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:

Behemoth's Bane and cheating in FFXI

I've been camping Behemoth for a few days now. I've never been to king camps before myself, but of course I've heard all the horror stories. The common opinion seems to be that they aren't even worth trying, because there are always around 100 people in the zone and all of them use bots to claim. Luckily I'm not a person who believes everything she hears without checking the situation out herself.

So I decided to give it a try. Behemoth seemed like a nice NM to camp because it always drops hides which sell for 450K on our server, and it also has a (low) chance of dropping a Black Belt item which I know would be nice for me and my many MNK friends. But my main reason for wanting to try and camp it wasn't the possibility of getting a BB item or the gil but the excitement of trying something totally new.

I was there on a few days with a couple of friends. I noticed soon that the hardest part wasn't actually claiming, but getting some friends to help with killing it in case we'd get the claim. The only one dedicated to camp it was me, and even though some of my friends have said they're interested, they're mostly unable to come online when the window is open. I couldn't do anything but decide to be patient and be there every day just to get ToD if nothing else.

Today when I woke up, I noticed that the window would be open in around 30 mins. I didn't wake up for it in purpose, but my husband had to wake up early today and I wanted to have breakfast with him before he had to leave. I logged in and decided to check the zone. There was no one there yet. I decided to run both my character and my husbands character there just in case. Then I got the idea to also bring my friends WHM there. When the first window opened, there were only me with my 3 chars and a person from a big HNMLS. Of course, I couldn't be so lucky that it would've popped on first window.

After a couple of windows more people started to arrive. I was starting to lose my hope of claiming, but I wanted to stay to get the ToD at least. 15 minutes before the second last window a friend RDM Artemision came online and I asked him if he wanted to join us (my husband had come home at this point). He said yes and hurried to the zone. When he was still on his way, the window had already opened and both me and my husband were hitting our claim macros as fast as possible. Suddenly I saw something huge on my screen and realized it had popped right in front of me. I really didn't know what I was doing because I was in kind of panic but suddenly I noticed its name turn red and saw the text appear in my log: "Evyen uses Chi Blast. The Behemoth takes damage."

First thought in my mind was "What the hell just happened?! o.O" I screamed to my husband: "I got the claim, I got the claim!" and couldn't believe it myself. It took us a while to get over the shock. My husband started building hate (he was there as PLD) and I just stood there next to the mob. Then I suddenly remembered I had brought my friends WHM there so I started to cast buffs on us, just to do something. When Artemision had arrived to us, we started to kill it.

It wasn't really difficult. Our setup was PLD/WAR, MNK/NIN, RDM/BLM and WHM/BLM which was also played by me. The only "problem" was that I was taking the hate off the tank, but it wasn't really a problem since the mob didn't hit very hard. It had also quite bad accuracy, since it missed most of the TP moves it used on me. It wasn't really a difficult fight, I used my 2hr but it was just to make the fight a bit shorter and because I had the hate most of the time anyway.

It was such a great feeling to see it fall down dead and read "Evyen defeats the Behemoth". We were all so happy and proud that we actually claimed and killed it together! A couple of pics here..

The name! It's red!



Notice how pathetic the poor taru tank (the one hiding behind its foot) looks in this pic:



We did it!



I had such a great feeling about our accomplishment that it got me thinking the people who choose to do these things in the "easy" way, cheating. Yesterday was the emergency maintenance which apparantly fixed a glitch which had been widely abused. If I understood it correctly, the glitch made at least some NMs drop 3 of all items. Think about 3 Ixion cloaks and so on from just one NM... I don't really know more about it, I just read a bit BG and Alla this morning and got bored with all the QQing going on there.

I was surprised so many people were actually complaining about SE fixing this glitch so that they can't abuse it anymore. When I read about the glitch, my first thought was "Why didn't anyone report it sooner?" Seems like there's something wrong with me because I honestly thought I'd report it asap if I saw something like that happen. Of course, it's easy for me to talk because I don't do for example Salvage, which I understood was the place where the glitch was mostly abused. But for me, the right thing to do would be to report it. I wouldn't really feel I deserved the gear if I got it in a way I wasn't intended to get it. It would take all the warm and fuzzy feelings out of it, it wouldn't feel like an accomplishment to me.

Same applies to camping NMs. I've never really understood why someone wants to use bots to claim them. I know that if I had used some unfair means to get to claim today, it wouldn't have been the same at all. I wouldn't have been so happy, probably I had just felt ashamed and guilty. It would've taken all the excitement and fun out from the experience.

I'm quite sure though that those people who do bot aren't really looking for that fun and excitement, but something else. I'm also quite sure that they think I'm really stupid to be so excited and happy about claiming one tiny NM once. But I don't really care, it's just my way to feel and my way to play this game. The only sad thing is, my way of playing doesn't really hurt anyone elses experience, but their way of playing does.

Anyway, enough thinking for now... I haven't again done much this week because I've been ill (a horrible flu, still). But on Tuesday there was my husbands birthday party in Windurst. I stayed there for a while even though I felt horrible, just because I didn't want to miss it. But when everyone else decided to go out and start singing and dancing, I decided to go to sleep instead. Anyway, the party was fun and my husband got a lot of great gifts!





And for the end a landscape pic I took while I was exping my DNC in Tahrongi Canyon:

I'm free!

Yesterday I left my "HNMLS" Europa. It's kind of hard to explain why I did it. First of all, I've not had fun in LS events for a while now. I've always been in a bad mood during those events, even my husband has noticed that. So that's the main reason I guess. I don't know why it hasn't been fun for me anymore. It just hasn't. For me, the atmosphere hasn't been very nice lately and I just haven't enjoyed my time spent in LS. That isn't anyones fault, it's just the way it is.

And then yesterday there happened two things which kind of made me do the final decision. First of all, in the beginning of our event, Xolotl was up. We have several people with Xol drops on their wish list (myself included). However, our leader decided we won't kill it. So, for me (and this is just my side of the story, I don't really know his) it just felt like he didn't bother with our wishes. Which got me thinking that why am I in that LS if the group doesn't care about my wishes. Of course I'm not saying it's so simple or that our leaders really think like that, but that's the feeling I got.

The second thing that happened yesterday was a disagreement between me and our LS leader. The thing is, I actually like camping NMs. I don't know why, but I do. That was one of the reasons why I joined Europa in the first place. But at the moment, Europa doesn't camp NMs. At all. So, I asked our leader if I can camp them on my own time with my friends then. He said no. I asked why. He said because it's in our rules. Well, we have also in our rules that we will camp Kings while their window is on our event time, but we won't do that either. I thought these two rules would go together: we can't camp HNMs on our own time because that would be a conflict of interest and could harm our linkshell. But because we don't camp them with LS, there is no conflict. No harm for linkshell. So for me, this just makes no sense. I can't camp these NMs in our LS, but I can't camp them outside the LS either.

So, our LS leader said that if I want to camp them, I will need to leave the LS. That really made me do the final decision. I have nothing agains the LS, the people in LS or the LS leader. I just didn't agree with the rules, didn't agree with being told I can't do what I want on my own game time (when it didn't harm the LS in any way) and lately I didn't enjoy the time I spent in LS events. These things together made me realize it was time for me to leave.

During my time in Europa, I experienced a lot of new things. I fought some NMs I've never tried before, got sea and did some ENMs and KSNMs I've never done before. I learned a lot and for that I'm thankful. I also met new people, and some of them became people I can call my friends. I will miss doing events with these people, I kind of miss it already.

I think I've said all I wanted to say. Explained why I left and said thank you for the time I've spend there. And please remember, the feelings and thoughts I've written here are just my side of the story, just my personal experience, nothing more or less.

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.