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Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Weakness

April 19-30, 2008

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I’ve been playing almost every day, missing only one or two. I just haven’t had the energy due to sucky job crap.

I haven’t been completely idle, though:

• Made it 3k into 67
• Did a group Mission 6-1 party for all three nations (Fhox (B), Mag (S) and me (W)). Puma was there but I don’t know if he was ranking up as well. Everything was rocking until my part, then I killed everyone >< (see edit below)
• Got a Carbuncle’s Ruby after just one day of trying – one solo leech in Qufim and two in Toraimarai Canal! Time for SMN!
• Went ahead and sunk the 41k-odd gil into Gobbie VI. Tired of no room and I keep adding jobs… Must look into armor set storage…
• Not a lot of luck on the tele-whore front, but made a little bit
• Did a little more Campaign
• Planning to unlock SCH for WHM sub
• Tried farming more Yagudo Necklaces for Norg fame (still not 4) but kept getting distracted.
• New Brigaders Monnica and Isabiel
• Fhox continues to tease
• FFXI 6th Anniversary lottery event is offering insane prizes – if I understand correctly, the top prize, besides 100M gil, is several pieces of AF+1 gear on many jobs and rare weapons like the K club! Only 5 prizes though, and I don’t know if it’s per server or overall...
[edit] Dear God, help me please! My reading comprehension is awful lately… I was looking into details and the prize groups are “choice of” affairs, not a whole locker full of goodies. Still, great prizes!
• Moved RZ missions a bit – need to get an Uggaleiph party together for a NM fight
• Still need to do WG3 and AU13

[edit 6/30/08] About that multi-nation mission-fest, I hope the following shot illustrates exactly how I earned the WHM {Amateur} title. *This* is why the party leader ensures everyone, including the over-eager WHM from Windurst, has read the fine manual for the mission/quest at hand... All four of us were in fact, dead. I took this after popping Reraise.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Foreign Language Exposure

April 18-20, 2008

Friday turned out very interesting, and productive. I started out in Campaign in Saroumugue Champaign after giving up on West Saruta. Immediately I’m surrounded by death because a Pious Yagudo is nuking everyone in sight. It took like 40 minutes to take him down, but eventually he died. Along the way, I managed not to die, despite a number of hard hits, and I must’ve raised 5 or 6 people.

I wound up getting like 1,200 XP for my efforts. But that wasn’t to coolest bit – I got a blind invite, near the end of the battle, in Japanese, from Aitu (sp?). I replied, as best I could in Auto-trans, that I needed 10 minutes more and would be right in to Aht Urghan. I arrived more or less on time and found her still seeking a sixth.

After sorting Sanction, and grabbing 3 Hyper Ethers, we eventually fill out and file out to Mamook via Runic Portal. Man am I glad I have all these so I don’t have to worry which one will be needed next!

Our main targets in the Mamool Ja stronghold were Ziz and random Mamools. It took me too long to settle into the appropriate –na routine, for the Ziz can petrify, silence and poison, while the Mamool had a few different enbeeblements.

After about 30 minutes in I got the hang of things and did a good job keeping the group healthy and unfeebled. However, the RDM decided to play pissing contest on the –na’s and so we dueled throughout the night, him winning almost as many as me through the use of Fast Cast. I almost always fired first but that lovely RDM trait at this level makes a big difference.

Anyway, despite my annoyance at myself for the slow reaction times on enfeebs, I think I did OK – nobody died and the few orange/red HP drops came from a couple of back-to-backs, or sticking macros. I was having a lot of trouble getting them to fire and I don’t know if it was a button press deal or just lag.

I also learned that, even at 4k a bottle, Hyper Ethers suck too. 100 HP. What the hell… Can’t even cast Cure V… So the other two are going back. That said, the RDM kept me Refreshed and I had +5 almost all night. Good thing too because I was on Haste duty.

Almost no English was spoken, and very little auto-trans came my way.



Didn’t play Saturday (In Orlando for the start of 2008’s Bradlee Family Fun-Fest) and Sunday was a lot of LS chat and two quickie Campaign ops. Threw a lot of smack-talk around between Fhox, Archer and myself, mostly about me whoring myself and owing Fhox my money. The Pimp Hat was mentioned. We might try to get Archer Rank 5 tonight or Tuesday.

I’m about 10k from 67, and I REALLY need to set up Elemental Staff macros after watching a Scholar called Celes rock the elements. I still don’t know what the effectiveness is, or if durations increase, but anything to make Blink and Haste work better!

Oh yeah, ta-daa~~ (PSP-sized but could prolly be adapted to other setups easily.)

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Rusty Ninjutsu

Didn’t do much besides a quick “Welcome” to Archer’s fiancee Morningdove and the delivery of Ninjutsu quest items. I took care of Jubaku and Kurayami which was the 10 sets of rusty subligars and a damp scroll. I have the 10 rusty leggings ready but ran out of time to make the delivery.

I did “skillup” my Norg pathfinding a bit, so future runs there will be easier and a little quicker.

Apparently I need to pay better attention to the Zilart mission flow because it seems they might be like Aht Urhgan’s – a lot of CS stops.

Also, while at Horlais Peak for the final step of the Damp Scroll quest, I noticed the steamy waters in the stone basin looked awfully inviting. I, uh… put Aerin in the best swimming outfit I could muster and got some good screenies of her relaxing in the おんせん. One of them will become my forum avatar on Wikia and other FFXI sites that allow one. It took over 30 shots but I caught her blinking so it looks like she’s napping in the steambath.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Where Is Everyone?

April 11-14, 2008

More late-night grind, a little more progress… I still don’t have the energy to do these right, so I’ll just throw all the updates on the table…

Finally got some WHM XP love, through two parties. One was Friday, and one was Sunday, both in Mt. Zhayolm on Magmatic Erucas.

The first party was started by Rickter, who invited me and told me he was still building. I took the time to PL Monnica bit in the Dunes. She took off suddenly, and the party nervously asked if I was leaving too. I told them I’d stay as long as I could but would leave once my party was ready. I resisted the urge to tell them to dress their Elvaan before the next party – they had a level 12 player naked…

Once Rickter signaled ready I warped back to AU and we made our way through the Runic Portal to Halvung. The party went well enough. Our Tarudin tank died twice from hit + Incinerate combos which he and I weren’t able to intercept in time. He didn’t seem to mind too much. About an hour in, Rickter and his lady friend (IRL? Dunno) say they’re leaving and make ME leader despite me shaking my head at his earlier request for a volunteer. Hooray for alphabetical order…

Fortunately, he hooked me up with both reps, so I really didn’t have to do anything. We kept on keeping on even after our BST DCed without warning. Oddly, XP went up with the new 5-player mix. And then I realized why XP overall was sucking… I forgot Sanction. Son of a… I wound up 4k short of 66 and no idea how close I’d have been properly outfitted ><

This was the party in which I met Embefora, who is a fantastic Red Mage, who happens to prefer White! Maybe she can give me advice.

Saturday and Sunday I tried using Campaign to get the rest of my level. I also went for an eval and got it – I now have the highest ribbon and should be up for a star next. Maybe some good usable or sellable items… Incredibly long delays between battles meant I only got 2k closer to a ding.

Ran into Fhox twice, who tried to set up something Saturday but we had no takers. He wanted help in Davoi farming a Sallet Cap but I begged off and went to Campaign. I kinda felt guilty but I just don’t get as much out of his farming as he does – my way is so much faster and easier ^^ He had to make it worse by reporting his death… We did have a great conversation about Japanese-English player relations and lingua-cultural education.

Speaking of farming, I’ve made two more passes through the Ruins. The first time, I got the tests, 2 Gravities and 4 Rusty Daggers, and all sold: 9k, 7k x2, ~1k x4!! Almost 27k! The second set won’t be as profitable but it’ll still rock. Even after all my shopping I have 140k now, which is good because…

I discovered using Furen’s Cure Calculator that VIT is nearly as important as MND. MND still seems to trump the same amount of Healing Skill. This is what led to my Hale Ring purchase and may lead to other gear setups if I can get more out of a VIT item (or VIT and MND) than the high MND I’ve been building with. I also learned there are two pieces of “RSE2”, River Gaiters and River Gauntlets. They have pretty fantastic stats for HP and MP but the sacrifices to SIR and cure power may not be worth it… Situational gear maybe?

Also on the shopping theme, I may be adding macroed Elemental Staves to my main macros. I have enough elemental spellwork even on WHM to warrant the swaps if they do in fact increase effectiveness.

Sunday night was the other Fhox encounter. He had part of a party in place so once he had grabbed me it didn’t take long to head back out to the fiery mountain. Apparently the party that he just finished with was lousy so he was hoping for better luck. And this time I remembered Sanction.

However good the XP was, I had a rough night White Mage-wise. The tank died twice and Fhox and I each died once, and mine happened just after RR wore. Fortunately I got a Raise III from a passing WHM which was awesome.

Like Saturday, the deaths were mostly hard hit followed almost immediately by the Erucas’ fave TP move – Incinerate. I took one from the BACK LINE that dropped me to double digits. What I learned from this party is that I can no longer rely on MPR boosts – there was next to no downtime to use it in. With Fhox’s Refresh, Vermy and Sanction bonus, I should have been pulling +5 refresh effect which kept me running a long time.

However, the pullers (one of whom was Lust!) only stopped when someone died or we had to recover from a link. I don’t like going cash-flow negative on partying but I guess I’ll have to investigate a Hi-Ether tank. /sigh

Overall the party was fun and I finally dinged 66 with a 4k buffer. We had a nice time and spending time with Fhox is usually interesting. I managed not to whine too much to Fhox about my performance but I still don’t like people dying. Especially if they’re me and I don’t have my RR sorted… {Amateur} indeed.

Monday night was a no-go. Something between a PS3 update and a POL update borked my internet. I went to bed with the new 2.30 update downloading and early Tuesday installed it, got on to POL and was able to sign in, with Matt’s help :) I was beginning to get paranoid that the Linux install screwups had somehow affected the network interface but I guess not.

And speaking of Matt: I was prepared for Monday to be a suck-fest. Sunday’s lousy mage-work, JHIN committee prep, work in general… Then I got some neat news. Brandon took third overall for his grade (4 classes), and Matt took the Stockton Grand Prize (Grand Prix – hehe – get it? Racing, winning, yada…)! His project is headed to State. Sweet! I was very happy for him. I’m already proud of my almost-clone, but he finally gets something good at school. He doesn’t get very many victories at Stockton and he just scored a big one.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

The Daily Grind

April 3 – April 10, 2008

Got last Recall scroll, Jugner. As it happens, this one lands me the closest to a CA, at least so long as San d’Oria holds the forest. I think it might be all of two minutes’ walk, so I moved my HP back to Aht Urhgan. Now I have ready access to AU, Jeuno, Campaign, Besieged and via teleports, the 3 nations’ areas by short choco ride.

Spent a looong night working the AF4 key quest because I initially responded to Eft’s shout and once we had a party of 5, went to Davoi. Not Beadeaux. So I helped with his quest and fortunately after it was done, all 4 were willing to go to Beadeaux and get mine.

The key for both quests dropped pretty quickly, especially with Kirin (sp) on MNK75 beating the hell out of everything. The holdup on mine was that sometime around the key drop, the coffer was popped, so we had to wait for the respawn, find it (out of 8 possible spots) and then get to it before anyone else. It was almost 5am Sunday when we succeeded. Before packing it in, I offered assistance or reward and was turned down. Kirin did ask a favor (in all caps): “Have fun playing this game!” I think I laughed – I try very hard not to get sucked into the grind ^^ Many thanks to the crew and then off to bed.

After flagging the next section of the AF4 quest, I tried going to Castle Zhavl to shout for Dark Spark help but got lost. So I went to Fei’yin to try for the magic tome needed to *finally* close out my open Tele-Vahzl quest. It took three days and a few deaths but I finally got the drop, and the chest only took 5 more minutes to get. A Tele-Holla and 5 minutes by bird and I had a scroll worth close to 100k in hand! And I only paid like 65k for mine, so, a tidy profit…

Side note – while I can kill Fei’yin Shadows easily now by nuking with all 5 of my Banishes, I wound up dead from resting aggro. While waiting to recover, I thought of a comic-panel line of dialogue: “When this Weakness doth pass, I’m coming straight for that ass!” Five minutes later my joke was reality as a BLM (BLM? His claymore’s bigger than he is!!) Shadow lay smoking on the floor.

I put my new scroll up for sale and then went to bed, planning to /shout for the final piece of AF4 assistance.

Wednesday, I logged in early, around 8, and found Kitty and Archer. We chatted a bit but still no Fhox. She thought I had quit playing but I told her I’ve had to stick to the late hours for the last few weeks.

That done, I shouted for help and got a couple of bites, with Termy deciding to go for it. I had initially misread the fight description, thinking we were up against AF3’s mob strength. AF4, Dark Spark, is a lowly level 55 Bomb that a WAR75 should be able to diffuse easily. So we stopped looking for help and duoed out to Xarcabard. The walk to the castle was uneventful and the walk to the spawn pop was easy and quick. Once we cleared out a pair of demons and an eye, I re-buffed, rested, and then popped DS. Termy went to work and until the very end, had no HP issues. I didn’t see it in the log but it looks like he took a couple of hard TP moves to the chin, going from 1,300 to 700-odd as one point but he was never in danger. My Banishes were doing significant damage but I had to keep some MP in reserve.

All told, I think we spent about an hour on this adventure, and then we prepared to split up. While I never offered one, and he never asked, I traded with Termy, putting up 10k. For a second I thought he was going to reject it but he didn’t. I still cringe a bit at the cost per hour (so to speak) but realistically, he helped me achieve a long-standing goal, and I can get that back with a short trip to the Ruins. And besides, I was offering Fhox more like 20k.

Returning to Jeuno, I got the Healer’s Mitts and discovered, courtesy of the Cure Calculator, that I actually lose one point off my C5 – 665 to 664 using the AF piece in place of RSE. *sigh* Anyway, I’m on a MND/Cure V build tear now, and added an Insomnia Earring and plan to get a Hale Ring to rep my Windy starter ring. Other than that, there isn’t much to Level 65 I don’t already have that will boost my cure power.

I see that the Noble’s Tunic is now under 500k. I need to hurry and level to 68 so I can finally have Refresh and a hat on.

Still no sign of Sunoco, online or on FFXIAH.

If I missed it, I already finished the first of 4 Ninja scroll quests. 2 of the 3 remaining need 10 each of rusty subligars or leggings. I also need a Damp scroll for the third. I hope these 4 fame 3 quests are enough to get me to fame 4 because the thought of farming more Yag neckclaces pisses me off. I have no idea, but something like 30 sets of 4 should have made me like 100k on the AH…

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Where Am I?

I-Don’t-Remember-When – April 2, 2008

I haven’t been Vana Logging lately because work truly sucks. When I’m depressed from one thing, other things get suppressed too. That of course is one reason I need to {Escape} from here pronto. One in-person interview and one phone interview since OCTOBER… >< I’ve had a few bites on various apps – email exchanges mostly – but noting more. Right now, Ape’s friend Kim’s husband Matt is trying to hook me up with a just-opened slot. We’ll see…

In any case, I haven’t stopped playing FFXI. I’m on almost every single night, only missing one or two recently due to illness and schedule conflicts. I’ve also had to work on other stuff like Ape’s cert class, science fair, updating my PSP to 3.90 M33-2 and trying web-enabled Remote Play, and the anime comedy goodness of Chobits.

I had an odd thought about working in a consultant/contract based I/T shop – what if they assigned an XP value to task items and based reviews, bonuses, etc. on level grinding? Poor performance would incur an XP penalty (bugs, missed objectives/functionality, etc.) while after-hours support could get an XP over time boost or something… It’s only a matter of time before someone does that in this MMO-crazy world!

Anyway, as for Vana’diel, I’ve been busy. I’ve only done a few parties but here are the highlights:
• Got BLM deep into 36 (1k tnl!) – May take to 53 vs. 41 to get Retrace
• Got DNC to 27
• Got NIN to 13 and finally got Norg fame to 3, allowing me to flag the first 4 Ninjutsu scroll quests
• WHM is still 65
• Spent nearly a week sorting out the Campaign system. Most of this was popping all the Maws from Jeuno to Windy (as well as the “Jeuno Ring” and Pashhow), and earning my first Campaign Ribbon.
• Once I had that ribbon, flagged all three Recall tele-scroll quests and have completed 2 of 3, and all 3 map quests
• Started BST! Went from 1 to 11 in a few days and am enjoying it. Learning hard and fast how BST works since all the guides I found were pre-BST solo boosts (no more XP penalty, tweaks to charming, etc.). Don’t know how far I’ll take it but it supposedly charms at full level even when subbed so it might do me well to get it to around 40 and then use it as the sub on DNC, NIN, RDM and maybe BLM to help me solo when I can’t get parties.
• Have been grinding decent XP in Campaign battles using Campaign Ops to boost AN gain. Nearly have 10k AN and will soon apply for another eval.
• Once I have the third Recall, I might figure out which is closest to a Campaign Arbiter and then move HP from Windy to Whitegate permanently, using a Recall>walk>CA tele path to get to Campaign fun.
• Finally unlocked the last two Runic Portals. This is partly what I’ve been avoiding WHM partying for – these levels tend to use some RP-accessed camps and I didn’t want to have any trouble.
• RDB had a group event on March 19th to get Rank 3 for 4 Brigaders. See aerinofsiren.googlepages.com for pics and details.
• Haven’t seen much of Fhox the last two weeks… RDB seems to be in a state of decline with Fhox, Chu, Mag Puma and Dex not being on regularly anymore. Despite Fhox’s new-year /lsmes to start working on missions/ranks/af, not much has happened…
• Skilled up club (~2) and staff (~6) on Fortifications during Campaign battles while *not* Tagged. Gonna have to keep trying this trick, and may try it on BLM for the Dark skillups

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Detour

I have no idea why I snapped this, but since it marks the one-year anniversary of my screenshot collection... I can only assume I was headed to a party on WHM. See Sunoco's loaner? That Vermillion cloak is awesome!