lolDragoon 75!

Yep, finally dinged 75 on yet another job: Dragoon!


That now makes me 8/15 on the jobs @75 needed to get Maat's Cap. And though people in my social ls keep swearing i'll get it one day, I know that I probably won't have more than 10 jobs at 75. While I really enjoy getting jobs up to 75 (with the exception of Ninja and Beastmaster) the fact is, I really don't have the space to continue having so many "active" jobs. I suppose I could go ahead and gimp a few gear-wise, but i'd really prefer not to.

I'd really like to take up BRD to 75 next, but I don't think I want to invest in it gil-wise and doubt that i'd be able to re-work my inventory. I guess if SE ends up giving us some new extensions to our inventory options, I might consider it but for now it'll be on the "to do" list. Besides, i'm working on my SMN still (lvl 62).

My main focus in the last week has been making what little progress i'm capable of, on my Burtang. I would really like to have a fully upgraded Mythic Weapon one day, and while I bet its more likely I won't be able to complete the upgrade entirely, I like the motivation of having something to work for in the game.

I've already been invited into an Einhejar shell which I start today, and i'm really looking forward to that. Its a new shell called Glowsticks, and while the leader told me that they haven't been able to access Odin yet, i'm still eager to try it out. I usually end up getting involved with fairly new shells and i've always enjoyed the experience of seeing the shell progress as a team. So far the members seem to have really great attitudes from what I can tell, and leadership seems really organized, so I'm pretty sure i'll have fun doing this event.

Then there's Salvage. I've been trying to find a shell to take part in on a regular basis, but so far no luck. But its not too bad, my friend Janko was able to ask his Salvage group to take me in for the boss wins so that I can get the titles needed for the mythic weapon quests. The first time I went with his group, I just went afk until the end of the run until they got to the boss. I then decided to target the boss chariot, to see what it's HP was sitting at. Big mistake.

My screen froze up, and POL crashed on me. I logged in as quickly as I could, but by the time I came back, the alliance had already killed the chariot boss and so I didn't get the title. But luckily they were going to do the same one a couple of days later, and so I pretty much did the same thing. Sat in zone, waited until they got tot he boss, and this time I DIDN'T give into my curiosity to target the boss, which resulted in me obtaining the title "Sun Charioteer". Now I only have 3 more titles to go!

And on that topic, i've been subject to a LOT of generosity in the last week. A few of my friends have helped pick up some cheap Alexandrites for me (Carste, Vepion) and a few others have actaully gone as far as giving me donations (Onedarkflame, Janko, Kawanomu). I'm really greateful to have such good friends wanting to help me out with the insane task of obtaining 30,000 Alexandrite. Thanks to them, i'm now sitting at about 450/30,000!

Now if I could just get another Braveheart sword to drop! I can't believe I tossed the one I had... but when I had finally unlocked Atonement, there was absolutely no thought that I might decide to try and upgrade it one day. Then of course a week later, the crazy idea cemented into my brain and while I wasn't crying about the situation... I was reminded of that same feeling the day I tossed my bibiki shell. -_-

And so I made the trip back to Sea this week.


It's really been months since i've been up there (aside from doing Limbus) but after getting DRG to 75, I really wanted to take advantage of gearing up the job as best I could. I originally got some help from Janko's BLU one day. We started killing sharks for their organs, which had its moments...


Eventually things were made easier for us, because there was a group farming the HQ shark organs in the area and they offered to team up with us, allowing us to lot the NQ organs. Things worked out in my favor, and I ended up getting 8/10 organs, in addition to the 5/5 squid organs that I needed.

A couple of days later, I decided to finish up the farming and headed out again on my BLM. I soloed probably about 5-8 sharks before I got the last 2 organs. All that was left, was the one organ from a UFO. And so Sabene and Anderoc came to help me out. We first tried a "manaburn" style, (2 BLMs, 1 RDM) but we weren't really able to nuke the mob down fast enough due to the regen effect it had. So at that point, we decided we'd call it and try another time. Sabene ended up logging out, and about 3 minutes later Carste and Zeo offered to come help out on their NINs.


The first fight we had, was a little unexpected and I didn't get a chance to get off my usual spells which I think might have helped us a little more. Near the end of the mob's life, it started to spam TP moves which really drained my MP, and because of my emnity merits I did end up taking hate at one point which resulted in me losing my stoneskin really quick, and was then followed by me getting KO'd. I had to HP at this point because I didn't have RR up. By the time I was able to get back to the group, everyone but Anderoc was dead and I wasn't able to get within range fast enough before he too ended up eating the dirt... er, water.

So we gave it another go, and this time it was a success however there was a death here and there I think. The fights always started out pretty easy, but near the end the mob would usually start getting off some really nasty moves and I just couldn't keep up with the MP, so the fights got pretty messy. But we did manage to go 1/3 on the organs (or maybe it was 1/4?) so I can't complain. We tried one last UFO to try and get an organ for Anderoc, but sadly no drop.

All the work though was worth it, I got to bring out my DRG to a merit pty that Vepion formed one night and was able to enjoy seeing my Drakesbane hit 800-1150 on birds. :)

Something else good happened this week too. That ENM i've been doing with Carste and Janko turned out to be a success. Carste finally got his X's Knife!


That makes us 1/3 for this fight, and from what I hear... that's really damn good. I've heard of many career THFs going more than 0/50. The best part, is that right before we entered... I told them I had "a good feeling" and turns out I was right. Every so often, i'll get this feeling and more often than not, I seem to be right. Well, at least when it is anything BUT the kraken club BCNM. ¬_¬

To add to our "adventures with Carste the Beardmage", a few of us in the LS got to help him with one of the Windurst missions. The mission was to take down some orcs in Davoi, and while the fight was relatively easy, getting the cutscene he needed at the end proved to be a difficult task. Well not really, but at least an entertaining one.

Carste ended up falling down off a bridge he wasn't supposed to, and so instead of taking the long way to come back to the rest of us, he decided to go and aggro the pugils nearby. We all thought it'd be a good idea, and save us time... until we saw how long it was taking for his HP to drop. Even after removing all his gear, the fish kept missing him like crazy. Eventually though, I think he did take the long way to meet up with us and get his last cutscene.


My social ls also is doing exceptionally well with ZNMs. Last week we did Cheese Hoarder, Iriz Ima and Ob. Ob was pretty interesting and new to many of us, probably more so for Janko because he was able to bring his PUP to the fight. I guess the trick with this fight, is to have a PUP bring out a specific puppet to control what type of frame Ob will have. After that, its a piece of cake like with most Tier 1's.


And this week we're hoping to try a couple of Tier 3's provided we have enough ls members available. I'm really hoping that we do, because I'll get to bring out my PLD/NIN and try the blink tanking again.

That's about all I can think to post about. I'll leave off this one with an interesting pic I took in Bastok (and who said Bastok was ugly?)

Blue Chocobo {Mine!}

So finally after having tried raising 2 chocobos, I finally found myself with a colored one on my third try! It jus so happened that last month during an ISNM run that Elden asked me to go on, I happened to get a chocobo egg. I had previously raised 2 other chocobos, hoping to get myself a colored one but as my luck would have it, both ended up being yellow. So off to retirement land they went. >_>

When I got the chocobo egg as one of the drops from my ISNM, I figured I might as well try and hatch it and see what would happen.

A week later, I found myself with a little blue female chocobo! And so I gave her the name LunaRay :)


I also got quite a bit accomplished this week to say the least. I managed to pick myself up my Captain's Rank in assault. I owe a big chunk of gratitude to the people in my original static that I had soooo long ago. It would have been nice to see the static end with everyone obtaining captain's rank, but with some members quitting, others moving to different servers... well, I guess it was never meant to be. But thanks Carste and Janko for helping me with the last win!

Ose also decided to be a little nicer to me, than he was to a friend of mine, Standpoint. More than a year ago, I helped him out with a few camping sessions for the shy little kitty to get his Assault Jerkin. I think he ended up being something like 1/13 or so on this drop, and so when I finally announced to my social that I was going to attempt to get this piece for my up and coming DRG, I have to admit that I was expecting to have the same kind of luck.

The first time I camped Ose, he popped within an hour. Not bad, but no drop.


I then tried to go after him a couple of nights later, which is when the kitty decided to drop the assault jerkin. Thanks to my social ls, we had a very quick and easy fight. I think the best part (or rather, the most humorous) was that as soon as the item dropped into my inventory, Standpoint had JUST crept up on us. Even though i'm sure he destested this NM because of his own experiences, he still came out to help... only he was about 3 minutes too late, lol. Which might explain why the AJ dropped.


There was a little detour that I made on my way to the Ose camping session that night. My friend Onedarkflame and I were the first to arrive, and we ran into a rather repulsive looking NM called Hellion. Without really paying attention to the fact that I had absolutely no buffs up at the moment, I casted Dia 3. Luckily though Onedarkflame engaged seconds later and took hate which gave me a few seconds to get us both some buffs. The fight wasn't too hard, but I was having to spam a few cures because Onedarkflame had come out on his SAM/WAR and didn't really have much in the way to help him evade the hits. When the fight was over, we were left with a scythe of sorts, which we ended up offering to a WAR who was in the area, seeing that neither of us ever planned to take DRK past 37.


And again I found myself getting another chance to nuke down some dirty mithra. Carste asked me and Janko to give him a hand for another attempt at the ENM "Requiem of Sin" in an attempt to get him his X's Knife. This time we had a better idea of how the fight was going to work, and our plan went pretty well. My job was to chainspell nuke "X", while Carste would be sleeping the rest of the group and then teaming up with Janko to nuke down X's pet rabbit. Then we would take a wipe and pretty much repeat, taking on new targets to nuke down. Everything went according to plan, with the small.. and minor exception. I now officially have 3 times in my RDM career where I have pulled the "Convert! >>>> Zerayla's HP drops to ~20 >>>> Before Zerayla can get off a cure, the mob KO's her". As I was nuking down something (I think the rabbit?), I ended up making a bad call on the distance I had between me and the mob and hit my convert macro. During that time, Carste had said he would stun the mob for me but before he could say "give me a second", I had already hit the macro which was followed with getting my arse kicked. Thankfully though, we finished the fight with no other problems, unless you consider getting 0 drops in the treasure chest one. -_-;


Oh well, we're hoping to try it again this week. I don't mind the fight at all, it is pretty fun and gives me a chance to have fun with my chainspell >=)

By the way... I've recently rediscovered the fun that you can have doing CoP missions! Earlier last year, I was finally able to help out a friend with his CoP missions. This involved getting some other LS members caught up so that they too could also complete the CoP expansion. While I do like the idea of seeing friends progress, there have been a couple of times when I've felt the frustration these missions can cause overwhelm me. It's all good though, we've been taking a break and i'm sure that it'll help because I tend to over-stress about these things due to the time sink involved.

Anyways, I was asked to help out 2 of my friends with an earlier CoP mission - Ancient Vows. I was very hesitant to wanting to do this because of my last experience. I had helped a couple of ex-ls members get this mission done, with I think 2 or 3 failures? I had spent quite a lot on meds and items which wasn't that big of an issue as much as never having gotten much of a "thank you" after it was all done. So needless to say, I wasn't very eager for the fight.

But Onedarkflame came through and did a little prep work and got us a really nice strat. We went in with 3 NIN, and 3 healers. We were split into pairs, and each set would tank an NM. We all managed to do very well, and had no deaths which really surprised me considering all my previous experiences had always involved them. I have to say that doing that mission was probably one of the funnest CoP fights i've done in ages, and now look forward to any other LS members that'll be asking for help on it.


I also got to bring out my MNK again for a little fun. Ascendotuum and Standpoint needed some help on a couple of WSNMs, so as usual... what started out with one or two people being available to help ended up with pretty much the entire LS coming out. Both of the fights were over pretty quick, and resulted in the much needed fun I had been missing on my MNK.


Speaking of fun... I wanted to help out Onedarkflame get a little xp on his BLM (which just recently hit 60) and offered to tank for him in a lvl sync party. We grabbed a lvl 56 THF and headed to the Lesser Colibri in Wajaom. The xp was a little slow at first, but it picked up in the end and he got himself a lvl and a bit.


I was just happy to be able to use my PLD. As much as I have expressed not really wanting to sync down my lvl 75 jobs, i've always found myself giving in.. and in the end, I usually ended up enjoying it. I'm pretty sure that i'll start offering my PLD for more lvl sync parties in the future, at least to LS members. Its fun being able to watch them attempt to steal my hate, hehe.

And another thing which i've found myself getting interested in, is the Moblin Maze Monger event. I've been looking into this, and it seems there's a few nice pieces of gear that you can get by doing "1 boss" style fights. Of course though, you need to have a specific setup in order to initiate the fight. So, whenever i've had a chance i've been trying to do some quick and easy MMMs to collect marbles and purchase the rune pieces needed so that eventually I can do these fights. As easy as these are, they're still a blast especially when you have a crazy mithra named Fieryblizzard who runs ahead and aggroes everything to bring to the party in an attempt to MPK us.


I haven't really been updating much on my other endgame activities, but figured i'd do that now. My dynamis shell is still going strong, we've managed to recruit a couple of new members again. This has made our farming runs veeeeeery profitable. I've especially been enjoying the fact that our shell hasn't been having any of the drama kind of issues i've been hearing happening with other shells. While not all are the same, many seem to have some pretty messed up leadership problems. I'm really glad that RoR not only makes everything "transparent" to our members, but also puts the "good of the ls as a whole" first and foremost. Whenever we need to make a change in the shell, we always try and look at things from as many angles as possible to ensure that whatever changes are made, are as fair as possible. So far we haven't had any complaints, so I think that's a good sign. And now that another one of our THFs has obtained his TH4, we've been seeing AF rain every run. Craaazy @_@

Limbus is also doing pretty good. We're finally starting to do Ultima and Omega again. We just finished farming up 2 pop sets for each recently, and i'm keeping my fingers crossed for the drops to come. I'm really anxious to see my homam body so that I can have that on DRG before I hit 75. I probably won't get that lucky, (i'm 2nd in line) but as long as we're getting wins and getting members gear, i'm happy. I can't wait for the Ultima fight planned next week... I get to bring out my BLM *evil grin*


Well that about covers everything. Only other minor updates are that i've completed meritting my WAR, gotten Bonecraft to 34, almost capped my merits out again (which I intend to put right into DRG when I hit 75) and...

I've decided to pursue a Burtang for my PLD. Yep, the mythic weapon. And yes, I'm aware of the time/cost that'll be poured into it. While I DO want to have it fully upgraded before I quit this game, I know that might not (well more like probably not) happen. I'm still going to put as much effort into pursueing this in game goal though, because all the requirements involved I know i'll enjoy doing and so even if I quit this game and the sword isn't fully upgraded, i'll still be happy because I will have gotten at least SOME progress on it.

But obviously i'm going to hope that opportunity + luck favor me with this insane goal ^^

Your base are belong to us!

So today I was asked to help out a fairly new ls member Valker, with the 2.3 mission dragon fight. As it turns out, I had actually done the dragon fight about 2 hours earlier too, with Vepion (Elden's alternate character). I don't mind doing the fight at all, its kinda fun to be able to bring out my MNK and 2hr the thing. I swear though, I have to have done this fight at least 30 times or more throughout my FFXI playtime.

Anyways... Valker's fight was going to be up in Horlais Peak. So I dragged Janko and Elden along to help me out because we had just finished doing some zeni picture taking together. I brought my DRG, Janko had previously been on his RDM and decided to bring that along, Elden was on BLM (he wanted an excuse to wave around his scythe) and Valker came on MNK.

When we zoned into Yughott Grotto, Elden had the bright idea to train every mob in sight so that he could spam -agas at the end. I figured it was also a good idea because Valker was only lvl 28 and would eventually get aggro from the higher lvl mobs, and this would save us the time from sneaking/invising him.

I have to say, watching Elden run for his feline life was quite enjoyable.


He must of had at least 20 orcs on him, and as he trained them to zone (while screaming for Janko to give him a cure because his HP got into the yellow) I just sat there laughing. Eventually though I decided to give him a hand and started provoking a few orcs and bats.


By the time we had finally reached Horlais Peak, i'd say we had trained every orc in the zone. So, basically, we claimed that territory as ours! And of course... we claimed the win on the dragon fight (but then again, that fight is so easy provided you're not with a noob of a certain beardmage, hehe)


But yeah, prior to helping out Elden and Valkar with the dragon fight, I was on a mission to collect as much zeni as possible. I've been working throughout the week to accumulate about 5k pts so that I can pop a few this coming Saturday.

So far the Casual Saturday Night ZNM group I have going with my social is turning out to be amazing. Everyone seems to be having fun during the fights, and a lot more members seem to be interested now that they've had a glimpse at the gear that can drop. I'm trying to encourage more members to take an interest because now they can have access to better pieces of gear without the stress of having to join an endgame shell, earn points, etc.

I'm extremely happy with the progress we made last saturday, which is probably due to the fact that I was lucky enough to get two of the drops I never thought i'd see.

Our night started off with Armed Gears. We had a lot of members, and figured that it would be best to do the hardest of our ZNMs while we had enough people. I had my friend Anderoc come along to help tank alongside Darce, and both did very well. The rest of our team consisted of BLMs (Carste, Sabene, and myself), WHMs (Falk, Drimergirl), SCHs (Janko, Kefkha), THFs (Soulstar, Ketsuchi), BRDs (Elden, Mailinx), a RNG (Standpoint), a COR (Zeo), a BLU (Kawanomu), a MNK (Athoz) and a DRK (Demionknight).

We had two pops that night, mine and Janko's. My pop yielded my highly desired Aurum Sabatons, a couple of grips and I believe something else. I was very psyched and am now determined to finish meriting my WAR so that I can see how much better I can do on the job. I probably won't be able to outparse my SAM, but... my DRG is able to equip them, so I can look forward to that. Janko's also yielded some nice drops, but unfortunately we didn't get to see a second pair of sabatons.


The fight was actually pretty fun. Our first time we took things pretty slowly, just about everyone was new to the experience. But by the time the armed gears were weakened down, we all went just a tad "leeroy jenkins".

To be more exact, I kinda went a little nuke happy.

Ok I lied... I went a little nuke happy, a little often....


Which, as i'm sure anyone could guess, meant that the NM suddenly had a new love for me. A love which surpassed that of the PLDs tanking and had me running for my dear life... which uh, didn't take long to lose. <_<


I like BLM! >=)

So after we finished up with Armed Gears, we went after Cheese Hoarder again. I think we did 3 pops, and all the fights were pretty quick. There was a lot less "blowing up" because most of us had a good idea of the distance we needed to keep this time around.

Then it was off to fight Verdelet! (Well actually I think we ended up doing these next two first... but, I don't think the order matters too much) When I originally read up on this guy, I thought curagas would be spammed on end and stuns would be flying through the roof.

The reality though was that I actually barely recall much else other than getting off one of my Burst II's before the mob was dead. We zerged it just a little too fast.

Aaaaaaaaand, something that I had really wanted but assumed i'd never see, dropped! Muse Tariqah! I was extremely happy to see my winning lot and probably missed a few thank yous in my chaotic excitment.

Next on the list was Lil Apkallu. This fight was probably the most fun, probably because many of us wiped to hundred fists, lol. But luckily the bird only got that off at the very end and we were able to finish him off. I think only the MNK feet dropped from him.


Then it was Iriz Ima again! I LOOOOOOOOOVE this fight! Its only too bad that we only had one pop though. Most of us got a little too anxious to nuke the big elephant down that we pretty much had him at less than half HP by the time we got him close to the camp we were "supposed" to kite him at. Actually, I think we pretty much killed him seconds after we got him there. Yeah... our ls rocks :)


So now i'm reaching a point where i've really got to put some effort into gearing up my DRG which as of today, has just reached 64. I have to say, ever since I got to lvl 40+ i've really started to like it. Especially on bird mobs. OMG!

I remember back in the day, "loldrg" was very common. In fact, I know that I even made jokes here and there too. But ever since the update with 2 handed weapons (even if it did get nerfed a little) I honestly don't see anything "lol" about the job. It might be that I have access to merits, and a few pieces of gear that aren't easy to come by (unless you have no life like me, lol) that have made me excel as a DD in party... or it might be that I have been getting invites very easy, always to camps where we fight bird type mobs... but regardless, I'm keeping up with the other melees!

Actually, most of my party experiences have reminded me of what I went through on my MNK. And of course, my MNK parties remind me of what I went through on my PLD. Which in lamens terms = I tank!

I can't wait to finally get lvl 75 and try merit parties on colibri. I'm just hoping that by that time, i'll have gotten either an assault jerkin (why hello thar Mr. Ose - REVENGE IS MINE!) or an Askar Body (doubtful considering I have 4 other people in my Nyzul that will also be lotting for this) or a Homam Body (which i'm currently in 2nd for). Likely i'll have to go with the AJ, so now I just need to work up the resolve to go camp Ose. (I just pray I don't have the same luck Standpoint had with that kitty)

The good thing about my DRG's lvl now is that I can do campaign. Last night after a run of Moblin Maze, Janko and Elden/Vepion joined me for some campaign.


The first while we enjoyed quite a bit, though there were a few deaths when we decided to go after the big NM turtle. Apparently his AoEs were a little too much for us to handle. ><

Aside from a lotta DRGing, Zeni picture taking and the usual Dynamis/Limbus stuff I do every week, I also managed to get in some small LS help time. Drimergirl finally hit lvl 50 on her DNC and needed some help farming a rare/ex item off some yagudo in the past. Elden, Janko and myself went to West Sarabaruta [S] to pulverize some yagudoes with Drimergirl. We probably spent a good hour there killing, before we finally go the drop @_@


Anderoc also invited me to help him unlock his polearm of trials so that he could get his lolimpulsedrive for his DRG. We did a few light skillchains in Pashlow Marshlands [S] and then headed out to SSG to fight a fish NM to finish the quest. Janko also came along for the fun, and I just did my RDM thing.


As for plans this weekend, I might be helping out a friend with his self funded Dynamis runs that he might be organizing on Saturday mornings. Then I have my Limbus, and then some ZNMs again. I'm hoping we'll be able to try Dea (tier 3) but that'll all depend on our turnout. Being that I emphasized our ZNM thing to be "casual" it won't be expected for everyone to show every weekend... but, hopefully we'll luck out so that we can pop multiple ZNMs and gear up our members ^^

Oh, and it looks like i'll be able to try out a new ENM this weekend. Carste dragged me and Janko along to get the pre-requisite fight done, which was a fight with "X" and "Y" mithras from the CoP storyline. (I think those were the names)


Of course you can always rely on SE to find a way to make you sink your time... because the actual fight that Carste plans to do this weekend, has a 1 week "cool down" which is why we're planning it for the weekend. Hopefully he'll get his "X's Knife" which is apparently an uber item for THF. I might have to convince Carste and Janko to boot me from party though, otherwise my "bad luck" might just play a factor. /em looks away.