Merry Werry Kyssmas Wysmas

Path to Diabolos Part 2

Ok... maybe not that much later.

So we finally made it, 2 days of work and we're at the final fight we need to do so that we can fight Diabolos Prime and get the summon. I was very scared going into this fight, reading up on all the setups and strategies there is a very low margin for error in this fight. To get to the arena for this fight you need to go through a zone called Pso'Xja which is also very neat looking but to get the pass you need to farm a Cyan, Carmine, or Gray Chip. Elov and I went down, later joined by vit and vamp and we got all the chips within a half hour. After turning those in it was time to make our way to the fight.


The setup consisted of our semi-static: elov, vit, vamp, and myself and we were joined by vit's friend Thulius for the stun whoring drk and after a quick shout in Aht Urghan we found battlegod who came as monk. So the final setup was nin, thf, mnk, drk, smn, and whm. Getting through the 40 cap area of the Pso'Xja zone (a series of colored warps) was fairly uneventful, Elov did manage to die once by cancelling sneak or something dumb like that, but we all made it there fairly fast.

In this fight, diabolos has this ability called nightmare which is an AoE Sleep that you can't be waken up from. This ability is.. well.. a nightmare, the one thing you want to avoid. Fortunately our dark knight stun whore was right on que for each and every nightmare utilizing the spell and his weaponskill stuns as well, couldn't have asked for a better performance from him. Elov as thf did his job of SATAing onto Vit (nin) to keep hate on him and, and the monk did an awesome job with damage.


The arena is laid out in tiles, at around 50% Diabolos starts to drop these tiles, if you fall, you're pretty much dead. Although we went over where we were to stand well before entering the bcnm40 it still managed to scare the hell out of vamp and I when both tiles around the one we were standing on suddenly fell. Vamp assisted me with healing as smn and I kept the nin and drk hasted, and erased and at 20% vamp used astral flow to pretty much finish it off. The pickup monk praised us and my LS greatly for the flawless run claiming he failed this run 5 times in the past and overall it was a fun and surprisingly easy fight. Everyone did their jobs perfectly and I can only hope it goes this well on the prime fight next week.

Even though our path to Diabolos is almost over, I look forward to continuing more of the CoP mission series. Riverne Site B next!

Path to Diabolos Part 1

I know its been awhile since I've given a post on CoP but after my Phomiuna Aqueducts (2-3) run nearly a month ago I pretty much put CoP on hold aside from a few other CoP 2-3 runs I've done with the LS.

Tuesday was no different. Started with yet another Phomiuna Aqueducts run for vamp who has her heart set on getting Diabolos as a summon. At this point that run is fairly routine for me, but after that we decided to go around and do the next fight in the series, Riverne Site A.

Killing in Hippogryph in Riverne.

I've yet to see a CoP zone that failed to impress me, Rivern site is no exception. A very unique and great looking zone. For this run we had Vit, Vamp, Elov, Roc, Krile, and myself so we figured we'd do the nin nin nin whm whm whm setup where each nin took a mammet backed up by their own whm. Elov was only a 39 nin and krile had ok gear for his whm but aside from those, we were in good shape with jobs.

All 3 nins wanted me as their whm so they all /random'd for me, the gimp nin Elov happened to win (he later admitted this was the first time he tanked a monster with no other ninjas to help post-37). Krile got assigned to vamp (and she lived!) and roc went to vit. This bcnm40 fight was so much fun we all had a blast. True it was serious and we had to concentrate but there was a lot of pt chat going on and you could tell everyone was having a good time. We didn't bring any yellow liquid that I heard really helps helps (the mammets can change job at any point, the liquid prevents that) but we ran into little problems. The blm forms gave us a run for our money but there were no deaths and we succeeded in the mission.

CoP 2-3 Fight

After that roc and krile left us but vamp, vit, elov, and I decided to continue on. After a few more awesome cutscenes we went to do road forks 3-3 which is a lengthy side mission in which you need to kill 2 popped NMs in Carpenter's Landing and Attohwa Chasm. Also included in this mission is a hilarious side story about the 3 tarutaru with the uniquely colored hair trying to find their father in Windurst that made this mission worth it alone. The NMs were easy for what we had, any one of us there could've solo'd both of them with relative ease. However the main highlight of this mission was after you killed the NM in Attohwa Chasm, you had 1 hour to climb to the top of a mountain in the zone. This is a cleverly designed mountain that requires careful navigation around ledges, over bridges, down drops, it was a very fun and exciting climb (though I don't recommend doing this at 5am) and if you don't make it in time or fall you can start over without having to kill the NM again (like I did.. 3 times).

Mountain climbing in Attohwa

Well more on Vamp's Path to Diabolos later.

No one ever asks you to come refresh them cause they got aggro

/nominate my favorite new command

Sometimes I can be really silly. By silly I mean a bastards son of a bastard.

Gprime Macro

Just to keep you occupied while I'm busy with finals (last day coming up!) I figured I'd post the infamous gprime boost macro. I'd give a monk 100k to do this in dunes, I personally can't think of any better way to use your empty macro slots at that level. :)

alt+1
/p I call forth, the divine powers of Altana
/wait 1
/em begins to lift the rock from the ground with his power.
/wait 1
/p YESSSSSSSSSSS I FEEL THE BOOOST OF POWAR!
/wait 1

alt+2
/shout CAN YOU FEEL IT VANADIEL? THIS IS TRUE POWER!
/wait 1
/p GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
/wait 1
/p Current power stats:
/wait 1

alt+3
/em power bar [|||||| ] 30%
/wait 1
/em power bar [||||||||||||||||| ] 65%
/wait 1
/em power bar [||||||||||||||||||||||| ] 100%
/wait 1

alt+4
/p NOW GATHER AROUND MY BRETHRENS
/wait 1
/p HERE I GO
/wait
/p BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSTUUUU UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
/wait 1

alt+5
/ja "Boost"
/wait 1
/p MY NEXT ATTACK WILL NOW DO MORE DMG
/wait 1
/em power begins to fade
/wait 1

alt+6
/em power bar [|||||||||||||||||| ] 75%
/wait 1
/em power bar [|||||||||]40%
/wait 1
/em power bar []0%
/wait 1

alt+7
/p I tried my best, tell me..
/wait 1
/p will I dream
/wait 10
/p BOOST MACRO READY
/wait 1
/echo BOOST MACRO READY

:)

Jeanhair ftw!

1. Bored
2. Late
   
3. Sleepy
4. Impossible Drop

I know for many of you one or all of those factors bring to mind NM camping. I know personally that SE hates me because I was 1/38 on my Moldavite earring. Screw 1 thief, 2 thiefs, 3 thiefs, a 75 thief with TH4 or even a full alliance helping me(btw the rdm & thf duo got it from us). I am now currently 3/41 on Moldavite.

So when Blutengel suggested we go camp Sozu Rogberry , what did i say "HELL YES HELL YES"! 1% drop rate with all the mages subbing gimped war how could we lose?

The hunting party consisted of Blutengel, Itachikun, Arcaus and I. Not the cream of the crop but hey, you normies like to sleep. We get to that tiny cell that the GS must love(reminds them of home) and setup shop. And from that second on all we do is spam voke. I spam it till Mr.Righty cramps up and I tape a chopstick to it and keep spamming with that. I slowly start to drift away thinking of my next all new awesome purchase Forest Rope. Only to be awaked by my death screams OMFG I got Sozu.

We concentrate on keeping Blut alive not too hard with 3 gimped mages mind you. Then disaster the other party in that room decides it's not hard enough for us so they decide to pull Bonze Marberry on top of us. The thf decides to bring us a present, now who's dead mage doubting hater.

And of course no drop, could I have been Seriously Madaru? Yes but it was too much fun :)

Cheating? .dat's not cool!

Even though I'm busy studying with finals I, as well as Jean, want to continue to give you a reason to check in our blog often so we'll be trying to get back into the daily update routine. Whether it's a long informative post, an interesting story about our experiences in Vana'diel, or just a short humorous screenshot caption, we'd like to give you some worthwhile and entertaining reads.

That being said, I began recently looking into the world of modifications and 3rd party tools for FFXI. No I'm not planning on hacking, I don't fancy the idea of being banned. But really it's very interesting how many applications and large communities there are out there devoted to these applications such as fishbots, PLbots, NM claiming bots, POS/speed hacks, etc etc. I was also surprised just how easily it was for someone to find such programs.

Anyway more on FFXI Hacking: Exposed in later posts.

----------------

While doing research I stumbled upon this FFXI enhanced map set which I recently started using and I find it immensely useful. This requires the use of dat swapping, so if you're personally against this (for whatever reason) or you're afraid you'll mess something up don't do it.

Firstly you need to be on PC, as you have no way of managing files on ps2 and xbox360, well no easy way anyway.

Next you need to visit this link and download the map set. The zip file is roughly 27.1mb and it has been scanned and contains no viruses.

Before you go on, BACKUP YOUR FILES! Yes incase you do mess up or choose to go back to the originals at a later date in time backup the maps in the folders you plan on replacing the dats of.

Now unzip the zip file into your \PlayOnline\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI folder overwriting all existing maps.

And now you have a nice new set of maps to use in place of the maps the game provides you with. These maps include NM spawns, coffer/chest locations, hidden areas of maps not present on the originals, and other nice things you'd find on a map if you went to a website such as ffxi-atlas.com.

Example of what my west altep map looks like now.

Also note that this doesn't magically give you the maps you don't have, if you don't have the map of an area... yeah.. you still won't have the map of that area, quit being lazy! And enjoy :)

Black Mage.. SOLO ONRY

First off let me apologize, due to finals I haven't been on FFXI much or posting but finals will be over soon.

I never considered black mage a big solo job, well I knew they could sleep, nuke, sleep, nuke but that's not exactly a way to gain a consistent amount of experience points per hour. However I discovered a new method I was experimenting with yesterday in which a black mage can solo and gain as much experience points per hour as an average xp party setup.


This trend seems to be becoming more popular since I begin reading and seeing it more and more and it's really an awesome way to gain xp. The DD role in xp pts never appealed to me which is why I turned to solo jobs like bst when I wanted to level a DD job however I may turn back to blm now that I have this new and fun way gain xp.

Here's how blms can do it:

- You find a camp with beastmen monsters that are much higher than what you'd normally fight in a 6 person xp pt, this camp has to have at least 1 beastmen monster that has a pet (smn, bst), whether it be an elemental, goblin's leech, rarab, or whatever, any pet will do.

- Now since the pet is always a few levels below the level of its beastmen master, if the camp you chose is good, the pet of the beastmen should be right in the level range of the monsters you'd normally fight in a xp pt at your level.

- Ok now here's the real trick, if you pull the pet of the beastmen while the beastmen has its back turned, you can pull just the pet. And so long as the beastmen doesn't turn around or see its pet fighting you, it will go about its business.

- Pets of beastmen monsters have very low HP, at my level it's around 500-600 HP, which means a few blm nukes can wipe them out fast, as little as 20 seconds. Once you get above 50 and learn ancient magic, you can one-shot these pets. Either way you can pull off consistent chains this way, just as a normal xp pt would.


Once the pet is dead, the beastmen monster will summon a new pet within 30 seconds, and you can use that time to rest and recast anything you need to. Now obviously this isn't without risk, it is soloing afterall. Since you're in areas that have monsters that are much much higher than you'd normally have to deal with, things can and will go wrong.

• - If you get aggro from something else in the area, while fighting/resting.
  
• - The beastmen turns to face its pet as you're casting a spell
• - You get resisted too much and can't kill the pet fast enough

...Or any other number of things, you could find yourself eatting dirt. Of course black mages do have some things that can help them such as elemental seal, sleepga, warp, but usually when dealing with monsters this high above you, aggro = death. Soloing will always be risky, however that's where half the fun comes from, just reraise yourself and continue. Now this strategy isn't limited to just black mages either, other jobs like blue mage can do this too.


What you need to get started:

• - A desire to level blm, duh! Without wanting to level black mage and spend alittle gil on equipping yourself with decent gear then forget this.
• - Decent gear. Yes while true in soloing you have no one to impress but yourself, this strategy heavily depends on not getting resisted and doing high damage fast. Magic Attack Bonus and +int gear / food helps a great deal. Also you may want to look into spell interuption/HP/Vit/Def gear as before 50+ you will most likely be getting hit.
• - A ninja sub! Yes while blm/nin may look silly to people, it's what you need to survive! Before 50+ it's almost required to have nin for utsusemi. This is because you can't kill the pets in one hit before 50, so in order to get those 2-3 spells off to kill the pets, you'll need shadows up (SS and blink don't cut it). Also with a nin sub you can dual wield wand for a nice boost in stats. By the time you hit 50+ you can go back to a whm or rdm sub.
• - The ability to take risks and try something new. Yes this is different than the normal xp pt style and soloing again is very risky. You will die, probably lots of times before you get the hang of soloing. You can think you know this game well enough to do this perfectly, but soloing definitely takes practice to get good at.
• - Reraise earrings. No explanation required, you'll need one, especially subbing nin may wanna consider a few hi-potions or HP drinks.

Well that should give you a good overview of the solo life of a black mage, I look forward to getting more into this when I get more time to play. I hope some of you aspiring blms out there may choose to give this a try too. Here is an awesome camp guide for blm solo camps that so far has worked out great for me, I'll keep you updated on my blm solo experiences as time goes on.

Birdgallo strikes again

Oh crap he found me!?!

Crazy exp

I think this is the most exp I've ever gotten on a single mob.

Mommy Dearest

I've decided to start another Chocobo. My first one has long since been retired after i ignored it for 30 days then had to wait through a lifetime of c/s then i left it for another 20 days and decided I hate him as much as he hates me.

Day 1: My chocobo hates me already.

Action Shot

Just wanted to post something since it's been a while.

Bahhh ram ewe

Time to make gil. I've decided that doing all my teleport scroll quests will net me enough gil to help me out till after christmas. Since all i need will be mea, dem and holla i can sell the other 3 for money. Arcaus and I were doing the holla one and i accidentally got us tele-holla by mistake. So we decided to check out the area for Bloodtear, by luck he was up and just stomping around. I like a fool just attack it. Unlike last time tho he's a pushover. I get him to 40% before I decide we need more manpower to finish it off. A quick shout on the ls and lovslayer along with Capone come to finish it off. No drop but it was fun. That fight was Seriously Madaru.

Next week on Pimp my Rdm

As you all know we have a new member to the ls Bugman. When i found him in Windy he was in a sorry state, all meelee gear with only his Windy ring that had any stats for a up and coming Rdm. Bad loldrg Drachonus, I'm pretty sure Drach showed Bug the exit to Windy and warped away. After a quick shopping trip Bug was ready to roll, but alas he had a war sub and a gimp one too. So i gently persuaded him to go level white mage(with my Hornetneedle). Now a few weeks later he has Whm 26, can get around from Jeuno to Windy with no problems, and is rank 4.

So last night i was bored so i went to Yhoator to see Bug. His party had just disbanded and he fell down a hole right under a overgrown rose. I found him and he asked if i could take him to Norg. Was he in for a treat. We get there and all the pirates make fun of him but he zooms around and eventually gets tuckered out.

Well keep on checking for updates to this taru rdm and i'd like to thank Windy Wheelz and Vana'diel Customs for the awesome job they did. :P

5-1 The Moogle Army Way

Last night as I was avoiding writing an argumentative synthesis paper as long as I possibly could I was up late finishing a round of helping people out. I can't remember everything I did but sometime after helping a LS member, Bugman, camp the bomb king in horotuto I went over to help Vitrolant farm his last Bomb Queen pop item, the Bomb Queen Core along with Xenojin, Doctordub, and later Jeangallo. Later on after that Jean and I went over to Waughroon Shrine to help Ronhiroishi complete his samurai AF3 quest joined by Vampslayer, Xeno, and Seyunkaduka. After this busy day it was around 2am and I had thought we were done with everything everyone could possibly want to do, but then Mercades, Aricelia, and Komieheto wanted to do their misison 5-1 bcnm in Fei'Yin.. orz

Now I had told merc I would help him through all the missions that require it and I wasn't about to go back on my word, I was just so damn tired. I didn't remember this bcnm at all, I remembered monks were good for it and there was a skeleton.. or two.. but that was about it. Well by the time this fight was assembled we didn't have any monks, hell we didn't even have any job that could tank. Our setup was drk/war, drg/blu, blm, rdm, whm, whm - my first thought after hearing this: we're so gonna fail.

Preparing to enter the match

Ok well we all got to the bcnm and decided Ari should tank as drk seeing as how she was the only one in the group with provoke and arguably the most successful chance at tanking. Nextly I noticed komie was wearing his whm AF and said he didn't bring any 50 cap gear... things are looking better! When we get into the BCNM we have no real plan except that ari tanks and that we all focus on the main NM, we kind of forgot about the 12 or so other skeletons that accompany the NM running around whacking away at you.

Look at that kickass drk tank!

By this time it was close to 3am and I was half asleep so I don't remember much details of the fight. But we really had no plan of what to do with the links, only kat decided to sleep them with his blue mage skill sheep song which would've worked, had they not been awaken by multiple AoE attacks. Ari, Kat (drg), and Jean remained focused on the NM while komie and I kept them alive while dodging links and merc ended up kiting the links for as long as he could since he had all the hate and lasted for the majority of the battle. Eventually we ran out of mp, the links caught up to the kiting blm merc, ari died, followed shortly by the backup drg tank kat, so it was just us whms and jean left.

During the fight, Merc kiting the adds.

The NM still had a good 20% or so left by the time every DD died so jean and I took out our club and sword and began whacking away at the NM. Two benedictions and a few cyclones and seraph strikes later.. amazingly the NM died and we won. That was the craziest 5-1 run I did, the setup was so.. awesomely bad. It was seriously madaru.

I'm tripping

So as i was waiting at the guild to get my hands on a fresh delivery of zinc ores, I realize it feels all too familiar. Then it hits me this is like camping for a ps3 so i run screaming! I guess ill just try craigslist for some ore, I'll probably get robbed in a parking lot at 1 in the morning.

I've been as busy as a Wespe

I managed to get charmed and kill who I was aiming for! Too bad Jedi went all crazy on me.

I finally finished Promy-Holla and get to Lufaise Meadows where I was promptly mugged. By those dirty taru.

I don't know where I am but it's neat and it took us a hour to get there.

And finally we got Vampslayer her Evoker's Horn early this morning ^^. This is why I should keep a stack of Echo drops on me at all times, so Elov doesn't die.

7 amaru!

So i get woken up at 7 am cause Mogwae's LS Kazoku get this fellow. By the time i show they have a solid dozen there to help so i watch FI twiddle there thumbs. If i pretend its only JST then its midnight and I should be playing so I start my day early really really early. 

O-Hat.... O-Noes!

I've done two ohat runs in the past and they're generally chaotic situations getting 18 or so people through a zone with monsters that aggro a 75 to get to a spawn point that's surrounded by even more dangerous monsters but this run yesterday was fairly better. First off it was organized by Jean who did an excellent job and we actually got everyone to the spawn point with only a few deaths. Nextly for at least half the time there was another LS called Templar that was farming eyes so they were taking care of links and keeping the area cleared.

When we were organizing the run we didn't have enough people in Moogle Army to do the run alone so jean picked up a bunch of random people to help, unfortunately the only reason they were really helping was because pretty much every last one of them had a cluster wanted an ohat of their own. This still wasn't enough so we coordinated with Itachikun and teamed up with the CoVs LS to create a full alliance for the fight. Only downside to this was they also had 4 people who needed their ohat.. so adding the 5-6 random people, the 4 people from CoVs, and Jean, Bermont, and I that was roughly 12 to 13 Ohat runs. Shit.

Well knowing that it was extremely unlikely this alliance would last for all 12 fights I volunteered to go first and be the "wipe tester" figuring I'd be the one to take the risk (losing my beloved cluster) but also be rewarded first if we succeeded. Well they say the first run is always the worst because people need to warm up with what they're doing and this is no exception. It started out nicely, going slow (compared to runs to come later), but steady and I was very optimistic.


I don't quite remember the particular order of events to follow during my fight but it went something like this: The tank died, which sort of started the chaos. Now stun is a very important part of the fight, this is why when you go on an ohat run.. you make sure you have plenty of people who can stun. Well the stunners somehow managed to miss stunning a Firaga III... twice.. followed by missing a Flare. This killed more people and created more chaos, however the whole time the kind Templar LS was looking on and prepared to jump into the fight. We cycled Templar members into the alliance to replace those who had left or died or disconnected and slowly but surely we took down the NM to get my ohat. I think we scared the main tank because he disconnected and never came back, we had to bring some new ninjas after that.


After that the rest of the fights improved with each time, we continued to bring more people down to fill in for gaps and ended up having a surplus of people wanting to get into the alliance at one point. There was a bst there who helped take care of links once the Templar LS left. We managed to do 4 more fights after mine, Bermont and Jean both getting to do theirs that night. There was a run in which someone called for help on one of the random peoples run which was pretty chaotic as we all had to logout and start all over again (took about 30 minutes to). Jean's run was similar to mine because by that time a lot of people had left and we only had 1 tank and less manpower but eventually he got his too.

Rant Warning:

I would've happily stayed until every last person who brought a cluster had got their ohat and that was the plan. The only reason we stopped was because CoV was getting annoyed that their members weren't getting their ohats and they decided to leave. Tso start, we /random before each and every fight to determine who goes first, highest going first. Yes.. that means every person going whether you're in Moogle Army, CoVs, or a random member has a fair chance at getting to go. Nextly, CoVs wasn't fully capable of doing this run by themselves, neither was Moogle Army, that's the whole reason we teamed up and grabbed some pickup people, together we were all able to bring down this NM, no one is entitled to go more than another person, whether you had this as a scheduled event or not. Jean was the one who led and organized this entire run in the first place and also got low /randoms on nearly every run we did.

CoVs made the accusation that Jean wasn't entitled to an ohat because he couldn't wear it yet... ... ... ... ... ... I find this kind of funny because someone from their LS attending to the event... taking up a valuable spot in the alliance (for the first run).. happened to be a lvl 49 monk. Not only was that a waste of space in the alliance, a job that was 21 levels away from being able to wear an ohat (not even the halfway point), but if anything a person that didn't need to be there. He was kicked from the alliance and made to watch the rest of the battles never getting a chance to go, but again had the chance to /random every battle regardless. Leaving an event just because you're not winning the /randoms and getting to go right away when we were all willing to stay till everyone had their ohat is immature and selfish of CoVs. Besides they have one of their members that got an ohat who did manage to win a /random against the 10 other people that needed it... could've won more if they stuck around.

End Rant.

I can't say I was seriously madaru at CoVs because all the Moogle Army members got their ohat! Bermont, Jean, and myself, congrats! And I thank bass, sey, ita, the Templar LS, random people, and CoVs.... for helping out. :)

Shattering Stars Rdm I don't wanna ; ;

Kyss decided to help me get another Rdm test and to show me how it might go down. It was pretty spot on. /runaway

I really like Sky

This had to have been the best part of sky so far.

/goodbye Galka

Merc and I were just wondering how many goblins it takes to kill a galka.. we got our answer.

Blackhook and Silverbeard

I really hate Blackbeard and Silverhook, they're perhaps the most annoying 21-24 hour NM spawns in the game. These two NMs each have their own 21-24 hour timers, however that really means nothing because when the window of one NM is open, there's a chance that EITHER NM will spawn on the next pirate attack of either one of the ships. So really, in one 24-hour period it's possible to see 2 blackbeards or 2 silverhooks instead of one of each. It's impossible to camp both spawns too, while you're on the boat from Mhaura to Selbina, the boat from Selbina to Mhaura is also going at the same time, and even if you use teleports and catch every single boat that goes from Mhaura to Selbina, there's still a chance you'll never see Blackbeard because Silverhook could've spawned in Blackbeard's window! argh!

Me attempting to solo Blackbeard

I've only seen Blackbeard once, which was the very first time I decided to camp him. That's whats been driving me crazy, I've yet to see him again and due to the way the windows work, there's a big factor of random luck involved. It's pretty easy to tell if pirates are coming right when you zone in. If the chatlog appears above the black screen for several seconds when you zone in and the doors are immediately targetable you know the pirate instance is loading. I've now made several attempts at trying for this NM with various LS members, the latest being half an alliance, and I've never seen Blackbeard a second time... even right after a maintenance when both windows are open...

Blackbeard camping with the LS

Yes... I really do hate Blackbeard and Silverhook... and the damn nice whm clubs they drop. But I haven't given up yet. I will admit, I'm Seriously Madaru!

And that's how we wasted 30 minutes of our lives

When camping meant smores and Beanie weenie

I recently went farming with Lopsider. Running through Korrokola killing slimes, checking to see if Dame Blanche was up or beating a certain fataru dragoon galka to the ???. Thanks to my trusty Bano del sol I was doing some nice damage to the slimes. I feel it's a must have dagger if you spend any time killing jelly type mobs for slime oil, for silent oil synthesis. So that night we got about 4 stacks of slime oil. That's gonna net us about 40k per stack of slime oil once all is said and done, might be a bit more if he only synthed on firesday facing 3 degrees north by north east. Ya know everytime he uses a silent oil I sorta feel like hes dipping into our product, he might have a problem O.o.

Later Loppy was on and I was bored as usual so we head on out to Kuftal. We also trick Doctordub, Dmkamikaze and Xenojin into coming. Not wanting to feel left out I sub my gimp 12nin. We get to camp(which is 3 square feet of safe space) and just start killing. It's slow going since I have only so much MP, Utsu is useless, and there is just so much Galka NPC to cure >.< . Let's just say i got the 1k I needed to get 68, 10 exp at a time. At about 4 in the morning Mogwae comes by to show off his new Rain Hat. By this time Dm has already died once, His fancy ninja moves did not impress that sabotender. Mog bids farewell at about 5:30 cause this thing won't pop. Then true to NM law it pops 2 minutes later. We are fighting a cactuar while it pops and Dm vokes it for claim and i sleep the add. Dm is tanking pretty well till we get two more adds. NPC main heal ftl. Xeno HP's and starts running back. I ask this RDM who has been afk all night for a raise and we're back in the game. After a lot of screaming, escaping, and zoning we get back to a unclaimed Mariachi. With GS standing by we didnt want to chance them taking our rare/ex dagger, so we aggro it and wipe. I had 1 charge left on my rr hairpin so my plan was foolproof. So I wake up Mog and he heads back to come help us wipe again. Once the GS raise us all and cure us we wait till the time is ripe to strike. 8 minutes later Mog's 2 hour is up and we go crazy cheering Mog on as he solo's the Nm for us. So 14 deaths later and thousands of exp lost we get:

I was Seriously Madaru!

Death and Challenge

I suppose you could say I'm spoiled because I have the ability to raise III myself everytime I die but I don't mind death, and I didn't long before I had the ability to cast r2 and r3. If you ever wanna test your ability to cope with death, I suggest you level bst to 20, that's a true test right there. What I mean to say is I don't mind an honest death, a death where everyone involved knew what they were getting into well before the fight, everyone knew their role, everyone put forth their best effort, and overall an honest attempt was made yet the result was unsuccessful. An honest death is acceptable to me, as opposed to a stupid death which I'll save for another post. These honest deaths are made possible because we're presented with a true challenge.

Bermont, Kiris, and I dead in an attempt to trio a rdm AF3 NM.

Challenge is something I've begun to experience ever since I started getting more into the Chains of Promathia mission series. This is a huge huge change from when I did the Zilart mission series. In Zilart, we were able to walk through those missions in 2 days with the help of a few level 75's for the missions. And once Jean, Merc, and I were done with our 2-day sky run, we went back and brought 10 or so other LS members up to sky too with little difficulty. Zilart is a series where you can have your hand held through it, CoP presents you with a true challenge. First off, the majority of its missions are level capped, right from the start, so there's no lvl 75 hand-holding, everyone's on equal ground for nearly every mission. Nextly for the level caps imposed on you for missions, the difficulty of the missions are understandably much harder. These missions require proper setups, strategy, and coordination to get through, even the very beginning missions, the promyvion runs, require a fair amount of effort to get through.

Moogle Army's Successful Sky Completion

CoP has often been criticized as being too hard and because of this it has been viewed as a failure of an expansion pack. I agree with this to a certain extent, I agree that the level cap put on some missions doesn't neccessarily match the level of experience required to complete a mission. For example on the promyvion runs, a fresh group of players who just hit lvl 30 technically could do the promyvion runs, but they most likely wouldn't succeed just due to the level of strategy and effort required to get through it. In that sense, CoP can be viewed as almost too difficult. However looking at the number of people who do proudly wear a CoP ring or walk around Sea, obviously it's not imposs ible to get through CoP, just challenging. Also due to the level caps it required people to have gear for a lvl 30 job, and a lvl 40 job, and a lvl 50 job, and so on which also frustrated many players.

I recently had the opportunity to do a Phominua Aquaducts run (CoP 2-3) with two linkshell members Jedimasta, and Xenojin. This was the first mission in a long long time where I felt unsure about the outcome. I was alittle unprepared going into t he actual fight as I wasn't expecting to be warped to the area with the Minotaur and have him immediately start pummeling on us but it was a fun fight. We did lose both a pld and a nin during the fight because of an instant-death ability that only has a random chance of being prevented but we did successfully kill the Minotaur. Overall my experience with CoP has been enjoyable. I'm not even finished with the second chapter and the story already shows some promising things to come, also the missions not only being something completely new to me but providing a real challenge just makes the series even better. I look forward to progressing in CoP.

CoP 2-3 Minotaur Fight

The Beginning

The FFXI blogosphere is huge, I never realized how many blogs related to player experiences in FFXI actually existed until just a few days ago. I thought it would be a fun thing to do and participate as well :). Leading a big social LS and doing as much as I do in one day I always have a lot I want to say and now I have a place to do it. But I didn't wanna be alone... at least not like that one time in besieged...

Anyway, I wanted someone else to share the space with and help fill it up with stories, ideas, pictures, thoughts, and all that. Jeangallo is someone who's active in the LS, he also likes to document his experiences in the game by screenshots. He also has a very unique and crazy perspective on the world we all play in. I think together we'll make a very enjoyable and entertaining weblog to read.

So do keep checking in, and pass along the word that this blog exists, hopefully our posts will keep you coming back for more. :)

Help me out!

I was looking for ffxiclopedia.org i must have taken a wrong turn in pashow.