CoP 3-5 ~ Darkness Named

I guess that since I’ve been working on Chains of Promathia lately, in additon to other things, that I should probably write about my latest battle in that series. I will also have another screenshot-filled update coming sometime later in the week, but for now there will be this post and also a post regarding some of the Treasures of Aht Urghan missions that I’ve been doing with SMLS.

CoP Mission 3-5 is the Level 40-capped BCNM against Diabolos which takes place in The Shrouded Maw. In order to get to the BCNM area, you need to pass through a 40-cap tower of Pso’Xja and also have completed a mini-quest in order to get the Pso’Xja Pass required for access to the area.

I already had 2-3 definite people for this mission, satisfying some of my job requirements for the BCNM.

Preparing for Battle

Here was our setup:

Inamorata (Ceri) ~ NIN/WAR (Sword mainhand)
Darkmoose (Aramina) ~ WAR/NIN (Axes)
Quietgansta ~ WAR/NIN (Axes)
Lazzlo ~ BLU/NIN
Morsel (Dmer) ~ RDM/WHM
Varus ~ WHM/BLM

The reason so many of us have names in parenthesis are because for half of the group, we were working our way through CoP for our second characters. Also coming along for the trip was Quietgansta’s second character, Sammie, who was on WHM/BLM 75 and tagged along in case we needed a Raise in the lobby after getting Reraise dispelled.

CoP 2-5 ~ Ancient Vows

So this past weekend I was able to get together a group of people and complete Chains of Promathia Mission 2-5, Ancient Vows. I have actually completed this mission many times before on Aramina, but now it was Darkmoose’s turn.

I had recently finished getting his Ninja to 40+, so my intent was to use Ninja for this mission, as well as bringing my friend Ruebiant along, who also needed the mission and could go as a Ninja. I have had many people tell me exactly what setup I needed for this mission, including the typical:

“Oh, that’s simple, just get 3 Ninja and 3 Healers”

Yeah, right! Like I have an entire day to sit around until I just get the exact setup that someone else says I need to win. In fact, not only is that setup unnecessary, it is likely that you will search for an eternity in order to get it just right. That being said, and the fact that I had two Ninjas already accounted for, I went for a different plan. My idea was to go NIN, NIN, WHM, DD, DD, Other Healer. So you may ask yourself, how are we going to do this? I don’t see a SMN to kite, and the RDM was /WHM at my request, so there goes the idea of a RDM/NIN kiting. We’ll get back to that in a bit, but first, was rounding out my crew…

I found both a WHM, and someone who could go RDM, fairly fast, and althought Ruebiant had a headache after 7+ hours of sky-burnout and opted out, I was saved by Ceri from Vinidication coming along on Inamorata as Ninja to take his place.

Thanks Ceri!!!

Long time coming…

So it’s been quite a while since a good update, and especially one with pictures, but I have quite a few to put up, and it’s Maintenance day, so it seems like a good time to post.

So I’ll probably go back and reorganize this later, but for now, here’s a brief rundown:

Various Sky adventures, including our Linkshelll’s first TP Burn on Kirin, which went pretty well. There are also a few of me in my usually position as Ballad Whore in the BLM party, which I honestly don’t mind. There’s a shot of Alatela and Sehbu replacing my legs in the Kirin room, and there are a few shots of the craziest Despot that Odin has probably seen in quite a while.

The people who got claim couldn’t kill it, so they were kiting it all over, and as word spread, there were easily 50+ people there following them around waiting for them to die. But, instead of just dying, they Calld for Help, and before people’s better senses kicked in, people started attacking and trying to claim. Of course, that meant that there were more people on the hate list, all of whom would need to die or log/zone and stay logged/zoned in order for Despot to turn back yellow. Thank god for Mazurka and being able to keep up when he would take off after killing someone for the next anonymous person on the hate list. We had one person who mugged him as soon as CFH went up, and zoned and still had residual hate after zoning, proving Kanican’s research on Enmity retention post-zone.

Anyway, we ended up getting claim when he finally turned yellow, probably some 20-30 insane minutes after the intial CFH went up, dragging a laggy mass of people all over that island.

In addition to that Despot, that night also included us getting Zip at 1% when another LS pulled prematurely when they saw us pouring into the zone. I felt bad for them, but at the same time, that’s what happens when you pull when you’re not ready. We also snagged Mother Globe when we did a quick check after Olla and wouldn’t you know, she was up.

I finished Zilart as far as Divine Might for Darkmoose, running into King Vinegaroon along the way to ZM6. Lynq was with us and he had LB on the way, but Resu got there first. Ace’s Helm is pretty nice, but it sure is ugly…

Somewhere in there is a shot of my NIN/DNC duoing with Alatela on DRK/NIN in Eastern Altepa Desert. The exp was seriously better than what I’d get in most EXP parties around that level, and safer, too. The next day, I did NIN38-40 in a trio with a MNK and DNC, and again, the EXP was flying. I think all three of us were thrilled with it. This really seems to be the type of thing that SE is encouraging with multi-role jobs like SCH and DNC.

I started Salvage with Justinius and a bunch of other Vindi people, and now we’ve done Silver Sea and Zhayolm remnants. We ran out of time on Zhaloym, but considering it was the first time that any of us had ever been there, I think that we did pretty well.

A group of us also snagged an Ungur Boomerang for someone and we popped Wyvernpoacher right after, but he was feeling stingy on the OBow. I was considering camping Argus post maintenance, but I saw an old friend setting up, so I wished him luck and went on my way. Been spending some time just screwing around, farming, camping some out of the way NMs, closing out quest, and I finally started Darkmoose’s NPC G1, since she’s been maxed out at 50 forever.

Only one trip to Sky this week, and I’m getting closer on finishing up various subjobs for Moose and Aramina, while still finding a little time to work on Paladin with my homies from Unification. I think I slipped in a picture of me teabagging Bitter when she died doing part of ZM5. Nothing like a good dead taru pic to make everyone’s day!

Odds and Ends

So lately that’s what I’ve been taking care of…  just miscellaneous odds and ends.

I finished my DNC to 37, and while it’s really a lot of fun and quite enjoyable, I don’t see myself taking it any further for a long time.  I just have so many other things that I want to do and a few things to which I’ve committed myself, and that leaves me with less time for things like leveling Dancer.

I also restarted my NIN, which had sat at 30 since “The Best Static Ever” when I switched to WAR and let Jeclaubond take over tanking duties.  Merick has been working on her DRK and had reached 28 the night before, and I told her that maybe if she got near 30, I’d grab the Ninja gear that I’d been working on getting together and we’d go put together a party.  As it was, last night she was soloing Yuhtunga Mandragora with her NPC while seeking for a party; something which I did on SAM/RNG from 27 to almost 31 while I was in Iraq.

So I took my time and headed to the jungle to duo with Merick, NIN/DNC30 and DRK/WAR28.  For all the doubters out there, Ninja really is a pretty decent DD when they don’t spend 25-50% of their time trying to cast Utsusemi, and to evidence that, because the mandies hit so lightly and eat shadows so quickly, usually, I’ll pull with Kurayami and be able to maintain hate almost completely through melee damage.  I did have to Curing Waltz for hate a little bit after Weapon Skills, but that’s not completely unexpected.

Merick and I were able to practically sleep through any mandy, with Drain Samba almost covering any damage that it could do to us, and we took down as much as IT Goblins, again a lot easier than I’d expected.  When you factor in time to wait for an invite or build a party, and the chance that a party of that level will fail in a relatively short time, i think that we probably ended up making out a lot better EXPwise than if we’d gone with other options.  I really would like to run my NIN the rest of the way to 37 as NIN/DRG, but that will almost definitely require building my own parties.  For the fun of doing it, I might do just that, but I really want to finish NIN to 37 this weekend, so I’ll probably end up tanking on NIN/WAR.

I did Aramina’s NIN to 37 a long time ago, and my philosophy on gear was to go for Attack and Accuracy, then STR and DEX as much as possible.  Where’s the Evasion?  Well, here’s the thing…  When you’re in a party of 6, you’re invariable fighting Incredibly Tough monsters, and with them being some 5-10 levels above you, you would need so much evasion to be noticeable, that you really don’t gain much by doing so.  By stacking on all of the offensive-minded stats, you will not only help the party help kill things faster, but you will also keep hate somewhat better, thus enabling that healer to toss you the extra Cure you might need due to not dodging a hit.

Guess Who’s Back… Back Again…

So there have been no new posts since being home, but that’s to be expected, as I’ve been quite busy in RL and in-game.

I guess I can recap a little of what I’ve been up to in-game at least:

• About 20 Merits between Moose and Ara
• Paladin from 51-56, 2 AF done, All key items and coffer keys farmed for the rest
• Divine Might for Aramina - Beastly Earring ^^
• CoP 5-3 Tenzen’s Path Complete
• Lance Corporal Rank for Ara
• Golden Star and Steelknight Emblem Campaign Ranks
• Dunes party with linkshell
• Cleared Qulun Dome with SAM, RNG, THF, and WHM54 (including Diamond)

In addition to all of those I finally joined an Endgame LS, Vindication. I’m still probationary for a while, but i know several members and everyone seems great so far. I feel like I need to get Sea so I can contribute more, but I’ll do what I can with Sky and other events, and once I get Sea, not only can I help the Linkshell, but I can work toward some of my own goals.

For the week ahead:

Monday: Campaign at least 4k Limit Points on Darkmoose, T1 Lebros x2, Merit on Aramina
Tuesday: LS Stuff
Wednesday: More Assaults, Lebros and Mamool (ZM4 for Darkmoose)
Thrusday: Finish Paladin AF and Sleepga II Quest (ZM5 at least 2 NM Headstones)
Friday: LS Stuff
Weekend: Paladin 58 and Scholar 20

Upcoming Static

Some of my earliest FFXI friends and I have been talking up a static party from 20 to 75 since about halfway through my deployment.  Now that I’m getting closer to home, that’s getting closer to starting, and I’m quite excited about it.  It’s planned for once a week, and now that people are settling into what jobs they will be doing, it’s looking pretty sexy.  So far, the lineup looks like:

D-Lo’s Sunday Morning Event LS

I’m pretty excited about Dezaar’s new Sunday morning event LS.  It’s not a social, and it’s also not constructed around a specific area like Sky, Sea, Limbus, Dynamis, etc.

Basically, he started a site for it and we all post what things we’d like to work toward, which allows us to compare and see what things we have in common and what things we’ll need to just suck it up and help each other.  There are several Assault areas that many of us want items from, so we’ll hit those, and Nyzul Isle seems to have gear that interests a lot of us.  The downside is that several of us want the same pieces from Nyzul, but the upside is that in addition to a melee character for whom I’d like Askar pieces, I also have a mage character for whom I could likely get all of my Goliard with little contest from others in the LS.

It looks like we’ll be doing some Soboro and Swift Belt runs once people reach the requisite missions in Chains of Promathia, and I know that there are at least a few popped NMs that people are interested in.  I don’t know exactly how it’s going to work out in the end, but if all I end up with it is some timespent with friends and Assault and Nyzul gear that I’d like, that’s still very nice for me.

Thoughts From The Road…

Well, it’s great to finally say that my time in Iraq has come to an end and I’m on the journey home. As it should be no surprise to anyone who reads these pages, I’ve put a lot of thought into writing about my time deployed. I don’t know exactly what I’ll write or what the format will be. I think that as I have some time to sit back at home and reflect on the things that came to pass during my time deployed, I’ll start to put things down and see where it leads me. Maybe it’ll end up being something that no one but me will ever read, but maybe, just maybe, it’ll end up being something more.

I watched the movie “The Bucket List” today, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, and when I finished watching the movie, I thought about what might be on my own list. One thing that I’ve always thought that I’d like to do is to write down my story and hope that someone would find some meaning in it. Some of my list items involve travel, and while I’ll put some of them off, maybe I will just go ahead and do some of them sooner than I’d planned because you never know how much time you have left.

Campaign Battle Strategies

With my limited connection and odd times of availability, I’ve been doing mostly Campaign Battles for the last few months.  The good news is that I am coming home very soon and I’ll have more options available.  However, I think that I’ll still be doing Campaign a lot when I’m not sure what else to do.  In saying that, I saw my first shouts for a Campaign Battle Linkshell this morning, and I think that it’s something that I’d like to have once I’m back.

While Campaign gives a great chance to beat on stuff for people who normally don’t get to, nice ways to get exp while playing your jobs that don’t get a lot of party invites, and other things, one of the things that I notice is very severely lacking is any sense of strategy with which we take on the battles.  I am planning to write a series of posts, bother covering things that are universal, and also posts about Campaign in certain areas or against certain foes.

Since the June update, it seems to be agreed upon that battles are frequently more of the multiple enemy sort, and that the Beastmen Confederate Forces are attacking hardcore in an attempt to get to our cities.  If you look at the Campaign map on Odin right now, Beastmen have full influence in East Ronfaure (S) and North Gustaberg (S), with gaining influence in West Sarutabaruta (S).  While I don’t think that it’s gotten as far as city fighting anywhere, if any of those neighboring areas go down, I don’t see why the cities won’t be attacked next.  If I were the Beastmen, that’s what I’d want to do…

The Replacements

There’s almost nothing sweeter when you’re in Iraq than to see the main body of your replacements show up.  That’s what I saw today as I headed back to the tent in the 110 degree heat and dust and wind.  Just over a week and I’m out of this bish!