Nothing But The Shoes

Started the weekend off with a Fafnir camp. We actually had a decent turnout for the first window, and as a result, Fafnir did not pop during that window. -_-‘ He didn’t pop until the 6th window, giving all the botting linkshells on Shiva the opportunity to get there. The LS that won the claim had a Lv6 WAR there to spam Provoke to get claim. It’s a level 75 zone – that character had no other business there besides being a claim bot. Not that it was time completely wasted. I fished up over 8 stacks of Moat Carp in the process. I decided to hit the Windurst auction house for more fish and take them out to San d’Oria before the FNLE Rostrum Pumps started. All in all, I turned in about 20 more stacks of fish (5418/10000).

Rumps was… interesting. Let me start by saying that we are rather experienced with the fight involved. The first fight went as smoothly as could be. However, since we had done Fafnir first, it was too late for several of our members to continue other pops. Our BSTs and several other key jobs left for the night. On our second pop (Talonshard’s pop), the Feeler Antlion spawned babies faster than we could handle them, and there were no BSTs to handle the adds from atop the pit. Alastor did eventually pop, but we were weakened and he wiped us out. After that, Talon had to log out for the night, but Keri logged in as him and dual boxed. We got up and tried one more time and had just enough people to squeeze out a win. We decided to give it to Talon since his went so badly, and logged him off there in nothing but his new shoes. -.^ Must have been a wild night there, bud!

Rounded out the evening spamming some campaign battles, and got my buffer back and then some. I can’t say enough about the campaign system – short, sweet, and easy events that you can undertake on just about any job over 60 and stop when you’re done. Just right for a casual player wanting to unwind for the night.

Cleaning day tomorrow, so I’m not sure what we’ll get to in game. There’ll likely be another Fafnir camp, and he’ll likely be late again because we’ll be ready for him… Shoopid dwagon.

Show Off

Well, I got an answer from the party which I purchased the Cisco equipment. It was in the form of a non-paying bidder complaint. What really ticks me off is that he was the one who screwed up by not having a viable online payment method within 72 hours of the end of the auction. I mean, honestly, who doesn’t accept PayPal if they’re going to accept online payment? He sent me a method involving Google’s online payment entrant, but by that time I had already sent the money. I responded with all the information I had, and that I had sent the payment out near on two weeks ago. If he wants, I’ll look into the status of the certified check and cancel it, but that just costs me more money.

Nothing too spectacular to report in game. We got a party together with Keri and I on BLM and Talon’s MNK. Rounded the party out with a WHM, PLD and DNC. The experience was pretty decent, and the party lasted for the entire length of my Black Pudding and then some. We all dinged once. The PLD and DNC actually leveled twice. I had a scroll of Aeroga II waiting for me, and once I hit 48, I was blasting the bats and beetles with reckless abandon. Keri was calling me a show off. Hey, it’s not my fault she forgot to get hers while she was in Jeuno. :P The PLD was rather skillful, and in search for a pearl, so I offered that, when he reached 65 on one of his jobs that he was welcome to attend a Two Drink Minimum Dynamis with us. He said he’d look us up when he got there, and I added him to my friend list. Never know, he might make a great addition to Soulfire someday.

FNLE tomorrow is Rostrum Pumps. It makes your magic cast faster. Fafnir tomorrow evening before hand though, so I’m going to bring some Moat Carp bait with me and see if I can’t catch me some fishies.

Toxically Cute

Still waiting for the Cisco equipment that I ordered over a week ago on eBay. The seller was using a defunct (as of the first of the year) payment site called BidPay for all his auctions. It wasn’t until I had sent off the certified check that he sent me an alternative online payment method. In the seller’s defense, I got the payment off late Monday last week, so it probably didn’t hit the mail system until Tuesday, and we just had MLK Jr. Day: a federal holiday. That, and I live in Texas, where the mail system is completely broken. If I don’t hear back from the guy by the end of Wednesday, I’ll shoot him an email Thursday morning to touch base. I’m just eager to get started I guess.

It was a dreary day outside, and one of those days where I felt more like sleeping, lounging around and playing with the kiddos that gaming. It’s an odd feeling – almost like I’m growing up. ;-P Clara loves to be picked up and tossed, flipped, turned upside-down and all sorts of acrobatics. I envision her being into gymnastics in a few years; she just loves the thrill of falling, flipping and tumbling. Being that cute should be illegal. Of course, I don’t mind obliging her, but after about half an hour of this I was getting tired out, so I set her down on the floor and let her tear around until bedtime while DeAnn and I lazed about on the couch.

What little gaming we did do was exploring. Being in so much endgame stuff, I nearly forgot how that feels. The new expansion has all sorts of new missions and a large-scale battle system called Campaign. Campaign is broken into two parts: Operations and Battles. Operations are generally small, simple and soloable quests that you can do quickly for small rewards and a bit of fame. You can do one per day, up to seven days worth at a time. Battles are just that – you are fighting on behalf of one of the campaigning nations against wave after wave of the hoard alliance. These battles can be longer than the operations, but still only about 30 minutes, and can net pretty decent experience points and rewards and don’t cost you experience points when you die. Both parts reward you with experience points and Allied Notes, which you can use to buy stuff and teleport around in the past. It’s the swift nature of the Campaign system that I like best. Sometimes, all I have is an hour to play, and it’s nice to get in a slug of ops or a quick battle or two. There’s always something going on.

Keri and I started with an operation called Streetsweeper I. Basically, you run around town and look for a random “Suspicious Object” point. Once you find it, get it and return back to the Ops NPC for your reward. The process takes at most 5 minutes. Unfortunately, since we hadn’t done anything with campaign since the release of the expansion, Keri’s medal (which gives you permission to do ops) had expired. She got one ops credit, but would have to wait until tomorrow before she could get another. Maybe we’ll do a bunch this weekend.

Next, we ran out to Sarutabaruta of the past to try our hand at a campaign battle. As luck would have it, a battle was underway, so we talked to the NPC at the fort and signed up. There was a large crowd of NPC fighters there to protect the fort, and several people were sitting around, too. We got there just in time for an eye and a big wave of bugs to come crashing in on us. Keri and I fought the eye until it died, then focused on one of the bugs until the NPCs blew them up with some pretty nasty spells. The whole battle, from running out to enemy retreat, took less than 10 minutes and gave about 700 experience points and 500 notes. Didn’t have to build a party, search around for someone to go on an escort quest or really anything beside show up and hit stuff. This is the kind of thing Final Fantasy XI has needed – something for the casual player. For a paltry 10 Allied Notes, we teleported back to Windurst and rolled out to the Meriphataud Mountains for a battle that was getting started. That one lasted almost half an hour, resulted in a little more death, and gave over 1800 experience points and over 1000 notes.

We rounded out the evening with a trip to the past San d’Oria. We finished one of the two storyline quests available to non-San d’Orians, the reward being one of four items needed to upgrade our inventory by 5 spaces. I turned in a bunch of Moat Carp before heading home and calling it a night.

I gotta start taking more screenshots, but in the mean time, here is some cuteness so toxic that it should be regulated. ^_^/

Project Morgenstern: Part 3

I goofed off most of today. The last of my auctions from the weekend finally cleared, and Captsassypants sent me my share of the gil from the Orichalcum Ingot, so I had lots of gil to sink into stacks of Moat Carp. It was enough to inch me over the half way point to Lu Shang’s Rod.

Once DeAnn logged onto Kerith, we teamed up with Demetrion and did some BCNM40 - Under Observation. It drops the Peacock Charm, which auctions off nicely. Normally, the three of us would go MNK, RDM, BST, but this time we decided to go as 3xBST. Demetrion said it’s an easy fight with that setup. We died the first round trying to get our strategy right, but made it through the other two with little panic. Didn’t seem any easier than the other setup, but maybe it just takes some getting used to. No Peacock Charm, but Utsusemi: Ni dropped. That’s about 70k apiece.

Next, we got a mostly LS merit party together: Talon’s THF, Kitiara’s WAR, Eleazar’s BRD, Keri’s RDM and yours truly on WHM/NIN. I figured I might as well work on whatever little bit was left on my Morgenstern, and try to cap Club skill while at it. We picked up JP DNC (read: pwnt) and went to Caedarva Mire by way of Azouph Isle Staging Point. We went on a pulling rampage, killing everything in northern part of the area, much to the dismay of the lower level parties there. We got some nasty shouts and tells from one party. They had issues of their own – if they can’t take anything but imps then we’re doing them a favor by helping them disband.

At any rate, about half an hour into the party, after I had gotten all the buffer I’d wanted and then some, I noticed something strange. I was pulling hate. And popping critical hits like candy. And Hexa Striking in the 700-800’s. That’s when it hit me: the latent on the Morgenstern had broken! Kiti and Talon both congratulated me, and said they want one, too. I sure wouldn’t mind doing some more KS runs. I mean, what else are those seals doing in my house except gathering dust? Shortly after this, my Club skill dinged a beautiful blue 256 – finally capped. Got some random parry, healing and enhancing levels, as well as a crash course in blink tanking on WHM and two merits. That let me sink 3 of the 4 merits I had into another level of Hand-to-Hand. All in all, it was a very productive and FUN merit party.

I went to sky and went AFK until sky hunt. I didn’t realize that there was none scheduled. >.< Still had a decent showing, nearly a full alliance at its height. Quaide and Eiael were the official leaders; I took attendance, lotted the pop items and directed us to Ullikummi after our Despot kill. I can see me leading sky hunts sometime – that was a lot of fun. We hunted for a Diorite for well over an hour, and just when it looked like we were going to leave empty handed, the last statue for the night dropped the stone. A few moments later we popped Ulli and got our hands on his Autumnstone. Hooray for more Byakko!

"That is... entertaining."

We had an event-filled weekend after getting a little housework out of the way. Farmed in Carpenter's Landing and filled my inventory with Lightning Clusters. After that, I did a quick Crawlers' Nest escort with Brickhouse before sky gods on Saturday. Used the scroll on MNK for a bit of an experience point buffer. We popped all the Genbu sets we had, then made for Byakko. There was another LS ahead of us at Byakko - they would have lost if we didn't help out. They ended up getting haidate, while we went 1/3. -.- Wouldn't be so bad if several members of their LS hadn't claimed they really didn't need our help. Rather ungrateful.

Sunday we did Dynamis - Jeuno. Every event cycle, the LS sponsors one run in Jeuno, and all the single currency auto-drops, with the large bills going to the LS bank to pay for the run and other stuff. It seemed like every AF that could drop did at least once. I was up for WHM, but lost the lot to Caldor. It's all good, I need to rebuild some points anyway. About halfway through the run, one of the goblins that had died earlier, but failed to despawn, kept getting up, summoning a slime pet, and falling back down. Someone called a GM on it, but when they arrived, all they had to say about it was "That is... entertaining." >.>''

Finished off the night with a BST leveling session. We tried a new camp in Yhoator Jungle that I had read about, but it's a very dangerous spot with a bunch of Anemones slithering haphazardly through the area. We tried to take one down, and ended up having to log out for hate after throwing every crawler in the zone at it. Hey, at least we got it to 30%... Shado was wondering if we'd like to level our BSTs with his MNK and wife's RDM. It's something we'll have to consider, though I'd rather link it up with our BLMs and Talon's MNK. All we'd need is a NIN tank and we'd be set.