I'm not dead!

(Magisterial & Tahla)

Well lately it's been feeling like the the "FFXI Journey" is starting to come to an end. More and more people seem to be quitting, or people just don't have the interest or time to play it as often as before. I actually find myself fitting into the "not wanting to play as often" category, only because with fewer people playing, the game is less fun to play. I've always been one to say that if I wanted to play by myself in a video game, i'd much rather play a console game. Despite the game seeming to be winding down, I still plan to play though - after all, I now have a new character to merit!

Tahla has finally reached lvl 71.

(Went 1/2 on Maat - BRD)

(Skilling up dagger)

(Xean killing the BRD AF1 quest for Tahla ^^)

I've had quite a few interesting parties along the way - many have included Xean's tarutaru "Magisterial". He's been working on getting Magisterial RDM75, which aside from the rare East Ronfaure [S] party, hasn't been the easiest thing. There's all the little quests you need to do in between the lvling in order to get access to the right camps, and of course when you finally are able to go and seek or put a party together... there never seems to be the right jobs available to get something going.

But there's really no rush. Me and Xean are just playing more casually and not really setting any big goals to stress about. That always seems to be one of the things that can easily burn a person out while playing this game - setting too many goals.

I've really limited my goals in this game lately, but then again I pretty much feel "done" with Zerayla. There's some things that i'd like to accomplish on her but many of them include the kind of commitment I can't give.

I even decided to call it quits on getting the mythic weapons "Burtgang" for my PLD. This goal seemed like it would be fun to continue working on throughout the rest of my "FFXI Life" but after some really bad luck and experiences with the prerequisites, I decided it wasn't worth the frustration.

The one prerequisite which stands out the most is probably Einhejar. You need to get the Odin win. And for quite a few months, I ran with one LS hoping that in time they would grow and be able to fight Odin. But in the weeks before I quit that LS, the numbers were dwindling down and runs were being cancelled. The leader and the members that showed every run seemed like good people, but I just felt that I wasn't going to see the progress I needed in that shell.

So, I joined another LS that I had heard had a lot of success and would even give me the opportunity to obtain the Valkyrie Fork for my DRG. I had put off joining this shell for a long time because the majority of the members are apart of an HNM shell which is very much disliked on our server because of their shady way of playing and bad attitudes towards other players. My first two runs with them went really well, but from that point onward, things were terrible. First of all, there was only about 3 members that weren't apart of their HNM group so we would be waiting an hour after the supposed "start time" only to find out that they would cancel the run. And on the days when we actually DID manage to run, we were always late because the rest of the shell prioritized the HNMs who's windows were open. Eventually I couldn't stand seeing 1-2hrs of my time wasted for nothing and decided it wasn't worth the headache anymore.

In addition to the bad luck with Einhejar, there were a few other things that just seemed out of reach. So in the end I went and sold all ~2000 Alexandrite I had saved up. I sent gil to all the people that had either given me donations, or offered me a discount for Alexandrite in the past so that their generosity wasn't wasted.

And... now that I had an extra chunk of gil to sit on, I went ahead and got Tahla a Sha'ir Manteel!

A waste of gil you say? Not really, because I do intend to get a Yigit body down the road (my static for assaults is going a little bit on the slow side, but getting there) and the price for the Sha'ir Manteel hasn't changed much at all in the last couple of years so i'll be able to get that gil back!

So these days I spend the majority of my time just playing on Tahla. But in the last month and a bit I have done a few interesting things:

I was able to help Athoz get Sabene a Joyeuse. She had no clue either which was the best part. Athoz had managed to get the ToD, I just happened to be online when Charbydis spawned so off I went along with Janko to help Athoz kill the NM.

SoTW also had a sky run a while ago. We had about 4 Byakko's and 2 Seiryu's. Our turnout was really good and while we didn't really get the drops that we wanted, we still had one member (Athoz) walk away with some new kitty pants.

Also gave Standpoint a hand with his WHM AF3 quest which seems to always get easier every time I fight it. AF quests seem to be a walk in the park for our ls. I wonder if Standpoint will actually take WHM to 75 though... he never struck me as the type of player that would enjoy WHM. But then again, /sch has really changed the way WHM is played and even I actually enjoy it now.

Vepion also invited me to lend a hand with the SAM quest. Out of the many many jobs he plans to lvl, he's been considering SAM and wanted to unlock the job. So I went out on WHM to have some fun with my club!

Another event worth mentioning was our SoTW Shen run. Vepion had organized it, and we managed to walk away with about 7 wins under our belts! Yet again, another event I was able to bring my PLD to, so naturally I had a blast =)

And about the only other thing I can think of mentioning is the ENM static I do with both Xean and Carste. We do the ENM for Promyvion-Vazhl and Antlion in Sheep's clothing once a week. We now have seen both the Toreador's Ring and Hagun drop. A little extra gil is nice and overall I really enjoy these ENMs. They're not stressful, they're not too long and now that Carste is trying to get his RDM to 75, I get to bring my SAM with polearm to the Promy-Vazhl! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee Samurai!

I think i've about exhausted my brain by this point so i'll wrap up the post.

FFXI is dying.... but! I'm still around, mwahaha!