Jimminy Cricket!

So its been eons since i've made a post. I guess I had just felt that it was too much of a time sink to update this blog consistently, and with very few (or no) readers, I didn't really see the point.

But thanks to my friend Onedarkflame who recently started up his own FFXI Blog (http://www.odfsblog.blogspot.com/), I regained that little bit of enjoyment and eagerness I used to have when i'd write up a post and decided that I should give this thing a go again.

So now for the updates!

Zerayla

• Completed A Shantotto Ascension mini expansion with some LS friends (Vepion, Carste, Hesper, Timwakefield and Onedarkflame)
• Leveled Bonecraft to 60 and Goldsmithing to 28
• Completed merits on all jobs @75 including non-job specific merits
• Capped XP on all jobs
• Obtained MNK, BLM Relic 5/5 (still missing SMN, SAM and DRG)
• Obtained Ares's Flanchard
• Leveled SCH to 51, NIN to 42 (EW EW EW EW!), BLU to 37
• Obtained Hecatomb Mittens & Shura Togi (thanks to a great SoTW Byakko and Kirin run!)

Tahla

• Leveled BRD to 75
• Obtained 5/5 Minuet, 5/5 Lullaby Recast, 8/8 Wind Skill, 8/8 Singing Skill, unlocked Troubadour & Nightingale, 4/4 Spell Interuption Down, 3/4 Evasion
• Obtained Sky Access

So that's the short version. I'm sure there's a lot of other things I could add, but that works for now.

Figured i'd also share a few good stories. One in particular which has made me a little bit of a celebrity of sorts on my server.

See, it was about 3 months ago that I finally managed to convince my fiance Xean to quit FFXI. He had been loosing interest in the game for a long time and due to getting a full time job, he wasn't really finding any enjoyment playing FFXI with the little "free time" he had. So he gave me his account, and I soon found myself with access to TH4.

This then led to a "farming obsession" that pretty much consumed all my free time. And because Xean had already stopped spending gil months before he quit, he had also accumulated quite a bit of gil. And thanks to about half a dozen Royal Rambles and other gil making methods (hello toreador ring enm x2!) I was able to save up a good amount of gil. So much in fact, that after the mog bonanza, I figured I might as well purchase the 12 Imperial Wootz Ingots I would eventually need to complete my Ares's Cuirass from salvage as I finally obtained 2/3 pieces needed for it.

So off to the AH I went. I made my first bid on an Imperial Wootz Ingot quit a bit less than the last selling price, hoping the sellers had undercut. Sadly, this wasn't the case and my bid of 1,140,000 gil didn't go through. So as I went to try my second bid of 1,160,000 which was the last selling price. Unfortunately though, I didn't realize that my cursor had moved to another item and because I had been distracted by a conversation on skype at the time, I really didn't read every word of my chat log to notice that I had just bid 1,160,000 gil on a stack of IRON INGOTS.

What's worse, is that I proceeded to make this mistake 8 more times without seeing that little bit of text that told me I had purchased a stack of Iron Ingots at that price. By the time I had noticed the mistake, I was torn between wanting to bash my head against my desk to express my disbelief that I had somehow managed to make that mistake nine times, and finding a way to express verbally the many things that might help relieve the anger and other crazy emotions I was feeling at the time.

So did I get any of the gil back? I did actually. Two out of three people that I was able to reach were understanding and kind enough to make arrangements with me to trade back the gil for the ingots I had purchased. The others either wouldn't reply to my /tells, or I just could never find online. After a week of searching, I just accepted the loss and moved on. And the truth is that I didn't feel as upset as I thought I would. I ended up seeing the ~10mil loss as something that would only give me more reason to log into FFXI and have something to do which as sick as it sounds... I actually kinda enjoy. Farming. (And if you think thats sick, you should see my sphere grid in FF10!)

So these days I pretty much just login and wait around for people to ask for help. I haven't really had a lot of motivation to do much, but then again I think its because I haven't really had a lot of success with being able to get people to be available/interested in any of the things I would want to pursue. I've pretty much just decided to wait for the things I'd like to go after to be organized or brought up by others as they usually seem to have better luck than I do when recruiting the numbers to accomplish the goal.

With so many people quitting and playing less, the "fun" that once was there seems to have all but disappeared. I still like playing the game, but the game on its own can only be "so fun". I think the company of friends is what really made this game the most enjoyable to me and when you find that the only company you have is your own... well, you get my point.

I'm hoping that the new updates that have been announced will generate some interest from players that haven't been playing much, and also look forward to the many level grinding sessions i'll have to do thanks to the level cap increase. I definitely don't look forward to getting my NIN up to 49 to use as a subjob, but thankfully my sunday static has agreed to let me gimp the party and level the job during that time ^^

As for future goals, the biggest one at this point is getting my last piece in salvage to complete my Ares's Cuirass. So far my static hasn't been able to beat the boss chariot that drops the item, so its been pretty discouraging. I don't think i'd be as frustrated if we at least managed to kill the boss to have a chance at the item dropping... but so far we've wiped twice at 1%. I've just repeated to myself "Its just a game" after the failure, and it helps a little bit, lol.

So there you have it. Probably won't keep up with this blog as often as I used to, and probably won't have too many pics to post (those are quite time consuming to edit and crop) but whenever I get the urge and feel bored out of my mind, i'll probably make a post here :)