Sword and Dagger

Vacations are wonderful things, they allow you to take a breather from the hectic life Vana'diel throws upon you, and enjoy the beaches and mountains without the pressure to defeat any monsters along the paths. That being said, mine was wonderful, but now it's time for duty to return and for my own desires to take a backseat...well, at least partially, I admit I was actually looking forward to returning for more than one reason!

I didn't do much on getting back, just went out with GYS to do ... something? and then I split off to go skill with Verrick for a bit in The Boyhada Tree. Went RDM/NIN with his BRD/NIN and it was fun fighting the Steelshells there. Sword ended up at 239.3, and Dagger at 228.7. So, when he got sleepy, I decided to log there and use the next night for soloing towards finishing up my skilling goals for a while, and sure enough, surpassed the levels needed for Savage Blade and Evisceration.

Last night, I went to PL a friend in the dunes, and figured we'd go near where the Valkurm Emperor pops so I could finish out my 100 kills without getting the hairpin. >.> Eckardt came out after a bit (I think they did Assault first?), and after I was 0/1 invited me to a party and was like "Guess what I got?" and as I ran over, the emperor died again, and Ta-Da!!! Another insect wing. -.- That went very much like the other 1-98, keke. So we're still out camping and PL'ing, and Doc sends me a tell to see how long I'll be on, and I told him I'm gonna kill the 100th VE and then log for the night. So Veme kills the crab, and as I loop, I see VE in the NW corner, and Dia claim as there were a couple others hunting. Gravity on it, and I bring it back, where Eck and I proceed to poke it to death, and true to comic form... 1% = Empress Hairpin (1/100, FINALLY! hehe) And again a big thanks to Eck for being the photographer of history! Hehe.

First there is the capture of the 100th bug, and then, the irony of the item FINALLY dropping. It was a long affair, thanks for at least leaving me in your will, Empress :P

Lists of things and leaving stuff out

Sections:
1) Hunting fails. 2) CoP slows. 3) THF flees. 4) Pointy Hat! 5) Other

1) I have a love/hate relationships with NMs. Some, like Mysticmaker or Morion, love me, and drop items well. The counter to this has recently been my bane, the Valkurm Emperor. You see, VE and I go waaaaaaay back to when I was leveling Ninja in Yuhtunga Jungle...and before the item drop was even the femme fatale version. He drops a hairpin. Sounds simple enough, right? And yet last night I have reached an astounding rate of 0/97 in achieving said hairpin. I decided if I went under 1% accuracy (aka, 0/100) that I was going to hang it up for that drop, and likely just level without it, until perhaps I can do the BCNM "Dropping Like Flies."

2) Haven't done much with CoP -- Not sure if it's from the lack of the static members, or from the difficulties some have had going through the Snoll. At this point, I don't know if our whole static is up to the Airship, or if we have to get some people through the Snoll Tzar still...so we'll see what's going on with that this week...

3) THF static went wonderfully well the other night: Lanoire (NIN), Alcindor (SAM), Zaria (DRG), Valynne (WHM), myself (THF) of the usual crew. (Sumiko had other static and thus wasn't in attendance) We brought Eckardt's WHM on as a 6th member, and headed out to the Crawler's Nest, where with two excellent WHMs (Go go Val & Eck), we were never in any danger of death, despite the horrible puller (me) who managed to get a few links through the night, including a set of crawlers before we had gotten Sleep available from the BLM subs. >.>;; But we handled everything smoothly, so I was quite joyful with how it turned out. Now maybe Noire and Alci will like dual WHMs next time! ^_~ Luv ya! Haha!

4) Much thanks go to Lorddocster and the Lords of Hyrda HNM crew - Fade, Legos, Fullen: Team Taliban ftw! and so many others I can't name them all, haha! We did quite a few runs of Hakutaku, and i now have some decent skillup gear when coupled with the Assault body piece I posted about a bit back!

5) I've recently been duoing my BLU with Eckardt's NIN, figuring I'll go up to about 27 and switch to take DRK on up to 37...however, having a 37 BLU sub might just be more useful for RDM than the Chainspell Stun...to have Chainspell Head Butt/Bludgeon. I'm not sure about that at the moment, it will take a bit more thinking on the matter before I decide if the setup is worth it, but going O Hat and high accuracy, it seems at the moment quite a viable option for Stun-nage as well.