Weekend adventures! (Mostly FFXI.) Lots of screenshots.

[thistlechaser]

I was going to do this post at work tomorrow, but I don't feel like going to bed yet, so here it is now.

Saturday: Almost totally uneventful and boring. Farmed lots, though was bored most of the time. I did all the offline stuff I wanted to (watched the new Bleach ep! Yay!) and had tons of time left, so logged onto the game and just farmed for lack of anything better to do ... and because I needed the money. *cry* I had just gotten to the point where I could start looking at Thick HQ pieces again, then noticed what happened to bomb core prices. (I'll need one at 63. Need it, it's not a toy like a HQ thing.) The price had been 300K when I made my shopping list many weeks (months?) ago, but they were now nearly 600K. For an item (ammo) you can throw if you're not careful. *cry*cry*cry* I got mine for 590K, but that was more than half the money I had. I spent most of the day grumbling in my head about it. (Okay, +12 attack will be nice, but if I had gotten it long ago I could have saved so much! But I suppose you can say that about most armor, at least on Midgar.)

The one high point of the day was that I went into Oldtown... um, that moblin city zone. It was my first time entering the zone (other than just stepping across the zoneline to hear the music). I didn't go far because I had no map, but still! It was highly highly highly cool and I want to go back sometime.

Sunday: It's been a long time since I've had so frustrating of a day. I missed Escort static because fricking Comcast decided that I didn't need an Internet connection for that hour. I really needed the XP, so was especially sad. I'll have to try to grab some random people during the week.

But at least I got back online in time for main job static! For those who don't know our group: We rock. I hate to sound that way, but we do. We've been working together for 60 levels now. We rarely get a death (maybe one a month, often less). We get outstanding XP/hour. We're usually ready for XP grounds before the recommended levels.

Today none of that mattered. Never, ever, ever before had we ever had a full-party wipe, but we had TWO today! Gah.

The first wipe was annoying because it was 1) preventable, and 2) muchly my own fault. We were leveling on Toramas (coeurls), and while the XP was darned good, the fights were really hard for us.



Then our puller (Kawaru) saw that Ose was up! (Non-players: He's a NM coeurl that has a really, really nice drop.) We put in a call to our LS, and high level folks came out to kill him. We decided to take him and tank him till they got there. (Or at least some of us did. I was a big 'Yeah! Let's try it!" excited voice.) Waru pulled Ose (Look! A good picture of a NM! I never usually get a good one!) but another darned torama popped on top of us, and it was too much. Waru's Last Stand -- we all died. And nevermind that our high level people arrived and were killing the non-NM kitties to keep Ose from linking, a damned HNM LS swooped in and stole him from them. (Edit, next day: To prevent wrong impressions, it was two people from that HNM, not the entire group.) Grrrr. (Edit: To be fair, at the time of the deaths I wasn't upset at all. I repeatedly said (in my head) that it was worth it. We got to fight another NM! Might not have killed him, but we battled him and I got screenshots of it! It wasn't until the day continued that my memory of it soured.) (Edit3: See the many comments on the whole "stealing" thing.)

So after we scooped ourselves up, we started XPing again, but things went really bad. A cat behind us, a cat ahead of us (close enough so that we were invisible to keep from aggroing them both), then a cat popped in camp. We escaped, but not before Ashn (taru NIN tank -- he had a "fun" time with the cats) had another death.

Now, RL me is rarely angsty. I try to keep other people happy and smiling, I try to be entertaining, but this had been the very worst party we've ever had. And since I'm the group's leader (today making me question that even more than usual), I was feeling rather responsible for the whole mess. While the mages went to rescue dead Ashn, I sat alone and thought about stuff. I really like that picture, as well as the moment I had there. The waves were washing up around me, all I could hear was the sea and the wind, and I thought about what we were doing wrong.

We decided to move and try something new. Either chain the heck out of VT mobs or to go and try antlions in A-whatever Chasm. The Chasm was close, so we tried there. The antlions were much, much, much better for us, but far from perfect. Conning them was very hard (one IT- could be much harder than another IT-), and once more we ended up all dead again (non-players: The monster is that big round brown thing in the upper corner. Antlions look like massive, ugly, horrible ticks).

Somehow I got an odd camera angle, and got a really nice shot of Eadwyn. I was trying to get a picture of how detailed things are (his eyes have multiple shades in them!), but that shot doesn't show it well. I should post the full-sized version, but even that doesn't show it as clear as it was in the game.

In more weekend-depressing-FFXI news, my Guillotine moves were just so totally embarrassing. I did more on a crit hit and some normal hits! I mean seriously, they did as low as 82 and 86 against both the cats and the antlions. I was seriously WTFing over it. On our very last fight I was bad (the first time I was bad the whole XPing day, so it was okay!), I told Cehra not to panic, then SE+TA+Guillotine'd. Yay! Finally a damage number like I had been seeing on the Friday night eye-hunt!

On, and one last screenshot, for zubis. Remember how, after you asked for a D2, I told you not to blame me for what was happening? That I hadn't said anything bad? Well, here's proof! See? It was all Ead's doing! ;)

So anyway, back to serious stuff: I had been fully confident that we would hit 61 today (I needed under 10K XP, and we always easily make more than that!), but we didn't even get close. We made 5K in 4.5 hours. Horrible, horrible. (That's so bad it almost seems like my math must be off. 2:30-7:15 = 4 hours and 45 minutes. I started 5,555 into level and ended ... 10K in? No, I guess 12K in. So I guess 6.5K then. That's still a really low per hour figure.)

So no wearing my yagudo hat this week. Hopefully next week. We're going to go back to the Chasm and stick with the VT lizards there.

Such a depressing weekend. Hopefully the work week will be better. (Ha ha.)

Comments

steal?

[ogcorvus.livejournal.com]

I hardly call Jaten and I an HNM ls.. I admit we owned Ose hard, but damn.. now our duo team is an HNM ls? Sorry you wiped but we didnt steal that shit from anyone. BTW, toramas dont link.

Re: steal?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_valiance/]

TRU DAT

Re: steal?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ketchup = some sort of inside humor or insult I haven't run across yet? Either way, see my comment to the other fellow if you're curious about how we saw things.

Re: steal?

[ogcorvus.livejournal.com]

ketch-up, ie get with the program

Re: steal?

[aelice.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't take what he says absolutely seriously. :3 Look at his journal, it looks like they gave some drunken lemur (or a 12 year old human?) access to a keyboard.

Re: steal?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

You guys aren't Valor? A Valor party was there XPing at the same time we were... then Valor people happened to show up and take him? Could have been chance, sure, but didn't look that way.

BTW, toramas dont link.

Yeah, you're right. Sight aggro. They were probably clearing them so we could get our party up sooner. I hadn't asked; we had had bigger things on our mind at the time.

Re: steal?

[ogcorvus.livejournal.com]

Honestly if you got upset over that, you are in for a real disappointment if you ever want to participate in end game activities. If your group loses to an NM and it has no hate on anyone.. and is sitting there unclaimed.. its fair game. And you are going to get nowhere by calling people thieves every time they kill an NM you had your hopes on.

And yes, Jaten and I belong to Valor.. but saying "a damned HNM LS swooped in and stole him from them" makes it sound like we took our entire LS down to Ose just to steal it from you or something. It was me and a buddy killing an NM.. Oh and if I am not mistaken, your "high levels" never once touched Ose, so again, there was no stealing involved.

Now, this is your LJ so I'm not going to tell you what to write in it because people like to give the typical "just dont read it" mumbojumbo, but it is really low writing garbage like that.

Re: steal?

[aelice.livejournal.com]

Two words: Common courtesy.

There were several times we were offered the chance to grab an unclaimed NM after the people taking it were wiped. Did we? Nah. I'd give them a poke and ask if they were going to reattempt.

Fair game if unclaimed, sure.

But again, I liked playing FFXI with a sense of honor. :)

Re: steal?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with aelice. The nice thing would be to ask "Hey, are you guys going to kill that or can we take it?", but I understand that HNM LSs aren't about being nice. (That's not intended to be an insult, though it probably sounds like one.)

Honestly if you got upset over that, you are in for a real disappointment if you ever want to participate in end game activities.

Actually, I'm disappointed now. I'm really sad that it takes this kind of thing to take part in end-game events. While I'm not in a HNM LS, I hear plenty of stories from others who are, and those stories make me ashamed for the people involved.

Personally, I'd rather be a kind player, one who "plays well with others". It's really very unfortunate that that (along with my job) would likely keep me out of most HNM LSs.

And yes, Jaten and I belong to Valor.. but saying "a damned HNM LS swooped in and stole him from them" makes it sound like we took our entire LS down to Ose just to steal it from you or something.

After your first comment I went back and reread my post and I saw how it could be read like that. (And then I snickered at the thought of all of Valor needing to storm in to take down little Ose.) My wording of it was poor, and I'll toss in an edit of the post now.

Now, this is your LJ so I'm not going to tell you what to write in it because people like to give the typical "just dont read it" mumbojumbo, but it is really low writing garbage like that.

Anyone is free to comment on any of my posts at any time. My goal isn't to spread lies or incorrect impressions, but what I write is very much from my own point of view. I was angry that our own high level folks made the trip out for nothing (others had been coming, in addition to the two already there), I was sad that our THF (who works so hard and does his job so well) doesn't have Ose's drop to wear. To my POV, you two arriving and taking Ose wasn't fair, but by the rules of the world you live in, it was a perfectly valid thing to do. We disagree on that, and in my LJ you're always free to remind me of that... just don't expect me to agree with you.

Re: steal?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

By the way, how'd you guys find my post? I was a little surprised to see comments from you.

[mirramithra.livejournal.com]

Toramas have icky icky high evasion and their special attacks always ended up with me and my whm pulling out our hairs by the end of the night. And if I remember right there's only one really safe place to camp there without having a kitty drop in on top of you when you least expect it. =( Trying to take them on at 60 is pretty rough, it's great you guys were able to chain them at all! I think we were doing Perytons/Gigas to 61 at the time, then Toramas 61-64ish, then squeaked by on Processionares in Boyahda 63+ (you're going to want to hug and kiss those little buggies by the time you get out of Onzonzo). I didn't even know there were lizards in Attowa that you could exp on, can't wait to hear how it goes for you guys next week. =)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

And if I remember right there's only one really safe place to camp there without having a kitty drop in on top of you when you least expect it.

Yeah, and there was a party already camping there (the HNM LS XP party, in fact).

Yeah, they were really dodgy and hard to hit. When my absorbs (DEX, AGI) stuck it was a little better, but they were resisted more than half the time. And their specials? I think both our WHM and NIN ended up bald!

I didn't even know there were lizards in Attowa that you could exp on, can't wait to hear how it goes for you guys next week. =)

From the few we killed yesterday, they were really good for us. Not great, but chaining them worked out. (Non chains were like a little over 100 XP, but with chains we got up near 200.) Plus there are a few IT-- lizards running around, which helps with the chaining. The main problem is that lizards pop in camp, and as linky as they are...

[draymor.livejournal.com]

Actually there are enough spawns in the first tunnel (around where Ose spawns) to support 2 parties, providing they aren't omgwtfbbqpwnting everything in sight and getting chain 7s and such. The slightly higher levels can also take on the occasional manticore if they're brave enough (Max MP down is teh suck). If you go past that and turn right (I think), there is also a short tunnel where pops are close but manageable, but you'll need someone to be on guard/sleep duty.

[mirramithra.livejournal.com]

Yep, that short tunnel is usually where we ended up camping. =^.^=

[ogcorvus.livejournal.com]

Side note, the safest way to hold Ose for reinforcements, is to keep him asleep... incase luck grants you more encounters with him.

[zubis.livejournal.com]

I thought holding was illegal under the new terms of service anyway?

[ogcorvus.livejournal.com]

Holding with the intent to manipulate the spawn pattern is infact illegal, but this only applies to NMs that have a set spawn cycle, like Behemoth for example. NMs like Ose are lottary and dont follow the same spawning patterns as the ones you see people getting in trouble for holding. In this case, holding would be a strategic maneuver for defeating it. I dont know if you keep up with the updates, but -most- of the commonly held NMs were adjusted to increase in strength after being held for certain periods of time. This is to prevent holding to manipulate spawn patterns.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Unfortunately our BLM is one level below us, and he was resisted left and right.

But no worries on a "next time". We're swearing off NMs during our XP times. :)

[aelice.livejournal.com]

T_T I wish you had a BRD, to try to toss a threnody to make the sleep stick :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I keep wishing for a Pocket RDM (refresh on hand! Any time you need it!) but a Pocket BRD would work as well! Heck, or both! One for each pocket. :P

[kelen.livejournal.com]

I posted in another thread, but wanted to say here that Jaten and their friend (Sorry, I'm so totally bad with names..) didn't come close to stealing Ose. :) It's not their fault someone in our group made a poor choice and claimed we could hold the nm until Beanie and Merlee arrived. Ose was sitting at full health, in the middle of the room, and was fair game at that point.

Sure we were disappointed as we wanted to kill it (Or rather Beanie and Merlee would kill it. Not like us 60s could have done a whole lot..), but that doesn't make them thieves.

I'm curious.. did you guys get the drop? :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in one of the many comments on this post I let them know you said that. (Though I didn't mention you by name, just "a dead party member" said that.)

I'm curious.. did you guys get the drop? :)

I've been avoiding asking that. If he did drop, then I'd be kicking myself more... and if he didn't drop I'd be kicking myself more. It's a no-win question. :P

[kawaru.livejournal.com]

For the record, here goes. I'm frustrated that we didn't get to even finish Ose. Yes, I know I'm 7 levels away from being able to wear the assault jerkin, so I'm not so mad about that(7 more levels of waiting for Ose to pop so I can try for it).

Kinda bugs me that they got Ose literally a second before Beanie engaged it, but that's what happens sometimes, so I'm not bent out of shape over it.

The main thing that irritates me was that this whole situation was caused by my lack of good judgement. It was our first time XPing in Onzozo. Despite that, I had read all the posts about Ose and how even around level 62-63, both parties XPing in the area usually ally and beat Ose. We were 60 and I knew we had no chance. I was waiting for Beanie and Merlee to arrive. I should have waited longer. Instead, I assumed they were going to arrive soon, so I pulled. If I had waited 45 seconds later, this whole situation would not have happened.

I'm sorry for indirectly causing some animosity between members of two very good LSes(love all my FI friends, and I highly respect all the members of Valor whom I've met and/or partied with), and sorry to my static for causing so much downtime. I know it was a group decision to try, but I still should have used better judgement.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Waru, do not blame yourself at all. Not one little bit. At least two of us agreed to do it (Ashn and I), and that I remembered no one spoke out against it. (I could be misremembering on that, I don't know.) It is TOTALLY not your fault. If the fault goes onto one person, it is me. I was leader, I should have known to say no. If you blame yourself, I will spank you next week. :) So don't, because I'll make sure there's no coeurl skin within reach. ;) You rock, you're the best puller I've ever met, and it's not your fault at all.

[kawaru.livejournal.com]

I'll keep my grubby little greedy knife wielding hands away from NMs during XP time. XD