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.

5:46:50

Ever since Seraphe stepped out as our sixth member of our Chains of Promathia static we switched our times and gathered on Saturday and Sunday. I'm honestly thinking that there is somebody out there who doesn't want us to finish CoP.

On Saturday, we realized that Ixidor wasn't able to log into PlayOnline, let alone FFXI so until he got everything settled out we figured we'd just go ahead and farm Sea for a bit. A few mobs later and I was able to finish geting my Korin Obi made :)

Saturday's Limbus run went just as well and Aylah even got one of the items to upgrade her AF so thats good.

Sunday a few of the members in KurokajiSyndicate had pops for Sarameya, my first actual large ZNM and zerg attempt. They went down with little trouble All was good, I'm still pissed my dad took my PS3. This is a worthless post and I'm waiting for step two of the update to download to my PC. Which is, yeah, just like the blog title says is remaining =/

Makin' Progress

Its been quite a while since I've last blogged. Its a pity though, since I've been doing a lot and have accomplished a lot in game.

I may as well start off with my and Oric's Puppetmaster and White Mage static. Although we partied most of our other jobs together, Oric and I managed to hit 75 in the same party. In all honesty, I'm quite shocked that I still leveled WHM past 37 since when I first started leveling Black Mage I subbed Summoner taking on the I don't want to main heal aspect and vice versa with Summoner. One weekend though, I managed to fly through WHM. Getting it to thirty so I wouldn't be gimp anymore. and then eventually 37. Then early last year my friends persuaded me into trying out WHM past 37 and I'm glad that I did because I really enjoy the job and I think I'm a good WHM. I know Lavera likes it when I'm the main WHM in Dynamis. Oric and I have been doing a lot on WHM and PUP as well, mainly some FoV and we've been working on our Mythic WS. We're only on Floor 5 but we're making progress since we can each close a light skillchain. Now only if Dynamis - Beaucedine would be nice to us and spare a Pantin Tobe and a Cleric's Briault. Anyways, on to missions!

If any of you guys have been following my blog you'll know that I'm in a Chains of Promathia static with five other of my friends. We were put on a hiatus after Letira's was out of a job. Well, he made it back to the game around the middle of September and we resumed with Three Paths. Sadly though, our kick ass MNK Seraphe lost interest with the game and we had to end up replacing him. Surprisingly, we managed to get another member who was just as good as Seraphe. A blonde Hume with a beard named Karlik,w ho soloed each of his jobs to 75. Each and every one of the fights for Three Paths went as smooth as I could have ever imagined. The only trouble we had was during the Moblin fight. I ended up putting up every other important buff aside from barfira but luckily I used Benediction and Let managed to get hate back from me.

Then, we all know what comes after Three Paths, hands down one of the most talked about missions in the game. Chains of Promathia mission 6-4, One to Be Feared, or simply known as the airship fight. I think I can speak for everybody in the static that we were all terrified of what was soon to come we came into that batle as prepared as we could ever fucking be. Our first fight went smooth, a little rough on time but we had no problems with the Mammets but Omega turned out to be the biggest problem of the entire fight. Near the end he starts to get nasty as hell. On our first try we managed to get Ultima down to 2% and then we wiped/ran out of time. We went three more times, switching up our party set up each time. On our fourth try, we were ready for business. We had Ixidor as Paladin, Letira and Karlik as Warrior, Aylah as Corsaid, Oric as Bard, and me as White Mage. We defeated the Mammets with barely any difficulty at all, Omega was still being a prick to us when he was at 1% when he went crazy and we ended up wiping. No worries, got back up and with a quick WS and a Holy he was down. Finally, it was the final mob, Ultima. This was the most smooth the battle ever went for us and we ended up winning. A fight that I thought I may never get to experience, we won. The cheers heard over Skype and the messages that filled up our party chat were hilarious. We fuckin' earned it! With that we only needed two more major missions and we'd have access to Sea and be able to do Limbus with our LS.

Then, once again, we were hit with bad news. Letira wasn't going to be able to play for a good bit of time and with that we came to an agreement that we could go ahead and move on with out him. Its sad to say, but being this close to the conclusion of CoP we needed to continue especially since we waited months for him to come back when he first lost his job. Everything is okay though, he was with us ever since our first Promy - Mea and when and if he comes back we'll be there to help him. Since yesterday we were stuck with 5/6 people for the NMs and TenzenI went ahead and asked the LS if anybody was available to help and sure enough, Astrael, our LS leader and probably one of the best geared Dark Knights on Shiva helped us and soon enough, by 2PM EST Karlik, Ixidor, Aylah, Oric, and I had access to Al'Taieu or as most FFXI Players refer to it as, Sea.

We accomplished so much ever since we started playing Final Fantasy XI and its nice to have done so. After leaving Sea, Oric and I joined some of our LS members for a Colibri party where Oric got 66BRD and I got three merit points. Speaking of, I finally maxed out my Summoning Magic merits at 8/8. With my Summoning Magic set I get 297 MP back from Elemental Siphon during single weather / Vana'Diel day. Hopefully I'll be upgrading my gear with the ability to partake in Salvage now and will get getting 300+ MP back.

In closing, I'd like to say {Carbuncle}ations to Oric for us somehow managing to get him a Hyorin Obi not even twenty-four hours after getting access to Sea. I have a feeling we'll be spending a lot of time there. Later ;)

Silencer of the Echo

So, as you may have guessed by the title, I have finally obtained my Royal Redingote.

After five attempts at retrieving the Omnis Stone and five attempts at fighting the Seed Crystal, my group won. I had in mind what I wanted to choose ever since I saw the list of augments.

I chose "Avatar perpetuation cost" -2 and Pet: Magic Accuracy +7/Magic Atk. Bonus +7.

Now, since most people gave a review of the expansion, I'll go ahead and give my two gil:

I'll admit that I didn't have too much of a problem with the first quests obtaining the Seedspall Lux, Luna, and Astrum even without subbing Thief. But I have heard that people have killed a ridiculous amount of mobs before finally getting the items. The second back-to-back fetch quest was, in my opinion, a bigger pain than the first quest. If I remember correctly, next was the Seed Mandragora fight which was great, especially seeing Ramuh one hit all of them round after round, and then was the first harder fight of ACP.

The fight againt the Seed Orc, Quadav, Yagudo, and Goblin. It was a challenging fight. Obtaining the Mark of Seed wasn't hard at all especially since Ixidor led the way with some Benny Hill worthy moments ;) But it was the fight that took us about four or so tries. But finally we won.

After the fight againt the Seed Beastmen we found ourselves venturing about and getting cutscenes and then we brace ourselves for the Lower Delkfutt's Tower portion where you have to ascend the tower under a level thirty cap. Thats was a fucking pain in the ass especially the one time I went as Dancer and died and didn't have any type of reraise.

In the end, though, we ended up winning and our final attempt went so well. The only person who had gotten hit was our Paladin, okay, our Red Mage may have gotten hit once or twice from a Seed Thrall but we all did a such great job. I was a bit disappointed with the story and the cutscenes though especially in comparison to Wings of the Goddess. As a matter of fact, the only cutscenes I thought were good was the first cutscene and the last. All of the others were a bit 'meh'

Onto Monday's update! All I can say is that it was full of win even if I don't have the final Bastok mission done to continue. Oric and I made a brave venture into the Northlands where we, surprisingly, didn't get ourselves killed. And the music track in Xarcabard [S] is simply to die for!

And on Tuesday....I got to kill the Amphiptere with a group of Summoners!

I'm off to work on a Moogle Kupo d'Etat since I'm only on Curses! A Horrifically Harrowing Hex. I really like this expansion a lot more than ACP. The cutscenes are cute and I don't really mind the fetch quests this time around.

Take care, I'll upload pictures later. I'm a bit lazy ^^;;