I'm not dead, I swear!
Once again, I've procrastinated and let lots of screenshots build up in my folder. When I finally decided to go through them this time I had around 200 screenshots to go through so it took awhile to weed out what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to put on here. I had so many I'm gonna end up splitting this into 2 updates, so here is part 1:
HNM Life
Well, when people aren't being lazy and HNM are actually at a decent time Zen has managed to scrape together the numbers to camp some HNM lately. Unfortunately, it hasn't been very successful as we've gotten no claims, but I don't feel like my time was wasted because I just watched tv between instances anyways.
Faf and Nidhogg have this terrible habit of eating my Stuns with their claim delay. Kind of sucks being penalized for being too fast ;(
We also made it to a few Aspi and Behemoth camps, though I didn't take any pics of Behemoth. One Aspi camp I spotted someone hanging out naked :O
It was Altdeer of course, apparently Altdeerland has gone from no pants to no clothes at all!
This paticular Aspi camp reminded me of Aery during high chance Nidhogg days, it was really crowded.
So Aspi pops, and some random alliance of JP's who shouted in Whitegate for members gets the claim.
They ended up killing it, and I was kind of suprised but I guess that just shows what a pussy Aspi really is as long as you have enough BLM.
One day I signed on and saw everyone in Mt. Zhayloum. Come to find out Cerberus was up and they were watching another LS fight. I headed out there because I like seeing HNM whether I get to fight them or not and I've only ever seen Cerberus 1 other time. Unfortunately, they ended up wiping at 3% ;(
Now, this brings up one thing I'd like to complain about. I understand people want to fight HNM or even just NM's in general. And I understand it's frustrating when someone else claims something you wanted to fight, but the way some people act when another LS is fighting something really disgusts me. In this example the LS fighting Cerberus was NovOrsa, and I'd consider myself on friendly terms with a lot of their members. If this was a trash linkshell like FR or gil sellers I would have no problems with all the "I hope they wipe" and "come on, GoH!" comments. Or like, if they'd only been fighting for a few minutes and wiped near the beginning or something I could understand the desire for them to wipe so we can fight. But once you've fought something for 3 hours and get it all the way down to 3% ... at that point I'd be devastated if it was my linkshell and we wiped, so I put myself in their position and root for them. It just annoys the shit out of me the way HNM are contested sometimes, and the way people act, even people in my own linkshell sometimes.
And while I'm on my soapbox... I'll take it another step further. Something else that really annoys me is people that can't just be happy for someone elses success, or can't root for someone else when they get the claim. For example, when someone is camping a NM like Xolotl or Mysticmaker Profblix (NM's that have nice rare/ex drops) against you and they get the claim, why would you be unhappy if they get the drop. All it means is they won't have to come and camp against you later. And as far as HNM go, why do people get mad when another LS gets nice drops from something. Like I know when Solstice got an uncontested Aspi a week or two ago people were actually unhappy they got a Dalmatica out of it. Why the hell can't you people just be happy for them, and how can you possibly be mad about it when you couldn't even be bothered to camp against them. ooooook... stepping down off the soapbox now.
Sky
Moonshines seems to be going really well, very pleased with our first Kirin. Second Kirin... not so much but if people would listen to me and Morningstar and shadowbind Suzaku on his 2 hour instead of trying to chainspell stun I think we'd be fine :)
We got an Osode, which was nice for the first drop, grats to Mischa :D
Also noticed Despot has turned into a highly contested NM... I dub thee... Despot's Aery!
Crafting
Crafting has been bi-polar to me, as usual. Some days are really good and some days are really bad. Let's start with the really good! So I was level 94.5 goldsmithing and figured I'd have a go at getting to 95 since that's where I could start doing the Elemental Bead rings and not lose a stupid amount of gil per synth. Some of them even make gil! So I get to crafting and hit 95 pretty quickly, hooray! I had 20 orichalcum rings or so on a mule from when I made them to skill a few levels ago so I decided while I was in a crafting mood I might as well go ahead and see how far I could get. This is what followed:
I ended up going from 94.5 to 96.5 in one sitting, it was crazy. Something like 20 skillups in 25 or 26 synths. Was pretty awesome. So after a bunch of those rings sold I went to make some more. Full moon was coming up and I wanted to get as much prep work done as I could before I went to sleep since I'd have to wake up early to catch the full moon. I was going to both try to skillup and try to HQ some phantom earrings during the full moon so I was making my rings and beads in preperation. Here's what happened:
I was pretty mad. That's almost 1 mil in loss before I've even gotten to the skillup synths... and if you'll notice one of those rings I hq'd, which makes it completely useless... might as well have broken it and lost both the ingots ._.
Then, to make things worse I get up to craft during the full moon and not only do I get 0 skill ups, I also go 0/12 on Phantom Earring +1's and break a couple skill up synths so thats another 1 mil down the drain. I was so disgusted I tossed my keyboard across the room and went back to sleep. Eventually though, a few days later I went 4/6 on skill ups and hit 97, hooray!
Adventures in Parrying Skillups
Back when I was around level 71 or 72 on RDM I wanted to try and skillup parrying and shield skill by rounding up a bunch of mandies and letting them beat on me while taking little to no damage. It didn't go so well and I ended up dying several times so I never bothered to go back... until now! This time I came at 75 but my gear was worse because I didn't bother to buy the damage taken -% gear and just went out there with what I had on hand. The few extra levels made a HUGE difference though, as this time I was able to gather up a lot more mandies and actually survive.
I took this screenshot near the beginning, in fact it may have been right at the beginning before I started getting any skillups. This is counting the skill + gear I was wearing but so is the ending screenshot so the number of levels gained is accurate.
And the ending screenshot:
So according to the screenshots I got about 33 Shield skill levels and 27 parrying skill levels in about 2 hours. At the end my shield skill capped so I moved to Korrigans but I was only able to take 2 of them at a time, 3 was just too much and I ended up having to kill one of them off. Some random shots from the adventure:
I did end up dying a couple times, but only because towards the end (before I moved to the Korrigans) I started getting really bored and stopped paying complete attention and let phalanx drop and the 16 or so mandies raped me pretty quick when that happened.
Random Stuff
Finally got around to finishing WHM off to 75 and capping xp. Eventually I'll put some merits into it but I don't really enjoy playing it much so merits for it are pretty far down the list of to-do's even though WHM merits are pretty useful.
Also, I'd just like to say I really really like the Greater Colibri camp. It's by far my favorite place to merit and anything less than 20k/hr there is subpar.
I've also ranked up to Chief Sergeant in assaultm though I haven't done assault in so long, kind of sucks having my tags go to waste every week.
Well, I guess thats it for now, I've still got a ton more screenshots but this entry alone took me like 4 hours to prepare, going through all the screenshots and cropping them and actually writing the entry, though writing is the easiest part. The good thing is next time I won't have so many screenshots to go through since I already did that, look for another entry within the week :D
HNM Life
Well, when people aren't being lazy and HNM are actually at a decent time Zen has managed to scrape together the numbers to camp some HNM lately. Unfortunately, it hasn't been very successful as we've gotten no claims, but I don't feel like my time was wasted because I just watched tv between instances anyways.
Faf and Nidhogg have this terrible habit of eating my Stuns with their claim delay. Kind of sucks being penalized for being too fast ;(
We also made it to a few Aspi and Behemoth camps, though I didn't take any pics of Behemoth. One Aspi camp I spotted someone hanging out naked :O
It was Altdeer of course, apparently Altdeerland has gone from no pants to no clothes at all!
This paticular Aspi camp reminded me of Aery during high chance Nidhogg days, it was really crowded.
So Aspi pops, and some random alliance of JP's who shouted in Whitegate for members gets the claim.
They ended up killing it, and I was kind of suprised but I guess that just shows what a pussy Aspi really is as long as you have enough BLM.
One day I signed on and saw everyone in Mt. Zhayloum. Come to find out Cerberus was up and they were watching another LS fight. I headed out there because I like seeing HNM whether I get to fight them or not and I've only ever seen Cerberus 1 other time. Unfortunately, they ended up wiping at 3% ;(
Now, this brings up one thing I'd like to complain about. I understand people want to fight HNM or even just NM's in general. And I understand it's frustrating when someone else claims something you wanted to fight, but the way some people act when another LS is fighting something really disgusts me. In this example the LS fighting Cerberus was NovOrsa, and I'd consider myself on friendly terms with a lot of their members. If this was a trash linkshell like FR or gil sellers I would have no problems with all the "I hope they wipe" and "come on, GoH!" comments. Or like, if they'd only been fighting for a few minutes and wiped near the beginning or something I could understand the desire for them to wipe so we can fight. But once you've fought something for 3 hours and get it all the way down to 3% ... at that point I'd be devastated if it was my linkshell and we wiped, so I put myself in their position and root for them. It just annoys the shit out of me the way HNM are contested sometimes, and the way people act, even people in my own linkshell sometimes.
And while I'm on my soapbox... I'll take it another step further. Something else that really annoys me is people that can't just be happy for someone elses success, or can't root for someone else when they get the claim. For example, when someone is camping a NM like Xolotl or Mysticmaker Profblix (NM's that have nice rare/ex drops) against you and they get the claim, why would you be unhappy if they get the drop. All it means is they won't have to come and camp against you later. And as far as HNM go, why do people get mad when another LS gets nice drops from something. Like I know when Solstice got an uncontested Aspi a week or two ago people were actually unhappy they got a Dalmatica out of it. Why the hell can't you people just be happy for them, and how can you possibly be mad about it when you couldn't even be bothered to camp against them. ooooook... stepping down off the soapbox now.
Sky
Moonshines seems to be going really well, very pleased with our first Kirin. Second Kirin... not so much but if people would listen to me and Morningstar and shadowbind Suzaku on his 2 hour instead of trying to chainspell stun I think we'd be fine :)
We got an Osode, which was nice for the first drop, grats to Mischa :D
Also noticed Despot has turned into a highly contested NM... I dub thee... Despot's Aery!
Crafting
Crafting has been bi-polar to me, as usual. Some days are really good and some days are really bad. Let's start with the really good! So I was level 94.5 goldsmithing and figured I'd have a go at getting to 95 since that's where I could start doing the Elemental Bead rings and not lose a stupid amount of gil per synth. Some of them even make gil! So I get to crafting and hit 95 pretty quickly, hooray! I had 20 orichalcum rings or so on a mule from when I made them to skill a few levels ago so I decided while I was in a crafting mood I might as well go ahead and see how far I could get. This is what followed:
I ended up going from 94.5 to 96.5 in one sitting, it was crazy. Something like 20 skillups in 25 or 26 synths. Was pretty awesome. So after a bunch of those rings sold I went to make some more. Full moon was coming up and I wanted to get as much prep work done as I could before I went to sleep since I'd have to wake up early to catch the full moon. I was going to both try to skillup and try to HQ some phantom earrings during the full moon so I was making my rings and beads in preperation. Here's what happened:
I was pretty mad. That's almost 1 mil in loss before I've even gotten to the skillup synths... and if you'll notice one of those rings I hq'd, which makes it completely useless... might as well have broken it and lost both the ingots ._.
Then, to make things worse I get up to craft during the full moon and not only do I get 0 skill ups, I also go 0/12 on Phantom Earring +1's and break a couple skill up synths so thats another 1 mil down the drain. I was so disgusted I tossed my keyboard across the room and went back to sleep. Eventually though, a few days later I went 4/6 on skill ups and hit 97, hooray!
Adventures in Parrying Skillups
Back when I was around level 71 or 72 on RDM I wanted to try and skillup parrying and shield skill by rounding up a bunch of mandies and letting them beat on me while taking little to no damage. It didn't go so well and I ended up dying several times so I never bothered to go back... until now! This time I came at 75 but my gear was worse because I didn't bother to buy the damage taken -% gear and just went out there with what I had on hand. The few extra levels made a HUGE difference though, as this time I was able to gather up a lot more mandies and actually survive.
I took this screenshot near the beginning, in fact it may have been right at the beginning before I started getting any skillups. This is counting the skill + gear I was wearing but so is the ending screenshot so the number of levels gained is accurate.
And the ending screenshot:
So according to the screenshots I got about 33 Shield skill levels and 27 parrying skill levels in about 2 hours. At the end my shield skill capped so I moved to Korrigans but I was only able to take 2 of them at a time, 3 was just too much and I ended up having to kill one of them off. Some random shots from the adventure:
I did end up dying a couple times, but only because towards the end (before I moved to the Korrigans) I started getting really bored and stopped paying complete attention and let phalanx drop and the 16 or so mandies raped me pretty quick when that happened.
Random Stuff
Finally got around to finishing WHM off to 75 and capping xp. Eventually I'll put some merits into it but I don't really enjoy playing it much so merits for it are pretty far down the list of to-do's even though WHM merits are pretty useful.
Also, I'd just like to say I really really like the Greater Colibri camp. It's by far my favorite place to merit and anything less than 20k/hr there is subpar.
I've also ranked up to Chief Sergeant in assaultm though I haven't done assault in so long, kind of sucks having my tags go to waste every week.
Well, I guess thats it for now, I've still got a ton more screenshots but this entry alone took me like 4 hours to prepare, going through all the screenshots and cropping them and actually writing the entry, though writing is the easiest part. The good thing is next time I won't have so many screenshots to go through since I already did that, look for another entry within the week :D