Champions of Aht Urhgan

I guess that I would like to start this entry on a more personal level by bringing up that I graduated from High School on Friday with a 3.6 GPA, something that I am incredibly proud of. Its hard to believe I started playing this game two and a half, nearly three years ago and came out with stronger friendship and more friendships. I must say, that while I was walking up to receive my diploma, I was picturing Professor Schultz and the Crimson Grimoire to appear, but luckily they didn't. As of now, I don' have any college plans for the fall, just enjoy my Summer. In a year however, I am planning on attending college for an English major, something I have wanted since I was still in elementary school. Anyway, now that that is over, lets get onto FFXI.

Rather boring Saturday. I was still a bit hungover from my festivities on Friday, but I decided to see what was going on. There were a few people online in KKS but nobody to really do much of anything. I decided to gear up my Dragoon and see if I could get that damn Ramponneau to spawn. I got lucky the first time, nobody was camping him and after a few rounds of killing Toads, he ended up spawning. Sadly, he has yet to drop the Summoning Belt for me, one piece of gear I really want for my Summoner. After that, I believe my Wyvern Etoile and myself sat in Bastok Markets [S] until it was time for Limbus.

Oric and I were hoping that instead of our typical Apollyon run we'd change things up and clear another Temenos zone. In the end, we ended up having a rather low group so False decided on SE Apollyon. Easy win. Before we decided on doing anything, which probably wouldn' happen due to our less than stellar numbers today, I went ahead and brought up Treasures of Aht Urhgan Mission 42.

Oric and I were trying for a long time to get a group of people together for this mission and thankfully one of KKS's 'newer' members, Princesslexi was on the same mission as well as our LS Leader, Falseliberty, who said he would be more than happy to help. Now came the part that I wasn' too excited for, shouting to try and get two more members. Surprisingly, we got two more rather quick. Two fights stood in our way of completing ToAU and finding out the conclusion out the conclusion of the ToAU storyline as well as our rings and our long awaited Glory Crowns.

Path of Darkness was a real pain in the ass. We had our strategy down but it didn' go too well the first time around due to Naja dying early on. I really didn' expect the gears being as much of a problem as they were and it was one of the times I truly had a lot of trouble with my MP management. I was surprised we didn' run out of time during our second run, after the first set of Archaic Gears we recovered after a few deaths and after the second set we had to recover due to low MP. In the end, we ended taking down Amnaf easy enough. Too bad Oric didn' learn Mind Blast though. Before we knew it, we were on the infamous Treasures of Aht Urhgan 44: Nashmeira's Plea.

Its time for some reminiscing though. I believe the first time Oric and I visited Whitegate was back when we were around level fifty, having yet to complete our first limit break quest. Once again, I have to give a special thanks to Darkeindzel and Avion for escorting us from the Mhaura ferry to Whitegate to helping us get our major staging points. We ended up not continuing on with ToAU until Salvage sparked our interest earlier this year but after our short lived Salvage static we went ahead on with ToAU until where we were today, about to engage in combat with Alexander himself.

If I said that I was a bit nervous would be an understatement, especially after most of the testimonials I have read and/or heard over the past few months. Our party went in knowing what we were up against and that there was a possibility that we wouldn' win but we all kept positive. Little did our group consisting of a WHM, PUP, PLD, RDM, DRG, and SAM would be feeling Altana's blessing today. Our fight against Raubahn went great, aside from his AoE WS that hit my a few times and Razfahd was nothing more than a joke and before we knew it it was us against Alexander. "I fucking love this theme!" Oric yelled as Ragnorak blasted from each of our screens echoing to the opposite side. Throughout the fight, we kept 'cool, calm, and collected' a quote Oric and I took to heart from Resident Evil: Outbreak and before we knew Alexander was at less than 50% and we had all survived his first Divine Judgement. Then almost like that he was at 5% and I was running low on MP. Our tank, Princesslexie, was dead and our SAM and DRG were near death as well.

"NOOOOOO!" I screamed as I ran to their aid used Benediction, at this point I could care less about my death, our melee needed to be kept alive. Surprisingly, I didn' die due to all the hate I got from Benediction, rather we made a come back. Then, 1% and he simply wouldn' die. I had completely forgotten about Perfect Defense. At that point I started to panic and shortly after I see that we were getting warped out of the battlefield. I didn' know what had happened so I quickly typed out, "IDD WE WINM?!" I then look up to see, Serenade (Oric's automaton) defeats Alexander, Truly, an epic moment that I will not forget. God bless the Puppetmasters, especially Oric who is a damn good one ;D

The final cutscenes, I must say, were spectacular. There really isn' much else I can say except I did start to cry when I saw that Ovjang and Mjeninghad been repaired. I went ahead and chose the Ulthalam's Ring for my Dragoon and any other melee job that I may level in the future despite being a main Summoner and White Mage. Aside from the completion of the storyline and new ring, the greatest reward was my damn Glory Crown which we had been dying to have ever since Naja stole them from us early on in the storyline. Classy, right ;D

I must say, I don' think there is a better way to start my summer, and I am looking forward to what the next few months bring :)

Reflections. Oric Gets an Osode.

Chat Frequency - 386027
Conversations with NPCs - 51913
Parties Joined - 2192
Alliances Joined - 345
Battles Fought -45704
Number of Times KO-'d - 1739
Enemies Defeated - 23921
GM Calls - 18

I really am going to attempt to start updating Astral Flow more despite having a computer that is completely unreliabe. In spit of now posting regularly doesn' necessarily mean I've been dead. I've actually been accomplishing a lot in game ever since my last post. Some of the more major things I've accomplished recently have been finishing my Summoner Merits. My White Mage merits are coming along quite nicely, my Group 1 is capped and I am 5/10 on my Group 2. Dragoon on the other hand...still a while to go.

Gear wise, I finally got a pair of Nashira Gages for my Summoner, one of the items I've been wanting ever since I started attending Limbus. Shortly after that I got a Nashira Turban, well, mainly since nobody else lotted.

And, to sum up other in game happenings, since I'm one of the few Summoners on Shiva who doesn' have Alexander and Odin, Oric have progressed a lot in the ToAU storyline which I'm really liking. Currently we're on ToAU 42 and then its onto the famous ToAU Missions No. 44 Nashmeira's Plea battle. We're hoping to finish by the end of this week.

Recently, which is pretty much yesterday, our LS has our BIG FUCKING EVENT day which consisted of a Kirin that started two hours later than we originally planned. I'll be the first to admit that it was a really sloppy job, especially dealing with his lesser God pets. Surprisingly, we ended up recovering from our sloppy start and finished slow, but strong. Got some really good drops, mainly including Kirin's Osode which went to Oric, now he doesn' feel so n00b without his Shair Manteel and a pair of W. Legs didn' go to Bennei. Dynamis - Beaucedine tonight, so we'll see how that turns out. Was really hoping for a Dynamis - Xarcabard since near everybody needs relic from there, but, hey, what can you do?

P.S. Oric just got a pair of Goliard Clogs from Nyzul. Yeah, pretty Bard in a matter of sixteen hours.

"Oric is a sexy Bard, doo dah HEY! doo dah HEY!" - Oric >.>

Singing in the Grotto

These past few days have been pretty intense to say the least. Since Friday, we've been hit with a pretty large amount of snow leaving most of us inside for a few days. So far school has been cancelled three days for Oric and me and I've already gotten the message that we're cancelled for tomorrow too. I'm glad, I really needed this break from school.

On Saturday our typical group of people participated in Salvage for the very first time. Before we finished CoP each of us took an interest in trying out Salvage. Just so happens that our favorite Elvaan, Aylah, created a list of which cells would drop to who and in what order. Upon entry we had a few doubts but I'll admit it was pretty fun. Using Skype really helps organization during Salvage. All in all our run went well. We only had two deaths at the beginning but we recovered very well. We ended up not killing the Bomb NM on time but next time I'm sure we'll be able to do it.

Sunday we went ahead and attempted to camp another very notorious monster known as Charybdis. This blog title is in regards to our rather 'fun' experience trying to spawn him. I really cannot even begin to explain what all went on down there other than this song Oric and I wrote about our bad luck with parties recently. Before you read any further, I'd recommend going to YouTube and listening along with the song Bad Romance by Lady Gaga.

Bad Party by Oric and Anidrall
Look for a WHM, we need us a tank.
Ninja or Paladin, I hope they don' stank.
I want EXP.
E X P
I want EXP.

I want my level, 10k tnl.
Soon I'll be 75, I hope I don' fail!
Just want endgame
want endgame
I want endgame!

You know that I want you
You know that I need you
I want it bad
a good party!

I want your songs and your phantom rolls
You and me could kill a colibri
ohohohohohoh
Or do some FoV or kill some EPs
I really hope we don' die
ohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoho
Caught in a bad party
ohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoh
caught in a bad party!
rarahrah

Where is the camp at, what are we fighting?
How 'bout Eruca's I'm sure we'll be fine
Cast barfira,
Bar fi ra
Cast barfira

Where is our puller I forgot to ask
How 'bout our SAM or is he an ass?
Let's just start
pleaseplease please please
Let's just start please!

You know that I want you
You know that I need you
I want it bad
a good party!
I want your songs and your phantom rolls
You and me could kill a colibri
ohohohohohoh
Or do some FoV or kill some EPs
I really hope we don' die
ohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoho
Caught in a bad party
ohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoh
caught in a bad party!
rarahrahrarahrah

Buff buff, haste me baby, cure me now what are you crazy?
Buff buff, haste me baby, cure me now what are you crazy?
Buff buff, haste me baby, cure me now what are you crazy?
Buff buff, haste me baby, oh forget I'm dead already!

We have a tank and we have a WHM
Should have gone well, we're all not on the same page
damnittaru, You are such a noob,
damnittaru, what the hell did you do?
What the hell did you do? What the hell did you doo? A friggin.. A friggin noob!

I want your songs and your phantom rolls
You and me could kill a colibri
ohohohohohoh
Or do some FoV or kill some EPs
I really hope we don' die
ohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoho
Caught in a bad party
ohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoh
caught in a bad party!

Banishers of Emptiness.

Chains of Promathia is probably the most talked about talked about expansion in Final Fantasy XI. Most of FFXI's Playerbase have heard of or completed Chains of Promathia and most people long to finish. Many will argue that it has the best story in the game and the reward for its completion that everybody would like to have. While I don' remember the actual date I started working on Chains of Promathia I can certainly remember like it was, well, yesterday. The first thing I remember is zoning into Lower Delkfutt's Tower as a level twenty something Thief and just in awe. I didn' continue until some time later:

At that time I never knew what any of the Promyvion areas were aside from the fact that a lot of people needed them and that they were, by the looks of it, a challenge. Even though I do not like this person, if it were not for them I may not have had such a smooth run through Promyvion, so I would like to thank Darkeindzel for putting those original runs together for my friends and I.


I believe it was on one of the first Saturdays in January of 2009 that the official Chains of Promathia static group started. Our initial group consisted of Letira who would be our Paladin through each of our runs and our Warrior in our epic fights on the Airship in Chapter 6. Then there was Oric who was my best friend in real life and in game. Oric was perhaps our main source of DD throughout Promathia lending himself and his Automaton Serenade in plenty of missions and his Scholar before I had leveled White Mage as one of my main jobs and finally leading us support as Bard in the final battle against Promathia. Then we have Aylah, our favorite Elvaan in game who met Oric and I when we first joined the game back in December of 2007. Another of our main source of DD throughout our run she would be sly and protect us with her Big Booty Shield or help as her Puppetmaster and during our Airship fight she did more than just buff as Corsair eventually providing a large source of DD during the battle. Then we have Seraphe who at the time joined us as his Monk and helped tank for us on Ninja during a lot of our earlier missions. Finally we have Map Master Ixidor who, as given by his title, we would've been lost without. Usually dealing devastating blows as Dark Knight or nukes as Black Mage or lending a healing hand as Red Mage Ixi definately was a great member of the team, who I must also thank Darkeindzel for introducing us to. Oh, and there's me who you guys know already ;)


"Go, go, CoP Static Go!" we would cheer each Saturday evening when being invited to our Skype room. I don' want to sound too, well, I'm not sure what the exact word would be but we worked great together and just about all of the time we came out on top and ended the day with either Aylah or myself eating victory Chinese. This would continue throughout the year and was definately an event we would look forward to each Saturday. Then we all had our doubts as we were faced with a large series of events:


I don' really prefer to go on about that bad which followed us for quite some time so I'll just sum it up. Our friend Letira had started to experience computer and real life problems which eventually led us to a hiatus. However, Letira came back but sadly that Saturday we were to resume, Seraphe never showed and while I still feel like an asshole for doing this I dropped Seraphe from the static and replaced him with Karlik, a shy player who soloed the majority of his jobs to 75. It struck again, none of us ever thought that we would ever finish Chains of Promathia when Ixidor's credit card company pulled sneaky shit which eventually led to him taking a leave of absense for a few months and Karlik who quit. Now, lets get back to the good.


This past Saturday we were all thrilled to learn that Ixidor's new credit card finally came in the mail. We finally continued on with The Garden of Antiquity. In a group decision we all agreed that, no matter what, we would experience the ending to this great story and walk away with our ring. We started around our normal time but we clearly didn' stop when we normally did. We were joined by Katiekat, a fellow Mithra from our linkshell who was on the same mission as we were. We continued on until three that morning with our dreaded fight against the pots.

I would like to go ahead and say that without Oric and Aylah, who are both skilled 75 Puppetmasters, we more than likely NEVER would have beat this fight. To be quite honest I'm not really sure which aggravated us more, the Airship fight or this fight. While we had our strategy down we kept messing up and then we finally got it. We started the fight with Oric and Aylah doing what they could with the Red Mage pots until a mess up. Once we messed up we ran to the other side, closer to the Black Mages, and wiped. We reraised and recovered with only more wipe in store. Oric, whose Automaton was ready again, went and started soloing the pots. Then, with barely thirty seconds left we won thanks to an Automaton, a few Astral Flows, and some heavy Black Magic.


We couldn' believe it...after a year since we first gathered together in Tavnazian Safehold we were facing the Twilight God, Promathia. We really couldn' believe that we were there. A year later with better gear and more knowledge we entered the Empyreal Paradox with strategy in mind. There he was standing right before us....Promathia. We took action as Prishe and Selh'teus accompanied us and after a few tries and job swaps later I screamed over Skype, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT GUYS! WE FUCKING BEAT MOTHERFUCKIN' CHAINS OF PROMATHIA!"


All that was left for us to do was to get our final cutscenes saying farewell to the NPCs we grew to know throughout Chains of Promathia. I'll be honest and say that I did end up crying through near all of these cutscenes but it really hit me even harder saying good-bye to Prishe and ultimately enjoying the final cutscene with Distant Worlds playing. I really am going to miss Chains of Promathia and now matter what all happened I really enjoyed every bit of it.


In conclusion, after starting before I even had unlocked an advanced job up until just completing and experiencing the storyline I feel a bit close to all those I worked together with. We experienced this as a team and we saved Vana'Diel together. Without then, I don' think I'd be able to do it. Thank you guys, thank you for joining and I hope we'll continue to kick ass and stay friends.







P.S. In case you were wondering what ring I ended up choosing, I eventually decided upon choosing the Rajas Ring. While I have my two main jos, White Mage and Summoner, at 75 I have been leveling Dragoon for the past few months and I decided that while the Tamas Ring is a great ring I can do fine with another mage ring and figured to treat my Dragoon.