The Final Stretch

So I should really update more often. I forget a lot of what I do with in a weeks time. Seems last time I made a post I was 69 BLM. Apparently at some point I got 70 though I don't remember exactly when. I do remember getting 71 though. Tybo and I went out and started duo'ing Puddings in Mount Zhayolm Monday morning. We ended up talking to then inviting any BLM that showed up to our party. Was great experience and even though the exp per kill was lower the best exp per hour was @ 5 BLM's. Only one BLM mage I spoke with turned down my offer for a party. Still not sure of the reason but oh well.

Um. To back up a bit at some point I got Jupiter's Staff which completed the big 3 for BLM. Honestly I would like to own all HQ stave's but first would like to focus on other gear needed for BLM. Then start with my goal for attaining the other HQ stave's.




That was an old pic but I thought it was funny and sort of relevant.

Sunday I slept through assaults. It really drives me crazy when I do that. It just can be really hard for me to wake up sometimes. I woke up at one something and most's the assaults were done. I think I did some Pankration while I waited for Salvage. (I passed out again while doing so.) Salvage went pretty well imo except for the fact nothing dropped. I also decided to go for a Mythic weapon though I doubt anyone took me serious. Still not exactly sure which one but most likely the Vajra.

Good to have a long term goal even if it is crazier than Itaz and his 2 Salvage body pieces. ZNM sucked when trying to do it "Legit". Wasted two pop items trying to find a way to do enough damage to the main nm and deal with the spawns. Eventually we gave in and did the zone strategy which felt a bit less rewarding but actually was more rewarding in regards to getting items. Personally I'll take the items and let others feel like they are superior.

Then Monday after the manaburn died down it was time for Dynamis-Bastok. I was finally able to go as BLM and I really enjoyed it. Was a lot more to do than when I was on RNG. Oh and I got the kill shot on the Mega Boss.

Had a lot of dead people on the ground from the AoE but I was able to stay out of Range and nuke it and at the final 1% cast drain on it as everyone was dying and some were deleveling. Then rested up and started casting raise on those I could.

Then last night we did some CoP. I was really disappointed that one of our members didn't show up. Unfortunately I had to make the decision to go without him. Not one I wanted to make regardless of what some may think. I was upset before at a previous situation with the same member but I got over it and was all for giving him another chance. I had mentioned a little bit in my post 5.2 post wasn't anything bad but I decided to go back and minimize what was said. Basically the same message but less wordy.

I do want to say that at first I felt very bad about deciding to continue on without him. This was due to the fact that the first post I made was very short notice (well everyone knew I wanted to continue on but wasn't sure if I could get the people). I made a post monday night saying I thought I might have the people to go.

Today I confirmed it before heading to work and made a post. So yea it was late notice. Before work I also gathered what anima's I could and sent them to those who should have been going on the mission and I knew probably didn't have any. This included Piddle, Kyzuf, and Celess. The kicker is when I realized Celess wasn't on and Kyzuf had called him repeatedly and wasn't answering I decided to go pull the anima I sent to Celess out of my Delivery Box so I could send them to someone who would be able to attend. They weren't there.

Meaning he at least logged in sometime after I went to work and before I got home and checked his Delivery Box seen CoP related items. Either ignored the ls message or wasn't on Blue (which is fine not a requirement to be on Blue 24/7.) But one would think someone would check the ls in which they normally do CoP with on the day the normally do said CoP.

Bleh this is turning into a rant and borderline attack on a fellow ls mate. That's not a good thing so I am gonna stop there.

We were a bit behind schedule due to some confusion after the situation occured. Still even a little behind we were able to get back on track and climbed to floor 4 without a hitch. Killed the two nm's and were about to move on when after he had been complaining about lag for a while Hawkman (a friend who also needed the mission d/c'd). We waited for a little while then me and Tybo made the decision to move on. We had a feeling that he was already tired before the d/c and that if he couldn't get right back on he probably would give up and go to bed.

It appears we made the right choice because he didn't show back up. We continued on and got to the 5th floor nm. Took it on and decided to move on to the BCNM and at least give it a go. We still had six people but due to a misunderstanding we had 2 whm's. Turned out to work out very well. The fight was amazingly easy and we were very close to setting the record even though we had two WHM's instead of another DD in one of there places. Still I think our set up was a very safe one and actually very effecient. PLD WAR WAR BLM WHM WHM for those wondering.

Afterwards I ran around did a few cs's read up on the next mission and planned the future of the CoP group for the next 2 weeks.

Again I want to say that I am very glad that Blue is my home in FFXI and here's to the Final Stretch of BLM the reason I decided to start blogging in the first place.

I'm a Slacker. Sue me.

Ok so again I am slow with the updates. So seems like last time I checked in I was just barely 67. So quite a bit has changed. Thanks to me being not so picky I decided to join Laa and Lp one night for BLM trio even though they were well below Staves level. Boy am I glad I did. Not only was it a lot of fun the exp was great as well and on the first night I got 68.

We went to West Sarutabaruta [S] first two nights and Rolen joined us one night and Itaz another. Second night Laa and Lp hit 47 and exp started to dip a bit so we decided the next day we would go to Gustav Tunnel. Oh yea 41 is where we started so 6 levels in 2 nights! The next night we went to Gustav tunnel as I said. Unfortunately the exp per kill was lower than I was expecting but we still were getting great exp per hour due to a SAM there killing mobs in the way to other BST's and their pets.

So at a few points we had 4 BST mobs that we could pull from. Tybo came out and joined us for a while and we were getting quite a few chain 5's. Oh and I got 69 BLM that night! Laa and Lp got 50 so we are AM levels now. I think both Laa and Lp leveled a bit without me which is a good thing because I think they both hit Staff level. Which is a "Yay!" in my book.

Sunday I didn't sleep and got all the way up to the final BC in A Crystalline Prophecy. Got lucky as I was aiming to get my Mark of Seed for first BC I got a /tell asking if I wanted to do the fight. I jumped on the chance and got the fight done with relative ease. Except the tank d/c'd with one mob left. But it was easy enough to kite around until he showed back up so we would not have to redo the fight. Finished the rest of the cs's and climbed up the Tower and was ready for final BC.

Then it was time for assaults. Got those done 2x RvB and 2x Lamia No. 13. Lamia was fun because it was the first time I was able to bring BLM to assaults. After we got done I saw a shout for final BC for ACP. I think we had a pretty good set up but the fight is a crazy one. Still I saw a few things that could have been tweaked for a better set up. We lost the fight @ 30% when the PLD got charmed.

They all wanted to go again but I was already starting to run late for codex and panty farming. So I had to go. We went to start the Codex farming and it took a while but me and Terre finally got our codex's. We then started to farm THF fomors for panties. Val got his panties but everyone was starting to get tired or something so Yev didn't get hers >.<. I was passing out but I was doing that all day. I had wanted to stay on and exp with Laa and Lp some more on BLM but If I didn't sleep I was probably going to die.

Monday I did Dynamis-Windurst for the first time. Everything was going well until we had to hug a wall to get past some mobs. Apparently at this point a single person can ruin an entire run. Which is exactly what happened. Everyone wiped. We tried a couple more times to just farm but wiped twice more. Then gave up and called it a night. After that a rl friend I haven't seen in a while had called me and wanted to hang out. Since it was my day off I decided to go over there. We played Call of Duty: World at War for like 5 hours. Then I came home and decided to try to get ACP done again. Saw a shout pretty quickly and decided to join.

Oh I forgot before Dynamis I climbed the tower for a second time. Anyway back to my story of how I hate my interconnectarwebz. So I get to the top of the tower and was waiting for everyone to arrive. Then my internet dies. It takes about 30 minutes for it decide to start working again. By then of course they have decided to replace me. I was pissed of course but I understood at the same time. It is the nature of pick up parties.

So I decided I would join Itaz and get my fomor hate taken care of. Didn't take long but again had an issue with my internet. I was very upset at this point and checked my fomor hate and logged out. Checked gardening on mules and logged out for the night after that.

Logged on today and was in Tavnazia. I had to switch to BLM still and I was already running a bit late due to some car issues. Finally got to Sacrarium and we went to go get the cs then off to fight the nm. Was a pretty interesting fight. I think we did well even though Laa was having connection issues. Afterwards though we had to farm another key due to some issues that should have been forseen.

Not blaming anyone I read the same thing and knew the same circumstances and didn't see the issue either. So we started off and things were kind of slow so I decided to go grab THF and run back so we would have TH2 and a more constant DD. Came back and wiped twice due to me thinking Sacrarium fomors didn't party. After the first pull I had suspicions but Itaz said they didn't party so I figured I just made a bad pull and after we killed the other fomors again I would try again. The second pull again led to 3 fomors and a wipe. We did manage to kill the red mage before we went down and it dropped the key we needed.




So we went on and I decided to get antsy and aggro'd a Taurus. I decided to make it a sac pull since I was already going to die and made a run for the door. Mrpiddle had to tractor me a couple times. Then I got a raise and we headed for the door to get our cs's (well Kyzuf, Celess, and I's cs's). After this we were done and started discussing next weeks event or lack there of.

Joined another ACP final BC run. Not even close this time. Not a good set-up at all. Oh well. Eventually I will climb the tower again. This fight is very reminescent of early days of CoP where you need to throw SMN's and RNG's at the boss. Really very lame. Oh well.

Still I knew the fight was fail before we went in. I like to try new things though so I decided I would go even though there was a DNC in the party. Epic fail but oh well. Seems like I am not destined to get my coveted RNG haste.

Anyway it's time to check my gardening and go to sleep.

EDIT: I totally forgot to say that I opened a chest in Sacrarium. I had the key from last weeks farming run. Peoples were like "wtf?" and all I said was "what a strange room" figured if anyone needed to know why 3.6k gil showed up in their wallets magically they could read my blog and find out.

Another Day.

So I finally convinced Itazura to join me on SCH to duo. We started out and were doing decently. I was pleasantly surprised actually on the capabilities of SCH. I was talking to Tybo on TS before we went and he was telling me how SCH was slower at using magic. While I did witness that to be true SCH was still a very useful job to have around and Itaz usually had plenty of mp which made chains easier. Another BLM showed up and was 73. I felt the need to preemptively make sure there was no fighting over mobs. I asked him to join. They agreed. I think they were JP. Didn't really say much but fell right into the groove with Itaz and I.

The only thing I did notice was he didn't cancel his stoneskin when Itaz would announce he was going to recast. Knowing Itaz he was probably slightly annoyed but really didn't turn out to matter much in my opinion. Ran around for a couple hours (maybe longer) killing qiqirns got a few chain #5's which was nice to see. Haven't seen those on BLM since I have no longer been able to one-shot pets. Got to about 7k~ tnl and Itaz asked my tnl which meant he was getting sleepy. So I asked the other BLM how long they had. They said 30 minutes so we went a bit longer and I got to 3k~ tnl and then gave Itaz and D2 and warped myself.

I did something in windy (can't remember what) then warped back to whitegate via the jerk that made me run all over town. Anyway headed to the lower level qiqirn camp and messed around there slowly getting exp while watching 30 rock on Netflix. (Oh yea I have dual moniters now which is great!) Nice getting to watch tv shows or movies while messing around on BLM. Anyways eventually I got my level (67) and decided I would try skilling up on these instead of going to campaign battles. It actually worked a lot better.

Didn't have to travel anywhere, very low risk of death, in fact I've died more in campaign skilling up. Also nice not having to wait for campaign battles. As usual I used dia and bio for dark and enfeebling. Also drain to get health back. When it came to elemental magic skills I spammed tier I spells and by the time I ran out of magic (enough mp to cast sleep II) I had the qiqirn down to 30% already. So instead of letting it heal up I just got enough mp to do a couple tier III's and finish it off.

The Bio and dia ones though I had to run over water to lose them and rest up and start over. but still was able to get a small buffer (only about ~1k) while skilling up elemental. Which was another added bonus compared to campaign.

Then it was time for sleep. Got home from work today and it was harvest time. Got a really good harvest on one character and the rest were pretty meh. Still though I would recommend it to anyone. Very easy gil and not all that time consuming. Actually thinking about it now I would change that to recommend it to anyone that logs in daily. lol. Then Tybo said he wanted to do something on his thf.

We ended up going to farm in SSG. The camp we usually use was taken (which has been happening a lot lately when we decide to go there) so the trip was pretty much a bust. Still it was pretty fun and I brought out BLM just to mess around. Got into a very exciting situation with a NM Sahagin, a blue sahagin(melee), and a bat. Was a crazy drawn out fight but entertaining at the least.

He had to get to bed early though and we weren't making much gil anyway so he logged out. I headed out to get some jellyfish and made a bit of mercury. Supply of fish was low (that's been happening a lot lately as well) but still was able to make a few gil of that.

Now I am sitting at my moogle thinking of what to do next. Pretty sure I'm gonna find a way to make some more gil.

Also again was very impressed with SCH in duo/trio situation I don't think I seen very many resists at all. Itaz said he has 6 elemental merits though but still very impressed. RDM would not have been able to keep up like SCH did. Itaz said he still preferred main healing (to each his own I guess) but I still hope that it was good enough of a time to hopefully get him to come out again sometime.

Ok enough avoiding farming >_<. Thanks for reading and see you in game!

Time to play catch up again.

So last time I made a post was nearly a week and a half ago. I've done a bit since then so going to get down to it. Found a nice place for a duo on BLM a while back and went from 64-66 lately hanging out there with Tybo while he capped his experience for his BLM. Really enjoyed having someone else around on BLM since I spent most of my time solo on this job. We were pulling in some crazy experience as well. I would compare it to an average pick up group or better which says a lot for a two-man group. Been trying to get others to join me as well. Very interested in trying to get Itaz to come out with us on SCH. I am very curious about how well it can perform.

Also been making progress in our CoP static. We finally caught up to where I am in the missions tonight so by next week I should be personally making progress in CoP once again. I am very excited about the whole thing and can't wait to get to see the storyline progress finally. I won't mind getting my Rajas ring at all either.

Also on Monday I did Dynamis-Jeuno and got my first piece of Relic. Was the BLM feet which seems to be a very nice piece can't wait to get the 5 more levels I need to wear them. Too bad the RNG relic didn't drop would have much rather had a piece I could use right away. Thursday is Dynamis-Windurst but not sure I will be able to make it due to work and how late we always enter. Might go for a while but not really sure.

I'm sure there is more I did but can't really think of it at the moment. Maybe I will post again once I think of something.