For starters, I picked this up:
This was something I had been working off and on to get since June. I basically turned in guild items whenever I'd remember. After a batch of reraise hairpins that saw me bust an entire stack over the course of 96 hairpins early last month, I completely refocused on getting this done. The only guild point item I have left to get from Bonecrafting is Bone Ensorcellment. There are other higher priorities at the moment though given that this is only used for a select few items that look like they have no demand whatsoever.
They didn't put a whole lot of detail into the sign. Here's a wooden signboard with the bonecraft logo stamped onto it. I'm guessing most people don't spend 200k guild points on something of this nature for it's looks though. I had mentioned in a previous post that the general consensus of players out there believe the signboards simply reduce material loss. There are some that believe it adds +1 to your skill. I've yet to see any statistical proof regarding this issue either way though. Mostly it's players saying "I did 10 synths of this and didn't break HQ tier." Ten synths aren't enough of a testing pool unfortunately. Fortunately, Bonecrafting affords me a cheap synth right at 96 that I can spam the piss out of to find out for sure what this sign does and over the course of the next month or so, I plan on doing just that.Y'see, the trumpet ring synth gives me the ability to NPC my results for break even as long as I buy the stacks of shells at 21k or less. With the current items that do give skill and adv. synthesis support, that puts me at 106 bonecrafting skill. As most people know, tier 1 HQ is 11 levels above the skillcap, so if this signboard truly does give +1 skill, I should HQ around 10% of attempts with this furnishing active.
The plan at the moment is for me to do 100 synths without the signboard and then 100 synths with the signboard then post the results. I realize luck can be a factor, but it shouldn't skew the results too badly either way. Another part of this plan is for me to do it when the moon is around 50%. This leads me to another series of tests I'd like to do at some point in regards to what days are best to synth on for HQs as well. Artisan's Advantage needs to go away too for these tests.
At any rate, the signboard is done and that's one huge monkey off my back. For those of you that don't have one of these, here's a couple pictures showing the sheer size of this thing too.
Einherjar
Sloppy Odin run this past Saturday, but after 13 months of perfect attendance, I finally picked this up:
Lots of people know I've been after this for a while and it was really the last major piece I needed to finish completely pimping out my dragoon. This makes me 5/5 on the Neptunal set. I attempted to HQ some cursed caps over the weekend only to bust an angel skin and NQ 3 caps. So 0-4 on the HQ Cursed Cap quest thusfar. At least the caps sell far more frequently than the cursed subligar. I'm still sitting on 3 of those damn things.
The one thing I've noticed about Odin is...
The more people we have, the sloppier it is to beat. A win is a win and whatnot, but it'd be nice to have a full house where hate doesn't end up all over the place sometime. :)
Dynamis
I've bemoaned on here before about the lack of people in dynamis lately. Yesterday wasn't bad. We had 45 or so people show up for a DL beatdown that ultimately saw long time member, Xanatos, pick up a Shadow Ring. During the near 5 years that we've been doing dynamis, we've killed the Dynamis Lord 34 times (I think...) and that ring was only the 4th one we've ever seen. Oddly enough, the last two rings we've picked up have come as the only shadow item that dropped.
The other good news about Obsidian is that I managed to rebuild the sackholders over the weekend. As a group the past few months, we've pretty much been the walking wounded. It looked like this:
Kaylea - Currently standing at 413 runs. Wrap your head around that number for a minute and consider that she's missed maybe...4 months worth of runs spread out over the near five years we've been doing dynamis. Burn out anyone?
Geddoe - Currently standing at 353 runs. Being in the UK doesn't help the burn out factor much when you consider our Wednesday runs start around midnight for him. Also dealing with some real life issues.
Kimille - Just had a baby a month and a half ago. Had a complication during child birth that she's currently recovering from while also learning about her son. Out indefinitely.
Gawayne - 80 hour work weeks, EU time zone and a number of family-related events causes his time to be sparse in regards to dynamis. The past couple of years, he's been mostly resigned to taking care of the website, which he does a fantastic job of, but due to the previously mentioned things, it makes it hard for him to do the administrative stuff for the runs.
Kreoss - Work schedule is kind of goofy, so it's never a certainty when he'll be around to do some of the admin stuff.
Yoteo - Lots of real life projects going on at the moment. His announcement to me the other day about having to go on hiatus for a while was pretty much the final straw that pushed me into action regarding the sackholders.
This was going to leave me as the only sackholder that was going to be around with any degree of reliability. It's not that I mind doing it, I just know what my limitations are. I've learned over the years that if I try to do everything by myself, I burn out a lot faster and become rather irritable. This is also complicated by the fact that I never really know when I'll have mountains of work I need to do and unable to block off a 3-4 hour window of time for events.
We've known for a while that we needed sackholders. We made a post on the forums asking to see if anyone wanted to step up and a couple people mentioned that they did. I knew that most qualified people likely wouldn't respond to that thread at all as well, so if we were going to fill out the sacks again, I knew I was going to have to go knocking on doors.
And so knocking I went...
After Odin on Saturday, I knocked on the doors of the following:
Tikki - A month or so ago when the sacks weren't all around to handle a Tavnazia day, Tikki stepped up to take charge. He was also one of the people that had posted in our sackholder thread a couple months ago too. We all felt he was very qualified to do the job, but the one drawback was one of his own admission. He was currently looking for work and until he found a job, he was going to be unsure of how much time he could commit and when he could commit it. Same thing still applied when I talked to him yesterday. He's willing to do the job, just a matter of getting his real life sorted a bit, so he's someone I'll check back on in a couple weeks.
Drakus - Drakus was the other one that replied in the thread we created. When we see someone say they want to be a sack, the current sacks discuss them. The general consensus on Drakus was that he lacked experience. From where I was standing at the time, we all lacked experience to some degree and if any of you have read posts of mine in the past about leadership, experience helps, but initiative is what gets noticed and what accomplishes things. After he had replied in that thread, I kept my eye on him. What I noticed was a guy willing to do the little shit during a run and not complain about it at all. That's something that goes a long way with me. At this point, it was a no-brainer for me to go and ask him and he accepted.
Rudithina - I was actually surprised when Kimille told me to go ask Rudi. I had never pegged Rudi as someone who was willing to step up. I knew she had opinions and I knew she had a lot of skill and flexibility, but I had never seen her as someone willing to stand up in front of the masses and direct traffic. So on Kimi's recommendation, I knocked on the 2'5" door belonging to Rudithina and she accepted. After a long conversation with her, I found I was wrong about that whole willingness thing.
Ceri - Ceri is one of the original members of Obsidian. From a sheer experience standpoint, it doesn't get much higher than her. She's certainly opinionated (remember...opinionated is good as long as the main goal is the betterment of the group) and, like Rudi, having a ton of jobs leveled makes her extremely flexible. Unfortunately, she's similar to Tikki in the sense that she's unsure what her schedule will be like until classes start, so she couldn't commit to it. I've seen her speak up several times during the course of the runs (not on the forums so much) when someone does or says something stupid and that was the primary reason I went to ask her. She had some concerns about actually directing traffic and about her legendary ability to get lost in her mog house even with a map, but I felt like if she's willing to give it a shot, things like that can be fixed. She's a "to be continued..." like Tikki.
Rifuburade - Rifu and Milie are married. This makes it only natural that I should ask both of them. They were both certainly qualified, but I held off asking Milie for the simple reason she's due to give birth in a month or two. Combined with classes, it was safe for me to assume she wasn't going to be able to commit that much time in the very near future. Rifu has shown a lot of initiative as of late about making himself a lot better (which was a bit of a difference compared to my experiences with him in linkshells outside of Obsidian) and has been more than active. Out of all the sackholders that I promoted, I know Rifu is probably going to be the one I have to work with the most (unless Ceri accepts and starts eating up my time having me find her somewhere she got lost in Whitegate...) since he's probably the least experienced of the bunch in regards to dynamis, but from an Einherjar standpoint, he should be able to just take right over if I'm not around for a run. He accepted the position and if it comes to a point where Milie feels like she can commit time too, then she's a no-brainer as well.
Mav - Last, and certainly not least, is this guy. We had asked him before and he had declined due to his commitments outside of the linkshell I believe (I don't remember exactly). I had actually forgotten that we had asked him before when I went to ask him. The guy's credential list is a mile long. He's got a ton of experience leading organized events outside of Obsidian, a ton of skill and a long tenure within Obsidian itself in both Dynamis and Einherjar. Aside from pulling, there probably won't be much in the way of training we have to do with him. He accepted as well.
So for those of you keeping score at home, this is the tally sheet from my work on Saturday:
New Sackholders: Drakus, Mav, Rifuburade, and Rudithina
Not sure yet: Ceri and Tikki
This doesn't mean the guys that are currently sacks are being demoted just yet and this is also an open invitation for any former sackholders still with the shell to step back up if their real lives allow it, but bottom line was we needed some help and I've apparently scored it in a big way. This tickles me to no end. :)
Salvage
I managed to make all 3 salvage runs this weekend for the first time in a while. Nothing real noteworthy happened during the runs aside from a Zhaylom Remnants rapefest that occurred and a Bhaflau Remants boss we destroyed in under 6 minutes. Salvage is as Salvage does.
Misc
- Picked up an Ass.Jerkin for Lectrikelion this weekend. Ose isn't anywhere near as difficult as I remember him being. Could be I got my Ass.Jerkin when I was a piddly little 68ish LOLDRG, but a Savage Blade - Drakesbane light chain knocked off about 2/3 of Ose's life. Sad thing is, Lect had been trying to get it for a few days and I went out there for about 15 minutes with Girlfriend, killed a few goblins and Torama, then Ose and (to paraphrase Jess) !~BAM~!, Lect now looks like the great pumpkin.
- Got Fishing to 80. Skillups are so damn streaky with this thing that it's infuriating at times. After avoiding fishing for a few days due to other commitments, I came back early Sunday morning to pick up 1.5 levels of fishing in about a 30-40 minute period of time. Compare this to days on end barely getting any skillups at all and you can see why this is so infuriating at times. Twenty more levels, then the great Ebisu quest begins.
- I got the first guide written for my 60-100 series in the form of Bonecraft. I'm in the process of talking to various crafters I know who have crafts around 100 that I can tap for commentary on this series to give it another unique perspective. The general run down of people I have in mind are:
Cooking - Kaelis
Leathercraft - Ninjafox
Woodworking - Celestria
Goldsmithing - Gawayne
Alchemy - Still Open to suggestions
Smithing - Likely Blaize unless I find someone else with it at 100. These aren't easy to come by.
Clothcraft - Still open to suggestions
I'm hoping to get these done within the next couple weeks. With what amounts to 8 more weeks of guides on top of what I've already written, it's pretty safe to say I won't have to worry about Critical Break columns until 2010 once this is finished. :D
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