Encountered Bo'Dho Hundredfist again in Campaign- this time, in Gustaberg just outside of Basty. It was an intense battle as there were only a handful of other players besides me participating in it. The battle was made even more complicated when a second wave lead by Shadowfang showed up. In that last shot, you can see I'm fighting alongside Invincible Shield, who was a silly NPC in the present (most important quest he was involved in was the quest to gain access to Ballista, whoopie....) but who is apparently a real bad-ass in the past.

Continued leveling up BST and encountered what is, thus far, my absolute favorite camp for BST. It's in Vunkerl Inlet around (F-8). There you will find a bridge separating two cliff-sides. Along the cliffs you will find a ton of non-aggro (but linking) birds and beetles. However, by pulling them onto the bridge you can fight link-free and will be awarded with a spectacular view of the waterfall. And the best part of this camp is there is a sprite who roams the area providing raise support in the event that you die. Awesome camp.

I very rapidly reached my limit on BST for my /DNC sub (my preferred sub for BST), so I had to go back out and level DNC some more. I'm actually leveling DNC/BST, which means my experience is very close to playing BST. 20+ I've just not been enjoying DNC at all; They suck for damage (daggers are balls at this level, and their H2H is crap), and they solo very slowly without a pet. As a result, I'm starting to pile EXP page quests and Streetsweeper Campaign Ops into my DNC's leveling to try and get it to 37 without having too work to hard at it. Maybe someday I'll return to it and absolutely love it (hey, I did with NIN) but for now I hate it.

After this, I finally broke the latent on my Pick of Trials and we headed out to Temple of Ugglapith to fight my WSNM. I was joined by Sloth, Jan, IC, and Trix (not pictured). Here we are at the spawn point killing aggro bees before the fight. I didn't actually take a picture of the WSNM battle simply because I spaced on it and it ended far too quickly :-) But I got Decimination and all was good.

It seems that normal parties have picked up again, so I was soon out leveling WAR in a real party. We were fighting Imps in the Mire, and I was finally skilling up my normal Axe again :-) I also happen to think I look pretty bad-ass in my WAR gear.

Just wanted to say that, quietly, 4 years have passed since I started playing FFXI. Kind of amazing, when I think about it.... And kind of depressing when I add up in my head how much I've spent on this silly game...

Anyway, I'm aware that technically I started playing in 2003, but it wasn't until April 2004 that I actually started committing my character's exploits to this site. So, really, it's been maybe 4 and a half years... but who's counting?

Been Beastmaster a lot in the past. I've really been enjoying it, and have been thrilled that SE has given us a lot of lower level areas with the Wings of the Goddess expansion. I've also been leveling BST really quickly (well, when I've been leveling it :-) usually gaining a level or two every few hours. It's been really enjoyable and a nice break from normal partying (even though it seems that Campaign Battles have killed off normal partying 60+).

Here I am with my Conjoined Twins pet and prey. I spent 18-25 between Windy and Bastok in the past as they had tons of mobs for me.

Because of the recent ability to open your moghouse to party members, and because I've been dying a lot in Salvage and Limbus, I finally decided to get my moghouse decorated a bit better. I went for "Moghancement: Experience" to reduce the pain of death, and started by putting beds in my home. I think I ultimately decorated it pretty well.

Speaking of Salvage, here we are entering Bhaflau Remnants. Our ultimate goal was to get to Long-Bowed Chariot, and kill him for his drops. The battle was intense, and everything was going well, until he got off a couple of successive "Mortal Revolutions", which are AoE knockbacks with stun. After those, he chose to turn and nuke the shit out of the tanks and then the mages with his "Homing Missile" attack. Stun plus 90% damage on most teammates and hate reset is a very bad thing and we couldn't recover from that. Alas.

I was then back leveling BST again, and was fortunate enough to experience a few levels while the "pets gain HP from drain samba" unintended "glitch" was in place. Personally, I don't think it should have been considered a glitch, and I think SE should have left it in... but oh well.

I also went and did some BCNMs as a BST. I absolutely love that I can solo so many of them now... even if my drops haven't been stellar.

Post-update, the campaign battles have become more intense (and, IMHO, more fun). Here is Bo'Dho Hundredfist using his nasty AoE move "Wrath of Gu'Dha" to send me flying. All in all, some pretty intense stuff...

Oh, did I mention that in the past I've switched nations to Bastok? Bastok [S] is really a pretty cool place... actually much cooler, IMHO, than the other two nations. It seems that SE finally has given Bastok some much needed love in this expansion pack, and has taken the most boring nation and turned it into something exciting. Hell, they even have Zazarg (the kick ass Galka Monk who is in Al Zahbi during Besieged) as a major military leader. I've actually invented this whole back story for Maior explaining why he used to be in Bastok, why he's in Windy now, and how he's connected to Zazarg:

..during the great Crystal War, Vis Maior was among the Galka who had found refuge in Bastok from the Antica threat. He and his childhood friend, Zazarg, rose quickly in the ranks of the Bastokan army as they tried to repay the republic which had given their people sanctuary many years before by defending it against the Beastmen Hordes. They were integral in many decisive battles during the war.

After the war was over, the two Galka returned to their beloved Bastok to find it had become besieged by a new enemy: Prejudice. Resentment among the Galka over their still low standing in the community despite their many years of service in the Bastok Mines as well as soldiers in the war, combined with overt racism from the native Humes towards their Galka brethren, made living in Bastok as a Galka incredibly difficult.

After a somewhat failed Galkan Civil Rights movement, the two Galka, defeated and morose, left Bastok. They went to Windurst, where Maior's war reputation earned him respect among the locals. However, the quiet life in Windurst combined with the (some would say fanatical) local spirituality, were not for Zazarg.

Maior saw Zazarg off at Mhaura, where Zazarg had chartered a boat and planned to set sail to see more of the world. He intended to head east and see where the winds took him. It was a bittersweet goodbye for the two friends, but they would meet again years later when Maior's own travels would find him in Al Zahbi and the Aht Urhgan empire...

Yes, I know this is all very "Role Playing" of me... but seeing Zazarg in Bastok, and seeing how cool Bastok was, made my imagination run wild... I promise this wont happen much :-P

Anyway went to Beadeaux [S] to check it out since I'll likely have quests and missions there.

Did some more Campaigns. Here is one in Jugner where we fought a nasty Kaiser Behemoth. Was also killed in a really nasty Campaign involving multiple waves of Yagudos and Raigegue R d'Oraguille who brings with him an army of undead. This was a bad battle, as the enemies even managed to wipe the Allied NPCs.

The last update also brought several new items, including the Fourth Division Haube, which is this kick ass little headgear that I'll use for my NIN, WAR and BST. It's also very blunt looking, which is a stark contrast to the pointy Optical Hat I normally wear :-)

Finally, this year we had another Egg event. I managed to make around 160k just from selling eggs to dorks. We then had a party in my house... Weeeee!

Started out doing some missions with Xill and Sloth for Windy in the past. Here we are heading to Fort Karugo-Narugo for some CSes. I hadn't ever really been this deep in the fort, having only run through it previously to get to Windy. The fort was pretty cool and has some pretty intense campaign battles due to its layout. After the CSes, we headed back to spawn the NM we needed to fight.

The NM is a War Lynx, and he's honestly a pushover. The only gotcha with fighting him is the fact that he has one move that does like 90% of your HP in damage in one fell swoop. This means that if you lack the ability to cure yourself (as I did, I was WAR at the time) you really need to bring others along.

After defeating War Lynx and enjoying the CS, Xill and I went and did a Campaign Battle in the fort.

The following weekend we, once again, had our Sea/Limbus farming in ClanAM. Here I am soloing goldfish while I wait. The Limbus event was for SE Apollyon. This time we had our full group going, and managed to get a win. Here we are taking out third floor boss Grave Digger.

Just a very small note to say....

I got my Destroyers and my Retributor from a couple of KSNMs I did tonight! Woooooo!

I had pretty much given up on the Destroyers... I tried 8 times in the past, never got them. The Retributor was an item I wanted for my WAR, but didn't really have too much motivation to actively try to get. Basically, they both drop from the same KSNM, but I've never been lucky enough to get them...

...at least... until tonight.

Anyway... I'm thrilled. The big downside is I have 3 friggin' latents to unlock now. My Destroyers, Retributor, and my pick of trials.... That's 1,300 WS points to get before I can use them all :-)

Oh, we also had a win tonight in our Limbus run. This is the first one for ClanAM (we normally just go for farming).

All in all, awesome day.

I've really liked the WoTG expansion thus far (with the exception of what campaign battles have done to normal EXP parties), and I've been really excited to see where they are going to go with this story. One thing I've really thought was cool has been the re-imagining of Vana'Diel in the past. In some places this re-imagining has been drastic. Take Gustaberg which now has cliffside pathways and fortifications. Or Jugner, which has become a war-torn and difficult to navigate version of its modern self. It even has some truly evil Campaign Battles there involving nasty Orc Warmachines operating at their full capacity.

I also really like some of the new areas. For example, Vunkerl Inlet is a particularly interesting and unique place.

I've also been raising another chocobo. This time I managed to get a green one. Meet LadyLimber. She has "Impressive" ratings in STR and END, and seems to move quite a bit faster than normal chocobos.

Meanwhile, ClanAM's Limbus runs have been going strong. We've had zero luck with Temenos (we always get the shittiest and most unwanted drops there), but we've rocked Apollyon pretty hardcore.

Also, I finally took the plunge and bought myself Kirin's Osode. Yes, it's a pretty neat item, but I always hated what it represented traditionally- It always was an HNMLS status symbol and something that indicated your stature in a particular HNMLS community. Since I've been long boycotting the entire HNMLS scene, I never wanted one.

But the decline in popularity of Sky HNMLSes, and the drastic recession we find the FFXI economy in, made it so that the Osodes dropped radically in price. So much so that I started wanting one. I mean, hell, it's pretty uber for all of the jobs I'm interested in (NIN, MNK, WAR, BST and SAM), and it's now dipping as low as 4 million gil on the Phoenix server. Plus, since I already have all the gear for the jobs I'm interested in leveling but haven't hit 75 in yet (WAR, BST, SAM), the Osode will really be the last major gear purchase I am likely to make in this game. Honestly, beyond the jobs I've listed here, I have little interest in taking any others to end-game. In fact, I'd estimate I may have another year (possibly two) in FFXI anyway. The gil is just sitting there, I may as well use it, right?

So, I pooled my resources, went through the above line of reasoning to justify it, and purchased my Osode. Yippidy-do.

I then went out and tested it by helping Jan kill Girtablulu, a WSNM for his Sword WS. My Osode made me very impressive for a NIN, and I was thrilled with the results.

So I've been doing an assload of Campaign Battles lately. I found that I really like Garliage Citadel for these battles, even if you can get overwhelmed pretty easily in the tight corridors there.

In fact, I leveled WAR from 67(ish) to 71(ish) nearly exclusively in Campaign Battles. I can't deny I love the convenience of being able to do this. I can just log in, run to an area having a battle, participate, and pull in an average of 4k EXP per hour. It's not great EXP, but considering you have no sitting around doing nothing while LFP, and the fact that it's EXP that is 100% on your time, it's really quite acceptable. And it's the ideal activity to pass the time when you are LFP and waiting for a real party- just raise your flag and run off to the campaign battles to earn EXP while you wait.

The problem with campaign battles are that you don't skill up your abilities. Your weapons, spells, and defensive/evasive skills never rise in these battles. So if you take WAR from 65 to 75 in campaign battles exclusively, your axe skill remains at level 65 levels. This is a pretty big downside to leveling in campaign battles exclusively as your character will wind up gimped.

Realistically, campaign battles should be used to augment normal EXP parties... and I'm pretty sure that's how SE intended them to be. The problem is, past 65, very few people EXP outside of campaign now. If you LFP, you'll find that the vast majority of people 65+ are in campaign battles and not LFP. You wont be able to find tanks, and standard melee will be few and far between. The end result is that the popularity of campaign battles are kind of making us all gimps. Sure, we can skill up after we earn the points... but that seems silly when we could have just skilled up and earned points at the same time in normal parties.

Anyway, I hope that once the newness of WoTG wears off people will go back to normal EXP parties and just use campaign battles as an augmentation. I'd really hate to have to skill up my abilities in skill up parties for the rest of my FFXI gaming career...

I know, I know... I'm doing a piss poor job keeping my journeys up-to-date. Then again, I'm not playing quite as much as I used to, so there's really very little to add as often as I used to be able to.

Anyway, we've been doing a flurry of BCNMs again. The WoTG expansion introduced the ability to invite people into your Mog House. A pleasantly unexpected side-effect of this is that people who previously never had mannequins are now seeing how cool they are and mannequin parts are selling again. So, we've been going for Charming Trio again.

Our weekly Limbus runs have really taken off. We have a pretty good group of around a dozen (usually 8-10 show up) that does a bunch of Sea related stuff. We've even begun farming organs for the quest "In the Name of Science". Most of us need UFO organs for that quest, so we tried killing a lower level one. Everything was going well, we easily got it down to 50% life and one of us stupidly suggested these were "Too Weak". But then a Charmga charmed all of the melees who promptly slaughtered most of the mages. Then the UFO spammed various attacks on us, whiddling us down to perhaps 3 people alive. By this point, it had a crazy regen effect on it (and our RDMs were down) and there was nothing those left alive could do to harm it in any significant and lasting way. Eventually, we just wiped. I have a sneaking suspicion our problem was we were feeding the UFO's TP with all of the BLUs we had. It seems to me that a RDM and MNK could almost duo it, as long as the RDM stays alive to sleep the charmed MNK and dispel the regen effect.

At some point, I also finally unlocked DNC, and became a dancing queen.

Started out camping Taisaijin again with Janoric. Within 20 minutes of the expected pop some asshole BST showed up and started charming the Taisais. What a waste...

I've been doing a lot of Campaign Battles lately. They are easily the coolest part of the Wings of the Goddess expansion thus far. However, I had to do a lot of experimentation to figure out how to do them just right. I had some bad deaths at the hand of nasty Orc mages in Batallia before I realized that I shouldn't fight there. It also took me a bit before I realized I shouldn't fight the leaders (like Vaa Oozo the Redolent and Muu Buxu the Elusive) without significant help. Even with help, it's very easy to wipe on a leader.

I eventually got the hang of Campaign Battles and now I do them quite a bit. At the time of this writing I've earned over 50k EXP/limit-points from Campaign Battles alone. I can earn an average of 4k per hour in them, with peaks as high as 6k. I know that doesn't sound like much compared to ToAU parties, but considering there's little downtime and no LFP it rocks.

Meanwhile, we've been exploring the WoTG areas. Trix, Xill and I headed to Sandy of the past and encountered Biddybugs which aggro. Who'da thunk a ladybug would aggro?

Soon, we decided it was high time to wrap up CoP. It's been, what? Nearly three years now since the expansion first was released? Since we were effectively two battles away from the end, we resolved ourselves to push through them.

So we headed out to the Garden of Ru'Hmet and up the elevator where we took on and fought the Ix’zdeis, which are nasty pots that attack all at once. Two of the four pots are BLMs and love to spam AoE spells so my NIN was next to useless. Instead, I came as a MNK and pounded them. We had to beat the battle three times to get everyone through it. Afterwards we headed back down the elevator to Empyreal Paradox where the final battle was.

Now, let me tell you something about the battle against Promathia...

In this battle, you have the aid of two NPCs from earlier cutscenes: Prishe (the extremely old woman who has the body of a child, and who pedophiles find hot) and Selh'teus (the emo kid who basically starts the CoP storyline). Prishe is a very capable MNK/WHM combination that has impressive curative abilities and can Hundred Fist. Emo boy has some semi-damaging moves but is relatively weak when it comes to defense, which means he can be killed by a stiff breeze. Due to his weak defense, moderate attacks, and general emo attitude, it's safe to think of him as a dark knight :-)

As for Promathia, he comes in two forms. Promathia's first form is kind of a pushover. You just run in and fight him as you would any other mob. His second form, on the other hand, is significantly more difficult. Everything he does is AoE, and some attacks (*cough* Meteor *cough*) are incredibly evil. Additionally, he alternates between magic and physical immunity throughout the battle.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, you can cure and raise Prishe (if she dies), but if emo boy goes down, all is lost.

Yes, that's right, the weakest link in the entire battle is ultimately the biggest determinative with regards to victory.

At the end of the day, there's lots of strategies for fighting Promathia. But the one that we were able to win multiple times with was where we let Prishe supertank the second form down to between 75-85% life, and then we alternatively fought/tank Promathia ourselves and kited him when he cast massive spells or during his invincible phases. It was difficult, and we lost easily half a dozen attempts before we finally won, but we did eventually win (and win twice, to get everyone past him).

After our victory against Promathia, we had to run around the various corners of the world to finish the mission. This included heading to Bibiki Bay as well as viewing the destroyed remnants of Tavnazia. But, finally, after nearly three years, we had CoP completed. Hurrah!

We then wrapped things up by going out and helping Xill defeat a Chaos Elemental NM for his Artifact Armor.

Just a couple of new year's updates:

• 1) I posted 2007s Sam's Video Game Awards. Read it to see what I thought was the best (and worst :-) video games of 2007. You may be surprised what I say about FFXI's latest expansion, Wings of the Goddess... Especially when you realize how much I'm actually enjoying it :-)
• 2) I officially closed ClanAM FFXI today. I said back in Sept 2007 that this was coming, but today I made it official.

Anyway... more updates coming. I've been playing a lot of FFXI during my vacation. I've really gotten addicted to Campaign Battles, and several of us have been wrapping up CoP (finally).