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.

Weekend Accomplishments 1/19-1/21

Another long and eventful weekend to report.

First off Friday I logged on and the LS decided to do a bunch of KSNM runs. And by a bunch a mean we ended up doing about 14 total. So I got some much needed gil and finally upgraded my lolspider torque to an enfeebling torque. I will eventually switch nations to windy so I can get the M.C.B. and push my skill up even higher but I do really not want to give up my starter city OP warps. However, I know I will I guess I’m just waiting for windy to control xarcabard and beacudine so I can still use those as I use them a lot.

Saturday was an odd day for me. I had some RL crap that kept popping up so my time on was a bit sporadic. I ended up missing almost all of Dynamis Beacudine so not much to tell about that. They did get a RDM body which more or less moves me to the top of the list to get one now. Tuesday will be Xarcabard farming only to get the new people acquainted with the zone. Then Saturday we are going for the win; I have a good feeling that it will happen too.

Also, I got my last enfeebling merit before I went into dynamis so my enfeebling skill now stands at 329. Got 2 more merit points as well so I will be upgrading mp as soon as I get back on.

We did limbus Saturday night and went to Appolyon NE. Did pretty well for our first try at it each netting 7 coins and we made it to the final floor but just ran out of time. I few adjustments to strategy should fix this and I have no doubt next time we will win. I now have 18 total Ancient currency so I am creeping ever closer to an upgrade. I’ll probably still go for the earring first but I am really starting to like the idea of my AF Tabard +1 being a nice multi purpose attire. Decent MP for Convert with no –hp, hmp +5, and of course the same enfeebling + skill still on there.

Sunday I decided to dust off my PLD equipment and go xp a bit. Party was so-so with the real downer be the RDM. I know I may be a bit more critical of RDM’s being it’s my main but this guy just didn’t put in the effort. I caught him AFKing a couple times, he never Refreshed me or the WHM, almost never dispelled the evasion boost off of the beetles we were fighting, and generally was just poor at his job. I managed to stick it out enough to get about 8k total in 2.5 hours. We could have done so much better it the RDM was at least decent but that’s the breaks I guess. Got to level 51 and a few k into it and called it a day.

That night a few of us decided to go farm some triggers for Genbu. 7 of us went out and we did get a water to drop finally before I had to log. Not sure how much longer they stayed but maybe they got another one, I’ll find out soon I suppose. Not sure what this means with us taking a step to kill gods but I know whatever we do will be with a small force. Probably no more than 10 people and realistically we may only have 7-8. We know Genbu won’t be any problem but not sure how far the guys want to pursue things. Guess it’s a wait and see kind of thing. It will still be nice to get some xenith mitts for my RDM and all this with just our social LS and not any SKY/HNMLS drama.

Dynamis - Windy

So another dynamis another win for us. Windy has even reached the realm of ridiculously easy for us now. I can remember back to the days when this was the one place we might actually lose if we didn’t all focus. Now it’s another laugher. 90 minutes of farming time after mega was dead. If we had really been trying we may have done a full clear even. The only stuff left I think was the Death house and a few by the Mog house.

Pulling here felt odd. I seems like I haven’t been to the zone in ages and almost felt lost in there. But even still with my slower pulling rate since I was trying to regain my bearings it was just easy. I can’t wait to get back to northlands now.

Beaucedine is on Saturday which means I finally get to main lot again. YAY! Getting the duelist tabard would sure be nice but it will probably be a while before another one drops. Then of course after Saturday’s glacier run it’s on to Xarcabard. Not sure if we are going to go after DL then or wait until all the new people have been to the zone at least once so we are better on time and directions with them. I kind of hope we just go ahead and try for the win since killing the NM’s and getting to DL is rather easy.

Also, not sure yet but I may have to miss limbus afterwards since I got some RL crap to do but not completely sure yet about my schedule. I hope I get to go though.

Weekend Accomplishments 1/12-1/14

Limbus, Assualt, and Dynamis.


You know I never really thought of myself as being a “End Game” type of player because I have never joined a HNMLS, never fought a sky god or ground king, and for damn sure never fought a sea Jailor. But when I look at the things I am doing now I realize end game is all about what you are doing, not necessarily just killing off the big monsters. This weekend I did Dynamis, Limubs, and some Assualt missions which kind of open my eyes to the content I was partaking of. Maybe I am an “End Game” RDM? Not that the distinction matters to me. I do what I like doing and what my time permits me to do.

Friday.

Did a little bit of meriting and xping to get my buffer back up again. My enfeebling merits are now at 7/8 and I’m sitting on 1 merit point already for the last upgrade. Almost there now, just a little less than 20k xp to go and then its time to do the mp upgrades.


Saturday was Dynamis Bastok. Pathetically easy is all I can say. Full clear with 30 minutes left!!! Full clear isn’t that impressive anymore but with 30 minutes left you can tell we were just blazing through the zone. 16 AF2’s dropped in all. One job and one job only had no drops though, care to guess which one? Yea RDM got boned again. It’s just comical really since the Bastok piece is more or less crap and even that don’t drop for us. Windy is up next which is about the only challenging city zone and it’s not bad either unless you have some moron in your group that can’t follow directions. I don’t think we will have a problem though even with all the new people. Anyways, I am almost back to northlands and my pursuit of the Duelist Tabard and the Death of Dynamis Lord.

Sunday we did limbus instead of our usual Saturday date as we just needed to finish up 8-1 for Hemdall to get him in. So we kill the three sets of 8-1 NMs (note a RDM can grav/Bind Kite these forever, they are really weak) with little to no problem except for a slight mishap with the MNK one using hundred fist at a bad time. We only had 5 people to kill these with and he took out 3, but I and Keeva managed to stay alive and kill off the last of his HP. So now our limbus group is up to 8 members and all of us from Spirit Link. Not a bad social LS huh?

We did Temenos West again and probably won’t do again for a while. This time the time chest just didn’t want to drop at all. We got down to 2 minutes left before the first one popped, and down to 1 minute left before the second popped. We still ended up winning though. We had to really lay waste to crap since the time chest weren’t dropping and it felt like we were really pressing forward through out the whole thing. Time seemed to just fly and everyone was very focused as we could just see us timing out. But we pulled it together and won again. 40 Total coins dropped so all divided out I got 5. Not the best loot but we did more or less skip a whole level rushing through since time was being a pain. Next up I think will be Apollyon NW for them on Wednesday. I might actually make a weekday run but I doubt it. If not I hope they do it again on Saturday so I can get a feel for the place before I start to solo it once a week to make up for my missed runs with them.

After limbus we did a few runs at Excavation Duty. This one is so easy it’s really just boring. But since I rarely get to do these, hell I’m still a PSC, it was a nice change. Got my dagger up to 245 skill so not a bad waste of time at all. Probably be another month before I do any of these but who knows.

Dynamis Jeuno 1/9/2007

Another city zone yesterday. We knocked out Dynamis Jeuno for the new people so a step closer to going after the kill on Dynamis lord. Was another easy run up until the Mega Boss. HPG died a little too fast on his sac pull and when the guy pulling the Boss back to the AH voked it, he immediately got Death cast on him. Too much lag and too close to out run the spell he died and since HPG was dead everything linked and well.. yea.

So a quick regroup pulled it again without incident and we were left with 2 hours to farm after the mega boss. I mean really the cities are so pathetically easy to beat I don’t see how shells ever lose to them.

Farming Jeuno is always a suck experience. Each statue pops like 6-8 mobs after you kill the mega boss and most are close enough to at least one more statue so you end up with these mass linking pulls that take forever to handle. Blah, always a lot of xp loss for me there as puller. Oh well its still better than being someone’s refresh whore in a zone so laggy you can hardly keep an adequate rotation going.

Lots of AF dropped as is pretty much the custom in city zones. I don’t have the final count yet but I know I saw at least 4 whm AF pieces drop. No rdm Af dropped so I didn’t get another piece but wouldn’t have anyways if just one dropped. Kogashi finally got fed up waiting on his hat and was main lotting RDM. So since he has a lot more points than me I would have had to wait. Would have been nice to have the plus 10 Elemental skill as I have been thinking pretty hard about doing some limbus solo and will need all the nuking gear I can get. I’ll just have to wait, probably wont do Jeuno again for 2 months since we rarely do cities.

Dynamis Bastok is up next. I’ll probably still just keep to free lotting the RDM Gloves and maintaing my points for when the body drops in northlands.

Since this is a rather small post (for me anyways) I figure I would update that AF drop table I had done in an earlier post. Here it is.

Job Hands Body Legs Feet Head Total  % of Drops
WHM   3    5    1    6    4    19   10.2%
PLD   5    2    1    2    3    13    7.0%
NIN   2    2    5    3    1    13    7.0%
WAR   4    5    4    5    1    19   10.2%
THF   4         3    4    3    14    7.5%
BST   2    4    2    5    2    16    8.6%
MNK   5         6    1    3    15    8.1%
BLM   3         3         3     9    4.8%
BRD             3    6    4    13    7.0%
DRG   2    3    2    2    2    11    5.9%
SAM             2    2    4     8    4.3%
RNG   1    3    2    3    2    11    5.9%
DRK        1    4    1    4    10    5.4%
SMN   1    3    2    1    1     9    4.8%
RDM   1    1         3    2     7    3.8%
Total 34  29   40   44   39   186  100.0%

So Whm and War continue to lead the way (and i havent even added in yesterday's run where 4 whm dropped) even though people in the LS all like to say bst and drg are the most common. Bst is up there yes but drg is hardly al that common for us. It's just no one wants it when it does drop.

Glancing at the table you can see we have gotten full sets of drops on 8 of 15 jobs. Much better than last time I posted. RDM drops still lagging behind in last place but at least it's getting better.

Future plans

Been awhile since I posted, had the holidays and all plus been busy at work after missing a whole week.

Nothing tremendously important happened in game though. My dynamis shell recruited some more people again to help us take out Dynamis Lord. So we are redoing the cities to get people access there. Did sandy on Saturday and it was of course easy as hell like always. Very lagy considering we had 54 people there although I fully expect about 10 people to drop out after we beat Dynamis windy like they always do. Jonova got RDM boots so congrats to him on getting a good piece. RDM gear is starting to finally drop for us.

We have Dynamis Jeuno tonight and with Jonova spending a lot of points on feet and the other high point RDM’s holding points for hat I think I am going to main lot the legs. Plus 10 elemental skill on them will be a nice addition to my nuking setup and the point value is fairly low on them. By time we get back to Northlands I should have enough points to be able to at least lot against Jonova for the body, the other RDM’s will probably still hold off for the hat. When we do bastok I’ll probably just free lot the gloves since they aren’t that great anyways.

After Dynamis Sandy Saturday I went on my first Limbus run. We did Temenos West and won. I got the ruby silk thread for my af upgrade and 6 ancient beastcoins. Not a bad hall. I’ll probably still get my loquacious earring first (ugh 75 coins) before upgrading my tabard. Limbus was defiantly fun and a nice change. With our small number of 7 people we run this more like an xp party with actual skill chains and MB’s. We are trying to catch Hemdall up in COP so hopefully we can have another member soon.

Here is a pic of me and Janaka inside limbus. Not much to see but meh i was busy.


The problem for me now is getting enough gil to fund my Dynamis and Limbus runs. I decided to just start selling off my Dyna currency as I get it and that’s generally enough to fund my runs. I also did another ENM brothers but we got a craptastic Eltoro leather so no money really was made. Hopefully next week when we do it i'll get something good. I should probably try to start doing the ENM 40 one again for a shot at the woodsman ring for more gil. With only one day to do mission, xp, merit, and make gil my time feels limited.

We did go out and do 2 ugly pendants. Was the first time any of us had gone to kill the NM. Was a pretty fun fight really and no real danger of us wiping to it. A simple kite and nuke strategy and all it takes is time. Did one NQ and one HQ spawn and got the drop both times. Drops went to Pusarah and Zeitsev cause well they bought the knifes duh. We will go again as the rest of us find knifes. That was the problem with us not doing more, just couldn’t find any for sale.

After the pendant runs we did the snoll fight for Hemdall and set the record. But really whoever had the record before must have just been dragging their feet. It was over 9 minutes. I can only imagine them not going over strategy first or just down right being too nervous to start the fight to have that bad a time. We did it in just over 5 and took our sweet time as it is. We also did the 50 cap part in pso with all the dumb doors for hem so now he is more or less done with the long ass mission that is 5-2 COP as they had already done the mithra fight.

I have really started to make an effort to merit. After finally getting the Duelist chapeau it has really made me want to just pimp out all my skills. Almost got enfeebling capped now with 6/8 upgrades done. May have that finished next weekend as I try to squeeze in merit time. After that it’s on to mp upgrades to bolster my convert ratio. I think I also want to merit my convert timer and just forgo any wind accuracy merits. I know Gravity/Silence is important but most things are either down right resistant to silence or I can land it anyways with all my enfeebling skill. Gravity builds up resistance anyways so all those merits won’t help if it’s an extended battle. Mp on the other hand is always useful and getting back 1k plus mp every 8:20 is very appealing to me. Of course I’ll still merit ice accuracy because a good bind is very nice and it helps with my Blizzard III resist rates. I think all told I still need about 70 more merit points to be done with my RDM. Not bad but still a lot of work. Needless to say because of this i have but leveling PLD on the back burner.