Halloween and hell hounds

So, I got asked to help kill Cerberus. "Eh, why not?" I ask myself


Killshot and free title for me :D

Afterwards, I got Juli to help me do the halloween event for a pitfork, for which we decided to start at Bastok. My stable-warp necklace is now exhausted (I think I can get more from this event?), so I need to take the stupidly long route of tele-dem > chocobo > Gustaberg N > Gustaberg S > Bastok. On the way, I come across this puppy;


Which can spawn anywhere in the zone, once per night on a full moon. So it's not entirely common to see. At least the drop is 100%.


So, I get to Bastok, get pitchfork, go to windy, get HQ. Done. As much as I like to act the jaded cynic, it's still fun to run around like a dumbass in costumes :3

Other stuff I did a while ago but got too lazy to add it:


Kvazz got a failnaught for his RDM, so I made him go RDM/RNG and shoot it at things for my own amusement.


Yes. Armed Gears. I still had a pop to use, and now I have homam I don't need Aurum for DRG so I let Juli have the boots if he got a party together for it. I nabbed the grips, which I've failed to sell either of. [insert QQing about how the boots drop now that I don't need them]

I had time before Limbus, so I went to do the ACP afterglows quest again in Fei'Yin. Who knows, I might just get an acc+7, STR/DEX+2 mantle!


...of course, I wasn't aware that I'd failed to use the last key I got.


One more for the bin, I guess?

Do you even know what you're getting yourself into?

I ran into someone who has just started the game (can't imagine why anyone would bother at this point in the game, especially with XIV on the horizon). I introduced him to the tutorial NPC, who should keep him busy and explain stuff like the Auction House etc so I don't have to.


The main reason I wanted to help, apart from having nothing better to do, was so I could actually use the mentor icon legitimately for once.

I had to look up the tutorial NPC on the wiki since I'd never used it, but they give you some nice stuff like free food, a reraise earring, exp ring, free exp and some gil for completing quests. I told him about the wiki, which is probably the single most useful thing anyone can tell you starting out, but he said he was on xbox and presumably had no PC access(thus no keyboard, and my own experiences of typing with the xbox controller are not positive ones). Realistically, I don't see him lasting long, especially starting as BLM. But as long as he's enjoying himself more power to him.

I did let him know BLM was rough to start out on, but his response was something along the lines of "but I liek to cast teh spells!" which is cute, but swinging teh axe is a more popular approach to leveling these days, but I'll leave it to someone else to crush his hopes and dreams. I told him to get a keyboard too, since I think the game would be plain unenjoyable without being able to interact with others properly.

I'll be surprised if he gets past 30 days.


Stuff I did that I didn't really mention because I was too excited about my new hat:


ACP augment spam! Only two items from the Fei'Yin quest pictured above (I got two other beak necklaces with useless junk on), other than those I've got a bunch of gil items, the worst being a potion+1 and the best being a gold ingot (18k). I'm hoping for a decent acc+6 mantle, or something like a free penitent's rope.


Standing around in whitegate! Here's some naked Galka antics.


MMM stuff! Soloing is difficult, so bring friends! More marbles for me, but miles away from getting a spade/hat.


Helping kill crabs-inside-worms. I had to stun stuff. RDM Aspir actually works better on this guy than it does on most Dyna-Xarc demons.

Also, new Wings of the Goddess missions in the coming update.


Who knew.

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.