Moar Kreutzet & Halloween 2008 begins!

We got bored holding it while Arc came on THF for Treasure Hunter, so I thought I'd practice a bit of tanking, which was made laughably easy with Slow/Paralyze II on, I could just make do with just :Ichi most of the time, and even then that was with no haste equipment, and only my AF hat for Fast Cast.
Juli got a Sirocco Kukri from it, and there were smiles all round.

After we went to investigate the possibility of NMs in Kuftal, apparantly Arc saw Amemet up on the way to us.


Wasn't there by the time we got there though, so we had a gander around for Pelican, the Astral Aspis NM.
It was fun playing around with the T/VT placeholders there, along with the wyvern that pops there, with out any -na spells. Fun times.

Also, I've just seen this in Taru corner of Whitegate:


The Halloween event begins! (can't wear my pumpkin hat at the same time) :(

The post with no name.

Todays title comes from the fact I posted without putting one, a feat I previously thought impossible. Now I've used my only chance to get away with such a heading so I'll just leave it blank if I run out of ideas in the future.

I was saving screenshots to do an entry on gear and merits, but ffxiah.com has an exciting new feature that lets you list all that crap there. So I just updated my info there instead.

It's pretty handy as I can just update it easily as/when things change, so beats doing it here.

I've helped camp Kruetzet recently, and I learnt alot from the experience, the most important thing is that it sucks. (Edit: it's much better without competition, but still a pain waiting for weather >:|)


With (what seemed like) nobody around, the manticores in Cape Terrigan timidly edged closer together...

Almost two hours, through two different periods of wind weather and then we still take a while to notice all the other campers had vanished...it turned out we didn't even see it pop and people were fighting already in the tunnel.



I tried Up in Arms for the first time, after a Dynamis run - unsurprisingly, no Kraken Clubs were obtained. It was pretty easy though with a PLD, RDM, THF(possibly any DD here) combo, although it did get difficult if we tried straight tanking (really high TP gain at the start due to number of attacks, and it hits harder towards the end). Kiting also makes it easier under 25% becuase it spams buffs instead of using TP on Maelstrom and the like.

Came out of it with 50kish in random junk and crate moneys, which is pretty nice compared to the 20k or so I got from the past two Under Observation runs.

Angon, and my new best friend.

I spoke with someone in a ZNM LS about killing Armed Gears for me in exchange for the drops (bar what I wanted) so hopefully we'll do that next weekend.

Now I still have no idea who the leader of the ls is, I should have asked instead of having this guy mediate for me. Hopefully he forwarded my proposal clearly, it would suck if they just kill it and freelot everything. Or try to make me join their ls.

I befrended the lecherous swine in order to keep tabs on him, and because it's hard for me to say no. :(

After tiring of having many parties like this:



Which end up like this:



I finally got one like this:


As that's not very clear, I mean a 2x BRD TP-burn on Greater Colibri, the kind of thing that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. I put three merits into unlocking Angon (and 25k into buying a stack of them) beforehand to make myself more invite-friendly.


On more than one occasion, the Angon animation glitched, making it appear that I'd just thrown my smart grenade, and on the first occasion my Thalassocrat. Despite how incredibly awesome this looked, I have no screenshot of it because at the time I was crapping myself thinking I'd just thrown 300k worth of polearm at an EXP mob.

A couple of hours and 5 merits later, we finish and I cap Slow II, thus completing my non-melee RDM merits (for now, I'm still not sure about 3 Phalanx II/2 Paralyze II). But before I go back and fiddle with Group 2 merits, I want to finish DRG and put whatever combat merits I have left into sword/dagger.

As for DRG merits, I hope to have Group 2 as follows:
5x Deep Breathing - That will give me double-potency breaths on a 5 min timer, which is a pretty significant reduction from the initial 15.

4x Angon - More merits in this simply increase the duration of the Defense down effect, which just gives me more for my money (an individual Angon is 248(?) gil). However, I'm not in any hurry to cap this just yet because I don't think I'll be fighting anything as DRG that will last much longer than 30 seconds anyway.

1x Empathy - Copying buffs to my wyvern is a neat idea, and has some pratical application in merit parties, but it's also useful to unlock just so I can use Spirit Link when he's at 100% HP in order to wake him up after a sleep AoE.

Strafe is meh, Group 1 are really tiny increases (3/6 seconds shaved off Jump/High Jump respectively) so I won't prioritze those, although the first one or two upgrades are cheaper than group 2, so maybe one or two levels before I finish Group 2.

Witch sash? On MAH server?

It's nice and all, but someone will have had to server transfer to get it over here. There's 2 up on the AH now, no sales in the history though. I wonder how much they're asking for it? :x

2 m.acc is kinda meh over a P. rope though, and espcially so considering the price it will probably end up as. Magic crit is moot until I see something to suggest that it does anything for enfeebles (so far the only testing I've seen suggests it gives +10 MAB on crits, and increases in magic accuracy or debuff potency are not easy to test) >:/

Hades is unlikely to ever get control of a beastman stronghold so I doubt anyone other than the filthy rich will be sporting these in the future.

Crab battle!

I won't lie. It wasn't very epic.

Followed by latent-breaking excitement:

Gogo Gimpulse Drive! (when I beat the WSNM). Savul-Kivul also dinged 65!


I was exposed to the sinister seedy underbelly of Sandy on my way to uncurse Heca feet.


...it's been a slow week so far :|

Determination.

I finally got around to finishing the last bunch of WoTG quests, and did some exploring after I spent an hour or so (including one death - trying to aggro bombs before I escaped) trying to figure out how to get through The Eldieme Necropolis [S]. Fortunately the guy who designed it, while still a sadist, made it possible to cross the area without the help of anyone else.

I thought I'd check out the little island in Battalia Downs while I was there:


So much for Jeuno [S]...


Finishing up the quest (Zeid is hot btw).


Afterwards, I got slept by the BLM orc in the room, so I had to sit and watch the other three orcs in the room link before they woke me up. Needless to say, it didn't make for an easy escape.

Now in order to continue with the latest quest additions I've gotta complete the all the missions first. Which means the Dragon BC in La Vaule.

We aren't best friends.

Of course I look up the quest, and check out the testimonials given by the ever-honest and relable populace of Vana'diel.


LET'S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK, SHALL WE??


INTERESTING


Easy, eh? I'll have no trouble doing this then!

*skips off through Jugner [S] and through La Vaule, after gearing up and getting supplies*

Things are going well, I'm still at near full MP, thanks to a Yagudo drink and Galarhigg is at 50%. Just when I appreciate my Dragon Killer trait kicking in three times in a row, he decides to flip out and double attack three times in a row. Healing Breath wasn't fast enough to keep up, and I go down. For shame.

I Home Point, and chalk it up to bad luck - after all, I was doing so well up to that point.

Attempt number #2!

Oh hey, you thought you turned away in time? I beg to differ. GAME OVAR.

Attempt number #3!

Even if I'd have brought holy waters, there's literally no way I could have survived this.

So in summary, the person who put that there is either lying or got incredibly lucky not to see any 'you die now' moves. Or I just plain suck, could go either way.

Pic of the day?



Another addition to my (somewhat lacking) healing breath gear!


Only improvements here would be AF legs +1, homam feet (which means starting limbus ._.) and a Wyrm armet, which may not be too difficult to obtain with the improved icelands drop rate (we got 2 last Xarcabard) but I'll be focusing on getting RDM first. Irritatingly enough, the ones I'm missing are the most significant boosts.

A triumphant moment!

I forgot take a picture when I hit 75, so this montage will have to suffice.

Yes, the SCH was meleeing.


DRG TP gear (gimp sub!):

Kinda meh, gold boots (god I really do go on about those damn things, I mention them every day I swear hahaha) would make it pretty decent and I'll upgrade the legs to something (Dusk? Pahluwan?) when I have money/time.

Wheeling Thrust:

I guess I could use some STR rings here, obviously Heca and Potent Belt would be improvements too. Pretty lame STR at the moment, but that is unbuffed and without food. (Also lame base STR, I might merit that after drg-specifics)

PentaRAWR:

Once again, Hecatomb pieces and Potent Belt - I'll probably keep acc rings on for this though.
(I'll keep trying UO shouts until I get a Peacock charm)

Also on the DRG to-do list:
Chanoix's Gorget Is a nice easy questable item that has a pretty zomg chunk of +Wyvern HP on it. Apparantly both RDM and DRG can solo it easily.

Impulse drive quest! Supposed to be a pretty lame WS (aren't all the quested ones?) compared to what I already have, but no reason not to have it!