2009:
2010:
5805-4559=1246 deaths in a single year! That averages about to be slightly over 3 deaths per day! I think everyone should send me 250,000g to pay for a SMN burn to get the exp back I lost!
Did the final prep work for the update. Finished my DNC and THF subs via some fast summoner burns. Well, it wasn't really that fast since someone was diagaing pulls for a few hours. GM call time!
I don't get why people do that at all. Such a silly reason to get yourself a warning/suspension/banning. Do people really care that much how others exp?
Capping buffers on various jobs. Allied ring is pretty cool.
I also leveled RNG to 75. Took me about 36 hours of AFKing in the tunnel to do 49->75. Looking back, I'm not sure why I chose to level WAR compared to RNG in the first place. I had all the gear already, as well as capped marksmanship merits from COR. I did need to finish skilling up Marksmanship up to RNG's new cap, which only took two back-to-back besieged.
I went on a huge merit spree afterward to quickly cap RNG specific merits too.
Not sure if this is the best setup, but I think -40enmity every 5minutes would be better than doing a slightly more damaging slug shot every 10minutes. I'm too lazy to go farm a Hightail bullet, and honestly I'd probably just mess up and use it without unlimited shot, so I went with sharpshot merits.
Here's my RNG gear. It's really similar to my COR, aside from a few changes.
TP:
I need 17 store tp to get a 5 hit setup( without /SAM) with my OAT gun. Rose strap(4) + Brutal(1) +Rajas(5)+ Skadi(7) worked. The main slot that is weak are my feet. Skadi would be cool for TP, but really lazy for that, since I need the 25+35. I had enkidu already, so I figured I would just use those. Hopefully they will add something new in the update.
WS:
I have to keep my 17 store TP to maintain my 5 hit. Again lacking feet options, but taru rse2 are 4 STR, so I went with those. I think getting a Mekki, as well as Hachiryu feet+legs will be imprtovements, but dropping 20M 5 days before a major update seemed silly, and Mekki is a pain to get. I also have another setup that swaps out triumph for a novia for more -enmity.
Barrage:
Just went with as much ACC as possible, and not worrying about my 5 hit. I think AF+1 gloves would be an improvement for the extra barrage shot.
Utsusemi! Also have some other random pdt/mdt sets too.
Thought about the jobs I'm going to take to 80 some more. I think it'll be RDM>BLM>COR as my first three for sure. Probably RNG or WAR after that. I'm not really sure about the others yet. It's really going to depend on what adjustments they receive, exp required to level, as well as the rest of the content in the update. I already foresee myself being busy with the Abyssea expansion, Walk of Echos, new magian trials, and whatever else they add. I don't really want to just be exping forever, and worrying about jobs I never even play these days.
With that in mind, I sold off a ton of my gear. BRD is basically naked aside from rare/ex and a few instruments. A few random WHM gear sets were also sold. BLU cannonball and certain specialized nuking (Eyes on me) are gone. Random PUP stuff are gone, and few other obscure gear sets that were never used.
I really never used much of the stuff I sold. The jobs are still functional, and if I do need the gear back I can just buy it again.
Did a few more magian weapons too, starting with the oat axe. I think it'll be better than gaxe when I'm /NIN! I didn't want to do this initially since my axe skill wasn't skilled up, but then I remembered I'd be killing 700 DC mobs during the actual trials, so I could just skill up then.
400 lizards and 300 puks this time around. Lizards were a lot more frustrating than they should have been. There's always a billion people in Cape Terrigan doing FoV, and for whatever reason they don't want to team up. Was really silly running around watching a bunch of claimed lizards.
Unfortunately didn't cap my skill as I was hoping for, but I did go from 100->232.
Finished the rest off in about 4 hours of Boyahda skilling up.
The VNM item needed this time was from Blobdingnag. This was easily the worst compared to Krab/Verthandi/Ruthven spam. Since I did them all in shout groups, getting people to deal with the adds was harder than you'd think. BLMs would never focus, so people were constantly dying. I'm surprised that out of the 9 fights I did, I didn't wipe once.
The tier2s weren't bad. Lamprey Lord is really easy and fast (9-12minute fight, including pull time) using pinning, but I could only do it in present Pashow, since that was the only zone I knew pin spots for. Past pashow never worked for me, and I was lazy to search through gustaberg.
Shoggoth could be done in any of the zones, but it was such a pain compared to Lamprey Lord. 20-30minute fight, but it depops extremely easily during chainspell if you're out of range for it.
Ever since people figured out the shadow thing for VNMs, I've started to play with shadows again. Out of the 9 fights, only 1 had a shadow, and it didn't drop a ring. The shadow discovery doesn't seem to have changed much, except now people can depop Yilbegans and not have to waste time killing them.
Also did the high damage gun for my quick draw setup. All the high damage trials are easy to do, since it's literally just a week of afk leeching NM kills. For some of the more horrible NMs like Bugbear Strongman and Hovering Hotpot that wouldn't repop for 5+hours, I just went to the NM's pop spot, joined the alliance that was there, and went to bed. Woke up the next morning with a few leeched kills. It was kind of funny sitting in an alliance of 12 people, where at any time 10 of which were afk, with 2 people killing PHs.
Needed 6 Yacumamas and 6 Feurenukes to finish. Missed a few shout runs, so figured I would just use the fence in ronfaure to solo as COR (plus Sedna leech!).
Did find a JP shout for Feurenukes at least. Took a few hours because of competition, but got it done.
Last weapon I did was the high damage great axe. There were less people doing this path, so couldn't do as much afk leeching!
The first of the VNMs, Jyeshtha was terrible. Convinced Silentmagican to solo it for me, and so he could get an Orcus pop. Of course he had to go 1/1! I used my colorful next, so we could keep going.
And of course.. 1/1 as well. Why does this never happen when you actually WANT the tier3 pops?
Finished the last 4 in a JP shout. It was awful. I think our setup ended up being 9 WARs 2 NINs 1 DRG and 1 RDM. They made half the WARs sub /WHM, and the other half sub /DRK for stun. Fights were slow and tiresome; doing it at 2 am made it even worse. Took 4 hours to get the last 4 kills I needed.
6 Capricornus were nice though! We just totally destroyed them, and finished in just over an hour.
An update teaser confirmed the continued expansion of trials. Most of the weapons are already the best that are available, so further upgrades will just cement that. Most likely the OAT weapons will turn into the occasionally attacks 2-3, and 2-4 times that were found in the dats, alongside the OAT. I think it will get to the point that if you don't have magian weapons, that you will be gimp. They also confirmed that they will be making certain trials easier. I'm pretty sure they mean the relic/mythic trials (1500 mobs is too much), and weather related trials.
We finally got KB in einherjar! I was so happy to finally fight it, but I think everyone else went emo that we lost. I think they need to adopt Daz's policy of making it their goal to make me happy. It would just be so much better for everyone!
Seemed to destroy us kind of fast, even though we were chainspell curaga2/accession cure4. I'm not sure why, but people were instructed to not WS at all until 50%. That just seemed hinder us, unless it does something even more super crazy if you WS before 50%? We couldn't even get it to 50% though.
We ran out of time before I could pull off an epic solo and save of the day! I think it's clearly saying something that I am the only person alive at the end though!
Randomly decided to try for Skadi Hands again.
Got it on my third try! After having not done salvage in so long, I didn't really mind doing it either, and it was actually even fun.
Also went back to trying for a Moblin Cest. You can technically make the strongest nuking belt in the game with it: something like INT+4 MAB+2 MACC+2. It's extremely rare to get all those stats on the same belt though, so I was mainly after the MAB+1~2 for my Quick Draw setup when using the correct day/weather obi isn't possible. You have to do Voucher #5's MMM.
The maze is soloable, but it's not a 100% solo. There are 3 different bosses that can spawn, and 3 different jobs that your goblin can be. In order to get the MAB belt though, you have to do the boss with your goblin as his mage job. The mage goblin does very well against 2 of the bosses(KB and slimes), but struggles against the weapons boss; so if you happen to get that, there's a fairly high chance you will lose.
A large majority of people have no idea this even exists, but the maze itself is pretty cool. You basically level up your goblin from 1->60, upgrading his armor and getting him new weaponskills and spells. Once he's ready, you go and do the boss fight.
It's pretty funny watching your goblin level up and develop. Some of his moves are complete hax though. I wish I had his 2hour ability: Elemental Blitz. He summons 6 elementals (one of each type) that cast an instant cast AM2 on the target. It's really cool to watch.
This is the best belt I got. I'm happy with it.
The update teasers said they're adding some new MMM boss fights. While that sounds exciting, they really need to fix some of the issues first. For an "instanced" event, getting in can be really frustrating. This problem is only going to get worse once the update gets here; MMM is fantastic for exp, especially if the new camps they introduce are less than ideal.
Another issue is that you can only use your maze once a day. This wasn't such a big issue before, but they keep adding more content to MMM. People will want to exp more than ever before soon, and if the new boss drops good gear, it's going to be annoying if I have to choose to save my maze for EXP or for gear. They should just limit yourself to not repeating the same voucher per day, not just any maze.
Leviathan got Fiat Lux again. I lost my medal the day before yet again, but it didn't really matter. This BC has become an absolute nightmare. So many more people have access compared to last time, and not only that, but people are now entering with 4-5~ people somewhat regularly. The price of the cape has completely crashed, and now pretty much everyone wants the body/head only. Entering with less people is of course going to be smarter. Unfortunately this means that there we will be even more groups, and the fights will take longer on average. Even at times that were good before, like the afternoon, aren't anymore. The minimum I had to wait was 30mins, but most runs had around a 90min-150min wait. These weren't even in JP primetime, where I'm sure the wait time is around 3hours...
Plus it didn't help that every single run this time around ended up in near fails. People forgetting the ops, not listening to instructions, slow responses on dealing with the adds. It was just terrible.
I did finally see a Nocturnus piece drop! I lost lot though! Emo!
We got Splitting Heirs again too. I would've preferred Plucking Wings, but oh well.
I've also been doing some solo limbus just for the fun of it.
Started with kings. I used to think BLM was the king of this solo, but I tried RDM/SCH and it really felt a lot easier than BLM. I wasn't even used to RDM/SCH quite yet. Kills are a bit slower because of tier 3 nukes only, but a good use of convert and the restore chest means you rarely have to rest.
KB is also much easier as rdm. With refresh and convert, you can spam blizzard3 instead of drain. The extra fast cast traits, as well as dark arts are also nice to have. This solo only took me about 18mins, and I was playing safe. Could easily cut it down to probably 12-14 minutes I think.
I really do think NW is 80-90% solo rate. You need to be insanely unlucky on the first two floors to lose. Even killing 4 mobs/floor you should be good to win.
Next I did NE, again as RDM/SCH. The first floor is definitely harder as RDM compared to BLM, mainly because of the lack of sleepga. The mandragoras love to hang around the time/restore chests too. I actually had to skip one of the time chests on this floor because I had aggro'd so many mobs. Luckily they run at normal movement speed, so I was able to make it to the teleport.
The second floor is where I think RDM has a much bigger advantage. The greater bird is probably the hardest part of this solo. Chainspell is really nice to deal a large chunk of damage safely. RDM also has better recasts for bind & gravity. Don't forget your poison pots/elshimo fruit so lullaby doesn't own you!
Third floor is easy as either job. Maybe RDM is a bit nicer because of chainspell? Doesn't really matter either way though. Just need to kill the doll and port up.
For the gigas floor, I brought my melee gear in the event I got stuck with the magic immune gigas. I ended up getting the vortex to open after the first two gigas though, so it wasn't needed. I'm not really quite sure how meleeing would have worked out as /SCH though. This is the only part where I would say you can lose this solo, so roughly 33% chance of losing.
Last floor is just kill 8 dhamels. BLM works better if you feel confident enough to ga3 a bunch down at once. If not, kill speed is probably about the same.
Then I did SW! This actually took me two tries. The first time I timed out with the final elemental at 35%, and the second time I clicked the final chest with 7 seconds left.
This run will actually slightly differ depending on your race. If you're taru or mithra, you will need to melee down the first floor. Galka, Elvaan, and Hume can nuke it down. You will still want to bring melee gear regardless though, for the third floor.
The first floor is the hardest. You need to kill the fomor associated with your race. There is 2 of each race; one will open the vortex to the next floor, and the other will spawn chests, which you can only pick one of. The hard part isn't really killing them, but dealing with links, and waiting for a clean pull. On my first attempt, I had to wait 4 minutes for one of the taru fomors to move into a safe spot. The vortex opened on the first taru. I decided to skip trying to kill the second taru for the time chest (10minutes) since I felt like I could possibly lose time by waiting forever for a decent pull, or barely break even.
Second floor is really simple. You just need to kill the Jidra without any leaves. Sleep and gravity land without any trouble, but I learned bind didn't. It really doesn't matter much though. Sleep/grav/nuke it down as fast as you can and port up.
Third floor are mimics. You only need to kill one mimic to make the vortex open. There are hidden time, restore, and an item chest, but as far as I know there's no way to differentiate between mimics and the real chests. Plus they draw in, so it's not like you can just randomly start clicking chests to test and run away.I went ahead and melee'd these down too. I brought antidotes to deal with death trap, but it's a weak poison, so not really needed.
For the final floor, you need to kill the 3 elementals associated with the game day you port onto the floor on. You can't obviously do this on darksday. Most other days should be ok, I chose water because both thunder and ice work well. This is where I would say bringing some kind of ranged item is useful. On my first run, I lost 1 minute by pulling them with a melee swing; they move around almost constantly, only stopping for a few seconds here and there.
They all automatically link, so once you've pulled one, pull it back to where you ported in. Sleeps, and quickly chainspell nuke them. Again on my first run I made a mistake in that I used convert prior to pulling the elementals, instead of resting my MP back. I think it would have been better to instead maximize chainspell and save your convert for it. I literally lost 20-30seconds of chainspell because I ran out of MP. I was unlucky and had the elemental resist me too, so it didn't end up dying, and I was stuck with 3 elementals and no MP. Resting is harder with 3 elementals up, so you really want to make sure you can get at least 1 down prior to chainspell wearing.
For my second run, I brought vile elixirs to make sure I would win. The coin total from this zone is awful compared to NW/NE, so you will lose gil doing it. It does make the win much more manageable though.
I couldn't get a perfect pull, so I purposely pulled a link. Sleep lands easily. Unfortunately I messed up, and my add woke up just as buffs were down. Few seconds of macro fumbling and panicking later , I decided to just quickly Death Blossom the taru down, and take the death.
Lost a lot of time waiting for weakness, and I had only brought 1 pizza with me, so I was stuck with crab sushi for the remainder of the run.
Made it to the last floor with about 7minutes left. The vile elixers helped a lot. I was able to kill 2 elementals with chainspell active.
I was freaking out because I thought I would run out of time a split second before I could hit the chest.
I think this zone is the hardest and the easiest of the three in a way. Easiest because there's no random surprises. You know exactly which mobs you need to kill to advance. The only luck based part is on the floor when you have to wait for a decent pull. It's the hardest because it's not very forgiving to mistakes. With NW, you can die during the run probably twice, and as long you are lucky with the portals you can still win. Of course all three will be much easier in a week when we become 80.
These were fun to do, but the downside is now I'm stuck with inventory -3. SE can't be done solo at all, so maybe I'll just bribe some melee to duo with. Only then I'd be stuck with inventory-4! I'm really far too lazy to do omega again. Finding/dealing with buyers is such a chore.
I really need to meet this taru dancer with a name similar to Tsolamogola. I've also never been more offended in my entire ffxi career. How can someone dare to confuse me with another taru?!
Really excited for this update next week. Everything seems like it will be fresh and exciting so I can't wait! See you guys next time when I'm super awesome level 80!
