I would have never thought I would be posting this so quickly after reaching fishing 100 but I am.  I obtained the Opal Silk today from Zaldon, so I am now half way to obtaining the Ebisu Fishing Rod!!



In order to get the Opal Silk, you need to fish up Liks and then turn them into Zaldon.  Zaldon will gut them open and see if the Opal Silk is inside.  There is less than a 1% chance that he will find the Opal Silk.  I previously turned in 10 Liks with no luck, but after reading some topics on the Fishing forums I decided to try out some of the Fishing Superstitions.  A few people say that you should turn in a bunch of fish at one time instead of a few each day.  They also say never to turn in fish on Watersday which kind of surprised me since you would think that fish and water go together.  They also say you should turn in fish on either New Moon 0% or Full Moon 100% and never twice in the same conquest week.

For the past few days, I was storing up Liks in my storage and accumulated 21.  I noticed a New Moon 0% was going to happen on Monday morning, so I thought I would wake up and give it a try.  Much to my surprise on the 4th fish Zaldon gave me the Opal Silk!!  So overall I was only 1/14 on Liks.  This is amazing as you hear horror stories of people that go 0/400 and even 0/600 on these items.  I still need to catch Gugurusaurs and turn them in for a try at the Saber Shoot, so I hope I'm just as lucky as I was with the Opal Silk.

Current Mood: optimistic

It has been a long and slow journey, but I have finally reached Fishing level 100!!  I got my final 0.2 skillup on an Armored Pisces in Oldton Movalpolos.



I no longer need to fish for skillups only.  I can now focus on fishing for profit and fishing towards obtaining the Ebisu Rod.  I hope that isn't a long and slow journey :-)

One of the best parts of reaching Fishing level 100 is that I no longer neew to keep all the Pelican Rings that I had in storage.  This gave me +5 storage!!

Current Mood: relieved

It's tough being a Hero all the time.  First I saved Whitegate, then Bastok, and now I have saved Windurst.  This past Tuesday I completed the Windurst Storyline with the help of the usual suspects (Bungelina, Rycen, Ixander, and Tanith).  I helped Star Sibyl release Fenrir so he can once again protect the citizens of Windurst.  The Full Moon Fountain flows again.  Here is a screen shot of Star Sibyl releasing Fenrir.




For all of my hard work and all of the services that I have given to Windurst they rewarded me with what every Hero wants........A Flag of the Nation we just saved!!!  (plus 100k which I couldn't refuse)



On the right is the Flag of Windurst.  On the left is the Flag of Bastok.  On the other wall I have the Flag that I received from Whitegate for helping them out and the Fishing Hole Map from the Fishing Guild.  That only leaves me with one Wall Space left!!!  I sure hope when I help Sandy out they give me something other than a flag.....

It was a very productive weekend.  After putting off completing "The Opo-Opo and I" quest for the past few months, I was determined to finish it up after I obtained the Ancient Salt.  Ixander, Alistaire, and Tanith helped me farm the Ancient Salt on Saturday.  I stopped working on the Opo-Opo quest because I still needed 3 out of the 10 items required for the quest.  I needed the Ancient Salt, the Wyvern Skull, and the Happy Egg.  The Ancient Salt was a pain to get because you had to get past some weight sensor doors in the Quicksand caves.  The Wyvern Skull was also difficult to get because you had to fight Hurricane Wyvern in Ifrit's Cauldron.  As the picture below will show you, it's a pretty scary place.  Good thing Yufafa was there to help cure me when needed.



The Happy Egg wasn't too bad, it was dropped by Knight Crawlers in The Boyahda Tree.  After obtaining the last three items I quickly traveled to Kazham to turn them into the opo-opo that requested them.  To my surprise they all gathered together and crowned me King of the Opo-opo!!!





From the pictures below you can see me with my new crown.  You can also see how all of the Opo-opo pay respect to me by bowing.  If I could only get others to respect me this way......






In other news this weekend, I was able to obtain the Relaxing Earring and Sorcerer's Tonban!!

The Relaxing Earring is obtained through the "In The Name of Science" Quest.  You have to collect organs and tissues from the mobs in Sea in order to get the item that you want.  The earring gives you +2 MP recovered while healing.  This give me a total of +26 MP recovered while healing with all of my other healing gear (not including food).  This becomes very useful as I usually use a lot of MP while nuking mobs.



On Saturday we did a Dynamis Bastok run.  It was a very good run for many reasons.  First off we completed the whole zone with time to spare.  We killed every mob which was the first time that has ever happened while I participated.  Secondly, it was Tanith's first time doing Dynamis with us which was a treat.  She also got to pull a few mobs too!!  Lastly three pairs of Sorcerer's Tonban's dropped!!  After a little confusion at the start, I found out I was 2nd in line to obtain this piece of gear, so I was able to lot one of them!!  The Sorcerer's Tonban give a 5% dmg bonus when you cast a spell with the same element as the current day.  The extra damage is really nice and can save a lot of mp since sometimes you don't need to cast another spell to do the same damage.



The only drawback from obtaining all of these nice pieces of gear is that I am starting to run out of room.  I might need to create a mule soon....

Current Mood: happy

It has been a while since I lasted posted.  During this time Team Dry Run has just completed all of the missions!!!  Here are some pictures that I took during our CoP battles.  Enjoy!!

Below is a picture of Team Dry Run before we took on the memmets, Ultima, and Omega.


Another picture of us on the airship before starting the fight.


Yay, we obtained Sea access!!


Now it is time to wander our way to Promathia.  First we need a quick lecture from Team Dry Run's Captain.  You can notice that Vaagan is way in the back sitting by himelf.  He was being bad so Rycen made him sit in the corner.


It's time to fight Promathia!!  In true Team Dry Run fashion, we beat him on our 2nd Dry Run.


Thanks to all the Team Dry Run members (Rycen, Vaagan, Ixander, Tanith, and Bungelina) for helping complete the CoP storyline.  Special thanks to Rycen for starting up the CoP static and getting the ball rolling.  It takes a lot of time to coordinate the schedule and to get everyone up to speed on exactly what we need to bring and what we need to do during the fights!!  I never thought that I would finish the CoP missions, it has been a lot of fun and I hope we can continue to do other Missions/Quests/Events together!!

I would also like to thank Aelia for joining us on all of the early CoP fights before Vaagan was able to join us.  I hope you and Temenos are doing well and maybe one day we will see you online again :-)

On Thursday our CoP static tackled Promathia Mission 4-3  The Secrets of Worship.  We ended up with 5 people only instead of six since there was some misscommunication between some of the other members.  That didn't stop "Team Gimp" from trying to complete another mission though.  We headed out to the Sacrarium with the 5 members (PLD, THF, MNK, RDM, and WHM).

The first part of the mission is to gather some keys.  We had to kill fomors for these, but this wasn't too tough.  It took us about an hour to get the two keys that we needed.  Surprisingly no subligar dropped for the quest.  We next needed the Sealion Crest Key.  This was dropped by a Corse NM named Keremet.




There was a little interesting twist to fighting this NM.  When you start fighting him, 12 other skeletons come to his aid.  They are very easy to kill and you are able to kill them before you attack the NM, so they don't really become a factor at all.  This battle wasn't too bad, except for some people getting charmed I think it went very well for only haveing 5 people.

Now that we killed fomors to get the keys and defeated the NM for the Sealion Crest Key, we had to leave the Sacrarium and reduce our fomor hate.  This would ensure that we would not agro the fomors as we wandered around the Sacrarium trying to kill the last NM for this mission.  The last NM we had to kill was a ghost named Old Professor Mariselle.



It was a long battle, the Professor keeps warping around the classroom which was a little annoying.  He also had two students that would warp aslo and cause some havoc.

Once we defeated the Professor we finished the mission by getting a final cutscene.  After the cutscene, we were able to explore a room where we found a nice statue and some paintings.  Below are a few pictures.









Overall a very good CoP run with only 5 people!!

On Wednesday our CoP static continued.  At this point, we were up to Promathia Mission 4-2 "The Savage".  This means we had to battle Ouryu.



We don't have the ideal party setup for this fight, but we thought we would give it a try.  We figured we should bring a lot of Hi-Potions and other items to help us out if things start to go bad.  We didn't have to kill Ouryu, just get him down to 30% health so he would give up fighting.

The battle started out good.  We were doing decent damage and Ixander was surviving all of the damage that Ouryu was dishing out.  As white mage, I was constantly spamming Cure 3 on Ixander and only taking breaks in between to use some Ethers and Yagudo Drinks to get some MP back.  Whenever Ouryo would take to the sky, Rycen was in charge of using a Mistmelt to drag him back down to earth.  This worked very well and we had him down to about 50% health.  That's when the battle started to get interesting to say the least.  I started to get hate from Ouryo and I eventually died.  Ixander started to spam Hi-Potions to keep alive.  I reraised to cure some more, but then Ouryo went to the sky and almost instantly did one of his AoE attacks from the sky.  That quickly killed me off again and Ixander wasn't too far behind after me.  Lina and Rycen did their 2 hour abilities and Ouryo was down to 35% health or so.  Lina got hate from using her 2 hour and she died.  It looked like we were going to lose the battle when we were so close.  It seemed right at the time Rycen was about to die, he got enough TP to do one more weapon skill and that seemed to be enough to get Ouryo down to 30% health.  We had some how won the battle on our first try!!  We were all really happy.  Rycen was probably more happy then anyone else since he has been stuck on this battle for over a year.  This reminded us of some of the close calls we had when we did the ToA storyline.  It's always nice to get a win in such a dramatic fashion.

Last night Lina and I decided that we would start to camp one of the NMs for her Brown Belt.



To obtain the Brown Belt you need to kill three NMs and get the three Rare/Ex drops.  The three NMs are Deadly Dodo, Nue, and Morbolger and the three items you need are the Dodo Skin, the Nue Fang, and the Morbolger Vine.

We decide to camp Deadly Dodo first since it was close to Jeuno.  We head out to Saurpmugue Champaign and start to kill the place holders.  We are getting pretty good drops on the placeholders and other mobs we kill since I sub THF for treasure hunter.  After about 30 minutes of camping, Deadly Dodo pops.  We get the claim and start killing him.  We finish him off pretty easily and he drops the Dodo Skin!!!  I was very surprised as I went 1/6.

We are feeling good and decide to camp Nue, so we head out and start to kill the placeholder.  After about 30 minutes Nue pops.  We start to kill him and he goes down fast.  We see the items drop into the treasure pool and he drops a Black Tiger Fang.  Oh well we say, we figure we can't be that lucky :-)

It's starting to get late and we are starting to get sleepy so we decide to head to Ordelle's Cave and stay logged in so we can get the Time of Death for Morbolger.  Morbolger isn't a lottery spawn, so we don't have to kill placeholders.  Instead he just pops every 21-24 hours.  So the trick is to just leave your character logged in and wait for him to pop and for someone to kill him.  You can then get the Time of Death and come back and kill him the next day after 21 hours have passed.  We head to his pop location and I can't believe my eyes.  Morbolger is just standing there!!  I quickly cast stun on him and get the claim.  We kill him and get the Morbolger Vine since it's a 100% drop.

We are feeling awake again so we decide to head back and camp Nue again.  We start to kill the placeholders and wait for him to pop.  It is about 1:50am and we decide to wait two more pops which would make it 2am.  The first one pops and it's just a Tundra Tiger.  We wait another 5 minutes...  Five minutes is up and we start to circle the tower again.  We see the Tiger from a distance and it's just another Tundra Tiger.  Oh well, we figure 2 out of the 3 items in one day is still pretty good!! :-D

 

On Wednesday night our CoP static set out to fight Diabolos in Promathia Mission 3-5 - Darkness Named.



It was surprisingly easy to get to the fight location, it was just an outpost warp and a few shimmering wall zones away (this would come in handy later on).

We arrived at the fight and prepared for battle.  The few concerns we had was first off the floor.  During the battle random titles on the floor will disappear and anyone standing on them will fall down and be devoured by a bunch of spiders waiting below.  As you can see from the picture that another group took below.




Once we sorted out where everyone was going to stand, the next and bigger concern was Diabolos's TP attack Nightmare.  This is an aoe attack that puts everyone to sleep and inflicts a nasty bio effect that slowly drops everyone's hit points.  The plan was to try and stun the Nightmare attack with the Blue Mage spell Head Butt and other weapon skills such as Flat Blade and Shoulder Tackle.  This is a difficult task as you have a small window to stun the Nightmare attack once Diabolos starts it.  It makes it even tougher since the log is being spammed with so much information that it's hard to identify when it's about to happen.  I've had a lot of difficulty doing stuns as Black Mage at times for these reasons.  Good thing I was White Mage for this fight so I didn't have to worry about it this time :-)

We head into the battle and everything seems to be going well. Ixander pulls Diabolos over to the side and gains a lot of hate.  We start dwindling Diabolos's hit points down, but at around 50% health he starts to spam Nightmare and puts us all to sleep.  He then kills Ixander and without a tank we all go down pretty fast at that point.

We are kicked from the fight and raise and recover.  We go in for a second attempt.  This time things are going much better, we get Diabolos down to about 15% health.  Ixander and I start to run out of MP and Aelia is pretty much curing Ixander with her Waltzs.  At this point I can't rest for MP also since I have poison on me and I have ran out of supplies to gain back MP.  My last attempt at curing is my 2HR ability Benediction.  I run up to the group and use it.  It seems like everything is ok and Diabolos is almost dead.  Then he gets Nightmare off and puts us all asleep.  Ixander once again goes down and Diabolos picks us off one by one as nobody can do anything except watch since they were asleep.

We are kicked from the fight again and decide to try once more.  Since we are out of supplies I warped back to town and bought supplies for everyone.  As mentioned earlier, good thing it was easy to get to the fight location otherwise everyone would have to leave and it might have taken a very long time.  I return with a lot of supplies and we try again.  Things are going well, but Diabolos gets Nightmare off again.  For some reason luckily I woke up first and was able to wake everyone else up.  We recover nicely.  Ixander starts to run out of MP so he starts to pop Hi-Potions as needed.  I'm running out of MP so I start to pop Ethers.  We get him down to about 10% and he gets Nightmare off once more.  We all get into yellow HP, but we wake up and are able to survive.  We kill him off right when we needed to.  It seems like if the battle went any longer we might have lost.  We did a much better job that run and was able to stun nightmare more often.  It was a great battle and a lot of fun!!!  Now we have access to the AH in Tavnazian Safehold, can outpost warp there and more importantly we have access to the Dreamworld Dynamis areas!!

Bungee just received his new Harpsicord that he ordered from San d'Oria:



As a tribute to the fine craftsmen of San d'Oria, Bungee decided to play the San d'Orian theme:



You obtain the Harpsicord by buying the FFXI Piano Collection CD that just came out.  I really enjoy listening to the songs on the piano.  They seem to be really soothing to listen to, but have a lot of energy to them as well.  The Harpsicord will play the San d'Orian theme every game day at 22:00.  If you are online and would like to check it out let me know and I can invite you over to my Mog House.