High Times in Vana'Diel

Three Notorious Monsters

2009-04-26T19:58:00.002-05:00

Here's the video of the Yagudo Muralist fight, from the earlier posted about "Picture Perfect" quest. The fight was a little short by itself, so I rolled a couple of other fights into the video as well; Dame Blanche is the second clip, we decided to try and pop her while we were in Korroloka Tunnel, she popped, we kicked her ass, and got 60k in drops to split (not bad at all ^^). Lastly is Fraelissa, who we actually killed the other day after we finished the Orcish Warlord off. She was more of a "eh, fuck it" kill, she drops the Almogavar Bow, but we didn't get it (nor need it, to be honest).

Anyways, enjoy:

I still think my Adventuring Fellow is a waste of oxygen...

Some Random Photos, and the most annoying quest I've done yet...

2009-04-26T09:35:00.038-05:00

First up, the random photos:

Level 28 Party, Yhoator Jungle [BLM, WHM, SCH, PLD, THF, NIN]

Weird texture issues in Ranguemont Pass...

"Ok, so Campaign Battle in Crawler's Nest was a bad idea..."

Killing an Ice Elemental in Beaucedine Glacier, on the way to Fei'Yin

Leveling the Adventuring Fellows in King Ranperre's Tomb

Do a Barrel Roll!

Almeth gets mauled by a couple beetles...

Fucking annoying scorpions!

Killing ghosts, trying to pop Dame Blanche; we were in the neighborhood... ^^

Almeth and I's Adventuring Fellows finally dinged 50 yesterday, so that meant that we had to do a quest, "Picture Perfect" to raise their level cap from 50 to 55. Similar to the regular Limit Breaks that everybody does at some point, except for it was really fucking annoying. We spent hours doing this stupid quest with all the travel, here's a photo synopsis of the quest:

First, you gotta talk to this dumb bitch and do a prerequisite quest that nobody ever does, "A Pose By Any Other Name". Bonus points for figuring this out before you attempt to do "Picture Perfect"...

Then you have to go all the way to fucking Selbina to talk to this mega-douche, Diederik, where he bitches and moans about losing a painting or some shit, cause he's an idiot...

Then you go all the way to fucking Bastok and talk to this old bastard, Umberto, who tells Diederik to hand over his goddamn painting already...

Diederik wraps a generic painting up in copious amounts of childproof packaging, because nothing is funnier then watching an arthritic old man struggle in pain trying to open a package.

Diederik then bullshits Umberto into leaving the painting be for now while he stalls for time getting a replacement; Umberto is fucking pissed, and wants us to get him a Bal Shell from Korroloka Tunnel. Since Umberto is a huge fucking douchebag, this task falls to me, even though he's the dipshit that fucked up in the first place...

Run your ass all the way to Korroloka Tunnel to dig up the stupid Bal Shell from one of like three excavation points in the whole fucking zone. Fuck you, Diederik...

Back to Bastok to give Umberto the Bal Shell, he shits bricks, and Diederik runs off back to Selbina like the little bitch he is...

MEANWHILE

Your adventuring fellow runs off to Windurst to talk Angelica into making another painting for the old man, even though he's so senile at this point you could staple a dead bird to the wall, tell him it's a painting, and he wouldn't know the damn difference.

Angelica explains that she can't do a damn thing unless Fhig runs off to get her an Opalescent Stone, which conveniently drops off of a Yagudo NM in Castle Oztroja, which makes no fucking sense but, as this whole quest is a big pile of shit already, why stop now? Fhig makes her way to Oztroja...

After all that stupid shit, you have to go back to fucking Selbina to talk to Diederik again, since apparently he couldn't tell you this shit WHILE HE WAS FUCKING STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU IN BASTOK!

Diederik gives you some good news...HE FOUND THE FUCKING PAINTING AFTER ALL, so all the running around was a big fucking waste of your time. As you are strangling him to death, he fills you in on how your Adventuring Fellow is doing with the whole "Get the Opalescent Stone from the NM in Castle Oztroja" thing....Who wants to to take a guess as to how it's working out? Let's just say, a trip to FUCKING CASTLE OZTROJA is on the itenerary now...

You stupid useless bitch...

NM FIGHT (video to come later)

Back to Windurst (kill me) to talk to Angelica again, who tells you that she heard that she didn't have to do the painting again, but she wants to do it again anyways, because the first one was a big bag of shit. You'd think I'd be off the hook at this point, but nope...I get to be the fucking delivery boy yet again!!

"Almost done, just a little embellishment over here...."

She puts the finishing touches on the painting while Fhig looks on in dismay. Angelica explains that as Umberto is blind as a fucking bat it really makes no damn difference either way...meanwhile I'm outside trying to cut my wrists with a rusty butterknife.

With the painting finally fucking done, I make my way to Bastok for like the thirteenth time today to give it to this old bastard. Notice that it's like dead of night; that's right ladies and gentlemen, this quest took fucking HOURS...

Diederik, Fhig and I look on in horror as Umberto stares off into the distance, reminiscing on his younger days, whilst simultaneously pissing and shitting himself. Who says old age isn't fun?

Quick shot of the two most useless people ever to walk the face of Vana'diel. Umberto and Fhig Larv everyone! Let's hear it!!

So ends the most annoying quest I've ever had the good fortune to have to do in this game before. BRB, buying a poison potion to off myself...

Some random photo's...

2009-04-15T08:01:00.018-05:00

Been a while since I posted; been doing the same shit we always do...here's some highlights:

"Oh look, they're mating..."

Son of a bitch...

Full party in Qufim; an old friend, Maraxis, came out and joined us with his friend Vigo. Fun times, and a very productive party ^^

Yay, Evisceration!! Time to really fuck shit up!

You know...you'd think I'd know better then to try and cross this fucking bridge during a Campaign battle, but nope...

Almeth giving me a hand farming a scroll of Reraise II. S-E recently lowered the level WHM get's it, and since it was going for 30k, I decided to farm it rather then spend the money...cause I'm a cheap ass.

Almeth and I being proactive, farming a Burning Hakutaku Eye; one of five "eyes" needed to craft a Hakutaku Eye Cluster, used to spawn Hakutaku and hopefully get an Optical Hat one day.

The resulting pile of goo after rocking it's face ^^

Just before spawning and killing Polevik for Amedelie, as part of the first PLD AF quest for the Honor Sword.

Farming Boyahda Moss and Tree Cuttings off of Goobbue Gardeners in Sanctuary of Zi'Tah...

Duoing in Boyahda Tree, helping Ame get Weaponskill points to break the latent on the Bow of Trials and get the Archery WS Empyreal Arrow.

4-manning in Yuhtunga Jungle, me as SCH, Ame as PLD, Almeth as DNC, and Kamiku as SAM.

Kamiku had to go, so we swapped in Reflaa's NIN, to get him closer to 37. Still got a ways to go yet, but we're getting there :)

Tribunis VII-I

2009-04-09T14:56:00.004-05:00

Just another NM fight video today, killing Tribunis VII-I in Quicksand Caves, trying to get a Tungi for Kamiku. It didn't drop on this run, but the second attempt later gave it up. Congrats Kami! ^^

Piece of cake, but in retrospect I really need to start moving around to the fron't side of these mobs...all anybody ever sees is me stabbing shit in the ass lol...
FULL SCREEN IT! ^^

Adios!

Orcish Warlord...

2009-04-06T14:29:00.002-05:00

I logged on yesterday to do some catch up work on my DNC, getting it to 72 so I wasn't all behind Amedelie and Almeth, and even though it was late, Almeth happened to be on, getting ready to kill an NM in Monastic Cavern, the Orcish Warlord. There wasn't any pressing need to kill this guy or anything; he was up, and we can't allow NM's to wander around unchallenged, now can we?

This guy was a chump, although he hit kinda hard. Nothing we couldn't handle, though. It's in HD, even!! YAY!!!!

More to come... ^^

Quick video...

2009-04-05T22:28:00.003-05:00

In light of the new update coming out soon, and 2 new gobbiebag quests, Almeth and I made it a point to finish up the final two we still needed to do yet. We had most of the expensive ingredients already, as they are rewards from Wings of the Goddess missions, save one: an Adaman Ingot. As this goes for anywhere between 80k-100k, we obviously we're interested in questing it instead of spending our hard earned gilz. It was a bit of bitch with all the prerequisite quests we had to do beforehand, but it was well worth it.

Here's the fight we had to do for the final part of Light in the Darkness:

There was some testimonials from a few people on the wiki that made it seem as if this might be difficult, but it was actually pretty easy. I mean, if you were fighting all these guys at once it might be a bitch, but it's easy enough to get out of the way and work on them in small groups, especially if you take out the Sapphire Quadav, causing them to scatter.

That's all I got for now, ciao!

Petrifying Pair

2009-03-31T14:44:00.002-05:00

Last night Almeth, Amedelie and I decided to try and make some money by doing the BCNM 30 Petrifying Pair. We'd done some research on this BCNM, and decided that the "Kite and Fight" strategy looked the most promising for us. Almeth and Ame both geared up as BLU/NIN's and set their spells to give them the "Lizard Killer" trait, and I took the kiting duties, gearing up as RDM/NIN.

Basically, Ame and Alm start pounding on one lizard, while I kite the other around, using Gravity and Bind. Once the first lizard is down, they jump on the one I was kiting, and I go into curing and nuking mode. I was a little nervous at first, but after we completely dominated the first one, that quickly faded away. We did nine runs total, 3 orbs a piece. I, of course, got the dick and recieved nothing but garbage...but Ame and Alm both managed to get themselves a pair of Leaping Boots. {Congratulations!}

{Ass raping}{You can have this.}

Laterz!

The week in pictures...

2009-03-31T13:18:00.019-05:00

Been up to a lot lately, leveling and questing and such. Here's some highlights:

Eating another death to Soulstealer Skullnix, on our second attempt to get me a Kard. His triple attack and crazy high accuracy makes him quite a bitch. /sigh...

Fighting trees in Wajaom Woodlands, trying to get a couple Puffballs for the quest Unending Chase.

"Hey! Come back here, prick!!"

What an ugly mug these things have...

Level Sync 16 party in Valkrum Dunes; DNC, NIN, SCH, and BLM.

Amedelie is one of those people, that wear full AF in a Dunes Sync party...LOL

Since when do Gob's in Valkurm Dunes use Paralyna?! What an asshole!!

I just knew dropping Cure Bombs in Besieged was a bad idea...

Level Sync 18 party at the Secret Beach. DNC, DNC, BST, PLD, SCH...can you say mega curing? ^^

This RDM, Hadouken, was bored as shit, so he decided to PL us. What a nice guy! ^^

Since we had not only a PL, but 2 DNC's and a PLD, I really didn't need to do too much curing. Instead, I just switched to Dark Arts and did the DD thing...outside of sitting on my ass and leeching experience, that is. ^^

Not only did he PL us, but he started training every Gob in the zone over to us so we could pull them off of him one at a time and chain constantly. This guy is officially my favorite RDM ever!!

"This is fucking awesome!!!!"

Hadouken, I love you. In a totally platonic, non sexual way, or course...^^

ZM5 Fight/Level 71 Party, Boyahda Tree

2009-03-24T13:54:00.013-05:00

The first thing on the agenda Monday was to help Amedelie get the final fragment for Zilart Mission 5 in Sanctuary of Zi'Tah. Almeth and I blew through this NM a while back with a pick up group, so I figured this was gonna be a piece of cake. We succeeded, but the fight was a little more difficult then I remember it being...although, we were in a full group with 75's on that occasion, so that probably had a lot to do with it. At any rate, for your viewing pleasure:

This guy hit like a ton of bricks; I damn near died right off the bat but Almeth managed to get it off of me in time. There was a scary moment where I almost two-houred, but we managed to recover and put him down. Congratulations on finishing up Zilart Mission 5, Ame! ZM6 here we come!!

When that was completed, we were off to Aht Urhgan for a Colibri Party in Bhaflau Tickets. While I'd much prefer to do the bulk of our leveling in Campaign, unfortunately skill-ups can't be gotten while you have tags on; in order to cap out our skills we've got to do a standard Experience Party. I ran out to our standard camp, and wouldn't you know it, there was a party already there. Muttering under my breath, I ran to a couple alternate camps in the zone, and yeah, all had full parties there already. For some reason, Bhaflau was just hopping...and our prospects for getting any experience out there rapidly became nil.

After purusing the interwebs for some alternate ideas, we decided to give Boyahda Tree a try. Almeth and I had duo'd up there recently for skill-ups in preperation for our Maat/Laila fight, and it was some pretty good experience. GodzillaX was online and available as well, so we recruited him into our little group and made our way...our main targets were Steelshells, although we worked some Elder Goobbues into our chains for some nice experience and money drops...

"Keep smilin', bitch...you ain't gonna be smiling for long."

"Ooh, bodyslam to the face!"

"Kick his ass, Sea Bass!!"

Amedelie blasting it's ass with a Sidewinder.

Break time!

"On my mark...Ready! Aim! FIRE!!!!!"

Kicking ass and taking names...

All told, we got a little closer to 72 (but still got a long way to go >.<), I managed to cap out my Dagger skill, and we all got some Boyahda Moss and Tree Cuttings...which sells for pretty decent money. Unfortunately, GodzillaX ate a death at one point (Goobbue crushed him for like 950+), but a White Mage in the area was willing to come and hook him up with a Raise, so it wasn't too big of a deal. As always, Godzilla took it in stride ^^

That's all I got for today, L8TRZ!!

Some PL action...and playing with our Adventuring Fellows

2009-03-22T01:12:00.019-05:00

Been kinda quiet in BD the last couple days, but today Almeth and I were on a mission. Our awesome Tuesday static party had to be adjusted for some sub-job leveling, so we started the day with working on Almeth's level 12 Dancer, getting it to 15 so he would have Curing Waltz, and thus not wanna slit his wrists playing the job in a full party. Seriously, take it from me...Dancer absolutely blows ass pre-15.

Anyways, Almeth got geared up as best he could, I switched to my White Mage so I could help him along, and we got to work...

As soon as we showed up in La Thiene Plateau, Almeth starting beating birds to death.

They weren't too happy with me, either...

"Bitch!"

For as high level as I am, these little fuckers were still able to land poison and shit on me...wtf?!

Working on the first page of the Fields of Valor manual for Valkurm Dunes, which sends you back to La Thiene...can you say annoying?

Almeth had a little trouble hitting these guys at times, but it was damn good experience when he put them down.

"These chests would be freaking awesome if we actually got in one at some point..."

These guys are little sneaky bastards. God I hate Gobs!

You gotta do the cooking by the book!

With as much as people kept stopping and staring at us as they ran by, you'd think they've never seen a Dancer or a PL before. Move along, people!

Almeth get's DNC to 15, and shows off his new moves... ^^

The next item on the agenda was actually a few things all rolled into one. We wanted to get our Adventuring Fellows some levels, and wanted to work on getting weaponskill points for the Evisceration quest. We decided to try out Kuftal Tunnel; we'd been down there recently on our way through to get Almeth the Vollbow Outpost, and tried to get a coffer key to drop unsuccessfully. It's the only way to get a map of the place, and Lord knows you need a map in that freaking dump. We hurried home, changed into our mains, and hit the road...

Another little bastard type mob. I'm glad the NPC's were with us to absorb some of that Thousand Needles bullshit...

One of the many crabs we fought today...

A quick pic with my bitch...

The party in the background killing the scorpion was a huge fucking douche brigade. They would come through and kill every fucking mob around us in like 2 seconds and leave us with nothing. Almeth started pulling from all around them and then all of a sudden we start getting /slapped and examined. Prick bitches...

All in all, yet another productive day. We got Almeth 3 levels on Dancer, got our Adventuring Fellows a couple levels, got about 40% of the Weapon Skill Points we need, and got the map for Kuftal. Not bad at all... ^^

Record Breaker!

2009-03-20T13:51:00.007-05:00

So yeah, doing more campaign with Almeth, he needed to get 71 quick so we could run off and start the Evisceration quest, so I decided to go out as my White Mage and get a little experience, and also so we could just dip out as soon as Almeth dinged.

I spent pretty much the entire battles weakened, and died at least 4 times. Dammit...

Record Breaker! Officially the highest damage I've ever taken...hurray for getting one-shotted by the NM!!

The Alpha Gnole's Plenilune Embrace is a neat looking ability...

...but not when it cures itself for this much, over and fucking over again. >.<

Campaign is a real love/hate thing for me... ^^

A new record!

2009-03-19T02:25:00.004-05:00

Last night I got hit the hardest I've ever gotten hit in FFXI before. During a campaign battle in Jugner Forest, Deathlord Rojgnoj picked me out of a gang of people to make an example of. I tried kiting him around, but I guess that just irritated him more or something, because I got one-shotted. It was so sudden, it literally fucking scared me lol...

Fuckin' A...

PWNT ^^

(Best part is, the tiger got me when I raised. And then again when I got raised a second time. This game really loves to rub it in...)

Zilart Mission 5 Completed!

2009-03-17T15:07:00.003-05:00

Logging in briefly Sunday, I noticed that Sandy had finally taken the Vollbow region, for the first time in forever. Almeth needed this outpost (I thought I did, too, but I must have done it a bajillion years ago lol) so a trip out to Cape Teriggan was in order. Since the final Headstone to Zilart Mission 5 was also in Cape Terrigan, we took a look to see what the fight entailed...a level 69-70 Shadow type mob. I was a little iffy on it, but Almeth thought we could do it...no guts, no glory, right?

I'm glad I listened to Almeth ^^

If the goddamn gob wouldn't have aggro'd this would have been a lot easier. Oh well, we won...that's all that matters! ^^

That's all I got for now...Peace!

Shattering Success

2009-03-15T20:56:00.007-05:00

So, with my first post to this blog I also announce my success at beating Maat! Deuce covered the basics of the day, so I'm just adding my video for you guys to see. Enjoy!

Another fun filled Saturday bites the dust!

2009-03-15T01:58:00.023-05:00

Today was an awesome day! We shared some laughs, we shared some tears, but all in all we had quite an adventure...

Ultimately, the goal of the day was for Almeth and I was to win our respective G5 fights, and break the level cap so we could continue to push our way to 75. There was a few things to do along the way, so we got on early and started making our way around. GodzillaX, our friendly neighborhood Galkan, was already online, and had some time to kill before he logged off for the day, so Almeth quickly enlisted him into the days festivities. First up on the agenda was to pop and kill Tonberry Tracker, and hopefully get Almeth a Thief's Kote. There was a bit of travel involved, so we got jumped to it and made our way...

"Hey, Godzilla, you didn't see where Almeth ran off to, did you? Goddamn him and his flee!"

Tonberries, Crawlers, and Bees...Oh my!

"Jesus Christ, just paint a smily face or something, it doesn't need to be a Rembrandt for God's sake!"

We finally made our way into the Den of Rancor, but we still had a bit of a ways ahead of us. With our Unlit Lanterns in hand, we made our way to the Rancor Flame to light them, and then back to the door we needed to open. Things were going okay, until...

"Yeah, that's right, LAUGH IT UP FUNNY MAN!!!! I FUCKING HATE YOU!!!!!!!"

Godzilla and I laid there dead for a bit, while Almeth begged and pleaded with everyone in the zone with Raise to come and help us out, but it was no use. Everyone was too deep in Den of Rancor to be able to come back up to help us, even offering a 10k reward was of no use. Godzilla and I home pointed, and we tried again, but upon closer inspection of the route we needed to take to get to the NM, Almeth realized it was just gonna take too long for us to get out to him. With a sigh, we gave up on it for the day, and as Godzilla had to log soon anyways, we bid him farewell and moved on to our next goal of the day: skilling up for our fights.

I'd heard around that for higher level players, The Boyahda Tree was the place to go if you wanted skill ups, so Almeth grabbed a shield and we made our way out there. Can't be fighting Maat/Laila with underleveled skills, now can we? We stopped along the way to get some payback on all those Golems and Goobbue's that made our lives miserable way back in the day...

"Not so tough now, are you, ya big stony bitch?!"

"Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!"

"God, why can't you just LEAVE ME ALONE!?!?!?!"

"Aww, don't cry Mr. Goobbue, we didn't mean to...OH LOOK, ALMETH, TREE CUTTINGS!!" *STAB STAB STAB*

Almeth skills up, while I just kinda sit here. Kinda hard for him to get skillups if the mobs hitting me, ya know...^^

This place is pretty damn cool...

We even brought our Adventuring Fellows out to get some Experience.

"Oh, sorry, didn't know you guys were fighting!"

"That's a really interesting hat you've got there, Almeth. Really interesting..."

"Oh Almeth, I'm so sorry player...I guess 4 Mandys was just too much."

Checking out the scenery while searching for a coffer...

Fucking crabs!

"Alright!"

After my death, we killed a few more, then decided we were ready for our G5. we weren't fully capped, but Almeth and I felt that we were close enough to give the big dogs a go. With a little trepidation, I made my way back to Jeuno to pick up some supplies in preperation for my fight with Laila. With my Hi-Potions, Icarus wing, Squid Sushi, Persikos Au Lait, and Sleeping Potions (for Opo-opo Necklace) all gathered, I traded my Dancer's Testimony to Laila and commited myself to the fight...

"God, I hope I don't fuck this up..."

Yeah! Eat it whore!!! Level 75, here I come!!!!!!

Almeth was also successful with his Maat Fight (video to come soon! Congratulations player!!!^^) so all in all, despite a detah or two along the way, we accomplished our goals, and for one brief moment, made Final Fantasy XI our bitch.

It's a nice feeling... ^^

Just a couple pics...

2009-03-14T02:13:00.007-05:00

Been busy building my new computer and getting everything working well. So far it's awesome, I was able to kick the graphics up in FFXI to twice the detail, and it looks great! I hadn't done Campaign in a couple days, so I logged in after I got everything configured and ran into this guy...I've never seen this shit before:

Nothing is quite as awesome as getting tags, taking 4 steps, and biting it to an angry AOE. As a runner up is laying dead underneath the thing for 20 minutes waiting for a raise. Yeah, it was pretty fucked up...

My death, later that same evening, in a Besieged. While I'm actually able to hit the mobs now, I still do 0 damage most of the time...not too good for TP gain.

I hope to have more posted later, after I get to play around with everything some more. L8trz!!!!

Screenshots and such...

2009-03-07T09:19:00.028-06:00

We've been doing a lot the last week or so, leveling and questing and such...it's been hard to keep up with screenshots and all, but I tried to snag as many as I could:

Level 46 Party, Quicksand Caves. DNC/NINx2/WAR/WHM...was very über ^^

Quick shot of the ferry as we shove off :)

"Alright, nothing blew up so far!!!"

The beginning of yet another long ass cutscene, during the quest Embers of His Past. It was a cool cutscene at least...

"Oh snap, somebody's 'bout to get fucked up!"

"I'm a tree!"

"Ohhhh Kayyy, somebody forgot their medicine this morning..."

"I'm a TREE, Goddammit!!!!"

"Ok, fine, you're a fucking tree! Shit, woman!!"

"Yeah, take that, simple bitch!!"

"Oh Noes!!!!!!!"

"AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH MY BALLS!!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

"You done fucked up now, bitch!"

"OMG FAILSAUCE Q_Q"

"You've got 20 seconds to start cooking me up a Chicken Pot Pie, or you can kiss your face goodbye!!"

"OMG PWND LOLOLOL!!!"

"Dammit, you were my best ho! Those Bastards!!"

Killing Moblins in Oldton Movalpolos, waiting to see if Bugbear Strongman spawns...

Yay, invisible elevator!

Clearing out Quadav's, before spawning the NM's for the quest "For the Birds".

As annoying as Elementals can be, they're great for TP gain... ^^

The fight itself. It was a complete and utter joke :)

Level 58 Party, King Ranperre's Tomb. Damn good experience to be had fighting the bats in the basement at this level.

That's not to say we didn't have any issues here or there. Sorry Ame! :(

Adios!

A quick fight, short and sweet... ^^

2009-03-05T02:12:00.004-06:00

We've been doing the usual over the last few days; had a kick ass level 46 party in Quicksand Caves, level 67 party in Bhaflau Thickets, got some quests done, etc etc. Almeth got his Ninja to 50, so we started working on his Ninja AF...first up was the quest "I'll Take the Big Box", which among other things, involved killing a Ghost type NM on the Selbina-Mhaura Ferry:

Poor little guy...

At any rate, it was pretty easy, as we expected. A random RDM watched us fight it; I'd like to think he was keeping an eye on us to make sure we were ok, but he never said anything, so who knows?

Anyways, that's all for now! Carry on!! ^^

Aren't we a bunch of busy little bees? ^^

2009-03-01T12:17:00.035-06:00

Since my last post, we've been running around doing all kinds of shit. Aht Urhgan Missions, Wings of the Goddess quests, Campaign, unlocking jobs, camping NM's...we've been a busy bunch. I've got a lot to cover, so let's just jump right in, shall we?

First off, Almeth and I were finally able to unlock Puppetmaster and Corsair. It'd been a while since we'd attempted to do it the first time, and it was a piece of cake this time around. We actually did it the right way, and got the Lamian Fang Key beforehand...last time we attempted, Almeth tried to pick the lock to the door and blew through an entire stack of tools. I don't know why we didn't just get the key last time (all you gotta do is click a ??? on the ground in Caedarva Mire to get one) but regardless, we got it this time and got it done. As PUP is pretty much on the way, we got that banged out, too. I can now finally say I've got every job unlocked...WOOT!!

It isn't often that we go into Arrapago Reef, so I took a screenshot while we were there:

Pimpin' ain't easy...

In my last post I had the video of me fighting Peerifool; the beginning part of quest "One Good Deed?". The conclusion of it involved running out to Attohwa Chasm and getting a few cutscenes, so Almeth and I finished it up together. While there, we ran out to Boneyard Gully to look around (neither of us had ever been there), and also explored Attohwa some. There was a scary moment when Almeth aggro'd a Trench Antlion (those fuckers hide in the ground and spring up on you, scared the shit out of both of us 'cause we so weren't expecting it) but he was able to Flee away with it and survive. While we were in the area, Almeth asked if I was willing to try and pop Citapati, a lottery spawn from the Corse that spawn there at night. Although the NM seemed like it would be a little angry, Almeth is very keen to pick up a Harpe, so I agreed to give him a hand. Due to some Scorpion aggro the moment we started killing a Corse, it ended up like this:

Figures...

The next night (or maybe two nights later, I don't quite remember to be honest), Almeth and I started working on some Aht Urhgan quests and missions. We were able to complete the mission Royal Puppeteer pretty easily, as this involved killing Ameratats in Wajaom Woodlands until we got a Vial of Jody's Acid for each of us. Lucky for us, we got the acid after 2 Ameratats, although we did have some Tiger aggro that was pretty fucking annoying (goddamn those Tigers and their paralysis move!). The did drop a Rusty Medal, which is used in long chain of quests to get some Imperial Standing and some Imperial Gold Pieces. As Almeth and I wanted to expand our Mog Locker some more, we were all about getting some free Gold Pieces, so despite the fact that the cutscenes were long as shit, and involved tons of running around, it was well worth it. We also attempted to do Aht Urhgan Mission 13 - Lost Kingdom, but that didn't work out so hot.

Building some TP before we attempt to fight the NM for Aht Urhgan Mission 13.

The fight itself. We were doing pretty well, but enmity control got away from us, which left me in a bad spot as far as healing us goes. We're gonna try this guy again with Amedelie; I think we'll be much more sucessful with someone else to take hate and deal damage.

Getting my face kicked in by Jazaraat was a little discouraging, so we ran around and took care of some other quests in the Aht Urhgan area. The first one we tackled was When the Bow Breaks, which just involved killing some spiders for a Frayed Arrow, and trading the arrow to a ??? in the same area...which rewarded us with more long ass cutscenes.

"Yeah, spider webs! Awesome!!"

The beginning of the longest 15 minutes of my life...

Alright, Threesome!

Make that foursome! This might not be so bad after all!!

"Oh, stop fucking around and just shoot somebody already, shit!!"

F-A-I-L

QQ, bitch...QQ

"YEAH!!! OFF WITH HER MOTHERFUCKING HEAD!!!!!"

What? He didn't kill her? What a rip off!

There was many more cutscenes, but I'll spare everyone from the rest of that shit. Needless to say, I got Carpal Tunnel from mashing the Enter key over and over again.

Yesterday, Almeth and I started the day off with a Besieged...it went ok, although not having reraise items and Wizard's Drinks really sucked a fat one. At any rate, it was a little rough starting out, but as more people showed up, things got easier. People were really friendly yesterday:

"Umm, could you stop grinding your crotch into my back? What the fuck kinda perverted shit is this?!"

Since we were already in Aht Urhgan, we finished up a few more quests, expanded our Mog Lockers (70 slots, woot!!) and then made our way to Sandy past to do some Campaign Battles. Amedelie showed up not long after, and joined us. Almeth tried to do it as his 48 Ninja, but the experience was just too broken at such a relatively low level, so he switched to THF. We banged out a Granite Rose I as well; since nobody ever does it we got a fat exp bonus for it. For the most part, it was just battle after battle, though:

This battle was so fucking crowded that the NPC's had to go up in the trees to attack. Nice...

Since we just so happened to be in Jugner Forest (S), we decided to give Fingerfilcher Dradzad another go. Now that we had gained 6 levels on him since our first attempt, we figured we had a far better shot at finally killing him and moving on in the Wings of the Goddess missions...and we were right. Having Amedelie along to use ranged attacks on him when he started countering made the fight a joke, and we were ecstatic that we finally got our revenge:

Yeah! FUCK YOU!!!

Amedelie had to log out not long after that, but I stuck around a little while to finish up the quest line Fingerfilcher was involved in, and got treated to one of the cooler cutscenes in the game:

"Huh?"

"Oh shit..."

"OH SHIT!"

"OH SHIT!"

"OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK..."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

Well, look who it is...Cait Sith!

"Aww pretty kitty!"

"Yeah? Well your character sucked in Final Fantasy VII!!"

That was pretty much the whole cutscene. Creepy cool shit. The next quest's cutscene was boring by comparison, but I did manage to snag a good pic during it:

"God, what a big baby! Walk it off, Asshole!!"

That's all I got for today. Ciao!!

Just a quick video...

2009-02-24T15:43:00.006-06:00

I've been lazy the last few days with the whole blogging thing, but as we all know, Bahamut's Dreadnought never sleeps. Since my last post, we've lot of experience parties, did some quests; all the fun stuff that we do :)

At any rate, here's a video I took of me soloing Peerifool for the quest "One Good Deed?"...the reward for which is the Map of Attohwa Chasm. Almeth discovered the quest the other day, and it wasn't hard to convince me to tackle it myself...

The fight was very easy, but it was long. It took me about 20 minutes to finish off all six of the mobs, plus the two Alraune that linked during the fight. I had to speed the video up to twice normal speed just to fit it into the 10 minute limit Youtube imposes...but it is kinda funny to watch... :)

That's all for now! ^^

How to draw a crowd in East Ronfaure (S)...

2009-02-19T01:06:00.021-06:00

Our first order of business Wednesday was to travel up to Fei'Yin and get the Ice Fragment for Zilart Mission 5. This just involved some traveling, no fighting or anything, so I changed to WHM and teleported Almeth and I out to Vahzl so we could start the long, boring run through Xarcabard and Beaucedine Glacier. I decided to wear the pieces of my AF that I could, the hat is pretty damn stupid looking to be totally honest. I never see people wearing the hat...go figure.

I know it's kinda dark...but seriously, is that not the most retarded hat you've ever seen?

Making our way to the headstone was a piece of cake...I'm finally getting WHM to a level where everything isn't going to one-shot me, so that's nice. There are some angry weapon type mobs directly in front of the Cloister of Frost, but it's easy to sneak by them. At any rate, we got our fragment and moved on to our real goal of the evening...some serious Adventuring Fellow leveling...

{Recall-Jugner}{You can have this.}

I love the fact that the chocobos in the past are black, it just makes them look meaner...

When we got back to San d'Oria (S), I quick changed into DNC, and half heartedly talked to the Campaign Evaluator...I have been kinda lazy lately and haven't been doing Campaign shit, so I was shocked as shit when instead of telling me I sucked and to go die in a fire, they gave me the next medal, the Sterling Star. I really think they made a mistake, but hey, I ain't gonna complain...

"You sure you don't have me confused with someone else??"

After that surprise, Almeth and I headed out to East Ronfaure (S) to get started killing Ladybugs like mad. The plan was to start off with our Signal Pearl, then as soon as that was completed, to pop our Tactics Pearl over and over until that was spent as well. It worked out damn well, I would say.

We started off in the same spot we'd been doing it before, on the eastern side of the zone about halfway down. There was a BLU there killing ladybugs by himself that started crying about how we were killing all the mobs and all that crap, so rather then tell him to fuck off, we decided to move over south of the fortification, and it was the best thing we ever did. Since fighting 6 at a time was no big deal, we decided to up the ante, and the efficiency, and just pull as many as we could find...

Raka and Fhig, just before the mass Ladybug extinction of 2009.

We started off a little slow, only fighting four mobs in this picture...

...then we started getting crazier and crazier as the night went on. I think there's 9 here.

It was ridiculous how many Ladybugs we had at one time...at some points, they couldn't even path correctly so they'd just kinda fly in circles around each other.

This silly bitch thought some stupid Noisome Powder would stave off it's annihilation.

I did still have to Curing Waltz from time to time...nine of these guys hitting for 30-40 each really adds up.

Dancing Edge was enough to pretty much put one down completely, and Almeth had plenty of opportunities to do it...

It was funny as fuck in the game, but really, this would be fucking terrifying if it happened in real life.

People running by gave us some funny looks...

Towards the end of the last charge of our Tactics Pearl, we'd actually started to attract a crowd of people watching us fight all these Ladybugs at once. We had so many, that they were popping as quick as we killed them, so Almeth would just run off and grab more as he saw them while I just kept working on the ones we had. Good samaritans, on their way to Campaign, stopped to ask us if we needed help, but a few people actually stayed just to watch and chat with us while we fought. I mean, really, how often is it you see a couple people fighting like every Ladybug in the zone at one time? When our Adventuring Fellows despawned for the last time, a few people /cheered and /laughed, and everyone waved goodbye. It was a good time, and it was kinda like we were performing for people. Fun stuff ^^

All told, we each got our NPC's a couple levels (level 43, woot!) and came away with 15k worth of Ladybug Wings each...a nice bonus in itself. Almeth and I headed back to town to turn in our loots, and at about that time GodzillaX showed up to hang out with us. Almeth elected to hang in town and work on some campaign ops with his Ninja, while GodzillaX and I ran off to do some Campaign battles. I should have come out as my WHM, but my DNC is a little behind Almeth and Amedelie so I decided to try and catch up instead.

There was a ton of people doing Campaign tonight...as soon as the battle ended it was like a mass exodus of people sprinting for the Campaign Arbiter.

GodzillaX helps me tear down the enemy fort in Pashhow Marshlands (S), meanwhile this slug thing is really freaking me out. I ain't never seen that shit before...

Some random person getting owned by an Orc...they were kinda pissed off today, but there were plenty of us to handle it.

Although GodzillaX bit it at one point (sorry pimp, I tried to save you!) it was a pretty successful run. I got a little closer to Amedelie and Almeth, and came away with a good amount of Allied Notes as well. I've got 30,000 so far...only 140,000 more (and 4 more ranks in Campaign) and I can pick up the Cobra Cap set; it looks like it'll be really hot for Dancer. I can't wait...

{See you again.}{Good night!}{/wave}!

More ZM5, NM hunting in Temple of Uggalepih/Level 66 Party, Wajaom Woodlands...

2009-02-17T00:14:00.026-06:00

When Almeth and I logged on Saturday the plan was for us to level our NPC fellows some more. However, as soon as we were ready to get started, Twinblade let us know that they were about to start making their way out to get the Fire Fragment, so we dropped our plans to go join them and get that as well. This involved a long, and ultimately disastrous, trek through Ifrit's Cauldron...

My first time ever in here, and it's a scary place...

To make things even scarier, there are lava flows that flare up in certain spots...preventing us from moving forward until they calmed down.

Thank God for Tonko and Monomi...there's no way I would have been able to do this using my broken casted sneak and invis...

At the very end of our trip, just before the zone into Yuhtunga Jungle, Twinblade and the WHM that had come along aggro'd a bomb, and since Almeth and I were ahead, stuck behind a lava flow, there was nothing we could do but watch in horror as they died. Since they were the only two with Raise in our party, they elected to give up and Home Pointed. Down to just three of us (Almeth, me, and a 72 Dark Knight that also lived through the trip), we decided to give the NM's a shot anyway...and wouldn't you know it, we managed to put the NM's down without too much trouble. Almeth was good enough to get him and I a garnet, so not only did we get our Fire Fragment, but we got ourselves an Opo-opo Necklace as well. Since it's used in most of the melee based Maat fights to break the level 70 cap, this was very important for us to have, and will come in quite handy.

With that out of the way, Almeth and I decided to try and kill another NM in the Temple of Uggalepih: Habetrot. This was purely a money kill; he doesn't drop any gear or anything, but he does drop anywhere from 1-4 Twincoons, which sell for about 25k each on the Auction Hall. Since he is a popped NM, and you can attempt to spawn him every 15 minutes, it wasn't too big of a deal to go out there and try and beat him down. Unfortunately, you can also spawn a plain old Crawler as well, and from our experience it looks like that's the more likely outcome...

At any rate, we used the time between pops to kill the random Tonberries, Wespes, and Rumble Crawlers that roam the vicinity...

I'd almost feel sorry for the guys if they weren't such little bastards.

"Yeah, sucka, eat that!!!"

When Almeth stands behind me and get's hit...this is what I see.

Somehow we managed to link 3 bees...wouldn't be so bad if they didn't heal themselves all the goddamn time.

"You're not the NM! Go get Habetrot, damn you!!"

We'd exhausted our supply of pop items without ever managing to get the NM. We journeyed further into the Temple to look for another NM to kill, but alas, we didn't have the proper key to get through a door we needed to, so we pretty much gave up on it and warped back to town. Not a stellar finish for the day, but at least we got the Fire Fragment done.

I took Sunday off for family commitments, but I did log on and pop my Empress Band in anticipation of our exp party Monday night in Wajaom. We all got on at our normal time and made our way out...

Regulators, mount up!!

"Whoa, dude...you do not hit me there!"

Legend has it, Puks are a mixture of Dragons and Colibri...why they have insect-like wings I have no idea...

As we were working on our second Empress Band of the evening, the redoubtable GodzillaX showed up, asked us what we were up to, and decided to come along and join the fun. It'd been a while since we partied with him, and it was nice having him with us again. ^^

One second before Almeth got his face bit off...these things are nasty little fuckers!

GodzillaX showing us how it's done...

GodzillaX catches a Crosswind to the face; Almeth's taking a stroll...

We threw the odd Tiger into the mix, but their AOE Paralyze was really fucking annoying...

Gotta love Ninja; with Mijin Gakure, you never need to bring a warp scroll with you...

Seriously, just look at this things teeth...

That was the end of our evening. Amedelie and GodzillaX logged for the night, and I went back to San d'Oria to trigger Sandy Mission 6-1. Hopefully we can knock that out tomorrow, it'd be nice to start ranking up again :)

In the cutscene, I got to talk ot the King again, and I told him what I really think about all this...

Think he get's the point? ^^

Until next time...

Level 24 Duo, Qufim Island/Zilart Mission 5 stuff...

2009-02-13T23:58:00.030-06:00

First off, I just wanted to share a funny name I noticed today while running around on my Windy mule:

Nice....

Ok, back to business...

Anyways, since Almeth's been leveling his NIN more lately, he's been edging ever closer to needing to level his WAR up some more so as to not be "teh gimp". We'd discussed it some last night after the ZM stuff we were doing, and decided to pair up his WAR with my RDM. It's been a while since I've touched RDM, so I was a little rusty, but I am excited to level it some...I really wanna get it to 40 for BCNM purposes, since like every damn BCNM has a strategy involving a RDM. I grabbed what gear I could piece together earlier in the day, got my macros all set up, and made my way out to Jeuno to meet Almeth and get to killing...

I'd forgotten what it's like to fear dying out here...

We had a bit of a rough start...Almeth and I decided to try and fight a worm that had spawned just a little too close to an Evil Weapon that was wandering around. We thought we would be ok, but those hopes were quickly dashed as the Weapon turned around, aggro'd Almeth, and started beating him down. I tried to stick a Bind on him so we could run...but I was too slow on the draw and Almeth got beat to death. The weird thing was that the mob despawned immediately after Almeth died...I know I cured him, but for some reason the mob just didn't feel like finishing me off. At any rate, Almeth ran back out, and we got back to it...

Worms love skillchains...

We were getting damn good exp with our empress bands, better then I expected at any rate. Our bands were spent in no time, which was actually a good thing as Qufim was fucking jam-packed. Seriously, there were duo's and trio's all over the place. The competition was pretty damn annoying, but we did get to lawl a bit as other groups rushed to out claim us, only to wipe because they didn't want to rest up between fights. I mean, worms don't move...why didn't they run away? Is keeping a claim worth a full wipe? Guess so...

With our bands finished off after like 15 mobs, we decided to work on getting a couple of the headstones done that don't require fights. We headed back to Jeuno, I changed to WHM, Almeth changed to THF, and away we were...next stop: Crag of Holla and Ordelle's Caves.

These pants don't go with my top at all, I feel like a fucking clown...

I don't think Square Enix could have made a more boring looking zone...

The trip was pretty uneventful...before long we had our Water Fragments in hand. We tried at getting Tumbling Truffle to spawn (no reason, the gear he drops sucks, but we were right there so fuck it, eh?) but he wanted to be a prick and not pop. We killed a few Napalms to try and get a Flame Degen to drop, needed for the quest Northward for a map of Castle Zvahl. Again, no dice. Finally, we killed a Stroper Chyme in a half-hearted attempt to get a Shikaree Ring, and holy shit, wouldn't you know it...one dropped. I can't even tell you how many of those stupid things we've killed...but finally we got one. I passed it to Almeth; it's a nice ring but I'm sure he'll put it to better use then I...

With spring in our step, I teleported us out to Altepa and we made our way to Quicksand Caves and the next marker...

Never catch me ridin' dirty...

"Almeth, wait for me, these monsters are scarrrryyyyyyy!!!"

I went with Ninja subbed, so I could use Tonko and Monomi, rather then regular Sneak and Invis...for some reason the regular ones I cast always seem to just suck ass and wear really quick. At any rate, we made our way through Quicksand Caves pretty safely, until...

See Almeth. See Almeth fight the Sabotender. See Almeth take 1,000 Needles to the face.

Yeah...we fought a sabotender that aggro'd without incident. Another one aggro'd pretty much immediately after, and thinking "no big deal" Almeth worked on it while I rested back some MP. I watched in horror as it hit him with 1,000 needles and one-shotted him. He was a little irritated (I don't blame him), but luckily I had just picked up Raise II the other day, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been (thank God I was WHM and not Dancer, though...that woulda sucked). He deleveled (ouch!) but he was only a few hundred away from getting it back. With sneak back up, we continued on our journey...

Almeth clicked this thing, and it sunk in the ground. I still don't know what the hell it does, though...

Finally, the Earth Fragment is ours!

Since Almeth was so close to getting his level back, we hung around and took out some of the Antican's that roam the area before heading out. It took a little while, but was a nice, low-key finish to the evening...

This guy glitched and kept wailing away at the spot Almeth was in before he ran around behind me. Pretty fucking funny...

[insert witty comment here]

Almeth wants to pull an Antican, and we know what's gonna happen...they're gonna start dry humping.

God, Blaze Spikes is fucking annoying...

A little "Paralyze" to get things off to a good start...

That was pretty much the end of our evening. Almeth got his level back and a small buffer, and we warped the hell out. So far we've got our Dark, Light, Lightning, Earth and Water Fragments done; now all that's left is Ice, Fire, and Wind. I can't wait to see how fucked up ZM6 is... ^^

In closing, here's a picture of your's truly...I was bored:

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I am a sexy bitch...

Laters!

Assault sucks...but Zilart Missions are fun!

2009-02-13T12:06:00.014-06:00

Thursday is our obligatory Assault day, so we all jumped on and got started pretty quick yesterday. We've been working on the mission Imperial Agent Rescue for a while now, and while we've actually managed to win a few, so far it's been damn ugly. The basic idea is that this dude locked up in one of three cells, and we need to pull mobs to attack us while we stand in front of the cell door. By hitting us (with certain abilities), the mobs will damage, and eventually break down, the door; hopefully the dude is in there, we rescue him, and go on our merry way. In practice, the mobs are a piece of shit and never do the abilities that will damage the door, and when we do manage to break the fucking thing down, the dude isn't even in that one...so we need to drag the mob to the next door and try again.

"You know, you're a real asshole, dude..."

Firespit, one of two ways that the Mamool Ja can actually damage the door. This is probably why they just can't stand doing it, and when they do, 75% of the time it misses the fucking door for no reason.

We try to focus on mobs that have an Axe or a Staff, because they will throw it at us and bring the door down in one hit. Sounds easy, right? Well, it would be if one fucking crit from us didn't break their goddamn weapon...

Yup...someone crits and there goes the ballgame. This is so fucking frustrating...

I ended up eating it at one point, and that was it...it's really a pain in the ass, actually. The problem is, Ame and Almeth can't do a lot of damage...they just need to feed the mob as much TP as possible so that it will do it's "Firespit" move. Since they're not doing very much damage, the slightest cure on my part pulls hate. I eventually get drilled, so I have to cure myself again, and the cycle repeats until I'm dead. I fucking love it...

At any rate, our success rate on this mission is pretty damn dismal; we win maybe 1 in 5 attempts...through no fault of our own, mind you, the mobs just fucking suck. That being said, we were a little burnt on this particular mission, so we decided to give another one a try: Leujaoam Cleansing. This particular mission is pretty straightforward...you've got 30 minutes to kill 15 worms. Piece of cake, right? Wrong...

Making our way to the worms...

"This isn't so bad! We may actually be able to do this!"

Fighting the worms one at a time was pretty damn easy. The problem is, after about 5 or so you come to a room with about 6 of them. Worms link pretty damn easy, have nasty -aga spells that can drop all our shadows in one shot, and silence us to boot. Upon entering the room, we linked one, and discovered that these worms can cast ancient magic...things were going ok until Almeth caught a Quake to the face for about 930 something damage, and he went down. Amedelie and I ran like little girls and used our fireflies to get the hell out of there. All in all, we had two deaths for the evening and not a single win...bummer.

Amedelie had to log after that, so Almeth and I discussed what we wanted to do for the rest of our evening. We kicked around a few ideas, and Almeth suggested we try and shout for help with Zilart Mission 4 in Whitegate. To be honest, I didn't expect to get any replies from people; FFXI has been out a while, and there aren't a whole lot of people out there who haven't already done these things. Because of that, I damn near shit my pants when we started getting tells mere minutes after our first shout. Within 20 minutes we had a full party, with great jobs to boot.

Everyone gathering together for a Teleport-Yhoat.

We didn't have a WHM to teleport us, so I was happy to change jobs for ease of transportation. This required me to run to Norg and change back into Dancer, but that was fine by me, plus one of our members needed to do the Tonberry Hate quest as well...that didn't end up happening (I still have no idea why it wouldn't give him the quest) but it didn't matter anyways. After some running around, we all got together and made our way.

ZM4 is a bit of a pain in the ass in that you need to light 4 lanterns to open the doorway to the BCNM that concludes the mission. Almeth and I had our unlit lanterns, so that wasn't too big of a deal, but there was a lot of running around involved in Den of Rancor, where the mobs are pretty pissed off, even to a 75. Although it was pretty scary shit, we managed to make it through unscathed and got where we needed to be. Entering the BCNM, we were confronted by three Tonberry NMs...

With a 6 man group, 4 of which were 72+, this was a pretty damn easy fight.

After completing the fight, there was a long cutscene, with this cult doing some shit. I dunno, I prolly should pay attention to this crap, rather than just mash the Enter key compulsively.

After that was finished, our helpers offered to start working on the next Zilart Mission: Headstone Pilgrimage. Not wanting to pass up such a good opportunity, we all readily agreed, and we were off. First stop was Sanctuary of Zi'tah...

The basic jist of this mission is you go to these headstones, click on them, and some of them have NMs which pop that you have to defeat. After the NM is done, you click on the headstone again and receive a fragment of some element. I didn't watch the cutscene, so I have no idea why we're doing this, but at any rate it's gotta be done.

"Wow, that's quite a tongue you've got there..."

We put that guy down in about 3 minutes, so it was onward to Behemoth's Dominion for our next headstone and fight...this one involving a couple of Weapon-type mobs. While en route, Almeth and I ran into an old friend and LS-member, GodzillaX. It'd been a while since we'd talked, so we caught up for a few minutes while waiting for other party members to arrive. He told us what he'd been up to, we did the same, and we all promised to get together sometime soon to level or something. All in all, it was very good seeing him again, so if you're reading this Godzilla, "You rock, son!!" ^^

At any rate, we made our way and did our fight. I didn't get any pics of the fight itself, but I did manage to snag a pic of the "Swirling Vortex of Death" along the way. I don't think it's actually called a "Swirling Vortex of Death", but that's the name I'm giving it, cause it's cool...

Almeth's got nuts big enough to click on this thing, but luckily it didn't spawn Satan or anything...

After completing the fight, it was way past our bedtimes, so we bid everyone farewell and headed home. A few peeps said they were interested in doing the rest of the headstones on Saturday, so Almeth and I are defintely going to try and participate in that.

All in all, we had a very productive evening...in closing, I'd just like to thank everyone who helped out: Zackthegreat, Twinblade, Whispers, and Muffinman. You guys all rock lots, and it was a blast running around with y'all! {/bow}{/salute}

Questing in Promyvion-Holla/Temple of Uggalepih

2009-02-11T23:55:00.022-06:00

Almeth and I had a lot on the agenda for tonight's festivities. I was a little late logging in due to real life crap (stupid real life taking away from my game time!), and my first order of business was to get my lazy ass down to Windurst to turn in the Guild Test Item and get my cooking cap from 80 to 90. I had my Whitefish Stew in hand, so I was good to go. Only 20 more levels and I will have my first level 100 craft! Woot!

When finished with that, Almeth and I got down to the first order of business for the day...finishing off the remainder of my Anniversary Band from the night before. I really had no idea how long that was going to take (I secretly prayed it wouldn't be very long), but I steeled myself for the worst. A quick Recall-Jugner and Outpost Warp to Southern San d'Oria (S) and Almeth and I were ready for some real grinding. Almeth changed to his NIN, and we got to work...

You'd think the Colibri would just run from us at some point...

Luckily, I must have been damn close to finishing my band off last night, because it wore in like two mobs. With that completed, we made our way back to town, and moved on to our second goal of the evening: completing the Tactics Pearl mini-quest for Almeth, since the game dicked him out of it the other day. At any rate, we made our way to Holla and got to work...

"Sealing my memories" or whatever the fuck it is...

"Yup...you're fucked!"

"O...k,...sounds...good...to...me........"

Here we have a Wanderer, or, as I like to call them: Sperm Monsters. You'll notice Almeth's Fellow just can't resist taking hate, which makes me want to punch her stupid face.

And this beauty right here, I have no idea...

Winding up for the home-run swing...

Almeth, I swear to God, if that bitch doesn't stop taking hate, I'm gonna kill her myself...

"Maybe if I dance for it it'll be nice..."

"Ok, scratch that, not a very nice creature!"

Fighting these "Memory Receptacles" is the only way to move from floor to floor. Seeing as how they're constantly shitting out those Sperm Monsters, I cannot help but feel like this was inspired by some sick Japanese Animated Porn...

"If that's not his tongue, Almeth, I'd say this guy at least owes you a drink or two..."

"Yeah, dude, you take the ass end, we'll go all 'fingercuffs' on him!"

"Look at her Tank that shit, player! What a stupid bitch!!"

In all fairness, we did manage to keep Almeth's Adventuring Fellow alive, despite some close calls, but in all honesty, you really need to keep an eye on your helper or else they will take hate and die a fiery death. I just wish I could cure her...but as she's technically Almeths "pet" (how fucked up is that?!) I can't do a damn thing to help her. Major bummer....but we got Almeth his Tactic's Pearl...so there'll be much more Adventuring Fellow leveling in our future. ^^

With that completed, I realized I left home without a warp item (Good going dipshit!) so I had to rent a Chocobo and run out to Valkurm to outpost back home. Almeth's Home Point was in Jeuno, and I proceeded to bounce around all over Vana'diel to meet him there so we could move on to goal number 3: Heading out to the Temple of Uggalepih to get our Paintbrush of Souls key item and hopefully find a coffer to open (and thus get rid of another goddamn key in our inventory). This was a prerequisite to our loftiest goal of the evening, number 4: to attempt to put together a pick up group to go tackle Zilart Mission 4. That is something Almeth and I really need to do, as it needs to be completed before you can quest the Opo-opo necklace, which is pretty much the key to beating Maat on almost all jobs.

We made our way out to Good ol' Ugly and got our Paintbrush of Souls pretty much without incident. In our quest to find a coffer to open, we hit a slight snag:

Motherfucking Tonberries, I fucking hate them so goddamn much...

Thank God there was a White Mage in the area that was willing to Raise me...but after waiting for links and shit to be killed before I could be safely raised, it was getting pretty late, so Almeth and I warped the hell out and went home. Zilart Mission 4 is just going to have to wait for another day...

The week (so far) in pictures...

2009-02-11T11:59:00.019-06:00

More of the same for BD...we're a boring Linkshell, aren't we? ^^

We've been doing Campaign, trioing and 4-manning, leveling our NPC's...all that typical shit. Almeth and I did manage to trigger the next Adventuring Fellow quest to get the Tactics Pearl, which involved bringing them into a Promyvion and clicking on a "???" (as well as killing monsters for more experience); alas, Almeth's NPC musta done something really fucked up at one point and ended up biting it...I tried voking but it was no use. I did manage to finish it up myself (mine lived), but unfortunately, Almeth has to do it again...not a big deal, but annoying anyways. We still have no idea what the hell she did to get so much hate right off the bat. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I was concentrating on us not dying ourselves, I didn't get any pics in there (way to fail!) but I'll try and get some when we do the re-attempt for Almeth...

At any rate, here's the pics I did take over the last few days...

"I do believe in Faeries!"

Level 65 Puk trio in Wajaom Woodlands...these things were a lot easier then the last time we tried them.

Preparing to strike...

Aww...isn't he cute?

"He's dead, Jim"

"Why are these things always so pissed off at me?"

This knock back move these things do is so fucking annoying, since they like to spam the shit...

"My, what big teeth you have..."

Going after Almeth for a change...

Terrible picture of an "Orcish Turret"; I'd never seen one before, but they killed it before I could get close...

Almeth, getting shoulder checked by an Antican in Quicksand Caves.

Almeth, our fearless Ninja, tanking an Antican with a sword that's larger than he is...

You know you've got an awesome group going when one of you can sit and rest the entire fight without any problems ^^

That's not to say I didn't get in there and mix it up with the rest of the crew, when I could hit the freaking things, that is...

"Yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and sit this one out, too, ok guys?"

In closing, I cannot say enough how awesome a DNC/WAR/NIN/WHM party is. We were able to put down these IT+ Anticans with little effort, and only had a couple close calls due to nasty Firaga II's when Silence wore and I wasn't able to get it back on them in time. The experience was awesome; with an Anniversary Band is was getting up to 500 a piece, and we chained with ease. At this rate, I'll have my WHM leveled in no time ^^

Until next time...{See you again!}{/goodbye}

Hot Adventuring Fellow Action or: How I Learned To Slaughter Ladybugs by the Dozens

2009-02-07T11:40:00.018-06:00

With our Linkshell members busy doing real life shit (crazy talk!!!) Almeth and I, once again, have had some free time to kill lately. Outside of the obligatory Thursday Assault Runs, and helping Reflaa get through the beginnings of the Wings of the Goddess crap, we didn't really have a lot going on. That being said, we've gotten back into getting some levels on our Adventuring Fellows. We've still got a long way to go, but we've found a pretty damn efficient way to accomplish our goals and make a little bit of money while we do it.

Now that Almeth and I are both 65, the Ladybugs and Colibri are easy enough that we can tackle multiple mobs at once, and by multiple I mean 5 or 6. With Almeth's Treasure Hunter the Ladybug Wings drop like water, the mobs are high enough level to give max Exp for our fellows, so we've been capping them out in like 10 minutes. It's been fun as shit (really really fun), and I'm gonna miss being able to do this when our fellows get higher. At our NPC's levels now (I think 38 and 37, although I could be wrong) we've still got some time before that happens...which is awesome. ^^

At any rate, some pics for posterity:

Fighting 5 Ladybugs and 3 Colibri simultaneously. This is the rare time when they were all relatively lined up; normally we just get swarmed...

Gust Slash {You can have this}!

Only 4 this time; our Adventuring Fellows must be getting exhausted...

And then there were 3...

This time it's 4 Colibri and 4 ladybugs...I dunno why but I just find this all hysterical. I wonder what people think when they run by and see us surrounded by mobs ^^

After 10 minutes or so, our Fellows were done for the day...but the carnage didn't end there.

Almeth, in a move of pure brilliance, decides to break out his recently acquired Valentione's Day stuff and get some club skillups...it was retarded how fast he got skillups ^^

I like to call this piece "Good God, Man!" Basically it's a cut and paste job illustrating just how frigging fast Almeth was racking up those club skillups. This is only about 5 minutes or so worth of chat logs...the red boxes outline the solid chunks...triple attack ftw!!

"Good God, Man! Part Deux"...again, the red boxes highlight the solid blocks of skill ups this guy was getting. Needless to say, I'm going to make it a point to bring out some dumpy weapon myself and do the same thing next time...

So there you have it. What we learned today:

Leveling your Adventuring Fellow on Ladybugs fucking rocks!
If you're high enough level, just grab as many as you can at once as possible...it's full of lulz!
If you have a low enough weapon skill in something, skill up on Ladybugs!

This is Deuce, signing off...

Questing Around/Farming in the Temple of Uggalepih...

2009-02-01T15:39:00.010-06:00

I logged on at my normal time yesterday to finish up some odds and ends, mainly the Past Reflections quest (still had to make the Icecap Rolanberry...trying to find Gelatin is like pulling teeth, it seems), but other than that didn't have too much planned. Almeth was already on, having spent hours trying to get a Rabbit Charm from Jaggedy-Eared Jack. When I showed up he was 0/5 (the drop rate on the Rabbit Charm is notoriously low), so I gave him my condolences and got to crafting.

Luckily the synths went without a hitch, so we now had all the items we needed to complete the quest. Almeth gave up on the Rabbit Charm for the evening, we bounced all over Vana'diel finishing it up, ending up in Jeuno. I worked on some cooking for a while (got level 78 {/cheer}! ^^), then we decided to give the Escort for Hire (San d'Oria) quest a go, which basically involves protecting an NPC as she runs through Eldieme Necropolis. We'd tried it before, but we were just too low level to kill the mobs fast enough to complete it. Being that we were now like 10 levels higher, we tried again, and yeah...still too low. We can kill the mobs just fine, but there's no way we were going to finish within the 30 minute time limit. Defeated, we collectively racked our brains for something else to do.

Almeth came up with the quest Everyone's Grudge, which is necessary to complete in order to clear your Tonberry Hate, and thus not get 1-shotted while fighting Tonberries when they pull that shit out of their ass. As we both had a Coffer Key to get rid of, as well as needing another key for a quest later on (TOO MANY FUCKING KEYS LOL), it looked like a trip out to the good ol' Temple of Ugly was in order. We ran out to Sea Serpent Grotto, triggered the quest, grabbed choco's and made our way.

While en route, Almeth spotted an NM wandering around minding his own business, Bisque-Heeled Sunberry. As we can't allow NM's to wander around unchallanged, we quickly dismounted and beat his fucking ass down:

He didn't even see it coming... :)

With him out of the way, we zoned inside and began our journey to get the Tonberry Key, reset our Tonberry Hate, and hopefully find the Coffer.

"Do you have a key, Mr. Tonberry?"

I don't know what the hell this thing is doing, but I bet it sucks...

"Hiding in the corner isn't gonna help you, dude..."

These guys link so fucking easily; it's quite annoying...

"Yeah, fuck him up Almeth!"

That was pretty much it for the evening. We killed tons of tonberries...the key is a real pain in the ass to get. When we'd given up on the key and focused on finding a coffer (which we never found...), that's when we finally managed to get a couple to drop. It was getting late, so we called it an evening not long after that. All in all, the trip was educational, at least. Last time I'd been down here these things were really pissed off so I didn't explore much, and managing to reset our hate was very nice (getting hit with "Everyone's Grudge" for like 2k ain't fun for anybody). I would have liked to have found that coffer, but oh well, we'll be coming back here again at some point for our Zilart Missions...

Peace out!

Farming in Uleguerand Range...

2009-01-31T01:16:00.017-06:00

Almeth and I popped an Empress band before we logged off Thursday night, in anticipation of partying as soon as we logged on Friday. Unfortunately, Amedelie and Reflaa were busy until much later in the evening, so we had a dilemma on our hands: since Empress Bands will run out if you don't use them in a set amount of time, we needed to find something we could reasonably kill for decent experience with just the two of us. Having recently triggered the quest "Past Reflections" to increase our Adventuring Fellow bond, we were in need of some different food items to complete the quest. I had the cooking covered (I knew leveling cooking would come in handy someday!) but there was one ingredient that was going to be a bitch...Buffalo Meat. It only drops from mobs in one zone, and the mobs were at a decent enough level that we could both get our Empress Bands in and try and get the meat I was gonna need. That being said, we made our way out to Uleguerand Range with our eyes on the prize...

"Why, hello there Mr. Buffalo! Can I have some meat, please?"

"Whoa!"

"OH GOD IT'S GOT ME!!!! SHOOOOOOOOT IT!!!!!!!!"

Did I mention these things are huge? So huge that the camera didn't know where to put itself, shit, so huge that the freaking buffalo didn't know where to put itself. We spent most of the time fighting these things with views like these on our computer monitors:

"Is it hitting me? Can you tell?? Aw what the fuck?!"

"Are you fucking kidding me?! How am I supposed to fight this thing like this?!?!"

"Aw COME ON!!! This is fucking ridiculous!!!!!"

Sometimes, and sure as shit not very often, but sometimes, the buffalo would actually get up off of our nuts for a second so we could actually see something. Of course, it wasn't things we particularly wanted to see, mind you...

"Holy shit OWWWWWWW!!!!"

What a cutie!

"Well, this is kinda awkward..."

"Um, yeah, anytime I can get out of this thing's ass would be cool with me..."

This is the same zone where I shot the "Mountain Sliding Fun" video a while back...which is actually pretty fun to do, provided you can get passed all the really pissed off shit on your way up the mountain. In leaving the immediate area where we found the Buffalo, we passed right by the bottom of one of the two hills you can slide down...and this is what we found:

I have no clue what the hell happened to this bunch, but they somehow managed to die on the side of the mountain. This is no small feat, considering there are no mobs on the side of the mountain. If they aggro'd up top, how'd they manage to make it to the side to die and slide down to the bottom? The world may never know...

Shot from a different angle, for the lulz. They were prolly like "Who the fuck is this guy taking pictures of us laying here dead?!" At any rate, I /cried out of sympathy, but in reality, Almeth and I found it fucking hysterical...

In the end, we managed to get 2 pieces of Buffalo Meat, which is all I needed for the synth, and I didn't even blow any up (although I did HQ one...why can't I ever HQ when I want to?!?)...good thing, too, as the drop rate on the meat fucking sucks. I'm serious, it's such a pain in the ass. Oh well, "all's well that ends well" and all that shit...

L8TRZ!!!!! ^^

Level 44 Party, Eastern/Western Altepa Desert

2009-01-30T13:37:00.014-06:00

Tuesday was our obligatory "Reflaa" day, and because of some issues finding mobs in the 50's for us to work on for a reasonable amount of experience, we decided to change things up and try a different combination of jobs so we could cap at a different level and find better mobs. That being said, we formed up a 4-man party of the following: Almeth as NIN, Amedelie as DNC, Reflaa as WAR, and me on my WHM. Amedelie was good enough to do some scouting by the outpost, and mob levels were good so it was a go. Sandy controlled Altepa also, so Reflaa was able to do a Supply Run and unlock the outpost, another big plus.

Let me just say, this combination is freaking awesome! We started off taking it easy, working on T's and the occasional VT...but they were dropping so fast and with such little effort we started focusing on IT's and were most definitely kicking ass. The experience was great, I had zero issues with MP, Ame was doing great on TP; all in all, I look forward to partying again with this configuration next time Reflaa plays.

Getting to melee and spend the majority of my MP on enfeebles and buffs, instead of healing, was tons of fun...and I got lots of skillups as well!

This poor BST tried to level here, but we were just mowing through mobs. I almost felt bad...almost. We were here first and all...he quickly moved on.

Drain Samba II makes me very happy... ^^

"Annnnnnnnnd, you're dead. Nice try though!"

The Gobs quickly turned to crap (how the hell do they go from all being IT to T in like an hour??) so we ran out a ways to check Anticans. Unfortunately, they were dumpy, too, so we moved on up to the next camp...our trusty Beetle camp by the plateau in Western Altepa Desert.

The beetles started out T (wtf?) but quickly shot to the VT and IT end of the spectrum once we cleared them out. They were a bit more of a pain in the ass then the Gobs were, but we got good experience from them.

Nice profile shot of me while my peeps beat down another poor beetle. Oh, the humanity!

"Oh no, it's charging!"

Half of my enfeebles didn't stick on these fucks...I really need to work on my magic skill.

Ame comes through with the Quickstep; Evasion Down {You can have this.}

At the end of the day, everybody got a level (don't remember the specifics but I got 55 on WHM, woot!), and had a great time. I can't wait to do this again; like I said, this combination rocks. Until next time... ^^

More Random Screenshots, Garuda Prime Fight...

2009-01-24T16:08:00.023-06:00

Having received some new Maze Runes through the course of our many runs, I received the "Dragon" Rune, and due to our being burnt out on fighting Elementals and other ridiculous shit, we decided to give it a go. I continued to come out as my 22 SAM for ease, and outside of some angry Petrification that really crimped our style, it wasn't too bad.

Just chilling out, waiting on Almeth...

"OMG Hurry!!!!!!" :)

"Please don't petrify us, Mr. Dragon sir!"

"Yeah, beat that ass, Almeth!!"

"Oh Yeah?! Well, you're ugly!!"

Been pretty quiet in BD lately. We've been doing some Campaign, working on some Assault Missions (no screenies of that, yet, been more worried about completing them and living lol), a couple random trio's here and there...typical shit. Here's some random pics from the last week:

When doing Campaign battles, NPC's will show up to help with the fight. During this fight in particular, however, I think they went a little overboard. There was so many freaking NPC's the fight lasted like 3 minutes...

And then of course there's situation like this, where there's no NPC's, and we get our ass freaking handed to us. You know it's bad when the Orc's leave a trail of bodies behind them as they push through. Thank God for Reraise and no Exp loss...

WAR/RNG/WHM trio in Garlaige with Amedelie and Reflaa. This camp was clear when we got there (amazing in itself since it always taken), but people kept showing up and staring at us. You'd think they'd never seen a trio before or something...

"Yeah, Ame, chase his ass outta here! OUR FUCKING CAMP, ASSHOLE!!!"

Now Reflaa's gotta start chasing people away...what the fuck is going on down here?!

The Beetle's were VT, so it took us a while to beat them, but the exp was good, and I even managed to land one swing in 5 with my staff. Staff skillups FTW!!!

Dropping Haste on Ame while fighting some Bats...

And now a fucking Beastmaster decides to camp on top of us. Did common courtesy go out the fucking window or something?

"OMG Ame shoot it!!"

Break Time!

Reflaa and I both dinged, and overcrowding/poopie exp forced us to move on. We tried running out to Quicksand Caves, but there was already a party. Finding trioable mobs at 54 is tough, so we said "Fuck it" to levelling and decided to help Reflaa get his Maws and Wings of the Goddess shit unlocked instead.

Cheering Reflaa on as he gets his Red Recommendation Letter to be able to participate in Campaign...

After an hour of running through the past, we take a quick break before we finish our run through Jugner Forest (S). Unfortunately, not minutes later, Reflaa caught some aggro to an IT++ Orc and that pretty much ended our night. Oh well, guess we'll just have to come back another day and finish it up... :)

And, for everybodies viewing pleasure, Kamiku, Almeth and I fighting Garuda. Kamiku pretty much whooped his ass, Almeth helped by stabbing her in the ass, and I just kept everyone alive. All in all, Almeth got his Garuda's dagger, and Kamiku and I walked out with 10k. Not bad for a 10 minute fight...although, the run to her took a while.

And so ends our saga for another day. Adios, Adieu, and all that good shit... ^^

Just a Video...

2009-01-14T13:51:00.003-06:00

Last night we had a new moon, so we took the opportunity to try and get Amedelie a Selene's Bow. It drops off of a pair of NM's, named Black Coney and White Coney, which spawn only on New and Full moons, respectively. In order to spawn them, you have to trade a San d'Orian Carrot to a set of "Rabbit Footprints" in Uleguerand Range. I had read about people going 0/10 on the bow previously, but luckily the NM can be respawned every 15 minutes, so we had plenty of time to keep trying...but it turned out we didn't need it anyways, as we got it on our first try. Treasure Hunter ftw!!!! :)

We were 75 THF/NIN, 75 WHM/BLM, 62 THF/NIN, and 62 DNC/NIN. Amedelie focused on DoT's and buffs/debuffs, I took care of healing and paralysis, and Almeth and Kamiku took care of beating it's face inside out.

At any rate, here's the vid:

For a little ol' rabbit, this guy was a bit of a pain in the ass. He has a move called "Snow Cloud" that he likes to spam, which inflicts Paralysis, not to mention the other standard rabbit attacks like Footkick and such. He hit pretty hard, too, but it wasn't anything we couldn't handle...

Laterz!!!!

Some More Screenies (and ANOTHER Vid )

2009-01-13T16:46:00.022-06:00

Almeth and I, at a loss for something productive to do with just the two of us, decided to give a new feature a try: Moblin Maze Mongers. Basically, you go talk to a dude and get Tetris blocks and a "Tabula", then you put the blocks on the Tabula in some random way, then you take the Tabula to the Shopfront and "order" your maze. Then you and the rest of your party can go in and kill the monsters (which are random types, although I'm sure there's some method to it) to get Marbles, which are used to buy more maze stuff (like runes for controlling the mob types, etc), and also exp scrolls and some gear. It was all very complicated, especially to me, since I have this reading comprehension thing working against me. At any rate, I had read that these mazes tailor themselves according to your party, so I figured me and Almeth would be ok as 61 THF and 61 DNC.

Almeth was attempting to order his very first maze, when he got the error, "The hands of darkness are preventing you from entering..." Not sure what the hell that meant, I tried mine, and it worked, so I have no fucking clue...his worked just fine later, anyways.

By the way, did I mention you only have 30 minutes to complete the maze? Before going in for the first time, we joked between ourselves, "Gee, wouldn't it suck if we got Oozes or something highly resistant to physical damage?"

Great. Fucking Oozes. Oh, the irony of it all.

"Um, yeah, there's no fucking way we're getting this done in 30 minutes..."

We gave it our best, and actually managed to put down all the Oozes in the 30 minute time limit, and then we noticed the next type of mob they had given us: Magic Pots. I didn't get any screenshots of them, because I was busy getting my letter bomb ready so I could mail it off to the Square Enix headquarters. I dunno how we did it, but we managed to get two of the worst types of mobs 2 melee's could hope to get. After that bitter failure, we tried Almeth's Tabula, which worked this time, figuring that we can't get something worse than Oozes, really.

"Well, shit, this is much better. I mean, we're hitting them harder at least, but they keep crushing us for like 600 damage. What a kick in the nuts..."

"Alright, we're getting there. Time is ticking, but we're not doing too bad, we just might make it!"

"Alright, Sea Monks are all dead, let's see what the next mob is...ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME?!?! ELEMENTALS?!?!?!?! THAT'S JUST FUCKING PERFECT!!"

Needless to say, we didn't complete either maze in the alloted time, because we got the big dick. Amedelie was about to log on, and Kamiku was finishing up his stuff, so we decided to go get a band in out in Wajaom Woodlands before we logged out for the night.

After the beating we took in the Mazes, the game owed us an easy party, in my opinion...

Quick, someone remind me why I play this game again? I mean, I might as well pay someone to just come kick me in the nuts repeatedly...

Back in business, Thank God...

We called it not too long after that. All in all, nobody ate any more deaths, so that was nice.

Upon logging in yesterday, Kamiku had some free time before his Limbus run, and Almeth was keen to get his last piece of THF AF. This involved running out to Garlaige and killing a bomb-type NM named Chandelier (awful name in my opinion but whatever). I geared up as WHM to better assist Kamiku, and we made our way out.

In order to get through the Banishing Gates, you need 4 people, and since we were only 3 of us at the time, that meant we needed someone to come for 2 seconds and stand on a switch. Asking politely didn't work. Offering 1k didn't either, nor did 2k. It cost Almeth 5k to get someone to come stand on a switch for 2 seconds...how nice.

Video of the fight. There was a couple "OMG HOLY SHIT KAMIKU'S GONNA DIE!" moments, but we got it done, and Almeth got his spankin' new Rogue's Poulaines...{Congratulations}!!!!

After the fight, Kamiku had to run off, so Almeth and I decided to give the Maze thing another try. In reading about it, apparently the maze will give mobs that check as DC-T to the lowest member of your party, so I geared up as my 42 PLD to give that a shot. We figured that, with Almeth being 20 levels higher, he'd be able to blow through whatever they threw at us. We wouldn't get any experience, of course, but we're more concerned with getting the marbles, so we can make better mazes. At any rate, we got our shit together and gave it a whirl...

Great. More elementals. Why does this game hate us so much?

We were at the very end, killed the last mob with like 2 seconds to spare, and waiting for the treasure chest to pop when the Maze collapsed and we got warped out. Needless to say, we were pissed off...and a new strategy was in order. Since being a 42 PLD wasn't low enough for Almeth to effectively put these things down, and since we kept getting stuck with goddamn elementals and other nasty mobs, I bit the bullet and decided to come out as my 22 SAM. I figured, if we can't kill these things in time with them being in the twenties, then something was just fucked up and we were obviously not meant to do this.

Letting Almeth take care of business while I sit on my ass and do nothing.

"We finally completed one! Now let's get the hell out of this shit hole!!"

That's all I got for now, cheerio!

Obligatory screenshot post...(and a vid!)

2009-01-11T18:54:00.019-06:00

Just some screenshots I took during our adventures yesterday, enjoy!

Almeth discovered The Colosseum in Aht Urhgan, and I just had to check it out myself. That tree owned that tiger in the face...

...and this leech destroyed this weapon. Who woulda thought?

Whatever the fuck that thing on the left is versus a spider. The spider won...

There's that Amedelie, sitting down on the job again. :)

Almeth says, "Let's do a Campaign Battle real quick!" Uhhh, yeah...

I finally get a Raise from some kind soul, and the mutant Orcs are out in full force...

...and then I immediately die again. That's my hand and some of my head at the bottom of the frame. What a fucking rip off.

Chilling in Al Zahbi, waiting for Beseiged to start. A couple people managed to get on top of the lamp post...

...so Almeth and I decided to join them. I wonder how many people can fit up here?

Badonkadonk. Derriere. Booty. Call it what you will; my shit is bumpin! ^^

Almeth wanted to sit up here with me, too, so I was nice and got inside the wall for him...

"Ok, play time's over, time to get serious!"

Ok, I call "Not fighting that guy!"

Ah, the insanity that is Beseiged...I could take my pants off and start playing with myself right now, nobody would even notice :)

Almeth crushing that shit from behind.

For everyone's viewing pleasure, a nice little video clip of Almeth and I attempting to finish up the quest "The Claws of the Griffon". Basically a bunch of cutscenes and an NM fight, we figured, "Eh, we can do this!" Just watch the video, it's pretty self-explanatory...

That's all I got for today...hasta la pasta!!

Level 61 Party, Upper Delkfutt's Tower/More screenie goodness...

2009-01-10T17:16:00.020-06:00

Since the bats in King Ranperre's Tomb were getting a little weak at 61, alternate campsites were researched, and we decided to give Upper Delkfutt's Tower a shot. It was a little rough at first, and there was some nasty links at one point or another, but all in all it worked out very well and should be good for at least a level or so.

The fabled "Stairway to Nowhere", which literally goes nowhere...which contributed to my rage quite a bit.

"Well, I sure do love running up and down all these stairs, shit!"

These three Gigas chased Almeth all the way to the stairway, then as soon as he started going down, said "Eh, fuck it...". What a bunch of lazy bitches...

Good thing Gigas are blind as a bat...

"OMG Almeth, where are you?!"

"Oh, there he is, and he even brought a friend!"

"I'll cut your crotch, bitch!"

"Yay, more fucking stairs..."

After our bands wore, Amedelie had to go for the evening, so Almeth and I pondered what exactly we wanted to do before we logged off ourselves. Almeth suggested running out to Aht Urhgan to get the final staging point we needed, the Halvung Staging Point. I had actually tried to do this particular staging point way back in the day, but I was like 40-something WHM, and I bit it really really hard somewhere along the way. At any rate, it was much easier this time around... ^^

"There's some serious Island of Doctor Moreau shit going on out here tonight..."

That guy looks like a fucking BADASS, doesn't he? :)

Halvung, a giant volcano, and generally happy and light-hearted place...

"Hey look, Almeth, IT+++++ Crawlers!! Let's say hi!!"

Around the middle of Halvung we came across this area, which is definitely getting added to my "Coolest Looking Places in Vana'Diel" list.

Same place, another angle...

"Ok, sightseeing's over, let's get a move on..."

Finally, Mount Zhayolm. We're almost there...

This place is so pissed off, the bombs roll in fucking packs out here. Cause, you know, one isn't enough...

And so concludes the adventures of another day...Ciao!!!

Bugallug Fight

2009-01-09T08:49:00.005-06:00

Last night we got the obligatory band in down in King Ranperre's Tomb (no pics 'cause, let's face it, how many pics do we need of the three of us fighting in a cave?), and after that was completed Almeth agreed to help me finish up a Bastok quest, "A Question of Faith". This particular quest wasn't even all that important to me (but it was a free 3k, anyways), but the following quest gives a ring worth around 60k, and that does interest me. A lot. Because I'm poor...

Anywho, this quest involves killing this level 45-50 NM named Bugallug. The ffxiclopedia site says that it's soloable by most jobs at 65, and since Almeth and I are both 61, I figure if we team up it should be okay. The earliest anyone's tried it was a trio at level 63, at least, according the the ffxiclopedia.

Yeah, what a fucking joke. Serves me right for reading too much into what was posted on there. I think we both got hit 3 times total. He dealt like a total of 100 damage to us. We totally destroyed him. I couldn't fucking believe it, he couldn't even hit us, the only time he managed to even connect is either when he countered or AOE'd us, regular melee attacks missed pretty much every time.

It isn't often in Final Fantasy XI that I get to say "Ha Ha pwned your fucking ASS!!!!!" but this was one time I did, and it felt nice. ^^

What a little bitch of an NM...

Anyways, that's all I got today! Adios and all that good shit!!

Aquarius fight/Level 59 Party, King Ranperre's Tomb

2009-01-06T14:51:00.024-06:00

Last night was exciting for me, as I got to explore an area I've never really been in: The Boyahda Tree. Well, that's not entirely true, as I'd run in there, screaming the whole way, while getting chased by angry Rock Golems in The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, while duoing on Goobbue's with Ame, a million years ago. So I'd seen the front door, so to speak, but never actually been in there. As Ame was keen to procure a Fransisca (an uber axe for Ranger), we took a few minutes, at the start of the night, to make our way out there to see if we could get Aquarius to pop. After bouncing all over Vana'Diel, we arrived in The Boyahda Tree, and made our way to the pop location...

I found out later that nothing aggro's on the way up there, but I wasn't taking any fucking chances.

This is a pretty cool place, actually...trees growing inside a giant tree.

We made it to the pop location unscathed, and since we a had a few minutes until Kamiku arrived, I looked around some...

Pretty neat looking :)

A waterfall, inside a tree...pretty cool.

While we were waiting for Kamiku, a 75 Puppetmaster that was soloing on the crabs in there actually managed to pop Aquarius. Amedelie sent a tell asking if he was going for it, and he said he already had a Fransisca, and actually agreed to join our little group to help fight Aquarius when Kamiku showed up. I'm glad he did, as the fight took a while even with 3 75's in the party. Of course, I couldn't really do much to it, being level 60 and all, but we TP'd up on the regular crabs that were running around so I could keep everyone healed up at least while Ame focused on enfeebling and such. All in all, it was a piece of cake...

Fransisca {You can have this.}{/cheer}!

With that out of the way, we got down to business and made our way back to San d'Oria to get a Band in. Having previously researched some camp's that a trio of 59's could handle, we decided to give King Ranperre's Tomb a try, working on the Dire Bats that run around in the basement. It was actually pretty good experience, so we'll definitely have to remember this spot for future parties in this level range. This was also an experience for me, as I've never actually ran around down here.

Some pre-game hot sex action. Doesn't Ame look excited? :)

Do a Barrel Roll!

On paper, those Worms seemed like a good TP mob, as they checked as Even Match. In reality, however, they raped the shit out of us, even though they were lower level then the bats, mainly because of the goddamn AOE's and they like to spam. So yeah, VT bats were easier then EM worms...go figure.

Ame's trying to electrocute me again, I think...

Unfortunately, we still had to rest up a touch here and there after the beatings Ame would take...

I swear, if I ever end up with an arrow embedded in the back of my skull, Ame's ass is going down... :)

Eat it, whore!!!

In reflecting on our evening, I have to say that Ame and Almeth fucking PWN as a team. All told, they were dealing upwards of 1800 damage total with their WS's and Skillchains. Since bats are weak to piercing damage (thats why we try to fight bats whenever possible), they dropped FAST after that. OF course, Ame would get perma hate after that, so I pretty much had to Cure bomb at the end of the fights, but all in all it wasn't too bad, and I generally was doing pretty good on the TP management.

All in all, Almeth got 60 and I got 61, so I was very happy with our progress. Amedelie had to log off for the night right after that, and as I had a few more minutes to kill before I had to log off myself, Almeth suggested we take a trip out to Norg to get some of the Rise of the Zilart missions started. I changed into White Mage and we Teleport-Yhoat'd out there. Upon entering Norg, I was treated to a pretty cool cutscene:

Despite the fact that I'd been out here like a billion times before, these guys were still like "Who the fuck are you?!" Story of my life...

I'd hit it...

This guy, and his son, win the "Asshole of the Year" award...

I have a terrible feeling about this...

Wow, they look real friendly...

Lol pwned...

Gilgamesh, the leader of Norg. He looks like a BMF, amirite?

This looked a neat pic to me, so I took a snapshot :)

Jakoh Wahcondalo, the Chieftainess of Kazham.

And so ends our adventures for another day!

Some random screenshots...

2009-01-05T10:22:00.018-06:00

With the holidays upon us, and the requisite "family time" that they entail (crazy talk! ^^), it's been a slow couple weeks for BD. We did whatever we were able, when we were able...but for the most part, it's been pretty low key. At any rate, here's some screenies from the random times we were able to get on...

I finally hit level 60, and am now officially in full Dancer AF! Yay!!!!

True, it looks like I'm hiding down here, but it's all part of my ingenious Master Plan. Ah, fuck it, you caught me...I'm hiding.

"Ok, yeah, I am so not fucking with that angry shit. No sir!"

I'm not positive, but I think Almeth was down there whacking at that shit like a crazy person. I have my character models turned way down (which is why you can't see any peeps down there), 'cause Beseiged murders my framerate...

"Ok, I'll pretend to actually contribute to the fight, why not?"

They took the goddamn chocobo renter! What the fuck!!!!!!!

Running around Alzadaal Undersea Ruins with Almeth, working on Aht Urhgan missions...

I love how, out here in Aht Urhgan, you can like teleport anywhere with these devices here. This whole area was built with the lazy elitists in mind (I can't wait 'til I'm a lazy elitist ^^)

This dumb bitch can't add for shit...I want my fucking Gold Pieces!!!!

"That looks like a cheery place!"

Another Staging Point can be crossed off the list... ^^

So, there we were in Garlaige, 4-manning Beetles, when this little /shout war broke out. I edited all the relevant parts together, but yeah, fucking hysterical. Apparently, that T* guy is pretty well known on the Fairy server to be a fucking douchebag, Kamiku heard that he stole an entire Linkshell's bankroll and changed servers, and I actually googled him later and found some reports in some forums that he stole a Kraken Club by disbanding the party right after they completed a BCNM and opening the chest, stealing all the drops. I'd have to concur with the douche part myself, since he decided to steal Beetle's we were fighting right in front of him for no fucking reason. You know you have to be a piece of shit to be called out on it on multiple forums. /blist FTW! ^^

Anyways, Ladies and Gentlemen, thats all I got for today. Happy New Year everybody!!!! :)

Partying and Questing...

2008-12-22T12:31:00.023-06:00

We've done a lot over the last few days. Almeth and I completed our G3 quests, we got the Shadow Lord fight done (thanks Ame and Kamiku!!!), we did some campaign battles, and we did some basic trio and 4-man experience parties mixed in there, as well. All told, a busy weekend for BD, but hey, what else is new? :)

This is what happens when you get too close to the Yugudo High Priest in Castle Oztroja...

These Gobs don't stand a chance...

Luckily, there's Pixies running around out here in Ronnfaure (S), so whenever we get drilled by a Bomb Toss, we can always chase one down for a Cure IV...

Some more Gob pwnage...

Chilling out, waiting for the Campaign Battle to begin...

Campaign is pretty much the same as Beseiged, except for the fact that it takes place outside of a city and there are NPC's fighting with you.

After we collectively wiped out the Gobs, these things showed up...they were pretty pissed :)

Annnnnnnnnnnd dead!

Kamiku joined us on his Monk for some Garlaige Citadel action... :)

Making our way through Castle Zvahl Baileys, en route to the Shadow Lord...

We caught some aggro, but it wasn't too big of a deal out here...

Resting quick upon zoning into the Castle Zvahl Keep. This marked where we really did not wanna fuck around with aggro...

This is a teleporter. I seriously wonder how people managed to get through this shit before it was written out online, because that wouldn't be obvious to me at all...

After finally making it through the Castle Zvahl Keep, we come to the bridge to the Throne Room of the Shadow Lord. Looks ominous, doesn't it? :)

Finally! The Shadow Lord's throne, how cool is this shit? :)

Aww, shit! Here he comes!!!

Well, he looks pissed off...

The video of the fight. Kamiku and Amedelie did most of the work, but hey, I threw a few Cures and Haste's out there! There was a ton of cutscenes that I had to edit out for Youtube time constraints, unfortunately...

After successfully beating the Shadow Lord, we return to San d'Oria to meet with the King and claim our reward! Zilart missions here we come!!! :)

Christmas fun, Final Fantasy style!

2008-12-21T01:14:00.019-06:00

It's that time of year again, and the Starlight Festival is in full swing. In years past I always blew off the winter holiday activities for one reason or another, but I vowed to try my hand at some of them this time around. It's actually been lots of fun, and I've made a decent amount of gil off of the items I've received as well; we all know how much everyone loves getting money for christmas... :)

The first of the mini-quests available is pretty simple: you go out into one of the newbie zones (I chose East Ronnfaure since I'm Elvaan and all) and destroy boxes to get Bell-Themed Tokens. These tokens are then exchanged for items; some food, some gear, all kinds of shit. After reading up on it, I made my way outside and started beating the crap out of some boxes...

"Yeah, die box!!! Merry Fucking Christmas!!!"

What a weak ass box...

"All right! A box full of boxes!! What an awesome gift!!!"

[sarcasm]"Man oh man, I hope this is another box full of boxes! That'd be SWEET!!"[/sarcasm]

Ok, to be fair, there was actually some decent drops out of the boxes, outside of the tokens, mainly food items. At first I was pretty ho-hum about it, until I realized that they can be vendored for up to 1k a piece to an NPC. When I discovered that, I was much more excited about breaking those boxes...and it also gave me something to do in between the other parts of the christmas stuff.

Next up was a mini-quest helping the Moogles deliver gifts to people. The best part is, it was always the same people, so it was just a matter of flagging the quest, talking to 4 peeps, and claiming my reward. They weren't even that far apart, so it was pretty painless, and I got some cool new clothes out of the deal. It could only be done once per Vana'diel day (roughly once an hour), but it ain't like I had anything else going on, so I ran around and did what I was told.

"Wow, there's a lot of Santa's around here today..."

"I've ran up and down this road like 12 times today! Kill me!!!!"

"Hey you! Betcha he like's my present better!!"

"Dude, why are you so surpised? I've been here literally twelve times now. I think you smoke to much ganja, player..."

And yet another mini-quest, giving Christmas cards to people. Basically, you talk to moogle who gives you card and tells you to find a certain race and gender to give it to, such as Hume man, or Tarutaru woman. The first night I did it, I was pulling my hair out, trying to find one goddamn person that met the requirements. Of course, I always got like Galka, and there'd be no Galkans anywhere at all. Or the ones that were around were like ignorant asses that wouldn't respond to tells. At any rate, Almeth found the trick to it, and I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner, considering the Easter event is somewhat similar...basically, if you're actually in a party with someone else, the cards you each get will match the other person in your group. So it's a real easy matter to trade the cards between each other, trade them to the moogle, then trade them back. This was another thing that could only be done once per Vana'diel day, but the reward was yet another Token that was able to be exchanged for some items.

Yay, Christmas!

I got all my decorations up, and I'm leaving them up all year. It's always Christmas in my house!

Almeth and I, showing off our Christmas shit...aren't we adorable!

Merry Christmas everybody!!!

A couple vids!

2008-12-15T11:18:00.006-06:00

This weekend, as a whole, was an exciting one for BD. We got Reflaa Tonko: Ichi, his Dark Spark fight completed, his G2 completed, and, with some help, completed San d'Oria Mission 5-1: The Ruins of Fei'Yin for Almeth, Reflaa, and I. I'd like to thank Kamiku and Willowrose for helping us out, as there's no way we could have completed this shit on our own, so thanks guys!!!!

Since I'm an idiot, I didn't think to record half the fights we did (which sucks, since the odds of us doing them again anytime in the near future are next to none) but someday I'll get them recorded to share with everyone and show off our uber leetsauce skillz :)

At any rate, here's the two fights I did manage to record:

This is the 5-1 fight. Basically, you're fighting a bunch of skeletons. We were WHM, BLM, WAR, MNK, THF, and DNC. Although some of us did get a little low on HP, and the Paralyze was really pissing me off, we managed to get 'er done without too much difficulty. Next up, Shadow Lord!

When that was completed, Reflaa and Amedelie had to go for the evening, but Almeth and I stayed on to run out to the Temple of Uggalepih to help Willowrose and Kamiku farm for some White Steel off of the Tonberry's out there. At first I was worried that I wouldn't be able to really help out (the Mobs out there are kinda pissed off), but I'm glad I went as we had tons of fun, even though people kept getting one shotted with "Everyone's Grudge". I really couldn't even tell you how many times Kamiku and the other 75's died, but it was lots...

To top it all off, through the course of our evening, we actually got the pop item for Sozu Rogberry, an NM that drops a pretty nice dagger for Almeth's Thief. The pop item has like a 1% drop rate, so he was obviously ecstatic, and everyone else was more than happy to help us fight it and get Almeth the drop.

Of course, since everyone else was like fully merited 75, the fight really didn't last too long, but it was fun to watch everyone own face :)

If this guy wouldn't have used Perfect Dodge, this video would have been literally 20 seconds long. After watching Barnyrubble totally rape shit as 75 Monk, I'm half tempted to start levelling it myself again.

And the icing on the cake, I ended up with a shit ton of drops to sell, which is nice, as I spent a 150k over the weekend buying shit for White Mage. I also came out of the festivities with Red Mage, Black Mage, and Summoner testimonies, so if I ever decide to take those jobs up to 75, I've already got that covered.

At any rate, we all had a blast this weekend! Many thanks to everyone that helped us out!!!

Back again in this motherfucker!

2008-12-13T01:01:00.021-06:00

It's been a while since my last post; I've been off doing the family thing while my boys in BD fuck shit up. From what I hear, things went very well for everyone, so first off, I'd like to say {Good Job!}{Congratulations} to my peeps!

With that being said, here's some screenies from the last couple days since I've been back in Vana'diel. It's good to be back :)

Some more hot trio action in Bostaunieux Oubliette, our standard DNC/THF/RNG trio.

Did you expect anything else? This time it was actually a full wipe...awesome!!

This is probably gonna sting a bit...

Disconnect FTW!!!!

And then there were two...

My very first Besieged! I really didn't do shit, but can you tell with all the shit going on? I didn't think so... :)

Somebody must have done something pretty fucked up right there lol...

Holy shit, there's Almeth!

"Oh my God, is that Mothra back there?! What the fuck kinda shit is this?!?!"

Good luck trying to figure out what the hell is going on, I don't think anyone knows :)

Success! And a free 1000 Experience Points to boot!

5-manning in Bostaunieux...we were WAR, MNK, THF, RNG, and WHM.

"Oh Lord, here we go again..."

Quick shot of the crew while Almeth was off shooting bats.

"Ok, so maybe casting Paralyze right off the bat wasn't a good idea..."

"You maniacs!!! You blew it up!!!! Oh God!!!!"

Almeth dings 57, and breaks out the obligatory Scorpion Harness... :)

Warrior AF Quest/Level 51 Party, Quicksand Caves

2008-12-03T17:23:00.008-06:00

Last night was another productive night. We spent the first part of our evening working on the next part of the Warrior AF quests for Reflaa, "The Taleskeeper's Truth". This was a two part quest: we had to acquire a Mottled Quadav Egg from a spawned NM in Palborough Mines, and a Parasite skin from the Yagudo Parasites in Castle Oztroja. Amedelie was going to be late, so Almeth and I ran off with Reflaa to take care of the Parasite skin first. Since Reflaa didn't yet have Tonko: Ichi (still on our "to do" list) he parked right inside the zone while Almeth and I ran off to find the the Yagudo Parasites we were looking for. The leeches are level 45-48, so they we figured they'd be pretty easy for a 56 Thief and 51 White Mage to take out, and you know what, they probably are when you fight one of them. All four though, well, that's a different story:

"Oh no, Almeth, save yourself!!!!!!!!!!!"

I wish I could say Almeth made it out alive, but unfortunately, with the 4 leeches chasing him, plus who knows how many Yagudo also giving chase, he caught a nasty Holy bomb and that was it. I had previously set my Home Point in Bastok so I could run around with Reflaa and point out all the peeps he needed to talk to after we got the drop, so I got to sit out that portion of the adventure while Almeth ran back out to take care of getting the drop. This time none of the leeches linked, and the skin dropped immediately, so Reflaa used his Instant Warp scroll to come back to Bastok and get the talking parts done. By this point Amedelie was online, so Ame collected Almeth and headed towards Palborough Mines for the next leg of our quest. After Reflaa and I finished up our shit in town, I changed jobs to Dancer, and we grabbed choco's and made our way to Palborough to finish off the next portion...

Once we got where we needed to be, Reflaa spawned the NM, and we proceeded to beat his ass down:

Piece of cake... :)

After that was completed, we all took the boat from Palborough back to Bastok and got ourselves ready to get an Empress Band in. I was originally going to go out as White Mage again, but I wasn't feeling it, so I stayed Dancer. We decided to give Garlaige a rest this time, and made our way out to Quicksand Caves to fight some Anticans and Beetles again. After a Teleport-Altepa from Ame, we made our way to our spot, Ame changed into Ranger in Rabao, and we got to killing...

Chilling out while we wait for Ame.

"Ooooh, Spike Ball to the face!"

After catching that Spike Ball in the lip, Almeth fights back with his ultra mega damage Rainbow Attack!

Almeth regains the level he lost earlier to those leeches, so cheers were in order... :)

We finished off our bands relatively quickly, and called it a night soon after that. Like I said, another productive night for BD! :)