WotG mission pics (spoilers)!

Since we don't really celebrate Xmas, we spent some time doing WotG missions in the past couple of days. I've read many negative comments of WotG but for me it has been really interesting so far. I'm only on mission 6 at the moment so can't really say much but I've really loved the Windurst story and the cutscenes! Here are some pictures of our way from mission 3 to mission 5...

Fights

We started from mission 3 related quests where we had to kill a NM Coeurl in Fort Karugo-Narugo. We trioed the NM with PUP, PLD and BLM, was really easy.



Another fight we had to do involved tons of yagudos! When I read from wiki that there were supposed to be "a large number of yagudos", I assumed that meant 10 or so, but in reality there were tens of them! We went in with two (PLD/WAR and PUP/DNC) and seriously underestimated the fight, but won anyway. Was a really fun and exciting battle!



NPCs

Several new and old interesting NPCs have been introduced. My personal favourite for now is maybe Cait Sith. Lehko Habhoka seems interesting too... and I really can't decide if I like Lilisette or not.















Battle scenes

The battle cutscenes have been really amazing!















Good stuff

The dancer show cutscene in San-d'Oria was just beautiful!





And this is one of my favourite WotG screenshots:



Here I am, riding towards new adventures!

MMM, Assault and Starlight Celebration!

So yesterday we did a couple of Assaults because people had tags. First we did Lebros Cavern PSC (most of us needed points from there) which was as easy as always. Our setup was PUP, BLM (duoing the north wall), DRG, DRK and MNK.



For second Assault I chose Periqia PSC because I needed points there and because it was a new assault for a couple of people. Unfortunately I didn't remember how much the mission sucked. I was controlling the NPC which is the worst task in this assault, since it's almost impossible. I've done it a couple of times now and I still don't really know how to make him stop or move. And he also likes to run away every now and then so I need to be ready to catch him. I didn't even have time to answer to /tells I got during this assault (sorry, I was seriously busy).

Anyway, after that one of us had to leave and another person wanted to save his last tag for Nyzul just to be sure he'd have four for that. So we decided to go and try MMM instead. Only one of us had tried it before and he had got himself killed so we didn't really have almost any idea about the whole thing. We just gathered 5 people and decided to give it a try. Our setup for the first run was DRG (68), DRK (70), PUP (75), BLU (75) and WHM (75).



We got warped to Everbloom Hollow and found a maze full of EP crawlers and slimes. It was easy and we finished with about 10 mins left I think.



From this first run we got 30 marbles (I think) which meant we all could buy the cool eyepatch for 10 marbles!





For our second run we decided to change our setup a bit. I changed from PUP to BRD and our lowest level member changed from DRG to MNK which was 75. We got warped to Everbloom Hollow again but this time there were DC (our lowest level party member was still 70) Krakens and Coeurls. Good thing I was BRD because those thing linked badly and it was really good to have someone to sleep them.

Yesterday we also had our LS Xmas event! We gathered in Northern San-d'Oria and first we did the card exchange thing for a while. After that we went out to smack some boxes and when all had their Dream Robe and the bell key item, we went to do that quest in Southern San-d'Oria for the HQ bell.

We also did a little "secret santa" game. Everyone who wanted brought a present (worth max 1000 gil) and then we gave them to our Santa Lary (Galkas make the best santas!) who mixed them and gave to different people. I was really surprised when he traded me and I got a linkpearl! The LS was called "LesAmis" ("Friends" in english) so now I can carry my friends with me everywhere I go! ^^

Some pictures of our event:













Merry Starlight and happy New Year to all of readers!

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! ^^

Fields of Valor coolness and other stuff

Yesterday I did a bit Xmas shopping and it was so exhausting and horrible I decided to reward myself with a lot of playing... As a result I played a bit more than I actually wanted to.

Anyway, we tried that new Fields of Valor thing with a couple of LS members. We decided to go as a party and level synced to 22. We checked the level recommendations and didn't realize they were for soloers, not parties of 4 people, so we chose to go to Valkurm Dunes. We took the hardest mission available there: we needed to kill 4 sheep and 4 damselflies.





For a group of four, the EXP wasn't of course as good as it could've been, but at least we figured the system out and two of us got levels! One of us had to go and then we moved to Jugner Forest and chose to kill funguars and tigers there. It was fun and easy and I got 3 levels while we were there!

Today I decided to continue exping my DNC in FoV. My DNC was level 28, so I chose Qufim Island mission 4: level recommendation 28-30, 6 gigas and 4 pugils. The mobs were all EM or T for me so it was really nice EXP. Every time I got those 10 mobs killed, I got 735 extra EXP and gil. I was soon level 30 so I've got 5 levels in the last two days just with FoV! I think I'll take my DNC all the way to 37 like that.

FoV makes at least soloing and duoing so much easier and more fun! The system really gave me motivation to EXP my subs. It's so nice that I can just take OP, choose mission and then get all those nice buffs without spending any gil! For example today when I was exping my DNC, I had free reraise, protect, regen and attack food on the whole time. It's a really great addition to the game, thank you SE!

Yesterday we also did a couple of Assaults: Mamool ja Training Grounds PFC and Periqia PFC. It's weird that no one else but me ever wants to do assaults in certain zone, everyone just says "I don't care, I can do anything". I know I need certain points to get some pieces of gear I want but I feel bad if I make everyone else spam the same missions all over again...



Anyway, those assaults we did yesterday got me the promotion to Second Lieutenant! I can't believe I'm only two ranks away from Captain now... Well, two ranks and a million Assaults I haven't done.



After those assaults a LS member Lary asked if we could help him to get Destroyers from Double Dragonian BCNM. The assault party agreed to help and some of us got orbs too. I remember when we tried to get my Destroyers it took us 8 orbs so I wasn't too confident we could get them for Lary with our 4 orbs. But well, Larys orb was first and Destroyers dropped! Then on the next orb they dropped again and on the last orb again... They only didn't drop on my orb, which means that I just have a horrible luck with that weapon I guess.

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.

My first Nyzul ever!

A while ago I got this idea about trying Nyzul Isle assaults. That's one of those things I've never got to try. So I decided to organize some Nyzul runs for my LS, just so that we could try it and get new experiences. I was surprised how many others were interested in trying this too: 10 people signed up! Of course that meant that not everyone could attend every run, but I wanted to give everyone a chance to try it.

When I first got this idea, my knowledge of Nyzul Isle was close to zero. Basically, all I knew was that the goal was to climb up 5 floors at a time and that every floor had a random objective. So I read some guides and information on different FFXI forums. Based on this information, I organized our first run and setup for it:

1. WHM/SMN (main healer)
2. BLU/NIN (secondary healer, stunner, main puller and DD power)
3. PLD/WAR (one guide said it's every important to have a person with provoke)
4. DRG/WHM (another person to help with healing and also DD power)
5. MNK/NIN (DD)
6. MNK/NIN (DD)

It wasn't really the optimal setup described in guides but I was happy with it. After all, about half of the people signed up for this only have one job at 75.

I understood that preparation for the run was extremely important. So I made sure everyone had reraise item, a form of sneak and invisible, echo drops, several different pulling methods (ranged attack, ninjutsu, voke) and a proper sanction bonus (refresh for mages and regen for melees). Our WHM also had poison potions with him and they proved to be very useful.



The first two tags went to figuring out the whole thing and making better strategies. There were a couple of things which made us work faster:

* In the lobby, instead of all of us spamming the rune, everyone did / when they we're ready to warp up, and then one person used the rune.

* We decided to split in two groups when we got certain objects (for example on "defeat all enemies" floors)

* On nearly all floors, we got someone to run to the rune when we had almost completed the objective, so that we could warp to the next floor as fast as possible.

One great advantage we had was that we communicated really well with each other and adjusted to different situations pretty fast. It's always easier to do things like this with friends than with a pickup group because with friends you're used to their play style and it's easier to communicate.

On third tag we finally got up to floor 5! After that we all had one tag left, so we decided to give floors 6+ a try and succeeded to get to floor 10! I was really happy, because my goal was to take us to floor 5 and I wasn't really sure if we could even get there, because none of us had really any previous Nyzul experience. But everyone did amazing job and thanks to everyone working so well together, our first ever Nyzul run was a great success!

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: