so the recent funfunfun update that took hours upon hours to complete gave us some new NM's in the WotG areas (the past). those NM's dropped new stuff, which people were reporting on forums dedicated to that sort of madness. and i, with everyone else who plays the game, watched with baited breath.

and lots of new NM's were found. since i'm currently leveling SAM, two of them took note to me. Skogs Fru who drops the Ecphoria Ring (Accuracy+4 StoreTP+1) and La Velue who drops the Amakura (Latent Effect: StoreTP+10).

immediately after the update, people who were really dedicated figured out spawn areas / requirements that were very vague, but i figured it'd be fun to camp an NM or two. i figured wrong. first off, for the tiger (La Velue), as it was a long spawn, supposedly 24 hours. when i logged on that day, it was about 22 hours since the maintenance window, so i figured that i had a good chance. once i got out there, i realized that there were many things working against me.

1. the spawn area encompassed two map areas, which took a long time to cover
2. there were about 20 spawns of the same type of tiger in the area, and any one of them could be the PlaceHolder. (PH for short)
3. if i wanted to kill it myself, i'd need /nin, but having /rng would help me widescan the area.
4. the area is incredibly hilly, with not may good sight lines, and the hills are soooo steep, that you can run down, but there's only a few ways to run up.

so i did what any dedicated crazy person would do. i brought out my mule on another account, and took the time to do the quest needed to get that mule /rng as a subjob before coming out. lol.

and proceeded to get claim on the NM after waiting about 3 hours. no drop, whatever, but now i knew the spawn time.

but, now i knew the TimeOfDeath, so i knew when to come back the next day. so, assuming that it was a 24+ hour spawn, i came out about 23 hours from death the next day to camp it again, proceeding to wait almost 9 hours for nothing, no spawn. i was a bit confused, and a bit pissed.

to make it worse, someone figured out what activated the latent while i was camping it, and updated the wiki. so, while camping a NM that never showed up, and wasting 9 hours of my time, i find out that the latent effect, while cool. would only activate when your HP is below 50%. what kind of shit is that? that's a lame latent, to me at least.

...

a few days later (yesterday from this post) i decided to camp the other NM. it's listed as "Lottery pop after 1 hour from the 3 Ladybugs around the path at (H-10)". so, i went to (H-10) of East Ronfaure [S] and proceeded to camp the northern half of (H-10) killing ladybugs like it was fun to do.

nothing. no pop. nothing but about 6 stacks of ladybug wings in my inventory, and 3 hours wasted.

only to search the web for screenshots of it getting killed and to find out that it's the southern half of (H-10) that you camp, not the northern half.

/cry; /anger;

yup, you guessed it, and if you're reading this, you probably went through the same damn thing today, trying to download the first big update of the year. and lots of shit in it. yay. i could go on for a while about all the shit, (and i use shit in a metaphorically good way, in case you were wondering) but, the highlights from my perspective (which is flawed, i admit.) is the following:

• Fellowship NPC updates (including allowing the fellow to benefit from -ga spells, and a faster regen rate when /healing)
• Campaign updates (fun shit to play with, and npc's with emnity)
• new SAM & THF skills, and NIN sneak (because i sub nin frequently)

that's it as far as i'm concerned. defninitly not worth the 4 hours so far of clicking «Retry» because the network is "busy".

speaking of... why can't they be honest? the network's busy, yeah... but it's not because of me. they try to give the user the bullshit of "... verify that cables, network devices, and network settings are properly configured". i'm at work as i write this, and we have a fcuking DS3 into the building, with two t1's backing it up, for all the work related traffic. it's not me. it's SE.

i'd like to see an honest message... like: "There are currently 1546 people downloading the update, and you're next in line. it'll be about 30 min until there's a port free." or "The download server is currently busy, please try back later" even. that'd at least be honest.

OR... the best yet... instead of having the client trying to download from one place (or multiple, i don't know how their backend works)... store the file information on POL's servers (as a fcuking text file, people) and then, once it scans your system... i does something smart. LIKE A DISTRIBUTED FILE SYSTEM RELEASE. let's learn from the rest of the internet people. take 10% of traffic from everyone who's already got it downloaded, and get the dats from everyone else so you're not waiting on one server.

or(2) if they're not smart enough to do that, create a small package that ties into POL, that you can download over bittorrent. then, when it gets to the update step, it takes the files from your local computer deciding which ones it needs as it goes. then you're done. no mess. even let someone else's system take the hit.

SOMETHING. {/cry}

/em continues to click the «Retry» button every few minutes.

[edit:1] finally finished home install @1:18a PST. ugh.
[edit:2] had to reboot my work pc just to get it to connect, i must have been locked into a bad server. once i got in, it was like 20 min to get the whole update.

i didn't think it would happen so fast, especially without any parties since 64. Campaign Battle is my friend. the nice thing about THF is that after 74 i could pretty much tank mobs on my own, it made things fun, and i pretty much got the max XP i could every battle, while staying alive most of the time. only downside of spending all my time in campaign is that now, i need to do about 30 levels of dagger skill catch up.

on another note, i got DirectParse running in the background while i play. stats are funfunfun.

now, to get SAM to 75... it's neverending being so indecisive.

it's been almost a year since i last posted to this journal; my indecisive-ness has made it quite interesting.

as in previous posts, it seems that it's time to catch up. bard is 75. i had a fun time getting there, and merit parties always love a BRD, but i rushed it, getting from 70 to 75 in just over a week. once i hit 75, and got a bit of a buffer, i had to take a break. every party i was in, i was the puller, as is the norm these days, and pulling, singing, keeping ballad on the mages, and keeping chains going to 10+ is fcuking tiring. in all honesty, i haven't gone back yet, with all the gear sitting on a mule.

after bard, i kinda took a break from partying, working on a ton of subjobs, getting stuff i might someday use up to acceptable subjob levels. over a few months, i got WAR, SAM, THF, NIN, & DRK to 37. worked on BLU and BST, getting both to 25.

then, decision time came. what to do now? i merited a bit on RDM, usually with my new linkshell (which has changed again since) and still didn't pick BRD back up. being broke, and wanting something to do that didn't always involve partying, i decided to level THF. that was three months ago... now i'm THF73.

somewhere along the way, one of my good friends who was on hiatus re-joined the game, and got Bard to 75, meaning that the ls now has three bards, other than me... and then he decided to level SAM, and suggested i take it farther than i had. in a matter of a week, playing w/ him, i got SAM from 37 to 50. and... i got my first piece of JSE, for sam; Shinimusha Hara-Ate. it was a pain in the ass to get, and i'll probably never get another, but i'm glad i did it. i'm now SAM54, and i'm going to take it all the way, as soon as i finish THF.

with the release of Wings of the Goddess and the addition of Campaign Battles, i haven't partied in forever, as THF isn't that high on people's lists of invites. campaign allows me to get pretty decent exp (3-6k/hr) without a party. i've pretty much leveled THF from 60-73 about 70% of the time in campaign which is quite a feat, if i do say so myself.

next update in a year! lol