Built in a Cave, from a Box of Scraps
Some sort of cosmic force out there is really pushing my black mage onward. I was resigned for the treck from 72 to 75 to take a couple weeks of off-and-on small amounts of solo work, but that’s definitely not how things turned out. Almost immediately after I showed up to do some Empress band soloing at Vunkerl, this Ablehand BLM asks me if I’d be willing to duo and level synch to him at 67, which I was. As usual, duoing with another player turned out to be much more fun. We shared some stories about what camps we soloed at and what we were doing in endgame and all that. Time, and exp, flew by. So getting base 200 exp with a ring quickly turned into getting base 300 exp without a ring due to the level synch, and my meager quota of getting about 8k exp before class turned into getting like three times that. I ended up level 73, half way to 74.
The next day, after a dynamis, some BLMs were talking about heading up to Mount Z to manaburn aga Wamoura Princes on the so-called “Zombie Hill” to get their buffers back. After the first two pulls left three people dead, myself included, I was a bit skeptical of this actually being a good way to do things. But we found our groove and I got the OTHER half of the way to 74 before the night was up. So that got me to 74. Yus!
I got a weskit for the 2 levels it’s good for. Because it’s sexy. And because it’s a good item and all that. But mostly because I just wanted to see what I’d look like wearing one. The coolness of looks is somewhat tainted by how common it is.
Also snagged a few more levels of RDM. Got it from 23 to 32 for the moment. It’s much less hateful now that I’m out of Qufim, but still pretty hateful since my MP pool is so small and I’m being expected to heal goblin bomb damage with no curaga. Sigh. The screenshot above was from a manaburn party on yhoator mandies which was weird but not ineffective.
A haiku from Kisana, regarding red mage:
Level synch away;
Staring into the depths of hell;
Red mage suffering
At least it’s almost done.
And got the Apolyton piece of the Limbus AF upgrade for my hat+1, which I’ll probably be wearing forever and a day.
Actually, that reminded me. I’m hijacking my own entry to talk about AXI, my endgame shell, for a sec.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve said anything good about AXI. HAVE I ever said anything good about AXI? In any event, I am now. AXI’s limbus program had really gotten with the times as of late. A few runs ago we started splitting up the group to farm two zones simultaneously for more boss runs and also more coins. Now we’ve managed to convince them that the demand for homam gear is, like, 28 times the demand of nashira gear, and so they’ve changed the schedule to 2 omegas for every 1 ultima fight. We do an Omega every third run now; could possibly do it even more often, but the gunpods haven’t dropped a chip in the last couple runs. So this is very, very good news for people like me that SOMEHOW have more morrigan’s gear for their BLU than homam that has been out for like 4 years.
Avid Ereblog readers may recall when I was talking about starting my own limbus group. I even posted some preliminary rules for the group. That entry went private (ie hidden) when I decided I wasn’t quite ready to declare it publically and didn’t want AXI people finding out I was going to try to steal their best limbus players. I scraped the whole idea when AXI got progressive about limbus. I figure that, if they’re going to be realistic about how many people want homam and how slow we’re currently getting it, than I can work with them on this one. So I’m slightly optimistic at having halfway decent blu TP gear sometime, oh I don’t know, in the next two years, as opposed to four.
… that wasn’t as positive as it sounded in my head. Oh well. Better keep going.
Did a little sea farming for organs and to help some peoples clean their mythic weapons. I think I’m going to do dark, ice, and thunder obis, and I have light from whm. Don’t see much use for the other four. Got a number of organs and completed the easiest obi, the dark-based anrin obi.
Also fought some UFOs for gorgets. I don’t have much to say about this other than the fact it looked freaking weird when Wise used a helix spell to make it solid black.
What else, what else…
Got my Nyzul group's discs to 100. This took an extra single run on Saturday to finish since Brimah d/c'd out of the party as we were entering on one of our usual Friday runs and so we couldn't climb without him since it wouldn't save to his disc. So the entire group is at 100 now. Not much to say about that other than to note it having happened. Next week we start doing armor floors only,
Oh yeah. During Einherjar we got a corse boss that almost immediately charmed Wiseman. So, there was a charmed Wiseman standing right next to me when I was on blue mage and we didn’t have enough time to kill the boss anyway. I would have regretted it forever if I had not done what I did. Really, after getting me killed as often as he did with his crazy antics, no jury could convict me.
You know, I'm not harshly judgemental about Kisa's sexuality, and neither should you be. But this is the second one of these from her. I'm starting to wonder.
I did this Wings of the Goddess quest Beast from the East. The quest involves no fighting; just a bunch of running around. I don’t usually go recommending quests, especially ones with kind of crappy rewards, but this was just too cool. It involved everyone’s favorite freelance Areuhat here. The screenshot I chose for Ereblog is intentionally boring as to not spoil what happens. Go check it out if you have like an hour to kill. I’ll say this about SE; their ability to make cutscenes has gone nothing but up as the game has aged.
Yep, I cropped out that specific line. Because it’s that freaking awesome.
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OH WAIT. THAT’S RIGHT. Between soloing/duoing in vunkler, doing manaburn parties, some campaigns, and begging/cajoling Valiant and Wiseman into staying with me long hours on Mount Z to kill puddings, I GOT BLACK MAGE TO SEVENTY FIVE! I actually got the final exp in a campaign battle that ended as I was crashing out of the game. That's right; I dinged 75 while not even logged on to PlayOnline. That's probably symbolic somehow.
Anyway, run: black_mage_for_glory.exe
Scanning…
Morrigan’s Robe detected! Magic damage increased. Magic damage increased some more. Field refresh systems online. Looks awesome systems online.
…
Morrigan’s Cuffs detected! Magic damage increased. Magic accuracy increased. Mockery of zenith circuits at full power.
…
Morrigan’s Slops detected! Magic damage increased. Enmity decreased. Bitter swearing about bad drop rates in silver sea remnants shields online.
So yeah. I suspect I feel sort of like how Tony Stark felt when he built that mechanical suit and started shooting down guys in a cave. A few field tests had me already hitting harder than about half the BLMs in my linkshell, and that’s without even using food or having any damage merits or obis and cheaping out on a few pieces of gear.
If only this was even close to the end; in addition to needing a solid buffer, I need a ton more merits and a lot of various pieces of gear here and there. I also plan to sink a fair amount of money into it, as I can always get the money back later if i want. I’m not sure how well I’ll stack up against the novio blms, but I’ll blow everyone else out of the water with ease. And if I ever get a novio (somehow… AXI sure won’t give me one) then it will be all sorts of game over.
It was clear I was holding off on this Ereblog entry until I got BLM75. Thank God I got it before too much random stuff piled up.
That's about it for ths week. One last thing though. I’ve hinted at it vaguely a few times in the past that I might have a super-awesome secret project in the works. I keep mentioning it so that I’ll feel more and more guilty about not getting it done. Feel free to bug me about this one if you want.