15-man Storms of Fate burn?

Wait - sorry, 14 man...

From the rank 5-1 mission, to the Shadowlord fight, to CoP 4-3/5-3, there is ALWAYS someone who forgets to flag the quest/mission/whatever properly, and only think to check after the arduous trip through Castle Zvahl/Beaucedine/Riverne/Pso'Xja.


It turned out to be alot easier than I imagined, and we beat it in good time, breaking the previous record (if only by a few seconds). All thanks to Dier for telling me to join, else I wouldn't have noticed I was even on the quest (and for being the only bard on the run!).


Plus I'm finally free from Campaign!


Assuming they're on time with the September update (I think it was September...?) I'll not have to worry about losing a rank before the next lot are added.

Leveling up, Level syncs and (second) Lieutenant.

More juicy update teasers have been announced since my last entry, there was this campaign stuff I didn't mention last time because I still don't like it (despite being half way to the final medal, I expect the Allied notes body pieces to be at least decent macro pieces for all the pain I have endured).


Level sync?

The new scheme to help low level players get exp that was mentioned in the Q&A session at the premier site summit last month has reared its ugly head , but I should have expected something like this instead of just lessening/removing the penalty for large (3~5) level gaps in parties. I don't see this becoming popular at all, unless people are offering to pay higher level people to come tank for them/whatever, but retaining your gear (granted it's with reduced stats) is very nice.


Also if the above picture is not a lie, it will be a major improvement in allowing people to help others with level-capped missions (hi2u CoP) without having to pay for level-capped gear all over again.


....I just read the article properly.
"* Level Sync cannot be used in areas or events where a separate level restriction already applies."

But wait!
"With the introduction of this system, there will also be major changes to the way equipment is handled in regard to level restrictions. Rather than automatically unequipping items if a player's level is reduced below the item's minimum level, the attributes of high-level equipment will be scaled down proportionally to the reduced level.
This will apply not only to the Level Sync system, but to all level-restricted areas and missions."

Going by the relic-wielding PLD in Promyvion picture in addition to the second quote, I'm going to hope this does remove the neccessity for repurchase of level-capped equipment (sorry crafters!) just to assist people. I can only hope that the first quote is badly worded and only applies to areas with a minimum level restriction (i.e. Dynamis).

"This means that players will now be able to participate in various battlefields, Assault missions, and Ballista, and also to adventure in level-capped areas such as Riverne without the hassle of having to switch equipment!"

...err yeah, I should read it all before I began forming an opinion. :D

It all looks good, not so hot for the purposes of actual leveling because I doubt any high level player would prefer it over a merit party, but it's great in helping friends start out (not that any of my friends ever expressed intrest in playing ._.). It better not mean I get requests to join gimpy level 60~70 parties because they can't get a healer.



Enough of that, needs more DRG...

Soloing 60-63 on Lesser Colibri was incredibly good exp, and very safe with Healing Breath now triggered at 50% HP. I only suffered one death, and that was because I failed to set spells (/blu) before setting out.



During some downtime in a Colibri party, while my fellow party members discussed the function of the watchtower we were camping by, I discovered that the addition of wyvern emotes made him evade my spear when I tried to stab him using /hurray.


65, and it's starting to grind now. Certainly an improvent on the way the game used to be, with the 50's taking twice as long as they do now, but my progress has really slowed despite nearly all my parties being great (I've not encountered anything worthy of criticism yet). I've used up the last charge on my anniversary ring, so I'm just gonna have to stick at it to progress. Currently, I need to save gil for the last few level's buyables and for cursed hecatomb pieces. I need to finish getting the assault points for the two areas (just need under 10k per area now) I want gear from, and finally to fight Armed Gears again for another shot at Aurum booties.



Speaking of which....


Our first attempt at it took just over 2 hours, I think, and wasn't all too difficult except for the part when I got disconnected towards the end leaving the poor fragile Flam to cope by himself while I re-logged (Xarp was being dual-boxed, we just had him there for Treasure Hunter, and to try Collaborator - but that ended up being more trouble than it was worth). It used its TP about 3~4 times in the fight, fortunately Artificial Gravity only ever caught one of us at a time - had it got us both, we'd probably have died. Rail Cannon was no problem, just damage, and it never used Antigravity or Restoration (phew). It did cure itself a few times, and also used some AoE debuffs towards the end of the fight (Paralyga, Blindga, etc.) which I wasn't expecting. No boots, the polearm is pretty decent for SAM, but we tossed it since nobody could use it.


Second Lieutenant?


And only 27/51 to Captain, hmph. At least I discovered in the rank up quest what the mystery 'sandwich animation' was used for in game-


After seeing this while messing in Altana Viewer a while back, I thought it looked like I was eating something, but it turns out it's for when Naja shouts into one of the speaking tube thingies...who would have known?


Building Bridges turned out to be a very exciting assault towards the end, when I found out my entire group were complete imbeciles who were incapable of a) Looking at the map to see where they're going. b) Splitting up to get to each of their objectives (I checked the map half way through to see all three of them going to one lever on the map, despite everyone been given a target at the start). c) Actually avoiding or even outrunning (both easy tasks provided you've got your eyes open and half a brain) the Lamia guards - the only time I was captured was when I was trapped in a corridor with Lamia coming towards me at both ends and even then I still managed to hit three of the levers and get to the rune before time ran out (barely!). My last rush to the rune really had my heart pounding, there wasn't even time to check corners, just flat out running.

Outside of my adventuring, I still can't get the game gamma to look good, it's either painfully bright in the day, and impossible to see anything at night (this mainly applies to [S] areas, I'll have to fiddle with it a bit more. I've put my background resolution up as far as I can, for no noticeable improvement.


Oh well, I like it as it is anyway. The only thing I want to change is the foreground resolution, as my chat window is needlessly long, and it makes it difficult for me to monitor the log (buffs wearing) and HP bars at the same time (hence the Yarnball plugin). But whenever I've changed the foreground resolution, it's always changed the window size, and this I do not want.

Mithra Dragoons....

Hawt~


So I've reached level 60, from being 52 only a couple of days ago. And from level 52~60 I've been fighting Lesser Colibri exclusively, which is awesome for me because they take extra damage from piercing weapons (such as polearms). The first party was from 52~54 and suffered from relatively slow kills, but hueg exp:


This was with my Emperor Band, had it been an Anniversary ring charge I'd have been seeing 1000 exp from some fights.


As we were over camping by quite a bit (would have not been doable without a bard) if I was careless and took hate, I didn't last too long, especially if they decided to use Pecking Flurry.

Eventually, some Bird NM popped that drops a Fowling Earring (which would be useful for me on DRG before I can afford a Brutal Earring).


We all swapped jobs and came back to fight it (the NM was taking the place of one of the normal birds, so it was getting in the way of our party) and it dropped the earring, on which my lot (927) lost by 40. A pity, that would have saved me a purchase, but it's only 60k anyway so it's not like I can't afford it.

A bit more fighting, the THF leaves and he asks a Summoner replacement to come, who was seemingly a walking stereotype:


Besides the Cloud-whatever clone name, and the corny summoning macros, I was tempted to challenge him after he first summoned Fenrir, explaining that the moon wasn't even out yet, but I guess he realised that and stopped using it. And honestly, if I was Diabolos, I wouldn't take any of this - I don't think the 'Lord of the Realm of Dreams' would give a flying fuck about fighting some birds just outside of Aht Urhgan.




There's much love and bitterness in this picture. First, we can see that my Mog Locker is finally capable of holding 80 items, but also that I'm down to 3000 Imperial Standing. Also, an assault shout I could have joined to get some points that I need was interrupted by a phone call requesting my presence elsewhere. At this rate, I'm not going to have any gear to ding into in the 70's before I get there (well, I'm most concerned about getting a Pahluwan Qalansuwa, since there's precious little else to get for headgear and I don't want to buy an O-hat).


Another day, another party (after getting 55 in Campaign Battles). The same PLD from the previous one, with better support (not to say the whm from the other party was bad, but RDM is much more useful against these, since there's no need for status cures, or many AoE cures). I also enjoyed a full-time haste for the duration of the party, something I've never experienced before.


The other DRG got stuck in this pose for a few seconds after a Super Jump - not much of a glitch, it just looks amusing. OtherDRG didn't do as much damage as I did sadly, although he was a level behind me, he still could have done more if he ate food (I guess he didn't want it stolen, but I only went through three stacks of mithkabobs even when I had it frequently stolen after 5~10 mins sometimes). The Paladin was very generous, and got their mule to bring me extra (free) food for me when I ran out. :D


Some numbers:

Our best chain. We managed a couple of other #20's and another #30, but this was our highest - which is actually better than some merit parties I've had...



Best jump! I had alot of good Penta Thrusts too, but I failed to screenshot my best. Most WS would be in the 600~1400 range, depending on my level and number of buffs at the time, but towards the end with food, bard buffs and Berserk, I was typically doing 1200~1400, I had two freak 1500+ penta thrusts (one was two-houred, at level 56) and a couple of sub-400 ones, and one that did below 100. :x
OtherDRG managed 500~800, with a few extreme 900+ and 400's - I don't think he ever broke 1k on a WS, poor guy. He should have used food, and he'd have managed it at least a couple of times.



Right now, I'm re-gearing DRG for the 60's, which basically just requires me to buy a new polearm and grip, if only the AH would let me...


The auction history has all previous sales around 80k for this polearm, but some clown thinks they can get away with selling it for over 100k. I don't know what Jessiiiii did, but if they're responsible for this sudden price hike, I can only agree with Lilrizzo's statement. Should I fail to get this at a reasonable price, I'll have to get a Grand Knight's lance until a dark mezraq is available. While I'm at it, whoever's responsible for the sudden jump in price of Assault earrings needs to die in a fire as well.

Wasted exp rings and new merits!

Dancers and scholars, rejoice! The job-specific merit point category, Group 1, will finally be coming to you in the upcoming version update!

With this addition, dancers and scholars alike will be able to reach new heights by spending acquired merits points on upgrades such as reducing ability delay and enhancing the overall effect of their job-exclusive abilities. The group maximum ability increase and the individual maximum ability increase will be 10 and 5 respectively, in line with the other jobs.

It would have been nice to actually see what they were going to be...strategem recast reduction maybe? :o I bet 'Conseve MP effect' will be in there somewhere.

Not much success with leveling DRG so far, despite getting 2 levels in as many days. Well, most of it really came from one party which was pretty decent but since then I've had trouble getting a new solo camp - I tried Crawler's nest


Exorays don't mess around. The sad thing is, my Healing Breath triiger was 305 HP at this point, so there's nothing I could have done to survive. :\

Flies weren't too bad though, and were easily chainable if the pulls were merciful (I ended up /whm for dia pulling, since /blu's Wild Oats ins't long ranged enough, pebbles would have sufficed though).

The Bostaunieux Oubliette was the next spot I tried, and turned out to be pretty nice despite the incredibly annoying attack down move the bats use.

(insert comical KO picture here)
There's some unwritten law it seems that whenever I settle down to solo and use my exp ring, someone will either call me or show up at my door, resulting in me being distracted and subsequently killed, or having to go out and wasting a charge on my exp ring.

Who needs discretion when you have Super Jump?

Being able to dump a 500~700 damage penta thrust right at the start of the fight, and then have the mob act like nothing happened is a thing of awesomeness. The only downside really is that the mob can usually get a hit or TP move in while the WS animation is still going, but it still beats having hate the entire fight.

51 DRG!

I finally got the spiked finger gauntlets I've been after for weeks, and kept missing on the AH (if I'd bought them before I started leveling /sam, they would have been 230k >:|). All's I'm really lacking is a Peacock Charm but if I had the money for that I'd be spending it on RDM stuff. Besides, I think a spike necklace is passable until 60.



Skillups!

A parrying skillup while farming zeni. I thought I'd engage the fly while it was slept, just in case I would parry its attack when it woke up...it worked :D. I've got enough to pop Armed Gears now, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.


Sky was good to me and let me cap club while farming (hurray for blue numbers), next up is archery or throwing.



Assault!

Since no-one's been on for Salvage, we've not bothered with the usual Lamia 13 spam. I did Imperial Code for the clear with help from Arc and Flam, and am now 22/25 for Second Lieutenant (but 23/50 for Captain) and I got what seems to be the largest amount of assault points I have ever recieved for a single run (first time bonus, three members, plus armband). We also got a copper ring.



SAM stuff!

I got my raise from that Pixie after 45 minutes of waiting. R3 was a waste of MP though, it saves the same amount of exp as R1 on people below level 50, foolish AI!


As promised, I finished leveling SAM to 37 with Campaign Ops.


Campaign crap!

New medal! It's not too hard to get if you spam a good few battles over the course of a couple of hours, despite all my whinging.

During said battles, I encountered one of these:

Of course the natural solution to a novel problem or encounter for any adventurer is to hit it until it dies, which worked pretty well in this instance. The Belfry came about when a bunch of Yagudo sprinted straight past the fortification we were defending, and started building this in a corner. Because these mobs have stupid amounts of HP, we couldn't kill them before they'd finished, at which point they warped out and left us to deal with it spawning some mean-looking yagudo while we beat on it. Someone had the sense to kite the new yags away from us (since everyone else were just hitting the new thing and hoping not to be attacked).


I upset a DRG after one battle, and got chased all the way to the end of the zone.

I'm going to try to level DRG as fast as I can now I've got all the subs I need ready (although THF is a little gimped at 34, it's not gonna cripple me that much, and I guess I can start putting that though Campaign Ops until it hits 37).

Need a raise :(

I was just trying to finish SAM off going 36~37 in Sarutabaruta [S] when a Dhalmel went apeshit after third eye wore early :/
Pretty sure a Pixie comes through here, so I'll wait it out. Any minute now...

Apart from this one let-down, I'm pretty impressed by Seigan/Third eye despite swapping between Seigan and Hasso constantly to get the best from both.



Weaponskills!


Carnage!

10 days left before my demotion, and not even half way yet...hate hate hate HATE D:


Awesome parties!

This was after the very same person asked me to raise one of their party members...in the end, they left in a mood because nobody followed their orders (moving to a retardedly unsafe camp). We went to Sauromugue Champaign instead and enjoyed a good rate of exp.

ZNMs!

A bit old, we did another Iriz Ima (my pop this time) only the greatsword dropped, which we just tossed. I'm tempted to go after the booties he drops, but I won't have macro space to use them unless I start to make use of windower macros (SE REALLY should have given more macro lines instead of this 'books' crap). >:|

I'm still waiting on that Pixie...

Some small misfortune...

On the day that I remarked to my friends that our caravan serves little purpose more than a 'glorified tool shed', it goes on fire. Nobody was hurt, and fortunately it was far enough from the house not to spread, but I imagine it's not done the hedge it was parked next to much good.

I had just gotten off to sleep as well, when I was woken up by my family - normally an impossible feat wehn I'm in a deeper stage of sleep - and upon hearing the news, all I could manage as a response was 'Oh, shit.' and then shot outside to assess the damage, considering grabbing the garden hose to battle with the fire myself. Having stepped outside to be met by 10' flames and a pretty much totalled caravan, I decided against the idea and waited for the fire brigade to arrive.

I'm not going to bother assessing the damage, because seeing the fire itself was enough to confirm the demise of my university notes and textbooks, which is essentialy the past year's £3000 of tuition fees down the pan, plus the cost of the textbooks themselves (in the region of £200)- none of which is going to be reclaimed since we don't have insurance on the caravan (as it's only purpose is storage nowadays). If I had a decent working camera digital camera, I'd be able treat you to a picture of the remains.

The fireman said that it started from the inside/front of the caravan, so either someone left fire in there by mistake, or someone has broken in through the window and introduced some fire to the curtains (it's unlikely, we don't know anyone who'd do something like that, nor is it the kind of area where arson is a common occurance). Well, I say it's unlikely, but it has to have happened somehow. I put a friend up in there for the night a couple of days ago, I'm not sure to be relieved that it didn't go up in flames when he was in it or blame the bastard for causing it to happen in some way...

Moral of the story? Don't take storage space for granted, because you'll be pissed if it goes on fire. D:

Anyway, back to the game...
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Dynamis and Limbus Get a Makeover!

So they're throwing in Relic gear, AF+1 and Relic+1 for ToAU jobs finally, relic is in Dynamis though, so SE didn't come up with any exciting way of obtaining these as some people had hoped (although it would be unfair on the already existing jobs that already require you to endure months and even years of Dynamis to get the best pieces of gear). Plus if it was a new event they introduced, only BLU, PUP and COR would be interested in doing it. I foresee entire linkshells stopping fighting in Dynamis when these pieces drop, just to get a look at the stats. Good news nontheless.

I'm not too keen on the blueness of BLU and COR's relic, I much prefer the look of COR's normal AF to this new one. PUP is actually the winner in looks if you ask me, I think it looks alot nicer than the other pair (and much more of an improvement over the horrid-looking AF).


Better news: the following reduction in price to entry items will be implemented in the upcoming September version update.

Timeless Hourglass: 1,000,000 gil -> 500,000 gil
Cosmo-Cleanse: 30,000 gil -> 15,000 gil

Long overdue, at least in the case of Dynamis, the cost of these have always remained constant (maybe not Limbus? I wouldn't know), from the days when stacks of sushi were 100k, through the massive period of deflation and RMT bannings, to the present time of ~300k Dusk gloves, and ~700k Scorpion Harness +1's. Assuming the price of currency doesn't plummet straight away, it might be possible to avoid uneccessary cities runs for the sake of making money to finance icelands for a while, but chances are it will fall eventually, in line with the reduced hourglass price, making for cheaper relic weapons! As long as it means it's still possible to fund dynamis runs from currency drops, I don't mind.

Hopefully that means cheaper Ancient Beastcoins when I decide to get myself a Brutal earring. It also makes starting up limbus slightly less intimidating, although I don't fancy dedicating more time towards it.

Even BETTER news:
Furthermore, the overall drop rates of select Dynamis areas, covering the relic gear of all jobs old and new, are set to be raised as well.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Beyond awesome, even though there's no surprise here since they all but confirmed it at the Premier Site summit. Of course that could still mean they're increasing the drop rate of Warrior and Dragoon city pieces, but they have been talking about icelands drop rates for a while now. And it's about time. Here's hoping it's something crazy like 100% drop off Xarcabard NM's for corresponding jobs (until SE realise the next patch and ninja-fix it) and not something crappy like a 1% increase (but considering the already feeble rate at which stuff drops, 1% would probably be more than double increase). So icelands spam ASAP post patch, in the (not so unlikely) event SE do break the drop rate and make it retardedly high before they adjust it again. However I do hope that this, combined with cheaper hourglasses, doesn't mean that there's going to be congestion for icelands zones.

Roll on September.

Clap, cheer...dance!

So the Sunbreeze festival started again, with a new main event! It's pretty fun to do even if you just go to watch a bunch of people dancing around in synchrony (just remember to turn emote filters on...!).









I spotted a suspicious individual in the crowd, and I'm not talking about the corse.


It's probably the same guy that was on the boat ride to Purgonorgo Isle after I completed CoP (I mean who else dresses like that?!) I guess he's after the HQ event gear so he can teleport there (if that's true, does he actually go for the clamming? I can only guess at that from the old swimgear he's wearing).

The sideshow mini-games added for each nation were also a good idea, and pretty fun (although I gave up attempting to beat the high scores because my inventory was getting full of useless food items). I found Bastok's the easiest, and Sandy's one the hardest, but those two were my favourites if only for the little red circles that jumped up when you did stuff right.

Windurst: Catch the Chocobo chicks!







Bastok: Shoot stuff, but save the Pixies! (wait...what? Pixies don't exist in the present)







San d'Oria: Spot the difference!






There's also goldfish scooping (and the music/fireworks at night in the usual zones) from previous years, which I think is in order to obtain some items for making fish tanks. I've not got the resources to decorate my Mog House, and I've done plenty of scooping fish in previous years, so I don't think I'll bother this time.


Samurai hasn't had much mention since it dinged 18, so here's a quick update on how I got to 31:

Buburimu!


I stayed for 18~21 and it wasn't too bad. I learnt my NPC has undead killer, and actually intimidated this Tough skeleton three times in a row, I just stayed with this screenshot because I was in a cooler pose.


Campaign Ops!


The exp from them hardly is worth the time getting to the past and doing them, but it gets my credits used up and goes towards my next medal at least.


Qufim!


I got 21~23 in a party here, then we moved to thr Yuhtunga Jungle. I was still a bit low, but I didn't complain because I love fighting Mandragora (so squishy and weak).
I stopped hitting with ranged attacks reliably at this level (my archery skill came uncapped and quickly fell behind), so I just opted for a low damage/delay bow for pulling.

Kazham / Jungles!


LFP...


LFP........(oh hey, is that a Double Attack? I'm not sure how it happened but it sure as hell looked like one).


Party invite! (Carbuncle wasn't happy to see me). This party had the most reluctant DD SMN I'd ever seen. We actually asked him several times to help do damage and use blood pacts (the party was taking barely any damage and the WHM was doing fine by himself healing). I would have jumped at the chance to play around with avatars (as SMN is often used as a healer for low level parties) but he didn't seem too keen on it. Hell, I wouldn't have complained if he himself was meleeing (kills were really THAT slow, I was the only proper DD) >:|


Finally, an all-JP party took me from 29~31. I got meditate in the party, and I have to say it's stupidly powerful. At one point, I was skillchaining with another samurai every time we got 100TP and then getting TP again in time to skillchain with the thief, until the other samurai got 30 and just used his TP to help heal with /dnc. Things got really messy when the THF got 30 and Trick Attack (as it always does) because despite the party working well as it was, people always want to try out their new toys. So I had to provoke the mobs coming in, while the thief takes forever to SATA the paladin (as is always the case when they're getting used to it) this worked maybe 50% of the time, and I always ended up being a strain on healing, not to mention some fights where the PLD couldn't even get hate back off me (probably my fault, I was getting sloppy). But no deaths occurred, so there's nothing to complain about.

At least I'm almost done with my subs :)

Until I need /SCH :(

Or finish /THF :(