First thing I’d like to talk about is my new blog design. I’ve been on the same “Nyzul Isle” style since the blog began, and was beginning to become tired of it. To top that off, it seems like the old twitter widget just flat out stopped functioning… that’s right, people, I’m still active on twitter! I decided to give it a bit of an uplift, and went with an “Al Zahbi” theme, since I’ve wanted to do some form of battle between Kyo and Liyel for a while now. Liyel has been fighting Robber Crabs in an attempt to raise her Club skill, and Kyo has been known as “Skoffinrider” for over a year. From there, it just kind of stuck–though I put in Starfaye (on a much more epic version of her Paladin) as a sort of referee, and this is what I got. Unfortunately the text is a bit small, but I may correct that if I get any complaint comments about it.

I updated the twitter widget and switched over all of the site images to .JPG format, which should help on the loading a bit. Not to mention that .PNG format just wasn’t displaying properly on my computer… if anyone should like this blog, I have to at least, right?!

Speaking of enjoyment, SE kind of tossed everyone a curve ball last night with that emergency maintenance. It screwed with my Salvage run, and I’ve been getting far more RMT tells today than pretty much ever before. Either the RMT are smarter, or they broke the chat filter somehow. Either way it’s pretty unfortunate.

Time to do a little bit of catch-up before I talk about the events of today.

Sky!!

CeruleanDivinity, led by Estrellita, did its first-ever gods run on Wednesday–pumping out a successful Genbu and two nice and smooth Suzakus. While we had mostly “open lot” drops, the Linkshell Bank went from 0 to somewhere in the margins of 440k without much effort. I’m hoping that I can set out enough influence for the bank to be set as a paycheck system, because I’ve seen far too many sky shells break over shady activities in regards to the funds gained.

The run started with me on BLM, and I was dualboxing Kurosama since he has work on Wednesdays. Overall, a fairly slow start… and I wound up going back to job change to Ranger, and before we even really began I changed once more to Samurai. Luckily I didn’t have to change again afterwards–probably because Estre felt a bit bad about making me change twice already.

As we were leaving Genbu, I noticed the scenery from Genbu’s Island at night. It actually looks rather peaceful… if you’re not a mage.

This was my first instance of actually dualboxing during a group event, and playing Samurai and Black Mage at the same time isn’t EXACTLY an easy task. I messed up on stun timing a few times, but I’m sure that if we had established a stun order I would have been able to more easily prioritize my thought processing.

Our first Suzaku dropped two Aquarian Legs abjurations, and the second dropped one as well. With a 150% drop rate on them, I have a feeling we won’t see any more for a while. It sucks too, since Liyel doesn’t have sky access yet… I really want these pants for her White Mage. D:

Now… normally I don’t do much of anything on Friday. It’s one of my two days each week that I have nothing scheduled in Vana’diel, so I take it to relax and do some crafting, or try to merit. I still need 2 more merit points to cap Enmity Decrease, and then countless more for my jobs. @_@; Oi. I started out this afternoon (yes, afternoon–I had no work so I wound up waking up at like 1 PM) with a solo ENM–Sheep in Antlion’s Clothing.

I take great measures to solo this every five days (or six, depending on when events are), namely because it keeps my skills as a Dragoon sharp. As anyone who follows my twitter knows that I’ve fought this ENM 74 times now, and this particular fight gave me another Galateia (which sell for 50k~ on Ragnarok)–my fifteenth in a row, actually.

To be honest, preparing yourself to fight Tuchulcha is very easy. The Pit Antlions that spawn by walking over certain cracks in Attohwa Chasm are actually harder than he is (the IT ones, at least)–not to mention with those you may have to handle Air Elemental aggro or more antlions linking. As a Dragoon, take a little precaution and try to solo a few of these before attempting the ENM version. If you can handle them with ease, then he’s going to be no problem at all. The hard part is if you pop one of the “babies”–any more than one of the three and you’re definitely going to time out on a solo run. As a result, it requires a bit of luck, and I think I use up a lot of that because out of 74 runs I’ve only gotten 2 hagun. >.> The next one is going straight to my funds for Usukane Haramaki.

Speaking of which, the Nomad Mog Bonanza is a very welcomed gift from SE. I ended up going with Amanomurakumo / Usukane Haramaki / Valkyrie’s Trews as my prize choices. Amanomurakumo namely because, as much as I would like Gungnir, I want to earn it–DRG is my <3 in Vana’diel and I don’t want to make any bit of it feel unearned. Also because having a relic that I can actually fully utilize in Salvage would be very, very handy. I chose Usukane Haramaki over Valkyrie’s Fork for similar reasons–I can join an Einherjar shell and eventually get the Fork, but it’d be a lot harder to save up the 14~15 million gil for a salvage body. All of the gil I’d save by getting it free could be used to buy other nice things for my other jobs. Finally, Valkyrie’s Trews because… well, frankly, everything else I can’t use, already have, or can get very easily.

As I was about to slow down for the night, and hoping to turn in early for work tomorrow, I got a /tell from Sziha asking if I could come help their group out on Salvage. Apparently Estrellita couldn’t make it, and Kurosama doesn’t typically do anything without her, so they were short two members. I hopped on in because I owe pretty much everyone in their group a favor or two anyway, and because Salvage is actually a fairly entertaining event. What I didn’t expect though, as I logged onto Teamspeak, was Icedout saying, “I think Kyo should come Dragoon.”

…Wat.

I’ve only ever done Salvage as Samurai, so I felt a little out of place. Fortunately it seems like Angon knocks the hell out of Long-Armed Chariot when you fuse it with two Monks. I’ve fought LAC the most with MulletHaven out of any Salvage boss, so I knew what to expect with Brainjack–and actually managed to successfully kite him three of the four times. It just reminds me that I need to do the add-on expansion for some movement speed in my legs… even though I’ve been considering any of the job options. @_@;

You know how Ascetic’s Fury turns mobs black when you gear-swap at the right time? Well, it seems like Drakesbane turns the entire area of sight BLUE. The above screenshot had to be darkened severely just because of the radiant azure light that was the aftermath of my meteor-esque Drakesbane. I’ve seen it displayed and had it pointed out to me in most of MulletHaven’s nyzul videos when I played DRG more often than anything else, but I never took much thought into it until tonight.

Foxx’s group is notorious for getting double Skadi head pieces on this boss, but it seems like the Holy Crest broke their curse. I’ve already forgotten who the Marduk’s pants went to, but since everyone but Sziha passed on the Skadi’s body 25 piece, I decided to lot on it so it would maybe see some use down the road.

…Not like I’m going to be spending 14~15 million on my 4th lv75 job before I “pimp out” all of the other three first.

-Kyo

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