Long Overdue Update

Then after earning priority on my 50th run with Dienamis, I obtained the last piece of THF I needed, the legs:

...and then finally I finished my freelot set: BST!  My BST was level 24 when I finished the set, but I can now proudly state that it's reached level 26!  Huzzah!

People tend to rail on others who lot relic only to let it languish on mannequins.  Rest assured, my Next Big Goal is obtaining a Maat's Cap.  The dauntless (thankless?) task of level every job seems like a lot of fun to me!  And regardless of whether I win/lose lots, the real fun of Dienamis is the people in the shell.  I mean, look at this:

Kori was worried that her NIN body wouldn't drop... but of course, later that run...

...and sometimes not everything goes right:

...but there are other times that make up for it:

I actually won those SAM -1, for my first HQ relic piece.  Exciting!  And just today I won MNK gloves with the lowest lot ever:

Which makes me 4/5 on MNK, 4/5 on RNG, and 3/5 on NIN - each job needs pieces from Beaucedine, which seems to be what always holds me back on sets.  For THF and SAM, both Jeuno and Beaucedine really held out on me for quite a while with those last pieces.  Oh!  Edwina got her BLM hat too!


Seb?
What's Sebby been up to?  Not a whole hell of a lot.  Haven't had much time for the poor fella. His NIN is up to 33 now, high enough to steal Baud's Peacock Charm...

...but he's also finally gotten his Chef's Apron!  Which seemed to take forever and which hasn't seemed to make much of a difference yet.

...as you can see, I've continued to deck out his MH to look like an actual kitchen.  Tracking down a Blue Pitcher was the biggest pain in the ass, lemme tell you.

Nyzul Isle
We've continued on our trek through Nyzul Isle.  We've completed two sets so far - Maxbebop's Denali and my Askar.

Bami is still one shy of full Goliard and Thale is one shy of full Denali.  We're working on getting Max up to floor 100 so Thale can lot on the Denali.  We're also starting to swap other linkshell members in when we farm armor floors.  One thing that's remained pretty constant in Nyzul is crappy appraisals:

But we did manage to get a Fransisca that we gave away:


GraveyardShift Breaks
This happened just after New Years...

Basically, we were already working on a new set of rules because the old ones didn't seem to be adequate.  Both members and leaders were unhappy with the current system and one day while I was in dynamis, the shell was broken.  We've since re-formed as Magitek, minus about a dozen members.  Those members in good standing that left have been tracked down and given gilsplits from GYS's LS bank.

Magitek has a point system and no LS bank, but beyond that we're still working everything out.  We've started camping some ground HNM's, we've continued to do sky and limbus farming, and we're about to open up recruiting to get some fresh blood in. 

I have to share this, which I thought was pretty funny:

...Maclax and Caclax left GYS prior to the shell breaking after hearing that they were going to be kicked out for a violation of the rules.  They have since gone on to apply at MercuryX (which didn't take them) and continue to use their Freetime shell for things like farming Sky.  More power to them and good luck.  I learned a bit about them back when we were all in Strike, and I learned some more about them during their tenure in GYS.  Suffice it to say, I'm not anxious to be hanging out with them any time soon.

Prior to GYS breaking, we got a chance to wipe to KV.  This is the first time I've seen this mob after all these years.  It was fun, but it was frustrating...

Yeeeeah, eventually it depopped while both GYS and Legacy tried to recover.  Oh well, someday...

I should also probably talk about my thought process regarding what I should do when GYS broke.  When GYS broke, Magitek had already been made and 8 people held pearlsacks: Bamimapa, Thalestris, Bakum, Maxbebop, Zwicked, Thanos, and Edwina.  This group of people was originally convened to help draft GYS's new rules.  When GYS broke, a decision had to be made about what to do.

To be honest, part of me was very tempted to make a big change.  I thought about joining MercuryX, the LS that transferred from Diabolos.  I've found them to be a nice bunch of guys and capable players.  The downside to that would be that I would've had to leave Dienamis, which I'm not prepared to do.  Despite what certain leaders of DynamisBums might think, I'm not a fairweather friend.  Next I thought about joining Dawn to be with some of my friends from Dienamis.  We have a great time in Dynamis, so logically, we'd have a great time in other endgame scenarios.

That would, however, have left my friends from GraveyardShift with sort of a void, and they'd have their own decisions to make.  I worried that some of them might not find a new endgame home so easily.  And thus, Magitek became an endgame shell.

Lowone Leaves FFXI
I only knew Lowone for a short period of time, but he became a close friend of mine.  He helped me find Dienamis as a new home and I helped him find GYS (which he even became a leader of).  He was upgrading Gun and we poked the Animated version from time to time. I recorded this for posterity:

...in case you ever want to come back, Low, I got this for you...

Campaign!
I've been having a hell of a lot of fun with Campaign.  I started leveling my RNG again using Campaign and all I can say is that wide scan is seriously useful. I did manage to see an Elvaan female, same model as my NPC in full Usukane, BB and Divisor Ring.  Wowza:

...have I mentioned how much my RNG looks like a tool?  Seriously... wtf gives?

At least I finally got it to 75!

It's not likely that I'll be meriting RNG anytime soon.  My next big project is subjobs and then DRK from 50 to 75 to make use of all that Homam/Askar I've got laying around.  Not to mention the Perdu Sickle I bought ages ago that's been languishing.  Of course, if things go well with my Usukane collection, I may have to start prioritizing my MNK.

Salvage with HomingMissiles
With my work schedule returning to something approaching normality, I was able to pick Salvage back up again.  Starting off slow and getting back into the swing of things with some new gear set choices and with my Third Eye merits nearly complete (4/5, keeping that last Store TP until I finish Usukane Sune-ate and see how it works).  We've been on quite a roll since I've been back:

You'll notice that the above shot is squarely centered on my Armlets and Thief's Knife, and this is why...

But even prior to that, we had much better luck in one of our Arrapago runs...

We've also finished a couple other assorted pieces:

...and had some fun to boot:

Some regular NM's
In my travels I tend to run into some regular NM's from time to time.  Sometimes they get me and sometimes I get them.  When Hippolytos popped while exping Seb in the tower, I did fine until his Hundred Fists, which destroyed me - even with Signet evasion, HQ gear, and a Persikos au Lait on.  I had to call in reinforcements!

I'd only fought Charybdis once or twice previous, and I'd always been the half-assed DD feeding the thing TP.  A few times over the holidays I got to THF tank the thing and had a blast doing it!  And yes, that was my Steal claim.

...and some lesser NM's got beaten on a bit too:

Poor little rabbit.

The Good, The Bad, The Miscellaneous
What better way to end a gigantic post than with a dozen or so unrelated screenshots with absolutely no context given?

...and that's all, folks!