Patch day!

So, what have I been up to? Let’s see the last time I updated… oh besides the animal crossing post… wait, never mind I’ve pretty much been playing video games all day long.

I got Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time out of the way. Now I have the unholy combination of FFXI, WoW, Dragon Quest 8, and Animal Crossing to sink my time in to. Out of the four of those, only DQ8 has a conceivable ending, and that’s probably a good 70 hours away. The rest I could keep dumping more and more and more into and keep having more to do.

However, my honeymoon with WoW may soon be ending. It’s been fun, but mostly because I’ve been able to do things by myself. Every time I try doing things with other people, a) things go less smoothly b) things get more hectic and c) people die more often. And currently, my quest log has 10/16 quests that are (Elite)… which means I have to do them with other people. I’ve been working on various other things, I got fishing to 225 and started the uncap quest and got cooking to 300. But right as I did that, I was able to connect FFXI to the update server…

Today’s FFXI update is a very significant one. It fixed some very major things:

1. The first thing I noticed is that the data format for the weapons and armor data files has changed. This means that the program I used to read the info and put it into the character manager spat out faulty information. For the armor, it wasn’t so bad, it only was missing a few things and had some extra garbage characters to delete. For the weapons, however, everything was off and it was pure garbage. Hopefully the author updates the program.
2. Dragoons now have a panic button, in addition to not being reduced to 80% efficiency when their wyvern dies and their 2-hour wasn’t up. Now they can call their wyvern every 20 minutes, and have a 2-hour ability that actually does something useful.
3. The rules for monster aggro after they lose everyone that was fighting them (via death, warping or zoning) now changed. Instead of staying where they are and tormenting other people, they now disappear and reappear where they were before they were being fought. I’ve already witness this today and it was a very good thing. i.e. “Omg they’re zoning that snoll! quick! Zone!” And I just kept resting. Sure enough, the snoll disappeared. This also means that zones like Garliage Citadel and Crawler’s Nest no longer become train nightmares at the zone full of monsters that someone dragged there and take forever to reset.
4. There are new Dynamis Zones. They are limited to 36 people, not 64 (hooray less lag), and supposedly are a no-subjob restricted area. They also drop all the old relic armor, as well as items that can be used to update them… ever so slightly. We’ll see if I actually try these. The other restriction on them is that you have to have beaten Chains of Promathia mission 3-5, which I did recently. (OMG, is that new CoP content that I actually have access to? Someone at SE has gotta be fired over that.)
5. There were other various changes to the fellowship system that I’m not far enough in to use, anyway.
6. The limits on merit points were raised. It’s now possible to get a full 7 points in any one magic skill, and still have one left over for something else. This raises the bar for the maximum Enfeebling or Elemental Magic skill by 2. Everything else was bumped up a bit, as well.
7. There is a new Avatar to summon. It also requires 3-5 to be beaten, because he’s the boss of 3-5. Diablos, the lord of Dreams, Terrestrial Avatar. The quest to get him was very easy to find, and people found it quickly. I had popped on, and very quickly got recruited into a group…

… We gathered together, got the quest, and headed to The Shrouded Maw, the battlefield within Pso’Xja. We weren’t the only ones:

Like the fellowship stuff before, everyone had mobbed the place. The difference is, people were there in groups of 6, and it was a lot harder for anyone to get any semblance of order. Unlike the fellowship lines, where people actually organized, it was a free-for-all. Everyone was crowded around the entry point, spamming enter whenever a stack of six dead bodies appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Yes, people kept going in and dying. This meant that the line wasn’t actually moving, just circulating. I heard that after we were there, they actually managed to get order established, but when we got in, it was through brute force.

So, the fight was just like the mission fight, except instead of being capped at level 40, we were uncapped. This meant I was there as RDM75/DRK37 and my job was to stun Nightmare every chance I got. I managed to do it three times, but he got one off at the very end after using his 2-hour. Fortunately, our BLM had used a poison potion, so he woke up and nuked the last bit of him dead. Two of us died when we zoned out due to the Nightmare (it’s a very nasty ability that puts you to sleep and drains your hp.. normally any loss of hp while asleep wakes you up) including me. But it was so totally worth it:

And here he is, obeying my every move:

Of course, the first thing I had him do was beat up on a rabbit. Only being a RDM75/SMN8, he was pretty weak, and it took him a few hits. I need to work on that. 😛 One of the other members of our group actually has summoner at 75, and she showed off some of the higher level abilities… and they’re niiiiiice. Magic Attack Bonus and Magic Defense Bonus…. Phalanxga… Nightmare (yes, it does the same thing! AoE Sleep and damage over time!)… and the 2-hour is an ability that does a random percentage of damage to the monster. Not so impressive against the level 30 monsters we were testing it against, but it should be very nice against much stronger monsters.

Afterwards, I finally got back to my mog house. I had received some gil in the mail from the Worm’s Turn runs I did last week, as well as the gil from the Suzaku x5 Genbu x2 runs we did yesterday. What I also got on Genbu yesterday was an Aquarian Abjuration: Hands… and after this last batch of gil, I had enough to buy the Cursed Mitts:

Mmmm.. Magic Attack Bonus. Maybe this will make up for not being able to afford an Igqira Weskit. I still want one though… more Magic Attack Bonus! MORE!

Then, as I was about to do something else, I got invited to a manaburn party by an LS-mate. I ended up getting two more merit points, which I used to bump my Elemental Magic Skill bonus to 3. It also made me realize that RDM75/BRD25(or 37) would be quite useful in a BLMx5 RDM manaburn party, and so leveling BRD from 16 to 37 is going to be my next project. Also, having Crimson Cuisses to help with the pulling didn’t hurt, either.

And here I was, scared that I was going to get bored of FFXI. Then again, the people in the linkshell are one of the main reasons I haven’t left, and every time I’m gone for a while and go back in, I’m reminded what a pleasure it is to have intelligent, competent people in a linkshell. If it hadn’t been for them, I would have likely stopped playing a long time ago. Hooray for ShirtNinjas!