Darkness Returns

Lots happened this past week but before I get to that its time for the really big news. Darknessfalls has come back to the game. He has been gone for just a little over a year and man it sure was nice to see him log on again. Dark is by far one of the oldest friends I have in the game so it will be nice getting to do things with him again. Not to mention we are from the same State so we got other things to talk about as well. Welcome back Darknessfalls!


So last week I mentioned how pathetically close I was to level 75 PLD. So Tuesday before Dynamis I did manage to get a party and Dinged 75 finally. It was nice knowing I had a second 75 now. The party was just ok and I was completely leeching since there was no way I was going to keep hate of the pimped out mnks we had and my damage was average at best. I would have done better but we were at bird camp so no food, and we didn’t have a brd so my attack stats were pretty low. Ended at 10k into my level so I was overall pleased with that after a short party.

Did Dynamis windy next. Unfortunately as I predicted last week it did not go well. It was in fact pretty damn terrible if you ask me. We wasted far too much time and way to many people didn’t bring reraise. And to top it off even after all the explaining and going over things someone still managed to agro the SMN house. Bah just wasn’t a lot of fun. We going to be doing it again tonight and unless things drastically improve I feel like we going to do it again next week. A PLD piece dropped but I’m not on main lot. However, each drop always means I’m one closer to mine.

Let’s see Wednesday what happened? Oh yes, we did sea again. And guess what? I got to go as PLD. I did not have a lot of time though so we just decided to kill a few yorva’s. I was the only Tank and since we had so few people we just did the small ones. I managed to even get an organ and I did a pretty good job tanking if I do say so myself. I’ll probably be PLD for them from now on since we have low turn out problems on their Wednesday runs. Wish I could make it on Saturdays when they do bigger things but I’m going to keep holding out for better Wednesday’s at least for a while longer.

Now we were supposed to attempt a PLD burn that night but it fell through. I was really looking forward to it but wasn’t shocked to hear we couldn’t get enough people together. So instead a merited a tiny bit on RDM. Got very close to having 5 merit points and ready to upgrade my last Ice accuracy for RDM.

Thursday was Limbus again. Another smooth run that netted me 4 coins. So that brought my total up to 25. I foresee me getting my nice new tabard very soon now. After limbus I went and xped PLD some more and got my buffer up to over 20k on it. Funny thing is that’s higher than I’ve ever had it on my RDM. Was never a huge fan of capping xping mainly because I wanted to dive straight into getting merits and getting into a party was never really a problem on RDM. With PLD tho I’d like to try and keep it high as the possibility of Death is far more likely at events.

Friday I merited a bit more and got up to 5 saved points. So I’m going to upgrade that last Ice accuracy and now start focusing on PLD merits. Want to unlock Chivalry first then go more combat oriented for messing around. Thinking of capping Sword, at 4/8 now, and then shield. After that I think I’ll move on to Crit merits and then I’ll see from there. Probably focus on Sentinel recast for sure and then I don’t know what.

That night we went and did some assaults. Still just a lowly PSC but hopefully one more set of runs should put me up a level. Also almost have enough points for a Chivalrous chain so that will be nice as well.

Had the weekend off as usual for the most part. Monday was another Limbus run. Got a lowly 3 coins so that puts me at 28, just 2 more to go!. After that I’m defiantly selling the coins for a while as I just don’t think I can keep up with the 60k a week expense along with other things. I really need to do some farming and KSNM again but I always seem to miss out when the LS goes. It’s like a running joke right now that I keep missing them.

Monday night I had an absolute blast. That PLD merit party that fell apart and never happened last Wednesday actually did happen Monday night. We went and xped in sky too making it trip down memory lane so to speak. XP was actually going really well clocking in at about 10k an hour. Not pad for all PLD and certainly not bad for a sky camp. I went /war while everyone else went /nin. Berserk plus Double attack though made me one hell of a DD. Busted out a few nice vorpals and one breaking 800 damage. I averaged about mid 500’s with a good handful going up to the 700’s. I hope we do this again soon, it was a ton of fun.

New goodies

Well I had an eventful week.


I’ll start from the beginning I guess. Tuesday was dynamis Jeuno and only 10 minutes in we get a Duelist Tights to drop and in what must have been a glitch I lotted a 995 to grab me a nice new leg piece. Yay!. I’m at 3/5 AF now on RDM. Also the LS won the zone meaning we are 3/3 so far with the biggest challenge up this evening. That being Dynamis Windurst. I have a feeling we wont win as there was a lot of mess ups in jeuno and they still pull way to slow and waste too much time. Who knows? I won’t get to lot here as no RDM drops and pld is still just secondary for me and several PLD need their AF.


Wednesday was Halloween so we had a very short organ farming run in sea. Managed to get a few pop items and one mob dropped a tissue I’ve needed for my hyorin obi. My normal lotting returned and I lotted a 5… yup just a 5. However the other guys who lotted were kind enough to pass knowing I had been needing it for a while. So I turned in my items and got a new belt for my RDM. Not a bad 2 days so far.


Thursday was Limbus again. Normal good run for us and I got 5 coins, the last coming from a /random. Of course if I win a random you know everyone must have rolled badly.

This brings me up to 21 coins. New tabard coming up soon, 9 coins to go.

Friday had nothing planned but leveling PLD. So between what little leveling I was able to do during the week and then the time I spent of Friday I managed to ding 74.

Also, in a rare occurrence for me, I was able to log on for a bit this Saturday. I XP’d PLD some more and ended needing just 10k to hit 75. So yesterday I logged on before limbus hoping to get that last bit and ding 75. Didn’t happen though. I got a party pretty quick but we had people dc’ing and no camps open and it was just a mess. I got a very small bit of xp bringing me to within just 4k.

Headed off to limbus and was shocked to find out we were going to attempt Proto-Omega. This was a first for me and they hadn’t done it except maybe once or twice and from what I gathered it was a loss. SO I went as RDM/DRK for stunning help and mainly back up curing as well. We went in with 13 people and after a rough patch in the middle pulled it together and beat him down. Drops were 2 head pieces and 1 body so that’s very good. I lotted on one of the heads, it was free lot, but didn’t win. Oh well. I think we have 2 more pop sets and now that we know we can beat it this should be a regular event.


After limbus I flagged up PLD again wanting to get that last 4k but alas luck was not with me for that. So after 2 fruitless hours of LFP I joined up with Pus and Lye to help them farm for some item Pus needed. The mobs were all dc to ep so I did manage to get some xp leaving me a measly 2.6k from my level. So close now it’s a matter of time. I can grab that with a besieged and a bit of solo if need be.

One a rather interesting note one of the members of my Limbus group informed me they were going to try a PLD burn party and wanted to know if I’d like to come. Hell yes I would. PLD xp and I get to focus on DD with it? Can’t turn that down. Normally I would think something like this would fall apart from getting support jobs to help out. We would need a BRD and RDM to agree to try it and most just wouldn’t want to risk getting slower xp for their time. However, the person setting this up is herself a BRD meaning we are halfway there. So we are supposed to try it out this Wednesday. I’m hoping I can ding 75 tonight but either way I’ll be ready for the party on Wednesday.

More of the Same

I hate being poor. Just thought I’d throw that out there. I have been dangerously low on gil for a while now and have been just getting by scraping up enough for events and food to party with. I need to fix that soon as now that my PLD is nearing its leveling end, I will need to focus on another job that will take a lot more funds.


On to my recent accomplishments. So I have been level grinding PLD a lot lately (and mostly with Pusarah and Marlow so that’s nice) and these last 6 days have been no different. I mentioned last time I was only 800 xp from 72 so of course I got that. I didn’t stop there though. I got level 73 yesterday and I’m 10k into the level. Getting ever so close to level 75.

Upon dinging 73 I knew I was in need of some equipment upgrades. First it was past time for me to get a defensive head piece. Believe it or not, I haven’t had a defensive piece for the head slot since about level 50. I haven’t needed one either but now that my PLD may be called upon to do things other than xp I need to start getting ready. Of course to do this I needed some gil since I have next to none. So very reluctantly I sold 10 of my ancient beastcoins for 120k total. I took this and bought the adaman head piece for 80k. I then sold my generals shield for 111k and am going to buy a Koenig shield for 170k leaving me with about 70k total in funds. Yikes!

That should get the basics done for PLD purchases but I still need to get a normal tanking earring and stop being lazy and go camp a Jelly ring for my second ring slot. Once those 2 are done I’m more or less done with going after PLD stuff except for Dynamis and upgrading my feet to AF+1.

So as I mentioned I sold 10 of my ancient beastcoins. This was really tough since after my run yesterday I was at 26 and needed just 4 more to get my RDM Tabard +1. It was tough but I figure I could wait one more week anyways since I’ve not been doing anything much with RDM other than Limbus and Dynamis which I don’t need the upgrade for anyways. So with the current rate of coins I should have enough by next Friday and then come the following Monday I can pick up my shiny new tabard. After that its upgrade my PLD feet for only 20 more coins , and I have half the materials for that already, then a brutal earring for 75 coins and that’s it for coin purchases I think for a long while. Actually, after I upgrade my tabard I think I’m going to end up selling half of my runs coins each time to just help fund future runs. I’m in no big hurry for the PLD feet or brutal so I can take it nice and slow and help ease the cost while I’m at it.

I have Dynamis tonight and I believe we are supposed to do jeuno. So hopefully I’ll have a bit of luck and some RDM legs will drop and I can lot them. This has been for me in the past the least dropping piece I have seen odd as that may sound. I really feel weird having my Duelist chapeau now with almost no other relic armor. I have had the hat now for almost a year and I get asked all the time by people if I am 5/5 Relic. Most people are shocked to hear I am only at 2/5. The legs will be nice for an elemental magic setup for nuking hard things so it has some uses. The gloves are still going to be blah but I would like to have them. And of course the body would be great for the fast cast. Oh yea, and then I could still use some PLD pieces too so if those drop and I can lot that would be nice. So yea still a lot of Dynamis ahead for me. Once I get in a better gil situation I may suggest or ask if the LS minded if I ran a Friday run since we only go once a week as it is now. That however is going to be a long way off on my list of things to do.

Paragon of PLD excellence... only took 71 levels

Much more timely on this update. Only one week apart from the last one. Go me!!

So in our last episode I was hoping to level PLD some more and to finlly get some more of my AF for it. Well I’m happy to report I was able to do just that. Got to 71 PLD about a week ago and last night had to end a party at just 800 tnl. So basically soon as I log on I’ll go grab that solo and hit 72. Also, I picked up my AF body finally thanks to Pusarah and Pbcup coming out to help with the NM’s. I still don’t have the head piece but other than needing it to store the set I’m not the interested in it. At 73 I could just get a Adaman head piece if I wanted something for a defensive build anyways.

The reason I had to leave my party with just needing 800 xp was I had to run to dynamis. This was my second run with the ls, and I think just their 4th overall, and we did dynamis bastok. Won the zone fairly easy and still had I think 35 minutes to farm after boss win. They still seem too slow on pulls for my liking but its not really my say so I just go with it. I did get to pull once when the main puller went afk so maybe they can get comfortable with me doing it some in the future and I can show them a few new things to speed things up. As a whole we got 9 AF. No PLD or RDM dropped though so I didn’t get to lot. Next up I think is going to be jeuno. Would sure be nice to get the legs for some more elemental skill.

Limbus has been going good. Been on three total runs so far all of which were easy zone wins. I have 15 coins and both pieces for my RDM AF body upgrade so I should have enough in about another week and a half. That will give me another 20 mp putting me at something like 1071 convert mp in /whm merit party set ups and 823 mp in normal /blm setups. Pretty much the only things left non HNM/GOD drop related is a hedgehog bomb for another 20 mp and another 30 mp from my last three merit upgrades. Once I get those more or less no need for MP food at all.

I think that’s about all for now. The sea LS has been kind of meh so if they don’t pick up a few more members or get something working a little better I may decide to just hold off on that stuff for now. Plus it gives me another day to do things like missions/assault/gil making that I need to catch up on anyways. Although the lure of an altruistic cape and a Justice sword is pretty damn strong and those aren’t that difficult of mobs so it bears some thinking on my end.

LS Overload

So I’ve been back from my unfortunate forced break for about 3 months now and ever since I’ve been looking for a new Dynamis, limbus, and general sky sea whatever shell. I got into a small sea shell a couple of weeks ago and that’s still progressing in its early stages and I’m happy with it so far. In nearly every party or mission or whatever I have been involved in I have been asking about shells and finally this Monday got some leads. SO now I have joined a new limbus shell which seems to be pretty good, and a dynamis shell that’s not full of noobs.

Went on my first run with the limbus group Monday and got 4 coins. I lotted an astounding 37 to try and get an extra coin… Run went smooth, we cruised through the zone and had tons of time left over. I’ll be going with them twice a week and using mostly RDM and switching to PLD once it’s finished up to 75 on Omega/Ultima fights. This shell has a lot of good players in it so I see it working out nicely in the future.

Dalilah was nice enough to send me an email telling me about a dynamis shell that was recruiting. I sent the leader a tell and asked in. He said yes but didn’t need any PLD’s but did need more RDM. Which is what I would prefer to go as anyways. They currently go one day a week and I had my first run with them yesterday. They did dynamis sandy and overall they did a decent job. Got the win but not all the time extensions (they were fearful of trying to go towards the nin house). They seem pretty well organized and I can see the shell working out fine. Only thing I could say I see for improvement is the speed at which they pull. The puller is waiting until everything dies before going out to get the next pull which is killing us on time. Also, they set camps waaay to far back sometimes. This is mainly a time sink they are setting themselves up with but as they get more experience and maybe a little coaxing hopefully I can offer some hints they will heed. I don’t want to act bossy or try and overstep people though so mostly I’ll remain quite about things. We got 4 AF drops and I’m secondary lotting PLD so at least now there is something I can get from Sandy since I’ve had the RDM boots for ages. I think the next run will be bastok and I know they have a lot of new members that need all the other city wins so that’s a good thing as I’ve probably done more northland runs than city anyways over the course of my dynamis career. Getting a shot at RDM hands and Legs again will be nice.

Now back to the original post heading. I now have about 5 different LS pearls I need to keep around for all the different things I do. I sure wish SE would make some kind of pearl box because my inventory space is getting horrendous.

Sea tonight, and hopefully more PLD level grinding and maybe I’ll finish up my pld AF>.> I mean I should have it since it’s actually good af for pld to tank stuff in, just not XP party tanking. I’ve only even had one party ask why I wasn’t wearing AF. It was an early morning JP party that was going < Where?>. I told them I didn’t have it to which they replied with lol’s and w but then the party started and I owned mob hate and had zero downtime as they saw how much better it is to tank with shield skill, enmity and DD builds on PLD now. When party broke I got lots of praise and what not. So really I’m dying to know why all those other plds out there are still XP tanking in AF? Most any forum you go to everyone advocates how much better it is to go as a DD tank hybrid and yet still I see the masses are just turtleing it up. Oh well. To each their own.

So I haven’t posted in a while again. Guess I’ll just list the basics and get things caught up.

Leveled PLD some more and now I’m level 70!! YAY! Still didn’t have but 2 pieces of AF so I asked if anyone wanted to help hunt down some coffer keys and like everyone on in the LS said yes… Not only that keys were dropping like crazy, got 2 Beadeaux keys and 2 garlaige keys in just 2 total hours including the travel time. Coffer in beadeaux popped right in front of us so I got my AF legs easy. Didn’t get a chance to use my garlaige key yet but hopefully I will soon. Also went and got the key from castle zvahl and went back later and got the key item for my AF body fight. So I should get that soon as I can find a few people to try it with me… or I get stupid and try and solo 2 mobs at once with my RDM.

I missed a couple of runs of sea due to my schedule changing over but now I’m set for every Wednesday at least. Not much dropped, fought a few things but no torques and haven’t done JOJ in a while for me to try and get the sword.

Been meriting a fair amount lately and now have ice accuracy up to level 4 bringing my total merit points spent up to 83. One more in ice acc, buy back my HQ ice staff and its time to try some stupid death risking stuff again. I think I’ll start with trying fenrir solo and then maybe leveling up blu a bit and trying to solo Chardybris as RDM/BLU. I have the needed merits and decent gear for that so who knows. Worth a shot anyways and I think it would be fun.

SAM is still on hold because I’m still broke as hell. Got down to a meager 7k the other day. YIKES! Still looking for a Dynamis and limbus shell although I do have someone I was told to talk too about joining limbus with so I may have something there.

Lastly, I have been hitting ToAU missions hard. In fact I went from being nowhere to now I’m on the last fight of the whole series. Yup just one more fight until I can get a ring (thinking about the magic acc one to help with nukes and bind especially) and getting the glory crown. These missions are so much easier and faster to do than COP was. It’s not even close really. If it wasn’t for all the CS that made you wait until JP midnight you could do the whole thing in a day, probably not take more than 5 hours tops. The one thing I do like about them tho is they really tried to develop a story with the missions. It was pretty well written from that standpoint and a lot of the scenes are funny. I’ll post some screenshots of things down below so if you are reading this (anyone read this? Just curious) you might not want to spoil things by looking at the pictures. I’ve also just been taking lots of pictures randomly so I’m going to post a bunch of them.

After getting through with the missions next up on the agenda is to start getting my assault rank up. I’d like to have as much of ToAU stuff done as possible before the new expansion comes out in case it gets really hard to find people to do the older content with.

Level grinding, broke, and MP gear

Lots to report about. Need to catch up again on whats been going on the last week and a half. First on the weekend of the 15-16 I had intended to just farm and level PLD. Well I did level PLD some and got to level 66 finally but didn't get any farming done. Party was pretty good again, another JP party cause they love me or something, and got to 5k out of 27.5k into the level.

After that i merited RDM some and on saturday spent most my time in sea with Janaka and PB. We did another limbus run, zero coins again had to take a zone we didnt like since others were taken. So yet another 30k down but oh well i still love limbus, its a great time for me. After we got done with the run we stayed in sea and farmed up some organs so me and Jan could get some sea obi's. Got everything but 1 tissue so i more or less done. I can probably just get the tissue on wednesday when i go for another run with my sea LS.

Speaking of the sea LS, we went and killed Ix Mnk on Wednesday. Went down easy but we got absolutely nothing. Of course we did just pop with 1 organ and not three since we had so few there and was many people's, me included, first time. After that we just farmed some more pop items to be ready for the next time.

Now that catches me up to this past weekend. Saturday I spent most the day leveling PLD. Man did I have some bad parties. First we got a RDM that was awful. She said she had a 5 month lay off so she was rusty. I could understand that, I was in the same boat recently. But her bad play went beyond rust, it was like she had NEVER played RDM. Had no idea RDM had Raise, didnt keep sneak up when getting to camp, almost never kept refresh on the PLD tank, and other things that she should have known. Being slow is one thing, but not even knowing to do these things is simply a whole new set of warning bells. I'd bet it was a bought character. Anyways 4 deaths later the leader was fed up with her, and I was at negative xp after an hour down 2k with xp ring on, kicked her and got a replacement. New RDM gets there and we start crusing along. Got to 15k total and then some people had to leave.

So after that party broke I went back to seeking. I must have been really wanting the headache. This party gets a smn to main heal which is fine normally. Except we hit another homerun with grabbing a worthless party member. I wont get into all the details but we end up letting her go, after I die 2 more times(yes 6 total deaths), and got Helio from my LS to replace her. Things went much better but i had to leave after about another hour due to some real life stuff. So i am now at 20k out of 27.5k for my level. SO if you take away those 6 deaths i would have leveled up. Oh well, thats the breaks sometimes.

I made one new purchase on my PLD. I bought a hercules ring to add another 3 enmity. Doing this, and being very low on gil, i went and sold 2 of my defensive rings for PLD. Those being an unyielding ring and a verve ring. They sold pretty fast and i had a little bit of gil from my mules. Well being me it started to burn a hole in my pocket and so I finally did something I had been debating anyways. I bought the last 11 ancient beastcoins for my Loq. earring. It cost me about 150k but all in all thats cheap in comparison to what something of equal value cost. NOw with the earring I hit 1k mp without any food.


Not bad at all. Now its time to upgrade my tabard and get rid of that blue cotehardie for my body peice. It has too much -hp on it to get my convert up much higher. So I need another 30 anc. beastcoins and then I think im done with everything I want to purchase for my mp set except maybe a hedgehog bomb sometime way off in the future. Everything else would by drop items off of HNMs and Gods.

So having done that, and having zero gil just about leaving PLD off limits, I went and merited on RDM some. Got a good party and with the merit points I already had saved up I upgraded my ICE accuracy twice to get to level 2. I still have 1 and a half merit points so almost to another upgrade for it as well.

That's it for now. I really need to get some gil and i'll probably level PLD up to 67 soon as I can actually afford some food for it...

More MIdweek Fun

Interesting day yesterday. So I mentioned I had joined a new, small, Sea LS. Had a total of about 16 people for our first farming and tier 1 jailor run. Got some HQ organs for some future pops and then used one of the pop sets they had farmed up for JoFo.

The fight is pretty straight forward and basic. Pop the Jalior and he has two pets. When the pets are alive he reflects all damage back. Since he doesn’t take much damage at all from melee weapons you basically just kite him around while taking out his friends. By the time we actually got to the fight we only had one tank as the others had to log. Still was really easy.

Only slight problem we had was the only real way to damage him was through magic. SO with only one BLM there and 2 rdm it was basically us three doing most the nuking. The other RDM didn’t seem to be nuking that much either but was more assisting with healing and keeping the tank up. I was doing this too until I realized people were just standing there and trying to figure out how to damage the guy. I threw out a bliz III and did 500ish damage and figured I should focus on nuking or else this would take forever. SO after maybe 10 minutes of nuking from me and the BLM he went down and only death was the blm died once after getting a bit too much hate from nuking.

No torque drop but did get the normal stuff.


After that, and seeing how few PLD’s the LS had, I dusted of my PLD gear and went and bought a sword to level it up again. Had a few things sell on the AH and got enough to buy a Macuahuitl +1. Nice enmity sword and something I can get away with in parties rather than dropping the gil on a Espadon +1. Damage difference is really just from WS since the Espadon is slower and at 70 I’ll be going with a company sword anyways so it’s only a miner inconvenience for me. Still need to get a shield torque and buy a herc ring for 66, then I’m fine till about 70. That will cost me about 80k. Also need a new shield at 69 that will set me back about 130k, or I can by the new level 58 wivre shield if it’s ever available but that will cost twice as much…ugh.

Anyways I bought the sword, put up my flag, and actually got a party pretty fast. I got about 12k in 2 hours so not horrendous. I’m at 15/26k so I should be able to ding 66 this weekend. Going to concentrate on farming and leveling PLD for the foreseeable future. Having another job 70+ will be nice and of course I can always use the gil. Also need to stop being lazy and go finish my PLD AF as that is useful for real tanking rather than the DD tanking I do in xp Parties. And of course still try and do some limbus.

Going to Sea?

Very busy weekend for me.

So last post I was still working on getting my staff grip. After a few more merit parties I was finally able to get the IS points needed to make the purchase. Yay, another 20 mp to throw on the pile. So my full casting gear MP (with food) is currently at 825, and my convert mp is now at 1046. Man that sure is a long way from when I first hit 75; I struggled to get 900 then.

On the limbus coin/more mp item front I went on a limbus Duo run with PB. We tried the elemental one and they are very resistant to nukes, did about 1/3-1/2 normal damage. Kill time was slow for us and we picked the chest that had the mystic avatar and got completely owned. This was lack of experience and I had never read up on this one at all. So I dropped 30k and got… zero coins. Oh well at least it looks like we may duo some more soon so that’s a definite good sign on the limbus front. If we do that I should be able to get my Loq. Earring in a matter of just a few weeks.

Also, after all the meriting I was able to get the last upgrade for Convert. Time to work on Ice accuracy now.


I logged in late in the evening on Saturday which is odd for me right now. Soon as I did I saw a shout from an old friend that was in my very first LS. He was starting up a SEA LS and was looking for members. So I sent him a tell and told him I’d come on their Wednesday runs and he gladly accepted me. This is of course something unexpected for me but with the time working out I think it will be very enjoyable for me. My first real experience with HNM’s I guess you could say. Hoping to get an Altruistic cape for my RDM as well as a Justice Sword and Fortitude torque for my PLD and RDM to use. We will probably do Tier 1’s for a while as we are just starting out but at least I’ll have a shot at the cape somewhat soon I would think. On another note they may be starting up a limbus group as well and if they do I may join if I can’t do any duos with people in Spirit Link or maybe I can get some of them to join the Limbus group. Who knows at this point it’s still pretty early.

On the gil problems I’m having I finally decided to go out and farm some things. Still a little unsure of what to farm nowadays as my old money makers are just not up to power anymore. I used to be able to get about 100-130k an hour. Today that same stuff might net me 30k. I tried out some new things and did decent I guess, got maybe 50k an hour and that seems good with how bad the economy is. Problem is that things are slower selling than my old stuff, but I can wait for the gil to come in as long as its steady.

Had just a few hours left to play after farming and went and leveled Sam trying to get to 34 so I can sell my katana. Got to level 33 and only 3k away from 34 so not too bad. One more session, probably next Saturday, should do it. Then its back to waiting for OKotes so I may be done for a while.


Last bit of news was somewhat surprising. It seems that Pus and Zeit are leaving my old Dyna shell after a difference of opinion on how some things are being handled. I had mentioned in an earlier post I was thinking about starting my Own Dyna Shell so here is even more motivation. Still haven’t decided yet but it’s certainly still on my mind.

Catching up

So I haven’t posted in about 2 weeks. Lots of things have happened but I just haven’t had the time to write an update. SO first things first. There was an update done that increased the damage done by two-handed weapons to bring them more in line with what the dual wielders in game were getting. I was thinking “Yay” because I was leveling up SAM a bit anyways and any boost is nice right?

Well SE did more than just bump the damage by a little. They made two-handed weapons extremely powerful and while I must say it was fun leveling SAM, it also made us a bit too strong I think. I leveled up to 32 before I stopped since literally there was no way for me not to tank on SAM now since I pulled so much hate through damage. It was nice at first but now I can’t even use berserk from subbing war since I just obliterate mobs and no tank can reasonably be expected to maintain hate off a well equipped 2 hander, which face it any level 32 job can be with not much gil. I might still get to 34 before taking an extended GIL break since I do have my GK for 34 and can sell back the one I’m using now for a bit of GIL and another inventory slot. After that though I’m either camping for OKotes or saving a ton of Gil and farming like mad.

PLD I’ve put on hold for just a bit. I need some gear upgrades for this too and well I don’t have the gil for that either. I need to get a new sword, a shield torque, upgrade my shield, and I need some new rings as well. When I do that it’s pretty much good until 70 and that would be a nice place to stop for a while to get the last bit of gear to take it to 75. Another reason I’ve put it on hold is because of the weapon changes and the melees going crazy and not even trying to watch their hate levels while having fun with the new upgrades. SE has announced that there was a problem in the calculations, which anyone could plainly see, and will fix this on the 10th so I’ll hopefully be ready to give things a go by then provided I can get the funding.

I’ve been meriting a ton on RDM. Convert is now at 4/5 upgrades and I have 2 merits in the bank needing just three more to cap out convert. After that it’s on to Ice accuracy and MY RDM specific stuff is more or less done. One reason I have been meriting so much is because its more or less free for me to do. Mage MP food is cheap and I earn the gil back just of the basic crystal drops so it cost me nothing and I can even make 1~2k. Yea not much but at least I don’t lose money.

Also, I have been working on refining my convert setup. I’ve been at 1k plus mp for a while now but I’m trying to get it even higher and I’d like to get my normal casting gear higher as the mp difference in casting gear to convert gear is pretty large at 206 mp. That’s a lot to try and burn off so as not to waste it. The things to do this however are not cheap.

For the first part to increase overall convert MP I got a dirt cheap lamia mantle. It’s 24 mp and cost a lousy 4k. This gives me 15 more than my current back piece and is great for merit parties and max MP. Next, in the last update SE introduced grips for two-handers and a few are mage types. The staff grip gives 20 mp, which I can keep on full time, as well as -3 enmity which I guess never hurts. This does cost 20K IS points though so I need to xp to get the points. I’m at 19k now so one more session should do it.

The next phase, getting higher mp in my normal gear, is where the expenses come in. Before my break we had been doing limbus runs and I was saving coins to get a Loquacious earring. I was at 59/75 coins before my connection crapped out. When I came back the limbus runs had stopped I have no reasonable way to get coins other than buying them. They're going for about 14 k each so I need to spend about 224k to get the earring. Yuck… I did see I guy shouting he was selling 5 for 12k and reluctantly decided to buy them. I didn’t really have the Gil to spare but figured I could at least sell them back at 14k if I was in dire straights for cash. So I am at 64/75 and if I find more for 12k need to spend another 132k for my earring. I am hopeful, however, that once my schedule changes in October I can do some Limbus Runs again or at the very least get someone to Duo some areas with me. Either way, I need to Farm up some Gil.

The other purchase also requires limbus coins, ugh. If I’m going to get that, the tabard +1, then I’ll certainly want to have a group or Duo for limbus to lighten up the GIL situation. So all in all with those 4 pieces I should increase my overall mp up 59 and my standard setup will increase 84 points leaving just 181 mp from convert to burn off. And on a “hey that’s neat” note I can get 1k mp without food and have zero sky/hnm gear and I still have 3 more mp merits I could get.

Last but not least, I’m hoping to do some ToAU missions. Marlow wants to set a group up and id love to be able to do it with the guys again. Me, bemi, and Zorb went and got up to mission 14 and hopefully we can get that knocked out soon. After that its all CS until about mission 22 so we can then start moving along and with what little I have read up on most the mission seem pretty easy. Not sure where Marlow and Janaka are at mission wise but hopefully we can catch up fast and get this expansion done.

Um so yea, that seems like a lot for one update.

Weekly Update 8/17 - 8/20

So Friday I xped on PLD some. The party was ok I guess but the xp just seemed to be coming in really slow. Every time I checked it seemed like I had barely gained 1k. Maybe I was just not into leveling PLD that night. Oh well. Party broke and I was about 8k away from 65.

Saturday I spent the majority of the day meriting RDM. I finally unlocked slow II after the party and then also started working on my convert timer. So I spent a total of 4 merits to get both of those at level 1. I also tried unsuccessfully to party on PLD. Just no parties for me that day.

Sunday I went and merited RDM again for just a bit. Got just one more merit in a short lived party. I also on a whim decided to join a random LS on a Dynamis Bastok run. Not sure why I did it but was fun none the less. The LS has a rather bad reputation but I wanted to go to see what other LS’s did in the zones to compare to some of my experiences from Alttab.

About 2 hours into the run I got DC’d and couldn’t get back on due to a power outage at my house. However, before that happened I have to say things really didn’t go bad at all. There where some warning signs as to why the LS probably struggled. First they had a lot of first time Dynamis people. I don’t think this is an every run problem but it’s possible they have a lot of turn over. Second, right before the run started the Leader asked if anyone had any pulling experience since they had issues with this. Now this is probably what hurt them most of all as they would have had bad links and pullers dying too often, and out of order killing. So I said yea I had pulled and would do it for them, lord knows I’ve pulled every zone tons of times. (The fact they let some new guy they didn’t know pull speaks volumes) And lastly their tactics are just a bit off on some things, this mostly would have cost them time but other things could be worse. I offered advice but no one really paid it much heed. Some things they will just need to see first hand.

With me pulling during my time there everything went pretty smooth. One new guy aggroed a bunch of crap and wiped us but we recovered nicely. When I dc’d they had made it halfway down to the alchemist guild in the ally and had 50 minutes on the clock so they where in good shape. No idea what happened after that but, unless they just messed things up badly, should have had no problems winning the zone. I think they go again on Wednesday but I have no idea if I am going to go or not.

After going on the run, and with the possibility of me having more playing time during the week starting in October, I may start up my own Dynamis LS. I have a ton of knowledge about the zones and while I wish I could rejoin Alttab I could never make their Saturday run. That’s still a bit of time away and not sure if I’m completely sold on the idea, but I may just do it.

Monday I started out leveling PLD. Had a good party (except the RDM didn’t do a great job of refreshing) but we didn’t last that long. Too many people had to leave for things so we called it off after about an hour and a half. I did manage to get to 65 though so I need to update some gear again. After that party me and Marlow went and did ENM 40. It was very easy but of course we got a crap 1k drop. I think we’re going to try again next Monday. Once that was done Pusarah had sent a tell and wanted to know if I wanted to merit so of course I said yes.

It was nice meriting with LS people again. The party had Pus, Keeva, Hemdall, and me with 2 others I didn’t know. We did trolls since all the other camps were overcrowded. Got 2 merit points done and called it a night. I updated Convert some more and its level 3 now and I have one merit point in the bank.

Well this was a long post. I really should stop rambling so much, It doesn’t help that my system at work is having issues giving me time to post.

Dusting off the hat

Had a good and productive weekend. Had a few good parties, got some questing done, and finally dusted off my RDM.

First off I started on leveling up PLD again. Fridays nights party was just odd to say the least. First off this party had a nin in it which is strange since that almost never happens with a PLD in the party. Second, there was no refresher in the party so my mp was constantly on the low side. And last, it actually went well. I was the main tank throughout the party but what we would do to save mp was about every 5th fight, the NIN would tank one while I just DD’d and recovered MP. The rest of the time the NIN was in full DD gear and was the main puller. Not the best xp per hour ever, but it certainly wasn’t terrible. I dinged 63 that night and got about half way into the level before logging.

Saturday I started looking for party as soon as I got on and almost immediately got an invite. The JP players really seem to like having PLD’s as main tanks at this level. In fact after we started the party we had 2 players who dc’d and never came back and unlike most JP parties that break up, they insisted I stay and found some replacements. After our 2 new members got there we went to work and the xp started rolling in. I got level 64 and good chunk into the level before we stopped. The SAM in the party had a Soboro and really makes me want to level up Sam right now and get it but I would at least like to get PLD up to the 70’s before that. The Sam was the first guy I had struggles to keep hate off of in a long time. I still maintained hate through out but had to often times grab it back from the SAM where as usually it is always glued on me. I’ll try to get to 66 next weekend, but at that point there are a few pricey items I’ll need to stop and get some gil for.

So Sunday I woke up and was determined that it was finally time to try RDM again. I still had to use the keyboard but since I have been at it for a few weeks now it is starting to become easier for me to use. So I geared up, put my flag up, and hoped for the best. It took about an Hour to get a party which I contribute to the fact I was in JP time and there were 7 RDM’s my level looking to party. After getting a party though I got a little apprehensive. First I was the only Healer and haster in the party. Even if this wasn’t my first party back this would have been tough to handle. Fortunately though, they decided to XP in the mire exclusively on imps and we had a NIN tank that was good about keeping shadows up. It was actually much easier than I would have thought and I had a pretty good rhythm going after awhile. It was a nice ice breaker party for me and I think I’ll continue to merit RDM at least one day a week now to get my timing back to what it was. I got 2 merits in the party and got my xp buffer back up to about 6k.

What I have decided to do as far as the buffer goes is to start out each party in xp mode and use my empress ring. Then after it’s used up switch over to merits. This should help me get a good mixture of both and sustain my death habits on RDM.

Almost forget to mention the bit about questing. On Saturday after I finished XPing on PLD I went and got enough fame done so I could flag Leviathan, Ifriti, and Ramuh avatar fights. Me and Zorb went and fought Ramuh on Sunday and got the win so now I just need to do the last 2 and I’ll have all the whispers to fight Fenrir. I didn’t turn in the Ramuh whisper to get the avatar simply because I want to be ready to fight Fenrir whenever the opportunity comes up. Not to mention I may want to try my hand at soloing him. Before I do that though, I would need to re buy my HQ Ice staff. Oh well that’s still a bit of time away.

LFP and Gil

SO anyways once again things didn';t go as planed but I never really expected them too. My plans are more of a guidline to help me stay focused on what it is I want to accomplish in game.

That said I didnt do ENM 40 once again but I did go on a ENM Brothers run with Marlow. Umm.. im still rusty... moving on. SO anyways I busted out PLD on Saturday and got to level 62 now with just needing another 7k to hit 63. Not bad at all. I also got my AF gloves finally thanks to Zorb and Janaka helping me to get the Coffer in the Necropolis. The gloves are ok and they do have 3 dex and 2 enmity on them. I might actully use these more than I thought since the dex makes up a bit for the Acc hit I would take by swithcing out of my current gloves. Probably only do this if I feel I need the extra enmity.

Sunday I really wanted to get my PLD to 63 but after looking for party for about an hour and a half I gave up on it for the day. I could have looked longer but the entire time there was a good 3-5 tanks constantly looking and I didn't want to waste my entire day. So I decided to level up my 19 Sam.

That went pretty well. I got to level 20 in the dunes in a pretty decent party, and then moved on to qufim. Ended the day at level 21 and need only about 180 xp to level up. I may even grab that solo before I go seeking again. NOw being in qufim reminded me that my thf is also 21 and at this low level i can grab gear to fit both my Sam and THF so I might go ahead and level them up together since i need thf at 37 anyways for a SAM subjob one day.

Gil is still an issue but hopefully i'll stop being lazy and hit more ENM's up or if I get really bored go farming i guess. Either way I need to do something before long as I have some bigger purchases comming up on PLD and of course SAM is expensive pretty early on.

As a note about this blog, you may have noticed I haven't posted any pictures since I have been back. Well, thats because I keep forgetting to take any. Meh, not much to show anyways, maybe i'll take some if I happen to get some good drops next weekend.

Lazy Days

So last time I said I had three goals for this comming weekend. They were to level PLD to 60, DO the ENM 40 for a chance at a Woodsman Ring, and Maybe merit on RDM. Well yea so much for setting goals.

I didnt get to do the ENM because I was being lazy. I had used up a charge on my tav. ring friday night and it wasnt ready saturday when I had time to go to the ENM. Now I could of just got there just as easily some other way but was being too lazy I Guess. Definately need to do this next weekend though. I have the scale and key item ready so its just a matter of walking there.

As for RDM Meriting I really should have gone and done this but got a bit scared when my Controller stopped working. I am horible using the keyboard controls and didnt want to risk messing up in a merit party. I did get on RDM and attempt to help out on a Diabolis run. I did well but the battle didn't. There was a leach there who didn't do crap and was giving bad directions. Didnt want to use chain stunning and had the melee stagger their 2 hours rather than just go all out. The longer a battle takes the more chances for mess ups. I died and had to HP since the leach whm didnt have reraise at the end. Xp buffer at a horrid 700. Yikes!! Need to fix that ASAP.

Now for PLD my goal was to hit 60 and although I didnt get any party at all on saturday I managed to surpass that and get to level 61. Had a good party on friday night that got me 10K into 60 and after the controller mishap and not wanting to merit RDM I decided to just do PLD with the keyboard and got the rest of the way to 61 on Sunday. Now I really should stop to get some AF gear but i tank offensivley anyways and the one piece of AF gear I need with the new style of PLD tanking I already have. That being the boots for the shield skill. Still, I have the key for the gloves and should probably knock that out anyways.

Next weekend the plan is to ENM 40, XP/Merit RDM, and level PLD as much as time permits.

Testing the waters

Logging back in for the first time brought about a few problems. First I had to download all the updates that took place in my time away. Then when i got back on everything felt odd.

I had to get reacquainted with the controls of the game. I actually struggled for a minute or two to remember how to open the main menu with the key board. Minor things like that made me a bit leery of trying to do much on that first night I logged back in.

I got to say hello to a few people I hadn't talked to in months and let the LS know I was back. A few people have left but it looks like the group of us that did COP together are all still in it. I also had to let them know my time on the game would be different now since my wife is working first shift on the weekends rather than second shift so I won’t be able to attend dynamis anymore. Also that going to make me attending or getting together with the LS for things a bit tougher.

Anyways, like I said that Friday was all about just familiarizing myself with things again. Saturday morning when I logged in I took the next baby step by deciding to go level a low level DD job. Low level DD (below 20 low) is pretty straight forward so I knew it would be a good place to start. So I broke out my SAM that I want to level anyways and got a party. The party went pretty well and I quickly got used to the flow of things and was the top DD in this party easily. Feeling more confident after this party I spent most the rest of my time getting my PLD ready to xp the next day.

Sunday morning came and I was still feeling good about trying out PLD. I geared my self up and started to seek a party. Amazingly enough it didn’t take very long at all for me to get one. It was an all JP party and with the times I am now playing in I may start to see most of my parties having JP in them.

We set out to party in caderva mire and took the boat to get there. This was the first time I had partied in the mire besides with level 75’s. The targets where birds and some type of puk I believe. I did a pretty good job and rarely lost hate throughout this party. The one thing I need to get better at though is using Cover as I was way to slow to recognize it in the first hour. It got better as time went on and I had to be on my toes because a Sam in the party was really doing a ton of damage with sidewinder and I had to use it a lot. This party lasted a bit over 3 hours and by the end I had dinged level 59.

One good thing about being out for 4 months is apparently the economy has taken a dive. Now normally this isn’t always a good thing but before my break I had been saving up for some DD gear and first on the list was a Hauby. This went for about 1.2 million at the time and I had just over a million saved up. Well when I came back from my break the Hauby was down to just 400k! So I was able to buy it and still have a good chunk of gil left over for some other big purchases. So I got to put on the Hauby when I dinged 59 and it was well worth it since the new style of tanking on PLD is to deal as much damage as you can while retaining some shield skill and enmity to help hold hate and mitigate damage. Next up I need to purchase a chivalrous chain and a potent belt. This should have me set except for some accuracy rings which I am going to try and get by soloing the ENM for.

So as of now the plan for next weekend is to get PLD to 60, do the ENM 40 for the rings, and maybe even go merit on RDM.

I'm alive again!!

Well ok i was never dead but my connection to the game is back alive. After just over 4 months friday night I was finally able to log back into ffxi. Here is the short of how the problem was fixed.

It turns out my first suspicion that the problem was with my cable internet connection turned out to be correct. It just took some convincing to get the cable company to believe they had a problem. See my internet did in fact work. I could surf the net, had zero problems connecting and anytime the cable company ran a remote test the signal would be pinged back like everything was working and connected fine. So they said it had to be something else.

Now i more or less knew it had to be the connection. First I had no problems connecting before I moved out to my new house. Second FFXI wasn't the only thing I was having trouble with. I could no longer log into my work without getting kicked off after about 2 minutes, and any time i tried to watch a video on line (think you tube) it would only play about 15 seconds worth before it got stuck.

I finally convinced the cable company to come out to the house by showing them bills I had paid to take my PC and have tests done on it. In addition we also hooked up my PC at the store and it had zero problems so something had to be wrong with my home set up.

Long story short it was a few minor problems that all contributed. One, the tap where our neighborhood connected to the cable line had a few issues. Second I had a line splitter the previous owner had been using that was pretty damn old and distorting my signal somewhat. And last just to make sure they gave me a new modem since my speeds where clocking lower than it should be with cable modem (still faster than DSL but not by much).

Not sure what put me over the top of letting me connect as the tech believed they all caused the problem. Regardless everything is working fine now. So I’m back and ready for more.

Truth be told the layoff was probably a good thing for me. It let me get some things done in the real world and I am not as burned out on the game as I probably would have been if I had been playing this whole time.

A final Farewell?

Perhaps this is my final farewell. Who knows for sure. I know that Pus and Zeit have probably seen my post on our Dynamis LS site as to the problems I have been having connecting to the game and they have probably shared that issue with you guys. It’s still happening and even though I have made numerous phone calls to all sorts of tech’s with various different companies the situation has not changed.

Trust me when I say I have spent countless hours trying to resolve the problem and nothing has improved the situation at all. I still haven’t canceled my account (which is why my name isn’t grayed out like darknessfalls is on the front page) as I still cling to a small hope that the issue can and will be fixed. To be honest though, I am losing faith. I will pay the April bill and keep my account active to give me a few more weeks of hope. However, if April 30th comes and nothing has changed it will mark the end of an era in my life. With that said there is a lot I would like to say to those in Spirit Link.

First and foremost: Thank you. I couldn’t imagine having progressed as far in the game as I have when I first started. It seemed hitting 75, while a long and distant goal, was possible anything beyond that I would forever struggle due to the limitations placed on my playing time. Spirit Link accepted those limitations and helped me through missions and quest I never thought I would have the opportunity to do.

This mostly refers of course to the journey that was COP. It’s generally hard enough to find people to do any COP mission with. The biggest complaint most people have is they get one mission done then have to start the shouting for a party for the next mission all over again. We didn’t have this issue, even though our “static” was never below 7 people. 7 people meaning every battle, mission, BC or whatnot we did multiple times. No one complained or argued we just kept at it until we were done. This was an LS accomplishment and one I was proud to be apart of. Thank you to Zeitsev, Pusarah, Keeva, Lyiea, Marlow, Janaka, Hemdall and Darknessfalls. Special thanks to Marlow who really helped drive this in the beginning.

Thanks to all the Limbus members as well (yes more or less the same people). To be honest limbus was the one thing I enjoyed most about the game. It didn’t take up too much time like Dynamis did, was challenging without being overly difficult, and the way we ran them was more reminiscent of how the old XP parties used to be with all the actual SC’s and MB’s we did. The whole experience was just a blast for me.

To all the other members of spirit Link you have my thanks as well. Helping me with key hunts and getting rid of latent effects. Coming out to help me with my Parade Gorget, numerous amounts of BCNM and enm, getting to rank 10 and countless other activities people helped me with I will remember and be thankful for. It made the game I played worth it. I only hope I was able to help as many of you and was as good a LS mate as I could have been.

And finally I can not say farewell without mentioning Janaka, Damn, Darknessfalls, and Dalilah. It’s hard to imagine playing FFXI without thinking of all of you. I met Janaka and Damn more or less on day 1, well over 2 years ago and Darknessfalls and Dal not much long after. If I was to list all the things we had been able to do, the missions and quest, this post would turn into a novel. We stayed together through multiple LS break ups (4?) and in all the time we have played never once had any disagreements or ill feelings towards one another. If I was leaving on my own terms and handing out gifts anything I had, though I was never a rich player, would be yours for the taking.

Farewell Spirit Link.

With great sadness,

Malaketh


For those interested in emailing me you can contact me at malakethx@hotmail.com. And yes I do check that account fairly regularly as I use it to set up a lot of crap I don’t want to get spam from in my work email address.

Midweek Fun

I had the chance to play some Wednesday so thought I would make a short update. I wanted to level PLD some more but unfortunately after 3 hours of seeking I did not get an invite. Figures I get a chance to play and nothing happens on the xp front.

I did however get the opportunity to go on the midweek Limbus run. It was well worth it too. Went in with 7 people and scored a total of 66 coins as a group. We killed all but 2 mobs in the entire zone, one greater bird and the magic damage only giant. We skipped the bird just to make sure we had enough time to kill the last floor “bosses” (had ten minutes to spare after killing so in hind sight we could have downed the bird) and skipped the giant since the only form of magic damage we had was from 2 rdms and that would have taken a ton of time. Didn’t need to kill them either since the vortex had already opened up.

So all said and done we each got 9 coins. That brings me up to 49 out of the 75 I need now. It was definitely a worthwhile trip to Limbus and not a waste of the day at all after my horrendous lfp start.

If I don’t get a party on PLD in the first hour or so of seeking tonight I think ill either start leveling SAM up to at least Qufim levels or maybe go ahead and finish up my NIN sub. It’s been at 29 for a long time so might as well finish it up soon and be done with it. Not to mention I could use my rajas ring on it since it’s low levels anyways and would let me have a bit of fun with the job. I also need to unlock RNG soon and get it started to 37. Lots to do yet for me.

RAJAS RING!!

The title pretty much says it all. After having the expansion for nearly 2 years and finally getting into an LS that’s helpful and was as committed to doing COP as I was I have finally gotten my Ring. Start to finish this probably took about 4 months I want to say. That’s of course a long time but we generally just got together once a week and did one mission in that week.

It was truly an amazing journey to reach the end of COP (not counting the bahmut fight of course). A static of 8 people, mostly always 8 lost darknessfalls but picked up Hemdel, which was dedicated and never left anyone behind even though it meant we had to do all the BC style fights twice is a true accomplishment of team work. To the members of my LS Spirit Link and most especially those in the static you have my sincere thanks. Congratulations to Janaka, Hemdel, Keeva, Pusarah, Zeitsev, Lyeia, and Marlow on your rings as well. A special thanks to Marlow who doggedly worked on keeping us on track and being the early leader in getting us through the missions.

The fight against promathia was just fantastic. I truly like how SE scaled the difficulty of this fight. It is no where near the toughest fight in COP. The airship battle, Ozuru, and even the 5-3 fights are tougher. The thing that makes it so special is that the battle field is amazing; the NPC’s that are there are actually good unlike other times, and it still takes a bit of skill to pull it off. The relaxed atmosphere of this fight lets you just really enjoy the moment. In the run I went on I think we had 0 deaths and the next run I think Keeva got an unfortunate silencga cast on the party(if you have never done this the silence can not be removed at all) right after he went down to like 400 hp. So only one death there. No real danger of losing the fight either time.

Now that our Sundays are freed up from missions I think we may seriously take a look at doing SKY as a social LS. Also, it’s going to give me a lot more time to level up so I am hoping to finish up PLD and then get started on the job I have wanted to do almost since I started playing the game. That is samurai. Rajas ring for one makes me really want to level the job as well as the fact that it gets to do a lot of WS, something I do rarely as RDM and not much still as PLD due to resting and just slower TP gain in general. If I come into enough gil to really fund the job like I want I may even put PLD on hold.


Sam is unfortunately expensive if you want to have the good gear. Which is exactly how I want to play it. I already have a job to 75 and a good LS and what not so there is no rush in how fast I take it. The expenses come early and often with things like Acc rings, O Kotes, and Jujitsu-Gi all coming by level 40. That’s going to set me back about 1.7 mil at the current prices. So before I start I’ll probably save up the gil for those purchases although I may go ahead and level to 35 in the slow LFP times on PLD. I am definitely going to be doing as much KSNM, BCNM, and ENM as possible to get started as soon as I can. Not to mention I need to level RNG as a sub which is going to cost some gil as well. Lots to do but oh well.

Dynamis LS did Bastok Saturday and was easy as always. We got I believe 13 af and of course 0 RDM again. Didn’t really care about the piece anyways and didn’t have it as main lot. Yesterday we went and did Glacier and I was main lotting RDM. Had the most points for it so if it dropped it was mine… so you know it didn’t drop. We did 4 attestation mobs and on all 4 we did not get the one we wanted. We now have 4 people on stage 3 of relic in the LS so I imagine we will continue doing these the next several runs until they all have them. Easy enough to kill and it didn’t hurt farming time as much as I would have thought. Next up is another Xarca run but I think we are just going to farm this time. Hope we do glacier again soon so I can get the tabard. Updated drop chart below.

Another limbus run granted me another 5 coins bringing me up to 40 now. Slow going but at least it is going.

Almost forget to mention I xped on PLD some more and got about 3k into 53. So 2 more levels down. Hoping to get some good parties this weekend and push it to 55 or 56 and stop to finish up the rest of the AF.

Long Missions, MP, and DL

So a few things to report. Did Dynamis Windy on Saturday morning. Several of us got there about 30 minutes late and from what I gathered it wasn’t going to well… But once the rest of us made it in it was the same old stuff. No RDM drops here so I was just lotting lolitem’s but we did get a total of 6 AF to drop and both Zeit and Pusarah got a piece so I was glade to see that.

On Saturday we did Dynamis Xarcabard again. Got the win again so DL is now just something we are going to farm at the start of each month. Still no shadow drop. We got I think 2 AF and of course the guaranteed 100 piece from Dl himself. Up next is Dynamis Bastok so I’m going to try and free lot some AF hands but with all the new people we have I am sure there will be a lot of RDM main lotting them. Oh well, no way I am spending points on this, it’s free lot or not at all.

Went to Limbus afterwards and got a really late start as someone jumped the zone on us. Oh well I got another 5 coins bringing my total up to 35, slowly but surely getting closer to another 30 mp and a bit of fastcast.

Oh speaking of MP I merited it a bit more and now have a convert total of 1019 mp while /whm (as in merit parties) and 1038 while /blm. Going to wait on getting the last 3 mp upgrades and switch to RDM specific again. I think I want to get slow II first and then work on my convert timer some.

Forgot to mention but between Dynamis ending and the start of Limbus me Keeva, Zeit, and Pusarah went and killed the NM for evisceration. Had the trial dagger for a few months now and finally got the latent done late Friday. Very nice WS and I was very pleased with it. Got one to land for 800+ and I didn’t even have any food up.


I got my af feet for PLD and went and xped for a bit. Still at 51 as the party was just full of crap players. We had no refresh and a thf that just plain sucked. Whm was doing as best he could without refresh as was I. Still got a few chain 5’s and am only a couple k away from 52 and putting on the boots. I am going to look to xp this more in the very near future. Dalilah was in this party as BLM and I felt bad for having her come join. Just didn’t know these guys would suck so hard and the fact they tried to start us out in kuftal tunnel with an all level 51 party. The melee couldn’t hit them at all and both I and the whm had zero mp left after each fight. So we wasted nearly an hour there before I got them to switch camps. It’s amazing no one died. Oh well, win some lose some.

Saturday my cop group finally got together again to finish up 8-2 and 8-3. Those missions are way to long. After about 5 hours we still hadn’t completely finish all the dumb walking around and getting key items. We finished 8-2 and got more than halfway through 8-3 before we had to call a halt. We are going to finish that up on this coming Sunday and hopefully 8-4 as well to be done with it all.

Having a very hard time deciding what ring to get. My MP levels are already starting to get high making the mp from Tamas looks less appealing. Not to mention the stats can be bought and are only slightly better than my cheap +4 rings. Rajas of course is a great melee ring but getting a one time only choice ring for the limited melee I do as RDM seems silly. PLD also wouldn’t get much use for me as I don’t plan on really tweaking it that much from a DD perspective. I will though level Sam up eventually so I can definitely see getting some use here. It‘s just odd getting something for what I consider a lower tiered job for me.

Approaching 1k

Just a quick Update. Ended up going to Dynamis Sandy on Tuesday. Was really hopeing I could get my schedulw switched around for just a few weeks making me miss Tuesday dynamis runs but able to attend the Wednesday Limbus rums. Oh well.

Sandy was well… sandy. Easy as hell zone anymore. I get so bored there sometimes. I really should level up my PLD so I can at least start hoping for free lot crap otherwise I just go to get points for my RDM Tabard. I stayed just long enough to qualify for 9 out of 10 points and then left to get some sleep. AF drops seemed to be a bit on the slow side but I’ll check later with the LS site to be sure.

Last night I couldn’t sleep much so decided what the hell I’ll go ahead and log in for a bit. So I log back on still in Sandy and decided I might as well at least start my PLD feet af quest. I’ll probably finish it up sometime Sunday and then the following weekend level up PLD up to maybe 54.

I also went out and merited for just a bit last night. Got another 2 merits bringing my reserve up to 4 and a mere 8k limit points away from getting another MP upgrade. So hopefully after I log in tonight I can get a quick few limit points and boost my total convert MP up to 1k with food. It’s a nice round number and a minor milestone I have been reaching for.

Speaking of convert ratio’s in the party last night was a Taru RDM. So yes we had a 2xRDM set up. A lot of RDM’s don’t like these but I guess it’s because they have trouble letting go of some of there typical duties. For me I just split p the hasting as iwould if a WHM was in party and take half the enfeebles. Most RDM’s seem to cast enfeeble’s in a pattern anyways so after the first mob is pulled you can see what they cast first and then just pickup stuff from there.

For instance this RDM liked to start off with Sow and Gravity. So I then decide to just start with para and Dia II and so still had things to do. As a note we partied at nyzul Isle so we had a greater opportunity to enfeeble with the bugards being pulled then say a super fast mire kill party. As a bonus in a double RDM party you get a lot more chances to nuke. I threw out at least one Tier III for every Buggard pull and depending on my convert timer, hate level, and mp level even casted a second from time to time. Very nice change of pace and xp was still rolling in at a high rate. It was considerably helpful of course to have only 1 other party there so no pulling competition’s going on. I’d say we pulled in a rather easy paced 12k an hour. If we had been going for any records or what not it would have been much higher but it was going so easy and laid back no need to push it.

Oh wait I was talking about convert ratio’s. So any ways this taru had a nice balanced ratio of 957/938. I was bit surprised however that it was so low. I wonder if many taru’s have a lower ratio than myself simply because of the limitations placed on their HP and cost at which it takes to raise HP levels. Not basing this on just one Taru as I have seen several with 850-950 ish total mp. Also his starting mp was about 910 so he didn’t gain a lot from his convert gear. I never check people but I know he must at least have some mp merits or be constantly wearing his +mp accessories to be standing at 900+. So while he started off with a higher base, 910 vs. my 790, I had a higher convert max, 938 vs. 990. In addition since I have a duelist Chapeau I gained 200 more mp per convert cycle over him so in reality I had the far greater mp pool to work with. Just interesting to see the benefits of my hard work paying off. He was a good RDM by the way not bashing him at all.

I can't Lot

Not much new to report about Did another Dynamis Xarcabard and that was pretty boring really. Doing the same zone three times in a row is enough to make me want to stop going but i went anyways staying until we had killed the NM's and then just left early. More than a few people didn't even bother to show since i am sure they were sick of the zone too. We got i think 4 af drops which seems to be about our average for Xarcabard but none of the really good ones this time.

Saturday we went and did Dynamis Jeuno for a change and it was a place i get to lot again. It had been over a year since any RDM legs had dropped for us so I was surprised when they finally did this time. COurse only 2 people had lotting rights with me being one of them and I returned to my old self and lotted 200 something to loose out. Oh well its all a matter of time until I get them. WE farmed a bit different this time with the orer of how we killed things and it made a drastic difference in our performance level. Far fewer mistakes and lots more mobs killed meant a lot more AF. We got 13 AF in total and an astounding 4 BLM drops plus of course we still got the win as always. I updated our drops chart and instead of typing it up i just copy pasted it out of excel into lolmspaint to get a picture.
What a shock, RDM still bringing up the rear. But at least we are getting more lately it seems. Also for whatever reason our LS seems to be anti Body drops. It is by far the lowest dropping AF accross the board and over the last 7 months, the time period the chart covers, of the 6 AF we have not seen drop 5 are Body pieces.

Onto Limbus. Gathered as normal and were headed to do Appolyon NE again when another group managed to get there about a minute before we did and take the zone. So the only other zone we could access there was Apployon SE and we decided what the hell lets give it a shot. We had never done the zone and was scrambling to get info as we was going through but all in all not a bad blind run. I even managed to dust off my dagger and melee on one floor where all mobs are weak to piercing damage to help speed things along. WE barley made it to the ghost floor and walked away with just 4 coins each but in the future I think we could clear this one with ease.

Sunday was more time to merit. Got another 5 merit points and bumbed MP up another level as well as having 2 more merits ready for the next one. SO mp is now at 4/8. I think i'll bump it one more time and then move on to something cheaper to upgrade for the time being. In addition 1 more mp upgrade will give me a nice 1k MP total on converts now.

I also went out and helped Helio get his G3 done. Not too hard to do and I always like helping people out. Not to mention he is a RDM so got to help out my Fellow mage class.

Sentinel

Very quick post. A Little while back the PLD job got a few major boosts in the form of upgrades to some of their job abilities. One of these was sentinel which now gives a phalanx type effect of damage reduction.

Some PLD's have gone out and tested it and have found it to be a 90% damage reduction when it first goes up. A few people have claimed to test it while setting pld as a sub job but i could never seem to find a screen shot verifying the reduction or see a consensus among those claiming to have tested it. So of course i went and tested it myself. Results you can see below.

Easy to see that even subbed you get the full 90% damage reduction with this ability. Nice new trick to throw in my bag for something down the road I am sure.

Dynamis, Limbus, and Merits

I have a lot to catch up on since I missed getting to post last week.

So Tuesday was Dynamis Xarcabard for the first time with all the new recruits. Went very well and in fact had 2 hours left after kill the 15 NM’s. HPG had said before hand he didn’t want to try winning the zone until Saturday so this left us with a huge amount of farming time. More so than we are used to. Had to make a lot more pulls than normal here but all in al not a bad expierence. Not much af dropped, only 2, but we did get 3 100 bills so not a bad run really. With as many people as we have now and all the experience of the shell you could really just feel the anticipation of going to kill Dynamis Lord. No one has much of a doubt that we will kill him and get the win.

Friday was kind of a weird day for me. I get on and for whatever reason everyone in the ls was leveling a low level job. So I thought, why not do that myself for a nice change of pace? So after talking like 45 minutes to get gear of my mule I decided on leveling my 20 thf. Was kind of fun and a nice change. Only got to level 21 but that was because coming across a party was tough. The low levels are a very barren place. I’ll probably go back and get to level 25 one day for flee but I don’t have a real desire to take it to 75 anytime soon if at all. I would maybe like to take up Sam though once I get the gil to really level the job. If I am going to level a melee job may as well do it with the best gear I can so I can enjoy it. Once I have the gil to afford Okotes and Hauby I’ll probably take a serious look into it.

Saturday was of course Dynamis and Limbus Day. Man have I been looking forward to killing Dynamis lord. Only 2 NA ls on the entire server have beaten him so to join those ranks and get what has got to be one of the rarest titles in the game was definitely something to be excited about. SO we go at the zone with our usual efficiency and lay waste to the NM’s again with 2 hours left to kill Dynamis Lord. So after killing all the dragons and then taking down Ying and Yang HPG went about telling the Strategy and assigning what jobs people should change into.

It was a no brainer I was going to go as RDM/DRK, since well it’s the only thing I have leveled that would contribute. So I go and change then join the RDM/DRK chainspell stun party. With the alliances set and everyone fully briefed, Alie makes the pull and we go to work.

Or at least most of the LS did. I on the other hand almost lagged completely out and it took me a good 15 seconds to get chainspell to activate. I was on the first stunning team too meaning it was important I got started and fast. Good thing my stunning partner didn’t seem to have the lag problem I did as he did fine stunning it solo. After my lag spike ended and I joined in the fray it was easy to tell we were going to win. Dynamis lords HP bar was falling soooo fast it was incredible. It took less than a minute to kill and we had Zero Deaths. He must have got off 1 AOE attack as I ended the battle with 660 hp so something must of hit me but it obviously made little difference this time with the shear amount of DD we had going.

So I got the key item and the Title from xarcabard. I would certainly call that a good day. As far as AF goes, we only got 1. However, it was a pair of Assasins armlets making it our 5th pair in the ls. That’s a lot of people with TH4. Dynamis Lord only Dropped a 100 piece but to be fair to our thf’s most had changed into DD jobs for the fight.


Onto limbus now. We did Appolyon NE again since we have been getting a lot of coins there. Went pretty well and unfortunately just like last time I had to leave early. I hate my schedule sometimes. Still I managed to stay all the way up until the last floor so it was not much of an issue with me needing to go. All said and done I got another 8 coins, bringing me up to 26 in total now, and I got the second item for my AF upgrade. So while I am tempted to just go ahead and upgrade my tabard I think I’ll put it off for the earring just incase something happens in the future to make getting coins harder such as my ever horrid playing time. At the current rate though it will be about 6 more weeks for my earring. Not bad and at least unlike relic gear you can see a progression towards the goal each run.

Sunday was all about merits. No plans had been made for the LS other than a cop 2-5 run that not everyone was on for so it got cancelled anyways. So I decided to merit, and merit, and merit some more. All told I got 7 mertis on Sunday in 2 parties. The first party was rather lack luster with a notoriously bad bard in the group that made things harder than they needed to be along with some very average DD. I think I got 2 merits in this party… maybe. The second party however was fantastic. We had a very good nin and mnk that just tore through things along with 2 sams that were able to throw out tons of WS. The bard was also above average able to keep the pulls coming and keep double ballad on me about 85% of the time.

In this second party we were consistently hitting chains in the 20’s only to be stopped by other parties and just barley. Then we got into a good rhythm. There was still 2 other parties there but we just got into a zone. Hit chain 106 before finally not being able to get a mob in time. Was hella fun going at that fast a pace. One of the sams in the group was actually level 73 and dinged 74 somewhere around chain 60. If all my parties were that good I would be finished meriting already. Oh well all said and done I manage to upgrade MP 2 more times to get it at level 3 and I have 3 more merits ready for my next upgrade. Finally getting some nice mp totals and with all the partying I did I have the IS to get a walhara turban to add to my convert macro. I think I will be sitting at 1050/980 convert ratio now.