Burtgang!

/hurray!

I have my very own Burtgang!

On Friday morning, I finished this bad boy up and finished the "Coming Full Circle" quest. This sword is very nice looking, but obviously its full potential will not be reached until I get all the trials and other quests finished.

And yes, I do plan on fully upgrading it.

My play time since Tuesday has mostly focused on finishing this up since I was so close. I managed to get 10 more linen purses with 1 double drop in there. The 61st purse came on Thursday night.

CDCing that last purse like a boss.

 The fun part was then getting to pop the 61 purses. I popped 8 at a time and traded the Alexandrite they produced. Before popping, I had 25,500ish turned in, so the 61 mathematically would cover the difference and give me a small buffer in case probability hated me.

 I lucked out pretty well and was turning in between 650 and 700 Alexandrite each time I traded him after popping 8 purses. Just for fun, I turned in enough to have 29,999 turned in. What a stickler! Not even a "Ok fine you have turned in close enough of an amount!". Nope!

Just wanted to see what he would say if you turned in 29,999 Alexandrite. C'mon Paparoon use proper grammar!

I ended up having 233 Alexandrite left over. The two stacks promptly went on the AH and I got a rebate in my dbox the following day.

Alexandrite finished!

I was so relieved to have finished Alexandrite. I farmed all 30,000 of the Alexandrite except for 4 stacks and 21 loose. 2 of the stacks were the "Penalty stacks" I mentioned in the previous entry, 2 stacks were a gift from a friend for PLing him with my blue mage, and 21 were purchased from an LS mates bazaar, whom had recently finished Kenkonken.

Receiving the sealed invitation

With Paparoon's sealed invitation in my hands, I went to finish the remainder of the tasks.

The real home stretch!

Remember that Neo Nyzul Isle campaign from a few months ago? I still had those T4 pop items in my inventory. I actually lucked out with the Gobbie Box and got a Tyger's Tail one day, so I did not have to travel to kill him. I did have to go get Sarameya and Tinnin, however. They were quick and efficient kills as usual. Except with Tinnin, I had never fought him and did not know that you had to let him regenerate his two heads before you could kill him. So that fight took a bit longer than I thought it would. Don't worry, Tinnin. I'll see you for a Burtgang trial in the near future!

Giving Sarameya a face full of blue mage.

With all three T4 ZNM items, I traded them to the tombstone and made my way to Nyzul for the culminating Mythic fight.

Ready to enter the final Burtgang battle.

Two atonements finished off Zahak and made Balrahn show himself.

Ready to meet your match?

 I went pld/sam for this fight and accumulated 3000 TP. I used Sekkanoki and then Atonement after Balrahn hit me with Atonement. Then, I use another Atonement at 2000 right afterward. That took care of 2 of the Aftermaths I needed.

I must admit, at least Atonement still looks pretty cool.

I found Balrahn's auto regen was very high so there was no need to check my damage so to speak. I used Meditate and just regular hits to get 3000 TP and that ended the fight.

The final key item is now in my possession.

With the key item in my hand, I got the second to last cutscene and then traded the initial Burtgang to the tombstone...

Trading the initial Burtgang.

 ...and ended up with a fully unlocked level 75 Burtgang! Happy day!

Such nice stats already!

I want to thank a lot of people for mostly putting up with my "Sorry i'm in salvage" for 2 1/2 months. I managed to do a lot of other things during this time of course, but most of the things I did were to help me do salvage and/or get my Burtgang. And now I have it!

Of course, it's not too useful without getting it through trials and that's what I am working on now.

Before that, I trio'd some Reisenjima NMs to get Odyssean Gauntlets and Odyssean Helm. I augmented them with a lot of Fern stones to go with the other two Odyssean pieces I had. I ended up getting +12% WS damage between all four pieces. I wanted to build a respectable Atonement set more for doing trials than anything else. I know that getting kill shots with  Atonement is hard since it does such little damage. I am happy to say that with the set I am using, I am doing 1200 at this point in time with Atonement with what I imagine is capped or close to capped enmity.

This morning I also got some Despair Mail by soloing Angrboda on BLU. I used Amchuchu (so happy I got to get him finally, after all this time of saying "C'mon give us another chance to get her!"), Qultada, Arciela I, Selh'teus, and Apururu. I made sure to use Winds of Promyvion whenever he used Volcanic Wrath so we did not wipe. I had a Revetaur pop left over for some reason, but this same group failed quickly because of his doom happy personality.

Why Despair Mail? As a numbers guy, I was still frustrated by that the 5 armor pieces you typically equip on Paladin do not cap your gear haste. Despair Mail offers 4% haste on the body slot instead of the usual 3%. On top of that, path B offers another 2% haste (as well as +12 STR - hear that BLU?) so just by using this in my TP set I now have capped gear haste. Don't worry - I don't plan on using it to tank NMs in a party!

So far, I have completed 1 Burtgang trial. I used pld/sam in Escha - Zi'tah along with my Ochain, 2x bard support trusts and Apururu as well. It went fast with being able to line up some Tarichuks and Bugards and let them feed me TP. 200 of those went fairly fast.

For the 2nd trial, which is 200 atonement kill shots on dragons, I am fighting Puks at Conflux 5 in Abyssea - La Theine. I am going pld/nin and using my Nibiru Blade in the main hand and the Burtgang in the off hand. Using the same support trusts, I can get a Puk to 20% or less HP pretty fast. I flash to pull, TP on them, and Atonement kills them. I am also using Voracious Violet, Sun Eater, and Plaguebringer atmas to increase my Store TP, Regain, and Conserve TP. It's working quite well so far. I managed to get 55 kills in just about 20 minutes once I got into a groove.

Dual wielding Burtgangs? Thanks /lockstyle!

It's an amazing sword and I can't wait to see it realize its full potential!

So now that I have finished the two ultimate weapons I set out to complete this past January, what now? I want to AG the Burtgang and 99 the Aegis (which by the way, is now 90 thanks to finishing up my Goublefaupe kills on Wednesday), perhaps AG my 90 Almace, and whatever else the future updates bring.

I am loving this game more than ever. There's always something to do. And it helps that I have met even more cool people than I had in the past.

Thanks for reading, and happy FFXIing to you all!