Dragoon Armour.... and the Chocobo Barding

Allow me to first of all declare this statement:  I absolutely LOVE the new Dragoon Artifact armour.    When I started this game, I made sure that the first job I leveled was Lancer because I wanted to play a melee job class that was Dragoon-like.  That, and the fact that i wanted my character to feel like a scion of Prince Nuada from the Hellboy 2 movie.

Fastforward to the 1.21 patch and here we are with the new advanced jobs and their AF armour... and the Dragoon quests, armour and job skills do not disappoint.   I spent the weekend finishing the quests and joining up with a lot of friends to do AF runs and it was a blast.... and here are the first images of my spiffy new DRG gear...

Further below are more images of a bunch of us wearing our new gear immediately after finishing the last quest... it was nighttime, but I still thought it spoke volumes about how much awesome fun we had.

Without giving away any spoilers to the quest storyline, first we had to take out the Red Drake (name withheld to prevent embarrassment of said creature being pwned by a group of pissed off Lancers)...

Then we had to take out this guy... (name also withheld because he's undoubtedly going to emerge again sometime in the near future)...

Then the victory lap... we actually raced back to the gates of Judgement... I came in third (true story).  And this is the moment of triumph where we all donned our new body piece...

Another view of the armour, zoomed out with Limsa at my back... literally, the phrase saying "Limsa at my back" indicates that I will fight tooth and nail to defend her...true story...

Then I wandered over to the Maelstrom High Command Headquarters to purchase the new Chobo Barding armour for my mount Pharaoh...

And once I got the key item, I sauntered over to the stables to inform my buddy.  Images of the three types of armour are below...

Took the ol'boy out for a trot afterwards and yep, he had a nice spring in his step cuz he seemed quite pleased...

Ummm, yes, I took off all my cladding in that last image.  What?!!  It was in the Thanalan desert and heat was bloody scorching...  couldn't let meself suffocate... beg your pardon, don't gimme that look...

And here are some random pics of friends and other players in town wearing their spiffy new AF armours.   I'll need to filter through my image files cuz I took so many that its a pain to go hunt down all the images right now.   Anyway, I can at least show off a couple other jobs real fast.

First off, Bard... twin Lalafells making a fashion statement...

Then Paladin... another twin set of Highlanders making a fashion statement.  Just thought these guys were sterling at being hilarious in town...

Then of course my linkshell-mate Moro Moro in his Paladin gear (cute, innit?) .  I had to hunker down to get this image cuz Lalafells generally have this thing about we Elezen standing too tall over them... kinda like how the Tarutarus from FFXI always threatened to bite the kneecaps of tall races... and I love my kneecaps...

Ahhh yes... by the way, the moon Dalamund is now a creepy red hue... just after taking the above picture, I swirled the camera around and saw it yet again.  Had to pan the screen to get it to show over my left shoulder...

Now, it just looms over all of us just waiting to fall out the sky upon our heads... almost giddily exciting innit?   Even in towns, it just sits there burning deep red... and of course, right beside it is one of the (Garlean scout ships?) who continue to spy on us...

Indeed, the 2.0 patch is going to be beyond insane, with the Legatus battles (I want to decimate Van Darnus sooo freaking bad....sending his minions to spy on us while we're getting tanked at the pub.  Bastard).   Plus, we should be getting more elemental battles (Garuda is next?), and a new battle system for all the classes... can't wait.

That's all for now, good people... I shall post up more later... be well!