Final Fantasy XI on dennogumi.org

PM6-4 redux

Wed, 21 May 2008 19:31:57 +0000

(Note: I should really start posting more often nowadays)

Last monday, for one of my group, I re-did one of the hardest missions of the whole Chains of Promathia expansion: PM6-4, better known as “One to be Feared”. I was looking forward to redoing it, mainly because I wanted to see if the adjustments that came after I finished the expansion (Sentinel modification, shield blocks modification, etc.) made the job easier.

Back, and movies

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:14:45 +0000

I haven’t posted anything in a month or so. Quite a long time, considering I used to write at least once per week. The reasons are mainly two: first of all, my work schedule has taken a turn for the worse, which means I have to do my job a lot harder than before; secondly, there wasn’t much interesting stuff to report.

Let’s resume from the hiatus by writing about my latest Final Fantasy XI session. Given that Square Enix didn’t release a lot of content for the recent Wings of the Goddess update, I did the few (four) quests in total in one day. Although the story was quite interesting, they were far too easy. I could have done them alone, probably. I wonder, what was the point of waiting four months for that? At least some form of challenge would be appreciated.

FFXI-URUSHI-Chaos: 01-02-03

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:24:39 +0000

For a change, my brother has found a place (DLsite.com) that sells dojinshi even to non-Japanese people, and also found three non-hentai Final Fantasy XI dojins, which I’m going to cover in this post. For reference, they are available with these prices:

Wings of the Goddess "opening"

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:39:23 +0000

Despite the utter lack of content in Wings of the Goddess my brother has managed to create a movie clip (inspired by the opening of Wild ARMs The Vth Vanguard). You can view it below (streaming) or obtain a higher quality version.

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8316261647217076877[/googlevideo]

(apologies for the lack of updates. I’ve been quite busy. I will probably post more in during the Christmas holidays)

Dancer... dancing

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 09:09:19 +0000

While I’m waiting for KDE 4.0 to compile, I just wanted to share a small clip of my brother’s character doing the Drain Samba animation. A bit of background: he has leveled Dancer up to level 7, and now he stopped because there is no artifact armor available yet (probably out in February) and because he’s also leveling another job, monk. Given how people rushed to get Dancer to 75 in less than a week (comments are left to the reader) it is a nice change.

Wings of the Goddess - first impressions

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:24:02 +0000

Finally my copy of Wings of the Goddess has arrived. It was just a matter of putting the DVD in the drive and let install the measly 350+ Mb of update (rather low for a DVD). As usual, Square Enix’s installation program is greedy with regards to information. Once it was installed, I enabled the expansion in PlayOnline and was good to go (save a 20,000+ file check).

Cavernous Maws

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:25:57 +0000

With the new version update, these strange portals have been appearing throughout Vana’diel. They’re supposedly the gateways to the past, but since I don’t have Wings of the Goddess yet I can’t really see what will they do. Nevertheless, I was curious and went to take a look at them.

They’re **huge. **I estimate at least twice the height of my character. For those curious, here are two photos (one is of my brother’s character, the other is mine):

Final Fantasy XI windowed mode

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:45:05 +0000

And so, with yesterday’s update, FFXI has gained a windowed mode. This has been a much-requested feature from the playerbase, especially from people who didn’t want to use the “unofficial” windower.

However, being the first major touch to the rendering engine, I think something got broken along the way. Mainly, I’m talking about a 20% performance drop of the engine (which didn’t shine before, but that’s another matter).

Wings of the Goddess - the details emerge

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 07:18:50 +0000

And so I’m reading that the FFXI Fan Festival has kicked off yesterday (I wish I could have been there). Naturally, reports have been flowing. The FFXI Encyclopedia has a good report of what has been said so far. 1up, the online branch of EGM, has also covered the event, but the article is only focusing on the new jobs (talk about explaining something no one else will ask… not to mention the attitude of that “journalist”).

New Wings of the Goddess trailer

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 07:49:45 +0000

As most people know already, Square Enix has put a new trailer of Wings of the Goddess on their web page, which has been updated as well. Unlike Treasures of Aht Urghan, it looks that story-driven content will be more present. Also, the trailer shows much more of the story than ToAU’s (and apparently, new weapon skills!): I hope it is an indication that Square Enix has learnt from the problems of the previous expansions.

Idiocy at its maximum

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:49:03 +0000

Yesterday I got word that the FFXI Encyclopedia, a wiki that I often go to read up on information and occasionally contribute, had been defaced. Apparently someone named “Taj” had hijacked the administrator account to change the main page to a short, anger-filled post that pointed to a discussion to the web site of Taj’s linkshell, the extremely famous “Urdr of the Blue Gartr”.

Treasures of Aht Urghan Mission 44

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:00:43 +0000

At last, I’ve made it! Last Wednesday my group took on the last mission of this expansion, “Nashmeira’s Plea”. I was expecting something as tough as Dawn from Chains of Promathia, but that wasn’t the case.

Treasures of Aht Urghan Mission 42

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:05:44 +0000

It’s been a while since the update hit the servers, but I couldn’t get my static party up and in shape until last Wednesday. We had already done the introductory cutscenes, and we prepared for the fight (a Blue Mage and several Imperial Gears). My party was made up by Eithin (White Mage), Sechs (Puppetmaster), Necronemesi (Ranger), Mitsuashi (Red Mage) and Daman (Black Mage).

New details on WoTG

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 08:56:43 +0000

The FFXI Encyclopedia has an interview with the Final Fantasy XI developers with regards to the upcoming expansion, Wings of the Goddess. Skimming through the lines, they give a lot of hints but no definitive answers. Sadly, there will be no barriers for missions, and no one asked about their length: Treasures of Aht Urghan had very short missions, often ridicolously easy, so I’d like a better challenge this time.

Among the other things mentioned, new jobs (I wonder if the usual people will start already complaining about “they suck for endgame! Boo hoo!”), a global adjustment of all the other classes (I’m hoping on an adjustment of Ninja as a subjob, probably the most abused subjob ever) and eve a hint on Tanaka’s new MMORPG, which is apparently still top secret.

ToAU Mission 35 - take 2

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 08:00:35 +0000

On Wednesday we tried Mission 35 again and this time was a success. Daman was not present, but we’ll do another run for him on Sunday.

Einherjar

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:56:36 +0000

Due to maintenance, we couldn’t do Dynamis on Tuesday. Instead, we settled for the new large-scale battlefield that has been added in the new update: Einherjar.

Aht Urghan Mission 35 - take 1

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:38:03 +0000

Yesterday, at an unusual late hour, I and my group attempted the 35th mission in the Treasures of Aht Urghan line. Preparation was the matter of watching a few (very interesting) cutscenes then we were off to a BC to fight a single enemy, a ninja (the name is a spoiler, so keep on reading only if you know what you are doing).

Lifeless people

Sat, 26 May 2007 16:27:49 +0000

When starting a run in Dynamis-Beaucedine, some person in charge of my brother’s Dynamis linkshell stated that over a whole Dynamis run (approximately four hours) you should not leave or be away. This statement is misguided at best, and personally I found it rather offensive for a series of reasons:

Not everyone is in the same timezone: if you have other commitments that force you to stay away for a longer period (such as meals with other people) you should not be blamed for it, after all real life takes serious precedence over gaming;

Final Fantasy XI - Wings of the Goddess

Sat, 12 May 2007 09:38:02 +0000

I did not expect it, but today Square Enix announced a new expansion for Final Fantasy XI, called Wings of the Goddess (but I like the Japanese title - something along the line of The Holy Warriors of Altana - more). There’s also a trailer available on the main PlayOnline page.

From what I can see it looks like a time-warp expansion, set back in time in the Crystal War, but the images are scarce. It’s been announced for Winter 2007, I’ll see how it will be. I hope it’s not like Treasures of Aht Urghan, which was a disappointment all along.

lolTribe

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:14:31 +0000

The behavior of some people in FFXI is certainly excessive to say the list, with many people (especially in the “endgame” linkshells) showing an extremely arrogant and impolite attitude. I had a really nice show of that yesterday, when I went out to get a few merit points with my static group.

Treasures of Aht Urghan Missions

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 21:27:23 +0000

On Wednesday 21st I was finally able to undertake the new Treasures of Aht Urghan missions! It felt nice, since I mostly play for merit points and Dynamis now (and occasionally some action in Al’Taieu, though rare and far between).

When you call a GM...

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:24:31 +0000

You usually don’t expect them to actually appear. Today, after a call made by my brother, was different…

Relic armor on mannequins is stupid

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:46:59 +0000

A lot of times when doing Dynamis it happens that people lot for a particular piece of relic armor then when asking about the stats I see responses like “It’s crap” or something similar. This brings the question: why do you want it in the first place? To put it on a mannequin to show off? There **is no use_ _**for relic armor unless worn. So, next time you make a lot, do the others a favor, save it for pieces you really want and let people who want to use the blasted things go first. At least they want to use it, and not just show off.

Relic 4/5

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 14:10:03 +0000

On the day after Christmas I went to do Dynamis-Beaucedine with United. I had to be the main assist for this run, and surprisingly everything went well. Not only that, the run had really **loads_ _**of drops (including a 100 currency piece), as the relevant thread says. Most importantly, I finally obtained the Valor Breeches. I had never seen them drop in Beaucedine Glacier, and luckily I was the only one lotting (I managed to lot of the ridicolously low amount of 172). All that’s left now is the super-rare Valor Surcoat, and having a Xarcabard run on 2nd of January I will put all my bets on that one. Of course, there is now the obligatory screenshot:

Update disappointment

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 08:35:21 +0000

I noticed recently that Square Enix has announced a new event in FFXI, namely Salvage. Apparently this looks like an Assault with other modifications (such as special conditions forced on the players) thrown in.

To me, this is a huge disappointment, as I expected more integration in the extremely fragmented ToAU landscape. Everything looks incomplete, and adding another incomplete part will not cut it. Not to mention that the only rewards are items… items that can only be used with the “regular” activities. Unlike the other expansions, everything seems loose and without a clear goal. I wish they’d stop adding half-baked features and focus on providing more for each update instead.

Obtained: Gallant surcoat+1.

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 21:23:34 +0000

The title of the post pretty much says it all. I’ve finally been able to obtain this piece of artifact armor+1 after searching for the last item I needed for about five months.

ToAU Mission 22

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:30:23 +0000

Last Tuesday I assembled a group and we took on the (only) battle present in the new Treasures of Aht Urhgan update. I had to look for members, but since Besieged was going on I lost a lot of time shouting for members. In the end I managed to get a red mage and a ninja along people I had arranged to meet with.

Valor Gauntlets!

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 16:18:21 +0000

At least, after six long months of wait, I obtained a new piece of the Paladin relic set.

Dynamis-Buburimu

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 22:05:19 +0000

UPDATED: Now a movie showing the run is hosted at Google Video.

On Tuesday there was my second attempt at doing Dynamis-Buburimu with United Dynamis. My first attempt, months ago, was a sore loss because of lack of people (and lack of experience, in my opinion). This time we had close to the 36 people needed for the area, and we were much better prepared.

The Black Coffin and merits

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 20:22:47 +0000

I forgot to mention it in the past entries, but my group finally managed to take on the (only) serious fight in the Treasures of Aht Urghan storyline so far. The mission is known as the “Black Coffin” and even if it involves six members it’s not a battlefield (or Burning Circle as they’re also called) but instead is an Assault.

Getting to the spot where the Assault takes place was kind of a tricky because we had a couple of deaths on the way: the area is Caedarva Mire on Dvucca Isle and there are a load of undead (Qutrub) and Imps in the way. I was the first to go down, followed by our ranger. Then we took a while to find the correct entrance to the Arrapago Reef. In the end, I had to leave out one person because there wasn’t enough time available to do a run twice (we were in 7).

Under Observation

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:42:12 +0000

Yesterday, my brother managed to do a BCNM40 with Mercredi and Rezo. It is a battlefield in Horlais Peak, in the San d’Oria region, where a group of three people maximum can enter. It is famous because it can drop a very rare item, the Peacock Charm (Accuracy +10, Ranged Accuracy +10 Dark resistance -10).

There are three enemies on the field, all of the mind gazer type. Two are rather small, and one is larger. The smaller ones use single target fire magic (Fire II) while the big one uses both single target and area of effect (AOE) fire magic (Firaga). All three spam a very annoying move, Hex Eye, that paralyzes everyone that is facing directly towards them.

New happenings on Asura

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:29:04 +0000

I’ve recently slowed down my rate of playing at Final Fantasy XI, mostly because the new update is scheduled for the end of the month, and I don’t have much to do nowadays. Besides, part of the people in my group are on holiday or taking breaks so I won’t get to do anything until the 28th of August or so, when I’ll be back from holidays.

Implosion

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 11:25:53 +0000

Over the course of three days, Heaven’s Inferno has imploded. This all started between disagreements in the leading council, mostly due to immobilism on one of the parts, Grummish. This person had a good and noble attitude towards helping and people behavior, but sadly “real game” scenario proved to be rather different. People that are 30+ act like children, even, which is rather saddening.

Anyway, in the end the same person made a long rant after Dynamis-Beaucedine (I wasn’t there, as it was during night time), that caused, like with my previous linkshell Inferno, a huge hemorrage of members. When one of the leaders acts like leaving, most of the members move like sheep. Flames also erupted in the forums. There was still a certain number of people inside, however one of the former sack holders went in and started mass kicking them out - probably to have them leave regardless if they wanted it or not.

The gods themselves

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 17:21:25 +0000

Things aren’t going in well in Heaven’s Inferno. Not only people have been leaving, but also I’ve been subject to an intense crossfire, more from the leading committee than anyone else. I correct myself, only parts of the leading committee, who seem hell bent in making things unfair for everyone (and flaming with ridicolous arguments).

All of this just to get some items, people bitch and moan all the time about those, which is really lame, and childish. All I can say is to quote Asimov:

dist-upgrade fun, DNS, drama

Sun, 28 May 2006 10:37:09 +0000

Yesterday I updated my laptop to Kubuntu Dapper RC. Overall the (long) process was quite smooth save a couple of problems (the use of NetworkManager for exaple, that caused me headaches to make wireless work) including the fact that the ATI drivers were looking in the wrong location (/usr/X11/lib/modules/dri instead of /usr/lib/dri) so 3D acceleration wasn’t working.

It seems smooth so far, though I think the idea of NetworkManager needs polishing, as some services that are started before it connects will fail (such as autofs).

Xolotl Xtrapolator

Sat, 20 May 2006 11:00:35 +0000

I’ve been spending a bit of my time last week to do several FFXI-related events. The most important are related to Assault, as me and my group (Eithin, Mercredi, Sechs and Billyism) managed to win all the level 1 Assaults, and therefore we got promoted to Private First Class (PFC), which sounds a little better than the lame Private Second Class. Here are also some random images from the new areas:

Treasures of Aht Urghan

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 13:30:50 +0000

Last Monday I got the new expansion pack for FFXI, namely Treasures of Aht Urghan. After installing (and going through the tedious update procedure), I’ve done some exploring. Some remarks:

The missions are either well hidden, or not particularly significant at this point: this in my opinion is a regression from Chains of Promathia, which had an extremely nice storyline;
The new areas are huge. Yesterday I’ve done some exploring in the Arrapago Reef area with Sechs, Eithin and Mercredi and we took more than two hours to get to our destination (including one death, and several fights inbetween);

Cursing

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 11:52:49 +0000

I really can’t believe some people on the Internet act all rough when all you ask them is to be more polite when certain people are around.

The issue at stake happened in FFXI, when someone went out with a “C****t” curse because of something. Now, Both my brother and me don’t like those kind of things. All my brother did was asking politely to avoid saying such things in public when he was around, and he got flamed by a certain person (who shall remain nameless).

Orz!

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 21:28:07 +0000

That (which represent a person kneeling in dejection) is my thought after last night’s Final Fantasy XI run. I assembled a group to take on PM8-5, the last mission so far, and I was pretty confident we could win without too many problems.

Well, I was wrong. The battle involves two enemies, who I had already seen in Zilart Missions 8 and 16. One likes to spam magic, the other has extremely annoying abilities. Getting the first one (the magic user) down is not too hard, although if his magic is not stunned the damage is pretty high. However, every time we managed to defeat this, people started dying very fast with the other. Some moves can actually one-shot people (me included).

Windows and Missions

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 22:13:28 +0000

Finally, we have windows in the office. Before that it was just a room with walls, and it looked a little claustrophobic. It took a good deal of time (4 months) to get these works done, but I think the result is worth it. At least the whole room looks a little more human, now.

I will be spending tomorrow’s work day analyzing data with an extremely bad piece of software, at least design-wise (the algorithm used inside it’s very solid, instead). It means that I’ll have to move around tons and tons of text files, take images and then compile spreadsheets (I wonder why all the reports in our laboratory are Excel-based… I’d much prefer tab delimited formats).

Mixed entry (yet again)

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 21:56:31 +0000

I haven’t been writing on this blog as much as I wanted, partly because of tiredness, partly because of my always-present tiredness.

Today I delivered the receipts from the Bertinoro school and also from Trieste: I hope I get a refund fairly quickly (although usually “fairly quickly” means around 3-4 months if I’m lucky). Also, these days I’m working on the DNAcopy package from Bioconductor (a series of add-on packages for R) to see if I can use the data from Affymetrix’s Chromosome Copy Number Analysis Tool to get a genome-wide view on copy number aberrations (CNAT only permits you to see one chromosome at a time). It’s quite heavy on computational resources, and for no reason quant (my work machine) reboots after a while, so I had to run it on another computer.

Valor Coronet! Relic armor 1/5

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 23:30:58 +0000

Earlier today I logged into FFXI to do my usual Tuesday Dynamis run with the United Dynamis linkshell. I was actually quite eager to do the run, since I missed two in a row because of lack of access to the specific areas. I was also hoping to see some relic armor drop at last. While many players want certain “endgame” items, I’m focused on the Paladin relic armor and weapons.

Rain

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 19:19:10 +0000

As today was almost completely uneventful (and kept on raining), I’m putting together an all-in-one entry. First of all I played more with the webcam on Linux. The exposure setting and some other gamma corrections can’t be really set in real-time yet, so it tends to get a little dark. Nevertheless I can get some decent results, here’s an example picture of my desk:

general/desktop.jpg

I also tried to update my old Mandriva 2006.0 installation on the desktop (shown in the image) but I couldn’t get urpmi to update the unofficial KDE repository. Sadly I think those packages are too broken for my tastes, I should have used direct backports from the development version. I guess I’ll reinstall the new version over the old one as soon as I get the chance. As the sidebar shows, I got Grandia III a few days ago. I’m playing it and I like it so far, I just hope it isn’t too short (Wild ARMs 4 was a real disappointment in that sense) and that the story doesn’t suck. I’m putting Magna Carta on hold because the plot (and the game system) is terribly slow. Later today I have a KS30 run in FFXI, hoping to get some good items. I also have to watch Fate/stay night #7, I’ll do that tomorrow night.

Opo-opos and Hyppogriphs

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 23:06:24 +0000

Yesterday I was feeling bad and had a mild fever, so I didn’t go to work. I took the chance of playing a bit in Final Fantasy XI. First, a bard in our linkshell needed some items for the opo-opo crown and so I and others tried to help him to get an item that drops off Sand Diggers in Quicksand Caves. We spent a good deal of time there, but we didn’t get any.

Knightly Earring

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 22:27:30 +0000

Finally I got my hands on something I’ve been wanting to get for a long time! Thanks to some of the folks in Heaven’s Inferno, I managed to assemble a party and get to Riverne - Site B#01, where the notorious monster Imdugud was. Assembling took a bit, but since no one is ever there (probably due to the level 50 cap?) it soon appeared after some hyppogriph kills. Things got a little rough during the fight (no referesher) but in the end we won. Vigieous, our thief, delivered the finishing blow: not sure if it’s myth or not, but I admit we were extremely lucky. Knightly Earring (my target) dropped, and also the Heavy Lance. Heavy Lance will go to one of our dragoons, I’ll inform the linkshell’s council soon.

Roc Star... yet again

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:58:18 +0000

I decided to get on FFXI this morning and I got “recruited” again for some Roc camping. Since I haven’t really helped with that thing recently, I decided to join the expedition. Luckily there was no competition, since people went either away or fell asleep (it was the heart of the night in the States, go figure). The nasty beast decided to appear only at the end of the window. It was a fast and rather plain fight, and no great rewards (crimson blade, vile elixir, reraiser) that even got lost because someone was too hasty in warping, bah. Next window will open tomorrow: not sure I will be there, though.