Oh great, a Great Sword

BLM:75 WHM:58 SMN:42 THF:74 WAR:58 RNG:43

Yesterday, I spent some time leveling WAR/THF. I was in a party with a NIN. a MNK, a SMN, WHM, and a RDM I think. We went to go level against Aht Urghan Aftercops(spiders) and Lesser Colibri(hummingbirds).

This is great except that the Lesser Colibris like to use a Snatch Morsel ability. This is very annoying to a heavy DD in a NIN party cuz turning the mob your way for long periods of time can cost you a Squid Sushi. Those don't come cheap btw!

So I tried to not use a weaponskill in the party. Since I knew the monk was wanting to use Raging Fists I came up with a weaponskill of Shockwave > Raging Fists for Impaction. Well the NIN speaks up and says that it is aoe. I knew that. I said true.

So since I couldn't come up wth a different sc then we solo'd. It wasn't a bad idea either. The spiders like to cast an aoe Slow ability which the WHM was not able to get off of 3 before it would use it again. It was very annoying. Since it was slowing the NIN and the MNK down and me down I knew it was prob close to impossible to keep off, nevermind keeping Haste up. So I adjusted by using my ws with the NIN so that the MNK could ws more often.

Later on tho the NIN speaks up and asks um "Why don't you use dual axes?" I always get this stuff from people that don't know what they are talking about. I was using a Great Sword. Now it's true that axes benefit from having A skill ability as opposed to the Great Sword's B skill ability. This is something I didn't know about until I was at around 48th level. So my Axe skill needs skillin up. But my Great Sword ablity is not tossable. I still hit with my ws much more often than say a Ranger so I am fulfilling my role in a party as a melee just fine. Melees usually have to be of that variety anway to make a good skillchain, one small dmg ws and one large dmg ws. You will notice from the table that this is true. That's why there is no Rampage > Raging Fists sc etc.

So your big boast about knowing what it takes to make a good melee falls deaf to someone that knows I would not be allowed to choose my ws of choice anyways. So I maintained a level of silence in the group which is not normal for me since I like to point out crap to people that want to learn. But it's a huge load of gobbledygook when you gobble about WAR/THF.

I may not have an extra axe. I may not be able to even use Rampage. I may not be able to backup tank as well as a WAR/NIN. But get you to the skillchain quickly and do 400+ dmg from a SA + Crescent Moon, that, I can do.

And I do it, with a Great Sword.

A new day or nights

BLM:75 WHM:58 SMN:42 THF:74 WAR:58 RNG:43

Well I am having fun again.

I am playing a new game now that's called N3 or Ninety-Nine Nights. It really is a blast to play. Unlike other puzzle games or rpgs, this game is more of a hack and slash your way to the boss type game.

You have to make your way across a map with your horde of defenders that take hits for you so that you aren't low on health when you get to the boss. Usually you are on the level of an avatar in power when compared to the minions that you are killing but they can still land a lucky blow and bring your health down so you have to be careful. The neat part of it is that you can do combos and the game rewards you with better weapons and more exp if you get a higher number of kills. This means you can go up in level to a max of about 8 starting from level one. The higher the level, the more deadly combos you can do, and the easier your life is.

Unfortunately, sometimes the bosses are very hard. You get to used to doing the same combo to kill off the minions, but this won't work on the bosses. Usually you have about 3 bosses to kill in each mission and then the game allows you to save. Each mission takes around 20 minutes to complete I would say but, if you die, you have to start the whole thing over from before boss one.

I have had to play over a number of times.

The fun part is seeing the other characters cross your path in the story that you will be able to play later. The game starts you with Inphyy, a holy red warrior with a great sword. She is really a blast to play. But there was also a holy blue warrior with a lance, a mercenary with a huge spinning whip-sword thing, a goblin with dual daggers, a priest with a huge stone staff, and finally a sorceress with a water elemental.

Now I know what all you BLMs are thinking, "Bring on the Sorceress!" Right? Well the game only lets you start with Inphyy and then only after you complete the mission with her does it let you unlock other characters. Well I had to finish the game with the red warrrior, the blue warrior, then the mercenary and then the goblin to finally get to the sorceress. What a hassle right?

Well it was worth it though cuz playing the sorceress now is too cool. The water elemental thing allows her to cast waves of water at her enemies doing combos like the other guys. The graphics on it are neat, but I must say it has taken a very long time to get there.

I still have to finish it with her and then I will play with the priest and then there is one more mystery character that I haven't unlocked that I don't know who it is.

The game is really a lot of fun. It's kind of easy but hey that's better than being stuck in a stupid puzzle where the key is god-knows-where. People at the store were like, "I wouldn't buy it".

That's bull. If you download the demo, and play through it, you're gonna love it.

It's too bad I don't have it setup in my room anymore cuz I could be lfg with my WAR/THF like I always am and probably finish the whole thing.

Life at the Sunset Grill

BLM:75 WHM:58 SMN:42 THF:74 WAR:58 RNG:43

I'm getting fat. I used to have the body of Rambo and now I can't sit straight in the chair. I can't figure out why but I think having more stuff to do at night used to keep my energy up. I used to do poker on Sundays, escort on Mondays, dart league on Tuesdays, darts again with my Sister and this fine hottie that is now married with somebody else's baby that was in love with me on Wednesdays, and Karaoke on Thursdays and then I wouldn't do stuff on the nights I worked. only 2 days Friday and Saturday since I am a millionaire(joke). It really used to get me tired but I also enjoyed the crap out of it.

Now, I don't have any dart partners, the poker guys are starting to get upset at me not wanting to party with them so much, I don't hardly see my sister or that other girl anymore, and then there is the game.

I know the game hasn't gotten harder. I know it's just me and my disillusionment with people that's getting me down. I know in time there are good people out there to meet.

I can't help wondering if it's the bad people bringing me down, or if I bring out the bad in people. I tend to be very annoying and when crap happens to me that I don't understand I try to think back to what happened that made this person do this and then I psychoanalyze myself. I am very attention oriented and I guess am used to getting a lot of attention. By the same token, I have a conconmitant ablity to amaze the crap out of people. It's my way of getting attention.

Of course that is another way of saying I am a troublemaker.

Bah, gettin tired of writing here, hope to have better news tmw. [peace]

Aggro culture is for the moths

BLM:75 WHM:58 SMN:42 THF:74 WAR:56 RNG:43

As a noob, newbie, or new boob, you often find that you stand out entirely TOO much in a crowd. This is especially true when you go into new areas. Areas like Mount Zhayolm here for instance have all their own particular stuff that will aggro you as opposed to other areas like Caederva Mire.

In Mount Zhayolm, most manaburn parties like to come out here to the pudding camp and manaburn. You have to use the staging point to jump to the Halvung Staging Point/Lebros Cavern/Mt Zhayolm area. People will think you're stupid for not knowing where you're going despite the 3 names this area has. I figured in time I would learn them but I still often find myself asking "Which staging point?" Of course a smart ass will be like let's pt in Halvung, just to find out who the newbies are and secretly take pleasure in having belittled someone today. I like to go right out and aggro something when this happens.

If you ever talk to customers on the phone and wonder how come the customer's IQ dropped suddenly, it's for this reason. People that are asking questions aren't asking to be poked, they're asking for help. But it is within the power of one person in a communication to make the experience for the other person very difficult. When someone is ugly to you, the best thing you can do is spread that "love" around.

Anyways, back to the topic. When you warp over to Mount Zhayolm, the first thing you will need is Invisible since the clusters detect by sight(aggro sight). Then you will need someone to get you the key to the gates of Halvung. Uchipu had a very nice piece of work explaining in detail how to get your Map and key to this area in our old ls website but somehow I have managed to screw up the quest. I click the door and it says it has a very large keyhole and now I click the ??? and I don't get the cast metal plate for some reason.

I hate going to new ls websites. I hate change. I hate new this and new that. I like old. Some people like to make new friends. Some people would rather go through tough times with the same old people. Which is better?

After you get through the gate the next thing you will aggro are more clusters(bomb type mobs) . The flies don't aggro and the trolls aggro sight also. The puddings aggro sound or detect by sound. Aggro means they will come after you if you are close. Some creatures detect by sound but don't aggro but that's just confusing so I won't get into how to undo your hate.

But there are always new things to find out. We found that out here 2 days ago. There is another camp I like to call the wamoura/dragon camp. You can manaburn there and the exp per mob is higher but you can't chain for as long there without refresh. I personally like fighting the dragons cuz it gives me that feeling that "hey, Im killing dragons, Im 75, look at me!" I'm so vain sometimes. Don't discount that vanity stuff either. People that are great at what they do often pat themselves on the back and brag and so forth. It's impossible to go all out and not wanna look at yourself after your achievement. People that go ding for example, wtf? Was that like hard to do? I dunno... it is a good way to chat with your ls buds tho so it's cool. I guess it's kind of like "cheers!" I wish there was a 2 letter word for congrats tho. Heh, I'm so lazy sometimes. But I like everyone.

OH ya, getting back to what we were gonna find out, we go out to that camp and it was taken too, so people start following the leader who is sneak invising blah blah. You don't need to sneak there. The dragons detect by sight and the wamoura princes don't aggro. What people don't realize is that the Wamouras, aka moth-type mobs, aggro true sight. That means invis won't work. Well while everyone is walking around, one girl aggros a moth and then I stun it and tell everyone we got aggro and before you know it I have 3 of em on me. I'm so kind.

Oh btw, manaburn death equals rb1. Ouch. It's lucky I was close to max on exp cuz man I have taken a big chunk off of there in the past weeks. But I never die in manaburn only when we aggro stuff. I don't aggro NOTHING hardly nowadays since I know what everything detects. Having a THF job helps with that too cuz you gotta know what aggros if you are gonna run around out there and pull stuff for the party.

We finally got the party going and it was really good exp. We stayed in a nearby wamoura prince camp and later we went back to the pudding camp and stayed there most of the afternoon. I got my 2 merits I needed and now I have a total of 3 Ice ability raises. My Freeze II is now doing 1400 or so dmg. Some people ask me hey man ain't it about time you got your weskit?

Hah, for 600k I get a little more MAB or I could get my Martial Knife for THF. Trying to think do I want a weskit? I know, I want YOUR weskit!

/em pulls <>'s Weskit off.

What were ya thinkin?

BLM:75 WHM:58 SMN:41 THF:73 WAR:56 RNG:43

This is me finally getting my party out to Attowha Chasm to party. We made a good amount of exp here and surprisingly, we attacked the lizards too and were able to get good chains. We had an RDM but based on these mobs we wouldn't have needed her for her Dispel. I had already told everyone that we were coming out here and she agreed to come last so we got lucky. I had two melees and a RNG as main DD and he was hitting for like 600 dmg on the flies which was cool. A Bard would have been legendary here but we were tight. I tried to Haste the tank and the RNG but the RNG was just too much to handle for the NIN tank. If we had a THF we prob would have been better. I kept Haste off the RNG after a while.

Yesterday I partied in Cape Terrigan with a bunch of RMT(Real Money Traders) types I'm guessin'.

When Christmas rolls around, as it has in the past 2 years, people will become extra unethically-challenged. This means they will start to give money to beggars(usually children). You have to ask yourself what ARE YOU THINKIN when you teach children that stealing is ok? When you buy gil you are stealing. Sounds wrong don't it. Children understand what rules are so if it's ok to break these rules and it doesn't hurt anybody, then it's ok to go into YOUR purse! lol

Buying gil is stealing. You have these people that work extra hard for no money for goons that have some money that wanna make a bunch of money. Sounds like our economy. But selling this money is not allowed. People are not supposed to be able to cheat. (deleted long boring discussion on government since I am too old to care anymore). So I am against RMT as a policy but I won't hold it against people that are helping me by partying with me.

Some people wonder, "why would you ever party with RMT" well cuz that's all they do is sit there and use up your Refreshers and Tanks and put em in a pt and wait for the rest to log in. That's something I would do if I was a noob since noone wants to sit in a pt in the hope of a refresher, they are just too rare to sit there and wait with 5.
When I build a party I like to make sure I have a main healer and refresh and a tank at least, and then I send out invites. But that didn't stop these other people from inviting me to their party. I was invited to a party with a THF RDM and MNK.

They were all rank 2. We sat there til people popped.

I am not one to pick nits about rank since it is hard to get the missions done but... no more partying with Rank 2 people for me. The MNK did his job pretty well. He used Raging Fists whenever he felt like it. And that's ok to do if you are a MNK.

The THF however didn't want to do the skillchain. Is that bad? She didn't want to setup SATA. Is that bad? When she felt like it, she would SATA the MNK! That's bad.

The RDM had level 18 WHM sub which didn't matter so much as the fact that she didn't know she was supposed to Refresh the PLD. After about 2 chains the PLD left without giving us an option. Luckily we had a NIN as the other DD but this just goes to show how good party forming skills go to waste. The PLD and NIN were regular folk and they did a good job too but they got fed up. We were chaining 3 mobs tops. These people acted like they had bought these accounts yesterday but still I was curious as to how they get so high level without knowing anything. I tried to train them so that they would act like regular folk but they seemed to be just pissed to have to be there. Eventually they went back to ws and SATA whenever they felt like it and I was like Curaga all over the place and was often out of MP.

Well I'm not curious about RMT party anymore.

I'm all precise to da point..

BLM:75 WHM:57 SMN:41 THF:73 WAR:56 RNG:43

As a BLM you have to focus your ability to solo as much as possible so that you aren't at a loss as to what to do when others are in trouble. Obviously, if you're a BLM, you know that this involves using Sleep and Bind. Your Dark Staff allows spells aligned to Dark Magic to be cast more effectively. This, this includes Warp. I always like to make sure Warp goes off without a hitch so I switch to my Dark Staff so if someone asks for a D2 you can see I'm in the middle of something and don't wanna be bothered to help your puny worthless little non-party... scratch.

Ahem, as I said Dark Magic spells are helped by using a Dark Staff. These include Sleep, Stun, Blind and, Drain and Aspir. Switching to your Ice Staff helps you cast Bind and Paralyze and Frost more effectively. Obviously your enfeebling skill is going to help with landing said spells but then how long they last is helped by the hidden MAB held by the staves.

Here I decided to go check out the bird camp in Lufaise Meadows. I started soloing against the saplings nearby and practiced sleeping and then nuking and then binding and then nuking, etc. It's good practice cuz now I am used to using the following pattern:

Ice Staff > Bind > Blizzard > Blizzga > Dark Staff > Drain > Sleep > Rest MP

Just repeat that process over and over and it should be easy to kill off most mobs that are killable. I would like to say that I tried killing East Prey mobs with those tactics, but no, my Sleep doesn't land that often. My Enfeebling Skill is seriously underleveled though my Dark and Elemental skills are at max.

Thank god for Elemental Seal, heh. I have a macro with ES + Sleep II. It rocks!