Jack of all Trades

Final Fantasy XIV is going to be an excellent game, and here is why

2011-08-10T14:06:00.000-07:00

A few days back I picked up FFXIV, and while a few days is certainly a small period of time to gauge the quality of the game, I'm convinced that this is going to be one of the best MMOs on the market by the time its first expansion came out. Does it have serious crippling issues right now? Absolutely. But those can be fixed, and the new developers seem to moving quite strongly in that direction. A lot of the mechanics of the game are quite complicated to explain, so for the purposes of this article I will assume a basic knowledge of how the game is currently set up.

5. Crafting and gathering. Simple as that. When I first started hearing information about the way FFXIV was going to do classes/jobs/whatever you want to call them I was a little hesitant to believe that it could work well, but having played the game now I actually enjoy crafting and gathering more than combat. It's no secret that combat in MMOs tends to be pretty repetitive and it's no accident that the word grind is used to describe the process of leveling up. To an extent, that's just the nature of MMOs. However crafting in all of the MMOs I've played has always been the worst in that regard. The few times it deviated from the basic 'choose-ingredients-hit-craft-pray-to-RNG-gods' standard, it just involved gimmicky minigames and headache inducing mechanics that players had to fight to comprehend in order to maximize their chance at a higher quality item. FFXIV's crafting and gathering mechanics are transparent and simple enough to make them easy to understand, but at the same time allow for sufficient depth to make the process entertaining.
Now, you might feel like gathering in FFXIV falls under the gimmicky minigame category, but a few aspects of it separate it out in my opinion. It's sufficiently simple to make it easy to do however many times, while still allowing some variation. The slider, while fundamentally an extremely simple thing, seems to influence what item you are able to get on that attempt, but it's also randomized such that you can't just put it at the top and always get one type of thing, so you have to rely on the hints. You also rarely get a situation where you would have definitely gotten the item if you had just one more chance, largely because it appears to give you an extra chance if you're close enough. This is extremely important because it makes it so that you almost never get the feeling that you just got unlucky, you always have a good chance to get the item, and it keeps you at least somewhat engaged in what you're doing.
Then there's the crafting. For some reason developers usually think that hiding variables from players in crafting is a good thing and make the entire process one giant paranoia headache where you wonder if what you're doing is right. The FFXIV system is pretty complicated and you could probably write an article as long as this one about how it works, but the overall point is that it's pretty clear to the player what is going on and what is up to them. On top of that, with the choices that the player makes during the crafting process you get all kinds of choices and approaches to finishing an item, and it creates a much more interesting process. The simple idea that your approach when crafting normally is different from when trying to get a high quality item, outside of using more bonuses or doing it on a specific game day or whatever vaults FFXIV's system far ahead of it's competition.

4. It's FFXI-2. A lot of english speaking people who played FFXI forget that the game was released in Japan well before it came out in North America, and that Rise of the Zilart was an expansion, not the vanilla game. Ultimately, people know this as a fact, but don't consider it when talking about FFXI's launch. It was a long time ago, and I don't remember much of the details, but as I recall FFXI's launch was also pretty terrible. Now, FFXI had loads of problems even after it got on its feet, and you can say what you want about Abyssea and all the little dumb mistakes that were made in the game's development over the years, but at the end of the day, it had a very solid niche it lived in, and it was successful as an MMO. I contend that WoW is not a benchmark that you can use when talking about other MMOs simply because it's a giant snowball that has been rolling down a mountain for years and years now. Yes it is an MMO, and yes it is and was ridiculously successful, but that kind of success just isn't possible with other MMOs, and it's unrealistic to try for or expect it. Based on all of the time I spent playing FFXI, and the responses I've seen from FFXIV's development team, FFXIV's developers are better than FFXI's were. I'm not saying the FFXI devs were bad, or even anything less than good, but the new FFXIV devs are just on another level. Part of that is their interaction with the community, which I'll get to later, but the conclusion that all of this forces me to draw is that while both FFXI and FFXIV sucked at launch (and you can argue which was worse, it doesn't really matter), FFXIV has a better team than the team that built up FFXI into a quite successful MMO. Based on that, I'm quite confident that this development team can do the same thing even better with FFXIV.

3. FFXIV is FFXI-2 again. Yea I know, same idea in two points? It's an entirely different aspect though. FFXI had TONS of little problems that just made no sense. Needless obstacles to the player. Some people would call the POL viewer one, and that's fair even if I don't agree. The whole windower situation was another, and not just the ability to play the game without it being full-screen. Some of the plug-ins that windower had, such as the one that made recast times easily visible to the player. How much time was left on status effects. All of this was information that the player could access but could not access easily. We could argue about whether or not using these plugins with windower was cheating, or ethical, or whatever you want to call it, but ultimately these were simple variables that made sense to not show the player easily that the game just chose not to. Certainly, difficulty has always been part of FFXI's and presumably FFXIV's niche, but that doesn't mean that you want artificial difficulty. FFXIV, in my admittedly limited experience with it, has addressed this and made these variables available to the player. I don't think they've addressed all of these issues that FFXI faced, but many of them, whether the artificial difficulty or just random dumb stuff variety, have been addressed.

2. Community management. It's absolutely unbelievable how much Square-Enix's philosophy for managing their online communities has changed since FFXI. In this respect, the initial failure of FFXIV is a good thing. Even a year ago, if you told me that FFXIV would have even half the community presence from the developers as it does today I would call you an ambulance to save your life from the massive overdose of whatever drugs you were on. Having real meaningful responses from the developers does so much to help players understand where the devs are coming from. Any good relationship is based on a foundation of communication, and the relationship between the devs and the players is no exception. You could easily argue that this is the most important and the most promising change from FFXI to FFXIV.

1. The developers. These guys are brilliant. It might be hard to see for a lot of people because the outlook the developers have right now is by necessity a long-term one, whereas for most people playing the game right now short-term is what matters, but I have more respect for these developers than I have for any others in the entirety of the game industry. If you go through any of their posts on the community forums, any of their interviews, anything at all virtually every word that comes out of their mouths makes perfect sense and they're taking the game in the exact right direction (making it FFXI-2) for this to be a respectable pay to play MMO. These guys are taking a train-wreck of an MMO with a gem of a game hidden with in it, cleaning off the crap, polishing the gem, and adding new content at the same time at an impressive pace. Is it tons of new content? Of course not. Are they going to be able to fix the game overnight? Of course not. They are however doing EXACTLY what needs to be done, in exactly the right way, and they deserve a lot of respect for that. You can argue about short-term things like balance changes and things to that effect, and you're certainly well within your rights to do that, but at the end of the day those are just short-term changes, which will undoubtedly fluctuate periodically. The long-term changes, the ones that will define what kind of game FFXIV will be in the future, are the ones that we need to pay the most attention to, and they are fantastic.

FFXIV is indisputably flawed. It is far from perfect, or even good, but the future holds loads of promise. To be clear, FFXIV will not be a game for everyone, and it was never meant to be. It isn't a WoW-killer, and no one should expect it to be. What it will be is an EXTREMELY solid niche MMO that may very well be the second or third most successful MMO on the market for many, many years. If I had to guess, it'll be free to play until the first expansion, which will coincide with the PS3 release, and Square-Enix will play it like a re-release, essentially treating it like a new release. I know it's hard, no longer being able to play FFXI because Abyssea changed it into something that you no longer love, but there is hope for the future, and while FFXIV disappointed us all, its future should not.

Lamps: Nemesis of the Retarded

2009-07-16T10:02:00.001-07:00

What part of "say / after you hit your lamp" is so god damn hard to understand?

Things that happened in the time it took SE to realize circle abilities were shit

2009-07-09T06:21:00.000-07:00

A whale exploded in Taiwan.

CIA admitted there was no imminent threat from WMDs in Iraq.

Bush was elected for a second term.

Tony Blair was hit by a purple flour bomb (I don't fucking know).

North Korea banned cell phones.

Reagan died.

Florida took it up the ass from multiple hurricanes. Seriously there're like 4 in one month.

A fire broke out in a Canadian submarine, many people became aware that Canada has submarines.

Martha Stewart went to jail.

Ubuntu was released.

Massive earthquake caused a tsunami and devastated Indian ocean region.

Ireland finished converting to the metric system.

Youtube came into existence.

France passed a law requiring their teachers to make colonialism sound like a good thing.

Pope guy died.

Hurricane Katrina happened, white American collectively asked "who the fuck is Kanye West?"

And much more. . .

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

Why play?

2009-07-05T01:41:00.000-07:00

No I'm not going to whine like a DRK about how SE sucks and the game is horrible. That isn't what this is about.

The reality of my time in the game at the moment is that I have about two months left before leaving for university again, and I don't need to jeopardize my grades by playing FFXI. So the question is, knowing that I'll be gone for 8 months (or forever) in a while, what motivation is there to play? Sure, there's some stuff, like I'm leveling SMN because I always wanted to wear the AF. Bigger picture though, why go to dynamis? Well, for that it's because I like the people there (mostly, loldrama and lolidiots), but as a more general thing, knowing that you're going to be leaving, and having a definite date really drives home the point that everything anyone does in FFXI is meaningless.

It's a really strange feeling, and a lot of people I know would benefit from feeling it.

What the census actually tells us

2009-06-22T21:44:00.001-07:00

Most White Mages suck, but we kinda already knew that.

Every time you spend merits on Protect or Shell V, god creates a PUP. Or a DRG, either or.

They are bad and you should feel bad.

Thank god no one merits holy circle recast, but whichever DRGs merited ancient circle recast. . . .

Public Service Announcement: Black Mage

2009-06-19T00:26:00.000-07:00

Being a decent BLM is not hard. You don't even have to think very hard about it. All you need is some staves and whatever INT gear you can find, and for the run of the mill stuff you're set, at least for stuff like the beetles in Sauromug[tab] [S].

Now, I understand that earrings aren't that big of a deal, and, hey, I didn't get any either, so I'm not going to talk about the AGI earrings, but for fucks sake. What the fuck are you doing with a dusky staff at 51? What the fuck are you doing with a dusky staff EVER?

It ain't money, because I'm looking at Seer's Slacks +1 which offer a whole +1 MP over the NQ, and with the price difference there you could almost afford both a dark staff and an ice staff, and by NPCing the fucking dusky staff OH HEY LOOK THAT'S ENOUGH MONEY!

Y'all are fucking retards sometimes.

WOAHSHI

2009-06-15T03:25:00.001-07:00

Dynamis currency from Campaign? PLEASE let this signal a change in how things work with relic.

the stuff

I have a lot I wanna talk about and I was kinda waiting to be in the mood to write something but holy shit! I hope its a substantial amount!

Work it harder, make it better

2009-06-09T06:06:00.000-07:00

Do it faster, makes us stronger.

Crafting is such a joke when you're having fun. Pretty much same deal with soloing BLM, though I'm going to take a break from that probably because I absolutely HATE the Temple[tab] camp. The Torama there is such a total dick.

FINALLY

2009-06-05T08:51:00.001-07:00

I never want to see any carapace powder ever again. Also, why is desynthing so retarded? How can they justify making something fail more than 75% of the time when 53 levels over its cap?

5/5 WHM relic now, somehow I managed to get the only useful piece other than the briault last. I mean even if its only macro'd into barspells, barspells are still pretty important.

Got my second piece of SAM relic too, except it's honestly useless to me because just a few days before I got these, I got. . .

Which I'll probably full-time on SAM since quite frankly the WS accuracy even with all the shit I leave in for WSing is retarded.

I also got cooking to 60 finally, not that it helps me really compared to what it was at before, but hey, its there. Haven't decided if I'm going to take cooking higher or just leave it there for now.

Oh and I got this thing.

A thought

2009-06-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

Examining people while you're /anon is somewhat hypocritical isn't it?

No one actually thinks it'll be out in 2010 right?

2009-06-02T20:19:00.000-07:00

I mean doesn't that sound kind of ridiculous? How long ago was FFXIII announced?

Happiness

2009-06-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

is trying to get Charybdis' ToD and watching the Prot/Shell V WHM not get the claim.

Anger is then seeing that there will be maintenance in 3 hours, and not really knowing what that means for the window.

Oh for. . .

2009-05-31T03:31:00.000-07:00

So I was too busy bitching about a moron to notice that I was writing my 100th entry. Fitting, really, but still kind of stupid of me.

I can't really think of anything decent for a faux-100th entry, so I guess I'll just do some pictures.

Not shown: 3 Duelist's Chapeaus and 2 Assassin's Armlets in 2 xarc runs.

It's just a fucking game, what is wrong with you

2009-05-30T01:09:00.000-07:00

When someone comes to help you, and dies doing it, most people react by thanking them for their sacrifice. Arilayne however, is not most people.

Arilayne's (and her group of flunky's) reaction is to, BEFORE THE FIGHT IS OVER, start talking about kicking the people who died and stayed down because they aren't that interested in grinding their buffers down for someone who has never helped them and isn't even a friend.

Oh, and why don't we keep talking down to them after the fight is over and she has her drop. Yea, that quote is from when the fight was already over, and after one of her sycophantic 'friends' started yelling at people to pass immediately.

No one flaked on you, you whiny ass, you and your goons treated them like shit after they came to help you and they left because of it. Next time me or my friends take time out of our days to help you, don't fucking treat us like leeches, and while you're at it, try to appreciate the help you're getting. Enjoy your sword, I hope you fall on it.

I apologize for the lack of more screenshots showing all the shit that went down, but none of my friends there managed to get a shot of the log and I had Arilayne and a few other people blacklisted for most of it. I'm sure this'll start some pathetic little war in a few people's minds, and I guess some people reading this would wonder why I would post it if I knew that. First, because I need to vent, and second, because I know some or most people get a kick out of this stuff. I'll leave the comments open since it'd be boring not to, at least until it gets boring or someone crosses a line.

Old Diary found in Behemoth's Dominion

2009-05-23T02:14:00.000-07:00

An adventurer traveling through Behemoth's Dominion uncovered an old diary last Windsday, apparently detailing another adventurer's attempts to acquire special boots that the various monsters in Behemoth's Dominion carry around in large coffers for seemingly no reason (most of them don't even have feet, let alone room for a coffer).

When asked to comment, the adventurer who located the diary simply said "fucking bots stole KB again."

The following are select entries and excerpts from the diary outlining the adventurer's slow descent into insanity and addiction.

Day 1
After ensuring that I had all the necessary supplies, I have begun my journey to Behe[tab]. Hopefully this will not take long, but many such journeys often do, so I have resolved to keep a log of my progress. No luck finding the boots today. Promising success opening the coffers though.

Day 4
I am almost out of supplies. I can feel myself slowly slipping away into a Potion +2 addiction, but I cannot allow myself to leave without finding the boots. I must push forward. They may be in the possession of the next monster I defeat.

Day 9
Khuma won't respond to my calls for help. She just keeps saying shes almost out of time and then mysteriously teleporting away, completely ignoring my weak, emaciated body and leaving me alone in this harsh environment. Next time she comes, I will attempt to eat her. It is wrong, but I don't have a choice any more.

Day 11
54-93 60 80 3 4 5 83 84 85 84
20 40 60 80 6 7 8 66 46
10 30 50 70 90 0 1 2 50 70 90 71

Day 13
THOSE ARE MY BOOTS
GIVE THEM TO ME
YOU ARE A COEURL
THEY DON'T EVEN FIT

Day 17
I have achieved enlightenment. If anyone finds this diary, you may seek my wisdom at the summit of Mount Zhayolm. I will go there because that seems like what enlightened people do, I can only assume I will learn why upon my arrival. Oh, and I found the boots, but I gave them to a Cursed Weapon since its feet looked cold. How can they walk barefoot in this frigid cave?

Love hate love hate love hate treasure caskets

2009-05-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

They're fun.

Until you really WANT whats in them.

Fuck you Gothic Sabatons, fuck you.

But please still. . . . see I can't decide, is it called "drop"? Because they aren't really drops, its a chest, so what do we call that?

But seriously, fuck you, stupid sexy awesome for my PLD and probably NIN and dammit I want them shoes.

Eight months away and still angry

2009-05-18T01:41:00.000-07:00

First thought I had in the first trip back to Whitegate after being away from the game for either months?

Fucking gimp hachiman SAMs.

I guess I haven't changed. At any rate I'm back, and thoroughly enjoying things like Field of Valor and actually having JA's on WHM that I didn't have to merit for (Divine Seal and the two hour don't really count).

Unfortunately many friends are gone or out of the circles I tend to hang in (I don't wanna be that guy who spends 10 minutes in 6 different linkshells every hour), but there're new people to meet too, so I guess that's just how life goes.

The future right now mostly involves determining how deeply into end game I'm willing to delve (not very) and who I should do that with, since I honestly want to spend my time with Versus because they're an excellent group, but I don't really have the time to do all their stuff so I'm unsure what I should be doing there.

Of course, I'm already back doing dynamis because I loved the shell I was in even more than I loved Versus, no offense to Versus. It was also quite nice to see that they had enough faith in me to throw me right into WHMing the tank party on my second run back, that really helped me get back into a groove.

Don't really have much to complain about really, at least beyond people doing back to back blog entries and putting themselves on TTTO three times in a row like a child pestering his mother for attention. Bet that pisses someone off and they leave an angry comment, but I guess that's pretty much why I'm saying it.

lolWoW

2008-09-11T03:11:00.000-07:00

Apparently someone complained about people putting their blog on TTTO and then talking about WoW.

Personally I think it's stupid to begin with, and it irritates me a bit when I go on there to read stuff about FFXI (and the entire point of the thing is to list blogs about FFXI) and then half the people are talking about another game or even something else even less related to FFXI. Occasional stuff is, ya know, whatever, but people repeat it and some days its kind of stupid. The front page is getting cluttered as it is within single days now.

A person responded to the guy who complained and claimed that there isn't a lot to post about for most people (about FFXI).

What this person should have said is that they have moved on from FFXI and are doing other things, but are either to lazy to remove their no longer relevant content from TTTO, or don't want to give up the exposure that the site brings.

As far as the particular person goes, I don't give a shit and it doesn't matter. No idea who they are, don't really care, but I'm tired of finding my water replaced with vodka.

Personally I'd be content with some kind of feature to prevent certain blogs from appearing on what shows up when I visit TTTO while logged in, but whatever. No one is paying Wyred to filter lack of judgment.

I cast the magic that makes the things do damn near anything

2008-09-07T01:31:00.000-07:00

Random, just because its an awesome song:

Anyway, I've kinda looked at what I enjoy doing in FFXI a bit and, more and more, I'm thinking that what I really enjoy is being the mage. Specifically the very back-line ones that die fast and use MP. Melee is great and everything but. . . I'm not sure, I just don't get as into it these days, maybe I never really did, I don't know. I've thought about selling my SAM stuff, but people still want me on that sometimes and SAM/DNC is quite a lot of fun.

THF. . . eh, selling off THF gear would be heresy. Chances are I'll cut down on gear for both SAM and THF and hopefully have just the necessary junk. BRD also needs to be whittled down some, which is unfortunate because I'm sure once that hits 75, people're gonna be wanting it out, even though I'm better with my WHM than I'll ever be with BRD (though I have hit my groove a few times pretty hard).

I'm also thinking about picking up SCH next and demoting NIN to only doing anything when Draco is around to duo. SCH at high levels seems REALLY cool, and pretty fun, in addition to being versatile as anything out there. On top of that, I'd like it at 37 anyway for WHM; sublimation makes a very nice addition to WHM overall. Maybe I'll start it once BRD 75s, or immediately after the update so that 7-10 and beyond takes even less time. The only part I'm really hesitant about is dealing with the dunes, but I think I'll be able to figure out a way around that, somehow.

Also, the freaking hockey season needs to start. NOW.

I'm not going to write an entry about Level Sync

2008-08-25T04:03:00.000-07:00

Because everyone else is going to and I'm tired of going to TTTO and seeing 5 entries about the same thing (PW media frenzy anyone?) that offer nothing new whatsoever and just say things that've been said on every forum thread or blog entry about the damned topic. I'm also tired of seeing people do more than one entry a day, but that's something else entirely.

Shit, now that I actually go to write about something that isn't the level sync bit I can't think of much.

I think I've mostly decided that I'm going to do RDM and NIN next, and probably ignore BRD in the short term. The RDM situation in my dynamis linkshell at the moment is a little spotty, but then so is the WHM situation so I'll probably just stick with being the WHM, because its what I'm good at for now. Its also a hell of a lot easier and I get RR3, so, no complaints.

My reasoning for RDM is. . . well, honestly, I just think its a cool job. I can solo stuff with it and it gets some really cool looking gear (I don't care what anyone else says, AF body + mahatma pants looks cool). It is also kind of like WHM except a lot more flexible and functional. I'll have WHM for things that need WHM, and if hardcore healing isn't really needed, I could just use my RDM and do other stuff too.

For NIN, honestly the primary motivation is soloability and its functionality in low-manning things. I do not really plan to use it in a party, mostly just duoing and soloing, probably with draco. With the new level sync thing it'll probably be quite easy and relaxing to get something nice going too.

Today I did my first tier 2 einherjar run, and it was Versus' first too. We did really, really well overall. I was a little sad that we didn't win, after getting the boss down to 21%, and knowing that bats and spiders really wasn't the scariest thing we could get (even maybe one of the easier combos), but then I realized we had gotten the flan, and that we had only two BLMs. So, all things considered we did an EXCELLENT job and we had some really good insight into what changes we might benefit from after the run ended. I'm extremely pumped that I'm with a group doing einherjar that is actually winning instead of just dinking around on T1s losing over and over.

We also did two KS99s, which I really wanted to be a part of (ie. use an orb) but I /random'd a 45 when we were picking orb holders, so tough. As it turned out, the first person who went (actually might have been our leader, I wasn't on the run because we had too many people) lost their orb because. . . I don't know why, but they lost. The second one was a success, but no speed belt, and that was the end of it.

Then we had Dynamis - San D'Oria. Or we did until some japanese shell went in and over-lapped with our time which was already scheduled an hour later than we had intended originally. So instead we did Dynamis - Jeuno and well. . . it kind of sucked. We got something like MNK MNK BLM THF, and wiped 3 or so times. Wipes shouldn't be happening in Dynamis - Jeuno, especially that number of times, so I started kinda brainstorming solutions with a couple other members, and I'll probably bug our leader about it a bit later and see if we can improve ourselves any.

Thief v. 2.0: The Weeaboo Thief

2008-08-24T03:48:00.000-07:00

So now that I've finished thief, one big question is "what now?" I've thought about it, and people have asked me. . . but I'm not completely sure.

I've got Red Mage at 59, Paladin at 41, Bard at 70, and most of all White Mage, Samurai, and Thief all need merits.

However, I've also been considering Weeaboo Thief, more commonly known as Ninja. It has a lot of things in common with Thief. For instance, there's no discernible reason for me to actually want to play it. It is hard, and while I suspect I'll manage to do a better job of it than most Ninjas do these days, I don't expect to enjoy it. Both jobs are also not all that capable of taking many hits (or dishing them out until much later).

I guess part of the motivation comes from wanting to be useful, on top of being able to solo stuff. There's also a tiny, extremely suppressed part of me that likes the traditional Japanese style of things (shapes/colors), however thanks to all the retards who can't talk about anything but anime I can't enjoy that stuff without feeling like a moron.

I'd also like to level Black Mage some if SE actually delivers on its promise of making mage + melee parties more viable again in the September update, but honestly for the time being I'm just going to assume they're completely full of shit and it'll just shift things to screw a different group over (I wonder if its Bard's turn?). Either way I look forward to the update if only to see what happens.

At any rate I have a history of saying (thinking) many things and not necessarily going along with them (at least not immediately), so we'll see what happens. For the moment I'm trying to farm up my elemental Ni spells for Ninja, and so far I've gotten the first four REALLY fast, and then nothing for like 4-5 hours. During a full moon too, so I'm tempted to just go buy the last two, even though I have this bizarre. . . I don't know what that prevents me from buying things I can farm, simply because I don't want to spend the money unless its a huge pain to farm or a low amount of money (less than 5k).

To close on an incredibly cute note: my cat has been meowing to get into my room for a while but I don't really want to let her in because she just wants to go out again a little after and I'm allergic to her (bad times on the bed), so she just poked one of her toys under the door and is now trying to stick an arm under the door to swat at it. I think she went and found it, then picked it up and brought it to the door to do that, because I threw it across the house yesterday.

An End

2008-08-23T01:45:00.001-07:00

I finally did it, 75 Thief. It happened maybe a week ago, but I didn't quite feel like writing about it, so I put it off until now. I guess part of me feels like this should be more significant to me than it is, but, its been. . . . I suppose satisfying, but the primary thing is that a large chunk of my motivation has disappeared. I don't think its entirely because I finished off thief, but a part of it is.

Regardless, this is what I started, and now (besides merits), it is done. I made my account on December 24th, 2003, and chose to make a mithran thief from San D'Oria. I had the same model as I do now, right down to the size. Now, here I am, my third 75 finally gets finished. I do not know why I enjoy thief, honestly leveling it was a pain in the ass and often not enjoyable (though 74 to 75 was the most fun thing I've done in a long time simply due to a combination of daggers, sushi for the first time, and lolibri). It doesn't get great invites, and its not something that you'd jump to include in a small group of good jobs to have on an event.

It doesn't do the greatest damage, it doesn't have any amazing abilities. . . why do I like it? Do I even in actuality like it, or is it what I think I ought to like, and I simply convince myself to without ever having a reason at any part of the process?

I don't really know, though I was definitely happy to be breaking 1000 damage by a good margin with Trick Attack Dancing Edge on Greater Colibri while getting 75. Either way, at this point I've at least convinced myself I enjoy the idea of it, so I'm proud that I've completed this. Leveling thief to 75 is not easy, and doing it while not sucking and leeching off of the other 5 members of your party is even harder. I am proud that my thief is 75, and I am proud that I'm not gimping it up like most thieves are.

Do I consider myself one of the better/best thieves out there? Hell no. There is a lot I could do to put out a bit more damage, and I admittedly dismissed the idea of using sushi out of hand until recently out of blind disgust for the standard melee mentality that is currently in place. However, for some reason. . . I feel like what I've done getting to this point with thief, and what it is now is more significant than anything else I've done in the game. There's no logical reason for it, that's just how it is.

It feels very weird, after 5 years, getting this job that I've cared about and been interested in the entire time really to 75 finally. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

The one thing that bothers me now is, part of me thinks that this is something like the fake ending in an RPG where the story really SHOULD have ended, but they wanted to let the player play around with all those spiffy end-of-the-game items they picked up in the final boss's dungeon, and then find completely broken max stat weapons in side-quests after all meaningful parts of the story have ended. Those never really feel right to me.

Well, enough of that I guess. The reality of it is that I ought to quit being sentimental about a number and keep making memories. Debating the contents and motivations of my thoughts with myself isn't terribly effective anyway.

(|Huh!?|)

2008-08-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

I don't even really know. Pretty out of it right now, too tired.

Lots of crap happened, some of which I'm not going to talk about because it needs to be in a post of its own, but some of it:

My dynamis shell's co-leader mistakenly invited feiwong. After a few of us let our leader know who Boktai was, I had the pleasure of breaking his pearl. He sent a number of us /tells and said some things in /say, and I have screenshots of the stuff that was in /say or /tell'd to me, but I'm going to send those to Wyred once I stop being lazy about cropping them instead of posting them here.

That being said, I'm terrified because feitard is going to find my non-existent myspace page and somehow use it against me! Oh no!

I also decided to sell off all my gear that isn't for SAM, WHM, THF or BRD in an effort to focus more on my highest jobs so that I can finish them off and THEN worry about lower level stuff.

Lastly, I joined Versus. Its a pretty interesting group, I find myself comparing them a lot with my dynamis shell for some reason, not really because they're similar or anything just kind of like I dated the dynamis shell first and versus is the new chick I'm hanging around. Its pretty nice, no one seems like a lootwhore or anything, which isn't something I can say about at least one person in the dynamis shell.

We apparently do Jailer of Love tomorrow, which is kinda lol for me because. . . I have noooooo idea what to expect, but thats kind of the fun part I guess. The first thing I did in versus was WHM for back to back Kirin fights, which was one hell of an initiation, given that I had no idea what my job was and I basically just joined the parties I was told to join and filled whatever role seemed the most appropriate. I mean, its kind of a no-brainer as a WHM, you get told who is tanking and you cure everyone, the tanks in particular, but it was still adrenaline filled and pretty fun in that it at least felt like a challenge.

Anyway, thats all for now, though I need to do a big post soon. I'm fucking tired.

Public Service Announcement: White Mage

2008-08-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

Yes you can gimp it up and still do your job fine. Should you? No. Knock it off and put some effort into the job like everyone else does.

And what the hell is up with Prot/Shellra V? Particularly Protectra V, why in the hell would you ever merit that? You get 68 defense from a fully merited Protectra V, and 55 from Protectra IV. I know absolutely no tanks who would ever prefer 13 defense over getting 250 MP every 10 minutes. Seeing WHMs merit Protectra V and Shellra V together over Devotion makes me sick to my stomach. Why would you ever spend 220,000 experience on 13 fucking defense?

As far as Shellra V goes, at best you go from getting ~21.9% magic damage ignored to getting rid of ~27.4% the stuff. Lets say, best case scenario, you've already finished EVERYTHING else, you have Devotion capped, and you're trying to decide between Shellra V and Martyr. Are there going to be big nasty NMs where you would want 5% more magic damage reduction? Sure. Ok, how about an instant 29 MP (Stoneskin) cure for ~500 HP every 10 minutes?

55 damage ignored out of 1000 from Shellra V's benefit vs. Shellra IV. For Shellra V's usefulness to keep up with Martyr, the total collective magic damage dealt to everyone with your Shellra on them over ten minutes would have to be NINE THOUSAND AND FUCKING NINETY MAGIC DAMAGE BEFORE REDUCTION. Fifteen magic damage a second. Does this ever happen? Sure, I haven't done HNMs, but seriously? Does it?

The only remaining argument that you can make in Shellra V's favor is that it gets put on 6 people, and that Martyr is single-target. I'm praying that no one really thinks thats a good basis for picking Shellra V over Martyr, but I figure there're always going to be idiots. . . so. . .

WOAHSHI

2008-08-04T09:03:00.000-07:00

500k entry cost for dynamis FUCK YES

Does this mean I have a hope in hell of getting a relic now? Maybe.

No, really, does it? No. But I'm still happy.

In before butthurt relic holders cry about how their relic is more legit because they paid more for it.

Public Service Announcement: Red Mage

2008-08-01T01:45:00.000-07:00

If you do not want to sub WHM and cast Silena DO NOT TAKE INVITES TO FIGHT IN CAEDARVA.

I am fucking tired as hell of asking for silena on BRD, get your shit together, find another job, or tell the DDs why they don't have songs up half the time. I'm tired of spending 8k every half hour because you're too lazy to cast a very fast spell.

This message has been brought to you by: (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|) (|Silenced|)

Also, stop subbing scholar. Seriously, you're idiots.

1/1 on Airship. . .

2008-07-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

No pics, because I did it on my desktop, which no longer has fraps, but fuck. I'm pumped.

Souel is awesome, and Xcaliber likes boys.

Onwards to sea!

Also bushinomimi, BRD66, PLD41, RDM58 almost 59. Woo craps happening!

Is it just me. . .

2008-07-29T03:35:00.000-07:00

. . . or is it always the gimpy domaru or full hachiman SAM in campaign that pulls hate from a mob that has 20ish people on it and then starts running away and kiting it around the tower or whatever area.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Public Service Announcement: Paladin

2008-07-16T01:14:00.001-07:00

Grindan Gaems

2008-07-12T03:21:00.000-07:00

To be honest I can't even remember when I got each level but I think I've gone from 44 to 48 and change on RDM so far. At the moment I'm 3k into 48, but I'll probably ding again tonight if I can stay up. Hell maybe I'll hit 50. That'd be kind of depressing actually.

Why the hell am I leveling RDM like this? Honestly I don't know. I just sort of decided that I want RDM at 75 and now its going to get done. I'll inevitably fall short and get sick of it (hopefully after 60), but for the moment I'm riding out my momentum and hoping I have what it takes to just burn the damn thing to 75. Maybe after or during that I'll find the motivation to do similar things with THF (72) and BRD (65).

It'll be great, I can go from being a princess on RDM and BRD and then raging with righteous fury against princesses and gimp THFs while trying to cap my THF.

Anyway, for the 5 of you who actually read this crap, how are the Public Service Announcements? I've thought about doing one for each job and if they're good enough, going through another cycle, but I want to put a lot of effort into them and make people laugh, so if its just going to get old after another couple I'd rather not bother.

I would very much like to get people to laugh (and maybe make a few people realize that they're doing something stupid. . .).

Conversations with teh Draco

2008-07-10T22:47:00.000-07:00

So Draco has always been kind of anti-end game, and doesn't like people who obsess over gear and spend all their time up in sky or things like that. However lately I've noticed hes been talking a lot about end-game gear and trying to get a group going for assault and salvage and nyzul and all this junk, so I was talking to him a moment ago, and heres the conversation:

Draco: No kidding
but yeah i'm just plotting out what the best for each of my probable 75s is, and then seeing if I can overlap
From the looks of it, PLD and DRG will share a fair amount

me: so I guess you've officially broken down now huh

Draco: I'm just putzing

me: sure you are

Draco: We'll see how things go
I keep calling it a perfect world pipe dream so I don't get obsessive
but I don't have much else to do but collect shit

me: "I'm not gay, I just like anal sex"

Draco: I bought every damn thing already
Fuck you lol

Public Service Announcement: Thief

2008-07-10T01:17:00.000-07:00

Why hello there Billy, it looks like you've gotten your Thief all the way up into the seventies! That's swell!

You've got your War Gloves, and you even noticed that TPing in Rogue's Culotte is gimp! You sure are moving forward Billy.

What's that Billy? You've upgraded your daggers you say? That's great, let's see what you got.

Wait, what the. . . Billy, what the fuck is this shit?

More critical hits? No, fuck you Billy. Fuck you right up the ass. Heart Snatcher is a piece of shit. Toss it now.

I don't give a shit that you spent days unlocking it Billy, you're a fucking retard. Toss it.

Wait, no, hold on. You're off-handing a Thief's Knife? And you're taking these to Frankie's merit party?

I'm sorry Billy, but you're being reassigned to WoW. Now get the fuck out before I find my belt.

This message has been brought to you by: Every god damn hour I've spent seeking my Thief because of the countless gimps who play the job making everyone think we're less useful than other jobs.

I'm looking at you Katoke. You and everyone like you.

Public Service Announcement: Samurai

2008-07-08T03:27:00.001-07:00

Guys.

Hey. Guys.

Domaru sucks. Stop it. No, seriously, its a piece of crap, stop wearing it.

Keep your haubergeon, and if you're high enough to think about the domaru and don't have a haub, find another job to play.

This message has been brought to you by: RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE

It doesn't even look good! If I see another SAM wearing okotes and a domaru I'll probably get my account suspended "helping" them understand how retarded they are.

Dynamis - Bedroom

2008-06-27T08:10:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, lots of stuff happening, but then it doesn't feel like too much for some reason. This weekend actually should be rough since I have plans to leave my house twice within two days (amazing!). Other than that though, just a nice relaxing week or so getting some important things done.

Got my second to last drop for the Opo-opo crown a few days back. We got it on the first kill, amazingly. The reason this was particularly note-worthy was we got Draco's on the first kill as well.

Did my NPC's G1, though I have another one I have to do for her now. Honestly its a bit of a pain, takes a while to get these quests done.

I got an O-hat! Ok sweet my Thief is ready to exp-wait fuck Sirocco. Dammit. I need to convince myself to forget about all this R/E junk that would make my Thief great and just level the damn thing to 75.

For now at least, its Paladin time though.

Pictures, with a side of lulz

2008-06-22T04:31:00.000-07:00

If you only care about the comedy, scroll down until you see the screenshot that consists of a whole bunch of orange text, that'd be it.

Unfortunately this ones already out of date. My PLD is nearly 29 now, can't wait to put on my eisen/kampf gear.

Got one of the more useless pieces of relic on Thursday. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have it and appreciate the drop, but. . . lets be honest. Its not exactly something most people would be happy to catch a WHM wearing in a party.

Got my first level of Devotion, mostly for Draco. Its pretty fun, I don't regret picking it up. I need to cap it off now unfortunately. . . oh well at least I have SAM to do that with now.

75 SAM! That makes two.

I also got Diabolos randomly, which means I have all summons. Ironically, like the day after or two days after I picked Diabolos up they announced the Ixion thing, and even though I know now that he isn't a summon (yet), I still cried.

Got my Minstrel's finally! I think I mentioned it, but Saruka helped me get the drop. Draco also camped it with me quite a bit. Go go BRD end-game gear at 62!

I also picked up an Assault Jerkin recently, which I really don't deserve. This should be Draco's or Saruka's. But we should be remedying that shortly. . .

Ah the lulz. Anything more I could say about that conversation will only detract from the hilarity, so please, enjoy.

Ah, Cutaru. I just thought this seemed appropriately. . . cute? With her (his?) ass up in the air like that. Ironically, soon after taking this screenshot I found out that Cutaru is in my Dynamis shell. What a tweest!

Wait, what?

2008-06-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

So I finally got around to installing photoshop and cropping up all my screenshots into what I want posted. I even organized them all so they're nice now. I go to upload them and. . . what? Photobucket got hacked?

So I can't upload them for the moment. Honestly I'm not sure what exactly happened to photobucket, I had JUST gotten a party on PLD as I noticed so I couldn't look into it much.

Anyway, improving Dynamis runs like I promised. Chat. Talk to everyone, get them mentally involved. If they're thinking about chatting with you and still doing their job, they're not thinking about whatever drop they haven't gotten yet or the fact that they've been there for 3 hours. Doesn't matter what you talk about, make a stupid joke. Just get a chuckle out of them or something. If your members are feeling good and not getting angsty over a mistake someone made or the drops or some other retarded drama, Dynamis is a lot more tolerable. The most important thing is to try to involve everyone unless they repeatedly act as though they don't want to be. Make them feel like they're part of the group even if its their first run. ESPECIALLY if its their first run. Get to know them all, even if only just a little.

You want people to have fun attending your runs, and lets be honest the game doesn't really facilitate that on its own most days.

Anyway, thats about it until photobucket comes back online.

PS: STOP FUCKING UNDERCUTTING KAGINAWA, FUCK

Thievery, Merits, and a second 75

2008-06-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

So I want to post screenshots, I have a ton of them, but theres just one hitch. No photoshop. I have CS2, and I can install it any time, but I'm like. . . . I think 1 gig away from a full hard-drive at the moment and I'm too lazy to find stuff I want to delete/put junk on a DVD. Too busy dinging 75 Samurai I guess. Whoops, that was for later.

Saruka got 75 Thief though, which is awesome and I feel great for him because hes pretty much in the same situation I am. We've both been Thief for about the same time period (5 years) and are only just now close to capping it, and in his case, finally capping it. I actually hadn't realized that I have as much in common with him as I do until recently, its been a lot of fun screwing around killing stuff with him.

I've also worked on merits some, and thought about what I want to get. Until the last few days, I had only ever gotten one merit, and it went right into Regen. However I got three in the last few days and picked up the first level of Devotion, which Draco has wanted me to have for quite a while.

However the real interesting thing that I was thinking about was what I was going to do overall with my merits in the short term, and specifically how I might use them as a tool for improving a job as I'm leveling it. Namely, Paladin. The main thing that I have thought about improving is HP or MP, because those would be pretty much universally useful. However what I was thinking was, in the interest of Paladin, going full 8/8 on MP. I know, I know, most full-time Paladins reading this are probably thinking I'm nuts or stupid. There are a few factors here. First, I don't plan on tanking in end-game. I have White Mage and probably Bard as well for doing any of that junk, and I don't think I'm a particularly good tank as a player anyway. I am better suited for a support role. Second, looking at Paladin from the perspective of someone who more or less intends to use it only for leveling up, and then random raids or missions where my friends need a tank, HP isn't that important. Point for point, in that situation (to me at least) it makes more sense to go after MP. On top of that, I look at how most of the jobs I level and enjoy are mages (I know two of my three highest are melee, but overall I'm a mage player), and from what I can see it makes the most sense to go after MP.

To top it all off, I finally got Samurai to 75 in this ridiculously fun party that I got to sub Dancer in. We had three Samurai, a Thief, a Red Mage, and a Ninja, and the Thief only ever got to engage the mobs when they pulled a link, because we were killing so fast. We got a good 30k, which allowed me a healthy 10k buffer, which I'll probably be too lazy to extend. So now I don't have to merit on my White Mage, and a shell member (Djohn) is slowly nearing 75 with his own White Mage, so its great that I have another option.

I'd go into detail about what I want to merit on Samurai but the only real interesting dilemma I've thought of is Meditate versus Third Eye. Everything else seems pretty obvious to me, and thus not very interesting. At the moment I can't really decide between Meditate and Third Eye because on the one hand Meditate turns into more hate generation, which I don't really need, and I'm honestly not very good as using Third Eye all that often, even though I have toyed with the idea of tanking with Samurai rather frequently, especially after Dancer was introduced. At any rate I'll probably do Meditate simply because its more useful than only five seconds off of Third Eye, and coupled with Shikikoyo its reasonable to see myself using and wanting even more TP than I already get.

Anyway, I'm either going to nap or go walk to an awesome family owned donut place near my house for breakfast, but the next entry will be something that at least interests me; a way to improve your shell's Dynamis runs without making any in-game adjustments.

Dynamis - Kitchen

2008-06-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

Joined another Dynamis shell. . . Elminster runs it, its pretty cool. Aside from a blatantly obvious gilbuyer (SH+1 + a key ring belt full time in dyna windy after not knowing if the airship in sandy went to windurst as a level 70 THF - oh and he got a relic drop) and some people who say things they shouldn't / act like they're on a power trip most of the time, its a great shell. Excellent PLDs, and a number of cool people.

I WHM'd of course, which was a lot of fun since the first party I was in (5 DDs and me) was very relaxing and enjoyable, and then they threw me in the tank party which at first was scary as hell since I wasn't quite ready for it, but once I figured out how things were going mostly it was easy. The PLDs did a wonderful job and made it quite easy for me to keep them alive.

I've also been doing ZMs, I never really realized how freaking easy they are. In the last little while we knocked off ZM4 and ZM5, kicked the crap out of both of them despite getting slapped around by the zi'tah headstone NM a bit. Can't wait to get sky access, there is a particular shell I would like to join, though I'm going to have to be careful about my work schedule and joining various shells like the dynamis one and this one.

Anyway, SAM partay. Maybe I can get 75 this weekend.

Lolwut

2008-06-08T23:15:00.000-07:00

Yea I left for a while, more so this blog than the game. Left the game for a month or two to do better in classes, did worse, so. . . I don't know.

Anyway, update day. Pretty sweet, lots of stuff, but most of them are things I want to see in game or screenshots of before I really form an opinion so not too much to comment on beyond feeling as though my SAM likely has some different goals now gear-wise.

SAM is 73. THF is 70. DNC is 37. RDM is 4. . . 43? Either 43 or 42, I don't remember.

SAM has actually been a lot of fun. I don't know what is up with the missed WS crap but for some reason its been happening less despite no gear changes, but when it does happen its like 3-4 in a row and then no misses for a while. Not really sure whats up with that, but I can only really move forward at this point.

Some douchebags jacked the price up on Shinsoku randomly, I've been trying to pick one up but I'm not paying 200k for something thats been 110k for a long time.

Lastly, I started making egg fried rice. This is excellent food and any retard can cook it easily, heres how you make it:

- Make some rice (I prefer brown personally, healthy), and refrigerate it the night before if you can though I don't think its completely necessary.

- Prepare the vegetables/meat you want to use. Personally I like to go with broccoli, carrots, and corn but red bell peppers and pretty much any meat work well too. cut them up fairly small, its best to be able to get a little of everything in most bites.

- Throw the rice in a wok or large pan with high sides, add some vegetable oil, maybe like 4 tablespoons or something, I just pour a bit in. the idea is to get it on all of the rice

- You have two options with the eggs: you can either do them separately (what I prefer because I make a big batch and my wok isn't all that huge) or you can do all of it in one pan. If you do it separately, just make scrambled eggs with salt/pepper and whatever else you'd like to add to them in a separate pan, and when they're more or less solid throw them in with the rest and continue to cook them. Try to get the individual pieces of egg relatively small. If you're doing it all together, at some point during the cooking, whenever you're most comfortable (I go shortly after I've put all the other stuff in) move everything but the eggs off to one side of the pan as best as you can and pour the eggs in, just make 'em scrambled right there. You might be able to just dump the eggs in without moving anything aside and cook it all together but I've never tried it and it might be kind of difficult.

- For the rice and vegetables, just stir fry them pretty much (which is to say heat the pan they're in and move them around with a bamboo or wood spatula until they're cooked). You'll want a little bit of soy sauce, depending on how much stuff you throw in other than the rice it will vary. Try to experiment with how much you use. You can also use other sauces, I'd imagine teriyaki or oyster sauce would work but I've never tried either personally.

tl;dr: Stir fry rice, meat and vegetables. Make scrambled eggs. Mix together.

Hockey players are the best, period (2)

2008-01-30T17:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRdRYq2CpjE&feature=related

Well, despite being a tech guy I can't figure out how to directly put the damn video into this, so theres the link until someone posts a comment on how to do it, not that anyone reads this.

But anyway, I noticed this video because my team (San Jose Sharks) just traded for Jody Shelley, who is in that. Basically, a leafs player autographed a stick for Shelley during the game, and threw it over the divide in the glass. What other sport could you possibly see this kind of friendliness in during a game in? Football? Fuck no. Baseball? Maybe, but probably not. Basketball? I doubt it. This is the one thing that makes hockey better than any other sport will ever be; the culture is just so ridiculously awesome that it is beyond description.

Another example, and I'm sorry that it involves the Sharks again but they're really the only team I watch, was when the Sharks were playing. . . maybe the Coyotes. . . I don't remember, but it doesn't really matter. A couple fights started up after a play, and in one of them, the opponent's player got injured a bit, and was laying down on the ice. Jeremy Roenick (pretty big name in hockey, generally speaking), who was the sharks player in the fight, was the one who called for the opposing teams trainer. Thats right, he wasn't throwing punches or trying to hurt the guy more. He STOPPED, let go of the guy, made sure he was laid down ok on the ice and called for a trainer. This is all right after they were throwing punches at each other.

This is why hockey players are so fucking awesome. They're not out there to kill each other, and its not as violent of a sport as people think. Fights on the ice are almost always about one of the people owning up to a mistake they made that hurt or could have hurt another teams player. They're about accountability. Not hurting people. Got that all you idiotic mothers who stop your kids from playing because "OH MY GOSH ITS VIOLENT"?

Hockey culture is win.

Soboro, Stir-Fry, and. . . S. . . s. . . reformatting

2008-01-28T05:04:00.000-08:00

So, as you can see in the picture, I got a Soboro. Its nicer than I had expected. Its not godly, by any measure, but its still quite nice I think. As you can see in the picture, Val was having a bit of fun harassing people about their (in)ability to spell things correctly. However, there were two other things that happened during the run. One was epic, and one was epic fail.

Lets start with the epic part. Towards the end, people started leaving and being pricks, so eventually we wound up with just 12 people, and our 'main' tank was afk (part of the epic fail). We wound up fighting one anyway, and its second self-destruct raped Enc, who was our 'second' tank. He immediately re-raised and voked it, and tanked it from like 50% until we killed it. He had 221 max HP I think during 90% of that. So, yea, Enc is now easily the most badass PLD I know, which is actually saying a LOT since I hang around Draconum a ton. Though I did pull hate off Draco with Regen III once, so. . .

On to the epic fail. On the second or third to last run, the 'main' tank Linkstrife said he had to hit the grocery store, and that it'd only take about one cycle (as in he'd be back a little after the next ??? popped, but before the one after that). We killed one, wiped, and waited like 2 hours total for him to come back. The other thing is, we would have been DONE at that point anyway if he hadn't brought out his second account to get one, and while he claimed otherwise, a few of us think he ALREADY GOT ONE FOR HIS MAIN. So, after a while we just said fuck him and left. He stayed there until or past like 1:30 AM or so (CST?) that night according to Val, so he was afk for a lot longer than "20 minutes or so".

Anyway, real life. I've been trying to get a wok for a while, and yesterday I finally got one. It is unfortunately xbawks hueg, but all of the other ones were tiny, so whatever. I made some vegetable stir-fry last night with a few things, and man was it ever filling. I haven't eaten vegetables in. . . forever. But yea, I wish I had a digital camera so I could put a pic of it up on here, it actually looked really nice for something I made (IT HAD COLOURS!). All part of an effort to kind of round out my diet so I can be healthy, since last semester I sort of ate almost nothing but pasta and lost 40 lbs. as a result, and I'm not going to say I was super thin or anything (6 feet tall and was like 180-200), but I'm not really fat either, so suddenly going and dropping 10 pounds a month just wasn't looking like a healthy thing.

Also, I got some stupid viruses on my desktop that turned into losing my net connection for 24 hours a week or two ago, so I've been trying to reformat it and because of a combination of about 3 impossibly irritating things, I can't normally reformat without a floppy, but I'm using this opportunity to put ubuntu on there as well, and my friend says I can use that to reformat, so hopefully that will work. The only thing that sucks about it all is I just realized that I don't have photoshop any more, so I'll have to downlo-I mean. . . ask my. . . family. . . for one of the copies from uh. . . home (actually now that I think about it, I actually am going to do that, I'd forgotten, but my parents bought CS2 and such, dad used to work for Adobe so he probably got a deal on it).

Anyway, off to make breakfast. . . recently discovered the joys of simple buttered toast.

Freakin hell. . .

2008-01-24T00:53:00.000-08:00

You know when you just kind of get off track and one mistake or problem creates another one and it just branches out until you're pretty screwed overall? Happening right now, kinda depressing. I know I need to just put my head down and work, but that has always been my one problem. I can't just strap in and turn on easily. Whether its because I make excuses, or am lazy, or what, I don't know, but it always happens and its the ONLY thing between me and the top of the class.

First problem was that my housemate is still a fucking douchebag, and even a hour or two ago was slamming and cussing at his computer, which has consistently either woken me up or made me unable to sleep, and that combined with the fact that the beds here are absolutely horrible and extremely difficult to sleep on, its virtually impossible to get a decent sleep schedule going. This has in turn caused me to miss a couple classes in the first three weeks because I've been on the verge of passing out, and to avoid the embarrassment of passing out in the middle of class I just went home and slept. In turn I was unable to do the first assignment in one of my classes (bye-bye 5% of my grade) and haven't done too much of the reading in my other classes.

The result? Well, I am trying to just straight force myself to get this work done and finish as much as I can as soon as it is assigned, and also get this stupid fucking excuse for a human kicked out of residence for being an all around douchebag.

This crap is creeping into the rest of my life too though, but I'm finding it easier to remedy it there. I've always been a tech/computer person, but I've also got a fair bit of intuition with story-writing, though at the moment its mostly just picking out what is wrong with other people's stories. As a result, coupled with my love of games I've been trying to aim towards a career in game design (not programming them, but literally designing the game/plot). Lately I've come across nothing but people saying there aren't any openings, and pretty much all discussion of it that I've seen ends there. This got me thinking about whether or not my goals are even vaguely realistic, and the whole thing is just depressing. At the same time, I understand and acknowledge that this isn't the kind of thing I can just decide and plan out on a whim, and in reality I have no idea what its going to be like 2-3 years from now when I graduate and really start working on a career, but it still gets me down.

Lastly, with FFXI I've been feeling severely unmotivated. Yea, I really want to get X, Y and Z but really. . . do I even have time to utilize sky access if I got it? Sea access? Any of that sort of thing? Hell, even just another 75 job? I'm trying to get myself into a relationship and I think its extremely likely that FFXI will take an extreme backburner seat when that happens, so whats the point of enduring retards in the dunes? I guess it might just be a result of the overall negative attitude that I've got going right now, but damn. Even my entertainment is kinda dying off here. I guess on the flip side I'm trying to get myself to listen to Canadiens and/or Leafs games as well as Sharks games (hockey for all you lolamericans, since any Canadian who doesn't know who the Canadiens or Leafs are whether or not they like them ought to have their citizenship revoked), so that might help me enjoy things more and motivate me to head out of my room some time to watch games, maybe a bar, I dunno.

Anyway, feeling a little better now but. . . theres still kind of an argument going on in my head between the new me (post-depression) and old me (depression). New me knows the game and beat it, several times, but it still takes a while to do, and the old me is still stuck in the same old loop. . . it feels like I'm playing therapist for a friend again, but its me, weird feeling.

Anyway, back to my reading.

Hockey players are the best, period

2008-01-15T04:55:00.001-08:00

So Thatsmypunk bugged me at 6 or 7 AM again, heres the result.

Ovechkin on a Segway

I asked why he was riding a Segway around D.C.

"Have fun," he said. "Why do I have to stay home? No. It's good. Watch beautiful city, watch girls...."

"Have you seen any girls?" Backstrom asked.

"No," Ovechkin replied. "Girls, where are you? I can't find you."

I've never been an Ovechkin fan or a caps fan, but man. I sure as hell am now.

There're a million awesome things about hockey, this kind of thing is just one of them. . . . freaking hilarity.

What am I doing?

2008-01-15T02:50:00.000-08:00

I've gotten a bit caught up in wanting to level too many things at once again, and its costing me a bit. Part of it is that for some reason I just cannot establish any kind of sleep schedule. Honestly if I had that taken care of I'd be doing fine and be enjoying things a whole hell of a lot more, but as it is my brain is all over the place and I'm writing in a blog at 5:53 AM after getting. . . . I dunno, see I'm not even sure I actually fell asleep between 2 and 4 AM, I think I was close but not quite there.

Honestly I'm not quite sure why I can't get a schedule down. Maybe I'm being stupid with late night gaming. Maybe the mattress sucks. Maybe I think too much when I'm trying to sleep. Maybe my housemate is loud at the wrong times of day (shockingly hes been better, but I still want to burn his ass at least once).

Looking back at what I've just written, I'm kinda surprised how quickly I went from "I want to level all my jobs" to "I can't sleep". Just goes to show how out of it I am these days. . . .

Far as FFXI progress goes, I've made it to 36 on Red Mage, which isn't bad I guess but. . . I dunno, honestly it doesn't feel like I've accomplished much.

Anyway, back to trying to sleep before I head over to tim hortons and buy breakfast. . .

Back up north. . .

2008-01-02T20:51:00.000-08:00

Well, I leave for Toronto this Friday, which kinda blows, I was enjoying myself here, but there are some upsides to Toronto as well, despite the fact that I'm going to immediately have to deal with the housemate situation pretty much starting the second I enter the house.

Oh well, at least now I can actually use my Wii. Hopefully I'll take some pictures of how I'm doing it and put a little thing up for people to read since its actually a really useful tool to get for a college student since its a pain to carry a TV around when you're already hauling a laptop and/or desktop. To be honest, it is lagged a little bit since USB isn't nearly as fast as a direction connection and it has to change the signal but like I said, its better than hauling a TV across the continent, or even just to and from storage every year. Just wish one of the stores around here had the Paper Mario game for the Wii, went shopping for it today and came up empty (still got some good headphones though).

I've also managed 60 BRD, and have purchased and/or farmed all songs up to 63, along with all useful instruments, and currently have pretty much the best reasonable gear I can get. Just bugs me that it takes so long to level, but, I think I may be able to stick to it and manage 75 in the next couple months maybe. I might wind up seeking out a soboro and leveling DNC instead just because SAM/DNC seems so awesome in theory, but I'd like to finish BRD if only for utility purposes. Its something kinda laid back without being melee that I can take on runs and things without having to worry too much about gear and "WTF I MISSED AGAIN". Well, technically theres resists, but now that I have + wind and singing from AF its kinda. . . I dunno. Just never seems to happen.

Weird, I feel like I have more to write about but I can't think of anything. Really just been playing Disgaea, leveling BRD, eating, and slowly killing myself with chocolate. Oh I did discover that I randomly lost like 40 pounds during first semester, not that I really care beyond that probably being a really bad thing. Oh well, probably got most of it back over the holidays anyway. Oh, and Seether's Fake It is an awesome song.

Aftermath

2007-12-28T21:03:00.000-08:00

So, Christmas at least is over, and I guess there might be new years crap coming up for most people, but personally I don't usually do anything unless a friend is having a party (or when I'm not single), but to me the whole new years thing is kinda meaningless.

I didn't get anything of note really for Christmas other than cash, which is what I actually need (FOOD!), and I don't really deserve much so, good stuff, just not horribly exciting. The main thing of note really was that I ate LOTS of really good food over the holidays. Highlight was probably the salmon with three cheese tortellini in a basil sauce. It was kinda mild but the salmon was perfect and I like tortellini a lot, so, good times. Actually back up in Toronto I bought some beef tortellini and it made me sick, so it was nice to get some real stuff. I've also bought myself a fair bit of chocolate, enjoying some now actually. Also ice cream, theres some mint chip in the freezer. So yea, overall great for food.

Theres also been some interesting activity with friends, getting to do a bit of psychology stuff and manipulating things to a degree. I'm in a wonderful position to completely ass rape a friend of mine mentally if I wanted to, but like I said hes a friend (even if hes done some retarded things in the past trying to get into penor fights), so I'm not going to play that game unless I would normally, and its kind of a complicated situation there. Very interesting though, and potential to come back into contact with some old, but crazy friends. Not likely, but possible.

Anyway, back to gnawing away at this chocolate block. Kinda fun, but my teeth fucking hurt.

Crappy Music Day

2007-12-24T08:06:00.000-08:00

Yes, its that time of year again. When some twit who no one will stand up to puts on horrible "holiday" music that would never sell at all if not for its "festive" aspects. I mean, come on, seriously everyone agrees here right? The music fucking sucks without exception. Doesn't matter if you normally listen to rap, rock, lolemo music, or whatever. This is the time of year when we can all come together in agreement over how ridiculously horrible Christmas music is.

Anyway, on to FFXI. For a long while I was looking to pick up a scroll of Carnage Elegy, but they cost a ton on the AH and Draco and I have both spent days (almost a month) trying to farm the damn thing. I think. . . night before last or around there, Draco managed to get the drop, and sent it over to me, so I owe him big time. Between the links and the fact that it took FOREVER to just get the damn thing to drop, it was really rough to try and get.

As a result, I'm looking to level bard again, and I do need to get my hands on those last two pieces of AF (body and hands), and work on the Opo-opo Crown and then finally a Minstrel's Coat to finish pimping out my bard, none of it is really necessary and I don't really need to pause my leveling for any of it. They can be taken care of as things go on, and I should be able to manage 75 in no time, which opens up new opportunities for meriting.

I've also been sorta half looking to get my hands on a Soboro and get dancer up to 37 for a very fun combination of SAM/DNC. For me, it would likely be perfect. I'd be able to support the group through healing tons, possibly also tank a little, and to top it off still be capable of doing some considerable damage. The only thing that would suck is that imps would absolutely destroy me even more than they already do, and I think we all know how often parties go after imps. Oh well, at the very least it'd be freaking disgusting for soloing random things and for coffer key raids. Hell I'd probably wind up soloing most of my keys after setting that up.

Anyway, off to get breakfast. At my grandparents house in San Diego, would MUCH rather be at home but it can't be helped.

Ten Year Olds in University

2007-12-22T05:11:00.000-08:00

I haven't really hidden the fact that I've had problems with my housemates up in Toronto, but it has gotten way worse. Initially, I didn't have any problems with this one guy, but now he thinks hes the greatest thing ever and doesn't need to pay attention to what anyone else says. . . so basically hes ripped off part of our bathroom door and likely damaged his room (which we all have to pay for unless we burn his ass, which I'm going to do). He has also created numerous issues with noise and just acting like a ten year old in general, even going so far as to try to provoke me while I'm not even in the country via facebook, which was a good laugh but its a clear sign that its high time he gets out of a respectable university and starts begging for change, because quite honestly thats what he deserves. Not sure how the hell he got in.

Chances are when I bring up the problem, I will be the one moved, but if I can essentially prove that he has damaged the house. . . he might get removed from the school entirely. To be honest, I want to burn this guy. It would be so satisfying to see him kicked off campus after all of the shit he has pulled, and maybe I'd be a bad person for genuinely enjoying ruining someone else's life, but hes well on his way to putting a significant dent in mine, so, him or me I guess.

Anyway, I've mostly been playing Guild Wars because its easier to pick up and put down whenever I want to, and with finals and getting back to California its been a little rough finding time to just sit down and play, but I think I'm slowly getting back into an FFXI mood, though some minor drama mongering has put me off a tiny bit. I will likely continue with RDM, I still want it up, but I'm at the stage where I just need to get any motivation at all back, and then move up from there to whatever comes next.

Oh, also: California is colder than Toronto? lolwut? Seriously though, 33 here, 37 there, kind of disturbing. At least theres no snow I suppose, and I've got my cat and a TV and real food (something other than pasta). Parents have done some yelling, and forced me to follow suit, but its MOSTLY been nice, and its certainly better than having some 19 year old who thinks hes 10 slamming his keyboard because he sucks at Half-Life. I can't wait to see the look on his face when he realizes that I wasn't joking about having a chat with some UTSC staff

Why red?

2007-12-06T12:23:00.000-08:00

Been leveling Red Mage lately, wondering exactly why its red and not green or something. Someone also asked me why I was leveling RDM, which kinda surprised me. Its a semi-useful situational sub to have for WHM, to be sure, but honestly I just felt like leveling it. Also, Galbatorix's Phalanx II made me a little jealous, it seemed extremely sexy and useful.

Currently sitting at 26, dinged earlier today before I went down for a nap. The party I got was kinda. . . . not so hot, but we powered through it and at that level it doesn't really matter anyway. Just not as smooth as I would have liked.

So far I really like the job but its been rough keeping up with resists. It has felt kind of like BLM, where I was having a lot of trouble having my spells not get resisted even though I had pretty much the most INT gear I could get. Because of that and mostly only really having debuffs that're useful (DNC take care of healing pretty much exclusively in the lower levels now, because theres so many of them and because there are so few WHMs) I've felt like I wasn't really a good use of a party slot most times, but even so things seem to be going ok, and around 33 things will begin to change dramatically.

I've also been really unsure what kind of gear exactly I'm supposed to wear. I feel like a WHM, except everything is the holy breastplate, and by the way if anyone reading this is a WHM who wears that, go kill yourself. I mean I get that RDM is supposed to be a hybrid but gear wise that turns into light DD gear because all the mage stuff thats even vaguely useful is either all jobs or the 'pure' mages only. I mean it doesn't really matter, I just feel weird wearing lizard gear into the late 20s because theres nothing worth upgrading to unless I wanted to look more pretty and go with beetle.

Thankfully school has more or less ended until next semester with the exception of finals, which is mainly why I'm moving significantly on RDM, but it also means that my housemates are around constantly so its been kind of a game of seeing if I can guess when they'll be loud and act like retards so I can fall asleep and then avoid them waking me up 2 hours later. Its also been rough actually trying to keep a reasonable sleep schedule. I'm a pretty light sleeper typically, I mean not that it matters since these idiots literally slam things around at 5 AM (like punching walls slamming) so even if I could sleep through the more minor stuff, that would wake me up pretty quickly, but a lot of the time they either keep me up or wake me up shortly after I fall asleep. . . . . I'm really looking forward to going home for a few weeks. There're a number of things I want to do and people I want to see (like my cat), but at the moment it looks like I might have to go down to southern california for christmas yet again which pretty much assfucks any plans I had to do anything even remotely relaxing over break. At any rate, I gotta get through finals first I guess.

Progress. . . . ?

2007-12-03T20:41:00.000-08:00

Managed Rank 8. . . . last night? I don't remember, my asshole housemate in the room next to mine keeps cussing at his computer because he sucks at games and dies a lot so I haven't really been able to get that much sleep despite telling him to shut up on more than one occaison. Anyway, yea. Rank 8, pretty nice, but I've got 10 in my sights.

As mentioned previously, I've been going through the CoP missions. . . ya know the more I see him the more I feel like Bahamut is a little pansy. I mean, if the Mammets were kicking his ass a little, surely he can't be THAT mean.

Beat up the Mammets pretty easily second run we went through on it. Oops, lolNIN is in this picture. Maybe I should have censored the names. . . . nah.

Also kicked Diabolos' ass, wasn't too hard, but it kinda blew that we had to run down there for it twice.

Best cutscene ever. I'm sure there are already MANY rule 34 related images around on the net somewhere.

Also kept leveling BRD though I've stopped recently because farming up the level 59 elegy is a pain in the ass and I don't really feel like spending the money on it yet, but with my source of income going through the roof thanks to the re-nerfing of 2 handers, that might change soon.

Lastly, Imac was around a couple weekends ago and there were a few fun moments, this being the primary highlight.

Miserable Failures

2007-12-01T18:32:00.001-08:00

So a while ago I joined up with a group moving through Chains of Promathia missions, and it was going MOSTLY ok, and a few of the people on the runs are actually quite smart, but eventually it got kind of. . . . . .

There is one central character in all of this bullshit, and I'll just call him lolNIN until he pisses me off enough that I feel the need to reveal his name. The short version is he is a complete moron who never prepares for anything at all and needs to have his hand held through every single thing no matter how trivial.

First instance was prep work for Mammets. For those of you who don't know, the prep involves a lot of running around, and if you're a retard (or just lolNIN) it takes FOREVER. Amazingly, I was lucky enough to be paired off to DUO the entire thing with this moron. He is a level 60 NIN. He is rank 4. He needs ports for every step the entire way.

The prep also involves fighting an ant lion that regains all of its HP if it returns to its spawn point, which it attempts to do every time it uses an ability. It took about 5 minutes of saying "MOVE THE FUCK AWAY FROM ITS SPAWN" and it got all of its HP back about 6 times before this retarded lolNIN could figure out that he needed to move. Several call1's were also involved. After that, whenever it moved back and we couldn't turn it, I had to spend about 2-3 minutes again spamming that he needed to get away from the spawn before he moved. After about half an hour he finally figured it out and it only took a couple notices in /p before he moved.

Please note that nothing in this is an exageration. I really did have to spend about 5 minutes getting this jackass to move away from the spawn, and it really did take about half an hour for him to figure out why DESPITE KNOWING THAT IT GOT ALL ITS HP BACK AT THE SPAWN POINT.

Eventually, after being about 2 hours late thanks to this guys inability to do his rank 5 mission, we got to Monarch Linn. We go in for the first run, seems to be going ok, we had three NINs (or two NINs and one lolNIN depending how you count). How I did not see this coming is beyond me, but the lolNIN got the mage mammet, and IMMEDIATELY pulled it right in between the other two NINs so that any AoE would pretty much hit everyone. At this point I figure that maybe hes just trying to fuck this up, but apparently he really is that stupid. After a few pointed comments in his direction we went again, told him to just shut up and go hump a wall with his mammet, and we won.

A few days later, we go to Pso'Xja to farm chips to get the pass for the Diabolos fight, and not 2 minutes after he and I zone in he spawns the two golems from the thing that you get the. . . . blue? bracelet from and is promptly assfucked. Of course, he decided not to follow me, so I can't do anything to make up for his idiocy until I run back and raise his sorry ass.

Now, we're on Ouryu, and while we lost the first fight (and had to warp because everyone was retarded and spammed their mistmelts on the first time he went up until they had none left), lolNIN amazingly managed to not fuck up anything major that I noticed. Course, now that we're on our way back to run it again he and everyone else in our party except me managed to split up into two groups, both aggro hippos, and both die, so, don't give him too much credit.

Gonna write a non-rant bit later probably once I have enough free time to fiddle with pictures.

Not good enough

2007-11-23T11:53:00.000-08:00

No one is perfect.

That isn't going to stop me from being incredibly pissed about this idiotic WotG PC delay. Thanks, I have no drive whatsoever to go and play the game so I can watch everyone around me enjoy new content while I have to wait. . . what is it now, 5 days?

Also, people at EB Games are douchebags. Not really news to anyone I'm sure, but its worth pointing out.

For the Lulz

2007-11-11T16:27:00.000-08:00

LolRDM. . ?

2007-11-06T04:22:00.000-08:00

Alright, I have a question to ask the FFXI community as a whole, or possibly specifically those who play RDM.

Why are half of the RDMs great players who pay attention, while the other half just suck completely beyond belief and cannot be bothered to actually play the game when they get a party?

Heres an example: In my static on Sunday, we initially had a RDM named Skelly. I had a bad feeling about him before the party started because he felt it was neccesary to spam a shout for people to join his linkshell in freaking Bibiki Bay. Shockingly, he sucked ass. I could give you specific examples of how he sucked, but really, I can sum it up by saying he was essentially afk 90% of the time and wasn't saying anything about it, not that it would have been alright if he had. Eventually, a mob pops on us, links, kills half the party, and Draco on WHM is the only one who attempts to sleep it, because guess what? Skelly has porn to watch, why the hell would he try and help the party or even pay attention? What a strange notion, this whole "playing the fucking game" thing.

Skelly the shittacular RDM is by no means an isolated case. I had another that went afk without saying anything in a party I had with Sicfreak on my BRD. The difference here was they went afk. . . and stayed afk for about 12 hours. Sic had a party there later and they were still there /healing in the same damn spot. Maybe they passed out? I don't know, and I don't care. You don't seek when you're really tired.

Yet, on the other side of things, we eventually got a replacement for Skelly, because he was embaressed to be revealed as the gimp moron he was. The replacement was another taru RDM named Tuzabuza, and he brought out the full potential of RDM. While Draco had to leave shortly after, if he had been there, he could have afk'd the whole thing and been gimp like Skelly and the party still would have gone smoothly. Tuzabuza took care of everything and had MP to spare. All in all, an extremely excellent RDM.

Tuzabuza's excellence however is not an isolated case either. There are quite a few excellent RDMs, and while I can't remember his name, I had a japanese RDM in one of my BRD parties that made BRD pulling extremely easy because if ballad wore for a short time while I was off pulling, he always had me covered and we didn't suffer because of it.

So why is it, that half of the players can play this job so well while the other half don't even try and are probably the most depressing samples of FFXI players in the game?

Anyone?

LolEndgame

2007-11-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

Easily the best laugh I've had in a very long time. I think Galb meant to say he couldn't figure out what it meant, but either way, it was hilarious.

I trio'd all of my weaponskill points with Draco and Galb a couple nights ago, and then yesterday while I was seeking SAM I saw someone shouting for the WSNM, so I joined up, got the kill, helped someone get Gimpulse Drive, and then enjoyed my final GKT WS until relic, if I ever pursue that.

Draco mentioned it in his blog, and honestly anyone who reads mine probably reads his, but, Draco, Galb and I joined an Einherjar link, and while we haven't won a run yet, the first run was quite promising and I think we'll be good as long as we filter out the retards, like the mob we got on Tuesday in our second run that wound up basically just sort of aggroing everything and then spreading out so the rape would be nice and slow over time.

I also joined Spirit of Evolution, which is kinda snazzy, but mostly only because Draco tanks it usually, so I WHM for him. The first run I went on was Jeuno, which was kind of a trial by fire since it was so nuts in there, but we did Windurst yesterday and that was kinda fun, but sorta meh for two reasons. First, its really hitting me that theres no way in fuck I'm getting any relic for a while. Second is the following and its implications.

This is one of the newer members of the link. Joined when I did, apparently. As you can see, hes a WHM, also a taru. Now, if you know your item icons, you already can kind of tell this guy isn't exactly the top of his class so to speak. Beyond that this guy is just fundamentally gimp, it bugs the shit out of me that no matter how much I try, how well I do, or how awesomely useful I make myself compared to this dink who brings fucking phalanx rings on WHM to dynamis, I will never, ever have priority on relic over this guy as long as we attend the same number of runs.

Yea, yea, equality and all that. Great. But you know what? Its bullshit that someone can bust their ass and be many times more useful to the entire group (see also: lolDracoTank) than most other people attending the run, yet when it comes time to see who gets what, they're just as good as this moron wearing probably the worst WHM setup I've ever seen while still having a Noble's. The guy even tried to act like wearing pseudo-tanking gear as a freaking WHM was justified. FFS you're a taru WHM, 20 defense from rings isn't going to slow your fall as you get assfucked by that NM. Get over it and do your damn job.

Here're the stats on the particularly lulzy pieces of gear he was wearing for those of you who don't memorize the images.

Oh, also we got some jackass RDM in Dynamis-Jeuno who almost never refreshed and lied about his sister's car running out of gas so he could afk for like an hour and watch some movie, and then when he "came back" he kept watching the damn movies. Then, just as icing on the cake, I /sea him after dynamis and the prick is seeking his 75 NIN, and his only search comment is "BRD burn only". Please, just, go kill yourself. Now, if possible. I'll tie the noose for you.

Events, Meripos

2007-10-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm 75 for real now.

Got my first merit last night. Came a lot faster than I thought it would. Second one was quick too even.

We broke about 5k off of my third, and once I get that, I'll be getting Devotion pretty much just because Draco wants it. I'm hoping to get that 5k in Besieged before this evening so I can surprise him with it and have it for Einherjar and Dynamis.

Yea, Einherjar and Dynamis. While I only really have one pearl for them so far, I more or less joined three linkshells yesterday. One for Einherjar, one for Dynamis, and a third for Sky when I get access as well as Salvage/Assault + other events when I can get access to them. I'm kind of really excited to be honest, I can't wait to see how it all works, and eventually snag some cursed gear (fucking cursed dalmatica is WAY too expensive). I also 'upgraded' my WHM's gear, which at the moment just amounts to buying an ether ring, but I'm going to snag a pair of blessed trousers as soon as I get the cash as well. After I get that I'll probably just take a week to wrap SAM up.

With SAM out of the way, it really becomes a question of how quickly I can blitz sky access. I'm not concerned with getting anything beyond that just yet, though obviously once its done I wanna work on completely wrapping up that series of missions, I've gotta just get to sky access first. After that, I could go on and on about what I'd like to get done, but if I manage sky access within 2-3 weeks I will be more than happy to sit with just that for a while.

I also need to determine what kind of income I may get from Einherjar and later sky. By the time I have it, it may not be horribly important since I'll have already gotten my Hagun and I already have my Noble's, but I'm certainly interested if it winds up meaning I don't need to spend much time elsewhere.

I'm not sure how I feel about the job at the moment, but depending how things go I may wind up taking BRD up next. It is already at 41, and Ringthree mentioned they were kind of short on BRDs, so I'd certainly get my use out of the job. My only real complaint with it would be having to pull, which kind of bothers me since I still don't understand why the hell BRDs pull. Oh well. I guess it will sort of depend on how much patience I have for the job when the time comes, because my problems with it before have mostly been the monotony of it, and I really don't do the constant manic running around of trying to put 4 songs up and then pulling fast. Ah well. Sure as hell wouldn't hurt to have leveled.

I want to be. . . the very best. . .

2007-10-23T02:08:00.000-07:00

Yep, a pokémon reference and its NOT about pankration.

Draco and I duo'd our BSTs a bit and MAN was it fun. Duoing solves everything that is hard about soloing BST pretty much. It was really easy as long as we stuck together and paid attention to what was going on. The only real trouble we ever had was finding another mob to charm, as for some reason things were taking quite a long time to respawn.

The bottom line is, if you can find someone to duo your BST with, and you don't hate the job, try it. Its REALLY fun.

Lastly, Draco failing miserably. To be perfectly fair, this was at around 4 or 5 AM his time, but it was still lulzy.

Operation Hexa Strike. . . . Swarm

2007-10-21T23:22:00.000-07:00

So Sundays are normally NIN/WHM/THF static with Galb/Draco/me, but today we wound up not running it, and instead there were a few fun things that were accomplished.

Firstly, and actually about midway through the evening, I got a little weapon skill that I've been wanting for a LONG time now.

Immediately after that, Draco Fmtwo and I ran off to meet up with Galb, and then on to Palborough to make 4 runs at Operation Desert Swarm which was. . . man. . . it was my first experience with it so my view of the drops is a little skewed, but I'll let the screenshots speak for themselves. Oh and we split the loot by the way, but the way it played out we didn't really need to in order to make it even.

First up, Fmtwo's orb

Then Draco went

Followed by Galb

And finally, mine

Apparently, thats some insanely good loot, but honestly I really wouldn't know. I've never done these. All I know is I made 330k or so easily and had fun owning with friends while doing it. Quite a nice evening.

Oh, and because I haven't in a long while:

Stupid People, Canadia, Renewed Interest

2007-10-04T08:08:00.000-07:00

Been a bit since I last posted (whined), so theres actually something to talk (complain) about. Firstly, my method of making money is currently ~37.5% as effective as it was a couple months ago. Of course, the only reason this has happened is because of undercutters being morons and boning themselves and everyone else up the ass, which in turn leads me to the conclusion that there are very few people out there who are not idiots.

However, beyond all of that (whining), as you may or may not know I'm currently attending university up in Canadia (Toronto specifically). Beyond being significantly less than happy with my social life on many levels, its been pretty nice up here so far, though it would be nicer if it got colder and if I had my desktop, which is theoretically en route, might even get here today for all I know. Due to the fact that the university I'm going to apparently barely even offers computer science, and because of my transfer credits, for the moment I'm taking classes that I couldn't care less about (history, astronomy). On the upside, I have Monday and Friday off, which leads me to my renewed interest in some parts of FFXI.

For the moment it looks like the next job I'm going to level will be PLD, but it'd be static'd so that probably won't be eating up too much time. That being said, it looks like the WHM/NIN/THF static will start moving again as well, so I'm not sure whether I want to just do meripos/capping SAM + money making while neither of those is going or if I want to throw a third job on top of those two. The only real problem I'm facing in game right now is really how I am going to deal with my last few equipment upgrades for SAM, which is mostly just a hagun. NORMALLY that wouldn't be so rough but because of the undercutters I mentioned before, I know make money roughly one third as fast as I used to, and when you need to go well over a million to buy the gear you need. . . its not pretty. Keep in mind this is ignoring the fact that I also need to start looking at some minor upgrades for THF (its pretty decently equipped as it is so I ought to be fine) and then in the future PLD as well.

The bright side is, my money making abilities SHOULD get better as prices rise again, however the fact that prices are hitting this low mid-week is scaring me. Maybe I'll just go buy them all up. . .

Housemates + Roommates

2007-09-23T01:37:00.000-07:00

This is probably only going to be relevant to anyone who is in college. However those of you who are, should read this.

It is 4:40 AM right now, on a Sunday morning. I live in a house with 5 other people. Two of them don't seem to understand that other living things exist. They have been loudly partying since 10 PM.

Stop fucking acting like you morons are the only people around. You know who you are. You are the people who don't give a shit about how your actions influence other people, and you force other people to make problems for you before you act like anything above trash.

You are scum. Inability to consider what your actions do to others is the one reason that is good enough to justify removing you from the gene pool for the sole purpose of improving the lives of every other single fucking person on the planet. On any level. Flunking frat boy at college who parties until 5 AM or a criminal who steals because he thinks he is all that matters, you're the same worthless shit.

Go ahead, by all means, enjoy yourself. But as soon as you start doing it at the expense of those around you, you become worthless. If you were the only person on the planet, cool, go do whatever, but guess what. You're fucking not. We're all here, whether we like it or not, and we don't like the smell of your farts as much as you seem to, so shut the fuck up and put down the booze.

lolwiki

2007-09-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23599
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=289981
http://digg.com/gaming_news/Regarding_FFXIClopedia_s_recent_move_to_Wikia

Soooo. That was where I went. y halo thar KI.

Kinda sad that people pull that kind of shit but I guess I shouldn't be that surprised. It just seemed like the wiki community was the one last little bit of sanity left where you could go and almost NEVER get flamed (though I'll readily admit there were some users who were douchebags and never really got banned).

Oh well, on to KI I suppose.

Life > FFXI

2007-09-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

So now I'm up in Toronto and I've tied up most of my loose ends, but now there are a few things that I'm looking into that are going to be loads of fun.

I haven't even managed to log on to FFXI over the last week or so, but I've decided that I'm going to develop a little text based game based around a universe I designed a few years ago. This is going to be a lot of fun for me, and probably wind up being an excellent game as far as text-based stuff goes (think Colossal Cave Adventure except more modern, plot driven, and maybe a little more user-friendly as far as interface goes). I'm really excited to get to work on it, and for the moment all I can do is write up the story for the first little bit, but soon I'll be able to start coding. I'm hoping to have the final version of the first game done and out by December, but, no promises. Probably more details later as they're solidified.

Reality and updates

2007-08-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

The summer has been a lot of fun, but I'm being slapped around by reality now that school is fast approaching. While the school I'm going to has arguably the most idiotic and poorly designed system for anything and everything that I have ever encountered, its my job to work through it, and it hasn't been going that well. For example, I have to pay for tuition and all that, but, they don't really give me any way of actually paying them. Furthermore I don't even have anywhere to live yet.

The whole thing is shitty and its stressing me out a ton, and I think its making me be even more of a douchebag than usual. The other thing thats getting to me is I don't know how much I'll be able to actually play once I am up there. That specifically isn't what bothers me, its that I don't know if I care. In a lot of ways I need to move on in life. Not neccesarily from FFXI, but I need to get into another relationship, and I need to work, and both are going to happen up in toronto. Realistically, with those two combined, I really don't see myself having the time to play FFXI, especially since in the past, while I have devoted a sufficient amount of time to girlfriends I'd really like to put a lot of effort into my next one, so chances are I will wind up spending any and all excess time I have on the relationship. As a result, I may wind up as one of those people who mostly just crafts and farms, and almost never levels. I'd really rather it didn't come to that because I define progress mostly as job levels, but I'm going to have to face reality pretty soon here.

Anyway, enough life crap. 65 SAM, Gekko, wtfpwn on imps. Really fun to play around out there and make the NINs look like idiots (/gasp, a NIN not tanking well? maybe they shouldn't be considered tanks in most situations). Not much else going on though.

75 Get

2007-08-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

Took me something like 5 years, technically. I may not like the job, but, there it is. First 75.

Also, I thought I took screens of the level up but. . . guess what. My computer actually crashed on the second to last mob, and when I restarted I forgot to start up fraps again. . . so I have nothing. Gotta love it.

The Mood

2007-08-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

Well, its been a long time since I wrote anything, and not because nothings been happening. Tons of shit has been going and, and thats actually probably more why I haven't been writing. Stuff with Toronto has been a complete bitch lately, EXTREMELY stressful and kind of depressing. Basically housing is full and I have to find my own place, which is going to be a royal bitch, but I have to, and I will.

As far as life goes, I also got a laptop, which is kinda cool but for some reason it lags with FFXI just as much on the highest graphics settings as it does on the lowest. Still trying to figure that part out, but with time it'll work itself out I guess.

In FFXI, a lot has happened. I may forget some stuff, but, I'll try and run through as much of it as I can. One of the biggest ones would be that I finished the promys, however I can't seem to get anything going with hitting the aqueducts for subligar, so for the moment its actually rather pointless. I also got my whole SAM AF set, and am currently SAM62, getting close to 63. My Thief hasn't moved much unfortunately because draco had to move, so he hasn't been online in like maybe 2-3 weeks now, but I'm beginning to feel like everything that I wanted my THF for, SAM can do better. Mostly simply due to the fact that SAM can actually take hits pretty well, and can dish out damage solo WAY easier than THF can. As a result I've been kind of torn about which I want to use for money making because it really is an issue of speed vs. treasure hunter. I've also been screwing around with some lower level jobs, mainly PLD, mostly because I got kinda tired of having 20 or 40k to get one level, and one of my highschool friends started playing, which has been a lot of fun.

Hes surprisingly fast at leveling, just yesterday got him 18 and his subjob. I'm hoping that down the road a little bit we can level together, but pretty soon I'm going to be EST and hes gonna stay PST, so timing may be nasty, and on top of that I plan on working out quite a bit in Toronto and getting an internship or something if I can find one relatively nearby, so I'm really wondering how much time I'll have to actually play.

Anyway, back to trying for 63.

This is why we can't have nice things!

2007-08-02T07:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.blacklooks.org/2007/07/resident_evil_5.html

After reading the post in the blog linked above, I have realized something extremely important about my childhood, maybe around when I was 10 or so.

Back then, around 10 years ago, my family had a macintosh with a monitor taller than it was wide, and a reeeeeally old dell, like one of the first ones they made. There were two main games that I played that I can remember, one on each. The first was a racing game that, whenever you crashed the car, also crashed the computer for the macintosh. The other, was SimAnt, for the dell.

Today, I would like to talk about how racist SimAnt is. In the game, you play as a black ant (clearly meant to represent Africans) and you try to conquer a yard and a house and fight against the evil red ants (Native Americans?). This is OBVIOUSLY completely racist and the game should be pulled from shelves. Maxis should also be sued into oblivion. You lead the black ants en masse to invade and destroy the red ant's home, trying to wipe their kind from existence. The game CLEARLY actively encourages genocide against Native Americans. Additionally the AI wasn't all that smart so it also insinuates that Native Americans are less intelligent.

As a result of playing this game as a child, I required 4 years of intense counseling to stop myself from attempting to conquer all of North America. It was extremely dangerous and I am shocked this game has not yet led to any such actions.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!

RMT vs. WHM AF3 - FIGHT!

2007-07-20T22:11:00.000-07:00

I took my SAM (yes wearing a scorpion harness and various bits of AF, I'll go into detail on that next post, TONS has happened) up to Fei'Yin to screw around some since I didn't have anything better to do, and I came across the most awesome thing I have seen in a long while. A massive group of like rank 1/2 level 60-68 BLMs who apparently tried to fight the WHM AF3 NM.

Not shown: yet another corpse and the 2 of them that were alive.

Um. . . . Ok

2007-07-14T01:46:00.000-07:00

So, SAM hit 50 a little while ago, I don't remember exactly when, but I did it. Then, invites just flat out stopped. The only thing that changed was a 49 turned into a 50 and it just went dead right then and there.

I have had 2 parties since I hit 50, one I am still in, and both have been absolutely horrible. The first one featured this incredibly retarded BRD who has SAM at 75 and as a result thinks he knows everything. He insisted that soboro was the greatest thing 50-72, which is a load of bullshit since its not even the greatest thing at 50. Sure, its good, but you hit like a pussy with it. Considering 50 is when you fight crabs in kuftal which are a royal BITCH to deal damage to, I'll take my other GKTs thank you. I laugh though cause the moron doesn't even have it yet he spouts this crap. He also claims that Tachi: Enpi is better than Tachi: Jinpu, which is stupid since Jinpu hits for more than double what Enpi can ever reach on a regular basis unless the mob has high defense, like crabs. Then, just to round it out, he thinks Lesser Colibri are a viable camp at level 50. Our tank was 49, and got absolutely fucking mauled by the birds when we went there, so we left for Quicksands, and then the tank hit 50, and the idiot started saying we should do Colibri. I was so very close to just telling him that he was a fucking idiot and that he needed to shut up as soon as possible, but, for some dumb reason I was feeling nice that day. Lastly, he said that RDM was a front line job, which was a mistell, but, further proved how phenomenally idiotic this jackass was.

Right now, I'm in the second party, which is WHM BLM RDM THF NIN SAM in Kuftal fighting crabs. This party set up would be great if more than half the party knew anything at all. At the beginning of the party, the THF would SATAVB ME instead of the NIN despite the fact that I could always get hate off the NIN even if I wasn't trying, so as a result I got nearly destroyed a few times, and finally I just started voking it any time I saw he had TP so the fool couldn't do anything retarded even if he wanted to. Normally I'd yell at him and tell him that SATA'ing me is stupid unless his goal is to deplete the WHM's MP, but he and the NIN are japanese so I can't really communicate well. Additionally, I can't even tell whether or not the NIN is any good because the stupid BLM can't stop nuking. The entire party so far, the BLM has periodically taken hate because they just won't stop casting. Sadly, the BLM is the leader, so I can't really say much to them about it since honestly if I ditched this horrible party I'd have to probably wait another 10ish hours seeking to find another thats pretty much as crappy.

I guess the upside is I got a couple AF pieces. The pants and the gloves for SAM, and I'm halfway through the AF2 quest. I also managed to finally get my THF AF body piece, which is completely useless really but I wanted to get it over with so I could be done with THF AF as soon as I harass people to finally help me with the damn AF3.

/angry (Warning: Extremely explicit)

2007-07-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Today, I tried to exp WHM. I got a party, NIN NIN BRD THF SAM, and they asked if we wanted to do Mamool Ja SP or Caedarva. Considering that my job in this party would be to Haste four (4) people and Silena three (3), I told them I wasn't doing Caedarva, and we headed out to the Mamool Ja SP. When we get there, they start whining like fucking five year olds about how they want to do Caedarva, and I just straight up told them that they could blow me if they actually thought I'd be willing to haste 4 people and silena 3 for the shit exp that you get in Caedarve at the 73-75 range. I left, they went to Caedarva, and now, I am fucking pissed.

Hey melees. Fuck you. Yes, you, FUCK you. The next burn party that invites me to Caedarva with 2-3 NINs and a BRD plus filler DDs and no one else with Silena and Haste is going to get a fucking earful. Just because you have to do something beyond hitting ctrl-a and your utsusemi macro doesn't magically mean that the exp in that place is crappy. Furthermore if you actually expect a WHM to do all the work when their job is already pretty fucking boring in the first place, you can go eat a dick.

Hell, even just give me someone else with Haste and I'll go. When I went with linkshell friends it was fine because we had a RDM who helped me haste and the exp was slightly better because we were lower. But now? No. Fuck you all. I'm not busting my ass so you can hit ctrl-a for 150 exp. Especially not when said melees are ungrateful fucks who bitch and moan the second they have to do anything.

That is all.

Rise from the Ashes

2007-07-07T01:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I pretty much stopped trying to do promys, cause they're too damn annoying, and I'm just going to try and go with a group when I find someone shouting. It is REALLY painful to try and lead runs for them, so, meh. I also just finished partying thief today, which was a lot of fun.

We started out going to Quicksand Caves from Western Altepa, and had WHM (Draco) NIN (Galb) THF (me) RDM SAM DRG. The SAM was supposed to first voke, skillchain with me (enpi > viper) and with the DRG (double thrust > enpi or jinpu). Generally speaking, the SAM got about one of those right each fight. I cheered when they said they had to go soon. After that we picked up a BLM, and moved to a better camp in the same zone that was netting us somewhere in the 5k-6k exp/hour range, which was pretty nice, but pretty quickly we got over the level we should be for those mobs, so we moved to Kuftal Tunnel, and did ok for a little bit, nothing spectacular. Then, the DRG disconnected and never came back. I invited a SAM, and figured he'd be the jp onry type, however, he seemed happy to be invited, and came over.

This guy was a freaking monster. He was a tarutaru SAM, and he did pretty much anything and everything that any SAM could. He was the first voker, and was SCing with both me and Galb every single time he could, PLUS one or two solo WSs randomly each fight. I do not know how the hell he did that, but he did, and it was freaking awesome. With him, we got into a groove and burned up to where Galb just barely got 54, while Draco and I got a decent ways into 53, so it was a very productive day, and we had an awesome party.

I am now also wearing my first piece of THF AF, the gloves, which're nice cause they replaced level 14 Battle Gloves, which I was very much sick of, but also I'm starting to look more and more like a THF now, which I'm really happy about. I hate the mage armor (doublet basically) stuff on thieves, but a lot of it you have to wear, so I can't wait for AF pants and Jaridah Peti, both coming up fairly soon (56 and 55 respectively).

Oh. I also got donuts.

Massive Fail

2007-07-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

Promys still not done (about the only highlight: they MIGHT get done tomorrow)

3ish hours in Fei'Yin without even SEEING a chest

An hour in Zvahl trying to get THF AF body, and only a mimic and a death to show for it

SAM stuck at 47 because I want the JSE for it before I push past 50

THF still at 50

Blessed Briault continues to be undercut and mine won't sell (which is freaking retarded cause its already not profitable as a synth)

While I did get a Mary's Horn randomly, it, along with everything else I've put up, isn't selling

Yea, I'm not having a very good week.

Best NM claim ever

2007-06-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

So yesterday, and a little bit the day before (sorta, it was early morning for most of us) some of us were camping Kreutzet for Supergirl's Sirocco Kukri, which we eventually got last night after seeing 3 pops. Draco naturally got both the claim and the kill.

So then I went to do prep work on THF AF3 cause everyone said they were really awake and wanted something to do, and Super got a little bored and went to check Ose in Onzozo. It was up, and some RMTs were fighting it. They wiped, and around then Draco and Super were there so they claimed it but both died, then I went in, Raise III'd them both, and then noticed that Galb was en route. . . .on his RDM. Freaking. Genius. I IMMEDIATELY used my Elemental Seal + Sleep macro on Ose, and then Galb got there right as Ose woke up, and he slept it until we were ready to totally wtfpwn it while the RMTs watched and spammed /tells to Draco. We didn't get the drop, but jacking it from RMTs like that was fucking awesome.

Anyways, thats about it, not much else has gone on yet.

Almost there. . .

2007-06-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day that I really have finals. I have a CSS project due tonight that I'll be starting soonish, and then a little essay that is due for my Speech class, which is a self assesment, and I think I will do extremely well with that. I'm not really stressed, or worried really. The main thing is. . . once this is over, thats it. I'm done. I just have to wait until I fly up to Toronto. Its like I've been running laps around a track for 20 years and now the finish line is only 5 or 10 feet in front of me, and in clear view.

At any rate, beyond that, the San Jose Sharks, who I've been a fan of since I could understand what hockey was, traded one of their goalies, Vesa Toskala (who kicks ass) to the Toronto Maple Leafs, so now I have a reason to vaguely be interested in the Leafs up in Toronto, even though I'm a habs fan as well (I can't wait to get shit for that in Toronto).

Lastly, for FFXI, I managed to get 72 WHM, and 45 SAM, so I'm trying to sell my Blessed Briault and wearing the errant full time. I think the main thing I really need for WHM at this point is Blessed Trousers and then I'm set until I want to pimp WHM out more. On SAM I am now wearing Brigandine, which is my least favorite armor in the entire game due to the fact that from 45-59 on Sorako's THF I had to wear it, and that was about. . . damn, it was at least like 3 months, maybe up to 6. That being said, it actually looks pretty good with okotes, and I only have to wear it until 50 probably, and I don't run around on SAM usually (yet) so I think it won't drive me insane just yet.

I almost forgot, but I will be picking up a Wii pretty soon probably. Perhaps there is a chance that it is a fad and won't be very popular after a little while longer, however, as a business Nintendo convinced me of its intelligence with the DS. To have something (dual screens) that I was so convinced was completely stupid sell extremely well convinced me that while Nintendo's ideas may not seem to be smart choices, once you try out what they do yourself, it becomes clear that they only seem stupid at first, but in actuality are brilliant and well executed ideas. Not sure if that made much sense, but yea, buying a Wii I believe, though I'm kinda tossing around the idea of passing up a Wii for a 360 or even a laptop if I save up, but both of them, particularly the laptop, are a little major for the budget I'm working on with college. We'll see, anyways. If I somehow manage a job in Toronto I'll likely wind up with 2 of the 3.

At any rate, I should get to work on that CSS project so I can be done with it.

Irritation

2007-06-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

Promys didn't happen. Again. I'm about ready to just start shouting in whitegate. I'm not going to blame anyone specifically for that, but I'm also not going to deny that its really frustrating me to the point where I'm questioning how much I should be helping out. Maybe I'm getting kinda angry about it a bit too early, and I should be more patient, but I feel like thats been the main thing I'd like to get done that I needed help with for a long time now.

Whatever. I'll get it done one way or another and if I can't get over that then I'll help less and show that it pissed me off.

Aside from trying to get that done, I've got finals the next three days (one a day) and then I'm free until I fly off to Canada to go to Toronto in. . . September? Dunno exactly when and I'm not worrying about it much because I'll be flying up with a highschool friend who also goes there anyways.

I'm planning on getting WHM to 75 before I make any more major runs with SAM unless I seriously get sick of WHM, which is absolutely possible. This'll not only help me make money for funding SAM when I do blitz it again but it'll give me time to do promys and get the neccesary subligar to get THF and SAM JSE. Also at the moment it'll help me make a little bit of money since I'm switching out my Blessed Briault for an Errant Houppelande, the former costing about 20-30k more than the latter.

(|Hmm.|)

2007-06-24T01:27:00.000-07:00

Well, I managed to get my SAM up to 42. . . pretty fun, snagged a tilt belt and then a walkure mask in anticipation of 43, but I couldn't get a party so I just played some Battlefield 2 while I downloaded a free MMO called Space Cowboy thats pretty cool. You fly a jet, sci-fi type thing, really fun to me. So tomorrow I'm theoretically doing Promys, which'll be a lot of fun, I'm looking forward to it, particularly looking forward to running around in the Tavnazia areas afterwards, I really want to see those areas as its something I've never done before in my FFXI career. Though, I have a hockey game tomorrow at 4 PM also, and while thats pretty early for a hockey game I'm a little worried about timing with the promys, though nothings been said so far.

Oh well. Either way, life'll go on, so whatever. The main reason I even want it right now is I'm getting close to being able to use the SAM JSE which is freaking awesome, has Store TP + 9 on the body and then the pants which drop off an NM in Oldton throw on another 6, and the best part is they look cool. I'm really looking forward to that, but I fear that I might not be able to snag them before I hit 50.

Also there, hopefully I'll manage to get the THF JSE as well, which would be quite sexy as I'd be using it pretty much forever, and it too has a cool graphic. That and I'm tired of being jealous of THFs that I see running around in it.

Lastly, I got my Tactics Pearl FINALLY. Now, this is actually making me kinda want to solo with my NPC, and I've been doing quite a bit while I seek on SAM. Luckily my NPC is only 35 so I still get reasonable exp for her off of junk that my SAM can easily slap around. What I really can't wait for is being able to solo in Xarcabard or Castle Zvahl, against Demons, who'll drop horns for me, and be intimidated by me. That being said, I'm looking forward to just soloing with SAM in general, or even with THF. One thing in particular I kind of want to be able to do is easily solo in Zi'Tah, because, like everyone else, I really like the zone and I spent some of my time prior to the first time I quit there, trying to get tree cuttings, so theres a fair bit of nostalgia involved.

Goals:
60-70 THF and SAM in early August
75 WHM by mid-July (earlier = better)
37 RDM by late July (not sure how much I care about this, but its useful for raids)

I am my fucking Okotes

2007-06-21T17:17:00.001-07:00

Yea, polearm, good on bats. Great Katana is a tiny bit under leveled now but I couldn't care less.

Lame

2007-06-16T22:23:00.000-07:00

Today has kind of sucked.

The weekend started off well enough, on Friday we did 2 WHM AF3s, both RDM AF3 NMs, Crawler's Nest key + coffer, THF AF2 NM in Sauromugue Champaign (only really me and galb on that one), and two Garlaige Citadel coffers. We also tried for a long time to get a Beadeaux coffer key but it wouldn't drop for us.

Today however, I basically just got up at 2 PM (stayed up until 5 AM helping draco with his computer, or trying to help anyways) and waited to see whether or not staticing THF would happen, and I was hoping it would, but at 9 PM I just said fuck it and started seeking SAM. Very stupid to have waited that long but I did. At any rate, now I've been waiting for an invite for like an hour and a half or something, with no luck. Not a good day.

Oh, also I might not even manage finishing promys tomorrow because its father's day I think. Admittedly getting a little jaded, similar to how I felt when I was trying to pull off Genkai 2 and my WHM AF3.

Work is done, time to play

2007-06-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

I've finally managed to get past the last major spike in work for the school year, all thats left are a few minor assignments, and then finals. That also means that I can finally really play, though, not really since all of my highschool friends are back in town, so I need/want to spend time with them frequently.

Either way, theoretically getting promys done this weekend, and if I'm lucky I'll manage to bring SAM up to 40+ as well (yay for Sandy CP armor, can't wait to pop that gear on, none of my characters have EVER been able to wear any form of 'heavy' armor).

Basic goals for weekend
- Level SAM significantly, ideally to or past 40
- Get a variety of raids done for linkshell, including two runs at the WHM AF3 NM and one (two?) at Miser Murphy for RDM
- Have Polearm leveled up to cap or near cap for when SAM hits Garlaige against bats (I'm happy to say I'm mostly done with this already, and I pull off a lot of damage with it)

It's hot!

2007-06-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

Really hot over here in northern California, but I've got a fan so its all good.

Anyways. SAM just dinged 31 a couple minutes ago, using a polearm thats mostly done being skilled for owning bats ing garbage (Garlaige Citadel), 3 levels off of my okotes, 9 off of my 2 woodsman rings. Yes. Two.

So next up is either Haubergeon or Chivalrous Chain, depending on how quickly THF approaches 60. I also gotta wrap up on promys and then get my SAM JSE body, and hopefully the THF one too, though I hear its tough. At 50 SAM I also need to get the JSE legs that drop off some bugbear NM in Oldton, which draco has been helping with a lot. Between the JSE body, legs, and job traits, I will have +35 Store TP at 50.

Lastly, and most importantly, I got into the college that I really wanted to transfer to: University of Toronto at Scarborough. I already have 3 friends that I know who go there, one of which I went to highschool with, so it will be a lot of fun. Plus. . . Canadian girls rock. . .

Productivity

2007-06-06T22:17:00.000-07:00

First of all, and probably most importantly, I static'd with Galb, DW, and Draco a couple days back, and we all got 50, so we can now work on AFs. It actually was a pretty bad day as far as our statics go, usually do much better, but I'm just happy we got 50. I also really wasn't in the mood with THF that much, so I don't feel like I ever actually hit my rythym in the party, and Draco wasn't feeling too great about it either. Who knows why it worked out like that, just an off day I guess. Either way, as a result of that we can all start on AFs, which is a lot of fun, especially for me since theres no key farming involved. That of course immediately led to me picking up my gloves (haven't actually gone and killed dark spark yet, so no picture), and my pants, which I love a lot. . . .they look awesome. I really can't wait until we get 56 or so, the true THF look will finally show on Soda, and I'll really enjoy running around with it. Also I'm approaching the THF level where I left Sorako, and I'm fairly certain everything else that Sorako had Sodako now has better. Bounding Boots, Empress Pin, subs leveled, WHM way up, rank 6, and some nice crafting levels (53.9 cooking right now, would easily be a LOT higher but I just haven't gotten around to it).

I've also been making quite a bit of money, and as a result have managed to pick up a Blessed Briault, along with the boots, both of which aren't that expensive, but I also have enough money to snag the pants once things sell, and the gloves of course will quickly follow. After that WHM is pretty much set for a while, or at least its as good as I care to make it right now, since I also have another Woodsman Ring, a Haubergeon, and a Scorpion Harness on my mind. Not to mention just random crap needed for THF and SAM.

Facebook + RMT

2007-06-04T03:34:00.000-07:00

I am actually the founder of an FFXI group on facebook, the largest one incidently (1110 or so members today), and an RMT group just tried to advertise on it. I was kind of amused, obviously deleted the message and banned the person, but I was somewhat impressed that the group is big enough to attract that kind of attention.

Oh well. As far as FFXI goes, working on getting money for Blessed gear, already bought the boots but that is absolutely nothing impressive. Need sleep.

DRK/RMT + Noobles

2007-06-02T01:02:00.000-07:00

Look very closely at that picture. The belt is a tilt belt, and the rings are empress and anniversary. The scythe is some random level 65 scythe, didn't pay attention to what it was. We D2'd the gimp after a few fights and invited a SAM.

Partying with my WHM static now, that bit was about 10 minutes ago. Fun times. Also, gonna get 70 tonight, so I may update with some ding screenies, since its something to be proud of now, kinda.

Just a random picture from when we got Nood's MNK AF something or other, probably 3. He got owned by some yagudo by the switch door, so he had to deal with me, sitting on his head for a while until Sorj was lame and raised him.

Lastly, a couple days back I saw Laqa, one of the few people retarded enough to make it onto my shitlist (list of people I keep who've earned some degree of hate, but are too funny (stupid) to make it to the blacklist), who I wrote a bit about a long time ago, when I encountered the moron in valkurm. (S)he was shouting in whitegate, effectively offering 1k to anyone who praised him/her for reaching 75 NIN. Previously I admittedly wasn't sure how much of a douche Laqa was, but they've clearly proven that they are among the best. They deserve an award for this degree of douchebaggery, perhaps a swift kick between the legs would lower their ego sufficiently.

Diamond in a pile of crap

2007-05-30T02:25:00.000-07:00

I still fucking hate leveling SMN though.

At least they LOOK pretty. . . .

2007-05-29T23:00:00.001-07:00

I've been leveling summoner just kinda randomly, so I can use it for promys and have it maybe at 37 for subbing on WHM if I ever feel like it.

Summoner SUCKS. At least in the dunes. What the frick am I supposed to do? I can't heal well with only Cure I, and I don't want to either. I can't do damage, using an offensive (note: carby is the only summon I have that has a defensive BP right now, and I have 'em all except Fenrir and Diabolos) blood pact once a battle doesn't do jack. It doesn't even do good damage. The summons suck at meleeing, if they ever hit its a pitiful amount of damage more fitting for a dagger, except they swing as fast as like a great axe. Should I be meleeing? Really? Cause its looking realistic. Its frustrating as hell to be aware of the fact that if I went afk for about an hour we'd lose maybe 10-20 exp/hour out of maybe 3000/hour.

I guess the upside is so far I haven't been in a single party without a WHM, so I've never had to main heal (not that I can but retards in the dunes would ask me to anyways).

I guess on the one hand its going to feel good when I finish leveling it, but for crying out loud I'm only 14 now, theres going to be a LOT of pain before I get it up to the point where I can even do useful things for the party, let alone enjoy it. After this I need to get RDM up for mage subs as well, then as SAM moves up I'll have pretty much all significant subs leveled for just about anything, or at least the basic exp ones. . . oh well.

UPDATE: Banish (from SUBJOB) does roughly the same thing as any of the offensive blood pacts (from MAIN JOB) and Cure (from SUBJOB) does more than healing ruby (from MAIN JOB), which is my only defensive blood pact. I might as well just de-level my WHM to 7 and party with that, it'd be the same freaking thing.

Music

2007-05-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'm kinda bored, so I'm just gonna run through some music I like in no particular order.

I like this one a lot, but as far as Ok Go goes I prefer Get Over It, which you can also find on youtube.

This next one is probably the best song ever to wake up to because of its intro in my opinion.

I love that song a lot, I grew up listening to Green Day, the Offspring, Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins, and stuff like that. As far as the Smashing Pumpkins go, I've just recently been able to get back into listening to them, as my dumb sister has all but lost the family's CDs, so I can't get at them.

The music that Frank Klepacki has done for various games, particularly the Command and Conquer series, is also extremely excellent, I tend to listen to that a lot.

Theres also Party Ben (http://partyben.com/), hes a mashup artist that does some really cool stuff, and honestly I enjoy his mashups more than a lot of the songs that he mixes together. Very good artist, and also a cool guy, he used to do radio stuff for a station here around San Francisco, is/was always fun to listen to.

Lastly for now, some Weezer. One of the best songs ever, from one of the best bands ever.

Anyways, thats it for now. Helping a friend to the MNK AF pants quest, and then staticing with my THF, so a fun day.

Clear road, new paths

2007-05-26T23:54:00.000-07:00

Well, firstly, probably the most important thing.

And of course. . .

Very VERY easy fight. As long as you're smart, and read up/prepare for the fight, this is a complete and utter joke. He never even came close to killing me. So, as the title indicated, I have a clear path to 75.

Also though, some new paths for me to travel down.

I can now finally start on ZM, and do Dynamis (waiting for Draco to pick a shell for Dynamis before I choose my own). For anyone that cares, Draco and I were talking about the band Bush right there.

I've also been doing some assault, which is really fun. I didn't really know much about it before but now that I've tried it, its awesome. This was a BRILLIANT idea on Square's part. One thing the game lacked was specific objectives and triggers beyond "go make this thing die and don't get killed". Very nicely done Square, another quality piece of work. I'm hoping to work towards eventually picking up a full set of the stuff for THF, or possibly SAM, or both, but hopefully one or the other. Can't recall which I found sexier stat wise and looks wise, and I'm unsure currently whether I'd rather run around on SAM or THF primarily down the road, but either way, theres a fun bit to look forward to.

Speaking of SAM and THF, I've been hoarding cash and abusing a select few synths in an attempt to raise money for two Woodsman Rings, (maybe) one Corsair's Knife, (maybe) a Scorpion Harness, a Haubergeon, and (maybe) a Byrnie. This is primarily because SAM and THF are the two jobs I believe I'm going to be taking up after WHM.

I've also been sort of toying with the idea of running BLM or RDM up to 75 for soloing reasons, though I need to take SMN to 37 as well so I have all my mage subjobs in order. Either way, for the moment I'm simply going to deal with getting WHM to 75 (most likely with the static its in, almost 70 now even), and then taking SAM up hopefully to 75 as well, probably with THF capping out somewhere in the middle with a little linkshell static we've set up.

Thats about it for now, I'll probably post some once I've picked up those few items I'm looking to get, though I fear it'll be quite some time before I get my hands on anything beyond the woodsmans and the corsair's, if even those 3.

Oh yea, and new template obviously. Sexy, I'd say.

Early Morning Part(y) 1

2007-05-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

So, last night I set my alarm for like 6:20 AM, and actually managed to wake up to turn it off. Then I went back to sleep.

Fortunately, I woke up again at 7:15 or so and managed to get online for the party before they replaced me.

We took a while to get the camp, which is fine cause we didn't know what we were camping, but eventually we found a good one and started killing while the SAM finished doing some stuff for his/her boss (some spreadsheet junk). However, after they finished, the SAM revealed that they had a pretty high fever, and weren't going to be able to party.

I totally don't mind, I needed to start getting up before noon anyways, but I was just kinda confused as to why they didn't say so earlier, so I suspect they may've just not felt like partying but didn't want to just come out and say that, but even if that was really the case I still wouldn't mind at all.

At any rate, we managed to get 67 (we got really close last time), so I'm kinda enjoying that, but leveling cooking instead of doing anything with WHM. More later maybe, need to see if this synth makes as much money as the one before it did.

Catching Up - The Rest

2007-05-13T19:36:00.000-07:00

Alright, this time around there'll be some more text along with the pretty pictures that I'm hoping the 2 people that read my blog like.

First up, hunting. I picked up three very important items a while back.

1. Bounding Boots - the last one I picked up, but arguably the most important, due to the number of jobs I plan on leveling that'll use them.

2. Empress Hairpin - first one I picked up, with the help of Draco, probably wouldn't have gotten this without him. It'd be the most important, but I ended up getting it after finishing off NIN, so really its basically Bounding Boots for my head, unless you wanna count the evasion for pulling on THF, but I don't really need it.

3. Ochimusha Kote - the least important, but by no means the worst item. If I could use this for more of my jobs it'd be more important, but its good for NIN if I ever pick it up again, will be INVALUABLE on my SAM, and wouldn't hurt on my MNK either if I level it more. Still need to get pairs of these for Draco and Galb though.

My WHM is also now about 5k off of 67, and I've got a testimony, so once I get around to bugging Draco for his earth staff, I'll go take care of that "fight". Recently though I think I made a mistake with my WHM that sucks for now, but might be really cool once I'm through doing it. I joined a static with some cool guys from Singapore, which is great, but most of them require waking up at 7 AM or earlier. SEVEN AM. I wake up at noon usually. This will be interesting.

A while ago, we knocked off Fugazi's RDM AF weapon, and had a nice little conversation towards the end as orcs just randomly came out of nowhere and linked on the one Ife was fighting.

The innocent question

Losing the innocence. . . .Innocence???And just because

Later on, we went to get Red Mage Testimonies for DW, and managed to get an item I didn't recognize, until we went and spawned this with it.

Draco got the knife. I'd be jealous, but its a level 70 item, and I probably won't have 70 THF for AT LEAST another 3-4 months, so, cool stuff.

I've also been leveling BST a bit with Galb and Draco, which is really fun, even though we're just acting like WARs for the moment and meleeing crap with no pets. . .I can't wait to charm stuff and make it do all the work for me. However, discussing BST in link got a fun reaction out of Noodles/TMP.
As you probably know, theres the whole 5th Anniversary event going on right now, and you get your stats like very year (plus a freaking sweet ring that acts like the empress band except for 3k exp and gives a 100% bonus), so, here're mine.

Lastly, I've been leveling cooking on Arigan so that I can have a constant source of income, while saving cash on BST and stuff. I've gotten to. . .I think its 12 now, I'm synthing while I write this up, making bug broth until 15 when I switch over to apple juice to 20. Hope I can finish that off before I have to go to bed so I can wake up at 7 AM for that static party. . .

Anyways, thats all for now. I think thats everything.

Catching Up - Summon Frenzy

2007-05-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a LOT done recently, and haven't posted, so I'ma start catching up. First up, avatars.Didn't get any pics of Shiva, but thats ok cause her face is fugly anyways.

Picture Frenzy

2007-04-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

Alright to make up for the extreme lack of pictures I've had since I'm been back, here're a ton. Firstly, catching up.

Last piece of WHM AF, my gloves.

A little Besieged NM fun.
O hay thar, purty hammar!
OMG WHY U R KIRR ME FOR?!?//1/1/!?/1/1//
SRSLY STPO IT ASSHOEL

Another result of my time in Besieged, extreme evasion skillup get.

Draco mugs an old lady.
Extreme level get.

Lastly, my jobs as of now. Note the WAR and NIN levels (woot).

Thats all for now.

Subs, subs, subs

2007-04-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

So I've taken this opportunity to level a couple subjobs that I need out of the way some, particularly WAR and NIN, though I've sort of toyed with the idea of taking MNK to 37 at some point here so it'll be an option down the road, but I don't plan on doing anything much that would use it so probably not.

At the moment, I've gotten WAR to 33, and NIN to 31 (seeking NIN at the moment, writing because its been forever since I got an invite), and while I feel kind of bad about the amount of money I have had to spend to level NIN in particular, it has made me notice something about the economy. I can make money. Not just dinky amounts that are somewhat meaningless. This is how it should be, anyone can make money, and anyone can get items that were previously kind of exclusive. Its freaking great. Hats off to Square-Enix for making this happen, they really did an excellent job here.

I plan on taking THF up a fair bit (AF or farther) once I finish off WAR and NIN, but I haven't quite yet found my groove in FFXI as far as what I really want to work on and take up, so I might change my mind. For the first time in the entirety of my FFXI career I feel some what neutral about all the jobs except NIN, which I hate leveling right now kind of because it is such a complete pain to tank, particularly in Kazham, at my level.

On Friday I went with Draco, DW, and Fmtwo to fight (and spank, largely due to Fmtwo) Shiva, so I got my first avatar fight out of the way and my summoner isn't quite as gimpy as it was before.

Anyways, thats all for now. Sorry there aren't any pictures, I have a few but at the moment I'm too lazy/tired to photoshop them appropriately and upload them, so maybe next time.

Rebirth

2007-04-09T03:22:00.000-07:00

I'm back!

I had left indefinitely on October the 31st, however, school is no longer an issue, and I've found the time to get back into the game. At the moment I am leveling WAR up to 37 so I can take THF up without worrying about my sub, although I will undoubtedly be forced to level NIN as well sadly. I am also passively leveling my WHM again, hoping for 75 at one point soon, though I'm keeping it with a couple friend's classes (one bard, one ninja) so I'm unsure how quickly it will progress.

Thats mostly it for now. I also picked up my last WHM AF piece (gloves), so I'll have some stuff about my first full AF set next entry perhaps.

It is good to be back.

So close. . . yet so far

2006-10-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

WHM62/BLM31

BLM is nearly 37, got all my AF except gloves, killing Maat is the only genkai left, mostly past all the expensive spells. . . need 2 more pieces of gear before I've got mostly the best stuff I can get. . . I can smell 75. Of course the crappy part there is, what about sky? I haven't even really started any zilart missions at all. Due to the fact that I'm getting to the upper levels so quickly I dunno how I'm going to manage getting into the end-game stuff without doing a lot of waiting. Having said that, I am aware that it takes a long time to get through the levels I'm at now to get to 75, as they're quite long, so perhaps I'll end up having plenty of time for sky after all.

Also I'm still only rank 5. . . . which is bothering me, but I might manage 6 soon, and once I get 6, 7 should be easy.

Money has also been an issue lately though. . . . the AH has been raping me, and I haven't had a chance to do a BCNM recently. I need to spend like. . . 400k or so, and right now I've got roughly 75k, so I've got a ways to go and little to no day-to-day income.

Oh well, I'll figure something out.

What. The. Fuck.

2006-10-07T23:03:00.000-07:00

This evening, I had the good fortune to have a great friend (Encino) be in the middle of helping a group of friends with someone's WHM AF3 when I logged on, and they were willing to let me join. So, we went over to eldieme after I helped Encino get 72 BLM back using the chocobo race thing, and we get to the hume bones and start killing dark stalkers. After a while, the bell for me drops, I lot, and wait. And wait. And wait. Then, not thinking about what was up with the bell, Encino and I disband from our part of the alliance and join the main group for escape. We escape, they go to do the shadowlord fight, and I warp to whitegate. I check my inventory. No bell. I check my key items, cause I figured it might be that and I was just having weird false memories. No bell. The stupid bitch WHM who the group was mainly doing the run for never fucking passed. Just to make it clear she was a fucking moron, she was wearing the earring that is activated by WHM sub, the AF hat (it was fairly clear this was what she wore in exp), and had no dark staff at 57. Oh, and shes rank 3. I pity anyone who parties with her.

Words can not describe how much I want to strangle this stupid selfish bitch. Normally, this wouldn't piss me off as much as it did, but I know damn well that there isn't going to be any kind of raid from my linkshell to help me get this probably within the next month, and I'm probably going to be 75 by then. Additionally, if I had the AF body, I'd wear it in exp and I could sell my crow jupon and mule my seer's tunic. I need the money from the crow jupon to update other pieces of gear.

Saying much more would likely result in me spewing out profanities and wishes that this stupid WHM would suffer some misfortune. . . like de-leveling to level 4. . . fuck that'd be satisfying. At any rate, I'm done, beyond still feeling like I need to kill her.

Weekend!

2006-10-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

So, its early friday afternoon, got back from Japanese class a little while ago. Its pretty fun, learning lots of stuff, just getting the alphabet down now. As far as FFXI goes. . . lets see. Finished G3, the last hard one for me. Got 58 WHM, so I can almost equip all the AF (most of which I don't have yet, go figure). Going on a raid with the linkshell in about an hour and a half for RDM/WHM/THF AF3s (not my WHM AF3, a friend's), and hopefully a Beadeaux coffer key for the same friend as the WHM AF3. At the moment I'm partying with Encino's SAM, my BLM, and some random WHM/BLU (I'm convinced that if they weren't here, exp wouldn't suck) in Qufim, but we're making like. . . I dunno 200 an hour or less. At any rate, thats it for now, hopefully I'll party WHM later tonight, and maybe I'll update this later with how successful the raid was.

More progress

2006-10-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

Well, first thing I really did today was get some friends together to help me get my Crawlers' Nest coffer key. At first, it was just me and Encino, but after a while we gave up, and later in the day, we got back together with Bloodless and Dungeonwhipper, and the four of us went back, and got the key on the third Helm Beetle we killed. After that, I ran around, found the coffer, popped it, and found a little something special inside.

Now, mind you, when I popped it and got my pants (freaking finally, I HATE my RSE leg piece now. . . been wearing it since 31), I was only level 55 still, so I couldn't wear them. So, right after that, all four of us went over to Beadeaux to try and get Encino's coffer key for his PLD AF legs. While we were slaughtering Quadav, I got level 56 (I had used my dragon chronicles from this week's chocobo race on my WHM to bring me within 200 of 56 earlier, so it was quite easy).

So, now I'm 4 levels away from needing to level my sub, 4 away from needing G3 done (going to work on that tommorow perhaps), and a mere 19 levels from 75. Also it seems like the cost of spells seriously tapers off after Raise II (which I still need to buy/farm ><), so I'm looking forward to cheap gear and such. At any rate, its time to sleep, I have class at 10 AM tommorow (yay for early morning Japanese).

How the eff am I doing this?

2006-10-02T23:55:00.000-07:00

Alright, yesterdays post was really long, so heres a nice short one that gets straight to the point.

Um. . . I'm not going to complain, but what the crap?

2006-10-01T22:17:00.001-07:00

Well, last night I was level 50. Was just hoping to be able to use my dark and light staves. At the end of last night I was level 52 and halfway through to 53. Now, I'm 53, and quite close to 54. So, now I need Genkai 2, my AF from the Garlaige Citadel coffer (head piece), Raise II soon, and my BLM leveled a bit (its 30 at the moment) sooner than I'd anticipated. If this continues, I think I'm going to just take WHM to 75 before touching much of anything else unless its in a static. That way I figure I'll be able to take whatever I want straight to 75 without being constrained by level caps, particularly the Maat fight (which is stupidly easy with WHM if you didn't know), and I'll be able to merit junk if I feel like it. Furthermore I'll be able to do end game stuff with all my old friends, get Hexa Strike, Black Halo, and if I can convince people to help me, Reverend Mail (I think thats what its called). Actually, after writing all that, I think I've convinced myself that I want to take WHM to 75 now. It'd also just be nice to get it out of the way, and have a job at 75 to take care of things that my other jobs can't. The only thing I'm really worried about is making money, and I've got clothcraft at 22 to help with that, but it just hasn't been enough. I've been farming on my THF but thats been taking a while too with not much to show for the time I've put into it. On the other hand, I should be doing some BCNMs soon with Draconum and either Dungeonwhipper or Galbatorix, so that might make life much much easier as far as gil goes.

Of course, since I got 52, I can wear the WHM AF boots, which Draconum helped me pick up earlier today.

Overall this isn't a horribly amazing piece of gear (except for soloing, its veeeeery sexy for soloing), but its a lot better than the seer's boots I was wearing, so I'm not going to complain. The MP boost is certainly nice for the slot.

Next up is my AF hat at 54, but I think I'm going to wait on getting it because I'm just going to be wearing my gold hairpin in exp anyways. I'd be all for getting it if it didn't likely mean I'd have to get Draconum (who pretty much ends up going on every single raid for anything the link ever does) to come and do the majority of it, so I'd much rather wait on it until no one else really needs anything and Draco has had a bit of a break from helping everyone, or until I can get someone other than Draco to help me out.

And now because I'm bored, have some random screenshots.

Just me, Draconum, Dungeonwhipper, and Galbatorix killing Ahtu for Draco's key.

This is how you leave Fort Ghelsba in style. Draco was power leveling my MNK to 12 so I could duo with his RNG, and once we finished, this is how we left.

Ding!

2006-09-30T13:58:00.000-07:00

50 WHM! Freaking finally. The last two days, I was seeking for about 6 hours total, at level 49 with about 2k until 50, and I got nothing. Not even idiotic RMTs trying to invite me. Today though, I got a craptacular party, which disbanded pretty quick (NIN lost hate to 1 Cure II, WAR was a douche for lack of a better way to put it, and the RDM never refreshed anyone, lotted on things, and was afk 90% of the time), and was then invited to a really nice party that quickly got me 50 and then some. Of course, I've already knocked off G1, so right now I'm just seeking and waiting to get 51 so I can use my shiny new staves (picked up dark and light a few days back). I've also leveled a number of other things, and I'm too lazy to look at my older posts to see exactly how far I've progressed, so here they are:

I've also run into a lot of old friends in Coejus' linkshell (such as Coejus), which has been quite fun.

As far as what I'd like to do in FFXI right now. . . . hmm. White Mage to 51 is my immediate short term goal, then hopefully to 60 relatively quickly, along with maybe SAM going up a bit too, but I dunno if I really feel like dealing with the dunes again on a melee job just yet, so thats holding me back a little. Now that I think about it, I'm almost back into the mood to take Bard up some more, maybe to 40 or so. . . I'll probably do that after WHM hits 60 unless I get frustrated in the 50s.

Oh well, back to seeking. . . hopefully I'll manage 51 tonight, that'd make me quite happy. . . really want to equip those staves. . .

Variety

2006-09-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I tried to level WHM a bunch after I did that run to 30 with my BLM, and it just fell apart. I got a party that wasn't. . . . well they weren't exactly the best level 42-44s out there. That kinda disheartened me a bit, so I'm currently working on my Bard, which is 18 (would be higher but I had another hockey game last night and I'm headed out with friends today, so I'm not partying) and should be 30 within a couple days. My only worry is getting my hands on a scroll of Mage's Ballad. . . I could easily buy one, I've got the money sitting there, but I just wouldn't feel right buying it when I could quest it and not have to deal with buying and then selling another copy later once I quest it. Oh, I also got Mary's Horn. I was randomly farming and I ran across Stray Mary, completely untouched, so I killed her and got my horn, was quite a nice surprise after I threw up three times playing hockey that evening.

For the moment, I've decided that the jobs I'm going to be "actively" leveling for a while will be BRD, MNK (WAR sub), WAR (THF/PLD sub), and BLM with a touch of PLD sprinkled in because my linkshell needs another tank, currently the only one is the leader, so he has to do like. . . well. . . everything.

Of course, most of the leveling will revolve around Bard. . . I love the class, my sub job is completely leveled already, and its incredibly fast to level, so admittedly I'm going to be spending a hell of a lot more time on it than on the other 4 jobs that I'm currently looking to level.