Final Fantasy XI journal

1:35pm: Barney is downed!
Sucks when time constraints prevent you from sharing such an awesome experience. On the last day of June 2005, IRON finally defeated Vrtra. If I remember correctly, the time of kill was 1 hour and 37 minutes. No matter how long it took, we are the first "single" LS to beat the big purple menace (less of a menace and more of a harmless dragon minding its own business). Since I am a lowly RNG I wasn't able to do any damage to her. That means I am without yet another title *tear*. Maybe I should level PLD so I can have the chance to tank something that I shouldn't hit with arrows. Anyway, here are a few pictures.

8:26am: The Dynamis Lord Strikes Back!
It is the day after the castastrophe known as "Too few Red Mages" has blown over. After a speedy travel through Dynamis-Xarcabard, we were quickly turned back by a pissed off Dynamis Lord. I guess beating him without any deaths 2 weeks in a row is a bit much for him to handle. He started the battle with what seemed to be a small AoE drain attack. I say small because it hit us for 100-110 total HP. But then I realized "us" was 50 people. And if I do math (which I try not to do very often) I come up with: 50 x 100 = a lot of HP. Our strategy is the same as everyone else that attempts to defeat him. We have a few RDMs take turns with Chainspell > Stun while everyone else unloads everything they can. Rangers are invaluable for this battle because we can toss out close to 8k damage in less than 30 seconds if all goes right. But as I said, everything didn't go right. The AoE drain took every shadow in Dynamis, leaving us all open for one of his weaponskills. I took the extra 2 seconds to recast..... a lot of people did not. I ended up being the last man standing! I don't think it matters that I only stood for 5 seconds longer than the person before me. Well, now we know that we are not invincible. But next time, we win. As strange as it may sound, our linkshell plans to get everyone (all 59 of us holy hell forever long) one of those nifty Shadow Mantles/Rings. The Dynamis-Xarcabard wasn't a total waste though. We got a few AFs during the run. PLD x2, SMN, NIN was the tally. Congrats to Winraf, Aribeth, Bayne, Cheryll (gotdamn thats a lot of AF for you) on the AF. Until next time, {Take care!} bros.

8:51am: The 1st post ever
Thanks to mucho downtime at work, I get to indulge the FFXI world with tales of mystery and suspense. Well, most of you have done everything I have done (maybe more, maybe less), but I would like to talk about it anyway.
My name is Biggest. I am a Galka (large model of course) from the country of Windhurst on the server Bismarck. I started the game during the original Christmas event (those awesome trees). During that time I have grown from a little Warrior with crap gear and no friends, to a little Ninja with crap gear and a few friends. My few friends range from some of the most well known NA players (Valkerine, Meowthy) to some of the most well known annoying NA players (Johnb) to some of the least known NA players (Algren) on our server. The japanese players I am friends with could or could not be in any of those categories, so their names will be spared.
When I started playing, I was invited in the the Orbit linkshell (I was WAR12 if I remember correctly). When trying to find my way through Maze of Shakrami with my first FFXI friend (Taruwen), a friendly RDM was forced to "watch over us". He then gave us a pearl and that was my home for the majority of my play time. Orbit LS was as good a place to start playing as I could imagine. For the most part they were friendly, helpful people with a lot of free time on their hands. I still owe a lot of their original members (they have since quit, come back, remade the LS to Orbitsquared) more than I could ever repay. Dakon, Gummybear, Shogo, Pangogo, Darkblade, Fuukochan, and everyone else that was there to welcome me in... I appreciate everything. If you EVER need help from this lowly Galka, don't hesitate to ask.
As I progressed in level (if you call 12-36 progressing) I was able to find my niche. Notorious Monsters. Before I found my way to Giddeus, I was stuck in a life of farming beehive chips. Through the chips, I was able to meet Meowthy (who whom I still owe all my "riches"). I didn't understand the AH posting function for the better part of 3 months. I would post items based on what the listing price was (super noob i know). For instance, if the price was 100g to post, I would post for 100g. I remember selling a Mithran Fishing rod (didn't we all try fishing at one point or another?) for 1,300g after I had paid 22,000 for it. I was never able to figure out how I could have been cheated like that. But then one day I posted a few beehive chip stacks and they sold to Meowthy for less than 800g per stack. She sent me a /tell explaining my mistake, and also gave me the chips back and allowed me to repost for the correct price. She lost a few k by doing this. So when I had more gil to spare, I gave her 50,000g as compensation for saving me from noobdom. Anyway... Notorious Monsters. I camped every notorious monster a level 36 WAR could ever kill alone. I met many friends through my many camps of Hoo Mjuu the Torrent and others. During this 2-3 month period, I made the acquaintance of Johnb (Mr. /shout all freakin day in Jeuno for every mission under the freakin sun) and Biggie. Maybe it was because we were both Galka of the same model and job, or maybe it wasn't.... We became the best of ingame friends. He was level 50 (and stayed that way for the entire time he played) and I was level 36. Together we managed to pull in 9million gil each. And that was all from Monster Signa sales. It was during that time that I decided to be a Ranger. I saw a RNG by the name of Macy running through Giddeus killing everything in his path on the way to a BCNM. He was killing mobs that would take me 4-5 hits to kill, with one shot! At the time I was willing to write it off as "His level is higher than mine". But Biggie informed me that all RNGs could do that. I wondered why everyone wasn't a RNG if that was the case. His response was "You will run out of gil before level 50 if you don't know what you are doing". Well, I had 9mil gil, so I figured it wouldn't be a problem at all. Fast forward a bit now...... RNG is doing well. I was able to camp more difficult NMs now. Mee Deggi the Punisher and Quu Domi the Gallant were very generous to me (this was well before the Jerry's decided to leave the Toms alone) and I got lucky (very VERY lucky) with Argus 3 times in a row. Tons of gil and items were obtained by me. Eventually I got myself to the higher levels (and this was all in the Chiefkabob days I want to point out. I am sure I will get to this topic soon enough). Things in Orbit started to get kind of rough. A few key members moved on to HNM LS (I didn't know they existed). I thought for the longest time that a few friends got together and killed HNMs. I had no idea that there were big LSs that were around for the sole purpose of doing that. A few of our other members began to fight often (I was one. I had a hard time with the way some of our members addressed others. I don't think an elite attitude is very becoming.) and things began to fall apart. At that point, I was invited to try and join a HNM LS by my friend Jodii. I met her during a few ZMs. Helping us during those ZMs was the awesome SAM (that became WAR that became RNG) Ryutaro. He is (or was, I never see that guy around anymore) in the LunarianLS. I still had no idea that was a HNM LS. I DID know that his gear made me cry. I had as good of gear as you could want at my level. But all my gear was purchased where as his gear was 100% better than mine... and all rare/ex. Anyway.... we did these missions and a few days later, Jodii told me about IRON. She was only on trial at the time, and was eventually passed on due to inactivity (but she had other things in life that she enjoyed more. so she wasn't upset in the least). I was allowed to join IRON. I didn't stay long because... well... I didn't feel as good as I did in Orbit. IRON was full of uber players that knew they were uber. Some were friendly, most were not. So I ran away as fast as I could. It is hard for a relative "noob" to fit in with players as far into the game as they had. I spent quite a bit of time working at becoming a better RNG and getting to a higher level. When I finally reached 74-75, Meowthy happened to introduce me to another HNM LS. Because she was so friendly, I didn't think she was a part of a HNM LS anyway. Turns out Ryutaro and the LunarianLS were the "uber" NA LS on the server. And Meowthy was one of their longer tenured members. I was able to join them as well. But, I wasn't able to feel comfortable there either. I tried to hang around for a while, but most of the guys there were very good friends. Good friends tend to hang together and not invite new people into their group. So I was on the outside looking in more-or-less. This feeling boiled over when they invited a member from my old Orbit shell. It happened to be the member I had the most problem with. When I saw his application on LunarianLS' forum "My friends in your LS include..... Biggest...." I had to leave. I didn't want anyone blaming me for him. Eventually I ended up back in IRON. They had merged with another (newer) HNM LS, Genesis.
That brings me to the end of the history. I am still RNG75, but I added NIN72. Still a part of IRON and still friend to players from all over Bismarck (including LunarianLS and Orbitsquared). During my time leveling NIN from 37-72, I was able to meet 2 awesome players. Algren the BLM (noob) and Highrez the RNG (aka Tetsujin the shit talking RDM of the LunarianLS). We try to hang pretty close for the remainder of our current job leveling. Who knows were we will part ways if we do. The next few posts I make will have some bearing on more current days in Bismarck. Since our LS is as awesome as it is (sometimes... Guesh Urvan DID beat our asses pretty handily), there will be much to post. We can destroy Dynamis Lord like no ones business. We have defeated Tiamat and Jormungand on the same day. While we were not the first LS to beat either of those mobs, we were the first LS to defeat them without the help of other LSs (same for Dynamis Lord). Stay tuned.