2.5 - Present FFXIV

Wow, it's only been a few months, Must be a record for me for updating this blog!

So the last time I wrote here. I had stopped FFXIV and went back to FFXI. I met up with Jiluun, one of my officers from Chemical (my linkshell I ran before coming to FFXIV). He was really helpful in getting my gear back up to date.

Mystics, the LS I was in before quitting was still going, so I ran events with them a few times a week. I also joined a LS called UniversalDynasty, a LS made up of various veteran players. I farmed a ridiculous amount of gil and managed to buy my way to a last stage Amanomurakumo.

One day I went to work and found out that 2 of my colleagues played FFXIV. They were on the cerberus server. I reactivated my sub to chill with them for a bit. Eventually. I stumbled upon a FC called Coral, who were looking for a Melee DPS for final coil progression. I decided to fill the position since they were at my point of progress and they were at times I could play.

It started off really well. We killed T10 in 3 pulls if I recall correctly. We started on T11 progression and started to get to the last phase pretty consistently. But one day our SCH disconnected and never came back, just vanished into thin air. So we were stuck without a healer. We managed to get one to fill in but he was awful, didn't have any cross class skills because he claimed he didn't need them.

So we were stuck on T11 for a while and I didn't see the group making progress. Suddenly, Pizwah asked me to go on FEARs Teamspeak. I met him and Firana and they asked me if I wanted to join a T13 progression group that they were rebuilding.

I was really unsure about what to do, I liked the people in my group but at the same time I felt we weren't going to progress much further in Final Coil. Our PLD then left the group which pretty much sealed the deal for me.

I'm really glad I did, because it's probably the best thing that happened to me in this game. I killed T11 on the second pull and T12 not long afterwards. So my worries about holding the group back were just me because unconfident in myself.

We also downed T13 a month or so later.

After Farming it for BiS, we decided to take peek at the Savage turns from second coil. T6 went down pretty easily, (No screenshot) but T9 savage was where the problem really began.

After being stuck on it for a very long time, we decided that we needed to change our Roster up a bit. We replaced our BLM with Brandon and Junpei helped us out for a bit and eventually:

It died! I haven't been back to any turn 9 related activity since.

We decided to take a break from raiding since 3.0 was really close. I was really looking forward to the expansion, The content in 2.0 was so old and I was craving something different.

Sadly, I've been really disappointed in the expansion so far. Sure, the areas are really pretty and the level cap increase has made some jobs really fun to play, but content wise it's just a recycled version of 2.0. The content is the same concept (Crystal tower and 4 fights for the new 'Coil')

Regardless, we pressed on and as soon as the savage turns were released, we hopped straight in.

A1 savage went down pretty fast, We were the 3rd group on the server to kill it I think.

Real life and Hardware issues came up, but we got A2 down pretty fast as well.

Now, we're still currently working on this thing:

This is easily one of the hardest things I've fought in any game. The difficulty increase from A2 is huge. Throwing in more real life, internet and health problems hasn't helped either.

We made another change to our roster, our new tank is looking promising and we're hoping to get it down soon.

In the mean time, I've been playing a lot of Destiny and other single player games because there's not a lot of content to do at the moment in FFXIV. But it's still a fun game to play when there's stuff to do.

See you again in a few months!

-Dom / Aud

A catch up. (2.1-.2.5)

Holy shit it's been a long time.

A LOT has happened since March 2014.

Firstly. 2.2 hit and we got given second coil. this is where the start of the downfall was. Our group had some problems and eventually disbanded. I also left my Free Company, Bad Touch.

So there I was, Without a static at the start of a new patch. I searched for weeks for a group, but Excalibur is extremely bad for EU players who can't stay up too late.

I did manage to get into my friend Sotel's group on my alt Mine turtle as they needed a BRD. But MNK is what I love and I eventually grew bored so I decided to keep searching. I did manage to kill turn 6 though.

I then decided that unfortunately, If I wanted to beat this content, I would have to start looking outside of Excalibur. I stumbled upon an FC on Ragnarok called Atlas. Who were looking for a Melee DPS.

It started off well, I learned T7 extremely quickly and T8. But sadly the group broke after we kicked our Summoner because of a bad attitude problem. So I was in the same situation as Excalibur, but on a different server.

I went back to Excalibur to play with some friends again, but ended up going back to FFXI for a couple of months. I fully upgraded my Mandau and caught up with some old friends. I eventually Re-activated FFXIV to see what was new and I ran into an old friend from FFXI and 1.0, Buttons Taru.

I got an FC invite to Abyss, which was a branch off from a 1.0 Linkshell I was in. One of their groups was looking for a MNK and they played EU times so I thought I got lucky coming back at the right time.

We cleared 6, 7 and 8 with little problems for about 6 weeks or so, But for some reason, this group was scared to go into Turn 9. Somebody always came up with an excuse as to why they couldn't go into that turn. I really wanted to kill it before echo implementation so it was really frustrating.

One week, I was asked by Memento Mori's group if I wanted to fill in for one of their members who was on holiday for a week, This group had been clearing all turns for some time and I was hesitant at first. They assured me they would be patient whilst I learned T9 and I was encouraged by someone in Abyss to go for it.

Sadly, we were plagued by connection issues, and adding my inexperience of the fight to the mix did not end well. We made it to Final phase a few times but could not kill it because of latency or Me not pulling my weight enough.

Feeling guilty, I offered to let my friend Amarant play my account and Have Piz play Amarants Tank so that they could get the clear for the week. They accepted and T9 was down.

God I felt horrible afterwards, and I am never doing something like that again unless I know I can do the fight myself. I really appreciated the patience that the group demonstrated but I felt so bad. I never told anyone I had killed it but by this point but at least I could go back to Abyss with some knowledge of the fight and progress with them.

Or so I thought.

The attitude towards me changed in my static, people were ignoring me or replying sarcastically to things that I said. I was expecting the worst and eventually it came.

They kicked me from the group for apparently not "Fitting in". Even though everything was fine for nearly 2 months, I just laughed and accepted it as I knew the group wasn't going to get anywhere since most of them were scared of Turn 9.

So I then tried something else, Assembling my own static to take down Turn 9. A few of my friends were without statics and after a week or so I managed to scrape together a group who has apparently all seen last phase or had killed the fight.

The SCH was the worst SCH I have played with EVER. She was a nervous wreck, had to tell people to tell her if they needed healing and fucked up most mechanics. The BRD in our group also could not deal with the mechanics. After a couple of hours, we hadn't even got to heavensfall so I disbanded the group and decided to wait as second coil was due to be unlocked for farming.

Me and Mani, (The WHM in the group I made and a good friend of mine) started to PUG the fight to gain some more experience, eventually we got invited to a group and killed it with no deaths. It was such a relief as we had both been working on it for a long time and I could finally put the nightmare of the previous 'kill' behind me.

I was still stuck with the same situation though, I had no static and couldn't find one that was EU friendly. 2.4 and Final Coil eventually hit and I had nothing to do as I had no group or FC. I eventually decided to transfer to Phoenix to see if there was anything there.

I joined an FC called Nightmare Eternal as a social member. I felt really out of my depth as I didn't get much second coil experience and the majority of the FC were deep into final coil. I eventually found a static and made it to the last phase of Turn 10. I thought it was going really well.

However it was very close to Christmas, I told the group leader that I would not be available to raid on a couple of days multiple times. I came back after these days and I had a very angry mog mail in my letter box from the leader, Claiming I did not tell him I was not going to be there and that he was going to kick me if I didn't show up again.

I got really frustrated with the lack of luck I was having with the game so once again, I canceled my Sub and returned to FFXI.

I had a really good time catching up and Started making another relic, the Amanomurakumo.

I've never really had much of an interest in SAM, but I've always loved this weapon, it looks really funny when wielded by a taru as it's so small. Tachi: Kaiten is also my favorite weapon skill in the game.

I'm going to end this post here as I want to save what happened next for a new post.

I really need to update this more often D:

-Dom