December 28, 2004
Lots of FFXI stuff has happened lately, so I'll just sum it up: fun! Tiamat, Jormungand, CoP missions, quest madness (down to less than 20 unfinished quests in the whole game), merit parties with Juventus&AA (HONE FANTAJI-), auction house camping, dynamis/typical hnm antics, insane scorpion BCNM, sabriga hunts, wedding (Tinu&Atrox!), christmas events and pure animal suit madness. For all screens go here!

As for the CoP missions...
Diablos BC: the nightmare ability was beefed up since a recent patch. People outside the BC were dying everywhere. We won but I died outside of the BC due to slip damage. The nightmare is just a cheapshot move now.. like a Spike Flail which puts everyone to sleep.
Ouryu BC: our job-specific strategy worked well, and for a NIN Ceis tanked perfectly outside of when it flew (ouch) and he even made a "stone def up" macro for that, my Garuda was also awesome on it. I can feel those merit points being put to use, dammit. Good thing we did sabriga hunts, we were able to have blingin' gear for the missions.

Among the quest madness I got to name a new airship to the "Lovely Fantasy Warship" (unsure about EN version) and saw some fairly rare cutscenes/NMs/locations which most people never have or never will, hehe. I also spent a lot of time soloing things which shouldn't have been soloed. In the end, I decided to go all out and finish off all possible quests in the game and push my skills to the limit.

With the subligar/sabriga hunting in Phomiuna Aqueducts and Sacrarium for Brygid's fashion check II quest, I ended up with the DRK (Gloom Breastplate), WHM/SMN (Nimbus doublet) and BLM/SMN (Duende cotehardie) pieces. I haven't traded in for the Nimbus doublet and wear the sabriga because I strangely like it as is.

In other gaming news, awesome PE mix for your ears.

December 08, 2004
Lot of FFXI adventurez lately. Mainly Ballista on the weekend with Sven, Timy, Rimu, Five and Edwin. Pure boner because I haven't seen Edwin and Five in so long. Fighting with and against people you know is equally fun. I'm sure I won't feel like playing Ballista if I don't know anyone, or if there's few entrants.

I also did some actual leveling. Aside from repeatedly dying (for various reasons such as Jormungand) on my BLM and SMN jobs, my WHM finally got to 64 in a haijin party.

I also did a few trigger hunts as Black Mage recently. I had a hard time remembering how frail I am, ever since Ballista. I got so used to marathoning, stunning and binding things that I didn't realize that marathoning Faust as BLM is not easy. Especially since at the same time I was busy doing party changes and inviting people all over the place. Sven refused to change parties so it meant various switcheroo stress, gah.

December 01, 2004
Lots has happened lately. Had a dinner at Bellini's with dog and got fat. The Incredibles is a cool movie. Also this week Ken Jennings finally lost, but I have my own reasons to believe he lost on purpose.

On the FFXI front we've finally finished Chapter 2 of the Promathia Missions. The 40BC versus 3 Mammets who change jobs at will was pretty hard.. and costly. That's one of the things I never again want to do in this game. However, the cutscenes and the BC arena itself were amazing. The waterfalls and huge cliffs were cool.

Following the 40BC was a slew (slew being an understatement) of cutscenes, mini-quests, mini NMs and farming in preparation of the next missions. One of the quests involved climbing to the top of the Parradamo Tor in Attowah Chasm. I spent an hour finding the way up, came back down and did it again so that it was within the time limit. NEVER AGAIN@#$@#$

I then wandered around Pso'Xja, doing some solo farming for chips to get the next BC pass. Russta and Calin found me, then we killed some bracelet NMs and hunted a few chests together while looking for his map. I took a much needed break and fell asleep. When I woke up it turns out the chest for the map was right behind where I left my character, so they were already done there (thankfully).

We continued to have a random chat party until I was called to a 6 man Fafnir camp - complete with taru PLD, we seriously need members to show up more often. Much later was a 19 man Dynamis San'doria with no AF drops at all! In the midst of all that, a Relic Gun somehow went into my inventory and I just found it now.. mreh.