Galka Style

I had a bad week last week and ended up taking a break from playing FFXI. On top of having a bad week the PC version of Wings of the Goddess was a week late here! Between the expansion being late and everything else I was frustrated and decided not to play.

Now I have the expansion and am ready to dive into the new quests, missions, and stuff as soon as I find some time around everything I have scheduled. Tuesday was Lumoria, Einherjar, and Limbus, Wednesday is Assault and Dynamis-Buburimu is planned so I will be doing that, Thursday is Salvage, maybe I'll find some time on Friday to do it. I am going to force myself to visit all the maws and do as many missions as possible before starting to actively level dancer.

Tuesday turned out to be a great night. Lumoria definately made up for the sloppy performance of last week. We ended up killing Fortitude, Faith, Justice, Hope and Prudence before calling it a night. Getting people to Faith is still painful for them, but they will all learn how to climb the towers or at least keep up with people who know how to or they can keep dying. Asking for help before they die would be a good idea for them too. Hope and Prudence were messy, but both of them dropped a torque for us! Prudence still needs work but we are getting better every time we do it.

Two tails for our troubles.

Limbus went well. Just before we were about to start it looked questionable whether or not we would have enough for Omega, but we ended up being fine. A few unfortunate deaths and we ended up holding it for five minutes just to be safe. As we were doing the last 25% of its health we decided to chainspell stun and finish it before anything bad happened. Omega managed to eject a pod that Robocop claimed and went down to 21 hp without dying and Bekei was brought down to 1 hp just before Omega died. Two tails dropped. I would have preferred pants for the people who need them, but another pair of shoes for me!

Einherjar was great. We had an easy set of skeleton warriors and nothing else. They were quickly wiped out by astral flow followed by the Morbol Emperor. Now that we had a better idea of how to handle the boss it went very smoothly and I remembered poison potions! We won with five minutes to spare. This gives fifteen or so of us access to tier two. I figure we will do at least one more round of tier one before having enough to attempt two. I hope people are consistent so we can hopefully get to Odin and maybe win so we will be able to access all the wings as needed...

Labels: Einherjar, Limbus, Lumoria, Wings of the Goddess

I didn't have a chance to play last night because the update took me so long to download. By the time it was done I didn't feel like playing. Both of my laptops kept saying between five and ten hours to complete downloading despite reconnecting both of them multiple times. After awhile I just gave up and let them chug away. In the past an update this size has taken between one and two hours for me.

From the sounds of it I didn't miss much other than price gouging on deathstones. I have a couple deathstones kicking around, but I probably missed out on the best profit from them. Apparently a great deal of Aht Urhgan content was broken by this update. Gears and some chariots were screwed up in Salvage. With restorals giving back all missing hp and discoids being equivalent to 55000 needles. People wanted more difficult Salvages, so here is their reward.

Out of everything that has been revealed and discovered about scholar and dancer the more popular job seems to be dancer. People seem to be generally disappointed with the spell list and abilties of scholar. They compare it to a weaker black mage. The job intrigues me, but I do not intend to put any effort into it while I am afraid I may have to solo a mage job.

Dancer sounds like a lot of fun. Originally I was hoping that it would turn out to be the reject job of Wings of the Goddess. Fewer people would play it and I would get to be more unique as one of the few dancers roaming Vana'diel. But instead I have decided to give the job a try and face the eventually overpopulated solo spots in hopes of pulling out 75 dancer in a decent amount of time.

This could be just the job I have wanted for the smaller content stuff I often do, but my greatest fear is that I will never or rarely have a chance to use it. While the job seems to have great potential I do not see myself being able to put it to proper use. I suspect my red mage will always be better when I trio things or I am needed for support and my black mage will be better because it is pretty well equipped. We'll see. I'll be leveling it along with everyone else, hopefully I don't become disenchanted with the job and lose interest to pursue other things in the game.

Labels: Wings of the Goddess

Another aggrivating Salvage-less week. Sure, we did Salvage on Thursday, but twice in a week is not worthwhile. Do people not want their items? Maybe I'll try harder to get people this week while working around exploring new content. Another upgraded piece would definately boost my enthusiasm. We'll see.

Limbus has been fun over the past couple of weeks now that we are using up all of our collected Ultima items. This past Saturday we did Ultima and it only used physical shield twice! Its first and last shield was physical. The black mages rarely had enough time to finish two spells on it before magic shield was back up. The 19% dissipation even got off because a second before we brought it down to 19% it put up magic shield and it was too late to call the melee off. Citadel buster ended up being sloppier than normal because of all this. Legs and hands dropped for Nachtskye.

At one point I pulled hate and citadel buster was targeted at me. With a mostly full pool of mp I healed and put stoneskin up and hoped to weather it out. The buster was a weak one. I survived with a little hp left. Ultima decided to follow up with a holy II. Out of the fifteen or so people alive, even though most were out of range, it picked me to cast it on. After surviving the buster it just had to take me out. Very unfair if you ask me. The same thing happened to a paladin, but everyone expects them to die.

Three, two, one! Holy II...!

We did Jailer of Love Friday night. It probably turned out to be our fastest Love although I still found it painfully slow. Our items consisted of a novio earring and love torque. Apparently we have received so many love torques that no one wants them anymore. I ended up taking the torque even though I have no real use for it. At least I will be able to put it to use on dancer sooner or later.

Salvage: Bash +10 - How useful...

Assault gave Suiram, Nivlakian, and I a sigma earring! None of us really wanted it so Nivlakian and I lotted in hopes it would help against discharge. I won. At the very least it looks nicer than the rest of my earrings now that I am sick of the novio/novia icon. Our current theory to justify the minus one space is that a common mob in Wings of the Goddess is going to have enparalyze, so I'll get to come and tank everything.

Wings of the Goddess soon!!!

Labels: Assault, Limbus, Lumoria

Last night was a night of excitement. It began with probably our best night of farming in Lumoria since we have regularly schedule time here. We started working our way to one of the monk Ix'Aern spawn points. Along the way deciding to try to spawn Temperance. Surprisingly, Temperance who is always a pain to spawn decided to show up. It spent a lot of time in blunt mode. So much that it started to resist gravity before being half dead. We ended up winning without earning a torque.

Next went Ix'Aern. I ended up pulling. As I was running by a ghrah it managed to land bind on me. It was a strong bind too. I ended up taking a few hits from the monk and other mobs before it wore and I was able to get out of range again. The aern died before I had a chance to get back to the rest of the alliance. A vice dropped and went to Backbone. We actually need the deed more than anything. Quite a few vices have dropped for us recently to the point we are out of or almost out of the deed.

Hope went pretty smoothly even with one tank dying very early. This Hope wasn't spamming thundaga so that paladin held it with no problem. No Hope torque for us though. Justice followed Hope, but we had no luck with that torque either. Justice was getting dangerous near the end. The black mages' mp was low and they were having problems killing the summoned xzomit without mijin gakure going off. We won with only one death that was caused by all the charms.

To finish the night we ended with Prudence. Prudence has always been a problem for us. We are starting to do it more efficently than we use to, but we still need work. Last time we pretty much wiped, but managed to kill it. This time it went much better. The first Prudence died, apparently with no deaths for the killing alliance. The second one was a little messy, but we managed to handle it much better than in the past. No torque though. Another Love is coming up soon!

Einherjar followed Lumoria for me. It went poorly. We ended up wiping to a flying wamoura and skeleton mage combo. Everyone was suppose to be standing on top of the tank after the pull so mobs wouldn't scatter after astral flows, sleeps, and deaths. Not everyone was standing properly. I know I am guilty of this. I was standing off to the side, but not nearly as much as some others. I don't think my position had much of a negative effect. With ten to fifteen minutes left on the clock we decided to try to solo pull the manticore boss. It didn't link everything around it. Everyone did a pretty good job at damaging it. In the ten minutes we had it was brought down to one percent before we were kicked out. It is disappointing that we lost, but we had a pretty successful recovery.

Normally I don't write about Limbus. It is the same thing over and over again, but problems have been cropping up between players again. One screwed up the demon pull in Temenos North and we had four black mages on us. I had said pull. It didn't matter who, we just needed to not be standing around. I thought it was obvious this meant pull the two demons that run directly in front of us, but the two furthest away were claimed instead causing the to close ones to ultimately link. Another person pointed out the error with some comment that must have been insulting. The puller had their back up for the rest of Limbus. The puller attempted to provoke an arguement with pretty much everyone for the duration of Limbus. Fortunetly we didn't lose because of the childish antics of anyone. As I have said before, people need to learn to not take things so personally.

Last Ultima because this post needs a picture.

Labels: Einherjar, Limbus, Lumoria

Shortly after earning our for Yoichi's sash from Royal Painter Escort we realized that it might never sell. While it is an rare material for a pretty good body it simply does not match up to other bodies for ranger and ranged samurai. Royal Painter Escort is a great quest, but does not provide us with enough potential profit. We have successfully won the quest earning all three chests with three people. We had the quest down to a science, but it is time to move on.

A perfect Royal Painter Escort.

Readjusting our focus to the longer Scouting the Ashu Talif has had mixed results. We have only attempted it twice, but we have a pretty good idea of how to run it now. Our first attempt we lost, Suiram took a couple ancient magic spells from imps and ended up dying when we had less than five minutes left. Our second attempt was much more successful. Our pulls were more fast paced and we made better use of the medicine we receive throughout the fight.

With Nivlakian as monk, Suiram blue mage, and myself as red mage we were able to quickly kill each wave of fomor and imps. Nivlakian as monk was to ideally kill the mobs that Suiram doesn't kill fast enough with his blue magic, but that never really worked out. Next time Nivlakian will be coming as black mage and we will see how things work out.

While we have almost no hope of killing Swiftwinged Gekko, that is not our goal. Winning has the potential to provide us with a star sapphire. Our assumption is that this sapphire has a much better market than the Yoichi's sash. While still worth a few million, but dismal drop rate, hopefully this will prove to be more profitable than Royal Painter Escort. Royal Painter Escort also provided us with one or two ??? boxes that could contain anything from a wool thread to automaton attachments or a Cerberus hide. We only had one worthwhile automation attachment from our first couple successful attempts. I doubt we will miss these boxes.

Labels: Assault

Another Tuesday full of fun and excitement. As the night wore on we had a pretty good turnout in Lumoria. Unfortunetly, Kyliee wasn't able to make it and she has the majority of our complete tier two jailer sets. It turned out I only have half sets. A lot of one deed, but lacking the corresponding virtue. We kept to the weaker stuff for the night. As we were nearing the end of farming people told me that they had a few complete sets. Oh well, hopefully we will have a decent turnout next week and knock a few tier twos off.

Einherjar went off without a hitch this week. The majority of people were in Hazhalm early enough for parties to be quickly organized. I also found out I can get to Hazhalm in less than five minutes if I don't stop over and do things in Nashmau. We entered pretty fast and were rewarded with a large collection of skeleton warriors and krakens. The first series of astral flows were shakey. Quite a few people didn't properly position themselves around the pulling paladin beforing unleashing their avatar. This ended up with some of the mobs scattering to chase an avatar or summoner. A few deaths happened, but with a little more experience should go smoother.

I should have turned shadows off. Lag was worse than normal when a lot of summons were floating about.

Our boss turned out to be the oboron again. With mainly Garuda being used it went down at a steady rate. No kiting was required and deaths were relatively few. The majority of deaths was caused by summoners going into aoe range without stoneskin. The oboron ended up dying with four minutes or so left on the clock. Three oboron meat dropped unfortunetly. One more win to be on wing two, but I suspect we will be doing wing one at least once more before we have enough people to move on.

Limbus is looking positive again. We have been regularly lacking two tanks for Ultima, so Temenos chip sets have been collecting dust. Damsonrhee finally finished leveling her paladin, so at least every other weekend when she doesn't work we should be able to do Ultima when Strayfax is home from school. This, of course, is assuming we have white mages since I don't like risking chips without them. The problem is we have fourish white mages that do Limbus with us, but lately none of them have been reliable because of non-FFXI things.

Labels: Einherjar, Limbus, Lumoria

Empty threats and vague notions of abstaining from participating in events after something terrible occurs that causes the entire run to be a waste of time is all it ever comes down to for me. While I did almost decide against it, I did Dynamis-Tavnazia last night. I'm glad I went. Over all there were a handful of minor mistakes, but nothing that caused us to wipe. Some of the repeated deaths from various individuals because they were standing in aoe while weakened was entertaining.

The worm went smoothly this time. Someone remembered to silence it this time and people communicated when it wore off or they couldn't recast silence at the moment. It spawned in a spot far from the bees too. We managed the larger pulls better than ever before with only a couple deaths rather than wiping. The second pull after grabbing a time extension that is a bee and eye pull worked very well. Suiram kited the bees while we killed the demons and taurus. People were slow on claiming, but caught up fast enough.

After our final pull of the day.

Our goal was Hydra armour from taurus and we did our best job yet over the few attempts we have made at farming them. From the sounds of it there was only one good pull left when we ran out of time. While the drops were not anything significant they did fall into my favour. After grabbing the time extension Hydra gaiters dropped!

Up until now I had an uncontested number of points for mage and melee Hydra armour. I could take the pld/war/drk set, but I think it would be frowned upon. I claimed four pieces with all my old points from the dozens and dozens of Dynamis I have done. Today was the first day I had to compete against someone else for a piece of the armour. I haven't been participating in Dynamis regularly lately, so it is no surprise that my priority had dwindled away. Rakshaka and I were told to lot against each other. He seemed hesitant to lot. I suspect he wants the body. I ended up lotting 400ish and he lotted more than 800. I was sad to know I wouldn't be getting another piece, but knew he deserved it. Then Rakshaka passed! Hurray! This gives me five pieces of Hydra armour. Any older members who know I already had four pieces and a near monopoly over Hydra armour in HydraCorps probably aren't too impressed I was allowed to lot. We have obtained eight pieces of Hydra armour, five of which I own.

Thanks to Rakshaka for passing. My faith in Tavnazia has been renewed, at least until something happens that makes me want to scream again.

The designation on the perpetual hourglass has been canceled.

Labels: Dynamis