The Pie Blog™

Much Better.

2011-12-31T23:26:00.000-05:00

I saw a /shout for the Limit Break quest again today on GW. This time I was already logged in and able to join it.

We had four tails and three BLMs nuke the little bastard down.

After talking to the Moogle again and a little running around I can now finally level to 99!

The only WSes that I'm interested in of the new merit ones are the H2H one (Shijin Spiral) and, when I get RNG leveled up, Last Stand which is apparently the best physical ranged WS.

So I can now do a shitton of leveling and merit point spending.

That didn't go too well.

2011-12-28T18:25:00.000-05:00

So I joined a /shout group to do the final Limit Break quest. We gathered at the BCNM entrance.

And went in. We were going for an Alexander Perfect Defense zerg. Not having Alexander myself, I went Neenja.

Things didn't go so well. That little fucker hits like a truck. It is kind of amusing to be murdered by a backflipping Tarutaru, but less than you'd think.

So we wiped. The full-on zerg with no healer thing relies on Perfect Defense and doesn't work so well when the Summoner doesn't have Alexander. Ugh.

But we regrouped and tried again. This time we had a Summoner with Alex, but no Seasoning Stone so he couldn't flag the quest.

We took care of the stone issue and went back.

/sigh

0/2. In retrospect I probably should have requested the SMN Hastega us as the SAM/WAR/whatever and I weren't Hundred Fisting the NPC, but I'm not sure it would have made a real difference.

Level 95...and Beyond!

2011-12-27T20:33:00.000-05:00

So I'm able to play FFXI again thanks to my videocard replacement gift on X-Mas. I got a Geforce 550 GTX Ti to replace the 240 GT that died. It's got about 4x the compute speed and more than 50% more memory bandwidth, so it's a nice improvement. Also, fuck PNY. They didn't honor the rebate for the old card because the receipt and UPC were "Invalid" (bullfuckingshit) and due to them having the UPC and receipt didn't honor their warranty either. So fuck them in their asses.

Anyway, I've been running around attempting to get the latest Limit Break quest finished.

I farmed two of the Ex items and the two Rare ones earlier. It was a rare reason to actually go to Dangruf Wadi and Raunguemontonotnont Pass.

I've since found out you don't really need the enfeebling item, but got this out of a box and will take a free million gil.

w00t! So there's that. Also, if you're on Cerberus you should really buy a Grapevine Cape. (I'm completely impartial.)

I also did 2/3 of my Trial of the Auction House trials and bought a bunch of Avatarites for the trials. I still need Ramutites for my Thunder Pot staff, but not being able to equip the result yet anyway, and the stuff costing 1.5mil to buy have decided to hold off on the time being.

Also since being back I saw this.

Which is apparently a WoW-like Trial Account. So they have those now apparently. I should try to get an IRL friend to give the game a quick run through. Most of the stuff is uncapped now, so I should be able to help get him through most of the content.

Y U NO UPDATE?!?!

2011-12-22T02:45:00.000-05:00

I aplogize for not writing anything here lately. I assure you it's not dead. It's not you, it's me. There's three things going on.

First, this is mostly a FFXI-centric blog and my graphics card was apparently murdered by Dolphin-emulated The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. If I try to do any 3D intensive app it immediately crashes and I get all sorts of amazing graphical corruption in Windows 7 Aero until I shutdown and restart. If you didn't understand that, suffice it to say I can't play FFXI, so I don't want to write blog entries about, "Hey I got some loot like a month and a half ago, or something."

Second, I've been looking for a job. "And in this global economic crisis" is practically a dead horse punch-line at this point and I'm terrible at job interviews, so that's time-intensive and incredibly unproductive. Apply one hundred times, get five responses, one interview, and no job. Repeat. It's somewhat disheartening.

Third, I decided to try writing and getting paid for it. Which won't mean the death of The Pie Blog™ because, seriously, nobody would pay to read this nonsense. But I've applied for and been accepted as a potential author on a popular comedy, list-based feature column website type thing that pays pretty well in lieu of finding a full-time gig and could be supplemental income regardless. In the case that they publish something I write I'll link to it from here. (You enjoy dick jokes, right?)

To make this somewhat FFXI-related, I'm looking forward to (hopefully) farm the stuff needed for the level 96 Limit Break and do that fight if anybody is still doing it on X-Mas (when I have a replacement GPU). Then I'll get my 95 NIN, MNK, PUP, BLM, SCH, SMN, and 71 RNG to 99!

BLMery!

2011-10-25T21:19:00.000-04:00

So I finally splurged for Comet and Thunder V today and had a little fun on BLM.

So that leaves only Breakga as my new spell I haven't acquired. 3.5mil down the drain, but I have plenty of gil and not much to spend it on anyway.

I, of course, tested them out using WormMark2011:

It only did ~50 more than Thunder V which is a bit disappointing as I've got a +3 Dark elemental staff.

I just finished up some KI farming in Aby-Attowha and forgot to see how it is inside. Blizzaja was wrecking the shit out of worms and quite satisfying. Sadly, I forgot to take some pictures.

Pants!

2011-10-18T12:51:00.000-04:00

And...

My cheap bastard agenda proceeds with haste!

Also, I leveled Synergy from 30 -> 58 for some reason yesterday.

The End of an Era

2011-09-30T20:20:00.000-04:00

Out with the old...

In with the new...

Where the fuck are the new scrolls from?

2011-09-20T13:10:00.000-04:00

That's a rhetorical question.
The real question is: Why the fuck doesn't a fucking NPC sell the fucking things?

Why the fuck aren't the new Automaton Attachments (from the last update months ago) synthable (or Synergy because that has to be involved in fucking everything) or sold by fucking NPCs?

I'd be leveling Black Mage right now, but ~3 INT and some shitty Job Ability aren't huge motivation. A bunch of new fucking spells? Yeah, that would do it. But fuck if I'd be able to get the fucking scrolls.

Fuck.

You don't have the game's source code....

2011-08-16T11:14:00.000-04:00

...So kindly shut your sychophantic ass the fuck up.

God I hate the Official Forums.

Epic Like Time! Also, I got a Subligar and know how to use it!

2011-08-15T22:39:00.000-04:00

First, you may have heard of Guildworks. It's like Facebook except filled with people you don't know who play your MMORPG instead of people you don't talk to from High School.

We can all agree that YarnBall is rad though.

Also, I hung onto the Carabosse Subligar.

And now I terrorize Jeuno in it. I like to think I'm becoming more mature with age. ;-)

I'll finally get around to covering Aby-La Theine farming tomorrow. I probably won't bother doing Konschstat because that zone is...Club, Staff, and 1h BST Axe or some crap?

NO WAI?!? LEVEL 95 LEVEL CAP?!?

2011-08-10T11:19:00.001-04:00

Dear Square-Enix,

This is not news.

Thanks,
evilpaul

P.S. Nobody cares about Adventuring Fellows.

P.P.S. Where's our MMM update news?

Tackling Tahrongi

2011-08-08T12:28:00.000-04:00

So a while back I said I was going to go over the various Abyssea zones and Empy farming in them. Today, I'll write a bit about Aby-Tahrongi which is by far the most annoying to farm and home to the two most feared (because they're misunderstood) NMs, Glavoid and Chloris.

Glavoid Path

So, let's tackle the nefarious worm first. To make the KI farming chain easier to understand, check halfway down the wiki page.

Regular cockatrice, coeurls, manticores, and efts drop the first tier items randomly.

For tier 2... Abas is a joke of an eft that 100% drops the next tier. Tefenet is a coeurl with a cool Death gaze move (you'll want to turn for it).

Tier 3 are 10-15 minute repop mobs that roam the zone Minhocao (standard Sandworm type mob) and Adze (a terrible, gnat with all sorts of enstatus stuff) and two force popped mobs, Alectryon, a standard cockatrice (eft+cockatrice items to pop) and, Muscaliet, a pretty standard Manticore. Proc red on all of these things and you've got a popset.

Meet Glavoid:

For Glavoid itself...you'll want some death-proofing. I'm not entirely sure how the Gorge/Disgorge TP moves work, but they sort of do 3000-9000 damage. This makes survivability an issue. Migawari will negate the damage entirely if it's up, but it has a one minute duration with a two minute recast. With capped Haste gear, the white magic Haste spell, and one or two March songs you've got a Ninja with 50% Haste. So Migawari can be up for all but ~3 seconds every two minutes.

So if you can get a setup of NIN/DNC, NIN/WAR, WHM, BRD you're good to go.

For the NINs: For whatever reason Glavoid despite being earth/dark based is susceptible to Stun and Violent Flourish. This makes its -ga3's fairly easy to stop. Slowga casts pretty quickly (and overwrites Haste), so Healing Waltz -> Ni is probably easier than trying to stun it. When its casting is also when you will want to WS as it absorbs physical damage when it TPs which can be hard to predict. Try to turn when its TPing (and for about half the moves, recast shadows), but if you've got Atma of the Apocalypse set you'll probably keep hitting it for a while anyway. Also, if you've got capped Evasion this is one blind ass worm and it misses about half the time in TP gear.

For the WHMs: Erase slow and reapply Haste and keep the NINs topped off. If you're /BLM you can try to stun -ga3's, I guess. It's fairly straightforward.

For the BRD: Keep Marches up. That's really all you need to do.

For the BLMs: Don't nuke it. Seriously, you'll heal it constantly. AFK and make all our lives easier.

If you've got a decent setup Glavoid is very overblown difficulty-wise. People treat it like Rani when all they have in common is that both can absorb damage sometimes.

Chloris Path

Finally, on to the legendary plant monster with an AoE Doom TP move!

Spoilers: It's also pretty easy.

P.S. Bring a few stacks of Holy Water if you're going to stand next to it.

Popping Chloris is the hardest part of farming Chloris. Seriously, scroll halfway down and look. The Tier 1s are all random dropped things and easy enough (if tedious) to farm.

The Tier 2s, Cannered Noz excepted, are straightforward kills with 100% pop item drops. Cannered Noz is a corpselight NM that spams a breath damage TP move and gets access to Blizzaga IV and Death as it reraises over and over and over and over. It's pretty annoying.

Tier 3s have Chukwa which is a 10-15 minute repop Adamantoise NM. He's not hard, but if there's competition to claim it can be annoying. Ophanim is your standard Hecteyes NM with a petrify gaze move. Treble Noctules is a bat that has a bunch of TP moves that I don't think any other bat in the game uses. Not at all threatening, but strange. Hedetet is really the only one likely to kill anyone as it has a Throat Stab type TP move which is lethal during Mighty Strikes. Proc red on all four and you've got a Chloris popset.

Meet Chloris:

She's a pink Mandragora who single-handedly supports the Holy Water market. She's also half-blind, so keeping shadows up isn't too difficult. Not that the ~80 damage hits are particularly life-threatening.

Aside from your support not standing near it and your tanks having Holy Waters (two or more stacks for faster spamming after Fatal Scream) there's not much to say. The best setup I've done it with was Innin tanking as NIN/DNC with a Ukon WAR/SAM using Retaliation and letting Chloris wreck itself when it uses Hundred Fists. WHM cures people. Everyone else stands back and watches. The pink terror dies in a few minutes. Fatal Scream's Doom usually wears off with two or three Holy Waters, but having two people tanking is a nice backup.

By far the hardest part to killing Chloris is getting a popset for Chloris.

TTFN!

So that's Tahrongi Empy farming. Very time-consuming, but not particularly challenging.

Next time: Aby-La Theine, zombies, and evil pixies!

Been kind of dead here lately...

2011-07-30T18:55:00.000-04:00

But that's not to say I haven't been busy...

Quite happy! I know everyone has one, but w00t! :-D

Going to go out for a bit and try stabbing some stuff with it later.

YUS!

2011-07-11T16:27:00.000-04:00

Do want!

The Valoredge could use some defensive boosts, and this might be just what was needed.

Skilling up faster is (potentially) awesome. This is Square-Enix though, so I expect it'll suck.

I'm a little worried about the Cure Potency one though...I usually am near or at maximum light slots with the WHM Automaton already.

Dispel is FUCKING HUGE. Now Ice Spikes are much less likely to get me killed.

Very nice attachments. Now here's hoping they're bought with Allied Notes rather than fucking Imperial Standing (which I have less than 3k of).

Tanking, Nuking/Proc'ing, and General Strategy...

2011-07-04T01:25:00.000-04:00

Like most people, I've been doing Abyssea ONRY, basically. Tanking stuff as Ninja mostly and as Monk on occasion, nuking/proc'ing yellow as Black Mage, and discovering stuff that's not apparent from reading the Wiki. Did you know Chloris is actually 32.4x more annoying to get a pop for than actually kill despite having a Doom TP move? Or that Glavoid is actually quite LOL? I didn't. So, I'm looking through screenshots and going to try and get something up about various NMs/fights from the point of view of tanking them, how to time your yellow procs, etc.

But it's late, so that'll hopefully go up on a not busy July 4th tomorrow.

Full AF3+2...

2011-06-28T13:20:00.000-04:00

Yes, I'm quite proud of your accomplishment.

You're one of many tens of thousands of beautiful and unique snowflakes.

Please stop lagging the shit out of Port Jeuno now.

Somebody w/ an Official Forum Account...

2011-06-19T20:45:00.000-04:00

Evilpaul is casting Aisha: Ichi on the Giant Bee.
The Giant Bee is Attack Down.
This isn't fucking English.

Ninja Chaimail +1 says "Physical Damage: Shock Spikes effect". This incorrect, it is simply thunder elemental damage. It cannot Stun attackers.

Uzura +2
DMG:45 Delay:216
DMG:+2
"Store TP"+15

Seems to not have the Store TP take effect if you switch to it while engaged after using a 2h weapon? I switch to a Gold Muskateer's GK swing it a few times, and switch back to Uzura +2/Kamome and swing twice for 9% TP. I swing twice next for 10% TP. 8 more attack rounds and 99% TP. What the fuck?

If somebody with an Official Forum Account could post there bitching about this broken fucktardedness that would be much appreciated.

LP Olympics

2011-06-19T17:32:00.001-04:00

So they're doing a Let's Play Olympics thing on Socksmakepeoplesexy.net, and I decided to throw my hat in. Hopefully, not having entered, followed the rules, etc, won't be grounds for disqualification. Anyway...

Yes, I sort of suck ass. The LP officially begins at 1:57.

Completely forgot about Mog Bonanza!

2011-06-10T22:47:00.000-04:00

So it turns out that Marbles are on sale for "shit I never win, but spend 40k gil on anyway" event of the year. So what would I pick should I be killed by a meteorite and could choose from beyond the grave? Read on, to find out!

Rank 1 (All five digits)

Gil, because money is nice.
Ridill, Kraken Club, Absolute Virtue drops, and Pandemonium Warden drops for the adventurers who have a time machine and can go back to the era when said items were useful.
Ochain, Daurdabla, and Defending Ring for the dedicated, but lazy, PLD, BRD, and miscelaneous tank.
10,000 pieces from Dynamis which is basically the "Gil, except I want it from another player instead of Square-Enix" option.
And finally, Level 90 Relic, Empyrean, and Mythic Weapons which are all varying degrees of tedious and/or fucking expensive.

This is pretty easy to decide. Well, the first part, anyway. I'd go with one of the uber weapons. As my jobs can either use Katana or Hand-to-Hand it's between those two. I've gotten a Kannagi to the Briareus/Sobek stages (i.e. where it finally becomes Kanagi and gets Blade: Hi), so I'd go for a H2H weapon. Both H2H Mythics are good, but job exclusive. The PUP weapon being the superior of the two. Between Spharai and Verethegna it's a harder pick because the former is very strong as a tanking weapon. But given the chance to get my Monk and uber WS in Abyssea and pimp my PUP a little at the same time I've gotta go with the Empyrean.

Rank 2 (Last four digits)

Rank 2 is much less interesting.

Alkalurops, Twilight Mail, Black Belt, Opal Silk, and Novio Earring all fall under the category of "shit I don't have any use for" (or already possess in the case of Novio). I'm amused to not see Novia Earring listed.
Shadow Mantle and Shadow Ring are both nice, but not that useful to me.
Bonanza Kupon EA is a free AF3+2 item, basically.

Cat's Eye

Pandemonium Key

Really, the only three things that I'd like from this group are Saber Shoot and Twilight Cloak. I've got Opal Silk already and Gugrusaurus is impossible to find on Cerberus. I can't catch them myself, so getting an Ebisu is effectively impossible for me. The Cloak would let me put my Yama's Staff+2 to work and do some epic dark elemental damage.

Rank 3 (Last three digits)

Ick. This category is almost entirely antiquated Salvage crap, Shadowreign stuff that's impossible to get, and really the only thing anyone should pick from here is a Roundel Earring to make their WHM awesome(r) or to sell because 9-10 mil is probably more than the gil reward.

Also, WTF? No, seriously, WTF?

Rank 4 (Last two digits)

Sea Torques, Dyna-Beauc armor, AF3+1, BB items, outdated weapons/armor, and an Odin Statue.

I guess I default to the Odin Statue for my mule option. He can hang with his pal Alexander.

Rank 5 (Last digit)

Rank 5 is the result of scraping the bottom of the barrel too hard and digging through to the dirt underneath. If you like those statue furnishings or really want to do those BCNMs they gave away vouchers for at Fan Fest back when they still did that you're in luck!

I guess I'd go with another statue.

TTFN!

And that's it until next time! I hope to have enriched your life by knowing what I would do in hypothetical circustances that will surely never come to pass.

MS's E3 Press Conference

2011-06-06T13:49:00.001-04:00

So because my life is sad I'm watching this thing. About half an hour in...

Call of Duty: MW3 appears to be more of the dreadful same. Terrible shooting and being shuffled from set piece to set piece. And if you play online you'll need to level grind and can enjoy being called a "faggot" or "nigger" by fourteen year olds. Yeah, I'm not a CoD fan.

New Tombraider Is Lara 21 because Japanese people think any older and you hit menopause? Also, her breasts aren't ludicrously sized. Crystal Dynamics isn't even a Japanese developer. I'm confused. And the alternating tap the shoulder buttons quick time event from Resident Evil 4 are back...because those didn't suck 5 years ago. Also, she has Detective Vision now? Is there some reason they couldn't have made a new IP rather than reboot Tombraider for the upteenth time?

Mass Effect 3 Looks to be more Mass Effect which is OK by me. The Kinect shit looks retarded. It's faster to click a button on a thing you're already holding than it is to read a sentence.

New Xbox Dashboard so Kinect can now navigate the entire thing using voice controls? Neat, I guess. Also, people use Bing to search? You learn something new everyday.

Gears of War 3 I know Ice-T is a big videogame fan, but him playing part on stage is still slightly bizarre. I didn't care about the preceding Gears games and I don't care about this one.

Rome because flailing about like a retard for hours kicking and shit sounds fun.

Halo: Anniversary Baby's First FPS is getting an HD remake. I always thought those repeating copy/pasted alien ship rooms and obnoxious sticky grenades needed multisample antialiasing.

Forza evilpaul doesn't care about racing games.

Fable: The Journey Can we really plant a tree and watch it grow this time? So there's a kart racing segment that Kinect can control? OK. Controller's still probably better. And now it's a rail shooter controlled with Kinect? I thought it was a shitty action RPG? Which makes it double shitty because action RPGs are just shitty action games with RPG element shoehorned in.

Minecraft Still have never played it on PC.

Kinect Disneyland Adventures I've never been to Disneyland. I went to Disneyworld when I was five. There's two things about this demo I'm noticing. First, the children they have on stage, like all children, can't act for shit. The mini-games look like things Tetsuya Nomura thought too cotemptably fucking stupid for Kingdom Hearts.

Also, THERE ARE NO BLACK PEOPLE IN DISNEYLAND. Is this set in the "classic 1950s" or something? Did they include "Colored" waterfountains? Hilariously racist? I'd say so.

Kinect StarWars A rail shooter and awkward motion-based combat? Pass.

I'm going to go out now as the additional Kinect shit is boring. Yay, finger tracking! Yay, avatars that live deep in the Uncanny Valley and have great stalking potential! It's like...yes, that's a thing you can do. OK. And? It's like a toy that will have the same longlasting appeal as playing with sticks and rocks.

Also, why is the douchebag on stage wearing gigantic fucking sunglasses indoors? Is it because you need to be fucking high to enjoy this shit?

Fuck! More Kinect Sports shit. I'm out.

I hate to sound like a broken record.

2011-05-31T13:31:00.000-04:00

BUT WHAT IN THE FLYING FUCK?!

LICK MY BALLS, SQUARE-ENIX.

Square-Enix Customer Support has a lot in common with unicorns.

2011-05-27T17:11:00.000-04:00

In that it doesn't fucking exist.

I can't log on to Evilpaul, yet again. I'd contact their "online support", but the last time netted me a boilerplate letter that made it clear my clear and concise description of the problem wasn't read by anything bearing intelligence.

And I was zoning into Abyssea-Attohwa to finish a couple popsets and kill the NMs. Would have finished all my and most of the rest of the static's +2 heads too. Now I won't even be able to enter fucking Abyssea for a full hour after the problem magically solves itself.

Fuck you, Square-Enix. Fuck you in your incompetent asses.

Finally!

2011-05-25T15:35:00.000-04:00

Got a twofer earlier today!

Freaking sweet! Like 1/~300 on the Haste+3% boots for my PUP and I now have a BLM AF3+1 Body.

With a PUP AF3+2 body I'd have capped gear Haste on PUP. For a job that used to get put on shit like Seer's gear that's pretty mindblowing.

The More You Know!

2011-05-24T02:21:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted much lately. I have been playing FFXI a good bit, but just haven't felt inspired, I guess. So, I just wanted to mention that if ~10 year old game reviews irk you that GameSpot has your number. They reviewed the first Persona, Legend of Legaia, and Suikoden. If you aren't a crazy person, and have played all of those games, then you know the only one you would tell someone you don't hate to play would be Suikoden. It was an awesome RPG. So, guess which got the lowest rating by GameSpot? Suikoden.

So, yeah.

If you're looking for old JRPGs to play through I wouldn't put GameSpot review scores as a point in your purchasing decision.

So why the fuck can't I go to Port Bastok?

2011-05-11T17:18:00.000-04:00

Two days in a fucking row.

I called a fucking GM yesterday. I never received a reply. I got a fucking form letter saying the GM was useless and to go to some website and something something somebody else will fix it. Well, I did that. I think. And today after I can magically log on again for some reason.

And now I can't again.

What.

The.

Fuck.

And they broke Port #@%ing Bastok now too?

2011-05-10T15:18:00.000-04:00

So, if you like logging in don't go to Port Bastok apparently. Or should I check POL.com to see they've posted a warning about that now and it's all my fault?

Like eight months for a fucking Version Update and not a fucking thing works.

Fucking really, Square-Enix?

2011-05-10T13:59:00.000-04:00

As expected, the Update Day Maintenance was extended and as a result I didn't get to login and see what's new until later in the evening. Being slightly (read: not slightly) drunk, I decided it best to just spend my stored up merit points and call it a night. Let other people figure out this Voidwatch stuff, and where the 14hMP staff is from.

So I did. On Hand-to-Hand merits. They didn't increase Evasion/Parrying/Guard/Shield beyond 4. Monk, PUP, and Ninja don't need Combat Skills other than H2H and Katana. It's only logical.

Great. So 19 merits fucking wasted. Thanks, Square-Enix!

Hmm. So what else is new? Well, there's the PUP H2H weapons with the 10TP/tick Regain.

Oh wait.

Fucking, really? The Caller's Pendant gives 2.5TP/tick to Avatars. It was really in need of a 90% reduction? Somebody had the decimal at the wrong place?

Am I being paranoid if I'm worried Sage Sundi is coming to my house and going to rape my cat and stick a banana in my car's tailpipe?

Update Day Stuff

2011-05-09T17:34:00.000-04:00

So the update finally arrived, and I'm here to pick apart the Version Update Notes and bitch about things. Let's get started!

The potency of the "Automaton: Regain" effect granted by the hand-to-hand weapon "Burattinaios" has been adjusted.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! (Or: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!)

Does Square-Enix hate FUN?! Sure, having 240%TP Regain per minute, 10% from the H2H was sort of broken, but FUCK! You could do shit like this:

And that's pretty awesome!

OK, so you can't really tell from the picture, but with RR/VV/GH set I was standing a PUP/DNC and Deploy -> Retreive to fire off an Armor Piercer for ~700 DMG twice a minute. Our tanks got exploded at 2%, so I Ventriloquy'd all the Armor Piercer hate onto myself...and couldn't find a Fanatic's Drink. But we deadified it anyway, so yeah.

What was my point in all this? It better be 5TP/tick and not some 2.5TP/tick like the Caller's Pendant (Avatar's don't need TP anyway :-P). /RAGE

Moving along....

Synergy On Sky (etc) Gear

Well, it turns out yeah, Synergy is still fucking retarded. Want to Synergize your Genbu's Kabuto to a whole new level of bucket helmet awesome? Well get your Synergy rank up to Recruit and get a Genbu's Seal. Synergize that Genbu's Seal into a Genbu's Tatter. Synergize your Genbu's Tatter+Kabuto into an augmented improved version.

Abjuration gear follows the same pattern needing a Tatter made from one of the papers from that set. Thankfully, you can use an Aquarian: Head seal to make the Tatter for your Zenith Mitts +1 or whatever.

And papers drop from Kings, which are now force popped, so maybe we'll be able to get some shiny, new, old gear without camping shit in Sky again? Depending what the augments are the stuff will probably just be situational with AF3+1s and +2s anyway.

New Synergy (UGH) Gear

The gear teased now has names and requires drops from the new Voidwalker NM things. Fazheluo Mail, Hyksos Robe, and Cuauhtli Harness. Hopefully, the battlefields are at least fun since the shit requires high level Synergy to make.

Dynamis? Anyone?

There's surprisingly no new information about Dynamis changes as far as I can tell.

TTFN!

So, a few interesting things (new Automaton Attachments!!), but most of the stuff is too vague to parse. Hopefully, the new Voidwatch stuff is fun and Dynamis is revived a bit.

More Shin, Sad Monk, Happy PUP, and Gold Chest Farming!

2011-05-02T12:21:00.000-04:00

I did another Shinryu since the one I posted.

It nearly was a loss as the Brew wore off right after I killed it. And my awesome loot was a Snoll Arm. I'm pretty sure Square-Enix is fucking with me.

Sad Monk

I went to farm up the parts of a Ulhuadshi popset I was missing, and saw this.

My usual luck had people camping nearly every damned thing I went to check on. So a little bit of lulz from seeing someone using a terrible weapon (Afflictors) and a mediocre, in Abyssea, weaponskill (Asuran Fists) brought joy to my black, black heart. Afflictors were shit at level 80. They haven't improved with age. There's probably Auction House shit that's better. Those Heroes zone augmented H2H are better. Asuran Fists doesn't crit. If you don't have Ascetic's Fury, you should be working on getting it. If you can't, for some reason, then use Backhand Blow. Sooooooo bad.

Happy PUP

Later in the day, I went Gold Chest/KI farming in Aby-Tahrongi.

I think that's my personal record for Stringing Pummel. I was PUP/DNC with RR/VV/MC Atmas. After some Bat murdering we moved to Scorpions.

Which went pretty well. I got the unpronounceable Burattinaios which gives my Automaton 10TP/tick Regain. Combined with VV and that's a crazy 240% TP per minute. Being able to Tactical Switch basically whenever the timer is up is pretty sweet. I haven't really used it for Curing Waltz III spam, but it would work for that too.

And that's pretty much what I've been up to over the past week.

Portal 2 (No Spoilers)

2011-04-30T20:15:00.000-04:00

So I finally got around to finishing the last thing in Portal, and got the sequel Portal 2. If you haven't played the first, then you apparently don't like fun, or missed the giveaway weekend it was free on Steam and didn't get the Orange Box either.

In any case, I've gotten about halfway through it and it's a great game. The writing is again top notch. There's a number of new characters and they're all humorous in different ways. The puzzles are back too, of course, and a number of new elements have been added. There's the colored gels that have various effects on surfaces. I don't remember lasers in the original, so I'm pretty sure those are new.

Something odd I still haven't figured out is heights. I've heard of people getting motion sickness from playing first-person shooters. I have never experienced this, personall. What I've never heard of people experiencing a real-life fear of heights in a videogame, but a few times looking down from somewhere it's made me feel uneasy. So I guess expansive environments that seem realistic is a positive?

There have been a few puzzles like the one above (pic stolen from Wikipedia) that were rather exhilarating. The blue portal is a big drop, and the distance that you're launched from the orange one is pretty long.

So, yeah. I'm going to take the controversial view that Portal 2 is in fact a great game. And if you haven't picked it up yet (the $50+ asking price is steep for a sequel to a game that was free), then check Gamestop or KMart this weekend as its apparently half-off.

Poop.

2011-04-26T22:45:00.000-04:00

Lame.

Down to the wire!

2011-04-24T21:04:00.000-04:00

So, I have been working on a Yama's Staff +2 lately. I went with the Dark Potency route hoping we'll get a dark elemental Meteor/Comet down the line. The previous two staves I upgraded were Ice/Lightning and had trials that could be done on BST pets. The later trials are killshots over 150 or 250 elemental damage. Both lend themselves to -ga3ing a bunch of mobs and/or just one-shotting BST pets. The Dark staff doesn't really have this option. Sure, you could Cataclysm stuff, but mage melee sucks. So, this one took a lot longer than the rest, and I plan to write up something similar to my previous posts about it.

But the point of this post, is that I finished it earlier!

Right down to the wire!

That looks....crazy broken.

2011-04-22T12:15:00.002-04:00

They posted some Job Adjustments for the ludicrously long awaited Version Update finally. I'm a bit surprised to see what they are. But first...

King's Quest!

To briefly comment on the changes to Ground Kings: Great! I'm pretty sure that somebody did a detailed mock-up of almost exactly the announced system several years ago and it was floating around at the '06ish Fan Fest, but better late than never. Lowering Black Belt item drops seems kind of retarded, I ended up having to buy mine for 6 million gil because the drop rate on NQ HNMs and KS99s was horrid, but otherwise it's a positive.

I'm not sure if I'll do more KS30 spam for R3 or wait for this. They should probably add BS/KS drops inside Abyssea (or however they changed them due to Genkai Quest problems).

Job Adjustments: Dark Knight

They do know about Desperate Blows merits, right?

Because this looks crazy broken. ~25% Job Ability Haste 60% of the time?

Puppetmaster?!

As you may know, I've got my PUP90 and enjoy murdering the shit out of things with Stringing Pummel in Abyssea. So, I was delighted to see this.

For the non-PUPs the Heat Capacitor looks like a Meditate for Automatons. Using Fire Maneuvers provides a boost to an Autos STR and makes Attack boosting fire-based Attachments like Tension Springs provide larger percent bonuses. Unfortunately, having Fire Maneuvers up also affects which WS an Auto will use, and it's not always the better one. Tactical Switch swaps TP between Master and Automaton, so I think it'll be most useful either where you can't use Fire Maneuvers with a melee/ranged frame or with the mage Auto where the Master is meleeing.

Power Cooler looks to make the WHM Automaton slightly more MP efficient. Mana Booster (also an ice-based attachment) reduces the recast time between spells, so it's generally in use already. An Automaton running out of MP is usually not an issue with ADD (Activate-Deploy-Deactivate) fully restoring MP and Deus Ex Automaton allowing ADD even when Activate isn't up. So it's nice to have, but nothing amazing. On the BLM Auto it's not desirable as those Ice capacity slots are useful for damage.

Barrage Turbine is exactly what it sounds like. It'll probably give three plus the number of Wind Maneuvers, possibly based on level, shots of Barrage. And the occasionally makes it sound like a three or five minute recast timer. I don't use the Sharpshot frame much, so I don't see this as particularly useful.

Galvanizer looks pretty nice. There's not much in the way of useful Thunder Attachments for Mage Autos. For the melee and ranged ones Target Marker and/or Stabilizer(s) are usually used to provide an Accuracy boost, so countering attacks after Barraging at the start of a fight would be pretty handy.

The new weaponskills both look good. The first being a crit WS could potentially be amazing in Abby. The second being multi-hit should outperform Armor Piercer which is single-hit.

Job Traits

These look OK.

I'm not sure how Tranquil Heart will work, but having some innate Enmity- on Cure spells can't hurt. It'll help make White Mage even more awesomely broken. For subjobs only /WHM will probably give the Tier II trait at 90. /RDM probably will at 99. Unless Scholar gets Gravity nobody will care if /SCH gives the Tier II trait..

Stalwart Soul looks to...what the fuck is a "DKN Lv.45"? Fuck.

Ranged crits just get a 25% damage bonus, unlike melee attacks, so maybe Dead Aim will have them act more like melee ones?

Misc.

And there's this stuff.

The VIT change sounds good for Counterstanced Monks. Probably broken in an Emergency Maintenance awesome kind of way. (I'm calling it!) Also nice, because I like using the Atma of the Mounted Champion which gives VIT+50 soloing or when I'm not sure about having dedicated healing.

EXP loss change is something people have been bitching about for years. If you haven't read Pat's The Rise and Fall of Final Fantasy it's interesting, informative, and pretty entertaining to anyone who's a fan of (or hates, I guess) the FF series. His FF11 experience was ruined in sizeable part by the death penalty. Rhete hated much more of the game overall, but EXP loss was a part of it. Losing EXP after level 5 is kind of a steep difficulty/learning curve bump. So yeah, evilpaul approves this change.

Now if they can just add those Targeting the Captain attachments somewhere else or make them Synergy'able or something. Somebody post that on the Official Forum for me. :-P

Needs Moar Tier III. Also, Merit Points.

2011-04-06T15:49:00.000-04:00

So like most people I was happy to see Fusionx delved deep into the Mysterious Dungeon that are The Square-Enix Official Forums and emerged alive with news contained therein of some stuff planned for the next Version Update. Whenever the hell that's actually arriving.

Merit caps are going up! I'm not sure what I want to put mine in though...

HP or MP? I went 8/8MP previously, and don't regret it. Nobody uses Sorcerer's Ring in Abby (you can swap your yellow gear, cancel the HP buff, and swap back to nuking gear), but I've still got one. HP would be good to have for tanking stuff as Monk or Ninja, obviously. Suggestions?

Attributes is easy: More INT! It continues to be the most noticeable base stat for my jobs.

I'm curious as to whether the increased Combat Skills are going to raise the category totals? The really nice thing unique to Hand-to-Hand skill is that as it goes up so does the base DMG of bare fists. So I'll raise that as much as possible. Evasion is also an easy pick if we're allowed to raise it further.

If it's just we can cap out additional categories, then I'm basically stuck with Parrying and Guard as I'm not about to merit Club or Staff. I guess I could do Dagger as I use it on NIN and PUP a little, but meh.

Magic Skills are also easy: Ninjutsu! Sure, I could do SMN magic, but resisted Ninjutsu makes soloing/low-manning stuff more difficult and I use Ninja way more than Summoner.

Others goes without saying that it'll be more of the same. So Critical Hit Rate +1% and Spell Interrupt Down -1% more.

Crafting Changes?!

Most intriguing is Sqeenix possibly allowing an increase in the points over 60 for Crafting.

If I could get another craft to 80, then I'd definitely go with Woodworking. Tier 3'ing Shihei would be fucking awesome. I'm forced to make my own as they sell for twice the cost of materials pretty often.

I'll have to check synth recipe lists, but Alchemy would probably be the other craft I'd want to get to 100. Not because it's a huge money maker, but because in this Abyssean World we live in consumables are really the only stuff worth buying.

What I've been up to lately...

2011-04-03T13:44:00.002-04:00

I haven't been posting much lately.

In-game I've mostly been working on getting AF3+1 seals. That's going pretty well. I've finished all six pairs of feet (they've been done a while now), finished all six pairs of pants (and plus +2'd three doing Sobek spam), and have +1'd all but one of my head pieces. I'm working on SMN as I type this.

I don't want this to be a "look at my shinies" post though, so something completely different: I've been doing Wings of the Goddess Missions! They really put some effort into the cutscenes. They're not the usual canned /emotes and dialogue. There's people flying inexplicably, throwing swords through the air and into Orcs, and all kinds of crazy. Here's a few pics I grabbed. I guess they're technically spoilers, but unless you've done WotG already they don't reveal much really.

I'm hoping to get up to and past the next battlefield/NM fight/whatever later today. If you're playing FFXI and haven't gotten around to them it's really worth it.

Also, take a look at this:

Is Square-Enix fucking with me?

New Battlefields!

2011-03-25T14:32:00.000-04:00

Square-Enix has said they're thinking about adding new battlefields using the HKCs/KCrests already. Could the KCs ones be soloable Pulling the Strings style BCNMs, hopefully with subjobs and no level cap, and reward AF3+1 seals? I think that would be pretty awesome. Could the HKCs be group battles that drop +2 items? That also would be kind of rad.

Get on it, Square-Enix!

Can you taste the packets?!

2011-03-24T15:50:00.000-04:00

Anyone know what time the servers are supposed to be coming back tomorrow?

Memories.

2011-03-23T13:47:00.000-04:00

Sometime back in 2006. Black Mage was my only level 75 job except possibly Summoner...which I'm pretty sure was only ~60 tops.

Stackable Drinks?

2011-03-21T22:06:00.000-04:00

Am I the only one thinking we'll see Yagudo Drinks and similar items stack to 12 whenever the update comes around? I'm drawing a blank on other things that really should stack that don't already (or that stack to 12 that going to 99 would be an improvement).

The Official Forums suck.

2011-03-20T15:00:00.000-04:00

Square-Enix launched the official forums finally. And while better late than after the servers are permanently turned off, I guess, they sort of, well, suck. This is primarily due to two reasons.

The first, is the software. While most web forums use phpBB or whatever, Square-Enix decided to roll their own.

This is not informative.

They distinctly lack any information as to what the sub-forums' threads contents are. It's nice there's Job Specific forums, and slightly odd that there's no World specific ones, but what's in them? That's a lot of clicking to see threads without making an account. (I have no desire to post there.)

The second, is that the posters are idiots. I know it's shocking: I found stupid people on the Internet. But hear me out. The first thing Sqare-Enix posted was a thread saying, "Hey, maybe make your threads' titles in some way reflect the posts' contents?"

So "Awesome idea for PUP!" would be an example of a bad thread title.

"Give PUP A+ Great Katana skill!" would be an example of a good, but stupid, thread title.

And here's an example from the forum.

82.5% Retarded.

Clearly, nobody read the "READ THIS BEFORE POSTING" sticky before posting. Again, I know people not reading the FAQ/Rules/any stickies before posting isn't news, but not banning people for being retarded on your forum makes your forum kind of retarded and buried under all the stupid.

EA/Bioware got some bad press for banning a stupid (although humorous/correct) guy from their forums. Square-Enix should probably at least do a little forum cleaning. (Bans affecting accounts would be a bit severe.)

So, yeah. Sucky Official Forum is sucky.

@1!

2011-03-15T15:56:00.000-04:00

So as anyone reading this knows they're doing their best "OH FUCK IT'S THE APOCALYPSE!!!!" impressions over in Japan with nuclear reactors blowing up, the sea swallowing entire towns, and generally making the rest of the world happy to not be in Japan. Etc. Etc.

Give the Red Cross or whoever else that's doing distaster relief some money if you can.

@1!

With that out of the way, I wanted to post a few pics of what I was up to before the servers were, quite understandably, shutdown so slightly more important things can have electricity. Then, I realized that it was mostly just Seals NMs in Abyssea, so that wouldn't be terribly interesting. So, it was basically just these two events.

I joined a Whetwetrice (however it's spelled) run and we popped and killed it a bunch of times.

Most of us ended up Petrified, the NIN and THF both died, and I was next in the pecking order. Get it?!?

With a little kiting around a rock until Amnesia wore off, Mana Wall, and Manafont I mananged to kill it though. I was quite pleased with myself. As /BRD37, no less. I was quite pleased with myself for saving our 1k gil farmed up pop item. (I don't remember if it was this run or the other one where only 2/4 of us splurged for the Mangled Cock Skin pop item.) Get it?!? I'm on fire with puns today!

After that, there's Shinryu. I went as MNK/NIN. I've tanked it a few times now, so I've tweaked my gear a little.

The melee hits take 2-3 shadows, so there's no way to keep shadows up all the time. And nothing it does can be Countered, so Counterstance is worthless. Here's the current set. The H2H is Added Effect: Evasion Down and the Dark Ring has PDT-5%. It's far from perfect, but serviceable and reduces the per hit melee damage from pretty high to much more manageable. For Atmas, I go with Razed Ruins/Sanguine Scythe/Impregnable Tower. It's for keeping hate via damage and getting my HP up nearly as high as possible. Being able to survive two high damage moves back to back makes things go much more smoothly.

So, we did the usual proc Blue (it was Staff; I think Shell Crusher?) and then hope the guy who's going to Brew doesn't do it wrong. He knew what he was doing, and sure enough:

We won and got a bunch of drops I already have/can't use. I think that's my first non-pure Brew-killl win? I learned the timing anyway for when you can proc in any case. It's basically the same as Iron Giants in that second pause between actions.

Shinryu's a fun fight regardless of whether I get new shinies, so I can't complain.

@1!, This time with feeling!

So the meaning behind the title of this post, was that I'm @1 drop for a whole bunch of Empyrean armors. SMN Feet +2 (my first +2 piece; assuming I finish it), PUP Head +1, SCH Head +1, SMN Legs +1, and I think another piece as well. So whenever the servers come back up I'll have stuff to do.

I'm kind of curious as to whether we'll get Traverse Stones for the time they were down? I've got >300, so I don't need them, but people who've been living in Abyssea are always complaining about being low.

TTFN!

So that's the highlights of what I've been up to in FFXI. Exciting, I know.

Why do people do Aby-La Theine Worm parties?

2011-03-07T01:20:00.000-05:00

I realize that there's an obsessive compulsive thing to only EXP off 7 of the 92 (or whatever) mob types in Abyssea, but why are Worm Parties so popular? Do people not have the latter two mini-expansions? Because worms in La Theine suck. Have these people never done them before?

You can't get NQ feet drops.

You can't get Dom Ops style stuff.

It's just shit. So why the love? Can someone explain this to me?

Augmented Byakko's Haidate?!

2011-03-02T13:50:00.001-05:00

I checked POL.com earlier to see if the weekly Q&A was posted and found this linked to on the FFXI_EN twitter.

For those who, like me, can't read kanji it says Acc+1 and Damage Taken-2%. Not exactly mind-blowing to be sure, but I'd use that over NQ Shura legs. Will Abjuration stuff also be Augmentable?

How will it work though? Maybe the Kindred's Crests battlefields? They also said in the tweets that the skill level required will be relatively low. So I guess I should skill up Synergy and finish off Smithing/Goldsmithing to 60.

The Summoner Stratagem

2011-02-27T12:58:00.000-05:00

As I wrote before, E-vase-sive Action is pretty easy to solo/duo for a possible Raise III scroll. I decided to try it again as Summoner/Red Mage since I dinged 90 not too long ago.

It turns out it works quite well. I used two Shivas and just stood back and watched. As you can tell from the screenshot I've got far from l33t SMN gear. No meds were needed.

Crap drops, of course.

Summoner: It's not totally useless?

2011-02-24T20:16:00.000-05:00

So I tend to rag on Summoner a lot. And the job has plenty of problems. But goddamn is Bakka a whole lot easier when you can toss a disposable Ice-immune pet at him and watch from a safe distance.

I'd been after a Goetia Chain for a while now, but always went as NIN/DNC. Violent Flourish is a pretty reliable Stun, but he can get pretty spamming with -gas and all his TP moves being AoE and shadow stripping. You, of course can't use it while you're Amnesia'd.

It's doable (bring RR), but standing back and keeping up Blink/Stoneskin is soooooo much easier. So I killed Bakka seven more times today and proc'd Blue with Full Swing on my tenth attempt.

Tada! Full Swing seems to be like the Tachi: Koki of Staff WS. Or something. The important thing is the damn neck piece finally dropped!

Yay! Now to toss like fifteen Bakka's Wings.

Mega Ding?

2011-02-23T19:11:00.000-05:00

I finally got all my jobs to level 90! Well, not "All Jobs", but Black Mage, Summoner, Ninja, Monk, Scholar, and Puppetmaster. Should I finally start working on leveling Ranger again? I've gotten a decent amount of Abyssea stuff done, so there's fewer /shouts that interest me. Maybe get Smithing and Goldsmithing from ~50 to 60? Suggestions?

First and Last

2011-02-21T21:32:00.000-05:00

Black Mage was my first job to 75. And its my last to get around to finishing an AF3+1 piece for. I did a little bunny murdering yesterday.

Poor bunny never stood a chance. Everybody got 8/8 on at least one job which was pretty nice.

I've been to Attowha three or four times now to get the base piece. On the plus side as PUP I'm also getting Automaton skill ups. And ta-da!

But I had run out of keys, so they were lost. ;_;

Nah, I'm kidding.

I finally got them! With the added damage reduction gear I've been getting plus an enhanced Mana Wall I can probably take a decent pounding now on BLM.

And now for something completely different...

Unrelated, but I also was able to grind out the last thingy in Aby-Konschstat today.

I think I can get a new synthetic abyssite from the Heroes zone now?

Server maintenance has me bored. Meh.

Well, that's a long-winded way to say, "We didn't actually change anything."

2011-02-19T20:41:00.000-05:00

I posted on BG saying they hadn't changed shit. Turns out I was 100% correct.

Because all the cool kids are doing it...

2011-02-19T17:39:00.000-05:00

I decided to see if I could solo red on Shinryu...

...And it turns out I can!

I had planned to try for three Blue procs (Ninja's pretty limited in Blue possibilities), but he died too fast.

I'd love to get my hands on that Cloak that teaches "Impact." Of course I'll need to go do a Dark elemental DMG+5 Magian staff. XD

So will we have the same "Kupohancements" when the servers are back up?

2011-02-14T12:18:00.000-05:00

The "mini version update" finally arrived and we're supposed to get skill ups faster now. I'll be switching to PUP and trying to get Bougrion's Automaton Magic Skill somewhere near capped. I'm not sure if the "Martial Master" moogle thing Cerberus had going will have worn off or not yet?

I'd prefer to try and farm BLM feet in Aby-Attowha while skilling, but having TH for skill ups is also very appealing...

Hmm.

OH GOD WE ALL DIED HORRIBLY!!!

2011-02-14T12:09:00.000-05:00

I'm kidding. ;-P

I finally got something to replace my Zenith Mitts for nuking on Black Mage! A MAB+2 and Enmity-3 improvement. Not bad at all.

People don't need gil anymore? (Also: "Free" R3 for your WHM)

2011-02-12T15:39:00.000-05:00

I was listening to episode #242 or #241 Pet Food Alpha podcast a few days ago, and the hosts mentioned that people don't really need gil anymore. Personally, having been playing less (i.e. no fishing+sushi making) I was broke and having trouble buying my new Black Magic/Ninjutsu scrolls. And doing random pickup groups killing NMs I see people scoffing at the idea of splurging to buy a 5K gil pop item. You know, we can just spend 15 minutes trying to get one to drop each kill rather than having 3-6 pops ready to go. Having leveled Ninja to 90 I'm using it a lot more and the cost of tools has gone up sharply, and I see lots of people complaining about that as well. Meds like Echo Drops seem to have become largely optional luxury items as well.

So have we entered some sort of "Post-Gil Economy"? It's true most of the new best gear is "free." But that was also sort of the case for most jobs for the past couple years. Thoughts?

Get Your Raise III Already, Dammit!

So I've run into quite a few 75+ White Mages who don't have Raise III. "OMG It's Super Expensive!!!!!111" I'm told. Well, that's true. It's 500-1,000K across servers. Of course, it's also soloable by a 75 Summoner with some MP meds. For those unfamiliar: "Summoner soloing" is code for "boring the mob (and any spectators) to death."

Which means other jobs can do it as well by level 90.

The KS30 I'm talking about is E-vase-sive Action.

I didn't say it's 100% safe.

You fight one of six elementally aligned Pot NMs. People pick the Wind Pot because there's frequent 2x Ice weather and Choke, Silence, and Gravity are not particularly threatening spells. At about 50% HP the Pot will use Chainspell. For jobs with Utsusemi the only real danger is from a -ga3 spell. The Wind Pot is susceptible to Paralyze and it proc's often.

If you wipe and RR the Pot won't use Chainspell a second time.

I've done this a bunch of times as Monk.

Of course most runs don't result in an R3 scroll, but what else are you going to do with KS? You get 24K in gil and usually at least another 20-50K in AH/NPCable stuff if all else fails.

As Monk I tried /NIN, /DNC, and /WHM. Of the three /NIN is probably the safest. Single target, Chainspell'd Tornado/Aero IV will wreck your shit. I haven't personally lost an orb yet, and it's a complete joke if I use Hundred Fists.

Puppetmasters need not be left out in the cold.

It's easily soloable on PUP too.

But what about the White Mages I initially mentioned? So let's see what White Mages have going for them:
1) Good skill with Club (a blunt weapon; Pots take extra blunt damage), and a multi-hit crit WS (Hexastrike)
2) Shell V, MDB Trait, Stoneskin, and decent magic defense
3) Paralyze (it sticks and procs pretty often), Haste, and Cure V/VI
4) Abilty to /NIN

I'd be surprised if a WHM80/NIN40 couldn't win this KS30 solo. The job that actually needs something from this is quite well suited to solo it. (I'd say Square-Enix did this on purpose, but we all know better.)

The cat's out of the bag. There's no reason to be "gimp" on your White Mage anymore. Go pummel an Air Pot and get yourself the scroll.

And in case it's somehow not clear this KS30 is even more of a joke with two or three DD/NINs duoing or trioing it. Just bring RR in case an errant -ga3 drops you.

@FFXI_EN must be on an RP server....

2011-02-10T23:03:00.000-05:00

Because reading the twitter question response posting, which I appreciate the FFXI dev team making don't get me wrong, I'm surprised "BUT THOU MUST!!!" hasn't appeared yet in its contents. It's all role-playingy and stuff. If an actual player wrote on Twitter, "Q: Oh, the Twilight God strike me down! Had I only known that a glorious day such as the February minor version update would come when Artifact Armor could be entrusted to Porter Moogles—the Goddess bless their gentle hearts—I never would have dreamed of casting aside my hard-won set! Will my beloved equipment be lost to me forever? *Sniff*" I have a fire he (no girls on the Internet) can go die in.

But, I was pleased to see this addressed in the latest batch of questions:

I haven't bought a Primeval Brew, but d/cing and getting kicked out when I was able to login the next day has cost me quite a few temp items. And by "quite" I mean a "whole big ole fuckton." I'll still probably keep my Brewin' for Shinryu, but it won't be a "OMG NO WAI I'LL LOSE 200K CRUOR IF I D/C" sort of decision.

So good on the "mini-update" news. Now when's the major update? And what's being added/changed/whatever? We haven't even gotten some level 95 cap increase news. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Yawn.

2011-02-08T18:39:00.000-05:00

It's not just a Blue Mage spell apparently!

Meh.

Unrelated note, but I finally got around to leveling my PUP and SMN from 76.

PUP's all the way up to 90 now. It's hilariously powerful in Abyssea. Slap on RR/VV/GH and VT mobs go from 100% HP to dead or nearly so from Stringing Pummel -> Tactical Switch (steal Bougrion's TP) -> another SP.

It's also a very sillily dressed job:

(I hit the lotto and got Haste+2 feet from the Dominion trophies guy.)

Summoner is only 83 as of yet. I haven't had an opportunity to get another Heroes zone party and anywhere else the EXP is crap by comparison. I'm still not a huge fan of the job, but there's some stuff where people just want to throw pets at it, so getting it to 90 could prove useful.

Asperger's Douchebag #2576: Snowman of Cerberus

2011-02-07T01:03:00.001-05:00

I suffered the misfortune of meeting Snowman of Cerberus the evening. I'd say all Galka are fucking retarded, but I know several people who play Galka who aren't petulant, loudmouthed, fatassed weaklings in real life.

I understand some people actually have genetic disorders. But then there are those who simply emulate them because they suck at tanking or whatever the fuck it is they were attempting (poorly) to do and feel the need to be whiney cunts with "witty" insults. Oh hey guys, I have a 'room temperature IQ' because I didn't do something I wasn't asked to do. Oh fail is me.

My only regret is I didn't run Sippoy on to the loser Galka so he could send me /cry /tells about MPKing him. You fail at tanking a fucking funguar, and I'm the "stupid" one? Key whore less, cracker, please.

The Pie Blog™ Super Bowl Coverage!

2011-02-06T20:22:00.000-05:00

A picture's worth 1000 words.

There was a lot more going on on Cerberus on Christmas Day. >.<

A few things I don't understand...

2011-01-30T21:46:00.001-05:00

I've been back in FFXI for a while now, and there's a few things I don't understand about the state of the game...

Echo Drops (Or: That thing you have no need to carry if you cast spells)

Do mages no longer need to carry Echo Drops? It's like somebody says, "Hello! I'm Bob the Mage. I'm here to cast spells!"

The MobWe'reAllHereToKillThatUsesSilence casts Silencega!

"Bob! Cast some spells!"

"I can't, I'm silenced!"

And since we're talking about Abyssea it's like a 50/50 shot that he was given a free fucking Cathlolicon, that cures Silence, when he fucking entered! It's not like these are the Elixirs and Megalixirs from FFVI or FFVII that were too awesome to ever actually use. Echo Drops cost a whopping 800 gil from the Duty Free store in Port Jeuno that everyone's AFK in to help lag the shit out of the place.

If Your Job Has Cure IV/V/VI and/or Haste You Might Need to Cast It?

I'm not crapping on White Mages. Lord knows they're useful and I sure as fuck don't want to be one. I'm not crapping on people for not keeping everyone who's punching/slashing/stabbing things in the face Hasted 24/7.

But if you join a pickup group as White Mage (or Scholar or Red Mage as a healer) then maybe cast fucking Cures? Everybody's half dead and you've got full MP? Even if you've got 20MP/tick Atma Refresh you're doing it wrong.

If you have Haste and somebody is blink tanking an NM having 15% knocked off their recast timers is sort of nice. It takes about three seconds every three minutes to do this. It also makes it a lot easier to avoid casting those Cure spells.

Or do people now invite healers to look pretty and...

Lotting Shit You Can't Use

I realize that probably the reason most people with Maat's Caps got them was because they felt tortured to their cores when some item dropped they couldn't personally use. But is it really necessary to lot every goddamned thing that drops even when you can't use half of it? Yes, we're all going to "level some job that's been 37 for five years to 90" at some indeterminate, imaginary, point in the future.

But do people no longer even feel the compunction to lie about it?

Bob defeats TheMobWeCameToKill.
You find a DRK AF3 Accessory on TheMobWeCameToKill.
You find a Flint Stone on TheMobWeCameToKill.

(DRKJimmy) Sweet DRK dropped!

DRKJimmy's lot for DRK AF3 Accessory: 426 points.
Bob's lot for DRK AF3 Accessory: 983 points.

Bob obtains DRK AF3 Accessory.

(DRKJimmy) Do you even have DRK90?
(Bob) Nope.

It's like people have no problem literally saying, "I can't use this, but I'm not going to let you use it." The only way I can think of to be a huger douchebag would be to immediately toss the thing and send the person who wanted it a URL to a screenshot.

/rage

The More Things Change

2011-01-29T03:22:00.001-05:00

I've been getting my Abyssea on lately. I mostly quit for a few months and only logged back in for the first time recently. (/wave Lisamarie) A lot about FFXI has changed since. Atma has gone from mysterious to "Gimp, why don't you have Atma of the Something Something?" with all three Lunar Abyssite.

Undoubtedly, the best way to approach Abyssea is with a few friends. If you take a party in there, pimp them out with Atma and Abyssite you can tackle damn near anything successfully. Add in that you're friends, and the give-take sort of lotting let's people get pieces finished without being greedy dicks or ninja lotting asshats.

I'm happy to report that I finished off the Abyssea zone Mega Bosses and all the ~~flying goat men~~ Caturae and got my Abyssite of Discernment!

I also went with the group I got the last zone clear with to (hopefully) get the Atma off Glavoid. I killed it before, tanking it as Monk, but we didn't get the Atma. This time I was there as Black Mage. Glavoid and Rani (King Flying Goat Man) have an undeserved reputation of being difficult. Undeserved, because they're not difficult they just absorb damage under some circumstances. And three out of four people can't observe those circumstances. But we proc'd red, I didn't die, Glavoid did, so I've now gotten Shinryuu access and am only missing Sedna's (also crappy) Atma.

Time for bed!

So...did they tweet anything interesting?

2011-01-19T12:10:00.000-05:00

I'm a little puzzled as to what the next Version Update holds in store for us. Not interested enough to check my long abandoned twitter (@realevilpaul!!!! lolzzzz!!!!), but I'm wondering where the game is headed from here?

The shuffling around of people for FFXI and apparent shit-canning of everyone who touched FFXIV doesn't inspire confidence. Sure, we can guess Black Mages will eventually be able to cast Meteor and since its apparently dark elemental wish they'd upgraded different Magian staves. Will the ZOMGAWESOME Empyrean Armor +2 get a +3 version? That would make sense for some of the weapons trials. The High Kindred's Crests seem to be a response to criticism of adding the Kindred's Crest with shittacular drop rates that made people spend 8+ hours killing shit to get 5 for the Limit Break quest. I'm guessing we'll also see new BCNMs (or whatever acronym). It would be easy "new" content, so I could see them going for it.

So any news? Anything not stupid posted on twitter?

Finally Dropped!

2011-01-12T21:25:00.001-05:00

I had a busy day in FFXI, and I intend to post a little about it (finally killed an Abyssea Megaboss, the Orobon with the unspellable name, and two others after that!!!), but the NMs in (S) zones I've been camping on and off for months finally all put out!

Now I've got the set of rings and put my Sniper's+Toreador's Ring duo up on the Auction House. (Hopefully, somebody will buy the things. The Price History wasn't encouraging.)

I killed Hyakinthos at least thirty times and may post a string of the frequently profanity laden screenshots later if I'm feeling like it. I finally got the drop as MNK90/THF37. (i r teh gimp. ;_;)

I'm a published author!

2011-01-12T12:19:00.002-05:00

Well, sort of. My review of Chrono Trigger DS is up on Socksmakepeoplesexy.net!

Of Flying Goat Men

2011-01-10T19:20:00.000-05:00

I stopped playing for a while because I didn't feel like I could get anything done with Abyssea, and Abyssea made most of the rest of endgame kind of irrelevant. Sure you can't get a Duelist Chapeau in Abyssea, but you don't need it with a 10MP/tick Refresh Atma. So the past few days have been refreshing in that I've both made some nice inroads into the crimson-skied horror that is Abyssea and gotten a bunch of jobs up to the level cap.

Flying Goat Men Ahoy!

I know that they're technically called "Caturae." Or something. And Dvergers (however that's actually spelled) are closer to flying goat men, but I like the nickname. There's six of the guys in the Abyssea zones and killing them can give an Atma, cool items, and if you've got a bunch of zone clears an Abyssite that tells you the element of NMs' weakness. I only had synthetic Atma (read: nearly entirely craptacular ones; <3 Kirin), so the prospect of getting some that are actually useful was appealing. So when I saw a /shout for one I naturally sent a /tell.

First up, was Aby-Tahrongi's Iratham.

I was there as Scholar and basically just cured the THF who was tanking it, and tried to keep him status ailment free. The way kills go is different than pre-Abyssea content. First, people try all the different elemental weaponskills until the NM is staggered by one. This makes it so you get 100% key item/Atma drops upon its death. Then, you kill the shit out of the NM without pulling hate/dying/whatever like pre-Abyssea stuff. There's other staggers, but for goat men they don't really matter.

And of course I didn't win lot on any of the cool drops:

So one down, five to go.

Next up, with the same group, was Sippoy in Aby-Vunkerl.

The strategy was much the same. Tank holds the NM while people try elemental WS. Red proc stagger and then we kill the shit out of it.

The fight went pretty smooth. Somebody tried to open/aggroed/something'd one of those mimic pyrixes and died hilariously halfway through.

The group continued on to do a third flying goat man. I was pretty psyched to be getting so much done in a single group at this point.

So we moved on to Aby-Attowha (however it's spelled) and the flying goat man formerly known as Yaanei. The fight was much the same as the previous two. I stood around and cured people, threw up useful Accession buffs, etc. The ending was a surprise though:

I guess I can't roll shit lots everytime? I actually ended up winning a STR/DEX+8 Acc+5 head piece that nicely replaces my O.hat and Genbu's Kabuto (for VIT mod heavy WS) for Ninja and Monk weaponskills.

I was pleased to see that the group was going to continue with "KI farming" for the next flying goat man NM. If you didn't play much in an update or two, that's short for key item farming. Damn I've felt like such a noobie this week. LOL. The flying goat man in question was Raja in Aby-Grauberg. So we got to kill a few things including my first Fire/Iron Giant.

And afterwards, I got an awesome Atma. If I had any 2H weapon jobs.

It gives Regain on 2H weapons or some such. But at this point we were ready for Raja...or so I thought.

It turns out Raja is a huge fucker. Seriously, I have a fire he/she/it can go die in. We had problems until two or three people switched to BST and we stuck pets on it mostly while a Monk continued to tank it. At this point I nuked it with Tier IVs. Eventually, we won.

It was a new day and with a new group that I continued my flying goat men slaughter. There was a /shout in Port Jeuno and I got invited in response to my /tell.

This NM was in Aby-Miseraux (sp? :P). The fight was fast and straightforward. The usual spam for weakness and then murder the shit out of. None of these five NMs compared to what would follow.

Rani is a strange NM in that it absorbs damage based on what it's doing. Nuke it while it's nuking you? It recovers an assload of HP. I tossed out nukes as SCH right after it was done casting (there's an interval in between spells), and we got it to 1% with a guy using a Primeval Brew before wiping.

I got a "bonus" death for DoTing it as it wandered off. So that didn't end well.

Luckily, the next day there was another /shout and I got to try again. This time we needed to farm up the key items to pop the NM. That was easy enough. First, a Chariot mob.

Which had the nice key item drop of some new Abyssite. Then, an Iron Giant mob. Twice. The first time somebody used the red "!!!" thing twice, so it didn't drop anything.

The Atma is pretty worthless for me I'm pretty sure. (I'm too lazy to go and double check.)

Then, we all left to get more time.

And I went shoe shopping:

Those and some VIT+3 shoes were the best I ended up with. I guess I could use them on PUP? Unless somebody chimes in with a better use for the Heroes zones Trophies I'm planning on just spamming boots. They can reportedly have 4% Haste on them. Like most randomly Augmented stuff the majority of the pieces look to be garbage even with the best possible Augments.

Anyway, do people kill Rani anyway other than Primeval Brew slaughtering?

I mean, sure it (usually) works, but it's like TP burning Bahamut...back when people still did Bahamut. Or TP Burning AV if there was some other strategy to kill it that actually worked. But I digress.

So I've gotten 6/6 of the flying goat men killed! With a whole bunch of zone boss wins I'll be able to get the Discernment Abyssite that all the kids are talking about.

Baby's first AF3+1!

2011-01-08T20:38:00.000-05:00

Despite spamming the holy hell out of quests for AF3+1 Seals, and getting enough seals to finish a few pieces only two of which are actually useful to me (PUP legs, SCH feet...no base piece for either), I never actually completed any AF3+1. That is until last night!

I even got a useful one, too! Now my MNK TPs in a capped 26% Haste!

I've been up to a few other things I'm planning on posting about tommorow.

Version Update/Heroes of Abyssea Impressions

2011-01-01T14:24:00.000-05:00

So after about a three month hiatus, I started to play FFXI again. So what's changed since then? A decent amount of stuff.

Update Thingies

With the new Mog Sack and ~400 inventory slots space problems are basically a thing of the past. Some way to swap an entire Safe/Locker/Storage with Inventory/Satchel/Sack would be quite nice though. That would make switching jobs sooooo much faster.

Salvage is officially on super duper easy mode. I still probably won't do it. The time spent on it would be better spent with the same group killing NMs in Abyssea for seals and AF3 accessories.

Scholar got even more awesome. I was partying on it yesterday and Sublimation chargest in ~2 minutes. I didn't get to play with Immanence

Stratagem: Immanence (SCH Lv.87)
Makes it possible for your next elemental magic spell to be used in a skillchain, but not a magic burst.

yet, but it looks like you could do an entertaining, if a bit pointless, self-Skillchain.

Pop Immanence.
Shellcrusher the mob! (Detonation)
Cast Thunder!
Fragmentation SC!
Pop Alacrity!
Cast Thunder IV!
Boom goes the dynamite! Magic Burst!

I'll have to give it a try later.

Probably more useful would be setting up SCs for lowmanning Abyssean NMs. If Immanence->Aero followed by Immanence->Thunder made Fragmentation mobs being kited by a Scholar and a few Black Mages could be dropped in less time.

Heroes of Abyssea

It seems that Square-Enix either listened to feedback or happened to get a lot of things right this time compared to Scars of Abyssea. The AF3 Seals are still a pain in the ass to obtain outside of killing popped NMs, but all the seals can be obtained from low fame requirement quests. How practical is it to get 10 seals this way? Not very, but I spammed enough Scars area quests to have seals to complete a few pieces, so its doable.

The base pieces of armor can also be purchased for Cruor and Dominion Notes. This is a nice change over the needing to win lot (or not have ninja lotted out of gold chests) to get the Feet base pieces or needing to get 1,000 Resistance Credits to buy the legs which takes a ton of Resistance Ops to do. (Maybe Bastion gives the credits at a decent rate, but I've never done Bastion and don't really know how it works.)

Dominion Ops are basically Fields of Valor that you can repeat as frequently as you can kill the specified mobs. The party I was in yesterday every five Buffalo we killed I was getting ~4,200 EXP extra. And according to a friend who's been keeping up with things you can get a single AF3 Seal every Vana'diel day. I ended up getting one each of NIN, MNK, and PUP hands. Along with some other crap ones. So Abyssean EXP, if it wasn't crazy awesome enough already, now has a decent EXP/hr at the start rather than the slow ramp up. With the storable merit points increased to twenty you can stay longer as well.

So if Abyssean EXP wasn't easy enough already, Heroes made it even easier. A mediocre group that would have had trouble before can work now.

TTFN!

I was planning to do a picturey second half to this post detailing what I've been up to, but its running a bit long and I need to go do some stuff outside. I'll try to get that up later.

ROI

2010-12-30T18:30:00.000-05:00

Return on investment:

Unfortunately, I'm hanging on to it as I still think Scholar gets Raise 3 and RR3 by 99. The Regen IIIs and Shell V made me some decent gil although nowhere nearly as dramatic.

262

2010-12-28T18:38:00.000-05:00

So I logged in for the first time in ~3 weeks. I mostly just said hello to everyone I knew that I saw on and went to check a few things. This was pretty funny.

And I don't have any of the recent reduced time between Stones Abyssites, so it can actually go up quite a bit. Not that I have anything to do there, really.

Meh.

So they made Ninja awesome or something?

2010-12-20T13:25:00.001-05:00

I haven't logged in since probably two weeks before the update arrived, but apparently Square-Enix made Ninja awesome?

Either people stopped updating the Wiki or it seems like most of the Magian Weapon Trials didn't get level 90 weapon paths? On the plus side, if I did my Ice/Thunder staves I'd only need to buy 15 2k or 20k items off the AH.

Meh.

The most broken version update ever?

2010-12-04T11:32:00.000-05:00

I looked at POL again and saw this.

The THF stuff...I don't care, personally. Better TH and a reason to have the THF do more than a missed /ra to put TH on the mob. Yay.

NINs and CORs get some inventory space saving stuff on Toolbags/Cards in the same update Square-Enix adds a "PS Limitations be damned!!!" second Mog Satchel. Better late than never, I guess. What's the distinction here?

Inoshishinofuda: Used to cast any elemental ninjutsu
Chonofuda: Used to cast any foe-damaging ninjutsu

The elemental ninjutsu are the foe-damaging ones. Unless we're talking Dokumori: Ichi and nobody's talking about that.

At 90 /DNC's going to give an additional Curing Waltz. Which would have been handy well before then.

SCH has lots to be happy about. SCH/BLM looks pretty viable due to the update. (Which I hadn't thought of for some reason in my last post.) A fifth Stratagem charge at 90 and Sublimation scaling up to 2HP->7MP/tick at 85 is just insane.

None of it will work?

But the last thing specifically...lots of numbers. I know update usually arrives slightly broken and an Emergency Maintenance two days after and extended server downtime on update day is expected. This particular update looks like it could be the most epically broken in quite a while though. Still, the Scholar stuff looks completely fucking awesome.

BLM/SCH finally not retarded!

2010-12-01T19:34:00.000-05:00

Well, from level 88 onward.

Square-Enix announced some job adjustments due in the December Update today. I haven't logged in in about three weeks, but I still check POL.com a few times a week for some reason. I'm not going to copy/paste the JAs, but they all look decent. Some new uber Warcry-like party buffs, single target melee/ranged attack buffs, Holy/Arcane Circle debuffs that actually do what you'd expect the original ones to do, and the usual bizarre, new Dancer and Scholar abilities.

Stratagem: Immanence (SCH Lv.87)
Makes it possible for your next elemental magic spell to be used in a skillchain, but not a magic burst.

I have no idea. A pick your own Level 1 SC property based on the element of your spell? OK?

New Job Traits!

The new Job Traits are basically just BLM getting Fast Cast for Elemental Magic. It's at level 50 and says it will scale, so will it stack with Fast Cast? If not it could actually be a nerf. But if Black Mages start going /SCH post-88 then aside from Stun and Enfeebling Magic it might just end up keeping spell casting times where they are now.

(Unrelated Note: RDM/DRK finally dies next week. :-P)

New Spells!

The expected STAT boosts, BRD songs, and nukes arrive. The two possibly notable ones are these:

Adloquium SCH Lv.88

Migawari: Ichi NIN Lv.88
*Uses the ninja tool, "mokujin."

The SCH spell means "encouragement" or something in Latin and will do...I have no idea.

The NIN spell means something like "to sacrifice" and the NIN tool means a "wooden man"...I have even less idea. Stoneskin? And why the fuck does every new NIN spell have to be a slow as dirt casting Ichi spell?

Existing Spell GET!

The stuff previously added that's becoming available to new jobs is notably Scholar getting Blink/Stoneskin/Spikes spells.

Does Break still suck? I think I was the only one who liked it. Red Mages and Scholars will be able to cast it by 90.

lolBLU!

And Blue Mages, of course, don't get there new spells listed or mentioned by name. The one pictured looks like Everyone's Grudge to me? lol.

TTFN!

I haven't been playing for almost a month now, or posting about FFXI much/at all. I'm thinking of deactivating my account on the 14th. It'll be the seventh anniversary (I think? ...I know for sure I activated it the day after my birthday which is the 13th) from when I started playing.

Not having played for a while now all I can really say I miss about the game is the people. The wacky discussions in EpicLS when there's no official event going on. Hating on FF8 because it's horrible. Raking Evilbron over the coals for failing at everything FFXI-related. The banter during events and super secretly in /tells. The talking with people from all over the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Japan, Australia, and random spots all over the rest of the world. Doing a /dance4 at Myoubi and getting /slapped.

Way back in HopelessLS doing CoP Missions together or taking down Hakutaku back when people only had 1 or 2 75s and less than uber gear.

Further back in FinalFantasyLS (the actual name :-P) doing ZM missions with Doggy and Blackraven and taking an Everyone's Rancor to the face for almost 3,000 damage.

Having an epic battle through Yughott Grotto with Aramyth and Enelya to take down the CM2-5 Black Dragon.

Getting killed in Zeruhn Mines by a Ding Bat in my very first battle ever as a clueless BLM01/.

Good times. They can't last forever though, and I think it's about time that I moved on.

Happy Turkey Day!

2010-11-25T13:18:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving to my three American readers and one (Canadian?) foreign one! Go roast up a turkey and make homemade stuffing. I know I am!

The turkey's been brined for ~36 hours. The aromatics are diced and the challah is getting all good and stale. Dinner's gonna be good.

Ouchies. (FFXIV) Moggi Bononoanazoaznaon (FFXI...do they still proofread POL posts?)

2010-11-16T20:00:00.000-05:00

I try not to fall into the bashing JRPGs thing that's so popular lately. And, of course, the reasons I've decided against playing FFXIV didn't have anything to do with how good or bad it is or was. But being linked to this over at the Escapist makes me think the game's in some serious trouble.

Mogby Bonznazona.o Ahoy!

I have to say it's a little disheartening when I check the TTTO to see if anything's new with FFXI, find there's a new Mog Bonanza, and immediately find typos in it.

If you're like me you immediately went to see what the Kupons trade in for and if you cross reference that trial on the wiki you see it's for the Relic Bow. So Monks everywhere will be sporting some Namas Arrow hotness. Thanks, Square-Enix!

/sigh

It's also more than a little sad to see the general prize listings. Salvage bodies? Absolute Virtue drops? Dynamis Relic Accessories? Umm, if you've been playing at all in the past six months you've probably gotten better stuff off Abyssea mobs that repop on their own every 90 or so minutes or can be force popped with an AHable item.

Meh.

Modern Warfare 2

2010-11-16T13:45:00.000-05:00

So I picked up Call of Duty (5?): Modern Warfare 2 for the PC. Admittedly, I haven't been playing many FPS the past few years. My last multiplayer FPSery was Counter-Strike. Not Counter-Strike: Source. The old-tymey original. It was fun enough if you got a bunch of people you know, either from real-life or online, and maybe a bunch of random intarweb dudes to fill out the roster and all go shoot each other for an hour or two. But I have no idea what happened to most of those people, so I stuck to the single player in Modern Warfare 2.

I haven't really been playing much single player FPSes either though. Bioshock (not 2) I made it to a little bit past The Reveal (you're a robot!) and got bored of the fetch quest they send you off on and never finished it. The ending's on Youtube, and I was thoroughly burned out on the fucking "hacking" mini-games. Before that, I played HL2. It's been a mostly FFXI and console RPG filled past few years of gaming for me.

So with that out of the way, I guess I should finally talk about Modern Warfare 2. A rhetorical question to start: Did they forget to put fucking fun in this game? The dificulty is all over the map. One mission I'm laying waste to anything and everything. The one before that I was getting killed every three minutes. The game doesn't seem to let you quicksave, and the Checkpoint system is also all over the map, so I'm replaying the same five minutes and getting killed by all manners of crap over and over.

The game seems to be trying to be "all realistic and shit." It's got an offensively stupid narrative and story that you're forced to listen to until the next level loads. The voice acting is generally good, but the full scale Russian invasion of America, which somehow totally catches the US military off-guard, seems sort of improbable.

The red exploding barrels they stole from Doom also kind of detract from the "realism." Do those exist anywhere? Have they existed at anytime? I remember seeing something on the Discovery Channel about a guy who's job it was to shoot barrels of ketchup or something that were swelling and would explode because of bacteria growing in them. But barrels that vaporize upon being struck by a bullet? Not so much.

I understand that younger gamers seem kind of stupid, paying $20 for map packs and DLC that should be free and often come on the game disc they shelled out $60 of their parent's money for, and many seem to think Halo: Combat Evolved was fucking mind-blowing for some mind-blowing reason, but they really like this shit? I'm not going to bother with the multiplayer because I'm not going to grind in an FPS to unlock things so I won't be at a severe disadvantage. Also, from what I gather apparently the only thing fun about the entirety of the game, if you're racist and homophobic, is calling the other players "homosexual African-Americans."

So would I recommend Modern Warfare 2?

If you enjoy more poorly written Tom Clancy-esque stories and a wildly uneven in difficulty single player campaign, or you personify the Internet Fuckwad Theory and want to level grind in multiplayer: BUY!

If you're a decent human being who likes fun: STAY FAR AWAY!

"There's no exploration in Metroid!"

2010-11-14T17:46:00.002-05:00

It's related to this if you're dumbfounded.

And if you can't tell: It's 100% MS Paint skillz, yo!

Why Frog was never a favorite party member! Also, No shoes, no service! Got Hat?

2010-10-25T14:30:00.001-04:00

As everyone who owned a Super Nintendo in 1995 (or thereabouts) knows, Chrono Trigger is pretty awesome. You had to beat it about a dozen times to see all the endings and had to burn through to the end a few times to get everyone Rainbow/Prism (I forget) armor and weapons and stuff which carried over to the New Game Plus. The only problem was Frog:

Meet Frog. Ribbit.

Unfortunately, Frog's best weapon was the Masamune, which was a story-related item. So you could get his second best sword, but were stuck with a subpar party member unless you were pretty far into the game. Where am I going with this? I have no idea, but I saw this in Port Jeuno:

Jerks actually getting (apparently TONS) of stuff done in Abyssea! I'm not even a Samurai and a little jealous. ;-p

Anyway....

iMonk

I finally leveled up Monk to 85!

It was a double bonus because my Taipan Fangs' trial is to proc 350 times on Cockatrice. I got about 80 of them out of the way.

Gotta love getting two things done at once!

Unfortunately, only ~3 pairs of boots dropped the entire time. One WAR (boo!), one BLM which I lost lot on (boo!), and one of something else I didn't care enough about to remember (boo!).

It would be great if SE didn't make Abyssean rewards some completely unbalanced and random. Some shit you can solo by warping to an NPC and trading an item that's dirt cheap. Some you can warp and trade a ludicrously expensive one(s). Some you have to run long, slow quests, but can still solo. Others are only NM dropped and you need a group.

I'm not sure how that's supposed to be balanced or fair. Did Square-Enix not realize how completely retardedly broken Limbus was? Ugh.

Anyway...

Got Hat?

I also did a Dyna run for the first time in a few months. Xarc was kind to us.

Around three RDM hats, two SMN hats, a PUP hat, and at least another piece or two. Dynamis Lord put out too!

He dropped a 100 shell and Shadow Mantle. Not a bad run at all.

Journalistic Integrity

2010-10-19T17:56:00.000-04:00

People generally seem to have concluded that FFXIV is basically a disaster. Like a pre-alpha version of FFXI from six years ago with HD graphics. It's kind of expected for there to be lots of problems when an MMO launches, but 14 seems to be setting a new record. A veritable zenith of sucktitude.

Part of a discussion on a gaming site about FFXIV brought up the topic of journalistic integrity. Do you deal with official PR people and whatnot to get inside access for previews and free review copies of games? Or do you go to Gamestop (ugh) or whereever on release day like everyone else and buy a copy, play through it, and get reviews out less frequently and later? If you go with the former you'll be probably feel pressure to be favorable towards the games you get access to. You might end up blacklisted if you tell everyone how god awful something is in a preview or review. The PR person you deal with might also be nice and you don't want to be a dick. Or you could just be a money-grubbing douche who will lie to readers to get free shit. I like to think that the huge gaming sites and magazines aren't the latter, but generally find myself sticking to smaller indie outfits anyway.

In any case, I was inspired to go check Wikipedia's Reception section, and then compare some reviews of the released game with the previews (of earlier less "polished" versions of FFXIV). And some of them are pretty funny.

Here's the conclusion to Gamespot's Preview:

Unfortunately, our play session was cut short after a few hunting expeditions, but we got a fairly good sense of much of what FFXIV will attempt to offer. The new game brings everything you love about Final Fantasy, and FFXI, into modern times with detailed, colorful graphics and a much better interface. The PC version of the game will launch in September while the PS3 version is scheduled to launch next year.

And here's "The Bad" from their Review:

Absolutely miserable interface
Does a poor job of communicating important information
Limited questing means you're always looking for something fun to do Everything about the economy stinks
Every aspect of the game is filled with dumb obstacles.

Granted, it would be hard to tell the economy sucked in a beta version that you're playing with only a few other people (and what a shitty way to setup a demo for journalists of an MMO), but the interface went from being better than FFXI's to absolutely miserable? lolwut?

Did different people write the two? I'm too lazy to go check, but I think it's pretty damn funny either way. And to be clear, I'm not saying, "Gamespot takes bribes from Square-Enix!!!!"

I don't know why I $#@&ing bother.

2010-10-14T19:08:00.000-04:00

So I logged on to FFXI today. I mostly stood around AFK for a while. And then I went to go help with Bastok 9-2 for lulz.

Which was mostly just difficult remembering how to get there. Hilariously easy fight, of course. :-P

And then I decided to do something productive: Level in Abyssea!

Which I think went well.

The cunt creatures at Comcast decided to shit all over the place apparently instead of running their fucking ISP shit. I "aggroed" the Spider NM on the way from the Conflux to camp. I say "Aggro", because the thing not loading onto my screen until after it hit me five times is cocklicking horseshit. Fuck Comcast. Fuck them in their child-loving monkey shit licking asses.

And I've now tried to re-login about 15 times and the fucking cockfeasting canklewhores are still shitting it up. I'll be surprised if I can get this fucking post up (on attempt #2 for that now).

Linkshell Community Beta Updates!!!

2010-10-11T15:56:00.000-04:00

Do they still exist? Because the items and armor from the September update still haven't been added to it as far as I know.

There's not much point to having a Varuna's Staff +1 you never get to use on anything if you can't show other people you have it! Or something.

Quit being lazy, Square-Enix!

Playing 8 and 16-bit Games in 3D?

2010-10-11T00:38:00.000-04:00

I have to admit I'm not a 3D fanatic. I've never seen a movie in 3D. Neither the oldfangled blue and red shit, nor the newfangled shutter glasses or polarized light stuffs. Being unemployed and poor also helps with that.

But something did come to me a while back. Many emulators of older systems have the ability to turn on/off various sprite layers. This used to be necessary for ZSNES back in the pre-0.7 days when it didn't support transparencies, so you needed to turn them off for some games. (I think the Mist Cave in the beginning of Final Fantasy II/4jp?) So, how cool would it be make the foreground and background into 3D in something like Super Mario World? Granted, I don't have a 3D capable monitor, 3D glasses, or, well, anything else to enjoy it, but I could see it being pretty fucking cool. Lots of people have Home Theatre PCs hooked up to their 3D capable TVs and playing old school games is another potential use for them.

So, I posted to the ZSNES, my personal favorite emulator, forum and asked about it. And it turns out it may actually be sort of viable. I pictured it working on a per game basis with tweaking or profiles needed, and that seems to be what people who know what they're talking about agree with. (Aside from the guy who replied, "lolwut?" in less concise words.)

The good news seems to be that we may be able to actually get what I'm envisioning (aren't I the pretensious cock?) on the Nintendo 3DS. And besides the SNES the original NES could potentially be 3D'd in emulators as well. How awesome would the moving/foreground sprites being 3D in Contra or Mario Bros. 3 be? There's also the lesser known stuff like Neo Geo's Metal Slug games that are fun as shit and might be 3D-able.

So, anyway, hopefully somebody who's not shitty at programming like myself, and not poor and unemployed with access to 3D capable hardware will hopefully make retrogaming 3D for my less sucky contemporaries.

R0-itis.

2010-10-08T14:24:00.003-04:00

For a while I didn't realize what caused it, but for me at least having Bit Torrent running (throttled; not using all my bandwidth) caused me to get FFXI-4001 and FFXI-0250 d/c errors. So, I closed BT when I wanted to play. No big deal, right?

Today, I logged on to try and get some Abyssean EXP and cap out my jobs at 85. I've been lazy with doing that as only my Black Mage is 85, nothing else is over 81. And I got disconnected every 10-15 minutes if not sooner. It turns out you don't lose your EXP chain or Atma, but those HP/Stat boosts? They're all fucking gone. And with how semi-AFK 75% of people seem to be about Abyssean EXP, because let's face it: It's pretty fucking boring, I'd really rather just burn through to 85 in one sitting per job. Instead, I spend several minutes with my R% dropping to 0% and finally, mercifully D/Cing me, and then logging back into POL, starting FFXI, logging in to FFXI, loading into the Abyssea zone, and finally putting my flag up. Then I get to stand around until whoever has leader of one of the parties invites me back.

Repeatedly.

But I perservere. The EXP finally gets good, I'm ~3,000 EXP to 82 Monk and I can't take any more of the shit. Something like 1/3rd my fucking time isn't even spent EXP grinding. It's slogging through the painfully fucking clunky POL interface and re-entering fucking passwords. (Because, "Storing SE Account Password that's unpossible!!!" /Ralph_Wiggum)

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCK.

I'll try to log back in later and hopefully get Monk, Scholar, and Ninja to 85, but there's no fucking way I can put up with this shit.

Not many posts lately, I know.

2010-10-04T20:20:00.000-04:00

I should hopefully have some FFXI related stuff to post tomorrow. But I just saw this on Youtube and wanted to share it. If you played Super Mario World, it will blow your fucking mind. Completely the fuck up. Seriously.

/stagger

Recommend me some PS2 games?

2010-09-24T21:06:00.000-04:00

I've mostly beaten all the PS2 games I own, but I know there's plenty of good ones I haven't played. I'm open to anything from RPG to SRPG to Action game to weird shooter or what have you. I picked up a bunch of the Greatest Hits/$20 ones over the past year.

I can finally say I finished Resident Evil 4 which was fun (better than the fifth one, if a bit longer than it needed to be).

A friend gave me his two God of War games (he got a non-backwards compatible PS2) and those were fun...if a bit long as well. Also, fuck those puzzles that require the kicking block move.

Of course I played most of the big RPGs for the PS2, but I'm sure I missed a few good ones.

Anyone suggest a title or two worth picking up? A personal PS2 top ten list to share with me?

Abyssean Fame & Seal Quest Spammage

2010-09-23T13:01:00.002-04:00

I haven't done any sort of event, other than ~3 Chigre pops in about four months now. It's mostly just been me soloing Magian Trials and getting my feet wet in Abyssea. It's all easy stuff, so I'll include info on how to go about it yourself (in a hopefully easier to understand than Wiki-scouring sort of way).

Since the update, it's been mostly Abyssea. I spammed the hell out of the package delivery quest in Aby-Vunkerl to get Scholar and Summoner feet.

It turns out, that you can't buy the feet for Resistance Credits or Cruor. They're from chests. So, I need to get a party in Aby-Vunkerl and win lot on Savant's Loafers now. On the plus side, I capped fame there.

The quest is easy enough, but there's some aggro on the way.

There's also a huge Marid that's also an asshole.

Here's the basic path, it's pretty straightforward.

Start by talking with Deraquien where you warp in. He's the yellow circle. Follow the green brick road to the purple dot, Elmemague, and talk to him to get a key item. Warp back with the Conflux and talk to Deraquien for (possibly) some feet seals. The first red dot is Hanuman an Opo-opo who moves at Flee speed and will rape the shit out of your face. The second is a fiery steel robot/marid pop area. They're both sight aggro and people like to repeatedly pull them to the conflux because people are retarded.

It can take a stupidly long amount of time, but spam it enough and you'll get 8/8 of your desired seals, eventually.

And just be aware that you need to find the base piece from a chest. Good luck with that. (Wish me some too, please. :-P)

After that disappointment, I decided to go and actually explore an older Abyssea zone and cap fame there. Namely, Aby-La Theine. The easiest way to do that is to trade about 50 Willow Fishing rods to one of the Lu Shang's brothers after talking to his sibling and getting a broken one. You can either fix that with a Light crystsal (and sufficient Woodworking skill) or just buy a bunch from Luisane outside Tamila's Sundries in S.Sandy.

I went with the latter.

Here's the path if you haven't done it before.

For the first time there anyway... Afterwards, just warp to #04 talk to the brother, and then warp to #06.

After repeating this 50 times, talk to Glenne (she's by the brother you've been trading Fishing Rods to) to flag an Abyssite quest. Find her Aveleleoneloneoneliene--husband--who's wandering around on the road somewhere by where the crag is supposed to be. And that's pretty much all I found to do in Aby-La Theine, really.

There's some NMs, but I'm not a RDM/NIN, so I'll pass on the pinning solos. People have been GM'd for it, and told to either kill the mob or Warp. And who knows if SE will decide it's Ban Hammer worthy a year from now. (I don't care either way.)

After this, I decided to go and try to get some Aby-Miseraux fame. Can you smell what Evilpaul is cookin'?!

Yeah, I would like Monk pants from trading in Murex Spicules, but those would cost ~9 million to buy off the AH with my luck (0/2).

It's easy enough to spam cook up the Galkan Sausage despite being in the middle of lots of cluster mobs because they deaggro when you trade.

To do the actual quest you enter, Warp to #03, talk to the Galka (hit confirm ~10 times) and then trade him a Sausage. With a little luck you'll get 8/8 seals of the pants you want pretty quickly.

I didn't want Red Mage pants. But I've still got ~ 3 dozen more sausages to trade.

So that's what I've been up to. It's easy solo stuff that anyone can do (bring RR for some of it), so hopefully it'll inspire other people to try and get some easy AF3+1 pants/feet. (Any ideas on getting the base feet pieces? Please leave a comment; I'm interested.)

My next project is to actually level my jobs to 85, finish the few Magian Weapon trials I've got open, and work on getting Aby-Attowha fame so I can get a MNK head piece.

Do people really have to AFK in front of Joachim/Horst and the #@&%ing Maws?

2010-09-22T23:54:00.001-04:00

God made Mog Houses and that space off to the side for a reason, people. Go molest Shami or mt stupid shit nobody cares about in Rolanberry Fields in /shout. Having to wade through 15 people deep to reach something is fucking annoying.

Unrelated Update: I'll post a bit about what I've been up to tomorrow probably.

Moar Abyssea

2010-09-16T20:43:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a little bit more Abyssea stuff by myself. First, I went to Konschstat and activated some teleports.

Exciting, right? Then I went on to what I was there for.

To get some abyssite! So my Traverse Stones now recharge every 16 hours. There's one other I want to get that drops off random mobs and then I'll have to get going on quests.

I tried to get going on getting Empyrean Seals for the +1 pieces earlier today, but didn't accomplish much.

I decided to farm up some Murex Spinules to trade in. I was in the wrong zone to actually trade them though. >.< I'd like to get the Monk legs. 5% Haste and Kick Attacks +5. So it's like combined Byakko's Haidate+Melee Hose.

I killed an Ephemeral Murex that was there too, and got a temp item.

So...yay? I guess? There's just soooo much stuff to do in Abyssea figuring out a good way to go about it is a bit daunting.

My Scholar is gimp. ;_;

2010-09-15T01:23:00.000-04:00

Because I finished my Indra's Staff +1 today!

And I haven't gotten around to leveling Scholar to 85 in Abyssea (and I sold my Jupiter's Staff).

Unrelated to this Magian Trial stuff, but Blogger added a Stats tab to the interface with all sorts of cool stuff. It lets you see an accurate hit counter and a per post views thingy. And it turns out my update day post with screenshots of AF3 makes up 11% of my total page views ever. LOL. This is just my personal FFXI blog. I don't have any groundbreaking stuff like cracking the code on how enmity works or statistical analysis figuring out other game mechanics, so it's awesome to see that my tolerance to slog through laggy ass menus in a zone filled with half the people on Cerberus and screenshot them in it interests people.

What's Brewing?

2010-09-14T12:17:00.004-04:00

I'm making beer today. Recipe for a Rye Pale Ale.

5.0# Pale Malt
2.0# Vienna Malt
0.5# 60L Crystal Malt
0.5# Rye Malt

1.0 oz. Cascade Hops @ 60 minutes
0.5 oz. Cascade Hops @ 15 minutes
0.5 oz. Cascade Hops @ 1 minute
(5% Alpha Acid)

1 package Safeale Dry Yeast (Because I'm cheap. I'd rather go with White Labs California 001.)

Should be a tasty brew. It's fermenting now.

Black Mage 85!

2010-09-13T01:09:00.000-04:00

I finally did some Abyssean EXPing and got my Black Mage to 85!

The party lasted long enough to get capped EXP and 6 merits.

Some people apparently didn't get an Auric Dagger because that thing was zoned and came back. And a couple people in my group weren't smart enough to not stand in front of the gigantic dragon that may not be friendly.

I decided to go and pick up my Varuna's Staff +1.

I can't equip it as Scholar (yet), but I've still got Aquilo's. I'm planning on making Scholar my next job to 85 anyway.

I also went to get some new shinies.

I don't have Stoneja or Waterja yet, but I don't use Stone V or Water V, so I don't feel left out. A guy in the Abyssea party was overnuking (yet paradoxically still doing pretty crappy damage) and dying with them. I wasn't impressed.

I put my extra merits to good use.

I've got 3/3 into Fine-Tuning now. It'll make capping Automaton skills a bit easier once I get around to leveling Puppetmaster which is still 76.

Black Mage got a whole lot of new stuff with 85 and I'm really looking forward to using it. Self-Refresh, Break (crowd control that works on Bats/Skeletons!), Aspir II, etc...all quite nice.

I discovered Mimics!

2010-09-11T23:28:00.001-04:00

I think it went well.

A White Mage you can't see in the screenshot there was nice enough to give me a Raise III, so I'm no worse for wear.

Since I didn't feel like working on Indra's Staff +1 today and haven't had a stretch of time long enough to do an Abyssean EXP group, so I've been screwing around in the various Abyssea zones most of the day. It turns out I have 66 stones stored up. I was in Aby-Konsch trying to get two Abyssites when I learned why there were chests just laying around randomly.

I got one of the two. It's the "lose less EXP when something in Abyssea WTFBBQPWNs you" one. (Whether it works when your Manafont+Warp macro gets you out in time to die from Poison or not I'm not sure.)

I did some exploring of Misereaux and Vunkerl as well. I mostly just looked for and activated Veridical Confluxes and Ephemeral Abyssean mobs.

Also, I discovered Spiders.

The Ephemeral thing went OK, but none of them dropped (drop?) any Abyssite.

I'm going to try and get maxxed out on the soloable Abyssea stuff while I try and find some people to do the more interesting stuff with. The Black Mage feet +1 and Monk head +1 Empyrean armor would both be nice upgrades over what I've got now without being a huge amount of work.

Of Indra and Varuna Staves (Part III): Varuna's Revenge

2010-09-11T03:07:00.000-04:00

As you know, I've previously explained how I went about getting an upgrade over the HQ Ice and Thunder staves for Black Mage and Scholar nuking damage and how you can too. It's a little tedious (read: understatement), but easy. With the update both staves got a single new trial to upgrade them to +1 versions with Damage+1. In Of Indra and Varuna Staves (Part III): Varuna's Revenge I'll detail how you can easily attain this new level of Ice Nukey Killingyness.

As in previous cases, you don't want to target mobs that are traditional solo BLM (or SCH) solo EXP fodder. BLM solo EXP is sort of 2006, really. What you want is the most utterly pathetic thing you can kill that gives EXP at 80+. In the case of getting your Varuna's Staff +1 you need to kill 250 Wyverns with 250+ damage Ice killshots.

A Whole New Killshot Experience (Or: Not your grandpappy's killshots: Grouping is clutch)

Previously, you needed to actually kill things with some amount of damage to get credit for your trial. Now, you can team up and get done more quickly. I'm not 100% sure this isn't a Square-Enix fuck up, but they did mention changing killshot trials (which I think is a very good thing), so get to it.

Anyway, if you have this trial active then a party/alliance member killing a mob with 250+ Ice damage while you have your Varuna's Staff equipped counts. So do a /sea and team up if you can. Unless the people you're with are complete idiots they're making your life easier.

There Will Be Walking

So you're ready to get started, but where to go? Ignidrakes in Riverne #B0 are the weakest options available to you. Sadly, DRG mob pets don't count. Yes, I tried. So head there.

The idea is you're running a loop with 11 Ignidrakes to kill.

The yellow and purple are the paths to take. The red circles are were you can find Blazedrakes. They are also wyverns, but level 85 and have 2x more HP than our targets. Plus they can and will rape the shit out of your face, so skip them and stick to the hilariously weak mobs.

For the green circle you need a Giant Scale to open the teleport. The blue circles are regular teleports. Hang onto some of the many scales that drop and you'll never have a problem.

Meleeing Is Encouraged

As strange as it sounds this is a Signet zone, so get Signet and use a mix of Phalanx, Stoneskin, and Signet DEF/EVA bonuses to your benefit.

By yanking out your weapon you'll get hit for 0 damage with Phalanx up as a level 81 BLM. Otherwise, you'll see the typical damage of weak mobs smacking all over.

Also to reiterate this, you can team up for killshot trials.

I did, and I got a whole lot of the trial done more quickly than I would have otherwise.

Now I just need to do some Abyssea and get my BLM and SCH to 85 so I can use my new nuking toy.

Varuna's Staff +1: GET!

2010-09-11T00:08:00.002-04:00

I finished my first new Magian Trial tonight!

Because I haven't leveled up any jobs other than dinging 81 I can't equip the Varuna's +1 yet, so I'm not trading it in yet.

If you're contemplating a "kill 250 wyverns with 250+ Ice damage" trial and thinking, "Fuck! Well, at least they aren't Soulflayers." that's true, but it's actually a pretty easy trial. (And you can team up for it!)

I'll post some detailed info on it tomorrow.

"Latent Effect: Relic Weaponskill": Revealed!

2010-09-10T01:57:00.000-04:00

Maybe. I'm betting that the "Latent Effect: 'Catastrophye'" Scythe and similar weapon's latent is going to be having a Relic wielder in party.

It's lulz to Square-Enix.

Full New (and some old) Armor .DATs!

2010-09-09T09:55:00.000-04:00

Julian from BG posted the list on his site.

A few stand outs (to me):

Velox Harness Rare Exclusive
Body
DEF:55 Accuracy+4 Attack+4 Haste+2%
Lv85 MNK THF BST NIN PUP DNC

Pluviale Rare Exclusive
Body
DEF:45 HP+100 MP+100
Adds "Regen" effect
Adds "Refresh" effect
Lv84 WHM BLM RDM SMN SCH

Chrys. Torque Rare Exclusive
Neck
MP+30
Latent effect: Adds "Refresh" effect
Lv83 WHM BLM BRD SMN SCH

Cirque Sash Rare Exclusive
Waist
DEF:6 DEX+6 Haste+6%
Lv84 PUP

Kemas Earring Rare
Earring
STR+2 VIT+2 Accuracy+4
Lv82 MNK THF SAM DRG PUP DNC

Eradico Mitts Rare Exclusive
Hands
DEF:20 MP+15 "Magic Atk. Bonus"+7
Enmity-3
Increases magic critical hit damage
Lv84 WHM BLM RDM BRD SMN

Cybele Pants Rare Exclusive
Legs
DEF:33 INT+10 Elemental magic skill +5
Magic critical hit rate +3%
Lv84 BLM SCH

Actual Haste body for MNK and NIN. Refresh Latent neck piece for idling in (hopefully a non-retarded latent). Better than Salvage pants and Zenith Mitts +1. Cool stuff.

I really need to find a Abyssea group. And get two more of these fucking Kindred's Crests. Seriously, fuck whoever thought this quest up.

Empyrean Armor Stats (Pictures!)

2010-09-08T17:38:00.001-04:00

I took some screenshots of the new Empyrean Sets and thought I'd post them to save some people time. (The listing of Jobs in the search screen is the same as the listing with the trial moogle, by the way.) I didn't do all 20 jobs, just the ones I have leveled...and Dancer.

Black Mage

Scholar

Summoner

Monk

Ninja

Puppetmaster

Dancer

Other than saying, "I bet your tears are sweet and delicious if you finished a Salvage body last week!!!" I don't have time to comment on them now.

UPDATE: Still no commentary from me on these, but you can see more of the sets here on BG.

Square-Enix has no idea what the #@&% Ninja does. (Plus other update revelations!)

2010-09-08T16:02:00.000-04:00

So the update's finally arrived and .DAT mining commenced! I've been reading BG, Alla, Julian from BG's site, Spira's site, and a few others and have stolen all my info from them in the most shameless manner possible.

So let's take a look at the new spells (the interesting ones, anyway):

Ninja
Myoshu: Ichi
NIN Lv.85
Teaches the ninjutsu Myoshu: Ichi.
Uses the ninja tool, "kabenro." Reduces TP dealt when striking an enemy.

Yurin: Ichi
NIN Lv.83
Teaches the ninjutsu Yurin: Ichi.
Uses the ninja tool, "jinko." Reduces an enemy's TP gain.

...Square-Enix has no fucking idea what Ninjas do, do they? They gave Ninja a self-Auspice fucking Ichi buff? And a fucking Penance Ichi enfeeble? Well, I sure hope the enhanced damage elemental ninjutsu doesn't suck rhino testicles too.

Surely, the -ja spells for Black Mage can quell my seething nerdrage?

Black Mage
Stoneja
BLM Lv.81
Teaches the black magic Stoneja.
Deals earth damage to enemies within area of effect. Successive use enhances spell potency.

Waterja
BLM Lv.84
Teaches the black magic Waterja.
Deals water damage to enemies within area of effect. Successive use enhances spell potency.

Fuck!

Assuming the timers aren't super long this might make... umm... soloing Operation Desert Swarm easier? (Well, Waterja might since Earth + Scorpions = FAIL.) Even with much better than -ga3 damage at the same MP efficiency these are the Stonega II of new nukes.

The rest of the spells are what I'd expected. No clue on Refresh II or Ballad III's potency for sure yet, of course. That Carol II spells also apparently soemtimes nullify their element's damage despite not saying this in the description kind of like an element specific DL Ring..

Limit Break Details!

Square-Enix went with the Easy Button option again this time.

Client: Nomad Moogle (Grand Duke
Palace, Ru'Lude Gardens)
Summary:
The nomad moogle claims to have
perfected another procedure that will
send your powers burgeoning to even
greater heights. Acquire five Kindred's
crests and four merit points if you
fancy yourself ready for the
undertaking.

Except, not really. What the fuck is a Kindred's Crest? Well, this:

Kindred's Crest
An elaborate crest belonging to the uppermost nobility of the Kindred.

So, great. It's pretty much guaranteed to come from something stupid and everyone's going to be camping the mobs that drop it like they're fucking Ridills.

So to review the new Ninja spells suck, the Black Mage ones probably suck and are probably useless, and the Limit Break quest needs some probably Ex drops that are going to probably be a pain in the ass to get.

But there's still new Magian Weapons, weaponskills, and Empyrean Armor!

Weapons!

If you're familiar with the H2H weapons, this tell you most of what you need to know.

Revenant Fists +1
DMG:+28 Delay:+55
"Victory Smite"
lv 85 MNK PUP

Ursine Claws +1
DMG:+0 Delay:+86
Lv85 MNK PUP

Taipan Fangs +1
DMG:+26 Delay:+61
Lv85 MNK PUP

Barracudas +1
DMG:+23 Delay:+60
Lv85 MNK PUP

Basically, the Walk of Echoes high DMG weapons get the new Weaponskills, but not the Empyrean Weapon STAT+10 boosts, or Occ. Deals 2x damage aftermaths.

The OAT and OA3 weapons don't change much, so it'll be interesting to see how they evolve. Higher DMG on the OAT and possibly OA4 on the low damage ones?

The Elemental path Taipan Fangs get DMG+3 and no change in Delay. Pretty much what was expected.

The Weaponskill Path weapon also got DMG+3, so what the new trials are should be interesting. More Store TP possibly?

There's also some new Relic WS weapons.

Heofon Knuckles
DMG:+30 Delay:+86
Latent effect: "Final Heaven"
Lv 85 MNK PUP

I'm guessing they're either Abyssea or Walk of Echoes only. Or maybe MMM only for lulz? Depending on the latent effect and the particular WS some of them could be pretty nice depending on how hard they are to obtain.

New Weaponskills!

Stolen from Priran on BG:

Victory Smite - Delivers a fourfold attack. Chance of critical hit varies with TP. Verethragna: Aftermath.
Rudra's Storm - Deals triple damage and weighs target down. Damage varies with TP. Twashtar: Aftermath.
Torcleaver - Deals triple damage. Damage varies with TP. Caladbolg: Aftermath.
Cloudsplitter - Deals lightning elemental damage. Damage varies with TP. Farsha: Aftermath.
Ukko's Fury - Delivers a twofold attack that slows target. Chance of critical hit varies with TP. Ukonvasara: Aftermath.
Quietus - Delivers a triple damage attack that ignores target's defense. Amount ignored varies with TP. Redemption: Aftermath.
Camlann's Torment - Delivers a triple damage attack that ignores target's defense. Amount ignored varies with TP. Rhongomiant: Aftermath.
Blade: Hi - Deals quadruple damage. Chance of critical hit varies with TP. Kannagi: Aftermath.
Tachi: Fudo - Deals double damage. Damage varies with TP. Masamune: Aftermath.
Dagan - Restores HP and MP. Amount restored varies with TP. Gambanteinn: Aftermath.
Myrkr - Restores MP and removes status ailments. Amount of MP restored varies with TP. Hvergelmir: Aftermath.
Jishnu's Radiance - Delivers a threefold attack, ammunition permitting. Chance of critical hit varies with TP. Gandiva: Aftermath.
Wildfire - Deals fire elemental damage. Enmity generation varies with TP. Armageddon: Aftermath.
Chant du Cygne - Delivers a threefold attack. Chance of critical hit varies with TP. Almace: Aftermath.

These look overall to be surprisingly good. Or at least they're not "Why, God? Why?" stupid/terrible.

Slightly amusingly if you went with the Walk of Echoes path H2H weapon for your Puppetmaster the Mythic WS Stringing Pummel is still probably better than Victory Smite. And the Corsair one still has me confused.

Armor! & Empyrean Armor!

It turns out SE broke POLUtils, so nobody knows what exactly the new armor is.

The Empyrean Armor comes from doing Abyssean Campaign which is being called "Bastion" in exchange for Allied Notes which are being called "Resistance Credits." It's like a palette swap except with words! Go go laziness!

There's these in the .DATs, so I'm curious as to how this will work exactly.

Ravager Seal: Hd.
A musty slip of parchment, worn and faded with the years. Faintly visible is the image of a piece of armor, annotated with elaborately scribed glyphs of a long-lost tongue.

Tantra Seal: Hd.
A musty slip of parchment, worn and faded with the years. Faintly visible is the image of a piece of armor, annotated with elaborately scribed glyphs of a long-lost tongue.

Orison Seal: Hd.
A musty slip of parchment, worn and faded with the years. Faintly visible is the image of a piece of armor, annotated with elaborately scribed glyphs of a long-lost tongue.

Goetia Seal: Hd.
A musty slip of parchment, worn and faded with the years. Faintly visible is the image of a piece of armor, annotated with elaborately scribed glyphs of a long-lost tongue.

The first and last are WAR and BLM I don't know (or care) offhand what the new names for every job is. And there's head, legs, and feet items all there for each job. Buy one of these and give it to the blue pompom'd Moogle to start a new Magian Trial?

Knowing SE though the ~~Campaign Battles~~ Bastion Conflicts will be completely unbalanced and undoable until Heroes of Abyssea is out. So it's not something to get too excited about just yet.

TTFN!

And that's basically all the info I've seen so far. Back to watching my PS2 try to download the update for three more hours (PC's already done!).

The most exciting part of the version update teasers?

2010-09-07T13:09:00.002-04:00

So the day before the update we get our last teaser and I think it's probably the most exciting one so far. I'm probably being a bit unfair to the Empyrean Armor and new spells, but that's because we don't know... anything about either yet. Let's take a look.

OK. So they didn't start strong. But really if you've done any Magian trials you know how useful this will be. Throw in the Magian Specs that tell you the weather and a lot of trials got easier.

I'd like to do some Walk of Echoes, so hopefully this will inspire people to actually do it. I'm guessing that the "monster behavior adjusted" means that they either won't all link or might be susceptible to some form of crowd control other than kiting. Letting everyone cast lots would of course be a nice improvement.

As somone who fishes this sounds potentially really nice. Assuming that I'll be able to catch whatever fish is newly guttable with Lu Shang's it could make me some money. Hopefully the fish ate spell scrolls this time instead of Flat Shields. Something decent that's Rare/Ex would be cool too.

For some reason I'm guessing that the fish will be from Abyssea. Which is both good and bad in that it means if I want to fish there I can't EXP too (or not as much anyway).

In unrelated Fishing news I'm now 0/271 on Gugrusaurus for my Ebisu Rod. /sigh

Anyway...

Why didn't the loot from chests go to the Treasure Pool to start with? Well it can now in any case. With how fast mobs die unless loot sticks around longer than crystals and other crap you'll need to be lightning fast to lot though. The chest thing also makes me think that maybe, similar to CoP Dynamis, Empyrean Armor pieces will drop off specific families of mobs.

A teleport NPC is sooo nice to have around as well. I'm sure people will still take half an hour to cash in merits and come back, but at least then they won't be able to claim it's because it's a long walk. It'll be the undeniable retarded emanating from them.

TTFN!

I'm looking forward to the "big day" tomorrow. I've got my five Magian Weapons (Indra's & Varuna's Staves, Taipain Claws, Sekka, and Uzura all with me. I'm logged by the Ru'Lude Gardens AH for quick buying up of anything that becomes a hot commodity (hopefully). And I'm nearish to Maat so I can hopefully do the limit break quest quickly and start getting jobs to 85. See ya then!

UPDATE: I didn't notice it, but "Thursday, September 8th"? Day/date fail, indeed!

PUPdate! (Job Adjustments Part #2)

2010-09-03T11:30:00.002-04:00

There's the second part of the job adjustments on POL today. Some of them are pretty funny (unintentionally, of course).

So....what's that do now? Just make for bigger WS? So Warrior has Attack+ JA, Accuracy+ JA, and TP Bonus+ JA? So much for that "trade-off" or stance thing.

The Bard thing falls under "about time."

The Ninja thing could be pretty nice. I was hoping for shuriken, but improving 'Ton spells works too, I guess. (My Gigas's Tiger as NIN/RDM with Aquilo's, Novio/Moldavite, INT+5 Rings, etc and 2x Weather was 590. I shall hit 900 for sure post-update!!! Muwahahahahaha!!!!)

So the Perp-X Magian Staves are now even better? Elemental Siphon being improved is nice. I don't see anyone using any of the buffs listed other than Fenrir's/Diabolos's though. ...Hastega could last five minutes already, anyway?

Activate v2.0? Level Sync not killing off Automatons for 20 minuttes is nice. I'm hoping to see more PUP stuff on update day. Some new attachments would be nice.

UPDATE: A few other things...

First, I'm glad I left NIN group 2 at 5/10 now instead of tossing my extraneous Abyssean merits into it. It remains to be seen how well the :San spells will perform post-update compared to :Ni, but being able to unlock all of them and having a reason too would be nice.

Less nice would be the Inventory -12 from carrying a stack of each tool, plus a stack of toolbags. Plus, presumably, -2 more from the two new Ichi spells. Then again, if the two new spells are like Aisha: Ichi in usefulness, I probably won't bother.

Having played Ninja a lot lately doing my two Katana trials I've got to say I'm liking the job a lot more than I had in a long time. For a while it was my, "Come NIN/DRK to Sky and tank something!" job. Then EpicLS stopped doing Sky like a year and a half ago (or something). So it was my "Come tank something random (and we don't believe Monk can tank)!" job. Then EpicLS mostly stopped doing...any events outside of Zeni NMs and Dynamis once in a while, so it sat idle. I guess my point is that even though my Monk still clobbers the shit out of things far better than my Ninja there's some...finesse that NIN has. Or something. I guess the wider variety of WS, ninjutsu, and Yonin/Innin make it sort of interesting. Being able to /WHM and Haste myself while having shadows is pretty neat too.

I'm still not too psyched about Summoner, but I'm going to finally get it up from 76 to 85 this update. PUP I've been putting off because skilling up the Automaton is quite annoying. It's Ranged skill isn't capped at level 65 even. (Magic and Melee are close to the 75 caps.)

More later.

Version Update is on Sept. 8th.

2010-09-02T09:45:00.000-04:00

Or so the end of the Scars of Abyssea trailer says that launched today says.

So...what do Summoners do in Abyssea?

2010-09-01T22:43:00.000-04:00

I'm going to take Summoner and Puppetmaster both to 85 once the Version Update arrives. I'd do it now, but they're just barely 76 and I'd rather only drag them through an Abyssean party (hopefully) once rather than twice.

But I'm a little curious...what do people invite Summoners to do in Abyssea? Hastega and Cure? Damage BPs? I think pet kills all counted as Ruby light (which nobody ever wants) or something? Anybody with some experience they can share please post a comment.

Enter: The B Team.

2010-09-01T09:47:00.000-04:00

Square-Enix announced that Tanaka is moving on and somebody else is taking over FFXI as "Director" today.

Artist's rendition of Akihiko to the right. The POL blurb SS'd to the left.

Blade: Hi? And the rest of the new WS reviewed.

2010-08-30T11:30:00.000-04:00

SE posted another "new WS!!!" video today.

Some of them look like they could be interesting.

Cloudsplitter - 1h Axe

Thundery axe weaponskill. Looks to be one-hit. Probably elemental and/or stun WS.

Chant du Cygne - 1h Sword

"Z for Zorro!" No, seriously. It means "Cry of the Swan" or something in french-ish and looks like a three hit physical WS. It appears a RDM is doing it because of the Teal armor.

Victory Smite - Hand-to-Hand

Looks to be 4 punches. It's being done on a Ghost, so I could be reading more into this than there is, but... maybe Monk will finally have a weaponskill that ignores physical damage reductions? Sort of like a Formless Strikes WS.

If nothing else Monks and Puppetmasters will literally get to smite shit next month. Which is pretty rad.

Rudra's Storm - Dagger

A two hit dagger WS that appears to be wind elemental. Rudra being a "wind god" and all. So maybe THF and DNC will get a fourth Wind elemental WS. Either Square-Enix is just fucking with Thieves at this point, with the level 83 Dual Wield I and all, or this one might actually do like 600-700 damage.

Torcleaver - Great Sword

A one hit GS WS. Looks like some sort of Stone stuff, so Added: Effect Slow (that never procs)?

Myrkr - Staff

This looks really goddamned cool! Hold your staff up Spirit Taker style and water pours all over the place from it! I wouldn't be surprised if it has a Magic Shield effect or something like Converts Damage to MP.

The name means "Darkness" in Norse mythology and is a forest planet in the Star Wars universe.

Jishnu's Radiance - Archery

A one hit WS that appears to be Burst II for your bow.

Jishnu's a dude's name. I can't find any significant ones. Perhaps some Bollywood guy got struck by lightning and it's gallows humor? :-P

Ukko's Fury - Great Axe

A two hit GA WS. It looks to be physical.

Ukko is the god of the sky, weather, and harvest in Finnish and Estonian mythology.

Quietus - Scythe

Looks to be a one hit physical or dark elemental WS.

Quietus was a guy who seized some power in Ancient Rome.

Camlann's Torment - Polearm

A one-hit Polearm WS. Looks a lot like the last new Polearm WS.

Tachi: Fudo - Great Katana

A one hit physical WS. Which means depending on mods/added effects/etc it could actually be good. Then again, Tachi: Butterflies.

Dagan - Club

Looks like some variation of Moonlight with five petal flowers. Could provide MP Refresh or Enmity Down?

Dagan is fishing/harvest deity or something.

Wildfire - Marksmanship

Looks like a single hit Fire elemental WS.

Blade: Hi

Looks like a one (read: two) hit physical WS. With some Attack multiplier and/or decent mods it could be better than Blade: Jin on things Ninjas....probably aren't meleeing anyway. Ninja could really use a boost if you're listening, Square-Enix.

And the video from Youtube if you haven't seen it already:

TTFN!