Final Fantasy XI Then...

[talizker]

Got any tips for a starting out BLM? I'm only lvl 5 at the moment, try to just grind my way to about 10 before I enter Horutoto Ruins to do my mission I was given.

As D says, use the Auction House to see what BLM spells are available at your level and you really do need them all. At Lv5 thats would be Stone, Poison, Blind and Water. Using Blind will reduce the mobs attacks while Poison will give the mob Damage Over Time (DoT) then use a combination of Melee (likely with Wand) and a few nukes. As BLM you want to be taking Easy Prey > Decent Challenge and nothing really above. Also, buy the best Def equipment you can afford. At Lv7 you can get Bind which will hold the mob out of melee range for a time enabling you to cast without getting hit.

I found 7-10 solo as BLM the hardest of all the jobs I have leveled - stick with it, check the level of the mobs your fighting and you'll soon be at Lv10 were you'll likely get away from your solo hell into the party hell that is Valkurm Dunes. If you can get a party from mid teens in Korroloka Tunnel then that is an awesome place to level instead of Valkurm.

By the way, what is your name in FFXI and did you get a Pearl yet?

[talizker]

Last nights CoP was another solid performance and I can't wait to move on. Looks like sone CS's then an easy uncapped NM fight in Misareaux Coast before more CS's then finally onto the BIG one in Sealions Den.

How are people for sorting the Misareaux Coast thing in the next day or two so we can set a date for the Sealions Den.

*excitement* ^_^

[Tobal]

Should only take 20mins to do the uncapped nm and that includes traveling.

Also got myself relic hand -1, which means I can upgrade my relic hands to +1 for 1 or 2 extras point on each stat!!

Been working on my alchemy again, took it from 52.8 to 53.5 for breakeven, gonna finish it off to 60 for sure then see what the prices are like for 60-70.

[talizker]

I just need one more Staging point now which I will hopefully get sorted tonight. Hopefully we can organise some more Assault later in the week for the two areas I haven't done yet.

Tsing - Tobal and I just need you to make the call on when you want to do the BCNM30.

Rare - shall we try and sort out those ENM30's this week sometime? Do you know when/if Vani and Moot are available. I'm thinking of going as RDM as I am just re-sorting Lv30 equipment ready for the BCNM30. Any others interested in the ENM30's???

[Tsingtao]

Ace last night, anothre step closer to sea! I'm off doing my CSes right now, am going to try to solo the 3 NMs will report back later.

I'm free on Wednesday and Thursday night this week. I suggest we could do BC30 and a dry run / first try at 6-4 on Wednesday with Thursday as the back up night if we get muredered.

Thinking about the mammets for the opening part of that fight I've had an idea. There are 5 mammets to be fought and sleep will not stick so here's what I though.

mammet 1 - Tobal + Darwock
mammet 2 - Wedge
mammet 3 - talizker
mammets 5 + 5 - Tsingtao

Mosley stays free and heals, idea would be to free up our highest DDs as fast as possible so. So Tobal and D work together, means Tobal subbing WAR then help talizker then take one from me, then my second then clean up from wedge as he is by far our best kite.

How does that sound?

[Darwock]

What a manic weekend, had a lot to do before my first dynamis run on saturday, got another book to write (best way to spend a monday morning). After tobal's warning about multple dynamis deaths on friday I desperately needed an xp buffer, so I spent friday night in a manaburn party (top nuker again!) in bibiki bay and hauled in 18,000 experience points.. also took me over the 62,000 conquest points I would need for the federation aketon.. I was very worried about how I was gonna get enough points for that as conquest parties are very thin on the ground these days. I'm not touching my CP until rank 10 now, no more empress band charges or reraise scrolls.

Then after reading the guidelines at dynacore I realised I was gonna have to un-gimp my rdm sub (only 1K into level 33 with my main at 70) as I didn't want to rock the boat by taking an 'unapproved' sub to my first event. I started soloing RDM in rolanberry fields while trying to get an ENM-Holla together on the LS, during that I got a party invite which took me 1K into 34 before it broke up.. at that point we had already had 6 volunteers for the ENM but a couple of people had mysteriously logged off - then at the last moment Meric (who had offered to tank) told us he couldn't tank it solo... I was losing hope but shouted up a SMN to help us, and Elite was prepared to do what Meric wasn't so we finally got the thing off the ground. Daviravi's first trip into Promyvion as well. That's the first Promy excursion where i've sort of had to take the lead, I was really cacking it as we weren't exactly a group of veterans and I still don't really know the way, to be honest I thought we were doomed. We made it to the spire with no trouble - problem was Davi didn't have the key item. We did it with 5 people and still managed to pull off the win, really sorry for Davi, but at least he's a bit more familiar with Promyvion now. That gave me 2K still to find, luckily I still had the spice gals quest available so I rushed off to Riverne #B01 and grabbed some Rivernewort, used the xp scroll and that left me with 900xp to get. Decided I'd better get stoneskin & phalanx for later, very glad I did so as those two spells made soloing the last 900xp a piece of cake, I felt totally invincible lol, was taking on DC goblins without a second thought. Almost enough to get me enthused about rdm (but not quite). Managed to get 12 xp points into level 35 at 18:30pm, just as the dynamis group started forming up in windurst. Result!

Dynamis itself then - just awesome. I got handed my perpetual hourglass and went straight in, and it was already a full scale battle when I arrived. I was totally confused by what I saw, I'd heard talk of blue eyed icons, red eyes, seismostomp, summoners, avatar icons etc... all I saw was just bedlam! Loved the atmosphere though, and as I got to grips with it I have to say I also loved the challenge, and loved the execution. Those guys deserve praise for being so well organised. As I said to tal it was like a military exercise.. more like how I imagined besieged would be with dedicated mage parties, tank parties etc. My job was to get up front with the other mages and nuke the incoming idols that spawn hordes of beastmen, they would all run past us in pursuit of the puller and into the tank parties behind us. From what I'd read I believe I was also supposed to take a hand in keeping the beastmen asleep, but as it was all a little bewildering I decided to stick to what I was doing until I got told otherwise. That was a problem as at one point we got told to switch to -ga spells, only nobody ever said "stop using -ga spells" - so silly me dropped a big bomb on a whole ton of yagudo and nearly got ripped to pieces. Dunno why that worried me though, numerous deaths were to follow anyway. Our blm party was wiped out completely several times.. mijin gakure etc. I always got R3 though so no complaints about it. Died a few times when nuking PLD & THF mobs that had 2hr'd, it became apparent that was because the 'off-tanks' weren't really doing their job properly - not that I would have known but someone else got killed after doing one WS on a sleeping mob and started having a go at them. The last death I took was to the mega-boss, he used that seismostomp skill and flattened me (and dozens of others) in one go. They beat him, I got raised, and got the clear - was told that's by far the hardest of the cities to win so really glad it's already out of the way! I saw some BLM AF drop too. Drool.

[Tobal]

We have 1 problem, Mosely! As Smn he could use carby to tank a mob and provide some type of curing but I think that would lead to healing problem?s when we fight the weapons, so whm I think has to be way. Its also suggested melee should use /nin subs which would lesson the burden for the weapons fight, so wedge and I should sub nin. I reckon I should be able to hold hate fine with my soboro+sushi with out provoke and is worth the test in the dry run. We all go into the fight with 1 yellow drops each.

As for the weapon fights, im sure you?ve read about pld using a eva setup for the first weapon(because it normal hit stun) and normal tanking for the second, so it might be best to borrow scorpion harness and couple of earring/rings from rare \(^o^)/. During the fight tali would debuff/support, mos on whm full curing and darwock using lightening spells. Wedge and myself using shadows, once they drop we move out the way and reapply and then engage again. If wedge doesn?t have nin sub, whm will have to, just reapply stoneskin/blink at every chance.

[Tsingtao]

Yeah I had seen aboutt he evasion set up its one of the reasons I've been getting some gil together. Got 4 million at the moment but if I could loan one will make my life much easier.

I suggest we take it on fully geared on the dry run and if things look promising at the end of the first weapon we go for it. I'm going to bring a CCB polymer pump at least and all the usual junk.

[Darwock]

I'm confused, what comes next is it weapons or mammets?

By the way at 60 cap I don't have either thunder III or thundaga II, are you sure I should be using lightning spells as they will be weak in comparison to my best nukes.

ENM30 - I would like to do it but Holla will most likely be out of the running still, also the job I have for it depends on a) whether I have beaten Maat and b) what everyone else is taking. So I may not be suitable.

Assault - I still need Periqia and Ilrusi so yes please to both of those. I have to go back to Arrapago for a couple of things so if you want company Tal let me know.

As for these CCB polymer things, I thought we had to farm up chips first? Let me say now, I absolutely cannot afford to buy one. Maybe if we'd done the bowyer ring I could, but I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel already to get enough to buy our groups elem torque. I've had a gray chip in my mog locker for a while in anticipation of getting the other 2.

[Tobal]

6-5 is 3 fights in a row.

Mamments x5 then,
Weapon x1 then,
Weapon x1

In 45mins, we get a short break in between to raise the dead, heal up.

Ideally we should have 2 ccb per weapon fight(120-150k right now, so 1 nights farming), which would give us a full minute of stunned state when the weapon?s go bonkers with TP moves near the end of there HP. We could farm chips but its going to long and painful to get 3 chips.

AM Burst is the most destructive move outside a 2hr you can hit these Weapons with, as the machines, so weak to lightening. 1 thing in out favour is the weapons do not have regen, so if we wipe there HP doesn?t regen, so a useful tactic is to have the ES+Burst while your weak and of course Dot spells!

[talizker]

Assault - I still need Periqia and Ilrusi so yes please to both of those. I have to go back to Arrapago for a couple of things so if you want company Tal let me know.

Unless anything else important is going on I will be heading back to Arrapago tonight to get the Ilrusi Atoll Staging Point. Plan is to go via Dvucca Isle Staging Point so I don't need to obtain another key (which I can't do solo of course). I did both the Job Quests in Arrapago, what else are you upto in that zone D? anything I may want to do also?

...and yeah, company would be great ^_^

[talizker]

Oh yeah, I understand there is a tricky NM fight to get the map for Caedarva Mire. Do any of you guys still need that as I do!!!

I think one of the other ToAU zones is also a NM fight for the map (can't remember which atm - doah!). Would like to get this map sorted as well as finding your way round the new zones is kind of tricky!

[Tobal]

i need all the maps still, so count me in.

[Darwock]

Right Sunday's fun for posterity - started with another manaburn behind the gates of Halvung on Mt Zhayolm, really messy start as one of our BLMs persisted in doing everything wrong. We used auto translate for everything but despite that he was casting sneak instead of invis (got half of us killed), running west instead of east etc. Turned out he was also wearing 2x evasion+ earrings (mythril), an agility+ belt, level 50 conquest gear and not even a trace of AF (hairpin on his bonce) other than the fact he was using the AF wand instead of a staff. Then when we got started he ate sushi O_o I'm not a fan of criticising other peoples equipment choices normally, but...

This was a different manaburn to normal, no sleeping involved just -ga III when the mob gets in range (flans). Got 17K in no time at all, left me just short of capping out level 70 and ready for Maat. Oh yeah I was 3rd place this time ( ; ; ) behind the 2 level 71s, they were using blizzaga III and I was stuck with Firaga III, no fair. lol

7pm I joined a Phomiuna Aqueducts party - 10 people in 2 groups of 5. I went in early to do my usual and check Mahisha, got caught out by a stegotaur in the last dangerous room and died. My party said they would come raise, to give you an idea of how well it went, I had 3 mins remaining on my raise timer before they reached me. I ran to the area and f&*k me the mahisha was there.. I then basically had to watch in despair as over the course of the next hour or so the other members of the alliance dropped dead one by one at the start of the zone, the squabbling started, people left to come back as white mage and never returned, d/c'd etc etc. We were left with our 5, no tank and a BLU/NIN who was convinced he could tank it. We had got the two subligar and cleared the room of stegotaurs with no difficulty so decided to give it a shot, and inevitably wiped. One member just HPs and disbands without a word. Started asking for LS help (must have been around 10pm) and Xandman and Rabs started to head out, but then our party whm d/c'd and never came back. You all know the story from there - tobal/tsing/saerik decided to help out, due to various screw ups got delayed and it started to overlap with our BCNM. Sorry about that but given all the ****e that had led to that point, it would have been madness to walk away without trying when we had 6 people stood in front of it ready to fight.

Fought it, killed it, no drop. I'd have been really f&*king pissed off if the night had ended there, but luckily the moblin BC was great. Invincible failed to pull hate once again and I think I had all the moblins on me from the kick off - god knows how, but I somehow survived the entire fight that way apart from a brief respite when Mosley's blood pact landed. It was the first time where I've hit manafont just so I could cure myself through the battering, changed my mind at the last second cos the team did a superb job keeping me alive, so was able to drop an AM on the Bugbear instead. Gutted I went for freeze instead of flare, was instinctive cos of all the 50 cap fights we've done but we could have done it even quicker if I'd used my head... as it was we still broke the record ^^

[hudson]

By the way, what is your name in FFXI and did you get a Pearl yet?

My FFXI is hoolak. I got given a linkpearl by somebody, which lets me enter their shell.. can I use that in some way? if not where do I get one? THanks for the info by the way.