(I'm back!) I guess...

It's been a while since I've really played FFXI, other than logging in to do events. And well, I quit most of my events. For a while I've been only doing Limbus and my Sunday events: Sky and Dynamis, and even that has been impossible at times. But after taking a somewhat total break from the game, I've actually felt like playing it again. Just not too much.

I decided to finish my project "get all subjobs done", and at the moment my job level list looks quite nice:



At the moment I have 6 subs leveled: WAR, NIN, DNC, THF, WHM & BLM. My last goal is to get my RDM to 37 as well and I'll have all the subs I need for now.

My latest achievement was to get my BLM finally to level 37 today! I soloed it almost all the way in pet camps, but I also duoed a bit with my husband. We had amazing time duoing mandies in the jungles:



I also used the yhoator pet camp which was amazingly never taken!



As you can notice, I had unbelievably gimp gear nearly the whole time... For example I used the xmas event boots until I could wear my RSE. And I didn't even bother to mule Seers since Elvaan RSE worked just fine.

I got my last BLM level in this amazing LS Qufim party (level 20) today. Our setup was THF, 2 x DNC, NIN, SAM and BLM and we owned the zone. It didn't start very well: I told our THF to pull before one of our dancers was there and before our SAM had any weapon...and of course I told him to pull a clipper. We almost died on that, but when we got all our members there and geared we succeeded to chain them. Then we decided to move to the pond to chain worms and we got chain #6 on them, which was pretty nice. Later my husband came to PL us, which made it even faster if possible. It was a great party!

I'M IN YOUR QUFIM, CLAIMING YOUR MOBS:



Then we had a Nyzul run, started from floor 46. Shokun kept d/cing for the first 3 tags and we failed two of them, but at least we got to floor 55. Boss run next time! We also got some amazing drops:



Also, our little limbus group is doing our first Omega on Monday! I'm soooo excited, can't wait!

Leading Dynamis and other problems

Our Dynamis leader needed to take a two month break from the game because of his studies and at the same time our second Dynamis leader wanted to take a break from FFXI. We also have two other sackholders, a guy who's responsible for LS bank and then me. So when the people who usually organize schedules, points, lots, setups and so on go to holiday, that work is left for me.

I've never really wanted to lead Dynamis and if I started an end game LS it certainly wouldn't be a Dynamis LS. But well, as I had previously lead a couple of runs and done setups and points for the LS, I didn't mind taking the job. Also, I suggested a person to be responsible for pulls and moving camp and another person to be responsible for BLM strategies, so I wouldn't be the only person leading the run and taking responsibility.

Yesterday was the first run without our leader. We were supposed to do Dynamis-San d'oria but a half an hour before we were supposed to enter, a group of six (!) entered the zone. I contacted their leader asking which Dynamis Calendar are they using (the answer was none...) and how long they would be in the zone (the answer was they don't know...) Our LS has never had problems with other groups since we have always been using Dynamis calendar and been in contact with other groups. But well, what can you really do when there's a 6 person group willing to take any zone they want not caring about LS which has scheduled this run with other linkshells?

So my first Dynamis run with me as a leader didn't start so well... I tried to talk with the group to find a solution but I didn't get any information out of them and finally I just decided to change our run to Bastok which was free. I was actually surprised how fast we got everyone to move from Sandy to Bastok, and we entered Dynamis only 10 minutes late.

The run itself went mostly really well. We got 13 pieces of gear and 6 wootz ores. Mobs went down fast and our setup seemed to work. The only big problems came when we were ready to pull the boss. The thing is, I had been so nervous about being leader for the first time and having to change the run so fast that I didn't check any info about the boss in that zone. So when we did our first sacpull to get the boss, our PLD who was bringing the boss to camp got bound... and we weren't ready for it. Long story short, we wiped and proceeded to second try.

On the second try we got a WHM and another PLD ready to support with pulling... Except that time the boss opened with casting Death on first PLD and the second PLD somehow failed to get the boss. Which meant we didn't get the boss again, ran out of time and had to exit the zone without win.

It was quite a bad ending for an otherwise good run. I blamed myself for not making sure we were well prepared for the boss and all the PLDs blamed themselves for not pulling the boss to camp... Anyway, in my opinion, it wasn't really anyones fault, it was just a moment of unthoughtfulness and bad preparation.

Other than dynamis, I've been doing somewhat a lot. Maybe too much. I'm starting to feel I'm too busy with all my FFXI events to focus on my studies well enough and that's definitely a bad sign. At the moment my schedule is this:

Monday: Free!
Tuesday: Assault, Salvage
Wednesday: Einherjar
Thursday: Free!
Friday: ZNM
Saturday: Nyzul Isle, Salvage
Sunday: Einherjar, Dynamis

So I only have two days a week free from events which really isn't enough for me at the moment. Nyzul Isle is my absolutely favourite event at the moment, I have so much fun there every time! Dynamis is also fun and there's a lot of gear I want from there, so I'm not thinking about quitting that any time soon. Then there's Salvage which is fun and doesn't really take that much time, and Assault which I need to do to be able to do Salvage and to get some gear. That leaves me with ZNM and Einherjar. Our ZNM group is nice but it takes a lot of time to farm zeni for pops and quitting ZNM would leave my Friday completely free from events. Einherjar, well... I don't really know why I'm doing it. So if I'll quit something, Einherjar will most likely be the first thing.

Talking about Einherjar, we finally won the Wing 3 yesterday! It was quite an easy chamber with Hydra boss and we won with 5 minutes left! Odin next week!



In Salvage, we've had two runs now, both in Zhayolm Remnants. Our goal has been to unlock 3 members fully to be able to pop the Porroggo NM in 5th floor and on the second try we were able to do it! The problem was, we didn't get the NM down... We were so busy to attack it that we didn't really even think of a strategy. Well, I'm sure it will go better next time.



In Nyzul Isle, I've had to make some difficult decisions about our setup. A while ago we took two new members to our static, which meant we needed to start all over from floor 1 for them. Then, on what was supposed to be their second run, one of them didn't show up, not sending any message... Not hearing from him for a week, I decided to replace him with yet another person (which of course meant starting AGAIN from floor 1)... and of course, after I had replaced the said person, he sent me a /tell asking if he's still in the static and explaining that he had had some credit card issues and he's POL account had been deactivated.

The thing is, he could still have sent me a message on our forums or something, but he didn't. So I said I'm sorry but I had already replaced him, and that I couldn't expect my static members to do the same floors all over again just for him if he didn't even bother to contact us in case he couldn't attend a run. It was a bit harsh from me, but well, I had to make the decision as the leader of the static. Anyway, I'm quite happy with our current setup. Everyone is at least on floor 10 and we've had two successful floor 20 boss runs (no drops though). On Saturday we had our best run so far: we managed to climb 5 floors up on every tag, getting from floor 1 to 20 and killing Fafnir!

Xmas hurries and worries

I've been very busy, done a lot both in game and in real life, but haven't felt much like writing about it. I've been waiting for the inspiration to update this blog and write about my recent experiences but it still hasn't come. Anyway, I decided to post at least a few screenshots of all the stuff I've done lately in game.

In Einherjar, we still haven't beaten Wing 3... Last time it was very close. One of the worst chambers looked like this:



But I've managed to get loads of ampoules, so at least I got myself something nice:



With SecretFellowship, we've farmed Swift Belt pops. On Saturday we finally got a Fomor Codex for everyone who wanted the belt, and we popped 3 of them. Only got one belt though.



We also did CoP 4-3 mission for our LS CoP static. It went really well if you don't count the fact I called for help on the NM.. which meant we had to kill it all over again. But it's an easy NM so we only lost about 10 mins because of my noobish mistake.



Last Friday we had the last ZNM run this week and got full drops from every mob we popped!





On Tuesday we had our third Nyzul Isle run. I didn't include myself in the setup but went in on fourth tag because two people had to leave. The first three runs had gone very badly, but on the last tag we got 5 floors up which was of course nice. Here's a pic of Nyzul Isle seriousness:



Today I haven't really played, just cleaned up my Mog House a bit and took the Xmas items from event storage. Now my MH is ready for the holidays!



Happy holidays everyone! ^^

Busy weekend

Busy weekend in game again... On Friday we had ZNM where we popped 3 Obs, 1 Iriz Ima and 1 Dea. I tried Dea as PUP for the first time and Comedies damage with ranger frame was ok.



It was a short event because we didn't have that many pops or that many people, so after we ran out of pops we decided to go kill some Ufos for organs. We decided to kill only the lower level ones and as a result we only got one organ.





Saturday our linkshell statics CoP run got canceled so we decided to go do a bit Campaign with LS party. I've never done Campaign with a full party before, it was really fun!



We also did the hagun ENM Sheep in Antlions Clothing. Our original setup was 2 x BLM, PLD, 2 x MNK, BLU but the other BLM couldn't make it so I decided to go PUP with BLM automaton instead of MNK... Unfortunately I managed to die which took my automaton down and gimped my damage a lot. Well, at least we won, even though the drops sucked.

Saturday was also the day for our second Nyzul run, this time with mostly new people. We have 10 people signed up for Nyzul so not everyone can come to every run. Anyway, this time there was me and Pythean (we both were on the last run too) and then Shisui, Shokun, Bukyja and Wasch. Our setup was WHM, BLM, BLU, SAM, MNK, DRG. Our goal was again to get to floor 5, but we were really unlucky with floor objectives. On our last run, we didn't get the "light lamps in certain order" objective once, this time we got it two times...and it took a while to figure out a good strategy for it. One of our members only had 3 tags too, which meant we only had 3 tries to get to floor 5. Well, luckily we managed to do it on 3rd tag, like we did on the first run too. This time we finally saw some weapons drop too: congratulations Shisui on WHM and SCH weapons!

After Nyzul we decided to go farm some Swift Belt pop items since many people in our LS need the belt. We spent two hours farming and only got two Fomor Codex during the last 20 minutes... Next time we'll bring TH for sure.



Yesterday (Sunday) I asked if my friends Sky LS wanted help on their run. I went there as BRD and we popped some Ullis and waters and a couple of Genbus and Byakkos. I had heard some horror stories about their runs so I was mentally prepared to wipe to Genbu but both gods went really well. And I got to lot Aquarian Head for myself because it was about to floor:



After Sky I went to Einherjar. It was our second try on third wing and we ran out of time again. On both tries we've had only one minute left for the boss and we'd need at least 3 minutes I think. I think we were just lacking people.

We also had our first Dreamlands dynamis yesterday! We did Dynamis-Valkurm and it was...well...interesting. We had some weird problems with the flies right at start which resulted in people getting lost and dying in weird places, which meant we lost a lot of valuable time. So we ended up just farming a bit. Too bad our only drop was BRD cape... Anyway, it was fun and it will go better for sure next time.

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!