Best NM claim ever

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. . .

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

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.|)

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

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

Lame

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

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!

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

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

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

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

I still fucking hate leveling SMN though.

At least they LOOK pretty. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.