It's Miller time!

er... I mean: it's Melee time!

Yeah, that's right. Just yesterday I realized that jack-o'-lanterns only cost 1k gil from the festival moogles (and can even be FREE if you just step outside the city and spend no more than 5 or 10 minutes killing a single 1-hp bat and a weak-assed NM) which means it's time to start putting that good food to some good use and leveling my melee jobs this week. Most likely just DNC, but I suppose my THF is a possibility too.

Next week i'm outta town and, the week after, i'm pretty sure the event will be over. Hmmm... Maybe I should just stock-up on them for future use... or even profit, considering they normally sell in Bastok for 3k.... but I guess we'll see.

This weekend I spent a couple hours in Campaign Battles again just cuz i was bored lfp (unsuccessfully for a couple hours) on my DNC. Did a little exploring of the past over towards Castle Oz [S]. Got my final past Gate Crystal (in Meriph [S]). Got more xp and meritted Kick Attacks up to level 2. And, to top it off, even got a rank-up in Campaign. ^^

I also did more questing in Windy and am basically a fight (some bones NM in Eldieme Necropolis) away from getting my key item to get easy access into the Fenrir Prime area. And even wasted a couple hours camping Quu Domi again... 2 out of 3 I got the claim. None dropped the haste feet. When I left, I told one of the other campers the ToD and he kept me posted on his luck over the next couple hours. He was claiming both Yag NMs multiple times and didn't get either to drop to good stuff. I'm startin to think those haste feet are purely a myth, invented by some cruel, sadistic brat who just sits {Invisible} on the level up above, laughing all day and night at the people down below, wasting their time and whittling their sanity into oblivion. ... Then again, the dude I gave the ToD to "knows someone who went 1/1 on the feet and was something like 0/80 on the hands".

OMG! That "someone" was probably that same sadistic brat spreading his lies!!!

/em wants to feed the tasty brat to Jormy...

SAM's Song

Here's a happy tune (a happy tune...)

Good stuff happening this week and I don't even need to spend much time discussing it: SAM up to 37. ^^ Killin spider-pets in East Altepa = good times... except when the damn goblins keep turning around all the damn time and link and kill your chain and.... (happy place... go to your happy place....)

Other than that: defeated Ramuh Prime and can now summon him, thus completing all main 6 avatar pacts. Yippy skippy! Also: defeated Shiva and Ifrit again to start collecting whispers for the Fenrir Prime fight. Also: started on the Windurst quests to obtain the key item to get access to Toraimarai Canal via the Priming Gate in Windurst Walls. Hopfully I'll have the quests completed by Sunday so we can blitz through the remaining avatar fights again and maybe go hit-up Fenrir Prime.

nuff for now. sleepytime.

Keep the change, ya filthy animal.

So, Treu was out of town again, which means I got to borrow his equipment and be home alone, all weekend, abusing Screamin.
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No, you perv, "his equipment" meaning "his laptop" and "abusing" meaning "PLing myself".
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You sick little monkey! "PLing myself" does not mean "playing with myself".
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Yes, technically I was alone and playing, but it doesn't mean it the way you're making it sound.
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No, it doesn't mean "playing with Screamin" either.
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Stop it already! It's not sexual at all!
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Seriously. Just knock-off the giggling already. /sigh

Accomplishments over the past few days:
- SAM is now at level 30, and I'm startin to see how sweet of a job it is. All of those Job Abilities and Traits to help build TP faster. Mikey likey!
- DNC is now at level 25, which now means free Snk/Invis! (I've basically always just been using potions/powders/ninja-tools, which are costly and/or take up inventory space.) Some of the dances are pretty slick too, but apparently I need to be in parties to make them really effective. (Soloing from 21 - 25 went kinda slow.)
- Defeated 3 more avatars, so I can now summon them: Ifrit Prime, Shiva Prime, Leviathan Prime
- Obtained Carbuncle Mitts, which I actually should have gotten like 3 levels ago for my SMN, but whateva. Now I can get back to leveling SMN without feeling gimped.

Near-future plans:
- Defeat Ramuh Prime so I can finally summon all Celestial Avatars
- Defeat all main 6 Prime Avatars again, to get the whispers, to get my Moon Bauble, to go fight Fenrir Prime, to be able to summon Fenrir, to be schweet
- Level SAM up to 36 or 37 so we can hit-up the {fun} zone
- If that is accomplished this week, then I'll probably switch back to SMN and start leveling that up to 37 as well

Cobra Lalalalalalalalalalalalala!!!

I haven't done too much over the past several days because I was out of town for a wedding for an extended weekend. So, here's a quick summary of what's been accomplished since my last post:

1. Got my SAM to 23 with /WAR out in Qufim. It was kinda nice to make some progress on something other than my MNK.
2. Did a lil crafting and bumped my smithing and clothcraft up a tad bit more. I only mainly did this to start clearing up some inventory space.
3. A ton of Campaign Battles. (as usual) But I finally got enough xp to rank-up and get my Holy Knight Emblem and, just last night, my Brass Wings of Service key items! After getting the wings, I immediately ran over and bought some Cobra Unit Subligar for 50k Allied Notes. Yay! New Leg Piece! Maybe I can finally get rid of my Vendor's Slops!

Well, honestly, that was it. I guess now I can back-off of doing Campaign Battles and get back to leveling SAM, SMN and NIN. The only thing I currently want to save up my Allied Notes for now is the Cobra Unit Body piece, but since it hasn't been released yet, I can take my good ol' sweet time ranking up and just hope they add it in in the next update in November. (I supposed I could also save up some Allied Notes for some good gear for SAM, SMN and NIN too, but I won't be needing those items for quite a while.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wow. Let's do that again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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