Vrtra Vanquished!

In the wee morning hours of today, Nightbane finally took down the last cop wyrm. Vrtra. I wasn't in the main alliance, so I didn't get to see what dropped. However, from the OMGs and WOWs, I assume they were good drops.



In other news, Zoldolf hit the big 40 today. He had some new armor that actually looked cool!

Mission 8-1

On September 8th, I decided to go ahead and finish 8-1. This involved getting a wand from a nm in Davoi. We had 5 people needing that wand, and the nm will only drop 2 per kill. So, we had to fight this thing three times. With a 15-30 min respawn time, we had a lot of nothing to do.


The nm is a black mage type, and had a habit of casting AoE spells to start. However, our rdm was pretty good with sticking the silences, so it wasn't so bad.

Fafnir!

On September 7th, our linkshell managed to grab Fafnir via Stun. This new claiming system has really leveled the playing field between the Jpn and NA's. It wasnt a super mean one, so the fight went pretty smooth. The drops were on the weak side, but we still claimed Fafnir nontheless.

Dynamis San d'oria

On September 6th, DownTheRamp went on it's bi-weekly trip to Dynamis. San d'oria was next on the rotation. This trip was full of af2! Unfortunately, no monk af dropped. However, I did get hit with 3 Eagle eye shots, and was victim of 2 Hundred Fists. You can see the photos I took at Caitlin's Albums.



Before going to dynamis, Zoldof gained another level! He achieved level 39 and new armor.

AF 1s

September 5th was a pretty slow day, so I decided to finish my af 1 for my White Mage and Dragoon. The white mage af was first. I stole xp mobs from a group to gain tp and started the fight with a 300 TP Asuran Fist. The fight took about 3 mins to finish. This af is more useful than, let's say, monk af 1. It has the mp, which I'm told is most important for white mage.


The Dragoon AF was a walk in the park as well. For fun, I decided to turn on Hundred Fists. The NM knew what I was doing and decided to turn on Invincible at the same time. At the end, my Destroyers would live up to it's name and the antican nm went down.


After the AFs, I called Zoldof and went to xp. He had a change of armor again! Where does he get the gil to buy it?? Seems a little shady to me.

King Vinegarroon and Zoldof too

On September 4th, I log in to find that most of the linkshell is in Alteapa Desert. I curiously ask around to see why this is so, and was replied with "King Vinegarroon!! Fighting right now!" This must be one of the new notorious monsters that I've read about, that or my knowledge of desert mobs must be pretty weak.

With an interesting name like that, my curiosity led me to the outpost and headed to the fight. From the hectic fury of commands and comments from fighting this monster, I learned that it had an uncanny regeneration rate. I also learned that the linkshell has been fighting it for over 2 hours and the monster was still at 100%.

The strategy they had going at the time was to try to nonstop skillchain with magic bursts. Apparently, they got it down to 80% (I wasn't around at that time to see it happen) by using this method. However, they were lacking the manpower to generate the appropriate skillchains.
The scorpion had a nasty habit of drawing in the alliance and using it's AoE attacks which would cripple, if not kill much of the alliance. It wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't do it every 2 mins.

At the end, the linkshell decided that our strategy wasn't working and had to use a new one if we had a hope of taking down the king. So we just gave up and left it alone...until next time.


After that whole experience, I decided to go to Xarcabard to level with my npc. He's leveling nicely, achieving level 38 during the session.

Mission 7-2

On September 3rd, my friend Semma decided to complete the final mission for rank 8. Naturally, I helped out because it was only a matter of taking out one monster. Sounds easy right? However, the placement of this notorious monster was around sight agro tonberrys, magic agro dolls and pots.

Even with everything around, Semma managed to cleanly pull with Carbuncle and the fight began. It wasn't so bad at first, even though the two Throat Stabs almost killed me. At around 20% hp, it decided to use "Everyone's Rancor" on me. I hit the floor harder than Mcdohl does against me in Ballista, it was brutal.

Unfortunately, this left Semma in a difficult position. So the Reverend Mail came out and she finished it off, along with tonberry add and a pot. Luckily, she killed the nm before the pot finished her off.

Vrtra

Today I went with the NightBane LS to take on Vrtra. It was my first time to fight it, so I had no clue on strategies they were planning on using. I just accepted the invite and observed everyone else.


It was a pretty good fight for 99% of Vrtra's health. I was part of the BLM alliance, so our job was to take out any of the monsters Vrtra summoned. As the battle progressed, the more mobs were summoned. However, we were able to contain it, for 99% of the battle. It was very unfortunate that we wiped at 1% health, I guess everyone got excited and lost focus on the final stretch.

Even though we wiped, it was a very exciting battle! I'm wondering why I haven't been participating before. I'll have to pay attention and catch the times they do go, because it seems like something I'd to do.




In other news. Zoldof got new armor again, and level 37! Things are progressing nicely.