Been doing weekly Limbus runs over at ClanAM FFXI-EG. Not too much to report on this front. Here we are farming Aw'euvhi for IC and Jan's first run. And here we are fighting a slime in SE Apollyon. We usually make it to the crabs on the second floor with our group, but have yet to clear floor 3. This isn't a really big deal, we're mainly just farming items (we're not going for the win), but we would like to make it further once we get more people in ClanAM sea access.

After one of our Limbus runs, we headed out to the reef to try and get Jan one of his Blue Mage spells. The spell is "Spinal Cleave" and is learned from Qutrubs. Jan must be mentally handicapped or something because he didn't learn it even though we killed Qutrubs for hours. I even wound up skilling up my sword because we were at it for so long. These were EM to T Qutrubs, and we earned around 10k (or one meripo) during the course of our spell farming.

Started out helping Sloth with CoP 7-4, which involves killing three sets of NMs strewn throughout the CoP areas. One can be found in Bibiki Bay, a Sea Monk by the name of Dalham. Another can be found in Misareaux Coast, a bugard named Bogglemann. Then a set of Cryptonberry NMs in Carpenters' Landing. Sloth had already managed to dispatch of Bogglemann solo, but needed help with Dalham and the Cryptonberries.

Dalham is fairly easy, Sloth and I duo'd him with little difficulty. But the Cryptonberries are much harder.

See, unlike Dalham and Bogglemann, the Cryponberries weren't one mob, they were four. Four nasty little Cryptonberries (which, in case you don't know, have all of the moves of the Tonberry) that are resistant to sleep, silence, and use some nasty two-hour moves.

The Cryptonberries are also some pretty nasty jobs to fight. The first one that spawns is a Ninja, with high evasion and Mijin Gakure. After this one takes a small amount of damage, his cohorts spawn. One is a Black Mage that will Manafont and nuke, another is a Thief that will Perfect Dodge and has crazy high evasion, and the final one is a Summoner who is more than willing to Astral Flow and decimate your group.

I have fought these Cryptonberries in the past several times, and the battle was always difficult. Sometimes we would win, but mostly we would lose. Every previous battle was fought with a full alliance simply because you needed all the help you could get in killing them.

This time, however, Sloth and I planned on duoing them. Sound crazy? Well it was... but it worked :-)

With his SMN, my NIN, and our NPCs we went to Carpenters' Landing. Once there, Sloth ran in to spawn the mobs. He did a tiny bit of damage to the NIN, making the others spawn, and then hightailed it to the zone.

After zoning and losing hate, we followed the four mobs back to the spawn point. It was strange doing so because they moved so slowly and never aggroed us or anyone else. Eventually, they all got back and began despawning one by one. Our plan was to wait until the rest despawn, and then grab the last one to kill.

Now, I had tried this plan before, but never with any real success. Trix had tried fleeing to the zone, but all of the mobs despawned at the same time for him so we couldn't grab one of them without linking the rest. Avatarx and I tried this with his Carby as well, but we had similar problems. Basically, I didn't have high hopes that Sloth and I would be successful this time.

However, Sloth and I lucked into a subtle difference to the plan that managed to make it work. As the mobs were going back, we got bored and attacked one that was lagging behind (basically, trying to see if we could avoid a link because the others were so far away). This made them all angry at us, and we had to zone again to shed hate, however it caused the one who had lagged behind to get even further behind his cohorts on their way back to the spawn point.

Once at the spawn point, we discovered they would despawn in the order at which they got to the spawn point. Because this last mob had been delayed so much by us, he took a long while to despawn. This made it easy to grab him.

The one that remained was the THF Cryptonberry Assassin, and he was very easy for the two of us to duo and kill.

All in all, it was surprising how this one tiny difference made the entire battle so much easier. If I ever have to do this battle again, I would do this technique in a heart beat.

Started out continuing Sloth's CoP missions with his Tenzen fight. He and I got to the den first and had to wait a bit. We attempted the battle a few times relying on a less-than-stellar WAR to do most of the damage and with me tanking as NIN, but this didn't work too well. Instead, I left and came back as MNK and trounced Tenzen with my 2 hour.

After we beat Tenzen, we met up with another group that was doing the next CoP mission. Since this mission is best done in an alliance, and they needed us, we decided to join them. On our way to the various NM spawn points in sea, our group got quite a bit of aggro. I blame it on the fact that most of our group was new to sea as of that moment, but it still didn't change the fact that this mission was drawn out more than it should due to several UFO deaths.

We did manage to kill all of the spawned NMs and complete the mission, however.

Now, by this point my group had already been going for three and a half hours. It was well past the time when I needed to go (I didn't have much time for this event as I was heading out of town the next morning). However, the other half of our alliance was determined to finish CoP that very night, and since certain members of my group needed these missions as well (and since I was feeling guilt for having to cancel the next two events due to my business trip), I decided I'd come along to help (they needed a tank, and didn't know the way so needed me to lead anyway).

I came along, but kept trying to convince everyone we weren't going to finish CoP that night. The next two bits to CoP were crazy long, and the next two boss battles were difficult (and we lacked the proper jobs for the first one). But, I guess my words only sunk in with my clanmates, because the other guys wouldn't listen.

Anyway, we started the long, hard trek up the Grand Palace of Hu'Xzoi to do CoP 8-2. This was a long and hard battle, many in our alliance couldn't grasp the concept of moving behind the Eo'zdeis to avoid aggro, so we had to stop every 30 seconds or so to deal with another aggro. Further more, we had lots of AFKs, but we still managed to progress up the palace and complete 8-2.

After we finished 8-2, it was easily after midnight my time, and I had a flight the next morning. I kept saying I really did need to go, but the non-clanmemebers kept insisting on continuing. I agreed to stay (since I was their only tank) when everyone promised to no longer go AFK and tried harder to avoid aggro.

However, for 8-3 we were having more of the same problems. We had AFKs that lasted for 15+ minutes. And we had people who didn't pay attention and got lost, requiring us to backtrack for them. The area was awesome, but it was getting so late and I was so frazzled by the entire experience that I didn't care.

We finally got to the boss battle it was 5am. The last leg of 8-3 had taken us easily 4 hours to complete due to AFKs and people getting lost. I was done, but we were at the boss battle and everyone wanted me to stay.

The problem? We had 9 people who needed the mission, but only one tank and one healer. This meant that, in order to do the battle for everyone who needed it I and ICD would have to do the battle three times to get everyone through it. Since the battle was roughly 30 minutes long, and since we'd have to do the battle at least twice per group (once for a dry-run, once for the real run... this is a hard battle), this meant we were looking at another 180 minutes, or nearly three more hours! And this was best case scenario, assuming everyone succeeded on their second run. And this excludes any AFKs or heals after deaths.

We also had no BLM or RDM (they had left earlier in the night) for sleeping the pots in the boss battle to come. Since that's kind of important for the battle, it was looking very doubtful this was going to work at all.

Oh, and did I mention I had a flight in 3 hours and had to be at the airport in 2?

So, I did one dry-run, we lost... miserably... but then I had to go. I apologized and logged.

Well.. apparently everyone who wasn't in ClanAM freaked at this. They started talking trash about me and apparently got quite vocal about me in Al Zabhi and Jueno (shouting how people should avoid me).

Of course, I couldn't be there to defend myself... I was out of town for the next week and a half. But, hells bells, I devoted 12+ hours to these guys, when I only had agreed on giving them 3! I had a freaking flight the next morning, and I had been reminding them that they wouldn't finish CoP that night. I'd been open and upfront about my time constraints, it's not like I was leading them along promising to stay until the very end!

Anyway... people like this really bug me.

As a heads up, from now on I will be storing my screenshots from the game in a lower resolution (512x382). This is because it cuts the storage requirements by half and I don't think the older, larger, screenshots gave us much more detail. Granted, if I ever find an image that should be larger, I'll put it online larger. But, for the most part, everything will be smaller now.

Been leveling WAR again... finally. I had taken around 3 months off from leveling anything. My WAR is finally high enough to fight Imps and company in the mire. Had a couple of pretty good parties out there.

Next, we did our weekly Limbus event over at ClanAM. This week we headed to Tenemos as a test. We went and fought Enhanced Tigers in Tenemos Western. Honestly, we didn't have the group for this and killing the Tigers was too slow. We actually could have beaten Tenemos Western with our group, but we were out farming so beating it wasn't our goal.

The next week, we went back to Apollyon because we could consistently school that one with our setup. However, with Sloth's help we could now obliterate the crabs. Damn, Ramuh and en-Thunder-ga rock...

After this I decided to go back camping Taisaijin again. I have no idea why I'm so fascinated with him... maybe it's because his worthless drop is such a cool trophy. The last time I actively camped him was in September of 2006. I didn't get the drop... again...

With Taisaijin dead I headed out to kill Kirata, who's drop I don't need, but still kind of want. Again, no drop.

Wrapped things up by heading out with ICD and Jan to do some BCNMs. We did Wild Wild Whiskers a few times, which involved tricking Macan Gadangan into casting Burst over and over again. We got ICD's drop... twice... and it was a very good night. We've also gone back to do the BCNM 20 Charming Trio, which we used to do all the time in ClanAM years ago.

Thankfully, the Mannequin Hands that drop from that BCNM are back up to selling at reasonable prices and rates. Mine sold for 123,456 gil within six hours of putting them into my bazaar. It's not the 500k they used to go for, but it's a lot better than the 30k they dipped down to.