Not sure if someone noticed it, but…

That's right, today at 12:24am CET the Vana'diel calender struck year 1000.
(screenshot was taken by Shuemue from theorderls.com, since I had to miss it )

 

Some other "interesting" facts:

The year 2000 would fall on 01 december 2045

This means FFXI started in the year 895 back on the 
Japanese launch of 15th of may 2002

Year 0001 would have been on the 9th of february 1967

Every Vana'month apparently only counts 30 days.

In conclusion we can say that only 105 years have passed 
even while ffxi turns at 25x speed  

 

NOW WHERE IS THE CELELBRATION CHAMPAGNE? 

  

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A few readers of this bloggie told me that they found the
layout of this weblog kinda… hmmmm… boring !!!!

Some suggested me to use more different colors and even switching to an one-column weblog.
Unfortunately it's not that easy and aside from the-"I am not so skilled in configuring all this"-part,
there are certain preferences I really find important in my weblog,
which only this Journalized-winter preset theme seems to give me.

I might change it in the near future, but in the meantime I am for example 
more interested in getting a beautiful Verohawke's Nest image header.
I am trying really hard to create something appropriate,
but even when I think of something VeroNesty to make,
it still remains extremely hard to put it together and to form it to a good looking -woaw- image.

 

Anyway, back to ffxi…

 

I have always had a serious dislike of level 75 xp parties.
The few zones that gave you a margin of the needed xp were not only like more than
an hour trip away, but were in my opinion never inhabitated by fun creatures to party on.

• Ro'Moave and sky -> weapons or statues (bleuh)
• King Ramperre's Tomb -> boneparty  (blaaaaah)
• Uleguerand ranch -> Stegos with doom (- I still can't seem to manage to turn at the right time >.<)

 

Since I even considered buffering my level 75 jobs as a serious burden,
I don't have to explain to you that merits were practically out of the question.

But now with the latest ToA installment all this belongs to the past !
SE added a few zones where you:

1. get faster XP as a level 75 than anywhere else in Vana'diel.
2. with these runic portals, only take about 1 minute to get to the XP zone which also means frustration doesn't kick in too badly when the party is breaking off sooner than later.

Needless to say that I have been meriting ever since
 
Now as most of you know, as an extra bonus for partying in the new ToA zone, you will acquire ISP
and if you manage to get 20.000 of them, you can exchange them for a Walahra Turban (+5%hat).

Thanks to my gold(coin)digging friend, I was already able to get it my turban morning !
Gamble if you read this, I sincerely hope that you still had enough time to enjoy your coffee

 

Lestath>> Turban looks so bad on female Humes .
Verohawke>> I wouldn't know, it looks like a funky Corsair Hat to me.
Verohawke>> Dat swap swap and swap.
Lestath>> Rofl

After that it was time for another Limbus, we cleared W-Temenos in 6 people
with fairly ease, but even after watching the screenshots again,
I can't remember doing West-Temenos ever before and if I did, I don't remember.
Either way, both options suggest (again) that I am not attending Limbus enough.

All wearing that UGLY turban but me

A Limbus, some quick assault runs and my usual crafting duty later,
right as I am about to call it a day, suddenly some pink letters of Teddweddy appear on my screen.
If you reside on Shiva and used to hang out quite a lot in Jeuno,
there is no way that you have never been approached by this little taru rascal.
He used to spend about 90% of his time in Jeuno with this sole mission:
Hugging everybody with Teddywarmth…

Well after 6 months of absence he's back once again
and last time I saw him, he was on route for the New city of Aht Urhgan !
My my Shivans beware

 

Welcome back Teddy for the 10th Time !
You'd better not leave again anytime soon now

 

  

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Right as I planned to log off after my smithing level 60 achievement,
Gamble sent me a message asking me if I was perhaps up for some devious challenge.

Hmmm… Tough one…

OK !

He told me he was upping thief and he wanted to get a matching Thf subligar.
The challenge would consist in retrieving the subligar with… just the two of us  

If anyone else would have asked, I'd have said it couldn't possibly be done,
but with Gamble I have duod munchies like Bune, hell even managed to get my ninja subligar.
Obtaining the ninja subligar was entirely different though, the surroundings in the aquaducts
(a pond) and the isolation of the ninja fomor, made it very well possible to solo this fomor. 

So anyways, we gathered together in the T. Safehold,
both switched to NIN/RDM, bought a stack of each elemental-ninjutsu
and then headed to the Phomunia Aquaducts.

Objective 1: find a Thief fomor

Since we both thought to remember that we saw a Thief fomor in a room near the pond
where we duod our ninja subligars about 6 months ago,
that was the first place that we went to check out.
Once we got there, there was unfortunately no thief fomor to be seen,
but it was funny to notice that at the pond where there used to be one sole ninja fomor,
SE had added a second fomor (Summoner).
Possibly SE must have heard about the technique to solo you ninja subligar 
by kiting the fomor around the pond and spamming ninjutsu.

It's not easy navigating through the maze looking for a specific type of fomor,
especially when you need to cross rooms which are filled with Truesight Stegotaurs.

Objective 2: disposing of the Thief fomor

As the searching for thief fomor wasn't hard enough already,
we had to figure out a plan to pull the fomor to a safe place (preferably linkfree ),
which also would give us enough kitingspace.

Easier said than done
After dying multiple times and screaming that it couldn't be done.

we finally found some inspiration in Alliyah who once sang:

"If at first you don't succeed,
dust yourself up and try again"

 

So we did…

and finally managed to find a way to separate the thief from the rest and
defeat it pretty easy actually by just bouncing hate through kitespamming the elemental-wheel.

Then suddenly, after a few Thf Fomors had been sentenced to dustexploration…

My jaws still hurt from the laughter I had,
this challenge was more than just great fun !

I don't think I laughed this hard in ffxi for quite a long time  

  

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I am pretty sure most people who play ffxi feel it sometimes,

when…

1. You have a day off at work
2. You're home alone >.> 
3. It's freezing cold outside and rain is pouring
4. There is no passion to read that Lovestory-novel again for the 3th time.
5. You dont really feel like going out or doing anything.

It's on these moments that you log into Final Fantasy XI
while knowing fairly well what's bound to happen.

Yes… you're going to end up being online for the most part of the day
and it will be evening before you even realize it.

As my prologue might have hinted, today was one of these days…

———————————————————————————————————-

The moment I logged in, a party was forming with the purpose of doing some various AF-quests.
I didn't hesitate one second and signed up, since I not only wanted to help,
but also really really really was looking for something a little more active
to do in game than the things I had been doing in the last few days…

A few people needed cofferkeys, other partymembers had some AF NMs on their clearlist, 
some even craved for a very short visit to Dark Fire: 

In general it was quite a hectic afternoon filled with the visiting
of various places to get all of the above done.

Somewhere in Castle Z. Baileys I managed to pull off a relatively high blade jin.
Perhaps it isn't so extremely high, hell maybe it isn't even the maximum I ever did,
but just for once I did not forget to hit the screenshotbutton for a change.

The Key-Team:

After the AF-marathon was done, we managed to rush back to Al Zhabi 
just in time to participate in "Besieged".

You know, SE should really try to come up with a solution to these connectionproblems 
we're facing during besieged. The concept and idea of besieged might be super,
but in its current stage the whole event feels to me like watching a
PowerPoint Slideshow Presentation, which reduces the fun-playability-factor practically to Zilch.

Especially when you're tanking these invading mobs,
you'll see yourself lying dead on the floor pretty fast,
and if you're in luck you can see 30 seconds later what hit you   

 

After besieged I went…

 

back…

 

to…

 

 

FINALLY !

I can not express how painful it was to get this subcraft to 60.
Never did I experience such slow skillups as with smithing

The things I crafted for skillups, should give me a good profit (like Dark sheets)
once they get sold. Of course the market is flooded with these particular items at the moment,
so I'll just have to be patient and suck up the horrible investment-loss for a while.

Here is an updated chart again:

Now as for Alchemy…
Shouldn't pose too many difficulties to get that from 50 to 60

  

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Well I can't say I have been much online the past few days
and for the time I was, I only did some crafting and chatting with people through the pinky /tell.

Today, we decided to massacre all our ID tags to do some assaults

The screenshot above was taken in the Mamool Ja SP assault "Preemptive Strike";
it's an EXP-alike setting with only one goal: Dispose of the evil Mamools !

was fun

  

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