Half-Empty Promises
Erecia / Kisana DRK static complete! Straight from 0 exp on level 1 all the way to 37. There were a few mishaps and deaths, but we straightened them out as soon as we could and leveled up to 37 together. Sometimes it was just the two of us, sometimes we’d grab a noob to synch down to, and sometimes it was a full party of random people that leeched along. We stormed Qufim during the auroras and wandered aimlessly through the jungles, all the while wearing gear that would make even a dunes party cry!
1-37 makes this my furthest static ever, beating out the Cib/Ere DNCx2 by a couple levels. Strangely, despite being such an emo job, DRK was often a good stress reliever from other, more bothersome things in FFXI. Things like AXI events gone sour or bad Nyzul runs. A pretty good experience. Kisa and I have been talking about doing it again with another job, but neither of us feel very strongly about leveling another job right now so who knows.
Speaking of Nyzul, I got this thing, putting me at 3/3 for Nyzul heads. I didn’t really want it, but everyone else had passed, so… we got this on a recent 100 run that was going very sour straight up until the boss, but, through a very good showing of last-minute planning and teamwork, managed to beat the boss in a fairly epic turnaround. It was one of our better victories in Nyzul lately and I couldn’t just throw away the physical symbol of that win, even if it is pretty useless.
Unfortunately, that’s about the only good experience I’ve had with Nyzul in the past few weeks. The core group is down to three members - myself, Kisa, and Valiant. Kelix, whom has been a core member for close to a year, mysteriously skipped last week, putting us at needing a full three temporary members. And through various clawing, negotiations, and begging we filled the gaps, but the runs were clumsy at best. People not understanding objectives, getting lost, just firing off 2hours we were hoping to save for later runs… in the past two weeks we’ve had a timeout and a wipe. Unacceptable.
It’s painful. Literally, in the sense that it’s frustrating to try to find people and keep them on the battle plan. But also on a broader scale. I pride myself on Nyzul. I’m generally okay at most events, but Nyzul is my #1 strength. I KNOW Nyzul. Kisa and Val and Kelix, for all their little quirks, KNOW Nyzul. This group has climbed their disks to 100 twice. We’ve gotten a lot of the best gear, and we’ve done it with style. Looking back at past Nyzul tagged entries, I can see my own pride in being part of such a great group of players kicking ass. To see the group fall so low is a blow to me personally. I want to chew out some of the temps sometimes, show them that we said not to do something but they did it anyway, and ask wtf they were thinking, and threaten them that if they don’t shape up it’s game over for them. The problem is that I can’t, because the worst way they could hurt me is to simply say “okay, I’m gone.” That’s the bloody problem with it - I need them more than they need me. There will always be more shouts in whitegate for Nyzul runs, but there is only one group I’ll ever go with.
The three remaining core people have decided that the group is on hold again until we can find people that are more consistent and/or competent to reform with. Most of us still want some gear there so it’s unlikely that Nyzul will just be abandoned without protest, but the current situation is too bad to keep pressing on with.
Last week or so, someone contacted me in game, saying that they read on Ereblog that I was looking for members and offering to join. Unfortunately my time conflicted with his events. I’d odd using Ereblog as a classified ads, but what the hell. My group goes at 8 PM EST and does four runs in a row. If you’re on Sylph and are looking for a group to farm just armor floors, feel free to contact me. Armor currently goes free lot and some of the best gear, like goliard head and askar body, have no competition at all now.
There’s really no point in this screenshot. I just think it looks cool.
CAPPED DANCER MERITS. CAPPED CAPPED CAPPED. I actually capped a job’s merits! I’ve never done that, not with BLU even. Not shown here are capped dagger, sword, and critical hits. This setup is a good mix of solo, low-man, and merit party use. I know I bashed Closed position in the past, and I still think it’s a bit silly, but I never really found myself wishing I had 30 seconds off of either of the stances, so what the hell.
MONSTROCITY
I refuse to explain why I appear to be playing Kisa’s character and why Erecia is also logged on at the time. But I will say I enjoyed the trip.
Still waiting.
Picked these up at a pretty painful Ultima run. They went freelot with only two people lotting them. Gee, the Ultima gear demand is so high, I'm glad we sure do those zones. It’s an easy macro on SMN but I’m still not really sure when to use them on BLM.
Aside from that, the low-man AXI shadow Limbus group is still profitable and succesful, though the last run we just blew off and went to merit because we couldn't find a 6th member. Nyzul pains echoed again. A lot of people seem to be AWOL lately...
Were that it was this easy in real life.
Every time I would make a suggestion/complaint to S, our main paladin, he always made some grumbly remark about me being welcome to come on and do a better job if he thought that I could. Well recently I got sick of this and decided to call him on it. I’ve been slowly preparing my PLD for regearing - getting a parade gorget, the Attonment weaponskill, farming a (as of yet) unused bomb queen pop. In the middle of this effort the guy left the LS outright, so now I won’t even be able to gloat about being better than him when I’m ready. Blast it all!
It does mean the LS is without a main PLD. The only thing stopping me from spending a lot of gil on PLD and regearing it and taking the position is the fact that I’m not sure I even can. The LS has a lot of sometimes-PLDs, and my attempts to use PLD before back when I actually had the gear didn’t go very well. It was fairly silly to have spent that much gil and never use it. I’m worried about that happening again. In the meantime, I’m taking things slow, trying to assemble what I need without paying an arm and a leg.
Odin 3 last Friday. People are always all “take more pictures of Odin!” but it a fight that really doesn’t screenshot well. It’s a guy on a horse being beaten on by 4 or 5 Levaiathans. I did what I could for this screenshot and almost died because of it. Pretty crappy drops this time too.
Dun dun DUN.