I'm Baaaaaaaaaaaaack

The ranka is back in action for another winter break of no-life FFXI. See ya in game folks.

Playtime = X

Lately, the reality of real life has been kicking in and I have found myself with little to no playtime. Christmas break is about 3 weeks away, but nearly 30 pages of exams and term papers stand between me and a winter's worth of FFXI and money-makin'. Its frustrating not being able to be online all the time like I used to be, but winter will be a different story.

CK had been running apollyon again and downed omega for some decent drops. Congrats to Eulore (Homam pants) and Zylia (Homam booties). No recent claims to talk about on the HNM front (lots of controversy in kings camps lately), but we're still at it and hopefully we get one soon.

Other than that its just our same routine until winter break hits. Our college students are cramming and trying to finish the semester strong, so we should be trying some new exciting stuff once we're all free from RL's grasp for awhile. Ranka out-

Rollin' Right Along

New Try Outs:
Eiteen
Deathsreturn

Try Outs Passed:
Tomasello
Uliwela


The Action-


Thursday, CK fought kirin melee burn style. This was our second attempt with this strategy and it all came together for us in a big way. Once his minis were down, Kirin himself died in 5 minutes of damage from our melee team. Not too shabby for a group with no Ridill warriors. Drops were shining cloth and ingots, which will be put towards gil split this month.








Our limbus division hit up Omega this week as well and struck gold on drops. Congrats to Moriarti (Homam Body), Daodao (Homam Feet), and Eulore (Homam Feet). One more trip through Apollyon and we're back to Temenos for a rematch with Ultima.






Fafnir had himself quite a week, proving to be a royal pain for several claiming shells, even flailing once before the Element group managed to take him out. Despite his nastiness, CK claimed him once again and managed to bring him down cleanly in ~40 minutes. Someone counted around 14 wings, 3 of which happened in a row at one point, but that didn't stop us. This was claim #3 since CK underwent some serious changes a few months back and we have yet to lose to Fafnir or Nidhogg...knock on wood.






Drops were Aegishhelmetofenmityness (Eulore), Andvaraglovesofgilness (Zylia), E.Hands (Nomar) and a dragon talon for gil split. No CK Ridills yet...










Winter break is just around the corner now too. Once our college crew is home for break, we'll be attempting some bigger, more challenging fights. If you feel like you have what it takes to succeed with an end game group, in an atmosphere unlike any other, apply today @ www.celestialknights.info. Ranka out.

More CK Action

New Try Outs:

Tomasello

Uliwela

New Full CK:
GodofDeath

Truegrave

Mobs Dead to CK since last update:

Fafnir - Ssouljah (E.Hands), Dragon Talon (Gil Split)

Behemoth - Behemoth Hide x2 (Gil Split)

HQ2 Ix'Monk - Aeron (Merciful Cape)

Jailer of Faith - Wyle (Claws)

Jailer of Hope - Nothing><

Jailer of Hope - Naotakun (Staff) Fifth Virtue

Bahamut V.1

Picture of the Jailer of Hope spawn. These were our first two tier 2 jailer spawns and they proved to be far easier than expected.

We also paid a visit to our old buddy Jormungand. She wasn't thrilled to see 31 CK forming up to beat her down. The fight went extremely well, though slow, we managed to take her with relatively few issues for most of the fight. Our tank communication has improved so much as of late and mage work was seamless all the way through. Adds control was probably the best its ever been for us, and all around everyone played a great game. Unfortunately at around the 11% mark, one of our members mistakingly called for help on Jorm. It was a sad way to end the night, but we have no doubts we had the fight won had we been able to continue. We'll be back to make it official in the near future.

Here's a couple shots of the action, enjoy:

That's all for now. Ranka out-

Busy Busy

Well once again I forgot to update this thing (thanks Jedi for the reminder :P) so here we go-

Recent CK Events:

We've been farming in sea and pushing a few more members through the last few battles for sea access in preparation for tier 2 jailers and beyond. We've got a solid sea team ready and its only a matter of time before we're spawning the next level of monsters there.

Our limbus division stepped into the arena with Ultima for the first time and despite having the wrong job spread (as we found out not long after engaging) we did quite well. Adjustments have been made and next time we will have a better go at this guy.

CK also had a couple of HNM claims this week (Behemoth, LoO). We seem to be getting the hang of competing for claims in rare spawn situations. We're still learning, but as we gain experience, we're improving our ability to win some of these claims.

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Oh and by the way, we don't cheat. We'd appreciate it if those who continue to suggest that we do (only a few bad apples amongst a group we have great respect for) to accept the fact that you don't win every claim. Our guys have worked hard, legitimately, at improving our HNM game and to insist otherwise only reflects poorly upon your own team. A shell that is graceful in defeat is even more honorable in its triumph.

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We attempted our first ever Kirin with melee burn style tactics on Thursday (goal being to hold him with constant dps long enough to burn him out before he can even summon). We did alright but had to revert back to traditional kiting methods when he managed to summon his minis. CK finished him off though and finally got our second ever pair of crimson legs (in who knows how many kills between drops) Congrats to Nogard on his new speedyness.

PinCKs Dynamis has been struggling with attendance, especially in my absense from the dynamis scene as a result of increased workloads irl. The decision has been made to put it on hold until playtimes allow for us to jump back in and run it again. Members will likely disperse to other shells in the meantime, so the future of our dynamis operation is uncertain. It was, however, a great run and I'd like to thank all those who remained loyal to our group and participated in our success over the last 2 years.

We have some big plans for the next two weeks, so expect some major updates in the days to come.

A Tribute to Old Friends

Well with the deletion of the old CK website and birth of a new one, I figured I'd post the few pics I managed to save from my origional crew in CK1 before we wipe the slate clean for the new generation. Enjoy.

Sosuke playing with monkeys.

Amiboshi's DRG had Twins.

Lagantis' famous Notorious Monster.

Talindra was always one of our more friendly members :P

CK Officers, back in the day.

Some of the first NM hunting ever by NA's on Quetz. Almaut gets his Dainslaff.

Cobi, my best bud on Quetz until he quit and migrated to Fenrir server while I was temporarily out of action.

Well, as expected, I completely forgot about this thing until now. Time for a brief update-

CK is in the process of recruiting select jobs to round out our roster for the next big content push. We've been fortunate enough to have some quality players apply recently and we'd like thank all those who have put in applications.

Kill wise its been pretty quiet the last couple weeks. We passed our Kirin week to Rawr due to somehow mixing up our alternating schedule, so we popped a buncha sky minis instead. They yielded some more of that basic sky gear we're using to equip mostly secondary end game jobs at this point.

Dynamis has been steady thanks to Typhus holding down the fort while I'm focussing on my college work.

Rsouljah's limbus group will be spawning Ultima this coming week as well, so that should be fun.

We also tried our hand at Hydra for the first time (Unfortunately I'm not computer savvy enough to figure out how to format my screenies for this yet) and though he spanked us twice, we managed to bring him to 9% and 5% respectively before going down. We'll be back to finish the job soon now that we know how the fight works.

Aeron and Rsouljah [CK Officers] brought CK into Sea Monday night for some Ix Drk + Jailer of Faith action as well. Tier 2 is just around the corner for us now.

Minor news:
CK Website- We're in the process of transferring our website to a new database (I think that's what we're doing anyways) so we may soon have a new URL to our page. I'd like to thank Tsavi (Origionally Oferi) for several years of maintainence on our website, we really appreciate the work she's done for us. /salute

My Purple Chocobo recently mated with Nomar's black chocobo so we're hoping for some special babies. Egg hasn't hatched yet so we're not sure what to expect.

Also dinged PLD to 35, somehow finding time to level it between massive loads of work. Auto refresh is fun.

Other than that, keep those applications incoming as we look to finalize our end game roster for that next content leap.

Ranka out.

Starting one of these blog things...

So after reading about a few Quetzalcoatlian's (close enough) blog adventures I finally decided to create my own. I'm not 100% sure how this works yet, so this may not even be posted. I'll be playing around with this trying to learn the basics enough to keep people informed about the ranka and his CK crew.

A little about me:

I'm Anaeran, "the Ranka", and Leader of the CelestialKnights end game linkshell. I've been playing FFXI since Novemberish 2003, and have a little over 8 years of MMO leadership experience. I came over to FF with FiresofHeaven guild friends from Everquest 1, and created the shell I've come to love so dearly in CK.

After a year's break between CK1 and CK2 (wasted on a relationship gone sour) I'm back doing my thing, once again trying to bring a new group to the top. It has been a difficult road. Recruiting the right mix of talent, personality and dedication has proven to be much harder the second time around, however I feel as though we now have a team capable of succeeding on the ultimate end game level as we continue to push through new, challenging content here on Quetz.


CK in review this week:

SKY:

Kirin died twice Thursday night. Congrats to Genjuro on his N.Body and gil split on a shining cloth, as well as some other things.

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SEA:

Jailer of Faith proved to be a nasty little critter but CK prevailed once again. Congrats go out to Rigelus on his Faith Claws as well as the entire CK linkshell on our 5th/6 tier 2 spawn set. We'll be setting sights on Hope and company in the next couple weeks. Way to go guys^^

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LAND:

Also, after a few months of drastic changes to improve the quality and competitiveness of CK play, it finally came together for us in a big way when we claimed Nidhogg this week. This was our first ever attempt at either Fafnir or his older HQ Brother and we brought this baddy to his knees^^

Apparently the majority of the server thinks we're botters and/or extremely lucky noobs despite the fact that CK has and always will be a legit, respectable shell- but that didn't stop us from feeling the satisfaction of declaring CK's rise to the real end game scene in a big way.

BIG Congrats to Enz (M.Body) and Naotakun (A.Body) on the first ever Land King abjurations in CK. Rigelus also got his wyrm beard, leaving him 2/3 of the way to his black belt. Behemoth time real soon to finish that up.

We also ran Dynamis -Beaucedine this week with PinCKs to farm and generally work on learning attestation routes. Naotakun, who is currently holding a stage 3, almost 4, relic horn, got this little diddy to help him along:

Props to Typhus (my PinCKs dynamis co-leader and CK officer) on his incredible execution in reaching the trigger as the rest of the team worked on spawning it. We cut it a bit close timewise, but managed to pull the Test mob after salvaging a botched pull prior to moving camps. Awesome job PinCKies.

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That's all for now. I'll try to continue to update this thing as CK continues to improve every day. I'll probably forget though, so try to remind me. Ranka out-