Galka Style

Am I losing interest in Salvage? Part of me wants to say definitely not, but another part is saying yes. It is becoming almost impossible to recruit five other people to perform a successful run outside of Thursdays. I want to do these extra runs but it is frustrating to always be one or two people short. I admit I could ask a few other people, but anyone who has wasted my time being a member of my group and left will not receive an invite from me. They can come groveling back before they are up for consideration again. The majority of them do not have the jobs I want or are poorly equipped anyway.

It is aggravating to see people that would rather level another job that they one day will want to take into Salvage over actually participating. Unfortunately I will be in no position to turn these individuals away in the future. The most I'll be able to do is ignore their request on the specific remnants they want for more active individuals. Do they not realize the armour from Salvage is potentially the best armour in the game that they will earn anytime in the near future because they do not camp Nidhogg and the like?

Our most recent Long-Bowed Chariot.

Hopefully organzing Salvage will stop feeling like a chore and activity will pick up. I need two well equipped monks so I can remove some people without a second thought. Someone who pulls nonstop when on something that could kill them quickly with slow sleeps would be nice too. As much as I enjoy pulling the majority of the time I normally perform much better doing damage or healing since I am normally on monk or red mage.

Maybe I should be less stringent on my expectations, but then it becomes like a waste of a permit when I only accomplish half of what is possible. We can't even make it to Citadel Chelonian in Silver Sea most of the time. I feel like I am wasting our time when we don't hit as many 35 mobs as possible.

Labels: Salvage

After HydraCorps' performance in Dynamis-Tavnazia last night I might be done participating in Tavnazia. It was absolutely apaling. We wiped to the worm. The second mob in the zone and we all died. All of this would have been easily avoided if anyone had done even a little research or paid attention to their job. There was a bunch of new people, there are always new people, perish the thought we have eighteen who didn't leech the wins from us and proceed to quit HydraCorps.

I thought waiting a day to write about this would calm me down over the issues, but writing about it has made me angry again. Here is a summary of what went wrong. The bugard went well so nothing to say about it. On the worm everything that could go wrong did.

No one silenced the worm. With two red mages and a white mage silence wasn't cast once. If silence was resisted that would be unfortunate, but it does happen. I wouldn't be able to complain about it, but no one even tried to cast it. I saw at least one breakga and two stonega IVs land.

The stun order was screwed up from the initial draw-in. The stun order was blm, me, drk. We had another black mage by the time we entered, but no one remembered to include him. It does not matter. Only two stuns are needed. On the first draw-in I waited a good two seconds to see if the blm would stun and I didn't even see the /p in his macro go off. Surprisingly the worm didn't ready any abilities during these two seconds. So, just in case I stunned. Between starting to cast and actually casting the worm readied tremors. My stun stopped it. The blm casted stun after mine landed. His has no effect. I am confident in my belief that the worm's tremors would have gone off if I had not stunned when I did. Some sort of aoe normally goes off sooner and even my stun shouldn't have accomplished anything. In that case I wouldn't have casted rather to save my stun for the next draw-in.

After draw-in I quickly run down the hall to a safe distance to throw in a quick spell before I need to be ready to stun again. There is some spam reminding people not to be idiots by aggroing the bees. Which is basically asking people to purposely walk into the bees. A couple sleepgas later the bees are dealt with. They shouldn't wake before the worm dies.

One stun out of turn and another wasted with three sleeping bees on top of us. Not a big dea this has happened before. The drk is up next to cover us until our stuns are back up. Next draw-in with ten seconds or so on my timer the drk does not stun. There is no evidence that he even tried to. The blm and I both have /p in our macros. There is no reason for the drk to have missed his turn. A significant amount of damage is done and three or four people are dead after the second draw-in. Still, we can recover. Wait, why did everyone just get hit by breakga?

With the worm at 3% I cast drain hoping to kill it. 1% left, the last surviving members of the alliance die except for me because I am standing out of aoe. Draw-in, run out of melee range, bees wake, start casting bio II, dead. And that was the end of HydraCorps' most recent blunder into Tavnazia. We have killed diabolos, farmed hydra, demons, taurus, leeches, pugils, and clusters, recovered from near wipes, trucked through many mistakes, but never, not even on our first attempts, have we wiped before unlocking subjobs.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have stunned on the first draw-in. Even if I knew the other black mage would be too slow on his stun I should have let the tremors go off. It was not my job to stun after the first draw-in. I made the assumption that the dark knight would have us covered for the first mistake without being told to. I guess I should just do my job and not be ready to cover anyone else. I would also like to place some undeserved blame on the paladins for not using shield bash effectively. It is extremely possible that they did and I just missed it. I doubt that.

The majority of this post was written to absolve myself of some of the guilt of stunning out of turn. After we had wiped the majority of the blame was placed on people not following the stun order. I didn't say anything because it would look like I was attempting to shift the blame to someone else when I did stun out of order. I still believe I did the right thing.

One person aggroing the bees is bad. I don't understand how you can accidently walk into them, but I hate to admit that it happens. After we wiped and people began dissecting how others screwed up someone said that six people walked into the bees. Not one, but six! Six! I think I'm glad we lost here. Odds are it would have cost me much more exp to raise Is when I found out no one else could be bothered to sleep demons or hyrdas.

Labels: Dynamis

Last week we made a great attempt at Einherjar. We didn't win, but everyone figured out what to do and what is expected of them. We did pretty well for our first try too. We brought the boss down to 25% or so. A good first try. Last night we earned our first win. It looked like we had a few more miscellaneous jobs than last time. A few blue mages, another melee or two, a white mage. I don't know if they made a difference, but we won and had the extra space, so I'll assume they did.

The only wave was a plethora of chigoes. They all died before the majority of the summoners even had a chance to astral flow even though they should have had astral flow up already as soon as the paladin pulled. A quick rest and everyone was on Hraesvelg. The manticore seemed to be much easier than the oboron from last week. Enfeebles landed with no problems. I could even stick frost on it although I doubt the minor negative agility it gave helped at all.

Hraesvelg was pretty harmless. Sure, his deadly grasp would one shot almost anyone and its fire breath or great whirlwinds hurt without stoneskin. Other than draw-in it had no special abilities that would have made it very dangerous. Gravity landed with no problem. Keeping myself hasted allowed me to put gravity on it consistently. Gravity didn't last long, but because of the shifting hate and general confusion it would often give a summoner a chance to run away.

With somewhere between five and ten minutes to spare the manticore finally died. On our first win we got a W. head abjuration! I forget who won the lot on it, but it was open lot and I lost. Our victory will probably draw more interest from people and increase our numbers to Rakshaka's goal of thirty six every Tuesday. I wish we were doing this twice a week. Twice a week makes Einherjar progression slow enough as it is, but once a week is almost painful. Sadly, odds are if we did it another day a week I wouldn't be able to make it. Heres hoping for more cool items!

Because of the POL forced update I forgot to log back in with the Windower to take screenshots, so you'll just have to take my word that I have Rossweisse's Feather. It will only be the first of many with any luck.

Labels: Einherjar

Another busy Wednesday full of Assault. Floors 56-60 went very smooth with Khimaira waiting for us at the end. It went down a little slower than normal without a sixth, but was smooth over all. Khimaira ended up giving us Askar manopolas. Like everything else from Nyzul so far they went to me because no one else wanted them. I was hoping for Goliad gloves. That would put me two items away from the entire Goliard set.

Would anyone with access to Homam manopolas use these?

After beating Khimaira we entered again on Kyliee's disk. On floor 62 she disconnected. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal. We would still continue and hope for the win, but she had to disconnect on the only floor we needed her for. We were given the easiest lamp conditions, everyone register on a single lamp. All she had to do was click it and we would have been able to finish the floor set, not wasting our Assault tags. Two rooms away she disconnected and didn't return. We waited twenty five minute hoping she would come back so we could rush through the final floors, but she didn't come back on. Originally we were hoping that after she disconnected it would let us finish the floor with four of us registered, but we weren't so lucky. It makes sense that she needed to be registered to finish the floor, but it would be nice if there was some sort of exception. Floor 80 is two weeks away for us instead of next week now. Oh well, stuff happens.

With Nyzul finished we did two Royal Painter Escort. We have been getting much better. We can do it nearly flawlessly, but are still having a problem near the end. After Faluuya finishes painting in the hold of the Ashu Talif Black Bart loses interest in Nivlakian and chases Faluuya to the poop deck. I am unable to pull hate with enfeebles and do not have enough time to cast elemental magic as he is running by, Suiram is too busy making sure a monk doesn't kill Faluuya to stop Black Bart, and Nivlakian's abilities do not seem to be enough to grab Black Bart's attention until he can engage him again. As soon as we can figure out how to handle this problem we should be getting three chests every Ashu Talif.

I'm going to say we are 1/10.

While we have yet to get the third chest Ashu Talif finally rewarded us with a Yoichi's sash. This is an easy three or four million for us to split. We haven't earned anything worthwhile since the turbo charger dropped, but this sash helps make up for the lack of valuable items. Hopefully with more to come.

Labels: Assault

Wow I can't believe it worked. The summoner burn went very well. I expected the Einherjar to be mired in delays with slow people forcing us to wait on them to come to Hazhalm or delaying party and alliance formations, but everything was fast and successful. Heck, I expected the plan to fail and we would wipe on the first pull. The strategy is similar to a manaburn situation, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Our basic party set up was refresh, paladin, four summoners. This seemed to work well. We had fourteenish summoners, a handful of melee, four or so paladins, and bards and red mages. I had a hard time keeping refresh on my party. Between so many avatars and mobs dying at once and the spam from spells being casted I don't know if I caught all the refreshes wearing off. That is pretty much all I did.

Our mobs turned out to be dark elementals, krakens, and the oboron boss. The casting from the dark elementals was no problem. I admit I forgot poison potions, but I didn't end up needing them. The first pull had so many avatars, players, and mobs in the area that I could barely do anything with the lag. I managed to get a few sleepgas off, so all the better. After some hectic confusion of poorly located avatars on the oboron it went down steadily but had too much hp for us. The summoners started with Ramuh. Apparently Garuda did better damage. Some of the summoners sounded confident that if they had started with Garuda we could have won. We timed out at 23%. Very good for our first try. I think everyone has a better idea of what to expect now so we will do even better next time.

Early in the fight. Some rear trigger aoe rocked some summoners.

The strategy needs to be refined a bit and with a little more experience we will do even better. A minute or two can be shaved off between entering and pulling the mobs. It felt like we spent too much time running or resting after the astral flow rush and before engaging the boss. Depending on the boss we get and their aoe usage it is hard to determine how we will fair against other bosses. The marlboro will cause problems with bad breath. Second and third wing bosses may be even more of a problem.

Not all visible, but the obligatory "I've never seen so many summoners at once."

I'm glad Rakshaka started this and invited me. I hope we will be even more successful in future runs. He is confident people will continue coming on time and expects a few more people for next time.

If you read this post hoping I would write about Ehrgeiz I'm sorry to disappoint you.

Labels: Einherjar

Someone has approached me about a summoner burn Einherjar linkshell. He is confident that the twenty five or so summoners and a handful of others such as tanks and support would be capable of clearing Einherjar. Six minutes or so for the first waves using astral flow and twenty minutes or more for attempting to kill the boss. I can see how this would work, but I am questioning the reliability of the group because I do not know who he has recruited. If we always need twenty or more summoners to be successful along with a handful or red mages, bards, and a paladin or two are we always going to get these numbers? People have a tendacy to flake out when they are not immediately rewarded with an item or immediately after receiving an item they want. A point system to ensure activity will be good. Negative points for not showing up quickly weeds out the dregs.

I wonder if the strategy would work. A paladin pulls and uses invincible at some point. The mobs cluster and a whole lot of astral flows go off and wipe the mobs pretty fast. Blood pact after blood pact later the boss dies. How would we handle the numerous casting mobs we would get. A series of strong spells all on the paladin will keep some of the mobs spread out. Only a couple would be alive after the initial astral flow, so it might not be that bad. Worms don't exactly move. A big worm spawn might be impossible to do. The first Einherjar I did we got worms and the marlboro boss up in the middle of them. I suppose we could run in and individually blood pact them, but that is hardly efficent. Some of the bosses have crazy tp moves. What would we do to deal with those without a stun order? Or maybe they wouldn't be much of a problem with bloodpacts and dozens of avatars floating around.

The Einherjar has been scheduled for Tuesday at 10:30pm est. While this doesn't conflict with Limbus for me if we enter late I will have problems being late for Limbus and Limbus will come first. I told him I would try to make the first couple of runs to see if it will work. I am very busy with everything I schedule, but being able to make this would be nice. I definately want to do Einherjar and if this is successful I will be happy.

Labels: Einherjar

Dynamis-Tavnazia is so much fun. It is what makes all those hours spent in cities and northlands worthwhile. The quality of drops are questionable, but the overall fun from doing it is worthwhile. A good Dynamis-Tavnazia always teeters on the edge of collapse. An exceptionally bad pull, people not paying attention, or no drops mixed with a Diabolos kill always turn into a depressing run. While getting a win for new people is always good for them those of us who have been around for awhile get sick of repeating it after leeches take it and stop participating.

One thing I don't understand is why the red mage were not trying to silence the magic users we were fighting. Demon and hydra red mages were casting for the entire duration of chainspell. The worm almost successfully casted three -ga spells. The first thing I do when engaged with a mage that I know can cause significant damage or heal themselves is cast silence when I know it won't resist. Oh well, we had enough stuns that nothing bad happened.

Last night we did Tavnazia and the results were pretty good. The goal was -1 bodies from leeches. Everything went relatively well although some things were done a little slow. The worst part is that we only killed three taurus. Only three chances at hydra armour is depressing. The leeches ended up giving us one melee cyclas -1 that went to me. It is going to be two weeks before Sagheera will return it to me. I already have her upgrading a piece of warrior af and I don't want to risk handing in more items for a Dynamis upgrade. I doubt I would lose them, but it isn't worth the risk. I now have melee gaiters +1 and melee cyclas +1. The body is probably the most difficult of the items to upgrade, so I'm glad it is done or will be soon.

We also earned two -1 legs from the bees. Red mage and dragoon. Not great, but better than nothing. I hope we do taurus next. They are what make Dynamis-Tavnazia great. I guess this Dynamis was a success with one moderately useful -1 body . Heres hoping for more next time.

I forgot to take pictures of all the fun. A great time for a picture would have been as a big train of leeches ran by us from someone who had went the wrong way during a confusing pull six minutes before the end. I was going to post a picture of us being spit out, but I was the only dead person, so no fun in that.

Labels: Dynamis

If you ever become a painter hired by an empress do not accept a job that requires you to draw diagrams of a ship infested with undead. It is no fun for you or your escorts. Being swarmed by Ashu Talif marines and finally their captain is not as much fun for a painter as you might expect. Faluuya didn't seem to consider this when she took the job.

Nivlakian, Suiram and I did the Ashu Talif fight Royal Painter Escort last night. It was our best attempt yet. While we failed at obtaining three chests we managed to kill Black Bartholomew for the first time with the three of us. We earned one chest for Faluuya finishing her drawings and another for defeating Black Bartholomew. Our basic strategy just needs to be refined to ensure Faluuya takes no damage throughout the entire fight.

Faluuya entering the ship for the second time.

There is one spot early in the fight where two red mages run to the top of the deck parallel to each other. As Nivlakian tries to catch up he grabs one of the red mages leaving the other one to wreck havoc. I need to remember to keep this other one in my field of view to grab it before it can start casting on Faluuya. This was our only mistake that caused us to miss out on the third chest. While marine monks can still engage Faluuya faster than Suiram can pull hate or kill them sometimes with a little more practice we should be earning three chests a fight. In the past we have let Faluuya be hit by a monk while inside the Ashu Talif. This has to avoided at all costs. If she is hit while in the ship she will run back to the poop deck spawning two more red mages. Fighting these extra red mages takes too long. Black Bartholomew will chase Faluuya before Nivlakian is ready and we will either lose or only earn one chest. One is better than nothing, but I want to see a yoichi's sash drop.

This is only the beginning.

Ashu Talif fights are fun. Like Assault or Salvage my Balrahn's ring works during the fight. When I don't forget to refresh myself seven mp a tick is great. I don't like converting during the fight because mobs can pop out of no where and take me down pretty quick if I have my camera turned away from them. Last night brought us a cheap automation attachment and some worthless gems. Hopefully we'll be pulling in cerberus hides, yoichi's sashes, and expensive attachments in no time. The fight is very fun for the short duration.

Wednesday also held Nyzul Assault for us. We took Kyliee's tag from floor 31 to 45. Luckily we didn't have any hard floors. Everything was nice and smooth. On 40 Fafnir showed up for a quick fight. With all the medicine Nivlakinan, Chubbs, and Suiram had we took Fafnir down with no problems. I had to heal more than normal, but the fight was easy. Goliard trews dropped and I won them because no one else wanted to reduce their inventory by one! While they aren't the right shade of purple they look pretty good with my Morrigan armour. Except for my sandals I'm all purple and black in my Morrigan and Goliard.

I couldn't help but take a picture of the lot.

Labels: Assault

This weekend was a normal weekend in Vana'diel for me that ended in great Salvage results. Friday night we hung out in Tu'lia. I finally collected Genbu's shield and Seiryu's kote after a long time of doing sky. I don't know why I never got them earlier, but I figure I will use them in the near future, so why not? That pretty much ends everything I need from Tu'lia. I still don't have some items, like Hecatomb, that I could make use of, but I don't really care about those except the body.

We finished another Ultima set for Limbus. Hopefully enough people will show this coming Saturday so we are able to do it. If people don't show maybe we can do Omega instead. We'll see. Ultimas is starting to pile up again. A few new people have been turning out for Limbus. More people will definitely help as much as I love trying to tank stuff on black mage I would prefer not to. I wish +1 materials I want would drop more often. I would really like to knock more piece of AF I need to upgrade off the list.

Kaboom Saturday night was all about Tartaruga Gigante. He went surprisingly well. The last time Kaboom did this was a few months ago. That time we did it we didn't even make 200000 gil each. It was an absolute waste of time. This time was better. A few shining and damascene cloths dropped along with some weapons with actual value. It was still a waste in comparison to some of the other things we could have done, but better than nothing.

Level eight Mamool besieged Al'Zhabi Monday night and I found it to be the perfect time to try and get some scythe skill for dark knight. When the besiege was over I had hit 201. I'm just happy I don't have to embarrass myself using vorpal scythe or something instead of guillotine now. Whenever besiege is on I grab Kyliee so she can help with my skill up. For some reason she enjoys seeing me die during besiege. With a giant's drink I have 3000ish hp normally. It is fun to melee NMs and other mobs with souleater, last resort, blood weapon, and berserk on. While I keep my scythe on because I still need skill mobs tend to turn to me pretty quick and start beating me down. Depending on what I'm fighting I'll spam cure Vs with Coitha or drink a fanatic's drink. Sometimes I'm too slow to drink the fanatic's drink.

Swarming Gulool Ja Ja.

Although I don't have a picture of the hit Gulool Ja Ja knocked me down with a 2000ish damage hit after I pulled hate with my abilities before I thought to use a fanatic's drink. Kyliee had a good laugh at my expense. Gulool ended up running away before we were able to kill him.

Labels: FFXI, Kaboom, Limbus, Tu'lia

Ghanraam giving up the goods.

You guessed it. Toiling since May with only one goal in mind and I have finally got it. There are still many items hiding from me in Salvage that I want, but they will come. A body with refresh on it for red mage and black mage is the only item I have truly wanted for a very long time. Screw you dalmatica!

I need something new to bazaar without my stack of khroma ingots.

This body is awesome in every way. Great for all that meleeing I do on black mage. More mp over time. More int and mnd for my spells. Lots of magic attack bonus. I wish it had some mp on it since my pool is so low, but I'll get by. I love the detail I can see on the robe in comparison to the Humes and Tarutarus I have seen it on. Everything is small and squished together for them, but lots of space to show the details on a Galka.

Suiram tells me that all the leaders of the first three Pandemonium NA Salvage groups have a Morrigan's robe now. I figured more NA were running Salvage before we started, but I'll take it. Odds are I'm the first Galka on Pandemonium, maybe in the game, with the robe. I can't wait to finish the set!

Labels: Salvage

Friday and Saturday I couldn't get Salvage going. Well, Friday I probably could have, but I was tired and in a bad mood by the time we finished in Tu'lia. Even the thought of Salvage couldn't get me out of my bad mood. Sunday rolled along with little prospect of Salvage until after Assault.

After some searching I managed to find four people to do Assault with, but still lacked that sixth. We ended up bringing Celtya's friend. I was nervous about him. A 69 red mage makes me uneasy as our main source of support, but he did pretty well. For some reason he didn't have erase. Hopefully he will next time if we need him to come again. I just wish he had said something after I kept asking for erase. After a few requests Celtya said that he didn't have erase. Why don't people speak for themselves? Maybe the red mage isn't comfortable using English. Oh well, everything went well for us in the end.

On the first floor in Arrapago cells were very common and we were quickly equipped and ready to move on. This did not bode well for 35s. It always seem if cells go in our favour we are less likely to receive a 35. The first astrologer and treasure hunter dropped nothing for us. The treasure hunter went a little smoother than normal with me opening with IV, elemental seal bind, IV, bio II, running around to lose hate. The best part is that I didn't die when I tried this.

Next floor we killed a gear to get Kyliee her sub job so we would be prepared for tribulation from the soulflayer. Followed by killing a treasure hunter. After a little bit of kiting it died to my fire IV. With quiet anticipation I eagerly waited to be disappointed by a loot pool full of fractus and incus cells. But this treasure hunter had a surprise in for us. Macha's Coat! Hurray!

I was so excited I forgot to take a picture. Here is us killing the chariot for Gwilly.

We killed the soulflayer and chariot after. Nothing dropped.

I knew I had to get my Nemain's robe as quickly as possible now. After we finished in Arrapago I tried getting people together for Silver Sea, but with little luck. Some had to go or had other plans. I could only get two of us. So, I decided to put Salvage off. I knew Suiram was planning on a Silver Sea, so I didn't try as hard as normal to get people. A few hours later I was with Suiram and his group going through Silver Sea. The original goal was to get cards for Zhayolm. Overall five dropped, but I lost the lot on all of them.

We brought Don Poroggo down in no time for my body. Hurray! We proceeded to the sixth floor to attempt to spawn Citadel Chelonian. We were successful with very few deaths. At the two minute mark we rushed to pull Citadel Chelonian. At the thirty second mark we were panicking that we would fail to kill it. We were kicked out at 30%.

No more frogs until I get new shoes or Kyliee a new body. Ribbit!

I can get my Morrigan's robe in one minute, but won't be home for sixish hours. I can't wait!

Labels: Salvage