AF, and some more AF... and AF?

Well my wednesday night LS static has finally reached that "fun" phase where everyone wants to get their AF done. So I spent most of last week helping out with various AF quests, in addition to my own. As of 2 weeks ago, I made a change with the job I was going to bring to the static. Instead of having Kaelyth's MNK (who i've now retired and saved me a butt load of gil) I'm bringing Zerayla's RDM to static, which has allowed Standpoint the chance to make some more progress on his BLU rather than being the refresher of the party which i'm sure would have driven him insane before we hit 75.

Because i'm lvl 75, and because Standpoint's BLU is also higher than the static we have been doing the level sync thing that was recently introduced. So far, this level sync feature has really seemed to save FFXI a little because it gives people a reason to play if they can level with their friends without having to be within the same level range. The only downside to this of course, is that if the job you're using is one that relies on stats you pretty much have to go and rebuy gear to fit the level you're going to be brought down to. I guess not being able to part with my gear for fear of needing in the future came in handy for me ^^ No gil spent on my end, haha!

But anyways, over the last couple of weeks our static has made enough progress to push us to the point where everyone wanted to go and get their AF done ASAP. I don't particularily mind helping with AF, but there was so much done in such a short time that I swear if anyone asks for help on AF in the next month, i'm likely to toss a moose at them or something. (Well not really, lol)

I didn't have a chance to help out too much with the actual coffer key farming because I was usually not around (I think i've caught some strange bug going around) or i've had a couple of events I was already committed to. But I did get to help with the fun stuff, that is with the AF3 fights.

Though I wasn't feeling the greatest the night that Soulstar and Drimergirl setup to go get their PLD and WHM AF3 fights done, I was still glad that I was able to come out on PLD again. I always like an opportunity to take out the job seeing as its not often needed for much anymore. We went to Davoi to fight 2 orc NMs for Soulstar's AF3, which ended up being just a little bit "overkill". He had asked for help in LS, and oddly enough that night we had quite a few bored LS members so just about everyone came out to lend a hand. I think the mobs were killed within less than 3 minutes, I don't remember a whole lot of that fight o.O


Then we also had a huge turnout of members come to help Drimergirl farm her Tavnazian Bell so that we could pop the NM for her WHM AF3 in Fei'yin. I was dreading the farming part, because when I had farmed my own bell as well as helped farm one for Xean back years ago, it had taken fooooooooooooorever. We were lucky though this time around, probably due to Carste's handy TH4! The bell dropped within about 45 minutes and we were off to fight the NM in Fei'yin, which again was also a piece of cake.

So that was good, they got their full AF completed. And as I mentioned, earlier that day I was able to snatch up a couple of friends and redid both of my AF3 fights for BLM and RDM.

Through Limbus, i've been able to upgrade a lot of gear. I also had a pretty big stash of Ancient Beastcoins left over from when Xean had quit so that made things a little easier. Our shell has been really lucky with drops (the items needed to upgrade AF) for the jobs I had leveled and it would only take about a 1-3 months to get both items I would need and voila! Shiny shiny gear! Well I had finally decided to stop upgrading gear and just redo all my AF quests so that I could get the regular versions again, and be able to store them on the storage NPC. I put off doing the first AF quests for a couple of months, but eventually got the last quest flagged earlier this month and just waited until I could ask for some help.

Zeo was the first to jump in, and helped me duo Miser Murphy in Fei'yin. I was really surprised at how easy that fight was, because the last time I had remembered doing the fight for a member of the LS, he had obliverated myself (PLD), Xean (WHM), the RDM (lvl 60ish) and a WAR friend of ours. It was all great until I read the guide on the quest and remembered there was still another NM in Garlaige Citadel I had to kill....

So using the handy dandy teleport to the past, I zoned into Garlaige Citadel. I ended up encountering Old-Two Wings, which was a fun and quick fight. Too bad he didn't drop anything though, meh just my luck in this game.

Finally I got to the spawn point for the last NM for my RDM AF3, which was a doll. I thought it'd be a pretty easy fight, but I was wrong. The NM seemed to attack really fast, so I was often having to recast my buffs and shadows constantly (I went RDM/NIN) and the fact that I was barely doing any dmg to him made the fight seem an eternity. But I outlasted the NM and finally wrapped up my quest!

Later on that day, a few other LS members gave me a hand with the BLM AF3 NM "Magic Sludge". Sabene came out on BRD, Onedarkflame came out on WHM and Soluslupis borrowed a character from one of his family members and tanked on NIN. This fight was a lot easier than the last time I had done it, but not quite as fun. The last time I had done this fight, we had Standpoint tank the NM on DRK/NIN and well... as his nickname implies, he was rather squishy which resulted in a lot of healing being tossed back and forth. But the part that made that fight the best, was when Alianne (who has disappeared entirely without a word) decided to convert right next to the NM and died before he could cure himself, lol. Ahhhh..... funny memories.


Oh, and actually there's still a little more to the AF stories... I helped out Elden with one of his SCH AF fights. I had to go to Grauberg with him, and we went into a BCNM fight against a SCH NPC. I was on RDM/NIN and he went PUP/WHM. At first things seemed to be going really well, he had his puppet tanking most of the fight but...eventually the puppet died and I quickly became the tank. No problem!


Right?

Lol.... I don't really know much on SCH but this thing was a friggin beast when he used his 2hr! I remember that Elden went down pretty quick, I think due to some high tier magic. I panicked a little and finally he told me to kite it a little bit while he reraised. Even though at the time I was down on shadows and recast timers, my stoneskin still held up so I was able to get a little distance and pull the NPC away from Elden. Only... he was down moments later, I think due to some -aga casting? I'm not sure, I just remember seeing fire and seeing Elden dead again ><

I honestly started to think that I was going to die too, mainly because the magic casting from the NPC seemed unlimited and I wasn't finding enough opportunity to get my HP back up while getting my buffs back up again. Thankfully though, the NPC only needed to be brought down to a certain % which I managed to accomplish. Success! Poor Elden though...


Aside from that, i've pretty much only been playing whenever there are events going on. I took a night to help Onedarkflame with club skillups/farming as well as Sabene with her magic skillups on her BLM. I think the night was a decent success, we had quite a few profitable items drop from the high lvl goobue. I would of tried to stick it out longer for them, but that night I had a massive headache and just had to get some sleep.


I've also started doing Nyzul again. I'm really glad that Elden stepped up and asked a few of us in LS to do this, because I was pretty disappointed when 3 members from my last static left. One member quit the game, another just one day decided to disappear without a word (though I did find out later on he had made a character on another server and the other) and the third is just one of those players that doesn't seem to really care much about people in the game to a point where letting them know you're going on a break from the game and will be leaving the static is common courtesy. Eh... I just wish more people in this game would treat their "friends" as real people, treat them the same way they would treat a person they know in RL. Anyways, moving on.....

So yeah, our Nyzul static was definitely a bit rusty and we didn't exactly get lucky with the goals we had to accomplish on some of the floors. But, we worked really well together and i'm sure that once we have more practice we'll be a lot quicker. The members in my static are very well coordinated and I know I can rely on this group to do a great job.


Everyone has been talking about all these new nyzul relic weapons, and new weapons skills which we can get from doing this assault, but to be honest I haven't even bothered to read too much into it. I'm just content being able to relax a little, and have a challenging event to do with ls members. Plus, we've limited our static to once a week so I think that'll prevent me from getting burned out like I eventually did when we used to have our assault static.

What else... what else...

I'm still trying to get in as much meriting as I can. I just finished getting 5/5 Overwhelm on my SAM and I think i'm going to finally try and tackle the never ending STR merits. Gawd, I think the last 3 upgrades are a total of 9 pts each?! INSANE! But... with me retiring Kaelyth I had a lot of gear I was able to sell, and had saved up a lot of gil so I pretty much splurged and got my SAM a few new shiny items which have definitely made me enjoy playing the job more. I love seeing the "rare" high dmg WSs happen more frequently, and count for more! >=)

I'm also using some of the excess gil I have to get my crafting up. I'm working Leathercraft, and got it to 49 this morning. Only 11 more lvls to go! Then i'll have to decide if I want to take up Bonecraft, Smithing or Goldsmithing. I think i'll probably leave Goldsmithing for last, seeing as that's a hug gil sink.

And just to expand a little on my wednesday static -- things are going pretty great. We've decided to add in another session on Sundays, provided everyone is around. This'll probably be something that happens every other weekend, but at least the extra xping session will help us. I think our goal is going to be to hit 75 before christmas, and I think now that we're finally able to go to ToAU camps that shouldn't be a problem. I'm just dreading the stage we'll eventually get to when Imps will be the choice of mobs. I absolutely hate those as a mage! 6-8k a stack for echos, and you can go through those soooo easily if you have really bad luck with links and aggro.

I'm glad that I get to do the static once a week though. Being that we're all pretty close, we all talk on skype during the session and talk just about everything. Most of the time seems to be spent tossing jokes at me, which for the most part I don't mind as long as it makes everyone laugh. The only real complaint I have is that at times, any one of us can slack off momentarily and sometimes this'll upset someone and then the atmosphere becomes way too "serious" for my liking. I had all my "serious" parties back when I leveled my first 6 jobs to 75, I really don't want to have to be scanning my chat log 100% of the time and get scolded if I miss something ><

I think that about covers this update... figured i'd toss in some random screenshots I took from my last Dynamis San d'Oria run. I was really disappointed that we didn't see any of the new AF drop for BLU, COR or PUP. We did get a huge turnout on AF, we had 14 pieces of gear drop and 2 - 100c's! One of which I won! And have yet to sell...... *sigh* Hopefully our Beaucedine run tonight will be much better!

Goodbye Kaelyth~

After a night of contemplating, I decided that I would retire my alternate character Kaelyth. I've been able to basically accomplish the following on him:

• WAR 55
• MNK 51
• NIN 29
• Genkai 1 & 2 - Complete
• Up to CoP 4.2
• Up to Gobbiebag Quest #7
• All Moghouse upgrades Complete
• WAR AF1 & 2 Complete

The reason I decided to retire him, is because I was starting to feel overwhelmed by all the things I "had to do" in order to progress in the game with him. It was starting to be a pain in the butt to ask for help on the very simple quests (such as AF and Genkai) and not be able to solo them. I have a lot more time to play this game than my LS friends, so I don't really like pulling them away from the things they could be doing to progress their own characters, with the little game time they do have.

So for now, Kaelyth will just be another one of my mules. The bonus to retiring him of course, is that I can now take some of the gear I bought him and sell it, such as my O.Kote, Emperor Hairpin, and Cross Counters. I'm planning on "beefing" up my SAM a little more on Zerayla, by getting the items that i've put off for a long time because they really only give me 1-2 more STR. It just wasn't worth the investment a couple of months to spend a couple hundred gil for a couple of stats. But now that I have nothing else to really invest in, I figured I might as well get a few pieces and enjoy my merit pts on SAM more :)

Other than that, i'm trying to use most of my time online to get some more meriting done. I swear it never ends! I've finally completed my PLD merits, so now all that is left is my SAM, WHM, RDM and WAR. I'm going to be working on my SAM next, and get 5/5 on overwhelm.

I'm also going to farm here and there, so that I can continue lvling my crafts and eventually get them all to 60. My plan was to finish getting leathercraft to 60, but the recipe i'm working on right now produces an item that doesn't sell too often. I could always NPC it, but i'd much rather be patient and make my gil back. So my mules are storing a ton of waistbelts right now and slowly selling those off.

I finally got to try the new level sync that SE introduced in this last update. I don't think i'm a huge fan because from what i've read up on it, if you happen to be a higher lvl and use your regular gear.... the stats are so greatly reduced that the gear is just, well.... crap. So basically, i'm going to be the kind of player that would rather get out my capped gear and bring that to a level sync party, and the downside to that is the time it takes to mule it all @_@

But aside from that, the idea is really great. I partied last night with some ls members - Soulstar, Drimergirl, Elden and we fought Ziz in Mamook. The party started off a little slow, due to the petrify move that the cockatrice kept using on me (we didn't have a WHM, so no Stona was available)... but eventually Elden realized that his puppet was able to stona me so he fixed the setup and things started to speed up. Only that didn't last long, because eventually our healer RDM had to take off to an HNM.

And that is the one reason I can't see myself joining an HNM shell. I wouldn't want to have to leave at the spur of the moment just to kill an HNM.

We eventually replaced the healer with a SCH, and our DNC with a DRG (the DNC wasn't doing any weaponskills, nor really healing with his dances ---- laaaaaaaaazy!) and things seemed to be really good, but it was getting really late and we had to disband about 30 minutes later.

So, to sum it up... I like having the ability to party with friends regardless of my lvl, but there's still a bit of preparation needed in order to do a lvl sync party which takes a bit away from its "greatness".

I'm looking forward to bringing my RDM to my wednesday ls static. I'm going to have 5 people to refresh, woohooo! (/sarcasm) I'm switching roles with one of our members so that he can bring his BLU and hopefully get it to 75 in this static. I don't mind the RDM duties and i'd much rather that the rest of the group be able to play jobs they enjoy while we static.

I think i've finally reached that phase where the game itself isn't "fun" (wait a second, FFXI was fun at one point? lol) for me most of the time, at least in the playing aspect. I still enjoy meriting, and crafting but i've been playing a lot of other games on my nintendo DS and Xbox 360 that i'm finally "unwinding" from the FFXI craze that gets you hooked in. I don't ever see myself quitting unless my friends decide to quit, and my LS dies.... but I'm not as obsessed about the game as I used to be. There's still some stuff I will consider trying out one day, like ZNM, Sea Gods etc... but for the time being, i'm just going to play more casually and mainly focus on my social LS members and events they want to do.

Speaking of that, I gotta look into organizing something fun soon. My ls has died down a little over the months so we don't really have as many 75's as we used to... so that kinda limits the events we can do on a bigger scale but i'm sure i'll think of something ^^

Red Mage 5/5!

After about 2 years of dynamis, i've finally managed to complete another relic AF set: Red Mage! A big HUGE thanks goes out to my dynamis shell RidersOfRohan, because without them i'd be pretty gimp ^^



Thanks to this amazing team, i've been able to get 5/5 on both Paladin and Red Mage, which were the two jobs I really wanted to one day complete. I've been able to collect some other pieces over the last two years, but my biggest goals have now been accomplished and I really can't thank the members of my shell enough for the hard work they put into bringing our shell to where it is today. And now that my goals are finally done, I plan to stick around until the day everyone decides to put up their hats, to see that all the rest of the members have their goals accomplished ^^

The only downside to having gotten the 5/5 on RDM, is that technically there was another member ahead of me who now has to wait for our next Xarcabard run to get his hat! Our shell has a tier lotting system for Northlands, so only one person can lot on AF at a time and the order is based on attendance. The member that was ahead of me, was actually second in line for the RDM Hat. We had a total of two drop that night... but I think the player who was ahead of me, figured a second hat wouldn't drop so instead, when a 100c dropped... he decided to lot that, and he won. And as our rules go, in Northlands you're allowed to lot either an AF, or a 100c. So he gambled his chance away, making me #2 in line for the hat that night... and, of course it dropped! I find it really creepy too, because when I saw him lot and win the 100c I was telling my friends on skype "watch, I bet you just because he won the 100c a second hat will fall" and sure enough, it did! I hope the update SE is giving to Dynamis to increase drop rates is noticeable, I want him to get his hat next run! ><;;;;

Other than that, i've done some more meriting (my Duelist's Chapeau is sooo helpful) and just about finished with PLD. I'm not quite sure what i'll be meriting next though... still have to figure that out. Way too many jobs at 75 -_-;

This week i've mostly been doing various things to farm more gil. I want to buy Kaelyth Cross-Counters, but as usual... whenever there's a "good" piece of gear that I want, the more I save up for it, the more it goes up in price. I have enough to buy them now, but... I don't want to use the gil that I always sit on for emergencies. Not that you can really have those in FFXI, but... I just have this thing, where I have to sit on a certain amount of gil, and I can't spend it. Its weird. o.O

I was hoping that by fishing, i'd be doing two things at once. Getting skillups, AND making gil. Unfortunately, I just get the fish. I must be doing it on the wrong days or something, I'm pretty sure you're only suppose to fish during certain phases of the "moon" in FFXI. I'm just too lazy to go look up that info.... I mean seriously, what kind of game makes you RESEARCH information?! Stupid SE.....

Eh, anyways... I helped a ls member get his joyeuse earlier this week. He was really psyched. Fight was pretty fun, I always enjoy seeing my paralyze take effect *evil grin*


And then to sum up the rest of my online time.... i've just been working on Kaelyth again. I sometimes wonder why i'm putting all this time into him, but then I have moments like during my Wednesday night LS static where I couldn't care less about the extra gil/time i'm investing because I have a blast being able to party with my friends. I can't really do that on Zerayla unless its meriting now, because i'll have some serious inventory issues if I take another job to 75 @_@;;;

We've actually done pretty good recently with the Wed LS Static. Kaelyth's MNK is now 49, and i'm finally seeing some damage on him. But... I now fully understand why anyone I knew that played MNK couldn't stand being in party for more than an hour. It gets really boring, really fast! X_X


I also had some decent pickup parties while lvling Kaelyth's WAR. I got him to lvl 53, and hope to get him a few more lvls this week. My only concern is going to be that I have to keep my subjob NIN up. I've only managed to get that to lvl 29, so soon it'll be gimp. I just hope my ls members are able to free up some more time, because i'm currently lvling it with them (2 NIN, 2 DNC static) and I would prefer to stick with the static rather than go solo. Its just more fun when you get to poke fun at each other instead of being focused on everything.

And the biggest pain in the butt, is redoing all the CoP missions on Kaelyth. (This is probably the main reason I keep saying to myself that i'm an idiot for creating an alternate character, lol) I've been lucky to get into a static through QCDN, and was even able to bring along one of my social LS members, Drimergirl. We're now on mission 3.5, the Diabolos fight and hopefully by October we'll be caught up to the rest of the members in our social shell and we can finally put together a LS static. I've promised to help out the QCDN group using Zerayla after that point, because I don't like the idea of quitting the group that helped get Kaelyth caught up.


And yeah, one thing I feel worth mentioning.... the Attowha Chasm Mountain Climb in 3.3 really isn't all that bad! I remember the first time I did it, I vowed NEVER to climb that mountain again. Of course I did end up doing that though, back when I had a ls static doing the ENM for the Hagun (I really wish that hadn't of broken, it was a fun ENM) and I did it again with Kaelyth. I actually enjoyed it this time around, and only fell off once at the very start, like 1 minute into the climb!


Oh, and did I mention that I hate not being lvl 75? I really don't like having to always ask for help on everything when i'm playing Kaelyth, always feels like i'm a hassle. But i've been lucky, ls members have been good and helped me out with various NMs that i've had to kill...

Such as... Valkurm Emperor who refuses to drop the stupid hairpin. I'm 0/5 on it, and spent all of today camping him only to go 0/2. NM camping in this game is seriously the most annoying thing!!!!! I can't wait until I get this stupid hairpin, I want to go back to playing already ><