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!

10大ニュース and more WotG!

10大ニュース or Ten Most Important FFXI Things I Did 2008

10. I tried Salvage, Einherjar and Nyzul Isle for the first time.
8. I claimed and killed Behemoth with my friends.
7. I joined Sky LS Lowquality and fought all Sky gods and Kirin for the first time.
6. I joined Dynamis LS ShadowHearts and did Dynamis for the first time.
5. I joined ZNMLS Epic.
4. I joined and left Europa LS.
3. I leveled 3 jobs to 75: MNK, BRD and PUP.
9. I got rank 10 in San-d'Oria.
2. I completed CoP and ZM.
1. I founded our dear LS SecretFellowship together with my husband and our friends.

Year 2008 was a really important year for me in FFXI since I got my first 75 job (Monk) in January and after that I got to experience loads of new stuff.

And in case I'm still playing after a year...

Ten things I want to do in 2009

10. Kill Odin.
9. Get some Salvage gear.
8. Finish merits with current 75 jobs.
7. Complete Dynamis-Xarcabard and all the Dreamland zones.
6. Climb to floor 100 in Nyzul Isle.
5. Get rank 10 in Windurst.
4. Finish ToAU missions.
3. Get THF, RDM and BLM to 37.
2. Level SAM to 75.
1. Level SCH to 75.

More WotG missions (spoilers) !

We did the mission 7 fight in La Vaule. The cs were simply amazing and the story is getting really interesting!

Some pics from mission 7: Purple, The New Black



Elvaans can be epic too!



These are my new favourite badasses, Hydraule and Aquila:



We got to fight a dragon. The fight was pretty easy with our setup (BRD, PLD and BLU).



Aquila didn't appreciate us killing her dragon...



Lilisette got dragged into that weird place were Caitsith lives. I hope that it will be a zone players can enter, kind of like Sky and Sea.



Like my friend Pythean said, there seemed to be a mirror like the one in LotR that shows us the future gone bad...



And then things just got really weird:



After the mission, there was quite a boring quest where I needed to feed some fish to the male mithra Lehko. After I gave him the fish he took me to a walk and gave me a dozen of roses. Too bad I'm not really into catmen.



Anyway, Lehko has his hands full already with the catgirls in Windy:



I actually suspect that Lehko could be the father of Nanaa Mihgo... But as my husband pointed out, he's probably the father of at least half the mithra born at that time.

Happy New Year to all readers!

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! ^^