Horrifying and Hilarious Weeping City

I MUST write about this because even Walter said after we won “I don’t know how we survived.” And yes it was weird!!!

Last night I went to Alliance Raid roulette with FC friends on Tonberry and we got Weeping City of Mhach. No, the Mhach didn’t weep. I did. And I bet my co-healer, a stranger SCH, also wept as much as I did. The start didn’t bode well. The tank seemed inexperience, and the whole party B seemed to struggle a lot.

First boss, the Arachne was….fine. We got by quite smoothly despite the fact that someone placed the web (safe spot) in the middle, and there were no less than 3 people who stayed on it and got squashed when the boss emerged from the sand vortex. I’m a bad person, so I snorted a laugh.

At Forgall, however, the errors were more fatal. See, Walter discussed with us and we agreed that we might wipe here. But the party B and the B tank never communicated with the alliance, and so we didn’t want to be rude and say “Let C tank for you.” Something weird about the Japanese Datacenter, I guess. I have hardly ever seen them communicating between parties in alliance raid. They usually keep talking to their own parties.

There was only once in my whole playtime on Tonberry that I saw someone from party B saying they’re new and need help tanking (and Mary assumed the position, reluctantly LOL). And that was after a very bad wipe, or two, I can’t really remember how bad we had it that time. So yeah, they’re drama-free. No angry messages between parties, but also no strategic planning.

Anyway, in Forgall last night, party B either 1) didn’t stun Beguiling Mist from the Summoned Succubus or 2) had been spamming Stun to the point of resist. So the Seduce fest was triggered. Haha!

Pic 1 : Before the epic death. I am not sure how and why the SCH, one of the bards, and I didn’t get charmed/seduced. Could be just lucky evade, or we were out of range (very less likely), or we were standing on the red holes and had bleeding that could prevent Seduce?

Pic 2 : I checked the battle chatlog and found that this was a cruel combo that was meant to wipe everyone.

  • Beguiling Mist (Succubus, B add) – raid-wide AoE that seduce everyone. Seduced people will walk to Succubus.
  • Rotten Breath (Dahak, A add) – close proximate (?) AoE poison breath. About 5000 – 10000 HP DMG, and Poison DoT.
  • Void Fire IV (Succubus) – ground AoE at Succubus’s position, where Seduced people walked to… About 3000 – 5000 HP DMG, and Burn DoT.
  • Voidblood (Haagenti, which was C add) – About 2000 HP DMG and perhaps also Poison?
  • Rotten Breath AGAIN (WTF, asshole!) Same deal.
  • And if you’re still alive, Haagenti uses Mortal Ray to try to get Doom on you, if you stare, you’re as good as dead.

3 of us didn’t even get Seduced, so we didn’t walk in, and didn’t get Void Fire IV, nor Voidblood, nor Rotten Breath, and survived. Walter got charmed, walked in, and walked out alive as well. Bravo to the SCH!

I used to wipe twice, back to back, on Ragnarok (Chaos Datacenter) because the party with Succubus didn’t stun it both times. It seemed like instant wipe to me, because everyone died in one hit. This is new. And my gear wasn’t that high. I was on AST 64. It was either the Bleeding (from standing on the red fiery hole) saved the few of us, or we just got a lucky evade.

Pic 3 : From there, with 8 survivors (2 in A, 2 in B, and 4 in C) we tried to recover. We raised and raised. People died, and died, because not enough heal power to keep the weakened alive…

We managed to win, eventually.

Hurray!!!!

The battle chatlog during the wipe has 13 pages, in case anyone is interested in reading for a case study, or just for fun.

And that’s it. Was tough, tiring, and funny. I won’t talk about Ozma because I am angry lol, especially in Atomos room. Last boss was a little mess, too, but we didn’t wipe. Meh. Although I’m not quite ranting, I will still put this in “My Rant” category because it was a catastrophic alliance raid. XD

Lord Hubby – Lavender Beds

Went out to the Lavender Beds with Raykit’s Lord Haurchefant for a session of photo shoot.

Yesterday, late night, Raykit told me she was going to play FE (something like that) and thus she would log into her Lord Haurchefant alt to let me take screenshots while she’s half AFK. So, here goes my spam. XD
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Lavender Beds has some wonderful spot for photo shooting.

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Even at night, with proper lighting from grouppose control, we can still take pictures with good exposure and colours. The photos below, however, were mostly adjusted outside of the game using PC program called PhotoScape and one of its presets of Film Effect.

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Night turned into morning, and I was still there spamming my screenshot button gleefully, LOL.

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I took about 200 screenshots in this session, and I’m posting 42 of them. Most of the pics were repeated shots of same thing, trying to achieve best lighting/position/direction/details.

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What’s a bummer was that while I was adjusting the camera angle and distance of the pic below, it became 8 o’clock and the weather changed, giving us Fog.

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//screams with frustration!

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At least the fog wasn’t too ugly and did not obstruct the photo that much (like, for example, Dust Storm is a hair-pulling kind of weather for any screenshot freak.)
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The new /gpose features are really, really great. SE did a wonderful job.

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The tree in the mist does look pretty, after all.

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Another extreme adjustment from Film Effect.

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The one below was natural lighting from in-game.

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Nice pose, nice angle, but that Botanist NPC…..

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I could even tilt the camera 90° and take portrait pics.

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Love it! Great job, SE.

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Teeheehee!

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Happy time.

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Then, we moved to other part of the Lavender Beds.

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This lotus pond is nice.

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Background…. foggy green sky. Cry.

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I adjusted color temperature in PhotoScape and turned it more blue.

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Self note: I have to go back there again and take this pic with bright blue sky.

It will be a nice wallpaper for my phone. XD
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After that, we moved to Dappled Stalls. It’s a nice small field of flowers, with chocobos in the background LOL!

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Sunset…

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And then night time came. I had to rely heavily on gpose lighting, otherwise the characters look too dark.

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The 2 pics below took 24 attempts, as it cannot be done smoothly in gpose. The hand position was achieved by having Lord-sama stand in a specific pose where he kind of runs his hand through front hair, or smooths it back, and I entered /gpose and quickly capture the photo in 1 second. Cannot adjust camera angle or lighting before taking pic, and if the timing failed, I had to exit /gpose and re-enter again. XD

What a fuss! But it’s totally worth it.

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Night sky.

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Embrace and salute.

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Really gotta love the stop/pause function in /gpose.

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Can pick the best frame of the emote to create desires positioning.

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:3 Same pause, different angle.

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Many different angles, actually.

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Cannot achieve this without stop/pause function. Bravo SE!

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Could even take a vertical pic.

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Huggle!

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Our old trick, using /bow to make Lord-sama lean closer into the hug.

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Last pic, it’s purely in-game lighting, without additional lighting from /gpose. Day time in the game really gives nice and vibrant colours. Really love it.

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Eternal Bonding Ceremony

So, today my character on Tonberry was in an Eternal Bonding Ceremony, wedding to a handsome Lord Haurchefant (Raykit’s character) and I’m posting a few pics here.


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The paths we walk, the oaths we swear,
The triumphs we share and the burdens we bear,
All will be cherished and kept in our hearts,
Stay faithful and loyal ‘till death do us part.

To love and to care, in sickness and in health,
Through thick and thin, through poverty and wealth.
To have and to hold, from this day forward,
For better, for worse, we shall go onward.

To serve, to protect, to aid in times of need,
I shall be by your side, through your every deed.
My love will not falter, my heart will not break,
Having you by my side, is the choice that I make.

With trust and honour, with love and with life,
We share all together, as husband and wife.

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I’ve also build a temporary room depicting a church for photo sessions in the FC house.

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The full album of photos from today contains over 100 screenshots, and I don’t want to spam them all here. So I uploaded the folder separately to DropBox. > HERE <

Mary Cocoa drew Aleczan and Haurchefant

I received a chibi pic of my character (nicknamed “Purple Cat” by the girls in Catketeers FC on Tonberry) from Mary Cocoa yesterday. It’s so funny and is extremely adorable. XD

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I feel it is an amazingly accurate fanart which depicts me when I meet Lord Haurchefant in the game. One of the reasons being that I’m such a HUGE fan of him and always spend an hour taking screenshots when he appears outside of a cutscene. During my second playthrough of Main Story, using my secondary character which I created on Tonberry, I took every opportunity I could and took a lot of pics with him.

Mary’s art is what I would also imagine Haurchefant to react when I’m all over him like that. XD LOL Mary is lovely and funny. Thank you so much for the pic. ♥

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