PUPs being robbed!

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

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

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

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



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

/sigh

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



Archery and magic done, only melee to go!

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



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

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

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...)!

Exhausted but you can't stop me from posting!

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

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

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

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.

The Apprentice

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):

Do want!

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...