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.