Lord I was born a ramblin' man...

I have GOT to start keeping up with this…

Well, it’s been a month so obviously things are happening. As mentioned in my last post I was taking the bard to 80; well I got there eventually. In point of fact, the bard is currently only trotted out for specific events (dynamis and this Saturday I’ll be using in an SK Abyssea alliance) now as I’ve been working on beast. Of course it will be used to recap its own XP and that will give me an excuse to unlock my Nyzul bard dagger and to work on my trial weapons. I think I might have to bard/beast to do that tho’, my bard is squishy.

Now on to the beasty… I’ve been leveling beast and unlocking my Nyzul axe for most of this last month. I did have quite a few weapon skill points from soloing in that time. My Primal Rend unlocked as soon as I hit Nyzul floor 90, maybe 85 as I wasn’t actually watching. Regardless, think I had about 900+ points on it.

So I needed a new project and I finally decided to work on my trial weapons. I picked up a level 75 axe, a level 75 dagger and a level 80 dagger, and I’ll be needing 1 more 75 and 80 dagger. I’m debating a staff for the healing, but I really don’t heal much on my bard so probably not. I actually don’t anticipate any issues with all of the daggers; when I melee on bard I bard/dancer or /ninja and I dual-wield daggers, and my next to jobs to level 80 are thief and then dancer, both of which primarily dual-wield daggers. That means I’ll be needing about 500,000 XP at levels that can use trial weapons or Nyzul weapons, not to mention however much I need recapping bard and/or meriting. Actually, the beast axes will be more of a problem as my focus is on the job levels more than the weapons, so I’m not sure how much time will be spent on beast once I hit 80.

We had a LS payout from my dynamis group. I can’t say how much I got, but coupled with what I had it was enough to get me gobbiebag 10 (I had 9) as well as some of the food I need. I’ve actually been able to keep my money somewhat up due to the low price of materials for some of the new jugs (especially since I farm almost all of them) and all that time soloing beast. A bit about the new jugs, they are largely AWESOME! I have used them leveling, farming and even in Abyssea where they hit so hard and effectively that good tanks cannot hold hate and big damage dealers don’t keep hate long enough to take much damage. Couple that with my pet taking a great deal more damage (it varies from jug to jug but all have several thousand HP) to take down, VERY low cost per jug, and at least 1 good special per pet (although the new mandy is borderline on the good special) and beast is one of the best jobs in the game in any party. Naturally, we don’t get partys…

Abyssea is all about controlling “light”, actually a status effect given due to HOW a kill is made that allows you to aim for certain rewards (notably time extensions for the area). People believe (currently still only a theory) that pets screw up the light you are aiming at; actually, if a pet does kill it simply counts as a melee kill unless they use a special, however of the new specials (at least on the jugs I’ve been using) the only one that would count as something else is Leaf Dagger from the mandy and I don’t use that anyway. Regardless, once again beast (and dragoon, summoner and puppetmaster for that matter) are getting no love even though we are quite possibly more effective than the jobs that are getting the love. I hope SE fixes this in the next go around before it gets ingrained; after all, it took 4+ years for people to realize that beast doesn’t hurt party XP (the pet just counts as 1 more member), and if this is allowed to continue for too long it will take just as long to debunk.

Now Abyssea has been mentioned a few times, well that’s because I’ve only done it a few times. It’s a strange way to play, and I have strange jobs to do so. Bard I might just have to retire as I did from merits and for the same reason; I’m being asked to do more than the other jobs, no one is doing anything to keep me alive and all I hear is bitching about speed if I take a few seconds to try to see that I don’t eat dirt because the chain might fall off. Now I love pulling, always have… it’s challenging, easy to screw up and not something everyone can do. I seem to be pretty good at it too. Both bard and beast are excellent pullers, albeit by different methods, and I’m very good at both (soloing will do that to you), but in abyssea you need some cooperation from the party too. My bard sleeps have been totally ineffective against the enemies where I went bard (bees, pixies, frogs and mandys) and the other sleepers weren’t sleeping to get stuff off my back. My beast has not been able to charm any mob in any area of Abyssea yet either, although that is not that much of an issue due to the strength of the new jugs. I still need people to take the hate off me and/or the pet if you want me to keep pulling. Enough about that.

I alluded to the exorbitant price of stuff a couple paragraphs ago. With everyone leveling and/or meriting so much the auction house just isn’t getting replenished the way it should and what consumables there are get gobbled up immediately, with inflation running rampant on almost everything. I’ve started to get back into the crafting part of the game (i.e. I try to XP off things that drop items I can use to level my crafts). I got to 59 cooking when I restarted beast making a bunch of pet food zeta- that meant a day farming coeurl meat in Onozco where I also soloed an assault jerkin. I’ve been killing a lot of scorpions for shells to take care of my bonecraft- in the last 2 weeks I’ve gone from 54.1 to 58.9- but my attempt to do demon arrowheads was stymied by the abysmal drop rate of demon horns without a thief along. My brief attempt at gnats didn’t go very well as pandemic nip allowed them to chew my pets up in short order; I’ll need to find an area with ample pets before I try again or else a different clothcraft recipe to 57-60. As far as black and goldsmithing, that is a matter of finding the right recipes, hopefully ones that use each other as sub-crafts. Leatherworking is just waiting for me to get the other crafts up, as I have 150k guild points stored, all key items done and for the most part leather materials are easy to farm. Fishing is waiting on the invention of the 36 hour day. Consumable shortage is just going to remain a problem for the foreseeable future.

I do need to get to work on the ToAU, WoTG and Abyssea mission lines soon, not sure when that will be happening. I’ve put so much on hold working on my character’s power and such that I tend to neglect progress through the various storylines. Hell, once I get the 80 jobs out of the way I need to jump back on my subs to accommodate the eventual 99 level cap!

Dynamis is getting to be a problem. Yes the fights are easier and more survivable and we’re getting better at revising our strategies to accommodate that fact. Now the problem is attendance and timing. Our start time is 7p.m. my time, and attendance is 6:30. We have been consistently entering at 7:30 or later for the last few weeks with a lot of people not showing until after we enter, if at all. We even have people having other people log their characters in to get wins or drops on nights when they are scheduled to be there and haven’t requested time off! I’m sorry for being pissed about this, but if you can’t be bothered to do the work what right do you even HAVE to a reward?! We need to get a handle on this, but luckily it’s not my place.

I think that’s enough of this for now, I’ll try to be better at posting here.