Mission progress.

I just remembered I hadn't been labelling my posts for the best part of a year, so I'll resume again. And maybe go back when I'm bored and re-label all my old posts...

I gave up on soloing 5-1, couldn't get the boss below 33% before timing out and I can't really think of a better strategy that doesn't involve spamming nukes and meds.

Well, there was 1 other strategy...bring a MNK!


This was much easier and didn't require any meds :3

Maybe if I just ignored the adds and meleed the boss for the enitre duration of the fight, hoping they don't sleep me/nuke me too much, it might be doable but I can't be bothered to try now. The RDM solo video I saw is very old, and I'm pretty sure he enters the BC fully buffed, so there's likely been some changes since then. Also, nobody knows about it so I can deny its existence.

With that out of my way, I can get back to finishing this damn mission line.


The Shadow Lord is an absolute pushover. First time I went, I forgot my shihei and with no northlands outposts or warp on me, I just logged until warp was ready because I didn't fancy walking through Xarc > Beauc > Ranguemont Pass > Ronfaure > Sandy and back again. In hindsight, I probably didn't even need shadows. He never even broke stoneskin in his second form and it took about 10 mins to kill both forms after I'd buffed. First form I could have gone afk for, were it not for casting shadows but he didn't hit that hard anyway.

RANK 6 GO

6-1 I had to collect a ridiculously rare flower for the dead queen's garden because she thought it was perfectly acceptable to put it in her will and have somone run to the other side of the world every time the old flower died out. Bitch.


Naturally picking the flower spawns a cactuar NM who, according to the wiki, "SPAMS 1000 NEEDLES CONSTANTLY ALL THE TIME OMFG DON'T FIGHT THIS JUST LOG OUT AND UNINSTALL SAVE YOURSELF ARRRFGHHGHZGGHGFNGH".

This led me to believe it might be rather dangerous, so I took care and opted to kite/dot/nuke as RDM/NIN, which apparantly can take up to 1 hour, 45 minutes. I was genuinely worried about 1000 needles spam, especially when I forgot to bring my NPC to soak up damage. It took me ~20 minutes to kill, and although it spent most of the fight within 1000 needles range, it didn't use it once. Cactuar guy doesn't seem to spam TP that much at all either, maybe uses it as soon as he gets 100% but really didn't use anything that often. So wiki people either lied, or had 4 MNKS hundred fisting it with level 1 clubs.


Another easy fight, and many of the fights later on follow this pattern of force-pop mobs that you can pop and then pull 1, and let the others despawn.

From the looks I can solo every mission up to 9-2 from here, so should make speedy progress now. Shame I couldn't beat 5-1 though.


Your missions suck and you should be ashamed. I like Halver more now for some reason, eh's a pretty cool guy. The rest of the Elvaan are pretty dull though.

Taking a break.

It's the easter holidays, and I've gone home. I'm going to be pretty busy with family/friends etc. so I've decided to take a break from FFXI since my schedule will be all over the place and I won't be able to attend events regularily and without being interrupted. Well, that and I have a shitty connection here (shared between 4 people) and am forced to use my laptop for logistical reasons which makes the game look and play like ass.

All things considered, I still managed to attend a dynamis run (Sandy) since it's late enough and everyone else has gone to bed by then.



I was lucky to have a framerate of 10fps at most times, and even D/C'd just as the boss went down. I couldn't log back in which worried me that I might miss the clear, but ended up working after I reset my loltop.



We ended up doing a Bastok and clearing the entire zone again, which was nice. But more importantly, this put me at 4/4 on city clears giving me access to Beaucedine Glacier, and hopefully Xarcabard soon.

Hopefully I'll find time to get on and level lowbie jobs (DRG!) and build a surplus of assault points so Salvage won't have me crippled when I start back again.

Dynamis.

I've only just started doing dynamis, despite it being around since before I was playing. My main reason for avoiding it in the first place is because all I hear is people complaining about exp loss, crappy drop rates on this and that, etc, etc. Also, I was intimidated by the whole idea of applying to shells in the first place, I guess.

After recieving some encouragement, I decided to finally give it a go. I joined Aristocrats, a shell that I've got a large bunch of friends in so it wasn't too discomforting and unfamiliar although the runs are rather late for me, I can put up with it for now.

My first run was in Bastok, which from what I gathered was one of the easier runs. It seemed very hectic with 40 or 50 people in the zone, running around, mobs all over the place but at least everyone else seemed to know what they were doing. At first I was in a party with a single WAR, so I didn't have a great deal to do apart from keep him buffed and alive and sleep the occasional mob that the blms missed.


Loot whoreing already?

I got put in a BLM party later to commence the soul-destroying process of a 6-man refresh cycle, but it wasn't all bad with MP refills and Aspir on the statues allowing me to nuke on occasion.

Only thing that troubles me in Dynamis is targeting stuff quickly through the mass of players/mobs, probably best to employ stnpc in my important macros (Sleep/Silence).

So we end up killing the main boss for the clear, and then proceeding to empty out the rest of the zone with 30 minutes to spare (hardly a surprise considering how many people were there).



Next run was Windurst, which got a little frustrating being regularily hit with paralyze and silence, along with sleepga at times. It was all going quite well, up to a certain point where we had to pass something called 'death house'. We were told not to aggro the mobs there, as we wanted to get pass and kill an NM for the boss to spawn before we fought the mobs here. So, I behaved myself and snuck past undetected.



Unfortunately, not everyone did the same resulting in an asston of mobs pouncing most of the alliance while we were split up and unprepared. Most of us managed to make it to a safe spot to die and reraise and made a feeble last stand there.

We lost a huge chunk of time thanks to this balls-up, but fearless leader Xarpei spings into action, sac-pulling (basically sacrificing himself so we can pick off one mob and avoid the adds) the NM we needed to kill, and then sac-pulling all the death house mobs away so we could get past to the bridge and avoid fighting them. He missed a few of the house mobs, so we had to take those with us and kill them at the bridge. In the end, most of the house mobs linked to those we were fighting at the bridge and we ended up killing 90% of the mobs we were trying to avoid in the first place.


Everyone was reassured to see how focused I am during pulls.

In the end, we still managed the clear and had plenty more time left over to kill a bunch more mobs.



Most recently, Dynamis-Jeuno.

Once again, I demonstrate my unending vigilance.

Killed some gobs, got paralyzed by pets, fire alarm went off just before we stormed the palace place so I had to afk for most of that. Half expected to be sitting beneath a sea of popped mobs when I came back, but I was ok and caught up easily enough. Was the first time I saw some RDM af drop, and I actually had the highest points out of the people who wanted it, hurrah.



'Spikes' enhancement is nice, since I do alot of bloodtanking in campaign and skillup soloing, also I still encounter alot of nuke resists on mobs that are very tough and over, so the +skill is very welcome. MP is cake, DEX is....uh, DEX. LolDEX.

The run went a little messy towards the end, but we got the clear easily enough again, putting me at 3/4 for Beaucedine Glacier access. I think the next run is Buburimu, which I do have access to having completed CoP 3-5 so I'm looking forward to trying that one out. Hopefully a Sandy run comes soon. :0

That's all.

Eternal Mercenary.

Farmed sky, got some pop items. We munched our way through Despot, Faust, Zipacna, Steam Cleaner, Mother Globe, unsucessfully farmed Diorites for an hour, and I think we got some water to drop and did the Ollas (maybe..)



Despot decided to pop after a particularily nasty meltdown, so I thought I'd bind him on top of the BLMs for giggles.
Ended up having to queue for a warp at the end, and naturally my presence at the front of the line was disregarded. >:(



Did Salvage later, no drops. No screenshots either because they were rubbish and got deleted.

More interestingly, had a proper shot at the final ToAU mission with the ls.



PLD/WAR was far, far more useful for this fight. PLD, WHM, RDM, BLM, BLM, WAR. Didn't encounter many troubles at all although everyone was out of MP at the last 1% where things got a bit panicy. While I was om nom noming on hi-ethers to get enough MP for a final nuke, Flam jumped in and finished the boss with his massive big axe. Exciting stuff. And new toys:




Will be nice for Salvages where I get the luxury of a ring slot, and assaults of course. Also, will consider macroing the ring for Silence, Sleeps, Bind/Gravity, Dark magic as long as I have space for it (I think only my Drain/Aspir macros have the room on them for more additions).

I'm happy to have another set of missions complete, now I can just focus on getting CoP done. But they may take a back seat to WoTG missions, since I don't want to miss the initial rush of people attempting them (as I did with Aht Ughan).

Yet more ToAU action!

So after zooming though my cutscenes up to ToAU 42, I happened upon a couple of people from the 35 run, who asked me if I was interested in doing the next fight. I said yes.



Had to draw upon the ls for help, but it turned out Xarp needed it too, when I always had assumed he had it all completed. The strategy was simple enough, but it didn't exactly execute smoothly... NIN, WAR, SAM, MNK and 2 RDM's, we intended to have each DD's solo one gear/set of gears each while the RDM's kept them healed/buffed and the main boss slept. Easy enough, just gears have some rediculous AoE attacks so we ended up spamming cures and taking alot of hate throughout. Somehow, the NIN was tanking worse and taking more damage than the other DDs combined (sigh) and managed to run in and die in the second room before we (the RDMs) even entered. No big loss, we just bound the extra gear and let the other DDs carry on as usual. Raised the NIN, and buffed up for the final boss.

Soulflayers are not supposed to be in the game, they are just a bad joke made by SE that was taken too far. This one in particular seemed to be immune to any debuffs I tried (not that I had much time to try sticking any before having to spam cures again). I gave up on status cures since they just got hit with them again over and over, so I just kept people alive and pray they'd kill it.

They did. I ended up pulling way too much hate and tanking towards the end (gogo blink cycling), so was unable to convert :/



We later attepmted 44 as well, which was a hell of a cool fight, although we lost in the end. :(
The first part went pretty badly, we relied on magic too heavily in the first few phases so in the final phase he was immune to stun so we just had to eat his nasty spells. Couple of deaths later, we killed him and rested back to full before engaging the mega boss. But by this point we had already wasted far too much time.




Ultimately, we simply took too long to damage him which was basically down to a bad set up more than anything else though (PLD/NIN could not keep hate, and the DDs had to hold back/die so we didn't get anywhere fast).
The music for this fight is pretty epic though, I don't mind repeating this a few times. Besides, it doesn't look too hard if you have the right setup.


Assaults!
I muscled my way into Arc/Soli/Flam's usual trio static to leech a clear on Escort Professor Chanoix, which was great fun.



We just stormed through the zone, sleeping (<3 Repose) anything the senile old bat ran into, which included many dead ends. Being forced to backtrack into the mobs we just slept was rather discomforting.

From what I noticed during that assault (I could be wrong) was that anything slept with Repose (the skellies) that we didn't bind as well would lose aggro eventually, and the ghosts which we were using Sleep II on would continue to chase, ruling out the possibility of the mobs in this assault being particularily lazy and losing aggro faster than normal mobs. So Repose generates less enmity than sleep? Possibly alot less cumulative enmity, as I think that's what keeps mobs chasing. Obviously I'm too lazy to test it.
If this is true, and I wasn't imagining things, it would be much more of a useful spell for escaping any unwanted aggro you get (of which there is plenty in assault missions).

I also did 'Stop the Bloodshed' with a pickup party, which involved bullying some chigoes (seemed to have 100% crits on them) until the rune pops, whilst avoiding some mean lamia. We did bully the chigoes, but the lamia were not avoided as efficiently.

A few melee died before I could get to them after we split up (oops!), I managed to aggro a lamia trying to raise someone, but they slept easily enough (but they do start to build resistance, unless I just got an unlucky sleep II resist), I ran back to the rune when it poped, got hit by a tier IV from the lamia on the bottom floor (!) and just about survived thanks to stoneskin. Crap loot, 1k assault points, 5 points to next rank (10/25), disbanded and went to sky. All smiles.

I forgot to take screenshots, the tier IV was a good moment too. :(

Naja Salaheem.

Naja and I are on good terms at the moment, along with completing ToAU 35 I managed to get myself a promotion to Sergeant after yet more Lamia No.13 runs. I know it would be a better idea to do other assaults for rank ups and first time point bonuses etc., but I really want the Ilrusi Atoll points for mah Yigit Turban.



Nothing jaw-dropping, but the 4MND is what I'm interested in for putting together a Max-mind potency build for Paralyze and Slow spells, also the +hMP isn't going to do any harm. Currently I'm sitting on +61 without food, so with this hat, plus a couple of earrings (1.2 million gil of earrings...) I'll be sitting happy at +69. I'm looking forward to breaking +70 after completing CoP and getting a HQ MND ring.
However, Salvage is currently doing it's best to keep my points down. >:(

Anyway, the rank-up Quest for Sergeant was no let down (i.e. not 'go find another warhorse footprint').


Had to do some running around, but it was a nice little story.


Next! ToAU 35.

The fight was supposed to be the hardest one (so far) in the Aht Urhgan storyline, but we just employed the cheap tactic of all-out melee raep. It worked pretty well.



Excuse the vandalism, but I really hate spoilers. I hate it how I always forget to take screenshots of a fight until it's over already.
We went with a DRK, MNK, MNK, PLD, BRD and myself as RDM/DRK. The monks boosted up to full and opened with a Chi Blast each, and then everyone used 2-hour abilities on the boss with some tasty Soul Voice marches from the bard, while I chainspell-stunned him. The paladin stood around looking pretty until the boss' babies spawned, at which point he cast diaga on them and kited away.

All in all, the boss was down in just over 30 seconds from engaging, which is a little dissapointing, but the cutscenes make up for that.
After the usual grim, "blah blah end of the world is coming, etc, protagonists are in yet another predicament and we're all doooomed, oh no! Who could possibly save us now?!" volley of cutscenes, it was back to Naja for more giggles.



Now, only two more fights between me and a sort-of-ok, sort-of situational ring and a shiny but otherwise useless crown. Strangely enough, the story and cutscenes are probably better than the rewards themselves.

Ohi

I tried this initially on LiveJournal, but we fell out and we're not speaking anymore. I decided to go out for a walk to clear my mind a little, and then bumped into Blogger who seemed like a much nicer guy, and had less angry buttons that wanted me to do things. I feel happier now, and I trust LJ is getting by much better without me in the way. It's all for the best.

Gogo copypasta:

Since finding mild entertainment in reading others' journals, I figured I'd go for making myself one for FFXI and see if that same small state of interest carries over into actually producing one. Well, that and every time I browse my old screenshots I feel the need to document each with a commentary in my head...

I've been playing FFXI for over three years now, since EU release or thereabouts (late 2004?...I forget), which doesn't really mean much, but it feels like I've been going for a while to me. But hey, who cares? I've had my main job, Red Mage at 75 for a good while now, so I'll spare you the story of the long climb to 75 since most see the game *really* starting at the higher levels. As a substitute, here's some oldpics:




Classic Guivre moment :]




I spent months farming/capping skills/questing RSE/etc at 40 and 50 during that period of hyperinflation way back when... but prices were all relative, I doubt it would be any less work getting started these days. Besides, it made me feel good that I could do it without bothering other people to help.




I wore some stupid stuff in my early levels (complete overhaul at 40 though :o) , but damn I didn't half look good. RDM/THF was the biggest thing to hit kazham, especially when I learned about enspells at level 25!




Earliest screenie to hand. I actually started as a Thief, intending to be a Dragoon when 'I grew up' (my actual words ._.), but soon my dreams were shattered by Crawler poison as I swapped jobs to something that could heal itself and ended up liking it.

Sigh...I honestly do intend to get DRG to 75 as my 'next' job (largely because it shares w.legs with RDM), but sans Homam, Ares and Odin's pointy stick I don't think I'll make it my main over RDM (not that my RDM is dripping with rare/ex shinies either ;-;).




I've migrated PC twice whilst playing, so the vast majority of my old screenshots are on other hard drives that I'm not too keen on seeking out at the moment. I have other stuff to do as well, really I do.

Moar will come. I have time now, but putting multiple entries on one day is not a good idea since I'll burn myself out fast and lose intrest, so I'll take it slowly. Not to mention I don't really know what I'm doing at the moment. :3