Catching up a bit. Random post is random.

Haven’t written much recently because life has been strange over the last couple of weeks.  Here in the UK, the Easter weekend is a 4 day weekend and I was sick for a few days.  We cancelled Einherjar and any formal Sunday event over Easter because a lot of people had family commitments. I’m a bit of a heathen so Easter doesn’t mean much to me, but I completely understand the necessity of entertaining small people with coloured eggs.

Staff I am aiming for

I’m nearly done with the next trial on my magian staff.  Mart logged in last night and we knocked out another 20 mobs before Salvage and so I think I have 23 left to do and I can move to Ro’maeve. I haven’t pushed for this as hard as I might have done before but I am making steady progress so it will happen sooner or later.

Everyone seemed very emo online last night. There wasn’t any drama, just a few people up and down.  We restarted Salvage and as ever, saw nothing drop. More tonight I think.

Have been messing around with VNMs with Kaz, Bergi, Aunshi, Ure, Clevan and others. Have helped Kaz kill NMs in Sara past and present for his Great Axe. Have killed the northlands Tier II NMs and a few in Ronfaure. I’m hoping to trigger a crystal change to a blue crystal this week before we attempt some Tier IIIs sometime over the weekend.

I have somehow ended up with a Fierce Belt, Warrior’s mufflers and Valor Gauntlets after the weekend. Of the three, the gauntlets are the only thing I really wanted. No one else needed or even wanted them and as I’m still working on allied notes and it may be decades before I have enough, I figured that the relic hands would be nice for PLD for a while.  We did also see a Wyrm belt drop, which was nice for Hasi, he’s almost done on DRG now and had a couple of good weeks in a row.

In Limbus I was very pleased to see this and so complete the upgrades I wanted to do for COR. Neph had it already and Bergi either didn’t need or want.  I’ve actually been playing COR more often recently. Every now and then it just makes more sense for me to come COR, especially as we have more BLMs than ever.

Send some good thoughts this way, concerned about a close friend, they could use a few.

Limbus Basic Guide: Apollyon North East

I realise that Limbus is ancient history but we’ve recently handed over running Limbus to someone else in the shell. So I said I’d make some notes for him and post em up. This assumes a smallish balanced group but not manaburn.

Apollyon North East

North East (Mandies, Birds, Pots, Monkeys, Dhalmel)

Before you go, make sure you have at least a couple of types of damage (melee/magical/ranged) for the Monkey floor.

On each floor except for the top all the time (3 x 5mins) and JA chests are up.

In this zone there are key mobs which drop the item chest and open the vortex. Each floor has slightly different combinations of mobs to get items and vortex. Make sure you always get times asap.

Floor 1

Mandies. Attack fast. If short on people just target the large white and black mandies and the Boss. One of them will open the vortex, one will drop the item chest. It’s random as to which does what. If one of the large mandies drops either the chest or opens the vortex, I’d suggest targetting the Goobbue Boss for the other but you may have to kill all three to get both the item chests and vort.

Two of the time chests can be hard to get, be careful.

If you have lots of people, kill until bored. Make sure you have times before going up.

Floor 2

One of the large birds drops the item chest, another opens vort. Small birds link with the large bird and each other, but the large bird doesn’t link with the small. So you sleep one small bird, kill the other and not worry about the large bird til both small are down.

All JA and time chests are behind the large birds and they will attack you if you go for the chest. So clear the small birds, then kill the large until you get vortex and/or time. The last time can be got by a duo. Here’s how…

Have everyone else zone up. Make sure the people staying down have reraise up. Need someone with AoE sleep and someone to run in and get time. The last time is behind the large bird near the vort. Sleepga, run in, get time and zone up. Lullaby works, bind etc too.

Floor 3

Hate this floor with a passion. Easy to link mobs. The number of mobs scale up depending on the number of parties you have. i.e. there will be an additional group of mobs per party. You need to kill a Doll to open the vortex and a large pot to get item drop. You often use JA chest here to speed things up or to recover fast. Get your time chests, they’re scattered.

Floor 4

This one is a little odd. The large opo-opo drop the item chest and one of the Gigas opens the vort.

Be careful, the opo-opo are nasty, link and have some vicious TP moves. One of the gigas will open the Vort but each one is immune to one particular type of damage. Try killing the one immune to ranged (Okeanos) or magic (Hyperion) first. If you get unlucky, you’ll need to kill the one immune to melee damage (Cronos). DoTs work, ranged prolly still works but magic is the answer. Can use JA chest on this level. Don’t forget your time chests, the last one of the three is near vort.

Floor 5

Never any time chests on top floors in Appollyon so by the time you’re here you’re stuck with whatever time you have. You can clear this in 10mins with a good DD setup but 15 is better. No point in killing the manticores, except for coins. So ignore em and run past on the left to hit the chest. Final chest in this zone never drops mats but can drop a metal chip.

A better weekend, or how not to go insane as a shell leader

This weekend was a lot better than they’ve been in a while.  I spent a few evenings off game last week just chilling, catching up with household stuff, ‘Being Human’ and various books and other games. I needed a break and I think I still need to make room for less time online so there will be more evenings off as I catch up on my real life list.

Still, finally I think we’re getting somewhere with lifting some of the stress of running the linkshells and sharing it a bit.  I approached Mac to take over the EU Limbus runs. I enjoy Limbus as an event but after over 3 years of it, and our major run being after an evening of Einherjar and major event, it’s too much. He’s going to co-ordinate with Carp, and they made a good start this weekend. I’ll talk about the rest a bit later.

Mothra-Ninjas and other animals

H’oh boy has the last week or so been interesting.  As ever our weekend was fairly busy. Not HNM  ‘get-to-the-chopper’ busy but pretty busy. Can I remember what the hell I was about to type just then? No… right so let’s start again! I have some images to add to this post but they’re at home, because I forgot to upload them yesterday.

I’m pretty sure that I did something on Saturday before Dynamis, but it wasn’t anything huge. I tend not to be on much before or after Dynamis.

I think we helped Tibi with her SAM AF fight in Palborough. I know I’ve spent some time on BRD/NIN down in Boyada, helping Doy towards his goal of capping Great Axe on DRK.  Mostly to suffer abuse but sometimes to get some weapon skill points towards unlocking my Dagger of Trials.  I should work on my BLM, SMN and SCH Nyzul staves but I really can’t face them right now. I’ve unlocked Mordant Rime, Death Blossom and Mystic Boon (awesome!) but even with decent haste gear, I hate two-handed weapon tping.

Anyway, Doy is only a few points from cap now and we did Dynamis Jeuno. Again.

WIDATW: Dynamis, Ouryu & Proto-Omega

Monday mornings suck.  Still it’s now Monday lunchtime and so I have a few minutes to update.  Vanadiel still continues and with next week’s update drawing ever nearer the augmentation system for FOV is being widened to level 75 gear now and there are some new augmentable gear quests coming which seem to involve crafters and high level 6 man NM fights.  http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11eu/detail/4728/detail.html

Over the weekend we got busy again. We had a quiet one last week in response to the 4^th of July celebrations.

I’m not paranoid, they are out to get me!

Things are… weird.  That’s not all bad or me trying to say something subtly, they’re just weird.

DRK

I got done with my DRK sub. Not without killing Mitch in the desert first. Naturally, I was powerlevelling Eld with Mitch through a FoV training spree for the last level. I decided on Eastern Altepa Desert for this. I dutifully op’d out to the desert and got the quest.

Eld's Current Jobs

A while later Eld aggroed a cactuar. One of those things and NP I think to myself.  I’ll have this ‘ere level 63 RDM sleep it for now. I can zone it/log hate once the current mob Eld is killing, dies.

Well that would have been simple if not for one thing… Cactuar Rapido popped! And how do we pull Rapido you ask? By linking with another Cactuar. What? Like this one here asleep? H’oh yes.

15s later, one dead Mitchturbo.

Still, you have to laugh. Brachial came out and raised him for me and I slowly missed my way to 37 DRK. I used to like DRK. I don’t right now.  Good gear, good food and still you miss painfully slowly.

Ranger

WIDATW: Dynamis, Einherjar, Kirin & Omega roundup

Feeling less emo but not great. Here’s some stuff we did.

We went to Dynamis Windurst and fate conspired to pretty much steal almost all our thieves and tanks away. So we ended up having a last minute reshuffle. We’ve already lost one of three stock thieves to stupidity so we were down to two and a couple of peeps who can play it in a pinch. Except that Nui’s net went out, Dru sold his apartment and had to do some paperwork, Reb didn’t make it and Uneac is only 72.

Dynamis, Einherjar & Proto Omega

Well I can’t really talk about Dynamis as I was off with a bunch of friends celebrating a hen night (bachelorette party). She’s getting married in May. Didn’t stop me getting a couple of text messages with drops in from Dynamis!

Weekly events update

So aside from levelling RDM what have I been doing?

Well dinged my RNG into Noct again. So once RDM is done I can work on my COR. I think I’m about 90% decided that I don’t want to level anything else after COR. I need a lot of merits already and I don’t see the point in being gimp at 75. I’m probably never going to cap all my jobs but the further I get from mages, the worse they will be. COR I can easily merit sword/dagger/marksmanship for and these will help RDM and BRD as well.

Last night we did Nyzul Isle. The chaps got their disks to 60, which is frankly awesome. Ironically we saw a pair of Askar hands drop which took us months to farm when we needed them for Niamh. Altho in all honesty I’d have been more surprised if they hadn’t dropped, SE loves irony. Rotx won them and so now he’s lending his dusk gloves to Jero and running faster. Or something.

WIDATW

It was a big weekend for us. On a personal note it ended fairly well and crappily at the same time. Might take some time out this week.

Helped some friends get Apocalypse Nigh done on Saturday. So now another group has some shiny new earrings. All good. It was a messy fight but we recovered and got the win. I wish I could say that was all that counts but I don’t really feel like that. Some days I just want to go in and do really well. We have those days but recently, it’s been completely random as to when.

Anyone want to send me some career mages? I’m running out…

Dynamis was fun but not the zone we planned. We ended up losing the /random for Xarc and moving to Glacier. Thankfully we were able to round up the players who still needed Glacier win and get them through. It wastes farming time but now we have three nice peeps through to Xarc which helps.

Nova (dynamis and now einherjar shell) is really doing well.  We’re steadily attracting quite a few new players and it’s beginning to look like if we get the practise in we’ll go for the Dynamis Lord one day. Not bad for a shell that started off with simple farming aims in mind. Payouts this month were big, it’s really helping people out and they appreciate it. Part of me still wants those gaiters and say screw the rest of you lol but I just couldn’t do it. And it means the people who have stayed are really invested in the shell. Complaints about lack of gill have just died out. Occasionally people want something expensive but there’s no daily pressure anymore. I’m really proud of us.

Drops in glacier included another BLM body which Firi passed to Carp so he could hold onto his lead for a hat. BLU dropped for the first time and Xhitman was really pleased. We also saw our first DNC drop and 2 more RDM bodies… We’ve had 5 or 6 RDM bodies so far!! We’re down to only needing them for 2 fairly new members before they go open lot! Still no THF and Nui is well overdue some drops. We walked out with 13 relic and 2 hundreds.