New Blog Home!

The new blog is on Windy Bird: A Final Fantasy XI Fansite!

Thanks to Strawberrie, Webmistress of Tarunation (known for Strawberrie Fields Forever), I have been introduced to WordPress for blogging. I like this - that way, folks won't have to be redirected to another place online.

Ok, ok, and it offers categories for posts. Something I've been wanting to a good long time. *lol* At least this will force me to try to learn PHP. I'd like to set the blog to look similar to Windy Bird: A Final Fantasy XI Fansite. Colorwise, I like the green. Never thought I would like some other color besides black, violet, and indigo so much. <(o.O)>

So, now, I'm busy copying all my posts from my Blogger account while at the same time fishing for my Lu Shang Fishing Rod. Yes, I have finally made my mind to complete it. I had stopped around 100/10,000 about a year ago, then got up to 900/10,000 when moat carp was between 4,000-6,000g per stack. Now, moat carp is 10,000g/stack. I have fished for a bit, kicking it up to 1,081/10,000. So far, Blackthanos, Crace, Darkkun, and Hadesixii are helping me with this. Gotta think of how to repay them, now - hmmm...

The new blog is on Windy Bird: A Final Fantasy XI Fansite!

EDIT: Apparently lots of folks (*coughsBOYScough*) kept missing my new blog link... <(o___O)>

[Fun] Chicken Bones?!

One of the most dreadful ingredients to get for my Cooking mule's Guild Points (GP). You either run a lot in Tahrongi Canyon digging those suckers up or risk the scary Attowa Chasm for those things.

I chose to go to Attowa Chasm.

All the excavation points are in the part of Attowa Chasm where even Lv. 75 folks can get aggro without sneak. What in the world convinced me to choose Attowa Chasm vs. Tahrongi Canyon for those chicken bones? According to various resources, chicken bones are more easily excavated in Attowa Chasm vs. Tahrongi Canyon. Plus, my small sense of adventure pushed me to explore the place. So, off I went to Attowa Chasm.

Along the way, I dug at a few excavation points outside the Maze of Shakrami.

Not too bad. But I was still going to go to Attowa Chasm.

Once there, I looked at a print-out of the map (haven't done the quest - really ought to, haha!) to help me navigate my way to the excavation points. First patch of excavation points I encountered was guarded by the famous poisonous Gasponia grass and lots of undead, including Liches, Mummies, and - A CORSE - EEEEEEEK!! That's what first went through my head when I say the big, dark, looming hulk of a Corse in front of me.

Yep - made the mistake of trying to explore at nighttime. Bad idea.

Of course, taking a friend's note (thanks, Olorin!), I had Sneak up. Getting over the initial shock, I walked among those fiends to an excavation point, paying no attention to the fact that I walked right through that Gasponia grass. <(>___<;)> Sure enough, I got poisoned, and my Stoneskin was the only thing that kept my HP from dipping into the colors, a.k.a. undead magnet range. The HP tick on that stuff is almost as bad as an Uragnite's poison! Back to excavation, though, my digs were... not the greatest.

D'oh!! <(><)>

So, onto the next spot to the west... a.k.a. Tiamat's turf! You heard right, this is the spot where that good old HNM dragon rests her tushy at! Thankfully, she was out for a walk, so nothing but more undead and an Arch Corse guarding that patch. The Arch Corse was enough to convince me to wait the extra minutes for dawn to arrive, so I found a patch against the wall, safe from anything that could aggro, and rested my MP to full as the sun rose in the eastern sky. Then, the only thing guarding those points was the Gasponia grass and two Air Elementals.

Right: no magic.

So, I skedaddled on up there to find the best batches of my dig on that trip.
Of course, my wonderful streak of digging had to be short-lived as I had brought only one stack of picks with me... and my sneak was wearing off! So, I ran a little away from the Air Elementals to a patch I thought would be safe and far enough away from me to cast it. Just when I thought it was safe as I ran along the cracked floor nearby as my sneak wore off...
As if things couldn't have been worse, I had silent oils with me. Good going, Aerro! <(-.-;)>

Overall, though, I did enjoy this little adventure through Attowa Chasm! I, honestly, would consider going back, again, to resume digging for chicken bones, again!

At least next time, though, I'll know better. <(^ ^;)>

[Fun] Fishing Trip, Again!

Ok, I admit, I'm typing all this from memory, which is rather foggy. I made a draft noting some details that I wouldn't otherwise remember... like... how many time we went against mobs. <(>.>)>

Anyhow, it started with Hadesixii (Hades) just (rather) randomly proposing a little ferry trip. I, who happens to be famously known in FishTank for not being a fan of EXPing but otherwise a crafting nut, decided to join him. I pretty much spent my whole gaming time on the ferry fishing with him. During that time, we had encounters with two of the three famously known Notorious Monsters (NMs) of the ferry: Sea Horror and Blackbeard.

Now, Hades was a WAR75/NIN37. I was a WHM68/BLM34. Of course, we had no problem with Sea Horror. In fact, Hades, during the last part of the trip, ran straight out of the cargo doors, straight to Sea Horror, and started attacking it! I stood in disbelief before uttering over Teamspeak:

Aerroenu: "Um... Hades, y'know that's Sea Horror, right?" <(o.O;)>
*pause*
Hadesixii: "Oh, really?" *lol* "I thought it was just a Sea Monk!"
*a good while after*
Aerroenu: "... you know you're fighting in Fishing Gear, right?" <(o O;)>

Blackbeard, on the other hand, was a bit iffy. Our fights with him lasted the whole time the pirates were onboard only because Hades, at each apperance, 2-houred (used "Mighty Strikes") Blackbeard. A few times Hades's HP dipped in the colors (due to me sometimes not paying attention). It would have been an easy fight aside from the fact that:

- I could not silence Blackbeard,
- Blackbeard used some nasty Area of Effect (AoE) spells, and
- Blackbeard had a nasty load of HP or axe was not doing as much damage (DMG) as it could against him.

In the end, we were 0/3 on Sea Horror, 0/2 on Blackheard. It was a bit disappointing not to get Blackbeard's Sea Robber Cudgel, but I would have preferred Silverhook's Seawolf Cudgel. I think I also got my Fishing 36 during this trip - can't remember. *lol*

I can't wait for more ferry trips in the future. It's really fun to do with a big group. You can fish up some profitable fishes like Nebimonites and Noble Ladies and risk meeting all those NMs. And, of course, there's the occasional pirate raids that make it fun, too. I'm just still debating whether it's worth me to sit down and finish fishing up my Lu Shang's Fishing Rod or just level other jobs that I can eventually use in Burning Circle Notorious Monster (BCNM) battles... or level other crafts. *lol*

[Holiday + Blog] Happy New Year!

Now I'm going to sleep, thank you.
<(@_@;)>

And for S&G, I posted some... "post category classification" of sorts. I dunno if Blogger lets you categorize your posts or not like some Japanese Blogs do, but, meh, whatever.

Also, I changed the font to Verdana and shrinked the size of it. If any problems, please post so I can go back and reformat everything.

[Rant] Some Players...

What's so hard with doing a little damn "game research"?
<(><;)>
Meaning...

Scenario #1:
Person1: Could you help me kill this [some random NM]?
Person2: Sure.
Person1: Great! So, where does he spawn?

Scenario #2:
Person1: Could you craft [some random item] for me?
Person2: Ok.
Person1 All right! So, what're the ingredients?

I highly suggest folks bookmark the following websites...

http://ffxi.somepage.com - Excellent for a quick look-up with basic details. Good update on recipes.
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com - Excellent for a look-up with many user-input details.
http://www.killingifrit.com/ - Excellent for searching extensive user-input and discussion for information and details.
http://mysterytour.web.infoseek.co.jp/ffxi/us/index.html - Excellent for static lists of armor, weaponry, recipes, specilized NPCs, and etc.

Another thing that bothers me...

Gilbuyer Behavior.
I cannot take a stand against the act of gilbuying as much as I can take a stand against gilbuyer behavior. Is it just me, or does a large majority (99.999999999999999%, anyone?) of gilbuyers have no sense of money value whatsover? I can understand the instance of gilbuying where the buyer is an actual person who worked for his/her own money who then decides to use that hard-earned money to buy virtual money. Working folks generally do not have enough time to play the game and "earn money in the game" like some other folks do. That I can understand, and it would be "them paying someone else for a service," the service of "playing the game for them. Yeah, sounds stupid, but it's their money, and they can do whatever they want with it.

But what about the folks who "use Mommy's or Daddy's credit card and buy virtual money"? To put it bluntly: Using someone else's hard-earned money for buying virtual money. To make it worse, too many of these folks frivolously spend that gil by contributing to inflating the prices of high-end, high-marked items, like, let's say, Vermies and Haubs. "Who gives a damn if a Vermy's 10 mil. I've got the 10 mil; I can buy it." No bloody value to the value of gil. And it turns around and hurts the folks who actually earn their gil and not go buy it with RL money that they did/didn't earn themselves.

I can probably summarize my thought about this "gilbuyer behavior" in one sentence:
What the hell ever happened to "pride in your work"?

Anyhow, time to go back home for me. And it looks like I can freely draw - whee!

... I just need to hold off final drawings until I get home and regain access to the Model Viewer for FFXI models.
<(-.-;)>

[Holiday] Happy Holidays!

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

Now, back to FFXI withdrawal and being unable to freely draw here. <(-_-x)>

*lol* <(^___^;)>

[Rant + Random] Blargh!!

Heehee, after a littaru prompting-wompting from Wyred (and, sadly, I should have made him bribe me with a Buche au Chocolat or Black Pudding), I've finally gotten off my fat buttaru and made another blog post.

First off, I hate my campus connection. I could be running nothing else except FFXI, and it's making a 24k modem look like lightning! <(@_@;)> What kind of bullcrap is that? To make matters worse, two months ago my connection started to go down the drain. I wouldn't have thought that the sudden surge of students online would affect it THAT bad! I've had to resolve to being absent from my beloeved Teamspeak because my bandwidth makes me skip. I skip so badly in FFXI, it... ugh, imagine getting responses about 5+ seconds late. Thank God my cooking mule can make insane loads of pear au lait, and thank God for the random moments I don't get that confounded "Communications seem to be congested" messages when I delivery and receive items! <(>_<)>

Needless to say, it's been majorly getting in the way of my gameplay. Leveling WAR/MNK has become dangerous, and had it not been for the PLer in the PT I reluctantly joined, I firmly believe the PT would have had problems. I seemed to have done a good job holding hate, but, again, my connection was ridiculous. I wouldn't have doubted I've have been able to hold hate with a "normal" connection. This honestly makes me worried, seeing how I'm staticing my NIN/WAR with a couple of friends from TS. I duo-tank with Acolyte as a NIN, so I need to be able to react quickly, and seeing how prohibiting my connection is... yeah, I'm not a happy camper.

On a slightly brighter note... I am such the crafting whore. <(-.-;)> The very instant I upload and update FFXI, what do I do? I go to my Cooking mule and shark up all the new recipes in the Cooking guild... and proceed to post about them on Somepage.com and KillingIfrit and sending a friendly email to Allakhazam. <(^^;)> Some further reading dug up the recipe for the cute Love Chocolate (HQ: Truelove Chocolate). Someone mentioned it was a Clothcraft, so I went out to personally find out myself. Sure enough...

Love Chocolate (Clothcraft 1, Leathercraft 1, Cooking 1)
Crystal: Earth
Ingredients: Parchment, Heart Chocolate, Scarlet Ribbon
Result: Love Chocolate
HQ #1: Truelove Chocolate

So, yeah, I made a couple in an attempt to sign an HQ one. Hope all the folks who bought mine enjoy them!

Meh, too frustrated to keep playing. G'nightaru! <(- -)>