Master of the Emptyness!

Lots to write about, because this weekend was pretty busy for me. First i'll start with an update on my lvling.

I've been wanting to get my DRK to 37, so that I could use it as a subjob on my RDM for the ability "stun" in case I ever end up in a sky LS or on a Fenrir run where I can be more useful. So friday night, I geared up and after seeking for a little over an hour I got an invite to a party that was killing weapons in Sauromauge Champaign. At the time, I was only lvl 31, and by the end of the party I ended up getting lvl 32 because unfortunately the xp we were getting was only about 80-100.

But things ended being somewhat better because the next day, when I was seeking for party I got an invite into Garlaige Citadel where I partied with a WAR/BLU tank (he had set up his abilities so that he had +10 VIT, and with the gear he had equipped he was actually doing really impressive), a WHM who was also controlling a PL, a BLM and myself. We weren't really killing incredibly fast, but the xp was nice and I managed to hit lvl 33 before the end.

Then late into the night after I had done all my events (which i'll talk about after) I decided to seek again, and got invited to a party in Garlaige again and ended up getting my DRK to 34. I wish I hadn't been so tired at that point, because I would of liked to have gotten 35, but oh well. Hopefully there will be time this week and I can get 37 before the weekend, because the next job I want to lvl is my SMN so that I can use that as a subjob on my WHM. Gah, I really have a ton of jobs to lvl x_x


And so Saturday morning started out pretty well. I was leading a Promyvion-Holla run for some LS members, and everyone that had signed up was prepared and on time (I love it when this happens). Aside from getting an extra hand from our trusty SMN Pasquale, we were set and so off we went to the crag.

But as to be expected, our luck with everyone showing up and being on time was about to be jinxed because as soon as we got to the second lvl of the promyvion, we ended up going to every Memory Recepticle which all ended up being duds. Finally, on the last one we progressed to the third level which was great.... except yet again, the same thing happened. We had to go all over the lvl to try new Memory Recepticles only to find them as duds. But this wasn't to be the worst, because we ended up having to go through this maze of trees and we were surrounded by mobs. Inari, being the daring Elvaan that she is decided to chance it and ran through, only to get a little too much aggro. So our party decided to fight and hope that we'd make it through...such wasn't the case however.



Luckily our WHM Kraksa had used a reraise earring and was able to raise us all, but you should of seen us right after because we were surrounded by mobs. We all had to huddle together to avoid getting aggro while we waited for our weakened status to wear. As soon as it did, we waited for the mobs to move and open a path and we got to our last MR and went to the last floor which we got through very quickly. And not much more to say on this, because we kicked arse on the BCNM. Carste and Spalko and myself were blink tanking, Pasquale got his 2hr off, Inari did her 2hr and dealt some nice damage and Kraska kept us all healed up. It was another success, and this had been the last promy that Inari needed so she finally got to see what Lufaise Meadows looked like ^^



After this, I got back on my DRK and did a little fishing in Jeuno while I waited for an invite. Unfortunately though, I wasn't getting any skillups and decided that I should try and see what kind of xp I could get with my NPC Epilleve. So I went out into Rolanberry fields, tried a few bees which were very easy but only giving me about 20xp each. So I decided to try a few goblins, only to find out that DRKs don't really take hits too well and at least on two of the fights I won with just barely over 10hp. Thankfully my NPC is set to "Soothing Healer" so she was able to toss out cures quickly, keeping me alive.



Then along came Sunday, which was suppose to start with Mission 5.1 and mission 5.2. We had about 6 LS members that needed this, and after some organizing we had set to do this that morning. Unfortunately though, some people weren't prepared gear wise and one person didn't show. Two were late but they did have reasons so in the end that was ok, but nonetheless it was still pretty stressful because I wasn't sure what job I would need to come as to make the party complete until the last minute, and I also had to ask a few people to come and help out and replace those that weren't ready.

As frustrating as it had been at first in the morning, things got better as the party tried to cheer me up. When we got to the Fei'yin BCNM, we weren't entirely sure our setup would be successful but we had a better setup than originally planned so we went ahead. Our setup was myself (WAR/NIN), Badinfluence (PLD), Sirivalin (BLM), Arimis (RNG), Sabene (BRD), and Clarisse (WHM) who later switched out for Falk (WHM) as we ended up doing the run twice.



The battles had been pretty good, there were a few times that our health dropped but everyone used their 2hrs wisely and we all survived. So after that, everyone headed to their nations and flagged 5.2 and we headed off to Castle Zvahl Bailey's. This time we had a few others join up with us to help: Spalko (SAM), Aserati (WHM), and Lokelani (WHM).

Also with this mission, we had to go twice but both battles were extremely easy as we had 3 75s for both battles. Because everyone knew it was going to be easy, the melee and Sirivalin decided to go all out and pretty much annihilated the Shadowlord's first form under 2 minutes leaving me to whack him with my sword, pretending to be the tank in the battle, lol. I didn't even get hit hard enough to need to cure myself, so holding hate against a nuking fanatic BLM and weaponskill obsessed SAM + RNG was out of the question! All was good though, we managed to get Clarisse, Arimis, Sabene and Spalko their rank 6!



After this, most of us who had done the missions decided to help out Kiersten get his Savage Blade NM. The NM itself isn't really all that hard, in fact i'm sure 3 lvl 75's could probably kill it, but the trouble was getting to the NM.

In order to do this, we had to run all around Altepa desert and in quicksand caves, activating the switches to open the Altepa gate. We managed to do the first 3 switches easy, with everyone following instructions well... except that on the last one, after we had activated it there was confusion on where we were suppose to go and because the gate would only remain open for a specific amount of time, we were at a disadvantage. In the end, after we had figured out where we had gone wrong we ran out of time. Most of us were willing to give it another go, but because a good majority of those helping had to do other things we decided to give a rain check, and try another time. But of course that didn't stop us from having a little fun before it was all done ^_~



So after the attempt at getting the Savage Blade NM, I went and got prepped for my CoP static. The plan was to head out to Pso'Xja and fight a golem type NM which would open a door that would lead us to Promyvion-Vazhl.

We were following the instructions of Lokelani and Sirivalin, and the instructions they had read indicated that when we zoned into the area, we should head straight to find a stone door. For whatever reason, none of us saw the path way which was directly in front of us, and we kind went on a wild goose chase for about 15 minutes. We decided to escape and try again, and this time when we zoned in we saw the door..... directly..... in front of us. So we just pretended that our little goose hunt hadn't happened and we had seen the door all along <_< (Gawd our CoP static certainly isn't the same without us making it complicated as Lokelani said! hahaha! Its what makes it interesting!)


So after we killed the golem NM, we headed into Promyvion-Vazhl which was a lvl 50 Cap area. We soon learned that the mobs here had a shorter range aggro than other promyvions, because we continued getting aggro. It was fine though, because the mobs weren't too difficult to take down, nothing a typical xp party couldn't handle.

When we got to the 4th floor, I immediately realized that we had forgotten to find the Memory Flux on the previous lvl, which we needed to get to in order to spawn an NM for a cutscene. So off we went to find the transporter that would take us back down a lvl. Haha, we just love doing things the hard and long way >_>;;


So anyways, after we killed the NM we made sure to find the memory flux on the 4th level before we proceeded to the last level. Finally, when we made it to the spire we tried to come up with a plan as to how we were going to fight the BCNM which had 3 NMs. We could fight one at a time, and when our current mob's hp dropped to 20%, the next NM would aggro.

So our plan was to have Xean tank for most of the bcnm, and we would have Kiersten kite the one that would aggro. We would use the anima we'd farmed up, and all do our thing. We also decided to save the hardest NM for last (depending on the first mob you pull, will determine the order that the NMs aggro) and use our 2hrs on that.

Our first attempt ended in failure shortly after the 2nd NM aggroed because the first NM that Xean was still tanking, started to go crazy with an AoE move that wiped all his shadows. Luckily we hadn't used all of our anima's by that point, and we still had all our 2hrs so we decided to change up the plan a little and I believe Kiersten ended up tanking the 2nd NM when the first one was finally killed. I can't recall though, because I was busy refreshing and enfeebling the whole time, and was really happy that all my enfeebles stuck (except for Slow, but Xean covered that one for me). But this time around, we had a smooth battle and we won after about 15 minutes of focused teamwork!!!

Now we're on "Three Paths" which apparently is going to be a really really long mission, but hopefully everyone will be available next saturday so that we can go all day. I'm really loving the cutscenes with Chains of Promathia and though i'm not really understanding the entire story, I'm still liking how its progressing. Definitely one of the highlights of playing the game.

And just because I thought it was humorous, I decided to post a pic of a new creation SE made to fight the RMT fishing bots that have sprung up this year. For some reason, these fishing bots are fishing mythril swords which I assume bring profit when sold to NPCs. If you've ever been in Qufim before this new update, you would of seen probably 30-50 bots all fishing on the cliffs fishing these up. Many players would try to MPK them with NMs in the area, but it requires a trick which i'm not too familiar with and sometimes is more of an effort... and in the end, still doesn't stop them from botting.

But thanks to SE and their sense of humor, they designed these new goblin mobs called "Goblin Bounty Hunters" which are all over Vana'diel, near the coastlines of where the fishing bots use to be. These goblins seem to aggro anything under lvl 30, and just leave a trail of dead bodies. Its really quite funny, and now hopefully RMT might just give up altogether and find another MMO to make money off. The only downside is these goblins are in some areas where parties use to xp, so now some places aren't populated anymore by xp parties.