Magic Fencer Report

This week I paid for two Fell Cleave parties to get my Blue Mage from 30 to 99, so I have quite a bit of catching up to do for spells and skills. I had enough merits stored after the second FC to max Assimilation, so I will be able to easily set desirable traits and spells in the future.

I’ve been using the Blue Mage Hunting Grounds website as a reference in my quest to learn every spell, and so far I’m about a third of the way through it, finishing up through Level 50’s last night. In addition to those, I managed to pick up Bad Breath, Feather Barrier, Dimensional Death, and Radiant Breath because of where I was farming the other spells.

I’ve always enjoyed going to out-of-the-way places in Vana’diel, and farming spells for BLU is no exception.

Once I complete the spell list, I will definitely farm up a Blue Mage’s Testimony and fight Raubahn in the Blue G5 quest. This job has turned out to be more enjoyable than I expected three years ago when I entertained leveling it!

The time has arrived for me to get down to business and actually level stuff up. Since completing the Level 99 Limit Break quest, I have a need to sit down and get both “main” jobs and “support” jobs up to snuff.

First priority is to get Red Mage to 99, followed by DRK to 99, then for hilarity’s sake, BLU to 99.

Then comes the pain of getting WAR, DRG, MNK, SCH, RNG, BST, and all the others to 49 or greater.

Fell Cleave days anyone?

The Magian Moogles are going to see a lot of me as things progress. Between getting my AF3 and some AF2 upgraded, I am working on a few weapons for various purposes: a STR Shikargar for my eventual Almace offhand, Almace itself, the Occasionally Attacks Twice Fulgurante, the Occasionally Attacks 2 to 4 Times Ogresse, and I have aspirations for an Apocalypse and an Ochain or Aegis, perhaps.

Yesterday I camped various NMs to get caught up on Almace’s trials to the VNM portion since one of them leads to Krabkatoa, whom I need 10 shells from for the OAT Great Sword. I took down Tottering Toby 3 times, took down Drooling Daisy once, then went to blow up the Rank 3 dragon for a friend before heading out to dinner. After dinner, I logged back in and got my other 2 Drooling Daisy kills, helping out a BLU on the first kill, as he only needed one more kill and I had wide scan from /RNG1 (really need to level that up at some point).

After those I sent him a tell asking if he was having any luck with Gargantua, as he was in Beaucedine, and I told him I’d finished Trial 152 and wanted to know if he wanted help on Trial 153. Turns out that since it’s for the Katana and Great Axe Empyreans as well he had a group going, which I joined up with. I had to go to bed at 11 PM, so I stayed AFK in the party and they got 2 kills of Gargantua before disbanding around 2 AM. Tonight will be spent up there for sure if my LS friends aren’t on.

These trials for some reason are more fun than mindlessly massmurdering the same class of mob a few hundred times. I know that I’m going to have to pretty much go into Zen mode for the OA2-4 Scythe’s long string of death. Oh well.

Perhaps I can finish up Trial 153 and get ready for the further trials tonight, but I’m hoping we can go seal hunting for RDM or DRK stuff too. We’ll see what happens in about three hours!

“Your level limit is now 99!”

Time to finish leveling stuff up now~

Sometimes one has to fall further than they ever have to find where they should be.

{removed}

I entertained returning to WoW, playing The Old Republic, or merely returning to the addiction of Quake 3 Arena, Counter-Strike, or some similar FPS. However, in the end, just over $600 and a new machine later, I returned to where I had gone to long before: Vana’diel–Final Fantasy XI.

After a series of false starts week before last, I began playing again more often this past weekend upon finishing the machine. Thus far, I have completed Red Mage AF3+1 Head, I have all the seals for Dark Knight AF3+1 Hands, and a smattering of other seals for DRK and Paladin as well.

Things are shaping up to thrust me into where I should be, and I merely need to work on getting leveled up ASAP. I reconnected with old friends, and with my sudden amount of free time, I should be able to get caught up quickly.

Fortunately, Vana’diel is full of things to keep me busy between Magian Trials, farming Dynamis, Voidwatch, and all the other things out there. The future looks exciting in its own way!

The hopeless addict has returned. Pray this isn’t a mistake on my part!

“There ain’t no gettin’ offa this train we’re on.” -Final Fantasy VII

This past weekend’s VanaFest saw Square Enix make a series of announcements that will forever change the face of Vana’diel.

The one most people are reacting to is the announcement of the level cap being raised to 99 from 75. The last time the level cap was raised was in late 2003 when the cap was raised to 75, just over 6 years ago.

My response to this was to immediately cancel my content IDs out of protest and quit the game. I absolutely do not want to level my support jobs to 50 and my jobs to 99.

Is this a knee-jerk reaction? Not really. I was already burning out beforehand, and that pushed me over the edge. I still remember the old days of overcrowded exp camps, and I strongly think this is SE’s final attempt to stop the bleeding of customers that’s been going on for quite some time. It’s probably backfired.

It’s been fun, Vana’diel. I won’t be joining FF14 after this announcement.

And no, nobody on Phoenix can have my accounts. I’m putting my token away in a place I’ll forget where it is.

My train’s reached the end of the line… Time for me to disembark.

In +1’ing my Duelist’s Chapeau, I now permanently have -5 inventory as I am 99.9% sure I will never get another NQ one. While having Duelist’s Armor claim slip as a key item was fun for a while, not missing out on another 3 MND for Slow II reallly is worth the inventory space loss.

I’ve passed on several -1 Duelist pieces before solely because I was looking forward to the day I’d be able to store my relic armor set and regain some needed inventory space; however, now that I have “the” +1, I may start working on the others. The hands, legs, and feet should be easy to get as they all drop from easy things: Buburimu for the hands, Nightmare Hornets in Tavnazia for the legs, and Qufim for the feet. The body, however, drops off Tavnazia’s Nightmare Clusters, a mob we rarely are able to get to, let alone fight, so it will be quite some time before I acquire that particular piece. … If anything, full Duelist +1 will make killer town gear!

Of all my semi-lofty goals for this game, I think that full Duelist +1 is the most lofty: a Dalmatica will eventually find its way to me, same with that infernal Goliard Saio that refuses to drop, same with a myriad of other items. But HQ’ing an entire relic set is two-fold: time and money. Each piece requires a token amount of ancient currency as well as the corresponding armors, so I find myself pricing them all out and hoping it takes a while for them to drop!

With FFXIV due out at some point this year, I wonder how sharply Vana’diel’s population will be cut. I don’t intend to switch to XIV: in fact, I may “grow up” so to speak and quit MMOs at some point in the not-so-distant future. That all depends on how badly XIV takes a toll on the overall population.

Needless to say, 2010 should be an exciting year for me in Vana’diel!