Casual Saturday Night ZNMs, has begun!

As mentioned in my previous post, i've decided to start up a little casual event on Saturday nights to give ls members something fun to do together. We're not a really big social/event ls, but we can manage to do quite a lot as a team with the numbers that we have.

So the event that was chosen, was ZNMs. I remember last year when SE first introduced ZNMs in one of their updates, I wasn't really interested. The gear looked great, but the work that was involved seemed too much of a hassle and for the most part, it seemed that you would need to join an endgame shell to get far.

Eventually though, a friend started telling me about how the fights could be low-manned and explained all the details about ZNMs. Though there was some extra work involved (like collecting Zeni points) I didn't really feel initimidated anymore. And after our last ohat run and realizing that our ls was pretty much capable of alliance type fights, I decided to get things started up!

Saturday night was our very first run. Originally it was going to be Janko and myself popping the tier 1 ZNM - Cheese Hoarder Gigiroon. But, with the interest of other LS members increasing, we soon had a few more pops on our agenda.

Our first fight seemed a little rough, probably because we didn't really know what to expect. Carste, Janko and his friend Kefkha were the only ones that were familiar with the fight, so it was a learning experience for the majority of us.

I went as PLD and had Darce acted as backup tank. I pulled the NM to the "safe room" where the rest of the group waited, ready to nuke down the NM. When we got the NM to the room, it seemed a little chaotic at first because there were mines every where and we weren't exactly positioned correctly in order to avoid the explosive damage. Luckily though, I don't think we had more than one death. Though, I did learn something interesting about this rat.... apparently he has this move where he removes certain pieces of your gear, and you can't equip it back for a period of time. Damn SE perverts. -_-

After our second attempt, we decided that I should go and change to BLM and let Darce do the tanking, seeing as he managed pretty well co-tanking with me. I didn't object to the request, after all... I don't usually get a chance to bring out my BLM for events.

So we went 4/4 wins, had a few drops and then decided we'd do the next ZNM in line - Iriz Ima.

This ZNM was a lot easier, and by far a lot more fun. We got to kite a huge Marid while nuking it. At one point, I managed to get off a Burst II for about 1600+ dmg only to have the elephant come after me and one shot me with one of his TP moves.

But that didn't stop me... as soon as I got raised, I got up and chased the thing as it was being kited around a tower and got off a Freeze II. This was of course followed by a little scolding from my friends on skype who pretty much just shook their heads at the weakened BLM who had a little bit too much fun nuking...

We got full drops on 2/3 of the pops that we did.

Next Saturday we plan to do Lil Apkallu and probably a few more Cheese Hoarder Gigiroon. If we manage to have people available long enough, we might even go after Armed Gears which i'm pretty excited about. I really really want to get those Aurum Sabatons! I might reconsider unretiring my WAR if I do.

So what else... oh, I decided to try a pickup KSNM run for Copycat the other day. That didn't go too well... the setup was WHM, WAR/NIN, SAM/WAR, DRK/SAM, PLD/NIN, RDM (me). I was hesitant with the setup, but figured i'd still give it a try. Turns out that my gut feeling was right, because we wiped on the first orb. We had to wait for one of the members to bring their mule and raise us, seeing as our WHM didn't have RR up. Unfortunately though, the second attempt was just as bad. While silencing the mob is a good idea, I was having to focus on the sleeps, hastes, refreshes, enfeebles and cures and couldn't sit there spamming silence (because the mob is resistent) otherwise I wouldn't be able to do the rest of my duties. And with only one stun, we just couldn't handle the -agas. After the second failed attempt, we decided just to call it quits. Guess my only luck in this is that I didn't end up using my orb yet. Glad that I have my KSNM static group on Sunday nights though, I don't think i'll be trying the pickup thing again ><

And continueing with the progress on my DRG, I finally decided to go after all the AF. I started with the first AF quest, which involved me heading out to Western Altepa to fight an antican.

Easy win.

Then I had to go get a couple of coffers and redo the Dark Spark fight (for the gazillionth time I swear) Janko offered to come out and help, and so I offered him the chance to bring his PUP that he had been trying to skillups on earlier... as great as the level sync addition has been, it really messes up jobs that need to get skillups and have difficulty in doing so.

The next day, my friend Anderoc offered to help me take out the AF3 fight. So we headed to the temple of Uggalepih and cleared the room where the fight was to take place. I then popped two fomor NMs, which he pulled one at a time. After we killed the first fomor, we waited for the other one to despawn... but, I guess we killed the first too fast, because I wasn't able to get the cutscene. -_-

So we rested up, and tried again. This time though, the fight seemed to be a little rough (that or my attempt to help was really just feeding the mob more tp) and ended up killing Anderoc. Thankfully he had come /whm and so he also had reraise up. He raised me, we waited until I was unweakened and as the saying goes... third time is a charm!

Finally, DRG AF done!

Having been the one that needed quite a bit of help this week, I was finally able to return the help. Janko was still trying to get caught up skill wise with his puppet (due to lvl syncing all the time) and so we decided to head to Vunker Inlet again to fix that. I brought my PLD along so that I could also get a few weaponskill points for my Brave Sword and unlock Atonement (now sitting at about 900/1600 pts).

(Zerayla may not like beating on the bambi mice in La Theine Plateau, but she sure loves nuking lizard like creatures to oblivion when she's waiting for the Manaclipper. <_<)

Throughout the week we've had a number of random skillup sessions. I've also been able to help him out with trying to unlock his BLU mythic weaponskill. We managed to get pretty far, but I think the new plan is to help him get a few more floors through Nyzul so that he won't need so many weaponskill points. Its just a matter of rounding up 4 other people to come along.

And on that note, I was able to unlock Tashi: Rana a while ago, though I forgot to mention it. It didn't take very long because i'd done quite a lot of skillchaining during my Wednesday ls merit/xp session. The animation for the weaponskill is really nice, its just too bad the damage isn't as great on its own. But that's ok, I can make Dark skillchain now! Woot!

Oh and speaking of Nyzul, my friday static finally made it to floor 60. I'm really glad that our group decided to help Drimergirl and Soulstar get lvl 75 on the other jobs they were lvling because now our setup is a lot more reliable. We have BRD, DRK, THF, WARx2, RDM. As long as we don't get any Soulflayer floors, I think we'll continue to keep climbing. The plan after we hit floor 100, is then to go back and farm the boss floors to get the gear we all want. I'd reaaaaaaaally like to get a few Askar pieces for my up and coming DRG. Otherwise, i'm gonna have to think really, really, really hard of a way to convince a few ls members to come and camp a certain kitty that is not to be mentioned. <_<

Well that's about all I can think to write about at the moment. Err, actually one more thing! Elden dragged me and Janko out to help him get G2 done for his new character Vepion that he's rushing to get to lvl 75 so that he can retire his Elden character. I met up with them both in Xarcabard, but when Elden zoned in, he realized he hadn't flagged the quest so he had to warp back to town and do that. While me and Janko waited, we ran into an old friend of mine, Gimli who eagerly offered to help us out. It was fun watching our dmg do insane amounts on the undead :)