Busy week (picture heavy)

Got this:


Our second ring in a row, and now we're done with the NM forever. Now need a Bomb Queen Ring, maybe a Gigant mantle (when I have the money spare) and that'll put my HB trigger over 750 HP. That's Galka territory, just without the gimp MP.

Capped this:


Got up to date with this:


I'm up to the BC fight now, should be able to join the next pick up shout I see. (Scorpion Helm rawks)


Farmed some of this:



And beat some of these:

Dracula! (Pretty easy, DDs swiftly dealt with Doppelgangers and he only charmed the tank once, right at the end. Slow landed without trouble, Paralyze was resisted a ton, Dracula being a DRK I guess).


Goldilocks! (Similar setup to the first attempt, just 2 melee instead of BLMs and BRD in place of SMN). It worked great until we got caught out with a bad -aga, killing both nins then he came after me, Sleepga II on everyone, woke me up with attacks but followed up with a knockback (and Curse) TP move and interrupted my cure, I tried to make some distance but then he hit me with a Tier IV straight after, which one-shotted me with cursed HP (and Stoneskin had already been removed).

I reraised and ran back to wake the WHM, but fortunately Goldilocks was already nearly dead and the tarudrk finished him with a Souleater/Last Resort Guillotine. Cute.

Also sucked that he kept intimidation up for pretty much the entirity of the second half of the fight (so it was really hard to damage him).

Now only the Cerberus fight in Lebros Cavern stands in the way of Captain Kaya!

Floor 45

Three runs with a pickup group. First was a success, then both 46~50 runs failed (one due to moving slowly on previous floors, other to a horrible mess of an undead floor w/soulflayer bosses).

Another thing from the second run:


Such a tease, SE!

Breaker of the Chains.

Thankfully I was able to get a nice screenshot without me looking like a prat at the front. Zeid is still hot.

It turned out to be an incredibly easy BC, I just had to chainspell stun floaty guy (which I messed up because I forgot to change my macros after upgrading thunder > jupiter's staff) and then have the usual 6-on-1 boss fight with the sword guy after he was dead. This just involved alot of cure spamming for me until they made him go dead from stabbings. Brutally complex stuff.

I hate short fights, never get to debuff. :|

Reward:

The obvious choice for DRG. While RDM would benefit alot from the magnetic earring (and would certainly see more use), it's nothing outstanding.

I saw a shout in Jeuno for the WotG mission I was on (Daughter of a Knight) where I'd reached the point requiring a treant NM fight. I like to think it went well.



We got up and tried again, some other came along and we beat it without a problem. Seems it had quite high def, because even with Angon and food, penta damage was pretty low (550 tops), and wheeling did alot better when I used it on the second fight (700/800). Might have forgotten to use food the second time as well.

Now I've got a good few missions worth of cutscenes (and probably several instances of wait until next game day/RL day/JP midnight/Chinese new year between cutscenes) before the next fight, and then that should be the end of the available content. Once again, I've failed to keep myself up to date with the missions...no real detrement though and it's not like I'm a whole expansion behind the vast majority of the playerbase.

Running in circles.

Gears #2.


Waah 4.5 hour solo, got to farm zeni and kill the rat/marid again, SE hates me/drop rate sucks etc etc.

More interestingly, a bunch of people got bant for salvage duping a while back. There's a pretty huge drama thread about it, but I can't be bothered to read through 79(and rising) pages of bickering.

So SE have ran out of RMT and are banning legit players now, woo. Not to mention some of the most accomplised players across all servers (Minidragon and Wopadobop amongst others). Many more temporary bans.

I wonder if they'll start banning windower users next?

Tin foil hats.

I subsequently changed my password.


I got intercepted by some strangers in Windurst before I could warp to Whitegate who asked me to go help them with mission 2-3. I'm starting to think there's some kind of sign on my back declaring my insatiable passion for dragon slaying.


Lion?! Wait a minu...TIEM PARADOX FWOASHSHH.!...

Anyway, we went and killed that. I lost my previous title 'Friend of the Opo-opos' (hadn't had it change since I quested my Opo necklace, which has to be a month or so ago by now...) and had it forcibly replaced with the less-than-stunning 'Dark Dragon Slayer'.

Karma is a myth.

I've lost count of the number of times people have told me 'if there's anything you need me to help with, just ask' from all the favours and misc junk I've gone out of my own way for to help out strangers, often just because they've asked and I can't say no.

If I recalled all those overdue favours from people (assuming I could remember who they were) I could put together quite an alliance. It's just usually the people I help are not the ones that can actually do anything to help me in return. But then again, those who have helped me along the way have probably not benefited from the experience either aside from being given thanks, and feeling a bit better about themselves.

But you would think, that at some point in time, those who do go out of their way, when most others would just outright refuse or ignore tedious requests (ie helping with low-level missions - the Three-Mage gate in the Horutoto ruins has always been a favourite for me, I've opened that countless times), would get at least some love, just a bit of random luck here or there to sooth the constant slap to the face that this game is. Like getting that NM drop you've been camping for hours, or maybe an invite to a party...or even some GODDAMN RED MAGE HATS TO DROP FROM DYNAMIS-XARCABARD!

You might be able to tell what I'm a little sore about currently. I hope I wasn't too subtle.


That said, it's always good for the soul to show how freaking awesome you are by hitting stuff in the face until it dies, and hopefully making someone's day in the process. (Even if the outing cost me 15k, and I missed a merit party being formed...)

Plus it's always cute when they try to reward you with some of the random junk they have, like crystals and level 8 shoes or something. Because it's worth something to them, so it must be worth something to you, right? I usually try to let them keep it anyway, unless they insist or it looks like they will be upset by having their shiny treasures rejected.

But anyway, why me? I got asked to do this mission while I was in whitegate, they didn't need my job (dragoon at the time) in particular for it and out of the hundreds in the area they see me as an easy target (even if I am an easy target, it shouldn't show!). It's not even like I'm high up on the list alphabetically, unless they started at A and asked people until someone agreed to help? If that's the case, alot of people are bastards for refusing that poor taru.


Ok, now I realise that none of this is particularily important or interesting, and I've gone on for quite a while about such a mundane topic. My apologies. This whole post in all honesty was as excuse just to post that picture of my mule punching a massive big dragon in the chin. Think of it as a wordy caption.

Let's cap Stoneskin!

After reading this thread I realised I had never actually checked to see if my stoneskin was capped and assumed the formula I was using was correct.

Cactuars seemed like a good idea to test on, and I didn't feel like buying venom pots.
First step was to find one, and nuke it down below 25% (so TP would be used instantly) and then sleep & get naked!



Equip stoneskin gear and cast:



Then I bound/gravitied the cactuar (getting hit would obviously ruin the test as you don't know how much HP you've lost) and proceeded to spam Dia for 1 damage to feed it 100tp.

After god-knows-how-many Needleshots (and subsequent stoneskin recasts), it finally used 1000 needles.


At first I thought I had broken the game by achieving a 550 HP stoneskin, but then realised I had my earth staff equipped.

So 1000 - 20% (staff) = 800 - 450 (damage taken) = 350 stoneskin!

On a serious note, Cerberus does not fuck about.

Well I was on DRG, so as a melee job it should be expected that I would ask for haste over being cured.


Dropped me from over 2k HP to 0 before either mage could even start curing. Even if I hadn't used my fanatic's drink earlier by mistake I would have been SOL either way.

They still managed to finish it off, but it was bloody - we were very lucky that he didn't go into stoneskin spam mode. And no drop of course.

Did surprisingly good damage with penta again (late 800/900s for each, others DDs were around 200~500), even if I only got 2 weaponskills off, would have been more if Cerb didn't randomly go apeshit. (But I was cheating because I buffed myself with an attack drink and the others had no buffs. In all fairness, they should get it as well if we have no BRD)

Next time, Cerberus! *shakes fist*


...oh yeah, I need to fix that spelling mistake in my utsusemi macro :)

Raaaage

I've had alot of things to rage about over the past few days. Let me share them with you.


Party invite, less than 30 mins in people just leave without any warning and we end up disbanding (after dragging one other poor person out to the camp). I had a 50 min wait on my warp club, and the RDM had already left so no chance of a teleport. :|

Earlier today:

...

Also much fun was had camping Bloodsucker. Not only does it pop in an area where there is nowhere safe from aggro, it also shares the name with every mob down there. And links. There are alot of links. So many that it is impossible to fight the NM alone, because it will be surrounded by 291048091 other leeches at any one time.



We've been there for 2 spawns. The first was a 3 hour camp (apparantly 21~24 hours after maintenance) of me spamming widescan and dodging leeches. When it finally showed up (it would have been up for 7 seconds max before I saw it), we got there to see it a NIN soloing it (without links somehow...) who had arrived minutes earlier. How he found it without widescan is beyond me.

The second time we knew the EXACT spawn time, and had located it a second after it poped. We arrive to find more people figting it (this group may have had widescan though).

More raging will ensue if the people who got it the 2nd time told others the ToD. They were a bunch of assholes though.


On a lighter note, I've finished my SL assaults. First I did Wake the Puppet which was a pretty easy trio (although it was a bit fussy getting the hang of it) we only escorted the bare minimum amount of puppets (4/6) then exited to get it done. All 6 could be done with 3 people once you have the hang of it.

Second assault (Operation: Black Pearl) was a bit harder.



Having to protect paper-thin NPCs (they take 1 hit to die) from countless large waves of mobs accompanied by the occasional level 75 Troll, until a Troll NM (who is quite tough) shows up and you have to intercept him before he reaches the Princess in the middle. It's pretty easy for the most part, the mobs are really weak (could barely get through phalanx) and take very little damage, but the hard part is watching out for the NM while fighting because if he reaches the middle, you auto-fail. I caught the NM with Blind, then set the melee on him, while 1 DD kept killing the waves (they didn't stop coming after the NM) and I rounded them up on me with Diaga while the BLM -aga nuked them until she died. :3

Not sure how neccessary this is, because I don't know if the normal mobs can kill the princess. If they can, it was very close as they nearly got to her. I didn't get a screenshot at the end because things were all over the place, it got very hectic.

I feel my rage has dissipated slightly...well, back to seeking.

Stuff that needs getting done

Because I either forget, or write it down and then lose my notes. So as long as the internet holds out (and even if it doesn't, it wouldn't matter by that point anyway) I shouldn't lose it by putting some goals down here.

-Merits. (DRG group 1 & 2 complete!)
I've nearly capped DRG-specific ones, but it's got to the point where everything is costing 4~5 merits for one increase so it's going to be slow improvements from here on. Not to mention I've never been in a proper 2 BRD/COR merit party where I reliably get hasted and don't have to worry about dying.

I might not finish combat merits, since I don't do all that much meleeing on RDM anymore and kill speed sucks on RDM regardless. I'll leave it open in case I level another job that can use the merits.

Attributes are a nightmare that I'm not looking forward to, INT/MND would be nice for RDM, but STR obviously would benefit DRG more. I'll probably do a mix of the three rather than capping one at 5/5, because it will cost me less merits that way at least.


-Captain. (Success! 05.02.2009)
Major goal of mine, but I've not made much progress since getting within 5 clears :\

FL assaults can be real bitches (to find people for more than anything), and I've got the hardest ones to go.


-Armed Gears. (0/3...)
Ugh, this niggles at me every time I think about it. I really just need to get it over and done with.


-Buy stuff. (Jupiter's staff, basic NQ physical/magic reduction sets done)
Not that I have much use for any, but it would be nice to have a decent enmity set and Pysical/Magic damage reduction sets. Depending on how cheap I go (missing pieces out, getting NQ when HQ is absurdly overpriced) this could cost me anywhere between 900k~2mil for the lot. And these builds aren't even optimal, not to mention the stuff is rarely on the AH.

Obviously mage gear has priority until I suddenly have a use for other sets, so HQ MND/INT rings + Jupiter's staff should be the next purchases I make. A second Communion earring would be nice, but I don't think so now they've jumped from 600k (my last purchase) to 800k. Debating whether it's worth getting more convert gear, at the moment it's good enough as long as I use food.

When I make purchases though, I want to stay around the 1 mil~ mark, in case I have the sudden need for tanking/situational solo stuff or if someone miraculously offers me Bodb's slops for 1 mil.


-Make money.
Can't buy things without money :\
I'm sitting on a mountain of KS/BS, but have nobody to do them with. I'm considering Up in Arms because it's a guaranteed 50/60k~ for each run, aside from the obvious shot at a K.club. Just need people to go with. I should be an easy duo with a good SCH or BLM, I have trioed it with some ease as PLD/RDM/THF before too.


-Sea/Limbus LS?
Would be nice. Less interested in Sea since the only thing I -really- want is a Love Torque which unfortunately also comes with an ass kicking from AV.

-Nyzul stuff.
Floor 100 (got!) 21/02/2009
Radiant Lance (mine)
Goliard Feets (mine) 21/03/09
Goliard Legs (not a priority, only because it's a free darksteel subligar +1)
Goliard Head (again not a priority, it's just Yigit Turban+1)
Askar Body (mine) 26.02.09
Askar Legs (unless I get Homam any time soon)
Askar Head (would TP in over Turban, just because it looks different :s)

-Crafting.
I've not done any major synthesis for years now (pretty much stopped after getting 54 & my clothcraft glasses) so I would at least like to at some point:
Finish Clothcraft up to sub level (60)
Level all crafts up to sub level!
Start Fishing maybe? (I've read it's much better to level if you have Lu Shang's rod or the other rare/ex one, so maybe not :|)

I would do more fishing/chocobo digging or even just plain farming IF I could see shouts in Whitegate from anywhere. I spend all my spare time in town these days in case I miss a shout for stuff I need. The game needs some form of universal pick-up group recruiting channel.

3520 WS points to Death Blossom!

More luck with pick up groups for Nyzul yesterday. I'm climbing alot faster than I'd expected.


20~40 in the past couple of days. Unfortunately I lost the lot on the lance, which would have topped off the awesomeness quite nicely for me. There's probably a decent chance of another one dropping before I reach 100 anyway, it's not like I'm going to be working off the WS points before I get to the top (especially not on DRG, since I only use it outside of events).

I got a new toy from the 31~35 run anyway:



Only 3520 WS points to unlock the WS according to this chart. Basically a big slap to the face from SE to anyone who isn't at floor 100.

Runic disks, Duelist's boots and lots of MND.

I joined another random Nyzul pick up group with a nice set up - RDM, BRD (at this point it doesn't really matter what you fill up with as long as the backline pay attention) then MNK, BLU, DRK, SAM. BLU is pretty useful in Nyzul, and not a bad DD at all for the weak mobs there. DRK isn't good for this kind of thing if you ask me, but stun came in handy and stopped us eating a few -agas from soulflayers.



The MNK and DRK were JP members so we couldn't explain not to exit on the last floor so we could hunt NMs with over 10 mins left. :|

Two lamp floors on our 25~30 run, one being a single lamp (quite far from the start though) and the other being a group of 5 that all had to be activated at once, which was easy to do once we'd found them all.

I'm always taking Cleric's Drinks (AoE erase/everything-na) on future runs, because it's amazing against Soulflayer's AoE blind/bio bullshit (I just have to pray they don't do it more than once/run, because I doubt anyone else takes them) and well worth spending 200 tokens per run even if it only gets used once.



I got a little chance to play with my new booties in sky, on the only mobs I come across often and can consistantly land nukes on...



I'm not entirely sure what I used to do with Blizzard III, but I think it was around the 621 mark, I'm certain the boots are better than my gaiters. 'keepers must have pretty low INT though, even unresisted nukes don't usually go over 600 on harder things (though I'm generally using less INT on those in favour of +skill).


Only reason I got to MB was that someone was breaking a WS latent.

My nuke gear is about as complete as it's going to realistically get. Most upgrades are in the 'unattainable' catagory for me (Morri robe/hands, Witch Sash) After those, all I can do is add 1~2 points of INT here and there (and INT merits, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do there yet).

Here's an e-peen shot messing around with MND songs at Ulli:

It would have been +98 or so, but those Etude effects decay FAST >:(
Could break +100 with better gear though (easily with SV Etudes), which would be cool.

Disappointment and distress.

I discovered a few days ago doing sky that the range of Phalanx II had been cut from the usual 25' (in windower distance) to 20', the same as any other buff/cure spell.



This is probably what SE intended, but I'd grown to like the extra range, it made Phalanx II special. :(

Now it's just a huge MP sink and another spell for tanks to nag you for.

Also essentially having the spell with a broken range since it's implementation (group 2 merits have been out how long now?) is pretty fail on SE's part.


I also tried a FL assault with a shout group. Arc and Soli were AWOL so it took forever to find the last few members. We probably would have won as well if they were on :\


The plan was to have NIN/dnc solo tank it (which worked out surprisingly well, just took a little time to build hate) and SMN to give Dream Shroud (Magic Defense bonus) and Earthen Ward (stoneskin) to help the NIN survive the AoE nukes.

Meanwhile, we had BLMs to nuke down the adds (which are little weapon thingys that the chair guy summons) which worked well for the first bit of the fight, until the BLMs started running out of MP and the weapons kept coming.

We struggled through, killing all the weapons and were just at the point of resting and recovering MP while the NIN continued tanking (chair guy was at 50% by this point) before we finished it off.

Unfortunately, the nin got hit with some TP move, followed by an -aga nuke, and went down. There was enough time to prevent this, where I could have got up from resting, dump cures on the NIN, and rest again but I didn't - I assumed the WHM standing up right next to me was going to do his job I'd been doing most of already throughout the fight. My mistake.

So after that, the shit hit the fan.



I was next on the hate list (by a large margin) so chair guy spent a good while chasing after me. There was a large rock near the entrance that was great for kiting around, although he could still cast on me. Bind and Gravity both landed well on him, which usually got me enough time to recast stoneskin and blink. Refresh was difficult to keep up on everyone else though, and I stopped refreshing the BLMs at this point (especially because we discovered they do crappy damage on the boss - melee jobs instead of BLMs next time). The WHM still barely cured me. I was curious as to what he was doing with his MP.

SMN seems a pretty good job for this fight, was apparantly doing good damage with Predator Claws, and the Ward blood pacts are invaluable for supporting the tank.

Struggling for MP, and unable to convert with the boss chasing me (he was in his intimidation phase, so I couldn't get bind off either) I succumb to an -aga spell. The nin was unable to establish hate after unweakening, else we might have recovered.



It was a fun fight at least, and we came so close to winning with a bad set up (if we just had 1 DD or SMN instead of a BLM, we probably would have won it).

Dynamis-San d'Oria love :3

Dynamis Sandy is kind. It gives me gifts.



I also got DRG feet a while back from Sandy auto-sort, so now I need some love from Bastok and I'll only need to spend points on the RDM hat before splurging on the DRG set.

New shoes MAB+4 is -probably- better than INT+4 from my gaiters for Tier 3 RDM nukes, but I've not had much to play with yet. I imagine that INT might work out better on more resisty mobs (which for RDM, is most things).



As for now, that's my high-skill set. I realise that I can use Master Caster's Bracelets for 7 more skill in the hand slot, and I usually do try to swap them on while casting if I really need it but I don't want any more nuke macros since it isn't the main focus of my job. 2 different (though they only differ in Ring2 and Legs slots) gear set scripts which I change as needed is how I operate at the moment.

After a long time shouting, and the gracious assistance of some friends, I beat an irritatingly difficult SL assault.



The 'difficulty' being you have a small chance of being able to find and fish up the monster that you need to kill in order to win. In the end (after 2/3 runs) we managed to fish it up in good time by cheating sod's law and fishing 4 mobs up at once (thus invoking the law that the NM would only decide to appear at the least comfortable moment). It was a little messy, but nobody died in the resulting confusion and things got back on track once we'd cleared out the adds. The NM ended up being less of a threat than the Krakens that you can fish up.

5 more assaults...


Oh, and I did some Nyzul (shout) runs for floor 16~20. First was ok, but we exited on the 19th floor because we got a crap ton of jellies/puddings/etc. to kill and wasted too much time.

The second one was better, but I was a complete liability (which makes a change) on DRG, I ran around aggroing things and dying twice during the run. We still won, and I did a 1.3k penta on Faf while weakened (although I had around 700~ attack from buffs). I'm not sure if that is very impressive, but that was my biggest (and probably only) contribution for the run. I got the clear, no gear dropped.

Intermission.

With three weeks of having no work to do or lectures to attend you would have thought that I might have actually done something noteworthy.

Nope.

So here's the unexceptional, the mundane and dreary experiences I've had in game this holiday season.


An assault. One Apkallu died. We won.

I have 6 to complete before getting to Captain. 3 of which are the hardest First Lieutenant assaults, and the other three are obscure Second Lieutenant assaults that nobody wants to join (I've spent the past 2 days shouting and had 1 person join, then suggest we give up). Captain may be long way away.


Since I had already bought the fishing equipment while shouting for one of the SL assaults, I decided to make some use of it. 30 minutes and two 0.1 skillups later, my rod breaks and so does my will. I sell my crap and log out.


A failed ENM solo. My first try, and it went pretty well until I had to convert. I spent too long curing myself up to full (would do better just to ignore the excess MP and keep nuking) so the beastie had time to Cure V itself follwed by Shell. At this point it was very nearly dead, so I thought fuck it and spammed nukes anyway. Turns out the shell is 50% damage reduction and so the 4 or so nukes I got off were not enough (barely) to kill it before chainspell wore. A very solid attempt otherwise, but really disheartening to climb that damn mountain (twice) again for another shot.


To rub the salt of bitter malice in the open wound of my crushed spirit, I had to endure a melee-oriented ODS run in order to watch my desired Serket Ring drop to another person.



The guy who got the ring wanted to go last (even though he won the second-to-last roll against me) so if it weren't for that bastard I'd have got it D:

We already know that all melee are idiots, and don't know that you can avoid taking 4x the AoE damage my moving the scorpions apart despite being told many times over the past hour. Also no melee jobs understand that monsters will attack the character who has the most enmity generated on them, and COURIER CARRIE DOES NOT MAGICALLY FUCKING TANK ANYTHING YOU WANT IT TO. Every time a BST does this with me, they try to fight two scorpions at once. But this is all understandable, as we know melee are idiots. The main complaints about this run are of course, about the SCH.
The screenshot alone demonstrates exceptionally bad gear choices;
- Full time gear (especially bad for a mage)
- Full AF
- Ice Staff, always (while this comes under 'full time gear', it's an epic failure in itself)
- Thunder Grip with said Ice Staff
- Rings/earrings/neck (belt and cape are ok, but could be alot better)
- FISHING ROD (no)

Now I wouldn't care if the SCH wasn't a liability for most of the run. Basically the only thing she did the whole time was AoE Sleep II at the start (which was the only point in having her) and then soak up damage standing in AoE range and doing nothing useful. She nuked a couple of times, which was pointless because we had 4 DD's, and cured I think once inside the BC. I can't stand acting as the only support in a group doing something (read: everything) when there's others standing around with their thumbs up their asses.

I'll try to manaburn this in future.