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.

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.

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.

sky farming

0/2 on sky runs so far.

Camped Despot and Farmed Diorite for ~3 hours each this week, but with no positive results. It appears my TH3 is broken on Diorite. At least everyone got at least one merit point.

Sky has not been friendly to the galkas. Hoss got one-shotted by meltdown a few times, and Sim got owned a few times following that aoe stun move that strips all shadows.

I'm planning on giving it another shot tonight.

If we get too bored with sky farming, lets resume the RDM/NIN/THF/WAR static.

night falls beneath candlelight,
white squalls beneath winter skies.

schedule

Congratulations to Sim on getting sky access! Now we can work on getting Haidate for all.

Here is the tentative 'regular' schedule:

Monday- Sky Farming
Tuesday- Farming/BCNM/Missions/Free- Sim Dynamis
Wednesday- Sky Farming (Everyone): Despot if Hoss has the next day off, Diorite/Ulli if Hoss has work
Thursday- Sky Farming
Friday- Open Day- whatever the general consensus is (Sky Farming, RDM/THF/NIN/WAR Static, et al)
Saturday- Open Day- Sim has Dynamis from 12-3 PST. Depends who is on and what we want to do.
Sunday- ENM, Sky Farming, exp.


I am usually on around 4:30 PST after I get home from work. Surv is not on a regular schedule, so we may start later.

In order to farm Diorites/Ulli, we will have to travel to the area where he spawns. To get to this area, this link may prove to be very valuable, especially with our lack of navigational experience with sky. Hopefully, we can burn through it pretty fast.

http://roverffxi.blogspot.com/2006/01/ulli-directions.html

Regarding the schedule: let me know if there anything you would like to add/delete/modify.

EDIT: Hoss quit his limbus LS, so we will be able to farm sky a lot more now.

future plans

I hate sky. It's boring.

However, I want a few pieces of gear from it- namely Byakko's Haidate and some Shura legs. This isn't just for me- I'm sure all of you want at least the Byakko pants. Fortunately, both these pieces drop off of Byakko. I figure once Sim gets sky access, we can go up and farm Ulli and Despot to get a bunch of triggers. Fortunately ulli is popped, and Despot is 100% claim if you pull the right doll. We can then find an endgame LS that still does sky, use our triggers, and bribe them with the Byakko gil drops- in exchange for the pants. I am willing to do this for anyone who is willing to help out with farming the pop items. Pretty much everyone has a job that can use the Byakko's Haidate, so I figure this could be a regular event, until we all get drops. We could probably spend a couple days a week farming pop items, and once we get 4 sets, we can go commission a LS, then spend a few hours in sky killing Byakko. Alternatively, we could get another 4-6 people to help us out on the fight, but I'm not sure if I want to spend the time/risk the drama doing that.

Next item: Swift belts. Sim and Hoss both need them still. Ideally, this should only take one or two nights to finish. We can do the same thing we did last time with Helldemon/Hellslayer, or we could try to 4 man it on BST, as everyone's bst is now over 50. I wonder how that would work- its probably doable. Sim and Hoss might want to farm/buy codexes, or I can come out and help farm if needed. Get that fomor hate up, and we might be able to put a concrete date on the schedule.

Resuming WAR/THF/RDM/NIN static: I want to get this going again. If you guys want to take them to 75, I'll probably switch to MNK at 66.

Assaults/Salvage: Looks like we all need them. Assaults look like we would be able to do some of them as a 4-man group. Salvage; However, looks like we need a minimum of 6 to enter. I am considering asking a long-time friend to join the LS (for at least a trial period). She has a bunch of random jobs leveled, and I don't know if her schedule would work, but who knows. I think she is leveling BLM at the moment, and that would help our setup out alot. Basically, my goal is to farm a bunch of level 15 pieces, and perhaps snag a few 35s, if possible. The level 25 pieces are dropped by the Salvage bosses, and I don't think we are able to low man them just yet. As for those pieces, maybe we can all join a larger LS later on for those. I figure if we are able to do assaults, we can start to explore and become familiar with the salvage areas and strategies. Salvage is fun, challenging, and very rewarding. Starting this post-sky/swift belts would be fine with me.

Let me know what you think!