Pessimism Pays Off!

Many people that know me, have seen that throughout the years of playing FFXI, i've become quite the pessimist. I would blame this on the fact that SE specializes in the term "Time Sink".

What this means is that the idea of spending hours of working towards a goal, that might result in failure, and thus result in wasted time, is very unappealing to me. I enjoy the game and many of the events in it, but there is so much work that is sometimes needed to accomplish something, and if you fail, you get to do it all over again. That right there, is what has over time, made me the biggest pessimist in this game.

Usually when something "big" is planned, I don't like taking chances and would prefer to "overkill" to make sure that time isn't going to be wasted. And whenever things look like there might not be "enough" to have decent rate of success, I can't help but express my thoughts which is why many know me to be a pessimist.

Despite this annoying trait though, I don't back out on anything I offer to help with, or say i'm going to do when it means having other people take time out of their day to also help.

And so.. more to the point, last Saturday we had a few ZNMs lined up. The most difficult one being Experimental Lamia which myself and Vepion had wanted to pop. When I checked the LS at our usual start time, there was less than a handlful of ppl available. So I didn't hesitate when asked in LS what the plan was, to express that I didn't see it being possible to kill a Tier III ZNM with what he had.

But the best part is that it seems to be everyone's personal agenda to prove me wrong! (well not really, but it'd be funny if it was)

And that's exactly what happened. Well, sorta. Soulstar asked a few of his friends to give a hand, and before I knew it, we had almost 2 full parties. We made our way to the pop location, which unfortunately took longer than expected which was more mine and Vepion's fault. On all our previous runs when we had made our way to Experimental Lamia, there would always be time spent waiting for people to gather and Carste would always end up farming the Lamia Fang key in the meantime which was needed to get to the pop location. So this time, I told Vepion that we both didn't have to worry and we would be able to farm one on the way.

Fast forward to everyone being at the gate, and no one having a key because the Lamia weren't dropping any ~_~

(I had Xean's character on auto-follow when I was duo-boxing him, and couldn't resist taking this screenshot. Kinda like it, looks like the lamia is playing music for us and Carste is singing!)

So some extra time was added on, but luckily ppl didn't seem too bothered. Finally we made it to the pop location, and instead of doing our usual pull to the bottom zone, we had Vepion sac the NM up to the wall, where I then grabbed her and pulled her to the North zone where the alliance waited. Me and Carste then did the repeated zoning with some help from other members whenever we went down, and the rest of the alliance killed the adds.

Even though we had a couple of deaths, we still managed to take Experimental Lamia down and Vepion got the drop he had wanted - Enkidu Leggings.

Then for my pop, we did the fight we normally did by pulling the NM down to the south zone. This pop seemed as tricky as the last, but that might of been because at the time I was duo-boxing Xean's BRD and wasn't able to stay on top of everything as well as I could have if I had just been playing on Zerayla. A couple of deaths, but again we had another win.

And the best part? AURUM CUISSES DROPPED!

I believe we've fought this about 5 times in total, and we've never seen these drop. But finally they did! Now I just need to figure out how I can persuade a couple of LS members to let me come DRG to the next merit pty @_@

Other than that, the only other thing I figure is worth mentioning is that i'm having fun getting Tahla ready. I finally hit lvl 30 today, and started the BRD quest which i'll probably finish tonight. I've managed to get her a couple of gobbie bag quests done, and plan to work a bit more on her fame so that I can open up more quests.


I guess it's a little odd that i'm finding some fun in repeating quests when I explained at the beginning of this post that the reason that i'm such a pessimist is because I dislike repeating things... but I guess playing a tarutaru makes a difference? I dunno, lol.

There once was a tarutaru named Tahla...

There once was a tarutaru named Tahla, who for the longest time, remained a lvl 5 monk mule in San d'Oria. That is, until a tarutaru named Magisterial from Jeuno sent her Kupo mail and invited her to embark on a journey through the lands of Vana'diel!


Well actually, after seeing a screenshot of my character and Xean's as tarutarus, thanks to some nifty program that Falk used on his pc to swap the .dat files, me and Xean both decided to bring out our tarutaru characters and have a little fun. The plan at the moment is for Xean to lvl RDM on his taru Magisterial, and i'll lvl BRD on Tahla. We probably won't try to do too many missions or quests, but mainly use these characters for LS events.

I'm not sure yet if i'll unlock ninja to use as a subjob, or stick to "ls only" parties so that I can just go with /whm until 75. I figure if I plan to use the character for LS events, chances are I won't need /nin too often and so investing time/gil into getting that to 37, might not be worth it. We'll see.

So, i've managed to get Tahla's WHM to 25, and BLM to 17 (yay for warp!). Most of my levels went by really quickly, thanks to an anniversary ring I had from last year.

I even lucked out getting to be the level sync target for a SMN Astral Flow burn, which brought me up to WHM 23. After that, I had a late night level sync party with Vepion's MNK and Zeo's PLD which went really well. I honestly didn't expect for a lvl 10 Valkurm Dunes party to go so smoothly, but that's just the pessimist in me speaking... which seems to always be present when playing this game, lol.

However, that fast and smooth ride soon came to a halt as soon as I accepted an invite to a Qufim party. I had a feeling when I saw the party setup that we probably wouldn't be getting the best of xp. We had WHM, SMN, SCH, DNC, WAR and MNK. Normally this setup wouldn't seem too bad, but for some reason the other mages thought that they were the main healers, and spammed cures rather than attempting to deal some dmg and speed up the kills. It also didn't help that our WAR wanted to kill worms out in the open where the Gigas spawned, and never waited to make sure all the mages were present before engaging. That of course lead to his death a couple of times, before he eventually just disbanded the party without saying a thing. I think in the end, I only netted about 3000 xp in that party ~_~

I took a bit of a break from trying to get Tahla to 30, (eventually I will though and then i'll unlock BRD) and decided to do a couple of rank missions. When I got to mission 1.2 for San d'Oria, I had to head over to King Ranperre's Tomb in the evening. I ran into an old friend...


Unfortunately though, he didn't drop anything.

I stayed in the area, killing bats for the rare/ex Orcish Scale Mails needed for the quest but wasn't having any luck. That's when Xean came and joined me, and after a couple of kills I got my item. He also went after the 2nd spawn for Spook to try his luck, but again no drop. I miss the good old days when me and Xean used to camp that thing as our gil maker, one of us always outclaimed all the other campers.

As for Zerayla, i've managed to do a little bit with her in the last couple of weeks.

First of all, I realized that I really enjoy my RDM. This has made me determined to become better at playing the most versatile job in the game, and so i've been trying to re-work all my gear sets. For the last year, i've only had my MP gear out of storage because all I ever did was merits. But now I have all my upgraded item, my rare/ex gear and i'm currently looking into other pieces to pursue such as a cape in Sea.

And because of the frequency that i've been asked to bring RDM to events (Limbus, Salvage, Dynamis) I decided to unmerit my Bio/Dia 3, and get 5/5 on Phalanx II. Only took about a week to finally finish, but that was because I went several days without a merit pty! (ZOMG!)

I've also been trying to get some more allied notes, because thanks to the update, I only need lets see.... 65k + 75k worth? I need to get both the new Iron Ram Mail and cobra Unit Harness, which so far seems like it's going to take an eternity to obtain. Everytime I put 2hrs aside to do campaign, I spend more than half the time waiting in town because there aren't any happening except for in beastmen owned areas. And those give you nothing if all you do is hit fortifications. Good job SE! Way to offer no incentive to go to those zones! /sigh


I will say though, last night me and Xean tried out the new "Union" thing and we're both happy with this update. If I understand it correctly, you just need to get a certain amount of AN, and your union will then get a chest full of random items. Anyone that joined the same union as you, will also be able to lot, but at least there's a chance you can get something at the end.

Then there is my ever continueing quest to get a decent leg weaponskill piece for my DRG. I have 3 options at the moment: Aurum Cuisses, Pahluwhan Seraweels and Askar Dirs.

Tonight I'll have a shot at the Aurum Cuisses if my social LS is able to do the 2 Experimental Lamia planned. But seeing as that ZNM is far out of the way, and requires a decent number of people... i'm not going to keep my hopes up.

Then there's assault, which is going well so far. I'm currently spamming "Pre-Emptive Strike" with Athoz, Sabene, Standpoint and Xean. I was a little sad when after our last run this week, I checked my points and saw that I was only about 90 away from being able to get my P. Legs.

And lastly, the Askar Dirs! While I believe i'm the only one left in my Nyzul static out of the "main lotters" that doesn't have this piece (which means i'm next up for them), no one has been wanting to do the floor that drops these so I have to wait until its my turn to call the floors. I think that might be next week though, so hopefully i'll have something for my DRG in the next 7 days.


Oh and I did get a couple of lvls on my RNG recently. I don't really enjoy the job at all, but i've been wanting to get it to at least 37 to use as a subjob for my RNG. I haven't really been in any situations where having COR/RNG has been needed, but I like being prepared and the fact that i've put off getting the job to 37 has been annoying me. I just wish I had the patience to get all the lvling done at once, right now I have about 16+ inventory slots in my delivery box filled with RNG gear that I want to give back to my mule already. Maybe i'll try to finish that this week.


And for LS events, SoTW finally has something new to add to our list of accomplishments! We took down our first Byakko!

Falk has been lvling his NIN with the static I do on Sundays, and he finally was nearing the "B.Haidate" level. So he spent a couple of days up in sky farming the pop items. And when I say "days", I don't exaggerate. I actually went up one time to help him and we spent quite a few hours killing Aura Stones but nothing dropped. It was still kinda fun though, I brought my RDM and my nuking set and didn't do so bad.


We decided to pop Byakko during our normal ZNM night because this is when most people were available to help, and no one had made any ZNM requests that week. But we did run into some trouble, because more than half the people that came out to help had either logged into LS too late, or been too busy on the skype call that was going on to have seen when Falk said we had to pop Ulli first before going to Byakko. What this meant is that we only had a handful of people at Ulli, with only one or two DDs. Everyone else had gone straight to Byakko ><

In the end though, we did kill Ulli and then joined up with the rest of the group. We were also pretty lucky too because there was a JP shell that was popping multiple Byakko's at the time, but they let us get our pop in.

So after buffing up the alliance, Falk invited the white purple striped kitty to come out and play!


Me and Darce were tanking him as PLD/NIN which was something new for me, because in my previous sky LS I had always gone PLD/WAR. I actually enjoyed it too, though did run into a few moments when I didn't have any shadows up and the recast timers were down. But our WHMs did one hell of a job keeping us alive, and I think the only death we had was our TH4, Soulstar. I think he died twice at the very end, though I can't really remember how that happened. Maybe the SATA hadn't gone off correctly?

All that matters though is that we had some really awesome drops. Falk got his haidate, and a few other goodies dropped that went to LS members.

The nice thing about doing sky gods is that it gives a chance to LS members that don't have the time, or desire to join an endgame LS, an opportunity to get endgame gear. And it even looks like we're going to have a Suzaku planned down the road too, which I look forward to seeing as I owe that bird for one shotting me ages ago with chainspell Firaga III. ~_~

I've also started doing Limbus again with a shell that Carste and some of his friends reformed from a broken shell. The run times are way more convenient, and so far the runs have gone a lot better. It looks like we'll be doing Omega a lot more frequently too, because this shell is used to doing low-manned events and we've done really well farming 2 zones in one run with very few people.


We even got to do an Omega, which I was able to bring RDM to! We had less than 2 full parties, which made the fight a little more challenging. The members are really good players though, and we managed to get the win which resulted in Carste finally getting his homam legs he's been after for months. I'm really looking forward to future runs with these guys, looks like we'll easily be able to do an Omega at least twice a month, and thanks to a fair lotting system, I might finally be able to finish my own homam, rather than sit on a bunch of points that mean nothing. (Fun fact: after I left my last limbus LS, seems they finally decided to change their lotting system and go with some of the suggestions I had made to make it more fair, go figure?)

Lastly... looks like Garrison might be something SoTW will start doing again. Kawanomu had setup a run last weekend for Cape Terrigan, and this was pretty straight forward in comparison to the other areas we've done in the past. It was pretty easy for me, all I did was bring COR/WHM and help cure and do some rolls. Oh... and spammed my sleep. I love that I can sleep mobs while running, quick draw FTW! Hopefully we'll get to do this again. The drops aren't all that great, but this is by far one of the more enjoyable quick events our LS has done in a while.

Salvage Static #5?

I don't want to jinx things, but I think I might finally have a salvage static that will actually make it past a month!


There are only two types of statics i've experienced that always seem to break whenever you get them started: CoP Missions & Salvage. I did manage to complete CoP over a year ago, but have yet to make any real progress in Salvage, which is due to every static I have ever been involved in, breaking. Either people disappear without a word, or RL schedules change and people can no longer attend.

But, i've finally found a static with 5 other people and so far it seems like everyone is planning on sticking around. The only downside to the static is that 2/3 runs, are at the break of dawn on Saturday and Sunday. Goodbye sleeping in! Just going to to keep my fingers crossed that this static works out.

I'm managed to free up more of my time now, which might not have been the greatest idea because I now find myself sitting in my moghouse more than I ever have.

I made a really hard decision to finally leave my Limbus shell. I'd been in the LS since day one, and we'd been running for over a year. In that time, we'd had a lot of members come and go, and aside from maybe a handful of people, most members couldn't be depended on to show up consistently which made our progress slow down quite a bit. Runs were being cancelled, and eventually the need to recruit became a priority.

It was then when things started to go sour. I had proposed a couple of ideas and requests to amend the lotting rules, because the system we had, didn't really fit things as well as it had originally when the LS first started. Very few of the original members were still in the LS, and while the idea behind the lotting system had been to fairly distribute gear to every member over time, you can't exactly do that when the majority of the starting members have left. New members had joined, and were being placed in the same tier as veteran members that had a year worth of attendance.

Eventually trying to point out the flaws in the lotting system, soon had a select few members making all kinds of accusations as to the type of player that I was.

The only point I ever tried to have understood was that the LS was a point system, which therefore meant that the effort and time put into the LS was being tracked. As with all endgame shells, a point system is designed to prioritize the people that are putting in more to the shell. I mean it doesn't make sense for someone to work 20hrs at a job and get paid $100, and for another person to work 2 hrs and also get paid $100, right?

In the end, not much was done to make the rules change because the majority of the members were not in favor of having any changes. And it was this majority, that while understandable, just couldn't commit as much time. There's nothing wrong with being unable to participate as much as "Joe", but it shouldn't be expected that because of your situation, you get the same opportunity to progress as quickly.

For a few reasons though, I couldn't just quit. The original leader has specifically asked me on a few occasions to help lead, and I had been promoted to an officer before he left the game. So I wanted to do my part and help the LS become better, to see it progress. I had also received a lot from the LS, and so I wanted to return that help to the members and see them also progress and receive the gear they were after.

But as the runs went by, it was obvious a few people disliked me and had fixated on their conclusions as to "who" I was as a person. Drama started finding its way into the LS, to the point where I eventually didn't feel comfortable expressing my opinion about anything because I felt like the moment I did, I would be accused of things that were untrue.

Finally, I just came to a point where I questioned "who" I was in fact helping. With the exception of a few, I felt treated unfairly, I felt judged unfairly, and I just didn't feel that I should be giving my time to people that wanted to take every opportunity to take things I would say out of context, to try and prove their conclusions that I was such a bad person - obviously out to take advantage of everyone in the LS.

So, I told leadership that I would be leaving and made a goodbye post to the LS. If the majority of the LS disliked me, then it would be better that I left after all, right?

It was difficult to do, because felt like I owed the members and the LS more... but overall, I believe it was probably the best decision to make.

At this point I think i'll be taking a break from Limbus unless something comes up. I've been considering helping my social LS get a "casual limbus" group going down the road, seeing as quite a few members have just gotten access or will shortly. But we'll see.

And speaking of casual events... SoTW had a good run a couple of weekends ago. We did a Tinnin x3 night, which resulted in 2 Enkidu Caps, 1 Enkidu Subligar, 1 pair of Hachiryu Sune-Ate (which sold for 3.2mil and was split to all members) and a lotta death!

Well, actually not really. We only had one run that I recall having more than one death, which was due to a short 30 seconds where Tinnin decided to say hello to our nukers. Overall though, the fights went well and only lasted about 30-40 minutes each. I'm really hoping that we have more interest among our members to participate, because for the Tier 3 and 4's we usually have to bring in outside help. Maybe i'll have to figure out a more convenient time to try and accomodate people's schedules ><

And now for some quick updates~

I finally got SMN to 75! And no, I am not getting a Maat's cap! I refuse to touch NIN or BST. NIN just seems like the type of job that would stress me out to do really well, because I know you have to be attentive. BST, just has too many negatives for me. You don't get party invites, and unless you're lucky enough to find someone else that wants to duo with you, the xp/hr is painful. At least for someone like me who has spent the majority of their "xping" sessions getting 20k/hr.

And speaking of that, i'm just about finished meritting SMN already, lol. I managed to get 5/5 Physical Avatar Attack, and am currently 4/5 with Magical Avatar Attack. I figure for the kind of events i'll be asked to do on SMN, the ACC won't be too big of an issue. And if I do resist, or miss... oh well, wait another minute and try again! >_>

I helped out again with some more CoP missions. Helped our the other static in our LS get to the top of Promyvion-Vazhl. I actually had some fun with this because I got to bring out my lvl 50 gear for SAM - yay soboro! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!


Also helped Vepion, Lyea and Fieryblizzard kill Diabolos. On our way out to the fight, Biast had popped and this turned out to be an interesting fight.

My plan had originally been to kite Biast on SMN, but Lyea ended up provoking and holding hate. somehow things got a little messy, and because not everyone had been in zone at the start, I ended up taking a death. This led to another group in the zone taking claim, but after a couple of minutes they also died to lolBiast.


Thankfully though, reinforcements came and we got claim and the kill. Oh, and the drop! Soulstar found himself the new owner of a shiny new helmet.

And now that Vepion and Fieryblizzard had killed Diabolos, they were able to participate in our dynamis shell RoR's first Dynamis-Buburimu. We got the win, which seemed pretty easy and managed to pickup about 5-7 items that you don't usually see in dynamis zones. There was one dragon though that ended up giving us a real hard time. He spammed through all the 2hrs of all the available jobs in the game (minus the new ones) and kept spamming a lot of AoEs that wiped our alliance a couple of times. But, our reliable PLD Ketsurui was able to keep up with the kiting and we did manage to kill it in the end. Now we're looking at trying to do more Dreamland zones, but because we only run once a week, its difficult to decide how often because it takes away from our usual zones.


Did a little NM camping too. Xean was out camping Novv the Whitehearted which was quite a surprise to me, because he's not a fan of NM camping. I went out to give him a hand, and within an hour, Novv popped for us. Xean went 1/1 for the Minstrel's Coat, which was really nice seeing as I had remembered another player going 1/7 on this. Guess it's just my luck that sucks with NM drops now, lol.


And lastly, had another go at the ACP fight. Athoz setup another run, and our setups seemed perfect. We had PLD/RDM, RDM/DRK, SMNx2, WHM and our 6th changed between MNK and BLM. The dmg from me and Soulstar on SMN seemed to be doing fine, because we got the crystal down to 50% in less than half the time allowed.


But, our first run had a mix of bad luck and some inexperience. Our PLD Darce, had gotten charmed a couple of times, which eventually made our RDM/DRK get drawn in, eventually killing him. With no sleeps or stuns available, it didn't take long for the rest of us to wipe.

The second run had less charms, and we did get the crystal down to about 4-5% if I remember correctly... but, once we lost our PLD and RDM, it was a sure loss.

I felt really bad for Athoz and Zaross, among the people needing the fight, they are the ones that have attempted it the most and never seen a win. And thanks to the greatness that is SE, they have to climb the tower EVERY time they want to try again. I can only imagine they're about fetup and ready to just forget about the body piece you can get at the end... but, I think we'l have another run planned hopefully in the week ahead. This time i'm gonna go all out and grab some extra meds.

Which thanks to a very lucky run of KSNM30 - Royal Ramble, won't be a problem at all! I finally got a chance to try this KSNM, and now I can't wait to organize a couple of runs with my LS. It is an easy enough fight (though you do need your kiters to be focused) and has a better profit than Copycat. Why hello thar mr. 100%-drop-O.Ingot! I managed to get myself a d.Ingot as well, which was nice because I plan to keep my O.Ingot to do the next gobbie bag quest... provided I can find myself a leathercrafter 81+!