Happy Belated V. Day.

Not much to report at this time.

Been studying up on Prommy V. fun fun fun.

Went out to dinner and hit the bar for drinks last night. I dont drink very often so I'm a cheap date^^.

In ffxi news:
Came to the conclusion that I cant level brd and nin and participate in LS events, going through COP crap while trying to maintain an exp buffer on BLM, somethings gotta give.
I never really believed people when they sid COP could destroy LS's, Statics, Friendships and cause people to quit the game entirely but I see it now.

To Quote someones thoughts on COP:

I like that assesment. I haven't met a player who has completed CoP that I considered to be any less than very good. They were good learing tools for stealth, teamwork, kiting, fast DD, hate control, basically for everything that a good end-game player should have. It's a far better measuring stick and right of passage than ZM ever hoped to be.

Thank god the CS's rock lol .. COP has been fun as hell so far even when I want to wring peoples necks for running into the maze in Sac. w/o sneak on for the umpteenth time. Come very close to blowing my lid over these "random" acts of noobness but we always seem to pull together in the end. As we near the uncapped portions its good to know that some will be forced to play jobs that they have more time invested in and clear up some of the confusion about how to do what needs to be done. And even better yet RR2 gorgets lmao...

I cant wait for this to be over so I can focus on my time in the LS again gotta get them points up ^^

Also I started a second blog for SS's and one for my renders/silly shit etc..
Xy's ScreenShots
For the SS archive
Time Played For my renders etc.. going to try to do something weekly like a mini comic

Doing this because I live with dial up and post images at work, would be nice to update the main blog from home ^^

COP 4-3 Complete!

Yay!
Smooth like silk first round.

Went on a second round for a fail. We would have won but some miscomunication and a loss of focus bit us in the ass. I dont mind that some want to be "leaders" of this merry band but they need to listen when spoken to.

Break down of fail:
@ 1 Telling the blm to sleep ghosts.
Now I told them over and over blm+sleep+ghost "can" work (or so i'm told) but its a bad idea on several levels #1 creates hate, #2 "if" it should stick it wont last for shit, #3 if it requires ele seal congrats you just blew a 10 minute ja on 30 seconds of sleep before the blm gets its ass kicked and has 0 chance of it happening again. Now since there was no way in hell I was wasting ele seal on sleep they TOLD the blm joining this round to do it, I told her dont bother and somewhere along the way she started spamming failed sleeps until told to stop by the same ones telling her to do it.... BRD yes, BLM {No Thanks}
@2 We lost one voke from win team.
This lead to the blm sleep debacle but it should not have affected the outcome.
@3 Someone told vip to only tank the pupils.
Yes he was supposed to voke the 2 pupils, but miscommunication had him doing only that, not DD'n the prof. How this changed from "Throw vokes at the pupils to keep them off the mages" I can only guess.
@4 People forgot to use poison pots and still didnt use them after being waken from sleep.
Jesus jumped up fucking christ c'mon. Well I suppose some kept running into maze w/o sneak ....
@5 Nin poked a formor.
With those damned ghosts teleing around the room its no big deal hell I had a few formors targeted by mistake. The Formors wyvern took a shine to me so that caused my death #1 of 3.

We got him under 10% even with the clusterfuck, not bad at all. Hell take away the wasted mp on cures for sleep, poor vip thinking he couldnt engage the prof and aly casting sleep I think we would have won and very smoothly. Oh that sounds like my telling vip to throw vokes and aly not to sleep dont it?


I understand some peoples need to be a leader but trying to treat this like Dynamis or HNM wont cut it. Maybe if the "leader(s)" had vet status on these missions but they dont. When you have 8 people in the group bullshit comments like LS for leader chat onry" wont cut it because regardless of the chat color if you wont listen to what people say you just plain wont fucking listen. Its a static and needs to be treated as such, everyone contributes, everyone is an equal partner. If someone has a lvl 75 job and tells you something just wont work dont make him repeat himself for a week across LS and Boards only to shut up about it and start again when another person with the same job pops up. grrrr

Dont get me wrong I love and apreciate the static however I will say it takes alot for me to hold back and not go off on a few of them sometimes.

Gyro's mmmm

http://cruftbox.com/blog/archives/001184.html

http://www.poubelle.com/butterpig/archives/000170.html

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_30420,00.html

http://www.astray.com/recipes/?show=Homemade%20gyros

http://www.sheepscreek.com/recipes/gyros.html

http://recipehut.homestead.com/GyroMeatLoaf.html

http://www.netcooks.com/recipes/Sandwiches/Gyros.html

Dynamis Lord Toasted.

Poor guy never knew what hit him it took "moments" to put his ass down.

Big grats to all who were there teamwork +1.
Shadow Mantle dropped ^^

Sexy new title indeed! I forgot to haul the usb drive to work to post pics so I'll have to up them tomorrow.

Spent last night farming or I should say attempting to farm codexes for swift belt run, death, fun, excitement ... we did get one to drop and I won the lot. Popped my exp ring before we started so I at least covered all exp lost. Passed out during the run 4-5 hours of tauruses did me in I guess.

Made our first attempt at 4-3 a few nights ago, horrid mess I hope the next shot goes a bit smoother for us. At least we got an idea of what goes on.

Been busy playing with FFXI Rendering since my connection is crapping out regularly.



Nin is still @ 73 only two short levels till merit machine time /hurray! I'm debating using nin for LS activities and shelving BLM for good, at the very least going to a very basic utility gear set on it. I had wanted nin to merit, spend on blm but as usual after a week or two of blm I'm bored as hell. Nin really doesnt excite me much either anymore, I think its just my general mixed feelings about hitting the leveling wall with no where to go or maybe its just the grind of the ToAU areas ez exp has bred a new wave of lazy players.

The problem of course is that LS activities would demand me to come as the more usefull blm (never enough blm) over nin. Then again I'm in the LS more for fun than gathering points for gear, hell it would take me a very long time to build up lock in points vs. the others so getting my hopes up and dreaming of new toys would lead to little more than frustration.

Still need to finish thf28, sam28 and maybe drk7 to 37 for a well rounded sj pool.

But I have a plan^^ I call it Bard .... lol

Got the gear together for brd now just need to find the time to get rolling on it.


I'm still going to level rng again (in the semi near future) I wanted rng up for COP stuff but I am soon out of the level capped areas so its priority has dropped.

FotoShop Phun.

Got bored made myself a sig ..



Then one for a friend




And after seeing some nifty rendered stuff .....



LINKY to the full sized render

Dynamis-Booby Prize. or, The place with the Zu's from Hell

Went on my first Dynamis-Buburimu last night and actualy enjoyed it.

Suprisingly simple to get to the {Mega Boss}, we wiped on the first try at him when he tore ass towards the mages from the start. Smoked him after a RR. Pulled Nightmare Crabs after that, another very easy section.

Then came the birds.

I dont recall their name, most likely blocked from my memory like a tragic childhood event. I wondered why a dozen or two were following the puller, I decided that the puller wouldnt mpk us and tried to sleep them, I noticed they dont sleep very well and hit very hard.

I RR'd up after a minute with a good chunk of the allience dead assuming I could use RR item then ele seal sleep them. I never got to see my char stand completely up before I was toasted again. Eventualy the allience got raised up agreed that if thats the way things were we had to at least kill the one that floated around the bodies preventing RR and forcing an allience to be tractored.

That bird died fast.

Then like a dark cloud racing towards us from the horizon came wave 2 of the Evil Zu's.
I did manage to seal-sleep a good chunk of them before I hit the dirt. Wipe #3 and it was decided the night was over, at least I got a cool new title^^

Lol side note: Only 36 allowed in on this and I think we had 7-8 BLM's show up, previous dynamis experience in the main cities I saw 3-5, almost never a full party. Glad I couldnt lot because I would have been depressed with the odds.

Afterwards a few of the blm's got together and went for a burn. I popped my merit cherry, not sure were I will spend it tho. I was shown a sexy new solo/burn spot in Mt. Z, on the way there every camped was maxed, I figured we would be fighting with at least 2 other parties but no we had this tasty little area all to ourselves.



In NIN news:
Hit 72 the other day and had to log out, logged in got trial weapon but I was mini-dc'n so bad I couldnt duo latent with vip and was forced to log. Logged in the next day and decided to run to kufftal to begin unlocking/KS farm. A LS Sam joined me for some Gekko->Ten fun and we broke latent extremly fast. Sam offered to help on NM as a BRD, King came as his nin and I went nin of course and we smoked the NM. Hopped, skipped and jumped to Norg and got my shiny new WS.

Moments after unlocking Ku (I was still building tp outside of norg to try it for the first time) I was invited to a crazy jp 12-13k an hour no ring party. I was also humiliated both tanking and DD'n by a pld/nin ( joy toy having bastid) forgot to save parse but I think I barely edged by him in dmg. I Dc'd 12k tnl and got hit with the version update so I couldnt return ;;

Ouryu here we come, and Sneaky F'n Asshats

Diablos received a can of whoop ass....

on the 4th try ^^

Went 2 rounds (failure) outside of static to get a feel for it., a few hours later I went with static and on the second try we beat his ass into submission, if vip the nin hadnt 2hrd for the kill we would have made it with zero deaths, hell not even a close call^^

In other news ...
72 NIN! Gotta go get my Trial Kantana tonight and start working on that.
Started knocking out a few limit points on blm solo, slow work indeed. Not really sure what if anything blmish I want to merit, with whm and rdm both in the 60's and slated to start exp when nin hits 75 I think I would be wise to throw everything into stuff I can use across the board, MP etc... after at least one fancy AM II thats is.

Helped Lilwoody with the Yin Yang Robe NM, I guess that stupid weapon was running around for 20 minutes unclaimed while he was gathering people, got the claim, got the drop. Woody had called on some random people outside of his LS, cop group to help, one of these was a jp blm. Now this BLM waited till the bitter end to pass then JPBLM outlots woody's poor 110 with a 850 >.> with mere seconds before auto lot kicks in. Thank god whoevers pt he was in had a leader on the ball because the second that bastard got kicked woody got his robe.
Wtf. JPBLM had the balls to start bitching about it in /say

Now had this fucker actualy thought it was random lot why did he time it to steal? I mean c'mon literaly seconds before it passed, this guy hit the button as items started falling from the add that was killed moments before before YY nm died, hell even one of the YY nm's items showed up as auto-lotted before his lot. Greedy fucker.

About damned time?

It was looking to be a nice lazy night off, nothing on my plate and I was still after all this time sitting at +17k tnl 75 so I decided to try my hand at solo exp while seeking on BLM.

The last time I went to solo in this place I died a horrid death on my first pull and swore off solo exp. It should have been very easy exp, fight a rng type mob that wont melee me to death, add little stoneskin and a round of nukes for easy exp, unfortunately I linked a thf mob who stabbed the shit out of me interrupting my attempts to sleep/warp the hell out of there.

This time I packed a RR pin, no point in making potentially negative exp any worse than it needed be.

Arrived at camp, popped my exp ring wandered around till I found something that deserved to die and bam ...

O.o 414 not shabby at all, and I didn't die. It did take my entire mana pool to pull it off but the mobs have a 15 minute spawn time and with three in a room so I should be able to pace this out nicely. I managed to pull a few chain 2's and every other time I cleared the room a chain 1 never once coming close to death. Couple of hours later I was a little over 5k tnl when I got a party invite. I almost didn't take it, its been so long since I used Blm for anything other than friend or LS help, but I did. Traveled to the mire, met up with the party and proceeded to blow things up for a little bit when one member took off ; ;, his replacement arrived killed a few things then the nin and rdm wanted to go without finding replacements, we finished the rdm's {Last} and he warped then nin said it was time for her to go I was sitting at 1k so the nin stayed ....

{/Hurray!}
Nin disbands 2hrs and I look down and lead has been passed to me /sigh. I asked the party (all jp now) {Looking for members.}??{Disband}??{Leader} {Do you need it}?? and pretty much all at the same time "{Yes Please.} {No thank you} {No thank you.} ^^" So after all this time out of the "high level game" I'm no charged with being the leader of a party, what you say that doesn't sound bad? well considering I have been in a lead position few times than I have fingers to count on I wasn't exactly confident. After some begging/harassing/silent treatment and a sneaky nin who agreed to come than changed to sam before I busted him we were back in the game.

I ended up 8k into 75 with no Kirbyprime to spam {job} Thunder IV {You can have this.} to. Not a bad night at all. Ran to the AH to see if there was anything cheap that would show off my new status, a hat or staff etc.., sadly BLM gets the shaft with auctionable goods at 75 ... I was kinda hoping there would be a silly staff that ww's skill on or a crappy cap .. hell anything .. I think all there that I could find were some melee earrings so no sexy new anything /sigh.

Poked around with the merit box, not allot I am really interested in except maybe a Tier 2 AM or something since my career path is still blurry.

COP Madness. Die mammets die.

Good god this shit takes forever.

I suppose I could end the post there as it kind of sums up COP.

Got 2-5 done last night, waited on a LS party to form people were either no-show or busy or w/e. So I sent a /t to a person I heard was shouting for 2x nin help on 2-5. My old friend Vipricerpm had shown back up for the second or third time in about a year and needed the mission too so we told the guy we had his nin problem fixed. By the time we talked to him he only needed one so we sat around waiting on LS party to maybe form.

About 45 minutes later I get a tell from the guy saying that he did infact need 2 nin to fill up 2 parties so off we went.

After the comical sneaking around riverne avoiding mobs and gathering up DC'd members we made it to the Mammets BC. We kept the same party format as we did on the trip in broke allience and vip's entered. 10-15 minutes later they were dumped out very much dead.

My party went in and got shit out a bit faster than the first, we didnt even get one mammet down, a kiter lost his hold and I got gangbanged by 2x mammet oh and managed to fill the first mamets hp t full since nobody saw his transmogrify move or w/e.

Vips parties second run went much the same way as the first only quicker ^^.

Our second run smn blew off his 2hr, war did his smn forgot to take a mammet off the war kiting, war dies, smn outta mp, bst running like hell .... death. we did "almost kill 1st mammet.

Our mini-allience was pretty bummed at this point and 6 people took off, the remainder staying looked like a good set up so we agreed to do one more run and do it proper.

*at this point all meds, RR items etc.. were pretty much gone I think i had the one lone hi-pot*

NIN, NIN, WAR, SMN, SMN, WHM.

We kicked thier fucking asses.

Me vip, and the war took center, smns kited whm did his thing.
1st one down np, a little late on the yellow liquid stuck him in blm mode ...
2nd one down "I think" we lost one smn as we droppd 1st and went to voke #2, stook a bit longer than first he used the transmogrify thing twice if memory serves.
3rd 2 members dead both smn, vip and I did our nin thing and smoked his ass.



Started through all the cs into 3-3 got C.Landing NM done, did windy cs's and plan to get together to knock out the last nm and mountain climb. Probably farm up chips or w/e else is needed to prep for Diablos tonight!

We would have done the 2nd 3-3 nm but I had about 3-4 hours before work and had to log ><

No exp for me.

Logged on right before Aspi window so I ended up spending the night there, of course the bastard wont pop till last window^^

Cant do dynamis tonight, cop dynamis run so that gives me the night off to exp blm, maybe 75 is in my future ^^

Trying to get a cop static going or jump into an open slot and get that crap hammered out once and for all. Not so much for the sea/limbus/rewards but just to get that shit outta the way. The rewards are nice tho ^^.

Also trying to get ToAU missions knocked out, think i'm on the jody's acid part.

The last few thousand exp are the worst.

Bleh time to get that 75 outta the way after what? 2 years? think I started around 14k into 74

1st pt invite I didnt have enough IS to use the runic portal so while looking for a brd we went out and smacked birds, while we were out there the nin commented on what a great set up we had for EMN in boneyard so after some discussion we headed there instead. 1st trip up the mountain was pure comedy, everyone splitting up, getting lost etc.. took well over an hour. We started 5/6 waiting on the whm to show and after we got the key item and he hadnt popped I d2'd the nin to go shout for 6th in whitegate.

He found someone but they didnt have the item so we had to crawl back up a second time, only 15 minutes start to finish ...

Hit the enm, smooth as silk, no good drops and parted ways.

2500 exp is better than nothing.

Took an invite last night for Manaburn {Do you need it.}
hell yes!
Mount Z, 2blm, brd and rdm. we tore it up through an exp ring took on a third blm near the end. Party was kinda short I stayed with the last blm and duoed a few more so he could get a buffer then warped and logged about 15-16k tnl. With luck I'll hammer out the rest tonight, or at least a chunk Thunder IV {Yes please}. Not sure if I will bother spend merits on it, probably just try to cap out exp.
If all else fails I can just solo the exp.

After blm its time to focus on nin's 5 levels, maybe within the next month or two I'll finaly have 2x 75.

So thats that, less time messing around with lower jobs, focus on the two higher ones.

Maybe after they get knocked out whm and rdm will follow (both 60+)
RNG at 40 now going to try to get that to 60 or so for capped crap, designate a day of the week as Ranger Day, still sitting on crap loads of arrow/bolt heads so all its really costing me is the price for the lumber and some crystals the HQ staves I bazzar'd thinking I would take this fast and furious went towards blm and nin ....

37 rng!

Oh yeah!
May have a slot in a static soon so I gotta stop rng for a few days to find out>< I dont really want to tho, rng has been mad fun. I was going to stop at 40 to turn around and get thf to 45 but the prospect of a static may make me keep thf on the back burner for a while, its sitting at 28.
soooo...
Thank god most of the rng crap swaps to thf ^^ Actualy I need to start leveling up the galka again, I bought him those shiny new Strike Subligar for X-mas and I havent even gone out to party him. I'll have to post a fasion shot here since they are rather sexy ...

Back to rng .. Rng life has been fun so far my only real issue is that I'm not overly cofident in my pulling abilities all these job levels and I have pretty much mage/tank/DD skills, no pulling. Last night was the sink or swim in Garbage Shit-I-Fell up against 2 Legit parties and 2 RMT parties (no clue who was at the gate).

1st pull: Learn that pulling bats from across a hole in the floor causes the bats to follow the walking path through the rooms and NOT fly across the hole linking wing rats >.> No death but close.

Party went smooth after that little lesson^^

We took the right tunnel camp and that the RMT were pulling 2 then damage both sleep one so I ended up having to pull from near the banishing gate several times, this run sucks without risk of aggro+link+fall into hole of death and cozying up to the ghosts to try to wrap a shot around a corner aint much fun either.

Party semi-disbanded about 1k to 35 2 people hit jeuno to change jobs and snag new members and off we went again. With the new people in place we eneded up averaging 6-7k and hour once we got rolling and even tho the party didnt last long it got me about 1/2 way to 38.

RNG 30 /hurray

Cracked the big 30 last night. Fun/frustrating party, we did alright considering our setbacks (things like me blink tanking as rng/nin because the war/mnk didnt care to voke very often). Ended up duo rng for a good chunk of the night no epeen stroking here other than feeling obligated to note that I did out DD ( dd damage not ranged) the drk o.O, guess those archer knives dont suck for dd lol, also note I didnt have pt misses turned on in parser so maybe he just wiffed like a mad man.

My original plan was to hit 30, switch to thf and finish that to 30 then bounce back and forth a few levels at a time till I get them both to 37. However really enjoy rng alot more than expected so I might just carry it through to 37, lord knows I have the ammo for it.

After pillaging my mules a bit more and using up some extra synthing items I was able to afford my strike subligar for the galka not only do they give me a bit more kick they cover my damned thighs^^ I cant wait to parse them in pt soon vs. rep subligar. Common sense tells me that the reps will pummel them for tp gain dot, but they look cool ...... post a pic later