AF, and some more AF... and AF?

Well my wednesday night LS static has finally reached that "fun" phase where everyone wants to get their AF done. So I spent most of last week helping out with various AF quests, in addition to my own. As of 2 weeks ago, I made a change with the job I was going to bring to the static. Instead of having Kaelyth's MNK (who i've now retired and saved me a butt load of gil) I'm bringing Zerayla's RDM to static, which has allowed Standpoint the chance to make some more progress on his BLU rather than being the refresher of the party which i'm sure would have driven him insane before we hit 75.

Because i'm lvl 75, and because Standpoint's BLU is also higher than the static we have been doing the level sync thing that was recently introduced. So far, this level sync feature has really seemed to save FFXI a little because it gives people a reason to play if they can level with their friends without having to be within the same level range. The only downside to this of course, is that if the job you're using is one that relies on stats you pretty much have to go and rebuy gear to fit the level you're going to be brought down to. I guess not being able to part with my gear for fear of needing in the future came in handy for me ^^ No gil spent on my end, haha!

But anyways, over the last couple of weeks our static has made enough progress to push us to the point where everyone wanted to go and get their AF done ASAP. I don't particularily mind helping with AF, but there was so much done in such a short time that I swear if anyone asks for help on AF in the next month, i'm likely to toss a moose at them or something. (Well not really, lol)

I didn't have a chance to help out too much with the actual coffer key farming because I was usually not around (I think i've caught some strange bug going around) or i've had a couple of events I was already committed to. But I did get to help with the fun stuff, that is with the AF3 fights.

Though I wasn't feeling the greatest the night that Soulstar and Drimergirl setup to go get their PLD and WHM AF3 fights done, I was still glad that I was able to come out on PLD again. I always like an opportunity to take out the job seeing as its not often needed for much anymore. We went to Davoi to fight 2 orc NMs for Soulstar's AF3, which ended up being just a little bit "overkill". He had asked for help in LS, and oddly enough that night we had quite a few bored LS members so just about everyone came out to lend a hand. I think the mobs were killed within less than 3 minutes, I don't remember a whole lot of that fight o.O


Then we also had a huge turnout of members come to help Drimergirl farm her Tavnazian Bell so that we could pop the NM for her WHM AF3 in Fei'yin. I was dreading the farming part, because when I had farmed my own bell as well as helped farm one for Xean back years ago, it had taken fooooooooooooorever. We were lucky though this time around, probably due to Carste's handy TH4! The bell dropped within about 45 minutes and we were off to fight the NM in Fei'yin, which again was also a piece of cake.

So that was good, they got their full AF completed. And as I mentioned, earlier that day I was able to snatch up a couple of friends and redid both of my AF3 fights for BLM and RDM.

Through Limbus, i've been able to upgrade a lot of gear. I also had a pretty big stash of Ancient Beastcoins left over from when Xean had quit so that made things a little easier. Our shell has been really lucky with drops (the items needed to upgrade AF) for the jobs I had leveled and it would only take about a 1-3 months to get both items I would need and voila! Shiny shiny gear! Well I had finally decided to stop upgrading gear and just redo all my AF quests so that I could get the regular versions again, and be able to store them on the storage NPC. I put off doing the first AF quests for a couple of months, but eventually got the last quest flagged earlier this month and just waited until I could ask for some help.

Zeo was the first to jump in, and helped me duo Miser Murphy in Fei'yin. I was really surprised at how easy that fight was, because the last time I had remembered doing the fight for a member of the LS, he had obliverated myself (PLD), Xean (WHM), the RDM (lvl 60ish) and a WAR friend of ours. It was all great until I read the guide on the quest and remembered there was still another NM in Garlaige Citadel I had to kill....

So using the handy dandy teleport to the past, I zoned into Garlaige Citadel. I ended up encountering Old-Two Wings, which was a fun and quick fight. Too bad he didn't drop anything though, meh just my luck in this game.

Finally I got to the spawn point for the last NM for my RDM AF3, which was a doll. I thought it'd be a pretty easy fight, but I was wrong. The NM seemed to attack really fast, so I was often having to recast my buffs and shadows constantly (I went RDM/NIN) and the fact that I was barely doing any dmg to him made the fight seem an eternity. But I outlasted the NM and finally wrapped up my quest!

Later on that day, a few other LS members gave me a hand with the BLM AF3 NM "Magic Sludge". Sabene came out on BRD, Onedarkflame came out on WHM and Soluslupis borrowed a character from one of his family members and tanked on NIN. This fight was a lot easier than the last time I had done it, but not quite as fun. The last time I had done this fight, we had Standpoint tank the NM on DRK/NIN and well... as his nickname implies, he was rather squishy which resulted in a lot of healing being tossed back and forth. But the part that made that fight the best, was when Alianne (who has disappeared entirely without a word) decided to convert right next to the NM and died before he could cure himself, lol. Ahhhh..... funny memories.


Oh, and actually there's still a little more to the AF stories... I helped out Elden with one of his SCH AF fights. I had to go to Grauberg with him, and we went into a BCNM fight against a SCH NPC. I was on RDM/NIN and he went PUP/WHM. At first things seemed to be going really well, he had his puppet tanking most of the fight but...eventually the puppet died and I quickly became the tank. No problem!


Right?

Lol.... I don't really know much on SCH but this thing was a friggin beast when he used his 2hr! I remember that Elden went down pretty quick, I think due to some high tier magic. I panicked a little and finally he told me to kite it a little bit while he reraised. Even though at the time I was down on shadows and recast timers, my stoneskin still held up so I was able to get a little distance and pull the NPC away from Elden. Only... he was down moments later, I think due to some -aga casting? I'm not sure, I just remember seeing fire and seeing Elden dead again ><

I honestly started to think that I was going to die too, mainly because the magic casting from the NPC seemed unlimited and I wasn't finding enough opportunity to get my HP back up while getting my buffs back up again. Thankfully though, the NPC only needed to be brought down to a certain % which I managed to accomplish. Success! Poor Elden though...


Aside from that, i've pretty much only been playing whenever there are events going on. I took a night to help Onedarkflame with club skillups/farming as well as Sabene with her magic skillups on her BLM. I think the night was a decent success, we had quite a few profitable items drop from the high lvl goobue. I would of tried to stick it out longer for them, but that night I had a massive headache and just had to get some sleep.


I've also started doing Nyzul again. I'm really glad that Elden stepped up and asked a few of us in LS to do this, because I was pretty disappointed when 3 members from my last static left. One member quit the game, another just one day decided to disappear without a word (though I did find out later on he had made a character on another server and the other) and the third is just one of those players that doesn't seem to really care much about people in the game to a point where letting them know you're going on a break from the game and will be leaving the static is common courtesy. Eh... I just wish more people in this game would treat their "friends" as real people, treat them the same way they would treat a person they know in RL. Anyways, moving on.....

So yeah, our Nyzul static was definitely a bit rusty and we didn't exactly get lucky with the goals we had to accomplish on some of the floors. But, we worked really well together and i'm sure that once we have more practice we'll be a lot quicker. The members in my static are very well coordinated and I know I can rely on this group to do a great job.


Everyone has been talking about all these new nyzul relic weapons, and new weapons skills which we can get from doing this assault, but to be honest I haven't even bothered to read too much into it. I'm just content being able to relax a little, and have a challenging event to do with ls members. Plus, we've limited our static to once a week so I think that'll prevent me from getting burned out like I eventually did when we used to have our assault static.

What else... what else...

I'm still trying to get in as much meriting as I can. I just finished getting 5/5 Overwhelm on my SAM and I think i'm going to finally try and tackle the never ending STR merits. Gawd, I think the last 3 upgrades are a total of 9 pts each?! INSANE! But... with me retiring Kaelyth I had a lot of gear I was able to sell, and had saved up a lot of gil so I pretty much splurged and got my SAM a few new shiny items which have definitely made me enjoy playing the job more. I love seeing the "rare" high dmg WSs happen more frequently, and count for more! >=)

I'm also using some of the excess gil I have to get my crafting up. I'm working Leathercraft, and got it to 49 this morning. Only 11 more lvls to go! Then i'll have to decide if I want to take up Bonecraft, Smithing or Goldsmithing. I think i'll probably leave Goldsmithing for last, seeing as that's a hug gil sink.

And just to expand a little on my wednesday static -- things are going pretty great. We've decided to add in another session on Sundays, provided everyone is around. This'll probably be something that happens every other weekend, but at least the extra xping session will help us. I think our goal is going to be to hit 75 before christmas, and I think now that we're finally able to go to ToAU camps that shouldn't be a problem. I'm just dreading the stage we'll eventually get to when Imps will be the choice of mobs. I absolutely hate those as a mage! 6-8k a stack for echos, and you can go through those soooo easily if you have really bad luck with links and aggro.

I'm glad that I get to do the static once a week though. Being that we're all pretty close, we all talk on skype during the session and talk just about everything. Most of the time seems to be spent tossing jokes at me, which for the most part I don't mind as long as it makes everyone laugh. The only real complaint I have is that at times, any one of us can slack off momentarily and sometimes this'll upset someone and then the atmosphere becomes way too "serious" for my liking. I had all my "serious" parties back when I leveled my first 6 jobs to 75, I really don't want to have to be scanning my chat log 100% of the time and get scolded if I miss something ><

I think that about covers this update... figured i'd toss in some random screenshots I took from my last Dynamis San d'Oria run. I was really disappointed that we didn't see any of the new AF drop for BLU, COR or PUP. We did get a huge turnout on AF, we had 14 pieces of gear drop and 2 - 100c's! One of which I won! And have yet to sell...... *sigh* Hopefully our Beaucedine run tonight will be much better!