/sigh

Time for a break... I've finally caused myself to become very burnt out on this game. It was bound to happen soon. I've actually been playing quite a bit lately, but because when I play (and the usual amount of time) is so off from what the game would normally require, I usually end up doing solo lvl grinding or even crafting (that seems very unproductive). I don't get a lot of the game by doing this. Along with that, Lee managed to get his account hacked and can't play for awhile... So without my usual group to play with (Lee being the "leader" of that group) when I AM on for any sort of extended period of time is a little frustrating.

It's been harder and harder to play ffxi as my kids are getting older too... It's nice to see all the news suggesting that Final Fantasy XIV will appeal to casual players as well since I'm gearing more and more in that direction.

Granted, I still very much like the game and SE and all that. I just need to step away for awhile. School and a deployment coming up, I won't really have a choice anyways.

Hell... maybe I'll even draw something. Haven't done that for months.

finally decided

My next job to 75 will be Warrior. With as much time as I've spent lately on SAM, THF, DRK, and a few other melee/DD's, WAR seemed to be the best choice for now. If anything Dark Knight will be next after that... I think.

Did a Nyzul run the other night with Yancey, Tenzo, Leenk, Cptporkchop, and... uh... some sch that came with us. I can't remember the guy's name. Anyways... I got two drops!!! (and forgot to screencap them.) Managed to get my Askar hands and feet. :3 They're both fairly handy for a PLD and will work well when I get WAR to 75. I'm extremely pleased with obtaining them.

This has little to do with anything, but I found it amusing... I managed to Skillchain on myself as a lvl 30 THF/NIN. lol

Back to the grind... more later when something exciting happens and actually remember to screencap it. >.<

30 SAM

Trying to lvl Melee jobs kinda gets me wanting to level ALL my jobs. Last weekend I ended up doing 2 lvls on DRK, 10 lvls on SAM, 1 lvl on WAR, 5 lvls on DNC, and 1 on MNK. I really need to work on THF as well... but I might be starting to spread myself a little thin. What's good though is that my gear for most of these jobs is pretty much the same since they're all between 37 and 20 basically... save for the weapons and a couple of other job exclusive things. Ultimately my goal is to get all this stuff to at least 37 and then just pick whatever I decide I like best and go from there. I will likely lvl DRK or WAR I think, but I kinda like SAM and DNC is just too good for solo'ing not to play around with it every now and then.

Tried doing a SMN burn pt the other day with Justin (Mehungtoolow) that ended in an epic fail. I'm not sure how. I've always been told these things are amazingly easy and quite awesome for quick xp... somehow, two of the smn's (I went as lvl 12 BLM since... I just want warp and don't care to lvl it) forgot to 2hr and then went when the COR (Justin) was afk. So... after waiting around after the emo fit everyone threw over it, I ended up warping back to my HP and went back to working on SAM again.

Started posting stuff on FFXIAH.com just for the heck of it. People post the strangest comments to artwork. I don't draw my characters in really awesome gear generally... i guess most people post screencaps on there or artwork on there for that purpose... I must have missed the memo. For anyone that's curious, go here: http://www.ffxiah.com/player.php?id=1156263

wow... soooo... my blog is gimp

after looking through a few other blogs (though Cinnabun's links in his blog) I realize that my feable blog looks fairly awful compared to most others. I'll uh... get to work on that once I figure out how these guys get some of the cool looking stat bars and stuff on their pages.

i need money.

Angel skin drops make me happy... or really... having gil makes me happy. Doing campaign for so long kinda makes me forget about farming on lvl'ing normally. So I spent last night camping Devil Manta in Kuftal Tunnel with Leenk and Cptporkchop. It usually ends up being a fairly boring time doing that, but... I'm poor so that works.

... I really need to craft more. But... I'm lazy...

I'm trying to lvl a DD job next. Kinda taking a break from PLD for awhile (though it's still my main of course). I've been messing with MNK, DRK, and SAM. I'm told I'll have the most luck with DRK and SAM for end game and tp burn pt's... stuff like that. But... I actually like mnk and with a dnc sub it's insanely easy to solo. If nothing else, all those jobs I'll take up to 37 real quick and go from there.

oh! I got my Iron Ram Hauberk! (and I completely forgot to screen cap it when I got it.)

ws over 1k

So... I know for sam's or drg's or any other DD jobs this isn't a big deal, but I thought it was kinda cool for me as a pld. I broke 1k for the first time on a weapon skill. :D

wheeeee!

Vanguard X = the blind leading the blind

So when I have any campaign ops credits, I usually do a quick run of the Vanguard X campaign ops mission... in East Ronfaure [S] primarily. It's quick (about 5 minutes so long as I'm only escorting 1 reinforcement) and easy and normally is rated at about 3 or 4 stars... so end up with about 350 XP and 1100 allied notes. Piece of cake. The only bad thing about it is that the reinforcements just seem dumb as rocks.

"... one more word out of you and I'm feeding you to the Orcs, dumbass"

The NPC will say one of three things. Either "I'm worried about the soldiers back at the Garrison" (and then he runs back to the checkpoint), "Is that an enemy scout?" (and then running the west), or "You're slower than turtles in the mud" (and running northish...toward the stronghold...sorta). The two latter NPC remarks aren't as bad. They kinda end up going in the direction I want them to without my guidance...but the former... I always secretly wish I could just kill the bastard myself. lol Still though... Easy Allied Notes and XP.

And speaking of which... 5 more days till I have my iron ram Hauberk. WOOT!

campaign results

As it stands, I'm right now 12 days aways (3 more evaluations) from getting my Iron Ram Hauberk. :D This will be my first set of any thing resembling end-game gear so I'm rather excited about it. Campaign goes pretty well for me for the most part. I average 2k+ on most battles and generally do the vaguard X campaign ops missions for extra allied notes.
From August 12th




From August 13th



I lurk around a few forums now. I'll probably never post. I've never really been a fan of socializing through message boards over the net...unless I know the people in person. I read what a lot of people getting in campaign as far as XP/LP goes. I kinda wonder if people know that there are caps on what you do and if they know how that effects their rewards. I'm sure they kinda do...but you always kinda see people either playing against a mob like they would in an xp party. >.>
oh well.
I do well in campaign. I'm happy with it. I think though after I've gotten my IR set completed... I'm going to be done with it for awhile and probably start working on lvl'ing a new job. I have only 1 lvl 75 at this time... I need something else.

Eirwen's lineart

I like doing surprise gift art for people... it's just sort of a random little thing i like to do. A lot of them time when people ask me for art (and I don't know them very well at all), I don't like to do it nearly as much. Even if it's a commission and I'm getting something out of doing the drawing. I'm weird like that.

So right now I'm working on a drawing of Eirwen who is a friend of mine and former Linkshell member when I was on Odin. All the guys I know on Deviantart that play on Odin are good guys (and girls) and were part of the reason I even considered staying on Odin.

Eirwen's drawing has colors but they're very much in the WiP stage. I'll post that up when they're done. I'm going to do something a little more cell shaded that normal I think.

Got WotG mission screencaps to post, but they're on my other laptop so I'll post them later.

heh heh...

I almost forgot to post this.

Got some art to for Sorasha for her and her boyfriend's character wedding. Just for the fun of it... plus a few other things to do.

In game... let's see... I got a Walahra Turban recently though I don't really use it much. The haste effect it comes with is nice but with no def on it, it doesn't work REAL well for me most of the time... Leenk, Cptporkchop, Nattaku, and myself went after the hagun ENM again the other night... kicked it's ass but we still didn't get a drop on Hagun. Go figure... and also... I"m starting woodworking craft with my wife. :D fun stuff.

I will be adding some stuff to this page soon to spiff it up a bit. Hopefully everyone reading (all 2 or 3 of you ^^;) will like it when it's up.

haven't posted art in awhile

I think I need to come up with some sort of banner and/or maybe some graphics for this blog. So for the banner, I'm working on this image:

Of course I'll crop and color it soon. Might use it in my Deviantart Journal too.

Working on merits and Nyzul lately. Still haven't finished lvl'ing RDM to 37 (sitting at 33 currently). For merits, I'm mainly doing campaign battles. It worked well enough to lvl me to 75, so getting merits should be a piece of cake. As for Nyzul runs, well... my usual group isn't always on all at the same time so we don't always go... A lot of the time the guys in the group are much more worried about hunting NM's for gil. which is fine I guess... I can think of other things I'd usually rather do. Oh well.

making a brickwall

In case I never mentioned it before, I hate mage jobs. They for whatever reason frustrate me to no end... Which is why I'm glad I'm only lvl'ing any of them to 37. I took RDM yesterday from 23 to 30, which is far enough that I can now sub NIN and solo my last few lvl's on the job. Maybe someday i'll get tired of playing a tank job and actually want to play something that doesn't take nearly as many (or any) hits.

I lvl'd with cptporkchop (Joe) for about 5 hours yesterday in Qufim. I actually prefer that place to kazham and thank god for lvl synch because we pretty much stayed at 20-22 and killed the same easy mobs for the most part. The party went really well... Joe would like to take credit for making it, but he only took over after the former leader d/c'd and never came back (which turned out to be a blessing).

Afterward, we went down to Palborough Mines and did the BCNM royal jellies once before I decided it was a bit late and logged for the night. The BCNM ended up a bust anyways... nothing of value dropped except for a phalanx scroll for my rdm.

Not much else exciting happening. I'm rather exhausted today and I have work tomorrow... so no gaming for me tonight. I may do some sketching instead.

The Echo Awakens

I was originally waiting to do all these missions with Leenk, but given that it might take a couple of weeks to actually do, I figured it would just be easier to do all the solo-able stuff for the add-on missions and then have Lee catch up later or something. The second mission was incredibly easy... the third looks to be as well... I actually have three small NM goblin fights to go through for it. but anyways... here's Me talking with Young Aldo
Hopefully, I'll be able to make it through all the missions by the end of the week... that's my goal anyways... sad thing is this will be the first expansion/add-on I will have actually completed. lol

tonberry slaughter

Leenk and I went up to the Temple of Ugglapih today to farm some tonberry lanterns... Leenk accidentally forgot to change his sub to /sam and instead went as a slightly gimped /thf (lvl30)... turns out that worked out to our advantage. After killing a few tonberries one dropped a flickering lantern which is used to spawn a NM named Sozu Rogberry. A fairly easy little NM that drops a Thief's Knife.It's really not a big deal, but apparently the knife sells for a decent chunk (70k) so we went ahead and went on to go spawn the NM. On the way there however, we ran into Bonze Marberry A nasty little BLM tonberry that spanked us pretty good at first. I wish I had screencapped it, because the little bastard hit Leenk with "Everybody's Rancor" and took him for 4,000 hp. ugh. Lee went down, but the tonberry only had about a 1/4 of his hp left... so after throwing up invincible and then another set of utsusemi: ni (I went as pld/nin) I was able to finish him off.

In the mean time, I started the first cut scene to the new add on storyline. I wasn't going to originally, but then I saw the Nuevo Coselete... One of the armor exclusives you can get for completing ACP. It's good pretty good stats, plus... two add on augments I can put to it (like enmity +5!! huzzah!) and it looks damn sexy... especially with my pld gear. XD

I mean... seriously... look at that! How cool looking is that?

Paladin +1

Been meaning to upload this. This is the .dat swap I ended up using on my Adaman armor for PLD. (I want to do my own thing for my AF gear... when I'm brave enough to .dat mod instead of just .dat swap)

Got it here (for crediting puproses): http://ffxidats.com/page.php?al=alias3132

Now that I really look at it, it is a bit over the top. lol but still not bad. I think the winged crown is what really does it. *smirk*

April Update

I love this game getting updates, but I hate downloading them. I've got the updates running on both my 360 and on my laptop and they are both about 3 hours each. I'll probably leave the update running on my pc while I go to work this morning... but the xbox I'll probably have to shut up and let it run later. I should have known better than the to think the updates would last less than an hour. lol
There does seem to be a decent amount of good stuff in the update. There are three jobs getting adjustments. Whm, Rdm, and Smn... I play none of the three on a regular enough basis to really care much though.
Among the more interesting things for me is the new story expansion "A Crystalline Prophecy". I won't likely get to that right away, so for now I'm going to leave it be. They have however added more Field Manuals to new areas...which I really like since Ashley (my wife) has started her own account to play as well. So since I'm helping her start this brand new character (a taru named "Emmalicious"), the xp and gil bonuses from the training manuals are great. :)
Anyone who wants more info on all that stuff can go read it here since it would silly for me to write about it at this point. most of it isn't really critical information in my personal game blog anyway.

I actually have a couple of days off to play this weekend. So I think I'm going to be doing that a little. :D Also... have some dat swap pics to post later... after I get brave enough with that, I think I might actually try .dat modding as well.

uhm.... kupo, dood!

I have officially started dabbling in .DAT swapping. XD (a gateway drug to .DAT editing! omg!) As a test to see how it would work, I messed with something that wouldn't stay with my character all the time, but I would clearly be able to see... My Moogle! He's an exploding penguin now. hehe

"How can I help ya, dood?... er... Kupo?"



"I need to get something out of stor...WTF???"

"Uhm... dood?"

Definately more to come later... dood.

Nyzul = Pain

Back to ifrit again. I swear this is my last server hop for awhile. I am never following Earl and Yancy around in their server hoppping ever again. ugh. Anyways, I've been to Ifrit more than once. So nothing new there. It is of course another server where technically, no one really knows me. I once again am without a reputation. Lucky for me, there are about 3 or 4 people I can play with on a semi-regular basis. 2 of those guys kinda know me. 1 actually does. The thing about rep that is most annoying... You run across people who, if they've never really heard of you, think they should tell you how to play your job. It's the most annoying thing in the world most of the time. Steve (Nattaku) who is a friend of Lee (Leenk)'s plays Scholar. While in Nyzul last night gave me unwelcome advise. I happens. Whatever. But... I've been playing for 5 years. I've had a lvl 75 job for 1 year. I know how to play it fairly well by now. That's ok though, I got my revenge later.

We tried going through Nyzul Isle 3 times (I think) and never really made it past the second floor. We set up a party of four 75's. DRG (leenk), SCH (nattaku), SAM (cptporkchop), and PLD (myself of course) which might have worked out well. Anytime we had a floor that involved defeating all enemies, we were golden. When it was a boss enemy floor we ended up screwed everytime. We apparently don't do well against magic using bosses... Particularly frogs. ugh. One battle ended by me turned into a frog, charmed, and then killing the SAM. (heh heh heh) I think I need to read up more on Nyzul before going back in. Usually I was pretty clueless on where to go or figuring out objectives. I figured it out eventually, but I went in with very minimal knowledge of what exactly goes on with assualt missions. Maybe Steve took that as "he doesn't know how to play at all" or something... I dont' really know.

After the Nyzul run which produced...pretty much nothing (Nattuku ended up with a BLU mythic weapon I think), we partied with Lee's brother Brett (shellangel) to lvl his 54 DRK. Steve continued with his advise, so... during a fight I stopped controlling the mob (a lesser colibri)'s hate, quit tanking, and let it head straight to Steve. He died pretty quickly. SCH's must be squishier than I thought. I've not done that before... it was mean and a bit rude, but somewhat gratifying. :D

Need to get some screen grabs to post on here soon. Haven't shown any lately.

Don't know much about the April update, but I may post about that when I know enough to have more an opinion on it. Same for the new expanded story content coming out soon.

More later.