~ M y t h i c a l ~

- Friday, February 20 -

After over six months of floor climbing, my LS Nyzul Static was now sitting on floor 80. Having four tags, the idea of getting floor 100 crept into all our minds. Considering our win ratio is usually 2/3, the idea of going 4/4 was insane. Yet, it was clear we all shared the crazy goal.

^ Floor 81 - 85:
Very smooth climbing. Had one lamp floor and it proved to be one of the easy ones where everyone just needs to touch the same lamp.

^ Floor 86 - 90:
More smooth climbing. Another easy lamp floor.

^ Floor 91 - 95:
We were clearly begining to get anxious about how close we were to floor 100 and whether or not we would make it by the end of the night. None of us wanted to say anything, trying not to "jinx" it. We encountered more smooth climbing. Finished this set with about 10 minutes left on the clock, an insane ammount!

^ Floor 96 - 100:
We were finally there, prepping for the floor 100 boss fight, a significantly harder fight than any of the other floors. We grabbed our items and headed up. On floor 98 our spirits were slightly demoralized. We had a Defeat specified enemies requirement and the target was Chariots. Chariots have been our kryptonite throughout our climbing history, sometimes being the sole reason for failing a climb. Regardless, we did not let our momentum drop and dived head first into Chariot hunting. We had some casualties but we took them all down. It set us back a bit timewise but we pushed on.

We reached floor 100 with about 8 minutes left. We healed to max, buffed up, popped our items and went in. We had to defeat Cerberus, which meant we had to avoid his devastating Gate of Hades move at 25% HP. This move will do massive AoE damage with an added effect of 40hp/tick Burn, basically decimating the party. Being the Dark Knight, I was tasked with Stunning this move. Several Diabolos fights behind me, having to Stun his Nightmare move, I was confident I could do this.

He chomped at us, tail whiped at us, clawed at us, but we kept at it, slowly pushing his HP down. At around 30% HP, I began to obsessively watch for Gate of Hades. I saw him preparing the move! I cast Stun!

Cerberus is stunned! Gate of Hades did not go off. Everyone let out cries of relief and continued to mash on the three headed doggie. He was defeated! We did it. We went 4/4 and successfully won floor 100. There were no gear drops, but that didn't matter. We will spam floors and get gears later. For now we had the pride to have accomplished such a feat and the knowledge that we will now only need 250 WS points to unlock Mythic Weapon Skills. Carste and I had our WS unlocked the moment we finished floor 100 as we already had enough points.

- Saturday, February 21 -

Draya and I found ourselves in Quicksand Caves camping the same NM, Centurio X-I, so we paired up. She wanted the Shamman's Cloak and I was hoping for the profitable scroll of Stonega II. After just one placeholder defeat, Centurio popped and we duod it without any problems. Centurio dropped Draya's cloak so we left there happy and decided to go do a round of Avatars.

Once Draya had to leave for Limbus, Drimer mentioned she wanted to finish unlocking her Mythic WS. So Chisei, Drimer and I went up to the Boyahda Tree to do that also while getting me some more points on my Thief dagger. While up there, we randomly stumbled upon Zerayla, Falk, Sabene and Janko who were working on some skillups and unlocking Sabene's Club of Trials for Black Halo WS. So, we allianced up and went crab mashing. It was a lot more fun doing this in a big group since both Drimer and I now had someone to close Level 3 Skillchains with for more points.

Drimer unlocked King's Justice!

It was time for our LS's Saturday ZNM Event. They again needed the sevices of my Thief since Carste is a lot more usefull on Black Mage, or maybe I'm just a lot less usefull on DRK or SMN, lol. Either way, I love Thief! :D We had about 6 pops and, aside from Cheese Hoarder Gigiroon killing us a ton, everything ran pretty smooth. My Treasure Hunter kicked in where it mattered and we got some useful drops. Vepion got a nice earring for his up and coming lolPUP and I got a nice Great Sword for skilling up.

Afterwards, we setup a merit party with Onedarkflame.

Onedarkflame - SAM
Zeo - WAR
Drimer - WAR
Soulstar - DRK
Vepion - BRD
Zerayla - RDM

This was incredibly fun. Zeo, Drimer and I were using our Mythic WS's and doing some nice damage. We also discovered that King's Justice and Insurgency(DRK) do Light! LOL Dark Knight can close Light. -.-; So Zeo and I were spamming Light Skillchains for some awesome damage. Drimer and Onedarkflame began to also do Light Skillchains. I have never seen Mamool Ja's go down so fast. We got about 20k an hour. Drimer and I left with enough merits to spend. :D

- Sunday, February 23 -

Onedarkflame needed some help with one of his AF NMs so we went out to Xarcabard and kicked some Chaos Elemental butt! Afterwards, I finished trading in the Avatar Whispers I had obtained the day before. 60k gil richer I began to thing of what I could do next.

Draya, Fizzywig, Texstaz, Hismonkey and I went down to Qulun Dome to farm the Quadavs there. I was also hoping to finish unlocking Mandalic Stab, the Thief Mythic Weapon Skill. We spent about 4 hours there. I was able to unlock the WS and we got a decent ammount of drops. We need to go back soon to finish a stack of Rubies which will yield us the most profits. $_$ It was fun to do something out of the ordinary for a change. We had some deaths, but we figured out a good strategy in the end.

I had a scheduled KSNM run so I headed to Jeuno to gather together with everyone. We succeded all five pops and everyone got a decent ammount of drops, including me. The profits from it will put me about halfway to my Blau Dolch. Yey! Slowly but surely, I am making the goal a reality. I hope the shell keeps having space for me in the KSNM runs. Its a lot of fun and definitely more profitable than farming. XD

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was one heck of a weekend. I did have some downs, mainly spending another five to six hours camping Odqan with not even a successfull pop, stupid fog, but all our accomplishments did good to raise my spirits back up. Another thing worth mentioning was that Drimer and I both got some Dynamis loot on Thursday night. I got my Assassin's Poulaines(feet) and she won the lot on a Lungo-Nango Jadeshell(100 coin)!!! We also both got some coins. I stole three and got an extra to drop!

This is probably a good piece for Dancing Edge. Charisma is one of the modifiers and the extra Triple Attack may help trigger more hits during the WS for extra damage.

The Hunt for Ungur

As I mentioned recently, the Ungur Boomerang is my goal equipment piece for ranged attacks. Not only does it have close to the lowest delay on any Throwing type weapon, but it also gives Evasion +8, which is pretty good for any Evasion Build.

Sunday, seeing as I had the whole day to spend in Vana'diel, I gathered up Fieryblizzard, Chisei, Texstaz and Drimer and we went down to Gustav Tunnel to track Ungur down. Carste's words of encouragement were:

"Zer and me spent 7 hours camping it before we gave up for good so don't get your hopes up."

My sincere reply was: "They are already up. I have faith."

Truth is we've been stumbling upon Ungur during Nyzul Isle for the past couple of weeks which had to be some kind of sign from the S.E. Gods that it was our time. Carste clearly did not want to sit there to camp the placeholders so I just told him I'd let him know when Ungur popped. My goal was to tank Ungur with the help of some cure bombing. :D

About two hours of Typhoon Wyvern placeholder busting, Ungur pops! We prep up, since there was no competition, and Fiery tried to Sleep claim it. It didn't stick but Fiery survived the trip to camp. I began to tank it. It wasn't easy as my Evasion + Evasion Gear didn't seem to be enough to really help with Utsusemi recast timers so I was being hit pretty often and pretty hard. Still, the mages were on top of their game and I believe we took Ungur down to about 65% before he dropped me and, soon after, the rest of the party. I felt pretty accomplished. Just gotta work on that shadow counting and my Evasion skill.

At this point, I remembered Carste and sent him a tell informing him that our friend, Ungur, was up. He said something about getting there in a bit after he was done doing something else. About five minutes after that he sends me another tell that went something like:

"F it! I'll finish this later. On my way!"

So, we Raised and unweakened just in time for Carste's arrival on his uber Thief. I would call him Master Carste, but that would make his head grow too big. He pulled Ungur and we began the marathon fight again. It was smooth, aside from Carste's HP dropping to 69 at one point. We defeated Ungur and his Boomerang was now mine! :D

Knowing that Carste wanted the Boomerang too, even though he kept refusing, I told him I would come camp it for him during the next spawn window and I was able to recruit everyone that had helped me get mine.

Four hours later we are gathering up again in the Tunnel, now with Carste, at my request, on Ninjar. Placeholder busting turns out to be a lot more fun since we decided to farm Doom Warlocks for their scrolls in between pops. About an hour and a half later, Ungur pops again! We head to his room, prep up and claim him. There was no counter camping, thank the heavens!

The pull wasn't clean, or something was missing and the fight started out somewhat odd. Still, Carste managed to establish hate and the fight stabilized. It seemed like victory was close when suddenly Ungur cheats and defeats Carste. I get hate and begin to tank it, but just like last time, I am still not ready for him.

We wiped, Raised, unweakened, cleared the room, prepped and claimed Ungur again. WIPE!

We Raised, agroed a Skeleton, Raised again, cleared the room, prepped and claimed Ungur. WIPE!

We Raised, unweakened, blood agro again, kill skely, Raise the victims, clear room, prepped and claimed Ungur.

So, wanna guess what happened?

No really, guess...

WIPE!!!

Our linkshell had been hearing of our sad but hilarious sucker match with Ungur and a couple of our peeps decided to head our way. Tex's girlfriend, RedAngel, also decided to join us on her Bard. So Carste, Drimergirl, Chisei, Baboon, Soulstar, Athoz, Sabene, Ascendotum, Fieryblizzard, RedAngel, Texstaz and HisMonkey prepared for yet another showdown. At this point its just become ridiculous. A THF/NIN and a healer are supposed to be able to duo this and yet we are sitting here now with two thirds of an alliance, twitching and looking over our shoulders for the stupid Skeleton in the corner that loves to kill us.

We clear the room once more and prep for the pull. The pull is clean, the hate is established, the fight is looking pretty good. Ungur is at 60% HP so the Nukers begin their elemental rain. Athoz throws in a Chi Blast to feel useful. Ungur, despite some deadly attacks, seems unable to take us down. No more than ten minutes later, Ungur finally bites the dust and Carste gets his Boomerang!

It was definitely one of the most memorable NM hunts I've had and another great success. We all warped away leaving our mark on yet another NM. A great "Thanks!" to everyone that came to help. It took about three hours to get my Boomerang and a little over four hours to get Carste's. Couldn't have done it without you all! Our new Boomerangs will look great with our Peacock Amulets. ;)

Graduated Assassin.

Happened two days ago...

The final stretch took a lot of Campaign and friendly parties...

I am finally a Graduated Assassin, also known as a THIEF LEVEL 75!!!

There are some things I still want, but overall, I feel very accomplished with my Thief. I have been able to "tank" campaign mobs successfully. I have broken 1,000 damage several times on certain Merit mobs. I have been able to significantly improve monster drops for myself and friends.

The things I still want:
- Blau Dolch (a.k.a. 2,000,000 gil)
- X's Knife (Critical hit damage increase)
- Assassin's Armlets (mmm TH4)
- Boxer's Mantle (All defensive skills +10)
- Ungur Boomerang (Good delay and Evasion +8)
- Thief Merits (a ton of them)
- Main pulling Dynamis.
- Solo something decent. (Haven't found a nice target yet)
- Steal coins from Dynamis mobs.
- Cap Evasion
- Cap Parry
- Cap Marksmanship

- probably a couple of more things but these are the ones that come to mind.

Another exciting accomplishment happened last night. Having Thief at 75, I went on it to Dynamis - Buburimu. I decided to shadow the puller, a friend of mine, to get the hang of what needs to be done and which online resources I need to employ. We got to the point when we needed to pull the Mega Boss. Fizzywig, the friend, was busy pulling the previous dragon so it was up to me and another friend, Texstaz on Monk, to find the Mega Boss, who likes to roam the whole zone and is a pain to find. Tex found him, but didn't really want to pull it since he didn't have Flee available. After about 10 mins of me trying to find where he was with no success, he went ahead and pulled it. Shortly after, I found him and the Apocalyptic Beast right behind him. He was doing pretty good with his Elvaan Monk HP till about halfway to camp when the Beast started hitting him hard. When I saw his HP at around 400, I stole his enmity with Accomplice and finished the pull. It felt awesome to not only save his butt, but to successfully finish pulling the mob to camp.

Thief, like Summoner, feels like a job with a lot of potential and I am just beginning to understand that potential. I want to give a thanks to everyone that has helped me get this far.

Special mentions:
- Carste : Best Thief I know and kind of my Thief Mentor. :) Always there to offer advice and help, even in things he is not particularly crazy about.
- Fizzywig : Fellow Campaigner and Dynamis Pull teacher
- Chisei : Will accompany me in whatever endeavors I undertake; Campaign, parties and random zone trekking.
- Ferque : Incredible help in getting my Sirocco Kukri.
- Drimergirl : Always letting me have the time I need to get things like these done and being my best farming companion(best wife too :D)
- Zerayla : Always there to give help where it really matters and, more times than not, unasked.

Nothing in Vana'diel is accomplished alone. Anyone that makes such a claim is really missing the point of this whole ordeal. Friends is what makes us want to come back to Vana'diel time after time.