RMT and the STFU.

I got bored of the Special Task Force's (+Unit for lulz) monthly reports and pretty graphs so stopped paying attention to them.
Then I get a tell one day:


Feeling satisfied with my clever response, I open my menu and realise I don't know how to contact the STF, or a GM. Even if I did, I'm not sure I'd want to spoil my record of 0 GM calls so far though the game. A sad state of affairs indeed.

(I hope he doesn't take it personally and hack my account.....! I'm not worth that much ;;).

Not that it would have achieved much anyway, it was a level 1 mule in Bastok that sent me the tell, so chances are it would have been deleted by the time I'd reported it. I wonder why it picked me of all people, especially half way across the world...

So I herd you liek Nyzul Relics?

SE was throwing some info about Nyzul relics around at the 2008 Premier Site Summit, along with a Q&A session with the Development team. Apparantly PUP, DRG, RDM, THF, WHM and COR weapons' info were dispersed amongst premier sites, but so far only PUP DRG and RDM have had articles about them.


I dunno how potent the 'occasionally attacks twice' is going to be, but it wouldn't be unrealistic to assume it's similar to the Joyeuse's frequency considering the identical wording and the comparitively low base damage on this weapon.
The 'aftermath' stuff is supposed to be a boost available for a short time after using a WS.


I don't know what to say about PUP stuff, but it looks sufficiently relic-worthy.


It won't replace staves. Again, assuming it's the same rate of double attack as the Joyeuse it's going to be the best sword available to RDM (as a relic should be - without a doubt, unlike Excalibur), but it doesn't look like it will justify a RDM meleeing on anything more than they already do. At least it will be a convert piece so is guaranteed some use...no parrying skill though?



...it looks looks silly to the point that makes it awesome. How this has been achieved, I do not know. The Dynamis relics had the hidden effect of dealing 2~3x damage, so that 'double damage' being displayed on these could mean these relics don't have any extra hidden effects on them. Aww.


Only enhancing steps doesn't look particularily impressive, but then again I'm not familiar with DNC. Kinda crappy damage/delay, but I guess DNC isn't all about dealing damage.

RDM so far seems to be the only one with higher base damage than standard alternatives.

______________________________________________________________________________________
Highlights of Q&A Session with FFXI Development Team:

- The ability to rapidly exchange campaign tags will be adjusted to discourage players who spam songs and self-buffs to gain experience in campaign.

- A security feature is being planned similar to the Account Authenticator device created by Blizzard.

- Dynamis costs will be reduced in next version update. :D

- An addition to the battle system is being planned to encourage melee and mage jobs to work together to coordinate attacks.

- The development team is considering revealing hidden food effects, but some effects will remain hidden. :)

- Campaign in the cities is intended to reflect the harsh times of the Crystal War, but adjustments are planned to keep certain NPCs, such as the warp NPC, from disappearing during battle.

- More job adjustments are planned, but no adjustments are planned for puppetmaster. (Uh...ok?)

- Square Enix is working on improving the account recovery process.

- There are no plans to enhance the Square Enix-sanctioned windower. :(

- Winning numbers for the Mog Bonanza lottery were randomly chosen, and the process was strictly supervised to prevent any improprieties. Participation in the lottery was a huge success and the event will likely be repeated next year. :D

- A new scheme is being created to help low- and mid-level players gain experience. :D

- No immediate plans are in place to increase the number of weapons players can merit. :(

- Group 1 merits are planned to be added soon for Scholar and Dancer.

- Additional rewards will not be added to notorious monster bosses on floors 20, 40, 60 and 80 of Nyzul Isle assaults.

- The development team is against the concept of transferring content IDs because the feature could possibly be exploited by RMT.

- It may be possible in the future for players to change their faces and hairstyles. :0

- Chocobos will soon be added to the WoTG areas.

- A hint is in the PlayOnline topics banner about new relic armor for recently added job. (we got that already, yeah...)

- More sellable gear is planned to be introduced as the RMT threat declines.

Most of that is pretty awesome stuff, and even if not, it's nice to know. Changing face/hair would be fun, I'd probably do it if it's not too costly just for the hell of it, but I see how it would help people to escape a bad reputation after robbing stuff and jumping server. Still, it won't be all that exciting if we're still limited to the 8-or-so face/hair models for each race (curse you PS2 limitations). I guess I'll add more relics as the information becomes available/as I can be bothered.

Ugh...

I only changed jobs to warp... :(


Announcement!


The next FINAL FANTASY XI Version Update has been scheduled to take place in early September. The development team is currently hard at work to bring you the following, just to name a few items:
- The continuing episodes of nation quests for the Wings of the Goddess expansion.
- Major battle-related tweaks and additions.
- Adjustments to fellows and Campaign.

- Ok, I guess. I've fallen behind with the quests, so I'll have some catching up to do. No new missions mentioned, but the quests trump them so far, so I've got no complaints. Chances are missions will follow.
- HMMMMM?! Could mean anything really, need more info.
- Fuck campaign. Seriously. Fellows are awesomesauce though.

From the pictures, seems like DNC and SCH are gonna get something (most likely job-specific merits), WoTG quests, and the third could be ToAU relic armour being put into dynamis (poor guys) or it could be announcing (hopefully) the reduction in hourglass costs, and the separate release of AFv2 in another system. Chances are this is just wishful thinking and Puppetmasters, Corsairs and Blue Mages will have to come suffer with the rest of us.

The most interesting thing there is seeing that the update is in early September. This could either mean it's going to be pretty lame, or will be pushed back a couple of months (and still be pretty lame).



Excitement!


The Sunbreeze festival is coming soon, and it seems folks at the Square Enix HQ have suddenly started giving a damn about seasonal events again because this one actually looks interesting (here's hoping they've put just as much effort into the event this year as they have done with the announcement).



Adventure!
SAM now 18. Giddeus until 16, Shakhrami 16~18. Worms good. Sarutabaruta [S] bad. 2 deaths. Didn't realise I had Third Eye until level 16.


Of all the countless droves of mages that passed me while leveling, none cast protect or shell on me, and the only one who bothered to stop and at least throw one cure at me was a rank 2, level 30 something RDM, and even then it was a meagre Cure I. The gesture was appreciated however.


Qufim next maybe? I'll be soloing (well, duoing) in Buburimu again until ~21. May try Gigas leeches as /drg or something.

Hi-res action shot (of me apparantly missing an attack completely)!


It's been a while since I did a HQ screenshot. Shame most of the JPEGs look like ass, but considering the amount of them I take my hard drive won't cope with everything in PNG or BMP. If I played with the game window a little smaller (since widescreen makes it difficult to keep an eye on the log and my party's HP/MP/etc at the same time it would be a smart move) that might reduce the file size a bit, but I prefer to run the game in full screen... decisions, decisions...

(laughs)

A recent dev. team interview got translated. God knows what they found so funny throughout the interview to provoke that much laughter.
There was alot of talk about Campaign, far too much for an event that most people see as for productively killing time between events/parties/whatever. The gist of it came to 'We're still balancing it to make it fun for everyone, and it's more complex than you think' to be honest, it isn't. It doesn't matter whether you go on about a nation's resorces, morale, technology level, favourite weather, whatever... it doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day, when you win battles things get better, lose battles, things get worse. Sure, there's the NPC that you can give strategy suggestions to, but I'm probably the only person who's given him a visit since he was put there, plus the fact that he will almost certainly be given contradictory orders by different players renders his existance kind of meaningless.

Some non-campaign stuff was pretty interesting, for instance the mention of a new 'party building aid'(?)
This “Party-Building Aid” system is something completely new, right?
Gondai: If I tell you any more, Ogawa will get mad at me. (grin) It will help players to build parties and enjoy the game with friends. It’s something that won’t require a lot of preparation and allow for a more casual playing experience. We feel it’ll make playing a little easier.

It's hard to imagine how this could help, since building parties isn't a problem, it's the fact that they usually are made by idiots and are devoid of tanks. A better solution to the problem would be to say...hell, I don't know, perhaps introduce a new tanking job? I guess any changes they do introduce to help low-to-mid-leveling easier are welcome judging by how retardedly difficult this game can be to start from scratch. Also anything that lets me finish DRG faster is a bonus, but expecting any groundbreaking changes before I get 75 is wildly optimistic.


”Magic that allows Red Mages to melee more,” “Ninja hate-lowering abilities,” and “more Avatars for Summoners.” What do you have to say about these frequent requests?
Gondai: Changes to increase variations in battle styles are being implemented with high priority, but there are still more things planned.

"High priority" excites me. Depends what level of priority it was when they first suggested the idea last year...

Sounds like they've finished Corsair/Puppetmaster/Blue mage relic armour finally, which should please a good few people. No mention of where it's going to be obtained sadly. Gadalar is getting his own background story quest like the other Serpent generals finally, so good for him.


As for me, I've not had much going on over the weekend, aside from this:


(it took long enough...two more to go)

And I duoed Cheese Hoarder Gigiroon (the rat on the armed gears' ZNM path) with Flam. I learnt a fair bit from that experience, the wiki entry was a bit confused and somewhat vague in places. Not that I'm going to make an account to clear that up, I can't be bothered. It took less than 30 minutes with a RDM and BLM, just kiting around the room adjacent to the pop area (directly East, on the other side of the wall) the rat had pretty poor pathing so would run around the outsides of the central square, unless you ended up directly opposite to him in which case he'd cut straight through. We just traded hate with nukes as best we could (my Thunder was resisting alot, but I didn't have the right gear on as my soloing macros still need alot of work), it ran off before it could do any real damage to us, giving us time to rest again. It would be even easier with 3~ blms, they'd probably only need to nuke once each to make it run again. It's easy to kite as well, possible so without movement+ gear.


We tried a couple of kiting paths at first, from the pull (red line on the left) the adds from the rooms on the way depoped by the time I reached the main room (E) where you can kite around in circles if you abuse the mob's pathing, or alternatively the green route around the teleporters is a safer and larger kiting area, but will take alot longer for a duo due to having to circle the whole area before your partner can nuke it.

We also tried Iriz Ima while we were at it, we both changed from /nin because it's a Marid and even easier to kite than the rat. Flam got a few extra BLMs to help on this one, so I just played the refresh whore while they nuked it down. Didn't take long at all, but that's hardly a surprise with 5 BLMs. It was very easy, but I still will probably go /nin if I have to attempt to solo it in the future because it does have the potential to one-shot a mage without shadows quite happily.

More Campaign (/sigh) SAM, and Assaults.

About 30k Allied Notes since my last one, and still no new medal. I hate it so much, but I can't bear to just leave it now I'm (presumably) so close.


Some genious had the smarts to bring a massive train of mobs to where I (and many others) was buffing, JUST having got my tags, so the next 10 minutes were spent on the floor. It wasn't particularily soothing to see people who spent the entire fight singing songs to themselves reraise, cast Reraise on themselves again and go back to singing...I was livid.

Windy still is under beastman control, by the way, but it doesn't really make much difference to the battles other than the NPC you get tags from is hiding elsewhere.

I picked up Samurai to make a start on it as a DRG sub, and headed off to Giddeus as per the usual for level 10-15 jobs (I should find another place really, because an area crowded with aggressive and linking Tough~ mobs is not a safe ideal, but there isn't usually a shortage unless someone is farming necklaces. I managed to cap Great Katana (which was about 10 levels behind what it should be at level ten, due to the 'I'll never take it past ten, so why bother' attitude I took with pretty much every job.


Links occur quite often, especially since I was using a bow with a ten-minute delay on it. Meikyo Shisui dealt with this link, ending two lives in a suitably cool fashion while my NPC soloed the third.

Another link later didn't end so well and I home pointed, at least satisfied with capping GKT.


I tried flowerheads in Sarutabaruta [S] the next day, which was ok for a while (most being Even Match~Tough) until I leveled and the majority being Decent Challenge.

My NPC did this though:


The first time I've seen him use it outside of the BCNM fight, due to its trigger (red HP and 100% TP on both) being near-impossible to attain in most circumstances. I didn't see it coming, so I failed to get a good screenshot of it, but he basically just shoots a light skillchain out of nowhere and explodes whatever you're fighting with it. Pity I had the damage filter on. In an attempt to make him repeat it, I got us both killed on the next mob, and home pointed again.
SAM is just short of 14, and has a long way to go.


Finally, I got another Assault clear (22/50 or something to Captain, lulz) on Demolition Duty. Kinda like Excavation Duty, but only an Automaton can attack the walls (which spawn crabs for some mysterious reason, that you can use AoE attacks on to damage the walls more) and you have to avoid Imps instead of Bombs.


Faster and probably easier than Excavation duty as long as you can handle/avoid the Imps and easily do-able with 3. Although you will probably need a healer, the Automaton takes a ton of damage (it swallowed three cure IV's after only a few hits from a crab) but it does also have a ton of HP, plus you can take it back to the start for repairs (but obviously this will consume time).

The leader knew his way around effortlessly, so I imagine he's spamming this one for points. I think it's only 1k each for a clear, so I'll stick with Lamia 13. With first time bonus and the band I got 1650 points, so not bad at all for a single run.

Sky Breaker?!

I actually did something on Cuddles for the first time in a long while, the poor guy was getting neglected.


I'd already got the Beadeaux and Davoi parts of the third limit break quest done, just had Castle Oztroja (the hardest) to finish. All of it is pretty straightforward, you've just got to hit a ??? in a relatively difficult to access place in each of the three beastmen fortresses. It's just Oztroja's one has a true sight NM stood right on top of it, along with several doors that need passwords/codes to get past.

The password changes every day, so it's faster just to check the two easily accessible words first, and guess the third from that list. SE can go to hell if they expect me to do it the hard way every time I go in there.


On this outing, I encountered a JP Paladin fighting against two Yagudo near the first door, so I jump in and kill the extra one for him, hit the levers and we go through. It turned out he was on the same quest, so I teamed up with him (well, we didn't actually form a party, I just kept an eye on him) and opened the Brass Door for him after I got through using a Hermes Quencher to flee past. Not sure if he was planning on doing the same thing, or just hoping someone might be there to open it for him.


I did the password after 4 tries, we dropped down and both successfully got the key item and warped out safely. I was shocked when I saw him do it, he managed to run back undetected even without invisible. I shat bricks expecting a huge train to follow him. Determined not to fail and look an idiot after helping him this far, I made sure not to aggro anything either.

I can finally start leveling on MNK again, and now there's nothing in between me and Footwork and other fun toys. Destroyers here I come!

ZNMs, new gear and why Campaign still sucks.

I finally gave Verdelet a try, I was given good opportunity when I went to check out the area to see if pulling it solo was possible and found most of the imps there were taken by competing exp parties.

I discovered the hard way that he has a 30' casting range (as opposed to the usual 21') when I took a Firaga III as I was standing idly around, thinking I was safely out of range. I also got hit with Sleepga II during the pull, and got hit by a second -aga spell and came close to death later on when I got hit by Frentic Rip as I replied to a /tell. Fortunately, I had 3 shadows up at the time that took the damage for me.


Red: Pop/pulling path (potential Imp aggro, probably can deal with 1 - gravity and keep running, although this will probably lose claim on the NM).
Orange: Still pulling, no Imps, only Jnun in the ponds but should be plenty of disance to avoid them.
Green: Kiting area, no aggressive mobs but still a few that can get in the way (not a big deal-he's incredibly easy to kite).

Other than those few hiccups, it was a fairly straight forward fight, and he's incredibly easy to kite (do-able without any movement speed gear, I wager) as he stops to cast very frequently. The only tricky part is getting DoT spells on him without being hit, I waited for a single-target spell before moving in range to apply DoTs. He does have Fast Cast traits, so it's not really possible, even on an -aga III, to run into range, cast and get out before he casts his own spell (made more difficult by him having a longer casting range than players). I didn't really get any chance to nuke either because there was a good chance he'd get time to -aga me and then Frentic Rip, which is a potential instant victory for him.


My solo macros need alot of work, I need to arrange them in a way so I don't get RSI by hitting Alt-1~6 over and over for 2 hours.
Full drops, too. When things went into the treasure pool, I tried to make room in my inventory in a blind panic by throwing linkpearls, I'll need to ask for more now. :x


More MND gear! +73 in total, which despite lacking a staff/+skill, is usually sufficient for landing slow (para can go to hell with its shitty accuracy and proc rate, I just use a staff so I can at least make it look like it's doing something) on sky NMs with a couple of tries, and pretty much all merit-level mobs (not that it's much use in a merit party anyhow). Shame about my crappy base MND, it's the only thing that makes me wish I was Elvaan.


Potential Nuking additions? Not too sure about this cape, MAB+2 vs. 4 INT is unlikely to make enough of a difference (if any) to warrant the -1 inventory space, especially for Tier III nukes, it might be of more value to a BLM.

Time well spent soloing, methinks.

Campaign is becoming such a pain in the backside. Despite Windy having a metric fuckton of awesome Freelances, they don't bother showing up with stuff like this happens:


Not to mention the previous 'adjustments' made to campaign made the beastmen wtfbbqpwn pretty much everyone, and all the nations have been fighting in town battles constantly since the previous update, and no ground has been made by anyone.
Until now.


Progress, but not in the direction we might have hoped. How the hell am I going to work on my next medal now? Is the place going to have a bunch of Yagudo campaign evaluaters instead?
If I had time now, I'd go check it out. But I don't.

They seek him here...

They seek him there...



His clothes are loud, but never square



It will make or break him so he's got to buy the best



'Cause he's a dedicated follower of fasion.

Bastok's Second Best Dressed.

A successful Sacrarium party netted a new drain piece and some disturbing dialogue from Brygid but unfortunately no DRG subligar (which is probably more useful than the RDM one), so I'm going to have to hold out a little longer for that.
The whole run was relatively painless compared to the normal quality of parties there, although I might have liked to give it a go on Dragoon for a change of pace, we were short of healers (surprise?). Thankfully, no dancers this time. I'm still reeling from that memory.

Other than that, I've farmed some zeni, and failed to do any assault missions whatsoever.


Zeni farming gets quite tedious when using normal Soultrappers, I miss the 30-second reuse timer on the '2000' version, but I'll be damned if I have to start up doing pankration, or donate a ton of Aht Urhgan currency in order to obtain them.

An adventurer worthy of admiration?

It was pretty quiet when I logged on, so I was bored enough to go and attempt to solo something. ZNMs are great for this, since you don't need to stand around waiting for a pop/claim. There's several 'paths' of ZNMs that ultimately let you fight different higher-tier mobs as you advance (look it up yourself if you want a better explanation) - and the muse tariqah I'm after is on the third path, meaning I had a choice of three monsters to fight - Chigre (a Chigoe which has a variety of unpleasant additional effects on its attacks), Lil' Apkallu (an Apkallu that does alot of running around and TP-move spam) and Velionis (a BLM/RDM Skeleton that has an incredibly powerful damage spikes effect, and can use Chainspell). My main objective was to just kill one in order to get the key item to pop the Tier II monster, Verdelet, that drops the shield. I picked Chigre because it seemed easier than the others - Velionis seemed like he could be dangerous, and Lil' Apkallu was reported to have more HP and resisted Poison alot, so would make for a much slower fight.


The ??? to pop him is located at the red dot in (E-8), the red path was the way he was pulled to the green kiting area at (E/F-7) the only thing that could go wrong during the pull is if you aggro one of the Malboro mobs that are in the large room, but one was right next to the cave exit and I managed to just get past hugging the wall. Chigre does move pretty fast (it seemed quicker than normal running speed) but it was possible to gain ground on him (albeit slowly) while kiting, so I'd say he might be around +10% movement speed, I doubt it's possible to solo for a rdm without Crimson Cuisses. I was only hit by him a couple of times: once during the pull (and got hit by poison, which is very stong, it's a good thing I had antidotes on me) and once again later on when I tried to nuke. A refresh piece may come in handy, as there isn't always enough distance to keep refresh up but I was hardly hurting for MP the whole fight, so it's far from necessary.
However, a few laps of the square and you should have got enough distance on him to cast refresh or even stoneskin before he can catch up. The Qiqirn in the area don't aggro but don't think that makes them your friends - they get in the way alot, so be ready to change course slightly to run around them, or swap equipment and 'blink' past them, as running into them at a bad time is enough to let the flea catch you.


The fight took just about an hour in total, with my only damage being from Bio II, Poison II and a single Blizzard I (any higher tier nukes would take too long to cast; he'd have time to catch up, strip shadows and interrupt you before the spell went off). I never tried Bind or Gravity, I'd read that it was highly resistant/immune so I didn't bother (I should have tried in hindsight, I did have some opportunity). Bio III would certainly speed this fight up, I was nuking with Bio towards the end just for the initial damage (~68, but Bio III is alot higher from what I've heard) as it was faster than elemental nukes. My dark magic gear is pretty lacking as it is, so I encountered a fair few resists on the damage, but only one full resist on poison for the entire duration of the fight.

I don't think /nin is definately needed for this fight, as long as you can stay ahead. The pull might be a challenge, but during kiting, it only hit me once and that was after utsusemi wore before I got chance to recast it. Perhaps if a duo, a second RDM/BLM or BLM for elemental DOT spells would be handy, although they would also need movement speed+ gear in case it came after them (apparantly hate decays fast, but I think it could be down to tanks being hit frequently).

Lost orbs and liabilities.

I attempted Under Observation earlier, I say 'attempted' because anything else really would have insinuated that the outing was in some way successful.

One death and two time-outs, and a very sad cat later we give up and go our separate ways. Typically, this BCNM is a cakewalk with 2 ninjas and a rdm/smn/whatever to kite the main eye - due to my role, I'm not exactly sure what goes on at the ninja end of this, but I always assumed it was relatively straight forward.


Apparantly not...
The Galka was actually a pretty cool guy, was nice and knew what he was doing, and ended up taking up the slack from the useless ninja, and killing both eyes himself, and on the second run (yes, we even tried a second time) killed both eyes AGAIN, because somehow the elvaan had managed to take 5% of it's HP by the time the Galka had killed his. I was kiting for upwards of 10 minutes, we didn't have enough time to kill the main one and failed.

The most annoying part is, I knew the useless nin's name from somewhere, and I have the creeping suspicion that I'd done (and failed) this very same BC with him before, with him as BLU/NIN, where he died again, at the start, for the very same reason (not facing away from the mob). I wish I'd have take a screenshot of that old run to confirm my fears. Some people just don't learn...


The only positive thing out of this experience is that I learned they changed the BCNM orb icon, it looks quite nice now.

I won more than I thought...

Looks like I didn't check my marbles properly, but it turns out I won five exp scrolls in total - hurray! One was on my storage mule so will never be used, but it was a fairly decent return compared to what most people got out of the Bonanza. Here's hoping for a repeat next year...perhaps even without the 2 month wait.

Seems some people from Windurst actually care about campaign, so we're getting all the cool freelances.


I've seen Kagetora (the guy from the ninja AF quests) around, as well as Areuhat(?) whatever that Elvaan/Wyrm chick is called... we've also got the Poroggo Prince helping (I'm not sure if he's a freelance or not, same goes for the Lycopodium NPC and his Goobbue friend).

But what do I care? I hate campaign.


Such a pain... took far too much effort to get this, I hope it was just down to maintenance interrupting my progress and having to start over or something, becuase it took me about 20 days of on-and-off campaign to get the stupid thing, and even then there's no decent rewards I want from the 'Wings' rank. SE can go to hell with their new ranking system (maybe more stars on Ops = faster rank ups? I doubt it, but worth a try).