Campsitarus- 1,000,000 hits!

Posting this from work, so it'll be quick. ^^

Long ago in June 2006, I blogged about my little projectaru, Campsitarus, getting its 100,000th hit.

Back then, I thought it was quite a big deal- I convinced Strawberrie to doodle me an image that I would later adopt to make Campsitaru's title, and was generally happy about how well it had been received within the FFXI community.

Things have since died down, with me becoming more and more busy in real life, and not having enough time to really try out new camps on my own. Not to mention that the harsh reality of the situation was that, people rarely ever used Campsitarus for its alternate leveling locations (correct me on this part if I'm wrong. :P) and there are only so many "standard camps" to cover before one runs out (although I really ought to get that Soldier Crawler/Hornfly camp done someday. -_-)

There were some beautiful locales and alternate spots that I tried promoting (the Misareaux Coast immediately springs to mind), but the only one that really "caught on" to some extent was East Ronfaure [S], and even then, it's still hard to get people to go there on a regular basis (which may or may not be a good thing. ^^)

So cutting my rambling, sometime today, Campsitarus will get its 1,000,000th hit.

I'm pretty busy these days, so I've been unable to do anything special to mark this milestone, although I've been meaning to work on the template for quite some time now. I really don't like the way it looks at the moment, but my teamplating/coding skills are {Too weak.} Would anyone like to {Help me out!}? :(

On another note, while everyone was getting all excited over the Vanafest, and the announcement of the three upcoming mini-expansions, the promotional image for A Crystalline Prophecy caught my eyes.

Wow. I was blown away.

I really like this style of drawing- probably something I should try to learn from. Admittedly, the bottom is a little odd (especially the taru), but the top part...wow.

There's something fluid and yet, so sad in the top part of the image. I love the use of colour as well. Here's the full image that I pieced together on photoshop and uploaded before I left:



Mental note: Look up more stuff from Katsuya Terada!

Finally, Rank 10 everywhere.

Finally, Rank 10 in all three nations!

Yeah, yeah, I know I should've done this much earlier, but you know how these things go. ^^

I won't go into the details, since this is very old content, but I have to say, it's a far cry from back in the day when I was part of whole alliances to try and complete our rank missions. Now, I completed all the missions with three people, max?

I was caught a little off guard when I misread the wiki guide to Sandy 9-2 wrong, and found myself trying to crowd control eleven orcs, instead of the five I was expecting. Not that it was that difficult to control six more mobs as RDM/BLM, but I have to say, I haven't felt this thankful for Phalanx in a long while. ^^

Anyway, this calls for a celebration...



...Coejus and Fishura are ftw. :D

Sadly, the first thing I did after getting Sandy Rank 10 was to switch to Bastok, so I could use the remainder of my Bastok CP to get another Gold Musketeer's Bolt to replace the one I accidentally shot away last month.

Then right after that, I switched back to my original nation- good 'ol Windurst. I missed Windy. :D

Now to somehow get all my OP teleports back. -_-

Baby footsteps into HNM

Despite having played since 2004, I have never really set foot into "the endgame" or so to speak. While I've done certain events, like Limbus or Dynamis or even Salvage from time to time, they were always more on a semi-casual basis, and not something I'd regularly do (well, most of the time, anyway).

So until now, all the things I've been doing were mostly soloing. Every weekend that I got to play, I'd merit a little, I'd do a bit of crafting on the side, and maybe, I'd throw in an occasional small thing like an ENM or an Apollyon NW run here and there.

The problem arises once I can't really do much more, and I'm done with all these. :P

So I had two options: quit, or find a group. I actually seriously considered the former option (as astute readers could've probably figured out by my now very infrequent updates), but in the end, I decided to give the game (more specifically the endgame) another chance.

I considered a couple of linkshells, but in the end, decided to try TeamKANICAN again, after Ashira blogged about TK being open for recruitment. I had tried a couple times before, but it seems that each time, my schedule would get in the way. I didn't expect anything different this time around.

After about a week, my application had been deleted from the forums. Given that "[if] you've heard absolutely nothing from us at all, ever, via PM, /tell, or what have you and it's been over a week or so, then we feel you're not right for us at this time." So, I guess that was it. :/

Thus, you can imagine my surprise when one of my friends inside suddenly asked me what my schedule was like again, and asked to meet me in Al Zahbi.



I was in! :D

First assignment: Dark Ixion. XD


Surprisingly, I was asked to go WHM to this fight. Normally, I'm called to go RDM or BLM, so suffice to say, my WHM is still, to this day, unmerited. >_<

Thankfully, as you can probably tell from the picture, Ixion decided to stop by Jugner Forest [S] which made things very nice for the mages, since we can just stand on the raised platforms to avoid all of Ixion's attacks, while still being able to support the rest of the alliance.

The fight looked cool, even though it felt a little bit repetitive. It was not without a few minor incidents (including one innocent passerby who got caught in Ixion's AoE and died) but everything more or less seemed to be under control.

I took my WHM/SCH to the fight, and while I was initially apprehensive about it since I haven't taken WHM/SCH to anything before, much less a HNM fight, I was worried how things would go, but I found myself really liking it in the end, if for nothing else other than "Penury + Celerity + Raise III = much <3." I wonder though, if this means I would be expected to merit my WHM, especially if I seem to get called on it more often...

In any case, I now have "Ixion Hornbreaker" to add to my pitifully short list of HNM titles. ^^;


Now, onto some minor updates:


Goldsmithing's trundling along sloooooowly, and I'm now at GS92. It's actually fairly after you're past the gold hell stage, with Elemental beads, followed by Orichalcum Ingots, and now I'm skilling up on Scintillant Ingots, which currently sell for a slight profit, and will take me all the way to 98.

The real problem now is availability of materials, which I suspect to be true for any of the other crafts in their 90s, particularly since I'm not online that often to camp the AH for Orichalcum Ores. I will gladly accept any ores people will d-box to me, and I promise I'll pay for them! Really! {please}? XD

I'm also at the stage where I can start to think about synthing some other items. I've already got friends asking me to sign a Koenig Shield and a Sha'ir Manteel (will need to level up CC for that though -_-), and another's trying to scrounge up the materials for me to attempt my first Triumph earring. Things are starting to look up! :P


On the Ranger front, things are going fairly well- I'm taking my time leveling slowly, but strangely enough, what parties I do get have been very good so far.

I found myself into a PLD COR WHM RNG RNG WAR 64-synced party tonight. Both the PLD and RNG were 75s who wanted to merit, and the WAR brought out a Polearm for the ride. The RNG was completely pwning me in terms of damage with all the gear I would like to have, and suffice to say, we were demolishing Colibris to the point where everybody, even the Japanese were all smiles. After all, {Sidewinder}→{Slug Shot}→{Slug Shot} does take out birds extraordinarily quickly. ^^

I am now RNG65, with just a scant 7k to 66. Just over one level to my O-bow! ^^ All in all, that party was fantastic, and I would've come out of it all smiles, except for one small problem...


...I shot my Gold Musketeer's Bolt! T_T

Level Sync'ed and loving it!

To the surprise of nobody, {Level Sync} has pretty much rewritten how xp goes in this new, revamped world of Vana'diel.


Fortunately, I like the changes. :D

Level Sync has certainly made it easier to party, although I have noticed that the good camps are also saturated a little bit quicker, probably due to the fact that it is now easier to assemble a party together.

I haven't quite figured out all the ramifications of {Level Sync}'s impact, although I imagine that the big plus coming from Level Sync will be that it allows an alternate route past certain very troublesome stages, for example the 49-52 stretch where there aren't very many ideal places to party, and the early 70s for melee characters.

To summarize the major happenings of the last few months or so, I've picked up a new job of interest and have started re-leveling my Ranger. I literally went on a rampage, leveling from RNG58 to 63 in the span of maybe four real life days after I decided, on a whim, to get myself an Othinus' Bow.

Admittedly, that added to the list of other random RA/EX RNG items I have randomly picked up, so yeah, why not level my Ranger some more? :P

In any case, party invites feel more common now, which is probably a good thing, except for one caveat- holy cripes RNG ammunition is expensive. >_<

For the record, I am a crossbow ranger. Part of that was because after purchasing a Eurytos' Bow, I read up on the differences between Archery and Marksmanship before coming to the conclusion that Archery didn't really have much place in endgame. Thus, goodbye Eurytos' Bow, hello er, Armbrust!

Of course, my getting my Othinus' Bow also solidifies the argument in Marksmanship's favour. :P

Because the mobs I've been xp'ing off lately (Colibris and Puks) are all strong against wind, I've taken to using only Darksteel Bolts in my xp parties. So far, on average, I've been using roughly four quivers every hour. A stack of quivers costs 100k.

It was only after the end of last night, at the end of a rather insane party where I actually used an entire stack of quivers, that I realised that over the last few levels, I had spent well over 300k on ammunition alone. That does not include some rather pricey purchases I also made when my RNG dinged 60 and 61, namely Deadeye Gloves (250k), a Precise Belt (125k) and an Amemit Mantle +1 (220k). Ouch. XD

Suffice to say, my walletaru has taken a substantial hit, so it's time to ease off on the RNG for a bit. ^^;

But I just dinged into my Fransisca! My Othinus' Bow is just another four levels away! >_<

Numbers, please!

The Mog Bonanza numbers are out! Here are the lucky and the luckier numbers:

Rank 5: ____1
Rank 4: ___44
Rank 3: __379
Rank 2: _1017
Rank 1: 47396

Ah well, one can always dream- all I got was the Rank 4 and Rank 5 prize. At least I come out ahead though. Congratulations to the 56 people out there with the top prize. Does that mean the Vana'diel economy goes up by at least 5,600,000,000gil? ^^

And of course, don't forget the real big prize of it all: Inventory -10! Wa-hey! :D

{Harpsichord}{Found it!}

Guess what came in the mail today? :D



Admittedly, I wasn't too happy about their choice of tracks, since I feel there are other pieces of music that really ought to have an official piano arrangement out, for example, Distant Worlds. That, and I don't really like much of ToAU or WotG music, as with a few exceptions, the rest are rather "meh." Could just be me though. ^^

Anyway, other than my spiffy new CD, the other thing that I was looking forward to was the in-game item you could redeem through a coupon provided with the CD. Without further ado,


{Harpsichord}{Found it!}

Onto other things. I've taken up to leveling Scholar after quite a bit of debating between PLD, SCH and BRD. In the end, I decided to go with SCH because it allowed me to do one more thing, which is yet another projectaru I'm working on.

The idea is to expand Campsitarus to include all the viable {Beastmaster}{Pet} camps throughout Vana'diel, since I've taken to solo'ing a few jobs every once in a while, and I find myself looking up more or less the same information I want to know when I want to take a party out to camp.

I started my SCH up again from SCH19, and at the time of writing (and after more {death}s than I can be bothered to count -_-), I am now standing at SCH24. :D

I also have plans to level BRD as my "drag parties to random places" job, too, although that's going by...a lot slower. ^^;

Finally, to wrap things up, here's the tracklist for FFXI's Piano Collections for those who are interested:

1. A New Horizon- Tavnazian Archipelago
2. Ronfaure
3. The Grand Duchy of Jeuno
4. Whispers of the Gods (Aydeewa Subterrane)
5. Stargazing (Windurst Waters [S])
6. Faded Strife -Besieged-
7. Mercenaries' Delight
8. The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah
9. The Cosmic Wheel (West Sarutabaruta [S])
10. Griffons Never Die (Southern San d'Oria [S])
11. Wings of the Goddess (WotG title screen)

Last but not least, good luck for the Mog Bonanza tomorrow! :D

Where is the Tarutaru?

{I'm back!} and {/welcome} to The Bloggaru, v2.0! :D

It's been way, waay, waaaaaay too long since I last blogged about anything, though as I'm sure I've lamented time and time again, it's mostly due to nothing particularly interesting to blog about.

Sure, I could join the masses of people that have since blogged about the ZNM update, or some new precious acquisition, but I think I'm kinda late for that, and have since missed the bandwagon. ^^;

So, I'll write about a new personal projectaru of mine instead. ^^ See, I've suddenly taken to going {sightseeing} all over Vana'diel, and taking screenshots of me doing the famous, and original tarutaru dance (read: none of that "/dance4 motion" crapparu :P) in all sorts of places across Vana'diel.

I've since compiled what I've done so far into an album, as well as a slideshow over on the sidebar. It's...quite satisfying to say the least, and I'm oddly enough having quite a blast doing this. If nothing else, it's certainly nice to get away from all the xp grinds, Assaults, merits, whatnot and just sit back and marvel at what a beautiful place Vana'diel actually is, if you took the time to explore. Here are a few samples of what I've been up to:



Now, unfortunately, when I was making this new template, I intentionally shot all my pictures so that they would fit nicely as a slideshow on the sidebar, but it seems that my current template, or at least the widget automatically resizes it down to whatever you see over on the top-right hand corner! Is there anyone out there who could {Help me out!}? >_<

Some of you out there might be wondering though, "Hey, isn't this...?" Yes, the idea is not entirely original (me dancing all over Vana'diel, that is). In fact, this was largely inspired by a particular YouTube video, that I understand has since become some sort of an internet meme:



Well, about two years ago, I was introduced to an earlier video of his, where all I saw was, well, someone dancing in places all over the world. I kinda watched it with my college roommates, had a little chuckle over it, and that was it.

Fast forward two years later. I'm randomly browsing through YouTube again, and I see a new video by the same guy (Matt Harding), except bigger, grander and honestly speaking, better!

It seems that his little dance has really taken off somewhat, and he even has his own website/blog, titled "Where the hell is Matt?" (hence my own title, "Where is the Tarutaru?") where he writes about all his travels, which even includes a three-part talk he did in Champlain College, Burlington, Vermont about his video, how it started, and so on. I found it interesting watching. ^^

But in any case, I then figured, why not I try the same thing in Vana'diel? And you know what? It's really fun! :D

Although now that I'm thinking about it, I probably should've shot video instead (which means I'll have to revisit every location again -_-) of just taking pictures, but the idea is still there. ^^

Now, anyone know of any video taking software (like fraps?) and some editing program I can download and use? ^^