The Bloggaru!

About the Artemis' Medal

2010-08-27T15:54:00.002+08:00

Introduction

One of the new items brought about by the version update that introduced Abyssea and raised the level cap to 80 was an Artemis' Medal,

The Artemis' Medal drops from Cannered Noz, a force-pop NM in Abyssea-Tahrongi.

The Bluegartr forums had a quick post that documented some of the testing behind the medal- namely how much MAB it gives based on the moon phase. They were pretty spot on, but the testing seemed to be left incomplete. There was also a lot of conflicting information regarding how the medal worked on other websites, like FFXIclopedia and FFXIah, so this was an open invitation to complete the test and set some numbers straight.

Results

I won't bore you with the details of the testing, but the results can be summarized with the following diagram:

Some points to take note:

The MAB gains is not tied to the actual moon percentage, but is instead linked to the moon phase.
Both Gibbous and Crescent stages are split into two moon phases, but the in-game command, /clock does not differentiate between the two.

Analysis

As of now, this is the best neckpiece for damage in the game, of course, depending on the moon phase. After all, +10 MAB is nothing to scoff at, even if it doesn't happen all that often.

But we don't want to carry around situational pieces of equipment like this, so how does it interact with the other neckpieces in the game, namely the Uggalepih Pendant and Goetia Chain? (Or if you're RDM or SCH, Lemegeton Medallion +1).

Based on my previous post comparing INT and MAB, I know that (at least for me) 1MAB is roughly equal to 1INT. Using this as a rough guide, we can say that Goetia Chain adds roughly 3.8MAB, while Lemegeton Medallion +1 adds roughly 2.7MAB.

From here, the analysis is easy- Artemis Medal is king until the MAB bonus reaches +6, where you will want to start swapping in Uggalepih Pendants. After that, you will continue using Artemis' Medal until the MAB bonus reaches +3 before swapping in Goetia Chain, or +1 before swapping in Lemegeton Medallion +1. Still, notice that even against a Goetia Chain, an Artemis' Medal will still be better more than half (7/12ths) the time!

That's all fine and dandy, but the next question comes from all Spellcast users- how do I script all this?

Unfortunately, the designers up in Square-Enix and their infinite wisdom (/sarcasm) made it such that the moon cycle is not actually symmetric. That is to say, if you wanted to use the moon percentage to determine which neckpiece to use, there isn't actually a set number. The last day on the Early Waxing Gibbous has a moon phase of 71% and the first day of the Late Waxing Gibbous has a moon phase of 74%. The problem is, the last day of Early Waning Gibbous is at 79%, while the first day of Late Waning Gibbous is 76%, so no matter what number you pick, you will miss out on some optimization somewhere.

In pseudocode, the process might look something like this:

equip "Artemis' Medal"

if(moonphase < 73)

{

if(moon phase < 30)

{

equip "Goetia Chain"

}

if(MP after cast < 50%)

{

equip "Uggalepih Pendant"

}

As for the actual code, well, I'll figure this xml jazz out eventually. :)

Of course, adjust the numbers if you're not using a Goetia Chain. In addition, I haven't quite pinned down the transition times between Waning Crescent or Waxing Crescent subphases, so that's something to look out for.

Calculus & FFXI II -- Haste vs Enmity

2010-04-30T15:41:00.005+08:00

Introduction

I was browing around the forums, when I came across this Allakhazam post, where the OP poses the following question:

For a long time now, I have been using a full enmity set for casting Flash to maximize as much hate as I can get out of flash. However, I am curious, over the course of an extended fighting session, say HNM/God/Ground king/Omega etc, would it be mathematically better to use Haste when Flashing?

Judging from the responses, the general consensus is to emphasize Haste over Emnity. This would probably be true based on observation.

We would like to give mathematical support to verify this claim.

But before we start, we need to establish how Enmity works, and how +Enmity and +Haste affect your overall enmity gain.

Once again, if the equations don't display properly, your browser is probably blocking the HTML or Java script that takes the code and turns it into equations.

Enmity 101

In late 2007, Kaeko (of Odin) began a series of tests to break down and analyze exactly how Enmity (also commonly referred to as just "hate") works. I won't go over the whole series, but to briefly summarize the basics,

Enmity has two components:-

Cumulative Enmity (CE)-- Enmity that does not decay over time, but instead decays when you take damage.
Volatile Enmity (VE)-- Enmity that naturally decays over time, and is not reduced through taking damage.

The sum of a person's CE and VE is that person's Total Enmity (TE), and the one with the highest TE value "has hate" (i.e. the mob goes after that person).

Both CE and VE share the same base unit of measurement (E), defined as "the enmity generated by casting Cure 1 for 0HP," and each is capped at 10,000E. Therefore, there is an overall "hate cap" at 20,000E.

The goal would be to reach this hate cap as fast as possible, and once you have reached the cap, maintain it.

Constructing the model

For any particular action, be it Flash, Provoke, Dispel, or what-have-you, the Total Enmity, $E$ that you gain as a result of performing that action can be thought of as a function of one variable, that variable being the total +Enmity from your gear and merits ($e$) that modifies the base enmity gain ($e_0$). Notice that I said a function of one variable, even though $e$ and $e_0$ both appear in the equation, but because I am talking about a specific action here, $e_0$ is really a constant.

+Enmity is a straight percentage increase over the base enmity gain, so

\[E(e)=e_0(1+\frac{e}{100})=\frac{e_0 (100+e)}{100}\]

(As documented by Kaeko, here.)

Similarly, your recast, $R$, can be thought of as a function of haste ($h$) that acts upon the base recast time, $r_0$:

\[R(h)=r_0(1-\frac{h}{100})=\frac{r_0 (100-h)}{100}\]

(As documented by Kirschy, here.)

Now that we've got some quantities, it's important to be clear what exactly we want to model. Since one of a tank's main goals is to maximize the amount of Enmity they have, you could just model the current amount of Enmity a tank currently has as a function of time, and maximize that. However, there are several complications in doing so, including taking enmity decay into account, not to mention that such a function is not even continuous.

We can accomodate for all that with the appropriate substitutions, but the question is whether all that is actually relevant to our problem.

Sure, we'd like to maximize the amount of Enmity that we have, but we don't consider Enmity's rate of decay when choosing what gear to wear. Instead, we load up on +Enmity and +Haste gear, and aim to generate as much enmity as we can, with as low a recast as possible.

That is to say, the quantity that we really want to maximize is not the actual amount of enmity we have, but rather the enmity generated per unit time, or the rate at which we generate enmity.

This is thankfully much simpler to model, and is the classic "rise over run" function:

\[f(e,h)=\frac{E(e)}{R(h)}=\frac{e_0 (100+e)}{r_0 (100-h)}\]
Now that we have the quantity we want to maximize, it's time to use calculus.

Calculus

In order to answer the OP's question, we want to see how the rate at which we generate enmity, $f(e,h)$ changes as we change either $e$ or $h$. We can then analyze the resulting quantities to hopefully establish a relationship between the two.

So, in order to approximate how the rate changes as I change one of the input variables, I first compute the partial derivaties:

First, the partial with respect to $e$:
\[\frac{\partial f}{\partial e}=\frac{e_0}{r_0 (100-h)}\]
Then the partial with respect to $h$ (this one uses the product rule):
\[\frac{\partial f}{\partial h}=\frac{e_0 (100+e)}{r_0 (100-h)^2}\]
Notice then, that
\[\frac{\partial f}{\partial h}=\frac{100+e}{100-h}\frac{e_0}{r_0 (100-h)}\]
\[\frac{\partial f}{\partial h}=\frac{100+e}{100-h}\frac{\partial f}{\partial e}\]

Recall that the two partial derivatives approximate the incremental gain in the rate of enmity generation as we increase either +Enmity or +Haste.

Thus, if $(100+e)/(100-h)>1$, that means that $\partial f/\partial h > \partial f/\partial e$, so +Haste has more impact than +Enmity on the rate of enmity generation.

Conversely, if $(100+e)/(100-h)<1$, then $\partial f/\partial h < \partial f/\partial e$, so +Enmity will have more impact than +Haste on the rate of enmity generation.

Clearly, that fraction acts as a boundary of sorts that separates the two cases, and in order to get an idea of what this boundary looks like, we set the two partial derivatives to be equal. So,

\[\frac{100+e}{100-h}=1\]
\[h=-e\]
This is thankfully simple, although you might expect such a simple relationship, since both +Enmity and +Haste act on the base enmity and recast time in a similar way. In any case, the relationship can be illustrated using a graph as follows:

Thus, we get the following conclusion:

If the sum of your +Enmity and +Haste is greater than 0, you will gain more by increasing +Haste over +Enmity.

Otherwise, if the sum of your +Enmity and +Haste is less than 0, you will gain more by increasing +Enmity over +Haste.

Since the vast majority of Paladins out there (hopefully) have a positive sum of +Enmity and +haste, this analysis shows that you will benefit from increasing +Haste over +Enmity the vast majority of the time.

(Q.E.D. ^^)

Further questions and limitations

While the simple analysis above illustrates that +Haste should generally be prioritized over +Enmity, it only tells us that the gains from +Haste is more than +Enmity. What it doesn't tell us is how much better +Haste is over +Enmity, under given conditions.

So while we can say +Haste is generally better than +Enmity, the only way we have right now to compare two pieces of gear against each other would be to plug the values into $f(e,h)$ and see what numbers come out.

Since the function is simple enough to compute numerically, I won't go down that line for now, and is not a typically asked question, anyway. But if you wanted to, you can simply repeat the analysis I did on INT vs MAB to better understand the relationsihp between +Enmity and +Haste.

More importantly, understand that this model only captures a small part of tanking mechanics-- the first part where the goal is to generate as much Enmity as you can, as quick as you can. This would be fine if there weren't a cap to the amount of CE and VE a player can have, but there is, and this analysis does not directly apply to the latter part of tanking, which focuses on maintaining the hate cap after it has been established.

Fortunately, that analysis is also simple, since any extra Enmity over the cap is effectively wasted, your focus now shifts to just trying to use your actions with as high a frequency as possible, so stack +Haste all the way.

More importantly, this analysis does not actually tell you how to tank. For example, a new RDM tank may misinterpret this analysis and believe that all they need to do is stack up on +Enmity and +Haste and spam Blind until the cows come home, not realising that Blind does not have a CE component-- thus once that RDM's VE is capped, all Blind does is re-establish the VE cap, but does nothing for CE!

In other words, the mathematics and formula in this case are used to manipulate known data to illustrate and verify a claim that we've already known. It will not make you a better player, not will it make you a better tank.

All it is is solid verification, a proof per se, and to some the proof is really what it's all about.

Calculus & FFXI -- INT and MAB

2009-08-25T00:23:00.045+08:00

Introduction

It has been long known to Black Mages that resists aside, Magic Attack Bonus, or MAB for short, is the stat that you want to focus on when it comes to raising your nuke damage. However, it is also known that for lower tier nukes, INT adds more damage than MAB.

Out of this comes the question of when the transition period is, and thus there is a need to relate the two together.

Today, a fairly common rule of thumb is that “2INT ≈ 1MAB,” which has been largely shown to be true from general observation.

However, I have not yet come across any mathematical support for this statement.

As advanced warning, there is a decent amount of math involved, which brings about two issues—first, not everyone likes math, so I’ll have to step away from the mathematics from time to time to explain what is going on. In addition, I have no idea what kind of math background my reader, you, would have.

To be safe, I am going to write for someone who has a high school background in Calculus, or someone in their freshman year in college.

Bear in mind that the mathematics detailed below will not necessarily make you a better player, nor will unveil some great profound secret that will change the way you look at nukers forever. It is simply an insight into the logic and reasoning that goes behind our decisions.

By providing mathematical support for the claim, not only do we get absolute, logical proof that the relation holds true (under certain circumstances), but we can verify its accuracy, and if need be, further refine the rule.

But in all honesty, I was bored. Very, very bored. ^^

By the way, if the equations don't display properly, your browser is probably blocking the HTML or Java script that takes the code and turns it into equations.

The damage formula

To begin, let’s start with the damage formula (D) for a nuke:

\[D=k(1+\frac{M}{100})[B+\lambda(I_Y-I_M)]\]

The equation above has a several variables, so I’ll briefly explain each component.

k is the product of all the modifiers you get from elemental staves, day of the week, weather, magic burst, and type of mob.
M refers to your total Magic Attack Bonus from both Job traits and equipment.
B is the spell’s base damage, which can be looked up elsewhere.
λ is the nuke’s tier-modifier, again, further details can be found elsewhere.
I refers to total Intelligence (again, base INT and gear)- the subscript Y or M tells you whose INT the equation is referring to- You, or the Mob.

For more information, you can look at its FFXIclopedia entry here.

MAB is divided by 100 and added to 1 to signify that MAB is a percentage bonus. If you have a total of 32 Magic Attack Bonus, then your MAB multiplier is 1.32.

Model limitations

Bear in mind that this equation is not entirely accurate because of limitations in the computation, which is a topic that is usually touched upon in college under Numerical Analysis.

Because a computer can’t store an infinite number of decimal places, it has to truncate the working figure at some point, which means it just ignores all the numbers after a certain position.

For example, if you were to multiply 1.4 and 3.7 together, but your calculator could only store one number after the decimal point, your calculator would give you the answer, 5.1, instead of the real answer, which is 5.18. Because the calculator cannot store any more numbers past the 1, the 8 is lost through the truncation process.

In Final Fantasy XI’s case, all the numbers that go into the damage formula are truncated down to their integer values, and so because of this, our calculated values from the equation above will have a little bit of error in it.

Calculus

Once again, the equation for calculating your damage is,

\[D=k(1+\frac{M}{100})[B+\lambda(I_Y-I_M)]\]

The typical textbook question here would ask you to maximize your damage.

Notice that this question by itself does not make sense, because the answer would just be to make your Intelligence and Magic Attack Bonus infinitely large. The unspoken fine print is to find the maximum value of D within some kind of boundary, which would represent the gear selection currently available. This is a topic typically covered in a college freshman math course in multivariable calculus.

Still, the question is not very interesting because you can just go out there and try different gear sets yourself, or just plug in numbers to compare. The problem is easily solved by just going out there and testing it yourself, without having to actually using college mathematics to do so.

What is more interesting is the relationship between INT and MAB, which will help when evaluating gear choices, or to better understand in what proportions of INT and MAB work well together. Are Vicious mufflers better than Yigit gages? What if SE produced a pair of gloves that added +9INT? Which is best?

Differentiation

Because we want to find out how much INT we need to make up for 1MAB, we need to first determine the increase in damage by changing INT and MAB. Hence, we need to differentiate.

The first stumbling block is that the function has multiple variables. Most, if not all of the functions up until high school calculus involve only one variable, so what do you know when there are two?

Let’s re-examine what the differentials actually mean.

Taking the derivative with respect to MAB as an example, it refers to the change in damage with respect to your Magic Attack Bonus. In other words, how much would my damage change if I increased my MAB by 1?

This may sound familiar to those who have studied basic microeconomic theory, in particular, marginal costs and/or marginal benefits. In this case, the marginal benefit of hiring a new employee refers to the benefit (profit) gained as a result of hiring one more employee, and changing nothing else.

Likewise, what we are looking at here is the marginal benefit of adding 1 MAB.

The key here is that the only thing you are changing is your MAB, therefore everything else can be treated as a constant!

This is called the partial derivative, and is used in functions with more than one variable. The idea is, how much change would I expect by increasing this variable while holding all other variables constant?

Because we are only interested in the relationship between I_Y and MAB, we only need to compute the derivates with respect to those two variables.

Also note that it does not make sense to compute the derivative to any of the other variables, because they are just outside our control.

So, if

\[D=k(1+\frac{M}{100})[B+\lambda(I_Y-I_M)]\]

I can differentiate this using the product rule, but I personally prefer to just expand the brackets and rearrange to get

\[D=\left [\frac{k(B- \lambda I_M)}{100} \right ]M+\frac{\lambda kMI_Y}{100} +k \lambda I_Y+k(B- \lambda I_M) \]

So, in order to take the partial derivative of D with respect to MAB, I assume everything except MAB is constant.

Thus, taking the partial differential with respect to MAB, I get:

\[\frac{\partial D}{\partial M}=\frac{k(B- \lambda I_M)}{100}+\frac{\lambda kI_Y}{100} \]
\[\frac{\partial D}{\partial M}=\frac{k[B+ \lambda (I_Y-I_M)]}{100} \]

Likewise, taking the partial differential with respect to your INT,

\[\frac{\partial D}{\partial I_Y}=\frac{\lambda kM}{100}+\lambda k\]
\[\frac{\partial D}{\partial I_Y}=\frac{\lambda k(M+100)}{100}\]

Thus, I now have a say of calculating the amount of change my damage will incur if I change either my intelligence, or my MAB.

Back to the question!

Going back to the original question, I want to know how much intelligence I have to add in order to match MAB. In other words, I want to know when the two partial derivatives are equal. In particular, I want to know how much intelligence I need to add (remember, that’s just dD/dI) when dD/dM is 1.

Using the principle of small changes, I can write:
\[\frac{\triangle I_Y}{\triangle M}\approx\frac{\partial I_Y}{\partial M}\]

In this case, ∆MAB=1, so
\[\triangle I_Y\approx\frac{\partial I_Y}{\partial M}\]

Finally, using the chain rule, I can now deduce an expression to find the change in I_Y with respect to MAB.

\[\frac{\partial I_Y}{\partial M}=\frac{\partial I_Y}{\partial D}\frac{\partial D}{\partial M}\]

Therefore,
\[\triangle I_Y\approx\frac{\partial I_Y}{\partial M}=\frac{100}{\lambda k(M+100)}\frac{k[B+\lambda(I_Y-I_M)]}{100}\]
\[\triangle I_Y\approx\frac{\frac{B}{\lambda}+I_Y-I_M}{M+100} \]

Voila! We now have an equation to calculate the amount of I_Y required to match 1MAB’s worth of damage.

Notice that MAB is found on the denominator, which indicates as MAB increases, less INT will be required to match that increase in damage. In other words, as your MAB increases, raising INT will become more and more damage-efficient.

Using the formula

To use the formula, pick a nuke and look up the required values. For example, let’s assume I’m nuking Thunder IV, which has a base damage of 541 and a tier modifier of 2, on an Ebony Pudding (89INT). I have 125INT and a total of 71MAB, including my Job Trait Magic Attack Bonus, so plugging those numbers into the equation, I get:

\[\triangle I_Y\approx\frac{\frac{B}{\lambda}+I_Y-I_M}{M+100}=\frac{\frac{541}{2}+125-89}{71+100}=1.792 \]

So I need roughly 1.8INT in order to match 1MAB’s worth of damage. Pretty close to the 2INT=1MAB claim!

Note that this number obviously varies from person to person, depending on that player's own stats, so if you want, you could quickly go through the calculation yourself to find your own INT:MAB ratio, but it should be quite close to the 9:5 ratio as suggested here.

Edit (16th April 2010): (Finally) got rid of those equation borders...only about 8 months late. :P

Edited to clarify some things pointed out by Robonosto.

BLM solo in Xarcabard [S]- a.k.a. "1400 damage or GTFO!"

2009-07-28T16:22:00.008+08:00

New personal record: Chain #41!

Okay, I know the actual picture says Chain #40, but I but forgot to take a screenshot of the Chain #41 kill. Of course, I finally got a resist on the next tiger and lost the chain there without a screenshot of that new personal record. Go figure. -_-

As you might be able to tell, I've been obsessing over this camp as of late. Not because the camp is good, although that certainly helps, but because this camp just feels like it has so much potential.

The actual meriting process is very simple- walk up to a Gigas’ Tiger and nuke. Parsimony whenever it is up, saving the other charge for Alacrity in case of emergencies. Rest for one or two ticks, depending on how far your next mob is, before continuing.

So, just how good is this camp? Tigers here are level 75-76, which is 100-130 base xp, which goes up to 150-195xp/kill once you're past Chain #4, or an average of 172.5xp/kill.

So, if you kill one mob every minute, your xp/hr will be about 172.5 x 60 minutes = 10,350xp/hr. Not too bad.

But in reality, I was killing one tiger every 50 seconds on average. 3600 seconds/50 seconds per kill = 72 kills = 172.5 x 72 = 12,420xp/hr!

So this camp is very, very good. You want in. So, what do I need?

Minimum standards

The entire camp revolves around being able to one-shot a Gigas's Tiger. This creates a very interesting bar to entry and I am very curious if the development team actually took this into consideration (though I think that’s giving them too much credit).

I think I’ve shown by now that this camp surpasses Puddings in terms of xp/hr, but note that is only applies to Black Mages that meet the minimum standard, so here it is:

The minimum standard: To deal 1400 damage on an unresisted nuke consistently.

If you cannot do this, your xp/hr rate literally plummets to the point where you would probably be better off sticking to Ebony Puddings. This number is a lot easier to meet with frequent ice weather and day bonuses, but such things are inconsistent- to truly benefit from this camp, you would want to be able to come here at any time.

Why one-shot? The obvious reason why is that two nukes obviously take longer to fire off, especially if you need to Bind or Sleep in the middle.

Secondly, one common speed bump in pet camps is that you have to wait for the mob to turn its back to you, or navigate your way around the camp until you are behind the mob so that the master does not see its pet coming after you.

However, if you can one-shot the pet, you can nuke from any direction because the master will not link with a dead pet.

Together, those two reasons result in immense time savings, which become invaluable when you need to meet the 60-second time limit for everything beyond Chain #5 and still rest sufficient mana to continue the chain.

To give the reader just what kind of standard is required, this is my current nuking set for neutral day/weather:

As a Taru with full Elemental skill merits and full INT merits, I nuke with 133INT and +29MAB in gear. I also have maximum Lightning potency merits.

Yet, my neutral Thunder IVs land for just 1369 damage, off my estimated minimum requirement by 31 damage, so I still have to wait for Ice/Lightningsday to come around before I can merit in this camp! >_<

For BLMs who would like something more familiar to compare against, I use the same gear setup, to nuke Ebony Puddings with a /RDM subjob for 1515 damage without food, 1540 damage with.

BLM/SCH!

Today, /RDM has become the default subjob of choice for Black Mages everywhere, and it's not difficult to see why. Here's what you get from /RDM:

Fast Cast II
Dispel
Gravity
Phalanx
Stoneskin
Blink

Of these, the most valuable are Stoneskin, Blink and Gravity. These are all defensive in nature, and provide Black Mage with the survivability required to function effectively.

However, if you can one-shot pets, there is no need for defense!

Your concern shifts from survivability to one wholly focused on pure mana conservation, which is where /SCH shines. This is what /SCH has to offer:

-10% mp costs through Dark Arts.
-10% cast time and recast time.
-50% mp cost through Parsimony (using one charge.)
-50% cast time through Alacrity (using one charge.)

You are most interested in the mana conservation through Dark Arts and Parsimony, whose effects add up immensely:

Let's say that with a cooldown of two minutes, you would Parsimony every third nuke. Thunder IV costs 154mp under Dark Arts, and 77mp under Parsimony.

Thus, you consume 385mp in total for every set of three nukes, in the following cycle:

Thunder IV → Rest two ticks → Thunder IV → Rest two ticks → Parsimony → Thunder IV → Rest two ticks → Repeat.

With Clear Mind V and +24hMP in my healing set, I get back 51mp on the first tick, and 54mp on the second tick for a total of 105mp restored through resting in between nukes, for a total of 315mp restored through healing per cycle.

If I nuke every 50 seconds, the whole cycle will take 2:30. With 1mp restored every three seconds from Sigil, Sigil restores 50mp in that time.

Thus, the total mana restored per cycle is 365mp.

Therefore, you have a net mana consumption of just 20mp every three nukes!

Camp orientation

Now that I've talked a little bit about the mechanics of the camp, one important final part is actual knowledge of the camp and its surroundings. First, you will never stay at one stationary spot. You will keep moving around, depending on several factors.

In total, I counted five Gigas Floggers in the area. One of them is to the far west, the other towards the eastern tundra. The other three are all clustered very close to each other in the center, and it is these three that you want to focus on.

However, you only need two Beastmasters to recur, so a good idea would be to just alternate between the two Beastmasters until one of them moves into an unfavourable location.

I'll be frank- this camp is very mentally taxing. Because you are /SCH, you have very little defense should something go wrong, other than perhaps Alacrity-Sleepga. Once you reach Chain #5 and above, pressure is constantly on you to keep the chain, which means you have to be able to answer the following questions quickly:

Where is your next tiger? How far is it?
Do I have to stand up early to get to the tiger in time?
Where are the surrounding Gigas?
Where are the Greater Amphipteres?
How close should I stand when I nuke to avoid the pet moving out of range mid-cast?
How far should I stand when I nuke to avoid aggro from the beastmaster?

As a rough gauge, if you have the Distance plugin on the unofficial Windower, a player character moves at a base speed of 4.0 yalms per second, so you can use that to decide whether you should stand up early to move to your next tiger.

Resists

It’s still a bit of a bummer that so far, my chain is completely dependent on not getting resisted. Theoretically, you can still keep the chain by timing an Alacrity-Tier III nuke in between tiger swings, but there are two problems to this.

One is more focused on player skill. Because resists are so unexpected, when they do occur, I find myself in a sudden state of panic even though I planned for such contingencies. With experience, I ought to be able to react accordingly and maintain a smooth flow.

The other, bigger issue is that if you nuked the pet in front of the beastmaster and your nuke was resisted, the beastmaster will see the pet and link, thus ending your chain even though you manage to kill the pet in time.

Yes, you could maneuver around the beastmaster to set yourself up for an ideal nuking spot, but if you focus too much on that, you forgo one large benefit of being able to one-shot pets. All I can say is that at least the Xarcabard [S] camp here has the benefit of choice, and with multiple Gigas Floggers around, at least you have the luxury of picking and choosing from the tigers available.

If, unfortunately you're forced into one particular tiger and you get resisted, well, that's ~~life~~ Final Fantasy XI. Just Sleepga, finish off the pet, curse, Retrace, and come back to start anew. :(

Black Mage Solo Chain #19+

2009-07-26T02:10:00.010+08:00

So, did I mention I love Xarcabard [S]?

I thought I was loving the new beastmen pet camps as a Scholar, when I posted my picture of getting Chain #9 solo, but I just went back there as a Black Mage, and well, see for yourself:

Chain #19! Solo!

For those who are interested in trying this out for yourself, I went BLM/SCH, nuking with Thunder IV only, resting for two ticks between each pet and using Parsimony whenever it was up. Sometimes, if the next tiger was far away, I'd have to get up after only one tick of rest.

The fact that I managed to get Chain #19 and still have 566/1093mp suggests that with this method, I could very well see something around Chain #40, assuming no resists. That being said, my chain breaking around #20 does not surprise me, as with my magic accuracy capped at 95%, I'd expect one in twenty mobs to resist my nuke.

I did however, learn a few things:

First, you only really need two Beastmasters to go infinite. However, as I mentioned in my last post, there are five Beastmasters in the area, so this wasn't really a problem. You must also be decisive- interrupting your spell midway will break the chain, so I'd sometimes risk getting aggro from a Gigas that was walking towards me in order to keep the chain.

I also learnt that I was just a little bit short of damage once Lightningsday came to pass. The tigers would end up at just 1% HP after my Thunder IV, which leads me to believe that you need to consistently deal 1400 damage to fully utilize this method outside of Ice/Lightningsday. I am just 31 damage short of that. :(

(For the record, I was nuking with 133INT and +27MAB from gear.)

There are still gear improvements I can make- it's just a matter of getting around to obtaining the stuff. :P

But all that aside, the big question- just how much xp was I getting? I sat down to manually calculate it, taking the time from my first Thunder IV to the first Thunder IV of the next chain. Overall, I was getting about 11,300xp/hr! That's better than Puddings! :D

I <3 Xarcabard [S]

2009-07-23T08:56:00.004+08:00

Wow, I'm liking this update. I haven't gotten around to trying out all the additions the update brought, but the first thing I did upon logging in was to beeline straight for Beaucedine Glacier [S] and subsequently, Xarcabard [S].

I think Xarcabard [S] must be one of my new favourite zones now.

I like the music, the mobs...and did I mention the xp?

The past couple of times I've been there, I counted a whopping five Gigas Beastmasters (Gigas Floggers) in the area. This would easily support two pet solo players, but when there's just one, the results are very, very nice. :o

Chain #9 solo. :o

Soloing here has been a very nice bridge between Vunkerl Inlet [S] tigers and Ebony Puddings, which has been a godsend to me since at SCH72, I really wasn't in a position to take on Ebony Puddings. I could kill them, but they'd take so much effort it really wasn't worth it.

Not to mention, you have your moments of {excitement} doing this camp, as you'll often have to dodge Gigas aggro and run in the path of a flying Greater Amphiptere (read: death from above) to keep your chain. :D

I stuck around Xarcabard [S] for a couple days, getting SCH72→SCH74 in the meantime. I think 74 would be the time to leave, since all the base xp goes down to 120-160xp/kill, and Puddings should now be a lot easier.

Best part of all though- the camp is right next to the Campaign Arbiter! Easy transport to and fro from camp, and to make things better, frequent Ice weather in Xarcabard [S] makes me a very happy nuker. :3

Ongoings.

2009-07-11T18:47:00.009+08:00

On a completely random note, I am in love with the Star Onions remix of Gustaberg.

It has come to my attention that all last written posts (I hesitate to use the word “recently” here) have nothing to do with my actual in-game activities. Sure, there were a few videos of me soloing Brothers, and a layout or two on the Campsitarus revamp (which is trundling along very slowly, I might add), but nothing answers the question of just what have I been up to in game?

I’m not exactly sure what to think of that. On the one hand, much of the FFXI-related blogs out there revolve around one’s own accomplishments and gains in-game, and to be quite frank, this very blog was along the same lines too.

However, somewhere along the road, I had difficulty fathoming that anyone would be interested in reading about my own conquests in game, especially when the posts start to resemble some variation of “We did this, I got that and the world goes on anyway.”

Occasionally there comes an interesting issue or hot topic which warrants a response, like my last post a couple months ago about Elmerthepointy’s questionnaire, and more recently, the Gardening bannings.

So in recent news, probably as a result of all the Astralburning that's been going on, Windurst took over Gustaberg.

{Nice to meet you.}, Kuuwari-Aori, W.W.

I haven’t really been all that involved in-game recently. I suppose I am at the stage where I’ve played long enough and am stuck in that not-so-pleasant limbo of trying to find meaning in what I’m doing, which is about the same time most people decide to just pack up and move onto other worldly pursuits.

I joined TeamKanican back in October last year to try and experience playing in a committed HNM linkshell. Things were initially both hectic and jam packed, with us camping Ixion, Sandworm, Fafhogg, (King) Behemoth and to a lesser extent, Khimaira along with all the other events that go on like Einherjar and Dynamis.

While you could say that continually having things in game to do were good, I quickly found myself disliking the rush from one camp to the next, only to stand around checking Widescan every few minutes, or spamming Stun every half hour.

More recently, we've laid off camping Ixion and Sandworm, going down to just Kings and Khimaira, which isn't so bad. We seem to have put Dynamis on hold, and I haven't been able to make our Einherjar runs either, so things have definitely cooled down in-game, or so to speak. The problem still remained though- I wasn't sure what I was playing for.

I realized that the main draw to me for TK was the image that Kaeko had portrayed, that TK was a shell that pioneered strategic advancements and so-and-so forth, and while I can say that with Kaeko’s help, we still do some of those things, the reality is very different.

Our latest pursuit lies with the trio team up between LimitBreak, BBQ and TK into Awsomeland to try and take down Absolute Virtue.

For obvious reasons, we haven't succeeded yet. Besides, if we had succeeded, chances are you would've heard about it by now.

But our rehearsal did lead to the following exchange, where I somehow found myself playing the role of Absolute Virtue,

Aside from that, much of my in-game time now revolves around low-manning ENMs, primarily Brothers and Shell We Dance, with the occasional Apollyon NW duo thrown in here and there, splitting the drops afterwards. It’s purely a money-making scheme, especially as I try to push for lower and lower numbers to maximize our returns per person, but it’s been satisfying working with people I’m familiar with once again and trying to push limits (no matter how small) as a small group.

I don’t know if I’m in a position to rightfully give strategic authority to others, but it was with that intention that I started taking videos of my solo runs with the intention of trying to improve other people’s play, by highlighting the general strategy required to win, as well as showcasing the mistakes to avoid.

It was this intention to share my knowledge and experiences that led me to agree when Ringthree asked me to contribute a mage-based column to his blog-turned-web magazine (though real life commitments have kept me from contributing much lately).

I also set up another personal blog along the same lines at thunderiv.blogspot.com which I hope will deal with my specific experiences as a Black Mage (and I suppose to a lesser extent, Scholar). It’s still largely empty though, but I do have several ideas I would like to put down on paper, but it’s just a matter of actually sitting down to write and flesh them out.

Then in addition, I also casually mentioned to Kallo back in April that I had an idea to talk about Campsitarus on Limit Break Radio, and we pieced together a brief outline which we just finished recording yesterday.

I’m not sure when the episode will air- it obviously depends on Aniero’s own schedule, but showing up as a guest speaker on the show was quite an experience and taught me a lot, even though the covered material itself was rather basic.

Honestly, camps and experience points is a huge topic, with lots of leads we could've followed, and in the interest of not wavering too far, we found it difficult to properly segment everything and just stick with the bare basics.

I definitely don't think we broke any sound barriers with what we spoke about, and I’m actually a little afraid people will think we’re talking about things that are overly basic, and I’m afraid we might've spent too much time just vaguely talking about things without really going down to things that might not be considered general knowledge.

Finally, I've been leveling my Scholar. It's currently sitting at SCH72, and once it hits 75, it'll mark my fifth 75 job along with BLM, RDM, WHM and SMN (notice a trend here?). It was interesting, especially in the earlier levels when I was trying to see just how far I could just on Beastmen pets only, but eventually, I just got sick of large tnls and started joining regular parties instead.

I did have a rather strange party the other day in East Ronfaure [S] though- it was a powerlevel TP Burn party, synced to 38, so I joked that I'd come SCH/DRK to melee with Attack Bonuses.

To my surprise, the party leader said "yeah, why not?" :o

It clearly didn't work out, so I decided to go and pull instead since we had no BRD with us. I ended up pulling an 11k/hr party as a SCH/DRK, and we were all set to leave East Ronfaure when we hit 41 until we found out that we were going 14k/hr afterwards. ^^

Don't try SCH/DRK pulling though- seriously, SCH/NIN would've been soooooo much better. >_<

Until next time!

My responses to the Japanese's questions.

2009-05-07T22:21:00.006+08:00

Elmerthepointy has posted up the second round of questions from the Japanese, fired at us, the non-Japanese speaking community in an effort to bridge the cultural and language barriers. I figured this time around, I'd offer up my own answers on my blog, even though they're in the comments on JPButton.

First off, if you're not familiar with the project, what Elmer did was to gather a sample of questions from the NA players (NA in this case meaning "Not Japanese." :P), then translated and posted some of the questions onto Japanese forums for Japanese players to answer. He then reversed the roles around, gathering questions from the Japanese to ask us, translating along the way in the hopes that each side gets greater understanding of the other.

The first EN/JP questions project can be found here.

So, without further ado, here are the questions to the second round of questions from the Japanese. Questions are in bold, my answers are in plain text, and any additional comments I have will be in italics. ^^

{START button}!

1. Do foreign players have a lot of interest in joining social Japanese Linkshells? (Especially ones with only JP members) I ask because when I recruit for my shell in Japanese, I get a lot of tells from foreigners looking to join. Personally, I feel like even if they could understand my /shout, it still would be hard to keep up with regular conversation. They wouldn’t understand pop-culture references to old TV shows, for instance.

I was personally interested in joining a Japanese linkshell, if only because it allowed me to keep in touch with my Japanese language.

That being said, you are right in saying that even if foreigners did study Japanese, we wouldn’t get all the pop-culture references. However, that applies to any foreign language student that’s trying to take his language skills to everyday conversation.

Now that I am in a Japanese linkshell and I understand most of what’s going on, I get headaches after a while, and will switch into an English linkshell to relax. I assume most Japanese feel the same way too when put into an English environment.

Keeping in touch with my Japanese was indeed one of the reasons why I applied to TK, although now that much of the EN side has gone due to the Salvage bannings, the impact of what is essentially a Japanese only linkshell is hitting me. Honestly, I get such headaches trying to keep up with the chat sometimes, I just stop paying attention and come to once I realise my linkshell leader's scolding me for not reading the chatlog. :P

2. Parties that cycle in replacement members seem to be popular amongst foreigners, but a lot of times the party will just disband once the replacement arrives. Of course, there are times when the replacement is contacted before they get all the way there, but there are many instances when no one says anything. There are also many cases where inappropriate jobs are invited and the party can no longer function well.

To me, this is a big reason behind some of the negative images Japanese players have about foreign players. What do you think about this?

Ah, I was wondering when this question would get asked. ^^

I am personally not a fan of “replacement parties,” though I understand why some would do it. To some, they might think why they have to stop the xp party just because one person has to go, so they find someone to replace the leaving member and keep the party going for those that want to stay.

Unfortunately, what happens a lot of the time is that people get tired around roughly the same time, so one person leaving usually leads to a chain of other people leaving as well.

I honestly don't blame the Japanese for this kind of impression that they have, because I've only very rarely come across Japanese players that will look for replacements.

I've accepted it as just the way of doing things with English-speaking players, and try to accomodate, such as not expecting to stay as long as I might otherwise in a new party, or asking the existing members how long they plan to stay before looking for replacement members.

I'm not saying it's overall a bad thing- I've been in excellent parties that were both good xp/hr and were long because of replacements, I've just found that it's usually more trouble than not.

In my experience, the unspoken guideline is that xp parties last around two hours from when you start fighting, so I plan around that.

3. Why does it seem like many foreign players don’t bother to bring medicines and potions to Missions and BCs? Many Japanese players make sure to have Vile Elixirs, Hi-Potions and/or Reraise Earrings.

From my observation, it’s accepted here that everyone has food and Reraise, while mages have Echo Drops in addition. I generally would not expect anything else, and if I really wanted Hi-Potions, Yagudo Drinks or something else, I’d specifically mention it in party chat before setting off.

I'm also going to call on some of the claims here, because I honestly do not remember an instance where a Japanese player came extra prepared to a mission. Honestly, taken to extremes, I can ask why you're not prepared with Opo/Sleep Pots or Icarus Wings. I know there are some people that carry around a Vile Elixir just in case, but to expect one is too much in my opinion.

As I mentioned in my answer- I will plan assuming members don't have these items outside of food, reraise and echo drops for the mages. I will say if I want other specific items before setting off.

4. Sometimes I see foreign pick-up parties recruiting for members using Auto-Translate, but then when I join the party, all the conversation and battle planning is in English. I’ll ask for them to {Please use the Auto-Translate function.} but nobody ever does. If you are going to /shout for help with the Auto-Translator, why not use it in the party? It feels like I was tricked.

Interesting point. I wasn’t aware full auto-translate shouts were even effective in recruiting Japanese players!

Sorry I can’t really help out here- personally, if I’m doing a mission and have both English and Japanese players, I explain what’s going on twice- once in English and once again in Japanese.

I honestly had never considered that Japanese could actually accept an auto-translated /shout invite and come face to face with a wall of English characters only, with little conscientious effort to translate the battle plan, etc.

That being said, it does strike me as odd that the question claims that even after he/she asks {Please use the Auto-translate function}, there is no noticeable improvement. It may be that we are so used to using the translator more as a shortcut function (like Sau"TAB key") as opposed to a translator that we're just not used to, well, actually using it to translate!

5. How many NA and EU players do Campaign? Any thoughts about the recent nerf to Fortifications?

I don’t do campaign, unfortunately, so I can’t comment here either.

6. What equipment do you think has great stats but horrible looks?
What equipment do you think has the best graphics?

Ugly: Zenith Mitts! The green gloves are sooo ugly!

Pretty: I personally love seeing all the classic FF costumes, so I love AF. In fact, my first job was WHM just because in my newbie days as a BLM08, a taru WHM rode past me on a chocobo, and I saw his Healer’s Briault, and I thought to myself, “I _must_ have that!” I was so disappointed when I found you couldn’t buy a briault off the AH. T_T

One thing I've noticed is that all the jobs I've leveled have a very striking piece of AF, be it the WHM or RNG body or BLM, RDM or SCH hats or SMN horn that really exudes the classic FF feel, and also why I didn't level say, WAR or MNK whose AF I do not identify as well with. Because of that, my first melee job will probably end up being DRG, despite my protests. :P

7. Outside of your normal party gear, is there any equipment that you go out of your way to get strictly for looks? What are your favorite pieces of casual equipment?

My Goldsmithing equipment. In town, I walk around in my Goldsmith’s Apron, Shaded Spectacles and a Vulcan’s Staff. I really wish I could get my hands on a Nomad Moogle cap though. T_T

I'm proud to be a Goldsmither even though I don't actually synth for gil. In fact, I fully understand why people would use their guild aprons as town gear. Apart from advertising, it feels good to show off the fruits of your hard work, especially for a craft like Goldsmithing! >_<

8. I’m a Mithra, and I find that a lot of foreigners seem to be into Mithra fashion. They examine me and ask where I got my equipment and such. Do you think male players enjoy dressing up their Mithra in cute outfits?

I’m not a Mithra, so I can’t comment. TARUTARU FOR LIFE!

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with playing a character who is of the opposite gender that you are in real life, if anything, it might even provide some insights into what people of the opposite gender may have to consider.

I wish I still had that bookmark on some university conducting a class in WoW, where one of the assignments was to create a new character of the opposite gender and observe how your own behaviour changed. I remember finding the student's paper quite interesting, but unfortunately, cannot remember for the life of me where it was now. :(

Second, did I mention TARUTARU FOR LIFE? ^^

9. I wonder if you calculate the XP/hr of parties, and if so, do you think that Skillchain/Magic Burst or Weaponskill spam produces the best results? Before parsing became widespread, Japanese players used to think Skillchain/Magic Burst was the best.

I think it’s been quite conclusively shown that weaponskill spam parties bring in the highest xp/hr rates, especially in merit parties. That being said, don’t neglect the power of a skillchain, but skillchains now are things that are done when the opportunity arises, rather than being something you’d plan a party’s strategies around.

Parsers did one very good thing- it gave you cold, hard, numerical results, which in turn allowed us to conclusively say that if you wanted to maximize your xp/hr, this style is better. I personally pay attention to the xp/hr gained in a party.

10. How come it seems like so many people don’t utilize Search Comments properly? Why don’t they write their camp location for others to see? Also, it’s strange to see so many people seeking without basic information written like available jobs and where they can access. Don’t you want an invite?

Yes, this has been frustrating me too. Most of the time though, I’m only really concerned with what camps are taken, so I can figure out where to go, or whether to even start forming a party in the first place.

As for subjobs, it’s rare that I specifically want a certain subjob (although I have been asked to merit as WHM/DRK before) and as for areas, unless the camp is really somewhere that people might not be able to get to (like [S] regions when WotG just came out), I’ve found it a same assumption that people can go to camp, so I don’t bother looking at those in search comments, nor do I see how excluding those comments would affect your party invites.

I don't remember when the last time I invited someone based on their subjob availability was, with the exception of ignoring those with underleveled subs. Concerns with areas do crop up occasionally for me because of Campsitarus where I am usually found trying to explore any new areas (I was trying to party exclusively in WotG areas when it was released), but other than certain times like that, I'd only ask if there really were some definite barriers to entry.

11. If you know you are going to be busy, how come you don’t alert people at the beginning of the party instead of surprising everyone at the last minute?

I have no idea- this is not something I practice, although I have been the victim of such things before. If anything, I’d say this is a rather unfair generalization.

I can see where the question comes from though. Sad to say, while I have had my fair share of people suddenly leaving the party without any prior warning, the majority of such cases are from EN players.

Perhaps it's the idea that I have the right to leave if the party is bad, etc. After all, if we're stuck in a company we hate, most would say "quit your job!" or something to that extent (well, maybe not in these days...)

In the end however, these cases are few and far in between, so I do feel it's an unfair generalization of the entire EN playerbase.

12. Honestly, the largest difference in thinking between Japanse and foreign players exists in the Merit party. You often say 5 DDs and a RDM is so good, but having a single, solitary healer is hard on the RDM. Japanese realize that healers can be in short supply, so we make sacrifices to lighten their burden, like subbing a mage job, or using Utsusemi. I feel like many people don’t show proper respect to healers.

When we say JP ONLY, it isn’t always an issue of language, but the fact that we feel there are other dangers and demerits associated with a non-JP party, stemming from our different play-styles, that we wish to avoid.

This key difference in thinking, more than any race or language issue, is what really sets us apart as players. They are just looking to sit back, relax and earn some decent XP.

Please feel free to provide your own insight and thoughts.

I agree that the difference in merit parties might just come down to mentality. Personally, if I join a merit party, I want the fastest xp/hr rate, which means I expect to be pushed to my limits, mage or melee. I don’t expect it to be relaxing at all. I am there for merits first and foremost. If I really wanted to relax and get some xp at the same time, I’d party with friends exclusively, where the aim is more on socializing than getting merit points.

That being said, where’d the 5 DD and 1 RDM come from? I’ve never seen that formula around.

I was surprised to see that the OP saw merits as something relaxing, although I'll admit it's not too far fetched. I've already spelled out my thoughts on merits and how I generally don't view it as something to relax to.

The interesting point here is what is the disservice being done here- pushing the healer, or making the healer's job easier at the cost of limit points? From a WHM or RDM's perspective, as a healer, I cannot easily solo or get limit points by myself, so I'm personally out for merit points first and foremost! Thank you for the consideration towards possibly making my job easier, but I really don't mind you taking more damage if it means I have to work harder and get more xp.

I will definitely agree that if the "meripo is for relaxing" mentality is prominent throughout the Japanese community, then this might be why there is such a difference in style. On our side, merits can be seen as a chore, so get it over and done with! Besides, we all like being part of that uber party that pulls in 20k/hr, so why not work towards it? In other words, why settle for being good when you can be great?

Bonus question: What type of sushi do you like best?

Salmon! My host family in Japan were laughing at me because I love salmon, but don’t really like tuna. I hear salmon is really cheap while tuna is expensive in Japan, so my host parents were happy, too.

I looooove salmon. Actually I like fish in general although I'm not so hot with tuna and sardines for some reason. But salmon..../slurp.

Imagine my surprise when I found out salmon is the cheapest fish in Japan, too! :D

And that's it! Hopefully you found these answers insightful.

Picture lifted from vgcats.

Brothers ENM solo- after the April Update

2009-04-22T23:22:00.008+08:00

Last month, I was working on trying to improve my BLM soloing, recording, documenting and commenting on my runs to pick out mistakes and areas of improvement.

I actually have three recorded runs, although I only put two up on this blog simply because, well, I didn't think they really appealed to the general FFXI audience. The third run can be found on my BLM blog, which is collecting dust at the moment, oh well. ^^;

Then the April version update came, and while people were dashing off to strange BCs and killing {Too weak} beastmen, I went up on my weekly routine Brothers BLM solo.

That was my first encounter with the 45-second Sleep II, and suffice to say, I didn't win that run.

Then came all the talk in the forums about SE adjusting sleep durations, as reports came trickling in. Mindertaurs, Ouryu, ghosts, bombs- all could not be slept for the full 90-second duration. The days of BLM soloing Brothers seemed over.

If this issue doesn't get rectified anytime soon, the question becomes whether a RDM could still solo Brothers, since a RDM's killing speed is faster than a BLM's for obvious reasons. (*cough* Chainspell *cough*)

So I decided to check it out. Never mind that I have yet to even attempt to do this ENM as a RDM, but seriously, the strategy should be more or less the same, right?

I am not used to soloing as a RDM (and this is my first time, too), so there are some incredibly newb mistakes in the following video. Keep that in mind! >_<

Well, there are a few changes, most notably that, as a BLM, I normally just suicide after the Eldertaur's dead so I can take on the Mindertaur with full MP. As a RDM, things change as I have Refresh and Convert, but not the firepower, so I need to maximize my MP before trying to nuke the Mindertaur down, and also try to reduce its HP as much as possible before nuking.

So, the basic strategy is now to just blast the Eldertaur down, and then DoT/kite the Mindertaur until the following three conditions are satisfied:

The Mindertaur's at 50%HP.
I have full(ish) MP.
Convert is ready again.

Once all three conditions are met, I'd start nuking the last 50% HP by cycling through Thunder III, Blizzard III and Fire III, hopefully overpowering any Cure Vs along the way.

There were several (rather major) mistakes made during that run. I tried to make a full version, with the boring parts just sped up for completeness's sake, but silly Windows Movie Maker apparently doesn't like processing movies when the source files involved go beyond a certain total. Ah well.

[1:16] I'm not exactly sure why I'm casting Thunder III here, or why I haven't Chainspelled by this point. With the change to Sleep duration, it's even more important that I fell the Eldertaur quickly, which cold-casting Thunder III doesn't not accomplish. You can make the argument that I could've Chainspelled into Gravity to be safe, and save myself the trouble of having to wait for Gravity's cooldown later.

[1:31] /panic. :( Could've definitely kept my cool better here.

[2:00] The clock here was added later to first give the viewer a sense of the time pressure involved, but also to keep track of just how much time you really have before the Mindertaur's in a position to actively play a role in the ENM again. Remember that either taurus may cast Cure V if one of them is below 50% HP, so I definitely got very lucky here that the Mindertaur didn't Cure V the Eldertaur.

More importantly, it gives us a timeframe to work with in planning future runs- we can plan based on the assumption that you have approximately 55 seconds to knock off the Eldertaur.

Unfortunately, I can't show the entire fight here because of memory constraints (that, and it was a pretty long, boring fight), but some things to note are:

For some reason, I had a hard time getting Poison II to stick.
Eventually, I just settled on whittling its HP down through Bio II with a few III-nukes here and there.
Elemental Seal-Silence also wears off too quickly.
Composure is fantastic here!

Some things I was not happy about is that even with Convert and Refresh, it still took all my available mana to nuke down the Eldertaur, and to nuke down half a Mindertaur.

If you look carefully at the various snippets I put in here and there, you may notice that my Convert timer actually increases after a certain point- I actually set things up and was getting ready to kill the Mindertaur, but even after a Convert, I found myself unable to kill the Mindertaur, so I had to wait for Convert to cooldown again and redo that 50%. Thankfully I merited Convert down to an 8:20 recast- I'd have timed out if I left it at 10:00.

If I were to do it again, there are definitely some changes to be made, particularly at the start- I know that bit was screwed up bigtime. >_<

For one, the pull was completely wrong. I'll readily say I screwed it up bigtime, because just looking at the video reveals a lot of error. I probably slipped back into BLM mode, and just did things as I would've if I were BLM instead, thus revealing the dangers of playing on autopilot. :P

See, the whole reason why you pull the Mindertaur to the back of the tunnel when soloing this ENM as a BLM, before the Elemental Seal-Sleep II is to buy you a few extra seconds to take down the Eldertaur.

The point is, because of Manafont, a BLM's limiting resource is not mana, but time! Assuming the ENM was just a 1v1 fight against the Eldertaur, a BLM would have no problems blasting through, backed by Manafont because time is on the BLM's side.

But time is not your limiting resource as RDM because of Chainspell! Instead, mana becomes your limiting resource (for obvious reasons), but that is still a very soft limitation because of both Refresh and Convert.

So what I think I should've done instead was:

Enter the ENM, buff, rest up.
Run in towards the two taurus, and Elemental Seal along the way.
When they aggro and move into range, immediately Chainspell and Sleep II the Mindertaur.
Gravity the Eldertaur, and start nuking away with Blizzard III.

The difference is that as a RDM, you wouldn't even bother to drag the Mindertaur to the back of the tunnel, because moving back within nuking range of the Eldertaur wastes time, not to mention that you still need to cross the Eldertaur and get to a safe range on the other side. It took me eleven nukes to down the Eldertaur. Counting the Sleep II, Gravity, Convert and maybe a couple of Dispels, it shouldn't be too difficult to get 15 spells off under Chainspell, even within the 45 second naptime the Mindertaur has.

You could even get gutsy and Convert without curing yourself if time really was that tight, and plan out the following scenario (using my HP/MP as an example:)

Starting MP: 983mp

Sleep II: 954mp
Gravity: 930mp
Blizzard III #1: 810mp
Blizzard III #2: 690mp
Blizzard III #3: 570mp
Blizzard III #4: 450mp
Blizzard III #5: 310mp
Blizzard III #6: 190mp
Convert into 190HP/796MP
Blizzard III #7: 676mp
Blizzard III #8: 556mp
Blizzard III #9: 436mp
Blizzard III #10: 316mp
Blizzard III #11: 196mp
Blizzard III #12: 76mp

Which isn't even counting the extra MP you save/gain from Conserve MP and Refresh.

In any case, it seems that SE has now officially come forward and classified this as a "Current Known Issue," so hopefully it'll get fixed. Given SE's track record though, I think it might be a matter of when it gets fixed.

I'd really like to go back and try again before the fix though, just to prove to myself that I can do the solo smoothly on RDM, even with the enfeebling "nerf" in effect. :P

Yet another layout to criticize.

2009-04-18T16:00:00.004+08:00

Taking the comments from my last post, I went ahead with another design for Campsitarus,

One big critique I seemed to get with the previous template was that it was just too dull. Sorry, I'm not a graphics designer. ^^; I tried to spice things up a little bit more this time with little tarus that also act as visual cues to the level range they represent (although I might've overdone it with the 70s taru. ^^;)

Perhaps the header should have more colour, much like the current Campsitarus where Strawberrie's drawing of me in RDM AF provides a very striking contrast against the green-ish blogger theme.

I'm still trying to keep at least all the standard camps visible on the first fold. It's my intention to display all the alternate camps below (you'll need to scroll down). This time however, the screen resolution has been reduced down to 1024 x 768. I checked against an 800 x 600 browser, and while there will be a little side scrolling involved then, all the campsite links will still be visible.

The font size for the camp links have been increased, and are now bold. I'm not sure if this is overcompensating for the too-small links the previous time around.

I also took away the articles, even though I still think they'd be a good idea. For now though, I'll err on the side that I won't be able to keep up with the articles, and so as per Oshikorosu's suggestion, I took them off.

I'm still not sure on the colour palette. As you may be able to tell, the colours were taken from West Sarutabaruta [S] this time. It still looks rather dull, but I'm at a loss here on what else I can do to spice things up that isn't too complicated and will still load quickly.

So, opinions? Ideas? Comments?

What do you think of this as a layout?

2009-04-15T02:35:00.010+08:00

After some fiddling around with Photoshop, I came up with this:

It's open to improvement, and is only something I quickly threw together, so there're bound to be some design flaws. As I am a believer of the "you cannot see your own mistakes," I'm putting this up for public consumption. Oh, and in case anyone's wondering, it's only a picture- this does not exist on the internet yet.

So, how is it? Too dark? Too many Mandragoras? Text too small? Why am I wearing a Haubergeon and a Butterfly Axe?

Some things to consider:

This was designed with a 1280x1024 resolution in mind, which according to the poll I put up, is the most common screen size.

Only "Standard camps" have been displayed. From what I've heard, not many people actually use Campsitarus for the alternate camps (and correct me if I'm wrong!) so I've decided not to display the alternate camps on the first fold (that's whatever you see when the website loads).

Where should the little explanation about standard camps and the button to flip over to Alternate camps go? Top left? Bottom right?

If you look on the left hand side, I'm toying around with the idea of maybe providing some extra value through articles related to xp'ing. There seems to be sufficient depth to explore, but I'd like to know what you all think about the idea. Basically, it'll expand Campsitarus into more of a real blog or online magazine rather than just a list of links.

Articles on the left, links on the right or the other way around?

Are the text "links" of the standard camps too small for comfort? You might be wondering what is with all the empty white space, but those boxes also need to fit the alternate camp listings for when users click on that button, and there are much more alternate campsites than there are standard ones.

Should I put info regarding BST pet camps here, and if so, where?

Is the colour scheme too dark? I didn't really give much thought to it, and based it off the current incarnation, using colours ripped from Caedarva Mire (place of /joy that it is -_-).

Either way, I'm sure it's an improvement over the one looooong list you have to scroll down in Campsitaru's current incarnation. Please leave feedback!

About a little blog of mine called Campsitarus...

2009-04-13T17:39:00.008+08:00

Lately, I've felt rather empty in game. Sure, I'm in a good HNMLS and while the fights are nice and all that, I haven't really been satisfied with endgame. Sure, you get neat gear, some very powerful, but I haven't really felt like I've been giving back to the community.

So, I've turned my attention to a little blog of mine that I started up a few years ago called Campsitarus

You might have heard of it, or better still, even used it. ^^

I've been meaning to take Campsitarus off blogger for a long time, and have it properly hosted on its own domain, like campsitarus.com or something, following in the footsteps of other FFXI-related websites out there. Yes, I know it technically should be campsitarus.info, but that just looks odd to me.

My problem is, I'm a complete {Amateur} when it comes to website design and templating. I can design the structure of the website and I know what I want on it, but I haven't the faintest idea how to actually code everything so, well, it shows up on the screen.

Furthermore, the task of revamping Campsitarus is no longer a one-taru job. Since I first created Campsitarus way back in November 2005, I have listed 123 camps for parties, and have another 36 pet camps to write about. Some still don't have entries, which was something that really bothered me. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that that is a heckuva lot of writing. And that's not counting the camp entries I took down.

Or to be more precise, that is a heckuva lot of revising to do.

The nice part about having Campsitarus on a blog has always been that people could leave feedback in the comments when things change, like for example, the introduction of SCNMs that made the Castle Oztroja [S] merit camp not as feasible as before (and a pity, too T_T) I personally couldn't keep up with all the changes, so left it to the comments to duke them out.

It is my intention now to revise these entries to update them with any in-game changes, or maybe bring a little nugget of information, for example, BRD pullers at the Greater Colibri camp will pull with a throwing weapon (I forget which one) because the Colibris won't waste time mimicking Elegy, and the pulling distance is greater (25 yalms, as opposed to 21).

There are also a few questions and loose ends that I want to incorporate into Campsitarus. I'm thinking it might be a good idea if I wrote an occasional post about partying in general, like how to deal with Japanese or bilingual parties, or what each job has to offer, or even things like what makes a good party.

The end result would be a Campsitarus blog, with normal blog entries, as well as links somewhere on the front page to all the information that people use Campsitarus for.

For now, I think I'll fiddle around a bit on Photoshop to see if there's even space to fit everything in. -_- So many ideas, so little space...

...and did I mention I'll need help with all this?

So I'll say this again, highlighted, just because I know many people don't actually read the content word-for-word:

I am going to revamp Campsitarus and I'll need help. If you can write, edit, do web design or graphics, or would like to contribute, please {Help me out!}

Please, give me feedback on this either by e-mail (tuufless.taru(AT)gmail.com), by contacting me in-game (I'm on Odin) or leaving a commentaru below. If you're willing to give me a hand, even better! :D

P.S: If you have it, "//vanatunes play 48" is made of win. :D

Brothers ENM solo #2

2009-03-12T16:38:00.009+08:00

In my last post, I detailed out my first successful solo attempt at the Brothers ENM. I went ahead and soloed the ENM again yesterday, and with the intention of improving my play, I'm going to repeat the exercise again. Things were slightly easier this time since I wasn't as nervous going into the ENM, although as you'll see from the video, things didn't quite go according to plan, so it was a good exercise in contingencies.

I nearly lost the ENM, but fortunately the game decided to forgive my misplays.

Observations:
[00:03] Again, I entered the BC on Lightningday. This was not intentional- I actually logged out behind the ice wall the day before, and it just happened to be Lightningday when I logged back in.

[1:23] I don't think keeping Ice Spikes up is a good idea anymore because of situations like this. Sure, the Paralyze proc might be more potent than a regular Paralyze, but in this case, the Ice Spikes proc could've broken my Bind, leaving me with an unsleepable mob without Bind or Gravity. Taking away Ice Spikes will also let me use Bind more aggressively in the future.

[2:17] As you might notice, the Mindertaur had woken up and is now within my sight range. You can see the benefits of sleeping it some distance into the tunnel as means of buying some extra time while you kill off the Eldertaur.

[2:34] In retrospect, I don't think Thunder IV was the correct nuke to use here- I failed to play around Cure V, and the small sliver of health the Eldertaur had at the end made it even more painfully obvious. That being said, I'm not sure what I should've used instead- Blizzaga III is clearly out of the question because the damage would be split with the incoming Mindertaur, but Burst II might've taken too long.

[4:16] I thought it would be safe to reraise by now in the interest of saving time, so you can imagine my surprise to see the Mindertaur turn around! With no reraise on, Priority #1 was simple- get RR on.

Note to self: the Mindertaur has a very large aggro radius to sound.

[4:28] There should have been a Gravity here to buy even more time, especially since I still had to wait for the Reraise Earring's equip timer to finish! This technically almost cost me the run- I was lucky that the Mindertaur persisted in using non-damaging spells and abilities, allowing me to put on Reraise in the nick of time. Had Bind worn off earlier, or the Mindertaur cast a Banish II, I probably would've lost the ENM.

[4:45] I've considered replacing my Sorcerer's Earring with a Reraise Earring in my standing set because of situations like this. A Sorcerer's Earring will not kick in until I'm under 25% health, and in this case, the additional damage reduction wouldn't even matter. On the other hand, there have been times where I've needed to put on Reraise immediately after getting up. By equipping a Reraise Earring as part of the standing set, the timer gets to count down even when I'm unconscious, so I can get up and immediately use the earring.

[7:02] It turns out that I didn't see the Mindertaur buff with Protect when I first reraised. That being said, when I saw that Protect was dispelled, I decided to Dispel again just to make sure Shell was not on.

Two points to note- first, if you want to cancel a spell, just /heal. Running around like a headless chicken takes longer. Secondly, I remember reading somewhere that there is an order in which buffs are dispelled- that is to say that Protect would get dispelled before Shell does. I'm not sure whether this is true, since it's been a long time since I read that. Ix'MNK's Crystalline Cocoon (which puts on both Protect and Shell) contradicts that statement, since sometimes Shell is taken off first, though maybe Crystalline Cocoon behaves differently?

[8:51] This time, I end up with 344mp left, which is much more compared to my previous attempt. I totalled up the MP used to take out the Mindertaur, assuming Conserve MP did not kick in, and I got a total of 1009mp this time around, compared to 1169mp the previous attempt. The extra 160mp used the last time can easily be attributed to the extra Blizzard IV (164mp) I needed to win the last time due to a Cure V that my Silence this time prevented.

From the above, killing the Mindertaur without drinks or ethers would be very doable (well, at least for myself) assuming Cure V does not go off, though it doesn't really leave much room for error. My current nuking setup carries 1083mp, which means that I'll only have 74mp leftover if Conserve MP doesn't kick in at all. As such, non-taru BLMs will probably need to find ways to boost their MP to 1000+ to effectively solo this, at least using this method.

Further areas of improvement would obviously include not being so sloppy when things go wrong- I've mentioned that I got away lucky from that attempt, and I do not doubt that statement. In lieu of this, however, I should probably experiment around a little bit more with carrying a Reraise Earring around to see how it feels.

Finally, feel free to leave me a commentaru if you see any other areas of improvement/interest!

Brothers ENM solo

2009-03-05T16:44:00.011+08:00

For quite some time now, it's always bugged me that I've been unable to beat the ENM, Brothers, solo. The ENM is very easy to duo, and I usually duo it with my friend Sodalitas. Yet, I've always felt that if I wanted to improve as a BLM, one of the things I could work on was clearing this ENM solo consistently.

But before I start on the "consistent" part, actually beating the ENM in the first place would make a very good starting point. -_-

I've tried a few times previously with no {success}, so as expected, I was quite nervous coming into this fight. I didn't do anything special to prepare since the idea was to be able to just go and "do it"- I only brought a Reraise Earring (I'm too cheap to use a Reraise hairpin :P) and a few Yagudo Drinks. Other than that, the rest of my inventory was pretty standard fare.

I watched a couple other videos, and borrowed a few ideas from them in my own fight, which I'll elaborate further below.

For those who aren't very familiar with this ENM, you are up against two Taurus, an Eldertaur (the small one on the left) and a Mindertaur (the large one on the right). The Eldertaur is immune to Sleep, while the Mindertaur can be slept, although it's recommended you back it up with Elemental Seal first. Both are susceptible to Gravity and Bind, and will try to cast Cure V once their HP drops below 50%.

Strategy:
The general strategy is to Elemental Seal-Sleep II the Mindertaur to immobilize it. Gravity the Eldertaur, and finish it off. Use Manafont if you have to, the priority is to kill the Eldertaur.

Once the Eldertaur is dead, run back to the start point, and let yourself get killed by the Mindertaur (you don't lose xp while in the ENM). Once the Mindertaur has left, reraise (you did put Reraise on, right?) and rest up. Hard part's over.

Once you're fully healed again, take on the Mindertaur solo.

At all times, be careful of Shell III and Unblest Armor, both of which give very strong Magic Defense Bonuses to the taurus- essentially, you'll see your nuke damage halved if either are on. In addition, make sure you do not face the taurus to avoid getting Doomed by Chthonian Ray.

For duos (I usually go BLM+BLM or BLM+SCH), have one person Elemental Seal-Sleep II the Mindertaur, while the other Gravities the Eldertaur, and both take out the Eldertaur first. After that, the Mindertaur should be easy pickings.

But wait! Why talk more about the fight when I can just show it to you? (And my first video, too! :D)

I have an HD version here, but I didn't get the aspect ratio correct, so it makes me look fat! /fume (So much for 5:4 ratios :/)

Observations:
Okay, some commentarus- first, yes, I'm on Windower. Let's get that one out of the way first. Eventually, I'd like to be able to do it without the various aids that the windower gives me, namely without Recast, TimeStamp and Distance to make this more of a "true" solo attempt.

[00:03] First of all, you might notice that I entered on Lightningsday, for the obvious damage boost with Rairin obi. You don't actually need this bonus, but I figured it'd be nice to have anyways. ^^

[00:19] With regards to the pull, you will notice that I only go ahead far enough to aggro both taurus before turning back into the tunnel, which was something I got from Avesta's video. The idea is to pull and Sleep II the Mindertaur far into the starting tunnel. That way, when Sleep II wears, you buy yourself extra time because the Mindertaur has to walk all the way back to the main arena.

[00:19 - 00:50] The actual starting sequence is the same as Avesta's video- aggro both taurus, Bind the Eldertaur, Stun the Mindertaur, run a bit, Elemental Seal-Sleep II the Mindertaur, Gravity the Eldertaur and start working on it. As you work on the Eldertaur, pull it away from the Mindertaur to build distance should you not kill fast enough.

[02:06] This should've been Thundaga III- neither mana nor longer cast time leading to spell interruption is an issue because of Manafont, and should the nuke get resisted, a Thundaga III would've dealt more damage than Firaga III.

[02:20] Not sure why I stopped and turned around here- probably force of habit. In this particular case, I wanted to get killed, and the sooner the better. :P

[04:24] You might notice I put Reraise on again. This is not necessary, just an extra precaution since I still have time to die, rest and try again if I don't manage to kill the Mindertaur.

[05:24] Yes, I forgot to use my Yagudo Drink at the start of the second half. -_-

[06:24] There should've been a Silence before this nuke to prevent the upcoming Cure V.

[07:02] Elemental Seal-Silence was something I got from Metticus's video. You don't really need to sleep the Mindertaur again, but you do want to prevent him from Cure V'ing himself, especially since your mana pool is a lot more constricted this time around. In my case, I should've Silenced him earlier than I did, making the fight safer overall.

[07:30] This last Blizzard IV nuke was risky. Yes, Gravity wore off unexpectedly, but still, I should've tried to Bind or at least Stun the Mindertaur after the Thunder IV first, just in case. Had the Mindertaur double attacked, got lucky and broke my Stoneskin through Blink, I could've had that Blizzard IV interrupted and now I'm cornered with a speedy Mindertaur on my heels.

[08:12] What exactly is the correct legal jargon for this sort of thing?? /confused

[08:19] Love it or hate it, I just can't like the weather in Uleguerand Range. -_-

I'm still a little bit worried about the Mindertaur solo- if you count up all the mana costs associated with solo'ing the Mindertaur, the grand total comes up to 1144mp, which is definitely more than what I carry around. Of course, this is not taking Conserve MP into account, nor the one Aspir I made for 96mp. If I were to take that Aspir into consideration, the total goes down to 1048 which just barely makes it into my mana pool (1083mp total).

Admittedly, the Mindertaur fight could've gone slightly better- that Cure V that went off probably cost me an extra III-nuke's worth of mana, which an earlier Silence could've saved. In addition, looking at how close the total MP spent comes to my max MP, a Yagudo Drink might actually be relevant. :o

Of course, one further trick I could do would be to first nuke in a real max-MP setup, with my Zenith Crown +1, Mahatma pigaches and Morgana's Choker on for +120mp. The damage won't be as high, but it covers 73% of a Blizzard IV in mana, so that might be something to look into.

That's all I managed to pick out from watching over my own play. I'm still looking to improve though, so if there are other things I overlooked, please let me know!

February.

2009-03-02T17:18:00.010+08:00

Listing one's accomplishments and newfound loot in blogs like these is fairly commonplace, and was something I subscribed to back in the day. Of course, the interest in that quickly died out, since after all, who really wants to read about the stuff you got?

And so the post count plummeted. :P

That being said, I do feel that I ought to look back over the past month, more of an exercise on my own progress than anything else. For obvious reasons, I meant to post this on the last day of February, but my modem's power adaptor burnt out. -_-

So, here's how my February went:

1) Sorcerer's Belt (1st Feb 2009)
TK usually goes to Dynamis on Sunday mornings, JP time. In an effort to get me cleared through to Dynamis-Tavnazia, we headed over to Valkurm. We cleared the boss as per our normal routine, and then proceeded to farm for AF. I'm not sure exactly what adjustments SE made to Dynamis drop rates in that update ages ago, but it was literally raining AF- unfortunately I must've misplaced that screenshot where our loot pool had six AF pieces in at the same time.

Anyway, I don't remember how many people wanted the BLM belt- if memory serves me correctly, there were only about 2-3 people, myself included. Eventually, one Sorcerer's Belt dropped, we all cast lots, and the belt went to another BLM in the shell.

The run went on, but towards the end, we went after another set of Manticores and Sheep, and another Belt dropped! Thanks to an unfortunate pull though, things were rather hectic, and I quickly cast my lot on the second belt.

Not too much later, with the leader pushing people to quickly pass on items, I saw the belt drop into my inventory, which is why I'm not sure how many people actually wanted the Belt that run.

Either way, I'm glad to have what is probably one of the best BLM-only belts out there. :D

2) Sorcerer's Petasos +1 (2nd Feb 2009)
The belt wasn't the only thing that dropped that Valkurm run- somewhere in there, a Sorcerer's Petasos -1 also dropped. Alas, compared to the Belt, this drop was resolved quickly and quietly once we realised I was the only one in the run who put the BLM AF-1 as part of my wishlist for Valkurm. I guess everyone else must've gone for a different job. :P

I bought 28 Tukuku Whiteshells from the LS bank, and wasted no time in trading all the relevant materials to Sagheera for the upgrade.

Next day:

This is also the most I've officially ever spent on +6MP. But white border! >_<

3) Zenith Mitts +1 (16th Feb 2009)
A few posts ago, I had managed to pick up a pair of Cursed Mitts -1 from a bazaar. I'm still not quite sure about the price, but after a little haggling, I managed to buy it for 8m gil. Now, the only problem was that at the time, I think I only had a little over 3m on me.

Thankfully, I was able to borrow 5m off Celestria to cover the remaining 5m, and listed my Mahatma Houppelande and Hedgehog Bomb up on the AH, which thankfully sold rather quickly (at 300k profit, too! :D) so I could repay Celes.

The problem now was getting the abjuration. -_-

Despite the fact that I've been playing FFXI for a while now, and have killed my share of Genbus here and there, I have yet to even see an A-hands, yet alone get ahold of one.

So, the task fell upon trying to get ahold of A-hands. Since TK doesn't do sky anymore, that leaves two options- either try to get the Genbu pop items myself, or Fafnir.

TK does Fafnir. :P

Only problem was, we couldn't claim Fafnir. In fact, the two times we did manage to get the claim, it was Nidhogg instead, though that really isn't something to complain about. XD After that, in the wee hours in the morning, BBQ and TK teamed up due to lack of members and actually managed to claim Fafnir, but A-hands didn't drop.

However, Ridill did. :o

Well, on the 16th Feb 2009, just over five weeks after I got the -1 Mitts, TK managed to claim Fafnir, and finally, I get to see A-hands. XD Luckily, the rest of the members had been around enough to the point where nobody needed A-hands anymore, so it defaulted to me.

Off to San d'Oria I went, and voila! My first piece of cursed gear! :D

4) Zenith Crown +1 (24th Feb 2009)
Unlike the Zenith Mitts, I actually had the A-head abjuration for quite some time now, and was just waiting for an opportune moment to pick up a Cursed Crown -1. For those who are wondering why I'm going with -1, I did my Stoneskin and Sorcerer's Ring calculations in advance, and as long as I was nuking in an obi, an NQ Zenith Crown would fall short of the 75% HP threshold needed to activate the Sorcerer's Ring by just 3hp. So unless I wanted to carry around another item to lower my HP, HQ it was. :P

I didn't really want to pay AH price for it, so I contacted my Goldsmithing buddy, Nynaeve to help me try to make a Cursed Crown -1, which he got around to doing. It took him a couple months, but that was okay, since I didn't really have the spare cash to buy it off him at the time.

Luckily, he saved it for me, and when I got my pay from TK, I bought the crown off Nynaeve at a discounted price of 1.1m. And I was off to San d'Oria again! :D

5) Morgana's Choker (24th Feb 2009)
With a Zenith Mitts +1 and a Zenith Crown +1 in hand, all I needed to complete my Sorc Ring setup was just two things, one of which was a Morgana's Choker. To be honest, I was a little reluctant at getting one, because the choker would serve only as a Sorc Ring piece- I have no use for the +MND on the choker because I was planning to use a Stone gorget for Stoneskin.

My initial plan was to either get a Dalmatica (I wish ; ;) or a Serket Ring to lower my HP down by that last bit, but then I looked over my numbers again, and saw that -40HP would suffice and not -50HP.

Thus, Morgana's Choker.

Luckily, TK has been steadily growing more active in Einherjar, and I didn't particularly have any need for the ichor, so I had stockpiled a small sum of ichor, which in this case, came in handy. :D

Morgana's Choker get!

6) Sorcerer's Ring (24th Feb 2009)
With Zenith Mitts +1, Zenith Crown +1 and a Morgana's Choker in hand, the last thing I was missing for my Sorc Ring set was, well, the ring itself. -_-

Thankfully, ENMs had been fortunate to me that month, and Sodalitas and I split both a Hedgehog Bomb and Hagun, which paid for the Sorcerer's Ring. I bought it a little high, at 1.18m- the price has since fallen down to 1.15m, but it doesn't really affect me, since my purchase from Nynaeve saved me that money and then some.

Ring in hand, my Sorc Ring setup was now complete! All I really needed at this point was an Ixion Cape to round it off, but that can wait. ^^

7) Merciful Cape (24th Feb 2009)
One other thing I was working on was my Elemental setup. In fact, I already had an Elemental Setup, giving me 329 Elemental Skill and 122INT (without food), but in the name of efficiency, I found out that I could actually forgo using an Elemental torque and still hit the 320/120 mark.

Why would I ditch the torque? My reasoning was, if I got a Merciful cape, I could reach 322 Elemental Skill without a torque or a weskit. That being said, I felt it'd be better to aim towards damage in the body and neck slots, which would mean Morrigan's coat (I wish ; ;) and a Prudence torque.

The difference is, a Prudence Torque can also be swapped out for an Uggalepih Pendant when needed. If I stuck with Elemental Torque and Ixion Cape, I cannot use the Uggalepih Pendant and still maintain 320+ Elemental Skill. But with a Merciful Cape, I can maximize my damage with the Pendant (7MAB > 5INT) and still maintain 320 Elemental Skill.

The only problem was getting a damn Cape. -_-

Sodalitas and I have been duo'ing Ix'MNK for quite some time now, farming H.Q. Aern organs solo or duo in our free time. The fight against Ix'MNK is easy- we solo it when the other is not around- duo's just faster, but the drop date is abysmal.

Thankfully, we saw our first vice of antipathy today, and after casting lots, it fell to me. Now, all I need is a Prudence torque to complete my Elemental skill set. :P

Oh, and if anyone wants to compare {luck}, we were 1/29 on the vice drop. Hopefully the second drop won't take as long. (/pray)

Wrapping up
So, that was my February in a nutshell, at least in terms of me getting shiny stuff. :D There are a few other incidents here and there, including a GM asking me about a Jeweled Egg and me seeing a Macha's Coat, but losing the lot (/cry), but I guess some of those things would be better saved for another time (read: this post is getting long enough already. -_-)

One last thing- I've started working on a little resource for BLMs. Like Campsitarus, it is extremely crude at the moment, and honestly, I don't know what direction I'm going to take it, if it even develops. Currently, I plan to put all my BLM musings there, although whether it will turn into a BLM-blog, or a BLM resource blog is undecided.

The information there is very basic and simple, so right now, it's pretty much for my reference only. I don't envision it taking over Kaeko's BLM guide, at least, not to that level, but if anyone wants to take a look and give suggestions, clicky below to see for yourself:

http://thunderiv.blogspot.com

Oh, and if there are any BLMs or SCHs out there who would like to contribute, please let me know! :D

On the Cheap: Black Mage 75

2009-02-23T23:46:00.039+08:00

Last updated: 28th July 2009.

A good friend of mine, Ringthree has a little mini-series over on his blog called "On the Cheap: (insert job here)." Essentially, he breaks down a job's gear options for the player that has just reached the endgame for that particular job, and the guides are, in his words, "a guide on how to be a good (something) in the quickest and most efficient way possible."

Until recently, Ringthree has been purely melee. He has since picked up White Mage and is now leveling Black Mage, and I've taken up interest following him simply because he goes through the questions every up-and-coming Black Mage goes through- questions I've long since taken for granted.

These are his past guides, if you feel like thumbing through them:

On the Cheap: Monk
On the Cheap: Samurai
On the Cheap: Ninja (this one feels like a paradox in itself.)
On the Cheap: Dragoon

So, paying tribute to Ringthree, I present to you my On the Cheap- Black Mage!

Before I start, Ringthree had made some rules about his series, which I'll reiterate here.

1. First, you can’t be dumb. I've had my fair share of silly questions, and while I'm more than happy to answer silly questions, it just gets aggravating when it becomes clear you are talking to a brick wall, like the person that insisted on casting Aero IV with an Ice Staff equipped.

2. You need to be an end-game player. The assumption is that you have main storyline content done, have sky access, completed CoP and ToAU. If you're not up to this stage, make it one of your priorities.

3. You need to be able to do at least some end-game events. That's not to say you're in a full-time HNM LS, but you should at least have access to an LS that does some end-game content, so you become an "end-game player" and not a "player with a job at 75."

4. Despite the name of his series, you will be expected to spend a decent amount of gil to get the gear you need. Not everything needs to be HQ, but I will suggest HQ pieces where I think the money is well worth it. Remember, this is "On the Cheap," not "On the Gimp."

With that aside, Black Mage is fortunate in that functionally, much of your gear can simply be bought. Of course, there are several end-game RA/EX items that will further enhance your play, but for the most part, you can build a very solid foundation with just the almighty AH.

With that in mind, I've provided options for gear that are financially quite easy to obtain, as well as providing further enhancements through event rewards.

There are at least eight main sets I think about when it comes to gearing up a Black Mage:

A standing set.
A nuking set.
An enfeebling set.
An elemental build set.
A Stoneskin set.
A Dark magic set.
A resting set.
An elemental debuff set.

I've intentionally left out a Sorcerer's Ring set here because the overall set is rather costly, and I wouldn't really focus on a Sorcerer's Ring build until you have these basics tied down.

Because of all these sets, it's a little difficult for me to talk about gear when I sort them into their equipment slots, so I'll first get the basic slots out of the way, before breaking up the rest in terms of their sets.

General

These are the slots that pretty much stay the same, no matter what you use, so I'll just address them now and leave it at that.

Weapons- When I say BLM weapons, the first thing that should immediately come to mind are your almighty Elemental Staves. At absolute bare minimum, you should have an Earth, Ice, Thunder, Wind, Fire and Dark staff. However, to really shine as a Black Mage, you will need to get the HQ versions.

Simply put, HQ staves are hands-down, the most powerful weapons a BLM has in his arsenal, surpassing both BLM relic and mythic weapons because of their hidden boosts to both damage (+15%) and accuracy (+30MAcc). That being said, you won’t need to get all eight HQ staves. At the very least, get your Jupiter’s Staff and Aquilo’s Staff first, followed by a Pluto’s Staff for more reliable sleeps. You can pick up the rest as you see fit.

Grips- I would personally just stick with a Bugard leather strap +1 for the 1 INT, seeing as how it is the only grip that has any INT on it. I wouldn’t consider the elemental grips.

Ammo- This one’s easy- Phantom tathlum. Tarus can use a Sweet Sachet to get the same effect, but the tathlum has 10MP over the Satchet, and isn't too pricey, either.

Rings- As a BLM, you really only have INT to worry about as far as stats go. As such, you can function perfectly well with two Snow Rings. If you’re considering going to magery full-time, Tamas Ring is hands down the best ring for a mage out there. Snow Rings can be a little pricey though, and Diamond Rings provide a much more affordable alternative with just a little bit of damage lost.

Other more situational rings you may want to look into are a Balrahn’s Ring for Assault/Salvage, and an Omega Ring to round off your Enfeebling set.

Now that the basics have been taken care of, I’m going to move onto the various sets:

Standing set

Popularized by Kaeko, the idea behind the standing set is to reap as much benefit out of your idle times, while waiting for cooldowns to reset, as well as giving you the best chance at survival if you pulled hate and need to survive long enough for the tank to get the mob back.

At the very least, you should have a Black Cloak for Auto-Refresh, and couple that with an Earth Staff for the -20% damage reduction. If you want to enhance your standing set even further, you can look into a Cheviot Cape and a Sorcerer’s Earring for the damage down effects, although these last two pieces are more debatable. Bear in mind that because a BLM's DEF is so weak, you are looking for gear that applies a direct percentage mitigation to the damage you take instead of focusing on your DEF rating.

For those fortunate to have Herald's gaiters, macro your gaiters into your standing set too. Also take note that because the movement speed does not kick in until the blinking animation has been completed, you will also want to macro your gaiters into pretty much every other macro except your nuking ones.

Nuking set

This is usually the first thing people focus on when it comes to gearing up a Black Mage. After all, your main purpose in any group is (usually) to deal damage. As a general rule, you want to focus on Magic Attack Bonus first, then INT. This, of course assumes you have sufficient skill so your nukes are not resisted. Thus, you may want to consider a hybrid of this nuking set and an elemental set until you complete your Elemental skill merits.

Much of the Nuking set focuses on INT where Magic Attack Bonus is not available. As with many of your other spells, INT determines their effectiveness, so you can easily take parts of this set and use them in any of the other sets where I have not mentioned anything.

Head: The biggest damage boost comes from a Selenian cap with INT+4 and MAB+2 augmented. Alternatives include a Yigit turban or Demon Helm +1. Which will do more damage does depend on your other stats, so experiment to see which you prefer. Personally, I hate how either looks and I love pointy hats, so I stick with my Wizard’s Petasos +1. ^^

Body: Your body piece is easy- get an Igqira weskit. Long gone are the days where these used to cost an arm and a leg to get, so there really is no excuse not to have one. Alternatively, if you have completed A Crystalline Prophecy, a Royal Redingote (with "Magic Attack Bonus +4" Augmented) surpasses the Igqira weskit and even comes very close to a Genie Weskit, at least in terms of damage.

Neck: Your neckpiece should be an Elemental Torque for the resist rates. Once you are comfortable with your resist rates, you can choose to opt for additional damage with a Prudence Torque. I personally wouldn’t trade the Elemental Torque for any of the other neckpieces that give intelligence. An Uggalepih Pendant rounds off your basic nuking neckpieces.

Ear: As a BLM75, there is no excuse not to have a Moldavite earring. Your other ear slot can be taken up by an Abyssal Earring for the INT. If you don't have access to an Abyssal earring, or if you chose a different Divine Might earring, go with either a Cunning, Morion, or Phantom Earring. Elvaan and Galka mages can try for their RSE earrings, the Desamilion's Earring or Gayanji's Earring respectively, both available from the ENM Automaton Assault.

Hands: If you don’t want to shell out the cash for a pair of Zenith Mitts (or can’t get the abjuration), you can use Vicious mufflers instead, although bear in mind that if you eventually want to use a Sorcerer’s Ring, it will be considerably harder to activate with the mufflers. If you don’t mind losing a little bit of damage, you can opt to use Yigit gages instead, which also doubles up as a Stoneskin piece. The difference is really quite minimal, so it may be something to consider if you are short on storage space.

Back: The cape that will add the most damage to your nukes (that is also free) is a Gleeman's Cape, obtained from Einherjar. Unfortunately, this does not come without its drawbacks, so most people stick with a Rainbow Cape/Prism Cape. If you're into ZNM, you can try for a Solitaire Cape, but it is very narrow in its use, and doesn't even make up for some of the earlier listed capes in terms of damage.

Waist: A Penitent’s Rope is rather pricey, but is well worth the money from BLM60 onwards. If you are looking for an upgrade in damage, you have a Sorcerer’s Belt to look towards, although bear in mind you may still need the Rope for Stoneskin, not to mention that the Belt usually has a decent queue. In addition, get your elemental obis- the damage bonus from a Hyorin and Rairin obi are too good to pass up, especially with SCHs around to fix the weather for you.

Legs: If you are short on money, Errant slops are your best option here. Later on, once you have saved up enough, you can upgrade them to Mahatma slops, which are second only to Morrigan's slops. Jet seraweels are another upgrade option, although I prefer the extra INT from Mahatma. If you can, also try to get ahold of a pair of Sorcerer's tonban to boost your damage when the condition is right (day of the week matches your nuke).

Feet: The best feet out there for damage are Yigit crackows, obtained by trading 20,000 Assault Points from Lebros Cavern. Fortunately, Demolition Duty happens to be one Assault a BLM is pretty useful for, if you decide to spam one Assault until you get the points. If for some reason you cannot do this, Cobra Unit crackows perform almost as well although personally, I find it less troublesome to just go and get Yigit.

Enfeebling set

As a Black Mage, nuking and blowing mobs up is not your only responsibiliy- thanks to four available Sleeps (two of them AoE!), Bind and Gravity (through /RDM), crowd control duties also frequently fall under a BLM's repetoire. That's not to mention the importance of landing your debuffs when it comes to soloing things- resists can mean the difference between you walking away safely, or facing the floor (if you're Taru.)

One thing to note- recent research into magic accuracy has shown a link between INT, MAcc and magic skill, which is a relationship I'll be referring back to every now and then. In short, as long as your INT is below the mob's INT+10, 1 INT = 1 MAcc = 1 Skill. After your INT exceed's the mob's INT+10, it becomes 2 INT = 1 MAcc = 1 Skill. You can read more about the test here.

Head: Igqira tiaras are both cheap and provide a very substantial boost to your Enfeebling magic skill, so there is little excuse not to have one.

Neck: At the very least, you should have a Spider Torque, although an Enfeebling torque is obviously preferred.

Body: Your Wizard’s coat serves you nicely here. If you can, upgrade your coat to a Wizard’s coat +1 for the extra 2 Enfeebling skill. Once you get used to low-manning Apollyon Northwest, the Ancient Beastcoin cost should be negligible.

Hands: If you can snag yourself a pair of Oracle gloves from ZNM, they will be the best overall piece for the slot. Long ago, you could carry around some Master Caster’s Bracelets, although nowadays these are probably not worth the slot, unless you happen to do a lot of {sea} activities.

Rings: Special mention goes to an Omega Ring for this slot if you want to use it. The combination of Magic Accuracy and 3 INT gives it an effective MAcc of +4.5~+6, while a single Snow Ring comparatively gives MAcc +2.5~+5. It's up to you to decide whether the extra accuracy is worth it to you or not.

Legs: Unfortunately, Igqira Lappas are a little bit pricey, due to requiring a drop from Megalobugard. if you can get ahold of them, Nashira Seraweels perform just a little bit behind the Lappas in terms of accuracy.

Feet: Which are better- Goliard clogs or Avocat pigaches? Either will be fine, although recent research on magic accuracy shows that Goliard clogs make the overall better choice, since in the worst case scenario, they are just as effective as Avocat pigaches, while in the best case scenario, they provide an extra 3 MAcc due to INT's role in MAcc.

Elemental set

An elemental set is something to look into once you start getting into HNM fights, where resist rates become a very real factor. You may have heard about the 320/120 rule, which is basically an eyeballed benchmark to reach (320 Elemental Magic skill + Magic Accuracy, 120INT). Ideally, you want to hit the 320 mark first, then maximize your INT after that. There are many, many options out there for a BLM to boost his/her Elemental Magic skill or Magic Accuracy, so match and mix from the options below depending on what’s available to you.

Head: You really should be aiming towards a Sorcerer’s Petasos for this slot. In the meantime, you can try to settle with an Elite Beret (+1) or Oracle’s cap until you get your Petasos. Of course, this argument is pointless if you ultimately decide to use your Black Cloak as part of your Elemental set (see below).

Neck: This one’s easy- like your nuking set, get an Elemental torque.

Body: I'm going to mention the Black Cloak here, in the event you feel that you absolutely must have the elemental skill. Bear in mind that the Cloak only adds +3 more Elemental skill and 4 INT over the Weskit (so an effective +5~+7 Magic Accuracy), not to mention takes away your ability to wear a hat, so the tradeoff is pretty steep. I'm not so sure I'd be willing to do it with a Demon's cloak either, but the option is there if you need a last resort.

Hands: Nothing beats Wizard’s gloves. Nothing, except Wizard’s gloves +1.

Back: You can go for a Merciful Cape, although be warned that the drop rate on Ix’MNK is close to abysmal.

Legs: Your option here is a Druid's Slops. Most of the time though, this tends to be overkill if you already have your purple hat.

Feet: Numerist pumps go here. Like Druid Slops, these tend to be overkill.

Stoneskin set

Due to the increasing amount of solo or lowman fights BLMs are called for, having a maximized Stoneskin is very important for increasing your survivability. For the record, a BLM’s Enhancing Magic cap is 200, so you will need to reach 114MND to cap your Stoneskin. Obviously, the gear you will need to accomplish this will vary according to your race.

Weapon: A Kirin’s pole is the easiest way to get the MND boost you’ll need for the weapon slot, and shouldn't be too hard to buy from sky linkshells that don't really need them now. If you have the means to add MND elsewhere, you can stick to a Water/Neptune’s Staff instead.

Head: The head portion is interesting because all three feasible slots also serve another role elsewhere. The biggest boost to your MND is a Goliard’s chapeau, which also fits into your resting set. If you find that you don’t actually need all 5MND, a Yigit turban works as a nuking piece and a Stoneskin piece. Later on down the road, you can shift towards a Zenith crown (+1) if you’re looking to find a piece that will also help activate a Sorcerer’s Ring.

Neck: There are several neckpieces that all provide decent boosts to your MND, such as a Promise Badge. However, I must stress that the absolute best item to have here, hands down, is a Stone gorget. Not only does it add 30hp to your Stoneskin (the next time you see an effective MND+30 on a neckpiece, let me know), it also allows you to surpass the Stoneskin cap of 350hp, so your Stoneskin now absorbs 380hp instead. In short, get one.

Body: All hail the mighty Errant houppelande.

Feet: Errant pigaches give you MND in the feet slot, but take note that they also take away HP in the event you want to work towards a Sorcerer's Ring set later on.

Dark Magic set

Two of your most important spells happen to be Dark Magic- Drain and Aspir. Drain is the most efficient damaging spell in your entire arsenal, damage/MP-wise, while Aspir shouldn't need much explanation other than these spells actually need to land in order to be useful.

Neither INT nor Magic Attack Bonus plays much of a role (if any!) in Drain or Aspir's potency. Thus, because Drain and Aspir are so good, but are restricted by a 1-minute cooldown, you can slot in Haste gear to lower their recasts, which may also come in handy when coupled with Stun.

However, there is one threshold you ought to aim for with your Dark Magic, and that is a total of 291 skill. Reaching this level lets your Bio II do an additional 1 dmg/tick, which can add up over longer solo fights. As a BLM75's natural Dark Magic skill caps at 269, you don't actually need that much +Dark Magic skill gear to satisfy this requirement, but I'll provide the options below.

Head: If you can get ahold of a Nashira turban, use it for the mix in both magic accuracy and haste. A much less troublesome alternative would be a Walahra turbun, purely for lowering the recast timer.

Neck: No brainer here- get a Dark Torque.

Ear: There isn't much to say here, other than good for you if you picked an Abyssal earring. Depending on prices, you may want to pick up a Dark earring as well.

Body: The undisputed champion here is a Nashira manteel, with magic accuracy, Dark Magic skill and Haste, all tied in one package! Alas, if the manteel is out of your reach, a Goliard saio will at least help with recasts.

Hands: Nothing beats Sorcerer’s gloves. Nothing, except Sorcerer's gloves +1.

Back: Your Merciful cape from the Elemental set also doubles up here as part of your Dark Magic set.

Waist: Going along the lines of reducing recasts, feel free to put in a Swift Belt here to lower Drain/Aspir timers if you can afford the space.

Legs: At last, one easy one to fulfill- use your Wizard’s tonban. The tonban alone more than makes up for half the difference you need to reach 291 Dark Magic skill.

Resting set

The next set I need to address will be your resting set. Usually, this is the set that doesn't get too much focus due to inventory issues, but also because an additional +1hMP doesn't really have much impact, so most of the time, extra hMP are bonuses slotted in here and there, usually with pieces that already have uses in another set. If you really want to dedicate the space to resting gear, full Yigit is one of the better options out there, although bear in mind that can still be surpassed.

Weapon: I should not have to say this here, but this is why people get a Dark Staff.

Head: You have several options here- a Goliard chapeau adds the most +hMP, although it’s only +1hMP over a Wizard’s petasos +1, or a Yigit turban. Yes, it's a sad day that BLMs can't wear a Mirror tiara.

Neck: To start, use your Grandiose Chain or Beak Necklace +1. If you really want to maximize this slot, you can try your luck at getting a Phi necklace through a chance appraisal from the Chief Sergeant Leujaoam Sanctum Assault, or a Gnole torque through Moblin Maze Mongers.

Ear: Be prepared to spend a lot of time in The Garden of Ru'Hmet to farm up a Relaxing earring. I personally wouldn’t bother with the other earrings that give +1hMP (and there are a lot of them!), although one to note is a Boroka earring that also doubles up as your nuking earring, if you don't have a +2INT earring or something better in that slot.

Body: The almighty Errant houppelande comes in here, especially since you can use the almighty houppelande for your Stoneskin as well. If you really want to maximize your hMP, you can aim for an Oracle’s Robe, although last I checked, it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to get your hands on.

Hands: Oracle’s gloves provide the best +hMP here. Bear in mind that if you have Zenith mitts, you may want to swap out the gloves as you rest to take advantage of the additional MP the Zenith mitts give you.

Back: For completeness's sake, I'm going to list the Invigorating cape here.

Waist: Your best option here is a Qiqirn sash +1, which thankfully is also quite affordable.

Legs: For those who are looking to maximize their hMP set, use either Yigit seraweels or Oracle's braconi here. Bear in mind though, that the gain is only +1hMP over Wizard's tonban +1, which also has its use in your Dark Magic set, so decide for yourself if the extra +1hMP is worth an extra inventory slot.

Feet: Use either your Goliard clogs, Avocat pigaches or Numerist pumps here, whichever you have.

Elemental Debuff set

The last set which sees little play is your Elemental debuff set. Your Elemental debuffs refer to the cycle of Rasp-Choke-Frost-Burn-Drown-Shock. The priorities here, however, is your INT, as INT determines the reduction in the enemy's stat, as well as your DoT.

1 - 39 INT = 1hp/tic (-5 stat)
40 - 69 INT = 2hp/tic (-7 stat)
70 - 99 INT = 3hp/tic (-9 stat)
100 - 149 INT = 4hp/tic (-11 stat)
150 - ??? INT = 5hp/tic (-13 stat)

As you can see, the magic number to reach is 150INT, which is quite substantial even for a Taru. I am not sure if the other races can reach the 150INT mark- if not, then at least aim for 100INT on your build. Supplement any extra slots with +Elemental skill gear to prevent resists. The overall set will resemble your nuking set, just replacing +MAB slots with +INT where available.

Neck: A Prudence torque again, is the winner here, but if you don't have one, you may want to consider one of the lesser INT neckpieces, in which case a Philomath Stole is by far the cheapest option.

Body: Switch your weskit out for your Errant houppelande.

Hands: This is where Yigit gages users get to save a slot and have nuking gloves that help their elemental debuffs, too.

And voila! It is done! It certainly took a lot longer and was much harder to write than I initially thought, but the above should give any upcoming BLM a very solid foundation to work towards. It is a lot of work to obtain everything, and admittedly I'm still trying to finish off bits and pieces here and there.

Further steps to take once you are comfortable with your gear would be to slowly upgrade the various pieces to their HQ components, as well as starting to plan/work towards a Sorcerer's Ring set. Unfortunately, the Ring set alone requires a fair amount of planning, so that is something I can talk about some other day. ^^; Then, there are always the "big three" to work towards- Herald's Gaiters, Novio Earring and Morrigan's Robe- good luck with those. ^^

As always, I do not claim this to be the end-all of all BLM gear guides- in fact, there are plenty floating around the various forums (with a bit of work), so if there are any questions and/or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment down below. ^^

48 hours later

2009-01-25T13:02:00.003+08:00

Well, the good news about getting suspended from FFXI is that all of a sudden, I find myself with a lot of freed up time- part of which can be used to at least write about FFXI. At least for now, I can hop on the bandwagon and contribute my 2 gil towards the whole ban-hammer issue. I'll do so by briefly summarizing the events thus far before offering up my own thoughts. I've gone through a lot of other people's thoughts regarding the issue, and have borrowed a few quotes here and there, though unfortunately, I seem to have lost my notes on who said what, so apologies in advance if I left you uncredited.

To those who don't know what the whole fiasco was about, there was a glitch that allowed you to duplicate drops from any instanced area (i.e: Nyzul, Assault, Salvage, Sandworm) by first forming an alliance, then breaking it before killing the mob. Once the drops were in the treasure pool, you could then change the party leader and have an additional copy of the items for each party in the alliance, or something along those lines- I myself am not too aware of the technical details, and have only seen the glitch in action just once (which was enough to warrant me a suspension, but that's for later.)

As can be expected, the initial reaction involved a lot of posts that took on a "I am holier than thou" or "serves you right" stance, as if to say that sweet justice has been served. (I also find it amusing that people immediately look to Allakhazam for this kind of response.) Personally, I find myself in great distaste of this point of view simply because it's too absolute. Not all players who used the glitch were aware of it, and to be labeled as cheaters just because they were simply there to help out their friends (who did know) with Salvage is unfair to say the least.

"Another rather sad story involves a player who PM'd me saying he clearly knew what he was doing and accepts his punishment. He received LM-17 and called the "SE call center" and was told he would be ok 72 hours (a temp ban). He did this exploit very often. During one of these runs, his JP friend tagged along and participated and apparently was truly as oblivious as you can possibly be about this glitch. The confusion of party allies and disbands coupled with a severe language barrier was the reason for this. This JP friend participates, truly without knowing, and he received the LM-17. He then called the call center and was told he had received the full ban by the call center representative.

Looking around other people's blogs, there are quite a few people who share that similar fate, people who are invited or tag along with a Salvage run, during which they were left scratching their heads as to why the alliance kept breaking and reforming. In the end, they are deemed guilty by association (or is that participation?) and are subsequently banned from the game.

If anything, I do feel that the blame lies squarely on the developer's shoulders, though bear in mind that this is my personal stance (maybe because I got suspended). A development team will not be able to smooth out every single bug and exploit in the game, especially when competing against the hive mentality of the player base, but SE has shown that they are able to react to things quickly if they want to (for example, AV patching). The fact that this exploit was known to the player base for over a year and a half with no action taken by SE does not bode well for the development team (they claim to only know about it from November 2008 onwards.)

Yes, the player base is somewhat responsible for helping SE out with maintaining the integrity of their product and informing them of any bugs and glitches. Yet, as Lordwafik put it,

"Someone in my salvage group actually *did* report the glitch to a GM, and their response was they know about it but aren't doing anything for it since they’re too busy on their newer MMO."

Furthermore, the glitch was a result of the game's own coding. No bots, no hacks, no third-party programs. All it took was a few alliance invites here and there and some leader switching. For the players involved, they saw an opportunity and took it.

Now that the suspensions and bannings have been handed out, attention has been drawn towards SE's consistency, or lack thereof, in handing out their sentences. Quoting Lordwafik again,

"My salvage set had about 9 people total, 3 of us got perma banned, 3 of us got letters, and the other 3 got nothing at all. We all did the same thing but all got different punishments which is just absurd, I too am curious what is it exactly that caused them to get bans? For more information, 1 of the people who got perma banned got absolutely nothing from it, 2 of the people who got the letters got a 35 each from it, and the people who got no letters or anything also received nothing, much like the person who got permanently banned."

In summary, the players suspended/banned as a result fall in one of several categories:

1) Knowingly used the exploit to dupe items and was banned/suspended.
2) Knowingly used the exploit to dupe items and was not banned/suspended.
3) Participated in a dupe alliance without knowing about the exploit and was banned/suspended.
4) Participated in a dupe alliance without knowing about the exploit and was not banned/suspended.

The third category are the aforementioned unfortunate bunch, since they probably tagged along with the run to help their friends, not knowing of the glitch, scratching their heads as to why the alliance kept breaking and reforming, why party leaders kept changing, only to get swept up in the bannings as a result.

Not only that, but the fact that there are still quite a significant number of people who fall into the "knowingly-duped-but-got-scott-free" category makes the bannings feel like a smack on the head. One argument is that you have to get a few innocent people in order to catch the guilty parties, but how do you think they feel?

This lack of consistency also plays into a rather embarrassing comparison against other in-game "crimes"

"People have gotten a suspension for racism, harassment, threatening someone in game, grievance to a linkshell or individual, fish botting, mine botting, and bot claiming monsters on their first offense. So how do those actions warrant a suspension to the game, but individuals dissolving an alliance are getting banned."

In any case, the sentences have been passed out, but assuming that Square Enix’s handling of the whole situation could've been better (and it most certainly can), what can be done now to rectify things?

The general consensus is that handing out permanent bans to players over this was overkill. To permanently ban players, loyal customers who have subscribed for years over taking advantage of something that ultimately was the developer's responsibility is over the top.

Square Enix can downplay things and just announce that everyone be awarded a 72-hour suspension instead and still have gotten the message across. With regards to managing the aftereffects of the glitch, Maiev suggests that Square Enix can also take away any gear that the players involved might've obtained illegally from the glitch instead of/in addition to suspending them, which is to say Square Enix could delete all their Salvage gear. Admittedly, this is a little narrow since the glitch also worked for Nyzul Isle and Sandworm, but is a start.

In terms of event mechanics, I do feel that Salvage drop rates need to be addressed. Part of the pressure originates from trying to shorten one's time spent in Salvage with good reason. Honestly, if the zone can be beaten, you know the strategy, you know what to do, and your group executes things correctly, then it just becomes a matter of grinding time in the zone. At some point, it just gets plain frustrating if nothing comes from your efforts, and I do feel that SE is rather poor at figuring out when "fun" turns to "frustrating" and coveted items simply become a symbol of "I endured more crap than you."

A rather strange analogy I was thinking about involves the escape of a high-profile terrorist from one of Singapore's detention centers in February 2008. Essentially, the prisoner, Mas Selamat, managed to escape by excusing himself to the toilet and escaped through an unsecured bathroom window.

The prisoner saw an opportunity to escape, and took it. In this case, he got off free. Additional measures have since been taken and key personnel have been fired. On the Vana’diel front, this would be akin to placing the responsibility on the developers, firing them, fixing the code and leaving it at that.

In our case however, the players were caught. The code was patched and the players banned. Going back to Mas Selamat, that would be as if he tried to escape, got caught, after which additional measures would be implemented and Mas Selamat receive the death sentence. Now, I understand there are maximum security facilities with armed guards ready to shoot to kill any prisoner that tries to escape, but is that really the atmosphere we want in a game?

Coming from someone who was suspended, yes, in retrospect we broke the ToS, and should have some penalty imposed upon us. I say "in retrospect" because in my case, the fact that we were flaunting the ToS didn't immediately come to mind. For me, there was a chance to see something new, and I took it. My first reaction to seeing the exploit in action was "Hey, this is kinda cool" and admittedly "Holy shittaru, I'd better keep this secret from the GMs!" was not the top of my list.

Personally, the experience was well worth it, since although nothing got duplicated (except Alexandrites, I think) there were fun times involved with trying to get used to the new, unique playing conditions. (Other than tripling drops, it also allows players to share AoE buffs across the entire alliance. As a result, I can also Haste other alliance members, but the side effect is that I cannot see people's HP without specifically tabbing over that player, so there was quite a lot of {death}. ^^;)

I do feel that a person's intent should be taken into account before deciding on what kind of sentence to mete out, although on SE's part, that is something very difficult to do on a case-by-case basis. For me, as I said above, my encounter with the glitch was more for exploration rather than exploitation, although honestly, I don't know what my stance would be if the glitch were to continue unfixed. I can say that I reacted to the patch that fixed the exploit with indifference, although that may be due to the fact that I don't Salvage.

Yes, I know that last point may not settle well with some people, but my personal opinion is that it's very easy to go all high and mighty and say you will be clean without having actually done it. Right now, I don't know if I will walk the talk, so I'll err on the side that I don't. My bet is that of the players who preach about "playing clean," a significant portion of the people would've used the glitch had they known about it.

I'm personally going to go with the idea that I don't think it was a mistake to address the player base with regards to the exploit. To people like myself who were caught up in the net despite minimal participation, we did technically cross the line, so I do think that some sentence is in order, it's just the nature I'm unhappy with.

For now, I'm going along with the assumption that my suspension is for 72-hours. Given that the Lunar New Year's coming up, I'll be away for the next few days, so the whole suspension thing doesn't really affect me all that much. I'm more saddened to see some of the people I know being forced to leave the game because of this. There were some big names caught up in the net, and while not all of them were likable, they each had their own contributions towards the community in some way.

As some people have pointed out, banning people over this, or more specifically, banning people's friends is probably more harmful to the game in the long term, for really, my friends in game are one of the reasons I still play. Take them away, and you remove the main reason why we continue to play after all these years.

If I am unable to log back in when I return, then I'll just assume that I've since been upgraded to permanent-ban status. I've come to terms with that, and while I've harbored thoughts of maybe starting up again, losing five years of work just like that is not really worth coming back for. I've had my share of {fun}, {adventure} and {excitement} in this game, and as much as I like the game, I think I've reached the point where I can walk away with no real regrets (other than maybe leaving Campsitarus unfinished, which is something I really ought to work on, too. -_-)

That's all from me for now. To all who will be celebrating the incoming year of the Ox, 新年快乐, 恭喜发财!

Suspendaru!

2009-01-24T00:07:00.003+08:00

Wow, I too got hit with the almighty ban/suspension-hammer!

As what seems to be the norm, I have no idea how long this suspension will be. Looks like SE's being either incredibly liberal about waving the stick around, or are being really thorough, since I only talked about it once. XD

Okay, okay, I was invited to try it once in Salvage after I heard about it, so I guess that counts against me. :P

In any case, if I were able to log in, I'd probably be trying to either earn money to recover from my Cursed Mitts -1 purchase, or I'd be leveling SCH up some more through pets. Speaking of which, while so far in my experience, SCH can nuke BST pets for decent xp, I have to admit, it is a whole lot easier as a BLM. God, Tonberry Elementals suck as SCH. -_-

Anyway, I have no idea when I'll be back, though given my sporadic timings these days, I don't think anything will change, really. ^^

:D

2009-01-10T16:35:00.000+08:00

The lack of blogging's caught up again. What have I missed?

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Happy New Year, everybody!

And one more thing that I just picked up today:

Soon, soon...:D

(Did I mention I am now broke? T_T)

(And where on earth is that A. hands abjuration?? -_-)

Campsitarus- 1,000,000 hits!

2008-11-27T06:00:00.001+08:00

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.

2008-11-15T20:02:00.000+08:00

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

2008-10-10T02:21:00.010+08:00

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!

2008-09-16T09:37:00.007+08:00

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!

2008-06-30T18:57:00.003+08:00

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!}

2008-06-29T22:39:00.004+08:00

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?

2008-06-24T12:57:00.008+08:00

{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? ^^

"Accomplished Goldsmith" {mine}!

2007-11-17T10:19:00.001+08:00

I understand I haven't made a new entry in a pretty long time.

I also understand that I haven't made a "normal" blog post (i.e: not trying to dissect a fight) in an even longer time.

Coincidentally, I haven't made a post about my Goldsmithing in an even longer time.

To be honest, it's been so long since I last worked on my Goldsmithing formally, that I don't even remember when my last archived Goldsmithing post was! >_< I suppose with the current state of crafting (particularly in the durables department), the drive to actually work on Goldsmithing has more or less died down, as seems to be the case for quite a lot of the crafts lately.

With high costs to level and with fewer and fewer profitable synths, Goldsmithing's more or less been relegated to earning me bits and pieces of small change here and there. As such, it's been sitting pretty at Goldsmithing 87 for the longest time. I'd occasionally make an Orichalcum Ingot back when it was profitable, and now that it's a loss, that too stopped.

Until recently, that is.

For some reason, I just decided to go and get that next level, which meant burning a lot of money. I had forgotten what my exact Goldsmithing level was, other than it was 87.x, but that didn't really matter.

Just like that, I purchased two stacks of Gold Ingots from the AH (pretty hefty, considering I'm a miser now :P) and sat down to work.

The first stack was good- +0.5 skill in twelve synths. The second, gave me this:

Hitting 88 is the magical number to go get a rankup, and so I immediately made a beeline for Reinberta, who decided that, of all things, she wanted a Colichemarde (go on, look it up. -_-)

Anyway, not long later, I went back to Reinberta with a Colichemarde I ~~shamelessly purchased from the Jeuno AH~~ made with my own sweat and tears, to finally get...

Of course, finally reaching the highest rank in the Goldsmithing guild meant that I could finally use my guild points that have been sitting idle for close to a year now. In this case, I am now eligible to purchase my guild furnishing...

And so, for anyone who is just curious on what Fool's Gold actually looks like, here you go:

Title: "Accomplished Goldsmith." Dammitaru, that feels good.

I'm not sure where I'm going to go with Goldsmithing now to be honest. I've got all the guild items, so that's one major hurdle down, so the next would be the almighty 100 (haha, I can dream on :P). Looking at the markets now, Goldsmithing 100 would be more or less a novelty, since I can't really see anything I want to make at 100, except maybe sign my own Manteel if I ever get around to leveling my Bard (dream on!).

But first! Time to recuperate my losses from all those Gold Ingots! /cry

(Edit: Okay, whose bright idea was it to have the Moghancement: Experience from the Miniature Airship overwrite the Moghancement: Goldsmithing from the Fool's Gold?! Now I have to take the Airship down, and I like that airship! /fume)

Something new to solo!

2007-10-14T01:00:00.000+08:00

Black Mages have solo'ed several things, from sea mobs to ENMs to KS30s to Apollyon NW.

Well, I've stumbled across this video that presents something new for BLMs to try and solo- Waking Dreams, better known as "the Diabolos fight."

Enjoy!

Just in case the above video does not work, you can see the video here, along with the rest of Vol's solo feats (including Ark Angel MR!)

Random screenshot!

2007-09-16T20:32:00.000+08:00

I'm still alive and kicking...sort of. No time to make a real blog entry, so I decided to leave everyone with this-

It's an old, _old_ excerpt from TrueRune. I haven't been on lately, so I haven't seen everyone in quite some time. A lot of the people involved in the chat have since quit, but I'll still protect the "innocent." ^^

BLM solo- Ebony Puddings

2007-09-04T14:11:00.000+08:00

Regarding lack of updates:

I am aware that, quite unlike me, it has been over two months since I have last written an update. To say that my real life has been busy is a bit of an understatement, with my current occupation taking up the vast majority of my time, and other real life commitments filling up the remainder of whatever leftover time I have.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that I haven't exactly been doing anything spectacular in game, other than the usual Limbus and meriting, things that don't require a massive time commitment on my side. What all this will result in, I cannot say for sure, but given my recent activities, I simply haven't felt that there was anything interesting enough to write about.

What I can do, however, is go into further detail about something I've been trying to crack during my solo Pudding sessions- how to crack and maximise your xp/hour.

By now, just about every BLM75 would have had experience soloing Puddings in Mount Zhayolm, or at least have heard of it. While Puddings are slightly more dangerous to solo, coming from Wamoura Princes, once you get used to it, they are by far the fastest xp/hour for a solo BLM.

It's not difficult to see why they're the ideal solo mob, either. They are mage mobs, so are Aspirable. They also have about 1000hp less than a Wamoura Prince. They also don't have a "magic-resistant" mode, in fact, they take an additional 25% magic damage!

Of course, being mages, they are slightly more dangerous than a Prince, but all that means is that you'll have to deal with the occasional Burn or Shock, or have to Stun a Sleepga or Firaga III, all minor inconveniences to offset the extra xp.

General information
Mount Zhayolm has two weather conditions- Fire weather, which is rather uncommon, and Earth weather, which is common. Within the area are eight Ebony Puddings, each on a 5-minute respawn timer. Ebony Puddings have approximately 4900hp each, and as mentioned earlier, take 25% extra magic damage. They are rather difficult to Sleep, so a good enfeebling set is advisible here. I'm also going to assume that for the purposes of this writeup, you are BLM75.

Casting range here is 21.5 yalms/units/whatever they're called.

If you are not familiar with the layout of the area, you would be well advised to familiarize yourself with the area so you know where all 8 spawn points are, and be careful of the Phasma towards the NE side at night. The southern passageway leading to Halvung provides a safe place to kite a Pudding, as well as an easy zone to run to should something go wrong.

In addition, when soloing, one BLMs generally takes up three Ebony Pudding spawns, so the area can support three solo BLMs comfortably.

Generally, the sequence of events are as follows:

Thunder IV → Gravity → Blizzard IV → Aspir → (subsequent nukes)

Your subsequent nukes would obviously vary depending on your general nuking strength and resists. Personally, I find that I need a second Thunder IV and Drain to finish off a mob, others may need more or less.

If this is your first time soloing Puddings, you may have trouble with your first few attempts as you get used to things, but you should adjust pretty quickly and soloing should be a breeze.

My current situation:

I've timed myself on a few of my sessions, physically taking down a piece of paper, recording my xp before I start and then soloing for a full hour before recording the new value, thus finding out my xp/hour. This is much more realistic (for obvious reasons) than those that xp for a shorter period of time, and then extrapolate out to 60 minutes.

My average xp/hour so far has been hovering around 8k/hr.

However, I've heard word on forums from other BLMs boasting of higher xp/hour rates solo, not to mention that there are a few issues I see with my solo tactics, so I'm out to try and improve on this.

Solo Chain #5

Most BLMs have little trouble hitting Chain #4 solo, in fact, I myself don't have any issues getting a Chain #4. The problem arises when one tries to consistently reach Chain #5, which I feel is the key to faster solo xp/hour, as always. I've managed to get Chain #5s in the past, but I wasn't able to consistently duplicate that, which is what I'm trying to attempt to dissect here.

Mana management

The primary limiting factor you will most likely face is your mana. Even as a Taru, I have to stretch my mana to accomodate Chain #5, so I can imagine how hard it must be for, say, Galka BLMs (My nuking MP is around 996mp).

As per normal, your mana recovery will be through Sanction Auto-Refresh, Aspirs, and your resting. While you do not have much control over the first two, it is important that you pay attention to how much you rest so you manage your mana and time properly. As a general rule, you can afford to rest to full all the way up to Chain #3, but once you start going for Chain #4, you need to pay attention to the amount of time you have left before you lose the chain.

Up to now, I've always held that 600mp is more than enough to kill a Pudding, with extra mana to spare should something go wrong.

AM II versus Thunder IV?

One thing that I see a lot in Mount Zhayolm are BLMs meriting using two -IV spells and AMII. Personally, I can understand the draw of using Ancient magic- you get big, pretty numbers! However, I can safely say that using Ancient magic is not the way to go for one big reason- mana.

Case #1: You use Ancient Magic. This means you kill with two -IV nukes.

Thunder IV: 171
Gravity: 24
Blizzard IV: 164
Freeze II: 287

Total: 646mp

Case #2: You don't use Ancient Magic. Thus means you kill with three -IV nukes (and a Drain).

Thunder IV: 171
Gravity: 24
Blizzard IV: 164
Thunder IV: 171
Drain: 21

Total: 551mp

You're looking at almost 100mp difference, which will take roughly 30 seconds to recover through resting. The only logical reason to use Ancient magic over Thunder IV + Drain would be in the interest of saving time, however, the difference is only 3 seconds, so it'd better be a close one. XD

Resting for Chain #5

Of course, you'd want to try and get as much mp as possible before you head off. However, it's obvious that you cannot afford to wait until you are fully recharged, otherwise you'd lose the chain.

The amount of time you have to kill the Chain #5 mob is just 2 minutes. I timed myself, and I take roughly 1:15 to kill a mob (including the time it takes for me to run and engage one), so I know that I have another 45 seconds to sit down and rest.

When you rest, your mana comes back after 20 seconds, and then subsequently every 10 seconds thereafter. For me, that means that I have three ticks of rest (+20, +30 and +40 seconds) before I know I have to head out for the next mob. However, just in case of any accidents, I only allow myself two ticks of rest instead.

A naked BLM75 rests for 27mp for the first tick. However, with +hMP gear, that easily goes up to about 50mp/tick, so two ticks worth is about 100mp.

Putting all this into practice:

All this talk is fine, and I wanted to actually go out there and see how well I could put this into action. This would allow me to see just how relevant all this musing has been, as well as provide some data which I could then use to extrapolate a logical xp/hour target to try and reach.

I went over to Mount Zhayolm (which was thankfully open! :D) and solo'ed six chains, three of which were Chain #5s. I noted down all the relevant timings and did my data collection in the process:

Time taken to move to a pudding
Minimum: 0:03
Maximum: 0:24
Average: 0:08

Time taken to kill a pudding:
Minimum: 0:49
Maximum: 1:18
Mean: 1:01

Mana used to kill a pudding:
Minimum: 325
Maximum: 591
Mean: 445

Mean time spent resting after Chain #X:
After Chain #0: 1:26
After Chain #1: 1:17
After Chain #2: 1:13
After Chain #3: 1:13
After Chain #4: 0:34
After Chain #5: 2:22

Based on these figures, I can now artificially reconstruct a Chain #5 to have a rough idea of just how much xp/hour we should be targetting:

+0:00 Stand up, move to engage 1st Pudding.
+0:08 Engage
+1:09 Defeat #0, rest

+2:35 Stand up, move to engage 2nd Pudding.
+2:43 Engage
+3:44 Defeat #1, rest

+5:01 Stand up, move to engage 3rd Pudding.
+5:09 Engage
+6:10 Defeat #2, rest

+7:23 Stand up, move to engage 4th Pudding.
+7:31 Engage
+8:32 Defeat #3, rest

+9:45 Stand up, move to engage 5th Pudding.
+9:53 Engage
+10:54 Defeat #4, rest

+11:28 Stand up, move to engage 6th Pudding.
+11:36 Engage
+12:37 Defeat #5, rest

+14:59 Mana full, repeat cycle.

Thus, our simulation would take 15 minutes to complete a full Chain #5 cycle (which includes a full heal, ready to start the next chain). The average xp a solo BLM gets from a Chain #5 is about 2440xp, so by extrapolating that, we should aim to get:

2440 x 4 = 9760xp/hr.

Thus, a 9-10k/hr xp rate is theoretically possible, although admittedly difficult to do. But an extra 1.7k over my current 8k/hr is certainly something to strive towards, although I'll definitely have to do more testing (and practice more!) before I can see such results.

Improvements:
One big problem I face with trying to beat the clock for a Chain #5 is that I do not have a Sorcerer's Ring. To be more accurate, my refusal to engage in HNM activities means I do not have the Zenith gear to convert my HP over to activate the Sorcerer latent (this also means that I nuke with Yigit gages, instead of Zenith Mitts. T_T)

The benefits of having a ring are twofold- first, I will be able to nuke down a Pudding in just three nukes, essentially saving myself from having to cast Drain. This saves me the 5 seconds or so it takes for me to cast Drain, and then cast another spell, as well as 21 mana. Is it worth it? In the interest of time, certainly, considering how close I was at times to missing the 2-minute deadline.

Someone on the Allakhazam forums also came up with the idea of killing Puddings two at a time before resting, that is to say that he solos one Pudding, immediately moves to kill another, then rests. It sounds like a good idea, since you save the rest time, as well as having fewer "dud" ticks where you recover 0mp, but I don't know how he squeezes a full rest in time to solo Chain #4 and #5. I'll certainly have to give it a shot though. ^^

BLM Solo- Operation Desert Swarm

2007-06-21T21:55:00.000+08:00

A few people have already solo'ed this particular KS30 fight and have written about it, such as Kaeko, and there have been numerous videos about, like Avesta's attempt (although it is quite old now),

However, I had yet to actually do this myself. I'm not exactly sure what prompted me to throw away some 120 Kindred Seals on praticing and fine tuning, but I started on it, and wanted very much to say that I was now able to comfortably solo the KS30.

Here are the basic facts, from Kaeko's writeup:
- 6 Platoon Scorpions.
- Each has exactly 5,000 HP.
- Not particularly resistant to sleep.
- Run at normal speed.

The basic sequence is as follows:

- Buff with Protect II, Aquaveil, Stoneskin, Blink, Phalanx.
- Rest to full.
- Thundaga III → Sleepga (reapply Stoneskin and Blink)
- Blizzaga III → Sleepga (reapply Stoneskin and Blink)
- Take medicines (Pro-Ether in my case, see below)
- Thundaga III → Sleepga (reapply Stoneskin and Blink)
- Manafont
- Blizzaga III → Sleepga
- Thundaga III → Sleepga
- Firaga III (win!)

Here's the log of my first successful run. I've edited it to remove all the "chaff"- the recast timers, "Equipment changed" lines, and so on.

Although I was successful that time, it was a lot closer than I would've liked it to be. Thus, I wanted to go out and solo a few more orbs to get more practice at it before I felt comfortable with a strategy.

Unfortuntely, four orbs later (two of which weren't mine), I had yet to repeat my win. However, it was not a total loss, for there were two realisations I made that I have since implemented into my strategy.

For those who just want to cut straight to the chase, here they are:

1) Bring a Pro-Ether (just in case).
2) Equip a Terra's Staff in your Sleepga macro.

For those who like explanations and reasoning, here are the more long-winded versions:

1) You will need mana items.
Assuming your gear is not of a very high standard, chances are you will be casting six -ga spells, in between at least five Sleepgas, not to mention reapplying Stoneskins, Blinks and Phalanx.

Doing the math, your mana spent (not accounting for Conserve MP) would be:

START

Thundaga III: 322mp
Sleepga: 38mp
Stoneskin: 29mp
Blink: 20mp
Blizzaga III: 299mp
Sleepga: 38mp
Stoneskin: 29mp
Blink: 20mp
Thundaga III: 322mp
Sleepga: 38mp
Stoneskin: 29mp
Blink: 20mp
Phalanx: 21mp

MANAFONT

Blizzaga III: 0mp
Sleepga: 0mp
Thundaga III: 0mp
Sleepga II: 0mp
Firaga III: 0mp

Total: 1225mp

1225mp spent before the Manafont is very high, even for a Taru. As it is, my current nuking gear caps my MP at 1006, so I'm still 219mp away. Thus, medicines are in order.

Based off my nuking mp, I need to make up 219mp somewhere, so a Pro-Ether comes in handy. This will vary from individual to individual, so be sure to check you can make up 1225mp somewhere without the aid of Manafont.

I have to admit, I really really wanted to be able to do this without the use of anything out of the ordinary (nothing more than maybe a couple of Yagudo Drinks), but given the gap in mana, that does not look likely for me, at least not now. Should I ever get Zenith gear, however, there is a chance I will be able to push my max MP setup to over 1225, thus negating the need for any special medicines.

Of course, should you get lucky on your Conseve MP, by all means save the Pro-Ether for another day! >_<

2) Damage reduction in your Sleepga macro

This is the big one.

You will notice that in Avesta's video above, and in other videos around the net that the general strategy is to run away from the scorpions after your -ga spell has gone off before casting Sleepga.

This makes sense, since if you have Herald gaiters, you could feasily outrun the scorpions, that and you might as well gain some distance before casting Sleepga.

However, I do not have gaiters, nor can I run away because of lag issues. In my case, I have to consciously stop and wait a second or two before I cast a spell, otherwise the server-side will think I am casting a spell while moving, and thus interrupt my spell even though I appear to be standing still client-side.

Thus, I cast Thundaga III and immediately start casting Sleepga while standing at the same spot.

One thing I noticed in my subsequent attempts was that there were occasions where my first Sleepga would not resolve simply because the six scorpions were able to tear down my Stoneskin and land a hit on me, interrupting my Sleepga. Once Sleepga is down, there is no way to recover, so it is imperative that Stoneskin remains up.

Let's do the math:

* A Platoon Scorpion hits me, in Enfeebling gear for, on average, about 90 damage/hit.
* With capped Enhancing Magic skill (200), Phalanx reduces all hits by -18 damage.
* A scorpion thus hits me for around 72 damage/hit.

* With 114 MND, Stoneskin is capped at 350 damage.

So, with Stoneskin and Blink up:
Case 1: Two shadows absorbs, 4 hits- 288 damage (Good)
Case 2: One shadow absorbs, 5 hits- 360 damage (Risks interruption)
Case 3: No shadows absorbs, 6 hits- 432 damage (Risks interruption)

As you can see, the problem above lies in the reliance of both Blink shadows absorbing two hits from the scorpions. Should even one fail, then you risk being interrupted, and thus lose the KS30.

So, I needed a way to prevent some more damage while still in my Enfeebling gear. Fortunately, this can be solved by using a Terra's Staff instead of a Pluto's Staff in my Sleepga macro.

Now, with the damage reduction from the Terra's Staff, the numbers look like the following: (Note that the damage reduction from the Terra's Staff is applied first, then Phalanx is applied.)

* A Platoon Scorpion hits me, in Enfeebling gear for, on average, about 90 damage/hit.
* With capped Enhancing Magic skill (200), Phalanx reduces all hits by -18 damage.
* A scorpion thus hits me for around 72 damage/hit.
* With 114 MND, Stoneskin is capped at 350 damage.
* Terra's Staff reduces all physical damage taken by -20%.

Thus, I take:
(90 x 0.8) - 18 = 54 damage/hit.

Giving us the following three cases
Case 1: Two shadows absorbs, 4 hits- 216 damage (Good)
Case 2: One shadow absorbs, 5 hits- 270 damage (Good)
Case 3: No shadows absorbs, 6 hits- 324 damage (Good)

As you can see, the inclusion of a Terra's Staff dramatically improves Stoneskin's duration. Now, there is almost no way the scorpions will be able to break through your Stoneskin before your Sleepga goes off, even if all six Scorpions successfully connect, and you even have some room to play around with should a scorpion land a critical hit on you.

In fact, even if you gave yourself an error margin and assumed that scorpions hit you for 100 damage/hit instead of 90, a Terra's Staff setup would still let your Stoneskin last five hits without wearing off.

What about Magic Accuracy?

When I first considered Sleepga-ing in a Terra's Staff, my immediate concern would be the accuracy of my spells. After all, while it has not been conclusively proven to my knowledge, there are many people out there (including myself) who seem to vouch that equipping the corresponding staff to your spell increases its accuracy.

By wearing a Terra's Staff instead of a Pluto's Staff, my Stoneskin will go off, but the chance that it will actually stick may go down.

Fortunately, when I went to test this out (yes, on yet another orb -_-), I was pleasantly surprised at having absolutely no difficulty landing my Sleepgas whatsoever.

For reference's sake however, my current Enfeebling gear puts me at an Enfeebling Magic skill of 285, which would've also helped.

Is there a way to keep Stoneskin up and still wear a Pluto's Staff?

This idea also crossed my mind, and resulted in a quick flurry to the Bostoneaux Oubliette in search of a Jelly Ring before I changed my mind. The idea was that with a Jelly Ring and an Umbra Cape, I might be able to prevent enough damage and still hold my Pluto's Staff for Sleepga, but doing the math unfortunately proved me wrong:

* A Platoon Scorpion hits me, in Enfeebling gear for, on average, about 90 damage/hit.
* With capped Enhancing Magic skill (200), Phalanx reduces all hits by -18 damage.
* A scorpion thus hits me for around 72 damage/hit.
* With 114 MND, Stoneskin is capped at 350 damage.
* Umbra Cape and Jelly Ring reduces damage by 11%.

Thus, I take:
(90 x 0.89) - 18 = 62 damage/hit.

Giving us the following three cases
Case 1: Two shadows absorbs, 4 hits- 248 damage (Good)
Case 2: One shadow absorbs, 5 hits- 310 damage (Good)
Case 3: No shadows absorbs, 6 hits- 372 damage (Risks interruption)

Which is only slightly better, assuming the Cape/Ring effect is applied first, otherwise Stoneskin still falls within five hits. In fact, if Phalanx were indeed applied first, then any percentage reductions, we'd need:

(90 - 18) * 5x < 350
x < 0.972

13% damage reduction, which is only available by having a Jelly Ring, Cheviot/Umbra Cape and Goliard Slops, which aren't exactly accessible to everyone. Even then, you still get interrupted within 6 hits, so for now, I prefer to just stick with a Terra's Staff.

So, has all this helped?

After the changes, I made one more trip into the Waughroon Shrine armed with a new Sleepga macro and a Pro-Ether. Suffice it to say, I was very happy with the results, particularly the staff as you can see from the above chatlog excerpts.

In fact, I would've won by a very comfortable margin, except that in order to play things extra safe, I popped my Pro-Ether, cast Sleepga II (just to be sure), then Manafonted into Blizzaga III.

I then Sleepga'ed, Thundaga III'ed...

...then found out my Sleepga II still had six seconds on its cooldown. >_<

Oops. >_<

In any case, I still haven't quite gotten the technique quite down for myself just yet, which is something that's been frustrating me. I went on another run after the Sleepga II blunder, and this time, one Scorpion woke up prematurely, causing me to have to run back into the Scorpion cluster to sleep it, and then my final Sleepga was partially resisted by two scorpions just before my Blizzaga III would go off, so it missed a scorpion.

In essence, there are still a few things that can go wrong. For now though, I'm at least satisfied with the breakdown thus far, and with a little bit more practice, I should be able to do this without any further hitches.

Of course, the problem now is that I'm about 10k experience down from all this testing...>_<

Big Update! Part I - Storms of Fate

2007-06-19T16:15:00.000+08:00

Once again, I haven't actually made any meaningful updates in a while, so I'll compensate by making one big update covering three different topics! The other two parts to today's entry can be found below. ^^

But first!

Ever since TrueRune (with the help of Fishura) beat the main Chains of Promathia storyline, I've been wanting to move on and finish the fights that represent the culmination the storylines of both Chains of Promathia and Rise of the Zilart.

Fortunately, I had already completed the Rise of the Zilart storyline quite a while ago, so after beating Promathia, I was all set for the first showdown against Bahamut himself.

All that was missing, as usual, was a team to do it with. >_<

Fortunately, Fishura was here to the rescue once again. :D

For some reason, I had managed to get the TrueRune sea group out in Al'taieu farming Phuabo organs for Saoirse and Akanea, when Fishura and I just so happened to be chatting with one another via /tells. It was then I found out Fishura was up in the Celestial Nexus completing ZM16 for some people, and there were plans to take on Storms of Fate afterwards, so I asked Fishura if there was room for us to join, and sure enough, there was!

The alliance that went in to take on Bahamut was as follows:
Me (BLM/WHM)
Lucimon (SMN/WHM)
Magicman (SMN/WHM)
Akanea (SAM/THF)
Drilex (BLM/RDM)
Flo (BLU/NIN)

Khimari (NIN/WAR)
Eratosthenes (WHM/RDM)
Seraphpdh (PLD/NIN)
Rife (NIN/WAR)
Gunblade (SMN/WHM)
Blksatin (RDM/WHM)

Fanya (NIN/WAR)
Tidusany (SAM/THF)
Keebu (WAR/NIN)
Depon (BLM/WHM)
Sneakee (WHM/BLM)
Xichi (SMN/WHM)

For the record, that's three Black Mages, four Summoners, two White Mages, two Samurai, three Ninjas, a Blue Mage, a Paladin, a Red Mage and a Warrior. Not exactly your standard setup, and actually, we paid very little attention to what jobs were going, but it was enough to get the job done.

I'll be the first to admit that strategy-wise, I can't actually say a lot about the fight, simply because well, I was too busy taking screenshots as opposed to actually concentrating on the fight itself.

I do remember that my first impression was that Bahamut is huge. I do not have some Distance measuring thingymajig, so coming into the fight, I had no idea just how big or how far Bahamut actually was until I was able to actually step close enough to cast a spell on him, which was a lot closer than my first guess turned out to be! >_<

As you might except from a haphazard, cobbled together setup like ours, the run did not go perfectly, although we did fairly well considering the alliance we went in with.

Basic strategy for the Black Mages would be to look out for Firaga IV and Dispelga to Stun. Bahamut starts the fight fully buffed with Protect V, Shell V, Phalanx and Stoneskin, all of which need to be removed before any real damage can be dealt to him.

Basically, all I did was nuke in front of Bahamut (to prevent Sweeping Flail) and stun whenever appropriate to keep things going. Occasionally, the chatlog would be filled with calls of "Megaflare!" to let people know Megaflare was coming, although really, it's very hard to miss Bahamut's warm-up taunting. All my nukes were in Elemental Skill gear.

When Bahamut was getting low on life, the call for a {Full Attack!} went through, which was where I Manafonted and started blasting Bahamut with whatever I had from behind. Evidently, I managed to turn Bahamut after just three nukes, which turned out to be a pretty good thing, considering he spun around and then used Gigaflare, which hit all of five people standing behind him, including myself.

One quick Reraise and a few more nukes later, Bahamut gave up! A quick run back to the Ru'Lude Garders later, and we were now primed to take on Apocalypse Nigh and Bahamut's second, and more deadly form.

Unfortuntately, it looks like once again, it'll be another one of those "try to hop on another group's run" type of ordeal, except for Apocalypse Nigh, which TrueRune should be able to do, although not everybody has completed the Zilart saga just yet.

Big Update! Part II - The State of my BLM

2007-06-19T16:10:00.000+08:00

With my current time restrictions, I came to the decision that it was time to just focus and concentrate on just two jobs- in my case, my Black Mage and my Red Mage. I enjoy playing both jobs, and each has their own unique challenges that come along with it. Furthermore, with people appreciating the benefits of a RDM/NIN tank, the combination of these two jobs would allow me to play four different roles in any setup- direct damage, healing, support, and tanking.

For now though, much of that remains in the future. As my first job to 75, much of my time has been spent working on my Black Mage. Of course, the ability to solo faster xp off Ebony Puddings is also pretty good incentive as well. -_-

As far as merits go, my choice of jobs echo the Magic category upgrades very well. Whereas previously with only 8 total upgrades, there needed to be a conscious decision between splitting Elemental Skill and Enfeebling Skill merits for BLM (I am of a firm stance that BLM needs some Enfeebling skill merits, not to mention that I had RDM considerations as well), now with the maximum capacity expanded to 16, I can simply just go for 8 merits into each category.

So far, most of my merits have gone towards my Black Mage, although if you want a complete map (also for reference's sake), here are my merit upgrades to date with respect to my Black Mage:

HP/MP:
Max MP 4 (10 merits)

Attributes:
INT 5 (36 merits)

Black Mage:
Lightning potency 5 (15 merits)
Ice potency 5 (15 merits)

Freeze II 1 (3 merits)
Burst II 1 (3 merits)

For a total of 82 merit points in total. (I know, this is a lot less than those with 200+ points, but still...>_<)

More recently however, my social, Singapore-based linkshell, Doom, has started to do a few low-man (<6 members) Limbus runs, and after a lucky week where the BLM upgrade pieces finally dropped from both Apollyon and Temenos, I can finally say I have one of the best BLM hats in the game to add to my collection:

I hope that this will be a more regular event, as I would like to complete a set of upgraded AF1 for my BLM, as well as for my RDM (although the BLM upgrades are more notable, in my opinion). I have no idea if we will be able to move onto Ultima and Omega because of our numbers as well as our available jobs, but I'll figure out how to cross that bridge once I get to it. ^^

So, gear-wise, at the risk of embarrassing myself, my Black Mage gear (as of today) is as follows:

There are still some glaring things missing. For example, I have no Zenith pieces, not even Zenith Mitts for that matter. The only piece of relic gear I have is my beloved Sorcerer's Petasos. I'm still carrying around my self-signed Wisdom Ring instead of a Snow Ring. Speaking of Rings, I don't even have a Sorcerer's Ring, nor the HP Convert gear required to activate said Sorcerer's Ring.

As far as purchasable gear goes, I'm missing a Sorcerer's Ring, a Snow Ring, as well as HQ versions of most other pieces. Outside of what money can buy for my Black Mage, I'm missing a few Zenith pieces, most notably a pair of Zenith mitts for nuking and Convert gear. Other than that, I'd like to pick up a Static Earring from Apocalypse Nigh, as well as complete the BLM's relic set, seeing as how all my remaining pieces (Sorcerer's Coat, Sorcerer's Tonban, Sorcerer's Gloves) have some relevance.

Unfortunately, a mishap with my (now ex-)Dynamis LS that resulted in the leader accidentally deleting all my points (without any backup records, too I might add -_-) has seriously discouraged me from continuing Dynamis with that linkshell. I'm up for suggestions on how to re-enter Dynamis though, and I've often thought about low-manning Dynamis as well, although I do not have the resources just yet for such a venture.

Granted, a Novio Earring would be nice, but alas, is much too far in the future to really consider with any seriousness right now.

Big Update! Part III - /emo Taru!

2007-06-19T04:05:00.000+08:00

I guess it's about time.

In Part II, I spoke about my Black Mage, here, I'd like to talk about my Red Mage. My Red Mage is not as developed as my Black, although thankfully a lot of their gear overlaps. However, the subjob demands of a Red Mage are considerably higher- I have /WHM, /BLM and /NIN leveled for their various purposes, but I have yet to level the last, very important subjob for RDM, which you can probably guess from the picture above.

/DRK.

Yes, as much as I hate to level DRK, and as much as RDM/DRK does not fall within the typical template of "damage, tank, support, healer," the RDM/DRK's 30-seconds of pure awesome in Chainspell-Stun is just too powerful (arguably the most broken thing in the game, next to Blood Weapon, KC-DRKs) to ignore. And so, reluctantly, I take up the scythe and get to work.

I'll admit firsthand, I don't like melee. Up to now, the most "melee" I really committed myself to was RNG and NIN, of which one is ranged (i.e. doesn't really go in there and brawl with the mob) and the other's effectiveness is more based on casting than actually beating things up.

So you can imagine my reluctance in leveling up my Dark Knight, not to mention the pains of having to go through the newbie levels and whatnot all over again.

Fortunately, I have yet to spend any charges on my Anniversary Ring. :D

In any case, I'm slowly working myself up the leveling treadmill. As I write this, I'm now DRK13, and have yet to get myself into a party (not that that's a bad thing). One perk I've noticed is the benefits of having capped Dark Magic skill from my BLM, which lets me easily solo Even Match mobs with good Drains.

However, there are two things that are driving me nuts about this job- capping my weapons (Great Sword and Scythe), and omg, DRK's Accuracy is terrible!

Hopefully this will be done sooner, rather than later. >_<

The Tarutaru Times Online

2007-06-15T14:24:00.000+08:00

One of my good friends Wyred has been working on a little bit of a projectaru of his own for some time now. He has recently decided that it was ready for launch, and voila, check it out at...

The Tarutaru Times Online!

Whew!

2007-06-09T16:31:00.000+08:00

In drastic contrast to my lament last week, this weekend was really, really productive! I'll try to keep things brief:

It all started when myself, Trebla (BLM) and Sodalitas (SMN) were busy doing our own things when someone happened to ask on the linkshell if anything was going on. Since I had picked up my Zephyr fan last week, I offered up the Brothers ENM. I thought it'd take a while, but as it turns out, both Sodalitas and Trebla also coincidentally had their Zephyr fans as well. :D

So, our first order of the day was to plow through that ENM for some easy xp.

Unfortunately, nothing good dropped (drops were only worth 4k in total -_-), but it was the start of what was to come. We were contemplating what we could do with BLM BLM SMN when I offered Apollyon NW as an option, which was quickly taken up on.

I know Limbus has been around for quite some time now, but I've certainly been taking my own sweet time with it. Part of it is because I don't have a Limbus shell, but also because I prefer to duo Apollyon- just I don't have a fellow BLM I can go with on any regular basis. Thus, I take whatever duo offers I can take. :D

To be honest, I've only duo'ed this twice before (yeah, I wasn't kidding about the slow part). Both times we got up to Kaiser Behemoth, but couldn't kill him in time, probably due to unfamiliarity with him, but still net somewhere around 15 coins each for the run. This time, with a third person (SMN), I went in with the idea of killing Kaiser Behemoth.

It was Trebla's and Sodalitas' first time against Kaiser Behemoth as well, and while we did have a couple of mishaps, it was still a very fun fight, probably because of said unfamiliarity. XD

There was a point where a freak accident killed all three of us close to one another, so I ended up having to kite Kaiser Behemoth, weakened, while the other two rested off their weakness. Then, as Kaiser Behemoth was around 2% health, a Meteor-gone-wrong killed off both Trebla and I, leaving a weakened Sodalitas to fend off Kaiser. Fun times ensued. :D

But in the end, Kaiser went down! To make things even better, both Sodalitas and I went in hoping to get the BLM and SMN upgrade items, and voila, my Diabolic Yarn dropped off Pluto, while Kaiser dropped the Astral Leather for Sodalitas. Congratulations to him in advance for his Evoker Pigaches +1! :D In addition, after splitting the coins, I now had enough coins to purchase my first Limbus item...

Ta-dah! :D

(Too bad I only put it in my standing macro. >_<)

We then went outside into Al'Taieu to farm organs to complete Trebla's Hyorin Obi, since he was fairly close to completing it. In doing so, we also got the organs I needed to complete my Karin Obi. :D

And finally, all that ENM, farming and whatnot let me complete something I've been working on for a while now...

84 base INT ftw. :D Now to work on maxing out Elemental and Enfeebling skill! This weekend really goes to show just how much can be done if people really set their minds to things. ^^

A disgruntled taru.

2007-06-03T11:43:00.000+08:00

I'm well aware that I haven't written anything for just over a month now. It's not that I've completely ceased playing, I haven't. However, my time spent online has taken a drastic cut. Gone are the free-wheeling days where I could log in everyday and burn a good chunk of time in Vana'diel.

My current occupation only gives me some 36 hours a week to do my own things, and with this change of environment, said free hours have grown to be very precious.

Which begs the question, just what has Tuuf been doing in-game, anyway? To be honest, I'm not sure myself. Nothing substantial, nothing that I feel worthy enough to write a blog post about. I've just been slowly chipping away at working on my Black Mage, picking up the occasional merit point here and there, and I've since funneled the proceeds from my Noble's Tunic into a Mahatma Slops and Prism Cape.

In terms of purchasable BLM gear, I just need to pick up HQ versions of the various pieces, and get myself a Sorcerer's Ring, although without access to any Zenith gear, the Ring doesn't look mighty tasty at the moment.

But anyway, I digress.

I was doing my usual rounds of people's blogs, when I came across this entry, entitled "On CoP" by Frohike.

His words strike home to me. Admittedly, I do not know much about Frohike, being on a different server, so all I know comes from his blog and his comments. What I do know is that in his real life at least, he is happily married (at least, I certainly hope he is! :D) with a baby son to take care of. As he explains in his entry,

I'm faced with a choice when I stare at the Playonline screen: do I want to spend the 2.5 to 3 hours of free time that I have tonight playing an MMO? And "spending" that time is really what I do. It has a cost, consisting exactly of what I could be doing rather than carrying out a virtual life in Vana'diel.

In the brief span of time between my kids' bedtime and my own, I could read one of the slew of books I've deceived myself into thinking I actually have the time to read. I could watch a good film with an appreciation that can't really be achieved during the kids' waking hours. I could continue to hone my writing, or finish the odd number of poems I began years ago. I could have a meaningful, uninterrupted conversation with my wife. Hell, maybe I could play something other than FFXI for a change.

What I think some of the other adults playing FFXI don't understand is the impact of this trade-off. We can't just come home from work, put in a few hours, log out, and go do something else in RL. Those few hours are it for some of us.

What Frohike writes echos my current real life quite well. With not a lot of time to do my own things, the opportunity cost of logging in increases. At the risk of sounding /emo, my one (and a half) days that I have a week need to be divided amongst all my responsibilities, my family, my friends and relationships both online and offline.

But when you only have (okay, for practical purposes) one day a week, how do you spend it? The question that faces me each time I log in is, "what can I accomplish now?"

I fully sympathise with those struggling to maintain their packed RL schedules on top of FF. I know a common complaint about FF is its time-consuming nature, and that has become even more apparent to me lately with my limited time. Suffice to say, with the clock ticking, I'd rather not spend my time sitting in my Mog House looking for a group, or staring in front of an empty screen camping some NM. Thus, I've just been soloing, making little progressions here and there on my own.

Sadly, for the most part, these little progressions are just that- little. An ENM here, some solo there, farming organs or crafting materials, and that's it for the week.

Oftentimes, I find myself wondering what all this is for now. I only log in four days a month (if even that), and I've seen people level up and overtake me, and subsequently, outperform me because they are able to participate in endgame activities while I am not.

It's good that SE is moving away from massive timesinks like the original Dynamis areas onto something that's more friendly for those with tight schedules. But how much of FF's timesink nature is inherent within its basic idea that everything should be done in a group environment?

For now though, the news of increased merit capacities have got me interested in pursuing the two jobs I love the most thus far, BLM and RDM. The real question though is how much can I really hope to get done on my own, and should I just ditch everything and start anew with a different job instead, or even a different game?

/sigh

Shattering Stars- WHM

2007-04-29T17:22:00.000+08:00

I decided to quit WHM, this time for good. Not that I have anything against WHM- after all, it was my first serious job, and I took it all the way to WHM62 before switching over to BLM. It's just that with three mage jobs, one of them was bound to eventually get the boot, and in this case, it just so happened to be WHM.

Literally everything I get called for calls for me to come on either my RDM or BLM. My WHM? Maybe the occasional Raise III here and there. Either way, I have very rarely used my WHM for anything since I actually hit WHM75.

Quitting WHM and selling off all my gear would free up a lot of the money that I have stored in gear, but also free up my Mog Locker which I need if I am to pursue other jobs (seeing as how I'm very pressed for space at this time). Just today, I went on a merit party with my WHM, and I was so out of practice, I made up my mind there and then that it was time to move on.

However, before I go ahead and quit WHM for good, there was one last thing I wanted to do:

Beat Maat. Again.

See, in the very, very, very rare instance that I actually level up all my jobs to 66+ and am able to obtain Maat's Cap (yeah, right!), the last thing I'd want to have to do is to revisit all my jobs again, repurchase gear, etc. just to fight Maat.

The WHM Maat fight is primarily won through endurance. I wasn't quite sure what exactly the alternate win conditions were, although supposedly it hovers around just being able to survive five minutes, or healing yourself for a certain amount. In either case, after farming Goblin Alchemists up in Cape Terrigan for about half an hour, my first attempt was a flop, mostly because I had no idea what to expect. Maat was hitting me quite hard (about 100 damage/hit), and the jig was up when he Combo'ed me for the kill.

Some more extra reading into the fight gave me the idea of damage mitigation instead. Thankfully, such items for WHM are very cheap, and so, armed with this extra knowledge, I went to the AH and picked up a few items, giving me the following gear setup:

Food: Shallops Tropicale

Main: Terra's Staff
Ammo: Fortune Egg
Head: Healer's Cap
Neck: Memento Muffler
Ear1: Insomnia Earring
Ear2: Medicine Earring
Body: Noble's Tunic
Hand: Blessed Mitts
Ring: Phalanx Ring
Ring: Medicine Ring
Back: Aurora Mantle
Waist: Hierarch Belt
Legs: Healer's Pantaloons
Feet: Healer's Duckbills

The rationale was to maximise VIT, DEF and damage reduction, which explains most of the choices I made. Of particular note is the Medicine Earring, whose -30% damage reduction triggers upon <50% hp. Combined with the Terra's Staff, it's a straight 50% damage reduced.

Note that I kept this setup even when casting Cure spells (i.e. with a Terra's Staff). I figured that the extra +Cure potency from the Medicine Ring and Noble's Tunic would make up for the loss from not equipping my Apollo's Staff.

This particular setup worked very well for me. I only needed to use one Yagudo Drink to last the entire fight, and although it was cutting things close, I still had Benediction available should the need arise. Essentially, all I did was tank Maat and lasted him out with a combination of enfeebles (Slow and Paralyze are very important!), Regen IIIs, cures and Flashes.

For the record, my battle log says I cured myself for a grand total of exactly 3000hp. I'm not sure how accurate this is as far as alternate win conditions go, although admittedly the number is strangely, well, round.

With that, I finally drew my WHM career to a close. I promptly sold off my gear, and am waiting to decide what my next move will be. Chances are, it might involve that Red mage's testimony that's been sitting in my Mog Safe for some time now...

More sea farming...

2007-04-24T14:15:00.000+08:00

It's been about 5-6 weeks since my last entry. As promised, I haven't quit the game (obviously), but to those still active in-game, you would have noticed that my playtime has been drastically cut. ; ;

What little time I've been able to squeeze out of my playtime thus far has been towards upgrading my Black Mage some more, for reasons I briefly detailed out in my last entry.

To be quite frank, my BLM gear leaves quite a bit to be desired, particularly for someone slowly gearing up for (light) endgame activities such as myself. Last time around, I worked on getting my Rairin and Hyorin Obis, as well as my Relaxing Earring. Now, I decided to work on another Obi- Anrin.

The Anrin (Dark) Obi requires seven Aern Organs, which proved to be even more of a pain than say, ten Phaubo organs. Part of this is because of the low drop rate, part of it is because the damn Aerns reraise, part of it is because the damn Aerns link with one another. -_-

Admittedly, I could have farmed the Aerns outside in Al'Taieu, but I figured I might as well get some xp for my troubles, so I decided to take on the Eo'Aerns inside the Grand Palace of Hu'Xzoi instead. The advantage is that all the Aerns here are VT, reaping 240-300 base xp/kill, but all the Aerns here also have a chance of dropping the HQ organs, needed to pop Ix'MNK.

I camped in the western room from the entrance- the start point of the escourt for CoP 8-2. Frankly speaking, either the western or eastern rooms would work, but I preferred the western one, since the Aerns that spawn in the western room are either WHM, BLM, DRK, RNG or WAR. Three of the jobs are Aspirable, while the RNG has (noticeably) lower HP, which is a lot easier for me to handle solo, than say, DRGs.

Things get tricky when links occur, although a quick Sleepga followed by a dash back to the entrance of the Grand Palace easily fixes that. The problem is that because all four Aerns roam across the entire hall, it can be quite trying to safely kill an Aern without any of the other three linking. Especially when it Reraises.

Reraises are more of a time sink than anything since although you get xp for the first kill, nothing will drop. The problem is, you're out of mana so ou finish it off with a dance of Sleep II, resting and nukes while you can. All while trying to avoid links again. However, the main problem I had with Reraises was that it threw off the respawn timer making it difficult to predict when to expect the next Aern to pop. A solo BLM can just about clear all four Aerns within the respawn timeframe, but with Reraises thrown into the mix, it gets difficult to anticipate.

In any case, as I mentioned, the droprate is terrible. In the time it took me to get my seven Aern organs, I had racked up some 40,000 limit points. -_-

Of course, in a rare occurance, stuff like the above happens, but I only saw a double drop like that occur once. >_< Fortunately, I have three HQ Aern organs for my troubles. My next step would be to get the squid organs and tissues (I only got one T_T) and see if I can find people to help me out with Ix'MNK. ^^

{/goodbye} again. -_-

2007-03-16T01:48:00.000+08:00

I understand it's been nearly a month since my last entry. It's not that I haven't been playing- I have been, but rather, the writer's bug hasn't bitten me, or nothing significant has happened that has made me want to write.

Two rl friends are back in the game, and are currently working on what will hopefully be a BLU75 and SAM75. On my side, I've been focusing on my BLM, given that we plan on working together as a casual-ish endgame LS of sorts, and I'm probably going to be the resident BLM around.

Thus, the sea farming. I finally got around to getting my Ice and Thunder Obis, as well as my Relaxing Earring, and I have to say, those organs were a pain to get. I actually solo'ed some 30,000xp just trying to get those organs, if that was any indication. >_<

Fortunately, all you have to think is "organs first, xp is a bonus," and things become a lot easier to stomach. It's actually easy to solo in sea as a BLM once you're used to things- not as good xp as, say, Puddings, but remember, organs first, yeah? ^^

I've also made some recent discoveries including finding out the convenience of having a PLD tank around as Seraphpdh and I duo'ed a few Euvhis, simply by him standing in the middle, covering me while I had 15 seconds or so of nuke heaven to kill the offending flower/spider/pot/whatever. It was fun. :)

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to take another extended break now. Unlike my last break, where I planned on quitting for good, this time I'm not planning on quitting, but also cannot say when I will be back. I know it will probably be at least six more weeks before I get back, and even then, I will not be able to play with any real frequency.

All I can say is "we shall see how things turn out." Wish me all the best of luck!

Dynamis-Xarcabard Interloper

2007-02-22T14:56:00.000+08:00

Okay, so I haven't been updating much. That's not to say that I haven't been playing- although I think the picture from the last post should've illustrated that point clear enough. ^^ It's just that I haven't really done anything significant enough to write about.

Sure, I could write about how I've been meriting some more, gotten 3/5 Yigit pieces, including my plan for "Breaking Morale," but with the way the FF community at large has gone on, this information is readily available elsewhere, and really, I think I might actually be quite behind on the curve. >_<

But at least this is something I can write about:

It sure took me long enough, but I finally saw the Dynamis Lord go down, and got the spiffy "Dynamis-Xarcabard Interloper" to add to the collection of titles.

Explorer II went in with 44 people, with the main objective being the Dynamis Lord. I actually didn't really want to come along for the run, but Kitsume eventually convinced me to go along, if only just to help kill the Dynamis Lord. My relationship with Explorer II is not as strong as it used to be, thanks to me moving back to the opposite end of the planet (thus, dreadful times for our runs) and my "quitting" led Lostman to delete all records of my points with no backups.

So suffice to say, there's not much I have left with that linkshell. -_-

Likewise, I wasn't terribly happy joining the run. After all, I just lost all my points, and would lose another four hours worth of sleep on top of that just by attending (I've griped about the ridiculous amount of time Dynamis takes on several occasions). As you can tell, I ended up going anyway, although I was tired, sleepy, and very, very cranky.

The journey up towards Castle Zvahl Baileys was rather uneventful, sans me accidentally MPK'ing the entire mage alliance when I accidentally stepped too close to the "Wall of Eyes." It was pretty much standard fare, although I did notice that we picked up a few tricks, such as time-nuking said Wall of Eyes down by just nuking an eye one-by-one. That way, the accompanying Demons will spawn, but will not aggro if done correctly, and is a quick, painless way of getting past them.

Of course, until I MPK'ed the alliance. But enough of that.

In other news, we went 0/15 on the Xarcabard NMs (as usual), although we did pick up yet another Summoner's Horn (/wave Nivaud) en route to Castle Zvahl.

Fast forward a little bit more, we have all ten dragons down, and dispatched Ying and Yang flawlessly by whittling both down to more bite-sized HP chunks before dispatching both of them with a volley of Blizzaga IIIs. It went so smoothly, even the same BLM's Blizzaga dealt the killing blow to both dragons, and before long, we were sitting outside the entrance rearranging in preparation for the showdown against the Dynamis Lord.

We had seven RDM/DRKs to Chainspell-Stun the Dynamis Lord, with a generous amount of MNKs and BLMs for damage. An obligatory THF for Treasure Hunter, a few Rangers for the "Ranger death combo" and a few support mages to round it all up.

Unlike my last attempt against the Dynamis Lord, we fought on the slopes leading up to the entrance, rather than on the very bottom. A Ranger would pull via Shadowbind, and run past everybody, where the first group of RDMs would then hold the DL in place while everybody else unleashes hell's fury not seen since the Snoll Tzar.

For some reason, this fight went incredibly smoothly. I didn't see any Oblivion Smashes, nor did the DL get to make his clones, in fact, he just...stayed there (Chainstun, d'uh). It actually went by so smoothly, only one RDM died, and we were left scratching our heads as to why we had so much difficulty with the fight previously.

But in any case, it was a very nice, clean victory. Congratulations everybody! :D

On an unrelated note, you may notice the rather turquoise squares that dot the landscape in the picture above- something's happened to my graphics card, I think. I'm not sure exactly what, but removing and reinstalling the device doesn't fix things. It could very well be the FFXI files itself, but I don't think that's the case since some other games on my computer (e.g. POP:T2T) also show minor graphic errors, although nothing as major as this.

Does anyone have any ideas? ; ;

I haven't quit either!

2007-02-15T03:22:00.000+08:00

...I've just been preoccupied with other things!

*CHOMP!*

Dawn.

2007-02-01T18:35:00.001+08:00

OMG, The Empyreal Paradox!

OMG, I'm finally done with CoP!

Despite the majority of us at TrueRune being unable to organise anything cohesive together, when things click, they click.

Since TrueRune attained Al'Taieu access all the way back in June, it has taken us about seven and a half months for us to finally get together and complete the last chapter of CoP.

Of course, we completed that last chapter in two weekends. >_<

Anyway, the TrueRune "static" at this point basically consisted of just myself, Chummy, Akanea and Saoirse. Seraphpdh had gone on to completing CoP while I had "quit" the game, and Tumble had also left the game.

We tried looking up our friendlists to see if anyone was willing to help us with 8-2 and 8-3, but the sheer length of the missions was a major turnoff for everybody.

Except one.

Enter Saintjust.

Like myself, a {Tarutaru}{White Mage}, he also needed to complete CoP from 8-2 onwards, and we quickly picked him up for 8-2. Figuring since we were only going to do 8-2 at that point in time and it was only escourting a bunch of Quasilumins around the Palace, we just went with the five of us,

NIN, SAM, BLM, RDM, WHM.

I came RDM/BLM, since I figured we needed to shore up a little on our offensive power, but boy I should've come /WHM instead, or at least BLM/WHM. While the mobs weren't exactly spamming status effects, there was enough Silence to make things irritating, and everytime Akanea and Chummy skillchained to make Dark, I wish I were BLM so that my MB would actually, y'know, finish off the mob instead of leave it at like, 10% health.

Of course, I corrected that for 8-3 and came BLM/WHM. Blade: Ku → Tachi: Gekko for Darkness, MB 2x Blizzard IV/Freeze II for the kill!

I have to admit, although 8-2 and 8-3 did take as long as most people said they would (roughly 3 hours each) they weren't nearly as hard as I thought they might've been. In fact, I felt they were rather easy, with the only tricky bit being dodging spinning pots (of which, I am not joking when I say we were initially incapable of sneaking past. -_-)

I shant really go into the details of 8-2 and 8-3, other than the fact that by the time we were done with 8-3, everybody in the party finally managed to get that spinning pot thing worked out, except for those in the Garden that spin really quickly against you. I don't think we ever managed to sneak past one of those. >_<

One of the reasons why we took so long though was our insistence that we get the map for both places, which as you can tell, isn't exactly the quickest of things to do. Speaking to Quasilumins from all over the Palace of Hu'Zxoi was bad enough, especially one that had to be done in the middle of an escourt, although I guess it strengthened our resolve a bit when it came to getting the map of Ru'Hmet, which involves climbing all five towers.

Fortunately, actually climbing said towers is rather quick and painless, and easily done with a few Sleeps/Binds here and there.

As the five of us were getting the Quasilumin from the last of the five towers, Fishura decided to come along, and from there, the party became 6,

NIN, SAM, RDM, WHM, BLM, BLM.

When it came to the gauntlet, we ended up just saccing to it while Fishura took the "easier" way through, having already completed CoP himself, and the final pots BC wasn't nearly as hard as we thought it might be. Of course, I guess when you have two BLMs, the pots go down quicker than normal.

Blade: Ku → Tachi: Gekko for Darkness, MB Blizzard IV + Freeze II killed one BLM pot.
Meikyo Shisui → solo Fragmentation, MB Thunder IV + Burst II killed the other BLM pot.

As the usual strategy goes, we wiped by the south door, reraised, rested to full recovery, slept one of the last remaining RDM pots, went all out on the other (toss in a Benediction), and the last was a piece of cake. Pots done!

After the last supposedly "hard" BC was over and done with, it was almost as if an unspoken revelation swept over us- we were very nearly done with CoP.

All that was left to do was the fight against Promathia himself in the coolest BC zone in the game- the Empyreal Paradox.

Of course, we weren't really sure what to expect. We heard he wasn't all that difficult, but we were in a funky setup with no medicines or supplies. Fortunately, Fishura assured us we could take him down easily, and so we just went straight into the Empyreal Paradox and comfronted the big P himself.

And yeah, he went down pretty easily, too. ^^

I have to admit, the Empyreal Paradox was every bit as spectacular as I thought it would be, and finally being in there myself after hearing other people tell me about how cool it is and seeing other people's screenshots, was really satisfying for me.

I kind of wish Promathia were much much harder than what he is- the way the fight goes right now, it is practically an anti-climax to the whole CoP, given some of the other fights you've had to go through along the way to get to this point.

Still, it's a ridiculously fun fight though, with a lot of running around, kiting, and watching NPCs own other NPCs (Prishe ftw!).

That, and you can Raise Prishe! No weakness, either! XD

It had been a long road, but it's finally over. I'm done with CoP. Congratulations, TrueRune. ^^

That, and I finally have my Tamas Ring. :)

Of course, now with CoP over and done with, I wonder what I'll do next...

But on an interesting note, Saintjust apparently had a bit of a starstruck moment as we were doing 8-2. It seems I'm more well known than I thought- he took screenshots of him doing CoP with me, and showed them off to his friend...

Tuufless's ego rises 0.1 points. XD

16-24 Bludgeon, Blastbomb, more spells, xp!

2007-01-28T21:49:00.001+08:00

Warning: Very long post!

Thus far, I've enjoyed BLU quite a bit, and someday, I worry that my THF subjob will eventually get left behind in the dust as I focus more and more on BLU itself.

I like the solo playstyle thus far- I haven't really had any pressing need to go xp, given that much of the xp I get comes from, well, actually trying to get my spells in the first place, so other than the odd streak here and there, I haven't really thought to myself "hey, y'know, it's time to get a party."

In any case, I leveled up from BLU16 all the way to BLU20 so far. There are several stories to tell, so I'll separate them into their appropriate sections:

Getting Bludgeon:
Bludgeon is one of the more powerful spells a BLU can use in the earlier levels due to its high damage output. I have to admit, before ToAU, I didn’t really know this mob TP move even existed, probably because nobody fights Cardians on any regular basis (except maybe for the various Windurst missions.)

In any case, after completing the Level 16 set of spells (Sheep Song, Healing Breeze, Helldive) I decided to move on and start working on collecting the Level 18 set of spells (Cursed Sphere, Blastbomb, Bludgeon). Off the three, I felt Bludgeon’s the most important, and so set out to get that one first.

Everybody knows that Cardians are found inside the Horutoto Ruins, but just where inside the Horutoto Ruins are they?

This is probably basic knowledge to anyone from Windurst at least, but the Horutoto Ruins is a series of disconnected areas. There are six entrances throughout the Sarutabaruta region that leads to a part of the Horutoto Ruins, and as you might suspect, none of them are connected to one another from the inside.

After getting Myoha, who was leveling his RDM20 to come help me locate the Cardians, we eventually found it tucked in a section of the Horutoto Ruins leading up to the Windurst 6-1 mission, entered from the Southwest tower of West Sarutabaruta.

The Cardians found in this section of the Horutoto Ruins start at the “Too weak” Two-series, and scale upwards. For me, a BLU16, the Four-series were DC, the Five-series were T, and I stopped looking once I hit the IT Six-series.

The good thing about Cardians is that they have a grand total of two TP moves- Deal Out, and Bludgeon, so actually getting the Cardian to use Bludgeon (so you can learn it) is very easy. The only problem I could think of is that Cardians, being Arcana, aggro to both Sound and Magic, and they link as well. The rooms are a little cramped though, but fortunately, Myoha could pull with Silence (to avoid links due to other mobs pathing into the first mob while it’s casting), so we went by with no links whatsoever.

It only took three Cardians (who Bludgeon’ed) for me to learn it myself. ^^

Then, it was onto the next spell...

Getting Blastbomb:
Blastbomb was the "Level 18 spell" that worried me the most. Part of that is because, like Dhalmel, Orcish Warmachines have quite a number of various TP moves, although slightly less than a Dhalmel. That wasn't really my main concern though- the problem was just where to find Orcish Warmachines plentiful enough to keep on killing them. It's one thing to have to hope for the correct TP move, it's another thing when there is only one or two copies of the mob around!

Fortunately, I found a spot in Fort Ghelsba that had five Orcish Flamethrowers for me to try and get Blastbomb off.

As a BLU16 though, the Flamethrowers all checked Tough. The problem was that I needed to clear the surrounding area of Orcs which would link with the Flamethrower once I pull. In addition, all the orcs were EP-DC, so I'd still risk aggro, thus needing me to clear the place out before engaging the Flamethrower.

It took a while, and in fact, I dinged BLU17 in the process of clearing all the Orcs out. After I had cleared a section, I'd then rest to full, buff up, and engage the Orcish Flamethrower. I killed a few without successfully learning Blastbomb, and things got dicey once in a while when I'd accidentally get a link on me.

For the record, Orcish Flamethrowers have an 8-minute repop timer.

I died here once, conveniently after my scroll of Reraise wore, so I had to troop all the way back here again. However, since xp wasn't my main priority, I stopped by the Ru'Lude Gardens, and contacted my NPC Fellow, Yufafa, set her to "Healer" mode, and we were off!

Having a helping hand made it easier, to the point where we could venture further into Fort Ghelsba, where I found even more Flamethrowers awaiting. This led to me wandering up and down the following route:

Flamethrowers are marked in red crosses, and I went up and down the darker red path.

Thankfully, after figuring out this path to follow, my Blastbomb was not much longer. ^^

Getting Cursed Sphere:
Cursed Sphere was the last of the "Level 18" spells, and I already had plans on how to get it. The obvious way would be to join a Dunes party and learn it off the Damselflies. As a BLU17, I would be on the upper range of the flies, and sooner or later, I'd learn it.

Unfortunately, that meant actually joining a Valurm Dunes party, which is probably akin to having your eyeballs spooned out by a pack of...nevermind

Anyway, no dunes for me.

Instead, I headed over to the outpost in the Meriphataud Mountains, where there are plenty of Crane Flies around. All the flies here conned Tough to me, which meant I could solo them, and lo and behold, I learnt Cursed Sphere off the very first fly. ^^

On a side note, because I was not yet Level 20, I couldn't ride a chocobo out yet. It had been a very, very long time since I last walked the Sauromugue Champaign. ^^;

Solo leveling & getting Blood Drain:
Since I was in the Meriphataud Mountains as a BLU17 and had all the spells until 20, it was time for me to xp!

Once again, I could’ve xp’ed in the Dunes. But why pull your teeth out when you can solo Worms instead? ^^

Seeing as how I was just in the adjacent zone, I decided to walk down to the Tahrongi Canyon, and from there, hit the Maze of Shakrami. All the Maze Makers still conned Tough to me, and using more or less the same tactic I’ve been doing thus far, I found I could comfortably kill two Worms (getting Chain #1) before having to rest.

Thankfully, nobody else was in the Maze at the time soloing, so I had free reign to all the Maze Makers, and kills were netting me anything between 140xp and 200xp. I tried seeing if I could conserve my mana so that I had enough for Chain #2, which I did once- I killed a third worm for Chain #2, but that left me with exactly 0MP and 4HP with a Rasp on. Not good news. -_-

Eventually, I leveled all the way up to BLU19 here alone in fairly short order. I know solo’ing is sometimes a pain, and I can’t stand leveling up my THF solo, but when everything you fight is T, it kinda feels like a Dunes party anyway. Once I hit BLU19, a few Maze Makers started checking Decent Challenge.

It was time to start thinking about the two Level 20 spells: Blood Drain and Claw Cyclone.

Chances are, the developers over at SE were thinking of somewhere else to get Blood Drain from. Giant Bats use Blood Drain, which pointed at the various Combats flying around the Maze of Shakrami. Most of them conned VT to me, but to my delight, I noticed that a few of them actually conned T!

Of course, that meant that they were “high-T” so I’d go in fully buffed and engage them like I do everything else. I’m pretty sure that Blood Drain isn’t the only TP move the Giant Bats have, but the first one I engaged used it, but I didn’t learn the spell. However, I got it on the second Bat. ^^

After that, I warped back to try and get my last “Level-20 spell”- Claw Cyclone

Getting Claw Cyclone:
I didn’t really bother looking up Tigers when it came to Claw Cyclone- I knew the weakest ones would be in the Jugner Forest, so I just headed straight there myself after bumming a Teleport-Holla off a friend.

You can imagine my dismay when the first Tiger I came across checked as “Incredibly Tough.” -_-

A quick look online also revealed that the Jugner Forest tigers are the weakest in Vana'diel, too. ; ;

Thankfully, the tigers here were like the Combats back in the Maze of Shakrami- I just got unlucky with one on the high end, and I found some Tough Tigers just a little bit further into the Jugner Forest. Thankfully, it only took two Tigers to learn Claw Cyclone- both of them used it. Seeing as how I went /WAR at the time though, looking back, I'm quite glad neither Tiger used Roar- I wouldn't know what I'd do then. >_<

Getting Poison Breath:
I got help from Motoka, a friend of Lostman's- I actually didn't remember her at first, when we played, we were busy farming Sacrarium for Subligars, and since it was a Japanese party, that's how I remembered her.

In any case, I was shouting in Aht Urhgan Whitegate for a Teleport-Dem so I could head down to Gusgen Mines to learn Poison Breath from the Bandersnatches there, and Motoka replied. Only thing is, she replied in English, so I hadn't the foggiest idea who she was. >_<

So then she reminded me, and the ever-recognisable Japanese "^^" gave it away. That at least set some things straight. >_<

Anyway, Myoha and I went down to Gusgen to try and duo Ghouls and Bandersnatches. Theoretically, I thought we'd pwn down here, since both Head Butt and Bludgeon are classified under Blunt damage, which skeletons are weak to. Unfortunately, I underestimated Undead's low HP aggro.

We killed one Ghoul with no problems, but the second Ghoul brought me down to yellow HP. That got the attention of a BLM Ghoul, and an Aeroga later, I died. :(

Fortunately, Motoka came to the rescue again- after I homepointed, I asked if she could give me another teleport. Not only did she give me that, but she also offered to help get me Poison Breath!

We basically ran around the "circuit" on the top floor of Gusgen Mines- there are a number of Bandersnatches along the way, but actually getting them to use Poison Breath was bad enough. Eventually though, they gave in, and I think after about 30 minutes of running around or so, I finally got that spell.

Getting Soporific:
Initially, I was planning on heading down one of my past Carpenter's Landing camps and connin...er, convincing an xp party to level off the flytraps there. Unfortunately, a quick check of the area revealed that the flytraps are slightly higher level than the Diving Beetles and Shriekers which make up the usual xp mobs, so a party there didn't really look very enticing, particularly if people aren't used to combatting Sleepga effects.

As I was looking around for people I could possibly duo with, I noticed another Blue Mage looking for a party. I asked if he had gotten Soporific yet- he hadn't. I then proposed we go and duo flytraps to try and learn the spell. As it turns out, the flytraps in Carpenter's Landing in the area directly connected to Northern San d'Oria were all DC-EM to us, which was just perfect. There weren't too many flytraps, maybe four or so, but on a five-minute repop, there wasn't all that much waiting around to be had.

Unfortunately, Soporific also turned out to be one of those spells that's just a pain to learn. Flytraps don't have that many TP moves, but for some reason, we just could not seem to learn that darn spell. Of course, with two BLUs at it, it would only be a matter of time, in this case, about 45 minutes or so?

The good part about trying to learn Soporific here is that you are also right next to some EP-DC Land Pugils, which brings me onto...

Getting Screwdriver:
...Screwdriver.

After both of us learnt Soporific, we turned our focus towards trying to get this spell even though at the time, we were only BLU22 and Screwdriver only becomes active at BLU26. Unfortunately, as seems to be the trend, we didn't learn it in the end, despite seeing it a few times amongst whatever Land Pugils we killed.

Thankfully, at least Screwdriver shouldn't be too difficult to get, after all- I could just join a few xp parties that fight Greater Pugils and I would've certainly learnt Screwdriver by the time we were done, right?? :P

Luckily, I was then invited to a 22-24 party. Not knowing where to go because Yuhtunga Jungle was packed, I offered Korroloka Tunnel. I felt 24 was too high for the Greater Pugils in Qufim Island, and the Pugils in Korroloka Tunnel are just one level range higher than their Qufim cousins. Alas, the Pugils did not pop as often as I thought they did in Korroloka. Instead, we were relegated to fighting Clippers, which meant that I wasn't going to learn Screwdriver anytime soon. -_-

Sure enough, by the end of the party, I still hadn't learnt Screwdriver. /sigh

After looking mobs up again, I discovered that the Pugils in the Valkurm Dunes would be just the right level for me to solo- all EM-T mobs. Unfortunately, as practically anyone can tell you, you don't really want to go fight Pugils in the Dunes, particularly if you're solo- there are simply too many parties there to reliably grab a reliable supply for yourself.

Fortunately, there's the other Valkurm Dunes, the one that nobody uses- Buburimu Peninsula.

After chocoboing there from Windurst, I was happy to find that the Pugils were the level range I expected they would be. I brought along my Signal Pearl as well, so Yufafa got to join in the action, and we duo'ed some more Pugils.

The problems of this camp soon became apparent, and now I know more reasons why an xp party really shouldn't go here. Again, for references sake, I camped at the beaches near the Song Runes. At night, Bogys spawn too close to the shore, and I actually had to deal with two Tough mobs simultaneously, something which I'm sure I couldn't have done without Yufafa around. >_<

When it rains, it turns out that a Water Elemental also spawns close to camp, and alas, that one killed me. :(

But not before I learnt Screwdriver from one of the Pugils! /joy

BLU in parties:
As you might've been able to tell, I got a lot of solo and duo xp thus far in my BLU career. I'm not sure why, but BLU lends itself very nicely to soloing, particularly at the lower levels, and I had the pleasure of seeing two BLUs in action, effectively stunlocking whatever mob we were fighting, thanks to the fast cooldown on Head Butt (which even damages the mob!)

So other than silly things like soloing a Chain #4 in Korroloka Tunnel, or duoing Chain #5, I have in fact gotten into a few xp parties over this period of time.

The first was when I was BLU19. It wasn't long before I got an invite to a Japanese Level 19 party, and when the dust settled, we were going off as NIN NIN THF BLU RDM BLM. Originally, our plan was to hit the Diving Beetles down at the Sauromugue Champaign, but we forgot to /check the area before heading out and alas, we soon found that the camp was taken.

So Land Worms it was.

Qufim was packed, as always. Parties with powerlevels were rampant (as seems to be the norm these days -_-) and to be honest, it wasn't terribly fun competing with another party for Land Worm pops around the pond.

It was around now that my router also decided to give up on me, and I kept disconnecting, but not before I reached BLU20, before d/c'ing and not coming back.

One thing that I did notice though, was the flexibility BLU had within a party. Because the core of our frontline was more or less the NIN NIN THF, I came /WHM. However, I needed to tweak my spell set seeing as how I probably wouldn't need Cocoon, Metallic Body or Pollen. Given that I would still be in the frontline though, I opted to set Healing Breeze as an option, just in case. Also, it took me a while to recall that I had subbed /WHM, and so could Barstonra- Worms got slightly easier after that. ^^

The other party I had was the abovementioned Korroloka Tunnel party off Clippers and Greater Pugils. Unfortunately, this party was a letdown of sorts. The setup was pretty decent- NIN THF BLU BLU BLM BRD. However, the majority of the party members were 24, close to 25 while at the time, I was still BLU22.

If there's one thing I've noticed about why BLU solos or duos so well is because against T-low VT mobs, you can land your spells reliably, in particular Head Butt. Against IT mobs, on the other hand, particularly ones where I'm on the low end of the party level range, a lot of my spells had no effect on the mob. In addition, a lot of my spells just didn't do anything- Bludgeon would on more than one occasion deal a grand total of 0 damage on a mob.

Of course, I suppose things will change once subbing THF for Sneak Attack comes into play, although another question I need to ask myself is what exactly am I supposed to do? I keep thinking to take advantage of low cast and recast timers, which basically means "spam spells," but as we know spell spammage gives the mob a lot of TP, I'm wondering if I should just be regular melee, chipping in the occasional Head Butt here and there.

I've never actually played a DD melee role (I focus on tanking as NIN and RNG is well, ranged :P) so I really only have my RNG experience to compare things against when it comes to damage against IT xp mobs. Of course, coming from RNG, I'm not terribly happy about my BLU damage, so I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

The other issue is that a lot of the "excitement" from BLU comes from learning your spells. However, my solo'ing Tough mobs to learn said spells, you also get a decent chunk of your tnl bar filled up doing so. I remember dinging then heading off to try and learn Cursed Sphere and so on- by the time I got all my spells, I was about half way to the next level, which was very nice.

Of course, this mechanic will change later on, simply because I will no longer be able to learn spells solo, and the total tnl between levels is too great to really expect me to have made significant progress on my xp bar while trying to learn a spell (and if it took me that long to learn a spell, I would've probably torn my hair out long before that. -_-)

...In any case, as seems to be the trend, I've burnt myself out on BLU already. Maybe someday I'll get the urge again. ^^;

BLU13-16, Healing Breeze

2007-01-20T00:46:00.001+08:00

One of the things that has been holding me back from leveling my BLU earlier is that, occasionally, you have a bit of a “roadblock” spell- one that you just cannot seem to learn in any effective manner.

For me, that particular spell was Healing Breeze.

The last time I tried, I tried solo’ing the Wild Dhalmel up in the Tahrongi Canyon in an attempt to learn Healing Breeze as a BLU12, but a few deaths later, I eventually gave up with that pursuit.

If memory serves me correctly, I then randomly tried leveling BLU up some more, hitting BLU13 in a Dunes party before the Dunes did to me what it usually does- turn me off leveling up yet another lowbie job.

I resigned myself to killing EP and DC mobs to level up enough so that I could eventually solo the Dhalmel (all of which were Tough mobs to me at this point) myself, until Coejus offered to help me get Healing Breeze.

His method was simple, and something which he claimed he used to help a lot of his friends learn Healing Breeze as well- as a RDM75, round up about six Wild Dhalmel, then spam Diaga over and over, giving each Dhalmel some TP in the hopes that they’d use Healing Breeze. If you paid enough attention, you can then kill said Dhalmel. If your BLU friend didn’t learn Healing Breeze, well, you still have the other five Dhalmels to go.

The problems with Dhalmel though, are twofold- first off, they have a grand total of six possible TP moves (Cold Stare, Berserk, Stomping, Sonic Wave, Whistle and Healing Breeze), so you’re already stuck hoping that the Dhalmel you fight does the correct move. Then, of course, you have the ever-present problem of actually learning the spell after said Dhalmel has been dispatched.

So basically, Coejus rounded up a herd of Dhalmel and started spamming Diaga. However, because of the large number of TP moves, it often became the case that the Dhalmels would die from the DoT without ever actually using Healing Breeze! Of the twenty or so Dhalmel that we rounded up and killed this way, I think only four _ever_ used Healing Breeze. Of course, I didn’t get to learn Healing Breeze off any of them.

I think Gorokai/Nivaud understands my frustrations when he said:

…when it came to Healing Breeze I was killing Dhalmels for 6.5 hours. I lost track of how many I killed after 200…Healing Breeze was THE WORST spell to learn.

In the end, I just decided to try and solo a Dhalmel myself, normally, for xp. I figured I’d get used to solo’ing in the meantime and just chance that a Dhalmel would use Healing Breeze. After all, I was only BLU13 at the time- I still had three levels to go before I could actually use it. For references sake, I was camping by the zone to the Meriphataud Mountains, due to the abundance of Wild Dhalmel within short distance.

It was then that I discovered how absurbly powerful BLU can be sometimes. Each Dhalmel was T, giving me I think between 120-180xp/kill. Most jobs won’t really be able to solo T mobs at this stage, at least, not without meds, but I was doing just fine.

Not only that, but really comfortably as well.

I think Maiev is correct when she said Head Butt is probably the best BLU spell. First off, it’s a very reliable Stun, only missing on occasion. But the things that make it shine are its low level requirement (BLU12), fast cast time, fast recast time (10 seconds!), and as if that wasn’t enough, it does damage, too!

Basically, I found out that, by the time I got through my initial sequence of spells: Sprout Smack, Head Butt, Feather Storm, Wild Oats, Head Butt, the Wild Dhalmel would practically be at half life, and I’d still be relatively untouched. Even then, Head Butt’s short recast meant that I’d keep the Dhalmel stunned quite a lot of the time, and I’d oftentimes emerge victorious with plenty of HP to spare.

Something I also accidentally chanced upon is that by having both Sprout Smack and Wild Oats active, I gained the job trait Beast Killer. Guess what kind of mob Dhalmels fall under? ^^ Between intimidation and Head Butt, solo’ing T Dhalmels really went by a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Only problem still was actually learning Healing Breeze.

Well, it took a while. Three levels worth of xp, in fact. Yes, I actually dinged BLU16 before actually learning Healing Breeze. It took that long. >_<

On the bright side, I then went 1/1 on Sheep Song. ^^

Back to Blue Mage. ^^

2007-01-19T19:59:00.001+08:00

I've gone through a lot of different jobs over the past two weeks for one reason or another- as someone said to me, "Every time I search for you, you're on a different job."

Thinking back, that's quite true- in the last two weeks, I've xp'ed as a BLM, WHM, RDM, THF, WAR, RNG, SMN and BLU- practically every job I have except NIN.

In that, I came to a few decisions- I sold my Ranger gear after plugging things with arrows just lost its appeal, and Summoner, as pretty as it is, still doesn't excite me in terms of actually playing it, so my Evoker's AF goes back onto a mannequin for now.

What has captured my latest interest (as you might be able to tell), is Blue Mage.

I'm not exactly sure what it is that intrigues me so. Maybe it's trying to realise Maiev's idea of how a Blue Mage should work. Personally, I like what Maiev's written up, so I decided to give it a shot, hence why I started leveling THF up on the side as well.

Part of it is because it's a nice mix between mage and melee, something to fill in my "melee" slot, yet be "mage-y" enough to suit my playstyle. Part of it's because of the solo appeal, when I don't feel like blowing things up with my Black Mage. Part of it's because it still feels that there is a lot about Blue Mage that people haven't really ingrained yet, which is quite probably the main reason why.

See, despite my being around since ToAU's launch, I still have no idea what to do with a BLU in my party. Sure, I've partied with a few before, but the ones I have partied with failed to really impress upon me that "this is what the job can offer." Maiev's guide showing how BLU can go DD, to the point where he outparses most "traditional" DD jobs is a direction that I could take, and it would help to at least give the community a better idea of what a BLU can do, because frankly speaking, I'm still very much clueless.

I remember when ToAU was about to come out and SE revealed the BLU mechanics, it held promise of being the most versatile class so far. The good news is that the promise of versatility at least, so far, is true. BLUs can fill in practically any position in a party, from healer, to DD to tank. However, this versatility also bites it in the back, as most BLUs don't seem to really push themselves, leaving me with a party member that makes me think, "well, now what do I do with this guy?"

Admittedly, partying with Madmartigan back on my NIN when I was doing a Campsitarus run did open my eyes to some of what a BLU can offer- in particular, BLU/WAR is a very nice complement to a NIN, being able to either off-tank with Cocoon, or aiding with Utsusemi: Ichi by stunning the mob via Head Butt.

Last, but not least, the name of the job is "Blue Mage." After having completed the "mage trinity," SE just had to go make a fourth "mage" job for me to level. How typical. :P

In any case, since I've upgraded to the new blogger, I've seen slowly taking advantage of the categorization feature via labels that say, Wordpress offers their users. In doing so, I've noticed that my posts regarding my other jobs are few and far in between, so I've decided to try and change that with BLU.

Yep, I'll go in detail what I did as a Blue Mage, and hopefully, everybody will gain a better understanding of what the job can do. I'm of course, open to ideas and opinions of other BLUs and non-BLUs alike! ^^

Resolve...

2007-01-19T19:46:00.001+08:00

I know I've gone through the age-old debate about "what to max, what to max" and for the longest time, my focus seemed to have jumped in between Black Mage and Red Mage.

However, given certain changes of events, I think I'll settle down and go ahead with the original plan: Black Mage.

This is for a number of reasons, mostly personal. For one, I have my Sorcerer's Petasos. ^^ (That's always a good start, by the way. :P) However, in order to really maximise out my Red Mage, I'd need the corresponding Duelist's Chapeau.

There is a catch though. I can no longer go to Dynamis on a regular basis. Like I said, I needed a four month break to set things straight in real life, and frankly speaking, I no longer have the time to dedicate a four-hour stretch to a Dynamis read, yet alone one that starts and ends in the wee hours of the morning. It's a little unfortunate that I never got to complete the Sorcerer's set, missing the Coat in particular, so if anything, I'll probably just join in on Explorer II's "earlier" runs and hope to complete it that way.

At least the hard one's done, thank goodness.

But more importantly, I know I've been called to help on my Black Mage quite a lot, whether it be for random NMs, missions, KS fights or whatnot. In addition, I've taken to soloing in Mount Zhayolm, and boosting my BLM would be beneficial in this respect, not to mention the various Ebony Pudding parties I've hosted over the past couple of days.

As such, I've been meriting quite a lot. I've already noted that I've completed my BLM's Group 1 merits, and have since unlocked Level 1 Freeze II and Burst II. I'd go about getting the others, but I feel the other categories are more important for now, namely my Elemental Magic skill, which I've pushed up to Level 3.

I still don't quite know how I'm going to divine my Elemental and Enfeebling merits. Currently, it's sitting at 3 to Elemental and 2 to Enfeebling, but I haven't decided if I want to go 5-3, 4-4 or 8-0.

See, the problem is, I'm missing a few key pieces of gear here and there that, while I can certainly do without, still bothers me a little bit. Namely, an Uggalepih Pendant, a Sorcerer's Ring, but more importantly, a pair of Zenith Mitts. Like I said, I don't think I can dedicate the time to go to sky, so it looks like I'm out of luck there.

Right now, I'm aiming to complete a set of Yigit for some resting gear, although I certainly haven't been taking Asault seriously. It's nice to do once in a while, but the drive is no longer in me for some reason. Right now, if I were to use up the four passes I have stored up, for example, I'd complete my Yigit Turban, but oh well.

Maybe I'm just getting complacent. ^^ In any case, I've also recieved news that I will have to take another extended break from the game in about two months time, which has really put the crimp on my plans. Oh well, we'll see how things go from there. ^^

Brygid the Stylist...Returns!

2007-01-11T09:26:00.001+08:00

Since I had cleared the Sacrarium leg of CoP, I had always wanted a Glamor Jupon for my own. For one, it's a very good piece of gear for RDM50, at least for the 8 levels you can wear it until your Warlock's Tabard.

Personally, since I'm past the 50s with my Red Mage, I just wanted it to keep in Storage with the rest of my 50-cap gear, for when I farm Pyrodrakes in Riverne Site #B-01 for Giant Scales when I go to Monarch Linn.

Unfortunately, as many can tell you, actually getting a Subligar nowadays is pretty difficult.

Heck, it might be just me, but without a linkshell, and with all my friends in their own respective linkshells, it's difficult to try and get enough people to come along. Fortunately, Lostman randomly sent me a tell wondering if I was interested in picking up some Subligar, and of course, I replied yes. ^^

He and his group were actually there for THF Subligar, and several copies of it, too. However, because the majority of the THF mobs spawns along the top half of Sacririum, and the RDMs along the bottom half, we literally ran around and around in circles (yes, navigating the maze that many times, too!) killing all the THF and RDM mobs along the way.

The drop rate on the Subligar...leaves much to be desired. But eventually (~2 hours), our first Subligar dropped, and it was the RDM Subligar!

As it turns out, that was the only relevant Subligar that dropped for us that entire night. :( We didn't get any THF subligar, although ended up with a BLM subligar after killing off some Fomor aggro in a freak occurance.

In any case, the obligatory panty shot! :D

Spiffy panties in hand, I went down to see Brygid regarding what new ideas she's got in her head. The workings of her mind leave much to be answered, and evidently, she felt that the way to go would be a Frost Robe and Slops.

The Frost Robe, at least was easy. I just went to Jeuno and picked up a Frost Robe 5k.

But the pair of slops?? None on the AH. Nadda. Zip. Nil.

Oh, sure, Bastok had a pair, but the person there listed it for over 21k, and there was no way I was going to pay 20+k for something only worth 8k at the Jeuno AH! >_< href="http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/133/5715/640/0901%20Fashion%20Disaster.jpg">

/sulk.

In any case, I could put up with the humiliation for a little bit. After all, she _does_ have the Glamor Jupon that I want, so I didn't exactly have much choice. After seeing me in her "genius" (I personally fail to see where), she asked me to pick a garment from her collection. I naturally chose the Glamor Jupon, to which she asked that I bring her a Scorpius Subligar.

Thankfully, I remembered it, and I gave it to her, elicting this response,

"The aroma?!"

What kind of warped Hume girl goes around sniffing panties?! Ewww, I knew there was something wrong with them Bastokans! >_<

And now for something completely different...

2007-01-08T12:08:00.000+08:00

Completely unrelated to what I've been up to in FFXI, I stumbled across this video yesterday.

Coincidentally, Mark Leung and I actually used to go to the same school together (before he went onto Babson College- he's one year my junior), and it's rather interesting to see what mischief he's been up to since then.

Of course, I'm not sure whether to grin at what he's come up with, or smack my forehead in embarrassment instead. ^^

Nice seeing you, Mark. ^^

The four part series can be found here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Or you can watch them all at once.

P.S: If it wasn't obvious enough, he too used to play FFXI at some point, but on another server as I.

Decisions, decisions.

2007-01-08T12:02:00.000+08:00

I find it difficult to find things to write about nowadays. Daily ongoings and the occasional accomplishment just doesn’t really have that kick in it anymore for me to really write about.

In short, in this past week, I dragged some friends from both in and outside TrueRune, and we, with a PLD we picked up on the way, went down to the Quicksand Caves to kill the NM I needed to unlock Savage Blade. I’m not really sure what to think about the whole thing- the feeling of splitting up the group into different parties, knowing that the success of the whole depended on each individual party was kinda neat, but it did make actually getting to the NM a complete pain.

In any case, Savage Taru!

/em gets the Papillions ready! ^^

I find myself in a bit of a rut, which is rather ironic given that I’ve only been back for two weeks or so. Once again, the syndrome of leveling multiple jobs has caught up to me, and right now, I have squeezed in between Storage, my Mog Locker and Mog Safe (and my inventory), gear for my RDM, BLM, WHM, but also more specific gear like 40 and 50-cap gear for my RDM, as well as gear for my RNG, THF and WAR.

As you might suspect, I’m quite out of space. >_<

Incidentally, I’m also quite out of money, too. It just happened so suddenly- when I came back, thanks to welcome back donations and Celestria paying me to synth up her Elemental Ores, I was hovering around the 500k mark for some time. However, the RNG bug bit, and many gear purchases later, and some other impulsive purchases, I find myself with a whopping 50k from which to live on.

I don’t think I’ve been this poor since…I don’t actually remember. >_<

Anyway, those are my two main dilemmas. I’m not actually quite what made me suddenly pick up the bow again. Perhaps it’s the “oh-so-cute” look Tarus have when in RNG AF that I always wanted, although if my SMN was any indication of how things might go, I’d probably just complete the AF set and plonk it on a Mannequin for goodness-knows-how-long.

Right now, the idea of leveling up BLU is appealing to me. To that end, I took up leveling THF, which currently sits at a rather humble THF12. I’m not exactly sure what it is about BLU that interests me so, other than, of course, AF, but the mage-melee mixture is certainly intriguing. Too bad I hear BLU doesn’t exactly get much in terms of invites, probably because most people (myself included) don’t really know what role a BLU fulfils.

Maybe I ought to just resell all my RNG gear and focus on THF for the time being. It’ll do both my Mog Safe and my wallet some good. But then…RNG AF… >_<

...and a Happy New Year!

2006-12-31T08:59:00.000+08:00

Heh, just barely one week after my return, I've already managed to burn myself out. At least it wasn't all for nought, and I'm glad to see this as fruits of my labour:

Yes, I've finally gotten around to completing my BLM's Group 1 merits. About time too, I suppose.

When I came back, I found myself with Level 1 Ice potency, and a sole merit point to my name. Raising my Ice potency to Level 5 would take another 13 merit points, or 130,000xp, which I got this past week.

I don't think I've ever xp'ed this intensely before- it must be the senses kicking in to make up for lost time or something. Quite literally, when I wasn't in a merit party, I was solo'ing on my BLM, although the more scary part is that I only partied three times during the course of this past week.

It all started out by my dragging a group of people down to the Nyzul Isle to test out the new Greater Colibri camp I heard about. Suffice to say, I kept coming back here as friends kept getting back to me, saying that they, too, wanted to try this camp out after hearing my positive feedback.

Seriously, for something as squishy as Colibri, they chain for 200xp/kill ultimately yielding much better xp than say, Sea Puks. With the correct setup, they practically go down just as quick, too. I was quite surprised at how easy it was to get a pretty good 9-10k/hr rate down here, just sticking to Chain #5s, but another party with some friends from TK completely blew me away. We barely partied for two hours that day, but managed to clock an amazing 18.4k/hr rate in our time there. Definitely something I wouldn't mind again. ^^

Anyway, that should be enough promoting for now. :P

Ultimately though, I had to ask myself just what I wanted to put my merits towards. By now, I'd come to terms with settling down as both BLM and RDM as "my main jobs", and would treat it as such. The only problem is which to merit first.

In the end, despite the fact that ultimately, I think I'd prefer to be thought of as a RDM, I ended up putting my points into BLM instead. Part of it's because I always felt that I should at least finish my Group 1 merits (that, and Blizzard IV's my favourite nuke). Part of it's because I felt I needed to pull my socks up and at least try to close the (noticably large) gap between me and some of my BLM friends. Part of it's because, well, if I wanted to merit RDM, what would I merit first?

At least BLM's Group 1 merits are easy- I personally haven't heard of anyone doing anything other than Level 5 Ice and Thunder potency. But RDM is an entirely different story altogether. Heck, what Group 2 merits do I put for RDM? If anything, I'd prefer to just sit back and wait things out a little more before committing my points to RDM merits, simply because I feel it would be better to further define what my RDM will do in-game before meriting appropriately.

Part of that consideration is HNM. Admittedly, Kaeko's livejournal has gotten my interest, since a lot of it deals with actual strategy, which I particularly dig. I guess this is why I like CoP so much, since when I mean strategy, I mean more than just "throw 36 people at Tiamat + adds". Kaeko (and TK) break down a fight into several different aspects, taking advantage of each in order to maximise their efficiency, and secure a win, which I definitely approve of.

You can see it in my comments about the Airship battle or Divine Might. I like these batles, not because they are cool (although there is that), but because just throwing yourselves in there isn't going to do you any good. In order to come out successful, you need a predetermined plan in mind.

But anyway, should I ever join an HNMLS, I would have to take the other RDM's merits into account, and then maybe we could co-ordinate something together. Of course, I'm still just as wary about joining the HNM lifestyle, particularly with rl picking up, but it's still nice to muse about every once in a while. ^^

In any case, BLM Group 1 merits, complete.

Yes, and about time too.

Have a happy new year, everyone! ^^

Merry Christmasu, everyone!

2006-12-25T17:24:00.000+08:00

Blatantly taken from Calcula's comic,

In other words, {I'm back!}

And what better time, too. Merry Christmasu, everybody! ^^

I would like a Dalmatica.

2006-12-19T11:31:00.001+08:00

I would like a Dalmatica.

I'll be frank about it. Before the release of the Morrigan's Coat, I always wanted a Dalmatica.

However, the idea of staring at a screen for up to three hours, hoping to get a lucky claim just for the chance of getting the drop, doesn't bode well with me, not to mention having to deal with perpetual competition and the ensuing drama.

To some, that is the cost of obtaining said Dalmatica, although really, as Russta put it, it sure looks like a way of aesthetically saying "I've stood in a zone longer than you."

Frankly, I didn't want to deal with all of that, so no Dalmatica for me. I can live with that.

Doesn't stop me from wanting one, though. ^^

My problem with FFXI's system of gear acquisition, for the most part, is that the old system, for god gear, Dynamis drops, and so on, was very binary- either it dropped, or it did not.

Of course, you can make the connection that more attempts = more drops, which is only fair. However, can we really say that a linkshell standing in Dragon's Aery, with more people mashing their Provoke/Dia/Flash/whatnot macros every 30 minutes means more claims than another?

What about those long streaks of "no-drop" days?

Harkening back to Dynamis, I believe it took Explorer II over a year before we saw a Duelist's Chapeau drop for us. But can you really make the argument that we "progressed" towards getting a Chapeau on the days where none dropped? In the meantime, other linkshells were happily getting their Chapeaus with no real issues whatsoever. Is that, for lack of a better word, "fair?"

People like challenges, however, people also like to see progress within that challenge. It is for that reason that I like the various sea gear (Brutal Earring, Loquacious Earring, Relaxing Earring, and so on) and Assault. While a run doesn't give you that coveted piece of gear, it at least gets you quantifiably closer. You are 6 ancient coins closer to completing that earring, or you are 600 points closer to redeeming that piece of gear. Compare and contrast to say, gods, where if it didn't drop, it was "too bad," "FU, SE!" and end of story.

(On a side note, grammar-nazis out there: just what is the correct use of punctuation for the above?)

I really would like a combination of the two systems. Make multiple, associated ways of obtaining gear. By "associated," I mean being able to work on both routes with a single event.

Right now, the Morrigan's Cuffs and Zenith Mitts are competition for one another (assuming all you're after is the MAB+5). People who want a Cuffs won't want to help out with Mitts and vice versa. Another way of putting it is that progress on Mitts doesn't affect the Cuffs. That doesn't really work at all.

On the other hand, (using Dynamis as an example) if you've already got all the gear you want from Dynamis-Jeuno, why should you sit around conceivably wasting your time, instead of perhaps making some progress towards your Dynamis-Beaucedine gear?

What if, (again, using Dynamis as an example) mobs could drop AF2, but you could also exchange a large number of ancient currency for AF2 pieces? That way, everybody would have progressed a little bit further towards getting their AF2. At the same time, gear could drop, so you still enter Dynamis with eager eyes, waiting for that drop to come. So in the end, if the piece of gear drops, great! If not, at least you can logoff knowing that you are at least closer to your goal than before.

I know the above paragraphs will probably draw fire from the crowd that says "You should be there to help others!" Pigs fly and angels sing, but unfortunately, things don't work that way. People ultimately want to get something out of their time committed to an event. If that satisfaction comes from seeing another person get their gear, fantastic. Unfortunately, there is little else other than that.

Of course, there might have to be some other minor adjustments, like making all currency EX to prevent gilbuyers from simply buying their AF, but hopefully you recognise the intention behind such a system.

I still would like a Dalmatica regardless. Now if only there was a way to exchange "hours clocked camping Aspi/Fafnir" into "Dalmatica."

Idle lurking

2006-12-19T10:19:00.000+08:00

So, let me get this straight:

Nemain's Robe +
Bodb's Robe +
Macha's Coat +
10 Imperial Wootz Ingots +
10 Imperial Gold Coins

= The only (non-Dalmatica) way for RDM to get a Refresh effect on a body slot.

Aside from the fact that the Robe might look a little bit...odd when coupled with the almighty Chapeau, I'm generally happy that this new piece of gear is around.

Emphasis on the "generally."

I won't go into further debate as to whether Morrigan's Robe or Dalmatica is so-called, "better." Personally, as a Taru RDM, I have an abundance of MP and a shortage of MND, so I would personally prefer the Morrigan's over a Dalmatica.

Really though, I just want to have an Auto-Refresh effect on my gear that lets me wear my Chapeau. :3

The pressing question on my mind however, is just how difficult will this be to get?

If anything, the three pre-requisite gear looks to be drops from Salvage, which seems to be ToAU's version of Limbus. I'm rather happy that Salvage, like Limbus, is an alliance affair (read: not basic Dynamis), and hopefully, completing the Morrigan's Robe will be a challenge.

That's right. I don't want the Robe to be easily accessible.

Take a look at the Walahra Turban. In exchange for 1,000 Imperial Bronze Coins, you have an unrivaled 5% Haste. It's a very nice piece of gear, admittedly, and put the 'ol Panther Mask +1 to shame.

Unfortunately, it was because it just cost 1,000 coins to get (not like people don't xp in the ToAU zones), that now, everybody has a turban, and really, there's little excuse not to have one if you have a job at 75.

Basically, the Turban is a "compulsory" piece of gear.

Trying to balance out player demand and supply for gear is always a tricky business, particularly if said gear offers something unparalleled or unique. In the Turban's case, 5% Haste was the most haste you could get from a Head slot, and with it being so easy to obtain, everything else (*cough* Panther Mask +1 *cough*) bit the dust.

I have similar fears with the new gear that was released this update.

Given the description of Salvage, it doesn't look like the new gear will be easy to assemble, so at least that's one worry down. However, it doesn't really address one other concern that I have from the new gear:

It almost renders "older" gear obsolete.

From a marketing perspective, I can see why they're pushing ToAU gear. After all, they want more and more of their player base to pick up their new content. However, notice a lot of the new ToAU gear is so good, it quite possibly challenges god gear in terms of quality.

I may be wrong in saying that, after all, I'm not familiar enough with god gear drops to make such a statement with certainty. But for example, notice that a Morrigan's Cuffs already makes the Zenith Mitts look rather tame, unless you really want that extra +25MP from Zenith *cough* Galka *cough*.

However, it's also interesting to note that (perhaps quite by coincidence) mages still have a reason to go after Genbu, as the Zenith Mitts +1 outclasses the Cuffs in the +MAB department. Not that we're likely to see any Zenith Mitts +1 anytime soon, but the point is that there's still that possibility to keep Genbu breathing (albeit, in a rather twisted sense.)

The problem with continually pushing gear upwards is that, after some time, your in-game mobs, whether they be normal mobs or HNM get easier since they generally don't improve themselves, or so to speak.

The other issue is that no matter how much gear is around, only the very top tier actually matters. Adding more gear simply obsoletes others, and with little being done to spice up the older zones, I wonder what will become of them.

Look familiar?

2006-12-15T10:19:00.000+08:00

See title. ^^

rawr~

Two months later...

2006-10-27T11:23:00.000+08:00

They say that in art, one must know how to paint, how to mould clay, or how to wield the blade to create one’s latest piece. That being said, people often forget that one must also know when to stop, when said piece is finished and done.

There’s always something that can be improved on, something that tugs at you saying “this isn’t quite right!” After some time though, “fixing” things loses its point, and worse, you run the risk of making the piece look overworked.

It’s as if you tried too hard. Ever seen those girls on the street with overdone makeup? It’s like that. Less is more sometimes.

There are plenty of other places this idea can be applied to elsewhere in life, in work, in love. The trick is finding that spot of balance and harmony, and I’ve always tried to live up to that principle.

Anyway, I digress.

The point is, sometimes, it is just time to let go. I know my last two posts have contradicted one another, but as time goes on, I feel that maybe my FFXI career really is good and done.

Were there goals in-game that I wish I could’ve completed? Plenty. But given the vast world that is Vana’diel, trying to accomplish everything is too much.

My last post was inspired by a spark of inspiration, an idea that I thought held promise which I could develop. It sounded like such a good idea at the time, but when it came down to things and I did my research, alas, the signs were all “no-go.”

And “no-go” it was.

Given my capriciousness over the last couple months, I don’t really want to say for sure whether this will be my final goodbye, or whether I will ever return to Vana’diel. Things move on, and as the toils of real life throws more and more stuff at me (and believe me, life is throwing two very big monkey wrenches at me at the moment), I’ve come to realize that really, perhaps it’s time to just draw a close to this chapter and start working on the next.

You can probably guess from my tone that prospects of my return are rather bleak (*cough* emo *cough*), and should I never return, then so be it. I have fond memories of Vana’diel and really, that’s good enough for me.

I still read people’s blogs from time to time (although I really wish some of you would update more!). It’s nice to see how other people are doing, even though I am no longer part of the same experience.

In about three weeks, my Content ID will expire and if what SquareEnix says really is true, then Tuufless will be deleted, and things will finally have some closure.

On a final note, sometimes I can’t help but wonder what it was in-game that finally did it for me. Most of us have that one big goal that we look at and say, “When I get this done, I can quit the game, happy.” It’s funny that oftentimes you don’t really know what said goal actually is until you complete it. I, for example had big dreams of my own- solo Charybdis, get all the good gear from Assaults, complete CoP, explore all the kooky campsites across Vana’diel…

…But in the end? Maybe I should just have never gotten that hat. ^^

P.S: Oh, and as for that project I was working on? It’s finally completed to the point where I feel it is ready for public consumption. Check it out here.

One month later...

2006-09-24T19:58:00.000+08:00

Strawberrie said:
Celius's first rule of quitting states that if you tell even a single soul about it... you will return.

See you soon, Tuuf. :o

Oh gawd dammitaru, Celius. -_-

It's been a little over a month since I "officially" quit the game, and to be honest, I really thought I would be gone for good. I was planning on saving my gear, just in case I decided to come back, but changed my mind at the last minute and gave everything away to those who showed up at my "farewell" gathering, just so that I wouldn't come back.

After I did my "final" /logout somewhere in East Sarutabaruta, I went on to cancel my Content IDs and uninstall the game.

Yes, I was that determined to put this chapter in my life behind me. >_<

As Strawberrie put it, at the time, it probably was for the better. I had ust graduated from college, and since returning home, I had idled away 2+ months at home, playing FFXI and living off my dwindling savings, and basically being an all-around leech in the family. I was determined to put an end to that. Really.

And I suppose it worked. I got onto the jobhunting bandwagon, and am now interning at an advertising agency, as well as looking at a possible lecturing position over at one of our local polytechnics.

It's been kinda nice, but boy, I hate the working life. It could just be that I'm in the wrong department (I'm currently stationed in account servicing), but the workload is high and the hours are crazy.

9-to-5? Hah. Try 9-to-9. (Or even 9-to-11, as I did once. -_-)

That, and just sitting down at my desk felt so awfully draining. I barely even felt alive during the day (and I don't mean in the "I'm exhausted" sense), with little human interaction other than taking orders from my superiors. I need out. Sooner, rather than later.

I know those of you out there already working are probably snickering at me right now, seeing as how I can't take this kind of stuff, but in all honestly, I do not want to be stuck in this kind of life for any length of time. And so, I started thinking about other ways to go about things. What I could like doing.

Yeah...just what do I like doing??

I liked teaching, and I liked writing. That much, I guess should be obvious based on the three blogs that currently make up "The Bloggaru Network"-- I like taking my experiences and helping those who would find themselves in a similar situation. To explore this avenue, I decided to take something that I already knew and liked and running with that to just see what happens. Guess what I decided to use as a base. :P

I've already thought up plans on what I could try and do. I'm aware that over the course of this project, I may upset some people and step on some toes, but it's a risk I guess I'm going to have to take.

I don't know where this will go. I will have to ask plenty of questions, and seek plenty of answers. Hopefully I'll have everybody's support.

So if you just glazed through all of the above, don't worry. The big news is, I'm planning on returning sometime. Only as of right now, I can't say exactly when.

More to come soon, but the taru will be back! ^^

The End.

2006-08-15T10:19:00.000+08:00

I never thought the day would come, and it feels a little strange typing all this out, but I'm afraid the time has come to hang up the wand (or staves), and move on.

Yes, I'm quitting FFXI.

Nothing against the game or anyone, really- I've been rather fortunate in avoiding all the drama that comprises the endgame, just that, well, thoughts of leaving have been with me for a very long time, but now recent developments in my real life demand my attention. In short, it's time to move on.

Strange, isn't it? To leave behind a game, much less a video game that you've been involved in over the past two years (and four months). I can't say that I regret playing, after all, I got to meet many people, made a whole bunch of friends (although I'd really like to meet people irl ; ;) and went on to creating a player resource in Campsitarus as a means of "giving back" to the community.

This blog in particular, has chronicled Tuufless' progress from the time I was a lowly WHM55 on my first job, fighting my first Prime Avatar fight all the way to now. Within the some 190,000 words that make up this blog are my experiences and trials, information that I hoped would help others facing the same situations, information that I wanted to see used. I'm generally satisfied by the responses I've gathered so far, although I suppose at some point it might be a good idea to quickly go back and index all the useful posts, although it would probably be too rushed to actually be a half-decent guide.

The following picture summarizes my thoughts and feelings quite nicely. It's a little cheesy, I'll admit, but it gets the message across.

(Full-sized image can be found here)

To all my friends who I have met in game, Thank You. There are far too many of you to list out, so forgive me for not mentioning names, but you know who you are when I say that.

A group photo with everybody would be nice, but ultimately quite a pain to organise, not to mention that half the people you want to show up, don't, but to just abruptly leave without warning, giving people no chance to say their own farewells isn't particularly fair, so...^^

I will make it a point to log in again Friday night around 11PM EST (Saturday, 12 noon JST.) It'd be nice to see a bunch of people one last time, at, say, Windurst (where else?). Five days is ample warning, isn't it? ^^

============================

P.S: Several people have asked me about Campsitarus, so here's what's going on.

This blog, Shiny Things, and Campsitarus will remain up, since Blogger is (thankfully) a free host for this sort of stuff. ^^ However, Campsitarus will undergo some changes. I don't know how many of you noticed, but Campsitarus will be merging with the Vana'diel Atlas to create a new resource on the internet. At least, that's the plan. >_<

How not to win an ENM

2006-08-08T11:20:00.000+08:00

Completely out of the blue, I was reading the Killing Ifrit forums, when I stumbled across a thread under the Red Mage forums regarding soloing the Monarch Linn ENM, "Fire in the Sky."

As the strategy relies heavily on nuking, I went down to the local AH and rummaged through all my mules to pick up whatever Level-50 gear I could find that added INT. It wasn't too expensive, until I bought a pair of Sly Gauntlets for 650k, and now the total bill came up to be around 1 million. (Guess this ENM had better be worth it, huh. -_-)

I was feeling pretty confident about my chances against the Cluster Bomb in the ENM itself, but the problem was procuring the Giant Scale I needed to get to Monarch Linn, and solo at that too.

Fortunately, TrueRune happens to have a PLD74 who is fairly desperate when it comes to getting xp....heheh.

So I conned Seraphpdh into joining me on my suicide mission. He went down to the storage NPC to pick up his 50-cap gear, and the two of us set out to duo some Pyrodrakes in Riverne Site #B01!

Actually, I arrived there first, so I solo'ed the first Pyrodrake with a combination of Gravities, Binds, Water II and Sleep. It took a while (just under 15 minutes -_-), but a Convert later and some more nuking, it got the job done. No Giant Scale drop. ; ;

Fortunately, Seraph had arrived by then and we set out to duo another Pyrodrake, this time with DoT tactics involving kiting with Gravity and Bind, and DoTs (Bio II and Poison II). Killing the Pyrodrake now was a much more exciting affair, and slightly quicker, too. Strangely enough, not a single Bind got resisted, which kinda makes me happy. ^^ This time, the Giant Scale dropped, and we were off to Monarch Linn!

...That is, until I got lost and accidentally traded the Giant Scale to the Unstable Displacement to get onto that island at (G-7), and then walked out the other Unstable Displacement. >_<

So now we had to farm up another Giant Scale. -_-

Fortunately, it only took three more Pyrodrakes before the second Scale dropped, and with that, we headed over to Monarch Linn for real this time, picking up the ??? for a Rivernwort along the way (more xp!).

Inside Monarch Linn, we restd to full and then prepared to enter the ENM, which then led to the following exchange,

"Oops," indeed. >_<

Armed with nothing but a Warp Cudgel and a Goldsmith's Apron, our fearless duo went in to battle the Cluster Bomb anyway, and got surprisingly close to beating it, except that I didn't have all the +INT gear that would've been nice for victory, and I thought I could Water II, Chainspell, then Fire, and have the timer reset for a second Water II, which...wasn't the case. I should have Chainspell'ed from the start, but oh well. The bomb blew itself up much faster than I anticipated and we were blown out of the arena, Snoll Tzar style. Ah well. But with no xp loss, at least HP'ing back to Aht Urhgan was easy! :D

That, and I now know to come with 40-cap gear... -_-

The Circle of Life

2006-08-05T23:54:00.002+08:00

I was making my usual rounds through the various blogs when I came across Kirsteena's entry, lamentably entitled "Blm woes".

To summarize, the advent of ToAU and the very nature of the mobs now mean that TP spam parties are all the rage now. Practically everything from the mid-50s are taken apart by some combination of a BRD, a RDM, a WHM and three melees, generally /NIN. The unfortunate side effect of this is that I'm hearing cries from other players, like Kirsteena and Gorokai, trying to level up this once sought-after powerhouse job: BLM.

To put it succintly,

Skillchains have died. Spamming weapon skills is all the rage. I fear when we get the next batch of players, who have only really known spam parties, through to endgame. Their precious rampage is going to do squat on Gods, and we are going to have players with little skill coming through.

Sound familiar?

It wasn't too long ago that BLM parties were all the rage, and many a melee-party looking for a BLM to round off their party, was left behind in the dust as BLMs formed groups with one another for round after round after round of good 'ol manaburning (something which I was rather guilty of).

Interestingly enough, these very same complaints were voiced throughout the community. Disgruntled parties unable to get that elusive BLM so they can set off. People worrying about noob BLMs as their precious Freeze does squat versus Gods, or their Sleep II gets resisted time and time again. Or, even worse, BLMs who couldn't land a Magic Burst to save their life.

To a certain extent, all this did happen. Our justification for manaburning was that we were familiar enough with party dynamics that we could easily hold our own in a regular setup, which I still believe now. However, the same could not be said for everybody, and therein lies the faults of "BLM PT ONLY."

I know BLMs who manaburned their way to 75. I know some of them who couldn't perform any of the aforementioned basic functions of a BLM. I've heard the horror stories of a BLM opening a fight with Flare with a NIN tank, and those who still equip their Ice Staff on Wind nukes (and gets their MBs resisted too, although I suppose at the time, I would've been surprised at just the MB part alone.)

On the flip side, I've seen the search comments, comprised of "{Black Mage}{Party} Only," or something resembling those lines.

Interestingly enough, we're seeing the same things here, except with the roles reversed. "{Burn}{Party}Only" litters the search comments of many an lfg BRD75, and I remember coming across more "If you have DRG DRK PLD BLM SMN (etc.) in your party, don't invite me" type of comments than I really cared to count.

And then, of course, just like those who worried about the state of endgame Black-magery, there are those today that worry for the state of endgame melee. The cycle continues...

My favourite zone of all...

2006-08-02T17:12:00.000+08:00

The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah may be pretty, the The Ru'Aun Gardens, strangely tranquil. The Tavnazian Safehold has one of the better pieces of music in the game (in my opinion), with Gustaberg following closeby behind.

But my favourite zone of all? The Misareaux Coast and the Lufaise Meadows.

I can't quite describe just why I like the place so much, but I'm sure gorgeous scenery, nice music to just chill to, and flying dragons overhead have something to do with it. Granted, technically they're two zones, so if I had to pick one, I'd go for the Misareaux Coast simply be merit of the waterfall that lies outside the Sacrarium, which is unrivalled in anything else in Vana'diel.

Several months ago (back in February, to be exact), I scouted around Vana'diel in search of potential camps to explore as Campsitarus was picking up speed and I wanted new places to put in. At the time, Treasures of Aht Urhgan had not yet been released, but for some reason, barring the occasional merit party off Abraxas in the Lufaise Meadows, there was a complete dearth of xp parties in the Tavnazian Archipelago region.

And that made me a sad taru.

On a bit of an aside, I have to say that all things said and done, I think I prefer Chains of Promathia over Treasures of Aht Urhgan. Don't get me wrong, ToAU did a lot of good things- but it feels all-too detatched, and made things a little too easy for players. Talk about pampered xp parties, with Sanction Refresh, a 15% xp bonus, physically weak mobs, and even a teleportation service straight to camp! On the one hand, all this is great, but I think some of that, y'know, adventuring, and actually travelling to camp has been lost (along with people's strange disregard for an already overpopulated camp. -_-)

But I digress.

So I was wandering around the Lufaise Meadows and the Misareux Coast looking for ideas when I happened to come by a pair of Beastmasters leveling off the Bigclaws and Makara. Crabs and Pugs are no stranger to xp parties, and at the very worst, they're friendlier than say, Leshachikha and Leshies that I still don't believe I managed to convince a JP party to go to. I wandered around the water for a while, following its trail upstream, marking down any potential camps I saw, and lo and behold, it led up to the waterfall.

"This is somewhere I want to party someday." I thought to myself at the time, and I scurried off to make my entry.

Unfortunately, I couldn't quite test the spot out myself, which I demand out of the vast majority of the camps I post on Campsitarus, mostly because I didn't have any jobs of the correct level range. However, my static group with Strawberrie and co. finally got me to the point where I could concievably drag a party there, although Darya who had just rejoined Odin after running away to Remora (he would later learn the error of his ways!) did not have Tavnazian Archipelago access.

Fortunately, Darya happened to go to sleep early today, leaving just Vagus, Strawberrie, Ristin, and I to party. All four of us had access to the Archepelago, and even better, all of us were actually willing to go to the Archipelago Gears started to turn.

Some hunting around later, I catch Masasume (who had just returned to the game) off guard on his WHM38, and we pick up a Japanese PLD41 for the ride as well. With that, all of us were off to xp at the Misareaux Coast!

XP was a little strange there. I won't say it was the easiest xp I've gotten (the mobs aren't as squishy as say, Worker Crawlers in Yhoator), but it was enjoyable nonetheless. In between Strawberrie yelling at Vagus and I to line up so that the Paladin would not get hit by Chaos Roll, I was busy happily snapping away at us fighting mobs for Campsitarus. Sometimes, I get a really nice shot, that is just too big for use in the compilation. So, I decided to make another copy, one that placed less emphasis on the mob itself, and post it here:

Seriously, how could you not want to party there?!

I think we ended up partying a little longer than expected though. Some of us hit Level 42, which leaves Darya now trailing at WHM40, so I guess he'll have a bit of catching up to do. ^^ Vespermoo is also trying to catch up again, given his absence for the last few days, so with any luck, we'll be all back and storming whatever strange location I come up with before too long.

And if you're thinking of dragging a party down there yourself, here's the link to the Campsitarus entry!

Campsitarus- 100,000 hits!

2006-07-31T14:15:00.000+08:00

Almost exactly nine months ago, I first set up the groundworks of what would eventually become Campsitarus, my resource to all the various xp camps I had come across in my travels around Vana'diel.

Since then, the compilation has grown a lot bigger than I had originally intended, and with it, taking me (and several unknowing party members) off to various places around Vana'diel, including Purgonorgo Isle, Carpenter's Landing, the Lufaise Meadows (and I don't mean Abraxas), and the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah.

I've gotten linked from numerous linkshell forums around the internet, their websites, and other FFXI-related resources, including the Vana'diel Atlas. In addition, people have come to hear of the little Campsitarus blog through word of mouth, and through my blogging associates (listed on the right), eventually spanning across servers.

Today, Campsitarus will get its 100,000th visitor. (Well, technically in about four hours, but it's 2am here. -_-)

It's a milestone of sorts, really. I couldn't be happier that what started off as a little idea has flourished into something this big, and in doing so, it has rekindled some of the fun and wonder I found when I first picked this game up some two years ago.

To commemorate the occasion, I asked Strawberrie to see if she could doodle up something for me, and look at what she made! :D

I guess this means that as of now, my eyes are brown, and I seem to be missing a lot more teeth than when I first started, but hey, what would you expect from eating nothing but pie for a year and a half? ^^;

In any case, here's a big {Thank you.}! to Strawberrie for the picture! (You would've noticed I've modified and incorporated it into Campsitaru's new title bar.)

In addition, thank you to all the people on Odin, and from the other servers for their support, feedback, and encouragement. Believe it or not, I've screenshotted them all, and I really do like it when people drop a little note about the webbie. ^^

In particular, I have a number of people to thank- those on my immediate blogroll who took thr trouble to promote Campsitarus in its infancy over on their servers (and still do so now.)

On the Odin side, I have my various linkshells and groups to thank- TrueRune, and our little static (Akanea, Seraphpdh, Saoirse, Sheldan, Hiroaki), my current NIN static (Darya, Strawberrie, Vagus (who also informed me of a lot of new camps I missed), Ristin, Vespermoo), everybody on my Friend List who helped contribute to Campsitarus one way or another (too many to list out -_-), and of course, everybody who agreed on following me to camp, no matter how strange the location. :D

So, the next question then becomes "Now what?" Well, I've started discussions with the folks over at the Vana'diel Atlas (where I shamelessly peel all my maps from), and with a little bit of luck, something will come to fruition, even if it is just to get rid of all the clutter that's built up on the front page! :D

Once again, a big {Thank you.}{everyone}!

Sorcerer's Petasos!

2006-07-30T11:02:00.001+08:00

The highlight of my day can be summarized thusly,

One year, four months, and eighteen days after I first joined Explorer, I finally have my Sorcerer's Petasos!

Granted, it doesn't quite match the Wizard's Coat, which means that I'll probably have to start looking into getting a Sorcerer's Coat the next time I heard down to Dynamis-Beaucedine, but the hard one is finally over, although strange as it may sound, I have mixed feelings about it.

Of course I'm happy to have one of the best BLM hats in the game. Granted, it's not "ZOMG DAMAGE" like the Yigit Turban, or a Wizard's Petasos +1 to a lesser extent, but it has some very nice stats on it. In particular, the +10 to Elemental Skill is very good for reducing those pesky resists, but coupled with the Sorcerer's Coat, blows the Black Cloak out of the water.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel that maybe this should've gone to someone else, like Riot for example, who was next in line and is 4/5 on BLM AF2, I believe. The thing is- I rarely, if ever, play BLM anymore. I've said it multiple times, and with more and more of my activities focused on my RDM, I can't help but feel that perhaps this should've gone to someone else. But then again, not taking the hat when I'm finally first in line for it would've been a slap in the face of all the effort I put in over the past year or so to get to this.

But hey, Seraph told me to "wear it with pride" right after I got it, and that, I will. ^^

Now, the Duelist's Chapeau, on the other hand, has a hideously long line for that. I personally have no idea how long I'll have to wait before I get one of those, so I think I might just get around to picking up random pieces of RDM AF2 in the interim, while we (slowly) shorten the line, one hat at a time...