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April 26, 2010

A puzzle

Ok, I've got to put an end to this belief I carry. My self-image in-game is directly tied to how I perform. That should not be the case, but it is. It's become so bad that I filter out everything just to avoid seeing the damage that myself or anyone else is capable of doing so I don't feel as bad. I block out heals, weaponskills, everything. It's quite pathetic, really.

In terms of understanding my jobs, I'm set. I don't claim to be an expert, but I know every single job that I use. I use my abilities and pay attention to what I'm doing. I watch my party and adjust my play style to fit the situation where it's called for. I'm always open to advice and hints on some neat tricks, but I don't consider myself as having a lack of knowledge.

When it comes to gear / merits; however, I am at a loss. For one, I flat out refuse to merit anymore. If my LS invites me (a rare occasion) or a group full of friends, then I will go. Pick up groups and whatnot? Hell no. I need to get over it, but I am deathly afraid of meriting with strangers. Not due to having a bad group, but just my own view of myself and my equipment. Of course, everyone knows this, so it's nothing new. When I do get any merits, it's either accidentally through sky farming, or playing around in the sandbox / campaign battle.

Gear is a work in progress. Quite honestly, I'm in a bit of a quandary about that. People say to set priorities when it comes to upgrading and all that. This is fine and dandy, but I'm not sure which pieces of gear take priority over another. Also, I don't want to be pigeonholed, and that's exactly what will happen. Truth be told, that's the very reason I stopped paying as much attention to BLM, which was my primary reason for even playing this game to begin with.

So where do you start? Obviously, you need money, but how do you go about getting it? I have around 2,000 seals to waste, but I'm hesitant to use them with people I don't know. Then, which BCNM / KSNM has the best seal:gil ratio? Royale Ramble is nice, but then you end up flooding the market with ingots and the price drops. UO is always good, but the chance of winding up with a full load of crap is virtually guaranteed. Of course, everyone wants the 50mil Speed Belt from KS99, but there's a reason that and the Kraken Club cost so damn much.

What's next? Farming. I can't even begin to describe how boring this is for me. Nevermind the low inventory space that I have; just getting the drops is frustrating enough. Doesn't help that I only have Thief at 41, but am I seriously supposed to level a job all the way to 75 just so I can run around and farm materials to sell that I'll use to upgrade other jobs?

Another thing I could try is crafting. This one follows the old "it takes money to make money" saying. So far, I've level Alchemy to 60 and a Smithing to 14 or so. Now, it's my understanding that in order to really be useful as a crafter, you need to take one craft to 100 and every other to 60. I don't know about you, but I just don't have the patience or gil for that endeavor.

Now let's say that I actually go through with one of the above and make it my goal to get X amount of gil to upgrade gear. If I look at really trying to make my jobs useful, any one of them will require well over 15-20 million gil, and this excludes Salvage gear. I do have a Dynamis / Sky LS, and my main LS dabbles in various endgame events (without much consistency for various reasons). However, Dynamis / Sky is the only thing I routinely do, and that's once a week. So you can imagine how long it will take to get relic / sky gear for my jobs. Therefore, the fastest means of acquisition is to buy gear outright. My Dyna shell doesn't do payouts, and my attendance in Sky is so low due to my work schedule that it's basically pointless to worry about the payouts from there. I know I've missed at least two payouts, but whatever.

Disregarding luck on HQ synths and great drops from BCNMs, the amount of time it will take to get this much gil will take at least a year. Now I ask you, does this mean that I should go into some reclusive mode and just farm / craft until I get this amount of money? Is that how people do it? Just go away for months on end and then return as this well geared player? I'm serious here; I really need some type of advice because this is driving me nuts. If I'm actually able to do this, I'll more than likely be bored sick of any jobs I already have by then and switch to a different job, repeating this cycle all over again.

The only job I won't get bored with is Samurai, but everyone and their unborn child is a SAM. Except EP, but he's special. As such, the requirements of what makes an acceptable SAM now are so high that few people ever reach it.

I'm not a bad player. I know this and I've had several people tell me the same. I'm not one of those SAMs who comes to an event wearing gear that has people scrambling to find the "Remove Member" button when they see me, nor am I an incompetent mage who nukes in Lv.10 INT rings while wearing full RSE at 75. Still, I have this perception that I simply have not been able to break.

I know I'm rambling and all, but this has been bugging me for some time now. How do you guys manage it? I'm not the only one with multiple 75's, so I know there has to be a way to do this without losing my mind. I've got to find a way out of this situation. Anyone have some advice?

April 19, 2010

A Wasted Day

That's how I want to describe yesterday. Well, it's actually how Aneviaul summed it up for me.

You see, I have this problem. Whenever I level a job, I tend to resort to Wikipedia's Equipment Guide for said job. It's full of handy information and advice for people who don't know exactly what to get. Of course, I could just say to hell with it and buy what I think would work, but due to my self-critical nature, that would just be disastrous. So how is this a problem, you might wonder?

A lot of the gear listed is either HQ (which I usually can't afford), or it's R/EX from some NM with incredible difficulty or extremely shitty drop rate. With that said, I bring you.... Belladonna.

I hate this NM.

The good thing about this lovely creature is that it spawns every 100 minutes. This is nice because you can get plenty of chances to kill it if you pay attention to the time. Unfortunately, this is one of those NMs with craptastic drop rates. Wiki be damned, and to hell with all of you who went 1/1 on this.

I spent all day...and I mean ALL day camping this goddamned flower, or whatever the hell it is. From 6 am to 9 pm, I planted (see what I did there) my ass in West Sarutabaruta and killed plants to pass the time. Every now and then, I'd run out and campaign or do something trivial until it was time for the next spawn. I lost the first claim because the stupid thing spawned on one side of a rock and waltzed right into the range of an RDM on the other side. The rest were all mine; gogo Animated Flourish!

Eventually, Yoko saw me out there and she brought her awesome treasure hunter along. Yoko has been my pocket thief for a long time, and I owe a lot of my gear to her TH. Bella said screw that and refused to give up the goods. We didn't even get a damn crystal.

Yokorye defeats the Belladonna... no drop.
Carinde defeats the Belladonna... no drop.

This went on for hours. I got one claim while Yoko was away and silly me didn't realize I was out of nin tools. Yeah, I died. Changed jobs and ran back as a naked BLM, hoping to claim before anyone arrived. I got the claim, but had no gear on me and not enough MP to really do anything. Guess what? Yeah, homepoint for me. I grabbed some shihei and changed back to Dancer. Got the claim again and killed it. Naturally, no drop. Talk about being pissed off.

Eventually, I saw that the LS was going to take pictures for ZNM, so I'm hoping that we'll get around to doing those. Personally, I only see three things I want from there: a pair of Oracle's Pigaches, the Alkalurops staff, and a pair of Hachiryu Haidate. Of course I want the Hachiryu body as well, but that requires beating Pandemonium Warden. No offense to my LS, but that simply isn't ever going to happen.

Anyway, I left moments before Bell was due to spawn, but I was tired of sitting around and wanted something different. I got a few pictures taken, then everyone decided to take a break. So that was exciting.

As a result, the only thing I had to show for yesterday was a few pictures of a worm in Aydeewa Subterrane and less exp on two jobs.

Finally I just said screw it and went to sleep.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Yesterday was basically a huge pile of Marid shit. I was getting ready for work this morning and figured I'd go campaign since I'm a few days away from being demoted. I checked my map and saw a battle in West Saruta going on. So off I went, but then I stopped. Come on, you know I had to go look.

Of course, it wasn't up. I started to leave, but I kept getting this feeling. What if I leave and it spawns? What if this is the one? I went back to killing the plants and wasting more time. At least I could only spend an hour there this time. A few people ran through to check. An RDM, a PLD, and this 75 DNC who thought they were slick and used invisible. In case you happen to read this, I saw you.

Ten minutes before it was time to go to work, Bella spawned and I got the claim. After completely wasting the previous day, the damn belt dropped on the first fight of the second day.


Thank you Wikipedia, for giving me yet something else to drive myself crazy over.

April 15, 2010

Nyzul Isle - Never No More

Nyzul Isle has been the bane of my end-game existence for as long as I can remember. Usually, it's one of two outcomes when I manage to reach floor 80:


We fight Cerberus and he drops something I don't need... OR

We fight Cerberus and he drops me.

That's usually it. It's a rare moment that the outcome differs from the above. Every now and then, I'll see Hydra appear. Of course, Hydra usually drops a weapon and that's it.

This morning was no different. It was prime time for the Japanese crowd, but I had time to burn and tags to waste, so I gave it another shot. Not to mention, I had capped exp for SAM since that horrid run in with a dragon not long ago. Off we go. I thought our party was pretty decent. We had SAM, SAM, DRG, THF, RDM, and BRD. I was happy with the setup and we went in.

First floor was chariots. At this point in my Nyzul career, I expect every floor to be chariots. We found the first one and stopped. I wasn't certain why we stopped, but we did. Everyone was just waiting for something to happen. I noticed our THF hadn't moved, so I took the initiative and tagged the chariot from a distance. Of course, I got aggro from a birdie but it was slept and we went on. For some reason, we were out of sync on that floor. Between no one sleeping, people not sticking together, or MP issues, I died twice and our DRG died right next to me. We also spent around 10 minutes on 76. Not happy.

I think we made it 78 when we got the 5 minute warning. Once again...not happy. We left the run and I asked who wanted to go for another round. Our DRG left and then our BRD decided to leave too. Cal saw me in the ruins and was hurt that I didn't invite him earlier, so I made sure to send a request his way this time. Few minutes later, I found a 6th and we were set. One tag gone, two to go. I changed jobs and we went in again.

I don't know if we were half-asleep before, but the next run was great. We ran through the floors like we were tearing through Valkurm Dunes. We got to the boss and it was none other than.... HYDRA! Fan-freaking-tastic. I just knew we weren't going to get anything. Everyone has a theory on the way drops work in this game. Let the THF get the last hit on an NM for best drops, or have a poor Taru die as a sacrifice. I have a new one: beat the shit out of the enemy so fast that it doesn't have a chance to hide the loot it was holding. Granted, I was an RDM and I didn't do squat to it outside of enfeebles, but Hydra dropped in mere seconds. When it was over, we still had 10 minutes to go, but I chose to exit instead. Mainly because I was too excited about what just happened. At an approximate cost of 54,250 tokens, say hello to this:

It was either the rock salt or the jacket. Obviously, the salt lost.

I couldn't freaking believe it. I am the master of making Askar or Goliard drop, but today, my luck changed. I think it's because I had Domie cheering me on and Cal in my party. Cal said Denali dropped because he had the power of funk music playing on his iPod. I dry humped his leg in thanks. Who says I'm ungrateful?

I am officially a sexy ass Corsair. Booyah.

Still, I had one tag left and I didn't want to be rude to my party for helping me out. So we went for one more run. This time, we ran into Khim. Cal's silly self decided to skip getting TP from the rampart and just rush in without buffs or the mages resting. Well, that's not entirely true. He did ask first and I told him to go play and have fun. He was giggling like a little kid. Khim fell with little issue and all we got was the Dancer dagger. The awesome part about it is that we had almost 15 minutes left in the run. I have never cleared a FL80 run that fast. So we laughed and decided to keep going. Turn it into a token farming run. Again, we tore through the floors. The force was strong with us today. When it was all said and done, we went from 76-84. We had about 3 minutes left, but decided to just exit and call it a day. We got a nice token reward though.

No drop on the boss, but it still ranks as the best run ever.

There are still items that are useful to me in that place, but I can now travel into Whitegate and honestly not give a damn about having enough tags to do a run when I see FL80 shouts. Time to focus on some real assaults and get that long overdue Captain rank. ^_^

April 8, 2010

Bittersweet Memories

I was just reading over the various posts that I've made while blogging here, smiling at some of the memories and shaking my head as I remember the frustration I've had as well. I also notice that I really do bitch a lot about FFXI. There's a reason for it though. It's because I remember a game that I truly loved. No, it was never FFXI, and I'm not about to say that this once wonderful game is now shit because of [insert overused reason].

Let me give you a bit of history, and maybe you'll understand why I am always so frustrated here.

I've only played two MMOs in my gaming lifetime. This one, and a fairly unknown one called Horizons: Empire of Istaria. While I doubt that any of you played it, that is where the name Carinde comes from. So if you knew her then, Jacinda is one and the same.

Horizons was meant to be an epic MMO that would reshape the industry. Unfortunately, it never even came close. It feel into huge monetary and management problems during its development cycle. The beta was a downright disaster, with graphic lag worse than a combined Besieged/Campaign battle. Speaking of graphics, while the environment was very pretty for its time, today it looks like some of the free MMOs that are advertised on various websites.

The game was riddled was holes and was far from completion, but the owners' had their hand forced and had to try to recoup some of the money that was bleeding from the game. So, they basically released a game to the public that was still in the beta stage. As you can imagine, it didn't do so well. The game changed management companies several times, and if the company that bought it didn't go bankrupt, they dropped the project and gave it to someone else.

Sounds like a bunch of fail, right? From a business standpoint, it certainly was. To the people who played it; however, it was something special.

My first experience to MMOs was this game, so I had nothing to compare it to. I knew nothing of Everquest; WoW and FFXI hadn't been released yet, so I basically went into this game with zero expectations. While that meant I was completely oblivious to the things that were frustrating other veteran MMO players, it also allowed me to see some of the more meaningful things the game offered.

I've never seen an MMO use the players as a selling point for a game, but this one should have. Other MMOs laughed at us and said that we only had a strong community in the game because actual content was lacking. Maybe they were right. The content we should have had wasn't out yet, and in most cases it hadn't even been created because of all the crap the development house was going through. So in a sense, all we really had was each other. At the same time, that's what it made it so great. We helped each other. We all worked together to make that mess of a game work. Talking with developers, crafters establishing a real marketplace, adventurers helping people in need...it was just wonderful.

Maybe we can't talk with the developers of FFXI like that, but we can talk with each other. Horizons had crafters just as FFXI does. As a matter of fact, the crafters of that game run circles around what's here. You want a spell with an additional effect: stun? Easy. Take the materials for a spell to a spellcrafter and they'll make the spell as well as add the effects. Need a damage boost to the spell? They can make that too. You want some armor with added STR? Not a problem. Hell, the crafters could even change the armor color for you. If you changed jobs and suddenly all that armor you have is useless, fear not. Take it to an armor crafter and have them de-construct it for you. It would be broken down into base materials that the crafter could use to create a different type of armor for you or someone else.


If it could be crafted; it could be customized. By the crafter, no less.

Everything could be crafted there. Even houses. You and your guild could buy plots of land and create a guildhouse, stores, crafting stations for the various crafts, storage silos, etc. etc. It wasn't relegated to a mog house that no one could ever see unless they were in a party and you opened your house to others. Imagine running around Windurst and the homes and such that you see belong to the people you game with, not just lifeless NPCs with scripted dialog. People added birdbaths, fountains, trees, stone columns...all sorts of things to make their house a reflection of themselves. I personally hate crafting. I didn't like it there and I don't like here, but if I had to pick a game to craft in, it would certainly be Horizons.


Standing outside of my guildhouse on a newly purchased plot we bought for our guild.

Myself and various others in the community, helping to put the finishing touch on our shop.


The economy there was also player-driven, just like here. The biggest difference being that people worked to benefit each other. Of course, there was greed just like anyplace else. However, when people noticed price surges and whatnot, we actually had a player-created Marketplace where those price surges were made public and crafters either explained and backed the surge or others worked to lower the price and make it fair for everyone. Prices were based on realistic expectations of income. When new items came out, they naturally sold for a premium, but this was eventually brought down to something more reasonable.

Adventuring is completely different. When I look back, I'm actually amazed at how much we trusted each other. It's almost scary. When we partied (grouped, as it was called there), it was customary to have one person to act as the assigned lotter. Similar to the person who lots coins in Limbus / Dynamis, but this person lotted everything that dropped over the course of the party. Rare items that were left on a body were simply asked for and usually there was never a problem with others letting someone have an item. When the party was over, the lotter distributed the items to the members and that was that. Ready for something mind-blowing?

We helped each other kill NMs.

Yep, we really did. We'd gather a group of people, and then we'd make an order of who got the item for that run. What's more, if the NM only spawned once a day or so, we all made it a point to remember the people in the run and go back the next day. If it was an NM that many people wanted, groups would take turns doing the fights. If one group was in trouble and another happened to be nearby, we didn't stand there and watch the other group die so we could take it. We helped them out. We fought the adds; healed the party if we could. Sometimes we'd even make an alliance and just take the damn NM down together. It was never a secret that an NM was up. Everyone knew, and everyone worked together.

Different guilds, friends and strangers...all working together.

We roleplayed in taverns; greeted each other in passing. People took off their armor when walking around in towns and just used their street clothes or "town gear". Sure, some people took the cliché route and used the medieval tone for their speech, but others created their own character type and went with that. The talks about pDif, fStr, M. Acc and all that jazz was done in forums. Istaria was our world, and we treated it as such. We even made up stupid events from time to time. Running through some of the toughest areas with heart-printed shorts and using level 1 weaponry. Having a player give clues through our marketplace and others scour the world to find them. Certainly silly, but it was enjoyable.


The "Special Pants Club." Killing the toughest enemies of Istaria in boxer shorts.

I realize that Horizons and FFXI are two entirely different games, but there are people behind the chatacters of both. Would it really kill this game to have a bit of heart in it? Is it so hard for people to lose themselves in the "game" of this and not treat it like a job or a math test?

I'm sure some people might read this and consider me to be an overt "care bear" or just someone crying, wait...I believe the expression is QQ'ng. Maybe I am. Perhaps I see this game a bit differently than some because I was "raised" differently in how I view an MMO. I don't bitch about this game because I don't like it; I bitch because I see people taking something that could be wonderful and turning it into anything but. Well there are a lot of things I don't like here, but that isn't the point.

I keep my experiences close to heart, and try to live up to them when I sign on to FFXI. I enjoyed what I was in Horizons, and try to be that here. I hope to make bonds with people in Vana'diel that are just as strong as those in Istaria. I don't want to become some smug elitist and start treating people like shit over their gear or play style.

Anyway. As I said, I do bitch a lot...but maybe now you understand why.

April 6, 2010

I should've gone outside today.

There was one phrase that I said to myself constantly while online today. "Jesus fucking Christ." Forgive me Lord, for I have sinned. At the same time, I was born with a 1st class bus ticket to Hell to use upon my death, so asking forgiveness is more of a formality than an actual concern.

Can you tell that I'm not happy? Can you really?

I seriously don't get why this shit has to happen to me, but let me break down today's eventful screw ups.

First Screw Up: Nyzul Isle

Is anyone surprised? Truly. I don't know why I don't just say to hell with a Denali Jacket and let my gimp ass stay with my ACP body. But nooooo....I have to keep trying. Note to self: You're an idiot.

I signed on, and happened to be RDM from my failed Nyzul run last night. Wondering what to do prior to sky, I see my twinny and we chat for a bit. Just so happens that someone was shouting for yet another Nyzul 80 with Denali up for lot. At first I was going to ignore it and just wait until I had more than just one tag to use. Seems like the smart and polite thing to do, since if some astronomical stroke of luck happened and I did get Denali, I'd hate to just grab that and leave due to not having tags.

Still, I couldn't resist the opportunity to get that armor. It actually would be fairly decent to weaponskill in, at least by my standards. Anyway, the leader wants me to come as SAM instead. This was surprising, since I was already fully geared and ready to go as an RDM. I didn't argue and went to change. After awhile, we head to the portal. Just seconds prior to entry, I get a call from family asking for help really fast. I swear on cheese and crackers that people have ESP when I'm about to do something. I apologize to the group and ask for a couple of minutes. Just so happens that the interruption gave me a moment to check my inventory and realize that I left my /nin tools in my locker. That would've been bad. I get my things and after 5 minutes, I'm all set.

Then it starts.

No sooner than everyone gives the "/" symbol, our WHM starts to d/c. We still had an RDM, but unfortunately, she just hit 75 two days ago and didn't seem confident enough to solo heal. We wait awhile and the WHM still doesn't return. Then the THF vanishes. Our leader goes to shout for more people and then his friend leaves too. So he says that we can't do the run without his friend and we disband. Frustrating, but at least I didn't waste a tag. Perhaps that family interruption was a good thing.

Second Screw Up: KS99

So now I've got roughly 90 minutes until sky and I see Ally's online so I double check with her to make sure things are set. No sky today, but KS99 instead. Bah. Not that I don't enjoy KS runs, but that one is like doing a KC run. 99 seals for a chance at an item that basically won't drop and, even though most of the items become free lot for the LS, you're talking about the person who has a habit of lotting sub 200's for anything worthwhile, and 959 for items that NPC for 46 gil. So I always pass on lotting and just help out instead.

Sure, I can possibly get 200-300k for the run but, hell, I can spend 30 seals and get a guaranteed 250k from Royale Ramble. Maybe if I level Monk then I'd be more inclined to take that orb out of storage, but for now, it's going to sit there and fossilize while I figure out what I'm going to do. Now let's talk about how those runs went.

I don't get it. I have got to be the gimpest SAM this side of Nashmau, yet somehow I managed to die multiple times. I don't know how many, but I'm guessing it was around 5-8. I've NEVER died that much on a single event, and I don't understand how I did it. Somehow, other people can weaponskill for twice the damage I do, but when I decide to go, the dragon takes notice of me and decides that it wants a new dead toy to play with. Thankfully, the WHM's gave me R3's each time, even though one of them died 4 times just trying to help me. I couldn't wait for that to be over.

There had to be something I could salvage out of the day. Haha, Salvage.

Final Screw Up: Partying

Twinny and I had been talking, and decided we'd level some more. Lately, she's been our THF and Epic's been the RDM. A semi-static, if you will. If only Yoko could be around more. Anyway, I begin the search for a party. I've been doing fairly well with party setups recently, but today it just wasn't happening. I find a 37 SAM and I get excited. I'm capped on Dagger, so level sync won't screw me up, and I'm already familiar with my abilities thanks to soloing. The SAM's reply? He was hoping for something closer.

What the fuck does that mean?

That was my initial reaction, but I later found out that he didn't know where it was. He's never been to the past. He asked if I was patient enough to wait for him. I could be such an ass at times, but that wouldn't be right. We all needed help at some point. Granted, I'm still looking for other people, but I at least give him directions on where to go. I start to look for people higher than that and just head to the birdies of Wajaom Woodlands, when Anne mentions that she got a lv36 WAR sync. w00t! I talk to him and ask him to meet us at East Ronfure. He agrees, and now I can start the party formation. I find a PLD and she accepts. Freaking sweet, plus I find a Bard that's interested as well. This is looking better and better. I realize we needed more DD because DNC really isn't huge in that area, so I find a DRG and he's all for it. Our sync is taking awhile to reach the camp, and is still hanging out in Port Jeuno, even though others have already made it.

Not wanting to be rude, I just ask if he has a way to make it. He mentions going to San D'Oria and taking the maw in the present. Then I check his home nation. Windurst. Unless he had some of the old warp collars from a previous event, that's a long freaking trip. I offered to retrace him if he could just get to Windurst. I figure that was easy enough. He's right in Jeuno; just grab a warp scroll from the Signet NPC and be done with it. This took longer than expected and I was about to head to Jeuno myself when he showed up. I send him on his way and retrace myself. That's when it hit me.

Paladin, Thief, Warrior, Bard, Dragoon, and Dancer. Son of a bitch.

In all my haste to make a decent party and get everyone to camp, I was running on auto and thinking that Epic was somehow included in that. My math was off and I completely forgot a healer. Oh this would be lovely. The fail is phenomenally strong with me today, I tell you. Luckily, Davi was online and I pleaded with him to heal us while I search for a healer to replace myself. It wouldn't be fair for me to kick one of them out just because I was to careless to look over my party setup and make sure I did things right. So after getting him to agree, he needed to change gear and get setup. I get to camp, and now everyone is waiting for him. I felt so bad because I had no way to realistically get enough TP and keep everyone alive in the time it would take for him to arrive.

Once I see that he's in the zone, I tell the party we can start. Our sync, bless his heart, decided to voke-pull a colibri. I made the mistake of assuming that people know better than to sub dancer in an exp party, and even though he was WAR/DNC when I invited him, I thought he was going to change on his own. I was proven wrong in a very bad way. Our PLD tried to pull the bird off him but couldn't do it in time, and he died. Then I find out that Davi isn't 100% familiar with the camps there, so I ran out to find him and bring him to us. The PLD disbanded and raised our WAR, then returned. Our BRD happened to disband too, but it was just to restart. Now we're all back and ready to go.

SATA was an issue and our PLD wanted to know why the WAR should provoke first since she had it as well. My blood pressure just isn't built to handle this type of questioning so late in the evening. After a brief explanation of why SATA is important, outside of the obvious damage increase, we get underway again. Things are going ok until Anne gets aggroed by a ladybug. Mind you, we're level 36 and it's a bad idea to screw with bugs then, especially in daylight. Davi takes on the bug for us and continues to heal. Then Anne runs out to grab another bird, and the bad stuff happens. Somehow, two ladybugs descend on her along with the Colibri she pulled. I tell Davi that she's in trouble. Meanwhile, our WAR provokes the bird in an act of herosim. We start to fight the bird while Davik's fighting the first ladybug. He heals Anne, but then realizes he's practically out of MP. I Divine Waltz everyone, hoping to pull enough hate to get the bugs off of her and onto me. Nothing worked. They wanted her bad. Davi converts and at just that moment, the ladybug focuses all of its will into a well placed hit that results in Davi's downfall.

With our PL dead, Anne follows soon after. I had used all of my TP to heal her and nothing to save myself from the ladybug that Davi was fighting earlier. The two that killed Anne depopped, but the other one came for me. Nothing I could do, and I fell. Then the Paladin, and everyone else.


Why me? Why in God's name does this shit always happen to me?

The PLD HP's and then disbands, and I can't say I blame her. Everyone else stays and I'm apologizing my ass off to them. I felt so damned bad. If I had paid attention, I would've noticed that I didn't have a healer. None of this shit would've happened if I had just been more focused and not rushed. Instead, I got everyone killed for a party they basically waited 30 minutes for.

Once everyone was raised, I apologized to everyone and signed off. What the hell was the point of staying around now, you know?

Maybe I really should just stick to soloing.

April 2, 2010

Hell Yeah!!

I take pride in the small victories. Changing jobs and having my gear all set up without taking 30 minutes sifting through my Mog House, being alive at the end of an ISNM run, small things like that mean a lot to me. Low standards or just easily pleased...who knows.

Today, I want to share what I find to be a pretty big victory for me. Mostly because I've never done something like this, but I'm sure others could with ease. Anyway, I got my first ever RDM/NIN solo! I've used this job combination before, but always in LS events and never to actually solo anything worthwhile.

I had just finished a Salvage run with some friends who've been kind enough to let me join their group last week, when I spotted an NM on Widescan. This isn't the first time I saw it, but the last time I was there as COR/RNG and didn't have my card ammo with me. I still didn't, but at least I knew what to go buy. Of course, the Auction House was out of Water Cards and no water clusters for me to make the cards, so I wasn't feeling too pleased. I ended up doing another event and then returned to Boompadu just to see if it was up. Luckily for me, it was. So I ran to my Mog House, got the best Corsair mage gear I could find, and ran back before anyone claimed/killed it.

Wiki mentions this NM is weak to water, which is nice because the ruins always have double rain weather. This made it extra nice for me because during one of my ridiculously bored moments, I farmed materials for all 8 elemental obis. I ran to the spawn area and used a couple of rolls to boost my magic damage, and then went to work. FYI, I don't have w.legs and even though this enemy moves slow, my gun fires slower. No, I wasn't trying to TP against this, I'm referring to the animation for Quick Draw. I guess I could try to blink through it, but I'm one of those people who likes special effects. I got hit pretty damn hard, and since I was COR/BLM it was a bad idea to let this thing get too close. The end result of this confrontation was a very quick death, but thankfully no one was nearby to see me and laugh.

Still, I did not want to give up so easily. You always hear about the almighty RDM/NIN and the ridiculous solo fights they do, so I thought I'd go back and try that. I just did the Odin fight and got myself a nifty neck piece and I figured maybe that would help me to an extent. Back to the moogle I go. Of course, now I'm rushing because I had pulled this NM to the 4 teleporters and the chance of someone coming across it was pretty high.

I made it back and no one had found it or bothered to attempt a battle. I stuck to the staple casts, Poison II and Bio III (gogo merits!), while running around the ruins like a scared child. It definitely took awhile, but it was also exhilarating in a way. It got me in the yellow most of the time, but I didn't panic and just kept using regen while kiting. I don't recall how long the fight took; all I know is that when all was said and done, I got 345 exp AND my first solo NM kill under my belt as RDM/NIN. w00t!! I also went 1/1 on the drop, and now I'm even more motivated to level DNC. While I don't like soloing in general, I do admit that soloing NMs like this is pretty thrilling. ^_^


Bow down, sucka!!


Neat multi-hit weaponskill macro piece, maybe?