Pimp my BRD!

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...)

Dynamis gone weird (also BRD & PUP gear plans)

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



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

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

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



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

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

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



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

Manaburn bard

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: