To be, or not to be, the Bruce Lee!

After spending a lot of time debating which job I had an interest in taking to 75 next, I finally decided I would do Monk. The funny thing is that MNK was the first job that I tried out in FFXI, and though I never disliked it I never ended up taking it beyond lvl 33. I had been in too many parties where the tanks were so horrible, that I ended up taking PLD as soon as I was able to unlock the job. This way I didn't have to deal with tanks that didn't comprehend the concept of provoking every 30 seconds.

Another reason why I decided to take MNK is because I still have my cross counters that I had bought for Kaelyth back when I was lvling his MNK. By the time I retired Kaelyth, the cross counters went down in price by 300k and I really didn't want to sell them knowing that they have been 1-1.5mil for the last year and a half. I'm pretty sure eveeeeeeeentually they'll go back up in price, and as long as I can make back what i've spent, i'll sell them. In the meantime, I have every intention to use them with Zerayla's MNK as soon as I get lvl 50!

And so far, the lvling has been very nice. I have made parties with mostly LS members, and on my first day of bringing out MNK I was able to get a total of 8.5 lvls, going from lvl 33 - lvl 41. Then the next day, I got it up to lvl 43, and finally got my Raging Fists. It is a pretty boring job for the most part because there isn't a whole lot to do in comparison to other melee jobs, but i'm enjoying the xp parties so far >=)

As for my meriting, i'm putting that on hold for the most part. I've finished meriting WHM, SAM and BLM over the last couple of months. I don't plan to do anything on my WAR because as long as my SAM can outdamage it, I don't see the point of having two melee DD jobs. I'll just stick with using the one that is better geared. I have a few more merits to add to my RDM, (need to max out slow II) but I'll get to those eventually with my LS static.

Speaking of that, our group has now reached lvl 63-64. We managed to get something like 23k in our last xp session, fighting colibri. Overall, i'm enjoying the xp sessions. I get to play my SAM and often me, Onedarkflame and Standpoint spend the entire session playing "tarutaru hockey" with our PLD tank, Soulstar. Its kinda fun watching him try to keep hate against us, when we get a little WS crazy.

Me and Drimergirl having a little fun with our costumes ~

I've also been helping a friend Sabene get some lvls on her BLM, which is now at 71. We were duo-ing up at Mount Zhayolm on some wamoura, which wasn't too bad. Its actually really relaxing being able to duo with another BLM for xp, because its better than doing campaign and you can go afk whenever you need to without having to worry about upsetting 5 other party members. And considering that I have a 2.5 yr old sister that I usually end up babysitting over the weekend, its really convenient to have unlimited AFKs.

We also managed to have quite an interesting show during one of our sessions when a ZNM shell ran by us with a huge troll. At first the shell seemed to be doing ok as we watched, but eventually in a matter of minutes everyone was dead. I had a few friends in the shell, so I figured i'd try and help out. Unfortunately though, there was obviously a couple of people in the shell who weren't big fans of me and most likely were the reason I was declined and invite to help (politely though). Oh well, their loss. I offered to help when they had wiped, and even got myself killed by dia'ing the mob so that it wouldn't despawn after their alliance had wiped but according to them "they were fine". (The mob despawned in the end from what I heard)


I'm looking forward to getting Sabene's BLM to 75. I'm also trying to convince other LS members to take theirs to 75, so that we can really start doing some insane manaburn ENMs, BCNMs and KSNMs for gil. Already i've witnessed how easy you can make gil with a small group of BLMs.

Last monday, Sabene, Elden and myself went to do Under Observation in an attempt to help get utsusemi: ichi for Sabene's NIN. Our first run (my orb) was a wipe, but luckily we had a friend who was also trying a bcnm at the same time there to help raise us right after. The first run was the only fail we had, which I half expected too because I was the only one that was experienced with doing UO as a trio manaburn. Our next 4 runs resulted in a phalanx scroll (60k) as well as a Peacock Charm! We didn't get the scroll we wanted, but definitely got ourselves a nice drop that made up for it, and more! We plan to do some more runs again this week, and i'm keeping my fingers crossed we get lucky again.

I also found some time to do the halloween events and get myself the new "Eerie Cloak". I'm not really big on doing events and such, because the items seem to usually be a waste of inventory space but I was bored one night and decided to try it out.


After killing 10 bats with my lolpup, I went after the big guy called Pyracmon. I soloed him almost naked (it came pretty close) and because of that, I got myself the 3 warp neck pieces that allow you to warp to the chocobo stables of all 3 cities - Windurst, Bastok, and San d'Oria. I think I now have a total of 10 warp items on my character @_@


Though i've made some progress with meriting in the last bit, I haven't really done as much with my crafts as I had hoped. I had a goal to get all my crafts to 60 before the new year, but I think my habit of being stingy and wanting to farm up my materials so that I don't spend gil like crazy is slowing me down. Luckily though, I had some ls members help me out a few nights ago as we went to kill raptors in Kuftal Tunnel. Mostly everyone had something to skillup, and we even managed to get some lvls on our fellowship NPCs.

While we were there, we also ran into Yowie.

He dropped a Yowie Skin, which I plan to use later on to craft a friend some desert boots. *Sigh* Still 10 more lvls to go on leathercraft, and the next recipe calls for Catoblepas Hides which never seem to be available on the AH when I go to buy them. -_-

Oh, and again our LS has started up some fun group events. We spent all of saturday farming codexes, subligars and killing fomors for hate in order to pop the swift belt NMs. We managed to farm up 3-4 codexes, and went 1/5 on the belts. I had hoped that we would have a better drop rate, but of course if that ever happened, FFXI wouldn't be the big time sink that it is, eh?


We plan to continue doing this for the next couple of saturdays, until the people in our LS have their swift belts and subligars. Its a pain in the butt to do because fighting the mobs is no where near as exciting or fast paced as your normal xp party, but in the end its worth it when you get to see your fellow ls mates with some fancy gear ^^.

Ooooo, and recently with the addition of a ventrilo channel for my social ls, i've managed to bring a few new faces in from my dynamis shell. Well actually, one of my long time social shell members Ichibankitsune turned out to be the RL friend of one of my dynamis members, and invited him into the shell. And of course because Ecator is good friends with a lot of the dynamis shell members, he sorta brought a couple of them with him. Its been really nice to see more people in SoTW again, and now that everyone has access to either vent or skype, i'm pretty sure we'll be able to enjoy any ls events we do even more.

Oh, and speaking of Dynamis... I finally managed to get a good shot of Ketsurui doing his savage blade WS with his angel wings item. I think he's had me take more than a dozen shots over the last year (I used to do sky with him too) but I never seemed to get a decent screenshot. On our last run earlier this week though, right before we entered, he was goofing off again and asked me to take one and it turned out pretty cool!


Dynamis has been great as usual. We've lost a few people since fall because of work schedules and college, but we've recruited more "friends of a friend" which has really turned out great. Its nice having members that generally just want to have fun and don't just one day decide to quit without ever saying a word to the leadership. I really hate when people do that -_-

Our last run we got 7 drops in Xarcabard too, which I guess makes up for our run the month before where we only had 2. Our Beaucedine drop rate is always above 10, which I think is really helping the morale. People are getting their AF (I got my WHM AF body! woo!) and we're getting more 5/5 sets for our members. I just wish we could get lucky with the wootz ores again so that our "Month End Bonus" (surplus of gil earned when we farm coins) which we give to our members, would be a little more. Oh well, can't complain!

Alright, i've obviously had way too much to update since my last post so i'll try to sum up the last bit here...

My Nyzul static has been doing surprisingly well.

Carste has a squishy head!

I really didn't think that we'd make it past a boss floor, after I had heard how difficult these were from other members... however, I guess I should learn never to doubt the members of my social, because we always end up getting stuff done (hello thar Mr. Hakutaku!) We've actually been able to progress to floor 36 all in a month, and we only do 4 runs a week. We've picked up another member who will probably be our full time replacement - Ecator. (One of our members, Zeo can only do 3 runs with us due to another static he has earlier in the week)

Poor Ecator.....

Captn' Ahab has nothing on me!

So, over the course of 3.5 yrs of playing... my fishing lvl has now reached

*drumroll*

LEVEL 25!

Lol. Yeah, I feel so accomplished. Actually, I never really pursued fishing like I have with my other crafts. I think I started it in the beginning as a way to make gil, and then it turned into something I wanted to use to help my alchemy back when I was making shihei. Now, its kinda turned back into a gil making method for me, and so far the results are pretty decent. I've found other ways to make gil faster, but seeing as I can't usually do a lot in game during the day because of work I tend to just farm gil in between and often need a change in what I do to keep myself from getting burnt out.

Anyways, today I finally hit lvl 25 fishing up Nebimonites in Sea Serpent Grotto and was a little excited. I really don't know how people are able to take this to lvl 100 though. If I ever tried that, it would kill me. I mean maybe i'll get up there one day just because I'm using it as a means to make gil... but never never would I spend more than 25% of my online time fishing. >_>

So now that i've managed to sell off most of my imperial standing that i've made over the last few months meriting, and spent more than half my online time farming gil... i've been trying to decide what I wanted to do with it. I've already upgraded a few pieces on my SAM, and while I could probably put a little more into my BLM, I just don't see the point because social linkshell events aside, I never use the job. I don't really see myself getting into endgame at least for the remainder of this year... so yeah.

In the end, I decided to use my recent profits to show my thanks to a handlful of friends in game that have kinda endured my ranting and venting both about RL and game stuff for the last few months, and get them each something I think they would need soon in game. I've been hunting the AH for the last couple of days, waiting for prices to to come in and hopefully i'll have everything i'm looking to get before the end of the weekend. Then I get to surprise them! ^^

I'd have to say that even though this is a game, I still stand by the belief that people should be treated as you would treat them in RL. As a result, I think i've been able to make some great friendships and its a nice feeling to know that your friends in game also know what you might be going through in your RL and try to cheer you up when you're down, or just listen to you rant about the stupid moments that happen.

Speaking of ranting... i'm guilty of having given into a pointless rant recently. I regret having posted it because I know better than to post on a forum where you can assume the majority of the people could care less about you... and the moment they make the decision to dislike you, it really doesn't matter what you say because you'll always be wrong, and a bad person.

To give a little back story, earlier this month I was getting ready to post the schedule for the dynamis runs my shell RidersOfRohan wanted to do. Most Dynamis shells post on QCDN so that we can prevent any conflicts in game, and have them resolved ahead of time.

Anyways, I went to the forum and looked at the threads that had been made... I noticed that there were a couple of conflicts. Now before I go on, I'll quickly explain that RoR is the only shell that runs at 9pm PST/12am EST. We only run once a week, which gives us 4 runs per month. Our shell was made intentionally to allow the PST players, late night owls, and casual players that could only do one night a week, a linkshell where they could participate in Dynamis. All the other NA shells run at 6pm PST/9pm EST on Tuesdays. If ever there is a conflict, the worst that should happen is that our shell gets pushed back by 30 minutes. (Provided the shell that enters the zone prior to us, does not enter late)

So getting back to me getting ready to post our schedule. I had noticed some conflicts. As I do every month, I tend to re-work the order of our runs so that we are conflict free, and don't even have to worry about contacting other shell leaders to work out a solution. This just makes things a lot easier.

As far as I had remembered, I had checked ALL the threads. Apparently though, I had missed one. (I didn't find this out until muuuuuch later though) A day after I had posted our schedule, I got a msg from the moderator of the forum telling me that there was a conflict. At this point, I was under the impression that the shell that conflicted with us, had obviously posted afterwards.

Anyways, I replied to the moderator and told her i'd try to resolve the conflict. I PMed the leader of the shell that conflicted with ours, and even posted in his thread that I had PMed him. In my first PM, I asked if it would be possible if their shell could select another zone. At the time, they were planning on doing Beaucedine Glacier a total of 3 times for the month of October. I figured that if they didn't like that suggestion, they'd offer up another suggestion to resolve the conflict. This is shell leaders do when there's a conflict, at least in my experience.

Well, a week goes by and I get no response. So, I make another post in the other shell's thread and ask if one of the members that frequent the forum could get in touch with leadership and let them know i'm waiting to hear back from the leader.

Finally, I get a reply. In short, it says that they don't want to do another zone, and that they will try to enter on time but they will probably go over 3hrs.

Hmm... no other suggestion, just a "deal with it" response.

So, I send another PM to the leader and ask if it would be possible for them to at least consider entering early or exiting at 9pm PST/12am EST so that our shell is not delayed. Its a big concern for me if our shell enters late because 1)Our progress is already half of the progress of your typical Dynamis shell that runs twice a week and 2)A lot of our members are on EST, so by 3am EST they're wanting to get to bed asap. I know that if we enter late, there's a good chance members will have to bow out of the run before we're actually done, and that also affects our progress in the run because our roster dwindles = less fire power. But yeah... never got a response to that last PM.

I know that if the tables were turned, all the leadership for my shell would have tried to do another zone. If for whatever reason that had not been possible, then we would have tried not to push the run time of the shell running after us. It just makes more sense to me that a shell that has more room to play with (due to having twice as many runs in that month) would be a little more lenient, or I suppose "kind" and help out the shell that doesn't.

But like with many players in this game, people really don't know what kindness means.

In the end, our shell got delayed by a total of 45 minutes and the kind of communication we received in response to the other shell the night of the run... wasn't exactly the best. Took a while to get the leader to finally respond, and in comparison to another shell that had pushed us back by 30 minutes the previous week, this leadership expressed a very "oh well, too bad for you" attitude.

We all knew that the chances of the other shell trying to exit for our entry time would be slim to none, but with being ignored half the time and the kind of responses we dealt with, it was really just another reminder that this game has people that could care less about anyone else other than themselves.

After being so frustrated that I had about 30+ people that were going to have to wait around for an extra 45 minutes, I gave in and posted a rant on QCDN. I guess I really didn't need to, but I guess that like others that post in that board... sometimes the frustration just gets to you that you have to get it off your chest. And of course, as you can always expect, there are always some members that'll come right in and begin their little crusade of "omg! Zerayla is wrong! She's a bad person! Off with her head!". I bet that if I had ranted about how racism is wrong, the same people would still find a way to come in and twist things just so that they could take the opposing side and try to say what an aweful person I am. Loldrama.

Onto better things!

My Nyzul static that i'm doing with my LS has been pretty fun. Our second run wasn't exactly a success, but we did get to try out a few different tasks and hopefully now that we have experience with them, we'll be a lot more efficient the next time. Damn those lamps!!!! GAAAAAH!


I also finally decided to go and break the level cap for my fellowship NPC Epilleve. I hadn't done it before because I thought that the quest would involve a lotta time, and annoying cutscenes... but recently, i've been helping out with skillup parties and other things where i've had a reason to bring her out, so I figured I might as well get her lvl to 70. Lo and behold, it was a very easy fight!. I think that she was a NIN/mage job, because she blew me up leaving me with about 180HP. Luckily though, she didn't stand a chance against my leet SAM and I was able to hack the last few hits I needed to bring her down. Hehehe.


And other than that, I helped out Onedarkflame with his SAM AF2 quest. We went to Valkurm to pop his 2 NMs, only to find out that we had to wait an hour until night time. So... we camped VE. Of course though, he didn't pop at all.


I just love NMs.... really I do. Its the reason why i'm currently parked in Quicksand Caves trying to help Odf with Centurio X-I who only took 4 hrs to spawn earlier today, and didn't give him the drops he needed.

They should ban NMs. Make them all forced popped or something. But I guess that would make some things too easy... ; ;

Damn, I really have to make a better effort to update this thing. I always have so much to write about, and always forget a lot of things after i've finished posting ><

Oh, but one thing to mention... I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight decide to take DRG to 75

*Waits for everyone to point and laugh, including herself*

I would probably never ever use it, but I have this urge to lvl another melee to 75. I suppose i'll try to finish my merits first though, I still have a ton of those to do.