Hanging up my Kabuto.

After some thinking, i've decided to retire one of my favorite melee jobs. Samurai.

As much as i've loved this job, there are just too many benefits to gain if I retire it. The first is that I can sell quite a few expensive pieces of gear and make some gil, which I can then put into my COR.

After playing this game for 4 yrs, I figure its about time I play a job and go all out without being stingy on the gear/food that I buy for it, while getting it to 75. People have fun in this game, in their own ways. Mine is doing the best that I can in a party, and being the most efficient. So, one of the first things I plan to do in order to enjoy my COR is to use the funds i'll make to get myself a few nice pieces, such as the Mercurial Kris. Zeo actually offered to lend me his, which was really generous, but if i'm not mistaken, I could keep the dagger up to 75, and even use it in merit parties. So, makes more sense for to have my own and that way I don't have to constantly hassle Zeo to send me his to borrow when I play on COR.

I'm also planning to put some funds towards helping Xean get his Black Belt. I haven't told him though he'll find out sooner or later (probably when he decides to read this blog entry) I know that since getting back to the game, he's really been enjoying his MNK and one piece he's always wanted to get was the black belt. I recently put up a "WTB" on QCDN in hopes to find a shell that is willing to make a deal and sell the quest items from KSNM99's, and even offered up my own that i've been saving since last year. I really hope an endgame shell contacts me soon, this is one of those things i've always wanted to do for Xean ever since before he quit the game.

The other bonus to retiring SAM is... INVENTORY SPACE! Having 8 jobs at lvl 75, with another 2 on the way is definitely a very time consuming burden. I have every single quest/extension possible to have the most inventory space, and I still have to send myself random items like food, tools through the delivery box just so that I can have space on hand. Not having at least 10 open spots, drives me nuts! I need that room for when I take pictures for zeni, and for farming or crafting. And when I don't have the room (which has been the case recently) I have to spend so much time sending myself gear and other items, just so that I can have more room. Oh, and did I mention I still have a mule with at least 80 pieces of low lvl gear? >_>

Yes yes... I know...

So by retiring SAM, i'll now be able to bring my DRG which I strangely feel bad saying... I enjoy more than my SAM. Its pretty well geared (still working on getting a few pieces, but that's another story) and though it didn't parse up to my SAM, I just found myself enjoying it more. I plan to use it mostly for colibri merit ptys, and if ever I need to do other mobs where DRG doesnt' fair so well, I do have my WAR. My WAR has never seemed to do so well, but most of my gear is rare/ex so its not really hard to gear it decently. I'll just need to get a pair of Askar hands through Nyzul and should be ready to go!

Oh, and i'll be able to get rid of my merits for Great Katana, and put new ones into Polearm! See... I have something like 713 merits so far? I've meritted EVERY "outside job" category, and the only place I can now put merits into... is my MNK. Which, I don't think i'll touch because I sold my K.Osode and gave my Brown Belt to Xean. So it'd be one pretty gimp MNK. <_<

Onto other things!

Thanks to my dynamis shell RidersOfRohan, I am now 5/5 on WAR relic! I believe i've managed to get all these pieces through free lot too.


I'm almost 5/5 on WHM and BLM too now. I wonder how much gear I would have gotten if I had been in a shell that ran twice a week @_@

All I can say is that having TH4 has worked wonders with our shell. We have 3 THFs that have this now, and we're finally able to get people more AF. We even got lucky and finally got another Valor Surcoat (about damn time Ketsurui!)

Aside from some occasional partying with Vepion to help him get his PUP to 75, me and Xean have been mostly xping on our BRD and COR. We're just about at the stage where he'll be doing the pulling. We just hit 37 today, and I can't wait to go to East Ronfaure [S] to have our first "merit type" party. I'll definitely have to invite LS members to this pty, it'll be a blast.

In order to keep up though with dmg, i've had to do some skilling up with my markmanship. The one downside to lvl syncing. Its not too bad though, i'm just glad that Xean can also benefit from skilling up his BRD skills so that he can keep me company. I just have to get used to the fact that he can endure grinds now, and actually finds some enjoyment in this game. Its been hard adjusting, because once upon a time there was very little he could stand about FFXI @_@


We've also spent some time helping out one of the new additions to our LS - Lyea. We helped her out with the rank mission 2.3 - aka "Pulverize the Dragon".


I swear i've done this fight at least 40 times now, and it never gets old! Usually I end up going MNK and 2hring, but this time I got to bring out my DRG (yay!)

Now just to wait until Lyea makes her way to lvl 50, so that we can do all the Genkai quests! Those are loads of fun =)

And the last thing to note, is another successful night of "Casual Saturday Night ZNMs". Actually, I completely forgot to mention but our LS took on Tinnin the weekend before last. Unfortunately we weren't able to do a "LS only" setup because... well, we just didn't have enough people available that night, but we did have some friends come out to help fill up the alliance.

Myself and Anderoc were the two PLD/NINs. I was pretty pumped and eager to finally tank something as /nin that would really test my ability to keep hate without provoke. I suppose because of the attack rate for Tinnin, i'd also be testing my ability to keep up shadows but... the challenge was cut short when we encountered a glitch.

After we got Tinnin down to about 80% (I think?) suddenly he seemed "frozen" and stopped attacking. We just wailed on him and took him down, with absolutely zero retaliation. The fun was cut short, and I guess because we had such an easy time with a Tier IV ZNM that was suppose to be a challenge, we got unlucky with the drops.


Not one piece of gear dropped. I felt pretty bad, considering this was Janko's pop and he had been working on it for the last couple of months. He's been wanting the Enkidu Subligar for his PUP which is now on its way to hitting lvl 75.

One good thing out of the fight though, is that I got the Tinnin Fang. This makes me 2/3 of the ZNM items needed in one of the quests for my mythic sword! And on that note, the only other areas i've progressed in my mythic weapon upgrade is accumulating more Alexandrite (thanks to Xean who always grabs any when he sees them cheap) and accumulating more ampoules from Einhejar. Still a long ways to go with this goal... lol... >_>;

But yea, as I was saying! Another good night with ZNMs. We started off with fighting Vulpangue, which umm... ended with about 80% of our alliance dead after the first minute. Thankfully though, we did manage to kill the steroid puk. We even managed to get the drop that Soulstar had been wanting, the SMN head piece. But, sadly he zoned before waiting for it to drop and it ended up falling to his wife, Drimergirl ><

The night did get better though, we went after Chigre next. We had to wait for another group to do a few pops, and the funny part is that they had quite a few more people than our alliance... and we managed to kill our one pop waaaaaaaaaay faster. Go go SoTW!!


I was able to pick myself up a Blood Ring from that fight, and Vepion got himself the Insect Ring, so full drops all around thanks to Carste's TH4! He must be enjoying the break from his BLM, I hear he's lost something like 20k in the last week due to other in-game events, lol.

Then we went after Verdelet.


And yes, for those in my LS that read this...

I KNOW YOU CAN MELEE VERD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...


......


Leave me alone!

We fought him twice, and while he did drop the cape item, we didn't get the shield. Guess we'll have to pop him again next week XD

(Vepion and Comedie making an appearance, lol)

Corsair!

Feeling a little bit lazy with this entry, so going to attempt to summarize the last two weeks as much as I can... (gawd I'm really slacking eh?)

Well first and foremost, i've once again gone back on something I said I would never do.

I'm leveling corsair! I always found the job interesting, and wanted to take it to 75 when the job first became available... but when I read into it and found out the costs to be efficient, I said i'd never touch the job. Its one thing to invest in gear, shihei and food... but having to spend even MORE gil, just to see your job perform well, really discouraged me.

But, as with a few other things in this game... i've changed my mind! When Xean returned to the game, he expressed his interest in wanting to take BRD to 75. I had wanted to lvl BRD as well, but only because out of all my close friends I only have one with the job at 75 that I won't feel guilty for asking to bring it to a merit party. And because Vepion had started on his PUP which he is currently taking to 75, I wouldn't feel very good asking him to bring BRD, as I know his preference is to merit on PUP.

So, it worked out great that Xean was going to lvl BRD because that then allowed me to look at something else to play. Thinking about the best combination for jobs, as well as what would be great to have in future merit parties, I decided to take COR. I know its going to be expensive to lvl, but its been a while since i've actually just ignored the costs in this game and done something I enjoy and I figured this would do the trick.

On the plus side, we've concluded that Xean's -TH effect is gone because with the farming sessions we've done, we've managed to make a lot of profit. We've gotten 4 Ecphoria Rings in the last week (3 during one session) and can easily get about 10 stacks of ladybug wings in just over 2hrs. Its nice to have your significant other playing with you so that you can work as a team to accomplish things in this game... you get them done faster, and usually have a good time doing it.


So for the last week... here's a look at what i've done:

Helped Xean get his SCH up to 37. He's enjoying the new subjob. I think its harder to believe that he is actually enjoying WHM period though, considering he couldn't stand it once upon a time... But i'm glad he likes the job, moreso because he's always been very effecient and whenever I played on PLD, we always seemed in sync with healing. He'd be fast to cast whatever I needed, but always knew when to give me "healing room" so that I could manage my hate. Good to have him back as WHM.


Got 3 members of my ls their Swift Belts. A few months ago we had done a few runs (weekend after weekend... after weekend @_@) but we never managed to get a belt for Falk. Finally he setup a run last Saturday and we had 2 other LS members come out in hopes to get one too.

Falk, Xean and myself started out by killing a few Tauro's to help Falk learn a BLU spell he needed, as we waited for more LS members to be free.


Finally we had Darce, Soulstar, Drimergirl and Korjon come out to help and we ended up going 3/3. We even managed to take on an NM with a link that we happened to get on our first fight.


I finished my merits in category 2 for DRG. I'm now down to meriting 5/5 on the recast timer for Super Jump. After this, I can merit my MNK, but I won't be playing that any time soon as i've pretty much retired it.

My Nyzul static went 4/4 again on our boss floors. We only managed to get one drop gear-wise, but the fact that we did great on getting to the boss with the win was enough I think. Looking forward to seeing some more big wins, and hopefully some new gear pieces for our static tonight.

Helped a new LS member of ours, Lyea get her fame to rank 4 for Norg so that she could quest Utsusemi: Ichi. Also helped her get the quest done to unlock NIN. Looks like we'll have another THF75 on the way. (*fears for the time when she'll be mentioning Kreutzet*)

On Monday, I was able to help out Vepion, Standpoint and Xean get from floor 1-15 in Nyzul. Our first run we had really bad luck, and I thought for sure we weren't going to end up getting the win but we did. Our next 2 runs went pretty smoothly.

I'm hoping that we'll be able to do this as a regular thing on Monday nights, so that way more ls members will have access to the Nyzul weaponskills and won't have to worry too much about having an insane amount of ws points needed to unlock them @_@

Dynamis this week turned out to be more than I expected. We did Beaucedine Glacier, and I was up for the BLM Body. I actually ended up getting this, as well as SCH, PUP, and DRG. So i'll have another 2 jobs to try and get to 75 in the future... <_<

I also spent a lot of time showing Xean all the new things added since he last played almost a year ago. He had seen a few of the new things such as Campaign, but he never really got a chance to explore the new areas. So I had some fun taking him to a few of my favorite places.


And I think that mostly covers the important stuff. I'm going to start focusing on farming Kindred Seals with Xean for the next couple of weeks so that we can do as many KSNMs possible. I've been spending a lot on gear as well as Alexandrites (now up to 10 stacks!) and need to put a bit more work into actually making gil, rather than spending it.

Oh, and here's just a pic I took the other day. I got Xean to call a GM and request his Benedight set. Back when we had our in-game wedding, they didn't have this available for male characters but sometime late last year, they added this. Any previously married male characters are now able to request a set if they never received one, though it does cost 50k.

Blessed

I've always tried to keep my blog entries to be strictly about my in-game adventures, but this entry will be an exception.

I started up this game almost 4 years ago, thanks to a very good friend who had sparked my interest in the MMO. I had never played an MMO before in my life, and I was very thankful that he ended up coming back to the game (as he had previously quit months before) when I joined. He helped me with so much in this game, and I know that without him I might of been one of the many players that get too frustrated and quit in the first month.

He taught me the ropes of the game, and always pushed me to play to the best of my ability. I remember my very first dunes party, while I was filled with confusion to the many different concepts of the game he helped me learn what a skillchain was and I felt really accomplished for being a brand new player and having learned the timing just right. I remember when I started playing MNK in Qufim, I eventually got annoyed with the "tanks" who weren't holding hate which resulted in my WHM getting hit, how I eventually decided to change my main job to PLD and become his tank, so that he would never have to worry about taking a hit. So many good memories...

It wasn't long before our friendship became something more, and just like we were in-game, we were inseperable in real life.

But life isn't always smooth sailing. Eventually a time would come when things wouldn't be as we both wanted.

The truth though, is that everything in life happens for a reason. And that reason, I believe is God.

Almost a year has gone by since that real life change. I never really gave up hoping though.

As it turns out, he never did either.

And now, for reasons I don't ever think i'll ever be able to justify, I am blessed to be given a second chance. I am blessed to have someone I cared for deeply, return to me. I am thankful, and I am happy beyond words.

The Dancing Zeo.

Yep. That there would be Zeo, giving an amazing performance for our newly made friend Mr. Bomb.

I had no clue what to name this blog entry, so I randomly chose one of the pictures I uploaded this week and figured Zeo deserved a little bit of fame!

Janko, Soulstar, Zeo, Carste and myself decided to do another MMM run, and we happened to get a round with bombs. The interesting thing about these bombs, is that with every action taken against them, they increased in size. So we had a little fun trying to see how big they could get... though eventually we were a little worried they might explode and KO everyone.

As for the rest of the weekend, our LS CoP group finally got back on track again. We woke up early Saturday morning to get the CoP airship fight done.


Our setup was Drimergirl (WHM), Soulstar (PLD), Carste (SAM), Standpoint (COR), Janko (BLU) and me (RDM). We decided to do a dry run, because only half of us had previously done the fight. As it turned out, our dry run probably could have given us the 1/1 win but... I failed to remember that when fighting Omega and Ultima, you want to pull them to the side of the airship where you first zone in so that if and when you do wipe (which usually happens during the fight) you can get up and recover.

So we managed to get Ultima down to about 30% without using any items or 2hrs, before wiping. But as I said, we didn't exactly fight in the right spot, and so when all the melees died... there was no way to raise them without having Ultima aggro right away, seeing as you can't tractor during the BCNM.


We decided to give it another go, and this time we got the win. The fight was a lot messier though, and we ended up wiping during Omega. But at least we were able to do the fight pretty quickly after our first attempt, unlike the time I did my first airship fight which was before the update that made it a lot easier.

Gawd that was a long 12hr day. We had to wait on our 2hrs and with people taking breaks and what not...

Anyways, i'm really liking my new Einhejar shell Glowsticks. Its a fairly new group, but the leadership seems really strong and organized. I would prefer that the members were a little bit more organized and able to manage their time better because we have yet to be able to enter on time, but I guess that's a problem in every endgame shell and probably always will be. (Though i'm glad to say my Dynamis shell is rarely more than 5 minutes late entering unless we're pushed over our entry time by another shell)


I've managed to collect about 3k Ampoules so far, and have a very long way to go but like i've said before, time doesn't seem to be an issue for me. I'm really trying to let myself enjoy everything in this game, and not feel rushed to do anything. Plus its a bonus that i've been asked to play jobs I generally don't get asked to use in other endgame events, like RDM/DRK! >=)

My wednesday ls static didn't end up happening this week, due to all the merit camps being taken. Drimergirl and Soulstar are now 73, so we should be finishing up our static hopefully before the end of the month. After that, we might end up doing some casual meriting on that night, or just leave it open to do other ls events.

But yea, in place of meriting we decided to give a hand to Standpoint and get him a few of the BLU spells he's been needing. We started off with the Wamoura princes in Mt. Zhayolm, which weren't too bad. Took us about 8-10 tries to get the spell. After that, we tried the massive Wamoura moths.

Those are a real pain in the butt, and require a lot of MP to be tossed around. But we did manage to get the spell within maybe half a dozen tries I think.

Finally, Carste joined up with us and suggested we go fight some Dahaks for Body Slam. I thought he was kidding at first, but turned out he was serious so we all headed out to the area where the Dahaks were.


I thought they'd be as bad as they were in Nyzul, but they seemed pretty tame. And I think all the bad luck that Standpoint has had in the game finally paid off, because he ended up learning the spell after our second mob.

Limbus is also going really well again, we're finally doing boss fights now that we've farmed up both Omega and Ultima pop sets. We did Omega this week, and went in with just over 12 people. We managed to do really well. I'm reminded of the first time we did Omega, and how it seemed soo much more difficult and challenging. And now when we do the fights, things seem, so easy. Its still fun though.


And the most important update for me this week...

I GOT MY BRAVEHEART SWORD!

I got this pretty quick when I first started doing Nyzul, unlocked it right away, and then decided to toss the weapon because I never really thought i'd pursue upgrading a mythic weapon. But a week later, I changed my mind... and felt extremely stupid for having tossed my sword.

I didn't think it would be too hard to get another one, but for the last couple of weeks i've had no luck. Anytime I did pickup Nyzul runs early in the week, the groups rarely went after the NMs, which is understandable when the goal is to get to the boss floor asap. So I eventually asked my ls static if they'd mind letting me go PLD/NIN on a floor 100 run, which would guarantee me the sword as long as we got the win.

Our first try, we just had HORRENDOUS luck. We did manage to get to the boss floor, but we timed out if I remember correctly. Our second try, we got to the boss floor with just a tad less than 10 minutes remaining, and got the win! I was estatic! It felt like getting my Valor Surcoat all over again! The downside though, is that we once again got 0 gear drops. For some reason our static has had aweful luck with seeing any gear. Ever.

I really hope that changes soon.... Oh, though I should mention that we did get a pair of Trotter boots on the weekend when we decided to do a random run outside of our usual static time. Carste is one lucky {Bastord Sword} this month thats for sure. Glad to see good people get rewarded :)

Well what was suppose to be a blog that was going to be posted 4 days ago, has become a really drawn out post... so i'm going to end it here. There's another good entry i'm hoping to type up this week, but had to get this one posted first. I really have to put away some extra time to write these, because I get way too distracted when i'm also playing FFXI and then the next thing I know, I have this blog entry just sitting here half finished for 4 days. >_>

(It has now become a tradition for everyone in my nyzul static group to poke me over and over... because somehow they think it'll give us a better chance at getting drops. <_<)>

Oh and before I forget, here's a couple of screenshots for the ZNMs we did. We're planning on doing a Tinnin fight sometime this month (though it might be delayed until we can get most of the LS to be available) and i'm really excited. Who needs an endgame LS?! HA!