Here's a semi-random update of some interesting random things that I've done in the last week or so...
Random Farming
I've been doing almost nothing but campaigning for the past week or so... and I think I'm finally sick of campaign xD It's gotten to the point where there are just too many people doing campaign in Windy that the lag is just like Besieged. Maybe it's time to go out to the beastmen held areas instead...
Anyway, I was sick of campaign so when Nain said that we should go farm this poppable NM in Ifrit's Cauldron, I jumped at the chance to do something new for a change. He'd always said that we should go farming as DNC & THF sometime. Our objective was a NM popped from a Rattling Egg dropped by Ash Lizards. It drops a skin that goes on the AH for 60k, and there isn't any competition, though the skin takes a while to sell.
Still, it was a little scary... I don't go to Ifrit's Cauldron very often... so I don't know that area well at all. We had a couple of deaths from bad pulls and links, but overall exp was positive and we came out with one skin each. The good news is that this also gave me a chance to cap my evasion skill, and get quite a few skillups on throwing! This also gave me some practice using Utsusemi Ni & Ichi to tank. I normally don't bother keeping Utsusemi up all the time on DNC since I can heal up any damage taken nearly instantly, but this NM hits really hard ^^;
Ashu Talif
Yay! I can't believe we actually won this round o.o I guess going up the stairs and pulling the mobs up, instead of staying on the bottom and fighting them as they pop works a lot better. We still nearly wiped to a couple of imps casting -ga spells on us, but at least with us on the upper deck, we were able to raise and recover.
One more fight before the main event! Everyone wants Barbarossa's Zereh's, so I have a feeling we'll be doing this for quite some time... Kinda ironically, I was watching Pirates of the Carribean this last weekend, so I finally get the connection between Barbarossa and pirates xD
CharbyI'm not sure what went through my mind when I /poke'd Ashle and asked him to go to the SSG to camp Charby. I guess I was looking for something different to do again. I arrived there first and found one AFK WHM standing there, so I was using the Devil Mantra to continue skilling up Throwing (189 skill level xD) when Ashle arrived and needed to be let into the gold door. On the way back, we killed a fish-person NM that dropped a high level DRG lance xD Since Ashle didn't want it, I just grabbed it and put it into my storage are ^^;; Seems like it's a lance for DRG/MAGE use since it gives bonuses to healing breath. Chances that I'll use it? Pretty low... but my storage is filled with random junk like this, and the AF+1 drops xD
Anyway, after killing the fishie NM, we went into Charby's room, and to our surprise, Charby popped at once. A RDM had showed up while we were busy fighting the fish and was killing placeholders. Before we could react, the RDM cast Bind on Charby, ran across the room and promptly died o.o;; Since Ashle had thought that the two of us could duo it with him in full evasion gear, we engaged... and lasted just a little longer than the RDM ^^; Ashle couldn't get Blind Bolts to hit Charby, so he didn't last long against him. Since he couldn't get hate, a couple of heals was all that it took to get me killed, and he fell soon after.
After HPing and coming back, we managed to beg a few other AP people to come along despite the late hour... Nuyu, Fuuji, Vanh, Utaru all showed up in SSG. Unfortunately, another group had moved faster and had grabbed Charby. Still, thanks for coming out on such short notice everyone! Especially since many of you had to change jobs and come out here... and thanks Conceptx for sending Fuuji a gold beastcoin!
I'm not sure if I'll go back again... I really do hate camping NMs, especially contested ones and NM camping makes me grouchy and annoying to be around. >.>
ZNMsLast night, I actually made it home in time to catch the last couple of ZNM fights. I managed to zone into the ruins in time to lot up the BLU-only "Beast Slayer" sword that dropped from Cheese Hoarder. I wasn't present for the fight, but the group let me lot it anyway! Thanks everyone ^_^ I actually didn't even notice this sword when I was looking through the ZNM stuff... It has a high damage rating, and it has +20 MP, so it's pretty good for BLU. Between this, the Perdu Hanger and Ifrit's Blade, I'm not sure which blades to use full-time xD I'm thinking that Perdu Hanger is still probably best for 1H situations, but when dual-wielding, Perdu & Beast Slayer might be overall better for the Dex modifier, higher base damage and extra MP compared to Ifrit's Blade.
I managed to join in for two last NM fights, one weird... I think it's called an Acrolith(?)-type mob that was supposed to do something funny for us, but disappointed us by not doing anything special except die xD We also went to fight a funny set of triple gears that had us melees running laps around a room xD Is it time for the Olympics already? I'm not sure how, but I managed to grab hate during this fight and get myself killed ^^;
DNC seems decent enough for healing/supporting a melee party for these fights. The Acrolith fight was fairly straightforward for DNC, though Zurar still managed to get himself killed somehow. The gear fight was rougher as all that running around made it hard to keep TP up high enough to keep everyone fully healed. Hopefully I can start making more of these fights. In another 4 weeks, my Monday schedule should open up again so I can meet up with everyone when we start, not just come in when we're almost done xD
TitanOn LS chat, Conceptx was raving about how he finally unlocked the Summoner job, so I volunteered to take him and go solo Titan xD Soloing the avatars was something that I wanted to do with DNC75, but I just never got around to doing it. (DNC G5 is another thing that I wanted to do... need to go get a testimony!) After finishing with ZNMs, I dragged Con & Zurar to Quicksand Caves to be witnesses to my folly!
Well, the beginning of the fight was very... anticlimatic. With my evasion skill capped from farming, max evasion merits, plus my Scorpion Harness & O-hat, Titan could barely hit my shadows ^^;; About the only thing that got through was when he cast Stone IV which ignores shadows, but I can cure that up with a single Curing Waltz IV :D
Fun part was when he 2-hr'ed... unfortunately, I'd forgotten to pull him down to the entrance, so the astral flow move did 1.6k damage... out of 1.2k HP ^^; It also did 1.8k on poor Con who happened to be within range. Zurar immediately engaged, and I reraised and healed him even while weakened. The rest of the fight went by pretty quickly and we defeated him easily.
So... lesson learnt... pull the avatar to the entrance before fighting... Ashle suggested using /WHM to have barspells. I'm starting to think that this might be a good idea. With how infrequently Titan was hitting me in the first place, using /WHM with Blink, Stoneskin, Barspells, and Aspir Samba, it might make avatar fights go even most smoothly compared to using Utsusemi.
I'll have to try the other avatars sometime... I still don't have them all yet since it was never a priority for me. It'll be fun to go through them all, collect the avatars and maybe prepare for a Fenrir run!
ScheduleAqqy mentioned that she would put up a blog post about her busy schedule... so I figured that I'd do the same! Let's see... my current schedule looks like:
Monday: Work, class at night, don't get home until 10pm, join in ZNMss... 14 hour day @.@
Tuesday: Work, relax at night/recovery from Monday... supposed to be doing Assault again
Wed: Work, usually a school meeting in the evening, Limbus late night
Thurs: Work, usually more school stuff in the evening, reading, etc. Assault again?
Fri: Work, SPT... if we ever get this started again
Sat: 2nd job ^^;;; School stuff in the afternoon, Limbus at night @.@
Sun: 2nd job stuff in the morning, adding in Einhjar if I wake up for it, Ashu Talif in the afternoon, as well as more homework/reading for school
What I call "2nd job" is basically work/ideas for various startup concepts that I've encountered. So far, none of these startup ideas have actually panned out into anything real yet, usually aborting after enough experimentation/research has been done to rule the idea out as unfeasible. Still, it's a lot of fun to work towards something big!
My day usually starts at 8:30am no matter what... simply cos that's when the sun rises high enough to wake me up in my room >.> I'm a light sleeper, and I like my 8 hours of sleep a day, so if I'm awake much past midnight, I get really grouchy the next day ;p
DancerWell, as of this weekend, I've "fully merited" Dancer... that is... I have max dagger merits, max evasion merits and max crit hit merits ^^; Since there aren't any Dancer-specific merits yet, I don't think there's anything else I can do to improve Dancer besides gear. Still, I've died a lot on DNC this past weekend just fooling around, so I do need to buffer up again. Unlike BLU, DNC really isn't suited for Campaign Battle, so hopefully I can grab a few people and go merit instead. Maybe it's time to put some more merits into BLU for a while until SE comes out with DNC merits!
Finally, regarding weapons on DNC... I still haven't decided if I'm going to get rid of my two Behemoth Knife +1's xD I picked up a pair of Jambiyas just cos they look good, and I'm using them nearly full time now. I'm starting to wonder if I should sell my Behemoth +1's and use the gil to buy a Vermy for my BLU instead... I'd be giving up +20 attack (total) on the Behemoths for the +1 damage on the Jambiyas. I'm still not sure which set of weapons is better ^^; Anyone have any opinions?
