Keitalu Journal

All the bustle of the new April version update and the upcoming expansion instances has me in an uproar!  I’m quite excited about all the stuff they’re giving WHM, because, quite frankly, it’s about damned time!!  Lots of other neat things coming out too, so I’m really excited.  Auspice and Esuna are really exciting new spells that I can’t wait to start using, and the addition of the job abilities is really great news!  Thank you SE for finally giving WHM some cool new stuff!  I greatly look forward to trying it all out! /cheer

With that, I wanted to post some official news on updates myself!  I didn’t really make any official statements before so I wanted to post some of the more recent additions to my collection of goods and skills.  First, and foremost:

I finally got the 35 component of my Usukane haramaki and was able to turn in another 12 ingots to get it crafted!  This marks my first complete set of Salvage armor, my most sought after series of the entire collection!  This also marked the 7th completed 5/5 set of gear for Lagsave, my salvage ls, meaning 6 people have come before me to complete their gear, and since, two have come after me.  Congratulations to Lagsave on 9 fully completed salvage gear sets!

I have to give special thanks to our salvage leaders, especially Jackalman, who helped me so much to learn what I know about salvage.  It’s been awesome playing with you and I greatly enjoyed the linkshell you’ve made.  There were times where it got rough and times where I didn’t think I’d ever see a fully completed set, but I was lucky enough to have several friends in the ls to make salvage lots of fun which made me want to stick with it.  I also owe Afuce a special thank you for getting me into Lagsave and referring me as a trusted player.  Thank you for hooking me up with a great group of people and some great friends!  Here’s to many more fun and exciting salvage runs in the future!

After finishing out my Usukane set, my next big goal was to cap Hand-to-Hand skill for my Monk, asap.  After several AMAZING merit parties with Heretic, Devinry, Arianna, and others, I was able to get that done in no time!  Thanks guys!!  Just don’t tell Heretic that I used my merit points to level up h2h and not Elemental Magic.  I was SUPPOSED to be using them there but after I got that full Usu, I just had to get this capped asap!  I haven’t spent any merits any other weapons, so I was excited to get this done.  I have Evasion skill merited which has been nice but this was my first weapon adjustment and it’s been really nice.  Definitely worth the time put into it.  I made the switch to Hades Sainti in Salvage, over Destroyers, and I’ve been quite happy with it.  I need to compare the two in merit parties to test them more, but the added hate on Hades is great.  To take my Monk to the next level I really think I need to finish my merits in Kick Attacks, Counter, Penance and Invigorate, and find a way to attempt farming Hope Torque.  It’s a bit of a long road ahead, but I think I’ll be able to get there, somehow.

More recently, I also managed to cap my Divine Magic skill which had been gimped forever because I never really used divine magic until Repose.  Prior to repose, I think I had gotten up to 200 on my Divine skill, but wasn’t able to get it past that.  When Repose came out, though, it became more and more useful to level up Divine magic and I started spamming flash.  I even pull with flash in Nyzul, Salvage, and other places, mostly to level up the skill, but I really like it for being a fast casting spell that doesn’t dot the mob.  It draws a bit of hate but if you’re smart about how you use it, it’s never a real issue.  It’s good game.

ZNM has been taking off pretty well and TeamHeretic has taken down every single mob from T1-T4.  Moreover, I think we’ve come to a solid result about how to take on each type of boss through trial and error.  Our group has some luxuries now that we’ve expanded our member-base a little, but the core remains really tight and effective, overall, and I am enjoying our outings on these challenging creatures.

As part of my ZNM conquests I was able to pick up a Muse Tariqah which was the piece I was waiting to get before snagging a Templar Mace.  It really is an awesome combination for WHM and makes it easier to reach capped Stoneskin without having to worry about grips.  I don’t even take any grips with me on whm any more.  But one thing that does suck about the Tariqah is the way it looks.  I mean I guess it’s cool but it looks too gangly and the tribal appearance makes the rest of my gear look, well, silly.  So!

I dat-swapped the shield into Aegis!  The D: face shield!  It’s awesome!!  I feel like it’s impossible to die as long as I have my Muse Aegis with me, protecting me from the evil magicks of my foes!  Muse Aegis with it’s golden frame, it’s lapis orbs that shimmer in the sun, it’s sturdy and agile shell that allows me to stay mobile and think on my feet while boosting the essence of my powers!  Muse Aegis!  The D: face shield!

And now a word from Jackalman!

Thank you, Jackalman!

While running around town one night, I ran into a fwen of mine that I met in ZNM–Ratnut!  We sat and talked for a bit, people watching and enjoying the fresh evening air.  After a bit, he invited me to check out his workshop.  Ratnut is a highly skilled craftsman, specializing in bones and fossil material.  He has an impressive workshop set up in his home, complete with simple and clean inanimate decoration.  It really is a beautiful workshop, this screen below doesn’t do it justice.

I took a few other screenshots while inside but I didn’t want to go too crazy.  I had to keep it cool since I was in someone else’s place of business after all.  I especially admired his collection of crafstman tools which are all highly specialized for his particular trade.  Intricate and purposeful, each instrument was neatly  organized for quick assembly and use within his workspace.

A short time after my visit to his abode, I asked if he would be so kind as to create a piece of gear for me which I lacked in my BLM outings.  Not only did he create a fine sample for me to utilize in my journey, but he was kind enough to provide a mark of his craftsmanship on the item, a symbol of excellence and quality.  I was really excited to get these lappas for my BLM, I had been trying to buy them on the AH for a long time but someone was grossly overcharging for them and I was never able to buy them for the money I bid.  Thank you, Ratnut, for crafting these for me!  They have been put to great use so far and will be a permanent item in my BLM arsenal.^^

Speaking of BLM, the situation in sea has been going well.  I managed to get enough organs together to complete my first obi, the Hyorin (or ice!) obi!  It’s nice to finally have it, but now that I do, it’s never Iceday! lol  That figures.  I still have 3 others that I want to get, so the quest for obis is not over!  It will forever continue with me fleeing the flowing and flying fish in the depths of the sea!

I’ve been soloing SAM a bit as well, during my free time and managed to etch another mark toward the goal of Maat’s cap.  SAM is a lot of fun and it’s a very powerful job; I really enjoy it.  Puks suck, however, and I’m happy to slice them into pieces for killing me so many times.

That’s about it for now.  It seems like a lot of stuff when I’m putting it together a blog update, but writing it out, it seems to go by fast.  My next major goals are to buy a pair of Herald’s gaiters for my mage jobs, buy a Novio earring for BLM, BST (Primal Rend), and RDM and SCH someday, and eventually COR, and work toward the job requirements for Maat’s cap.  I have my fwen Heretic working with me on nearly all of these goals, he’s a great inspriation to me and really makes these goals possible.  Lucky for me, he sticks around!  It’s nice that I can help him to reach his goals as well.  He’s saving up for a relic weapon and doing various forms of farming with me is one way he adds to his overall income in that direction.  He’s also working on Maat’s too, so we spend a bit of time leveling together.  Thanks, Tickles^^

Well that’s an interesting question.  Lots really.  Blogging hasn’t been on the menu but I miss it and wanted to get back into it (or at least try) again.  Hmm, lots of things going on these days really…  I made a bunch of new fwens, which is always great, and have been keeping myself occupied by doing several events with them.  One of my new best fwens, Heretic, I met in LagSave.  He invited me to try duoing Limbus with him.  It’s really, really fun.  I learned a lot from him about Black Mage this way, and it really rekinded my flame for the job.  I since spent a lot of time and money trying to improve my BLM with gear, merits, and experience.

The BLM Limbus duo experience is very magical.  All sorts of silly things come flying at you!  Ghost!  Dragon!  Turtle!  Behemoths!  We killed them all. ^.^  (In a nice way)  One of the coolest things about FF is when you see BIG damage come up on the screen and know that you did it!  BLM is all about that, so I personally find this exersize very fulfilling.

We enjoy our time in Limbus and collect lots of shiny coins which we split at the end.  Every now and then, a nice relic upgrade drops.  For talus like me who doesn’t do Limbus very often, it’s exciting!  I save the pieces I have in hopes of upgrading later on, when I get the other parts to it.

It was because of this that I decided to spend my Imperial Wootz Ingots that I was saving for Usukane Haramaki, on the completed Morrigan’s Robe set that I had collecting dust.  Ever since then, I’ve been slowly upgrading BLM to something extraordinary!  Hopefully someday I can do as much damage as Heretic, but really, I think it’s more important to be as skilled and experienced as him on BLM.  He typically solo this run, doesn’t even need 2 talus!  I want to get to that point someday.  It’s a long road for me, but I think I can get there with time.

Heretic later invited me to join his linkshell, TeamHeretic, for ZNMs!  I’ve been doing with them since last year and it’s been a lot of fun.  I get to go to places I don’t go very often and find some very interesting creatures!  (Very mean ones too)

One of the best thing about doing znm, for me, is that it teaches me to play my job in different ways and do things with it that I have tried or didn’t even think were possible.  An essential requirement for participating in znm is getting pop items, but for that you need to turn in pictures of mobs that the dude Sanraku wants.  He send me to all ends of the earth looking for his pics.  He’s so lazy and old he can’t go himself so he makes talus go for him.  Sometimes he gets too many and he doesn’t like the pics you give him, so he gives you less points for it.  I really hate when that happens. :(

I never thought of banishing a mob to death before, but I realized that I can solo dark elemental in sky this way using WHM/NIN.  It’s very interesting.  Banish normally doesn’t do very good dmg so I almost never use it, unless fighting undead mob and you has mps to spare.  Now that WHM has repose though, it’s quite easy to fight these dark eles just by banish and sleeping them.  It’s been a nice source of skillups for me too.  Divine magic has been my only uncapped magic skill on WHM for a long time, because I never really used Flash/Banish before.  With Repose, though, it becomes more useful, and I realize more and more, using flash at the right time can help a lot.

ZNM has been an amazing source of income for me and so I find it very rewarding in that sense too.  However, the greatest thing about doing znm for me has been the fwens that I made.  There are great ppls out there that I didn’t even know before, and I am so happy to have them in my life now.  It’s doing events with fwens that make it fun, even if you lose or die or get lousy drops.  At least you had a good time with your fwens while you were there, sharing laughs and building bonds. (And habits!)  Blixi, one of my favorite ppls, and I developed an unspoken rule that we will use warp 2 on everyone in pt who needs and after, simultaneously Warp II each other.  It’s fun to watch our characters disappear at the same time.  I dunno, it’s really silly I guess, but it cracks me up when it happens, and if I ever see Blixi cast Warp II on me, I hurry to cast it back so she isn’t left alone. =)

In an effort to build improve my skills on BLM while simultaneously getting better gears, I decided to travel into the sea and kill fishes!  I have to collect their organs for the items I want.  I think it’s really gross though.  I never liked touching fishes cuz they’re slimy and yucky, but this way I don’t really have to.  I can just blast them to death with my powerful spells!!

Although I don’t like to touches them, they LOVE to touch me and sometimes a little too much. :/  This is a rather common sight in the seas these days.  I have recently had a hard time fighting this xzomit momma.  Her stupid babies won’t sleep long enough for me to kills her!!  ORRRRR stupid babies run out of range of Sleepga and I have to sleep them individually so everybody is waking up at different times and my timers are going crazy and my mps are always low.  I die a few times trying to get mp and can’t cuz everybody won’t stfu and sleep for a lil bit while I rest so I can kill them!  UGGHHH!  Stupid fishes and their families, omg!  I went after salvage tonight and lost about 8k on blm.  I don’t mind dying or losing exp as long as I can learn from my mistake, but this stupid babies always giving me problems.  If anyone has any suggestions, I really appreciate it, cuz idk what I’m doing wrong lol.  I always wear my gloves so I don’t have to dig these yucky organs out of dead fishes after I kill them.  I’m really close to getting a Hyorin Obi.  After that, I will save up for Relax earring and Rairin/Korin Obis.  I don’t want to get too many cuz I can’t hold all this items I have for blm already. @_@

But while we’re on the subject of these obis, here’s a quick did you know!  You prolly know that obi is a Japanese belt or sash.  It goes over kimono and use to keep clothes in place where they should be.  It’s also highly decorative so they come in many size and color with various pattern.  This elemental obi collection are all named after the element they correspond to.  I hear lots of ppl say, “I forgot what it’s called, but I use the ice obi.”  Well, it’s very easy to remember which one is which, if you are ninja like me! :D

Ninjutsu comes in various elemental categories as well.  There is:

火 Ka - Fire (katon)
氷 Hyou - Ice (hyoton)
風 Fuu - Wind (futon)
土 Do - Earth (doton)
雷 Rai - Lightning (raiton)
水 Sui - Water (suiton)

The “ton” at the end it means like ninja art. ^.^  So “katon” means fire ninja art!

Obi has the same prefix going on.

火 Ka - Fire (karin)
氷 Hyou - Ice (hyorin)
風 Fuu - Wind (furin)
土 Do - Earth (dorin)
雷 Rai - Lightning (rairin)
水 Sui - Water (suirin)

In addition to this, obi also has light and dark elementals:

光 Ko - Light (korin)
暗 An - Dark(anrin)

This kanji for “an” is also sounds like “kurai” if you use the kun-reading.  Kurai sounds like anything a ninja uses? Kurayami perhaps?  Which casts blindness on a target.  You see how it all comes together! (hehe)

The symbol for the “rin” at the end is 輪 which is like circle or loop, like the belt circle or loop around your waist.  This kanji is also the counter for flowers which I didn’t know until now.  (Thank you Kodansha!)

I like to study different languages so this is really my kind of thing.  But if you had trouble before, now you know you can always remember what the obis are by name just by thinking of the Ninjutsu names.  Neat huh? :D

Anyway, there’s lots more going on that I will have to update you guys on.  I want to say thanks to those who still read my blogs after so many days of silence.  I was really surprised by the amount of positive feedback I got on my stories, both in-game and here, even from ppls I don’t know! ^.^  I will try my best to keep them going so you can pass the boring times at work or wherever you might be.  :D

Over the past few months, especially, I have noticed people becoming increasingly uncomfortable around me.  Today when I came back from lunch, I saw this IM from my fwen sitting on my desktop.

I don’t know what the big deal is, really.  Let’s take a look at the last 4 quotes I’ve used in Gmail chat.

(My real name and email address are distorted/blurred to protect my privacy from the evil spam people who lurk in the dark corners of my blog.)

Each of these lines have a personal meaning to me and represent something that has happened or is happening in my life! But back to my point, I’m still not seeing it.

When I sign in to the game I usually use a greeting of some form to say hello and let people know I’m around if they need anything.  I could say something like, oh I don’t know, “Hello!”, but people have been saying that for years.  It’s boring.  I sometimes usually end up saying something like…

Can you believe that some people actually get upset/offended when I say this?  I don’t think it’s offensive at all.  If anything it’s plagrising that awesome video game Zero Wing.  You know, the one that gave us historically classic lines like, “All your base are belong to us !!” and “Someone set up us the bomb !”  The stuff dreams are made of, that.

I will admit sometimes I am a little over-the-top, but is that honestly such a bad thing?  A lot of people are so serious all the time.  It’s like, Y SO SRS?!  When my friends started telling me I’m weird, it didn’t really faze me, but then they started doing this awkward silence thing, and eventually started telling me things like, “I’m okay with you dying alone in a gargantuan fireball”, I started to listen.

There have been some rumors floating around about me and I just want to clarify things a bit to sort of clear the air, if you will.  Yes I did lick the Eternal Ice several times in Uleguerand Range, but only because it looks like a giant frosty!  This business about people peeing on it and it being littered with pubes, if all that were true, don’t you think it would be YELLOW and furry?  I don’t even want to mention some of the other things my friends said about the Eternal Ice, but I’m ready to just let it all go at this point.   Yes, I do occassionally claim to be kiting around NMs that don’t exist, dragging my fwens out to help me kill it, only to tell them I lost claim when they get into the zone. Yes, I randomly shout “Gate Widow” various times of the day, and yes I do shout it out loud too.  It’s happened a few times at work, I mean come on.  Yes I sometimes try to have conversations with NPCs and often put words into their mouthes and tell people certain “mithra” npcs really do say certain “lolspeak” works like iSry and lulz…

Yes! “WTF R U SRS!?” was a real selection option..!!

My point is: do these things really make me weird?  Well that’s not really a point as much as it is a question, but I don’t think it does!  I’m just your typical…

4-earred!

4-eyed!

2-nosed!

Red floaty ball taru!

Who squeaks when you /poke him.

>,<

Okay so I got the 2 plug-ins installed that came recommended by Etain.  Hopefully that takes care of it.  I also set up the blog so people don’t have to be registered to login, so everyone should be able to write comments now.  REALLY hope this works out and I can get back to posting about my adventures! ^.^

Wow I upgraded my site… I needed to get the latest version of some spam tools…  I had over 1000 spam comments so I tried a query to delete them and ended up deleting almost all my comments, which REALLY sucks! D:  Damn you spammers!

I’m sorry if you lost your comments, my fwenz.  I gotta try a lot harder to keep this site spam free.  It’s really, really, really bad. >,<

Wow, I didn’t even realize it but my site has gotten retarded spammed!  I’m trying to figure out a way to fix this…  If you have any tips or suggestions, please let me know.  /halp!

I’ve been gone so long I’m sure everyone lost interest in my blog lol.  Actually the biggest hangup for me was the fact that I can’t easily bring images from home to work.  Work is where I do all of my actual blogging, cuz wtfwork, contact me anytime at iSleep@work.com.

Anyway, I’ve actually made a lot of progress since my last post in July. <_<  I’m not really sure where to begin, but I’m sorting through my images now so we’ll see what comes up first…

Well, I finally ran into enough people who needed to complete Apocalypse Nigh, so we teamed up and got that squared away.  Surprisingly easy fight, we dispatched it with great ease. o.O  The cutscenes are so beautiful too!  It was nice getting cool cs like this with my character in melee gear.  I so rarely get to drag my ninja out of the closet these days.  Most people are surprised when they see my gear, because they figure I’m a career mage. :/  Talu ninja for life!  I ended up going with the Hollow Earring after a long debate/discussion with several of my friends.

Hollow Earring
[Ear] All Races
DEX +2 Accuracy +3 Ranged Accuracy +3
Sword enhancement spell damage +3
Lv. 72 All Jobs

I decided on this earring for the following reasons:

• Ethereal Earring - There’s another earring that can give you 5 evasion, and there craftable earrings that offer more attack than 5 and having both of those at the same time will never be too much of an issue for me, really.  Moreover, I don’t think I’ll ever aim for an end-game PLD or DRG, knowing all the gear I would need to get for it.  The conversion of dmg to mp is nice but it doesn’t seem too useful for most of the other mp-using jobs I have an interest in.
• Static Earring - This was the only earring I could rule out immediately.  If I had a bunch of other gear to stack up magic burst dmg and was BLM main, I would consider it, but I don’t so I skipped this.
• Magnetic Earring - Almost everyone I know took this earring or the Ethereal earring.  It seems like if people are mage-main, they choose this, melee-mains took the ethereal.  I don’t deny this is a great earring, but I honestly like my current set of HP equipment for my WHM, especially as a taru.  The conserve mp is great for blm, but to be honest, I’d rather use Loquacious and Moldavite or something offering more INT.  My style really prefers to aim for the most dmg I can get or casting as fast as I can.

Given that, I went for the Hollow for all my melee jobs (especially my upcoming MNK), offering both +DEX and +Accuracy, for faster TP gain.  I plan to level up a couple melee jobs from this point and I think this would be perfect for all those jobs as well as MNK.  I just recently got MNK71 and I can’t wait to start using this for tp gain on MNK.  …Especially now!

Thanks to DuckHUNT, I was able to meet the Bushin and fulfil the requirements to complete the Black Belt!  I was pretty STOKED to get this done, to say the least!  Having just recently completed this, I haven’t been able to really test it out, but I am very much looking forward to some hardcore soloing, and it will only get better from here out, as I can pick up new gear and Asuran Fists as I level.  This wouldn’t have been possible at all without my friends, especially Cloud, HK, and Afuce, who helped me camp these NMs at all hours of night and day.  I <3 u all!

And while we’re on the subject of NIN and MNK, I recently joined the traveling circus!  Wait no.  I mean I completed my Usukane Sune-Ate!  One of my most sought after pieces from Salvage!  It took a really long time to get these for me, guess that’s just how my luck is, but it’s so awesome to finally have them!  I’m now 3/5 on Usukane, with just the Haramaki and Hizayoroi left to complete.  I suspect it will take a while to complete these last two pieces, but I honestly enjoy salvage a great deal, so I’m cool with it.  And it’s really a great feeling to help my fellow linkshell members get their most desired pieces. ^^  …And I’m still tossing that circus idea around as a part-time, after-hours activity!

My Salvage linkshell, LagSave, also promoted me to a sackholder since I last wrote an entry here!  I was really kind of scared at first, but I’ve been working heavily on my Salvage notes (I have a whole binder with maps and strategy outlines, it’s pathetic) to be able to improve any runs I lead.  I’ve also developed a simple system for easily keeping track of who lots on cells while I’m leading, to make it easier to call cells and do my job.  It’s *really* hard to keep up with people’s debuffs, healing multiple parties, and leading a run (just thinking about it makes me a bit nervous) but it’s not so bad once you get into it.  I’m really happy to be able to help my Salvage linkshell and it makes me feel really good that they trust me to be a sackholder.  I hope to become as great of a leader as our other sacks and our fearless leader, Jack, aaaand I hope to see many ecstatic faces from our members who get their wishlist completed, one piece at a time! :)

One day, while waiting for Faffy to awaken from his nightly slumber, I was sitting around talking to my fwenz!  It was then that I noticed Cloud has a very nice tail!  I asked him several questions about it, but he started to get a little weirded out.  I don’t really know why, but I like tails!  I wish I had one too.  I wonder what kind of tail I would get if I could have any kind.  I think something like the mithra tail, but maybe with a little ball of fur at the end, like a lion.  Or a tiger tail with stripes!  So many possibilities.

While I was telling Cloud about this, he proceeded to use his tail for… perverse and inappropriate things!  And this is exactly why you never go afk during Faffy windows!  You never know will be done to you! D:

Oh and I got this shiny new hat!  It’s so awesome that I can’t take it off!  Except when I have to. ; ;  I wish I could come to Salvage on Black Mage more, but then again, I enjoy WHM’s role in Salvage quite a bit, so I’m okay with it.   I’ll modify my statement to be, I wish every job I use at 75 could wear this awesome-looking, super-powered magical hat! :D

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 - Grimoire of the Rift

I don’t make a habit of reviewing video games but I do make a habit of playing them, and so I often feel like I have a good sense of what makes a game fun and good.  But these terms are so subjective that nearly every game ever released gets praise from at least one fanboy uneducated in the arts of classical gaming, thus rendering the terms “fun” and “good” relatively pointless.

Nonetheless, an objective examination of a game can inspire other people to form their own opinions about something and help them consider whether they should run out and buy said game or stop playing it for some other new FF game that just came out; and since this is the essence of what reviews should be about, I am going to talk about the last game I bought, “Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 Grimoire of the Rift”!

(I purposely wrote a winded introduction to this review that would match the beefy, lengthy title of the game!)

The title of this game really boggles my mind.  I mean, typical Nintendo branding is why they called the first game Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.  It was for the GameBoy Advance and they called just about everything, “Advance” at the time.  Super Mario Advance.  Final Fantasy V Advance.  Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario 3 Advance.  The list goes on.  What bothers me is that this game has nothing to do with the GameBoy Advance, but because the predecessor was released on the system where nearly all games had “Advance” stapled to the end of their names, the word “Advance” remains a part of the new title.  Yes it’s a continuation of the original FFTA game, but if they had called it Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: Grimoire of the Rift, would any of the FFT-style game fans really have overlooked it?  It’s not as though it’s really a true sequel.

If you recall the last FFTA game, this one starts with a similar concept.  You’re a kid on the normal world and you get sucked into the world of Ivalice through a magical book, whose pages remain blank.  As you venture through Ivalice, you note that the book is magically filled with a story about your quests, so you figure that you will return home when all the pages have been filled.  You are the stereotypical youth of unyielding optimism and enthusiasm, but you are tossed something of a sense of humor, so Luso, the main character isn’t a bad kid at all.  Unlike last time, you don’t end up sucking your friends into Ivalice along with you, which I kind of like…

So you start by getting thrown into a battle and you meet a clan of jolly fellows, lead by a bangaa (or whatever he is) named Cid.  If he is Bangaa he looks NOTHING like the rest of them, but he also looks nothing like any of the other races.  Whatever.  He asks you to join his clan so he can protect you from the giant throbbing cockatrice that wants to peck your eyes out.  You accept, and a JUDGE appears from the skies and flags you as a member of the clan, dressing you in fantastical clothing and a hat that no one would dare to wear in the real world.

Now at this point, I know I’ve said enough.  JUDGES.  Yes, the judges are back.  This alone is reason enough to skip the game, and while I still hate them with a passion, I can’t say that they are as bad as their predecessors.

For those who didn’t play the previous FFTA, they implemented a “Judge” to oversee a match.  The judge will set a law at the beginning of the fight, and it can be anything from, “Don’t use magic”, to “You cannot stand still on your turn.”  In the previous game, if you violated the law, the offender would be taken by the judge and thrown into prison, removing them from the field.  You had to go bail them out of jail after you won or lost the fight.  And they wouldn’t post bail on them right away, so you would have to go without certain characters for days.  WTF?!

In this version, you don’t get thrown into jail if you violate the law you just lose the bonus items you could get from winning the match and you get less exp or something.  I did it once and it sucked, so if I ever violated the law on accident, I’d just reset the game.  “Oh that’s not so bad at all then.”  No, no.  It gets worse.  It is your prerogative to uphold the laws, but the NPCs you fight, aren’t subject to them at all.  Now, you might think, “Okay that makes sense.  Why would the NPCs care if they lose the bonus items at the end of the fight?”  Well sure, it makes sense for normal battles, but in a boss battle, a clan trial, or event match, if you violate the law, it’s GAME OVER.  The match ends and you get a grand prize of wasted time!  Meanwhile, the NPCs continue to be free of any laws.  ASS!

So let’s talk about the game mechanics and what the points really mean.  In FFT, you would get EXP (Experience Points) and JP (Job Points) for every action you took.  While it was a relatively low amount of exp, you could kill all the enemies in a field except for one, and perform self actions that would raise your exp leveling you up quickly and making each battle yield a large amount of points, but only for characters that were on the field of battle, performing actions.   In this game, you get a base level of EXP for each match and you get a bonus for every round you perform an action.  The character that performs the most actions in a round is called the MVP and gets extra EXP.  After each fight, you also get 30 job points which get applied to your entire clan, even people who did not participate in the battle, so you can level up the skills of your deadweight characters while working on your main set, which is really nice because usually you have to swap people back and forth to keep everyone even, which is such a pain in the ass to do.
In typical FFT fashion, you must pick a job for your character and various skills and abilities will be made available to you based on the job you select.  Unlike other FFT games, though, your skills are tied to your equipment.  So let’s say you change to Thief.  You have no skills at first, so you have to equip a dagger which gives you a Thief skill, like Loot Gil.  When you go to purchase items, you can see a list of all the abilities they offer, and some offer the same or different skills to various jobs, making them reusable.  Also, in typical FFT fashion, you can equip a subset of skills on your job, to use the skills you learned from another trade.  So if you’re a Black Mage, you can also equip your White Magic skills to heal and nuke, which is pretty handy.  The down side is that each skill/ability has its own exp meter, and until you get enough points to “master” it, you cannot use it on a different job.  This means you are forced to level up on that sucky job for a long time until you finally get the skills you want mastered so you can switch to something else less lame.  My main character has been Solider for nearly the entire time I’ve played and I put about 15 hours into it so far.  That shouldn’t be allowed.

But let’s talk about the things that make this game a pain in the ass…  I entered a clan trial that states the following.  You must defeat all the enemies without using MP.  Okay, no problem.  Since you can regear your people before the match starts, you can change your mages to melee and you’ll never have to worry about using MP.  WRONG!  More on that in a moment.  You enter the fight and the enemies appear to be Warriors or something who can also cast magic.  Black magic spells target the immediate radius around them, so they can end up nailing several of your guys at once.  If they all move back to back, that could near, if not full, wipe your party.  Fuck?  Okay, but wait.  We just said the law was not to use MP!  Yes.  YOU cannot use MP, the NPCs can.  “But if I use it, I don’t just lose the bonus shit, I lose the match and its insta-over!”  That’s fucked up.  So earlier, I said you can regear your guys and turn your mages into melee if there is a law like, “Don’t Use MP.”  So I used my Mog Knight and had him do a move called Mog Lance on one of the bad guys.  Guess what happens?  VIOLATION!  GAME OVAR!

Wait, what?

Mog Lance doesn’t use MP!  It’s not magic!  And if it were a spell, it would have a number next to it, indicating the MP cost!!  …Except it doesn’t, and somehow it still counts as using MP so I lost that clan battle and my clan points.  What the fuck are they thinking?

They also have certain laws that will obviate certain characters in your arsenal completely.  For example, there is a quest I did that said, “No Actions by Hume”, and since my main character is a Hume and I was forced to put him on the field, I had to do this fight with him taking no actions.  I just made him stand in the corner and cry.

There are also things that say you cannot harm certain races, so you have to make sure that you remove your reaction abilities, like counter, which will make your character counter attack after being hit, otherwise, you could accidentally violate the law and get boned by the judge.  One law made it illegal to miss.  With the right setup and a good strategy, that isn’t too bad, because you can get a better hit ratio from standing behind an enemy, but if they attack you from the front and you have counter on, and your counter attack misses, it’s over.  That’s just stupid.

The game moves entirely too slow for me.  I am willing to give myself over to dark world of level grinding and although this game offers a way to level up all of your character’s skills, regardless of whether you use them on the battle field or not, the fact that the capacity of your job is limited by the skills you get from GEAR is incredibly retarded to me.  I can’t even map out whether or not a certain job will become useful later on because I have no idea what other moves it will get.  And the judge system of this game seems to be less inhibiting than its predecessor, but at least in the last game, you had cards that could remove the law on a certain field.  Here you just have to live with it.  The system is bad, it makes playing this game un-fun, why would the game designers force you to play in an un-fun way?  I get the whole, “let’s make it challenging and throw some surprises at the gamers” idea, but if I put all this work into getting my characters to use special moves, I want to be able to use them, not sit on them because of the ass law system.

All that said, I think this game has a lot to offer if you are willing to put up with its bullshit.  It’s a brightly colored, fairly light hearted story with a nice new cast and promise of fun battles using your customized team, but the level up system is a bit slow for me and I despise the concept of gaining skills from weapons and not being able to use them on other jobs until mastered, especially when it can take several rounds of increasingly hard battles where you have to hope for available quests that you can complete with your current team while you finish out that damned ability mastery bar.  Unfortunately, since I bought Final Fantasy IV, a game which I never really played the original version of, I’ve moved on and haven’t looked back.  I think if they ever release another Tactics Advance game, I will scan it first for the implementation of judges, and if I detect even a hint of a law-like system, I will pass it by.  If you like this game, I wish you the best!  You are more patient than I, and have a much deeper sense of appreciation for games of this nature.

(But I say it’s ASS!)

After tea, Keitalu invites Afuce ovar to his birthday party and everyone who has gathered enjoys in food and drink and shinies! Everyone has fun telling stories, jokes, and complaining about drop rates in Salvage.

After the birthday cakes (yes CAKES!) all his fwenz present Keitalu with a special birthday gift! It is tradition in Vana’diel to make a wish before to open special gift like this! So Keitalu close his eyes and think of what he can wish for…

But suddenly, with his eyes closed, Keitalu begin to see a silhouette of a person in his mind! It must be next person to find… But it’s so hard to make out who it is… He looks to be hume, wearing RDM clothes… Light color hair.. and..

Suddenly Xenora came by and showed Keitalu a bright sparkly! So shiny! But Keitalu was distracted from his thoughts though he remember the basic concept of the person he should look for next!

Afuce comes over to Keitalu during the pt and say he has to leave. :(

“Wow I guess u has bettar plans, eh?”

“Oh it’s not that, I just has to go home to feed my dog Reuben and my brother called and said he was destroying the house again so I needz to check on him-o,” Afuce replied.

“Oh wow, solly it happen 2 u. :(((”

“Me too. And sorry I has to miss ur pt! But thanks for the food! It sure was delicious-o!”

Keitalu smiled. “Come back after, kay? Cos we still has to find moar keeper of the secret star and I think I has a clue for da next one!”

“Yes! All right my friend!!! I will be back shortly!!!!!!!”

Afuce left and pt started to wind down. Keitalu thanked all his fwen for throwing such a fun pt! Keitalu says {Gotta go! Got stuff to do!} and bids farewell to his fwens! (Leaving them to clean up the mess themselves…)

Keitalu begin to search everywhere, looking for person who looks like person he saw in his mind. Unfortunately for him, RDM is such a common job (everyone has it!) and there are lot of hume too, so it’s hard to find people who don’t look like it! But there sure are some flashy people out there!

Finally, it seems the hume in question has been found! Keitalu approach him with a cautious eye, examining him repeatedly and making surprised face emotes around him.

“Who ARE you?” The hume RDM questioned at last.

“Haha solly. I’m Keitalu and I has been looking for u!”

The hume looked suspiciously at the tiny taru. “Wat fer? If I MPK’d u at some point let me just apologize now because sometimes I just get-”

Keitalu pulled the hume away into a vacant area where they could has some privacy. There he explain the situation and was pleased to see that the RDM was becoming moar and moar interested.

“I’ll definitely help you, mai gud man, for I am Shoten, seeker of hidden treasures!”

The two continued their conversation and after minutes out loud ramblings and arm flailings, Shoten darted up and pointed toward the MH!

“Let’s go! I know of the treasure which u seek!”

Keitalu was shocked! Amazed! “You mean you has this treasure already?!”

“…Oh, no.” <,< “I have to change to /blm to go back to WG…”

Keitalu, no everyone, was silent. (Even people who didn’t even know what was going on)

Moments later the duo arrived in WG and Shoten took the reigns, leaping around town searching under every table and behind every pillar. Could the omega 1337 shiniez be in such a common place? It seems unheard of! Or so our hero thought.

“Aha at last!!!” Shoten shouted with ravenous glee. “I has found ur treasure but in order to see it, you will have to come quietly with me!”

Shoten starts casting Sneak on Shoten.

Keitalu stares blankly.

Shoten crept stealthily toward a man crouched on the floor. As they drew closer he exclaimed in a whispered voice…

“r u srs?” Keitalu was not amused.

“I know, it’s s0 kewl…”

“This r n0t wat I wanted. You r a tool. I’m outta here..”

Shoten, surprised and desperate, shouted, “No wait! If this isn’t the treasure you are looking for, then maybe we should go talk to the expert of all things valuable.”

“Who is that?”

“President Naja of course!”

“Ya. Good idea. Let’s go schedule an audience with the president who has a billion people to bludgeon with her morning star before she could possibly get to us. I’m sure we’ll find the treasure sometime before we’re 90. Besides, she’s so violent and brutal, and she only cares about herself. Why would she bother to help us?”

“Leave it all to me! I won’t let you down!”

Keitalu sighs as Shoten sped off, “You already did…”

A moment later, Shoten reappeared, “All right! Let’s go to see the President!”

“How did you get us in so fast???”

“Do you know Abquhbah? Well he’s my older brother! I have the inside connection! I was supposed to meet with the President this week anyway, but I asked Abe if I could get moved up to today. He said she wasn’t in the greatest mood but she could see us now because some mercenary just failed a huge mission for her and she is waiting for a second group to form to make another attempt.”

“Wut it’s for?”

“No idea. But let’s go!”

Keitalu reaches to open the door when he hears the feminine-sounding shriek of a grown man. He turns his head to look at Shoten who is in a /panic. Keitalu’s indescribable face strikes with a lash of frustration, disappointment, grief, and disgust all with one glare.

Abquhbah storms through the door to find the two standing outside. Moments later Keitalu has finished explaining his summarized story to President Naja herself!

After hearing this story, the President Naja Salaheem said nothing. She quietly clasped the shaft of her morning star, turning with it held firmly in her claws. Her eyes narrowed and one could only imagine the ideas she she cycled through her crafty head. Many times she opened her mouth as if to speak, but instead she said nothing. Everyone in the room couldn’t help but feel apprehensive at her silence, but it all shattered to bits like a plate of fine china dropped from mouth of a dhalmel onto the dry, rocky plains of Bibiki Bay when she burst into a rage exclaiming how foolish Keitalu and all his fwenz are!

The president proceeded to explain, in depth, how everyone in her sight and their corresponding souls are her property! How dare anyone think otherwise!

“But nonetheless, your plight intrigues me,” President Naja said in a sly voice. “I have a quest for you! You will be required to form a party of decent size and variety. Get this together as soon as possible and speak to Abquhbah when you are ready to depart.”

“Where do we go?”

“I’ll ask the questions here, my bulbous-headed tiny man!”

Keitalu frowned. Shoten did too.

“Well that’s your orders. Wat r u standing around here for? Decoration? GTFO!!”

Keitalu and Shoten decided to split up to ask their respective fwenz for help with this mission from the president.

“Let’s meet back here in an hour,” Keitalu said. “Tell your fwenz that the president may offer us special shinies if we accomplish our goal. Make sure to only bring people who is not too n00b. I dun want to full wipe on something critical like this, get me?”

“Okay! I only have 1 friend but I’m sure he will come with us!”

“…Sure whatever. I’ll be back in hour!”

As Keitalu ran off, he stumbled into the legs of an elvaan. The elf picked him up and dusted off his tunic.

“I’m sorry about that, Keitalu. I’m back and ready to go!”

Keitalu looked closely at this elf who knows his name… “Afuce?”

“Yar. It r m3. lulz”

For some reason Afuce seemed different… Keitalu couldn’t shake the suspicion that this was not really Afuce! He questioned him…

“How was Reuben?”

“He was fine, thanks. He tore up the blankets on my bed and totally ripped my pillow into bits. My moogle was hiding in the corner when I got home and my brother was so upset that he had gone fishing. He taped a note to the door saying he’d be back tomorrow.”

Wow, Keitalu thought. This must be Afuce! But why he looks different? “Wat happen to ur other ears Fuce!”

“Oh, it was just a hat, as yours is, I’m sure.”

“Yeah…”

“Shall we head out and find the shinies now?”

“Oh, dude! You missed wat happen! We are going on a top secret mission from the president herself! She is going to give us more details but I’m pretty sure she knows something about the secret star!”

“Wow, how do you know?”

“Well I told her everything and she say she r interested… She also say she will use only us for this mission cos our special goal.”

“Fascinating. Let’s not delay then!”

“Yaya! Come with me I will ask more of my fwen to come help!”

“All right then,” Afuce said.

“Let’s go!”

As Keitalu vanished around the corner, a voice spoke to Afuce! “Does he suspect you?”

“He was leery at first, but I have him convinced.”

“This tarutaru is not easily fooled. Stick to the plan and don’t let him catch you off guard.”

“Yes, mastah. His shinies will be ours!”

Keitalu popped back around the corner.

“Hay u! C’mon I’m gonna teleport us!”

“Sorry about that my dear friend. I must have zoned out for a moment. Let us depart!”

[OMG HAX! Afuce is not Afuce!? But who he is??? How is it possible!!! Wat r going on lulz!

To be continued..!!!!]

Well I had ss but my stupid work computer decided to ignore my flash drive so I can’t post them. >,<  I have to say this update is a bit nuts though.  Talk about a crazy addition to content.  I didn’t get on until way late last night so I missed Salvage.  Apparently, several Alexandrites dropped.  A few sorted to Jack and he tossed them. XD  I think we’re going to have one person collect them from all of our runs for now and hang onto them until we know exactly what to do and how best to use them.  There’s talk of it being a prio’d item but it will obviously work differently than a normal drop.  Some people are saying we could split them and sell them and actually make money on Salvage lol.  Nothing set in stone right now though, so I guess we’ll figure it out as we go.

So anyway, last night when I got on Cloud and a few people were wanting to try out some of the brand new stuff.  We decided to try out the new NM system.  So okay first off, you have 2 npcs in Whitegate.  Ryo and Sanraku.  Talk to them both and they get you started.  Ryo tells you what kind of photos Sanraku is most interested at the moment.  Now gear yourself up with your Soultrapper 2000 grab some blank photos and hit the road!

…Wait.  You didn’t get one?  wtfPankration?  Yeah no kidding.  I didn’t get one either.  Hit up THE PIT and talk to the fat guy right inside the door to your left.  Oh and take Imperial Gold Coins with you.  Trade him some and hook yourself up with a set.  Cloud and I got the Soultrapper 2000 (lulz) and the high speed photos but honestly, I dun think it’s worth it.  Especially at 500 jettons a pop.  Screw that.

So!  You’ve got your target mob!  You know where it’s supposed to be!  You have your camera and equipment in hand!  Off you go across the world and through time to find something from the bird family.. like bats!  Wait what?  The npcs say really weird things, but they give you a target to find, go find it and paparazzi that shit!  Jingex, who I believe had the most experience with taking pictures of the mobs like this, suggested we only do higher level mobs and get them down to 5-10% before taking pictures.  We took his advice, but it wasn’t easy.  Also, Ryo will give you guidelines on what makes a good photograph.  Listen to her carefully because if you do it right, you will get more points per shot.  Anyway, we took a bunch of pictures of these mobs near death.  (Must have been very embarrassing for them!)  We went back and turned in our photos to Sanraku.  Ryo can appraise the shots if you trade her but Sanraku actually takes them, appraises them, and gives you points.  You need 1400 points to do a tier 1 NM, but most of us didn’t actually get enough.  I sure didn’t.  But Cloud did and so we headed off to fight Chigre!  We killed it with a party of 6 and though no one died, I wouldn’t describe it as an easy fight.  When it touches you, it can give you like.. Slow, Paralyze, and Poison.  Like all at once.  Sucks!  Also hate apparently resets after every 2 hits?  idk but I went on NIN and couldn’t hold it for more than a few seconds at a time.  We had a lot of dots on it, both from RDM (Sly), BRD (Jing), and SCH (Shaya).  It went down after a few minutes and dropped.. a Chigre!  Apparently you turn this in or something to qualify for Tier 2 NMs, but it could have dropped a Blood Ring!  Some of the T1 NM drops look ok but honestly nothing stellar.  I need to research what the other drops are and how to get them, but I REALLY like this system where you can get a small group of friends and rotate through NMs a few times a week and advance people’s NM tier and potentially get them items!  I look forward to doing this a lot more, even though the picture taking thing kinda sucks.  Leave my ISP alone.  I still need to buy my Perdu Blade. ; ;