New year, new job? Support role job? + other musings

Zu's been making noise about wanting to level another job on his supermule Yasu recently... as well as finishing some jobs of his own. Fuuji has also been talking about finishing off WHM, so... it looks like it's highly possible that another exp series might start up next year xD Well, after a little break to take care of some business with Shantotto and stuff.

What happened to the good old days of having one job? xD

So... I'm also considering the possibilities... I'm at 5 jobs now, and at the limits of what my mog locker can handle for fast gear changes. Adding a 6th job would mean that I'd have to do some significant reshuffling of how I store my junk, and probably mean tossing out a bunch of coffer/chest keys xD Should I do a 6th? A part of me wants to do it to round off the roles in the game... I have 2x healer (SCH & DNC, 3x if you count BLU), 2x DD (BLU & DRG), 2x nukers (BLU & SCH), tank (PLD, and a lesser extend DNC). I currently do not have any jobs to take on the support or ranged attack roles, unless you count DNC for support and BLU for Ranged with Cannonball. Another part of me wants to go finish off some merits as per my last blog post... and a final part is looking at the next year and wondering if I'll be playing Star Wars or another game by this time next year... Star Trek Online's preorders are starting up soon :o

I haven't actually decided if I'm going to take on a 6th job or just stick to meriting. For meriting, I have a ton of merits I could potentially do, but if I take a closer look, I really don't want to do THAT many, just a few... 10 to finish HP, 3 to unlock Deep Breathing, and another 9 to upgrade Angon to 1 minute. The others would be in the "nice to have" category, but wouldn't really change how effective I was, or how I'd play my jobs.

Sooo... *if* I were to take on a 6th job... what would I pick? Well, here's my thought process...

Corsair

Support role that shoots... capable of sleeping, dispelling, regenerating MP, increasing attack, accuracy and stuff. Pretty much the highest contender due to:

Pros:

- Is a hybrid class... supports and does damage

- Ranged attacker, so that fills a 2nd role as well and would round things up nicely for me

- AF looks cool :D

- Already have the Coffinmaker gun in storage from KSNMs a long time ago. Also have the rank and IS for Luzaf's Ring

Cons:

- Expensive... just the rolls alone cost over 600k, not counting cost for bullets, as well as gear for ranged accuracy/attack which I currently do not have

- Would have to unlock and level RNG as a subjob

- Role seems limited for events... COR/WHM and in the BLM party? Anything else?

Bard

The job that everyone thinks of when talking about support. Good at crowd control, enhancing the party and pretty much critical for events and zergs.

Pros:

- Ready to go, have subs already. BRD16 at this time. Much of the gear overlaps with SCH, which currently pretty much has no overlapping gear with my other jobs

- Have enough assault points for Yigit gear

Cons:

- Common job, interestingly enough... Zu just finished it and I don't really want to compete with him for gear! Doing that on DRG already is bad enough!

- Afraid of the brd4life syndrome

Red Mage

The other job that seemingly everyone has leveled up, and a must-have for things due to the strength of the enfeebles, as well as the ever popular Refresh & Haste

Pros:

- I actually enjoyed RDM... It's one of the "broken" flexible jobs in my opinion... most of my SCH gear would work on RDM too

Cons:

- Highly popular, lots of RDMs out there already, lots of competition for gear

- Done it once before... not quite sure I want to repeat myself

- Afraid of the rdm4life syndrome

- Would have to unlock and level DRK, as well as finish BLM sub D:

So, if I were to decide to level a job next... right now, I'd be leaning towards COR mainly for the "AF looks cool" factor compared to BRD xD Still, like the DD post post from a few months ago, I figure I'd open this up for comments in case I missed any important factors :) Remember... last time I nearly took SAM up as my DD job xD

Other musings

Small bit on other random thoughts and musings...

- Seems to be some interest in restarting Nyzul Isle. Zu wants to get some Goliard gear for Yasu, I want some more Askar gear (legs mainly) and Helo & Rooks wanted to come have some fun. Spengler & Ghiren might also be interested as well. Nyzul is still one of my favorite activities in FFXI... the need for tight coordination, the rush of a well-coordinated team, and the satisfaction of pulling off a near-loss always gets me excited. This is also one of the few events where I think BLU actually shines with the ability to adjust between heavy DD, sleeping, healing(especially on no White Magic floors), supporting, and the critical light-based dispelling on Soulflayers and stunning for Dahaks. It's also the only time I bring out BLU/SCH, so I look forward to starting this up again. Due to finals and the holidays, Zu says we'll consider this after the new year break xD

- Next up: the Shantotto expansion. I've been pretty much ignoring this, figuring on avoiding the rush... then finishing DRG became a priority and I had almost forgotten about this xD After we finish Zu's BRD & Fuu's RNG to 75, we'll probably switch our exp time to work on this expansion. I know that Spengler is interested as well, as well as Ghiren, and they're both ahead of us... I still need to go poke some silly avatars! Probably going to schedule this in the next week or so.

- Been reading up on Evolith and Synergy... not liking what I'm seeing... this seems even more complicated than MMM, with the need to go out and hunt NMs and a new weird crafting system that has their own points, spending gil for... erm... weird synergy currency. I talked to the NPC in Metalworks to start the quest to unlock the Synergy crafting skill and immediately got sent on a fetch quest with expensive AH item -- the Brass tank. Gee... now I wish I didn't AH the one I got from ISNMs on Sunday xD. Doesn't seem to have any interesting reward at this time, so I have a feeling that this will probably be something like Chocobo Racing and MMM which will have few people enjoying the event, and have lots and lots of updates and developer time wasted on enhancing it. I could even see them creating a new WotG endgame event that requires you to go get Evolith stuff and use Synergy points to get pop items for NMs like... erm... Pankration and ZNMs so that their dev time isn't just wasted. :P

- I've also noticed that I've been on PLD a lot recently :o And... in some events, the only PLD ^^;; Back when I leveled PLD, I did wonder if something like that would happen since PLDs are a known quantity, while my other jobs are all hybrids that aren't as well understood, or for that matter, suited for dedicated roles. Interestingly enough, this also came at a time when I'm starting to be bored of playing SCH, so it was a most welcome change. I'm also flattered that I'm trusted to solo tank events since in most events, losing the tank usually results in a wipe, if not a complete failure in the event.

Well, that's this week's post... If you have any comments/feedback/random thoughts, please post in the comments :)

Long big update time + lots of pics (and spoilers!)

Whee… big post time. I recently realized that some people who read my blog actually don’t play XI anymore, but still find it fun to read about what’s going on through my blog, so I’m going to do my best to take more pics and post them up here. Didn’t post pics last week, so this week’s Monday post will include some pics from the week before. I’ll also be posting some pics from the WotG missions which contain spoilers, so be warned!

Ok, first up… lots of updates on activities in FFXI.

#1: Big congrats to Spengler for last Thursday’s record Nyzul Isle run! Goliard boots AND Denali legs both in one night! This actually concludes our current “need” list, so our Nyzul group is taking a much needed break at the moment… didn’t get together last night, though if people are up for it, we can probably get together sometime in the future and either work on people’s “want” lists (2 Askar, 1 Golaird for me, Ghiren is eyeing Denali, plus I think Speng & Zu are still interested in some pieces?), help people climb (Teia, still out there? Saw you last night!) or do something else like ISNMs or doing regular assaults for people.

#2: Big congrats to Fuupup for his Hachiryu pants last Monday, followed by his Novio Earring on Tuesday! Talk about good stuff happening in pairs!

#3: Congrats to me and Vanh for… catching up completely with all the WotG missions! Especially big thanks to Vanh for duo-boxing the last two fights. Since Fuuji was busy on Sunday, the two of us got together and started working through the final few missions (and picked up a gobbiebag upgrade along the way) That’s it for WotG missions for us until the next update. Only thing left for me in WotG content is to finish up the last few Bastok quests.

#4: Big big thanks to Tassy for helping me farm up some sea organs for my Soil Gorget. Having two people doing this is a lot, lot, lot easier and safer compared to just one… Of course, she was the one who dragged me out there in the first place, so… maybe she is to blame too? xD I’m almost done… just need one UFO organ now >.>

#5: [Censored]

Alright… time for the main event… lots and lots of pictures! First up are random pics… I’ll keep the WotG pics at the end so you can avoid them if you don’t want spoilers!

Recent Random Pics

As part of my “twin PLD” series, I’m posting more pics of various Paladins who dress like me… This week: Kazenokizu, who managed a 1:1 mapping for visible equipment!

Next up… big train to zone… i wonder who all those Mamool Ja are after…

Here I am tanking Jailer of Love… Surprisingly simple job on PLD/RDM

Of course, if you poke JoL… right after his friend AV comes along :o

Now for some fun numbers… first, breaking my Blizzard IV record, followed by a crazy number of skillups. This isn’t with the “martial” thingie mog tablet, so I’m curious to see how much better that will be.

That’s it for random pictures…

Next up, WoTG mission cutscenes… Warning: CONTAINS SPOILERS

First up, a Lil’showdown…

Next, a series I call… the faces of Cait Sith =3

And… time for a catfight!

Couple of Dancers in trouble ; ;

And… tarutarus had better watch out… Dancers can Sneak Attack!

I really, REALLY think that the DNC 2-hr should include an animation that does something like this:

And how come Lilisette gets all the cool moves ; ;

And finally… WotG is coming up to the big showdown!

That’s it for this week! Stay tuned next week for hopefully more fun things!

1st week update -- Trying to squeeze time out

First week of 2009 and I'm already feeling a little swamped. First off, a few little updates about what's been going on.

Scholar 7....3?!

Yes, Scholar has been going backwards and I've permanently deleveled to 73 now. This was the result of quite a few deaths... death by Armed Gears from pulling hate much too easily healing other parties, failed attempt at Limbus as SCH74 and me screwing up on SCH in Nyzul. I really do suck at SCH for endgame events.

In an exp party, it's no problem... I get into a cycle of buffing, enfeebling, then switching to nuke a little before I switch back to light arts. If I'm nuking, it's no problem either as I can focus on one thing, but switching between the two turns out to be confusing and painful, resulting in many deaths. Previous week's Dynamis I couldn't really balance the nuking/healing role and default to mainly healing. During Limbus, crowd control while also trying to keep people healed up without pulling hate became too confusing, especially since I was /WHM and being out of Addendum: Black meant that I couldn't sleep mobs.

I think I'm trying too much to play SCH like a RDM, switching between arts and getting caught up in the timers. As a RDM, I'd be able to enfeeble, heal, dispel, regen, nuke all in the space of a few seconds. For a SCH, this takes a little more planning and timing. For my first (and hopefully only) Nyzul run as SCH, we reached Cerberus with over 15 minutes left. This was only a floor 80 one too, and I had max MP going in. I ended up screwing up by being caught in Dark Arts/Addendum: Black while trying to Dispel Cerby when his AoE paralyze caught me. Attempting to switch out ended with the arts switching and Addendum: White being locked out for 3 minutes, during which Cerby basically decimated the entire party >.<

Scholar is definitely taking a back seat to both Dancer and Blue Mage. I'll take Scholar out if we need some magical damage, or if it's a kited fight since I hate getting dizzy running around chasing something! Healing/Tanking can be done better on Dancer, and most other things handled on BLU.

Schedule changes + Trying to open some time

A few small short-term schedule changes:

- Nyzul: Ashle's computer is broken for at least the next 2-3 weeks... Let's start Nyzul at around 7:30-8pm PST on both Thursday & Sundays

- Out between 1/16-1/19: I'm out of town, so that means I'll be missing... 2x exp sessions, 1x Dynamis, 1x Einherjar, 1x Nyzul and 1x ZNM session. I might pop in to say hi, but I probably won't play much ^^;

Meanwhile, I'm trying to open some time up in my schedule to do some MMM. Unfortunately, the other people who also want to do MMM have just as packed a schedule as I do. Frodo, Varg & Kurai are all interested, plus I think Teia & Zurar? Right now, only Tuesdays are open for me... but Fro & Varg have Salvage. I'm going to propose that we try to crank through runs after Salvage on Tuesdays, and after Salvage/Nyzul on Thursdays. If we start early enough, we can do some mazes. Otherwise, it's going to be a lot of ad-hoc grabbing people to go do it... I wonder if Fro has run his mules to Jeuno yet.

Only other "unscheduled" time I have right now is Saturday afternoons. >.> I'm probably going to cut back soon... possibly on one or more of the following:

- Reduce exping as a commitment since that currently occurs both on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. Ghiren has expressed interest in finishing his WHM (level 68 I think?) and might be able to fill in for me once I finish SCH?

- Drop an event... right now, high on the list are Einherjar or Limbus. However, I do enjoy Einherjar since it's one of the few times I can go crazy on Dancer with Soul Voice+Double March+Haste Samba+Saber Dance! Limbus seems like it may end up being dropped by default since attendance hasn't picked up since the holidays have ended. We need another 3-4 solid people we can rely on to continue doing this event, and the only people who do not already have commitments are dragging their feet getting to sea.

- Cut Nyzul back to just one day a week... I know I said this before, but I always end up just grabbing people on Sunday when I'm bored... doesn't feel right to let those tags sit there unused >.< Plus, the sooner we finish getting everyone armor, the sooner we can cancel Nyzul completely.

Other-time wise... for the next 10 weeks, I'll be missing Wednesday Dynamis simply cos I won't make it home in time (again) and I'll run late for ZNMs, though I should still make it to pop sites before most people since for some reason, I'm usually dressed and ready to go compared to other people.

Oh yeah, another new poll up :P

Holiday Update + MMM spamage

This is going to be a big post since I haven't been blogging much over the holidays, but I've been doing a looooooooooot of things :)

Scholar 74!

I think it was the week before Christmas that Vanh said to go get Scholar 75... After I had pushed Scholar past level 40, the job became even more fun and broken than before with Accession. The Monday before Christmas, Zurar Kurai & I went to do the final SCH AF fight (with a little trouble from Zu DCing right as the fight started, but that's a story for another time). That pretty much started my crazy attempt to get SCH 75 before the normal "work/school" schedule started up again. I knew that once the holidays were over, I'd pretty much abandon leveling up since I'd be too busy with RL stuff, or FFXI events to even change jobs into SCH.

Luckily, SCH gets invited to parties at a very good rate. A few of my objectives for the holidays was to 1. Catch up on TV/movies/anime and 2. Catch up on various OTHER games I've neglected. Well, I was barely able to completely #1 since I'd get 15 minutes into a show when I'd get an invite on SCH. Contrast that to other jobs like Dancer or Thief where I was able to finish playing Mass Effect while seeking xD

After Sunday's normal "static level-sync" party with Vanh, Fuuji and the usual crew (normally Zurar & Kurai), I was able to get to level 74. Just 40k left until level 75, which is either 1-2 decent parties, or one good merit party. I'll probably get my usual 20k buffer and leave SCH as that. The good news is that my Elemental, Enfeebling and Dark magic skills are actually almost capped, just 4-5 below cap right now thanks to a few well-timed Besieges. So, unlike other mages (many new RDMs out there), I'm actually able to Sleep, Enfeeble and nuke effectively. The Sunday static still needs a healer, especially as they go through the 60s and near 75. I'll continue coming as SCH (unless they'd rather have me on DNC) both to get some more merits, and to get some skillups in Enhancing & Healing magic. By the exp chart, There's about 500k worth of experience between level 56-75. I still need 21 more merits to finish Dancer merits, and I'll probably want some extra merits to work on other things, such as attributes, HP/MP or possibly Scholar or Blue Mage specific merits.

Scholar@75(ish)

So, what's interesting from leveling Scholar was that even before I finished the job I was asked to come as SCH73 to two events so far, Dynamis and Limbus. This was surprising since 1. the job wasn't finished, 2. my SCH isn't geared to be good at anything at all, and 3. I haven't finished learning or experimenting with it yet. I still don't know a Scholar's limits and capabilities and I'm not quite comfortable taking it out yet.

Dynamis: This was a low-man Dynamis-Sandy... we started with barely 19 people and we were going for the win. As far as I counted, we had 2x WHM and 2x SCH for this zone and I was coming to basically mainly heal, which was "ok" for a SCH, but I really felt that I could have done better on DNC. A few times I had run out of MP and many times Wuwu came close to dying, especially when he became the /assist when people started to fall. On DNC, healing would never have been a problem. I'm almost never without TP in Dynamis, and unlike a mage healer job, I pretty much have unlimited stamina for healing people. Dancer really excels in low-man situations, and a low-man Dynamis would have been one of them.

On the other hand, when it came time to nuke the bosses, I didn't have to just stand around idle and was actually able to do some nukes. Unfortunately, since my level, skill level, and gear were totally not prepared for nuking, I barely did any damage at all, even with helixes. Overall not very satisfying. If I'm coming to Dynamis as a healer, I'd rather come as DNC instead and do an overall much better job keeping people alive.

Limbus: Similar to Dynamis, we had a low-man run due to the low turnout from the holidays. Normally, this would have meant that Nain would be on RDM, and I'd be on either BLU or DNC to either back him up, or main heal. Nain wanted to try him on BRD and me on SCH instead, and this turned out to work fairly well.

A few advantages from this setup: We had 2x AoE sleepers (BRD + SCH Manifestation) instead of just one close-range AoE sleeper (BLU using melee-range spells) Instead of having to always heal up damage one person at a time, I could Stoneskin-ga people and use Regen-ga. Instead of Nain having to keep up a busy Refresh/Haste cycle, he could use March, then Ballads on me, so it was overall less stressful for Nain. Final advantage was that we would have Raise II in case of emergencies. Blew through the floors easily with no downtime. I even had MP to throw out a few nukes here and there.

Other SCH endgame: So... when I first started leveling SCH, I had a few things in mind... first was the cute AF! It's one of the jobs that I wanted to level mainly for the AF. Other jobs that fall into this category are... PLD(pretty), RNG(girl scout) & BST(stuffed animal) ^^; The other reasons was to take up a different back-line role for certain events.

For some events where I go as BLU/WHM (or BLU/SCH), I usually end up as a back-line job throwing out heals, casting Diamondhide or trying to use Breath spells as a magical attack. The reasons behind taking up a back-line BLU are normally to avoid feeding a mob too much TP (our big hitting spells can easily push a mob up to 100% TP in a few seconds), or for mobs that are taken down purely by magical damage. As Scholar, I can do the back-line job much better than coming as BLU. The SCH Stoneskin costs much less MP and can be repeated more often. Throw in Phalanx for even more damage mitigation. Switch to Dark Arts and a SCH can throw out more nukes, at a further range instead of having to be within AoE range of the mob like BLU or risk having the mob move out of position.

So, basically, any event where I have to "stand back" instead of being up there in front of the mob, I'll probably break out SCH. This is mainly Omega for Limbus, but may include certain ZNMs. (like Cheesehoarder, or that Gears one that keeps running around and makes me dizzy if I try to melee it) If healing is needed, I'd rather take Dancer out since Dancer has not only unlimited stamina for long fights, but can also switch over to become a tank in the event of pulling hate instead of having to constantly log out to get rid of hate. BLU would be used for cases where flexibility is needed (mainly Nyzul), or in the event that simple DD is all that is needed (unlikely since so many people prefer to DD than to heal).

What next? Well, SCH is my "mage/nuking" job for at least the foreseeable future. BLU is my DD job, and DNC is my tanking/healing job... I'm considering if my next job should be a "support" class, either BRD, COR or RDM. That would probably depend on how SCH is taken... if I'm asked to constantly come SCH where my DNC would do just as well, or a better job as a healer, then I'll probably *not* level one of those "4life" jobs.

Furthermore, I really need to gear up my SCH sometime. The gear I'm using right now is simply AF and my +MP gear from BLU and a couple of magical accuracy rings I had lying around. No Moldy earring, no int/mnd gear from the AH at all. The only Scholar-specific items I've bought (besides spells) are a Light Staff and Ice staff, so it may be a while before my SCH is fully geared up to handle nuking. Finally, I'm also still fully concentrated on Dancer as my main job, so I'm still much better at Dancer in terms of ability, merits and gear!

Meanwhile... I might go back to toying with PUP. A lot of my Dancer/Blue Mage gear can also be used on PUP, and with Fields of Valor, I think it might be fun to bring this pet job up through the levels solo!

Lots of lewt!

Let's see... I've gotten a lot of loot since the last big post. What do we have...

- Etoile's Toe shoes -- aka Dancer AF2 Feet from Dynamis Jeuno. Good accuracy piece and Dancing Edge WS piece

- Mirage.. erm... gloves -- BLU AF2 gloves from Dynamis San d'Oria. I was a little surprised when I actually got to lot on these, but... I guess we didn't have that many people with us that night ^^; These aren't really *that* useful for a BLU given that I have Enkidu's gloves as well as Homam gloves, but the +Dex, +Mnd & +evasion are nice... and of course, this brings me that much closer to finishing the AF2 set :)

- Enkidu's Leggings -- Excellent haste & attack piece. Goes on full time for both Dancer and Blue Mage for almost all situations. The only times I'd swap them out is if I need more accuracy, or if I'm going heavy on the nukes on BLU. This replaces my dusk feet. Thank you to Teia who agreed to swap my Vargie-signed boots for her normal ones. She now has a pair of signed Dusk feet, and I have a bit more gil ^^

- Askar Head -- Picked this up helping Fuuji's group with a floor 100 run. Since they all already had all the Nyzul head gear, any head gear that dropped would go to me... and this happened to drop ^^; Unfortunately, I don't have any jobs that can use it yet... I guess I should look into leveling SAM at some point. I didn't know that floor 100 used to be a 100% drop >.<

- Denali Kecks -- This is an interesting piece... For BLU, it adds Magical Accuracy & Attack. For DNC, it mainly adds the +3 evasion. They look like PJs, so chances are I won't be putting them on much, but this piece brings me that much closer to finishing my evasion setup on Dancer. The main thing I need now is just the Boxer's Mantle, and I'm only 10 Ancient Beastcoins away from finishing that. Also picked this up with Fuuji's group... they really seem to have more luck with drops than we do.

And... not sure if I mentioned these... I got both of these in the previous week before the holidays
- Mirage Jubah -- BLU AF2 body. The +accuracy and Refresh effect make this a full-time body piece. The only time I'd swap out to my AF+1 body would be if I *really* need the Blue Magic skill, which would mean I'm doing magical attacks

- Delta Earring -- The 15k Einherjar piece! FINALLY got it just before the holidays... Good thing too! This is a good piece for Dancer due to the +dex, +chr & -enmity. Since I usually /SAM, I don't always use my Suppanomi earring and this makes a really good replacement.

Phew... lots of loot there. Boxer's Mantle will probably come this week after another Limbus run. I still need a few pieces more to complete what I consider to be my "ideal dancer setup", most of which is the DNC AF2, but I just discovered another piece that I'll cover later... I still haven't figure out what I'd want/need for Scholar yet. So far, I've got Goliard armor on the list once we finish Kurai's set, and probably SCH AF2...

Speaking of Goliard and armor...

Nyzul Isle Issues

So in the past, we've been inviting some people to come along with us for Nyzul runs, normally when we've been 5/6 or occasionally, 4/6 people. While we'd like to help some of our friends, we've had a few cases of people grabbing items and... disappearing after getting gear, going away without even a thank you, or even worse, afking during Nyzul itself and risking losing the whole event, or losing other item drops. The purpose of a static is to make sure everyone knows what to do, and to get gear for everyone in the static, not to have people hop in, get gear and disappear.

Going forward, we'll be taking on a policy similar to other groups: Gear that nobody in the static needs can be lotted on by "guest" people who come along. Our static group is very friendly and won't lot on something that we "might use in the future". We don't even lot on gear that our secondary jobs can use if the job is retired.

So, if you'd like to tag along with our group with the hope of armor, please be aware of this restriction. This includes all notable gear. Currently, since we're still relatively early in the farming stages, the only piece of armor that isn't spoken for is Askar Body since all of our heavy melees already have it. We've almost finished one set of Goliard, so I'm expecting Goliard drops will soon become available too.

If you're interested in joining in on runs with the understanding that you'll only be able to lot if and only if nobody in the static needs the item, please let me know. Of course, we'll do our best to accommodate the chance of you getting an armor drop (i.e. scheduling a floor 80 for a chance at Askar body). We run at 8:00pm PST on Sundays (2-3 runs), and 9:45pm on Thursdays (3-4 runs). Sunday runs are when we'll most likely have 1 slot open for a guest. The more runs you come on, the higher on the list of invitees you'll be, and of course, as we complete our armor, the more other drops will be available.

Finally... if the above doesn't interest you, I'd just like to say that it is not *that* hard to find a group of 5 other people and climb Nyzul for yourself. I know at least 7-8 people who are still at the beginning and want to climb. The hardest part is the first few runs when you're still learning what things mean and figuring out how to best work as a group. If you stick together, you can climb through the levels very fast once you get over the initial learning curve. It took our group 5 weeks to get from floor 0-100 once the Nyzul weapons were released, and we even had a few farming runs too. We didn't start off perfect, and our first run failed at floor 1!

Moblin Maze Mongers -- Loot revealed!

So... after getting back to... ahem... "work", I was digging around a few forums and came across something interesting. Apparently some people have figured out the combinations of mazes to finally get MMM to give out some significant items! What caught my eye was this:

Ermine's Tail - DMG: 34 Delay: 194, Evasion +8, "Lizard Killer" effect, +7% crit rate vs. lizards

And... most importantly, this is usable by Dancers! Low delay, high damage and most importantly, a significant boost to evasion! This dagger is almost as good as the Azoth for Dancers. The only thing Azoth has over this is the +accuracy. Ermine's Tail actually does more damage due to the lower delay. This is the ideal off-hand weapon for a DNC/NIN, and possibly a main-hand dagger for situations where accuracy isn't as crucial, and evasion is needed. Plus from the picture, I'm guessing that it has a pretty Jambiya-type model instead of the Azoth's weird sickle-shape.

Sooooooooooo.... that means... I want one of these xD According to what I've seen, this has a chance of being in the Hoardbox for a specific configuration of maze, specifically:

007 Liquidation Team (100 Marbles) -- This is the "single NM" maze

004 Beast Rune (200 Marbles)

094 Lost & Found (500 Marbles)

Total of 800 marbles. The mob popped is a Dhalmel-type mob called Purushamirga. From our single try with Kurai vs. an elemental-type NM, these fights are fairly easy, but do require you to be on your toes. The level of the mob is based on the highest level in your party, so no cheating by bringing along a level 1 mule.

I'm currently at around 300-400 marbles, so as soon as I get enough, I'll be reconfiguring my maze to pop this mob exclusively. I'm pretty sure Kurai will be doing the same :)

Anyone wanna run some mazes?

Nyzul Isle - Farming & Climbing

Sorry about that messy transition to splitting the group. I thought I talked to everyone about climbing, but I guess I missed some people >.<

Anyway, the number of people who wanted to do Nyzul finally hit critical mass and I had to split the group or else end up juggling people back and forth. Nobody wants to sit out on the sidelines while waiting, and nobody wants to do 10k+ WS points, so time for you all to go climb!

Should be pretty straightforward... You've all done a bunch of climbs already from farming weapons, so you know what to expect. I think it's a good mix of jobs too.

Nanopy: WHM, main heal, Repose, Dark-Based Dispel with /SCH
Abhor: BLU, DD, light & dark sleeps, Light-based Dispel
Conceptx: PLD, tank whenever possible, backup heal, DD
Parn, Teia, Karou: DD, don't hold back, /NIN for Sneak, Invis & damage mitigation

Don't forget, don't climb without 6/6. If someone can't make it, Parn has level 20 that you can farm some armor at the very least. 5/6 can handle bosses almost as easily as 6/6.
You're your own group now, so you can adjust your schedule however you like!

Farming group: Back to the old members... 'usual schedule, probably 5/6 on Sunday farming so we'll avoid floor 100 on Sundays.

Nyzul Isle - Splitting the group

As of right now, we have a pretty large group of people who do Nyzul together...

With a Runic Key (floor 100)
- Ascule (BLU/SCH)
- Ghiren (Lots)
- Zurar (SAM/NIN or /DNC)
- Ashle (THF/NIN or NIN/WAR)
- Kuraikaze (SCH/RDM who is back into FFXI after a month break)
(Utaru - retired... doesn't come atm)

Without a Runic Key (and at floor 0)
- Teia (DRG/RDM)
- Nanopy (WHM/SCH)
- Conceptx (PLD/WAR)
- Karou (SAM or WAR/NIN)
And... Zurar says that he would like to climb his alt Yasunami up as well. She's not 75 yet, but he says that he's going to blitz her up to 75 during this holiday season. Would be coming as SCH/RDM

So, we have a total of 9(or 10) people who want to do Nyzul, half of which need to climb to 100. The good news is that we can acutally do Nyzul with 5 and still win, though it is a little tight if we get a bad boss. The bad news (at least for me) is that coordinating 9-10 people while being fair to everyone quite a headache.

To try to fix this... I'm proposing the following:
1. Continue farming with our existing group until Yasunami is of a level to actually do Nyzul. This means farming for the next month or so until Yasunami hits at least level 65-66 and can be useful. Farming group would be: Ascule, Zurar, Ghiren, Teia, Ashle and Nanopy, with Kurai & Nanopy swapping spots whenever we do a floor which either of them already has the armor. i.e.: Floor 80 Kurai will come along since Nanopy already has the Goliard Body.
- Karou will fill in for whoever can't make a run... so on Sundays, Karou will come since Ashle can't make it most of the time. If you can't make it, let me know on AIM/POL messaging so I can let people know.

2. Once Yasunami levels up enough, split into two groups. The original static will continue farming with 5, while a new climbing static will start going from floor 0 with Nanopy, Teia, Conceptx, Karou, and Yasunami.
- Party is a little weak on the DD side and could use a 6th person. I'll see if I can slide in a 6th person for you. Yasu should also nuke on Dark Arts whenever possible to speed up kills.
- For "no white magic" floors, Teia can heal with Healing Breath using Poison as a trigger spell. Alternatively, Conceptx can come PLD/DNC and use Waltzes once he gets the sub leveled up
- This also means that Zu probably will end up doing a lot of Nyzul back-to-back, or change the days which this climbing static goes.

Anyway, farming schedule wise, will be Thurs & Sun. 3 runs on Thursday@9:45pm PST, 4 runs on Sunday@8:30pm PST. Be sure to pick up a 4th tag sometime between Sunday night and Wednesday night. I normally pick mine up right after ZNMs on Monday.

Any comments/issues? Feedback much desired...

Back and doing crazy stuff already!

My DSL came back sometime on Saturday, and since then I've somehow managed to get pretty busy pretty quickly again.

Let's see... what did I do...

- Managed to get killed twice in Einherjar!
Ok, so one of those times was basically the boss looking at me, and everyone else that the boss looked at went down as well, so that part wasn't too surprising. What did catch me by surprise was being targetted during the one giant pull. This happened before during Dynamis where near the end of a big pull, I end up being targetted by mobs as soon as they wake up. As far as I can tell, this is just based on the face that curing generates hate either doesn't dissapate, or does so very slowly. As a Dancer, I usually end up spamming Divine Waltz to keep my party healthy. Doing so cures a lot of HP over time, but mobs do not pay attention to this compared to Provoke and flash until someone on their hate list has been cured by a lot. I think I had a BLM in my party, so that explains that.

- Promy as WHM/SCH
This is kinda weird... I don't know why I felt like it, but i brought out my WHM after... over a full year of not playing the job. I just felt like playing it when Connie mentioned needing help for Promies. WHM was my initial job that I took up to 30 in order to unlock BLU. I had a good mix of equipment from leveling SCH to 37, sO i was actually decently equipped. WHM/SCH was a good combination too, with Light Arts helping a little for MP efficiency.

The promies themselves were fairly easy once we got the necessary items to actually win. Anima for both promies, and poison pots to prevent Sleepga. Ironically, between the exp from the missions themselves, and the one ENM we did, my WHM hit level 38 and now I need to go do two more teleport quests!

- ZNMs - Enkidu's Cap
We did 2x Tygers this week. Quite a few people did not have the 500 zeni necessary to enter the area for Tyger... There really is no excuse for this since we have the schedule up at least a week before the event, plus reminders in party chat, and finally, if you're doing ZNMs, you should be farming zeni in the first place! 500 zeni isn't even enough for a Tier I pop item. For every mob we fight, someone has to go out there to farm anywhere from 1-4k zeni. Newcomers are forgiven, of course, but everyone should have some zeni on them and help share the load

Unfortunately, Tyger didn't drop much of consequence... first pop we nearly lost when both Frodo and Wuwu went down, but Connie stepped up and did great in blood tanking the doggie while everyone basically kept him alive for almost 10 minutes before Fro & Wu were able to take over again. 2nd Tyger was very smooth, but the only interesting drop was Enkidu's Cap, which went to me since... well, nobody else had it on their list ^^;; Personally, I put it up there just cos I hate having incomplete armor and I wanted a full Enkidu's Harness set! (I even have a full Scorpion Harness set... probably the only full set across all servers!)

Enkidu's Cap is pretty decent... DEX+3, AGI+3, Accuracy+8, Ranged Accuracy+8 and Subtle Blow +2. Overall, it replaces my O-hate permanently so I don't have to look at it anymore! I still find it kinda funny that my "endgame" armor seems to come in on specific slots. So far, I have 3 head pieces (Enkidu, Homam and Denali) and two hand pieces (Enkidu and Homam), but no other slots.

- Crazy party for Nyzul Isle
After a super-long 14 hour day, I felt like doing some Nyzul... plus I promised to take Connie sometime to give him a taste. We also grabbed our new LS member... (forgot how to spell the name) and put together a pretty crazy party. We had BLU/SCH, DRG/RDM, SAM/DNC, WAR/NIN, PLD/WAR and THF/NIN. Three non-traditional hybrid job combinations, and three "traditional" jobs. The basic idea is that I was to main heal + support with both Teia on DRG/RDM and Zuzu on SAM/DNC backing me up.

We ran into a few big problems... first is that people were careless and ended up aggroing a bunch of mobs unnecessarily (Mousse anyone?) With me as the only sleeper, it's really hard to keep a party alive while sleeping 3+ mobs ^^; Not going to name names, but people should know better ;) Second problem is that we ran into a series of crazy hard floors. Chariots are hard enough on their own, but we got Chariots + Gears. Got a series of Eliminate Enemy Leader floors which prematurely ended both climbs. Connie did great for his first time through, and we introduced our new people to the AP tradition of wiping for no good reason. :D

I still think that crazy job combinations can handle Nyzul. Just need more experimentation to figure it out :)

Nyzul - Farming update

Whee... finally getting some decent Nyzul results from our farming!

Last night, we got:
Denali Bonnet (head) - Ascy
Goliard Clogs (feet) - Kurai

No drops on one run, and failed the final run because we basically had me weakened when we reached the boss floor and was running low on time.

Big thanks to Flayer & Zerofaith who filled in for a certain taru that decided to go play inside scary houses! It looks like we might have additional guests for the next few weeks too since both of our tarus are probably going to be out for at least part of the next few weeks. Flayer is going to join us as a replacement for most of these, including those next Thurs. He'll be wanting Goliard stuff!

Current armor pieces so far:
Ascy: Denali - Head
Ashle: Nothing
Ghiren: Nothing
Kurai: Goliard - Feet
Utaru: Askar - Body & Denali - Hands
Zurar: Askar - Feet
Guests:
Lazymashi: Askar - Head
Flayer: Nothing (wants Goliard)
Zerofaith: Nothing (wants Askar)

Ghiren & Ashle still have not gotten anything yet, so they're next up on the priority list. Ghiren would like Askar Feet & Body, so next week we're going to concentrate on floors 20 & 80. Ashle is being a nice guy as usual and is passing on stuff other people want, but he would like some nice Goliard gear for his up-and-coming RDM. Of course, when we have guests along, they're welcome to lot too for items that they can and will use.

Statistically speaking, if we get on average 2 armor drops per 4 runs, we should be done with getting everyone a full Nyzul armor set in about... 3-4 months... This is also assuming we maintain this drop rate and the items we want drop instead of getting a ton of Askar. That's not too bad given that we took 5 weeks to get up to floor 100 doing 7 runs a week. The climbing schedule was a little crazy, so I don't want to hold people to that for farming, but we can always still go on Sundays or Tuesdays.

Actually, I'd like to find out if there are any people who would like to go on Sundays or Tuesdays for farming runs. That way I can look out and pick up some guests to fill in for those who do not want to go and we can get some more armor for everyone. Sundays would be ideal, around 8:30-8:45pm PST gather time for up to 3 runs. That gives the tags enough time to refresh before Thursday. Let me know if you're up for that!

Nyzul - Completed floor 100, future farming

First up, good job in completing the 1-100 run in record time! Looking back at my blog posts, we started on 9/11, so we basically climbed up to floor 100 in about 5 weeks. We still have to finish Ashle's 91-100 disc, but that shouldn't be a problem this coming week.

Nyzul Farming
Going forward, we'll be doing Nyzul for the express purpose of farming armor. The schedule will be Thursdays only, gathering at Whitegate at 9:30pm Pacific. We're starting as soon as Ashle gets on, and we'll be doing 4 runs. Ge in Whitegate on time so that as soon as Ashles gets on, we can start our first run and people can get to sleep at a semi-reasonable hour. We won't be scheduling any more Sunday runs, freeing up assault tags so that people can do other assaults. Of course, if you actually want to do more farming runs on Sunday, just bring it up to people and if we have free tags available, we can do up to another 3 farming runs and pick up some friends to fill in for people who aren't around. Just be sure to pick up your 4th assault tag so that we can do 4 runs on Thursdays.

Farming schedule will generally be: 1-2 high floors (80/100), and the remaining lower floors. I'm not sure how bad token usage will be, but we'll continue to spread the floor picker around so that everyone has more or less the same number of tokens.

Farming Strategy
Strategy will be slightly different since we can't just spam 2-hrs on every single run! Basically, 2-hr at your discretion. If we hit the boss floor with only 5 minutes left, chances are everyone will have to use your 2-hr to try to get the win. If we have more than 5 minutes left, then it would be best to hold off and save your 2-hr for another run. I'm leaving it up to you all to use your best judgment on whether to 2-hr or not.

Item strategy remains the same. Melees might want to pick up additional damage drinks (like Soldier's Drink, Champion's, etc.) Jobs remain the same, though if you want to switch things around a little, let me know. I think we can have some flexibility in job choices.

Loot Lot Rotation - Round Robin
Simple round robin rotation... basically, everyone will lot on the pieces that they can and will wear. Once you have 1 piece of armor, you're out of the lotting pool until everyone has at least one piece, then we open up lotting again for the 2nd piece, 3rd, etc. This way, hopefully we can spread out armor to everyone so that we all finish up our sets at the same time.

Current armor pieces so far:
Denali: 1x Hands (Utaru)
Askar: 1x Feet(Zurar), 1x body (Utaru), 1x Head (Lazymashi)
Goliard: None

From a previous blog post, we have the following priorities for pieces:
Kurai: All except head for Goliard
Ascy: Denali feet & head
Ghiren: Askar body & feet
Zurar: Askar body & head
So... that probably means we'll be doing floor 20 the most since we have demand for all 3 armor pieces there, followed by 80 & 100. We'll catch up on 40 & 60 later once we get everyone a few pieces that they really want.

For weapons, I think almost everyone has already obtained the weapon for their main jobs, right? The only one I can think of that we haven't obtained is DRG for Zurar. Don't worry though, we'll get that easily... all Zu needs to do is get DRG to 75, then we'll have him start a 96-100 run. The floor 100 boss always drops two weapons, one random one, and the other will be for the job of the person who selected the floor. (Which is why Wightslayer dropped last night. I picked the floor after Utty DC'ed) If you have any other weapon desires, let me know, otherwise all weapons are free lot.

Nyzul Weaponskills - Pyrrhic Kleos & Expiacion
Very... very flashy! Both weaponskills put out a lot of light and are very flashy! Of course, I've seen Expiacion before since Varg demonstrated it to me right after the updated, but I've never seen Pyrrhic Kleos before, not even on youtube.

4 hits, flashy... my initial impressions of Pyrrhic Kleos was that it looked like a tiger slashing claws, similar to Claw Cyclone, just with a lot of light. I need to figure out a way to make videos in FFXI and upload it xD Or... at the very least, remember to take some screenshots :o I'll try to put some up soon.

Damage wise, Expiacion was what I expected, not as good as Vorpal Blade and more of a setup for a Darkness skillchain with Vertical Cleave. Pyrrhic Kleos on the other hand, was fairly decent... about 280-500+, depending. I need to experiment with it a little more to see if Building Flourish affects it, and if the damage can exceed Dancing Edge consistently, maybe try it with more accuracy in case I'm missing hits.

Big thanks to Ghiren who helped me with the points for this! My turn to return the favor now :)

Yet another random update

Whee... some randomish updates on my adventures.

New toys
Let's see... surprisingly, my Blue Mage has been getting quite a few upgrades recently. Besides the recent rash of gloves that I've picked up over the last few weeks, just last night I managed to (finally) learn Mind Blast and picked up a new shield from ZNMs. It was free lotted and I happened to win the lot xD

Legion scutum DEF: 16 MP +20 Enmity -2MP recovered while healing +5Lv. 71 All Jobs

Pretty good shield... It's weird to actually see myself running around with a shield since none of my jobs actually have any shield skill. I might try wearing it on DNC/SAM just for the -enmity. It should really help when I take on support roles on BLU. I've put together a enmity down equipment macro that throws on all of my cobra unit gear as well for use during heavy healing events.

Merit parties
Kurai has been trying to level SCH up to 75, so I've been tagging along for a couple of meritish parties on Dancer. We seem to also grab more or less the same people... Dexie, Zurar, and he's grabbed Ghiren, Savage and Styles in the past. I've been coming as DNC/SAM for these, and overall exp isn't too bad, about 12-13k/hour without band.

DNC/SAM allows me a little more freedom in using TP to basically main heal the party while I'm pulling. I think I'm a little rusty now since it's been a while since I've actually pulled for a merit party. Couldn't break chain #16, partly because our party wasn't full of 75s, but mainly because I still don't have the right timing down on when to go out to get another mob in order to keep the chain going without bringing a mob back too early and getting us all killed. ^^;

4 merits stored up right now... I might just keep storing merits for use when level 2 merits come out for Dancer... or I might put a few merits into sword for Blue Mage. I do need just a little more accuracy on Blue Mage to throw out those 7-800+ Disseverments more consistently xD

Nyzul
Floor 75 now! 3/4 of the way there. Just 5 more successful climbs before we hit floor 100 and finish climbing. Hopefully we should be done with that by the end of this week, and we can switch over to a lighter farming schedule. We had our first Denali piece drop on floor 60, the gloves. Good tanking piece for NINs I think, so it went to Utaru.

Coming up though, I think we may have a scheduling problem. Originally, I'd figured that we would simply switch to a 4-run Friday-only schedule for farming, but this poses a problem for people who want to sleep (relatively) early on Friday for work on Saturday, as well as for people who want to do other Assaults on Sunday since using up all tag on Friday would mean that you only have 1, maaaaaaaaybe a 2nd tag late at night on Sunday.

Right now, proposals are:
- Do 4 runs on Thursday night - Can't be done since we start too late for people with work on Fri
- Do 4 runs on Friday night - Samish problem as above, plus lack of tags on Sunday
- Do a split of 2 runs each night, allowing for 2-3 tags on Sunday for other Assaults

Nyzul people, let me know what you think.


ZNMs
Mild fiasco last night when the Experimental Lamia basically had her way with the whole alliance. We had a problem when the tank party was getting one-shot one at a time, leaving the Experimental Lamia to aggro the rest of the alliance and start taking us down. Didn't help that the pets spawned and immediately started attacking the tank party as well and tanks weren't able to grab them in time.

Next week we should have a better strategy that involves a very foolish Blue Mage getting the attention of a bunch of lamia at the same time... mmm... that sounds almost like the plot of a h-dojin o.o;

Meanwhile, since Aqqy has basically abandoned us for the evil World of Warcraft, I've put together a ZNM site to take over tracking of what's going on, wishlist items, etc. It's available at http://znms.blogspot.com. Right now, it is quite out of date as I need to get information about what has happened over the last few weeks, what items people have obtained, what pop items are available, etc. If you know of anything, let me know in game, in the comments, or even email at (my char name) at GMail.

More random updates

Phew... caught up a little on my life, enough that I can actually watch some TV tonight instead of rushing from thing to thing... I had a few minutes, so I figured I'd put up another random blog post! Let's see...

Blue Mage - New Gloves
Seems that I need to throw a few merits into BLU... with my "physical nuking gear", I'm at over +30 Str & Dex with my new Enkidu's Mittens. However, that seems to be at the expense of accuracy as I seem to be doing more damage with my regular melee gear on. My nuking gear takes some accuracy off in favor of putting on more Str & Dex, so to get the best results, I'll need to raise my accuracy a little... probably through some sword merits since physical Blue Magic is dependent on main weapon accuracy. I might throw some into Blue Magic skill as well. I haven't touched either of these merits since... well, since I hit BLU75

Nyzul - floor 55
I was experimenting with gear in Nyzul. Of course, it didn't help that I was targetting high evasive rats, and I wasn't using Sushi since I'm very much a hybrid role in Nyzul, switching between healer to full-on DD to sleeper all during the same battle.
Still, we're just over the halfway point for Nyzul! Pretty good for 3 weeks of work. We have 9 more successful climbs to reach floor 100, then we can switch over to a slightly more relaxed farming schedule. We have 5 runs scheduled between tomorrow & Friday, so... with a ton of luck, we may actually hit floor 100 by the end of next week!

Other topics
People around me have probably noticed that I've been a lot more testy recently. I haven't been on as much, and may have been snapping at people ^^; Sorry for my behavior... it's just been a trying few weeks. Besides the crap going on with the stupid economy, I've also been really busy at school with basically taking the lead with my final project, which is going to be larger than any project that we've ever done.

About the economy... this is going to be bad. I think we're still at the beginning of what will be at best, a 1-2 year recession, and at worst, a 4-5 year depression. I've already taken measures to protect my investments, but it really does suck that I'm going to be graduating in the beginning of next year. If you're in school, try to delay graduation for at least another 2-3 years... by then we should be out of, if not climbing out of this mess >.<

Nyzul - More progress, lots of weapons, 1st armor piece

We're making a ton of progress in Nyzul. Since the previous Sunday, we haven't had a single failed run yet, and except for a few minor mistakes, we're doing these runs almost perfectly! As Fuuji says, we're no longer a "noob nyzul group" :D

We've only run into one ordered lamp floor since the previous Sunday as well. Seemed to be a little confusion during the run, so I figured I'd write a quick clarification about ordered lamps.
- When you first find a lamp, activate it at once and stay there. If you see other lamps nearby that do not have people on them, shout out so that someone can get to it.
- When all the lamps have been found and activated, you'll see all the lamps light up. This tells us that we have found all the lamps and we can start to figure out the order
- This also means that if you aren't on a lamp, you should head back towards the Rune unless someone at a lamp has aggroed something and needs help
- In most cases, if someone has aggroed, try to keep the mob slept. If this isn't possible (i.e. You aren't Utaru, Kurai or me) fight it off and other people should come help you. Be sure to say something to let us know to come
- When we are going through figuring out the sequence of lamps, even if your lamp does stay on, you still need to activate it in the right sequence in the order for it to count. So when I talk about starting the next sequence, make sure you activate your lamp at the right time even if your lamp appears to be "on"

Good progress so far. Last Friday we completed our 16-35 climb, and we're set to climb from 36-60 this coming Thurs & Fri. We're having a ton of weapons dropping, and while I'm trying to keep track of them, it's getting hard to remember :)
Since Thursday, I think we've seen:
SCH - Ghiren
NIN - Utaru
MNK - Ghiren
RNG (again) - Dunno
SMN - Ghiren
SAM - Zurar
BST - Ghiren
At this point, Ghiren says he's 7/20 for the weapons and is going for a full set! Keep in mind that you can store any weapons you're not using for 1 Imperial Bronze Piece, so if you think you'll ever level a job in the future, may as well grab it and put it into storage. We also got our first armor piece on Sunday. Askar feet went to Zurar! Congrats! That's the 1st armor piece we've seen in all our runs, so we're 1/4 in terms of armor. And... that's without a THF xD (though Zu did come /THF)

We're going to try to start a little earlier on Thursdays. The time that we get our 2nd tag on Thursday nights is what determines when our tag refreshes on Sunday, so the earlier we start on Thurs, the earlier we end on Sunday :) So that means, try to be in Whitegate, on the right job and all ready to go by 9:45pm latest. Ashle, try to be there and ready to go as soon as you can login too!

We'll keep to this schedule for at least the next 3-4 weeks. If all goes perfectly, we'll hit floor 100 in the next 3 weeks and then we can decide what to do then. I doubt that we'll have picked up much armor for people given the armor drop rates, so if people are interested in farming armor, we can switch to a slightly more relaxed schedule. I'm thinking just 4 runs on Friday night, plus possibly two runs on Sunday nights as well for a total of 6 farming runs. That will open up Thursday for people to do other things or to get more sleep.

Slightly different topic: Is anyone actually considering unlocking the full weapon?


In other news... just a brief update in other misc stuff.
- I've finished meriting category 1 Dancer merits. Ended with 4 Haste Samba, 4 Reverse Flourish and 2 Step Accuracy. I think this is a good balance between all of them. I can hit dynamis and limbus mobs very consistently with Steps now even wearing full haste gear without food, and my Reverse Flourish gives a significant enough TP return that I'd use it with any amount of Finishing Moves during downtime. For now, at least, I'm temporarily done with meriting Dancer. Maybe it's time to look into HP or MP merits, or possibly BLU merits.
- Been dying a lot for some reason. Seems like every event OTHER than Nyzul has had some form of wipe... ZNMs, Dynamis, Limbus. And of course, in Einhjar, I went down after getting a ton of skeletons beating me up... I guess I was healing my party too much? xD
- DNC/SAM works quite well in exp parties. Tried it out in the mire in a level 69 level sync'ed party against Imps. The extra TP from meditate basically meant that I could main heal without any worry for running out of TP, and even if the mob did face me, it would go back to the tank after hitting me once. Worst case, I could get Third Eye up to prevent a second hit. As long as the mob can't one-shot me, I think DNC/SAM is more effective compared to DNC/NIN

Nyzul - Great progress, floor 20

Great two Nyzul runs last night. We did 16-20, and surprisingly, we reached floor 20 in just under 15 minutes both times! We hit a series of easy floors... killall, eliminate specific enemy, and lamp floors that only had one lamp to activate. We still need to get some practice on ordered lamps before we can be completely confident of climbing and handling floors with little problem.

Two lessons learnt in last night's run:
1. The XBox 360 overheats and will crash. Especially if you just did something laggy like Besieged, Campaign, or even a merit party. Try not to use the 360 for time-sensitive things like this where you may crash :) (Actually, I stopped using the 360 cos it's just unreliable for FFXI)
2. Be careful which item you use. Fanatic's Drink instead of Body Boost... or... Fireflies instead of Fanatic's Drink ^^;;

Good work on the runs! I think now everyone has a feel of the strategy, items to use, when to use them, etc. After tonight, I hope we'll be about 1/3 of the way to floor 100! That's just in 2 weeks, so good job so far.

Hopefully we'll start getting some better luck with drops... I can't believe we got two Killer Bows last night >.> That's in addition to the one we got last week. And we got no armor drops on the floor 20 boss... twice! (Yes, we had a THF!) Just for curiousity, here are the drops I've seen in both my runs, and a few pickup runs with Varg/Fuuji.

2x BLU - Ascy & Ghiren
1x DNC - Ascy (on a pickup with Varg)
3x SCH - Ascy (on pickup with Fuu), Kurai & one lost due to not passing in time
3x RNG - Ghiren, Ashle & Ascy (auto-lot)
1x THF - Ashle
1x DRK - Utaru
1x WHM - Fuuji
1x DRG - Dexie (was her floor 100 run, so it was a guranteed drop)

Think that's every weapon I've seen drop so far, I think. Need a DRG or SAM one to drop for Zurar so that we'll all have a weapon to go WSing in once we finish climbing.

Btw: For free/auto-lot weapons, there's no harm in picking one up if you think that sometime in the far, far, far future you might want to level the job. There's a NPC in Whitegate (K-10, 2nd floor next to the teahouse) who will store any Nyzul weapon for 1 Imperial Copper Piece. That's where I've dumped my RNG bow, and will probably put my SCH staff once I take it out of storage.

Nyzul - Lamps & progress

Good progress so far on Nyzul Isle. Up to floor 15 right now, and we tried one stab at floors 16-20, but we got hung up on an ordered lamp floor and barely ran out of time. We had 3 minutes going into the boss floor with virtually no MP, but we still took off a good chunk of the tortoise's HP before we ran out of time.

Good news is that we're getting much better at flooring up with minimal hassle. The first 2 floors only took us about 10 minutes, and about 10 minutes was spent on the lamp floor. The 4th "killall" floor we drew was a tough one as it also included a Darak >.> I'm pretty confident we can get through 16-20 easily this Thursday and continue climbing.

Lamp Strategy
There is still some confusion over lamp floors... Not too surprising as they are confusing, and even I'm not quite ontop of this yet! Here's a little info to help us out.

There are three types of lamp floors. You won't know what kind of lamp floor this is until we find the first lamp and touch it.
1. Activate all lamps at the same time - Easy... Just split up, find a lamp and stay there. There are between 3-5 lamps. Once we have people on the lamps, I'll call a time and we'll activate them. The person who does not have a lamp should either help with aggro, or go back to the rune and prepare to get us up
2. All must activate one lamp - Even easier. Everyone must go to one lamp and touch it. This means everyone has to move out. First person to activate the lamp should go back to the run and bring us up
3. Lamps must be activated in a specific order. More details below

For specific order lamps, here is some information on the behavior of the lamps
(Mostly taken from http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=79;mid=119498020713612950;num=14;page=1)
- The lamps will not light up until all of the lamps on that floor have been activated. So, if we've hit all the lamps that we've found and they do not light up, that means that there is another lamp we're missing
- Once we have activates the lamps in any order, they will all light up for 10 seconds. After the 10 seconds, the ones that are in the right order will continue to stay lit. The ones in the wrong order will fade and turn off.
- If a lamp is in the right position in the sequence and is still "lit", when we start doing other sequences, you still have to "activate" the lamp even though the light is still on. We need to hit all the lamps in the right sequence for it to work.

So, if we get a lamp floor, this is the sequence of what will happen for an ordered lamp scenario:
- Fan out and search for lamps. This is a fully-independent floor and everyone is on your own to avoid aggro. Keep in mind which mobs are sneak and which are invis. If you can sleep (me, Utty & Kurai), take a more dangerous lamp. If you see someone who has aggro and has to fight, go help and kill the mob ASAP. We may take out some mobs near some of the earlier lamps when we're still grouped together
- Whoever finds the first lamp should touch it and immediately say what kind of lamp it is. If it is an ordered lamp scenario, activate it at once
- Other people will continue to search for lamps, activating them as they find it and staying by their lamp. Make sure to say something in party chat (i.e.: "Found a lamp... one more S of me")
- As soon as we find all the lamps on the floor, they should light up since we've been activating them as we find them. At this point, we need to determine the order
- To figure out the order:
- Wait 10 seconds after the lamps activate. Some lamps should go out. If yours goes out, call out "off" in party chat
- I will call out an order to reactivate the lamps.
- Once you activate your lamp, do "/" in party chat so the next person knows to go
- Once everyone goes, the lamps will light up, if they are not already. We have to wait 10 seconds, then SOME lamps will go off
- If your lamp goes off, immediately say so in party. People with lamps that remain on should also call out that their lamp is "on" as soon as they see that someone else's lamp is off
- I will call out another order immediately. We repeat until we get the right sequence.

The logic puzzle behind the lamp activation order is actually fairly simple. Lamps that are lit up in the correct place in the sequence will stay lit. Lamps that are not right will turn off 10 seconds after the sequence of activations has been completed. This means that if your lamp stays on after the sequence completes, you will always be in the same position.
Example scenario:
- After me, Kurai, Zurar & Ghiren find and activate 4 lamps, the lamps actually light up.
- At this point, Utaru & Ashle should be heading back to the runs to prepare to release
- 10 seconds later, one, or all of the lamps will go off. If your lamp turns off, say so
- I'll call out an order... "K, Z, G, Asc"
- Everyone activates their lamp in order and use "/" in party chat to indicate that they have done so
- The lamps that are off will light up... Wait 10 seconds, then some lamps will go off again
- Let's say Zurar & Ghiren's lamps go off. In party chat, it will be:
Ghiren> Off
Zurar> Off
Kurai & Asc> On
- I'll call out another order... "K, G, Z, Asc"
- Same thing, and this time since we swapped the only two lamps that turned off after the sequence, it will activate the rune and we're done.

Critically important: 3 messages need to be said in party chat:
1. Use "/" to say when you have activated your lamp. This will let the next person know they can activate their own
2. After the 10 seconds is up, if your lamp turns off, make sure to say so in party chat ("off" or "lamp off")
3. After you see someone saying "off", if your lamp stays on, say "on" or "still on" to help figure the order out ASAP.

I think that's it for lamps... that's the last puzzle for climbing that we have confusion on. I'm pretty confident that we can get to floor 100 now that we're getting used to Nyzul :)


Boss Floors & Farming
Sunday nights are our farming nights. Hopefully we'll just need to pick up 1 person who has a tag available and wants to get something. Thanks Marduke & Fuuji for coming along the last run.

How late our tags refresh on Sunday actually depends on how early we start our 2nd run on Thursday. We can pick up a new tag at the same time that we pick up our 2nd tag on Thursday. Hence, if we start at 10:00pm and pick our 2nd tag up at 10:40pm, we won't be able to do a 2nd run on Sunday until 10:40pm.

Kinda makes it hard to farm if we're running that late :) As such, try to be on time, or even early for runs so we can get through and let people sleep!

As for farming, weapons drop pretty much randomly from NMs. As for armor, think about which pieces you'd really like to get and we'll concentrate on those floors. Right now we can only farm the feet piece since we only have access to level 20, but in a couple of weeks if not by this week, we'll probably have access to level 40 armor. Let me know which pieces you'd like and we'll concentrate on the appropriate floors :)

The armor sets are:
- Askar Korazin Set (Heavy melee)
- Goliard Saio Set (Mages)
- Denali Jacket Set (Light melee)
Floor 20: Feet / Floor 40: Legs / Floor 60: Hands / Floor 80: Body / Floor 100: Head

Nyzul - Stable setup & Strategy

So, I think we've finally got a stable group of people together to do Nyzul runs. Schedule is a little crazy, and it was a pain to figure out a schedule that worked with everyone, but I think we finally have something. I really admire other leaders who are able to hold people together for various events like Varg, Fuuji & Rooks. Getting 6 people together for Nyzul gave me a headache xD

Weekly Schedule:
Thursday: 9:45pm PST - 1-2 runs
Friday: 9:30pm PST - 3-4 runs
Sunday: 8:00 PST - 2 runs
Make sure you pick up a 4th tag between Sunday & Wednesday so that we can do 5 runs between Thursday & Friday. We're definitely climbing on Thurs & Fri to get to floor 100 ASAP. Sunday, we'll either be climbing if Ashle makes it, or we'll be picking up a 6th member and doing some armor/weapon farming.

For the most part, the jobs & responsibilities will be:
Ghiren: WAR/NIN - Heavy DD & backup tanking. Provoke mobs as necessary to get them off mages, especially in the case that we get a slept link that has woken up. For the most part, we'll be killing so fast that no real tank is necessary
Zurar: SAM/DNC - Heavy DD & backup healing. Concentrate on DD unless the mages are low on MP. Keep the party alive, and be ready to switch over to Seigan if you get too much hate
Ashle: THF/NIN - DD, hate management + running back to the rune. Be ready to accomplice the mages in case we have to cure bomb the party. DS Curaga IIs are actually quite common after some bad AoEs. You can trick attack either onto Zurar (Seigan) or Ghiren (/NIN)
Utaru: DRK/NIN - Heavy DD, sleep/stun. Utty, you're also pretty much on top of the group when it comes to going ahead and pulling mobs whenever possible
Kuraikaze: BLM/WHM, later SCH/WHM - Healing as the priority, sleep/stun. Nuking is secondary to help finish off harder mobs (Psycheflayers, etc.) Once you have SCH leveled up it should help a TON with Regen-ga and the ability to remove all status effects from everyone at once.
Ascule: BLU/WHM, later possibly DNC/SAM - Main healing, sleeping. I can get a basic 3MP/tick Refresh during Assault, but that's not enough to keep up with all the healing of the group. DNC has the recast issue on curing status effects, so chances are that I'll be going BLU for more flexibility and faster status effect curing


Strategies & Items
For the most part, I think we have the climbing strategy down and just need a little practice. Here are a few things that we need to pay attention to:

- Avoid unnecessary aggro and fighting. During floors where we don't need to kill certain mobs, don't attack them! We have 3 sleepers and we can easily keep 2-3 mobs asleep long enough to go up to the next floor if necessary. If you have trouble disengaging from mobs, turn off auto-targetting.
- Bring echo drops! All of you! No *need* to spam them, so if you don't NEED to be Silena'ed immediately you don't *have* to use it, but if the party is getting beat down and both Kurai & I are busy keeping everyone alive, use it and get your shadows back up!
- Upon entry into Nyzul, make your item purchases and let everyone know you're done ASAP with a simple "/"

For the most part, we're going to climb ASAP, going up 5 floors at a time. Hopefully we'll also get a "kill all enemies" floor where we'll get a shot at killing a NM and getting a possible weapon drop. Assuming we get to the 5th floor with time to spare, we'll search for and kill the NM for that floor for a possible weapon drop.

For boss floors (20, 40, 60, 80), basically the same strategy, but everyone will need to spend some token on buying items.
Melees:
- Body Boost (Doubles max HP. The bosses hit for 3-500 pet hit, and CAN triple attack)
- Fanatic's Drink (Invincible - Use this when you're being targetted by the boss)
- Optional: Dusty Wing (300% TP. Zurar: Use this after you 2-hour to continue spamming WS's. Use a Fanatic's drink too so that you don't die!)
- Optional: Monarch's Drink (Regain affect... aka TP regen)

Mages:
- Body Boost (Kurai! Your HP is scary low... use this for boss fights!)
- Strange Juice (Refresh - 300MP. Pretty sure it does NOT work with Sublimation. I've been using this even during regular climbing)
- Dusty Ether
- Bring a scroll of Instant Reraise. In case of an impending wipe, use it so that we can at least recover and hopefully complete the floor & exit.

Use body boosts as soon as we enter the floor, then we'll top off HP and go for it. Unless we're farming the floor, feel free to 2-hour at will to take the boss down ASAP with as few casualities as possible.


Rewards
Our main objective is to get the Nyzul weaponskills. As such, we need to both obtain the job-specific weapon, and to climb to floor 100. I've been researching the number of WS points necessary, and it seems that while having the runic key (clearing floor 100) requires only 250 WS Points, the requirement grows steadily down to around 8000 WS points at around clearing floor 20, after which it grows exponentially as it approaches floor 1. Current report of floor 12 is that it takes over 12,000 WS points, so where we are at floor 5 isn't very good.

Good news is that at least we can climb :) Other good news is that progress is counted on every floor, so exiting at floor 99 would count towards progress (about 300 WS points vs. 250 on floor 100). Final good news is that any WS's you do on the weapon after you start the quest counts towards your final number, so you could do like 300 WS points, THEN clear floor 100 and immediately obtain the WS.

For weapons, this is what I have for people's main jobs. Good news is that there is very little overlap!
Ghiren - PLD, WAR, SMN, MNK & RNG (obtained)
Zurar - SAM, DRG
Ashle - NIN, THF
Utaru - NIN, DRK (obtained)
Kuraikaze - SCH, BLM
Ascule - BLU, DNC (both obtained)

Lots of other jobs are basically free lot. I think a lot of you are also leveling more jobs, so if you see a weapon drop that you want, just let everyone know. (i.e.: Ghiren nearly has WHM done, Ashle is leveling RDM(?), Utaru is coming up on THF)

Armor wise, we have the 3 sets of armor:
Askar - Heavy Melee (WAR, PLD, DRK, BST, SAM, DRG) - Ghiren, Utaru & Zurar
Denali - Light melee (MNK, THF, RNG, NIN, BLU, COR, DNC) - Ghiren, Utaru, Ashle & Ascule
Goliard - Mages (WHM, BLM, RDM, BRD, SMN, PUP, SCH) - Ghiren & Kuraikaze

Basics are... lot if you can, and *will* use the item. If nobody will actively use the item, then lot if you can use the item. If everyone who can use the item already has it, then lot it if you think you'll want to use it in the future xD
Example: Of the Denali set, I'll actively use the feet and head pieces so I'd lot them if they came up. For the other Denali pieces, I'll only lot them if nobody else will actively use them. Finally, I'd like to have Goliard gear for when I eventually level SCH or RDM, but I won't lot that unless nobody else wants it.

Finally... let me know if I'm pushing too hard. I'm a very task-oriented person, and when it comes to getting the job done, I'm very quick to parse out resources and give orders ^^; I probably come across as curt during assaults due to the time pressure involved. Some of my management team members like it as I can get the job done, but it does sometimes rub people the wrong way. You all have my AIM, so do talk to me if there are any issues!

Post-update update

It's been a week since the Sep-2008 update, so I figured I'd dump a few of my impressions out there.

Level Sync
Definitely an interesting idea. I don't think there will be many parties in the future that won't take advantage of level sync. It's too easy to keep a party synced to a low enough level to yield max exp for a specific camp. The only disadvantage I could think of is that if you're always levelnig up in a level sync'ed party, your skills will quickly become out of date, and the first non-sync'ed party you join afterwards, it'll take you a while to recap your skills.

Personally, I've only tried it twice, once on BLU in a dunes party, and another on DNC at a level 45 party. In both cases, the feeling was... nostalgic. I haven't tanked on BLU/WAR since... well, the dunes, and toying with low level DNC is always fun. In both cases, it let me play around with some friends that I would normally not be able to while they were leveling other jobs!

Only annoyances of level sync are... you lose TP when you sync, or whenever the sync'ed person levels up, making it super annoying... plus that for level-capped missions, you still get your armor, so no more "naked dragon fights" ; ;

Campaign
Everyone noticed that the /brd-bot nerf took place, and having the C.A.'s empty of people just afk there is a welcome change. However, I noticed that other aspects have changed as well, making it actually easier to get exp. One thing I noticed is that for some reason, wall-hitting exp has significantly increased.

Previously, no matter how long I went to hit at a wall, I'd get only about 1k exp. This is whether you're hitting the wall for 15 minutes, or 45 minutes. To maximize this, I'd refresh my tags about once every 15 minutes, adding some travel time to wall-hitting. Now, I noticed that even after 15-20 minutes of wall hitting, I was still hitting the time cap. i.e.: I was still getting more than half allied notes compared to exp. This was for doing nothing but hitting the wall. More testing needs to be done here to see how viable this is for afk-exp :)

Oh, and I've changed to doing campaign on DNC/WHM. I can't hold hate as well compared to BLU/WHM since I can't spike damage, but I can last a lot longer when soloing a mob. Actually, I can hold a mob off pretty much indefinitely as DNC compared to BLU where I'd eventually run out of MP and die xD

Nyzul
Started doing Nyzuls... not only doing a group on Thursday, but also random farming groups with other AP members. I've done a total of 6 nyzul runs since the update and I already have all the Nyzul weapons I wanted o.o; Thursday night we did 2 runs, and I got my BLU weapon off a random NM between floor 1-5. Sunday afternoon, did a 95-100 run with Fuuji's group to get Dexie her runic key item and I picked up the SCH staff, and Sunday night, we did some farming runs with half of Varg's group and I got the DNC dagger.

Weapons seem to be pretty common drops. I guess the hard part is having the weapon you want drop. I seem to have lucked out for now, getting 3 of the 2 weapons I wanted. I've activated the quest to unlock the weaponskills for both weapons, but I don't think I'm up for doing 5000 WS points just yet xD

Still, from what I've read, you can do WS points at any time, and if you go up Nyzul enough to clear the # of points necessary for that floor, the WS simply opens up, so I'll be open for any skill-up or WS party out there.

Other Dancer stuff
Merit wise, I'm currently at 4/5 on Haste Samba, and 2/5 on Reverse Flourish merits. Haste Samba I can't really eyeball the difference between 5% haste and 9% haste... I'm assuming it's there, but my attention is usually elsewhere... i.e.: the HP bar. Reverse Flourish merits are immediately noticable since instead of getting 46% TP return on a 4 finishing move Reverse Flourish, I"m getting 52%.

I'm now considering how I want to finish the Dancer category 1 merits. I want Reverse Flourish to be at least 4/5 since that'll give me a 46+12 = 58% return with 4 finishing moves, which lets me do a WS and immediately follow up with a Curing Waltz IV given the TP return on any WS I use. I'm now debating whether I want to use the last two merit increases on finishing off Haste Samba + Reverse Flourish, or to put them into Step Accuracy. 1% more on Haste shouldn't be that noticable, but having an additional +6 accuracy on steps might be more useful on those hard NM fights where I have to go in full accuracy gear in the first place.

I'll put together another post about Dancer soon xD

Blue Mage Stuff
Did two Limbus runs since the update... I haven't seen a single AF+1 item drop for BLU yet, though we did see a single COR the other day. I'm already saving up ancient beastcoins to upgrade my body piece. We'll have to see if it's possible to obtain the actual pieces necessary to unlock it.

Since their schedule matches up with mine for the most part, I've asked to join BMO in Dynamis to hopefully get some AF2. I saw one person running around with the BLU AF2 body so far, and I must say that it does look pretty slick xD. It's been a while since I've done Dynamis at all, and Ascule does not have any northlands dynamis access, so it might be a while before I get any progress in this department.

Nyzul - 1st run & "hints"

Tonight will be the first "serious" Nyzul session. I think we have a good group of people who can climb to the top, but for the most part, we're a bunch of newbies at this! So, to hpoefully help things along, I've put together a small list of hints that might make things go more smoothly.

1. If you haven't already, check out http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Nyzul_Isle_Investigation for information about what the basics of Nyzul are all about!

2. Take initiative. This is a small group event, and we have lots to do with very little time to do it. Climbing 5 floors in 30 minutes means that we can spend an average of 6 minutes per floor, so instead of waiting for instructions, figure out what you need to do and go do it. (find the NM to kill, figure out what the objective of the floor is, go find those lamps

3. Communicate. Along with taking initiative, tell other people what you're doing and what you've found so there isn't any duplicate effort. If you found a lamp switch and intend on staying by it, announce it to the party. Also, follow instructions that you're given

4. Know your role & help others. If the party has split up and you see that someone has aggro, help them out real quick instead of letting them solo. Also, when the party splits up, try to make sure you're with someone who you will partner with well. Two mages together won't last long against mobs, nor will two DDs without healing. Sleep links if you can, and be independent as much as possible. This includes bringing powders and oils if you aren't able to cast sneak & invis on your own, and being able to hold off a mob by yourself until help arrives. (i.e.: NIN or DNC sub, sleeping/stunning the mob, etc.

5. Actions upon completing a floor. Once we complete the objective of each floor, someone needs to go back to the starting point to either get us to the next floor, or to exit Nyzul Isle. Since only one person has to do this, everyone else can do... something else! Like mages can (and should) immediately /heal in order to regain MP, even melees can do that for HP. Whoever goes back should declare it, and hopefully have enhanced movement speed. Additionally, if you see that we are about to complete the objective and know that you'll be the person that will go back to the rune, head back early so you can hit the floor up as soon aswe complete the objective. (most likely going to be Ashle when he comes on THF)

That's it for now... hope that helps somewhat!

Endgame - Nyzul

Fast post to get this out there. With the September update, new weaponskills were introduced and... like many others, I want them!

From my understanding of what limited information out there, you need a runic key in order to get the quest to unlock the WS. In order to get this key, you *now* need to progress from floor 1-100. Simply joining someone at a higher floor and going to floor 100 does not give you the runic key. So, my goal is to put together a group of 6 dedicated individuals that will go from floor 1-100 together with the goal of getting everyone both the runic key, and the mystic weapons that they want! And as a side note, we'll pick up armor along the way :)

The fastest this can be accomplished is between 3-5 weeks of continuous successful floor climbing. The initial goal will be for the group to get to floor 100, then we'll start farming various floors for both weapons and armor. Since weapons drop from any NM now, once we hit floor 100, we can pretty much pick & choose where we want to farm. Realistically, I think this will be a 3-6 month time commitment of a 2 hour time block a week in order to get everyone what they want.

So, two big questions... 1. Who wants to join? and 2. What time?

For who, I have:
- Ashle, Utaru, Zurar - all previously expressed interested in doing Nyzul when we disbanded our assault static a few months ago
- Kurai - Is interested! Never done assault! I know Kurai's an oldbie, but to me he seems new and very enthusiastic!
- Ghiren - "Maybe", hasn't done nyzul in a while
- Frodo - Varg says he's interested xD

As for time... well, I'm trying to set a time that won't conflict with people's schedules, and does not impose too much on people's lives. As such, the following days/times are out:
Monday nights - AP has ZNMs
Wed & Sat nights - Half of us have Limbus in the evening
Tues night - School night! Even though we used to hold assaults on Tuesdays, I know a number of us are going to school still so I'd rather keep this night free

I'd also like to try to block off Friday & Sunday nights so that everyone can have a social life... unless for some reason everyone who signs up for this agrees to meet during on of these times... Sat & Sun daytime is out. Go outside and have some fun!

So, that leaves... basically Thursday night, unless people are also okay going on Sunday nights xD
Hope this is okay with people... Ashle: Do you still have a late night start? >.> I'll contact everyone individually to see what people think...


btw: Where's Utaru been? >.> I know he was trying to arrange for something too... but what happened? And are we still doing Ashu Talif? ^^;