Buffalo, Chigoes and Marids!

Silly Buffalo-herding event turned out to be pretty easy (despite being hit back to Windurst Waters twice) once I discovered they weren't all the same and ceased my efforts to round up the bulls.

The rewards!

Costumes that could actually be used outside of town led to some exciting chigoe-based adventures while waiting for Dynamis-Valkurm.


Many a brave chigoe fell during the long trek across the desert.


Isolated travelers stood no chance against the might of the chigoe horde!


As dusk approached, the valiant chigoe warband was ambushed by a scheming gaggle of adventurers. They fought bravely, and gave not one inch to their foes. None survived the encounter - the adventurers had brought Raid.




I forgot the exact number but at least I can tell from this I've over 400 beastman seals, along with 103 Kindred seals. Now if I could just exchange the damn things for a random chance of getting a Peacock Charm, it would save me the trouble of repeating the BC 10 times.

Iriz Ima?!

The vile beast was slain! Huzzah! ...no drops though :/
It really is ultra easy, I managed to do it in just over 30 mins without even trying to go all out, I just made sure I was making full use of convert. With /blm and a little more effort I see a rdm doing it in 25 mins, but you'd have to be alot more careful with only stoneskin and blink to rely on. I'll just stick with /nin so there's no chance to screw up in future, I can spare the extra 5 mins if I'm honest (but hopefully I won't need to go through tier 1 and 2 again!).

I'm ready to pop Armed Gears once more, just need bodies to throw at it, or another 4/5 hours to spare.

Fun with bombs.

...



...this is why I need to get a HQ soultrapper. 60 seconds between shots makes the whole process take far too long. I've got a good amount of Imperial Standing from exping now though, so I should be able to afford the coins.


New costumes! Not sure where they are from, but the Chigoe one is a consumable item rather than an enchantment.

First Lieutenant, First Xarcabard and First tier ZNMs!

Too many doing Nyzul...

Shouts for random assault clears are getting rarer these days, thanks to the improvements to Nyzul (or maybe everyone is Captain already?). Of course I'd like to work on my Runic Disk for when I want to get the new WS (you need to work off something absurd like 5~7k weapon skill points if your disk is at floor 1).

Anyway, this one had us getting various status detriments on us and talking to the NPC so he could analyze them. It's peculiar but not particularily hard, as long as you have a bit of luck on TP moves from mobs.


Promotion quest! This isn't something you see every day...


When I say first Xarcabard...


I do of course refer to our first Dynamis-Xarcabard post drop rate adjustment patch.




This was I think the second pull? Two mobs killed and we get a 100 piece and NIN hands, which gave alot of hope for the rest of the run. Of course, the drops after this point didn't live up to expectations, although WHM hands dropped towards the end, which were becoming something of a myth judging by people's reactions.





Cheesy Hedonist, lol.

One must take time to appreciate item descriptions such as these once in a while.

Also duoed Gigiroon with Arc (I appeased his efforts with a BLU sword, hope it comes in handy! '-'), and I've been busy farming zeni so I'm ready to pop Iriz Ima and Armed gears again now, best get back to praying for boots. And I'm not gonna attempt it again without at least 6 BLMs/ranged DD's.

People keep inviting my DRG to camps, and then leaving/disbanding/getting someone else before I get there without even saying a thing until I get there and ask where the hell they are. GAH.

...Well, I say they 'keep' doing this, it's happened about 4 times (but twice just this night)...my point is this never happened once from 18~70. Back to seeking in JP prime it is!

Hecatomb, humiliation and holy crap it's X's knife!

I missed the sale of a pair of cursed gloves for 360k by one minute, because I was bidding low, and ended up paying 390k. :\


At least I've got something to swap in for WS other than a belt now. It's sad that I never actually got to use Tarasque +1 since buying them (only in level sync parties, where they gave less attack than the Spiked Finger Gauntlets that I can't seem to get rid of (the price dropped by 90k in 3 sales). Waste of moneeeeeeeey :(


How do you die to Genbu?

I was on the phone and didn't have enough hands to move before converting. Seriously I saw that water breath coming from a mile off. Genbu is a clever bastard sometimes.



! First time doing the fight, too. It was really messy, but that just made it more fun :D I really enjoyed those fights, despite the trip to get there. Grats to Xarp for his shiny new toy!

There is no god.

Four and a half hours.

Never again.

Merits, yet more level sync and BCNM joy!

Will this level sync madness never end?!

(beats the hell out of sitting in Whitegate, but since buying my level 70 stuff, I've had no chance to use it thanks to level scaling)


Level 59 Lesser Colibri party go! Vast majority of the members were tarus, so I had to oblige and join them.


It was great for a while until the leader decided we had to change to level 55 for some reason, so kills slowed down significantly as we didn't have a bard.

I managed to get 50k exp (so half way to 74) today in Caedarva, and thanks to our SCH's AoE stoneskin, it was relatively painless. I'm burnt out from exping though D:
Seriously need to sort my gear out now before I carry on. Plus I need to catch up with my Polearm skill, thanks to having level sync parties almost exclusively since it came out, it's fallen behind.


Merits!


I found out drawdistance goes the other way too, so at least Bhaflau Thickets is less taxing on my eyes - I hate the crappy textures/colours in that area, looks so nasty and eats my cpu. I love how you can see the Alzadaal ruins from most places around Aht Urhgan areas though - the sea route from Nashmau to Al Zahbi is a strong contender for my favouite looking zone. I should make a list of them sometime.

Anyway, I have 9 merits stored now, ready to dump into four levels of Polearm skill when I hit 75.


Under Observation love!


Only decent drop out of three runs, but I might be able to afford a brutal earring now :O

I'm glad I got competant people this time, it's restored my faith in pickup BCNM groups again after the last two times...

This is why we can't have nice things.

Speaks for itself really, some people actually use search comments so I don't want to see people's dynamis crap when I'm looking at what others are selling/buying. If you insist on having it with a pretty blue icon, then put it under the 'other' catagory or die many deaths.

Level sync is great and all, but EVERYONE tries to get to a level where they can fight Colibri. Not the squishier and non-mimicing Lesser Colibri, but the standard ones. Clearly this is done in order to get on my nerves specifically, rather than avoid less favourable camps (hi2u Caedarva Mire).


This is a pain for me, because these have been a favourite to solo for the past few levels (although they're DC~T now, so I need to find something else to move onto - it may end up being Campaign, god forbid).


Remember RMT parties? Yeah, me too.


They still haven't got out of the 2005 manaburn mentality.


Nor have they gotten any better at it, poor little things.

Sin Hunter...hunter?

Arc, Soli and Xarp had me come along to do the Sheep in Anlion's clothing ENM along with the Tango with a Tracker quest. Easy wins for the most part, although there were a few close calls on the antlion BC.


Drops were junk, but I always love getting a Tarutaru-in-a-chest. Plus free exp and 10k from the Tracker BC made it worthwhile, and I have access to the X's knife BC to boot.

O hey, is that sum level sync?


This party wasn't too great, and then we had barely 30 mins to party before an emergency maintenance anyway. Plus I don't like nin tanks and erucas even less.


66 DRG duo on colibri was pretty zomgawesome, although Pecking Flurry did sting a bit, especially after an interrupt or below 50%, we managed not to die and got around 17k exp in 100 mins, which got me a healthy buffer into 71. The only downside is that I didn't get any polearm skillups, even though if I was soloing them at 71 I'd still be able to cap it on the same mobs.


DRG af is that much of an eyesore, I'm surprised we didn't get a GM called on us for running through whitegate with it on.

Current known issues.

As always, SE broke the game after the update. So let's have a look at what needs fixing this time:

- Campaign is broken. They're aware of this one at least, but for the moment you lose exp when KO'd twice in campaign, unless you get another tag. But I think this is the update where they intended to implement a delay between getting tags to stop /brd bots?

- Lamia 13. Somehow they've made her pets undispel-able, so have fun winning that with 3.

- Remedies.

...what? They dropped the sale price after all, from 3.2k down to 480~.

- Wyvern 'remove' breaths don't work either, I just read. Wow.

Also, UI mods apparantly all crash the game now, as does copy/pasting into windower.
Legendary hero Aikar is aware of the windower problems, and working on fixes - probably more effectively than SE fixing their own crap.

There's probably a few other minor things people haven't discovered yet, but breaking the game to a point where there's no real reason to even make use of the content from the latest expansion is a pretty epic failure on SE's behalf.

Lamia 13 glitch would have made me rage uncontrollably if I still spammed it for Salvage points, though I still feel sorry for those that still do.

Time remaining: Unknown.

Well, the version update is here, and it's pretty disappointing. As I feared, they had pretty much announced all the major changes in advance, and there was no great hidden surprises (or anything new for RDM, lol - last year's fanfest announcement makes me anticipate something every update now D:).


New WOTG quests, but not missions - I'm surprised that they didn't add any more missions already, but not really bothered that much as the nation quests were always more interesting. I better find time to catch up.

Fellows can now Provoke regardless of which job type they're set to, which makes the tanking class completely redundant, yay.

Leveling made easier?
EP/DC mobs give more exp now, first weapon skills learned at skill level 5 (definately a good change, because initially, 90% of jobs literally have nothing to do for 5 levels except auto-attack and those levels will go even faster).


The potency and frequency of special attacks for certain monsters in the following families has been adjusted using a low-level standard. PCs at lower levels will now find these monsters easier to fight:
Mandragora / Funguars / Crawlers / Lizards
Really neccessary? Mandies are weak enough as is, Funguars I understand - Dark Spore is a bitch, Crawlers/Lizards aren't particularily dangerous, just needed dispelling. Cry less. Edit: I misunderstood, it probably only applies to below lv. 10, which deaths from poison etc. I can sympathise with; I was thinking 'low level' as being up to 30~50 area :x

TOAU BST pets are getting adjusted, I think this is to gimp their HP levels, I vaguely recall reading somewhere that they have the same HP as a normal (non-pet) mob at that level. While a welcome adjustment, TOAU is how old now?



Campaign got nerfed, but here's a cute Taru picture to make up for all that wasted effort :)
-Love, SE.

ps. We didn't add any new ranks or body pieces, lol!





NM and battlefield changes

Nyzul changes, including increase in availability of mythic weapons, and easier access (now all party members' disks update rather than just the leader, and data is no longer is erased when they complete floor 100). Great adjustment, but why was it not like this in the first place? I see no logical excuse to have it the way it was previously.

Absolute Virtue is now a 100% pop after defeating JoL so everyone who does sea can look forward to dying alot more, and along with Pandemonium Warden they will both depop if not defeated within 2 hours. Obviously this is accompanied with a serious gimping of the pair so that they can actually be beaten within 2 hours now.

Also:
The strength of Zeni NMs will now gradually be adjusted after a predetermined amount of time has elapsed following their being claimed.

DO NOT WANT! Seriously, if this means they rage after like 20 minutes I'll be very upset. There goes my future hopes of soloing/lowmanning my way to Aurum booties...

The stats for BLU/COR/PUP relic gear have been mined out of the dats for a while already, but I'll wait till I see them drop in dynamis (assuming we ever get to do a run again without having zones nabbed without warning - they didn't make it instanced) I did take a peek at the BLU body, which unsurprisingly had acc and refresh on it, which probably will annoy some BLUs with morrigan's robe who were hoping for it to be on the head piece (I'm kinda glad about it, so RDM can at least be unique in having head/body refresh available). Meh, they can at least be happy for having a Morri robe >:O!

Misc junk

Remedies are gonna be cheaper! Hurrah! (they were stupidly expensive though) Also Crab sushi, but I've never even heard of it before.
...never mind, it says 'sale prices' so probably means PCs are gonna get less money for selling them to NPCs. God forbid someone might have actually been making money from crafting.

Pretty much everything else was very minor and uninteresting or was already announced in the previous weeks. What a let down.

-New items available via harvesting have been added.
! Maybe another Red Moko grass goldrush again? :D

Oh, they addded 'Fellow' to auto-translate, along with 'Level Sync' and 'Cut and Cauterize' (I don't know either).

While this is a useful accompanyment to the array of phrases and words we can select to help communicate precisely and quickly with our Japanese co-adventurers to enhance everyone's playing experience, where the hell is 'Tank', 'Puller' and 'Damage dealer'? {meat} {Shield} does not mean tank, nor does {Fisherman} mean puller. I want the proper damn terms so I can talk with JP people without looking like an idiot.

There's a ton more common terms that REALLY should be in there, but I can't think of any at the moment. Perhaps I'll compose a list and then email it to SE a million times over.


Damn it, I want another update now. :|

This, I like to see. Those, I do not.

(Yes, it took me this long to get something written and this is all I manage...)
These are those occurances that just make my day that little bit better.

After two minutes of flagging up on Dragoon, still getting my gear ready:


Like I need to be convinced to join, I'll take anything as DRG...

The AH is also being kind to me:


I'm going to be selling these as soon as I get Tarasque +1 mitts, but the person who has the only pair on the AH at the moment thought it would be ok to mark up the price by 15%, so I'll wait a bit more. Also, selling my Dark Mezraq which has gone up again since I bought it! Shame the new (Colossal) lance looks pretty plain.

I had a little adventure in Nashmau as well when I went there to solo in the mire a few days ago. I forgot my AF so I ended up talking to every NPC in the town looking for an armour storage NPC. I did not succeed.


I did however develop a liking for the Qiqirn and their amusing dialogue, especially Pipiroon boasting of his (her?) non-existant array of weapons.

I also encountered some Galka being Harrassed...


...which turned out to be part of a quest I never finished, the subsequent completion of which netted me a shiny imperial silver piece. Using my amazing talent of logical thinking, I traded the silver piece with the currency NPC to obtain 5 bronze pieces, three of which I THEN traded to the Ashu Talif quest guy, to flag a BC I'll never do!


Obviously, we can't neglect the things that I don't like to see either, of which there are many. Campaign, as a whole, being one of them (although I don't hate it quite as much now I've achived the max rank and no longer feel obliged to take part).


Why is this picture so unpleasant? Well, we can see that a new wave of Yagudo have shown up, this is not neccessarily bad as without them Campaign would be a bit tame. The problems lie in that there are hardly any Allied NPCs (there were about three left, half-dead from the previous wave) to help fight them, so it's down to the rag tag bunch of adventurers to kill a horde of enemies with what only can be accurately described as a metric fuck ton of HP EACH. Also note that there are a large quantity of said adventurers in the path of the beastman onslaught, who are naturally going to start running around in a blind panic towards anyone else, usually the weakened people resting to one side (read: me) apparantly bonus points are awarded for MPKing large clusters of half dead/low level/afk people. Moo Ouzi is an absolute pain as well, so his presence is just salt in the wound, and this is already a pretty big wound, with a compound fracture and it's turning gangrenous.

This is how campaign makes me feel. I also hate the tedium of having to wail on Fortifications for 30 mins+. It's great if I have something else to do and just afk while I'm at it, but that's not often.

But even I will admit there are worse things than messy Campaign battles, such as parties caming in Nyzul Isle/Caedarva Mire (Hediva Isle I think it's called). It sucks.

The fact that I arrive to see a 5 front line/ 1 back line party set up makes me want to start up an internet hate campaign against the leader, only encouraged by the fact he decides he's suddenly sleepy as soon as I arrive and is going to disband. Why the hell invite another person for 10 minutes? It's not even like it was another member who suddenly was leaving, but the very same guy who invites me. Also, pulling in this camp sucks, because there's Soulflayers about, which aggro magic, job abilities, true sound, everything - and can happily wipe a party of 75's without a bard (guess what we didn't have :D). Of course, I have two different parties here (why did I come back a second time...?) and in both, a mix of Warriors, Samurai, Dark knights, etc. - none have a ranged weapon. Seriously, I don't care if it's any good or if they have their skill with it capped, just something to pull with if we don't have a dedicated puller. I'd do it, if the only ranged attack I have available wasn't pebbles... people really need to consider what they can do with their jobs outside of just hitting mobs.

Oooooh it makes me so mad. Anyway, it seems I've managed to regress into whinging about stuff again (and I was hoping for a positive post :() so I'll just carry on with that now. DRG is going downhill in the damage department, maybe (hopefully) because my lance was getting outdated, I wasn't winning parses by such a large margin any more, and in fact Samurai are starting to out damage me (Tachi: Gekko seems to effortlessly do more damage than I can manage with either Penta Thrust or Wheeling Thrust) but I've still technically been top of each party by a small margin if I include my Wyvern's damage in addition to my own.
Having reached 70 now, I need to finish off getting the gear I want in the 70's (in particular I need to make a bigger effort getting Aurum booties and Paluwhan head/legs).

Anyway, the September version update is going to be occurring on the 8th, which is great news for my pessimistic side was expecting it to be set back to late September. I'll probably do the obligatory update highlights post while I'm updating or the day after, assuming I have nothing on. Now here's hoping that there is something extra to this update other than the annoucements they already made, because those are pretty epic enough already. We'll see.