Operation: Flying Brick

I haven't had many blog updates in the past few months (and neither has anyone else), but I can honestly say it hasn't been from a lack of playing FFXI. My linkshell has been busy the past few months finishing up Empyrean armor sets, and more interestingly, finishing up level 85 and 90 Empyrean weapons. Awhile back in January I started working on my Almace and Ochain. I decided I wanted to get serious about Ochain first, and completed it almost exclusively with linkshell assistance. Once that was done, I took a little break from the hardcore grind, but soon enough I kept working on my Almace.

When I first started the sword trials, I was convinced that I would only be able to complete the Walk of Echos sword, since farming Empyrean weapon items was quite a task, and progress was slow. To top it off, who wants to make a Paladin/Red Mage/Blue Mage a better damage dealer when you can have a serious job be a better damage dealer? My linkshell apparently, and they even helped me camp against an army of Ninjas to get it too. :)

I have had about 3 months to play around with the level 90 Ochain, and it is very impressive. It has an uncapped block rate, as opposed to every other shield in the game which has a hard ceiling of 65% block rate. It seems to block for about 60% damage reduction, not taking into account Paladin traits or gear enhancing those traits. In addition, with Shield Mastery III, I get back 5 TP per shield block, and blocking so often makes most spells I cast never get interrupted. I was very impressed.

As for Almace, I only have the level 85 version for now, but I am still able to put up impressive numbers compared to any other damage option for Paladin. 'Chant dy Cygne' is a 3 hit weaponskill with a 60% DEX modifier that has a critical chance that varies with TP. In comparison, Vorpal Blade is a 4 hit weaponskill with a 20% STR modifier that also has a chance to critical that varies with TP. In addition, I am now using a base 57 damage weapon instead of a base 35 damage weapon (Joyeuse) and both have a delay of 224. My weaponskills are now usually in the 2000-4000 range in Abyssea depending on what I am fighting, instead of the old 500-1500 damage Vorpal Blades with my Joyeuse. The Aftermath from the weaponskill almost makes up for the loss of 'double attack' from Joyeuse too. I haven't done any serious tests outside Abyssea yet, but I assume the ratio will be similiar.

So, with that said, Emperyeans have been a substantial improvement over existing gear. My next goal is to finish up Ararith's Emperyean Polearm so that she can join in the fun too. :)

Sometimes you make your own fun.

It's been quite some time since I made a post here, and I can honestly say it hasn't been from a lack of playing. I have been doing Abyssea at least three days a week and within my Abyssea group have completed many +1 and +2 Empyrean Armor pieces for PLD, RDM, and BLU. Of special importance to me is that I have completed my full 5/5 of the +2 PLD Empyrean Armor thanks to the help of my group. Things are going so well and drops are so plentiful that I have even started working on some other +1 armor pieces on the side for other jobs I expect to be leveling in the near future.

In addition, most of my group including myself have cleared all of the bosses in Abyssea and have access to Primeval Brews now at a price of 200,000 cruor instead of the usual 2,000,000 price. Given that many of us have cruor to spare, this becomes important at the end of the post...

With our success with pimping our members out with Empyrean Armor, the natural progression of this has been to start getting members Empyrean Weapons. One of our members already has a level 85 (and soon to be level 90) weapon, and others of us, myself included, are following in their footsteps. I currently have my primary focus on the Ochain Empyrean Shield. It is a shield that puts even the Aegis to shame, and that isn't something to snuff at. Complete information can be located here: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Ochain_%2890%29

I had originally considered going for the Empyrean Sword Almace first (and this would be my next goal once I complete the shield), but being a Paladin at heart, I couldn't pass up the chance to work towards this beauty. What isn't stated in the shields stats is that it is a Size 6 shield (Aegis being a Size 5 shield, and all other shields being size 1-4). It has a reported block rate of ~90% even on high level NMs and seems to have a very impressive level of damage reduction per block. This would be one of the best upgrades possible for Paladin in that it would greatly increase survivability and in addition grant an almost limitless MP pool against almost all enemies. My progress is slow but steady, and I have added it to my stats found to the right of my blog posts. I will be trying to keep it updated.

With that said, I come back to the title of my little update. Being that many of us have quite impressive armor and weapons and access to 200,000 Brews, sometimes it just so happens that we take a break from the serious business that is Abyssea group item farming and have a little fun. Yes, we might have been doing it very wrong as they say in this specific occasion, but damn if I didn't laugh the entire time doing it. Let's see if you can figure out what is wrong here...

Dark Ring +1

So, to make a long story short, I take back everything bad I ever said about augments or Abyssea...

We actually managed to get a few nice Dark Rings, but I think the next best one was PDT-4% and MDT-3%. I think I have used up all of my lotting luck for a long, long time. O_O

Fishing 100.0

I started fishing a few months after I started playing FFXI to earn gil for armor in my early levels (we are talking back when I was leveling WAR to 37 as a sub for PLD, and I specifically remember saving up gil to buy the chain armor set at level 24). I remember getting fishing to about fishing 35 before taking a long break from serious fishing for about 4 years. I had found better ways of making money, and the old fishing system (before the one implemented now) was very boring for me.

A little over a year ago, I started up fishing again due to being bored and broke. My goal was reaching fishing 100 and getting my Ebisu, which is the closest I ever thought I would ever get to a Relic in the game. Well, things didn't seem to happen in the order I expected, but I am not going to complain:


As shown, I finished up skilling on Cave Cherax because I didn't want to start fishing Liks or Gugs until I had capped skill. Most fishers I've talked to said that fishing skillups after 90 were really slow, and for 90-94 that was true for me. However, I fell into some sort of skillup vortex at level 95 and got those last 5 levels in under 4 days, so I will just consider myself lucky and not question it...

Since then, I took a crack at fishing Liks, and with the two fishing rings with charges, it isn't a problem. At this point, I will probably take a break from fishing for now and keep working on my subjobs for the level cap increase coming in June. I will make another post after the patch with what I think about the levle cap increase and the new add-on.

Indomitable Spirit

I don't think much more needs to be said...

Ebisu Fishing Rod mine!

Special thanks to Cdgreg and Upbeat for supplying me. Final tally was 1/387 for Gugs, and 1/68 for Liks. Not too bad, since the approximate average for the quest is a 0.5% droprate on the two items you need (Which makes the average number of required fish about 400 total).

So long, and thanks for all the fish...