Magic Fencer Report

Ugh, Excel is both the most awesome program ever and the most dangerous. I took some time this morning to tabulate up how many merit points I need to fully merit my 5 99s and associated categories: 691. Ouch. Guess I got a lot of worm parties or whisker burning to do…

On the less daunting side, however, I managed to get up to the 400 plantoids stage of the OAT Great Sword and got enough skill to use Resolution, which has one merit in it now. This is definitely doable if I put my nose to the grindstone.

Patch day today, whee!

Thus far the use of Ninja to collect seals and +2 items has gone rather nicely. Wednesday night I killed Pascerpot a few times with a friend’s BLM to get the 8 seals for Iga Kyahan +1, and we killed 3 Bukhises as well, which weren’t nearly as smooth, even with another NIN to help, heh. After we left Abyssea, I researched what NMs dropped both Voyage Stones and Voyage Cards, which was what we were hunting Bukhis for to begin with and found that Ovni in La Theine fit the bill, so he became last night’s target. My friend got enough Voyage Stones to finish her PLD feet +2, and I ended up 2 shy of RDM feet +2, and one Voyage Card shy of NIN feet +2. Tonight is ADL, and I’m going to try to get a group going for Fjalar to finish T1 of Tavnazia VW afterwards, so the great seal/+2 hunt will resume tomorrow.

Speaking of seals and +2s, every time I end up with a large amount of merits stored, I go through the list of merits to decide where to put them and usually end up throwing them in to DRK’s Group 1 and 2 steadily, which makes me want to sit down and finish skilling Scythe and GS up and actually see about reequipping it. I logged on at lunch today and picked up another Break Blade with the intent of actually finishing the OAT Fulgrante this time instead of abandoning it midway through the ladybug extermination stage, and last night I joined in an Arch Omega fight with a friend and some others because the legs are good for DRK. I guess the need for a heavy DD is growing in me again. Sadly, the seal/+2 hunt will be extended to that job too…

And speaking of +2 equipment, I’m lacking 1 Vision Card to having 5/5 on BLU, and several other miscellaneous ones for the other jobs. Soon, I hope!

Back to the workday for now…

It’s been a couple of weeks since I wrote anything over here, so it’s time for some recap action!

I’d started work on finally finishing the Lu Shang’s Fishing Rod quest, even going so far as to compile a spreadsheet to track remaining fish, stacks of fish, and full 200-catch fishing days, but some reading about utilizing Requiescat on Red Mage lead me to the decision to finally finish up the Wings of the Goddess storyline to acquire a TP Bonus/Attack Moonshade Earring for that and many other weapon skills.

I’d postulated that with a healing job and a burst-damage job at 99, both quite sturdy in their own right, I would be able to fairly easily solo my way to the end. Excepting one open-world and one BC fight, I was able to solo them all, including the final fight. I feel proud of my ability to finish them all off so easily after being stuck at Crossroads of Time since 2009 or so. Champion of the Dawn, indeed.

In between all this, a friend of mine sent me a tell one day asking if I was interested in doing ADL. Seeing as my money supply is slowly dwindling, I asked her what times she was planning, and they were sufficiently early enough in the evening for me, so I signed up. Thus far we’ve not been able to pick the correct ADL clone, but otherwise we’re doing great! I brought my Red Mage out of retirement for this event, which is quite awesome!

Once I’d finished the WotG missions and all the cutscenes, I almost immediately suited up Ninja, bought three stacks of Inoshishinofuda, went down to Quicksand Caves, and started nuking spiders and Antica til 230-ish skill at which time I went to the Boyahda Tree to nuke Steelshells til somewhere around the old 75 cap. I was pretty close to running out of tools at that point, and it was getting late, so I headed off to bed, shelving the great skillup experiment for another day.

Well that day was the past two nights. I bought another few stacks of Inoshishinofuda and went to Abyssea-Grauberg to nuke Glen Crabs, ending up somewhere over 300 Monday night. Last night I went out there again and skilled while waiting for a LSmate to log in for Ulhudashi spam, ending up at 396 by the end of the night. I’m very close to capping, and even with uncapped skill and my totally-not-amazing gear I was able to enfeeble Ulhudashi and not get interrupted too much when recasting shadows. I think I’ll be able to easily acclimate myself to true shadow tanking after far too long. Tonight I should be able to cap Ninjutsu for sure, which will be one less skill to cap. Next up after that will be Dark Knight and Paladin’s skills. Joy. And to make matters worse, Red Mage’s still aren’t capped either! At least Blue Magic capped while I was doing WotG missions last week, heh.

But for now, it’s back to the rest of the day at the office!

I’m back in Vana’diel for the Nth time. An old friend of mine, the original owner of my second account in fact, started playing it again and posted on Facebook that he needed an Earth Staff. So happens I had one on a mule signed by someone who was in our old HNMLS on Ragnarok that helped the two of us camp Wyvernpoacher Drachlox all those years ago, so I reactivated and let him borrow it.

My first priority was finishing my stupid Fire Shikargar, which I eventually did. After that I finished the Wind Shikargar for more evasion and dual-wielded them for a bit until the recent update that made Coins of Glory and the other Walk of Echoes coins sellable in bazaars. I quickly bought 30 of them and turned my no-helms-turned-in Nobilis into a Badelaire, which became +1 and +2 right away, thanks to the plethora of Kindred’s and High Kindred’s Crests I had stored up. I guess I wanted a CdC-equipped sword to use until I get motivated to camp the NMs and VNMs again then farm up helms, skins, and horns to make a 90 Almace. So far it’s impressed me a lot, being very effective for taking down old content and for dealing large damage in Abyssea despite being the cheap knock-off version.

On the jobs front, I now have Ninja at 99. That is one job I swore I would never take past subjob levels, but after reading this excellent guide on the FFXIAH NIN forum one day, I realized I had equipment already in my inventory to get started once I’d completed the NIN AF quests. So a couple of Fell Cleave parties later and my NIN was 99, all ready to be skilled up. I capped Evasion and Katana a few days ago, and Ninjutsu is in the 150s, so I still have a ways to go before I can really start using it to farm seal NMs or just goof off.

But the biggest highlight is finally getting my White Stratum Abyssite to VI. Over the past few weeks I watched the live shouts page for Voidwatch Jeuno Tier Climb shouts, taking one that started out fine, easily felling the Tier 1 NMs in the present, but it went sour after we lost nearly an entire party and the group disbanded after several wipes on the taurus in Sauromugue [S]. Thankfully, another one popped a few days later, and that one got me to Tier 3, but it was far too late by the time the group hit Tier 3, so it disbanded pending completion the next day. Well, I didn’t join in that group because I was helping a friend with CoP missions, but another potential full climb happened a few days later on a Friday night. I had to work the next day, but I decided I’d go with it and see just how far I’d get before it got far too late. The answer is Tier 4, leaving me with Stratum Abyssite V and very little sleep for work.

In the meantime, a person from my old Dynamis LS, who was frequently the WHM in my party in fact, was in need of Jeuno T1-6, and very nearly got into the second T1-3 climb, but due to her not logging on soon enough missed out. I told her I’d keep an eye out for tier climbs, and one popped the following week after my run to Tier 4. She ended up getting through Tier 4, so we were then on the same stage. This past Saturday night I did a repeat, sort of, of my Zilart M6-12 run years ago by standing in the midst of Port Jeuno shouting, well /yelling, for a long while to get a full alliance that stayed pretty much together for the entirety of 1 T3 fight and T4-6, excepting Botulus Rex and Ig-Alima. I used two Void Clusters on Kalasutrax and refused to take payment for them, as I’d wanted these done as much as the next person.

Thus far I’ve not touched the expansion too much besides unlocking Rune Fencer and Geomancer. I guess spending so much time away from the game in the past 3 years since I quit for WoW has my in-game priorities shifted to a very different point than it was years ago.

But there is still plenty to do in Vana’diel!