Final Fantasy XI Then...

[vwilsonuk]

Wireless networks always give me hassle. Just this morning I turn on my computer and it won?t connect at all (and neither would my PSP). Check the Router settings and see that somehow overnight my 128-bit WEP encryption has been disabled. Completely baffled me how this could happen seeing as though no one had been anywhere near the router in between it working and not working.

Wireless routers seem quite odd for that. Tsing has had quite a few problems with a machine turning itself on since he installed his wifi router, even now it has encryption on it. His seems to seize up every once in a while, and now I have one too that does the same. I'll turn on my laptop and it won't be able to tell that the network is there (or it'll pick up a network too weak to connect to), I can bounce the lappy, remove the card and it makes no difference. I can even turn the router on and off quickly with no difference (and the lights on the router suggest it should be working all the while). Only when I turn it off for a minute or so does it start working again.

No encryption on mine yet, need to sort that out >.<. Am quite impressed with this SuperG stuff though - 108Mbps, will be buying that for all my wifi peripherals in future.

What's the deal with these BCNM 20s then? I have WHM, BLM, RDM and now my Smithing is profit making I should have MNK in a few weeks too.

[C']

Wireless routers seem quite odd for that. Tsing has had quite a few problems with a machine turning itself on since he installed his wifi router, even now it has encryption on it. His seems to seize up every once in a while, and now I have one too that does the same. I'll turn on my laptop and it won't be able to tell that the network is there (or it'll pick up a network too weak to connect to), I can bounce the lappy, remove the card and it makes no difference. I can even turn the router on and off quickly with no difference (and the lights on the router suggest it should be working all the while). Only when I turn it off for a minute or so does it start working again.

This sounds very similar to the issue I have with 2 other computers on my network. Half the time they work but the rest they just seem to drop completely. Moot?s computer is slightly different in that the network drops from the list of available networks completely then will reappear at random intervals and connect then go again. The other computer always seems to know the network is there but when it isn?t connected keeps telling that the signal is too weak and that I will have ?limited connectivity? (which always translates as no connectivity -_-.

But my computer and the PSP never have any connectivity issues at all

My knowledge of these things is somewhat limited at best. It can?t be anything to do with distance from the router as in terms of physical space between them, both computers are closer than mine is and I?ve even taken the PSP halfway down the street and still picked up a connection (which is what made me realise perhaps an encryption key would be a good idea ). It must be something to do with some settings on the 2 PCs but I don?t really know what.

Something that does concern me is that when I highlight the Wireless icon in the system tray it gives the details of the connection (Name, Speed etc) but also says ?Acquiring Network Address?? and does this forever.

[Darwock]

I use a thing called a linksys wireless gaming adapter for my PS2.. I have a superb linksys router so I thought this thing would do the job, but in actual fact it refuses to work unless SSID is broadcast and there is no WEP key specified i.e. it's a piece of crap.

My solution to the total lack of security that resulted from this was to use MAC filtering, which is about as solid as you'd want for a home network really. It doesn't sound like any of these problems you're having stem from WEP keys etc, but if they do you could always try taking it off and using MAC filtering instead.

[C']

Hmmm, earlier in the week I expressed my annoyance at having emergency maintenance on Sunday evening which pretty much scuppered our first Promyvion attempt. However S-E have announced the reason for the interruption and can be found here:

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news5505.shtml

Have to eat my words from earlier and applaud S-E for the swift action they took to resolve this issue. The implications of a tool that allows a player to change their job anywhere are immense and I shed no tears for the 600 accounts that get action taken against them.

[Tsingtao]

Post on the thoughts on the BCNM 20 runs, spoiler wrapped as this details exactly our intentions on taking this as well as drops and tactics.

->Open Spoiler<-

The NM 20 runs at the moment require 2 RDM/NIN and a NIN/WAR for the run as far as I understand. The actual BCNM been taken on is the Crustacean Conundrum which we think is a gauranteeed drop for the mannequin body (about 800k). My understanding on this one is there are 3 crabs that have very high def and limit you to 0 or 1 damage. The RDMs are there to take down the smaller crabs using en spells, probably 1 damage per hit and I think the minor crabs have 25hp. The NIN tanks the main crab (35 hp) using a vulcan sword for added enfire and probably a high speed weapon in the off hand. Once the little crabs go down everyone takes the main.

[talizker]

Right, time to start thinking about my next challenge. AF3 - Defeating Miser Murphy in Fei'Yin and Guardian Statue in Garlaige Citidel...

Has anyone tackled these before?

What I really need to know in the first instance is can we do these with a LS party as per the recent Coffer Key hunts or are we talking Alliance time?

[C']

Moot did Miser Murphy back when he was Cesarion so should be able to give you some pointers regarding it?s difficulty. I?ve never battled it myself but I do recall Cesarion had the quest activated when he went to do 5-1 and his group (who were 50-60) were hit hard by it and had to zone (some died).

He never realised Miser Murphy would spawn as soon as he entered Fei?Yin.

[Tsingtao]

In my experience in Davoi the 2 NM fight was quite straight forward with a party of 5, 75 RNG, 75 RDM, 75 NIN, 66 WHM, 60 PLD. We wiped them out quickly and with little danger. I'd say it can be done in the LS if Wedge, Tobal and Bayan can turn out or we get a 10 player show from everyone else.

[talizker]

I'll have a chat with Moot in the next day or two and see what he says. I'm hoping we can go down the LS route, especially for Fei'Yin, as forming any kind of Alliance to go there is not at all easy, especially when it is not likely to be required by many people.

I will try and organise this for sometime next week. I haven't seen Bayan on recently, i'm asuming he's on holiday or something - does anyone know when he will be back?

[vwilsonuk]

Something that does concern me is that when I highlight the Wireless icon in the system tray it gives the details of the connection (Name, Speed etc) but also says ?Acquiring Network Address?? and does this forever.

Do you have some kind of MAC address restrictions on the wifi router (so it only gives network addresses to machines it recognises)? Or is DHCP turned off with the two devices that work using pre-configured IP addresses.

Don't know much about it but would look at these two options. Also check they're all configured to use the same variant of the 802.11(?) protocol - I've seen routers claim they will do both at the same time but lower the speed to the lowest common denominator, or do other equally random sh!t. Mine, for example, has an option to run superG or slow to the lowest device connected, but even with a superG card in my laptop it tries to run at 54Mbps. I have to force the router to operate only at 108Mbps and exclude all other clients to actually get both the router and the pcmcia card (which came in the same box) to talk at their maximum speed.

[Darwock]

OK recap of the weekends events:

Yesterday I went to investigate my next mission - when i arrived at the location there were two tarutarus recovering from death - they had just attempted to get through the gate and been defeated by a bunch of NMs. They invited me to join for the second attempt. Perfect timing! So we had two black mages, one white mage. The plan was for the white mage to trigger the 4 NMs with sneak up, then try to pull one back for us to fight. It didn't go that smoothly - he died on the attempt, but the 2 of us were able to get another one isolated and tried to keep it asleep while the white mage's reraise weakness wore off. I think it took us somewhere between 10-15 minutes to actually kill the thing after that - we were alternating ancient magic so getting MP was the challenge. A few hairy moments as well as our sleeps were occasionally resisted. Great fun though! Next step of that mission involved Toraimarai canal and the Full moon fountain.

So today that was my plan, go into Toraimarai and check out the mission and my AF3. I found the fountain without too much trouble, then went back out to investigate AF3. Any budding black mages might want to avoid reading this, as it contains spoilers.

->Open Spoiler<-

The story is that something has been poisoning the Great Star Tree, so I was to go and check out the roots. The ministers gave me a 'sluice surveyor mk I' magic doll to help.

So after a short amount of time I found a ??? point. Clicked on it and the doll responded, kicked into life and said 'magic stagnation eradicated'. Hmmm. There must be more, so I kept looking. Found another ???. This time the doll beeped and said it had reached it's absorption limits, and needed a black mage's 'black power'. Well I was stumped by this. There was a slime next to the ???, so thinking back to my Eco-warrior days I thought maybe this needed killed. Not very hopeful though as it was only rated as DC. Anyway I killed that which also took ages, but kept getting the same message. On with the search.

Next thing I came to was the roots of the tree itself. There were four notorious monsters in amongst the roots (also slimes). I put 2 + 2 together and made 5 - but you know, poisoned roots and notorious slimes make for obvious conclusions. So just like my Jammer leeches faux-pas, I attacked one, burst landed for 300 or so and the health bar wasn't dented at all. Warped out fairly certain those were not the correct monsters.

I figured black mage's black power had to be some kind of item that i was to trade with the second ???. Probably dropping off the real NM I had to fight. I was pretty pissed off with the vagueness of it though and had been discussing it with Rare. He wanted to go into the canal, so he offered to help me scout around in exchange for opening the sealed portal.

We hadn't been in long when a large group of players ran past us - I checked and there was a 58 BLM amongst them, so I asked and they confirmed they were doing the same quest. They then went very quiet though so I just kept looking around, neither me nor Rare had a map so we both got pretty lost.

Picked up aggro off a crab I had to deal with - Rare arrived just in time to help me out with that. Then the other party responded to ask how far I'd gotten with the quest. I explained where I was stuck and they said I need to activate manafont before clicking the ??? ><

Then told me to hurry up or I'd miss the main event. Blimey, hadn't even realised I was invited. So it all got a bit stressful, as I tried to find my way back to the ??? and then rush to meet them. After the ??? and halfway there, I stopped for sneak, and we both heard several bats squeaking as I did so. No sign of anything coming though so I thought it was a false alarm. Rounded the next corner and got destroyed by several bats, pugils and I think a couple of crabs and possibly some leeches too.

Someone from their group came and raised me, and I immediately sneaked, but something happened and as I ran after them (with the main fight already in progress) I was met by a train of leeches coming in the other direction who instantly hit me despite sneak. I have no idea what was going on. Died at the top of some stairs, where I watched Rare handle a single leech that soon became two leeches, then two leeches and a slime ><

He finished fighting them just as the alliance finished killing the quest NM. They were Japanese so I wasn't sure what was happening but I then found myself fgetting tractored face down through the dirt for half the distance of the canal, until we were all together at the final ??? so it was apparent they were willing to go a second time.

Ok this fight was UTTER BEDLAM. It was a dark elemental, but not long after we started, a bunch of fallen knights appeared in the area and homed straight in on us as well. The elemental was throwing out sleepga's left right and centre, at one point while I was helplessly asleep and having my MP aspir'd out I watched Rare get reduced to double figure HP before getting cured at the last second. Since the quest had robbed me of my 2hr all I could do was add a couple of -ga's onto the various mobs and then hope for the best.

They cleared it though! Thank god, I would not want to be repeating that for the world. It was messy, I couldn't solve the puzzle and I was pretty useless in the fight but at least it's over.

Big thanks to the people who let us join in, and thanks to Rare for taking hits for me.

[C']

You know what I was thinking when I was fighting the first leech? I knew the other would link but at least the slime won't aggro me (as we'd run past several without any hitch).

WRONG!

My heart sank

I was straight back in there with Tobal, Moot and Apathye when you logged off to get moot a second Viking Axe and we got it second kill. However Apathye went into the harder area and ended up going afk in a 'safe spot'. Next thing we see, his HP goes from 666 down to 14 then 0. Apart from that (and a Moot death) it was a decent run and Moot now has both Viking Axes he needs (we saved him about 300k in all).

Also me, Tobal and Wedge just defeated the NM for San d'Oria mission 7-1. There had been talk of us trying to trio it but in the end we went as a group of 8 people (PLD, 2 BRD, 2 WHM, 2 SAM, NIN) and it was a crazy fight. Never in any real danger but it got a bit hectic at one point with me and Tobal taking some damage and hitting yellow HP. Due to the nature of the mob (which I won't go into) a PLD tank is recommended so I was able to try a damage dealing Ninja build with Tobal once again kindly donating me his Haubergeon and Ochiudo's Kote. With these beauties and the enhanced Darksday bonus from my Sairen I had STR+21 and Attack+57. I was eager to see what I could do.

The results I liked as despite not provoking and only using 4 debuffs at the start I took hate in the battle. Tobal even asked me to remove my Emnity+ gear which he thought I still had equipped but it had all been removed prior to the fight. Pure, Ninja damage

Certainly got me eager to try and work on a my own DD build NIN for events as needed.

Now back into Vana'diel I go. Hopefully we are finally going to attempt Promyvion tonight.

[Vanicent]

Promyvion Dem was successful. I think everyone has done that one now.

Anyway, I don't know about the rest of you, but I managed to get two screenshots.

Fighting the boss:



And me getting a lift home from Apa:



Thanks Short Stuff 8)

Look forward to another Promyvion later in the week.

[mikewl]

Congrats guys, its a great feeling when you emerge victorious from a Promyvion, makes you feel like you have passed a real test in skill in the game.

[talizker]

Yeah, congratulation to Promy party, Darwock for on the AF3 and R, T and W for 7-1

Here's how my weekend went...

Friday: 6-1 party that turned into a (late) 6-2 party. Rank 7 /cheer

Saturday: Ninja flag quest complete.

Sunday: Another one of my famous, patented, cr@p parties. Loads of time spent getting hardly any exp...

I really want to get to Lv60 before I start having a little fun with some of my sub jobs etc but Exping at the moment feels like such a chore ><

Really looking forward to the COP stuff as this will be a welcome break!

With the COP activities this week I will probably not try to get a AF3 party together until after that is complete.