Category Archives: FFXI

Ding 37 and the Lazy Square-Enix

I’ve finally finished.  Way too much work for what I get out of it.

The it is, of course, a level 37 White Mage for my Chi Blast sub.

almost37

Yay 37 … er, grrrr.  Lazy goblin, give me 3 more experience points!

yay37

Ahhh there we go, much better.

And yes, I did kill an easy prey for 15 experience points.

ding37

I’m no saint, I just wanted the sub to be finished.

🙂

Moving along.

Last week, I obtained the Thief AFv2 body piece.  And I noticed something, it looked strangely familiar, but I just could not place my finger on it.

afv2body

The pockets on the arms though, and the way the vest is, with the side pouches at the bottom.  Could it be?

pbody

Could the Pahluwan Khazagand be a reskinned version of the Thief AFv2 body?  The answer

overlay

Yes.  This is an overlay of the 2 above screenshots with the AFv2 on top and set to 50% transparency.  The vest, arm pockets, and side pockets all line up.  They did, however, add in a shirt underneath.

That being said, I like how the body turned out, anyone know how I can reskin my Pahluwan Khazagand to look like this?

-pyra

Even More Old Photos from the Archive

snowfrake

My favorite Engrish name ever.

As a White Mage, I actually die a lot more than you’d expect.

I’ve been somewhat lucky in getting a couple "Moment of Impact" shots, both from dynamis.

Here you go.

kaboom

burnedalive

I would not have done nearly as much in this game if it wasn’t for some of my friends.

One of the best of these friends, is Chumley, wherever he may be today.  I was introduced to him by a mutual friend at the time, who quit once he was deployed overseas.  Chumley was kind enough to sign my Noble’s Tunic.  The one before, and the one after mine both HQd.  I definitely would have preferred to wear a HQ one signed by Chum, but I will never sell this Noble’s.

This is for you Chum.

manafonting

Another group of friend did the Windy Missions together when we all had breaks from our LSs in Oct 2005.

This is from the inside of the monastery in Davoi.

davoi

Dandelyon was also a good friend.  She too, quit the game, but her husband, Sprinkles, still plays.  The elf warrior on the left is Vaulaude.

My final two pictures are from Dragon’s Aery, and the exit back into Zitah.

dragonaery

dragonaeryexit

Until next time.

-pyra

Yet More Old Photos From the Archive

 diabolos

Few people know it, but I was one of the first to get Diabolos.  As soon as I got him, I went to play around.  A crowd gathered because everyone wanted to see what it could do. For the people who were there, this would be the first time any of them had seen Diabolos.

stallion

What people also do not know is how far back Stallion and I go.  He organized my first CoP static.  It died out after a couple weeks, but we still managed to get through a handful of missions.  This is one of the reasons I was happy to help him with the 8-3 and 8-4 battles.

zencart

While browsing for other pictures, I ran across this one.  Could that be?  Zencart?  This was me leveling my SMN in the high 60’s, probably in Bibiki Bay.

waterspirit

Sometimes the game messes up.  Thankfully, I was quick on the screenshotting 🙂

I’ve got one more entry in this series I’m working on.  It will be posted soonish.

-pyra

Chat Lines that Amused me

enkedoodle

Biggest waste of money ever.  Never used them, ended up selling them off for 50K.

sky_doesnt_suck

Proof that sky doesn’t suck as much as everyone thinks it does.

mibo_is_worthy

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.  If you get it, you get it.

she_defeats

Really?  "She" defeats.

ayslain_hates

Awwww Ayslain hates this game.  That’s why you got BANNED.

expensive_osode

I hope no one actually bought that.

okote

On the upside, I did get my O Kote, and I still have them.

yay_marketing

Good marketing for V-Day.

-pyra

From the Photo Archives

I’ve been taking screenshots in this game since about the time I started and found out what buttons to hit to take them.

I came across this old one today and wanted to post it.  Deergirl is my current Sandy mule, but at one point was my Windy mule.

 Deergirl_and_afv2

Now, this might not be impressive, until you see the date — 2004.  This was taken late-summer 2004, and this White Mage already had AFv2 body.

For reference, most players I know had not started, or were only playing for about 6 months when this screenshot was taken.

I was running by this player, and I saw what looked like the normal AF body, but it didn’t quite look right.  And for some strange reason, it was a lvl 74 item.  It was not for a couple more months that I realized what it was I had seen.

At last check, Xyiliumy still played.

I saw her character much later.

xy2

I wish I could make faces like that in my /seacom.

More to come soon!

-pyra

I’ve done it!

I’ve done it, actually done it.

What have you done Pyra?

I’ve turned the mithra into the biggest skank out there.

Even RSE would cover more, which is saying a lot I think.

Continue reading

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

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