Galka Style

With moments to spare and two fomor left we rush down the ladder to quickly dispatch the remaining monks. They both die. The thirty second warning was a few seconds ago. Would we have time to claim our prize? The chests shimmer into existence at our feet and we quickly pry them both open. A collection of worthless gems spills out of one and a single unidentified dagger out of the other. Before we have a chance to collect our gems we are quickly pushed off of the Ashu Talif. Fortunately the pile of precious stones did not contain a star sapphire, but it is unfortunate they were still lost.

With a superstition of superior appraisals held closely to heart we return to Nashmau with a hope the questionable knife would turn into our golden goal. It turned out that Memeroon knew exactly what we wanted. One matron's knife ordered up and served.

One in one.

With this knife we obviously managed to kill Swiftwinged Gekko with a little bit of luck. We kept to the same plan of me chainspelling when possible, Nivlakian with asuran fist, and Suiram with whatever spell he used. By the end of third time Gekko showed itself it was almost dead, but the third time is also the most dangerous for us. Nivlakian pulls ten or so fomor, two or three imps, and Gekko. If Gekko launches the wrong spell it is almost guaranteed that Nivlakian will die. Gekko used bindga on us, the wrong spell. With Nivlakian bound he couldn't get out of the casting range of the imps. My erase is only so fast so he has to cast utsusemi and hope for the best. With a few fomor already beating on him he casts utsusemi: ni just in time to absorb at least two ancient magic spells. If those spells hand landed we would have ended up wiping and it would be a loss. We got extremely lucky. I proceeded to die on that pull from thundaga and pulling too much hate with cures. I blame Suiram for being slow.

Moments to spare.

Because we had taken more time to make sure I had mp to use it effectively on Gekko time was very tight at the end of the fight. We cleared everything just before the thirty second mark and probably had the chest spawn with less than fifteen seconds to go. Due to lag or whatever my treasure pool did not load in time so I didn't have a chance to lot anything and we lost all the gems. None of us thought to quartermaster. Star sapphire wasn't in the treasure pool, so its all good!

... and a condsener from Targetting the Captain!

I can't believe we ended up getting a matron's knife on our first win. I have no idea how common the knife is from the ???. I have never seen it before but maybe most people just don't want to bother trying to get it. I hope the appraisal rate for matron's knife is extremely rare so I can feel special. It was difficult winning this with three people, but I am glad we did it. Only four levels to go on dancer to use this. Time to step up and start exping more.

Can you guess the other knife I'm wearing?

Labels: Assault

Just for Suiram.

Everything that happened in the next post!

Labels: Assault

When we started doing regular runs of the Ashu Talif quests I didn't think we would be able to pull off wins with three people. When we did these quests the first time we had no idea what was going on. Even with six people we lost the first two more than once. Going back didn't seem like a very good idea, but Suiram had a plan so it was worth a try. We started with Royal Painter Escort. While challenging after a little bit of practice we were able to pull it off with little difficulty. We were often able to pull it off perfectly with the occasional minor hiccup. Earning three chests was great, but the items that came from them were lackluster. The ??? chests rarely appraised into anything of value and the single yoichi's sash we did receive took forever to sell at a price lower than what we would have liked.

We decided to expand. Scouting the Ashu Talif is the most difficult of the three quests, but also offers the best rewards. The much coveted star sapphire. It makes lots of great items and is extremely rare. A perfect draw for our trio after the depressing results from the yoichi's sash. This one took quite a few tries to win with a win/lose ratio not favouring us. At a certain spot Swiftwinged Gekko would hit us with sleepga, paralyga, bindga, or gravitga followed by lots of fomor or imps jumping on our puller ultimately killing all of us. We could recover, but always needed another sixty seconds or so to finish off the quest. The loses were uninspiring, but we are getting much better.

We decided to add Targetting the Captain to the mix. I had started leveling dancer and decided I wanted the pants from this quest. Nivlakian and Suiram thought it might be fun. Doing Scouting the Ashu Talif and Targeting the Captain would speed up our overall time doing the quests. We use to have to run back Nashmau and activate the second quest then return to the Ashu Talif after completing the first quest. This added a good fifteen minutes or more to our travel time and was pretty annoying. Doing two quests lets us start one quest right after another.

While we haven't perfected our strategy on Targeting the Captain yet we are working towards all three chests from the quest. With me kiting the captain while they kill Bubbly we should be able to pull off three chests in no time. I have no confidence in myself to pull the captain successfully for his chest, so Suiram pulls and I try to hold hate while I kite.

Around the time of realizing I wanted the zereh's from the third quest matron's knife started to look like a great weapon to have for dancer. Killing Gekko seemed impossible for us because we were still having a hard time even completing the first quest. While it would be nice to have I kept to being realistic and not working up my desire for it. But we have been doing better. We have won three or four Scouting quests in a row and this made us wonder if we could do all three quests successfully with the maximum number of chests from each. Targeting the Captain is only a stones throw away, but would we be able to kill Gekko?

We only have five chances of about ten to fifteen seconds each to kill Gekko before it disappears. Would that be enough to kill it? Initial tests showed us a big maybe. Nivlakian was mostly useless. If we are lucky he would be able to get one or two asuran fists on Gekko. It would be up to Suiram and I. There are three easy pulls where Gekko spawns by itself, where if we are all ready and in position before it spawns we can all do a little bit of damage. Two pulls where Nivlakian has to pull and run away to ensure he doesn't die. One of these I have to watch Nivlakian's hp to make sure he doesn't die. This gives me four opportunities to make use of chainspell blizzard III and I can use it three times with the two revitalizers I get. If I am paying attention and remember to put on all of my elemental, int, and magic attack bonus equipment my spells will do around 200-400 damage and I am able to get two to four spells off depending on my positioning. It would seem I have to do the majority of damage because Suiram simply does not have the casting range I have available.

We have made one serious planned attempt so far, but a few minor screwups caused us to miss our prey. We weren't prepared for the second Gekko spawn. We had forgotten to hold the last imp and I was out of range. On the fourth Gekko I should have been standing with Suiram and Nivlakian, but was off to the side hoping that it would give me another cast or two on Gekko. Gekko decided to attack me and quickly moved out of range for Suiram and Nivlakian. I believe these mistakes are the reasons we failed to kill the imp. We brought it down to 9%. Next time we will win. I can almost taste the matron's knife.

A great knife. I'll be the envy of lazy dancers everywhere. Ignore the fact that dancer can't use it according to the screenshot, because they can!

Labels: Assault

I've scratched another item off my goal list. Last Saturday saw the final Homam item find its way into my inventory. So, I am officially done with Ultima and Omega and will only be coming to help others get their stuff. I wish I could say I was done with Limbus completely, but there are still +1 items that I want to make, so I will have to suffer through Limbus for a little while longer at least.

Honestly, I would like to stop doing Limbus now. I have been doing it consistently with Omega and Ultima as a goal for about one hundred and sixty five runs. Before that I was doing it regularly for the sole purpose of coin collection. When I was doing it only for coins feels like such a long time ago. Back in the day five hundred thousand gil for a coin... I almost regret not selling my coins back then. I could have made a fortune. Oh well, it would be great to cut Tuesday and Saturday Limbus out of my schedule. Going to bed earlier on Tuesday and freeing up a bunch of time on Saturday would be nice.

I intend to continue regular participation in Limbus at least until I hit two hundred total points. That is only thirty nine points away. After that I might start to phase Limbus out of my day like I did with Dynamis. By that time I am hoping there is something for Suiram, Nivlakian and I to do in Wings of the Goddess. Speaking of which, I need to finish those missions.

Labels: Limbus

One day I write about general lack of motivation in Salvage that has been pulling me down and the next shows great results which are inspiring. We had a few screw ups throughout the night. One which I will take blame for, we weren't properly prepared for the bhoot in Arrapago. We had only earned two hp cells by the time we reached it and without a thief only had one subjob. I thought I would be enough to tank it. Turns out I was wrong. Things went poorly and lots of people died. Rather than recover and killing the bhoot I wanted to move on as quickly as possible to at least kill the armored chariot in hopes for some 25s people wanted.

The other problems happened on the second last floor in Bhaflau. I've come to a point where I just expect everyone to be aware of a mob's abilities and tp gain. I no longer cover them in anywhere as much detail as I use to. I might say one or two words but other than that I do not say anything. Mostly on chariots people need to understand the results of them beating on the chariot. If tanks and support cannot keep up with the aoe they need to say to themselves 'Hey, maybe I should stop hitting the mob.' and turning away from it. They need to do this without being told. We do not want homing missile going off when we failed to clear all ten gears or back to back discoids before we have recovered. They need to read up on all the remnants and ask questions. If they are not asking questions I am assuming they know what is going on.

Back to what made me angry in Bhaflau. In the last room of single gears two gears were hanging out at the door, facing the hall where we were waiting. The first thing that happens, someones moves up to see why I'm not pulling and two gears disappear. We just lost our chance of doing the rampart and who knows how many deaths we are about to incur on the chariot. We went back and killed the archaic chariot where we had the tp problems I mentioned earlier. I ended up dying. Dying was more of an annoyance than anything tacked on to the screwed up single gears. Over all the boss went smoother than expected, but failed to drop any of the 25 bodies that we have been looking for.

I'm pretty sure everyone except me and Delphynia died at least once because of homing missile.

The shining gem of the night was our first run in Arrapago. On top of killing the boss, which we haven't done in awhile because I push us to try to spawn the treasure hunters on the last floor and bad things normally happen wasting too much time. We killed the archaic chariot and got full drops! Three 35s makes up for the screwed up bhoot and the last couple weeks of mostly dry Salvages. This essentially finished two more items for us. Nobody wanted the skadi shoes so they were trashed. We just need to get the 15 for Backbone's gloves. The exciting part of the fight with the armored chariot was that we killed it just before the thirty second warning. Although two people were dead I quickly removed them from the alliance and no items were lost.

We have had great results with this chariot with eight items in nineteen kills.

At a glance it is pretty obvious that the vast majority of our time is spent in Arrapago and Bhaflau. Both have put out pretty well I just want to find a way to incorporate all the other areas for 25s and 35s more regularly. I need to find people for Friday to Monday and Wednesday. So much Salvage... That would be awesome.

Labels: Salvage

Back from the holidays with lots to do for better or worse. I didn't do much over the holidays even though I had the time off from work. I wasn't at home, so I avoided playing as much as normal. In dancer news I pushed the job to 64 and really want to finish it. I am sick of exping in parties good or bad and am looking forward to not exping anymore. Gaining dancing edge was very nice. I have been unable to solo goblin pets because dagger lacks any damaging weaponskill before this. Dancer is still very inefficient compared to any other job I have soloed, but it is better than nothing when I do not have the time to commit to a party. I can't wait for 75!

Salvage has slowed to a painful crawl. I want to do more but motivation is dwindling. We have been lacking the people for us to confidently go after any chariot bosses on Thursdays. Among connection problems, people going AWOL, general screw ups, and who knows what else it is becoming tiring. Is it too much to expect people to have an understanding of the basic map layout and monster spawn conditions of Salvage? Everything has been readily available for a long time now. People need to stop being lazy and do a little research. I cannot hold their hand for everything.

On the plus side Kyliee did get this.

Kaboom is back in action. Unfortunately the majority of our focus is spent on KS99 Wyrm nowadays, but money is money. Assuming we get a speed belt to actually make money off all of our kills. The image below summarizes the more interesting part of that set of orbs. A black mage pulled hate while a little in front of the wyrm. Unfortunately, the black mage didn't die to a fire breath. While almost everyone repositioned the only person who didn't was one of the paladins merrily swinging away with his sword at the wyrm's flank. I could see it happening. The paladin took his turn with hate and it all went downhill.

I'm surprised no one appeared to try and stun this.

Surprisingly me and a handful of others, including the paladins, survived the spike flail. Everyone except me and the paladins proceeded to die with a follow up hurricane wing, but what can you do? We quickly recovered and pulled off the win with less than stellar results from the item chest.

I don't even know why I took a picture of this.

Dark knight equipment has been coming along steadily even if I passed a torque I could make use of. I don't know why I always pass things that I can make use of for people with fewer points than me, especially torques from Lumoria. I passed on a justice torque last night. It would have made a nice addition to my collection of torques clogging my inventory and it would be useful on my dark knight! Oh well, I'll probably get the next one. Nyzul did cough up a askar zucchetto for me which is nice. Although we cleared Chubbs' disc for it a hat is a hat.

Not the Nyzul my hat came from but you wouldn't know if I didn't tell you!

Labels: Assault, FFXI, Lumoria, Salvage