Sunday, 2 November 2008
Friday, 31 October 2008
Savul-Kivul
My beloved adventuring fellow. Let me tell you something about him.
2005 ed.
I first met him at level 41. The quests to be able to call him, and the subsequent NM fights which I remember having trouble with as the poor little guy kept dying trying to tank them.
I also remember the queues. Oh god, the queues. Looking back on it now, I'm quite impressed that people actually waited in line with nothing more than common courtesy forcing them to do so. I wonder if people would do the same nowadays.
Alot of early leveling (30~40) was done in Rolanberry due to its proximity to the (then) busiest town, Jeuno, and the abundance of farmable mobs (bees, crawlers, Goobbue).
I first gave him a Great Katana, entirely because I thought it looked cool and progressed through the higher level GKTs (at immense cost might I add) only now I've realised that it does nothing more than change the weapon's model.
I later swapped him over to Great Axe, because of the utility of some of the weaponskills (Weapon/Shield/Armour Break) and because Sturmwind, and later Raging Rush was pretty decent damage. Iron Tempest was really the only -bad- WS he could do. As I'm unable to find any relevant screenshots of him from around this period (likely 2006/7), here's an artist's impression of what he might have looked like:
Currently he's using Axe/Shield because I was using him to tank when I levelled a few jobs to 37 (DRG, BLU, SAM) earlier this year. Most of the WS's suck though, and even Rampage does crappy damage, so I'll change him back to a 2-handed weapon when I finally get him to the cap. He should have access to Tachi: Gekko or Kasha I think, which are broken weaponskills so I might have him back on GKT.
2008 ed.
I've only really logged on this week (midterms coming up and I need to revise more) to level him in Grauberg [S] which is a really nice camp exp-wise, he's gone from 65 to 67 in 4/5 calls. I found that subbing /sam and depending on him to heal was more cost-effective than a mage sub, and made for faster kills (although the downtime for MP might even that out). His current armour has been the same since level 40, while it looks pretty cool, I don't think it accurately reflects his high level, so that's another thing to look into after changing his weapon. Hopefully I'll have enough fellow points from calling him here to be able to make his appearance more impressive.
I got a couple of merits out of it, and managed to cap Polearm. Now onto Group 2, dump a couple of spare merits into jump recasts (not sure which ones yet) and I'll be done.
And finally; an Assault I did at some point, but can't quite remember:
32/51 to captain! (I'm not in the shot because I'd just used Super Jump before taking it)
Today's entry was brought to you by team Kaya
(I could have sworn they added more than just one fellow emote, but all I could get him to do was /bow)
2005 ed.
I first met him at level 41. The quests to be able to call him, and the subsequent NM fights which I remember having trouble with as the poor little guy kept dying trying to tank them.
I also remember the queues. Oh god, the queues. Looking back on it now, I'm quite impressed that people actually waited in line with nothing more than common courtesy forcing them to do so. I wonder if people would do the same nowadays.
Alot of early leveling (30~40) was done in Rolanberry due to its proximity to the (then) busiest town, Jeuno, and the abundance of farmable mobs (bees, crawlers, Goobbue).
I first gave him a Great Katana, entirely because I thought it looked cool and progressed through the higher level GKTs (at immense cost might I add) only now I've realised that it does nothing more than change the weapon's model.
I later swapped him over to Great Axe, because of the utility of some of the weaponskills (Weapon/Shield/Armour Break) and because Sturmwind, and later Raging Rush was pretty decent damage. Iron Tempest was really the only -bad- WS he could do. As I'm unable to find any relevant screenshots of him from around this period (likely 2006/7), here's an artist's impression of what he might have looked like:
Currently he's using Axe/Shield because I was using him to tank when I levelled a few jobs to 37 (DRG, BLU, SAM) earlier this year. Most of the WS's suck though, and even Rampage does crappy damage, so I'll change him back to a 2-handed weapon when I finally get him to the cap. He should have access to Tachi: Gekko or Kasha I think, which are broken weaponskills so I might have him back on GKT.
2008 ed.
I've only really logged on this week (midterms coming up and I need to revise more) to level him in Grauberg [S] which is a really nice camp exp-wise, he's gone from 65 to 67 in 4/5 calls. I found that subbing /sam and depending on him to heal was more cost-effective than a mage sub, and made for faster kills (although the downtime for MP might even that out). His current armour has been the same since level 40, while it looks pretty cool, I don't think it accurately reflects his high level, so that's another thing to look into after changing his weapon. Hopefully I'll have enough fellow points from calling him here to be able to make his appearance more impressive.
I got a couple of merits out of it, and managed to cap Polearm. Now onto Group 2, dump a couple of spare merits into jump recasts (not sure which ones yet) and I'll be done.
And finally; an Assault I did at some point, but can't quite remember:
32/51 to captain! (I'm not in the shot because I'd just used Super Jump before taking it)
Today's entry was brought to you by team Kaya
(I could have sworn they added more than just one fellow emote, but all I could get him to do was /bow)
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
<3
I was actually 2nd for it, but the person ahead of me was afk (came back just in time to see it drop :x).
Thanks for all the tells guys, this really made my day/night/whatever. :)
A weekend in pictures: Assaults and Adventuring fellows.
Despite my activities (namely NPC leveling) being tragically cut short, I spent alot of time doing stuff on DRG. First up being Mamool Ja assault spam:
My highest wheeling and penta thrust so far, only food and Angon for these so there's alot more potential there with Hasso, Bard/Corsair buffs.
Three runs of PFC, and we disband with me at 15000/20000 points toward my next objective.
After that, I'll go for Captain (31/51 ...sigh) and look into Nyzul (primarily to make progress on my disk, but I seem to have missed the boat as far as statics are concerned).
Well, shortly after that assault party disbanded, I see another shout for a FL assault in the same area.
Wasn't the most complex one I've done to be honest. The objective was pretty much 'kill this hydra lol' with no adds, no wierd gimmicks to find it or make it spawn, just go in and kill (well aside from the spike flail-esque move it can do if you give it TP at the wrong moment, but we were prepared for that!). Penta still outdamaged Wheeling, I'm yet to encounter a situation where Wheeling is preferable. 1500 points + first time bonus left me only 2500 from 20k points. I'll just finish off by getting the clears in that area (unless I get no intrest from shouts, then I'll just spam PFC some more).
Adventuring Fellow Action!
Maat fight from Maat's perspective?
I crushed the poor guy. I meditated to 300% TP before entering, which was wiped upon entry (thanks wiki!) and I was dumb enough not to wait for the recast to be ready, so had to make do without it. He was some kinda crazy BST/NIN combo with a Great Sword, and a devastatingly powerful pet (read: lolcrabs). I got lucky with interrupting Jubaku and Utsusemi with Jumps and Penta Thrust, but after 1 WS and a couple of Spirit Surged jumps he gave up. Dissappointing performance, Savul! (I expected better from him...) :(
I dumped a bunch of Fellow Points into his duration - since there's not much else to spend it on, other than silly hats (that said, I might get a chef's hat or opo-opo crown for him).
I helped someone with their WHM AF3 fight too. Well...tried to. I was reluctant at first after seeing what else they had brought with them (60-something THF and horrendously gimp NIN, who ended up spectating for some reason) and having heard of unpleasant encounters with this NM.
Needless to say, it didn't end well. Dimensional Death rapes hard, and it spams -aga nukes like there's no tomorrow (which for us, there wasn't). I could have offered to come back as RDM or something, but even then I didn't see myself winning without resorting to kite/DoT crap.
I spent some time leveling with Savul, but not as long as I would have liked due to a few unfortunate deaths and disconnections. He's just short of 66 now, with Grauberg Hippogryphs being level 71-75 he should be getting some nice exp. I've gotten the art of fighting them down pretty well now, I'm usually fine if I save TP for after they use Choke Breath (Silence and Paralyze) so I can WS to trigger Remove Paralyze from the blue rat, use echo drops (if it's not nearly dead) and carry on all smiles. Until it uses the terror move on me and another one links while I'm immobile. It would be nice to set NPC AI to "Don't cure me, but remove status ailments and buff etc." which would fit DRG soloing fantastically, but kind of too well to be fair on other jobs. Pffft. Or set him to only cure when I'm in red HP! That wouldn't be too bad at all...
Hippogryphs suck, but they die fast. I've been trying to think of safer, squishier alternatives to level him on, but nothing else comes to mind. But as these are lv. 71 minium, then they're ideal for leveling him to the 70 cap (they will always be Tough~).
My highest wheeling and penta thrust so far, only food and Angon for these so there's alot more potential there with Hasso, Bard/Corsair buffs.
Three runs of PFC, and we disband with me at 15000/20000 points toward my next objective.
After that, I'll go for Captain (31/51 ...sigh) and look into Nyzul (primarily to make progress on my disk, but I seem to have missed the boat as far as statics are concerned).
Well, shortly after that assault party disbanded, I see another shout for a FL assault in the same area.
Wasn't the most complex one I've done to be honest. The objective was pretty much 'kill this hydra lol' with no adds, no wierd gimmicks to find it or make it spawn, just go in and kill (well aside from the spike flail-esque move it can do if you give it TP at the wrong moment, but we were prepared for that!). Penta still outdamaged Wheeling, I'm yet to encounter a situation where Wheeling is preferable. 1500 points + first time bonus left me only 2500 from 20k points. I'll just finish off by getting the clears in that area (unless I get no intrest from shouts, then I'll just spam PFC some more).
Adventuring Fellow Action!
Maat fight from Maat's perspective?
I crushed the poor guy. I meditated to 300% TP before entering, which was wiped upon entry (thanks wiki!) and I was dumb enough not to wait for the recast to be ready, so had to make do without it. He was some kinda crazy BST/NIN combo with a Great Sword, and a devastatingly powerful pet (read: lolcrabs). I got lucky with interrupting Jubaku and Utsusemi with Jumps and Penta Thrust, but after 1 WS and a couple of Spirit Surged jumps he gave up. Dissappointing performance, Savul! (I expected better from him...) :(
I dumped a bunch of Fellow Points into his duration - since there's not much else to spend it on, other than silly hats (that said, I might get a chef's hat or opo-opo crown for him).
I helped someone with their WHM AF3 fight too. Well...tried to. I was reluctant at first after seeing what else they had brought with them (60-something THF and horrendously gimp NIN, who ended up spectating for some reason) and having heard of unpleasant encounters with this NM.
Needless to say, it didn't end well. Dimensional Death rapes hard, and it spams -aga nukes like there's no tomorrow (which for us, there wasn't). I could have offered to come back as RDM or something, but even then I didn't see myself winning without resorting to kite/DoT crap.
I spent some time leveling with Savul, but not as long as I would have liked due to a few unfortunate deaths and disconnections. He's just short of 66 now, with Grauberg Hippogryphs being level 71-75 he should be getting some nice exp. I've gotten the art of fighting them down pretty well now, I'm usually fine if I save TP for after they use Choke Breath (Silence and Paralyze) so I can WS to trigger Remove Paralyze from the blue rat, use echo drops (if it's not nearly dead) and carry on all smiles. Until it uses the terror move on me and another one links while I'm immobile. It would be nice to set NPC AI to "Don't cure me, but remove status ailments and buff etc." which would fit DRG soloing fantastically, but kind of too well to be fair on other jobs. Pffft. Or set him to only cure when I'm in red HP! That wouldn't be too bad at all...
Hippogryphs suck, but they die fast. I've been trying to think of safer, squishier alternatives to level him on, but nothing else comes to mind. But as these are lv. 71 minium, then they're ideal for leveling him to the 70 cap (they will always be Tough~).
Monday, 27 October 2008
Technical failure or epic failure?
I fried the power unit on my PC.
It froze, so I thought I'd hit the power switch at the back. Only it wasn't the power switch, but the voltage switch.
Fortunately, I found a computer shop that does repairs (which is lucky, because this godforsaken 'city' is so small that it doesn't even have a cinema) so hopefully that will be fixed today. According to computer-fixing guy, there's a chance my motherboard was damaged, which sounds rather expensive.
On the plus side, my laptop received some love for the first time in months, and I managed to update FFXI on it. But I remember the damn thing having trouble running the game smoothly even with SNES graphics and in an empty zone. Hopefully I won't have to resort to using it.
I also did some digging on it and found a bunch of old screenshots which were interesting to go through. It turns out I was still on my laptop even after WoTG release, and up to January 2008 :O
I can't remember using it that recently now, I've gotten so used to playing on PC that it's hard to even imagine coping with that piece of junk.
As this entry is disturbingly devoid of pictures, here's one of the Ark Angels (GK is probably my favorite):
Also Serpent Generals! (I wish I could find where to watch this cutscene again)
Which leads me into the thought for the day - which of them would win in a fight? It's a hard call to make, the generals have retardedly high stats so they can endure an army of besieged mobs beating on them for an hour straight, but they don't have a full alliance of BLMs to throw at the AA's which is of course the only way to reliably beat them.
It froze, so I thought I'd hit the power switch at the back. Only it wasn't the power switch, but the voltage switch.
Fortunately, I found a computer shop that does repairs (which is lucky, because this godforsaken 'city' is so small that it doesn't even have a cinema) so hopefully that will be fixed today. According to computer-fixing guy, there's a chance my motherboard was damaged, which sounds rather expensive.
On the plus side, my laptop received some love for the first time in months, and I managed to update FFXI on it. But I remember the damn thing having trouble running the game smoothly even with SNES graphics and in an empty zone. Hopefully I won't have to resort to using it.
I also did some digging on it and found a bunch of old screenshots which were interesting to go through. It turns out I was still on my laptop even after WoTG release, and up to January 2008 :O
I can't remember using it that recently now, I've gotten so used to playing on PC that it's hard to even imagine coping with that piece of junk.
As this entry is disturbingly devoid of pictures, here's one of the Ark Angels (GK is probably my favorite):
Also Serpent Generals! (I wish I could find where to watch this cutscene again)
Which leads me into the thought for the day - which of them would win in a fight? It's a hard call to make, the generals have retardedly high stats so they can endure an army of besieged mobs beating on them for an hour straight, but they don't have a full alliance of BLMs to throw at the AA's which is of course the only way to reliably beat them.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
I'm weak.
As the goblin cat picture clearly incdicates, I gave in and got dusk feet until I get a decent shot at Aurum. I updated FFXIAH info to reflect gear changes, and deleted some sets (such as hMP) because they're hardly exceptional and just clogging up space.
So now I need to try out my new gear! Here's an event I didn't go to as DRG:
We managed to link the Quadav NMs we were pulling with a crapton of other mobs, plus a dragon came along to munch people mid fight, and Apocalyptic Beast made an appearance, causing everyone to run around in blind panic. I had an amusing death to a ninja turtle that got me with ore toss while I was recasting stoneskin.
Good stuff. We recovered, still managed to clear (barely), and got a decent amount of drops. The important thing here being these drops are not D. Tabard/Chapeau.
The moral of todays episode being: in spite of increased drop rates, Dynamis still sucks because icelands AF doesn't drop everywhere.
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
I got some new gear, so I thought I'd write about it.
We did a couple of Kirins for the first time in a while, because we finally had the numbers for it. The first one was a near-disaster, with Astral Flow killing pretty much everyone (except myself and one NIN, who got one shotted by Stonega IV a little later on) so we had to stall him with PLDs (Arc and Soli) for a while until the NINs had recovered.
Tarutaru in a can. The perfect distraction - compact, reliable, and ridiculously cute.
So that was pretty ugly, and took over an hour to kill, but we managed it... at least we got a double abjuration (D. body and W. legs) out of it.
Pillars present no obsticle for the master of the Shijin!
The second was much smoother and didn't take nearly as long, but drops were pretty poor (I think an ingot and an abjuration).
Typically, there's no cursed harnesses on the AH and probably won't be any others for a few months now I have the paper. Teaches me for watching the AH for two weeks to try and get it cheap (again...will I ever learn?).
I'll have a look in Rolanberry.
Tarutaru in a can. The perfect distraction - compact, reliable, and ridiculously cute.
So that was pretty ugly, and took over an hour to kill, but we managed it... at least we got a double abjuration (D. body and W. legs) out of it.
Pillars present no obsticle for the master of the Shijin!
The second was much smoother and didn't take nearly as long, but drops were pretty poor (I think an ingot and an abjuration).
Typically, there's no cursed harnesses on the AH and probably won't be any others for a few months now I have the paper. Teaches me for watching the AH for two weeks to try and get it cheap (again...will I ever learn?).
I'll have a look in Rolanberry.
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