Lexa

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Sat, 09 May 2009 09:24:53 GMT

AND NOW! I BRING YOU A HAIKU!

Same old, same old shit.
FFXI not worth it.
WoW is easymode.

Come look me up if you're so inclined, though I haven't got the time nor drive to be a raider with the same gusto I was an endgame player in FFXI.

Rexa
Alliance
Grizzly Hills (PvE)

PS. No, you can't have my shit.

PPS. Dear Lexa, of Grizzly Hills, who never shows up on search, never logs in and does not exist on WoW-Armory, WoW-Heroes or any other database out there - can I have my name back? :(

Another year, another... uh, year?

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:28:08 GMT

So, a little while back, Ultima decided to retire from the HNM scene officially. There was no motivation to camp anything, and we were encouraged to seek out alternate means to fight HNMs. Maybe this decision was exactly what we needed, maybe it was the pure awesomesauce power of Sarahlynn being the new shellholder, but since going "social," we've been fighting more HNMs than in the entire year I've been in this shell (well, almost a year).

In the span of a single week, I received some titles I thought I'd never ever see, like Tiamat Trouncer or Vinegar Evaporator! The King Vinegarroon kills were even Ultima's first kills, and although we received a V Claw and a lot of useless crystals, we eventually did get our first Ace's Helm! Congrats Aelfinn! :D

Khimaira was another one of those "file it away in the Keep Dreaming category" NMs for me; I knew Ultima had killed it before, back in yonder days (had the first kill on Valefor, iirc), but I honestly thought they'd never kill it ever again. I've never thought Hauteclaire was as good as people would have it, and I still don't, but for the first time - since killing Khimaira became a reality and not a far-fetched dream - obtaining one seems like something I'd like. I still maintain that it's a situational sword at best, but I wouldn't turn one down. *blush*

Another NM I've been hunting to death is Xolotl. There was a misunderstanding when I went 1/1 on the Kotes, and since then I was a woman on a mission! Thankfully only took like two weeks before they dropped again, but it was still two weeks longer than I liked. What made me sad though, was that my little tarubuddy Raist came out to help like every damn day, and not a single knife dropped (as per usual; but would have been nice). We killed it a couple more times after I got my Kotes, but then stupid school started and my playtime got severely reduced.

Speaking of Raist, we've started duping Brothers for a chance at some gil! I like this ENM, if you disregard the horrid climb to the top of the mountain. Thankfully I have a Tractor/R3 mule on the key item shelf, so only one climb is necessaryl, but it's still annoying. With one run a week on a regular basis though, we hope to get a hedgehog bomb to line our pockets! I'm getting closer to my Aegis, and I know Raist is eventually hoping to be able to upgrade a Mandau.

Since last time, I've managed to keep my mind set on Aegis, and kept putting every spare gil I have towards my shield. In fact, now I'm finding that my biggest problem is enough sponsorships, rather than gil! Ultima's dynamis shell (Amitlu), while awesome and fantastic, simply doesn't offer me the chance to sponsor enough to make real progress. I've been meaning to start my shout dynamis on Regn again, but I just can't seem to find a fucking time. :( I'm busy pretty much every night of the week, and the times I am able to go, my closest friends can't - and starting a shout dynamis without at the very least a regular puller and/or a THF is not going to work out so well. Trust me, I speak from experience. I do love Amitlu, though, and finally got a piece of Relic I've been after for a very, very long time...

Salvage is still God-awesome and full of win, even when we don't get any drops (which - let's face it - is more often than not), and I cannot believe how much I missed out on all those months I wasn't doing Salvage. If I knew how much fun I'd be having, I'd have leveled NIN a whole damn lot faster, that's for sure! As for the shoddy droprate, well, we've been doing exceptionally good this month, so I suppose it all evens out in the end. :D

DORP

1/1, congratulations Tarja.

2/2, congratulations Manikalas.

HEY, congratulations, me!

I am SO glad we decided sell/split for this.

Congratulations, Tarja.

1/4, congratulations Aelfinn!

Woot! 1/toomany.

OMFGnhfjkdbghkdjgj!!!

Fashion Police

Congratulations on your Skadi feet, Kirae! MoarDots's 4th completed piece.

Grats Pat, on Usu hands (you lootwhore). MoarDots's 5th completed piece, and 2nd for Pat.

Congratulations Benny, on Usukane legs, and MoarDots's 6th completed piece.

Congratulations Tarja, on Morrigan head! MoarDots's 7th piece, 2nd for Tarja.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ME FOR VALOR SURCOAT AND 5/5 RELIC!!! WOO!

For The Lulz

It was then that Rektify developed his intense hatred for all zones.

Rhine is a patient and laidback person.

Manikalas pwns Magos and one-ups me.

Khimaira helps me through my brainfart, with impeccable timing.

Another example of impeccable (and hilarious) timing.

GOOD NEWS, DWORVOS! :D

Garret loves me - a lot.

Jailer of Fortitude does not.

Yay, Atonement!

And finally...

This was taken in sky, right around Seiryu's island.

This is an actual photo I took, on the plane to or from Norway (can't recall which direction).

I just wanted to point out the similarity. It's funny.

That is all for now.

Drive-by Update!

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 06:04:09 GMT

It's finals week and I'm busy as hell, but I felt I should at least do a quick drive-by update!

My various statics have been eating up a lot of my time, as well as the end-of-the-semester rush. I still enjoy Salvage, though. :3 The duplication trick was nice while it lasted, though we only got to try it for like two weeks before they fixed it, and we never actually duped any drops with it. To be honest though, I must confess that my life has gotten a lot easier afterwards. Keeping track of cells was so complicated with duping, and it gave me a headache. :( Now, though, Salvage is once again the most fun event for me! :D

I died because of a lack of magery in my little solo party...
We've started to do better, and although some may argue my group is still not very effecient (I hear of other groups who hit a metric ton of NMs + Mega Boss, supposedly without duping), I'm happy with our speed. It works well for the lotting system we have set up. We've started to expand our boss kills beyond just Long-Bowed Chariot, since lately we've had no problems going 10/10 on the gears (unless it's fucking wind weather), which - as most people who has ever done Salvage will know - reduces Homing Missile to nothing, and produces the following reaction:

So it was time to expand our horizons. We have now both killed Armored and Battleclad Chariot with no problems. Long-Armed Chariot proved to be a greater challenge, as our only try so far resulted in a lot of death and a subsequent time-out at 11%, but I'm confident that we can do it within another try or two. :)

Dynamis has kept rolling, though the last couple of weeks I've been unable to attend a lot due to RL obligations and such. :( We did down DynamisLord a couple more times, though. Amitlu recently implemented a new lotting tier, based on attendance. It will no longer go Wearable > 70 > 60, etc, but start with people with 50% attendance over the past month's runs, then go to wearable. The attendance points and % is kept track of on our forums, and so far has worked really well. We've lost a few people and been unable to clear DynamisLord again since, but honestly, I think that's acceptable. We are once again allowed invitees, so now we can make sure that our dynamis-ers are not only able to go for other runs than northlands, but that they're okay with not lotting on the first tier if they don't show up. :D

I think we're up to our... actually, I don't know. 9th? 10th? 11th? Odin. We finally got an e body, if I recall correctly! :D It was swiftly followed by an Odin without a Zilart abjuration at all, though. Gee, thanks. Also, Galkasaur got a pretty new breastplate! Shiny! Now I need to win the lot on the next one, so I can have both pieces, mwahaha! I've found myself on pulling duty in Einherjar recently, and apart from one awful wipe (sorry, guys... *gulp*) I think I've done okay. It's a lot of fun pulling - certainly better than just engaging and hoping to maybe break 100 dmg on a Jin.

One of the main reasons I've been so busy, slash, not doing anything - depending on how you see it - is not just because of my statics, but because of stuff like this. Mining. Farming. Crafting. Making money. I'm a little disappointed SE nerfed the bloods/weapons from the Castle/bugard skins NPC prices, because variation is key for me. I NEED as many options as possible not to burn out, because I get bored very easily. Why this sudden rush to make gil? Well, I looked over my Aegis funds.

Aegis. My dream. My multi-year work in progress. I got my first Silverpiece in June 2006, and since then have been saving, slowly slowly slowly. I've always envisioned Aegis to be years away. Even now. but upon doing some calculations, if I can raise the gil and get enough sponsorships (which yields a good currency count, granted), I can have my Aegis in as little as 14 million, or 6-9 months of sponsorships.

I've put everything on hold. My crafting. My leveling other jobs. Even my Ares body is on hold (though I didn't sell the Khromas/Wootzes I'd accumulated already - putting it on hold does not equal taking a step backwards!), which is probably just as well since LBC never drops the 25 body anyway.

PS. Now that I said that and put it on hold, LBC will drop 25 Ares next run. Guaranteed.

Anyway, yeah. That's pretty much what I've been doing. So if you're interested in buying Alexandrites and/or Ancient Beastcoins, contact me ingame. :3 I have approx 100 Alexandrites, and an ever-varying amount of Ancient Beastcoins. Next stop: Aegis!

DORP

Cheapskate. No Zilart body.

I have decent luck with this ISNM. 2/3 for me on Ores, now. One went to Ares fund. This went to Aegis fund.

The most amazing Salvage loot pool I'll ever see. We're no longer hunting 5F N Poroggo Madame.

Limbus, being a dick to me, after trying to get this piece for 2 years. I got it some months back. This is just cruel irony.

La Vaule stronghold BCNM pool #2.

Sandworm #3? Guivre pool.

DORP from a lower Tier Einherjar wing.

Fashion Police is out of commission for this update.

For The Lulz

PLD pwning an army of BLMs going for the killshot.

I hate non-HQable items.

Great minds think alike.

Oh BOY!

I didn't say it - he did.

Magos getting up at like 5am JP time, and logging on for our SUNDAY Nyzul static.

Sozofail.

Lexafail+1 (or rather MINUS 1...) Sadface.

Well, Regn does look like a girl-taru, IMO. No offense to his char models.

Why, thank you random stranger I've never met who joined my lowbie pt! :D

Dirty Sass.

AWESOME mule name.

Being closeted is hard, but we understand.

Aquazero + Soundwave = true love.

OH SNAP!

I was being blasphemous again.

Heard during Hunting Wasp Rampart in Bhaflau Remnants. I admit it - I LOL'd!

How rude, Benny!

Oh, and did I mention, clowns freak me the fuck out?!?

Soj has the ability to make his sarcasm just piercingly sharp!

Et experimented in college, like everyone else.

Soundwave shares with the linkshell... too much.

Aquazero is wise and speaks turth.

Self-explanatory.

You can never have Too Much Lexa ™

Shrewd. Very shrewd.

My discovery that you can stun EES in dynamis.

A solid self-pwn, there.

And finally...

I ripped off Family Guy (yes, yes, I know the original reference as well - Family Guy episode "Love Blactually"), and nobody got it. :(

Oh, PS. In case anyone was wondering. My Hades Sainti synth broke. D: Both Cerberus Claws lost. Lulz. XD

PPS. Ultima fought a Tiamat. Trufax. No, I'm serious. I was there!

Man, I suck.

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:38:13 GMT

I have to find a better way to motivate myself to update this thing. XD

1/1 on pop, 1/2 on drop (got a multi-pop Rampart).

My Salvage group has been doing quite nicely. The way we're set up, we're not newcomer-friendly, so we've really emphasized having a steady group of people going who are all in it for the long haul. We haven't done so bad on droprates, either, if you take into account the 35s we've gotten that's not a prioritized piece. Unlike other Salvage groups I know of, ours work in the way that every member pick a piece to upgrade (in my case Ares Body) and then we specifically hunt NMs for the 35s people need. So far, we've completed three pieces (Usukane Legs x2 and Morrigan's Body), but also gotten quite a few other 35s, among them Ares Hands, Skadi Feet, Ares Body and Marduk's Body. I'm working very hard these days to raise the money needed for my body.

Of course, money won't mean a thing if Long-Bowed Chariot never puts out. The thing has tossed pretty much every drop except the 25 Ares Cuirass at us. And man, oh man, are we sick of seeing the 25 Ares Mask and Skadi Feet. We do not want anymore! Give us some 25 Macha's Coats and Ares Cuirasses instead, fer Chrissakes! At the very least, our strategy is all but perfect now, and we've been successful in killing it without meds, and even with a sub-optimal number of people, a few times now. Of course, we also had an awful awful wipe at 1%, but like Glinda says, "accidents will happen." Sometimes you have a house fall on you, and sometimes you wipe to LBC at 1%. We did discover though, that SCH is f'in awesome in Bhaflau Remnants. While other zones offer greater risks for a SCH due to lack of cells (they need fucking everything to be at full strength - MP, HP, JAs, subjob, magic, etc etc etc), Bhaflau has cells coming out the ass, and having AoE -na spells, phalanx and Stoneskin available for the tanks has been beyond amazing. On normal Rampart runs, all the buffs are even potent enough that our healers have been bored off their ass, because they have nothing to do.

Recently Ultima took a stroll up in sky and I got to try my hand at tanking Faust as PLD/NIN. As always, this kinda screenshot is the best I can get of Faust when my back's against the wall. It was an interesting experience, as Faust is very much about spike hate. Overall, I must say I think I prefer /WAR, just like on regular Gods - the fights go so fast that spike hate is far more valuable to me. Though I willingly admit I'm warming up to /NIN on Kirin.

Ultima has also been messing around in various beastman strongholds a bit. We've tried our hand at the WotG BCNMs, and the orc one was slightly confusing the first time around, but in our defense there was not too much info up at the time. We still beat it, though - most of our problems came from having too many melees and feeding it too much tp. The second time around was much, much easier (and my role was much more relaxing, haha - though it was fun to tank the main NM as PLD/NIN, holding a RNG as NIN/WAR was a delicious snoozefest).

Medusa was probably the most fun I've had in the past month, Salvage aside (man, I love Salvage!). Apart from the awful walk and the stupid key farming and the truesight mobs and whatnot, I'd do Medusa every day if I could. I felt bad since this event was scheduled specifically to get people titles for their Mythic Weapons and I got my title, then the next time it was scheduled I got RL'd hard. >.< Medusa was... a real challenge to tank. It took us two tries to get her down, and the first time was, quite frankly, a fierce hot mess. The second time went much smoother as soon as me and Elvi figured out where/how to position ourselves and such. What really amused me, though, was that due to tanking with my back to her and her attack speed and strength, I found it far more effective to turtle up. Hence the fun. I have not gotten to play a "proper" endgame turtle for... I think ever. In large part due to the fact that I didn't have the gear back when it was still acceptable. Then once I started gaining more gear for myself, PLD/NIN became all the rage and nobody ever looked back. The situation was a bit absurd, and I felt a bit as if I'd stepped out of SE's AV video as I was standing there in my m body + earth staff combo... but at least I found a use for the Valhalla Helm, which I originally thought to be 100% town gear, haha!

A Jormungand was also scheduled on calendar to get titles for us newer Ultimaers, but there's not much to say about this attempt. We had some positioning problems, most of the alliance had never fought him before, and as such it ended badly at a very low HP %. It was sad, but such is life. I hope we'll make another go at some point.

Amitlu has been progressing very nicely. Though I think maybe the number of members got slightly too big, the side-effect of having those kind of forces is of course that we can now kill Dynamis Lord without problems. We got rewarded on our first one, but I do believe our second one dropped nothing but a 100 byne bill... that kinda sucked. I've been slacking on sponsorships lately, which I've been meaning to fix. However, moneymaking has never come easy to me, and at the moment I'm stretching myself pretty thin between trying to come up with 10 million for my Ares Body and gil for dynamis in addition. The increased droprates has been an amazing blessing, though. Our first Xarcabard after the adjustment yielded a whopping 3x THF, and the run with the cheap DL we ended up getting 2x PLD in the last four minutes. Having two Surcoats in the pool at the same time was extremely odd. I, of course, lotted 60-ish for the first one and 29 for the second one, but Elvier won one of them, so all is right with the world. :D

My Nyzul static has taken a break from doing nothing but boss-farming, and started climbing everyone's discs towards 100 for the Mythic Weapon quest. We unfortunately lost Onorok, so have been testing the waters with replacements. I think it's a testament to Onorok's level of GODAWESOMEKICKASSNESS that we've wiped/ran out of time on 3/6 runs since he left. Another FFXIer bites the dust for RL, which quite honestly I can't blame him for - but it always sucks to see a good friend go. Onorok, if you stop by and see this, YOU'RE THE MAN! We'll miss you a lot a lot a lot a lot. Thanks for the gift you left me.

Fuck that sad cutscene. Fuck it.

RedZeppelin finally reached his retirement day. I'll tell you, that retirement cutscene? Just about breaks me. I'm a big wuss, yes, yes, and I fully expect mockery and ridicule to come my way for this, but that doesn't change the fact that the retirement cutscene still breaks my poor wittle heart. RedZeppelin did turn out exactly the way I wanted him, thuogh - red, with First Class STR and END. The fact that he knows Gallop is a nice bonus. I've been considering racing him and eventually try for a Pullus Torque - because baby choco chicks are win - but I have so much on my plate at the moment, both ingame and IRL, that it won't be a priority for a good long while, if ever.

Another highlight of the past month has been getting the FUCK out of munchkinville. I hate Windy. No, let me say it again: I hate Windy. It's a nice enough city, but I never ever want to be Windurstian again. It's too big. Too far to walk between Mog House and OP taru. Too far between Mog House and AH. I mean, even SE clearly realized that Windy is just too big, considering they put freakin' tarus there to warp you between the zones. And it's still too big! how 'bout that?! So despite the hefty fee since Bastok was in first place, the second I had my Rank 10, Windurstian Flag and my 100,000 gil, I switched back to Bastok. It cost me 40,000 out of the 100,000 I'd just aquired, and it was worth every single gil.

Near the end of the long line of big, scary things I've gotten to play with lately, there's this guy. We haven't killed Cerberus in a long while, but recently a bird whispered in my ear that he was up and unclaimed. As luck would have it, there were enough people on ls, and I'm not quite sure what happened, but everyone raced to go. I was in a meritpt at the time, and it came to an extremely abrupt end since half of us were from Ultima. We actually got outclaimed initially by two RDMs from a different endgame shell, but their backup did not arrive in time and they both died. Garret was demonstrating his new WS, which did very awesome damage. I have my Brave Blade from Nyzul, but since my disc is currently only inscribed to floor 55, I've decided against working on my points. This was an interesting fight as we only had two stuns, and Cerberus got off quite a few Gates of Hades, but we won anyway. :) No Algol, but synth materials for everyone!

And just to round it off - poor LoO. All alone. He dropped club for Benny a few days prior, but not for me.

Sadface.

DORP

Nyzul: Jaggedy-Eared Jack, Taisaijin, Valkurm Emperor, and Bomb King. Guess which one gave us a drop?

1/1 on NM pop, 1/2 on gloves

OSHI--

Inventory -1, R/Ex collection +1

This ring has some interesting damage increases for Shield Bash. I average 70 dmg now.

959 lot. Suck it!

SO useless, but a lifelong PLD dream!!! I love Odin!

...I... love... Odin...?

Inventory another -1. R/Ex collection another +1

Oh, this is SO much more than just another +1 for my R/Ex collection!

Hey, look, legs!

I know you can't see, but that's me winning the two Cerberus Claws for Hades Sainti... Anybody know a BC 100+3 with WW + Smith 60? ^^;

Fashion Police

Congratulations Eticket, on Valkyrie's Fork!

Koga Chainmail got!

Mannequin Pumps got! (RED BOOTS!)

Congratulations Pat, on Usukane Legs!

Tidal Talisman got!

LULZ SPELUNKER'S HAT!

Koenig Cuirass got!!! FINALLY!!!

For The Lulz:

Stupid super-secret sacks.

STILL never the answer, boys!

OI FAIL!

I'd watch that.

An example of my beefed up Shield Bash damage.

September update

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:49:49 GMT

Ja, ja, I was slacking again. Pfft.

Chirp chirp!

One of the things that's kept me busy this past month, has been my chocobo. I decided to roll with the whole "red PLD" thing and raise a red chocobo. Thanks for Sassafras and her insane chocobo knowledge - not to mention the two chococards I got from her - I started the chocobo raising adventure anew. OrZ and PerfectFriend are good chocobos... well, that's a lie, OrZ isn't good for anything and PerfectFriend is black and fast but doesn't match me - but I felt a red one was due. I took a chance and named it RedZeppelin before I actually knew its color.

Denali, anyone?

My Nyzul group has been doing very well, with a not horrible droprate of floor 40. Of course, we wish we'd get something besides Denali, but oh well. At least Varda's mannequin looks pretty now. With the recent update, we're hoping to climb a little bit more, so those who wish to upgrade mythic weapons can do so. I originally had zero interest in mythic weapons at all - but then we saw the stats. I must say, that PLD sword sounds 100% absolutely game-breaking. So yeah. I'm interested, haha! XD

Through some unfortunate moment of weakness, I was persuaded into switching nations again. After swearing up and down that I would never be Windurstian, I find myself now to be Rank 8. I blame Pat and Eticket, and only them. But at the very least, I have someone to keep me company in my misery. We're hoping to finish the last two ranks any day now - and the extra gil I've made off this hasn't been bad, I must admit. Bright side to everything, I suppose. Though I do think I have some sort of hangup about Windy, since I've been Windurstian for a few weeks now, and have not yet gotten a single outpost, nor done the Aht Urghan quest. I just set my HP in Whitegate and let it be with that.

Lexa is intimidated by Biast's pres-- OH SCREW YOU!

I think this is the first time I've ever stumbled across an NM I genuinely wanted to kill, when I was on my way to do something else entirely (BRD AF). :D I didn't even have to kill Shadow Dragon. It was just sitting there, right next to the Outpost. Also, if you ever find Biast, know that he's a bitch to "kite" and hold. Not because he's fast, or uses Draw-In or some such - but because I kept losing hate literally every second. Eventually I just straight-tank held it. At least he finally ended up dropping that helmet for me! :D It's an exclusive addition to my r/ex collection. Though with the amount of r/ex stuff I have now, I really should level BST...

Magos taught me to manaburn statues to farm diorite. It was fun! :D Apart from the bit where, y'know... the diorite didn't drop. That kinda sucked. My next project for myself will probably be centered around sky pops - getting a Kirin set, and a Byakko set, to try for an Osode/d body/Haidate.

I also merited a lot in the days after my last LJ update. I've reached level 4 Hand-To-Hand now, level 1 Evasion (LOL) and level 2 Sentinel. I know, I know, I didn't have Sentinel merited before this. Well, I suck, what can I say. XD I'm rapidly getting very close to where I can start leveling my MNK. :) I'm missing a couple more h2h merits, a Brown Belt and the low level Fumas (I never bothered with them on NIN, but since I can stack them with Brown Belt on MNK, I'm gonna get them). I've already started collecting Brown Belt items on Regn, and thankfully didn't have to camp that stupid Morbolger for the vine, since it dropped from the KS30. thanks to Eticket, Raist, Benny, Pat, Pitlith and whoever else helped out with that.

Melee burn Bahamut

Melee burn Kirin

Ultima has become more active as summer has drawn to a close, which I'm very happy about. ^^ One thing we've started doing, is TP burning stuff. I'm still not the biggest fan of TP burns, but it's definitely easier in an ls where pretty much everyone has multiple jobs at 75, so the odds of excluding people is that much smaller. (Ironically, CTB members now has multiple jobs at 75 as well, so they've been TP burning with great success also.) Bahamut has been a joke, We've gone through like five orbs or so, over the past few weeks. Our best time, from gather together to warps, was 40-ish minutes. We normally take about 10-15 minutes getting to the entrance, then another 5 minutes or so testing BRD rotation, then another 5 minutes sleeping TP. The ultimate goal is to have a quick-like-bunnies in-out in 30 minutes or less, so we can do orbs before normal events with no stress.

Kirin proved to be somewhat tougher, helped in no small part along by the fact that he's got a bad regen, can't be stunned, and thus gets off more annoying TP moves on the alliance. Kiting him until he's done summoning has proven to be a successful strategy, though.

I also got some HQ Euhvi organs and went for a personal JoFaith pop - and let me just state again, for the record - MAN, Faith is a bitch! It took so many people, and so many deaths, that I am absolutely definitely not considering trying again until I'm way closer to being able to fully put that torque to use. I felt bad for the people who came to help. :/ Sorry guys.

Long-Bowed Chariot win #2

My Salvage group has been doing considerably better. After losing to LBC yet again, I said fuck it. I told all the mages to bring viles. I told all the melees to bring icharus wings and pots. I had Pitlith go BLM instead of MNK. Complete and utter overkill, in other words. That was the first time we killed LBC. And as an added bonus, he dropped one of the items we needed (25 Usu pants). Since then it's gotten easier and easier, and meds are no longer required. Though y'know, if he could stop dropping Phobos Masks, I'd be grateful. Having Pitlith as BLM instead of MNK definitely helped things. The one time, Pat also pulled a perfect 10/10 on the gears, and we're now also killing the chariot every time. :)

Misc other stuff:

InLulusJar fought Odin again... I do believe that was our fifth...? And this time, it had an awesome outcome for me. :D

RedZeppelin came out red.

Never thought I'd even see this guy, much less kill him. 0/3 on drop now, though. As is expected.

My dream of being a SMN with only Carbvy, Diabolos and Fenrir (avatars aquired in that order, too) was crushed when I found out I needed to be able to summon the avatars to do Waking the Beast.

Dynamis droprates have been hawt since the September update. I can't wait to see what's in store for us in the Northlands.

Woot, my first sub

I finished my first sub to 60. Thanks to Sharain for the many... many... MANY... stacks of flan meat, and to Gordie for the sulfur.

Two things I thought I'd never see: NIN75 (or any job besides PLD75, really) and Windy allegiance.

DORP:

Congratulations, Tarja

FINALLY! 1/12 on drop, 1/2 on lot, 1/14 in total.

LastseconddynadropGO!

Regn is now 2/3 for belt, missing Nue fang.

It matches my Avalon Breastplate in a REALLY ugly way.

For my ossum RNG...

Fashion police:

Congratulations to Arafea on your Usukane Legs. MoarDots piece #1.

Congratulations to Tarja on your Morrigan's Body. MoarDots piece #2.

Windurstian Salute... ugh.

Bahamut's Mask obtained!

Denali Kecks obtained.

Pahlublahblah Body obtained!

Valhalla Helm obatined!

Congratulations to Sojourn on your Marduk's Body. Soj doesn't run with my group, but it's still awesome!

For The Lulz:

Moggles: Doin' it wrong.

Damn ho can't keep her mouth shut.

Ono is being freaky.

Sass is being freakier.

Soj correctly describes trying to target the mob in a horde of NPCs in Campaign.

Arafea took the big step...

...though he seems to have some misconceptions about himself.

August update :D

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:06:28 GMT

I was slacking again. 0:)

Since Summer Semester I ended, I no longer had to get up at the crack of dawn, and was able to start attending Einherjar with Lulu's shell on a regular basis. Bless Lulu for always saving me a spot, even when I'm late. ^^; The runs are getting pretty full, to the point where Lulu has actually had to turn down people. Insane! We've also had a cycle going where Lulu sends in mules, so that barring problems with clears, we have an Odin set once every two weeks. The last cycle has been a bit troublesome, as this one time the wrong chamber was selected so we repeated a Tier 1, and more recently we ran out of time on a Tier 3. Getting three waves, with double mobs in the third wave, plus Behemoth boss is serious cheating.

Congratulations Kupkup on a. body.

Our first Odin went off without a hitch. Personally, I think it's kinda lame that the Tier 3s are harder than Odin himself. I'd feared this fight, because back when it was first released I heard of people wiping and wiping and wiping, but now that all his tricks have been exposed and everyone knew what to expect, it was pretty much a joke. The first fight I was on kiting duty. Those adds hit freakin' hard. :( I was not allowed to lot since I'd only just started going with them, but I'm fine with it. :) Fighting Odin in itself was pretty awesome! Garret and Jifrulond were the tanks, and fatty Galka even managed to /heal in time for Zantetsuken. XD Our loot pool wasn't bad, either. ;) The second Odin we did, Garret was unable to attend, so Lulutoo had me main tank it alongside Onorok. Gulp! It was a very very annoying fight to tank, but I had tons of fun!! I like tanking big shit, and doubly so if said big shit keeps me on my toes. :D

Ultima recently started doing their own inter-linkshell dynamis. I'm one of the main sponsors, and the past month has been very stressful on my wallet. D: I originally signed up to sponsor once, maybe twice, a month because I knew I'd have problems raising money otherwise. Well, due to a slew of circumstances, I've ended up sponsoring four times - it would have been five, except the rules have been temporarily changed due to the new changes SE will implement regarding hourglass cost. We've been doing decently well, though I really wish attendance for the cities was higher. It seems kinda wrong that we struggle to even gather 16 people for any given city run, whereas we had over 30 people show to Xarcabard. I understand that people want Northlands AF - hell, I do too - but for us sponsors, it comes out to an incredible loss. We can't afford to make 120 singles in Beaucedine due to shoddy droprates, and then again make 120 singles in a city run because people don't show up! I wish people would realize that if they don't help us with the cities, there's only a matter of time before we're unable to help them with Northlands hourglass fee. :/

That being said, dynamis hasn't just been frustrating. :) The good thing about low-man versus the giant machine that was Dynamis X, is that there's less competition for AF. I got these the same day my NIN hit 71, completely uncontested. Since then I've seen them go freelot like twice more. :D

Being that I got such sexy pants, I set about leveling my NIN further. I convinced some friends to help me push towards 74 for a Beaucedine run, and when everywhere else was full, we tried out some alternative merit camps. This is in Castle Ostroja [S]. The Yagudos there were fun to merit on, we literally killed our way to the top of the castle, and then kept slaughtering the birds up top there. They ranged from T near bottom to IT up top, and although it wasn't a colibri camp, it was still awesome exp! We didn't have Haste, though, since Raist's SCH is a gimp without the spell. :p (Apart from the lack of Haste, though, I've come to really respect SCH.) I hit 74 in a couple of hours. :D

A couple of weeks after that again, I hit 75. It still feels weird having two 75s. I'm Lexa, she of the eternal PLDONRY status. NIN75 doesn't suit me, I think. And I'm also now convinced that everyone who says NIN solos everything so easily is overexaggerating. NIN has pretty decent survivability, yes, but I take so much damage! And I freakin' miss my shield whenever I see "Lexa's casting is interrupted." I duoed Uninvited Guests with Pat's WHM the other day, and the Mammet hit me for over 300 per hit in sword form. My PLD would easily block that down to less than 100. :(

However, the ease with which I merit these days makes up for it, though. :p Now, my only problem is actually finding the time to merit.

RIBBIT RIBBIT

One of the reasons I've been so busy is that I've gotten another static on my hands. I figured it was about high time I said "fuck it" to everyone who turned me down for their Salvage group due to my eternal PLDONRY status, and put together my own static. :) It's a good group, consisting of me, Pat, Raistlinmajere, Arafea, Pitlith, Tarnak, Tarja, Kirae and Manikalas. Though Manikalas recently told me he'll be on an extended break from the game, so we might have to replace him. :( We've been doing well so far. We've had problems with Long-Bowed Chariot, though. Oddly enough, it's not the lack of 10/10 archaic gears that kills us - though it does complicate things to constantly only be 8 or 9/10 - for some reason we run out of MP too fast. >.< We only keep two MNKs on it, one if MP gets low, the BRD has Storm Fife... I've discussed it with several other experienced Salvagers, and asked on BG, and yet nada. :/ We'll get him eventually, though. We actually kinda have to...

...because this is just silly. We were losing a couple of people for our 2nd Saturday run yesterday, and decided to just do a quick Arrapago. It started out awfully. One healer is not enough, and there was a lot of death and confusion. It paid off, though. So now my question is - I've had problems raising 1 million gil to sponsor dynamis - how on EARTH am I going to raise like... 10 million gil for the Imperial Wootz Ingots I'll need?! ; ;

The run continued with insanity, as the Archaic Chariot put out for us. Sadly, Pat was not there to lot them since he'd forgotten go get a Remnant Permit in advance, but I know an Arafea who was very happy. :p

Misc other stuff:

Damage record on Boreal Hound. :) I totally did more than Pat.

Nyzul puttin' out and Onorok and Junglist being stupid and passing for me.

Varda clearly needs to do the AF dance more.

Oh, zing!

I've started working on Lexa's h2h merits.

Pat let me try on his Osode, and I became mighty sexy! I've gotta get me one of these!

Highest Jin I've ever done (Boreal Hound doesn't count), and first time one of my WSs has broken 1k since my first Vorpal on a Goldfish in sea.

I heart tarus!

I don't heart Garret. :(

Congratulations, Pitlith, on your p. head!

Me and Jung swapped our Sandworm bodies temporarily. I think I look better than him. :)

And just to finish with something pretty; my FFXI Piano Collection CD came, and I got my harpsichord!

Biggest fucking post ever, where I talk about luck a lot.

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:40:58 GMT

What a boring fight. No, seriously.
The addition of ZNMs to the game has led to a craze of sorts. It's very amusing to walk around Vanadiel - especially in ToAU areas - as you'll usually be able to tell what mob is the current required mob for Zeni. Just look for the extremely overcrowded areas and the gazillions of Soultrappers going off left and right. Ultima has dipped their toes in, and helped Tarnak with his pop items. The Armed Gears, which I think is a Tier III? Was an easy, but unbelievably boring fight. I was literally falling sleep. Kiting in general can be very, very dull, but I think these gears need some kind of award of certification for dullest kiting mob ever.

How come he can run through the little wall, but I can't?
Ultima also claimed and killed Ixion a few more times, but then it seemed like we lost interest. The fight that this picture is from was one of the last ones we did, and quite frankly, I am not keen to repeat the experience. It was a very long fight, we were basically lacking in everything - DDs, mages, tanks - everything. I was originally planning to bring Abbylu and not Lexa, but then we only had one PLD, so I dual-boxed Lexa out, thinking I'd let Abby sit there afk and logged in, in case something happened. But then Abbylu's party didn't have a Refresh. So the end result was me, attempting to tank Ixion and play refresh whore to Abby's party, all while trying to avoid getting trampled on both characters. On top of that, this fight went on and on, and Ixion had already popped late, so by the time the fight was drawing to an end, it was coming up on 3:30am. I was exhausted, running on less than 5 hours of sleep, and overall did a horrible performance. I'm not proud of it. At least we killed it, but I hope to God I'll never have to do something like that again.

I guess eventually I have to take it to 37.
I seem to have been bitten by the exp bug. I hate exping, everyone who knows me knows this - I am Lexa, the one-trick pony, PLD75 onry, etc etc, but for some obscene reason I've found myself leveling a lot of jobs and subs lately - most notably coming close to finishing my NIN. Since I'm also taking BRD to 75, I needed to take WHM to 37, and for WHM37 I needed BLM18. The only thing I could possibly hate more than exp grind, is solo exp grind. Yet I found that soloing worms in North Gustaberg [S] was comfortable, nice and quiet, and while resting MP I could surf LiveJournal and BluGartr. Since I'm a slowpoke and unable to exp for more than a few hours at a time, tops (despite clearly being on a roll these days), it took me 2 days to get BLM from 11-18, but at least it's done for now. Eventually I will have to take it to 37 as well, but it's not a priority.

Look, ma! I'm warping!
I finally finished that damn quest for the scroll of Warp, too. now I just need to suck it up and cough up the 60k or so for Drain from the AH, since I did that quest many eons ago, and sold it to fund my wee little warrior.

I look weird as a mage.
With BLM18, nothing was left to stop me from exping my WHM the final stretch from 33-37. Yes, my WHM was 33 and my BLM was 11. Gimp, etc, etc, I know, I was young and dumb. But at least now it's done. I like playing WHM, and it's one of the jobs I'm thinking of taking to 75 "eventually." And by "eventually" I mean in about 8-10 years. I'm not a bad WHM, either. :) I found I was a slight bit rusty, but I got back into the swing of things fairly quickly. I still remember playing Razarac's WHM for PM6-4 airship fight and being awesome at it! :p

I like the Mire. It's NIN on cruise control.
My NIN has finally gotten high enough to move on from Erucas in Mount Zhaylom, to Imps and Jnuns in the Mire. I must say, this kind of NIN tanking? I like. I started using full DD garb some levels ago, and in the Mire it pays off. The mobs here are very squishy, and combined with the Amnesia spam, I open each fight with a voke, squeeze off a Jin here and there, and that's pretty much it. Mobs die to fast I only need one recast of Ni most fights - two at most - and when DDs inevitably pulls hate off me, I spam some ninjutsu to get it back if I'm amnesia'd, but that's it. Caederva Mire is cruise control for my NIN, and I love it. I'm currently sitting at level 71 (I love being able to wear my Ohat again), and hoping to be 75 ASAP. 72 is going to see a slight break to fix the latent on my Senji, but apart from that I'm pretty much set gear-wise, to 75.

Now them's sour apples.
One of the items I've needed for my NIN, was Fuma Sune-Ate. i've not been able to justify spending 150k on them, because I am a gigantic cheapass like that, so I decided to KS30 for them. True to my usual luck, this was the result of my orb. The next day I brought another party and spent 30 of Abby's seals, and we then proceeded to get Fumas on every orb except mine. Thankfully, it wasn't all bad luck that day, since the crap drops I did get on Abby's orb was wort exactly 150k. I bought Pat's Fumas since he offered. I also won three - 3 - Rank 4 prizes from the Mog Bonanza lottery, so I'm going to spend a Behemoth Hide and get it synthed into Dusk Gloves, which will pretty much conclude my NIN Haste build.

Insert headless joke here
I had fun tanking the Tier IV ZNM Hydra for Tarnak. We were supposed to have a go at Cerberus and Khimaira as well, but then there was a maintenance and the cost of the key items or whatnot went up, so it got put on hold. Still, though, I think implementing the ZNM system was a smart move on SE's part. Of course, you don't want people fucking up Einherjar or whatnot, trying to take pictures of the scary whatchamacallits within, but anything that gives good loot that doesn't involve standing around for forever, only to lose claim, is good in my book. In other news, this one time, the recommended fauna was a Quiqirin in Periqia. There's only one Assault in that area that has a Quiqirin in it (Defuse the Threat). I grabbed Pat and Marcus and in we went, cleared the Assault, and got an inventory full of Soul Plates. Came back to the NPC - and it was no longer what he wanted. Gee, thanks. XD

Look ma, no sword!
I got lucky and got into two tiny meritpts this past month. One was with CTB peeps, where I was main healing (I'm a good PLD/WHM main healer for merits, but to be quite honest, I hate it), and one was with Ultima peeps which ended pretty fast when the BRD had to take off. Still, though, I got one merit, and almost capped my exp. I finished capping it in Campaign, so overall I'm happy. I hope meriting will be eaiser on me once my NIN is 75, because quite frankly I'm tired of being poorly merited, tired of being turned down from every pt because I'm a lolPLD (hell, some people in my own linkshell doesn't even want me), and while it is a shame I've had to level secondary jobs to get some merits, I do understand that's simply how the game works. Elitism is abundant - I can be one hell of an elitist myself - and so it's either roll with the punches and get merits, or stay a poorly merited, unwanted lolPLD. :)

Luck luck luck luck luck!
People who know me, may also be familiar with my extreme bad luck. It may not always seem like it, because when I do luck out, I luck out hard. But generally, my luck is horrible. Horrible. I've noticed a definite trend as of late, though.

Observation 1) Pat is lucky. This is nothing new. He's so lucky, I constantly tell him he's got golden hairs coming out of his ass. But I've discovered that bringing him when I'm off doing stuff, will significantly increase my chances of being successful at whatever it is I'm off doing. For instance: I was working on my BRD AF coffer key in Castle Zhval Baileys. I've been doing that on and off since like... April/May. The longest I ever spent up there was approximately five hours. In total, I guesstimate I've spent more than 25, trying to get a damn key. Well, I brought Pat up. And we got the key on the sixth mob or so. Another time, I went 0/10+ on O Kote NM (all with a THF75 present for TH3), when Pat walked into the room, picked up my keyboard, and just then - as if it was magic - the NM popped right in front of him, he outclaimed like 8-10 other campers with my character (naturally - wasn't very hard since it popped right in front of him), with no TH, and got the drop.

Observation 2) Emo = luck. This was something I first noticed when I got my Askar feet. After God knows how many fruitless runs, i exploded in a pile of emo into the ls, bitching and moaning and swearing every God under the heavens hated me - and then I immediately got the drop. Well, this has worked for me on several other occasions now.

Now let me direct your attention once again to the screenshot above. Coo Kuja the Unseen was an NM I was camping quite a bit back in the day. I wanted his necklace for a HP build (that should tell you how long ago it was). I never saw him. I spent hours and days outside of Castle O, waiting, killing, sitting around, and still nothing. I never saw hide nor hair of this NM. So i'd been in Castle O, getting my BRD AF coffer there (once again, got the key very fast with pat's help), and had teleported to Mea. Pat chose to run out. Then he says from across the room, "I don't know who this guy is." I look over, and he has my fucking NM! Since Pat is awesomesauce, he not only held the damn thing long enough for me to run Lexa there from Mea, he held it long enough for me to dual box Razarac in on his mostly naked 46THF for TH2. People can say what they want about TH2 placebo. I still think it was Pat's luck that got me the dorp. Sure, it's outdated, and people completely rained on my parade by being all, "pfft, that thing sucks," and "oh, that useless NM? I killed him yesterday." But it is still something I've wanted for a very long time, but never got. Until now. <333 Plus, it'll go well with my useless packrat R/ex collection.

Oh, Hydra... have we met before?
With the end of Summer Semester I, I found myself with a little more time on my hands, and a more flexible bedtime. Next Summer Semester, I don't have 8am classes anymore, and as such have been able to start attending Einherjar with Lulutoo's shell (invite only, to my knowledge, if you were wondering). I used to be ahead of everyone in number of ampoules since I'd been doing some on Sylph, but with the update and school, I'm pretty sure everyone now has more ampoules than me, haha! XD Though getting 1900 for this Tier III clear was just fucking awesome! 8k now, and only 7k to go for my Ritter Gorget! :D Since I haven't gone with Lulu due to Summer Semester, I won't be able to lot anything from Odin, but quite honestly I'm not concerned about it. The only thing I'd really want is a martial body, and... lulz.

Ten's animation is so much better than Jin's.
I've been doing a shitton of Campaign. I actually ranked up to the next Ribbon (yes Ribbon LULZ!), which shocked the hell out of me. I guess it's time to start saving up for those Iron Ram pieces anyway, and Campaign - while boring and horrible - will help me get them, as well as providing me with little dribbles of exp for my NIN, and merits on PLD. I just really hate arriving at a place, getting tags, and having mobs warp out after two minutes, giving me like 150 exp at a time and such.

Kiting while gathering
And finally - last, but VERY certainly not least - we got Sandworm. Ultima hasn't hunted Sandworm, I've mostly been watching Pat's shell get claim after claim after claim (they pretty much had every claim since the update and for two weeks+ after), but this one day nobody was hunting it. Someone from shell (who was it? Nekio?) found it up and unclaimed, and off we went. Being one of the first people on the scene and knowing that it was going to be in King Arthro's area, I was excited and determined to get sucked in. I knew for a fact that nobody had yet killed KA on Valefor, having followed CTB's reign of Sandworm. One lolshell cockblocked them one day in a KA zone, but seeing as how they only had like 8 people, they wiped naturally. So I was very psyched about it, and hoping to every higher FFXI power that I wouldn't glitch out. Thankfully we got very lucky - not a single member of the alliance got left out. Does that mean SE ninjafixed it? I don't know. I would hope so.

The Knight Crabs were surprisingly squishy!
The fight itself had a slight bit of confusion at first. We had planned for me to kite the Knight Crabs. Well, it turns out, the Knight Crabs are pushovers. They hit me for barely 50 dmg a hit, and they went down to two WS from a DD. But more importantly, they refused to follow me. :( They kept going back to KA to cure him with Water IV. So we scrapped the whole kiting idea, and instead had the DDs TP on them, as well as BLMs burt -agas if we started to get overrun. Galka tanked KA like a pro. I felt extremely useless, but at least I Shield Bash stunned two Water IVs along the way. Take that, you scoundrels!

No belt, but me being who I am, didn't care
This was our loot pool. The fight itself took barely even 30 minutes, and this was our reward. We were told PLD mains lot, and I saw Garret lot a 558. My heart was literally racing as I hit the Cast Lots button. Inventory full? OK, toss out some sole sushis. Cast Lots. Lexa's lot for the Avalon Breastplate: 89. My entire gaming career flashed before my eyes, I shit you not. How I lotted a 50-ish for my Homam hands, and how I've lost Homam Legs several times with less than 100 lots. All the times I've lotted low for my AF2, and how - the few times I did win them - I won them with low lots, because there was nobody to compete with me. Now here's where Observation 2) comes into play again. I exploded in a pile of emo, doing my best to keep most of it away from public ls chat/party chat and kinda failing, when the following rolled over my screen:

LYKE OMG GALKA ILU!!!

Pat calls me Little Red - "like the gum, Big Red."
I know at least one more popped up since then, but I confirmed that it was aquired at a later date than mine. So to my knowledge, my Avalon Breastplate was the first on Valefor. I love this thing. I love it, I love it, i love it. I was giggling and squeeing and jumping around with glee, and I'm pretty sure at some points my vocal range entered a pitch only dogs can hear. And that is how Lexa, the unlucky lolPLD, got to be the luckiest damn lolPLD I know of. :)

Other random stuff:

DORP!

It's like a black Crimson Scale Mail.
Congratulations to Tripp of CTB for that shiny, shiny new Zahak's Mail. You completely deserve it, since you never take freakin' anything from the shell. My only question is: Now that you have every pet job in the game at 75, what's next? o.O

Lowbie RNG for COR sub. Currently at 12. Party, anyone?

As per usual when I camp shit alone.

Last Ixion Ultima did before interest dwindled.

Hydra ZNM drops. We got an Enkidu Harness on the second pop we did.

BRD AF, hooray! Only missing body now.

Goddamn, Anniversary Ring is sexah!

The mother of all reading errors.

Amentis's attempt #17 to Skillchain with a one-hit WS gets pwned by Utsusemi.

And that's pretty much it.

OK, I lied.

As if this entry wasn't big enough already, I dug up some old screenshots from my PC in Norway during my trip back home, so this is thelexa: The Nostalgia Edition!

This was it.
It may not seem like anything important, but this was where it all started. This was when I, frustrated with something or other, sat down to have a chat with my good friend Magos in Whitegate, and he said, "Don't be so sure Ultima would reject you, Lexa." At the time it was just an idle thought, I was frustrated with CTB in that moment, and wasn't even remotely seriously interested in leaving. But the fact that he thought I could get in, gave me the courage later on, after my failed attempt at creating an endgame life on Sylph, to submit an application once I got back on Valefor. I'm both happy and sad for this moment, since I still miss CTB on a pretty much daily basis, but I love Ultima. I love what we do, what we accomplish, and most of all - I love not being burnt out on leadership duties. :D

PP.
This is my luck PP. "Pre-Pat."

Holy cow, PM2-5?!
I doubt anyone remembers, but back in the day I actually used to help with CoP missions a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot! I don't know how many times I did PM2-5. I do know that I've led more than 35 groups successfully through PM2-1. I think I've done PM6-4 about 14-ish times. PM3-5 Diabolos around 20. Razarac saw a lot of use in those days, since both SMN and WHM are incredibly useful for these fights. :)

PerfectFriend, the second attempt.
My first chocobo was named OrZ and couldn't do anything. PerfectFriend was my second one, and came out black, and I fed him to be a speed chocobo. He's not quite as fast as rental birds, but still not bad. Though I don't think I'll ever raise another one, despite really wanting a red one (to match the rest of me, of course), because the cutscene when they're auto-retired? Saddest fucking cutscene ever! My wee wittle heart couldn't take watching it again.

lolAggro
The first time I fought Serket. "Fought" Serket. OK, so I didn't fight Serket, I smacked around adds, but I still got the title.

LOL, people didn't believe us.
Pat got his Adamantoise Egg, making CTB 1/1 off NQ. The following day, they made it 2/2.

Storm Turban DORP!
One of the better appraisals we've gotten from Assault. We've also gotten some GKatana, Phi Necklace, Assault Earring, and some misc other crap. Most of which Pat has won. Now where's my damn Assault Earring?!

Naked tanking Genbu.
It's a bad picture, but you can kinda see Stiker naked in the background there. What can I say? It's a CTB tradition that started with me. <3

Grrr!
The only time, to day's date, I have zoned into somewhere dead. How annoying!

My, how far you've come.
First attempt at KS99 turtle. It... didn't go so well. I never saw a successful kill of the turtle while I was in CTB. I later helped out TG with his Egg, and at that point they killed it as if they had done nothing else their entire lives. I cannot for the life of me figure out why he was so difficult the first few times, since the setup was pretty much the same...

Woot!
One of the few times I've gotten lucky all on my own. I had one KS99 orb, and I was hoping it'd drop a Beard for Pat. It did, and I got to be the person responsible for him completing his Black Belt. I was incredibly happy I could do that for him, since he helps me out so much.

So I herd u liek AF2?
Fullest dynamis loot pool I've ever seen.

I AER NINJAR!
Looking back, it's taken me a really fucking long time to get NIN this high. >.< Wow, I'm pathetic, haha!

Dynamistell in action.
My short-lived dynamis shell. We ran for almost six months, but I had to call a full stop because people are ungrateful and greedy. I always prioritized clear for people, always! There was never a majority for farming, everyone always wanted clear. So I cleared - and then they said "woot, I got clear!" and took off, instead of staying behind to farm so I got my money's worth. By the time DMT shut down, I was losing on average 500k per run. The worst currency yield I ever got, was less than 60 singles for a million gil. Overall, I estimate I lost a good 8-10 million, a lot of which was Pat's, since I borrowed a lot of the gil from him. I could have been an asshole and just made everyone farm, but I don't want to be one of those people. I'm now debt free and back to my regular Aegis upgrade schedule, of one new 100 note each 6 months.

Finally!
Everyone who knows me, knows how long I waited for my w legs, so I won't retell the story. I was considering going for Blood Cuisses since I'd been waiting so long, but Pat bought me a pair of Cursed Cuisses as a gift before I even got back to town. My NQ fastpants may not have as much epeen as everyone else's, but their sentimental value cannot be topped.

Yay assholes!
Order of events: Denton leaves CTB in a fit of drama. Denton runs around town wearing new abjurations and HNM titles, but without an endgame shell. Pat strikes up a conversation with known NA gilseller friend Jution, since they knew each other before Jution turned to the dark side. Jution gives up a bunch of other gilseller helper names, among them Denton. Pat posts screens on KI. Denton is the only one stupid enough to try to defend himself, claiming this and that. Nobody believes him; everybody laughs. Denton displays what a miserable bastard he is when it turns out he not only had kept his old CTB pearlsack, but snuck onto shell and kicked everyone. Pat made macro for Denton-kick; Denton was kicked; kicked members were re-pearled; everyone laughed at Denton again.

I miss you, Ming.

I always liked dinging into things.
I still can't wear it. I need to level, I guess.

LULZ!
Best. Screenshot. Ever! He was since asked to drop pearl by Pat, due to "irreconcilable differences" with the rest of the shell.

No big. We didn't need that hat anyway.
How come people still don't know that breaking an ally before shit has dropped = bad?!

Teh Koolkeith!
This must be really old, KK hasn't played in forever... I miss you, KK. :(

Ossum.
Romulus demonstrates how to properly make up for a previous embarrassing mt.

Now. Finally. That's all she wrote.

I'm back!

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:25:44 GMT

I moved back to LJ, even if a free account is gimp as all shit. I just got so got sick of the comment spam for Wordpress, the weird formatting - plus, I love my DeepestSender addon for Firefox.

We had very little time left.

First of all, I've been doing more than my fair share of Nyzul Isle. Well, that's not quite true, I'm very pleased with the amount of Nyzul I've been doing. I'm less pleased with our droprates. Stupid Goliard just does not want to drop for us, in either of my statics. My oldest static, the original group, has taken a break from Nyzul and is right now just focusing on our past clears, hoping to get pretty stuff from the ??? appraisals. So far - nada. But then again, that's expected. At least Varda finally got her Goliard Clogs in our Sunday static.

Dance, puppet, dance!

I've also been doing dynamis with DynamisX as per usual, and had some good luck in a Jeuno some time back. Ever have one of those insane runs, where you can't stop lotting 900+? I ended up with a Jadeshell as well as synth materials for over 30k to NPC. I had to have Shadowfox hold some of my stuff, so I could have room to keep lotting.

I FINALLY GOT IT!

The sweetest "victory" for me with DynamisX, however, was probably finally winning my Valor Coronet in Dynamis-Bastok. I know it's a mediocre piece - a macro piece for Rampart at best - but I cannot count how many times I've lost lot on this damn thing! I've lost lot in every way and situation possible. I've lost with 980+ lots, and I've lost with less than 10 lots. I've lost them to PLD mains, PLD secondaries, people without PLD leveled. I've lost them right away, last minute, to friends, to foes. I've lost them in shout dynamises, my own shell, DynamisX, and everything in between. Thank God the nightmare's over. Of course, the Gods decided to laugh at me and immediately drop like 3 more, which all almost went to freelot, but I don't care that I spent the full 4 points for it. It was worth it!

Probably the only way I'll get to play with Tiamat, considering the state of things on Valefor...

Ultima did some more Bahamut version 2, which I was psyched about. I was hoping a couple of masks would drop, and maybe even have a chance at winning one, but unfortunately no such luck. However, my day took a definite turn for the better when I was asked to main tank a fight. I was largely unprepared, thinking I was only there for adds, but I did decently all things considered. I do need to work on my gear, though. I wish the better body pieces for PLD wasn't so damn hard to get - Valor Surcoat, Ares Cuirass, and lolKoenig Cuirass. I also need to invest in some resist builds... once I stop being a lazy, broke ass that is.

Great view.

Either way, I had a blast. I did end up dying around 30% or so, but it was still a whole lot of fun!

Just as I finish /rdm, I need /blm as well. Typically.

Ultima's Einherjar attendance has been just low enough so that it got too troublesome trying to clear more Tier II wings, and has now joined up with a different shell to do Einherjar. I really wish I could go, I was so well on my way to my Ritter Gorget - and now, after the patch it should be even easier to get the ampoules - but alas, I did that silly thing some people do and signed up for summer classes. With my alarm clock going off at 6am every weekday, I'm just not in any shape to be attending events that start at 11pm or later. :( I miss Einherjar...

Hee hee hee.

I've been manaburning Limbus here and there. Since my dear friend Ming quit the game and left me her characters, I've been taking advantage of the fact that Abbylu has BLM merits, and Regn doesn't. It's good fun manaburning Limbus, and I wish I could do it more often.It also enabled me to get my Brutal Earring. I was having a difficult time deciding between Loquacious and Brutal, but in the end I decided Brutal will be more useful, a larger part of the time, while Loquacious wouldn't be used nearly as much, despite the fact that I tank everything /nin these days.

The mission has failed. Now leaving the battlefield. Or something.

This one time, in Nyzul, we killed the floor 20 boss and got nothing, and instead of warping us out, I was like "DURR DURR DURR NEXT FLOOR!" Deciding to give it a go anyway when we got "Eliminate enemy leader" objective, and he was sitting right there, we drew our weapons. Then we timed out and didn't get any tokens. And I was embarrassed.

*

Now, from May 12th to May 29th, I didn't play hardly at all, except to level my mules to level 5 and get Mob Bonanza marbles on something like 14 characters. Why, you ask? I grabbed my trusty MNK Patroklis halfway around the globe, to visit Norway - hereafter known as the Land of the Ponies (for reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture). We stayed there for just over two awesome weeks. It was fun showing off my home country to Pat, and it was also nice to be able to introduce him to some of the other Norwegians I've introduced him to in FFXI.

See, here's Pat in front of the Royal Palace. He was disappointed not to see any ponies, but we did go up and poke the funny Royal Guards, though. Norwegian Palace Guards look much cooler than British Palace Guards. Norwegian Palace Guards have black uniforms, and their hat is hard and tall, but with this weird tassel-looking thing just kinda sprouting out from the side. Go google it or something.

By Akerselva at Grønland.

First up, we met up with Brenni, the girl who way back in December 2004 said, "Lexa, you've got to play this game I'm playing now, it's called Final Fantasy XI!" She's very cute, she's getting married to her beloved manthra Desdemona this summer, she's got a big, drooling dog named Garm, and two very awesomely cute ferrets named Simpel and Skade.

Cassian: HALP HALP RAEP!

Next up was Cassian, Pat's personal Kosebamse. Pat was overjoyed at finally getting to meet the love of his life. Cassian seemed apprehensive, but we all know he's hot for Pat. Cassian used to be in CeeTeeBee, but he quit the game back in December. Like a big fucking jerk. Now who's gonna do freakish damage to their JoLs, hm?!

*lick*

And then finally, there was Detarium. Detarium was also in CeeTeeBee for a while, but he left to play with Brenni and Desdemona in Fusion. Something about not being able to be in a US shell on an EU schedule, 4am events... something. I dunno. *whistles* If you thought Pat was enthusiastic about seeing Cassian, that was nothing compared to how happy Detarium was to see Pat! I have another picture of Pat touching Detarium's ass. Trufax. I just didn't know how to shop their avatars in over that scene...!

*

Anyway, back to our regular schedule.

/verygimpdnc > /war

I've been doing some Campaign on my NIN. It's not so bad when there's a lot of battles, and when I get decent exp for them, but I'm still not a huge fan of Campaign. Usually, I have to wait so long between battles if I camp a zone, and if I try to chase it - even with the handy messages in the past towns - I'm usually either so late that it ends almost immediately, or so early that I have to wait forever for the mobs to get there anyway. It gets very annoying and frustrating.

lolEva build.

Thank God Pat's WHM leveled into my level range. It actually gave me motivation enough to suffer through an actual exp party, and my NIN is now 66. One level in something like... five months. All right! :D I've also pretty much put my evasion build on the shelf for now, except for soloing.

HI2U Dark Ixion

The most recent update came with a lot of goodies, but the best part about it - in my opinion - was Dark Ixion. Not because his DORPS are the most amazing items in the game to date, or because the fight is like the best ZOMG fight ever, or for any other reason really, except the fact that I was the first person to tank him. Ultima got the first claim on the server, and I was the first tank on scene. Yelsaewnor and Blueshawk were right behind me, and 90 minutes later, Ixion gave his shit UP!

Pretty dead horsie.

It was a very interesting fight. I'm particularly interested in if Acheron Kick really is his little mini-version of a Spike Flail (aka triggered when someone takes hate from behind). Also, remind me to bring Echo Drops next time I fight him. x.x His lack of HP bar was a little annoying, since I don't use such fancy plugins as Infobar, or other programs to scope out the HP. I died quite a few times. But I can honestly say he's the most fun I've had tanking for a long, long, long time. I was bouncing around the room after it was over. I was also fortunate enough to be let into the alliance again near the end, and snagged the title, which was HUGE for me.

Ixion Hornbreaker

My FFXI career is most unremarkable. I play the game, I do my thing, I have bad luck and good luck and I tank stuff. But I don't usually do anything special. Valefor wasn't the first server to take down Dark Ixion, but we were far from the last, and being one of the 18 first people on Valefor with this title was incredibly huge to me.I am however, sad that some other people there who were there from the start and arrived early, as well as helped scout him, did not get the title that day. That was probably the biggest drawback to not being able to tell its HP%, otherwise they should have been let in to get the title.

DORPS

No cape for us that time, we've gotten it since. Congratulations to Varda, Modoja, Redd, Onorok, Joanna, Spit, Nekio and Mhmmmimafreak on your pretty DORPs. Did I leave anyone out?

CHEESE!

I haven't looked too closely at a lot of the recent update beyond Dark Ixion, but I've started to accumulate a little bit of zeni for the new ZNMs. It's an interesting premise. Although I sincerely hope endgame shells all over will be laying down Soultrapper rules for their events, since sometimes you can get asked to bring pictures of... inconvenient mobs. Does anyone really wish to lose an Einherjar or Salvage because people are busy snapping pictures instead of WS'ing/curing/voking/whatever? It's made for some interesting situations when it comes to regular mobs, though.

Finally, some random shit.

949 lot on freelot. Go, go.

My very first Spike Flail, one time we got Darters.

It's literally been years since I learned a new spell on my PLD.

Awesome mule name.

Craft leves, as of this date.

A classic example of why you should think before you type.

Giggity.

THE END! END, I SAID!

<3~

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:49:06 GMT

http://lexa.ultimals.com

I've found a new home~
I love LiveJournal dearly, but it sucks without a paid account.
And I already have a paid one for my personal journal.
I don't wanna pay for two.
Maybe someday I'll return, but for now, find me at the above location.

Stuff completed!

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:41:39 GMT

February is only half over, and has already been a highly eventful month for me! o.o;; I've gotten to complete quite a few goals I've had my eye on for a long while, now.

Warning! post contains spoilers for some missions from both Bastok and ToAU storylines.

First of all, my application with veteran linkshell Ultima was resolved. :) Back in September when I originally left CTB, I was considering applying to Ultima, but refrained from doing so for two reasons: They didn't have open applications for PLDs (and I always was irked when people applied to CTB even though we blatantly stated we were closed for their particular job), and I was certain I wouldn't get in. However, after being strongly encouraged by a few friends, I decided to go ahead anyway. I was flattered when I got positive words from some people I didn't realize even knew who I was, and from a few of the players I've looked up to for a long, long time. :D Makes a gal all warm and fuzzy inside. ^^

I did more dynamis with DynamisX, and not only did I get to sponsor a Xarcabard (which even though I've been told the yield was lower than normal - not surprising considering it was Xarcabard - was a better profit in terms of currency than I've ever seen), but I got the clear. :D I've now received the clear for every "old area" dynamis zone. Just missing Buburimu, Valkurm and Tavnazia. :D

February 5th (psst, Ultima people, the date is wrong on the member's list :p) was the day, though. I was headed to do Ultima limbus, and just before we left, I was presented with this pretty, blue pearl. I haven't had a pearl for over two years, since before Pat made my CTB pearl into a sack. The lack of responsibility is... amazingly liberating. I feel happier, more relaxed, and it's a lot easier for me to enjoy events, now that I don't have to worry about complaints, alliance setups, strategies, and whatever else comes up as part of the leadership. ^^ Ultima is also full of extremely talented and amazingly humble players, and I feel very much at home.

Me and Pat have also been working pretty hard on our Assaults. I'm now 3 clears away from Captain, and he's about the same. Our strat for Black Shuck that I mentioned last time worked out for us, even if it was a close call. I kited the elementals, while Pat took care of the Cerberus-copy tanking. Our biggest problem was for me to get the attention of all the elementals at the same time. I ended up subbing /gimpwhm for Diaga (dear God, I need to finish my RDM), but it severely reduced my survivability (Stoneskin or not, Flare HURTS when not absorbed by shadows). We beat it, anyway, that's what counts. :) We also made (surprisingly) fast work of Orichi (Hydra-lookalike), and I can't for the bare life of me figure out why he gave me such a hard time the last time I attempted it. x.x

So anyway, since our rank-up opportunity is rapidly approaching, we made sure to work on our ToAU missions as well. Taking, of course, a brief stopover to kick this NM's ass, just for kicks (it drops nothing of value or event remote interest - just some spectacularly shitty gloves). The double chicgoes he kept spawning certainly kept things interesting. XD PS. Did you know a hume female PLD can tank two chigoes better than an Elvaan MNK and a Galka WAR? :p Lawl!

Now this is an interesting story. See, due to the impatience of some of us (hey, now, we can't all be born patient and rational), half the static ended up pulling ahead of the other half. So this resulted in us needing help for the final fight. And my, what epic help it turned out to be!

The Story Of Why Lexa Owes Spit Her Soul - (here be wall-o'-text)
We were told pretty much from the start that we could not, could not do it without a BLM in the group. Well, a BLM wasn't an option for us, as we spent hours trying to find someone to help without much luck. Our initial setup was PLD WAR MNK RNG RDM WHM. Our first attempt only took ten minutes, as we exited when we realized we were killing the Blue Mage too slowly. We adjusted our strat a little, then went in again. This time it actually went surprisingly well, until the very, very end, where I died, leaving the DDs very vulnerable. We wiped with Alexander left at about 12% or so. Pat, being the suicidal maniac he is, RR'd and let loose a Chi Blast which ended up taking more than 7% off his total life. Unfortunately, we ran out of time right after. :/

At this point, it was getting really late, and our RNG had to leave for work (those crazeh EU people... err... wait...). The DDs had burned their 2-hours, and were pretty annoyed, but determined to try ONE more time (that was all the RDM had time for), if we could get a sixth. Enter Spit, from Ultima, graciously putting his Assaults on hold to kindly come out to help blow shit up. We adjust the strat further, and Pat brings /whm and full Chi Blast gear, just in case. Once again, things go decently well. Until Alexander is at about 20-21%, and we wipe. Time was running out for us, we got the five-minute warning, and generally it all looked really bad. I was up, Pat was up, and the RDM was up I think, but that was pretty much it. We start sadface-ing about losing yet again, when Pat starts Boosting. So quickly, a cunning plan is thought up.

Fae was dead right by Alexander, but with RR and tp. We already knew Pat's Chi Blast could do devastating damage to him. Spit still had Manafont, but would probably get one-shotted if he attracted Alexander's attention. So this was the order of events that followed:

Lexa > raises Spit > eats Taco > cures to full Weakened HP (about 550-600 HP)
Pat > Boost x 12 > Chi Blast, bringing Alexander down to 11-12% or so
Fae > Reraise > SA Steel Cyclone, for another 5%-ish
Lexa > Flash > Sentinel > Invincible
Spit > Manafont > Nukenukenuke

While this was going on, Kirae (RDM) and Maisee (WHM) were spamming cures on me for what MP they had, and the RDM was also helping to nuke (lol, 0 dmg Stone). As I die, I notice Alexander at 1% HP, and the 30-second warning scrolling across my screen, just as Spit starts casting a Blizzard III. But to my horror, the Blizzard doesn't kill it! I don't dare look, thinking we lost despite our final hurrah - until Alexander suddenly falls to the ground, deader than dead. A well-placed final Thunder III from Spit with less than ten seconds left on the clock, and we got our win. I got my Ulthalam's Ring and my (urk) Glory Crown (HI2U Inventory-1), and I will never post a picture of me wearing it, since female humes look RETARDED in crowns.

So anyway, back to our normal schedule.

Ultima requires you to have two jobs at 75, one of which should be a mage job. Since I'm a big slacker, I don't have two jobs at 75, much less a mage job. What I do have, however is Regn - BLM74. I ended up taking him to JoL, and it was fun. :)

Then I ended up dying to Absolute Virtue, which was even funnier!

And I got my Swift Belt, which I was extremely happy about! :D

Between limbus fees, my crafting and my now pretty acceptable /nin haste buidl and -dmg%/MDB builds, I've been pretty broke, so I spent 30 of Regn's KSs on Copycat. I was gonna save them to do KS30 for Morbolger Vine (I hate camping), but money > boredom of camping. Fortunately, I got Fuma Sune-Ate on my orb, as well as an Adaman Ingot which has risen considerably in price since it was included in the Gobbie Bag quests, so that definitely helped.

I also got an interesting party on my NIN - they invited me to DD. I have a decent DD build - nothing spectacular, but not too shabby. The rest of the party consisted of DRK PLD SAM RDM BRD, and on a whim I decided to parse the party, to see how I did. The results were... really surprising!

Cervantes was the SAM, Rizzen was the PLD and Arpeggio was the DRK. And yes, that's me outparsing the SAM. I realize that 42 battles isn't a lot (I wasn't parsing the entire party), and I also realize it could be a fluke, and that parse numbers tend to even out and really settle only after a gazillion more battles - however, after having spoken with some friends of mine, I do believe I could have continued to outparse him. He wasn't badly geared by any stretch of the imagination (Store TP pants, Haste feet, Haub, Okotes, Soboro), but I was told that Soboro will be outdamaged by other GKatanas at this level (we were 63-64). I also know that I was using food, and wearing a decent amount of Haste, and being constantly Hasted, so I was actually geining TP faster than the SAM. the accuracy rate of 80% isn't completely correct - it was at 91% until I stopped eating food, because the colibri kept snatching it when the DRK started SATAing me. Regardless of the fact that they both should have (and would have) outparsed me eventually, I'm pretty proud I held my own for as long as I did. ^^

I've also been working on my Bastok missions. :) Redd kindly helped me activate the weight switch in Altep for my 8-1 cutscene, and Sojourn covered up his normally exposed midriff to gear his SAM and 2-hour the ghost for 8-2. Pat was also there to punch it. :D I was dreading 9-1, since I recall it taking a horrible crowd of BLMs (I helped on Regn once) - not to mention, otherWiki says not to attempt it without at least a party of 75s. Well, I've never been one to give up when a challenge presents itself, so when Benny (BLM) and Ehon (RDM) offered to help, we shrugged and went to trio it. It was a very focused fight, and we beat it without much problem. It was extremely amusing. :D Thank you so much, guys!

After that, only 9-2 remained. Redd dressed up his SAM and came out along with Tarja (RDM) and a SMN who responded to my shout. We were not certain we could 4-man it, but decided to try anyway. It didn't go so well, as the shadows that Zeid spawns decided to first make Fragmentation on my ass, then continue to make it a Light. We'd wanted the SMN to Astral Flow as soon as they appeared, but clearly there was some miscommunication somewhere, because he didn't. The SMN ended up leaving afterwards. Since we were up there anyway, though, Redd, Tarja and I decided to try to trio, this time with the clever use of all our 2-hours. When Zeid spawned his shadows, I Invincibled, Tarja Chainspelled the shadows down, and Redd Meyiko Suishu (sp?) Zeid himself. The result - Rank 10 for me!

Two pretty flags for my Mog House. :) Back in yonder days, I wanted to do Windy as well to have all 3 flags, but now I'm certain I never will. I value my OPs too much.

Our little Assault static was hoping for at least three clears this week. Unfortunately, life did not agree. King Goldemar - what a whorebag! We discovered that it's really true - the order in which he summons down the weapons to help, means everything. We wiped hard the first time. The second time, we wiped harder and horribly. The third time, we finally won, having gotten a good order on the weapons, and lucky with the -gas. At which point some of us were out of tags (because they forgot to pick up an extra *pointed stare*), and I had to run because...

...I got to see this big lug for the first time. :D Well, technically second, I guess, since I obviously beat Bahamut version 1, but - first time I set foot in The Wyrmking Descends battlefield, anyway. It was a very awesome fight to be a part of, and I can't wait until I get my own shot at tanking him. ^^ He seems really annoying (terror, petrifications, dispel, dispelga, all sorts of fun stuff), but that's where the challenge lies. :D I got some gear to work on before that, of course, though.

My job was pulling the wyrm adds. I'm extremely relieved Ultima has not yet conformed to the "NOTHING BUT TP BURN!" mentality that so many endgame shells has these days. I also really amused that the first time I got to see Tiamat and Jormungand, had to be in this BC. I've wanted to see them a few times - I've even travelled up Uleguard Range five times, for the sole purpose of suiciding on Jormungand (and see if I could shield block him in the 3 hits I'd be able to keep alive) since everyone always tells me he's "always up!" Not once have I found him up, though. I guess I just have shitty luck, lol! Anyway, congratulations to those who got dorps! :D

As you can see, it's been a REALLY eventful couple of weeks. o.o;; I leave you now, with some random funny screenshots.

Ran into an asshole on a random Swift Belt run. A REAL asshole (as witnesses can testify to). That's fine, be an asshole to me if you want. I have my ways to snoop into your game career. I don't think I've ever seen anyone this freaked out. He followed up by bombarding me with "HOW???" tells.

Pat gains brownie points, loses brownie points, and goes into minus.

Amentis is, by his own admission, a whore.

Even seasoned 75s sometimes make hilarious mistakes.

Raist and Pat demonstrate their mutual love for each other.

The end.

There's no place like...

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 06:30:08 GMT

Life on Valefor has been amazingly pleasant since my return, and I'm happy to say - in larga part, normal. ^^ It's good to see a lot hasn't changed. Pat still punches stuff. My friends are still goofballs. My enemies are still retarded. Anonymous KI trolls still try to stir up drama with lies and bad information. There's no place like home, and honestly? With friends like these, why would I ever want to be anywhere else? :D

With the new semester starting, I thought I'd have less game-time again like I did last semester - and it certainly has taken a bite out of my FFXI-time. However as luck would have it, I decided to drop an unnecessary class to ease the workload for myself, and at the same time - without intention - opened up two hours between classes, to do homework and study. :D Wewt for time saved!

I'm currently still in limbo, but have found that surprisingly, being without a linkshell isn't so bad as long as I still have friends to talk to, and play around with. ^^ Besides, it's been really good for me in the sense that I definitely have more time to work on my personal goals. :D

Doing Assaults with Pat again has been awesome. :) And even though this stupid doggie keeps munching us up, I'm enjoying myself. The problem with the Cerb carbon copy, has been the elementals. Until now, we've tried having a mage take care of them, but now we're thinking I should be the one to kite them, since I have decidedly better survivability, and just have Pat /nin tank the puppy. I'm thinking /nin would be the sub of choice for me, even for kiting, but ideally I'd finish my /rdm.

Dracula was much more pleasant. :D Unfortunately we ended up wiping the first time, due to my stupid internet. x.x Since I just moved and have not had cable installed yet, so I'm currently leeching wireless from the neighbors. XD Silly college town, just around my house there are six wireless networks in range, hehe. Unfortunately, that also sometimes leads to disconnects at the worst possible time. Like say, when tanking Dracula, just as he pops a hard-hitting Pat-doppelganger. The second time, though, we did some ass-whoppin' in a solid way. ^^

I've also been doing dynamis with DynamisX, and since Regn's buffer suffered a bit as a result, I got some leveling in. With plenty of groping, of course. <3 Thanks to Hollitz for letting me leech his Marid exp. ^^

I applied to Ultima a while back, but I've been really bad about showing up to their events so they can see my tanking skillz (or lack thereof, depending on how you view it). One event I did make, however, was Proto-Ultima! I've never tanked Proto-Ultima before, and I had an absolute blast! With my current lack-of-endgame-shell status, I haven't been working on my resist builds at all, so of course when I got hate on a CB, I dropped like a sack of potatoes! It was the most fun I've had in a very, very long while. And I ended up with a nice, new title. :)

I've been thinking about Proto-Ultima and resist builds. Obviously, I can't do that neat -25% magic damage Aegis trick (yet), but there are other gear I could get to reduce the damage from Citadel Buster. I heard a friend of mine (one of the most solid tanks I know of) opted for a lot of Coral gear. I think I'd suffer greatly from losing the haste or enmity I need for /nin, but maybe I could work on a set to macro in for when CB is close to going off? After all, it's got that nice countdown. I was thinking something like this:

Haste/enmity setup:
Main: Mac[tab] +1
Sub: Koenig shield
Head: Walhara Turban
Body: AF (Team Gallant... go... ; ; )
Hands: Homam
Legs: Wyrmal
Feet: AF+1
Neck: Shield torque/Harmony torque (situational)
Ears: Cassie/Ethereal
Rings: Sattva/Hercules
Back: Resentment Cape
Waist: Trance (0/1 on Swift Belt, hoping for a new run soon)

Citadel Buster -% magic damage setup:
Main: Iron Ram Lance (-10% damage taken)
Sub:
Head: Walhara Turban
Body: Coral Scale Mail (-3% magic dmg, -4 on the +1)
Hands: Coral Finger Gauntlets (-1%, -2% on the +1)
Legs: Coral Cuisses (-2%, -3% on the +1)
Feet: Coral Greaves (-1%, -2% on the +1)
Neck: Shield torque/Harmony torque (situational)
Ears: Merman's Earring x2 (-2% on each)
Rings: Merman's Ring x2 (-4% on each)
Back: Resentment Cape (-5% with Signet on)
Waist: Trance (or Swift when I get it)

Depending on how many +1 pieces I get (if any), and if I opt for the lance (losing the TP from weapon-swapping might hurt me bad), macroing in this for CB, would bring my total -% magic damage taken up to between -24% and -38%. :) I guess it's something to work on, and see if it does me any good. :D

I also got my first shot at tanking Dynamis-Valkurm with DynamisX, which also was mass fun! :D I'm not a huge fan of main tanking dynamis - it's very chaotic, and I know that I hate when the main tank is slow with targetting, so I always freak out when I get that pressure on me. I much prefer the laid-back environment of backup tanking, voking slept mobs off mages and such. However, seeing as how it's... oh, maybe a year? At least? Since the last time I mained dynamis, it was a refreshing change of pace! :D

As part of my whole, "Lexa getting back to her roots" thing, I went back to doing something I forgot how much I enjoyed: Helping random shouts with CoP. ^^ It's always fun helping people through these missions, and it's extra fun when you run into intelligent, smart people, who aren't being stupid about aggro, about gear, supplies, strategies, or anything! :D This group beat Diabolos and Ouryu in a couple of hours, and then got the keys for 4-3 farmed up. :) We're currently trying to set up a time that works for everyone, to do the rest of 4-3 together. ^^

I tried leveling my RDM and THF a bit, both level 18 and struggling through the hell that is the dunes, but... well, with parties like these? It's not going to fast. :p I've been soloing a lot.^^

What I have been doing rather successfully, however, has been crafting. :) Thanks to all the flan meat I collected while manaburning Regn in Mount Zhaylom, I've been getting some decently okay Alchemy skillups, bringing me a bit closer to my goal of 60. Smithing has gone from 17 to 32, and I'm hoping to get it to about 47-50, so I can mine Mount Zhaylom with maximum effeciency. My Guild Points in the Goldsmithing guild are now up to over 75k, which isn't too bad considering I'm still not past Novice. :D I'm gonna be spending 50k of them on Sheeting and Gold Purification before I get to the level where I can buy my items, but I'm fairly confident I'll be able to get both the glasses and the apron the second I'm ranking up to be able to buy them. ^^

Crafting is probably going to be my main focus for a while. Smithing is obviously the sub I'm currently working on, and after that I'm aiming to finish my Bonecraft (currently at 27). Then there's Cloth, Leather and Wood - though not necessarily in that order. They're not crafts that interest me even the least bit, so I think it'd going to be painful to be motivated to level them, but oh, well - gotta be done. :)

Finally, more proof of why I love my friends:

And Moggles - of a different kind:

That's all. :)

Guess what?

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:43:04 GMT

Honey, I'm home!

Anyway, everyone seems to be doing these end-of-2007, goals-for-2008 posts, so I figure it's the hip thing to do. 2007 has, without a shadow of a doubt, been the worst year of my life. My Real Life has been beyond crazy, it's been downright torture, and it's definitely affected my ingame life. As of right now, things are still not okay - in fact, I'd say that right around the time we hit end of 2007, I also probably hit an absolute low point in all the crap that's been going on - but I hope that things will turn around soon. I know they will eventually. Something about keeping at it, staying positive, or some such. I think despite all the problems with ingame drama, gilsellers, assholes and all the other frustrations - if Real Life was like FFXI, things would be a lot simpler for me.

Generally, I didn't have a lot of ingame accomplishents in 2007. I completed stage two of my Aegis, and am into stage three, thanks to my somewhat short-lived Dynamistell shell. I decided to stop runs when I realized people don't stay after clear to farm, and I was losing between 500k and 600k per run. I got my spiffy red sword, but that was more luck than anything. I didn't do bad ranking up in Assaults, now being First Lieutenant about 38/50 for Captain. Last Christmas Eve, I was Sergeant Major. Slow going, perhaps, but it's something. I got NIN to 62, which I'm proud of, because holy mother of GOD, do I hate exp grind.

Generally, I think goals for 2008 is a stupid notion, because if 2007 taught me anything, it was that NOTHING turns out the way I hope or expect. But still, over the next 12 months, I hope to get NIN the last leg to 75, as well as BRD from 42>75, and MNK 32>75. I hope I find a linkshell where I can feel at home. I want more merits, definitely (my poor PLD never gets meritpts now that I have no linkshell). I'd like to get some of those awesome PLD gear pieces (AF2, Bahmut's Mask, that elusive martial body). I think my first and most important priority, however, should be to utilize the time I do have to play better. Being back in school has been a real time sink for me, and so it seems silly to dilly-dally around in the game for three hours, accomplishing nothing, when I do have the time to play. So I think time management is my only real priority and goal for 2008.

Well, that and Nue. Bastard. 0/7 now.

WotG-y stuff

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 12:33:46 GMT

So. :) With Christmas break here, I've had a little bit more time to play lately. I got the expansion safely installed and registered for both Lexa and my little slave taru, Regn (though not the kinky kind of slave, because the character belonged to my ex-boyfriend and it would be very, very awkward for me), thanks to a very, very nice gal in England, and my long-time buddy Raz in Norway. :D They both sent me registration codes for my stupid EU version of the game. :)

Now, before I set out to explore the new areas, there was one more thing I had to do in the old areas, so to speak. (What do we call ToAU now that there are newer areas out? Middle areas? Neither-new-nor-old areas? Anyway. One thing I had to do.

Hi, bitch!

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find Second Lieutenant Assaults with a shout party?! Well, I do. XD Whenever I had time to play, I'd log on and shout for hours. I was averaging one person an hour. And after they responded to my shout, it was a game of chance to see if they'd stick around long enough for the rest of the party to flesh out, or if they'd leave because they got sick of waiting. I am still missing an absolutely horrid amount of SL Assaults, but at least I got my rank up!

Finally, after more than 30 total hours of shouting.

I also got to try out a couple of First Lieutenant Assaults. The Khimaira one is really not bad if you have a balanced party of 75s (we lost once, but beat it second time - we would have beat it first time if we'd had Stona in the party. The Hydra one is evil. Evil. EVIL!

It seemed to easy at first, but looks are deceiving...

It starts out all nice and easy and really slow-hitting - then eventually it just goes amok and hits as fast as it's HNM counterpart and it was just a horrible, horrible deathfest that ended with Home Points for everyone, since it dispelled our RRs.

So. Wings of the Goddess.

Ironically, even though Lexa's expansion was installed first, Regn got more exploring done, a week later. Lexa barely peeked her little snout into the Shadowreign zones to snatch up a few Maws, while Regn did the whole tour. Maws, map quests, Sprinter's Shoes, you name it.

Tarutaru Maw cutscene = WAY WAY WAY better than hume.

I was giving Pat the guided tour of what little I did know, and as we were muddling our way through present-day Jugner Forest (I do believe we were going to the Batallia present day Maw), we happened across Fradubio. :)

Dropped jack shit, of course, but still, was good fun. :D

Since I am a somewhat inexperienced BLM, we traded off sleeping it and kiting it back and forth as we slowly whittled it down. We got lucky and it didn't spawn any saplings until the very, very end. :)

It wasn't until last night that I finally got around to actually do something on Lexa. XD But I am now a member of the Fourth whatever in Bastok. :) I must say, I do not regret switching nations to Bastok. I feel much more at home there than I did in San D'Oria. Maybe because it's an industrial town, and I'm kind of a city rat IRL?

Bastok[S] mission cutscene.

I must say, I like Campaign. :) It was a little confusing at first, but once I got out there and saw how it was done and what NPCs to talk to, it's a piece of cake, and I got a 2k buffer, now. :D (I was very close to delevling my PLD...)

Besides that, I've been trying to get in touch with my roots a little bit. I started another character on another server. When I started playing FFXI, I had no clue what I was doing. I didn't know what jobs were good for what races, and vice versa. I didn't know what job I wanted to be. (I initially wanted to be a DRG, then a WAR, then a SMN, then a PLD.) Had I known I'd develop such an affection for PLD, with an interest in MNK, I'd definitely have gone Elvaan.

Well, this new character - let's just call her FakeLexa - is what I didn't get to do the first time around. :) I must say, I enjoy being a lowbie again. The though of some of the things I have ahead of me is intimidating - Kahzam keys, subjob items, limit breaks, missions, and GUH - CoP missions. x.x However, on the whole, I really enjoy having her. I don't play her a lot, so her progress is slow, but it fits me. :)

Yesterday was an Extra Grand Adventure. See, two weeks ago I was exping in Ronfaure, when I noticed Windy had control over the Ronfaure region. This week, apparently Sandy decided to get even, and snatched Sarutabaruta. So I switched into a level 1 job, then made the trek all the way from Sandy to Windy, and got the OP Warp for Saruta. From there, the journey went to Jeuno to pick up cheap armor and such, before finally going back to Sandy.

I did take the time to call a GM on some fishbots, though.

Beyond that, I've just tried to have some fun, and do small stuff for my own benefit, that I can just put down if I feel like it. I camped Nue, for the most part uncontested, and totally outclaimed a RDM one time. I'm now 0/3, and getting annoyed. :p

Uncraimed NM?

I also did some laid-back stealing of mythril beastcoins in Oldton Movapolis to level my Goldsmithing. I say laid-back, because my /THF is 15, so naturally my steal rate kind of sucks. At least I got Bugbear Strongman a couple of times, and made a few hundred k off that. :D But the most fun I had, was probably with Pat and Cassian. Cassian is a RL friend of mine in Norway, who's sadly leaving the game soon. He left me with some nice parting gifts which I will put towards my Aegis, and so Pat decided we needed to have some fun in return. So he grabbed Cass and me, took us to Lufaise Meadows - then popped Amaltheia. XD

Cass chillin' by Amaltheia and her sheep.

We spent a good two hours kiting that thing ALL over Lufaise Meadows, and we discovered a few funny things. A) It's hilarious to watch all the sheep and rams come running to assist Amaltheia. B) They do not attack if Amaltheia does not attack, which is how we got that screenshot - Amaltheia is sleeping. C) Amaltheia is not aggro. We know this, because if she was, we would have MPK'd all the people camping Megalobugard several times, when we died.

Cass will unfortunately be gone before I can get Lexa back on Valefor, so I'll bid him adieu for now. :/ He's one of the last of the Norway-crew, famed amongst friends for being a fucking pimp, and an absolute beast. He bought his Hauberk+1 during the height of the inflation, funding it with chocobo digging (pre-nerf, of course) and crafting. I still remember when he did 1400+ damage to JoL, effectively destroying all the other DDs present, long before there was such a thing as /SAM sub or all those nifty two-hander upgrades that's happened the past year. He's died more than any other DRK I know due to his hate-stealing damage, and I'll miss him.

So how was your Christmas? :D

Long, much-needed update.

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:39:59 GMT

Disclaimer: Will invoke tl;dr feelings in a lot of people. I don't mind. I just ramble on.

I know I have not been posting for a long, long, LONG time.

I've just not felt it.

I've been doing some thinking about FFXI and my options (and my lack of options) in this game, and about everything that's changed the past two years.

Two years ago, December 2005, I was gracefully accepted into what was affectionately dubbed "the PLD and RDM shell" due to the excess number of players with these jobs in it. That linkshell was CrimsonToothbrush. I was a level 64-65 PLD, with stars in my eyes and big dreams of the endgame world. I went back and re-read my oldest posts, despite them lacking pictures (my LJ picture account was renamed after I renamed my personal LJ, and I've since deleted it), and I can't help but feel a little moved by everything that's changed.

There's the obvious changes that has affected everyone. Game mechanics. ToAU didn't exist. WotG wasn't even in the planning stages. PLDs did not yet have Auto Refresh, SAM was not a viable sub for most DDs, and earth staff tanking was still perfectly all right.

Then there are changes to CrimsonToothbrush. People have come and gone. Most of the "old" members are gone now. I fondly read about how excited I was that we beat Genbu. I was reminded of the sense of awe I felt when I saw Kirin for the first time. I write about the amazing Koenig hands, the mysterious Limbus, saving up for the full Adaman armor set, and still finding fun in helping others. Nowadays, it's not so anymore. I never touch my Koenig hands, I don't believe my other AF+1 piece or Homam legs exist, I wouldn't be caught dead in Adaman, and helping others is not the same anymore. A year and a half ago, I lost claim on Charby through betrayal from a friend. I went to sleep, discouraged, and woke up to find my future boyfriend sitting next to me, just waiting for me to wake up again, so he could help me. A high number of people dropped everything they had immediately, to come help when they realized I was awake again.

Today, I've burned a lot of bridges. Some by my error, some by others'. I'd need at least two hands to count the friends I've lost because they turned out to be assholes. Several people I praised so highly in my older entires went on to steal Shadow Mantles, scam gil, bot, or even make serious real-life threats (not the "Imma kick yo' ass!" type, but the "You live here and here and here, and you better watch yourself, because someday soon I will come rape you to death!" type). I've thankfully not (yet) lost that many by my own fault, but there is certainly a count for it.

I like FFXI endgame. I feel like I have only still barely dipped by toes into it. CTB, during my time there, went from being a shell where yes - killing Genbu was a HUGE accomplishment - to killing all the sea Gods while half asleep. We've done sky, sea, a few HNMs, and most popped NMs. I've done Salvage, Assaults, Einherjar, yet there is a whole world of content for me still to explore. I love that.

However, I also do believe endgame changes a person. I miss the old me. I miss the ability to get excited over mundane things. I miss the ability to not take anything for granted. When people did their jobs right, I would praise them and cheer them on. These days, I expect it.

In October 2007 I left CrimsonToothbrush. CTB brought me a lot of good things, and a lot of firsts. My first Koenig piece. My first time tanking Genbu, as a level 68 dumbstruck PLD, amazed that my linkshell leader would give me the chance. My first time kiting a mob. My first time tanking pretty much every mob endgame. CTB brought me my boyfriend, my best friend, and my at the time linkshell leader, Patroklis. However, when a person gets stuck in a rut where leading becomes a job, and alienating friends is no longer a surprise, it's time to move on. I was accepted into Arista on Sylph server, and server jumped - yet as I am writing this, I am preparing to jump back to Valefor. My playtime has been severely restricted as of late, and when I do have the time to play, I wish to play with Pat, rather than to shout for the things I need to get done, on a strange server where I do not even have the few friends I do have left.

I think the server jump and my leaving CTB has been an educational and a humbling experience for me, and I can only hope that I've learned from it. The past two years, FFXI has evolved, CTB has evolved, and I have evolved. I've gone from dumbstruck, naive PLD-woman, to stern, hotheaded, angry PLD-woman, and it's not a change I approve of.

This post is made in loving memory of what was, and as a reminder to myself of what can be. This game is supposed to be fun. Now watch me try to get back to basics.

I'm still Lexa.

HERRO!

Tue, 01 May 2007 05:47:00 GMT

http://ctb-ls.com

About damn time we got our own domain, and a real website. Words cannot express my deep and utter contempt for getphpbb and free servers like that.

Congratulations, Pat!

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 13:32:24 GMT

Behemoth Tongue from KS99, quite some time ago. Adamantoise Egg from Adamantoise 1/1 (go go, CTB! We made it 2/2 on Egg the second day, but no MNKs were present, so it went to a 6th job MNK in the 40s). And finally Wyrm Beard from my orb (go go, me!), on KS99.

HOLY SHIT!

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 02:44:59 GMT

I do believe I'm first NA (well, technically EU I guess) on the server with it. Only one other on Valefor to my knowledge, and the guy doesn't use it, because he has Excalibur.

Holy shit, long time no see

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:26:33 GMT

Okay, finally, an actual update. There IS a gap ni my update history as I'm missing some screenshots from my 3-month stay in America, but whatever. ^^

I like the ferry best when I'm alone...

First of all, I'm nack in Norway now. It's been an adjustment, and still kinda sucks, but overall I'm doing better than the last time I was home. I've started working on applying for an American college, so hopefully, that will turn out well.

Yay, UFO organ!

Well, anyway, we discovered some time back, that we four-manning UFOs is a hell of a lot easier than going with a paryt or more. Me, Pat, a RDM (or WHM) and a BLM, and it's easy as pie. Only problem is, every time I mention UFOs, about a dozen melees jump up screaming "I WANNA GO!" and I don't have the heart to lot against a melee. So eventually, I ended up going on a secret farming with some close friends, and lo' and behold! Organ, yay! :D

GM Najakan goes above and beyond

We had a mishap with Jailer of Hope, and Pat was overall having a bad day, so during my GM call about the mishap, I asked if he could maybe send a /comfort in Pat's direction. Not only did Najakan /comfort Pat, he also popped for us, and stayed to bullshit for several minutes. While it did suck that our situation with Jailer of Hope couldn't be corrected, at least we got one hell of a pep talk!

We ended up killin JoH anyway, but he dropped nothing. >.< (Except lolStaff)

Dynamis-Jeuno, hoy!

We've also struck up a deal with another endgame linkshell, Tribulations, to do dynamis together. Tribs wanted to do Northlands, but were lacking numbers. We were just lacking numbers, period. So we now do dynamis together, and so far, we've cleared everything. And Jeuno in particular, was extremely giving with AF drops, dropping RDM RNG BLMx2 MNKx2 DRK WHM SAM WARx2 - and a 100 note.

Faster, pussycat-- etc etc etc

We did a sky run, which rewarded us nicely. Byakko's Haidate for Thegrouch - congratulations. And of course, as I mentioned previously, FINALLY, martial head for me! :D Hurray!

Anton, dood. I can't sing with joo over thar!

So I woke up at like 6am one day and couldn't go to sleep again, and as I logs on, Pat suddenly IMs me, saying I booted him. Turns out, he'd been invited to lvling PUP, and not wanting to do without me, he'd geared me up and was dual-boxing my BRD. Well, I could take over myself, and got a couple of levels in on my BRD. :D

THIS ASSAULT WINS AT LIFE!

We're now Sergeant Majors, and I must say, Blitzkrieg is by far my favorite one. XD

Wohoo, Keerin!

Gods run led to a double-feature Kirin. The first one dropped Osode, lolPole, n body - very nice drops. The second one was CRAP. CRAP I SAY! I feel gypped. It only dropped lolPole. Now where's my fuckin' w legs, bitch? :p (j/k)

Damn you, Koolkeith

I was gonna write about how I went meriting, until I realized I did not have a single picture in which the mob was turned towards me. I suppose it's my own fault for agreeing to merit in the Meadows with a friggin' pimp RNG and an equally pimp DRG.

Sea... holy God, sea, you suck sometimes

We've been farming sea. We have almost a full pop set forr Jailer of Love, the only thing that stands between us and it, is Jailer of Hope. And subsequently, Ix'MNK. We've killed Ix'MNK so many times now, my head is literally spinning. I hate Ix'MNK, I hate him, hate him, hate him! And no drop yet... Guh. emind me why I wanted sea again?

Too many melees, orz!

So yeah, a while back we got Cassie ToD. And we camped. And outclaimed about 7-8 gilsellers. And got a Cassie Earring. I gave it to the PLD who actually got the ToD, planning to return the next night. then the next night, they were in need of a tank for Limbus, so I let another PLD decide where he wanted to go, Cassie or Limbus. He chose Cassie, she popped early, and our ls now got sole ToD, and another earring. I figured no prob, I'll get it tomorrow. But then there was a server maintenance. FUCK YOU SE!!! Fortunately, we regained ToD, and even got a few claims. But no drop. Bleh.

Proto-Omega: easier by the day!

We've now done Proto-Omega 3 times, and in those 3 times we've goitten 3 hands, 2 bodies, 2 heads and 1 legs. It's getting easy now, and I do believe we have another set waiting to be used. ^^ Congratulations to those who got drops (including me, yay)!

My bleakest Cassie moment.

After days and days of tracking the ToD, a LOT of lost claims to gilsellers. we returned to Cassie, and fnially outclaimed the gilsellers again, but then the sick thing happened: They still got it. We had an unfortunate mishap when our NIN died. Northern, being my hero, tanked for a long-ass while as THF, but then Cassie got in a few lucky hits, just as the NIN unweakened, and immediately followed with Bad Breath. Northern's HP sank rapidly as mages were struggling to echo drop themselves, and the NIN was bound too far away to voke. Cassie went yellow, only for a split second, but it was enough.

WTF am I doing back here?!?

You know, I swore I wouldn't return to SSG, but... come on, it's Lilyuna! <.< We won claim and killed. Congratulations on your Joytoy, Lily!

Finally!

Anyway, ToD for Cassie had moved into the REALLY early morning hours, EST, and the number of people available to help was as such reduced. A few stubborn Americans still came down to help, however, and thankfully we have an EU NIN in the ls. ^^ We had no WHM, so I dualboxed my friend Maisee, and as such has no pictures of the actual fight (Fraps + dual Windower = crash), but it exciting. It was close, but we won in the end, and finally! Earring! Thank you to everyone to came down to help, especially Tripp who claimed (SMN claim FTW!), and Tre who tanked like a pro!

CHARM ME, DAMNIT! CHARM ME!

And finally, I did some Besieged (since I got my Turban, I had less than 40 IS left...) to unwind...

Ding @ 31 merits

...and merited some. I've now started working on my MNK merits. Going to cap crit hit rate, then work on stats like STR and DEX. I unfortunately cannot meriot hand-to-hand skill. Damn you, SE, for not giving PLDs h2h skill. WE NEED TO PUNCH STUFF, AMIRITE?!?

Finally, I'll leave you with this little gem of an ls chat excerpt:

lol @ TG

Yay! And a rant

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:49:15 GMT

First of all, I know I haven't updated. I have a lot of screenshots on my PC in America, so I need to get a hold of those. <.<;;

Second - YAY!

I've been waiting a long time for this abjuration. A lot of Seiryu's with no drop at all, and twice I passed it for other PLDs who didn't have prior drops in our ls. ^^ It's IMO probably the best of the Koenig set (the body is indeed very nice, but really - mostly e-peen :p), and for a while I was considering waiting and tracking down the -1 version, but then I decided it wasn't worth it just for the 1 shield skill. XD

Now onto the actual subject of my post.

Someone asked me the other day, why we don't TP burn Kirin. With all the amazing videos out there popping up left and right, of Kirin defeated in 10 minutes, 9 minutes, 7 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes and 90 seconds, and with all my ls has accomplished, it's become sort of a "why shouldn't we too?" issue. A couple of people in the ls has hinted at their interest, but the question I'm talking about came from someone outside our ls, who doesn't know our ls closely.

TP burning Kirin in 90 seconds is amazing, I'm sure - but personally, I would rather have a Kirin fight where as many people as possible can get swapped in and have their piece of him. If we were to TP burn Kirin, it would effectively exclude half of our ls, because their job is not fit for anything in a TP burn aliance, other than to sit and watch outside, or heal from outside the alliance. I get that people like e-peen. Hell, I like e-peen. I love prancing around in my new head, Homam gloves, +1 boots, Knights/Ethereal earring and Sattva ring. I love showing off my gear that I spent so much time working for. But I think the most devastating thing for a linkshell, is if feelings of jealousy, of being left out, become too frequent. Some gear drama is expected in an endgame linkshell, it's unavoidable, and especially in a linkshell not working on a point system. Why did this person get that, when I feel I've contributed just as much, and soforth. Why is the one warrior getting the Adaberk, when the other warrior had the same attendance.

I like that my linkshell doesn't have a point system. It allows us to reward the people who are unable to play as much as others due to RL. A person who can only log on once or twice a week, but spends their very limited gametime doing their very best to make events, help out, make contributions to the ls, is imo a better member than someone who plays every single day, for hours on end, yet only hows up to one event a week. I've been on Council for almost a year now, and I like having a say in who gets what, and so far we've had minimal gear drama, because we do our best to reward everyone.

But why on earth would be want to excluse such a large number of people from our Kirin runs? It'd only be a hassle. We're not a majorly pimped linkshell in the land king sense of the word. We don't have black belts yet, or adaberks, simply because we don't camp the land kings. At all. We like to fiddle around in sky and sea, and have some pretty damn pimped out members, but even still, TP burning Kirin in 2 min would take some serious effort on our part. And it just doesn't seem worth even attempting.

Kirin is one of the coolest fights in the game, imo, because he's a pushover - but still bad enough that if we get unlucky, if we have the wrong jobs, low numbers, or fast summons (which happened once before, and caused an unpleasant wipe), we can still get buttraped by him. It's a fight I like to see new people in on, it's a fight people like taking part in. I like it when our BRD goes "HAY GUYZ LOOK AT ME LULZ!" and then spams Mazurka till the PLDs get blue in the face from trying to get hate back. I like it when the RDM goes "O.O I landed [insert enfeeble here]" and I like it when our 68BLM fresh to sky lands a stun and then has to call me on the phone because he's so excited. I like it when our mithra MNK Chi Blasts for more than our elvaan MNKs and then goes "/blush" and I like it when our thieves complain that Kirin moves just as they're about to WS, so they lose tp. And I especially like it when our galka PLD eats a solo Stonega IV, then taunts our other race PLDs about how he lived, only to get thrown in his face that "Yeah, you ate a STonega IV, but can you cast a Holy and a Cure IOV in a row, HUH?!?"

There's room for 18 people in an alliance. At the most, we had more than 40 people show up to one of our Kirins. Now, I would rather take the 30 min-1 hour 15 min to kite Kirin and kill him "old school" style, and see everyone present happy, than live with the e-peen of having killed Kirin in 2 min, while excluding more than half the people who showed up in the first place.

Tiny update just to say...

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:37:20 GMT

OMG!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH CTB!

To summarize...

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 23:30:00 GMT

1. I didn't die.

2. I did die ingame a few times, but meh.

3. I went back to America.

There's been a lot happening the past month.

Let me summarize this as short as I possibly can. I was not happy back in Norway. I went back to America. I'm here till January this time, and since I've been back, I've been happier. That's mostly it. ^^

I did Bahamut, finally. I'm ONE fight away from my Ethereal Earring now. ONE!

We fought Byakko again, and he dropped Kittie panties for us! Congratulations Xxin!

I figure we get maybe one Ulli out of every 5-6 times we camp him, but it's worth it. It's SO worth it!

I did ToAU Missions, and let me state for the record: This is THE saddest cutscene since they killed the goblin.

I did more Assaults, when they introduced the new ones.

I got promoted to Sergeant! :D

So far, no Sergeant Major, unfortunately, as my Assault Static has kinda been put on hold, since Faelorn's computer has gone kaplooey. ; ; It's just a matter of time, though, cause my Assault static rocks, and we'll be back at it once Fae gets his PC fixed.

Byakko means Kirin. Yay for death by Quake!

This was also the first Kirin I led. ^^ I think I did good. And it was fun, and Kirin dropped both Pole and Osode for us. Congratulations Romulus, SAM extraordinaire, and Meldanae, blowing shit up since God knows when!

I camped NMs for fun.

...thoguh once I'm done with my NIN sub (it's 33 now), I'll be leveling MNK on the side as my pet project, so I can use those then.

I helped with PMs again. FINALLY people need help with PM8-4! I LOVE this fight!

I did Dynamis-Bastok. Got the clear with a different shell than in this picture, though.

I helped with rank mission 5-2! Yay for naked Shadowlord tanking!

I did an ISNM. I wanted a new chocobo egg (I retired OrZ).

I did Tatami Shield (lolBurst).

I did Limbus. And I FINALLY got my 2nd AF piece, and am now the proud owner of Galant Leggings +1!

I started a new chocobo.

I originally wasn't going to raise another one, after I retired OrZ, but then one of my ferrets died (the new owner mailed me and told me they found lots and lots of cancer, so he was put to sleep right on the spot, it was all very sudden), so I'm now raising PerfectFriend. I hope he'll be a different color than yellow, but even if he's not, I don't care. I'm being girly about this, damnit! And PerfectFriend is in memory of my ferret Grizzly.

Grizzly, my fat cuddlebug ferret, sleeping inside my covers. This was years ago.

I'm also not really sure why I dont have any screenshots of this, but the other day, I did Limbus for coin yield, having started to save for my Boxer's Mantle. Me and Pat had ordered pizza, and I went to answer the door. When I came back up with the food, Sagheera somehow told me I had 75 Ancient Beastcoins instead of the (much) lower amount I had when I left my seat... Thank you Patroklis. Yay for Boxer's Mantle! :D

And finally, there's been some ls drama going on lately. No endgame shell is completely drama free, sadly, but what separates the strong shells from the weak, is their ability to deal with said drama. I'm more and more convinced my ls can weather anything, because even with our little drama period, we're still here, and we're stronger than ever.

Why? Because in the middle of it all, we took down our first tier II sea Gods.

They all dropped virtues for us, so now we have a full Jailer of Love pop set. We're not going to pop him for a while, because we wantt to be absolutely prepared for it, we're doing research, and we're probably gonna practice on some Yovras and such. But we're talking about a linkshell where, a year ago, only a handful of people were past the basic promies. Literally. I got a pearl to CTB in December '05, mere weeks before they started the application process. I got my pearl inside the Crag of Holla, when CTB was doing mass promyvion runs. There were literally maybe 5-10 people with access to Tavnazia. And now we're killing sea Gods. I've been there for CTBs first sky God (Genbu, I remember following the fight through ls chat, as I did not have sky access yet), first Kirin (dropped double n. bodies and w. legs), first wipe to Kirin (man, what a war at KI when some pitiful botters tried flaming us at KillingIfrit). I remember when we didn't have enough people to do an Ohat run (less than 10 people showed up), and last Kirin we had over 40 people show up. CTB has been around for years and years as a social, but I've been there from the beginning of the endgame-CTB, and it's amazing to see how the linkshell has grown.

With recent drama, we lost some people we thought to be friends. People who turned out to not be friends at all, but rather backstabbing, lying weasels. I pity them, because they burned their bridges, and when we do pop Jailer of Love, when we BEAT Jailer of Love, and have BLMs in Novio earrings, and THFs with Love Torques, they can by all means continue to dabble around in linkshells that will never get even remotely as far as CrimsonToothbrush has. We do sky, we do pop NMs, we do sea. We shy away from land king harcore HNM camping. We're two steps away from fighting Jailer of Love, and we're thinking about CoP Wyrms for the challenge of it. (Plus, not nearly as much drama, botting and horrendeous camping as with the land kings.) We have a VERY strict non-tolerance for bots or hacks, and we never steal or MPK (except for gilsellers - those are fair game, but only if we KNOW they're gilsellers). I'm incredibly proud to be part of this linkshell, not just for what we have already accomplished, and for what we WILL accomplish in the future - but because we're family.

New CTB linkshell video. CTB Floats On.

That's mostly it. ^^ I'm in America till January, and when I go back this time, I'll be more prepared to deal with the suck, and I will be back here soon enough, anyway. ^^

Here I am, once again!

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 11:03:20 GMT

I did that thing where I went too long without an update again. So this will most likely be very brief, with just my usual Picspam. Anyway.

....big guy, hm?

So I don't have screenshots from the last few days I spent in America, but meh. I got back home to Norway eventually, anyway. Did O-hat.

I also did Jailer of Temperance.

SO so satisfying to finally beat the snot out of that ass.

I did Ix'MNK.

We tried the medium version, but the two mages he had with him proved to make it a difficult fight for us, so we picked ourselves up again, started thinking strat for next time, and popped the light version instead.

It rewarded us VERY nicely.

Congratulations, Raistlinmajere - CTB Kiter Extraordinaire!

I helped Jinxone camp for his Acha D'Armas. I'm 2/2 on him now.

I did PM5-2 for Lordjohn and Razarac.

I did besieged - /war sub - and didn't die! :D

I merited! O.O Finally got my next Chivalry upgrade.

I did sleeeeepy Assault Static.

This was around 4-5am my time, I think, and Pat woke me up for this purpose. I don't really recall doing these Assaults, but I do remember him laughing at me - in ls chat - because apparently, I'm hilarious when I'm that sleepy. Still don't know wtf I did, though. x.x

I did BCNM60. Made out a little bleh, but way better than nothing. :D

I did Limbus.

I've been going regularely to Limbus once (sometimes twice) a week since I got sea back in April. Only ever missed it twice. And I still haven't gotten an AF+1 item, or my boxer's, or anything. I'm one of only two persons who's been going that long, who has yet to see any form of rewards from it. I've seen the other item I need for my +1 boots drop ONCE, and then I got outlotted by the other PLD present. I dragged some friends into Temenos, hoping to get my other item, and a NIN item for one of the others, but no luck. /sigh. We did get to the top floor with only 8 people, though. :D

I did more Assaults, this time only 4-manning a few. Lamia No. 13 <3. ^^

I helped Anatheria with 7-4. (Congratulations on sea, Ana!)

I killed Meww the Turtlerider, and got NOTHING! :P

I got Rank 7.

I helped with PM5-3 Mithra Trackers... twice! Once on Raz, once as myself.

For so many levels, I managed to avod the Brigadine Armor... but I'd loaned out my own level cap gear, so I had to borrow Pat's, and... well, /sigh. Checkerboard armor, you got the best of me after all. >.<

The bright spot, is of course that Razarac - the REAL Razarac - stopped by the game to say hi, and played himself for this fight. He's still not coming back on a premanent basis (poo! ; ; ), but it was very nice to finally intriduce him to the ls.

I did KS99.

0/2 again. We WILL beat that Behemoth one day. We tried a method with a THF/BLU SATA Head Butt rotation, since we heard SA Head Butt is nearly 100%, but we don't have any BLU mains in ls yet. They stunned Meteor successfully a few times, but mostly the problem was the timing. Second attempt, we tried good old-fashioned kiting, and we did a lot better then, until the melees had built so much hate, us tanks couldn't get it back, and it was all over. We definitely made some great progress, however.

I led sky farming - and WE GOT ULLI!!!

Pat has been wanting ls council members to take a more active role in leading, so the other day I solo led my first sky farming. I'm insanely pleased we got Ulli that day. This upcoming month, I'll lead a Tatami Shield run as well, and (scary!!!) a Kirin.

(Footnote: Which reminds me, we killed Kirin twice since my last update, and got two Osodes. Congratulations Koolkeith and Xxin! :D Unfortunately, no screencaps as they are in America. ; ; )

I raised a chocobo. It's standard yellow, the fucker.

I finally found the lowbie NM in Konschtat. I wanted this for my NIN.

So I leveled my NIN, with some lovin' MNK PL'ing from Pat.

Now, lately, I haven't been much with the good mood. Everything and everyone seems to piss me of, despite me logically knowing I am in the wrong, not the people I am angry withf. I'm generlally not happy these days, due to some personal issues, not to mention being back in Norway isn't high on my "happy happy joy joy" list. Unfortunately, I tend to take my frustrations out on the people around me, so I've been unequipping ls a lot (which is just... a massive abnormality for me), and have been wanting to be left alone a lot. I hope my real life situation will improve, and that I'll be able to go back to America soon, but until things settle and my mood starts to improve, I wouldn't expect any majorly interesting updates.

On top of all this, I suspect trying to quit smoking when already moody and miserable might not have been the brightest idea, but *shrug* eh, well.

So just to end on a lighter note, I bring you chat log screen caps.

Auctioning off one of our Taru WHMs at O-hat run.

Romulus, demonstrating #4 of Top Ten Things You Don't Wanna Say In Ls, With Lexa Present

Sometimes, our ls chat gets so crazy that even the crazy people think it's crazy.

ROFLCOPTER!

And finally...

It's not always eaasy to tell us PLDs apart when we're wearing heavy 50-cap Iron Musketeer's Armor.

That's all, she wrote. Until next time. Hopefully I will be over this whole horrible hormonal bitch from hell-phase by then, heh. ^^;

Busy, but not like usual...

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:49:29 GMT

Hehe, so, these past few weeks have been busy for me, but not in the usual way.

I finally got Rank 10 San D'Oria... but that's not nearly the highlight of this post.

We did Dynamis-Jeuno with the linkshell, and for the first time in a while, we actually had decent attendance.

This zone was my first dynamis, ever. I had 100's in comment.

Fairly quickly in, an M. Silverpiece dropped, and to my pleasant surprise, I won it, lotting a 500-something. Since I am working on my Aegis, it really made my day, as it saved me maybe 80-90 unsponsored trips to dynamis. ^^ Shortly thereafter, the Relic Shield dropped, but I didn't win the lot for it. Slightly dejected, seeing as I'll need two (one to upgrade, one to pop Amaltheia) I moved on, then went bug-eyed when a second relic shield dropped! Once again, I lost lot for it, at this point being the only PLD present without one. We joked about getting a third relic shield to drop, and I guess this was just a damn good day for me overall, because near the end - a third shield dropped. ;)

I'm happy that when I finally won a lot, it was for this.

Hurray for shield!

I am now about halfway done with stage 1. It's a several years long project, btu I have confidence I will get there eventually.

So I'm just standing around Whtegate, when Pat tells me there's a shout for San D'Oria Rank Missions 9-1 and 9-2. I've been wanting Rank 10 forever, just so I can finally switch nations and be a Bastokian. So I jumped on the shout, along with fellow ls-member and WHM/RDM/BRD extraordinaire Imani.

Heh. He's wearing a gold orcmask. *gigglesnort*

The missions were really Too weak. The hardest part was actually restraining myself from strangling the other PLD, who, in his own words, would rather wear the Adaman boots over the AF boots, because 3 more DEF was better than the 10 shield skill. And no, he wasn't a staff PLD.

Anyway. Finally. Got my rank, and my flag. The next day, I was a Bastokian.

The best kiter our ls has (though somewhat involuntarily - he's a BLM), Raistlinmajere, has been leveling THF, and it's now to the level where it can use the Sirocco Kukiri. We hate Kreutzet (or Strudel, as we say). We hate him. But at this point, poor Raist had been there for the past three windows, not having slept for about 40 hours, and still hadn't gotten his knife, so we went, we stayed, and we camped. I brought Razarac along, as his WHM is of more use than my PLD. For some unknown reason, RMTs decided to stop by, so we dicked around with them a little, but unfortunately - or, I guess technically, fortunately - they didn't stay till pop.

Dayson: Oooo, ooo, Edievenus, ooo, baby!

We waited around for hours for wind weather, and at the VERY end of his window, wind weather finally showed up, we claimed, and we killed, and the knife dropped. Congratulations, Raist!

I went back to working on my Bastok missions.

Too weak.

Last time we did a Galliard Trousers run, not everybody got 'em, and it got late and people got tired, so we set up another one. Pretty much everyone who wanted them now has a pair, far as I know, and although we had - like the last time we did it - a couple of unfortunate pops, there was nobody who wanted the pants who didn't get them because of a wipe. We had enough pop items to feed a fuggin army. >.>

Kurrea... Everything from a pushover to the world's biggest bitch. Damn those buffs.

Now, every time we've had sky farming, we've had a team at Ulli, hoping, praying and offering bribes to whatever higher powers there might be, that we would outclaim the RMTs. No such luck. RMTs keep claiming, and we keep trying to steal/mess it up for them. Our MO has always been this: We find an RMT without blockaid, throw a Cure to get on the hate list, then Invincible, spam JAs, and run! We've managed to steal hate quite a bit, but never managed to get it to go unclaimed.

Until one particular day... Everyone knows that certain BRD songs create an obscene amoutn of hate. Like the Mazrkas. Chocobo and Raptor Mazurka. Enter Xxin, BRD75 (among other 75s) and Faelorn, WAR75. Xxin found an RMT to cure, then spamspamspammed Mazurka. And although the RMTs ended up killing it in the end, Xxin was kiting a hell of a lot more than the RMTs were! So we deck out Faelorn in all the +enmity gear he can equip. Then we have him sub /BRD. And then we sky farm.

13 hours after we first arrived in sky, Ulli popped. RMTs claimed. I find an RMT without blockaid, throw a Cure, Fae then cures me, and starts spamming Raptor Mazurka. It doesn't take long before he grabs hate, and he runs Ulli out into the main room, dodging statue aggro like a pro. Hilarity ensues as Ulli flat out REFUSES to turn back to the RMTs, and we nearly shit ourselves laughing, when one little RMT taru decides to cast Stun on Ulli. In the middle of the magic-aggroing Aura Statues. Ive never seen a taru die that fast!

Five-six minutes of this goes by, Faelorn not letting Ulli go, and somehow managing to kite this big lug around the main room, without getting statue aggro, while the RMTs desperately try to grab hate back, and the rest of us spam our voke/dia/stun/whatever macros on Ulli, in case he goes unclaimed. Then it happens - his name goes yellow, and the blissfully red. A combinations of Dias, Stuns, vokes and a well-placed Eagle Eye Shot from Koolkeith did it.

HAH! HAH! HAH!

People were excited.

Pat even changed his "damn you Faust!" comment.

That is such a pretty sight.

So the next time we did sky Gods...

Finally... FINALLY! We got to play with the kitty again!

It was so perfect, too, because every God dropped crap. And I mean crap. Genbu, Seiryu, they were all cheap as HELL! But Byakko? Byakko came through, and dropped the shorts for us. Congratulations, Yendor!

Apparently, we inspired others as well, because people in the ls have been getting random /tells with congratulations, and the next time we were at Ulli, we saw a PLD/BRD. ;) One ls told they managed to get it unclaimed, but didn't manage to turn it red, so it died yellow, and although they didn't get the stone, at least the RMTs didn't, either! Mazurka spam FTW!

Me, I went back to my Bastok Missions. The Rank 3 dragon was funny. Naked party, and still beat the snot out of it. ^^ Thanks for helping, Pat, Fae, Cha, Mero and Raist.

Hurray, Rank 3!

We also went to play in sea, to take on the Jailer of Temperance and Jailer of Fortitude. The last time we encountered Temperance, he was being a bitch, and wiped us within short time. We were determined to get revenge.

...didn't work out so hot.

He sucks. Plain and simple. We lasted a lot longer, being more prepared for him, but in the end, we still ended up dying pretty hard. >.> So instead, we moved on to Jailer of Fortitude, hoping to have more luck with him.

Now, this was almost TOO easy.

I wasn't of much help in this fight, because he runs friggin' FAST, but Melfurion, my Galka security blanket, kited perfectly, with his spiffy fastpants. I mostly just stepped in when we wanted to see if Melf could straight-tank it, then got chopped down. But for the most part, I enjoyed being "on-call" and watching the others get dizzy. :p And I guess someone wanted to give us a consolation prize for being smacked down by Temperance twice, because Fortitude dropped the torque for us.

Congratulations, Faelorn!

There was a consideration of giving the torque to a PLD, since Fae got the Axe, but everyone agreed it was so very clearly a WAR drop > PLD drop, and that it would make more sense to give both to Fae, who could really use them, rather than give such a rare drop to a PLD who would get less use from it (not to mention, neither Melf and I, only PLDs present, would wear it over the shield torque). The fun part is, of course, that Fae has a quest activated, so he can't quest for his Virtue stones until he collects a bunch of organs from those flowers - Eu'Whis, or whatever they're called. XD

I also helped a friend of an ls member with G2, and came across a bunch of gilsellers doing G2 while there. Sadly, we couldn't fuck it up for them, despite our bravest efforts.

It makes me sad.

I also got stuck in Besieged by accident, and was reminded why I do not do not DO NOT GO /WAR to Besieged. Force of habit - I engage, I press ALT+2, I Provoke.

And when I provoke in Besieged, I die.

I leveled Raz's BLM some, and got it up to 35. Only two more levels until his sub is fully leveled, and I can start thinking about taking his WHM all the way to 75! ^^ Pat came to my rescue, playing my character's GIMP. ASS. WHM, when we couldn't find one. It's still kind of freaky to see myself running around like that. <.<

Pat totally took advantage of my capped Divine Magic, and got the kill shot several times, with Banish.

More Bastok Mission! Magicite, hurray! :D

Rank 5. I'm starting to not look like an RMT anymore. ("lvl75, rank 2, wtf???") :p

Now, this is the RL stuffs. You see, a few weeks back, I went to visit ls leader and specal friend, Patroklis.

More specifically, August 1st, I left my not really all that wonderful country Norway, flew halfway across the planet, and landed in PA. I'm still here, and will be for another week, going back home September 14th. We've had a world of fun messing with people's heads over this, seeing as nobody really knew I was here at first.

I like being in America. ^^ I've always wanted to live here, but due to the costs, I can't go here very often (last time I was here was in 2000). It's very nice to be back, and there's a lot of stuff I never knew. XD I've never had cheese sticks or pizza with flavored crusts or pancaked with maple syrup until now. But of course, a definite highlight was getting to meet some of my very, very closest friends, that I talk to nearly every day ingame. We met up in Pittsburgh this past weekend, went to the movie theater, went to eat, and then went a'drinkin' together.

Some people might say FFXI is just a game, but there are stll real people behind those avatars, and there are real friendships being formed, and getting to meet my friends, some of them coming a very long way (couple people drove up from Wisconsin and Kentucky, one flew in from Texas), meant a lot to me. Going home is going to suck, but until then, I'm going to enjoy myself.

Now, if Pat could only stop stealing my keyboard to type weird and obscene things from my character (both in /tell to random people, in lschat, in party chat, in /shout and in /say) I would be infinitely grateful. ^^;

Now, back on track.

I rarely have the time/oppertunity to merit. I'm one of those people who won't level a 2nd job just for meriting. I don't wanna level WAR to be able to axe burn, simply because I find WAR boring. I wanna tank, and on top of this, I am usually busy with my ls and/or friends, and thus, meriting is rare for me. However, the other day I finally got to do ome meriting, and the result?

It's capped.

I am insanely happy and relieved to have it capped, but at the same time, it pisses me off that it caps at 4, and not 8, like most other things in the Combat Skills category.

My Assault Static has also been rockin'! We plowed through Lance Corporal, and had no problems getting Corporal!

Not too many in my ls this high yet. ^^

Once Corporal, we made short work of clearing all the Corporal Assaults, so we are now officially done. We have cleared everything, we're on top of the danm world, and are free to dick around with whatever we want, do the Assault areas where people have gear/items they want, until SE releases new Assaults and/or ranks.

Fae and his li'l train of Quiqirin Drivers.

So, on top of all this brilliance and happiness, there's even more. Yes, more. We went sky farming. And found Ulli camp empty. YES, EMPTY! Now, there was always a risk it just popped, but we decided to stay anyway. And just as we were dicking around with PHs, fighting something like four statues at the time, laughing and just messing around - there's Ulli. Popping nice and quietly and all relaxed. So we claim and we kill, and holy crap! We get to fight the kitty again this Saturday, and as a bonus, we get to do TWO Kirins this Sunday. TWO!

The RMTs were all busy in LoO or Gustav or Garlaige, and we have no clue if we just got lucky, and all the windows were open at once, but we like it. A couple hours after we killed Ulli, the RMT were all back in the shrine, but we won't forget the feeling of being all alone when Ulli popped.

Best. feeling. ever!

So just to finish up, I leave you with three screencaps I just had to include.

Revenge for him licking me in my last post.

Xxin, answering how he pulled off a gf with the voice of Drew Barreymore and the looks of Kirsten Dunst.

We get bored and have weird conversations at Ulli camp.

I be alive still!

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 06:29:39 GMT

No, I didn't die. So PAHAH! on you! Now, since it's been SO damn long since my last update (shame), I'm gonna take the cheap route and just picspam you with some of the shit I've been doing since the last time I updated.

Yay for dying!

I've done Limbus.

I've camped Ulli.

This was pre-update. Damn those RMTs. ; ; And how the fuck did SE think randomizing his pop around the room would help any?! Anyway, yeah. We spent a LOT of time at Ulli. Got ONE stone out of the deal. One!

We killed Xolotl a whole lot... but this particular night had an added bonus.

This deserves some text. We went up to Xolotl one night, having been delayed by something or other, and found him up and unclaimed. Just as we were gathering, RMTs jumped in and claimed him, undoubtedly wanting to sell us loot from the treasure pool. Thing is, Xolotl charms. And you can attack charmed people.

This be the proceedings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXUB-YaVpA

We be famous. ^^ Since then, I've been cheered on and clapped at and every now and then I still get random tells from people, saying how much I (and my linkshell) rocks. ^^ Most fun in FFXI ever. Everevereverever.

Now, the RMT were of course not happy. They CFH'd X, but we just let him despawn and then wated to claim until the next night, The RMTs hung around, of course, ready to kill us when we got charmed - except... What RMTs need to understand, is that Pat didn't HUndred Fists just for the hell of it.

PLD defense PWNs j00!

The RMT NIN went at me when I got charmed, but quickly realized it wouldn't do, when he was hitting me for 5-10 dmg per swing. As it turns out, not even his 2hr would do much good.

RMT NIN Too Weak!

I dipped into orange, then went on my merry way, chasing down our ls WHMs. We killed X, got the stupid BST hat - again.

I helped with PM4-2... again

I did Dynamis-Bastok. No PLD AF dropped. Poo!

I did sky Gods. Or sky Gods did me. Whichever works.

I did Besieged.

Foolproof plan to not die in Besieged: Sub gimpy /WHM. That way, no risk of my itchy voke finger pressing Alt+2 by reflex and pissing off mobs I shouldn't piss off.

I did PM5-2 with Razarac. Wel,l the climb up, anyway. Wiped at the BC.

I trained Ghelsba Outpost (and then nearly died because I lagged myself out so hard).

I did KS99...

....I died in KS99.

We're still workin on the strat for this dude. <.< Gonna get him someday. Just sucks that till we do, 99 KSs are lost each time.

I did Dynamis-Buburimu.

My first delevling since hitting 75 back in May. Wohoo!

I did Swift Belt run. What a shitty droprate! Something like 2/6 or 2/7....?

I helped with PM5-3 Bugbears... again.

I helped with PM5-3 Mithra Trackers... again

For the record, I now own Romulus' ass. 'Cause we went once, and wiped because of a mishap with Astral Flow, and Romulus was one of TWO people, adamant that we wait for two hours until our SPs were up again, and try once more (despite the late hour). And then he fell asleep while we were waiting. So we got everyone else through, and now I own Rom. Plain and simple.

I did Dynamis-San D'Oria, and got my first clear. I also kept delevling, balancing between lvl74 and 75.

I helped with PM6-4... again.

We're starting to get a damn decent chunk of the linkshell in sea now. I hardly ever help with PM2-5 and 3-5 and that stuff anymore. Really damn impressive, considering the fact that when I got my pearl, back in December, I picked it up inside the crag of Holla, where the entire ls was doing mass anima farming for the basic promies. "You've come a long way, baby." (No, I don't like that music, I was just reminded of that album.)

....then I helped with PM6-4 some more.

Joyeuse for Yendor!

Diabolos Prime for LordJohn and Tripp! Hurray!

Helped with PM4-2... again.

YAY FOR KIRIN AND OUR 3RD OSODE! Congrats, Thegrouch!

I soloed (erm) Cerberus.

I was actually out looking for the Warhorse Hoofprint for the Superior Private quest (two days before I found out there was a glitch w/ the quest that sometimes prevented the hoofprint from showing up for days.... I was ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE! >.< ), and when I finally decided to give up and go back to Whitegate, I saw Cerberus up, and decided why not. Of course, it also gave me some funky screenshots.

Pahah! Shield skill FTW! And I was /WHM even!

Anyway, I got Superior Private!

I did Assaults. This one was annoying as hell, but at least we beat it first try. Never again. EVER!

I helped with PM5-3 Bugbear fight... again.

We tried our first Proto-Omega fight. Didn't go so hot, but next time we'll get him. NIN tanks > PLD tanks on this one, methinks.

I did BCNM30, hoping for a Wrestler's Mantle.

I'm staticing my BRD with Pat's PUP, and I'd hoped to surprise him with a Wrestler's Mantle. Well, first of al,l I suck at keeping secrets, so he figured it out AS we were doing it. Second of all, this BCNM sucks. We tried once, and wiped. Tried one more, going all out, and 4 fucking Astral Flows and 1 BP didn't fuggin kill the stupid saplings. We barely won, though, with a lot of death, so at least Ajay got a Mannequin Body out of the deal.

I did more Assaults with my kickass Assault Static. Saving Private Ryaaf was Too weak, and the title cracked me up.

I fought Jailer of Faith.

Melfurion survived a Quake II. Damn Galka HP! And congrats Grouch, on your new h2h toys!

I did KS30 Copycat... by accident.

I was actually trying to save up 99 seals to donate to the "let's experiment with a KS99 strat that doesn't involve us dying horribly" fund, but then when I was going to do the BCNM30, someone (who was playing my character at the moment, as I was on Raz) traded the wrong seals, using my KSs instead of my BSs, so I figured hey - why the hell not, when the damage was done, anyway.

I killed Ungur. Congrats on your boomerang, Shadowfox!

I unlocked Chivalry. Which is HAWT, by the way!

(Oh, and Phalanx II gives me multiple orgasms.)

I did one of the new ISNMs. And holy GOD, this one sucks. -.- 0/2.

I leveled Raz's BLM some. Gonna take his WHM to 75, so now I need his BLM to 37.

I fought the Jailer of Temperance... by accident.

We were sea farming, just killing everything we came across, not really paying any attention to where we were, when suddenly something is smacking me around, and my screen reads "The Jailer of Temperance hits Lexa for 208 points of damage..." I swear, I had NO clue we were near one of his PHs... <.< We were too few, and WAY too unprepared, so of course we wiped. It was a nice taste of what he was like, though. ^^

I did Uggly Pendant run. Only died once. ; ; Didn't come anywhere near my last death count of 11.

I did Kurrea. Took us a couple fights to find out how to deal with this guy, but after that, he was mostly Easy Prey. Galliard Trousers FTW!

...and all this, brings us up to today.

My biggest and most important accomplishment.

I have no had this much fun since the first time I got to tank Genbu, at level 68.

I have not been this happy since I got my Joyeuse.

I have not felt so proud since I smacked around gilsellers at Xolotl.

I am tanking Genbu butt. ass. naked.

The only things I'm wearing is my Koenig Shield, my Joyeuse and my Rosenbogen. No rings, earrings, nothing. And I TOTALLY lived, too. Which is hella amusing, since just a few days before this, we had the Galliard Trousers run, and I ran into a 75PLD who I think was in the wrong line of work. He and I started up a discussion, the old and trusty PLD vs NIN debate. Now, I am not anti-NIN. NIN is hella useful on a damn lot of things, and can tank a lot of things better than PLDs. But this PLD cracked me up, bc he was lvl75 PLD, with a NIN at around 40, and he's the biggest anti-PLD I have ever met.

...I'll give him the Charybdis part, as it IS hard for a PLD to tank Chary.

Anyway, that's it in a nuthsell. I've been doing a shitload more, but realy. I just went through more than 1500 screenshots, trying to pick out the most important ones. Gimme a break. <.< So. Just to round up this post...

...here are a few random FFXI funnies.

We got twins in our linkshell. That's hot.

SE totally changed Suzaku's text when he's popped. Totally.

My birthday was July 10th. I know it was. But God knows what the hell I was doing that day.

BAD FAE! Taking advantage like that....! NO COOKIE!

Monks in Scorp Harnesses and AF pants is Pat's numero uno aggrivation.

I love my wonderful, wonderful, weird ls, and the weird people in it.

Striking up a convo with the RMT at Ulli camp.

We get along so well in CTB because we have the same goals and opinions.

....totally how I got on the CTB Council... TOTALLY... <.<

And now for something completely different

Sun, 09 Jul 2006 03:20:40 GMT

This is an interlude to my usual picspamming posts to ask:

Why the hell does all my friends turn into scrupulus asshats with no morals?

FFXI is a game, I am well aware of this. But no matter how much of a game it is, it is still a game I spend hours on daily. I sacrifice a lot of time on it, and I enjoy it. I take the time and effort to help my linkshell and my friends, and I love it. To me, the game is not about items, or achieving the most. To me, the game is about friends, the community and family I have found in my linkshell and with my friends. To me, having friends, and having fun in the game, is THE most important thing, hands down. Now, when you do asshat shit ingame, you're ruining your reputation, and without reputation - what do you really have left? Will a Dalmatica, full Koenig, a Ridill - hell, a fully upgraded relic weapon, do you any good, if they were aquired through stealing/botting/gilbuying? Will all those spiffy things serve you any good, if no linkshell will take you in, and nobody wants to party with you?

I will never endorse stealing of NMs, botting, gilbuying, or anything of the kind. And I would never be in a linkshell that does. So why the fuck does my former friends, who once upon a time shared my opinion, suddenly turn around and join these shitty linkshells, with HORRIBLE reputations, just for the sake of pretty items?

When I was a level 25 Warrior, freshly dinged, I was on my way back from Qufim Island, excited about my newly gained level and to be going to new areas (Kazham, ooo). Unfortunately, I got aggro from a weapon, died and deleveled. Laying there dead, disappointed to have lost my level, a guy in a white gold-rimmed armor came walking along, and gave me a Raise. I was shocked. Not only could this guy, who for all intents and purposes looked like a melee, Raise - he also had Cure spells! As an added bonus, he PL'd me the last few exp I needed to get my level back, and then walked me safely back to Jeuno. This guy became one of my very best friends, and I decided right then and there that I wanted to be a PLD. He is currently in one of the linkshells on my server with the worst possible reputation. Their leader is a notorious thief and botter, and several of their members have been caught confessing to the same crimes. Their linkshell also reportedly has no lotting system. If you can use it, you can lot it. When I found out he was joining said linkshell, I confronted him of course, and my questions were quickly met with "Everyone bots these days," and "I don't care what they do." He explained that he wanted his Koenig Body, and as the discussion escalated into an argument, he was quick to throw it in my face that he would have Koenig Body WAY before me.

This person is now on my /blacklist. It saddened me deeply to have to /blist him, as he is one of the oldest friends I had in this game.

When I was a level 30-something PLD, I was helping a RL friend of mine get her Elshimo Marble for the Teleport-Yhoat quest in the jungles, and through mutual friends I met another guy who quickly became probably the best friend I had in this game up until I joined CTB. He is one of the most selfless persons I've ever met, he never said no to helping with anything, he helped me get each and every single one of my AF pieces, and we had a ton of fun together. He was a PLD as well, although quite a few levels above me. I can still remember him taking me to Purgonorgo Isle to show me the scenery this game has to offer, or trying to duo the Sea Horror with him and dying horribly. Now, recently, a new "HNMLS" has started to make its prescence known on my server - and not in the good way. The first notable thing they did was steal Despot from a soloing BST in sky, when it was at 1%. Their "second in command" is also notorious for having cooperated with gilsellers for the longest of times. When confronted about all this shit on FFXI forums, several members - and the notorious second in command - has given very clear replies that they don't give a fuck. My friend recently applied to this ls.

I, like with my last friend, asked why he would even consider joining this ls, after knowing everything they were doing? The reply I got was simply that he was tired of being passed over for items and/or abjurations he wanted, and that this was his chance. He didn't give a crap that the linkshell condones stealing. He didn't give a crap that the linkshell is full of immature brats who don't care how they get the items they want, as long as they get them. Needless to say, the discussion ended badly. I have not yet blacklisted him, but I feel certain I eventually will.

Maybe I'm being holier than thou about this. Maybe I'm the asshat. But in my very honest opinion, there is nothing more important in this game than your reputation. This game is played because of communities, and the very game mechanics is based on cooperation with other players, and if nobody wants to party with you, help you out, or do stuff with you because of a shoddy reputation - what do you have left? I love all my friends dearly, and losing two of them in this way hurts me. I just hope they're happy when they finally have their fancy Koenig Bodies or whatever. I'd still prefer playing naked for all eternity and having fun with my friends, versus selling out on my own principles and morals, just to get pixellated items. I don't really have any more to say.