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.

Rebirth

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

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.

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!

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

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?

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?

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!

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

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.

BLM Debauchery

Well, I've been trying to more or less just put my head down and level like mad with my BLM. Guess what? 2 days, 7 or 8 levels. I think I accomplished my goal. Its been a fun and interesting ride. One party, I had another BLM in it, hume if I remember correctly, and he was using his highest damage spells while I used Aero and Fire repeatedly (Yuhtunga Mandragora's in Yuhtunga Jungle), which made me laugh, cause I was out-damaging him significantly and I usually had more MP than him. So, at the time, I figured I was a great BLM. Then I had another party, later on, with another BLM, this time a taru. As the party starts, I notice that he is also using his highest level nukes, while I'm using whatever the mob's weakness is. So, to take a look at whats up damage wise, I turn off the filters and quickly notice that he is kicking the CRAP out of me for damage. It wasn't even funny, and the guy seemed like a bit of a noob too! I got resisted like 10 times more often then him, and even when I wasn't resisted he still did far more damage. It was very sad, especially since I'd just picked up a Seer's Crown +1 for 3 more INT that I figured would put a big dent in the number of times I get resisted. Either way, I'm still leveling BLM quite quickly, and I haven't had any complaints about my abilities so I guess I'm doing well enough. . . though I am going to need to talk to a few BLM friends about how things work. At any rate, my success with leveling BLM has inspired me to aim for high levels in WHM soon, so hopefully I'll be knocking off G1 and my AF soon enough.

{luck} {You can have this.}

{See you again!}

Good Times

Well, I have to say, I haven't felt this good about FFXI in a very, very long time. I'm actually ENJOYING leveling. Keep in mind, pretty much all my jobs except WHM are either in the dunes or in qufim, both of which. . .eh. . .you know. But yea, its really fun right now, and none of that emo junk I often seen in other FFXI blogs.

I've gotten my BLM to 25, THF to 27, and leveled my marksmenship significantly along with helping several linkmates with various lower level junk.

Lots of fun.