Okay... so, once again, I've failed at keeping this up to date. So in the next couple of posts I'll try to get back on track...

First of all, I realized I hadn't gotten a screenshot in my WAR AF that I got several posts back, so here it is. You'll note there that I'm lacking my AF gloves... well, that's because they were already turned into AF+1 by that point and I wasn't high enough to wear them yet.

We got a little bit into trying out strange and wacky Campaign Operations for a while. Here we are about to enter the battlefield for Granite Rose. And here we are fighting Yagudo Stormers and other mobs for that same Campaign Op. I must say they were actually pretty fun even if the rewards were marginal.

Afterwards, we went out and hunted Dyinyinga as a grope. You can't see Xill and Sloth off screen in that shot because they were trying to keep out of silence range. We didn't get the drop as a group, but later on I was able to come back and get it.

Next up we did another Campaign Op, this time one for Bastok. If I remember correctly, it was Bastok's version of Granite Rose, but I didn't take any screenshots inside the battlefield and it's been several months since we did this particular event, so I can't say for certain.

Rounded out the evening doing several Campaign Battles. Here, Xill and I are dealing with an unwanted Rafflesia aggro outside of the Fort in Karugo-Narugo.

..More continued updates..

Because of the recent excitement over ZNMs, I decided to try my hand at collecting monsters for Pankration. What I didn't expect was to get into it as much as I did.

See, when Pankration first came out I was busy doing my weekly Limbus group (and not much else). So I never really tried it. I had heard second hand that it was lame and so I dismissed it outright having never checked it out for myself. Boy was that a mistake :-)

Pankration is best described as Pokemon meets FFXI- which, in and of itself, does not sound very appealing, I know..

Using a special camera you go out into the field and attempt to capture the souls (or copies of the souls) of various creatures. These souls are stored on "Soul Plates", which generally specify what creature they came from as well as an ability taken from that same creature. As an example, maybe you captured the soul of a "Sea Puk", so the plate says "Sea Puk" on it and could list any of the Sea Puk's special abilities such as an agility boost or blink.

Taking Soul Plates to an NPC in Al Zahbi gives you the option to either turn them into a pet to fight in Pankration, or apply the ability on the plate to an existing pet. These pets can then enter a special arena (known as "The Pit") and fight other people's pets for experience and fame.

Not every Soul Plate can be turned into a pet, and not every ability can be used by every pet, so it is more complicated than I've just detailed. But what I've written is enough to give you an idea of what Pankration is.

Anyway... I got into it. Here I am standing over the Pit awaiting my pet's entrance to the arena. Here's my Marid Explosives Klotz fighting a Corse (he won that battle). To date, I have around 7 different pets... too many, IMHO, I need to let some of them go. My favorite pet is easily my Mother Globe-based spheroid named "Giant Mountain", who currently has Blink, an AGI boost, and Amnesia Attack.

I also have found Besieged to be an interesting place to farm for useful Soul Plates. Many of my best Soul Plate abilities have come from there. It had been a really long time since I had been in Besieged, and things had changed quite a bit. Here I am having been killed at a crazy distance by whatever the hell this giant thing is. Really... I didn't even see what it was before it killed me.

We at ClanAM have a long time friend who we've been trying to get into FFXI for years. We even got him to purchase FFXI for the 360 when it came out, but he had never even installed it. Well, finally, now that FFXI is winding down, we got him to join.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you Sichuletmc, AKA 'Schultmc' in other games. Why the complicated name? Well, Schultmc had FFXI suggest a random name for him, and the first name it suggested was this strange bastardization of Schultmc so he picked it. Of course, I realize that this is because it took his Live ID as a base and modified it, but I haven't had the heart to tell him that yet :-)

So we went out and did a low level party to introduce Schultmc to the game. It was a lot of fun, and eventually wound up in Dangruf Wadi where a couple of linked Goblins gave us a severe ass-raping. I will say we are very excited for the upcoming level sync update which will allow us to more easily party with Schultmc.

Soon afterwards I continued leveling WAR and managed to ding 75! Here I am in my 75WAR dual-wield gear which includes Kirin's Osode, Retributor, Maneater, Fourth Division Haube, Fourth Division Shoss, Fourth Division Shuhs, and Fighter's Mufflers +1. My Great Axe setup is essentially the same except I substitute a Fourth Division Toporok for my Maneater/Retributor combo. All-in-all, I'm very pleased with how my end-game WAR turned out.

Next up was an ill-fated Divine Might pick-up that we decided to join. Here we are running through Sky to the BCNM. Aaaaaannd... here we are dead. Not much more to say about that, really.

After the failure of Divine Might, I headed in to get my Mother Globe shot for my Spheroid Pankration pet that I mentioned last post.

I might have mentioned this before, but recently several of us switched nations to Bastok to do the missions there and get rank 10. Here we are fighting the dragon for Bastok Mission 2-3. The really cool thing about it was that we were able to trio it. Trix was WAR and tanked it, Sloth was SMN and I was BLM. I slept the dragon while they killed the eye, then we all teamed up on the dragon. No 2-hours were needed, and the battle was cake.

Next, I began focusing on my BST AF. The first non-weapon quest involves killing Dabot'z Ghost, who was a pushover for my NPC and I. After, I decided to finish up some much needed quests for my BST such as getting the map for Bostaunieux Oubliette which involves hanging out on the boat from Selbina to Mhuara a lot. This led me to fight the Sea Horror more than once. Kind of amazing that this mob that was the bane of so many of my earlier trips on the boat is such a pushover to me now.

Another needed BST item was the Gaudy Harness, which involved journeying to the aqueducts and killing Fomor. Obviously, this is something I've done tons of times in the past back when ClanAM had weekly sub-runs that I was leading up. But this time was different. This time I was coming as BST, which mean I could solo most things in there with skill. Throw in Trix as a NIN and Sloth as a WAR and we could handle just about anything the damned place could throw at us. All told, we got everyone a couple of subligars (whether they wanted them or not) and got me mine. Here I am in my pretty, frilly panties, and here I am in my amazing Gaudy Harness.

With Harness in tow, and my map, I was able to go to Bostaunieux and kill me some mobs. I must say that I've enjoyed the oubliette, even if the EXP is slower than I have been used to in (S) areas. It's just thrilling to be able to throw DC pet slimes at VT bats and hounds and come out victorious.

Rounded out all of this by taking Schultmc to see some sights. Here we are by the waterfall in North Gustaburg. From there, I walked him up north to Selbina where we got on the boat and went to Mhuara. In Mhuara, we parted ways as I had some quests to wrap up there, but I did see my friend off from the cliffs.