Category Archives: Dynamis

Monking it Up

Well, during the experience of capping my experience points on Summoner, Thief, and Monk (to compliment my existing capped exp on my White Mage) in Campaign.  I managed to get this little item.

sterling_star

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.

final_sting

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.

2KHP

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…

intruder

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.

dune_widow

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.

miz_wins_lot

miz_gets_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 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

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

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.

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.

Dynamis – Xarcabard

Since I have a habit of including parts of the opening Cut Scene for new things, here we go, Dy – X.

dy_x_open_cs2

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.

dy_x_open_cs1 dy_x_open 

Oh man, here we go!

dy_x_pano 

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

dy_x_yingyang 

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.

dl_boss 

dy_x_title

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

The Road to Dynamis – Xarcabard

In order to get to Xarcabard, I needed to first win the glacier.

dy_bcd_boss dy_bcd_win

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.

dy_bcd_ouch

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

-pyra

Quick Updates

So I haven’t really posted in a week, but I should have an update ready soon

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

Partially Down

Boooo!

status_01

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.

FFXI-3203

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

status_00

status_01

status_02

status_03

status_04

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.