Another item checked off my list of things to do!

Well on Friday night I finally got to do my Bomb Queen Run and get my Bomb Queen Ring for my PLD.

My sky ls had planned to do a run on Friday night, and at first when I logged in it didn't seem that we had enough members. But after confirming with my friend Anderoc, I was told that it was possible to kill the Bomb Queen NM with as few as 6 people. So with 10 people who showed up for the event, I thought we'd have it beat no problem.

Boy was I wrong. Everything was going ok at first, though progress was pretty slow. We had divided into two parties: One party would tank/kill the Bomb Queen and another party would take the spawns that popped off her and kill them. Unfortunately it was this part of the plan that didn't seem to work too well because our "spawn" pt wasn't able to kill the mobs fast enough, and they continued to do self-destruct which ultimately led to their death, which then led to everyone else's death.

I was a little frustrated at first because I had used my pop items for this, and we had wiped. But thankfully one of the ls members had an extra set and sold it to me for 20k. We then called in favors and asked a few friends to come give a hand. I was joined by Xean, Anderoc and Alianne's SMN which proved to be the solution to the mini-bombs that would spawn because all the SMNs had to do was take them outside and let them self-destruct on the avatars.

So after about a 10 minute battle, I had a new ring for my PLD. I don't plan on using it for xp parties or anything else really, because i've never found myself to need the extra HP. I might use it if I ever get called to help tank on a god, but other than that it'll just stay in my moghouse for the time being.... One more item to check off my "to do" list!

What else happened this weekend? Oh, on Saturday me and Xean did more lvling on our WHM and NIN. We finally hit lvl 70. But I have to say our first party was a bit of a let down. I had accepted an invite from Stormcrow, a RDM tarutaru who I had partied with earlier in the week and had been disappointed with the lack of "support" he did. Well I was about to find out little had changed.

When we got to our camp, I noticed that he was wearing his "witch hat" and a "macahuitl +1". I figured he'd change when we started fighting. So much for "benefit of the doubt". After a few fights, I suggested he use his RDM AF hat because it would be more helpful to the party then a bit of extra MP, and then I also asked if he had his staffs because none of his enfeebles were landing. He had said he forgot them in his moghouse, so me and Xean tried to do more enfeebling to make up for his resists. But it soon dawned on me that he was doing only a fraction of the spells he should be casting.

I'm not one to be "elitist" but I found that his performance for being a lvl 70 was ridiculous. All he would cast was Gravity and Refresh. There was no Dia, Paralyze, Slow, Poison, Silence, Haste... NADA! Oh, and did I mention that when we got links the one to actually sleep them was me? THE WHM!!!! That I found just a little sad, considering that at lvl 70 a RDM should have the mob slept before a WHM can manually go into the menu to do Elemental Seal + Sleep.

After noticing how bad things were, I tried to tell him in a polite way that he should be casting more, and explained that at his lvl, these things should be known. He gave excuses about him having a bad keyboard, and eventually sent me a /tell saying that he should stay because he was just leeching xp because of how badly he played which sounded like a self pity trip if I ever saw one. So I responded and told him that instead of awknowledging that he was doing little to help the party, that he should step it up a notch and take some of the suggestions I had made. About 5 minutes later, he forced d/c.

But that gave us the chance to invite our ls friend Terminataru as RDM. And as soon as we started xping again, I noticed the increase in our xp and the smoothness of the battle. Terminataru was silencing imps, doing all the enfeebles and it made things a lot easier for us.

After that, I ended up joining up with Alianne and Ameriana to do the BCNM40 "Royal Jellies". I went as WAR/NIN, Alianne went as BLU/NIN and Ameriana was RDM. We did 3 rounds, and the only worthwhile item that dropped was utsusemi: Ni which Alianne lotted as he needed the scroll for his NIN. I ended up getting a lvl 40 staff for my SMN so that wasn't too bad, I was just glad that out of the 2 orbs that Alianne had used he at least got something useful.

Then later that night, Josudes asked me and Xean to help him skillup his sword. We headed to The Boyahda Tree and fought some Steelshells for a bit. I think he got a few lvls on his sword, where I got maybe one point on my dagger which is now sitting at 130 <_<;;

Then on Sunday morning I did some crazy meriting. I used my Anniversary Ring and Empress band, and ended up getting a total of 70k+ within about 3-4 hrs. Our merit pt got above chain#60 and each mob was giving about 180-200xp each. I decided to apply my merits to my RDM and got myself Dia III and Bio III.

After taking a break from the game, I logged in to do ToAU15: The Black Coffin with some LS members. Myself, Xean, Carste, Alianne, Spalko and Akichu went into the BCNM and had an easy victory. We all decided that we were going to meet up the following weekend and continue with the missions if possible. Hopefully this turns out to be a static as it would be nice to get these missions completed. I wish I had the pics from some of the cutscenes to show, but unfortunately I forgot these on my home computer so maybe i'll update another time and add them.

Then because Monday was a holiday for me, I got to spend it playing FFXI. I got invited to an all JP party with a PLD, and surprisingly we were able to get up to chain#8. The xp was a little slow, and eventually Sirivalin offered me a spot in a manaburn so after talking with the party leader and finding out we were going to disband soon, I headed off and got myself another few merit points and obtained Paralyze II.

And other than that, I managed to get my SMN to lvl 17, however that was an agonizing experience. I remember Valkurm Dunes being a pain in the butt, but after spending more than 2hrs there for 3k xp WITH my empress band, I pretty much promised myself to find a way to bribe Xean into PLing me to about lvl 20. I could always go solo the xp but i'm in a bit of a hurry to get SMN to at least 37 to use for my WHM so i'm going to try and take the quicker route first. The only consequence that i'll probably have by getting PLed another couple of lvls is that my SMN magic isn't capped yet and i'll have to find some time to work on that.

Well thats it for this update!