Silver Sea Remnants
Party 1: Cole (main MNK), Khrone (MNK), Erm (BRD), Ofe (WHM), Rob (SAM), Kuni (RDM)
Party 2: GH (THF), Liquidblue (BLU)
Not in attendance: n/a
Enter Time: Mon 01/25/2010 ~10:57PM EST
Goal: NM Run
1st Floor: Hammerblow Majanun
We decided to start taking the West path on the 1st floor again to try and get me my Usu 35 Head. Still no luck though. Cruised through this floor like usual. We completely bypassed the central room, but in hindsight, since our gear drops ended up sucking the big fat fatty, we might have done better to spend a little time on those Fomors. There's 16 of them and they constantly respawn. Less than a 50% chance for a cell drop. But then again from what I recall, they die pretty darned quick.
2nd Floor: Dekka
NW path to kill the imps. and hopefully get some Marduk 35 Feet... but as usual, no luck. These imps really suck due to their CONSTANT spamming on Silence and Amnesia. Like, NON-STOP spamming of it. It was pretty ridiculous. We really need to figure a way to prevent this from happening before trying these guys again in the future... if that's even possible.
3rd Floor: bypass
I think I was the only one that knew we had to kill the Speedy Gonzales Imp in the northern chamber in order to open the door to get to the central room, but no biggie. As usual, he was kind of a pain in the ass because he runs away after you take 10% of his HP from him, and the gears in the room make it a little more difficult to grab him without unnecessary aggro. Hindsight: timewise, it probably doesn't matter whether we only kill the Imp, or completely clear that room. We probably could have been killing the gears while waiting for him to come back around each time anyways. No biggie though. Greenie sac-pulled the East room for us so we could take out the stationary rampart. It seemed to go a little slow for us, because everything started coming back before we finished off the rampart. Probably due to lack of equipment cell drops for us.
4th Floor: failz
We waited until everyone was unweakened before zoning up to the 4th floor. As soon as we entered, we ran down to the central room, picking up some items from caskets along the way. Everyone knew which rampart to grab on the initial sac-pull... although I was kinda confused why someone else took my place for grabbing one of them. lol Whatev. 4 ppl grabbed them and I was backup in case someone missed. So, after I saw that 3 of them were grabbed, I just Chi Blasted the 4th one and started runnign towards the entrance. We got all 4 up to the starting room and started taking them out... which is when the suckage began.
Problem #1: the archaic ramparts just could NOT be slept. they just seemed uber-resistant tonight.
Problem #2: we were missing a LOT of our swings because of the lack of cell drops up to this point on the run. i don't think we got a single Rings cell. Only 1 (or 0?) head cells. Only a couple ranged, but I didn't have one... basically, all of my slots that I use for my Acc+ gear were still locked. Ditto for the rest of the melee it appeared. I had my Cobra Unit Feet and Hands equipped, Focus up, and ate some sushi.... and I was still missing like crazy.
Our WHM went down... then our RDM... then everyone else. As soon as I had taken hate after the RDM died, it just would not let me get my shadows up so I died pretty quickly too. (By this time, there were already 3 mobs that had spawned from the ramparts.) We ended up getting the 3rd rampart down to about 15% I think, but we wiped. After a couple of us raised, we decided that we wouldn't have enough time to finish off the ramparts and kill the turtle before time ran out, so we just gave up.
Simply put: I don't think we really did anything wrong at all on this run. We only failed due to the crappy droprate of cells. It happens. Hopefully we'll be luckier tomorrow night.
Afterwards: did a couple Golden Salvage runs with Rob and Greenie to get us more Assault Points for future salvage runs.
Showing posts with label badluck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label badluck. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Little Changes Big Results
No, not really. I can't back that up.
Silver Sea Remnants
Party 1: Cole (main MNK), Khrone (MNK), Erm (BRD), Ofe (WHM), Kuni (RDM), Liquidblue (COR)
Party 2: GH (THF), Rob (SAM)
Not in attendance: n/a
Enter Time: Mon 01/18/2010 ~11:00PM EST
Goal: NM Run
blah blah blah... Basically exactly the same as the past few runs, except we had LB on COR (instead of his usual BLU or WAR). Having 1 less DD kind of worried me. I felt that we were running a little slow in the beginning. Ofe had some connection issues (severe storm in his area). I think even LB DCed once. Our first attempt at pulling the Archaic Ramparts on the turtle floor resulted in a wipe because the wandering gears took us (well, at least ME) by surprise. Towards the end [someone] also noticed that [they] had apparently gotten Regen instead of Refresh with [their] Sanction. lol
And yet, we still killed everything we planned on with several minutes to spare! :-D So it actually turned out to be a pretty good run. No 35 drops, so clearly that sucked. But I'm still glad we got our objectives completed, despite several things going wrong. I guess the COR's extra buffs really helped out. Maybe we should try this out more often? On other runs? Just this run? I guess we'll just have to try and see!
UPDATE:
I probably won't be able to make it to our next (Tuesday) run because I'm goin to the Cavs/Raptors game. I told the group to go on and plan on me not being there, although I'm still not sure what they'll be doin. So far, sounds like they're gonna try the same battleplan with just 1 less MNK. I'm guessin LB will switch back over to WAR so they have a third DD though.
Silver Sea Remnants
Party 1: Cole (main MNK), Khrone (MNK), Erm (BRD), Ofe (WHM), Kuni (RDM), Liquidblue (COR)
Party 2: GH (THF), Rob (SAM)
Not in attendance: n/a
Enter Time: Mon 01/18/2010 ~11:00PM EST
Goal: NM Run
blah blah blah... Basically exactly the same as the past few runs, except we had LB on COR (instead of his usual BLU or WAR). Having 1 less DD kind of worried me. I felt that we were running a little slow in the beginning. Ofe had some connection issues (severe storm in his area). I think even LB DCed once. Our first attempt at pulling the Archaic Ramparts on the turtle floor resulted in a wipe because the wandering gears took us (well, at least ME) by surprise. Towards the end [someone] also noticed that [they] had apparently gotten Regen instead of Refresh with [their] Sanction. lol
And yet, we still killed everything we planned on with several minutes to spare! :-D So it actually turned out to be a pretty good run. No 35 drops, so clearly that sucked. But I'm still glad we got our objectives completed, despite several things going wrong. I guess the COR's extra buffs really helped out. Maybe we should try this out more often? On other runs? Just this run? I guess we'll just have to try and see!
UPDATE:
I probably won't be able to make it to our next (Tuesday) run because I'm goin to the Cavs/Raptors game. I told the group to go on and plan on me not being there, although I'm still not sure what they'll be doin. So far, sounds like they're gonna try the same battleplan with just 1 less MNK. I'm guessin LB will switch back over to WAR so they have a third DD though.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The Tortoise and the Hare
(spoiler alert: the tortoise loses)
Silver Sea Remnants
Party 1: Cole (main MNK), Erm (BRD), Ofe (WHM), Rob (SAM), Kuni (RDM), Liquidblue (BLU)
Party 2: GH (THF), Khrone (MNK)
Not in attendance: n/a
Enter Time: Mon 01/11/2010 ~11:00PM EST
Goal: NM Run
1st Floor: bypass
We decided to take the East path for a change, which bypasses my Usu 35 Head NM {/cry} but it turned out nicely because the other side seems to give a lot more cell drops, plus we can move through it a lot quicker than the West path.
2nd Floor: bypass
SW path. Pretty sure we killed a few before porting up.
3rd Floor: success
Made our way to the East porter. Everyone bypassed the South room without incident... which I'm pretty sure was a first for us. lol When clearing the East room, only had maybe 1 or 2 deaths from some unlucky hits. No major incidents. Gyroscopic Gears (NM) only dropped Ares 15 Head. :-P
4th Floor: success
Made our way down to the main room. All 4 pullers made sure we knew which Archaic Rampart we needed to grab. ... And then the wandering Gears came floating by, heading North. :-P GH managed to aggro them and pull them far enough away so that after he had died, they didn't come back after us. Since the wandering Gears were on the North side of the main room, we decided to switch tactics and pull the Archaic Ramparts towards the South end, instead of the entrance chamber to this floor. Once everyone was set, GH aggroed the room and ran North while the 4 pullers grabbed their Archaic Ramparts and headed South. Pullers had to make sure to keep hate and not lose their mob, but we eventually all made it down to the South end and picked them off one at a time (while the others were kept slept). Citadel Chelonian popped. We waited for the wandering gears to start heading back North and kind of followed them back up to the main room. Once we were clear, we pulled the turtle NM a little further South (but not even all the way to the end) and took him out. He only dropped Morrigan 15 Head. :-P
Flied out.
Final Notes / Lessons Learned:
While it kind of irked me that I (as the 2nd MNK) was put in the outside party AND that we bypassed the 1st floor NM, I'm still happy that we finally had a VERY smooth SSR run. Apparently this layout/plan worked for us this time, so I can't really complain. I'm pumped that we finally got a chance at killing the turtle (every other time we've somehow managed to screw up pulling the Archaic Ramparts) and that it went down so easily. We didn't get any good drops, but at least this is another run that we finally have worked the kinks out of. The drops will just come with us executing our battleplan successfully over and over again. :-)
=========================
Follow-up regarding the next night's run:
Basically the exact same run (and still no 35 drops) with a few minor changes:
- Rob (SAM) was in the outside party and Khrone (2nd MNK) was in main party
- before Ofe (WHM) got his magic unlocked, he was actually in the outside party and Rob (SAM) was in the main party, since a WHM without magic is basically useless (although I think he actually got his magic unlocked withing the first 60 seconds of entering Salvage. lol)
- we had a slight delay on the 3rd floor when someone accidentally aggroed one of the mobs in the South room. only took a few minutes to kill though. nothing major.
- we also delayed a bit before pulling the Archaic Ramparts because we weren't sure where the wandering gears were. we probably could have saved a bit of time by just charging in as soon as we got there. again, no major time-loss though.
- we pulled the Archaic Ramparts North this time, instead of South, due to the location/moving-direction of the wandering gears. (which seems like it will always be a coin-toss) So, at least now we are accustomed to pulling in either direction and know we can do it without incident. :-)
Silver Sea Remnants
Party 1: Cole (main MNK), Erm (BRD), Ofe (WHM), Rob (SAM), Kuni (RDM), Liquidblue (BLU)
Party 2: GH (THF), Khrone (MNK)
Not in attendance: n/a
Enter Time: Mon 01/11/2010 ~11:00PM EST
Goal: NM Run
1st Floor: bypass
We decided to take the East path for a change, which bypasses my Usu 35 Head NM {/cry} but it turned out nicely because the other side seems to give a lot more cell drops, plus we can move through it a lot quicker than the West path.
2nd Floor: bypass
SW path. Pretty sure we killed a few before porting up.
3rd Floor: success
Made our way to the East porter. Everyone bypassed the South room without incident... which I'm pretty sure was a first for us. lol When clearing the East room, only had maybe 1 or 2 deaths from some unlucky hits. No major incidents. Gyroscopic Gears (NM) only dropped Ares 15 Head. :-P
4th Floor: success
Made our way down to the main room. All 4 pullers made sure we knew which Archaic Rampart we needed to grab. ... And then the wandering Gears came floating by, heading North. :-P GH managed to aggro them and pull them far enough away so that after he had died, they didn't come back after us. Since the wandering Gears were on the North side of the main room, we decided to switch tactics and pull the Archaic Ramparts towards the South end, instead of the entrance chamber to this floor. Once everyone was set, GH aggroed the room and ran North while the 4 pullers grabbed their Archaic Ramparts and headed South. Pullers had to make sure to keep hate and not lose their mob, but we eventually all made it down to the South end and picked them off one at a time (while the others were kept slept). Citadel Chelonian popped. We waited for the wandering gears to start heading back North and kind of followed them back up to the main room. Once we were clear, we pulled the turtle NM a little further South (but not even all the way to the end) and took him out. He only dropped Morrigan 15 Head. :-P
Flied out.
Final Notes / Lessons Learned:
While it kind of irked me that I (as the 2nd MNK) was put in the outside party AND that we bypassed the 1st floor NM, I'm still happy that we finally had a VERY smooth SSR run. Apparently this layout/plan worked for us this time, so I can't really complain. I'm pumped that we finally got a chance at killing the turtle (every other time we've somehow managed to screw up pulling the Archaic Ramparts) and that it went down so easily. We didn't get any good drops, but at least this is another run that we finally have worked the kinks out of. The drops will just come with us executing our battleplan successfully over and over again. :-)
=========================
Follow-up regarding the next night's run:
Basically the exact same run (and still no 35 drops) with a few minor changes:
- Rob (SAM) was in the outside party and Khrone (2nd MNK) was in main party
- before Ofe (WHM) got his magic unlocked, he was actually in the outside party and Rob (SAM) was in the main party, since a WHM without magic is basically useless (although I think he actually got his magic unlocked withing the first 60 seconds of entering Salvage. lol)
- we had a slight delay on the 3rd floor when someone accidentally aggroed one of the mobs in the South room. only took a few minutes to kill though. nothing major.
- we also delayed a bit before pulling the Archaic Ramparts because we weren't sure where the wandering gears were. we probably could have saved a bit of time by just charging in as soon as we got there. again, no major time-loss though.
- we pulled the Archaic Ramparts North this time, instead of South, due to the location/moving-direction of the wandering gears. (which seems like it will always be a coin-toss) So, at least now we are accustomed to pulling in either direction and know we can do it without incident. :-)
Friday, December 4, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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!
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!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
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.
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!
Friday, July 3, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
That which does not kill us makes us stronger
My current guard skill-up gear setup:
/equip main "Black Adargas"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.
/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"
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
Sunday, April 19, 2009
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.}
(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.}
Monday, April 13, 2009
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. :)
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. :)
Thursday, March 12, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, January 16, 2009
I'm only paranoid because they want me dead
So my conspiracy theory is still in full-effect.
It's as if there are LS members, SE, Mother Nature and Byakko himself (yes, I'm counting him as a separate entity from both SE and Mother Nature) all are trying their hardest to prevent me from getting my Byakko's Haidate. {/sigh}
It's been about 4 or 5 weeks since I took first place in line for haidate and random shit keeps happening to prevent me from actually getting it. First there was people screwing up their jobs (or just Byakko deciding to not give me any love) which caused us to wipe to Byakko. Then came Christmas/New Years time where the LS decided to take a break for one week (and then I was out in Vegas the following week) so some people did a bunch of outside farming and overtook me. The week we come back, we do 5 Byakko's, 1 was a failure, and only 2 haidate drop which go to the guys who overtook me. And then there's this week where we only get 2 Byakko's done, which results in only 1 haidate to drop but it goes to a buyer. We still apparently have like 3 popsets out there somewhere but people keep leaving early, or not getting online a night that we plan on killing a Byakkko, or DCing because of the horrible weather lately (On a side-note: it is currently -9 degrees here in Cleveland, Ohio and yet it's 45 degrees in Anchorage, Alaska. Oh, and apparently they might hit record highs today in Los Angeles, California today too.)
...
Well, I now have like 230 LS points or something and the next person behind me that even MAY want haidate (cuz everyone else already has it) is like 80 points behind. So, now I KNOW I'm in the clear and noone is gonna overtake me in points. (Well, unless someone decides to be a dick about it and go buy 2 full Kirin popsets or something.) Yesterday I was actually considering something crazy. Like, if 2 or 3 people did not show up last night and I knew we were going to be doing a Kirin and then a Byakko, I would try to lot on both Osode and Haidate. Even after the 70 point drop from Osode, I'd STILL be in the lead for Haidate by a fair margin... but that's just crazy talk; I don't really wanna push my luck.
I just REALLY want my haidate. pleaseohpleaseohplease...
After that, Osode, Dryadic Abjurations, Aquarian Abjurations, etc... that's all just icing on the cake. And I should easily be able to pick all of that stuff up just cuz I'll be sticking around with this LS for a long time, strictly for the weekly cash payouts. This week we made over 8mil from sales and random gil drops. Altho this will probably be split among 25-30 people, it'll still be worth it in the long-run to have this constant flow of gil. Well, I'll be sticking around also cuz I kinda like helping out some of the n00bs; I feel like I'm finally giving back to make up for all the help that Treu, Disdain, Hybrid, etc... have given me over the past year and a half. Altho giving directions thru {sky} while trying to farm for water AND take attendance is kinda difficult. lol
Well, on a bright note: at least Treubond and Hybridkiller have been getting gear outta this LS. Apparently they have had HORRIBLE luck with their other sky LSs in the past. Treu managed to pick up a couple items this week (N Feet and D Head) and Hybrid got his Haidate and W Legs (which promptly became Blood Cuisses, rather than the typical Crimson Cuisses) within the past week or so.
Hopefully next week fortune will shine upon me and I'll be able to start pickin up my desired gear as well. ... And hell, I might even go BUY a damn Byakko popset or two if I have to! :D
It's as if there are LS members, SE, Mother Nature and Byakko himself (yes, I'm counting him as a separate entity from both SE and Mother Nature) all are trying their hardest to prevent me from getting my Byakko's Haidate. {/sigh}
It's been about 4 or 5 weeks since I took first place in line for haidate and random shit keeps happening to prevent me from actually getting it. First there was people screwing up their jobs (or just Byakko deciding to not give me any love) which caused us to wipe to Byakko. Then came Christmas/New Years time where the LS decided to take a break for one week (and then I was out in Vegas the following week) so some people did a bunch of outside farming and overtook me. The week we come back, we do 5 Byakko's, 1 was a failure, and only 2 haidate drop which go to the guys who overtook me. And then there's this week where we only get 2 Byakko's done, which results in only 1 haidate to drop but it goes to a buyer. We still apparently have like 3 popsets out there somewhere but people keep leaving early, or not getting online a night that we plan on killing a Byakkko, or DCing because of the horrible weather lately (On a side-note: it is currently -9 degrees here in Cleveland, Ohio and yet it's 45 degrees in Anchorage, Alaska. Oh, and apparently they might hit record highs today in Los Angeles, California today too.)
...
Well, I now have like 230 LS points or something and the next person behind me that even MAY want haidate (cuz everyone else already has it) is like 80 points behind. So, now I KNOW I'm in the clear and noone is gonna overtake me in points. (Well, unless someone decides to be a dick about it and go buy 2 full Kirin popsets or something.) Yesterday I was actually considering something crazy. Like, if 2 or 3 people did not show up last night and I knew we were going to be doing a Kirin and then a Byakko, I would try to lot on both Osode and Haidate. Even after the 70 point drop from Osode, I'd STILL be in the lead for Haidate by a fair margin... but that's just crazy talk; I don't really wanna push my luck.
I just REALLY want my haidate. pleaseohpleaseohplease...
After that, Osode, Dryadic Abjurations, Aquarian Abjurations, etc... that's all just icing on the cake. And I should easily be able to pick all of that stuff up just cuz I'll be sticking around with this LS for a long time, strictly for the weekly cash payouts. This week we made over 8mil from sales and random gil drops. Altho this will probably be split among 25-30 people, it'll still be worth it in the long-run to have this constant flow of gil. Well, I'll be sticking around also cuz I kinda like helping out some of the n00bs; I feel like I'm finally giving back to make up for all the help that Treu, Disdain, Hybrid, etc... have given me over the past year and a half. Altho giving directions thru {sky} while trying to farm for water AND take attendance is kinda difficult. lol
Well, on a bright note: at least Treubond and Hybridkiller have been getting gear outta this LS. Apparently they have had HORRIBLE luck with their other sky LSs in the past. Treu managed to pick up a couple items this week (N Feet and D Head) and Hybrid got his Haidate and W Legs (which promptly became Blood Cuisses, rather than the typical Crimson Cuisses) within the past week or so.
Hopefully next week fortune will shine upon me and I'll be able to start pickin up my desired gear as well. ... And hell, I might even go BUY a damn Byakko popset or two if I have to! :D
Monday, January 5, 2009
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
Wondrous spectacles abound!
SEE: HellsBells (aaaaalllllllllmost) clear another Tier III Einherjar!
SEE: HellsBells completely clear Dynamis - Bastok!
SEE: HellsBells get 30 (yes, THIRTY!) AFv2 drops in a single run!
SEE: Everyone and their mother get BLM AFv2 Legs!
SEE: Hitler on ice! (Wait... that's from somewhere else....)
SEE: LolFail get back-to-back Dios... and then 3 more!
SEE: Khrone get no love... /cry
Yes, 'twas a spectacular evening to be back and gaming. For everyone else but me. Well, I guess I still got participation points for everything. /shrug
HellsBells - Einherjar:
Summary: Wing III - Brunhilde's Chamber went off fairly well. No major mishaps. But we just plain ran out of time at the end. We had the boss down to around 50% when our lamps wore. Another minute or two and we would have had it.
Optimist: A little more experience doing Einherjar runs. An extra LS participation point.
Pessimist: Didn't get the clear, which means I think we need to do this one again before we can do an Odin. (meh. I still need a Wing I and Wing II feather anyways.)
HellsBells - Dynamis:
Summary: Dynamis - Bastok was unlike any other dynamis run I have ever done. I honestly think we cleared the whole zone with about 30 seconds left before timing out.
Optimist: 30 AFv2, a 100 currency piece, and 16 ores dropped. Not too shabby. Notable drops: 7 BLM, 4 SAM, 4 THF. And I got an extra LS participation point. And several gil items too.
Pessimist: None of that AFv2 went to me. What was crazy was, plenty of the freedrops managed to go to the same 2 or 3 people all evening. I woulda liked some of the action on those 4 SAM hands or 2 MNK feet... but whateva.
LolFail - Sky:
Summary: Sky farming was apparently very successful. Supposedly we picked up 5 dios, 2 waters, and a bunch of season stones.
Optimist: More pop-items means more gods means more points and more likelihood I'll be getting my god-gear sooner. And I got a bunch of LS participation points. (a few of us did some outside farming afterwards.)
Pessimist: While I was away on vacation (spent several days around New Years Eve in Las Vegas) a couple people overtook me and I am no longer in 1st place for Byakko's Haidate. As a a matter of fact, I'm down to 5th in line now. /sigh
SEE: Khrone put the barrel of a gun in his mouth....
SEE: HellsBells (aaaaalllllllllmost) clear another Tier III Einherjar!
SEE: HellsBells completely clear Dynamis - Bastok!
SEE: HellsBells get 30 (yes, THIRTY!) AFv2 drops in a single run!
SEE: Everyone and their mother get BLM AFv2 Legs!
SEE: Hitler on ice! (Wait... that's from somewhere else....)
SEE: LolFail get back-to-back Dios... and then 3 more!
SEE: Khrone get no love... /cry
Yes, 'twas a spectacular evening to be back and gaming. For everyone else but me. Well, I guess I still got participation points for everything. /shrug
HellsBells - Einherjar:
Summary: Wing III - Brunhilde's Chamber went off fairly well. No major mishaps. But we just plain ran out of time at the end. We had the boss down to around 50% when our lamps wore. Another minute or two and we would have had it.
Optimist: A little more experience doing Einherjar runs. An extra LS participation point.
Pessimist: Didn't get the clear, which means I think we need to do this one again before we can do an Odin. (meh. I still need a Wing I and Wing II feather anyways.)
HellsBells - Dynamis:
Summary: Dynamis - Bastok was unlike any other dynamis run I have ever done. I honestly think we cleared the whole zone with about 30 seconds left before timing out.
Optimist: 30 AFv2, a 100 currency piece, and 16 ores dropped. Not too shabby. Notable drops: 7 BLM, 4 SAM, 4 THF. And I got an extra LS participation point. And several gil items too.
Pessimist: None of that AFv2 went to me. What was crazy was, plenty of the freedrops managed to go to the same 2 or 3 people all evening. I woulda liked some of the action on those 4 SAM hands or 2 MNK feet... but whateva.
LolFail - Sky:
Summary: Sky farming was apparently very successful. Supposedly we picked up 5 dios, 2 waters, and a bunch of season stones.
Optimist: More pop-items means more gods means more points and more likelihood I'll be getting my god-gear sooner. And I got a bunch of LS participation points. (a few of us did some outside farming afterwards.)
Pessimist: While I was away on vacation (spent several days around New Years Eve in Las Vegas) a couple people overtook me and I am no longer in 1st place for Byakko's Haidate. As a a matter of fact, I'm down to 5th in line now. /sigh
SEE: Khrone put the barrel of a gun in his mouth....
Friday, December 19, 2008
Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods!
ok, so the title of this post really doesn't have anything to do with anything IN the post, but it's late and I really couldn't come-up-with/find a quote that explained my surprise for the happenings of this evening.
I guess I could have just used a non-quote and gone with something like "Man, Treu's gonna be pissed that his gf kept him from gaming tonight." (well, actually that IS a quote... from me... said in LS chat earlier tonight. lol)
So, I get up to {sky} around 7:00 tonight and just kinda camp out at Despot while I take a nap. (Figured I might as well get up to sky early and not have to worry about rushing up there at 9:50... and might as well camp out the ToD for Despot too.) So I get the ToD... yay. Everthough we didn't go after him tonight.
Well, it's REALLY late and just to make a long story short, we beat Olla, Suzaku, Mother Globe, Kirin, Seiryu, Genbu, Byakko, Byakko again, and then Kirin again. Yeah, so if you're keeping track of points... that's 15 points. So anyone that shoed up on time tonight and stayed til the end... got their 15 points they need to take a slice of our LS payout for the week. :-P heh, whatever. I'm just glad we had the ppl to DO all of these gods tonight.
We got a Haidate from the 1st Byakko we did, which was sold to Cyrel for 4,948,000 gil (woo hoo!) When it came time to do the 2nd Byakko, Drayco said he'd pass for now... and Niyah wasn't there... and Xzavier wasn't there... so... um.. wth?... are you f-ing serious?! ... no.. quit toying with me... SERiOusLY?! _I'M_ up for the next Haidate?!?!?!?! (/em pees himself with joy.) So, we start taking out Byakko again and everything's running smoothly... and then the unexpected happens: one of the monks we have swapping in-and-out of the alliance to Boost and Chi Blast ends up pulling hate, and so when he drops from the pt, noone else can attack. :-P This somehow just screwed EVERYTHING up and we practically wipe. (at this point I'm having flashbacks of this exact thing happening to Treu when it was his turn for Haidate. lol) Well, this time, we actually recovered... but still no Haidate for Khrone. oh wellz. At least we still got the kill and a couple other drops.
Well, we ran from 10:00pm til 4:15am so... it's time for some sleep for me. Damn, i'm glad i got that nap in for a couple hours earlier tonight; i have to be awake in like 1.5 hours. XD
I guess I could have just used a non-quote and gone with something like "Man, Treu's gonna be pissed that his gf kept him from gaming tonight." (well, actually that IS a quote... from me... said in LS chat earlier tonight. lol)
So, I get up to {sky} around 7:00 tonight and just kinda camp out at Despot while I take a nap. (Figured I might as well get up to sky early and not have to worry about rushing up there at 9:50... and might as well camp out the ToD for Despot too.) So I get the ToD... yay. Everthough we didn't go after him tonight.
Well, it's REALLY late and just to make a long story short, we beat Olla, Suzaku, Mother Globe, Kirin, Seiryu, Genbu, Byakko, Byakko again, and then Kirin again. Yeah, so if you're keeping track of points... that's 15 points. So anyone that shoed up on time tonight and stayed til the end... got their 15 points they need to take a slice of our LS payout for the week. :-P heh, whatever. I'm just glad we had the ppl to DO all of these gods tonight.
We got a Haidate from the 1st Byakko we did, which was sold to Cyrel for 4,948,000 gil (woo hoo!) When it came time to do the 2nd Byakko, Drayco said he'd pass for now... and Niyah wasn't there... and Xzavier wasn't there... so... um.. wth?... are you f-ing serious?! ... no.. quit toying with me... SERiOusLY?! _I'M_ up for the next Haidate?!?!?!?! (/em pees himself with joy.) So, we start taking out Byakko again and everything's running smoothly... and then the unexpected happens: one of the monks we have swapping in-and-out of the alliance to Boost and Chi Blast ends up pulling hate, and so when he drops from the pt, noone else can attack. :-P This somehow just screwed EVERYTHING up and we practically wipe. (at this point I'm having flashbacks of this exact thing happening to Treu when it was his turn for Haidate. lol) Well, this time, we actually recovered... but still no Haidate for Khrone. oh wellz. At least we still got the kill and a couple other drops.
Well, we ran from 10:00pm til 4:15am so... it's time for some sleep for me. Damn, i'm glad i got that nap in for a couple hours earlier tonight; i have to be awake in like 1.5 hours. XD
Monday, December 8, 2008
Company always on the run, Destiny is a rising sun...
This past weekend didn't even turn out remotely as good as I had anticipated.
CoP:
On Saturday Disdain wanted to start blitzing thru CoP and I still needed to do Promy Mea and Promy Dem. Well, we got our party together: Treu and Hybrid on SMN, me and Zspa on WAR/NIN, Disdain on DNC/NIN and Ramoth on RNG. Well the first Mea we failed, but that was mainly because we didn't have enough animas and didn't quite use the ones we had at the right moments. Disdain altered the plan a little bit for when we pop the animas and the 2nd run ended up being a cakewalk.
Then ppl had to start going their own ways to events or dinner or whatnot, so we were just going to put off Dem until Sunday. Well... we ended up not getting back together because someone was always busy the entire day. But we did farm up a bunch more remnants and memories so it shouldn't be that bad if/when we DO get around to Dem. Hopefully tonight around 9pm... but then again, since the update was today, everyone will probably be busy running around checking out the new stuff. Still not clearing my Promies makes me a saaaaaad panda. ; ;
ENM:
Sheep in Antlion's Clothing. Me, Treu, Sush, Hybrid and Drayco. Beat it with 5 minutes to spare. No worthwhile drops.
Dynamis:
Sunday night HellsBells went on a Dynamis - Windurst run. FINALLY I can get my 4th city clear, right?! . . . Wrong. :-P A n00b ended up not paying attention and pulled the deathhouse. We wiped, reraised and then realized we still had a couple ppl trapped in front of the deathhouse, so we had to pick them up before moving on. Paxton ended up organizing the BLMs to time-nuke the statues and then everyone took out the remaining mobs. I had to use {Hundred Fists} and before it even wore, the damn mob we were fighting puts up Perfect Dodge. /sigh oh well. We cleared the deathhouse without further incident and the lost members rejoined.
Another wipe took place a little later because someone pulled something they weren't supposed to. ({Welcome!} to {Dynamis}!) We raise again and by the time we were set to go, we had less than 15 minutes to clear the center and then kill the boss. So, we try to speed through the center and ... well, I think you know where this is going. Wipe once again. We start raising and see the 3 minute warning and just ended up giving up. No Windy clear for Khrone. And that makes me a saaad sad panda. ; ;
Sky:
I missed the first Kirin kill cuz I was in Dynamis. I get up there as fast as possible and miss a Seiryu as well. Then we just farm for Dios. By the time I get to the camp, they had already gotten 2 right away. I head back towards the entrance to open the yellow gate for someone... apparently was seen by a stat when I used up my last invis powder, was killed, {fun}. (this was death #4 in the past 3 hours.) Whatever.
We leave to hit up Kirin again now that everyone has their 2-hours back. It takes me 13, yes THIRTEEN, attempts to get to the Kirin room. Over a stack of sneak pots used up. Had to borrow more from Kota who was stuck in pretty much the same rut I was. One of the times leaving the pot room I hear him say "help", so I turn around and see that he's attacking a weapon. Why? I don't know. So I figure he just wants to do something while we're running in circles. I engage. I ask "why we attacking this?" He replies "aggro" and then promptly dies. I immediately turn and run for my life. Guess what happens next! (this was death #5 in the past 3 hours.) Whatever. Oh, and Kota said I was bad luck and that's why HE kept failing to get into the Kirin room too. So I choose a different path...
I eventually get into the Kirin room because I gave up on the western path and too the eastern (Water) path. That worked for me the first try. /sigh Gotta remember that from now on. We kill Kirin with a quickness. We leave. Kill like 2 stats outside and then take out Despot right away. Then it was back to dio farming til 3:45am. (yay 3 hours of sleep til i gotta get up for work again!)
Lots of death and lack of sleep makes me a very sad panda. ; ;
Version Update:
Yus! Version update is here! And it actually installed relatively quickly for me tonight. (20 minutes tops I think.) Unfortunately no new ranks (level 5) and no new campaign gear, so I guess I'm just spending my allied notes on a Cobra Unit Cap and Leggings for better Acc while WSing. /shrug There's really nothing else I'd need the notes for until I get other jobs up higher so why not, right?
But yeah. It's been a kinda depressing past few days in-game. Hopefully things will turn around shortly. (Like we plan on hitting up the bird camp [S] with Disdain's DNC37 and my NIN37 and SAM37 this coming weekend.)
On a good note: I put a 7th merit into H2H. w00t! Almost done with it!
And just to kill some time, I went and finally completed the Blade of Death quest for the Deathbringer (GS for DRK). Just had to run and trade the old GS basically since I completed the 100 kills over a YEAR ago. lol Yeah, finished the kills on 7/28/2007. I guess I haven't really even GLANCED at DRK since then.
CoP:
On Saturday Disdain wanted to start blitzing thru CoP and I still needed to do Promy Mea and Promy Dem. Well, we got our party together: Treu and Hybrid on SMN, me and Zspa on WAR/NIN, Disdain on DNC/NIN and Ramoth on RNG. Well the first Mea we failed, but that was mainly because we didn't have enough animas and didn't quite use the ones we had at the right moments. Disdain altered the plan a little bit for when we pop the animas and the 2nd run ended up being a cakewalk.
Then ppl had to start going their own ways to events or dinner or whatnot, so we were just going to put off Dem until Sunday. Well... we ended up not getting back together because someone was always busy the entire day. But we did farm up a bunch more remnants and memories so it shouldn't be that bad if/when we DO get around to Dem. Hopefully tonight around 9pm... but then again, since the update was today, everyone will probably be busy running around checking out the new stuff. Still not clearing my Promies makes me a saaaaaad panda. ; ;
ENM:
Sheep in Antlion's Clothing. Me, Treu, Sush, Hybrid and Drayco. Beat it with 5 minutes to spare. No worthwhile drops.
Dynamis:
Sunday night HellsBells went on a Dynamis - Windurst run. FINALLY I can get my 4th city clear, right?! . . . Wrong. :-P A n00b ended up not paying attention and pulled the deathhouse. We wiped, reraised and then realized we still had a couple ppl trapped in front of the deathhouse, so we had to pick them up before moving on. Paxton ended up organizing the BLMs to time-nuke the statues and then everyone took out the remaining mobs. I had to use {Hundred Fists} and before it even wore, the damn mob we were fighting puts up Perfect Dodge. /sigh oh well. We cleared the deathhouse without further incident and the lost members rejoined.
Another wipe took place a little later because someone pulled something they weren't supposed to. ({Welcome!} to {Dynamis}!) We raise again and by the time we were set to go, we had less than 15 minutes to clear the center and then kill the boss. So, we try to speed through the center and ... well, I think you know where this is going. Wipe once again. We start raising and see the 3 minute warning and just ended up giving up. No Windy clear for Khrone. And that makes me a saaad sad panda. ; ;
Sky:
I missed the first Kirin kill cuz I was in Dynamis. I get up there as fast as possible and miss a Seiryu as well. Then we just farm for Dios. By the time I get to the camp, they had already gotten 2 right away. I head back towards the entrance to open the yellow gate for someone... apparently was seen by a stat when I used up my last invis powder, was killed, {fun}. (this was death #4 in the past 3 hours.) Whatever.
We leave to hit up Kirin again now that everyone has their 2-hours back. It takes me 13, yes THIRTEEN, attempts to get to the Kirin room. Over a stack of sneak pots used up. Had to borrow more from Kota who was stuck in pretty much the same rut I was. One of the times leaving the pot room I hear him say "help", so I turn around and see that he's attacking a weapon. Why? I don't know. So I figure he just wants to do something while we're running in circles. I engage. I ask "why we attacking this?" He replies "aggro" and then promptly dies. I immediately turn and run for my life. Guess what happens next! (this was death #5 in the past 3 hours.) Whatever. Oh, and Kota said I was bad luck and that's why HE kept failing to get into the Kirin room too. So I choose a different path...
I eventually get into the Kirin room because I gave up on the western path and too the eastern (Water) path. That worked for me the first try. /sigh Gotta remember that from now on. We kill Kirin with a quickness. We leave. Kill like 2 stats outside and then take out Despot right away. Then it was back to dio farming til 3:45am. (yay 3 hours of sleep til i gotta get up for work again!)
Lots of death and lack of sleep makes me a very sad panda. ; ;
Version Update:
Yus! Version update is here! And it actually installed relatively quickly for me tonight. (20 minutes tops I think.) Unfortunately no new ranks (level 5) and no new campaign gear, so I guess I'm just spending my allied notes on a Cobra Unit Cap and Leggings for better Acc while WSing. /shrug There's really nothing else I'd need the notes for until I get other jobs up higher so why not, right?
But yeah. It's been a kinda depressing past few days in-game. Hopefully things will turn around shortly. (Like we plan on hitting up the bird camp [S] with Disdain's DNC37 and my NIN37 and SAM37 this coming weekend.)
On a good note: I put a 7th merit into H2H. w00t! Almost done with it!
And just to kill some time, I went and finally completed the Blade of Death quest for the Deathbringer (GS for DRK). Just had to run and trade the old GS basically since I completed the 100 kills over a YEAR ago. lol Yeah, finished the kills on 7/28/2007. I guess I haven't really even GLANCED at DRK since then.
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