C'est la update!

Yesterday Square had a 6 hour maintenance with a ton of new additions. Much to my ... delight and disappointment as well, they added three new Dynamis areas (Buburimu, Valkurm, and Qufim)

#1 These areas coincide with the normal town/field dynamises of the past.
#2 Completion of CoP 3-5 is required.
#3 ... No sub jobs while in this zone.

Also, these areas will give way to belts and capes that are dubbed Artifact. Our Dynamis Artifact gear can now be upgraded too! During the update, some were using data examiners to determine that indeed there were new HQ AF2 pieces in the .dat files. Very cool. Down side though, since these new Dynamises run concurrent with the old ones, coins will not be more numerous. They have gained new usage as well, so I can only invision the price of coins increasing further yet. Still, very positive update.

They also tried to avert MPK attempts by making mobs return home when unclaimed or unaggroed out of their radius. This kills BST players. All of them that I have spoken to are quite upset and I hope that SE does something to fix this hardship.

Cooking!!! This update provided two new Key Items for my craft ^.^ Patissier and Stewpot Mastery. I managed to get Patissier for 8k, but Stewpot I need to rebuild my GP which are still recovering from the recent purchase of my Culinarian's Apron. I tried out a few recipes, didn't get a screenshot of the gorgeous cakes I made, Gateau aux fraises (Strawberry cake in french) and the HQ Midwinter Dream. Here are some of the other Patissier related recipes. I was kind of disappointed on the stats on the said cake above. I still need to find where these new items are and attempt these, they are Adeptish level so may prove to be at least somewhat useful.




I gave Landstar one of the Gateaux aux Fraises just to show off my Patissier. He wants me to make him a HQ or High Level synth with my name on it, but I haven't the GP right now to do it. Still building and I'd love to get Stewpot Mastery asap. As a christmas gift, Landstar synthesized me a Tactician Magician's coat +1.


I could really use this as my blm is 47 and when I get home I hope to get it to at least 60. I camped Moldavite earring with the boyfriend a few days ago, claimed once, no drop. Second time some people came and CC'd right on its spawn time and ended up with claim. It kinda sucked but its not like our name was on the Gobby.

Dragoons also got a huge overhaul. Call Wyvern became an ability, while they earned a new two hour, Spirit Surge. This makes their jump abilities more potent. Jump lowers defense, High Jump kills some TP, and Super Jump reduces the person behind them's enmity by 1/2! I heard some complaining about the new 2hr, but to be honest in a fix it would be great. Thats what most of our two hours are for... sticky situations. Paladin can avoid all attacks and keep a mob on him while everyone else goes all out and he wont have to worry about hate problems. Thief have Perfect Dodge to get out of those fights where you just gotta get the hell out. White Mages have a full cure mechanisms. Black Mages don't need to rely on limited MP. Red Mages can repeatedly cast spells without delay. Warriors can knock off critical damage on mobs, Ninjas can try to finish a mob off by sacrificing themself, Samurai can use TP over and over again. It's not practical for full use during battle. Of course it isn't. In fact 9/10 times the only time I see a 2HR actually used is for impractical reasons. A person is fixing to leave the party so they 2HR. Black Mages use it to quickly D2 a party if they're going to bed. Red Mages use Chainspell to escape fast, rather than cast spells over and over again. White Mages randomly spam Benediction at the end of a fight when they dont feel like healing. 2HRs for the most part only truly come in handy in a fix. Dragoons in the slightest should not be complaining. This new 2HR is 40x more useful than just getting a Wyvern out every 2HRs. Now theres no reason that you will be gimped, as if your Wyvern dies you only have to wait a short time to regain your full strength. I applaud square for this change ^.^

Diabolos was added as a Summoner avatar. Also you can fight Bahamut now. I heard someone last night defeated him. I saw Diabolos last night and he is quite big when compared to Shiva or Garuda or the other summons. Very cool that a dark summon finally was added. We had Light, Wind, Water, Fire, Stone, Thunder, and Ice. Nice job getting a dark into the mix ^.^

They made some changes to the NPC system too, but to be honest, Yufafa is level 35 and she isn't going to level very quickly. I only level her when the opportunity seems good. I might level her pre-Dynamis Beaucedine when we start doing those. But I'm not going out of my way to level her.

My intentions when I get home are to get thief to 75. I really would love to be officially done with that job for a bit. Once I'm done with that, I may or may not pawn off some of my many equipment. I have so many slots I use for thief gear. Its overconsuming. With BLM staves on the horizon... I really need the extra space.

I can't wait to get home and be able to participate in alot more things.

Bringing back the black mage!

After a long long break, Zylia the black magic caster is back! I think... lol. I've been wanting to get away from thief (at least something thats a break, I'm not retiring thief and I plan on getting 75 over winter break). It's hard for me to xp thief when I'm at college. Theres just too much to do outside of the game and lately parties I've been have been extending to 5 hours or up. I can't afford that especially with finals approaching.

So, I got really good gear for my black mage, at least the best that I could say I'd suffice for. Not the absolute best, but if someone checked me, they'd at least comment slightly that I was well equipped. I bought my eremites+1, morion earrings and all the +1 seer's gear (minus the body piece, as I find 1mp insignificant for the price of the +1 version). The one item that I wanted but didn't get was the sash, but it cost upwards of a mill and I just can't justify it just restarting the job. If it was my thief, I'd probably not doubt it. I like to have a little bit of a surplus of gil too, incase a 600k sushi binge is around the corner ^.~.

So I wandered around and skilled dark a little with Yufafa. Left my flag up the whole time. I was killing a Goob in Rolanberry fields when I got an invite. Ran out to Crawler's nest at less than full mp. When I got to camp the thief had pulled a link (which they were managing kinda.. the beetles were falling out of our level range). Suffice it to say... we didn't stay at the beetle camp long when I got there. We moved toward my favorite crawler camp at the end of the tunnel leading to the exoray portion of CN. I asked Drkstr a ton of questions last night. I've always been confused on the bio vs dia thing, but Shyrra corrected me and now I feel quite stupid for not reading the captions on the spells. Drkstr helped me a ton with timing MB's. I always found Tier I spells really easy, just cast upon the skillchain animation! Tier II however I hadn't really had any experience MBing. I had just received Blizzard II, which is probably one of the first REAL Tier II MB since distortion nearly became a standard around that level on my thief. I leveled to 42 during a ENM run, so its only natural I never had practice. It was so much fun MBing that, and I only missed 2-3 (2 because my boyfriend called, I primarily missed them because they were at the start of the fight and I was just routinely elemental debuffing and I messed up >_<) All in all I'm definitley getting the hang of BLM. I want to keep my spells completely up to date though as I go. I hate not having a complete spellbook.

The party went pretty well, well the first group of people that is. We had a JP ninja tank and that was a blast. The whm had almost full mp all the time. Our RDM was a newbie though... he didn't realize what Convert did and when he dinged 41, much to my dismay, he didn't have refresh with him. It's ok though. An exoray mold dropped and he said he needed it, so thats when I took him to the side and told him about Convert. Can't expect them to learn on their own. I had to get taught how to use SATA. I warned him heavily that its not free mp and that its not safe at all to do that near mobs who AoE or during bad situations. its HP<->MP not HP->MP. After the ninja left, we got a pld and from that point on things started slowing down. Eventually we lost a few members. By midnight, I was the last member fromt he old party in the party. This party should've ended when 3/4 of us left instead of replacing almost everyone. The party configuration switched from nin thf war blm whm rdm to pld sam sam rdm blm blm(this one was otw). Really nice set up at this level really. Phraust one of the SAM's, pulled a link and didn't realize an exoray had also linked on him. I told him on his way back, not to worry about the two crawlers linking because I had sleep and wasn't a big issue. On his way back... I saw the exoray clomping behind him and screamed 'Exoray nooo' 'Exo exo exo' but I guess it was too late and he started running in. I was resting at the time, so the exo ran right up and nailed me. They're almost impossible to sleep I tell you -_- at least at my level. So yeah, we wiped. A friend had just came to CN though so he sent his RDM's over to raise us. We got raised up. After being raised... the taru samurai went afk.... and didn't come back. We waited around, killed a few using Phraust's two hour and otherwise very slowly. Then the tank was having connection problems and disconnected. Don't think he came back ever. Oh well.. we all were kind of tired. I tried my hardest to find a new tank (seeing as I got dumped with leader once again...) but it was late and I had to go soon and I couldn't get anything. Phraust finally said to cut our losses and call it a night, though I had just called a black mage out to replace me and he had just arrived. Way to make me look bad to a JP... :( Anyways, the original party was really good. The second one had a really good potential..... but it never reached it.

Tonight's going to be somewhat limited play time. I know that for sure.

Dynamis-Bastok

God those scorpions are a pain in the ass. Royally. We wasted a good 10-15 minutes on them. Just couldn't get control over them. Plus we saw a rarity tonight from what Peregrine said. Apparently bards can knock you back and out. Fun stuff. Tiny bit of pulling. I wish I was more confident. I always get nervous when I have to pull. Love to try it on my own but I'm still worried my pace will result in failure. Toward the end an argument broke out over an AF piece. Kinda sucks. I kinda attribute the argument partially to the way Dynamis ended, not so much our loss, but the fact that we wiped unnecessarily. The mages were arguing, melees trying their hardest, shit just went to hell. Oh well, its a stressful time of year. Alot of us have finals and whatnot. Can't expect miracles. Only two thief, myself and pere, were there tonight. 2 Monster Jackcoats that no one wanted, one Assassin's Vest that went to a sub lotter, one Red Mage Gloves, and Melee Gaiters, which parsed because we were all dead.

Alot of the regulars haven't been showing up lately. Kinda sucks. We lost our powerhouse. I personally think we all need to level up. Dynamis-Bastok monsters are always particularly defensive of us. I don't know if its the shell or just their mob type but we're always crunched for time with them. I don't know. Part of me wishes Pere would take a mini-break until after New Years and regroup then. Its alot of stress right now, even for him. Oh well.

Cheerful thought of the night: Vyyuke can suck my left ***.

Ro'Maeve Water

Went to sky today despite my better judgement to farm. Aura pots for water. How annoying. It wasn't so bad until another sky LS showed up. Little bit of competition never hurt anyone I guess. They left and we got the water shortly after. Little tedious. Overall not bad.

Dynamis-Bastok tonight. Wonder how that'll go. I don't have my paperwork out so I'm kinda hoping Peregrine doesn't pop a 'Zy, your up tonight.' tonight of all nights. I think when I'm off on Mid-semester break it'll be easier. Either way I hope that it goes really well tonight. Last week was a disaster.

Party status

Party is: Me, Busso, Cherron, JP BRD, TaruBLM name I don't want to type and Apu. Light SC is pretty good on these vultures. I just accidently pulled a link... and died. So far no net gain.. it sucks.

Note to self: Tavnazian Rams use Petrify.

I'm now 6k down from where I started. What a great way to start off this blog huh.............................. On a better note, our bard has a lvl 70+ whm so we're all getting R3's, not to bad :D

Oop, people have to go. I died 3x (twice was my fault... I need to develop a failproof way to pull there -_-) The other time we took on a ram (purposefully) not realizing it petrifies...

I can't believe it...

Well so far today's been a slap in the face. I flew to Windurst this morning and low and behold the Guild point item was 'Smoked Salmon' which I had made two days prior to put into Salmon Subs. It was still on the AH last night. I arrive at the Auction House to find out it had sold minutes before I got there. So upsetting :( Just now I came to San D'Oria so that I could get some walnut logs and salmon to finish up my stuff. Low and behold I arrive 1 hour after the guild closes. And I'm in an XP party thats 5/6 members and about to leave.

Going with Cherron, Busso and Apu, all members of Invictus which is kinda cool. I need to get my thief job to 75. If I do that, I can start to relearn Black Mage. I learned hard last night that when I was working Black Mage up to 42, I really didn't fully understand the job. I nuked and debuffed, but part of me wasn't really sure exactly the effects of it. I'd really love to have something thats remotely 'desired' in terms of a job. No one goes looking for thieves. We're all over the friggen place.

Let's see if I can stick to this...

I've always thought about making a blog for Zylia. I'll take a stab at documenting my adventures from now on!