Funniest Thing Ever... Thanks Russta!

I have been really down lately. I really do not know why. I guess my entire life situation is just catching up to me. My gaming life is kind of ... lets just say complicated these days. I am not one to put my emotions on this lj but ... yeah.

Anyway, I really dunno what or who led me to scouring youtube today. But I came upon several videos from old Final Fantasy games. I am a big softy... I know alot of people think of FFX as the bastard child of FF games. The series really hasn't been the same since FF9, but I did fall in love with FFX. Emotionally invested in Yuna and Tidus' relationship, finding this video from FFX2 several years after I beat the game to get the "sad" ending, made me well up a little.

I have alot to say at the moment, but really do not know how to express it all. So here, take this video in the mean time.

Myinre sent me this today. I found it kind of funny. Especially since I eat at the BK and not many other fast food places.

I am now completely convinced that we are not only surround by them, but they run the world at large. We can see the finest example of this at the pinnacle of Western civilization today. Yet watching this just proves to me that it runs much deeper than just the W.



How can you honestly tell me that shows like America's Top Model, Beauty and the Geek, One Tree Hill, and Life is Wild are all "better" than what that would have been? I just don't think you can.

So, as someone sent me an IM earlier "you're playing ffxi again!"

Its funny, I started that entry over a month ago. Never did get around to finishing it. I did log in to FFXI for a few hours that day. I roamed around the world, captured Ose on my little pokemon camera thingie, and headed back to Whitegate to mess around with my newly minted pokemon pet. Needless to say, I could do anything else in the world and still be able to take the 2 minutes every half hour to watch my little pet cat get killed.

I keep hoping that Square will get a clue and improve FFXI enough to make me want to come back full time. The game's core concepts are better than Lotro, WoW and EQ. The idea of having to be socially interactive in a game to play it is a very unique one in the modern world of MMO's. FFXI holds a place of its own in that right. Its just too bad that the rest of the "advancements" in the MMO world still baffle the people "updating" the game.

When the announcement of the Wings of Altana expac was released I was actually excited. I LOVE the history and story that SE has given us thus far. The two things that made Chains of Promathia the very height of FFXI and Treasure of Aht Urghan the very lowest point, seemed to have to be in this new expansion. We will see in 21 days if that story is actually there. Yet the one thing that would for sure bring me back for more than a lookieloo is not there. No amount of new jobs (can't wait to see how cringeworthy the male dancers will be, and we all know they will be horrible), no amount of "historic zones" can make me come back to a game that has continually proven it does not wish to go forward out of its own past. Until SE decides to raise the level cap to 85+ he game will continue to be stuck in its own history. Sure, the days of the Dalmatica and the Ridill being the best of the best of the best may be over, but their usefulness has not diminished enough for people to not be forced to sit and attempt to pull every day. They have added Salvage and Assault, and with it new gear. Yet, these are new challenges, that are minor at best.

The story and the game need to move forward.

After previously dealing with the pain of Lebros's Brittle Rocks, Periqua's Army of Crabs and Toads, and Ilrusi's Fun loving Lamia #13, it was a bit of a challenge to enjoy getting beaten on by lizards day in and day out.

( Assault Fun + Various Other Affairs )

While, I was out of town for the week of the latest update, I have been able to explore a bit of its content. Well I should say limited content. The additions where quite large on paper, but very few of them have had a real impact on game play or the bottom line level of fun to be had.

( Exploring the new content )

Periqia:
A Little Piece of Hell Inside A Reef

After we had managed to clear out Lebros Canyon of Brittle Rocks and Ilrusi Atoll from a charming Lamia and her minions, we set our sight on escorting an annoying pirate through a bunch of seafood and gelatinous masses for a while. Assault in and of itself has been a joy for us. It has given us something else to do besides Limbus and Meriting. We managed to rank all the way up to Senior Private (after SE fixed the Dark Rider) by farming Lebros. We moved on to dispelling Ilrusi and picked up som Pahluwan bodies for a couple of us. The Gomlek however sat there staring at us. It being usable by at least 3 of each of our jobs. It havin Magic Attack Bonus was intriquing for me as Red Mage. But the real beauty of the piece is that while having that MAB it has Evasion and the all important hMP+5. Add to that the Song Cast Time -10% and its an insane body piece for the merit party pulling bard.

Periqia has a few assault options at the moment. With Requiem the Private First Class being the least interesting since its base AP is incredibly low compared to the other two. While we are all Senior Privates, the SP mission Saving Private Ryaaf would garner more base points, it just didn't work with our job set up. So we decided to work with Seagull Grounded. The guide so eloquently put on the wiki page is kind of complicated, and to be honest, I don't much like the "Sleepga and Logout" methodology at all. So here you have how we did it. We lost only a single time and that was because we just plain got sloppy after doing it 18 times.



When you first enter Periqia you are in a "Pirate's Chamber" with the NPC, Excaliace standing in the far end of the room staring at you. Your job is to make sure he runs to the other end of the zone. He is fairly fast in his movement speed and he can get faster, so be forewarned. The jist of the mission is that once started he will move until you get in his face to stop him. We did this with three people, OJ as MNK/NIN, me as NIN/WAR and Katlan as WHM/RDM "controlling" the pirate. The pirate himself is far from easy to control. You stop and start him by getting close to him and far away from him. Yet if you get too far away he runs. If you let him get within a certain distance to a monster he runs away. When he runs away he Flee's. He will stop and get tired and you can catch up. Yet even with Herald Gaiters, he is hard to keep up with when he bolts.

After he begins his run he comes to a group of 6 rooms. Three of which have three non aggressive crabs inside. Our plan in a nutshell, "Be fast and be ahead of the game." When we begin, OJ and I get hasted and run and kill the first crab. By the time it is dead (or just about), the pirate will make his choice. If he chooses the empty room, no worries, not time wasted. If he chooses the crab room, we are ahead of the game and can pull the crabs within range of our WHM (Pitstop) who has stopped him outside of the room. She can cure, haste, regen, dia and dispel from her spot and can rest whenever she needs to. Once the room is clear, move to the next and rinse and repeat. He can and will pick any combination of rooms. We have had him choose all 3 crab rooms or all 3 empty rooms. At the very least we will always kill a crab in atleast the first and last crab room. As sometimes he will have chosen the middle empty room before OJ and I could get to the next crab.



The crabs really aren't the problem in this mission. If you have problems with the crabs, just stop reading, click that link to wiki above and try the cop out way and sleep everything and logout. After the crabs you come to a crossroads, both literally and figuritively. Once the crabs are done, make a stop at your Pitstop and get cured, hasted, regened and head towards the T intersection ahead while your escort moves the Corsair through the last of the rooms. There may be a Doom Toad somewhere along the path anywhere from the eastern door to the western door. So get going quickly and check for it, because you don't want the pirate to make a run for it. If its not there you may or may not have to deal with it later on depending on the path he takes. To the East there are Two pugils in an "Imp Maze" room and another in an open room, which is usually accompanied by the "Roaming Toad". Take note, these pugils do not aggro, but they do link. Since you are 3 and do not have a sleeper (unless your melee is BLU or DRK) be careful here and try to avoid a link if you can. To the West is a tad easier with only 2 Pugils and unless you are completely unlucky, no Toad to deal with. If you do happen to link the pugils, with your two blinking melee it isn't too difficult to have one person tank each one while concentrating on killing a single one. Remember these Pugils are only Tough's and with Ninja debuffs are quite tame. Becareful here though, because if your Pitstop decides to toss you a cure, or debuffs the wrong mob from their babysitting spot in the rear, they can easily pull hate. If they do, its /goodbye NPC and you not only have to catch him before he gets away and ends the run, but you have to catch the mob that now is after your babysitter.



The final stretch can be done one of two ways. Preferrably, if you didn't totally screw up and either die stupidly (yes this happened to us) or randomly have pirate boy run away you will kill the next toad. However, if time is short you can kite it into a subtunnel and still win witha shortage of time. As you move south from the pugils you will encounter your first of two Toads in another "Imp Maze" room. There is a nifty little side tunnel with some old boxes in it that you can pull it in and kill it. This lets your babysitter move the prisoner to a point where they can cure you without having him run. This is also the side tunnel you can use if you are short of time. After that toad is dead, heading to the end of the run there is your last foe. Yet another Toad and yet another side tunnel. This room is quite large and you do not neccessarily need to take the mob into the blocked off tunnel in its rear, but better safe than sorry. Once there, the babysitter can finish the mission. You can kill the toad or not. Pop the chest and hit the runic portal and you are done. Take note though, that when you leave the zone, not all people zone out at the same time depending on lag and the Toad will attack whoever is left. We had atleast one death because of zoning.



In the end after 20 runs (give or take) you can walk away with the Yigit Gomlek, Pln Crackows, or whatever else is your desire. To be honest there isn't much in this area that seem worth it. The Gomlek and the Crackows seem like the only things worth putting the time into it. As for the usefulness of this piece... Well I have had very limited opportunity to compare things. I did however take note that during a Limbus run with another Red Mage nuking with Zenith Mitts, AF2 Boots, Moldy and Crimson Mail there was little difference between us. Infact I was averaging 1 more dmg per nuke than she was. So who knows, it definately is sexy, and very nice for bard. It looks really good with all the Seraweel pants out there. Its really too bad that the Set bonus is so incredibly minor that SE really shouldn't have even bothered with it at all. Do they really think that any mage of anytype will every wear all 5 pieces? Hell, even as Bard you just lose too much charisma and skill to make it a worthwild option. If they want to mimic WoW they might have actually done so and given us something to truely aspire to. Dear SE, start thinking these through before just adding stuff for gimick value. Each piece on its own has some reason to pick it up, as a group they just aren't worth it. Even with a total of MAB+11, no self respecting Red Mage or Black Mage would give up better pieces for 1mp/tick.

In the end, its another fun thing we did together. With each zone, we alter our setup a bit. We have been MNK/RDM/BLM, RDM/RDM/BRD, and now MNK/NIN/WHM. There are two zones left, Mamool is the most intriguing of the two because of Yigit Gages. Who knows what will be in the new "Atlantis" assault zone. Either way going with my friends is the way to go.

Mercurial:
Having the characteristics of eloquence, shrewdness, swiftness, and thievishness attributed to the god Mercury.

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A couple of days ago, Kat asked me if I was interested to help our old friend Rengoku with this level 20 NM fight. I was really interested to experience something new so I agreed. Now Rengoku is one of Ramuh's leading fishermen. He fishes like there is no tomorrow. Thus, he had quite a number of Bhefhel Marlin to trade in for chances at the pop item for this fight. I am not quite sure at how high of fishing skill you need to start the quest. I do know that the fish in question is a level 62 fish. So the quest requires at least a middle of the road fishing skill. According to Ren, there are a couple of preliminary quests to complete as well.

The fight itself is capped at 20. You trade the "Pirate's Chart" to the ??? on White Sands Beach in Valkurm Dunes. I had always kind of thought that this was akin to the lvl 45 escort fisher quest in Tavnazia. I was proven wrong. While there is an NPC he basically is there to speak alot of giberish and warn you that danger is coming. While I had known there were three mobs to kill (the taru npc even tells you there are three before they pop), I had always thought that the popped seperately. Needless to say all three pop at once; a Crab, a Manta, and a Sahagin. They all can use a SP. From what we have seen on our 5 attempts, they all have Hundred Fists. There is supposedly a way to fish up Snares that you can use to stop them from using it. However, because we do it the easy way we have never tried to fish them up.

To defeat the enemies we have used 2 Summoners and Rengoku has been Thief or Monk. I realize that most walk throughs for this fight insist on using 3 Summoners. I will say that 3 would make it simple as pie. However, 2 is doable. We did wipe once because of a bad resist from the crab. So our way isn't foolproof (Or should I say SE proof). People die sometimes too, even in victory. All three of us have died atleast once in our five attempts thus far. Yet on good old number five we were victorious and extremely lucky and we got the dagger. Let me reiterate the lucky part. We have another friend who raised his fishing only to do this miniquest. He has done over 40 fights thus far (well over that number I suspect). He is a whopping ZERO for all his attempts. The dagger seems to have the drop rate of a Vivian Ring.

About the dagger's usefulness though... I had the opportunity to play with it in a merit party vs trolls tonight. Offhanding it with my haste build, haste and double march I literally never stopped swinging. I have had the priveledge of playing with a Kraken (Oh so long ago) and this thing just plain seems faster. I am probably wrong, but at least with this knife I would hit IT/VT a whole lot more with my 230 dagger skill vs 200 club skill. The JP warrior actually started to laugh after seeing how fast I was swinging while using it. Unfortunately, the base damage is just too low and was not offset by my increased Jin rate. After looking at the parse, my dot damage was down a good 10k from its normal levels after 80 mobs than it usually is. While my Jin totals were higher, it just wasn't enough to offset it. It was not by any means a fair test, but I felt that I needed to change back to katana to not be gimping the party. Maybe if I had dagger merits or was a thief, or a ranger or a corsair. In the end I would love to be able to own it, but the price to even buy it from "us" is too high for me. So if you are on Ramuh and want to pick it up, give a /tell.

The great wyrm of Apollyon... is a big wimp. Oh sure if he can hit you he can easily two shot you. If he can hit you that is. A week ago we somehow got aggro from the big guy and he proceded to own us all. We have wanted revenge but not thinking we could kill him, we let him go. Until I read this post on the BG forums. I am sure we didn't kill it near as quickly as the OP of that thread kills him. Yet with Nece off busy with RL, we did it with 2BLM and 1RDM.

Starting with Gravity and then ThundagaIII, OJ and Kat bounced hate back and forth. We Slept the big guy only once to rest some MP. With 4 Elemental Seal's, 2 Chainspells, and 2 Manafont's to work with, he was cake. We had two slightly dangerous moments when Gravity wore at the wrong time. A quick chainspell gravity+cure+bind fixed that problem. The Wyrm has some Auto TP but its very very very small amount. Our second moment was a Dragon Breath that took OJ only into the yellow. I have no idea if the big guy can flail or not, but seeing as its extremly easy to keep hate coming from in front of him with such a large kite area and a small number of people to have hate to deal with. With Gravity and easy to land bind, he was a puppy dog. Let me just say that my Red Mage is horrible in terms of merits. I have 2 Enfeebles and 1 Ice Accuracy and was able to easily land Bind with Tabard on.

Let me just say that the three of us had the time of our lives, being able to defeat something we never would have thought we could have. We didn't even use any of our SP's after we used the Benediction chest. Still on a high after that win.

The BH level was not quite as fun, as we wiped once. I can swear that at one point the bosses in this Apollyon did not link to the "minion" mobs. I have never seen Faf link to the Wyverns, and until this week I had never seen KB link to the little BH's. Yet he did...we wiped. With 5 minutes left we managed to have 2 unweakened BLM and a weakened RDM and killed the last 2 normal BH's ftw. Converting and Chainspelling with 24 HP to make sure we win with 15seconds left was awfully fun too. I didn't do much damage as RDM, but it felt good anyway. Ending with 41 coins 2BLM pieces and a Ranger piece was nice. It let me finally pick up this.

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( In Other News... )

It was an interesting day. We started off with a random festival of AFK's as always. However, after we got going there was no stopping us. We first hit up Riverne and toasted our lovely Bugard friend. Who once again was stingy. I really need to finish my Goldsmithing so I can use all that damn Aluminum we have. No weapon or ring this time. We still haven't seen a ring drop since the 3rd MND ring dropped for us. I'm beginning to think that it will only drop 3 of the same rings and never another.

Post Riverne, we proceded to have yet another AFK Carnivale. When we all returned we headed off to Phomiuna and played with some Stegotaurs until we got a codex to drop for another run at getting Nece and OJ a Swift Belt. I think these will be codex numbers 3 and 4 for both of them as each time they've just plain had bad luck on drops.



We decided to randomly play around with Tres Duendes. I know that all three of us have wanted to kill these lame red bats before, but we always thought we couldn't handle them with so few people. We were wrong. Thanks to the advice of friends, we tried it out. OJ had to sacrifice himself for the greater good, but Nece and I managed to smack down the tarutaru pet quite easily. Never landing a single spell thanks to an ES Silence and the simple fact he just liked to drain/aspir/blaze spikes all the time. The bats weren't quite as easy as they are quite evasive. Even with a decent amount of accuracy gear and sushi, accuracy was iffy at best. That being said, Jubaku kicked the bats ass. With an ES Blind and Hojo at our side, it was fairly easy. With an unweakened OJ, we managed to defeat it with fair amount of ease. It does have some nice moves that I have never seen any other bats use though. Unfortunately, we didnt walk away with Vampiric Claws for OJ and his monk. We did walk away knowing that would could do it with 3 though.

Myinre joined us about the time we sent Tres to their death. With 2 WHM and 2 NIN we headed off to Mahisha for some fun and excitement to top off the night. Let me just say that Mahisha is HUGE. This night was the first time I had ever seen either of these two NM's, both were pretty cool. We pulled the monstrous taurus upstairs and proceded to beat it down. Unfortunately, I was in mid WS when it Ray'd me and I plopped onto the ground like a sack of potatoes. OJ tanked him like a champ though. Never even batting an eye. His observations about tanking him were quite interesting. Unlike normal Taurus, Mahisha is not a monk type. It never countered either of us and it hardly double attacked. It has no 2hour, so it is hard to tell what type of monster it is, but it wasn't evasive either, so who knows.

In the end, the lame Taurus did manage to drop for us. Unlike its little bat buddy, we got a prize for our efforts. One which Myinre took for her monk and dark leveling. I kind of found it funny that this piece can be worn on BLM too. Somehow I can see Myinre running arond on her Black Mage in that mask too.

We will be back soon. I know it in my heart. Those claws will be awesome for OJ's monk to play around with. Plus, that ranged acc dagger is something I know people will want. Nece was drooling over it. So we will be back. Maybe with enough people to take down that evil bitch from hell... Eba. All in all the day was quite a lot of fun.



And yes thats a tarutaru in the picture, he's just extremely short.

Thief has always been a job that I have both wanted to play and despised at the same time. A very, very long time ago I had managed to get Thief to 15 in a party with Myinre's Ranger. When I say a long time ago, I mean like 2 years ago now. So when we decided to do a subjob trio set to 37 it was the first job that came to mind. With Kat leveling Red Mage to sub to her newly 75 Black Mage and OJ leveling Samurai as what will turn out to be his next job to 75, we began.

I won't lie there was a bit of power leveling involved. I got them both to 15 so we could begin together in the dunes. That wasn't a pretty set of circumstances. With noob after noob, we took a day to get from 15-18. We had a few deaths in the process. Well we had a few wipes, and OJ took a few deaths of his own as well. I actually killed us by pulling the damned Golden Bat once. I went as THF/RNG through the dunes and it proved helpful in finding targets in a zone that was chock full of parties. I had never seen 3+ parties on Whitesands Beach before competing for pugs and crabs, but I did on that day.

The following day we picked up Kensai's paladin for a couple of hours. It was good to be able to play with that cat again. That 50+ hour a week job just doesn't let us see much of Ken anymore. We picked up a JP Blue Mage named Jeteripo. A great little taru, who ended up being a good source of damage and a secondary healer throughout the night.



After exhausting the Champaign Beetle camp, we moved to Qufim and picked up two former LS Mates of ours. Since Ken had to go to sleep because of that lame job. We picked up Rikktor and Harrower as Paladin and Bard. It was a great party. We cleaned out the pugil's like they were out of style. The party ended and we had gone from 18-24 in a few hours.

The next day was time for the Jungles. To keep with our trend of friends playing paladin picked up Myinre this time. We zoomed through the lower jungle and when Yhoat had around 8 parties we went and killed Furriers at the Outpost. We finally did end up destroying Mandies and Goblin in Yhoat for a while though. But it wasn't long before we ended up in Behemoth's Dominion and then Altep before the night was through.



Ending the night in Altep at 35, the following day we took to the jungle once again. Fighting at the Gate Crystal, we finally managed to obtain the elusive 37.

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A few observations. I really did enjoy thief. Alot more than I had thought I would. The job itself has a higher learning curve than the others and it took me a bit to get the hang of it. I know I was an extremely bad thief at the beginning but I like to think I improved with great strides once people stopped complaining and gave me some constructive ideas to help me out. Is it a job that if I wanted to take to 75 that I could see myself doing? Yes, but it would take a whole lot of patience and a decent amount of help from thief friends to get me comfortable enough to continue with the job. On that note, I am 1/5 on Thief AF2, so who knows... maybe in the year 2007 or something. Until then I am happy to have it so whatever job I take to 75 next; Either Blue or Warrior; that it will never have a gimped subjob.

What little free time I've had has mostly been spent meriting the last week or so. The particular party that you see above was a disaster from start to the time we lost Sinday. We had originally been looking for another Monk to make our usual 2 Monk + 2 Bard + Ninja + Red Mage party that has done us so well up on Troll Mountain before. We soon found out that all the Monk's LFG either were arrogant JP who wouldn't see fit to respond to the likes of an English Speaker (even if they spoke in JP) or would completely worthless and didn't have Ninja subjob. So we grabbed Typhonae as our 3rd melee and went up the hill.

The Galka did us well. He was the first Warrior to flatout out parse me (like he should) on Trolls. Its just too bad that OJ d/c'd on out very first mob out of the gate. With his power out, we went on without him for almost an hour. Finally, giving up on his return we picked up Sinday. Who we would have kicked on site in Whitegate if we had any inkling that the gear he showed up in was the gear he was actually going to fight in. It was a nice Town Set of gear. The new Jaridah armor plus a pair of Tracker's Kecks as pants. Quite a nifty looking outfit to tell you the truth. However, to fight in it as a 75 Warrior? All I could come to say was WTF?!!? I won't even speak of his numbers but to say that We have had Corsair's in our Troll parties that have done better damage numbers. If you are a Warrior and can not average higher than 350 on your Rampages with 2 bards(4 songs) in your party... Anyway, thank god OJ returned and we booted Sinday and the party was back on. We managed to do quite well after that. I picked up my 4th Strength upgrade and I am about 1 good merit party away from the last one. I honestly do not know where to go after that. I could use up my last 4 Combat slots on Katana. Yet, I have a 92-93% accuracy rate while using sushi atm. If I believed I could get away with using meat and still being pretty accurate I would definately finish Katana. However, I am pretty sure that I would have an acc% of lower than 80%.

So my next merit goals are up in the air. Do I do Enfeeble for a Red Mage who will only be used as a TP Party Healer and Limbus Refresher/Sleeper? Do I merit sword for my eventual Blue Mage (and possibly use as a joytoy Warrior later on)? Do I drop a bunch into Subtle Blow? Or maybe even spell interrupt? I honestly do not know. I know that I will never want to touch enmity as any +enmity would directly effect my usefulness as a mage and any -enmity would do the same for my ninja. Oh well... just more to think about. I hope that those new merits in the update are worth it. Hell, since they haven't even spoken of them since fanfest, I just plain hope that they are in this update and not in August/September.

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So yeah, during the weee hours of the night when there is nothing to do cause we are all basically sleepwalking, we have been daring to spelunk. Going deep into the realm of the tonberry caves of Den of Rancor in hopes to come out with Water IV. We have been trying to pick this scroll up for Kat since she was the level to use it. However, we got sick of spending hours in Quadav country hoping and praying only to see only water crystals and the occasional seal drop. So we went to camp NM's for it. There are actually 3 nm's in the Den that drop this idiotic spell. The first and by far the easiest is the crowned prince of the tonberry. The weakest of all the Sozu in fact. He doesn't blow up and he doesn't really like to Grudge or Stab alot. All he can do is manafont, but easily silenced by a 75 Black Mage, he is weak. Unfortunately, he doesn't like to drop. So we started camping the second NM that drops. A higher level NM, and one with perhaps the worst pop area of them all. His PH's are in a small room with bats, Mousse and 4 berries, the halls around the room are small and also have bats and mousse. OJ sacrificed him taru life atleast 3 times in the pursuit of this nm. Most of them were from him 1000+ Grudge, but the last was to the evil NM himself. We finally popped him. In his little room with Water Elementals, 4 Mousse and bats galore. We died... It was a horrible massacre, but we went back again. We died again... well not all of us. OJ survived and defeated the little bastard mutated Kuluu and got the drop we wanted. The stupid berry decided it would drop a nice Thundaga3 on top of us and it continued to cast as he was pummeled with not only my Jin, but OJ's full Asuran. I am honestly glad we will not have to go back down there again anytime soon. We died but were successful, but its not as good as if we had done it cleanly.

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We finished up Ilrusi yesterday and OJ and I picked up a pair of these nice purple armors. Its cute and its a pretty nice piece to be using for the little things. Fighting in small groups doing the stuff I would have used the Byrnie or SH for in the past. Like most people have said, it doesn't seem to actually work on Crit%. I did parse it last night over only 100mobs. I did it in a setup where my dex numbers were exactly the same with hauby and with purple. The differential was well within the margin of error. I plan on doing a couple more parses. If its not broken, like a lot of people insist that it is, I want to figure out what exactly the meaning of the wording is.



Playing around with it we went and killed some demons after getting OJ and Kat their BLM AF2 redone so we can redo their hat quest later this week. We managed to pop good ol' Count Bifrons. However, as usual those damn demon's are stingy and all we got was a few measly gil. I will say this about the armor though. It looks damn nice. All the purple I own now goes together quite nicely. I just wish the turban wasn't so blech. Its not that bad for me to look at during xp. But thats only cause I see it only from behind, but around town.... please shoot me if I wear it then. Someone find me a dat swap for the thing that makes it look nice.

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We really enjoy this camp as you can no doubt tell. It is still not as good as the mire and thickets camps, we do know that. We will never hit a chain as high as in either one of those camps, or even come close to the fabled 20k/hour thickets parties that a certain someone keeps dangling in front of me daily. However, we enjoy our merit parties in the quiet solitude of the crappy camp.

Its difficult to get chains above 10 here just because Trolls have a number of chain ending tp moves and abilities. Diamondhide can easily cease a chain at anytime. These trolls like to use it at sub 5% just to extend their lives a bit longer. Not only do they extend their lives, but often times they extend the lives of their brother who was pulled and sits asleep nearby. Rock Smash at an inopportune moment can petrify a melee at a bad time to kill a chain as well. Our chain #66 last night was a new high for us. We are proud of the accomplishment. A 30+minute chain held together by two hundred-fists, 2 soul voices and alot of pure luck of enervation spam instead of diamondhide.

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It didn't take too long to get another 9 merits. Bringing me up to level 3 strength upgrade and the base strength of a hume ninja. My dot and jin numbers seemed to jump just a tad with 2 upgrades. It will be fun to see what 70 base strength does.

With school finally ending this week, we had an opportunity to merit a bit on a Monday afternoon for once. We have been actively looking for new areas to merit in and Kat seemed to have found one right up our ally.

Just let me tell you, the Mire is always full. We like imps but really have had little opportunity to take advantage of them. On our fair Ramuh, there is usually an over abundance of people near Azouth making it impossible to get decent xp without a migrain headache coming soon after your arrival on scene. So we thought maybe we would make an attempt at the Periqua Mire camp. The major difference between the two is that instead of flies in between the Jnun and Imp's you get Qutrub, Qutrub, and more Qutrub.

There are actually quite a large number of them around the two marshes that are full of several Jnun. The imp population here is on the extreme low side in comparison to Azouth. So the majority of your killing will be the fat little hunchbacked zombies. Despite what the websites say about the Qutrub, they do in fact aggro sight as well as sound and health. The amount of valid information about these fatheaded zombies doesn't end there.

Yes the do aggro to sight. However, their aggro range is about that of an Aura Statue (maybe a tad larger.) This goes for all three of its aggressive mechanisms. We were able to raise up and were not health aggroed by them. However standing with sneak and invisible up and unweakening within their sight range, they were aggressive. This could be a function of actual red/orange level health vs. yellow or it could be the simple fact their range is miniscule.



The camp was an xp maker. While we were working without random hp aggro we did really well. That being said, there are a number of real issues here. First and foremost is the obvious, the camp is 90% undead. Not only the Qutrub and Jnun will aggro health here, but there are many Drauger Servant's around as well. Mostly these bones were thieves and dragoon's from the looks of it, but there were some mage's and dark knights as well. These have a huge health aggro range and will come from out of no where to kill you. Another noteworthy observation is that the dragoon bones will almost immediately resummon their unsleepable pet when it is killed. (We tried +80 or more charisma'd bard lullaby and SleepII and were not able to sleep it.) While this may prove nice for chains, its a pain in the ass otherwise.

We ended up dead more than once due to health aggro issues and bones. However, that wasn't the real problem with this camp. The real problem lies in the mobs themselves. Even with sushi and gear that would normally see a 90%+ accuracy most of these mobs were highly evasive. OJ with pure accuracy gear had a 76% accuracy rate. This is a monk using Shura, Snipers+1, C.Chain, NKote, etc... Our other monk was just barely at 70% accuracy as well. Using sushi I could only manage an 80% accuracy rate. The Qutrub may seem like they are all Black Mages or Dark Knights because they can all cast -GaIII, Absorb, Stun, and Ice Spikes, but they are far from that. Their spell casting abilities are just an add on. There are many thief zombies out there, complete with evasion bonus and Triple Attack. Its true that there are some that seem to be warriors that carry saber type swords, but most seem to be thief types.





In terms of pure damage numbers you can put out, these rival Ul'phedme. We saw even bigger numbers over the course of our short stay in the area than those. The 1600 Jin was but one of a few. OJ even managed to drop a pair for 2000+ Asuran's during the party. Its just too bad that these huge numbers don't make a bit of difference when the mob has double the HP of most other xp mobs. Even the roughly almost 7000 total damage Light skillchain (one of only a handfull that was not resisted) only left the mob at 25%.

In the end the camp isn't neccessarily a bad place to xp. I am sure a 70 party there with a skillchain and a blm could do very well. The HP aggro, the unsleepable (by bard or rdm) Qutrub, and the pure accuracy issues we had (even with a bard) it just wasn't worth it. Lucky for us we had a White Mage with us. We did have to home point once though. (Good thing Ninja has capped xp.) We will not be going back there anytime soon to merit. Maybe someone else will go there and find it worth wild, but it won't be us.

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On a brighter note, after we finally gave in and decided Periqua was total hell, we replaced our White Mage (who was off to dinner with her man) and went back home. We just love Trolls, its not even funny. We picked up Aqhu a level 74 JP only Corsair and made our way to the great Mount Z.

Aqhu kept us in Chaos Roll for some reason. Not like we really could get her to do anything otherwise. Yet it worked out all right. She also kept us in Corsair's Roll. Well, she did that til she hit 75 and we replaced the Red Mage that didn't seem like he was "all there". Once she hit 75 we had Chaos and Fighter's Roll. Personally, I would have liked to have seen Monk's and Fighter's. With two monk's in the party and Aqhu in full Dusk/Turban/Pln the sheer amount of tp moves that we were seeing was bordering on the horrible. The party went extremely well after we got our new taru Red Mage. We even managed to pull off our highest troll chain yet at a ripe # of 35. I know its not Mire high. Hell it isn't even KRT high, but for trolls its our best yet and they are much more interesting to fight than lame imps that spam amnesia and black cloud spamming bones.

In terms of xp I started the afternoon with little more than 2 merits and I ended with a little more than 7. We wiped not once, not twice, but three times during the afternoon at Periqua. So with HP's and R1's, its even more xp than that to get back to capped and on merits. So 2 more merits and I can pick up my 3rd Strength upgrade and I match the base strength of a Hume Ninja.

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Trying new things is alway fun. Admitting the new things sucks is never fun.