Long overdue, but I finally finished Apocalypse Nigh, some people say it's just a quest, but I am pretty sure it's intended as a MISSION. Not only do the cutscenes before and after the fight give closure to the entire Zilart and COP saga, but also do both titles in the Mission Log change to The Last Verse…

Just displaying some pictures without any comments…

Since we're on the subject of spoilers anyway

1. Only your party (no Prische) fight Archduke Kam'Lanaut and his brother Eald'narche.
2. As the Promathia fight, it's a very fun, but easy fight.
3. Did Lion now die for real… or not?
4. After the ending of major story line, you can choose yourself a fancy new jewel.
5. Having both the RDM and BLM job I chose for:

After doing somefancy new FL assaults with Whisper and his angels, I saw someone shouting in Aht Urhgan for members for the Storms of Fate quest (a.k.a. Bahamut V1). After searching for more than a year for a large group to team up with to this quest (posted on various forums, was enslaved by Dilinja,…), I did not hesitate one second to ask if I could join.

Apparently I had some "fans" in the alliance
This only encourages me more to update my weblog more often ! ^^/

Again, I do NOT take any credit whatsoever for the BLM SOLO GUIDE on my weblog. Most of the work was done by SALACIA and VITRIOLIC while I merely tweaked it a little and implemented some of my personal experiences.

Speaking of fans, I got this conversation one day earlier at Leaping Lizzy camp:

Kuranji explained he was browsing the internet for info on "Hyrulian Shield". That's how he ended up in the DAT section of the weblog. He then claims after having read more on my bloggie he decided (as as the Final Fantasy fan he used to be) to play FFXI. Amazingly flattering story… if it's true

Anyway, I digress !

Back to the Wyrm King…

About an hour and 17 deaths of various team members later we finally arrive at Bahamut's Dominion. Leaders decided to do a dry run first…

Eddie an incredible paladin (with Maat's Cap) did an amazing job tanking until Bahamut starts going nuts when he's around 20% I took over tanking as Ninja until it was around 10%, but as stun order was off and curing wasn't reall that optimal I soon bit the dust. The other 2 paladins died just seconds after me… With Bahamut going berserk but near depleted HP, everyone just went nuts and 2-houred like crazy. Guess the dry run wasn't so dry anymore Meanwhile, more than half of the alliance was already wiped by Megaflare.

But… we prevailed ! Bahamut got taken down (just in time if you ask me). We won the battle by just fighting it once, which is pretty good considered it was an alliance formed by /shouting for members  

This is the team we took Bahamut down with

I already got an invite from some of the members to do the final quest "Apocalypse Nigh" together with them next week (We have to wait until after next conquest tally before we can activate the quest). After this quest COP will be truly finished, can't wait ! 

R 

I have never had any regrets about my Tamas ring which I chose after the ending of the COP Story (2/3 of my jobs are mage jobs anyway), but since it is possible now to switch COP rings every 27 days just by dropping your ring and reentering the Marble's Tavern in Upper Jeuno, I didn't see any reason why not to give the another COP ring a trial period of a month. That's why I exchanged my Tamas Ring for a Rajas Ring last week and have been using/testing it quite intensely on my ninja ever since.

If you still don't know the stats on the COP rings by now, here are the pictures to refresh your memories:

At this point I feel that the rajas ring is luch more useful than my previous Tamas ring.
Please give me a chance to explain…

First of all there is not one magic spell in the game that requires both INT and MND at the same time, while on the other hand melee attacks and some weapon skills (such as Blade:Jin) rely heavily on both STR and DEX at the same time.

Secondly does the Subtle blow +5 and Store TP +5 traits combined seem to be much effective to me than the +30mp (which I recover by having full mp merits) and the enmity reduction (which to me isn't really visble at all).
While playing solo I can swear I very much notice the effect of subtle blow as the mob uses less TP moves. As far as the Store TP trait is concerned however, my TP keeps ending up to 98-99 TP, which still requires an extra hit/delay to get to 100. This is probably because I dual wield Unji and Perdu Blade most of the time.

At this point I seem pretty happy with my Rajas as it feels of more value to me than just an "equipment swap saver"  like the Tamas ring was for me. It's still a pitty that you can't have both of them though :'(

S 

As I am actually a little bit tired of crafting for a marginal sum of money, I found myself farming in Sea Serpent Grotto last week (I must have a thing for dark caves >_<). SSG actually holds quite an amount of treasures. Novv's Area or the place behind the "Ornamented door" make perfect farming spots. As Ninja/thief I farm easily up to 100k/hour thanks to gilfinder, the stealing of golden beastcoins and all the WHM-BRD scrolls that drop and which all sell for an excellent (5-12k) NPC price. As an extra bonus the amount of beastman and kindred seals just keep stacking up and Beatrice's level is slowly finding its way to the level cap.

Being down there also gave me the opportunity to help several people to get their Joy-Toy.

C

Even while crafting is not really a big money maker right now, this doesn't mean that with all these low prices it wouldn't be a good time to skill up these last levels of my subcrafts. And finally today after a few months of inactivity on the crafting area, I at last got the followng message:

This brings my overall Craft Skills to the following levels:

That leaves only 3 more levels of Goldsmithing and 0.7 level of Clothcraft to be done.
I am nearly there !!

Alternative Title : *Puffing around in the Windurstian Zoo* 

After the latest version update, a completed Lure of the Wildcats quest makes it possible for you to get teleported from the Nation (where you did the quest) to Aht Urhgan for a miserable 300 gil, so I decided that it was time to finish up this quest in that last nation standing. Windurst…

I guess you could say that, I almost literally dropped and lost my mind doing the Windurstian part of this quest. Even with ranger subbed and a printed list of NPC names that I had to talk to, it still took me nearly two hours to finish this quest ! (While the Sandy' quest barely took me 10 minutes)

Not to be a racist here, but if you TaruTarus look very much alike in appearances, then you should at least try to differentiate by being a little more creative in naming each other.

I mean: Chewbime kiba, Chewmebi kebi, Chewmemi kebab …
Scrolling through my widescan alone gives me a terrible headache >_<
and if you really have a hard time being original, there is nothing wrong with names like Plop, Stimpy or even Josh.

Furthermore, I don't care if you are a NPC or not, but if you know that you are a little Taru, do you really find it necessary to go hide yourself in some dark hole or duck behind some sinister wooden crate ? You are doing it on purpose, aren't you?

Oh and if you all are supposed to be so intelligent,
then why does the infrastructure of your city appears to be one of the worst and most chaotic in Vana'Diel?
Please don't you dare giving me some explanation like:

1. "As Tarus we had to compromise with the Mithras about the City's layout and since Mithras are basically still cats (animals), Windurst had to be designed as frickin Zoology."
• Does this imply that you Tarus are animals yourselves?

2. "You're a just a stupid Hume, which is why you will never be able to comprehend the true ingenuity that lies within the infrastructure of our Capital…"
• Sure, building your city on the middle of some lake that would flood your entire city if some rain would start pouring out of the sky and letting Dhamels roam free in the middle of your city. You even had to employ some gimped Black mage Tarus to warp you from one part of the city to another, since the egos of some tarus required them to live on some separate islands of 500 square (enix) metres which made the city larger than it should have been in the first place.
  

3. "Nobody is forcing you to come to Windurst!"
• I know that, but unfortunately my employer resides in a Windurstian guild who still takes care of my source of income. However, I just got notice that I won the Aht Urhgan Green card lottery for the year 2008, so I am relieved to say that I won't be forced to renew my "Windurstian working visum". I can now just move my Clothcrafting business to Al Zahbi. /hurray for that
  

Oh and just to make sure that you don't get the wrong idea: 
I still love you little rascals 

After spending 2,500,000 GIL (Read:Way too much) on this item: 

I wanted to make sure, I could use this item as much as possible. The latent is activated by your current HP being at 75% of your natural HP. The best way to achieve that is to put some (Convert to mp and -HP) gear in a single macro. The only problem is that there is not so much equipment availaible before 73 (then you can use the Zenith set) to make that possible.

At my current level 68 I need around -200 HP to get at 75% of my natural HP, so far I have:

• Tiphia Sting (Ammo) = -25 HP
• Astral Aspis (Shield) = -25 HP
• Serket Ring (Ring 1) = -50 HP
• Astral Ring (Ring 2) = -25 HP
• Emperor Hairpin (Head) = -15 HP
• Star Necklace (Neck) = -15 HP

Which totals a (-155) HP so far. I can't include the Penitent's Rope, nor the Black Cotehardie, because I nuke with these items. So in my search for more -HP gear I stumbled on some item dropped by a Summoner Tonberry in the Den of Rancor.

According to Somepage Carmine-Tailed Janberry is a lottery spawn from the Tonberry Imprecators on the map with the Sacrificial Chamber and lottery from the Tonberry Imprecators that are around G-8 to H-9. It is strange that you need to kill placeholders in the large room, since Janberry himself pops in a different area, near the tunnel down to Sacrificial Chamber with the pillars (E-5 to G-8). C-TJ must have not been killed for a long time, because approximately 15 minutes after I had my first round of 3 Imprecators, he had already decided to pop. 

This is really fun solo fight ! He's is definitely not that hard. Although this NM is supposed to be a summoner, I have never seen him casting an elemental or using astral flow during the enitre fight. However he does use throat stab, sigh and all of the other funlky tonberry moves which can turn out quite nasty. For a summoner, he does have an incredible amount of HP, which almost left me MP-less before the end of the fight.

Anyway, It was an extremely fun(ny) fight seeing this poor demented Tonberry swing his chocobo wand at me and of course it's always nice to see that you get the drop ^^/ (I believe Asklepios is a 100% drop anyway).

With this item added to the items above I can get to (-185)HP, which still is ot enough, so if any of you still know some items that could bring back my HP even further down, please please please do tell me