Waah... stupid low drop rates!

God, drop rates are horrible! Did another Sarameya on Monday... no Hachiryu as usual... and not even an Oracle's Robe! Some weird cap dropped that nobody wanted... so another Tier IV gone without taking things off the wishlist...

Also, Chigre was giving out the wrong ring... at this point, everyone who even has a mage job somewhat leveled has the +magic accuracy ring... even Con picked one on monday, and his BLM isn't anywhere near the right level... not to mention I'm fairly certain that BLM doesn't need magic accuracy, but would benefit more from int rings (I think?)

Then... no Dancer stuff AGAIN in Dynamis... I've lost count of the number of runs we've gone on without DNC drops already... Xarc is just not being my friend... I think tonight is run #5 where I'm hoping for DNC or SCH drops.

aaaaaaaaand... boy, key hunting sucks... no luck getting that Bead key yet for my PLD AF... ~.~ how annoying!

(ok... I think they've stopped watching... /whine off)

Real blog follows...

So Wutangwarrior mentioned that my whining seemed to be working since after my last whiney blog post, I've been getting a surprising amount of relic items... all for SCH. Picked up two -1 pieces (that I can't use yet as I lack the NQ) and the SCH relic legs (good macro piece for Dark magic). I got 2 out of the 3 possible pieces I needed from last Saturday's Dynamis Qufim (the last being the SCH belt... I already have the DNC & BLU pieces that drop in that zone), so that was very nice and I even got the "loot whore" award for the night... which I guess is an honor? :o Let's see if whining works again ;)

Event Updates

So... I've been doing a couple extra events outside of my normal schedule. Last Tuesday, I happened to be home earlier than normal due to an off-site meeting that was on the way home when Utaru sent me a /tell not long after I logged in telling me that there was a plan to do Bahamut v1 coming up with his sea group. I've been wanting to finish up this questline and do Apocolypse Nigh for ages for the Ethereal Earring. However, I was stuck at that alliance BC for Bahamut for ages and couldn't join any shouts for the final fight. Last week I jumped on the opportunity joined Rooks and ThisOrganization to go poke Oryu. That was definitely an interesting fight... I've never seen a BC before that had that many mobs around to fight.

Last night we did Bahamut v1. Interesting fight, but Rooks made it look pretty simple. We just had to stay out of the way. Just before this, I joined in for the fight for Jailer of Prudence... my first "sea" fight. Definitely a weird fight with two mobs being popped, and it teleporting all around whenever hate was lost. I found it funny that it would disappear, reappear, kill a BLM, then disappear again. Turned out that I ended up being targeted as well from generating too much hate from curing people. Luckily, I had some Stoneskin up, and HP merits which kept me alive.

Next week, looks like we're doing Bahamut v2 :O We're doing it "zerg" style and expect a fight of about 60 seconds... which puts me in an interesting position since the *one* job I don't have (and don't really intend to level yet) is a power DD job suitable for zerging... at least, at first glance. BLU would seem to be the obvious choice, simply spam spells... but I came up with an alternative.

DNC/SAM, throw on Saber Dance(50% Double Attack), add in Haste Samba for a party of DDs, plus Box Step every 10 seconds for Defense Down which benefits everyone. No Foot Rise, Reverse Flourish merits plus Meditate should ensure that I can throw out at least 3-4 Dancing Edges in under 60 seconds. It should be interesting to see how this works. I've gone all out on mobs before in Limbus and can put out more WS's per minute compared to most other DDs.

Paladin Update

Paladin leveling has been going just a liiiiiiiiittle crazy... the previous weekend, I went from 35-45 inside Crawlers Nest with Connie's leveling group. This past Memorial Day holiday, we went crazy and did a leveling session that went from 1pm Sunday till 7am Monday morning, with a brief break to help Dexie get her WSNM done. I went from 45-56 (1.2k from 57) in one night without a single piece of AF done >.<>

On Monday, I started up the PLD AF quests together with Ghiren. Ghiren needs to re-do his PLD AF since he upgraded his stuff to AF+1 a long time ago and want to re-store the full set. We also had a few extra coffer keys lying around, so we didn't have to farm too many.

We started with the hands "quest" coffer in Eldieme... I had an early hunch to go check the coffer up by the glacier entrance and lucked out for the first pair of gloves. Thank goodness for Lyco teleports, or else we'd have to have spent at least another 20 minutes just walking there. The 2nd coffer wasn't too hard to find since I could play with the switches and send Ghiren downstairs to check. Ironically, I found the 2nd coffer as well, hiding right next to one of the switches and guarded it until Ghiren could get to it.

Next up was the evil castle Zvahl for the "AF3" quest. We also had to poke Dark Spark to complete the hands quest, so we killed two birds with one stone. I virtually never go to the castle, so wandering around there was an interesting experience. So was tanking 3-4 demons at once on DNC. Ghiren came THF/NIN for TH2 so we could get some key drops. Interesting enough, we managed to get both keys in a reasonable time, as in finishing up both the keys and coffers before dinner!

Last night we continued our AF rampage... first by killing the AF3 NMs in Davoi. DNC/NIN & WAR/NIN for this one. We did the "pop NM, run him to zone to despawn links, then fight at zone" method... which almost worked out. We ended up with a few links anyway from the Orcs near the zoneline. They were giving Ghiren some problems, but once I voked all the links and extra NM off him, it was easy. I'm really liking DNC/NIN for low-man things. High evasion makes it hard for mobs to hit in the first place, and if they do hit, Utsusemi takes care of most things. If Utsusemi is down, or the mob does an AoE, Fan Dance reduces damage to virtually nothing.

We tried for the Beadeaux item next... started key hunting, but we got careless early on next to the Afflictor and got cursed. A badly timed Stonega-III from a linked BLM one-shot us, so we gave up on that area for now... We'll be back later!

Garliage was last on the list. We both had keys, and this is one coffer that you need to be on PLD to do. Between the WotG access and the new Lyco teleports, we're able to get past both Banishing gates. We were too eager to get past Banishing Gate #2, so we missed the first coffer which was behind #3 and I had to go back around for it while I left Ghiren behind #3... Funny thing is, I didn't know Sneak would drop when I popped the coffer, so as soon as I got my AF head piece, the ghost that was standing right next to me aggroed and proceeded to beat me up! Good thing PLD has Invincible... I made a mad dash to zone, pretty much aggroing everything behind the gate. A few spells got through, Bio II, Drown and at least one big -ga spell as I zoned out with only 30HP left and going down. Good thing I had HP merits :O Ghiren got his 5 minutes later when the coffer repopped behind gate #3.

So... only the Beadeaux key & coffer left to get... Probably pick that up later this week, then I can work to get PLD to 60!

Events: Dancer?

So... recently I've been going to events nearly exclusively as Scholar... Part of it is because Scholar is more versatile, being able to Cure-ga other parties, being able to nuke when necessary, and of course, being able to sleep in a pinch. Plus I'm not really expected to handle any of those jobs since there are dedicated BLMs, WHMs or RDMs, so I feel more free to switch tasks around and have some fun. The other major part is... well... playing Dancer at 100% takes a lot of concentration, watching timers for abilities, keeping a closer eye on the party's HP, and always switching mobs quickly to maximize TP gain.

That said... I'm really liking it when I take Dancer out for smaller events. AF coffer key farming is pretty fun and I can go all out DDing for periods... when we did Dexie's WSNM, I want DNC/NIN as well, starting off by main healing, but as the fight wore on, the theory behind enmity kicked in as I built up enough enmity from healing to take over tanking. Again, Utsusemi + Fan Dance = little loss in enmity, so hate ended up staying on me for the rest of the fight.

Now, the bigger question would be... where else would I use Dancer? I'm still not sure on this... I think for ZNMs I should have taken DNC to Nosferatu since in the past it's worked out nicely that I can take over when both PLDs are either down or charmed, but I brought SCH this time because we were doing Chigre as well... We haven't done many different zones in Limbus recently since we've been concentrating on completing pop sets, so I haven't really done DNC there in a while either...

Nuking SCH

So... one of the reasons I picked up SCH was to be able to fill in for BLMs whenever there is a lack. However, I haven't really paid too much attention to the nuking side of things, just picking up random things when they come by (goliard gear, +magic accuracy rings). Pretty much the only things I've picked up intentionally are an Elemental Torque and a Errant pants.

Last Limbus I decided to see how effective SCH nuking would be... we were manaburning it anyway. However, I was a bit surprised by the results. By keeping Hailstorm up, using Cream Puffs and always using Ebullience, I was able to match, and often exceed the BLMs who were nuking the same mob with the same spell. Ebullience is a 20% increase in potency, so it looks like SCH can match BLMs when nuking regular mobs. Stratagems recharge once a minute, but I can store up to 4 at any one time so I could use it for almost every single nuke. Throw in Sublimation, and I almost didn't have to /heal at all. King Behemoth was another story, of course, but I still managed to put out some 600+ Blizzard IVs

Well... long post, but that's the update for the past two weeks!

Read this now!

Interesting article. I think some people need to read this:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/22/2334206&from=rss

Yes, including me

Moblins support open-source operating system "Linux"

Recent reports have shown that the underground mobs known as "moblins" have infiltrated various large corporations, including Novell, Intel as well as the Linux Foundation. They appear to be working to create a new operating system project code-named "Moblin", an optimized Linux platform that targets moblie devices such as netbooks, MIDs and similar.

http://moblin.org/about-moblin has a list of confirmed Moblins who have currently infiltrated into the highest ranks of business corporations. They appear to be engaged in an anti-business stance of offering this operating system for "free" instead of making adventurers bring rare and expensive items such as Orichalcum Ingots or Oxblood Orbs as offerings. This anti-goblin behavior is clearly an act of war against the goblin business mindset!

Bluffnix, from Muckvix's Junk Shop in Lower Jeuno was not available to comment on this new development, but was overheard mumbling something about "Windows 7 Netbook Edition".

aaaaaaaaaand... SE strikes again

About 24 hours after I found something to catch my interest again in FFXI, the game turns around and discourages me again...

Let's see...

- Horrible ZNM drops... AGAIN. Not a single Enkidu's anything for people, just a pair of crappy Katanas that nobody wants

- Lots of Bard capes, not enough Dragoon earrings from spamming a Tier 1

- And me going 0/4 on Parade Gorget so far...

Three more tries on me right now for the gorget... I might just forget this piece and go without. No sense throwing gil away, though I'm starting to reconsider my effort to level again... I am sitting on a small pile of unopened console games that are a lot less frustrating compare to FFXI...

And... I'm also going to bet that tomorrow's Dynamis Xarc will also not have any DNC or SCH stuff dropping... which would make it the 3rd Xarc in a row where I'm first in line for stuff that won't drop, and god knows how many other events/items...

In other SE hates fans news:

- Final Fantasy XIII will no longer have Japanese voices due to the Xbox 360 port

Considering that I own both systems, and I'm currently playing Valkyria Chronicles with JP voices due to the significantly better voice acting (plus I know enough Japanese to follow along), I'm very disappointed with this.

True, the voice acting in FFXII was decent, but I would like have the option to listen to the original voicetrack

- SE pulls plug on fan-made Chrono Trigger project

Alright, so they do have a legal footing to stand on. I'm just amused to see them tramping on the efforts of their fans instead of figuring a way to work with them. I feel for the poor fans who spent time on this project only to have it cancelled at the very last second.

Typical last generation corporate attitude... making no effort to reach out to their customers.

Looks like PLD is job #4

Looks like I've been bitten by the leveling bug again... this time it's for the job of Paladin. It's been high on my list of jobs to do for the following reasons:

- The AF is pretty

- It's a critical job for events

- The AF is pretty!!!

Ok, so I mainly like the job cos I think the AF looks really cool and noble xD Same way I like Dancer(cheerleader), Scholar(schoolgirl), as well as the Ranger(girl scout) and Beastmaster(teddybear!) armor! Of course, all the research I did in enmity when I was experimenting with DNC helped catch my interest as well.

So far, I'm finding it a lot more fun ever since I hit level 30 and got Sentinel. Adding Cover & Flash since then has made it even more fun, and having two suicidal DRKs who keep on trying to kill themselves during exp gives tanking a slight challenge. Level 43 now, closing in on AF armor... From what I've seen, looks like PLDs are in short supply right now for leveling, so that should help with getting to 60, or even 75.

So far I've found that it's an easy job, easy to get into a routine of Provoke & Flash for exp parties... to the point where I can be watching anime at the same time. The recent Refresh addition to Signet really helped, and together with Auto-Refresh, I've almost never had to /heal at all. Hopefully I can get out of signet areas before this expires so that I can take advantage of Sanction Refresh.

Gear wise... this has been a surprisingly cheap job to level. I only need to pick up three spells in total for PLD 1-75: Flash, Holy & Reprisal. Armor wise, I've been taking advantage of the CP I have stockpiled and picking up Centurion stuff, and now Iron Musketeer gear to tide me until AF.

Now... AF wise is going to be a pain... So far I haven't leveled an "old" job on Ascy, so I've never had to deal with the pain of farming coffer keys and finding the coffers. PLD also has three of the most annoying coffers... Eldieme, Garliage and Vahzl. I already have Eldieme and Garliage keys, still need a Beadeaux key, and I shudder to think about Vahzl -.-;

Other item wise... after looking through everything else on PLD, I think the only piece of equipment I need to go out of my way to get is the Parade Gorget. Level 50 item, drops from a forced pop mob in a zone I really don't know... I'm pretty confident I can go DNC/NIN and handle anything in Moblintown though, so it's just a matter of finding time to go poke it, ahd hopefully not get too lost.

Once I hit 75, I probably will want to go re-do the ACP final mission and swap out my body piece. I also have an Askar Helm & Homam hands, while it's the AH for other pieces! Anything I'm missing? Advise from more experienced PLDs would be appreciated!

Losing energy/motivation

So... it's getting hard to be motivated enough to login to FFXI these days... some of the downers:

- Events I want to do being cancelled (Dynamis, Limbus)

- Stupid low drop rates on things (Dynamis, Nyzul, ZNMs)

- General apathy from people doing things (Lots of no-shows, or people coming reluctantly, or not willing to do prep for events)

Even my idea of having Friday be a day that we get together to do things for people is a huge bust. You know... it's pretty hard to help you do missions or get sea access if you're not willing to login, prep, or even talk about stuff you need.

At this point, about the only thing I actually look forward to is Monday night ZNMs. We're winning, we're (somewhat) getting stuff, and there are SOME people who are willing to go out there and volunteer their time to farm zeni. The cooperative people are definitely earning their rewards, while we also have people who we have to poke and prod to even get the basic 500 zeni to even participate in the fights. Those people really discourage me ~.~ If this were RL, I'd sit them down, give them a talking to, then look into replacing them if their performance does not improve.

Other events... Dynamis is a chore now... I think I've tried making it fun in every way possible, healing, nuking, even trying out main assist. At this point, I'm half-watching Terminator during Dynamis, but I only have 5 episodes of that left... there just hasn't been any interesting drops for me recently, even though I'm at the front of the line for a few Xarc pieces for the past few runs. -.-

Limbus is dying. If we're still doing it in June I'll be very surprised. Utaru is pretty much the only one holding it together now. I'm burnt out.

Einherjar I've consciously decided not to do anymore. I don't mind that Dynamis starts at my dinnertime since I can just come a little later and join in, or take a short break during this multi-hour event. Einherjar is a short event, need to gather, then be there for the whole event and it completely destroys my dinnertime

Salvage I'm also deciding not to do. Salvage isn't just a 90 minute commitment once a week. It's also a commitment to go farm assault points. It also has no reward I'm interested in, even though the event itself is still kinda fresh and fun to me right now.

and... that's it... I've been on-again-off-again for leveling PLD... don't really feel like it since the LAST exp party I had there was a jerk who was yelling at me for provoking. Seriously... we may have a PL, but that doesn't mean that the BLMs can't get whacked around.

Non-FFXI news

Pretty bored of FFXI, so here is some non-FFXI news!

Other Games

I've been playing a lot of Valkyria Chronicles these days xD This is a turn-based strategy/3rd person shooter hybrid game, where you have to position your units carefully, then when it comes to your turn to move it, you take control in a 3rd-person shooter perspective over the character's shoulder and move/shoot in real-time.

It's quite a fun game, with lots of subtle little tactics that you can try, including trench warfare, snipers, cover fire and defensive positioning all playing a part in it.

And the funny part is that right now, there's a Valkyria Chronicles anime that is based on the game that is coming out in Japan. I had picked up the game months ago, but I didn't have time to play it due to school... at first I started out playing the game to match what was going on in the anime... which turned out to be a huge mistake as the two have just subtlety different details... like, in the game one of the main characters breaks out with the a tank on his own, then destroys a gate, while in the anime the tank goes on a rampage and blows up a ton of enemy tanks xD Keeping the difference between the two straight quickly became confusing.

Still, the anime has been pretty faithful to the game so far... only 4 episodes of the anime are out so far and they seem to be covering every major engagement, and spending a lot more time on character development.

What else... oh, also picked up Virtual On on the 360's XBLA. Haven't played that game in... erm... over a decade now :o Used to be good in the arcades, which always surprised people who would underestimate me :) Of course... there aren't any more good arcades in this country >.>

New compute environments

Let's see... a few changes to my compute environments...

For home, I've upgraded at last to a 24" 1920x1200 monitor, specifically the Dell 2408WFP. This is a more expensive monitor compared to other monitors out there, but has a few advantages:

- Better color reproduction - uses true 8-bit color instead of the typical 6-bit/color with dittering

- Much better viewing angles... have you seen those Samsung panels? >.>

- No dead pixel guarantee

Came close to buying a cheaper TN-type panel from a local store, but in the end, I decided that the extra premium was worth it. The only downside is that this type monitor has a slightly lower response time compared to the cheaper TN panels, but I can't tell the difference.

Also upgraded speaker system to a Logitech Z-5500 5.1 surround sound system. Yes, I know FFXI doesn't have 5.1, but with Dolby Pro Logic II, at least it sounds good :) I also have an alternate 4.1 system hooked up to a laptop that I use to watch anime and various TV shows during boring events like Dynamis and Limbus... I mean... erm... listen to music?

At work, I decided to go overboard and see what I can get away with. I'm now using 3 monitors with a total resolution of 5120x1200... definitely overdoing it! I can't see the side edges of my monitors anymore!

Looking for toys

Fun part about having disposable income is... disposing of it! This year was the first year that I don't have something lined up to buy during my birthday... in the past it was easy! PS3, etc... I was toying with the idea of building or buying a new computer to play computer games on, but I realized that I don't actually play PC games anymore, at least none that would tax a computer. My Macbook Pro can play FFXI just fine at 1920x1200, so there's really no reason to upgrade.

Instead, now I'm looking at a cute little computer or "Mobile Internet Device" (MID) called the Viliv S5. In more civilized parts of the world such as Europe or Asia, these MID devices are becoming extremely popular as you can easily take them out and do some computing, instant message/email, Skype, etc. when you're traveling on the train or a bus. This one is extremely impressive as squeezes a fully-featured Windows XP computer into a tiny device that's less than 1lb and can actually fit in a pocket!

There's a really good overview of this tiny little toy at http://www.pocketables.net/2009/04/review-viliv-s5-premium.html

Currently not QUITE available, but I'm considering picking it up... not sure what I'd actually do with it... at the very least get the GPS working so I can easily take it traveling, or even just use it in my car... Now the only question is whether I should try to get it now, or wait for a SSD version to be released...