HEAD ASPLODE

So, some incredibly game-breaking announcements were made at VanaFest 2010, it's quite alot to take in, but it's pretty much the next (final?) year of planned content:


It seems SE has decided to break from their past two years of underwhelming updates and really stir shit up this year. Most notably with new endgame areas, endgame expansion packs, new NMs/HNMs and increasing the level cap to 99 and the subsequent job adjustments to try and achieve some balance in order to prevent the game from becoming horribly unbalanced. Keep in mind they might not actually carry any of this out, and could be just trolling the whole community:

"It is anticipated that the level cap increase will impact the balance of certain elements more than others. We will keep a close watch on these areas and, if the situation demands, review and reconsider even the adjustments that have been announced."

Of course if they do go ahead with this, it now creates the question of how easy that will make current endgame/HNM, or will they be level-capped, or even made stronger? Or become completely redundant finally? Also, sucks for all the people that levelled every job to 75 for the sake of completion :3


This white mage is using convert. While this makes me a little bitter, at least Composure will remain RDM-exclusive, and if refresh is made available through subs, no more refresh cycles for rdm!

Although new HNMs never excite me all that much, I am glad to see they are implementing the one thing I always wanted to see in FFXI before I quit:


YEAAAAAAAAAH GIANT CRAB HNM ! Granted, it's not as big as I would have liked, but it's the thought that counts.


R.I.P Hades

Looks like I'm off to Cerberus. On the plus side, more people on server means I'm gonna be getting more missions done (I hope). Bad side: more competition for NMs that I don't camp, more crowded merit camps, when I don't need merits and more HNM competition when I don't camp HNM. Will be interesting to see how things change.

March update seems mostly expected stuff; new missions, campaign/synergy stuff, new avatars, etc etc...

Best stuff being
-CRAB HNM!!!
-PUP getting +1'd with hand-to-hand getting raised from C to A and automaton getting a bit tougher (i.e. becoming more useful).

Avatar: Alexander
Uses "Perfect Defense" to reduce damage sustained by party members and prevent status ailments.
- Damage reduction and resistance rate will vary with the summoner's remaining MP.

Avatar: Odin
Uses "Zantetsuken" to vanquish all foes within the area of effect in one fell strike.
- When used against NMs, will instead deal damage.
- Amount of damage dealt and accuracy will vary with the summoner's remaining MP.
- More monsters within the area of effect will reduce accuracy.

Both seem pretty meh, considering you need astral flow active to summon them. I would like to say zantetsuken is makes Odin the next astral burning summon, but more mobs in range lowers accuracy, so I'm guessing training a ton of mobs in hopes to one-shot them isn't gonna work out well. Also if people had to pick 2 avatars they fully expected to be implemented, it would have been these two so no surprises here.

Also new Trial of the Magians junk that I've not looked into, nor do I have time to! But going by this, and the emphasis on synergy, it's looking like SE are focusing more on augmenting and enhancing current armour/weapons in future as an answer to raising levels rather than introducing shit tons of new gear for people to carry around. I could be wrong though. Either way I'm screwed as I don't have the inventory space for this stuff.

OH JEEZ VanaFest and updates!

So it's been a while since I looked at the playonline site, or talked about news or anything really.

SO, VanaFest 2010 is imminent and so far there's been a bit of hype before the actual event, such as:

- (Nomad) Mog Bonanza. Free relics for no-one!

- Some stuff about a competition on twitter to win a cute hat. I have enough hats already, am cute enough and I don't like twitter so I won't bother signing up. Plus I'm slow and won't be able to reply fast enough.

- And today, the announcement of a new version update planned for mid-march! (ie. April)


Going by the picture, it just looks like mundane crap (synergy, more WOTG missions, campaign adjustments). I'd be happy for missions, but I've fallen behind on the current ones, and nobody does shout groups for them, so I'm pretty much shit out of luck.


Considering they're announcing the details at the event, it's likely they'll have at least something impressive (avatars?!). Here's a picture they put up as a massive cocktease to contribute to the wild speculation:

"Making macros for some of the stage demonstrations."

Even though the macro text is blurred, from the rough size and shape of the letters it looks like /ma can'treadthis < me >. This is clearly absolute proof of a new avatar, and s1= SUMMON 1?! Again, concrete proof of there being more than one avatar planned for release in the next update.



So anyway, I've been trying my luck on the Jasper Tathlum NM again, now 0/3. I included the whole log to show the silly damage you can do with 300%TP Full Swing :3




I found my Hume equivalent guarding the Xarcabard 'outpost' (by outpost I mean flag pole with 2 people stood by it).






Almost there for RDM combat skills! Shield is stupidly hard to get compared to parrying for some reason, but once I've capped that I'll just finish parrying with an earth staff.



An interesting, but ultimately useless augment. I have now sucessfully augmented bows with every stat EXCEPT MIND. It makes me very sad, especially considering that when I finally do get MND it will be negative.

I don't know...

JP players being weird. I tried to join in, but they cancelled costumes before I could get mine on :(



Auto-translate being weird. Same set of moonrunes came up every time someone used auto-translate. Guessing it's an error message of some kind, or aliens have hacked my game.




Augments being normal. Shit sucks, back to FoV I go~

DUN DUDUDUN DUN DUN, DUN DUDUDUDUN

DUN DUDUDUN DUN DUN, DUN DUDUDUDUN


Yeah, my first Odin. He's a bit of a sissy, just tried to annoy me to death with AoE status effects (bind, blind, silence, curse, blahblahblah). I want a better screenshot next time.


Drops were pretty nice though, even if I wasn't even tempted to ninja lot anything ;D

Gogo Genbu resist set? Or you know, not.

Since my augment luck sucks (who's doesn't?), I went after some NM that drops a MND+1 tathlum. It didn't. Shock.

But camping was relatively painless for the first time in my life. I showed up, no competition, killed the frist lot of placeholders and BAM! NM pops and lets me kill him. Sweet. Someone else showed up just to see it die, and they were just after scylds (some synergy thing) so I said I'd team up with them on the next pop and went off to do some FoV in between.



Cape terrigan appears to be stupidly popular (probably because it's close to the outpost, gives decent points and you can use an NPC there) so you have to compete for raptors and dumb stuff like that. I should start doing it in sky I guess, but it's so much faster elsewhere.

I returned later for 2 hours of killing placeholders and watching competition for the NM to show up, climaxing with me leaving before it pops because I had limbus to attend. This is why I hate NM camping.


And what was possibly the most depressing and humiliating limbus run in my life. This SE apollyon will haunt me for a long time.

No, you can't sac pull in limbus, and no there's no real need to ever. But my bad for explaining why something is a bad idea in an attempt to be polite instead of just typing 'NO' or 'STOP' first. Although that nearly ended the run having to reraise near to blood aggro mobs, it wasn't really the only thing that bothered me that run. 1f was a cataclysmic orgy of death due to people

a) Not being careful with slimes and forgetting how easily they can make you very fucking dead.
b) Forgetting what the fuck utsusemi or bouncing hate is for.
c) Believeing they are invincible for some unknown reason, and charging in without buffs and subsequently going from full HP to 0 while I'm in the middle of hasting them.

2f was a little better, nobody died to crabs (I think?). But the boss was handled horribly, resulting in much death including my own, which I am mainly to blame for. The kraken boss uses hundred fists. Coupled with the fact mobs hit generally hard in this area, it's not a pleasant experience. We normally just have DDs 2hr and ruin it's day, Grav it and let them run away if in trouble, this usually makes it die before hundred fists wears off, and I get to chain nuke and it's fun! Instead accomplice a DD, perfect dodge and kite it is apparantly a better strategy because you can show off to all your friends how awesome your thf is. Of course don't forget to finish it off by running back into range after your rdm has it bound and gravitied so it can one shot you and put the mage back on top of the hate list (remember that DD you just used accomplice on? Yeah). But then I decide to fuck up by expecting the DD to retake hate (keep in mind this is a WAR using hand-to-hand and a SAM that likely doesn't have capped polearm) so I nuke a bit, and it obviously is coming for me, but it's 1% now and I can kill it with one more nuke, or the DD will before it gets to me. Turns out I should have chainspell nuked, or ran out of range a bit more as it killed my stoneskin/shadows then followed up with a 1k TP move. The shame.

But anyway, even before the run our best DD (the WAR) was told to bring daggers for the slashing immune floor (2f). I expressed my doubts, saying polearm would be better. I was told he was capable of 1500 eviscerations on war (which I didn't believe at all, not without either 2 houring or dia/angon/bergressor+brd) so I accepted he'd be fine without polearm. Except he didn't bring daggers, or a polearm but hand-to-hand. This is WAR, which has a B- rank or higher with any melee weapon EXCEPT hand-to-hand, which is a D.

3f fucking sucks no matter what you do, but it's still easy to pull off, unless you're low on time from the other floors (shouldn't be, but we obviously were) OR if you try to sac pull without disbanding. What makes it worse is that a sac pull isn't even neccessary to begin with. So needless to say I was speechless when I saw an army of skeletons come marching into view.

People finally sorted themselves out for 3f boss and finally 4f where nobody actually died, though we came close and I still ran down to 0 mp before convert was up. Shit like this is why RDM is not a good main healer. Or at least I'm not without seriously good support. Anyway, we got the chip so it was not a total failure.

SO AFTER ALL THAT QQing and misc rage, what can we learn?
1) Next time we do Apollyon SE with me solo healing, I choose who comes. Even though most of the people I'd take as a first choice have quit, so much for that :(
2) Alternatively, take a better RDM. And I mean a god-tier RDM with access to cure V and light arts.
3) If we got RDM AF from 1f instead of dying all over the place and being generally wank, I wouldn't have complained at all and would have been very cheerful for the entirity of the run.

God damn, I love complaining.

fo rreal?

I thought this was pretty good, considering how little my first nuke did and the fact I was weakened (although it may only be double-weakness that effects nukes). Oracle's drink as buffs. Next SSR I wanna try that with chainspell!

Anyways, after salvage I tab around and target some NM I've never seen before through a wall. Lawz and I investigate (keep in mind we had both just unweakened, so low HP). Turns out it aggros low HP from a mile away and depops after it loses hate, and there was a group gathering there to fight it.






I felt bad afterwards for the other people in the group, but the guy mouthing off came across as pretty dense and unpleasant, so I couldn't care less about him. Also it turns out it was Lawz's mother that killed him, but Lawz is a loser anyway for not having a buffer on brd!


! rock (graphical glitch? I don't know)
Managed to scrape together another 450 tabs from Fields of Valor to waste on another STR-1 bow. I can't wait.