ToAU 44 and other stuff

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.

Leading Dynamis and other problems

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!

Xmas hurries and worries

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! ^^

Busy weekend

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.

Crazy people

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:

An epic battle on a boat

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



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

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







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

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

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



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

Dynamis gone weird (also BRD & PUP gear plans)

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



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

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

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



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

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

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



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