So Much For The Afterglow
Posted: April 28, 2014 Filed under: General | Tags: FFXI, Mythic, PLD Leave a commentPerhaps I should have saved that title for another day. God, I hope not..
Warning: This post is very image-heavy and spoils the end of the Mythic quest. Also, there’s a PUP in JSE near the end.
So tonight, I ran around on BLU/DNC slaying a bunch of ZNMs. I had built a Tyger pop the night prior and knocked him out easily enough, so all that remained for now was a Sarameya. Being able to use Trust NPCs for these fights makes them beyond a cakewalk. At least for most jobs, I’d imagine.
The only time I had any trouble was my first Nosferatu pop. Clearing out the room with my Trust NPCs, I had Haste and double Marches. I engaged Nosferatu and multi-attacked myself to death quicker than I could react. He had spawned with Spikes up, evidently. What really surprised me was how potent they still were!
My friend Wolowizard has been doing Nyzul Isle with me so I could finish my Tokens up. I’m glad I had someone to help. We did them with my alt sitting at the Rune of Transfer. Our average runs, we cleared 15-20 floors and I got 6-7kish Alex at worst and 10k+ at best. The one night I did it without him accompanying me, I ended up with less than 5k tokens. Quite a difference and not really fun to do lamp order floors solo…
So with my last requirements out of the way, I went to hit up that damned rat bastard in Nashmau.
He gave me an invitation to the palace, where I triggered the Trust quest I had neglected. More on that later. After that, I triggered this cutscene.
So I headed out to Caedire Mire’s cemetery with the requested items.
I was given an invitation to a battlefield at Nyzul Isle. Inside this fight, I fought a hydra NM and then Balrahn in the form of a fomor.
I am sent back to the cemetery for my final batch of cutscenes involving Burtgang.
Well, now I have a 75 Burtgang. It’s taken me roughly 4 months to finish, including getting Captain from Corporal and not farming/buying Alexandrite for the first month or so.
What’s next? Magian trials! The first one is just weapon skills on lizards, which means I get to be lazy and efficient all at once! Just pull 10-20 lizards in Abyssea, turtle up, and abuse them for TP gain!
Fun note: This is my 50th post on this blog. Cheers.
How Yooo Dooo Dat?
Posted: April 26, 2014 Filed under: General | Tags: FFXI, Mythic Leave a commentThe sun had risen, the birds were chirping, and a general feeling of relief came over me. Yes, this morning, I completed the Alexandrite portion of my Burtgang. Running Salvage daily is no longer necessary, but I think I’ll be continue farming it since the price went way up on Odin.
Now all that remains is a few Nyzul Isle runs and some ZNMs. Okay, a lot of ZNMs.
The coolest part of today is that the end is in sight. At some point, farming for this weapon will be a thing of the past and I can have more time to do different things in game. Or sleep longer. Damn, does that sound good right about now.
Gimping It Up In Arrapago Remnants II
Posted: April 22, 2014 Filed under: Instructional | Tags: FFXI, MNK, Salvage 2 CommentsSo I’m rounding the bend on Burtgang and a lot of my game time has been devoted to raising gil, farming Alexandrite, or buying Alexandrite. Essentially, a lot of relatively not very exciting stuff to read about.
I figured I would take this opportunity to throw together a quick guide to gearing a MNK/DNC in order to solo Arrapago Remnants II. I recently leveled my alt’s MNK and /DNC just to do this and have started farming the zone on them. I can usually clear the bosses inside of 25 minutes with these fairly unimpressive gearsets and tactics.
The Gearsets
All of the gear listed below is easily attainable by any player in this day and age. I use some CoP completion rewards, but I’m not sure they are necessary in order to this content. The rest of this stuff is Auction House gear, Skirmish gear, or high droprate stuff. I’ve included a few random easy/cheap alternatives for some slots. The Otronif gear likely outperforms the Espial gear with any decent augments on them.
Main: Eminent Baghnakhs
Ammo: Jukukik Feather
Head: Otronif / Espial
Neck: Peacock Charm (Can probably substitute almost anything else)
Ear 1: Brutal Earring
Ear 2: Ghillie Earring +1 (
Body: Thaumas Coat (Much easier to obtain a floor 100 win now, can use Espial body otherwise)
Hands: Otronif / Espial
Ring 1: Rajas Ring
Ring 2: Heed Ring
Back: Atheling Mantle (100% drop from Orthrus ) / JSE Cape / Letalis Mantle
Waist: Windbuffer Belt / Celt Belt / Black Belt
Legs: Otronif / Espial
Feet: Otronif / Espial
For WS, grab what you can. The same Otronif and Espial pieces likely do well enough. You can pick up some DEX and STR accessories from the Auction House to go along with them. If you want to do even better DMG, you can check out the MNK guide on FFXIAH here. Remember, we’re going for the least amount of gear required for this guide. The current era ilevel gear makes soloing ARII so easy.
The Path
So your gimpy ass MNK/DNC is geared up to a relatively low standard, their Hand-To-Hand skills are at cap or close to them, and you’ve unlocked Shijin Spiral or Victory Smite so that you have a decent Weapon Skill to use. Now we run off to Arrapago Remnants II with some form of Reraise and get on with it.
Once inside, run up to the lamp and unlock all that you can. In the next room, kill a bird or two to unlock Head/Neck and Back/Waist. Start building up 5 Finishing Moves with Quick Step while you kill mobs. You’ll need them for the tail end of the run.
Then head North and kill a leech or two to unlock Ammo and Earrings/Rings. Now when you fight stuff it won’t feel like it’s taking an eternity.
Run back South and East to the lamia there. You will most likely unlock Legs/Feet from her. If you don’t, Special Jig up and head further down her tunnel to the next lamia who should do it for you.
Travel back to the leech room and Jig across it to the lamia in the adjacent tunnel. Kill this one to hopefully unlock Hands and HP. If you don’t get it from that one, just Jig and move further in that path and kill the lamia further in. We’re heading that way anyway to immediately floor up to floor 2.
On floor 2, you can pretty much skip it all and head to the center to warp to floor 3.
On floor 3, head West to kill a flytrap or two to unlock DEX, AGI, and MND. Jig up and follow the path to the door to the portal to floor 4.
On Floor 4, decide if you want to take a handful of extra minutes to head West to kill the Acroliths. All 3 have a ~10% chance to drop a Pouch for extra Alexandrite. It can’t hurt! Either way, head East to the portal to floor 5.
On Floor 5, we’ve got the gears floor. You have to kill at least one of the Gears in the first room to unlock Body here, This is where you have to make another decision. You can full clear the entire floor with some luck and good pulls on your gimpy MNK/DNC for about ~40 Alexandrite… or you can just skip it all and head up to the next floor. It’s up to you, just make sure you have Reraise up if you decide to do it and pull the gears away from their initial spawning area so it’s safe to get up.
On the next floor, you need to grab the Armored Chariot and kill it in 3 minutes. If you fail to do so, the NQ Khimaira won’t pop from the Rampart and you’re going to screw yourself out of the best source of Alexandrite in the game. For my alt, I pop Focus, Impetus, and Hundred Fists on the Chariot. It always feels like it’s too close to the timer otherwise. Your mileage may vary with the Chariot, but you definitely don’t need your SP for the Khimairas.
Kill the Armored Chariot in time and start pounding on the Rampart. Eventually, he will use Reinforcements. If your gear is decent enough, you might need to turn around and wait for the TP move at 15%. I’ve had an unlucky multiattack round take it from 14% to death before on my main character and… that stinks.
Upon the use of Reinforcements, NQ Khimaira will spawn. Finish off the Rampart and get to work. Time your JAs and Curing Waltzes well, staying prepared to Violent Flourish his TP moves to Stun them in time. Dread or Fulmination can end your run here. Just concentrate on Stunning, keeping your HP up, and Boost + WS when you know it’s safe to do so. He’ll go down with a 10% chance to drop a linen purse, and then you can kill the mobs on this floor for more Alexandrite or floor up to the main event.
HQ Khimaira on the next floor is… pretty much a repeat of the previous fight. Keep a stock of Finishing Moves up with Quick Step so that you can Violent Flourish his TP moves. Keep that HP up with Waltzes. If he gets you low, use Chakra as well. Save Inner Strength as a last resort in case his Fulmination goes off. It will not only increase your HP to higher levels, but top you off as well. HQ Khimaira will drop a linen purse 100% of the time upon his defeat.
Your average Alexandrite haul for a rush to the boss should be ~75 without a linen drop off the NQ Khimaira. If you full clear the Gears floor and get pouches off the Acroliths, you can see 125+ Alex for your time. If you get really lucky, the NQ Khimaira will drop a purse and then you could be looking at over 200 Alexandrite for your time. Not bad.
My gimpy alt’s MNK/DNC can do a boss rush in about 25-30 minutes now that I have lots of practice. Not a bad way to raise 750,000 gil on average in 25 minutes…
Posted to the Official Forums
Posted: April 8, 2014 Filed under: General | Tags: bullshit, Salvage Leave a commentI have neglected this blog due to a lack of free time to update it. I apologize. What’s sapping a good amount of writing time this past week? Read my post from the official forums below to find out! We’ll see is SE keeps my post where it lays or buries it elsewhere. I’m sure it’ll draw out a few contrarians or server merger monkeys as well.
Regular blog posts chronicling what else I’ve been up to will follow soon.
Salvage Congestion Making Content Inaccessible
I have been dealing with this problem for about a week now on the Odin server. During my playtime, Arrapago Remnants’ entry gate is flooded with people waiting to enter. Square has done maintenance on the zone many days this past week and I had hoped that the hardware maintenance performed yesterday would possibly help this issue. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there’s been any improvement.
Obviously, Square has been notified of this issue by many players already and there are aware there is an issue.
So here I am, another day this week, spamming the entry gate and getting countless repetitions of the same messages:
“You cannot enter at this time. Please wait a while before trying again.”
“Cannot connect to server.”
This makes for a not very fun playing experience and I wondered if Square has any plans to alleviate this issue in the future?
As with entering other BC areas (AAs, etc.), Japanese players with a much better pingrate have an unfair advantage in entering before players from other regions of the world. I get to spam the gate over and over for dozens of minutes while Japanese players get to walk right up and enter before me.
While typing this message and pondering what to write here, going back and forth while spamming to enter, I had 10 Japanese players enter the zone ahead of me after having walked up just briefly before.
It’s amusing to see so the same 5 people squawking in the General Board, begging for server mergers. Here on Odin, things are active enough to the point of not being able to do what you want when you want, even when you gather the resources (people, kis, etc.) to do so.
Is this how you want to spend your time, waiting to gain entrance somewhere? It’s not how I want to spend mine.
My follow-up post
An update, as I passed the hour mark on waiting for entry, all of the Japanese players had entered. Now was my chance!
Or so I thought.
I was met with multiple “Could not connect to server.” messages and moments later, up walked 2 Japanese players.
I continued to attempt to enter and watched as both of them were eventually allowed to enter. Ahead of the guy who was waiting and tediously spamming for over an hour.
I was alone again and continued to try to enter. After many tries, I finally got in.
An hour and 5 minutes later.
Please fix this.
Unconceivable, Unbelievable
Posted: March 21, 2014 Filed under: General | Tags: ADL, Behemoth, Limbus, Mythic, PLD, THF 4 CommentsThis past week or so has been runaway awesome and I have no idea of where to start.
Our ADL group has been kicking some serious ass. Every session, we’re all walking away with Marrows and some of us with 100’s to sweeten the deal. WAR, WAR, BLU, BRD, COR, SCH has worked wonderful.
I ended up getting my 5th Marrow and preceded to upgrade my Mandau, which found it’s way to i119 very quickly.
We’re all now to the point where we are selling our Marrows and making a killing. It’s wonderful. Everyone’s pulling their own weight and we’re having a great time goofing off on Skype.
I hit 100,000 Ichor this week and exchanged it for Balrahn’s Eyepatch, which got turned in right away. A few friends still need Ichor, so I’ll probably be accruing more than I need, just in case I got mental and decide to ever do another Mythic.
My friend Wolo got his Gjallarhorn this week and now I’m helping him work on his trials. The first session saw me walking away with about 2.5 Million gil in drops for my time. Not bad, right? Dynamis-Jeuno was never this much fun.
I ended up returning to CS Apollyon II this week, wanting to work on getting that darned Patentia Sash. Well, guess what? It finally dropped tonight… along with the Sortiarius Earring. On the same run. WTF.
I was feeling lucky. So I hit up Upper Jeuno to scan the bazaars, figuring I’d scoop up any affordable Alexandrite. I saw a Savory Shank for 3.5 Million and started thinking. Square’s on the 9th Login Campaign out of 11 planned. It has been and most likely never will be this cheap or easy to gun for a Defending Ring… If I wanted a reasonable shot at this thing, I had 2 months to do it.
Okay, I said to myself, let’s start throwing some muscle at it and hopefully it will —
Holy fuck, Indeed!
New Beginnings
Posted: March 13, 2014 Filed under: General | Tags: AA, ADL Leave a commentDid some KS99s earlier in the week to help a friend try to get his Black Belt items. Strider Boots dropped for someone else. The guy who usually gets everything. Hah.
AA group finally hit another milestone: the last of our static finally got his Felistris Mask. This puts an end to our need to double up on AA MR fights every time we get together, allowing us to do other AA fights or even try the others.
I ended up getting the Anahera Saber from AA HM and it’s… a really nice offhand for BLU! I took the opportunity to dust mine off and play around on it I have to run out and farm up all of the new Adoulin spells, along with a few missing oddities. I started working on upgrading the AF and relic, since BLU’s AF/Relic is pretty powerful stuff for the job.
Our regular ADL group saw some issues the other night and it was decided to disband it for now. Not really wanting to sit at 3/5 Marrows for my Mandau, I took it upon myself to form a new static. We ended up putting together a team of what we felt was the bare minimum. All of the members were really proactively and reliable in the old ADL group, so we weren’t worried about carrying anymore dead weight (a problem with the former group).
Our inaugural run saw us going 3/5 on ADL, with a total of 4 Marrows dropping. Our team is WAR, WAR, BLU, BRD, COR, and 1 SCH & 1 WHM alt. We seemed to do really well until Terror landed on us like a brick wall on both of our losses. The BLU’s Sudden Lunge is invaluable in a lowman setup like this.
So for our first run in the new lineup, we ended up getting Marrows for everyone but one member and had a great time. Not bad for 2 hours of work.
I’ve been really terrible about taking pictures lately in game. I’ll try harder to remember from now on.
Marching Along
Posted: March 7, 2014 Filed under: General | Tags: AA, ADL, Mythic, Salvage, Skirmish, Voidwatch Leave a commentWow. It’s been quite some time since my last entry. Some days, I struggle with the idea of posting “Did Salvage. Got Alex. Turned it in. Did something else, got something. Then called it quits for the night.”
Obviously, I don’t want to be super repetitive, but I’m in the long stretch now for my mythic. It’s going to take some time until I’m on the other side of the tunnel. We’re sitting at 3/4 of the Ichor done, almost 1/3 of the Alexandrite turned in, and about 1/2 of the Assaults relogged by this point. It will be pretty cool to finish up the Einherjars and Assaults, freeing up some additional time through the week. The Alexandrite will get there when it gets there, but I can floor it occasionally to help speed up the process. 135,000 NNI tokens isn’t that bad when I can walk out of each run with 10,000-15,000+ points.
Outer Ra’Kaznar Skirmish
My friends and I have done some more of the new Outer Ra’Kaznar Skirmish and we’ve figured it out well enough to clear the secondary objective painlessly. Some general tips on the NMs in case someone’s googling for them:
Dullahan – Keep this guy enfeebled and it seems to prevent him from doing his most damaging attacks. Have your DDs fight him from his backside when possible.
Ironclad – Don’t use any magic or skillchain on him to help prevent Ballistic Kick and encumberment status. All DDs should coordinate to weaponskill at the same time to prevent skillchains and drop him quickly.
Yeti – When his stone aura goes off, someone needs to weaponskill him from the back to disable it.
Chapuli – Weaponskill at the same time like the Ironclad NM. This allows you to bring him down quicker.
Pudding – Avoid this SOB with most group setups. It’s not worth the hassle.
The other NMs really have nothing special going on to note. Just kill them ASAP and use your head.
Your first Noetic should be used to gamble on fenestral fragments. Since you’ll have 0 at that point, the chance of losing any amount doesn’t hurt you at all. You do get the chance to get up to 12 for nothing if you’re lucky, though.
Hopefully this will help someone looking for assistance on getting started with Outer Ra’Kaznar Skirmish.
Other Stuff
We’ve done some post-update Voidwatch. I ended up finally getting Anhur Robe. Lawlz.
AA static finally got another Felistris Mask this past week. One more and the usual group will all be fitted with them. Then we can focus on the other fights a little more. Getting pretty burnt out on doing 2x MR every session and walking away with nothing of interest. The gil I get is nice, but there’s drops to be had from the other fights!
ADL group is pounding along. Our recent addition of a BLU to help keep ADLs stun-locked is working out really well. Some of us have been farming pops outside of the standard group sessions. Now we’ve walking out of ADL runs with 6-8 marrows a night. This is pretty cool and helping keep people more motivated and… at least slightly more on task. Unfortunately, there will always be outliers when you give them enough slack to dissapoint.
I’ll Have To Double Up On Meals
Posted: February 21, 2014 Filed under: General | Tags: AA, Assault, PLD, Skirmish, Trusts Leave a commentMonday night we decided to try out lowman Delve. We did some brainstorming and decided to try the derp party method of MNK, MNK, MNK, BRD, SCH, and WHM. We did 2 attempts at Tojil. The first time, we timed out. The second, we wiped at 30% and called it quits.
Overall, it went pretty well considering that all 3 MNKs rarely play the job. With some tweaking, it’s definitely doable.
We did some more AAs this week with the static. We ended up toppling a Very Difficult AA Mithra, but did the others on Difficult. I got an Agitator’s Collar finally off the Galka.
We did one ADL this week. This time, we brought along a BLU to spam Sudden Lunge. This helped a LOT and made the fights a cakewalk. We went 4/4, despite not picking the correct split on every pop the first time. I got my first Marrow to put towards my Mandau. Looking forward to more easy ADLs!
I’ve been working on my Assault relogs for Mythic. I’m already almost 1/5 done.
We checked out the new Skirmish zone last night. It’s a hell of a lot more fun than Yorcia Weald, being more similar in style to Rala. You have to run from room to room killing NQ and HQ mobs. They all drop points that go towards the goal amount. We went in with a really weird job lineup and cleared the primary objective, but didn’t have enough time to clear the second. One of the HQ mobs is a pudding that we couldn’t do much dmg to with the jobs we took, so we had a THF kite it around while we killed other mobs.
I decided to take a shot at some beetle blood from Suzaku, so I went up to sky real quick the other day to farm pops. I got lucky and got two pops from one round of Brigandish Blade and Faust, which I was able to obtain right away. Suzzy is a pushover now and I could fight her head on straight through Chainspel. Unfortunately, I didn’t get beetle blood (a ~25% droprate supposedly) from either pop.
The new lineup of Trust NPCs feature some pretty solid cutscenes that harken back to previous interactions with them. I haven’t done the prerequisite quest to obtain Gadalar, so I’ll have to get on that sometime. My favorite out of this round is likely going to be Ulmia, who will sing Marches pretty consistently.
Prische was pretty entertaining. She’s getting ready to be a beautiful bride…
Ulmia was reluctant and not very entertaining.
I discovered that I had forgotten to obtain Volker previously, so I got that done.
And then I went after Iron Eater.
I eat up the old XI storylines like candy, so these cutscenes were a real treat.
Sorry for the lack of updates this week.
Corsets For Everyone!
Posted: February 14, 2014 Filed under: General | Tags: AA, bonanza, Dynamis, Salvage Leave a commentSince ADL was cancelled Monday night, we decided to work on Apademak horns for Shui’s D harp. Apa is a cakewalk with current era gear, naturally. It’s so weird because it wasn’t that long ago that my friends helped me slaughter him for my Almace 90. A followup session Thursday night proved to be enough to get Shui’s Daurdabla to 90. Now we have a 3 song BRD for AAs!
Speaking of AAs, our group is getting pretty solid at them. We’re rarely seeing issues in Difficult fights and have even replaced a real player on WHM with an alt being dualboxed. With a 3 song BRD and a 2nd relic RNG being upgraded this week, we should be plowing through the fights now.
Earlier in the week, we did back to back Difficult AA MRs and ended up with pretty much the same loot pool after both. They looked something like this:
So disappoint! We’ve yet to see another Mask so far. At least I finally got a Patricius Ring off the Elvaan. It’ll help on the MR fights from now on. That cat is evasive as fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
I did some Zhayolm Remnants IIs this week to farm up the 45 for Skadi’s Cuirie +1. It took a few runs but I got it. Overall, I don’t enjoy Zhayolm Remnants II because you don’t get most of your gear till the last couple of floors and the Alexandrite from it seems low compared to Arrapago II.
With the acquisition of my Cuirie +1 and some work on upgrading my THF AF to 119, my THF’s TP set is pretty damn fierce now. Obvious upgrades to go from here are 119’ing my Mandau (soon…), a Patentia Sash, and getting a better offhand dagger. At this point, Izhiikoh is the best offhand dagger to use. So there’s some goals for THF!
I ended up using a permit or two to help my friend get his Cuirie 45 as well so he can work on the +1. There was no way he could solo Zhaylom on any of his jobs.
A Dynamis Sandoria run the other night went so well I decided to exit and hit the sack by the time I exceeded 250 coins. I figured it was good enough to just call it. I haven’t found much time at the end of each night to do Dynamis very often. Sucks, because it’s great gil for the time investment.
I didn’t win anything higher than a Rank 4 prize in the current Mog Bonanza. All went as expected. I’m undecided on what to pick on Fox’s R4 marble still. A skillup item, maybe?
You can finally get Naja’s cipher from the current login campaign. She does a bunch of MNK JAs and uses Peacebreaker. I don’t think I’ll be using her a lot, but I’ll most likely drag her out and kill her a bunch sometime. 🙂
Square posted another video trailer, this one for the upcoming February update:
Things I’m excited about:
-I hope new Skirmish doesn’t put me to sleep, They’re adding another tier of power for the weapons and the red armor sets are going to be upgradeable, but at the cost of our current augments. Mixed emotions, but progress is always good in the end.
-Delve can be 6-manned, so I can finally farm Airlixirs and get the boss drops I’m missing now.
-New RUN abilities may or may not be enough to get me to level it to at least 49 as a sub for PLD.
-Waltzes being adjusted. Oh fucking finally.
-Relic upgrades. I’m hoping our current augments are kept (the ones that enhance JAs). We’ll see!
-New Adoulin missions. I really need to get on these, but I need to allocate time for them somewhere…
So, overall, I’m really looking forward to this upcoming update. Square’s been on a roll with XI, making it really attractive to keep playing the game.
O Captain! My Captain!
Posted: February 11, 2014 Filed under: General | Tags: Mercenary, Mythic Leave a commentI logged in tonight to find out that our usual ADL run was cancelled. Our group leader was too sick to play and went ahead and called it. This gave me the perfect opportunity to jump right into Demolition Duty and finish my last Assault for Captain.
Demolition Duty tasks you with guiding an automaton to wreckage around the islands to have it clear them out. You’ve got to simply defeat any enemies that spawn to keep the automaton safe so it can perform it’s duty. You can actually Aeolian Edge mobs next to the wreckage to do additional damage to them.
So with this one in the bag, I ran off to Whitegate to get my Captain Wildcat badge. This was most likely the easiest and quickest promotion “quest” out of all of them and I’m glad to finally get started on my Burtgang “for real.” Now I have to wait for Japanese midnight to initiate the first quest and clear it right away, then I can start storing Alexandrite on the NPC.
I’ll write about more shenanigans again soon.
Adventures in the Wasteland 