Man, I suck.
I have to find a better way to motivate myself to update this thing. XD
1/1 on pop, 1/2 on drop (got a multi-pop Rampart).
My Salvage group has been doing quite nicely. The way we're set up, we're not newcomer-friendly, so we've really emphasized having a steady group of people going who are all in it for the long haul. We haven't done so bad on droprates, either, if you take into account the 35s we've gotten that's not a prioritized piece. Unlike other Salvage groups I know of, ours work in the way that every member pick a piece to upgrade (in my case Ares Body) and then we specifically hunt NMs for the 35s people need. So far, we've completed three pieces (Usukane Legs x2 and Morrigan's Body), but also gotten quite a few other 35s, among them Ares Hands, Skadi Feet, Ares Body and Marduk's Body. I'm working very hard these days to raise the money needed for my body.
Of course, money won't mean a thing if Long-Bowed Chariot never puts out. The thing has tossed pretty much every drop except the 25 Ares Cuirass at us. And man, oh man, are we sick of seeing the 25 Ares Mask and Skadi Feet. We do not want anymore! Give us some 25 Macha's Coats and Ares Cuirasses instead, fer Chrissakes! At the very least, our strategy is all but perfect now, and we've been successful in killing it without meds, and even with a sub-optimal number of people, a few times now. Of course, we also had an awful awful wipe at 1%, but like Glinda says, "accidents will happen." Sometimes you have a house fall on you, and sometimes you wipe to LBC at 1%. We did discover though, that SCH is f'in awesome in Bhaflau Remnants. While other zones offer greater risks for a SCH due to lack of cells (they need fucking everything to be at full strength - MP, HP, JAs, subjob, magic, etc etc etc), Bhaflau has cells coming out the ass, and having AoE -na spells, phalanx and Stoneskin available for the tanks has been beyond amazing. On normal Rampart runs, all the buffs are even potent enough that our healers have been bored off their ass, because they have nothing to do.
Recently Ultima took a stroll up in sky and I got to try my hand at tanking Faust as PLD/NIN. As always, this kinda screenshot is the best I can get of Faust when my back's against the wall. It was an interesting experience, as Faust is very much about spike hate. Overall, I must say I think I prefer /WAR, just like on regular Gods - the fights go so fast that spike hate is far more valuable to me. Though I willingly admit I'm warming up to /NIN on Kirin.
Ultima has also been messing around in various beastman strongholds a bit. We've tried our hand at the WotG BCNMs, and the orc one was slightly confusing the first time around, but in our defense there was not too much info up at the time. We still beat it, though - most of our problems came from having too many melees and feeding it too much tp. The second time around was much, much easier (and my role was much more relaxing, haha - though it was fun to tank the main NM as PLD/NIN, holding a RNG as NIN/WAR was a delicious snoozefest).
Medusa was probably the most fun I've had in the past month, Salvage aside (man, I love Salvage!). Apart from the awful walk and the stupid key farming and the truesight mobs and whatnot, I'd do Medusa every day if I could. I felt bad since this event was scheduled specifically to get people titles for their Mythic Weapons and I got my title, then the next time it was scheduled I got RL'd hard. >.< Medusa was... a real challenge to tank. It took us two tries to get her down, and the first time was, quite frankly, a fierce hot mess. The second time went much smoother as soon as me and Elvi figured out where/how to position ourselves and such. What really amused me, though, was that due to tanking with my back to her and her attack speed and strength, I found it far more effective to turtle up. Hence the fun. I have not gotten to play a "proper" endgame turtle for... I think ever. In large part due to the fact that I didn't have the gear back when it was still acceptable. Then once I started gaining more gear for myself, PLD/NIN became all the rage and nobody ever looked back. The situation was a bit absurd, and I felt a bit as if I'd stepped out of SE's AV video as I was standing there in my m body + earth staff combo... but at least I found a use for the Valhalla Helm, which I originally thought to be 100% town gear, haha!
A Jormungand was also scheduled on calendar to get titles for us newer Ultimaers, but there's not much to say about this attempt. We had some positioning problems, most of the alliance had never fought him before, and as such it ended badly at a very low HP %. It was sad, but such is life. I hope we'll make another go at some point.
Amitlu has been progressing very nicely. Though I think maybe the number of members got slightly too big, the side-effect of having those kind of forces is of course that we can now kill Dynamis Lord without problems. We got rewarded on our first one, but I do believe our second one dropped nothing but a 100 byne bill... that kinda sucked. I've been slacking on sponsorships lately, which I've been meaning to fix. However, moneymaking has never come easy to me, and at the moment I'm stretching myself pretty thin between trying to come up with 10 million for my Ares Body and gil for dynamis in addition. The increased droprates has been an amazing blessing, though. Our first Xarcabard after the adjustment yielded a whopping 3x THF, and the run with the cheap DL we ended up getting 2x PLD in the last four minutes. Having two Surcoats in the pool at the same time was extremely odd. I, of course, lotted 60-ish for the first one and 29 for the second one, but Elvier won one of them, so all is right with the world. :D
My Nyzul static has taken a break from doing nothing but boss-farming, and started climbing everyone's discs towards 100 for the Mythic Weapon quest. We unfortunately lost Onorok, so have been testing the waters with replacements. I think it's a testament to Onorok's level of GODAWESOMEKICKASSNESS that we've wiped/ran out of time on 3/6 runs since he left. Another FFXIer bites the dust for RL, which quite honestly I can't blame him for - but it always sucks to see a good friend go. Onorok, if you stop by and see this, YOU'RE THE MAN! We'll miss you a lot a lot a lot a lot. Thanks for the gift you left me.
Fuck that sad cutscene. Fuck it.
RedZeppelin finally reached his retirement day. I'll tell you, that retirement cutscene? Just about breaks me. I'm a big wuss, yes, yes, and I fully expect mockery and ridicule to come my way for this, but that doesn't change the fact that the retirement cutscene still breaks my poor wittle heart. RedZeppelin did turn out exactly the way I wanted him, thuogh - red, with First Class STR and END. The fact that he knows Gallop is a nice bonus. I've been considering racing him and eventually try for a Pullus Torque - because baby choco chicks are win - but I have so much on my plate at the moment, both ingame and IRL, that it won't be a priority for a good long while, if ever.
Another highlight of the past month has been getting the FUCK out of munchkinville. I hate Windy. No, let me say it again: I hate Windy. It's a nice enough city, but I never ever want to be Windurstian again. It's too big. Too far to walk between Mog House and OP taru. Too far between Mog House and AH. I mean, even SE clearly realized that Windy is just too big, considering they put freakin' tarus there to warp you between the zones. And it's still too big! how 'bout that?! So despite the hefty fee since Bastok was in first place, the second I had my Rank 10, Windurstian Flag and my 100,000 gil, I switched back to Bastok. It cost me 40,000 out of the 100,000 I'd just aquired, and it was worth every single gil.
Near the end of the long line of big, scary things I've gotten to play with lately, there's this guy. We haven't killed Cerberus in a long while, but recently a bird whispered in my ear that he was up and unclaimed. As luck would have it, there were enough people on ls, and I'm not quite sure what happened, but everyone raced to go. I was in a meritpt at the time, and it came to an extremely abrupt end since half of us were from Ultima. We actually got outclaimed initially by two RDMs from a different endgame shell, but their backup did not arrive in time and they both died. Garret was demonstrating his new WS, which did very awesome damage. I have my Brave Blade from Nyzul, but since my disc is currently only inscribed to floor 55, I've decided against working on my points. This was an interesting fight as we only had two stuns, and Cerberus got off quite a few Gates of Hades, but we won anyway. :) No Algol, but synth materials for everyone!
And just to round it off - poor LoO. All alone. He dropped club for Benny a few days prior, but not for me.
Sadface.
DORP
Nyzul: Jaggedy-Eared Jack, Taisaijin, Valkurm Emperor, and Bomb King. Guess which one gave us a drop?
1/1 on NM pop, 1/2 on gloves
OSHI--
Inventory -1, R/Ex collection +1
This ring has some interesting damage increases for Shield Bash. I average 70 dmg now.
959 lot. Suck it!
SO useless, but a lifelong PLD dream!!! I love Odin!
...I... love... Odin...?
Inventory another -1. R/Ex collection another +1
Oh, this is SO much more than just another +1 for my R/Ex collection!
Hey, look, legs!
I know you can't see, but that's me winning the two Cerberus Claws for Hades Sainti... Anybody know a BC 100+3 with WW + Smith 60? ^^;
Fashion Police
Congratulations Eticket, on Valkyrie's Fork!
Koga Chainmail got!
Mannequin Pumps got! (RED BOOTS!)
Congratulations Pat, on Usukane Legs!
Tidal Talisman got!
LULZ SPELUNKER'S HAT!
Koenig Cuirass got!!! FINALLY!!!
For The Lulz:
Stupid super-secret sacks.
STILL never the answer, boys!
OI FAIL!
I'd watch that.
An example of my beefed up Shield Bash damage.
1/1 on pop, 1/2 on drop (got a multi-pop Rampart).
My Salvage group has been doing quite nicely. The way we're set up, we're not newcomer-friendly, so we've really emphasized having a steady group of people going who are all in it for the long haul. We haven't done so bad on droprates, either, if you take into account the 35s we've gotten that's not a prioritized piece. Unlike other Salvage groups I know of, ours work in the way that every member pick a piece to upgrade (in my case Ares Body) and then we specifically hunt NMs for the 35s people need. So far, we've completed three pieces (Usukane Legs x2 and Morrigan's Body), but also gotten quite a few other 35s, among them Ares Hands, Skadi Feet, Ares Body and Marduk's Body. I'm working very hard these days to raise the money needed for my body.
Of course, money won't mean a thing if Long-Bowed Chariot never puts out. The thing has tossed pretty much every drop except the 25 Ares Cuirass at us. And man, oh man, are we sick of seeing the 25 Ares Mask and Skadi Feet. We do not want anymore! Give us some 25 Macha's Coats and Ares Cuirasses instead, fer Chrissakes! At the very least, our strategy is all but perfect now, and we've been successful in killing it without meds, and even with a sub-optimal number of people, a few times now. Of course, we also had an awful awful wipe at 1%, but like Glinda says, "accidents will happen." Sometimes you have a house fall on you, and sometimes you wipe to LBC at 1%. We did discover though, that SCH is f'in awesome in Bhaflau Remnants. While other zones offer greater risks for a SCH due to lack of cells (they need fucking everything to be at full strength - MP, HP, JAs, subjob, magic, etc etc etc), Bhaflau has cells coming out the ass, and having AoE -na spells, phalanx and Stoneskin available for the tanks has been beyond amazing. On normal Rampart runs, all the buffs are even potent enough that our healers have been bored off their ass, because they have nothing to do.
Recently Ultima took a stroll up in sky and I got to try my hand at tanking Faust as PLD/NIN. As always, this kinda screenshot is the best I can get of Faust when my back's against the wall. It was an interesting experience, as Faust is very much about spike hate. Overall, I must say I think I prefer /WAR, just like on regular Gods - the fights go so fast that spike hate is far more valuable to me. Though I willingly admit I'm warming up to /NIN on Kirin.
Ultima has also been messing around in various beastman strongholds a bit. We've tried our hand at the WotG BCNMs, and the orc one was slightly confusing the first time around, but in our defense there was not too much info up at the time. We still beat it, though - most of our problems came from having too many melees and feeding it too much tp. The second time around was much, much easier (and my role was much more relaxing, haha - though it was fun to tank the main NM as PLD/NIN, holding a RNG as NIN/WAR was a delicious snoozefest).
Medusa was probably the most fun I've had in the past month, Salvage aside (man, I love Salvage!). Apart from the awful walk and the stupid key farming and the truesight mobs and whatnot, I'd do Medusa every day if I could. I felt bad since this event was scheduled specifically to get people titles for their Mythic Weapons and I got my title, then the next time it was scheduled I got RL'd hard. >.< Medusa was... a real challenge to tank. It took us two tries to get her down, and the first time was, quite frankly, a fierce hot mess. The second time went much smoother as soon as me and Elvi figured out where/how to position ourselves and such. What really amused me, though, was that due to tanking with my back to her and her attack speed and strength, I found it far more effective to turtle up. Hence the fun. I have not gotten to play a "proper" endgame turtle for... I think ever. In large part due to the fact that I didn't have the gear back when it was still acceptable. Then once I started gaining more gear for myself, PLD/NIN became all the rage and nobody ever looked back. The situation was a bit absurd, and I felt a bit as if I'd stepped out of SE's AV video as I was standing there in my m body + earth staff combo... but at least I found a use for the Valhalla Helm, which I originally thought to be 100% town gear, haha!
A Jormungand was also scheduled on calendar to get titles for us newer Ultimaers, but there's not much to say about this attempt. We had some positioning problems, most of the alliance had never fought him before, and as such it ended badly at a very low HP %. It was sad, but such is life. I hope we'll make another go at some point.
Amitlu has been progressing very nicely. Though I think maybe the number of members got slightly too big, the side-effect of having those kind of forces is of course that we can now kill Dynamis Lord without problems. We got rewarded on our first one, but I do believe our second one dropped nothing but a 100 byne bill... that kinda sucked. I've been slacking on sponsorships lately, which I've been meaning to fix. However, moneymaking has never come easy to me, and at the moment I'm stretching myself pretty thin between trying to come up with 10 million for my Ares Body and gil for dynamis in addition. The increased droprates has been an amazing blessing, though. Our first Xarcabard after the adjustment yielded a whopping 3x THF, and the run with the cheap DL we ended up getting 2x PLD in the last four minutes. Having two Surcoats in the pool at the same time was extremely odd. I, of course, lotted 60-ish for the first one and 29 for the second one, but Elvier won one of them, so all is right with the world. :D
My Nyzul static has taken a break from doing nothing but boss-farming, and started climbing everyone's discs towards 100 for the Mythic Weapon quest. We unfortunately lost Onorok, so have been testing the waters with replacements. I think it's a testament to Onorok's level of GODAWESOMEKICKASSNESS that we've wiped/ran out of time on 3/6 runs since he left. Another FFXIer bites the dust for RL, which quite honestly I can't blame him for - but it always sucks to see a good friend go. Onorok, if you stop by and see this, YOU'RE THE MAN! We'll miss you a lot a lot a lot a lot. Thanks for the gift you left me.
Fuck that sad cutscene. Fuck it.
RedZeppelin finally reached his retirement day. I'll tell you, that retirement cutscene? Just about breaks me. I'm a big wuss, yes, yes, and I fully expect mockery and ridicule to come my way for this, but that doesn't change the fact that the retirement cutscene still breaks my poor wittle heart. RedZeppelin did turn out exactly the way I wanted him, thuogh - red, with First Class STR and END. The fact that he knows Gallop is a nice bonus. I've been considering racing him and eventually try for a Pullus Torque - because baby choco chicks are win - but I have so much on my plate at the moment, both ingame and IRL, that it won't be a priority for a good long while, if ever.
Another highlight of the past month has been getting the FUCK out of munchkinville. I hate Windy. No, let me say it again: I hate Windy. It's a nice enough city, but I never ever want to be Windurstian again. It's too big. Too far to walk between Mog House and OP taru. Too far between Mog House and AH. I mean, even SE clearly realized that Windy is just too big, considering they put freakin' tarus there to warp you between the zones. And it's still too big! how 'bout that?! So despite the hefty fee since Bastok was in first place, the second I had my Rank 10, Windurstian Flag and my 100,000 gil, I switched back to Bastok. It cost me 40,000 out of the 100,000 I'd just aquired, and it was worth every single gil.
Near the end of the long line of big, scary things I've gotten to play with lately, there's this guy. We haven't killed Cerberus in a long while, but recently a bird whispered in my ear that he was up and unclaimed. As luck would have it, there were enough people on ls, and I'm not quite sure what happened, but everyone raced to go. I was in a meritpt at the time, and it came to an extremely abrupt end since half of us were from Ultima. We actually got outclaimed initially by two RDMs from a different endgame shell, but their backup did not arrive in time and they both died. Garret was demonstrating his new WS, which did very awesome damage. I have my Brave Blade from Nyzul, but since my disc is currently only inscribed to floor 55, I've decided against working on my points. This was an interesting fight as we only had two stuns, and Cerberus got off quite a few Gates of Hades, but we won anyway. :) No Algol, but synth materials for everyone!
And just to round it off - poor LoO. All alone. He dropped club for Benny a few days prior, but not for me.
Sadface.
DORP
Nyzul: Jaggedy-Eared Jack, Taisaijin, Valkurm Emperor, and Bomb King. Guess which one gave us a drop?
1/1 on NM pop, 1/2 on gloves
OSHI--
Inventory -1, R/Ex collection +1
This ring has some interesting damage increases for Shield Bash. I average 70 dmg now.
959 lot. Suck it!
SO useless, but a lifelong PLD dream!!! I love Odin!
...I... love... Odin...?
Inventory another -1. R/Ex collection another +1
Oh, this is SO much more than just another +1 for my R/Ex collection!
Hey, look, legs!
I know you can't see, but that's me winning the two Cerberus Claws for Hades Sainti... Anybody know a BC 100+3 with WW + Smith 60? ^^;
Fashion Police
Congratulations Eticket, on Valkyrie's Fork!
Koga Chainmail got!
Mannequin Pumps got! (RED BOOTS!)
Congratulations Pat, on Usukane Legs!
Tidal Talisman got!
LULZ SPELUNKER'S HAT!
Koenig Cuirass got!!! FINALLY!!!
For The Lulz:
Stupid super-secret sacks.
STILL never the answer, boys!
OI FAIL!
I'd watch that.
An example of my beefed up Shield Bash damage.