Kill...rinse (er, rebuff)...repeat...

I'm averaging a week between posts now, probably to give me plenty to write about when I do.

We're still kicking over on Cerberus and making efficient work (most of the time) of the monsters we choose to fight.

So here's the rundown of the past 8 days of FFXI for me. Keep in mind for most of this time I was on break, so I was able to get some more play time than usual. I would like to think I made the most of it!

New Gear:

Shneddick Ring: I finished my SoA missions last week and chose this as my reward. Despite some "why didn't you get <insert other choice> instead?", I am very happy with this selection. It does stack with crimson so I actually move even faster than 18%. It helps no matter what since everything requires some type of traveling. It has made my salvage runs more efficient (more on that later), and in general has upped my efficiency. The other choice could have been the TH ring, but I decided against it since I can already get TH3. Vocane was not really a consideration because of my dark rings, and the one with the MAB and Acc (Karieyh ring I think?) was a side-grade at best.

Plus, I was effectively able to solo every SoA fight (with trusts). I did receive help from an LS mate for the Hades' fights and even he was completely shocked how efficient the final fight with Hades was. Blue mage is a powerful job.

Nibiru Cudgel x2: It took 9 fights to get the first cudgel. We got lots of Tabars and Grips though! Seriously, that fight was not nearly as taxing as we thought it may have been. We used August to tank (a trust I really really want by the way) and he was an absolute beast. We coordinated skill chains to keep the lanterns down, and really made the fight go quickly each time. I ended up getting the 2nd cudgel a couple days later on the first kill, so it took me 10 total kills of Kamohoalli to get both cudgels. They are a significant improvement over the Gabaxorea, and currently for me I think they are the best MDMG option. Unless 2x Colada with MAB is better, but still for my main use of them they work very very well.

Hagondes Coat +1: I spent more gil on this than I was hoping to. I saw first hand how terrible the Skirmish augment system really is. The fact you can get an augment that only has PDT on it and nothing extra is already terrible, but other options definitely do not have equal chance of occuring in my honest opinion. In likely 100 attempts, I saw MAB once, and MACC twice. If anybody has both on any of their gear, they are extremely lucky. I decided to do this during this past weeks' assistance campaign because at the time it was a viable alternative to Amalric body and Gyve body IF you get the right augment. What I did end up with is not bad for a standing piece - PDT -4%, MDT -4%, and Fast Cast +5. Still, could have been much more. On the upside, my BLU was able to solo a V-V-V Ra'Kaznar skirmish and that was my primary source of stones. I did buy some off the AH (and spent a good chunk of gil doing so) and used up vouchers to get more fragments to get stones from the NPC. Still as mentioned, decent standing piece.

Eschite Gauntlets, Souveran Diechlings, Lustratio Subligar: I cashed in two abjurations and got these gauntlets as improvements for my PLD. The Diechlings immediately went into my tanking set, but I am holding onto the Acro Breeches for situations where I don't need to tank (such as soloing mobs, etc.) since they are still a better DD piece. The subligar is a WS piece for CDC thanks to the huge DEX boost they offer in the leg slot. I haven't augmented the subligar yet but will likely path B it. The gauntlets went into my divine magic set with their very nice boost. I have not augmented them either since I really just need them for the divine magic skill.

Amalric Doublet: And my favorite acquisition of the week is this bad boy. I did spend a bit extra in getting the cursed piece as our LS leader had a Hexed Doublet -1 for sale for 10M gil. I thought for a while and even knowing that the HQ chance was low, I felt it was worth the chance. I know it equates to 1/4 of my stage 4 relic requirement, but I still wanted to try. While we fought Pakecet, we did get an Eschite Ore drop so I was able to get the stuff over to one of our shells' alchemists. Still, I ended up with just the NQ. I originally had them on Path A, but needed to move it to Path D for salvage (more on that in a bit). It did take us 3 attempts at Pakecet to get the V. Body to drop, but the first two ended in wipes. When we went for the 3rd and 4th attempts, we used PLD BLU GEO BLM WHM COR for the setup. Despite some worries that we wouldn't be able to do enough damage, we managed to kill Pakecet in about 5 minutes for the 1st kill. That is the one that had V.Body drop. I think the main reason it went so well is because our Geo has Idris and caused my Subduction spam to hit for 5k-7k per cast. That's a lot of damage. And since I popped, adds came to me and died in 1 cast of Entomb. For the 4th kill (I had an extra pop and others wanted potential drops) we added another BLU and killed it even quicker. I had to go afterward, but they kept most of that group and killed Vir'Ava a few times. Our PLD got Souveran Body on the 4th kill. A very efficient run.

Salvage report: With all these new acquisitions, how is salvage going you ask? Extremely well. I was fortunate to get double linen 3 times in the past week and despite still only going 2 times a day on average, I have made good progress on Alexandrite. I am averaging about 20 minutes in AR2 and am using two sets of BLU spell setups. I use a full MAB spell set for the first part of AR2 and SSR2, then switch to a melee spell setup for the Chariot floor in AR2 and NQ boss in SSR2. I buff before switching spells (Azuresets is great by the way - highly recommended for any blue mage that uses windower) and then by the time I need spells the cooldown has passed. My SSR2 best time is 16 minutes, not counting transit time to the zone, zoning in, and getting rid of initial pathos at the beginning. Gears now die in two casts (although they went to 1% before I switched the path on my Amalric Doublet to path D). I don't have to eat a fruit parfait any more, and can full time the Chaac belt when I get to the Alexandrite dropping mobs. Plus with the extra movement speed, I can clear floor 4 and get to the NQ boss without having to open the last door and going back to get more mobs. I am quite pleased with the efficiency of my runs now.

Relic/Mythic Progress: After spending 10M on the -1 doublet, I am restocking gil to purchase more silverpieces. I did acquire one since I last wrote, but now with my blue mage pretty much maxed out for salvage, I have more room to spend gil on pieces for Aegis.

Alexandrite: 14,601/30,000 - almost 50% there
23/50 Assaults - turned in Lebros and Ilrusi logs, working on Mamool Ja now.
other items all complete

16/100 Silverpieces

I did spend some time CPing this past week as well, and am now up to 772 JP on BLU - 3 away from another capacity point increase. I am doing accolade/sparks/bayld runs each day in Adoulin to fill out daily unity tasks and am getting some CP that way as well. I find those relaxing and obviously quite efficient on BLU. Sometimes I go to Escha to complete the tasks as well, but I make sure that, with the exception of Arcana, I am getting CP each kill. If you know of an Arcana spot that gives CP please let me know, as the only quick one I have is Sky.

So the plan is very simple for me - Alexandrite and Silver. Taking advantage of Gain XP as well is in my plans. I stocked up on SP keys if the gobbiebox item campaign returns as well.

Thanks for reading, and good luck with the abjuration keys this week!

No room for Slopsy play

Yeah I made up a word for the title. It's ok. I promise.

That's because as of this morning, I am now rocking Amalric Slops, as well as a few other nice pieces for both my PLD and my BLU.

Since last time, I have procured quite a few items, including Gyve Trousers (still using for Cure potency), Acuity Belt +1, Ghastly Tathlum +1, Valorous Mask, Souveran Schaller, Nixxer, Psycloth Lappas, Assimilator's Jubbah, Luhlaza Jubbah, Rawhide Vest, and Rawhide Mask. I also have the Lustratio Legs abjuration to use.

It's been a solid few days of gear gathering for sure!

My magic accuracy set has been afforded the most improvement for sure, and because of this whenever we did Dawn during the campaign it has been real easy (but still not 100%) to stick Sudden Lunge on Promathia.

We ended up fighting Naphula a lot for the abjuration for Amalric Slops. When it finally did drop, it was on the 9th kill, and then the kill afterward yielded another one for Shurakai, who had helped me pull together more pops. He even donated some Ayapec Shells to me so we can try to pop the Zi'tah Orobon to get some Nibiru Cudgels.

Shurakai also told me about a feet piece that I can use for CDC on my BLU and PLD called Thereoid Greaves. They seem really good with crit rate and crit damage. Currently I am using Acro Leggings and Rawhide Boots for CDC. These are a little far down on my list of things to farm at the moment, but they do seem easy to get whenever I have a chance.

I'm still chugging away on Seekers of Adoulin Missions. I am almost done with Chapter 4, and at this point am 5 fights and a lot of cutscenes away from finishing up.

Shura & I both need Pakecet next so we can get Amalric Body. I have gil saved up for that when I procure the abjuration.

I did new augments on my Herculean Helm and was very fortunate, getting MAcc+20 and MAB+35 as well as fast cast +2. A very solid augment!

I'm still doing Salvage at least once a day, and after today should cross 13k in Alexandrite. I'm a bit behind what I was hoping to be, but it's been time well spent for sure!

Tying up loose ends

I ended up having a long weekend this past weekend, with a snow day on Friday and on Monday. This afforded me some extra time to play the game as well as extra time to spend with my family. I struck a very nice balance and managed to accomplish a fair amount of things in game. Some more exciting than others.

I wanted to acquire a Ghastly Tathlum for my BLU magic set so I participated in a couple of Unity runs Sunday and Monday. We killed Specter worm about 5 times on Sunday, but no tathlum. I did get 10 ores. On Monday we killed it probably 7 more times and I did get the tathlum. Two people on the run also gave me their Specter's Ores so I now have 34 of the 50 needed to upgrade it. Yeah I know the only change is 1 extra magic damage, but call me a glutton for the +1 (well, as long as it doesn't involve a 50 mil cursed piece and an abjuration).

I am making progress in my Seekers of Adoulin missions. I am up to the point as of yesterday morning where you run through Outer Ra'Kaznar collecting scales. I ended up taking a detour from that mission and navigated Inner Ra'Kaznar so I could get the home point. I want to finish the missions soon so I can go on Sinister Reign runs for some more PLD and BLU improvements - and that August trust is pretty badass. I wouldn't mind that at all.

I have done Salvage at least once each day, but given the other things I am doing in game I am not accumulating Alexandrite at the same rate per day. This is not a bad thing. It is important to diversify and not burn out doing the same thing. How Kaht grinded those Heavy Metal Plates for that many days on end still boggles my mind. My salvage runs are still about 18 minutes long for SSR2, and 25 minutes for AR2. I was pretty fortunate and have gotten two runs in the past 4 days that dropped double linen.

I am halfway done with my Ilrusi Atoll assault log, having needed points yesterday morning.

This morning the update went live and we all found out (and some accurately predicted) that the REM upgrade will be 10,000 Beitetsu/Pluton/Riftborn Boulder depending on the type of weapon you are upgrading. Obviously I am a long way away from Burtgang i119, but this is not too bad considering I am doing Dawn II anyway pretty regularly. Me and three LS mates grinded out about 8 runs this morning of Dawn II, alternating between the fight and capping merits in Zi'tah. Still no Gyve Trousers or Doublet, but we did see a Fettering Blade drop. All our wins have been on Normal. We tried our strategy on Difficult, but it just does not work as you must use some damage mitigation for Promathia's attacks, which hit hard on D.

I ended up with a good amount of the three aforementioned upgrade items. I put a stack of Beitetsu on the AH in hopes I can cash in a price spike.

This week I want to see if I can pull some people from my LS to use my Naphula pops. I am hoping to get the Venerian Abjuration for Amalric Slops. That would eliminate the need to get the Gyve Trousers - except for BLU cures. I think I would initially use Path D for them for maximum damage in Salvage and other lower level ventures, but switch to Path A for fights where I would need the magic accuracy.

I made some upgrades to my magic accuracy gear and am working on more. I am farming mweya plasm to buy the magic accuracy earrings. When I have some time, I cleave mobs for Unity RoE objectives and use the yggrette shards that drop unless it's from a mob I can kill reasonably quickly. In Foret, I can kill all but the Krab pretty efficiently, although the Uragnite requires me to set a different set of spells. The nice thing about the Seekers zones is that the mob types are pretty prominent in each of the field zones and therefore easy to fulfill those unity objectives. I need the accolades to keep getting the Specter's Ores, and of course converting the Sparks to gil.

I got a few more T1 Reisenjima clears and ended up getting a Valourous Mask for my PLD. I was able to augment it with STR, Att, Acc, and Double Attack. With regain on it, it seems to be a very nice TP piece for situations where I don't need the extra MDT or PDT.

With the campaigns going on this week, I am hoping to keep doing Dawn II and get some job points on the side while capping merits. I will do a few salvage to keep up with the Burtgang progress.

I'll probably get some Incursion in as well, but that's not too high on my list of priorities.

I want to finish the SoA missions sooner than later. I decided I want to get the Shneddick Ring as my reward, because the other options for me would be marginal upgrades - I have really nice augmented dark rings so I don't need Vocane Ring that much. Also, the TH ring was a consideration as well, but I decided that I can already get TH3 so TH4 was not going to be a massive upgrade.

I want to hit 15k Alex before next week. I'm just under 3k away.

I want Amalric Slops or Gyve Trousers/Doublet. I also want Amalric Doublet, but that's a bit out of reach for me now. One thing at a time for a hero on a budget.

Burtgang Progress
12,121/30,000 Alexandrite
1/5 Complete Assault Logs (15/50 overall)
Wyrmseeker/Eyepatch complete

Aegis Progress
Stage 4
15/100 M. Silverpiece

I am Hercules!...well, ok I'm still Jeff.

A very solid and eventful couple of playing sessions have netted me some more improvements for mostly my BLU.

On Friday morning, I teamed up with an LS mate and duo'd some Gestalt in Escha - Zi'tah. We both were BLU and he used his trusts to make the fight pretty trivial. I set blank gaze and turned on Chainspell to prevent spikes from killing me. He pretty much couldn't touch us any other way. 

We didn't get any drop on the first kill, but the second one dropped Rawhide Gloves. At first, I went a traditional DEX path with them, but you will see in a little while that I did not stick to that.

I had these screen shots taken before I turned in my Wyrmseeker. The first was one I just took to remind me of what I was almost done with (Nyzul tokens), and the 2nd one is right before I turned in the Wyrmseeker I wrote about on my last entry.

Now, my LS mate wrote me a nice message with his strategy for soloing Dawn II that worked pretty well for him on Normal. He's short a Gyve Doublet as well, so him & I did a couple runs of Dawn II. He has the necessary trusts to pull it off with Amchuchu, Apururu, Selh'teus, and Arciela (I, not II). The two of us made Normal look easy, finishing in 4 minutes 45 seconds. Unfortunately, no Gyve trousers or doublet. We tried twice again this morning, but again none.

I decided to switch to path D on the Rawhide gloves because it gives you 15 more magic accuracy, making them BIS for that on BLU. Before I switched that path, I tried to solo Dawn II but failed on 2nd form because stupidly I forgot Echo drops. Sudden Lunge was landing a bit more frequently, but not frequently enough for me.

Also this morning, another couple LS mates all needed Herculean Helms and we had one of our expert blue mages come out with us. We used Apururu and Amchuchu to round out the party, and we successfully killed Oryx 5 times, getting the helm to drop 3 times, which was enough for all that wanted it, including me!

When we went to augment them, I got pretty lucky on the 5th or 6th stone and got these augments:

I burned through quite a few more stones in hopes to get something even better, but this turned out to be the best I could get. It's solid no doubt, but still 1 less macc than my Assim. Keffiyeh +1. I will continue to pour Pellucid stones into this in hopes I can get INT, Macc, and MAB on the same attempt. Going to take a while I know, but I have nothing else at the moment to pour stones into.

Later I went CPing at portal 5 in Reisenjima. I have a pretty good flow and can get a rate of 15 JP per hour. It's not CP party worthy I know, but still nice to just snag a few when I have the time. I am working on my physical effect accuracy and now have 5 levels into it. Again, needing this for Dawn II to land Sudden Lunge more often.

I will continue to likely duo Dawn II and will of course write a nice post when I get either the legs or body, which would be 2nd best to Amalric.

Also since they wanted me to name them, thanks to Kaht and Shurakai for all your help these past few days!

Burtgang Progress

11,089/30,000 Alexandrite
1/5 Complete Assault Logs (12/50 overall)
Wyrmseeker Complete
Eyepatch Complete

Aegis Progress
Stage 4
15/100 M. Silverpiece

Accomplishments abound...and failures

Got to do some new stuff in game the past two days, and the march for mythic continues with a few milestones reached.

Starting off with the new stuff.

I had posted in the forums on FFXIAH about easy to acquire magic set upgrades for blue mage. One person mentioned getting a Herculean Helm and augmenting it with MAB. This seems promising to me and when I mentioned it to my LS, I immediately got 5 people who wanted to help kill it as they wanted helms as well.

Unfortunately, we did not have the correct set up for the NM that drops it. We failed pretty badly with BLU GEO PLD RDM BLM WHM and it was definitely because I couldn't read wiki well enough to see that GEO makes it go crazy.

We tried again with PLD BLU BLU and trusts, but ran into trouble handling its TP moves.

I was encouraged seeing a video of a BLU soloing it with trusts using Amchuchu to tank and just CDC spamming it without worry of breaking the horn. He used echo drops to handle silencega, and it seemed that his trust whm was never hit with silence. But again, I cannot do that because I do not have Amchuchu. I'm hoping she's in the campaign for February because she is pretty awesome.

So no helm for me as of yet.

I also wanted to do a few upgrades to my TP/WS gear, but most of what I would want seems out of reach for me at the moment - either because it's too expensive (Adhemar hands for example), or drops from mobs I hardly see people in my LS trying to fight.

I have been reading up on the Dawn II fight and I think I want to try to use that to get the Gyve trousers and perhaps Gyve Doublet. I think my BLU can solo it on Normal using Sudden Lunge and CDC with trusts. I'll set TH with spells and use my Chaac Belt to give me the best chance at those gear pieces. They will be nice holdovers until I can procure Amalric slops and doublet.

This morning I finished my Nyzul tokens and got my Wyrmseeker Areuhat item for mythic. I figured out a solid way to increase my tokens per run by starting on floor 46 in the regular Nyzul Isle Investigation. With proper luck, I was able to make it to floor 60 for the 30 second boss kill, then exit. If I did this, I got almost 5k tokens and minus the 900 token cost to start on floor 46, that's a +4k token profit. Very nice for 30 minutes. But now that that objective is done, I can bid adieu and good riddance to Nyzul Isle for now.

I also got my Lebros Assault log complete and turned in. My system since I used my initial supply of assault points was to do 2-3 assaults after running out to replenish and give me points to enter Salvage. The last 5 assaults in Lebros were very easy to do, although I did fail Operation Black Pearl on the 1st attempt because I was too far away to hear the NM announcement. On the 2nd run, I stood near the NPCs and waited for mobs to come to me.

All in all, progress continues to be made. I will refine my strategy for Dawn II and hope to get those gear upgrades.

Burtgang Progress
10,766/30,000 Alexandrite
1/5 Complete Assault Logs (12/50 overall)
Wyrmseeker Complete
Eyepatch Complete

Aegis Progress
Stage 4
13/100 Silverpieces

Bring on February

My in-game exploits continue to focus on my mythic weapon. The Aegis has taken a small back-seat due to needs for my blue mage, but they are definitely helpful needs.

I happened to procure the abjuration for amalric hands on Thursday morning. Not having the necessary gil for them, I asked a LS mate for a loan to buy the cursed piece. Funny enough, the piece had dropped in price by 50% over a very short time so I was able to get it at the AH for 1.9M. They were not as huge of an improvement on my magic set like the feet were, but they were still a boost. At this point, the NQ Gear in Salvage will go down in 3 casts when all my gear is on - even if one of those casts is a half resist. The triple gears still take an extra cast if one is resisted, as they get down to 10% with a half resist (they die with 3 unresisted Subductions).

I also got enough login points to get another Dusktip Stone +2 and put it on my Telchine Braconi. This time I got INT+9 which is what I was after.

Those improvements have my subductions at 3788 now with a fruit parfait in Salvage. Pretty solid.

Other than Amalric Gages, no new gear to speak of.

I did 2 assaults with LS mates in Ilrusi and got clears for those, and I did 3 more in Lebros Caverns. That puts me halfway done with Lebros (next is the Apkallu pairing one), and two difficult ones in Ilrusi cleared (Lost & Found, and Desperately Seeking Cephalopods).

The helpful thing is I needed the Assault Points anyway because I had run out! My plan is to do 2 or 3 assaults whenever I run out, then use the points on Salvage.

Once I finish my assault logs, I will just use the first lieutenant assaults when I need points.

This morning I duo'd some T1 Escha Zi'tah NMs on my Paladin to keep that fresh. We did Cunnast and Wepwawet fairly easily, although my friend did die to Gates of Hades towards the end. Luckily, it was me who had the trusts spawned.

I hope this month brings me another 10k Alexandrite, and finishes off my Nyzul tokens and Assault logs. Meanwhile, I will keep procuring Silverpieces when I can. I paid back the loan, so now my gil can go back to buying Silverpieces.

Burtgang Progress

10066/30000 Alexandrite
118025/150000 Nyzul Tokens
7/50 Assaults

Aegis Progress

Stage 4
X Necropsyche
X Fragment
11/100 Silverpieces