Archive for the ‘FFXI’ Category
A couple of days ago I finally deactivated my FFXI account. I decided I would quit the game when the level cap is raised and so I did. I’m simply not interested in grinding and trying out the new content anymore. I just feel I’m completely done with this game for good. I still think FFXI is the best MMORPG ever made – for me at least. From the first time I saw the opening cutscene I fell in love with it, and no other game has ever compared to that.
I’ve played FFXI for three years, during which I’ve experienced a lot. I’ve gotten to know some really great people who will hopefully stay as my friends even though I’ve quit the game. I’ve experienced some great adventures, laughed a lot, sometimes even cried, and gotten really pissed off many times. I’ve played the game with all my heart, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
The last time I played was Sunday a week ago. I had a day off and I was home alone since my husband was abroad. We had scheduled an Assault run and Apocalypse Nigh fight. We had an Assault static, and our goal was to finish all the Assault missons for the captain rank, but we lost some members along the way, and in the end there were only four of us left. We had a really good team and completed most of the missions on the first try, but during our last run we noticed that unfortunately the last five missions were simply impossible for our setup. Anyway, here’s our super team on our last run together:
After the Assault run we gathered for the Apocalypse Nigh fight. I’d waited to get this done for a long time, since I wanted to do it with my LS mates, and I had to wait them to go through CoP and ZM and organize Divine Might and Bahamut v. 1. Me, Alix and Pyth needed the fight while Toby, Nagabaroshi and Malys kindly agreeded to help. Here’s our cool team before the fight:
And with a strategy like this, how could we fail?
After the first seconds I noticed my SCH/WHM wasn’t needed at all, so I turned off the chat log and started taking screenshots. I’m sure they won’t blame me for it, since no one died.
And before I noticed, the fight was won and done.
A great ending for my FFXI career, I’d say. Because if I had to sum up the whole game in one word, it would be “CoP”. And as Prishe put it:
I want to thank everyone who has been a part of my FFXI experience, especially my dear friends in EtVaanOsaa, SecretFellowship and ShadowHearts Linkshells. I will miss you guys!
I will be playing FFXIV as soon as it’s released, so hopefully I’ll meet at least some of you there.
/goodbye
When I first started playing FFXI and created Evyen I chose to play MNK. It’s kind of weird because I usually play ranger / thief kind of characters in games. But I fell in love with MNK, it seemed like a really cool martial artist and the ultimate DD job. I considered MNK as my main job, I guess, and it was my first and only 75 job for a while. I took the job quite seriously, spent a lot of times reading different guides and obtaining the best equipment I could get.
I remember when I was a level 18 MNK and read about the Purple Belt quest. Of course at that point I felt like I had already achieved so much: completed my subjob quest, almost gotten through the dunes, I was close to obtaining my rank 3 in San d’Oria etc. Considering all this, the Purple Belt quest felt like a huge challenge. I remember when I tried to get to Tenshodo HQ to open the quest, and the extreme disappointment I felt when I found out I couldn’t even get in there before obtaining an invite which costed 8,000 gil in the AH. I didn’t have that kind of gil! 
I remember saying in LS that “now I need to spend hours farming” or something…. A LS mate Doshin felt sorry for me and decided to send me 10K. I was shocked and swore I’d pay him back (which he of course refused). And after getting my Tenshodo access and the quest unlocked my LS EtVaanOsaa took me to La Theine Plateau and Konschtat Highlands to farm the big scary ram NMs. It took a long time but I finally got the both items needed for the quest and felt extatic!
And then came level 40 and the Brown Belt quest. It was a nightmare because at the time the belt costed a lot and many players did the quest just to make some gil, and therefore the NMs were actually camped. I remember it took me and my friend Shokun (<3) like two weeks to get the belt for both of us. It was completely crazy, we camped Morbolger in the middle of the night and were in seventh heaven if we got the claim!
At the time I laid my eyes on Black Belt – The Ultimate Monk Piece. I decided to get it some day, which was of course a bit silly from a player who had a level 40 MNK as her highest job and had no idea what it would take.
Then I got my MNK to 75 and leveled BRD and PUP. I didn’t forget my dream about Black Belt but I started realizing how much work it would take and that there was no way I could do it alone. At some point I ended up in Europa LS which did KSNM99 and I added the BB items on my lot list, but the line was long and I knew from the start it would be highly unlikely I’d ever get them.
And then last summer Malys started camping Adamantoise and Behemoth for his BB and I decided to join him. Neither of us were able to attend all the windows but we somehow managed to keep track on ToDs. For most of the time there were only two or three of us but we got some claims, even if we didn’t have a lot of luck with drops.
Malys already had the Wyrm Beard and we succeeded to get him the Adamantoise Egg (well, he was actually asleep at the time but in the party nevertheless). We had really sucky luck with Behe though, and in the end he bought the Tongue and got his belt.
After that I took a long break from camping, and also a two month break from the whole game. After I came back, Malys told me he was still doing KSNM99 wyrm with his static and asked me if I wanted to tag along and lot the beard in case it drops on his orb. The guys in his group were nice and told me I could lot if it drops on any orb since no one else there needed it. I was lucky and it dropped on first orb, which was Ejins, and he told me to lot. Thank you!
After that we started the NM static thingy with SecretFellowship. I was surprised of how many people were willing to offer their help with camping, and we had quite a lot of luck with Behemoth. We only camped it for about a week straight I think, before I got my Tongue. I want to say a huge THANK YOU! to everyone who helped me camp, you guys are awesome!
And then there was the turtle. As I said before, I actually thought that would be the easiest part, but for some reason people are really excited about camping NQ Ada on our server, it seems. The amount of people on day 2 camps was just crazy, and we lost more claims than we got. And even when we did get the claim, it never dropped. I was getting really frustrated.
On Saturday the window opened before 10 AM and I honestly didn’t feel like waking up for it. I already thought not to set my alarm and just sleep in, but then I thought that my LS mates are probably waking up early to help and it would be really shitty of me not to show up. So I woke up and dragged my character there. As I had guessed, there were three people who had come there only to help me, and no one else in the whole zone. Luckily it popped on first window, Malys claimed, and I took my husbands character to train all the mobs away to avoid getting links (and for tarutaru sacrifice of course). We killed it easily with four people, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the treasure pool!
Of course I immediately ran to Jeuno to do the quest:
And OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG:
It has been a long road but I finally got the one piece of gear I’ve dreamed of for about as long as I’ve played the game. And it’s all thanks to my amazing friends who have spent so much of their time just to help me. Words can’t describe how thankful and happy I feel. <3 you guys!
Been a while, haven’t played much. We had our second Ultima and it was another success, even with only three BLMs (several of our members are currently on a break). We used NIN tanks again and RDM/NINs as backup tanks. This time we also had a PLD but he wasn’t in the tank parties so he didn’t get that many buffs and only got hate once – after using invincible. I think we’ll keep trying different options though to see what works best for us.
The other week our dyna LS had our very first Dynamis-Buburimu run, and to our surprise it actually went really well and we even won! I don’t think anyone expected us to win on first try but we were well prepared and focused and everything went really well. But naturally, we did have our traditional wipe in the end of the run:
On Sunday we tried Dynamis-Qufim, but only got the boss to around 50% before we wiped. Our biggest problem there was that our only RDM/DRK died in the start of the fight so we didn’t have CS stun. Next time we should maybe bring two RDM/DRKs just in case. Anyway, I’m really happy we’re doing dreamlands zones since it’s fun to try something new and I’ve been drooling over the PUP cape and SCH belt for a while now…
We’ve also been camping Ada a bit. I’m still 2/3 with the Black Belt items, only missing the egg. We’ve gotten some claims but the egg just doesn’t like to drop, it seems. It’s a bit frustrating…every day I’m heading to the Valley of Sorrows I keep thinking “This might be the day I finally get my belt!” and then – it never is. But I try to think that if I only keep going there, I will get it, sooner or (most likely) later.
The other day was the worst Ada camp ever. For the first 2,5 hours there was no one but us. And of course, as it ended up being a last window pop, just before the window a HNMLS ran there. And naturally, they claimed and killed. But what happened next was just unbelievable: the guys got the drop and tried to sell it to us! I mean, wtf…a HNMLS ran to a day 2 (!) Adamantoise just to claim and kill it for the drop they didn’t even need! What the hell were they thinking? “Hey, I see a noob LS trying to get NQ Ada, le’ts go claim it from them, I’m sure they’ll want to show their support and pay us for that!” There’s no way in hell I’d pay anything to anyone who behaves like that towards other people.
I don’t mind competition, I really don’t. I realize I’m not the only one who want certain items and when there’s only one mob which drops the said item, competition is natural. I hate it when people treat their competition like they’re some spawns of Satan just because they’re after the same thing. But what I do mind is when people do something just to screw other people over. I mean c’mon, we’re all civilized adult (well most of us are, I guess) people who are playing an online game to have fun (I hope). Why would someone want to ruin the experience for others? I just don’t understand it. What do they get out of it? Why would someone want to be a part of a group which behaves like that?
I was so pissed off after that experience, I just shouted and swore in LS chat. I don’t think I’ve ever behaved like that in LS before. I of course overreacted and apologized for that – it’s not like it was like my LS mates had done anything wrong so they really didn’t deserve me shouting at them… I was just so tired and frustrated.
But amazing people that my LS members are, they haven’t given up with offering their help. We’ve been camping every day now for almost a week and there have always been people to offer their help. I’m really lucky to have these people in my LS and as my friends. <3
Yesterday we got a whole different experience of Ada camps. It was a first window pop (for once), and when we got it, a person from a HNMLS /cheered us and wished us good luck. That’s how people should behave in NM camps. It shouldn’t be all blood, sweat, tears and drama, but rather friendly competition and having fun.
Other than Ada camping and dyna, we’ve done some Nyzul. I finally got my second Goliard piece, the pants, and oh-me-god are they ugly:
We also had our second ZNM run which went pretty well but we weren’t really lucky with drops… Except with Lil’Apkallu which dropped Numerist Pumps on every pop! Alix also got a Dragoon’s Earring from Chamrosh:
On next run we will finally start doing tier IIIs. I’m really looking forward to it, hoping to get some nice drops for people!
I’ve also done some CoP again (what do you mean I have a problem)… Did 8-3 and 8-4 for Lary and Wasch. When we were getting ready for the pot fight, we started talking about the storyline and noticed none of us had any idea if the fight had anything to do with it:
And I got yet another proof of how much my LS members really like me….
And here’s my Mog Bonanza prize from this year! As always, I let the moogles choose the numbers. This time they gave me the full series of king statues:
Last Sunday we had our second Sea run. We killed our very first Jailer (Faith) and Ix’Aern MNK. Grats Vivinite on Merciful Cape!
I don’t know why that is, but for some reason I find myself doing the same CoP missions over and over again. Last weekend I did all the promyvions for the billionth time and then I did the pot fight and Promathia fight with another group. The third CoP static in our LS just started their way through the missions last week, and they did Minotaur yesterday. Now almost everyone in our whole LS either has Sea or is in a CoP static.
Congratulations on finishing CoP to Ethalio, Athlir, Ciro and Vivinite!
Have done some dyna runs, but no luck with SCH drops. Alix and Pyth have dropped a lot though, which has made me happy:
Had a Nyzul boss run without a THF again yesterday. Three tags, no drops. Sucks.
I haven’t really done much aside from normal events: Nyzul, Assault, Limbus, Dynamis. We did finish the mini avatar battles for Shantotto expansion with Alix, though. We did a few prime avatars at the same time because Alix needed the whispers and I’m greedy for gil. Ashmedai joined us for a couple of fights because he needed the whispers as well.
We had very detailed strategies for each of the fights:
Today we’ll have a Dynamis-Xarca and next week we’ll do some more Shantotto missions and Ultima, at least. Unfortunately I don’t have much time for playing since I have an exam on Friday.
A couple of words about good playing and good leadership
Posted by: Evyen
January 21st, 2010 >> FFXI
Last night me and my husband got into discussion about FFXI elitism and what do we expect from other players in our events / missions / EXP parties etc. Neither of us really considers themself as an “elitist” – whatever that means – and I can pretty safely say none of our LS members think that about us either. However, there are some things I expect from other players:
1. I expect everyone to carry some standard items with them at all times. These standard items include at least appropriate food for your job, a form of sneak and invisible and echo drops if you play a job that casts anything from ninjutsu to white magic (this includes melees with /NIN sub aswell). Nothing sucks as much as a WHM who can’t cure you because they’re silenced, or a tank who can’t keep their shadows up because they’re silenced. Carrying food and standard medicines is an important part of playing your job right, and shouldn’t be ignored.
2. I expect everyone to have read about the event / mission / NM we’re doing and know what they’re expected to do, which items are needed etc. I don’t mean everyone should spend 5 hours googling about different strategies and experiences, but at least read mission walkthrough and NM TP moves from wiki. If you’re doing a mission, don’t expect the leader to hold your hand and drag you through it step by step, but rather be prepared and make sure you always know what you’re expected to do next and why. It doesn’t really take that much of your time, but it will save a lot of your event leaders time, not to mention nerves.
3. I expect everyone to have standard subjobs for their job leveled. Of course it’s a different thing if you’ve just hit 75 on the job, and I don’t mean you have to have all the possible subs leveled. But after you’ve been 75 for a while, I expect you to have at least two different subs for your job. For example, if you’re a RDM, you should have at least /WHM and /BLM leveled and if you’re a MNK, you should have at least /WAR and /NIN leveled. There are some jobs that can get by with only one sub leveled (for example WHM or THF, as long as it isn’t WHM/THF and THF/WHM as one famous example 
), but most jobs need at least two subs.
4. I expect everyone to have functional gear for their job. And by this I don’t mean you have to have a full salvage set and all possible HNM gear, but gear that actually boosts your performance instead of making you weaker. You should always aim for the best gear you can afford in gil or time. I understand not everyone want to spend all of their limited play time farming for gil and not everyone can dedicate hours of time for end game events. But there are some standard pieces of gear which are required, for example a Light Staff for WHM (yes, I’ve seen a WHM curing a Dark Staff equipped…on purpose…because he “couldn’t afford” Light Staff) and so on.
Now these are the things I expect from everyone, and neglecting them will make you…if not a bad player, at least sub par. Of course there are exceptions, mainly players who have recently hit 75 for the first time, and mistakes happen to even more experienced players (it’s not like I’ve never forgotten food / echo drops / sneak and invis items etc). But in my opinion, these things are something every player should consider as their responsibilities as EXP party / mission group / event members. It’s a totally different thing if you’re just playing solo, but as soon as you’re playing with others, you should do your best to fill your role as well as possible.
In addition, there are some things that make you a so called good player, at least in my eyes:
1. Before doing an event / mission / NM, you have read the setups, strategies, TP moves etc. and prepared for them according to your role (for example, if you’re a tank, you know if you should come as /RDM, /NIN, /WAR or /whatever, you know if you need some magic defence gear and so on). In other words, you know which main and subjobs are most useful for your group, what kind of gear and food to use, which items are needed, what kind of magic and / or TP moves to expect from the mobs and how to react to them etc. without having to be told so by the event leader.
2. You carry extra items with you to make things go smoother. Simple things like reraise items on melees and yagudo drinks / ethers on mages can save the day.
3. You can react fast and adapt to changing situations. When planned strategy fails, shit hits the fan and people start dying, you don’t panic but do your best to help the group to recover – even if it means sacrificing yourself so that for example tanks or healers can get up safely. You are able to think of the group rather than just think of yourself.
4. You know how to utilize your main and sub job to their full extent (and have many useful subjobs leveled). If most of your job abilities are more or less useful, you really should use them all, not just one or two. If you’re a melee using /NIN, please learn how to count those goddamn shadows – there’s no point of using that sub if you can’t keep your shadows up. And if you’re /WHM, for gods sake use those spells you have! I’ve seen way too many BRD/WHMs, BLM/WHMs etc. just standing there and watching while the tank is in desperate need of paralyna, erase or cure and WHM is otherwise busy. In short: if you have a useful spell or ability, use it!
5. You know how to communicate with your group and adapt to different play styles. By this I mean that you’re not just standing there doing your own thing, but you’re working as a part of the group. For example, if you’re a healer, you know how to react to tanks needs fast, and also know if the PLD in your group likes you to give him space to get hate from curing himself and the others. If you’re a melee or a BLM, you know how to walk that fine line with hate and still do as much damage as possible. You understand that you need to play differently with different people. This goes for strategies aswell: if you see someone filling a certain role in the strategy, you’ll support him or fill another role. Of course it’s nearly impossible to work well together as a group with people you don’t really know, as it takes time to learn each others play styles. For example, when our Nyzul group started it was…well…chaotic. These days we barely have to speak to each other about strategies because everyone knows what is expected from them and what they can expect from everyone else.
6. You commit time to making yourself a better player and try to learn from experiences. You want to understand your job and everything it can do. You are familiar with your limits but constantly try to push them farther.
As you probably noticed, none of the things that make you a good player have much to do with gil. Well, of course eating good food and having medicines with you cost, but if affording them is an issue, there’s most definitely something wrong with your money making strategies. Anyway, my point is, gear doesn’t make you a good player. You can have all the best gear in the world, but if you fail in the points I’ve made, you still suck. Being a good player is a lot more important than having a good gear. But, it has to be said, good gear makes good players even better.
I’ve been lucky to have many excellent players in my Linkshell. We’ve experienced many different kind of fights together and all of us have learned a lot during the time we’ve played together, I think. At least I have.
How about good leaders then? I’ve been in a few different mission / end game / event groups and learned something about good and not-so-good leadership. In my opinion, there are several things that make a good leader:
1. They know what they’re doing. This one is kind off self evident, I think. I don’t mean that the leader has to have personal experience of the event they’re leading (it helps a lot, though), but they should at least have done their research well.
2. They can give clear instructions and aren’t afraid to give them. People can’t know what you expect them to do if you don’t tell it to them.
3. They know the basic abilities of all jobs and know how they can be used. And when I say “all jobs”, I don’t mean “NIN, PLD, RDM, BLM, WHM, BRD, SAM, THF, MNK, WAR and RNG”. I really mean all jobs. Many leaders seem to be stuck at CoP time and are afraid to try anything new.
4. They know how to work with what they have. Some leaders look at the mission, decide they need certain jobs and refuse to think any other options. Good leaders first consider which jobs their groups have and then figure out a way to make them work. They know how to be creative.
5. They know how to give feedback. I’ve seen some leaders throw a tantrum in linkshell or party chat because someone makes a mistake. That only makes people nervous because they’re so afraid of making mistakes and turns group atmosphere negative. It’s much better if the leader just /tells the person what they could do better next time. A good leader also gives positive feedback and shows their appreciation when things go smoothly.
6. They know how to take feedback. Kind of self evident again, but important. Good leaders do their best to make their group members feel that their comments and suggestions are appreciated.
I don’t know where this post came from and it certainly became a lot longer than I expected it would. Feel free to comment and post your own opinions, I’d love to hear what other people think!
Last night our Limbus group finally beat Ultima! I can’t describe how happy I am we finally won this fight after many failures. Our last try was so close, I was 99,9% sure we’d win this time, but I was still nervous as hell when I logged in for the fight last night after work. For this run our setup looked like this:
Tank party: 2 x NIN/WAR (would have wanted them /DRK but neither had it leveled), 2 x WHM, RDM/NIN and BRD/WHM
BLM party: 4 x BLM, BRD and COR (the COR was level 52 but what the hell, he had all the needed rolls!)
Melee party: 2 x SAM/THF, BLU/THF, SMN/WHM, RDM/NIN and WHM
The strategy was to have 2 x NIN/WAR tanks (and 2 x RDM/NIN backup tanks in case the NINs go down, as they did), SAM/THFs doing Fragmentation SC and BLMs MBing Thunder III and IV on it. One of the SAMs got DC pretty early, so luckily we had the BLU/THF to replace him as a SC partner. This time damage wasn’t a problem at all, but next time I’ll most likely have 4 x SAM/THFs and also a couple of more BLMs if possible. I’m still not sure about which tanks to use, at the moment I’m thinking RDM/NIN might actually work best, since they can survive any of Ultimas TP moves, even Citadel Buster.
The biggest problem we had this time was people not following instructions. My plan was that we would hold Ultima at 81%, 61% etc. so that we could control when it uses Dissipation. Because Dissipation is a hate reset move, my plan was to have BLMs do timed AM2 to trigger Dissipation and stun immediately after (when everyone else but one tank had ran out of Dissipation range, of course) so that with luck we could avoid the whole move, and even if it would be used, only one tank would get hit. Unfortunately, people weren’t really good at holding Ultima at certain HP and Dissipation hit us by surprise many times. We also had some problems with Stun cycle (for some weird reason, at least one of our BLMs couldn’t see any of Ultimas TP moves in his log before he took spam filters off etc.) and rebuffing tanks after Dissipation / death. But all these are small problems which will be fixed when people will get more experienced in fights like this.
In the end we won relatively easily, with 20 minutes left. Good job guys, you rock! Congratulations Brevalaer on Nashira head and Vivinite on Nashira feet!
Last Friday we had our first ZNM run with SF. We had tons of tier I pops and we had 12 people attending the run, which meant we could easily kill all the tier I NMs. The run went really well, we had a good time and before I even noticed, it was 1AM and we decided to call it a night. We got 13 drops in total, I think. Congratulations guys!
Me and Alix started doing A Shantotto’s Ascension missions. We’re currently on the Avatar fights part, and we decided to duo the primes while we’re at it. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a lot of time for playing lately, so for now we’ve only done Ifrit. We’re planning to continue those today when I get off work, though.
So the holidays are over and it’s back to school and work with me. During my few day vacation I spent so much time playing FFXI I came dangerously close to getting an overdose of it. I started camping Adamantoise on xmas day and have been there every day after that. Unfortunately, I soon noticed I wasn’t only one with the same idea. Here’s a pic from one day 2 Ada camp:
Adamantoise = SERIOUS BUSINESS. We have only gotten 2 claims and decided to give up with it for now. No point wasting our time when the zone is full of people. It’s funny though, I was sure Adamantoise Egg would be the easiest BB item to get but as it turned out, everyone seems to want to camp the turtle for whatever reason. I’m getting so desperate I’m actually considering using my seals for the KSNM…
I only found one screenshot taken from Ada camp… And yes, we messed up the pull big time and didn’t get it to a corner. Was really messy.
As I wrote earlier, we have recently started to do some NM events with SecretFellowship. We camp some NMs, do Sky and Sea and ZNMs, pop NMs etc. Pretty much anything people want to do, assuming we have enough people for it. But it’s really casual, meaning all events are 100% voluntary and you don’t even have to attend them if you’re online if you just don’t feel like it etc. It’s all about having fun together, getting experience from fighting new NMs and helping each other to get some nice pieces of gear.
Making a balanced lotting rule system for a social LS like us has been pretty challenging. At first we had a very simple system: you get 1 point / hour for any NM event and 2 points / hour for any pop item farming. All items costed 5 points to lot. Person with most points and the said item on wish list had the lotting priority (and you could only put stuff you can wear on your lot list).
The problem was, I was getting way too many points for camping stuff for myself. I was on top of the point list, mainly because I had spend so many hours camping Behemoth and Adamantoise (for my Black Belt items). So I suggested we change the rules so that people won’t get any points if they’re camping NMs for themselves. At the same time, we also added a rule that when we start camping something, the lot priority for that NM will become locked until the person with highest lot priority either gets the drop or stops camping. We also changed point costs so that pop NM and ZNM drops are now 5 points / item, other NM drops and sea/sky drops are 10 points / each and some hard to kill or hard to claim NM drops are 20 points / item. This meant that I nuked 15 points away from myself and I moved from the top of the point list to 8. place. At least for now the new rules seem to be working well. Anyway, as we discussed about this in LS, people reminded me that we shouldn’t really need very strict rules anyway since we are a social LS, the point of our events is to have fun and help each other, and if someone even tries to abuse our rules they will be dealt with accordingly. ;D
On last Sunday we had our first Sky farming run with SecretFellowship. Most of the people attending the event had barely even been in the zone before so I was prepared for it to go pretty badly. Of course there were some aggros and deaths when people weren’t used to sneaking around the inner zones, but all in all it was a pretty good run for a first. We spent almost four hours there and during that time we killed Despot, Zip, MG, SC, Faust and BB. MG was a bit messy because the pull failed, as in BLMs did’t succeed to kill all the slaves at first and our only tank + some other people died. But Pyth started to kite MG as BLU, BLMs stunned -gas and rest of the melees killed the popping slaves, which gave us time to recover and finally kill it. After that run we have pops for almost all the gods (only missing half Byakko and half Genbu) and people got some valuable experience from popping and fighting almost every Sky pop item NM.
After the Sky run we had scheduled a Divine Might run, as pretty much everyone in our LS has Sky now but most people hadn’t done DM. I was pretty nervous about the fight because we don’t have an army of BLMs and I had never done it with a melee setup before. So I told everyone to have reraise earrings ready. We used the following setup:
Kiter/tank party: 3 x PLD/NIN, 2 x RDM/WHM, WHM
BLM party: 3 x BLM, BRD, WHM
Melee party: 2 x SAM/NIN, BLU/NIN, MNK/NIN, BRD, WHM
Our strategy was pretty simple:
1. BLMs start the fight with timed Burst II on the Taru. SAMs meditate and take the taru down with WS as fast as possible.
2. All PLDs take one angel: Elvaan, Hume and Mithra. RDMs assist the kiting PLDs and sleep the pets. WHM keeps the PLDs alive.
3. BLU pulls Galka to stairs and kills it with MNK with the assist of BRD and WHM.
As none of us had tried this strategy before, we decided to have one dry run first. To my amazement, before we even noticed, three of the angels were down, only Elvaan and Hume (+ 2 pets) still standing. A BRD kept the pets asleep while we gathered our efforts to kill the Elvaan at the stairs. In the end we wiped with the Elvaan still standing, but he had already used Benediction and we still had plenty of time left, so we reraised and rebuffed. Luckily the two pets also depopped after we all died, so we only had Elvaan and Hume left.
We killed the Elvaan first, started out with timed Burst II again and the SAMs used 2hr on it (well, tried, but didn’t have enough time before it died). After this we pulled Hume to stairs. I was just shouting “WHMs use Benediction if it uses Mijin Gakure!” in party chat when we got the message of victory. Awesome job guys, winning a fight like this on a dry run, I love you all! This is our amazing team after the fight:
Congratulations for all who needed the fight and a thousand thanks for Poty and Lary for your help!
After the DM we still had a dyna run, Xarca. I felt exhausted, it had been way too much playing for one day for me, but didn’t want to skip the run just because I had made some bad scheduling choises. In the end the run went pretty well and we even got to see 2 x THF hands in the treasure pool at once:
On Tuesday we had an Assault run with our static. We decided to start with the Lebros Supplies AKA The Worst Assault Mission Ever. Everyone I know either hates this mission with passion or has never even bothered to try it. We decided to go with the sleep / run away strategy with reraises up on everyone, and our strategy was SCH/THF (me), WHM/THF, BLM/THF, SMN/THF, BLU/THF and SAM/THF. In the end I died several times but at least we won with a few minutes left. I’ve said this before but this time I really mean it: I will never ever do this mission again!
I’ve also done some EXPing in LS parties. We’ve had some good time in the Dunes, Qufim and East Ronfaure S! I decided not to level another job anymore, but focus on keeping full buffer on my 75 jobs and finally meriting them.
On Monday evening after Limbus we decided to try ACP11 fight again. It was already pretty late, around midnight for me, but we took a small break after Limbus and then gathered at the BC. We took our time getting ready, synthing yagudo drinks and going over the strategy, wanting to make sure nothing could go wrong this time. When we were finally ready to enter, our BLM popped his food…black pudding.
Surprise surprise, it was a group food! There was a stunned silence that lasted for about a minute while everyone went to wiki the food effects and found this:
Food Effects: (3 hours, All Races)
- Group Food Effects
- HP +8
- MP +4% (Cap: 25@625 Base MP)
- Intelligence +4
- MP Recovered While Healing +1
Not-so-cool for our DDs for an important fight, huh? At that point we could only laugh and go get ourselves killed on the top floor to remove the food effect. I think bringing a black pudding to a BCNM might become a popular practical joke in our linkshell after this experience…
Anyway, our setup was PLD/NIN, 2 x BLU/WAR, RNG/NIN(?), BLM/RDM and SCH/WHM (me). PLD kept the hate of the NM without engaging it and kept running away from it to stay at max distance full time. BLUs and the RNG were our DDs and one of the BLUs was on the clone duty. BLM stunned all -gas and kept some DoT on the NM. He also casted some nukes but as you probably know, the NM resists a lot. Anyway, we won easily with 10 mins left, no problems whatsoever.
Finally! I started to be so frustrated with this fight, don’t know what I would have done if we had lost again.
After the fight we went to get our new cool items. Alix got lucky with one of the keys:
I chose the body piece for my PUP, because I felt the pet augments were the best.
Me and Alix posing in our new hot bodies:
Happy Holidays for everyone!
A while ago we started camping Behemoth with our LS NM static. Our NM rules are really casual, for example you don’t have to attend camps if you don’t feel like it even if you are online. All rare/ex drops go according to points and wish list (the person with highest points and said item on their wish list get to lot) and all gil items are sold and gil split between everyone who attended. So after one maintenance I went to get Behemoth ToD and we started camping. By “we” I mean mostly my husband and myself, and then some random helpers whenever people had time. Most of the people in our linkshell have either jobs or school (or both) to attend, so not many could spend hours camping NMs during the day. I didn’t expect us to be very successful, but was pleasantly surprised. We camped Behe on seven days, one of which was a HQ pop, and got claim on four of them! I also found out that my LS mates were happy to help with camping whenever they had time.
And finally, last Wednesday the Tongue dropped!
I want to say a huge THANK YOU, hugs and kisses to everyone who helped me with camping, <3 you guys!
Have the tongue and beard now, only the egg left!
We had some pretty interesting discussions especially during the earliest windows:
On Thursday we had yet another Ultima try with our Limbus group. We haven’t yet succeeded to kill it, and I heard that on the last try the biggest problem was tanks going down way too fast. Trying to learn from that experience, I made the setup for this try to look like this:
Tank party 1: NIN, RDM, WHM, COR, BRD, BLU
Tank party 2: NIN, RDM, WHM, COR, BRD, BLU
BLM party: 3 x BLM, SMN, BRD
The point was to have as much magic defence as possible: Magus roll, Saline coat etc. Also I asked all RDMs to sub NIN so in case the tanks would go down, they could do the tanking while NINs recover. Well, this try was our best Ultima try yet and we succeeded to get it to 10%ish (?) but then we ran out of time. So next time I’ll only have one tank party and get a couple of SAMs to do SC so that BLMs can MB and we should be ok. I’m fairly confident that we will win next time, and we’ll have another pop soon since we’re now doing two zones at once. All in all, it was a nice try, good job guys!
We’ve also tried ACP11 fight a couple of times again. On Saturday our setup was PLD/NIN, SCH/WHM, BLM/RDM, BLU/WAR, BLU/SCH and DRG/WHM. PLD kept the hate without engaging the NM, trying to run away from the NM the whole time to stay at max distance to avoid the charm move. BLM stunned -gas, kept DoT on the NM and slept the PLD in case he got charmed. BLUs were our DDs, casting Cannonball from max distance, and DRG was there to pull and solo the clones and use Angon on the NM. I was there as SCH to heal, obviously. This try went really well but we ran out of time when the NM was at 2% HP. That’s so frustrating every time; I keep thinking that if I had rested one or two ticks less, if we hadn’t been so careful with DD hate, if the BLM had nuked between the stuns etc. But it was also encouraging, since the fight went really smoothly and we could have won it with that same setup and strategy with just a couple of small changes.
So yesterday we tried again. The DRG couldn’t make it, but we replaced him with RNG and put one of the BLUs (both subbing WAR this time) to clone pulling duty. We figured that since we’d have one more DD this time, it would be easy. Well, when we were entering the BC, RNG couldn’t target the door for some reason. He zoned, logged out and came back in, nothing helped. So we went with five: SCH/WHM, BLM/RDM, PLD/NIN and 2 x BLU/WAR. Got it to 12% and ran out of time. Not bad for five, but if we’d had the RNG there, we would have won. Well, another try today, I hope we finally make it (and after that I will never set my foot to Delkfutt’s tower again)!
Yesterday we also had our first low man Sea event! It was the first time most of the group had done Sea, so we started by farming some pops. We farmed for three hours and after that we popped Ix’Aern DRK. Everything went really smoothly, only two deaths on the whole run: a nuke trigger happy BLM and a nuke trigger happy SCH (myself). No drop from Ix’Aern DRK though.
On Saturday evening, we had our Linkshell Xmas Brenner. We had reserved a level cap 30 Brenner and our rules were 1. random teams; 2. only event gear or level 1 gear; 3. only event food and no items. Of course it was really difficult getting any damage done wearing close to nothing and having no real weapons, but it was fun! Dual wield Dream Bells = SERIOUS BUSINESS.
On Thursday we had another Omega run. It was probably our best Omega ever: we succeeded to kill it in 10 mins and no one died. Congratulations Potato on Homam head, Lary on Homam body and Naga on Homam hands!
Yesterday we went to camp Behemoth. For the first windows the zone looked like this:
But of course it ended up being a last window pop and at the time the zone looked like this:
Three different HNMLS + some random people + us camping Behemoth. NQ Behemoth = SERIOUS BUSINESS. It seems NMs never pop when there are only a a few people in the zone. It’s frustrating but well, that’s FFXI for you sometimes! At least we had fun camping, was nice just hanging around talking with friends.
After the camp we did a Qufim EXP party. We were there for about 1,5 hours and got levels 20-24. Tahvo dinged 60 on his BLM and finally got to wear the hat he’s dreamed of since he first started playing! I almost got level 73 on my SCH too.
In the evening Malys told me I could come leech their KSNM99 Wyrm on his orb for beard. Last summer I camped Adamantoise and Behemoth with Malys to get some Black Belt items and once I claimed and killed Adamantoise when he was sleeping and let him get the egg. He has his belt now and I didn’t get any of the items (really sucky luck with the drops and didn’t continue camping after the summer). Anyway, I agreed to leech and went there as BRD/WHM so I could be at least a bit useful. They’re doing the KSNM with a lowman setup, maybe 9 characters 3 of which are dual boxed. They’ve been doing it for a long time now and are very good at it, so we didn’t have any huge problems on any of the orbs. I was in the tank party (2 x PLD, RDM, 2 x BRD) and sang mostly double march (and fire carol when the wyrm was in the air), kept elegy and lightning threnody on, blindna’d tanks after hurricane wing and cured when needed.
No one in the static wanted the beard so everyone promised to let me lot if it drops, not only Malys. And ZOMG it dropped on the first orb!
We even broke the battlefield record two times!
One down, two to go! <3 you Malys, thank you!
And finally, here’s one of the (dis)advantages of being in a multilingual LS:
