Hogan. Paladin. November Update. FFXI'S fate.

To everyone who has been viewing my blog, I am sorry for not updating as often as I should. On a personal note I have been devoting more time to looking for a new job since I was laid off from my first one. And I know many of you agree that real life comes first before FFXI. I did manage to land a new job thankfully.

Speaking of which I've been feeling rather....uncertain about how FFXI will be once FFIXI (14) comes out. In recent runs with dynamis and a limbus group I joined up with called Altana's Assassins, I've been surrounded with talks of people saying FFXI will be no more in the next six months. But the thing is, nobody really knows for certain and yet people still play. Right now everything is up in speculation because we really don't know how FFIXI will be as well as how people will either play both or stay with one or the other. And yet, some people treat it like its 2012?

I admit, FFXI is an old game now, and many people have quit the game for many reasons, not just becaue of FFIXI. Hogan, a long time friend of mine and fellow Galka has decided to quit the FFXI and the end of the month, simply because he's lost interest. While I will miss him and Ratchety, his son, I do understand and respect his decision and will never forget the fun times we had; from leveling together to doing missions to doing crazy amounts of KSNMs and BCNMs, to hunting NMs together. If anything when it will be my time the memories of good times will always be there at the very least. Hogan and Ratchety I will miss you guys greatly but.... I will continue kicking more butt on FFXI in your stead!

(Seeing Hogan for the last time)

So while everything is uncertain I will at least do that and enjoy FFXI as much as I can and for everyone I enjoy the game with.


The past several weeks have been steady, eventful, busy, perplexing and entertaining. November's update has brought about some good things such as job adjustments to Beastmaster, Summoner and Ranger. And while it has brought about more WotG missions, new Notorious Monsters, and new synthesis recipes, there's a few things I'm puzzled with such as the new Synergy method that's out. As an up and coming crafter I should look into this and see what it brings.

Shortly after CoJ's disbanding I joined up with Altana's Assasins Linkshell. Its made up of some dynamis linkshell members. It did take me time to make the choice to join. It wasn't easy at first but in the end I felt it was for the best to just continue onwards.

I'm still doing dynamis of course but it has become increasingly frustrating lately because we've been having Dynamis-Xarcabard taken constantly by a rival LS; well I wouldn't say rivals since we never steal zones from people but still.....
Anyhow, aside from that our runs have been steady thankfully......

(.....well, to say the least, thanks to my 5 star-now3 star rated pulling dang it)

The new add-on, Shantotto's Ascension has drawn a lot of attention as well. In fact people have completed it in under a week! I noticed because last friday I caught Bradly with some new pants on, for once not with his pants down :-P



(Every time I see Bradly in this set up I always think about the Robin Hood: Men in Tights movie:-P)


I've been helping Foulei with his missions for it the other day. While I haven't started it yet and still need to complete Kupo D' Etat, I enjoyed duo'ing with Foulei as I always have done. We make a good team I would say!




(A galka duo picture is worth a thousand adventures)


(yes, Galkas CAN read)

In between all of this I've been leveling Paladin, which is now level 69! Six more painfully long levels to 75! Whoo hoo! I am excited to get to that level so I can help out with tanking for both Dynamis, Limbus, and Sky linkshells as well as missions for people. Not that I am unhappy with people needing my Thief and sometimes my Warrior. In fact I've grown quite used to being on my thief more often. But I've been getting both good pointers and praises from people about my tanking on Paladin lately which I thank and appreciate friends and LS members for.

(Partners in crime: *left to right* Jadewolf , Foulei, myself, Jakary)

Well that's all for this entry folks but I leave you some words of thought; enjoy FFXI for what it is that makes you enjoy it, even if it's old and a new version is coming out. Sure, nothing lasts forever but that doesn't mean you should stop enjoying something you like doing.


Peace.

Money Making. Mantis. End of CoJ.

Well I will not beat around the bush at all on this one but sadly, CoJ, the LS I helped out Limbus with has disbanded from doing Limbus entirely. I haven't been too thrilled about it even though at the same time we're at the point where I think we really need to focus on other things individually. Plus it was getting really hard and difficult to maintain anything with such low attendance. As much as we did in keeping the LS alive with limbus with the manpower we had, every time we were at our peak it would trickle down to 7-8 out of 20+ people we had in our roster that would show up to every run.
The other factor is the majority of people we do have said they will be having tough times to come attend due to real life obligations and that is understanding at the very least. Real life comes first.
So yes, CoJ is done with Limbus it seems. However I want to give my thanks and everyone's cooperation, patience, and persistence until the very end. And though we may go our different ways in game events perhaps, don't be afraid to hit me up sometime and say hello or whatever the case may be.

Aside from the bad news I've gone basically back to gil making for now with all this free time I have. So I've taken up Gardening again, farming my butt off; anything to reek in the gil much better than normal. I slowed down on cooking a little bit just so I can do this then continue when I have enough.

Not much in pictures this session because I'm a bit busy with some things at the moment. More will come later but as you can see below I stumbled upon this little critter today while I was out:



I find the Mantis to be quite a fascinating insect. Though scary looking to some people, they are quite harmless. In fact they are helpful to the ecosystem. In some cultures they are considered good luck.

Double. Dungeon Adventure.Dough Making.

(Leveling cooking, with a watchful Galkan Cooking master *lvl 100, /envy*)

Well summer is nearing its end, with 4 weeks untill autumn. I can't wait. I enjoy the fall season for many reasons; the multi colored trees, cold weather, the holidays mainly halloween and thanksgiving, and many birthdays, mine included in the next three and a half weeks.

Many things have come around lately. I went back to leveling Cooking. In the course of a week I went from where I left off, level 30, to level 40. It was a little expensive because in the process I had to make Meat Mithkabobs. While they do sell fast, 4k gil a stack, a couple of the ingredients got for about 12k gil a stack. I overdid it in making so many of them to get to where I am now, making Pie Dough to skill up cooking even further. Thankfully making Pie Dough and selling it isn't so bad. I'm not losing much gil at all really. So I'm in the process of making some amount of gil through cooking at my level. With the game economy being rough, cooking recipes from 1-40 doesn't sell quite as much as it used too but if I play it right I can make some of them profitable. It's a matter of where and when to sell them.

While I have been giving myself some downtime from events to level cooking, except for Dynamis to keep up with my points for a specific reason, I did take some time to do a little dungeon adventure. Foulei kept pulling my tail to get up and go hunt for a Jelly Ring for my paladin. So, we ventured to San 'D'Oria and went down into their "basement", Bostaunieux Oubliette

(They can lock me up but they can't keep me in here *grr*)

Foulei and I got some assistance with the NM unexpectedly from Danille, Thelittlecrash and Royalwitch. Though fighting the NM is doable with a duo team, a little extra help didn't hurt after all. Needless to say Fou finished off the NM with his Red Mage 2 hour, Chainspell, and nuked it to death while the rest of us hacked and slashed at it, even though we did very little damage to it, but hey, every bit helps right?

Offline-wise, I got to see a rather upbeat opening to the new Kamen Rider series this year, Kamen Rider Double. As some of you already know I'm a huge Kamen Rider fan and have been watching the series every year, each year having its own Kamen Rider, different looks, theme and all. I think the opening video will speak for itself. Enjoy!

Kamen Rider Double (W) Opening

The Blue Mage Blues....in a good way. Ballista. Beginning of a new Linkshell.

Fun. Fun. Fun. I'm having way too much fun with Blue Mage this past week!! As it stands now it's level 24 and I have all the current spells at that level. Some of them DID take effort; Blastbomb, Feather Storm, Metallic Body. Regardless it has been well worth it. The only problem is there's so many spells that sometimes it is mind boggling to figure out what spells to use. On top of that once you set your spells it takes about thirty seconds. Too many chiefs, not enough indians. However, what I learned is that playing blue mage, takes patience and planning ahead. Once you do these things it's an unstoppable force.

(FLASH! AH-AAA, Galka of the Universe)

Meanwhile I got a /tell from one of my friends, Horas. He had informed me he decided to make his own linkshell; EndResults. Their main focus is endgame events and getting people through missions, all that jazz. Horas has gathered a good group of friends for his LS and I'm confident they'll do well and I'll be there, whenever I'm able to help them out.

(Horas' LS people, EndResults)

As seen here, there was an LS meeting with EndResults to go over times for events. They're still working things out a bit but I believe they have something going. Just after the meeting many of them wanted to do something that a lot of people haven't done in a very long time; Ballista!




I managed to get Hidetada and Atherine in on this since they've been wanting to revive Ballista. A lot of people haven't had any interest in it so it was difficult to get people to do matches with. My friend Xanathos stated his reason for not doing ballista because he hates the restrictions placed upon Ballista which was equipment changes. Once you change gear while doing a match you can't move for a moment. While this could be a hindrance there's the strength of a good challenge, and that's what I see.

Camaraderie. Progression. More friends.

(3 out of 5 Homams^^. Many thanks to CoJ members for this!)

I've become quite the popular Galka these past several weeks not to mention I have people who come through for me as well.

Granted I've been extremely busy since my last update offline, whenever I have been online I've accomplished a lot for both my friends and myself.

But before I get to that I do want to talk about July's update. I like it and hate it; more pros than cons at the very least. Granted I haven't messed with Kupo'De'Tat (if that's spelled right lol) just yet my pals tell me the rewards are pretty sweet and I still have yet to decide which reward I want for either my Thief or Paladin.
The Union addition to Campaign Battles is really nice and the new armors are good, despite some people's misgivings about some of them. Also, the new Blue Mage spells and Ninja Abilities are decent according to what people have told me if used properly.
The major con I have with the update are two things. Firstly, the annoying unforseen agrro of some mobs WHILE there's a campaign battle going on, particularly the Greater Amphiptere in Xarcabard (s). Secondly, the Greater Amphitere's period :-P Last I checked if you're engaged in Campagin no mobs that don't have anything to do with Campagin don't bother you. I guess SE watned to be evil this time :-P. For now I just avoid that area.

Now, as for what's been happening of late. Children of Jenova, the Limbus linkshell I'm with has been quite busy since we formed a merger with another LS. Now that we have enough members we started to push forward with events. We banged out tons of Proto Omega, and now have started to do Temenos floors again. Granted, the merger process was a little rough at first but understand that, yes, sometimes sacrifices are ment to be for the greater benefit for everybody.
I think we'll be ok overall.

I started doing Nyzul again. Foulei, Atherine, and Hidetata wanted to help me with floor progression. So far, with effort we managed to get from 19-40 in a matter of a week or two.
In addition I went back to leveling Paladin again, which, now, is level 62^^.

(Fighting a boss on floor 20; Fafnir.)

I've been called upon lately on my paladin. I guess it goes with the territory. I'm glad really because it gives me the chance to practice tanking, which has improved immensely. And believe me, I WILL have my exp capped to its fullest once its level 75 because I got this nagging feeling my Paladin will be "abused". Heh.

(bcnm 60. good tanking practice i gotta say)

So July has been rather fruitful in both doing a lot of things with friends and progression. This galka is finally going places once again!

Juggernaut Axe. More Dynamis Pulling. 4th of July

This week has been good; hectic, but good. I threw in this little comic illustration for two reasons. One is because Foulei and I went to a comic book store this week and well, did some shopping there. I know things are tight right now due to the economy but we really needed to do this for once since we've been so strung up on FFXI for weeks, so it was good to get out and do something and we haven't picked up any comics in months, and for him its been a few years. The books we both got were well worth the cash since they were well worth reading. ^^

The other reason for the image is after much saving up on gil, selling things and a very generous donation from Foulei, I bought the Juggernaught Axe for my Warrior. Out of all things, it has been the most sought after item out of anything else. I also bought a Magnet Knife for my good ol' Thief, per advice from Zidaneii, my fellow Thief friend and, yes, mentor (there Zid, i said it! happy? lol).

Both weapons are great, moreso the Magnet Knife; good for farming if you run into any trouble since it slows down the movent of the mob you would be fighting, the damage is really sweet-it shows on Sneak Attack/Trick Attack-and even though there's a -10 on Evasion it doesn't really effect anything if you have Evasion capped, close too capped level (ex; 5 lvls) or merits. Its a very well rounded knife if you don't have the "big guns" such as Siccoro Kukri, or Blau Dolch.

Back to Zidaneii for a bit now. On friday we had our usual Dynamis event. I log on and out of nowhere Kamille and Zideneii request I come as Thief. I'm like "oh no...they want me to act as puller for the linkshell, joy...". I was ambivalent because we were going to do Dynamis Beaucidine and since i'm still in training i didn't want to do the dreamlands areas since they're more time senitive. I got lucky and we ended up doing Dynamis Bastok instead since the other zone had been taken by another group.
I did enjoy being puller in a dynamis zone this time as opposed to last time so I'm kinda getting the hang of it. Zid' said I'm doing fine but I pull too slow. I will have to work on speeding it up. He's a good teacher, though he likes to poke fun at me, which is fine. It gives me a sense of humor behind his helping me out with theif and he has been very helpful :)

Well, I hope everyone has had a good holiday, The 4th of July :) Foulei and I did for sure. We went to a cookout at a friend's house to celebrate Independance Day as well as her Birthday. We had a good time.

I hope you all did too :)

-Rusty.

75 Thief. Goodies. A Crystalline Prophecy. Paladin.

My, oh my, I have not updated in so long! My apologies everyone!!

The good news is I got so much accomplished over the course of three and a half months.
Getting Thief to 75 was one of them.

Thief 75, Completed!

In a playful sense, there's good and bad news on this. The good news is both the Sky and Limbus Linkshells call upon both my Warrior and Thief nowadays. The bad news is they get to abuse my Treasure Hunter >.>. Seriously it's good to be needed on both of these jobs. Recently I've been "in-training" by a few thieves and a good friend of mine, Zidaneii, in the "art" of pulling in Dynamis. It's coming along ok, though my terms were that I be trained in the nation zones, not the dreamlands, since the dreamlands areas are more time sensitive you can't botch up. Zid' says I'm doing ok but just need to pull faster; but then again he likes busting my chops anyway :-P.


AAAAANNNNDDDD.....!! As you can see, I finally got a pair of Byakko's Hidatae!! Both Foulei and Simi, one of our Sky LS leaders got pairs too, all three of us on the same day! That's uncommon for this particular NM for more than two pair in one sesson.

Our thanks goes to the Sky LS, FragglesGoneWild, for thier help and contributions thus far.

Also, (not pictured unfortunately), a week later, I also received a Kirin's Osode when we did a Kirin run. Even the LS were surpsied at the turn out of me getting both these sought out "Goodies" in as little as two weeks. I pays to save up points ;)

I took some time off from sky, a much deserved break if you ask me, to tie up a few loose ends. I started by working on the Add-on SE put out a few months ago; A Crystalline Prophacy. Zidaneii, Foulei, Bradly, and a few other people (i forgot thier names atm, sorry) got together to work on the last battle. We had so much fun doing it, though Zid' and Foulei were having fun killing my clone >.> since the final boss kept spamming it out more than thier clones.

After finishing and much much thinking, I chose this as my prize:

MirkeWardecors

Other than all of this I've been helping some friends with CoP a bit. Since I've been leveling Paladin, they've grown to have use for it. I've been doing ok tanking on missions for the most part which is fine since I need the practice. My paladin is now level 57, and I will continue to level it once I build up some gil again.

Well that's all for now. Take care everybody!

Samurai, 37. Back to Blue. Feild Manual. Street Fighter 4.

Yes! As you can see folks, I've gotten Samurai to 37!! The funny thing is I "dinged" (what people online say when they gain a level on this game) at 0 exp! Talk about strange odds!
Playing the job of Samurai was an interesting experience; the abilities and job traits are really good. I can see why a lot of people level it beyond 37. Its been very helpful for Warrior as a very good subjob option.

Now that I've completed this task, I went and geared up Blue Mage afterI sold off the samurai gear I used. With Theif drawing into the 70s range and sam out of the way I have more freedom to start another job besides Blue Mage. Paladin will be next in line as well. Those two jobs will be slow starting however since I have to finish meriting Warrior.

I went back to Sand'oria and zoned into West Ronfuare to level Blue Mage a little bit last night before bed. I had forgotten that the last recent updates came out with the Fields of Valor manuals. I hadden't tried them out yet untill last night. It's a really impressive feature! Not only do you get a really good exp bounus from completing the tasks that you have to follow, you also get exp normaly from the mobs you kill. I reeled in about 1.5k exp in under 5 min just following a task. I'm told there's other features using Fields of Valor but I have yet to look into it personally.

Last weekend I finally picked up my copy of Street Fighter 4 for playstation 3. While I don't normally buy ps3 games once they come out, I gave this one an exception for two reasons: 1. I've become mentally frustrated with ffxi lately. No lie. On top of that I got this wonderful console, the ps3, and all I been using it is for ffxi, not the other games I do have, which are very few. Might as well "milk out" my ps3 to its fullest potential. 2. With what I've said to number 1, I need an outlet, so Street Fighter 4 will be that outlet for a very good while.

The game is great and its good to play a fighting game again. My only bane is my partner when he uses Zangeif! >.> They-Capcom-tweeked Zangeif to where now its tough to beat him, skilled or not. Normally Foulei doesn't play him but hes grown rather attached to the "so-called" Red Cyclone because of these tweeks. So i've been getting my butt kicked (won't tell you who i play, sorry folks, secret :-P)!
The online pvp feature is pretty nice. No lag, a few disconnections here n' there but that's about it. You can host matches to random people or pick and accept challenges from your friends only. So there's a lot Street Fighter 4 has to offer!

Ready. Fight!!

-Rusty.

Trolls, they scare me but not really.

The image says it all. A few weeks ago I was looking around profile images on a FFXI site, called Final Fantasy Players. I had a pic posted there ages ago back when I was new to MMO and wanted to get a peek at what others looked like behind their characters. I haven't used it in years then. Looking back, and how many people deal with jerks online, both on the game and on forums or whatever, I remember some of the pictures I seen and I gotta say, nobody's got nothing to be threatend nor afraid of. Its true, the internet is where you can literally be someone else and use it, also, as an extension of bringing out your true colors. However, behind the keyboard and without a computer some of these "trolls" are less than ordinary and really, nothing to be afraid of.

Foulei once told me, "Don't feed the trolls". A good example was when I made a post on one of the forums pretaining to FFXI and I made it clear to people that i did not want any aruguments amoungst themselves when they answer a question I've made. Sure enough nobody made a single post, whereas prior to the post I made one before that without the warning and tons of people answered and argued between each other.

So really everyone don't be annoyed or angry at the internet trolls out there. They're nothing but hot air, and is it really worth getting angry at someone that could be half a continent away, let alone behind a keyboard? Really.

Samurai. Shinkenger. Stress Test.

Samurai Sentai Shinkenger



Yes, yes. It looks "Power Ranger" esq but you know what, that's how Disney bastardized one of the best Tokusatsu series. I knew of Sentai long before "Power Rangers" kicked in the 90s during one of my channel surfing days as a kid, bored out of my mind after Godzilla Hour and Kung Fu Theater were over on a typical Saturday afternoon. Anyway, I watch the fan sub japanese originals every year, thanks to a good friend of mine who's into the same thing and told me of a group who fansubbes Tokusatsu shows like Sentai and Kamen Rider.
This year, finally with a Samurai Theme after all these 30+ years of sentai, this is Samurai Sentai Shinkenger (above)!!

As a kid I've always been fascinated with the ways of the Samurai of Japan. I've studed whatever I could find to understand more of Samurai and so on; the traditions, famous Samurai Warriors, etc. So when this came out last week, I was more than happy to see both something I've admired and watch a tv series on a yearly basis at the same time.

Ironically, I don't think i'll ever level samurai to 75 like I intended. I know, its strange and its got nothing to do with Foulei "stealing" the job I wanted to level first; yes, we kinda had a competition thing going to see who would surpass whom in levels for a while :-P. Honestly though I think its because there's so much competition and demand with the job in terms of gear, use and events that I dont want to stress myself out with it. Besides I got one melee job at 75 anyway.
The good side at least is that I have been leveling Samurai and will continue to do so this week to finish getting it to 37, with it now being around 33 so I'm close. I also managed to try it out as a subjob with Warrior and I gotta say, I'm impressed with the results. I can do weaponskills much quicker now and do more damage. So while my desire to level Samurai to 75 waned over time, I will put it to some good use with my current main job, Warrior.

Part of the reason of it progressing from 24-32 this week is because I took off from work for two days. I was having a lot of chest pains on Monday night for about 3 hours, barely having any sleep. On top of that I've been having these pains for almost a year now in some occurances. So I stopped ignoring this issue and went to the doctors on Tuesday. Given my family medical history of prone to heart problems, the doctor inisted upon me taking some tests; blood work, chest/heart x-rays, stress test. So I have my work cut out or me there on these tests in the next week or two. I just hope its nothing serious.

Xanathos' Wedding. Return of a friend. Appreciation of Level Sync and friends.

While last week had its ups and downs-from the cancellation of the Nyzul run to CoJ's victory over Omega-some good things came in the direction of my adventures and others on the game. Just last tuesday, before attending Xanathos and Ororodos' wedding held in South Gustaberg I "paid my respects" to a rock mount on Vomp Hill. I needed to do this, strange as it sounds, to give thought to friends and aquaintences who are present and those who've quit the game.

It has been, as of this coming March, 7 years playing FFXI. Though I don't have as many level 75 jobs or experienced the game to its maxium potential (Salvage, etc) yet, and though there have been some rough scrapes socially to the brink of wanting to quit the game I still keep going. I want to give it my all even if i don't finish everything 100% on this game. I do it for those that have left the game. I do it for family and friends who have passed on in real life. I do it for myself most especially. I've learned that life, yes, delecate and short. So you want to give it your best. A few of my friends who have quit the game have no regrets that they had not finished thier goals; because while yes, its good to have goals one thing is certain: the game is just digital....the friendship and good times are real. That is more important. Everyone, never forget that ok?

After Vomp Hill, I headed over to the base of the lighthouse where I ran into the rest of the wedding party.

(The wedding party meets up with Syrynx, the chaparone and Best Man *me*)

This has been the 3rd time I've attended a wedding and the 1st time experiencing one outside of a nation city. Everyone was assembled when I arrived, and a few others followed. Surprisingly half of them I knew so it was great seeing old friends. It stunk that Foulei couldn't make it but only because he had to work the day of the wedding. It couldn't be helped since it was arranged by the Weddingmaster GM of the specific day. Syrynx, a long time friend of many, gave us instructions on what we needed to do once we were taken up to the top of the lighthouse. Afterwards she provided us with drinks and fireworks so when the ceremony was over we could celebrate and take screenshots, which are below.

(Wedding party *left*. Bride, Groom, Best Man and Lady *right*)

(Left: Happy Couple;Xan and Orodos. Right: Xan, Luriel, Ororodos, Syrynx)

















(Left: Ororo and myself. Right: Me, Syrynx, Xanathos)

There's more screenshots where that came from which I still need to aquire from Xanathos and the others so expect more images in the near future.


Oh shoot, I should've added this first. Prior to the wedding marked the return of yet another longtime friend; Scarlette!!

( Bumps into Scarlette in Windurst (s) area; brings back old times!)

When I last saw her last summer, she was leveling Dancer. Seems she's picked up where she left off once she returned and is having a fun time with the job. Its good to see her again. In fact she's joined the ranks of CoJ, mostly just to mingle with the rest of us on the linkshell. Currently she's really not into the whole endgame aspect of things right now, which is understandable because, like me, she wants to work on her character progression for a little while.

Progression, the word, has been ongoing lately this week. Last night Foulei, myself, and those who needed completion of Dynamis-Quifim acheived that finally! After about a year we finally got completion. Some good drops came about during the run which I do congratulate the dynamis ls members who aquired them, though I never said so directly. I tend to be rather....quiet during events mostly, as strange as that is.

After the dynamis run was over I hopped on to leveling Samurai. I gained about 3 levels on Thursday, but shockingly enough, I gained 7 levels last night!! Arathas, Envytaru, Dorion, Kirby and Massive invited me, with Foulei as our PL*powerlevel* (prior to the invite Foulei PL'ed me a bit), to join them to level on Quifim Island.
I kinda wanted to keep to myself for the evening but with convincing from Foulei I then graciously accepted the invite to level with them. Sure enough I had a wonderful time and thanks to them I'm now about 3/4ths of the way to getting Samurai to 37 for my warrior! I have to say, Level Sync is a blessing. It really is helpful especially if friends want to get together to acheive a goal such as leveling a job even though the level ranges are so far off. Level Syncing fixes that so there's no limitations to that matter. We did so well and got some fast exp that it was even hard for Foulei to keep up with us as far as healing us goes and I had to ask the group to slow it down to fighting 2 mobs at a time, not 3, haha.
Guys, thank you for the invite and the help. I really appreciated it in the end :)

Well, time flies when one makes posts. It's now noon, on Valentines Day. Its time for me to get ready to spend the day with a special someone after lunch with family first. Have a good day to you all as well!

-Rusty.

Nyzul Frustration and Update.

Good news. Foulei and I saw the long-awaited Underwolrd 3; Rise of the Lycans on Saturday. It was a good movie, and probably the best werewolf special effects movie yet to me. The plot is more of a prequal to the first two movies, if nothing else.
It felt good to actually not be on the game doing something else for a change. We really haven't gone out much since the holidays. I'd like to think that Foulei and I still have lives outside of the game, which we do.

The bad news. Our Nyzul static didn't go through this today. Again. That's almost three weeks now :(. Two of our members, whom have been off and on the game due to thier college semester studies, haven't been on lately. I've been feeling frustrated because of this. While real life priorities take precidence, which I myself respect, the downside is we're not progressing like we should. So I've come up with a proposal to possibly recruit two new members into our group but we would have to see where our two buds game time situations lay before we come to an agreement. I would like for us to actually progress, not constantly cancel. And I for one certainly don't want to quit doing nyzul. Despite what people may think of my opinion, obtaining assault gear is a great substitute as opposed to obtaining the hard-to-obtain stuff out there from land gods and sky gods.

Anyway. Since our static run was canceled today and I felt frustrated I decided to just log out for today. It think it was for the best. It made no sense for me to get this way over a game so I used the best old fashioned method when dealing with a game that frustrates you; I turned it off.

Ultima; the annoying Macy's Day Float. WaWa. Update.

As you can see, CoJ faced up to Proto-Ultima. Every time I hear that name I feel like i'm fighting a really tough Mega Man X boss (damn you to tell Sigma!!). The old days! Foward, we took on Proto-Ultima twice and lost to it twice. Boo! While our first time at fighting it was rather rocky-to be expected for first timers-the second time went extreamly well to us getting it down to 1% vs. 45% prior. That's a really good feat in my opinion.
To the linkshell members who've attended so far, please, please don't give up and don't be discouraged. Keep in mind that we're starting out on doing big events like this ourselves rather than sign up with other groups. That's a good thing. Yes, were going to have tough losses, yes we'll have to repeat stuff over till we get it right. Other groups had to start somewhere and do the same thing, trust me.

The 2nd fight ended rather funny for good ol' Rusty though. We were trying to go all out to finish it off at the 1% mark so I went and did a SATA+Warrior's Charge WS on it. I sure got it's attention because it did Antimatter to my FACE; 2130 pts damage 0.o

As far as some of you know, through chats on Skype with me and Foulei and even on game chat, him and I have mentioned WaWa on countless times. I noticed many of you asked "what's a WaWa???" Well, look no further! I promised you cats some pictures. So, here you go!









And that's the grand tour of Wawa!

The past week or so have been productive online. I completed all of the Ninja scroll quests. Yay! I'm so happy I got my gilz back from when I was leveling Ninja to 37. I was rather lazy in questing them at the time and Foulei had given me his Utsusemi scroll that he had extra of anyway. It's good timing that I got the scrolls and some gil back because, franky, Limbus has left a lot of people strapped.

("Unemployment Line")

I also got thief to 68, 7 more levels to 75, whoohoo!! Frankly in this, I want to thank SE for the wonderful Level Sync and Foulei for the go-ahead to level on further just for the fact that I can Level Sync down to his Dancer, which I want to do. It would be great to have his Dancer leveled. He's worked so hard on it! I was, at first, very jealous that he surpassed me on Red Mage, I admit. But now I'm proud that he's done so.
He was right in saying that I should focus on one job at a time, but if possible only work on two, no more than that; hence Warrior and Thief for now. I had wasted time trying to level multiple jobs when I first started playing but not get any results with my Warrior, which now I have to finish leveling Samurai to 37 for the sake of better Damage Dealing. Lesson learned.

(top image: lvling thf with static, guest starring Xanathos, Limbus LS leader)
(bottom image; Me and Foulei Campagining. His RDM looks spiffeh!!)

That's all for now folks. Untill next time, peace out!!

Kamen Rider.Update. Weblink update.

This site has been lacking a few things so what I did was add some website links of some of my favorite things out there as far as information and entertainment goes. I hope its of interest to you viewers out there. One of the links is a fansubbing site i go to download and watch Kamen Rider (japanese translation "Masked Rider), a 30 year old TV series. I remember seeing a few shows when I was little and people thought I was crazy because it used to be on a really obscure tv channel on a really obscure time; we're talking 11pm on a weekend! The one I saw was poorly translated, kinda like those Kung Fu Theater type of translation :-P

Anyhoo not that many people knew about Kamen Rider, well my peers anyway. The series was off and on from the 80s to the 90s then stopped in the mid 90s. Then a few years ago a friend of mine introduced me to the fansubbing site who picked up the Kamen Rider series from 2000 to present day. It seems that the series took off then, and sure enough its been out every year ever since!

So, to share with you readers what I watch on my spare time, of many shows, here's a little clip of various "henshin" (transform) through some of the Kamen Rider Series in the past several years. Hope you enjoy it.



Aside from "geeking out" on the Kamen Rider goodness, all has been well. Offline I've been busy with work, with also being busy online as well. Between Dynamis, Limbus and doing static runs on monday's as usual, I really have not had a chance to do anything else. There have been days where its frustrating as all get-out and there are days where I just roll with the punches and deal with it. Limbus has been leaving me broke of late in gil so what I have to do is put time aside to farm my tail off, which I'll do in the coming days ahead. I need a break from all the activity on the game anyways.

On the bright side, CoJ (Childeren of Jenova) LS took our first stab at Proto-Ultima last Wednsday! Downside is we lost. Upside is we learned how to try to do the fight next time, tonight hopefully. We just have to rehash our strategy a little bit and hopefully we'll win this time.

No pictures of the fight and other stuff this time around. I still need to upload them but I promise I'll posts some later.

Also, a big congratulations goes to Foulei on his reaching to level 75 Red Mage. Go merit that puppy!!

Untill then, peace out.

Happy New Year!

Well, out with the old, in with the new.

It has been a rough year on personal standards offline but with the support of friends and relatives it has been endured. Many thanks to those who have been there for me think and through thin.

This year will be interesting, with many things to reflect on while doing so. After some....issues, the CoP Linkshell was reformed.

Out of respect of the members and those who went on their separate ways, I wont delve into the reason why things have changed. I want them to know this however: have fun. Enjoy the game and have fun to the best of your ability. While whatever choices you make will help you with whatever you want to do, know that my feelings have not changed and I will not think less of any of you. It's your 12.95 a month after all ;).

The reformation of the CoP ls has changed into what we now call Childeren of Jenova. I was rooting for other names like "Team Venture" or "Justice League of Vanadiel"(JLV) but it was too late :-/. Ah well, at least the pearl is blue. Hehe.

The purpose of the ls, right now, is Limbus and Sky. Now that we've gotten most of everyone through CoP, with only a few members left in tow, we're focusing on other things. We've been off to a rocky start but we've been progressing decently; deafeated Bahamut with only 11 people, doing ZNMs on the side, to name a few things. And while we've had or have differences we've worked things out like mature adults should be.

Things may change in the LS however. I have no doubt in my mind it will. Its not a bad thing if it is the case, its just is what it is. You have Linkshells go through so many changes, sometimes even disband and reform under numerous circumstances. However the important thing through rough transitions is to never forget your friends and those whom you work together with, espeically if they all do a good job. All the more better if an LS does stay as it is mind you ;).

Aside from that I've cashed in a few merits with Warrior so I've added in merits to my Axe and Great Axe merits along with a few Critical Hit bonuses to boot. And just today I had partied with some LS people: Foulei as Dancer, Danille as WHM, Arathas as Sam, Thelittlecrash as War, and Gengjosanzo as Corsair. However crash had to leave so we traded him in for a Paladin. We had fun leveling. I had gotten thief to now 67. Thanks so much guys :)!! You saved our Monday static some grief for us to level in Cadavar Meire haha.

Aside from all this not much else. The rest of this month and probably feburary I will focus on farming and doing quests to make some gil. Limbus has been exhausting as far as $ goes ; ;. And, perhaps, I'll start to level a new job; Blue Mage! We'll see. And we'll see what the new year will bring.

-Rusty.