General: The Week in Review

I took a vacation day on Tuesday (car had to go in for repairs), and spent a couple hours fishing on the Mhaura-Selbina ferry. It was a nice change of pace, but uneventful. No Sea Horrors or Pirates. We caught 2 stacks of Nebimonites, since Kiki should be using something better than Crab at this point, and Nebimonite Bake seems to fit the bill for her "every day" food. I'd like to start having Seafood Stew around as the "good" food, but I think it might be awhile before we get Qiara up to that level of cooking skill.

Kiki's up to 529/10,000 moat carps. Still feasible to have Lu Shang's Rod before Christmas, but we'll have to do a lot of fishing.  

We helped Manon fight the Dragon to complete her Dragoon flag quest. It's a really quick fight for a trio of level 50s!.

Then we spent Saturday afternoon in Promyvion Dem and Mea, farming recollections and levelling Grym's WHM and Manon's RNG a bit. Grym's WHM is now 36, so she can now do teleports to Mea, Dem, and Holla. We've done the Teleport-Yhoat quest as well, but that's a level 38 spell. Three ClanBEB people joined us in Promyvion, and we decided to head up (in?) a level to fight tougher stuff. It was a bit tougher than we had counted on. Our party was WHM/BLM, WHM/BLM, RDM/BLM, RNG/WAR, RNG/NIN, and WAR/NIN.

Tanthalus hit 24 Saturday night, so Grym and Kiki took him to Yhugott Grotto to get his first Kazham key. There was a duo there trying to get another key, so we allied with them and got both pretty quickly. I'd be inclined to say TH2 helps there, but we never took long to get that key anyway.

On Sunday, Grym ran around with Manon working on Manon's Crawlers Nest map quest. Having the teleports helped a bit, but it got even faster when Emith joined them so Manon could get D2'd back to Selbina. Sounds like Manon only has two monuments left to pick up.

Kiki decided she'd head to Qufim to level her THF a bit more (was 400 exp into 19). It went a lot better than I expected. I got a party within 15 minutes of putting up my flag, and less than 4 hours later was 400 exp into 21. And that included a raise-less death, and all the waiting around for people to regroup after the banshee and giant aggro that is so common in Qufim. I think most of the people in the group each had a death, but despite that, it was a pretty successful Qufim party. We started out was 2 WHMs, NIN/WAR, DRK/WAR, RNG/NIN, THF/MNK, and mowed through the worms until the RNG got DC'd and didn't come back. The NIN/WAR, Zabaq, is the same character model as Kiki, only with darker hair. It was cute having two little taru sisters fighting the worms. We replaced the RNG with a DRG/BLM, and the WHM with another WHM and continued on until too many of us had to leave.

Anastasia came by and tossed us a few cures and protects, and killed Banshees around us for awhile, and later, Vynala did the same. It's nice having high levels pass through looking out for the exp'ers.

Worked on raising Kiki's woodcraft skill a bit, and got it up to level 36. Making arrows for skillups is nice, since you can at least break-even on them. Qiara's up to level 63 for cooking. There's a crafting timer page now that seems to really help with crafting for skillups. Qiara was making pumpkin soup (sells for NPC for a loss if you count the fire crystals, but not too painful), and got a skillup on nearly every synth.

Leveling: Static Party Reaches 50 (Yhoator Jungle)

We were all hoping we'd be able to get to 50 on Saturday, and happily we did! Locmari was just barely 48, while Grym was the highest, at about 4K/7600. We really didn't know where to go, but decided to try to get people who would be willing to try going back to our favorite spot in Yhoator. There wasn't a lot of choice for people at 48 LFP, but I spotted Maechen, SAM48/WAR24, and thought he might be the guy we partied fighting Furriers when we hit 29, and he was interested. With no RDM or WHM looking, I asked Locmari if he minded being the main healer (SMN/WHM), especially since we were fighting "easier" things than we might usually. He didn't mind, so I invited Bigbadbear, a Galka BRD/WHM (who had over 200 HP more than Kiki).

I told them we planned to head to fight gobs in Yhoator, that they would be T to IT, that we loved the camp, and that we all really wanted to be 50 before we finished partying. They were in full agreement, and so off we went. About 5 hours later, we met our goal, and disbanded, all quite happy to have reached that milestone.

It was really pretty uneventful. SAM would get crazy TP, so there were lots of skillchains. The Bard songs helped everyone. We got a couple links, but handled them with no problems. We did get our HP blasted a couple times with gobbie bombs, but since those also killed the goblins, we weren't in any danger. For some reason Grym's Viper Bite macro didn't always work. We're not sure if it's because of spell/song animations happening when she's trying to use it, but it meant Maechen would end up tanking a few times, since he'd be first voking, then landing a Tachi: Enpi, and Grym's SA/TA without VB wouldn't turn the mob. So in those fights, I'd usually end up casting Cure III on him a few times before getting hate, if I did get it.

I do find that the easier the mobs are, the harder time I have holding hate on them.

We pretty much plowed through the goblins, but I believe we only got one Chain #6. Mostly ended with a #5. Had really little down time, it usually seemed to be from not having enough goblins to kill rather than needing to rest for MP.

As usual, we had the camp to ourselves, but then about an hour before we were done, a party of 43-46s showed up. They camped right in the middle of where the gobs spawn, so we figured they'd get wiped out at some point, but they managed (had a black mage with sleep). After the BLM hit 47, he warped out, and they didn't get the party going again until right before we left. I hope they enjoyed the camp as much as we have.

It's nice to have Raise now! I got to raise 2 people on Saturday, one in Yuhtunga, another in Qufim. There's so many things we have to do now with being 50. Mission 5-1, Genkai 1, start in on our AF quests, and so on.

Missions: Promyvion-Dem (CoP 1-3)

Kiki joined up with a ClanBEB run on Promyvion-Dem on Friday night (having got NIN up to 15 during the week). This is a good starter Promyvion - with guidance from the experienced players, we made it through nearly without incident, and the boss fight was very straightforward. Our party of six consisted of RNG/NIN (Midget), PLD/WAR (Marilyn), NIN/RNG (Lucrezia), WHM/RDM (Atrayu), RDM/SMN (friend of Atrayu), and WAR/NIN (Kiki). Yobun accompanied us as a PLD/WAR to help us all get to the Spire safely.

Our plan was to avoid aggro as much as possible as we headed to the memory receptacles to get to the next levels. We'd fight the strays while Midget would concentrate on the memory receptacles. The AOE knockback effect can be countered by standing with one's back to one of the four pillars surrounding the memory receptacle, which is pretty handy.

Yobun got aggro'd on the second level when he was scouting, and told us to stay back and let him die.

After the mobs wandered off, we raised him and continued on. We had to fight once or twice, but didn't have much trouble at all. The biggest problem was Lucrezia's internet connection. She got disconnected 3 times on the way up to the spire, and once again after we had defeated the boss. Since this was the last one she needed to do, it would have been bad to have missed out!

For the boss fight, Marilyn tanked, and Lucrezia used her three special animas. Kiki used her 2-hour (mighty strikes) when Midget said to - the mob was at about 2/3 HP. I believe Midget used his (eagle eye shot) at the very end, and that's what killed it. So basically we all pretty much bashed away at it until it was dead. The Dem boss doesn't have any AOE attacks, and no status effects either, so it really was pretty simple.

I'm really looking forward to doing the next two, and doing them again as other people need to do them as well.

General: More Odds and Ends

Moat carp count: 287/10000

Spent a couple of evenings farming for recollections in the Promyvions. One evening was with Manon in Dem, and another with just Grym and Kiki in Mea, though we had a BST join us, since she was doing the same thing, and it was easier for the three of us than for her alone and us as a duo. She had died once while soloing and getting aggro from a spawn. So we're all set with a set of the three animas for a Promyvion boss fight. Hopefully I can do one or more of these soon with ClanBEB. That's my main reason for levelling NIN, to be able to do Mea as a WAR/NIN.

Saturday morning I continued levelling NIN, getting it to 6, then grabbed Emith, Grym, and Dalubhasa to do the SAM quest for me and Dalub. We headed to the Sanctuary of Zi'tah, quickly dispatched the treant (900+ from Emith's Freeze finished it off). Off to Konstadt Highlands to fight Forger again for Dalub, then sneaking to Norg to turn in our items. 3 hours later our great katanas were ready.  

Kiki's fame in Norg still wasn't high enough for the Utsusemi scroll quest, so she bought 10 rusty subligars for the rusty subligar quest, and that was enough to push her up to the right fame level. Hurray! It only took about 124 yagudo necklaces too. So I did the Utsusemi quest as a PLD48/RDM24, sneaking past all the ghasts and sahagins and everything else in Sea Serpent Grotto, only getting lost once. It's always so stressful doing sneaky quests. The scroll's currently going for 250K on the AH - it will be tough reading it when her NIN hits 12. Also picked up a couple of other Norg quests that I couldn't earlier.

We spent Sunday morning and evening levelling Kiki's NIN. She's now about 1000 exp from level 12. Dual wielding is pretty fun, but the low level weapons for NINs really aren't all that great. Still using the level 1 Wax Sword +1 in her off-hand for the ACC bonus, since NINs can't wield Bee Spatha +1s, which would be better. Katana in main hand, and she's getting decent skillups on that.

We also helped a WAR30 do the Ninja Flag quest. It was a bit of overkill: PLD60, SAM50, THF48, PLD48, and the WAR30. The WAR sure got smacked badly fast at the start of the fight after touching the coral. The PLD60 was boasting about having two pairs of leaping boots (one on his mule), and about how he jacked the price up to 600,000 this week. We're never going to get a pair at this rate. It seems to me they were only 150K when we started playing. They just keep going up and up. At least Grym's closer to the point where she can get her AF boots.

Leveling: Semi-Static Hits 48 (Yhoator Jungle)

We decided to head back to the Ifrit's Cauldron zone in Yhoator Jungle Friday night. Draconian was LFP, so we grabbed him, and I asked Plumpixie if he wanted to join us (wasn't LFP, but it doesn't hurt to ask). He said sure but had to reboot his computer to split his connection. We got impatient and worried he wasn't coming back, so Draconian asked Lilliet, a WHM to join us. She said sure and we headed to camp. We got off to a poor start, with Lilliet hitting a Cure IV macro before Grym's SATA on me, and I think I managed to get hate back, but she was wiped out by a gobbie bomb. Fortunately she had reraise on, and things went much smoother after that.

Lilliet and Draconian both had to go, so Plumpixie joined us, and we got a second Paladin, who didn't mind using his greatsword and not tanking for awhile. After a bit, Loc needed 5 minutes to put his son to bed, and the PLD must've fallen asleep or something. We left him in the party for awhile, but after about 1000 exp and no sign of life, we dropped him and shifted our camp to protect him from bombs. Draconian was done with movie night and rejoined us. We plowed through the goblins, and ended up with about a level and a half of exp, getting the four of us anyway from 46 to 48. I love having Refresh - even with all my taru MP, it's nice having it seemingly endless. Cure IIIs are great for hate.  

After Draconian had been back with us for nearly two hours, the PLD came back to life and came over and said "Why you kick me?" I pointed out he'd been AFK for nearly 3 hours, and definitely over 2 hours. He made a >< face, hung around for a couple minutes watching us fight, then warped back to Jeuno.

We got a couple links on pulls, but handled them all. Manon thought she would try to kite them, but really, Grym's so much better equipped for that, with Hide, Flee, and Utsusemi. Plus we really need Manon's damage to get rid of the first mob as fast as possible.

Leveling: Thief in the Dunes (18-19)

Kiki took her THF18 to Valkrum, and after waiting over an hour, finally got in a party. It was a bit of a mess, as so many Dunes parties are, but after 3 hours she was level 19, with a safe buffer. Rajiv became the leader and tried hard to organize us properly. He's really a rank 9 WHM61, taking a mini-break from his main job, having fun playing a MNK. We had a bit of fun sitting outside Selbina, playing around with /emotes while waiting for our party invites. Nothing like a good Taru bonding experience.

We were trying to chain snippers then end with a pugil, but there weren't enough mobs to keep us going well enough to make the low exp add up quickly. I'm not sure what to do at 19. The Dunes just seems bad, but 19 seems low for Qufim. Then again, that's when I headed there with my DRK.

General: Odds and Ends

Kiki's Norg fame after 120 Yagudo necklaces was enough to pick up the rusty leggings, the rusty subligar, and the Tonko quests, but not enough for Utsusemi, so she'll have to make another couple runs through Giddeus. Saturday evening, Grym and Kiki headed to Korroloka Tunnel to fight the leeches for Kiki's Ninja flag quest. At level 46, a PLD/WAR and THF/NIN had no trouble what-so-ever. It may have taken Kiki a long time to do it, but it's kind of funny to do it when you are your own "high" level help.

So Sunday morning, we headed to the Highlands to fight the Forger for part of Kiki's SAM quest. Also a piece of cake. Tonight we'll probably head to Zi'tah and drag Dalubhasa along to finish off the Treant. I'd been promising him for months that we'd do it when my PLD was high enough to not need anyone besides Grym helping.

Kiki decided that if she's going to be a proper fishertaru, she needs a Lu Shang's Rod, so she started turning in Moat Carp. 166 down, 9834 to go. :cry

Leveling: Partial Static Gets to 46

The static party spent a lot of time Friday evening and Saturday afternoon trying to level. Overall, things went pretty well, but came to a miserable end on Saturday afternoon.

Friday evening, we were able to get a WHM (Brega) and a WAR/THF (Marc), and we headed for the Labyrinth of Onzozo. We were at 43, and I think this may not have been the best place for us. The goblins were too weak, and there was someone farming the Cockatrices, so the three goblins->cockatrice chain plans were a bit ruined. The cockatrices were kind of funny to fight. I didn't like getting petrified much. Hard to hold hate when you're a statue. More interesting to get cockatrice meat as drops instead of insect wings though! Marc had to leave for a bit, and when we thought he wasn't coming back, Loc invited Draconian, a WAR/NIN to replace him. Of course Marc got back just before Draconian arrived, but was good natured about it and left the party.  

Funniest moments: pulling a Goblin Trader with a leech pet, and getting a dozen leeches linked on the way back to camp. I was laughing so hard it was difficult to zone. Emith dropped by for a bit to see how we were doing. If he stops levelling long enough for us to catch up to him, it would be fun to have him in the group again.

Saturday, we decided to head back to Western Altepa Desert. The beetles were still pretty good here until we got to 45. We picked up Gamemadness, a WHM, and Redek, a DRK. Gamemadness had teleport-altep, but hadn't been to Rabao, so we stopped in there so he could get his map and so we could chocobo to the camp. It was pretty uneventful and good exp, but really slowed down a lot when we leveled.

Redek brought up goblins in Yhoator as a suggestion, and since Grym and I had previously scouted out a camp near the Ifrit's Cauldron zone, thinking that sounded like a good spot for the mid-40s, I quickly added my two cents. Everyone agreed, so Gamemadness teleported us to Dem (only 3 of us had the Yhoator crystal, plus it's a long scary walk from there to the camp), we rode to Jeuno and took the airship to Kazham. It was a long trip, but ended up being very worth it.

The camp is wonderful - at a zone, so no spawns. No one else around, just an occasional miner heading to Ifrit's Cauldron. Plenty of goblins, with fairly easy pulls. We fought Hunters (nice and soft) and Bouncers (very hard on us before we hit 46), and were routinely getting chain 4s for 280 exp. It ended badly however. When Manon headed out to pull for what was to be the final fight of the day, she got a link (hunter and bouncer). I thought we were all going to zone, the WHM thought it would be a good time to cast a teleport spell to use like Escape, Manon was getting smacked by two gobs, and I thought a Cure III would be a good way to grab them both at the same time. Sadly, it was too slow, Manon died, and the rest of us were standing on the teleport crystal at the Dem crag. We should have all just zoned, and I should have provoked the Bouncer and hit Invincible. Looking back at the log afterwards, Manon was getting hit for nearly 150 HP with each hit. I guess our RNGs are nice and soft too, just like the goblin ones. It was very sad.

General: Frustration with Probable RMTs

While we were wandering nearly aimlessly, looking for places to level as BST25s, we ended up heading to Pashhow, figuring at least we could farm dark crystals and mushrooms and get a couple points from marsh funguars. We had a funny fight with a Goobbue (with a probably RMT Dragoon watching closely, hoping no doubt for it to go yellow when we got new pets so he could steal it from us). For some reason, Kiki couldn't lose hate, so she started running around one of those big round rocks, with the Goob in pursuit, and the pets chasing the Goob. When Kiki was directly opposite the Goob, it started jumping up over the rock to get her. It was very funny.

We had a very close fight with a tough Malboro. Ran out of handy pets and had to use our jugs. I think we'll avoid those in the future.

Then we decided we'd head up to the NW corner, where we liked to go as small groups in the high 20s for farming and a bit of EXP, way back in May, before Kiki existed. It was always empty, with leeches that drop Beastmen's Blood, crawlers that drop Silk Thread, and even a NM leech that drops the Bloodbead Amulet.

We got up there, and what do you know, there's Bloodpool Vorax! Looking around, we see there are plenty of things we can use as pets, so we attacked him. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Elishya, a highish level RDM (Cure IV at least), starts hitting every mob in the area and immediately calling for help on them. Since you can't charm mobs that have been called for help on, she removed our ability to successfully fight the NM leech. She ended up pulling it away from us when it went yellow. We were so very angry that someone would be so very mean. She's obviously used that tactic frequently in the past.

So we headed home to Windurst (outpost teleports are awesome), switched to PLD43/WAR21 and THF43/WAR21, and headed back to Pashhow to kill stuff that Elishya farms. Emith joined us as well, so we spent maybe a couple hours running around grabbing what leeches and crawlers we could, though she still got a lot. We managed to grab Bloodpool Vorax too (no drop), and at that point she had to call in her DRG friend to help her (the one who had hoped to get our Goob earlier in the day).

Overall, I'm sure it didn't make a dent in their overall gil-take for the day, but it still was kind of fun doing it.

I don't know if they're part of a larger group or not, but Elishya has a bunch of sales in the Jeuno history list for both stacks of silk and stacks of beastmen blood, just like Mywhm in San d'Oria, Mywar in Bastok, and Nologout in Windurst. Seems they've decided to make their money off of things people need to craft, and jack up the prices while they're at it.

General: Vacation Ramblings

I tend to not write anything when I'm busy playing, as has been the case over my Christmas vacation time. Some of the highlights from the past couple of weeks:

Helped Locmari get the item from the Headhunter Quadav in Beadeaux, so he and Manon were both able to finally complete Rank 5. Unfortunately they both ended up dying in Castle Oztroja after Manon got the magicite, but didn't have an instant warp scroll or anything, and they tried getting back out the way they went in.

Grym and Kiki did the Rescue quest, since they both got the extra items from the Headhunter, which unlocked the jail cell. When they went back to Beadeaux to do this, and the Beadeaux Smog one as well, Kiki managed to get aggro'd when she thought she'd reapplied Sneak. The Bastok Market Gate Glyphs from Summerfest came in quite handy. They went back with BLM subbed, did both quests safely, and warped out.

Finally got a key in the Ordelle's, fighting Goliath Beetles well away from the Stroper Chyme campers. We logged out in the dead-end canyon in the SW part of La Thiene after not having much luck finding a chest. When we went back in later that day, we got aggro'd by a goblin, and had a Pathfinder, a Shaman, and I think a Smithy on us, plus the Pathfinder's pet and then a Slash Pine when Grym used Cyclone. We both had to use our 2-hours (THF43, PLD43), and of course the Stroper Chyme campers stood by watching us, probably hoping we'd die. I think Grym was down to 3HP at one point, but we prevailed. Pretty exciting. Then we headed back to where we'd been killing beetles, and found a chest, so Kiki got her Cunning Earring. I'm torn between keeping it for DRK and RDM, but it was selling for 60K last time I checked....

We did a couple of Selbina quests, one of which involved hours of fishing to get a Fat Greedy each.

We spent some time in the Bubu end of the Maze of Shamkrimi trying to get chest keys for our RSE quests. That was kind of fun, since we were actually getting some EXP off of the mobs, plus some skillups. We both got keys, and now Grym has the full set (had bought everything but the feet), and Kiki got a set of feet and sold them. Since the Mithra RSE is worth so much more than the Taru RSE, it doesn't make too much sense to let Kiki have keys before Grym. Kiki does have a Gusgen key, so we'll have to go looking for a chest there.

We did the Holla/Dem/Mea Teleport scroll quests, and those actually were easier that we had thought they would be. In Gusgen and Eldieme Necropolis, we went as THF43/WHM21 and PLD43/RDM21 and just used Sneak, but for Garlaige Citidel, we were WHM35/NIN17 and RDM25/BLM12, since we needed Invisible as well. Kiki sold her scrolls for about 140K, but Grym will be reading hers as soon as we can get her WHM up to 36.

We did a New Year's Moogle quest to get teleport collars for San d'Oria. Since we already have the Trick Staff II, the Treat Staff II, and still have our Windurst and San d'Oria gate Glyphs, we don't feel like we have to get the other two teleport items (each has 10 charges, and takes you to that city's Chocobo Stables).

We helped a SAM44 (Bloodghost) do Mission 3-3. Near the top of the tower, a lot of the gobs and giants were checking as Easy Prey for us, but for some reason they didn't aggro us. It wasn't until the hallway right before the room with the Giant that drops the tower key that we actually had to fight anything. It was sure a lot easier than it was with people in their 30s in a group!

We helped a THF30 do the Beastmaster quest in Qufim. There was also a Taru mage at level 30 who was with a Galka WAR in full AF, but the WAR provoked the Kraken away from the nightflowers, and then just stood there while the Taru started fighting the Kraken, pulled hate, got killed, and delevelled. Then the WAR killed it in one hit with Penta Thrust. Not sure why he let the Taru die.

We helped a couple people get their Carbuncle Rubies. I'm glad they drop pretty quickly, unlike when we were hunting for Grym's months ago (300 leeches!).

We levelled BST to 25, and are having a really hard time finding a good place to level. We spent a lot of level 21-25 in Bubu, and I almost think that's where we have to go still, though it will be harder to find toughs.

We started working on getting Kiki's Norg fame built up. She really needs to unlock NIN and get it up to 15 for Promyvion if nothing else. She's turned in 104 Yagudo necklaces so far (two runs through Giddeus with Grym and Kiki having space for 25 each, I don't understand why people bother paying 200-500 gil each when they're really pretty easy to collect).