3 Day Weekends = fun times

So... there's a lot to catch up on. On Friday night the LS did a Rostrum Pumps run. Pretty much the last piece I need on my BRD to make it feel complete. It's egotistical to think this, (especially since good armor does not mean good player) but my BRD is pretty uber now. I mean... really.

Weapon: Terra's Staff
Head: Opo Opo Crown/Bard's Roundlet
Neck: String Torque/Star Necklace
L.ear: Loq. Earring/Melody+1
R.ear: String Earring/Minstrel's Earring
Body: Chl. Justacorps+1/Bard's Justacorps
Hands: Sha'ir Gages/Bard's Mitts
L.ring: Tamas Ring
R.ring: Jelly Ring/Minstrel's Ring
Back: Jester's Cape+1/Prism Cape [soon to be Intensifying Cape]
Waist: Gleeman's Belt/Ocean Rope
Legs: Bard's Cannions/Zenith Slacks
Feet: Rostrum Pumps

Makes for a pretty respectable collection of stuff. My RDM is starting to get almost complete as well, and with a new addition on Saturday at the God's run... I'm one step closer to completing RDM gear. This is a piece I have been waiting for since I was in Envy, and a piece I have been in line for since November. These are the hands to have for any RDM or BLM who is nuking. Magic Attack Bonus+5 and 50HP>>50MP is godly. My RDM now (with a rolo pie) is now 981HP and 963MP which is damn near the 1:1 ratio all RDMs strive for. With the Intensifying Cape from Assault I will be hovering dmn close to 1000MP with food. With the good came some bad. First my main competition is a girl who only attends our runs to spend points, she has stopped accruing them because she joined another LS. This meant I had to earn more points to win the bid (or wait for her to get them). Well I finally passed her by 1 point before the gods and she forced me to pay 100% of my points. Doesn't matter though, I have my mitts and thats 1/2 of the items I want in sky, the other being Genbu's Shield. The other bad news was Cursed Mitts jumped from 750k>950k the day I got my abjuration. Even worse I had to get mine for 995k... which annoyed me somewhat until I checked the Cursed Mitts recipe and found that one of the ingredients costs 1.1M so I guess I can't complain. Either way I got my mitts and that's all I was concerned about.

Sunday started with me finally breaking 70,000 Guild Points and earning my Magnifying Spectacles. Sadly they are impossible to see on my character when I wear them unlike bonecraft or goldsmithing but all that matters is I got 1/2 of my "crafting gear" taken care of. Now to earn 100,000 more for the apron... ugh.

Later on Sunday we did a Dynamis run. Finally I was going to be able to put those weeks and months of levling a job I absolutely despised to good use. I have to say one thing about DRK... stun is fun, and when used properly you get compliments from your party and that makes you feel good. But playing DRK as main? BORING. You can engage a mob and go afk for 1 minute and come back, and as long as the mob hasn't moved no one in your party knows any different. No thanks... Anyways we went into Dynamis - Xarcabard with the intent of clearing all time extensions and then taking a run at good old Dynamis Lord. The last time we went after him we won, but after many deaths, ALOT of XP loss, and a zombie attack that took nearly 20 mins. Needless to say, it was a clusterf**k so we vowed to do it again and do it right. We had 8 RDM/DRKs, about 9 BLMs, maybe 5 PLDs, and about 6 WHMs. We also used a BRD/BLM to Elemental Seal Ltng. Threnody which worked wonders. We took that badass down in about 3 mins flat. We had perfection going till 5%. Thats when Ying and Yang appeared and stunned our Chainspell stunners (me and Rhyis) and that jerk got off an Oblivion Smash but the last group of stunners came in and the melee finished him off. Only a Jadeshell dropped but it was seriously impressive. We ended up having over an hour left to farm. I'm really proud of Obsidian for really executing this time. We are a premiere Dynamis LS on Odin and I'm extremely proud to be a part of it. I really hate PS2 pics, when someone posts a PC version of the group pic this crappy one gets replaced, until then... the Interlopers:

Finally on Monday was sort of a day of resting. I woke up and found that some friends wanted to kill a NM in Riverne #A01 so I grabbed some DRK gear and headed out. We were going after a NM called Heliodromos which is actualy 3 NMs. Once you engage one the other two attack and once the first dies the other two will despawn in about 10 mins. We went out with about 12 people and killed all three no problem but only got 1 pair of Mountain Gaiters so we let the person who really wanted them all along have them and Gooftaru now has his new boots. We decided to check another NM called Aiatar which is a Wyvern type NM that drops JSE legs for DRG and DRK. We had a DRK there named Lyric who really wanted the Sable Cuisses. He was actually a tough fight. He used Dispelga and Paralyzga which were incredibly annoying and he also used normal wyvern moves which aren't so bad if you didn't get your food dispelled and you can't cast your shadows because you're paralyzed. After about 6 minutes we finally got him down and wouldn't you know it... we got the worst drops you could get.

We called it a day after that and headed off. I did yet another Apollyon SE limbus run... (this is our 6th in a row I think) and we got 5 coins. We could do this in our sleep now. I think when we pulled the boss weapon on the 4th floor we had almost 25 minutes left... I wish we could farm or repop the mobs to use that time we get with time extensions. Oh well, I have 8 coins and 1/2 items for both BRD and RDM. We need to start going to Temenos again so I can get my 2nd items for AF and we can finally get some Nashira gear.

Finally (yes really this is finally) we did some BCNM60 runs. Six to be exact. We did Dismemberment Brigade in Horlais Peak and it was a joke how easy it was. We had PLD, NIN, DRG, RDM, BLM, BRD and we won everytime. We were really after Spectacles and crate after crate we weren't getting any. Hell even my crate was a flute and 5 goldsmithing items... Red Rock, Mythril Ingot, and 3 gems... so lame. Finally at 3:00am on our final crate I had lost my patience...

So there you have it... threaten SE in shout and you get your drops. Our total haul was 1x Spectacles, 2x Dragvandil, 3x Hamelin Flute, 2x Assault Earring, 4x DS Ingot, 4x Mythril Ingot, and a bunch of gems that can be NPC'd for 2400g (and are that much at the auction house). I think we walked with about 1M each when all was said and done. Well, that about completes my Memorial Day wrapup entry. Hell if you read this whole thing and got this far... send me a tell in game. I'll send you 1000g cause you're either entirely too bored, or enjoy reading my blog. And I bet you'd enjoy it more if I paid you to keep coming back :P so take care guys, my fingers are tired.

catching up

I have alot to catch up on but have neither the time nor energy right now at 4:30am to do it. I'll get an entry up tomorrow, unitl then...

I <3 the 80's.

Who needs those stinking THFs?

Treasure Hunter pfft! I was soloing Marids to close out a merit and I was getting crazy drops. Hides, Hairs, and tons of seals. I think I got a total of 7 hides, 3 hairs, and 9 Kindred Seals over about a 3 hour period. I was crazy bored and wanting some stuff. I got the hides turned into leathers (thanks EJ!) and then had a friend synth a Jaridah Peti (thanks EJ!). We did a little Limbus (Apollyon SE again someone shoot me now) and we lost because I hit my convert macro instead of my silence macro when pulling skeletons. It backed us up timewise and I shoulder the blame for that loss, though we ended up with the same amount of coins per person as we did last time so...meh. On a side note I finally got enough Assault Points to unlock tier 2 assaults so I am now a PFC Wildcat and can accrue 5 id tags now instead of the previous three. Hopefully I can find a static and finally start getting my assault rewards.

A lil good, a lil bad, and alot of Lost

(this entry is a culmination of the past 2-3 days)

Kind of a weak couple days since the Valkurm fiasco. I beat Apollyon SE again for the 10th time it seems, finally getting enough coins to recieve my earring. Spent some time in a Imperial Standing party. I have no desire for that stupid turban so I'm just accumulating points right now, hoping that there is more to the rewards than just 1 item. Oh yeah I beat Shadow Lord with a 75MNK. It was a joke actually, but fun nonetheless. The cutscene was longer than the fight. I did 3 Assaults as well, wining one in the never before attempted area of Periqua and then went 1/2 in Lebros Cavern. The Qiqirn were bastards when it came to dropping their mines, and both times someone messed up the blowing up of the wall by running away too soon. Oh well... I've got some things I need to do, leveling can wait. In no particular order:

1. Level Clothcraft to 85
2. Get my Magnifying Specs and eventually my Weaver's Apron
3. Get to Windy Rank 8 for Master Caster Bracelets (INT/MND+1, ele/enf magic +7)
4. Get Grandiose Chain (HP/MP+10, hpp/mpp+2) Mamool Ja Assault [2,265/8,000]
5. Get Intensifying Cape(HP/MP+30) Lebros Cavern Assault [3,762/10,000]
6. Get Bard Slippers to go 5/5 on BRD AF2

Decided to see how much CHR I could get on my BRD... came up with 2 pics, one with my Opo Opo Crown activated and one with both CHR+ songs on. I could get it higher actually if my ring wasn't gimp and I had different earrings. Without songs I had CHR: 68+66 which isn't all that

bad, but with songs I had CHR: 68+89 which is absolutely insane... So the moral of this story is... um, I can have alot of CHR if I wanted to. Also I didn't notice I was BRD/BLM until I was standing in front of the Trail Markings in Beaucidine...

Kinda a crappy night tonight, started off the day camping Cactrot Rapido with the LS for who knows why, we claimed with 14 people and somehow wiped. RMTs claim it while we're reraising and kill it. Wonderful. Then I figure while we have these people here we could get my Savage Blade out of the way. Well I have no idea the process of opening the gates so we bailed on that idea. We wandered around and killed the Dainslaif NM (no drop) and the Save the Queen NM (no drop). We made our way to the Dune Boots NM and finally got a drop. We wanted to move onto an ENM but I noticed the day/time and realized I had to attend my regulary scheduled Dynamis (Beaucidine). We farmed for over 3 hours and all that dropped was 1 single Montinont... Such crap. At least my night picked up, when I logged out I was able to watch the season finale of Lost, but I won't go into that seeing as this is my FFXI blog.

...

That's pretty much all I have to say about Dynamis - Valkurm. A fight with a NM that does not seem to have any way to 100% negate charm or its other TP moves. Today we took the Mega Boss to 5% and lost. There were (in my eyes) 2 reasons this happened.

1. Within 3 seconds of engaging 1 of our first 2 Chainspell stunners got massacred by NM's babies.
2. We were short handed even though we were signed up with 36/36 for weeks.

We got no AF, we got a loss, and I'm pretty pissed about it. Everyone did their jobs right, we just didn't have enough people in that "everyone" category. So my mood about the whole thing is simply "...".

My melee days are OVER!

Thank god... This is one of the reasons I am happy to have completed my short-lived chapter playing melee. Berserk + Nightmare Scythe got me a whopping 1 damage... Anyways I went from 35DRK to 38DRK and finally got Stun activated so I can chainspell stun. It's such a relief to finally have finished this. It's sad when I think about it, I spent weeks upon weeks leveling this job so that I can have 60 seconds (edited) of continuous stuns. Either way it rounds out my RDM, so now being able to choose to go /BLM, /WHM, or /DRK makes me a more complete RDM.

A little disappointing news came earlier in the day. I finally got all my synthesis materials to make the 650k Jaridah Salvars. I paid the stupid Aht Urghan NPC 1 Imp.Brz.Piece to get synthesis support, and I tried to synth. Tried. I was 4 levels from cap on Clothcraft, 20 levels over cap on Smithing, but the listing for Leathercraft was (?). Here's my beef... Steel Ingot is a lv36 Smithing synth, which I had. Karakul Leather is a lv10 Leatherworking synthm which I had. I can only guess that there is some other craft that is needed but either way, I could synth it. So what to do? Ask a friend to do it for you. I did that, I asked a 98+3 Clothcraft friend to synth. I handed all materials over to her and she started to synth. Failure. I ended up losing a 250k Marid Hair and a 220k Karakul Cloth. Needless to say I was disappointed, but I'll just try and farm the ingredients up again and have her make it. Ity was just bad dumb luck that it failed. In a few hours I have Dynamis - Valkurm and I'll be goign as RDM/DRK to help of the final boss. It seems like I am the only person bidding on BRD Slippers so if they drop I could (once again) be welcomed into the 5/5 AF2 club in Obsidian. Here's to hoping.

Absolutely confused...

So I was skilling up because I was determined to get past 58 today and become a Craftsman. I turned in my 2 Wool Bracers for 6400 Guild Points (woohoo!) and started synthing Hunter's Cotton. I wish I had known about this synth sooner, it costs about 2000g less per synth if I buy all the ingredients off the auction house, probably 1/3rd that price if I synthed the ingredients myself. Either way, it took me past 58 and I ended up finishing at 59.4, which I'm quite happy about. I have 34,998/70,000 guild points (half-way to magnifying spectacles) and also started collecting items for my 1st pair of Jaridah Salvars. It consists of 2x Karakul Cloth, 1x Marid Hair, 1x Karakul Leather, 1x Steel Sheet. They sell for 650k but the ingredients cost more than the value of the item so I decided to farm everything. So far I have 1 cloth and almost have enough skins to make a 2nd cloth. I farmed the Marid Hair last night after an hour of soloing (250k on auction house NO THANKS!) and I made the steel sheet myself.

Anyways, as to why I was confused. I was told that synthing is helped if you are facing a certain direction, on a certain day, with a certain elemental staff equipped. I usually almost always do this. This time however I forgot to and was just in a rush. I synthed on darksday (supposed to be bad) facing south (was using earth crystal which means I "should" face SouthEast) and had my Thunder Staff equipped (theory says best luck comes with Earth/Terra's Staff equipped when using earth crystals). To top it off I had no guild support and was in my mog house which has "a faint glow of water eneregy". The item's cap is 63, I was 58.7 and here is what happened: I got +0.7 skillups in 5 consecutive synths. After the first 2 I said, "screw this don't change what's working for you" and continued synthing facing the wrong way on the wrong day with the wrong equips. It was Darksday 3:14 and was First Quarter Moon (45%). Now I'm totally confused... Either way I hit 59.4 and hopefully can get to 63 by spamming this synth over the next few days.

Update -
Spent 5 hours in a party organizing KS99. Took the RDM/DRK almost 3 hours to get online, then while waiting in Balgas Dais for 2 hours the second I trade orb 1 PLD starts to DC. Our other PLD said he was way late for something and logged... We were gonna try it with 1 PLD and a crapload of healers, and as I approach the circle... he DC's again. We called it eventually, a little over 5 hours after the party was started. I'm 2 levels from 37DRK too, glad I left my party for that.

...I'm gonna go buy a lottery ticket.

Damn melees sidetracking me!

Look at this crap! Its 3:57 am and I'm finishing up an Imperial Standing Party... I get invites when I'm not looking for party or when I'm trying to get into an Assault party. Only time I never get invites... when I'm looking for an xp party. I tell ya what though, being RDM in a burn party is alot easier than being BRD. I have to do more but it's much easier cause I just plop my ass in a spot and heal, haste, silena and blindna! So easy. I got 2 merits tonight and finally closed out Convert Recast timer. I'm down to 8:20 in between converts. Not bad if I say so myself. This will be nice when I'm soloing VT mobs and needing that MP faster.
I'm not sure what I'm going to work on next, maybe Max MP. I had a spare merit and threw it into that category which got my max MP up to 823 without food. Still kinda sucky but I'm Hume and RDM, cut me some slack here... When I get my Assault cape which is HP/MP+30 and my Locq. Earring which also has MP+30 I should be sitting pretty around 880 MP or so. Then my Zenith Mitts will get me over 900 MP.

Speaking of Zenith Mitts... screw Genbu, fat ass friggin turtle has not dropped mitts for me dating back to November, and the only mitts he has dropped was 2 weeks ago when I was unable to attend our sky run... Isn't that some sick irony. Anyways the sun will rise in 90 minutes so I am off to sleep. I have another job interview I need to rest up for. Here's my day in a nutshell.

1. Solo'd some Marids with xp ring on, great xp and Kindred Seals
2. Got Clothcraft to 57 (so close to 58 and Craftsman!)
3. Turned in 6 Cotton Hachimakis for guild points (HQ'd 2 of them!)
4. Won Dynamis - Beaucidine (3 AFs... wtf, where were our THFs tonight?)
5. Did a burn party, got 2 merits, capped convert and raised Max MP

Diving In

Well I finally bit the bullet today and started in with the Green Ribbons. Damn they suck. Out of 12 Silk Cloths I only successfully synth about 8-9 Green Ribbons and out of those 8-9 ribbons I only get skillup on maybe 4 total. So far I've gone from 53.0 to 56.1 in about 7 stacks of Silk Cloths and I've had to sell any synthed ribbons back to an NPC for 2,070 gil. Luckily I'm halfway through this ordeal and will quit in about 3 levels. Once I hit 59 I'm moving onto White Capes so I can actually sell the capes on the Auction House.

I've found that I can also make Field Hose which caps at 60. The materials (when synthed from scratch) cost the same amount as the Ribbons but instead they actually sell on the Auction House. If this is the case (as it has been tonight at least) I'm going to make Field Hose until I cap it at 60 and then move on. Blowing up Silk Cloths make me cry. When I fail on 4 synths and lose 4 cloths thats a total loss of 56,000 gil. I'm sure when I am at 86 Clothcraft I'll wish I was only losing 56k a stack but right now that still kinda stings a little bit to be losing 56k to failed synths. I'll pick up where I left off tomorrow and do a Dynamis - Beaucidine. I am not lotting anything because I have both BRD and RDM AF2 from that zone so I'm strictly going for the coins and the points.

My quarterly rant

I am pissed about a few things today, and I'm gonna vent them right now because I feel like it. If this refers to you or has anything to do I'm sorry, but I'm just fed up with some things and need to vent.

1) Stupid newbs - Last night I was trying to farm silk on my ex girlfriend's character (which is technically mine since it's on my Content ID but that's besides the point). This character is 30THF is located in Jeuno. I grabbed an instant warp scroll and signet and did a simple everyday shout. /shout Teleport Mea Can I have it? 2000g You can have this. Simple enough right? I got four separate people (not all in the same party) asking me to teleport them to Mea... Are you retarded? Can't you SEE that I am a 30THF and looking for a tele, not offering one? All 4 of these bozos were not even rank 3 yet... and since all tele-taxis seem to have moved to Aht Urghan, the morons are left begging for rides in Jeuno... begging a THF for a tele.

2) Undercutters - People in this game have ZERO concept of any form of economics. Macroeconomics, microeconomics.... even basic principles. These people are idiots. I say this because I'm trying to sell stacks of Velvet Cloth, Silk Cloth and Linen Cloth and all 3 items were undercut. These idiots would rather sell a 170k item for 160k today than wait 5 hours and get 10k more. Friggin idiots... Then someone sees its last sale at 160k and undercuts to 155k. Now we're 15,000g below the normal selling price. Problem is that buyers don't want to pay high prices so they gobble these prices up, making the seller think, "Oh crap I can sell this item in 12 minutes! I'm gonna farm it more and sell for 150k!" and now we're 20k below normal selling price and it's now 1/8th cheaper than it was yesterday. I wanna climb through my TV and punch these idiots in the face till they can't see their screen anymore to ruin the economy. Having said that I have almost 700k sitting on the AH because people wanted to undercut prices by about 5-10k; thus lowering its "going rate" which is lower than my current listed price. Which means I have 3 choices; a) wait for people to stop undercutting and the price go back up, b) wait for the item to get sent back to me from the AH cause some dingbat dropped the price, c) Stop Sale of the item and relist at the lower price which in turn reinforces the lower value of the item. All choices SUCK.

3) Vagus - (as of late) Now this can be a touchy subject. I have known this guy for almost 2 years and respected him when he led me in Envy, but as of late he has been kinda pissing me off. Everyday... every single day he camps Lord of Onzozo for Kraken Clubs. His gaming experience has come down to sitting around for hours trying to get an item to sell for 200,000,000 gil. That's right two-hundred million gil. Now some of you might say, "Linkshells everday camp Fafnir or Behemoth, etc" and sure, you're right. Linkshells do camp those NMs daily, but not for profit. Not to get a 200M gil item to sell. They camp it to better their LS members. Instead Vagus camps LoO daily to make money. I thought about this for a while last night and came to the conclusion that an argument could be made that he is attempting to monopolize a NM. Now he doesn't get cliams daily I know this. He has RMT's there everyday to compete with. I do know that he has claimed it multiple times and gotten a Kraken Club a few times as well. I see him purchasing a Shura Togi for 9M or some super-duper dagger/knife for 10M and that's cool, I made my money off of my Manteel. But when is enough ENOUGH? That has bothered me recently, but also the fact that in my Dynamis LS I only see this guy at Dynamis Xarcabard runs. He no longer attends any other runs except for Xarcabard and the same goes for Strawberrie and Senrez and a few others. It sickens me that we helped them get their AF yet they don't come on runs to help us get our AF. Sure you have to quit sometime, but if you are only going to come on 1 run for your last piece of AF don't even bother coming. It just shows a lack of respect and says to me that all you are concerned with is you getting yours. Once he gets that last piece of AF I'll bet my wallet we'll never see or hear from him again in Obsidian.

I'm pissed today and I don't care that I'm typing this down. Fack.

Found it! Money pit!

So, after getting Clothcraft from 1-51 in one week I had spent a whopping 1.1M gil in total. Not bad, seeing as I didn't spend any time hovering on the money synths. Today I hit 52.6 and looked at what lay ahead for me. No synth is free, but so far they have been extremely cheap. Getting from 53-62 is going to be a bit more expensive than I am used to. I have to make Green Ribbons. The ingredients to the ribbons are the cheapest of the synths in this crafting range. The ingredients are simply 1 Silk Cloth and 1 Wind Crystal. Easy enough. Problem is a stack of Silk Cloths are 170k... that equates to just over 14k a cloth. I can ease that pain a little by making the cloths myself from Silk Thread. Silk Thread is 45k a stack and since 3 x Silk Thread = 1 Silk Cloth that means I can make a stack of cloths for 135,000 gil. That at least saves me 35k in ingredients. If I synth each cloth that makes each Ribbon synthed cost me about 11,250g, and since the NPC buys the ribbons back for 2000g I'll be losing approx 9,100g per synth. Not all that bad, but seeing I'll probably have to make 6-8 stacks of Green Ribbons to get up to 62(ish) that means I'll be losing about 655k-837k after all is said and done... crap. Hopefully this will get me to 62 and I can get past this small hurdle, and I shouldn't hit another speed bump until around 78.

Until then I'm going to try and make some gil on the side by synthing cloths day and night. I've found some moneymakers which I'll share with you (don't go screwing up the economy with these now...)

Flax Flower x 2 = 1 Linen Thread
Linen Thread x3 = 1 Linen Cloth

That means 72 Flax Flowers are needed to make a stack of Linen Cloths. Flax Flowers are around 200g at the guild or at the airship shops. 72 x 200g = 14,400g in Flax Flowers. Guess how much 1 stack of Linen Cloths is? 60,000 gil. Thats a 45,600 gil profit. There's more

Crawler Cocoon x 2 = 1 Silk Thread
Silk Thread x 3 = 1 Silk Cloth

That means 72 Crawler Cocoons are needed to make a stack of Silk Cloths. Crawler Cocoons are around 810g each and are only available at the Clothcraft Guild Salesroom or the Auction House. 72 x 810g = 58,320g in Crawler Cocoons. And how much is a stack of Silk Cloth? 170,000 gil which is a 111,680 gil profit.

For the next week or so, these two synths are almost the only thing I'll be doing. Hopefully I can make about half of that upcoming gil loss beforehand so instead of losing 655k-837k... I may only lose about 200k-400k.

Server down for maintenance... /shocked!

While they're fixing the servers once again I find myself blogging away before I grab a late lunch. I haven't been doing a lot of anything in game except crafting. I got Clothcraft from 39.4 to 45.7 last night and planned to get it to 50 until I was told the server was going down for more maintenance. SquareEnix said "gtfo or else", so I logged.

I've started to use alot of lightning crystals, and that crap is getting to be more expensive than the damn ingredients! Lightning has hovered around 6k but now they are creeping to 7k and above. I threw in the towel and headed out to Qufim and Behemoth's Dominion. I farmed for about 45minutes before I finally did something stupid. I pulled an elemental with Dia and started nuking, then realized I had convert up and ready to use (you can see where I'm going with this). I slept it and immedietly used my convert macro and converted to 23hp. Well Mr. Elemental wasn't slept (seeing as I had Dia'd him) and he got in a shot for 31. Unfortunetly 31>23 so I had to ask Mohib (MNK/WHM) to come all the way from Jeuno to raise my stupid ass. I deserved the xp loss. I didn't even have Protect on much less Stoneskin. It reminded me of my favorite title ever granted in this game:
I left with about 12 stacks of lightning clusters and went back to making silk and velvet. I remembered I needed to do my guild points so I checked and it was a Wool Cap (lvl 45 synth). I was at 44 at the time I think so I grabbed some Chocobo Feathers and guild support. Faced southeast with my Terra's Staff on and I get this! My first ever +1 synth. I had gotten the animation while making Wool Thread and Linen Thread but since they don't HQ I never reaped the benefits until tonight. I wanted to keep it just for sentimental reasons but it was worth 4960 guild points and when I saw that I said "screw that" and synthed another cap, a NQ Wool Cap. With my points I bought the key item "Spinning" which allows me to use multiple threads for one crystal. It doesn't help me skillup any faster, but when I want to make gil by turning items into threads this will save me a bunch of crytsals (which aren't cheap) . For example, 2 Flax Flowers + 1 lightning crystal makes 1 Linen Thread. Well, when you have learned spinning you can use 6 Flax Flowers + spindle (75g) + 1 lightning crystal and you'll get 3 threads. You end up saving 2 lightning crystals per synth. That's 24 crystals per stack and that equates to a 12-14k savings per stack on crystals alone. Anyways at the end of the day I was 45.7 and had the key item Spinning. From this point on I'll start saving for my Magnifying Spectacles. That's 70,000 GP's and the apron is 100k GP's (ugh).

Linens-N-Things (my new way of FFXI life)

So for the past 5 days all I have done is craft. I didn't do much of anything Thurs-Sat because the Moms was in town, but other than that I have been in Windurst crafting my little behind off. Only time I have left Windy is for Dynamis (another Valkurm loss on Sunday...) and Limbus which is tonight. Last night I got Clothcraft to 39.4 and even got Goldsmithing to 10.7 which means I can make Silver Thread (whoopie) I think it's a loss though, not completely sure. Either way I think I have spent less than 1M to get my Clothcraft to around 40 which isn't that bad in my opinion. Soon alot of stuff will be made with Velvet (which is expensive), so I think I'm going to spend time making the ingredients instead of buying them since the crystal cost is far less a sunk cost than the price of the already synthed ingredients.

On a positive note I have 2 interviews this week, both with different divisions of Morgan Stanley. I'm hoping one of them pans out. It means less time on FFXI but more time living my life with more money. Money > FFXI

And the boots makes seven

Entered Dynamis last night and was high bidder on Duelist's Boots, and I didn't expect them to drop to be honest. Then we started getting drops left and right. We got NIN. WAR, DRG, then BST and the AF just kept flowing. We ended up with 15 AF when it was all said and done and I think my boots were the 13th or 14th AF to drop. I was really getting worried because the boots are really good boots. Good MP and Magic Attack Bonus + and it means I'll be selling my Wise Pigaches. They cost me an arm and a leg in terms of points but they are a rare drop and it's my 7th AF piece (3 RDM and 4 BRD) and the only pieces I need left are BRD feet and RDM hands. Neither of those two are considered rare drops and I should be able to get them with the points I have left. I don't ever expect to have a Duelist's Chapeau, at least not for a long ass time. There are about 3 people with 100 points that want it and we've seen 2 drop in 8 months so I'm not worried. When we were ported out of Dynamis - San d'Oria our total haul was:
BRD
RDM
MNK
BST
NINx2
RNGx2
WARx2
DRGx2
PLDx3
(and a Montinont)

On a crafting note I got Clothcraft to 14 in a day. Crafted about 4 hours total all day yesterday. Pretty easy stuff. I did Grass Cloth to 4, Capes to 8, Cotton Cloth to 12, and I'm doing Cotton Capes to 18. I'm kinda liking the fact I can synth 10 of these capes and then desynth the capes back into threads. For almost an hour last night I was synthing Cotton Capes and desynthing them back into Cotton Threads only to use those threads to make cloths for more capes! I even got some skill ups on the desynths. Looking ahead it shouldn't be too bad until I break 50, then alot of the synths seem to use velvet. I will probably hover there for a week or more trying to make some gil off simple profitable synths like silver thread, silk thread, and velvet cloth before I make the dive into the 50+ waters. Right now that's still a ways off tho as I am a 13.8 Cothcrafter.

On a personal note Mother's Day and my Mom's birthday are both this weekend and she's in NYC to visit, so my online time will be limited. I might miss my Limbus LS's 1st run at Omega but there's not much I can really do about it I guess. Oh well, I want Ultima's body parts anyways...

I chose to be a Weaver

So I thought alot about the small fortune I have earned over the past 2 weeks and realized... there's nothing really to buy. My RDM is almost completely covered (I need Master Casters for the hands and I should be done) and my BRD is the same. All my good gear is rare/ex and the stuff that isn't is NQ. I guess if I wanted to I could buy Mahatma Slops and Wise Pigaches+1 but is it worth the millions of gil for +1 INT? I don't think so, not when those millions can return millions more when put into a craft.

So a decision had to be made. Which craft? Since my Smithing was at 55+1 I had pretty much 3 main options; Bonecraft, Clothcraft, or Leathercraft. I looked over bone and just wasn't really feeling it. Besides Scorpion Harness most profitable synths in bone have to be HQ'd. The real choice was between leather and cloth. I thought alot about this, and I know a few people who are leather vets and a few people who are cloth vets. Both are pretty wealthy from thier crafts, so then I just looked over the recipes. It seemed like getting cloth raised the first 50 levels was going to be a walk in the park. I can get to 31 by only crafting with Grass, Cotten and Linen! At 43 I need to get my Goldsmithing up to level 12 for Silver Thread, but that's a ways off.

From level 1-51 I found that I only have 6 synths out of 13 that require more than 1 ingedient. After that the smithing subcraft may benefit with synths like Arhat's and Shinobi. I feel confident about this and might dabble in some money making synths when I hit that level to just provide some income. I've been told leather takes about 15M to get to 100, and looking over the synths it looks as if cloth may be less. That's my first impression, I may do an about face in one week but for now I'm pumping my gils into Clothcraft!

Waiting for the other shoe to drop

So I've had a lucky week... A very lucky week. Last Wednesday I got my Bard Cannions for 7 points when the person who got me up to a 60 point bid backed out. Thursday I finally got BRD to 75, Friday night I somehow found a Shining Cloth for 1.21M. Sunday afternoon I got my Bard Justacorps for 17 points (not too bad seeing as the average value is 16) and then Monday night I sold a Nobles Tunic that I made from the Shining Cloth. On Sunday night people finally found out how to acquire that stupid Haste turban, (whoopie) for 20 Gold Pieces and the value of Gold Pieces went from 400k to 850k. I managed to get into a couple of psycho parties; one MNK party for Chain #148 and another RNG party with Kmstr, Fatkat and Jahga which hit Chain #152. The only reason we stopped is because they ran outta ammo, but at least I capped RDM xp and made a whopping 5,000 Imperial Standing points. This allowed me to buy 5 Gold Pieces and sell em for 800k each. Thats 4M gil for 3 hours of xp. This has been an insane 7 days... I'm waiting for someone to hack into my account and steal all my stuff. It's happened before, I'm praying that something like that doesn't happen again.
I managed to make my way out to Arrapago Reef and get my staging points. It's really quite an amazing area. very wide open, great music, and it snows! I'm tempted to explore some more but it seems that Imps don't like people treadingon thier territory. A few times I had to sleep an Imp (or two) and log out to to survive. The looks on the Imp's faces are priceless. They look down on you with this smirk on thier face as they beat the snot out of you. We'll see where this new expansion will take me, so far I'm quite pleased with it.