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.

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.

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.