Fan Art Contest results. Update viewpoints in-deph.

(29th is BBQ DAY. Artist: Miyoshi)

Although this illustration above did not make 1st place it is my personal favorite :-P Notice the special snack at the fire, heh. You can check out the rest of this years artwork and final results here.

Last night after a frustrating assault run of the Supplies Recovery mission which we lost to 5 times before winning, and some MMMs with Bayni, Floppymonster, Donkielicious, Foulei, Capession and myself I went to the Nomad Moogle to break my level up to 80 as well as start on the quest for my Assault rank up. I lost on the assault rank up test so I have to try again sometime today. As for leveling to 80, I've decided to take my Paladin job up first. Truth be told, in the last several months I've been having a lot of fun on Paladin more than the other two level 75 jobs I got. Yes, Thief was and will always be my first job I've leveled, then at midway through levels I got so hooked on Warrior I took that to levle 75 first at the time, with Paladin in tow as my third job to 75. Talk about a roller coaster ride!

Foulei and I did some surfing around FFXI threads and forums over the update in terms of armory and items. The majority of them are noteworthy as well as looking into, whereas others are in question. Here is an example:

Here is a list of the entire Pearle armor set, here

Pretty impressive stuff, right? Now as you can see the leggings are good compared to the Unicorn Leggins which I currently have. It's a tough call though simply because I just had the U.Leggings made by a friend and it's signed no less. Additionally, I have a set of Hecatomb Leggings I use as a macro piece for both Thief and Warrior weaponskills. If I did not have the U.Leggings and Heca-feet I would consider these as an overall alternative. However, this would be good to have for Paladin and I'm sure they will be handy with the other jobs that can use them. Heck, if anything the entire set would be a noteworthy set for a Paladin Damage Dealing set up as far as my opinion goes.
























In some cases such as mine, I feel that what I have is not obsolete though some people will say otherwise. But why change something that is obviously not necessary? In other cases though and with other types of new armor and items out there from this update I can understand why certain pieces of armor would become no use. It's really a case-by-case situation with the new armor and weapons out there. Also, a lot of these new items are obtainable through running or attending the new add-ons so I do not see why one would buy these since players are putting them on the auction house for a fortune. You have to love the money sharks, huh?

/Sadface on Mogbanaza. Overwhelmed upon the update. Staying the course.

Well the update is here! The assault static didn't have a run that because of the installations so I took time to organize some personal things offline and do some net surfing on some important information as well. The next day however I was looking forward to logging on to check things out.

But when I got home from work and started to log on I suddenly felt....overwhelmed at the prospects of the update. Many things have changed at how us, the adventurers, will play. Its like from going to driving a car with an automatic transmission to a car with manual transmission. That kind of transition have people befuddled. I sure as heck was at the time.

What I learned from experience and some advice from Foulei was to deal with one thing at a time. It's the best way towards achieving goals, well for me at least. I'm not as hardcore as many others and that is fine considering that I'm a casual player by my standards so I am happy with my situation. So I will stay the course of my current plans which are to enhance the Paladin job, leveling Blue Mage, level Cooking, Campaign like crazy, and do assaults with the static group. Everything else I'll do in between when I can and push on through without wavering.

("A warrior must take care that his spirit is not broken"-Author Unknown.)

Yesterday the mog bonanza announced its numbers. Unfortunately, I didn't land on the higher ranks. All I got was a choice of a statue. I choose the Shadow Lord one. It's fine since I never got anything at all in he last Mogbonanzas anyways :-P Still, it would've been nice to win something bigger. There's always next time.

So, when I logged online the night after the update and our Limbus and Salvage events, Foulei, Capsession and Bayni invited me over to level with them.....in Promiviyon-Holla! I was like, "wha?0.0". They told me that the update has added a ton of new mobs, hence why a lot of old areas are overcamped when they were setting up the party.


We get to Promyvion-Holla and climb up to the top floor, but prior to that we spot one of these new mobs pictured here. Boy, this little guy was kicking our butts; it attacks fast AND hard, not a pretty picture let me tell you! After the near death battle we continued up with our 6th coming in tow. Once assembled we leveled for a bit before I started getting sleepy and I tottered off to bed after getting a replacement.

Ok, so far now I am enthused about the update because it brings out many good possibilities despite the small amount of shortcomings of it. If the good outweighs the bad, go for it! An old saying to live by :)

B and B adventures. My update viewpoint, and more.

First and foremost I am looking forward to this coming weekend, which marks me and Foulei's birthday and our anniversary, which lands on Father's day. It's one of the busiest times of the year for me seeing as how I have to juggle all three somehow but I usually manage to pull it off. The one thing that stinks this year is I may have to work on Sunday because of inventory and it is mandatory that everyone attend :(



Additionally Foulei and I have been having some good adventures lately. He has been leveling Beastmaster and I have been putting some time into Blue Mage as well. We've even been doing a few duo runs together through FoV or when I need spells for my Blue' and have been having some fun while we were at it.

Foulei has reached levle 55 on is Beastmaster and wanted to get his AF in order. We got a good portion of his AF set accomplished in the last few days, fighting NMs, spending hours getting Coffer Keys, you name it.

My Blue Mage has been on a bit of a slow progress because I'm still trying to get the rest of my spells up to current before my leveling progresses. Plus, in between, I've been attending events with Fou' this week. I, er', ended up skipping out on our Assault static run which we have every Monday and Friday but I had a good reason. My first and old static leader, Scudmissile (yes, that is his name no lie) needed some help with the Black Coffin mission and needed a Paladin. I asked the assault static if i could help him out and they said yes. Though I thought it was only going to take a while, it turns out that it didn't because Scud''s group needed to get some of thier CS' done. So we ended up taking longer and the assault static decided to make our night a free night. I felt bad about the situation but everyone was ok with it, since I had explained I wanted to help Scudmissle and his group because I owed him big for getting me a good way through CoP all those years ago.

I also did it because, well, I miss all of the doing adventures on the fly by helping people, weather its total strangers or friends. And with all the advancements I've made through experiences with Dynamis, Sky and Limbus I wanted to see how well I have been doing. What good is it when one has gained skill and gear for one's character on this game if it's not being used? It seems like I've improved a lot^^.

With the update on the way I am looking forward to it because it's an open door to many possibilities, which I don't know why a majority of people being so fussy in the forums over it. I can' partially understand their reason, with what the increased level cap. We all have been working hard to get to level 75 all these years to the point where it's become a livelihood. But at the same time this gives us something to do to shake the boredem away as well as make some gil in ones pocket by crafting consumables and armor.

Speaking of armor:


Many Many Many thanks goes to both Xan' and Kamille for their help in the Unicorn Leggins for me. I really appreciate it guys and I'll pay you back when I can Kam, I promise ;)

They have been a big help for my Warrior, both in haste and the STR factor.

As illustrated :-P

FFXI AH & Blue Gartr trolling; really guys, nobody cares what you think. Latest updates.

(Fraggle Force Farewell)

In the recent weeks I had recently made some posts of pictures and chit chat on FFXI AH forums just for kicks. A few times I came across internet trolls there or people who would /sigh over what I post. I had spoken with Foulei about this and he told me people will scrutinize over what I have in terms of gear because they are elitists.

You know, I have to say this not because I'm annoyed, far from it, but because it's silly and pointless on both victims and instigators but really guys and gals, trolling is stupid. While there are means to delete and block people who troll others those that are trolling are nothing but either losers or attention junkies that want some sort of entitlement because their "elitist" words will be immortalized. Nobody really cares what these elitists have to say in the end so why fuss? They don't pay your 12.95 a month do they? And remember one of the rules of Internet 101; Don't feed the trolls. Internet bullying is about as intimidating as an ant biting an elephant, especially over a game.


Now on to the updates.




First the bad news. At the end of April, FraggleForce, the dynamis ls, has officially disbanded. It was a VERY hard decision to make on Sindari's part, our leader of FF, but a reasonable one. With all the radical changes happening-from people quitting the game, to constant competitions of zones with other ls'-it became to a point where we as an ls have exhausted our options to try to keep things going. However, it goes without saying that I had a blast in the two years I've been with FF and you have to admit they lasted as long as most other dynamis ls' have, in the 5 years they've been running. To me, that's very impressive. I've learned so much about my three present lvl 75 jobs and more as well as made some good friends out of it so it hasn't been a waste. Who knows, perhaps I'll join another dynamis ls in the next few months but for now I'll enjoy the free time I have to do other things which leads to the good news.

After the disbandment of Fraggle Force, event leadership went over to Capsession after Sindari stepped down and the LS bank went over to all of it's members who have attended the runs in the last months which was distributed fairly. Needless to say, I used some of my share to upgrade some equipment for my Warrior job and the rest will go to leveling crafting and Blue Mage :-P

The Fraggles as a whole are still together, still doing Sky and Limbus events and Capesssion is planning to start doing Einherjar once he irons out everything. Untill then I've been doing Salvage and Assaults now with a handful of the members. I've been having a pleasant time and it's good to have the freedom so as to catch up on things such as getting merits, doing campaign to build up points and so on.

Things are looking up I would say.

Good News.

(Joytoy Musketeers^^)

Ok, the good news first.

I cannot tell you how happy I am for me, Foulei and Zidaneii/Thegreatmoneky (he has two characters) to have your Joyeuse's. And we got them all in under two days! It took me two years of hunting this thing on my own with whatever help I could get. The first time I thought I could solo it on my Thief but at the time I didn't know the requirements to try to solo it let alone at the time my evasion wasn't at around 290, which is where you want to be around in when facing Charby. Anything lower than that and you're asking for trouble. The second time I had gotten a lot of help for it but when it dropped someone ninja lotted it from me the bastard. It's ok I blacklisted the whole lot of them for doing that since they didn't give me any explanation. The third attempt was with one of my game mentors who was a Ninja but things got out of hand since we didn't have a healer and by the time we got up some people showed up and took the claim while we were recovering. Attempt #4 was with another ninja buddy of mine and an RDM friend. We were doing great but right around 2% of its life our rdm accidently got aggro from an elemental which messed up our flow and we died.

Attempt 5 was Foulei and Zid, then when it was my turn for mine we got some help from a few other folks. My thanks goes to everyone for trying to help and have had helped out big time!
The sword is pretty handy after all despite my misgivings about it. I'm just really glad Fou and Zid got it for thier Red Mage jobs which I know its helpful to them in that department. While I don't have Red Mage leveled I know too much about it ironically. Between me leveling it on Kujata with an old character I had then and my 1st CoP leader being lvl 75 himself I could write a book about the job....well, kinda lol.

Happy New Year.....All late!! 0.o

1000 apologies everyone!

My lack of updates have a really good excuse though. I was laid off/letgo (it's really complicated) from my old job and I had to spend time to find a new one which I did back in November and I've been working ever since. I had a lot of adjusting to do though and some life changes were made because of the job change.

But I hope everyone is having a good start of 2010, the year of the RustyTiger (yes pun intended, heh). It's funny too since in Chinese culture I fall under the Year of the Tiger and I'm a Libra. A strange but interesting combination I assure you.

So not to stray off I hope you are all enjoying the updates SE is handing us so far. While I'm not too crazy about our level cap to 99 at this time it does leave many open doors and possibilities. My concern is the difficulty of players vs. mobs. As I said and SE has stated there will be a level cap of 99 but I'm told the mob difficulty will not be increased.

Aside from that there are many other things going on with this update that it's too much for words in a good way. And since it's been weeks now since the announcement, no need for me to post a link.

Again, forgive me everyone for not updating like I should but expect more to come in the next few days or weeks from now so continue to read on :)