Geared Up

I logged on for about ten minutes Thursday to handle my obligations to GhostWing, but otherwise spent the day away from Vana'diel.

Today

Neyla, Yawawa, Gauldeval and I kill Elder Goobues for xp.

was entertaining. Neyla and I hit Boyahda Tree to do some meriting and level our NPCs. I've decided to unlock Devotion next, and another session or two should do it. When that's done, I'm going to max out Beast Affinity. That ability, coupled with my Monster Gloves, will easily bump CourierCarrie to 75 and break the cap to bring FunguarFamiliar into the 70s for a better damage dealer pet when I have a dedicated tank.

Yawawa and Gauldeval hit 61, and Neyla suggested we do this a couple times a week until the NPCs reach 65. I'm all for it. I'm a little short on goals at the moment, so this is the sort of thing I need. My Monk is on semi-hold until the linkshell static is running and caught up (I say "semi-hold" because I'm still doing ENMs and XP scrolls with it, and will party if I get antsy enough) and should probably look for another job to level. The thought of tackling Summoner again has been knocking around in my head. It's the job I'd most like to have at 75 without doing the actual work of getting it there.

I had fun killing goobues, although we had two or three different people come up at assorted times and poach from our camp. It throws off the pop cycle when they do that, which makes finding a nice rhythm a lot harder. A Beastmaster was kiting Aquarius for 30-40 minutes, so I imagine he was stalling it until some friends came along for the axe.

After we finished up in the tree, I switched over to White Mage and tried to get a Florid Stone from the diremites in Nue's Tower. I didn't have any luck and had to leave for Dynamis.

We

They're not so scary when they're asleep.

did Bastok tonight, and I enjoyed myself well enough. The prospect of being able to log out and sleep instead of staying up until midnight was weighing on me because I kept thinking "One more week... one more week..."

I think everyone could've taken home a Relic Axe if they'd wanted, and we got a ton of relic gear. When it was over, we had four DRK, three MNK, two BST (which went to people who had the job in the 30s and 40s), two SMN, as well as individual THF, BRD, PLD and BLM.

Wyrm Food

Every

Cynoprosopi chases Quieren.

time we do the land gods section of Limbus, I get that quivery feeling of dread as we near the Fafnir floor. I died repeatedly the last time and expected to do the same today. It didn't happen. I ran along with Quieren and somehow managed to avoid taking any breath attacks to the face while the others killed it. The item crated had a ton of coins in it, so the fight was well worth it.

The behemoth floor was somewhat nasty. We linked two of the smaller ones and then managed to aggro the Kaiser while we were at it. Achates kited the big guy while we dealt with the smaller ones, and from there it was smooth sailing. We got the win and everyone walked away with three coins.

Other than Limbus, it's been a quiet day. I fooled around with GhostWing and managed to find another Freshwater Set. They're becoming very common and the price has dropped.

Fomor Codex

GhostWing's

I should dig in Meriphataud more often.

strength and endurance bumped up to "Impressive" today, so I registered her whistle again to reflect the new stats when I call her. She must've been in a good mood, because she found an orichalcum ore during her walk and then followed up by getting a dragon talon in the Hot and Cold game. With the saltwater set she found yesterday, that's about 200k she's earned for me in the last 24 hours. I've got to finish maxing out her physical stats so I teach her a few treasure-related abilities.

To celebrate, I bought a Potent Belt to wear when I'm on Beastmaster.

Speaking of, Quieren's endgame linkshell was planning to do a Swift Belt run. He needed a Fomor Codex, so I volunteered to help him farm one in the aquaducts. There are three taurus mobs near the entrance. I've killed them solo plenty of times during my own farming runs; having another Beastmaster along would simplify it. Mortal Ray isn't a big concern when there's a second pet to tank after the doomed one dies.

We'd been there an hour when a BLU/BST named Synical turned up hoping to fight the Taurus mobs to learn Frightful Roar. Rather than have him camping against us, we invited him into the party to help him out.

I

Vampire Bats are sturdy pets for fighting Taurus.

spent most of that time worried if the guy could survive. He wasn't wearing an ounce of Charisma gear, so he'd often be kiting around and getting into the red-almost-dead range before landing a charm. He also wanted to learn Filamented Hold from the diremites, so Quieren pulled those between Taurus pops.

Quieren was running out of time and was ready to leave, but I told him to stick around for one more spawn cycle. The codex dropped off the next mob. It took us 22 kills to get it.

Synical didn't learn his moves while we were there, but I did a search after I'd muled all my level-capped gear and saw he'd changed over to BLU/NIN. Probably a wise choice.

Sick and Twisted

Today's trip through Dynamis-Beaucedine did not deliver the goods. I was of course hoping a Cleric's Briault would drop, although I'm not really worried. It'd be just one more piece of gear to carry around and swap into my Regen macro. I love my Noble's Tunic above all else.

It was a good run for others, though. It was starting to look like another no-relic trip when we finally got the Duelist's Tabard for Starfyre. The running joke is that Starfyre has been going topless (nothing in the body slot) on these runs, so people were lamenting the retirement of "the twins." I'm one of those fuddy-duddy stick-in-the-mud types who would rather see a piece of gear -- any gear -- equipped in a slot for a key job like Red Mage, so I was just kinda relieved... although I admit it was was funny.

We

Drop my briault, damn you!

also got Ranger and Ninja (go-go Zaria!) and I managed to go through the entire run without dying. I was knocked into the red at one point by an exploding Ninja.

Blackmagik, a Bard in the linkshell who usually manages to drive me to thoughts of blacklisting him every run to stop his constant chatter about self-cutting and other emo-related topics, managed to crack me up when the conversation turned to dead baby jokes and he had a few I'd never heard. For example:

Blackmagik: What's worse than ten dead babies nailed to a tree?
Blackmagik: One dead baby nailed to ten trees.

It's the sort of conversation that causes members to turn off their pearls for a bit, but I was laughing too hard to care.

While I was slogging through the glacier, Neyla was taking part in the world's longest Lv. 6 Besieged against the trolls. It went on for well over an hour. He also helped Lululn, the Japanese taru who does every job solo and no doubt saved Beastmaster for last because it would be like a vacation, get the map to Caedarva Mire by killing the chigoe NM.

There's one more glacier run before I retire from lolDynamis, and it happens to be on the 29th. It would be lovely to have it drop on my last run with the crew, which is exactly why it won't happen.

Schedule Snafu

Maintenance happened today instead of the usual Monday or Tuesday, causing us to put off our Limbus run for nearly three hours. Quieren was irritated when several people didn't want to do a late run, but I couldn't blame them. People have stuff they like to do after Limbus, and I wasn't going to hold them to it.

We had enough people for Apollyon SW and killed our way through fomors, treants and mimics. We had to sprint to the top floor with the elementals because DarkDay was approaching and that would've meant taking down the trio of Dark Elementals to win. We got there on LightDay and only had to kill Light Elementals to pop the chest, and we spent the remaining ten minutes farming everything except the Dark ones. Everyone got three Ancient Beastcoins. Not bad.

Test

Pants are for serious people.

Your Mite went surprisingly well. I say "surprisingly" because Hadafal was having a late-starting run at Divine Might and couldn't make it. Veresko tagged along to fill in that sixth slot as Blue Mage. Apu didn't have the key item and couldn't go, dropping us down to five again. It took a little longer to kill Pasuk, but we didn't have any problems.

I was on White Mage this time and got the last bit I needed for a second Merit Point. I'm trying to decide if I want to wait for a third point and unlock Devotion or just go ahead and bump up my Critical Hit percentage. I also managed to forget appropriate mage pants and wore my Fisherman's Hose instead.

Neyla, Wulfgar, Apu, Lepruvian and I did the necropolis escort right after. It went extremely fast with all that firepower.

I finished out the evening by riding GhostWing out to the telepoint in Yhoatr Jungle to meet Neville, who wanted a Chococard[F] so he can try for a blue chocobo. I'm also going to track down Langly in the coming days to get a card from his bird, which is red. My goal is to have one of each VCS Plaque on my workbench with all the pots.