Black Halo

I traded my chocobo egg to the stable NPC yesterday morning at 5 a.m., and I'm glad I did. It's nice being able to get updates when I arrive home from work or wake up at a sane hour on the weekends.

I

I don't think the pot expected this kind of reception.

popped on this morning to check the egg and maybe do guild points. I asked the linkshell about the Black Halo fight. Since there was a short maintenance due in two hours and everyone was bored, Otak organized a run for me. Quieren, Aimartaru, Zoner, Veresko, Otak and Q's bored friend Raivyn headed for Ro'maeve to kill the pot.

We had two deaths -- Q and Veresko -- on the way because we were killing stuff along the way and got into the Very Tough mobs and had some clustered together. Ouch. I raised them and we all used Sneak to get to the camp. Once they'd recovered, I popped the pot and we killed it fast. I now have a weaponskill I'll likely seldom use, unless it's to make Light with Neyla's Beastmaster.

Raivyn asked for help with a Corsair fight in the Maze of Shakrami, so with complete overkill we went to the door in the Argus room and popped a skeleton. That poor thing was reduced to powder in no time.

For shits and giggles, Quieren trained all the leeches in the opposite room. We even got a Carbuncle Ruby out of it. Ha!

Busted Up

Neyla

The quadav offers mustard for my corndog.

and I started in Beadeaux for today's coffer key hunt. It took us awhile to work our way to the camp near the Mute, but two other people were already there killing quadav. We moved to the small four-door intersection room, but it only took a few pulls before we got a nasty link and I had to Escape us. Neyla wanted me to let him die so we wouldn't have to walk all the way back, but it was too late.

The other two people had cleared out by the time we got to the first camp and we started clubbing turtles in relative safety. I had my Club of Trials with me; all those Light skillchains quickly worked off the latent effects. I switched over to the Morganstern at that point. The spiked ball is a lot more imposing and deadly-looking than that ridiculous metal corndog.

The key finally dropped, so we moved on to Castle Oztroja to farm a key he'll need for his Bard gear.

Another Red Mage, Jedimind, also was on his way to the top floor. We reached the trapdoor at the same time and the guy triggered it, dropping Neyla down below. We split and I managed to get a little lost, but we finally met up at the next door.

The top floor with all the coffer mobs was loaded with gilsellers for some reason. Trying to compete with them for mobs wasn't much fun, so we decided to drop into the open area with the Yagudo High Priest.

"People

Neyla admires the yagudo.

complain about the quadav," Neyola said, "but I think yagudo are tougher fighters." I believe him. He was constantly applying Stoneskin and casting to keep hate off me while we ground them down. Our visit was cut short by a link that brought four yagudo down on our heads, so I Escaped us while Neyla kept them occupied.

We didn't feel like climbing to the top again, so Neyla suggested Boyahda Tree to work off points. After the magical spamfest, clubbing Robber Crabs and Knight Crawlers to death sounded like a welcome respite. I called Paprika -- "Tarutaru hax!" Neyla accused -- and rode off past him.

The tree was a highway of familiar faces running upstairs to kill Fafnir while we were doing our thing. By the time we left, I'd worked off half the points for my Morganstern. A coffer key dropped near the end, giving us a nice 10k bonus. Better still, the day had given an extra 1500xp to my dwindling White Mage buffer.

The

It's not easy saying goodbye to Papa Paprika.

other major event of the day was Paprika's retirement. I'd planned to wait until after the next update, but his stats haven't improved much lately and I've been itching to start raising the egg from his "date" with Evildr's chocobo.

"Get ready for the tear-fest," I told Neyla. "I've heard stories about this cutscene."

Yeah, I got on the edge of misty-eyed. I was presented with flashbacks of Paprika's life before they shipped him off to the retirement farm, and it was startling to realize I'd been raising him from egg to adulthood for over three months. It kinda bummed me out that my daily interactions with him have ended, but at least I can still ride him when I use the whistle.

Down to the Wire

I'll be hitting 50 on Monk soon, so Neyla and I decided to go farm the coffer keys I'll be needing for my Artifact Armor quests. We decided to start in the Crawler's Nest, since he'll also be needing a key for Bard armor. I took my Club of Trials along so we could work on my Black Halo points. I don't know what sort of natural disaster was going on down in the ring-shaped exoray room, but I raised seven or eight people before we finally reached the Helm Beetle area.

My

Hexa Strike is a wonderful thing.

key dropped off the first beetle, which made me laugh. Neyla's dropped a little later. We were only in the nest thirty minutes.

We hit Garlaige CItadel after that. We helped some people get through the banishing gates to find a coffer -- I managed to get aggro from two Explosures and had to Sleepga them to stay alive -- and eventually the two of us moved down into the basement to kill bones, pots and ghosts. Neyla cracked me up by saying he didn't expect to keep hate once I unleashed Hexa Strike on the mobs. I got my key, but we still had about thirty minutes before I needed to leave for Limbus.

We killed more mobs and made Light Skillchains. I'd worked off 175 of the 300 points I need to remove the latent from the weapon, and we'll finish the job tomorrow or Friday when we go after the final key I need from Beadeaux.

Limbus was a somewhat disorganized affair today. Quieren and I talked about it, and obviously we need to adjust the gather time. We have too many people popping on ten minutes before we're supposed to leave Jeuno, which makes it almost impossible to plan a run effectively because we don't know who or what we have until the last minute.

I was on Veresko's team for the third floor of Temenos Central. There are groups of beastmen which have to be killed off to weaken their corresponding gods in the middle room. We had no problems with that part, but Veresko got disconnected just before we could start the boss pull. We gave him a couple minutes -- I told the mages to rest MP while we waited -- and he finally popped back on. I was relieved, as I had no clue if there was a proper order for killing the NMs other than saving the yagudo for last.

The

We're short on time.

actual boss fight went sour. We killed the Paladin NM, but there was some confusion about the next pull and we ended up wiping. We recovered, dusted ourselves off and waded back in. We fragged the White Mage NM and then followed up by going after the big yagudo Summoner.

This is the funny-tragic part. We were so down to the wire on time that we managed to kill the final NM in the very last second and got all the Ancient Beastcoins he drops... but then we got booted out before we could open the armory crate. We won... but technically we lost. I can't complain too much, because it really was an amazing rally.

"You guys realize," Veresko said as we were licking our wounds in the lobby, "that if I hadn't disconnected we would've had enough time to get the win, right?" We all told him not to beat himself up over it. Something else could just as easily have gone wrong. Shit happens.

We headed for the Dem crag to meet with the other team and pool the coins for distribution. Each of us walked away with three, so I'm satisfied. We'll have to do the fight again soon for the Ultima chip we need.

Return to the Caves

I got invited to a party in the Quicksand Caves, and I didn't have high hopes for it after checking the lineup. It was Paladin, Monk, Beastmaster, Corsair, Red Mage and Bard. Sunday's ENM had put me close to 49, so I figured I could at least get my level and a buffer if nothing else.

The

Antican mages are very brittle.

party impressed me, though. We were killing beetles and anticans with little effort, although there were some unfortunate deaths due to linking mobs. The Corsair acted as puller, and at one point he linked two Anticans. The Paladin grabbed the main target, but the COR didn't zone the other. Instead, he joined the fight and got nuked into oblivion by ancient magic. The linked antican despawned after it finished killing him.

It was odd partying with another Beastmaster. She did pretty well when she wasn't going afk or forgetting to put her pet on the prey. She's friends with the Bard, and they're a package deal. Neyla has been offering to pull me along with his Bard once he catches up to me -- a Bard is a great bargaining chip when it comes to leveraging party invites -- but seeing a Beastmaster do it makes me a sad panda.

I'm about 2000xp away from 50. I might push on to 52 before I stop, since I could equip Kung Fu Shoes and my T.M. Hooks+2. I'll worry about it later. I have to find a pair of Kung Fu Shoes first. They've been selling for 600k at the auction house, but there's only one set up for sale and the schmuck tried to jack up the price.

Deadlock

Neyla came over so we could beat Gears of War on Insane Difficulty. It's appropriately labeled, but after many many many many tries we managed to pull it off. I'll do the fight when Neyla gets his 360, since he'll need the Achievement... but probably never again.

After

Guess what? Mobs spawn here!

he went home, I logged on for Dynamis-Jeuno. Ajs had said Friday he'd be making a big announcement tonight, so I was a little underwhelmed to hear he's quitting the game at the end of December. Leadership of the linkshell most likely to fall into Gladdy's hands. I've been seriously considering leaving lolDynamis altogether, but I think I'll stick around a bit longer to see how it pans out.

If nothing else, I'm hoping he'll reverse the disquieting trend of putting people on the spot when they get a fair win on a relic lot. I was ready to start grinding my teeth when a piece of Red Mage gear dropped and Ajs offered the winner three million gil to pass it so Jescer could get it. Gladdy, Jescer and I all basically told Ajs to knock it off. Besides being extremely rude, it doesn't exactly create a welcoming atmosphere.

Jeuno wasn't a horrible run, though. It's been a long time since I've been there, and some of us were rusty. We'd cleared the palace and wandered back to Maat's area, but the leadership had forgotten to tell us to move out before all the mobs started repopping inside. I was the first to die, I think. I was more amused than anything else.

The auction house was worse. The pull didn't go well and our two Paladins died fast where we couldn't reach them. It didn't turn into a total wipe, but it came close. Damned close. Blancho went out to start pulling mobs so we could rescue them, but kinda forgot to make sure we had a living tank. Nobody knew who to assist, and it got ugly. Again, we managed... but Celvantes and Taurothar spent about forty minutes on the ground before we could raise them.

Not a Myth

Limbus was a clusterfuck today. We had twenty people, so we ended up making two teams to farm different zones. Neither of us won.

My team probably would've managed it, but Quieren pushed us too hard to get through the beastmen zone and wouldn't give mages time to recover MP. I was the only healer in the alliance, and it was so bad that we had people dying to Blaze Spikes.

"I know you have to save MP," Ikari said from the other party, "but is a Cure too much to ask?"

"Yes."

We

Pasuk gets some serious payback.

got to the top floor with all the goblins. I said I was ready to Carby-pull the mobs (the main reason I go /SMN in Limbus), but I guess nobody was paying attention because they charged in and started attacking. Our sleepers eventually got killed when the mobs started waking up. It was irritating.

On a far more positive note, the "Test Your Mite" static did a great job on Pasuk. After the last run, with our first loss, I wasn't sure how much could be attributed to the new mix of jobs we were using. I can now chalk it up to simple bad luck, because we kicked its exoskeletoned ass.

Better yet... the Woodsman Ring dropped. We've been doing that fight for months and seen countless Geist Earrings drop, but never the Woodsman. I'd started thinking it was just a myth. The 3000xp is the main reason I do the fight every week, but that ring will make for a nice little payday bonus.