As I mentioned in the last entry, I had been thinking about quitting the game. Well, I finally made my decision and did actually quit the game. I quit the game on Jan. 30th, 2010.

I do have a backlog of screenshots and stories to share, however. So while I have officially quit the game, expect updates here in the next little bit chronicling my last days in FFXI.

All in all, I really did enjoy my time in the game and have no regrets spending 6+ years of my life in it. I think that Square has crafted an excellent role-playing experience and I anxiously await the arrival of their next MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV :-)

Been toying around with the idea of ending it all... Bound to happen sooner or later, and Maior has had a long run. We'll have to wait and see when I ultimately put him out to pasture...

In the meantime I've been leveling up DNC/BST some more. I have very little interest in leveling DNC in a party and I've been spoiled by the EXP you can get solo as BST, so I'm just doing DNC/BST. I'm not enjoying DNC, so once I hit 37, I'll stop. The one perk of leveling DNC/BST is that I get to visit my old BST hunting grounds again. That actually is pretty cool. It's been fun to head back to Alteppa and have the mobs grant me EXP again. I even managed to drag Meretrix out for some level-sync action.

We also went and did some Campaigns together. Trix has decided he wants Campaign-gear so we've been trying to get him ranked up. We also went out and soloed in some ToAU areas together, which is a blast because I loved those zones as BST.

Back in October, Squeenix gave us a pretty kick-ass little event which resulted in this dashing little number as well as various sundry costumes. It's been a long time since both Trix and I could get into an event together.

Finally, we've been helping Schultmc a bit with his missions and things. Honestly, we're not helping as much as we probably should because I think both Trix and I are getting a bit tired of FFXI, but we are still helping a little bit. We went and took him around for his Magecite mission, which brought back memories. While we were helping him out, I encountered a bunch of new NMs, such as Slumbering Samwell. We also went and camped an NM for him in the Grotto, where I encountered Seww the Squidlimbed and his drop fro Trix. We were there to kill Fyuu the Seabellow and get Frog Trousers for Schultmc.

Went out farming NMs with Trix for some inexplicable reason that I forget. I really wonder what we were doing out there in Zi'Tah because Noble Mold just doesn't seem worth it. Perhaps we were doing some level-synced field manual pages or something...

With the new expansion (Moogle Ta-Ta's, or whatever) we got a slew of new end-game areas added to the past. One new area was Xarcabard (S), which is a pretty frightening place. It has these nasty new mobs that fly high in the sky and swoop down to attack you (sort of like if the UFOs in Sea had sex with dragons). Here is one NM version of these guys. They have a nasty tendency towards hanging around the campaign arbiter and killing people as they talk to him. You'd think the bastard would warn you, "Hey! Don't come over here! Nasty bullshit dragon will kill you!"

They also added Beaucedine Glacier (S), which can't be any more purple. Neither area is terribly BST friendly, which is unfortunate, but I sure do love taking my MNK out there.

Because of my troubles with the previous mini-expansion, I was determined to finish up Moogle Ta-Ta's before people figured out which jobs they did not want in order to beat it. So, I pretty much spent a few days pushing through the expansion hardcore.

Here I am about to kill some cardians for it. The cardians were total cake, but there were so many people needing it while I was there that we wound up killing them as a group.

Soon I was off to the desert and Quicksand Caves where I joined a group to take down Nanaa Mihgo and friends. That fight was also cake, even though we did have one DC in the middle of it.

Before long I was on the final battle which involved killing a super-sized Moogle and a few of his crew.

This battle was a bit of a challenge, and annoying when you failed because it required you to do the previous mission again (and the previous mission involved a lot of walking around). The groups I was with tried various strategies including having the BLMs nuke/kite while the melee sit back waiting for his crew to spawn, zerging the Moogle himself (which wasn't without peril) and having close-quarters DD hang back while RNGs kited the boss. Needless to say, I didn't win it the first several attempts.

So I went back with Trix to help him out on earlier missions. I wanted to get him caught up so he could get through Moogle Ta-Ta's quickly as well, but he dragged ass and that didn't happen.

Eventually, the winning strategy we used to kill the final boss was to zerg him down with a DD-heavy group. At the end of the day, this seemed to the most straight forward and reliable way to beat him (wound up beating him three times this way, and am yet to have a RNG or BLM burn work).

My reward was this lovely Anwig Salade with it's obscenely large visor. I augmented it with:

• Attack+3 Pet: Damage taken -10%
• STR+4 Weapon Skill Accuracy +15

This made it a very good hat for both BST and general DD jobs. All in all, I think I look pretty kick ass with it on.

Alright, so I've been busy and bad at updating. Hell, I've even had screenshots in the queue waiting to be put up here and yet I've still not been updating.

Well, this time I have a couple of really good reasons. The first one is that my video game company just released our first game, Duologue. So, you know... go buy it :-) It's pretty exciting to have this first game done and be working on our second game.

The second reason was that I had another RRoD (pretty sure that's #5 for me). This caused me to, once again, lose an assload of pictures and my macros. It wasn't as bad this time as I had a backup of my macros from June 2009, but it's still annoying as I lost my DNC macros (I have started that back up again) and my end-game BST macros (probably the biggest irritation).

Anyway... expect some updates soon.

So, in my journey to level 75 Beastmaster, I went back to Aydeewa to kill tigers and mites. I must say, I loved Aydeewa, definitely one of my favorite general places to level.

Had a pick-up party for ACP11, which is something that I'm, regrettably, 0/10 on. Friggin' battle is driving me insane. On my way up to meet my group at Stellar Fulcrum, I met Enkelados, and dispatched him without a drop.

Here's our group at the entrance to the arena, and here we are looking down on the crystal itself. This battle is really a monster, and because I don't have certain jobs at 75, I tend to get passed over a lot for these battles. Needless to say, I'm desperate for a win. Unfortunately, we didn't win.

After my sad loss, I went out to help Schultmc with something in Davoi. While there, we killed Purpleflash Brukdok... you know... because he was there.

As I've been nearing BST75 I've also be buying some pretty strange looking stuff... Mainly because I like looking pretty.

Anyway, in the end I dinged BST 75 in sky. I went up there and did a few pick-up duo parties as well as solo'd and before I knew it, I was Beastmaster level 75. Woot!

Been spending a lot of time lately doing things I've already done before in new and interesting ways. For example, I've been taking my BST back to old haunts I've been too as other jobs. This includes places like Bibiki Bay where I duo'd with Liabelle. If you'll recall, Bibiki Bay used to be the shiznit back when it first came out and everyone would level there. Once ToAU hit and end-game TP-burns became all the rage, Bibiki Bay fell out of favor and the only people who would go there were people who didn't have ToAU or people who were looking for a less camped place to go. Now, with WoTG and campaigns filling in the latter gap, Bibiki Bay is practically empty (BLMs still love to solo there as there are BST enemies with pets to kill, but that's about it) making it a wonderful place to go as a Beastmaster.

After our time in Bibiki Bay I went to do a BCNM with Liabelle. I'll be honest, I forget what the BCNM was about, all I know is it involved killing Vassago, a Demon, with my NPC.

Soon I was back doing more Nyzule runs. I forget how many I've done, all I know is a) I've never gotten a weapon for any of my end-game jobs, b) I'm yet to get past floor 5 personally, although I help out of people of any level, c) I'm yet to get any armor for any job of mine that can use it (although, the MNK body armor dropped once and no one wanted it, but it was lost because we were running out of time and needed to exit).

Next up I was back re-acquiring ACP keys to try for an augmented item to fit one of the jobs I'm serious about. This involved killing Chuglix Berrypaws, Vegnix Greenthumb, and Driblix Greasepaw. I forget what I got this time, but it was a joke. First real bum-item I've gotten from the ACP keys. I also fought Malefic Fencer for another augment attempt. This time I got a cool mid-range augmented item that would be semi-useful if I ever decide to level up SAM again.

Headed out to Halvung to fight crawler vs. crawler as BST. It was pretty fun to be back soloing in such a dangerous place, but the EXP rate wasn't what I was used to so I didn't stay much past one hit on the empress band.

Wrapped things up doing some Basty missions. Finally got around to doing the Archlich fight. I actually wound up doing it twice because one run ended in failure. After 5-1, we continued on up to the Castle to kill ourselves a Shadowlord. I forget the last time I fought the Shadowlord, but I'm reasonably certain it was before I got my 360 because I don't remember him looking as cool :-)

Then I went out and solo'ed the next mission with Liabelle. This next mission involved killing a big mean Manticore named "Eastern Sphinx". He has a friend as well, but you only need to kill one of them. On my way back out of the zone, I fought and killed Celphine who, if you recall, was a NM I used to camp for my NIN when my NIN was low level. Never saw her spawn when I needed her, and she didn't drop what I wanted this time anyway.

Been doing a semi-obscene amount of Nyzul lately. I'm semi-interested in some armor for my BST, but mainly interested in the Nyzule weapons. I'm sure I'll live to regret making a commitment to one of these weapons, but, damnit, I'd sure love to have primal rend on my BST.

Killed quite a few interesting things in Nyzule, including the Dune Widow, which is something Trix has been camping for months now, and Hydra, who dropped the only Nyzule item I've ever been able to equip... and I lost lot on. Even encountered Serket, who gave us an ??? Ring, which turned out being a Copper Ring.

One thing I noted while I was doing these runs was that my Osode seems to have a fanny pack on it. I had never noticed it before, and now wonder what in the world I use it for? My guess is that I keep jelly beans in it. Maior friggin' loves jelly beans. Either that, or some porn. Maior also friggin' loves porn.

While doing something in the past, I came across people fighting Dark Ixion and stupidly got close enough to take damage. Didn't die, but that screenshot cost me HP.

Decided to take my (now-72+) BST out to do some NM hunting in the past. I had already fought Balam-Quitz previously as NIN, but it was pretty fun to take him down as a BST. Also went and took down Dyinyinga a couple of times for the hell of it.

Next we did kind of a clan-leftovers ACP mission thang (where those of us still left in the game kind of bulldozed through a bunch of them). I didn't get a picture of the fight, but here we are after the mid-ACP battle. It was a hairy fight because of a couple of failed macros (I fucking used Call Beast on a Coldblood Como after my first pet died), but we still won.

We then did the annoying Delkfutt mission involving chasing down buggery glowing lights. It was long, hard, and tedious, but we did it. Then Xil and I stupidly entered the fight at the top just to see it. Unfortunately, doing so lost us our key-item so we had to do the tower again. The battle was fucked up, and I got wedged into the middle of the crystal unable to attack it.

Is that a tiger in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?

Wrapped things up by doing some campaigns where I met some NPCs I hadn't encountered before. Like Auroral Alicorn, who screamed like a bitch and scared the shit out of me, and Odzmanouk, who has a really cool quest to make him spawn.

Whirlwind (whirlwhind) BST leveling activities took me all over creation to some crazy-ass spots. Where to begin?

I wound up heading to Aydeewa Subterrane to use leeches against other leeches and worms. Absolutely loved the Subterrane, I had virtually no competition the entire time. The only other people I encountered were BLMs and SCHs leveling off of Quqirns. One SCH actually teamed up with me where we both continued to solo our mobs, but do so in a party which meant non-stop chaining. I think we managed to get chains into the 20s at a few points.

Afterward, I headed to get my Sacrarium page, but found an NM I wanted instead. See, looooooong ago, when I started leveling BST seriously again, I did the same thing I do with all jobs I seriously want to level: I sat down, went through all available armor for the job, and figured out what items I wanted to get that weren't obscenely unreasonable to obtain on my own or with small groups of people (which basically eliminates gear from things like Dynamis, but oh well). One of the items I wanted was Altaua's Ring which, at the time, was rather expensive on the AH and not sold very often. So I planned on eventually camping the NM for the drop. Then... I promptly forgot about it...

Fast forward a year or so and I'm walking through the coast on my way to Sacrarium. As a BST I've developed a habit of constantly spamming widescan whenever I'm not in a city/town... I'm sure I'm not the only BST who does this. Anyway, I spot on widescan this strangely named mob: "Odqan". Naturally, being curious I run to him, find him unclaimed, and proceed to kill him. I didn't know the level, but did know that I could always kite him with pets if I needed to get away.

Obviously, I didn't need to worry about killing him- he was cake. But I was surprised to get this drop of a ring that granted me +Charm against aquans an amorphs (two pets that can be notoriously difficult to charm). It was then that I remembered my list of gear I wanted and that this ring (and this NM) was on that list. All in all, I was very pleased to have this ring :-) Of course, in the interim time the ring has sunk in price on the AH, so I could have bought it there... had I not forgotten about it.

After my NM chance encounter, I took my BST in some campaigns (which I use on BST for those times I want some EXP but don't want to set up a complicated camp situation). While in Windy (S) I encountered a strange male Hume DNC named "Prettywoman". For some reason, it reminded me very strongly of Dr. Frankenfurter.

Next up, it was back to a different part of Subterrane to fight Defoliators. If you recall, I had a blast leveling on these in a party as NIN a few years back. Atlaua's Ring came in handy here since my pets were amorphs. In fact, without the ring, I doubt I could have made this camp work.

Once I was too high for the Defoliators I headed back outside to fight higher level LOLibri. Then, it was off to Passhow (S) to have raging Slug vs. Slug fights. Passhow (S) was exceedingly fun and gained great EXP due to the fact that my camp was right by the outpost and I could join in on campaigns when they started.

Okay, so Squeenix announced the next Final Fantasy MMORPG last week during E3. No big whoop...

Went out to do some BCNMs with Trix. He's in a lot of DNC AF these days, which means he has a flower in his hair. Silly Manthra. We also went out camping some NM for a dagger he wanted, as well as attempting to kill the NM who drops an axe I want for my BST. His we killed and got the drop... Mine, well, he killed us.

I got into Moblin Maze Mongers a bit, which I could often solo as BST... unless I was very unlucky with the spawns.

Yes, I've mentioned it before, but I friggin' love leveling BST and how it takes me so many places off the beaten path. Places like Pso'Xja where I fight Diremites. Pso'Xja is especially awesome because I can use the relative beast strengths to optimize my time there. My Snow Lizard pet is strong against the Diremite prey, resulting in many intimidations. Ultimately, my time in Pso'Xja was over before I really could enjoy it as it was only valid for a couple of levels. /cry

Meanwhile, Trix and I have decided we really would like the final augmented body item rewards from ACP (Mirkes with pet augments for me), so we began doing the ACP missions. This involved killing several NM Goblins in the areas around Jeuno: Vegnix Greenthumb (his friends call him Doctor), Dribblix Greasemaw, and Chuglix Berrypaws.

The update had just been released which allowed you to augment items, so of course I had to try it. Since I was leveling SCH and BRD, my focus was on low-level gear for those jobs. Headed out to fight Blue Bascinet a few times. Had a few duds, but did get a couple of pretty sweet things including the following:

• Priest's Robe with HP-7 MP+7 added.
• White Mitts with MP+4 MND+1 added. (This makes it practically equivalent to Baron's Cuffs.)
• Brass Subligar with AGI-1 INT-1 CHR+1 Dark+1 added. (That CHR is great for a leg piece at that level.)
• Cotton Cape with Fire +6 Ice + 5 Water +5 added. (Great low-level nuking item for SCH.)

I also went and did a higher level one in Xarcabard for Trix. This involved killing a dragon, who was a pushover. IIRC, Trix got crap that run, but he was going for something pretty specific. I've found that you need to go for more general items which can be used by multiple jobs. If you do that, and use cheap gear, you will be less disappointed by duds and more thrilled by successes.

I also went farming Stray Mary for my BRD. While I was there, I had to fight the augmenting NM Thunderhead because I'm an addict now. Actually, I think that's the battle where I got the Brass Subligar augment I mentioned above.

Got Stray Mary a few times, but never got the drop. Stupid thing, not sure BRD is worth this hassle for me :-P

While I was in the area, I decided to check on good ol' Valkurm Emperor. As I was walking through, before I could even bring up widescan, the fucker popped right in front of me. And I got the drop.



Now, if you recall, I got this drop back when the NM was still dominated by gil-sellers. I had the real Hairpin, not the Rare/EX version that drops today. Well, with this most recent kill, all of a sudden I had the original real Hairpin and the Rare/EX version, and I was faced with a decision: keep the original, or sell it.

See, having the original was always kind of a nice trophy. It was me declaring loudly "I was able to best the gil-sellers who used to control VE!". Getting the drop after the change wasn't as hard as you were only competing with other normal players, and once someone got the drop they ceased being competition. So it was nice to have the original.

But on the same token, I didn't need the original. The Rare/EX version is identical except in name and color- the stats are exactly the same. So why hold onto this relic from the past when I could sell it and buy something else I might need more?

In the end, I decided to sell my original Hairpin and keep the Rare/EX version. It was a hard decision to make, but it was worth it as I used the money from the Hairpin to purchase my BST's Tatami shield.

Finally wrapped up by killing some Orcs around Tavnazia to reduce my Fomor Hate. This included me stupidly clicking on ???'s I encountered which spawned this guy for a quest. Now, I was able to kill him, but I wonder what would have happened if I had been out there with a slightly lower job :-)