Anyone Out There?

I honestly don't know if anyone still reads this but quick update.  Obviously I'm pretty much done with FFXI, I may get on to say hi every few months but there's no way I could actively play that game again.  Plus I could never get back what we once had in the Moogle Army.

Recently I began thinking of my memories of FFXI.. back when we were all leveling, when being 75 was never about endgame and gear whoring.  When we would get together just to hang out and help each other out for the fun of it.  When Moogle Army had over 30+ members online at peak times which was insane for a chat LS that promised nothing.  We had such a great community, nothing compares to what I had with all of you, great times! :)

I'm currently casually playing WoW, I have a lvl 80 priest on Cenarius (horde) and I play with Flotsam.  He's currently doing blog updates about WoW so if you get the chance, check out his blog: The Taru, Too! (link to the side).  WoW has been a blast, it took me about 6 tries to finally get into the game but I do see its appeal.  Granted the community that exists in FFXI just isn't there in WoW, but you can't always get what you want.

As for my co-author of this blog.. jean.. I mean mog.. I hear he's taru king of bahamut.. or something like that.

Anyway if you happen to stumble upon this post, which I highly doubt anyone will, please get in touch with me!  It'd make me so happy to hear from more of you, about wtf you're doing now.  Or just leave a comment so I know you're out there!

Aim: williams3481

Msn: williams348@gmail.com

And to conclude, here's a video slideshow I made yesterday of MA, enjoy!

Memories of Moogle Army
(Click HQ for slightly better quality)

A thought on Bards

Beastmaster is currently at 55 and on hold for the time being.

Lately I've gotten back to my love for mages and support roles and I went back to Bard. Now I'm essentially the type of Bard that most career Bards hate, a 3rd job merit whore. I'm not leveling Bard because I want a new main, I just want a side job I can use in merits, most people who share the same goal as me tend to be crappy Bards who rush to 75 and I can understand why the career Bards hate that.

I never really could imagine being a career bard. Sure they have tons of awesome endgame gear choices, more than most jobs, but the job is just so limited to me in use at 75 that I would never want it as my first and only 75 job. We've had Bard mains in our LS, sure they can come along on the odd event like a NM and things like that but when it comes to most things, they just don't fit in much. Things like assaults, bcnms, ksnms, and CoP missions that have defined setups that work (commonly referred to as cookie cutter), often times there just wasn't room for a Bard. And during my time in endgame linkshells, the only purpose the Bard ever served was being a Ballad whore for the Black Mage pts. I'm sure a career Bard could argue they're more useful than just what I mentioned above but for my case and what I do in the game, I just view Bard as a very limited job.

So no I'm not leveling Bard to take priority over my current jobs, it's just a situational 3rd job that can come in handy every now and then, such as merit pts. This absolutely does not mean I'm gonna be a gimp Bard, I do understand where the career Bards are coming from and I do take the time to make sure my gear is comparable to the Bard mains out there. I obtained the HQ staves and +1 instruments I need, I spent hours in Phomiuna to get a Gaudy Harness, I camped the minstrel's coat, I got all the items for an opo-crown, and I splurged on a wind torque. Even if I'm just gonna be a merit whore, I'm gonna be the best damn merit whore I can be.

The New Bst

Ok now that I'm level 50 I consider myself to have entered a whole new realm of Bsthood. All of these minor changes that add up to produce a new Bst for me. Firstly level 50 means my whm sub is 25, w00t! What this means is now I can not only sneak but invisible myself making it so I can now go pretty much anywhere in the game for free, as well as sneaking/invising others which is immensely helpful. Nextly.. I can now raise people, another thing I've been looking forward to, a Bst can be your best friend if you happen to run into one when you're in trouble. And auto-regen is always lovely as well.

Another great thing about being 50 is new gear! I finally get to put on my Gaudy Harness and will now never find myself with not enough mp to cast what I want when I want. This body piece grants auto refresh till 49 mp which is more than any Bst ever needs to get through a fight, also comes in handy when you need to keep sneak/invis up for extended periods of time. No more normal melee gear for me, I've always acquired 4 pieces of the crow gear set which gives a total of +18 evaison and -20 enmity, perfect for the Bst job for soloing anyway. If I want to return to pting, I'm gonna need a more DDish melee set, but now that we're getting into Aht Urghan territory (for xp pts that is), I'm not all that wanted in pts anyway.


So I have a whole new look, some great new spells, and a new a renewed attitude to kickass as I approach the higher levels of the game.

But before I get back into pting, there's just one thing I had to take care of.. the thing I've been waiting for most since I started this job.. Bst AF!!

Ok like all my jobs with AF now, I like to just breeze through it and get it all out of the way at once, I was able to get 4 of the 5 pieces done in just a few hours, the only one missing the Garlaige coffer, not being able to get the people at the time due to an inactive LS.

Doctordub enlisted himself to help me and together we set out on getting the Oztroja and CN keys I needed, finding the chests and finishing those. Killing Dark Spark and duoing my AF3 NM (I solo'd the AF2 NM before he joined the team whm/nin style), and then I went to pop the Beadeaux coffer myself since I happened to have a key in storage. I don't really find AF quests as fun as I did when I first got my whm set, this being my 4th set now, but it was an enjoyable time and we got through it all fast.



Now to begin my trek through the 50's, more to come!

Bst Adventures lvl 43-49 and More!

Ok sry for the long post, but I've been busy over the past week or so and haven't had much time to stop and write about it. Though I don't imagine many would be interested in my progress on Bst anyway, unless they were leveling one themselves but I also included some events on the side as well as my pts with LS members just so this isn't completely about me. The LS is still very much apart of my day to day experience on Vana'diel, even though I play what is considered a solo job.

Level 43

Most of this level was spent in West Altep. I felt like getting away from the mainstream leveling spots for awhile and had a relaxing xp session in the desert. Now I camped by the Korroloka Tunnel entrance in West Altep (the one most people don't know about) and I never came into contact with another play my entire time there.

It's pretty close to Rabao being just southeast of it and you can roam up and down the area, the level range is consistent. My pet was always spiders, there was a good mix of DC and EM spiders at lvl 43 and the prey was.. everything else. From Dhalmels, to anticans, to the very best prey.. WORMS! Spiders took down worms incredibly fast and they popped all over, but the only problem was, worms only spawn in the desert from 18:00 to 6:00. But when they're out, the xp went very fast, otherwise it was just decent.


Break

After that I took a break from leveling because I was set on getting my gaudy harness, which you can read about a couple posts down.


Level 44

Had a nice party with doc's taru mule who was blm at the time. Just your typical crawler's nest party. Now I've never been a fan of this zone, always got lost trying to figure out the right tunnel and the way to the secret room.. till I got the map anyway. However as a Bst, I have a newfound love for this zone and I can forsee myself spending a lot more time in it.


Break

After that party, Shadow asked for help on his mnk AF which was a coffer key in.. what other zone but.. Crawler's Nest! W00t. Cyaan came along to help and we got the key to drop in about 15 minutes and had little difficulty locating the coffer. We also found that Demonic Tiphia was up so we had to attempt that.

Now let me just say, this is the most annoying NM I've ever seen, not only does it have an unlimited source of MP to cast spells like sleepga2 and Cure V, but it can also use its Pollen TP move to restore 3,000+ HP.. which it used quite frequently.. along with Cure V.. ugh. Also the NM is known for using Final Sting when it gets too low on HP almost always guaranteed to take out the person tanking, which it did! Poor cy. After that a quick Dark Spark fight and Shadow had his mnk AF gloves.


Taking a break from Crawler's Nest.. for awhile anyway.. we did a BCNM60, which was successful! Lots of deaths but every orb was a victory and everyone got a worthwhile torque, looking forward to doing more in the future.




Ok back to Bst:

Level 45-46

I had 2 successful party's both in Quicksand Caves, the first pt I got to spend time with Buggman and his drg but other than that, nothing special to report here.


Level 47

I decided to go to Gustav Tunnel, I've always had successful party's there and I've always stated it would make a good Bst zone because of the vast amount of charmable monsters throughout the entire zone. However I wasn't a big on goblins so I was a bit hesitant at first, I never had much luck fighting gobs in the past.

Oh how very misguided those doubts were. I had an AWESOME time here, fastest xp I've ever gotten on Bst! Now that I'm a much higher level than the last time I fought gobs, things are much different. Firstly Bomb Toss is much less threatening, now that I have protect/shell, cure3/regen, blink, and barfira, fighting gobs is no longer scary. Also at this level, there's much less chance that you'll get hate with a good pet.


All my pets were DC or EM leeches, and omigod leeches make efficient killers! A DC Leech could easily take on a T gob, and this level range of monsters stretched the entire first floor of the zone. So if there was a xp pt that came and started pulling gobs and such, you could just move down the zone a bit and keep on going. I hardly touched flies just because there were way too many of them around and linking is dangerous but I did do bats when I ran out of gobs (rare). The suicidal bomb toss gob made for some nice chains and fast xp, I really enjoyed my time in Gustav and hit 49. :)

Death or Intense Moment: Killing lots of gobs in Gustav I managed to spawn Goblinsavior Heronex, and of course being a reckless Bst I just had to try and solo it.. regardless of its level which I didn't know at the time.. still don't. Well I threw my leech at it and just kept throwing anything in the area at it until I ran of DC/EM pets. Surrounded by Gobs on all sides of my camp I couldn't really run off to some other part of the zone to continue without getting a gob link. So I started charming Toughs.. but mischarms got the better of me and I ended up dead. I'll have my BSTly revenge one day!

Level 48

w00t level 48! New shiny Viking Axe and a Life Belt for a total of +20 accuracy.

Ok at this level Gustav became alittle too low, most of the gobs conning EM, so I went back to good ole Crawler's Nest. This time around I played in the back entrance map of CN which also makes a nice Bst playground, everything charmable, lots of places to camp. I was using the Labyrinth Lizard camp, 2 big rooms interconnected by an aggro-free tunnel. I would do Lizard vs Lizard whenever I could find a EM one, now this wasn't the fastest xp, but it sure is a profitable spot. The lizards drop a shitload of things such as crystals, beastmen seals, lizard skins/eggs/tails (all stackable), and chest keys. And the nice part about the chest keys are there are 6 spawns in my camp alone. I opened the chest 3 times while I was there finding gems, gil, and a 15k war/drk great axe. It was an enjoyable time, however it's also a high profile spot. Subject to farmers, xp pts, and just people running by killing things.


I didn't stay the entire level for 48, I had my flag up and got invited to a xp pt in the basement to Garlaige. This is the first time I was asked to pull as Bst so I had a fun time pet pulling, it was also nice never having to worry about links since I could just despawn them, I hit 49 in this pt.

Level 49

I went back to my godly Lizard farming/xp spot in Crawler's Nest today only to find a XP pt there, BOO! They easily had control over the entire camp so I went to the basement of CN with exorays, beetles, and soldier crawlers among other things. This ended horribly in one battle when an Exoray's AoE took me out fast so I went back to Gustav.. good ole Gustav! And I grinded the level out.


Level 50, yes! More to come..

LS Drama ftw

Ok so apparently this happened late last night when I wasn't on. Peeknut went crazy on lar and jean and called their relationship illegal, lots of drama ensued, he was kicked and now seems to have a personal vendetta against the LS and our blatant support of pedophilia. /sigh

Anyway I log on today and jean gives me the brief summary of the event followed by peeknut having a wonderful conversation with me, to which I have posted below. Another lovely display of LS Drama ftw. None of the conversation has been censored, the things blacked out are from other /tell conversations and the party I was in at the time.

(you can click each image to see it larger if you can't read it)








He also added at the end that I disgust him, didn't get that shot though. orz

Subligar Farming - Gaudy Harness

Now I've always despised subligar farming and avoided LS pts that went there. Mainly because I hated Phomiuna Aqueducts as much as the Promyvion zones. I never was a leader for any of these beginning CoP missions so I never learned my way around the zones nor did I care to. Not to mention I didn't really have a subligar I needed but now I have a reason to go there. To get the godly Gaudy Harness which is an uber body piece for both bard and Bst, two jobs that I'm currently leveling.

The Godly Harness

So I sucked it up and decided to get a pt together and go kill Fomors in Phomiuna. I found two people in the shell that were also after subligars, Asphe and Doc, so we went there as a nin, smn, bst trio. Now I honestly had no idea if this was even enough to take down fomors and if bringing no raise was a good idea but I had confidence in my regulars as they typically know their role and how to perform well in difficult situations. It turned out to be justified because Asphe, Doc, and I had no problem killing Fomors over and over again for 4 hours that night, later joined by Ari and her friend Rown for awhile at the end too. Among the subligars we got were rng, smn/whm, blm/smn, and nin. However the two we didn't get which happen to be the best items were thf and bst.. after 4 hours, and with TH there part of the time.

Asphe, Doc, and I trioing Fomors

So with 4 hours of time and 3-5 people netting us no Bst subligar I was determined to get it so I set out to do this solo early afternoon that next day.

It was right before work, I literally had about a half hour before I had to be in my car driving to work but I figured I could get away with being 10 minutes late if I had to. So I outpost warp to Tavnazian Safehold and quickly grab all my Bst gear, I also break out my monster signa and tuna sushi which I haven't used in a long time since I need all the +chr I can get for this crazy strategy. I buy a stack of Zeta food (best pet food on the AH, heals 350 hp and adds regen) and I set out for the Aqueducts.

Dodging Taurus' and moving as fast as I can, now having memorized my way to this camp not needing to look at maps I get to the camp with little difficult. Now in order for me to solo this I need a VT/IT slime pet that I then 2hr to make it mine for a guaranteed 30 minutes with increased power. The hard part though.. charming a VT/IT slime and not dying.

So I find my target and set out trying to charm it with all the +chr I could pump into this little taru bst. Mischarm.. after mischarm.. after mischarm.. thankfully the slimes are slow and don't chase you long so charming from a maximum distance and running way out of the tunnel that the slime is in (hoping a stegosaur isn't waiting at the exit) usually makes it lose interest in you fairly quick. Well after 8 tries or so I finally charm and quickly hit my 2hr Familiar, now I have this awesome slime pet ready to kill some fomors.

Only I'm not actually at the fomor camp, now I have to drag this pet across a room full of Taurus' and hope I don't get aggro, now keep in mind I only have 30 minutes with this pet so time is NOT on my side, waiting for the Taurus' to move can be costly. But I manage to get past all of the True Sight dinosaurs and into the Fomor camp in about 2 minutes time.

The room where the Bst Fomor spawns has 4 fomors in it, 2 hell bats that link with the Fomor Bst's bat, and a NM that's 8 levels above me when I'm at a 40 cap. So I sent my slime in for the Bst Fomor and pull it back to the safe hallway, this slime is amazing. It kills the Fomor's pet bat in about 6 hits with my help and then goes to town on the actual Bst. The slime hits so hard he easily tanks the entire battle and his AoE move Fluid Toss does an added 150-300 damage, completely destroying the Bst Fomor with no difficulty at all. First kill, I get a bronze key which was nice but I wanted the subligar.


Now the Bst Fomor is on a 14 minute respawn which means I'll only be able to kill it once more before my 2hr is gone and I lose my IT Slime on steroids. I take the time I have to kill the Hell Bats in the room so they don't link and a VT Diremite in the hallway just to avoid hitting it with my slimes TP AoE move, all the while building up 300% TP for ourselves. The 2nd Bst Fomor respawns, this time we pull it fast enough so it doesn't have its pet with it. So of course this time we kill it even faster and make this poor Fomor look worse. My 2nd kill soloing as a Bst, the subligar drops!


Knowing I basically now own a Gaudy Harness (once I do the quest) I head off to work 10 minutes late a happy little Bst! It amazes me what this job can do solo, I'm in love with Bst right now. :)

Bst Adventures lvl 40-42

I know there's a gap in my journal going from 37 to 40 but I honestly don't remember when or how I gained those levels so lets pretend they never happened.

Level 40-41

Kyss the Bst has returned! Starting fresh at level 40 I've ditched the taru RSE and I'm sporting a whole new set of armor and a nice new AF axe (first AF weapon I've actually used seriously). Now an interesting thing happened today, I changed to Bst and within a few minutes of being a bst/whm I get an invite for a party.. no flag up or anything. Most people would never consider a non-LFP Bst for a party, hell many wouldn't invite us with our flag up either =p. Turns out the invite came from another Bst around my level who knew how nice they were in parties. So our party went to Gustav and I gained 2 levels that party, not much more to say about that.

Level 42

Okay I'm back to the solo life now, no random fortunate party invites today. But that's fine because I was looking forward to being on my own again. Now I have over 6 zones to choose from that have viable camps such as SSG, Crawler's Nest, west/east altep, yhoator, and zitah and every one of them seemed appealing. Now my previous camps have always been in remote locations where people barely ever go (like the islands in bibiki, random parts of SSG), however this time I thought I'd go to higher traffic location.

I chose crawler's nest, and I'm glad I did, this camp completely got me back into Bst. The camp was the first ballroom, which is a popular lvl 36-38 party spot so I got to see some familiar faces like vamp and doc which was fun as I was leveling. The Surprising thing about this camp is that I didn't die once, and it's a lot riskier than a lot of camps I've been to. The main strategy was charm the many even match (at 42) lizards in the room and use them against the crawlers, sharing with the xp pts.

Now a small cramped room full of lizards.. that link by sound.. means one mischarm and I have a nice train of lizards after me. And this happened at least a few times during my stay here. Now I said I didn't die, but that doesn't mean I didn't come close to dying several times, I always seemed to do the right thing at the last possible moment. Is it skill? My Bst instincts? Pure luck? The Bst gods easing me back into the job perhaps? Well whatever it was, it was damn exciting! I had so much fun at this camp, even the bad situations that I somehow always managed to live on got my heart racing and made this an awesome xp session.

Me in a piece of armor I never thought I'd see myself in.

I mentioned the lizards linking on mischarms being one downside to the camp, the other is obviously the ongoing xp pts coming in and out, as well as people who just wanna kill your lizard pets for farming or the hell of it. While the majority of the time when I was soloing there was only 1 pt and plenty of crawlers for the both of us, by the time I had hit 43 there were 3 pts and not enough crawlers for anyone. Some of the upsides to the camp are that lizards kickass versus crawlers. Crawlers are soft squishy creatures and lizards make very effective pets against them, they also intimidate them as do I when I have hate. All of the crawlers offensive TP moves are frontal AoE which means as long as I stood behind the crawler and didn't have hate I never had to endure a poison or a slow attack. As for the lizard TP move, mostly bland but petrification sometimes would keep the crawler immobile for half the battle which was nice.

Overall it was a fun time and I was able to hit 43, I look forward to doing more with this great job.

BST Memories

I actually wrote this a longass time ago but I never posted it, but I figured it'd be a good post to get back into BST mode, I still laugh over this situation as it reminds me about how fun playing BST is.

Old Post (past):

So today I started levelling BST again, I haven't touched BST in a long time so I kind of forgot how to play it. When you're a BST all alone in a camp or secluded part of the zone as you often are you really need to be more attentive than you would in a normal XP situation. Cause when things go wrong, there's usually never anyone around to help, which means if you want to live, you need to be able to think and act fast. There's no whm behind you to throw out that emergency cure or that blm to sleep a link, or that war to voke something off you. As I was saying, I had forgotten how to play this job, so on with the story.

I scrambled through my mog safe, mog locker, and mule to grab whatever BST items I had left and discovered, to my delight, I hadn't sold most of the equip I used when I stopped playing the job. I filled in the remaining gaps by buying some Merc Captain's armor with my overabundance of conquest points in Windurst. I figured once I hit 40 I'll be redoing much of my armor anyway so I didn't spend much.. or any gil.. on BST for this level.

After browsing the BST forums on Alla to refresh my memory on the prime levelling locations, I settled on Yuhtunga Jungle. Seemed like a good choice.. at the time.

I had loosely read the directions on how to get to the camp and found it with little difficulty by use of Outpost Warp. It felt good, being in the wild, on my own, just me and native jungle inhabitants, I really missed this playstyle.

I then went back to the forum to make sure I was in the right camp and to read what the strategy was here. As I'm doing so, I hear the aggro noise that we've all come to know and love. Quickly going back to FFXI, I realize I parked my char at a crappy spot, and had a Very Tough Goblin Robber hitting me. Lovely.

So what came next, panic of course. My first instinct was to run, which I started to do. Though some point between noticing I was in yellow HP and figuring out which direction I was running I realized I was a BST and BSTs could Charm! There were two perfectly good Soldier Crawlers in front of me, which would've made great pets, only when I opened my macro set.. I was on my BLM set. /sigh.

So I'm running away, dodging further gob aggro, and fumbling through my macros to get to my BST set when I come to the open area by the outpost. I find the macro set and I'm able to Charm Bind the Gob that's chasing me to get alittle further ahead.

By the outpost the only Charmable pet around are Easy Prey Young Opo-opo's, which are resistant to charm might I add. I take the risk and Charm one figuring it's just Easy Prey and to my relief I now have an EP pet. I quickly send it to fight the gob chasing me and I have a moment of relief. A brief moment..

Thinking I'm home free I run what I think is a good distance away from the intense battle between my monkey pet and that gob to Cure myself up. Was it a good distance? Nah, so my cure II grabs hate and the goblin loses interest in my pet and starts running toward me again. Joy.

So I begin kiting it around the open area of the Outpost till my pet could regain hate, only as I was doing so.. I catch aggro from a Goblin Furrier in the area. My pet finally catches up with the Goblin Robber and they begin to fight again but now I'm stuck with the Furrier still on me. Thankfully it's only Easy Prey so I decide to engage it.

It didn't take long for the VT Robber to finish off my EP Opo-opo and I did notice this. Only managing to get the Furrier down to 75% I had to disengage to get another pet. Again the only thing in the area being Opo-opo's I go for another one. This time.. it fails.

So here I am with a Young Opo-opo, Goblin Furrier, and Goblin Robber all heading after me, at this point I'm thinking I'm pretty dead so I decide to make a run for it and see how far I get. I figured I'd head for Sea Serpent Grotto and to my surprise, I manage to drop down the correct hole and I'm down by the waterfall heading to SSG with a nice lead on all my enemies I managed to make.

I had 22 HP as I'm heading toward the waterfall, I'm pretty much home free though. Figuring I'd just avoid the Sahagins and all would be good. I was feeling pretty good right about now.

Then it happens:
The River Sahagin starts casting Dia II.

NO! 22 HP, knowing my death would come fast I stopped to cast cure II, only I didn't look at my MP and didn't have enough for a cure II. So I start casting cure I and by that time the Sahagin catches up to me and kills me.


----------


Looking back on this situation there are so many things I could've done differently had I remembered more about playing BST. Not going AFK in a spot where I'm likely to get aggro would've prevented that whole situation. Being prepared and having my macros ready would've ended it quicker as well. Remember all the abilities of the job I had available to me such as the stack of Jug Pets in my inventory which would've come in handy had I remembered that or properly using Tame to stop a mischarm which also could've helped. I could've used Reward too to make Opo-opo last longer to give myself more time. Also I was wearing a pair of powder boots at the time which would've given me Flee that I could have used as well. Even just using my chocobo whistle to scout the camp and not getting off my chocobo till I was ready to start could've done the trick too.

My survival instincts will come back to me, but I do feel like I'm learning how to be a BST all over again.

In current news, my BST is back in business, currently lvl 42, and I hope to be able to write about BST for a long time to come :)