On a Good Farming Night

I worked from home yesterday, since my car and the lot it was parked in was covered in 6 inches of snow.

Which was perfect for being able to get a lot done work-wise, and immediately being able to gear up and head to sea for some farming action.

On a side note, I helped some French Black Mage get his Moldavite Earring two hours before getting mine from an uncontested claim. Yay, working from home!

When I got to sea, some members and I promptly went about finding the ??? for Ix'Aern (MNK) to use up the inventory -3 I carried due to the HQ Aern Organs. Two and a half hours later, after getting us lost, wandering in the general direction, discussing strategy, Aidan going afk to deal with children, a few more people popping on to help, Maeriya showing up to solo Ghrah M Chips, and me venturing out solo from the pop point to raise Arael (on the other side of the map) and Melkor (on my way back), we finally....

Arael died again.

Lol.

Melkor found him because Godshatred and I were sitting at the pop point behind a one-way door. A door that Arael found the Quasilium to open with earler. Yay Arael!

We did finally kill Ix'MNK with Xenien kiting and the rest of us supporting and/or nuking. The fight was significantly shorter and much less of a headache than the gathering portion.

I feel very confident in my ability to get to Ix'MNK in the future in a timely and safe manner. Yay learning the hard way!

The Vice of Antipathy (Merciful Cape) dropped for Arael. Sweet :D

Then I left to go grocery shopping and take Xenien to work.

When I got back and finished unloading food into my fridge and pantry, I asked what was going on.

They were on like Reraise #5 of Ix'Aern (Dark Knight). I ran down RDM/NIN style to help kite.

This was honestly my first time using RDM/NIN to kite by spamming hate spells a la PLD/RDM. It was frickin sweet. Blind is the bread and butter of this method, since it generates 1 CE and 640 VE. I also utilized Dispel (320 CE/320 VE), Sleep II (480 CE/480 VE), and Cures as needed. I am sure some of those were cast with -enmity, since I don't have an enmity set or a rule for kiting for RDM in my XML, but it still worked really well.

Enmity values taken from Kaeko's Enmity Table blog entry quantifying hate per action by Cumulative Enmity (CE) and Volatile Enmity (VE). You can read his testing in further detail here.

I only know from hearsay that the fight was rocky before help arrived. Shadowkept apparently attempted to carby kite while requesting everyone rest up and be ready, but a few people tried to cast DoTs anyway and got their hind ends promptly handed to them.

Once I got there, though, I was able to quickly help kite on hate spells alone. When a BLM would toss out a Tier IV or an AM II, they would kite until two or three spells later I could regain hate and begin kiting again. Deaths were at a minimum throughout the rest of the fight I participated in. I believe Ix'DRK only reraised three more times before finally handing over his Deed of Moderation.

It was a good night considering I had to skip Nyzul Isle due to lack of available static members and the need to stock my apartment with food.

Altana be with you.

Guntar.

Happy New Year! (a bit late)

It's that time of year! The time of year when the year just begins. Also, my birthday was the 3rd!

I've been terribly busy between work and play, so my apologies for the lack of posts.

I took some paid time off of work from Christmas Eve until New Year's day. I feel like I really got in the relaxation and fun time I was craving.

I got Bioshock and the Orange Box for Christmas (finally!) from my brother and parents, respectively. I'm only over a year behind, but I look forward to playing them all. I also bought Left 4 Dead after playing my friend Drew's copy for the XBox 360. I loved everything about the game except that it was not on a high-res screen and console joysticks are always clunky and unwieldy for first-person shooters. I solved both of those problems by buying the pc version. It was on sale for $37.49!

I finished Portal, and that was ridiculously fun and had a lot of little things that made me laugh. If you've played it, you know. If you haven't, you won't understand until you play it. So play it.

I finished all four Left 4 Dead campaigns on both Easy and Normal difficulties. It took me two attempts at the Hospital Finale on No Mercy to escape with all survivors on Advanced difficulty, but it was friggin' fun and challenging! I look forward to doing campaigns on higher difficulties with friends instead of NPC AIs.

I recommend L4D for anyone who likes the zombie genre and is enthralled at the concept of surviving a zombie apocalypse with your closest friends. This game has tapped into something that I haven't experienced before. The in-game commentary (which is cool to play through) explains this concept as "small co-op group versus a horde" that was inspired by Counter-strike games featuring a few players with guns versus an army of bots with daggers.

The zombie mob for CS:Source was fun, and Zombie Panic! took that a step further, but they hit the jackpot with this one. The idea is not that you have to prove your skills as better than anyone, but rather that you must coordinate your skills with your fellow survivors and rely on one another to be a potent team.

This does not appeal to everybody, as I was arguing why I love the game with another FFXI player who was denouncing it heavily. The great part about this game, though, is that the people it DOES appeal to are exactly the kind of people you would want on your survivor team working with you.

Win-win.

Altana be with you.

Guntar.