All 99

It's official, all jobs that are currently released are now 99.

This was the time that it happened.  It is done then ... again.

I'm now retired from FFXI.  Thanks again to all those that made the game fun and helped so much in getting me to where I was when I retired.

Duelist's Chapeau

MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!!!!

FINALLY MINE!!!!!

Dynamis is awesome now that I can solo/duo it on BST.

That is all...

1 Year

I was going to write one more message since it has been 1 year since my last post. The problem was is I was going to write it on my 1 year from canceling my accounts, but after rereading the post, that was actually October 31. Oh well...

So it has been 1 year since I left FFXI and basically a year since I left FFXIV. FFXI has changed so much since I left. The level cap is up at 95 now and so much of my gear would be total trash if I ever went back. It is really sad because I do honestly miss it. I have thought about going back just to level BST at my own pace but it feels like such a waste because I wouldn't have anyone to do it with and it isn't the most fun by yourself. Not to mention most of my time is now taken up by my girlfriend "not" moving in with me (yeah, she's moved in). Which means my life is no longer my own but everything I do has to be ok'd by her.

Anyways, I was going to try FFXIV some more because that game has changed so much now too but I just can't find the time to play it. They say by this time next year they will have FFXIV 2.0 rolled out and the game will be completely different and much more like FFXI than they originally anticipated. I'm ok with that because I enjoyed FFXI so much and it was really a great game that was balanced well with the grind and the fun stuff to do. The grind back in the day was tough, but still fun and not a terrible terrible time sink because you could still get some advancement every night. It was more difficult to get parties than it was to actually level up. FFXIV has been free to play for so long now that I'm debating sinking some time into playing it until they make it pay-to-play again which is supposed to be at the end of this month some time ... I think. After that, I will have to see how much time I have and how much I'm actually willing to spend and play FFXIV after the huge changes. Only time will tell.

Since no one will probably ever read this post, I will just say one more good luck in your endeavors to all of my old FFXI friends and I hope to see you again in some game in the future.
Treubond Out...

It Was A Good Run

It is official, after 8 years of playing FFXI I have finally retired. Treubond and Screamingeagle have officially been canceled on October 31, 2010, and I don't have any intentions of reactivating them. FFXI has changed so much and has become a big grind again to get to the highest levels and I don't want to have to do that again. I had to do that for my Maat's Cap and now that that elite piece of gear is only ok now I feel that SE has told me to move on ... so I did.

I am now playing FFXIV basically daily but not hardcore like I was FFXI. I have changed my name and only a few of my RL friends know my new name or server. If you read this and are curious let me know and I'll think about letting you know. :P

14 has been kinda fun so far, but nothing amazing. There are a lot of issues still and my BIGGEST complaint is the stupid Market Wards. I LOATHE MARKET WARDS!!! Let me say again, I LOATHE MARKET WARDS!!! It is just a place where people throw they're retainers and hope people see them and hope those people that see them actually want something on their retainer. Or if for example I want to buy some ore, I'm just as likely to find it in the leatherworking ward as I am the ward specifically for ore. The only difference is you get taxed 2% for selling items in the proper ward instead of 5% ... woo. Sunday night I literally spent HOURS looking for crap in the market wards and didn't find it. What a waste of time looking for stuff just to HOPE you find it there and sold at a reasonable price. It really irks me because it feels like a huge chore to find new gear or crafting items to make the gear I need. That is one big thing that I miss from FFXI, the auction house. It was a great way to have a centralized place to buy things that was organized into basically market wards. Now if they only figured out a way to incorporate an auction house into the market wards that would be just swell.

The other big thing that I'm really having issues with is searching and partying. There really is no way to search for someone, at all. And if you do know that they are online, you have no clue where they are. This also becomes a problem with partying because no one understands how to use the partying system because it is not intuitive. I watched a video of someone explaining how to use it, but that doesn't help anyone else because they don't know how to use it. It was nice to be able to just throw up your party flag in FFXI and add a comment if you wanted and people would know you want to do some sort of exping or partying. Knowing that partying is going to play a big role in getting your DoW and DoM jobs ranked up means they need to enhance this system or people are going to get to 20 or so and just get sick of it and quit. I'm starting to feel that way because it is quite a grind to even get to 15.

One more kind of annoying aspect of the game that I really don't understand how they didn't implement but I guess I can live without right now is sorting your inventory. STUPID!!! That is something that should have been thought of when they CREATED THE INVENTORY. Obviously they don't have people with any sort of foresight at SE or even knowledge of their previous games because I'm pretty sure there was a way to sort your inventory in FF1, yes, that says Final Fantasy 1.

I could keep going on little issues and annoying aspects of the game that shouldn't be too difficult to work out but hopefully most of these bugs and lack of functions will be fixed at the end of November or beginning of December when they do their big updates. Here's to hoping or I'm gonna have to find a new hobby...

FFXIV

The game is out and in my possession. It has been installed, updated, and registered.

Mazer Rackham at your service. For those that don't recognize the name, go read Ender's Game. Mazer is now rocking out with some good classes and I'm learning a ton about the game. I still need some insight into where I should be leveling and how I should be leveling but I'm making some progress none-the-less.

My favorite class so far has been Lancer. But I have to admit that Lancer is more fun with other class' abilities to attach to it. Like having Cure that I can use while on Lancer is nice because then I have a way to cure myself during a fight. Also, when I get PUG to rank 6 I can get Second Wind and have a basically free self cure every 60 seconds. Combining all of these jobs is so much fun its crazy. I really like how it is based right now but I have still yet to get into macros and seeing how gear swapping works too. Another thing is when I get my classes up higher I'll have more wiggle room with abilities and can cross over more which will make things REALLY fun.

I am not sure how the skill up tapering works though yet because I haven't really noticed a difference, just that as I rank up the mobs get easier and I get less skill points. It was nice teaming up with Disdain Kirai last night though because we were taking on some stronger mobs and getting really good skill ups. Duoing definitely seems like the way to go from about 6-10. We were doing Dodos near Camp Horizon (I think) at rank 8 and were doing pretty well once we figured out that Disdain should be tanking because he had the free self heal and the much higher physical level to mitigate the damage. Dodos were doing about 100-150 per hit on me but seemed like only about 100 at most on him. The other nice part is that they don't really have any devastating attacks just more of debufs like slow, blind, and sleep. Getting 250ish skill points on average from them is way better than getting 100 max on the lower level mobs I was killing before.

Hopefully tonight after singing I'll be able to get my PUG going and get to 6 then be able to swap back to my CON and LNC and get those to 10 for more abilities. After I get those out of the way I may swap to THM to see what I can get out of that. This is getting fun!

Abyssea

Two big updates for this week; Abyssea and Trials.

Abyssea:
I have now discovered that going from 75->80 can be done in about 5 hours if you do those 5 hours straight in a good Abyssea exp party. I went with HellsBells on Sunday and we were OWNING at getting exp. We had a very balanced group of mostly melee and then a few healers and 2 nukers. The first about 30 minutes was spent trying to get everyone accustomed to Abyssea and just people saying, "get mages to kill." Once we started figuring out things like no one should WS below 30% of the mob so mages could blow them up we started getting good chains going. After that we started doing more melee kills to bulk up the number of chests dropping since supposedly magic kills grant more time chests and more melee kills are just more chests. Then there was a point where our exp seemed to have just stopped getting any higher so we switched to WS kills which supposedly boosts your exp and cruor gain. By the time that my Internet decided to go out for the night (exactly 12:30AM) we were doing about 500-550 exp per kill. I was told the next day they had gotten up to 600 exp per kill and were just raking in the exp. It wasn't too bad considering the amount of exp that we were getting. I also would have left with about 90 minutes left but since I d/c'd in there my clock kept running. Great time and hopefully I'll be able to do it again on Sunday with them.

Trials:
Sadly I haven't had any luck getting my Lamprey Lord kills so my Radenotachi is still stuck at Attack +7 instead of damage +10 which would be a big boost. But with Screamineagle I have made some good progress on his sword. I finished off the Sabotender kills and am about halfway through the lizard kills on earth day/weather. With the sword I have now I have some damage+, delay-, vit+, and physical damage-5% which is amazing! After the lizard kills I will only get 2 more damage I think which is still nice because I think it is now the highest damage sword I have on Screamineagle.

Other:
On a side note, DaFunk has officially broken and repearled under a new format. DF will now be an event based shell with a slight focus on HNM, mainly Behemoth. That is kind of sad for me because that means that no one is camping Aspid anymore which means I may have to pay to finish off my Black Belt. On the plus side though, they will be completely splitting the bank based on points. With this split I should be getting about 4M gil which I can spend however I see fit which basically means it'll be going into my "fund my Morrigan Robe" stash. With that 4M I can pay for close to half of the robe too since Imperial Wootz Ingots have dropped so much in price (was 640k, but back up to 800k).

I did kill Adamantoise yesterday too which was kind of fun. It was Treu, Screamin, and Vanderbilt on his 80WHM. You wouldn't have guessed it but that 80 WHM helped A TON!!! Without his being able to Repose the birds we would've been destroyed. I had Screamin tanking with his fancy Hauteclaire-2 and myself on RDM which was nuking and refreshing and failing at sleeping the birds. It was a ton of fun and I got the title for Screamin and Vandy, so that was cool. It made me realize that getting my jobs to 80 really does mean a lot though because those 5 levels make a huge difference, especially when it comes to HNMs.

That's it for now. Maybe another update coming next week for all of my 0 readers anymore. haha

Lots of Updates

There's so much to talk about and so little time because I'm so busy at work so I'll just try to do some short blurbs between me doing work.

Level Cap:
Yup, level cap was pushed up to 80. So far I've been hearing that being 80 is making some things easier (and necessary in Walk of Echos) like doing Salvage or killing some HNMs. I don't really think there were any game breakers being 80 though. Some nice boosts were sekkanoki on other jobs making WAR a big powerhouse again, convert while /RDM, phalanx for PLD at 77, and that's all that really jumps out at me. There were some new job traits and abilites that came out but again, nothing game breaking.

Abyssea:
I have yet to do this but I did just buy it. I am excited to get into it though because I hear that the exp in there is really pimp, like 50k in 90 minutes. The other thing is people are saying that skill ups are more easily come by in there. Then the items that drop in there are pretty nice. Threw bomblet is really nice because of the STR+2 and ATT+10 which blows everything else away. Goading belt is the big item I want from there because of more haste and Store TP which is amazing for SAM. Plus the high damage weapon items needed for Magian items drop in here which means I have to go in here if I want the uber damage weapon for any job.

Magian:
This has been pretty nice because it takes little effort each night to camp these pretty easy NMs or killing random mobs during certain conditions. For Treubond I now have a GK that is a little worse than Hagun but once I finish some of these VNMs I will have a GK that is better than Hagun. As for Screamineagle, I really only use him on PLD or on rare occasion MNK so I decided to do the earth based sword for him. This sword will be better than Hauteclaire once I finish it, but he will have to be an 80 PLD to use it. Once I finish the trial I'm on now it will be a Physical Dmg -2% sword with some VIT on it which is big pimpin considering he doesn't really have anything else for tanking.

So that's about it for now. The game has gotten a little more interesting with some new gear sets and how to gear up my jobs but I'm still at a point where I don't see myself getting any post 75 gear because there is still a lot of syncing down to 75 for exp or trials. Anyways, I'll try to update again when I have something more to say. :P

Macha's Coat

Hark, what is that? I do believe a 2 35 drop in salvage. And ... and what's that I hear, a 35 Morrigan body drop?!?! Wait, there's more, to whom did it drop??? TO TREUBOND?!?!?! ZOMG!!!!!!!!! Oh, and the 35 Morrigan Head went to Nappysan.

And yes, this was a very old post that I never finished. So I'm just going to post it and say that since I got Macha's Coat I haven't really done any Salvage but I do now have my Z Card to pop my 15 body piece.

FFXI?

What is this FFXI that people talk about? I seem to remember this game, but what is it?

I kid I kid, I joke I joke. Seriously though, I have logged on 4 times since the server merger about a month ago. Once was the day after and I did some fun VNM stuff and then 2 times for dynamis and then once more just sitting there in game while I was watching a Cavs game. Honestly since starting my new workout, P90X, I have had very little time to play and what time I would have had I was dedicating to FFXIII.

FFXIII has been a really sweet game and a good look into what SE is probably going to do with FFXIV. I love the paradigm switching, no joke. Its awesome that you can swap your job on the fly and there's no MP to worry about, just time in between abilities or attacks (ATB gauge). It appears they are putting something very similar to that in FFXIV which looks like it is going to be pretty slick. I am now starting to get pumped about FFXIV because of all the good information that is coming out and videos and pictures and people Alpha testing!!! I'm still waiting to find out more about this game though before I build my new computer. Hoping they release all the info in the next 2 or 3 months.

Anyways, now that I am basically done with FFXIII I may start playing FFXI again. I still want to try to finish some stuff off and get back a little into HNM. My 2 goals in HNM right now are still finish my Black Belt and get a Dalmatica. And I also may be joining a salvage group with Khrone soon which would be hawt since that is another major thing I wanted to do in game. :D We shall see how it goes.

#8

#8 75 Job: RNG!!! I know, its awesome, I got my 8th 75 job and 2 days later ..... "the new level cap will be 99". ZOMGWTFBBG!!!!!!! I'm furious about this because me and all of these other people that went through the grind of getting these jobs up and getting Maat's Cap ... wow.

You spend 6 or 7 years playing a game and then out of the blue they completely change the whole thing. I really hope they don't screw this whole game up. A few people I have talked to have already been talking about quitting when the level cap goes up depending on how they do it, myself included. It is so frustrating to have put all this time into the game just to find out you weren't really going to max like you have been doing for literally years. Vanderbilt and I were talking about this last night too and he was saying that even at first he was really pissed about it but now doesn't really care, which is the same boat I'm in. Spend so much time grinding out exp and then WHAM! you aren't done yet. The only advantage I can see to this is that there will be more opportunities for exping, if I even want to anymore. ... enough about this....

Now that RNG is 75 though I have the need for A WHOLE LOT of merits. Last night I got a total of about 11 merits between a merit party and 2 SMN burns. Sadly 10 of those merits went into Troubador which most people will never see my BRD use, but my BRD needs to be better at HNMs for ES Elegy. I did throw 1 merit into Archery just for giggles. My next merits are going to be spread throughout my jobs to where ever I can build them up the fastest now. Like throwing a merit here or there into H2H or Archery or Madrigal or Minuet, whatever makes my character better, faster.

Bleh, better, merits, makes me wonder if I'll even still be playing this game in a month or 2. Imagine all the free time I'd have....

iPwn

I think I'm going to rename my RNG: iPwn. RNG is just so rediculously powerful against birds I can't believe it. Records were meant to be broken and my 1660+ Sidewinder yesterday definitely broke my latest record.

Its great when a PLD has to work to keep hate off of me and I'm not even spamming arrows. The one PLD did a good job of keeping hate for the most part. I wasn't able to spam arrows but I could regularly shoot and not get hate unless I got a few crit hits in or WS too soon. The next PLD blew chunks because I would shoot 2 arrows and then have hate. That party only lasted a little while though, thankfully. Then I ended the night with the best tank of them all, a NIN in Caedarva Mire. This guy was so good, he didn't need to spam provoke or any ninjitsu to keep hate ... oh wait, that's because he rarely had hate. He was so terrible I would lose 3 shadows before he would even provoke the mob. Then to top it all off, he just says out of the blue, "oh, I gotta go, thanks bye". Which was ok with me because I was ok with not shooting anymore arrows in a 5k/hr party.

I'm getting more and more excited about finishing RNG off because then all I get to do is just merit and HNM. I have no plans of leveling another job to 75 any time soon. There are enough jobs that I have to choose from that are plenty helpful. The biggest problem will be meriting and gearing them all to a respectable level. Inventory is going to be an issue considering I'm going to have 8 jobs at 75 and all will be geared pretty well except WAR which I only plan on having gear for but never really using. SAM and RNG will probably be my main 2 DD jobs with MNK and WAR decently geared. RDM, BLM, and BRD are all pretty well geared right now for me and SMN is decently geared but just really needs the Fey weapon to be where I'd be happy with it. Wow, 4 DD and 4 mage jobs, I swear I didn't even plan that. lol

On a side topic, I'm also looking forward to getting back to HNM camping because that will allow for me to do some other things, like play FF1! Disdain has been playing that in his free time and been having fun with it so I think I want to go through and play the old fun games like I used to again. They were hella fun back in the day and I've gone back to play some of the other games like FF3 but never beat it because I got side tracked with FFXI stuff again. The good thing about this is that I can be playing FFXI AND playing other FF games and still technically be doing stuff in both.

Tonight I don't have anything except Einherjar so I'm hoping to get to 72 tonight on RNG, or maybe merit some more. There is also the possibility of me doing CoP with Khrone tonight to try and get him through 4-2. If we can get him through that I will be very happy because that puts him 1 step closer to Disdain and 1 step closer to both of them finish CoP! Of course now that I have these hopeful plans laid out my gf is going to come over and take up 75% of my night. lol

Quote of the Day:
This ranger is doing over 200 per shot!
...
...
mt >.>
- some guy complimenting me by accident on my normal shots on birds :D

Pew Pew

RNG is FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN. But there is a pretty big draw back, shooting arrows. And after about 1.5 levels I've used almost a full stack of scorpion quivers, that's almost 1200 arrows! Other than that it was a good night.

The best part of the whole night was that I logged on and Vaniel sends me a tell asking if I want to party with him and Papao. So the party consists of 3xRNG, PLD, SAM (Khrone), and DRG (Swifman), and we just ROCKED out with our extra PLs. I'm talking damage was recockulous with sidewinder spam by 3 RNG. Then with the DRG and a Soboro SAM working it we were pretty consistently hitting a chain 6 but then would have to run too far to get that chain 7+.

Sadly I had to leave after an hour and a half for volleyball only to come back and find that Vaniel and one of the other guys were still there exping. Except now they had 2xRNG, COR, BRD, PLD, and RDM. The RDM wasn't doing anything and neither was Van on PLD because the 2 RNG were destroying the mobs so fast with their 1800+ sidewinders. Van told me later they hit like chain 14 at one point before they finished. Then my party that I had gotten, with my flag down mind you, went over there and hit chain 6 once but had a crappy bard that couldn't keep songs up. Luckily that party ended pretty quickly.

This is when more hotness started because Disdain had just logged on and wanted some exp on his 62DNC which we decided to sync to. Now we were rolling with RDM, PLD, DNC, 3xRNG but then Pap got sick of RNG and swapped to SAM. Still we rocked out some really good exp and I got to 69 baby! Good place to finish off eh? Ba-dum-PSH! Now I only need 20k until my RNG because very sexy with O Hat, Maat's Cap and Scout's Belt.

I'm really kind of excited about RNG now. To be honest I'm way more excited than I thought I would be to be shooting away my gil. The gil really isn't that horrible right now though because I'm just using Scorpion Arrows and getting some good usage out of them, plus 1200 arrows only cost about 25k. When you think about it, its really not terrible unless I'm upgrading my arrows to Demon arrows or Bodkin arrows which are like twice that. And of course something that I don't think of until after the fact is swapping arrows when WSing. Like use Scorpion arrows to TP with and Demon arrows to WS with since swapping those don't make you lose TP. Hopefully I remember to change that tonight in my macros. Quick note on the macros too is RNG is now macro set 19.

Too bad tonight I have stuff from 7-9 and then maybe sneak into dynamis after that unless my gf comes over. In all, my gaming tonight will probably be limited but I'm happy with jumping 2 levels on RNG just yesterday. Talk about getting things accomplished! Maybe tonight I can get some more done and crank out another level so I can get more good gear.

Quote of the Day:
BOOM HEADSHOT
- me after doing an 1100+ WS on a bird :D

#7

Job #7 to 75 is now done. I finished MNK in an about 2k exp campaign battle which left me with about 1.8k buffer. This is something I will have to fix eventually but its a great feeling to be able to throw on that extra 10% haste and the brutal earring. My damage output in campaign should really be able to jump up now and get me more exp to get a buffer with. Campaign will now be strictly for getting a buffer as I can now go merit on 7 different 75 jobs. Well, really 5 because WAR is pretty much retired and SMN would be kinda hard to get a real merit party with unless I was doing a pet burn.

Now that I have MNK technically out of the way I am looking at merits. My top merits in basically the order I want to get them in:
1) Minuet (5/5)
2) Madrigal (5/5)
3) Troubador (5/5)
4) GK (8/8)
5) H2H (6/8)
6) Archery (6/8)
7) Overwhelm (5/5)
8) Meditate (5/5)
9) Shikikoyo (1/5)
10) Blade Bash (1/5)
11) Phalanx 2 (5/5)
12) STR (5/5)

Those are my top 12 I suppose. A few are interchangeable on how I feel at the specific time. Like I may switch around Meditate and Overwhelm or maybe move Troubador to #1, but for the most part that is the job order I want to work on. H2H and Archery are in the air too on where they go but I figured I'd throw them in while I was working on combat skills.

Well, I guess I should mention why Archery is even in there. RNG is my next job to 75. Yeah, I know, its like I have a death wish or something. Again, to be more productive and helpful to HNM I want to have another good DD that is widely used and RNG fits that bill for things like Ixion and Odin. I mean can you really say an LS has too many RNG, its like you can never have enough BLM or BRD. RNG is going to be a pain with literally shooting my gil away but I have quite a bit of gil right now so I don't feel too bad about spending some. The biggest problem I'm going to have of course is skilling up while level syncing. My archery as it is is under leveled so I definitely will not be using any expensive arrows until that is fully skilled up.

And I got totally sidetracked for like 2 or 3 hours and here I am trying to figure out where I left off. How about I just stop then for today instead, sounds good.

Quote of the Day:
/blist add Hanzow
- do it, you will be better off

Slaughterhouse

One really big update and another semi cool one. Big one: Congratulations to Khrone on getting his Adamantoise Egg and in turn finishing his Black Belt!!! That is huge because that really boosts his MNK and can really help him out in salvage... and yes he's a bastard for having a salvage group.

Semi cool update: Slaughterhouse is a pimpin Campaign Op. Not only can you get a basically guaranteed 361 exp from it, you can also get anyone else in your part 361 exp also. I've gotten about 8 or 9k exp from doing that Campaign Op from Treu, Screamin, and Khrone now. That has been a quarter of me getting from 74 to 75 and all faster than doing campaign battles! Sadly that still means I can only do this once a week and use my 7 ops tags all at once. On the plus side it is faster than just sitting around hoping for a party and constantly doing campaign battles and averaging like 2 or 3k an hour. The only plus side to the campaign battles is that I can make a little bit of gil and get merits on Screamin at the same time.

Thinking of Screamin, I need to make a little bit of a plan on what I want to do with his merits now. I have been getting more for him but don't really have anything that is jumping out at me to merit on him. What are some good things to merit on PLD or MNK? (as those are the two jobs I use the most for him) I already capped Chivalry for him which is very nice because a 10 minute recast on that is very helpful especially when PLing or doing campaign battles because a PLD can run out of MP pretty quickly against some of those mobs. Well, ideas are welcome!

Quick update, I also spent my first chunk of points on a pair of Herme's Sandals! 15 points for about 900k ain't too shabby especially when I'm using MNK right now and the movement speed +12% is very nice for getting around.

Quote of the Day:
I don't read squiggle squiggle.
- Khrone last night when auto translate was translating very strangely for him

Spending Points

I actually spent points in HellsBells last night! It was craziness! Too bad it wasn't on a RDM Hat, but instead on a RNG belt. But hey, that is one great belt and I can level into it too. So it does feel good to finally get some good gear from HB instead of just showing up and hoping for a free drop or something.

Another big bonus from last night was hitting 74 on MNK. 74 isn't really a landmark or anything, its just that it means I only need 1 more level to finish off exping MNK. I'm about 3k into 74 now and really hoping for an exp party but not having ANY luck at all. The other big boost I got last night was finding out about a Campaign Ops that can get me a little bit of exp but quick exp. Its nothing that makes me go OMG OMG OMG, but I got like 3k exp in about 20 minutes which is awesome. Sadly you can only get 1 tag a day and can only save up to 7 at a time. What makes this really awesome is that you can do this with multiple people at once. So I can go with Treu and Screamin and do Slaughterhouse 3 on one char and Slaughterhouse 2 on the other but get exp for both chars. Basically it means I get double exp for my 2 chars! That means I could get about 4400 exp per week in under an hour which ain't too shabby when you don't have to fight anything at all and I'm getting it on 2 characters at once. Brilliant!

Now the final grind begins with me finishing off my MNK. It is semi exciting now especially because I get a HUGE boost in gear when I hit 75 with Byakko's Haidate and Walahra Turban. It also seems like maybe by the time I hit 75 I'll have my egg for Black Belt too. Then I think I'm really gonna let loose on merit parties and finish off the merits that I'm really hurting for. I have so many merits that I need and it doesn't help that I'm going to have another job at 75 to merit with and get merits for. For MNK alone I'm going to want H2H and a few other random merits. Then for BRD I'm going to want to cap Troubador at least for HNMs like Khim and not to mention doing Minuet and probably Madrigal. That right there is like 40 merits and that still doesn't even cover SAM or RDM or a few more merits I want to throw into Archery for when I start doing RNG. SO MUCH EXP STILL TO DO!!!

I am excited at least to finish off MNK and move on to something else. Meriting will be a good change of pace from Campaign though. Getting on to something different is always good because you get that sense of fulfilment finishing something and moving on to something else. Gimme my gold star!

Quote of the Day:
Brilliant!

2/3 BB

I am now 2/3 on Black Belt items, woo hoo! This now puts me at about the same place that my bro is, only needing the egg for a Black Belt. The funny part is, my MNK is only 73.

Speaking of MNK, it is a biznatch to level. I haven't gotten an exp party in about 3 weeks and that party was only because Ofecant let me tag along while he was leveling his RDM. So instead of exp parties, I have been doing Campaign Battles to level up and I actually dinged 73 in a campaign battle. Now I've gotten my last 30k on MNK in campaign and it is really getting old. I just want a few hours of a party just to finish my dag gone MNK off. I'm about 60k from where I want to be on MNK. Once I get there I can shelf MNK and go merit on SAM or BRD or RDM (or MNK). Just getting to 75 is so hard because invites are non-existant for me.

I still haven't decided for sure though if I'm going to take MNK to 75 then merit or if I want to jump right back in to leveling and finish RNG. The benefit of meriting first is that I have less jobs to put merits into, therefore less distractions finishing off what should be finished. The con is that it puts my RNG leveling off for a while so I would still be limited to basically only BRD on some DF events. Some merits would really benefit me, like finish troubador and nightingale for bard or GK, meditate, and overwhelm merits for SAM. But what I actually want to do, I'm not sure. Meriting after I finish MNK makes the most sense because then I won't be stuck doing constant merit parties and I can break it up a bit with leveling RNG. One thing I discovered while leveling for Maat's Cap was definitely taking breaks between doing the same boring thing over and over again. It helps a lot when you can break it up by meriting on SAM, meriting on BRD, exping RNG, then meriting on RNG, meriting on BRD, meriting on RDM, etc. If I was relegated to just meriting on BRD for the rest of eternity I would probably want to just shoot myself. lol

I guess at the rate I'm going that decision is still a few months off though. Getting MNK out of the way will help me feel sooooo much better because I hate being so close to being done with MNK but just can't quite seem to get there.

Another random thought I've been having lately, level BRD on Screamineagle so I can always leech a party off of him. I mean that is a great idea since I would always have a BRD in my party and its not like dual boxing a BRD is all that dificult since you since 3 or 4 songs every 2 and half minutes. Plus it wouldn't be terrible to have a BRD at 75 on a second character, like I did with Disdain before he decided to token his account and then quit. PUNK! :P

Anyways, if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions please let me know. Input is always welcome.

Quote of the Day:
I just realized that my first point I spent in DF was on the Behemoth Tongue.
- I said that Saturday night after it just dawning on me that I had spent my first point

Working PC

So somehow someway my desktop started working again. I didn't do anything to it except smacking it on the top of the case. Since I gave it a hard crack on the top I have not had it restart or crash on me. Go figure that showing a little tough love is what straightened it out.

Sadly this also means that all my time spent looking for a new PC is all for nothing now. I had a pretty slick computer laid out too. At least I know what to look for when I do make a new computer in about 6 months though. There is a new desktop in my future though because FFXIV comes out in the middle to end of next year so I will need an upgraded PC to be able to cope with the enhanced graphics. Not to mention I would love to have a new toy to play with.

One thing I must admit is that I have been getting a good amount of use out of my laptop lately. I have a new appreciation for it because it is really convenient to be able to spin around in my chair, put my feet, watch TV, and still be able to game. My laptop also isn't as laggy as it used to be for some strange reason. I always had to dumb down the effects and characters displayed because it would lag, but now it seems to be doing just fine.

Something else I will have to try out is the new windower. My version for my laptop (which is running Vista) is really old because there were compatibility issues. It seems they have fixed those issues because Khrone is now running it on his laptop and he said it works like a champ. After I update that I may have to go and put in spellcast for my BLM macros to make my casting a little bit easier. It would be nice if it could automatically parse what my ACC is and know to switch to more ACC based gear or more ATT based gear. That is getting quite technical and it does do that to a certain extent, but hey, I'm just saying.

Quote of the Day:
Me: I quickly read my email title and thought it said Infidelity Investments.
Khrone: lmao, Infidelity Investments, where we plan to help you with your future affairs.

PC Problems

I haven't been able to game much lately because I've been having some issues with my computer. It likes to just restart at will now instead of just when Micro$oft makes it.

Since my computer has gone down I've been playing a lot of Modern Warfare 2 which has been a lot of fun. I do like how you can rank up and unlock new weapons and attachments and you have actual things to accomplish in the game. It makes it feel like I'm actually leveling up and gaining new abilities and spells like in FFXI. As much fun as MW2 is I have to admit its starting to become a little repetitive and I'm starting to miss FFXI a little. This is a good thing though because I think I was getting a little burned out with FFXI and needed a short break to reignite the spark.

Hopefully I will have some time to get my computer back up and running soon though because I will definitely want to get back to FFXI soon.

Quote of the Day:
Does this rag smell like cloroform?
- from American Dad (I think)

Limbus

Still not much going on in game since I've joined HNM since I honestly don't have much time to do anything besides log on for Einherjar and Dynamis and then the occasional HNM camp. The only difference now is that I joined a limbus shell too.

This limbus group seems really good as they have enough people to do 3 zones at once. Its great because that means faster turn arounds on doing Omegas and Ultimas. The only problem with that is that that also means that many more people ahead of me for items. As of right now I believe I would be 11th in line for Nashira Seraweels which isn't so great. Hopefully people will be blowing points on other pieces of gear and as of right now I have no use for Homam I don't have to waste points on it.

The big problem with this all is that that also means I have to spend more time gaming which I just don't have the time to do because my gf dictates my life right now. I'll be lucky to make a run or einherjar, dynamis, and limbus a week. I'm just going to stop there before I turn this into a complaining post.

Anyways, limbus is fun because I'm actually doing it with people I know like Cbassx, Sush, Ratman, Awnee and Fadee. Like last night I was chatting with Sush the whole time while he was in another zone. Then I was ripping on Cbassx because we were in the same run and we were both BLM. What was fun was that I got bombed by an avatar's astral flow and I blaimed it on Cbassx when I guess it was the other BLM that ran at me to get me blown up ... thanks dude! But was still fun, and fun is all I'm really looking for in this game now.

I've come to the realization that I'm not really doing HNM for the uber gear and the possibility of millions of gil, I do it for fun. There is no way I will have the time to dedicate to HNM to probably even get off of trial let alone really compete for a piece of gear. I am more doing this for the new experience and the titles and the new friends and the possibility of new gear. To be honest I don't mind camping HNM right now because I have other games that I play to waste that time between windows. Its funny because I actually don't like the ones where I have to actively search for the HNM like Dark Ixion or Sandworm because that means I can't dual game.

I also already know what I'm going to spend my time doing once I get sick of those other games, craft or fish. Since I know I'll be camping on my main I might as well try to skill up Screamin's fishing and make some gil. Or maybe go farm for crafting items to skill up my crafting on Treu. Either way, I'll have something to do while I'm camping HNMs.

Quote of the Day:
Khrone: And if you win first prize you can get 2x AV items!!!!
Me: huh?!?!
Khrone: Oh wait, that's a footnote not a x2.
Me: lmao, iiiiiiiidiot!
(today when they posted the Mogbonanza 2010 info)

Not Much

Not much has been going on in game since I got Maat's Cap and joined DaFunk. It has basically consisted of me camping HNMs and attempting to level my Leathercraft.

The HNM part has been pretty cool. I guess I could start a tally of how many of each HNM I've killed so far. It would at least give me something to update in my blog.

As far as crafting going I've gotten about 5 levels on my Leathercraft since the last time I updated this. It is pretty terrible now because I have to go through farming Dhalmels for hides to craft and it is quite annoying. I wish they could be like other mobs that pop in a very small moving location and popped very quickly. As they do not and supposedly the best place to farm them is Bubu, I have to walk around the whole friggin map farming these guys that can walk around a quarter of the map. If only they were like goblins in Gustav Tunnel where they can only walk around in a 10 x 10 area and the respawns about 10 minutes. Well, these are a respawn of about 10 minutes but they walk around in about a 100 x 100 area and no more than about 5 pop in any one location. That means I get to run alllllllll around the map to get these mofos and hope they drop a hide. Probably the worst part of this all is that they drop other stuff that is just total junk and likes to take up inventory space very quickly.

Other than that little bit I've been trying to get whatever else done in game that I can but nothing has really been working out for me. The only thing that is about to pay off with what I'm doing is that I'm 1 decent guild item away from getting my Bonecrafting apron. That will definitely be a bonus because that puts me at 76+2 which is only 2 levels from cap for RR hairpins which means I won't have to worry about breaking nearly as much. 1 level can really make a difference in breaking synths.

Anyways, in my spare time camping I've still been doing some reading since I've technically beaten Uncharted 2 already. I want to try to finish up the Twilight series before I go back and play through the harder levels of Uncharted 2. That way I won't be as distracted while doing one of the other.

Hopefully I can get more stuff done in game in the next week or so so I actually have something to update. Maybe some more HNM kills or more meriting or something.