Chuck Norris Belt - Part II

There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist.

Fafnir
DaFunk
2 mil
I is happier

'nuff said.

Time for toys and time for gear

Bhaflau Remnants
Party 1: Cole (main MNK), Khrone (MNK), Erm (BRD), Ofe (WHM), Rob (SAM), Kuni (RDM)Party 2: GH (THF)
Not in attendance: Liquidblue
Enter Time: Tue 12/22/2009 11:03PM EST
Goal: Boss Run

1st Floor:
West path. Kill Bifrons and move to the next room... after getting to the central room and clearing it, send someone to the porter while everyone else backtracks to kill more mobs for necessary cell drops. Cell drops were pretty much in our favor tonight throughout the entire run.

2nd Floor:
Killed all 4 flans quickly, not caring whether spikes were up or not. Took the NW path. Again, killed almost everything.

3rd Floor:
Rings/Earrings and Ranged cells weren't dropping for us tonight, but all other equipment cells were, so we were happy. Lots of STR and VIT. A few INT and MND. Not much else stat-wise.

4th Floor:
Got up here 55 minutes into the run. (5 minutes faster than last time.)
Killing gears went a lot smoother tonight too, probably because we had more equipment unlocked, but also because we made sure we DoT-ed all gears ASAP and tried to make sure we SCed as much as possible too. Aggroed 1 gear, but killed all of the other 9. So, the boss's Homing Missile was still going to reset hate, but we tried to be prepared for that.

5th Floor:
Had about 20 or 25 minutes left in the run by the time we ported up.
Made sure to pop HP and MP boost items before coming up to the 5th floor. Entered the boss room. {Boost}ed. Buffed. {Chi Blast}ed and the fight was on. This time the MNKs did a much better job at keeping shadows up. Around 60% the BRD 2houred. (Ofe said he was getting 12 MP per tick at one point. awesomeness.) Around 45% (?) the main MNK 2houred, reset timers, then 2houred again. Around 30% the 2nd MNK (me) 2houred. Ran into a bit of badluck though by this point. The boss fired-off a Homing Missile RIGHT before the SAM got in a crit hit, so it kind of locked in hate onto him for a bit and started following him around the room. I lost a lot of my 2hour just trying to chase the thing down. By the time my 2hour wore, I was pretty much dead and and a minute or two later we had run out of time. He only got off 2 (maybe 3?) Homing Missiles.

Final Notes / Lessons Learned:
Readjusting when everyone 2hours worked out really well. Next time we might want to hold off on 2houring a little bit more, but all-in-all we think we did a lot better than previous boss fights.


Next week we will not have Salvage, due to the holidays. Will start up again on January 4th.
We'll try to focus on getting some Assaults done instead this coming Mon and Tues night.

Hopefully it'll only be a few more Campaign battles until I can rank up. After I rank up this time, I can go purchase a Patronus Ring. (Physical Dmg Taken -2% might help out a bit on this boss fight.)

Listen buddy you're not going anywhere

(from The Big Boss)

Bhaflau Remnants
Party 1: Cole (main MNK), Khrone (MNK), Erm (BRD), Ofe (WHM), Rob (SCH?), Kuni (RDM)
Party 2: GH (THF)
Not in attendance: Liquidblue
Enter Time: Mon 12/21/2009 ~11:15PM EST
Goal: Boss Run

1st Floor:
Took our time and prety much cleared out the entire West path (as well as the central areas). We went through and killed all Bifrons (bombs) first, then cleared the final/central room, then backtracked killing more mobs until we got cells that we wanted/needed.

2nd Floor:
Killed all 4 flans quickly, not caring whether spikes were up or not. Pretty sure we ended up taking the NW path (may have been SW though). Again, killed almost everything.

3rd Floor:
Hell, I can't rememeber. Killed lots. Still didn't get the gear drops we were hoping for. (ie. hardly any Feet/Legs dropped for us, but we got tons of Rings/Earrings and Ranged...)

4th Floor:
Gears. Simply put, we F-ed up. We just weren't taking them down quickly enough. 1st one warped out. 2nd one warped out. 3rd we killed. 4th warped out and we just said "screw it" and went on to the boss.

5th Floor:
Everything seemed to go well for a while. MNKs were taking their time, focusing on just keeping shadows up, but as usual, the damn thing kept wiping my shadows with AoE moves AS SOON as I would get them up. Add to the fact that my legs were still locked (therefore no Haidate and therefore less Haste) my timers kinda sucked ass. Boss was hitting us for 400s - 500s. I died at one point, but RRed and got back in there. When Cole went down, the boss started firing off homing missiles and we just declared it a loss.

Final Note:
Things for us MNKs to remember for future runs: we should get as much DMG- gear as possible. (see full list at home, but it was basically Arhat's Body (+1), maybe Head (+1) too... Patronous Ring, Jelly Ring, nyzul feet??...) Might even want to eat a Tav Taco for this boss.
Also want to make sure the RDM had Phalanx II cast on us to reduce the amount of dmg as much as possible.

Let me tell you why I suck

SSR run this past Monday night... but I couldn't go because I lacked the Assault Points. :-(

A few of us went on an Excavation Duty run right before Salvage was scheduled. I thought we were doing great, but didn't fully realize the amount time it takes to get all the way back to the starting point. We were running back to the Rune of Release and were probably about 15 seconds away from getting there... when time ran out. :-P

So, I screwed myself over because I didn't plan on failing an assault right before we went into Salvage. oh wells. At least the group had a good run.

1st floor NM and both 3rd floor NMs were taken out. Unfortunately no good drops, but at least the group got to them and took them out. (yeah, this is me still trying to think positive) :-)

Lesson Learned: make sure I have enough Assault Points at LEAST the day before a run so that I don't miss out again, just in case we fail the assault run right before Salvage.

Don't Suck

"... And if you feel yourself starting to suck, suck less."

Silver Sea Remnants
Set up: Khrone (MNK, main assist), Cole (MNK), Erm (BRD), Ofe (WHM), Toon (RDM), Rob (SAM), Uke (SAM), LB (BLU), GH (THF)
Not in attendance: Kuni
Enter Time: 11/30/2009 10:44PM EST

1st Floor: success
Same run as usual, barrelled-through down the West path, cleared 2 rooms on the way, easily took out the 6 Fomors and jumped straight into fighting the NM. I tried to push through as quickly as possible, quickly moving onto the next room as soon as the previous mob went down. I gotta remember to keep doing that, rather than what I've kinda been doing in the past, which was kill, then run around checking chests or lotting/passing cells, etc... When time is critical, we can worry about lotting cells while already engaged on the next mob, or even while just auto-running down a hallway. I'm getting better though. (at least that's my opinion. lol)

2nd Floor: bypass
Took the SW route this time. Not sure why, but it seemed to confuse some people a bit. There really is no difference in taking portal #3 up (SW) or portal #4 up (SE). Killed just a couple mobs while GH ran to the portal.

3rd Floor: failga and timeout
We warned people about aggroing mobs, but they either didn't know what aggro-ed what, or just flat-out didn't adhere to the warning. The plan was to bypass the South room and hit-up the NM in the East room. We needed to Sneak-up and just avoid aggroing the True-Sight/True-Sound Gears. Unfortunately 2 people got killed with a swiftness, and we never could really figure out why. (Sidenote: Treu actually thinks it may not have been anyone's fault. Apparently Sneak isn't 100% effective, so it may have just been a fluke that someone's Sneak just wasn't effective against one of the mobs.) So, while trying to raise them and getting other mobs out of the way, we ended up wiping entirely. Basically this is what killed out entire run. By the time we got up to the East room and were ready to start fighting, we only have about 15 or 20 minutes left. We still killed a few mobs and farmed up a couple gil items before timing-out.
Lesson learned: Don't just randomly attack mobs in hopes we can save someone quickly. at least in THAT room. We definitely need to set up a plan of attack so we don't keep sacrificing one person in order to raise another.

Final Note: I'm glad I wrote down the entry time on this run, because everyone else forgot to. :) Yay for my addendum note from my previous post!

The Sum of a Whole Lot of Nothing

Last night we completed our 8th Salvage run with our group. (2x Bhaflau, 2x Arrapago, 2x Bhaflau, 2x Silver Sea. yeah, still haven't done Zhayolm yet, but we'll probably be getting to it the week after next.)

Let's start with the positives:
1. I've actually not really had any trouble (yet) in keeping up with my Assault Points in order to keep getting my Remnants Permits. (much thanks to Treu, Screamin and Lamia13)
2. I've gotten a lot more good experience on these runs and many "lessons learned" which I really need to start writing down.
3. almost all of us are on Vent and it's SO much easier to communicate with what's going on, who gets what cells, reminding people to lot/pass/pickup/trade/bazaar cells/items/whatever.
4. I've gotten a few more 15 pieces!!! (ok, there's not really anything special about that, I know. I'm trying to stay positive, damnit! lol)

The negatives:
1. Assault Points - I'm barely hanging on a thread. lol The majority of the nights we do runs, I ONLY have enough points for ONE Permit. (So I'm really thankful we are only doing runs twice a week.)
2. all of our "good experience" has primarily been coming in the form of "oh shit. we definitely gotta remember to NOT do THAT ever again" lol
3. not everyone is on Vent. {/cry} and sometimes things seem to be getting miscommunicated with what the gameplan is, who should be lotting what cells, etc...
4. we still haven't gotten a single 25 or 35 drop yet. ... and that's what REALLY makes me a saaaaaad paaaandaaaaaaa.

I'm not letting anything get me down though. Salvage is rough. I knew that when I was getting in to this. At least this is a HELL of a lot more interesting than just spamming {sky} for 10 months! :-D


So, time to breakdown last night's run of Silver Seas Remnants:
Set up: Khrone (MNK/NIN and main assist), Ofe (MNK/NIN), Cole (SAM/NIN), Greenie (THF/NIN), Kuni (RDM/WHM?), Erm (BRD/WHM), Rob (SCH/RDM?)
Not in attendance: Toon (internet connection was down all evening), LB (out of town for a funeral), Uke (out of town? work?)
NOTE: So, yes. I'm actually kinda happy we have 10 ppl in this group now, since it actually happened that 3 ppl couldn't make it, but we still have enough to do a run without having to {/shout} for some random person to join us.
Enter time: 11/24/2009 10:35pm EST

1st Floor: success
Charge in, fists-a-blazing, heading down the West route. Just cleared one of the side-rooms on the way to the NM room, to pick up some random cells. Ended up grabbing one more mob from another room too cuz cells drops were kinda lame.
Our THF stayed in the West hallway while the rest of the group went to camp on the South end of the room. THF aggroed the mobs and runs back in the direction we came from while the rest of us grab the 2 MNK Fomors (from now on, referred to as "Fornicators" cuz Greenie keeps calling them "Formers" lol). By the time the 2 MNKs were down, the rest of the Fomors had deaggroed and come back to the big room. We then start picking them off 1 at a time. Once all 6 Fomors were dead, we regroup back in the West entrance to the big room, buff up, and then kill the NM (Hammerblow Majanun).
It all ran smoothly this time (as well as last time), so this will definitely be our strategy from now on. Unfortunately, we still didn't get the Usu 35 Head drop.

2nd Floor: wipe, but lessons learned
Immediately ran to the SE path towards Powderkeg Yanadahn NM (always drops Usu 15 Legs, sometimes Morri 35 Legs).
Lesson learned #1: While we knew that these Fomors have a wide low-HP aggro range, it was still wider than we had anticipated. We fought in the hallway in the East entrance to the room, but we still accidentally aggroed more than we could handle. From now on, we need to fight further away from the room in the hallway where it turns North.
Lesson learned #2: These Fomors and Imps (Devilets) do NOT deaggro like they did on the previous floor, so do NOT try to outrun them. They also move back towards their starting locations VERY slowly so if we know we will wipe, try to die closer to the room so they can get out of the way faster so we can raise and continue.
We ended up just getting a few more out of the way then zoning up.

3rd Floor: skipped NM
Circle-around south-west-north-east towards porter #2. Sneak and stick to the wall to bypass the mobs in the South room altogether.
Our THF aggroes everything in the East room and kites back towards where we came from. The only remaining mob in the room will be a stationary Rampart. We killed it in order to open the door to porter #2. Several mobs had returned to the room before we killed the rampart, but we were still successful in killing it and warping up.
We skipped Gyroscopic Gears NM because none of the members present needed anything that it dropped.

4th Floor: failga, lesson learned, strategy still not 100% sure about
Wiki lied to us stating "Archaic Rampart x4 (stationary in the rectangular room)". After the run, I corrected the Wiki entry to state "Archaic Rampart x4 (stationary in the rectangular room, until aggroed)"
Our plan was similar to other floors: have our THF aggro everything in the room and kite it all out and far away from us, while the rest of the group lays the smackdown on the ramparts in the corners. When the ramparts started following him, we panicked a little bit. We managed to grab one or two and were fighting one down in the main room. The other mobs started coming back and I tried running into a corner of the room, bringing the rampart with me... but he decided to draw me back towards him into the middle of the room, where my ass was quickly handed to me by 3 gears.
Our future plan was discussed after we wiped and decided we didn't have enough time to kill all 4 ramparts and the NM: THF will aggro everything in the room and continue to kite everything towards the exit porter, while DDs will try to voke/chiblast/grab-however-we-possibly-can the 4 ramparts and kite them up towards the entrance room (where we came in). Once we get the ramparts up to the entrance, start picking them off one at a time, making sure not to let any of the others run away back to the big room.
This plan sounds reasonable, but we still may run into a few problems with this: (1) all DDs need to make sure we have some form of voke capability (2) we need to worry about the 6 gears that wander the 4th floor hallways and hope we don't run into them on our way back up towards the entrance (3) once at the entrance, hopfully we will just be able to Sleep the other ramparts while focusing on fighting one of them.


We briefly discussed possibly doing Zhayolm Remnants next week, but we decided that since we seem to now have the hang of SSR, we should probably stick to it for next week.

I honestly don't care what zones we do, because we're gonna be doing them ALL a LOT over the next year or two or whatever. I'm game for anything... until we start getting 35s, and then we should try to focus on completing those pieces.

Happy Blackout Wednesday everyone!

Chuck Norris Belt - Part I

Chuck Norris said, "Toy boat," until everybody else's tongue got twisted.

King Behemoth
Excellence
2 mil
I is happy

'nuff said.

I hope no one minds but I have no intention of facing this sober

(quite possibly the only line I can remember from the movie Ice Pirates. Gee, I wonder why? lol)

Finally got another Salvage group! W00t w00t!!! Some members of HellsBells decided to get a Salvage group together. (I'm glad Treu pointed it out to me or I might have missed it on their forums. Thanks bro!) So I applied and was accepted.

Looks like we have about 9 members so it might take a LITTLE longer to get full-Usu than I had initially intended... but then again, with an extra member or two, at least we won't be struggling if someone can't make it on a particular run. Hopefully the extra man-power will actually speed some things up too, like, we can kill stuff faster to get cells on the early floors... but we gotta make sure we don't waste too much time trying to get cells for those extra people if they don't need them. Basically, we can just use the extra help on the early floors and then have them sit out on the later floors. /shrug I dunno. Guess we'll just have to see how it all goes.

I'll clearly be on MNK full-time. Our THF and BRD are probably set too. But the rest of the people have some varied jobs so they can change it up as we see fit for each zone. (Couple have MNK and SAM. Couple have RDM. etc... So they can switch around if they ever get bored I suppose.) I guess we might also be trying some newer strategies than what I'm used to. Our old group pretty much stuck to the party layout of: RDM, WHM, THF, BRD, MNK, MNK, SAM. I guess this group will probably be throwing in a BLU, BLM and/or SCH into the mix, as well as probably having an extra MNK. Again, we'll just have to see how it all pans-out as we go along.

I'm pumped though because from what I've seen/heard, these are all pretty good players. And since we all belong to the same LS already, hopefully no drama will ensue.

In other news... hell, what have I been doing with my gametime since my last post on here? ("not much...." stfu Treu!) Let's see:
1. I finally quit my sky LS. Too much stress and headaches and loss of sleep to deal with just getting some gil. Seriously, I was spending like 16-20 hours a week up there, just to get... what... 500k per week? Totally not worth it. I'll miss my friends from up there though. Hopefully I'll see them around.
2. Started up on SMN burns in the Tunnel. Good times. I've only done a few, but they pretty much always turn out to be good clean runs. I'm almost always helping to pull with Annel, so that gives me a little more to do than just sit around for 45 minutes doing nothing. Makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something.
3. Got some SMN AF gear (weapon and legs), SMN AFv2 (head and legs), Yinyang Robe... of course, I can't really wear any of this stuff yet cuz I'm only at SMN 62... but at least it's nice to know that I can just level-up into this gear and don't need to worry about it later.
4. Finished my last 3 Gobbiebag quests so my inventory has been upped from 65 to 80! (plus Satchel space as well. YUS! More space for me to fill up with... um.... garbage. lol)
5. Blackbelt items..... yeah. Still no luck.

aight. that's it for now. I'm sure I'll be back to more regular posts in the near future, most-likely all Salvage-related.

And now for something completely different... MCS

In regards to Monopoly City Streets which just did a server reset this morning around 3:00AM EST... and in reference to posts on their blog.
http://www.monopolycitystreets.com/
http://blog.monopolycitystreets.com/

==============================================
======== To the MCS Developement Team ========
==============================================
I just wanted to start off by saying that, despite all of the complaints you guys read here on the blog, there are still some of us that will enjoy the game. I think it's a great concept, bringing an old boardgame to life by using REAL city streets from all over the world and allowing people to compete, in real-time, against other people that are ALSO from all over the world. It's free. It's fun. You won't be hearing any complaints from me! :)

The only suggestion I have is to add in some kind of messaging system so that we can communicate with other players. It could probably even just be tied into the current "Alert" system that is set up. I just think it'd be nice to have a way to strike a truce with other people if you get into a Hazard War with them that just gets out of control. lol (Of course, the down-side to having a messaging system is that all of these cheaters/botters/whatever could end up just spamming everyone and making things even worse....)


==============================================
===== To all the whiners and complainers =====
==============================================
Really? You REALLY expect to find a FREE game out there that you can play and then complain that it's not up to your standards? REALLY? And you REALLY think that a piece of software, as complex as I'm sure this is, can be fixed and patched and modified within a couple HOURS of people making complaints and suggestions? Really??

You're probably the kid from down the street that used to come over to play boardgames with me when we were young... we'd laugh, strategize a bit (as much as inexperienced kids can do), have fun... and then as soon as you realize you weren't going to win the whole game, you're the one who "accidentally" kicks the board so no one knows what houses are on what properties... or opens a window or aims a fan at the board so the paper money goes flying everywhere.... Yeah, you're that kid who lacked integrity and a good sportsmanship attitude.

Ya know what? NOT EVERYONE CAN WIN. Every game has winners and losers. Face it: you're not always going to be a winner. (This is a life lesson I'm teaching you here, so I hope you're really listening.) Sometimes life sucks. Deal with it. This is a GAME. If you have problems with the game, then you can either deal with it or you can quit. It's really that simple.

The cool thing about this is that you don't even have to be at the top of any leader board with this game. How about you just play to compete against a group of friends?

And I can't stress that enough: THIS IS A GAME. I don't know about you guys, but I play games to relieve stress. Some of you people seem to have that concept flipped around somehow.

Do you REALLY need electronic validation on a world-wide scale that you are the superior mouse clicker compared to all who oppose you? Perhaps you should seek professional (read: psycological) help.

Really.

==============================================
==============================================

Outta the way, Peck!

I was reading some comments on a slashdot article yesterday and got to thinking how FFXIV might be different from other MMORPGs. Of course, this is entirely speculation because SE still refuses to comment at all on the battle system for FFXIV and won't even really say much about the job and level system. ("We cannot talk about the battle system at this time." "we are trying to implement a lot of new systems that other MMO’s haven’t used in the past." "We will expand the job system to make it fairly different from the one in FFXI." etc....)

I don't know of any RPG system where, the more damage you take, the less effective you are at your job. Like, if you have 1500 HP, and you're currently down around 100 HP, that actually would mean that you are almost dead and probably would feel like crap... so you shouldn't be able to hit mobs as strongly as you normally would hit them at full HP.

Along those lines, when you "level up", why should you get so much more HP upon leveling? You should basically just be able to defend better against weaker mobs, but not realistically "have" more HP. Know what I mean? Then again, to counter that thought, I guess having drastically more HP means you can survive weaker attacks better anyways... so your HP % is actually what remains unaffected (eg. your pain-tolerance threshold is effectively higher.)

I kinda hope that FFXIV really IS different from other MMORPGs in that they honestly have found a different approach to levels/skills.

Why CAN'T a new WHM just sit in town and constantly spam Cures on everyone that walks bye? So much so, that he would effectively be able to gather enough experience/skill in curing that he'd be able to eventually learn a Cure IV spell. Actually going out and killing mobs shouldn't be necessary for a skill like that. Think of it like teaching yourself how to program in various software languages at home, rather than getting real-world/corporate experience writing applications.

I dunno. Just random thoughts I was having yesterday.

Freefalling

I have passed a milestone that not many (in the grand-scheme of things in FFXI) have done: I have created a Linkshell.

Relentless, formerly known as lolFail, has been repearled again and is now known as Freefall.

The LS voted me as the new leader, but all that really means is that I now hold the linkshell. I also get the final say in any executive decisions regarding members, points, rules, etc... but hopefully it will never really have to come down to that. I plan on keeping everything the same as it has been for the past 9 months, because it works. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?)

The past few days have been running relatively smoothly with the much-appericated assistance of Lilmama, Cbassx and Altimaomega, my sack-holders. (uh huh ahuhuh huh. I just said they hold my sack.) Lil still takes care of selling gil items (via Puntaru) and passing out the weekly payouts. Cbass and Alti help organize the various farm and god-kill sessions and point out things that I miss from time to time. (ie. "Dude, we really shouldn't be doing Suzaku without a RNG up here") Alti has also been a champ in getting us new members because we have gotten like 10 new members this week. Unfortunately, we haven't done any extensive background checks on these people before giving them a pearl and allowing them to join us on runs. I have already recieved several /tells about 2 of these new individuals that I "should keep an eye on" due to other people's previous experiences with them.

What has NOT been running smoothly this week is that Kirin has just NOT been cooperating with drops for us. All 3 Kirin's we did this week dropped us a total of 2 Kirin's Poles and 4 gil items. That's it! No N.Body (which we STILL have not seen drop since 4/27/2009). No W.Legs (which, as always in sky shells, is one of the 2 most desired pieces of gear). Not even a stinkin D.Body (which used to fall like rain to us)! Alti actually called a GM after last night's run to ask about this. The GM looked in to it and said that the "drop rates seem to be working fine" and, simply put, "our luck just apprently sucks" and there was nothing he could do about it.

Well, at least waters dropped for us quickly last night. We got up to sky and I think we got our 1st water on the 3rd pot. ^^ So, we popped 1 Olla (from a water we got a few days earlier) and before we could even pop the 2nd Olla 15 minutes later, we had already gotten a 2nd water for the evening! After those, we quickly ran up and took out Zip, which ended up giving us 3 full Genbu popsets.

After taking out those 3 Genbu's, we are now sitting on about 5 or 6 full Kirin popsets... so hopefully now that we have more members showing up, we can hopefully get back to popping Kirin twice per night, like we used to. :-D


On a more personal note, I haven't really felt like I've accomplished much in-game lately since my last post, but at least I'm making SOME progress:
- FINALLY beat CoP 3-5... which was kind of funny. we ended up beating Diabolos on what was supposed to just be a practice run. we hadn't taken any food, or used poison pots. we just wanted to make sure we had our stun order down correctly. next thing we know, he was already down to about 55% hp and we were like "uh... so um... should we just try to kill him NOW? or is this still a practice run?" lol
- Guard Skill is now up to 150
- I got my A Hands last night (which now means after I get my W Legs, I can spend my points on N gear and I'm done with sky!)
- I got my Melee Gaiters from Dynamis - Bastok, which should help out a ton with Guard skillups (guard skill +12)
- I got my Melee Cyclas from Dynamis - Beaucedine, which has been nice for just healing up a bit between fights, whether while resting or running
- I attended Khrone's first Dreamlands which was Dynamis - Buburimu last Wednesday and already got my Melee Gloves -1 (woooooooot!)
- incremented my STR merit up to level 3
- leveled PUP up to 46

... huh. I guess I actually HAVE accomplished quite a bit over the past few weeks. And this is all still while I'm attending sky basically 20 hours per week too. ^^ Go go Tattooface!

The next couple days (4th of July weekend) will probably be spent abusing Screamin as a PL to help me level my guard just a bit more before Treu gets back from vacation.

On This Date in History: 6/13/2008

I just so happened to be wondering yesterday (Friday) afternoon at work "how long have I been participating in {sky}?" So I looked up one of my google docs.

Side-rant
And in case you don't know me, let me just say this: "Worship the Goog". Seriously. Google is awesome. Google has changed the internet drastically in the past several years. If "The Singularity" is ever going to happen, it will spawn from that which is currently known as Google. But I digress...
/Side-rant

So I looked up one of my google docs... of which I have MANY to help me in my trek through FFXI. I have documents that describe my history. I have spreadsheets that track equipment i use on various jobs at various levels and what gear I SHOULD be using. I have spreadsheets that track LS attendance, drops, pop items and points. I have spreadsheets that help determine whether or not LS members qualify for weekly payouts. I have spreadsheets that help us organize Salvage runs. I have documents that list out what my various macros and macro books are. I have spreadsheets for crafting recipies and what levels to do what synths to best save on gil. ... Yeah, I use goggle docs a lot!

I looked in my "FFXI Character History - Khrone" document which I initially created about a month (7/17/2007) after I began playing FFXI (6/14/2007). I used to keep basically a daily detailed log of what I did, but after a certain point, many things in-game become repetitious (ie. sky and dynamis runs, merit parties, campaign battles, etc...) so I stopped logging the random noise and later began to only log the somewhat major happenings of Khrone.

Lol, ok, another sidenote: on 7/17/2007 my first note of the day (so, the first REAL post of this document!) reads "met and got help/gear from Hybridkiller" :-D

Anywho... back the the MAIN point of this post XD: my sky history.

Here's some extracts from my history doc regarding sky (and also a little about my character development to show you how new I was): [text in italics and brackets are notes I just added in here and do not exist in my history doc]

5/19/2008 - applied to Astrumnovae (Dynamis & Sky LS) [my first ever End-Game LS]
5/31/2008 - Completed Zilart Missions 4 - 13
5/31/2008 - Obtained access to Sky
6/13/2008 - participated in my first Sky run; fought and defeated Suzaku and Byakko; no drops for me [this is the item that sparked this post]
6/14/2008 - Progressed to MNK 75 with NIN as SJ [lol I didn't even have a 75 job before my first sky run]
6/14/2008 - broke latent on Knuckles of Trials
6/18/2008 - Maxed-out Hand-to-Hand skill tonight (276)
6/29/2008 - Obtained Key Item: Limit Breaker [means I can now start meriting]
6/30/2008 - Merit: Combat: Hand-to-Hand: Level 1 [my very first Merit. "Mikey's all grows-up!"]

(... then lots of uneventful stuff that I logged, NONE of which was any real progress. Yeah, Astrum sucked the big fat fatty.)

7/13/2008 - completed quest "The Walls of Your Mind" and obtained Asuran Fists weapon skill (with help from Kotahitoa, Fadee, Ruiness and ?F*?) [that last "F" name might have been Fludemon, but I honestly don't remember.]

8/3/2008 - applied to HellsBells Dynamis LS [so apparently Astrumnovae had disbanded by this point, which means no more sky until I find another LS]

...

11/3/2008 - joined lolFail LS (sky linkshell)
11/12/2008 - killing gods in sky tonight with lolFail - obtained Dryadic Abjuration: Body (Shura Togi) [yes, just 9 days after joining, I already got D Body!!! This LS r0x0rz!]
11/13/2008 - bought Cursed Togi for 949,000 gil and obtained Shura Togi
11/24/2008 - killing gods in sky tonight with lolFail - obtained Dryadic Abjuration: Hands (Shura Kote) and Genbu's Shield both by accident [lol, in my n00bness, I must not have passed the items. not like I was going to, or even could, use them anyways]
12/9/2008 - sky - god killing; 10pm - 3am; Suzaku, Sieryu, Genbu x2, Byakko (x1 fail); Byakko x3; Treu and Exion got Haidate; Lux booted for being annoying [lmfao Lux. that's so awesome i actually logged that. and yay Treu for FINALLY getting his first Haidate. yeah... FIRST of TWO haidate. lol]

12/9/2008 - Google Spreadsheet created for tracking LolFail Attendance and Item Drops [yay me! in all honesty, this LS would have died a LONG TIME AGO if it wasn't for this tracking document]

1/22/2009 - Sky - Byakko - Obtained: Byakko's Haidate
3/5/2009 - Sky - Seiryu - Obtained: D Head
3/7/2009 - Zilart Mission 14 - Divine Might - Completed; Obtained Bushinomimi
3/10/2009 - Promyvion - Dem (cleared)
3/10/2009 - Began CoP Chapter 2 [yeah, still not even close to getting sky-warp yet]

But that's about it. Oh! I guess I can add this past Thursday's item:

6/11/2009 - Sky - Kirin - Obtained: Kirin's Osode [yay! my very first Osode!]

Something else I just realized: all of this time and effort I have put into this sky LS... and I have only obtained 4 items. Ick!!! Well, then again, they ARE pretty big items. And I guess I can't really use anything else anyways, since MNK is still my only 75 job. lol

I kind of wish I had logged other somewhat-major happenings like "Sush has finally said he is not coming back to the LS and not giving back the LS gil or items he has", "I am now the sole-person responsible for taking attendance" or "Zal and Shiiga taking a break [or announced they weren't coming back] so Lilmama and I are apparently the de facto leaders of this LS" etc.... But I guess all of that never actually happened on any specific date; it just kind of happened over a few weeks' time.

But anyways...

Happy First-Sky-Event Anniversary to Khrone!!!

wow... and I didn't realize until about 30 minutes after posting this that tomorrow is Khrone's 2nd birthday! Yeah, look up at the top of this post where I said "I began playing FFXI (6/14/2007)". lol

Go go 2-year-old Tattooface!!!

Always do everything you ask of those you command

Well, lately it has finally occurred to me that, no matter how much I deny it or try to ignore it, I am most definitely a commanding leader in Relentless Sky LS. lol

I started off just joining this LS (back when it was called lolFail) just to get a few much-needed pieces for sky gear. I had heard that this LS was spamming sky like madmen, so I'd be able to get it quickly. 9 days after joining, I had already gotten my D Body!

I kept sticking with it, going up to sky for 5 hours a night, 4 nights per week, because I needed Byakko's Haidate and the gil to pay back everyone I had borrowed gil from. After a while, it seemed like the leader (Sush at that time) was getting burned-out from the administration side of running an LS, so I did what I could to help him out. I began taking attendance every night. I kept track of what items dropped from what gods. What items were sold, and to whom. What items could be sold on the AH to go towards the weekly payouts.

Oh yeah, weekly payouts back then were also given to anyone who attended sky and obtained ... what was it... 15 points? Basically, you needed to be up there for 2 full nights. (The rule was later adjusted because too many people were abusing the system. They'd show up for a Kirin burn, which might take an hour out of their evening, but they'd still obtain 5 points.)

Well, long-story short ("too late"), I've still been going up to sky basically every single night, for the entire night. My attendance and experience have put me in a position of leadership. A position I did not want to take up, but it has none-the-less been forced-upon me. If I quit, I have no doubts the whole LS will crumble within a week or two, because no one else is up there as often as I am and no one seems to have the patience and diligence I have to take meticulous notes and attendance.

I actually WANT to quit this LS sometime soon (it takes up too much of my time... and it's SUMMER damnit!), but before I do that, I want to make sure someone can take up the reigns of what I have been doing all this time. I really don't want the bad karma of being the reason for the destruction of what once was a great sky LS. Shiiga recently gave me admin access to the DKP, so now I am taking attendance, keeping track of drops, and keeping track of points. Lilmama keeps track of who has what pop items, selling gil items on the AH, and contacting/collecting from sky-gear buyers.

ok, now I'm just blabbering on about nothing... /sigh
I need sleep.

This will be continued in a later post...

That which does not kill us makes us stronger

My current guard skill-up gear setup:

/equip main "Black Adargas"
/equip sub
/equip range
/equip ammo "Tiphia Sting"
/equip head "Genbu's Kabuto"
/equip neck "Guarding Torque"
/equip ear1 "Coral Earring"
/equip ear2 "Coral Earring"
/equip body "Temple Cyclas"
/equip hands "Ochimusha Kote"
/equip ring1 "Woodsman Ring"
/equip ring2
/equip back
/equip waist "Tilt Belt"
/equip legs "Temple Hose"
/equip feet "Suzaku's Sune-Ate"

Not much more time has been spent on leveling guard, but I have finally been buying some more equipment that should help me out in my quest to cap this thing out. I tried spending some time up in Wojaom Woodlands as MNK/DNC; even though I got some experience and plenty of items to sell on the AH or to NPCs, skill-ups were practically non-existent.

I'm still only sitting around 136 though. /sigh

Well, at least with the XP I earned, I got a 3rd Merit point and decided to unlock Invigorate. Turned out to be pretty nice for when I'm soloing too. My next merits will probably be dumped into Penance (4 and 5 points for the next upgrades) unless I still can't find a Salvage LS to join... in which case, I will just start filling up STR (9 points for the next upgrade).

As for my blackbelt items... I have been to all 3 camps several times over the past few nights/mornings and still haven't had any luck. I haven't seen Excellence claim an HNM yet. /cry And worse yet, apparently there's some guy ("Hanzo"?) who's been telling every HNM LS out there that he's willing to pay 5 million for his blackbelt items. So clearly it's gonna be a little longer til I can get mine. /sigh

Be vigilant...

... guard your mind against negative thoughts." - Buddha

This weekend was a Guard skill-up extravaganza! I'm really trying to keep a positive mind on skilling-up my guard because I KNOW it will be beneficial in the long-run for me. Especially during Salvage runs.

I started off by spending some time getting my PUP from 40 up to 42 and constantly seeing my Guard skill-up as I went along. Obviously I can only do this while tanking, which meant I had to solo again, but it was fun. I even started toying around with various heads and bodies on my automaton and finally started skilling up Lobo's ranged skill... although I doubt I will ever really cap this because it just doesn't seem all that useful. He'll probably always just be my back-up mage while I solo. But once my Guard hit about 94 (?) I decided to head back to SSG as MNK/RDM and see if my Guard started proc-ing more. And whaddayaknow?! It DID! :-D

Well, actually, I spent some time running around to various zones and trying different mobs before heading back down to SSG. (Davoi, etc...) Lower-level mobs (my guard skill / 3 = mob level) will get a better guard proc rate. Unfortunately, mobs in the 30's basically cannot hit me due to my high Evasion, and when they COULD get a swing through, I would counter it basically every time.

So I decided to head back down to SSG and use the same tactics I had used before. Now that I had GREATLY increased my Enhancing magic skill, hopefully my Phalanx and Stoneskin would be a little more effective too. (and yes, they were.) I think a set of Sahagins (typically 3 Marsh/MNKs at a time; I'd get a Bog/DRG every now-and-then when I couldn't find 3 MNKs, but the DRGs tend to hit me for a lot more, so I'd always end up deliberately killing them before my counters took them out.) would typically last around 20 - 30 minutes. In general, I got about 1.0 skillups per hour. There was a stretch where I was getting about 2.0 skillups per hour, but I decided to log off at that time because someone was running through killing everything in site, which meant I couldn't "target something in the distance" and make my mobs last longer.

My Guard skill is currently sitting at 135, which makes me feel pretty good. I'm still getting the majority of my skillups anywhere from 0.3 to 0.5 so I figure I can stick around SSG to do this for still quite a while before needing to find somewhere else to go.

Since this skillup procedure is pretty boring (I could engage and then walk away from my computer for 5 minutes at a time without the slightest worry of dying) I ended up watching a lot of tv (SciFi had a Land of the Lost (from the mid 1970's) marathon) and doing more reading up on some randomness. While surfing around, I found someone else's tips on how they got their Guard skill capped.
Funbard's Guarding Gear Sets: http://funbard.livejournal.com/20898.html
Funbard's Guard Camp Summary: http://funbard.livejournal.com/16613.html#cutid1

Unfortunately for me, his camps don't start until around guard level 160, but I guess I can start looking at those once I level up a little more. Hopefully I'll be up around that range by the end of this coming weekend.


In other news:
Our sky LS has been fairly uneventful due to the holiday weekend, but hopefully people will be back online and up in sky tonight.

Nomar gave the bank that he was holding to Lilmama and she started handing out payments. She also started giving out payments frmo last week's runs too. It was only about a 3.4 million gil bank, but only 6 of us asked for it, so we're still getting a nice payout.

Shiiga mentioned that she and Zal are finally moved in together and will probably be back online by this coming weekend.

Hopefully with all of this good news, people will begin to start spamming sky again and we can start using up all of these Kirin sets that we are sitting on.

In closing: life is good. I'm still leveling and therefore making slow progress on the AH rankings. (Yeah Pimpsterer, I'm ahead of you again! haha!) My guard skill-up is proceeding as planned (although, a little slower than I had initially expected). The weather is nice. The Cavs have been playing well. And I am in good health. Game on!

I scream, You scream...

We all scream for icecream!
er... I mean for Screamineagle!

That's right. Screamin finally FINALLY got his Byakko's Haidate last night! Woo hoo!!! Which, unfortunately, means he will probably no longer be joining us up there anymore, which *gulp* means Treu is more-than-likely done with sky too. I suppose he may stick around for another week or so just for payouts because we still are sitting on a couple Kirin sets, but then I'm sure he's out like a fat kid in dodgeball.

His BRD and SAM shall definitely be missed for Kirin burns, as will his RDM for farming, but he deserves a break. 4 years of sky tends to cause mental issues. (And I know this after only spamming sky for ... what... 8 months?)


Also, three cheers for Lastok! Bastok took over Sarutabaruta! So that was one more Supply Run Mission (outpost) that I can cross off my list. Only Ronfaure and Tavnazian Archipelago to go!


As for personal progress: I did end up putting that next merit into STR, taking it up to 2/5.

My whole "skill-up guarding" plan though... well, long-story short, it didn't work out like I had expected it to.

I went out to Caedarva Mire to kill some Chigoes. I MNK/RDM and throw up Stoneskin... which lasts all of 4 - 8 hits and it's gone. (not NEARLY as effective as I thought it was supposed to be.) And even worse, I would counter them every now and then and take out a third of their HP. (and this is me fighting barefisted too!) 6 Chigoes later, I decide to take this elsewhere because I had only gotten a single 0.1 increase to my Guard skill.

Next stop was SSG beyond the Mythril Gate to fight some MNK Sahagins. These worked out alright at first... until 2 respawned right behind me and took me out before I even realized what was going on. Again, Stoneskin basically made no difference. Hell, even Phalanx didn't seem to do anything. I swear, with Phalanx up, they were hitting me for 25-28. When Phalanx wore, they were hitting me for 22-25. WTF Mate? So I die. Had to bring Screamin down to Raise me. Then I start using him as a PL. Step 1: I attack 1 BRD Sahagin and run him around to aggro 2-4 MNK Sahagins. Step 2: Take out that initial BRD and the target something in the distance and, while still staying engaged, face the MNKs so that the only hits they're actually taking is from my counters. Step 3: Screamin cure-bombs me... and never takes hate because I haven't touched the other mobs. ^^ Well, after probably around 2 hours, I had still only gotten a single 0.3 skill-up. /sigh

So I give up and decide to get back to PUP. Yes, PUP. Fought a few randoms in Korroloka Tunnel and headed out to Altepa to kill Spiders. It actually went fairly nicely. With my h2h capped and fully-merited, I really didn't have any issues with my accuracy at all. And my automoton (Lobo) is pretty smart in knowing when to cast Silence and DoTs and nukes.... Having a PL helped because I was just soloing, but I ended up getting all the way up to 38 this past weekend. The Field Manuals helped a ton too. Att+ Food. Regen. Niceness. ^^

Pretty sure I'll be getting the White Turban once I hit 40 because I can then use Lobo as a backup healer in any party I join. ... OR I could go for the Black Turban and use him as a nuker, but then there's always the problem of him taking hate and dying on me. Yeah, probably WHM, but still not 100% sure. I also decided to get my RNG automoton head and body... but I don't even know why considering I will more-than-likely NEVER use them. Whateva.

Using Maneuvers more and more is definitely helping me understand how they work and how you can use them to control what Lobo does next. (Thunder to cast more often and for magic attack bonus. Water to reduce hate. Light to regen himself and to cure me. Dark to refresh himself. Earth for stoneskin. And obviously all of this depends on the attachments you have active too.)

Oh, and btw, while leveling PUP, my Guard skill increased about 3 full points. This might just HAVE to be the way for me to go... at least until I get my Guard up to around 100 or 120 and then start trying again on my MNK.

Another note: It definitely seems like a Full Moon helps with skill-ups. Again, it could be a coincidence, but whenever I'd see multiple skill-ups within a minute of each other, I checked the time and yeah... Full Moon. And just because I was curious, I did 3 quick little Leatherwork synths... and 2 of them gave me a 0.1 skillup. I'm about 95% convinced a Full Moon helps skillups now. But what do I know. I'm just a n00b. lol

THF @24. Almost have flee!

Aight. Enough for now. Back to work. haha

I bathe in their blood

And no, I don't look red from leveling my RDM lately...

[ For some quick/somewhat-disturbing humor: http://www.explosm.net/comics/1636/ ]

I think I'm finally done leveling my Red Mage!
I FINALLY hit 34 last night (I just haven't had much time to spend on getting RDM from 20 up to 34 lately), which means I can now cast Stoneskin and proceed with increasing my Guard skill. (MNK/RDM ftw?)

Well... I might not be COMPLETELY done with RDM just yet... because I think there was SOME reason for me to possibly want to get it up to 35. (Fast Cast II?? whatev.) I'll eventually be taking it up to 75. Eventually. It still won't be for a long long time though. Not til after SAM and SMN are there first.

{sky} has been keeping me busy lately (as always) but at least I'm finding time to spend on other important things... like CoP missions! I've already made it up to the 3-5 fight, which we will hopefully be doing tonight, assuming Sana and Nomar are online at a decent hour and aren't too busy. Otherwise I'll be heading off to {Dynamis - San d'Oria} with HellsBells and then off to start using /RDM.

I can only imagine that progressing through PMs will be easier and easier as we go along because I've had people constantly asking to join our group when we catch up to them. (someone is at 5-1, someone else at 5-2, someone else at 5-3, etc...) Oh goodie! Maybe I'll actually get to complete this!

The AH site shows that I have been making some progress in achievement points... and yet I'm getting ranked lower and lower each day on our server. WTF Mate? I still can never tell if this means that more people are signing up on the AH site or if more people are just progressing faster than I have been. /cry

Whatev. I'm happy with the progress I've made lately. :)

Other random progress I've made over the past few weeks include finally capping-off my Counter merits (5/5) and leveling PUP up to 30. And yes, soloing PUP is hella easier than trying to solo RDM... and a lot more {fun}! Those lil automatons are pretty smart, knowing when to cast Silence or finish off a skillchain, etc.... I also have another 6 merit points to dump into something tonight... which will more-than-likely be STR, taking it up to 2/5. I COULD get 1 merit in 2 other MNK Group 2 areas... but I figure STR would probably be a better choice for me at this point because it can still help out with other jobs (ie. SAM) and I don't really need those other Group 2 merits. They'd be nice to have to better my MNK and might possibly be a little helpful in Salvage if we ever start back up again... but I think I'm gonna stick with STR and THEN maybe into those other areas, because my next STR will cost me 9 merit points. ugh!

Treu and I have also been discussing possibly starting to get a gruop together for Salvage runs again. And after hearing last night that Lilmama now has all 3 items for her Marduk Feet (still needs crafting items) I think I'm really wanting to start up Salvage again. I crave Usu so badly, it hurts sometimes. /cry

We have a few people in mind that we are going to ask to join us. Some we really would like to have; some we will take just because we know they are good people that have jobs that we'd need and they wouldn't try to screw us over (ie. get their gear and then split). We're aiming to maybe start up our runs again in a couple weeks, but obviously that depends on everyone's schedule.

We'll see. We'll see.

I served five years in the Republican Guard

So, I've read (multiple times) what Genome has written on the subject. I've also seen ElmerThePointy's YouTube video. All really good stuff and I'd be COMPLETELY lost without it. I'm pretty sure I understand what needs to be done here:
(1) aim for mobs at a level around ({your guard skill} / 3)
(2) wear as much EVA- and Guard+ gear as possible
There's not much more to it than that. Right?

So at skill level 82 I should be aiming for mob level 27 or so. (82/3 = 27.333...)

Well, after spending the majority of this weekend trying to level my Guard skill, I think I have come to the conclusion that either (a) SE has changed something regarding guard skill-up with this latest update a week or two ago [HIGHLY doubtful] or (b) I am screwed because I waited too long to level my Guarding skill.

My situation: I'm a 75 MNK. My Guarding skill is REALLY low (85). My Evasion skill is capped (256). My Counter Rate is fully meritted (5/5).

My gear: I'm wearing very little gear and no weapon (so the mobs last longer). Total of EVA-19 and Guard+10. (Something weird to note: the gear makes my combat skills now say Guarding=95 and Evasion=256. Why would the gear make a modification to one skill but not the other?)

My camps/attempts:
(1) Fort Karugo-Narugo [S] fighting Lycopodiums (Mandragoras lvl 22-25): 45 minutes and 0 skill-ups. I figured they were a little too low leveled so I moved on.
(2) Sauromugue Champaign [S] fighting Lycopodiums (Mandragoras lvl 28-32): over 90 minutes and 0 skill-ups. I figured maybe with the guard+ gear I should aim for higher levels still, but according to your posts it's only the base-skill level that makes a difference.
(3) a few other areas were attempted with various mobs at an appropriate level (jungle, etc...) but all of those were completely unsuccessful as well.
(4) Bibiki Bay fighting Alraunes (Mandragoras lvl 37-40): 6 hours and a total of only about 2.5 skill-ups. Skill-ups were 0.1s, 0.2s and 0.3s. (Which seems like just the perfect range for me to be getting them frequently, no?) I also got 0.8 of it all in a span of about 3 minutes. (Very beginning of 2/29/1071, Watersday, Full Moon (100%)... if that makes any kind of difference to anyone researching when it's best to get skill-ups.) The rest of the skill-ups were spread out and probably 45-60 minutes in between. /sigh

My method: (Same as I've seen/read.) I'd pull about 8-10 mandys and run near a wall or onto the pier to get them to line-up properly, then aim myself at (a) something in the distance (which just got annoying because I'd have to reposition frequently if the mob moved) or (b) one of the mandys that was slightly off to the side, then angle myself so I'm facing the rest of the group, but the targeted one was just ever-so-slightly "unable to be seen" so that I was engaged but not actively killing anything. I could get a group to last around 30-40 minutes until they would start dying off from my counters or until I started getting worried about my health from lack of TP (I was /DNC for Curing Waltz II).

So... Am I doing something wrong? Or am I just screwed because my other defensive skills/abilities are just too high? (Guard can't proc unless EVA and counter are bypassed.) They were missing a LOT but I'm pretty sure Guard was procing fairly often; I wouldn't necessarily see the animation, but they would consistently hit me for 10-22... and then sometimes (25% of the time perhaps?) they would only hit me for 5.

Am I just going to have to go level PUP and slowly build my guard on that job? (because my EVA will be capped MUCH lower) Or maybe just go find a character to borrow to {Level Sync} myself down to force my EVA down too??

I'm kiiiiiiinda getting frustrated here. Especially when I read that other people are getting 22 levels in a matter of 3 hours. /sigh

Suggestions: {Yes, please.}

Rehab is for Quitters

Ara (who's blog I just realized late last week, I can finally view again) has finally stated that he is definitely not going to be coming back to FFXI.

Then, purely coincidentally I might add, Hybrid tells me Friday night (heh now that I think about it, it was probably only like 5 or 6 hours after I found out about Ara) that he will most likely be quitting FFXI for good also.

Ara's reasons were somewhere around the lines of: (1) having too much fun in other online games and (2) not wanting to pay for an FFXI account (and paying-up on an outstanding balance or something too).

Hybrid's reasons: (1) woman issues (in order to spend more time with the gf, he's gotta quit the game. it just takes up too much of his RL time.) and (2) monetary issues (it's tough to hold down a full-time job and make rent, car payments, school payments, buy groceries, keep the lil' lady showered in gifts, etc... and still try to live it up as a P.I.M.P.)

So, my Friday night was kind of a downer.

I was actually going to purchase the security token and the ACP expansion, but now that 2 people that I can really trust in-game are definitely not coming back, I'm hesitant. Plus the fact that Treu's chickie will be graduating in a couple months and will probably also try to drag him away from the game... I just may not have anyone left! ; ;

Well, not really. I still have good times with all of my {sky} buds. (ie. gettin constantly kicked in the shins by Nomar... randomly screaming "Hooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"... giving nicknames to people...)

But I'll tell ya, once Treu quits the game, life at work will get uber boring. I mean, what the hell are we gonna surf for and talk about all day at work from then on?!? D:

Well, on the bright-side: Disdain is finally making appearances online more and more frequently now. And he's still got 2 friends he's bringing into the game. So I guess I have that to look forward to. :)

Only 2 more weeks until I can finally get my Monday and Wednesday early-evenings back again, and thus can get like 6-8 more hours of game-time (or sleep-time!) per week. :)

Nothing's right, I'm torn

ARGH!

Not so much the ARGH! as in "the Castle of Aaaaagh..."

You know, the kind of ARGH! that Charlie Brown yelps out when Lucy pulls away the football right when the ol' cueball is about to kick it.

Treu just pointed out to me the news about the new Square Enix Security Token.

Good news: Account Security - You will never have to worry about your account being hacked again (well, probably. There's always the chance that someone figures out what the root/random-key is to your account and can still get in.)

Bad news: Account Security - You will never be able to share your account with anyone. Like, when Treu is out of town, I won't be able to abuse him as my own personal PL. (heh, stop laughing. I know my PL skills suck. :-P) Or, like he already asked me to do for him this coming Sunday, I won't be able to get him into Dynamis - Buburimu (correction: Dynamis - Valkurm) (while he's at his v-ball game) so he can get his final Dynamis-clear to get access to Dynamis - Tavnazia. What if I'm still at work and the LS I asked to get my black belt items is killing Adamantois RIGHT NOW! ... Too bad. I'm at work. Treu won't have my password to log onto my char and run me out there to pick up my goods.

Good news: Inventory space - Inventory space OUT the WAZOO!!!

Bad news: You need this extra inventory space in REAL LIFE cuz you're now gonna have to carry this keychain around with you everywhere. No more spur-of-the-moment stopping-by Treu's house and gaming on his PS2, unless I take this thing to work with me every day.

I guess we could always just make sure we have our cellphones with us and then just TEXT my code to Treu when he asks. /shrug Assuming the text messages can be typed, sent and received quickly.

I'm torn. Don't know what to do. Inventory space would be godly... but at what cost?! (and i'm not referring to the $10 cost; the same price as an expansion pack.)

It has been discussed that we may just purchase the keychain for our primary characters (Khrone, Treubond, etc...), but NOT for our group-characters (Screamineagle, Annel, etc...). We'll see. We'll see.

A Very Merry Unbirthday to Me!

Today, March 12th, is my first unbirthday after obtaining the ripe old age of... um... 25. Yeah. 25. Again. For like the 8th time.

It turns out I really didn't take as much of a break from FFXI as I had anticipated. But in the past week or two, I have actually gotten quite a bit accomplished!

Our good buddy Hybrid has recently discovered, from the character Finalfantasyxi, the Buburimu Astral Flow burn camp and has gone completely, if you pardon the expression, ape-shit crazy over there. He must have gotten something like 12 levels in 2 days with SMN burn parties. It's nutso! So, of course, I want a piece of this action too, so I had to go unlock my COR (which didn't take very long at all). Well, in order for them to let me into the party, they basically said I needed to bring a job that they could all Level Sync down to... so, basically, I'm not really making any progress on the jobs I really want to level, but at least I got to experience the camp a few times.

So, the trick works like this:
(1) You have a PL aggro basically half the mobs in Buburimu. In our case, I was running Screamin as PLD75/RDM37 (for max defense, phalanx, etc...). I even had to take off his W Legs because I was outrunning and de-aggro-ing [is that a word?!] basically everything. The party just sits down near the entrance of Mhaura and waits for 10 or 15 minutes while the PL pulls everything. The route I typically took was just heading southeast and then zig-zag my way north up the coastline until I got about 2/3rds of the way to the top of the map. Then I'd start zig-zagging my way back southwest towards the camp. Pulling all of the mobs is actually pretty simple; you just need to provoke 1 of each type of mob that links (birds, goblins, dhalmels, crawlers, etc...) at the beginning and then everything else will follow. The only real tough part is just making sure you don't outrun all of the mobs and deaggro any.

(2) Once you have the desired number of mobs (preferably 40-50) just run back to the camp and stand still while all of the mobs start putting the smack-down on the PL. Now, you need to make sure your party has at 3 SMNs and are level synched down to 15. Once everyone is ready, the SMNs {Astral Flow} and {Blood Pact: Ward} twice. This should basically take out all of the mobs and give everyone in the party a boat-load of xp. It typically jumps your level 15 character up to level 18. NOTE: If noone in the party has a job at level 15, you can still Level Sync down to say level 13 and still use the same tactic, but just pull a smaller batch of mobs.

(3) Now that everyone has gotten their xp, and 3 of your party members have used their 2-hour, head into Mhaura and have the other 3 members job-change to COR. If the CORs use their 2-hour and hit a 5 or a 6, all of your party members' timers are reset, including their 2-hour timers! Huzzah!

(4) Have someone job-change to another level 15 job.

(5) Rinse and repeat.

Using this technique I progressed to BLM 17, SCH 17, PUP 18, THF 23 and SMN 25. I also leveled my BRD up to 12 in the hopes of hitting up this camp in the near future. All-in-all, it's a quick and easy way for people to get xp... but sometimes the amount of time it takes just sitting around waiting for the pull or the time it takes to get a COR to get lucky and reset your 2-hours just takes a little longer than I would like. You probably still end up only making no more than 10k xp per hour so you might just be better off in a normal camp. Oh wait, that means getting a party together in the Dunes... nevermind.

Besides that burn camp, I also hit up the East Ronfaure [S] bird camp and got my SAM up to 49... which makes me a happy panda.

Mog Locker - now expanded to 80!

Gobbie Bag - quest VII completed, so my inventory is now at 65!

ToAU Missions - progressed up to Puppet In Peril.

Zilart Mission - completed Divine Might and got my earring (Bushi)... not that I'm gonna use it for a while, since my SAM is still only at 49. /sigh

CoP Missions - I FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY got {Promyvion - Dem} done and began CoP Chapter 2. My WAR also leveled up to 41 while beating the boss. hehe nice.

Sky - Seiryu finally decided to drop a D Head for me. Byakko and Kirin however still decided to be stingy that night and not drop my much-needed D Legs and Osode. I was first in line for those items that night too. ; ; oh wells... now i'm back down to 3rd or something cuz I don't outside farm like some of the other members of Relentless.

Salvage - I got my first 35 piece (Usukane legs - Hikazu Hakama) from our Arrapago Remnants run! And I think this is actually the first 35 piece our Salvage LS has obtained. I so happy! :)

Relentless - Our newly-reformed sky LS also got our first payout. It was actually 2 weeks worth of payout, but it turned out to be something like 1.2 million gil per person. VERY nice. I really hope we can keep this up.

To Salve and to Salve Not

Our little Salvage group apparently isn't running as smooth as we had all hoped. And, I hate to say it, but it's probably partially my fault cuz of my lil' mishap Sunday morning. Having just returned from the emergency room at TWO different hospitals, I was just not up for gaming Sunday afternoon, so I missed-out on our 3rd planned Salvage run. And apparently the run didn't go so well. And apparently there was much yelling again. ; ;

Tuesday night @10pm was our planned 4th run. By 8pm, Hybrid and I were both on Gigidy, but noone else was. So we go do a couple {Assault}s because we both want to start clearing all of them for Captain's rank, but also because I really needed the assault points to get into Salvage that night. So we use all 4 tags. While we were about to start on our 4th assault, and a couple other people were on Gigidy, we start wondering where the rest of our group is, cuz we didn't even see them online. This was around 9:50pm.

Ya know what? I just erased like 5 paragraphs cuz it sounded like I was bitchin too much. (And I don't like writing about negativity on here.) Simply put: not everyone showed up. But we still had 6 people. There's no reason not to enter Salvage if we have a full party ready to go, is there? We can still try an easier route. We can still farm for gil items. Hell, we can still just go explore some different areas and try new job combinations! But come on... don't throw a fit about noone being online and then log off yourself. (without even telling anyone)

Apparently our schedule needed revising, so we did that to the best of our capabilities with only having half of the group there. Hopefully everyone will still be able to do these runs at these new times. Hell, even if we can't make it to these times, we can just try to go on runs when we all happen to be online! I don't know.

I just want to do Salvage. Flat out, Salvage is the path to my primary goal of this entire game.

Quit complaining and try to think of resolutions to the problem. Damn, y'all suck. ;-)

Oops

This morning around 4:30 AM I fell asleep at the wheel of my car while driving home. Apparently I veered off the left side of the highway, punched through the large metal guard-rail, rolled my car several times, and went through another metal fence before landing up-right almost on the on-coming side of the highway. Needless to say, my Jeep Wrangler is completely totaled.

Yes, I am fine.

Seat belts and airbags save lives.

They do not, however, save the hard-top of your Jeep from being ripped off your vehicle like an orange peel. They do not even keep your cellphone within an arm's reach after flipping over multiple times. I will never complain about "that damned flashing LED on my cell phone" ever again, cuz if it wasn't for that, I would have never found it and I would have been sitting on the side of the highway for quite some time because apparently the majority of drivers (at least in north-eastern Ohio) are assholes and won't stop for a guy waving his arms at them off the side of the road who has OBVIOUSLY wrecked his vehicle and is in need of assistance.

But I digress.

People, wear your safety belts. I have no doubt in my mind that if I wasn't wearing mine, I would be dead right now.

Seriously.

So now I come to the point where I need to say that I need to take a break from FFXI. :( Hopefully it won't be too long. I'm thinking a week or two or three. Eh, then again, I might be back online later today. I just need to make sure I still haven't sustained any serious injuries, eventhough the emergency room has just released me with a clean bill of health. I need to find a new car. I need to make sure my insurance covers all of this. etc... You get the picture.

{Take care} and I hope to see/talk to y'all soon.

Second time, same as the first...

Second time, same as the first:
A little bit louder and a little bit worse!

Actually, GigidyGigidy's 2nd Salvage run went fairly well last night. Well, better than the 1st run went. We ended up doing Zhayolm Remnants again, but this time we took a little more time on the first 2 floors to farm cells that we needed. Perhaps a little too much time was spent on the 1st floor while going after Incus Cells (weapon) but like everything else that is Salvage, it'll take time for us to really get the feel for how to do this right.

At least this time I could actually use my shadows! The first run I had unlocked my subjob and JAs almost right away... but didn't get a magic cell the entire time. Granted, last time I actually had a lot more equipment slots unlocked too. I think I had everything but legs/feet, ranged/ammo and body unlocked. This time I only had weapon and hands. :-P

We got up to the 4th floor within 30 minutes, so we went after Poroggo Madame to get some 15 pieces... one of which was the remaining piece necessary for Caol's Usu feet! We basically wiped 2 or 3 times to the NM before we finally got it down... but at least we know what to do now. It went somethign along the lines of:
(1) THF sack pulls from the North room and heads towards the east room to die
(2) MNK #1 Chi Blasts the NM as soon as she enters the north/south hallway and then runs towards the west room, where everyone else is waiting
(3) MNK #2 waits at the south door of the north/south hallway (making sure to stay out of sight from the froggies) and Chi Blasts the NM if necessary and also heads towards the west room
(4) put the smack-down on the NM after she completely enters the west room and try to pull her as far from the center room as possible so that we don't aggro the other froggies either during the fight or while she's heading back to her spawn location
(5) everyone stay in close so when she charms us, noone dies (NOTE: Taru froggies are smaller than others. lol)
(6) repeat 4 and 5 til she's dead
(7) lot gearz0rz and /hurray

So, it took us 2 runs just to get some 15 gear... ... ... lol Nah, we're doin fine. I think we have the cell order down now (after only 2 runs!) We just need to figure out how much time we should spend on each floor farming cells and learn when to just cut our losses and move on to the next floor for different cells. Like, it would really have helped us out if we had some HP cells.

In other news: we headed up to sky right after Salvage and did our last Kirin, Suzaku and Byakko with our current group. Before Sunday's sky run, apparently a bunch of people are getting cut from the shell. Guess we'll see who stays and who goes.

And damn you Kneehigh for being ahead of me in points for D Legs!!!
At least we got another haidate last night for the group. 1 less item for us to clamor over. Can't wait til we start selling THOSE. :)

Everything is different, but the same...

Everything is different, but the same... things are more moderner than before... bigger, and yet smaller... it's computers... San Dimas High School football rules!

{Dynamis - Beaucidine} on Sunday seemed exciting to me; new zone, new paths, new gear drops, etc.... Hell, even city-runs used to seem exciting to me. Maybe it's because I finally now have all of my Dynamis city clears... maybe it's because I have now experienced the Icelands... maybe it's because I don't really have any AFv2 gear that I really want/need at this point in time... But whatever it was last night {Dynamis - Bastok} was more boring than watching shit fossilize.

The only thing that was really keeping me awake was chatting with people on Vent about how boring the run seemed. lol Well, that and laughing about how Treu was bitching me out for getting BLU AFv2 Legs free-drop to me. :-P I suppose Somajan's {/assist} macros helped a bunch during that first hour (samples include: "For a good time call Vangaurd Militant 8675309", "What is your name Vanguard Defender?", "What is your quest Vanguard Vindicator?" and the one I liked best of all "Achoooooooo!"), but then a new main assist came in and everything dulled-down again.

I guess there just wasn't much talking going on in LS-chat. And people didn't really seem all that excited about various AF that was obtained. We still got something like 18 pieces and 2x 100 currency pieces. People SHOULD have been excited, and yet they didn't really seem like it. /shrug whateva. BRING ON XARC!!! :-D

In other news, a new admin post on lolFail's forums site showed up yesterday afternoon entitled "Announcement: Breaking Linkpearls (PLEASE READ)". :-(
So, immediately, I {/panic}.

I still need gear! (D Legs, D Head... would still like to get some A Hands and an Osode or 10 too)
I still need gil! (to pay for various cursed items as well as black belt items)
I still... hell.... I still wanna hang out with a bunch of the people in this LS!

Apparently this was the same reaction of many. Several people were sending me /tells all last night saying how worried they were about being booted. People asking me to check their "attendance %", their "lifetime attendance %", their current amount of points... People saying how it'd be so unfair that they get booted because they've put X amount of hours into outside farming and yet haven't really gotten any items yet. People comparing themselves against other members to try and gauge their probability of getting their pearl broken. People asking why I thought I might get the boot cuz they thought I was actually a sack holder. (All I do is take attendance people. Anyone can do that. ... Wait. I mean: I'm valuable! This is a tough job! I'm irreplacable!!!)

I suppose I'm glad that at least ONE person actually had the same feelings as me and wasn't just worried about gear/gil and said he'd actually miss hanging out if he got kicked. :)

Well, whatever happens, I guess I should still be happy. Hell, I got a D Body and a Haidate in a matter of months! Treu got 2 pairs of W Legs (one for him and one for Screamin). Dude, that's major accomplishments right there! So, if I'm still in, then cool, I can still hopefully get some more gear to help pimp-out my MNK. If I'm out, I guess that'll at least give me more time to focus on CoP and Assaults and Salvage and the ton of other things I still need to get to.

/crossesfingers

Fox has one of those new reality shows at eight, 'Fast animals, slow children.'

So umm, YEAH!

Salvage went about as smoothly as I had expected it to on our first run: about as smooth as a baby's bottom... that has been put through a blender set on "chop" for 5 to 10 seconds. (I'm not positive, but I'd imagine that that's not "smooth" at all.)

We got so pwned it was almost laughable. Almost.

I don't understand why some of the people on our run were expecting to actually like cruise thru the floors and kill NMs with ease, when some of us had never even been on a Salvage run. Oh, and it didn't help that cells were being dished-out to people kinda slowly. And that some cells were just lost because everyone passed on them, eventhough not everyone HAD them. And that we were kind of rushing through everything and didn't get the cells we needed to progress to the next floors. And that instructions seemed to be changed on-the-fly which caused more problems than they resolved. And that there was a lot of YELLING which I think just ended up causing more frustration among our group. And that we split up on the first floor and were killlin mobs kinda slowly. And that.... oh geez. I'll just stop there.

I don't have time to write much this morning, but a word comes to mind when I think about the run last night: clusterfuck.

Simple solution: it's gonna take time, experience, and more planning in order to accomplish anything in Salvage. I think everyone realizes that now, so now that we got served, everyone can lower their expectations for the time-being and hopefully our next run will be a little easier-paced.

Despite all the negativity in this post, I'm still tryin to keep an optimistic mindset on our Salvage group. :)

Re-elect Mayor Goldie Wilson. "Progress" is his middle-name!

Progress Progress Progress Progress Progress

(1) Expanded Mog Locker to 70
(2) Merit: Kick Attacks 4/5
(3) Merit: Counter 2/5
(4) LolFail payout from last week: over 600k! (I can almost TASTE that Blackbelt. It's actually within sight now that payouts are this huge.)
(5) Dynamis - Beaucidine: My first Icelands run. Got the clear! Got PUP Body (free dropped to me) and then inadvertently started a fairly large, and somewhat awkward, argument between several LS members as to how "I now had to level PUP since I have an AFv2 piece now" (yeah, I was totally kidding) and some ppl laughed and some ppl took offense and how PUPs have to take all this crap from non-PUPs and they don't know how it's a sweet sweet job and blah blah blah... After my "i gotta level it now" comment, I pretty much just stfu cuz I think a couple ppl actually got mad over it. lol
(6) Sky: we sold a couple items already for this week :)
(7) Salvage: YUS! We finally got a linkpearl set up (GigidyGigidy, and coincidentally it's the same color yellow as my HellsBells pearl), got our members together (Khrone, Treubond, Ratman, Hybridkiller, Hulcalan, Drayco, Caol, Mactatus), discussed jobs, times (Tuesday 10pm, Thursday 10pm, Sunday 3pm), some rules, yadda yadda yadda. Yes, Salvage is actually happening! w000000000000000t!!!

In summary: closer to capped merits; closer to blackbelt; closer to Usu gear. My long-term goals in this game are happening!

I'm a Mog. Half man, half dog. I'm my own best friend!

[GM]Dave kills me.
http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-warned-you.html

If it wasn't bad enough that you're single, suddenly society makes you out to be some form of freak.

Maybe you like being single.

Maybe you're waiting for the right person to come along.

Maybe you're busy leveling up your ranger.

ahhhh, good stuff. XD

Today's Secret Word is...

Thundercunt!

Yeah, our LS has had our own little memes throughout our somewhat brief history so far: "Team Mexico", "we're disbanding the LS because [insert random made-up excuse]", "I just broke [player]'s pearl ... cuz I felt like it", "pulling a Sush" (falling asleep at your computer), anything referencing Pandas, YouTube video lists (for when you're bored), etc... But last night Treu made some off-kilter comment about how he was upset that some schmuck was buying Ancient Beastcoins off the AH for 9k and immediately selling them for 9.2k, to which he referred to the player as a "Thundercunt". Much hilarity (and name-calling) ensued. Nomar has now dubbed Treu with this as his nickname, to go alongside my nickname of "tattooface". XD

While farming last night, I noticed Shiiga's SMN gear. Niiiiiiice stuff. AF+1, AFv2, ZNM head piece, Yinyang, etc... It was pretty slick to see someone have a free Garuda out for a while while Ballad was active. :-D I'm jealous, but now I have someone to look up to while leveling my SMN.

So! My progress over the past month or so:
(1) {Salvage} access O - w0000t!!! I joined a random group of people (5 of us total) and did The Black Coffin ToAU Mission. Turned out to be, like the Lost Kingdom fight, a LOT easier than I had initially expected. We rocked it out with out any difficulties whatsoever (well, 1 guy DID die right before we beat it) and we weren't even all that organized. We had said that we were gonna take out the RNGs first (which were on the outsides) and then work our way towards the middle... but when the fight started, it seemed that pretty much everyone just went 1-on-1 with someone. lol
(2) PUP O - I unlocked Puppetmaster a little while ago, primarily because I was bored and wanted to do something a little different. One day while I was trying to deathport back home from Sandy, I pulled out the automaton and tried to die... and the automaton just kept whooping butt. I ended up leveling before I actually died. Couple days later I took my PUP outside Basty just to do a little water crystal farming for my gardening... and ended up getting PUP up to 12. lol I just couldn't stop! It's actually kinda fun to play and I'd get all giddy when I SC with my automaton. lol
(3) {Dynamis - Windurst} O - did a run here with HellsBells DURING the SuperBowl... timing of that run sucked cuz I missed out on 2 parties (but I was exhausted from getting back a couple hours earlier from another Colorado ski trip anyways) but I'm glad I stayed home and went on the run... cuz I FINALLY got my clear! So, tomorrow's run is Sandy, but Sunday night we're doing Beaucidine. My first Icelands!
(4) Mog Locker expansion - expanded to 50 and then to 60. Yeah, I thought I fully expanded my locker when I initially opened it... apparently not. Another what... 18 days or something til it'll be at max-capacity.
(5) Finally got back to doing a little more leveling on my SAM and progressed up to 43. Also obtained my SAM AF weapon.
(6) {Genbu's Kabuto} O - cuz noone else really wanted it last night. lol
(7) Besides all of that, I did a bunch of random questing around Whitegate as well just to gain a little more ISP and Imperial Gold. /shrug Again, I've been bored lately; sky is becoming a lil too monotonous.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise

Woke up this morning (i have about 1 hour til i need to leave for work and only about 6 hours til i need to leave for the airport for my ski trip this weekend... and i still haven't packed yet!) and saw that this was posted to the HellsBells forums last night:

==============================================
Author: Rob
Title: HB Officer
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:49 am
Post Subject: Einherjar Discontinued
Message:
Effective 1/28/09, we will no longer be running Einherjar due to lack of interest. Points will be frozen until a decent member base is formed that would like to continue with HellsBells Einherjar.
==============================================

Bummer.
I was hoping to start making more time for this now that I got my haidate, but it appears I'm too late. But I did see this coming. Up until a couple weeks ago HB's Einherjar runs were free to attend and then they decided to start charging people 5k gil (or more if necessary numbers didn't show up) because apparently it hadn't become a self-sufficient event and was just leeching off of the HB Dynamis bank account. Some of the people that I noticed that showed up to these events had sub-par gear so it didn't surprise me that they were too cheap to toss in a measley 5k for a run, so I'm sure even fewer and fewer people were showing up to the runs.

oh wellz. It was fun while it lasted I guess. I had only made it to a handful of events, but I guess it was still a good experience just for the fact that it was something different from the monotony that is sky farming.

I think I'd still be interested in attending runs, but a major problem for me is that I can't come on Wednesday nights before their Dynamis runs. I'm pretty much busy every Wednesday night until 9 or 10pm EST... and that's gonna be the way it is for about 80% of the calendar year. ; ;

Maybe if they changed-up the schedule more people would be willing and able to attend?

Close your mouth, please, Michael. We are not a codfish.

The past several days since I've become a very happy camper (got my haidate) some randomness has occurred that really doesn't need to be remarked upon... but I might anyways since I don't really have anything else to speak of. /shrug

I've been pretty happy with how this LS has progressed. Back when Treu told me about a group of his friends "that were quickly pwning {sky}", he had the patience and decency to blitz me, and a few others, through our ZMs so we could get sky access. At that time, I was a pretty stressed-out gamer cuz I REALLY wanted to join this group and quickly attain various pieces of "god gear" (Kirin's Set pieces, abjurations, etc...) that would help pimp out my MNK. Back then, it was clear to me that I would need this gear as a stepping-stone to be an effective member of our future Salvage group and obtain my long-term goal of "full Usu".

I was stressed-out primarily because I was constantly worried that these guys would all get their gear quickly and then disband the LS (or move on to {sea} or something) before I got the gear I really wanted/needed. Especially in December when it kind of seemed like people were getting their gear and then leaving right away. And when it seemed like Sush was getting fed-up with keeping track of attendance and drops and points and all that administrative nonsense that is necessary to make sure everyone is getting what they've earned. That's when I decided to take some of the burden upon myself and created my LolFail Tracking spreadsheet. Creating the spreadsheet and actually maintaining it adds even MORE stress to my gaming-life (do any of you really understand how much of an effort it is to try to keep track of who's participating and who's leeching and who's just flat-out passed-out at their keyboard...?) but it has apparently become well-worth it because the LS is now BOOMING again.

People are getting the gear they want. We are selling pieces like hotcakes. Hell, we've even had plenty of items just drop and lost because noone wants them anymore! Just this past month we've dropped A Legs, A Head, E Feet, Suzaku's Scythe, D Hands, Seiryu's Sword, M Hands... we even had 2 D Hands drop off of a single Suzaku and both were abandoned. Yeah yeah, some of this gear really isn't worth it, but it's just awesome how we used to have a waiting list for some of this gear (and how we had buyers for some of it)... and yet we still just drop it cuz everyone that wants/needs it already has it. There's even gear that drops and people are just taking it because they MIGHT want to eventually level a job that could use it.

Obviously we still have waiting lists for the more prestigious items (W Legs, D Body, N Body, Osode, Haidate, etc...) so we're not going to be giving up on {sky} anytime soon. Plus we still seem to be making some decent gil just selling these items now.

So yeah. I'm in good spirits... despite not getting an Osode for myself yet. :-P

Kirin was apparently all hopped-up on crack last night... and sold all of his gear drops to pay for his fix. We got up to his room and another LS was there fighting him and it just seemed to take FOREVER for him to die. (We actually thought that these guys were just n00bs and didn't know what they were doing.) After about 45 minutes of us watching them (and I have no idea how long they were up there fighting before we got there) they take him down.... and get NOTHING. Well, I think they said they got an ingot to drop. But that's it. Then comes out turn... and we wipe to Kirin. {/sigh} Well, actually, it wasn't really that Kirin was putting the smackdown on us; it was more because one of our WHMs 2-houred before he/she was supposed to and then we started dropping like flies. Oh wellz. Our 2nd Kirin run proved a little more successful, but still only resulted in getting W Legs for Xzavier ('bout damn time X!) and NOTHING else. Stupid coked-out, broke-assed Kirin.

Other than that though, nothing really worth mentioning.

I guess people are starting to visit the spreadsheet more often now. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But whateva. At least they know everything is logged and they can correct any mistakes we .. er... _I_ have made. (Thanks again Mars! If you hadn't said anything, we might have missed out on the point for that one Suzy kill.)

In conclusion (cuz I REALLY gotta get some lunch and get some work done today) I'm astonished and really happy that this LS is still going strong. Yeah, it may seem like we're constantly making adjustments to the rules, but we're just trying to make it fair to everyone and make sure everyone gets what they want and need while making sure that they've earned it.

And now for something completely different...

I don't like to talk about RL stuff in here, but I kinda felt the need to tell y'all briefly about my day so far today:

2:00 AM - I obtain Byakko's Haidate. And there was much rejoicing. (yaaaaaay)
3:00 AM - I decide to log off, but first have to say {Thank you} to multiple people, answer a few LS points questions, take a few screen shots and then write my previous blog post.
3:30 AM - I log off and go to bed.
5:00 AM - I wake up and forcefully projectile vomit (out both my nose and mouth) for approximately 30 minutes for no apparent reason other than perhaps my body was rejecting the Coke I drank earlier in the evening because it didn't have its usual companion ingredient of "a fifth of Jack Daniels".
5:30 AM - Jump in the shower and be sloppy about trying to clear my nose and throat.
6:00 AM - I brush my teeth and then pass back out in bed, trying to watch last night's episode of Smallville, failing miserably not even 2 minutes after hitting "Play".
7:30 AM - My alarm goes off and I wake up in time for work, feeling surprisingly refreshed despite only getting approximately 3 hours of sleep.
9:00 AM - I arrive at work and yet I don't have the usual disdain I have grown accustomed to over the past decade.
11:00 AM - My manager walks by my desk and says these exact words: "Dude, it's 11:00, your eyes are open, you're sitting up... it's good but it's crazy." (Yes, those exact words. So, he's shocked that I'm awake. Typically I apparently look like hell every morning after our {sky} runs. lol)
11:30 AM - Lunch
1:00 PM - I get back to my desk and realize I am still not very tired.

So... I guess what I've learned from today is: owning Byakko's Haidate gives you a hidden effect of Enhances "Resist Sleep" effect or something in Real Life. :-D

Or I guess it's more likely that the act of "puking my guts out" was purging the remaining angst and animosity I had towards the game in being unfair in my desired Byakko drops and now, today, I just feel hella better because I'm not stressed-out anymore.

Byakko's Haidate dropped for me! Byakko has given me his blessing.
Lux has been apparently permanently banned!! SE decides get back on my better side again.
It has finally warmed up a little bit outside and the Day Star is even out today here in Cleveland!!! Mother Nature is smiling upon me once again.
The conspiracy has been recognized, informed upon and dissolved. Time to move on.

But to get back to the game: Apparently Lux was only supposed to be temporarily banned but is now permanently banned. This actually does not surprise me in the slightest given his history of being a "people person". I'm willing to bet large sums of money that he called up SE, asked to have his account restored, they said "ok, in a couple days" and he responded with something along the lines of "WTF, Are you IDIOTS?!? You should ban me for ETERNITY!! You should ban all of my relatives, neighbors and anyone I have ever talked to in my entire life!!! You're all friggin morons and should be dragged out into the street and shot!!!!!" To which a message is sent out immediately to [GM] Dave's queue to "initiate project perma-Jormy"...

It's peanut butter jelly time!

Peanut butter jelly time!
Peanut butter jelly time!
Peanut butter jelly time!
Peanut butter jelly, peanut butter jelly, peanut butter jelly and a baseball bat...

Heyyyoooooooooooooo!!!!
Yoooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
Waaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

(can you tell i'm excited?)

I finally got my Byakko's Haidate. ^^



The 1st Byakko we killed tonight still wouldn't drop it... but it finally dropped for me on the 2nd one. So, I is a happy camper.

Sheesh, I think I took the point-lead for haidate like 4 or 5 weeks ago and I'm just getting it tonight. Craziness. But whateva. Now all I have to say is: SCREW YOU LolFail!!! I never liked any of you and now I can finally go my own way now that I got all the gear I want from sk.... oh wait.... I still wand a few more Dryadic and Aquarian Abjurations.... heh heh... um... Forget what I said. I'm still cool wit y'all. I was just playin. Ya know.... I KEEEED I KEEEED! eh heh. eh heh. heh. mmmmm....

Well, that was the 1 piece that I DEFINITELY wanted/needed from sky, but as I said, I'll still be going up there for quite a while. (If anything, just for the gil payouts.) At least from now on though, I won't push-off RL stuff just so I can make it home in time for {sky} just in case they decide to do a Byakko!!! lol Man, the past couple weeks has completely drained me because of worrying about missing a run and worrying over someone passing me again in points. It now feels like a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders. "R O L A I D S" (Now that's how I spell relief!)

A few other drops also came tonight: Treu got ANOTHER set of W Legs, but this time they were for Screamin. Aguaa also picked up some D Legs... for Jaugax... and a D Body for himself. Man, craziness tonight. People are gearing up... no, PIMPING up their MULES and yet, noone wanted to be on the waitlist tonight for W Legs on our 2nd Kirin run. WTF mate? Some people just have some screwed up priorities I guess.

In other news: Kyrja is a single female, that (obviously) plays ffxi, knows how to cook (well, at least "knows how to cook chicken better than her mother"), doesn't mind if her man frequents strip clubs... and yet still thinks she's gonna have a rough time finding a husband. Sush and I both jumped on that one with Sush shouting "MARRY ME! QUICK, Before Khrone asks you!!!" rofl!

I was also noticing a few other people's gear tonight. Cephas and Kyrja seem to be the only ones (at least that I've seen) that have any Askar gear. And a few other people are a LOT better geared than I expected them to be, judging by the way they sometimes act/play. (But I'm not naming names cuz I know y'all are reading this now! Thanks Sush! :-P lol)

But yeah... since people are starting to pass on gear, I'm wondering if we are reaching the point where we all just about have the gear we want and we should probably try moving this group off into something else, like sea. Hulc is apparently back and wants to start up a sea group and a Salvage group, so I'm definitely gonna try to jump in on that action. Although, I still have 2 more ToAU Mission fights and basically ALL of CoP to do before I can participate. DOH! But as I said, I can now ease-off of sky a bit and start going after other stuff: get Promyvion - Dem done, merit a bunch more, start crankin out assaults, maybe level SAM and SNM a lil more so I can be a little more versatile, etc...

Oh, and finally, apparently Lux got banned earlier today. Whoa, and I just noticed Boogers is on the ban list too! Hm. Wonder what they did. Lux could have just pissed someone off now that he's off his meds or whatever (lol) and Boogers always seemed like a nice guy. Eh. I guess most of these bannings usually have to do with gil buyers... but what do I know? /shrug

OMFG! Minidragon of Bismark was permanently banned!!!
And fellow NineInchNinjas member Doomcrack was also (temporarily) banned!
Jackyl of Garuda - temporary ban.
Dude, these were the 3 guys that were beating out Stan on the AH website rankings. Un-cool, bros. It looks like a LOT of relic weapons have now been removed from various servers and even 2 mythic weapons! (Hell, Minidragon himself had like 6 relics and a Maat's Cap!)

Aight. Enough for now. Gotta get my typical 3 or 4 hours of sleep before I gotta get up for work in the morning. /sigh