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.

A bit PUP endgame, a NM in the past and more whining about whiners

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!

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.

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!

Lolpup sadness, anger and frustration

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!

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.

Raging Flamingos

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.