The entire month of November was pretty good, and the end to the month was no exception. We took a short break from events due to Thanksgiving holiday in the US, but we returned to action Saturday & Sunday and had a great weekend.
First off, I'll just get Saturday out of the way as we did Proto-Omega yet again. Drops were not fantastic, but we got 2 Smalt chips to kick start our next popsets so that was nice.
Total Omega Drop Summary (44):
Homam Corazza - 14
Homam Cosciales - 16
Homam Gambieras - 24 (+1 Nariseth)
Homam Manopolas - 23
Homam Zucchetto - 25 (+1 Floor)
Next up was Sunday events, which always consist of Einherjar and Dynamis. We were on our 2nd Wing 3 attempt to gain access to Odin and we got a wonderfully easy draw of mobs. Wivres/Scorps in the first wave, then Taurs + Khim boss in the 2nd wave. We cleared all our regular mobs with just above 10 minutes left and then killed Khim in just about 2 minutes, it was really super smooth. I think a repeat of Wing 1 will be in order before Odin so that we get a few more people access, but hopefully that is a formality and Odin goes down this week.
Afterwards, there was a Besieged going on so people hopped in there to recharge 2hrs for the Valkurm boss and we entered that zone right around our normal start time. Everything went great and we got the win as usual. Then we started farming, and those lame Hippos finally let loose with all the drops they've been holding from us. After that, Sabotendars and Manticores were dropping stuff as well. All in all, we got 20 total drops, including some really good ones ... 2 PLD capes, BRD -1, SMN -1, COR belt, 2 NIN belts, etc, etc. It really was an awesome run.
The coolest thing I noticed when filling out the drops on our spreadsheet was that with the drops yesterday, we've now gotten everyone possible accessory drop from each of the 3 CoP Dynamis zones at least once. Even the new jobs, we've seen all the drops at least once. It took forever for more PLD capes to start dropping, but now we're up to 5 of those total and now the really rare, really wanted drop is Cleric's Belts. We've gotten just 2 of those and the last one dropped in March. I hope to continue focus on CoP Dynamis zones in the future, not only because they still have plenty of drops our members need, but also because they're 2 hours instead of 3.5 hours. :P
Salvage:
Our Salvage success continued this week as we completed 2 more upgrades. Clannagh finally obtained all the Ingots for his Ares's Cuirass and picked that up and we got Nemain's Cuffs for Riz's Morrigan's Cuffs upgrade and he completed that. That brings our total completed armors for November to 8, with a total of 17 all time for our Salvage static. Things were slow going at the start, but things are going quite well now. We could even complete some more stuff with our run tonight and bump that November number even higher, but who knows!
Other Stuff:
I decided to toss a merit into Aura Steal to finally unlock that. It will be situational, but worth having. I'm not sure how many more upgrades I'll give it if any. I also need to unlock Assassin's Charge for THF and finish off Trick Attack recast rate. Those are my next priorities and then I can work on some RNG merits if I feel like it. I'm probably overdue for one of those boring Merit Plan posts, but since there's a LS vacation coming up over the holidays I'll probably save all my boring content until then. :D
Oh, and I spent a decent chunk of Friday getting WS points, many thanks to Rizelmine, and unlocking Empyreal Arrow for my RNG. I haven't used it yet, of course, but I'm glad that's done. Left on the to-do list for my RNG are unlocking True Flight and capping off Marksmanship and Archery, both of which have a few more levels to go.
That is all.
- November was Good.
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
vedderffxi- November 30th, 10:42
calm
- Salvaging Success Continues
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- vedderffxi
- November 24th, 11:59
lazy
My last Salvage update was when I completed Skadi's Jambeaux. Since then, we've completed 3 more pieces, including this for me:
I have a feeling these might not be much better than Black Cuisses for some WSes, but I'm not going to carry around 2 pieces of WS gear nor pay the gil for Onyx Cuisses, so these will work just fine for me. Yet another good piece of endgame WAR gear for my level 40 WAR. Hmmm.
Anyway, aside from these which I completed last night, we also got a Usukane Haramaki for Wodie and Usukane Gote for Superfesty. Each of those were completed in the last week as we got 35s from their respective NMs recently. All told, we're up to 15 pieces of completed Salvage gear for our group, which is pretty good considering we only go a maximum of twice a week. On top of that, we've got numerous other pieces of gear awaiting one drop to complete ... so I think we'll be picking up more completed armors more quickly as we go along.
Other Stuff:
Sunday, we had an amazing Dynamis-Xarcabard in terms of efficiency. We only had 26 people for most of the run and we killed more demons than we ever had before. I mean, I was pulling big pulls too ... stuff that we often wipe to, but we handled it all with ease. We were rewarded with 13 AF2 drops, but a good half of them at least were garbage and free lotted. We did manage to get our 12th Chapeau and 15th Petasos, so that was good.
The LS did another Omega while I was away Saturday, I'll recap the current drop totals below.
Total Omega Drop Summary (43):
Homam Corazza - 14
Homam Cosciales - 16
Homam Gambieras - 23 (+2 Anissa, Karmaaa)
Homam Manopolas - 23
Homam Zucchetto - 24
Hmmm, what else happened last week. Oh, we did another Dynamis-Buburimu and got our 3rd Valor Cape. Simpson won the lot which was great since he's been to more Dynamis with us than anyone but me. The rest of the run was good too, a couple of RDM belts and a few AF2-1 that people wanted. All-in-all, Bubu is Bubu ... we tear that zone up and it's up to SE to decide whether or not to reward us with drops.
We lost a winnable (in my opinion) Wing III Einherjar on Sunday, pretty much due to one Logi (Bomb type mob) out of 12 Self-Destructing and wiping most of our DDs. That completely slowed us down and kept us from having enough time on the boss to win. SIGH. Wing III is so entirely frustrating sometimes, but in the end it will punish you for mistakes so you better focus and be in top form or you don't deserve to win pretty much.
Since there's a holiday coming up in the U.S., we don't have any events Wednesday or Thursday, but I'll probably find something to keep myself busy when I'm not passed out from a turkey coma. :P
To wrap up, I'll leave you with this pic of me touching Elphaba inappropriately while we were fighting Battleclad Chariot. :O
- 75 RNG - About Time; Bye Bye, Taisai
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- vedderffxi
- November 16th, 12:54
- calm
This post title references the reaction I got in LS when I finally dinged (dung?) 75 RNG.... "About time!" I'm a notoriously slow leveler, and my RNG was already level 42 or something when I started to level it in earnest back in February or whatever. So 9 months later, I finally get level 75.
It wasn't a planned thing either, but I was asking around about a party Sunday night after events and dinner and a few people were interested, so we finally settled on a level sync camp in Wajaom near the leypoint. We didn't get the main camp, but we got the hallway and consistently got Chain 5, often surpassing C5 by a few chains before pops died out. I think we were getting about 15k/hr or so.
A few people in the party leveled up 2-3 times and then finally near the end of the party, I got my level. I was happy since I was only hoping to make a dent in 35k XP I needed to level going into the party, but getting there last night was awesome.
My RNG has fairly decent gear for a newly 75, but I'll have to give it a rundown some other time. I have a lot of work left to do on RNG as I need to cap out both Archery and Marksmanship again, as well as do some quests to unlock weapon skills that I still need. I'm hoping that RNG is pretty self sufficient on EP mobs and that I'll be able to make skill chains with my NPC and knock all those quests out without too much trouble. I'll probably end up capping skills at events >.>, but if I can get a merit party or something then that'd help too. I don't expect to use RNG much at events, probably just Odin and Sky, but that's good enough. It'll be nice to know we always have a RNG available for those things.
Taisaijin:
The other cool thing from the last week was getting the coolest title in the game. On the way to Dynamis-Beaucedine, I always go check for this NM since it's spawn conditions are pretty unique. When I got up the hallway, I saw a SMN who was trying to solo it. It looked like he was doing pretty well, but in the end he wiped with the NM around 12% health and home pointed. No one else was there, so I claimed it and called to everyone else that was waiting on Dynamis to begin to come down to the tunnel to get the title. The screenshot above is the accumulation of gathered folks.
Of course the NM died easily, but sadly no hat dropped as a trophy for anyone. However, the mission was accomplished ... cool ass title, "Bye bye, Taisai"!! I already queued an update on my ffxiah.com profile, so the title is stored for eternity, zoop.
Other Happenings:
- Thursday night we hit up Sea NMs and got both a Faith and Temperance Torque. We were originally intending to hit up JoL, but we ended the night after a couple of Prudences that put us in position to finish up 2 more JoL popsets next time for a total of 3. We need some more Novios like whoa.
- Einherjar on Wednesday was the biggest bone job we've ever had in a wing 2. Wave one, we got Slimes and Draguars. Wave two, we got clots. Ughhhhhh. Since almost no one subs NIN anymore, Fluid Spread was a killer ... Stunning was hit or miss, so when those mobs started spamming Fluid Spread we suffered many casualties. The good news was everyone hung in there and we killed all the regular mobs, but timed out on the boss. Everything was much better on Sunday as we breezed thru a draw of Bombs, followed by Dragons/Spiders, with the Dahak boss. Ahhhhh...
- The only other thing to report was 3x Ouryus downed on Saturday. Nothing exciting there, aside from the fact that we only had 14 real people there. A couple of dual box BLMs helped out, but mostly we did it with 13-14 real people and killed them just a bit longer than it took us with 18 people. This means there's more Bv2s coming sometime next month, woot!
- Skadi's Jambeaux Get!; Return to Bv2
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- vedderffxi
- November 10th, 12:49
tired
Last night was our first attempt at a Bhaflau Remnants boss in about 2 months... things went well and we finally got some drops we needed off the selfish bastard! Riz picked up a 25 for his Morrigan's Robe (he seems indifferent about completing it atm) and I got the 25 for my Skadi's Jambeaux, completing the piece!
It was the 12th completed piece for our group and my 2nd overall, first in 6 months. That's a pretty big gap, but we usually only go 2x a week at most so it is what it is. I didn't really want these that badly when we started out as I already had Trotter Boots and Crimson Cuisses, but when I pick up the 35 for these about 4 months back I wanted to complete them. Then I got Hermes' Sandals and I realized how much better Quick Draw damage was when I could wear my Denali Kecks instead of Crimson Cuisses while kiting and I decided I wanted the Jambeaux even more so I could sell my Sandals.
So, I don't know where these rank... somewhere in the list of top 5 armor that I wanted from Salvage, but not near the top.
The Wyrmking Descends Round 2:
After successfully zerging down Bahamut 3/3 times in our first trip, we headed back this month with a fresh batch of Orbs ready to use. This time we were much luckier with CORs resetting 2 hours with Wild Card, so we were able to attempt 4 Bahamuts in just about 2 hours time. Sadly, we were only successful on three of them as a Silencega -> Dispelga combo boned us in our 3rd attempt of the night. We managed to get it down around 30% with absolutely no buffs at all, but after that our Stuns wore and we wiped.
Fear not! The night was still a success. Last time we got all sorts of good ra/ex... this time was good for gil items. In total, we got about 12mil, of which 9m is going to be thrown into the pool for a split for our members. We're buying Evokers from the LS now, so we're reimbursing that cost from the drops we get at Bahamut. All in all, it's working out well so far and we're having a good level of success and fun so I hope we can keep it going. I snagged a Bahamut's Zaghnal as well, mostly for lulz... but I might like to see how it does on a zerg sometime, I dunno. I'm sure it won't be as good as M.Kris is.
Patch Thoughts!:
I don't have many! I'm usually all over the update info and trying to figure out what new items and quests I can get/do to most benefit my character, but this time I'm sort of just letting everything play out and I'll peruse over the results slowly as they come in. I did finally purchase the 2nd mini-expansion along w/ the newest one, so I picked up my Nexus Cape yesterday. It will be kind of neat to be able to teleport to my party leaders location... especially for ENMs or camping NMs like King Arthro.
I'll probably be most interested in the new Synergy Crafting process, but they didn't even release that yet so I'm out of luck for now. Oh well!
- Odin #10, zomg no D.Feet
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- vedderffxi
- November 5th, 10:45
excited
Last night was our much anticipated 10th Odin. It was just about like any other Odin aside from the fact that 10 is a nice big round number and like I mentioned last entry, something I dreamed as an unattainable goal about a year ago... shows how far we've come. And even though we've gotten some good drops in recent Odins, we've gotten some really bad stuff too... but not last night! A pretty good pool all around:
A.Feet & H.Hands are nothing to write home about, but better than some of the other garbage you can get in those slots. The best drops, of course, were our 5th E.Body and 5th Valkyrie's Fork. After losing the lot on the Fork last time, it was Lynkyn's this time... and as you can see, the E.Body line is orange meaning I lotted on it, but couldn't beat a 292, QQ!
Like me, Wodie's not gotten any drops from Einherjar yet either, so we both lotted and I'm happy he won. It gives me a few more chances for some N.Legs to drop before another E.Body does. I just hope we don't go on a super long drought or something and I'm talking about getting nothing from Einherjar this time next year, haha!
The ampoules from Odin's Chamber pushed me over 115k, so I can choose another 15k item and still keep a balance of 100k for the Mythic upgrade item in the off chance I try to upgrade that. I'm on the fence between Morgana's Choker for a COR/mage setup or a Delta Earring for Dancing Edge for my THF since I'll probably never get a Pixie Earring. The good news is that in another month, I'll have enough ampoules for whichever I don't end up getting this time so I'm not gonna sweat it too much either way.
Aside from the Odin, the only other thing I have to report is our 11th Ultima... which of course didn't drop a body for us, but oh well!
Total Ultima Drop Summary (11):
Nashira Crackows - 6 (+1 Darklunna)
Nashira Gages - 4
Nashira Manteel - 0
Nashira Seraweels - 5 (+1 Sirwaz)
Nashira Turban - 7
- A Dream Come True
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- vedderffxi
- November 2nd, 13:08
exhausted
Here's a little snippet from my LJ dated January 6, 2009:
"It'd be awesome if this time next year I was talking about our 10th Odin kill or something like that, haha!"
More or less, I was talking about goals for this year and at the time we'd not fought a single Odin yet. That would soon change, as we would defeat our first Odin on January 26th, but by this point I'd been through the rigors of Einherjar, especially Wing 3s, for a few months... and it wasn't hard to figure out that they are one of the most challenging things FFXI has left to offer.
Well, this past Wednesday we finally had everything gel again and we got a fairly easy Wing 3 win which opened up access to our 10th Odin, which will be upcoming later this week. So pretty much we've knocked out 10 Odins in 10 months since that post back in January... not bad, not bad. We could even knock an 11th or 12th out before our annual Holiday vacation, but let's not get crazy now. :D
Einherjar is probably my most favorite event that we do, which is probably why it causes me so much frustration at times, but it seems like people keep learning and things are getting easier for us again... I hope it continues.
Recap Since Last Entry:
It looks like it's been 2 weeks since I made an entry, so I'll try to touch on some of the highlights since then.
Dynamis-Qufim - Yesterday we hit up Dynamis-Qufim again and it was a pretty productive run. The most amazing thing from the run was that we got 3 HQ currencies from regular statues that occupy the zone. So rare have HQ coins been for us in CoP Dynamis areas that this was 3x as many as we'd gotten from statues/eyes in ~30 runs all time. I think one Tavnazia we got a HQ from an Eye, but other than that stats have never dropped coins for us.
Aside from that, we got 13 Drops, but nothing really great. The best thing to note for me personally was that I finally got my Assassin's Cape to complete 6/6 AF2 for all my jobs. It's not a great piece, mainly limited to unstacked Trick Attack, but it's been eluding me for some time so it was great to get. I appreciate Wodie passing too, though I didn't get the impression he wanted it that much.
Kirin: - Did 3 of these last night, including a merc. kill... which netted us a grand total of 8k worth of drops, but other than that we did get a W.Legs, D.Body, and 2 Shining Cloths which was a decent haul. We zerged the first one with great success and actually killed the 2 kited ones in pretty short order, so that was nice. Grats to Lunk (Lynkyn) on the W.Legs!
Ouryu: - We converted 3 Cloud Evokers into Monarch's Orbs for the LS over a week ago. We were going to do 4, but stupid KoN was there and had the BC tied up for about an hour. We're going to be trying to make BV2 and Ouryu regular events now, as long as we keep getting a good supply of Cloud Evokers.
Other Dynamis: - We had our once monthly midweek Dynamis a couple weeks back as well, it was Buburimu this time and we pretty much owned the zone like we usually do. I pulled a giant herd of Dhalmels again, which is always fun. Luckily we killed them all with little incident. We killed some Cocks too which produced lots of juvenile laughs. I think we did a Windy too, but Windy is Windy... not much else to say about that.
Sea Jailers: - We only hit up Jailers once in October and it happened to be in the last 2 weeks. There was much excitement as Jailer of Justice finally dropped another torque. Wodie exhausted his points to obtain it, so congrats to him. Later on Jailer of Love dropped a Novio which was pretty nice of him. We still need more!
Salvage: - Not anything super exciting from Salvage for me to report, but we did get a Macha's Slops (Rizelmine) and a Deimos's Cuirass (Evangel) within the last 2 weeks. I'm not sure that I have a whole lot to gain from Salvage anymore if I plan to do the Shantotto expansion... the reward are leg armor which can be augmented for Haste +3% and Acc +7. If those aren't better than Skadi's Chausses, they're certainly close enough. However, since I haven't even finished ACP nor bought MKD, I don't see myself picking up the ASA pants immediately, ha.
My only other comment about Salvage would be that our lotting guidelines have been pretty loose, since I set expectations with everyone that I didn't want people to be loot whoring or stepping over other people on drops. So far it's been working out well, even though some people have gotten more than others, most have gotten multiple 35s and people have passed items to others who may have more use for the item than they will. That's all well and good, but my fear is that once people start getting 2/3 on like, every armor set... then people are going to want to start lotting whatever they can to complete things and that toes may be stepped on. On the other hand, no one has approached me or posted on the forums about changing the lotting rules in any way, so I don't really feel compelled to change anything at the moment.
Omega: - Killed ourselves another Proto-Omega. He gave us Body for the first time in awhile. Here's the drop rundown.
Total Omega Drop Summary (42):
Homam Corazza - 14 (+1 Tsuruya)
Homam Cosciales - 16
Homam Gambieras - 21 (+1 Sanoskae)
Homam Manopolas - 23 (+1 Mcleod)
Homam Zucchetto - 24
Ranger XP: - Last but not least, I've been working on XPing RNG and got it to 73. I further XP'd it to just beyond halfway to 74 and I'm hoping to get a little time this week to FoV or Campaign and get it the rest of the way there. An actual experience points party would also be nice, but those tend to take bigger chunks of time that I don't really have lately. Level 73 is cool though cause it means I get to finally wear my Hope Torque and Blood Finger Gauntlets. I also purchased a Kriegsbeil from the AH, but I don't know if I'll keep it. I think I'm gonna probably want to use a Vulcan's Staff for anything I might come to events on as RNG... but in the meantime, it's got better stats than my Francisca so I'm using it in Campaign since I melee there quite a bit, being a cheap bastard and all not wanting to use Arrows/Bolts.
Some To-Do's for RNG include getting my Bow of Trials and opening up that Weapon Skill... as well as skilling Axe, Bow, and Marksmanship to the cap. I can't remember if I picked up a Killer Bow when we were doing Nyzul, but if I did then I will need to unlock lolTrueflight once I ding level 75.
Quotation of the Day: "
" - lolCode laying down the law for everyone in Campaign, hahahaha.
- Trying to keep my cool
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- vedderffxi
- October 19th, 14:28
predatory
I play FFXI for fun and to basically waste time that would otherwise be spent zoning out in front of the TV or being out somewhere spending money that's better suited being saved for something else.
So what happens when FFXI makes me so angry that I could easily punch a hole in the wall? Well, I just log off and disconnect from my IM services. Cause really, I just don't want to think or talk about it. The worst part is when I get /tells or IMs from people telling me what went wrong or how so-and-so messed up, like I don't fucking know exactly what happened. DUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRR.
Yesterday, we had an incident in Einherjar that cause a failure in a Wing 3 chamber that otherwise would have easily been a win. Essentially, the boss ended up being aggroed on the last wave before the rest of the regular mobs had been fought. Is that a HUGE problem? No, not really. You can kill mobs in any order you wish in Einherjar. You just have to kill them all, that's the only requirement. So we ended up bringing the boss (Freke - Cerberus mob) to camp and started fighting it.
Well, I don't understand what happened, but people just completely went brain dead. People were taking more damage than they should, melees and mages were dying unnecessarily, someone aggroed a few of the regular mobs, just total garbage. Now, I'm not unreasonable, I understand that we didn't start fighting this boss in the most prepared fashion possible (full MP, full HP, Soul Voiced BRD songs, etc), but we had a WHM AND a RDM in each melee party... and at this point, mages should know to get the hell back from mobs with nasty AoEs and all that stuff.
It's like people are on autopilot whenever things are going smoothly with no issues, but as soon as there is a hiccup or people have to actually react to something they don't expect then everything goes all to hell.
So yeah, long story short we wiped with that stupid thing at 3% and everyone had reraised at least once and the kill just wasn't going to happen. I felt bad for the person that caused the original mistake, because it wasn't the worst thing in the world... but you know people will blame him. I really want there to be someone else who can pull in Einherjar, but these growing pains are tough to handle.
After the time expired on our debacle, we were supposed to do Dynamis but I just told everyone to enjoy the afternoon off because I didn't feel up to it. Clan's in account recovery land and Chistoso was probably working, so I wasn't anywhere near the mood to deal with it all by myself. Afterwards someone told me that it was good that I canceled because maybe it would clue people in to the fact that they need to focus on things better. I hadn't thought of it that way, but if anyone took it that way then good. I can count on one hand the number of people in the LS that I would trust to know what they are doing when shit hits the fan and that number needs to be like 5-6 times greater than it is.
The Rest of the Weekend:
Friday Night - Silver Sea Remnants! No drops, of course.
Saturday Night - Linkshell did Proto-Omega since I wasn't able to log on. Archaon finally got Homam Cosciales!
Sunday - I logged back on later in the evening to pick up my Commodore Culottes +1
These aren't amazing, but they're pretty good for Detonator and I'll be using them for kiting as well. It's the most Evasion you can get on the leg slot for Corsair.
I'm sitting on 2 more AF2-1 items that I need to upgrade. Scout's Socks and Scout's Braccae. It sucks that each take a conquest tally cycle to be completed, but that's the way it is. Additionally on Sunday, I farmed up some Ovinnik Hides to make leather for the Scout's Socks upgrade. I'm probably going to do that one first since the NQ are level 74 and the AF2+1 are level 75. I can get them out of the way now and only miss wearing them for one level. The Scout's Braccae, on the other hand, are level 72 and I can wear them now. So I will probably wait until I get level 75 on RNG before I go ahead and upgrade those. I do have all the currency and materials ready to go though, so it's just a matter of waiting for the right moment.
Hmmm... so what else happened. Oh! It wasn't over the weekend, but I got to play NIN/DRK during our ZNM event on Thursday. We did the Soulflayer NM for the first time and it wasn't all that bad. I thank god that Zecilus had experience with it and didn't mind sharing the strategy and helping organize it. I've made it very clear that people need to research these things on their own if we've never done them before... being their pops and all. But with that, we've now attempted/killed all the Tier III mobs so hopefully people start to retain information on the strategies for all these things and we get more efficient at it. While I'm handing out props, many thanks to Nariseth who helped lead the Dea crew while some of us split off to kill Iriz Imas. That was very much appreciated and sped up the night quite a bit.
I'll go ahead and end now with the updated Omega DORP COUNTZ:
Total Omega Drop Summary (41):
Homam Corazza - 13
Homam Cosciales - 16 (+1 Archaon)
Homam Gambieras - 20
Homam Manopolas - 22 (+1 Anissa)
Homam Zucchetto - 24
- Bahamut v2 Success!; Catch-up Entry
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- vedderffxi
- October 12th, 11:18
- calm
It's been awhile since I made an entry here, but that's mostly because I've been away on the weekends and not a whole lot else exciting has been going on. Well, that changed with a few exciting events that happened recently.
The Wyrmking Descends:
So I decided we'd tackle one of the few events we'd never done before. I'll assume you know what this is, commonly referred to as Bahamut v2. We were successful on 3/3 attempts and got some pretty good drops. Here's the best single pool we got of the 3:
All told, we got 3 Bahamut's Staff in total and 2 Bahamut's Mask as well. I got a Bahamut's Mask on my Orb, but assigned it to Wodie since I don't really have a use for it and we'd obtained the Cloud Evoker together quite some time ago. Next time we do these, I think we have one more personal orb to do, but the LS will be taking over ownership of the Monarch's Orbs and paying off members for the Evokers up front. Should be a decent way to make money for our members each month!
As far as setup goes, we went with the following:
Party 1: DRK x4, WHM, BRD
Party 2: SAM x3, THF, RDM/DRK, BRD
Party 3: SAM, WAR x2, DRG, RDM/DRK, BRD
Actually, we had hiccups with either access, disconnects, or 2 hours being ready, so we never did the fight with the perfectly ideal setup, but we won all 3 times anyway. I have a feeling that we could do it with just the RDM/DRK two houring if we had a WHM spamming Curagas on the DRKs. Next time we do this we're gonna try to optimize it a bit, but I'm hoping that we soon come out with a good setup.
For anyone interested, here's a YouTube vid of the kill done by Nariseth:
Summary of other Happenings:
So, there's been plenty of stuff besides Bv2 since my last entry, some exciting, some not, but I'm gonna run thru what I remember here.
First off, after our 3rd Bv2, Clannagh disconnected, then came back, then warped. It was weird and he was asking me on IM if he was online or not. I told him he was, then he said it wasn't him. Yup, he'd somehow had his session hijacked and was hacked. He got back on his character about 10-15 minutes later, but they'd cleared his character of just about anything sellable. Luckily, he has a token and is going to request a rollback. Hopefully it all goes smoothly and he gets back online soon... it's gonna put a kink in LS stuff for a bit, because I still have some days where I'm not gonna be around, but hopefully someone will step up and want to lead so we don't have to cancel events.
That was one shocking thing ... the other that I can think of offhand is that we did KS99 Wyrm on Thursday and finally got a Speed Belt. It was our first one in about 45 or so. We got through 10 Themis Orbs in total and Congrats to Anissa on the Speed Belt. Nothing against Anissa, but I'd always hoped a regular / longtime member would get some Speed Belts from that KS99, however any Speed Belts at all are welcomed, imo.
Yesterday, we did Dynamis-Tavnazia and it was pretty much the same as usual. We got 8 total drops, which is about the average there. Luckily for me, I got 2 of them:
Those RNG -1 Legs went to me. I actually got COR -1 Legs too, but not the ones in that screenshot. Yeah... we got a 2nd pair later. Dragonfly snagged those and now we're both 3/5 in COR AF2+1 armor, haha. I need Feet & Body and she needs Body & Head.
I hate and love Dynamis-Tavnazia all at the same time. I like it because there's the chance for some really good drops and it's just an 18-man zone which makes it more challenging. But on the other hand, it's just sorta bitchy sometimes. Drops are irregular and there are some pulls that just always seem to overwhelm even though they should be easier. Oh well.
We did a couple Omegas that I haven't reported recently, so I've got the updated Drop Summary for that too. Sadly, no more Cosciales which we are pretty much in dire need of now. There's 5-6 people that pass other stuff everytime we do an Omega because they are waiting on the pants, orz.
Total Omega Drop Summary (40):
Homam Corazza - 13
Homam Cosciales - 15
Homam Gambieras - 20
Homam Manopolas - 21 (+3 Seether, Shemc, Vithi)
Homam Zucchetto - 24 (+1 Wonton)
Other Stuff:
- Working on Wing 3 in Einherjar again. Some bad luck (maybe?) has kept us from winning the last 2, but we'll get one eventually, hopefully Wednesday.
- Upgraded my 4th Feint upgrade. One more upgrade then I'll be able to either work on less important merits here and there, or save some up for when RNG gets to 75.
- Speaking of RNG, I think it's close to level 72. My hope is to get it there this week, but it's more of a hope than a plan at this point.
- Salvage has been good lately, some pieces have been getting completed. Still nothing new for me, but I'm 2/3 on many pieces... just need some drops!
Aaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnd, that's all I can think of now. People are lame and don't say anything funny that I remember anymore, so no quotations for you!
- Odin #9
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- vedderffxi
- September 25th, 10:10
anxious
Wednesday night we attempted and defeated our 9th Odin. I think somewhere I said something about not expecting us to do 10 Odins over the course of this year, but we're one more away from reaching that milestone and we have 3 months left to do it. o.O That's pretty cool, imo.
Here's the money shot:
Once again, we got pretty good drops overall, but nothing for me to lot. I'm not one to usually worry about "what's in it for me", but I've been coming to Einherjar since the beginning now (over 80 runs) with nothing but ampoules to show for it. I guess I'm just sorta ready to get a chance to lot something... getting our 3rd D.Feet in the 2nd Abjuration slot is like a kick in the nuts too. There's ~15 possible drops for that slot in the loot pool and everything is better than that garbage. Would it hurt to get some N.Heads or N.Legs? Hell, people would be elated with A.Hands at this point since Genbu is a whore. Anyway, I'm not the only one in this situation... there are others, but that's just the nature of Einherjar. It sure would be great if they adjusted the drop rate of Abjurations from the regular chambers... because that would clear up a lot of the wait on the non-Body Abjurations.
Anyway! If I can get on the ball and finish up RNG before the next Odin, I might be able to do something different for the fight. I was COR/WHM for the main DD party this time. The AoE move that dispels player effects every 10% HP makes coming COR a little annoying, but it's still a good job for me to contribute to the fight and still be able to call out directions and be sure things run smoothly.
Other Stuff:
Aside from Odin, there hasn't been much happening. There is a little more interest in ZNMs now, I think. Last night we did 5 Khromasouls and 4 Armed Gears. I believe people are working on popsets for various mobs so that's cool. I still need zeni, but I think I'm going to miss out on a Sarameya pop this time around since a lot of people are 1/3 or 2/3 of the way there now and it's not likely we'll go back to Khromasoul before our next attempt.
I XP'd 2 Emperor Bands worth of XP on my RNG with Murdoc and some ClanD people on Tuesday. That was pretty fun... it'd been awhile since I've done that. I'd like to get 72, as I mentioned, since there's a lot of new stuff I can equip. I can perhaps leech merit parties once I get another level or two as well ... that would speed up the process to 75 for sure.
Quotation of the Day: "
" - More of a funny screenshot than a quotation, but I make the rules here so blah!
- Ummm... RNG to 71?
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- vedderffxi
- September 21st, 14:29
blank
Not a whole heck of a lot going on since last week. The two biggest pieces of news would be getting my RNG to level 71 and us taking down a Wing 3 chamber in Einherjar and getting ready for our 9th Odin.
Ranger XP:
So, Um, yeah ... I got RNG to 71. It was mostly done via XP scrolls over the last 2 months, haha. There was some Campaigning in there and perhaps a short XP party, but mostly I've been paying no attention to RNG at all. No new gear to slap on @71, so I'll have to wait another level before I can regear a lot of things.
Einherjar:
Last Wednesday we tackled Brunhilde's Chamber again and finally won. Numerous issues that I lamented in my last post kept us from taking down a Wing 3 for a couple of weeks, but we got the most odd Wing 3 I've seen this last time. What was odd about it was that the boss was already up when we entered and there was only 12 total mobs.... 6 Scorpions and 6 Wivres. The *problem* with that was that I'm guessing the Scorpions had at least 50k HP each... it was insane. They took forever to kill and clear. Of course they like to do Earth Pounder and whatever that one move is that one shotted all our SAMs at least once, it seemed like. The Wivres that came next weren't that bad, but they took awhile too. Since all their AoE moves are debuffing moves, it was good that we fought them second so we were able to get a lot of people cured up for the boss.
The boss was Freke (Cerberus type) and we took care of him like we usually do. I never saw him the entire run because I wasn't pulling, so I assumed that once we cleared the Scorps and Wivres that another wave of mobs was gonna load ... so I was pleasantly surprised with the boss being ready.
Just yesterday, we could have done Odin but there were quite a few people who couldn't make it so we decided to do a Wing 2 reclear instead. For whatever reason, we had a lot of key members without a W2 win so it seemed to make sense. Of course, we almost failed... D: Everything was going great until the boss... we got the Dahak and I have no idea why, but our BLMs couldn't Stun Body Slam everytime and we had a lot, a lot of deaths. They redeemed themselves a bit as people continued to fight weakened and we finally took it down right as the 1 minute warning passed. Hurray, victory!
So with all that happening, it's finally time for Odin again.
Other Stuff:
28 people showed up for the 18 man capped Dynamis-Tavnazia, so we had some trials and tribulations whittling down the entrants to 18, but the promise of entering the zone next time for the 10 that got left out (myself included) will hopefully appease those that didn't get in. From what I could tell, the run went pretty well so that was nice. I would have liked to have enough for a 2nd group, but it was not to be.
Oh, hahaha... we did Sea last week too, including Hope, 2x Prudence, and a Love with nothing to show for it but 100% drops... SIGH. At least we are sitting on 2 more Loves that we should be able to knock out next time.
The only other thing of interest is that I'm slowly building up my zeni balance again. After working my way up to 2 Tier4 bosses I was quite depleted on both zeni and seals. I'm going to try and lowman all my T1 & T2s this time around, but I'm not entirely sure how that will go. My COR can solo pretty well, but they are time consuming fights and I'm not usually on that long.
Quotation of the Day: - ZOMG - News Flash! - I've decided I'm too old to remember funny or interesting things that are said when I'm online without screenshotting them, so from now on I'm not going to post a QotD if I don't have anything good! *world ends*
- Stuff & Things
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- vedderffxi
- September 14th, 14:22
Again, there isn't too much to report over the weekend, as I was out of town Saturday, but I'll give a quick lowdown on some happenings anyway.
Friday night, we took a 6-man team into SSR primarily to hit up NMs for 35s. How many drops did we get? Yeah, zero. Oh well. The good thing about SSR is that you almost always get nice Alexandrite totals, so everyone got 6 each which was great. Afterwards, we hit up Boneyard Gully to try and snag a Hagun, but it was not to be. We're still 1 / a lot.
The 2500xp from the ENM pushed me over a limit point threshold giving me 5 in total. Finally! It's time to return to THF merits and work on the 2 minute Feint. So I spent the points on Feint upgrade #3. Currently sitting at 6mins which is pretty nice. I need to get to work on Aura Steal also, but I think maxed Feint will be better for the group since I'm THF quite a bit at events.
Saturday comes and goes and I hear that Sky was not very generous. A couple of epic fail Byakko drop pools ended the night, but luckily we don't need too many Haidates for the LS anymore. Although, getting some nice sellable synthesis materials would have been great.
On Sunday, I thought the day was going to be a complete waste. First off, we failed Brunhilde's Chamber for the 3rd time in a row. It's not that we're losing them, because we've lost 3 in a row (or more) before, it's that people are just not executing properly and/or overlooking basic things that need to be done in order to win... like use RR, keep proper positioning, etc., etc. Not to mention we're running with about a constant 30 non-mules now which makes it a bit more challenging. Ugh... anyway, we got the Khimaira boss to 6% and timed out which was excruciating.... especially considering the time that had been wasted/lost earlier in the run. Should have been an easy win.
So then, it was time for Dynamis-Qufim and we had some people log out, some people decide not to come, and some people log on. Well, all-in-all we ended up with 31 people and not very many DDs at all. I was sure that we'd have problems with the boss. However, much to my surprise, the subjob ??? was found right away, no one messed up and did anything stupid pre-boss, and EVERYONE listened up and did their job on the boss itself. I must say, it was just about the smoothest Qufim we'd ever done. To top it all off, we got 19 total drops, which was awesome. I snagged a pair of Scout's Socks -1, so once my RNG becomes of level I'll have one of the best pairs of WS feet armor there is.
By the end of the day Sunday, my faith in the LS was restored for the time being and hopefully we'll get over the Wing 3 Einherjar hurdle again pretty soon and get our Odin on.
Finally, I finished up the day Sunday doing 4x Imperial Code for Assault Points. One of our ??? necklace items appraised into a Phi Necklace, which Zecilus won. Still no sighting of an Omicron Ring. :(
Random Things & Stuff:
I checked a player named Dorocy who's notorious on our server for not wanting to be checked (check message filter, where are you?). I didn't even notice it was this person until I'd done it, then the following conversation occurred:
I was surprised to get the tells in Japanese, I think the last time I checked this person I got some English nonsense about being a degenerate.
Oh, here's the Carpenter's Ring pic from my last entry:
Also, just yesterday I got Jamann her Tanner's Apron. I've also got her Leathercraft to 72.8, but now that I've got the apron I think I'm going to get to work on skilling it some more. The path to 100 doesn't look too terribly hard, though it could be slow due to the availability of supplies at certain points, I'll just have to wait and see.
I think I'm up to my 2nd highest gil total ever at the moment. I'm trying to decide if I should pick up a couple of things or hang onto it in the event that I try to upgrade a Salvage body. Right now though, the economy seems to be in a deflationary period, so holding on to liquid gil should be better than picking up items.
Quotation of the Day: "orz, I guess I got it before I died >.>" - Me, after raising up and looking for the subjob ??? in Qufim. I had aggro when I was trying to hit it and died pretty quickly... therefore never saw the message that SJs were unlocked.
- Sarameya; Ultima; Complaints
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- vedderffxi
- September 11th, 13:03
- pensive
No entry from me to talk about the weekend and I was mostly gone the entire time. It was a holiday in the US, so I had some things going on. I heard things didn't go as smoothly as usual, but what can I do ... I can't be there 100% of the time. The LS did knock out another Ultima, which I wouldn't have gone for anyway, so that was good:
Total Ultima Drop Summary (10):
Nashira Crackows - 5 (+1 Evangel)
Nashira Gages - 4
Nashira Manteel - 0
Nashira Seraweels - 4
Nashira Turban - 7 (+1 Phyre)
Congrats to Evangel who's now our first 5/5 Nashira.
T4 ZNM - Sarameya:
Last night we did 5 Achamoths, but afterwards we had a crew all set for Sarameya... a couple late comers made me feel much better about the attempts as I knew we were a tad short on DDs.
Our setup was:
SAM x5, WAR x4, THF, DRG, DRK, WHM x2, RDM, BRD x3
We had 3 pops to do and our plan was basically a non-2hr TP burn with BRD rotation, etc. Sort of like Kirin. The first one went great. Everyone was ready to go and the BRD rotation worked perfectly. I didn't time the kill, but it was probably 45-60 seconds long and I think there was at most one casualty. It was Evangel's pop and he claimed the Oracle's Robe, so the rest of the drops went to the bank, including Pachipachio!
2nd time up, we had some problems. I actually can't state with specificity what went wrong, but pretty much it started spamming Gates of Hades under 10% and a few people had already died, so it finished us off after that. We raised folks up and Nariseth very graciously sac-held it while we recovered. After weakness wore, we attempted the TP burn again and killed it this time. Of course this was my pop and we only got Oracle's Cap in addition to the 100% drops. I took the Hide, so at least I got 1.1mil out of it.
Finally, on the 3rd one we had most of our 2 hours saved up, so we killed it without too many deaths at all. Another Oracle's Robe dropped, but that was it.
Overall, I think it was a good first attempt. The things I'd change for next time would to be sure to wait on the BRDs Troubadour ability recast and also bring a couple outside healers if possible. We had 19 people total so the killing alliance was pretty much what we went with.
Complaints:
Well, it's primarily one complaint with a number of symptoms. That one complaint is that it's getting to be a bit of a chore to run the LS. Recently, we've had some key members hang it up and quit FFXI. I don't resent them for it, but I do bemoan the fact that it weakens the LS to a degree. Not to mention that I've been trying to keep from accepting new members, but now with some attrition I'm going to have to go and open up applications again. However, it's doubtful we'll be able to replace the quality that left with new members.
Additionally, it seems some people like to offer up unwanted commentary on a variety of things lately. Whether it be the strategy we employ, the gear of a LS-mate, or whatever. I definitely don't mind people saying things to me about the LS, but the middle of an event isn't the time for me to handle such things, I already have plenty going on. Not to mention, if there's a problem with something, I think just about any respected member of the LS can speak up constructively and get their point across to the LS members without it having to come from a sackholder or myself. As for strategy, I sure as hell know that taking an alliance to Omega or something like that isn't the most efficient or "pro" way to do something, but if we have 18 people that want to go, then why the hell not? Just because things aren't done optimally every single time doesn't mean the end result is all that different. This game isn't rocket science... whenever someone on a forum or in-game talks about how awesome they are I just want to laugh.
I think some people in the LS need to chill out and not take things so seriously, but I also think there's a larger number of people in the LS that need to be MORE serious and try to do a better job educating themselves about their job and gear. Not to mention pay attention during events so things don't have to be spelled out every single time. I'm not pro, I'm not a noob ... but I sure as hell know what's going on and I need more people to be like me in various ways to make my life easier. :D
Man, I love the LS, but I've secretly wished I could throw in the towel and just do Salvage 7 days a week sometimes. But in the end, there's always a new challenge and I actually think that I'm learning some things about dealing with people that I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to in my job or around my friends.
So in summary, I wish things were easier for me and I wish people would be sensitive to that and try to help me out or at least not be a pain in my ass, but it's not the end of the world either way.
Other Stuff:
- Finally accumulated my 80k Guild Points and picked up my Carpenter's Ring. Now it's time to start again for my Signboard! 200k GP this time, should take me at least a month to do.
- Completed a couple of Kirin pops, so we'll probably do him late this month or early October. Moar W.Legs or N.Bodies please!
- Still no luck on ENMs lately. The limit points from ENMs have me about 2k away from another Feint upgrade though.
- RNG is in Park mode. Nothing happening there except for 2-3 XP scrolls a week. It's now ~10k from level 71, so I could probably Campaign my way there in a day if needed ... the problem is I don't have a day to Campaign.
Quotation of the Day: "Make the pants drop" - Sanoskae, almost a pickup line, but alas he was talking about Hachiryu which did not drop. :(
- 50% Increase in completed Salvage Armor
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- vedderffxi
- September 1st, 12:15
busy
Salvage Puts Out:
Last night we hit up Zhayolm Remnants and snagged some Nemain's Cuffs and Phobo's Cuisses to complete Morrigan's Cuffs and Ares' Flanchard for Clannagh and Evangel respectively.
Up until then, we'd completed 4 pieces as a group, but this vaulted us up to 6 total?!?! Yeah, not super amazing, but since we usually only go once a week for sure, it's not half bad. Hopefully there will be a Friday run this week that can target LBC in Bhaflau, but it depends on who is available.
I think our luck with 35 drops has been pretty good. Everyone that's a member of the static has obtained at least 2 35s overall, some outside of our group. Off the top of my head, we need 7-8 boss drops to complete more upgrades, so hopefully our total continues to grow. Right now the biggest backup is on Usukane Sune-ate followed by Skadi's Chausses. Seeing some of those 35s will make everyone happy.
Proto-Omega:
Another week, another Omega. This one didn't give us any chips from the Gunpods though, so we're desperately low on chips for future Omegas, but we'll get them soon, I'm sure.
Total Omega Drop Summary (38):
Homam Corazza - 13
Homam Cosciales - 15
Homam Gambieras - 20
Homam Manopolas - 18 (+1 Lynkyn)
Homam Zucchetto - 23 (+1 Zubob)
Dynamis/Einherjar:
Sunday was the normal Dynamis & Einherjar fare. W2 was defeated with 30 people, which is on the low end for us. We got the Golem boss which we hadn't seen since the early days, but everyone followed directions to the last detail and we defeated both copies simultaneously.
Afterwards, Dynamis-Xarcabard was scheduled. We'd not gone in quite awhile, but the zone was generous! Lacking strong melee DDs, as we have been lately, we didn't even give DL a thought but instead farmed our brains out. It was worth it too, as we racked up a record 15 AF2s in the zone. 3 HQ currency pieces dropped as well, which was a welcomed occurrence. The sad news was that most of the AF2 was garbage ... 3BST, 3WAR, etc. You get the picture.
Other Stuff:
- Found a weekly Assault trio for Imperial Code to help keep my AP up and to hopefully come across an Omicron Ring. At the rate we're going, my AP is growing since I'm not Salvaging enough.
- Another weekend of ENMs yielded nothing special, but in PtP Evangel WS'd while TFA and we ended up wiping with the Memosphere at 3%. Luckily I died out of range w/ RR and was able to get up and Quick Draw kill it for the win anyway. It was sort of annoying and epic at the same time.
- I've been furiously working on Guild Points for both myself and Jamann. She needs her Leathercraft apron and I need my Carpenter's Ring. After I get my Ring, I'm going to work on the signboard. If I keep up my interest in Guild Points, I might keep going until I've obtained all the WW items just for the sake of being complete.
- The first month of our new LS money split has completed, and while there are still some items to be sold I believe there are some people who are going to get over a 1mil payout. That's pretty crazy o.O, but it's been a good month for us in the gil department.
Quotation of the Day: "
" - my first ever 999.
- Learn to Low Man; plus Salvage Puts Out
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- vedderffxi
- August 27th, 11:52
amused
I wish I had screenshots of the following course of events, but sadly I do not.
Last night after Einherjar, I went up to Sky with Evangel for a round of FoV Page 3 (11 Dolls) on my COR with him on BLM. We've done this a time or two before, once nabbing a Despot, but mostly for the quick ~3k XP and gil from the FoV pages.
Shortly after we arrived, a quartet from Armada shows up and starts pulling 4-5 Groundskeepers at a time and taking turns with Sleepga and -aga III nukes trying to take them down. I think they had 2 RDMs and 2 BLMs... and I will name names, because they are idiots: Townsend, Hagendas, Honeypoo, and Extzy.
They did this successfully their first attempt. Meanwhile, Evangel and I had killed 4 Groundskeepers by ourselves just pulling them one-by-one. On their 2nd pull, Despot popped after the first of their 5 Groundskeepers went down. Sadly for them, Extzy and Hagendas died in the process to the Groundskeepers which left the other two (both RDMs) to handle Despot. With that, Townsend headed toward the pond with Despot. I assumed since they had 2 players up they could hold/kite Despot until the rest were unweakened and they'd be able to kill Despot no problem. So I pulled one of their already weakened GKs so we could get an easy kill credit toward our FoV page then went out to pull more.
On my way to pulling more I saw Despot running back towards us and white! It was chasing Honeypoo, meaning that Townsend must have bit the dust somewhere along the line. Soon after, Honeypoo went down and Despot was ours for the taking. I blasted it with an Ice Shot to get some hate and it started chasing me, though still white at the time. Unfortunately, next I noobed it up by not changing back into my idle gear before using another Ice Shot to try and get it claimed. So when I used it, I got claim but I also froze in place and Despot punked me down and killed me. Luckily, Evangel was on his way and claimed it with a clutch Stun and started heading to the pond.
From that point on, kiting it was academic and we ran it around the pond whittling down it's HP while the quartet from Armada tried to get in our kite path and lag us out... even calling in 4-5 of their LSmates to help out! Nevertheless, we weren't phased and we easily killed Despot while they looked on like the bitches they are.
Moral of the story, 4 people from the self proclaimed "best, most pro LS on Cerberus" couldn't kill a mob that we easily duoed. Losers!
Bhaflau Remnants:
We got 5 total Gate Widows Monday night and saw the following drop 3 times!
Congrats to Clan, Elphie, and Rizelmine on their cuffs. Finally things are looking up in Bhaflau. Now we just need a 2F rampart that is equally generous so we can be done with those blasted NMs once and for all!
My hope is that Friday there will be enough people available to run a Zhayolm to try to get some 15 cuffs so people can finish up their hands.
Other Stuff:
- 3 way split in Limbus on Tuesday completing an Omega popset and getting us one chip closer to another full Ultima.
- Blew threw a Wing 1 Einherjar in less than 15 minutes last night.
- Now that I have Hermes' Sandals, I'm able to equip Denali Kecks for additional Magic Attack Bonus in my Corsair Quick Draw kiting set. While killing placeholders in sky, I was getting 350+ Ice Shots depending on rolls. I still have room to improve, but it would require a Novio to get the biggest improvement.
Quotation of the Day: "
" - After timely stunning of the Orobon boss in Einherjar.
- Odin #8; 6 Tinnins; 2x Dynamis
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- vedderffxi
- August 24th, 12:10
- accomplished
There've been some busy times in Immortality in the last week, here's the lowdown:
Odin #8:
This Odin was going smooth like always until about the 50% mark. For some reason, our DDs wouldn't pull back when their mages were low on MP and couldn't cure them any longer so our DoT ended up slowing down considerably in the last 50%. To the point where we had less than 2 minutes left by the time we finally got the win.
In total, we had 25 + a feather mule. We've beaten Odin with less, but this time things just didn't go as smooth as I'd have liked. I know ElectricMayhem did Odin with 19 (their mule was a regular player), but I honestly don't see us being able to come with a solid enough setup to pull something like that off. Especially after a close call like that, I'm a bit scared to go in with anything less than a solid group of 24. Oh well. :/
Drops weren't anything fantastic either. The screenshots are on my other machine, so I'll update it later, but we got M.Body, D.Feet, P.Head, and our 3rd Valkyrie's Fork. Simpson won the M.Body and Aliiyah the V.Fork with the other 2 items going free lot, not surprisingly.
I'm happy that we've gotten an Odin specific weapon/armor on 7/8 of our kills, but the 2nd and 3rd drops in our pools have been weak for the most part. A couple H.Legs and a N.Head being the best out of 16 items.
Congratulations to everyone though, any Odin kill is a good Odin kill. I don't know much about JP linkshells on the server, but there's at most only 3 NA/EU linkshells with more Odin kills than us (possibly just 2), so that puts us in pretty rare air which pleases me.
Tinnin Marathon:
After completing a bunch of Tinnin popsets during our last ZNM event, we went out to pop them Saturday night. We had 7 total pops, but one of the pops was on a player who was hacked early last week, so we only did 6. All of the fights were pretty easy, I think just one ended up getting rowdy, but we got it under control quickly. Here's all the drops from the evening:
Oracle's Cap x4 - Cinamontostfunk, Deuteu, Shemc, Zecilus
Enkidu's Cap x2 - Dragonfly, Vedder
Enkidu's Harness x1 - Amanada
Alkalurops x2 - Mastervivi, Charliekun
Tinnin's Fang x1 - Vedder
Additionally, we got over 700k worth of synthesis materials that were sold and deposited into the monthly payout pool.
I was disappointed to get Enkidu's Cap on my pop, but I didn't have it yet so I went ahead and lotted it. I'm 3/5 Enkidu now, only needing the Hands and Legs. I will be building up pops soon to go for those, but I haven't had any luck in awhile.
The PW trigger was nice to see. Sadly, our linkshell alone has little to no chance at defeating PW, so if we happen to collect the other 2 triggers then I see myself proposing a team up with some other LSes on the server, but that's a long way away.
Dynamis - Buburimu & Jeuno:
Last week was our week to do a mid-week Dynamis and the target zone was Buburimu. It went great. We got the kill quite fast as usual, despite having entirely new pullers for the pre-boss mobs. The biggest news of the night was our first Valor Cape since January of '08 dropping. We have 4 longtime PLDs in the LS that still need it, so we just decided to let them all lot with Clannagh winning the item. That made him 6/6 on PLD AF2, so congratulations to him.
The rest of the run was pretty good. Even though I linked all the Dhalmels, everyone kept their cool and we killed them all off. The total drops for the zone was 19 items. Included in there were my Commodore Gants AND the Commodore Gants -1!! I was the only one lotting them, so I got them both and upgraded them right away. :D That 6/6'd me on my 4th set of AF2. The only non AF2-1 drop I need from Dynamis now is the elusive Assassin's Cape.
Sunday was Dynamis-Jeuno, which is of course old news for us. So old, in fact, that we cleared all the pre-boss mobs and put a pretty big dent on the post-boss mobs as well before wiping on a mistimed time nuke / sleepga combination. Coulda been worse, but farming after the boss in Jeuno is always a bitch for some reason. Nevertheless, the zone was nice to us with 14 AF2 and 489 coins.
Other Stuff:
Friday night we did Bhaflau Remnants and killed the boss again finally. No NMs popped on 2F and we got Phobo's Cuirass and Bodb's Crown AGAIN off the boss. Sadly, Superfesty and myself will have to wait until next time for a shot at our 25s to complete pieces.
I have no new gear to report except for the aforementioned Commodore Gants +1 and Enkidu's Cap, but I did recently finish up Corsair merits entirely (not sure if I mentioned that in my last post or not). I've been getting XP doing ENMs again now that Evangel is back, although they haven't paid out except with a Cloud Evoker which I won the lot on.
RNG XPing has been on hold except for XP scrolls, but I will probably need to go out and Campaign sometime soon if I get free time so I don't lose my medal.
Quotation of the Day: "It's been a long time since I was one shotted like that!" - Archaon, after getting smacked down with Serpantine Tail right after we popped one of our Tinnins. LOL, it was so fast no one could do anything about it.
- Fought some stuff, got some drops!
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- vedderffxi
- August 17th, 13:07
- excited
Just a few things to note since my last entry:
Dynamis-Beaucedine:
Was one of our better Glaciers. 14 AF2 and 604 Coins dropped, including 4 HQs. That will be a nice deposit to the monthly gil distribution bank. I'm already dreaming of nice payouts for everyone at the end of the month! On top of it all, I stole 5 currency from mobs which is easily a record amount for me from one Dynamis.
Limbus:
Killed both Proto bosses since my last entry. I'm only attending Limbus these days for regular zones when we do splits and need someone to lead, so I'm only able to report on the drops from the bosses.
Total Omega Drop Summary (37):
Homam Corazza - 13
Homam Cosciales - 15
Homam Gambieras - 20
Homam Manopolas - 17 (+1 Wonton)
Homam Zucchetto - 22 (+1 Floor)
Total Ultima Drop Summary (9):
Nashira Crackows - 4 (+1 Simpson)
Nashira Gages - 4
Nashira Manteel - 0
Nashira Seraweels - 4 (+1 Sanoskae)
Nashira Turban - 6
ZNMs:
We finished up a few more Tinnin popsets and now we have 7 total. I don't know how many people will be able to show up this weekend, but the plan is to knock some of them out. We also completed our 3rd Sarameya pop, so I figure that will get scheduled for sometime in September. I'm hoping the more T4s we do the more people will work on their own pops so we can focus on them more. Right now ZNMs are going good enough, but if more people did them and learned about the various fights I think we could be a lot more efficient.
Despot Duo:
So I went up to sky earlier in the week to see if I could solo Groundskeepers and COR/DNC and it became apparent quite quickly that I could not do so. They hit me too hard and too often to keep TP up for Waltzes. Discouraged, but not hopeless I decided to ask Evangel if he'd be interested in trying to duo some Groundskeepers for FoV for XP and tabs... and if Despot popped, it popped. He showed just a passing interest, but last night we went up there and gave it a shot.
I was pulling the GKs as COR and he was nuke/kiting them on his BLM/RDM. Without resists, he was 3-shotting them most times. We pulled a whole 11 and completed one FoV, so we went back for another and on the 5th kill of the 2nd FoV, Despot popped! There was another group up there who was goofing off and they started to follow me and Evan as we tore toward the pond to kill Despot. It was easy to get there with W.Legs and once we were there, it was about a 15 minute duo for the kill, which was awesome. Gem of the West dropped, of course, so we put it on my mule and it sold overnight for 400k... zoop!
Quotation of the Day: "Do you guys want help with that?" - Maryanne, making me chuckle when she asked if we wanted help killing Despot.
- Trying to get that Groove back
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- vedderffxi
- August 11th, 12:01
- blah
I took a look and noticed that it'd been over 2 weeks since I posted anything here and figured it was time to do so. I'll start out with some LS info then personal udpates. Being busy at work and busy at home means I'll probably forget something, but oh well.
Immortality:
We'd picked back up from Summer Vacation the last time I posted, but not really done a whole lot yet. In the meantime, we quickly knocked out Wing 1 & Wing 2 Chambers in Einherjar, but stumbled a bit in Wing 3. Two losses before finally netting a win wasn't bad, but we're used to being more consistent than that lately. All in all, we're in line for another Odin which will probably be going down this coming Sunday.
We did another Proto-Omega, easy as pie.
Total Omega Drop Summary (36):
Homam Corazza - 13
Homam Cosciales - 15 (+1 Deluge)
Homam Gambieras - 20
Homam Manopolas - 16 (+1 Karmaaa)
Homam Zucchetto - 21
We're sitting on one more Proto-Omega popset which will be used very soon. We spent some time recently in Temenos and have collected one and a half Ultima popsets. Once we can arrange chip-holders time online a bit better we should finish off that second one which will be nice. Temenos is a nice change of pace, but people want Homam for the most part, so we tend to focus there.
In Dynamis, we had two very successful runs in a row. Two weeks ago we did Windy with about 24 people and did really awesome. We got 10 AF2 and the win. There was a time when I dreaded that zone, but I know quite a few tricks there for pulling that make it a bit easier to manage and we rarely have problems there anymore. This past Sunday we did Dynamis-Valkurm and had our highest Dynamis turnout since coming off vacation with 30 ... that's a low number for us, but I'm finding we're still really efficient. We burned down the boss with ease and farmed quite a bit. There were 14 drops overall with the highlights being 2x BRD -1 head. Most other stuff was wanted, but THF cape, WHM belt, and PLD cape are still being quite elusive... PLD cape most of all.
Sea and ZNM are both moving along, ZNM being where more excitement appears to be on the horizon. The LS has at least 6 Tinnin popsets that are complete and ready to go, or one T3 away from being done. Soon we'll have a Tinnin marathon night and hopefully get some more Enkidu's Harnesses and other goodies for the LS. Perhaps even a Pandemonium Warden trigger. :o Additionally, there are 3 Sarameya popsets in the works. We've never done it, but a night will be set aside for it as well.
So what's that leave us with? Oh yeah, we did Sky a couple times and 2x Kirin this past Sunday. D.Body, W.Legs, and Synth Mats were the drops. Not horrible, but enough with the D.Body please ... they are about to go free lot.
Handling Gil:
The other big news with Immortality is that beginning in August we've begun a new system for distributing gil to LS members. More or less it's an attendance based 'paycheck' model, where drops are sold and gil is pooled to be distributed monthly to members that qualify. I was hesitant to do something like this at first, because it's sort of "ZOMG so serious!", but in the end we decided that the LS bank is more than healthy enough to sustain day-to-day operations and I wanted to be able to give back more than just gil from excess Dynamis proceeds to our members. The reception has been positive so far, at least that I've heard. The side effect of this new policy is admittedly to try and provide incentive and keep attendance up for events where people may not necessarily want anything. As you know, we don't have any mandatory events so members are free to come and go ... giving them a chance to earn a little gil should help keep us moving along at events.
Vedder Happenings:
Not much to report except RNG is now 70. There's some good gear to be had at 70, so I'm glad to finally get there. The grind up to 75 is going to be long and tedious... and I bet I'm going to need to do quite a bit of Campaign to finish off, but I'll make it eventually.
Financially, I'm doing fine but lack of events and ENMs has caused my gil to dwindle a bit. I still have enough to do what I want to do, but without much gil coming in I'm not looking to spend anything until that changes.
Salvage is moving along, but we're in a bit of a rut with drops because we aren't seeing many wanted 35s from NMs and our recent boss attempts have been thwarted in one way or another. We're down to going at most twice a week as well and I've started trying to rotate zones a bit more instead of always focusing on Bhaflau Remnants all the time. People want drops from everywhere, so we should keep trying all the zones... but on the bright side everyone has obtained at least one 35 armor (either from our group or another) except for Rizelmine. I feel bad for him, but hopefully when it rains it pours and something he wants drops sooner rather than later.
I've been considering trying to see if I can solo Despot in Sky sometime as COR/DNC, but I don't seem to find myself with big enough blocks of time lately to even try it. Since Groundskeepers are 'Tough', I'm interested in finding out if I can solo melee them as COR/DNC and then if Despot were to pop, switch over to COR solo kiting mode and take him down that way. I'm actually positive I can do the latter, but the former could prove to be more difficult. I don't see myself dying to the Groundskeepers as I could always Light Shot and then zone, but if I find them to be too overpowering for melee mode then my only other option would be to Quick Draw kite them down too which could prove to cost a mint in elemental cards. :( On the other hand, with FoV up in sky now I might be able to get enough little bonuses from the Field Manual to make Groundskeeper soloing easier than I'm anticipating.
Well, enough rambling ... my FFXI life is pretty boring overall atm, blah.
Quotation of the Day: "Two rolls, sleep the empty, and cure me" - Evangel, responding to me seriously when I jokingly hoped I remembered what to do in Pulling the Plug since it'd been such a long time. :D
- Return to Events & Individual Happenings
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- vedderffxi
- July 27th, 16:20
cranky
Immortality Returns!
Summer vacation officially ended this past Thursday, July 23rd. I think some people are still on vacation though, since attendance at events has been lighter than usual since we've returned, but this always seems to happen. Some people chose to move on or quit... not to mention it's still summertime and I'm sure people are keeping busy.
Thursday night we went back to Sky and completed 2 Kirin popsets. Trigger and God killing along the way was about as what you'd expect, but Suzaku dropped money for the bank both times we killed him, so that was awesome.
Saturday night we went swimming in Sea. Everything was pretty much as lame as expected, until late in the run a few more people logged on so we slipped a JoL in to end the night. Graciously, it awarded us with full drops, all of which were snatched up by waiting members. Congrats to Simpson on the Novio, Okie on the Novia, and Isominds on the Torque. It's either our 2nd or 3rd full drop JoL in 10 kills, so pretty good.
On Sunday, I was expected the masses to return as it was our longstanding Einherjar/Dynamis day, but we got a light turnout for both events. There were just 26 for Einherjar, but luckily it was a Wing 1 and we still got the win. Logi self-destructing isn't fun, but we recovered in plenty of time to TP burn the boss for the win. After that, we had even fewer people for Dynamis-Beaucedine... just 24. That didn't prove to be a problem as we farmed just about all that we normally farm and picked up 14 AF2 along the way. RNG AF2 was not declared and dropped about 2 hours into the run so I spent the points and picked them up since they are both good AND the last piece of RNG AF2 I needed. 6/6 RNG AF2 and I'm still 69. All of it was either free lot obtained or in the case of Northlands/Outlands, obtained via points when no one else wanted. Zoop.
Individual Happenings:
Not much going on for me. The 'RL' everyone talks about has been keeping me pretty busy, which is cool. When things subside, I've spent most of my time online Campaigning to get medals back or going out on the random XP party for my RNG. As mentioned above, I'm level 69 now ... about 20k from 70. I've got a lot of gear waiting the rest of the way so as I level I should be able to sell some things and make a bit of gil, which will be nice. ENMs have dried up for the time being with Evangel being offline and the LS on vacation... so without any other sources of income I've been stagnating on that front.
Salvage has been on a break since before the LS break but resumes tonight.... hopefully with a little renewed vigor, but most likely with the same ol' disdain for drop rates! Not that our drop rates have been horrid, it's just that things that are dropping are not necessarily high on people's wishlists so the most wanted items are still out there for us to get.
Oh, I also noticed the blog of a former member with a holier than thou attitude who seems to have an axe to grind with every previous linkshell and possibly the world in general. I contemplated correcting her on a few of her "facts", which more closely resemble inaccuracies than anything else but I decided it would be a colossal waste of my time. Instead, I will sit and watch as time elapses and her current linkshell falls out of her favor and laugh and laugh and laugh, since at present she thinks they walk on water. :P
Quotation of the Day: "
" - Wodie, after telling me to check out his seacom on Plank.
- First Half Stats
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- vedderffxi
- July 14th, 14:32
optimistic
Immortality currently sits in the middle of its Summer Vacation, so I figured it'd be a good time to hit on some highlights from the first half of the year.
Before I drop some stats on your ass, I feel compelled to say that this is just a stat summary of what we did in the first half of the year. It's not intended to be bragging or some sort of statement about how good the linkshell is. Invariably, someone will leave the LS or a forum-goer will happen upon this blog and decide that I'm trying to brag and tell you how awesome Immortality is, etc., etc. Well, nothing could be farther from the truth... I don't play this game to have the best LS nor do I play it to compare my LS to others and see who sucks and who's wtfzomg awesome. It amazes how people with an axe to grind can take just about anything and turn it into fuel for maniacal rants about whatever.
So yeah, I think Immortality is definitely not the best LS there is, nor the worst... we're somewhere in between, and I could care less if you think you're better than us. It doesn't change my playing experience one bit. :P
First Half of 2009 in a Nutshell:
Dynamis:
30 events
378 total drops
292 AF2
51 AF2-1
31 AF2 Accessories
4 Hydra Pieces
1 Dynamis Lord Kill
45.6mil paid out to money lotters
Sky:
9 Kirins
7 Byakko's Haidate
Limbus:
12 Proto-Omega
5 Proto-Ultima
Sea:
16 Sea Torques
9 Jailers of Love
10 Earrings (4 Novio, 6 Novia)
ZNM:
4 Tinnin
Einherjar:
7 Odins
4 E.Body
1 A.Body
2 misc. Abj. from non-Odin chambers
I could actually dig a lot deeper and pull some more stats out, but that's most all of the important ones I could think of. Best of all, that stuff was accomplished in about 24 weeks with around an average 14 hours of planned event time each week (including gathering time). That's a pretty light load considering what we've accomplished.
Could we accomplish even more if we tightened up our roster and expanded our schedule? I'm sure we could... but that's not what we've been about in our 2.5 years of existence and it's not where we are headed. What we do and where we focus our efforts might change, but I'm happy with where we are and what we've done... and everyone else that is enjoying Immortality is welcome to hang around for a bit. :P
Quotation of the Day: "Seriously though, Seiryu's Sword is awesome... it's just like a Ridill" - Sanoskae, when me, him, and Wodie were all joking about how awesome he was 2 years ago.
- Odin #7 - Ripped up w/ Ease
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- vedderffxi
- July 8th, 16:23
- exhausted
Well first, a little diversion from FFXI related stuff to just announce on here that my baby daughter was born this past Friday, July 3rd. So things have gotten really different around here and that's partly behind the delay in my posting lately, but it's all super worth it! :D
Odin #7:
Originally we were supposed to do our 7th Odin last Wednesday, but I wasn't able to make it last minute and I wasn't able to make arrangements with people who were comfortable running the show in my absence so we pushed it back. Normally, we'd go to Einherjar on Sundays, but since it was a holiday weekend we decided we'd get a solid turnout on Monday night instead ... sure enough we did. 31 out of 38 with access showed up, giving us our most attended (and easiest) Odin since our first.
There I am as COR assisting the RNG team again. :P We only had 2 RNGs this time, but a whopping 4 SMNs and lots of SAMs and WARs, so this Odin was a breeze. I also overcompensated on healing and support since we had more deaths than I like last time and it worked great. Fomors blasted a few people (including me on the last set), but all-in-all we had a really smooth kill.
Drops were exciting too!
Woot! Our first Martial and Aquarian Body Abjurations. Up until now, we'd only seen E., P., and H. Bodies... so a little variety is nice to see. Our 6th Odin specific item in 7 kills is pretty hot too. :D Our 3rd Helm, so the LS is getting really horny.
The folks above were the winners of the drops... only H.Hands were completely free lotted. I'm really hoping that SE changes the drop rate of abjurations in the regular chambers, since we're seeing as many bodies as other drops so far ... and we really need some Neptunal. D:
Other Stuff:
Not much else to report FFXI-wise since my last post. We did a Salvage on Monday night with Superfesty in our group, but we're taking a bit of a break from Salvage to coincide with the vacation the Linkshell is on. We did well, but timed out on the damn boss because we took too long on the way there (my fault), but the group is doing well killing all 10 gears on the way to LBC so that's good. We don't need too many 25s from LBC yet, but hopefully Arra starts dropping more.
As alluded to above, Immortality is on a summer vacation for a couple of weeks to recharge the batteries and to give people a chance to do what they want for a few weeks. We've done this the past few years at X-mas and in the summer and it's worked out great. We tend to always have a few people that never show back up, but they'd likely drop off the face of the earth either way, so no big deal.
I doubt I make many posts here while we're on break, so I'll be seein' ya. :P
Quotation of the Day: "Figures" - Wodie, after seeing A.Body drop for the first time after he changed his wishlist.
