Elfaria

People come and people go from FFXI, it is a very transient population. There is an on-going joke in my ls that you never really quit, and that if you say you are quitting (specially if its for WoW) then its met with the "sure sure, you'll be back" sort of retort.

I think how much you immerse yourself in the game, the people you meet and the roads you take greatly influence how much of a draw FFXI can be if you do decide to quit. A lot of the people I have know to quit have come back occasionally and dabbled but mostly stay away, but they also never really got as involved as myself and some of the friends that I have now made.

Of course, there are many many varied reasons to leave, from being served divorce papers, to a change in circumstance that makes your departure involuntary.

One such was Elfaria, who had a drastic change of circumstance resulting him taking a break from FFXI. Sadly this seems to have been a greatly extended leave of absence. There are people who I really do wish were still around, one such being Elfaria.


Crazy, French and Taru! He was just a lot of fun to be around, with his sly remarks which were always spot on, his determination and dedication to his jobs, insane magic bursts or busting out the WS on his SAM he was intense and hilarious and I miss him ooodles >.<

So a toast to those who have gone on and yet still remain in our memories. Wish you were still here. I think a nice red would be appropriate about now LOL and some fine cheese.

Salvage Superstars!

The natives are getting restless and to be quite honest this was just such a spectacular moment lol I don't mind if it gets posted twice. Ring can wax lyrical about Izman's Ares Legs finally dropping and a huge congratulations go out to Izman, Mr. Anti-Legs-Dropping himself for finally getting his mitts on these sexy legs.

I know it might come across as kind of smug, but we all agreed there is a degree of satisfaction gaining them before the update is due, we got them the "hard way" although how significant the adjustments for SilverSeas Remnants and Bhaflau Remnants are remains to be seen, all we can do currently is speculate.

Celestria and Blaize have been doing Salvage for a very very long time, and it was down to just 2 more remaining drops, Ares 35 from SSR and Marduk 35 legs from BR so we have been doing a LOT of both zones. With Izman's success in SSR we were just down to spamming the heck out of the Bhaflau run, with poor Blaize being a class act every single time on the timed gears floor.

We have been through so many runs where we got to the floor, and just saw no Peryton at all, and quite frankly I was at the point where I didn't even really think that they were going to drop even if we did get the big bird, we would just be inundated with Skadi bodies, which while marvelous isn't what I was looking for LoL.

ALL that changed!!! With this stunning end to our Salvage run the other week. 8 Perytons not a sniff of a drop from 7 of them, Ring d'cs and an 8th spawns with 60 seconds on the clock. Ring reappears JUST in the nick of time, but we STILL get the "This mission has failed, leaving the area" message when Iz busts out a Raging Rush and boom! EVERYTHING drops, AND POOLS.

What a night! You guys are SOOO cool! I can't thank you enough. I do feel bad that I ended up with the Skadi body when it could have gone to better use, but we will be back! I of course, immediately got lost in the Undersea Ruins in an elated high trying to get back to Whitegate so I could FINALLY go get my Marduk legs made. I have been waiting even longer than Iz has for his Ares pants for these, but I was always unlucky on the lots or it was just a plain old no-show on the NM's. SUPER sexy for bard though. I am thrilled to bits AND I can shelve all that horrible bard af.

Here is the moment, in glorious technicolour!



*dances again* I am soo grateful to all you guys and Celestria for helping me get them, and not threatening to kill me for doing Bhaflau for the umpteenth time!

In a different vein, I want to spend a moment talking about Thazienne. Thaz is a super cool guy for all those who have crossed paths with him, while he won't sit there and tolerate nonsense, if you get close to his fuzzies you can find out what an awesome guy he is with a razorsharp wit. Ah Kallo, you love it really ^.^ Hahah.


Totally selfless in his willingness to come along and help you out what ever it is you need, be it a bit of TH for farming, or some random quest, so it is always fun when I can help him out! And this time we managed to get him his full set of sexy SAM af. This was NEARLY doomed when the quest was blocked by the final mission in the Celestrial Nexus, but I hijacked our ZNM group (Big thanks again to Celestria, Blaize and Izman) to go knock this fight out for him so he could finish it all up. And as you can see he is looking miiighty fine in it all now ^.^ Congratulations Kitty ^.^

Intermission

One of the oddest things that struck me when I was at the Fan Fest this year was the prevelance of comments along the lines of "Oh your from THAT server that is always crashing."

It was such a random thing to be told, considering that crashes and downtimes on Odin are NOT that common, after all I have spent 5+ years on the server now, I would have a good idea wouldn't I. Infact it was with some amused excitement we got to witness large chunks of our sever keel over and die on Wednesday evening. Whitegate was the first to go swiftly followed by Xarcabard, Dynamis-Xarcabard, Kuftal, the Woodlands and Arappago that I KNOW about.






Since we experienced this down time, I thought a little intermission might be in order to fill the void.



Normally you would get the "Best of Burt Bacharach" for your intermission, but sadly all I have are these few morsels for your delectation and delight ^.^ Enjoy.

Quotes out of Context Series 9 - 14

MrBooboo's Big Day

This is not going to be a particularly wordy post. Shocker I know. I am going to let the pictures do the talking for me, that is all it is going to need.

Aside from 1 hiccup where Boobs decided to d/c right as he traded the coins this all went off without a hitch.

Enjoy these as much as me and not nearly as much as Mrbooboo.









And what do you do after all that hard work? Well...

Dragoon

I first started playing FFXI when it was released in North America. I remember it very distinctly. My friend; who no longer plays, by the name Buttons bought me a copy of game and I was over in the US visiting at the time. We set up an account for me so even though I lived in the UK I wasn't squeezed out by the speed (or lack thereof) of the transition into the EU market.

So that is a fairly long time now. I've been playing for a very long time, as reflected by my "Playtime", which isn't "enhanced" shall we say by long periods afk, if I am not playing I log out. Saves any confusion and the long string of missed /t's you inevitably get.

When I first started out I was in love with Ranger class from the RPG world. I had aquired this love after encountering a character called Kivan, an Elven ranger from Baldur's Gate who you can add to your party in the High Hedge. He is just an AMAZING strong character to have on your team, he was graceful, powerful and invariably the top dog in my parties I made, able to carry the most weight and do the most damage.

Armed with my love of rangers I was determined to become a ranger in FFXI. Now, usually when I play RPG's I play Mage classes, just a quirk of mine I guess, I always have, lol when I first created my Baldur's Gate character I had NO clue at all what I was doing and created a Sorcerer with 11 INT and no VIT. Took me a year to complete the game with him, a stiff breeze would kill him and he failed every spell learn at least 6 times before the load in the game that was in my favour. LOL.

He was a terrible character, but even with his horrendous build by the end of the game, he was able to blast things very satisfactorily. *chuckle* This time! I was determined to break the trend and started off as a Warrior. I even remember my glee when I finally got all my Scale Mail gear and looked "menacing" hahaha. Of course it only lasted a short while till I got fed up with the lack of party invites and went and leveled White Mage instead.


I think if I recall correctly, the first time I ever knowingly was aware and saw a Dragoon class was in Jeuno, back when seeing someone in AF was a big deal. I was just coming out of the moghouse and I got a fleeting glimpse of it and was immediately captivated. I remember babbling to Buttons about it, who had gotten to a higher level before me and was somewhat amused at my excitability.

Of course that was really about it, a flash of purple armour and an expression of delight and not much else for quite a long period of time. I was focused on leveling WHM to 75, and this was back in the day before the update that turned a Dragoon from the laughing stock of melee to one of the best damage jobs in the game.

My first real encounter that sparked it all though, was from a player called Cuja. We used to hang out and chatter and such and he would spend a lot of time seeking and planning to take over the world with fish. I think watching him play, observing the innate grace of the job was the time I became totally smitten with Dragoons.

Then I sort of fell into endgame, with my first sky ls Equillibrium which led to Versus and that is probably where my obsession for the Dragoon job class started to manifest itself, long before Versus became known as a linkshell in its own right, even before people had any idea I might be the leader of said linkshell it was known as "That ls with all the dragoons in it" for I ran the sky ls to go to if you wanted to be involved in the action as a dragoon.


I would insist that any dragoon come in their full AF LoL it was fabulous, At one point I managed to have 5 dragoons and me all in 1 party at the same event all in their AF. It was so funny although perhaps I think my ls watched my giddy insanity with a sort of benevolent amusement at my antics.

Of course the inevitable step was taken and I embarked on leveling the job myself. It took me the better part of a year to get t to 75, struggling against the flow of opinion that Dragoon was a weaker class due to our inability to do any massive spike damage, Penta Thrust was our strongest weaponskill and that was so hideously unreliable you could range from 0 to 700 if you were lucky, but still we existed as a peculiar brotherhood of dogged persistance and resiliance. You instantly felt kinship with any other dragoon because they too understood the struggle against the tide of popular opinion.


Over the time you spend playing FFXI, you inevitably level more than 1 job to 75, and in the midst of all those jobs and classes you end up with just the one job that you really love, while the others are either retired as jobs you loathe, or used as practical jobs for the events and needs of the group. Thus it is for me, I love Dragoon, but I am mostly always to be found on bard or white mage simply because those are the classes I am required to use the most. I am hardly ever on ninja because there are plenty of career tanks in Versus that I am never needed as that job, and it is fun to play but not an all consuming passion for me like Dragoon.

I try to be economical with my gear, while I strive for the best, if I can do something just as efficiently in 1 piece of gear instead of 30 I will go for the former, I just don't have the inventory space to accomodate vast sweeping gear swaps even for the mere 4 jobs I have leveled currently. Dragoon is the exception, if there is something that only improves my dragoon by the smallest margins I want it, I pour all my time, energy and effort into making a well rounded job class that has everything and anything it needs to perform at the top of it's class.


Some of my upgrades may seem like a fools errand, but I am an extremely persistant person and once I set my mind on something I invariably get it if I want it badly enough.

I am starting to run out of gear improvements to get for my dragoon although I can still see a few places for improvement.

My set-ups for Dragoon -

TP
Weapon - Thalassocrat
Grip - Pole Grip
Ranged - Smart Grenade
Head - Walahra Turban
Neck - Love Torque
Ear1 - Brutal Earring
Ear2 - Assault Earring
Body - Ares's Cuirass
Hands - Homam Manopolas
Ring1 - Raja's Ring
Ring2 - Ulthalam's Ring
Back - Amemet Mantle +1
Waist - Swift Belt
Legs - Homam Cosciales
Feet - Homam Gambieras

Now, as much as I dislike the appearance of it, I think an Askar head would be better for me than the Turban, and at some point I really think I should get a Forager's Mantle instead of the Amemet I have been hanging on to for some time now. Other than that the most intrinsic change left for my TP gear (ignoring any future updates) is changing my Thalassocrat for Gungnir, but that will be something that is on going rather than immediate, short term I would like to switch it out for the Skyraider and the Supremacy Earring, but that swine of an Orc in La Vaule will not drop it.

Weapon Skill
Weapon - Thalassocrat
Grip - Pole Grip
Ranged - Smart Grenade
Head - Ares's Mask
Neck - Depending on WS Light Gorget or Darkness Gorget
Ear1 - Brutal Earring
Ear2 - Triumph Earring
Body- Ares's Cuirass
Hands - Ares's Gauntlets
Ring1 - Rajas' Ring
Ring2 - Flame Ring
Back - Amemet Mantle +1
Waist - Warwolf Belt
Legs - Ares's Flanchard
Feet - Ares's Sollerets

Now, WS gear becomes a much greater spot for flexibility, I COULD "improve" my gear to hecatomb, but to be honest, with all the benefits and bonuses I get from having a full Ares set, why would I? I much prefer my WS set up as it currently is, I don't really miss very much and I get some extremely satisfied with my damage output


Ok yes yes, Salvage isn't always the best test, but it is still authentic and a WHOLE lot of fun, you might as well say that Qutrub don't count because their DEF is so low. Anyway that's my arguement and I am sticking to it! /grin

When I do get to play Dragoon it is thrilling, I love it, it is so much fun, completely exhilarating. Everyone should level dragoon and stop pretending that they don't want to be part of the class of top dd's in the game!

Versus

It is snowing. In Central London... /disgusted. Snowing!!

Yes yes, I realise the world thinks that we are a grey, cold and overcast country, but it isn't always the case, London is quite warm compared to the rest of the country and it rarely snows, even less likely for it to stick, and today it is doing BOTH!
HUMPH!

So an incident last night along with general rumminations have prompted me to do a post about my linkshell. The incident in question was an impromptu change in the schedule to do a Jailer of Love instead of a Kirin that I had hazily thrown out there. This caused a rather unexpected amount of resentment amongst the ls members who voiced complaints about the unnannounced change and bothered me enough that I did consider just throwing in the towel right there and then and just finishing all events for that day. But, I am stubborn and persistant and I have wanted to pit the ls against the new version of Love for a while, but it can be so incredibly hard to get everyone to show up at the same time, on time and I wasn't about to let this opportunity pass me by because of a few gripes over nonsense things.

As with most of these things, it is perhaps better to start at the beginning...

Versus is a sleeper ls, people know about it on the quiet. It isn't one that is trumpeted from the hills. We don't have the notoriety of Ressurection, we don't have the ground-breaking-headline-news-making fights of LimitBreak, and we don't have the dramafest of BBQ. Infact, I think our general reluctance to ever enter into the HNM fray; and fray is a very good word to sum up the poor attitudes and greed that tend to come with the highly competative HNM scene at end game, has meant that we generally tend to be under the radar when it comes to new people hunting around for an end game ls.

How we DO maintain our membership is through word of mouth. This is an extremely powerful tool in the Versus arsenal. Ex-members will constantly refer people to Versus if they are looking for that ls that isn't quite the points-driven environment of some of the other ls', and yes I appreciate that we have been used as a stepping stone more than I care to admit, we have a great core membership that are dedicated and loyal to the linkshell.

Time and time again, I have had people say the same thing to me or to my other members, that while they may have gone on to bigger and different things, nothing was ever quite like their time in Versus, love us or hate us there is something quite unique that we have managed to capture in the spirit of how the linkshell works.

Since we started around 5 years ago, we have had around 300 different people pass through our little community, all bringing their own interesting facet to the linkshell, some have polarised opinion, others have brought the linkshell to its knees but we always manage to get back up again and pull together through the leaner times till we are once again at the top of our game.

After casually talking to people about what they do end game wise in their ls, you never quite really comprehend how much we do as a team. We are constantly working together, getting under each others skin and heckling from this end of sea to that end of sky as we go along. As it stands at the moment, through the linkshell we offer Sky, Sea, Limbus, SCNM's, ZNM's, any forced spawn NM within reason, KS99 runs, Assaults, Einherjar and Salvage. All of these events across a 7 day spread, where we only really have no events scheduled on a Wednesday because most of us have Dynamis and Saturday because it is a PAIN to get ppl to show up to events on a Saturday, its the weekend and everyone wants to go hang out with the girlfriend or read Bible stories to their nan some such thing for those people who profess to have a real life LoL.

One of the great things about Versus is the sense of communal spirit, short of food, someone will shore you up, forget those silent oils, here have mine. There is no real resentment and no sense of permanent IOU's filling the spaces inbetween, we are simply working together for each other as well as to better our own interests.

I have noticed that you tend to get things done more efficiently when you are not just being completely self-indulgent about the matter in this game. Sure there are plenty of people who have come before who will use up and toss aside to gain something, but that is such a short-term temporary attitude. If every person in your linkshell didn't think about themselves but worked to further someone else's goals everyone would get what they wanted. Of course this is not Utopia, we have our disagreements and foilables but that is a natural state of existing in a unit, it would be somewhat unrealistic to assume otherwise.

I do find it hard at times running the ls, I am increasingly beginning to wonder if the more someone gets things from the ls as a whole, the more they begin to resent the fact that I do not facilitate the gaining of what ever it is that is left for them to obtain. Of course this is not strictly speaking true, I am not out to "get" anyone LoL, but I do have to maintain a balance and there are a lot of people now who only really need one or two items left from the ls before their store of goodies is complete as far as the ls can take them, attendance at that point becomes wholey for someone else. I think that lack of progress towards what you want can wear down your spirit and let those little niggly demons sneak in.

The BEST thing about the whole linkshell is the banter. I have said it before and for us it still stands true, if you aren't getting heckled, you most likely are not fitting in. We thrive on the double entendres, the play on words, the sly wit, the innuendo and the raucous humour that is rife in the linkshell. You need to come prepared to have a bit of fun and not get too uptight about our rather cavalier attitude. We are a flamboyant and funny group to be around and you really should never be above sending yourself up, it's all part of the fun.

If there has been one thing that has remained the same in the history of Versus it is our ability to be accomplished at what we do, but always with a light step and a smile while we do it. And that makes it worthwhile for all that hard work and effort.

In Demand

There are days when you do nothing at all. Time trickles by a drop at a time and you find you've spent the entire day on your own, with barely a peep out of the ls. Invariably on those days you are sat wondering what to do barely able to motivate yourself at all to do anything even though you know there are about 10 different things you COULD be doing none stimulate you enough to actually make the effort and go out and do it.

Then there are those days where you just can't get a second at all to yourself. LoL not that this is a bad thing, but quite unexpected and a bit of a pain in the neck if you have set up to do something fairly complicated and inventory dependant, such as crafting.

Last Wednesday was one such day. Having nothing to do I had decided to embark on a bit of crafting, in my spare time between events I had accumulated 5 stacks of bone chips to turn into scorpion arrowheads, all I needed was the time, motivation and a lot of on-site crafting as scorpion claws do not stack.

I cleaned out all my inventory and wandered off to the Crawler's Nest as DRG/WHM. Iz and his friend even came out to help, I was there for all of 30mins before I got a /t from Samuraisoldier asking if I would be interested in doing a Nyzul Isle run floor 95-100. Pondering I was, SURE why not! Lets go. At that point he didn't have the 6 people required for the run, so I thought cool, I can stick around and do more crafting. Nooooo.

3mins after the /t from Sam, I get a /t from Coejus saying would I be interested in a quick BC fight. Considering I thought it would take a little while for Sam to get the 6 people together for Nyzul I agreed, only to slope back to town and empty my inventory from crafting. So much for THAT idea! LOL

One quick Superman style change and voila! I am WHM.



1 hour later, voila BRD for Nyzul.



3 full job changes in less than 2 hours. It's exhausting! The more jobs you have at lvl 75 the worse your congestion in your storage spaces becomes. I am maxed out in my moghouse, my mogstorage, my moglocker and my gobbie bag. I don't even comprehend those who haven't upgraded their gobbie bag to 70. It would drive me insane. I am struggling as it is currently and I only have about 9 slots free!

Quotes out of Context - 6 & 7
These two compliment each other so well I just couldn't bring myself to separate them, I am so bad. Teeheehee. Of course, in keeping with the theme of being out of context they are not related AT all.





But I digress! LoL
Back to the matter at hand. Zipping off the the bc which I found to be The Buried God out in Beadeaux_S, I thought it would be a breeze. Error, Error! Never ever assume anything will be quick in Final Fantasy unless it's your death, in which case it will come far swifter than you desire.

I felt terribly embarassed that I held up the Nyzul group for an entire hour doing this bc with Coejus! Of course, I have to turn down Coejus for a lot of things when he asks, either the timing is just not right or I am knee deep at events. This is one of the few times I could say yes and so I did.

This is Coejus! His hobbies are hat collecting and sitting in people's laps. He is a really really cool guy, although beware his mewp mewps !! They are addictive and will ensnare you in their cuteness before you are aware of it. His tarutaru-ness will inviegle it's way into your concious mind and you will be forever addicted.



As a side note, I have to say going in the past is one of the few times I enjoy taking Chocobos. They are not expensive and very easy to obtain with Allied notes which are equally easy to earn. Plus! They look SUPER cool!



This Past SCNM fight is not one I have done before, I was quite pleased to be experiencing it first hand I thought it would be great to get some relevant action experience for when I took Versus to do the fight.

It is a very small BC zone, with a super shiny Quadav, and his 4 minions 2 BLM and 2 WHM. The set up was predominatenly mages, with SMN, RNG and BLM being the main damage dealers, a BARD, SCH and WHM as the main healers, 2 PLD and I think maybe 2 DD? I can't remember, I remember Coejus being there SAM lol as he had to peel an imp off me as we were huddling against the corroded gate.

It is extremely easy to kite the main NM in this fight around a small patch of wall at the top and on the left of the bc area, while everyone else takes out the Quadavs in Supertank mode. Meaning you have your PLD aggro everything and kill things one at a time while they all beat on him, it really was not hard to keep Aable alive and once they were dead even the main NM wasn't hard as a straight tank fight.

Hate was re-established pretty quickly after each reset and it was just whittled down until death. As it appears with all these fights, once the "aura" of each NM vanishes, they actually become very easy. The auras are often incredibly debilitating, gravity from the Yagudo, slow from the Quadav and flash from the Orc, along with a huge boost to its defense.



Most of the fights seem to be endurance and survivability until you can get rid of the aura then bring out the big guns and mow down the mob before it reapplies its aura.

This was a very successful run with the silly hat and the GA dropping. Some very satisfied customers left LOL and I got a new snazzy title to boot. I can't wait to do this with Versus, I think we should be able to handle it quite easily.