Project Morgenstern: Part 2 (and some other things)

I wasn't really online much to speak of on Thursday. I arrived for a Limbus run in CS Apollyon with Keri, and we didn't do so hot. It was a learning experience - we got 1-2 coins each for the 30k gil, deathga and our troubles. Friday was promising to be rough, so we cut out early.

After the kind of week we both had, DeAnn and I were in the perfect mood to get completely hammered stay up late gaming. She brought home some Little Caesar's, I brought home some Coke Zero and we both set about getting some BLM experience with Talonshard. It was an OK party - PLD and DRK (who came as a pair), Jarvis on his BLU, Talon on his MNK and Keri and I as BLMs. Experience sat at just over 4k/hr and we were partying in Quicksand Caves on spiders and beetles for a little less than 3 hours. Everyone in the party leveled, even the PLD, who took more than a couple death-inducing Sickle Slashes to the face.

Talon's ISP has some serious issues with Chinese hackers and botnets, and is either unwilling or unable to spend the money for decent security, or unknowledgable on how to set up said security. Instead, they tell all of their paying customers that they must log off and disconnect at 11:30Est... "Sorry Mr. So-and-so, but we're completely inept, so you can't use the service you've paid for after this time every night." At any rate, once he hits that time, the poor guy must log off. He gave us leave, however, to use his character to help me get closer to breaking the latent on the Morgenstern. So DeAnn logged off Kerith and on to Talonshard. She likes to engage in (read: encourage) the sometimes raunchy late-night LS chat. It was weird to see those words next to Talon's name - it was all I could do not to take an embarrassing screenie. We hit Kuftal Tunnel for nearly an hour. I have got to be getting close on this thing.

We ended the night off with a late-night merit party. It was the first time I got to take my MNK out since getting my spiffy new crown and completing the Melee Attire set. With food and buffs, I finally got Shrade to break the 2000 hp mark. Holy +mHP Batman! I took repeated Pecking Flurries from the birds we fought and they never once sent me into the orange, let alone the red. Hell, I only hit yellow twice.

Sky gods are tomorrow. My points are so low that I'm not up for any drops, but that's OK. I need a rebuilding session and I enjoy sky events. Sometime this weekend, I'm going to need to farm, too. Almost halfway done with Lu Shang's, and if I can keep up the pace I've set, I'll have it around Memorial Day.

Melee Royalty

My work generally follows a certain pattern: about every hour, we have a rush of calls as people are arriving to work or a meeting and things aren’t working. After about 15-20 minutes, the calls die off and you get the odd call here or there for the remainder of the hour. Certain types of calls also happen during certain times of day. I get most of my LAN password reset and printer issues early in the day, while many of the SAP and report processing calls happen later. So I will typically take in a large rush of calls, followed by long periods of little to do. Luckily for me, I’ve discovered Google Books, and have been reading The Adventures of Oliver Twist the past few days in between calls.

After work, I went to pick up Clara, only to be reminded once I arrived there that she was with DeAnn for a doctor’s appointment. -.- I knew that... Really I did… I got home no sooner than I would have normally, but at least DeAnn was home before me to tank the kiddos.

Before gathering in Xarcabard for Dynamis, I went to complete the next leg of my NPC’s limit break. It involved finding a shell by excavating in Korroloka Tunnel. I got it in two or three swings, and decided to break the rest of my pickaxes there as well. Nothing pricey, but I did get a turtle shell, which NPCs nicely.

While we were gathering together, my party was talking about pregnancy. Two members in my party were expecting, Azmodius and Shadokaryuudo, and Shado is having a hard time with it. I feel for him – I remember when DeAnn was carrying Clara all too well. It was like some strange alien being had taken over my wife, turned her into a raving maniac, drained her of all life energy and instilled in her an insatiable craving for ice cubes. I joked around with him a bit. “It’s too late to save her. But you still have time. Run, and you might get a head start.” Poor guy.

We had our first wipe in Dynamis – Xarcabard pretty soon after starting. It’s pretty easy to catch aggro from half the zone and train it right into your alliance. Which is exactly what happened. We got to the first set of steps and a full-sized freight train of demons plowed the whole alliance. Considering what I had done Sunday evening, I can’t say anything, save that at least I waited until we were done and most people were out of the zone instead of the other way around. ;-P Dynamis ended with as epic a wipe as it started. We tried to pull only a few of the popped demons from an earlier sac pull. Instead, we pulled the entire ramp that popped from the sac. Made for a great screenshot.

As for drops that night, we were there for Shado’s Demoniac Fragment, which is needed to upgrade the Relic Katana, Kikoku, among the most powerful weapons in the game. We handily took down the Animated Kunai and got his fragment. We also got several relic armor drops, including the Melee Crown. That’s right: after nearly two years of trying without seeing one drop, one finally did. I’m now a proud member of 5/5 Melee Royalty – and I can finally scratch that off my wishlist.

Project Morgenstern: Part 1

It was another crazed day again at work. In the process of plugging security holes, access to rather vital documents in continuous use by hundreds of users was shut off. As I understood it, the decision was made with the notion that, if a user really needed this access, they’d call in for it. Drives me absolutely bananas that one person would sidestep what is their job, only to make three times that amount of work for several other people. I had stayed late the previous day, so I left a little early today.

When we finally settled down for the evening, Keri and I hopped on BusinessCasual and set to work on skilling up to break the latent effect on my Morgenstern. We were going to go to Kuftal Tunnel, but after learning that Keri’s sword skill was higher than I thought, we set out for The Boyahda Tree to fight the tougher crabs there. When we got to the big main room, we found there was already a party there skilling up on all the crabs. We teamed up with them and made as many skillchains as we could with other people spamming TP. Keri got several levels in sword, and learned Swift Blade and has nine more levels until she can start working on Savage Blade. Eventually Talonshard finished with Einherjar, so we all met up in Kuftal Tunnel for about half an hour of bashing crabs there. Talon and I can make a skillchain that works off the latent effect faster than the others. I might borrow his character sometime and Keri and I might go after crabs in the Tree – they live longer.

Dynamis – Xarcabard is tomorrow. On a side note, seems no one was too terribly tiffed at the WHM MPK action Sunday night. One of the LS WHMs said it’s an innate WHM trait to cause massive MPK and that everyone else just needs to be more aware when there’s a WHM around. ;-P Here’s hoping that Melee Crowns rain from the skies. >.>;

CureBot Engage

Monday was a Monday. An update was pushed out company-wide where I work, and it was causing all sorts of headaches. Processes weren’t functioning, reports not printing and jobs not running. To top it off, I got a call from DeAnn that Clara was running a temperature and that she may need to be sent home. Luckily the temperature was just under the state minimum – it would have cost me a day’s worth of earnings if it were any higher. I was nearly an hour late getting out – called DeAnn to ask her to pick up Clara from the daycare.

After some “stress relief” (;-P), we decided to cook up the hot dogs and play for a bit. Talonshard had sent Keri a message that the Goblin Archeologist was near the surface and about to pop. After much trading on our part, someone else got the trade needed to pop the goblin. Upon some deliberation, we decided to head to the sky hunt underway. I hoped I could get in some weapon skill points on my Morgenstern, but for the better part was placed outside the main alliance to keep people alive. They had taken down Despot by the time we got there, and claimed Mother Globe, Steam Cleaner and popped Brigandish Blade by the time we’d left.

I got into an alliance fighting Steam Cleaner placeholders, so I got a few weapon skills off. Sky hunts are really only good for weapon skill points if you’re a melee. For a mage job, you have to make it abundantly clear that you are there to use your weapon, not to cast magic – not very helpful in sky. I mostly soloed my club skill in Kuftal Tunnel, and duoed my Club of Trials with other people trying to skill up. I’m hoping to get a good session in tomorrow night in Kuftal Tunnel or The Boyahda Tree on crabs. WHM/NIN with Lilith’s Rod for a secondary weapon turns those crabs into MP juiceboxes.

Dynamorz – San d’Oria

Rather lazy day today. We did some minor cleaning and laundry after church this morning. Dishes hadn’t been done in two days and were starting to stink. -.- After we were done getting the few things finished, DeAnn and I sat down and headed for Dynamis – San d’Oria. I had burned off the last few stacks of insect paste bait I had on me, and along with the stacks I had bought, I had 20 stacks of Moat Carp to trade in. That’s 240 fish, or just shy of 2.5% of the quest done. I’m at about 4500/10000.

Dynamis – San d’Oria felt a little more chaotic than normal tonight. We got a couple RNG, a WHM, SMN, PLD and I think a WAR piece. I’m @2 on my WHM, so one of the main job WHMs got the lot. Once we were finished, as most of the LS were heading out, I saw there were some statues that had repopped in the chocobo stables courtyard. So, like a n00b, I drop my glass (giving me 30 seconds before the game would force me out) and attack one of them just to goof off and maybe die in an epic and hilarious way. At some point, I missed the part in LS chat not to touch those, because they would spawn 30 or so mobs. I made it out, but the tromping army of demon orcs proceeded to mash some of the remaining people into a pixeled pulp. I stayed to raise people, apologized and logged out, but Keri said it didn’t seem like anyone was too upset. I felt horrible.

Sky tomorrow, I want to go because I enjoy it and really need the points, but I also want to go level one of my other jobs or farm up BLM spells for later. I’ll see what DeAnn feels like doing and go from there.

Birthday Weekend

What a blur of a weekend! I had to work late on my birthday, but "working late" still puts me home before DeAnn. We decided to get Peng's for dinner, and made it online with all the kiddos fed just in time for FNLE - KSNM 99 Horns of War.

This fight pits an alliance against a Behemoth-type monster. In Final Fantasy XI, Behemoth (and his big brother King Behemoth) serve up a constant stream of TP moves and cast a nasty AoE high damage spell called Meteor. To win, the tank needs to run this monster up and down the hill while keeping hate and outrunning TP moves and Meteor. Meteor can be interrupted if hate changes midcast, so all the BLM's and melee start in on him when he starts casting. Drops can be very lucrative and one of them in particular - the Behemoth Tongue is needed for the Black Belt quest. We won 2 of the 3 runs, but no tongue. :P

The next day, Captsassypants got a group of SMN's together with Keri and I and we SMN burned Contaminated Colosseum. I'd been wanting to do this one for a while because it drops the Morgenstern (aka WHM's Destroyers.) We lined up 6 runs, and won them all handily. Morgenstern dropped on 3 of them, so I got one! Now time for me to unlock it. It takes 500 WS points to do so - I foresee me living in Kuftal tunnel for the next week and a half. All told, each member made about 100k in good money drops, random junk and loose change. Not bad for 30 seals that were just taking up space.

The main event Saturday was Kirin. It's the culmination of many weeks of hard work hunting in sky, and has a lot of really nice drops. I'm hoping that someday I can get a Kirin's Osode. We did 3 Kirin runs and Osodes dropped on 2 of them, along with some money drops and tons of Shura body pacts. Shura for everyone! It was the first time I had ever been in the party when Kirin died, so I also got a spiffy new title. After Kirin, I used up a coffer key to get the other map for sky that I've been needing.

Our LS has Dynamis-San d'Oria tomorrow, and I'm also hoping I can burn through the rest of my insect ball bail and get some of the money from the KSNM's to trade in more Moat Carp.