Long time coming

Only a week short of 8 months waiting for the Apollyon drop. I got the second half of my DRG materials in the same run, but I can only upgrade one AF per week, so RDM body then DRG head and I'm done with the essential AF upgrades.


Bow augment of the week. Any day now...

I've been trying to find people to join to kill Farruca Fly. Never thought it would be so freaking impossible to find anyone doing T2 VNMs that would at least let me leech kills, but eh such is life.




Seems I missed the bus that all the competant people doing magian weapons took. So if I happen to find anyone doing the VNMs they are almost always complete morons.

1/6 so far, and far too many hours wasted to get that. Why is everything simple end up so difficult for me? :(


I broke my game as well, only recently noticed that Mithra don't close their eyes anymore when resting (everyone else I asked reported them closed). It could be because I changed my .dats to get rid of the goofy vanilla idle stance.

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.

Roooar I'm a lion

Pic unrelated


I took the boat to Nashmau for Einherjar because there's lots to take pictures of, and I wasn't in a hurry.


Drawdistance comparison!


I prefer the foggyness (sans drawdistance) here, it fits the area/weather more, but drawdistance usually makes zones look 100x better (as in you can actually see more than 5ft in front of you). God knows why SE bothered to put cliffs and crap in the background if you can never see them in the normal game.


I noticed I was being stalked after a short time, so I sat down for a mock tea party with my new friend Archduke von Krinkenhoff Apples III to discuss a plan to eliminate the unsightly onlooker.

Fortunately for this unsightly villain, I was distracted by strange noises, which turned out to be a flock of birds harrassing my ship and pooping on the deck






SO ANYWAY


Temenos - West tower. Actually enjoyable for a change because DD's don't sponge too much and I had a WHM (hasting nobody of course) to at least cure people when they got in the red, so I just went apeshit and started chainspell nuking every floor. Was fun stuff.


I found Nem in the Boyahda tree, presumably perving on the elvaan lady I found him next to when I showed up. A couple of stacks of darts later I'd capped throwing (hooray!) and left him to spam sleep bolts/arrows for skillups. Turns out the sleep on them is something silly like 99% proc rate, so you can just shoot away keeping them asleep full time. Next I need to regear and train a bunch of mobs for shield and parry skill.

Omega, augments and game mechanics abuse

What's this?!


Pretty insane Omega, we got 3/4 chips for the next set from gunpods, no RDM af though :<


Sadly I'm back to the bottom of the ladder for Nashira again, plus with lectures starting again next week I'll probably only be able to make half the runs (though I could do some apollyon soloing for coins/af+1 if I miss tuesdays).

Anyway, some recent augments!


Sky FoV. Only got enough tabs for one more attempt :(



Fei'yin ACP. Nothing to see here.




Some new NM in Upper Delkfutt's Juli wanted. Turns out you can just abuse the porter to lose hate completely even when it's stood on top of you. It can be dot-soloed this way but obviously will be longer and incredibly boring. No drop for us of course. I'm assuming I don't get banned for doing this, as it follows the same principle of zone/dot/nuke, which has been around since the game started. Though this particular strategy probably wouldn't work if the NM wasn't magic aggro only.


I've been doing some fishing as well!


I found insect paste for 30 gil each at the fishing guild so I went to get me some moat carps. It's better money than the random crap I'd fished up at ports but I still don't think the money is worth the time investment. I won't bother turning them in for the Lu Shang's quest because it's a 20 gil loss per fish, and it probably works out better to sell your fish and buy the rod at the AH (3.3mil minus about 200k in tax from fish, rod is 2.9~3mil) although if you already had a bit of money, it would be faster to catch some of your own and buy some carps off the AH.

I want to find a way to farm gil, the only reason I'm reluctant to spend anything is because I know I don't have a way to make my money back :(

I can't really go back to my old routine of harvesting/farming in Giddeus because that was VERY inventory-intensive and probably not very profitable anymore because people don't need low-level crafting ingredients. Also, clothcraft is useless mid-level because nobody needs stat-less mid level gear anymore, and nobody cares enough about leveling to augment their level 50 gear if they know it will be replaced in 5~10 levels.

Also, zomg skillups


Should be level 10 soon ;o

New shoes, BV2 and finishing MNK

I say new shoes, all I did was pick up my DRG af+1 from the NPC I left them with for two weeks. But it's a healthy addition to my Jump set, which I will get around to posting with the rest of my gear soon, since I'm fairly satisfied with what I've got now.




MNK from 32~35 from a mix of soloing/FoV/Garlaige party. Wasn't too bad, but I want it done so I can spend my time doing something productive instead of satisfying my OCD-esque compulsions (next: deleveling whm and nin to 37 so they match my other jobs).


My turn to CS-stun Bahamut. Not hard, but I'm always worried about screwing up and asploding the alliance.

Gear, limbus joy and banoonza

Updated my gearsets on FFXIAH, and added my Healing Breath trigger set that I made recently. Not everything reflects perfectly what I use, because I can still forget things or macros misbehave etc. Also I can't be bothered to put up EVERY set for my jobs because alot of them only vary by a few pieces (like some DRG TP or WS sets) or are sets I'm not yet finished with (RDM melee sets, or dark magic).

I'll get on to finishing them when I'm bored enough. Also no pictures today because I don't usually take plain screenshots of my gear.

Also, Temenos gave me an early christmas present last week in the form of DRG AF materials, so I opted to upgrade the feet. Next = head, then done. May upgrade the rest in future for the whitebox factor.

New year mog bananza (bonanza? banonza? who knows?) is go! I've got my 60k of marbles, now just to wait until the 29th of January :(

Virus

My throat hurts. I probably have something nasty coming along.

Also, my virus scanner picked up it's first ever virus! I managed to pick it up on my USB pen drive, which I'd recently used on a public PC in uni to shift some data between machines. A bit dumb of me, but next time I'll get a floppy disk (yes, they are that old). I shouldn't get too worried over the viruses that my AV picks up anyway.


Did some limbus. Ultima - everything good until last 20%, which was a near loss. 19% Dissipation was the only one to get off again, apparantly it's faster than the others? That really screws us over as well, it's so annoying and meant tanks had no shell (I think) for CB, so both died after the first.

Omooga next, hopefully homam legs x2 can drop so I don't need to pass another item I want before I get them :\ and Apollyon will give me a chance to finish my next RDM AF+1 (body), I've got a huge stockpile of coins building up.

Oh and Shantotto expansion is for sale, gonna be leg-gear for the reward. Mage one looks HIDEOUS. Hopefully I can get a decent WS piece out of these because my current leg options aren't too hot.

Look at this parse.

Look at it.



Apart from it commenting on the quality of merit parties I get (other members were THF and WAR), I think this is my first Drakesbane over 2k on merit mobs (food, minuetx2, Hasso - I used Angon on the mob before and even then did less). I didn't get much chance to try for e-peen damage as I'd used most of my food before the 2nd bard came, as the guy before was a good polearm SAM and we were parsing pretty evenly and I wanted to keep up. This is the parse from the first half of the party, before he left:



Overwhelm is way over powered :( but it was fun competeing! Oh, and the THF was 74 when we started (leveled after the SAM left).


I've got 7 merits and can either use them for meriting RDM combat skills (lol) or changing 5/5 Deep Breathing to 5/5 Angon, which is more likely. Although unnecessary. Hmm.


I forgot to mention an Ultima fight we did before I went away, it's old but was a thoroughly enjoyable experience nonetheless



It was a smooth kill to 20%, all dissipations stunned, no deaths (bar one...), etc etc. Then I learned something new: don't expect the last dissipation to get stunned even if all the others have. Considering how things had been going, this wouldn't have been a problem really, but we cycled our BRD out to SV buff the melee so we could zerg past the last 20%. Whoops! After several Citadel Busters, much scrambling, dying, re-raising, weakened nukes, and dying again we had it at 1%



messy :(

I was in a position to lot nashira body afterwards, but decided to save for homam legs instead. I'm kicking myself for it already.

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).

Hundred fists + drain samba = ?

Yuck. I think it's because drain samba is based on weapon delay, as longer delay weapons drain more, shorter delay drains less so not to give an advantage to single-handed weapons (god forbid should someone be using anything other than a GKT to melee with these days).

This was leveling MNK to 15, just after I'd done RNG. I'm using 15 as a stepping stone towards 20 so I can get some decent gear for my jobs for the 15~20 stretch and re-use it on multiple jobs instead of leveling each one individually to 37 gimping it all the way. It's also useful (leveling multiple jobs at the same time, that is) because I can keep good camps in mind and go back to re-use them before I forget. Once I hit Qufim levels I'll start flaging up again. I still have COR, PUP, BRD, DNC SMN and SCH at level 10 so alot more work yet. Once they're all 20, I'll start taking them individually to 37, starting with the more useable/fun ones and take it slowly from there.




I ran out of arrows on RNG and had to grind my way from 14~15 by meleeing.


MNK. Turns out these birds link. Fields of Valor regen + drain samba (DNC is a zomg sub at these levels for most jobs) + DC~EM mobs is a great combo. If there was only a room full of EM mobs for me to solo...ohwait. MMM may have applications here. Sadly it lacks FoV, and caskets/kupowers.

Augmented junk.


I kept the Racc. +8 one for skilling on RDM. Still no capes. Had a nasty run of mythril ingots recently.


I also discovered what happens when you try to collect the afterglows again before JP midnight has passed. They still haven't done something about the annoying kupowers message. It should only be shown when you log in, or if you type /kupo or something to cut down on that annoying spam. At the very least remove it from city areas and especially mog houses.

And finally...new shoes!


<3 <3 Now if Temenos would put out DRG I could get AF+1 legs which would be amazing because a) They would tide me over until homam legs for TP, and b) It's the last piece I need to complete the best attainable Healing Breath setup.

Shame RDM can't use the boots, so I can't sell my dusk shoes :(

I want to do a convert guide at some point, and continue with paralyze testing, but that's stupidly time consuming and I have other stuff to do in game, like use my assault tags. Not to mention the update is coming on the 21st so that'll have me busy for a while. I'm getting the kupo expansion soon as well, because the trailer makes it look a little more entertaining that ACP was. And the hats.