Alayic's little den

February 22, 2004. first time i heard that "it all began with a stone, or so the legends claim." an auspicious day in which Alayic was born. Sefi told me that I would want to be a taru, knowing my propensity for magical jobs, but I didn't follow her sage advice and went with the Elvaan because "elves are always magical!" I found out just how wrong that was.

I started my career in FFXI as an RDM to be honest. I had read that it was a hybrid of blm, whm and melee, and I figured it was a good way to start. Sefi though did have to laughingly tell me i didn't have to hit ctrl + a each time i wanted to swing my sword...i kept putting it away and taking it out, rinse and repeat lol.

I remember one of my first parties in Valk, there i was a level 17 rdm, no sj, nice sword, decent armor (i thought) and on the front line swinging my sword, until a BLM yelled at me to get on the back line and help enfeeble. Most of my enfeebles didn't land of course, cause i hadn't spent much time leveling magic skills :\.

I remember getting my sj items with sefi, and racing back to sandy and leveling blm up. i was a blm/rdm for quite awhile until someone told me that generally blm/whm was the way to go. I hated that concept as I didn't want to be a whm...and I leveled that job very very slowly. I was blm/rdm almost all the way to 37blm.

I remember getting Stun in the jungle with a great group. I remember getting my first elemental staves. I remember getting Quake, Warp 2 and a Dark Staff from an old LS Member, Zefren. I remember doing G1 with him as well. I also remember having to level up quickly at one point as Shay & Jaman were almost 60 and I wasn't high enough yet to do G3. I did make it and on we went.

I remember trio'ing with Tey & Lree from about 62-65/68'ish. I remember killing the rodent looking things in TAU zones for hours to level. I remember some duo's with Jaman along the way, and some groups on Mt Z. I also remember a party one night that I got 75, and my first merit point.



One of the final acts of that party was on Mt Z and involved alot of trolls. We'd get one down, and one would spawn. We'd sleep one, and another would wake up. This went on for like 10 minutes and we just somehow kept going with no deaths.

I remember many many Shaylaa'isms ("i'm a thf/war so I can't provoke"). I remember many Thursday night scroll runs. I remember months of work for CoP, doing things 2 or even 3 times depending on the size of the groups, and sometimes waiting for HOURS for 2hrs to cool down (I believe we waited twice for cool downs on one of the Promyies, whichever one spawns adds).

I remember "Operation get Shay's rdm to 37." I remember many sets, many groupings, many jokes, much laughter. I think laughter is something that is a predominant theme in most of my memories, sometimes to the point of tears. I still have some of the screen shots of Jaman asking Lree "how do you know i'm cut?" when he meant 'cute,' and of a weird conversation that had Jaman giving anal birth to Juki's baby. And who can forget tail penises...







My lap was never cold either:




So many memories, so little space. I write this though to celebrate the memories I had...and lament that there will be no more. Earlier today I hit the button to stop FFXI. I kept it for so long out of sentimental attachment, and also in the hope that one day I'd get back into it. As of right now, that doesn't seem like it's going to happen. I'm not deleting it off of my computer on the off chance that I do decide to re-enlist...but for now, I bid everyone a fond farewell. I will miss you all.

Please don't hesitate to contact me on IM, my SN is Firesong18 (you have to tell me your name first though, due to privacy settings you can't see me otherwise). I'm also on MSN under firesong17@yahoo.com.

been having some issues lately with ffxi. i love the people, and i've made friendships i never want to end. my problem though is that i seem to have no real 'goals' anymore, and i find it harder and harder to sign in and do anything.

right now, the only thing i really have as a 'goal' is to get rdm to 75. since i'm not a fan of pickup parties that means ALOT of campaigning. while i don't mind campaign battles, they are kind of boring/monotonous after awhile.

but other then campaign battles and getting rdm to 75 (and will probably never use it after), i don't have any goals. i'm not really into endgame things, though i wouldn't mind some of the gears, though even if i wanted to join a dynamis, limbus, etc LS, my work schedule doesn't really allow for it since i get off at 10pm est.

it seems like each time i sign in, there are more strangers in the LS and less friends. i don't begrudge those people in the game who have those goals and things going on with endgame ls's, or exp sets etc., just i feel kind of like the stranger looking into a house. doesn't help that my best friend in the world, Sefi (the one who got me addicted in the FIRST place) doesn't play really anymore.

no, this is not a "i'm thinking of canceling ffxi" topic, just a mental ramble kind of. just some stuff that's been going on in my mind lately. oh well lol.

hey everyone!! i was poking around today and i found a CD labeled "Misc info" so i decided to to see what was on it. turns out, on there was the software i use to edit pics!! i was psyched cause that meant i could reinstall it and edit me some pics for a livejournal entry (pics are a vivify requirement).

wait, what was that? why did i have to reinstall a program that i had used many times? well the quick answer to that is...my computer went kaput in mid-november'ish. woke up a few minutes before alarm clock, no issue all looks right with comp in idle status & black screen. when alarm clock goes off 5 minutes later...BSOD. rebooted, got back to the desktop where got the normal alert of 'system has recovered from a serious error.' checked the event log and saw something along the lines of "the system disc is not usable, please run error check." well before i could actually start the error check...i BSOD'd and could not get back to the desktop b4 i had to go to work. when i came home, it again would auto bsod, couldn't get to safe mode, nothing.

brought the comp up to sef's house to see if we could just add the drive to her comp and have it do the error check...which it did kind of work. took over 3 hours for the error check to process, and there were SO many errors and missing files and orphaned files and things i can't even remember it was ridiculous. luckily Dell does have a restore partition on the drive so after i saved most of the important things (i forgot a few unfort), we did that and reset the computer to the initial startup. it's worked fine since then, with the exception that i cannot run a chkdsk. if i run it inside windows it will BSOD before it completes. i'm afraid to run it outside of windows, as i had done that after we got it fixed, and it would always get stuck at like 75% on the last stage. i ended up having to reset it...again.

so, since then though there hasn't really been anything noticeably wrong. sef isn't sure if it was an hdd hardware issue or not, but i'm leaning to possibly no, as i'd think if it was a hardware issue it would have resurfaced by now. i'm in no way saying things are great, but they gonna have to stay this way till i get enough moola together to get me a new comp. i did just start a new job, which has a much larger (potential) payout then my old one. i do start at a higher base salary even w/o incentive, so we shall see.

now, ffxi stuff...ffxi stuff. well, alot has happened since my last post (back in october). i can say that i now have a second 75 on my brd! i'm so psyched! i'm finding myself more and more on brd then blm. i think it's that i've been on blm almost since i started, that i find it just very refreshing to be on something completely different. sadly i did not take a screenshot of my level up :(.

things i DID take ss's of though:

leveling sword on brd. also doing for my blu which eventually might level up again :)



also, after a besieged, but before our set started (and due to this our set started very late) H got an invite to an apoc nigh fight. he asked me and ayat if we wanted to go, as they weren't full. well i'm no fool and i said yes:



and then:



i was very psyched about that, as it means i got a little more ungimped.

let's see, what else. OH! i said hi to a dragon:


this one was just great. doing sac scroll quest on thursday, jaman had gotten there first and threaded his way through the maze. suddenly he was like "omg, come to room 3!!!" well when i got there, i went up front by the teacher and helped run that class:



now this pic, was done as one of those purely coincidental things, that you don't think about till you actually look at the screen and realize it lol. me and vistos were doing campaign battles, had died and were waiting for weakness to wear. well when i looked up, this is what i saw:



i was dieing as we just looked...so cute in a weird way.

well, i'm signing off this for now, but i leave you with this final image:



that shay...always full of surprises.

wow, another update from me already. that's gotta be a record!!!

ok, just some quick things this time (and yes viv i do have pics). nothing much to report since i just posted an entry on the 22nd. the set is going very well, we are all at around 66 (except terru who's a smidge behind). we finally all brought our AF's out so we could take a (little late) group shot:



as you can see, Terru doesn't have the AF hat on. we asked him to wear it and he said he will never put it on. he did put it on for like...1 second, but was to fast to catch it on an SS.

i've also ranked up to Chief Sergeant in Assault, go go longer sanction! this actually happened a bit ago, i just never posted. also, last night i got my Yigit Gomlek.



so happy about this piece. i can use it in stead of the Errant on BLM for the MP recovery, and is at least a semi decent substitute for the Sha'ir Manteel, which at 6million a pop is well outside my budget.

well, that's really all i have to say. i found a few other fun pics though that i wanted to share.

Vivi being silly:



Jaman doing bad things to Sefi:



another shot of the Kuku's fighting a door (pre kookoo):



shortly after doing an NM fight for sef's rank 9 (we were just talking about this last night to):



that's all folks. enjoy!!

i didn't realize that much time had passed since i last posted here. i'm actually currently at work, but the system i need to use in order to do my job isn't working...joy.

so, what's been happening in the world of Alayic. well, our set did pick back up, and i'm having a complete blast. my brd is currently 65, and we are getting at least 1-1.5 levels a night. i know as we get higher that will slowly drop off, even at 10k/hr, when we get into the 30-40k xp/level. thing is, i don't care. i'm having FUN!

we all work very well together, and being on the skype call allows us to work even smoother. in all seriousness, we've had extremely few deaths along the way since 37ish, and those that have happened number less then 5-6 total. for so far almost 30 levels to have had almost no deaths to me is just phenomenal.

being on the skype call just adds a whole other level to playing this game. you get to know people more then just by reading the little letters on the screen. i can't say how often i've just started laughing hysterically as shay will say "i have TP" and h will go "Provoke/big cure/flash/shield bash" etc. he's a great tank, i just don't think he works well with a thief as he's used to having to pull hate, and i don't think it computes that now and then he has to deliberately not have hate on him lol. this is a little different now with shay having the assassin job trait, so she doesn't really NEED hate to not be on h.

let's see, what else. my BLU is 39 now, only one level away from Chain Affinity! blu is duo'd with sef, and anyone else who happens to come along. it's something i really do enjoy, though the occasional stops for spell hunting can be annoying as it can take so long to learn a spell. i really like the power behind blu, and it's damage output is just so fast and hard. i like!

lastly, we almost had a small depression last night. Socks hasn't played in a bit, and he was going to quit the game. he was having difficulty with parties due to lack of fenrir, and since smn was his first 75, it just wasn't easy to have the final two avatars. when he signed on last night to say he was leaving, cronk asked if he had fenrir to which socks replied no. well he had fenrir within 2 hours of that point. me/tey/h/rikku/cronk/socks went out to the full moon fountain, and fought the Guardian of the Moon. we wiped the first time, then rikku came back as whm, and we did great the 2nd. the awesomeness was due primarily to cronk, who managed to stun (rdm/drk), fenrir's Howling Moon. also, Fenrir didn't due the Lunar Cry mass dispelga which stripped us of all our buffs. was a piece of cake after that, and he fell to the kookoos!! socks immediately began seeking, and was told he's not allowed to quit lol.

well, that's all i can think of at the moment. still waiting for this damn system to come up here (2 hours in, no luck).

talk to you y'all on the flip side!

hey all (like 2-3 people that read this). it's time for another update :).

nothing much happened lately, most exciting thing was actually something that was pure melee-ish, which for me is amazing. i got my staff skill to 230! this skill could not even have begun to be obtained without the wonderful people known as Shaylaa & Mistaaytch. we've done a few (under-exageration) skill up pt's along the way, and i just completely love these two peoples! this is not to detract from anyone else who i've ever done a skill-up party with before, Jaman, Minibeefcake, Sefirothe, just to name a few. you all are wonderful people :D (yes even jaman).

oh but wait, there's more...

popped out of the skillup party to get the staff of trials, then went back for a bit to do some ws's & sc's. did about an hour or so with sef on fri/sat-ish in misery coast, as well as alot of just killing mobs with my trusty npc. then Ayatsubame took me to kuftal for about two hours on sunday night. broke around 1pm and one of the last few mobs was it...i BROKE THE LATENT!!! i now have so much more respect for anyone who has ever done that. it SUCKS! lol

oh but wait, not done yet...

cronk took me out to Ifrit's Cauldron, and Tey, who had been semi afk, got his tail dragged along (was me in a kitty party!). well, of course all i should need to say is:



which of course leads to:



and



i am so psyched! i feel some more gimpyness falling off (i'm sure mini will have a comment telling me my path to ungimpness has just begun).

so, what else is out there. well monday is the update, and the next(last?) set of missions. i still have to find some peoples to do Gessho with, so hopefully can get that done soon. the update also has Grips which squeenix went out of there way to mention that there will be mage types, so hopefully they will be good ones (though finding the room for multiple grips as well as 8 staffs...another gobby bag please). also, i'm hoping some basic grips are vendor items, and not only craftable. only reason for this is they will be mondo expensive for the first few months until prices drop on them, so we'll see.

well...that's all i can think of at the moment. hit me up if you like :)

so nothing much happening in game. i will be honest that i've been playing in other areas, though i won't say which or shay might kill me :D.

so...what did i do. oh yeah! i helped a few of my fellow ls'ers get an O-Hat. now, since Vivify asked oh so nicely:





hmm...that's kind of it lol. till next time :)

this is for all the hundreds of millions of non people who don't read this. they were all not clamoring for an update, so to make sure to satisfy their irrelevant needs, i've posted an update :D

anyway, where am i. been a long time since i updated last, maybe i'll get into a habit of updating more often (then again, maybe not lol).

ok, so recent job type things...well my nin is 38 (no Ni), my rdm is 40, smn is 32, blu is 28...and something else...what was it..hmm...oh yeah.

BRD is 50 (af complete! thank you mini & jaman for the help on those coffer mobs, and tri to killing the orcish dude so i could pop the NM for the coat)! got in a very smooth set with jaman, h, shay, cronk, & socks. we have alot of fun while leveling, as we are sitting there on skype chit chatting. we haven't leveled in a bit though, cronk i think is off till after his wedding (and the permanent attachment of a ball and chain to his body). he did say we could go ahead w/o him and he'd catch up (and i have no doubts about that), but it's hard to find just the right job combo when seeking as we need someone who could be a sata partner so shay can do her thaing, which means they have to know what they are doing. not to mention, if we added someone to the set it would only be on a temp basis till cronk came back. so that could be weird lol.

so let's see, what else. i got sergeant major rank in assault (least i did if that's the one you get after the exercise regimen). i still need the tau mission against a certain yagudo, but i know sef at least needs that to, though her schedule is a bit wonky anymore.

speaking of work schedules, mine finally got changed back to what it was this time last year, 11am-730pm EST. stupid supervisor & management who made me there till 11pm, then 9pm. freaking fought for 7 months to get a shift changed BACK to what it had been!!

anyway, moving on lol. sef and i are semi nubbing our blu's together, just a thing to do together since her work schedule doesn't let us talk to much anymore. we occasionally drag others along (mini & socks, and maybe jaman soon). we spent yesterday spell hunting for about...6 hours. we are two spells (well she is 3 as she couldn't learn poison breath from the dogs) from being done hunting up till 38! those spells are digest & pinecomb bomb lol. i like the flexibility of blu alot, though i hate the learning spells part. that just...sucks. the weird part is that both of us are all "yeah we know we won't use this, but gotta have them all."

ok, i can't think of anything else off the top of my head right now. closing this out. leave me some <3! :D lol

yeah...today kinda sucked.

1) ended up being half hour late to lunch due to traffic on the highway. they were doing construction work (potholes) but didn't tell anyone. yeah, that blew

2) work sucks and was boring as hell

3) on my way home i get hit with this just...overwhelming feeling of depression (no i'm not clinically depressed) when thinking about the game. realizing that i made a huge error when i made alayic all those times ago. i'm someone who prefers magical jobs, and i didn't listen when sefirothe said i'd want taru.

as elvaan yeah, i don't die as easy as taru, but the power just isn't there. i run out of mp fast, which inhibits big nukes, and while i'm not 100% on this here i swear my low int is messing with enfeebles such as sleep & gravity. they are black magic so they probably are int. just knowing that no matter what i potentially do, or with the best gear possible (which i'll never see), i'll only ever be a 'decent - low level good' blm.

4) died twice tonight. the first one was no big as was in a 50 cap area and was with cronk and jaman trying to get subligar. a fomor war attacked and just sucked. that i didn't mind as i was actually having fun :).

2nd death, and the one that pissed me off. i just bought igqira lappas to be able to bump up my enfeebling skill, and figured i'd give solo'ing a shot. i killed 2 roaches in about an hours time..TWO..then i died. i just kept running out of mp, and could never seem to get it back fast enough. the first one (which i think was T), resisted 3 sleep attempts before i got it to stick. second one wasn't to bad, third one killed me when it was at 21%. it just kept waking up, and then i couldn't get it back to sleep.

so yeah...this will be fun trying to get merits on blm. i don't mind parties, but damnit...i wanted to solo. i doubt i could do puddings for the same reasons just listed, and to my understanding they aren't the most receptive to a sleep spell. while i can still kill Qiqirn i guess in alzadaal, meriting on those will take forever.

so yeah...today just sucked.

ok, so it's been awhile since i updated this, so i figured i'd give it a shot. let's see..my last post was just rambling about some CoP thing, so lets see...

the most recent thing i can think of was "operation get Shay 37rdm as fast as possible." as shay is leveling up her blm, soloing will almost require a /rdm for Mount Z (gravity primarily), so she was going to need this. a few LS members (i believe cronk, h & jaman) decided to do this as a full newb job pt. cronk did sam, jaman did thf & h did drg. i came war for a bit (joined at 5) and got it to level 11. had a little bump at one point but that was only a small one (just realized i didn't take a picture).

the second time i joined, i was a SMN. my smn was 23 so i watched them run back and forth between gobs and giants alot while i waited for them to get to equal level. along the way we all learned how to slide into healing, which was an innocent question by me that turned into a huge thing as we were doing it all over. H did it once...and a gob got in his way, how rude lol.

next place we went was to the jungle, and actually here is where it gets a little interesting. apparently a few weeks ago, cronk (as manders) was in a manaburn pt on mt z, when they decided to boot him mid cast, to add a brd. understandably this annoyed cronk and would annoy just about anyone to no end, as they apparently did so without any notice. so there we were on the ship to kazham when the leader of that previous manaburn was on the ship seeking party, while cronk & manders were there with me. so cronk told me to invite manders, and then invite the other guy. i did, reluctantly, and after a bit with ship docking and zoning out of port and stuff, finally got the guy in the pt, and manders d2'd him back to whitegate, making cronk's night.

now, personally i wasn't to happy about it, though i did have the option to say no and chose not to, so i can only blame myself lol. i will admit it was funny. the reallllly interesting part was that this guy complained to his ls, understandably, and one of the guys came out to kazham. he located us fighting mandies & gobs, cast ice spikes on himself and began to cure bomb members of the party. doing this would generate no xp for us if the mob hit him and got damaged. so we called a GM as this was going a little far.










so that was a trip and a half. basically the GM told him to get lost. the guy who came wasn't even the guy who was D2'd, and while yeah i understand the whole 'stick together' thing, at least do it in a way that doesn't violate TOS.

so let's see...oh yeah, we also often appeared as a Gilseller PT:



but it worked. we all got to 37 on sunday night/monday morning. :D

so what else...oh i saw a dragon:




and also got something else done that's been annoying me. the full story will not be told here, but needless to say:



well people, i think it's time for bed. have a good one!!

well as we all know in March, squeenix changed the rules on CoP in that you don't lose xp when you die in a BC. they announced this of course about a week or two after our set finished the set up to Promathia.

so here i was, admittedly semi annoyed though not completely, until i saw this in regards to the fight with the Zdei pots fights:


You can't build TP on mobs in the garden before going into the battle anymore since March 2007's update. Also you lose buffs after entering the fight.


now that...ouch. going in with TP was nice, and having the ability to buff before was nice to. still doesn't balance out the 6k xp i lost in that fight, but eh.

yes, i needed something to do. i felt weird that i hadn't posted in a while (though neither has shay so i'm not completely off :D).

ok, last friday we restarted our CoP set, and were going for the final bc's. it took 5 runs on those damn pots to finally win. not 5 wipes mind you, just 5 runs. finishing that we had a very well timed besieged going on. we went back to al zahbi, got & used the revitalizer temporary item, and then went back to Sea for the fight against a god.

the fight was a little hectic, but we weren't doing that bad. around 7%ish i manafonted as i was out of power, and was throwing out nukes. at this point i had a major error that i still can't believe. the mob was down to about 1-2% and i died. i did have reraise up, but i got a little over excited, and somehow...accidentally homepointed. first time i've EVER not waited the 20 seconds for the little window to come up...and it happened to be then. i was pissed off!

my anger however was shortlived. within the 10 minutes it took for me to go downstairs, get a drink of water & get back, a new pt was pretty much formed to go do the fight again. i've always said i love our LS, but this really proved that we have an awesome group. they formed up quick, and performed flawlessly to help me undo a massive error.

i got my Tamas ring at about 1:30pm EST the next day :D.

this week was a very nice one if i do say so myself. started a little bit the other night to get shay 4 KS. i go about 7 levels on my staff skill.

then on thursday night..:



then last night cronk & shay had arranged a party for me to get a specific goal done. goal accomplished:



GO ME! Thank you SO much to Shay, H, Sef, Cronk & BH! i think i ended up with over 50k xp points last night, lol. i was main heal during the time in Mire, and didn't do that bad. i've never cast curaga or curaga II so much in my life.

we took a small break when sef left, and then Kitpu joined for a bit as we went from the Mire to beat on Trolls. i got my key item for limits, and got my first limit point (applied to magic)!!! and yes mini, i will be capping my XP, i just wanted to get one point lol.

one point when doing trolls, we were fighting 2, then a 3rd linked. kitpu dc'd, BH died. the first one, a pld, was dieing while i kept two rng's slept (well tried to). had a few interesting moments, then while we were almost done with the first rng, a troll rdm popped...we won somehow, but omg that was a few interesting moments lol.

i LOVE our LS

i'm almost there! i'm at 73.5 lol. i think i xp'd more on friday then i have in a very long time. i duo'd with jaman at like 130p - 430/5ish at Mt Z (joined by a 3rd for a little bit, then jaman left then 3rd left). i refreshed sanction, and went to aydeewa subteranea, and i was essentially there till almost 2-3am with occasional stops for sanction refresh. finally got to 73 and bought my Igqira pieces.

saturday did some duo'ing with jaman, which ended up moving from puddings to roaches when we merged with others. was a weird way, i thought, of doing things though when it worked it worked...WHEN. unfortunately it didn't work every time, and jaman died, and so did a few of the others. i did end up getting about 20k xp from that, thoguh i think we were much better off doing the puddings.

i haven't xp'd again yet, might do some tonight. the thought of killing more rats right now makes me a little ill, just because i spent over 10 hours killing them on friday. i might kill them a few xp a night, hit 74 by the end of the week in small easy stages.

I...beat...Maat..

OMFGWTFW00T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i beat maat!!!

took till my 3rd try, and i think i still almost lost. freeze & waterga III did a respectable (kinda) 522, but flare only did 329. what almost cost me was that maat did stun right as waterga III was about to fly off, but a blink shadow was still up and it absorbed it!

this was turning out to be such a bad week, i lost twice, didn't get claim on the gob for the moldavite earring...then last night mini got claim with mug, and today he got me my third testimony (thank you sef, eli, tokh & cronk who got me #1 & #2). and i won...


I LOVE MY LS!

well i'm on vacation this week, so i'm setting a few hopeful goals. i've started setting very minimum goals so i'm not disapointed, or angry with myself, if they don't happen.

my main minimum goal is to level to 69 (no dirty jokes please). i just want the one level and i'll be happy. two would be awesome, but i don't see myself getting 70, i might try for a pt.

i also might level rdm though instead of BLM for a bit. apparently rdm is a better sub for BLM if having to solo. since my schedule starting next month sucks (230p - 11p sun-thur) i'm probably going to need to solo more. my only problem with leveling rdm is that it's very similar to blm in the whole enfeeble/nukage aspect, with a little more emphasis on enfeeble & healing. i'm not saying it's the same, but it is similar which would make it a little annoying in my head to do it. eh, lol.

i did my first limbus tonight, which i thought was alot of fun. the only thing i didn't like was the whole dieing 3 times thing...and H didn't even die so something was wrong. i did random a 999 for an extra coin which i thought was pretty cool. what i'm worried about though is the price tag of Limbus with a 50k per pop. i don't make money easy in the game, and i'm going to have to figure out a way to do that semi steady pretty soon :(.

lets see, so far this week i've done the black coffin bc, did my cutscenes, got my Aydeewa Subterrane map, got the new staging point (omg so freaking easy), helped Cronk kill the ghost for the Gold Coin (we ended up in an alliance which was helpful), and helped someone else do the Black Coffin BC.

lets see what happens by the end of the week :).

and the reason i know that? we got there!!!!!!!

months and months of time invested into this expansion and we have finally crossed the void to this bizzare place.

i know i posted last time that i wasn't sure if i was going to be able to join the rest due to my level. turns out it wasn't that much of a problem (though my flare only did like 583 ><). we had a little of a rough start as a member hadn't done the CS in bastok, but that was fixed quickly enough.

my problem actually turned out not to be my level, but my damn internet connection. it's been wonky all week, was perfectly fine on wednesday. thursday night, and all day friday however, it was awful. random disconnects as the modem would recycle. had it happen twice in 5 minutes, then once ever 35. was always a random time, and i was terrified it would happen during the fight, or the cs after (not sure what happens if you leave during the cs).

never fear, Sefirothe is here! lol, sef (my excellent best friend since umm..7th grade) lives about 3 minutes away and let me come up and do the fight on her comp. was really fun to be with her doing it, was reminded of college with us being on our comps next to each other talking away playing star craft. the funniest part was when i was casting spells, got off stone IV and then i lost my target on tenzen and started freaking out. then sef, oh so calmly stated, "yeah you lost the target, you won!"

i was in shock, and then thrilled that that hurdle was FINALLY over. we only had one fatality (sorry H), and then the rest of us were in this massively confusing place with no map.

YAY US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well friday we did the airship fight. we were going to start it with just a dry run, so everyone could get a feel for it. yeah well, all i have to say to that is:



we went in totally expecting party wipe. noone popped food, mammets went smooth as silk with almost no difficulty at all. moved onto omega, and while myself, jaman & shay died on this bad boy, we still hadn't used food, didn't use any ccb's, nothing.

so we get to ultima, and after resting start thinking that maybe we do have enough time. we debate this down to about 20/25% and suddenly were like screw it. ccb toss'd, mighty strikes used, chainspell used (though poor jaman only got out one Thunder II before he was killed), and just nuking. i have to say...wow! if i listened to someone telling me this story of how they beat ultima, i'd be like, yeah right!

considering we went in there totally not prepared for actually fighting, we KICKED ARSE! everyone was awesome, and everyone did everything just about perfectly. i wish all dry runs worked like this :D.

so next is tenzen. this is the part i get worried. long ago when this was started, tenzen was a distant idea. i had lots of time to potentially level up, and hopefully be of use, though i knew even then i wouldn't be 75 by the time of the fight. the problem is that he's possibly this friday, and i'm only 67 (maybe 68/69 by then). i know that i might not get to go to Sea with everyone, and i acknowledge that, though i have to admit it makes me feel weird. i know my level is a deterrant, but i wanted to step into sea with the others. we'll see, and if i can't go in with them, and have to wait for the next wave, so be it.

w00t! i got 64blm! odd part was i was more excited about getting erase then i was Bliz III lol.

we pt'd yesterday, but thost damn colibri are awful for mages. i volunteered for main healing (and stole sef's vermy). came close to level, but we were all tired and the smn was about to fall asleep. tried again tonight for an hour, couldn't find a whm or a rdm, and since we were going to do crawlers would have needed more curing power then i could manage. neither job would pop on seek, and poor tey tried to ask all whm's in our range, and none would come pt.

at about 930/945ish we just broke. we all wanted to pt, just couldn't get the components together. i joined shay, aya & eli in the boyhada place to break shay's latent for Steel Cyclone. they stayed together after shay broke latent (congrats!), and got me my level :D. i love our LS :)

hello to those who may or may not read this, this is my first post.

hmm...what to type, what to type, what to type...can't think of much really. main accomplishment today was that i got about 3.6k xp from the escorty type things. brd is almost 26, and i think that's what i might focus on pt wiseish. drg is fun to solo, but not sure i wanna pt with it. i like rdm & smn, but after doing blm i'm kind of tired of nuking and enfeebling quite as much.

CoP this week, should be interesting. i get to go into both twice (joy!). i'm not so worried about the trackers, but the snoll is scaring the bejeezus out of me. i'm just worried that i'm going to massively f up, and i'm going to screw someone out of getting the thing ;;. hopefully won't happen, but you never know.

kind of worried about after the airship battle (scared of that to, but that's a dif topic). my level isn't very high (not sure how long going to take to level up), and tenzen is uncapped as well as almost everything afterwards. 63blm not much use in an uncapped thing that 75's can barely do *sighs*.