February has been one hell of a month for me. In real life I ended up struck with a lot of health problems, but in FFXI I ended up having a lot of positive experiences with my friends and my new Dynamis shell. I’m starting to get into the groove of things, and am kinda feeling the love from the people I am starting to PT with regularly in Dynamis. The past few runs, however, haven’t been as kind to us as our first run in Jeuno in terms of AF drops. San d’Oria seemed particularly stingy, but at least I had fun getting myself killed over and over and over and over again. No, that’s not sarcasm either. I kept rolling over laughing with how many damn links we had until, well, we had a particularly nasty pull and Hiroshiko accused me of wanting that big of a link. WHICH I DID NOT, THANKYOUVERYMUCH. Sure, I wanted to be able to do more than Ballad, toss cures, and what have you… but that doesn’t mean I want to see wipes of epic proportions… <.<; At least now I can say I have finally obtained these titles!

We also did a quickie BLU set last weekend, which was a lot of fun. A very nice Elvaan RDM also decided to help us out while he was waiting for his friend to arrive so that they could take over the world!

I wasn’t very keen about the camp spot, but it was at least nice being able to hit the occasional Chain 5. We were basically camped out in Gustav Tunnel fighting Bones and Robber Crabs on the second map. We had only one instance of blood aggro, but that was our fault since we had fought too close to the area we were pulling mobs from. Still, I kind of wish we had harder mobs to fight but it was still a nice place for us to all skill up and get our Sword and BLU Magic Skill up to speed from having done Campaign and Level Syncs for awhile. But now that we’re getting up to speed (close to 65), I’m steadily looking forward to getting new spells despite knowing that I am probably the only one who feels that way.

And finally… wanted to see if I could get any rewards with the Adveturer Recruitment Program I used to invite my brother with a long time ago and found I could get this! Yay! Now to try and get my brother to pick out his last reward so I can get the Lunar Cap!

Since getting my BRD to 75, I’ve often wished I had enough time in the day to do end game things. Alas, when I get home its usually 8:25 and then I unwind or do homework, and weekends are the times when I often have religious obligations and have the desire to do things with my friends. So I’m REALLY happy to finally find a Dienamis Dynamis LS that seems ok with me missing some runs because of my obligations and has most of my friends in it.

It is mostly a start up shell, and we’ve just done two runs so far in Jeuno and Bastok. It is kind of a little boring as BRD, but I’m still happy to do something with my BRD instead of letting it rot in its little corner. But being in the shell is more incentive for me to push BLU to 70+ since I REALLY want BLU Relic (I’m in love with its color scheme).

But all in all, I feel as though I’ve been pretty busy in FFXI when I’m able to log on. Awhile ago I was able to get Assault Jerkin with Mekare, Orophen, and Hiroshiko and then thanks to everyone’s help in joining me in Campaign I managed to get another medal rather easily. I’m slowly shooting to catch up to everyone else, and it makes it easy since I usually need to either a.) cap my BRD exp after Dynamis or b.) try to level BLU when I only have a short time available to me. At the same time, I need to be very careful about spending too much time on the game on weekends now since I just have a little over a month before I finish my Montessori teacher training… ._.; Wish me luck?

Despite not having posted anything in awhile, I’ve done a bit here and there in FFXI and have even *gasp* logged on during the weekday to try and do more things!

First off, kitty! For awhile I’ve wanted to go after Ose in hopes of getting an Assault Jerkin. We decided to make an attempt at farming it last Sunday, despite me feeling sick as a dog and wanting to pass out in my chair a few times. Eating soup managed to revive me, as did competing against Hiroshiko on trying to erase people’s status effects as WHM. It was a lot of fun and made me a little more determined to finish leveling WHM when I can. I know I’ll suck at it but standing next to my new fully AF’ed RDM boyfriend should help keep me sane and willing to keep going. ^_^b

Most of the time I’ve been on I’ve been doing Campaign to try and regain the medals I lost. Its been really hard and frustrating for me, especially since I’m more apt to just zone out when by myself in a Campaign battle. I’m finally at Sterling Star, but I have a looooong way to go before I am caught up to everyone else. I AM thankful to my friends when they do decide to join me for Campaign though! I feel a little more focused and entertained, and a lot less lonely than I can sometimes feel when playing WoW. The only thing I hope for is being able to get higher in terms of medals without going crazy doing Campaigns so much. Granted I’m getting a chance to level BLU… but its certainly not as fun as playing with Meka and Oro as BLU.

Which brings me to… yes, our BLU set is going through a transition. Because I really needed to rank up but couldn’t really do it as BRD or WHM without QQ hardcore, Mekare and Orophen granted me permission to do Campaign as BLU. I was resistant to it at first, but they insisted it was ok and Orophen pointed out I need to do things for myself sometimes. Which seems a tad bit frustrating because it means I’m on my own most of the time, but its also a little relaxing and makes the game seem a little less daunting when I can do things at my own pace.

I also learned something NEW about FFXI! Two things in fact. One of them I remembered from long ago but the other one I had no idea about until Mekare mentioned it last Sunday.

/translate and /macro set/book #!

Translate is probably for my own amusement whereas macro set will probably have me re-writing all of my BLU macros so that I don’t have to think too hard about what I am doing when creating spell macros on the fly.

To translate an item (items only, unfortunately) you type in: /translate (item name) and then either J, E, G, or F

/macro set/book # allows you to write out several macros and if you need to re-use them for OTHER macros, just write out its number and place it on the macro line. I’ve yet to try this out myself (been too sick) but I’m hoping it will make my BLU macro sets more intuitive and less painful when I need to keep writing out gear swaps for BLU.