Monthly Archives: January 2008

I Love the Interweb

My web host (Dreamhost) has, by default, a stats page.  You cannot access it, but I can.

Every so often I take a look, and normally I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.  However, I am usually amused by how people get here via the normal web search engines.

search_terms

I’ve circled the ones I find out of place.  "woofie ffxi", "where is the courthouse in bastok ffxi", and the strangest to me, "pyra elf".  I would love to get a copy of Visual Sciences (now Omniture) running to really see where people come from and go to.  If anyone has seen this product, its really nice — if you want to track your users as they traverse your site.  I guess I’m just bored at work sometimes and this is the crazy stuff I come up with.

Aside from that, my chi blast gear (see link on the right) appears to be a fairly popular hit.  I’m glad all that work isn’t going to waste since it did take me almost an hour to compile all the info.

Anyways, back to the regular programming next time, I just wanted to share this.

-pyra

The State of the Pyra, 2008

(Disclaimer:  This is a joke, considering that today was the State of the Union Address)

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.

ata_whm

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

ata_smn

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.

pyra_thf

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

pyra_mnk

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

pyra_sky_gear

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.

mnk_crown_plus1

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.

jeuno_death

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.

campaign

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.

goodbye_for_now

-pyra

This was so amusing, it needed to be posted

While browsing through Technorati for the FFXI tag, I stumbled upon this entry in the Star Onion blog.

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

Pictures from my Mini-Vacation

In a departure from our normal programming, here are some pictures from from my trip to Williamsburg.

Capital building.

gov_building

hall1

This is a reconstructed building on the original foundations of the 18th century building.

The main street of Williamsburg, the Duke of Gloucester street.

w-burg-dog-street

A birdhouse in the back of the Wythe House.

birdhouse

A rack of muskets in the Magazine.  Some of these are over 200 years old, and still work.

muskets

Looking out the window of the Magazine to the old Courthouse (original 18th Century building).

courthouse

And finally, the Courthouse itself.

courthouse2

Well, that’s some of the best pictures from my trip.  I did take them all, and hope you enjoyed looking at them.

-pyra

Oh How Far We’ve Come

I was digging through my archives and I ran across this video

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

No Epic Pics, But Some Good Ones Anyways

I have no epic photos this time, its been a slow week while I level my White Mage to 37 for Monk Chi Blasts.

I did have some fun, and wanted to share some pictures.

In Campaign, I’ve managed to hit the 4th ribbon.  These are starting to take a bit more work to complete than they used to.

ribbon4

At least I was able to get both Pyra’s and Ata’s at the same time.  Keeping them in sync is much easier since they were both 75 when Wings of the Goddess came out.  Unlike Assault, which is just annoying.

I did this 3-man Campaign Ops.  It was actually fun, and the exp reward was decent too.

campaign_crab

It is called Brave Dawn I for Windy.  Since anyone can enter, and you get exp even if you are not doing the mission, I went and helped out on Brave Dawn II.

Moving along, it has been too long since I saw this in my chat log.

about_time

I only managed to go from 90.0+2 to 90.7+2, but any progress is better than no progress.  100 is still along ways off, but is .7 closer now than it was before.

If only I could find a steady supply of griffon hides.  I estimate I’ll need 120-150 of them to get to 95 leather.

I did, however, manage to get an entire stack of the stuff, which I sold to myself.  Why did I sell it to myself?  Simple, the entire sales history was 1 person to himself for under 100 gil.  I decided I needed to change that.  Yeah, I’m a bit evil.  Enjoy!

In other news

pers_loves_men

Why does everybody come out of the closet to me?  Its really getting old.

I still love the newbie RMT names.  I think they just stopped trying.

rmt_noobs

Aagg, and Ggaa.  I guess they are as dumb as they look.

After I saw Mischa’s Post about Az that she posted here, I decided that I needed to make him jealous.

This is Wiki, my mule, receiving last night’s sales.

make_az_jealous

Then I went and spent about 200K, but managed to sell another 250K.

Und Das ist Alles.

-pyra

Some More Random Pictures

I made a mule on Diabolos and went to visit my old friend Virmythrax.  Got to see her Mog House too.  I like what she’s done with the place, it is quite organized, unlike mine, which is, very Spartan.  I need to get one of those tables for my fishtank.

visiting_virmy

This is just one of those pics that had to be posted.  From Apollyon NE, the one boss Cronos, was hiding in a tree.  I liked it, but the picture lost much in the resizing.

cronos_limbo

Floating chest!  Many people saw this one floating for some reason, so it wasn’t just on my end, this time.

floating_chest

And my aggro-happy friends, as they aggro not 1, but 2 Om’youvras.  Az should take note, this will kill Mischa much better than just one lower-tier UFO will.

double_ufo

Really, was this necessary?  I hit him for 31, then get nailed for 1023.  That doesn’t seem fair for some reason.

ouchie

-pyra

Dynamis – Cleanup

One of the more annoying things about having multiple jobs at 75 — especially multiple characters with multiple jobs at 75 — is the desire to be ‘done’ with a dynamis zone.  This month, I have completed two zones.

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).

thf_booties

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.

treesure

Mmmmm, Treeeeaaasure.

Testing out a New Signature Block

So I found some new tools and toys to have fun with PhotoShop

new_signature_inprogress.png

Thoughts? I made this all myself too.

-pyra

More fun than one should be allowed

So it looks like my monking days are coming to a close again. But I’m not complaining.

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.