I purchased my first HQ Elemental Staff.
There is no turning back now.
God help us all.
Aquilo's Staff. I guess I'm a career mage now.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
So you thought removing the level caps on CoP was a good thing...
Well you were fucking wrong.
My linkshell did some CoP tonight.
We did the Mammet fight.
I didn't even get to finish watching the cutscene before they had cleared the battlefield.
Minotaur was similarly trivial.
This is not making things more accessible, this is blatantly removing content by making it trivially easy.
I'm so angry I don't even have a screenshot for you. God damn!
Monday, August 16, 2010
Scholar got me thinking again
This weekend I picked up Scholar again. My friend was going to bring a new person into the game and we had this elaborate plan to have a rad party starting as a level 1 White Mage, Samurai and Summoner. That fell through, so instead I ran around hitting things with a stick on Scholar.
Once I got to level 10 I decided it might be a good idea to actually put together a macro palette.
This is always a defining moment for mage jobs I've found. Putting together a functional macro palette and planning it so that you have room to expand is a bit of an art form. For Damage Dealing jobs it tends to be a little easier since you aren't weighed down with countless spells and abilities, and it can all fit into one line early on without any difficulty. Mage jobs on the other hand require a bit more finesse and planning.
Over the course of leveling a few different mage jobs I've found there's a routine evolution of macros I keep using.
Typically you start with just one line of macros. 20 slots is usually all you need for the very early levels so this works out well. This serves to build the foundation of your most commonly used spells. I generally split mine in half, CTRL for things that get cast on the party and ALT for offensive spells. Since there are a few select spells that you end up casting very frequently it's useful to have one macro line set up as what I internally term a "resting palette". It's the macro line I keep defaulting back to because it holds all the spells I need to cast at the drop of a hat. It always ends up being macro line 2.
Alas, the leveling process dictates that you will eventually amass more spells than can fit on a single macro line. So we must expand if we want to be able to sling spells without losing time fiddling with a menu or mispelling spells manually in the command line. This takes us into the realm of more specialized and comprehensive macro lines. Two new lines to be precise.
Above the resting macro in line 1, I tend to put all my miscellaneous Black Magic. Normally this consists of 6 nukes and various other goodies that expand upon what could not fit in the ALT section of the resting macro line. The CTRL/ALT split isn't as important here beyond keeping the 6 nukes in a row on the same section. I'm just a tad OCD about that, but the rest gets filled with Sleeps, Drain, Aspir and whatever else I could conceivably need. It's also a haven for any Black Magic related job abilities when there's extra slots not taken by spells.
Beneath the resting macro we have our White Magic on line 3. This has our full set of cures, because while typically you'll alternate between two tiers in a party it's still worth being able to call up any of them at any given time. Here's where the barspells and status-curing spells go as well. Not much to say about it really, it holds the White Magic that doesn't fit in our resting macro line.
"But wait," you cry, "where are all the equipment swapping macros?"
Do not fear dear reader, they have not been forgotten. Macro line 4 houses macros for various gear-stances, like INT and MND builds or your hMP(healing MP) set. While I imagine this can get quite crowded for some folks, I haven't hit a level of gear saturation that makes this section overloaded just yet. There are still plenty of free slots and I've taken to filling some of them with job abilities simply for convenience. Once I hit gear saturation though, the whole macro system I've built up to this point is going to dissolve anyway, so I try not to think about it too much.
Macro line 5 has ended up being a wild-card section. It holds things that aren't used that often or aren't exactly critical but still need a macro, like Sneak and Invisible.
So, to summarize:
Fireworks over Bastok.
This shot amuses me for some reason. I think it's the Tarutaru.
Once I got to level 10 I decided it might be a good idea to actually put together a macro palette.
This is always a defining moment for mage jobs I've found. Putting together a functional macro palette and planning it so that you have room to expand is a bit of an art form. For Damage Dealing jobs it tends to be a little easier since you aren't weighed down with countless spells and abilities, and it can all fit into one line early on without any difficulty. Mage jobs on the other hand require a bit more finesse and planning.
Over the course of leveling a few different mage jobs I've found there's a routine evolution of macros I keep using.
Typically you start with just one line of macros. 20 slots is usually all you need for the very early levels so this works out well. This serves to build the foundation of your most commonly used spells. I generally split mine in half, CTRL for things that get cast on the party and ALT for offensive spells. Since there are a few select spells that you end up casting very frequently it's useful to have one macro line set up as what I internally term a "resting palette". It's the macro line I keep defaulting back to because it holds all the spells I need to cast at the drop of a hat. It always ends up being macro line 2.
Alas, the leveling process dictates that you will eventually amass more spells than can fit on a single macro line. So we must expand if we want to be able to sling spells without losing time fiddling with a menu or mispelling spells manually in the command line. This takes us into the realm of more specialized and comprehensive macro lines. Two new lines to be precise.
Above the resting macro in line 1, I tend to put all my miscellaneous Black Magic. Normally this consists of 6 nukes and various other goodies that expand upon what could not fit in the ALT section of the resting macro line. The CTRL/ALT split isn't as important here beyond keeping the 6 nukes in a row on the same section. I'm just a tad OCD about that, but the rest gets filled with Sleeps, Drain, Aspir and whatever else I could conceivably need. It's also a haven for any Black Magic related job abilities when there's extra slots not taken by spells.
Beneath the resting macro we have our White Magic on line 3. This has our full set of cures, because while typically you'll alternate between two tiers in a party it's still worth being able to call up any of them at any given time. Here's where the barspells and status-curing spells go as well. Not much to say about it really, it holds the White Magic that doesn't fit in our resting macro line.
"But wait," you cry, "where are all the equipment swapping macros?"
Do not fear dear reader, they have not been forgotten. Macro line 4 houses macros for various gear-stances, like INT and MND builds or your hMP(healing MP) set. While I imagine this can get quite crowded for some folks, I haven't hit a level of gear saturation that makes this section overloaded just yet. There are still plenty of free slots and I've taken to filling some of them with job abilities simply for convenience. Once I hit gear saturation though, the whole macro system I've built up to this point is going to dissolve anyway, so I try not to think about it too much.
Macro line 5 has ended up being a wild-card section. It holds things that aren't used that often or aren't exactly critical but still need a macro, like Sneak and Invisible.
So, to summarize:
- Black Magic
- Default
- White Magic
- Gear/Job Abilities
- Miscellaneous
- Fishing
Fireworks over Bastok.
This shot amuses me for some reason. I think it's the Tarutaru.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
I Am Building a House of Fish
I have no idea how this happened.
I'm rather fond of my mule. Major bonus points for those of you who got the reference without looking it up.
The last time I tried fishing was last Summer back when I first joined the game and was looking for a way to make gil. Back then it was frustrating as hell. I hated it. Rods breaking constantly, lines snapping, running out of bait without catching anything. It was utterly unappealing.
But for some reason I picked it up again and it has taken hold of me by the teeth and dragged me into its lair. I can only assume a club over the head and an unpleasant night are in store for me, but for now it's not so bad.
Something tells me it's the fact that this time around I started with a Halcyon Rod, which tends to not break on everything with gills or oxidation on it. The other thing that's made this bearable is that I recently made my first mule, so I now have somewhere to put this mountain of fish.
Even with all that going for me, it still doesn't make sense to me why I got drawn back in. The gil so far hasn't been worthwhile, as farming and gardening still pay better and more consistently. It's like some bizarro craft where the crystal and synthesis requirements are all warped and inverted. Instead of melting everything down into profitable slag, I'm forever expanding my inventory with NPC fodder.
There's this fantastic myth that's been perpetuated for years that Moat Carp are some sort of awesome reliable income for new players. I'm calling bullshit on that right now. The Auction House has been flooded with Moat Carp and we haven't seen a sale in days. At the rate any new fisherman can land them, the supply quickly outstrips the demand leaving many high and dry. You're better off spending your time farming something like beehive chips that rush out the door as soon as they hit the AH, never lingering more than a day unless you've been trying to jack up the price.
So fishing hasn't exactly been a gold mine. In fact I dare say I've sunk more money into it than I've made back at this point and if I keep losing lures that may not even change.
It makes no sense, but I completely and totally enjoy it.
Seriously.
You think I'm joking, but I've done nothing in the last two days except fish. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if I hit the 200 fish per day limit tonight with all the fishing I did. It's nuts!
Now I have a mountain of fish sitting on a mule that is going to take forever to sell. Or I might just go with my friend's suggestion and start making workbenches out of the fish.
I'm rather fond of my mule. Major bonus points for those of you who got the reference without looking it up.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Pebbles
I figured out what the litmus test for for finding a good Linkshell is.
If your linkshell organizes a party to Purgonorgo Isle and the primary concern is lotting on Pebbles then you have found a good Linkshell.
God damn was tonight fun.
If your linkshell organizes a party to Purgonorgo Isle and the primary concern is lotting on Pebbles then you have found a good Linkshell.
God damn was tonight fun.
On the way over.
Expect more coherent postings when it isn't 4 in the morning.
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