Not Dead

I'm not dead, I'm just sleeping.

I know it's been awhile since I've made an update. And this update won't include any fancy screenshots or anything. For those of you that I still message in game from time to time when I come on for dynamis this news post is probably a pointless read, although I will summarize what I have been up to for the past few months.

At the end of February my last HNMLS Element was officially declared dead. Because I felt there was no linkshells for me to join that would accept me and make me happy at the same time I took the opportunity to try out the free trial of World of Warcraft, a game I thought I would never touch. Within a single day of the free trial I was hooked and went out and bought the game and the expansion so I could restart as one of the expansion races. I have to admit that I can now see more clearly how many flaws FFXI has when compared to a real addicting MMO, and I have kept very busy and much entertained throughout my playtime in WoW with so far not more then a few minutes of down time. I am currently almost level 69 and hopefully soon to be raiding the end game bosses and PvPing to earn all the great gear I keep hearing about. However saying that I feel I might have more free time once I am level 70 and could see my reappearance on the FFXI scene in a minimal capacity.

In FFXI I haven't been logging on for more then dynamis for the past few months, in May I was only on once a week even. My dynamis shell PerfectAtaraxia has been accomplishing a lot considering our decreasing attendance since Christmas, with only about 30 members per run we are still completing relic armor sets and relic weapons. I am currently 0 for 7 on my attestation with two more attempts to go still in the next week and a half to hopefully complete this linkshells third weapon. If any of you that I know well are interested in dynamis and feel you would be in for the long haul please let me know and I will speak with you about joining up.

I currently am a Free Agent in terms of FFXI, with no linkshell and high expectations I will field offers from potential shells. I am not that interested in being a jack of all trades anymore however and would prefer to specialize in a small number of activities, with my highest interests being in Assault, Salvage and Sea. I have much to offer and a lot of free time on weeknights (Mon-Wed-Thurs after 8pm PST) and weekends. I will not treat FFXI like a job however and will always go out with friends over playing a game.

I have four jobs to offer and 3 sets of Jailer of Hope sets. I will not use them unless I am guaranteed a Hope Torque. I am experienced in all aspects of FFXI, and have done everything the game has to offer, I strive to be the best at my job and do not respond well to incompetent people and people who make the same mistake more then once. If this is too highly demanding then I'm sorry but you are probably too carebear for me.

Maintenance Day

As we all eagerly await maintenance to end in about an hour and a half I have run out of things to do at work and have decided to make an update here.

It's been just over a week since last update. On the 13th I was at a great Dynamis-Bastok run here are the statistics from that...

Single Coins -- 302
Saotome Kote -- Caaeia, Thelema, Unmaligned, Guiller
Wyrm Brais -- Direwolf
Summoner's Bracers -- Inuyashha
Sorcerer's Tonban -- Talrappy
Duelist's Gloves -- Valkyrion

Yea that's right, 4 SAM drops as well as a whopping 302 single coins! That number was only off our record by two back when we got 304 coins back in November which was also in Bastok. Unfortunately Andreas (the one person actually needing SAM Relic in Bastok) left the run early after only one of them had dropped.

On Saturday the 17th we went to Dynamis-Beaucedine where it was announced that once again I wasn't going to have an opportunity for my attestation because of the maintenance today and us needing to get some people the win. Thankfully we will try to make four glacier runs in March in which two of them will be attestation attempts. Anyways let's go ahead with the Beaucedine loot...

Wyrm Mail -- Arturus
Duelist's Tabard -- Cinder
Melee Cyclas -- Knightblade

On Sunday we went and camped Fafnir in the afternoon before heading to Sea. It's kind of funny how some groups claim way more then others, I'm starting to really wonder if there's a way of simply just being able to prove cheaters based on the ratio of claims a LS gets to the amount they camp. I mean theres really no skill in claiming nowadays, you just need to be lucky and in any algorithm that involves luck all LS's should have pretty much the same ratio of claims to camps. Unfortunately I don't think thats the case and if you were able to track each LS's ratio you would easily be able to pick out the LS's with the most cheaters (I say most because I don't believe theres no such thing as an end-game LS without any). Saying all that though I think it's clear which LS's are claiming the most and having said graph of ratio's is pretty much just a formality.

We went to Sea and killed Faith and Ix'DRK getting both the Virtue and Deed we needed. Unfortunately we still aren't back to where we were when Johnnyb stole all our pops from us but we are being viligent in getting back to that point.

In completely unrelated news I have got my WAR to Lv73 and about 25K from Lv74 which I hope to take a chunk out of tonight and maybe even hit 74 or come close.

Is Goldsmithing Worth It

What have I done since the last two dramatic updates to this site? Really this whole month so far has been pretty anti-climatic. I've participated in two Dynamis runs this month so far (Jeuno and Windurst), we won them both no problem and I got Warriors Mufflers from Jeuno for 200k.

I have been trying to level my WAR as much as possible but something always comes up or I'm feeling too tired to do it, only managing about 40k EXP last week. I find that now my WAR is Lv71 that I am getting picky again on how much EXP/hr that I can tolerate. My LS is currently trying to figure out a better way to manage the members weekly activities and may begin to limit how many activities a week that each member will be allowed to use as an excuse to miss scheduled LS events. You have to understand how crazy it is to try and run an end-game shell when most of your members are running with different Limbus, Dynamis, Salvage and Assault groups on a weekly basis.

Sorry I have no screenshots for today's update, I only started taking them for this blog and normally I'm not much of a screenshot saving person so most of the best screenshot opportunities I end up not thinking to take.

I guess now is a good time to address the question I said I would answer last month. That of course being the famous "is goldsmithing worth it?" that I have been getting from quite a few people. I'm assuming the main reason people ask this question is because they are aspiring goldsmithers themselves or leveling another craft that they think may have similar results.

The answer is easy and very simple... no! Yes thats a no with an exclamation mark. The ONLY way that any craft is worth it these days and for the last year for that matter is for personal use, for saving little bits of money here and there. Why do you think that almost every NA/EU player to hit Lv100 goldsmithing has dramatically seen a drop off in their interest in FFXI and playing in general? It's because they thought goldsmithing would make them billionaires and then reality comes around and smacks them upside the head. This is exactly why I took goldsmithing extremely slow and made sure to lose as little money as possible in the skillup process because I knew through extensive market research that goldsmithing would not make me enough money to make it my only cash cow, no craft can be a singular cash cow anymore and that's just the sad reality of supply and demand. The richest players on the server are only rich because they either spend all their time NM hunting and farming or put a huge investment into leveling several... yes several crafts to Lv100.

Last year at this time it was demand and gilbuying that made having a Lv100 craft be crazy valuable, but as of right now the exact opposite has been occurring and with every wave of bans that SE makes it is extracting more and more billions of gil from the economy and there is less and less demand and buying power from the players of this game. For example at how horrific demand is these days, three weeks ago or so I made a large batch of sell ables, 6 Diamond Shields, 6 Wing Sword, 12 Lv36 HQ rings, and 5 Lv36 HQ+1 rings. When I made them the Diamond Shields and Wing Swords were 450k each and the Lv36 HQ+1 rings were 120-150k. As of this moment I have sold all the Diamond Shields, each for less then 400k due to deflation, I have sold only 1 Wing Sword which sold at 350k and I still have all 5 HQ+1 rings which I have been listing for prices as low as 90k with no takers.

If this is the type of market you would like to deal with when you hit Lv100 then by all means, spend the 30-40M in losses from Lv70-80 and the 20-30M in losses from 90-100, but my advice is to save that money and spend it elsewhere on something that will help you now, on something you will have FUN with now! Crafts are things that will NOT help you now and will take probably almost a year to make back the losses suffered while skilling up, on top of this you have to deal with the frustration of trying to sell rare items in a market that no longer cares about having the "best of the best". Personally I feel like the community that isn't already uber is just a bunch of lazy slackers that want everything handed to them and aren't willing to grind out the gil to buy something they can be proud of.

I like to make big numbers in merit parties and show off what I can do. Now you know why I leveled goldsmithing, I never saw it as a money maker, and hell I make free Kaiser equipment PLD's I feel are helping me or my LS. The simple reason I leveled it was because goldsmithing for me has always been a trophy, a goal that I wanted to see completed and absolutely nothing more.

PS: I made Jamal a forum signature over a month ago, and yesterday he supplied a large donation of byne bills for my effort which I just wanted to say a big thank-you for. I have made a lot of forum sigs and this is the first time someone has shown such a significant appreciation for my work.

I also finished Grodo and Tryxie's sigs.

Dynamis Lord and Aegis Completed

Friday was supposed to be a Sea farming run to make-up for the organs that were stolen by Johnnyb last week (see my last update for details). However we didn't have enough mages show up and everyone decided to call it a night. I did however lure a few people to come kill a Yovra with me seeing as I'm working on getting a Snow Gorget finished. It was fun to say the least.

On Saturday we had a Dynamis-Xarcabard run, it was Kicamo and Kiere's last day with us as they were moving on from the game so we went ahead with our Dynamis Lord attempt even though we were undermanned with only 35 people and composed mostly of mages and paladins (7 RDM, 5 BLM, 2-3 WHM, 4-5 PLD, 2-3 BRD). It was a fun run and we had excellent performance from the people who were there. The stunning was great and DL couldn't even do a thing for the first couple minutes as we whittled down his HP with the few melee cannon jobs we had. At about 50% we simultaneously both ran out of stunners and Ying and Yang were re summoned, and at about 40% Dynamis Lord did his famous Oblivion Smash attack and wiped most of us.

Melee Crown -- Jils
Summoner's Horn -- Juvenile

On Sunday my LS decided to take a trip down memory lane into Sky. We did the full circuit of gods first.

Neptunal Feet -- Flamey and Janelly
Neptunal Hands -- Flamey and Klank
Wyrmal Hands -- Kakomei
Seiryu's Kote -- Galiant

And then we did one Kirin the old-fashioned way.

Wyrmal Feet -- Willian
Kirin's Osode -- Galiant

After the old-fashioned attempt we switched jobs to give TP burn Kirin a try. We were doing extremely well, and had Kirin down to 60% within about 30-40 seconds, however at this point Kirin casted Stonega IV and immediately after it landed (quicker then it took to cast Curaga's) Kirin decided to bust out Carbuncle and Astral Flow us, to say the least this was the end of our first TP burn attempt. But everyone had a lot of fun trying it and I really hope we do this method again for our next pop as well.

Last night was a big night for my dynamis linkshell PerfectAtaraxia, although most of them didn't know about it until today (most probably still haven't found out). We started the night with a Dynamis-Xarcabard run. With about an hour to go in farming it was decided that we would give my Animated Katana another run (the first time we tried it was after already killing shield and no one had 2hrs, thus it just warped on us). This time however we did an excellent job, the Animated Katana got a few Blade:Metsu's off and tried to Warp 3-4 times but we managed to stun it every time and get the drop!

Abyss Burgeonet -- Guiller
100 Byne Bill -- Tagrineth

After the run was over Wagnus approached me with a proposition. He asked that I lend him 2000 OBronzepiece on top of the 3000 I would get back immediately so he could finish his Aegis. I was immediately interested and very excited to get a relic completed in PerfectAtaraxia finally.

After he had his 10,000 coin we went to Carpenters landing to finish the job. Here is a screenshot of the "before" Wagnus and then the "after" shots.

After all this excitement Wagnus came up with the suicidal plan of going and testing it on Jormungand, so everyone that could stay began their ascent to the great white north (no not Canada).

As you can see, two of those chat log screenshots are back to back in which Wagnus got hit for between 10-70 dmg in 7 out of 8 attacks by Jormungand! He did not have Sentinel up during those attacks either as you can see by the one attack that hit him for 200+. It was an amazing night and I'm very happy to finally see a Relic finished in one of my linkshells.

The Johnnyb Jackass

Alright so I know I said I was going to update the site with something else in my last update but low and behold something else went down that was much more important to get off my chest.

Please take a moment to read the following screenshot which was taken about a year ago.

Sometime last week it was decided that we would do a Swift Belt run on Sunday a couple hours after Sea. This seemed like the best time for people that needed the belt and could help so Jamal being the organized leader he is and always wanting to please the most members he can decided to make it happen. Little did he know that Johnnyb also had Limbus scheduled only a few hours after Sea which is a group that has a roster dominated my Element members. Jamal had no idea that JB had this Limbus planned as JB is not mature or organized enough to have these things communicated with the rest of the LS officers.

After the Swift Belt run Johnnyb announced that we was quitting Element and taking all our Sea pops he had on him which the LS as a whole had worked hard for over the course of the last couple months. His decision was made based on the fact that he felt Jamal and Cami had purposely scheduled over his Limbus run and had disillusioned his group into not attending with him. He felt he was justified to keep the Sea pops he was holding because he had helped a handful of members get Sea access and was now throwing a tantrum that they did not attend Limbus after putting all his time into helping them.

So after days of trying to negotiate with Johnnyb and figure out some sort of equal ground for everyone and being rejected at our every attempt I decided to talk to a GM about it.

Notice the contradiction from what I was told a year ago. I was expecting it though so I wasn't shocked, after all it's not the first time you have heard a story about one GM saying one thing and another GM saying another thing, however maybe it's the first time you have seen a single GM contradict himself completely.

Johnnyb, enjoy your items, enjoy whatever you do with them, and enjoy whatever LS takes your sorry ass. Personally I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you don't though, and I hope the rest of the community hears about this bullshit and refuses to associate with you altogether... welcome to the shit-list.

The Gration Marathon

It's been over a week since my last update, I've been a bit too busy with my latest addiction of watching the entire second season of Grey's Anatomy that I downloaded (just finished last night). I watched all 27 episodes in 4-5 days, so I haven't had much time for the lowest priorities (like this blog).

So last Sunday we spent a short time in Sea in the afternoon and got ourselves a Jailer of Temperance pop, unfortunately the Virtue didn't drop.

However, right after Sea I asked Cami and Minas to help me get a Yovra Organ to complete my 3rd Gorget, they were happy to help and although the first Ul'Yovra didn't drop we went and made shorter work of the second one and got the organ. Thanks again for the help with that, now I need to get organs for an Snow Gorget so I can use it alongside Great Axe when my WAR is finished leveling.

I also spent some time early in the week leveling my WAR (dinged 67 today). I experienced my first low level PT in Caedarva Mire and it was pretty disappointing because of all the issues with links and such but we did break my record for highest XP in a single kill.

Both those screenshots came in the same experience chain. I also leveled in sky on flamingo's at Lv66 for a couple hours and was happy to see you could still get 7-8k/hr up there, which to me was much better then competing for camps in ToAU areas.

After these parties I spent a few days getting Bloodthirster Madkix to spawn in Kuftal Tunnel. This goblin notorious monster drops a Lv68 axe called Acha d'Armas. The first time I spawned it in only about 45mins of killing placeholders, I tried to duo it with Kakomei on RNG but we died with the NM around 30% because of all the 300 dmg bomb tosses. So Kakomei brought her brother Makaw on WHM and we trio'd it down, unfortunately without getting the drop.

The next day I camped it for about 4hrs and got it to spawn again. This time Kakomei came out to help with assistance from Klank on THF and Thelema on BLM. We made short work of it, but again the NM did not drop the axe. So once again the next day I spent about 2hrs camping and a couple people showed up to counter-camp me, personally I saw this as being in bad taste as it's such a lowly NM that's not competed for and can be camped solo many times throughout the week, so I took off and came back a day later. On this 4th time camping it I only spent about 3hrs killing placeholders before it spawned and was happy to have Kakomei come out again to help. This time I really wanted to get the axe to drop so I called on Lionsheart whom is an old friend from earlier years, and when he arrived we killed Bloodthirster Madkix for the final time because he dropped his axe!

Friday I went out drinking with some friends and missed out on fighting my first Amaltheia, apparently Element had no problem with him though.

And finally, last night was our epic Gration fight. Yes I know Gration is normally not a NM you would find with the word epic preceding it but because of some complications it became that way. After leaving Dynamis-Beaucedine where we only got Duelist Tabard to drop I came back into Element LS to find Deuce saying that he had popped Gration with only 3 people and 2 of them had DC'd, so he was perpetually kiting Gration, losing hate and letting him wander back to pop spot and then kiting him again. So I told him I was on my way to help as I hadn't fought Gration in about a year and we have never attempted him even once yet in Purpose/Element as no one was interested in it. Flamey and Barbiechic were also quick on the scene and all of a sudden we had enough people to slowly whittle away at Gration's HP bar. After doing several 700+ dmg Spirit's Within I decided to switch back to Katana's hoping that maybe 100% Jin's could do more damage over time then Spirits Within. I was right, my Jin's were doing between 300-500 dmg so this sped things up quite nicely.

At about 1.5hrs in we had Gration to about 18% HP but everyone was off getting TP for WS's that somehow Gration had lost hate on everyone and wandered back to his pop point. When I got to him I saw he was back to 48% and was pissed! So I voked him quickly and began kiting again. Cami showed up about 10-15mins later and Flamey went back to city to change jobs. With Cami's added damage we started making quicker work of him and shortly after that Minas showed up on WHM. At this point we have done the entire fight with only 1 healer and no gravity or dispel. Unfortunately I was spending most of the time kiting instead of getting TP to WS which made this fight take longer then it should have if we had a reliable PLD kiter. At just over 2hrs into the fight, longer then it took us to kill Jormungand the bastard finally fell.

For the majority of the fight our setup was NIN, THF, WHM, SAM. Cami on MNK and Minas on WHM showed up for the final 20-30mins. This is not something I want to do again, especially with a NQ pop item that doesn't even guarantee a drop!

I will probably be making another update today or tomorrow which will address a few things people have been asking me lately. One of them being the famous question "was goldsmithing worth it".

Master Goldsmither

Before I get to the fun part of the thread, let's go over the past week in review. On Saturday I went to Dynamis-Bastok and was disappointed to see one of our lowest attendances ever. We didn't even beat the zone because of time constraints (1 pull away), I think we have quite a few people being closet depressed or something since the holidays, or simply a large number of people not interested in doing city zones anymore since most of the LS has all their Relic armour needed. I hope these people begin to understand that we cannot run northlands more then four times a month because of scheduling constrictions. And furthermore if we don't have good attendance and good currency drop rates in city zones then we will be too broke in the long run to do northlands zones as often as we do.

On Sunday I got up early for my first taste of Salvage. We were only in the zone for about 10 minutes as we were trying a new strategy with only 1 monk and got our asses handed to us. However we know what to do for this Sunday and that won't happen again. We then headed for Sea to do some quick farming, spent about 2hrs trying to spawn Jailer of Temperance and then went to Ix'DRK for a quick kill.

After this we had a short LS meeting to go over some pressing issues of the past month or so and then had the rest of the night off.

Yesterday we had Dynamis-Sandoria which we got a small attendance boost from our Tuesday only members but were still undermanned for what we would of liked. Fortunately we killed the final extension with just minutes to spare and got the full 180 minute run out of the night. Was a decent night for relic armour and currency drops as well as a single 100c. The best part of the night was wiping to one of the Orc NM's after it used charmga three times within 30-45 seconds. Being as I was one of the few to actually pay attention and stay out of range of charmga I was spared being the Orc's bitch for a minute but after seeing a few people rushing to kill me I decided to blow up on Motley.

Today was the best day I've had in a long time, but I still don't really feel that excited. It just seems like any other day but with less weight on my shoulders. First thing, we claimed King Behemoth on the 3rd window. I think it was only day one for KB but we got lucky, seems we have claimed KB more then Behemoth since Element was formed.

I got Behemoth Tongue on free lot. I've always debated leveling MNK, it might be something I do down the line when I have more money and am finished with the jobs I'm already leveling. Congratulations to Aced on our first pair of Zenith Pumps and Rikumaru on Pixie Earring.

After KB I warped to Whitegate to synth a couple rings for Stubbs since he wanted to take advantage of my free synths while I'm skilling up. I started off by synthing the ingredients I bought for my own ring synths, it was a horrible start as you can see.

But then the sky's finally opened and I was finished.

Here is a screenshot of the current state of my crafts just for proof.

Still got to work on that Leathercraft skill but that's for another day. As far as the road to get here it has indeed been a long one. I started leveling Goldsmithing in December 2004 and only just finished today (yes that's over 2yrs). I know this is probably pretty slow for most Goldsmiths but I never really believed in power leveling it and losing a load of gil in the process, I kept track of all my expenses/profit from the skillup path and not including money synths (which don't yield skillups) I finished with a debt of 32,375,000g. This is fairly good for Goldsmithing though as most will tell you, I accredit this low debt to gardening almost all my platinum ingots (from nuggets) through the 60-70 stage, and benefiting from a good elemental bead market (when people actually bought beads on the auction house). I also started doing my skillups at Lv95 (almost 10 months ago) when Lv74 rings were still selling for 200-500k profit which they continued to sell for until I hit Lv99, because of this I made a lot of money back in this stage.

Below is a complete breakdown of how much gil I had spent at each level of goldsmithing. I have an even more detailed list in excel but that list is hundreds of lines long.

14: +$69,100
20: +$192,000
22: +$203,000
27: +$203,400
31: +$204,700
32: +$191,800
43: +$355,600
47: +$548,000
53: +$920,000
56: +$1,820,000
63: +$543,000
64: +$3,836,000
67: +$2,900,000
70: +$6,150,000
76: -$16,900,000
80: -$27,430,000
87: -$29,600,000
92: -$50,335,000
93: -$51,370,000
95: -$57,130,000

Somewhere between 95-96 I hit my largest debt of -$61,700,000 before selling the stuff I had made.

96: -$57,800,000
97: -$52,500,000
98: -$39,240,000
99: -$32,450,000

At 99.8 I had got my debt to it's lowest ever in a long time of -$30,120,000 but bad luck and several breaks ended up putting me down to my debt's final resting place.

100: -$32,375,000

A New Year

I hope everyone had an excellent New Years and have made their resolutions for 2007 (I hope to pay off most of my student loans), I ended up going to a house party that was pretty crazy. It's been about a week since my last post because of the holidays and laziness and quite a bit has happened since then.

I obtained my Chocobo Whistle on Day 30 and promptly had to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised that at only level 2 Strength and Endurance that my chocobo was still decent speed and gave me 21 minutes of ride time.

On Monday night Element attempted their first Ouryu run, we didn't really have much of a strategy but wanted to give a different Wyrm a shot. It started off as just trying to do it like Jormungand, with SMN's doing the majority of the damage but we found this wasn't working very well because of the breakga spam and hate problems because of the amount of healing that was needed with only two main tanks.

So after our first run (sorry Saosague) we changed up some jobs and went with about 10 black mages and summoners and used a strategy where we would sleep Ouryu when he was on the ground and manaburn when he was flying, this worked to an extent but the elementals were draining on the black mages mana and there wasn't enough time to have a full MP pool when Ouryu began to fly, we ended up being kicked out with Ouryu at around 30% health, however we only took about 2-3 deaths total on the second run and are feeling confident when we try this again (we have 3 pops remaining). We will have our revenge!

I did some XP'ing on my Warrior over the weekend and yesterday while at work bringing me to level 65, also used an XP scroll on my Samurai about 10mins ago to hit Lv46 on that job. I also got invited to a merit PT on Monday before Ouryu and had a little fun in Thickets which was unusually empty so we got a really good camp and some nice XP for a couple hours.

Not shown is our BRD (Skitles) and WHM (Kabrina).

I purchased about 700-800 coins since last update and have decided to cool it on the bazaar purchases, I'm letting myself get a little out of hand and my gil is disappearing a little too quickly especially considering I still don't have my attestation and won't be attempting it again until February sometime since both our Beaucedine runs this month will be wins for new members. I wasn't at Dynamis on Saturday but attended on Tuesday for our Jeuno run. We got pretty shitty drops again (whats up with drops since the patch?) and hardly any currency. I got kind of mad and punched Sanoske in the face.