Leap of faith

So I made the jump. I found someone who was looking for the same things I was (a new server, a new craft, and a new set fo jobs). I found that person on Bismarck and I made the leap and traded up characters straight up. To my right you can see what I gave up in Gorokai, here is what I recieved:

name - Nivaud
race - Male/Elvaan (Face 3A)
allegiance - Rank 10 Bastok, rank 8 Windy
jobs - 75SMN, 75RDM, 75BLM, 57BST, 56DRK, 55WHM, 37NIN
access - all areas including sea, sky, ToAU
crafts - 95 cooking (Raw Fish Handling), 84 fishing (Lu Shang's Rod), 60 Woodworking (Lumberjack), 27 smithing/alchemy

The character has a weskit and a yinyang robe for SMN! Along with LuShang's, I have an Evoker's Ring, Ugg Pendant, Loq. earring, and about 60-70 merits dispersed throughout SMN, BLM, and RDM. The RDM has 3 AF2's, the BST has 2 AF2's :D and the character has 1/2 the items needed to make a RDM, BST, BLM, and SMN AF+1. Unfortunetly I only have 14 coins... but that shouldn't be a problem. I have found a new joy in fishing and cooking. Last night I fished up 2 stacks of Black Sole in Port Jeuno (sinking minnow = free bait!) and then I synthed up some Sole Sushi and stuck it up on the AH. Easy gil... I also spent a few trips pulling in some Gugru Tuna and slapping them up on the AH block 4k.

It's not huge gil like clothcraft... hell I could buy a 500k Galaetia and make a 700k pair of trousers in 2 minutes and make 200k right there. Instead this is a slow and steady craft that has return customers. Once one of my clients bought my blessed trousers I'd never realy see him again, but melee are always gonna look for sole sushi when the fight. So I'm hoping that this turns out a little less stresfull than camping the AH for Galaetia and Siren's Hair.

Sadly I have to call POL and get the pasword for my new email account. The previous owner never used it and forgot it, and the only way to get my screenshots to my PC to host them on this blog is to email them from my POL account to my real life email account. So, unfortunetly, no new pics of my dhalmel SMN.

On a side note, I wanted to thank Resurrection very much for being the only HNM LS to take a chance with me. I never asked to join, but I was glad I did. They welcomed me and forgot the past and decided to invite Gorokai and if I was truly an ass... just kick me. They treated me iwth respect and were so SO helpful. You helped me kill my 1st king, my 1st Cerb, and my 1st Limbus Ultima. You helped me get BRD AF+1 legs and about 8M from my KS99 last week. I thank you guys for all you did. A while back I did my CoP static with Aenarion and Gimmeone, two Res members. UP told me to listen to him and forget they were Res, just push through the missions. I'm really glad I did. Thank you all.

bore ring

- Solo'd BLM from 138/23,000 to 12,100/23,000 over a few hours while watching TV.

- Synthed up 2 pairs of blessed trousars, having to deal with mid-week undercutting morons so they aren't selling, patience is a virtue.

Still need a buffer on RDM, seeing as I'm 1,400/44,000 right now.

I truly love tarus...

So for the past few days I have managed to do a whole lot of nothing really. A bunch of random stuff but no "big thing" has happened since Aspi last Sunday. Monday I leveled SMN which was sorta just to pass the time. Tuesday we did some Limbus, Apollyon SE which I've done a million times with Victory before. We managed to pull out the win. Wednesday was Dynamis and we got the win but 23 of our 45 people left right after the boss, so farming was not happening.
Thursday I picked up some xp on BLM, since none of my duo partners were online. It was the first normal party I have been in, in about 6 weeks. I was shocked to how much fun it was to getback to normal parties. There wasn't a whole lot of chatter, 4 of the 6 were japanese. We had PLD, DRK, RNG, RDM, COR, BLM. The RNG and DRK did a Fragmentation WS to perfection and I was able to MB Thundaga II or Aero III almost every time. The COR was dropping me Wizard's Roll which was like crack. I ended up getting 16k xp in two hours and really loved the experience. Taru's in COR AF take the cake.

We have planned to finish our KS99 runs that went unfinished from 2 weeks ago, but it kept getting delayed. Friday night we finally got the people together and did about 4 runs (mine included). The first run was great drops, the 2nd run was crap (poor Eowen). The third run was my orb and I ended up with a Shinsoku (3.7M) and a Behemoth Hide (5.1M). Not a bad bounty for 99 seals, seeing as last time I walked with a 5M gil Kriegsbiel. A big thanks to Resurrection for their death and suicide each time the KB got to 1%... since we all knew it was gonna blow.

Finally Saturday (today) I logged on to see no one really doing much of anything. I checked my Choco in windy which still hasn't hatched, went to Sandy to trade in Cursed Soup with Oblation Abjuration to get some Ambrosia, and decided to get some skillup. I got on BRD and went out to the local Lesser Colibri's outside of Aht Urghan. I had sanction + auto regen bonus on to start with. Then I would cast Regen and 2x Paeon. I was getting like 15hp/tick and I was able to stay at 90% HP while meleeing these damn birds. Energy Steal was a great WS to fill up my MP bar (since Cyclone is wind based and did about 5 damage to the Colibris). I started at 171 skill and ended at 197. It took about 2 hours but I got myself ready for the 200-225 mobs. I don't know why I really skilled up other than the fact I want to use Heart Snatcher (since my damn RDM can't use it) and I also want to eventually use Evisceration.

I bailed on solo skillup for Limbus, and without going into too much detail... let's just say we got to the last floor and had to kill 3 elementals and for some reason our melee thought that 4 melee could kill them without pulling em back to a safe spot. I tried saying "NO MAGIC CASTING" but some people just had to cast. We wiped, we lost, oh well. Not smart, hopefully they think it through better next time. The night ended with a crappy xp party that netted me 276xp in 2 hours, so I went back to my solo spot and was able to solo to 63. I decided to leave on a high note and logged off at that point.

newb

Not much going on last night, didn't feel like leveling BLM since I've done it so much recently. Wanted to get my newb feeligns back. I hit up my armor mule and saw that I still had all my level 15 mage gear so I muled it all over, switched to 13SMN, and headed out to Tahrongi Canyon. Soloing as SMN is easier than soloing as BST, and very little attention is needed, granted it's only 40-70xp per kill but seeing as it's only 3600xp per level... thats 65 mobs killed. If you kill a mob every 2-3 minutes than you can get your level in about 2 hours. So that's what I did, I spent the night watching the DVR on split screen and soloing on SMN, going form 13 to 15. I probably need to start going into parties now but even then, I won't need to pay super duper attention since all I'll be doing is using Blood Pacts and backup healing. (I will not be a main healer, if I wanted to be a main healer I'd have switched to WHM).

Tonight may be more of the same unless we actually DO our scheduled KS99 run which has been pushed back now almost 2 weeks since our last one. Maybe even do a few jailers. If both of those fall through I'll just party on SMN, solo on BLM, or skillup on leather (finally).

Aspi sunk (this time I WAS on-board)

Tonight we decided to head out to Aspi. We knew he was due and we had the people online so we all gathered at the Valley of Sorrows for his window. We had ToD from the previous night and when we got there only LB was there. BBQ started to trickle in and the Unsent popped up after the 2nd window. We weren't seeing much astion and I was watching the Colts game on splitscreen. I do this sometimes when I am in a slow situation like Dynamis or Kirin or camping windows (see below in this old pic)

So after the 4th or 5th window started to perk up because there's only seven. Well, he popped and we got claim. He isn't all that hard, it's the fact he is in an area that has so many adds that he can be tiresome. We evetually did most of our damage on MB's, and after about 30 minutes of fighting we killed him. Aspi drops Wyrmal Body, Aquarian Body, and Koenig Feet. 2/3 of the drops are RDM friendly... well he dropped the feet (Congratulations to Kimith!). Seems fitting since the PLDs claimed and they did a great job on adds. Drops were:

In other news I got my BLM to 62 while duoing and hit my alltime high for XP. We had to burn a Manafont in the process but it was well worth it. Fun times all around today. Too bad I was too damn lazy to level leathercraft this weekend...

Temenos Liberator

FINALLY!

FInally beat one of the 2 NMs in Limbus. Granted it took 59 minutes and change, it was our very 1st time and our very 1st win. We learned alot, mostly who has hate when Citadel Buster begins and who doesn't. We went in with 17 or 18 and came out with about 12 (still alive). Everyone gave their all, no one complained about R1's and after throwing everything we had at it including the kitchen sink we walked out with 2 claws (Nashira Gages x2). A big congratulations to Nanci and Gimmeone for their new uber SMN hands!

All in all a good fun night and it's a step in the right direction. I think we are going for Omega now which is infinitly easier to get to and to kill. Hopefully we can get melee some Homam (finally!) and start heading back to Ultima for some more Nashira (yes, please). Good times!

After that everyone kinda crashed. We were pretty exhausted. I know I was. I started the day duoing BLM with Santiago, finding out that spamming tier 3 and tier 2 agas do just as much damage in alot less time. I ended up 2k tnl before we headed out for Ultima.

After that I decided to take a shot at Aht Urghan mission 13 "Lost Kingdom". It's a Fomor NM named Jazaraat way out in the western part of Caederva Mire graveyards. I almost solo'd it with grav, nukes, and DoT's but he ended up double-attacking me (both were crits) and then he used a TP move on me that is BIND! That was the end of me... one hit after being bound and I was toast. I called out for some BLM support and Sartre came running. I offered him gil which he refused after the kill. LS mates helping LS mates... that's what I like to see. I have to make a note to myself that I owe him a favor. I just know he's going to cash it in on a CoP mission...

Finally, it seems some veterans to ffxi are leaving. Both leaders of BBQPlatinum are hanging up their controllers/mice and calling it quits. I wish we could have left on better terms but I still wish Hulkk and Donnie the best. They put together quite an impressive endgame LS and were always respecting to surronding LS's. Also a good friend Tuufless is quitting. I have gotten to know {Tough}less for a while, he was always out to help people and even though he dabbled ever so gently in endgame he steered clear of any drama and made sure he had fun playing a game, which is really what it's all about. He has made the difinitive resource for camps Campsitarus as well as an intriguing Goldsmith's blog called Shiny Things. Tuuf has always been a example of the kind of player we all strive to be. You will be missed Tuuf, good luck in real life. I hear it's a jungle out there.

Back to the Subterrane

So I decided to give this BLM solo thing a shot. It took some trial and errors but after finding that tier 2 agas and tier 3 nukes weeren't really worth it and Burst was somewhat being resisted I settled on Flares. I found a spot in the area that has 3 Qiqirn that pop very close and repop is 16 mins so by the time I kill the 3rd, I can go back to the 1st and he's up. Let me outline a little better. The main mob is Qiqirn Enterpriser:

They are a RNG type mob that checks VT to me as a 61BLM. The great thing about these things is no matter how much damage I throw at it, it never rushes in to attack me... It just stands there and shoots arrows at me. Well each Flare hits for 1050 and 4 usually take them down. That equates to about 4200 damage that you have to do. My strategy is to cast stoneskin, blink, flare, blind, and then sleep 2. I eat a Wizard Cookie and rest to full MP. Repeat. Without empress band on they give 312xp per kil and with the empress band on they give 468xp per kill. Really this is easy xp that requires very little, (if any) attention. Last night I did this for two hours while watching Talledga Nights on my PC... Easy stuff, and no stupid XP party is pulling my mob. The other benefits (like I said yesterday) is the auto-refresh from sanction and the closeness to Aht Urghan as opposed to way out in BFE Bibiki Bay.

BOOM!

Multi Muzzle

So I login yesterday to go level BLM since Monday was a bit of a fiasco. I decide to try Aydeewa Subterrane which I'm told has Qiqirn Enterpriser which I'm told is a soloable mob for BLMs. Well, being a RNG mob it is because you can nuke the hell out of it and all it does is try to shoot at you. I was able to kill one for 300xp with no Empress Band on (450xp with?!) but it was slow going and used alot of MP. I would say I have to cast 2 Flares and 2 Quakes to kill it, while it only takes 1 Flare and 1 Thunder II to kill a Hobgoblin Rarab. Either way, I kinda like this area better because

1. I can get Imperial Standing.
2. I can get Qiqirn Sandbags which desynth into Silica which actually has some demand right now.
3. When we don't lose the Astral Candy... I can get auto-refresh with sanction on!

Unfortunetly, I got 1 mob in before I heard "LB is dying to Cerb!". Ugh, so I warped, job changed to RDM/DRK, realized that Odin lost in Besieged so I couldn't use Runic Portal. I had to sub DRK so I couldn't escape once inside Halvung... so I had a long ass run to get into Mt. Z. At least I found Archaic Mirrors along the way and marked them on my map for future reference.

By the time I arrived most of LB had home-pointed or tractored and was weakened. Our LS pulled with 4 and held for almost 10 minutes... I guess they felt they weren't going to lose out again by being overly cautious. Well they held him till the cavelry came and we never had a problem. Two Gates of Hades got through... 1 was on mine but I KNOW I stunned it. There must have been massive lag and I got the chatlog line late. Either way we recovered and had only 2 deaths from the whole fight. This time Cerb was nice to us. Two claws, one hide, one meat, and one Algol. That sword is so sexy, and it's kinda the only way people can know you killed Cerberus without checking your title. Since Mantle and Bow can be bought, this is the only rare/ex item that he drops.

Afterwards I was convinced to return to Airship BCNM. I once said after I died so much to that stupid ass fight... "I'll never do Snoll or Airship EVER again". Well, I was somehow convinced to go as BRD (well, a nice free reraise hairpin was thrown in) and we got Madberserk and Ncloud both Sea access. Congrats on that! Now we need to get these new sea-goers into some Limbus/Jailer action.

Aspi sunk (I wasn't on board)

Got home last night and tried to solo on BLM, a party was there. They said they weren't going to stop pulling the Animalier even though there were TONS of other mobs to chain off of. Got sick of it, came back RDM. Brought along my NPC and starting killing Gobs . Got my NPC 57 but got bored trying to pull their mobs... it was true, there were tons of mobs to chain off of. Camped Intulo, popped him, got a curaga earring.


I wanted Magic Slacks...

Went back to Aht Urghan, synthed up a pair of NQ Cursed Slacks and NQ Blessed Trousers. No skillup... We were buying time for a NM pop, so I headed back out to Bibiki Bay as BLM. Sure enough, same damn party was there. This was, like, 4+ hours later... They still refused to let me have the gob so I moved. Found a gob who has a pullable pet but it's a distance. If the rarab gets 2 shot in on my stoneskin it's gone. Killed 3 rabbits, then died... Reraise 2 was on. I got up and warped. We were to gather for Aspi.

Changed to BRD, finally used my newly aquired Volbow Outpost (Windy hasn't hardly ever controlled it since I changed allegiances). Camped Aspi alongside BBQ and LB and it popped. LB claimed, killed no problem (duh) but only W Body dropped. LB has been looking for members to hand out Dalmaticas to since almost every single one of their mages in shell has one. That thought stayed with me for most of the night where I sat in my mog house waiting for the slacks/trousers to sell (1.7M and 600k respectivly).

While in my mog house a buddy sent me a tell that he stunned Kirin. MANY people will say he's unstunnable, but with enough Dark Magic and ES on you can stun him. I bet him he couldn't and he produced an undoctored pic of a stunned Kirin. I made a little sig for him while I sat in my mog house and eventually logged off after sending it to him. Here's the sig:

just a random thought for LB

Revisiting the Cerberus situation with LB...

Multiple members of LB told me that Res needed to be faster with our claim, and thats why they rushed in and took it from us with 8 people in their party...

Yet this weekend Auronku claims Fafnir and dies because his alliance couldn't cure/invite him in time. Clan claims and HANDS IT BACK to LB. Now this is called respect, something we didn't recieve at Cerb. The only reason I mention this is because Auron told me in tell:

a) We gotta be faster if you want the big kills
b) We will have the same thing happen us again, especially with the JPN shells.

Well, seems not Auron. If that were so, then Clan wouldn't have handed you guys back Fafnir even though you lost it when you died. I'm just trying to make a point here, even in the endgame arena, LS's can show respect to other LS's that actually do the work, i.e. camping a HNM (us) as well as claiming a HNM(you).

source: http://my.opera.com/ashira/blog/ (since LB is saying it's a lie, I'll pass along where I got the info)

Sunday remix

Sunday was a pretty lazy day. I started off trying to get some skillups, which as of late have been a real pain in the ass. I got +0.1 from a pair of Blessed Trousers which got me to 94. Then I did something stupid (again) and bought 2 stacks of Rainbow Cloths and Silk Threads to make some Rainbow Capes. Well... they cap at 94 and I realized this as I was getting my advanced support at the guild. Needles to say I didn't get a Prism Cape, so I desynthed them all and got back 4 stacks of Raibow threads. I turned 3 stacks of thread into 1 stack of cloth, and sold the stack of cloths and threads. I ended up getting no skill and no +1. It cost me 1.2M for the materials and I got back about 800k... Like I said, I'm stupid. Later on I bought 8 War Berets @ 75k each, and 8 Phoneix Feathers @ 2k each. Synthed all eight, didn't get a single skillup. Dammit all to hell.

I picked up a Kirin's Pole for 750k, I got BLM to 61, and then headed out to Dynamis - Xarcabard. Once again, no chapeau dropped, but we got WAR body and MNK head which finished out the sets for Tohmane and Rihai respectivly. CONGRATS YOU TWO!

Finally we headed up to Horlais Peak for some KS99. I got 3 runs in and the LS did a total of 5 runs. We won all but 1, because 3 people DC'd and 1 person went AFK while dead... We still had 4 more orbs to do but ran out of time so we're going to finish them up Friday. Hopefully, we stay on schedule and head up the promies tonight so I can get my darn Magnetic Earring!

Limbus, Jailers, and Cerberus. OH MY!

This afternoon we did some Limbus action, we decided to go after HQ Beastmen. Another new floor to me but fairly straightforward. 2 mobs in all 4 corners of a room, 3 more in the NW and SE corners, and finally the 3 HQ Mega Bosses in the middle. Not to hard, We had lots of time, 47 coins for 18 people. Was nice to see new stuff in Limbus. We should be doing Ultima this week sometime, possibly this weekend.



After that we gather in the Garden of Ruh'Met for some jailer action. We planned to farm the Ix'Aern and pop Jailer of Temperance and Jailer of Fortitude. We got our parties together and we get the call that Cerberus just popped. We were outta sea and into Halvung in about 5-7 minutes. No one else knew, but lots of people saw a sea of orange dots heading for the Runic Portals so it was only a matter of time before people who didn't camp it found out it was up.

Now I want to stray away from being a drama magnet, but as we were setting up our parties LimitBreak charged in with 8 people. I kinda asked Costello before his party even got there if they planned at making a go for it. His answer was "maybe", which was obviously BS cause he had a sea of people en route. Telling us yes would force his hand, so instead of lying he just didn't tell the truth. To me, it's pretty lowly and disrespectful to charge in like that. Its not like this is Fafnir or KB, we camped it, we were organizing for it, and LB pretty much just said, "Too bad, too slow". I look at this as if our LS gathered for Jorm or Tiamat and as we're finishing up our parties another one run in with 8 people to claim and hold. It's not illegal, it's just disrespectful.

It's also embarrassingly disrespectful the way alot of my LS was talking in say. I don't condone it, I don't agree with it, but I am in no position to stop it. Especially when our leaders are the ones doing it. To categorize myself with people that are rude in /say is pointless. That's like saying that I look at LB members as gil buyers since one of their members has spent hundreds of dollars on his character purchasing gil... but I don't look at LB as gil buyers. Even if one was really bad at buying gil. I'd expect them to feel the same about myself and who/what was said in /say during the fight.

Anyways, congrats on the win LB, you definetly didn't earn it but you sure as hell got it (along with an Algol). Let's hope in the future you can show a little more respect to a LS that camps a NM instead of riding in on our coat-tails and claiming a mob with 1/3rd your alliance, hoping to hold it for your slow as molassus teammates.

Guess I don't avoid the drama magnet too well do I?

stupid.

So yeah, the Ix'grah cannot be duo'd nor killed by DoT and just "run around". To begin with after 2 grav/binds it resists. To effectivly beat that NM you'd have to land 20-30 grav/binds.

aint happening.

Also I was able to land poison II. bio II, choke, shock, and burn. They were on 5x for 1:00 each time, did 0% damage to it. To effectivly kill this you'd have to land those spells for hours.

aint happening.

Instead, I nuked it with Thunder III, did 2% damage. Then regen'd it all back in 2 minutes. I eventually gave up and died. We waited for hours and hours for our other pt to meet up. Literally, 2 hours for them to catch up to us @ the NM. I fell asleep twice. They finally showed up at 3:30 am and we killed it without a problem. The ironic thing is, I joined up with this person to farm my organs, then to farm LS Grah chips, and I somehow convinved myself to help with this mission.

/slap

Nice or just stupid?

So I logged in and offered to help farm organs for a LS mate who just got Sea. Well that turned into farming Grah chips inside. That somehoe turned into doing Mission 8-2, (duo'd). When I decided to try and help him I was thinking this was 8-3 (which can actually be solo'd by a BLM or RDM as long as you sleep/log any aggro you get.

Well, it wasn't 8-3, it was 8-2.

The mission where you escort 5 NPC (Quasiluminums) around the Palace and try to not die in the process... yeah that one. It ends with an Ix'Grah. I really don't want to try and duo this thing but he asked someone in another HNMLS and they convinced him it can be duo'd by putting max DoT on it and running around. I don't think I can kill a NM thats somewhere around level 85 by just DoT... but for some stupid ass reason I'm offering my help.

We'll see how this turns out.

Dynamis - Tavnazia loss... no pics

So yeah, I was both excited and annoyed last night in Dynamis - Tavnazia and never got around to getting any pics. We go again on the 20th so I'm hoping to get pics then. We got to the last boss but lost because we weren't stealthy enough to sneak by the NPC Diabolos mobs and the main boss just destroyed us. I'm kinda pissed that Mazurka works in every Dynamis zone, and it works in the Tavnazian Safehold, but does it work in Dynamis - Tavnazia??? NO! Stupid SE. Talk about glitches... when we got to the Diabolos NPCs Christmas music started!!! I kid you not. Even our time was screwy. We were to be kicked at 8:19pm but our designation didn't wear off on the hourglass until 8:21pm. -.-

Anyways the main 2 bosses spam Sleepga and Bio-ga and when they attack you they don't wake you up. That's fun. We need to refine our strategy a bit but we did kill the 2 time extension mobs, we killed the subjob mob, and we had 38:00 left to get to and kill the final Diabolos mobs. We just fudged up getting there.

Sorcerer's Tonbon-1 dropped for AF2+1 BLM legs. No Chapeau, I was high bidder. I hope we get that win next time...

BLM AF done

Yesterday I realized I needed to get my Wizard's Pestasos so I wrangled a few LS mates up and headed out to Toramai Canal (sp?). We used a lil cheat in killing the NM. Santiago sneaked up and pop his elemental. Then he walked back to the party and waited for it to despawn. Once it did I waited 5 minutes and popped my elemental. The party killed it and we both clicked the ??? for a CS. Usually for 2 BLMs you would have to kill 2 NMs. Congrats to Santiago and myself for Pestasos. Also a big thank you to Hex and Fatally and all that came out to help.

After a successful Limbus run where we got BRD, RDM, MNK, DRG, and PLD items (+48 coins and a metal chip!) I took up duo'ing with my BLM partner (yes the one who sold me out after I sold myself out) and we both got to 60BLM. We are actually only about 1400 xp apart when it comes to levels. I don't see us stopping this until 62(ish) since we can still get Chain #1 300xp without Empress Bands on. Eventually we will be able to solo these for probably 250-225xp per kill and keep getting more insane xp from not being in a normal boring party. Tonight I have Dynamis Tavnazia, and I am REALLY excited about it. Expect many many pictures tomorrow from this new zone.

Also, props to Frozenx for adjusting the BBQ blog. It originally said that we pulled Cerb @ 13% after BBQ's 2nd wipe. Unfortunetly that wasn't the case and Fx was already warped and/or logged off. We pulled at 45% (it's went from 13% to 23% to 34% to 45%) not the 13% that was originally stated. With so much drama in endgame I'm really glad this was cleared up without a bickering session.

Muzzler

So, we killed Cerberus, what fun it was, and somewhat of a hassle. I'll illustrate what the facts were and try to sway from making it dramatical.

- I was duoing in Bibiki Bay with a BLM that I have duo'd with many times. We were being "covered" by a member of BBQ (seems they were bf/gf). Things were goin fine
- A LS member says, /l I'm bored, I'm gonna check Cerb
- Three mins later /l CERB IS UP! No one is here!
- I tell my duoing partner I have to go because a NM is up, and it's Cerb
- I warp to Cerb, get there, and BBQ is gathering
- I find out that our BBQ back @ Bibiki Bay found out about Cerb from his gf... yay.

We gathered and had about 13 people, BBQ started to gather and we see them with 6. For some reason, they claimed it, did 1% damage and wiped. That semmed somewhat pointless. So they had someone tractor them and start to raise. We were still at about 15 people and we weren't rushing in. They got about 12 I think and pulled. BBQ was hacking away at it but Cerberus is not that hard until 25%. BBQ got to about 45% and missed a Gates of Hades. Wipe. We waited for it to regen to 100% and we finally had a full alliance with a few outside paralyna people. We went in.

I had never fought him and didnt know what to expect. Cerb has paralyzga, a fire spit conical attack, and a huge AoE attack called Gates of Hades. Luckily, Gates of Hades is stunnable and quite slow. Still, if you don't stun it your done for. You won't wipe with 1 but you'll go from 100% to about 30% in 1 shot. We got him to about 27% and then we had to start looking for GoH. We stunned the first but didn't have the cycle down. On the 2nd one we missed it and it got through. We couldn't recover and wiped at about 24%.

We reraised and started tractoring, and got everyone up. BBQ went for round 2 when it regenned. At this point we just we spectators, watching how they attacked it. Also, this time they had more members than before but some of their tanks and other jobs had left. They still did really well, they took it to about 10%, maybe less. Then a GoH got through. They looked like they were recovering and actually did. A few minutes later, another, and then another. They were done.

Hex said in LS no one pulls till it hit 40%. I asked why and he said something about hate and stun... I don't know. We watched it tick its HP... 23%, 34%, 45%. We claimed at 45% because 1) it was late and 2) It was obvious both LS's could take it to 20% without difficulty. This time we had a stun order laid down in concrete. We took him to 20, 15, 10%. Stunning every GoH. I wasn't really concerned with doing anything to Cerberus when it was my other 2 RDM/DRK's turns to stun. I was refreshing my people in my party and my outside paralyna's were getting me VERY fast. When I was up to stun I watched that screen like a hawk for "Cerberus readies Gates of Hades". That was my cue to execute my Stun macro. Sure enough we got him down and finally killed him. 1st kill for the LS and drops were Claw x2, Hide, Meat. No Algol :( but we did kill it.

Afterwards we went to the Hostel and wasted gil on fireworks and costumes. So in 3 days of being in Res I've killed Nid and Cerb. Good introduction.

cerb

3:28am right now but tonight we found cerb and tookhim down, details + drama to follow tomorrow.

a new day

So after learning that one of the HNM LS's I was looking to join had no interest in accepting me (28 no's vs. 3 yes's) I was ready to give up on ffxi. Reputations take you pretty far in this game and mine's pretty crappy. I've asked around for a new end-game LS and most said no thanks. Finally, Friday I got a tell from someone I never thought I would. Hex from Resurrection.

Hex and I were in the same LS before he created Res. Since that time he has been on the opposite side of every LS I have camped with for almost 2 years. I had come to hate him for the simple fact that he wasn't on my side. This escalated from incidents that came about from other Res members, most notably Azeral trying to MPK me at our 1st Nid claim.

Well, after some deliberation I decided that, hell he was giving me a chance, I'd be selfish not to give him and his LS a chance. I showed showed up at Dragon's Aery Saturday morning since they were camping Faf/Nid. I was invited to a party but given no pearl. I camped for 2 hours with them and Nid popped. Hex claimed and we got him in our alliance. Nid, so we meet again.

This time I was in a party with people who knew what to do, what WS's to do, how to announce their intention to do said WS, and finally BLMs that knew how/when to MB those SC's. Then a veteran RDM of the LS showed up and was invited to my party. I was in a party now with WHM, RDM, RDM, BLM, BLM, BLM. We were doing fine then a BRD needed to come in. Well of course I was kicked (not asked to disband >:-\ dammit) and I outside healed while they grabbed the BRD. At that point I was told I had my pearl after the kill. It took 48 minutes and M Body/N Legs dropped. Unfortunetly I didn't get my title, but there's always next pop.

Next we did Temenos Central (floor 2) and won with under 1:00 left. One step closer to Nashira. Ended up with 4 coins bringing me to 20 and I got to finally see a new area of Limbus! Sunday was a mix of success and distress. Sunday morning I did Dynamis - Buburimu (victory) and we ended up with RNG belt, DRK hands, MNK hands-1, BLM hands-1, and two pairs of RDM hands -1. Our most successful run (drop-wise). Later we attempted Jorm in Ule Range. We had anough people but 3-4 people were in the wrong jobs (me included but I was told to come BRD!), and after starting over @ 90% we took him to 74% and kinda threw in the towel. A good chunk of players was EU or JPN and it was like 3am GMT and 8am JST. We're going to attempt him again next Saturday.

I'm exhausted, but excited at the same time. Res isn't as bad as I, or some others, make them out to be... there are some idiots in the shell but the problem is they are very "loud" idiots to others, whereas in other LS's I was in the idiots were idiotic toward their own LS members, not other LS's. I'm happy so far, there just needs to be a little less bickering. Pointing the finger at people for their mistakes doesn't change what happened in the past. You just need to learn from it and move on.

BRD AF2 done

So last night I finally got around to doing a city run and it was Jeuno. I haven't been to the cities in months, and the last 2 times I went to Jeuno the slippers didn't drop. Luckily for me they did this time. So now that I closed out BRD I can continue to sandbag my points so that I can keep my place in the pooverbial "Cheapeau Line". Right now I think I am #5 in line which means if I'm lucky I might see a hat come my way before the end of the year. In a week we're going to try Dynamis - Tavnazia for the 1st time, so that's something else which will be new and probably take a lot of xp from me.

In other news my blog's page loads has jumped due to Ohemgee's sad attempt to be cynical by putting my url in his sig. Funny thing about Ohemgee is he sold his account earlier this year (which technically makes him RMT) and now he wants it back and can't get it back (haha). He spends as much time as ever trying to be funny in forums since he can't get in-game any longer, so he must have been jealous of my RDM because he's recently put his crosshairs on me. Oh well, at least I don't RMT and I have my character still. If anyone asks him about it he, of course, denies it saying that his account was "stolen" (how clandestine) yet if you looked hard enough you would find a post on KI's Odin forum where he was asking if anyone wanted to buy his character for $500 before he put it up on eBay. Haha, pathetic.

i love tarus

So last night I logged on so that I could possibly get some BLM xp in. I found a 59BLM who was a taru and had pretty good INT gear. He was fairly new, and didn't have the gil to buy a reraise earring and/or ginger cookies. He only had 30k and when I told him we would duo in Bibiki Bay he told me he had never ever been there. I asked if he had CoP and he said of course, so a friend tele'd us out there and we headed out on Choco to Bibiki Bay.

We arrived to an empty camp (yay!) and the Hobgoblin Animalier wasn't being pulled. All the conditions were right. I explained to him that I would pull the rarab with Blind, he would sleep 2 and if that failed he'd Sleepga 2. "I don't have Sleepga 2". /sigh ok well I'll sleep it if you fail, but you are a 59BLM taru with INT gear you won't fail. I put on reraise, stoneskin, invis, and headed out. "Ready?" I ask. "RDY!" he types.

I pulled the rarab and came back to camp, and there he is resting. Two hits later I lose stoneskin and on the third hit I take 160 dmg. Only then does he finally stand up and start Sleep 2. I take another 180 dmg and his Sleep 2 is resisted, so I stun and start Sleep 2. I get to 60% and the rarab finishes me off. Then it moves to the taru. 1 shot takes 80% of his HP. I reraise up and sleep 2 it. "I forgot to put up stoneskin" he tells me. He's now @ 22HP, I'm at about 30HP. He starts casting Burst and I realize I have 224MP cause I'm weakend and used Sleep 2. He cast Burst and took 50% of it's HP, but the rarab finished him off right after. I cast Stonega 2 and got it to 5% and it killed me.

Two dead BLMs, no reraises. "Thanks, it was fun, I'm going out to dinner now with my parents". He HP's and disbands. Great. I got a raise from a passerby and threw inthe BLM towel for the night.

Seeked on RDM for 30 mins and never got an invite so I grabbed my NPC pearls and headed out to Castle Oztroja. I was soloing Prelates and High Priests and not getting any of the money scrolls, and then a pary of 5 tarus rolls up behind me. They weren't RMTs but instead they were Japanaese. There was a SMN, WAR, NIN, WHM, WHM so I asked if they wanted Refresh. They thanked me and told me they needed a Judgement Key. Easy drop off the Flagellants, I get 1 from every 4 or 5 I kill.

We killed stuff for 2 hours with no drops. It was fun though. XP dropped considerably because of the amount of people but it was nice to help some people. Sucked that we never got the key but we did get both WHMs their testimonies and I was able to snag 2 Kindred's Seal and 1 Beastmen Seal. We disbanded around 12:30am and I was lookig to head to sleep. I hit the AH to sell the scrolls and they were all around 1-2k. Reraise 3 was 4k I think. I NPC'd them all for 2500 and went to sleep.

Not a bad night, I felt good about finally being able to offer some "pseudo-help". Dynamis Jeuno tonight, if Bard's Slippers drop I will be 5/5 on AF and finally finish BRD AF2. I hate Jeuno though. We'll see I guess.