3/3

Pickup salvage run. It only took 15 months <3

If only I'd got the cloths back then when it was cheap...

Also 4/4 on chariot titles. \o/

The perplexing properties of paralysis: Part deux

I decided not to add this to the old post, mainly so I don't need to date ammendments myself, and it keeps each entry shorter and easier to read/scan for info. They'll all have the label 'Paralyze testing' so it should be easy to find.

I've moved on to mid level monsters now, so findings can at least be a little more ecologically valid (although any conclusions I make based on data from these tests will not reflect the performance of Paralyze on higher level/resistant monsters). However, it can at least contribute to establishing a difference in proc rates in low dMND and high dMND conditions, which may justify meriting the spell for some people.

I've chosen to test on a staple monster of FFXI, the Crab. Robber Crabs (The Boyahda Tree) to be exact.


YO what's up?

I chose these for several reasons:
-They don't double attack, so it's clearer to define attack rounds and avoid inaccuracies in recording.
-They don't hit hard, so I can just stand there and let them hit me, instead of spamming shadows etc (frequent TP moves will jeopardize the experiment's internal validity, so you can't afford to give the target TP).
-I was skilling up there anyway and it was convenient.

Right, same method as experiments 1/2 except this time I didn't kill the target after each cast, because these vary in level (and by extension, MND level) and it would have taken hours just to do 30+30 casts. Also I'm doing 30 instead of 20 because it's a bigger number and therefore betterer. Also this experiment isn't as well controlled as 1/2 because they did get a rare TP move off, which slows attack rounds slightly, but isn't too damaging (in an ideal world I'd scrap the trial, but that's frustrating and I'd go mad if I had to do that too often)

Without further ado; here's results for 3a/4a; (low dMND condition - 60 MND)



Make what you will of it. I'm busy and have to go :D
Basically Para2 wins here, despite shorter overall/average duration.

Dynamis-Xarcabard home delivery

Demons have wings; why do they need to hitch a ride? And they look far too heavy for that to be possible.

I found a pickup group doing some of the WoTG quests, but I had to leave early before we finished the windurst wing of them. I can solo the rest, but I'm not sure if we were doing other nations or missions afterwards.


FITE. Here's me doing 25668 damage in a single attack because I'm so good. Eyes are very squishy, the demon dude on the ramp was unsleepable and not very squishy. Also hit hard and his friends began resisting sleep after a couple of casts. I won't spoil it, but windurst's storyline is still pretty grim.


We farmed some bottled pixies afterwards, which is a fairly mundane task to begin with, I just thought my first exact 1000 damage WS was noteworthy.



Other stuff I've done -
Not enough people showed up for Salvage so we couldn't do that, what a shock. But the leader got morri legs 35 recently so decided we should do Zhayolm boss next, so I might have a chance at completing my own. Basically I've come to the conclusion that anyone who can reliably get 6 competant members with good jobs to show up for Salvage is already doing it, and would rather sell drops than let new people join.


Wiped to Ultima at 7% which is frustrating, but we did have around 13/14(?) people, and alot were inexperienced/new and one champ who is a near complete liability managed to forget soap. It was a smooth, albeit slow kill to 20% and a couple of dissipations got off, but we managed to recover from those. It's just we had to eat about 3 Citadel Busters and too many people died to it, plus he was being an asshat with shields as usual.

Wiped a whole bunch in dyna-xarc, wasn't a great run to begin with and after Flam left I was seemingly the only one sleeping anything. Bad drops also.

Basically endgame is not going well for me at the moment.

More interestingly....I tested Para 1/2 on robber crabs after a skillup session, using the same method that I used back in March. I still need to do high MND and high skill conditions (even though I never bothered with +skill on Tiny Mandragora, crabs are at least above 'Too Weak' so there may be some improvement in resist rates) but chances are resist rates are still floored on Easy Prey mobs, most likely because of the ~15 level gap + merits. Although you will never see an outright resist (magic, or enfeebles at the very least do not suffer from the 95% accuracy cap that melee attacks do) there may be some improvement in the average duration of paralyze when casting in +skill gear.



I've done 30 casts for each paralyze and paralyze II, which is still lacking in size but it's really fucking tedious to do so many in one sitting, and without any way of recording results other than by hand it's not going to get any easier.

Results need writing up so I can compare them to the previous tests, I'll add them to the old post when I get around to it.

SIDEWINDAH

Nothing interesting to put here, but it's been a while since I wrote anything so here is a list of stuff I did recently. What a bore.


SKILLUPS PEW PEW
Archery > 198 (cap: 210)
Throwing > 173 (cap: 189)
Parrying > 175 (cap: 200)
Staff > 220something (retribution soon!)

Still no martial master kupopower :(



Camping Rare/ex stuff for a mule I hardly use! 0/1 then death warped after a rampage around castle oztroja.


Campaign! Wasted time doing battles to find I already had the max medal rank. Maat is a beast though.



Standing in Whitegate! No 3rd mithra with the mage gear from MKD/ACP came along :\


Dynamis! I was almost entertained for the first hour and a half. Melee gear for next city run? (not windy though, fuck yags)

What is this.

It's not a shellbuster, I can tell you that much. And that it's on a DRK. I don't even know why I bother when I see stuff like this.


Here's an illustration of RDM abuse; probably the biggest recast list I've made from normal party duties


When buffing just one party is not enough. I think I'm the only person with RDM leveled attending limbus at the moment (other rdm is MIA). At least there's no competition for AF+1 bits. Speaking of which...


+1'd my 2nd RDM hat, next will be body > legs > done.
DRG +1 legs will be my new TP legs (and it completes my healing breath set) until homam. I can't store my AF now however, but I plan on HQing the feet (jumps) and head (healing breath, spirit link) then putting the useless bits (body, hands) in storage.

Exciting things I've been doing between limbus (pictured, above), dynamis and standing around in whitegate now include salvage (again)!

New salvage group will take some getting used to, but we managed to do LAC (silver sea boss) on the first try, which is something I hadn't beaten before and didn't expect to beat, so it's a good start. Now hopefully I'll see a Zhayolm run sometime in the next month instead of the usual SSR > SSR > Bhaflau> SSR > Arrapago > Arrapago > Arrapago > Arrapago > Bhaflau > SSR > SSR > etc. rotation that everyone on the server seems so fond of (I've even only seen one Zhayolm pickup group shouting, and even that was JP).

I think I'll just leave this here

Moogles, Merits and Medals.

MKD spoilers ahead, be warned. Not that it matters anymore because people just read about it on the wiki ahead of doing missions anyway.

Despite it being a week since I've really done anything, I've managed to do alot in the past couple of days, including beating the moogle expansion~


Chamber of Oracles fight was a bit rough, since the boss spams a nasty TP move which you can see killed two of our DDs in the final moments (because I started nuking, haha!) but other than that it's a simple sleepga > kill adds > fight boss > repeat.



This is then followed by some interesting, but still long-winded quests (or mini games) which are interesting if only because it isn't kill X mobs for Y drop. The only downside is after you've spent an hour doing all the challenges and then fail the final BCNM, you need to repeat them all from scatch which makes it just as bad, if not worse than ACP in that regard.

Thankfully, I went 1/1 on the final fight, which is a relief because 4/6 members were Japanese and the leader was English-speaking. They still managed to explain the strategy quite admirably with the auto-translater. Though it probably sounded a horrible mess to the JP members I had a feeling they knew what they were doing anyway.


And they did! Because the boss spams heavy AoE damage and draw-in every time he hits 75%, the melee should do nothing to get hate on him for the majority of the fight to avoid pointless sponging (hence why we stand and watch on the stairs). Our 2 BLMs basically did most of the work, tanking the boss with stoneskin against a wall (because of knockback) and they were even able to rest because his normal attacks were too weak to break stoneskin. BLMs would nuke him down then sleepga the henchmen, which we dealt with. After 2 waves of henchmen, we slept the 3rd wave and finished the boss off with DDs and BLMs going all out.

All in all, it's a decent expansion, even though they've taken the bad points about ACP (re-collecting key items to repeat fights, competing for low-level mobs to farm) and made it even worse. At least the story wasn't as horrible, but the mid-level augmented items from the chest seem to be no good compared to ACP's augments.


Here's my kupo hat in my new DRG WS setup, it should give me plenty of accuracy now so I've ditched my acc rings for STR in my penta thrust set up as well. I'm still not sure about N.body vs ACP hauby (7 STR vs 10 att + 5 DEX) but at least the body/head combo match here.

The day before I did MKD, I was spamming Campaign battles out of boredom, and I wanted to play on DRG, and ended up getting myself a new medal, along with a T. whiteshell (plus other junk) from Union chests.



And I got enough EXP to finish my attributes merits


I could be criticised for not going 5/5 STR but there's bigger wastes.

Mumor 2: Moar mithra!

As it's my 200th entry, here's some nice artwork to celebrate:



SE is back to recycling events it seems, but adding mithra to them is never a bad thing ;o


Not much has gone on in the world of me, I've not even got any crappy augments to show off because I've not got one in days. Also not been online much because I'm lousy like that.

I did get up to the first BC fight for MKD, so I need to look for a group to attempt that. The prerequisite for it was the same as ACP's 'collect afterglows' missions except longer and more annoying (what a surprise). At least they made good use of the map markers for the first time since the adventurer cupon quest:


Why they never bothered using these for any other fetch ??? quests in the game is beyond me, perhaps they forgot (or, more likely, they want people to suffer and scour entire zones to find them by themselves).

*shakes fist*