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...

More Maat Mashing

This will be a very short post as I really didn't get that much done this weekend since it was my birthday.

I beat Maat on BST which actually came down a lot closer than I expected. I had to take Maat down below 20% which most people say he gives up at 30% so it was getting scary because my pet just died and Maat and his pet were wrecking me. Luckily I only had to land 2 more hits after my pet died and I won. Simple fight though where I just followed the wiki. Go in with the HQ spider thing, Lifedrinker Lars or whatever, and just sent him in. I took out the pet (dragonfly) pretty easily and then started with a WS on Maat then Snarl. Then just regular melee/Sic-ing my pet. Actually, I don't even remember if I Sic'd my pet. lol

Then I did SAM last night and it was scary close. It should've been over in about 45 seconds but when I looked back at the log I realized why it wasn't. Apparently I missed my 2nd WS which was the most important because that was supposed to be the start of a SC. I was going to rock out Light and then finish him off with an extra Gekko. Well, Maat had other plans by dodging my 2nd WS and screwing up my nice large SC that was going to kill him. Luckily my Third Eye was a champ and absorbed like 6 hits after I put it back up and was able to just melee him down. This was an unlucky fight for me as I even have merits into GK because I whiffed that WS but lucky because I was still able to take him down.

That's about it besides more Testimony hunting so I can clear out inventory space to actually level my RNG. Hopefully tonight I will get round 2 on DRG and MNK and maybe Repose my way to a WHM victory as well. Here's to having a few more Maat fights done by tomorrow.

I'm Burning Out

Yeah, I like to use stupid 1-liners to show say what I'm really doing. But I have a feeling once I actually get Maat's Cap it will be rough to think of new ones.

Since it has been a while since I posted I will go back to where I left off, DRG. I believe it was 59 the last time I posted but now it is 61. That happened this past weekend while I was moping around and had no intentions of leaving my house for reasons I will briefly mention at the end of the post. Anyways, I got into more bird parties and got my Polearm up close to 180 which is decent but still not where it needs to be if I want to beat Maat. I still have 5 levels of exp to get my skill up higher and seeing that it is not even capped for level 54 yet I will be able to get it at 200 if not close to 200 by the time I start getting into regular Colibri parties and finish DRG to 66.

Next was BST which I was finally able to finish off SMN burning, hence the title. The purpose of the title is that last night I did 4 burns in a row and was starting to get a little burned out and was not in the mood to have me and another guy pull but me hold all the mobs while he went and joined the burn. For future information, it is rather difficult to recast with over 100 mobs smacking you even if you have Aquaveil up. I was able to hold the mobs pretty well but I did end up having to use Invincible at one point to save my arse.

You may be wondering why I have THF listed in the label also. Well, THF is listed because after I finished BST I switched to THF and got 7 levels going from 50 to 57 in 2 burns. It was great to basically fly through the 50s in a matter of 2 hours. lol I figure by the time I finish DRG to 66 through exp parties I should be able to burn THF to 66 through smn burns. Hopefully I can finish them at the same time and then strictly concentrate on RNG.

One thing I have been thinking about though is that I want to have SMN above 70 before I do Maat on it because I think that trying to do him without using my 2hr could really save me some time from having to wait for my 2hr to reset and do another fight right after it. Not to mention I wouldn't mind trying to snag a Yin Yang Robe before I do the fight to really rock his socks off.

Something I have started to think about is what will I do once I get all my jobs to 66 and get my Maat's Cap. There are a few jobs I wouldn't mind getting to 75 but I'm in no real rush to do any of that. Maybe I will start meriting again and start concentrating on finishing off the jobs that matter to me like RDM or maybe even SAM. I have some STR merits I could really use or plenty of other places I can drop merits. But I have been more thinking about finishing my own MNK off to 75. It could really be a big boost for getting myself into a Salvage group especially when I'm now 1/3 on Black Belt items without spending a dime. Although, another option is trying to join an HNM shell and just help out whenever I can. Its not like I would be around all the time but whenever I get on I could devote my online time to them to get some really nice gear for myself. Plus there is sea I could jump into to get myself really rounded out for some of my jobs like SAM, MNK, or even BLM. Not to mention in sea I could pick up the enfeebling cape.

I dunno, for those that read this blog let me know what you think I should do after Maat's Cap. Level all jobs to 75? Do SCH? Join HNM? Merit? Farm as much gil as I can? Finish Bonecraft to 100 and do subcrafts to 60? I need some help people!

Oh, and I said I was going to mention why I wasn't in a good mood this weekend. Which ironically coincides a little with Lost. On 7/23/09 my car was broken into and my work laptop was stolen. Part of the ID number on the laptop was also 23. Anyways, if you know something about Lost it is one of the "cursed" numbers that Hurley talks about. But I had to have my window replaced on my own dime and luckily work paid for the laptop. Hopefully that will all be finished and taken care of by the end of tomorrow though because I will be getting my car back by the end of the day tomorrow and hopefully all my software will be completely updated on my new laptop. Ok, I'm done writing as this turned into a long post.

30 LEVELS TO GO!!!

Quote of the Day:
Guess what? I just shot a bear!!!
- Sawyer on Lost in Season 1

Fast And Burning

JUST LIKE MY PEE!!!! No, not really...

Well, I am happy to say I got 2 levels last night! Actually I got 3 levels last night, but the 1 on SMN I don't really count because it is already post Maat's Cap level. But the other 2 levels were on BST so that is a big step in the right direction as that is my highest Maat's Cap job that isn't 66 yet. I probably got about 50k on my BST from SMN burning when it would've been more but we had 2 huge screw ups on pulls.

Some people think because they know the concept of how an Astral Flow party works they know how to do it correctly. Such as; I know how to pull, I get hate from one of each type of mob and just link everything. Yes, that is how you pull for an Astral Flow party, but just because you can make it all the way across the zone without dying doesn't mean you actually pulled correctly.

The other puller in my 2nd group did not understand how to pull. He just aggro'd and ran, that was it. You have to actually keep the mobs close or they depop. The one good pull we had with the 2nd group was because I cleaned up everything he missed. The guy said, I'll pull the middle, and by the time I got Screamin in the zone there were 10 mobs just at the front part of the middle that had already repopped. So I pulled some bats from up top, then pulled the middle again and we got about 30k which is just from pulling the middle. When this guy "pulled the middle" the second time I didn't have Screamin clean up after him because I had Screamin do an actual upstairs pull. This is where I should have realized it was a bad idea. I got 8k from that pull and that was with my exp ring. 8k... Let me reiterate, 8k. I know my pull on Screamin wasn't that great because the tunnels are narrow and it is very easy to lose a lot of mobs, but this guy obviously got NOTHING from pulling the middle. Needless to say, if I ever do Astral Flows with him, I'm not letting him pull the middle... EVER. But hey, at least our Level Sync target only gained 1 level on his 13 DRG.

Live and learn I guess. Next time I'm only doing SMN burns with people I know and trust because I'm pretty sure I could dual box pull better than that guy "pulls the middle". I was surprised that Korroloka was so empty, but that makes me hopeful for next week. If I can snag Vandy to be my 2nd puller we can easily rock out 60-90k in a few hours and finish off his DNC and maybe start another job for him since he's trying to take all jobs to 75.

Tonight I probably won't have any progress because I have some RL stuff to do and then tomorrow I'm heading to PA to go camping for the weekend with some friends from college. So basically, partying all weekend in the middle of nowhere.

Quote of the Day:
Just remember, you're still better than Tom.
- me to someone I play v-ball with, its funny if you know the whole story, but I'm lazy

Astral Flowing Through Levels

Let me start off this post by replying to Brian and his misinterpretation of what I meant by "SMN burn". I did not mean you get 5 SMNs and a COR and just go fight mobs. I actually meant an Astral Flow party using Level Sync. Without Level Sync this idea would be almost impossible because you would need everyone to be 10-14.

How this works:
Find a level sync target that is between 10 and 14 (or even 15) and get a few SMNs and a leecher or 2 depending on your set up. The usual set up is a level 12 target with 3 SMNs and 2 exp leeches. Then the big part is having 2 or 3 of the people with access to a level 75 RDM or PLD/RDM to pull the entire zone of Korroloka Tunnel. RDM works best because you are less likely to get interupted but I have yet to die from interuption. Usually you have one pull the mobs down the middle while the other pulls the mobs up top. Once you get as many mobs in the zone as you possibly can together you get them in a very close spot. There is a way to transfer mobs from one person to the other by curing and then resting but there have been times where I have gotten stuck resting and ended up dying because I couldn't move from there being so many mobs on me. Getting locked has only happened to me twice so we still transfer mobs to Screamin so the RDM can do an extra pull of mobs.

Anyways, once all the mobs are together one of the pullers picks a big mob, usually a Sea Monk or a Giant and starts spamming spells on it to gain a lot of hate and calls for help. This will be the target of all Astral Flows, or more specifically Diamond Dusts, because there will be very little hate gained by the SMN but the mob will still be targeting the puller. Once the mob is selected you have someone in the party engage the CFH mob so the SMNs can just assist that person for the target. Then there is a 3 or 4 SMN rotation of about 10 seconds apart of Diamond Dusts. Since you are Level Syncing so low, if you don't level between DDs you can pop 1 Hi-Ether and have enough MP to summon Shiva again and DD again, easily allowing you to get off 3 DDs per person and basically killing all 100+ mobs. This normally gets us about 30-35k per pull and takes about an hour total for the pull and killing all the mobs and using the extra 3 people in the party to use their COR 2hr to reset the 2hrs of the SMNs so you can rinse and repeat. On a really good pull you can get up to about 40k with a good COR exp roll and a low enough level sync.

Using this method I have easily gained over 200k worth of exp and finished my SMN off doing so. When I first discovered SMN burns I was a level 44 SMN and am now a 67 SMN. Not to mention I was also able to leech my BST from 55 to 60 last night as well greatly lowering the time I will need to spend getting to 66 on the rest of my jobs.

PLD I was able to just get into a really good party that I had to leave earlier than I would've liked for a SMN burn party. :D But I did get my PLD to 58, giving me another piece of AF to wear and 1 less piece of extra gear I need to have. I am having some fun with PLD because I'm definitely getting a better idea for hate control as a tank just by knowing how much enmity my abilities get me and doing certain things to keep hate on myself.

I know this feels a little like I'm cheating to get my Maat's Cap but I know these parties won't last because we'll run out of sync targets eventually. I also realize that my time with FFXI will be slowing down once my girlfriend moves home this weekend so I won't be able to dedicate the time like I can now, so I want to get in as much as I can before then. After this weekend it will be a real struggle to get the rest of my jobs to 66 because of my time constraints. It will also stink for events since I won't know when I will be able to make them or not because it will all depend on the woman saying she wants to spend time with me that night or not. Stupid RL getting in the way of my goals for Dynamis, Salvage and Maat's Cap.

Quote of the Day:
Hellbunny: What job are you leeching, PLD?
Me: Guess again.
Hellbunny: PLD?
Me: lol, I'll give you a hint.
(I charm a mob)
Hellbunny: BST, good choice.

Light Leveling

Since I was out of town camping this weekend I didn't get much done. I got back Monday but ended up taking 2 naps throughout the day because I was so tired and then ended the day at my friend's place eating some food that he had cooking for 10 hours that tasted really good. For as long as he had cooked the corned beef I didn't think it was THAT amazing, but it was really good.

In game I did do some light leveling Thursday and Monday. Thursday I got my BST to 55 doing my camp in garlaige and ended Screamin with a 25kish buffer on BST. Congrats bro on a job well done on letting me finish your last 2 levels on BST. :P

Yesterday I did some afternoon leveling on WHM and got it to 62. Nothing spectacular because it was a level sync party in Qufim Island that wasn't really all that good. When I got home from my friend's place I did throw my flag up on WHM and see if I could get a party or go do something with Khrone. Sadly sky was canceled so I did have free time the rest of the night but when Khrone told me he was probably just gonna go to bed I decided that I might as well do the same because odds were low anyways that I was going to get a party and I only saw shouts in Japanese which wasn't boding too well for me getting into a shout group. So I just decided to hit the sack and enjoy sleeping in a comfy bed again.

On a side note that has nothing to do with FFXI, I know, I'm shocked too, I found a 1 season show that looks pretty cool. While leveling my WHM I watched the first 6 episodes of the show thus far. It is called Harper's Island, and the premise is a mass murder was on the island and killed 6 people and kinda caused families to scatter off the island. Now these people are coming back 7 years later for a wedding because 2 of the people met on the island so they are going back because the girl's wealthy family was going to foot the bill. Anyways, the show starts off with someone dying in the first 5 minutes and by the end of like the 2nd episode 5 people died. Right now there are about 8 people dead and they still don't really know who is doing all of this killing. I have a guess to who is doing all the killing but I won't say anything on here and just let whoever watches the show have their own opinions. FYI, all the episodes are on CBS.com which is where I watched them all. Oh, and hulu.com is awesome too. :D

Quote of the Day:
I'm on vaca.
- it was more the quote of the weekend because we were constantly drinking and just relaxing and having fun, but it wasn't vacation, it was vaca. lol

Screamin's #4 75

It has been done, Screamineagle's BST is now 75 with the help of last year's Anniversary Band. I burned through 4 charges last night on BST that's how well I was doing on BST.

Sadly I had to still start in Crawler's Nest because I still wasn't comfortable enough to go charm stuff in Garbage Citadel. Once I dinged 53 though I did a quick check of GC and saw no one ther so hurried my way there. Just my luck though about 2 minutes after I looked the 1st time another BST jumped into the Hellmine spot. I sat around hoping he wouldn't be there that long and hoped I had just overlooked him earlier but he told me he had gotten there about 20 minutes before I asked him which was just about when I left CN and headed there. He was nice enough to agree to trio with me and level sync down to 53 because he was 56 at the time. One really nice thing was that we were still getting great exp even as a trio and none of us even came close to dying.

When we started up I had my exp ring up and Screamin of course had his anni band up so we were ROCKING out exp. I mean Screamin was getting almost 600 exp on some of the hellmines that we chained. The only issue was that because there were only 4 hellmine pops we were burning through them pretty quickly. Luckily we were able to take out the Fallen Majers too and I think we did end up taking out 1 Fallen Mage as well. It helped keep our chains going and helped fill the void while waiting for hellmines to respawn. Most of the time we would clear all the hellmines and Fallen Majers and then the hellmines would be repopping, so it worked out perfectly. Occasionally it was a pain when the hellmines blew up and took out all 3 of our pets because then we'd all have to find new pets, but I did find a light at the end of the tunnel. I discovered that if I uncharm my pet and my pet is not the target of the hellmine's self-destruct I can get my pet to not get hit by it. The one time the hellmine self-destructed and I uncharmed my pet and the other guy's pet died, Screamin's was down to about 10%, and because mine got missed, mine was still at around 70%. A new trick (and a new macro I need to make) for a good duo team to live by.

Now my BST is 54 and could now probably charm the beetles pretty easily down in the basement of GC and Screamin's BST is a little over 6k into 75. I'm very with how much I got done last night on BST even if I did have to skip all of sky to do it. Thankfully I was able to get 4 charges burned leaving me with only 3 charges to use the next 2 nights. As long as no one is at the hellmine camp tonight I should be able to burn 2 rings before having to leave for volleyball. Which means I would only have 1 charge left for Screamin to go through which I could half burn while I'm doing sky and he's just killing mobs in sky on his BST. Maybe I'll even try to pop a Despot or something. lol

Quote of the Day:
I jizz right in my pants every time you're next to me,
and when we're holding hands its like having sex to me.
You say I'm premature, I just call it ecstacy.
- Jizz In My Pants (SNL skit)

Duo BST

Seeing as you can get new Anniversary Rings I decided to take a break from WHM so I could try to speed up the slower road. The other reason I am doing BST now is because I can level sync duo with Screamineagle's BST and I would love to get his BST to 75. Another thing with Screamineagle is that he still had a full 10/10 charges on his Anniversary Band from last year. Seeing as I wanted to get a new band before they stop giving them out, I needed to burn it fast.

Yesterday it took me a little while to get used to dual boxing duo BST, but I feel that I am getting the hang of it now. Crawler's Nest at 51/52 is really easy and slow exp duoing. I'm not really sure what people were talking about how duo BST is way better than soloing because I remember getting more like 3-4k/hr as solo and I was only getting about 2-3k/hr last night duoing. The bonus is that I am definitely getting used to BST and how to release a pet and grab a new one without getting hurt because of having a 2nd BST there to keep hate. Basically every mob one of my chars would swap pets and I would just cruise.

With my anni band on I was only getting between 180-300 per kill which is total crap and anni band gives double exp for up to 3k exp. I was knocking out as high of level mobs as I could with what level I was at and still having mobs to easily charm. I will just be more than happy to get into Garlaige Citadel and fight bombs because I know how good that exp can be solo or duo and I'm banking on rolling through anni band charges as I was only able to burn about 3 charges last night. One of these nights I will probably completely skip sky just so I can burn through these bands because it HAS to be done by Thursday since I will be out of town from Friday til Monday and they stop handing out the rings on Monday. So Thursday or bust!

Last night I was also able to be in sky while soloing Screamin's BST in sky doing Flamingos on pots. It was actually pretty easy and only a few times would I really get messed up because I would release the pet either too late or after releasing the pet I would have a -ga3 or tier4 cast on me and I didn't realize. But I must admit, not once while duoing or soloing did I die! GO ME! Something else I realized last night is that with this anni band I will EASILY get Screamin's BST to 75 with a good buffer and maybe even start meriting a little on it. I figure I'm about 19k from 75 now with 7 charges left (6k needed for a charge to be used up) which puts me at 42k total before finishing this anni band. So if I just let all of it go into exp I would end up with a 23k buffer on his BST which more than enough. Actually, that would leave me at a very good place on his BST because I would expect to leave about 15-20k buffer on there and if I do more soloing in sky I can also use Fields of Valor and get about 1400 free exp every 11 mobs. Now that I have also gotten him some tabs I can give him a real refresh from the tabs and not have to worry about constantly swapping in Gaudy Harness when he get super low on MP, which also means I could melee more for faster kills.

Yesterday I was really excited about BST but the super slow exp really killed my high hopes for it. Tonight I'm really hoping that I can get to Garlaige and get some good exp flowing. The duo guide says 2 bats can easily take down the mines which is great because the level gap between myself (and my pets) and the mines is much higher which means I should actually be getting about 150-200 exp per kill which would be just grand. Here's to hoping no one is down in the basement of the Citadel because I WILL be taking their mobs, sorry.

Here's to hoping tonight I can get through at least 3 more charges tonight and maybe even a 4th.

Quote of the Day:
I bought a cactus. A week later it died. And I got depressed, because I thought, Damn. I am less nurturing than a desert.
- Demetri Martin
(Khrone found it as the google quote of the day)

Unmotivated

Lately my craving for the grind of exp has been tailing off. This is really bad for me trying to hit my goal of end of the year for Maat's Cap because unless I stay hardcore for the next 2 months I have no chance. At the same time I knew this day was coming because there is no way I could keep up that sort of grind for that long.

Last night I really got nothing accomplished in game on my character. I really only geared up my THF and then sat around looking for a party. While I was looking for the party I was messing around with Screamineagle's 73BST. I was doing decently well on it but there is still some getting used to the macros that Screamin set up. Some of the macros just aren't as intuitive to me as I would hope. For instance, he has seperate macros for equiping his charm gear and his CHR gear and another macro for actually charming. To me, I think those should be consolidated into 1 or 2 macros at the most. CHR is used for Charm accuracy and so is the light staff which makes me think that they should be one in the same macro if possible, but also when he has such a simple Charm macro like he does I don't see why he couldn't at least combine 2 of them. I may have to do some rewriting of some of his macros but for the most part I think his macros are pretty good becuase he has the regular pet macros like fight, stay, etc. He also has macros for equiping his attack gear for himself like his Hauby or his attack rings and earrings. Those are macros I will definitely need when I get to that point on my BST.

For the most part I am just trying to get a feel for how beastmaster works again and more of how it works at higher levels. I have already discovered that I'm picking it up pretty quickly and I even had a few good moves, like when I discovered that one of my pet's moves was an AoE move and got aggro from another mob I just uncharmed my mob then recharmed it and went back on my way to killing. It was good to see that it was almost instinct for me to do that because it shows that I could probably jump back into BST pretty quickly since it is definitely a different kind of job to level.

I suppose I won't even set any sort of goal for this evening because I don't really feel that I have that strong urge to go exp. Maybe now would be a good time to go back and get some of the AF I should be working on. Or another option is to finish Screamin's BST to 74 so I can get his AF+1 legs completed and then redo his AF legs and get my AF legs while I'm at it. This is all stuff I will need to do anyways so I guess I might as well start doing it now while I'm not really in the mood for exp.

Quote of the Day:
Sometimes, truth isn't good enough, sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.
- Batman, The Dark Knight