Gear, limbus joy and banoonza

Updated my gearsets on FFXIAH, and added my Healing Breath trigger set that I made recently. Not everything reflects perfectly what I use, because I can still forget things or macros misbehave etc. Also I can't be bothered to put up EVERY set for my jobs because alot of them only vary by a few pieces (like some DRG TP or WS sets) or are sets I'm not yet finished with (RDM melee sets, or dark magic).

I'll get on to finishing them when I'm bored enough. Also no pictures today because I don't usually take plain screenshots of my gear.

Also, Temenos gave me an early christmas present last week in the form of DRG AF materials, so I opted to upgrade the feet. Next = head, then done. May upgrade the rest in future for the whitebox factor.

New year mog bananza (bonanza? banonza? who knows?) is go! I've got my 60k of marbles, now just to wait until the 29th of January :(

No, you can't has forgs

Zhayolm is a complete shit. We were supposed to do 5f/6f, but after being gyped out of cells again (we got 2 rings and 2 ranged after clearing 2f NE, so could only dupe one and therefore unable to unlock 3 people for 5fN) we ended up doing the boss.


Now I'm 2/3 on ares legs and morri feet, both needing the 35 :\

We could have tried for 6f, even without 5fN, but that would mean going south on 3f and killing 5fS (drops nothing) just to pop 6f which I feel is a waste of a run by itself, if we were faster we should be able to manage 6f+boss I guess, but our setup isn't great for this zone. In future, we might port up SE on 1f so we get hands (and TH4) before killing NE room, which I think is a waste because clearing NE first is always the best option because it can drop more useful cells, and I'd rather have everyone with back/waist/rings/earrings/ranged instead of just hands. Whether it was just bad luck, or we just didn't have TH on all the lizards (I wasn't paying attention) I can't tell, but this zone is not being kind to us, and we've done about 3 or 4 consecutive runs here so it's about time we went elsewhere for other people's stuff.


In other news, Flam came back to play over the holidays and we both went to dyna for shits and giggles. As it was dynamis, the shits and giggles ran out pretty fast, although spamming 2hours on Jeuno gobbies (dice move thingy can reset them) was entertaining for a while.


It was actually the first time I ever did dynamis as non-RDM, and now I have no idea why people always wanted to get off RDM in favour of DD jobs, because it's just as repetitive, and harder to ninja-afk when meleeing. 3am finish killed me, I don't know how I put up with that regularly.

Forgs

Our first attempt at 6f went as planned, which is a nice relief even if we got the usual 0 drops.



I learnt a whole bunch of stuff as well!
-2f Madame does contribute towards poping 6f, so you don't need to bother with timed 4f pops.
-Pop conditions are more trouble than the NMs themselves
-Lack of WHM is costing us time on 1f/2f thanks to petrify, but Juli is the only one with THF or WHM leveled, so we're kinda stuck

We finished 6f with about 22 minutes left, if they hadn't put the stupid chariot + gears on 6f we could have gone and killed the zone boss as well :\

Oh well, not bad for a first go.

Gurfurlur the Menacing, Ouryu + misc events

I've been fairly busy lately, but too busy to write anything decent here, plus just writing about events is yawn.



So, sea LS did some rampaging in Halvung on our way to Gurfurlur. Attendance wasn't great so it was a late start unfortunately.


I was on adds duty again, and they're complete pushovers to tank (2 RNGs and 2 PLDs). Not that I actually tanked them, but Ranger mobs are the easiest thing in the game to hold, and Paladins aren't exactly very offensive.


Hate on the adds was messy throughout (RNGs were being jerks for some reason) and positioning didn't go as planned, so they ended up running around and linking random trolls which we then had to have the DDs deal with.


But the fight with the big guy went smoothly throughout...until the last 20%


At this point he starts using a fun AoE-"every bad status effect you can think of" move, and we lost both tanks to something, so he moved into AoE range of everyone and proceeded to do what he does best: menace folk.


And boy, were we menaced.

More Recently...
...Limbus didn't drop any AF materials I need, limbus sucks.
...Salvage gave us skadi x2 from LAC, and skadi + marduk junk from BC, which wasn't wasted at least but nothing we have 35's for. No 35's dropped of course (and we took the wrong porter after fully unlocking for 5fN on our last ZR run, orz). Zhayolm needs more practice, and we need to be faster (plus I want to do 6f!) and I need more assault points, argh!

...Campaign lost me a medal, I'll try to make an effort this month not to lose another else I'm going down a rank. Lousy event.

Tarutaru galore though!

...I've started helping DaFunk with Einherjar, partly because I'm nice like that, and partly because I get to leech Therion Ichor for some nice items; mainly Morgana's choker and Aslan cape for converts/MND builds. Downside is I won't get any abjurations or Vork but it's not like I'd be able to seek out a successful einherjar shell that wants me anyway.



Most Recently!
Did some Ouryu killin'. I was in charge of kiting elementals and babysitting melees as they killed worms and just generally take damage.


The elemental gets kind of annoying after 20 minutes, it starts resisting sleep and runs out of MP so you can't aspir it anymore. I ended up just casting slow on it and letting it hit me with ice spikes on (added paralyze effect!) so I could just ignore it after that with stoneskin/phalanx absorbing damage. Suggesting that the melees kill it because there's no reason for it to be alive anymore was met with a 'lolno' until Gohan said they should kill it, then promptly did. No wonder I'm so hostile to people who don't pay attention to how back line jobs work!

And completely unrelated, I'm meeting ALOT of RDMs recently who have a dalmatica but no relic hat. WHAT IS WITH THAT?

Update for great justice

That's about it.

Not been on much thanks to this awesome essay that I'm failing miserably at. 1500/2500 words and I've got tomorrow left to finish it, which may sound like nothing, you could probably bust out a 5k word essay in a day if you have your shit sorted, but I've been managing maybe 300 words per day ._.

My shit is anything but sorted.


Oh well. Over soon, then I get the joy of christmas shopping and exam revision to look forward to.

Synergy

I'm not into crafting. I'm not into augments particularily. I'm not into camping particular monsters for a small chance at getting claim/kill/drop. I'm not into gathering a group of people to take part in an activity that will soley benefit myself. Synergy is certainly a good choice of name for this system because it combines all of the above into one abhorrent monster of an activity.

It is with pleasure that we announce the arrival of the version update featuring the exciting new Synergy and Evolith systems. Get together with your craftiest friends to create heretofore unseen items and put the perfect finishing touches on your arms and armor, old and new alike!

Want to learn more? Peruse the details here.

Pros
- Exploding is funny
- There is a mithra in the preview pictures
- Thwack furnace (THIS IS HOW WE FIX PROBLEM IN RUSSIAN SPACE STATION!)

Cons
- Think about crafting, but the only materials you can synth with are exclusive NM drops
- Need friends (with skill in appropriate craft?) to help synth stuff
- No idea what gear you can actually synth yet, unlikely to be anything useful
- Augments likely to be lackluster and not worth the effort involved
- Going to Bastok sucks unless you have a home point there
- Claim usage of a synergy furnace. Idiotic idea, and you can't get a private furnace until you get level 5 synergy skill AND complete a quest.

Now what?

Merits capped, and still not decided on another job, or have time to level it so...sword/dagger merits gogo?



Also, Hades got Martial Master kupower for the first time in a while, so I went off to finish my ranged skills.


Moar blue numbers! I spent 10 mins getting the last 2 levels on Archery (Even Match), then 30 mins without a single 0.1 on throwing, which was spent on Easy Prey. So either EP is too low for me (I thought this was unlikely, being at 173 skill) or I'm horribly unlucky.

That's all. What an exciting life I lead ;\

(I don't have anything to give you)

Cold winter is cold. I have work to do. I have two weeks to design an intervention aimed at reducing drinking amongst a student population (good luck with that) and I've not written a word.


So, I'm back to a strictly events-only regieme for FFXI again and after that maybe even less because I'll be busy with family/friends and christmas crap, then exam revision up until half way through January.

It's that time again...

Mog Bonanza III.


They didn't even wait a year after the last one this time? So this either shows SE can tell the dwindling interest in their game (so are planning regular bonanzas), or don't intend to be holding any more events like this by the time next summer rolls around.

Either way, I look forward towards burning 60k between all my characters and maybe winning a couple of statues for my mules.

Lootwhorin'

Jailer of Love. Full drops. I get three of them :D


My inventory is all jumbled because my game crashed shortly after lotting (I don't know why, I just opened my satchel to make sure I had space) but fortunately everyone passed/it dropped before I d/c'd <3

Needless to say, I could build a new house with all the bricks I shat while trying to log back in.

Voracity = Novia by the way, Novio will be a long time coming. But I'm more than pleased with what I have for now, Novia is a tasty piece of gear and very underrated.

Gulool Ja Ja

Just because.



We had to pass true sight stuff in Mamook, so we just rampaged through to the boss' room.



I was in the adds party, we were in a side room holding them while the others killed the boss so I missed most of the fight but it wasn't terribly difficult or demanding either so I couldn't mess anything up!



Wasn't easy to get a good picture at that distance :\ not that I dared to go closer anyway.


It turns out he's a really pathetic king. Is so low level he doesn't even grant EXP, and is incredibly poor! He doesn't even have any good loot, what a loser. And I didn't even get a picture of his throne because it was so crappy looking. Even so, it's a shame because I'll probably never go back there again! I also discovered he has a back door to the Jade Sepulcher which takes 5 mins to get to Whitegate. With this in mind, why does it take so long for him to arrive for Besieged?

So I got some cool shorts I thought I'd post pictures of them and some other stuff

Now I'm happy with my DRG at last, any other major improvements (Vork, Rajas, Aurum body, n.head/legs) are out of my reach but I'm satisfied with leaving it at is for now. I'm still making improvements however, just not going to be a major priority.


Byebye limbus points '-')/

Also means I'm in no hurry to finish the Shantotto expansion for the leg gear from that.

I've had a fiddle with my Healing Breath trigger as well.


I decided to test whether it was worth going for full HP+ on trigger, then equip Wyvern HP along with the relic hat before the actual breath goes off, instead of the Wyvern HP+ going on my trigger set.

It seems to work quite well, despite there being a lag with wHP+ showing up on the UI, for the sake of healing breath it doesn't appear to suffer from that delay. I still need to try it in actual soloing situations to see if it's totally reliable under laggy conditions etc. because I don't want to get caught out with a crappy 200HP healing breath at a critical moment because I bashed my macro too much. For now my trigger HP is approaching 800, and I should easily surpass that if I open up wHP slots for more HP gear.


Got me a pickup party for ASA 10:


Easy stuff, only 2 DRGs for DD so it got a bit chaotic when things started resisting sleep but we pulled through with no deaths and won in 11 minutes. This is probably a really easy fight anyway even if you have to wipe, because you could kill half of the mobs with a weak group then wipe reraise and continue. Assuming it's a 30 min BC and not 15, that is.

The final fight looks like a complete nightmare, so that may take several tries (and much fun running around the Den of Rancor for 16 key items).

Shantotto mission progress

So, which were the clones again?


Somehow people actually wipe to this fight. This worries me, because the same people will be attempting the last BCNM when I need it and chances are you'll need to collect a million ??? points, capped at level 1, before attempting the BCs which will all be lost on entry. Because the add-ons are awesome like that.

My progess has been slow, but steady despite spending hours backtracking because I keep forgetting to get certain cutscenes etc. Most recently I've had to embark on another tedious farming quest, which includes the exciting twist of each target monster being weak to only one type of damage (Ranged, Piercing, Blunt, Slashing or Magic) and any other damage types will do 0. Plus they despawn after ~5 minutes of being engaged, so despite them being weak overall, you can't possibly solo it as no job can do every type of damage....or can it?


Unsurprisingly, RDM manages to reach around SE's opressive policy of forced grouping by just being generally awesome. Most jobs can solo several different ones, but only RDM (and NIN?) can deal all the different damage types.


The Ranged-damage only guy was naturally the most trouble, since RDM has a poor selection of bows, and very low skill (210 cap) plus I only had /RNG 15 so no extra accuracy bonus or Barrage. Despite that, I managed it with a level 58 bow, which was the best available on the AH at the time aside from a Failnaught, and I wasn't about to dump 3 mil for the sake of killing one monster.

I'm very pleased that my time spent skilling bow for RDM actually came in handy, who would have thought? So this feeling of elation almost offsets the time I'm pouring into this expasion to make such slow progress.

Crafting and complaining

Having finally come the realisation that people might not want to fight over trash mobs so that they can advance, SE have allowed people to sell/buy the drops instead of doing away altogether with the mundane fetch quests. Of course this only means that people are going to spend time farming said items to sell to those who are too lazy/rich to do it themselves at inflated prices. Not to mention the now added fun of crafting thrown in so there's a chance you lose the items you just farmed in a failed synth!


Fortunately they're low enough level so that anyone with 0 skill can attempt to craft, but I still got skillups at 4 Alchemy. I was lucky enough not to break any synths, so I didn't have to go through farming again, and could sell the spares I got! I've made about 100k from this stuff, which is decent considering I didn't go out of my way.

Parchment turned out to be a rare commodity when I wanted it, with singles going for over 3k and no stacks on the AH. It's a level 31 leathercraft synth so I wasn't able to make my own. However, I found that you can get it from a level 2 desynth involving flutes (which are very cheap and easily obtainable from NPCs)

So I grabbed a stack of lightning crystals and fired Cuddles into action in Bastok's music shop. Hopefully I've got the worst of this expansion over with, and the rest is just NM fights/cutscenes.

Business as usual.

Servers are up, but I've got an 90+ mins left to update, so I guess I'm not doing anything until tomorrow. Nothing new here. Love my ISP!

Updaet notes.

SCH got Modus Veritas nerfed, because you could do a shit ton of damage with it in a short space of time with impeccable timing/the right conditions. SE actually nerfed something before it was exploited for a change, which is the biggest surprise. Some guys killed a yovra, some people got upset because they wasted merits, the world moves on. I always thought it would be a useful thing to speed up lowman kited fights etc. but you don't really find that many (good) SCH's that actually gear for nukes/helixes rather than just curewhore.

/tell filter for spam messages will be nice if it works, I've been getting a load of RMT tells recently and it's starting to irritate me.

Avatar Favors will provide a few minutes of entertainment for me before they become taken for granted, assuming that they are even used at all (considering SMN is brought for damage, if you need party support you're gonna get a BRD or COR).

I can't even be bothered to think about MMM or the other misc junk because nobody careeees.

I gave in and got the Shantotto crap, just so I had everything. If it's going to follow the same pattern as ACP or MKD it'll be a few months before I finish it.

Hurrr FFXI

Possibly the weakest version update preview I've ever seen. My god.

Even if they did announce something remotely interesting, like deleting all jobs beside WHM, PLD and SAM, I wouldn't be terribly interested because I've got a ton of RL shit to sort. Shit like:

"oh sorry, that three weeks worth of data collection you devoted yourself to organising (very well, might I add) is going to be scrapped and all your efforts were wasted :) Hope you didn't neglect any other area of your work to make sure it was done properly! Oh you did? Whoops! Glad I'm not you. Now could you start from scratch and re-collect twice as much data in 4 weeks? thx! :)"

The above is obviously exaggerated. It only refects a FUCKING IDEAL SCENARIO and I have no gurantee that the stimuli for the experiment are working reliably, much less a full 4 weeks to test in, as I need to recruit more participants from a now dwindling pool, wait for their responses (fuck people who don't check emails for 7+ days), arrange dates for testing, and make sure I can get someone in to test them. If I can't get anyone in, or they decide they feel like FUCKING OFF ON A HOLIDAY WITH TWO DAYS NOTICE RACHEL, YES I'M REALLY NOT HAPPY ABOUT THAT, guess who has to cover for them? Moi.

Fuck

My

Life

Of course, nobody has specifically asked this of me, but I seem to be the only one that can get shit done without having to be told explicitly what to do. Despite this, I probably have the weakest CV out of the lot of us simply because I've not done any part-time cannon-fodder jobs at a warehouse or fast food outlet. Fuck yeah employers.

Maybe I'll just take off for a few days and hope everything is peachy when I come back.

CUT ALL THE REST BECAUSE IT GOT SERIOUSLY WHINEY AND DEPRESSING :)

INSTEAD HERE'S A KITTEN IN A BOX WITH HIS KITTENY FRIENDS :))

Bad form from me. Hopefully this post is more amusing than it is depressing.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

So by now everyone has relised the add-on scenarios are pretty bad. Like "WTF why have I even payed for this" bad. It appears SE have realised this as well, but instead of actually changing the content from bad > good (the logical solution) they instead tease us with powerful quest rewards (see earlier rage post) and now random convenience items!


Why it has a 40 hour recharge, I don't know. Apparantly you can abuse convenience. Now having scanned over the list of areas you can use it in, I see it has little use in gathering people for endgame activities, although it could be useful if people have spare characters to park them in certain areas (say, Uleguerand Range / Attohwa Chasm for easy-access ENMs).

I could say at the very least it prevents idiot party members getting lost in the jungles, for example, but chances are you don't want to be partying with the kind of people that get lost in the jungles.

So anyway, I leveled MNK a bit.

Blessed Radience nom nomnom. 15~21 still works pretty nicely at Buburimu outpost. I intend to do parties from 21~37 now I can get some decent gear going.

I also noticed an odd thing with Counter:


I'm 99% sure that the counter skillup came from the WS, and it's already known that counter can proc on WS, but I don't think I ever saw a 'miss' message before (this is speaking from 60 levels of MNK experience on my mule, obviously kaya hasn't done much punching).

Jorb #3

I still can't decide what to level...but I've thought of enough reasons not to level pretty much every other job.



I want something I can equip well, but I don't want to take up more events. I don't know if BLM would be worth leveling without any relic gear, same goes for SCH because they both get some good pieces. I've considered BLU but that's not great for leveling (although can solo BST pets decently) and it only has niche uses at 75. I wanted to try BST, but leveling that would just be for the sake of leveling, I won't pretend it has much use at 75.

I could do BRD quite happily, but I already have RDM to fill the slot of underappreicated support job. THF? No TH4, which doesn't bother me but it will bother everyone else.

Sighhhh


Maybe I'll resume leveling stuff to 37, at least I don't have to worry about gear and endgame applications then ;D

FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Oh sorry, you wanted a WS piece? We thought it would be better to make the gear you've been trying to get for the past 8 months obsolete instead. Makes me feel even worse about not getting Nashira body now.

Some extremely nice TP choices, namely STP+5, acc+7 and haste +3% but I still want homam legs because they look hot and SE can die in a fire for this pisstake. I could make some pimping cure legs for RDM, if only the mage legs didn't look SO FREAKING UGLY, could also be used for PDT set. Oh well, grats to SAMs for their movement speed gear.

Virus

My throat hurts. I probably have something nasty coming along.

Also, my virus scanner picked up it's first ever virus! I managed to pick it up on my USB pen drive, which I'd recently used on a public PC in uni to shift some data between machines. A bit dumb of me, but next time I'll get a floppy disk (yes, they are that old). I shouldn't get too worried over the viruses that my AV picks up anyway.


Did some limbus. Ultima - everything good until last 20%, which was a near loss. 19% Dissipation was the only one to get off again, apparantly it's faster than the others? That really screws us over as well, it's so annoying and meant tanks had no shell (I think) for CB, so both died after the first.

Omooga next, hopefully homam legs x2 can drop so I don't need to pass another item I want before I get them :\ and Apollyon will give me a chance to finish my next RDM AF+1 (body), I've got a huge stockpile of coins building up.

Oh and Shantotto expansion is for sale, gonna be leg-gear for the reward. Mage one looks HIDEOUS. Hopefully I can get a decent WS piece out of these because my current leg options aren't too hot.

So, my housemates...

Terrible taste in music. Or at least one of them has, and that's enough when said individual doesn't have headphones.


Sea! My first time doing jailers so I stuck with refresh whore duties so I could learn what's going on and not break anything majorly. I also need to get the map for the inside areas since it will actually help now.

I met FFXI's big tough bastard for the first time;


He's not quite like everyone says, pretty polite in fact.

So, after doing a bunch of jailers, we went over to Riverne to fight Bahamut.


I hadn't done this before either (at least not v2), but it's a straightforward zerg fight and I was there as Angon dispenser. So having been online for about 4 hours that day with no problems, I d/c about 5 seconds before the bards start doing songs, and log back in a minute later just as they finished :(

I at least managed to get invited and dispense angon as planned just after everyone engaged, so I at least contributed something (plus a few melee swings for 0...). We came short of beating the old record by about 10 seconds, for which I would like to blame my poorly timed d/c.

Halloween and hell hounds

So, I got asked to help kill Cerberus. "Eh, why not?" I ask myself


Killshot and free title for me :D

Afterwards, I got Juli to help me do the halloween event for a pitfork, for which we decided to start at Bastok. My stable-warp necklace is now exhausted (I think I can get more from this event?), so I need to take the stupidly long route of tele-dem > chocobo > Gustaberg N > Gustaberg S > Bastok. On the way, I come across this puppy;


Which can spawn anywhere in the zone, once per night on a full moon. So it's not entirely common to see. At least the drop is 100%.


So, I get to Bastok, get pitchfork, go to windy, get HQ. Done. As much as I like to act the jaded cynic, it's still fun to run around like a dumbass in costumes :3

Other stuff I did a while ago but got too lazy to add it:


Kvazz got a failnaught for his RDM, so I made him go RDM/RNG and shoot it at things for my own amusement.


Yes. Armed Gears. I still had a pop to use, and now I have homam I don't need Aurum for DRG so I let Juli have the boots if he got a party together for it. I nabbed the grips, which I've failed to sell either of. [insert QQing about how the boots drop now that I don't need them]

I had time before Limbus, so I went to do the ACP afterglows quest again in Fei'Yin. Who knows, I might just get an acc+7, STR/DEX+2 mantle!


...of course, I wasn't aware that I'd failed to use the last key I got.


One more for the bin, I guess?