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.
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.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Out of Gil 2: The Quest for more Gobbie Bags
Well it's happened again. I've run out of money.
On the bright side I now have 65 inventory slots, so it was totally worth it.
I guess now would be a good time to review how my last gil-making scheme has been going.
The goal was to get into gardening in order to avoid having to constantly farm every day to cover expenses. So far it has been working out. I found out some seeds can be harvested in just three days, so I was all over that like a cat on catnip. After spending a few months fiddling with growing elemental ores over the course of 3-4 weeks only to have the results be rock salt instead, this was a huge improvement for me. No more month long waits and disappointment, just a small steady stream of crops.
I may as well let you all know what exactly I used, no point in keeping it secret.
The secret formula is this: 1 pot + 1 bag of grain seeds + 1 fire crystal +3 days of waiting = lots of TaruTaru Rice.
Or if the random number generator feels fickle, you'll get a handful of ice crystals or a red rock.
It's not big money, but it's enough to get by on day-to-day expenses.
Funny story though; When I first got into the market, TaruTaru Rice was selling like mad and for 15k per stack. Holy money making agriculture Batman, I thought to myself, this is where I need to be. Well after a few weeks something in the market shifted and the price dropped to 10k. Alright, still reasonably profitable and the 15k was probably just a brief spike in price and this is the market stabilizing itself.
Well maybe not.
See, the price on my server hasn't stopped falling. From what I can tell we have about 7 stacks of rice on the Auction House for every one stack that gets sold. The market is in free-fall. Stacks are going for 4k and still dropping.
It's actually been pretty amazing to watch. At this point I just want to see how far it will fall before everyone bails on it entirely. I'll still be there though, since it hasn't hit the point where selling stacks of seeds is more profitable than growing them yet.
In the meantime, I'm still running low on gil though so it's probably time to go farm something. So much for not having to farm again, huh?
Who is driving these chocobos?
On the bright side I now have 65 inventory slots, so it was totally worth it.
I guess now would be a good time to review how my last gil-making scheme has been going.
The goal was to get into gardening in order to avoid having to constantly farm every day to cover expenses. So far it has been working out. I found out some seeds can be harvested in just three days, so I was all over that like a cat on catnip. After spending a few months fiddling with growing elemental ores over the course of 3-4 weeks only to have the results be rock salt instead, this was a huge improvement for me. No more month long waits and disappointment, just a small steady stream of crops.
I may as well let you all know what exactly I used, no point in keeping it secret.
The secret formula is this: 1 pot + 1 bag of grain seeds + 1 fire crystal +3 days of waiting = lots of TaruTaru Rice.
Or if the random number generator feels fickle, you'll get a handful of ice crystals or a red rock.
It's not big money, but it's enough to get by on day-to-day expenses.
Funny story though; When I first got into the market, TaruTaru Rice was selling like mad and for 15k per stack. Holy money making agriculture Batman, I thought to myself, this is where I need to be. Well after a few weeks something in the market shifted and the price dropped to 10k. Alright, still reasonably profitable and the 15k was probably just a brief spike in price and this is the market stabilizing itself.
Well maybe not.
See, the price on my server hasn't stopped falling. From what I can tell we have about 7 stacks of rice on the Auction House for every one stack that gets sold. The market is in free-fall. Stacks are going for 4k and still dropping.
It's actually been pretty amazing to watch. At this point I just want to see how far it will fall before everyone bails on it entirely. I'll still be there though, since it hasn't hit the point where selling stacks of seeds is more profitable than growing them yet.
In the meantime, I'm still running low on gil though so it's probably time to go farm something. So much for not having to farm again, huh?
Who is driving these chocobos?
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Genkai 2
*sigh*
"Underwhelming" is the only description that springs to mind.
Tonight my Linkshell took it upon themselves to run me through my second Limit Break quest. This one involved defeating some Notorious Monsters in the frozen northlands of Xarcabard.
I had wandered up to one earlier in the week just to see how hard it hits and it floored me in less than a minute. It wouldn't even be worth attempting to solo, unlike Dark Spark where I could see a glimmer of hope poking up just beyond the horizon.
Stomping on them with three higher level players helping just didn't bring me any satisfaction. It made the whole ordeal trivial, a chore, a minor inconvenience. I knew this was going to happen too. Hell I didn't even have to properly research the NMs, we just wandered up there and slaughtered them.
This was not an adventure.
I really need to make a point of exploring the Shadowreign era. It turns up cool stuff like this.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Warrior is the Batman of FFXI
It's true.
Worse yet I think Warrior is starting to grow on me, especially since I've started taking it to Linkshell parties.
I just spent the night in Spore Hollow and had a blast. We were syncing to 25 and our puller was clinically insane. At any given time we had two to four Funguar on top of us, and no one to sleep them so it was up to me and the Ninja to make sure they didn't eat the mages. I'm not sure the Ninja was up to the task when synced so low, but I sure as hell was. Firing arrows as two Funguars come in and provoking the third as our puller cackled maniacally, leaving the Ninja to hold the first one as the rest of the party wailed on it.
You know what gets a monster's attention better than insulting its mother?
Hitting it in the head with a gigantic axe.
At any given time I could wander up to a mob that wasn't eating the ninja, wallop it in the face and it would decide I was tastier. I'm not sure it quite counts as tanking, but I was eating enough cures that it kept me on my toes and I couldn't use Provoke carelessly. Heck, half the time I was switching to target a new mob just to make sure I kept hate until the rest of the party could start wailing on one of the held mobs.
I'm pretty sure we were making less than 5,000 experience per hour, but damned if it wasn't fun.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to go soak my head and put my head between my knees until the desire to abandon Red Mage and level Warrior goes away.
The new expansion is producing fashion disasters like this. I am displeased.
Some guy was shouting for mission 2-3, the one where you fight the dragon, tonight. I managed to rope most of the Linkshell into helping with the fight. Afterwards we adopted him and had an awesome party in Jugner Forest.
Worse yet I think Warrior is starting to grow on me, especially since I've started taking it to Linkshell parties.
I just spent the night in Spore Hollow and had a blast. We were syncing to 25 and our puller was clinically insane. At any given time we had two to four Funguar on top of us, and no one to sleep them so it was up to me and the Ninja to make sure they didn't eat the mages. I'm not sure the Ninja was up to the task when synced so low, but I sure as hell was. Firing arrows as two Funguars come in and provoking the third as our puller cackled maniacally, leaving the Ninja to hold the first one as the rest of the party wailed on it.
You know what gets a monster's attention better than insulting its mother?
Hitting it in the head with a gigantic axe.
At any given time I could wander up to a mob that wasn't eating the ninja, wallop it in the face and it would decide I was tastier. I'm not sure it quite counts as tanking, but I was eating enough cures that it kept me on my toes and I couldn't use Provoke carelessly. Heck, half the time I was switching to target a new mob just to make sure I kept hate until the rest of the party could start wailing on one of the held mobs.
I'm pretty sure we were making less than 5,000 experience per hour, but damned if it wasn't fun.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to go soak my head and put my head between my knees until the desire to abandon Red Mage and level Warrior goes away.
The new expansion is producing fashion disasters like this. I am displeased.
Some guy was shouting for mission 2-3, the one where you fight the dragon, tonight. I managed to rope most of the Linkshell into helping with the fight. Afterwards we adopted him and had an awesome party in Jugner Forest.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Dark Spark: Round 2...FIGHT!
I've learned two things from my fights with Dark Spark:
After spending some time lollygagging about on Warrior, Samurai and hunting the odd Notorious Monster, I decided it might be time to make another go at it.
The basic strategy was to bank on Cocoon, Phalanx and Stoneskin providing enough damage mitigation for me to simply outlast Dark Spark. Sadly this was not to be.
Dark Spark delighted in tearing through my Stoneskin with remarkable speed and once that was down, even my formidable defenses weren't enough to keep him from devouring my face. I held out longer than I expected though. I think I managed to knock off a good 20-25% of his health before I died.
As I said before, blood tanking just wasn't efficient. I burned through my MP way too fast. Even if I had been a bit more calm during the whole thing I would have simply run out of MP at some point and that would be the end of it. I can certainly see how using Utsusemi shadows would be a lot more efficient, but I just don't have the gil for it and there's a few other things that bug me about it, like the prospect of having to manually turn off shadows when recasting Utsusemi:Ichi. I'm fairly certain that alone would be enough to get me panicking and screwing up everything else. While I'm used to killing things really slowly on Red Mage, NMs seem to be on a different scale altogether. Usually I'm fine with killing things so slowly because they hardly ever manage to land a hit. Dark Spark was pretty much the other end of the spectrum, and that adds a lot of stress to the ordeal.
So my Linkshell found out what I was doing and decided to come out and help me kick Dark Spark's ass properly. Afterwards we had some fun just goofing off and beating up demons. All too soon it was time to return to Jeuno.
How long has it been? A few months now I've been trying to get these gloves? While many would say I wasted my time fooling around leveling Blue Mage and even attempting this solo, I think I'm better off for it. I've learned a bit about gearing for melee combat, I've learned the fear and stress associated with trying to solo a monster that you have no chance against, and I've also found what could very well be my favorite subjob for Red Mage. For me this entire ordeal has been an absolute success.
Dark Spark:1
DrJones: 0
The cavalry arrives.
Stlyish gloves!
- Blood tanking is horribly inefficient
- I might not be cut out for soloing
After spending some time lollygagging about on Warrior, Samurai and hunting the odd Notorious Monster, I decided it might be time to make another go at it.
The basic strategy was to bank on Cocoon, Phalanx and Stoneskin providing enough damage mitigation for me to simply outlast Dark Spark. Sadly this was not to be.
Dark Spark delighted in tearing through my Stoneskin with remarkable speed and once that was down, even my formidable defenses weren't enough to keep him from devouring my face. I held out longer than I expected though. I think I managed to knock off a good 20-25% of his health before I died.
As I said before, blood tanking just wasn't efficient. I burned through my MP way too fast. Even if I had been a bit more calm during the whole thing I would have simply run out of MP at some point and that would be the end of it. I can certainly see how using Utsusemi shadows would be a lot more efficient, but I just don't have the gil for it and there's a few other things that bug me about it, like the prospect of having to manually turn off shadows when recasting Utsusemi:Ichi. I'm fairly certain that alone would be enough to get me panicking and screwing up everything else. While I'm used to killing things really slowly on Red Mage, NMs seem to be on a different scale altogether. Usually I'm fine with killing things so slowly because they hardly ever manage to land a hit. Dark Spark was pretty much the other end of the spectrum, and that adds a lot of stress to the ordeal.
So my Linkshell found out what I was doing and decided to come out and help me kick Dark Spark's ass properly. Afterwards we had some fun just goofing off and beating up demons. All too soon it was time to return to Jeuno.
How long has it been? A few months now I've been trying to get these gloves? While many would say I wasted my time fooling around leveling Blue Mage and even attempting this solo, I think I'm better off for it. I've learned a bit about gearing for melee combat, I've learned the fear and stress associated with trying to solo a monster that you have no chance against, and I've also found what could very well be my favorite subjob for Red Mage. For me this entire ordeal has been an absolute success.
Dark Spark:1
DrJones: 0
The cavalry arrives.
Stlyish gloves!
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Warrior Revelations
1. Playing Warrior in a party puts me in a very aggressive mindset.
Mandy in a box!
This was common sight tonight. I lost count of how many dirt naps I took.
I also spent some time running around in the the Promyvion zones this week. They're so beautiful and eerie.
2. Face tanking proper is all sorts of awesome fun.
3. Linkshell parties are awesome.
Tonight was some of the most fun I've had in a while. My old Linkshell reformed itself this week and tonight we went out to do some exp partying. There were four of us, so we had a few slots taken up by interlopers but it was still a lot of fun.
It got especially interesting when the Dancer and I both came to the conclusion that our incompetent White Mage needed to die. I had to beg this guy for Regens in a jungle party...that's pretty damn sad. The idiot was just cure-bombing, which screwed with efficiency and on occasion, hate management. The proper course of action was of course to see if we could get away with killing him once a drive-by PL showed up and attached itself to our party. Goblin tossing a bomb at you? Run towards the idiot mage.
Yeah, as two guys who play mages as their main jobs we had so much contempt for this guy. Spamming Cure III is not how you main-heal a party, ok? Jebus...
So yes, there was all sorts of wonderful face-tanking tonight. Often with two mobs showing up to camp when we only wanted one. Juggling between Berserk, Neutral, and Defender modes was an interesting exercise in judgement. Most of the night was spent in Neutral, with Defender going up mainly when goblins showed up. My face was very delicious.
After all is said and done, I think I managed to gain about 8,000 exp over the course of five hours. I died a lot and it was a romping good time.
Mandy in a box!
This was common sight tonight. I lost count of how many dirt naps I took.
I also spent some time running around in the the Promyvion zones this week. They're so beautiful and eerie.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Front line melee...
I just got out of a party and I'm damn near frothing at the mouth with rage.
This...
...turns into this mess.
Shooting bunnies with axes.
Let me back up a minute before I injure myself with all this concentrated hatred.
Last week my friend and I were working on unlocking Samurai and we damn near had it but had to logout before the NPC finished smithing our swords. Figuring it'd be a fun class to tag team with my friend I decided to get off my ass and level a subjob for it, namely Warrior. This is all part of my back-burner plan to level Dragoon some day.
After bouncing past the Dunes levels I spent some time skilling up in the Dunes(oh irony, you slay me). After some time with my flag up I get a party invite to the oddest of places. Rolanberry Fields in the past. Well I haven't been there before so I venture out and it takes freaking forever without chocobos or teleporty goodness or even maps. After burning through a full stack of powders and oils getting to camp I find the party. The setup makes more sense once I learn there's someone Power Leveling the party, but that's irrelevant.
The point being that this was my first party as a Damage Dealer(DD).
After two hours...I have complete and utter contempt for all DDs. It's the fucking lazy man's job, no two ways about it. The difference between playing a front line melee and playing a mage job is like night and day.
The DD does this:
- Hit things with pointed sticks
- Use one, maybe two Job Abilities
- Execute a Weaponskill
- Repeat
I swear to god, that's all that's required of them and they get a pat on the head and a cookie.
Whereas on Red Mage I get to take care of all this and more:
- Keep everyone alive
- Cure status ailments
- Dispel enemy buffs
- Keep folks Refreshed
- Keep folks Hasted
- Apply Enfeebling magic
- Renew Enfeebling magic
- Sleep links
- Try not to draw hate
- Nuke
- Manage MP while accomplishing all of the above
This is absolutely bananas!
For the entire party on Warrior I was able to play with a PS2 controller in hand.
I can't get away with that on Red Mage. No, on Red Mage I'm hammering macros so frantically I need the keyboard just to jump through 5 macro pages in a timely manner. Don't even get me started on how I have to take in the scope of the battle and give the party the kick in the ass it needs when it comes time to retreat; Setting down the controller and picking up the keyboard to type a message takes way too damn long.
This...this just makes me angry. I don't have the proper words to convey it, just a boiling sensation of rage that the majority of the party workload is getting dumped on the mage. I suspect whatever's left is given to the tank, because the role of Damage Dealer requires no accountability whatsoever.
This...
...turns into this mess.
Shooting bunnies with axes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
