Some days you just get lucky

I'll keep it short, I'm tired. Did Limbus today and while I'm waiting for everyone to gather someone starts shouting that he's selling a V.Claw for 6M. I head on over to the Auction House and see there isn't any in stock and the last sale was for 7M. I send him a tell that I will pay 5M right now. After a little negotiating I convinced him that he wasn't losing 1M, but gaining 5M since he obviously got it from a Kindred Seal BCNM. He bit and I threw it up on the AH for 6.75M and went about Limbus. We beat Apollyon NE, got 5 coins each, and when I got to my Mog House I found that someone had paid 6.8M for it! I made 1.8M gil just in the matter of about 2 hours, doing absolutely nothing!

If that wasn't enough... I warped to Aht Urghan and did a successful Assault run. We got 1200 Assault points and a ??? Ring. As I took it to the appraiser I saw a taru run by with a bazaar. As I always do, I check his bazaar and to my pure astonishment I saw a Shining Cloth for 1.1M! I actually did a double-take (which is evident in the picture) and as soon as I realized it was in fact a 9M gil Shinig Cloth I bought that bad boy right up!It cost me 1.21M including taxes. What a night! I'll have it synthed into a Nobles Tunic and hopefully sell that for 20M (if it's still worth that). With my Manteel sale and little investments like these... I may actually end up with enough gil to make a serious run at getting my crafting where it should be so I can make a hefty/steady income from synthesis. We'll see. I hope this is a sign of things to come.

*edit - well poo I just found out that Nobles have taken a nose dive in the past 2-3 month and is down to around 10-12M opposed to the 20-25M they were after Christmas. Oh well, I spent 246k on the rest of the synthesis materials for the Nobles which brings my total to 1,456,000g for all materials. Thats still a 10.5M gil profit.

The new crack has arrived

So Treasures of Aht Ughan arrived. Of course I had to get it asap, actually waiting 20 mins for my GameStop to get their UPS shipment. When UPS finally arrived I got on line and was the first peron to request their copy. The manager kinda gave me a look and then turn around to crack open the box and find a PS2 copy for me. I was tired of waiting.

I have alot to go into but its 4:06am and I am awake on the computer... Everyone rushed for jobs, I got BLU and COR unlocked. Don't have much interest in PUP, although the frames are super cute. After day 3 there was 4x the amount of people in Aht Urghan Whitegate than all of Jeuno... The SquareEnix gestapo started shouting "gtfo!" from the heavens.
I had never laughed harder while playing this game. Nearly 600 people in 1 zone and only about 170 people total in 4 Jeuno zones. Anyways enough about other people back to ME. I have been playing BLU and been LOVING IT. It's very powerful and there is so much it can do. I've sorta found myself in a BLU burn with 5 BLUs and a BRD. We kills things so fast that we are about 2 levels ahead of the normal xp party, so we went to Qufim at 17, moved to Pugils at 20, and onto Yuhtunga Jungle at 22. Fun times, and now with Ballad on our 25BRD... it's only going to get faster. We have a player on our server that played 3 days straight, almost 24 hours a day. He finally crashed after the 4th day but by that time he was 38. On day 2 when he was level 28 I sent him a tell asking why he was rushing through the job, and asking if he had his spells. Here is a snippit... I don't want to throw his name out there though everyone on Odin knows who he is pretty much. I asked him right after if he had Healing Breeze, a level 16 spell. He said no and I told him that it was found that Healing Breeze and Sheep Song combine for Auto-Regen. His reply was classic. "I don't have Sheep Song either so it doesn't matter much to me". Anyways to each his own. There is no AF armor or weapon in the game so as he rushes to level 60 he'll get there and have no reward for AF. I, on the other hand, am farming all my spells so that I can be a well rounded BLU, and be able to use combos for traits. There's more to leveling a character than just being the highest the fastest, whether you are NA or JP.

Finally I picked up my Choral Justacorps+1 before Dynamis. Such nice armor. I'm waiting for the screenshot that Elvima took so I can post it, but here's a little text that made me incredibly happy one Sunday afternoon.

Return of the GigaFlare

So I was leveling my DRK on Goro (30DRK as of now) and my RNG on Tyrhanny (49RNG) and I got a tell saying that a group was heading out to try Bahamut v1. Say no more, I was down for this fight. I had fun last month and zoned into his BCNM while wandering around doing the Spice Gals XP Scroll quest. I entered and tried to Elemental Seal Sleep II Bahamut.

I failed.

But either way I knew I was all setup for the fight (cutscene-wise) so we gathered up a group of 5 BLMs, and 11 other melees. The group was with some very nice people, people I've known off and on for a while. Aable, Yumikogirl, Darcain... too many to list. A nice group of people from Lineage, Furiousx, as well as a few stragglers. When we entered I started to remember how big this guy was.

We setup a good stun order and set off. Everything started off well. Bahamut does alot of talking, and especially tends to jabber on right before a major move. He used Flare II and some other moves that did about 200-300 damage. My job, as always, was to have my refresh cycle going on the BLMs at all times and in between Refreshes I would haste some melee and also Dispel Bahamut. We didn't have any problems at all really, we decided to 2 hour at 20%. At about 25% he started spamming TP so we mostly let it go from there. I made sure I had full MP and had all buffs up before I Chainspelled. After I made sure Stoneskin, Phalanx, Blink, Refresh, and Haste were up I popped a Ginger Cookie and rested. Thank goodness for my healing mp equipment (+19 mp while resting!). After about 90 seconds it was time to see if I could pull the hate off the melee! I hit him with Grav just in case (which didn't stick of course) and used Elemental Seal. Then I used Chainspell and just smashed the Thunder III macro. I used all my MP and ran back to convert. With Chainspell still on I was able to Convert and use back to back Cure IV's. I ran back and started mashing again. After 2 spells all of a sudden he used GigaFlare. I saw about 6 people go from 75% to 0% in a second. His HP was at 3% and 6/12 melee were dead but the mages were still holding on. Someone shouted "finish him!" and I honestly thought for a second I might be able to finish him off with my 550mp left. I spammed till I was out of MP and then Kumo used eagle Eye Shot to finish him off. Great fight, lots of fun. I'm sure if you had 2-3 Chainspell stunners then he'd never even get GigaFlare off, but we had none.

When it was all over and we were raising outside the BCNM I looked back on the chat log to see how much damage I was doing. Every single Thunder III hit him for 75-78... There was no way in hell I was going to solo finish off Bahamut. Meh, either way I got the win. Now I have to finish Zilart Mission 17, "The Celestial Nexus" so I can do Bahamut v2. On a side note one of our NINs was shown to be the hacker he truly is! How else could a 50NIN be wearing a Kirin's Osode?! It was fun times, I hope to do Bahamut v2 with these same people.

Man I love uncamped NMs!

Well it's been a few days so I'll update ya. I was 500xp from 38WHM so I decided to solo to 38 with my NPC. Simple enough. When I hit 38 I realized that I could now teleport to Yhoat and Altep (of course I hadn't quested the scrolls yet). I saw shouts in Jeuno of people offering 3-5k for Teleport-Altep, so I hit up the Auction House and bought Yhoat for 300k and Altep for 350k. The next day I decided to quest Altep.

I went to Rabao to start the quest then into Quicksand Caves to check for the ???. Luckily I found the ??? and right after I found my map coffer. After 2 years I finally got that stupid Quicksands Cave map. I realized that no one was camping Centurio X-I. I knew that this was a NM that I could solo and I also knew how good the Shaman's Cloak was. I sat around for 2.5 hours killing the Antican Signifier PH's (BLM) every 16 minutes. Then a SAM friend of man wandered in for his coffer for AF and after finding it decided to camp Centurio with me. Finally it popped and I got claim. Here's the problem... he links with surrounding antica. I got 2 links and pulled into hallway. I used sleepga and focused on the NM. Problem is he used "Frequency Jammer" which is a TP move that silences. Well silence stuck a real long time and the 2 links woke up and pounded me and my 53SAM friend into the ground. Upset but not defeated I HP'd and bought echos as fast as possible. I grabbed a teleport and rushed as fast as possible to the caves again. I got there and he was still unclaimed! I quickly used reraise and pulled.

Another 2 mob link...

Great, but I was able to sleepga them and focus on the NM. Then I see I'm examined by a friend in my Dynamis LS. I ask for help and get the reply, "My SMN friend here wants the cloak". Of course I did as well so any help was outta the question. I made sure I had max buffs. I used protect and shell before pull but I also made sure I used aquaveil, phalanx, blink, stoneskin, refresh, regen, ice spikes and baraero. He likes to spam Aeroga III. I also made sure that I dispelled his blaze spikes and kept him blinded, slowed, and paralyzed. Silence won't stick on him no matter how hard you try. Then I just whacked away at him. I kept the sleepga macro ready so that when I saw the links woke I quickly used sleepga to take them out of the picture. One of the most important things I realized was not to waste TP. Centurio likes to use ancient magic like quake, burst, and tornado. With haste and joyeuse I was able to build 100% TP quite fast and stun any AM he tried to use on me. Anwyays I was able to slowly chop him down and he never once used silence on me... I got the kill and the drops were Iron Ore, Adaman Ore, Stonega III, and Antican Robe. Well that sucked. I warped out. I turned in my item for Altep scroll and found out I can't get scroll till next JPN nidnight, (11am EST). I sold the Adaman Ore and Stonega III scroll. I didn't even use an echo drop so I sold them right back (for a 2k profit I might add!).

This morning I wake up and decide "what the heck", so I head out sandy and get my scroll, warp back and find out it's selling for 50k over what I paid for it and I throw it up on the AH. I port out to Altep and head out to the caves. No one is camping him again and I kill my 1st two PH's. I make sure I have buffs ready after 14 mins and realize as the next pop is coming up, "crap, I don't have echos..." and as I realize this I see Centurio X-I pop. It was literally about 4 seconds after that thought popped into my head that he popped. I waited for a clean pull this time and when I saw him alone I grabbed him. Kept up the same strat. Use as many spells as you can on him and yourself. Stoneskin, blink and haste combined with paralyze, slow, and blind go a long way. I love enfeebling magic. This time I didn't have links to worry about and I don't think I ever got yellow HP and my MP never dropped below 50%. Drops came up and sure enough! This is a great BLM cloak for leveling up BLM and its also the best cloak you can use if u want to go into a 60 cap BCNM. I'm really happy with this drop, and since it's rare/ex it means it can't be purchased, it has to be earned! Here's the stats on it.

What makes me laugh is all this came about because I was bored and wanted to get 500 measly xp on my WHM.

Gotta be quick in this game

At least four times today I lucked out and scored an item by having the fast finger. The first came when I decided to camp a NM for my recently leveled 36NIN Tyrhanny. I ran to Davoi as RDM/WAR but went /anon of course. There is a 60WAR/25THF (gimp) Chinese RMT farmer. I know he is Chinese because after I got claim he kept trying to speak to me and I replied {I don't understand Japanese} and he replied "Chinese". Anyways, this WAR named Shopurs is in Davoi 24/7/365 and never ever EVER leaves. He camps the Jujitsu Gi NM all day long. His RMT buddy is Asuranfists, I watched him come and unload his stuff off him (3 Gi's and 9 Sitabaki's) and then bazaar it as he warped out. Here is what stupid RMT's do... they undercut themselves. This moron was selling multiple gi's daily for 1.5M and he undercut it nearly in half in about a week. Well anyways I waited till he used flee and got the old voke macro ready and sure enough right in front of me pops a long named Orc. Poisonhand Gnadgad is his name, he is a level 40 MNK Orc that pops once every 1.5 - 4 hours in Davoi. He drops the Jujitsu Gi. It seems like it's mostly used for MNK and SAM, but I love the look of it and right now I am using Federation Gi, great NIN stats but it's a lv25 armor and comes with much less DEF on it .

Anyays it didn't drop so it really doesn't matter. What is funny is 1) I beat him to claim, 2) He was extremely interested to know if I got drop asking me in broken english, auto-translator, and finally in Chinese and 3) Later on I saw he sold 3 Gi's and 7 Sitabaki's. He had undercut the Gi from 1.5M down to 850k, even selling one for 800k. RMT farmers are such morons... If you look close in the pic below you can actually see the RMT to the right of the NM. He's got the bazaar next to his name and he had 2 Gi's and 5 Sitabaki's for show.

Later I decided to finish my Mithra RSE gear. The final two pieces were Savage Gauntlets (MP+16, VIT+4, MND+2) and Savage Loincloth (MP+32, VIT/MND+1). I really didn't have any interest in either of these because they are kinda mage specific and seeing as Tyrhanny is a RNG/NIN/THF/WAR I doubt I'll ever use em so I checked AH and to my surprise the pair were worth about 700k combined! Nice chunk of change for running into a dungeon for 30 seconds, finding a chest, and trading Thief's Tools to it!

Finally... after I was all tired and worn out I decided to head to Sacrarium for my weekly XP scroll quest. It's real easy, just talk to NPC, head to Sacrium, in one of the 6 rooms is a ??? that when clicked gives yoi key item Tavnazian Cookbook. Take it back to NPC to get XP Scroll reward. As I started hitting the rooms I noticed someone checked me. Strange, very rarely are others in Sacrarium when I am. Anyways I went to room #2 and checked the bookcase and sure enough ??? was right there. I clicked it, got key item, and warped out to claim my scroll. Had I been about 4 seconds slower I'd have had to wait about 15 mins for it to respawn in another room.

Moral of tonight's stories. "Be sharp", or others will screw you over and beat you to the mob, item, etc. (People such as myself it seems...)

quickie

Just got done with Dynamis, got insane drops... of course RDM boots drop like the 1st time in months and I decided earlier in the week to save for Bard's Cannions... oh well, grats to Johyo. I went ahead and harvested my plants. Last week I planted 10 grain seeds and ended with a bunch of Tarutaru Rice. This stuff sells well and is 18k-20k a box because it is used in all the melee sushi. Anyways this time I bought 2 stacks of Grain Seeds and planted 10 seeds on 2 different characters, or 20 plants in total. My results were:

10 Grain Seeds
Brass Flowerpot >>> 51 Boxes of Tarutaru Rice
7% New Moon


10 Grain Seeds
Porcelin Flowerpot >>> 37 Boxes of Tarutaru Rice
7% New Moon


When I broke down the numbers I was very happy with the results. I spent about 66k on 20 seeds. From those 20 seeds I got 88 Boxes of Tarutaru Rice. That rice is valued at (low end) 132k-147k (high end). I more than doubled my money in 4 days... I'm thinking of becoming a rice distributor.

somebody got the hooooooook uuupppppp

Well I finally got a pic of my character and his hat, and boy do I look better when viewed on PC! Thanks to Victory LS for such great teamwork and dedication. So later on last night we did Apollyon Northeast and sure enough with 17 we not only beat it but I walked away with my 2nd piece of BRD AF+1 item! That means as soon as I get my coins I'm making my Justacorps +1 and selling that damn Sha'ir Manteel. Hopefully it will hold its value of 30M over the next 2 weeks or so. I'm really just so proud of that LS growing so well so fast. I was very tempted to quit it the 1st two runs because we had like 5 people and I was not going to pay 50k to die and not get items... but I stuck it out and now we are going for Ultima/Omega by the end of next week.

I've started playing Tyrhanny more and more which is strangely interesting for me because I don't usually like melee jobs. Well I got her up to 32NIN and I even got a friend in my LS to help me camp Empress Hairpin this morning! It was so great we were camping against a LS of 4 people, 2 of which were THFs. Somehow someway he pulled of a miracle and voked Valkurn Emperor. I got there with it at 10% and he finished it off and we got the drop. I was so excite and happy I forgot to take a screenshot. No matter, I'm happy with it. I solo'd for about an hour today and the difference is night and day. Without hairpin a mob might miss me1 out of 4 times it now hits me 1 out of 4 times. After a failed claim last night I was cntemplating trading my H.Kote for a Emperor Hairpin + 2M gil but no one would bite. Then I went to sleep with it in my bazaar for 5M gil, (1.7M gil less than the AH price) and it still wouldn't sell! Luckily I still had it this morning because thats when I got the drop. Now I'm 2 levels from H. Kote and 6 levels from Gaiters. Never in a million years did I think I'd enjoy looking forward to leveling up melee...

Today was rarely exclusive

Lots of rare/ex stuff today. The day started with me hitting up the NPC and picking up my Warlock's Chapeau +1. I was very happy to get it and then headed to Lower Jeuno to the Magic Shop to "erase my memories". In essence I can now do the Warlock's relic attire quests again. This is mandatory if I wanna store my RDM AF anymore (which I do) and my pocket is feeling the strain of lugging around extra armor I'm not using.

After basking in my glow (for all of 5 minutes) I realized last night was daylight savings time and that I was in fact 1 hour from Dynamis - Qufim. I quickly switched over to BRD and headed out to the Heiroglyphics. We did 70 minutes of bidding before we entered... and we ended up with 3 whole drops. We ended up with DRG hands, DRG belt, and BST belt. We also ended up with a win. This was our 1st win in about 5 attempts and it puts us one step closer to Dynamis - Tavnazia. Eighteen people, 15 minutes, 1 pissed off gaming community. Either way I am a Dynamis - Qufim Interloper. It was alot of fun.

After Dynamis I jumped into a NIN and WAR spam pt and ended up grabbing 21k of the 30k I need to ding 75BRD. I'm about 9100 tnl and hoping to get that tomorrow. Then I switched over to my 2nd character. I really started to enjoy playing melee though long ago I vowed not to melee ever. My real life girlfriend took one of my fishing mules and made it her character. She played while I was at work and when we broke up the PS2 and account went with me (since it was mine to begin with). The charcater's name is Tyrhanny and is currently a 30THF, 30NIN, and 49RNG. I xp'd on her last night as NIN and went from 27 > 30 in one sitting. Strangely, tanking was fun. When I got back to Jeuno I realized that I needed to upgrade some things. I picked up some Dodge Earrings and then saw that RSE feet were nice. Savage Gaiters are Mithra RSE feet and are HP+16 STR+3 CHR+2 but they were 330k. I decided to quest these buggers cause they're free if you go out and earn em.

I looked on http://www.mithrapride.org/vana_time/index.html and found when it was time for the Mithra and where. I didn't have a key but I did have a stack of Thief's Tools and a 30THF. I hurried out there on choco and realized that I had no oils/powders when I got there. I got aggro from a Goblin which I disposed of easily but then I realized there's some tough stuff in here. As I was about to drop down a hole I got aggro from a jelly. I was doing fine but it did some type of fluid spread move and dropped my shadows. I was taking damage and then saw 2 mithra run into the room. I typed /help and they ran at me, examined me, then typed {That's too bad.} and dropped down the hole! That annoyed me so I dropped down too. Luckily the jelly doesn't follow. when I got down there I saw them fighting stropers, and as I checked the chest spawn locations sure enough there was a chest! I careful went over to it and traded one Thief's Tool to it and viola! "Tyrhanny recieves key item magical pattern!" Then I get a tell from one saying "WTF that was our chest can't you see we're trying to get the key??!" I just typed {That's too bad.} and then /wave before I used my scroll of instant warp. Some people are just unreal. Anyways I ran straight to the gobbie and got my free Savage Gaiters! Tomorrow is a new Limbus, Apollyon Northeast so we'll see how that goes. In theory I could get my 2nd BRD AF item and finally be able to make Choral Justacorps +1. I've decided once I get my Justa+1 I'm selling manteel. Also when I get Bard's Cannion's I'm selling my Sha'ir Seraweels because I'll swap between Cannions and Znith Slacks (+50MP). Soon I'll be selling my Sha'ir Gages because I got my Bard's Cuffs, and finally I'll be letting go of my Sha'ir Turban because I have Bard's Roundlet, Opop Opo Crown, and Demon Helm. Pretty much all my Sha'ir will be sold hopefully by this time next month. That's about 35M gil right there and I'm going to invest that into a craft that will net steady returns. I'm thinking Clothcraft, but I haven't decided yet. I have Smithing at 56 and that's really only good with Goldsmithng (no thanks!) so I've got a decision to make. Thats a long ways off though. Treasures of Aht Urghan is bought and paid for and so now I'm just preapring to move into that expansion pack. Until next time, mahalo.

Slow day today

Well, yesterday was a slow day. Started off with... you guessed it Boroka. THF got killshot, all 4 items dropped, eight kotes in a row. They don't sell so yay... Still fun nonetheless. I was able to steal two of our campers and head to Waughroon Shrine for Rank 2-3 Dragon fight. Easy stuff. I ES Sleep the dragon, they pull out an avatar and Astral Flow the Eye. I Manafont and finish off the eye while the wait for BP and use Yag Drinks. Dragon wakes up and I re-sleep, they get their MP back and summon Ifrit. Game over. Fun fight, I decided to nuke it out at the end and won with 20hp. Got Rank 3 and logged.

Came back later and tried to get a Yorva party started to no avail, and decided to do Rank 4. Easy stuff, and since I had the Delkfutt Key from Sandy rank missions all I did was enter in, go to the left and head to the Delkfutt basement with 3 doors. I found the ambassador, warped back to Ru'Lude and hit up the embassy. Rank 4. Disgustingly easy and saved me the time I would have spent climbing 10 floors and using the key with the elevator. Afterwards I did some cooking, took the old NPC out to Oztroja and got him to 51 before getting a massive train and dying (I chuckled). Then I hit up my cooking mule and harvested 7 stacks of Taru Rice from 10 grain seeds (my best harvest yet). To put that into perspective a stack of 12 Grain Seeds is 40k, a stack of 12 Boxes of Taru Rice are 18k. Once you get 3 stacks of rice you've paid for your seeds. I ended up with 7 boxes and didn't even use the entire stack of seeds. For all the number crunchers that's 33k planted and 126k harvested. Can't complain about those numbers!

I should get Chapeau+1 tomorrow, maybe start the quest for another NQ Chapeau if I could only figure out what NPC I have to talk to so that I can re-quest it. Not a whole lot accomplished but at the same time not a whole lot attempted.

*edit - finished Boroka again and wouldn't you know it, the NIN who really wanted the kote didn't get the drop today. First no kote in 8 days. That sucks, but there's always tomorrow. We got torque, earring and (duh) cape. I caved in and took the torque. I'll never solo on BRD really but if I do ever decide to, at least I can have STR/VIT+4...