Stupid Host...

That's right, Tarunation is yet again having host issues. Hopefully the domain will be back up soon. Keep your old links, as the redirect service will eventually point it back to tarunation.com. -R. 12/9/06

Tarunation goes LIVE!

Yes, boys and girls, Tarunation! is finally live with my new blog. I will be ending my updates on Blogger and am switching over to the new host. Please check your links.

MAIN SITE: www.tarunation.com
BLOG: http://www.tarunation.com/blog/wordpress/

Thanks for a great Blogger run!

- Strawberrie Fields

IMPORTANT NOTICE!

I will be moving my blog from Blogger to my own domain over the next few days. Expect no updates for a while. On a side note, my new Blog software hijacked my layout, and all I have is this backup. It looks the same, yes, but a lot of my links got erased. So... If you would like your blog to be linked to mine, leave a Taru Hug (comment) on this post, and I will add you to my new blog! Just remember, you have to update at least once a month for me to be interested in your blog. T_T -- Strawberrie Fields

Inspiration

[Random Post] After reading The Diary of Pahya, I've gotten a little kick of inspiration to step up my involvement in my FFXI life a little more. While working the hours that I have been, and testing out random Betas (I played another one today called Face of Mankind), I haven't made time to sit down and complete at least tarunation.com. But I think I might have to make time now, delve some more into the origins of Strawberrie Fields, etc. I never have any motivation for it because it feels like no one really reads those kinds of things. Most Vana'diel residents don't have time to go offline and read up on my websites. To them they are probably just pointless Tarutaru brain farts that don't need to be pulling time away from the HNM worlds. And while it may be self-gratifying to do something like write a detailed bio, the feeling soon fades if you never get any comments on it. So, I leave you with that, and maybe after Vagus goes to bed, I'll put in some work on Tarunation.

RFO Beta: Update

[LV7 Spiritualist] Well, I played Rising Force Online (Beta) all this morning instead of getting some chores done, or at least leveling my WHM back to 75. But I had to test it out, since the server was down last night. So here's a little update, for those of you interested. Let's start with the look of it. Or namely, with the character creation.

That's me! I do look cute, don't I? But the problem is that... so does everyone else. They have 5 faces to choose from, which is nice. But they also only have 5 hair types... And once you choose one, you can't change its colour to anything else. Even WoW and FFXI have better character customization. And don't let me get into City of Heroes, which was just mind blowing. But I guess it's what to expect from a PVP engine. The less difference between character models, the less lag in massive PVP battles. Moving on to emotes. First of all, it took me forever to figure out how to USE emotes. People would say, "type /Sit" and I would, but nothing would happen. I figured out how to shortcut the emotes manually onto my bar below the screen to get it to work. And once I tried out some of them, I was just amazed at how retarded they looked. They are, from left to right: Wave, Bow, Laugh. Yes, that last one is laugh. It's like they took the worst kind of geisha movement they could find and exaggerated it 100-fold. Not only is the movement choppy, but it just looks comical. But I guess it's alright, since people are too busy killing each other to notice that someone is trying to wave to them. Next we have the combat. The system itself is not so bad, although being used to just selecting monsters with (Tab Key) in FFXI, having to click on each one and the press the auto-attack button is a lot to get used to. While the system is not so bad, the people are. A lot of quests involve killing a certain amount of monsters. And unlike in FFXI, everyone can attack the same mob. Whoever deals the most damage gets the items to loot. But whoever deals the killing strike gets to add the notch to their "monsters killed" list. So trying to accomplish these kinds of quest in caves FULL of beta testers is very frustrating. Only about half the monsters I pulled, engaged, and did damage to showed up on my notch list, because others would sit, wait, and then hit them with the killing hit. The dying in the game is not so bad. You click the key and it just transports you to the lact place you set your bind at. As far as I've noticed, you don't lose any items or take any exp loss. But then this is only level 7. However, in most dungeons there are monsters with HUGE level gaps in between them. Someone will aggro and train it through all the noobs, killing us all. And constantly having to run from headquarters to your old camp gets really annoying, especially when running always uses up Stamina. The Spiritualist class was fun, but I made another character named Bear to try out the Warrior class. I also used up my last slot (you only get 3 character slots per server) to make a Specialist named Yukikaze. Those eventually get to ride mechs. The overall feeling of this game is really bad. It's amusing at first, but you soon realize what a grind it is. It's frustrating to die constantly, or have your kills stolen when you're trying to accomplish a quest. The main objective seems to be PVP, so they maybe didn't puch much thought into anything that happens before then. And since I despise PVP, I will probably be dropping this game before it is even released. If you're a PVP fan, I encourage you to try it. If not, don't even bother.

Central Temenos - 4th Floor

【７５WHM白/３７BLM黒】 Last night we did Proto-Omega with LimbusRavagers LS. That was our first time attempting it, and I must say... it was a pain in the ass.

It started out very well, few people other than tanks died. But it dwindled down from there. Somewhere along the way hate was starting to be lost, and a lot of the nuking/curing mages (including myself) were drawn in! and died pretty instantly. Some of the melee even used up all the charges on their Reraise pins.

At about 20%, Proto-Omega started almost spamming Citadel Buster. This move should strike fear into the hearts of even the strongest Galka Monk. It will count down for 30, locking in on its target. The rest of the people run like hell up the stairs and out of the room because chances are, if you're still in the room when that counter reaches 0, Omega fires off the longest directional AOE you'll ever see, and you DIE.

The first Citadel buster Vagus ate like a good little boy after his insane Chi-Blast. Turned it into the opposite corner, shouted (peace) at us and promptly bit the dust.

After everyone was back in the room, I was running out of MP for cures and my whole party was starting to get pretty beat up. So I bit the bullet, ran into the fray, and Benedictioned. Next thing I know, Omega starts counting down again, and ON ME this time. That must have been my Karma for laughing at Fagus.

So I run to the north corner like I'm supposed to, and the others hightail it out of the room. And as I'm running north, all I see is Vagus, weakened, crouched in the corner. By that time, the timer has already reached 10, he won't get out in time. So I just kind of stop, point Omega at him, and wait. >.>

I MPK'ed my husband.

I think that alone was worth the whole run. To cut to the chase, I hit level 74 again, irreversably this time. We didn't kill Omega, the Citadel Buster spam was really screwing with us. As we got up a BLM to bomb it into oblivion (Omega was maybe 0.5% HP left, you couldn't even see it on the bar), it put up Magic Shield, and all nukes did 0. In short, we ran out of time. Had we maybe 2-3min more, we would have won and someone would be wearing a piece of Nashira. But alas... maybe next time.

Dynamis-Xarcabard Interloper

【７５WHM白/３７BLM黒】 I figure I will be doing much post-spamming today, as I'm still waiting for my RFO download, and Vagus is out for the day. Before I begin, here is an interesting read:

Paul Knox's LiveJournal: This shines a lot of light on the worst case of FFXI drama to hit Odin in a long time, possibly ever. Concerns Miriamel, Cyro, and this person who was her real life fiance. I'm not gonna voice my concerns or opinions, because it's not my place and I don't know either of them. But it's still an amazing read, not only because it's human emotion at its best, but also because it's written so damn well. It's not teenage angst full of "omg" and "wtf." It's grown people who have had their hearts broken. Give it a read. Original Killing Ifrit Post: A word of warning. Quick Guide: Paul = Imnotusnit = Miriamel/Mandy's Real Life Fiance. Planned wedding, his parents gave her wedding gifts Brian = bmorton18 = also known as Cyro, the guy Miriamel married ingame Chris = Karbine = third guy she started playing with, and the reason Paul broke off the engagement with her.

Now moving on to more important things, like my Dynamis-Xarcabard run. We went Sunday, and I was hoping for NIN AF2 hands more than anything. And of course they didn't drop. So off to Dynamis Lord we went. The actual fight took... Over an hour I think. It's supposed to last about 60sec, but somewhere, somehow, something went horribly wrong. Once Dynamis Lord was down to 20%, people started dying. Including myself. Many many times. After the first few deaths I couldn't afford to cast Reraise 3, or even 2, and had to deal with Reraise 1. (And I have this sneaky suspicion that quite a few of the WHMs DID wait for MP for reraise 3...) After many Reraises and running in on a suicide run to reclaim DL with Dia, or to Raise a WHM who lost Reraise, I came to the horrible realization that I was now in fact a LV74 White Mage. I lost 20,000 exp on that run. I have never lost so much exp on anything in my life. I was pretty raving mad. But we did beat Dynamis Lord, and I got the Hydra Corpse piece and the title. But in my anger, I forgot to check the Trail Markings for my final cutscene, and just warped my pissy ass to Jeuno. So, I'll have to do that some other time. Title: Dynamis-Xarcabard Interloper

RFO Beta Live!

[Life Outside FFXI] The game I have been waiting for for months is finally live! Well, the Beta testing, that is, and I've got my beta codes right here! Rising Force Online is supposed to be a pretty popular game in Korea and Japan, and now they finally brought it over here. And after much waiting, Phase 2 of Beta is finally live and I get to play! That is.. after I download the 1.2GB client through file planet. I gotta wait 45min just to GET to the download, because I'm too cheap to pay the $6 that is to subscribe to the service. Anyway, here are some links and pictures if you're interested! RFO Official Website: RISING FORCE ONLINE I will probably be playing the Bellato race as my first character. Most likely Chandra job set. Look for Strawberrie on the Beta server!