So, I heard you liek bonanzas?

It's been a while. I've been super with work and shit over the holidays so I didn't get much time to play/write stuff here.

So anyway, yet another mog bonanza just got announced, which is still some time away and nobody will win it, so it's not worth worrying about (until they announce the numbers, then I can complain about getting yet another statue for my mule).

So yeah, I'm on Cerb now and unsurprisingly there are a fair few more people here:

Not that this has helped me in any way, still not seen any shouts for missions that I'm on and more people only means more competition for FoV mobs (ugh), NMs, etc. I'll try putting together some groups when I have more time after I get my dissertation in.

Mainly I've being doing my most hated activity of camping NMs for the horribly time consuming Trial of the Magians quests, which requires me to kill a fuckton of trash NMs nobody cares about SEVERAL TIMES EACH (fucking hate that part, there's no reason for it other than to waste time), then kill a couple of new NMs that you can't kill solo, and your job is not even ideal for, so nobody wants to help you with it. Hopefully we can get together some sort of loljob alliance of DRG and PUP that need the kill so we can do it, otherwise I'm SOL.



The only thing this has going for it is that you can at least team up with whoever needs the quest and everyone gets credit for the kill, so thankfully the 4k+ people on this server aren't all potential enemies.



I saw some other neat stuff too, like the way frogs pop:


Gets kinda old though when you've been waiting on the NM to pop for three hours after the window opens (single placeholder lottery pops, fuck yes).


So far, I've had to kill:
Spendlix Spindlethumb x3
Herbage Hunter x3
Kirata x3
Intulo x4
Ramponneau x4
Keeper of Halidom x4

And finally, I have the last two to go until I get my DMG:99 polearm (relic-1!):
Shoggoth x6
Farruca Fly x6

Fuck knows how I'm going to finish this pair.

As for events, Lawz left the server so Salvage is in a 'wut' stage at the moment, I've not been on much either due to work but I expect it to go downhill unless we find a good WHM/BRD and or MNK replacement (preferably all three :|). Plus I don't want to lead runs and my memory isn't great at the best of times so keeping track of what cells people have/need is not going to work out, unless everyone actually takes care of things themselves, but I can hardly ask everyone to learn everything about salvage so I don't have to tell them what to do. In any case, going 2 times a week is not enough to get familiar with everything or get practiced enough to not suck, not to mention the issue of drops, I really don't have more time to dedicate to it either so all I can say is MEH D:

I got some cool shit from Limbus at least:


And I probably dropped about 10 places in the waiting list for nashi legs because of it, but this is worth the sexy.



And, I broke my previous Drakesbane-vs-Kirin record!



In between that, I've got the usual no drop (or even pop) from Timeworn Warrior, which I'm somewhere around 0/5 at now (and at least 3 occasions where I gave up camping because he didn't pop for over an hour...).

In addition, more failed MND bow augments:


And Lamian Kamans are 20k normally on Cerb, so that just got twice as expensive as it was.

Finally, it seems like some lovely people have taken over La Vaule [S]:


Sadly I don't really have the friends or contacts to start spamming Splitting Heirs for chuchu mantles, so no gil/gear for me!

Ok, I'm done dumping.

Full Swing is a really good WS because I did over 1k damage with it

Staff >> 130, Retribution quest started. Annoyingly, I can't make lv.3 skillchains unless I have a Nyzul WS or Retribution itself, so I'm going to have to grind through with lv2 SCs.


It wasn't terribly packed in the tree, despite it being a weekend I wasn't fighting for mobs. (DYING GAME OMG)


Full Swing still sucks at 100% TP (but it does get a 5x multiplier at 300%), so it's pretty much never worth using over polearm anyway, but these were just for fun. Tough crabs, 300% TP, angon/dia 2, Wheeling Thrust gear, staff skill <230.

GG Siren.

Siren World's Undefeated Besieged Record Eclipses 2000 Mark!
(04/06/2009)


Ever since the introduction of Besieged to Vana'diel approximately three years ago, Siren has emerged as the only world to maintain an immaculate, undefeated record. And as of May 27th 2009, this record has reached an amazing 2000 consecutive victories!

We would like to offer our heartiest congratulations to all the denizens of Siren World, and wish good fortune to those in all worlds who do their part in the frenetic defense of the Imperial Capital, Al Zahbi.

I've not commented on the POL news stuff for a while, but this is quite impressive, especially that they went that long when a two week period on Hades without losing the Astral Candescence is considered a 'good stretch'.

Misc stuff:

People carpet :o


Seems we can't do dreamlands with less than 30.


Cool damage bro. This was on Bhaflau remn. 4f gears, I thought it was good since I normally average around 1~1.2k. Had double minuets and angon for it (coeurl subs as food), so no surprise here.

We linked a couple of gears, and the pickup guy didn't know to kill them fast so 1 warped while fighting, so we got about 7/10 overall. Still managed to kill the boss and complete some Usu legs!

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.