B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word

So, yesterday, after I told Treu about our little bird camp from the night before, he was a wee-bit ticked-off because he actually declined the party invite that I ended up taking. Ok, "wee-bit" is a severe understatement. He was PISSED. But I'm sure he's over it now because he went to that same camp last night and made some incredible progress as well. I guess he's back up to where he should be in his grand plan for acquiring Maat's Cap y the end of the calendar year (or early January).

I actually didn't do a whole lot game-wise last night because Heroes and Prison Break have started up again and I'd rather not be letting my character die because my eyes are glued to the tv for a full hour and not paying attention ot the battle at hand. I also had a ton of other stuff to start taking care of, but I did get a little game time in.

I basically just got in a few more campaign battles, but man, a couple of those battles were pretty exciting. (and no, i'm not being sarcastic for once.) So a bunch of my MNK gear was packed away in storage and I didn't feel like running all the way back to Bastok to pick it up and then run back out to Windy [S], so I just dealt with what gear I could get out of my mog house and locker. I used my O Kote rather than my Cobra Unit Mittens. Happy Egg rather than my Smart Grenade. Nomad's Mantle rather than Amemet Mantle +1. Aikido Koshita rather than Vendor's Slops... and at one point this all seemed to make a HUGE difference, although I still haven't figured out why. Basically, I was taking on 2 Yagudo and there was a RDM that was just standing off to the side helping me out. (The Yags were Templars I think... I have a screenshot of some of the log so I'll post it up here when I get home after work.) The cool part was just seeing me fighting off both of these Yags with a swiftness. It almost looked as if I had Hundred Fists activated because my fists and feet kept flying pretty much non-stop for about 90 seconds (ot at least that's what it seemed like). I was countering EVERYthing they were dishing out to me. The log was just showing "Khrone hits....", "Khrone scores a critical hit...", "Khrone counters...", "1 of Khrones Shadows disappears...". I think they only got in maybe 2 or 3 hits in the whole spree. I was so giddy I almost peed my pants. ^^

I know the RDM was healing me and casting Haste, but I honestly can't remember (and/or didn't see) what else he was doing, but it seemed to make a HUGE difference. (I'm sure the "Counter +2" from the Aikido Koshita helped a bunch too, but I've just never seen it work THAT well before.)

The other battle that was pretty fun was also in West Sarutabaruta [S] where we had a platoon of Salvemixers and a platoon of Faeries join us. (A platoon of Casters were there too, but whateva.) Having 2 full sets of healers made this battle a joke. I immediately jumped in and started attacking, without waiting to make sure others were following me (yeah, typically that means instant-death in campaign battles) and then I'd make sure I kept standing near the faeries. The entire battle, I rarely even had to put my shadows up because I would constantly get bombarded by Cure V's... frequently them resulting in "Khrone recovers 0 HP". ^^ Faeries and Salvemixers rule!

I'm starting to get the hang of the campaign battle limitations. I make sure to keep a close eye on my parser and when I reach the max amount of damage, I head back to the arbiter, get evaluated, get tags again, and jump back into the fray! It's turning out to be a lot nicer now that I know the limits and know that I can get more than just 2k xp for an hour-long campaign battle. By the end of the night, I had enough to spend 3 merit points on another Merit for Crit Hits, which takes that up to 3 now. Woo Hoo! That'll help out on some of my other jobs that I'm leveling, as well as on my WAR actually when I'm going on my promy runs. (If I ever get back to that.) :-p

Wow. Let's do that again!

Puppets at the Information Center: [singing] / Welcome to Duloc / Such a perfect town / Here we have some rules / Let us lay them down / Don't make waves / Stay in line / And we'll get along fine / Duloc is a perfect place / Please keep off of the grass / Shine your shoes / Wipe your... FACE. / Duloc is, Duloc is / Duloc is a perfect... place.

So, last night Ara got invited to a level 37 party out in East Ronfaure [S] and kept harpin on and on about how he got a level after only like 15 minutes, so I decided to see if I could get in on a piece of that action. And what do you know, they said SURE! ^^ We were just killing colibri (and the occassional ladybug) but we were cruisin along at an average of around 13.5k xp per hour. So nice. Oh, so nice.

I went WAR/THF (how fortuitous that I had JUST leveled my THF up to 19 not even a couple hours before!) and got to toy around with Sneak Attack and Weapon Skilling. Kinda fun actually... although it would have been better if my Great Axe was actually skilled up. lol I think I started the evening at around only 65 but ended up around 95. (which is still not capped for a level 40 WAR, but whateva.) I was keeping up with the damage that the WAR/NINs were putting out (and actually slightly more, but barely noticable). The only one really doing more damage than me was our DRK who was just slaughtering everything in his path. There were times when he and I would do a skill chain and the bird would be dead practically before Ara could run away from the party to go find the next bird to pull!

My WAR started off only 54xp into level 37 but I ended up at halfway through 40. And I think I was only out there for and hour and a half or two hours. We definitely gotta remember that place in the future!

Aside from that, this weekend was fairly productive. Treu was outta town again so I got to borrow his laptop to use Screamin as my own personal PL for a couple days. Got my DNC up to 21, THF up to 19 and SCH up to 11 (mainly just so I could get rid of some low-level mage gear). Sold a ton more stuff in the AH. Bought a few more bahuts to contain all this extra crap I'm accumulating while leveling. (can't sell this stuff fast enough!) Finally went and completed WotG Mission 2 (for Windy, you have to kill this War Lynx NM which has a move that instantly takes you down to 5% hp... so it took me like 5 tries to beat this thing, but I eventually solo-ed it) and began Wotg Mission 3 (Cait Sith). Now that I'm on Cait Sith, I can start going after a couple items needed for my next Gobbie Bag quest too! And aside from all of that, of course I did a bunch of Campaign Battles and ranked-up again to Emblem of the Steel Knight $$$.

All-in-all, a VERY successful past few days. I even completed one of my long-term goals by finally getting WAR up to 40. (Which means I probably will never be leveling WAR again.)

I doubt I'll get much done this week because I have too much to do to get ready to go out of town this weekend for a wedding in Boston, but we'll see. I've already started looking into getting my next gobbiebag and also doing Bastok Mission 6-1. I'll probably do a few more Campaign Battles so I can level up again Wednesday or Thursday night. Maybe I'll even try to hit up that same camp again with my 37 NIN with Ara again and try to get Treu to come out to see what this camp is like.

You know when I'm down to my socks, it's time for business, that's why they call them business socks

Well, looking back on my daily logs (every night I log off of FFXI, I keep track of what I accomplished in a google document) it looks like since my last post I have just done a LOT of campaigning. It started off as mainly just to see what they changed to "make it easier to retain your campaign rank", but then it turned into more exploration of Campaign Battles and Campaign Ops.

I completed my first Campaign Op and realized that if I just activate those (Aegis Scream and Smokescreen) while going into a Campaign Battle, it's just an extra little bonus of XP and Allied Notes... so why NOT always do that, right? And, as I just noticed this past Sunday, it's best to do a bunch of them right away on Sunday afternoon while all of them have 5 stars, cuz there's even more of a bonus in there too.

Rankwise, I got back my Copper Emblem of Service and even progressed to Iron Emblem of Service. I'm starting to creep up on 50k Allied Notes so hopefully by the time I get a high enough rank to purchase the Wings level gear (in something like 12 days), I can finally get the Cobra Unit Subligar and have a slightly better leg piece than what I currently have. I guess in some cases, I might want to keep the Vendor's Slops and just macro them in (ie. Chi Bast) but for the most part, these subligar will be better for my MNK.

With all of the XP I've gained in the past so far, I've even added another merit to my Critical Hits. ^^

I've even spent a little time on several other jobs, mainly trying to get some future subjobs out of the way (and also while I can speed through some levels while Treu is out of town and I get to use Screamin as a PL) ^^. THF 13, WHM 20, SCH 8, DNC 16... I'm gettin there. My main goal this past weekend was to get my WHM outta the dunes because it was impossible to find a pt since everyone Level Sync's and PLs their way through. (and if I WAS lucky enough to find a pt for my WHM, it sucked ass and just ended up wasting a charge on my xp-ring.) /cry

oh wellz. Near-future plans: will probably do a little more campaign tonight because I can't stay up late tonight (have to be somewhere by 8am tomorrow). The rest of the week I might just hang around Whitegate looking for people to go on a Carby Mitts run, or to go do my other 2 promies, or go do some assaults, or go kill some avatars, or... well, or whatever. Maybe even look around for another LS to join so I can find a static to get me through my PMs to get me Sea access.

"Eureka" is Greek for "This bath is too hot"

Wow. Almost a full month since my last update... and not really all that much to show for it. ; ;

I slowed down a bit because I was watching as much of the Olympics as possible. Much time was spent just random skilling-up and questing and selling items in the auction house and ... you get the idea.

I went out and got all of my Tuning Fork Key Items to start going after the Prime Avatar fights. So far, I still only have beaten Titan and Garuda (with Treu's help, of course). We got the smack-down layed upon us when we went after Shiva and then... I guess we got sidetracked and just never we back after any other avatars.

After that, I made a bunch of progress on my Summoner, going from 11 up to 23. Even went after a couple NMs for some low-level mage gear. (Hermit's Wand and Pilgrim's Wand) Tried camping Quu Domi again for the Haste-feet and after about 6 or 7 hours, and 3 successful claims... still nada. (This brings my total kills on this guy up to about 10 or so by now and still nothing. Even the other people that manage to get the claim still haven't had any luck either. Are these feet a myth?!? Prolly not. Just sucky drop-rate.)

White Mage has also increased from 11 to 14. Oh, and btw, I hate playing White Mage and I hate the Dunes and I especially hate playing White Mage in the Dunes. I don't even want to think about the amount of hours I've put into partying (and lfp) in the Dunes for my WHM. And I've only gone up 3 levels. (and believe it or not, some of those parties actually had PLs too.) /sigh

So, after being bored trying to level WHM for my SMN, I decided to get back into Campaign now that they have supposedly fixed the requirements for maintaining your rank. So far I've gotten around 6k xp. Even decided to do my first Campaign Op. (Aegis Scream I) Wow. I kinda wish I knew about this a while ago. A few of these Campaign Ops are strictly for Attacking or Defending in Campaign Battles. It's basically just an extra bonus you can get on top of what you get from the Battle. Gotta remember to do this as much as possible now.

Also tried a couple {Level Sync} parties. The first one was with my WHM13 in the Dunes; the rest of the pt consisted of a 75, a 70, a 45, a 40 and another 13. Simply put: it sucked. Our tank was the 70 WAR/NIN... but he didn't realize that being /NIN at that low didn't allow him to use shadows, so I'd have to rest for a minute or two after every 3 or 4 mobs. (Yeah, I was the only healer. No PL. And all of their high level gear apparently sucked after level syncing down to 13.) The other time was with Treu. I took my SMN 21 out with his MNK 39. We were cruisin along nicely in Korroloka Tunnel on Worms, buit as soon as our xp rings wore and we went up a level or two, the xp trailed off practically to nothing. ; ; Oh well. At least this will probably be a good place to come with my SAM 20 in a couple days, either with Hybrid or with True again.

True and I have had a couple discussions on how {Level Sync} isn't really as good as everyone had anticipated. It kinda sucks if you're jumping down large amounts of levels because your gear does NOT stay very proportional. (Brown Belt taken down to level 20 gives you.... a MUCH worse waist piece than Purple Belt. Less STR and no haste. wtf?) Hopefully people will start to realize this and not be so retarded when putting level 75 parties together in the friggin Dunes. Idiots.

No gamin tonight or the rest of this weekend. Have a bachelor party out in Boston to hit up so I won't be online til Sunday night. Unfortunately, HellsBells is doing Dynamis Windurst Sunday night at 8pm... and my flight doesn't even land until around 10:30pm. /cry Maybe I'll try to catch an earlier flight so I can make it home in time to get my Windy clear (and watch the Browns Steelers game). I don't think they're doing another Windy run for at least a month or two, so I REALLY want to be there for this.

oh wellz.
Go Browns!
Go Buckeyes!