Something That Actually Warrants A Blog Entry From Me

(All images that were made small for some reason when uploaded directly through here were now made links to the image instead.)

Just so readers know, this is not Zerayla. The author of this entry is me, Xean. Since I'm not a blogger, I asked if I could publish this rare occasion using her blog rather than create one. Now you understand the title, sort of. There are things that bother me -- like any human being -- but rarely ever to a far extent, especially not to publicize about. But one this has bothered me, yet it is not what I will be providing a lengthy discourse about. In short, what bothers me is knowing that a particular incident still remains unchanged in the minds of people, including those who claim to be objective. Note that objective does not mean a lack of ethics or morals. Objective scrutiny of what is right and wrong requires us to be Factual, Logical, and based on acceptable Principles.

One thing people forget about being factual is that we must gather absolutely ALL relevant information as possible. Since the incident has long gone, the purpose of this entry is not to reignite something. If that were the case, I'd do this for many eyes to see immediately elsewhere. But for the interested reader and myself, I'll be giving justice to the commonly missed rule of presenting all relevant information. This is not going to be me nagging, ranting, moaning and complaining or crying "Oh pity me, oh pity me, I've been made a victim!" like most people do. No, so biased readers beware.

At this point, even I would ask myself, "OK, what the heck are you talking about already?" You have a right to feel this way, but now listen to me that I am going into that now.

About a half-year ago, myself and two others became hated ones. Still doesn't bother me because I remain steadfast with my conclusions. Since most people who heard know what happened at the time of the incident, I'll recap the incident itself. In FFXI, a player named Myrrh did not get his YYR the day he planned because mostly I expressed to a shaking, worried Soulstar what he already felt but receded that Myrrh was not to be fully trusted.

The timing is critical: were I to have premeditated a plan to have Myrrh be "ninja-lotted" then there would be no doubt that was what I wanted. What happened that evening as I just arrived home was I saw my brother logged into FFXI on the Xbox360. He and other LS members were in Ro'Maeve helping Soulstar and Myrrh to camp Shikigami to get the YYR. So I get settled in and log into the game myself for a static party that night shortly after, I hear my brother saying that the YYR dropped. I look at the TV screen and see that Myrrh lots. I observe for about 30 seconds and see that Soulstar isn't lotting. So I ask "Why isn't Soulstar lotting? Is he AFK?". Let's start tracking time here; it takes a few minutes for items from the treasure pool to automatically go into someone's inventory. I watch for another 15 seconds or so and Soulstar still has not lotted, passed, or even said a word. Now I'm wondering why because he could lose the item, which up to this point all I knew was that they talked about getting it together on our LS forum. With a minute almost gone, I send Soulstar a /tell asking if he's there. There's a minor delay until he replies saying that he is. So I ask him why he has not lotted yet because he should be lotting. After a short discussion in which he is telling me he can't and me asking why, he tells me that Myrrh asked to be the first person in line to get a YYR. This proposal was presented in-game when they grouped up to camp -- it was nowhere on the LS forum. I expressed to Soulstar that proposal was unfair since Soulstar earned the right to a YYR for his work on following the ToD (time of death). I finished by saying, taking into account the suddenness of the proposal and lack of reply to Soulstar's forum post about a plan for cooperation, that I wouldn't trust Myrrh. The clock is still ticking. My conversation with Soulstar ends. I'm still in party. Soon after, he lots. That fires up Jyakotsu, who lashes out at Soulstar. As usual, Myrrh stands behind Jyakotsu also taking whatever shots he can too. The item drops to Soulstar and they're still going at him.

Up to this point, I don't have any screenshots of game conversations. I only saw what was being said in the alliance against Soulstar through my brother who was playing on the Xbox360. The Xbox360 can take pictures, but not with chat logs included. And since I was in party, my chat log pushed the conversation with Soulstar out of memory. So unfortunately I don't have screenshots of those conversations to give quotes verbatim. I can hear the haters and accusers already applauding. Nonetheless, neither I nor anyone else can prove or disprove what I have said. You either believe me or you don't. But I assure you that the accusers would never be able to give you this level of comprehension. Case in point being when Jyakotsu could not even provide oral explanation for his best RL friend (who will remain unnamed here), who said he was wanting to mediate between me and Jyakotsu so he did not require visual proof from either of us. Explanations were to be sufficient, something that Jyakotsu could not even half-provide. Rather, he always said to "look at the forum". When he told him to "look at the forum", he is talking about the Flame topic on the QCDN forum he created against Soulstar, Zerayla and me. No one wants to look at an old topic, seriously. Here are images from that conversation showing how often he said to look at that old forum topic because he wouldn't explain things himself. I wonder if his best friend ever looked at the forum, but I'll go with saying that he didn't since he never has mentioned anything about his best friend Jyakotsu's aggressive and disrespectful rhetoric.

Anyways, let's retrace back to the time around the incident. I was getting sick of them bashing on Soulstar, so I sent Myrrh a tell. From this point on, I have some screenshots from that evening. The following is between Myrrh and I:

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/5107/menmyrrhp1hi7.png

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/2313/menmyrrhp2wh6.png

The first problem here is when Myrrh says "He spent one day here". Whether he spent a day or not is ultimately unimportant. Why? Well if you take a look at these following pictures, you will see that it was THANKS TO SOULSTAR that Myrrh even had a SHOT at Shikigami.

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/6596/correctiontodji0.png

As you can clearly see, Soulstar corrected Myrrh about the ToDs. Were it not for his willingness to offer this information, Myrrh would have arrived at Shikigami too late every time. Was Soulstar obligated to offer this information? No, he wasn't, especially since there was a gap of time between the time he camped and the prior time that the would-be thief did. Let's think about this consequentially. If Soulstar had never given the correct timings, Myrrh would have not been camping Shikigami at the right times. But Soulstar could have kept the times for himself and asked the rest of us for help to get him the YYR. Just like we did for another our of members, without requiring the help of some SKY LS with NOTHING BUT high levels because thats what its intended for. This shows that Myrrh did not care about Soulstar correcting him. Soulstar was NEVER thanked for it. Myrrh only cared about Shikigami and the YYR. Looking back at the chat, he stated that they agreed that Myrrh would get the YYR. That's fine, but the post-incident accusations that him and Jyakotsu made that I was pretty much telling Soulstar to ninjalot the item was incorrect because, as I wrote earlier, I told Soulstar that he should lot based on his right to lot BEFORE he told me about the proposal that Soulstar made which he mistakenly agreed to. On our LS forum, Soulstar wrote utterly sincere apologies to Myrrh.

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/3892/responsesoulyf0.png

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/4603/soulapology1sx5.png

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/94/soulapology2om8.png

I felt so sorry for him because he was pretty much brushed off. Myrrh called his apology "bullshit". It's at the bottom of his post here.

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/4769/myrrhcallapologybullshilh7.png

So Soulstar did something he himself acknowledged he shouldn't have. But he apologized and he wanted to make up for it. He, Zerayla, and myself, the mainly accused, told him we would commit ourselves to helping Myrrh get his YYR. (Following pictures are what Zerayla and I said.) And it was not because anyone told us to.

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/7337/zerapology1yv5.png

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/60/megoingtohelpjd6.png

Back to Myrrh's careless response to Soulstar. He compresses Soulstar's apology and calls it bullshit, then reflects the distrust against him onto Soulstar. Hmmm. Well anyways, take a look at that image again and read the first line. What does it say? "You may not trust me but Jya did and I had planned on helping him next". Oh no! Did Myrrh really say that? Well now we see the truth about the situation, don't we? Myrrh was never going to help Soulstar, because he planned to help Jyakotsu after getting his own YYR. I could quote that line all I wanted. But wait! Unlike some retard on QCDN called Tity? No, wait Tidy. Unlike such a fool, I wouldn't single out a quote and repeat it ten times over to use as proof, even though I'd really be taking it out of context. (I'm referring back to the QCDN flame topic that Jyakotsu made, in which Tidy quoted a chat log from Jyakotsu. He cut and paste a part of Jyakotsu's chat log, in which Jyakotsu said I made Soulstar ninjalot when I responded with an "I told him to". Yeah, I did tell him ... BEFORE he told me about the proposal that he agreed to. Regardless, the image was cut off with me quoted as saying "I told him to". Not even the entire chat log. It still does a good job of fooling all the idiots at QCDN, though. Someone might even see this and cut and paste that line by itself to post too, repeating a proven process.) So that quote alone doesn't say anything, because that's not what he meant. I followed by asking him who he was talking about, which you can see here.

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/5939/whatreallywasmeantvk7.png

So what he really meant was that he was going to help Jyakotsu after Soulstar. BUT WAIT AGAIN! There is an inconsistency here. If we look back at Soulstar's apology post at the end of his first paragraph (the 2nd link out of 3), we see that he said he was happy when Myrrh said he wanted to help all of our LS's Summoners (two: Soulstar and Alianne) get a YYR. It helped Soulstar a bit in putting trust in Myrrh. But now Myrrh has made it obvious that he never intended to help Alianne with a YYR afterwards. Instead his buddy Jyakotsu, who never convened with any of our members on YYR help, was in truth going to be priority. Jyakotsu himself had a different perspective about the YYR camping. This was at the supposed "mediation" between him and me.Now this doesn't prove that Myrrh would never help Soulstar, but let's not be foolish by ignoring all the common indications. If you still disagree, then go learn some psychology, or observe people yourself. People follow patterns; that is why they do the same things that aren't good for them despite the thousands of examples that say otherwise. Despite all the little indications that compound the more there are that have been mentioned, the biggest one is pretty obvious but some people have either missed or choose not to consider. And it is this: Jyakotsu would never have had the "right" to post a flame topic against Soulstar, Zerayla, me and our LS as a whole if Myrrh were to have accepted the apology and never have denied any one of us from helping him. But Myrrh did deny any apologies and any help. We already know he called Soulstar's apology bullshit. But what about the next day? I logged my character off in Ro'Maeve, Shikigami's zone, with the intent to join Myrrh for his YYR. Soulstar too. No one was allowed. Myrrh ignored all of us. And that allowed him and his buddy Jyakotsu to go off ranting on QCDN to all the retards who heard them out. As you can see in the following picture, anyone from our LS was denied. Even those who were there the previous night and did nothing wrong.

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/3517/img20070720180738hi4.png

Oh, but their alliance was full you say? Well first Soulstar said they "seem" to have a full alliance. "Seem" is the keyword. But let's say it was the case that they did have a full alliance. Firstly, the previous night, when Soulstar got the YYR, the alliance was not full. Remember, my brother was part of it so I saw. Secondly, that alliance had a number of members from our LS and some from Myrrh's Fury LS. If you look at the following screenshot, you'll see he is complaining about not getting enough responses from Fury to help him get a YYR.

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/2276/myrrhcomplaint1fb5.png

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/6324/myrrhcomplaint2hp3.png

Finally, Myrrh did not have to get a full alliance (assuming it was full) to help him after hearing both from me and Soulstar that we would help. Oh but he couldn't trust us with actually doing that, you say? Well let's go with that. At the very LEAST, Myrrh could have responded to Soulstar and I when we logged on into the zone on time to camp the NM with him. But he didn't. Why? Because he was denying us. If he did not deny us, then that flame topic on QCDN would have been made null and void. But Myrrh let it continue. He wanted it to continue. While we, the accused, were telling him we would make up for it, him and Jyakotsu led the masses into their typical flaming retardation. Why did he do this? Well maybe I'll have to put the pieces together for you if you are either stubborn, dumb, or ignorant. After apologies and offerings of help made, what makes it just for Myrrh to continue allowing a hate topic existing against us? The fact that he didn't get his precious little YYR like he intended to? A lot of dumb people say that the apologies and the offerings of help don't matter. Now that's some real bullshit. So absolutely nothing can make up for it according to such people. For the rest who aren't so dumbheaded, that should have stopped Myrrh from letting it continue. But he didn't. Since he didn't get his damn YYR that he was only intending for himself so he can forget about Soulstar afterwards. Myrrh joined by posting lies in it himself as well. Look at the following image, it is from that topic.
http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/3014/myrrhliets9.png

Oh, look. Myrrh quoted Jyakotsu who said the very same thing I just explained here! Really, Jyakotsu? You would have never made the flame if we apologized? But we did apologize and you made the flame anyways! Oh, and the easily fooled masses applaud! You see, it is what Jyakotsu really wanted. He even lies to his own best friend about it. From the "mediation" we mentioned earlier:

And I was even denied explaining why he was lying.While this "mediation" (I keep using quotes because I knew nothing would come out of it) was happening, Jyakotsu asked that Myrrh join the conversation. At the end of these two pictures, you'll see his lie. After you read it, recall that he was not banned since he was still posting to us calling all the apologies bullshit. That's what he thought I was talking about anyways. I was really talking about the topic in which Soulstar posted the correct Shikigami schedule. Myrrh never said a word about doing things together like Soulstar said.

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/1396/myrrhsotherlieql2.png

Myrrh was quick to nag then left the conversation. Now you can see how easily they can lie and Myrrh can change sides when it gets him what he wants. That is what he is used to anyways. First he is complaining about an LS that was not at first willing to help him and was considering quitting that LS. But then this happens and he turns his back on our shell. He wins all the attention he needs and craves from everyone online. Congratulations, Myrrh.

That pretty much wraps up what I felt the need to write up. Or what I have remembered to write, anyways. Eventually, someone who is aware of this issue will come along and be enlightened. I don't need the sympathy, though. Knowing that someone has read the other side of the story to get the full truth is enough for me. But I am in no rush for that to happen, or to happen to a large degree at all. The incident has passed away, and frankly, I didn't really care. After the first evening of replying to a ton of hypocrites on QCDN, I decided to just stop wasting my time. If people are so easily willing to go off what one side says without really asking the other side all the right questions, then I let it be. I would rather not associate with people who can do that. So yeah, I didn't care enough for it to bother me. People left our LS, and I just thought "Go ahead". If you're like that, then you're not really a friend. So why be upset? Heh.

I'm still alive.

Well, i'm back from my holidays. I spent christmas with my bf Xean and we spent most of the month of December with his family in MX. It was definitely a good christmas, and one that i'll miss.

I'm finally back home, and have been for a bit so I have quite a lot to update. I'll start with the oldest stuff I can remember.

(ITS CAITSITH!!!!)

First there was the new expansion released "Wings of the Goddess". So far I haven't really gotten into the expansion much, mainly because SE hasn't worked on adding a lot to it just yet. Aside from acquiring all the "Maws" which are actually teleports that take you into the past of Vana'diel, i've only participated in an event called "Campaign" a few times.

(Going through my first Maw, which is the portal to the past)

(Exploring in the past o.o)

Campaign is kinda like a garrison event where you talk to an NPC and assisted by other players and several NPCs to fend off the zone from the beastmen who randomly attack. Sometimes the monsters that attack are easy, and other times they're a pain in the butt. The good thing about this is that you don't lose xp when you die though, and depending on certain things you do during the campaign you will be awarded some xp and "Sigil" points which is the expansion's version of "Signet".


Before leaving on holidays, I did manage to progress quite a bit. I had upgraded my Gallant Leggings to the +1 version thanks to my limbus shell KeitaroOmega. We're a small shell with members from KeitaroAeon and the social shell KeitaroPrime and we manage to do pretty well. Hopefully we'll get to try out Omega and Ultima in the month ahead, provided we can get more people to show up >_<

But because I got my +1 AF, it was time to go through my PLD AF quests again so that I could get the regular versions and store my set. I managed to get some help from my social shell TBH for the AF3 fight, and had a big turnout of people wanting to help. We took out both orcs pretty quickly =)


My Dynamis shell RidersOfRohan has also been doing great. Our roster is filling up fast, with experienced and devoted members! We've been able to go on a winning streak since fall, and have yet to lose a win. Right before christmas, we were focusing on getting everyone their regular cities wins, because we're going to start focusing on Northlands this year which is a big thing for our shell. In fact, tonight is our first Beaucedine run. I'm sure we'll do great, and even if we mess up we'll still laugh about it because thats just how our group is. Its probably due to the fact that the majority of our members are just casual players, and so if something goes wrong they don't get too upset because its not the end of the world and we know we can try again. I'm so glad to be involved with the leadership of the shell, I really want to help see these deserving players obtain their gear.

(Yay, gotta love it when a small mistake in Dynamis-Sandoria results in everyone being charmed and killing the people who were out of range!)

As for Sky, I haven't really pursued anything of late but i've definitely seen our shell award many of the members with abjurations galore. Its good to see some of the newer people also get abjurations, I think its a big moral boost when they join and can immediately start upgrading their characters. Our shell is now moving on to trying tp cannons on Kirin, and hopefully Friday we'll have a successful run. Lately i've been asked to come as PLD on my character which has been a lot of fun but I have to admit that being on my WHM was more convenient. And this friday, i'll probably get a chance to try the "DD" role. The leaders asked me to come as Xean and use his MNK because we've recently recruited more WHMs, so it'll be nice to have a change. I just hope that we can get a few W. Legs to drop because since being with my sky shell, i've never seen them drop and our two main PLDs Ketsurui and Myrrdin are definitely overdue. They deserve that drop so bad, I hope we get them >_<



Other than that, i've been able to obtain the Swift Belt for my melee jobs, though it doesn't look like i'll get to use it for a while. The static for my WAR (lvl 73) has been on hold, due to a friend Timwakefield taking a break from the game. Recently he told us to continue without him but we all promised to get him to 75 whenever he comes back. He's a really good Galka PLD, so it bites that we'll have to find a pickup tank for a while. But anyways, this static should be picking up in a week or two, so hopefully WAR will hit 75 within a month or two depending on how often our static lvls.

(Fighting one of the swift belt NMs, I got 1/1 on my trade!)

My SAM is the main focus i've had since I got back from my vacation. I want to get it to 75 so that I can have something else to merit with, but RL things always come up and I can never seem to get myself into a party. The biggest downer to FFXI is the time consumption, first you have to wait 1-4 hrs for an invite, and then you have to put hours into lvling just to get a lvl! GAH! At least i'm 72 now, so i'm almost there.... just need to find time to get a party.

Oh and a note to the gilbuyers of FFXI. I hate you. You people who have within a week raised the price of the Hagun by 700k, instead of letting the idiots who put it up for sale get it sent back into the delivery box, annoy me. The entire market of FFXI is dropping, things are not worth much anymore, and then you guys go screw things up by purchasing gil with your real life money and not caring that the Hagun is 700k more than it was just a few days ago, making the price raise for future sellers/buyers. Ugh....

In otherwords, Zerayla is going to be a gimp SAM until the Hagun drops a little because I'm not spending that much on a Hagun when everything else is dropping in price. I'll be patient and wait until it goes down, and use the rare/ex GK I got from sky recently until then. -_-

Oh and speaking of SAM, I got my Tachi:Kasha! Me and Xean skillchained for just over 2hrs (with short breaks) and I unlocked my trial weapon, and a few days later got some help from some LS members to go kill the NM.


And so the most recent fun activity that I did, was help Standpoint get his BLU AF3 fight done. We had to fight a mob that spams -ga spells, and knowing that we'd need to take it down asap I brought my SAM and decided to 2hr. Unfortunately the 2hr was a bit of an overkill, and Xean was disappointed because the fight only lasted about 10 seconds ; ;


Last, myself and Xean have joined a ToAU static with some LS members. We did mission#22 on Sunday to get one of our members caught up, and by the looks of things we should be able to complete the missions within 3 weeks or so. The fight for #22 was fun, though like the previous time me and Xean had done this, it didn't go according to plan. The plan was for one person to enter, die and then let the NPC tarutaru take hate as she killed the monster. The rest of us, would heal her. Well... I figured to speed things up i'd toss a Bio III. Lol. Smart. I ended up kiting for about 10 seconds before just deciding to take a death in hopes that we could still go with our plan, which actually did work... it just sucked that I made a stupid mistake >_<


Thats it for this update, there should hopefully be some good stuff to come soon because this month i'm going to try and get some LS events going again. Its been far too long since TheBrotherhood did a subligar race, or garrison and we need to take a break from the grinds and just hang out and goof around.

Cure? What is that?

I never thought it would happen to me, but it finally has. I've been burnt out of playing the role of healer, specifically on my WHM. For the past few months, all my event linkshells have needed me to come as WHM. I've rarely had the chance to play on my PLD or my RDM, which is really unfortunate considering that i've managed to merit out my RDM by a lot.

I remember when I first started the game, and me and Xean were just creating TheBrotherhood our social LS, I would go out to West Ronfaure and look for new players and PL them a little and help them out. I'd invite them into our LS, and from there help teach them the ropes of the game. Sadly though, as time went by it became very rare to actually find "new" players. Most of the lvl 1-10 players in West Ronfaure were often mules or just veteran players lvling a new job. There wasn't really much help I could provide other than PLing, and so I eventually stopped looking for new recruits to our shell this way.

But the point of this story is that I reaaaaaally liked having my WHM at lvl 30 at that time. I liked healing, and keeping people alive and helping them that way. I sometimes would go out and help PL linkshell members if they had a bad party setup and needed a little backup healing. I honestly WANTED to get my WHM to 75, so that I would be more helpful to my LS members.

But ever since I started joining endgame and having people always request my WHM, i've found that i've started cringing whenever I hear "Pls bring WHM". I really don't like sitting in the back and just tossing out hastes and cures. I don't mind when we fight gods and other mobs that require me to be quick with other spells (erase, bar spells etc) but for the most part, I would much rather be in on the action, doing something TO the mob rather than just keeping my pt members alive. Plus I really miss the battle music, in a lot of the zones where I end up, there's never any music... stupid SE -_-

So yeah, i'm really hoping that once I finish with my 2 DD jobs: SAM & WAR, that maybe my event shells will allow me to bring something other than WHM. The only downside to all this is that I can't rely on my RR3, and often endgame events get expensive for melees because of the meds you have to bring >_<. Oh well, if I can at least take a small break i'll be happy.

So speaking of my DD jobs, i've managed to get WAR to 72. I was hoping that i'd have it at 75 before I fly down to spend christmas with Xean (next thursday) but because of the US holiday this week (thanksgiving) most of my static is going to be away and busy so we won't be lvling this thursday or saturday. And then next thursday, well i'm flying out. But hopefully i'll have it at 75 in the two weeks that follow, our static generally gets one lvl per session.

And for my SAM, well thats been a bit of a challenge to get invites on. I'm adequately geared, but I just never seem to be seeking when others around my lvl range are. And considering that most people just merit these days, usually there's maybe only 1-2 parties lvling anyways so waiting to be invited as a replacement isn't the most reliable way to get a party invite. Oh well, my SAM is almost at 64 and i'm sure i'll get it to 75 eventually. I definitely have found SAM to be more enjoyable to play than my WAR, mainly because there's more to do on the job. I like keeping busy.

As for regular updates, I finished getting 8/8 on my enfeebling for my RDM. I was going to get 8/8 for elemental magic, but because of how long it takes I decided to put that on the backburner for a while and work on my WHM merits. Started working on my Cure Recast time, and now i'm down to the last upgrade for that.

Unfortunately my crafting has kinda been slow. I started to pick up clothcraft a few weeks back, but because of the cost of gear upgrades me and Xean have needed (got him his Blau Dolch recently with the gil we had been saving up for the last couple of months on my mule) I've decided i'd wait for a bit. I really do want to get all my crafts to 60 one day, but I know the cost to put into that will add up. Usually i'm pretty good with cutting down the cost by a lot though, because I try to farm up my ingredients when i'm crafting. I really can't put more than 50k into crafting without seeing it come back. And though i'm sure I could make some gil crafting lower lvl items, I often find that farming will get me more gil per hr than crafting would. There's a lot of time you have to put into crafting for gil >_<

Other than that, I decided to quit my Sea linkshell Prowess. There were some good players in the LS, and I was mainly there to help my friend get some gear but the shell itself has been deteriorating. 2 of our last JoL's were completely wasted because we had two people call for help during the fights. I was never able to stay until the end because I have limbus (and for some reason people take over an hour to gather together even though the start time is always listed in the ls msg -_-) I think that the moral of the LS really dropped, because our last session we didn't even have 12 people show up. I really can't see the LS continueing, its only a matter of time before it breaks with so many people leaving and I think I would rather be doing something else more productive and enjoyable. I told my friend of course that if they ever need me for something really big, that he can always call on me and i'll help out. But I just don't want to put in the time for an event that i'm not having fun with. Sea seems more like a headache to progress in, than any other endgame event i've tried. Maybe it was just the LS, the people in the LS... i'm not sure but for now Sea won't be one of my focuses.
On a good note though, I got to play PLD on Kirin with KeitaroAeon. They were a little short on PLDs and asked me to come up and tank, which was fun... except that Suzaku seems to really enjoy one shotting me. Whether i'm fighting him as a mini, or as a god I always seem to get killed by the stupid bird (and no, i'm not wearing Bomb Queen Ring). But its all good, as long as we get through the fight in the end I'm not too worried about my deaths. Plus when I was kiting Kirin on our last run, I think I had the longest "kite" time and stayed alive, hehe. I think that time Xean had come as WHM (lol) and thats probably the reason why. He's always on top of things and keeping me healed.


Last thing I can think to write about is that i've decided to get my SMN to lvl 40. A lot of our LS members in TBH are wanting to setup CoP statics, and i'd really like to help out when I can. I know that for some fights, SMN is a great job to have for the BCNMs so I managed to get together some LS members and we lvled in Crawler's Nest. I got my SMN to 38, so only 2 more lvls to go and then it'll be ready.

Busy, busy, busy.

For the last two weeks, i've been doing a lot in the game. So much that I haven't really allowed myself to do a lot else, like updating this blog. <_<

Well to start, TheBrotherhood finally got our last SMN Alianne his Ying Yang Robe. Alianne had gotten the ToD, and for once the spawn time for Shikigami happened to be at a decent time. (His window always seemed to open in the early AM for me and Xean -_-) So on a Saturday morning, our LS gathered out in Ro'Maeve and we camped the NM against a few other groups. Xean ended up getting the claim after Shaolina had spotted the NM on his widescan, and from there we all gathered to help him bring it down. And lucky for Alianne, because the YYR dropped on the first go.


Right after we killed Shiki, Zeo asked for some help on the weaponskill NM for GreatAxe, so those of us who were free went out into The Sanctuary of Zhi'tah and took down the tree. Was a very easy fight, not much of a challenge ; ;


For the rest of the week, me and Xean did a lot of various lvling on different jobs. He wanted to bring his DRK to 37 to use as a subjob on his NIN for sky events, so I helped PL him to 28. As usual, he sported his shiny subligar =P


After he hit lvl 28, I joined up with him on my THF and we took both jobs to 37 within a matter of 3 days. We had quite a bit of luck with our parties after Kazham, always seeming to gain a lvl at least within an hour if not less. And because of this, it freed up a lot of time for us to be able to merit.

Some merit pts we did with our LS members, and others were pickup parties. Though I managed to finally get Protect/Shell V for my WHM as well as devotion, getting those merits seemed tedious at times, especially the last merit pt that we had. We had a BRD who didn't want to pull, which was fine because our THF volunteered to do the job. But it only got worse from there.... our BRD wouldn't finale the mamools we were fighting, wouldn't really help with erasing, wouldn't sleep links (until the party was nearly wiped), wouldn't keep songs up (i'd say I had ballad maybe 60% of the time) and the list goes on. Sometimes I wonder how people manage to get to 75 and not be at least "decent" at what they're suppose to do -_-

And we have also pretty much started a LS static with our WAR and THF. Timwakefield is our PLD, Alianne is our BRD and depending on when available, we have Tiaybara as another THF, Shaoulin as RNG and Falk as WHM. These parties aren't always "super xp" but the atmosphere is pretty relaxing. Whenever there's a death, there's never any yelling or insults being shot back and forth, and its just nice to be able to party with other players that do their job well, and are also geared accordingly. So far we've maned to get our jobs to lvl 69, so hopefully before the end of November we'll be at 75.


I also managed to finally participate in a beseiged for the first time in months. I never seem to catch these, and though i'm not a fan of the event, I do like getting skillups, xp and some imperial standing. I actually enjoyed this last beseiged, mainly because all my enfeebles were landing.... well, that is until I met up with this guy:


At first I thought I might of accidentally changed one of my .dats but after checking, I found out that this guy is one of the NMs. I wasn't able to do a whole lot to him, though every once in a while one of my enfeebles stuck.

As for the endgame activities, I recently joined my friend's sea LS Prowess. I really don't find myself eager to get any of the gear I "could" earn, nor do I find sea all that appealing as far as the farming goes. I know its pretty much the same as Sky, but I just don't really find myself enjoying it a lot. For now i'll stick around and help when I can (lately i've had to leave early for limbus, and on the other farming day I have to do errands in RL) and hope that at least my friend can get a little closer to getting some of the gear he wants. I think i'm mostly attending for that reason, because I just don't feel as interested as I thought I would in earning anything.

Sky has been going really good. I managed to get my Rostrum pumps (thanks KA!!!) and the only item I now need for my PLD/RDM/WHM would be the W.Abjuration legs. Eventually i'll be working towards getting my SAM and WAR some gear, but being that I can't equip anything yet because they aren't even lvl 70+, i'm going to wait.

Then there's Limbus which has seemed to be really good to me lately. Together me and Xean saved up 75 coins to get him his brutal earring, and now he's going to help me get coins to upgrade my PLD feet, and also my loquacious earring. I also have the items to upgrade a RDM and SA AF, but these aren't yet priorities compared to the others ^^;

Last thing that is worth noting.... well actually one of the two last things.... Xean got his sirocco from Kreutzet. We had camped the NM late one night with some LS members, but he never popped. Then Xean got the ToD the next morning, and so the following night we had a bunch of LS members come help him kill the bird, and he went 1/1. Seems his luck has changed, because Carste went 1/6 on that stupid bird ; ;

And so onto the last thing.... me and a few other LS members killed Bune! This is a wyvern NM in Gustav Tunnel, I believe around lvl 80ish. Timwakefield and Carste were with us (we were there to do the another WS NM for Carste) and the first time we ended up wiping because we didn't exactly buff before the fight, but after raising we managed to kill him. Unfortunately no drop.

Chains of Promathia: Complete!

After more than 2 years of playing, I have finally been able to mark one other "to do" off my list. I've finally been able to complete the Chains of Promathia missions! For a lot of people, completing CoP isn't the biggest accomplishment in this game, especially considering that the expansion is a couple of years old if I remember correctly... but for some, like myself... being able to find a group of people that are able to commit themselves to doing the missions with you is a huge obstacle of its own.

I remember when I first started the missions, the Promyvions I was able to get a group of random people needing them. Some of the names that I remember from the original static we had were Dowzer and Tonicfly. It was so long ago that really the only thing I do remember is that on our first promyvion, our party had gotten aggro on the last floor and we didn't have reraise at the time, so we had to HP and start all over again. Dowzer had already completed these, but had offered to help us and had been really nice about waiting. And with everyone's help, me and Xean went 1/1 on all the promyvions.

For a while, we didn't go any further with our missions but instead created a weekly LS CoP Promyvion static, where we would have our LS members sign up and we would create a party to get them their promyvions done. We did these for several months, maybe 5... but eventually me and Xean had to take a break because with all the muling for the gear, and sometimes having to find last minute replacements because some people didn't show up, became too much of a headache. I'm sure now that i'm done with the missions and have had a really long break I might set this up again, but so far our members all seem to be beyond the promyvions >_<

Anyways, a while later one of our LS leaders Sirivalin had decided to make a static within our LS to obtain Sea access. Unfortunately me and Xean didn't sign up in time, so there weren't any open positions for us. However, a while later two of their static members (Suko and Susuki) had decided to take a break from the game (wish they'd come back, miss those two tarus ; ;) which gave me and Xean the opportunity to join in. So Sirivalin, Alianne, Kiersten, and Evanai (Lokelani) helped me and Xean catch up in the missions and for a good couple of months, we would meet up every saturday and progress in CoP.


Along the way there were a few breaks, which everyone was really good about. We all were understanding that RL priorities come first, and so we took a relaxed and slow approach with the missions completing them whenever all 6 of us could meet up.

Soon though, our great static was about to become like most CoP statics... broken. Sirivalin and Evanai had been a couple for about a year (maybe more) and due to some differences, that changed right after we had finished mission 8.0 and received our Sea Access. Because of their breakup, Sirivalin didn't feel the desire to play the game anymore and decided to quit FFXI to pursue other things and also take care of some other things in RL.

When this happened, the 5 of us decided we would continue and that we'd get a friend of ours Anderoc to help with the remainder of the missions. But things never seemed to fall into place, there was some drama that took place in the LS and things just fell apart... one of our members left the LS, and another continued on their own with the missions. It was only Alianne, Xean and myself left and finding 3 people to help with the missions was just too much of a hassle at the time.

So finally, 2 weeks ago I was talking to a friend of mine Gimli who had previously offered to help out with CoP missions (he was only 2 missions ahead of us). I then posted on QCDN hoping to get some more people, and had Evanai request to join up again. So all I needed to do was ask Anderoc, and then everything was a go again. Our plan was to work for 2 consecutive Saturday evenings on the last of the missions, and finally complete CoP.

For once, things didn't go as planned but instead of going badly, they went great. We managed to go from 8.1 - End all in one night. We all met up, and started killing the Aerns on mission 8.2 which I managed to actually prolong because I had forgotten to get one of the cutscenes after killing the NMs, which meant we had to backtrack and fight again >_<

Lucky for me, no one was upset and we killed them easily anyways. We then progressed with 8.2 which we also lucked out on, because there was an alliance of about 10 people also doing the mission where we would have to navigate the Palace of HuXzoi and lead an NPC through. Then we would have to climb these towers inside that corresponded to the races within our group in order to get a key item for the upcoming BCNM. Because we had joined up with the alliance, we were able to get this done pretty fast and efficiently killing mostly everything that aggroed or was in our path. I can't imagine how difficult it would have been to do this mission with only 6 people, but I know it would of taken FOREVER.

Finally when we were ready to do the BCNM for 8.3, I took a chance and asked the other group if we could borrow their BLM because according to all the information online, the fight required an Elemental Seal + Sleepga 2 because we would be fightin 4 Magic pots (BLM and RDM types). Bran, their BLM was more than happy to help us out but we had to wait for their group to go first (And Anderoc offered to sit out for the fight because he had already completed the missions). Their first attempt was a failure, and before they could give it a second try another party out of no where ran up and entered without even trying to make some kind of order of which party could enter first, based on who had been there longer. So after that party failed, we let their group try a second time which again they didn't win. So their group said that we could have a chance to try, but again before we had a chance to enter the BCNM the 3rd group that had already "budged" the first time did it again leaving us to wait outside until they were done. I think we waited about 1.45 hrs before we were finally able to enter the BCNM -_-

So when we zoned in, we did our usual buffs and had everyone take out the two BLM pots first before we would intentionally wipe. After we reraised, we took out the last two RDM pots and got ourselves our win! Considering that the other two parties hadn't been able to win the BCNM with their setup, we were really relieved at getting the 1/1 win. So we decided to stay up for the rest of the night and complete the last BCNM.

The last fight, was a lot of fun. We had a friend Cix come and help out, who gave us some helpful information about the fight seeing as he had already finished CoP. Before we entered though... I HAD to take some pictures! Xean really thinks i'm crazy with my photo taking obsession..... but.... I can't help it! I like looking back on these and remembering things like this.

I also managed to take a few cutscene shots as we entered the BCNM where we would have to fight Promathia in two forms. The first one was relatively easy, took a bit of figuring out for me personally though because at first glance the BCNM looks smaller than it really is. We had Gimli kite Promathia as the rest of us helped take him down while keeping Sel'theus and Prishe alive, who also helped us during the fight. The second form seemed to be even easier, because I remember only getting in two nukes and on my third go, everything froze and I sat there going through the chat log afraid that we had somehow wiped when really we had won, lol. Poor Cix though, he had died at the last second right as Promathia did, so he never got his 2000 xp bonus >_<


After the fight we gave our congrats to everyone and said good night, for me and Xean it was 2am, but for most of the others it was 4am int he morning x_x

And the next day me and Xean went to complete the MANY cutscenes which more or less just told you what happened to all the characters involved in the story. Then there was a final cutscene which I really enjoyed, that you get in Lufaise Meadows. There's a song with vocals playing, and during the entire cutscene you can't see any LS chat at all, so I guess its equivalent to an FMV. There were some nice scenes which I of course took pics of ^^


So finally I went and got myself a Rajas Ring. The day before I had been 100% sure I was going to get the Tamas ring for my RDM and WHM, but after doing some more thinking I figured that the Tamas Ring could be replaced by macroing in other rings, where as the Rajas couldn't. There wasn't really anything similar to the Rajas ring and seeing as my WAR and SAM are nearing 75, I figured it would better for me to pick up the Rajas instead. And so far, i'm loving it!

Well that's pretty much it for this update. The whole experience had some fun moments, and some annoying moments... I remember our Airship fight was the longest, we had used our 2hrs and because we went 1/3, that mission alone took an entire day because we had to wait for our 2hrs to be available. I'm really glad to finally have this done, but the only thing I dislike is that because the missions were so drawn out, and never happened consecutively I really have zero clue as to what the storyline was about. I know bits and pieces but I really don't understand it. Guess i'm going to have to go online and see if anyone has written down the story -_-

And decided to leave you with a few scenic pics I took which I really like. If I have time, I might do something with the full size versions in photoshop.

The Way of the Samurai

Well I finally finished questing all my SAM AF, so I guess now the only thing left is to get the job to 75. Questing the AF was probably the most annoying thing i've experienced in this game so far.... well actually, there's probably worse but still. Getting my AF3 done was the longest out of all the quests. When I completed my AF2 mission, I had to wait a full day (until JP midnight) in order to flag the AF3 mission. Then, when I flagged that mission I had to do a lot of running around... to and from Norg. Finally when I was ready to do the actual fight, I managed to luck out and have a few LS members give me a hand. I usually plan things like this ahead of time, because I hate asking "at the spur of the moment" but my friend Anderoc also needed to redo the quest (I think he had upgraded his AF and wanted to be able to store the NQ set) so I asked in LS half expecting everyone to be busy... but I lucked out and had Arimis, Sabene, Alianne and Clarisse come help.

But that wasn't the end.... nope, after I was finished with the fight, I had to go back to Norg, trade an item (SE loves finding ways to get us to spend our gil in game -_-) and then wait ANOTHER 24 hrs before I would get my AF. Ugh.

Well once I was done getting all my AF, I set out on my little mission to lvl as much as possible. Only that didn't really happen the way I had hoped. I had a lot of commitments in the evenings that prevented me from being able to seek during the peak NA hours.... and a lot of the time I would have to do some errands in RL so with what time I did have left to seek for party, I usually just spent it with my flag up, sitting in my moghouse.

Some parties were great, while others were just horrendous. I remember one party I had, the leader didn't even know what mobs we were suppose to be fighting and kept insisting that we fight crawlers in Aydeewa which were at least 3 lvls above our own. I would tell the leader this, but he didn't listen and it took 2 fights (both taking 7 minutes each) before the party and leader agreed that perhaps the mobs were too high for us -_-

But I did finally manage to get lvl 60 yesterday which I was really happy about. As soon as I hit lvl 59 the day before, I noticed that my dmg was MUCH better than it had been before. My weaponskills could go as high as 700-800, and on average did about 300. My hits alone were better than before, making me quite happy to be DD for once. I reaaaaally can't wait until I have both SAM and WAR at 75, i'd much rather play on these jobs for events than WHM. I never get to go as RDM (which is a pity considering thats where all my merits are) and so maybe if I have a DD available I can start playing that instead.

As for what else i've been up to recently, I decided to help out some LS members get sky again. We've set up a static, and managed to get ZM4 and ZM5 completed in one night. The fights were very easy, and as usual we had some good laughs. I much prefer doing missions and quests with my ls members than with pick up groups, you don't have to worry about people getting lost, getting aggro and then dying. It does happen from time to time, but very rarely. We'll be completing the rest of the missions until they get sky this coming Sunday, which i'm looking forward to. Being apart of this is always fun, because this is one of the "steps" you have to take in the game to progress into endgame and I just really enjoy being there to help along the way.


I also helped out Alianne with his BLU spells recently. He needed a bunch from high lvl mobs in ToAU areas, so we had to get together some other LS members. Carste, Arimis, Sabene and Shaoulin came along to help. For the most part, the spells were learnt pretty quick but we did have a couple that took more work. Some of the mobs required that you damage their weapon/tusk which could ONLY be done by hitting them with a critical hit. Only after that had been done, would the mob use their tp spell that Alianne needed to learn. Why does SE make things so annoying? -_-


As for my endgame activities, i've been doing pretty well recently. My limbus shell has won every zone we've done so far, and within 2 consecutive runs I picked up both PLD AF+1 items, so I went ahead and trading those in the other night so that I can obtain Gallant Surcoat +1. The downside is that i'm only left with 20 Ancient Beastcoins now, so I have to do a lot more in order to get my Loquacious Earring ; ; Oh well, i'll get it eventually, lol.

And last week in Sky I was asked to come as PLD. I got to tank a couple of gods, and NMs which was pretty fun. I've been a bit hesitant to come as PLD because I don't carry any HP gear (I really don't believe in HP gear unless its for Spirits Within) and I haven't actually been able to obtain any of the Koenig or other sky gear for PLD yet, so I never felt "equipped enough". But after tanking Genbu (which I ended up getting KO'ed at) I did manage to get the M. Hands abjuration so that wasn't too bad. Guess I had to make a sacrifice in order to get something from the big ugly turtle, lol.


And I think the funnest NM to tank was Suzaku. He did end up one shotting me and the other PLD, so we had a THF kite him around a bit and right as my unweakened status wore, I was able to get hate back on the bird and we finished him off. We didn't get many gear drops from him, but I believe we did get 3 gil items! All in all, it was a fun night and now all I can hope for is that I might get asked to come as PLD more often, because I am sooooooooo sick of WHM >_<
Oh yeah, and as for Dynamis RidersOfRohan is doing exceptionally well. We've recruited more BLMs and they are definitely the ammo of our LS, lol. I'm glad that we have committed people in the LS now, because we're doing great during our runs and now its only a matter of time before we get our Windurst win and look at heading to Northlands. I'm just glad my "ugh Dynamis" phase is over and that i'm enjoying the event again. Our last run had a few laughs, we had pulled the NM and because we hadn't done San d'Oria in a long time, some of the melee forgot that they weren't suppose to engage the NM and so many of us were charmed. As you can see below, there's the group of us chasing each other. I was the only one who got slept in time, lol. I think we had 5 AF drop from this last run and one Montiont Silverpiece which I won the lot on (lol there's a first for everything).


And last, I figured i'd post a couple of pics that I took during a Beseiged event. I had just zoned in to the city from an xp party that disbanded, when I saw these little frogs hopping around. So of course, out went my Soboro and off I went to slaughter them all. Of course I barely hit them because of my lvl, but it was still fun. I was just lucky I didn't get turned into a frog, I'm pretty sure a few other people did.


Oops, almost forgot... my sky LS did a KS99 run 2 weeks ago. We did the Wyrm KSNM99, which was really fun.... except for the massive deaths.... <_<


Apparently you need a couple of BLMs, and well, apparently we didn't have enough ; ;. We managed to get the wyrm down to 15% but while he was in flight, he had decimated most of our alliance on both attempts that we did. Our second attempt was better, we managed to get him to land after being in flight but I guess people stopped "trying" thinking that the battle had been won at that point, and that cost us the win because he managed to wipe us all again. It was definitely a good practice, but a loss for the two people who had used orbs ; ;