Last Saturday while playing on my 14-day trial, I was invited to attend a Dynamis with the group I used to play with on Diabolos, now called LastBoss.  I went as a White Mage and it is the first time I’ve been a White Mage in Dynamis in nearly 2 years.

It really was like riding a bike.  I guess since I’ve been playing White Mage since summer of 2005 it was all muscle memory.  It probably also helps that I had a backup copy of my macros from my old computer and was able to get back to what I was used to quickly.

The group is new, and had some trouble.  They also only had about 20 people in the zone, excluding myself.

At least we got to the Angry Tuna…

At least it wasn’t my fault?

Anyways, after this, I was ready to restart the Pyra.

I logged on to Caitsith just in time to go kill Roc.

ToD was sometime that doesn’t matter anymore because the server was reset.

I then got to go and do Limbus with my old group.  I missed them.  But lets not tell them that, it makes it harder for me to negotiate for more cookies.

I have to admit, losing my Thief and Monk macros made this tough.  I barely remember what gear I had to switch and when (if I remember right, both had significantly more gear swap macros than my White Mage ever did).  I was casting spells and using JAs and WSs from the menus again like a common noob.  I might be somewhat nooby again, but I’m far from ‘common’ .  Limbus was really fun, and it was hardly about the items, it was just about having fun with some old friends.

On Sunday night, I went back into Dynamis with KillerInstinct.  We did a Jeuno.  After I’d spent half the day writing new Thief macros, I ended up going as a Monk.  However…

I was a little disappointed.  The other one only hit me for 700ish.  My monk has ~1600 HPs in Dynamis gear (and I was /WAR)

I noticed a few things after my extended absence –

1. I can’t remember what is ‘good’ for damage anymore.  My asurans were hitting for ~450-500, and I was pulling hate, but I thought they should be double that
2. The economy has gone crazy.  Most ancient currencies have doubled in price while I was away.  I’m sure not complaining though, as I had a bunch on Pyra which I’ve sold to gain some pocket change.
3. Thief evasion is still as amazing as always.  Because I need inventory space, I went and completed the first two Young Griffons quests.  The second requires you to fight a NM with a high counter rate.  Well, he barely hit me on my Thief (ok so I added about +17 evasion skill and wore some of my normal +eva gear).
4. I need to completely rewrite my Thief and Monk macros.  They needed it before, but it feels like such a daunting task.

Anyways, enjoy your Moogle Coup of State and update.  I’m going on vacation in a few days, and so won’t be even starting the 2 mini expansions for about a month.

-pyra

First monster.

Wooot!  It was off of a Kindred Thief too.

Which completes my set, making me 5/5.

Wootness.

Then at the next Xarcabard run, this happened.

So now I have a Shadow Mantle too.  Sweet!  (Maybe I should level a Paladin)

I don’t think this is extremely impressive, but on darksday, with the extra 20 VIT, I had 118 VIT.  As a Monk.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) we had some good luck with Blue Mage hats.

Yeah, I know.  It was crazy, and blue mage is now on free lot status.  I believe we got 5 of them in one run.

At least we are getting lots of drops in Xarcabard now.

On a different note, I found this funny (its from limbus).

Haven’t seen a 999 rolled in a long time.

-pyra

My Dynamis shell — KillerInstinct of Caitsith — has been around for a while, and has been doing Dreamland for over a year or so at this point.

Since we lost our old pullers, and we had to train up some new ones, we decided to try to improve our time to gain more time for relic farming.  Ideally, we would also decrease the number of deaths.

One of our members — Machtaru (he posts here and is a friend of mine) — came up with a crazy idea for Qufim.  It involved 2 parts.

1) Skip the statue NM and melee burn the Mega Boss.

2) Pull the Mega Boss without sacing the goblin statues.  There was a rumor that it was doable.

Since this was a new pull for us, we had 2 backups at the MB pull.

I got to be the primary for this one.  Yes, I was very nervous.

We camped in the South, instead of North near the Thunder Elemental and the Rocs.

To get to the MB, I hugged the tower’s outer wall.  It was on my left.

Before I could see where the entrance to the tower would be, it had aggroed me.

The nearest statue is about 1.5 – 2x the Dynamis link range away.  The one we could see walking was too far away to matter.

As soon as it aggroed, I hit flee, and hugged the wall back South (it was on my right this time).

His AoE throwing ability will take off 3 shadows, or hit for about 700 dmg with an earth staff.  You can only survive 2-3 hits, and I really doubt you can evade one.

By skipping the statue NM, we saved about 15 minutes over our normal time.

For the pull, we had a primary puller (me) as THF/NIN, a secondary puller for if I linked and had to run (Jastor) as THF/NIN, and a tertiary puller/observer to see what really happened (Machtaru) as NIN/THF.

This pull method could not have been simpler.  No links, no extra aggro, no sacing (although we did run through a what-if scenario in the event that I did aggro — I didn’t think I would live through the pull until I did).

Why am I putting this out there?  I want to see if other’s can reproduce the effort, to ensure it was not a fluke.  I’m also curious if this pull can be done from the North side, instead of the South.

I don’t have any pictures right now, and I’m heading out of town for the weekend.  As an anti-spam filter, I hold in moderation all first-time commenters.  So if you are new, and don’t have an approved comment already, it won’t appear until I approve it Sunday or Monday.  Also, no pictures until Sunday or Monday.  If there is interest, I’ll go take some in Qufim and post them.

Another thing we noticed was that the NM Statue (Sottung) is not only magic damage, but also physical damage.  The melee hits were doing noticeably less than normal.  We took about the same number of deaths as normal, and the fight lasted longer than it should have, but we won, and saved 15 extra minutes for farming.

Finally, congratulations to Machtaru for coming up with this crazy idea, especially when we were told that it could not be done.

The first comes with a picture.

After he D/Cd, his icon in the search screen showed him D/Cing.  I’ve never seen that before, but it may have been there for a while.

The second is more important.

A few weeks ago, I entered my mule about 2 hours late on a Thursday to try to help clean up after a bad Dynamis wipe.

The following Sunday, my mule was able to enter at the same time as everyone else.

Which would mean, the time you are marked as entering Dynamis is the time the hourglass is broken, not the time you enter.

I’ve only tried it once, but wanted to spread the news to see if anyone else had seen this.

-pyra

At the last run, one of the leaders said to try footwork.

The first one is at 300% tp, the second around 120% tp.  I’m impressed.  Especially considering that a Soul Eater-ed Dragon Kick only gets me about 650 damage (at full health).

For normal dynamis and limbus, I wouldn’t use footwork much.  The slow delay means I get 1 or maybe 2 hits in per monster.  In city dyanmis, I only get 3-5 hits per normal monster as it is, footwork would lower that too much.  But for a big WS every so often, or the start of a fight like DL (or any HNM for that matter), footwork is a nice boost in damage without soul eater.

I do agree though, stacking footwork with hundred fists would be completely broken.  Footwork kicks do more damage than a normal kick (even with dune boots) by about 40-50%.  It would be so broken it wouldn’t even be funny.

1890 HP without food even.  And just after Pyra hit two years old too (account was started early April 2006).

I’m actually surprised I got it, as the monk body has not wanted to drop for me for a long time.

Anyways, this is my first full set of AFv2, even though Ata has been 4/5 on white mage AFv2 since May 2006 (when it was still an odd thing to see a white mage with a Cleric’s Body and Pants).

It took three LSs to get this all.

PheonixPinion (Boots)
AmericanIdol (Hands)
KillerInstinct (Pants, Cape, Head, Body)

-pyra

Only 2 more years until he’ll be ready for stage 5.  Or so.  Maybe he can fund it with fire clusters.

Since we had a different puller than normal for this Jeuno run, and I know he reads this blog, I’m going to embarrass him by showing the final pull of the night.  At least it happened with only about 5 minutes left, although I’ve still got no clue how this link managed to happen.  And yes, this was my first run with my Homam Pants.

In the interest of not having too many short entries, here’s a fun game to play.  Its called Real or RMT.  Ebaydotcom, what is your guess?

-pyra

Its been too long without a real update, so here is a good one.

About 2 weeks ago, KillerInstinct fought Dynamis Lord again.  This time for some good drops.

Yeah, full drops from a DL, a very rare occurrence.

But the most important part is this–

Yeah, 548, one of my highest weapon skills on DL to date.

But the best part is this.

That DK was the kill shot.  For full drops.

Which of course has one obvious conclusion.

Anytime you want drops, just bring more Monks.

-pyra

Yes, I was there for TH-Whoredom, but they pulled it to the bottom of the cliff so I could hit it once.

While hoping for a D. Ignot to sell, we got a dryad staff instead.  As the only White Mage present, free lot for me!

So its a free 50 MP.  Not too bad for a short run.

But you might say, a short run from where.

Well, I had just outposted to the Merphy Mountains to finish up mission 6-2.  Earlier in the day, I was a bit bored and decided to duo the fight with myself.

The fight is quite easy for a MNK/NIN and a WHM/BLM.  Although it did go bad after the first Yag, the final 3 went very smooth, especially since I managed to get the SAM and WHM to use their 2 hour abilities before I died.

After my trip to Castle-O, I went to see the Star Sibyl and now my signet lasts 1 hour longer than before.  Yay!

Oh, and the 40K is nice too.  Payed for that night’s Limbus run.

I also finished up my 4th Star in Campaign.  Hopefully I’ll be un-lazy and get the first metal this weekend.

Other than that, I’ve only done a Dynamis – Xarcabard.  Thief hands finally fell after a 5 month break.

1 more person off the list before I will get mine.

Since we always do a Dynamis Lord when we go to Xarcabard, and I always go to Xarcabard as Monk, I got to try a decent Chi blast on him.  I was in mostly melee gear as a MNK/DRK, and I only got 10 boosts, and its Dynamis Lord, so this isn’t horrible.

Part of this came from my newly acquired Temple Crown +1, and a borrowed Osode.

Speaking of a borrowed Osode, here is what I look like in 4/5 of the Sky Set.

Soon I’ll have one of my own.  Hands are kind of meh for monk, I prefer the Melee Gloves, or the +1 if I can get them.  According to Genome, they help with counter rate, aside from the obvious evasion granted by 15 extra AGI.  But I would put myself at the bottom of the list for Seiryu’s Kote, Rangers, Ninjas, and even Samurai deserve them before a Monk would.

-pyra

Star #3.  I should get Star #4 at the end of this week depending on how much time I have.  Does anyone actually know that that symbol is on these?

While doing campaigns, I ran across some new, and bazaar, names.

I’m not sure what Instant Love is, nor why she was making some inappropriate emotes towards Xenith.  Maybe I just don’t want to know.

Here was something completely unexpected.  I was asked to join an Assault group, and we did one I’ve never done before.

We did worms, and I did a 1K Darkness o.O !

And it was just enough for the promotion.

About time hardly describes it, but I was still happy about this occurrence.

The quest was interesting, you have to run around to 5 lakes around the thickets and woodlands.

And I got this screenshot.  If you know my dislike of elves, it makes sense why I liked it so much .

That’s right you smelly elf, bow down to the cat!

Oh, and also about time.

I got my astral leather for Ata’s SMN Boots +1.  I got the Temenos half forever and a day ago.  I turned them in right after limbo, so they are ready as soon as I need them.  I also finished a Monk set for Pyra, but have not decided which piece to upgrade yet.  I also will need more coins since I’ve been using them as fast as they come in and only have about 5 left.

Finally from me, I took this picture in my last dynamis run and wanted to post it.  Click for a larger version.

-pyra

That’s the 6th rank in Campaign, of a total of 12 currently available.  I’m hoping to have the 10th rank by the expansion next month.

Well, going along with the Monk theme, in an amazingly close Apollyon SW (down to 60 seconds remaining on 2nd floor before we got the time chest), I got final stinged.

However, 879 HP is just over half of my normal geared up hit points.

Speaking of Hit Points, I’ve managed to boost my total HP to over 2000.

I do cheat a little.  I have 30 MP which is converted to HP.  The one earring is a Brutal, the other is an Intruder earring.

Speaking of the intruder earring…

I just got the intruder this week as well (and no, you can’t have ToD).

While waiting for Centurio to pop, I hunted the Dune Widow.  I got a claim, but this is all it dropped for me.

Boooooooooo.  I need teh gilz.

Finally, the most important part of this post.

Please congratulate Mizuhito on getting his Melee Cyclas, and hitting 4/5 on Monk AFv2.

And that is it, the week of the monk.

Hopefully, a couple more Melee Cyclas fall — as we are farming the glacier for the next week — and I can not only beat my 2038 HP, but can also hit 6/6 on Monk AFv2.

-pyra

Another year has passed.  At this time, I would like to reflect on the occurrences of the past 365 Days.

For starters, this has been a good year for Dynamis productivity.  In it, we’ve seen Atalantia reach 4 of 5 on her White Mage AFv2.

At the same time, she has also received some Summoner AFv2, making her 2 of 5.

Her Yinyang was definitely a victory for all of Vana’diel as well.  We all rejoiced in her happiness.

This has also been a good year for Pyra.  She was able to hit 4 of 5 on Thief AFv2.

And her Monk also hit 4 of 5, with the relic accessory, making the Monk 5 of 6 overall.

In addition, Sky was kind in 2007, allowing her to obtain 3 of 5 of the Sky "God Set".

We had significant victories in 2007 and early 2008.  Victories in Limbus came just last week ago with the first piece of AF+1 for Pyra.  Atalantia is still working very hard to get her first piece, with a breakthrough expected anytime now.

This is an important first step, with many more steps to come.  This piece also marked the near completion of Pyra’s Chi Blast set, missing only 1 key item, Kirin’s Osode.  It will come with time, but until then, we need to persevere and strengthen our resolve to work towards our goals.  The Osode is within reach, and I urge everyone to not give up now.

In other news, Dynamis continues the be our main source of Experience Point loss.  Every loss saddens us, but makes us all stronger.

We know that some loss is a necessary sacrifice to ensure the groups grow stronger and closer.  With time, we can minimize this loss, but until then, we will do everything we can to make sure that is it not in vain.

The economy has been a roller coaster ride this past year as well.  The Really Moronic Tribe, a cult originating in the far east, has been nearly eliminated.  However, this extermination effort has not been without its draw backs.  The effort has caused a recession as new industry was built to make up for the loss of productivity.  We will recover.  We will succeed.

The war continues 20 years ago.  It is a hard fight, and the beastmen never run out of reinforcements.  We must fight in the past to ensure a safe today.  A year ago, we thought that we would lose to the beastmen, and many encouraged us to stop fighting, saying that a pitiful amount of Allied Notes was not worth the loss of life on both sides.  Detractors said that the forces of the 4 nations lacked the courage to step up and do what was needed to make their lands safe.

Today, we see the National Protection Councils, or NPCs, in all 4 nations sending troops to support the war effort.  Eventually, our combined effort will drive the beastmen forces back and we will take the fight to the Shadowlord himself.  We cannot allow his regime to survive.  His days are numbered, and no matter where in the mountains of the Northlands he hides, we will find him.  We will be victorious.  We do this because we have to, for the present, for our children, and for Cid.

This next year will not be easy.  Proto-Omega, Proto-Ultima, Dynamis Lord, and others seem to just reappear every few weeks.  They must be defeated for peace to reign.

We will not be pulling our forces out of any zones where they are still needed.  Al’Taieu still crawls with creatures, some would say monsters, so notorious that they take 18 or more brave fighters to hunt down and capture or kill.  But it is worth the effort, the items we find on them prove infinitely valuable in the continuing battles.  We will undertake missions, as they come up, and finish those missions we are already working on.

Together, we can make Vana’diel a strong nation for all, with a good past, present, and future.

Thank you, and God bless.

-pyra

Appearantly there is a joke on the BG forums about a Dragoon who paid for his relic upgrade by farming fire crystals.

So, FFXIAH placed a relic calculator on their site, and they compute how many fire clusters it will take to pay for your relic.

Woot! Only 90,000 needed for my Mandau. Time to start crackin on that. Only 2.5 years if I get 100 clusters per day to sell.

-pyra

http://downloads.ai-ls.com/pyra/dynamislord.avi
(42 MB, requires DivX).

The file’s date was 05 Oct 2005.

It is the first known successful attempt by an English speaking LS at killing Dynamis Lord.

And of course, my own first attempt with Ethereal (they still exist, but only recently beat DL).

http://downloads.ai-ls.com/pyra/SuicideDLEthereal.wmv
(54 MB, requires DivX)

This file’s date was 04 Jan 2006, but I believe the attempt was made in late December 2005. The music choice could be better, but I didn’t make it. If anyone knows that the first song is, let me know. The other song was based on an inside joke at the time that no one probably remembers anymore. I’m sure they would be horrified to know this video still exists.

A later attempt with the same group as above

http://downloads.ai-ls.com/pyra/dylord.jpg

File was dated 12 July 2006.

I feel like a noob all over again watching this stuff. So many people in that video who no longer play. Such crappy gear, yet we thought we were awesome.

What a difference a couple years makes.

-pyra

The first was a Sandy, where Ata finally got SMN AFv2 Boots.  I say finally because I haven’t seen them fall in years (until I joined KillerInstinct).  I no longer have any jobs without AF from Sandy.

Then the next run, Jeuno, I managed to get myself a pair of THF boots (on the second pull of the night too, I knew they would fall).

My SMN is 2/5 AFv2, and THF is now 3/5, with body and hands to go.

The only two pieces I am still missing from city runs are SMN Pants (Windy) and THF Body (Bastok).

Slowly but surely getting there.  I have the chance to be "Finished" with Bastok tonight, if I spend my points on THF Body (assuming it falls and the others ahead of me don’t want, or enough of them fall).  But I don’t really want the body all that much, its sole purpose would be to complete the set once I have hands.  So, I don’t much care if it falls or not – I don’t even have THF AFv1 Body yet.

Also from this run was this screenshot.  I thought it was nice.

Mmmmm, Treeeeaaasure.

Much to my surprise, it appears as though I’m needed on thief.

At least I know in advance what subjob I’m bringing .

For last night’s Dynamis – Valkrum, only one thief showed up. So, I ended up running back to town to do a quick change to thief. I was in such a hurry and had such nervous excitement, that I forgot 2 pieces of gear that I shouldn’t have. The first being my normal pants (Bravo’s Subligar), which was not a huge problem. I just wore my AFv2 ones instead. The second was also not a huge deal, it was my shield (Tatami), which is just such a nice item that I rarely get to use.

I ended up being puller for one of the 3 Nightmare Flies. Since it was my first time as thief in this zone, I was nervous.

It took me a little bit to locate the fly, but I found it and waited for it to move.

I grabbed it and started running to camp.

It was so exciting, it was thrilling… the fly caught up to me. No worries, hit the flee and I’ll be fine *splat*. Crap, I’m dead.

I gotta admit, my heart sunk a little. First time trying that pull and I screwed it up.

No one could get to where I was fast enough to save the pull, so I did the noble thing.

Accepted reraise, hit perfect dodge, and shot the fly again. As soon as I dropped off the cliff, I had a black mage and ninja to get a little hate on it. Arrived back in camp with 30 hp.

Next time I’ll live through it .

After that was one of the smoothest dreamland runs I’ve seen maybe ever. And the drops were amazing.

2 Ninja Belts
1 Paladin Cape
1 Summoner -1 Head
1 Samurai -1 Head

Of course, as one of 2 thieves there, I take full credit for all drops.

It would have been a lot better if I had some alcohol, because I needed it.

Cornelia is one of my favorite NPCs.  I know she is dead (according to the story line), but I still like her.  She shows up in the Monk AF quest Cut Scenes, and is just awesome, except for that whole galka love stuff.

Oh man, here we go!

Xarcabard is very different from the other zones.  There are not many statues, but there are a lot of eye type monsters instead.

Ying and Yang must die at the same time, otherwise they will be resummoned.  Once they die, you can cause damage to the Dynamis Lord.

Unfortunately, I did not get any good pictures of the Dynamis Lord fight.  Next time I’ll get better ones.

The drops were quite nice too, as the ring is fairly rare.

But anyways, I got the win and the title!  Woot, I’ve wanted to win this for almost two years now.

That’s part 1, part 2 coming soon.

-pyra

Of course the Glacier run did not go quite as smoothly as it should have.  This is what happens when an avatar is not slept.

As you can see, two monks survived Astral Flow, but were killed by the Quadav right away.  Oops.

-pyra

In the past week I have

1) Beaten Dynamis – Beaucedine
2) Another Proto-Ultima win
3) Beaten Dynamis – Xarcabard (including Dynamis Lord)
4) Finished my Dark Knight to 37 (for mnk/drk on above mentioned Dynamis Lord)
5) Leveled my Samauri to 15
6) Leveled my Dancer to 24

It has been a busy week.

There was also the virus scare that really hit home for a lot of FFXI Players. I know the thought of losing both of my characters was horrible, but at least there was no way to migrate them to another server (still in 90-day cooldown from last migration).

-pyra

Finally going to get the Dynamis – Beaucedine win, and BAM, server crash.

Apparently, 4 servers are ‘partially down’ although from what I’ve seen, there isn’t much of anyone still connected on any of them.  All 5 major cities on Caitsith are down .

Anyways, when I try to reconnect, this is what I see.

So I found the other status codes, here they are –

Yeah, this kind of sucks… boo servers down.  Its odd, I can’t find just Maintenance right now.  Oh well, going to go to bed unless this comes back up soon.