stuff

I suppose I should probably update this... It's been nearly a week.

NIN/SAM/RDM/BST static is now 59 (/hurray), and we were parsing ~15k/hr 5-manning birds at level 58. That was pretty fun. Surv (SAM) and the random DRG were destroying birds with polearm skillz. Sim was hitting decent rampages, too.

We have been on a slight exp break following the byakko success. This has been due to the need to farm. On... Sunday? Grenkinne, Survive, and myself did some more Under Observation runs. Nothing dropped, save for a Peacock Charm (Mine). We also did ENM on Monday, and got a Forager's Mantle... our first decent drop in ~12ish ENM runs. Continuing my lootwhore status, I won the lot on it. My Peacock Charm finally sold, and I was able to buy some Cursed Haidate -1, which (using the Dryadic Abjuration: Legs) turns them into Shura Haidate +1. At 2.2M, they are pretty nice pants... that I cannot efficiently wear yet.

Speaking of gear that I need/want: Gren, Surv, and I have been up in Upper Delkfutt's tower the last few days. We have been slowly meriting/farming shields. So far we are 0/3 on Pallas, and 0/6 on Alky. I want the Alky bracelets for SAM, hoping to save myself ~700k. Last night Gren and I went over 2 hours without a single moldy buckler drop. That was beyond annoying.

In order to wear Byakko's Haidate (tp)/Shura Haidate +1 (ws) and maintain a 6-hit, I need to cap the Store TP Group 1 Merit Category. This has also been a focus this week. I joined a crappy merit party, and got nearly 4 merits in a few hours. As of this posting, I need <2k exp to cap Store TP. Woot.

Sim has been sick this week, so our plans to camp Aquarius for him havn't been a reality as of yet. His CoP static, normally on Wednesday, was moved to Friday. I think we will probably join his group to escort them up to the spire. There is also an ENM at the top, so we might be able to do that too. We will probably go as RDM SAM SAM- and maybe get a Toredor's ring out of it. That would be nice. Either way, it will be fun.

Sheep in Antlion's clothing on Saturday night.

win

Never again. No more sky! Thursday night marked the last 3 Byakkos per our deal with Revelations. Fortunately for us, we were able to get everything we had hoped to get. We started off popping the 3 Ullis, and farmed Aura Statues while we were waiting. We ended up getting another Diorite, so we stuck around to pop another. We then traveled to Byakko to pop him 3 times. The first pop yielded no useful drops. (1/4 on Haidate overall, 0/3 on the last 3 kills) The second pop dropped Byakko's Haidate and Dryadic Abjuration: Legs (Shura Haidate)!!! Being next in line, I lewtwhored and took both. (2/5 on Haidate overall) The third and final pop dropped Survive's Haidate, and we were able to walk away victorious. (3/6 on Haidate overall). Thanks to everyone in Revelations who came out and killed Byakko for us! Good times.

I am saving up for the Cursed Haidate -1, which cost ~2M. If anyone wants to hit up some BCNM/KSNMs, I am down.

Grenkinne spent the evening in Sacrarium and got Dulce a Swift Belt! Congratulations to her!

Tonight we will probably finish T2 Assaults! Over the weekend we will probably exp/farm/AF, with ENM on Monday. Simkiel will be starting up Dynamis again (Saturday and Tuesday), and will be resuming CoP on Wednesdays.

Now that our sky goals are complete, our focus has returned to exp, assaults, and ENM. Salvage at this point will probably be a distant future event.

weekend recap

This weekend was pretty much all about leveling. Our RDM/NIN/SAM/BST static went from 48-54 this weekend, which is pretty nice, even though we were averaging ~6k/hr. Gren is getting the hang of RDM, and is pretty much able to stay on top of the haste/refresh cycle. Survive has been having fun with a 6-hit setup at level 50 with her soboro (WS for 100-200, but who cares- its fun). Simkiel is grinding through BST, one level away from that elusive Rampage- I think he dinged 62 last night. As for me, ninja is tough. Keeping hate, spamming spells, wsing... etc. I need to work on gear swaps too.

While people were afk and whatnot, I attempted to pop Beryl-footed Molberry, who has a ~15% drop rate on the Hototogisu (level 55 offhand katana). The mob itself isn't too bad, but it uses Mijin Gakure, which can really mess you up if you don't resist. The pop item itself spawns once every 2 hours, so camping this thing can be a tedius project. Gren and I went 0/3, then Surv came out for the last two kills, and we went 1/5. During the downtime/clearing the pop room, I farmed Tonberry Cutters to get a scroll of Hojo: Ni. Finally got one right before the 4th NM pop. Saved me 20k, lol.

Sim has also continued his lootwhore madness. He finally got a Senju for his Ninja (hurray!), and also got a Serket Ring on his ODS run.

I would like to resume Assaults tonight, if everyone is on and/or willing. With 4 tags, I would like to do 4 assaults. We have to first do Golden Salvage for Sim, and then we can start T2s. For our setup, T2s look fairly easy.
-For Orichalcum Survey, it looks like RDM SAM NIN BLM will be effective there (or SAM/DNC instead of BLM). All we have to do is kill worms (again), and do some mining using a key item pickaxe.
-For Pre-Emptive Strike, just have to kill 13 Mamool Ja Executioners. RDM NIN SAM SAM setup here, duh.
- Lebros Supplies- this one looks annoying, but we need to get it out of the way. There are some decent guides on wiki if you want a summary. In short: bring movement speed+ gear. We will also try to do this at night for sim's +25% movement speed boots.

I don't know what Revelations is doing this week yet, but if it's anything like previous weeks, we will probably be doing sky on Tuesday, so we can finally use those Diorites.

ENM on Wednesday probably.

assault

Last night we decided to do a few assaults. Sim, Surv, and myself were Private Second class, so we were still stuck on the T1 fights. We did Leaujoam Cleansing, Excavation Duty, and Seagull Grounded. Sim and Surv had forgotten to get tags on prior days, so we were unable to do a fourth Assault.

Leaujoam Cleansing was cake. NIN SAM SAM RDM made short work of the worms (Rana>Gekko ftw), and Sim wondered how we lost on a prior run. It was our first time doing Excavation duty, and we really didn't know what to expect. We won with a few minutes to spare. BLM is essential in that fight, by the way. The most eventful mission was Seagull Grounded. Survive wore her crimson cuisses to direct the npc, and Gren, Sim, and I took care of the mobs. As this was our first time attempting the assault, we didn't know that the NPC freaked out at the sight of non-aggroing mobs. It took way too long for the NPC to get past the initial crab areas, and we lost valuable time figuring this out. We finished the mission with <10 seconds to spare, and didnt even open the chest. It was fun though.

Survive and I were able to rank up after Excavation Duty, and Sim just needs Golden Salvage to advance to Private First Class. I'm glad we were able to start stockpiling assault points for our eventual salvage runs.

We finished assaults around 8:30pst, so we ran out to do the Sheep in Antlion's Clothing ENM, which we could start at 9:54. It took about 30 minutes for everyone to get to the top of the mountain, return to the NPC, then run to boneyard gully. We got fairly unlucky with the ENM, as everyone died once except for Sim. Two of the lesser ants popped in close proximity, and Surv's Sleep II was resisted. Regardless, we were able to get the win... but we didn't get any of the big money drops. We will probably end up doing the ENM again next wednesday.

Congratulations to everyone! We went 4/4 on all of our events!

Probably will end up exping tonight and over the weekend, with assaults on either sunday or monday. Next week we have sky (need 3x despots, 3x ulli kills (diorite obtained), and 3x byakkos). Hopefully this will be our final sky session.

inventory +1

Tuesday was pretty much a day off. I had to be in Tavnazian Safehold around 6pst, so I figured I would stick around the Tavnazian region for a bit, maybe farm a codex or something. Just for kicks, I checked on Odqan and Upyri, and to my surprise, Upyri was up (~21-24 hour spawn). He is really hard at night, and I only had lvl 50 gear on, so I summoned Grenkinne to help me out. I left it unclaimed until he got there, and it was beyond easy. Dropped Vampire Mask and Cloak. Gren wanted the cloak for his Dark Knight, and I NPC'd the mask. Gren then proceeded to go afk for the rest of the night.

One of the conditions for us popping/fighting/killing/lootwhoring byakko was to provide Revelations with 2 Cloud Evokers. This rare/ex item is used to enter 'Ouryu Cometh,' a lovely BCNM-style battle that can last up to an hour. Basically it took an hour for everyone to gear up and gather together in Tavnazian Safehold, and even longer for everyone to get to the BCNM entrance in Riverne Site #2. I used my pop item, and allowed the Alliance to enter. Revelations was able to burn Ouryu down with relative ease. I was part of the 'clean up' crew (supposed to be taking care of adds), and as the adds were essentially supposed to be charmed/asleep at all times, I did absolutely nothing. I supposed I could have warped out, but that probably would have been bad form. Regardless, it was still incredibly boring. On estimate, I think Ouryu had approximately 60,000 hp, so he took almost 40 minutes to take down. I suppose it was worth it, as Revelations now has a shot at Bahamut v2- in which they can score some pretty sweet gear. They also got ~900k in gil drops. Fortunately, I'm not all too interested in that stuff- I'll settle for Byakko's Haidate and Inventory +1 instead.

Hopefully the last sky run will be next week!

lootwhoring: a weekend recap

After 3 attempts, we finally got a swift belt for Sim! Congratulations! Sim has really lootwhored the last few days: Optical Hat, Byakko's Haidate, and now a Swift Belt!

We went with Grenkinne and Dulce on Saturday, and killed the NMs 4 times (2 each for Dulce and Sim), and only got one belt. Its good to know that WHM RDM SAM THF NIN can take the hume down easily, and the galka with some difficulty. Good times. We will probably end up going back once Dulce gets another codex.

Earlier on Saturday, we teamed up with Grenkinne and did 'A Sheep in Antlion's Clothing' ENM. While only a galatia (sp?) dropped, we were able to complete it with ease. We also made it up the mountain in record time, which allowed us more time to do the swift belt run.

On Friday, we farmed up 3 more diorites- so we should be set there (at least with our current arrangement with Revelations). Sim tried out his shiny new haidate, and proceeded to destroy aura statues. I went THF this time, so we only had to kill 60 or so mobs for all 3 pop items. Hopefully we will resume Byakko later on this week.

Congratulations to Survive for beating Maat on Warrior and Red Mage! She has now beaten him 9 times! I beat Maat on White Mage, which brings me up to 8 Maat kills- still need to do it on Dark Knight.

Now that another job has been crossed off the list, I decided to start Ninja. Survive is on Samurai, and Simkiel is resuming Beastmaster. Grenkinne joined us as Red Mage, and we were able to get Dulce on THF. We partied for a few hours, and I was able to go from 37 to 41 (yay rings!). Ninja is a real stress on inventory space- holy crap. I don't know how you do it Sim. Anyway, I'm just a few levels away from being able to equip my Gothic Gauntlets and Sabatons, which should definitely help with tanking. Fortunately Survive has mastered Seigan/Third Eye tactics, so if I lose hate (to her), we won't get destroyed. Another job is past 40, which means more artifact quests... my inventory hates me.

haidate!

All of that sky farming has finally begun to pay off. The first Byakko that was popped on Thursday dropped Byakko's Haidate (congratulations Simkiel!) and Byakko's Axe (congratulations Survive!). The second and third Byakko didn't drop anything that great, but I was able to get some neptunal hands, as no one wanted them. So we have to farm three more diorites, and get 3 more despots, then we will be set for 3 more pops- then our deal with Revelations will expire. Hopefully we will go 2/3 on haidate for myself and surv. I still want some shura pants, too. If we don't get drops for everyone, then I suppose we can do more ENM and hope for some more cloud evokers, I guess.

sky farming

Congrats to Sim for a Dynamis-Beaucedine win!

Surv and I ended up taking a ~2hr nap after work, so we got up a little late. We headed up to sky to help Revelations with farming sky- part of our cloud evoker/byakko deal. We used Sim's and Surv's diorite, and got 2 Despots. So, we have 2 full Byakko sets that will probably be used on Thursday. We are in sort of a rush to get Diorites, so we will be farming them tonight too. Sky farming was fairly eventful- we killed MG, BB, Faust, Ulli x2, Seriyu, and Despot x2. Seriyu's kote and the Martial head dropped, so that was good for Revelations.

Hoss is trying out a new endgame LS, so best of luck to him.

post-holiday update

Lots of new developments as of late.

Firstly, congratulations to Simkiel for finally scoring an ohat!

After a long leveling binge yesterday, Simkiel went 61-64 on Monk. Survive and I dinged 65 on Warrior and White Mage, respectively. Anotsu joined us for a short time at the end, and was able to hit 69. Survive and I noticed that her warrior and my white mage were the original jobs that we had started with, almost 3 years ago. She was going to be a ninja, and I was going to be a bard. Oh, the nostalgia. Once we hit 66, Survive and I may switch jobs to something else.

Our last ENM run yielded a second Cloud Evoker. While this is useless to us, I was able to trade our cloud evoker collection to the Revelations Linkshell for 3 byakko runs each. We have to farm the Diorite, but that shouldn't be too tough. They will help us kill Ulli and Despot- then we will do all the Byakko kills at once. Hoss has clashed with Revelations in the past, and will probably not be joining us for this event. I have left the invitation open to him, should he change his mind. Should we not get enough Byakko's haidate, I'm sure future Cloud Evokers will pop in the future. I will be in contact with Revelations to figure out when we will be doing sky. I'm hoping it will be completed at the end of the month.