Der Katzespiel

fingerspitz @ 2007-07-29T04:49:00

2007-07-29T09:29:18Z

Edit: Orz one of the things I forgot in the past few months was to cut my big entries D: also I friended most everyone who added me, sorry I didn't before, I r dumb. Anyway I'm going to Yokohama for two weeks to learn some Japanese with a family there and S H O P, there will be pics if I find a damn camera in the 5 and a half hours before my flight leaves. Be good you all, think of me when you turn on your bots :3

K so, this is my new hanging-out gear on brd. I'm still playing with the look but heca cap is just adorable. We've been crushing faf claims, and got a ton of n. heads, including sha's, so that's cool. On the other hands, the 4-5 days in the past 2 weeks have included 2 nids and a faf that dropped ridill. Quantity over quality :(

Killed yet another tiamat, but this time I just plain forgot to get some screens. I did nab a couple from ouryu, including this rare tail-shot. I don't know if ouryu is easier to nuke or requires less damage for an early landing than outside wyrms, but with 18(ish) people his flights were incredibly short, he would spend maybe 30 seconds in the air before being blasted down. Don't think we beat our record from last time but it wasn't iceday and we didn't quite round out ally while I was there I don't think. Tiamat is being nice lately also<3 occasionally I'll get runs of resists on elegy or threnody, but other brds in the ally are really nice about communicating and keeping track of debuffs. I like the idea of maxed wind and singing merits at the same time but redoing my magic merits back to their original form after finishing enfeebling and getting elemental to level 3 is not appetizing. I get the job done with what I have, so I doubt I'll make any changes there.

Whole buncha cats. It's been 2-3 months since I merited in a party that wasn't nyzul isle mamools, 3 DD 2 BRD 1 RDM. With too much damage you sometimes have to make the DDs pace themselves to keep chains up, but the exp is phenomenal, if sanction is at peak bonus it sneaks up towards 30k/hr. It's not every day you can get a party like this together but I feel like if I can't get the perfect setup for merits I should just work on the other million things I need on this game and worry about merits later.

Got a good amount of sea done, sha and I both have ice and thunder obis, sha has his BLM cape from ix'mnk, and I just farmed up a 3 organ set for a try at my own because I was bored. Sha's BLM has really taken off, he's got a very nice setup and I beleive almost full merits now. Mine is um a little more humble :( still mostly NQ staves and nuking in some very suspicious gear, plus only merits in burst/freeze II and 1 thunder potency. I'm working on it, one aern at a time. I've also seen Ix'drg about 8-10 times in the last 5 months, with not a single damn cape. Haven't been up in a while but might try again, or maybe another mnk cape first, havent decided.

Hpemedes were fun, the trick I found for them was to open with thunder 4, then immediately gravity and run. They open their mouths 30 seconds after being nuked if left awake, so an AM2 when there is about 4-5 seconds left on your thunder 4 recast timer and it should land right in time. Tier 3-4 + drain to finish, repeat.
Mnk there is info on all over bg and I've never actually done the pull myself, but drg is pretty straightforward for a rdm and a blm. After popping (AND DISBANDING~) the rdm needs to keep poison AND bio II up on every time. Whatever BLMs are with you can trade tossing nukes on the ix and zoning, but if the rdm isn't on the ball with dots drg will regen hella fast. I just switched off each time I zoned, one poison the next bio. A rdm could probably solo the thing like that, but have fun popping it :( garden aerns are positively satanic.

My rdm melee stuff is schmexy, but yes I should be shot for not macroing mnd for savage blade. In that shot I'm farming for my davoi key (got it next kill) to get thf af hands, the only peice I think I want for my new toy job. Thf requires a little more concentration than the melee I've done before, and it gets frustrating when tanks insist on messing up your SATAs, but moona is nice about voking when I need on her drk and I'm having fun spoiling myself with dex gears. Been very slow compared to past jobs because I am busy irl, going to japan on tuesday for a couple weeks, although part of the problem is also that tanks are hella scarce pre-50 this time round for some reason. Sha is on rdm for the new set though, so at least we will have the refresh locked down when we make parties, that was the usual choke point on drk drg pld set.

Ugh it's 5.20 and I just realized I haven't even talked about leveling drk here, or even nin before that, so I'm gonna call it a night. I'll be back~.

Behemoth's Bane

2007-07-23T08:09:46Z

At this point it's been so long that I may as make a new lj, but too lazy :E. In the god knows how many months since last post I've gotten several more jobs to 75, a ton more to 66 in an attempt to get a maat's cap, scored some of the better gears in the game for my jobs, changed lses from a mostly sky/sea outfit to the top HNMLS on the server, and killed almost every major mob in the game that I hadn't killed before. Got NQ behemoth last night, the last one I needed to complete my set of king titles; I also finally killed proto-ultima and have been in more tiamat alliances than I can remember.

Also as you may have noticed I was given rigorous behavior modification from Mskitty to eliminate the '^^' emote from my writing. That's probably the most important thing.

Updates without pictures are hardly updates at all, but I've honestly been so damn busy I've hardly had time to clean out my screenshot folder since last time I posted here. I do have a ton of new stuff to talk about and show off, and I just finished cleaning out my screenshots to make room for more, so I will make a real update later.

I wrote out a big paragraph about friends or whatever, but deleted it :( Fact is I lost a lot of respect for some people in Mattet for stuff they did mostly after I left. Certainly not everyone, I still wave to lots of people and consider Mattet a step ahead of whatever sky ls is wiping to darters this week. But leaving and more specifically applying to Rzero is the best thing I've done with my time in ffxi and I'm really grateful to them, especially Cephius and Mskitty, for giving Sha and I a chance.

Until whenever.

Vestigial Chamberlain

2006-11-14T01:17:39Z

Orz ._.; well it's not like anyone reads this, but jeez I haven't updated in forever :< Busy enough trying to play the game while not flunking my classes, much less wander around the annyoing screenshot interface and try to write about it xD My screenshots got capped loooong ago >< >< >< so I dont have anything of more recent stuff, but I'll post what I salveged.

I was too busy in the BC to get any shots of the fight, but sha and I duo'd the last windy mission for rank 10 :D RDM/BLM and NIN/WAR. The fight is against 4 cardians and then a manticore and a wyvern. The cards are basically a joke, sha put them down in a minute or two each and para slow silence sleep/ga was never resisted (actually nothing was ;3 bc60 with ls netted me an enfeebling torque, 295 skill atm <333). We rested (almost) to full before starting off the second part, but before I could do blink and stoneskin arujido marujido went all leeroy jenkins on us and took off for the manticore 0o. No problem I thinks to myself, ES sleep II the wyvern aaaaand CHOMP. Bastid then preceeded to squat on my body and repeat his chomping when I tried to reraise; ; Try #1 no-go, lesson learned: wyvern immune to sleep. Hustled back, smashed the cards, bind+grav'd wyvern while sha owned the manticore, then finished the job (that's what the title is from ;p) Ok, less talky more pix:

R pumps for me~, sexy shoes^^/ fast cast tiny but noticeable if you play bard, a job where knowing when you can start running while casting is important. Mostly about the mp though, would get z pumps if I could :X.

Grats Scion on sword test, and a ton of people on af :O good run! And test mob looks so cool 0o also did one with +1 when all the zones were busy, grats zild on aegis test.

Someday I will do a ve~ry long post about assaults :x today is not that day! Me and sha are sergeants now, looking forward to catching all the way up so we can do new ones as soon as they are released :D.

A lot of apathy about limbus lately in shell, the 1% proto ultima loss (not shown, omfg I hate magical/physical barrier so much) didn't really help ;/ did one more of these for, um, drops, I forget what, and just finished another set so hopefully one more soon (body plz kthx).

This run is still awesome though <3 Note in bottom picture, you can sneak around mossback to pop that TE as long as you do it from the side shown in pic. Apollyon BRD dropped FIIIIIINNNNAAAALLLYYY this week, AF+1 hands get :D now for legs and body (*'-').

Temp is my least favorite t1 jailer I think :< cool looking, but a huge butt to pop and a pain to tank+kill if you dont have the setup+weapons for it.

Couple of these for us~, I got brd shoes (macro for string stuff yay :E) and everyone in the shell with warrior anywhere above 37 got gloves. Pix also got her whm legs with a sexy 125 lot ;p grats pb <3. Second time through we popped boss at last momentish and tried to kill at MH, only to find an NM pops right there after he dies lol. Wish I screenshotted the dancing goblins we got when they tried to go back to spawn.
`

Bravura + santy suit = victory (*'-')/ til next time.

waaaah no new titles; ;

2006-09-28T05:33:15Z

Yo^^/ Skool is hard and I am lazy, so mostly gonna let the pics do the talking ;x been a mostly quiet week or so anyway, busybusy with school or trying to camp kings since they've been in NA primetime for several days. Only one faffy for us so far, for double zenith mitts lol ;/. But some cool stuff did happen, and was caught on camera :p.

Proud. Majestic. Gimp errant. lol; ;.

Dynamis-Xarc by moonlight = awesome screenshot opportunity :3.

Our...third Cerb maybe? And still no kills ~_~ lol.

Certain linkshells need to stop pulling mobs they cant fight...and especially need to stop calling for help on them when they wipe. A sparse afternoon crew almost got him down before the vultures could swarm, but I disconnected right as he dipped under 25% and apparently he did 4 back-to-back gates on our paired up stunners that overwhelmed us; ;. Oh well...we know we can kill him, just need the chance.

Big collibri are almost as delicious as the lessers it turns out :O RDM62^^

Almost finished with Kurrea, much smoother this time. Galliard Trousers get^^

lol :3 'Sit down, let's get a pic before he shows up again' 'POP!' Windy 8-1 for shadow jaco maj and myself :p

Just glad VS didn't claim him this time ;x

NW Apollyon is AWESOME. I hate how badly melee is nerfed on the behemoths, but with no experience personally and only a few veterans along we stumbled into 57 coins divided through 10 people. Mini-Nidhogg was HELLA fun with one tank, I have no idea how the heck Walks kept hate...but it worked, and our BLMs put him down with ease. Lots of fun, lots of coins, lots of upgrade stuff, and a nice long run :p (some people complain about length, but I <3 limbus so :x). Tonight we split for a 3kings apollyon and a central floor 1 temenos that put us at proto-omega #3 and one fight away from ultima #2. I really like how smaller limbi have been going, and I hope we start being able to divide even more finely and include everyone soon^^.

I also sold out and got a musical earring;; someday apollyon will drop my gd doeskin, but not this week it looks like /sigh. I may pitch the idea of farming omega for gunpods this time if everything goes smoothly, so maybe one will drop then? Ya right ;/ but maybe will get some chips back :O! I will report how it goes (*'-')/ Until next time~

Jailer of Hate

2006-09-18T07:07:44Z

Well it's been a kinda bumpy week (*'-')/ lotsa ups and downs. I will say this though, everything we struggled on and that made us wanna kick the crap out of our game boxes and cost us our experience buffers, all of that crud we killed in the end. <3 Mattet, and even more <3 Shasha. This isn't a game you can count on to always please, and I'm glad I'm playing with people who know that when it seems like it can't get much worse it will pretty much have to get better^^. Ok, lj cut time, we'll do small stuff first I guess, big update.

It's, um, sky :x Maybe I just shouldnt write captions for pictures that dont need them^^;

Sky stuff, sky stuff, Sha got shura head and I picked up hecatomb leggings for my brd. I guess that sounds kinda weird :x but we do suzaku every week, a couple more and we'll start junking n feet anyway :p.

See, this is a good example of a place where a caption isnt really necessary. Well too late now I guess;;

This seldom-seen fellow is the ninja TE at the far west end of dynaims san'doria^^ I've never actually been on a purely farming run of a dynamis before, so this was hella fun for me :x not worrying about the mega boss gave us time to see bits of the area I had never seen before :O Like this guy's yard where he hangs out with his five ninjer buddies :p A couple of the normal ones 'sploded on us, but we managed to burn down the boss without any mijin action :D.

Did some KS30 Double Dragonians, easily easiest BC/KSNM fight I've ever done lol :x The dragons were a cinch to sleep and took really high melee damage, the only threat was running out of holy water trying to deal with the chaos blade spam. Unfortunately, after specifically choosing this BC for the awesome latent weapons, I walked away totally skunked ;/. Two dissectors dropped, the first I lotted 30 on, which was predictably lame. The next was only lotted by me and urich, who lotted a whole 80. Feeling sorry for him apparently, I went ahead and lotted 30 again ;/ And heart snatcher never even showed....oh well. At least I know what to do with my seals now :x too impatient to save for 99^^;

Shadow shows off his new loot^^

Let's see, after a very nice PLD with an apathetic linkshell furnished me with a ToD I got a few people together and killed charbyd for my new joy-toy^^ Many thanks to zaxx chhay urich and Shadow (*'-')/ <3 as well as Wildman for lending a hand~. Unfortunately I left sea serpent grotto with all of 98 sword skill ^._.^ but after a couple days of soloing colibri with double march on I've managed to get spirits within at 175 sword :D This thing really is incredible fun, I still think the DoT from dagger is greater because of the better options for ws, but it's hella fun and a great offhand for brd/nin. Everything I dreamed of really, <3 everyone who helped me get it and burn in hell whoever that was who spammed /ems and /randoms while we were fighting 0o Talk about a weird place to bring out the HNM style grief crap :x some people need to grow up.

Consider this entry sub-titled 'Vinegar Evaporator'^^

Speaking of which^^; After our wednesday limbus runs Pants said on /l that vinegaroon was up, and an executive decision was made to haul butt out to altep. Our holding pt got claim, and we organized what 2 hours we had to bum rush the ugly scorp (fresh out of limbus, my soul voice wasnt even up;;). We got him to 10% or so before he wild raged a few times in a row and managed to wipe us, we probably would have had it except after the opening skillchain he drew in all of our BLMs before they could finish casting their magic bursts ><. So we get some ninjers up and hold him till we recover, trying some different stuff with skill chains and building tp on adds.

This *entire* time people from Pandavas have been /follow on KV, randomly heckling us. ~_~

Well the tp we're giving it trying to normally fight the damn thing is letting it spam some nasty stuff on us, people start dying, madness begins. At this point more PV people start to show up, because apparently with PO disbanded and us busy there was still absolutely NOTHING ELSE in the whole game they could be doing. Most lses, when the find stuff to fight, choose mobs that aren't already claimed, but it takes all sorts I guess ;D. Many amusing and droll comments are made about us taking down AV but not being able to kill KV, which is a joke that I imagine is worn out with basically any ls that's beaten AV at this point.

Because when it rains it pours, at some point in here Jaco tries to cfh an add that we had pulled for tp (after some PV members killed all the ones that normally spawn) and the game does that lame thing where it calls for help on the main battle target as well ;/ We all know we arent supposed to cfh adds from the main alliance, but sometimes you just dont think, ya know?;; Anyway, now things really spiral out of control, madnes ensues, KV is after everyone and everything. We all log hate and somehow Greyhald pulls off a perfect recovery claim with dia the second it comes off cfh status, and we manage to get some ninjers together with me mamboing them to hold the darn thing still. At this point we've realized that we're just going to have to finish the 2 hour wait to get all our 2hrs back for the big push, as there's not other way to kill the darn thing.

It's at this point that I see my first GM ;x You would think that if another linkshell wanted to fight this mob so bad that they call a GM about it, they would have camped it themselves, and hustled their own ls out of exp parties and what not. In any case, Chhay gets a tell saying that we need to engage the mob, which we chose to interpert rather literally, our ninjers in their arhats pulled out their earth staves and commenced the smackdown of the century ;D. Finally, after 2 hours of holding, tens of thousands spent on antidotes at the outpost, we switched in the DD parties, fired up our 2hs, and blew the scorp away in under 5 minutes. The highlight of the evening was definitely that our only drop ended up going to a 22RNG who had earlier in the fight accidently called for help ;D Due to ALL of our main job rangers, our second job rangers, and our third job rangers having logged out earlier into the three-hour fight, Heavy Shell went to Jaco, who is leveling ranger just as fast as his little legs will take him. I could have lotted it, but with me at 67 and him at 22 I can still basically gauruntee he'll get to 75 first^^;. So grats to him, and thanks to those in PV and +1 who showed support.

The fun multiple-hour fights are not over, however ;/ on friday after 6-7 successful if boring kurreas, we popped KURREA THE UNDYING, SUPREME LORD OF PAIN. 700 melee hits during physical buffs, hundred fist speeds at times, 4000+ damage tornados and aero IVs, and constant silencegas, good times. He also regen'd whenever we managed to do a signifigant amount of damage, threatening us with a neverending fight ._. By the time we pushed him down people needed to go to bed, leaving us even more kurreas (including mine! D:) to do next saturday; ; orz. Congratulations Hellblade on the hardest-earned galliard trousers in the history of forever, and great job everyone handling the kurrea from hell.

I will now dispel your confusion regarding the title of this entry (*'-')/ On saturday despite a certain lack of members Mattet decided to do our second Jailer of Love. We tried a different tactic, nuking the summons with -ga spells as they appeared, but we didn't really have the firepower to pull it off, and things went bad very quickly when JoL decided to use thundaga III 5 times in a row, something which I had never seen in the previous fight or at any other point in the one that followed. JoL lost aggro eventually and people went wild throwing themselves at it to try to hold it AV style. Things did not look good for any kind of recovery if this continued, so drawin upon my horror at the thought of farming another pop set and my vast reserves of untapped stupidity I dropped party and declared myself sole JoL death puller. It cost me my level and ten thousand exp more with Hymnus reraise to hold the damn thing long enough for the alliances to reraise an rebuild, and that's going to cost me a little bit of my soul to get back in crowded merit camps, and I already regret it a little, but someone had to do it I think ;/

We recovered, we reclaimed, we had the usual, incredibly boring fight with no more crazy wildness. And for all our efforts, the hours spent killing faith and prudence and justice, the time spent fighting love and the hundreds of man hours it will take to get our buffers back, we got precisely a polearm. I don't know why after implementing a system of NMs almost exactly like sky's SE decided to completely strip down the drop pools of those NMs while at the same time making them in general much harder, but oh well;;. Congrats nore, use it well~, see you at ix'drg on tuesday lol;;.

Anyway, things are looking up now at least. I've spent all darn day writing this update lol :x just finished uploading new pictures, let's see~.

Too bad the noble's is a loaner :p (<3 cat#3)

The new NMs have finally decided to give us some loot^^ our last three Zoral Jaas have all dropped both earring and axe, although one of those...well, long story :x. We saw it up on the way back to al zhabi from exp, and trotted out to snag it asap, only to find Qinn, who we vaguely knew from previous exp pts and his ninjer friend wiping to the mamool due to the ninjer DCing. I mistakenly grabbed the mamool and raised Qinn. The problem is that the mamool isnt the NM, the bird is xD so when Qinn's friend came back they just ran back to the spawn area and got the bird...what a pain^^; Qinn gave us a share for borrowing sha's TH3 on the kill though^^. Gosh I wish I had pics of all this :< Anyway, we also managed to pop and kill Zizzy Zillah, a cockatrice in mamook with what appears to be infinite tp regen 0o. It took 5 people on various jobs with sha tanking as thf to take it down, but we got both drops and may make a cool million each :p. Sensing we were on a roll me and sha went to try Emergent elm in thickets, which is pictured above. After getting him to ~50% he suddenly picked up some crazy regen and was 90% by the time we wiped. After a second try brought similar results I remembered that the new NMs seem to have day/night gimmicks. Sure enough after 18:00 his regen vanished and he stopped spamming the obnoxious leaf storm. Full drops again! Another attempt today netted no drops;; but it looks like a decent way to make money without much competition, as the boots will go for another million gil or so :O.

Dear Apollyon: BRD material please. Oh please please. @77coins >< pretty soon I'll be able to get musical earring and still have some in case I get upgrade stuff ~~;.

Dynamis Buburimu interloper :p Sweet jesus though, those bunnies are scary ._. 800dmg whirl claws, no thanks~. Grats lucy on melee cape and kasp on PLD hands -1^^ hopefully this will change peoples' minds about CoP dynamis enough so that we can get better at farming these areas and get some more cool rare items and sexy titles :p.

In any case, I'm going to finish this episode of Loveless and get some Zs. I leave you with this (*'-')/

No morta, eft JOO

Paragon of White Mage Excellence

2006-09-08T07:34:34Z

Oh yeah, that other job I have :x. I'll be the first to say I'm a kinda mediocre WHM lol ;/ In particular I've never mastered the art of reraise. Oh well^^; at least I can look cute in my briault now^^. Pix inside...plus some big news :333

Thanks shadow for farming my bell and fame and co. for help with NM :D

RDM also progresses nicely, party tonight was pulling 10k/hr o0 ran into a couple of well-geared fellows from VS :p chain 31 colibri was fun, thanks ballen and corwen for playing with us <3 is good to have friends in other ls :p (also {Affection} @ the pickup bard Bloodymary ^o^). http://vitalstatistics-ffxi.com/PHP-Nuke/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=417 has a couple pictures, you'll notice walks dying because I'm too busy yelling at him for using SE WS when mob is at like 90% to cure iv him ;x. (Edit because I forgot: walks is gay < call5 > )

Anyway, some jerks ganked half our camp ~~; and the VS people had skool in the morning, so we called night before I could wear my hat. HOWEVER my mini fashion show is not over >:D. In the first picture you'll notice sha sporting his styling ninjer relic, but tonight CityBloodSukDynamis picked up our, um, 4th shadow mantle and something even cooler for my favorite cat:

TH3 baby ^-^

Grats seany on his mantle and grats shadowism on Assassin's Armlets :p Night everyone~

Paragon of Red Mage Excellence

2006-09-06T14:46:45Z

I need to start giving entries different names lol o0 I'm running out of titles. But I do have my RDM AF done (mostly, stupid GC coffer ><), level 57 now, back in toau areas...I forgot how much I missed colibri exp <3. Was kind of bad weekend ;/ Other events made us cancel ls limbus so I tried taking a little ls group up SE apollyon for the win. 6 people, going really well with like half an hour left starting the third floor, and after specifically telling everyone that shadow was pulling I elegy'd a skele on the outside and it ran the long way back, killed us all, and everyone who had reraise on burned it trying to get up and help finish the links ;/. Run wasted, my fault, felt really bad;;. But sha and micha cat pulled me out of it, and the next day I made one of those parties where you get so much exp you actually feel guilty ;x chain 5 300+ on colibris with no exp ring (or sanction bonus, lolmidgard). Other stuff:

Jaco's pic again^^; I'm totally in it though!

We decided to mix it up a bit and to a straight-tank melee zerg kirin, hella fun. Our ls has a grand total of exactly zero ridills and zero adaman hauberks, so we're pretty proud of pulling this off (*'-')b. Kill time was 20min-ish, next time we'll drop the tank party and hopefully wont have to kite him between stonegas (We were probably fine, but we kited during recoveries to be safe), which should bring down the time required exponentially~. Also: I'LL REMEMBER MY STUPID MINUET AND MADRIGAL INSTURMENTS ><; grrr, noone said 'hay spitz let's go do straight-tank kirin' when I left MH ;/ I had all my rdm junk in inventory. Anyway, mages doing this make a seperate barstonra macro to use when you see -ga coming up, because you'll want to have barfira or baraera on the rest of the time for heat breath or great whirlwind (depending what mode he's in). Also, melee damage is not high enough to get away with DS curaga II in normal skill gear :x lol. I'll pack some enmity stuff next time, kirin smacked me around when I dumped that 2000 hp on pt ;D. Otherwise, stay in range of -ga, it will do less damage when it hits more people (don't ask me why), and despite what I said about curaga, you want to recover FAST if he hasn't used astral flow yet. -ga followed by searing light will drop your ally and possibly waste your pop set if you dont have recovery party. He tried to pull that on us, but we had healed in time^^. Update coming soon with more pics~, off to german class for now (*'-')/.

Apollyon Ravager^^

2006-08-31T05:32:46Z

Yay for fast entires^^ no ljcut even this time. Picture is props to jaco (*'-')b ty taru~.

I still can't beleive he didn't die the whole fight o0 (jaco I mean ;D)

Omega was actually a metric ton of fun :O Fast and nasty kind of fight, we finished in what felt like a *very* short time. War/nins and blm pt will do that I guess^^. Gunpods are the DEVIL, everyone needs some form of blink ><. I got resisted on elegy every time, until I stuck threnody (<3 my new set of staves, threnodies are so awesome), time to make new macros it looks like^^;. It's nice to see things that are challenging but far from impossible to debuff, it makes me feel better about my merits. Grats to Ryshes and Theo on legs and head respectively. Hopefully we can get sha a pair next time, they're his dream shorts. G'night all^^/.

Virtuous Saints O_O

2006-08-30T05:48:49Z

Another big week in the life of a cat^^;. Moved into college, got internets working, and, um, killed the hardest mob in the game ._.b.

Hell ya :P.

Heeeelllll yesh :3

As usual I had filled up my screenshots folder on a previous event, so my only AV screeny is the one above from our website (<3 Jaco). I can offer you some high quality shots of Jailer of Love though :p.

Light

Darkness

Heavenly Strike O_o

JoL was fairly lame the general consensus is^^; his ridiculous hp and regen combined with his almost complete lack of offensive capability makes him a total snorefest^^;. I doubt anyone wil even die on the next one, once the rdms learn that when you have a natural C- in a skill (wing and singing) you can't land finale every time ~~;. Dispel more boost please rdms! I got a 1k smack on the butt myself when I ran in for a last-second curaga II, so AV popped over my dead body^^;.

Pretend we're outside and that's AV^^;

AV himself was not especially more challenging :x. He started off invincible and ridiculous, spamming 2hrs and ridiculous spells and abilities too fast to be controlled. After a couple of vicious all-out kamikazes on our part he subsided into a total puppy ._. The last part of the fight was simply slowly pushing down his massive hp. I'd still like to think that he works in a reverse rage mode and a certain amount of damage needs to be done to lock down his more damaging spells and abilities, but the windower plugin says that we didn't reach the 95% mark that was theorized to be the key on our winning push, so it's still a mystery. I do think however that anything related to other mobs, ebon panels, jailer weapons, etc. can be discounted :x something we did to him did the trick, we just need to figure out what and do it again. There's a thread on BG forums, you smart people go work it out lol ^._.^.

Poor goldfish; ;

We've had some good luck in sea all around lately :D. Just today we scored deeds off of ix drk and drg, as well as jailers of fortitude and faith, we just need some love from prudence to make us ready for another JoL (who dropped us both earrings in addition to our winning AV O_o lol). I know it's just luck, but sea has been just a sweetheart to us of late <3 today drg popped after literally the first aern we killed and drk took only one camp move. Madness, I know, now drg just needs to cough up vice for my astute cape :x so I can be cool like Fame. <3 that taru, but it's hard being perpetually second in line to someone else for your job's loot^^; Would be a ton harder if Fame weren't one of the nicest people I know ._. and lord only knows he's earned his rewards (grats on your own manteel btw taru :D).

I cried a lil at CS :< I'm such a sucker for ff games. /farewell prishe~

Things progress nicely on other fronts^^ Red Mage and Shasha's Monk both 52 now, our AF almost done. Have nearly rounded out my collection of elemental staves (no thunder or water yet^^;), have tweaked my MND gear to something ridiculous while maintaining a ton of enmity gear, and still have capped enahncing and enfeebling magic. I'm thinking of tossing my last two magic merits into enfeebling, but I'm not ready for that commitment yet ;/ BRD is still my love, and I'm not quite ready to surrender my perfectly brd-focused merit setup. Tbh I mostly want the job for better duo opportunities with my leibe katze shasha^^; for which I wont need the merits, and I doubt my ls will ever tell me 'spitz, we have enough brds today' (although we do have quite a collection when they all log in :x lol).

Walks: I'll take this pic of you as a young girl down as soon as you send me your osode. <3, -spitz

Ls pt has shrunk and fluctuated, but still fun^^. Shadow still horrifies ninjas even with crow legs on, and walks still horrifies WHMs, while at the same time making me want to play DRK. Absorb TP looks sick, and walks has actually secured a permanent place on my refresh orders o0 (generally drk gets refresh on a 'you have no mp and I have some extra time/energy' basis). I would honestly be interested in leveling it if I weren't so sure that not every RDM is as smart as me (not to brag, but seriously ~~; leveling my WHM randomly with sha the last couple weeks we have had some bad experiences. RDM number one owned exactly one elemental stave (dark ;/), RDM number two had a refresh macro with a call in it ("{Refresh}Juice' in JP) and managed to get half the pt killed en route to camp in ro'mave.). So yeah, maybe someday...but not soon ;x.

Random closeup^^ Sea is so pretty when it's not lagging so hard I can't move^^;

Stuff to do, stuff to do~ :/ AV failed to drop me a damn manteel, so it may be time to look into getting my own, and musical earring and meoldy +1 and HQ rings and I need to do stupid star necklace quest and buy the insturments I never got around to getting and clean out my inventory so I can hold this all. Would like to form an ENM static, but not sure I know enough people who can log on every day of the week and would be interested. Need to finish ZMs so I can do bahaumut fights (omg bahaumut ._.). And I STILL haven't done my homework xD. I'll start posting shorter updates more often soon, since exactly half my regular readers has complained :3 til then~

Lifter of Shadows

2006-08-18T07:52:09Z

Omg I haven't posted for a week D;. Busybusybusy, college is soon and I'm aiming to be wearing rdm af by then (sunday)^^. I've been hardcore level-whoring RDM with shasha and some other ls peoples last few weeks, 45 as of tonight and party planned for the morning.

AF1 NM: 0 Spitz: 1

Now, when I was leveling BRD through the dunes and the painfully boring early parts of the exp grind I was basically convinced it was the worst job at low levels ever. No special atk or def, no mp regeneration ability, tiny mp pool, crap equip choices, etc. Red mage is like that, only worse. You basically get to be a gimpy WHM and/or a gimpy BLM with lower ele skill, weaker cures, a smaller mp pool and (omg this sucks so bad at low levels; ; ) no clear mind. SEVERELY LAME :<. But things have picked up nicely since I got enough MND gear to see better results on my enfeebles and learned dispel and refresh, and I'm addicted to fast cast <3. So things progress nicely there (*'-')/.

The standard Evisceration shot for this update^^

Wind Crystal. That's all I really have to say about new NMs :/.

...yeah right, I'm never that brief lol; ; The new NMs seem pretty decent all things considered; decent drop rate, fast repops, each drop 2 peices of solid but not game-breaking gear for various levels and jobs. That having been said, so far they have absolutely SKUNKED me :< so meh.

I'm really bad at kiting

Jailor of Faith is a big fat jerk xD. Like most kited NMs he's hilarious to kill, with much running and flailing and panic and me biting my tongue at constantly mobile mages and people being randomly removed from existance by powerful moves and spells :3. My biggest complaint is just that because of the ridiculous haste we had to make up the tower to get to the spawn point before the ??? moved we were *not* in ideal parties, and the opening SC got Breakga'd so we never really had a tank for very long :/. But we took care of business and came away with a pair of joy-knuckles and a Virtue^^ so all's well that ends well (*'-')b.

Moo~ :3

KS99 was much in the same vein ;D there's nothing like an unavoidable 2k+ damage AoE to liven up a BCNM^^. After a sticky start with some newer people who hadn't done this before (me lol; ;) we got a bunch of runs done and got some shinies for the orb donors, the ls coffer, and a few of our MNKs^^. We have a ton of people who want to do this and the other KS99s, so I'll prolly have more on these eventually.

Spawn more overlords!

Title news: 2 more dynamis xarcabard wins for Citybloodsukdynamisomgwtfname, and STILL no more shadow items :<. We did however score both a RDM hat and another pair of TH hands on this last run, along with the completely unavoidable BST hands -_-; lol, and other miscellany (*'-')/. Xarc is a whole world of craziness, I don't even know enough of what's going on to tell you much about it :x. Just...don't try to sleep the NMs as BRD ;/.

Dynamis Lord is no match for le grand papillion and her 260 atk double SV minuets!

It is absolutely vital I write something here so I don't have two screenshots in a row :x I got too many good ones in xarc. I guess I could mention that after another ridiculously good Apollyon SE shadow suggested that we take a swing at the floor 2 Kraken boss and we pushed him down to 30% or under before running out of time. Our attempts to replicate this success have been thwarted thus far, since you have to have an absolutely perfect run otherwise to have the time, and we've linked crabs on both the last two lol -_-;. But we have learned that you can survive a crab link through strategic use of mambos and careful hate management, and we're still piling up the coins^^ 49/75 for loq/musical earring, and if I get the materials more than enough for AF+1 hands or body^^.

Here's the other screeny^^; I hope it was worth the interlude

OTHER DYNAMIS NEWS: I ACTUALLY GOT AF OMG. I've done a pretty good spread of end-game stuff now, so it's really nice to pick up some gear that makes me look the part;; I'm so NQ. And it's also absolutely delicious to see dynamis FINALLY COUGH UP MY STUFF AFTER LIKE 4-5 MONTHS :<. It's just the hat, but it's a really good peice when I'm enfeebling HNMs and dont need the w turban haste or mp from opo crown.

Thanks cancan for the wedding gear btw^^ iono what it is about tarus and marrying me... ;x

WHEW. Whoamg, update over, going to bed^^. Good night!
EDITZ: I forgot, I also totally landed elegy on DL and I give all the credit to my hat. <3 mushroom head 4ever KEKEKEKEKEKEKE

Hydra Headhunter >:D

2006-08-07T09:11:58Z

Big week ^_^ So big there's not even an intro before the lj cut (*'-')

Ok, chronological order. First off, CoP finished~. I spent all saturday with a mixed bunch of ls members and random pickup people trudging through the escort mission, not looking forward to helping anyone with that anytime soon (Ty grim for coming along btw :3). The Zdei BC at the end I had heard horror stories about, Russta himself said it was harder than the airship battle and various other people told me to expect lots of exp loss;;. The best part was our setup, 4 BLMs, myself as BRD and a MNK, which, you'll notice, doesn't acually have a tank. Or a cure higher than III. And as we enter we see the record set at 20 minutes ._. morale at that point: low.

But to make a long story short, since I don't have any pretty pictures, we got by with one death and a 5 minute clear time. Anyone who has problems with these pots: throw more BLMs at em^^. Magic damage was tearing them up, and having four e. seal sleepgas made the fight pretty much a joke. 8-4 was...not so forgiving. I strongly recommend you *not* do that BC, easy as it is, without a main healer. But I'm going to pick up my tamas ring tomorrow^^. Now to real news~

stabstabstab!

Two apollyon runs since last update, mu~ch better. First time we had almost flawless run until crabs decided to be jerks and link. Finished that one on the last crab, frantically stabbing, still made god coin count though because of high drop rate. Our last run, through good pulling, perfect timing, and some sexy tanking by my lovely assistant...

Sup :3

The last crab died with 10 minutes left on the clock, which we used to find the chest, pose by it, and then go play with the manta. I'm incredibly psyched about it, even if the reward weren't incredible it's a ridiculous load of fun to map out a really micro-managing strategy like ours and see it work^^. In a tiny enviroment like limbus (or my mp pool, lawl ~_~) there's really not much room for mistakes (or bad luck, as I mentioned last week), so yes, basically my point is that I <3 Shadowism. Can't buy tankin like that! >:D

In other big CoP news:

Shamelessly ganked from ls's homepage because I didn't take any of my own^^

THIS IS THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING I HAVE EVER FOUGHT. Vrtra charms tanks regularly, hits like a truck, has one-shot capability wth sable breath (I think that's the name), and, my favorite part, 500+ damage AoE with added effect sleep. This, of course, was not enough for SE, so she also spawns in a room full of mobs for level 75 exp and regularly spaws IT(ish)(I think) skeletons and ghosts. Basically the only way to kill it I've heard of is to kite it with a team of tanks ready to rotate when one is inevitabley floored and do dmage using tp and hate-free summoner BPs while a seperate alliance takes care of the extras. I was miserably late, so I ended up and the BLM alliance nuking the summons, but this being CoP it was no snoozefest. Vrtra summons *fast*, and they share hate, so they have to be lullabied and gravitied so the black mages can land their spells. This is fine for the caster-type skeletons and ghosts that take their time and cast spikes on being summoned, but the WAR type Peys charge right after the tank at ridiculous speed. So yeah, busy busy (*'-'). After a kinda rough start we picked up nicely until the vicious, grueling photo-finish win. Streetsoldier gambled on a Mijin Gakure with the *entire* summons alliance having been dropped by wing (the aoe sleep + damage move) spam, and won, which is good because otherwise he NEVER woulda been allowed to forget it.

Check out http://mattet.ath.cx/ for the originals and more^^(shameless linkshell plug :D)

Now, being in the dead black mage alliance doesnt get many any titles, and it's unclear to me who's getting the BRD JSE we have materials for (fingers crossed, although I'm just happy that we won^^). Add that to the factor of pure revenge, and the kill I'm really happy with this weekend wasn't no wyrm.

I'm so glad I made it into ally when we killed it :3

This NM is kinda like Cerberus, he swings between being a total puppy and a rampaging, invincible destroyer of worlds. Also, like Cerberus, he takes pretty minimal damage from magic, melee is the best way to take him down, which is fine by me^^. I was in tank pt though, so I got to witness how weak he is as long as you keep the heads off. With only one head on he uses trembling, a powerful move, but blinkable and only hits melee range, an AoE minimal damage with gravity effect that is reduced to less than 100 damage with a good Baraera, and....nothing. He's a total pushover like that. The problems start when he gets a second head and adds Pyric Bulwark, an invincible effect, and Pyric Blast, a Virus breath attack to his arsenal. Then the last head adds Polar Bulwark, a Magic Shield, and Polar blast, paralyze breath attack, and at 20% health the most dangerous problem: Nerve Gas, AoE 20/tick poison and very powerful curse.

Hunt them heads^^

So yeah, he's a pushover with one head...but when he gets another he'll almost immediately use Pyric Bulwark, which will make him nigh-impossible to damage, and in the meantime will probably raise the third head, and then nerve gas your alliance into oblivion. It's a slippery slope! The best way we found to keep the heads off was to simply keep the damage coming. Melee will need shadows to deal with Trembling, and support for when they don't keep shadows up because they're lazy ~_~, but otherwise just dont let up and be ready to launch a massive push with 2hours and stuff around 10%. If he gets heads up he'll spam his shields and then you'll be out of luck; but if you keep the pressure on you'll get rewarded^^. (With a title at least).

Other stuff:

Jailor of Justice, no virtue or torque, but pretty fun^^

Another Jeuno win and then a glacier (not shown) for me :D Now I just need my AF to drop...

Rawr <3

And on that note I bid you all good night ^^/

Kirin Captivator

2006-07-30T06:37:53Z

Ok, stuff from last time first^^. Evisceration is a blast, I got 350+ on DC toramas with no food or songs and my extremely weak gear. Need some acc rings, and some str ones for wses, plus an o-hat and chivalrous chain, and more besides :x. But let's face it, much more important than evisceration's new, boosted stats is the awesome look!

Shankshankshank! >:D

A couple more things were on that list of random melee gear last week than are this week^^. Many thanks to vlad for crafting me a sexy new behemoth knife, and SE for implementing horns at a delicious droprate from an easy BC. And <3 forever shasha and morta for taking down the top cat of onozozo for me (even if morta only showed up to try to mpk himself on the nm with his cool new merit abilities ;p).

Spitz and the silly hat mafia

The BC that got me my cool new stabby-toy is the one I mentioned last time, Happy Caster in Nav(tab) Execution Chamber. We're now 11/11 on it, with a fair amount of drops that aren't quite phenomenal, but are well worth the tiny 3k IS entry fee. Glad I saved up 30k before the patch ^_^. The BC's one opponent is a new flan-type mob that spams -ga IIIs and IVs with ridiculously high INT stat. He'll also occasionally use Xenoglossia, a JA (or possibly tp-based attack, if that's the case he has some kind of tp regen though) that makes his next spell insta-cast. When you're talking about 1200+ dmg with shell V on, you cant really mess around :x.

MY HUGS ARE MADE OF THUNDAGA III

Our first few runs we kited him like sissies, which was a decent tactic, and incredibly hilarious, but the arena isn't really suited for running away, he pinned us against the ends and one-shotted us when we ran away. We realized though that his very low hp made it perfectly possible to simply swarm him, interrupting his spells with melee attacks and WSes, and put him down before he caused too much trouble. This was effective, fun, fast, just a little dangerous, and netted us server record time of 2minutes 21seconds :p. On the next set of runs however, we learned that ES lets you stick silence, and while we had no casualties I thought some of the fun was gone; ;. Hopefully noone busts our record, reset to 2minutes 13.

Morta poses as an evasion-whore ninja

We also picked up a pair of the new MNK body peice, and promptly gave em away to a couple ls members^^. Lookin good mort and ryshes~.

Of course the title news was my first Kirin. Kinda fun, a lot more work than your average BLM party duty, but sticking songs on a quintet of wandering mages with the attention span of goldfish with down syndrome grates my nerves (if ya hadnt guessed). Seriously, the basic assumption of the BLMs in my pt was that I could SEE INTO THE FUTURE and determine where they would be standing in about 10 seconds, which would be possible if they didn't zig-zag like DUIs accross the kiting path. (I don't really care that much xD it added a little fun to the work, but seriously, where are all of those BLMs *going*? :Q The pattern of their movements was a mystery to me).

Rawr :3

Drops decent, Osode cloth D body, but no H body for poor shasha D:. The boy needs a better WS swap body :<.

After horrible, wracking indecision I eventually surrendered my limbus duo run to the needs of the swarm and ate floor in Central Tenemos with the rest of our ls. Around 25% he decided to nuke our tank pt (myself excluded for the most part :x) out of existance and then Holy II them when they reraised, which led to some ugliness and the loss of the run. We were moving a little too fast, probably because of a slow start gathering people up, hopefully we'll get it next time, although honestly I'm way more interested in ultima atm^^;.

Boo~

By way of reverse payoff, earlier in the day I helped a few ls members take down ultima's little brother in CoP mission 6-4 (Congrats shao gaddes theo^^). I was really impressed with how smooth it went :O I was 1/4 on it (2 dry runs and then a mistake on the mammets that made us wait till 4th to go for win), but the ls group was 1/1 as BRD RDM WHM BLM NIN SAM, and only 2 CCBs. No deaths, no even really dangerous bits. I guess the trick to this BC is simply having a really strong support team for your tank and taking the fights slowly, but also being able to finish them quickly at the lower health percentages.

I still hate guided missile

Ok, that was ridiculously big^^;. Gonna go pass out now, dreaming of xarc access; ls is still deciding between glacier and jeuno for tomorrow. Tune in next time I have a sexy new title to show off (*'-').

Fafnir Slayer

2006-07-27T16:39:53Z

Ls picked up the post-maintinence Fafnir for some E hands and a talon, which has now been totally nuked in price xD. It was still nice to get a king, even an NQ one, but of course next day we go back and PO claims it with a party against like two and a half alliances of VS and an ally and a half of us :x. There are no pictures because my folder was full; ; please forgive me~. Faffles isn't really a very interesting fight for BRD, because we all have to be on feet it's basically ballad spam + stoneskin. The trickiest part is definitely that fully half of your server's endgame population will be standing right on top of you in an area smaller than a mog house and wanting very badly for you to wipe so they can get some of those awesome gilseller hands :3.

Foofles did resist my elegy a couple times, cementing my decision to sink some merits into singing and wind asap, possibly before I max Troubador, which was the biggest letdown and worst translation of a spell description ever; ;. It claims to 'double the effect' of songs sung while it's up, instead it doubles their duration :/ I guess I was a little optimistic to think SE would let me 2hr every 15 minutes, but was still kinda angry about it until someone pointed out to me this basically just doubled the length of my Soul Voice :x. At level 3 it will basically allow me to just not cast spells 1/3rd of the time, 5 min song duration and 15min recast, so I may yet finish it up. We shall see~.

Started taking hits the second I left screenshot mode; ;

Well this post was gonna be about how awesome and rewarding duo limbus is in terms of challenging your strategic ability and making you flex your job's potential, instead it's about how one mistake in limbus will absolutely ruin your day :/. About 3 seconds after this screenshot shasha started casting ichi after losing ni shadows very quickly, got double critted for 400 a hit and then critted again, and died right near the slime's spawn point, effectively ending a run on which prior to that point shasha had yet to be hit and we had burned half the first floor in five minutes without my soul voice. Bad luck will crush a run, remember your RR and pull stuff away from spawn points!

Yes, watch me melee a mob that has a WS that inflicts AoE 30/tick bio as BRD! >:D

Note my awesome melee gear :s. Yeah, Soulflayers were the wrong mobs to try out the setup I was gonna use on second-floor apollyon crabs, but they did cough up 2 capes for us after a 3-4 hour voke fest with half the endgame shells on our server and a solo SMN who tried to sell the cape he got ~_~. Broke one and HQ'd the other, putting two of our Blue Mages in full AF just as soon as their quest delay is up^^ (One already had body). Soulflayers are nasty mobs, but we had to bring so many just to claim I couldnt really judge how hard :/. Everyone whined about how SE had killed their father and raped their mother with this system of AF, but I'm fairly sure in a week Soulflayers will be nothing more than menaces to innocent newbs wandering around reef ;s.

I also did a full set of the new ISBCNMs with some ls members (and semi-ls members :s <3 Yutti), for 5/5 wins and some HILARIOUS deaths xD. I neglected to get screenies there as well though, so I'll talk about em next time, as well as new SP assaults >:D Warhorse Hoofprint get! More to come (*'-').

Ouryu Overwhelmer T_T

2006-07-24T08:12:59Z

Back from vacation, and I note on my ls's forums we have wyrms scheduled. Now I adore my ls even though I haven't been in it for so long, but organization and planning are not among the many things about it I hold dear :s. When I say 'wyrms' are scheduled, I mean just that: we could have easily ended up at Vrtra or Jorgumand(sp?). But instead since we had a couple cloud evokers from uncapped ENMs done by memebrs, we did Ouryu :D.

Okay, the pictures aren't stellar cos I'm not a pro and PS2 is too weak, so please forgive me on that point ><.

:Q

As I mentioned, I don't reall adore BLM party duty on slow kinda events like dynamis, but I did *not* have any time in this BC to twiddle my thumbs ._. I don't know much about the nature of Ouryu's attacks except that he does an AoE that adds a slow effect and it really, really sucks; ;. So yeah, I kept busy keeping the poor BLMs alive and nuking happily, and taking care of the most evil part of this fight.

That's right :< The adds.

Ouryu's floating island BC comes with a pair of worms, and a matching set of elementals, one earth and one water. They aren't horribly tough, but they repop if you kill them and wander around the place till they agro you again ><. I dunno what the precise strategy for them was supposed to be, but while the BLMs did their best to keep em Sleep II'd, BLMs are busy creatures with short attention spans, so I spent a lot of time casting lullaby T_T.

Well that's kinda pretty :x Maybe I can get better at this whole screenshot thing.

They did not give me a *second's* rest, neither D:. Just when I'd think I had it made, fresh ballads on, stoneskin up, mp full, we'd get nailed by a -ga III from an insufficiently slept ele that had woken up unnoticed. The slightly crazy nature of the fight meant that I actually got hit by Flood once O_o noone noticed the thing casting for twenty seconds or whatever...orz; ;. Thank jebus for lullaby recast merits and sha'ir gloves D:. But the good news...

If you cant see with the crap quality, that's him dead :s

Victory! :D We went 2/2, netting us 6 kunwu ores, two tutelaries, two wyrm horns, a bit of siren's hair and some dragon blood. Afterwards my officer friend who got me into ls in the first place caught me up on a lil history, apparently they had tried it beofre and wiped at 1%; ; So awesome comeback :D. All the damage was done by BLMs and Chi Blasting monks, so come this new update you may not hear about another win on this BC for a lo~ng time :/. But I ain't gonna prophe...phrophe...predict doom based on a badly translated press release, so we'll see^^.

CRAB BATTLE~ XD

Otherwise I helped my besterest kitty friend finish up his great axe skill, busted the latent, and duo'd the NM^^ Like most WSNMs, kinda boring :s with a good ninja and carnage elegy they're just normal mobs with a ton of health. Steel Cyclone is great though, no doubt I'll have to macro VIT and STR etudes so those warriors dear to my heart can put out those big 300% numbers ;p.

lol AF1 knife; ;

I won't pretend my interest in skill up was totally unselfish though ;s It cost hours and part of our souls, but we got my dagger all the way to 230, and next time there's stuff to farm it'll be time to break my latent and snag Evisceration^^. Tbh I'm really looking forward to it :D. The aforementioned friend and I have been duoing SE Apollyon (omg next update :D there will be pics!), but our record is only first floor clear and 5.9 repeating (slivered him with Mijin Gakure ><) of 8 crabs on second floor dead. I thought after the first run that me meleeing with sushi and attack songs would help cut down on lo~ng kill times on the tricky crabs, but it's taken till now to get melee-ready^^. There's a ton of stuff to think about gear and macro wise that as a standard support class job I've never had to think about. Guess those melee red mages have a leg up on me, huh?

...Well no, they still suck, but hopefully next update I'll have shots of me eviscerating crabs and tons of ancient beastycoins :3. Til then :D.

TEH EDITZ: Wow, ffxiclopedia tells me there are *four* worms, and they don't respawn, but have to be killed as a victory condition T_T. I know we had a WHM/BST in the ally who was nominally in charge of keeping them busy, I just kept seeing them wander through. Plz don't trust me, I'm a newb ;s

Hallo, und eine katze's ethos für BRD

2006-07-18T03:57:29Z

Hallo! A long time ago, when the world was young, like last august or so, I dumped my Elvaan cos I got tired of his haircut and made a Mithra. I named her Fingerspitz, because it's a cool German word (fingertips) and it sounds all dexterous, which is what Mithra are :D. Unfortunately for me, in the party HUD, character names have 6 letters shown, then an ellipses if they're any longer. So you can call me what every single other person I have ever, ever met in final fantasy XI has called me no matter how many times I ask them not to; ; 'fingers'.

I basically messed around in this game for months and months, leveling odd jobs I didn't really want to play, and reading on the internet a TON more than actually playing the game, since Leon County Schools frowns on bringing PS2s to class, even if you only play at lunch . But a couple weeks before I graduated, playing with my dearest kitty friend, I made a fateful decision~. I spent 5k for a peice of parchment and unlocked BRD, and it's about BRD that I want to talk about in my first entry^^.

This...is not me <.< Nor is it a BRD.

Now whenever I'm bored and stupid enough to wander over to the Killing Ifrit job-specific forums and try to learn something new, one of the top ten newest BRD topics is without fail about how easy bard is, and more specifically how you could level it to 75 naked/subbing DRG/while picking your nose and going afk 5minutes out of every 6. It can take me hours on end to get my faith in humanity back; ;. I don't know about other people, but I enjoy this game the most when I'm playing my hardest, and very few things annoy me more than people who want an easy ride to 75 without having to do an honest party's work. So when I leveled BRD, I was (not to toot my own horn (oh my God I cant beleive I made that joke; ;)) pretty pimped :3. I spat on NQ insturments, NQ rings, gear that wasn't as good as AF and most of all on gimped subs. I got my subligar from the aqueducts and sported my gaudy harness at 50 (letting go of my panties was a wrench, I won't deny; ;), I got all my AF done early with the aforementioned dear kitty friend, I got ALL of my spells on time, and I had my WHM and NIN subs ready at all times. (I'm going somewhere with this, not just bragging, I swear ;x)

This isn't me either <.> Why don't I have a single picture of myself on this computer!?

The other thread I see a lot on forums at KI and Zam (not that I go to Zam except under extreme duress) is the one about how either 'BRD is so horribly boring, how does anyone play it', or the one about 'where are all the BRDs? Ballad prz; ;', both of which feature posts from someone who has 75BRD and says they avoid it at every cost now because it's so boring and they hate it so much. Now I won't try to claim the two phenomenon are always connected, but when I leveled BRD, with my serious search comments and my above-average gear complete with apropos r/e armor and all the expensive spells, I had a *blast*. I made a couple of *great* friends, I basically sang my way into an HNMLS on the strength of my play, I had so much fun I logged on maybe 5 minutes after waking up for a week and needed only that long to get from 60-low-something to my very first 75 job (squeee!). I adore BRD, I merit mostly for fun (capped most of the stuff that really affects my performance atm) with my friends and lsmates, and if I had to start all over again I know I'd get WHM to 37 and go get that parchment for the emo NPC in the tavern and get BRD to 75 a second time with pleasure~. There are some aspects of my role in bigger ls events I dont like, but luckily we have a fair amount of BRDs and I can generally wile my way out of the snooze-tastic BLM party to get in with the melee.

What the crap O.o

Which brings me to the third major thing I hear from/about BRDs; what a certain lj user has called 'Princess' syndrome (Err, I should give specific credit, look up Mifaco if you want to be depressed just a little about this game). Because of the higher invite rate bards get, many people are much pickier and choosier, to the point of becoming kind of jerks about it, even when their own gear and play is sub-par because they can get away with more. Now I'm not going to waste my time in 2k/hr pts where I spend half the time staring and doing my nails , that's not productive and not fun. But I came up with a solution around level 55, when I got a little more confident (I was always a little shy in game before ;3); form your own parties~! Bards have invite power, they're the hardest part of a 'perfect' setup to lay hands on. So why make yourself available to the 'unwashed', herr elitist BRD? Ninjas will trip over their speed hack boots to join up when they /sea your job, and RDMs and WHMs are a dime/stack, not to mention equally eager to team up; from there you have your pick of the poor, unloved melee who have been seeking for hours. When I try to explain this to people, they tend to stare at me up to this point (drooling a lil sometimes), and then interrupt to say that they 'don't know how to make a party'. Either at the end of this entry or as the next I will create for such people 'Finger's big guide to how to make exp parties on BRD', but until then my thoughts for you are as such: if making a party is so hard you can't do it then maybe you should ease up a little on the gimp who invites you to his PUP DRG DRK WAR/MNK WHM group. You have the single hardest-to-find part of a party in yourself, and you can't whip something up for the other 5 members? Sorry, not much sympathy, and for my money not much room to complain. Although I'll agonize to my friends and linkshell over the deplorable state of parties I join, I refuse to whine in /p, and when I dump them for being crappy I try to make a half-way decent excuse, or at least tell the truth politely, and go without making a scene.

I swear I'll have better pictures next time; ;

Okies, whew O_o Huge wall of text there, but I think I've explained my basic BRD ethos (*'-')b. I promise, cross my heart and hope to die, I won't bore whoever is reading to death with this crud ;x. My inspiration to make a livejournal (besides horrible, crushing boredom and seperation from my beloved character; ;) is from Russta, I spent the last two days reading literally 4 years worth of his adventures in vana'diel and found it to be totally interesting because of his informed opinions, tips and informtion about the game, great stories, and most of all pretty pictures :3. I know I can't really offer anything as interesting as him as of yet, but as soon as I get back home I'll work on the stories and information, and the pics are coming asap^^. I'm leaving off here for now to go make my background pretty :3.