Merry Christmas!

~ M e r r y C h r i s t m a s ~

After 3 years of procrastinating, I've finally decided to obtain the Christmas event gear. The first 2 years I played this game, I never felt motivated enough to get the Christmas gear. Last year, I wasn't in town and didn't have access to FFXI.

However this year, I decided that i'd finally do the mini-game events and get the lolchristmas gear.

The mini games weren't too bad, and I was able to get everything within 2 days of casually playing them. I even managed to pick up quite a few food items, which I hope to use in whatever low level ls events I get involved in.

And now to the more interesting part of this post... Last month I decided that I would be hosting a special Christmas event for my social shell. This would be my way of thanking the members for making the shell a success after all this time. We've had people come and go, but no matter how many members we've had at any time, they've always been great about making the LS a place to call home!

So at the beginning of the month, I had all the members that were interested in participating, post on our forum to sign up for a "Secret Santa" gift exchange. We had about 14 people sign up, and I sent each of them a little PM to let them know who they had been paired up with. They were then given the task to find a gift (in game) to give to the member they were paired up with.

Then this Sunday, at the break of dawn (7am my time X_X) we all gathered together at the Kokba Hostel (sp?) and took some time just to hang out, goof around and take some fun screenshots. The fun part about having LS events at the hostel, is that you get temporary food items, costume items and fireworks and everyone was having a blast playing around with them.


After we had our fun, we called the names one by one and did the gift exchange. It was a huge success, and many of the gifts that were chosen had a lot of thought put into them. It was fun to see everyone get a little something that would either help them level a job they were working on, or in the case of Carste, decorate his mog house with a dozen roses (lol)

When we were done with the gift exchange, we sat down and took a few group screenshots to finish it off :)


But the day was not done yet! I split everyone up into two teams, and started our "Treasure Hunt"! The goal of this event was for the two teams to travel around Vana'diel and farm up random items that I had selected (from slime oil, to a Kaiser Sword). They had around an hour and a half to collect as many items as they could, and at the end the team with the most items would be declared the winner!

So off they went to go farm the items, while I headed up to my kitchen to make some breakfast. <_<

After about an hour and a half, I asked both teams to come meet me in whitegate and the team that would have obtained the most items, would be the winners! The winning team consisted of Fieryblizzard, Carste, Athoz, Sabene and Demionknight. Each were rewarded with 100k each. Their team had managed to get 9/10 items, where as the losing team, had only managed to get 5/10 items.

Soulstar, Drimergirl, Elden, Janko, Zeo and Mailinx were given the task of shouting a little song, in whitegate. The song of choice? "I'm Too Sexy" I of course had the lyrics changed up a little so that it could fit the FFXI theme:

I'm too sexy for my love too sexy for my love
Love's going to leave me

I'm too sexy for my subligar too sexy for my subligar
So sexy it hurts
And I'm too sexy for Bastok too sexy for Bastok
San d'Oria and Windurst

And I'm too sexy for your party
Too sexy for your party
No way I'm disco dancing

I'm a model you know what I mean
And I do my little turn on the catwalk
Yeah on the catwalk on the catwalk yeah
I do my little turn on the catwalk

I'm too sexy for my car too sexy for my chocobo
Too sexy by far
And I'm too sexy for my optical hat
Too sexy for my optical hat what do you think about that

I'm a model you know what I mean
And I do my little turn on the catwalk
Yeah on the catwalk on the catwalk yeah
I shake my little touche on the catwalk

I'm too sexy for my too sexy for my too sexy for my

'Cos I'm a model you know what I mean
And I do my little turn on the catwalk
Yeah on the catwalk on the catwalk yeah
I shake my little touche on the catwalk

I'm too sexy for my cat too sexy for my caitsith
Poor pussy poor pussy cat
I'm too sexy for my love too sexy for my love
Love's going to leave me

And I'm too sexy for this song

And for those that want to see the actual screenshot -- Link

We had quite a few people shout back some positive things, but we had one person who didn't quite appreciate our performance! ; ;

Oh well.. we had fun and that's really all that mattered.

After the event had been wrapped up, I geared up my RDM to help out with the CoP Sunday static we have going now to help Standpoint, Drimergirl and Soulstar. We started off with the Mithra fight in Attowha Chasym which went pretty smoothly. We managed to get down 2/3 mithra before we wiped, which was only because the mobs seemed to gain a resistance to our sleeps. But we got back up and finished off the last one with no problem!

Next was the Snoll Tzar fight... I was asked to change to SAM, which instantly made my day. The fight strat was pretty straight forward - ZERG!

And that is exactly what I did! It was funny, because someone mentioned a directional AoE move that the mob had, and Soulstar then asked where he should be standing so that he wouldn't get hit with it.

My answer?

"Away from me!". I knew that i'd be tanking the fight, especially because I had planned to use my 2hr.... hehehehehehehe......


Yep, I was the first and only one to die! It was fine by me, I sat back laughing because I knew to expect it, and was just happy that I got to pull out some damage on my SAM beforehand.

The last fight was against some moblins in the Mine Shaft (something something). I was asked to come RDM/NIN and kite the big one, which wasn't too bad. I just wish there had been a little more kiting room.

We'll be continueing the next missions sometime in January when everyone comes back from their vacations, and if all goes as planned, 3 more LS members will finally have their Rajas rings before the end of January!

And speaking of moblins.. SE introduced a new game event called Moblin Maze Mongers. I haven't read up too much on the specifics, but from what I know already, the objective is to kill a certain amount of mobs, in a maze, within a certain amount of time. If you succeed, you are awarded "marbles" which are a new form of currency that you can purchase gear from, as well as special items that allow you to do harder types of mazes.

I originally did a couple of runs with Elden's alternate character Vepion, and Janko. We managed to get up to the last 2 mobs, but lacked the dmg to complete the maze. No problem though, we mostly just wanted to try it out and have a little fun.

The day after, I was invited along with Zeo, Demionknight, Soulstar, Drimergirl and Mailinx to do a few runs. We did much better (obviously due to having a full party) and I think I managed to collect about 30-40 marbles. I enjoyed these, and I think it's a great idea that SE introduced this event. Now when people log into the LS and have nothing to do, we can just meet up in Jeuno and take some time to do the mazes.


Oooh, and I totally forgot to mention this, but... my social shell members are the best! Near the end of the day (Sunday), I was asked to join a party with Sabene. A few other LS members were in party, and I had no clue what they were up to. Then Sabene started telling me that herself and the others, had enjoyed the event I hosted and wanted to give me a gift because I hadn't participated in the Secret Santa gift exchange myself.

Looking in my trade box menu, I found myself the Dark Spirit pact for my SMN. And just moments before, Onedarkflame had given me the Light Spirit pact as well! I was extremely grateful for the gifts especially considering that both of the items are very pricey, and I would of never thought to get them for my SMN (which is now lvl 52!) I have to say... these guys are quite sneaky, but very smart! I'm probably not an easy person to buy for in the game, because aside from the insane expensive pieces of gear, I usually have everything I need... and these guys were able to find something I didn't have, and had honestly never put much thought into getting. So yeah... now I can feel not so gimp on my SMN! Thank you guys! ^^

And so to end this post, I figured i'd post a few pics of my little brenner match against a certain BLU.

With the help of Elden's PUP, I was able to show Janko a thing or two about poking fun at the Canadian!


We had a blast, which I find really odd because I really don't enjoy PvP at all. But I think its mainly because while we all did want to be the victor, we goofed around a bit and didn't take it so seriously. I'm pretty sure that Janko held back a lot and let me win a few times... not that he'd really be able to dent my PLD much *flexes*

Ok... I lied.


Maybe the PLD can be dented, just a little. ^^;

Well that's it for this post. Hope everyone who is reading, has a great christmas with their friends and family and best wishes to you all in the future :)

Dancers and Pixies, Oh My!

So last night... was interesting.

As of late, i've been staying up late with two of my friends Janko and Elden doing random things.


Last night we decided to do a little bit of campaign. Normally we all just gang up on a mob and call it a day, but when we zoned into Sauromuge Champaigne [S] there weren't really many mobs left, aside from an NM Yagudo which happened to have a few elementals. After about 20 minutes of slowly killing the elementals, only to have the NM summon them again, I decided to take Elden's somewhat sarcastic suggestion of kiting the NM "Kirin Style".

So off I went, provoking the NM and began kiting him in circles around the building as Elden, Janko and a few other players chased it down. I did this for a little while, but eventually the elementals kinda overwhelmed us all and well... yeah, i'm sure you can guess what happened next. :)

After that campaign, I felt a little burned out so I decided to make my way to this one area in Grauberg [S] that I really like, and mentioned in my previous post. For a long time my favorite place in the game has always been The Sanctuary of Zhi'tah, but some really retarded personal reasons I have tried to stay away from that zone. After discovering this new area though, i've decided it's my new favorite place in the game.


Not long after I got to the area, Elden and Janko decided to come find me.

That quest of theirs soon turned into...

Elden sees a pixie!

Elden engages the pixie!

Elden dances and tries to impress the pixie with uber solo skillz!

Elden is annihilated by the pixie!

So after getting back up, they finally made their way to where I was. We then decided it would be fun to kill some Wivres that were nearby. Then still being in the crazy "I must kite the mobz!" mood, I decided to voke one and lead both Elden and Janko into a field filled with true sight Hypogryphs. *evil grin*

I was actually hoping to lead them into the little fairy area, but Janko ended up getting aggro as he chased the Wivre that I was kiting and well... umm... yeah. I guess I kinda MPK'ed him. <_<;


I wasn't going to be able to solo both a Wivre and Hypogryph on my PLD, so also let myself die and then home pointed so that I could change to WHM and give Janko a raise 3. After a grueling 20 minutes of warping, changing back to PLD and finally making my way back to him and Elden, we decided to have a little revenge on the birdies.

Or to be more exact, elden thought it would be fun to play with the birdies while me and Janko watched and tossed popcorn at him.


What started out as "Elden soloing a hypogryph" soon turned into a "Elden getting owned by 2 Hypogryphs".


Actually no, he did pretty good and lived through both. But I was getting a little bored, so after Elden engaged a third hypogryph, I decided to get up and help him out while Janko goofed around and hid underneath the mob.


We had a few more kills before we finally decided to make our way to the NPC that teleports you back to the city. On the way back, we killed a few quadav and had the Dancer's Testimony dropped, so of course Elden got excited and insisted that me and Janko who were ready to pass out, stay online a little longer so that he could go and fight the Dancer NPC. (Which he was doing ok with, until the DNC NPC decided to 2hr and apparently weaponskill-ga the crap out of him)

All in all, it was a fun and random night. We didn't really have any goals in mind, and for once just took the night to goof off and watch how hyper a person can get when they get beyond that stage of being dead tired.

As for other things i've done in the game... I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but i'm helping some LS members with their CoP missions. We've decided to run through the missions on Sundays, and we started with promyvion-vazhl. Well actually, I didn't help with the vazhl fight but I did join in afterwards to help the group get past the 16 doors that each spawn a Golem.

By the time we were done with this part of the missions, we decided to call it a day and continue again next Sunday. Hopefully we'll be able to get through most of 5.3 - Three Paths before the evening and then if we're lucky, we might even be able to wrap up the expansion by the end of January. *crosses fingers*


And speaking of January, I'm going to get to chaperon another wedding. My friend Soulstar asked me to put in an application for him and his RL wife Drimergirl a couple of months ago. The application was finally accepted and the wedding date has been set for January 4th.

SE even approved Soulstar's request to have the wedding ceremony held in Misareaux Coast (at the cost of 240k!) so it should be a very interesting wedding. The only downside to having the event held in a requested area, is that the guests have to have completed up to at least CoP 2.3 in order to attend, otherwise they won't have access to the area. They also have to be lvl 68, so that they won't get aggro.

While the second part was easy enough to take care of because the guests all had jobs beyond lvl 68, the first was going to be a challenge. I really wanted to see all of Soulstar and Drimergirl's friends at their wedding ceremony, so I organized a run last Monday.

I had vowed never to do the promies again after having spent a good 4 - 6 months helping LS members get them done, because all the planning, organizing and time invested had just burnt me out. But I made an exception this time, and thankfully the people I organized the promyvion run for (Onedarkflame, Hanow and Athoz) were prepared and very efficient.


On top of that, I was finally able to use some of my Kindred Seals that continue to accumulate. Athoz was wanting to get a run done to get his Destroyers, so along with Sabene, Janko, Elden and a friend of Janko's, we setup to do Copycat.

It was a pretty fun run, what with everyone getting charmed and beating on our fellow party members ^^.


We managed to get a total of 3 Destroyers and had quite a few gil drops. Janko got 2 Orihalcum Ingots to go towards his Morgan's Body fund which he's currently working on.

Ooooo, and speaking of salvage stuff! Carste invited me to a "Usukane" only salvage group. We were suppose to have a run on Wednesday, but one person wasn't available and we still needed a 6th to show so that we could enter. The plan is to "low-man" the event, and do only the areas needed to get the items to obtain the Ususkane feet. I've never done salvage before, so i'm pretty eager to finally try it out :)

And while my Nyzul static is on hold until January, i've been able to join an assault static on Saturdays. The goal with this static is to do assaults needed to obtain "Captain Rank". I probably won't be able to get Captain rank with this group because once Nyzul starts back up, i'll have to bow out but hopefully if runs go as smoothly as last weekend, we'll get very close.

Oh and on that same note, the quest to upgrade to First Lieutenant.... IS EVIL. The first mini-game is absolutely irritating. You have a group of humes, and you have to figure out which of them are Quqirns (sp?). You only get a few hints to help you figure out which are the Quqirns, so its a process of elimination. And for the most part, its irritating as hell. -_-

Carste and Janko also invited me along for a BCNM60 - Up In Arms. We did 3 runs, and as to be expected, no kraken club dropped. I thought for sure that we might get one this time, considering both Janko and Carste have been lucky in the past and seen one drop on a run they've done (seperately of course). Guess my luck is still too crappy and it overwhelmed their good luck. I'm probably sitting at 0/50 on this BCNM now *shakes fist*



Seeing as i've been sitting behind in Wings of The Goddess missions for what seems to be forever, I decided i'd also make a little bit of progress. I was actually suppose to do the missions in a static last year with a few ls members, but... one of them decided to go into labour on the night we were going to meet up! So that got put on the backburner, and I think everyone just kinda forgot about them.


Right now there are so many statics happening in my social and so many events that I haven't wanted to set up anything else, so when Janko offered to give me a hand with the easy ones I took him up on the offer. We headed to Jugnar forest where I had to get a cutscene, and I went leroy jenkins and popped the NM by accident. But the NM Orc stood no chance ^^


I think i'm actually caught up now with everyone else that I was originally going to do the missions with, so I feel a bit more relieved. I hate being the one to hold people back in anything, and considering it took at least an hour or more just to get all the cutscenes and mini pre-requisite missions involved, I won't have to worry about that anymore.

And for the lastest news, my SMN finally hit lvl 51! This week my sunday static made a small change and we had our session yesterday. I was eager to be more useful to the party with my hastega. Sabene who is playing RDM is doing great with all the enfeebling, refreshing and healing and while we do share the healing duties, I still feel at times like i'm not contributing as much. I guess i'm too used to my RDM where i'm plowing through my MP and constantly casting... where as SMN, I have to keep waiting to use my BPs.


Anyways, the party disbanded when I was about 1k tnl (51), and after someone had mentioned the elemental staves at 51 that I conveniently forgot about, I quickly headed off to Campaign to get my remaining xp. I ended up going to Vunker Inlet [S] where I started to buff myself, and then out of no where a huge red ball of flame explodes on my screen and I see my HP shoot down to 0.

WTH?????

Seconds later, there's about 8 NPCs standing on my dead corpse, and I see Shadowhand running around killing everyone in sight.

Great....

I had to wait for people to pick off her little army that was camping my body before anyone could see that I was dead underneath and raise me. ><

But I got my lvl in the end, so I was happy!

Time for some more CoP!

So finally a new CoP static has started, and this time i've got a mule full of items, food and reraise items!

A while back, one of our members Standpoint had mentioned wanting to lead a static to complete CoP. He's had probably some of the worst luck in this game, especially when it comes to statics for Chains of Promathia missions. For some reason, he just hasn't attracted the right kind of people to commit to his previous statics and after a couple of people leave without a word, well... things just kinda fall apart.

So when he mentioned wanting to start another static, I was eager to be apart of this to ensure that this time, he would finally get to the end of the missions. He's the type of player that rarely asks for help and usually keeps to himself... but if ever someone mentions needing help in the LS when he's online, he'll almost always show up a few minutes later without a word, waiting for an invite to help out. He doesn't get to play too much either, so that of course makes it really difficult for him to progress much in the game, at least in terms of endgame so it'll be nice if our ls can help him finally accomplish one of his big goals in the game -- getting that shiny rajas ring!

A few people in our LS had expressed an interest in joining, and so this week we decided to work on getting them caught up to Standpoint who is currently on "Three Paths". This meant starting off with mission 4.2, which involved running around Sacrarium and killing a corse NM. Unfortunately I wasn't able to join up for that fight, but later in the night I was able to help out with the climb to Promyvion Vazhl.

Janko, Carste and myself joined up with Drimergirl, Soulstar and Elden to help them get the mission done. We were only able to get to floor 4, but the climb went smoothly. We would of kept going too but because it was late on a Sunday night, we had to call it and reschedule (which is yet to be determined @_@)


The two NM fights that we did manage to do, were pretty fun. As Carste had predicted, I was tanking on my SAM.

<_<

>_>

I went SAM/WAR with my Soboro, and it was fuuuuuuuuuuuun!

But as you can see, my "fun" on SAM often results in this:


I probably should have gone /nin, but what can I say? I like to make my mages work! Squishy ftw!

*ahem*

We also managed to (mostly) finish our never-ending swift belt run which was started a few months back. We had decided to farm the codexes we needed, and our first time with the NMs only resulted in one swift belt dropping. We tried to setup farming runs in the weeks that followed, but there never seemed to be enough people around.

Finally though, we decided to give it another shot and thanks to one of our members Falk, who was able to farm 2 codexes on his own, we headed out for yet another run.


This time we had 2/3 belts drop, which was great. We weren't able to get Falk a belt, but we do plan to have a run in the future when he gets his NIN closer to 50.

So yeah... I also was able to experience something that really changed my opinion on BLU recently. I know the job can be pretty versatile, and that in solo situations its a powerful melee/mage. But for a long time, I always thought the job was pretty "meh" in merits.

That all changed when I was invited to merit with some members from my Limbus shell. At the time, I knew my friend Janko had just gotten his SCH to 75 and was desperate to finish some of his STR merits in order to start on SCH merits after. So I invited him along.

This was definitely one of the most enjoyable merit parties i've had in ages. First of all, our setup was RDM, COR, BRD, BLU, WAR, MNK. I was keeping haste on everyone except for the brd, refreshing myself and Janko on BLU, and was even able to keep up with dia'ing (3) every mob. There was hardly any time to rest in between it all but I was glad because it meant that boredom wouldn't creep in like it usually does in most merit parties.

After a while, Janko asked if I could parse him and so I loaded up directparse and after about 30 minutes... I went to check the results. Knowing that both the WAR and MNK were fully meritted and had some pretty good gear, I expected to see them as #1 for the dmg in our party.

Nope.

Our BLU, Janko was in the lead! The party continued for another hour and a half and whenever i'd check the parser, Janko was always in the lead. Our COR also had a parser going and confirmed the results. So... I guess as long as the BLU has a real haste and a constant refresh, they are definitely a job to invite for some good xp in a merit pty. I think in 2.5hrs, we were able to get just over 60k.

I went ahead and put those merits into my MNK. I decided to go with Kick Attack rate first, and hopefully if I can manage to get myself into another merit pty I'll be able to start on my merits for "Focus" soon after. The problem i'm having though, is that i'm not getting any invites on my MNK. I do plan to semi-retire the job soon, but i'd still like a few more opportunities to play it a little more ; ;

I was able to get into a Nyzul pickup party with MNK yesterday, so I guess that's a start. My own Nyzul static has been put on hold until we can get Drimergirl and Soulstar to 75 (in the meantime, we just merit/xp with them during our static time slot) so I figured I might as well join a few pickup runs and test my luck.

My luck is still crappy (to be expected of course) but the runs we did went pretty well. Our first run was a climb from floor 31-36, which we did very easily. We had probably 8 minutes left when we exited, which is something i've never experienced before. The second run, was a boss run for floor 40. Again we got to the last floor with about 10 minutes left, and after popping my 2hr and temporary items, we zerged the boss down really quickly. Unfortunately we didn't get any drops though.


On our last run, we had to replace a couple of our members which was probably not the best idea. We had two floors where you have to figure out the lamps, and the replacement members were either not familiar with these types of floors, or just really failed at comprehending english. The leader for the run gave out pretty clear instructions, saying who needed to touch the lamp and when, but this didn't exactly go according to plan, and we had to redo the lamp order quite a few times. All the wasted time left us with 3 minutes to kill the boss, which was another Behemoth. We got him down to about 50% or less before time ran out ><

Oh well, I was just happy that I didn't die at all!

Last, i'm really urked with part of the new update that was just added yesterday. SE decided that in order to try and discourage RMT even more, and prevent them from making gil to sell on the internet, they would cut the NPC selling price of a few items. While this is good in trying to eliminate RMT, it does also affect the regular player. Myself and many other friends I know, have farmed some of the items that were affected for a little gil... and of course now, we have no choice but to find alternatives to earn gil in the game. I have some stuff to fall back on, like fishing and crafting... but a few people I know will probably have a much more difficult time trying to find something that can net the same gil/hr ratio.

Well I guess we'll see how this new update looks in the next few days. So much talk about the new battle systems that were implemented to help players get a little xp while being able to play casually. It sounds pretty confusing to me right now, but i'm sure i'll give it a try soon with a few friends and see it for myself.

Btw, has anyone ever been to Witchfire Glen in Grauberg [S]? I was looking for some Brasscaps (mushroom looking mobs) to farm some items, and ended up finding this secluded area where a bunch of fairies were. There was a waterfall and small little ponds all around, and absolutely no mobs. Really nice little place.

Campaign + Monk = Squishy?

Well, i'm currently sitting at 20k tnl to 75 MNK.

I owe that mostly to my renewed interest in campaign, which is thanks to a few friends: Elden, Athoz, Janko and Anderoc. I haven't really done a lot of campaign except for maintaing my current ranking (thanks to SE, you HAVE to do some campaign every 30 days in order to keep your medals.... -_-) but as I started lvling my MNK, I knew I would have to do a lot more in order to get myself some shiny new pieces: Cobra Unit Cap & Cobra Unit Subligar.

Well as soon as I put my mind to it, I was able to get the 90k Allied Notes I needed to get both pieces within 2 days. I had to change my allegiance to Windurst of course though, in order to get the gear at the cheapest price. (otherwise you have to pay an extra 20k AN for each item)

After this, I took a bit of a break from doing campaign, I felt pretty burned out. But recently a friend of a friend, Janko, who we will soon bring to the dark side, starting hanging out with a bunch of us and dragged me back into doing campaign. Most nights it would be me, Elden and Janko but throughout the week we've been joined by Sabene and Athoz.


Being able to do campaign with friends has made it all the more fun and bearable. Sometimes you experience some death...


And other times you get to wail on the birdies that try to stab you repeatedly with their little kunai weapons!


Of course one thing I still have yet to understand... is why the Yagudo have an obsession with removing Zerayla's top. -_-


An interesting thing i've learned with having done so much campaign this week, is that there are certain special NPCs that will randomly come and help you. There's this one fairy NPC that has an entire armie of pixies that help you out with healing magic...


And then there's this little toad dude, with a family of frogs. I'm not really sure what he does because I only saw him at the end of a campaign, but I like the idea that various creatures from the past come out and help you.


There's even this one NPC couple with a PLD and a RDM, and they actually talk in /say as they fight. Usually the RDM Hume is giving her "husband", the PLD, orders on what to do while she stands behind him keeping him alive with magic. Kinda funny to watch.

Here's just some random shots from campaign... I likes the fairies :)


Here's the Elvaan completely owning the poor Orc. He never knew what was coming.


With all the lvling i've managed to do on MNK, it was only a matter of time before i'd have to do all the questing to get my Asuran Fists unlocked as well as my Destroyers. And let me say... I am SO GLAD that I decided to keep my Destroyers ages ago when I got them in a KSNM. I never had the intention to lvl MNK, but for whatever reason I had decided back then to store my Destroyers because I knew it was hard to get a group together for the KSNMs that drop them... making them a little rare to come by.

Thankfully, my LS was able to lend a hand with everything I needed. It also helped that one of our members was also lvling MNK (his first to 75) and also needed help with many of the same things.

But before I could start on my Asuran Fists NM, I had to complete the NM to get my Steel Cyclone for my WAR. Yes... I have WAR. Its semi-retired though, because no matter what gear i've managed to get for it (I have all the hecatomb stuff from sky) I still can't make it dish out the numbers that my SAM can... so, I just don't play it.

I was able to snatch Janko, Zeo and Standpoint for the fight in The Sanctuary of Zhi'Tah against a big walking tree NM. I brought along Onedarkflame who I duo-boxed (though not too well, I suck at multi-tasking) on WHM and we all decided to zerg the thing. It only took a couple of minutes, but I was quite happy.


The next day, I formed a ws party with Athoz, Sabene, and Janko in Castle Oztroja. Later on Chocobits joined up with us to help out with his Hexa Strike. Both me and Athoz were able to get our WS pts completed in a matter of a couple of hours, and we even managed to get a few nice scroll drops for gil.


When we were finally done with that, we put together a group to go fight the Asuran Fists NM. Zeo and Onedarkflame came out to help me and Athoz. We decided to all 2hr the thing, which was probably a good idea considering I ended up tanking for most of the fight and just about died ><

Later on that day, I was able to get some more WS points to break my Destroyers thanks to Onedarkflame and Athoz. We didn't finish that night, but I managed to login the next day and finally break them. Yay :)


As for other LS events, it seems like we're starting to get back into the groove again. Its been a while since we've had enough members to really go out and tackle big NMs. Just the other day, Standpoint asked for help with the antlion NM for his RNG Jupon, out in Attohwa Chasm.


Initially there was a little bit of a... how should I say, sight seeing detour as we followed our brave little tarutaru SMN Soulstar. Eventually though, we did get to the right place and did a little testing here and there to figure out how to pop the NM. It involved us killing an Antlion Tracker (I think that's what it was called) which would pop if you rested on the cracks in the ground. After 5 minutes, you then had to move to another set of cracks and the NM would have a possibility of popping.

We lucked out and had him spawn within the first 20 minutes, and pretty much overkilled the thing. Our group consisted of Standpoint, Carste, Soulstar, Drimergirl, Onedarkflame, Janko, Mailinx, Athoz, Terminataru and myself.


And because Carste happened to spot Xolotl earlier, we all decided to give it a go and kill him. The first try started to go decently, but after about 10 minutes we knew that our setup wasn't really what we needed and it wasn't long before we wiped.

But of course, we still managed to have a little fun. I was able to finally show my thanks to Standpoint for all those canadian jokes he's always directing at me >=)


Anyways, after a little job changing (I went /nin for probably the second time in my entire PLD career... I always get really nervous because I don't feel very confident tanking without provoke) we took Xolotl for round 2! And sure enough, we got through the fight much quicker, with no deaths. I even d/ced about 2 minutes into the fight (stupid router) and we still pulled it off. Too bad our shell has really bad luck with drop rates, because we got absolutely nothing from the fight. Not even a crystal ><


And apparently farming "zeni" isn't as bad as I thought it was. One afternoon when I logged in, Janko invited me to farm zeni with him. I didn't want to go through the hassle of making inventory room and getting the special cameras you need to take pictures, but I figured i'd keep him company and help him out. So we headed over to Newton Movapolas to find some moblins. The first area we found, had already been claimed by a zeni farming party so with my leet navigational skills (i'm not as bad as people say I am!) I took us to another area and we quickly found us some moblins to play with. Then in about 20 minutes or less, we managed to take all the pictures that Janko needed to turn into zeni. So now i'm starting to consider trying out ZNMs in the future, if only I can find a shell that works with my schedule.


In terms of my character progression (aside from all the fun MNK stuff) i've managed to get a few more assaults done. I think i'm going to try and flag the quest for First Lieutenant sometime this week, though i've heard the quest can be pretty irritating because some of it is luck based (yay!).


My limbus shell also had another win on Ultima. I got to bring out my BLM for the fight which made me happy enough, but to my surprise I also got myself a pretty pair of Nashira Crackows. Now if only I could get my RDM into some more HNM events to test out the magic accuracy a bit ; ;

And last but not least... I'm still trying to work on my smithing. Leathercraft has pretty much come to a halt, considering no one seems to be selling the stupid catoblepas hides -_-

I'm hoping to get smithing to 30 before the weekend (sitting at 29) but after that i'm going to take a break from any kind of gil spending because I have some serious farming to do. I want to give a gil prize for a LS event i'm planning in December. We're going to have a "LS Secret Santa" as well as a "LS Treasure Hunt Party". I'm hoping to have 2 teams compete against each other to farm up various items and have a gil prize for the winning team.

Before I go, I might as well post my most recent accomplishment too... in fact, its so recent that it happened while I was writing up this extremely long post!

MONK 75!

7th job to 75! Now... either this means I enjoy the game too much, or... well, lets not mention the other possibilities. >_>;

Next up, loldrg! Why? Well... because i'm not touching NIN or BST! And actually, mainly because I have a few pieces of gear that most DRGs pursue so i'd like to make use of them seeing as my PLD doesn't get to come out too often.