Soboro Sukehiro
30 September 2006
Gomen nasai! Seems that after my (not so) uber 100th post that I've suddenly lost all energy to continue updating. After some much needed rest I've finally got enough motivation to write another post. There's quite a lot to report actually so this will be a fairly large review.
Lets start with some Final Fantasy XI news. A few weeks ago I organised a Soboro Sukehiro (great katana) run with the help of a few members from my Dynamis linkshell. Though only a handful of people signed up for it on the forums there was quite a large turnout when it came to the gathering time. I was suprised that so many people were willing to help. The run turned out to go very well, despite me dying before any fighting had been done! /laugh We got five Soboro Sukehiros in the end, one of them being mine. /joy
I've been having lots of fun with my new katana. It's so simple to pull off a solo Light skillchain now - provided of course the "2-3 attacks" effect kicks in once between each weapon skill. The damage on it is a little weak but that doesn't matter, it's still one fantastic sword. Plus I like how it looks. I'm very grateful to those people who helped me get the Soboro. I never thought I'd manage to get one in all my time playing FFXI but here I am with one in my possession.
I also managed to get all of my Paladin AF done in the last couple of weeks. The Garlaige Citadel coffer was such a pain. It took me several weeks of waiting until I happened to chance on a nice party who helped me get around the gates. Zansho also came to help me out too and in the end, after 4 hours of searching, I finally got my Gallant Coronet. I never want to go through that coffer search again.
As if that wasn't tough enough I decided to be crazy and solo my Surcoat quest. There were reports on the Allakhazam forums that you could fight only the PLD NM and still get the item you needed. So I subbed Ninja and went off to Davoi to give it a shot. When I spawned the 2 NMs I ran like crazy to the Monastic Cavern zone and went in. Came back out and saw the Ranger orc but the Paladin orc was nowhere to be found. To make matters worse some random Warrior decided to fight the Ranger as he was walking back. This delayed things a lot. Eventually the Warrior gave up and the Ranger reached the well to despawn. For some odd reason I couldn't spawn them after this. So I zoned out and back in to see if that did the trick. Thankfully it did and I once again ran to the zone with the 2 NMs chasing me. I stopped just short of the line though and made sure the Paladin was right next to me before zoning. I came back out and he was still stood outside so I engaged him. Unfortunately I ended up linking the 2 weaker orcs in the area so I had to kill them before starting on the NM.
Once those were dead I began killing the Paladin. I'd built up TP on those other orcs so I used Yukikaze, followed it with a Meikyo Shisui, Gekko, and Kasha to make Light. This took about half his life away. I used Meditate and while my TP was filling up he just so happened to drop my last shadow. Unfortunately I only had Ichi left so the casting was slow. Due to this just as I press the macro for Yukikaze my Meikyo Shisui effect wears off. There goes my Fragmentation... /cry If I'd got the last skillchain in time the fight would have ended a lot sooner but as it was it began to drag out.
By this point I was pretty low on health but luckily a random person came by and cured me a few times. This guy saved my life because without that help I would have surely died. The struggle continued for another 5 minutes by which time the NM and I were both low on health. He kept spamming Cure IV to stay alive while I did the same with Utsusemi. I decided to switch to my Soboro at this point so that I'd get TP fast to try and stun his Cure IVs. Eventually with me on 200HP left he succumbed to a double attack from the Soboro and fell to the ground. I was so in shock that it didn't sink in for a few seconds. I couldn't believe I had won after all that. I was actually shaking I was so hyped up. That was the toughest fight I have ever done. I felt so damn proud of myself after that. I traded my item and finished off the quest to get my Surcoat from Prince Trion. Man, what a rush that was. It's not something I'll forget anytime soon.
For the last week or so I've been watching 'Taiyou no Uta' which stars Sawajiri Erika once again as a girl who has a serious illness. The story is about Amane Kaoru who has a condition called 'XP' which makes her unable to be in direct sunlight. Because of this she spends most of her life at night. Her passion was her singing and song writing. She'd often go out to the local park to play her music. With her went her treasured guitar which she'd picked up in her past during a hospital stay. Through some lucky coincidences she meets up with the owner of the guitar and their relationship develops from there.
It's a lot lighter drama than '1 Littoru no Namida' was but it does have it's sad moments. Sawajiri Erika herself does a good job of playing this ill girl who is still so full of zest for life. She's changed her appearance a lot since but still looks as stunning as ever. Overall I'm liking this drama a lot and am looking forward to watching the remaining few episodes.
Wow, this entry has turned out to be longer than my 100th post by miles. /laugh Just shows how pants the last post was, huh? Oh well...
Posted byHocchan at 9:37 pm 0 comments
100 E Youkoso!
01 September 2006
Yatta! Welcome to the 100th post! Congratulations to me for reaching this centenary. It's only taken me 18 months to do it! /laugh So what goodies do I have in store for all you avid readers? Well, we will start with a nice 'Top 5' ranking list of quotes from my previous updates. I've looked through my old entries and picked out some gems for everyone to enjoy again. A few of them I'd forgotten writing but I had a good old chuckle re-reading them. OK, lets get on with the show!
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1.) "I'd better bloody get a job or I'm going to petrol bomb the sodding place."
2.) "Makes me want to go hunt them down and hit them with a shovel."
3.) "Just give me a job or I'll cry!"
4.) "Atchoo!! Urgh, sorry, I'm allergic to bullshit."
5.) "I sound like I'm a serial killer in a quiet American suburb or something...bwahahaha! Where's my knife?"
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As you can see, a couple of them are related to my current unemployed predicament. I did like number 4 a lot but since it wasn't really a quote from me I felt it couldn't be placed too high in the chart. Hmm... from looking at the chart you could say that I'm an insecure, jobless psychopath. /laugh
Here is a commemorative picture I made for the occasion. It's built up using 100 photos from my collection. The majority of it was from the trip to Ingleton Waterfalls a couple of days ago. I didn't quite have enough pictures to make 100 so I had to use a few from the previous trips to Grizedale and Beacon Fell.
OK now, it was originally meant to say "100" in the middle, with the photos as the numbers. Kind of like those big posters you see where a picture of say... Yoda, is made up of pictures from the Star Wars films. Except I couldn't quite pull it of. One - because it's not really big enough, and two - because I'm too lazy to rearrange all those pictures. /laugh So you'll just have to enjoy it for what it is.
Right, onto the main news. Last week I went for my job trial at Tesco. I arrived there and they immediately sat me down at the reception desk and a lady showed me what the basics were. She showed me how to answer the phones and what to do if someone wanted something. They also made me use the tannoy to speak to the whole store which was an interesting experience. One of them I was notifying customers of an offer at the opticians and another I was asking a member of the health and beauty department to contact reception. Such a strange experience to hear your voice being broadcast to the whole supermarket but it was fun. I was there for about and hour before the section manager took me off to discuss hours. Unfortunately the hours aren't quite suitable for me. 6am starts which would mean getting up at 5am to set off. They said they'd pass my application back to a different section to see if there were later start times available. I'm still waiting on their phone call but if they haven't called within the next few days I'll ring them myself.
Last Sunday my friend and I went for a trip to Ingleton Falls (where most of the photos came from). It was a nice sunny day which made the walk quite tough. The walk itself was very nice. Plenty of big waterfalls to see on the way, the main attraction being Thornton Force. This was a huge one that you could clamber behind. It's such a great feeling to be standing behind such a force of nature. It makes you want to leap out through the falling water and into the pool below. Unfortunately that probably would have resulted in death or severe breakage of bones so I resisted the temptation. The area around the falls was also very nice to look at. The Yorkshire Dales are well known for their Limestone pavements and the stuff was everywhere. We visited a lot of towns and villages on our day out. In Skipton we stopped for a Chinese meal from a take-away located in the town centre. I had the best vegetable singapore chow mein - much needed fuel after a hard day's walking. Mike had a chicken chow mein which he ate from the comfort of a plastic bag (not really, and don't ask /laugh). Very good day out.
I think that's about all I can manage. It's not quite as grand a post as I'd imagined but I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Here's to another 100 posts! Long live Kuroneko Doumei!
Posted byHocchan at 6:59 pm 2 comments
