A new beginning.

How does a person learn to start all over? I'm not really sure I know the answer... what I do know, is that at times, its unbearable. Sometimes in life, you lose the things that are closest to your heart. Perhaps in the long run its better, but the pain still lingers and knowing how to move on, and start all over is a difficult thing. Seems impossible almost. But then again, maybe thats because the human heart has a hard time letting go...

Anyways, the person who brought me to FFXI and taught me everything I know, has left the game. Because he was the shell holder of TheBrotherhood, we would no longer have anyone to promote future sack holders for the LS... So I went ahead and created a new home.

I spent maybe two days trying to come up with a name, but it was hard to move away from the name that I had known all my FFXI life. TheBrotherhood has had its moments where people have tried very hard to bash the members, more specifically the leaders I guess. But regardless, I will always feel that our LS represented something that wasn't very common to find in the game... a place where good people could come together and help each other enjoy the game. We've always encouraged each other to ask for help, but never to assume that a favor would need to be repaid. Instead, we wanted our members to just help because knowing that you might have made someone else smile and accomplish something they couldn't have done alone, is far more rewarding.

So, after thinking about the kind of members we had... and how many of them had often referred to each other as family, and remembering the times when some members would have your back no matter what... it made me think of my favorite animal, the wolf.

A wolf is a type of animal that lives in packs, and they spend their lifetime with each other. They kind of represent "family" in the animal kingdom, and defend their members against other predators. They're fiercely loyal and protective of their kind, and i've seen these qualities in the members of TheBrotherhood. The members don't hesitate to offer their help to others, and many actually go out of their way to see to it that everyone in the LS is progressing in the game and having fun. We all have our nights where we goof around and joke, and we also have our moments where we confide in each other about things going on in the game, and even in real life. We don't look at each other as "polygonal 3d characters", but rather for the people we know that are behind the screen. We're real people, and we're there for each other.

So taking all that in mind, I called the new LS "SpiritOfTheWolf".

Many of the members are pleased with the name, which i'm really happy about. I was paranoid they might think it sounded lame, but so far I haven't heard anything but positive comments.

And so, now I start the game again alone. Its different, and I guess this is how the rest of the players experience the game. It gets a lot more boring when you're not always with someone to do things with. I can always ask SoTW members to do something with me in game, but its not quite the same... but I guess its just something i'll need to learn to do. Both in game and in real life.

You can never know what to expect, no matter how much you try to plan things out. Life will throw stuff at you, but you gotta hang tough and get through it.

Kinda a corny post this time around, but meh. Hopefully by the next time i'm ready to post i'll have some good updates to make. Been trying to keep myself super busy lately (but i'm definitely not keeping up with the screenshots -_-)

Convenience vs Enjoyment.

Still on my semi-break from the game while Xean is visiting me for the month, but we've managed to login from time to time to participate in some LS events.

Lately i've been able to bring my PLD to a lot of events, which has been really great. I don't get to play the job very much because usually i'm one of the few people in any given event that has a WHM or RDM, and in the end I usually have to bring one of these jobs.

While I definitely do not "enjoy" playing on my WHM, i'm starting to prefer bringing it to endgame activities because i've realized that in comparison to my other jobs (PLD, SAM or WAR) it's relatively cheap. The only expense I really have is Wizard Cookies, and seeing as I can craft those I save a bit of gil. I never bother with MP food unless i'm going to be in a short battle. Speaking of that, I really don't understand why i'm one of the only WHMs in my endgame shells that uses cookies instead of MP+ foods. Whats the point of having a boost in MP if you're only going to have it once? If you're in a long drawn out fight (which is most of the time) you're not going to be able to rest your MP back to full, so its a complete waste to get MP+ food. Instead WHMs should be using cookies so that when they are resting, they're minimizing the time they're healing back the MP so that they can be tossing out more cures. But anyways, getting back on topic...

I'm not sure how to balance things now. Sometimes when I do get the chance to bring any job of mine (which is pretty rare, because i'm one of the few people that come as what is needed rather than what I want.... ) I don't know if I should play a "fun" job (which would be my SAM, PLD or RDM) or play a job that is going to save me gil and make things convenient (being able to teleport and warp is soooo nice). I'm thinking I should play what is more fun, because after all this is a game, and thats the main point of playing it... but there's still a few expensive pieces of gear I have my eyes on, and I sometimes get a bit hesitant to spend gil elsewhere. Meh, I guess it'll all depend on my mood.

So getting to the events part... in Limbus i've managed a few pieces and gotten myself a Warlock's Tabard +1 and a Mynochin Kabuto +1. I have enough coins to upgrade my Warlock's Tights, but I still need the items. And at the moment, our shell is focusing on farming the chips needed to fight Omega and Ultima, so it might be a while before I get lucky with the zones we do.

I just hope that a suggestion I made ends up being approved. Our shell has only allowed recruitment through its associated sky and social shells. If you weren't a member of these two shells, you couldn't be in the Limbus shell. That was a good idea, but unfortunately over time some members have just stopped coming, or being dependable to show for every run. We even had to cancel a run once because we only had 6 people show up.

I really don't understand people that committ to an endgame shell, and then decide to do other things in game when they're suppose to be attending the event. Its one thing to have something in RL and not be able to play, but its another to be logged IN the game and choosing to do something else. Its not hard to understand the simple concept of: People don't show up to event = Less gets accomplished = Progression of shell is halted. How can people expect us to get them Homam/Nashira gear if they're not showing up to the runs to farm the items?

So anyways, i'm just hoping that they'll soon allow recruitment through referrals because I have a few LS friends from TBH that i'd like to invite. I know they would be dependable, and thats exactly what our shell needs in order to progress.

And I guess that brings me to Sky. I feel like i'm almost done with this event, though I do enjoy it enough that I can see myself still being apart of my sky shell even after i've earned the last pieces of gear I need (K.Osode, D.Body, W.Legs) but there's a few things that have been frustrating me lately that the idea of quitting altogether, look tempting.

My issues sometimes get addressed by the leaders, but not fully. Our shell has some good members, people that have been around for months even though they no longer require any gear... but, we have a very large amount of members that like with my Limbus shell, can't be depended on to show up. Right now our typical farming days are Wednesdays and Saturdays, and on average we have 6-8 members that show consistently. I haven't been available 100% this month because Xean's been here, but i've tried to login when I can and when I have, i've noticed how low the participation is. Then I usually do a search for members I know, and lo and behold they're out leveling, meriting or doing something else in game.


Again I say, if people do not show up, the shell can't continue to progress. If you're not interested in doing the events and dedicating yourself, then don't sign up. At times I really wish I had enough knowledge and time to organize a shell myself, because I wouldn't allow members to come and go as they please. If you sign up, and you're logged into the game, you're expected to be there. But I guess the leadership of my shell doesn't really want to act on this, maybe because the shell itself isn't entirely serious about its goals. Maybe its just a shell where friends come and do Sky when they want to, and maybe its taking me close to a year to realize this...

I just hope that things become a little more strict, and that either recruitment starts happening again (we haven't had any new members join for a while) or some changes are made so that the people that are showing dedication and a desire to make the shell progress, are able to get ahead. Guess i'll just have to wait and see.

Well moving onto some other good things... me and Xean were able to help 2 of our LS members get their rank 10 for San d'Oria. We helped Sabene and Alianne with the last few missions, which were relatively easy. Sabene brought along 2 friends as well who gave us a hand.


But that wasn't the end of the San d'Oria missions... lol... Idun, a friend from my personal forum had decided to play and needed help with the dragon fight for 2.3. So Xean, Alianne and myself went out to Giddeus to help him kill the dragon. Me and Xean were gearless, but knowing how much of a wuss this fight was it didn't matter. Xean went as MNK and 2hrd the dragon while Alianne and Idun took out the Hecteye. Meanwhile I sat back and tossed some cures and regens. Yay, go go WHM! <_<


And just last night, me and Xean helped out a few LS members get their rank 6. Originally we had planned to get Soulstar and his wife Drimergirl their rank, but found out that another of our LS members was half way through the magicite missions. So I took him to get the last 2 magicites he needed (Castle O. and Beadeaux) and then he was able to flag 5.1 with the rest of the group.

It took a lot longer than we had expected to get him caught up and get everyone to Fei'Yin because Drimergirl didn't have her Vazhl crystal, but everyone was fine with the wait. SE just loves making everything take long, so that we can never complete the game and they can keep making money -_-. TIME SINK!

We wrapped up the missions around 9pm my time, so everyone had to log for the night because they are all on CST or EST.

And while the CoP static i'm helping with hasn't been able to do any runs for the last 2 weeks, we were still able to get up to 5.3 - Three Paths on our last session. We had completed Promyvion Vazhl, and did pretty well.

I'm a little concerned for the fights ahead because the available jobs we have, aren't ideal. I'm pretty much the only healer/refresher/haster available, and while one of the party members can come BLU and help with this, I'd much prefer a heavier DD and have someone else do the support. But melee jobs seem to be the popular thing, and well.. yeah... i'm the only one at the moment that can cover that area. I'm pretty sure if people come prepared we'll do fine, but I tend to always worry about things that require a lot of effort, gil and time and get antsy when I don't think everyone is 100% onboard. CoP is just one of those things in this game that is hard to laugh off if you mess up. I remember for the biggest fight, the airship fight... my static spent more than 12 hrs because we had to try 3 times and use our 2hrs. It was also a bit expensive too using the items and meds required for the fight. But if I remember correctly, SE made the difficulty easier for the fights so maybe we'll get lucky with that. Hopefully we can continue with the missions next Sunday, i'd like to see more people with Sea access and shiny rings!


And I guess the last thing I can mention is that RoR Dynamis is doing great. This month we've been focusing on getting our new members their wins in the cities. Windurst was a pain in the arse with a few wipes, but we did get the win. And after updating our lotting list today, I noticed that we're really progressing in terms of getting people their gear. Our runs tend to have close to 10 drops now (excluding northlands) and a lot of the gear ends up being free lotted. I guess its only a matter of time before we see more members with 5/5. I'm pretty happy with how well our shell is doing, and can't wait for the day we'll be ready to take on Shadow Lord.


A lot of shells have taken him down, and accomplished a lot, but they also run twice a week. Our shell does half the runs of a typical shell, and i'd say in the last 6 months we've really built ourselves a good group of players that know their stuff.

Oops, and one thing I almost forgot... Alianne is now just 2 spells away from completing his BLU spells. We got him another spell from the Wamouras on the weekend. It was kinda interesting with only 4 people, but we survived and I think we went 1/3 too. It was like a mini-merit pt, really slow xp... but as Falk said, it was better xp than he had experienced in a while...


which reminds me, I keep hearing complaints from friends being in pickup parties and I keep hearing how aweful the xp is... how people don't know how to do their duties in party. Makes me wonder if i'm going to try to stick to a LS static for my BLm and Xean's BRD, or do the pickup thing. I'm thinking we might just stick with our LS static when we hit 40, i'm not too eager to chance having bad parties ><

Be patient, and you will be rewarded!

Haven't been updating in a while because Xean's been spending the month with me, so any time I have where i'm not working or playing FFXI, i've been using to do other things (video games, spending time with the family, watching movies and tv etc). Plus I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed when i'm ready to update because I always have so many pictures to edit in photoshop. >_>

Anyways, as the title of this entry says... those who are patient, usually get rewarded. Well after about a year and half of doing Dynamis with my group RidersOfRohan, I finally managed to obtain 5/5 on my PLD Valor set! One of our DRGs, Ecator, also got his Xarcabard AF making him 5/5 as well. We got a few other pieces in Xarcabard and hopefully once we get the last of our newest members their wins, we can really focus on Northlands and start completing everyone's AF sets.


I've also been playing around with some more .dats recently. I downloaded a bunch and slowly started to replace a few. I really liked this version of the white tiger.


On top of getting my PLD AF finished, I also was able to wrap up Apocolypse Nigh with some friends from a social shell called KeitaroPrime who I know through the sky LS we're in called KeitaroAeon. We went 1/1 on our win, and I was able to get myself an Ethereal Earring which I can now add to my PLD setup.

Here's a few pics of the cutscenes before the actual fight...


So now the only missions I need to work on would be Wings of Goddess. I haven't really done a lot with this expansion, but then again there hasn't been a whole lot added. I've tried out campaign a bit, and while its a good way to get xp when you're seeking at higher lvls, I still can't get myself hooked to doing campaign all day. I was able to get Xean into it for a couple of nights, but the fact that you have to continue doing campaign in order to keep your "rank" is annoying. I think that once you obtain a certain rank, you should be able to keep it... but I guess this is another one of SE's ways of making sure the players continue playing so that they can continue making money -_-

One good thing about the expansion though, was a new NM added in the East Ronfaure [S] area called Skogs Fru. He drops a ring that right now is worth about 300k, which me and Xean tried farming for a couple of days. Unfortunately though we went 0/2, and the fact that there are quite a lot of campers discouraged us from sticking around. It really bites when you wait around for 1-2hrs for the NM to spawn, and then lose claim ><


While I haven't really been playing much for my own character progression this month, I have logged in for LS events and as usual, those have been a success. We did a Soboro Sukehiro run just last week, and went with 8 people which was less people than the last run I did, and we had far less deaths. We did have to sleep the NM usually at about 20% health in order to regain MP, but we never had a wipe and in the end I think we went 2/6 on the great katana. I think the highlight of that day was when Ferque was one shotted and after the battle Timwakefield decided to dance on his body.


Also managed to get 2 of our members their rank 10 for San d'Oria. This week me and Xean have been helping out Alianne and Sabene with their missions, and wrapped them up just today. The fights were all generally easy, and I don't remember having any deaths. I even got to bring out my SAM for most of the missions which was nice, because I always end up having to bring my RDM or WHM to most events ><


Ooooh, and look at this pic. This was from the mission 6.1 where you fight a Cactuar NM in Altepa. I can't remember exactly what move was pulled off to get this effect, but I liked that I timed it well to get this:


Me and Xean also helped Sabene get the avatar Fenrir earlier this month. A few LS members were wanting some of the rewards from the fight, and Sabene wanted to finish getting her avatars in order to start lvling her SMN job. We went 1/3 on the fight, which I think is mainly because we weren't dealing enough dmg at the start of the fight. In the end though, I suggested having our DDs dish out a little more and 2hr at the start, which got us the win.


As for sky stuff, I've been taking a break in the last couple of weeks so I haven't really been able to put a lot of focus in that area (been busy in RL going out with Xean while he's visiting). I'm working on earning enough pts to get a Kirin's Osode next, but at the moment there is quite a few people in the LS with more pts who are also after the item so it'll be a while before I get to try this out on my SAM. It also doesn't help that when we do actually fight Kirin, he's been dropping crap. I think recently we've just gotten gil drops and Kirin's Pole ><


The good thing is that we pretty much can guarantee a Kirin kill once a week, provided enough people show. For the last couple of months, we've been having a tp cannon setup when killing Kirin where everyone pretty much zerg him and use their 2hrs. As great as this is, I miss the old fashioned Kirin kill because it seems too easy and unsatisfying when Kirin dies in under 2 minutes. I actually like bringing my WHM and having to be on top of erasing our PLDs and curing them, or the odd occasion when I get to bring my PLD and kite him. Oh well, whatever makes things easier I guess.

As for Limbus, me and Xean finally saved up enough coins to get me a Brutal Earring. I really like that we both put our coins together and work towards getting one of us an item at a time. Next item we're saving up for will be the BRD earring (can't remember the name) because Xean plans to get his BRD to 75 after his vacation here. So right now we've got about another 50ish coins to save up for.

Oh, and speaking of Limbus goods... on our second Omega run (first run was a failure with a few wipes which led to us running out of time) we got the win AND both me and Xean won a piece of homam gear. I got the legs, and he got the feet for his THF. And just yesterday we did another Omega run and two other members in our shell got themselves a homam piece. Hopefully if we can continue to keep up our numbers, we can keep farming Omega sets and get more people some gear... its a costly fight with the sleeping potions and the 30k expense to enter the fight, but well worth it for the gear in my opinion.

Also recently, a friend of mine from my forum (my forum is actually a general public forum with a special section for our social LS attached) decided to join FFXI. Its nice to finally have someone who is "new" to the game, because teaching the basics is pretty fun. You get to explain to them the roles of different jobs in an experience party setup, how to avoid aggro and the different types of aggro... and of course... you get to help them with missions! I really enjoy the beginning missions you have to do (Kazham keys, rank missions etc) so whenever i've had a chance to login and not do any planned events, i've been helping out Idun. A few of our LS members have also stepped up and helped him out, showing him to the dunes, sending him some beginner gear and so far he seems to be liking the game. The worst thing that can happen is him getting frustrated with some of the annoying aspects of this game (making gil at early levels, getting party invites etc) so i'm just keeping my fingers crossed that the first few weeks will be enjoyable so that he sticks around and gets a job to lvl 75 to really start experiencing some of the better events in this game... like... KSNMs!


Which of course... I have recently discovered are the best way to make gil! Recently a few of us from TBH have kinda made a static and for two weeks in a row we've done Copycat runs which is a pretty interesting KSNM. Basically you fight an ahriman mob, who will charm a party member one by one and possibly use their 2hr. I think I enjoy this fight most because i'm kept pretty busy, sleeping the people that get charmed, waking them when it wears, refreshing everyone, curing everyone, hasting everyone and enfeebling the mob. Plus its just fun to see myself charmed and try to club Timwakefield to death with my staff. =P


Most of the people that are in this KSNM static we've kinda made, are also in my assault static which now runs twice a week. I'm really glad this got off the ground because i'm now at the assault rank: Sergeant. I think I have about 2 or 3 more ranks to go until I can purchase a Perdu Voulge (sp?) with my imperial standing, and i'm getting close to completing my Yigit set. Sometimes the assaults can be a bit draining because they're not really fun, and more of a grind but whenever we can we've been trying on new assaults to rank up faster which so far have been a success. I just dread the day we'll have to do one mission called Lebros Supplies which looks like a pain in the arse... you have to feed a ton load of NPCs (by going back and forth to another PC that will give you food, one piece at a time) all the while kiting/avoiding true sight crawlers. This one mission just seems like a headache and we keep putting it off because it looks like it would be really messy with none of us having tried it before. <_<


And last but not least, we're finally getting more of TBH members through their CoP missions. I've joined a static to help out, and so far all the missions have been a success. We just finished up mission 4.3 and after taking a week break we'll be continueing with 5.3. I'm really anxious to see some of the people in the static finally get their access to Sea. Though doing "Sea" for gear hasn't been something i've enjoyed, Limbus is definitely worth it and I hope that by getting more of our members through CoP more doors will open up to them. Plus they'll all get their shiny new rings!


Well thats it for now...

A good week.

Well i've had about the best week ever, in FFXI. Actually, its more of a "2-week" time frame, but still.

Where to start, well first off... two Dynamis runs back to back, I came out with some more Valor AF! Dynamis-Windurst was a little more messy than usual, and by the end of our run we had more than 10 people who had to leave due to needing sleep/work/other valid reasons. I think we were down to 2 BLMs too, and even had to melee the stones at the end @_@

But within the last 30 minutes of our run, the Valor Leggings dropped!


I was so pysched, i've waited for these for a long time and there was one other person lotting against me and knowing my luck in Dynamis, I figured i'd lose the lot. But for whatever reason, luck was with me that night and I got a 600+ lot which won me my boots! I think the greatest part, is that the entire LS was expressing how happy they were that I got them. I had a bunch of congratulations through /tell after they dropped, and it reminded me of how lucky I am to be with a group of good players and good people. I was very grateful for everyone cheering me on and just really happy to be apart of a friendly dynamis group.

And the luck didn't stop there.... the following week, we did Dynamis Beaucedine, and we were about half way through the run with 0 drops... until... VALOR BREECHES DROPPED!


Our Northlands lotting is a little different, and setup so that those with the most attendance get their gear first (rewarding veterans first) and because i'd been with our shell since day one back when it was SpiftasticAdventures, I had the most attendance and up first for lotting the PLD AF. Again I was pretty much surrounded by everyone cheering me on, and I ended up being so psyched myself that I wasn't entirely paying attention to the debuffs I was casting on our PLDs and ended up getting off the wrong spells for a few seconds. <_<;;;

Next week is Xarcabard, our first run in that zone. I'm excited to try it out, but i've heard so much about the difficulty of the zone that i'm not going to over-estimate our LS. But i'm pretty confident that with some of our main players like our puller Cherron, that we'll do very well. And even if we have some wipes or just a few mistakes, we'll learn and do better the next time.

In other endgame activities, i've FINALLY gotten my Byakko's Haidate!


I've been saving up my points from sky farming to lot on these, because they're one piece of gear that all the melees want and therefore really hard to get. I've actually had enough points to be in the lead to bid on them for the last month, but Byakko wouldn't drop them and on the Byakko before the last, leadership didn't pay close attention to the people lotting and allowed a person who had been considered "inactive" to bid. According to our LS rules, if you're considered inactive you have to attend at least one farming session before being able to bid, and so technically while this player did have more points than me, they still weren't suppose to be able to bid. I was a annoyed at the time because I had thought for sure i'd get the Byakko Haidate that night, and when I saw that I was outbid by another player who shouldn't have been able to bid right away I immediately brought it to the attention of the leads, but for whatever reason they chose not to address it until after we had killed Byakko.... despite that I brought it up to them through /tell BEFORE the fight.

In the end, apologies were made so I left it at that. I didn't mind that the other player had gotten them too much because if they had more points than me, obviously they were deserving. Its just that not everyone follows the rules, and the leadership isn't always aware of the status of its members. I guess sometimes I just like being a perfectionist, and if there are going to be rules in place for me to follow, I expect that they will be followed by everyone else.

But anyways, on our next Byakko pop a week later, the haidate did drop and I won the bid. Of course it cost me like 90% of my points, which is one of the highest bids i've ever seen for the Haidate. Its worth it because now my WAR and SAM don't feel so gimp, but its going to take a while to regain those points that I paid for the haidate so that I can finish the other gear I need to get.

As for missions.... my static had been able to make it up to ToAU44 this month, but we had decided we would wait on the last fight with Alexander to better prepare. Well last weekend, some of the members were asking if we could try it out, and gave some suggestions as to how we could change our setup. We were going to invite 3 people from our LS as well, so that they could get this last mission.... mainly because they had tried more than 10 times to do this fight with other groups and hadn't succeeded.

So we went in as PLD (me), BRD (Alianne), MNK (Timwakefield), WHM (Xean --- Haha!), DRK (Standpoint) and BLM (Carste). Our first run we got Alexander down quite a bit, but we just didn't get in enough power at the very end and he wiped us pretty bad. But on our second go, we made sure to keep me at full health when Alexander did his Omega move at 50%, and I managed to live through it and though we did have a few deaths, we did manage to finally kill him!


Our third run we replaced Timwakefield with one of our static members - Hojima (WAR) and again we had a win! We were on a roll! Finally for our 4th run we had Alianne change to WHM, brought in Elden for BRD and replaced Hojima with Spalko (SAM). This too was a win, but definitely not an easy one.

We were all definitely happy though, 3/4 wins on ToAU44 which seemed to be pretty decent considering 3 of the people we did the fights with had tried many... many.... many times, only to have failure. Of course I think the reason why though, is because it wasn't done with a full LS group, hehe. When our LS comes together, we can definitely pull of some great things.



Also, being that i'm an active member for KeitaroAeon and KeitaroOmega, their social group KeitaroPrime opened an invitation to me and Xean to complete Storms of Fate, which is the mission required just before Apocolypse Nigh. Me and Xean had to get up early on a Sunday morning in order to do this, but it wasn't a problem because like Divine Might, you usually need close to an alliance of 75's to take down the BCNM which isn't the easiest thing to do.


Our fight went really well, except that I died at the start. I was sitting in orange health for about 10 seconds and then took a bit hit sending me face into the dirt. I quickly raised and went near the mages to get unweakened, but the group was doing so good that Bahamut was dying too fast, and finally when he was down to about 15% I just jumped back in unweakened because I didn't want to miss the entire fight ><

And so our run was a success! Thanks to KeitaroPrime for letting us come ^^

What else is on the list... oh yeah, Sabene decided to change her nation to San d'Oria (yay!) and so me and Alianne were helping her get the beginning missions done. We helped her out with the BCNM fight for 2.3 in Giddeus, which was fun. I of course hopped on my MNK and 2hrd the eye and dragon, hehehehe. I'm really going to have to pick up MNK again, that was always a pretty fun job to play.


And a few days later we gathered a few LS members and did the BCNM for mission 5.1 and 5.2 for Sabene. These were a piece of cake with everyone having done them previously, and everyone being lvl 75 for the Shadow Lord fight. Sometimes I kinda wish I had played the game before the lvl cap was raised to 75, so that I could see what a challenge the 5.2 fight use to be for players.


With how busy i've been, I haven't really had much of a chance to lvl up my DNC with Xean's BRD. We did however manage to hit lvl 20, but with his school and my other in game activities we just haven't been able to steal some time for ourselves and lvl. And to make things worse, getting a decent party at the early lvls is always a pain... such a pain in fact, the we ended up duoing lvl 18-20 in the dunes. I don't mind the duoing, but I definitely prefer the xp of a good party much better.


And just a few little updates on my character:

-Put 4 merits into Great Katana
-Unlocked Shikikoyo
-Finished merriting PLD
-Lvled Woodworking to 39
-Lvled Leathercraft to 35


Thats about it for this update.

5th job to 75!

Finally got my WAR to 75 this week, making it my 5th job to 75. I had hoped to ding 75 with Xean's THF, but during our last static session he was trying to setup his new mega computer (which in the end had a defective power supply which means he has to wait another 2 weeks before he can use is new computer) so I ended up getting ahead of him. I had decided to start using my Byakko's GA (thanks KeitaroAeon, was the first drop I got with you guys) to skill up my GA skill which was sitting at 223 (and thanks again to Elden and Xean who helped me skill it up earlier that week). I managed to get it up to 245 on that party, which only lasted maybe 2hrs so hopefully i'll be able to cap it in my next party. All in all, the dmg seems to be much better but I would occasionally get some pretty crappy weaponskills ~ 100-200 dmg -_-. But I did manage to break 1k about 4 times! So I guess it can't be too bad, haha.


And on that same note, Sabene got her WHM to 75 with us. All week we've been doing pretty much "all ls" merit parties trying to get her to 75. It was a lot of fun, and though we didn't always have the best jobs available we still managed to get 7-10k/hr. Its always nice to party with friends, especially because you don't have to worry about having someone who can't perform their party duties.

So the next job i'm planning to lvl will be BLM. I don't really find it too much fun to play in xp parties, but I'm sure i'd enjoy it at 75 when I get to bust out some nukage on NMs. I always liked playing the nuking RDM, but sadly as my job class (and race to a degree) was limited, I could never really come up to par to any BLM. I know that lvling BLM will be tough because ever since ToAU, its not wanted in parties much anymore... BUT! I have a plan.... I'm bringing Xean along on his BRD! So I should be able to get xp pretty decently whether its with a regular party setup or with a mana burn. And I can't wait for Xean to have BRD@75. Knowing that he's the type of player that will do his party duties efficiently (and fast) i'm sure that by the time we're ready to merit at 75, i'll be seeing those nice chains of 200+.

But in the meantime, I gotta get his BRD caught up to my BLM40. So i've decided to lvl DNC up to 40 and use it as a subjob (for those random times when it would be useful). So far I've only managed to get it to 15, so I JUST got my curing waltz which is nice... but I have yet to actually fight something "tough" and see just how good the job really is.


Me and Xean have been duo-ing for most of our dune levels and though the xp isn't that great, we've still managed. We've had a few of those stupid deaths... you know, the kind where you see an NM and you think to yourself "Lets KILL IT!". Then 10 seconds later, you're lying face in the dirt....


Yeah.....

Aaaanyways, one of the most recent things that i've had the pleasure of doing, was an Ohat run for my ls. A few weeks ago, one of our members Elden mentioned needing one and I told him to make a topic on the LS. After that, we had several members show an interest so we did a lot of farming for the hakutaku eyes needed to make a hakutaku cluster which is the pop item for the NM. Finally after everyone got their cluster synthesized thanks to our very own alchemist Tiaybara, we scheduled a run which actually happened last night.

I was a little worried about how successful the run would go because we were very limited on the "help" end. A couple of people who had said they'd help out weren't online, and a couple of others didn't even bother to let us know they had changed their minds and prioritized something else.... but in the end, it didn't matter because we went 6/6! HA!

I was really happy after our first fight. It went soooo smooth, no deaths and barely anyone went beyond yellow HP. We only had 2 WHMs at the start, and while they did run low on MP they still did an excellent job keeping our tanks paralyna'd. And our tanks definitely were on top of things, as well as the stunners. I got to go as RDM/DRK and really enjoyed stunning whenever I could but with all the enfeebles, refreshes and assisting cures I sometimes had a full plate @_@

In the end, I was extremely happy with the members that came out to help. We pulled off something that not many "social" linkshells get together to do, and seeing the reactions of everyone at the very end was worth it.

Congratulations to Elden, Standpoint, Kawanowu, Yourdestiny, Tiaybara and Zeo for your new fugly hats!!! And thanks to Ferque, Trindel, Alianne, Soluslupis, Timwakefield, Sabene and Xean for helping on the run.


Based on how much fun everyone had and the comments at the end of the run, we'll definitely be putting another run together in the future. Hopefully we can even try a few different pop NMs.

Now for the other random things I did this week...

I recently got a /tell from a player who had joined SpiftasticAdventures Dynamis LS a long time ago, and unfortunately had to stop playing and took a long break. She came back to the game, and started a new character Annalise. We ended up talking a little bit, and in the end I offered her some help to get her new character started. She took me up on the offer the next day, and me and Xean went out to help her with the Magicite Mission to get her rank 5. I hadn't done that mission in ages, so it was nice to do again.


Then I also had Anderoc invite me to help camp the rare/ex fuma with him. On my way to Castle O., he ended up claiming the NM and managed to get the drop. So when I got there, we waited for about an hourish and got the second pop. Unfortunately we didn't get the fuma though. Haha, one of these days i'll go camp them seriously, but I'll probably wait until I can find a decent site to download free stream videos so that I have something to do while I wait for the window to open. I really can't stand waiting around for NM windows, sooooooooooo boring -_-


Other than that, KeitaroAeon finally did our Kirin TP Burn. I was asked to bring up Xean's MNK/DRK because my SAM wasn't merited yet. The actual fight itself was neat, and everyone was pretty excited... the only downside to it all, was that the fight was about 2hrs late. We had a lot of people show up late, and we actually ended up making another LS wait on us. Hopefully though our next tp burn Kirin will happen on time because the fight itself is only a few minutes long.


Its just too bad that I died on Xean within the first 30 seconds.... I didn't even get to use his entire "Hundred Fists". ; ; Oh well, lol... there's always next time. It looks like we might try to TP burn Kirin once every week, which would be good considering we've collected a ton load of Kirin pop sets and haven't quite been able to use them.

As for anything else going on in the game, I just finished up ToAU42. The first fight was a bit sloppy and we died in the second room, but when we tried the fight again we made it all the way to the Soulflayer and got the win. Was a bit of a long fight, but pretty fun. I love it when I get to play RDM and enfeeble the mob... and see them work effectively, mwahaha...

Our next fight is going to be against Alexander, but we're going to wait on a friend of ours to help on his BLM (we hope). We're also going to see if we can get Timwakefield to lvl 75 on his PLD so that I can come on RDM to help with refresh and healing because we don't have anyone else with RDM available. I've heard the fight is pretty harsh, and would rather wait for us to be 100% ready with the perfect setup, then waste an evening trying and ending up with only failures. Gawd the game can be such a time sink at times -_-


Last, here's a little pic I picked up while in The Sanctuary of Zhi'tah. My favorite zone in the game. Its a bit dark I think, because the image was made smaller but when you get to see all the details in full size its really nice. I'll have to use this for a future wallpaper or signature.