The Fox and the Blau

We’ll kick off this quick update with my stats this year:

So I’ve got another 75, with a second one sitting at 72 waiting for me to bother with it. Can you guess which job is my 3rd 75?

I knew you could!

A picture’s worth a thousand words, evidently.

Been synthing for profit and working on my Moogle missions with Drgirlfriend the past day or so. I still haven’t decided what augment to get, but I’ve got a few ideas burning in the noggin.

I triggered this on accident…

Back in a few days with a more worthwhile post (or so I hope).

So at this year’s Vanafest, SquareEnix announced the upcoming year’s worth of changes and updates to Final Fantasy XI. The biggest shock was the fact that they are raising the level cap to 99… WOW! I couldn’t be happier with the news, as people have gradually been quitting or are saying they will ditch XI for FFXIV upon it’s release. Now the rest of us can lowman all of the events we want to do, since each of us has the opportunity to grow very powerful.

I came back to XI about a week or so before that announcement. Drgirlfriend and I took a 4 month break. I spent my first week leveling some subjobs up, DNC and RDM, to the current SJ level cap of 37. Then I began working on my PLD, which is resting at 37.

For the past two days, I’ve been working on getting — THIS!

Drgirlfriend asked a few LS members to come out while I was still at work to help camp Charybdis during it’s window last night. The bastard didn’t pop until hours later. Thanks to Fallenhero, Izual, Jaax, and DG for my new Joyeuse. I was really looking forward to getting one and it’s thanks to everyone staying up very late and hanging in there that I got it.

Note: NIN/DNC tank is divine for this fight. Throw in a RDM or BRD and you can duo it fairly easily. Throw in 2 RDMs and it’s almost a sure thing!

Drgirlfriend and I have finally convinced another of our good Gilgamesh friends to transfer over to Ifrit. /Welcome to Retarutarded! :O

My Black Mage hit 60 yesterday and late last night I finish up my BLM AF with the hat, thanks to DG and Keithdragoon.

Also, bonus topic: Silly Goblin climbin in a tree. You’re not a monkey! 0_0

Wow, I still can’t believe it’s taken me this long. I’ve tried to lose as less gil as possible skilling up Alchemy and have had to stop skilling numerous times due to flooding. I decided to push for 88 hard today and probably lost a good chunk of gil doing so. Oh well. I’m considering spending a night or two farming Giant Bird Feathers so I stop bleeding gil doing Icarus Wings (flooded constantly).

Did a manaburn party and a handful of hours soloing on my Black Mage and it’s now at 59.

Well, time for a quick catch up post…

-My LS, Endeavour, regrouped under a new name, Forevermore. We’ve taken some time off of events for the past month or so.

-I got PLD to 68 and then set it aside when the LS regrouped. I wasn’t enjoying it less, but I wanted to devote my free time to something else…

-Been spending my time working on BLM, a lot of it solo. My BLM is currently 57. I’ve got a lot of snazzy gear for it (Sorc. Ring, Uggly Pendant, R. Pumps, Zenith Crown, etc.)  and currently sit at 2/8 HQ staves. Really enjoying it overall and can’t wait for it to be 75.

-My friend Kelton was hacked a couple of weeks ago but has finally gotten his account returned. I’ve been reading about the hackings since they started, but it was really weird to see it happen to someone I know.

Well, it’s certainly been some time since my last update. I just survived the busiest week of the year at my job and every moment I’ve been on has been devoted to leveling Paladin. It’s been a goddamn blast! Since there’s maintenance today, I figured I’d update the ole blog.

Drgirlfriend and I went to pop the Parade Gorget NM. I told DG to bust out a heavy nuke, I Accompliced, she nuked it again, I popped a Dancing Edge and Goblin Wolfman died. Very easy with BLM75 and THF75. Gorget dropped, which made me 1/1 on it.

I solo’d the Earth Elemental fight for Paladin’s AF weapon, Honor Sword. I had gone out on THF/WAR with just my farming gear and actually got beat up a little bit. During the fight with Berserk up, it critted me for over 300 dmg! Either way, got my AF weapon done on the 30th.

As I stated at the beginning, I’ve been grinding PLD up pretty quickly. The majority of the time, I’m level syncing to the mid-30s in Garliage Citadel. Ordinarily I HATE this zone, but it’s made for a good bit of 8-13k/hr parties with and without EXP bands. Every time I get into a party, I seem to go up 3-5 levels. It’s made for a lot of late nights.

The best part is I’ve been doing it mostly with people I knew. It really makes the time fly by.

I synthed my first Hakutaku Eye Cluster for Kelton this past week. It’s weird synthing it now over a year since we originally farmed the eyes!

Took a short break last night to help Kelton’s friend do a Garuda run. On the way there, we found an NM I knew about but had never spotted before in game. We got pretty lucky on drops.

As you can see, there was a THF soloing it when we got there. We let him have his fair shot and even Raised him after we beat it down, but the damn guy was still all butthurt over losing.

So I’ve really spent the majority of my time in-game grinding Paladin the past week or so. I’ve made it all of the way up to PLD52 now and did my AF feet last night, thanks to Drgirlfriend/Kelton for staying up until dawn helping me get it done. I’ll probably grab a few more AF pieces today before Limbus tonight.

Here’s a few shots from the AF fight, which was a breeze with a couple 75s.

So I’ve started this along with Drgirlfriend. So far, it’s ok. Like many other people, I’m somewhat disappointed in the constant fetch quest missions that we saw with ACP.

Took a break from grinding my PLD with Kelton’s MNK to try for his O Kotes. The results after less than 2 hours of camping?

Excitement!

JEALOUSY!

I can’t believe we were that lucky. I thought this was going to be the first of many nights camping the gloves.

Playing catchup here for nearly a week, so I’ll be fairly brief today.

On Monday, SE released the Summer update and I’m personally pretty pleased with it (alliteration is fun). They’ve finally finished Campaign, with the bodies, new ranks, and Union system. I snagged an Iron Ram Hauberk the first day because my WAR had nothing like it. Unfortunately, since they added drops to campaign, a metric shitload of people  invaded the usually peaceful campaign battles and cockblocked anyone from making much that night.

So Drgirlfriend, Keithdragoon, Kelton and I headed up to the tree to mess around/skill up. I went WAR/SAM to put it’s tanking chops to the test. I had leveled SAM to 37 pretty much solely on Fields of Valor a couple of months back and basically shelved it. After playing around with it that night, and tanking the majority of the mobs, I’m really looking at Paladin again. Oh, and Sword 206.

We also explored Beaucidine (S) and Xarcabard (S) briefly, unlocking teleportation to those zones and watching people being eaten by the new flying dragon, Amphiptere. It was cool seeing some of our server’s most elite players dying to simple things like aggro. Overally, this was a blast. I know that there won’t be many/any new areas that give off this sense of exploration for the rest of XI’s life, so it’s also bittersweet. I can just remember how fun it was running around Aht Urghan’s areas that first night…

Later that night, I got invited to be the syncee for an lsmate’s Astral Burn party. It involves training a LOT of mobs into a tiny spot and having a few Summoners Astral Flow all of them to death. I’d never done it before, so I said sure. The pictures below show the end results!

As you can tell from the last picture, the second run did not go nearly as well. I still got 5 levels on my BLU, though!

I now interrupt our regular blogpost for a blast from the past!

We now return you to our regular blog post…

The next day, I gave Drgirlfriend a small loan to push her over the top and she bought her Terra’s Staff. She’s now 8/8 on HQ staves. We also farmed her Garliage Citadel coffer key so she could get her last piece of RDM AF, the Warlock’s Tights. Now that her RDM is approaching 70, she’s using it in campaign a bit on the side and seems to finally be enjoying campaign more. I know that’s pretty hard to do on BLM.

As I stated earlier, PLD’s got my fancy currently, so I geared it back up with what was available from the AH and my mules, and duo’d with Kelton last night. We got a few levels (@28 now) and burned some rings with FoV in the Dunes before calling it a night on that.

WHO WEARS SHORT SHORTS?!?

We finished off the night with me showing Kelton how the FoV Augments work. We hit up Behemoth’s Deminion and duo’d the mini-Behemoth Gudanna there with great ease. I got crappy augments on my Warrior’s Belt +1, so I NPC’d it. Kelton got Earth resistance +2 on his Legionnare’s Mitts, so not bad, but not necessarily great, either.

Last night, after a hearty nap that followed a fun day at work, I logged in just in time for Limbus. We had enough people to split again and my team went to Temenos North. We were a little light on the DD side, but we made it to the next-to-the-last floor without any major mishaps. An avatar that was summoned right after a Sleepga went off beat down our fearless leader Avoo and then turned to the Paladin who stayed behind to Raise her. We were left with a couple of support mages, Aarwyn on Samurai, and myself on Thief.

The Temenos North boss fight has you facing off with 5 Goblins. It came out pretty close, but with our mages on their toes and us whittling the gobbies down as fast as we could, we pulled out of it with a victory. Loot gained: 1x WHM and 1xTHF. I already have Hands and Feet, the only pieces worth really bothering with, so I passed on them so another member could improve their setups. Overall, this tight run was a lot of fun.

Later on, my buddy Keithdragoon poked me, asking me if I wanted to work on Wings of the Goddess missions. Our friends Acc and Tarcuanium (who helped DG and I get through CoP very quickly) were willing to lend a hand. Unfortunately, DG and I were only started in Windy’s storyline, where Keith had made some good progress. So we continued our Sandy missions and after some long cutscenes involving a lot of back and forth fetching for Rholont, we finally came to the battle for In a Haze of Glory.

With a setup of BLM75, BLU75, SMN75, and THF75; we just ran right through it. It was a piece of cake. The cutscenes following the mission were pretty cool, I thought. I liked the part with Rholont and his crew toppling the big orc. Here’s a few screenshots:

After a good nap, I hit the Campaign trail to push towards my next Feint upgrade. I finally got it this morning. 2 more upgrades (10 merits total) to go until a 2 minute Feint recast! Yeah, buddy!

The best thing to happen during the past day or so? My long-time friend Kelton has returned to the game and traveled to Ifrit to be with Drgirlfriend and I. Welcome back, Kelton!