Just a couple days after I got around to posting my DRK gear! Thanks to Beyond and those who came out to help us bring him down.

Didn't expect to hit 75 so soon. It was at 37 when I started leveling it on Nov. 24, 2008. Level Sync ftw I guess(and no my skills are not behind and I do have Kasha!).

Once I hit 73 I had begun saving merits for SAM and was able to do this right after my pt ended:



I need three more merits to raise sTP to Level 4. Hopefully I can get those tomorrow.

I also bought two new items for BLM: Auster's Staff and Pluto's staff. I now have all the important ones and the rest will come as I have spare gil to spend.

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully more soon!

I decided I was going to spend some time working on my Smithing. I had been thinking about leveling it for a long time so it was already sitting at 26. I managed to get it to 29 on Iron Chains and skill ups pretty much died there. The guide I was following recommended Claws which required a Bonecraft sub. Well the only sub I had was 19 Goldsmithing so the quest to level some sub-crafts began.

I decided to start with Bone and Leather since those were the ones I would need the soonest. I did Leather first. Well, I tried. I filled up my inventory and Ellorna's with Sheepskins and got to synthing it into Leather. 80 synths later I hit level 1. Yeah. I kept at it until I hit level two and then moved onto to Solea. This synth was Level 11 so no skills on breaks but with Advanced Support I was able to hit level 3 pretty quickly.

Bonecraft was much quicker. I leveled on Bone Hairpins very quickly and then moved on to Bone Arrowheads. Both of these synths were painless. Wind Crystals and Bone chips are both very easy to come by and take up much less space since they stack(unlike sheepskins). I stoped once I got to level 4 because I had been crafting just about nonstop for several hours.

I needed to craft the test item for my Smithing test towards the end of the night. It required me synthing a Silver ingot or two. In the process I managed to hit Level 20 Goldsmithing so I needed to do that test item as well.

At the end of the day:

I thought I had a screenshot of my Bonecraft skill ups but I guess not.


Purchases~

Well since Ellorna gave me her account I have been selling off some of her stuff. Mostly stuff I'll never use or stuff that was just taking up space on mules. I ended up making around 10M by selling off stuff I'll never use. I still have the basics like the P. Rope/Ele torque/Noble's tunic/etc.. Would have been stupid to sell the stuff that makes the jobs useful in the first place.

The first thing I did was shop around for a pair of Homam Cosciales. I contacted HomingMissiles though PM on FFXIAH and got no response. The next day I saw that EverybodyLimbus was selling them 500k cheaper anyways(for 3M). I got in touch with Hracknul and worked everything out. Around mid-January or early February I should have them(I hope). It will be nice having them finally since they benefit so many of my jobs.

After that 3M was spent I shopped around and picked up a few things I had been wanting for a long time: Haubergeon +1, Fire bomblet, Fowling earring, and a Flame ring. I can't wait to do some stuff on DRK to see how much of an effect the new gear has on my performance. Here's the highlights of my current gear:



This isn't a specific set I use but it does look pretty. The next thing I want to do is upgrade my AF Helm. Then I'll be done with DRK AF upgrades until I have nothing else to use Anct. Bst. Coins for.

I still have 1.2M left but I'm going to save that. I want another acc ring for MNK but that can wait. I'm going to try to do the Toreador's ring ENM more often now that I have a healer to drag along. I've been hesitant about doing it solo without a Brown Belt. Something else I want to do is get a more solid Chakra set going. Right now my Chakras are about 360. I could hit 421 pretty easily but it would cost me about 300k in new gear and four item slots.

In other news I helped my friend Daegarae get his BLM to 47 from 44. In the process my BLM hit 65 finally which means I can finally wear my Ele torque. Woo! It was fun playing BLM again so I may try to play it more in the upcoming weeks.

That's all for now!

Well SAM is 70 now. I managed to get a 6-hit using JSE hands, legs and feet. Sadly the stat bonuses on those pieces are abysmal. Can't wait until I hit 75 so I can merit sTP and get rid of the legs and feet. My WS damage is starting to get more impressive already. Gekko is in the 800s and Yuki is in the 700s most of the time. I've still parsed highest by at least 6% in all of my PTs. The 6% was against an HQ SAM(the guy has a serious white-box addiction). I'm pretty sure he would have beat me if he had a Rajas but he didn't.

Ellorna quit and gave me her account. So now I have a char with TH4 THF, 75WHM, and 75BLM. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet but I'm looking into ENMs/BCNMs I can duo. I might take up RDM or SMN on the account to have some more versatility(even though RDM is my next job to 75).

I used Ellorna to get a second mule Whitegate access. It went very quickly considering the mule was Level 8. The mule only died three times. That's an extra 40 storage so far(need to wait to do next locker upgrade). Now that that's done I'm going to work on maxing Mog Safes, Gobbie Bags and Storage on a couple mules so I can delete at least three.

Sorry for the short update but hopefully there will be more to blog about soon.

Obviously it has been a bit since my last update. Just going to cover stuff very briefly this update and will try to update sooner next time so I don't need to rush and I can add some pictures.

Last time I updated my SAM was not even 50. Now it is 65 and it looks like 70 shouldn't take too long if I keep getting quality exp. It's mostly due to Level Sync that I've been leveling so quickly. While the exp is great and it doesn't take long to get a party I spend more time skilling up than exping. Tonight I spent several hours getting GKT from 209 to 217(it caps at 227). The thing that slowed me down the most was getting SAM AF. No other AFquest series that I've done has had so many unnecessary delays. In one quest you were required to wait until JP Midnight not once but twice! Ugh. Obviously I got it done eventually but damn.

I had a pretty decent party on Lesser Colibris today as SAM. We got a high chain of 79 and I broke my SAM Penta record with a 1488 Penta Thrust. We were only getting about 13k/hr though since we were synced to 60 and then 61. My best party so far on Lessers has been 17k/hr without band.

I've been duoing with Daegarae a lot since he came back from a break recently. Mostly on lower level jobs but we also did a DRG and PUP duo to help him reach 60. Another thing we've been doing is Up In Arms. Even if you don't get the club you still geat about 50k+ per run from the gil reward and NPC-ables. So it isn't like you walk away with nothing.

One of the first things Dae and I did after he got back was the Retribution WSNM. It was pretty tough with Dae being so rusty but we pulled it off after a couple tries. Retribution is kind of useless but it is a fun WS and I needed it done so that I could move on to other WSNMs.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something but it probably isn't anything important. If it is I'll just update this.

I surpassed my goal of hitting 44SAM and am now 46SAM with 3k to 47. Since I was getting so close to 50 I decided to start getting some of the gear I will need.

First off were Shinimusha Haidate.

These are some nice pants for SAM and they aren't too expensive but I'm pretty broke right now. I still wanted them though so I persuaded Ellorna to lend me her TH4 and off we went to camp the NM. After two very boring hours:



1/1 on an item with a 15% droprate! Thanks Ell!

Next up? The matching JSE body of course. I already had the Subligar so I just needed to get the items Brygid wanted. Those happened to be a Bishop's robe and a pair of Silk Slops. Just my luck. Bishop's robe rarely sells and Silk Slops are grossly expensive for no good reason. I was able to find someone nice enough to let me borrow their Bishop's robe(Thanks Michaelirvin!). I had to buy the one pair of slops on the AH for 50k. Hopefully someone else needs them and will buy them quick.

After a short run to Bastok(Retrace > North Gustaberg(S) > North Gustaberg > Port Bastok > Bastok Markets) I was rewarded with:



That's all for now. Hopefully more SAM news soon!

Well, I left Saviour. I really didn't like the way the shell was ran and being on BRD 100% of the time just wasn't fun at all. I wouldn't have minded being on BRD all the time if it was worth it but it wasn't. In my last post I mentioned how they didn't believe me about the depop trick for Prudence but I don't think it was a matter of belief at all. Saviour seems to be stuck in 2006.

I haven't seen Gods die so slow since...Okay I've never seen Gods die so slow. For all their talk of how I'd be on BRD all the time because of their pimped out melees they never bring those melees to anything but Limbus. "Throw BLMs at it" seems to be their motto. That really wasn't the breaking point though. As slow as it was it got the job done.

During that run with so many BLMs we were doing Byakko and it got off a Banishga III. Not a single BLM even attempted a Stun and they weren't all nuking at the time. Well I was buffing the THF and got hit as well. I finished casting the second song, reapplied Stoneskin(so I wouldn't get raped if Byakko turned and did Cyclone), and made my way to the BLMs. Ballad had ~7 seconds until it wore off so I started to reapply that. Now, it had been about 34 seconds since the -Ga III went off and the THF was at 500ish HP. I was going to cure him after I was done with Ballad. It wasn't a priority since that was the only damage he had taken so far during the fight. He certainly wasn't pulling hate. One of the leaders decided the THF should have been at 100% by now and proceeded to tell me how to do my job in LS chat. Nevermind not one word was said to the BLMs who, apparently, never picked up Stun on their way to 75. Even in Legacy the lack of Stuns would have been unaccpetable. Whatever. I cured THF up and started resting MP. Next, again in LS, I get told to Paralyna. Agh, this one is my fault. I had my filters set up poorly and I had forgotten to make a -na macro set(I had just recently brought BRD out of retirement to join this LS). After that I Paralyna-ing and Curing just fine.

During that run I got a pair of Seiryu's Kote and D. Abj Legs. I was the only person who wanted the kote and the leader who would later reprimand me for not curing kept asking if anyone else wanted the kote repeatedly before I was allowed to lot. Needless to say I was annoyed at the end of the run so I figured I'd take a short break from events. I would check in on the forums every day and noticed someone mentioned I had disappeared. I was going to reply but one of the leaders said they didn't need a BRD who "casts songs and goes afk anyways". Whoa. Nevermind the three Limbus runs where I healed perfectly well when the WHM died from being in AoE range and kept everyone alive to clear the group of mobs. So I left. Turns out I wasn't the only one. Another BRD left as well to join another linkshell.

Okay now that that is out of the way I can get to the good stuff. I got burned out getting BLM to 64 so quickly that I decided to take a break from it and level another job. I was thinking SAM or THF. Both jobs were sitting at 37. My decision on what job was really made by the fact that I have most of the standard gear already. I mean...It kind of seems like a waste not to level SAM when you already have a Justice Torque.

I spent some gil getting passable gear for SAM. None of the good stuff was up on the AH so it wasn't very much gil. I don't have O. Kote(Melee Gloves for MNK) so I decided to camp the NM. After three kills and no drop(four counting the one time I saw him up before) there was a total of eleven campers there. Yuck. I warped grabbed the Ancient Currency from the last Dynamis run I did(Xarc) and tossed it in my Bazaar. As soon as I hit Rolanberry I got an invite on SAM. The leader was very persistent so I accepted. Half way there the leader and two other members DC. Turns out they were RMT(maybe). So we decided to rebuild the PT. It went very smoothly and by then end of the night it had turned into this:



I almost felt sorry for the mobs. Distortion after Distortion on Beetles was too much fun. As you can see we lacked a healer because the PLD had paid someone to PL us. After he hit 50 he left and we repped him with a BLM. The fights went even faster and I quickly hit 40. Halfway to 41 the PL wanted to leave and two members had to go to Dynamis so I called it done. I needed to update gear anyways.

I grabbed a Jujitsu Gi and went to get a Tilt Belt but none were up. Turns out someone was buying them all to NPC them. Awesome. Well Ellorna was leveling her 42 DRG so we decided to sync to my level and kill T-VT crawlers. It was a lot of fun and we had a couple close calls but we never died. After I hit 41 and got a buffer we called it since it was pretty late and most of the mobs had gone from T to EM or DC.

Hopefully I can get to 44 today to upgrade my GKT to something better without spending 100k on a weapon I'll use for less than five levels.