So close...

But still pretty damn nice. Not far off a free enfeebling earring, but +2 MND on that would have been epic. I guess I can also use it for after-WS elemental breaths for my wyvern...but I don't really bother with that because I just tend to mash macros until they fire so any /wait lines get screwed up. Maybe worth a try if I can get Dragoon's earring from that T1 ZNM.

I asked if anyone wanted to help me with 5-1 since we were right outside the BC and a couple of lovely souls did offer to help, but others just fell silent. Except one of them, who asked:
"What mission is it?"
"The skeleton fight" I reply
"o" *warps*
What an ass...


They were more interested in going off to do more ACP missions, so I can take some small consolation in the fact they will fail miserably at the final fight. And suffer through the painfully mediocre cutscenes for the preceding missions.

And I got a nice earring.

Comet charioteer

Salvage is on again! New group, and everyone knows their shit, moreso than me so I need to re-learn stuff that I forgot over the past year. I had to go on DRG when I'm only used to doing it on RDM but I still had a good idea of which cells were which.



First run was in Bhaflau, and we were aiming for the boss (Long-Bowed Chariot) which had me worried because I've never had a positive experience with him. We killed all 10 gears on the fourth floor without them warping, plus the chariot there so we didn't get owned by Homing Missile.


The boss fight was very smooth, I only had to spam Angon, jumps/meditate for tp and WS when it was safe, and we had plenty of time left so I didn't really need to be there. Although heavy damage is needed for the 4th floor gears to kill them before warping. I wasn't keeping track of time, but we might have even had enough time to do a rampart + boss.

Was a good finish to an otherwise crappy day, which I spent (trying) to merit and got ignored by good parties, invited by mediocre 72~75 parties, which was fairly fun because I was main healing on DRG/BLU but that takes alot of attention, especially fighting Mamools because by the time I can heal someone (50% HP), they can easily get one-shotted by some TP moves. So not really workable on Mamools unless your party uses +HP macros so you can heal them earlier.

But it's not really a surprise people skip DRGs for meriting (despite them having a main weapon that has +25% damage against merit birds) when you take a look at the 'average' dragoon you can find:


To be fair, that's not a bad jump setup, but rings/earrings are still very bad and...well, I wanted a party :(


My eyes. Tiger ring +1. Trail weapon. There are no words for this.

If you want something doing properly, do it yourself.

Doesn't it suck how the actions of one person can completely screw up pretty much any event?

Also, I'm regretting augmenting my ACP body with acc/att, I'm thinking store TP would have been a better option after all now that I only use it for jumps (more acc overall than heca, also some VIT and no slow in case I get a hit in before changing gear).

More twins! (DRG edition)

Well...they're close

Bastok have managed to come second in conquest, but still only have control of three areas, two of which I already had the outposts for :\


Aragoneu was the only OP I didn't have. Still no northlands of course!

Spent 2ish hours skilling up, I didn't really notice much of an increase from the skillup mog tablet.


10 levels on staff, which is about typical for that amount of time (I wish I'd kept track better). And at least 1~2 parrying which is more that I'd usually get I guess.

So not a very noticeable enhancement, but this is FFXI, what else could I expect?

Ugly gloves.

RDM relic complete! Over 290 enhancing skill now with only 3 pieces of gear. Of course it still doesn't break the next tier for Phalanx II, but it's another +1 to enspells and Phalanx 1. I could break 300 skill, for the final +1 to Phalanx II, but that would mean changing merits, getting the +enhancing sea cape, or farming ACP keys to get a +enhancing belt - none of which I feel like doing just yet. If ever. Plus it would mean I need to carry 2~3 more pieces of gear just to break the last tier. For normal party support purposes I only need to be carrying AF legs, so the gloves and my enhancing torque can go in the 'situational gear' pile in my satchel.

Molybdenum Ingots are falling in price! So I could either get one now, while they're under 400k (in case they jump back up to 500k again) or keep waiting for them to fall further (hopefully all the impatient rich people have all got theirs now).

Haven't we been here before?

Flame gorget go! I couldn't get a party to try it out though :\



I've been pushing to make progress with Bastok missions, and so far got from Rank 2~5


My third (and final) run in with the mission 2-3 dragon. Much easier solo on BLU than it was for RDM. I filled my inventory with hi-potions, and ended up using 2 (which I would have lived without anyway) so now have a ton of them to shift.


Rank 3 involved trading crystals to skip the pointless missions! Also mission to Jeuno to save the ebassador guy who randomly wanders into Delkfutt's tower (for NO reason, and still doesn't explain after you save him) and gets knocked out in a place that is inaccessible unless you climb ten floors, kill an NM for the key, then travel BACK DOWN to reach the basement. Good thing the key is re-useable and I've done it twice before! I climbed the tower anyway, to grab the key item for ACP 11.


Magicite. Did this all as WHM to tele/warp around faster. Turns out Otzroja is a bit annoying solo at level 42. And some of the levers (the door you need the torch for especially) are really annoying to open because you have to be in a really specific position.


5-1 next, just need to borrow a mnk (or almost any other job would do, I imagine). Northlands outposts would be nice as well...

Apart from all that, I spent some 3 hours in Sacrarium helping people farm subligars. We had a good drop rate at first, but then the THF had to go and it fell to 1/109580185 kills. Fortunately the guy who wanted THF subligar d/c'd so we managed to get subligars for everyone else who was left and gtfo. At least I got some Conquest Points out of it? Yay.

I saw an ACP 11 shout while I was looking for a party, and decided to give it a go, since I'd just farmed the key item. Typically, the last guy who joins doesn't have the key item and we have to escort him up the entire tower, killing/kiting everything in the way (no sneak/invis and I can't cast on him when he's level-capped). Thankfully it wasn't in vain.


Everyone knew what they were doing! PLD had magic damage gear, and could actually hold hate for a bonus (and didn't get charmed once). The only difficult part was the THF (designated clone-killer) was on the opposite side of the room, so we had to run into aoe range if they needed curing, and they had to run into aoe range to pull the clones because they were running towards us. Coupled with the fact it was spawning clones in pairs for some reason, things got a little messy towards the end when the THF got hit with Seed of Judgement and died, leaving me to nuke the clones (but was running out of MP) and my Thunder got resisted on the last clone (which then killed the SCH), so I used weapon bash, stunned the crystal again, and was about to melee the clone to finish it off (was out of options!) but luckily the SMNs kept up the damage on the crystal and finished it off.

So even with a good group it can get messy.


WAIT LOL, HOW DID WE EVEN GET HERE???

look, it's that bit from the starting CS and I'm not in it:(

So anyway, the entire ACP storyline is pointless and confusing because it revolves around Aldo's sister who has being missing since Tavnazia got owned, but has been in the game since the start.


Except that she does have a different name, and that was never explained either. I'll try talking to her to see if she says anything different.

So, ACP is a mindless nonsensical expansion, with a 'storyline' that opens more plot holes than it closes. But if you want to try for some neat augmented items, and a shiny new body piece, then go ahead by all means.

Woot?

Exams ovar. Which would normally mean I have more time to play, but my connection is being a dick and for some reason won't let me play FFXI, even though I can do pretty much anything else.

Well, I logged in for limbus fine a couple of days ago, and Nem talked people into killing a Yovra for me while we waited for Omooga to be free!


I was messing around because I wanted to show I can take hate from BLMs lololololol when it did that to me D;

Apparantly it used boost or some shit. Still, 1374 total damage in a normal hit and that's with protect on...they don't mess around.

Now if I could only log in, I could go get my flame gorget sorted (and free some inventory up).

Kupo.

Old news, but whatever man. I'm not playing a great deal due to exams, still a week of those to go D;

Basically people need to run around and find 11 tablets (which were all found by the time I knew about the exams), and can be found across the original/zilart areas.

From what I gather, anyone who finds a tablet gets this ring and extra goodies:



And when all the tablets are found, you get a bunch of spiffy bonuses:

"Thrifty Transit": Outpost teleport sites will operate free of charge!
"Martial Master": As an added Signet effect, battle skills will increase more rapidly!
"Blood of the Vampyr": Signets will be boosted with the abilities of Regeneration and Refresh!
"Treasure Hound": Signet will grant you the Gilfinder and Treasure Hunter abilities!
"Artisan's Advantage": The chances of losing ingredients due to failed synthesis will be significantly lowered!
"Mystery Boxes: San d'Oria": Treasure Caskets will appear more frequently around San d'Oria!
"Mystery Boxes: Bastok": Treasure Caskets will appear more frequently around Bastok!
"Mystery Boxes: Windurst": Treasure Caskets will appear more frequently around Windurst!
"Mystery Boxes: Frontier Lands": Treasure Caskets will appear more frequently in the north and other distant lands!
"Swift Shoes": Adventurers who are fully rested and healed will temporarily be able to run with great speed!
"Ease of Exploration": A teleport service connecting the towns of Mhaura and Selbina to the three nations will appear!

Which are pretty awesome, especially movement speed+ (though I've not noticed a major increase), skillups and regen/refresh from signet. Best part is you can still get these bonuses after the adventurer appreciation campaign, even if it's only three random ones/week. But getting the SAME DAMN MESSAGE every time I zone for the rest of my life might get a tad annoying.



The only downside to this event is how it coincides with my exam period, so I can't actually take advantage of it, and I've just changed nations.


So my signet duration sucks right now :\

Stuff what I done: first Ultima!


It went pretty smoothly, until the end where it decided to spam Citadel Buster and some magic shield almost exclusively, when we only had BLMs and one MNK for damage (other DD forgot to buy soap...).

Dynamis was supposed to be Valkurm, but we ended up doing Windy due to low numbers, which is pretty much the worst case scenario possible for me. Not only do we miss out on a nice short dreamlands run (particularly the zone that drops the D.chap -1, which is about the only thing I -really- want from dynamis now), but we have to do the most annoying city run, that features fun things like AOE stun moves on every normal mob, sleepga/slowga/paralyga from statues, silencega from pets, Death house, etc etc.

Of course no DDs are capable of subbing anything other than WAR (DRK/war what is this I don't even?) so I have to main heal a party full of people fecklessly taking damage just trying to prove they are the BEST AT DOING DAMAGE EVAR! Along with my usual sleep/debuff/nuke stuff regime, because of course we would have one less than the bare minimum of BLMs again. With that said, it wasn't a terrible run (actually better than a typical windy run) but we still might have actually cleared had people got themselves fucking killed less (hello /nin) and we had a better strategy for the Heaven's Tower mobs.

I think I'm just grouchy because I've not gotten anything new and shiny in game for nearly two months (although I shouldn't complain since the last thing I got was RDM hat). When exams are over I'll get back to the soul-crushing work of Aurum boots I think. Doesn't look like I'm getting homam any time soon, so I think I can justify the effort. I would buy N. head for DRG if the price of the cursed cap wasn't so ridiculous (thanks, gobbiebag quest!). If I could just find someone to sell me Bodb's slops I can die a happy person.

Horse, Weekend pickups and a new salute.

(The following may not follow logically or chronologically, I can't be bothered to organise this entry)

Stuff that I did:


I got asked to help kill Dark Ixion, not that they really needed me at all (and I missed a pickup party that beat the final ACP mission in the process ><), it felt like I was there out of pity and to soak up MP from all the damage I took (it was difficult actually getting near to WS without being hit with some form of AoE), but there was a cool moment when I dodged Wrath of Zeus with Super Jump.


This probably isn't jaw-dropping, but my gear could be better, and I was at least pleased with it considering it was 100%TP with no angon, and my only buff I had was food. I assumed Wheeling Thrust was the best WS for the job, since I was doing SAWS but I would have liked to play around with others to see what they did, Impulse Drive might actually be half decent at 300% TP and with Angon to make up for Wheeling's ignore defense.

Well, I got a title out of it at least.

I got a nice screenshot of Saruta as well while getting the outpost for Cuddles.



And subsequently got my own, along with the few other areas Bastok had claimed. They are seriously poor at conquest for some reason, despite more players being with Bastok than Windy. So Northlands outposts may be a while off.


YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY GREENS.

I did some misc quests to help me get around Bastok a little easier as well, like the Mog House exit upgrade, and the Whitegate warp.


Now, here's a shot of another attempt at the final ACP mission;


SNES graphics were neccessary to reduce lag in the fight. I have a sword out because it all went tits-up and I wanted to melee cloned people for giggles. (Prepare for wall-of-text RAEG post)

I've gone with some workable setups, I won't lie. But I'm still 0/2, so how can this be?
a) I could simply fail so hard at this that I can't succeed regardless of group
b) Despite having suitable jobs, people are idiots and cannot do anything right unless I spell it out for them, which I tend not to do because I don't want to sound condescending.

While it may be easy to assume I only pick b) due to my own self-serving bias and so attribute failure to the actions of others, I genuinely get stuck with idiots the majority of the time and sometimes I can't pick up the slack short of playing their jobs for them.

Now in this particular fight, I didn't go in with high hopes. The PLD wasn't particularily well geared, and clearly didn't know much (if anything) about the fight. The combined total of all his magic damage reduction gear was:
MDB +5, Magic damage taken +5%.
I didn't want to patronise him about his fundamentally retarded gear choices because it would only be met with the usual "I can't get good gear Q_Q", which annoys me greatly, because you can get non-retarded gear pretty easily, especially a half decent magic damage set for PLD, from the AH.

I wasn't too bothered about damage taken anyway, because we had a good WHM and RDM to keep him alive, as long as he could hold hate and not get charmed. I told him explicitly what to do and what not to do before we went in, so that should have been ok.

Right?

Right???

lol,

Wrong.

He proceded to run in, use ALL of his abilities like a champ BEFORE he'd done anything to the crystal, so invincible/sentinel/rampart/etc = 0 hate! It's literally astounding (and sad) how someone can play for 75 levels on one job and still fail to understand the basic game mechanics that surround said job's only purpose.

Oh yeah, I forgot to say he started RUNNING IN CIRCLES around the crystal after he finally flashed it (didn't have hate the whole fight, just ran around it to take damage). Which is something I explicitly told him NOT to do beforehand...

Granted, I screwed up as well and stunned a clone instead of the crystal on it's second cast (I was busy trying to tell the PLD what to do...), which made everyone panic and despite me stunning every other subsequent cast, we didn't recover and wiped.

Now I do focus on this PLD alot, but there was a SAM/RNG10 and dual-wielding WAR, but they can't be blamed for having not-so-useful jobs, even if I do dislike mediocre melee-only people. Couldn't fault the SMN, but with the absolutely tragic performance of the PLD there really wasn't much room left for anyone else to fuck up to a degree that was even noticeable compared to him.

I'm being pretty horrible to him, poor guy. He wasn't a terrible person, just pretty lackluster and could have just broke down horribly under pressure (wat, I know).

What makes this even more irritating is that this guaranteed failure after only 1 minute inside the battlefield means I've got to spend another half-hour climbing a 30-capped tower, and then wait another 30 when I join my next party for the rest of them to collect the key item AFTER they join and keep the considerate people who got it beforehand waiting.

If I'm not zerging this next time, I want to make sure I get a good tank. If not, I'll get my MDB gear (and buy an I.R. Lance) and just give it to them.

Short version: Don't join weekend pickups.

Mog Satchel - how do you use yours?

As you may have guessed, my security token arrived today (well it actually arrived a week or more ago, but I'm not at my home address and my parents had to send it to me).


Anyway, I'm very glad to finally have it :D
I can get on with leveling other jobs now I have room, and even keep all of my RDM gear on my main instead of in delivery box limbo.

At the moment, I plan to keep all of my warp stuff, along with linkshells, emergency reraise, signal pearls and maybe DRG gear too. It also makes the last gobbie bag quest a little more worthwhile, now that I get 10 inventory space from it rather than just 5. I'll get that done when I can get all of the stuff for less than 500k.

Oshi- for added awesomeness, put "bind ^o input /satchel" into init.txt
So ctrl-i will open inventory, and ctrl-o will open satchel! Saves me going through the menu to move stuff :)

Rank 10

Well worth the struggle for the final mission. Glad I tried it solo, because it's not at all easy to find people to do these missions (even by doing "/sea all rank 9 san" and asking everyone I saw was no use, they were all on 9-1).


I made two more attempts at 9-2, the first ending like this:


I unintentionally MPK'd Trion when trying to kite the DRK during his 2-hour.

The difficulty in this fight lies in
a) Keeping both yourself and Trion alive, which requires you to;
b) Keep hate of Trion because he eats up damage and has low HP, and;
c) Not run out of MP, and try not to die during Convert (which will be needed for the final part of the fight).

I guess I would have had a little less trouble (and probably won a little while back) if I took a vile elixir or two.

Although the failed attempts weren't entirely wasted time:


It's been a long time since I got any increase in shield skill, it should be very close to the cap (189?) now. (not pictured) I got another parrying level too~


Feeling a little dismayed after another failed attempt, wasted food and 2-hour, I went back in again to see if he would ever deviate from his usual pattern of BLM > DRK > PLD.

I didn't have chainspell ready, so fully expecting to lose, I just went in without food. He did change his order, much to my relief, to BLM > PLD > DRK, which works out well because I can keep the DRK slept while we kill the pld, and the BLM dies fast so it gets him out of the way.

I had to kite the DRK again during his 2-hour, because his hits happily smash through stoneskin and it doesn't help when he's draining you for 100~200 HP every attack.



I never considered the time limit to be a potential problem, but if it had lived for 30 more seconds I would have been feeling very depressed.

I did screw up a couple of times on this run (interrupted initial cast on the 2nd part of the fight, then got slept and suddenly had the DRK and PLD hitting me, and Trion getting beaten up by the BLM) but I recovered just about, and not having food probably slowed me down on the first part of the fight (having to recast stoneskin more often) so I don't think the time limit is a major issue as long as you don't waste any time or screw up too much.

So, that's the whole of San d'Oria's storyline soloed (except 5-1 D:), and 9-2 was the only challenging one of the bunch. The others were fun though, I like easy wins.

In addition to my 100k and San d'Orian flag, I farmed up an Azure key while I was down in Fei'Yin, which traded in for this;


1.6k in NPCable junk!

And I couldn't have completed these missions at a better time, because Bastok now have Saruta AND are 3rd in conquest so it'll be cheap swapping nations!



Now to see how much I can solo of the Bastok storyline. I know enough Bastokans that will help me do missions if I get stuck anyway, so this shouldn't be as tough.

Rank with the stench of defeat

I've been trying to finish up some mission storylines. Here's how they went:

ACP final fight!
Our setup seemed decent, we had RDM/drk x2, PLD, RNG, SMN, BLU. One major problem with this fight for me is that my "telepoint lag" seems to manifest itself fourfold in the swooshy whirly attack animations of this boss, and that really kills my performance in the fight unless I face the wall, which is not altogether too helpful. God forbid should I actually get in range of the crystal.


It went alright for the first 50%, but we were burning MP way too fast, because people kept going into AoE range to cure the tank who was running all over the fucking place. Better positioning would have made it much smoother. Charm really screwed us over as well because it was resetting hate on the tank, so everyone else was getting drawn in and taking damage. I've since learned that you can outrun or stun the charm move, so that's something that will help for next time. (we failed, by the way, so I get to do another climb of delkfutt's, yaay)


It's a 30-minute BC so you aren't really in a hurry to do damage, you just need to keep people alive. So a strong backline (3 mages) plus one decent DoT melee (MNK) on the crystal and 1~2 people to deal with adds and maybe do some damage to the crystal as well should be good. If you're going to have a dedicated tank, then make sure they have a decent magic damage build (assuming the TP moves are magic damage, they look it anyway) and they seriously need to look out for charm and outrun it because it's not easy to get hate back from 0 with reset timers. Need a stunner somewhere in there for -aga nukes, and two if you want to stun charm as well.

Alternatively you can just zerg it.

San d'Oria finale!
I tried shouting for help to get 9-2 done to no avail (granted there was only one other Rank 9 Sandy person in the zone), so I headed out to Fei'Yin alone to gauge the fight solo.


11 vs. 1? Seems fair to me.

RDM/pld because cocoon is annoying to recast every min and it's very easily interrupted.

I just did the usual stuff, but didn't bother with any sleeps after the first couple because it slows down killing too much, and there's too many to sleep without an -aga version. They broke through Stoneskin pretty often, but were really lousy at interrupting me, so I could just recast it whenever. They kept running around me to form this circle, so I couldn't make full use of my shield. if I started by aggroing them, then running back to the corridor, I might be able to make better use of it and even tank without stoneskin for extremely fast TP gain plus shield mastery bonus. Also good for skillups, I got a couple of parrying ones in the fight.



Part deux. The bit I was worried about, having to keep Trion alive vs. three significantly harder orcs. There's a BLM, PLD and DRK, and all have pretty heavy bias towards their jobs - meaning that PLD doesn't hit especially hard (50~70), the DRK hits like a truck (100~200), and the BLM... well, silence lands on him so he's not a concern.

I cast Protect on Trion, not shell because I didn't intend on letting the BLM get a spell off and I wanted to conserve MP for cures. I made sure to tell him to not get his fucking shit killed.


Should have taken my own advice.

Sleep II > BLM. Trion decided to attack this first. What an ass.
Sleep I > DRK. Forgot to cast sleep II over it afterwards. My bad.
Bind > PLD. Wore early, and had him hitting me while we tried to take the blm down.

BLM died, I cast flash on the PLD to get stoneskin back up, but didn't notice the DRK had woken up, who ran over at that point, interrupted my stoneskin and then finished me off while I was unable to act for 30 seconds thanks to the awesome way SE designed the game.

I forgot about Sentinel :|

As this actually seems a do-able solo now, I'll try again. Same strategy, the first part is easy but I'll make sure to filter damage taken so my log isn't spammed horribly and I can tell what's going on.

For the second part, I think I'll chainspell right off the bat and sleep 2 everything. Following that, hopefully Trion will go for the DRK or BLM first (DRK is rough, and I'd like to get that out of the way, but I'm not sure what the BLM is capable of spell-wise.

About time!

Xarcabard, Beaucedine and Qufim outposts! Just missing Vollbow now.


Boyahda Tree skillups. Called my NPC for some free Fellow Points, and to make him use Blessed Radience before he died (didn't want to stop and rest for him).
Staff > 200something
Parrying > 168

Adventurer Appreciation

Even if it's not much compared to the mog bonanza, it's at least a nicely illustrated and extravagant way of announcing a new batch of anniversary rings.

And I was genuinely amused by this little message from Tzee Xicu:

Hark, unclean adventurers; accursed worshippers of the false Goddess.
Your wicked existence, while an affront to the true faith, strengthens the bonds of the noble Yagudo race. To you blasphemers do we owe our unfaltering unity.
May death take you and your tainted kith and kin.

Anyway, I've been doing some ACP stuff:


A level 30-capped Delkfutt's tower climb. Daunting at first, it's not at all bad if you're careful and take your time, though next time I'll do it as WHM for Reraise in case of emergency (I forgot they lowered the level requirement).


More junk from repeating the Fei'Yin fight.


Killed this guy, so I can summon all but Fenrir now on my Lv. 10 SMN!


And also spent 2 hours killing crap to learn an awesome WS that freaking explodes when you hit stuff!