Limbus!

So Tuesday night I did my first Limbus run...

All I can say is WHY did SE not make Dynamis like this?! First of all, the event only lasts about an hour. This is really nice because an hour is nothing in comparison to 3hrs of having to stay at your computer without any breaks. And second, throughout the event you are earning "Ancient Beastcoins" which are distributed to the members at the end of the run, which go towards either upgrading your AF1 set to AF1+ 1, or for purchasing other nice gear.

So unlike Dynamis where you can go months without ever actually being lucky enough to have the AF you want drop, and then only to be outlotted by someone else... every run you actually earn something. It feels so much more rewarding doing Limbus, I only wish Dynamis could be this great.

But anyways, KeitaroPrime/KeitaroAeon created a new branch called KeitaroOmega and we went in to Tenemos on Tuesday night and kicked butt. We only had about 14 people, and I think mostly everyone got about 5 ancient beastcoins and we had a few of the AF+1 upgrading items drop. The fights were pretty easy from what I could tell, and we only had a couple of deaths but those were more or less because of being one shotted by a critical on low health.


It was really interesting getting to see all the types of mobs we had to fight. The first floor had black mandragoras, the second floor had opo-opos and I think one of the last levels had dhalmels. It was nice having variety in the kinds of mobs that we had to fight, because it meant that my job actually had something to do! Different bar spells needed to be cast, different status curing spells were needed and it kept me busy which was nice. I hate being healer and hardly having to heal because people keep their shadows up ; ;

We are suppose to have a run Saturday night, but i'm not quite sure yet if i'll commit to that only because weekends have always been my "LS help" time where I try to organize events to help on seeing as that's usually the most convenient time to get enough people together. We'll see how things go though, i'm really enjoying Limbus so if no one needs my help I might join on the Saturday run as well.

And the only other stuff to really post about, is the status of SpiftasticAdventures. For about 3 months or more now, we've been without our original leader Archmage. He's had some financial things to take care of and wasn't able to reactivate his account, so he passed on leadership to me for a bit. It was suppose to only last about a month, but unfortunately in life things don't always work out the way we want to and he hasn't been able to come back.

Unfortunately though, when it comes to Dynamis i'm really only good with the duties of the tank. I'm not really good on knowing more than the basics for other jobs, and as a result I haven't felt at all like a leader because I can't really give the walkthrough of what the group needs to do. And on top of that, every run we had less and less people starting showing. I don't mind the people that have had breaks because of RL, or just wanted to enjoy summer but I am extremely annoyed with the people who never posted or notified someone to say "hey, i'm not going to be around" or even "hey, i'm quitting". There's way too many self-centered people in this game that are inconsiderate and thats one of my biggest pet peeves.

So needless to say, eventually our numbers were so few that we had to start cancelling runs. And this continued, until we had cancelled 4 runs in a row and decided the shell was dying and we had to do something.

As of right now, we had an offer from another player named Zaus who is starting up a dynamis shell, and has about 10 people that he would like to merge with our shell. So, our group decided it would be for the best, and come next tuesday we'll see how things look because both our groups will be meeting up and being issued a new pearl.

Me personally, I think i'm about done with Dynamis for right now. I have a lot going on in real life (company I worked for is closing down our office, so i'm out of work) and the stress and organization that Dynamis requires feels to be too much for me at this point. You have to pay attention to attendance, update it and keep track of a bit all the while making sure your group is filled with good players and that everyone's moral is pretty high. And me being the type of person that wants to do a perfect job and doesn't like "any less", well right now its too much for me. I feel like i've failed SA because we've pretty much died out, and I was never an expert on everything about dynamis so I never felt like I should have been "the leader" of the shell. I had help from two other officers (Acts and Kizaryo) but unfortunately they too had to take some time off and weren't always available to help in the areas I wasn't so good at.

I'm a bit bummed that out of 9 months of being an officer for the shell, I never managed to get the gear I had made a goal (Valor) but that's how this game works sometimes. Some people get really lucky, while others don't. The one good thing though is that out of all the Dynamis shells i've heard about, I think ours had a really great group of people. We were a lot more laid back than others, and very understanding to the needs of our members when it came to RL. And some of our members did manage to get 100c, as well as the AF they had been after so we did have our success. Its just a shame we didn't get to see it through to the end.

As for the new LS, i'll end up being an officer but because I have no idea what kind of work i'll end up getting (if I can find any) I won't know what my work schedule will be, and if i'll still be able to do dynamis. So for now i'll help get the group started (I just hope the new leader Zaus is organized like Archmage and our other officers were) and help out where I can until I no longer can't. But i'm going to step back quite a bit from the "leadership" role, for me at least its something that I need to take a break from so that I can worry about the other things I have going on in my life.

I...Hate...Birds...

If there is a type of monster in FFXI that I despise, its the big birds. Why? Because I now have a history of camping two of the big birds - Roc & Kreutzet - for friends, and after HOURS of camping these stupid NMs... myself and my friends have not seen the drop.

Back in July, I helped my friend Carste camp Kreutzet to get his dagger for his THF. Unfortunately, out of 5 or 6 claims, we did not see the dagger. Eventually we had to take a break from camping him, because of people's schedules.

Then all of this week, i've been helping a friend Falk camp Roc, so he could get the Dyrad Staff for his WHM. Again, after 4 claims we haven't seen the drop. I'm really starting to believe that somehow, i've inherited Xean's luck because I have a few other NMs i've camped and haven't seen the drop (Ose -_-).

All I have to say, is when these stupid birds drop their items, I am SO taking a break from camping NMs. I myself wanted to get a Dryad Staff, and an assault Jerkin but seriously after waiting around for 3 hrs of doing nothing, and sometimes having to stare at your screen because you have counter campers... I want to farm like crazy and make myself sick of farming before I camp something again.


I guess as frustrating as camping these NMs are, its can still be fun once we actually get to fight. I've been able to tank Roc all 4 times, and I really get a kick out of it because this was the main reason I took PLD. I wanted to be the tank everyone would ask for in LS, and i'm finally able to have that opportunity.

So aside from trying to get Roc all weekend, I managed to accomplish a bit. On Friday night, KeitaroAeon did gods. We fought Seiryu, Genbu and Byakko. I even managed to pick myself up the A. Abjuration: Legs which I immediately uncursed and made into Zenith Slacks (yay, 50 more MP for only 890k! I'm such a moron!!!). I was thankful that a second A. Legs dropped on our second Seiyru fight because originally I didn't have the highest bid, Ballmug did. But he had told me in /tell that he would pass the abjuration to me if it dropped, because he was only going to use it for his BRD. I was really appreciative, its not every day that you find people that pass up stuff they want. But I guess he was repaid the gesture, because he also got his that night.


And on Saturday morning we fought Kirin. I think the fight took us about an hour and 15 minutes, but we were a little smaller on numbers from our last Kirin fights. Still, we won and I think the only deaths this time were from Astral Flow. We might of had one or two random DD deaths but other than that, things were smoother this time. I think we even had some of our PLDs kiting with /nin which I didn't believe would work very well. Guess I myself need to practice and try it out sometime.... that is, after I get the gear. I'm still a pretty gimped PLD when it comes to Sky events, hence the reason I'm WHM for all events right now.

Later on in the day, Alianne wanted to burn some of his beastmen seals. He has about 7 stacks so Timwakefield, Alianne and myself decided to try Up In Arms. We went WHM, PLD, MNK. Unfortunately though, the damage output/damage taken wasn't in our favor and we ended up wiping at about 15%. I heard that BLM is really useful, so as soon as I can snag Carste we'll probably try it again.

So with 60 seals down the drain, we decided to try Petrifying Pair for only 30 seals. The first run we did, was easy however our second attempt I did the stupid mistake of not watching my shadows, and right as I casted Bind which resisted, Gravity wore (I was the kiting RDM) so I was pretty much dead soon after.... and my lizard then went and tore Alianne and Tim to pieces. I felt bad, but we decided to do another 3 runs which went very smooth. Its annoying how if you make one mistake, sometimes it can cost you the entire run. And in the end, we each only had about 5k in drops. Not one good thing dropped from the BCNM. Ugh. -_-



What else? Oh, I was set on killing "Goliath Beetle" to get his rare/ex shield, seeing as I had never seen him. So one night I went out to West Ronfaure and started killing beetles.... which apparently were his placeholders. Only apparently they weren't, because he didn't spawn for over an hour. BUT! I did manage to finally see Jaggedy Eared Jack which I had never seen in the 2 years i've played this game, so I went and took him down with my staff! Guess he didn't like that too much, because he didn't give me the drop ; ;


I also took some time out to help Shaolina get a PLD testimony. That was kinda fun, had a few LS members come out to give a hand, and managed to get a few levels on my club. Its now sitting at about 187 so not too far off from being able to quest Hexa Strike. And luckily the test dropped within about 2hrs this time, unlike every other time that i've helped farm the testimony and it took 4hrs +


Last thing to note I guess, only because I have a pic to show for it is that me and Xean took out Keeper of Halidom. I've killed this guy at least 10 times and never gotten the drop. Its still fun though, he's pretty easy now that i'm 75 but I remember being a lower lvl PLD and him giving me and Xean a bit of a tough time.


I only managed to get 2 tree cuttings out of 40 minutes of farming, which I suppose is evidence that my luck and Xean's is very veeeeery bad. I hope I can get motivated to farm some more cuttings, I want to plant again and try making more gil by gardening Ores, but so far i've only gotten 1-2 ores per harvest. >_<

Making some changes to my merits.

After doing a little bit of reading on RDM, i've reconsidered some of the merits i've applied. I guess when I first starting meriting as RDM, I didn't quite know the roles I would have in endgame and what spells I would find myself using more when soloing and partying, so that resulted in making a few bad choices. Currently my merits for my spells are:

Bio III: 2 merits
Dia III: 2 merits
Paralyze II: 1 merit
Phalanx II: 1 merit
Slow II: 0 merits
Blind II: 0 merits

I've decided that as great as Paralyze II is, its not a guaranteed effect all the time when it does land. I understand that the more MND you have, the more often you'll find the mob is paralyzed but even still, it is not a predictable effect. And here you have Slow II, which is somewhat the same as Paralyze in the sense that its preventing the mob from attacking as often. The difference is that Slow has a guaranteed effect (as long as it lands). So I decided that I would remove my merit point from Paralyze II, and put it into Slow II. However, i've heard that only one merit point doesn't really get noticed and most people will put a minimum of 2 merit points into the spell. So, I had to remove another merit point from another spell.

Seeing as I definitely use Bio III and Dia III, I decided against removing a point from either of those two spells, leaving me with Phalanx II. The majority of the time I am on RDM, i'm almost always with a NIN tank and seeing as they should be having shadows up throughout the majority of the fight, there's very little reason to need to cast Phalanx II. And, for sky events i'm always asked to come as WHM so again I wouldn't really need to have the spell available, so I guess i'll be removing my merit from Phalanx II as well, to add to Slow II.

I really wish SE would allow us to remove limit points and apply them elsewhere. It doesn't make sense to earn a merit point, apply it and then should you decide you want to move it somewhere else, you're forced to re-earn the limit point altogether. Considering each limit point is 10k experience points, and most "merit points" are a total of 3-5 limit points that can be pretty harsh if you make a hasty decision on where to apply your points. But then again SE knows exactly how to keep their players around -_-

So now that I have my merit points figured out, its just a matter of getting into good parties and getting them. Unfortunately though, the parties i've had recently lacked a BRD and we always had a DD pull which didn't really let us get beyond chain#7. So meriting has been slower than I wanted, but what can you do? On a good note though, I did max my MP merits and now have a total of 80MP added on. I even break 1k on my WHM MP without food now, which is pretty neat. I don't feel so "elvaan" anymore when I look at my MP.

I also decided to put some merits into my Ice Magic Accuracy (2) and Wind Magic Accuracy (1). Last night a LS member of ours, Elden had asked me and Xean to party with him to help him hit lvl 75 so we went to mamool and picked us up some xp. It was kind of funny though, because Elden was PUP so there were a few jokes here and there about PUP dmg. I didn't have the parser on, but Xean said that PUP dmg was a lot less than he had expected. Guess the job is really only good for soloing? ^^; Thats ok though, it was a decent party and its always nice to be able to xp with LS members and see them hit 75 which Elden did last night.

Other than that I helped Pasquale with his BLM AF. We had to go to Castle Zvahl Bailey's and kill some demons for a wine cellar key. We spent maybe 40 minutes farming this before it dropped, and then spent another half hour trying to figure out where the Wine Cellar door was. It was kinda funny, we were running around and eventually discovered that we were in the wrong area. Gotta love when you're looking for something, but you're in the wrong area! Either way, we managed to find the right spot and Pasquale got his BLM AF.

I also decided to spend a little gil and craft a bit more. Most of the time I don't craft unless I can farm the ingredients, but I was too lazy to go farm Sheep Skin to turn into Sheep Leather, which I needed to craft Parchment... so instead, I bought it from the AH! I felt like such a spender ; ;

But I managed to take Leathercraft from 27-29. I think i'm only a few points off from lvl 30, so i'll probably just move onto the next recipe because i'm too lazy to go farm more ingredients. Only problem is that the next recipe requires Ram Skin, which means farming 2 Rams that pop every 15 minutes... which in short, means i'm going to be spending a LOT of time in La Theine.

Oh and good news is Timwakefield is finally back from his break, and we're planning on doing some assault tonight. He wants to try out the assault where you fight a wall, but apparently you need more than 3 people (at least we think) so we'll probably get a few more LS members to come out and get themselves some points too. Looking forward to some more assault fun! ^^

Owned Kirin!

I think I really need to figure out when the majority of FFXI North American players tend to start forming parties, because everytime me and Xean seek on our WAR and THF we always have such a hard time getting an invite. In fact, on 2 nights that we spent seeking there were only a handful of DD and absolutely no healer, refresher or tank which pretty much guaranteed we couldn't get a party. Finally though we managed to get on on the third night we decided to seek and it was a pretty decent party. The only downside is that we were fighting crawlers in Aydeewa and there didn't seem to be enough for the speed we were going at. We had a BRD, WHM, NIN, MNK, WAR and THF and we were easily getting chain #6.

The party didn't last as long as I would of liked, but that always seems to be our luck. The party had to disband with me and Xean less than 5k tnl because our healer and brd had to leave and there weren't any replacements available at the time. Oh well, guess we'll try again sometime this week and eventually get lvl 62. Hopefully, lol. On another note, I finally got a nice rampage! I'm still trying to experiment with gear to figure out how to get the most out of my tp gear and ws gear, but I haven't exactly had too many parties to test this with.


As for the fun stuff, my sky ls fought Kirin this weekend and we won our 2 fights. The first fight was a learning experience for some, I know there were a few things I had to get use to (like running around being ready to erase the kiting PLD asap) Our first fight took over an hour, but then again I think it took at least 10 minutes for Kirin to pop his first mini-god which apparently isn't normal from what others said. We took down the mini-gods no problem, but man do I hate Byakko and his stupid paralyga move. I've actually found out that i'm much faster typing /ma "paralyna" nameofperson to cure the status effect.

I think the best part of both fights was when Kirin did his 2hr. All of a sudden, there were quite a few dead bodies lying around so it was up to us WHMs to raise those who didn't have RR (surprisingly most people did) and getting the alliance back up which kept me busy for a while. I think I actually enjoy being WHM for Kirin more than I probably would enjoy being PLD, kiting isn't my thing ; ;.

As for the drops, we didn't get Kirin's Osode which I believe is what people refer to as the "gold" but we did get a couple of abjurations. I don't recall which off hand, they were mostly for WAR I think. But we did snag 2 shinning clothes which I believe are going to upcoming WHMs in our shell to craft their nobles. Its good to see that the LS looks first at gearing up the members to make sure that they can perform better for events.

After the Kirin fight, I created a new tarutaru mule named Enza who I plan to lvl with Sabene's mule Isabo when we're not doing anything else. At first I wanted to call my mule "Ten" or "Sin" but all variations of those names had been taken so I asked Xean to help me makeup one, and after 1 or 2 names that I didn't like, he came up with "Enza" and that was the winner!

I plan on lvling Enza as MNK for now, but so far I haven't had a chance to because everytime me and Sabene would get ready to go lvl, someone in the LS would need some help so we'd just put our lvling away for the time being. Its not like we won't find time to lvl our mules, where as people can't always get help when they need it so it was more important for us to help out our friends. Plus, we always have a blast.


I also ended up helping Sabene farm her yagudo necklaces for her norg fame. We must of turned in at least 150 necklaces so hopefully her fame is good now as she had already done a few other things for her norg fame. And I thought i'd take a pic of her new and improved hair for her character! I found a couple of .dats that make the hair for both the black and blonde version of her character much longer which I like.


As for Sunday, I did a little bit of meriting and managed to add another 10 MP to my lolelvaan MP pool. Now I just need 5 more merits and i'll be finished with it. My gawd its taking forever though, and to think that eventually i'm going to want to upgrade my INT stats which I think the last 3 upgrades take 9 merit pts each! X_X

By the time my merit pt was over, we had enough people in LS to come out and finish up our subligar/fomor codex farming session we had started last weekend. It was actually quite a success, because we got everyone their subligars and even got 3 codexes to drop. Now I just need to try and get a group available to do the NM and hope that i'm lucky enough to get the drop because its not guaranteed ; ;


Yep, was a lot of fun and glad that everyone got what they needed.

CoP - Will I ever see the end?

I'm really starting to doubt that i'm ever going to finish the Chains of Promathia missions and finally obtain my Tamas Ring. About 2 months ago, our CoP static leader Sirivalin ended up having to leave the game for RL reasons, and hasn't been able to reactivate his account since. He had told our group to proceed with the missions, and most of us had promised that if he does come back we'd help him finish the last of the missions, because we were all close to the end -- Mission 8.0.

While we were able to get a friend (Anderoc) to volunteer and help us finish the missions, we were never able to actually get together to continue because someone usually had something happening in RL on our saturdays, which was our static day. So we waited a month, and finally when we were going to be able to continue a few more things happened and it was pretty much assumed that one of our members wouldn't be joining us for the next missions. So now we needed to replace yet another... but coincidentally, one of our new LS members was also on the same mission and asked to join. We were all set. Or so I thought...

Last Saturday, we were finally going to be able to work on 1-2 missions... but after confirming with our new 6th member, I found out that he was going to be leading his new sky LS and doing events. He was going to be doing this at the time that had previously been discussed and confirmed for our "CoP Static time". I was really disappointed, not because we were going to have to find a 6th yet again but because I didn't really think he really cared all that much that the entire week I had waited, under the impression he was going to help us... I could have been searching for someone to fill in. I didn't get the final confirmation that he wasn't going to commit until that Saturday morning, and it fell on me to disappoint the rest of the members who had been eager to continue and expected us to complete a few missions that Saturday. I hated having to tell the others "We're stuck again, we don't have a 6th. We can't proceed, run is cancelled". And I didn't really get the impression that our "so called committed 6th" really cared about our situation. But I guess some people in this game only look out for themselves and can't be bothered with the problems of others.

Anyways, i'm not going to give up because our static has 2 good friends and I want to see them also get their CoP rings. I'm just at a loss as to how I can get a 6th to help out, because I don't personally know anyone that is on CoP 8.0. I just hope something comes up, it would be nice to finally have these missions complete.

So what else... Well our LS did another Sabotender Bailarina run for one of our MNKs. We gathered quite a few of our members, brought out our NPCs and started killing placeholders. After about 40 minutes, the NM finally spawned and we took him down... but he sure annihilated our NPCs with his 100 needles. It was still fun, and we all got together to take a nice group screenshot. I really like these, reminds me of what our LS is capable of because of our desire to help one another.


After that, we headed out to help Shaolina kill her cactuar for her mission 6.1 (San d'Oria). This guy was MUCH easier than Sabotender Bailarina and took barely a minute for us to kill.


Hmm, there are a few sky updates too. KeitaroAeon took down Genbu with ease, and I managed to get the Aquarian Abjuration: Head (for Zenith Crown) for only 2 pts! No one else needed or wanted them I guess lol. We also got the A. Hands which made one of our BLM very happy. I'll probably be saving up points for these soon, but for the moment I think i'm going to try and get PLD or WHM gear seeing as I use WHM mostly in Sky, and i'm sure the other BLMs would benefit more from the A. Hands right now.

We also did a Shen run on Saturday morning and I got myself a reverand mail. We ended up doing about 8 runs, 2 of which were for non-ls members. One random person had showed up and asked if we'd help him kill it, and we figured why not. All runs were successful with only a few deaths. I hope that we'll get to do more NMs like this, I have a lot of pop items in storage and its a nice change from sky farming.




And on Sunday, I spent the day helping out with CoP stuff. First I helped some LS members get CoP 2.3 done, the one with the minotaur fight. We ended up having almost a full alliance for this because a lot of people wanted to help out. After we finished up with the fight, we headed up to the library and because we were planning on doing some subligar farming after, we thought we'd kill the fomors in the library. Bad idea ; ;


Some of us didn't realize that the more fomor hate you had, the bigger aggro range the fomor had. We had pulled one party of 2 fomor to the doors, and started killing them but as soon as our sneaks wore, a few of us with high fomor hate ended up drawing in the other parties of fomors in the library and we were annihilated. This was definitely a massacre to remember... we had such a hard time trying to raise everyone because none of us were really in a safe spot to raise, and usually our "guesses" with the aggro range weren't so good. I believe Pasquale died the most, that poor Taru has the biggest death rate i've ever seen, it almost rivals Xean's drop rate lol. But in the end, our BLM and WHMs were able to save us all and about an hour later we had completed the mission and headed on to subligar farming!


By the end of the run, we had managed to get quite a few subligars - SAM, PLD, PLD, SMN/WHM, NIN, NIN, THF. We weren't able to get everyone the subligar they were after, but everyone agreed to continue and finish the farming next sunday. So i'll be looking forward to that next week, and this time we'll have more time to farm because we will be starting the farming right away.



Oh and before I forget, figured i'd share the new look for my RDM. I had seen this outfit on a mithra .dat and wanted it for elvaan, so I made a request on ffxidats.com and ended up getting someone willing to help me out. I actually did make a change myself (Xean's been teaching me the few things he knows about .dat editing) and made most of the body black by getting rid of the majority of the red stripes, but I don't have a pic of myself in the new version right now.

The only other thing worth mentioning... is that invites on my WAR and Xean's THF are well.. non-existent. Two nights this week, we've had our seeks up for hours and had nothing. I've even kept an eye out for the people seeking in our lvl range, so I could make a party but all there have been are DDs. No tanks, no healers and no refreshers. I hope we can get past these next few lvls because I really would like to be able to have another option for the jobs I merit with. Plus it would be nice to have Xean have his THF at 75 so he can do some farming with TH3 (even though i'm sure that doesn't really affect his drop rate lol) Hopefully we'll have a chance later this week to seek and get a lvl at least. Its been so slow lately.


And last but not least, just a couple of cute pics of me and Xean that I had taken and liked. He likes to make fun of me because i'm obsessed with taking pics, but I don't mind. I like being able to have pictures to look back on and help remember things that happened in the game that I might of enjoyed =)

Things have been quiet.

Lately things in FFXI have been kind of quiet. There hasn't been a lot of requests in my ls for help, at least when i'm online or on our scheduling forum. I kinda miss the overwhelming list of "things to do" in the week, but at the same time i've been enjoying having evenings where I can login and just craft. I really want to get all my crafts to lvl 60, but because I've decided to try and farm most ingredients its definitely taking me a long time. Thankfully Xean's been logging in when he gets home from school and bringing out his THF to help me though, so that's sped things up.

Since my last update, I haven't really done a whole lot. On Tuesday, SpiftasticAdventures, the Dynamis LS i'm helping run (well at the moment I've been put in charge of leadership while Archmage is away) was suppose to do Windurst. Unfortunately though, we only had 2 BLM show up, and we only had 5-7 melee DDs. I guess because of the summer, a lot of people are out enjoying themselves and going on vacations and what not, instead of staying locked in the house on their PS2 or PC... so for the last few runs we've been short on members. So on Tuesday, rather than use the hourglass we were going to use, the LS decided to save it for the next run and cancel this week's Windurst run. I felt kinda bad because we had one or two new members who had just joined, and that night was suppose to be their first run. I hope our cancellation didn't give them a bad impression, because this has been our first ever since we started way back in November 2006. I guess people are just wanting to enjoy the summer rather than play video games and honestly that's fine by me. Our LS has always been lenient with people taking time off to enjoy life... we don't want our Dynamis runs to seem like work, because eventually when you start logging in to FFXI because you "have" to, the fun disappears. Progressing is important, but being able to have fun and enjoy yourself is more important I think.

Oh, I also tried doing the assault for Mamool training grounds called "Imperial Agent Rescue". The guide on this said that a PLD or NIN would need to tank a mamool, and position themselves so that the mamool is facing a door to a cell which might hide the NPC you're trying to rescue. As easy as this sounds, it wasn't for us. The information says that you need to get either a BST or WHM type mamool with a weapon, and have them use their TP move to throw it at the door. Otherwise, 3-5 "Firespits" will apparently knock down the door.

Well the first time we went, I had pulled a NIN. Lol, stupid mistake. I'm sure we had 5+ firespits go off, but after 30 minutes we were sent back and failed the mission. The second time around, I grabbed a WHM type mamool with a staff, and eventually we noticed that at some point his weapon had disappeared. I think this might have been due to one of us using our weaponskill on him, i'm not really sure. But either way, the firespit move again went off numerous times and never seemed to get the door open. I don't know if it was the positioning that was wrong (I did move a lot of times to try different angles) but after that second failure, we just called it a night.

I think our new plan is going to be to rank up first, and then try the second mission for that area. I'd really like to get those Yigit Gages ; ;.

And last night was a looong night up in sky. At first things were going really great. A LS had pulled Despot but because they didn't have enough people, they ended up wiping and our LS ended up getting claim and killing him. After the kill, we went over to the wiped party and offered to give them R3 but I guess a few more of their members showed up and they thanked us for the offer, and took their raises from their team.

I spent most of the rest of the night farming Diorite, which didn't drop until way late into the night, at about 11:30pm. In between that, we had killed Mother Globe, obtained a water item to pop Olla and also killed Faust. I think my sky LS has been doing a lot better with its farming sessions, at least by reading the posts on the forum. I think its because they've recently added a few more members and so far the members seem to be dedicated and friendly which is a good combo to have. Though the session definitely bored me by the end, it was still pretty satisfying to feel like we'd accomplished quite a bit. Looks like we're going to have a few gods to fight this Friday ^^

But aside from that, not much to really post about. As I said things have been quiet. Lots of people are taking breaks or lvling. Feels kinda relaxing right now, but i'm sure things will pick up again soon. Then its back to the hectic scheduling to make sure I can help with everything that needs to be done. @_@

Ugh Meriting.

Lately that's pretty much all i've been up to. I've been wanting to finish off my MP merits so that I can finally work on my enfeebling skill and magic accuracy, but this is taking much longer than I thought. I'm now 5/8 MP merits, and each time I want to make an upgrade (for 10 mp lol) I have to accumulate 5 merit points.

I've been somewhat lucky lately, because on Friday night me and Xean had a merit pt with our friend Anderoc, Xean's brother and 2 other JP players. We were probably getting just over 10k/hr, but because we were fighting trolls and Anderoc was on his PLD to get a buffer, we weren't able to go beyond chain#6 or 7. But at the end of the party, I was able to get my 5th merit pt and was able to add another 10 mp to my lolelvaan mp pool. Then on Sunday morning, I had managed to get into a really great cannon merit pt. We had myself (RDM), BRD, COR, NIN, MNK, WAR and we hit chain#113. We could of continued chain, but unfortunately our MNK kept d/cing and eventually this caught up. I managed to get 2-3 merits I believe, and for only about an hour and a half of xping which I didn't think was too bad at all.

I also managed to get my WAR to 61 with Xean's THF. Its actually kinda funny, because when we were invited to the party there was a player from QCDN who ended up disbanding without saying a word. I knew he had disbanded simply because of me and Xean, because you know... we're evil and we might tell our party member to ninja lot the crystals or something. Actually, I find it more funny that "condoning ninja lotting" somehow relates to our performance in an xp party. I already explained the whole thing a few posts below, but sadly most of the people at QCDN find satisfaction in hating people and being one sided. It wouldn't matter what would have been said, the outcome would of been the same with everyone saying it was all "bs" just so they continue hating. I mean even now there are still posts happening in that flame where people continue to say no apologies were made, that no attempt to make amends were made... lol, people are truly blind. If I cared what they thought, i'd quote all the times apologies were made and the explanations of how attempts were made to fix things, but i'm not wasting my time on ignorant people like that. But yeah, got my WAR to 61 and now only 2 more levels until I get to take my Francisca out of storage!

Our LS also got together to help out our member Samsy take down the NM for his Dune Boots. At first we only had 4 people available to help, but soon more were able to come out. We started killing the placeholder cactuars for about 30 minutes, and finally the NM popped. We had 9 people in party, most with their NPCs to help take the damage from the NM because he spams 1000 needles. This move actually ended up getting really annoying at the end, but luckily no one died. Well our NPCs all did, but none of our members. And as soon as the boots dropped, we decided to reform one of our parties in the alliance to go help Shaolina with her 6.1 mission, but there was some confusion and Samsy's party disbanded. We were all freaking because his Dune Boots hadn't yet dropped but we managed to get him into party quick enough and he lotted them.

Shaolina's NM for her mission was much easier, and we took this down in a matter of seconds. It was still fun though, and I even got battle recorded though I probably won't upload it because the lag was so bad I wasn't able to rotate the camera very well and i'm afraid it will be very choppy.

After that, we headed up to Castle Oztroja to kill Yagudo Prelates for the BLM Testimony that Nanekyune needed. On the way up, we killed a few leeches for the WAR AF item, though I forget who that went to. And when we were on the top floor, it only took us 3 prelates before the test dropped.

At that point, everyone headed off to do their own thing and I logged out to go watch a movie at the theatre with my brothers.

When I got home, I decided I'd try to lvl up my leathercraft which was sitting at 18. I headed out to buburimu peninsula to kill dhalmels for their hides, which I would turn into dhalmel leather. Eventually Xean joined me and helped. We farmed for a good hour and I managed to hit lvl 21 which had been my goal and the cap for the recipe. But you wouldn't believe how many dhalmel saliva dropped that night... for every kill we had, there was almost always a drop @_@

Talk about luck.

Monday night, me and Xean waited around to see if our static members would login so we could spend a few hrs lvling. As mentioned, I was going to be taking WAR and Xean would be taking THF. Our static was going to consist of all LS members, but... like with every static, something always happens and in the end it falls apart.

The first bad news we had about our static, was that our BRD Remus had recently gotten a job offer, and come August he would start. We were all happy for him, because it sounds like its going to be a good paying job but, the hours wouldn't allow him to remain in our static. :(

Then the next thing, was that one of the members in our static left our LS due to the events mentioned 2 posts prior. He was our healer. This would leave our static without 2 of the most important jobs: Refresher & Healer. So the plan was going to be lvl together with us 5, because Remus still had until August but unfortunately only one other party member was online on Monday so we had to cancel. I'm trying to see if we'll still be able to party on Thursday, our other scheduled static night but things aren't looking too great. Oh well, if we don't end up lvling i'm probably going to finish up getting Audri's avatars because last Sunday when I did my avatar run, he wasn't able to stick around for the last 3 due to work.

So instead, the plan was to continue with our assault static that includes me (i'm usually just the replacement), Timwakefield and Soulstar. For the last 2 months they have been doing Golden Salvage to get both Tim and Xean some body piece for their MNKs. Every once in a while i'd fill in, or log into Xean if he wasn't home from school to help them get their points and finally as of last night, we finally finished everything up. Next we'll hopefully be able to do Imperial Agent Rescue so that I can obtain these for my RDM:

Then last night, I logged in and the plan was to help Xean's brother Zhoutai with his BLU AF1, but unfortunately the only high lvl people available were already busy. So I sat in my moghouse for a bit, and ended up watching "300" on tv links until more people popped on.

Eventually Standpoint logged in and asked for some help on his WS NM for Impulse Drive. At the time, there didn't seem to be too many people that had logged on in the last while to ask to come along and help but after mentioning it in LS, we ended up having a full party. We headed out to Sea Serpent Grotto and went beyond the door that requires the Sahagin Key. When we got to the location, we buffed up and cleared the area and then Stand pulled the NM to us. The fight lasted maybe 5-8 minutes, but it was fun. We had myself (PLD), Standpoint (DRG), Soulstar (SMN), Terminataru (RDM), Littledipper (RDM) and Onedarkflame (WHM) and we did really well. And its a good thing I picked Elvaan, because right at the end of the fight right before the last hit was made, that stupid pugil did some attack that brought me down to about 200hp, when I had been sitting at over 1k. -_-

After that we were going to head out and help Zhoutai with his AF, but he had managed to get into a party so everyone just went off and did their own thing. I believe later on Zhoutai managed to get his AF1, because by the time he had finished his party more LS members had logged in and were available.

I on the other hand, had Dynamis. For the past 3 runs, i've pretty much been in charge because Archmage hasn't been able to reactivate his account. Before he had left, he'd asked me to take care of the coins and LS bank which i've been doing. The only thing that I have been having to step up and do in addition to this, is organizing the parties. Usually in the past, Kizaryo, Acts and Archmage took care of this because they were more familiar with it but now i've been taking on more responsibility in this. Though I have a general idea of what works, what jobs should be brought along... I don't feel entirely confident all the time. But luckily Kiz and Acts are still there, so we usually talk together and get things figured out.

So yeah, last night we did Dynamis-Jeuno. At first, things were going really slow. We were very low on members (lately people are taking vacation for the summer, so our numbers these last few runs have been much less than what we're use to) but we managed to keep going. It wasn't until near the end that things started to get a bit messy. I really don't know what the problem was, whether the pulls were too much or if those designated to sleep the mobs weren't keeping on top of things but we ended up having a few wipes which really made us lose time. There just seemed to be more mobs going crazy. We did recover pretty quickly, but we had lost so much time that right as we were ready to pull the boss for the win, we had 3 minutes remaining and we didn't manage to get it. ; ;

But the night wasn't a complete loss, I think we had 5 AF lot that night, 2 of which were for our MNKs who were extremely happy because they had been waiting months to see this AF drop. I guess because our LS only runs once a week, when AF drops for one of our members its always a "big deal" because we don't see it as often as other linkshells. Our progression is much slower, so when we do accomplish something its always reason to be estatic.

I was so tired after that run though, and headed off to bed right away. As for tonight, I get to go up in Sky again with KeitaroAeon. I've decided to donate a diorite I once had drop one time when me and some ls members were killing things after having gotten a group of our members sky access. I feel confident that the people in this LS are good people, and during our last god run I didn't see any hint of greed. I'm sure people are eager to get their gear, but the attitudes were very encouraging and they were really happy for those that did get winning bids on the gear that dropped, so I think this will go to good use. I'm still surprised at how the atmosphere reminds me of TBH.. I feel like i'm at home :)

Oh, and the reason for the topic of this post is that right before Dynamis, Josudes asked if I could give him a hand with Dune Widow so that he could get the Spider Torque for his RDM. I had about 30 minutes before I had to get ready, and didn't think we'd manage to get the NM to pop because its a lottery spawn but I headed out anyways. After about 5 minutes and a few spider kills, he told me to head south because there was a spider there. But as I headed south, I saw another spider to my right and after targeting it and reading "Dune Widow" I provoked right away. Me and Jos killed it in about 2 minutes, and sure enough the Spider Torque drops. I was pretty surprised, because i've heard some horror stories about this NM and it having a very low drop rate. And here we had just gone 1/1, at least for me. It was awesome, saved him a good 200k with about 10 minutes of work ^^

FFXIDats.com is my new friend.

Before I get into the updates, figured i'd post some really fun pics of some new .dats i've changed around. Lately i've been having more time to go to ffxidats.com and have found a few that I like. I haven't been able to get a lot for my character because many of the artists there have a preference for Mithra and Hume, but i've managed to find a few that I really like.

Here's my new chocobo look. Xean originally found this one and showed it to me when he was spending his break with me. I really liked the armor and loaded it as soon as I could.


And then for fun, I was looking for a few mob .dats and saw one that said "Fenrir Crab". I had a look and figured i'd try it and this was what Mr. Crab looks like now. Unfortunately though, the pic below was enhanced a bit so you could see the colors. In game, its harder to see the pattern and it looks like a dull purple, so i'll probably be changing it to something a little brighter.


And here's my new design for Zerayla. I have always had a thing for green eyes, and when Xean started playing around with .dat editing I asked if he thought he could make my character's eyes green. He gave it a try and it turned out great. You can't see them all to well in this pic, but its a nice little detail that i'm happy with. I wish I knew more about .dat editing, there would be so much I would love to create. Maybe i'll try it out when I have more time and patience, lol.

So for updates. Lets see... Me and Xean got our WAR and THF to 60. We wanted to catch up to our static because they are all 60 or 61. We managed to get a decent party, and the galka RDM was very good at MP management so there was almost never any resting time. The only downside is there was no astral candescence so we didn't manage to pull in as much xp as we had hoped. Either way, we got our lvl. But now due to well...the event in my post before this, we've lost a static member and another one has recently obtained a job and will be starting in August. So our static consists of 5 members, and I think once August comes around we'll have to go our own seperate ways. I was really looking forward to being able to lvl with friends too ; ;


Throughout this week and weekend, me and Xean and other ls members have tried to get me an assault jerkin. I never really cared for this item, but seeing as I find myself on RDM so much more often, I figured it would be nice to have when i'm not fighting IT mobs. I plan on using it for farming weak mobs, and just using it as part of my melee setup. Well though we haven't had so much bad luck getting Ose, he's usually spawned within 1-2hrs for us anytime we've camped it... we have yet to see him drop the assault jerkin. We're now sitting at 0/6 as of last night, and yes everytime Xean's been in my pt, well actually no... my first time he wasn't, but still I'm just going to say his luck was to blame. I think somehow i've caught his bad luck >_<


Saturday I spent the day helping out LS members with their CoP. Unfortunately they don't have a full static, so most of the time when they do their missions they have to shout for a 6th. Well I ended up coming out to help them on my WAR which was pretty fun. We did some farming in Sacarium to get a coral key, that took a good hour to get. Then we did some wandering around for them to get their cutscenes and we fought some Ramuh look-alike NM called Keremet. Then we ended up moving from room to room to get a ghost called Old Professor Miraselle to pop. Luckily it only took us about 3 tries to find him, where as when I had done this mission with my static it took us 3hrs if not more. The fight took a while but we got through it and now Spalko, Soulstar, Clarisse and their other static members can move onto Vazhl.



And Sunday was pretty packed with events. I woke up early to do an avatar run for a few members. Not many people were able to show up for this run, at first it was just myself, Standpoint and Audri. We managed to do Ifrit, Leviathan and Shiva before Audri had to leave for work.



These fights went pretty smoothly. Then myself and Standpoint duo'ed Ramuh.


After a little break for lunch, Sabene had finished dynamis and asked to join up with us. So we went ahead and did Titan and Garuda. I reaaaaaally liked all the buffs I was getting, those avatars had NOTHING on me!

Unfortunately though, Titan apparently hacks because he one shotted Sabene. ; ;


After we had finished with the avatars, we headed out to camp mysticmaker to get Standpoint his Moldavite Earring. Our first two spawns we were beat by some other campers, but that was ok because the ones who did get claim were pretty nice and wished us luck for the claim too.

In between Mystic, we would camp Ose like mentioned above. It was finally on the 3rd pop for Mysticmaker that we got claim thanks to Xean. For once the NM spawned right beside him and he got it right away, and then our group went all out and just obliverated the gob, I swear he didn't know what hit him. And we got the drop!

Throughout we had a few other LS members join us for a bit, and we'd just kill random things to wait for the NMs to pop.


We had planned on camping him again because originally we were going to get a moldavite earring for both Standpoint and Pasquale, but Pas had to logout for the night. Hopefully we can get his in the next couple of days, I know he's planning on taking his BLM a bit further now and it would be nice to have the earring in his gear setup.

After that, we headed back to Ose and when Josudes showed up we decided to add his NM to the list of what were going to kill that night. He wanted a goblin that drops some dagger for THF, so after we had killed Ose we started killing the placeholder goblins for his NM. After about 30 minutes his NM popped and because he was so excited he pulled right away. We would of been fine but an elemental had spawned and I had taken my chances when casting magic and well... I aggroed the elemental. ; ;

I wasn't able to keep Xean alive because I was also trying to sleep another gob BST that had linked and after Xean and Josudes died I tried to high-tail it out. Sadly, those stupid puddles that are hard to see prevented me and I couldn't dodge a torama and I ended up eating dirt too. I HPed and brought out my WHM instead and after raising everyone and getting rested up, we took down Soulstealer Skullnix... but again no drop! >_<


For the rest of the night, we tried to wait on Ose to pop but I guess the kitty didn't like that we'd killed him so much, because after 3hrs we didn't see him and I eventually had to logout because of work the next morning. Oh well, we'll get those NMs sometime.

aaaaaaaaaand, one really awesome thing to note this week is that i've joined another sky LS, KeitaroAeon. Some good friends of mine had told me that they were more of a laid back casual sky LS, which really appealed to me because I really like being able to give most of my online time to TheBrotherhood. Well i've been with them two nights already and not only does everyone seem to be organized and know what they're doing, but they're also very friendly and helpful. I almost feel like i'm at home in TheBrotherhood when i'm up there in sky with this group, and that was exactly the experience I was looking for.

We killed a few gods on Friday - Seiryu and Byakko. These fights were really easy and we only had one death so it really does seem like most of these people know how to handle themselves. As for the drops though, I think only a couple of things dropped. I ended up getting to lot on Byakko's Axe which i'll use on my WAR down the road, because that went to free lot. I also tried to bid my current points that I had on getting the abjuration for the Koenig Schaller, but because of my noobness I did this in LS chat when I had meant to send it as a /tell to the person accepting bids. So basically, all the PLDs knew what the minimum bid was going to be because they now knew mine, lol. But that's ok, I didn't have many points and I was sure I wasn't going to win the bid anyways. There'll be another time, so far i'm having fun and its even better because Xean has also joined and will be able to keep me company.


Oh and last, I felt like sharing this pic I took while in Valkurm Dunes. I did 3 different versions (using photoshop) and really liked how they turn out. I plan to use these in a future wallpaper or signature. Valkurm isn't all that bad ^^

Reputation or Friendship?

Its funny how people can be consumed entirely by the opinions of people who they have no relationship with. This past weekend, I have seen how some people on this earth would be so quick to toss a friendship out the window, rather than see their reputation (which by the way is determined by people who again, they have no relationship and could just as easily be called strangers) destroyed. Its ok though, as hurtful as that can be when you find your "so-called" friends turning their backs on you, you realize that they could have never been your friend in the first place to have the ability to abandon a friendship so easily. In the long wrong, you really are better without them.

Well I plan to do 2 entries today. One to go over the events that i've been dealing with this weekend, and another which I consider to be my start to moving on.

Lets start with many many months ago. One of my LS members, Soulstar had made a request to try and camp an NM called Shikigami. He was I think in his 50's at the time, but he wanted to get the drop, "YinYang Robe" which is an uber SMN piece, knocked out of the way. He had asked a few of us to wake up very early that one morning, and I remember being there extremely cranky because it had been so early on a weekend and I really like to sleep in on my weekends. But, knowing what this item meant to him and that he'd probably do the same for me I woke up early and headed out. Unfortunately that camping session failed miserably, because we really weren't prepared. See the thing with this NM is when he spawns, he's invisible. The only way to make him appear, is to cast magic and aggro him. The problem? There's weapons and golems all around the area, which all aggro to magic = suicide.

So anyways, Soul had gone /rng to be able to pick up Shiki on wide scan when he popped, but because he didn't have a map... we weren't really able to have a clear position on where to try casting in order to aggro Shiki. In the end, myself and the others who had gone to help ended up dying as we kited a train load of mobs, that weren't Shikigami. Another group had gotten the claim. At that point, Soulstar said he'd wait until he was closer to lvl 71 to equip the piece, and get it.

Fast forward to last week. Another LS member of ours, Myrrh had raised his SMN and was now the same lvl as Soulstar. Both were lvl 70. Myrrh decided to try and get the YYR and had mentioned it to our LS so that we could help him. He had been having trouble with his endgame LS being helpful, and according to his rant about them... they would even "ignore" him in LS when he brought the subject up. He spoke about them in a very negative way, giving us the impression that this LS wouldn't help Myrrh for whatever reasons, and wouldn't even awknowledge his request because he never even got a "I'm sorry i'm busy" response. He mentioned it wasn't until later when another popular member of their endgame shell said he needed the YYR, that the LS said they would help. So in other words, they would help this guy (Jyakotsu) but not Myrrh? Not being able to confirm this, but taking Myrrh's word we believed this LS wasn't very "lets help each other" and so many of us assured Myrrh we, TheBrotherhood could be depended on and would help him get his item.

In fact, it was one morning when I was on that I had heard through /tell Myrrh saying he wasn't getting any luck on Shiki, and everyone had ignored him. I didn't have anything to do, and wanted to help him so while Myrrh was doing some of his endgame stuff I gathered up some LS members and asked if they could come help Myrrh. I went out of my way to get a group ready for him, as a favor. He's helped me before, so of course I wanted to do what I could to help him.

So we headed out there, and waited for Shiki to pop. There were other campers there, but luckily we got claim and Xean who had also logged on to help tanked Shiki. Sadly though, we didn't get the drop. But it was ok, because all of us who were present said we'd continue trying, thats what TheBrotherhood does for its members, we help each other until we get the job done.

By this time, Soulstar had become aware that Myrrh was starting to camp Shiki and wanted to help and do a "LS YYR Camp" event so that we could get all our SMNs in our LS a YYR. We currently have 3 that are 70+, so it would be nice to get them their gear. As Soulstar even said, "lets pimp our SMNs!". This clearly shows his intent to see all 3 of them with the item.

So after that point, Soulstar followed up a few times and also camped Shiki. He had woken up at least on 2 occasions to confirm the ToD (because the time would have been too early to get LS members to come out) and corrected the predicted spawn times that Myrrh had originally posted on our forum. Both were putting in effort to getting the YYR and the TBH LS members were also there everytime possible when one of the two SMNs would go out to camp. I hadn't been available as much as I wanted to, but I had promised that the weekend would be easier for me to show because I had no other in game commitments.

Fast forward to thursday night. In LS, we hear Soulstar asking around if anyone is available to help camp Shiki. I hadn't noticed Myrrh in LS that night, so I figured he was doing endgame or just not online (I never bothered to search him). I had told Soul that unfortunately me and Xean were in xp party, so we couldn't come out but again assured him that on Saturday night we'd be there if he didn't have it by then. A few other members luckily were available, and they headed out there to help him out.

Well the next thing I notice in LS chat, is one of our members asking why Soulstar hasn't lotted. First thing I thought then was "oh gawd, the item drops and he goes afk!". But right after, someone else mentions that Myrrh has lotted a 27 and that Soulstar isn't lotting. So at that point, me and Xean both told Soulstar through /tell that he should take his lot. I mean, if you helped and you need the item, you are entitled to a lot right? That's fair.

But what we didn't know, is that when the camping session had first begun Myrrh had asked if he could get the drop first, and that Soulstar pass. Soulstar agreed to this and myself and Xean didn't know. If we had known, we would not have encouraged him to lot because it wouldn't be right for him to go back on his word. He would need to talk things out with Myrrh because they had made an agreement. But, because he was feeling pressured and there probably wasn't much time remaining, he lotted. Because he hadn't first asked or confirmed with Myrrh that he could go back on his decision to give Myrrh priority, technically it was what is called a "ninja lot". Of course this little detail about the agreement wasn't made known to me or Xean at first. Had it been known, we would of questioned why someone was asking for priority in the first place. I mean that right there is kind of greedy in itself. When I go to camp an NM and another LS member also needs the item, and is there to help... we lot, and the highest wins. Then, we make an effort to do the same thing again to get the person who didn't win, their item too. Why not let luck determine who gets the item first?

Anyways, the next thing I remember is hearing that Soulstar was being attacked. Again at this time, I didn't know about the agreement and hearing that it was Jyakotsu giving him crap, I immediately sent Jya a /tell asking why he was harassing Soulstar. The responses I got were completely hostile and the tone very aggressive. He asked "so you condone ninja lotting?" and then when I tried to tell him that Soulstar had every right to lot he threatened he was going to take this to the QCDN flame board, which he did. I told him to bring it, because I had no clue an agreement had been made.

It wasn't until talking with Soulstar through /tell that he mentioned he felt bad because he had previously told Myrrh the first drop was his. So right then and there, I knew this was going to turn ugly. I immediately apologized to Soulstar for having encouraged him to lot, because I felt I had pressured him to do so and guilty. I really wouldn't have encouraged him but rather questioned him had I know about the agreement. And then I also ended up talking to Myrrh and apologized to him for what ended up happening, because everything was turning ugly and I felt bad. Mistakes had been made and the first thing I had to do was apologize, I felt responsible for Soulstar's actions. Then I really wanted to try and get a solution and get everyone calmed down. I didn't want to see anyone upset.

Well as soon as I went to QCDN and saw the flame on me and Xean, people had already judged us. We were snakes, and according to Jyakotsu we had plotted all along to make Soulstar lot for the item. No matter how many times I said the truth, people would tell me I was lying, I was spewing BS and basically the entire community had turned against me. I did try explaining my side of the story, but when that happened every piece of information was twisted and Jyakotsu with his mission to tear me down took every possible jab at me and exaggerated everything. He claimed i'd called him this and that, claimed he had screenshots to prove this and that, and I think after his first 1-3 posts I just started ignoring what he had to say because I didn't think he was humanly capable of talking things and hearing a person out.

Then Xean posted and defended his view on the subject. This of course, was also taken in the wrong way and I swear sometimes those people feed on negativity that it wouldn't matter what you said... they would find a way to turn it against you and mean something bad just so that they can continue to have reason to despise you. Such angry people, I kinda pity them if they need to hate others. Anyways, Xean had posted that the reason he had been wanting to make sure Soulstar had his lot was because he didn't feel Soulstar should be trusting of Myrrh... and truth is, with an NM that requires this much work I think you could doubt that most people would be willing to continue putting effort into killing it a second time, once they got their item. Xean feared that if Soulstar didn't take an opportunity to lot, and that Myrrh won, Myrrh would eventually stop helping. And he based that off of a few things, which he had gone to explain. One of the reasons ended up being proven to be a joke, but there were still other little things that proved Myrrh wasn't a saint so Xean's opinion wasn't entirely false. I personally am more trusting, and wouldn't have been thinking that Myrrh would slowly stop putting as much effort to help camp Shiki after getting the item, but then again i'm always the one getting stepped on and being taken advantage of. Xean on the other hand? Nope, he's cautious and doesn't take chances, and as a result he's never been taken advantage of. Now thats not to say that Myrrh was without a doubt going to take advantage, but if Xean had an opinion he's entitled to that. And as a friend, he wanted to make sure Soulstar wasn't being too trusting either and possibly make a mistake.

But the entire community took this as "Xean hates Myrrh and just didn't want him to get the YYR". That doesn't really make sense considering that Xean had already helped Myrrh ONLY once already on this, and had already signed up to help on the weekend. It also doesn't make sense for him to hate Myrrh and be able to joke around and talk like he always has with Myrrh. Xean might have opinions, he might not agree with people's actions but he NEVER lets that affect how he treats a person. And nothing in his past history with Myrrh can ever prove he hated Myrrh, instead it proves the opposite. They were friends. Xean just didn't necessarily trust him to be consistently helpful with an NM once he got what he needed from it, but so what? You can be friends in RL with people who you might not trust to leave alone in your home, I know many people that do that. But that's a trust issue, and Myrrh didn't try to disprove it when Xean brought that to him, instead he gave the silence treatment.

Moving on, the very next day Xean did his best to be home early from school and Soulstar was also online. Both had sent Myrrh /tells asking if they were needed to help, because they wanted to ensure that Myrrh had a YYR. They wanted to make up for the event that went bad the day before, and felt that by offering help would be a start. However, they were both ignored and never got a response.

Even I got the same treatment. I had told Myrrh and Soulstar prior to all this happening, that Friday I had Sky and would NOT be able to help. However, on Friday as I was heading up to sky I noticed Myrrh was camping the NM and I would be passing through. My Sky alliance hadn't yet formed, and I figured I had at least 10 minutes before I'd need to be up there. So I sent Myrrh a /tell and told him if the NM was expected to pop in the next 10 minutes, I could help because I was passing through.

Guess how this got twisted over QCDN...

"I have 10 minutes to help, take it or leave it". Lol. Yeah, just shows that people need to twist things because if they accept the truth of it, they can't continue to hate you and bash you. And the truth was, I wanted to take an opportunity while I had it, to help. I was denied that chance.

I've tried posting on QCDN 3 times, apologizing and explaining everything but everytime I do, i'm told what I say is wrong. I'm told I haven't yet apologized, (do people even read my posts?) that I feel no remorse and that I have done nothing to make up for it. Hell even Myrrh is now saying this, and its evident that he just doesn't want to accept the truth because then he has no reason to be angry anymore. They have nothing. So they continue to call us names, and tell us we're just calling a BS story because without that they can't continue and I guess they have nothing better to do with their time, so they need this. Kinda sad.

I think what the most disappointing thing i've seen so far, are the people that I once called friends suddenly turn their backs. They're so worried about what others, are going to think of them. Lol, I mean just Friday night me and Xean were laughing and helping PL Inari, and the next day he tells us he's going to have nothing to do with us anymore. That was a shocking one, but I guess all it really means is that there wasn't a friendship there to begin with, because friends don't give up like that. Then there are a few people that like I expected, go with the rest of the flock. All they care about is the attention they get. I just lol at them. I lol at the people that fall for their fakeness too. Thats when I like to say "karma will bite you in the ass". I wait for that day, I don't have to do anything because i'm sure it'll happen on its own.

At this point though, i'm done. I've banned Myrrh from my LS forum because he has repeatedly said how he wouldn't come back to our "shitty" ls. Oh yeah, did I mention he's called out everyone in the LS? People who respected him? People who had nothing to do with this incident? Yeah well he just made a fool of himself, so many people were really supportive of him at first and after seeing how backstabbing he can be to good people... well they saw him for what he truly is.

Its funny, just this morning I was reminded about one event that actually did prove Myrrh's greediness. A long while ago, a friend of ours was leaving the game. He had WW 100+3, and had invited LS members to a goodbye party. He was planning on handing out some HQ staves if he could make them during the event, and he did this. But when he started handing them out, there were a few people that suddenly let that greed over an item take control and you could see it how they spoke trying to be the first to get the HQ staves he was giving away free. I remember one of our LS members being so disgusted and upset about it, because he felt that the members cared more about the HQ staves then the friend who was leaving... that he ended up logging out. I remember the names that had been mentioned though, the members he had felt were being greedy and Myrrh was among them and i'd have to say i'd agree. During that event, mostly everyone was all "OH ME ME! PICK ME! I WANT THE HQ STAFF!" including Myrrh.

Anyways that is probably going to be my only rant on the topic. After having a full 16hrs + yesterday helping out my friends that have more integrity and loyalty as well as just a brain period... I know i'm done wasting my time on people that don't matter. If they want to judge me, they can. Truth is, they don't know me so they can think all they want. And if they want to judge harshly, well I just laugh because maybe they do so to forget about their own mistakes in life that might be worse than this. I only need to prove myself to the people I care about, and aren't quick to slam the door. And lucky for me, its those people that have already looked into what they know about who I am, as well as Xean and Soulstar to know the truth. The game is likely going to be a bit harder to get through now, but I never really needed a lot outside my LS to begin with so its not as bad and i'm just going to continue playing having fun.

I despise Kreutzet...

Well for the past week, i've been helping a ls friend Carste camp Kreutzet. This NM drops a rare/ex dagger which is really good for THF... the only downside to this is the spawn conditions for the NM.

First, his respawn window only opens 9hrs after he was last killed. Go go SE for making the respawn times in this game absolutely insane -_-. Second, he will only spawn during "windy weather", and even then during his 3hr window its possible for him not to spawn at ALL during windy weather. If this happens, he's guaranteed to spawn the next time windy weather occurs. And here's pretty much what happened with our camping session last thursday night.

The window had opened at about 10pm our time. We waited for windy weather, and after about 20 minutes of waiting, we notice that we're surrounded by tarutaru. Tarutaru with no linkshells. Tarutaru that are all /anon. Hmm, suspicious? In the world of FFXI, you betcha! We were being countercamped by RMT, how fun.

In their party, we noticed that there was a mithra THF and throughout the 3hrs of waiting for windy weather we later found out that he (Nakirin) had to have been a legit player because he actually did have a LS, and a few times that he had spoken to us he seemed to have no problem communicating. So in the end, we assumed that this guy had probably hired the RMT to help him get the NM.

Anyways, while we waited there was one point where Nakirin had said he needed the NM. Then later he asked if we would help him pull it, which is when I came up with an idea. I decided to send an invite over to Nakirin to see if he'd alliance with us, which he accepted. My plan was to make them think we would help him, and when Kreutzet would actually pop I'd give party leader to Carste so he could make himself quartermaster and get the drop. But shortly after about 3 minutes the alliance disbanded. Then Nakirin asked in say "Please invite me" again so I sent another invite.

We then decided to kill some cockatrice with them while we waited. But while we were fighting, they disbanded so obviously the RMT had probably been smart enough to tell Nakirin that we probably had no intention of helping. Meh, it was a good try anyway. Would of been a lesson for the THF not to hire and support RMT who ruin the game for legit players -_-

Anyways, eventually the wind weather did spawn, but no Kreutzet. After that, the wind didn't spawn again during the 3hr window. This was good and bad at the same time. It was good because it guaranteed that during the next windy weather Kreutzet would spawn... but, because of our luck the wind weather took a full 2hrs after the window had closed to spawn. I think it was about 3am before I ended up logging out that night.

Before Kreutzet spawned however, we had another opportunity thrown at us. The WHM in the RMT pt had apparently gone AFK, and a cockatrice had aggroed him and killed him. He reraised but as soon as he did, he got himself killed again and didn't have the chance to cast reraise on himself. Their party started asking us for raise, but of course we weren't about to help some RMT. So instead, we told them that we had a WHM on the way with R3! ^^



They believed us, and kept asking us for about 20 minutes how far away the WHM was. They started saying that R1 would be ok, but we insisted we would give them R3. Then one of our party members commented that they could easily get one of their BLM to raise him. Apparently the RMT had forgotten or weren't aware that they had raise <_<;;

Anyways, shortly after the WHM was raised the windy weather popped and we ran out to get claim. Carste managed to get it, but died on the way back. We had been caught off guard a bit, and because I had been low on MP I decided to convert right away. Bad idea.


The last times I had fought Kreutzet, he hadn't bothered to use his AoE move Stormwind which is a 3 consecutive move which deals quite a bit of damage, until the very end. Well for whatever reason, he used it right away in this battle and because the first attack took off my stoneskin, his second hit killed me right as I had converted. -_-

I decided to homepoint so that I could race back and help. But the battle didn't go so well after that, because he apparently kept spamming that move and our only healer Josudes had a bit too much to handle with everyone taking damage and wasn't able to cure Xean on time who had been tanking. As soon as Xean went down, the rest of the party did and the RMT got claim. We thought it was over...

That is until a BLM who had been getting the ToD, Hanzokoro gave us a hand and raised Xean and Carste and joined our party. Right as Kreutzet got down to about 3% health, the RMT pt wiped and we managed to get claim and kill him. Sadly though, we didn't get a drop making this 0/4.

I swear its Xean's luck >_<

So yeah, I refuse to give up helping Carste get this NM because of all the trouble we've had. I don't want to make all the time spent on this bird a waste, so he's going to be getting ToD and hopefully I'll be able to help this week.

Other than that, i've managed to get 2 more merits which I applied to my MP. I'm not 4/8. I figure i'll finish this stat, and get the full 8/8 because i'm elvaan and all my jobs currently require MP. Then next i'll start adding to my elemental and enfeebling. So much meriting, it never seems to end ; ;

And on another note, our LS has been getting some really excellent members lately. I decided to go camp Ose on the weekend before Kreutzet, and asked if I could get some help and had quite a few people come to help. It feels nice to have that kind of response, even though I wouldn't have minded if people were busy... just knowing that our LS is filled with members that really do enjoy helping each other is rewarding. Its been nice to see some good new members come in considering we've had a few leave/quit and even a some that spend almost no time in our LS anymore. Guess its always the good ones that stay ^^

Another win against Diabolos!

Haven't updated in a while, mostly due to the fact that Xean's been visiting me these past 2 weeks. He's still up for one more week, and then has to fly back home. I won't get to see him again until December... ; ;

Well first things first. I managed to finish meriting my sword skill, and now have 8/8 merits on it. The next thing I want to merit is my MP, because both my PLD and my RDM can benefit from the extra MP. After that, i'm not quite sure what i'll merit next but it will probably be something for my RDM seeing as I find myself playing on RDM more often than PLD. Its really convenient to be able to solo things and not have to rely on other high lvl players.

I also managed to bring my SMN up to lvl 33, but getting a decent party has definitely been a pain in the arse. I think over the weekend, I had my seek up for more than half the day. Finally after getting my first invite, I found out that the party members included a couple of lazy "newbs". We had one WAR that hadn't bothered to level his subjob, and wanted to use Scythe because he planned to take DRK once he hit lvl 30. I never understand this logic... because even without the help of friend, I would know to have my subjob lvled. As for the weapon choice, I might not have known what was best without Xean's help but as soon as I had found out each class excelled with a certain weapon, I would of used the best available weapon for my job.

And to top if off, both the WAR and the BLM in our party had been begging us to kill a few mandies outside Kahzam while we waited for 2 members to join us. I didn't quite know why they were eager to get some xp until a few battles later when they mentioned they were only a couple hundred points from lvling up, and would be leaving right after. They hadn't even planned to get a replacement... just joined to get their lvl with the intention of leaving right after -_-

Thankfully though, after we got their lvls we were able to invite 2 others: Timwakefield and Spalko's mule: Mudiwudi. Our setup rocked, and I managed to get 2 lvls that night! I wish I could party with LS members more often.

Oh, and I also managed to get another try at Diabolos. I had tried him a few weeks ago, and went as PLD. The plan was really strange from what I had been used to. I was asked to go down and solo Diabolos while the BLMs would cast their first spell from the top. But the trick was, I wasnt going to be in party until just before they casted. Because there was at least a good 30 seconds where I was without party, I kept getting warped around the platform and not expecting this, I panicked a bit trying to make sure I wasn't going to be on a square that would fall to the floor below where these spider mobs could kill me. In the end, our party wiped because of the nightmare move that Diabolos casts... or should I say spams?

But I managed to get in on another run last Friday. The setup was BLM, BLM, SMN, RDM/DRK, WHM (me), NIN/WAR. This was definitely the smoothest run I ever had. The BLMs and RDM took turns stunning, and we managed to deal some hefty damage to Diabolos before he had a chance to go crazy with Nightmare. I think we only saw the move once, which was right at the end and ended up killing one person at the last second due to the bio status. But, we came out winners and I got myself the Diabolos Earring which has ACC+3 (except for during dark weather) which I will be using on my WAR.

Other than that, I finally figured out how to use Windows MovieMaker, and made a video of my LS. I plan to update it and edit it once I get better clips to use, but for now i'm pretty happy with it. Its just taking an eternity to compress and save, so i'll have to post that that afterwards.

Guess that about wraps up this update. Looking forward to starting my static for my WAR and Xean's THF. Its going to be an all LS static, and hopefully if everyone's schedule permits, we can get in 2 sessions a week and hit 75 within 2 months. I'm also going to be looking around for a limbus LS now that I have sea, and hopefully before the end of this month i'll get my Tamas ring! Still so much to do in his game x_x