After being diagnosed, misdiagnosed, and uh… diagnosed again… the doctor speculated I had mono. I don’t know what to believe in anymore, but I do know I was feeling much better this weekend save for the back pain I suffer once in awhile.

At any rate, I have been trying to scramble to do as many Campaigns as I can to get back my medals and to level up my WHM. It has sometimes failed by the Campaigns either ending by the time we get there or disconnecting just minutes before the Campaign ended. We also lauded the return of my brother back into the gaming and *gasp* LEVELING up. It was the marking of the end of the world seeing this, but I guess it was sooner or later before the apocalypse had to come.

I didn’t stay on for as long as I wanted to, however, due to health reasons, but I managed to get a bit done before my MRI on Saturday and then watch as my desktop’s wireless connection choked, gurgled, and then died when trying to update FFXI. Seems like I will be playing and working on my laptop a little bit longer than I anticipated…

Anyway, I want to Congratulate Hiroshiko on graduating from High School and being accepted to Howard University! Its a big achievement for such a little guy who used to cower in fear in my presence. Oh how did his knees quake when he saw me looming over him oh so many years ago. If only I had dangled him from the tree then… then maybe I would have had a more obedient pet to add to my lineup.

I know we have all poked at and laughed at S-E. Even though we knew certain additions or changes could have helped us for the many years some of us have been playing, we kind of just gritted our teeth and bared with it when those changes never took place. Now, as the game is headed through the geriatric stage, S-E has finally decided it was worth implementing the following:

Nomad Moogles in Selbina and Mhaura
Supply Quest Records
Item Autosort Function

If it weren’t for the fact I’m already tired as heck (been awake since 4:45 A.M.), sick, and still depressed over the fake out over the new MMO Orophen mentioned to me yesterday? I would be hitting my head on the table a few times asking what the bloody hell took them so long.

102. That was my temperature the other day, and since then I’ve been laying in bed delirious, wondering if I could make an omelet on my head, and if Reiokyu would accept scrambled eggs in his package I have yet to send out. My fever has gotten better, worse, better, and uh… lets just say it can’t tell me if it wants to stay or go.

I wanted to force myself to write because I have been missing the world of Vana’diel since I found myself being unable to play due to my body wanting to go into a comatose state when the weekend hits or the fact I have a pile of homework I have been unable to complete my homework due to said comatose state. Most of the time I just want to laugh it off, but its starting to stress me out. Its not fun when you want to do something, but find that you can’t because you’re in bed sleeping the day away. And its not something I want personally, but something my body demands of because of some reason or another.

Probably the only amount of joy I had was to briefly play with Mekare (Happy Belated Birthday!) and then to do Crystal War Quests with Orophen. Halver? He is a total loser with a capital L. Its ok, because I still <3 him and his love for his sister~ Oh yeah, and the JP totally have everyone pwned in the first Mario Kart tournament. The rankings as of last night showed that 9 out of 10 spots were held by the JP with a record time of 1 minute and 30 seconds. I almost came close to 1 minute 45 seconds, and then I got hit by a chain, a shell, and then ran over. ._.; Good bye beautiful time record~

A lot of people who use Brandson’s Map Pack and UI can now find updated versions done by a person named Emiko! I don’t use the mods myself (too lazy), but I know this might be helpful to those who have used the mods or are interested in modding their icons and such.

Visiti the site here! https://emikoffxi.livejournal.com/

FFXI

I didn’t do much this weekend due to me feeling purely exhausted for the most part. I often don’t realize how exhausted I am until Friday evening hits and my body just wants to do nothing but sleep after pushing myself to walk on a limp right leg for most of the week. Most of what I did had to do with Mission 5.1 for my brother and then getting my brother’s BLM AF hat. Nothing spectacular, but I was happy that my brother had finally logged on after several weeks of being on hiatus…

We did have a great big laugh at watching a jelly monster run around to get us in the Canal. We were laughing our heads off watching it run and the music would play for all of us as it would get close and then stop when it got too far away. It almost seemed like we were in a horror movie, but with a little pudding cup chasing us down instead of some freaky scary… thing.

the World Ends With You

If you don’t own this beautiful DS game, I highly encourage you to get it ASAP! This game is made by S-E and Jupiter and is a little reminiscent of Kingdom Hearts, especially Chain of Memories. If anyone had played this GBA game, you know that it was a kind of annoying card battle game that sometimes made me want to chuck the game at someone. I never did finish it, since I fucked up my cards and (at the time) didn’t want to replay through the damn thing.

The World Ends With You is totally different from the annoying card system, in that you have pins that are highly dependent on things you do with your stylus. This game is NO button mashing game! It IS a very stylus intensive game that caused my hand to cramp up after hours of gaming with that tiny stick. Even the storyline is different than normal FF fair. Its a lot more ‘real’ for me, as I could distinctly remember being on the same vibe as Neku for a very long time. The music is also a great addition, and is unique (to me) in that it changes with each round or even if you refresh the page. It actually makes me want to buy the sound bites on the game; a feature I typically don’t care for in other games but actually appreciate in this one.

And in relation to the title? There IS a clink clink reference in TWEWY somewhere in the game!

Mario Kart Wii

0860-3659-2541

I am extremely impressed with how they handled the WFC setup for this game versus that of SSBB. I actually don’t suck as bad as I do on Mario Kart Wii than I do with SSBB so unless my brother is hogging the Wii or I’m not trying to level up my pins and buy out all the clothes in Shibuya… I’ll be on racing every so often.

Camp: Garlaige Citadel (Basement Level)
Targets: Funnel Bats, Chamber Beetles, Fallen Mage, Fallen Major
Spells to have handy: Jettatura, Bludgeon, Cold Wave

Alternate Camp: Quicksand Caves (Enter J-9 from Western Altepa Desert)
Targets: Helm Beetles and Anticans (**See note below**)

Going to try a different format that will most likely be found on past BLU related EXP entries on a later date. No images since FRAPS has not yet been installed on my laptop and I have not yet reformatted my desktop.

Getting straight to the point: I’m sick to death of the Citadel now. We’ve been here for awhile, and we can’t seem to leave just yet because the other camps are either over camped or the mob levels are too high for our small party. We’ll be stuck here for awhile, but hopefully we can move onto other mobs sooner or later…

Okay, so things to note: Gravitation renkei is your friend. MP Drainkiss for MB? Even better! Try to do this as often as possible, as we have been able to net a little over 100 MP magic bursts at time. Personally, we loved to SC with Sickle Slash and if you are able to boost up your DEX or have naturally high DEX (like Mekare did), then you can watch your damage soar close to 400 on that spell alone. Jettatura is a great spell to have to buy your team mates some time if they are handling an add from a low level bat or if the mob is just causing you some grief when trying to cast Utsusemi. Its part of functioning together to make things work well in your favor, and it did quite often for us when we were handling adds and what not.

Now, in a previous post I talked about swapping out Bludgeon for another spell. For undead, however, I decided to quickly swap it in for some quick, easy damage when I was waiting for other spells to finish their recast timers. It sucks to have to spam spells, but with undead… we don’t have much of a choice since a tiny mishap can help expedite a death. On the other hand! They die quickly and we get lots of delicious EXP in return!

There is an alternate camp, but even though we came here first… we were bullied out by the other party who went on top of us. It was very frustrating, but there isn’t much we can do when they have 6 people and we only have 3. Anyway, if future trios decide to come to this area, make sure to bring Echo Drops and everyone should have the ability to SILENCE the mage type Anticans! This isn’t an option, this is mandatory. And even then? You’re totally taking a gamble on them because it is not even 50% chance that the Silence will last more than 1 minute. You’ll be lucky as hell if it does! If you actually brave it against this type of Antican, prepare to have enough TP to kill it off fast before it kills you! We actually had to run like crazy because we learned the hard way how our Silence isn’t very effective against them. :

Version 2 of doink! is finally up! After over a year hosted on my domain, it has finally a new look to go with its belated anniversary on mreh.net. Things are still being worked out and fixed up and not everything is up, but… its at least there! The layout is currently much larger than the past layout, so if you are currently having trouble viewing this page then feel free to check out my original FFXI blog on Livejournal: https://calaera.livejournal.com.

Many thanks to Orophen/Derrick who put a lot of hard work into making this layout and putting up with my fickleness! He also tried very hard to make this out in time for my birthday, but failed by a few days. But its ok because I still love him! <3

If you’re wondering where I have been these past few days, well… mostly busy with school, work, and health related issues. The newest version of doink! was supposed to have gone live soon after returning from Sakura Con, but Orophen and I decided to refrain from putting it up after I decided I didn’t like how it looked on smaller resolutions (1280×768). Its still being worked on, so expect to see something new in the next few weeks (or sooner… later, and expect to see a dead body).

I am also working on SCH on the side, since BLU is kind of… left to the wayside at the moment. Mostly because of my weekends being eaten up and then health/personal issues coming up when we do get to leveling up. @_@; So, hopefully, we will get the time to do a full session sooner or later…

Orz That is what I’ve been wanting to do for over an hour of sitting in Fort Karugo-Narugo with long breaks between mobs showing up or just the campaign to end. If it weren’t for the Campaign Ops Aegis Scream II, I think I would have gotten my evaluation long ago and just jumped ship to another region. It was insane how long the wait time was between one wave and then the next. Relentless attacks my ass! It actually seemed a lot more fun and interesting when the beastmen were killing everyone in sight and there were more of them to kill off. Now Fort Karugo-Narugo can have as many as four groups of NPCs easily taking down the mobs before I can even get a glimpse of one! Argh! I don’t remember battles lasting as long as they seem to have been, and its downright annoying to keep looking at the clock and seeing that 10 minutes will go by and there is still no mob in sight. Meh. At least I was able to get a merit or two out of this, but I’m still kind of meh about wanting to go solo Campaign now when battles are taking an hour or more to finish…

FFXI Cosplayers from the Bahamut Server

Not so much an FFXI update as it is a Sakura Con 2008 and video game update. The con itself was a lot of fun and I had the chance to see, do, and meet several people at the convention. If you’re interested in seeing some of the cosplayers I ran into, you may view the photos I have posted at Livejournal. However, you must be a registered user of Livejournal in order to view them.

If you are also interested in Ali Project, you may watch a clip of a piece of the concert I have recorded here:

The Penny Arcade crew was also at Sakura Con and handing out free waffles and ice cream. Not just any ice cream. Chocolate ice cream! I wanted some (free is always good!) but everyone else beat me to them each day they served them. ;o; I may be making plans to attend PAX since I will not be traveling to Vegas this year, so if anyone else plans to go… let me know!

As for new video games, I started to play No More Heroes on the Wii. Its usually not my type of game, but my friend says it is really good and I try my best to try new things once in awhile. I’ve only gotten up to 10th ranking so far, am playing Sweet mode, and generally really suck… but I kind of like the crudeness of the game. Its art style reminds me of a comic book (though just the start of it… I haven’t gotten very far at all), and the fighting is alright. Though I wish I could get the hang of the upper and low attacks (I only got them by chance). Its also hard to fight when blood is covering 80 – 90% of the screen and you can’t see much else but blood, body parts, and coins. I think the later part amuses me most since its like a bloodied version of Mario breaking boxes to get coins! I’m not sure if I’ll continue playing it, but I guess I will dabble in it once in awhile before I give it back to my friend next week.