Weekend Update

(I forgot how fast the XP is!)

September 12-14, 2008

I had kind of a slow weekend - no late night partying and sporadic daytime play in between family activities.

On Friday when I got home from work I logged in close to 6 to check on Yalto and Aleu - even with Ike about 2 hours away from landfall they were still on ^^ I joked they had time for a Campaign battle. Other than a brief chat with GD nothing else happened Friday. Mostly because my new work schedule means I'm sleepy much earlier...

Saturday I logged in and jumped right back into Campaign. I'm down to Ribbon 2 but at least I didn't get completely booted from the army. I did two runs of Iron Anvil and two Campaign ops and I ended the session just 1.3k away from 69. The two ops were in Saromugue and XP for both was over 1,400 apiece. Thus, I'm hoping one more run does it.

And later on, it did. I actually pulled down 1,600 total. I really hope the other battlegrounds are similar in terms of difficulty because these three ops felt like campaign of old. Hard-fought but manageable. Sure, I died once or twice, and sure, so did lots of others. But it was a pretty even fight. I even saw a Belfry this time, and a Yag tank, with its War Lynxes. But I didn't die over and over! Yay!

I also took the time to try for another Tactics Pearl and figured I'd combine trips and grab the map while I was leveling Sufhi. I'm pretty sure I had killed max mobs before reaching the ??? for the pearl but I got interrupted during the event. And of course Sufhi pooped out and left before I could clear the area and click again, so no pearl and no NPC XP. With Sufhi gone I had to solo all the way to the third floor. This is where the map is supposed to be. It's not. There are apparently two third floors and I have no idea how to get to the one I want.

Despite plans to play Saturday night, I wound up falling asleep again. I'm getting OLD... Oh, almost forgot. Ape and I wanted to watch SNL for Tina Fey's stint as Sarah Palin. That skit was awesome. Most everything else was as bad as it's been on SNL the last 10 years... Really really bad.

Sunday morning, after a rapid run to McD's for family breakfast, I jumped on again. I was in RDB this time after yesterday afternoon's question from Fhox about leaving. No Boss, I'm not leaving RDB! But my new schedule means I see a lot more GD people and a lot of empty RDB. So if RDB is empty, I'm gonna switch over.

That said, this time it worked out - 6 of us were on and Fhox wanted to get 5-1 for Dark and Raki. And once again, we spent just under an hour getting to the BC and 8 minutes and 40-odd seconds on the fight itself against all those skeletons. Argh!

There was concern about Raki's low level (WAR40) but it never mattered. Bene and Dark were putting out so much damage they held hate pretty solidly. Isa and I did the enfeeb and heal thing and we didn't have too many problems until Taber'quon dropped an AoE taking about 40% of our health. I shoved a Benediction up his bony backside and at full health, we finished beating him (back to) death.

Later Sunday night I got a quick invite from Jonnyboy out to Caedarva Mire on WHM and after an awkward start we quickly racked up monster XP on Imps and Jnun. I still hate Imps. Props to Spookyx on RDM - she dished out Hates *and* Refreshes all around meaning I could keep MP longer. I still had to call for a couple rests when our pally lost hate or unexpected aggro screwed with our strategy.

Everything was rocking until Jonnyboy DCed and never came back. There was some discussion about what to do but ultimately, after a long wait then a fruitless search for reps, we decided to throw in the towel. Which was fine - it was getting late and I had some chores to do anyway. Plus I got over 6k into the level in just over an hour's play!

Quick Notes: For the 5-1 fight, Fhox kept trying to Level Sync us. I never got a good answer out of him but Sync isn't supposed to be usable in capped areas. I think he was trying to find a way in using post-50 gear. But sure enough, on entering the Burning Circle, we lost our Sync icons. I had already switched to 50- gear so I didn't see it immediately, but it looks like caps are also treated as syncs. On finishing up a rest I used my usual macro to stand up and my Staff equipped. I threw on the rest of my main gear set and it all worked. So, basically, you can treat capped areas as sync parties now?

P.S. Brothermist found me - if anyone else finds themselves in here please let me know what you think!

P.P.S. Sunday we verified you *can* fit 4 people, a week's worth of groceries, and some other shopping bags into a Mazda RX-8 ^^