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? ^^
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)
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.
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!
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.
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.
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:
