What's Happened to the Updates?

I've been busy on FFXI lately. Very busy indeed. Here's a breakdown of stuff that I've done.

-CoP3-5: Diabolos Fight (kicked his ass with 2xBLU ^^)

-Diabolos Prime Fight (wiped 3 times and barely scratched him, payback methinks ^^;)

-Levelled Warrior from 50-61 (and had a jolly good time doing so!)

-Completed a set of Warrior AF armour. (including a very fun AF3 fight with Resurrection members in Behemoth's Domain, and a dumb solo attempt at Dark Spark!)

-Started a low-level static with Ansible.

-Tried to sort myself out with some decent equipment.

Diabolos Fight for 3-5
I actually did this quite some time ago now, but Soran noted to me last night that I hadn't actually written up the blog entry I'd promised on it.

PM3-5 is pretty damned easy with the right setup. Diabolos, big and nasty as he is, is only really dangerous for the fact that he likes to use Nightmare, an AoE Sleep/Bio combination where the Bio doesn't actually wake you up like it would under a normal Sleep effect. Fortunately, this can be stunned. Since its a level 40 cap fight, the only jobs with stun-capability (if you discount stun WS) are DRK (with the spell Stun) and BLU (with Headbutt).

So we took two BLU. Basically, Diabolos spent the whole fight stun-locked. While I stunned, the other BLU cast Bludgeon, and then we switched. I dunno how much damage the other party members did, but Diabolos barely had a chance to move, let alone cast any spells.

Demajen 1 : Diabolos 0. Win!

Diabolos Prime Fight
Diabolos Prime fight is not so easy. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it is the most broken thing ever, surpassed only by Absolute Virtue fight probably. Diabolos now has Fast-Cast on everything. Fast-cast sleepga II, fast-cast Bio, fast-cast Dispel etc etc. Even with me stunning on DRK and a RDM/DRK chainspell+stun, we got our asses handed to us 3 times. The bio effect on Nightmare (which always goes off when you are in the middle of something else btw) takes a MASSIVE chunk of HP off you each tick. No wonder the Diabolos fight rewards are rare and sought after.

Demajen 0 : Diabolos Prime 3. Lose! ; ;

Warrior
I have to say that Warrior is more fun than Dark Knight. It sucks versus certain types of mobs, but overall its very strong. Last night I was in a party fighting Defoliators, a pretty green crawler variant, in Aydeewa Subterrane. At 60 I was pulling of 500-800dmg Rampages with no difficulty, and the XP was great. In fact, we had to fight with 5 at the end because our WHM had to leave and had not got a replacement for himself despite saying he had. I only needed 1600xp to level, so we got that with 5, and it wasn't much more difficult really. Only slightly slower. We were still hitting chain #5s. Anyways, Warrior 61 now (with full AF, hurrah!)


Another set of AF armour
Warrior is my 5th job at 60+, and Warrior AF is my 5th full set of AF armour (BLU is still missing the hat... I really need to get that so I can put BLU AF in storage!) The story for the WAR AF quests isn't particularly long or special but its OK. I'd like to thank Griss for helping me get the Eldieme Necropolis coffer key, and help me get to the coffer, and also for killing stuff in Castle Zvahl Baileys for me so I could get a coffer key there too! Thanks a lot!!

I'd also like to thank Dayhawk, Damen, Prophecy and Hardhitter for venturing down into Behemoth's Domain last night for what I feared would be a massive farce - WAR AF3 body fight. The fight is vs 3 goblins, a WHM, a THF and a RNG. I've done this one once before actually, with about 12 people, and there were several deaths. 5 of us couldn't possibly be enough, could it?

Well actually it was, since we were all 75 and all experienced players. Dayhawk, as WAR/NIN kept the THF concentrated on him while fighting the WHM that Hardhitter and me fought. Prophecy took the RNG through its paces as SMN/WHM with Garuda to help. And Damen, as the naked BLM/WHM, healed people as needbe. HH and myself got the WHM down to about 20% easy then it Benedictioned and we had to start over again, but that was no problem, since it only took about 30 seconds to get it down to that number in the first place. We finished off the WHM and started on the THF, which was taking a chunk out of Dayhawk slowly. We beat the THF into a very bloody pulp with some nicely timed Asuran Firsts/Rampage combos, and then discovered that the RNG was down to about 20% health anyways, cos Garuda owns. We finished off the RNG and it was all over. Easy, and fun! Just the way I like it!!

Here's a quote that amused me greatly.


So thanks guys. Now I have a full suit of sexy red AF that I'll barely use, but at least it can go in storage now :)


Ansible Static
Ever since Odrade sadly quit Ansible and FFXI, there has been kind of a hole in their regular proceedings. Tuesdays and Thursdays used to be XP/Merit nights for them, and without that regular scheduling, its no surprise that there was a feeling of emptiness.

Charless suggested recently that on one of those two nights, we should start a static party to fill the gap. More importantly, it should be a low-level static so that slowly, over the course of many weeks, we could grow to be mighty in the jobs we picked. Thursday night, we said, was going to be the night, and last thursday, 5 brave souls gathered to face Qufim Island and get our designated jobs to about halfway through lv.23, so that next week the full static could begin with everyone on level pegging.

And then Tiggeress got spotted and dragged off to a Kara HNMLS event, which was rather annoying. So four of us:

Demajen: PLD21/WAR10 (we needed a tank job >.>)
Saikyo: NIN22/WAR11 (DD-onry!)
Chuckey: WHM22/BLM11
Obsidion: COR22/RNG11


And to be honest, considering there were only 4 of us, we made ok XP. It was long, slow, and quite dull, but OK xp was made. I didn't hit 23 (another 2k tnl) but everyone else got to where they needed to be, so I can make up the 4.5k I need to get halfway through the level by powerlevelling during the week. With Tiggs as MNK, and Darkscorpion as RDM, we should have a pretty decent party all the way up to 37 where Chuckey is gonna tag out for Charless' WHM, and Saik is gonna swap out NIN for WAR and go crazy DD-stylee. Depending on how much I am enjoying PLD, I might stay as the shiny white knight, or I might swap out for NIN37. Knowing Saik's ability to steal hate off my NIN with his WAR (see previous post about us levelling in Altepa) I should probably stick to Paladin: damn your damage efficiency Saikyo :P

That is the plan anyways.... Let's hope it all comes together!

Current Warrior Equip
Spent a lot of time getting this stuff together. So here I will show it off :D


Final Words
So there we have it. A busy time on FFXI. Today, Saturday, I'm sat around LFG in Al Zahbi. There are close to 4000 people on, and I'm not getting any invites on WAR or DRK. Annoying. Still, it has given me time to write this blog.

Dema, signing off...