Trials Galore.

Lately weapon trials have been the focus for me in game. And I think this will be the trend for a while, because I recently decided to pursue the Empyrial weapon [Hand-to-hand] on Xean.

At first I had no real intention of going after this, and was going to settle for one of the other trials that would give me a slightly better pair of weapons than my destroyers, but my hubby offered to help me with the harder Abyssea trials on and off. So now i'm trying to fly threw the ever tedious trials that involve camping lottery NMs. I'm nearly done after a matter of days, with only one more Ramponneau and 4x Keeper of Halidom before I can move onto the VNM trials. I will probably be taking a bit of a break once I reach the Abyssea trials (Chloris is the first trial) but eventually the plan will be to get the Verethragna on Xean too. I really want to play his MNK and feel "completed" with his character gear-wise before this game dies. Which i'm hoping, won't be for a long time.

Also spent a little time working on my own trial for my Rhongomiant. Carste, Athoz and myself went out to Attohwa and did a little bit of key item farming so that we could pop Uladashi. As with all of these NMs that drop the items needed for weapon trials, there's always one NM that is a pain to do because it's a spawn-timed NM which means having competition. And I thought for sure, our progress would be slow when we zoned in and headed to the Amun camp to find another group there as well as a solo NIN. But, after getting the first claim... we had the NM to ourselves. Guess we intimidated the other group, and by the second pop, the NIN also left.

After doing about 5 Uladashi, I had completed my BLM AF3 Head +2, and Xean's MNK Head +2. We started working towards the completion of Athoz' MNK head and Carste's BLM Head, but didn't manage to finish. And I got another 9 Uladashi fangs to add to my trial, leaving me with 31 more to get.

And just a few days prior, we worked on Onedarkflame's trial in Misareaux. I think he got more than halfway done with the lantern items he needed for his trial, and we also managed to complete a few AF3+2 legs including my SAM.

I'm starting to feel less overwhelmed by all the stuff I would like to get, because at the speed we've been going... we're getting a lot done in a short amount of time. SE has finally been making some good changes to the game, giving us more to go after, but making the challenges easier to take on in smaller groups. And the whole cutting down on NM spawn time? Excellent idea... No more 21-24 hr crap. -_-

Also thought i'd include this pic. They did a minor update last week, which affected the blinkmenot script. Basically anytime you did a gear swap, your gear and/or character would change entirely to the most random of things. The pic below, is supposed to be my PLD...

I was helping out Vepion get some skillups on his staff, tanking bugards in Abyssea Misareaux Coast. The funny part is that I hadn't played on PLD in so long, that I had completely forgotten that being /nin meant that I could cast shadows to have some "interrupt-free" cures. I think i've just been on MNK/WAR too much and forgot about blink tanking.

And yesterday I was able to finish up my RDM AF3 +1 hands on Zerayla. My hubby offered to login and play a little bit with me, and wanting to give him something a little more fun to do, I figured i'd find an NM to do. At the time, Hesper was in LS and so I asked if he wanted to come out and kill an NM in Uleguerand that dropped BLM, RDM, WHM and SCH. We managed to finish my RDM pretty quickly, as well as Hesper's WHM, BLM and SCH hands. Carste logged in a little later and came out to work a bit on his BLM and RDM hands seeing as we were done with those. We didn't get to finish the ones Carste needed, but got pretty close. Was fun to see the "real Xean" in-game. Definitely made things easier on me because I only had to focus on one character. Duoboxing has become a permanent thing with me, so the little break was nice.

I also was able to get my Orison Cape for Zer's WHM finally. I've killed that rabbit at least 5 times (when the first expansion came out) and never got the drop. My husband briefly logged in a couple nights ago and as I was showing him the new things in Abyssea (how to proc) I figured we'd try an easy NM. After waiting around for a bit, Mangy-something-Marvin decided to pop, and off Xean went killing it, just like old times.

I remember back when I first started this game, and was about lvl 8 or so, me and Xean went out to La Theine and he introduced me to the higher level rabbits that we began to club to death. At which point, I accused him of animal abuse for killing what I came to call "Bambi Mice". (They look like a cross between the disney deer Bambi, and a mouse) Fun days those were...

Aside from that, i've been trying to plow through the trials for my Ice (dmg) Staff. Because TBH has plans to take on the turtle KS99 this coming Saturday (and hopefully i'll finish Xean's black belt) Athoz, Hesper and Onedarkflame also wanted to get their staves completed. So we've been working on the trials over the last couple of days, and are now 3 trials away from finishing. Tomorrow we'll hopefully complete the next 2 that require real work [Crabs + Wyverns] and then the last trial is just a matter of trading in 15 Snow Geodes.

And maybe eventually i'll get my Thunder Staff done too. I started working on it last week, thinking it would give me something to do while I camped the stupid lottery NMs on Xean. And for the most part, it wasn't too bad.. but the trial i'm on, now requires that I kill "Slimes". And it can't be any animorph, it HAS to be a slime. Which limits me to non-abyssea areas, which means = excruciating slow kills with no easy way to regain MP. At least if i'm doing it on my own. I gave up after about 10 kills in Bostinaux Oubliette, when I realized how painfully long it was going to take me to do on my own. And i'm pretty sure I won't be working on this staff again until others are caught up and interested in doing the trial i'm on. I would much rather go with other people.... unless I get extremely bored one day. But i'm sure if that ever happens... I'll always have netflix or something.