You're doing it wrong!

I have moved

2009-06-04T09:15:00.000+03:00

The new address of the blog is usva.nu/evyen. See you there! ^^

Our first Proto-Omega!

2009-03-31T13:38:00.003+03:00

To be honest, I was extremely nervous about our first Omega. Our group only has 14 members and only five of us had done Omega before. Our setup was following:

Tank party: NIN/DRK, PLD/NIN, WHM/SMN, RDM/DRK, BRD/WHM
BLM party: BLM/WHM x 5 + BRD/WHM
Melee party (erm trio): WHM/SMN, WAR/NIN, MNK/NIN

We kited it when it was on 2 feet and straight tanked when it was on 4 feet. Our BLMs used only tier III and IV for the first 75%. Our WAR voked the gunbods and we had two BLM casting tier IV to kill them. Since it was our first try, we didn't farm the pods.

For the last 25% after the last gunpod was dead our RDM/DRK used CS+Stun, PLD used Invincible, melees used 2hr and BLMs started to cast AM. We killed it with plenty of time to spare and got hands and head as drops. Congratulations guys!

I'm so proud of our little group, everyone played so well and did excatly as they were told to do! There weren't any problems and only one BLM died. Good job guys, I love you all! <3

(I'm back!) I guess...

2009-03-28T18:13:00.002+02:00

It's been a while since I've really played FFXI, other than logging in to do events. And well, I quit most of my events. For a while I've been only doing Limbus and my Sunday events: Sky and Dynamis, and even that has been impossible at times. But after taking a somewhat total break from the game, I've actually felt like playing it again. Just not too much.

I decided to finish my project "get all subjobs done", and at the moment my job level list looks quite nice:

At the moment I have 6 subs leveled: WAR, NIN, DNC, THF, WHM & BLM. My last goal is to get my RDM to 37 as well and I'll have all the subs I need for now.

My latest achievement was to get my BLM finally to level 37 today! I soloed it almost all the way in pet camps, but I also duoed a bit with my husband. We had amazing time duoing mandies in the jungles:

I also used the yhoator pet camp which was amazingly never taken!

As you can notice, I had unbelievably gimp gear nearly the whole time... For example I used the xmas event boots until I could wear my RSE. And I didn't even bother to mule Seers since Elvaan RSE worked just fine.

I got my last BLM level in this amazing LS Qufim party (level 20) today. Our setup was THF, 2 x DNC, NIN, SAM and BLM and we owned the zone. It didn't start very well: I told our THF to pull before one of our dancers was there and before our SAM had any weapon...and of course I told him to pull a clipper. We almost died on that, but when we got all our members there and geared we succeeded to chain them. Then we decided to move to the pond to chain worms and we got chain #6 on them, which was pretty nice. Later my husband came to PL us, which made it even faster if possible. It was a great party!

I'M IN YOUR QUFIM, CLAIMING YOUR MOBS:

Then we had a Nyzul run, started from floor 46. Shokun kept d/cing for the first 3 tags and we failed two of them, but at least we got to floor 55. Boss run next time! We also got some amazing drops:

Also, our little limbus group is doing our first Omega on Monday! I'm soooo excited, can't wait!

ToAU 44 and other stuff

2009-02-19T16:23:00.006+02:00

Yesterday made me remember why I actually like this game. For a while I have been only logging in because I have to, and it definitely hasn't been fun. Well, of course I have enjoyed doing dynamis and some other stuff, but mostly it hasn't been very enjoyable. Until last night.

We were doing ToAU mission 44, which is the much feared Alexander fight, probably the most difficult mission in the game currently. To be honest, I was pretty sure we wouldn't win, because I had heard so much horror stories about that mission, about losing again and again even when using The Most Optimal Setups. And well, our static - like all our LS statics - are based on who wants to do the missions, not on which jobs they have leveled.

Anyway, at first our setup was RDM/DRK, BLM/WHM, PLD/NIN, DRG/WHM, DRG/RDM and PUP/NIN (me). On the first try we wiped to the BLU guy and decided to just HP and go again. On the second try we knew we would run out of time, but we used it for a kind of "dry run" to see how Alexander is like. We got it maybe down to 75% before we wiped. Our third try didn't go well at all, and we decided to just give up, and at that point our second DRG needed to leave.

So, we replaced the DRG with a LS friend who had done the mission before. After that our setup was WHM/SMN, RDM/DRK, BLM/WHM, PLD/NIN, DRG/SAM and PUP/NIN (still me). We went in, tried again, got Alexander to 3% and got thrown out. But the good thing was, we weren't pissed off, we were laughing! It was so unbelievably funny and epic how we just kept throwing bodies at it and praying for the best... And it was so close in the end!

Because it had been so close and we were having so much fun, we decided not to give up just yet. We used a COR to get our 2hrs back and decided to give it one last try. Well, in the end, the next try failed and we decided to give up and come back, but anyway... On our sixth, final try, we finally won! It was really, really close though, because after we got the "You have 30 seconds left in the battlefield" message, Alexander had still a few % HP and he used the invinsible shield move which meant we couldn't damage him in any way. Luckily, it wore just a few seconds before time ran out, and then Alix used a WS and Red landed a spell to finish him off. I couldn't believe we actually made it! It wasn't an easy mission, but in my opinion, with a good team of friends, (almost) anything in this game is possible, if you just won't give up! And this one proved it, once again.

If someone is interested, I'll tell a bit about the strategy we used the time we won. This might be interesting for Puppetmasters at least. ^^

Raubahn Form One:

As soon as we entered, we ate food, used reraises, casted protectra & shellra and then ran away from the door and pulled Raubahn in to a corner where there was more space for mages to stay far. For the first and easiest form, we used mostly only magic damage. Our PLD was only melee engaged all the time, and our BLM, RDM and PUPs BLM automaton nuked him down. BLM and RDM also took turns stunning Eyes On Me. When he used 2hr, BLM and RDM kept stunning/sleeping him to prevent him from one-shotting us with EOM, but we never disengaged or stopped dealing damage. When he was around 20%, DRG engaged too.

Raubahn Form Two:

I changed my automaton to ranged frame (ranged to keep Comedie far enough to prevent her eating AoE) and meleed the second form down with PLD and DRG. BLM and RDM kept stunning / sleeping and we tried to take him down asap.

Raubahn Form Three:

Our strategy was simply "kill him asap and try to survive". The third form really sucked, but on our final try we got him down pretty fast. I continued using ranged frame, and I think Armor Piercer did around 800 damage on him. No one died while fighting Raubahn, and when he finally died the third time, our mages were ok with MP.

Razfahd

This was the easiest part of the mission, because he wasn't really able to hurt us in any way. We tried to get him down to 50% asap, using any damage available. While fighting him, I deactivated my automaton and changed back to the BLM frame for Alexander.

When we had gotten Razfahd down to 50%, we got the CS, and decided to rest full since we were really good with time (30 mins left or something like that). After that, we engaged Alexander. Our PLD/NIN stood in front of it (I don't remember if he was in melee distance in the end or not, but I think that he did melee). Mages were far away on both sides of Alexander (and so was my automaton, as far as possible) and me and DRG were meleeing on different sides of him. The positioning was extremely important, and somehow I managed to do it so that my automaton didn't take any of the AoE damage! That was really lucky, because her nukes did a lot more damage than my meleeing.

Our biggest problem during the fight was Alexanders 2hr, Divine Judgement, as we didn't really come up with any good strategy for it. On this final try, we tried to get our BLM to nuke away all his MP, grab hate and die to his 2hr while others ran away ("Because we're brave like that", as Alix said ;)). The problem was, our BLM actually died before he even used 2hr, and in the end, that situation became a full wipe. However, most of us succeeded to die in a safe place (well, everyone but the poor BLM who got drawn in), and we had plenty of time to reraise and recover. And when Alexander used his 2hr again when he was on about 4%, we succeeded to avoid it slightly better (I think).

In the end, I used about a stack of food, a reraise earring and whatnot for this mission, but it was all worth it, because WE WON! WON WON WON WON! And I got a cute grown and a nice ring! So it was totally worth it!

But really, the best thing was that it was so fun! It was such a great feeling to finish something this difficult with friends. I laughed so much yesterday, especially when we got thrown out from the battlefield when Alexander was on 3%, I had such a great time! Call me crazy, but those are the moments that make this game enjoyable for me!

Talking about enjoyable, we also had our first Limbus run with SecretFellowship! I decided we start with NE Apollyon, because it's the most easy Limbus zone I know. And it was really almost perfect, we finished the zone with about half an hour left or something. Red kind off took the lead there, but I didn't mind, because well, he's just so good at it. It's just a bit amusing because he's always telling how much he hates leading stuff, so I just had to tease him about it. Anyway, I love our group, and I'm really looking forward to our future runs!

Also, the Einherjar group I recently left, finally got to do their first Odin and I promised to help. And, we got thrown out when he was at 1-3% HP. I'm pretty annoyed because that will most likely be the one and only time I never get to fight him (because well, I'm really not interested in doing Einherjar), so I wanted the experience and the title and the memory... But well, I guess I will remember that time as the-time-when-we-I-almost-became-Elite-Einherjar.

Because I'm bored

2009-02-11T17:53:00.002+02:00

Some um...interesting? things being said about me in LS chat:

Oh right and we killed Tinnin with Epic for the first time! Grats for Enkidu's body Pyootu!

And then me and Red went disturbing:

Pimp my BRD!

2009-01-27T14:58:00.003+02:00

Yesterday some of my beloved LS friends did some Periqia assaults with me to get me the Yigit body finally! Thanks guys, <3 you!

That got me thinking about my current BRD gear and how I'd like to make it better. This is what I use now...

Weapon

For Elegy.

For Finale and Cures when /WHM. Will update to Apollo's at some point.

For all other songs.

I am thinking about getting Earth Grip for Elegy and Light Grip for Finale.

Head, neck and ears

It's pretty and good.

This is the best neck piece for BRD I think?

Not much to say about earrings... <3 them

Body, hands, rings

I love it! Love it love it love it!

My first and only upgraded AF piece. Totally hot!

This was the first item I got from Einherjar.

The latent is pure hotness! Got this from a solo BCNM ages ago, lucky me!

This is for situations where I can't be on yellow HP or when I really need that extra 2 CHR.

Back, waist, legs, feet

The piece I really want for this slot is Astute cape, but as I don't do Sea at the moment, this will do for now.

Meh.

These will be upgraded to +1 when I get my Limbo group going somewhere in the future.

Probably the best feet piece for BRD at the moment.

My Bard isn't really amazingly pimp, but I've worked hard for every piece of gear and I'm currently quite satisfied with the gear I have. Next I'll be working for my yellow HP macro, I think Zenith gear is a good way to start (well, because I need an excuse to do Sky...)

LOL @ banned people, Dynamis, ToAU & WotG missions

2009-01-23T11:57:00.005+02:00

Of course all the FFXI community is talking about the bannings of Salvage duppers at the moment. It's been entertaining to read all the QQing in BG. The comments that have said how FFXI will be dieing (!!!) now with all those HQ endgamers gone have been the best laugh. Hate to break this to you, but this game doesn't revolve around you. You broke the rules and knew the risks, now face the consequences like a (wo)man and stop whining.

Haven't felt like logging in for a while. I got my DNC and THF to 37 so all my needed melee subs (WAR, NIN, THF, DNC) are done. Next I should focus on getting RDM (currently 24) and BLM (currently 22) to 37, but don't know how to do it. I'd like to duo with someone maybe, but don't know if anyone else has a melee job they'd like to level with me. Partying is of course always an option but for some reason I really don't feel like going looking for party...

So instead of playing, I've been studying a bit (well, at least trying), doing iaido and reading and writing fanfiction. I've only logged in for events or to check my plants but mostly I haven't felt like doing even that. We'll see how long this will last.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I was talking to a FFXI friend of mine in Facebook. He mentioned he had crafted a Royal Cloak. Some mental malfunction hit me and I decided to buy it. I have no idea why, really. I guess I have too much gil. I don't even have a job that would need it really. Well I've used it on my BRD when I've had to recover MP fast and it's a nice idle piece I guess. My LS friends have been happy to /point and /laugh at me every time they've seen me wearing it though... As they said, it's probably the most stupid thing one can put their money to.

But it so red and hot!

Dynamis-Windurst was pretty much a chaos on Sunday. We didn't have that many members on that run, and too many left in the middle of the run for whatever reason... We were left with not enough people to even try the boss pull and we had a couple of horrible wipes. People who stayed to the end were somewhat angry about so many people leaving and wanted to get extra points for staying to the end. Well, I decided to give them full 5 points and only 3 points for those who didn't stay to the end. I know at least most if not all of the people who left in the middle of run had a good reason to do it, but in the end it still meant we weren't able to even get to the boss and I felt like it would be fair to give some compensation of the time and EXP lost for those who did stay to the end.

Many people thought people didn't attend the run because they don't want to do city dynamis. I don't know if it's true or not, but I hope everyone understands we have many new members who need the city zones cleared before we can organize Northlands runs again. If people keep skipping the city runs like this, we'll never get to Northlands again... Anyway, it's Dynamis-Bastok this Sunday, the zone is easy and I'm pretty confident we will clear it.

With SecretFellowshep we've started doing ToAU missions. We did ToAU22 and will do ToAU29 next Monday. It has been easy and fun, but the storyline isn't as interesting as CoP or WotG have been in my opinion.

We've also done the WotG missions a bit, we're currently on mission 10. I think I should get those cs and farming done because I think others are waiting for me... Anyway, the storyline is still great! Some CS pics...

Flying dancers:

Camouflage!

Chilling out with Lili:

Wuts this? /poke

Cat /panic

A cat with nine lives:

<3 My favourite badass <3

Gimme a big warm hug!

Leading Dynamis and other problems

2009-01-12T13:44:00.006+02:00

Our Dynamis leader needed to take a two month break from the game because of his studies and at the same time our second Dynamis leader wanted to take a break from FFXI. We also have two other sackholders, a guy who's responsible for LS bank and then me. So when the people who usually organize schedules, points, lots, setups and so on go to holiday, that work is left for me.

I've never really wanted to lead Dynamis and if I started an end game LS it certainly wouldn't be a Dynamis LS. But well, as I had previously lead a couple of runs and done setups and points for the LS, I didn't mind taking the job. Also, I suggested a person to be responsible for pulls and moving camp and another person to be responsible for BLM strategies, so I wouldn't be the only person leading the run and taking responsibility.

Yesterday was the first run without our leader. We were supposed to do Dynamis-San d'oria but a half an hour before we were supposed to enter, a group of six (!) entered the zone. I contacted their leader asking which Dynamis Calendar are they using (the answer was none...) and how long they would be in the zone (the answer was they don't know...) Our LS has never had problems with other groups since we have always been using Dynamis calendar and been in contact with other groups. But well, what can you really do when there's a 6 person group willing to take any zone they want not caring about LS which has scheduled this run with other linkshells?

So my first Dynamis run with me as a leader didn't start so well... I tried to talk with the group to find a solution but I didn't get any information out of them and finally I just decided to change our run to Bastok which was free. I was actually surprised how fast we got everyone to move from Sandy to Bastok, and we entered Dynamis only 10 minutes late.

The run itself went mostly really well. We got 13 pieces of gear and 6 wootz ores. Mobs went down fast and our setup seemed to work. The only big problems came when we were ready to pull the boss. The thing is, I had been so nervous about being leader for the first time and having to change the run so fast that I didn't check any info about the boss in that zone. So when we did our first sacpull to get the boss, our PLD who was bringing the boss to camp got bound... and we weren't ready for it. Long story short, we wiped and proceeded to second try.

On the second try we got a WHM and another PLD ready to support with pulling... Except that time the boss opened with casting Death on first PLD and the second PLD somehow failed to get the boss. Which meant we didn't get the boss again, ran out of time and had to exit the zone without win.

It was quite a bad ending for an otherwise good run. I blamed myself for not making sure we were well prepared for the boss and all the PLDs blamed themselves for not pulling the boss to camp... Anyway, in my opinion, it wasn't really anyones fault, it was just a moment of unthoughtfulness and bad preparation.

Other than dynamis, I've been doing somewhat a lot. Maybe too much. I'm starting to feel I'm too busy with all my FFXI events to focus on my studies well enough and that's definitely a bad sign. At the moment my schedule is this:

Monday: Free!
Tuesday: Assault, Salvage
Wednesday: Einherjar
Thursday: Free!
Friday: ZNM
Saturday: Nyzul Isle, Salvage
Sunday: Einherjar, Dynamis

So I only have two days a week free from events which really isn't enough for me at the moment. Nyzul Isle is my absolutely favourite event at the moment, I have so much fun there every time! Dynamis is also fun and there's a lot of gear I want from there, so I'm not thinking about quitting that any time soon. Then there's Salvage which is fun and doesn't really take that much time, and Assault which I need to do to be able to do Salvage and to get some gear. That leaves me with ZNM and Einherjar. Our ZNM group is nice but it takes a lot of time to farm zeni for pops and quitting ZNM would leave my Friday completely free from events. Einherjar, well... I don't really know why I'm doing it. So if I'll quit something, Einherjar will most likely be the first thing.

Talking about Einherjar, we finally won the Wing 3 yesterday! It was quite an easy chamber with Hydra boss and we won with 5 minutes left! Odin next week!

In Salvage, we've had two runs now, both in Zhayolm Remnants. Our goal has been to unlock 3 members fully to be able to pop the Porroggo NM in 5th floor and on the second try we were able to do it! The problem was, we didn't get the NM down... We were so busy to attack it that we didn't really even think of a strategy. Well, I'm sure it will go better next time.

In Nyzul Isle, I've had to make some difficult decisions about our setup. A while ago we took two new members to our static, which meant we needed to start all over from floor 1 for them. Then, on what was supposed to be their second run, one of them didn't show up, not sending any message... Not hearing from him for a week, I decided to replace him with yet another person (which of course meant starting AGAIN from floor 1)... and of course, after I had replaced the said person, he sent me a /tell asking if he's still in the static and explaining that he had had some credit card issues and he's POL account had been deactivated.

The thing is, he could still have sent me a message on our forums or something, but he didn't. So I said I'm sorry but I had already replaced him, and that I couldn't expect my static members to do the same floors all over again just for him if he didn't even bother to contact us in case he couldn't attend a run. It was a bit harsh from me, but well, I had to make the decision as the leader of the static. Anyway, I'm quite happy with our current setup. Everyone is at least on floor 10 and we've had two successful floor 20 boss runs (no drops though). On Saturday we had our best run so far: we managed to climb 5 floors up on every tag, getting from floor 1 to 20 and killing Fafnir!

10大ニュース and more WotG!

2008-12-31T20:23:00.008+02:00

10大ニュース or Ten Most Important FFXI Things I Did 2008

10. I tried Salvage, Einherjar and Nyzul Isle for the first time.
8. I claimed and killed Behemoth with my friends.
7. I joined Sky LS Lowquality and fought all Sky gods and Kirin for the first time.
6. I joined Dynamis LS ShadowHearts and did Dynamis for the first time.
5. I joined ZNMLS Epic.
4. I joined and left Europa LS.
3. I leveled 3 jobs to 75: MNK, BRD and PUP.
9. I got rank 10 in San-d'Oria.
2. I completed CoP and ZM.
1. I founded our dear LS SecretFellowship together with my husband and our friends.

Year 2008 was a really important year for me in FFXI since I got my first 75 job (Monk) in January and after that I got to experience loads of new stuff.

And in case I'm still playing after a year...

Ten things I want to do in 2009

10. Kill Odin.
9. Get some Salvage gear.
8. Finish merits with current 75 jobs.
7. Complete Dynamis-Xarcabard and all the Dreamland zones.
6. Climb to floor 100 in Nyzul Isle.
5. Get rank 10 in Windurst.
4. Finish ToAU missions.
3. Get THF, RDM and BLM to 37.
2. Level SAM to 75.
1. Level SCH to 75.

More WotG missions (spoilers) !

We did the mission 7 fight in La Vaule. The cs were simply amazing and the story is getting really interesting!

Some pics from mission 7: Purple, The New Black

Elvaans can be epic too!

These are my new favourite badasses, Hydraule and Aquila:

We got to fight a dragon. The fight was pretty easy with our setup (BRD, PLD and BLU).

Aquila didn't appreciate us killing her dragon...

Lilisette got dragged into that weird place were Caitsith lives. I hope that it will be a zone players can enter, kind of like Sky and Sea.

Like my friend Pythean said, there seemed to be a mirror like the one in LotR that shows us the future gone bad...

And then things just got really weird:

After the mission, there was quite a boring quest where I needed to feed some fish to the male mithra Lehko. After I gave him the fish he took me to a walk and gave me a dozen of roses. Too bad I'm not really into catmen.

Anyway, Lehko has his hands full already with the catgirls in Windy:

I actually suspect that Lehko could be the father of Nanaa Mihgo... But as my husband pointed out, he's probably the father of at least half the mithra born at that time.

Happy New Year to all readers!

WotG mission pics (spoilers)!

2008-12-26T16:23:00.003+02:00

Since we don't really celebrate Xmas, we spent some time doing WotG missions in the past couple of days. I've read many negative comments of WotG but for me it has been really interesting so far. I'm only on mission 6 at the moment so can't really say much but I've really loved the Windurst story and the cutscenes! Here are some pictures of our way from mission 3 to mission 5...

Fights

We started from mission 3 related quests where we had to kill a NM Coeurl in Fort Karugo-Narugo. We trioed the NM with PUP, PLD and BLM, was really easy.

Another fight we had to do involved tons of yagudos! When I read from wiki that there were supposed to be "a large number of yagudos", I assumed that meant 10 or so, but in reality there were tens of them! We went in with two (PLD/WAR and PUP/DNC) and seriously underestimated the fight, but won anyway. Was a really fun and exciting battle!

NPCs

Several new and old interesting NPCs have been introduced. My personal favourite for now is maybe Cait Sith. Lehko Habhoka seems interesting too... and I really can't decide if I like Lilisette or not.

Battle scenes

The battle cutscenes have been really amazing!

Good stuff

The dancer show cutscene in San-d'Oria was just beautiful!

And this is one of my favourite WotG screenshots:

Here I am, riding towards new adventures!

MMM, Assault and Starlight Celebration!

2008-12-20T13:17:00.003+02:00

So yesterday we did a couple of Assaults because people had tags. First we did Lebros Cavern PSC (most of us needed points from there) which was as easy as always. Our setup was PUP, BLM (duoing the north wall), DRG, DRK and MNK.

For second Assault I chose Periqia PSC because I needed points there and because it was a new assault for a couple of people. Unfortunately I didn't remember how much the mission sucked. I was controlling the NPC which is the worst task in this assault, since it's almost impossible. I've done it a couple of times now and I still don't really know how to make him stop or move. And he also likes to run away every now and then so I need to be ready to catch him. I didn't even have time to answer to /tells I got during this assault (sorry, I was seriously busy).

Anyway, after that one of us had to leave and another person wanted to save his last tag for Nyzul just to be sure he'd have four for that. So we decided to go and try MMM instead. Only one of us had tried it before and he had got himself killed so we didn't really have almost any idea about the whole thing. We just gathered 5 people and decided to give it a try. Our setup for the first run was DRG (68), DRK (70), PUP (75), BLU (75) and WHM (75).

We got warped to Everbloom Hollow and found a maze full of EP crawlers and slimes. It was easy and we finished with about 10 mins left I think.

From this first run we got 30 marbles (I think) which meant we all could buy the cool eyepatch for 10 marbles!

For our second run we decided to change our setup a bit. I changed from PUP to BRD and our lowest level member changed from DRG to MNK which was 75. We got warped to Everbloom Hollow again but this time there were DC (our lowest level party member was still 70) Krakens and Coeurls. Good thing I was BRD because those thing linked badly and it was really good to have someone to sleep them.

Yesterday we also had our LS Xmas event! We gathered in Northern San-d'Oria and first we did the card exchange thing for a while. After that we went out to smack some boxes and when all had their Dream Robe and the bell key item, we went to do that quest in Southern San-d'Oria for the HQ bell.

We also did a little "secret santa" game. Everyone who wanted brought a present (worth max 1000 gil) and then we gave them to our Santa Lary (Galkas make the best santas!) who mixed them and gave to different people. I was really surprised when he traded me and I got a linkpearl! The LS was called "LesAmis" ("Friends" in english) so now I can carry my friends with me everywhere I go! ^^

Some pictures of our event:

Merry Starlight and happy New Year to all of readers!

Xmas hurries and worries

2008-12-16T18:13:00.003+02:00

I've been very busy, done a lot both in game and in real life, but haven't felt much like writing about it. I've been waiting for the inspiration to update this blog and write about my recent experiences but it still hasn't come. Anyway, I decided to post at least a few screenshots of all the stuff I've done lately in game.

In Einherjar, we still haven't beaten Wing 3... Last time it was very close. One of the worst chambers looked like this:

But I've managed to get loads of ampoules, so at least I got myself something nice:

With SecretFellowship, we've farmed Swift Belt pops. On Saturday we finally got a Fomor Codex for everyone who wanted the belt, and we popped 3 of them. Only got one belt though.

We also did CoP 4-3 mission for our LS CoP static. It went really well if you don't count the fact I called for help on the NM.. which meant we had to kill it all over again. But it's an easy NM so we only lost about 10 mins because of my noobish mistake.

Last Friday we had the last ZNM run this week and got full drops from every mob we popped!

On Tuesday we had our third Nyzul Isle run. I didn't include myself in the setup but went in on fourth tag because two people had to leave. The first three runs had gone very badly, but on the last tag we got 5 floors up which was of course nice. Here's a pic of Nyzul Isle seriousness:

Today I haven't really played, just cleaned up my Mog House a bit and took the Xmas items from event storage. Now my MH is ready for the holidays!

Happy holidays everyone! ^^

Fields of Valor coolness and other stuff

2008-12-10T18:20:00.004+02:00

Yesterday I did a bit Xmas shopping and it was so exhausting and horrible I decided to reward myself with a lot of playing... As a result I played a bit more than I actually wanted to.

Anyway, we tried that new Fields of Valor thing with a couple of LS members. We decided to go as a party and level synced to 22. We checked the level recommendations and didn't realize they were for soloers, not parties of 4 people, so we chose to go to Valkurm Dunes. We took the hardest mission available there: we needed to kill 4 sheep and 4 damselflies.

For a group of four, the EXP wasn't of course as good as it could've been, but at least we figured the system out and two of us got levels! One of us had to go and then we moved to Jugner Forest and chose to kill funguars and tigers there. It was fun and easy and I got 3 levels while we were there!

Today I decided to continue exping my DNC in FoV. My DNC was level 28, so I chose Qufim Island mission 4: level recommendation 28-30, 6 gigas and 4 pugils. The mobs were all EM or T for me so it was really nice EXP. Every time I got those 10 mobs killed, I got 735 extra EXP and gil. I was soon level 30 so I've got 5 levels in the last two days just with FoV! I think I'll take my DNC all the way to 37 like that.

FoV makes at least soloing and duoing so much easier and more fun! The system really gave me motivation to EXP my subs. It's so nice that I can just take OP, choose mission and then get all those nice buffs without spending any gil! For example today when I was exping my DNC, I had free reraise, protect, regen and attack food on the whole time. It's a really great addition to the game, thank you SE!

Yesterday we also did a couple of Assaults: Mamool ja Training Grounds PFC and Periqia PFC. It's weird that no one else but me ever wants to do assaults in certain zone, everyone just says "I don't care, I can do anything". I know I need certain points to get some pieces of gear I want but I feel bad if I make everyone else spam the same missions all over again...

Anyway, those assaults we did yesterday got me the promotion to Second Lieutenant! I can't believe I'm only two ranks away from Captain now... Well, two ranks and a million Assaults I haven't done.

After those assaults a LS member Lary asked if we could help him to get Destroyers from Double Dragonian BCNM. The assault party agreed to help and some of us got orbs too. I remember when we tried to get my Destroyers it took us 8 orbs so I wasn't too confident we could get them for Lary with our 4 orbs. But well, Larys orb was first and Destroyers dropped! Then on the next orb they dropped again and on the last orb again... They only didn't drop on my orb, which means that I just have a horrible luck with that weapon I guess.

Busy weekend

2008-12-08T08:42:00.003+02:00

Busy weekend in game again... On Friday we had ZNM where we popped 3 Obs, 1 Iriz Ima and 1 Dea. I tried Dea as PUP for the first time and Comedies damage with ranger frame was ok.

It was a short event because we didn't have that many pops or that many people, so after we ran out of pops we decided to go kill some Ufos for organs. We decided to kill only the lower level ones and as a result we only got one organ.

Saturday our linkshell statics CoP run got canceled so we decided to go do a bit Campaign with LS party. I've never done Campaign with a full party before, it was really fun!

We also did the hagun ENM Sheep in Antlions Clothing. Our original setup was 2 x BLM, PLD, 2 x MNK, BLU but the other BLM couldn't make it so I decided to go PUP with BLM automaton instead of MNK... Unfortunately I managed to die which took my automaton down and gimped my damage a lot. Well, at least we won, even though the drops sucked.

Saturday was also the day for our second Nyzul run, this time with mostly new people. We have 10 people signed up for Nyzul so not everyone can come to every run. Anyway, this time there was me and Pythean (we both were on the last run too) and then Shisui, Shokun, Bukyja and Wasch. Our setup was WHM, BLM, BLU, SAM, MNK, DRG. Our goal was again to get to floor 5, but we were really unlucky with floor objectives. On our last run, we didn't get the "light lamps in certain order" objective once, this time we got it two times...and it took a while to figure out a good strategy for it. One of our members only had 3 tags too, which meant we only had 3 tries to get to floor 5. Well, luckily we managed to do it on 3rd tag, like we did on the first run too. This time we finally saw some weapons drop too: congratulations Shisui on WHM and SCH weapons!

After Nyzul we decided to go farm some Swift Belt pop items since many people in our LS need the belt. We spent two hours farming and only got two Fomor Codex during the last 20 minutes... Next time we'll bring TH for sure.

Yesterday (Sunday) I asked if my friends Sky LS wanted help on their run. I went there as BRD and we popped some Ullis and waters and a couple of Genbus and Byakkos. I had heard some horror stories about their runs so I was mentally prepared to wipe to Genbu but both gods went really well. And I got to lot Aquarian Head for myself because it was about to floor:

After Sky I went to Einherjar. It was our second try on third wing and we ran out of time again. On both tries we've had only one minute left for the boss and we'd need at least 3 minutes I think. I think we were just lacking people.

We also had our first Dreamlands dynamis yesterday! We did Dynamis-Valkurm and it was...well...interesting. We had some weird problems with the flies right at start which resulted in people getting lost and dying in weird places, which meant we lost a lot of valuable time. So we ended up just farming a bit. Too bad our only drop was BRD cape... Anyway, it was fun and it will go better for sure next time.

My first Nyzul ever!

2008-12-03T12:26:00.003+02:00

A while ago I got this idea about trying Nyzul Isle assaults. That's one of those things I've never got to try. So I decided to organize some Nyzul runs for my LS, just so that we could try it and get new experiences. I was surprised how many others were interested in trying this too: 10 people signed up! Of course that meant that not everyone could attend every run, but I wanted to give everyone a chance to try it.

When I first got this idea, my knowledge of Nyzul Isle was close to zero. Basically, all I knew was that the goal was to climb up 5 floors at a time and that every floor had a random objective. So I read some guides and information on different FFXI forums. Based on this information, I organized our first run and setup for it:

1. WHM/SMN (main healer)
2. BLU/NIN (secondary healer, stunner, main puller and DD power)
3. PLD/WAR (one guide said it's every important to have a person with provoke)
4. DRG/WHM (another person to help with healing and also DD power)
5. MNK/NIN (DD)
6. MNK/NIN (DD)

It wasn't really the optimal setup described in guides but I was happy with it. After all, about half of the people signed up for this only have one job at 75.

I understood that preparation for the run was extremely important. So I made sure everyone had reraise item, a form of sneak and invisible, echo drops, several different pulling methods (ranged attack, ninjutsu, voke) and a proper sanction bonus (refresh for mages and regen for melees). Our WHM also had poison potions with him and they proved to be very useful.

The first two tags went to figuring out the whole thing and making better strategies. There were a couple of things which made us work faster:

* In the lobby, instead of all of us spamming the rune, everyone did / when they we're ready to warp up, and then one person used the rune.

* We decided to split in two groups when we got certain objects (for example on "defeat all enemies" floors)

* On nearly all floors, we got someone to run to the rune when we had almost completed the objective, so that we could warp to the next floor as fast as possible.

One great advantage we had was that we communicated really well with each other and adjusted to different situations pretty fast. It's always easier to do things like this with friends than with a pickup group because with friends you're used to their play style and it's easier to communicate.

On third tag we finally got up to floor 5! After that we all had one tag left, so we decided to give floors 6+ a try and succeeded to get to floor 10! I was really happy, because my goal was to take us to floor 5 and I wasn't really sure if we could even get there, because none of us had really any previous Nyzul experience. But everyone did amazing job and thanks to everyone working so well together, our first ever Nyzul run was a great success!

Crazy people

2008-12-01T18:05:00.002+02:00

On Friday me and my husband went to farm some hippogryph tailfeathers to get Mistmelts for our LS CoP statics Ouryu fight. We decided to try Grauberg S and it was a good decision. There were a lot of pops there and the drop rates weren't too bad. We also got some help from CoP static members Potato and Bukyja. It was fun and we farmed enough feathers for 4 Mistmelts.

After that we decided to go farm some Zeni. I wanted to get a tier III pop Armed gears (trying to get items for tier IV Tinnin). Zeni guy wanted Puks so it was easy compared to some other monsters he had wanted lately (Wamouras and Elementals). Here's a nice shot, say cheese!

The ZNM run went pretty ok at first. We did Cheese Hoarder and I was there as PUP. Last time Comedie was doing some nice nukes but this time I had a couple of merits more which meant I had Fire IV. Well, Comedie tried to cast that most of the time and it got fully resisted every time. Every time I had maneuvers up Comedie tried casting Fire IV and did very gimp damage. Then I tried without maneuvers, and then, for some weird reason, Comedie used Aero IV and it did a lot better. Is there something I don't know about? I had scanner equipped I think, and since the mob was earth based, I assumed Comedie would've tried Aero IV all the time with ice maneuver up instead of Fire IV... I also don't understand why all the Fire spells got resisted though...

Anyway, after the rat it was time for me to pop my tier III Armed Gears. We only had one PLD/NIN, but my husband was there as PLD/WAR as a backup...well at least that was how it was supposed to be. In reality, the PLD/NIN didn't seem to care at all about who had hate. BLMs were complaining about the mob hitting them and the PLD/NIN didn't even flash, which meant of course that the BLMs were going down. So my husband as PLD/WAR just had to take the role of the main kiter as the person who was supposed to do that just didn't do his job. My husband did, in my opinion, amazingly well as PLD/WAR, but he really should've had /NIN. Well, he will have it finished for our next ZNM run anyway. Anyway, we killed the first pop quite easily. I didn't want any drops from it but it dropped Oracle's Gloves which I gave to my friend Xmysticlegend.

Then we had a second pop of the same mob and all went pretty bad. BLMs were dropping like flies, the same with WHMs and PLDs. It was all chaotic... I tried to focus on keeping mages balladed (which was nearly impossible since they kept running all over the place) and PLDs and BLMs cured. I tried to give people advice in LS chat to get everyone look after each other. When we finally got the situation somewhat under control, it was too late, since an hour had passed and the mob was in rage mode. It was just impossible to kill for us, we didn't have enough damage at that point. So we decided to give up and our leader decided to call it a day.

After we had already stopped the run, a person started shouting at me in LS chat. She said I was pissing her off somehow... I was just "wtf o.O" I really didn't see it coming and was just surprised that someone suddenly went berserk on me. Well, I just told her that I was really sorry if I had offended her in some way, since I didn't mean to do that, but I'd prefer that if she had a problem with me, she'd send me a /tell and we could talk about it and solve it. Well, she didn't seem to want to talk about it really, and I honestly still don't know what was it all about (my friends didn't understand the situation either since they sent me /tells asking "wtf was that?"). I guess it's just that some people just don't like each other. I know there are some people who annoy me and I'm sure I annoy many people too. That's how life is, you can't like everyone. Most people, however, try to act like adults and get along with these people instead of shouting and trying to cause drama.

Anyway I'll just try to forget it and hope it doesn't happen again. A friend suggested that I'd just blist her but I really wouldn't want to do that to LS members. I just want to try to get along with everyone, and I hope everyone can do the same. If I annoy you, just send me a /tell and try to solve the problem. If you can't do that, just deal with it and ignore me, /blist if you want. It was a pretty good run if you don't count the wipe and someone yelling at me. Kind of sucks it happened on my husbands first longer run with the LS, because it really didn't give a good picture of the LS. I had told him that the shell had pretty good atmosphere and then he had to witness something like that... oh well.

Mmmh what else have I done in game... Right, I did a BCNM run with a couple of LS friends. All the others got bad drops and I got an Archer's ring again which kind of made me feel bad.

Yesterday we did another second wing einherjar and won again! The boss went down easily, it was a good run. Third wing on Wednesday!

And then of course we had a Dyna-Xarca run yesterday. Got some drops, including Valor Surcoat, which was very nice. Wiped on the Dynamis Lord again... but I think we really learned something this time.

Then I've also got some EXP for my DNC. Yesterday I had a short duo with my friend Toby, then we did a LS trio with Coreyz and Zaonic. Today me and my husband did a duo in Korroloka tunnel, it was very good EXP and I got a couple more levels. My DNC is now 22 and my husbands NIN is 34!

And then a totally unrelated image... I did a campaign battle some time next week and everything didn't go as I had planned:

Behemoth's Bane and cheating in FFXI

2008-11-27T13:54:00.010+02:00

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!

2008-11-24T16:11:00.003+02:00

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

2008-11-22T16:26:00.004+02:00

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!

2008-11-17T16:41:00.005+02:00

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

2008-11-16T14:11:00.003+02:00

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

2008-11-13T10:09:00.003+02:00

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)

2008-11-10T11:04:00.004+02:00

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

2008-11-08T19:59:00.004+02:00

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!

2008-11-04T11:44:00.004+02:00

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? ^^

Lolpup sadness, anger and frustration

2008-10-31T14:43:00.004+02:00

Yesterday I was hanging around in my HNMLS and they asked if I wanted to come to merit pt with them. I was pleasently surprised because I was on PUP atm and thought "hey, why not, that's a great way to get some automaton archery skillups and cap my buffer!" Well, of course they had thought that I'd come as BRD... Because that's seems to be the only job some people want me to use... And it's just impossible to get decent exp with only one COR and no BRD, right? Yeah, right...

Anyway, I wasn't really interested in being anyones song slave so I stayed as PUP and we got some decent (my expwatch showed 15K/h at the time without band) EXP. And then the guy who put the party together left, because of "real life issues" (yeah, sure). Then another LS member came to replace him as DRG/SAM, he died (well....DRG/SAM on colibris) and left too, without giving any explanation. A couple of mins later we noticed he was in another party with his MNK.

So, at this point, two LS members, who were supposed to be some kind of friends, I think, had left the party, because (I'm only assuming here as they didn't say anything) we didn't have The Ultimate Meripo Setup. Now this is excactly the reason why I've been only partying with my social LS SecretFellowship lately... Because in SF parties we all choose the job we want to play and actually have a good time while we party! And we still get EXP! Sounds weird, doesn't it?

I was pretty upset actually after those too guys left. In my opinion, it was just rude to leave a working party (especially one that included only LS members) just because it wasn't perfect. And I also took it too personally because I've just had to hear a bit of that "lolpup" shit. I have never made fun of my LS members jobs or said that their jobs suck... And I will never do that, because it's just stupid and close-minded.

Anyway, after those guys left, our setup was this: RDM, COR, DNC, PUP, SAM & DRK. Ironically, our EXP only got better after they left, it was around 18K/h without EXP ring (just horrible exp, isn't it). Anyway, I got full buffer, one merit and some levels of automaton archery before we had to disband. Comedies automaton archery skill is now 160/169, but she was doing ok dmg and some quite sweet Armor Piercers.

Those Armor Piercers were especially great when they closed Darkness skillchain, making that damage double! Unfortunately, the colibris didn't seem to appreciate them that much and usually ended up trying to eat Comedie alive after every WS. She only died once though.

I know that WS can and will do more dmg once I've capped skill and learned to use my WS maneuvers better. I'm looking forward to it!

Exhausted but you can't stop me from posting!

2008-10-30T10:41:00.002+02:00

I'm so exhausted I'm pretty much in a coma at the moment.... So I'm sorry but this post will be lame.

From some reason I got an idea to organize Zilart Mission for Secret Fellowship members so that everyone 70ish+ level there would get Sky access. We started from ZM4 (the tonberry fight) on Monday and did it again on Tuesday. Now I have 6 people who actually need the missions so I'll have to kick myself out from the static... Anyway, I'm guiding them with rest of the missions this Saturday, so they should have Sky in the end of the week.

On Monday we also kicked Ultimas ass again. Was a nice fight, only deaths came in the end when we zerged it and it decided to go BOOM. Head and hands dropped, I think (I really don't care much about Ultima/Omega drops since I don't have any jobs to use them).

I started synthing the Reraise earrings, and for now it has gone pretty well. I've had 2 synthing sessions with them:

First session

Time: Lightsday, Waning crescent 14%
Starting skill: 41.1 (synth cap 45)
Free synthesis image support

1. 0.1 skillup, success
2. 0.1 skillup, success
3. 0.1 skillup, success
4. success
5. 0.2 skillup, success
6. success
7. success
8. 0.1 skillup, success
9. 0.1 skillup, success
10. 0.1 skillup, success
11. 0.1 skillup, fail, full break

DING Goldsmithing 42!

Ending skill: 42
Success rate: 10/11

On the following day, after I had sold most of the earrings synthed in the first session, I decided to have another try.

Second session

Time: Darksday, First quarter moon 45%
Starting skill: 42 (synth cap 45)

1. 0.1 skillup, success
2. fail (lost 1 ingot of vivified mythril)
3. 0.1 skillup, fail (lost crystal)
4. success

After 2/4 breaks I decided to get free synthesis image support again, and did the rest of the synths with that:

5. success
6. 0.2 skillup, success
7. success
8. 0.1 skillup, success
9. success
10. 0.1 skillup, success

Ending skill: 42.6
Success rate: 8/10

I'm doing pretty nice money with these earrings at the moment. They sell fast in AH and I've also sold some for LS members for a lower price. I still have 8 earrings unsold, but I couldn't synth more anyway because there isn't any Vivified Mythril in AH.

Actually, I've been thinking about starting to synth the Vivified Mythril myself. For that I'd need "Gold Purification" Guild Point item, which isn't really hard to get (40K GP). A bigger problem is, the recipe requires animas, which require Alchemy skill 75 or something and an Alchemy GP item Anima Synthesis. Well, my husband has a mule with Alchemy skill 60+, so that shouldn't be a problem. We'll see.

Yesterday we decided to go duo a bit with my friend Pythean. He had a PLD level 20 and I had a RMD level 22 so we went to Korroloka tunnel and killed some worms. Later another LS friend Zaonic joined us, it was fun.

In the evening we did a bit Sky farming and Einherjar. We tried the second wing for the first time and the time ran out when the boss was around 30%. Not bad for a first try, in my opinion.

A couple of pretty landscape pics from Beaucedine:

Some silly Goldsmithing calculations

2008-10-27T21:27:00.006+02:00

Already a second post today but I'm bored while I'm waiting for our slowga LS to gather for Limbus.

I synthed my last Mythril Ingots today! Last time I speculated I won't even get to level 41 with them, but it was better than I thought.

I got to do 14 synths with 2 stacks of ingots:

Time: Iceday, Waning Gibbous 76%
Starting skill: 40.2

1. 0.1 skillup, success
2. 0.1 skillup, fail (lost the crystal)
3. success
4. 0.1 skillup, success
5. 0.2 skillup, success
6. 0.1 skillup, success
7. fail (lost the crystal)
8. 0.1 skillup, fail (lost the crystal and 1 ingot)
9. success
10. success
11. 0.1 skillup, success

DING Goldsmithing 41!

12. success
13. 0.1 skillup, success
14. success

Ending skill: 41.1
Success rate: 11/14

The success rate has been a lot better than I expeced it to be. I started with ingredients for 36 synths and now I have 33 earrings on my mule!

Next I will start making Reraise Earrings from the Mythril Earrings I have. I have already bought one stack of Vivified Mythril (110K ouch!) for those so I can start synthing after next JP midnight. ^^

I did some funny calculations about the money spent on my Goldsmithing. I started this Mythril Stage at skill level 32 and it costed me around 89K to get my skill to 39. As a result I also got 72 mythril ingots, which are worth 384K when sold in stacks in AH. Then I turned the 72 mythril ingots to 33 earrings which are worth 132K when sold in AH... so while I'm making profit considering where I started, but I kind of feel like I've lost money while synthing those earrings. But anyway, while Mythril Earrings only sell for 4K/each in AH, Reraise earrings sell for 16-18K.

Syrup Wiping

2008-10-27T10:11:00.005+02:00

I've had a really nice weekend! On Thursday my mother and my brother came to visit us and I enjoyed spending time with them. And on Saturday there was a club party where me and my husband went to meet some of our friends, and it was great too. I was supposed to be studying but oh well, I had such a great time! I just need to hurry up a bit with some books and essays now.

In game I've done some Goldsmithing. On Friday I decided to start with the Mythril Earrings. I did 12 synths before and 12 synths after the JP midnight.

First 12 synths:

Time: Lightningsday, New Moon 7%
Starting skill: 39 (synth cap 42)

1. 0.1 skillup, success
2. 0.1 skillup, fail (lost 1 ingot)
3. success
4. success
5. fail (lost 2 ingot)
6. 0.2 skillup, success
7. 0.1 skillup, success
8. success
9. success
10. success
11. success
12. success

Ending skill: 39.5
Success rate: 10/12

Next 12 synths:

Time: Watersday, New Moon 5%
Starting skill: 39.5 (synth cap 42)

1. 0.1 skillup, success
2. success
3. 0.1 skillup, success
4. success
5. success
6. success
7. 0.2 skillup, success
8. 0.1 skillup, success

DING Goldsmithing 40!

9. success
10. success
11. 0.2 skillup, success
12. success

Ending skill: 40.2
Success rate: 12/12

I have ingots for 12 more Mythril Earring synths, but I doubt they will take me even to skill level 41. The next synth on my plan is Reraise Earring which caps at level 45, but it's quite expensive so I'm not sure if I want to move on to that yet. Well, I'll synth the rest of the earrings and think about it then I guess.

On Thursday I helped my husband camp Sewer Syrup for Jelly Ring for his PLD. I went there as PUP/NIN and my husband was PLD/WHM. I seriously underestimated this NM and we wiped after a very unfortunate blood aggro. Well, a LS friend came to help us as MNK/WAR, we recovered and tried again. And wiped. Our friend just took too much damage as /WAR and we couldn't keep him alive. That time we also got some nasty links. Finally, we did a quick job change and decided to try it one more time. My husband stayed as PLD/WHM, but I changed to MNK/NIN and our LS friend changed to /DNC. We killed the thing and the ring dropped!

On Friday we had a ZNM run which was a bit of a disaster. No one really focused on the run, me neither, because my family was here and I was just busy to end the run to watch a movie with them... I apologized from our leader later, I should've either just focus on the run or not attend at all. Anyway, we killed this NM I hadn't fought before:

And I took a pretty pic from Mount Zhayolm:

Yesterday I helped the Secret Fellowships CoP static with mission 3-3. We killed the Antlion NM and climbed the mountain in Attohwa Chasm. It was fun, no one even fell down on the way up!

After that I did ENM with Europa. We got lucky and got Haguns from 2 of the 3 runs! Then we went to Sky. We killed Zip, popped a few Olla, Genbu and Suzaku.

We did a first wing Einherjar again to get second wing access for some members. We won again, but it was a bit messy. Second wing on Wednesday!

Also, my chocobo chick WildRhapsody has grown to a young chocobo. All the color tricks I tried on her unfortunately failed, but I'm still trying to grow a nice digger choco of her.

Goldsmithing calculations, automaton skillups and a Mog House tour

2008-10-23T10:57:00.005+03:00

This morning I noticed I had 2 Mythril Ores in my inventory, so I decided to buy 2 more and do one last Mythril Ingot synth. Somehow I got lucky and got a 0.2 skillup from that synth, and dinged 39 Goldsmithing skill! I counted my Mythril Ingots and the result was 6 stacks, which is 72 ingots. For curiosity, I also checked my AH history from ffxiah.com to see how much gil I had spent for those 72 ingots. The result was 88,840 gil from my main character. Mythril Ingots currently sell 6K/each or 64K/stack, which means I have made ingots worth of 384,000-432,000 gil with only 88,840 gil. Not a bad way to get 7 levels of Goldsmithing skill.

Unfortunately, I can't sell the ingots for profit, because I need them for my next stage. Mythril Earrings cap at level 42, and I have ingredients for 36 synths of those. After that, I move on to Reraise Earrings, which cap at level 45, and which I can sell in AH for profit. I hope this plan works and everything will go well.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time playing. First when I logged in, I helped a LS friend with his Rank 3 mission dragon fight. After that I went to Sky for some automaton skillups. I used the Sharpshot frame and capped Comedies melee skill at 230 (for that frame) and got automaton archery up to level 254, which is the cap for level 72. I still have 15 levels to go with automaton archery, and I need to find a way to get them, since mobs are becoming a bit tough at these levels.

Anyway, I enjoyed spending time in Sky, it was as pretty as always:

Yesterday evening we had a LS event (Sky farming) and Einherjar. Because we don't have that many people in Europa atm, our leader decided to do a new LS for Einherjar. It was a nice solution because now we can invite our friends outside Europa to join our runs. We've now had 2 runs with this new LS and we've won them both easily. Yesterday was our last run in the first wing and Sunday we'll move on to second.

After the Halloween event we had in our sosial LS last Saturday, we visited each others Mog Houses, and that made me want to continue decorating mine. At the moment I really have no idea what to do with it. Anyway, here are some pictures from Mog House.

My sleeping space:

This is the area I'm most happy with at the moment.

My dining space:

That table needs something, but I have no idea what... Also, I'd like to get another table maybe, I really don't like that one that much.

My ummm...... horn space?

This is the area between my sleeping space and my dining space.

My tea corner:

Some day, this will be a pretty area for serving tea and cookies for my friends.

I never thought I'd fall for this...

2008-10-21T21:07:00.002+03:00

...but omg I just HAVE TO have this goblin one:

Long time, no Sea.

2008-10-20T16:38:00.004+03:00

We haven't done Sea for a really long time with Europa, because we have been focusing on getting people the last items they need from Sky. But yesterday, after we had done the ENM, we popped a few thing is Sea for a change.

Also, my friend borrowed me his Sha'ir Manteel! It's such a hot piece of gear, can't wait to get one of my own!

Sea was nice. We popped Ix'Aern DRK and MNK and then Jailer of Fortitude (x 2) and Jailer of Temperance.

And here's a lesson for all of you: Vorpal Blade PWNS, as one of our PLDs got to experience:

I don't remember when I've been in a EXP party outside our LS but lately me and my husband have started to duo with our BLMs. We're level 20 at the moment and the worms in Korroloka tunnel give us nice EXP.

I'm working on getting my BLM to 37, and after that my RDM to 37, so I'll have all the mage subs available for SCH in case I want to level it. I could level SCH only for the AF, it's so amazingly hot, especially on Elvaan females. <3 But we'll see if I start leveling a new job any time soon, I still have so much to do with my current 75s.

We had a Dynamis-Xarcabard yesterday. It was a total chaos most of the time but we did great before the end. Here's a screenshot from the run:

Good luck on trying to sleep one mob in the middle of that group. >.<

I also played a bit with .dat swaps. Here's a supergirl Evy!

The Very Secret Halloween Party

2008-10-18T21:54:00.003+03:00

Just a small update with some pictures, because our social linkshell SecretFellowship had a Halloween party today and I had such a great time there!

We gathered in Windurst at 6PM my time and did first the cloak event. We had to kill some bats as level 1 and then kill the boss. After that we got our Eerie Cloaks. And repeating that with killing more bats gave us the +1 version. Was fun and easy.

Here are some of us killing the boss:

And here's a group picture of everyone who came to the LS event:

After everyone had gotten at least the NQ version of the Cloak, we did the pitchfork quest and the witch hat quest. I also gave cookies for everyone so they can trade them to NPCs to get some items. I already have both the HQ Pitchfork and Coven Hat so I wasn't very interested in doing those things, but I got some random items from the NPCs.

Then we all gathered in Tahvos Mog House. We voted for the winner of the "best costume" prize, and it went to Lary, a Galka who was wearing a Santa outfit with a pumpkin head.

Then we /cheered Lary on and danced a bit:

We spent 3 hours doing this LS event and I had such a great time I didn't even notice time passing! Thank you guys, it's great to have people like you in our linkshell!

The Apprentice

2008-10-18T00:45:00.006+03:00

I had a very bad morning today... I overslept, missing a lecture, and when I finally woke up (at 1 PM), I realized I had forgotten to sign up to exam I was supposed to have on Monday... So I've been kinda grumpy the whole day. I'm also a bit ill which has made my day even worse. It seems that when things start to go bad, everything will go bad eventually.

Luckily my in game morning was a bit better than my RL one. When I logged in, I decided to get my next Goldsmithing guild rank item, which was Ghain Gorget. There was none for sale in AH but I synthed it myself, only costed 12K. So now I'm finally an Apprentice goldsmither, yay! And by the way...

For a minute I didn't know what was going on when I entered the guild and saw this:

But then I realized the halloween event had already started today. I haven't read anything about the event yet but we'll do it tomorrow with our linkshell. I'm sure it'll be fun. ^^

After visiting the guild I decided to go farm some Mythril Ores. I recently finally got my THF on level 15 for TH (I know I should take it to 37) and I decided to go as MNK/THF. That really seemed to increase the drop rates and I got some very nice skillups there. My Goldsmithing skill is now 38.6, so only 1.4 levels to go with this synth. My NPC also dinged 36 while farming there. I wonder if I should change her weapon soon...

I stopped farming when the day turned to Windsday and went to check on my choco. She's 12 days old now and has excactly the same stats she had on my last post, except that her Discernment is now "Substandard". I decided to name her Wild Rhapsody, somehow I felt that name would suit her.

This evening we had a ZNM run. It was a very good run and for once we were on time. We popped 2 x Verdelet, 2 x Iriz Ima, Armed Gears, 2 x Chamrosh (one of them mine) and Dea.

This last ZNM pic is our whole alliance smacking down the one poor Red Mage who didn't stay in Charm range... He died twice.

We did Dea last and I asked if I could come there as PUP. I've been there many times as BRD and felt really bored, frustrated and useless trying to run behind PLDs who can't stay still for 5 seconds for me to sing for them. But oh well, the PLD wanted me there as BRD so BRD I was. I don't mind using a job if I know it's useful for the group, but in that case I just felt useless. Again. And I don't like it. But oh well, can't win every time. Anyway, Dea dropped a pair of Oracles Pigaches, which I've wanted for a long time. They went to free lot, and I was the only one who wanted them! Lucky me! ^^

And here's a pretty pic of Al Zahbi (yes, it's there... keep looking):

Whining about whiners

2008-10-15T15:44:00.007+03:00

I want to ask SE what on earth they were thinking when they planned those new ads. Yes, people have been complaining about SE not advertising the game, but that's no excuse. Seriously, have you seen these?

Yes, I think they're funny, especially the rock band scene is hilarious! But I'm afraid they're funny only for people who are already playing the game. I very much doubt we'll get any new players with these ads. But hey, maybe that doesn't matter, because Jimmy the guitarist is so freaking cool!

I usually don't rant about anything but one thing has been really annoying me lately. On Sunday, my husband had his first run with our dynamis LS. He did the best he could to be well prepared for the run: studied strategies from internet and bought some new equipment and other stuff (reraise items, poison potions, echo drops and food) and so on. Well, during the run he began to wonder why he bothered with all that when it seemed that no one else did. And that's exactly the thing that has been bothering me too.

Our dynamis LS isn't "elitist" in any way, which is a good thing in my opinion. We have many members which are fairly new to end game and most of our members have pretty standard gear and so on. And it's totally ok, you don't have to have amazing 1337 gear or have loads of experience to do your job well in dynamis. But some of the things I've seen there are just... not acceptable to me. I've seen mages without the basic elemental staves (yeah, a 75 WHM without a light staff), mages, paladins and ninjas without echo drops ("sorry, I couldn't cure you, I was silenced!") and (the one that annoys me the most) melees who come to dynamis without reraise items.

We have a LS rule which says everyone should bring a form of reraise on every dynamis run. However, most of our members don't care about that rule, and our leaders don't care about if people follow the rule or not. We have another rule that people who don't have reraise, will get R1. However, they usually get a R3. Also, usually people insist on getting R3 and whine about losing exp and being in danger to delevel.

So, for these people, who keep whining about the EXP loss, here's a newsflash: When you come to dynamis run (or any other end game activity), you can safely assume you'll die at some point (if things go wrong as they usually do). Here's another newsflash: In FFXI, when you die, you'll lose EXP. Now, a smart person might be able to combine these two together, but I really don't expect that much from the people who I'm referring to here, so let me do it for you: "When you come to dynamis run, you can safely assume that you'll die and lose EXP".

Let's make this even a bit more difficult. Here's another newsflash, just one more, I promise: You can prepare for the EXP loss you'll experience in Dynamis by getting yourself a nice buffer. Buffer is the amount of extra EXP you need to keep yourself from deleveling and whining after someone does something stupid and your whole linkshell wipes. Now see, I solved this problem for you guys! Get that buffer thing, so you don't have to whine!

Seriously speaking, it isn't really nice to follow the rules unless everyone does so. It's not nice to spend money on reraise items for every run and use that reraise 1 if the people who don't care about the rules don't have to spend any money and get raise 3 almost every time.

There is a purpose for this rule, you know. If, in case of full wipe, everyone has reraise up, we can recover a lot faster. That means, we can also continue farming a lot faster, and thus, maybe receive more relic drops and currency. Also, it takes a lot more time for our WHMs to R3 everyone than it takes our all mages to R1 everyone. This should be simple enough for everyone to understand, but apparently it is not.

Anyway, on more positive topic: my little choco chick is ten days old now!

Here are her stats:

Strength: Poor
Endurance: Poor
Discernment: Poor
Resceptivity: Poor
Affection: Parent (max)
Condition: Excellent, high spirits
Personality: Enigmatic
Likes: Clear days
Abilities known: None

So, she doesn't know anything or isn't good in anything yet, but at least she's happy! ^^

I'll check on her once or twice a day on Windsday (hoping it will affect her color). Her current care plan is "listen to music" to increase her discernment and receptivity. I'm also feeding her one Vomp Carrot and one Zegham Carrot a day at the same time. Vomp Carrots increase strength and endurance whereas Zegham Carrots increase discernment and receptivity.

Nothing special

2008-10-11T15:42:00.004+03:00

I've had a really horrible morning (well, afternoon). Me and my husband overslept, waking up at 1PM. I haven't been in iaido practises for a few weeks now because they've been canceled, but today there was going to be a practise at some school instead of our dojo. So we ate some breakfast and hurried to a bus so we can get there. Well, when we've got to the school near our dojo, we realized we were in a wrong place... So we spent over half an hour walking around in rain trying to find the right place. We didn't find it, and after some time, we just decided to come back home. It sucked.

I have an important exam coming up at uni so I haven't really played much... I've been doing some gardening and growing my choco. My chocobo is now a chick. She doesn't have a name yet but she's very cute:

Also, my Tree Cuttings and Cactus Stems were finally ready to be harvested! The cuttings were a success and I got 90K worth of items from 5 pots. However, the Cactus Stems gave me absolutely nothing valuable, which was a bit disappointment.

Sorry for the lame post but I haven't really done much in game. I think I'll write more about the color theories I'm testing on my choco next time I post.

Why do good PLDs go John Travolta?

2008-10-06T19:23:00.003+03:00

My gardening has been going on pretty well, at the moment I'm making around 50K/week with it so it's ok. I'm still looking foward to try some different recipes and other things. And my Cactus Stems or Tree Cuttings haven't even grown yet... I've put 2 crystals to both of them now though, so it shouldn't take too long anymore... I think.

I also started growing a new baby choco! I've read some information about chocobo color theories and I'm testing some of them, trying to get a green one. But for now, my little baby choco is only a one day old egg.

On Friday we had our ZNM run and we fought this really cool vampire NM called Nosferatu:

Well, at least some of us were fighting... While the others (not mentioning any names here) seemed to be going John Travolta:

Still don't know what I'm talking about?

Notice the detail:

See?

Growing things

2008-10-02T15:24:00.006+03:00

The morning lectures at the university have started and I'm feeling terribly sleepy most of the time. I really don't understand why anyone would want to go to a class at 8 AM. It feels so unnatural and stupid to wake up at 6 AM when everything is just black. But well, I like the course I'm taking so I guess I'll just have to change my day rythm somehow so I wouldn't feel like falling asleep every other minute.

So, again I haven't done much in game. On Sunday we killed Xol again and this time we even got the hands! I was so happy our LS finally got a drop from him, even though I didn't get to lot. I took this screenshot before our leader kindly reminded me that Xol will also charm people outside the alliance and I'd better pull back if I don't want them to kill me. ^^;

I did the new in game event too. Unfortunately, most people in our LS had done it already so we couldn't do it together. But well, it was fun and easy, and the new furniture is nice!

Yesterday I did a nice BCNM run (Royal Jelly) with Buttons and Shokun. Our setup was BRD/WHM (me), SAM/DNC (Shokun) and SAM/WAR (Buttons). The BCNM was again easy and the drops were nice for me and Buttons. Unfortunately, Shokun didn't get much anything. My treasure pool looked like this:

Not a bad way to spend 40 BS. ^^

About a week ago I read the Pikko Pots gardening site and decided to do a few gardening experiments myself. At the moment I have 30 brass flowerpots (10 on each of the characters on this account). On 20 pots I'm growing Wildgrass Seeds and on 10 pots I'm doing experiments with some Tree Cuttings and Cactus Stems I've farmed or quested.

Today is the harvest day for the Wildgrass Seeds, so I'm excited to see how much gil I can make with them. I've also put the first crystals on the Tree Cuttings and Cactus Stems so they are growing well too.

Do want!

2008-09-26T13:40:00.008+03:00

This post is about FFXI things I've been thinking about lately and what I want to do in game in the near future. I haven't felt much like playing lately because I've felt I'm somehow stuck in game and have nothing I'd actually want to do except LS events. So, I took a moment to think about what I'd actually want to do at the moment in game and this is what I came up with...

Crafting

I read Tuufless' Goldsmithing Blog and got inspiration to start leveling Goldsmithing. I don't have any crafts leveled and I'm really not a patient person so we'll see how it goes. I've leveled Goldsmithing a bit before, very slowly, because I've wanted to stay on profit while skilling up.

At the moment, my Goldsmithing is level 36.2, so I'm on Mythril stage, and making profit while skilling up isn't so easy anymore. I've synthed Myhril ingots which have costed me around 4-5K/ingot while an ingot is worth 6-7K in AH. The thing is, I can't sell the ingots I've synthed back to AH because I'll need them for my next skillup recipes.

So, to make leveling Goldsmithing a bit cheaper for myself, I decided to try to mine and farm some Mythril Ores myself.

The first thing I tried was farming in Palborough Mines.

But well, since Mythril Ores are the most expensive thing you can mine there, I didn't find the place worth the time I spent there.

Then I checked wiki to see which mobs dropped Mythril Ore. The higher level worms in King Ranperre's Tomb where on the list and wiki claimed they also drop zinc, silver, iron and gold ore. There were also 28 pops of them and they had a short respawn time so it seemed like a perfect place to start farming.

Well, long story short, I spent over two hours there and all I got was Copper ores and Flint Stones...

I decided not to give up just yet. This morning I decided to try Fei'Yin and the Ore Golems there. Those actually had a decent drop rate on Mythril Ores and while I was farming them, I also killed the dolls and pots there. After a few hours I had capped the exp on my MNK, got almost one full level of Goldsmithing and got items worth around 41K. Not a bad way to level a crafth, although a slow one.

At the moment my goal is to get Goldsmithing to 60. After that, I may try some other crafts and then decide which one (if any) to take to 100.

Exping and skilling up my PUP

I have this sort of an obsession of keeping the EXP capped on all my 75s. At the moment I've succeeded to do that on both MNK and BRD but not on my PUP. I need around 30K exp to get a full buffer for it and that can be easily done in Campaign.

But, Comedie (my automaton) also needs some serious skilling up... At the moment her skill levels are:

* Magic 267/276
* Ranged 246/269
* Melee 225/269

So there's a lot of work to be done, and at the moment I have little to no idea how to get her skills up. Well, magic is easy since automaton gets nice magic skillups from healing... But the rest will be a pain, I'm afraid.

Meriting

At the moment, I don't really have many merits... So I should work on them, too. These are my current plans for Job spesific merits:

MNK

Group 1:

* I have no idea!

Group 2:

* Penance: 4 upgrades (0 done)
* Invigorate: 5 upgrades (1 done)
* Formless Strikes: 1 upgrade (done)

BRD

Group 1:

* Minuet effect: 5 upgrades (1 done)
* Madrigal effect: 5 upgrades (1 done)

Group 2:

* Nightingale: 1 upgrade (done)
* Troubadour: 1 upgrade (done)

PUP

Group 1:

* Automaton Magic Skill: 5 upgrades (0 done)

Group 2:

* Role Reversal: 1 upgrade (0 done)
* Ventriloquy: 1 upgrade (0 done)
* Fine-Tuning: 3 upgrades (0 done)
* Optimization: 5 upgrades (0 done)

That'll give me something to do for a while...

Forget the break!

2008-09-22T17:33:00.003+03:00

So... I started taking a break and it went well for two whole days (!) until I realized playing is really not disturbing my studies in any way if I don't have any studies... No, I didn't stop studying because of FFXI. But I decided that instead of going to the stupid, boring education lectures, I will only take exams on them. So, after that, I'll have most of my days free of lecuters and other things, so I have some time for playing too. I don't want to be playing as much as I have played before, though.

I did a new study plan for this autumn term. I'm taking 6 exams and one course where I have to do a presentation. That's enough but not too many courses I think. On Friday me and my husband went together to a course called Ethnic Minorities and Religious Communities in Finland. It was a bit weird because the course is held at the swedish university and we were the only Finnish speakers there (the course is held in English). The course seems very interesting and inspiring. In the end of the course we're supposed to do a presentation of one religious event in our home city. We're hoping to be able to take part to a local shamanic drumming session for our presentation.

I've felt a bit lazy because our last Iaido practice was cancelled. I might go to an extra practice during this week to replace that. But well, my mother and my brother came to visit us on Saturday and I got to spend time with them instead. We went to see the animation film Wall-E and it was brilliant!

In game... well, I haven't played much. We've camped a bit Simurgh and KA without many claims or drops. But we did kill this weird NM I've never heard of before:

Yesterday was my weekly event day. I did ENM, Einherjar, Bahamut v. 2, Sky and Dynamis.

I've also got some really nice pieces of gear:

And yes, I know the previous pics I've posted don't work. I'm working on fixing it but it seems that won't happen before next month.

(Taking a break)

2008-09-13T13:28:00.003+03:00

Just a short post now, as I'm a bit in a hurry. I slept late and I'm eating breakfast at the moment. In an hour I should be on the bus on my way to iaido practice.

On Monday was the big September update in FFXI. Everyone had been waiting for it for a long time. Personally, I was mostly curious about the PUP AF+1 and relic pieces. The AF+1 was a bit of a disappointment for me, but the relic set seems great. The increases in drop rates seem also very promising.

On Tuesday I had my first Japanese class. It was a cold and rainy day and I had to almost run to the class, so when I finally found the right place, I felt like I had just ran marathon in a shower. But well, the class went really well. Our teacher is a charming japanese lady who mixes Japanese, Enlish and Finnish in her speech in an interesting way.

In game I have done some Campaign. I got a new medal (Wings §§§) and dinged 75 on my PUP! I enjoy doing campaing, it's fun and easy way to get a bit EXP. One day I found myself alone doing the offensive battle in Garlaige Citadel with the NPCs:

And then I found something shocking! A dead MacGyver, how can it be?

I've also tried a bit the level sync partying with my social LS. We've had two very good parties, one in Yhoator Jungle and one in Crawler's Nest. It's so nice to be able to play friends, I really love the level sync function!

On Wednesday and Thursday we camped Simurgh (no boots). I succeeded to forget I had blockaid on and complained about no one inviting me. Go me!

We also made two new assaults with our static, which meant I got a promotion to Chief Sergeant. I took some funny screenies from the quest:

Yesterday we had a sloooooooowga ZNM run. It took us over 1,5 hours to just gather and travel to first pop place... So when we popped the first NM, it was already 10.30 PM for me... It wasn't the fault of our leaders but the people who didn't listen and / or follow the instructions. I felt frustrated and tired, I'm really hoping it will be better on the next run.

One screenie from the ZNM run:

This will be my last post for a while, since I'll be starting my FFXI break after tomorrows HNMLS events and Dyna run. I'm really happy about the break as I'm getting very tired with all the drama there has been going on lately.

New challenges and victories

2008-09-08T12:57:00.007+03:00

I had such a great weekend! On Saturday some people from our social linkshell decided to gather together in Al Zahbi to do Besieged together. We had people from level 50ish to level 75 and we had a great time!

Then I had to log out for a few hours to go to my first ever iaido practice! I was really excited and scared at the same time... There were about 10 of us newbies, and also two older iaidokas training there and then of course our teacher. All the others were men.

We were given wooden katana swords, bokkens, and the training began. It was a lot more difficult and tiring than I had expected. Also, the instructor kept coming to check my position, my movements, the position of my hands and so on much more than he checked the others, which made me nervous. After the training my every muscle and my knees hurted like hell and I felt I was unable to walk to the bus stop to get home. And then the instructor told us that it would be good if we could make it to practices 5 days in a week! Some of our practices are from 6.30 AM to 7.30 AM, and I'm actually thinking about trying them. That would be an interesting start for a day.

Anyway, I liked iaido a lot. I hope I'll have the energy to continue practicing it and maybe some day I'll be as cool as these guys:

When I logged back to the game later on Saturday evening, we decided to start a little LS merit party. All the best camps were taken (again!) so we ended up in the mire. I really didn't feel very focused, but well, we all got at least some EXP before we decided to go do the Promyvion-Mea and the ENM in there for one of our members.

The promy boss and the ENM went ok. The way to the top wasn't as easy as it usually is, though, as two of us got aggro on the third floor and two people died. But well, all got their EXP back and more when we did the two fights in the spire. ENM drops were only worth 20K, but well, that's always better than nothing.

I also got the key item Mea Silver for the quest Shadows of the departed. Only Holla to go now!

On Sunday I decided to change my characters face again. Evyen now looks like this:

Red hair and green eyes. <3

Our afternoon events started with ENM. And for the first time ever (for me), something really nice dropped!

The best part was that the drop went to my really close friend Shokun who has been wanting that for ages! Congratulations!

After the ENM we did Einherjar. There were skeletons and vamouras and the boss was like Kirin. I was there as bard for the first time and didn't die once! I subbed NIN which actually saved my life. We won the chamber, grats us! No abj. drop though, unfortunately.

We decided to face our worst enemy, Bahamut v. 2 again. Sun was shining on Riverne Site B and we all felt warm and fuzzy. Well, at least I did, sitting under a tree with my friend:

I was, again, for the first time, facing Bahamut as Bard. My job was very simple: Soul Voice, Double minuet on three parties and then spam Finale on Bahamut. I also kept barfira up on my party just in case... And this time, finally, after a few failed runs, we took him down! Good job, everyone!

Our leader seemed to feel like testing our luck even more, because after Bahamut, we headed to Sea to pop Jailer of Prudence, which we had only tried once before and wiped. After experiencing a few horrible deaths and desperate situations, we managed to take him down, too. A good day for Europa, I'd say!

Then was the time for me to head to Bastok for Dynamis. On my way there, I picked up something nice for myself:

Dynamis run went really well. It seemed that all the problems had really been solved, and the atmosphere was a lot better. I actually enjoyed the run very much. We tried a new strategy, which worked really well. Drops were nice too.

Feeling tired

2008-09-06T11:19:00.003+03:00

This has been a busy week for me. My courses at university have started and I've also had some other real life things to take care of. Most of the times I've logged in to FFXI, I've felt too tired to do anything. That means I've also been unable to offer my help to my LS friends, which has made me feel guilty. I don't want anyone to think me as a bitch who never helps anyone... But well, I wrote my thoughts on our linkshell forums and some other members wrote their thoughts aswell and it has been a good discussion in my opinion.

This week I decided to help more and bitch less in all events. I'm trying to learn that sometimes it's best to just stay quiet. I'm not the leader and I don't have to take leaders role or responsibility. For now it has been working ok, I think, but I'm afraid the dynamis on Sunday will be the real test for me. ^^;

We did Omega and Ultima on Limbus this week. Both were a bit messy and felt a lot more difficult than the last time we did them. Especially in Ultima people died a lot (but I used my secret bard survival skills and didn't die once!). But well, at least we won.

I also finally got enough coins to upgrade first AF to +1. I'll do BRD hands first (Singing skill +10!) as soon as I'll understand how the redoing AF quests thing works...

We also killed Overlord Bakgodek with our HNMLS. The drops sucked. Horribly.

Yesterday I had a day off. I woke up around 3-4 PM... When I logged in, I decided to help my friend camp Okotes. No drop, again, unfortunately. Some very stupid people had complained to him in party about not having Okotes and that it was stupid for a SAM to use Woodsmans and he should get Snipers instead... I felt like /slapping those guys in the head. Seriously, my friend is playing his first and highest job in game, he has an awesome gear and then people complain him about having two Woodsmans instead of Snipers...

Yesterday evening we had a ZNM run. We popped Iriz Ima, Wulgaru, Gotoh Zha the Redolent and Iriri Samariri. All the others went well, but we wiped to Iriri Samariri when it was around 12%. It was our first time doing that mob and we only had 13 people, so we knew it was a bit risky. But well, it was good experience. Wulgaru was my pop and I was hoping to get a Hissho Hachimaki, but I didn't have any luck. Actually, none of us seemed to have a really nice luck, though we got one pair of Enkidu's hands.

Playing dead

2008-09-01T11:02:00.003+03:00

An angry and short post is angry and short.

I had a horrible day in game yesterday. First of all, for some reason, I slept like 14 hours, voke up around 4PM and missed the first part of our HNMLS event (ENM and Einherjar). When I logged in there was a nice LS message waiting: "You guys are late." I have no idea why I slept so long and I felt really bad about coming late to the event.

Well, we went to sky and did a couple of BB, a MG and four Suzakus. Suzaku decided to be a bitch and 2hr firaga III just when I was singing for the tanks. I died.

In the evening we had Dynamis-Xarca which went about as badly as it can go. I lost around 6K exp. Good times.

This DL quote kind of summed it up for me:

I'm also having some personal issues with one of our dynamis LS leaders. I'm concidering leaving the shell, no point for me to be there if it only gets me in a bad mood. And I don't want to be lead by a person who thinks our linkshell rules don't consern him and he can do whatever he wants and be rude to other members. But well, I don't want to create any drama so I won't post anything else here.

Avoiding cleaning up

2008-08-29T13:18:00.002+03:00

I've been a bit busy with the thing called "real life" lately. Some of my university studies and my new hobby iaido start next week and I'm really excited! Also, I've done some serious shopping this week and tried to clean up our home a bit because my sister and his boyfriend are coming to visit us today. Yesterday I got to know that I passed my last exam of philosophy in the university! That means I need to do only my exams of Swedish to get my BA diploma.

I haven't got any great achievements in game lately. I opened Summoner and tried it for a few levels. I don't think I'll ever take it to 75, but I think I could level it every once in a while for fun. For some reason, I like all the pet jobs in game, but I don't think any of them can be as close to my heart as Puppetmaster (speaking of which, I just dinged 74 on it yesterday!). I think I like PUP so much because it's so challenging. It's probably the most difficult (and expensive) job in game to make effective, and it's also a very versatile job.

Our HNMLS events this week have been Limbus and Sea farming. We did Jailer of Fortitude and Jailer of Faith and wiped to Jailer of Prudence (We've never tried it before) because our pulling strategy didn't work. Most of the Limbus drops have floored now which sucks, but we're trying to collect more Omega and Ultima pops.

Yesterday we did an ENM run with our social linkshell in Promyvion-Dem. We finally got a drop worth of some gil, a summoning earring. I also got my Dem-Silver key item for Shadows of the Departed -quest which I have to do before I can do Apocalypse Night.

A bit short post this time but I haven't really done much in game and I should be cleaning up our home right now...

Linkshell fun fun fun!

2008-08-25T09:42:00.005+03:00

Yesterday me and my husband went to see an iaido presentation (I don't know the right word in english for this). I needed to leave the LS events for two hours because of that, but it was refreshing and very interesting. I've wanted a new hobby for a long time, and I think this might be it. I'm going to a beginner's course next month and I'm really looking foward to it! I also signed up to study a bit japanese this year, so I'm hoping this year will be interesting.

I decided to take a two week break from the game from September 15th to 28th. It will be a difficult time to take a break maybe, because there will be a big update and I might miss something cool (for example, all pieces of PUP relic drop on one dyna run and I'm not there to lot them). I think it's a big reason for why this game is so addictive. But anyway, I think the break will be great for me.

I've played quite a lot again this weekend... On Friday we had a ZNM run which went really well. I even got something very nice for myself:

At the moment, I'm using that and my Rajas when I'm on my MNK or PUP. I also have two Woodsmans and I'm really tempted to sell them because I'm extremely poor... But on the other hand, I might want to level SAM or some other melee job soonish and then I'd regret selling them... And they're also nice for BCNMs and other capped things. Well, I don't know really.

On Saturday we had some kind of event day with my social linkhsell SecretFellowship. First we did the ENM Sheep in Antlion's Clothing with part of our LS ENM static. Our setup was a melee one (WHM, 2 x MNK, SAM, BLU) and it didn't work very well. But well, the point of the static is to have fun and try different things and setups and get experience. We won the ENM with 14 seconds of time left. Unfortunately, the only drop was Kejutsu satin. Yay, 800 gil for everyone!

After the ENM we did a bit zeni farming with my LS friend who I asked to join our ZNM LS. The zeni guy wanted ice elementals so we headed to Uleguerand Range, me as MNK and he as BLU. Unfortunately, the elemental we picked somehow succeeded to resist most of the Yawns casted on it, so my friend died. Fortunately my friend was kind enough to come raise him and help us with taking the rest of the pictures.

Then me and my friend Shokun went to help our LS mate Lary with his Sandy rank 8 mission BCNM. Lary is always very nice to everyone and I think he actually spends most of his time helping other people, he really is one of the friendliest people I've ever met. I was really glad I could do something to help him. Unfortunately, we had to keep them waiting for a while, but after we got to the BCNM it went really well and we even broke the record!

Then was the time for our LS CoP static Promyvion-Holla run. I wasn't included in the setup so I was spying the run on my husbands screen. It went really well, and again Holla seemed to be the easiest one (probably because that's always the one where we use most animas). Anyway, after organizing 3 Mea runs, 2 Dem runs and one Holla run, everyone but one of our 30+ level linkshell members are finally done with all the promyvions! Good job, guys!

I warped to guide them to the Tavnazian safehold. We ran around a bit doing the map quest and some random quest which gave us all 2100 gil for killing some orc NM (was a bit overkill with 7 people ^^). After everyone had gotten their map, we went to explore the Misareaux Coast and I showed them one of my favourite places in game, the waterfall there. We decided to stay there for a while and have a picnic!

After our little picnic we decided to do a parade gorget run because 3 of our members wanted the item. We had heard the drop rate could be horrible, so we took 12 pop items with us. One of our linkshell members offered his THF for TH, which was really nice. Amazingly, in the end we were 3/3 of the item!

Yesterday I didn't play much because I have the iaido presentation thing, but I did do Bahamut v1 and v2 (we broke the record on the first one and lost to the second one) and Dynamis. For the first time ever, our dynamis leader was unable to attend the run, so he left it to two of our leaders. Unfortunately, one of them didn't seem to feel like leading anything at all, so one of them got all the work to do. Because I'm one of the sackholders in the LS, he asked me to help him with the setup. After that experience I now respect our leader more, it was really a nightmare to try to build a reasonable dynamis setup for the first time. But anyway, the setup worked (at least in my opinion well), we did the boss (at that time our leader was able to attend the run too) and got several drops too. I couldn't believe my luck when this dropped and I got the right to lot it:

That was my first Dynamis-San d'Oria run as BRD on my lot list (it's my second lot job). That was also the only piece of BRD relic I want. And it dropped. And I got it. Amazing!

Now I'm only missing MNK body and head (I'm first in line for both!) and then the PUP relic, when it comes out, if the pieces are as good as I'm hoping they'll be. Then I can just save my points until I have some other job leveled to 70+.

Killing big meanies (and some players too)

2008-08-21T17:14:00.005+03:00

I have only one week of vacation left before my studies at the university begin again. I'm really looking foward to studying again! This year I'm studying whole new subjects, mostly education (I'm studying to become a teacher). I'm also planning to start studying Japanese, but I'm not sure if I'll do it at the university or at an adult education center. Anyway, I've been thinking about taking a little break from FFXI to focus on my studies again. Maybe a week or two, maybe more, I don't know, but I definitely could use one. We'll see.

Anyway, on this week I've done quite a lot in game. On Monday we had a great Limbus run. We did Apollyon S/E with 11 people, it was an easy win and we got a nice amount of coins. Also there were several drops, though half of them floored. Anyway, I can't remember when was the last time I've had such a great time doing Limbus! People seemed to be on a relaxed mood, no one complained about anything, we were joking and it was really fun.

Also, I did the biggest damage weapon skill I've done so far:

For some reason the mob got mad at me after that. ^^;

After Limbus we had an assault static run with two of our members missing. We got replacements for them from out linkshell and decided to do a Lebros Cavern PFC assault Lebros Supplies which I still hadn't done. That assault sucked more than any assault I've ever done! I mean seriously, on wiki it seemed so easy (just run from NPC to NPC avoiding aggro) but somehow we got loads and loads of aggro and people just kept dying. On the first try we lost it and I felt really horrible, because I knew no one wanted to do it and the only reason we did it was because I hadn't still done it (I was ill the last time they had done it). Well, we decided to try again, and we made it on the second try. There were still deaths though, and I felt really horrible about them. After that everyone swore they'd never ever do that assault again, me included.

On Tuesday I decided to get a bit EXP for my BRD. I got a nice merit party (the setup was a dream: RDM, BRD, NIN and 3 x SAM) and the whole colibri camp area was empty! I dinged 75 before I could say it and got a really nice buffer too. Next I'll focus on getting my PUP to 75 and gearing and meriting all my jobs like crazy.

After exping I asked if one of our linkshell members still needed help with his PLD AF weapon fight. He said yes so we decided to go do it. I had just done the fight a while ago for my husband, so I knew where it was, how it was like and so on. So I geared PUP/WHM, met my friend in Jeuno and teled us to Holla. I remembered that the mob (an elemental) had hit my husbands char very hard when he had popped it, so I told my friend he should Flash it so that it will miss him. Well, I have to say that was a horribly stupid idea. I had no idea flash would generate so much hate. So, my friend died, and I felt like a total idiot. The saddest thing was, I was PUP/WHM but I didn't have enough MP for raise and no MP gear with me... So I had to ask my husband to bring his character to raise our friend. Well, at least he got his AF weapon, even though everything went wrong.

While we were waiting for my husband to come to the rescue, I had fun playing with my BLM puppet. I haven't used it for a long time, so I had never seen it cast tier III nukes before. I decided to tease some bunnies and test them.

Yesterday I helped a new linkshell member with his Sandy rank 2 mission. I also showed him how to get to the Dunes, and we got him tele-dem and holla crystals. He seems like a great guy and I had a great time with him.

When my friend Shokun logged in, I asked him if he'd like to come farm some sea organs with me again. We spent maybe 2 or even 3 hours in Sea and this time even got some drops. When we were just talking about how we were starting to get bored with organ farming, a friend of ours who was camping Charybdis told us it had popped. So we ran to help him. We had a NIN, RDM (who wanted the joytoy), BRD (me) and WHM. Things were smooth and easy until our NIN had to go afk in the middle of the fight and he died. And then the rest of us died too... So we called some reinforcements (another NIN and a THF(?)) just in case, reraised and rested. At one point I was moving to a safer spot to rest when my sneak suddenly wore. I kept running becaue I thought I didn't get aggro. When I was next to our WHM, something smacked me hard and I died... and then it proceeded to kill the WHM too. I felt so sorry, it was such a stupid mistake from me. Anyway, when we all were gathered and unweakened, we claimed and killed it again and of course got the sword for our RDM friend. A happy ending is happy.

After the Charybdis we had to hurry to our HNMLS event. We were going to try Bahamut v. 2. The fight went really well for some time, but (in my opinion) we didn't have enough stunners and WHMs, so after a couple of Gigaflares got off, we wiped. We got him to 20% and he didn't summon anything in that time, so I think it was ok for our first try.

After failed Bahamut v. 2 we decided to do Ouryu, which went a lot better. It was a long but a fun fight, I was there as BRD and was quite busy the whole time.

Today I haven't done anything in game. Our social LS has ENM + promy run today but I left myself out of the setup because I had to do it to someone. I have limbus and assault this evening, but before that I think I'll just do something else than play.

Big Fish (not the movie)

2008-08-18T13:22:00.007+03:00

On Friday I asked if my friend Shokun wanted to farm some sea organs before my ZNM run. We spent 2 hours in Sea but didn't have much luck: we only got 2 or 3 drops, I don't even remember. Anyway, it was nice and fun, and I got some skill ups for Comedies magic skill.

After Sea farming we had a ZNM run, which went a lot better than last week. First we headed to Arrapago Reef again (/sigh) and we popped 2 Nuhns. This NM turned out to be extremely easy one, and we got some good drops too (3 pairs of Oracle's Pigaches from 2 pops!). When we were fighting the thing, I couldn't stop thinking the movie Big Fish (a great movie, by the way).

On Saturday I got this amazing JP party which took my BRD from level 72 to 74. The party lasted for four hours, the setup was great and all members were good players (it seemed to be a LS static). All other members were japanese but they did their best translating everything they said for me, which made me happy. It was such a cute party too, because all our melees were tarus! We had a taru DRG, taru SAM and taru NIN, sooooooo cute!

Yesterday was my busy LS event day again. First we did ENM (got a Hagun!), then Sea farming (on an area of which I had the map, yay!) and then Bahamut v. 1! The Bahamut fight was a piece of cake really, I thought it would be more difficult. Our strategy was to zerg it and it was dead in 54 seconds if I remember correctly. No one from our alliance even died. But well, I'm looking foward to Bahamut v. 2, should be more challenging.

It was funny to run across the capped area with the LS, almost everyone without any gear (should've brought my new bikini!).

After Bahamut it was time for our Dynamis run. When we were gathering, our LS leader asked me if I wanted to take some leadership tasks in the LS. I answered yes, because I was glad to be able to help the LS. I really like our Dyna LS, I think it works very well and our leader does a great job with leading our runs. So, I was made a sackholder and asked to check the applications, give pearls and post news when needed. I'm very happy that our leader felt that he could trust me with those things, and I hope I can make his job as the LS leader a bit easier by doing them.

Lately I've been thinking somewhat a lot about my role in the linkshells I'm in. In a group situation, I always tend to give people advice, even orders. I know I shouldn't do it as much as I do, but that's the way I've been used to. That's my way of trying to help the group and I always do that when I'm excited about something. I do know it can be very annoying at times and some leaders may feel like I'm trying to take their role. Also, I know I can be a real bitchy with rules and other stuff at times, so I can understand if people find me as an annoying person. So I think it's something I need to work on, to try not to become a total bitch who tries to overrule the leader every time I get excited.

Raging Flamingos

2008-08-15T15:21:00.008+03:00

I've been a bit ill for the last couple of days so I haven't really done much but played. My sister and her boyfriend were going to come to visit us this weekend but I had to cancel it. I was really looking foward to seeing them so I'm a bit sad about it.

Since I've been ill, I haven't done much anything else but played FFXI. On Wednesday I helped a LS member with his Rank 5 mission. Now all of our active members are at least Rank 5 and we can do Rank 6 together soon. I took this screenshot when we were doing the mission, meet Evy the Galka:

On Wednesday evening we had a Sea run which didn't go very well. I felt really ill and tired and found it difficult to concentrate. I guess I should've just logged out but I hate missing events (in fact, I've never missed a Dynamis run or an event of my HNMLS). Well, we killed the Ix'Aern DRG and Ix'Aern DRK and the DRK dropped the RDM cape (and only reraised once!). But when we were hunting another DRK, somehow many people got lost and died, and that's when the chaos began. I got lost and died too and for the first time ever I was told not to reraise (I was BRD/WHM) but wait for a R3. I guess our leader wants my BRD to get to 75 really bad. ^^ Well, anyway we were splitted all over The Garden of Ru'Hmet, some of us dead, and most of us didn't seem to have any idea about where to go. So our leader told us the event was over and we warped away.

The thing is, our leader said that people should've studied the maps and know how to move around. While I agree with him, I'm really horrible with all maps. I mean I can get lost in East Ronfaure, seriously! And it really isn't that easy to move around in a place of which you have no map (that's the only Sea map I don't have). I always have the map open on my laptop when I'm running around there, but it isn't that easy to try to follow someone, check my position from the in-game map which I don't have, focus things on my screen and check the map from wiki... I guess I should really get the map of that area, but it's impossible for me to solo, so I'll need to gather a group maybe.

Yesterday I decided to get my PUP a little EXP and skillups. I headed to Sky and decided to try to fight Flamingos there.

Yeah, they look all cute and pink but I'm quite sure they have some kind of hidden rage mode. At times it seemed to impossible to keep my shadows up because their attack speed just seemed crazy. But it was ok when Comedie kept Slow, Paralyze and Bio II on them most of the time. The birds checked Decent Challenge - Tough and they weren't too difficult. Exp wasn't amazing, but it was ok, and skill ups were great!

The best thing was, these birds dropped 3 coffer keys for me and I left Sky 50K richer! ^^ Hunting for coffers was fun, too, I don't know any other zone where coffers are hidden like they are in Sky.

After I got bored with exping, I asked if anyone in the LS wanted to do a BCNM run. I didn't have enough my seals for an orb myself, but I knew other people had, and I also know some of our LS members have never done BCNMs before so they might be a bit shy to organize a run even if they wanted to. So we did Royal Jelly, 3 orbs, and one of them dropped Utsu: Ni. That person is now 2/5 on those, he seems to have a very good luck. I think most of us have had a Ni drop from this BCNM (well, of course, not me), so it seems to be really worth of seals. And the best thing is, it's really easy and can be done in (almost) any setup, we haven't lost it once.

After the BCNM I decided to go to farm a bit, this time on my level 11 SAM. I had almost two hours to spend before limbus and in that time I got two levels and a nice amount of silk, beehive chips and honey. I also noticed I like SAM more than DRG, and I think that may be the job I level after I get my BRD and PUP to 75.

When we we're on our way to Limbus later, one of us got ufo aggro and we decided to kill it. First it seemed to be going really well, but then melees (me included) succeeded to get some nice links from the TP mobs and we all wiped. I really hate those things!

The Limbus itself was just epic! First of all, our puller pulled too fast leaving two of our members outside (and one of them was one of our tanks). However, anything went really well before the last floor, where the puller pulled ALL the mobs at the same time. It turned out that those gobs really didn't feel tired enough to stay asleep and we all wiped after killing some of the mobs.

So we were all dead and we didn't have much time left (we had less than 10 minutes). So we had no option but to chainspell and R1 all. When we were all up, we got the 5 minutes notice. There were 3 mobs left, so we decided to rest full HP and zerg them as weakened with our 2hr. I was sure we'd wipe again to the first Bomb Toss, but the plan seemed to work surprisingly well. In fact, we were already killing the last mob when we got the 1 minute notice. The bad thing was, at that moment, the gob decided to cast Sleepga II and we all fell asleep... My heart was beating so fast, I couldn't believe one stupid sleep spell would prevent us from winning. But you know, miracles do happen! The gob was stupid enough to use Bomb Toss soon after the sleepga, so we all woke up and succeeded to kill it and win with I-don't-want-to-think-about-how-many seconds left. Good times!

I also got the MNK item, so I now have both items for both MNK and BRD! That means I can't lot anything for a long time, but I need to save coins anyway.

The usual stuff with some friend list drama

2008-08-13T10:24:00.002+03:00

On the last couple of days, I've spent a few hours farming in Saruta on my DRG. In those few hours I got many stacks of wind and earth crystals, silk, honey and beehive chips. They also took my DRG from level 10 to 14 which I'm happy about.

I also ended up removing a person from my friend list. The person had been on my friend list for a while (like 2 months maybe) after one party we both were in. He didn't talk to me often but every time he did, he seemed to want help with something. I really didn't enjoy being the person you only talk to when you need something, so I had been thinking about removing him from my friend list almost as long as he had been there. Well, the day before yesterday he finally crossed the line.

He had just dinged 75 on his highest job so he wanted Walahra Turban. He then realized he didn't have enough imperial gold coins, so he (logically???) decided to ask if I want to give him some.

So... First of all, I don't even know this guy! Yes, he's on my friend list, but he has only talked to me when he has needed help with something. So what makes him assume he has the right to even ask me to give him items worth of nice money? Sure, I don't mind borrowing my friends (the people I know and who also help me every once in a while) something like that, but this guy was talking about giving the coins to him and I don't even know him! He has never ever helped me with anything, or even wanted to know anything about me. Some friendship, huh?

I think the funniest part was when he said about not being able to buy the coins because he's saving gil for his (Shura) togi. This person doesn't even have Sky access! And I have three Shura abj. in my MH at the moment, waiting for me to save enough gil or points for the cursed items. But of course I should use some money for his Shura gear first, right? ...right...

Anyway, I logged out, removed him from my friend list, and logged back in. After that, I politely told him I was sorry but I felt like he was just using me to get things he wants, and that I don't like people like that being on my friend list.

On Monday we had Limbus which we won easily even though one of our two PLDs got d/c just before the last floor. We did Apoyllon, and a BRD item dropped. I got it, so I now have both items for one AF+1. I think I'll do the hands first, I just need some coins.

Yesterday was the first run of the ENM static I organized! We did a level cap 40 3 person ENM Fire in the Sky in Monarch Linn. I was a bit nervous but we won extremely easily. Our setup was RDM/BLM, BLM/WHM and BRD/WHM (me). BLM had only time to cast 2 nukes before the mob died so it was a fast win. Unfortunately nothing good dropped, but at least we now have experience with this ENM.

I also got to a merit party with my BRD. I was nervous because I had never pulled in a merit party before and I had never been to this camp (Mamool Ja staging point) with BRD. But it went surprisinly well, exp/h was around 15-20K and I pulled fast enough all the time. My highest chain was #42, then the melees didn't kill the mob fast enough (yeah, blame the melees! ^^). I still need practice with keeping all songs up and chains going, but I think I did well enough for my first merit party.

Byakko = serious business

2008-08-11T16:06:00.001+03:00

Yesterday I woke up relatively early. After breakfast, I started to go to climb the mountain at Attohwa Chasm to get the key item for the ENM our LS does every Sunday. When I had done the climbing and was going to Boneyard Gully, I ran across this guy:

He was just chilling out there alone, and there were almost no other people in the zone. So I told my LS he was up and we decided to kill him on next night. Last time we killed him he rewarded us by dropping this:

This time the drops were a lot better: we got two dark crystals instead of one!

I think we all are a bit frustrated with this NM at the moment. We've killed it a few times now and nothing good has dropped. And many people have his drops on their wish list, so it seems we'll be wasting a lot of time with this guy.

Anyway, after Xol we did ENM (surprise, surprise, no good drops) and then we headed to Sky. We did 5 Genbus and 6 Byakkos. Genbu gave us 2 x A. hands which were the reason we popped it, and Byakko gave us some nice haidate and a pair of Shura legs. We also did 2 Zips while we were near his pop place. It was a nice Sky event!

Also, I learned something new there. While I was singing for tanks, I suddenly experienced this:

For a while I didn't realize at all what had just happened, but it turned out I hadn't payed enough attention to my log. So, if you're reading this, here's something you should always remember: when your log says "Byakko redies Claw Cyclone.", run away as fast as you can!

After my HNMLS event I had Dynamis-Jeuno which was a bit a disaster. Everything went really well at first but then we somehow managed to get an amazing amount of links and wipe with too little time left for the boss. And the drops weren't nice either. But well, that's how Dynamis is sometimes.

Today I did a little farming with my level 10 DRG in Saruta. But almost as soon as I'd started, my friend Shokun told us in linkshell chat that Rose Garden was up and I decided to go kill it. One other LS member Potato came along too. We claimed and killed it but unfortunately it didn't drop anything.

Also, I got the new swimsuit for one of my mules today. She seemed very happy about it:

Manaburn bard

2008-08-09T22:54:00.001+03:00

Yesterday was the worst ZNM run ever! We decided to pop Experimental Lamia which pops in Caedarva Mire, but you have to go through Arrapago Reef to get to there. So, we took a lamian key, like the guide said, and went to the Arrapago Reef. The thing is, I really hate that zone. I think, everyone who plays this game has a zone they don't enjoy being in at all. For me, it's the Arrapago Reef. I mean, the place is huge, the map is confusing, there are tons of undead mobs and imps everywhere, I always get lost there... So I wasn't too surprised when some people got lost and / or died on the way through the place.

However, I was surprised when at some point we found out no one had any idea about where we were supposed to go. Finally, we found a door which seemed to take us to right place, but the problem was, we didn't have another key to open it. The guide only mentioned one so we brought one. And there we were, in the middle of Arrapago Reef, stuck at a door which might be the right one but even if it was, we had no way of opening it.

So, we farmed a key, and after some time, we even found the right way! It only took us like.... Two hours maybe? Anyway, we finally got to the mire and people were feeling very tired and annoyed and some people started to complain in /l. I felt really bad about the whole thing, because I don't like people fighting over nothing. I know this game and the people who play it seem sometimes very annoying and frustrating, but then I just try to take a deep breath and think positive. I don't see any reason to start ranting about it and make other people feel even worse than they already do.

Anyway, we go to the pop place, pop the NM, and..... guess what? We wipe! We didn't have that many people on the run and I think we all were really tired and couldn't focus, so that may be a part of the reason why it happened. Losing to this NM certainly didn't make us feel any better so we decided to call it a night. I felt really sorry for the person who lost his pop item. After the event I felt like I had just wasted hours of my time for something completely stupid. I usually don't feel that way even if events go wrong, because I try to think that we all make mistakes sometimes and we can always learn from them. But this time I didn't feel that anyone really learned anything. But anyway, I'm sure the next weeks run will go a lot better. These things happen sometimes.

Today I woke up feeling really tired. I had a really hard week, maybe a bit too hard, and I don't feel like I've recovered from it yet. I wondered if I was in a mood for playing at all, but then I asked if my husband wanted to do a BCNM run with me and he said yes. I asked a friend to come along too, and we had a great time together. We did Royal Jelly again, that's the BCNM we've been doing a lot lately. No good drops this time unfortunately, but you can't win every time.

After the BCNM, I finally helped my friend Shokun to farm Illuminink for DM pop item. He has been asking me to help him with it for a long time but I've always said no because I've been in a horrible hurry with my studies and haven't had much time to play. And when I've had time, I've wanted to spend it on something relaxing, not farming something. Anyway, we killed statues at Hall of Gods zone and it didn't take long to drop so I guess we were lucky. It was fun doing something with my friend, we haven't really played together much lately outside the LS events.

After we got the item for my friend, I decided to go lfp on my Bard. It took me a long time to find a party (!), so I spent time working on my study schedule for this autumn. I was surprised to notice that most of my lectures will be at the evening after 4PM. I'm not complaining though.

Finally, I got an invite to a manaburn party. I haven't been in a manaburn party ever, so I had no idea what was a BRD supposed to do there and what kind of EXP I would get from it. I was of course curious, so I accepted the invite. There were 2 BLM/RDM, 3 BLM/WHM and me as BRD/WHM. The only thing they wanted was double ballad, so my job with song was really easy compared to melee parties. I also pulled which was nice and easy after we found a camp with so many pops we couldn't clear them all. Exp was good and I pulled chain #5-7 the whole time. I felt really relaxed and enjoyed playing my job, so I really liked that party! I don't remember when was the last time I've been in an EXP party where I could just enjoy playing the job. I dinged 72 in that party and we disbanded 45 minutes later, so I got a nice buffer too.

When we were gathering at the camp, I noticed for the first time, that the sunset at Mount Zhayolm is really beautiful:

Also, here's a picture of our party in action:

Feeling guilty

2008-08-08T14:20:00.001+03:00

I had a horrible day yesterday. First of all, I waked up at 8AM and I was tired as hell. I just wanted to go back to sleep but I had some important things to do so I had to go out. When I came back home, I started to study. I didn't get one book for my exam until yesterday so I had only one day to read it. So I read until I felt my brain was going to explode.

At 10PM my time we did a Limbus run in Temenos and a BRD item dropped. My BRD is only level 71 at the moment, but I've been asked to use it mostly in all events. I haven't been doing Limbus long and I wasn't sure about our lotting rules, so I asked who could lot it. One person wanted the item, but it turned out that he already had one piece of BRD AF +1 and our rules say that in those situations persons without any AF +1 should be able to lot first. So they told me to lot, the other person passed, and I got the item.

I said I hope we'll get another drop on the same run so the other person can have the item too. Then they told me it was a really rare drop and he had been waiting it for 6 months... I felt so bad for him, if I had known that, I would've passed the item. But it got even worse... Our point person said that I had a right to lot it because BRD was my main lot and only the secondary lot of the other person. Well, BRD isn't my main lot... He had messed it up and in the end it wouldn't have been my lot at all. So a person had waited for an item for half a year and then some noob in the LS comes and lots it even though he had every right to lot it. I felt so horrible, so guilty the whole evening because of that. I really hope another BRD will drop soon and he'll get it.

But I also have some happy news! Yesterday I decided to spend all my gil for Ancient Beastcoins so I could get something very nice for my Bard:

I'm loving it!

Also, yesterday after Limbus we did four assaults with our static, and I finally got promoted to Sergeant Major (I don't think I've done any new assaults for this promotion so it certainly took some time). The promotion quest was one of the most disturbing ones I've seen:

I'm so happy it's weekend now and I finally have some time to relax and play. We'll do some ZNMs today and I'm looking foward to it, but before Sunday I don't have anything else planned. I think I might farm a bit and maybe level my Bard.

(Hello!) (Nice to meet you.)

2008-08-06T11:06:00.000+03:00

So, for some reason, I decided to start a FFXI blog. Let's see how it goes. I can't promise this to be an interesting blog, as I'll write mostly for myself.

I've played FFXI from June 2007, so about 14 months now. I started playing mostly because for the first time in my life, I had time for it. I was forced to take a long vacation because of my health and couldn't really do anything but stay home, play and read. So on June 2007 I created an elvaan female character called Evyen and stepped into the world of Vana'diel.

Now, after 14 months, I have achieved quite a lot in game. First of all, I've made some very great friends, and they are the most important reason for me to keep playing. My first LS, EtVaanOsaa, was very important for me. I experienced many memorable moments with the people in the LS, and even though the LS split up in the beginning of summer, I still consider those people to be my friends. At the moment, I have two linkshells: SecretFellowship is my social LS where I spend most of my play time. Europa is my HNMLS where I do events at least on four days a week. I also have a dynamis LS and a ZNM LS to keep myself even more busy. I love doing all kinds of in game events with a group of friends!

When I created my character, I first started playing as a Monk, which ended up also being my first job to 75 about six months later. After that, I've been leveling Puppetmaster, which is level 73 at the moment, and Bard, which I got to level 71 yesterday but then deleveled in a horrible KSNM. At the moment I'm focusing on leveling both to 75 and gearing them up. I'm not done with the gear of my MNK yet either.

One of my goals in game is completing all the missions and most of the quests. For me the most interesting thing in FFXI is the fantastic storyline. I love doing quests and missions and I like to watch the mission cutscenes over and over again (I have all the ZM and CoP cs on my computer). For now I've done all the CoP and ZM, and I also have rank 10 in San d'Oria. I'll start working on ToAU and WotG missions when some of my friends reach a bit higher level so I can do the missions with them.

In real life, I'm 22 years old. I'm married to most wonderful person on Earth. Now when my vacation is over, I'll be going back to my studies at university. My BA work was accepted a year ago, but I still need to do some courses to get my diploma. Besides of playing FFXI, I enjoy reading and watching movies and my favourite TV series. I've also taken some classes in oriental dance at the university, and I'm hoping to continue that hobby this year.

I haven't had much time to play lately because I've been studying (I have an important exam on Friday). But here are some things I've done:

I did a lot of Windurst quests and was "deep in dhamel doo-doo" with some of them...

My Dynamis LS made our first encounter with Shadow Lord on our second ever Dynamis-Xarcabard run!

Yeah, it didn't end up so well...

I've also been enjoying the summer festival a lot! We made a little LS event out of it and had a blast.

I got myself a new Adventuring Fellow today. Meet Yufafa: