#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