A Crystalline Prophecy!

So, SE finally released some new content through the expansion "A Crystalline Prophecy". As usual, I've gone through the missions and barely paid any attention to the actual story... only this time I really DID try to read through all the cutscenes! I just wasn't able to retain any of the story this time around.

But on a good note, I was able to finish the mini-expansion and get the end reward in just a matter of days!

When the expansion was finally available, many LS members were jumping into the missions, eager to complete them for the customizable gear. I had no intention though to start them. I've never liked the idea of racing to do something the day it becomes available, nor following everyone just because of a new "hype".

But, eventually I got the push I needed to jump into the missions because Xean wanted to start the quests with me. We kinda have this unwritten rule that when it comes to missions or quests, we won't do them without each other. I like this, makes the game more enjoyable to play together and makes everything we do feel like a team effort ^^

So, we started off by farming some crystal items from Beastmen in different parts of Vana'diel. The drop rate was really good, and while we weren't able to get all 3 items (x2) in one session due to other game events we had planned, we still got them done pretty quickly. We then moved onto the next mission, which involved killing goblins in various areas for a key item which would then allow us to pop a goblin NM.

The NMs were laughauble. Well, at least for a lvl 75. We then had to head back to Qufim to fight a few waves of mandragoras which also were a piece of cake. All it took was one -aga spell to obliverate each wave.

Around this time, some acquaintances from my Dynamis shell were also doing the same mission and asked to climb up to the top of Delfkutt's tower with us, to take on the last and final mission.

The climb was pretty easy, and thanks to our friend Anderoc who came along to escort us we got to the top pretty quick. Anderoc also offered to help us out with the fight. Our setup seemed really good (We had WHM (Xean), RDM/DRK (me), PLD/RDM (Anderoc), BLM (Verdandi), RNG (Vague), RNG (Standpoint)), but... for one reason or another, we had some really bad luck with the "charms". During this fight, there's a possibility of party members being charmed, and we had this happen 3 times. The last time was ultimately what caused us to lose, because we had 2 pty members that got charmed.

In the end, Xean was the last "elvaan" standing (our entire group was Elvaan) which I thought was pretty funny.

So after a couple of days, me and Xean were able to arrange another run with all LS members (If you want something done right, you gotta do it with SoTW members!). We picked up Soulstar on SMN and Sabene on BLM.

This run went much better. Slowly but surely we got ourselves the win! I really enjoyed the RDM/DRK aspect.

After we got the win, we swapped out Sabene's BLM for Athoz's MNK. We actually did quite well, though this setup was just a little trickier. The role that Sabene/Athoz had, was to kill the adds that popped throughout the fight, which were actually clones of various party members. We were doing pretty well and managed to get the NM down to about 40% (I think) before things went wrong. I can't remember how it happened, but Anderoc ended up taking a really nasty hit and died and from there... well, lets just say that RNG's don't do well at tanking mobs that have a really powerful magic attack =P

Since we weren't able to get the win for Athoz and had a few other LS members that were needing this fight, we decided to put things on hold and schedule another run later on. To date we've had one other attempt, and we tried the "zerg melee method". This didn't go quite well, but i'm pretty sure that if everyone was prepped we could have gotten it. Here's to hoping that the next time we'll finally get the win @_@

And onto the end result of all this expansion stuff...

I got myself a new PLD body! Neuvo Corselette!

I chose the augments: Emnity +5 & Fast Cast +5.

I did have a little bit of difficult deciding which body I was going to go for, because I was strongly considering a body that would benefit my up and coming COR. But in the end, I decided to go with PLD just because it has always been my favorite job in the game, despite not having many opportunities to play it.

And speaking of my COR... I finally obtained Slug Shot! Can I get a Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!

In the last few parties i've had, my weaponskills have been doing some really nice dmg. The only other job i've lvled that parsed as high during ws on birds was my DRG. My WAR, SAM and MNK are all weak in comparison! @_@

I owe the fun to Xean though, because he goes out of his way to give me Hunter's Prelude >=)

Our bird parties have been really fun. Pulls come in really fast to keep up the chain, and overall progress is really fast. We've managed to get ours friends Drimergirl and Standpoint a couple of lvls here and there, so the company is also nice. Sometimes the whole "starting" process takes longer than desired, but once we get going, its smooth sailing.

Speaking of sailing...

I got my COR AF3 done! Timwakefield, Drimergirl, Xean and myself went to Arragapo Reef for the BCNM. I was a little worried that our setup might not be enough because I seem to have had a memory of the fight being difficult the last time I did it, but as usual... I get proven wrong. The fight was ridiculously easy. All I had to do was bind + gravity the BLU, while everyone else killed the other bad guy. Then when the hume was killed, everyone came after the BLU which was killed a minute later.

Now all I need to do is finish questing my COR hands (why does SE make some pieces of AF so crappy?????) so that I can store the set. And the reason why? Because I have about 1-3 pieces of open inventory on my character now.

Which brings me to another thought...

Rather than waste precious space in this blog entry though, I will just sum up my thoughts about SE and their POL Customer Service:

Insert Vulgar Language: Here.

Yep. Long story short, I ordered my security token the day it became available, which is suppose to come with a Mog Satchel >>>> + 70 Inventory Spaces for me!

However... after 2 weeks of waiting, I called up SE and after waiting for more than 30 min, I was finally able to get through to a representative who was only able to confirm that my token was "still being processed" (aka - has NOT been shipped!) and advised me to call back in a couple of days to check on the status again because he would not be able to provide any information on when it would be expected that my token would be shipped.

*Smiles*

(No sarcasm, I swear!)

So what else have I been up to recently? A little bit of meriting here and there... saving up my merits to apply to my COR (now lvl 62) which I hope to have at 75 before the end of the month.

Xean joined an HNM shell too, and while I haven't committed myself as a member because I don't feel that I would be dependable enough due to my other game events/priorities, I have been tagging along to help out when I can. So far i've been present for an Adamantoise fight which was killed way too fast for me to remember ; ;

I just went to a Fafnir window, but sadly the LS Xean is with didn't get the claim so no fun there. (I was even able to play BLM!)

I really wish that I had gotten some response on QCDN about an endgame shell willing to sell the black belt items, but after posting on a few sites (with no response -_-) we've decided that this might be the only way for him to get the belt. It'll probably take a lot longer to accomplish, but its something to do while playing the game and work towards. Plus I just really want to play with Xean's MNK finally geared up (minus the Usukane which seems to be out of reach for now).

As for other random things, ZNMs are still happening with our LS, though we haven't really been able to do the Tier 3's recently. Its a little discouraging at times, because I really don't like having to tell people "we can't do this ZNM", but with low turnouts and not enough of the right jobs, there's only so much you can do. I'm hoping that with the addition of some new members (and returning members) that the interest will pick up again. We have done so well with the ZNMs in the past, and I really like the idea of our small little social shell being able to gear up members with rare/ex pieces that most people believe are only possible by joining "endgame shells".

I've also been able to help Vepion, Darce and Xean get floor 71 in Nyzul Assault. We've started a somewhat permanent static on Mondays, and we've had a good success rate with our runs. Anderoc has volunteered to help us out as well, and so we usually just need 1-2 pickup members which haven't been too much of a hassle to find.

It's interesting how when I first started doing Nyzul, I despised the event. I didn't know much about how it was done, and found it to be very stressful. But now with the static that I do on Fridays, and this one that i've been helping with, I actually find myself enjoying the runs. I think its just a matter of getting used to the different tasks so that you actually know what you need to do, and having everyone else on the same page. And thanks to Skype, doing this event is SOOO much easier now because both static groups I run with, we use it and makes communication so much quicker. So much time is wasted when you have to type out instructions >< style="text-align: center;">