A picture is worth a thousand words.

Was it a thousand? I'm not sure.

Anyway, the above picture is read as thus; After nearly two months since my last Dynamis-Xarcabard run, I've been thinking about Duelist Chapeaus alot for some reason. Not that I'm first in line for one (it's a grey area somewhere between 1st~3rd, depending on who will lot when it drops, and who happens to be on that particular run.) or that I've been waiting for one to drop for X number of months/years/whatever, it's just been niggling at me - scraping away at the back of my head whispering "I'd look good next to that Goliard Saio" whenever I hit my idle macro.

But now, at long last, I've finally achieved my long ambition and obtained the one thing that could satiate this bothersome niggle - a screenshot of someone who looks like me wearing a Duelist's Chapeau.

Another Xarc run soon, so pray for many hats.

Christmas stuffs.

I took advantage of the easy christmas event this year to pimp out my event gear:


I only needed the +1 robe in order to take this screenshot:




The +1 boots are meant to enhance sneak, so I might test those vs. the other enhance stealth boots I got with my Imperial Standing and see if they're actually worth carrying around. I've had the stealth boots for quite a while and have failed to do anything major with them so far, need more motivation!

Haven't done much in the past week-and-a-bit due to the season, seeing friends, PC troubles (apparantly dust was making it iffy, I'm hoping that was the only thing). I didn't show up to the nyzul static that a pickup group wanted to arrange on Wednesday, thanks to my PC acting up. Oops.

I wasn't too excited about doing it with them anyway, only seemed like half of them actually knew what was going on, the rest were just there to auto-attack what was in front of them.

Savul-Kivul attains level 70!

I bought him a crown and capped his max. active time (so it's about 90 mins now?) with all the fellow points I'd accumulated in his last few levels (costing me 130k points :|).

I'll play with his look a bit more, and get more points so I can lock it all. There's alot of choice though.

Moblin Mazes Missing?

The moblin mazes stuff wasn't put in this update from the looks of things, which is a huge let down because I was expecting it to be the main feature of this update. Seems pretty empty without.


Best thing from the update was moving the OP warp NPCs in each nation to somewhere actually useful.

Other handy stuff they threw in is that Reraise can't be dispelled (which is normally only a problem for idiots standing in aoe range, but I've seen it happen if you get unlucky when fighting a mob with single-target dispel), they fixed level sync gear scaling a bit more (Evasion / Enmity / hHP / hMP scale now and aren't completely negated), they broke crossbows, and tweaked wyverns (HP is now restored automatically when they get exp boost). Everything else was already announced or wasn't particularily amazing.

I've done a few of the missions, which have had me running around farming crap and jumping between the past and the present. It's really lame, but I expect it to get much better.


While farming for the missions, I saw my first treasure casket drop! The temp items are pretty useful and I think it's a great addition although it's not very common. The only downside is it's got me killing mobs all over the place just to get chests to pop.

I've not tried Fields of Valor yet, because I couldn't find the damn book in Saruta when I checked by the outpost, so screw that.

New potential.

I got VERY lucky on a Nyzul floor 80 run (winning a lot against 2 others with only 400~).


So now I can easily improve my convert setup again :D
That picture is with MP food, which is pretty awesome but impractical if I need to eat cookies to rest at any point. Without MP food I'm still below 1.1k MP. /BLM converts would be optimised with either a Serket Ring or Hedgehog bomb (500 and 600k each, respectively) but would need both for /whm converts. I'm not sure if I'll toss the tathlum yet and replace it or keep it for nuking as well (depends on inventory space, because I might try to grab some conserve MP gear now I can stack it effectively).

It's also replaced Errant body on my enmity- set, and has joined my cure/refresh/haste macros (losing fast cast from relic body won't hurt too much with 4% haste for recasts). I've not had chance to play with the haste on a melee set, but it should be fun to see 18% haste on my RDM. :3


Other stuff wut I done:


Capturing frustratingly fussy penguins! I wanted to carry on after I got the first penguin to get more points (over 15 mins left), but someone decided they'd had enough and exited us. 1500 points until I have 20k in Ilrusi Atoll, which means Pahluwan body will be replacing my Scorpion Harness (only a minor improvement, but the points aren't much use on anything else) and I can send it back to Cuddles as an early (or late, depends when I get the points) christmas present.


I did the final Widnurst [S] story quest with three people. It's quite hard to find people willing to do them for some reason, I guess there's the people who want to do them as soon as they're out, and those that don't never bother. Oh well, their loss.


I'd say it went pretty well. The plan was to have WHM spam cures on the NPC while BLM and I kill the Belfry thing as fast as possible. I spammed jumps, WS, 2 Hour, jumps WS etc. while more mobs poped from the tower and started attacking me (wasn't expected). I used an Icarus wing I'd got from the Bastok quests for one final WS before I got KO'd at which point the BLM finished it off seconds before our NPC died. I like these missions. Not that they're overly challenging (probably too easy with 6), but that they can have a fine line between success or failure, especially with low numbers where everyone has to pull their weight to succeed.

It's just a shame that the next batch are going to be several updates away. New missions could be good though.


I caught someone shouting in Whitegate looking for someone to level their NPC with, so I dragged them to my spot in Grauberg so I could leech cures from him and suffer less downtime.


Then he tells me his fellow doesn't have access to the past yet. I think fine, he knows how to do it so I have a shower and come back. Still not done - he's not got any of the area warps. Two hours later, after alot of walking, chocobo vendor hunting and cross-continent riding we reach the Grauberg. He's on foot again at this point because he needed the Pashhow gate crystal and couldn't afford a second choco. He wasn't completely dense at least and knew what he was doing, which is a rare treat for most random encounters.

Anyway, we call NPCs, kill stuff for a while. Savul gets half way to level 70 and we call it a day. Everyone goes home all smiles. Especially me, because I have a Goliard Saio. Yeeaaaaah!

Clears until Captain: 12.

Searat Salvation is only a Corporal assault, so it wasn't hard to get people for it. While it looks easy on paper, the fish can really ruin your day, especially towards the end of the assault. Makes it worse that you can't make the rats follow you again until the fish stops chasing them. We cleared in plenty of time, I cheated a bit and forced the qiqirn to run towards the objective (Aaahhh! Dooon't eeet meeee!). But we still stayed until the end trying to get the last 3 rounded up for extra points, finally getting them there with less than 30 seconds remaining. Exciting stuff :D

This was followed by another Nyzul pick-up group doing 1~5. Once I had joined the leader filled up with 5 DDs, which nearly made me rage quit right away. I stayed in hope of numerous and humerous deaths to soulflayers because I was feeling spiteful and wanted to say 'I told you so'.

We gathered.

Now I normally don't post gear shots of people, but this is probably the worst case of "SELL THAT CLUB AND SORT YOURSELF OUT YOU MESS" I've ever seen. WAR/NIN by the way.


(so much for anonimity, orz) That said, the run actually went well and we cleared successfully (which was down to awesome luck really, no lamps, no soulflayers - the only 'hard' floor we had was all slimes and I had a casting time pathos). Killed 2 NMs, both dropped a NIN katana (lol) and the only NIN there already had it. Both ??? drops were also appraised as the NM drops which were junk anyway, so that person has wasted all their appraisal luck on a Malflood ring and Nightmare Gloves so is doomed to get nothing but bone earrings for the rest of eternity.

But the fun doesn't end there!


I did the last Bastok Wings of the Goddess mission with another pick-up group, which was pretty difficult with just the three of us towards the end, when we got swamped by three waves of Quadav, the NPC would have died (it was hard keeping hate off her for some reason) if I hadn't used chainspell to cure her and sleep everything. Definately wouldn't have done it if I wasn't /blm.

SE are doing a good job with these cutscenes as well, they seem a world apart from the stuff that you got in the old/zilart even CoP zones. Definately on par with the Aht Urghan stuff.

One does not simply angon his way into Mordor.

I finally got a screenshot of me throwing my Thalassocrat! Well worth the hour spent in a shitty 73~75 party with no brd/cor on Mamools. :D
No Boromir photoshop here sadly, MS paint is where it ends for me with image editing. And I'd probably suck at using photoshop if I had it.


Nothing exciting has been going on, so I've been meriting alot lately. This was one of the better parties:


5x DRG, 1 BRD. We got chain #260 before disbanding. We were supposed to go DRG/mage x3 and then 2 DRG/ddsub, but the leader didn't like that for some reason and changed to /whm half way through (not that it damaged the chain). I was /sam, probably because I didn't have a Saurian helm or relic hat. :|

For what it's worth, I parsed that party (or at least part of it) I kept restarting it when people went afk for a long time/changed subs so it was a little fairer. But then again I was the only one with a DD sub so it wasn't fair at all. Oh well!


Really it's better used as a comparison between the drg/mages. Nothing surprising there considering gear/drakesbane access, how quickly they each engaged, etc. My wyvern did more damage (ignoring my breath damage, because they were defensive) as well, thanks to empathy + brd songs. I wasn't checking if any of them were doing the same thing.

Merit adjustments:
Angon - Lv.3
Deep Breathing - Lv.2
Jump/High Jump - Lv.2 (if I didn't mention these already...)

Thinking of finishing on Angon - 3, DB - 5, Empathy - 2.
One minute Angons should be enough to keep it up on extended fights (that I'll be on RDM for anyway) for 1/3rd of the time. Anything else I do should die within 1 minute and if not, I'll be using Spirit Surge & Jump on it to extend the duration.
Deep Breathing lv.5 would give me 5 min recasts, which increases the chances that I'll restore a substantial amount of HP to a Puk after weaponskilling on it.


I'm not sure if this restored my Wyvern's HP, or is just a typo and is actually restoring the Puk's HP. It could be that my WS killed it, and then the game registered the wind breath as restoring HP so redirected it on the wyvern? :S
Who knows? Who cares? Will I get my DRG merits complete any time soon?

Probably not.