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.

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.

Wait, sub warrior to survive?  So what do you sub for Dynamis Lord?

Dark Knight.  Yes the zerg Red Mage’s favorite sub is also the zerg Monk’s favorite sub.  It does, however, require the full attention of a white mage (or two) per monk to work.  Souleater + Hundred Fists gets deadly FAST, especially if the boss gets a lucky tp move off.  Asuran Fists, at full HP, and if all 8 hits connect (which is somewhat rare on Dynamis Lord — 7 of 8 hits is more common for me) takes me from about 1500 to 650 HP instantly.  But, with a subbed souleater, half of that lost health is converted directly into damage (around 425).  [Disclaimer:  All numbers are rounded since my DL zerg gear is a combination of my Chi Blast and melee gear to avoid blinking and causing my white mage to lose target.  You can do the numbers yourself, the math is <total HP> * (.9^8) for what your ending HP will be if all 8 hits connect.  Gear listed at end of post].

As a result of Asuran costing me 67% of my total HP, I tend to prefer Dragon Kick on Dynamis Lord.  This works well since I wear an Osode for the initial Chi Blast, then don’t take it off.  A 300% tp Dragon Kick is a powerhouse, and doesn’t completely kill me (end with 81% of starting HP since its a 2-hit WS).  I also sometimes have to save TP if my white mage is having a little trouble keeping my health up (as was the case at the beginning of the fight last night).

This screenshot shows one of my highest Dragon Kick’s on Dynamis Lord so far, as well as part of the chat lines to show how much curing a Monk needs.

Once that Cure V landed, I was at near full health, and 300% tp.  665 is not too bad, although about 150 of that damage was from my souleater.

Willowdream is almost always my only white mage for this.  If I haven’t mentioned it before, she’s great, and I only died once (and even then it was to an Oblivion Smash) on the Dynamis Lord fight since I’ve started doing Xarcabard for the win.

Even though I didn’t get the kill shot on Dynamis Lord (although I sure tried), this is the second time ever that I’ve seen full drops.

At this rate, I might even get a shadow ring of my own!

I later had some fun with a skeleton (after the hourglass expired) and some souleater + asuran.    I’m evil.

Well, since the theme of this post is monking and dynamis, please congratulate Miz on his shinny new Melee Crown, which completes his monk AFv2 set.

-pyra

My Monk Dynamis Lord fight gear is:

Weapons:  Destroyers (duh)
Ranged:  Bibiki Seashell (hush you, I’m lazy)
Head:  Temple Crown +1
Neck:  Chivalrous Chain
Ear1:  Merman’s Earring
Ear2:  Brutal Earring
Body:  Kirin’s Osode
Hands:  Temple Gloves
Ring1:  Ulthalam’s Ring
Ring2:  Raja’s Ring (I know, it doesn’t work in the Ring2 slot, only the Ring1 slot, hush you)
Back:  Melee Cape
Waist:  Brown Belt (if anyone wants to get me a black belt, I’ll happily accept it)
Legs:  Byakko’s Haidate
Feet:  Suzaku’s Sune-Ate

This setup gives me the bonus to boost from AFv1 hands, as well as +38 to MND.  I also like the extra accuracy from Focus with AFv1+1 head on.  I’m sure that this could be improved.  I’ve tried a couple different setups.  Most of the things that require me to switch gear cause trouble to my white mage (although she now has /target Pyra and /ma “Spell” Pyra macros).  Since I have Soul Voiced songs on me, my accuracy isn’t going to get a whole lot better than it is already (souleater has +25 acc too, but I’m not sure if it stacks with focus, which is +30 acc since I use AFv1+1 head).  Also, we always make sure to land Angon and Feint on Dynamis Lord, which helps a LOT.

Sadly, we only have one more run at the guy until June.  No thief gloves at all this month .  We had 3 white mage gloves fall this week, I’m hoping for a repeat with thief gloves next run (especially since I’m currently #3 in line for the blue gloves).

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

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.

Ohhh dead-ish people.  Its like a dead family reunion.

More ghosty people.  Its really, really awesome.

Then some parts of the text.  As I said, awesome.

Ohh, a mysterious ??? is talking.  I wonder who that could be.  Any thoughts?  Diabolos perhaps?

That…Just….Happened.

-pyra

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.

After we crossed the bridge at the end of part 1, we fought some Hydra.  They were nasty, but the Black Mage, White Mage, Red Mage trio were not too difficult.

The Melee trio of Monk, Thief, Warrior proved a bit more difficult, and I ended up tanking during the Monk’s Hundred Fists (at least for a couple seconds)

The Monk had some TP move called Shackled Fists.  It looked, and hit, like a renamed Final Heaven.  If you’ve never seen a Monk get 1-shotted before, here you go.

A closer look at the damage.  OUCH!  1468.

A pic of the Hydra Beastmaster and his pet Hound.

On the next floor, we ran into some Kindred.  Of course no dynamis would be complete without a summoner.

And some AF!  This is only the second pair of these I’ve ever seen fall.  Cool.  The person who got this is now 5/5 on White Mage AFv2.

More shinnies in the treasure pool.  Hydra Gaiters.

I just thought this picture was neat, so I included it.

As the run came to an end, we got out first big link of the night.  But with under 10 minutes left, we were basically finished already.  Notice how in these pictures there are usually only 3 people alive, myself, Irons as thief, and Mptythoughts on his Warrior.

This is Pyra’s final stand.  Vae Victis!

-pyra

From the opening CS.  Unlike the other Dreamland Dynamii, this one is much darker, and Diabolos is barely visible, surrounded in a very bright light.

And part of the text, weird.

I’m not sure anyone knows what the ’storyline’ behind dreamland dynamis really is.  I know I’ve got no clue.

Anyways, you enter, subless as always, and have to get time right away (start with 15 minutes, only allowing 18 members inside).

After he is dead, run up to the middle floor.

One of the time monsters is a Nightmare Worm.  Think Phantom Worm on steroids.  He likes to do draw-in then immediately stonega4 or tremors.  Luckily (for me at least) he only used tremors.  1600 HP comes in handy when he uses a 400 damage to all move twice in a row.

Mages were not so lucky.

Hey look, NPCs in a dyanmis.

Running across the bridge in the safehold.

Sure, send the cats in first.

Nightmare Hornets, nasty guys that have a TP move that gives them Hundred Fists.  Wouldn’t be too bad, except the zone is full of them.

End of part 1.  In an effort to not have huge posts, this post was split in two.

-pyra