So what’s been going on lately.. hmm. I head back to college in a few days, but I thought I’d share the quasi-interesting things going on in my life ingame.

When I quit XI two years ago, very few LSes had beaten Dynamis Lord in Xarcabard. I remember ED’s few attempts at it resulting in a total wipe at approx 90%. Of course, this was prior to the days of RDM/DRK being known to be useful for this kind of thing, so yeah, went to Dyna-Xarc with ED a few weeks ago and watched them decimate poor Dynamis Lord in under a minute. How things have changed! Of course Dyna-Xarc was emo and we got 0 AF2 drops that entire time. At least we got a Shadow Mantle. ; ;

Have since been catching up on AoAU missions. I can’t say I’m finding the storyline too interesting and it pales in comparison to the fun I had with Promathia’s storyline and BCs. None of the BCs have been overly challenging and I guess this is Square’s attempt to curb the anger produced by the “difficulty” of the Promathia missions (though I don’t think they were that hard, to be quite honest with you). I’m current with missions though I haven’t done the final BC yet just cause the final rewards suck and I don’t have the inventory space to hold yet another useless item (the lv50 rings + blue coronet). So perhaps I’ll never finish the missions because I just don’t care to. <_<;;

Salvage has been fun/stressful as always. We have a good set of constant players (about 12 of us who attend weekly) and we’ve got some pretty good drops thus far. We’re continuing to go every Friday and have got lots of gear so far though we’re still having a bit of trouble with the Long-Bowed Chariot NM thanks to our lack of healing. Otherwise, we’ve had some pretty cool drops so far (though I haven’t gotten anything as of yet) and I’m debating between getting Morrigan’s Robe or Cuffs first. Both are exceptional pieces of gear for RDM, so I’m having trouble deciding. Either way, the cost of the ores needed once all 3 pieces have been acquired is disgusting. D: Plus I hate having to do assaults to get points. Since I’m effectively 2 years behind everyone else, I’m still a PSC and killing rocks in Lebros Cavern every week to get my points. *dies*

I’ve been leveling my BLM rather arduously since I last posted. My BLM was 37 a week or two ago and now I’m up to 53 and having fun all the way. BLM is a lot easier to play than RDM and a lot less stressful. Being a good BLM really equates to two things: A) lots of INT gear and B) Elemental debuffs + not overnuking. I’m finding that a lot of parties have gotten stupid lately and don’t do Skillchains at ALL anymore. I mean I understand opting against a skillchain if it requires the melees to use gimp WS to form it, but if you have a Samurai, Ninja, and Warrior for melee, not having a skillchain makes me want to punch people. And LOLTPBURN is bullshit, I’m sorry. TP burn is effective once warriors get Joytoys + Ridills and merits and /NIN, not before. I’m so sick of people saying DMG is better just spamming WSes if their WSes are doing >100 dmg. I’ve had a number of parties that didn’t even know HOW to form Skillchains in the late 40’s-50’s. That’s ridiculous. LERN 2 PLAY people. I constantly parse my BLM’s dmg to be doing between 25-30% of the entire DMG in a party without a Skillchain. With skillchains, I easily am doing over 50% of the DMG in a party. BLM is a strong job, but it truly shines when melees skillchain.

And oddly enough, BLM is one of the most E-peen jobs I’ve ever seen. 2-3 BLMs in a party is pretty common now a days and it’s like.. everyone instantly /c’s your gear, checks your spell damage and tries to compete. I’m quite proud to say that while I don’t have nearly as much MP as tarus, my spells are always stronger. DD Yay for merits and +30 INT gear pwahaha.

Tags: Dynamis, EXP, Salvage, ToAU