Wow, almost 3 weeks... I am teh slacks

Always good news and bad news. Bad news first, PC go boom. I came home last week and found that my PC would freeze sometimes while playing FFXI. I would have to do a hard restart and eventually, it stopped loading. The HD would spin, the power supply powered up, but the screen stayed black. Being a badass MCDST, I realized it was one five things.

1. CPU/motherboard
2. Hard drive
3. Video Card
4. Memory
5. Power Supply

Seeing as those are the only real things in the computer itself, I started to tackle each one. If it was the memory the screen would load but show an error message. If the power supply was dead nothing would power up (the HD was spinning np and so were the case/cpu fans). That left the cpu/mobo, the hd and the video card. I went to Best Buy and bought a PNY nVidea 9600GT and a Seagate 250GB HD. After installing one at a time and then both at the same time I found nothing was loading. Same black screen. It wasn't the monitor connections, so it had to be the cpu/mobo. After returning the stuff back to Best Buy (TY Best Buy cash return policy!) I ordered a new cpu/mobo combo. I ended up ordering a Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 CPU with a Asus P5N73-AM mobo. For all you tech geeks out there:

• CPU: Socket 775 Support Intel Core 2 Quad/ Core 2 Duo/ Pentium D/ Pentium 4/ Celeron Processor; Support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology; FSB 1333/1066/800/533 MHz
• Chipset: nVIDIA GeForce 7050 & nForce 610i
• Memory: 2x 240pin DDR2-800/667/533 DIMMs, Dual Channel, Non-ECC/ Un-buffered, Max Capacity 4GB
• Slots: 1x PCI-Express x16 Slots; 1x PCI-Express x1 Slot; 2x PCI Slots
• IDE/SATA: 1x ATA-133 Channel; 4x SATA2 ports, Support RAID 0, 1, JBOD
• Ports: 8x USB 2.0 Ports (4 rear, 4 by headers); 2x PS/2 Ports; 1x Serial Port; 1x Parallel Port; 1x S/PDIF Out; 1x VGA port; 1x RJ45 LAN Port; Audio I/O Jacks

Anyways, the cpu and mobo should be arriving 2/4/09 and hopefully through deductive testing (guessing) I found the issue that was wrong with my PC. Now the good news!

I bought myself a new (to me) laptop 4 days before my PC went DOA. Picked up a 15.4" Acer with 2GB memory, 250GB HD and Pentium Duo running 2.0Ghz. Luckily it runs FFXI without any problems but I gotta get used to this smaller keyboard, different layout and VISTA. As pretty as it is, I have found it to be annoying already. Always asking for permissions and not loading windower or ApRadar or any number of programs I need/want it to run. WHAT ABOUT FFXI LAWLER?

Well.... my update is more PC than game but I do have some new news. I got WAR to 74 and now stand at about 20k till 75. I've gotten my cooking to 47+ but my fishing is taking longer than expected (only 13). I've gotten some nice gear recently; got Enkidu Leggins for my SAM till I get Shura Haidate and also picked up a Maneater to use with my Joyeuse. My WAR isn't all that gimp. of course I still have some stuff to get (head and legs) but it's getting there!

Other fun things have been seeing Oneway get his Aegis (CHOP CHOP!), getting my Golden Star in Campaign, and taking down Dark Ixion. We got him last night and it was the first time I'd fought him. I was the tank party's BRD and at first I tried to buff them in battle but soon learned that was a waste since a) They ran away from his AoE moves every 30 seconds and b) I didn't cause I was singing and was getting wrecked. Luckily I'm a smart taru BRD and use Stoneskin so I never died, but I did learn that when you are the BRD in the tank party for DI you have to cycle Pianissimo for your tanks. We did it with 2 PLD/NINs and 1 RDM/NIN and so it was pretty much Pia>March>Pia>Ballad x3. Then Ballad myself and the 2 WHMs who were on the turrets, wash, rinse, repeat. Some fun screenshots from the fight:


That stupid horse kicks HARD



(I accidently cropped the "Odogg was defeated by Dark Ixion" part...


full drops!


new title!

I have more pics from things that have happened the past 3 weeks but they're on the PC so when it gets up and running, I'll suddenly remember a ton of other stuff I'd done/gotten. Until then I guess I'll wrap things up. Take care everyone, see you in game!

New Year, Same Claims

So much has gone on the first week of 09. We got a Ridill, we went 8/9 in claims over a 3 day period picking up:

• Aspi
• Adamantoise
• Fafnir
• Nidhogg
• Behemoth
• Tiamat
• Cerberus
• Khimaira

We only missed one NQ Behemoth yesterday. One of the Fafnir's was a double drop Aq Abj: Feet so I ended up with one. That puts me currently at 5 cursed abjs I have in storage.

lol@DHands...

Also I've taken up crafting. I'm fully aware that in crafting most of the money you put in to get high level never sees any returns... so if you pump 10M into clothcraft, rarely will you get back more than 10M in returns, thus preventing any profit. Still, it won't cost me much as a cook or a fisherman to get up there in levels so it won't take alot of sales to get me out of the red. People always buy food, and most of the time it's sushi. As evidenced by my last post I started fishing on Maller, but recently I began cooking on my Galkan mule, Mallet. since he doesn't need any job levels to skill up.

Putting in a couple of hours a day on each craft has been easy and its obvious that cooking is way faster, even if fishing is way cheaper. I was able to fish up about 500 or so Moat Carp and get to level 10ish. On the flip side I got my mule to level 42 in the same period of time. Mostly on cheap synths like bug broth, selbina butter, baked popoto, insect balls ($$), and fish broth.

Hopefully by early March I'll near 100 or so, turning in all my guild points for the apron, hat, and other items. Fishing may take a bit longer at this pace though... I think I'm around 497/10,000 for Lu Shang's but since Moat Carps cap at 56, I'll be fishing those until I either cap or get that damn Lu.

Some final other bits of info before I sign off. We did 3 Jailer of Love runs and ended up with three Love Torques, two Novia Earrings, and one Novio Earring (grats Nya!). I managed to finagle a Love Halberd from JoL as well so I think I may be doing some much needed skillup on polearm for Salvage.



lol taruHP

What else.. what else... Hmm.. Need to do some BCNM and KSNM runs soon...

I think that's about all I got right now. HNMs are starting to open at the wee morning hours of 7am-9am EST so I may get a day or two more of camping and then they're gonna be during work hours, so that kinda stinks. Also I joined a somewhat static party for Nyzul Isle so hopefully I'll be climbing them floors and getting that elusive Askar gear for my SAM.

Well, until next time...

Ringin in the New Year with a new post

A little cliche, I know, but who cares, this is my blog.

Finally got home form Florida and was able to get some guilt free time in game. Only problem was what was waiting for me back in NYC... work! As much as I wanted to put in long nights the reality was I wasn't going to be able to stay on much past 10:30pm EST. It seemed at the time that everything was popping after 11pm, but stuff moved back and I finally hit my days off. A quick update of what has happened in the past week or so.



First thing as soon as I logged in my first day back I fought Tiamat. To me, Timmy's always been easy but for some reason there was some trouble with this fight. It wasn't a WW fight, it was an assisted fight but the tanks were all over the place it seemed and at 3%... it flailed. Of course going on SMN I wasn't harmed and only about 4-5 people died overall but still, Timmy should be an easy fight if you have the right resist gear on and it didn't seem the PLD/NINs did. Was a messy fight and crappy drops. Wyrm Horn onry. lawl.

After that it seemed like either I was missin stuff or we weren't doing a whole lot. I got Behemoth one day, 1x hide (wtf is with my luck), then we did a Dynamis-Bastok which produced this:

Open lotted MNK feet 15 seconds apart. Yay. SMN hands did drop and I high lotted... then I found out I needed like 6 more Dynamis' to be able to lot. They of course went to someone who hasn't logged into the game or attended a LS event in over 2 weeks. Yes, I am that lucky.



We did an Tier III Einherjar where we cleared the first 3 waves in seconds, then got raped by King Behemoth. Before the fight I was meditating and attaining a true level of nirvana, as eveidenced by my levitation above.

I started to work on WAR a little bit in Campaign. Seemed like easy enough XP, and if you die you don't even lose any XP. Lots of people around, I can quietly just slap around a few mobs and steal a few thousand xp a fight without any harm, right?

Seems not. Stupid ass Orc MNK NM. I was determined to get my revenge and not soon after I sure as hell did!

HAHA! Took down the Orc King himself Bakgodek. Not so cool now with that big goofy gold crown now, are we?! Even sent em running back to Davoi with their tails between their legs.



Then on New Year Eve we pulled out all the stops. Camped and claimed Khimera (5x Lightning Crystals YES!!), then camped and claimed Aspi (2x D.Feet YES!!!!), and finally we ended the night by camping and claiming Nidhogg (N. Legs WHO CARES, I'M NOT A THF!!!)




Finally, I decdided to take up a craft. I know most crafts really don't make money anymore but I'm not really a farmer with a 37THF so I figured I'd take up fishing and cooking. There's no real outlay for fishing and cooking is always gonna be used and you will always have repeat customers. Sell a Haub+1... sure you make a shit ton of money (if it sells), but then you're done. Want more money, make another one. Yeah right. My last charcater had 93 cooking and 89 fishing so I know what foods (as of August 07) were in high demand and what I need to fish/cook up to be able to keep some form of a steady income coming in. Well that is all, I leave you with my results of almost 2 hours of fishing straight last night. Nine stacks of Moat Carp down... 824 more to go for the Lu Shangs!