Skaldheim

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Miracle Comeback

Congratulations to the Boston Red Sox, your 2004 American League champions.

Never before had a major league baseball team lost the first three games of a seven-game playoff series, and then win the next four. In over a century and twenty-something tries, no one has come back from death's door like that. In fact, no one had even won three in a row after going down 0-3.

Even better, in the Game 4 the Red Sox were three outs away from defeat. They were about as far away from winning this pennant as you could possibly be, and they came back and won it! If you were to make a movie of this series, no one would ever have believed it. Ever.

That it happened against the Yankees, in Yankee Stadium, a year after the Yankees snatched a pennant away from the Sox, makes it even more amazing.

I don't think I will see something quite like this ever again in my lifetime. This is why baseball is the greatest game ever devised by the mind of man.

It is NEVER too late.

Jefferson 9:32 PM

Monday, October 18, 2004

New Miniatures Project!

I have still been painting away, bit by bit, as baseball season went on. The pile of Lord of the Rings miniatures is not getting any smaller, either. I've just been painting them more or less at random, and really not getting to play any. Not getting to play has dampened my enthusiasm for painting, I'm afraid. Without a game to look forward to, it's hard to stay motivated.

Well, I decided to do something about that. I have offered to run a game of Lord of the Rings miniatures at Dundracon next February. Here's the event I submitted:

...The True Meaning Of Haste
Type: Minis
System: GW Lord of the Rings
Variations: none
# Players: 6
Power level: N/A
Provided: All figures provided by GM
While Theoden leads his people to the refuge of Helms Deep, Gandalf rides
desperately to find Eomer and his exiled legions of Rohirrim. In this
scenario, Saruman's Uruk-Hai try to ambush and destroy Eomer shortly before
Gandalf's arrival. New players welcome.

I will find out in January if my event is accepted. I'll have to start designing the scenario and painting the figures now, though. The deadline, plus the parameters of the scenario, will give my painting efforts a nice focus. I'll keep you all posted on how it goes!

Next step: first draft of the scenario and orders of battle.

Jefferson 2:55 PM

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Creeping Doom

We tried something new in FFXI this week--BCNMs, or "Burning Circle Notorious Monsters." These are arena battles with special "notorious" monsters. You trade in beastmen's seals to obtain orbs, which you take to burning circles to activate the battle.

We chose to fight Bitoso, a notorious crawler in Balgas Dias. This is a battle for three 30th-level characters. If you go in as a higher-level, your level is "capped" at 30 for the duration of the fight. The fight lasts fifteen minutes. If you don't finish in time, you are transported out of the arena with no reward. If you win, you get a nice treasure chest. If you get killed, you lose about 450 XP each. (Ouch.) It's a real test of tactics, teamwork, and cunning.

Riloth, Dydo and I fought Bitoso six times this week. Here was the initial setup and tactics:

Riloth--ranger/ninja (RGR/NIN)--would stand back and use his archery skills to do great damage to Bitoso.
Dydo--ninja/warrior (NIN/WAR)--close with Bitoso and use his mystic abilities to avoid getting hit, and keep Bitoso off the others.
Gryffyn--black mage/white mage (BLM/WHM)--stand back, away from the others. Nuke Bitoso with Lightning, then cast Sleep. While the crawler slept, everyone would back off and rest. Then I would cast Aspir to drain his magic points and refill my own. Then I'd drink a pineapple juice for further magic point regeneration. Then we'd repeat the cycle.

Why this way? Well, we read on the Net it was a good tactic. Bitoso does two really annoying things in this fight. He casts big cure spells on himself over and over, and he casts a paralysis spell on his opponents. By putting him to sleep and draining his magic points, we hoped he wouldn't cast those spells.

Here's how it went:

BATTLE THE FIRST A complete stalemate. We didn't do much damage to him, he didn't do much damage to us. Time ran out.

BATTLE THE SECOND Change of tactics--just beat the crap out of Bitoso the way we would any normal monster. So I ditched the Sleep spells, and did my usual thing. I started by casting Drown, Rasp, Blind, Poison and Bio on him--all "debuff" spells to weaken him. Then I nuked him with Lightning while casting Cures, Paralynas and Poisonas. I still cast Aspir whenever possible, because I get the magic points it drains from the monster. Dydo pounded him hand-to-hand, interrupting a lot of Bitoso's spellcasting.

This worked great, except that I ran low on magic points very quickly. I ended up using Manafont (cast spells for free for one minute, but I can only do this every two hours) at the end of the fight. That let me finish him off by pounding him with spell after spell. Victory! We got crap from the treasure chest, though--about 1500 gil each after we sold everything.

BATTLE THE THIRD Same tactics, but to save some magic points I didn't cast the debuff spells. Bitoso kicked our asses, and we all died. He cast a lot more Paralyga spells. Dydo just couldn't keep Bitoso's attention and keep him in hand-to-hand range.

BATTLE THE FOURTH This took place two nights later. Same tactics as the second fight, but I switched from pineapple juice to the more powerful Yagudo drinks to help maintain my magic points. We won this fight, though I had to use Manafont anyway. I probably didn't need to, but I decided to do it because we had Bitoso on the ropes and I wanted a quick knockout. We got excellent treasure--a wizard's earring, a singer's earring, and other stuff.

BATTLE THE FIFTH We stuck with a winning plan, but I added Slow and Paralyze to the list of debuff spells I used on Bitoso. I noticed that Slow, Paralyze and Blind were the most effective debuffs, so I kept recasting them. Riloth used his two-hour ranger ability to score the knockout. More good treasure, including a wrestler's earring.

BATTLE THE SIXTH We just got unlucky on this one. About halfway through the fight, Bitoso started casting his Paralyga spell twice as frequently as we'd ever seen before. I couldn't cast Paralyna fast enough or often enough to counter it. Bitoso took advantage of this to wipe the floor with us.

Jefferson 11:57 AM

Friday, October 08, 2004

Call Me A Conformist

Well, I'm not entirely sure about this, but what the hell. I signed up with Haloscan, so now you can comment on my posts. Most likely your comments will be more interesting than what I actually write. You see, now that I've reduced my daily readership to zero by posting about Final Fantasy, I'm trying to compensate in other ways!

Jefferson 5:20 PM

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Mythril Harvest

When I talk to the uninitiated about Final Fantasy XI, there is always a "huh?" moment. This is going to be one of them.

Some months ago, I had Gryffyn take up gardening to make money. He practiced by growing flowers and corn for his cooking. Eventually I got brave and decided to plant some tree cuttings to grow tree saplings. That worked great. I then decided to replant the saplings in the hopes of growing ore.

"Huh?"

Yes, in Vana'diel plants can grow minerals as fruit. Don't think about it too hard, just go with it. In August, Gryffyn grew five saplings and got a valuable water ore and some mythril leaves. (Mythril is that stuff dwarves go ga-ga over in The Lord of the Rings. Apparently it's common to many fantasy worlds.) I sold the water ore at the Jeuno Auction House for a nice 240,000 gil--by far the most money Gryffyn has ever had at once.

Now my second character, Baggaholden, is in charge of gardening. (You see, he's always at home, unlike Gryffyn who is always out in the world adventuring. It's much easier to tend the plants if you're the housebound type.) Today, Baggaholden harvested ten more saplings in hopes of getting another water ore. Here's Bagga and all his trees:

To successfully grow a water ore, you need to follow a certain schedule, following the elemental days of the week and so forth. The phase of the moon is apparently also important. Here are the important moments in the growing of this orchard of trees:

* 9/15/04 -- planted 10 tree saplings on Watersday; moon was 90% (full moon)
* 9/24/04 -- fed a water crystal to all 10 trees on Watersday; moon was 5% (new moon)
* 10/1/04 -- fed a second water crystal to all 10 trees on Watersday; moon was 24% (waxing crescent)
* 10/7/04 -- harvested all 10 trees on Watersday; moon was 14% (waning crescent)

If you want to grow a water ore, you do all the important things on Watersday, and you feed your plants only water crystals. (Yes, you feed them minerals as well, which might explain the mineral fruits!) Aside from this, you have to "Examine" all your plants each and every Earth day, or they'll wither and die. Gardening in FF XI is best left to the slightly obsessive.

So how did we do? Did we score another expensive water ore? Let's see the results. I'll break them down pot by pot because my fellow gardeners like that sort of thing:

Brass Pot --> 16 mythril leaves
Brass Pot --> 12 mythril leaves
Porcelain Pot --> 12 mythril leaves
Porcelain Pot --> 3 fire clusters (each fire cluster breaks apart to make 12 fire crystals)
Porcelain Pot --> 2 fire clusters
Brass Pot --> 13 mythril leaves
Brass Pot --> 16 mythril leaves
Brass Pot --> 15 mythril leaves
Earthen Pot --> 14 mythril leaves
Earthen Pot --> 14 mythril leaves.

No water ores! I'm now 1-for-15 in growing those. On the other hand, in the last few months the recipe for growing elemental ores has become well known. Everyone's doing it, and the market is glutted. Water ore now sells for 100,000 gil at the Jeuno Auction House. NPCs in Bastok buy Mythril leaves for 824 gil each. Fire clusters sell for 3000 each. Total gross take from this harvest? 107,288 gil.

Not bad, but did I make a profit? I grew the tree saplings from 10 tree cuttings. The tree cuttings cost me about 35,000 gil. It took 40 Earth days to grow the cuttings into saplings, and then grow the saplings and harvest them. I have 5 surplus tree saplings left over from the cuttings. I can sell those for about 8,000 each. So I made 112,000 gil over 40 days, which is only 2,800 gil a day. That's not a terrific profit, to be honest. If it took more than 2 minutes a day to maintain the plants, it would be a colossal waste of time. I think I'll switch back to growing corn, which grows very fast. I use that to make insect paste, which makes me about 6,000 gil a day in net profit--more if I'm growing my own corn!

Jefferson 5:20 PM

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

FFXI: The Night The World Broke

Few people are going to confuse a MMORPG with a good book. The suspension of disbelief, though, is very important for the enjoyment of both.

Case in point: last night I was playing Gryffyn, my tarutaru black mage, in Final Fantasy XI. I had just joined an adventuring party in an underground complex known as Crawler's Nest. The Crawler's Nest is this eerie, greenish, somewhat icky maze, with giant silk webs hanging from the ceiling in most places. These are apparently left behind by the hordes of giant caterpillars called crawlers. Running through the place with the other five people in my group, dodging the crawlers while we looked for a safe place to camp, was pretty exciting. It was like being in a movie, really.

After a few minutes, the movie kind of...stopped.

Gryffyn stopped responding promptly to my commands. Words I typed in the chat channel took a good long while to appear on the screen. Reality became choppy; time fractured, hiccuped, and finally...stopped.

The world of Vana'diel disappeared, replaced by a lovely black screen with a window saying that my connection was lost. My disbelief was lost as well. Grumbling, I went through the steps to reconnect, which took a few minutes.

Apparently the massive server farm in Japan, where the game actually runs, lost its link to the Internet. Most of the 3,000 players on the Phoenix world (where I play) had been disconnected. Indeed, most of the people on all the 33 worlds had been kicked off!

My party was lucky. When the world fell apart, we were just standing around. We weren't fighting anything. You see, if you lose your connection, the server keeps running the game without you. Your character stays in the game for a few minutes, until the servers realize you're disconnected. Then they log you off. If you get disconnected during a battle, your character keeps fighting, even though you're not there. You just don't fight very well. Since it can take a few minutes to reconnect, your character can get killed pretty easily while you're disconnected.

When I got back on, the reports started filtering in: everyone in the Yhoator Jungle was dead. Many deaths in the Dunes of Valkurm. The casualty lists just went on and on. Of course, "death" in this game is temporary, and within a minute or two everyone was back on their feet. Only a loss of experience points showed they'd suffered any harm. Nonetheless, it felt as if a great natural disaster had befallen the world.

Seeing all this, my disbelief was once again fully suspended. If the film on a movie breaks, the movie itself carries on once the projectionist fixes it. However, the players in the movie don't know that the film has broken. But on this rare occasion when the "film" of the world of Vana'diel broke, it changed everything. It was a part of the game as much as the Crawler's Nest was. We all feared that it would happen again (which it did, two hours later), and we altered our battle plans accordingly.

I don't think the game was designed this way on purpose, so that even when it breaks it still seems real. It's a happily brilliant coincidence, and part of what makes these games so addictive.

Jefferson 1:59 PM

Off-Season

Now that the Giants season is over, it's time for me to set a new course for the good ship Skaldheim. Since I don't play armchair GM with much conviction or authority, I'll leave the hardcore hot-stove league stuff to more knowledgeable writers. I'll still throw in my two cents when I come up with something brilliant to say. (I hear the peanut gallery already: "but that's never, Jefferson!")

Instead, I'll write about other things. When I started this blog, it was my intention to cover several of my hobbies. I've ended up writing almost exclusively about baseball, but it's time to branch out again.

In an attempt to reduce my committed readership from three to zero, I'll be writing about my adventures in Final Fantasy XI. I'll also be writing more about miniatures wargaming, particularly a project I'm about to start for the next convention. I'll be writing about whatever else that comes to mind, trying to strengthen my chops and find something I'm really excited to write about. I may even break down and add a commenting feature to Skaldheim.

Come spring training, I'll steer the ship back into baseball waters once again. Then I hope to be in great shape. I'll keep trying to give 110%, just happy to be here, and God willing I'll be able to help the team somehow.

Jefferson 9:02 AM

Monday, October 04, 2004

Fearless (or is it clueless?) Playoff Predictions

Here are, without comment, my dead-certain-to-be-wrong playoff predictions:

DIVISION SERIES:
St. Louis over Los Angeles in 5
Houston over Atlanta in 4
Minnesota over New York in 5
Boston over Anaheim in 4

LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIPS:
Houston over St. Louis in 6
Minnesota over Boston in 7

WORLD SERIES:
Houston over Minnesota in 6

Jefferson 11:39 AM

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Two Down, One To...NOOOO!

It's been a bad day.

Seriously, since Felipe Alou moved Dustin Hermanson to the bullpen, the 'pen hasn't been nearly as bad. Since Alou greatly diminished the roles of Franklin, Herges, and Christiansen (the "Trifecta of Suck" as I lovingly called them), the bullpen has been a lot more reliable. Hermanson has been a good, albeit not great, closer. Jim Brower has been nails. Scott Eyre and the others have been at least acceptably good. Therefore, I had good reasons to think that the Giants could hold that three-run lead yesterday.

The problem was, Jim Brower had pitched way too many days in a row. Hermanson had pitched four days straight, which is already a lot to ask of any closer, let alone one not used to the role. So it was no great surprise that Hermanson's arm looked dead yesterday. It's not really his fault that he couldn't be effective on a fifth straight day. I give Alou credit for sticking with him during the ninth as long as he did. I mean, look at his alternatives--Brower wasn't available at all. But after Dustin walked the bases loaded, he had to bring in someone else. With one out, the game was still salvagable. Unfortunately, he turned to the Trifecta of Suck. And they turned an excruciating ninth inning into something only the Marquis de Sade (or a Dodgers fan) could love. The blowpen returned and delivered its all-time tour de force masterpiece. A farewell performance that we will always be able to point to and say, "really, they were SO bad that...."

Cody Ransom deserves a special mention. The error he made on that groundball did not cost the Giants the game. Let's face it, the Dodgers scored seven, and Ransom was only responsible for one of them. Yet after that play, you have to wonder why this guy has a uniform. He can't hit. He flat out can't hit to save his life. His only redeeming skill, the only thing that's kept him on the roster, is his allegedly stellar defense. If you ask me, if Ransom can't make that play in a crucial situation, he needs to be released.

I can't speak highly enough of the performance that Brett Tomko gave the team yesterday. Tomko is a man utterly transformed from the human gas can we saw early in the season. I don't know the name of the sports psychologist who has helped him find his inner ace, but he deserves a nice fat Xmas bonus. Come to think it, so does Tomko. How great has the starting pitching been this last month? I am very encouraged by the prospect of a starting rotation of Schmidt, Tomko, Lowry, Williams, Foppert and/or Rueter. As long as the bullpen sees come major improvement next year, this staff could be very formidable in 2005.

So we come down to the end of the season today, barring a miracle assist from the pathetic Colorado Rockies. We can see in these Giants a capable, frustrating, 90-win team that is oh so close to be a serious World Series contender. The offense is top-notch. With a couple of upgrades at catcher and outfield, it could become extremely scary, even if Bonds finally starts his decline phase. The starting rotation looks to be solid. The bullpen is where the major work remains.

So what am I saying here? That Sabean did another good job this year. In retrospect, the trade for A.J. Pierzynski was a mistake. But it was surprising that it was--Nathan was far better this year than most people expected, and A.J. sucked more than most people expected. Sabean's signing of Tomko and Cruz deserve to be applauded, and Mohr and Tucker were both brilliant for stretches of the season. He finally saw the light and released Perez, though he never should have signed him in the first place. The trade for Ledee, while it did absolutely nothing to improve the club short-term, removed a significant contract obligation for 2005. When I look at the clusterfucks underway in other organizations, I am glad that the Giants have a competent and capable management group.

Finally, if you love baseball you really have to applaud the incredible stretch run by the Houston Astros. To play .800 baseball over the last 50 games is a historic achievement. If I'm the rest of the league, I would not want to run into these guys in the playoffs. They're by far the hottest team on the planet, and they deserve special recognition.

There might be something else to talk about tonight, but we'll see.

Jefferson 9:00 AM

Friday, October 01, 2004

One Down, Two To Go

The Giants have won the first game in Los Angeles. Behind brilliant pitching performances by Kirk Rueter, Jim Brower, and Dustin Hermanson, the Giants defeated the hated Dodgers 4-2. Houston also won today. It's still a tie for the wild card. The Giants are still alive in the NL West race.

Stay on target, gentlemen.

BEAT L.A.!!

Jefferson 9:46 PM

A Simple Plan

Okay, here's the situation.

We're tied with the Houston Astros for the wild card. They play the Rockies at home three times.

We're one game ahead of the Chicago Cubs for the wild card. They play the Atlanta Braves three times.

We're three games ahead of the San Diego Padres for the wild card. Oh screw them, they have no chance.

We're three games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers for the NL West title. They play us in L.A. three times.

So it's damn simple. What do we need to do if we want to the win the wild card?

BEAT L.A.!

What do we need to do if we want to win the division?

BEAT L.A.!

What do we need to do if we want to keep playing next week?

BEAT L.A.!

What do we need to do to make everyone forget the pitfalls, the pratfalls and all the anguish of the regular season?

BEAT L.A.!

Gentlemen. Redemption is within your grasp. All will be forgiven, all will be forgotten, lost in the wash of glory and victory if you can follow this simple command:

BEAT L.A!!!!!

Jefferson 9:50 AM