The Smithy

I started smithing many many years ago, but I never really finished.

This weekend I decided to do something about it!

Someone in my linkshell also told there's this thing called a Smithy's Torque, so I of course spent my weekend at the cauldron farming those chests :P

Now there's the whole crafting thing.
Earlier the problem with powercrafting for me was getting the gils.
This time around though, seeing as gil comes easy to everyone, my problem was buying materials.

The auction house just simply doesn't have enough mats. Not when everyone and their mother wants to level Smithing at the same time to produce those ever so wanted Voodoo pieces.

Alas I managed to get enough mats, I pretty much scraped the AH of any materials I could get my dirty little hands on and I'm finally done!!

Now it's my turn to get some Voodoo pieces :P

If the AH could just stock up on some adaman..

I member

Jailer of Fortitude

I always wanted to solo this guy, or atleast low-man him.
for a long time I pondered on how to kill his adds while kiting him, then I read something on BG that made the fight more doable.

As it turns out his pets are as lazy as all the other ghrahs out there.
All you have to do is kite him to another tower, and his friends would just give up and go home. When his pets were alive, he had a reflect effect on him. At first I thought this was a bad thing, but this could be worked to my advantage. JoF will usually never stop running, but when you cast something on him he will stop and cast it back, giving you a good head start after a nuke. Long story short... this guy is a joke.

I would battle this guy alot, and it was alot of fun too.
I would feel proud and a sense of accomplishment after defeating him and various other NMs on my RDM. Alone or with a good friend.

I don't get that feeling anymore.
Soloing a tough NM today in FFXI mostly means nuking something down on SCH while 5 trusts assists you.

Todays FFXI is easy and maybe that's a good thing? I remember playing two days a week for a year before I could get my Duelist's Chapeau. Standing at a HNM ground and waiting for hours so that the ls with the best claimbot could get the HNM. Watching others claim the NM you wanted that you camped for hours.

Then again.. I remember the thrill when a NM popped. Adrenalin rush and seconds start to feel like minutes. Then you get the claim and it feels so good to stick it to the other campers. One of my happiest moments in the game was camping KV for Ace's helm. I was out there in the desert all alone on my RDM against many other players. I got the claim and had to kite him while my ls rushed to my aid. Just one small slip and the NM could go to another ls.  After tons of /tells from salty players we got the NM down and I got my helm. You do not get this kind of thrill anymore. Everything is popped and planned, no surprises.

So they took care of the claimbot issue, and today anyone can get anything done if they want to.
It all came with a price though.

FFXI has lost it's charm.