Behemoth's Bane and cheating in FFXI

I've been camping Behemoth for a few days now. I've never been to king camps before myself, but of course I've heard all the horror stories. The common opinion seems to be that they aren't even worth trying, because there are always around 100 people in the zone and all of them use bots to claim. Luckily I'm not a person who believes everything she hears without checking the situation out herself.

So I decided to give it a try. Behemoth seemed like a nice NM to camp because it always drops hides which sell for 450K on our server, and it also has a (low) chance of dropping a Black Belt item which I know would be nice for me and my many MNK friends. But my main reason for wanting to try and camp it wasn't the possibility of getting a BB item or the gil but the excitement of trying something totally new.

I was there on a few days with a couple of friends. I noticed soon that the hardest part wasn't actually claiming, but getting some friends to help with killing it in case we'd get the claim. The only one dedicated to camp it was me, and even though some of my friends have said they're interested, they're mostly unable to come online when the window is open. I couldn't do anything but decide to be patient and be there every day just to get ToD if nothing else.

Today when I woke up, I noticed that the window would be open in around 30 mins. I didn't wake up for it in purpose, but my husband had to wake up early today and I wanted to have breakfast with him before he had to leave. I logged in and decided to check the zone. There was no one there yet. I decided to run both my character and my husbands character there just in case. Then I got the idea to also bring my friends WHM there. When the first window opened, there were only me with my 3 chars and a person from a big HNMLS. Of course, I couldn't be so lucky that it would've popped on first window.

After a couple of windows more people started to arrive. I was starting to lose my hope of claiming, but I wanted to stay to get the ToD at least. 15 minutes before the second last window a friend RDM Artemision came online and I asked him if he wanted to join us (my husband had come home at this point). He said yes and hurried to the zone. When he was still on his way, the window had already opened and both me and my husband were hitting our claim macros as fast as possible. Suddenly I saw something huge on my screen and realized it had popped right in front of me. I really didn't know what I was doing because I was in kind of panic but suddenly I noticed its name turn red and saw the text appear in my log: "Evyen uses Chi Blast. The Behemoth takes damage."

First thought in my mind was "What the hell just happened?! o.O" I screamed to my husband: "I got the claim, I got the claim!" and couldn't believe it myself. It took us a while to get over the shock. My husband started building hate (he was there as PLD) and I just stood there next to the mob. Then I suddenly remembered I had brought my friends WHM there so I started to cast buffs on us, just to do something. When Artemision had arrived to us, we started to kill it.

It wasn't really difficult. Our setup was PLD/WAR, MNK/NIN, RDM/BLM and WHM/BLM which was also played by me. The only "problem" was that I was taking the hate off the tank, but it wasn't really a problem since the mob didn't hit very hard. It had also quite bad accuracy, since it missed most of the TP moves it used on me. It wasn't really a difficult fight, I used my 2hr but it was just to make the fight a bit shorter and because I had the hate most of the time anyway.

It was such a great feeling to see it fall down dead and read "Evyen defeats the Behemoth". We were all so happy and proud that we actually claimed and killed it together! A couple of pics here..

The name! It's red!



Notice how pathetic the poor taru tank (the one hiding behind its foot) looks in this pic:



We did it!



I had such a great feeling about our accomplishment that it got me thinking the people who choose to do these things in the "easy" way, cheating. Yesterday was the emergency maintenance which apparantly fixed a glitch which had been widely abused. If I understood it correctly, the glitch made at least some NMs drop 3 of all items. Think about 3 Ixion cloaks and so on from just one NM... I don't really know more about it, I just read a bit BG and Alla this morning and got bored with all the QQing going on there.

I was surprised so many people were actually complaining about SE fixing this glitch so that they can't abuse it anymore. When I read about the glitch, my first thought was "Why didn't anyone report it sooner?" Seems like there's something wrong with me because I honestly thought I'd report it asap if I saw something like that happen. Of course, it's easy for me to talk because I don't do for example Salvage, which I understood was the place where the glitch was mostly abused. But for me, the right thing to do would be to report it. I wouldn't really feel I deserved the gear if I got it in a way I wasn't intended to get it. It would take all the warm and fuzzy feelings out of it, it wouldn't feel like an accomplishment to me.

Same applies to camping NMs. I've never really understood why someone wants to use bots to claim them. I know that if I had used some unfair means to get to claim today, it wouldn't have been the same at all. I wouldn't have been so happy, probably I had just felt ashamed and guilty. It would've taken all the excitement and fun out from the experience.

I'm quite sure though that those people who do bot aren't really looking for that fun and excitement, but something else. I'm also quite sure that they think I'm really stupid to be so excited and happy about claiming one tiny NM once. But I don't really care, it's just my way to feel and my way to play this game. The only sad thing is, my way of playing doesn't really hurt anyone elses experience, but their way of playing does.

Anyway, enough thinking for now... I haven't again done much this week because I've been ill (a horrible flu, still). But on Tuesday there was my husbands birthday party in Windurst. I stayed there for a while even though I felt horrible, just because I didn't want to miss it. But when everyone else decided to go out and start singing and dancing, I decided to go to sleep instead. Anyway, the party was fun and my husband got a lot of great gifts!





And for the end a landscape pic I took while I was exping my DNC in Tahrongi Canyon:

I'm free!

Yesterday I left my "HNMLS" Europa. It's kind of hard to explain why I did it. First of all, I've not had fun in LS events for a while now. I've always been in a bad mood during those events, even my husband has noticed that. So that's the main reason I guess. I don't know why it hasn't been fun for me anymore. It just hasn't. For me, the atmosphere hasn't been very nice lately and I just haven't enjoyed my time spent in LS. That isn't anyones fault, it's just the way it is.

And then yesterday there happened two things which kind of made me do the final decision. First of all, in the beginning of our event, Xolotl was up. We have several people with Xol drops on their wish list (myself included). However, our leader decided we won't kill it. So, for me (and this is just my side of the story, I don't really know his) it just felt like he didn't bother with our wishes. Which got me thinking that why am I in that LS if the group doesn't care about my wishes. Of course I'm not saying it's so simple or that our leaders really think like that, but that's the feeling I got.

The second thing that happened yesterday was a disagreement between me and our LS leader. The thing is, I actually like camping NMs. I don't know why, but I do. That was one of the reasons why I joined Europa in the first place. But at the moment, Europa doesn't camp NMs. At all. So, I asked our leader if I can camp them on my own time with my friends then. He said no. I asked why. He said because it's in our rules. Well, we have also in our rules that we will camp Kings while their window is on our event time, but we won't do that either. I thought these two rules would go together: we can't camp HNMs on our own time because that would be a conflict of interest and could harm our linkshell. But because we don't camp them with LS, there is no conflict. No harm for linkshell. So for me, this just makes no sense. I can't camp these NMs in our LS, but I can't camp them outside the LS either.

So, our LS leader said that if I want to camp them, I will need to leave the LS. That really made me do the final decision. I have nothing agains the LS, the people in LS or the LS leader. I just didn't agree with the rules, didn't agree with being told I can't do what I want on my own game time (when it didn't harm the LS in any way) and lately I didn't enjoy the time I spent in LS events. These things together made me realize it was time for me to leave.

During my time in Europa, I experienced a lot of new things. I fought some NMs I've never tried before, got sea and did some ENMs and KSNMs I've never done before. I learned a lot and for that I'm thankful. I also met new people, and some of them became people I can call my friends. I will miss doing events with these people, I kind of miss it already.

I think I've said all I wanted to say. Explained why I left and said thank you for the time I've spend there. And please remember, the feelings and thoughts I've written here are just my side of the story, just my personal experience, nothing more or less.

A bit PUP endgame, a NM in the past and more whining about whiners

On Thursday me and my husband woke up, looked out from our window and saw this:



It's winter here now, it seems! Too bad we can't really enjoy it, because we're both ill atm (got a flu). But I hope we'll get better during this weekend.

In game, I've tried endgame a bit as a PUP. On Monday I did limbus as a PUP (used RNG frame, unfortunately don't remember the zone) and it was great to do something else than sing for a change. Also yesterday on our ZNM run, I used PUP for the first time on Cheese Hoarder Gigiroon. My automaton magic skill isn't fully merited yet, but I think Comedies nukes did some ok damage. This was one of her best nukes:



The ZNM run yesterday went ok. We did 8 pops and got some nice drops. I just felt tired and ill and tried to do my best to make the run go as smooth as possible... until in the end when one guy managed to piss me off and I basically told him to stfu. The leader had told us to move together but some people (including this guy) ran ahead (to the wrong direction, of course), so we had to go raise them and whatever which made us lose too much time.

Well, when we were going to the last NM, this guy kept complaining about how it took so long and he was already late from another event. Then he just ran somewhere and died (he was in a horrible place, in a wrong direction and it took us some time to raise him because we had to kill all the mobs on the way to him). Then, when we were finally at the camp, this guy fell off to another area and couldn't come back up. So we told him to die so we can tractor him, and he kept complaining about exp loss (boohoo @ losing a few hundred exp with R3).

I just hate it when people just whine and whine and whine and complain and whine some more about the things that are mostly their own fault. I mean, who told him to fell down so that he can't get back to us? No one! Instead, he was (we all were) told several times to follow our leader and stay together. It's only his own fault if he doesn't follow instructions and has to die because of that. Also, it's totally not our fault if he's late for another event, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. So no point in complaining about that to us, it just makes us feel irritated. It's your decision if you stay for so long that you miss another event or not, so whatever you decide, you should be ok with that. If you're not, well then it's your problem, not mine. Just stop whining in LS and party chat.

Anyway, like I said, the run went ok. I think I shouldn't have said anything maybe, but well, what's done is done. I apologized to our leader though, since I don't want to bring any bad atmosphere in the LS, and I certainly don't want to cause any drama. I should learn to control myself a bit better maybe, and not let people annoy me so much.



Yesterday we did also a couple of Ilrusi Atoll assaults and a Besieged with SecretFellowship. It was fun and relaxing, I'd like to do more stuff with these people!



Today when we logged in, a LS friend told us that the NM which drops Molione's Sickle, Ba'Tho Mercifulheart was up. They were there with a DRK, PLD and RDM and had just wiped. No one else was there, so we hurried to help them. When we got to the camp, they were keeping the NM slept and killing a link. At this point, we were DRK (weakened), 2 x PLD (both weakened...), RDM, WHM, SAM and BRD. Well, the link didn't want to die and the NM was hard to keep asleep, so we wiped, again. How sad.



After the wipe, we reraised, got aggro and wiped again. Good times!

Luckily, our amazing saviour-kiter-rdm Xmysticlegend was already on his way to the rescue! So we raised our dead and made them run safe to the zone. Then we rested full and let Xmysticlegend pull the NM (and an army of other quadav) to the zone, where we finally succeeded to kill it easily with no deaths. No drop either though.





I liked the Beadeaux of the past a lot more than the Beadeaux in the present! It was prettier and the music is so much cooler! Of course the mobs also wipe the floor with me, unfortunately. Putting true sight imps in Beadeaux is just pure evil. ; ;

PUPs being robbed!

If you play(ed) a mage job, how much gil would you be willing to pay to be able to get 15-45% of your max MP back every three minutes (without having to lose any HP or anything else)? It sure is a nice ability, isn't it? But maybe not worth that much gil... Hard to say, because mages usually don't have to pay for their abilities.

PUP, on the other hand, has to pay for every job ability the automaton learns. Stoneskin (Shock Absorber) costs 10K at the moment on our server, Flash (Flasbulb) and Convert (Mana Converter) are also around 10K and so on. Some of those attachments are quite easy to get, and they don't cost as much as the rarest ones.

You can, of course, play PUP without getting the best (and usually also the rarest and most expensive) attachments, just like you can play any other job without having the best gear available. But, I, as a player, usually want the best gear (well, not including the seriously too expensive stuff like relic weapons and so on), and I also want the best attachments for my automaton.

So yeah, I don't want to skip the opportunity to get a nice amount of MP back every three minutes for my automaton. I've wanted to get this attachment for a while now, but there has never been one in AH when I've checked. Well, today I checked AH again, and to my surprise, there were two of them! I was excited, hoping that because there were two, they would be cheaper than usual.



But, because people never undercut things I want to buy, I ended up paying 550,000 gil for it. No, that's not a typo. I did pay over half a million gil for an automaton attachment.

/sigh

After dying a little inside because I had just spent so much gil, I decided to go do a bit Besieged with my husband. Because Comedies automaton archery is now capped and I wanted to try my new attachment, I decided to go with the BLM frame. There was a double Besieged, and in the end of the second one, my automatons magic skill was 0.1 levels from the cap. So we went out to kill a few colibris and spiders and Comedie finally got the last 0.1 skillup!



Archery and magic done, only melee to go!

Oooo, and I almost forgot, I got something very nice for myself from Dynamis-San d'Oria yesterday:



Now I'm only missing the hat (which isn't really good for anything else than moving from a campaign battle to another or something like that) and the cape (which is pure hotness).

I also did a few synths today and got my Goldsmithing to level 45! That means I won't get skillups from Reraise earrings anymore, so I need to find another profitable synth for skilling up. I can still make money with them, though, so it doesn't matter that much.

Cold cookies

On Thursday we did NW Apollyon. Everything went ok until the last floor, when a BLM succeeded to overnuke and then nearly wipe us all. It was frustrating to die and lose EXP just because someone didn't pay attention to the LS chat and leaders instructions. I don't mind mistakes, they happen to everyone sometimes, but it is irritating to see some people do the same mistakes all over again... How difficult is it just to focus, listen, and do as you're told to do for once?



Anyway, we won the run and I got the PUP item. I have no idea which piece I'll upgrade first, the PUP relic is so awesome I don't know how much I'll use AF+1... Need to check the stats again and think a bit.

On Friday we had a ZNM run which went really well! There was some minor drama though, but it was so stupid and pointless and it's really not even worth mentioning. I popped Iriz Ima because I'm working on tier IV Tinnin pop.

Talking about Tinnin, we popped it on Friday for the first time. We had a pretty good setup:

Tank pt: PLD/NIN, PLD/NIN, WHM/BLM, BRD/WHM, RDM/WHM, RDM/WHM
BLM pt: WHM, RDM, 3 x BLM
DD pt: WAR, SAM, BLU

Our strategy for damage was doing Fragmentation SC with mages MBing with AM2. We had two tanks and many mages for viruna, poisona, paralyna and cures. The strategy was good, but we did one big mistake. We should've made it clear which mage is responsible for which tank and so on. Because we didn't do that, both tanks went down after a while and after that we started to wipe and it was impossible to recover. I think it might have been good to have 2 WHM in the tank pt and maybe even a third PLD. Also it wouldn't hurt to have more BLMs for MB, just to make the fight shorter.

The fight didn't go very well, but I think we learned much from it. Too bad it takes so long to get that pop item, I feel sorry for Pyo who lost his pop.









On Friday we also did some Assaults with SecretFellowship. All went well and it was fun. I also capped my automaton archery skill there! ^^



Yesterday we did ENM run with SecretFellowship. I wanted to try Brothers because we had never done anything in that area and it had some nice drops. Well, we've spent over 2 hours just trying to get to the ENM area... I was such a nooblet, aggroed many mobs and even fell down at some point. It was a disaster... Tahvo summed it up pretty well, he said:

It's funny, you spend all this time to get to 75 so that most mobs are too afraid to aggro you. Then you INSIST on coming to places like this where there are angry cows that can see through invis and all kinds of snowballs that freeze you to death, scary gaping holes where you fall in to oblivion. And even the cookies you packed for lunch are covered in frost so you can't even eat them for comfort, unless you want your teeth broken. ; ;

Here's Vana'diels Top Winter Fashion 2008-2009:

An epic battle on a boat

This week we've been camping King Vinegarroon a couple of times. On the first day we camped it, it popped early and two people had to kite it for 2,5 hours while we waited for LS members to come online. On the second day we had more people online and only had to kite around half an hour while we gathered and buffed. We've camped it on two days this week, killed on both days, and got an Ace's Helm on both days! Lucky us. ^^



Yesterday we did a couple of ToAU missions (13 and 15) for a LS member Alixia. First one was the fomor NM Jazaraat which was easy with 3 people (DRG, PUP, RDM). The second was the BCNM on Ashu Talif. It was a 6 member fight but we went as 4: MNK, DRG, RDM, SCH. Our strategy was to sleepga and then pick the Ashu Talif crew members one at a time. However, the sleepga got resisted somehow, so all the bad guys were suddenly on our SCH, which made us go /panic and not follow the plan. It was a total chaos, people were soloing whatever mobs they saw (I had two on me) but it was sooooooo fun! I don't remember having that much fun in a mission for a long time! I was running around the ship hunting the crew members and it was all chaotic.

When we had killed them all, another set of crew members popped, this time with their captain. We all focused on the captain, and our SCH Dazz kept kiting the others. I used Hundred Fists on the captain, after which he did a 900+ dmg TP move on me and I died... But we won and I was the only one to die!







Yesterday we did a Kirin with Europa. It dropped an osode (I think I'm first in line after that one!) and Shura Body abj. which no one wanted and it floored. Kirin went ok, a few deaths, especially after Astral Flow, but it didn' take too long. I was a DD party leader as a BRD so I spent all the fight running after the melees and singing Minuet every time they stopped.

After Kirin we did Einherjar, second wing again. The first mobs were bats which went down nicely, but after them popped worms and this corse boss that someone aggroed... So we got the Mega Boss on us without buffs, songs, and so on. Well, we got it down but it was slow and we didn't have enough time for the worms, which were slow to kill. So we lost.

While fighting the boss, I got charmed and started smacking another (taru) BRD in the head with my Light Staff. It was funny. Good thing I didn't do much dmg and mostly missed.



Today I logged in and noticed there were a few ingots of Vivified Mythril in AH so I bought them and teled to Rabao to buy some Mythril Earrings. I did 3 synths and got 0.1 skillup. My skill is now 44.2 maybe, I'm not sure... Anyway, at level 45 I'll get the next rank and can get my cool sunclasses (after saving about 50K guild points of course...)!

Dynamis gone weird (also BRD & PUP gear plans)

As I wrote on last update, we've had quite a lot of LS parties lately, which means I've got some merits. I have 52 merits now in total, and hoping to get more soon. My husband has his PLD at level 72 at the moment, so I'm trying to party with him as much as I can. I usually go as BRD because we don't have other active BRDs in the LS at the moment. I like pulling and buffing melees, and it's also cheaper for me than playing other jobs, especially PUP (sole sushi and automaton oils +2 aren't cheap).



I've been also working on my BRD and PUP gear. There aren't many pieces of gear I'm missing on any of my 75s. For BRD I need Sha'ir Manteel (for which I'm second in line I think), Loquacious earring, AF+1 legs (need to start doing Limbus again) and Astute Cape (again, second in line but the NM and drop rate suck). I also need to upgrate my Light Staff to Apollo's, but that's not my first concern. After these I'll be happy with my BRD gear.

For PUP, there are more things I want... First of all, there's Animator +1 but since I'm doing Einherjar two times a week, it shouldn't take too long to get. Then there's the Pahluwan head, which is from Leujaoam Sanctum Assault, 20K points. So I'll just need to do Assault. Then there's Faith Torque... I have no idea how many people are in line for that before me. For ears I'll want Brutal Earring (yeah don't have one yet) and Merman's Earring, which I should buy. There are also two ZNM pieces I want: Enkidu's body and feet. And then the relic cape! Oh god, that's a lot of work... I'm also still missing some attachments: Hammermill, Condenser, Eraser, Smoke Screen and Economizer. For positive news, my automaton magic skill is now capped and archery skill only two skill levels from cap, which is great!

Yesterday we tried the second wing in Einherjar for the third time, and this time we won! The mobs were bats and leeches, and the boss was Dahak. Was an easy zerg battle, no deaths. I finally got my first Einherjar item:



That will replace my Minstrel's Ring when I'm not on yellow HP and my Nereid Ring when I am on yellow HP.

In the evening, we had a Dynamis-Beaucedine run. It was mostly a good run, but there were a couple of things that went terribly wrong... First of all, some melees attacked an orc NM which resulted in nearly full wipe. I don't know why they did that, especially when our LS leader said in linkshell chat that all melees should move far away while mages kill the orc NMs. The second thing was even weirder: two people died at some point, but they didn't mention it in LS chat, nor did they ask anyone to raise them or anything... At last someone from their alliance mentioned it when we were ready to pull the boss, 30 minutes (!) after they had died. No one had no idea of where they were. I would've just left them there, but our LS leader wanted to "leave no one behind" and went to look for them... which resulted in more deaths. So, those guys never got to the boss camp and we lost all the valuable farming time.

Luckily, I was too happy to care, because I had just got this:



So I've already got half of the PUP relic set: body, hands and legs. Still missing the cape, head and feet. Looking forward to our Dreamlands runs in next month!

A week of chaos and destruction

Seems like mostly everything has been going straight to hell in both FFXI and my real life this week... But I'll try to get past all that and write only about the positive things. So unfortunately, this will be a short post.

We've been having quite a lot of LS parties which have been great every time. It's so fun and relaxing to exp with friends! I also soloed my DNC for a few levels the other day, it's level 13 now. I'm really not that interested in the job, but I love the dance animations, they look great!



Today was a nice day. We did ENM Test your mite and KSNM ODS with Secret Fellowship. I got Damascus Ingot which sold for 350K.





After that we went to do the Diabolos fight for CoP, since one LS member needed it. And we wiped. Twice. I still have no idea what was going on there. But well, can't win every time.

Missions!

I've done quite a lot during the past week. First of all, my dear friend Shokun came back from his FFXI break and we decided to do rank 6 missions. Our friend Shisui needed them also for her other character Ashelia, and another LS friend Buttons needed them too, so we gathered a group together and got help from Tahvo and Xmysticlegend. It was fun and we won both fights easily.









Last Saturday we did ZM5-ZM13 to get Sky for people in our LS. We did the missions in about 5 hours I think, the fights were easy but we lost some time because of aggros in Ifrit's Cauldron. Anyway, everyone but one person who had to leave early got Sky. Was a long way but it was fun!







I feel a bit guilty because I've neglected my chocobo lately... WildRhapsody is an adult now, and has a bit weird color maybe (?): she's yellow but has brown on tips of her feathers. She also has a huge beak which makes her look a bit funny. Anyway, I finally got her to learn Treasure Finder today!



Since me and my husband had our second wedding anniversary yesterday, I'll end this post with a random screenshot of us. Here he is hiding behind me, can you see how short the tarus are, even compared to small elvaans? ^^