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.

*grumble grumble*

ah ha! And you may have thought I'd forgotten this Blog. Well I haven't! (clearly). It's been 3 months that I've been in Qatar now and I have 3-ish more to go. When I come back, I'll have my son, my wife, and a new daughter there to greet me. I of course will have FFXI to come back to. I've been able to play a little bit out here, but the connection is so bad and Odin's server is so over-populated that I have a hard time being able to do anything. So the quick fix? I moved to Garuda. I will be there for about three months. I didn't want to follow my friends that were formerly of Valefor because as I recently noticed, they've moved servers again... and I didn't think it would work trying to move back to Ifrit since Leenk recently had a baby with his girlfriend and probably won't be finding much time to play in the very near future (for the next three months that is). So... Garuda... I know a couple of people over there. I really know nothing about the server honestly. It seems alright so far. Instantly, I noticed the lag there wasn't even close to what I had in Odin. My first disappointment there though? Camping Carnero for 3 hours. Ugh. What a pain in the ass.

Once I'm back home, I'll be trying to get back to Odin I think.
More later...

involuntary break

I'm not really sure who actually reads this journal. I keep it more for myself than anything else.

I'm sitting in an airport right now on my way out to Qatar... just kinda testing the wifi to see how that's going to work while hopping from air port to air port until I get to my ultimate destination. Seems this will work for now.

Leaving right now is hard. I not only said goodbye to my wife, but to my son on his 2nd birthday. I'll miss holidays with them, birthdays, and the birth of my daughter. Leaving this time compared to others is a little harder than it usually is.

As far as the game goes (since this is my FFXI blog), I got NIN up to 36 the other night. Not all the way to a Subjob level but it's getting there. If I can log on downrange, then I'll be able to round that out. It's not really a huge concern of mine at this point. If I log on while I'm "gone" it'll be more for the social aspect than anything else. I'm sure the lag I'd experience would be horrible. Anywho, just saying that I'll be around and wanted to update one more time before I head out.