Spent quite a bit of time during my vacation over the holiday leveling up. Went to the deep dark recesses of Kuftal Tunnel and fought Ladons.

On Phoenix, Silk Thread has hit an all time high of 90k per stack, so even though I am Mr. "I Hate to Farm" I went out and got in on the action.

Went back and leveled some more. Was even in the last party Arbelast was in before he was kicked (he was leeching someone elses account, it really was his fault.. was still sad though). I made it to 71 and started my Asuran Fists quest.

For those who don't know what this (or any of the end-game weaponskill quests) involves, allow me to explain...

At end game each weapon has a special uber powerful weaponskill that can be obtained. For every weaponskill thus far, you just gain levels with that weapon and they unlock, not so for this last weaponskill. This last weaponskill must be unlocked by doing a quest. Each quest for each weapon is actually very similar:

• #1 : Get a quest weapon. Weapon has some latent effect that is always on until the first part of the quest is finished.
• #2 : Take weapon out, do weaponskills and skillchains against things that are EP or greater to someone in your party.
• #3 : Score a total of 300 points with the following point system:
  • 1 point for any weaponskill
  • 2 points for a tier 1 skillchain
  • 3 points for a tier 2 skillchain
  • 4 points for a tier 3 skillchain
  • 5 points if you end the skillchain
• #4 : Once you have 300 points, your latent effect wears off, and you take it back to the NPC you got it from.
• #5 : The NPC sends you to fight a nasty NM that you will need help on.
• #6 : Kill NM, get new fancy weaponskill.

So, because I really want Asuran Fists before I next level, I am taking some time off to get it.

Started out by running with Busco to get his G1 items. The problem was I was stuck behind the first gate waiting for one more person to help open it. I eventually did get in and we got him his item as well as helped out someone else with their AF knuckles.

I then went with another friend to help fight the Yagudo High Priest. I then went to help get more coffer keys and testimonies in Quicksand Caves, even killing me a quest related NM that I needed.

Afer this, we had a very successful aqueducts sub run. We were trying for keys too, but none dropped. We did fight a Fomor SMN but only got the NIN, DRG, DRK and THF subs. There was another party farming them that kept dying. Amazing how badly others can suck :-) We tried for SMN subs several times (because we had a few who needed them) but never got the drop.

Started out right by doing a fun little run in Temple of Ugglapith with an alliance from the clan. We were there for a variety of reasons, and it really was a great success. First, we were there to help Drifter get her key as well as a quest item. We were also there to get Meredi, Mynx, and a few others keys so they could get their map item. Additionally, we were there to get a few people the Paintbrush of Souls key-item so we would have people with the item in the clan whenever we needed to do the first battle-mission in RoZ.

So, we killed a buttload of Tonberries to get keys. Compared to the last time I was here with Darkkit, we got keys much easier. In fact, 6 coffer keys dropped this time, and at least 4 normal keys (for the Paintbrush key-item) dropped. We even found a coffer for Drifter's AF. Unfortunately, by this point Drifter and Ava were far away getting her a quest item, so several of us cunningly hid the coffer by sitting on it. Somewhere under Mynx, Meredi, and myself is a coffer waiting for Drifter to show up and open. Not that I minded sitting there with two lovelies in my lap.

After the coffer was openned, some of us lingered killing stuff with our NPCs. Ava, Cyc, and myself also took on an NM or two. The Manipulator was especially terrible, as his AoE attacks wiped out Liabelle (my NPC). By the end, only 2 coffers had been found, so the rest of us wanting maps will have to come back again sometime later.

Once I was done there, I went out and helped Ravennightwing kill the NM for his first DRK AF item. I then went with Slothimus to help get his subjob items. For those who don't know, Slothimus was from the old ClanAM. There, he was known as Sloth. He has very recently joined us in the game. Anyway, he wanted to be different so we got him his subjob items from Mhura instead of Selbina. It kind of kicked ass :-) I then rounded out my good deeds by helping Gol, Durr and Milo get some Garliage Citadel coffer keys. What a good boy I am.

After I was finished helping others out for the day, I started a party to go kill the NM for my Asuran Fists. Sometime during my Temple of Ugglapith run earlier, the latent effect on my knuckles of trials wore, so I was ready to kill Bodach and get my weaponskill. Meredi and Phurios were the only ones from the clan that joined in helping me, so I wound up having to get others to help. It took forever to get our last member (a tank) but we eventually were able to set out. When we got to the Bodach spawn point, we started by killing the Bloodsuckers in the area, which would have aggroed us and complicated the battle. After we cleared the room, we rested up for Bodach. Not too many women will kneel down in sewage for you :-)

When we had rested, we clicked the ??? to begin the battle. Bodach was honestly a pushover. We had 3 monks and we all timed our 2 hours such that he went down easily in less than thirty seconds. Thus, I only have two shots of the battle. Here we are pounding the tar out of him, and here he is trying desperately to hurt us. Less than a minute later, he was dead and two more monks had Asuran Fists.

Rounded out the weekend with Tam's 2nd Aqueducts farming run. I personally thought it was a success, we got 4 subs to drop, and killed a NM (with a drop). But she is rather discouraged because of how few people showed for it (and two of those that did show kind of sucked). Here we are killing Tres Duenues. We were going for the Vampire Claws, but got the Dagger drop. If you look in the picture, yes, that is Tam dead. We didn't really know what to expect with the battle, and the BLM killed her.

I just wanted to post some pics of my cool new Dagger from the NM drop.

Here it is at my side.

Here I am showing it to the world.

From another angle.

And yet another angle.

I submitted this one to Allakhazam, we'll see if they use it...

On our way to another Subligar/NM run in the Aqueducts, we stopped to kill ourselves a NM for a quest. Bloody Coffin is a crab NM that once owned me when I tried to solo him around 60 or so. So I came back with a bunch of people 70+ and we destroyed him.

We then went and did our sub run. Here we are as we are starting. Here is a Summoner that I think dropped either Ava's or Tam's SMN/WHM sub. We once again took on Tres Duendes, and once again beat him. This time he dropped both the dagger and the claws I wanted. Joy!

After this, we did Thersty's ENM static again. I'm not taking many pictures of these now since they are basically weekly, but I did take one notable one this week. We managed to get the sphere drop in both Dem and Mea. Both spheres went to Kitchel and we managed to get her the map during the ascent. However, for Mea the ??? spawn was ultimately in a very bad location. So, I pulled all the mobs away from it giving Kit a chance to grab the ???. This resulted in my death but I was happy to help out with the map :-)

Finally wrapped things up by doing BCNM 40: Royal Jelly with Dragonlance and Darkkit. This one involves killing a number of Princess Jellies before they meet in the middle and merge to form a big nasty jelly queen. Monk is typically not a good choice here because our H2H weapons are weak to slime. However, with my handy dandy new Vampiric Claws that we got from the Tres Duendes NM on our last sub run, I was able to do some serious damage to these. In fact, I'd even say that MNK with these claws would be my prefered job to take into it. DRG and SAM are jobs that traditionally excel at it, but they both have weaker consitutions and wind up needed more healing than a 40-cap MNK with their high VIT and Chakra does.

Ronfaure has been everyone's bitch lately. Last week Bastok controlled the San d'Orian homeland, and this week Windy took control. So I took advantage of the situation by making an Outpost run there. It will be very useful to be able to OP warp to Sandy whenever I feel like it.

AAAAAAGH! Maior has an udder!!!

...ahem... excuse me...

I went with Kach to help her get her MNK AF2. These are the MNK feet, btw, and you wind up being able to wear them till end-game (they are very nice). This particular AF involved heading to Davoi and two very angry hippy Orcs. Personally, I soloed mine (you can technically just let them kill you, despawn, reraise, and then invis back to the hide flap) but I wanted to kill these Orcs sometime in my career so I went out to help Kach. We destroyed them with little trouble and soon Kach had her new Temple Gaiters.

After this, several of us went out to finally do ZM4 (Zilart Mission 4). This is the first battle in the Zilart series, and it has a lot of pre-requisites. So it's been hard to get people to do it. If you recall from a couple of posts back we actually already had farmed the Paintbrush of Souls (Key Item) and simply lacked the 4 lanterns needed to open the path to the BCNM arena. So we headed out to first get the lanterns. We actually managed to get 5, so I got one to keep for later.

We then headed to the library where we had to clear the room of Tonberries. Here I am Asuran Fisting a Tonberry to death..... Hmmm.... that sounded bad.

Once the room was cleared, we headed in, lit our lanterns and fought our fight. We pretty much schooled the Tonberries with only one unfortunate death... mine.

See, I guess we all have a shitload of Tonberry hate by now... So when I got hit with "Everyone's Rancor" I took the following damage:


Yes, that's right... 5606 points of damage in one move. I, of course, only had 1707 HP. Little bastard :-)

Started out with Thersty's ENM static, once again. This time Ava and Ray showed up totally unprepared! They were children for crying out loud! Ava even asked Tam "Can I go to the potty before we go, Mommy?" For shame.....

The ascent was largely uneventful, as they always are. Although I did snap a cool pic of a MR enclosure. We managed to do Dem & Holla in a record time even for us, so we attempted Mea for the hell of it. But a mis-fired anima cost our tank's life in the first 2 seconds of the battle (stupid Impalement) and we ultimately lost. No EXP loss, of course, so it was all good.

I then went on a fateful attempt to get ZM5 done. We started in Ifrit's Caudlron, which I hadn't been back to since the Summerfest event from 2 years ago. The place was still freaky, but most things were EP to me by now. Most things we're EP... as we got in deeper, we found nastier and nastier things.

Here we are at one of the many lava flows waiting for it to subside. I must say I look pretty kick ass with my Scorp Harness and Kotes in front of flame. We toasted marshmellows as we waited.

Unfortunately, my party was a group of idiots. We get within a few feet of the zone, and one of them aggros the Ash Dragon (nasty NM) and drags it to us. This dragon is true site, and we were pressed up against a lava flow, so he wiped us. Joy :-(

After this, Thersty and I went out leveling NPCs while we waited for people to show up for a Fomor sub farming event. We tore through Beastmen surrounding the Safehold to lower our Fomor hate as well as farmed bugards for drops.

The sub run was fun, and we fought Tres Duendes again. We did have two deaths (Arb and Ray) but we got the claws and dagger as drops. Congrats to those who got the items (I already have them and didn't pay much attention to who got them this time). We lacked a THF this time, so we only got a couple of sub drops the whole night.

I then went with a random pick up party to get some other ZM5 mobs done. Killed weapons in Behemoth's Domain as well as Sanctuary of Zi'tah's big nasty Doomed Pilgrim. Nice tongue, chief.

We also went and wrapped up the rest, and did a faux shot of us preparing to enter the avatar crystal in Fei'Yien. We didn't go, of course, but was a funny shot anyway :-)

I then went on a CoP 2-5 run with a few friends. These weren't clan-mates, but I did know two of them from elsewhere. We ascended easily. Once at the top, we decided to do a dry-run battle. No foods, no medicines, no 2 hours, no nothin'. Just run in, enjoy the cinemas, try out the Mammets and expect to lose.

Well, we won :-D

Stupid things, I think I've been over analyzing this battle.

Next we headed out and did Mea and Dem ascent and bosses for Dayum, Drifter, and Faoria. Killed a few map droppers on the way, got Faoria her item, and got Dayum and Drifter into the next chaper of CoP.

Rounded out the weekend by running to Attowha Chasm to do my next CoP mission. Met up with Rankkiller (from my 2-5 run) and Ramses and we popped the bug. We slaughtered it, of course, and climbed the mountain which was kind of a pain but was still very fun. It pretty much took us all day (Vana'diel day) to get to the top, but we made it and wrapped up the mission.