Galka Style

The week has been fun and exciting. All the changes and quests brought with the update have been great. The Alexander fight was the best so far. We learned that completing all the Assaults results in the rank of Captain and free staging point teleports. We have to finish the Assaults as soon as possible. This will save me a lot of imperial standing points. I can't wait! The Assaults sound real fun too.

Tuesday brought us fun in Lumoria. We started with a low showing but it picked up relatively quickly. I didn't have any items to spawn any tier two jailers so we stuck to the other ones. Temperance, Forititude, and Faith all died. We got torques from the first two. I was hoping Faith would drop one as well, but I guess we can't expect three in three. Next week should be full of Hopes, Justices, and Prudences if people show up on time, well one Prudence.

I'm pretty sure Temperance died to my poison here.

Salvage had a low turn out, but we won Zhayolm Remnants twice along with killing a madame poroggo once. Two Skadi hands in two Zhayolms. Whats up with that? Half of our 25 drops seem to be Skadi in all the areas. Why must Salvage screw us over with Skadi? No one wants it! Go away!

B - C - G!

Bust out the Beetle.

Labels: Assault, FFXI, Lumoria, Salvage

Apparently 20-25 people alliances have had successful results in Einherjar with them clearing a wing in twenty minutes. This sounds like exactly what Einherjar needed to make it more popular. I really want to do Einherjar, but my only option is with a group of people whom I do not like at a time that will screw up my sleep schedule even more. I'll give them a try tonight if I remember to. If the delay isn't too bad maybe I can make it regularly. All I want is an aquarian body. I deserve one, don't I?

It is times like these that I wish I kept stronger relationships with people I know. If I could get enough regulars for my own Einherjar I would in a heartbeat. Ideally I would be able to find someone to lead with me or they lead and I assist. Unfortunetly, I don't know enough people who are free during my times, competant and would make the extra effort I expect from everyone. I would like to say I could get six, but I doubt it.

I'll try tonight and hope for the best. Maybe reports of eighteen people doing Einherjar will come in and I'll be able to rally enough to come with me. We'll see...

Update: Suiram is planning to do Einherjar with his linkshell and friends, but his times don't work for me. Maybe I can convince him to work out time for Wednesday and Sunday instead.

Labels: Einherjar

I was reading some things. Monk might not be the best damage anymore. This make me sad. We'll see as people begin to post damage parses on exp mobs and the like.

Labels: FFXI

Spoilers!!!

The final(?) Treasure of Aht Urhgan update happened last night! It was a great update. While nothing useful came out for any of my jobs directly from equipment the two handed changes sound like they were great. New missions and quests to look forward too.

I logged on as quickly as I could and started the rank quest right away. You have to wait an hour to start the actual quests. So, I started the missions. Two bcs and a bunch of cutscenes. Lots of fun in both bcs. I ended up doing the first bc twice. The first time we did it with four with no problem, but Nivlakian had to leave for sleep. We are going to have to repeat the missions for him. Someone asked me for help after they heard that we did it with four, so I went and helped them.

After winning that fight I convinced them to do the final bc with me. We failed. Three of them went to bed and I got three others and we attempted the fight again! We won! Hurray Ragnarok has been prevented.

Here is the basic strategy we used for the first bc. After buffing our kiter aggro'd Amnaf and used the pillars in the map to kite around the gears that spawn. The red mage sleeps Amnaf and melee assist Naja. The gears have low hp, so they die very fast. After the gears are cleared engage Amnaf until she teleports. Rest up, do the same thing again, but with triple gears. Rest up and follow Naja to Amnaf's final form. Soulflayer time. Engage and kill her. She is very easy. Watch for -ga. She has cursed spikes always, so don't bother removing curse. Be ready to erase bio from tribulation.

Nivlakian and I standing over our conquest.

A few cutscenes later and you get to fight Raubahn and Alexander. Pull Raubahn so Razhfad doesn't aggro. He doesn't link. Raubahn will reraise twice and you will be fighting him back to back. His sword weaponskills and eyes on me spell go through shadows. Eyes on me can be and should be stunned whenever possible. It hurts quite a bit. The first two times you fight him he is pretty easy. A taru war died to eyes on me and a weaponskill real fast when we won. When you fight him the third time he is immune to physical and his evasion seems to jump up or focus just wore off. If you have a tank get hate and take it down with a black mage. I used formless strikes on him in this form too. This is the only time I have found the ability useful.

Azure lore eyes on me hit me for more than 1000.

After that rest up and engage Razfahd. Around 50% hp there will be a cutscene and you get to a chance to rest up before engage Alexander! Alexander loves to spam banishga III, diaga III, and other abilities that wipe shadows and do a lot of damage. The abilities seemed to be too fast and numerous to stun, but banishga can be stunned. It also has a tp move that heals around 1000hp. Light carol doesn't seem to be worth it. Increase your damage output as much as possible with march and minuet. Other abilities to note, divine judgement 1200+ damage aoe, void of repentance terror on person with hate, radiant something 300 to 500 damage. Everything except normal melee attacks wipe shadows or goes through them excluding holy II and banish V. I was getting melee hit for 200-300 as monk.

Alexander terrorized me!

The basic strategy we used on Alexander included mnk, blu, war, blm, whm, brd. We had melee spread out around it so we don't all get hit by aoe at the same time. Melee traded hate as much as possible and we just wore it down. Magic users brought hi-ethers and yagudo drinks. We couldn't have won without mp items. I filled my inventory with hi-potions. I didn't have much space, but they definately helped for a free quick 500hp after a divine judgement. Blm stunned whenever it was up, it looked like we needed it, or banishga III was being casted. Placement is very important. If melee are not all being hit at the same time by aoe support should only have a challenging time keeping up with healing. If you wipe you can recover. Have everyone die as quickly as possible away from Alexander so it doesn't use its healing tp move. It does not regen hp while not engaged and you can tractor in the bc because you are fighting in Nyzul. Make sure someone with tractor dies away from Alexander so they can tractor anyone who gets drawn in and dies before running away. Five minutes later go back at it.

Ragnarok Preventer.

Divine judgement is awesome looking. I didn't get a good screenshot of it. When Alexander uses it it spams omega in the chat log along with some other text as lasers shoot out around it. Very nice looking. These last two missions were great. They really help make up for the relative ease of all the other ones. I didn't have time to get all my new items for winning, but I look forward to getting them soon.

Labels: FFXI

I forgot to do a weekend report last week, so I'll fit two into this one.

Last weekend was pretty slow. Limbus and Salvage happened with no out of the ordinary surprises other than what I already posted about. Wopadobop acted like Wopadobop for Kaboom. I wrote about that too. On Friday we had five Byakkos and they were great! We got four haidates from Byakko. I'm pretty sure we were long overdue for such a haul. Should have a few Kirins coming up too.

One black mage decided he deserved haidate after the fourth Byakko for his not 75 monk and threw a fit when he was refused because someone else had priority. He warped or logged off before the fifth. After the fifth dropped haidate I was told he was back in sky and asked if he could lot the haidate. Refused again. I haven't seen him on the linkshell since. I am partially surprised he left based upon his relationships with certain people in the shell despite past actions. But he joined a greed-centric linkshell, so I guess he'll fit right in. (Yes, I'm biased against the linkshell he joined.)

To anyone who might be reading this. If you have a problem with our item distribution rules then you bring it up well before the item drops if you want to be taken seriously. Have a possible solution for the problem. Do not claim you should get an item thirty seconds before a fight or right after the item drops. Doing that puts a sour taste in my mouth and I will be against you before you even get started.

This more recent weekend was fun too. We did Ouryu on Friday. The first run I disconnected five seconds after entering! It took me another ten minutes or so to get back on. By then we were too far in for me take proper control like I wanted and I had to catch up to figure out what was happening. In the end we dealt very poorly with the adds and they indirectly caused a large number of deaths. We won with only two minutes to spare! The next Ouryu went very smoothly. Only a couple of deaths, adds were well managed and we beat Ouryu in just over thirty minutes.

The first evoker was mine with pretty good drops. I got a damascus ingot and both weapons in addition to the normal stuff. I crafted with the ingot the next day. It broke...

Kaboom did Bahamut on Saturday. Late as normal... We used my orb first. The first one was shaky because most of our tank party was new. After the white mages knew what was what they did a much better job. On my orb Bahamut's staff dropped! The staff went to Kitfox in exchange for me getting the loot from the monarch's orb she has. That means her orb is mine and I do the 60/40 with Kaboom. Hopefully, maybe?

Nyzul was pathetic and I'm trying to forget about it. Nothing interesting out of Salvage and Limbus.

Labels: FFXI, Kaboom, Tu'lia

Something away from FFXI for a change.

Before I went to Cuba in July I bought a Nintendo DS Lite for the plane. Originally I only bought to games. It turned out that the DS is a much cooler system than I thought with a lot of good games. The touch screen, while not imperative to most games, is a real neat feature. Dual screens is nice, but most games do not take advantage of both screens and keep to displaying some sort of map in the top while everything else goes on in the bottom. This is the biggest crime of RPGs on the DS. The second screen could be used for so much, but the developers cop out and don't bother to take advantage of it.

I've enjoyed the games I have, but I recently wanted to get a couple more. This is when a guy at work introduced me to the R4 DS card. He also recently bought a DS and he hates to buy games when he can find a way to find them for free. The R4 card has a slot for a a micro SD card, but is otherwise designed like a normal DS card. With a few files and a folder for roms on the micro SD the card is ready to go to play games.

This, of course, should only be used for backups of games already owned...

In FFXI news, update today!

More update details were posted today on the PlayOnline site. The details look great for some of the less desierable jobs. My focus is on corsair since I already have the job at 47 and am at the threshold for some of the great abilities and armour the job gets.

Corsair

After the version update, corsairs across Vana'diel will be the happy recipients of several job enhancements.
For starters, the effect of Phantom Roll will be augmented so that the effects can be felt even when neither a large nor Lucky Roll is made. To make a comparison, the efficacy of a corsair's roll will generally exceed that of a bard's song. Should a corsair roll an 11, the efficacy will, for the most part, exceed that of two bard's songs.

The length of immobility a corsair suffers during their rolls has also been shortened. In addition, the merit point-accessible ability "Fold" will function to reduce the likelihood of busting, as well as modifying the effect of rolls.

We will also be adding new gear that will further increase the range of Phantom Roll. When using the roll and this gear in tandem, even players engaged in combat at some distance from the corsair will fall within the area of effect. And as if that weren't enough, players can even expect new ammunition with rather enticing damage ratings.

I'm seriously considering leveling this job after dark knight. Our linkshell could definately use some corsairs and I know I would be good at the job. The people currenlty leveling corsair are much slower than I am to exp. Odds are I could get to 75 before them even though I have seven levels to finish on dark knight and am about ten levels behind them on corsair. I wonder how corsair is at soloing. I'll level my ranger sub to compliment corsair for solo exp. I should be able to get sixty or so with no problems. Ammo might be expensive.

Labels: FFXI

Limbus was exciting last night. We split as normal and I had a group do Temenos Central 1 and my group did Apollyon NW. Unfortunately, I thought someone else had the Temenos chip and I ended up bringing the person with the emerald chip to Apollyon with me. The Temenos group did north instead since they only had nine anyway. I don't know how the Temenos group did because I went to bed after I finished. I'll assume they won.

My group did Apollyon SW. I started off nice and smooth except we were forced to kill most of the fomor to make the chests spawn. On the second floor the giant tree was waiting for us a the first tree spot. In retrospect, this turned out to be good for us. I think we would have lost if we hadn't killed it first. When we engaged the only tp move it used was pinecomb bomb. I couldn't keep up with healing and eventually pulled hate. We all died. A few minutes later we recovered and killed it. No pinecomb bomb this time!

Ten minutes left as we teleported to the mimic floor. Ten minutes to find the time chest. While I would have preferred to get the time and item chest on this floor I didn't want to risk it. The first mimic to die opened the teleport for us, so we rushed up, engaged the fire elementals. Killed them and won!

We had less than two minutes left. I'm impressed we managed to squeeze out a win after the giant tree rocked us.

After next Saturday we'll have two Ultima sets, one and a half Omega sets. If Damsonrhee and Saraphina get their friend to give us another Omega set that will be extremely helpful.

Labels: Limbus

I have been doing the ENM Like the Wind every five days lately in an attempt to earn cloud evokers and items to sell for a little bit of money. The ENM is real fun and pretty easy for me to dualbox. I have only done it four times or so now, but I find it extremely easy now that I know what to do. A few cures, regens, and hastes and I am fine for the majority of the fight.

Like all Boneyard Gully ENMs the worse part is running up Parradamo Tor. It is the most difficult part of the ENM. It takes me just shy of thirty minutes to run from the Mea crag to the top of the mountain with Mazzic and Coitha. I have Coitha follow Mazzic for the majority of the climb, but a few times she has fallen off the ledge when I move to fast. I have to be careful for that if I don't want to run up the entire mountain twice.

After climbing the mountain it takes another fifteen minutes to run to Boneyard Gully with the keyitem in hand and finally less than ten minutes to pummel the quick footed eft to the ground. Therer are only three items that are worthwhile from the ENM, but getting a maneater or cloud evoker is worth the hour spent when I might be standing around bored. A cloud evoker alone can net me a couple million from a successful Ouryu and Bahamut 2.

One maneater in the bank.

So far, I have earned one cloud evoker and one maneater in seperate runs. I haven't decided if I will sell the maneater or save it for when my dark knight hits 73. Six more levels, but it might be worth saving.

Labels: FFXI

Despite saying I was going to take a hiatus from Kaboom the break ended up only lasting one week. I was back for a Bahamut 2 run. Where I would coincidentally also get to use a monarch orb. Rather, that was the plan. I've only seen one side of the following story, but I find it quite comical!

Quite a few black mages were in Tavnazia on time. The majority of the signups, in fact. A few of the people missing were regulars who were normally on time. I figured they were just running late and it would be no big deal. Turns out it was a big deal. Two black mages had been invited two hours before Kaboom was to start to fill in a couple of empty spots in the roster. Both black mages had come to Bahamut 2 with us in the past and knew what they were doing.

Wopadobop does not get along with these two individuals and was angry they were invited rather than people from his own linkshell. Apparently accusations of favourtism were thrown around and who knows what else was said until Wopadobop decided to ban his linkshell from Kaboom participation for at least this Saturday and maybe more. I have no doubt his ban was an attempt to show us that we needed him more than he needed us. I guess his plan didn't work. This resulted in at least three people needing to be replaced which added another good sixty minutes or more to what appeared to be a run starting somewhat on time.

The best part of all this is that Wopadobop was kicked from Kaboom. I disliked him from day one, but have always been polite. I am glad he is gone. I have no doubt that he found himself and his 'close' ties to his friends as the only thing that held Kaboom together these past few months. Maybe it will deflate his ego a bit.

The two last minute black mages probably dislike Wopadobop as much as he dislikes them, but were mature enough to put their feelings aside for a few hours to make some gil. I hope Wopadobop continues to be childish like this and I hear about it. I always need a good laugh.

Oh, I didn't get use my orb, but only doing one orb has happened before in the past.

Labels: Kaboom

Last week's series of bad Salvages have redeemed themselves last night. We had a great turnout of twelve people, including three new people. I like to have twelve people when going for the Bhaflau and Silver Sea bosses. It gives enough support and damage that we can do the bosses without worrying about one mistake causing us to lose and I don't lose hairs trying to figure out how to distribute cells. This isn't the case with Zhayolm or Arrapago, but I'll cross that bridge when we get to it if participation continues like this.

We did Bhaflau twice and won both times with great results! Our first round we cleared nine of ten gears on the second last floor. Homing missile ended up doing massive damage and hate reset to the tank, but only minor damage to everyone else in range. This made it real easy. There was only one death.

The second time we successfully killed all ten gears with lots of time left over. I decided to spend fifteen to twenty minutes on the rampart in hopes for Enlil's Brayettes. We were lucky with three preytons spawning, but none of them dropped anything. I was surprised by how easy the tragopans were. Much softer than the colibri, I think. We killed the rampart around forty percent and moved on to the chariot.

Line them up!

Like all the reports said the chariot was extremely easy with all the single gears dead. There were two deaths when hate got a little out of control near the end, but the run was well worth it.

After tonight we completed another two Salvage items. Celtya got his Ares Curiass and Backbone his Usukane Hizayoroi. Four items down with dozens more to go!

Labels: Salvage

I haven't been doing Dynamis for awhile because I am tired of it. I have battled through countless hours of countless city and northland runs. I've earned thousands of points and spent a great deal of them on great items. And I am worn out of running around for three or four hours in Dynamis. As such I've only been going to CoP Dynamis which generally last one to two hours.

My favourite of these is Dynamis-Tavnazia. Small numbers, lots to do, and most of it is very difficult to do. The chance for of good and bad items dropping makes it all worthwhile for rare equipment to show off that the average player will never own. These are great reasons for doing Tavnazia. The problem is only a few people from HydraCorps feel the same way.

Last night HydraCorps scheduled a Dynamis-Tavnazia/Xarcabard split. Eleven people showed up wanting to do Tavnazia. Tavnazia was cancelled and hopefully rescheduled to Sunday. There are a couple reasons people do not want to do it as far as I can tell. The loot isn't great. Items are few and far between. Currency is almost nonexistant and getting an undesired piece of AF2 makes for a great run. Xarcabard is more likely to drop an item than Tavnazia. There is no point to winning. Defeating a Diabolos only nets a cutscene and a couple titles. They could at least give us some currency for winning. The biggest turn off for people is they do not like Suiram. He can be a jerk and people are overly senstive (see previous posts).

I wish I could find eighteen good people who enjoyed Tavnazia as much as Suiram and I do. I would love to do it regularly to get more Hydra armour. Although eighteen regulars would mean more competition for Hydra armour than I currently have.

Labels: Dynamis

I have found my annoyance with stupid mistakes coming through to FFXI more and more lately. Whether it is something simple like someone being too slow to cast certain spells or a group of people screwing up and causing a wipe. To me the annoyance is quite visible when I use certain phrases or terms. My favourite is the ellipse. To me it conveys an annoyed or angry stare. There is so much to say that is inappropriate that I am speechless or it is better left unsaid.

I also always try to appear to give people the option to do whatever I tell them to do. I make requests, say please, use more text to appear friendlier, etc to try and make whatever we are doing more enjoyable for them. I don't know if this works, but I like to think it does! When people start to screw up I feel like I have to start to micro manage everything. If I could and keep up with what I am suppose to do I probably would. I drop the niceties and start issuing orders. Whether these orders are fulfilled as I expect them to be is generally a surprise.

I sometimes wonder if people know that I am annoyed or angry with them. I do my best to treat them how I want to be treated. I do not want to appear to hurt their feelings or insult them. No doubt they will overreact and only give me more headaches. Do they realize I am making an effort not trying to be a jerk and only trying to be as successful as possible?

Labels: FFXI

I wasn't really paying attention to any of this. During sky farming I just hit F8 and cast on whatever is purple or red and hope I don't die. I think I was playing FFIII.

We are killing golems in Ru'Avitau for diorite as an alliance as that is the last item we need for the night. The melee have engaged one golem and a couple black mages have started on their own by alternating damage with sleep spells. The melee's golem dies and they engage the black mage's. The black mage with hate ends up kiting for a bit and almost dies because the melee keep waking the golem.

After the golem dies and no one is dead the black mage says in party to never wake a mob the black mages have been sleeping and casting on. I don't remember exactly what he said but he was clearly angry or annoyed. 'Never' is a bit extreme in my opinion because sometimes you want them to, but the tank needs to make sure they have hate first. I say the same thing semi-regularly as well and it goes ignored. I don't really care because normally I don't die because of it.

The paladin in the alliance seemed to take offence to being told what to do. The paladin replied with 'If you want to nuke make your own fucking party'. I'm paraphrasing this quote, but it is close enough. All that is important is that he overreacted. The original quote seemed to be an attack directed at the black mage. There was no reason for it. Of course, there was no apology. I doubt he saw anything wrong with what he said. I proceeded to throw in a bad joke to lighten the mood after I scrolled up to see what the problem was.

Awhile later I was told the black mage left the linkshell because of what the paladin had said. I noticed earlier that he wasn't in my party. I assumed he had disconnected again. Part of me was surprised while another part was not. I didn't think the black mage took things so personally despite knowing almost everyone in FFXI overreacts to almost everything. This isn't the first person who has left due to such stupidity and I doubt it will be the last.

This is just a game. Some people need to learn to act their age. They would not treat colleagues like this at work. The anonymity provided by the Internet does not give the right to treat anyone like this. You do not have to like everyone you work with. Everyone needs to sit back and let minor insults slide off them. It isn't worth getting worked up about. While it may still be a game there is a person on the other side of the world somewhere who doesn't like being insulted anymore than you do. Be considerate of other people's feelings. There is always a better way to relate how you are feeling without resorting to insults. Treat others how you want to be treated.

I know if I overreacted to every stupid mistake people made in Limbus or Salvage that they didn't apologize for I wouldn't have anyone to do either with.

Labels: FFXI, Tu'lia

Not much happened this weekend, so just a short report. Two of four Salvages were depressing which I already posted on. KS99 Behemoth was pathetic and I am trying to forget about. Nyzul Assault was almost cancelled, but we ended up doing three and getting Nivlakian to floor 80. One more Sunday and he will be at 95 and we will wait for the update before doing 100.

Suiram, Nivlakian, and I did the second Ashu Talif fight twice and won on our second try, but we need to pick up our killing speed. The fomor captain decided to warp himself just as Nivlakian was getting ready to engage. Hopefully we'll do better for next time to get two chests.

Labels: FFXI

Reprobation > Sleepga > Blizzaga III > Ninja running into mages to avoid Blizzaga sums up Salvage...

Labels: Salvage

After quite a few itemless and depressing Salvages we finally faired better Saturday night. First we did Silver Sea Remnants to finish Kenjo's Skadi's Jambeaux. This will be our second item completed. Well, technically our first. As far as I am aware Shayanna still hasn't completed her gloves. So, two down and dozens more to go. After killing Dekka we proceeded to kill Don Poroggo. I wasn't sure if it did frog chorus. Turns out it does and it has long range.

Ribbit!

After that not enoguh people had a permit for another Salvage so we went and did other things. Awhile later Suiram invited me to do Bhaflau Thickets with him. He wanted a screenshot of his capped elemental magic with his new theta sash. We ended up doing the first, second, and third reactionary ramparts. We didn't have much time on the third rampart, but the first and second were great. The first rampart spawned three spiders!

One of the gate widows.

Even after Alexei accidently meleed the second rampart for a swing or two five Skirmish Pephredo managed to spawn! While this is normally great the bees didn't feel like dropping any Usukane feet.

Lots of bees, but not many shoes.

On the third rampart we were overwhelmed by colibri. We didn't want to sleep because the colibri cast the same spell against the user and none of us brought poison potions. With a little more organization with the melee and a focused sleeper this wouldn't be that hard to handle. We had ten to fifteen minutes when we started, so we didn't miss much by not killing the colibri fast enough.

Labels: Salvage

I found myself too tired to properly do Salvage last night. I just couldn't focus. I made a plethora of mistakes that I normally do not make. We ended up timing out on Zhayolm. Doing Arrapago just seemed painful. This feeling better not continue.

KS99 tonight followed by more Salvage!

Labels: Salvage

A conversation Suiram and I had while waiting for our tags to reset for Assault.

One hundred more Assaults until we get another good item...

Suiram won the lot on this and has maxed out his elemental magic again, I think.

Labels: Assault

I have found myself increasingly unhappy in my linkshell as of late. General inactivity from certain individuals, people staying on other pearls during events or just in general, and our constant wiping.

We wiped to Kirin last week. This is annoying, but we generally do not have enough people to properly kill him. I don't understand why the kite party dies seemingly so easily, but it happens. We wiped to Prudence last night. We always wipe to Prudence. Unfortunately, I do not have a better alternative so we manaburn and hope it goes well. It normally does not. The kicker is after Prudence we wiped to Faith. I'll take some blame in this. Clearly my expectations were too high for the rest of the linkshell.

The plan was to farm organs while a few black mages went to find the ??? and then wait for it to move. I found the ??? and after we received a few HQ organs I became impatient with waiting. Everyone farming organs was to come to the NW tower, where I was. I had the black mages wait in their towers in case the ??? decided to move seconds after the melee were prepped and ready to spawn Faith. A ranger died on the way. I still don't understand how someone can die with a black mage, red mage and white mage to sleep things on the way, but he did. After a few minutes the melee were ready to spawn Faith. I disbanded to sleep mobs that would aggro the spawner and log off. The black mages were told to come to the NW tower.

I expected we would have to hold Faith for five to ten minutes while we waited for the black mages and we would quickly kill with five black mages. This never happened. The black mages never showed. Something happened with Kyliee, Prong, Keum and they escaped two or three times then disconnected. Shortie died and I assume Allura went to help him. They showed up after we wiped and I had called it a day. I don't understand the difficulty black mages and red mages have climbing the tower. Common sense, stoneskin, sleep and bind (for dark ghrah) is all you need to quickly climb towers. I think I'm going to get some friends and low man Faith. I have decided I want my torque.

Sometimes it feels like I have to explain everything with intricate detail to get anything done right. Well, my version of right. Things that we have done many times before I expect people to be able to do. If they do not ask questions then they know what to do. This never happens. People are afraid to talk. They cannot ask for a raise, ask for explanation of the kill, call hate or anything else. I'm growing tired of this. It is a much their responsibility as it is mine to handle such simple tasks, but if I do not do them no one else will.

Maybe it is time to move on to a new linkshell. I do not owe my current one anything. But Limbus would end if I left. Maybe Salvage would too. Sometimes I wish the linkshell would break so I could leave guilt free.

Labels: FFXI

A holiday today, so no work!

I didn't do as many Salvages as I would have liked on the weekend, but we did a few and had nothing drop. A few hours ago someone posted on the bluegartr forums a possible method to spawn the two Qiqrin treasure hunters on the sixth floor in Arrapago Remnants. The current theory is have the sixth floor cleared and wait until the ten minute warning without opening the door to the teleport. I hope this is accurate. It will definately help obtaining Morrigan's Robe when we don't have to kill the chariot.

Friday night we did Kirin. We started late as normal... And ended up having to hold with bio while we recovered. Luckily I had Mazzic and Coitha there so recovering was quicker than normal. We got a damascus ingot and wyrmal legs abjuration.

Kaboom happened on Saturday and after a seventy five minute wait for us to start I decided that for the time being I am taking a break from Kaboom. I am no longer interested in waiting an hour or two for Kaboom. We kill the wyrm in Early Bird Catches the Wyrm. We didn't get any great drops, but all the good things are rare from the chest. I came as red mage. I find it more enjoyable as black mage.

The wyrm up front and centre.

More assaults on Sunday. Nothing special or out of the orginary. We got Askar hands from floor 60 for Kris in Nyzul.

Labels: Kaboom, Salvage, Tu'lia

Salvage last night made me very angry with a handful of individuals. The lesser offence of people afking annoys me to no end, but the big problem came with people not paying attention, lotting items over the tanks, jumping on chest items like revitalizers while it would go to better use to someone else, and being slow to erase, paralyna, and haste.

For anyone who does anything with me regularly they know I am impatient with almost everything in the game once I have to start relying on others. I want you to be as efficent as possible with knowledge and ability equal or greater than mine. Unsurprisingly, this does not happen often. I feel no obligation to explain myself to anyone who is receiving points multiple times. I am tired of repeating myself a dozen times when someone different shows up. When I say gears must be pulled and not linked or aggro'd I expect everyone to act appropriately and stay out of range, but no. There is no reason to not know this. It is clearly explained on ffxiclopedia. Did people not do the research that I told them to do? I am tired of the ignorance.

I have a few basics for handing out cells that is always consistent. Magic to tank red mage > bard first, weapons to most efficent damage that require weapons first, and any melee related cells to tanks first. Every regular knows this. I assign these at the start and normally keep to this method for the next two runs. I do not want to go over item drops for everyone every time. I have other things to do and when cells are regularly dropping I take not having to deal with them for granted. I expect everyone to be aware of this. You are expected to know your place in lotting when we get regular item drops especially when I am busy pulling or doing something else.

Taking the only revitalizer we were lucky enough to get for mighty strikes over our only bard makes me angry. While I have never said that revitalizers should go to our bards first I thought it was common sense. When I asked who took it he was afraid to own up to his mistake. But, hey, the warrior who took it would at least put it to use and do lots of damage to the chariot. Of course that didn't happen. While I told him not to engage at the start to keep tp gain down he managed to get himself hit with homing missle and killed by diffusion ray after our first wipe. He didn't have hate, but was just standing in the way when we were kiting. I am also positive I told him to lose the multiple hit weapon for chariots and certain NMs in the past. Guess which hand was holding the ridill? Absolutely pathetic.

I have always found the problem of people being slow to paralyna, erase, and keeping haste up to be a touchy subject. I have not been able to find a way to tell support to do a better job without appearing insulting. I understand that they have other spells to cast, have to deal with timers, mp management problems, and messages get lost in the spam, but when success or failure relies on being casting paralyna as the chariot readies discharge or a fast haste I just don't know what to say. I always hope people will emulate me when they see me on the ball to remove a status effect.

Hopefully Bhaflau Remnants goes better in future attempts. People need to learn to ask questions. I assume people who are silent know what they are doing.

Labels: Salvage

I have been stuck with a difficult decision recently. When I first heard about Einherjar I decided that I wanted to do it. I want to do it twice a week every week until I find it painfully boring like I do most times I enter Dynamis. Einherjar provides a great new challenge with the potential for awesome rewards that I would not obtain otherwise because I do not actively persue any notorious monsters. I want to go even more with the recent announcement that the mobs will be made a little weaker.

When Einherjar first came out I decided I would lead it for the linkshell and hopefully we would be get a regular consistant number of people participating. This did not happen. The last time we tried to go not even twelve people showed up. People had a tendacy to flake out, pretend to be afk and simply not show when it came to us doing Einherjar. So, I dropped it. I will not lead Einherjar for the linkshell. Now how am I suppose to do Einherjar?

I only see two options when deciding join another linkshell that does it or find an outside group that does it. Joining another linkshell is not an option right now because it will end Limbus, Salvage and other things for me.

The other option is to join the group that is loosely associated with HydraCorps. My problem with this is that HydraCorps takes forever to get organized. One hour waits to start Dynamis is disgusting. As far as I am concerned we should be entering fifteen minutes max after the gather time. I fear this will carry over to Einherjar because many of the leadership or active members in Einherjar appear to be made up of former or current HydaCorps leadership. For a thirty minute event there is no reason to spend an hour organizing. There is also the questionable start time. It appears that Einherjar starts after Dynamis. What time is after Dynamis? This can be a wide variety of times. Not having a start time that is set in stone only causes confusion and delays as non-HydraCorps members are slow to get there or have to wait for HydraCorps members. It does not help that Einherjar starts so late at night for me.

Maybe I should give this group more credit at least they are trying. They might be more efficent than I think and just need some more experience before becoming better. Maybe I'll go next time and see how it goes. I'll have to ask some people what they think.

Labels: Einherjar

I have been playing FFXI for a long time and it is time to post some of the long term goals I've had for awhile and have started to develop. With Miggs recently lending me Coitha many things have become significantly easier to complete because I no longer have to bug others with requests for help. While not needing help on some goals is definately useful the majority of what I want requires the assitance of my linkshells, groups and statics.

Limbus has been a grind for a long time, but now that I have decided to upgrade more artifact armour and obtain Homam once my dark knight is 75 I am more interested in it than I use to be. I have more ancient beastcoins than I could ever use with my consistant income of them. I currently have more than three hundred coins and have spent another two to three hundred. +1 artifact armour is just a matter of time.

I have some high expectations from Salvage. Full Morrigan and Usukane?! I must be crazy to want to devote so much time to Salvage. Once I complete my Morrigan body I will be lotting everything I want with reckless abandon. Ares body is a nice to have, but I don't think I'll ever actually finish it. Same goes for most of Usukane. I don't have much accomplished in terms of Salvage armour. I took too long to start doing this regularly, but I am now doing it four or five times a week. I'll get what I want sooner or later.

I would love to have at least one set of Nyzul armour, but my static only does it three times a week so we can also do Salvage regularly. The armour has been slow going. Three pieces in two hundred and fifty floors! Our goal isn't to farm the bosses, but to get everyone their key item. Maybe I'll get lucky. I wanted to put Assault items that come from ??? on here too, but there is no point. The items are so rare it is extremely unlikely we will ever get them as long as we are pushing for Salvage and Nyzul.

Other armour on here is mostly in the nice to have category. Tu'lia and Lumoria items? I don't need these. Although a faith torque would be nice. The biggest thing I want from Tu'lia is dryadic body abjuration. I have been without this for too long and have been using monk much more for Salvage. This will also help for all the merits I need to pump out. I currently have three pieces of Hydra armour. This is huge considing how often HydraCorps does Dynamis-Tavnazia. More is coming hopefully. Dynamis is such a pain nowadays that I have been skipping to do other things on my goal list, but I need the points if I want to be competitive for Hydra armour. Once two or three people get ahead of me for items I might cross this off my list and call it complete.

Things that are missing but I am making no effort to obtaining include dalmatica, crimson curiass, herald's gaiters, and various things from Einherjar. I do not actively persue any notorious monsters or particpate in Einherjar so there is no point in including these items.

Labels: Assault, FFXI, Limbus, Lumoria, Salvage, Tu'lia

A few days ago I hit 56 on warrior and have been working on artifact armour quests during free hours between events and when I have spare time. I've been doing dark knight quests at the same time since they both take place in Bastok and it saves a few minutes to get the quests at the same time.

Last night I was working on the warrior body quest. I decide to do it only with Coitha and Mazzic because I remember that the quest was pretty easy despite fighting three goblins at once. I would be fighting a thief, white mage, and ranger. They all use their two hour abilities and like to spam goblin tackle and throw bombs, but they are pretty easy. The white mage and thief went down with no problems. All the mobs were hitting Mazzic, so I just engage with Coitha and let him swing and occasionally heal.

By the time only the ranger was left Coitha was low on mana and I was counter tanking. Tanking a ranger that uses eagle eye shot with counterstance on turns out to be not such a good idea. After a hexastrike > asuran fists > gravitation for 2500 damage the ranger returned the pain before I thought to put shadows up. 2075 damage later I was lying on the floor. I kited on Coitha for a bit, tossed out a raise, more kiting while weakness wore and proceeded to finish Moxnix.


I haven't seen this damage from an eagle eye shot since before rangers were changed. Even then the high damage numbers would only come from the Xarcabard demons or Beaucedine Hydras. Lesson learned on tanking with counterstance.

BAAM!

Next on the artifact armour list is dark knight helmet and white mage body.

Labels: FFXI