Yay rank 10! (FFXI, no unmarked/uncut spoilers)

[thistlechaser]

After only two and a half years: Rank 10 gotten! Yay! Slow as heck, aren't I? But it finally happened! Since Sandy is in first place for the first time in months, we pushed to get it done this week.

First off let me say: I was crazy for worrying about the fight. CoP has me so ready to be (pardon the term) assraped every battle, I was expecting this fight to be hard. Very hard. Heck, it's the last city mission fight, after all! But it wasn't even a challenge.

I brought in 20 hi pots, au laits, yag drinks, an I Wing, poison pots (in case the last boss was going to sleep us), my TP regen ring, and a crapload of other stuff. Went in 58/60, full of meds. Other than my reraise item and TP regen and one food (all used before going in), I used nothing. Ha ha! Seriously, CoP is to blame for this.

I took tons of screenshots, mostly because I wanted to remember the storyline. It worked out for Thistle so well! :) Anything spoiler-y will be behind the cut or have a clear warning.

I was hoping for a better title from rank 10:


We were one second from setting the record!

We could have easily broken it, if we hadn't stopped to talk at one point. But still, we won and that's all that counts! :D

Rank 10! Woo! -- WARNING: Text in shot contains spoilers.

Coolest part of the night! Eh, of the fight anyway: I tanked the war machine! (I didn't get a shot mid-battle, so you'll just have to trust me on that. At this point I had still been expecting the fight to be hard and was concentrating instead of taking pictures.) Even though I had hate almost the whole time, the silly thing couldn't touch me. Me! With a ton of -evasion and the defense of a wet paperbag!

Just a nice scene from the final CSs. :) WARNING for that, no text visible.

That's a whole lot of dead orcs!



King Ranperre, really old elf king dude of KRT fame!

I've played IC Thistle as having a good amount of his anger come from Sandy elves looking down on him all his life. (He grew up there/it was my starting city.) So oh my! These comments from the king are nice!



And last but far far far from least: My flag and aketon (and naked mannequins and fish tanks~). It may look silly on me, but the flag rocks and I'm so proud of both! I just wish you could see these things in your rental MH, since I'm almost never in Sandy.

Before and after this, I worked on goldsmithing. Hit 27, and I'm prepped for a push towards, um... 31 or 33 (I forget what my next item caps at).

Comments

[kelen.livejournal.com]

Yay! Yay! I was so worried about this fight. Such a relief to know I won't need a ton of shit on Sat. Dunno how I'm going to manage juggling all the gear if I don't have time to mule. @.@

And congrats on rank 10! I so want it too...

[loneguardian.livejournal.com]

Neh, the Bastok 9.2 was a challenge, but only 'cause I did it with moron randoms that couldn't keep Volker alive. :P (And the boss likes to self-light-skillchain on the tank, but we never wiped, only let Volker die...) I hear Windy is the hard one. But I didn't need anything more than food on Bastok's, so I was gonna bring good, a poison potion, and maybe a hipot for emergency, but shouldn't need it. ;3 City missions are stupideasy compared to the expansion missions. Seriously. c.c;

[kelen.livejournal.com]

I think I'm too conditioned by CoP. 9.9;

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm so happy to have it!

I think we should bring at least a couple hi-pots just in case (plus opo-opo necklace/sleeping pots for melees). Our party setup will be very different on Saturday (one sleeper, no BRD), so it might be more challenging. I'm not going to be bringing more meds than that though.

[loneguardian.livejournal.com]

plus opo-opo necklace/sleeping pots for melees

Overkill. X3 I'm bringing a poison potion or two for the sleep-casting one, a persikos au lait ('cause I have a couple fruitthings), and -maybe- a wing if I can afford one. Mostly going to rely on my /WHMness to keep me alive. Rank missions really aren't hard enough to be medworthy. z.z

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to bring a wing this time (absorb-TP 4tw), but going in with full TP did help.

Mostly going to rely on my /WHMness to keep me alive.

It's not keeping you alive that's the most important, it's going to be keeping Ead alive. He's going to be keeping eight mobs asleep for a good five minutes or so. The faster we kill, the better for him. Sleeping to 100% TP before we go in is effortless and will help him a lot.

[loneguardian.livejournal.com]

/WHMness will keep Ead alive too. Plus D, plus Nif. I'm not horribly worried about the fight. z.z I'll pop a wing instead of sleeping, if people deside it's necessary. Takes less time and is cheaper.

[gbeans.livejournal.com]

[blinks blinks] I thought you had alchemy leveled o.O Nothing gets much cheaper than a handful of sleepshrooms and materials bought in Jeuno. But whichever you want is fine. I have a stack of wings on mule if you need one.

[southern-hell.livejournal.com]

Lol @ Opti hat and Aketon :P
Grats on rank 10! I'm in Bastok alot more with choco raising so I actually get to see my flag it's nice :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yes! Thanks to the chocochicks I'm in Sandy a whole lot more, so at least I pass through my MH now and then. :)

[calandra.livejournal.com]

You know, I never considered that. Doing CoP first would make the rank missions seem trivial.

In any case, the Sandy rank 10 mission is fun, and has a lot of story.

Now that you're rank 10 in Sandy, move to Windy. I'm currenly rank 8. We can finish that off, and all move to Bastok. (after that, I'm moving back to Sandy. I started there, it still feels like home.)

[loneguardian.livejournal.com]

Randomiconwar~ X3

I think people are hesitant to move nations now 'cause conquest is so unreliable with people exping all the time in ToAU... I know I'm having second throughts about doing Windy, even though that's the last flag I need. ; ;

[calandra.livejournal.com]

I heard people talking about that last night.

It doesn't matter to me so much. I just moved, so I don't have any outposts anyway. >

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

You know, I never considered that. Doing CoP first would make the rank missions seem trivial.

It totally did. Remember the leg of CoP where you had to run around the world to get CSs? No fights, just CSs everywhere? That was harder, more annoying, and took way longer than Sandy 9.2.

[calandra.livejournal.com]

True.

We went as a horde, madly teleporting and chocoing all over the planet.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oops, forgot to reply to the second half! Nope, sorry, never ever ever going to Windy. Even if I could get all my outposts back right away (ha, never going to happen nowadays), I HATE Windy. It's too f'ing big, too annoying, takes too long to get anywhere. And Bastok is ugly as hell, so no way I'd ever want to move there.

While I wouldn't mind seeing the other nation storylines, I love Sandy and never want to move elsewhere. I have rank 10, every outpost but one, Sandy is not too big and nicely organized -- I have no desire to give all that up. :)

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

I"m entirely the opposite. I dislike Sandy because it takes too damn long to run from one frickin' end to the other. And you have no warp Tarus!?

:P

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Why should a city need warp tarus to get from one part to another? That's a sign it's too darned big! :P

But how often do you have to go from one end of a Sandy zone to another? In South, you're most likely to go half (MH to AH or chocobos). What's past the AH? Leathercrafting guild, grocery store, and that ... house or whatever it is, all the way at the end.

In North, if you need to get to the "industrial zone" (WW guild, smithing guild), just go through the tiny Port zone. Otherwise your longest run is MH -> outpost warp guy.

I <3 Sandy so much! The zones are mostly straight lines, no mazes or back alleyways like Windy and Bastok. Plus I love the music!

Sandy 4ever~! ;)

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! ^_^_v The aketon looks really nice on you. (Although the mannequin is kinda wrong. ;p) Glad that the fight wasn't too bad. ^^

I'm half-tempted to move out of Bastok when I get rank 10 someday, just to see what the other nation storylines are like, but I don't really want to give up my outposts. ^^; I have all of them and I highly doubt I'd ever be able to get the starting zone ones again. (If you kept them when you returned, I'd consider it, but I think you have to do them all over again if you move back to your old country.)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

It was worse when I was standing right in front of the mannequin. Looked like his face was pressing into my ass... ><

And agreed. Outposts are too important, especially now.

And thanks! :D

[reynardstruan.livejournal.com]

I'm on SM9-2 right now. Considering I was stuck on SM9-1 for eight months that might not mean much, but meh.

What was your setup? As I understand, it's a BCNM, so you can only bring 6 people...need a PLD to keep hate off of Trion, and a sleeper (probably means I'll have to go as brd, not sam :\)....anything else necessary? I'd say whm preferred for tele-vazhl, but for the BC itself, will rdm do just as well?

[loneguardian.livejournal.com]

*glances at forums* Looks like the setup was MNK/WAR tanking, BRD/WHM, BLM/WHM, WHM/BLM, DRK/NIN, and either a DRK or MNK that I dunno the subjob of... X3 *bes helpful* The Monk was saying on LS that she was near one-shotting the orcs with Asuran Fists, so I imagine they're not too much of a challenge with competant people. (Doing it with randoms always makes the missions seem a billion times harder than they actually are ; ;)

[calandra.livejournal.com]

The first wave of orcs?

If that's the monk I'm thinking of, just point her at them and watch. ^^

I did that fight at about 65 (I can't remember), and I was takeing them out easily, so they should be pretty easy at 75.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

The war machine took maybe... 60 seconds to kill? Each of those eight little orcs died almost faster than I could get an absorb-TP off. The three big orcs at the end took a little longer, maybe a minute or so each, but weren't much of a problem.

I think people got into yellow a grand total of 2 or 3 times. I didn't take one single hit (not counting lost shadows) even though I got hate a couple times.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Let's see...

DRK/NIN (me)
MNK/WAR (tank)
MNK/something (second tank)
BRD/something
BLM/RDM
WHM/something(BLM?)

However, I could have tanked most of those mobs. The silly things couldn't land hardly any hits, and my shadows held up perfectly fine.

I'd say a sleeper is the most important job, and multple sleepers is even better (we had two on this run, but will have just one (a RDM) on our Saturday run).

[kerai.livejournal.com]

I'm personally trying to convince people not to switch nations so I don't have to go through the horror that is Windurst's 7-1 (I think) again. Going up into Davoi through the orcs that still aggro, dropping invis to hit the elevator, training about 20 70ish orcs up to the NM and then having everyone except me and the RDM wipe to spells... not good times.

I think the Windy title is "Vestal Chamberlain", or maybe it was guiding star... there were a bunch from the last few missions.

That poor naked mithra mannequin! *mails clothes*

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, no worries! There's no way I'm changing nations now! I'm finally finished, I don't want to start all over again. :P Let alone, lose all my outposts!

[gbeans.livejournal.com]

Getting the Aketon gave you the title of "Elite Royal Guard". The actual Sandy titles is "San d'Orian Royal Heir".

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

Does this mean Thistle's in the line of succession?

...and I've got the mental image of Thistle I, King of San D'Oria now. I have the sneaking suspicion that he'll be all in favor of increasing the number of female Dragoons out there. ;p

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Did you watch the Fullmetal Alchemist series? I'd be the king who makes all women wear tiny little miniskirts!

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

I've read the manga, yeah. But I still don't think miniskirts can beat the walking pantyshot that is my AF. ;p

And yet I wear it anyway... it's either that or the black leather shorts/boots combo.

My DRG clothing choices are very disturbing, aren't they?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oh, drat! I'll have to buy that one back then. It's much cooler.