Rambling

Well, I held off posting in the hopes of some epic event taking place but no such luck. Rather than force a story to tell, I'll just shower you all with pictures of the last week. I guess that's one of the problems with blogging. Eventually, you start repeating yourself. At least you're all still reading, right?

Right?

*crickets*

/sigh. Whatever. I hear that talking to yourself can be therapeutic anyway.

Before all the random pictures, there is *one* new thing to talk about:

ZNM!!

This was a first, and it was pretty fun. Granted, it's little more than a glorified NM fight, but we went in as a small group and whipped up some enemies nonetheless. We got decent drops on the majority of the ZNMs we did and had a good time with all of the fights. Hopefully, we'll be doing more of it soon.




Got Ranger to 69 (no sex jokes), and still having a lot of fun. Currently doing Field of Valor to build tabs and take a shot at augmenting (read: destroying) my gear. We'll see how that goes. I did get a groovy™ headpiece from a treasure casket in Ro'Maeve though. Not the most amazing piece of gear but, free adds up after awhile.

Ok, enough talking. Random picture time. ^_^

I have yet to find an enemy uglier than these things, truly.

Is it bad that I can't remember what I was doing here? >.>

Dynamis - where dying alone is not an option.

True Story: I've earned more Dynamis money through Campaign Battle than Dynamis itself.

One day, my fellow Summoners. One day...

Playing Hide and Seek with Epic. Can you find her?

On Broken Wings

I'm a sucker for story. Let's get that out of the way now. Awesome items and sellable drops be damned. Give me some story cutscenes and I'm more than happy. That being said, I'm going to forego the standard bitch session about this last update and jump to my favorite part:

Wings of the Goddess.

I can't get enough of this, really. Ouf of everything I look forward to with each update, new missions for this expansion always make me smile. Maybe it's also because I know that deep down, Black Mages and Summoners will never get new spells and avatars too. Another story for another day.

I won't give out the story details, but I'm sure you can find them if you wanted to. Needless to say, the situation is becoming more desperate by the second. New enemies and plot elements revealed, Lilith takes center stage to explain her plan, and Sir 'Ringaling' as (Cait Sith Naoi calls him) still shows no sign of improvement.

For the most part, I also enjoyed the fights that were added. The last fight can be extremely cheap or considerably difficult, depending on the tactic you choose to win. I'm going to do both methods just because, and I also want to watch the ending cutscene again. xD

What I will say is that by the time you reach the end of this current expansion, you can't help but feel for Lilisette. The events set in motion here leave you feeling pretty much helpless, but you know that you can't give up. I also got confirmation about some nagging suspicions on a few people.

Bah, I want to go home and watch those movies again. Blasted job getting in the way of fun. ; ;

Photo time!

This fight was infinitely easier than the one in The Long March North.

Our PLD got aggro while everyone else was in the CS, and stupid me just had to help fight.

We played a game of hide and seek with this little vortex while blowing up walls in Everbloom Hollow.

Lady Lilith casually playing chess

Piss of a Cait, and she'll knock you out. The "catfight" scene was hilarious. xD

Events take a huge turn and what she fears most is beginning to happen. D:

Hang in there Lilisette, we're going to win!!

Ranger stuffs and a bit of random

I am truly enjoying the DD side of the house now. Don't get me wrong; I'll always be a mage at heart, but the melee classes seem to have a bit more creative freedom during the fighting. Not simply spam a cure or only use four out of forty available elemental magic spells. The only problem is there so much gear to keep on hand for DD. I might end up doing those last two gobbie bag quests. Not looking forward to spending all that gil just for 10 spaces. @.@

As of the last update, I had just reached level 60 and was loving some Sidewinder spam. Guess what? I am still am. This job is an absolute blast. Between this and Samurai, I don't think I want to level anything else. Well, Scholar and Dancer, but they don't count. I just want the kinky outfit and frilly dress. >.>

If there is anything that gets me about this job, it's the ammo. 80k for a stack of Demon Arrows. I almost cried when I saw the price of Kabura Arrows. 120k+ per stack!! I'm going to level Woodworking ASAP. Just no way I'll be able to afford this job on a steady basis when I blow through ammo so quickly. Of course, if I learned to slow down my shots, it wouldn't be so bad. Really though, who wants to slow down when you can do such awesome damage! Maybe this is why I die so much as a BLM.

So I'm 64 now, and got myself a nifty little axe. It was all a matter of luck though. I was hanging out with Yoko and BFG (our nickname for Blackflame) when we noticed Aquarius was up. Since we were all in our 60's we left it alone. Later, another group showed up and proceeded to kill it. Surprisingly enough, they shouted in the zone and asked if anyone wanted the axe. Well hell yeah, so I sent a tell immediately and disbanded from my party. They let me freelot and I got the drop. w00t! So to Thyson and party, thank you so much. ^_^

Oh, speaking of getting nifty items, after helping Davik unlock his Destroyers, we took a trip to Gustav Tunnel to check on good old Wyvernpoacher. The camp wasn't crowded, save for a lone thief who appeared to be afk. I'm guessing he was, because when we finally got the NM to pop, he never moved. Domie came out as a winja to help out, while Davik and Max were MNK and THF.

Silly me warped out to get some of Domie's gear while I waited for the placeholder repop and the NM spawned the moment I zoned back into the tunnel. I saw HP dropping and I ran as fast as I could. Domie had the healing under control and I made it in time to get a nice Meditated Tachi: Gekko on him. I'm loving some Treasure Hunter, I'll tell you that. So far, each THF I've partied with hasn't let me down. Of course, now it won't work for the next year since I've said something.

Anway, 1/1 on O-Bow and I'm a happy camper. Not sure if I want to go for that Kriegs-something-or-other axe, but that's from a KS99. Not like I can just go camp that whenever I want.

Operation Pixie Freedom!

I'm sure many of you have found yourselves holding a bottled pixie at one time or another since visiting the past. Well, aside from building amity with the pixie race, a Square-Enix interview also mentions that rebuilding the population will have a nice little side effect: Pixies will appear in the present. I don't know about you, but that sounds extremely awesome to me. I have no idea what zones they'd appear in, but who cares? Can you imagine dying somewhere in the present, only to have an R3 with ZERO exp loss tossed your way, regardless of your level? This is the biggest no-brainer quest I've ever heard of, yet I don't see many people doing it. Know why? Cause we're too busy killing pixies.

I want to scream inside about this, even though I understand the reasoning. It seems that the poor pixies are the sole keepers of Stygian Ash, which is used to engage Dark Ixion. It's sad really. The one creature in the entire game that is so revered by players is also one of the most sought after to kill. Because of the constant killing, the pixies become less inclined to heal or raise ANYONE on the server, since hate is shared server-wide. So after hearing about this, I decided to do my part in helping to restore the population and maybe even get some pixies in present time.

It's a really, really easy quest to do. The droprate for the imprisoned pixies seems to be pretty high in Castle Chicken-head [S]. Kickern and I went there and got 6 of them in no time at all (1/1 most of time, and 1/2 otherwise). Of course, they're rare and we can only hold one a time, but since Kick had the recall spells, the trip back and forth was pretty fast. All you do is drop off the pixie at Witchfire Glen's Fey Spring in Grauberg [S]. It's fun, fast, and since the enemies are mid-70+ you're going to get some exp for it too. Seriously, it's win/win either way.

So take a moment out of your camping schedules or whatnot and do your part to rebuild that population. The pixies will love you for it, and you'll love those R3's you're bound to one day be in need of.



...and now for random stuff!

We spend all day killing stuff, but it's nice to enjoy the peaceful moments with friends.

Haha, Crotchwinder, go!!

Poor Keffka. His first Sidewinder wound up killing him and not the bird.

Kirin's rejected twin, all alone in Onzozo. Got Namikaze an Assault Jerkin though. ^^

and finally...

One more for the pixies. Don't let 'em die. :(

See you ingame ^_^

Worldwide Events

Oye, I really need to update this on a more frequent basis. I end up getting way too much stuff to talk about at once. On with the reading, cause little Jaci was a busy bee last week. ^_^

Swift Belt!

I actually got my belt a little while ago and forgot to mention it. Definitely a handy piece of gear. This run wasn't for me though. I had signed on and found a few of my ls mates hanging around out there so I got changed and headed out. I never thought it was possible, but we had an amazing run. Went 3/3 against Balor with very few casualties. None of us could believe it. So Allistor, Epic, and Kraytos (non-ls mate, but friend) all got some groovy belts and everyone was happy. We even scored a Gemini Subligar. Still no luck on the RNG one, but I might not even need the damned things now. Ah well.

That's right. 3/3 on Swift Belt. It's ok to be jealous, I won't tell.

Katana Madness!

Miliani's been leveling Samurai now also, and it was finally time to head to Cape Riverne to get "the last katana she'll ever equip" (failed MIB reference, sue me. :p ) We had a pretty solid party setup, but it was late at night and I don't remember what it was. I just remember that Tenken stopped being lazy and actually tanked. I was amazed, really. Shenel got the drop on that run, but no such luck for Mili. Jamarn tanked the next day and Mili got hers, so it worked out in the end. Congrats you two!

I know you don't see him, but Tenken really did tank. Honest!

Another day, another Hydra

This must be the common NM for Nyzul 80. I rarely ever see anything else when we do this floor. We didn't spend anytime messing around with other NMs due to some bad floors and just got to business. As usual, Hydra started off with the damned damage shield. We waited it out and proceeded to /pwn. We got a mythic weapon, some crystals, and a new LS applicant. Next time.



Ein-fail-jar D:

You know what sucks about this event? We don't do it often enough. We have enough people, but unfortunately several seem to always conveniently miss it. I don't get it. This is the shortest event we do, yet it seems to take forever to get going. Takes no time to get to the area, and we're limited to 30 minutes once it starts. Not like this is some extreme late-night time sink *cough*Dynamis*cough*.

Even worse is this an event that EVERYBODY gets a reward for doing. We all get the ichor at the end, so we can run right out and get items if we've saved enough. Not like other deals where we have to use a point system and possibly not get anything other than some exp loss. Just frustrating as all hell. We're on Tier III and now that we're on the final leg, hardly anyone is around.

We went in this time and fought a Khimaira-type NM. The waves tooks us too long and we timed out when we reached the boss. It was a good run and everyone did great. I simply wish we either had more people or that the ones we have start showing up a bit more consistently.

One day, we *will* reach Odin.

Slam Spam SNMs!

These Orc NMs in the past are really damned annoying. You've got AoE charm spam, Jump Spam, and this blasted DRK who does little more than try to slam you into a wall non-stop. We hit the ground running and collected several of the key items to make another pop set for the SCNM battle. Not quite certain when we're going, but we should have more than enough for a few runs when we do.

We didn't get much in sellable drops, but we did get a nifty katana. Not bad, but nothing to write home about when you look at the other options out there. As a funny side note, once we ended the event, EB said she wanted a retrace. So I immediately sent her on her way. Only problem was she was still waiting on one of the pop items to drop to her and I didn't realize it. Guess I reacted too fast. Sorry EB. ; ;

Sorry EB, it really was an accident. >.<

A bit of everything

Fun times in Vana'diel ^_^

Dynamis Windurst

I had hoped to get some SMN legs from here, but what I ended up getting was a nasty dent in my exp buffer. Just as we were fighting one of those Summoners, one of the avatars woke up and wasn't stunned in time. So yeah, one Astral Flow and we saw an entire alliance drop. Thankfully, the WHMs had reraise so we regrouped and got it together. Miliani got her scholar feet and is now 6/6. Congrats!

Dynamis BooBoo

After an LS vote, we ended up doing another run at Dynamis Buburimu. Personally, I wanted to knock out Qufim because we always seem to end up wiping at the Mega Boss and I need that blasted clear! One day, I suppose. Only notable drop was a scout's belt, but I was too low to lot. I need to level faster. :(

Welcome back Bhin!

KS99!!

I have always wanted to do one of these. Been sitting on umpteen kindred seals and have only used them to spam ODS from to time. So since we didn't have enough for Einherjar Tier III (surprise, surprise), we ended up grabbing our orbs from storage and headed out.

All in all, it was a fun run. Got a few decent money drops, a Wyrm Beard for Tenken's black belt, and the usual lot of junk. Hopefully we can go back soon, as I would love to get my hands on some of the more prized drops in this run. Oh yeah, someone needs to tell Jamarn to get a buffer...please.

Here you go Tenken, your 15 minutes of fame on my blog. :p

Still working on RNG, and finally made level 60. All I can say is Sidewinder is bloody awesome. Gets me in a lot of trouble though cause I let loose at 100TP a bit too often. So I keep getting the " -.- " look from paladins when I steal hate. What can I say? I have a new toy and want to play with it.

Random Stuff

Messing around with Dark Spark while doing my RNG af quests.

No need for Camouflage, I blend in perfectly as is!!

Poor thing was so scared that it climbed on the vegetation.

Now this one is kind of interesting. Normally, I'd just shrug this off as a positioning error and laugh it off. Which I did at first. However; at work today, a coworker was looking at ugly animal photos (don't ask) and he came across the coconut crab, also known as the Robber Crab. Sound familiar? I thought so too and I looked them up. Turns out the FFXI Robber Crab might very well be based off of this gigantic thing. What I found funny was this photo:


Turns out that Robber Crabs actually DO climb trees. Oh, and just in case you want to know how big these things *really* are:


Yeah, I wouldn't want to cross paths with one either.

Wascally Wabbits

Ok, this is a story that I just had to share with you all. As you know, I've been leveling Ranger and having a lot of fun. Well, one of the things that is not so fun is getting the various bows once you reach 50+. Namely the following: Vali, Othinus, and Selene's Bow. They are usually heavily camped and have low drop rates, or have non-ex equivalents that are ridiculously expensive.

After spending a few days of constantly camping Eastern Shadow for Vali's Bow, I figured I'd give a shot at fighting White Coney for Selene's Bow instead. Unlike the shadow, which has a 16-32 hour respawn window, the coney only has a 15 minute timer. Only problem is that it spawns during a full moon, and only then. As luck would have it, the full moon came up 90 minutes before I had to leave for work. Lucky me. So I arrive at camp and bring Karyn (my NPC) with me to help dish out some damage. Come to find out that I actually arrived an hour earlier so I ran around to waste time. When I got back, a THF and WHM were at the camp. Rather than battle them for the pop, I offered to team up. TH4 {I'm interested}. So now it's three of us and then I get a /tell from Jamarn, who had offered to help earlier if I ever went out there. True to his word, he geared up and was on his way.

The full moon comes and we pop the rabbit. The fight didn't take more than a couple of minutes and that TH4 worked like a charm. Masso (THF) was happy and got his bow. Jamarn had just arrived and we waited for the next pop. Here's where things get interesting. Another THF, Ghaleo, shows up and asks if we got the drop. There was silence for a bit, but then I nodded to him. No sense being rude about it. He congratulated us, and then everything went silent. A few minutes later, more of his friends show up. A BST and a RDM. So now it's two parties that will have to fight for the spawn. Lovely, right?

The footprint shows and the other team gets the claim. Masso runs up to watch the fight and I go back to the camp and just silently sob to myself. They aggro two raptors and the RDM sleeps one while the bst charms another. We looked on as they dropped the NMs life at a pretty steady pace. A few minutes later, they are still fighting. Little Coney wasn't going down without a battle, it seems. We laughed it off a bit, thinking little of it. Then the NM started spamming its healing move...for almost 1k each time. The raptors wake and the battle starts going downhill. Coney kills the THF but the RDM manages to raise. Five minutes later, the RDM goes down and the raptors leave. Mind you, all this time, the BST is dealing with Coney. He even brings Carrie into the fight, but just can't seem to win.

Now we're getting a bit impatient. Not that we want the other team to wipe; we just want them to either win so we can get the next pop or die so we can finish off what's left of the NM. Time for work was getting closer and this had already gone for over 10 minutes. We figured the RDM would get up and help out, but it seems that this guy forgot to cast Reraise or bring a RR item. Truly unfortunate.

We next witness the most epic battle between a 75 THF, BST / pet, and rabbit ever imaginable. I'm not even kidding. Nearly 30 more minutes of this and they *still* couldn't win. Light skillchains, sneak attack, rampage, shark bite...you name it, they tried it. No good. Coney laughed off every attack and healed itself. At one point, it went from 2% back to over 70%. The THF finally died after awhile and it was all up to the BST. He kept using his jugs of broth and spammed Carrie. The THF HP'ed and we figured it was over, but oh no. A quick /sea all revealed that he had gone back to change jobs. He was on his way as BLM/RDM to try sleep-nuking, we figured. The BST held Coney as much as he could, but Carrie was no match for the bunny and went down with him following soon after.

Now it was up to us. SAM, THF, and DRK. Coney was around 60-70% when we got a hold of him, but we all had enough time to build up lots of TP, which spelled bad news for Mr. Coney. It took us around 20 seconds or so to finish it off. Skillchains are your friend. Thankfully, Masso's TH4 worked again and we're both 1/1 on Selene's Bow and I had less than 3 minutes before I had to leave for work.

I have to hand it to the other team though; they gave it their all against that little bugger. You know the really funny part about all this? I bought 12 Carrots to pop the NM and never even used them.

Any cooks out there need some carrots?

Nyzul, HNM, and BOOM!

Nyzul 100!!

Evilpaul asked if anyone wanted to do some Nyzul. I was still trying to hit 100, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Things were going smoothly until floor 98, and then we hit a hiccup. I think we had a couple of members down or weakened, but we had no time to rest when we hit 100. If I remember right, we had about 3 minutes to drop our NM.

I have to admit that seeing all of these puddings made me hungry during our runs.

In all of my attempts with Hydra, every single one failed miserably. I was hesitant about this one too as well since we made it there with so little time. That damned Pyric Bulwark has messed me up constantly. We ran in and literally tore Hydra a new one. I was amazed at how smoothly the fight went under the circumstances. LS group > random pickup. Lesson learned.

Poor EP, but he redeemed himself at the Hydra fight with Hundred Fists while weakened. Go EP!

So finally, I can say that I have finished my long and arduous climb of that damned maze. Sadly, I can also say that I've already done the quests for the weapons that I really wanted to unlock, so having the runic key really doesn't do much for me. Maybe this will motivate me to unlock a Mythic weapon one day.

After that, we spammed floor 80 and got nothing worth mentioning. Well wait...Divi got a Mage's Staff. So now we both can be laughed at when we attempt to gain TP to use Vidohunir during an event. >.>

Random Shots

My identical, yet slightly taller twin. I think we both have the exact same jobs leveled too. >.<

We decided to show off our tans in Whitegate. Obviously, I don't tan so well.

Merit Blunders

There's a story behind every picture, and these two are no different. We were all alone in Bhaflau Thickets, having some fun and getting a few merits to pass the time. We had got into the rythym where paying attention 100% was no longer necessary as every action was pretty much automatic now.

Suddenly, Shenel just dropped dead. For a split second, I thought she was on the receiving end of a nasty Pecking Flurry and then we realized what happened. Somehow, she either mixed up macro buttons or lagged and use the wrong job ability. Either way, she blew herself up. I've seen a few goof-ups in merit parties, but I have never seen a person get so bored that they just blow up mid-chain. :p

No worries Shen, we still love you.

The Vinegar King

Seriously, I don't like HNMs. The fight is fine, but the claim method absolutely sucks. Standing around like a bunch of morons waiting either for some time window or specific weather which magically makes an NM appear is silly. You've got about .00000001 seconds to get the claim before any of the other competing LS's snag it away and make all those hours camping mean nothing. Then once you get it, you have to play a game of cat and mouse while you hope and pray that you are able to avoid its attacks long enough for the rest of your linkshell to arrive at the site and start fighting. It's just silliness.

However; like all true FFXI addicts, we camp it anyway.

All it takes is one mistake during a kite, and it's Game Over.

I was part of the kite team this time now that I have RDM/NIN. So after running a few laps around the spawn point with Vice and Miliani, the rest of the LS arrived and I was asked to change jobs again. Surprisingly, Brim had me come out there as a SAM. That made a very happy Jaci, cause slicing shit is greatness.

Me + Great Katana = Happiness

It took us no time at all to put this scorpion in its place. We actually killed it faster than one of our most well-geared LS's on the server. Yes I'm gloating a bit, and I like it. Might do it more often.

As for the drops, we got some awesome Earth Crystals. It's just what we were all hoping for, cause no one wants that silly Ace's Helm.

Party at Castle Oztroja [S]!

So we decided to go for another SCNM and try to get more awesome gear. This time, Tzee Zicu the Manifest was our target.

It only took a moment to realize how silly I was for chasing this NM around. Then I died.

It was our first time, so we figured we'd go in there and see what we could learn from the fight. I don't remember everything that happened because I ended up falling asleep mid-battle and found myself at my home point with a loss of exp. ( sorry >.< ) However; for the time that I was awake, I learned the following:

1. We were unprepared.

2. Baraero is your friend

3. Tzee Zicu's elementals hit damn hard.

4. I need more magic resistant gear

5. I should take naps before late-night events.

Still, it was a fun night. If only I were awake to remember it all.

See you in game!