Archive for December, 2009
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:
Not much to post really. We had a LS Qufim party on Sunday. I used Tahvo to PL us and every time someone had to take a break I got Tahvo in the party to EXP his BLM a bit. EXP was pretty nice and we had a good time. We also did a Royal Jelly run with Pyth and Zen. Got one Utsu: Ni and one Phalanx, so we got about 140k/each. Not bad, but could have been better. After the BCNM we also did a SAM AF fight for Pyth. It was easy.
Sunday evening we did Dynamis-Beaucedine farming run. It went pretty well, and I didn’t die once.
On Monday we had a Limbus run. We were supposed to start an hour after maintenance, but because people hadn’t downloaded the update in time we ended up starting an hour late. In the end we had 18 people attending the run (+ Vivi who forgot to buy the soap and thus couldn’t enter) and we completed both NW Apollyon and NE Apollyon with plenty of time left. I was in the NW Apollyon group and was really proud of us: even when we had many people who had never done the zone before, we succeeded to kill all the floor bosses and only had a couple of deaths on the last floor (and they happened only because one Meteor hit the BLMs).
On Monday we also did the Leviathan fight for Malys. I had never done any avatar fights before and for some reason I expected them to be challenging… Well, I was completely wrong. We did the Leviathan fight on Monday and Garuda fight on Tuesday and we broke the battlefield record on both times. Nice and easy way to make a fast 10K.
Tuesday evening we had an Assault run with our static. Alix had fallen asleep so we replaced him with Vivinite. Our goal is to complete all the assaults for the Captain rank, and yesterday was our second run, so we did the rest of PSC missions: Golden Salvage and Imperial Agent Rescue. I really really really hate the latter one, because it’s so much about luck and those stupid mamools almost never use the right moves, but to my amazement we succeeded to completed it on the first try and the NPC was right behind the first door we succeeded to open. I swear to Altana I’ll never do any PSC Assaults again.
Yesterday we started discussing in LS chat about a person who had obtained a very nice piece of gear in an end game LS and left the LS after that event. For some reason this is often seen as unaccectable behaviour, and I really don’t understand that. In my opinion, if you have followed the LS rules, attended events and worked hard to earn points, and by doing so earned the right to lot (according to rules), it doesn’t really matter what you do afterwards. I don’t think a person has the obligation to stay in a LS after he has obtained an item, because the work done to earn the said item should have been done before you lot it, not afterwards. If people don’t have to work enough to really “earn” the items they are allowed to lot, then the problem is in the LS rules, not in the people who follow them.
Let’s face it: most people in FFXI do events (at least partially) for the gear and when they’ve gotten all the gear they want or need, there’s little to no reason for using your time on those events anymore. Most people aren’t thrilled to use at least 6 hours a week for dying in Dynamis if they don’t need any relic gear. (And I’m not talking about myself here since I have done Dynamis and other events for ages without actually needing anything from them.) I just mean that I don’t think people have the obligation to do an event they aren’t really interested in doing anymore. For example, if someone in my Limbus group decided to quit after getting full Homam / Nashira set and all the AF+1 items they need, I would never think that would be a bad thing to do – on the contrary, I’d understand them and I’d rather replace them with a person who actually wants to do the event and needs the gear. And I’m not talking about one time events like Ohat or Swift Belt runs where it really would be a shitty thing to do to leave as soon as you’ve gotten your drop, I’m talking about stuff like Dynamis / Sky / Sea / Limbus and so on.
Of course in the case we were talking about the person just left without saying anything at all, he just stopped turning up to events. I think everyone can agree that it was rude from him, but people were actually complaining about him leaving after obtaining a piece of gear rather than complaining about him leaving without saying anything. I just don’t get it.
Anyway, on Wednesday I logged in and Naga asked me if I could help her with camping Ungur. There were three of us: Naga as THF/NIN, Ruse as RDM/NIN and me as BRD/WHM. I was there to double mambo them, keep elegy on and help with cures. It popped within an hour or so and Naga pulled it with one skeleton link. It was a nightmare to try to keep the skele asleep, double mambo on Naga and Ruse, double ballad (with pianissimo) on myself, blink and stoneskin up and try to help with cures… In the end I only sang ballad for myself and Ruse, kept elegy on Ungur, kept skele asleep and focused on curing. It was a tough fight, both me and Ruse died at one point, but we won anyway. Grats on your boomerang Naga!
Of course after we had succeeded to kill Ungur, we wiped to that stupid skele… An epic ending for an epic fight.
On Wednesday night we had Dynamis-San d’Oria. It went really well, we got many nice drops, and I even got my first SCH piece! I can’t remember the last time I’ve lotted anything in dyna, must have been about a year ago.
Yesterday we had a Limbus run again. We had four new members (!) and for the first time we had more than 18 people wanting to attend the run. Also for some weird reason people had started to gather 1,5 hours before the actual run. I guess those guys really like Limbo. We had planned to do Central Temenos 3rd Floor, but I decided to split the group in two. Most people went to do the original zone but me, Malys and 4 others went to do SW Apollyon. Unlike me, Malys had a lot of experience of low man Limbus, so I asked him to lead our group. Our setup was WHM, RDM, BRD, NIN, SAM and BLU. We cleared the zone easily taking one time chest, and we would have cleared it even if we had taken item chests on all floors. Only one to die was me and that was only because of my own noobness.
The other group had one wipe, apparently because some people weren’t listening to the leader’s instructions and then they had some problems with pulling the NMs (the person pulling them had never done carby pull before so it was understandable). But they recovered easily and won the zone. So we got 2 zones cleared yesterday and finished our Omega and Ultima pop sets. Yay us! Here’s my beloved Limbo group:
Took a two month break during which I didn’t log in to FFXI once. This was my longest time without playing for the last 2,5 years.
On Saturday morning I logged in and the first thing I did was a Nyzul isle run. It didn’t go very well, we failed two of the four bosses (ran out of time once and wiped once) and only got one piece of gear, denali body, which went to Pyth. I didn’t make any huge mistakes though, other than once I forgot what our floor objective was and I just started killing everything in sight, until Pyth kindly reminded me that we were supposed to kill puddings… I felt really stupid for making such a silly mistake, but at least no one seemed angry about it. Anyway, it was really fun to do Nyzul again, even though we didn’t get that many drops.
After Nyzul we went to kill some augment NM in Valley of Sorrows and then to Kuftal tunnel to do some skillchains for weapon skill points. It was mostly me and Pythean, but Naga and Zen joined us for a while. It took us quite a while, but finally I got both Stringing Pummel and Ascetic’s Fury unlocked. Stringing Pummel seemed amazing, I’m really happy I finally get something better than Howling Fist / Dragon Kick for my PUP.
At some point Zen sent me a tell that Sewer Syrup had popped. He was camping it to get Jelly Ring for his PLD. Me and Pyth ran there to help him kill it. Was really easy with PLD, WAR and SCH. We even got the drop, grats Zen!
In the evening me and Tahvo went to duo a bit. His BLM was 55 and my SCH 70 so we synced to him and headed to Vunkerl Inlet S camp with Goblin’s pet bat. The EXP was really nice, especially with emperor band, and I only died once. We both got a level before we decided to call it a night.
On Sunday morning I logged in asking if anyone needed help in anything. One of our newer LS members had just gotten his WHM to level 17 and he asked if someone would like to EXP with him. So we did a LS party synced to level 10 and went first to Konschtat Highlands and then to Valkurm Dunes. I decided to EXP my SAM which was level 14, and got a painful reminder of the reason I don’t play low level jobs: I don’t have any gear for them! I looked like one of the bad guys in Kill Bill movies – in a bad way:
Our final party setup was WHM (a galka without a subjob, so it was a bit challenging), RDM, BRD, MNK and 2 x SAM. All melees subbed WAR and we bounced hate with provoke. Was fun, if not very fast.
Me and Zen being cute (actually I went there accidentally, I didn’t even notice it before Zen sent me a /tell asking why am I hugging him like that…as if I needed a reason!):
After the party me and Ethalio needed to hurry to Dynamis, but Zen and Poty stayed to help Yellowmage get his subjob and to escort him to Jeuno. Dyna was ok, we did Xarca and I only died twice I think… Of course the PUP hat had dropped while I was gone, and with my luck we won’t see another for a year, but hey, that’s FFXI for you. In any case, it was good to be back in Dyna, even though there was and had been some stupid drama in the LS.
Yesterday I did some Campaign with Vivinite, Zen, Naga and Rusefus. I haven’t done campaign for a long time, and I noticed I rarely got even decent EXP from it as SCH. There was one really interesting fight in Garlaige Citadel S… I noticed a battle was just about to start there so me, Vivinite and Rusefus warped there. When the mobs started attacking, we noticed there were only three of us in and two groups of yagudos attacking! We casted invisible and tried to hide while we waited the mobs to pass, but failed miserably, ending up dead (it seems all the campaign mobs are true sight, who would have guessed, huh). Anyway, we got ourselves (re)raised and ran to a safe corner to recover. When we were finally unweakened and buffed, we pulled a mob and started killing…only to notice the battle ended just then. It was so frustrating I couldn’t help but laugh.
Yesterday was also my first Limbus run after my break. I was nervous as it was a bit weird to be coming back as a leader when I had just been gone for two whole months. We had many new members and I felt a bit disorientated. We did Temenos North and it went really well apart from one person aggroing all the Tonberry summoners on sixth floor. 
That got a few people killed, but other than that, there weren’t any deaths and the run was pretty smooth.
After Limbus I went to help a few LS members with their Tenzen fight. Their setup was WHM, SMN, PLD, 2 x DRK and me as MNK. Every time I had done that fight it had been with a zerg setup: WHM, RDM/DRK and four melees so I was a bit nervous about how the setup would work. We did one dry run and one real run and won. They got their Sea and I learned a lesson about not judging a setup just because it isn’t the easiest option.