To be, or not to be, the Bruce Lee!

After spending a lot of time debating which job I had an interest in taking to 75 next, I finally decided I would do Monk. The funny thing is that MNK was the first job that I tried out in FFXI, and though I never disliked it I never ended up taking it beyond lvl 33. I had been in too many parties where the tanks were so horrible, that I ended up taking PLD as soon as I was able to unlock the job. This way I didn't have to deal with tanks that didn't comprehend the concept of provoking every 30 seconds.

Another reason why I decided to take MNK is because I still have my cross counters that I had bought for Kaelyth back when I was lvling his MNK. By the time I retired Kaelyth, the cross counters went down in price by 300k and I really didn't want to sell them knowing that they have been 1-1.5mil for the last year and a half. I'm pretty sure eveeeeeeeentually they'll go back up in price, and as long as I can make back what i've spent, i'll sell them. In the meantime, I have every intention to use them with Zerayla's MNK as soon as I get lvl 50!

And so far, the lvling has been very nice. I have made parties with mostly LS members, and on my first day of bringing out MNK I was able to get a total of 8.5 lvls, going from lvl 33 - lvl 41. Then the next day, I got it up to lvl 43, and finally got my Raging Fists. It is a pretty boring job for the most part because there isn't a whole lot to do in comparison to other melee jobs, but i'm enjoying the xp parties so far >=)

As for my meriting, i'm putting that on hold for the most part. I've finished meriting WHM, SAM and BLM over the last couple of months. I don't plan to do anything on my WAR because as long as my SAM can outdamage it, I don't see the point of having two melee DD jobs. I'll just stick with using the one that is better geared. I have a few more merits to add to my RDM, (need to max out slow II) but I'll get to those eventually with my LS static.

Speaking of that, our group has now reached lvl 63-64. We managed to get something like 23k in our last xp session, fighting colibri. Overall, i'm enjoying the xp sessions. I get to play my SAM and often me, Onedarkflame and Standpoint spend the entire session playing "tarutaru hockey" with our PLD tank, Soulstar. Its kinda fun watching him try to keep hate against us, when we get a little WS crazy.

Me and Drimergirl having a little fun with our costumes ~

I've also been helping a friend Sabene get some lvls on her BLM, which is now at 71. We were duo-ing up at Mount Zhayolm on some wamoura, which wasn't too bad. Its actually really relaxing being able to duo with another BLM for xp, because its better than doing campaign and you can go afk whenever you need to without having to worry about upsetting 5 other party members. And considering that I have a 2.5 yr old sister that I usually end up babysitting over the weekend, its really convenient to have unlimited AFKs.

We also managed to have quite an interesting show during one of our sessions when a ZNM shell ran by us with a huge troll. At first the shell seemed to be doing ok as we watched, but eventually in a matter of minutes everyone was dead. I had a few friends in the shell, so I figured i'd try and help out. Unfortunately though, there was obviously a couple of people in the shell who weren't big fans of me and most likely were the reason I was declined and invite to help (politely though). Oh well, their loss. I offered to help when they had wiped, and even got myself killed by dia'ing the mob so that it wouldn't despawn after their alliance had wiped but according to them "they were fine". (The mob despawned in the end from what I heard)

I'm looking forward to getting Sabene's BLM to 75. I'm also trying to convince other LS members to take theirs to 75, so that we can really start doing some insane manaburn ENMs, BCNMs and KSNMs for gil. Already i've witnessed how easy you can make gil with a small group of BLMs.

Last monday, Sabene, Elden and myself went to do Under Observation in an attempt to help get utsusemi: ichi for Sabene's NIN. Our first run (my orb) was a wipe, but luckily we had a friend who was also trying a bcnm at the same time there to help raise us right after. The first run was the only fail we had, which I half expected too because I was the only one that was experienced with doing UO as a trio manaburn. Our next 4 runs resulted in a phalanx scroll (60k) as well as a Peacock Charm! We didn't get the scroll we wanted, but definitely got ourselves a nice drop that made up for it, and more! We plan to do some more runs again this week, and i'm keeping my fingers crossed we get lucky again.

I also found some time to do the halloween events and get myself the new "Eerie Cloak". I'm not really big on doing events and such, because the items seem to usually be a waste of inventory space but I was bored one night and decided to try it out.

After killing 10 bats with my lolpup, I went after the big guy called Pyracmon. I soloed him almost naked (it came pretty close) and because of that, I got myself the 3 warp neck pieces that allow you to warp to the chocobo stables of all 3 cities - Windurst, Bastok, and San d'Oria. I think I now have a total of 10 warp items on my character @_@

Though i've made some progress with meriting in the last bit, I haven't really done as much with my crafts as I had hoped. I had a goal to get all my crafts to 60 before the new year, but I think my habit of being stingy and wanting to farm up my materials so that I don't spend gil like crazy is slowing me down. Luckily though, I had some ls members help me out a few nights ago as we went to kill raptors in Kuftal Tunnel. Mostly everyone had something to skillup, and we even managed to get some lvls on our fellowship NPCs.

While we were there, we also ran into Yowie.

He dropped a Yowie Skin, which I plan to use later on to craft a friend some desert boots. *Sigh* Still 10 more lvls to go on leathercraft, and the next recipe calls for Catoblepas Hides which never seem to be available on the AH when I go to buy them. -_-

Oh, and again our LS has started up some fun group events. We spent all of saturday farming codexes, subligars and killing fomors for hate in order to pop the swift belt NMs. We managed to farm up 3-4 codexes, and went 1/5 on the belts. I had hoped that we would have a better drop rate, but of course if that ever happened, FFXI wouldn't be the big time sink that it is, eh?

We plan to continue doing this for the next couple of saturdays, until the people in our LS have their swift belts and subligars. Its a pain in the butt to do because fighting the mobs is no where near as exciting or fast paced as your normal xp party, but in the end its worth it when you get to see your fellow ls mates with some fancy gear ^^.

Ooooo, and recently with the addition of a ventrilo channel for my social ls, i've managed to bring a few new faces in from my dynamis shell. Well actually, one of my long time social shell members Ichibankitsune turned out to be the RL friend of one of my dynamis members, and invited him into the shell. And of course because Ecator is good friends with a lot of the dynamis shell members, he sorta brought a couple of them with him. Its been really nice to see more people in SoTW again, and now that everyone has access to either vent or skype, i'm pretty sure we'll be able to enjoy any ls events we do even more.

Oh, and speaking of Dynamis... I finally managed to get a good shot of Ketsurui doing his savage blade WS with his angel wings item. I think he's had me take more than a dozen shots over the last year (I used to do sky with him too) but I never seemed to get a decent screenshot. On our last run earlier this week though, right before we entered, he was goofing off again and asked me to take one and it turned out pretty cool!

Dynamis has been great as usual. We've lost a few people since fall because of work schedules and college, but we've recruited more "friends of a friend" which has really turned out great. Its nice having members that generally just want to have fun and don't just one day decide to quit without ever saying a word to the leadership. I really hate when people do that -_-

Our last run we got 7 drops in Xarcabard too, which I guess makes up for our run the month before where we only had 2. Our Beaucedine drop rate is always above 10, which I think is really helping the morale. People are getting their AF (I got my WHM AF body! woo!) and we're getting more 5/5 sets for our members. I just wish we could get lucky with the wootz ores again so that our "Month End Bonus" (surplus of gil earned when we farm coins) which we give to our members, would be a little more. Oh well, can't complain!

Alright, i've obviously had way too much to update since my last post so i'll try to sum up the last bit here...

My Nyzul static has been doing surprisingly well.

Carste has a squishy head!

I really didn't think that we'd make it past a boss floor, after I had heard how difficult these were from other members... however, I guess I should learn never to doubt the members of my social, because we always end up getting stuff done (hello thar Mr. Hakutaku!) We've actually been able to progress to floor 36 all in a month, and we only do 4 runs a week. We've picked up another member who will probably be our full time replacement - Ecator. (One of our members, Zeo can only do 3 runs with us due to another static he has earlier in the week)