I was honestly sort of hoping for some silly dialogue from the Moogle when I approached him wearing my year-old anniversary ring. Last year the Moogle's ominous warning that I shouldn't throw my ring away inspired me to hold onto it even long after it exhausted its usefulness. When I did finally throw it away in front of the Moogle I honestly felt like a jackass. But not nearly as much of an ass as the Moogle was when he again told me that I'd never ever get another ring while passing me my second one. I welcome the XP boost, mind you. But that warning sounds so dire and serious considering that if we could keep these things we'd likely have enough to string into an anniversary necklace by 2011.

I've written before that I think the Moogles are a source of great evil within Vana'diel. And while this doesn't prove that they're evil nearly as much as the war-effort event that led into WotG, this certainly proves that Moogles are goddamn liars.

Before I go into my usual "This is what I did since my last update" routine I want to take a moment to share a couple of views from other players that I got in the forms of /tells. The first is pretty much just for the sake of stroking my own ego.



I have a lot of people stop in and say hello to me anymore. Mostly in Whitegate when they bump into me they'll send a quick /tell saying hello and comment on this LJ. And by all means you're welcome to do this. I love talking to other players. This is a social game and, frankly, I get bored when I don't have anyone to talk to.

On the other hand, if you notice I'm online and I'm in Apollyon or anything with the word Remnants in its name; you have to understand that I'm probably doing something that requires my attention. If I ignore you then it isn't because I hate anybody. But I do get busy and sometimes I can't read and respond to everything that gets sent to me while we're fighting Long-Bowed Chariot. Also, if I'm in Batallia theres a 100% chance that I'm in AFK Bazaar mode while showering, writing here, sleeping, or out of the house.

Again. I don't mean any of this as "Don't talk to me." I just don't want folks getting angry if I don't respond right away. I'm logged in FFXI pretty much constantly regardless of if I'm out doing something, in another room playing SNES, or actually at my computer.

Now for the second bit:



This honestly sort of worries me. I rarely go back and look over my older entries unless I'm looking for something in particular. Like sometimes folks will ask about one of the Ashu Talif fights and I'll go back and look at my own writing to see if I can dig up anything helpful to share. I've had people quote favorite lines out of my LJ in /tells at me and I think that some of my best "material" comes from when I'm angered by one thing or another. Hell, I still get mentions of Admiral McStupid. But I have to wonder if FFXI is draining on me as a whole.

This game can be -very- frustrating. And I do legitimately stress over my gil and progress in the things that I attempt. But am I more negative now than I was when I started? I honestly don't know the answer to that question. Surely my real feelings in other parts of life have also influenced my mood and writing, but I seriously don't know how to reply to the comment about me being bitter aside from the fact that I mostly blame Salvage. Anyone who has read a fair chunk of this LJ (you poor souls) I do, however, welcome to comment on this. Am I becoming more bitter...?

Anyways; all that BS out of the way--its time for the meat of the entry.



Our Tuesday Limbus run was scary. For one thing, we had to go to the worst part of Apollyon to go after the last chip for my Omega pop set. I felt bad for dragging us out here and apologized repeatedly for making us deal with the fomor and mimic floors.

We went as BLM, BLM, BLM, and my RDM to act as a manabattery. Its important to mention that I've had a constant (literally 24 hours a day) headache ever since Mother's Day. In an effort to help, a family member gave me a painkiller. The trouble was that I didn't really question what I had been given until I started feeling pretty loopy. And then it came into full light that I had taken something that had been prescribed to deal with pain that followed my family member's major surgery. I asked precisely what it was I had been given, but I can't remember what the answer was. In fact, I don't remember much of anything so I'm glad I have my screenshot folder to help me out. Whatever it was, it was far too strong for me to take over a headache.

En route to Limbus I do recall making odd comments about the sky in Al'taieu being so many different colors and "yet so few colors at the same time". I was spacey as hell and twice I totally zoned out while en route to Apollyon. People asked if I was going to be okay. But I actually felt really damned good. We pressed on.

Floor one resulted in an unfortunately bad pull that caused a chain-reaction of fomor links that ended up wiping us. I'd probably have been kind of angry at the bad pull if I hadn't been so medicated---but we got up and regrouped to pull again. Unfortunately we had lost precious time in our Limbus run. Celestria suggested someone needed to go pop the time chest on the other side of the area.

I nominated myself for the task. The BLMs needed to rest and my MP was pretty unimportant in comparison. I made my way over to the time chest but there were fomor guarding it. Using my awesome ninja skills (by which I mean they pathed away), I snuck up and grabbed the chest. Floor complete! But we were hurting for time.

Second floor we killed a tree with nuke-spam and that was it. Cake! But no extra time was earned.

Floor three was mimics and I -hate- mimics more than I hate many things. Popping the first chest restored everyone's 2hrs, HP, MP which was welcome but we wanted the time chest. We only had five minutes left and we weren't even on the last floor yet!

Cele warned that we only had time to pop open one more chest. Our second chest was, unfortunately, not the time bonus chest. Instead, it was a mimic. Luckily, mimics die nicely when hit by tier4 nukes. We nuked it down, got the portal opened, and ran up to the top floor with about 3 minutes left.

Up top we had to kill three Dark Elementals. Each BLM was given an elemental to kill and I was tasked with helping. I immediately popped Chainspell and put Gravity on each of our enemies. And then I began spamming nukes alongside the others.

Blaize died. And it was probably my own fault because in my dazed-nuking frenzy I completely neglected to try to save him until it was too late to do so. We got the one-minute left warning just as the elementals fell to the ground and Blaize picked himself up with his Reraise hairpin.



I thanked everyone repeatedly and apologized for letting Blaize die. He seemed to shrug it off but I still felt bad. Cele reminded me that my chip-set was now finished so that our work had payed off. And I suppose that was true. Proto-Omega is set for the coming Monday and I'm both excited and worried. Every time I kill Omega he always drops nothing but those damned helms.

After that, it was time for Salvage.

Yet another run through Bhaflau Remnants resulted in Mad Bomber showing up for us for a second run in a row---which I think is a new record for us. I like Mad Bomber because when we take his path it means I get to spam nukes at him and the flans on the floor above. Take that!



I don't care if they are stupidly weak to magic; nuking those flans for over 1k on RDM makes me feel awesome. But I left my Moldavite Earring at home. Sheesh...

Gate Widow was, again, a no-show. As was the 4th floor rampart's Roc NM.

We ended up getting a ridiculous number of Body and Mana Boosts. Enough, actually, for everyone to have one of each---even the people who didn't need more HP or MP respectively. Having both, I got to become Super RDM with the power of having the most awesome Convert ever. But I didn't even have to use it. Espera(WHM) and I both still had over 1000MP when the boss was slaughtered.



Goooooooooaaaaaaaaaaalllll!!!!

Our last drop off the boss means we don't have to fight him anymore. Which frees up more time for the Ramparts. Which is honestly going to make Bhaflau runs even more painfully dull than they already are...but my pants are done!



Aaaand thats it for Usukane! Gloves, Shoes, Pants! Done, done, and done. The only possible future adjustments to make for PUP now look to me like: Faith Torque, Swift Belt, and Animator+1.

Of course this also meant my SAM had awesome new pants too. For inventory space, I'd very much like to put my SAM AF in armor storage. But that would require me finishing the set. Well, thats something I should do anyways. So here goes...!



Sneaking around Kuftal to find a coffer took longer than I thought. I went as PUP since I didn't want to change jobs and wanted to show off my new pants. Luckily, I had saved a coffer key that I got off a crab back when I was leveling SAM. The tiger in the picture above ended up aggroing me just a moment after the snapshot was taken. He was actually fairly tough. But Tsukushi kept me alive while I kicked the crap out of him. Don't mess with Usukane PUP, sucker!



Teleporting away to start the quest to go after Dark Spark, I couldn't remember how difficult the area around the AF Gloves NM actually was. Just to be safe I loaded up some of my battle-gear onto my RDM and headed out to finish what I had started.



I gave Dark Spark and his surrounding mobs far too much credit. Spark's Bio3 was the most threatening thing that I encountered. The fight was greared for people at AF-ish level afterall; so I don't know why I bothered with the job change and all the gear swapping.

I returned to Jeuno and claimed my new SAM gloves. But I was missing a piece. The body armor. I'll have to get out to the Temple of Uggalepih and dig up a coffer key for that.

My work is never done.

~Myrrial

My Bard's Stoneskin set for /WHM and /RDM is, more or less, almost complete.

As BRD you need around 145 or so MND to cap it.  The only thing I'm missing is a Pride Staff, because I haven't been able to find it.  My stoneskin will officially cap after obtaining it, but for now if I'm really desperate for a capped stoneskin I can just buff up with a MND Etude beforehand, or use MND food lol.

As with any mage job with access to stoneskin, refusing to cast it is just being lazy.  I'd rather someone cast it without MND gear than not cast it at all.  That's pretty bad, too, but not as bad.

And until I get a Pride Staff, this is my BRD's stoneskin gear:


lolGeistEarrings (I refuse to get the MND+2 ones until I have RDM leveled to really benefit from the extra MND)...  eh, 2 MND for stoneskin is 2 MND.

mesmerix totally, totally rocks.

She is the wiki-tiki-goddess,
She is the wiki witch of the east,
We must bow our heads in supplication and give thanks!

http://cam-wiki.org/Lord_Tyrian_Frost

*grins* Let the quotes and rumors begin - looking forward to having one of these up at last :-)

Most days I log in pretty much knowing what I'm going to do in advance. Sure I may sprinkle in a random ISNM or Campaign Ops when I hadn't counted on it intially but for the most part plans may change.

While swapping through LSes the other day I noticed a call for Up In Arms that needed a third member. Now, I'm perfectly aware that Up In Arms is a massive waste of seals but when I checked my inventory I had precisely 60 seals on hand so I figured that may have been a sign or something so I decided to simply roll with it as I had nothing better to do while waiting until the evening for Salvage anyways.

The unusual part was when I was asked to come on my 60DRG. Not that theres anything unusual about that in-and-of-itself...but I hadn't used my DRG for anything in quite a long time at this point.

Shockingly, I had enough gear handy to throw together a halfway decent DRG (I'm still surprised that I had my 60 polearm handy instead of on my mule). I was told to sub WHM so I did.

We gathered up as PLD, SCH, and my DRG/WHM.

We went in and the fight was much more scary than I remembered it being.



See. This is why people manaburn things. Round one, our PLD had trouble holding hate off of my mighty(?) DRG and we ended up consuming a great deal of the SCH's MP. An unfortunately strong WS floored our tank and it fell to me to protect us. Oh dear lord.

I opened up my ability list and noticed my 2hr. Spirit Surge. Okay. I didn't even honestly remember what it did but I fired it off. My TP gauge jumped up as I ate Lumiere, my pet Wyvern. I unleashed a Penta Thrust, my two damaging jumps, and got to Penta again. I took a crapton of damage from the monster's last WS but I scraped by for the win.

Okay. The drops sucked but that was honestly fun.

Round two resulted in a charge of plan. We opened with the PLD kiting, the SCH on Gravity/DoTs, and me running around swinging my polearm and letting Lumiere smack the kraken around. I remembered that I had Super Jump to shed hate with so I layed on the damage without fear this time. The fight went much, much smoother and we took our foe down easily with our stronger opening.

Aaaand crap dropped.

Round three involved less kiting and more Penta Spamming for me. By this point I felt that we had mastered the fight. Of course nothing special dropped yet again but it was a really pleasant encounter aside from the part where we had to walk to the burning circle. But more than that; I was pleased to have gotten a chance to dust off my DRG and get use out of its abilities. That was the first time I've ever gotten meaningful use out of Super Jump and I have to say DRG is actually kind of cool.

But not cool enough for me to want to outfit as a 75 job.



Speaking of outfitting my 75 jobs; my Limbus group is now making a concious effort to get me into a bit of Homam. My 3rd chip for my Proto-Omega set was obtained on Saturday so I think that fairly soon I'll get to put my luck to the ultimate test and see if something other than the damned homam hat will drop for my BLU. I really need to take another look at the armor set and figure out which ones would benefit my BLU the most to see which I want to lay claim to.

Salvage...is Salvage. Our Saturday run ending up having too few people show up. We grabbed a couple of friends to act as stand-ins and as a result we weren't comfortable with going and trying to fight the boss (which I still need to kill for my pants). Sacrificing him, we were able to do three of the much-hated Ramparts. Floor 1 rampart was a jerk as always and we saw no Gate Widow.

Floor two was much less lame.



Skirmish Whateverthehell spawned maybe a half-dozen times. And better than that he dropped the 35 piece to Usukane shoes---TWICE! We only needed one pair; but we got a bonus pair. Rock on! That means that we never have to deal with the lolbees Rampart ever again. Done. Finished! Off the list! Thank. God.

Moving on to the 3rd floor Rampart....well, there was no luck there either. But screw it. Even with two of the ramparts being failures and my target mob being left out the run was a massive success.

Any progress on Bhaflau is a welcomed change.

~Myrrial

http://cam-wiki.org/Lord_Tyrian_Frost

Help with formatting and stuff appreciated...I've seen some kick ass wiki's out there, and would love to make mine look better than just "standard template" :)

Out of pure boredom I lended my hand to Versus (the leader of which does Salvage with us sometimes) when they went to go do Sea. I don't have an endgame shell really; so I don't get to ever go do that sort of stuff. I was given the forewarning that anything that dropped was for the shell's members. And that was fine by me. I just wanted to kill some time.

By some painful coincidence the event of the day ended up being the spamming of Jailer of Faith fights. As a 75PUP, Faith is one of the few jailers I'm actually interested in. Thats one sexy torque.

I know borderline nothing about Sea. But myself and a Paladin named Izman were tasked with scouting for the spot where Faith pops and pulling/kiting until the rest of things got under control. I felt oddly important considering that I was effectively a guest. Either way, I was given a pearl just for the sake of easy communication.



I had never fought Faith before but it seemed simple enough. Faith's earth magic was aggrivating as hell and his weaponskills were amazingly destructive. Personally, I was impressed by how much I resisted Breakga. But mostly the whole deal for me was running around spamming Refresh, Barstonra, and Cure IV since I was seemingly in the "tank" party with all the Paladin-kiters.

Faith Torque dropped twice. For the second drop; Ringthree (another friend from Salvage) was told that he could roll on them against another player. But he purposefully passed on them after his rival rolled a lowly 100-and-something. I thought that was a very generous move. I suppose that Ringthree is a kinder person than I. If I had any right to them whatsoever I'd have outrolled my own mother for a Faith Torque.



One of the five or so claw weapons that dropped ended up auto-sorting to me. Since PUP's Sea weapon is the effing Hope Staff this drop serves me no purpose other than being a trophy of sorts. I'll hold onto it for now just because I think its neat.

In other subjects; Bhaflau Remnants continues to hate us. In particular, the boss is being a stingy bitch with the Usukane pants. Its now repeatedly dropped literally everything else that its capable of multiple times but won't give up the pants. Its only a matter of time. And the odds of my pants showing is a greater chance than any of the 35s for the other poor folks in my group. But its saddening all the same. I'd really like to come out of a Bhaflau at some point this month knowing that something got finished for somebody.



I also drove Dancer up to 34 one morning because I was unable to sleep. Shockingly, the act of XPing the job quickly remedied that. But jumping up the two levels was nice anyways--I do look forward to being able to get rid of some of the gear that I'm holding onto for this job.

I really need to figure out a way to become more involved with Sea. At the very least I would like to better learn my way around there. Faith honestly seems like I could fell it rather easily with a small band of friends. Though I'm unsure how I would ever manage to convince people to try such a thing over a torque that would likely not drop and for such a selfish cause as getting something purely for me.

I'll find a real Sea group someday I suppose.

~Myrrial

kinokofry
Art and comics by Rebecca Clements

wii_kartonline
All about Mario Kart Wii: challenge, chat & have fun

the_polaroids
Post and peruse Polaroid photos

In an effort to cure my boredom today I decided at one point that I would help the next person that I saw /shout for help with something in Whitegate. When that "next thing" ended up being a call for help with a painfully long list of BLU spells I then decided to go and help with the SECOND /shout that went by instead.

Some random DRG needed a hand getting to Azouph Isle staging point. There. Fine. Perfect. It would give me something to do, give me someone to talk to when my LS mates were nowhere to be found, and give me that "I helped someone. Yay." sense of...having helped someone. Yay.

As it turns out, my DRG person was the quiet type. We did talk a little bit and he asked me how I liked RDM but before we got off the boat to Nashmau it occured to me that I probably talk more than most people do in these sort of games.

The trip itself was painfully easy. I warned him that we'd have to watch out for imps but there weren't any that ran any risk of coming after us. When I made this trip for myself I found the staging point on complete accident while fleeing with a friend for our lives from an imp. During our trip today I saw three imps. Two of which were being slaughtered by XP parties and one more that could have possibly been a threat if it hadn't been claimed within two seconds of spawning and then dragged out of my line of sight to probably meet the same fate as the other two.

After our safe arrival the DRG thanked me repeatedly and passed me 20k which I certainly wasn't going to turn down.

Back in town I decided it was time to get some more work done towards savings. While putting together a group for the ISNM I got randomly taunted by the leader of another Salvage shell about the good luck they've been having with Macha's Coats. >.>;;;



Yeah. Thanks.

I briefly blew up at my own Salvage friends; demanding that they allow me to enter Arrapago alone and go solo the Qiqirn Treasure Hunter(s). But instead I ended up refocusing on the task at hand and getting the ISNM going. Crap dropped. And then I put together a second ISNM group.



Thank. God.

The only other real event of the day involved Arilayne, Walrus, and I pulling together and plugging away at Pulling the Plug once more in our continued hope for a nice expensive ring to drop. Empty Seed was -really- harsh on us this time but we did manage a win after a close call and a Benediction to save our asses.



No luck on the drop but the fight was as hectic, fun, and as good of an excuse to break out my BLU as ever so that was good.

Oh. And just before bedtime (i.e. now) Cele and I pooled our funds together to grab up a strangely priced pair of Herald's Gaiters in the Batallia mulefest that we intend to resell. If the shoes do manage to sell again it would serve as a nice bonus towards my eventual robe. So maybe I'll luck out afterall at some point. One can always hope at least.

~Myrrial

This month is Mental Health Awareness Month, so the LiveJournal team is offering users a chance to support the Depression and Bipolar Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping improve the lives of those suffering from mood disorders. Proceeds from purchases of the Emerging Sun v-gift during May will be donated to the DBSA, so feel free to buy one. Or, if you really want to rack up some good karma points, get a bunch!

And don't forget: Mother's Day is this Sunday. Be a dear and check out the v-gifts shop. Send something that'll make her smile.


L to R: Emerging Sun, #1 Mom, Gift Basket, Chocolates, A Dozen Red Roses


We know how you salivate over the prospect of new themes, especially when they're designed by users with a unique handle on both form and function.


L to R: Shiny, River at Night, Live and Learn, Vector Drips.

( Winners of the HP 'What Do You Have to Say?' Theme Design Contest )


We'd like to remind you that the nomination process for LiveJournal Advisory Board user-representatives has begun. If you think you're fit for the job, now's the time to nominate yourself! After all, you're the only who can do it. In two weeks, on the 22nd, the voting process will begin; we'll remind you about it again here.

If you're interested in keeping up with the nominations, watch lj_election_en. We'll post the results and announce the winner by the end of the day on May 30th. The new user-representatives will be seated on June 1st. Further details can also be found in lj_2008.

Last night our Salvage run again resulted in no 35s or Usukane pants out of Bhaflau. After the run was over some of us sat around and discussed our hatred for various parts of the game. Then, after everyone else had logged out to sleep I dragged myself off to bed. And I had a dream about Salvage.

In my dream we were running a Salvage zone that my subconciousness had made up. The zone featured a crazed monster that looked like King Goldemar from the tier10 Periqia Assault. Except that this version was tinted silver and had retreated into the Alzadaal Undersea Ruins with a bunch of Antican larvae that he raised and brainwashed into defending him and his treasures. His portion of the undersea ruins had turned into something of a Crawler's Nest looking...hatchery. Except it was far more twisted than just that. This fella had used arcane power to change his Antican minions into something much more badass and scary.

The whole place kicked ass. I went on RDM and did my usual buffing/healing/enfeebling thing. We ended up running out of time before reaching the final boss. But one of the bigger enemies we killed ending up dropping PUP relic pants before we timed out. Being the only PUP present; they went to me. They turned out to be green, orange, and hideous. We discussed ways to improve our run the nex time. And then I woke up shortly after that.

I suspect that I may need a break from this game. Maybe I'm slowly going mad.



After sorting through my inventory and realizing how badly I need more space; I came upon my Dancer gear. I would very much like to get rid of that crap--so I took the time to raise Dancer from 30 to 32 yesterday. Then I went to Old Sandy and did the Streetsweeper III Ops seven times in a row (Boy was that exciting) to the tune of 1820XP. It feels like progress. But I still can't really decide how I feel about Dancer.

Do you ever feel as though everyone else has more Gil than you? I can't run from the Assault Office to the Auction House in Whitegate without bumping into at least three people wearing Morrigan's Robes. I don't even looking for the other Salvage body pieces. Just that one. They're -everywhere-. And I'd really like to know how the hell people are funding it.

I honestly think I would enjoy this game more if I just gave up on the damned thing. Whenever I'm logged in I worry constantly about my Gil total. I don't buy Chocobos when I Tele-Holla. I'll -walk- to Sandy to save 250 Gil. But nothing makes money. Playing Tele-Taxi for a month doesn't matter when the price of ingots just continues to rise.

I'm at the point now where I'm considering server-swapping somewhere else once my Salvage group is finished collecting everything just so I can obtain my ingots in a cheaper environment. How screwed up is that? With SE aware of how bad things are on Odin; I may run the risk of never being able to return. And at the very least I'd be stuck on an alien server for six months.

All this stress for one item. Its so very silly. When was this game fun? I can't remember.

~Myrrial

Advisory Board Nominations Begin

This morning we are opening the nomination process for the user-representative positions on the LiveJournal Advisory Board. A full description of the process can be found here.

To get you started, here are the basic things you should know:

- You may only nominate yourself
- Each nominee will need 100 motions of support in order to be eligible to be a candidate
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Everyone here at LiveJournal is looking forward to this first-ever User-Representative election! We'd like to thank everyone who is participating. Some words from our current Advisory Board members:

danah boyd: “LiveJournal is filled with very passionate users. These users have helped shaped LJ's various communities over the last decade and it gives me great joy that LJ is recognizing and incorporating users' voices into the decision-making processes. Having user representatives from different parts of LJ on the Advisory Board will help make sure that the company is meeting the needs of its diverse constituents.”

Esther Dyson: "I'm sure we'll learn a lot from the process, and later on from the two users selected as well. Especially, I hope that the discussions before the voting will be more meaningful and more focused on policy than those in some offline campaigns."

Brad Fitzpatrick: "It's cool that SUP is getting users involved with the LiveJournal decision-making process. I look forward to seeing who the community elects and the results of our efforts working together."

Professor Lawrence Lessig: “The user elections will provide a critical check on LJ's process of maintaining a valuable and trustworthy environment for the LJ community. The mandate of the elections will give the user representatives pride of place among the members of the Advisory Board. Each of us will look to them to guide us in our judgment about how best to make LJ the community we all aspire that it will be. I look forward to welcoming the user representatives, and learning a great deal from them.”


chasethestars has also made some banners for you to use, if you'd like to show your support for the candidate of your choice!

( Banners + code for you to use! )

Compliments to the Chef is one of the three ISNM fights you can do capped at level 75. Up until recently, I had only done Shadows of the Mind; but that all changed the other day.

The encounter involves killing one Orobon NM. Orobon being one of the least used ToAU mob skins around following maybe Dracula and King Goldemar; I decided just as soon as I saw someone shouting for the fight in Whitegate that I would join up. This particular NM is pretty hardcore. He has a throat-stab style move that, frankly, sucks. He also has a bunch of random status-incuding movies that include such lovely things as Slow, Plague, Silence, and Sleep. I was brought along purely to keep people alive.



The fight is about as hard as anything is that you would throw a group of Black Mages at. My duty as a RDM was mob control with Gravity and Bind. And, of course, to play as the medic. Sadly, Bind is borderline useless in a situation where nukes are being thrown CONSTANTLY. So control and communication wasn't as strong as it probably should have been. Our one BRD died a couple of times. I'm honestly not even sure how he managed to get hate over the nuke spamming. I just don't know.

Overall the fights went rather smoothly...but I didn't like it nearly as much as Shadows of the Mind. For one thing, getting to the zone where you do this fight isn't as simple of a trip. For another, the NM's TP moves are much more scary than the Puk's B. Mantle that gets easily countered by AoE sleep.

I went back to do Shadows of the Mind just as soon as the Compliments to the Chef run was over. Shadows of the Mind decided to be the nicer of the two fights for me.



With my Imperial Standing savings starting to crumble, the ore was a sight for sore eyes. The market for Khroma is starting to crash. Which would have been a good thing back when I was saving them up. But now that I'm aiming to sell them it means less money for the same amount of work. Even worse; the price of the finished ingots is going UP despite the cheaper Khroma because of the fact that Wootz Ore isn't readily availible enough to make these ingot synths happen. In fact, a Wootz Ore now fetches the same price as a Khroma. I am -really- starting to hate this game.



I met this chick in my final efforts to save my Campaign medal. I heard about the NPC on the KI and BG forums before--but had never seen her in person. She fights for the allied forces and when she gets mad she TURNS INTO AN EFFING DRAGON. I -hate- shapeshifters in fiction. But its really friggin' cool to have a dragon fighting alongside you. The lack of her having any explanation or character development is depressing though. She turns into a big farking dragon. And no one is surprised by this fact. I know Vana'diel isn't built on realism. But why is such a crazy feat going completely ignored? We have D&D style dragons wandering around in humanoid form. Lets see some story implimentation. Or at the very least a fight against one.



After announcing that she'll show her true form; she turns into the above pictured dragon. She is friggin' huge. Her name changes...which implies that goes by Areuhat when dealing with humans but is really named Odzmanouk. I didn't get a picture of it. But she can Spike Flail. And thats just silly.

For my Campaign grinding I ended up earning enough merits to make a much-desired adjustment to SAM.



And, as always, theres Salvage.

Salvage this past week ended up being a really mixed bag. We ran Zhayolm, which proved to be an amazing success. We fought my old nemesis the Usukane 35 hands frog to try and get a second pair. Those didn't drop. But we were shocked by what did.



Although they weren't needed by anyone; it always boosts morale when 35 pieces drop. But to make a good run even sweeter:



Ares shoes got finished by Butcher. Which makes our 45th finished armor.

Back in Bhaflau; it was time to shine for myself and Espera. The lolbees rampart was a total bitch and spawned 3 bee NMs...none of which dropped anything for Esp. And the boss dropped double Morrigan's 25s and I'm pretty sure it actually laughed at me before it fell dead to the floor to mock me for not dropping Usukane 25 pants.

Thats a shame. I really wanted my Usu pants for my birthday. But actually. Thats today so I should probably make plans to do birthday-related things.

Like merit grinding.

See you folks next time!

~Myrrial

a. Post a list of 15 fandoms (shows/movie-series/book-series)
b. Have your friends list guess your favorite character from each one.
c. When guessed, bold the line, include the character name, and write a sentence about why you like that character.

1. Babylon 5
2. Rome
3. Bleach
4. Space: Above and Beyond
5. Battlestar Galactica (1978-Original)
6. Battlestar Galactica (Modern)
7. The Black Company series (by Glen Cook)
8. Lord of the Rings Trilogy (by J.R.R. Tolkein)
9. The West Wing
10. Star Wars (all six movies)
11. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
12. Histories (yes, all of them) (by William Shakespeare)
13. Inuyasha
14. Cowboy Bebop
15. Deadliest Catch

Have at! :-)

Firstly, thanks to everyone who responded last entry. I think Arilayne and I are going to get on some seal burning in the near future and we'll see how that goes.

As for right now, I'm currently on Day Three of trying to save my Holyknight Emblem of the Four Squiggley Marks; which means I've been spending a great deal of the time that doesn't involve Salvage or Limbus to do Campaign.

I remember arguing on pretty much every FFXI-related forum there is that the demotion system is stupid...and time and time again people would defend it by saying that getting your medal reinstated would require minimal effort. I argued that the whole thing was dumb as it directly punished players who felt the need to, say, take a break from the game for a month or more.

So here I am going through that minimal effort to save my medal. Maybe the lower ranks require no work but I'm about to claim my THIRD merit point purely on trying to save this medal. If I hadn't burned so much time on this already I'd just give it up and cut my losses.

So heres what I do. I go to Sandy, pick up Aegis Scream III, and then defend the hell out of everything we own until the mission is complete. Then I go back to town, hand in the mission, and then go to my "friend" Alfred to get told that the high-ups in Jeuno are still displeased with my performance and that they wish to take my medal. Rinse and repeat.

I don't see anyone from Jeuno out on the goddamned battlefield anyways. What the hell are THEY doing for the war effort? Yeah. Jeuno can pretty much kiss my ass.

The whole thing wouldn't be so bad if it were fun. But it isn't. And the fact that only 25% or so of the people who were out here the last time I gave enough of a damn to be out here remain shows that I'm not the only one who feels that this is a waste of time.

The battlefields are populated mostly by Dancers, Puppetmasters, Beastmasters, and a 45th level Paladin with no subjob (I kid you not)--which cements in my mind the fact that the only people out here are those who want to defend their medals or simply can't get a party to save their lives.

And I pity them. Because this sucks ass. And a lot of it can't be helped. For one thing, usually some poor sap ends up getting ganked by the entire enemy force just as soon as they arrive.



Sometimes; you'll be fighting tooth-and-nail with one enemy group just to have another show up and the entire group will become hellbent on deciding that YOU need to die. Since Campaign mobs hit as stupidly hard as they do; this is a death sentence to anyone. In the above picture, I got aggro by Shadoweye and his swarm of bugs while I was fighting an orc. I ran around for six minutes but my effort to shout for help was futile. And I don't blame folks for not helping me; as they would have likely ended up suffering the same fate.



As if the regular Campaign mobs having some crazy hivemind coordination and slaying people together isn't bad enough; the NM leaders of those groups are generally so insanely hardcore that approaching them is a death sentence. I primarily stick to Jugner; because the Orc that spams Jump -every two seconds- to gain TP insanely fast and interrupt everyone's spellcasting constantly, the Warmachine of Death, the Level 5 Petrify, Firaga III spamming eyeball monster, and Kaiser Behemoth's AoE thunder damage/stun spam are sadly pretty tame compared to whats in other zones.

Of course nobody wants to tank these things; and who can blame them? So it falls upon people like me who have to tank simply because flimsy Joyeuse + Enthunder damage is enough to pull hate. And tanking NMs in Campaign is an exercise in futility except by crazy survivalist things like PLD/DNC.



Shadoweye is the odd exception as it can apparently be tanked by my RDM/WHM without too much trouble. But thats only because he spends a great deal of time casting Fire IV and Firaga III (apparently he only uses fire spells)--which are easily mitigated down to nothing with Shell IV, Phalanx, and Barfire. His physical WS are horrid and were capable of hitting me for 600+ through my Stoneskin; but being as much of a fan of Level 5 Petrify followed by consuming a ton of time casting fire magic makes him surprisingly one of the weakest links in the enemy line-up as far as NMs go.

Of course I might be biased. By the end of the fight a bunch of people had dropped dead around me from the AoE fire spam. Which brings me to my next point of hatred...

Why do people rush forward against the enemy? If you hang back and let the enemy come to you at the Fortification then the friendly NPCs will assist in the combat--which is the ENTIRE REASON THEY EXIST. They help do damage. They help tank with their batshit crazy HP totals. And they also help to soak up -ga spell damage. And yet people refuse their help time and time again by venturing waaaay too far out into the zones in pursuit of the enemy.

SE says that in the June update they're making adjustments to the rank system for WotG. I sincerely hope that it changes greatly; because the one in place right now makes me want to go choke the development team. Now that its May; my birthday is just a few days away. And more than anything I really want to take a folding chair upside an FFXI dev's head.

...Aaaand just as I say that I somehow pull hate on five Shadowfang Voids. Lets make that folding chair something bigger. Like a pinball machine. Or a small car. And lets replace me hitting them with it to something like, say, having it fall off a building onto them instead.

Can anyone make that happen for May 5th? That would be awesome.

~Myrrial