General: The Week in Review

Moat carp count: 2759/10000

The Egg Festival pretty much preoccupied Kiki and Grym from Thursday evening through Saturday morning, but after getting all the items, it got pretty boring trading and selling eggs from all of our characters, so we started getting back into our usual routine.  

Kiki joined in a ClanBEB linkshell event on Friday night. We headed to Pso'Xja for a general exploration and see if we could pick up one of the items for Gobbiebag VI and for a later Promathia mission. We started out with 11 or 12 of us, and ended up as two parties of 4 each: PLD62/WAR31, RDM69/BLM34, WHM52/BLM26, PLD51/WAR25 and MNK62/THF31, PLD54/WAR27, PLD50/RDM25, RDM52/BLM26.

Note that the first party had two means of escape (teleport from the whm and escape from the rdm). Originally the other party also had 2 members capable of escape, but they had to go earlier than the rest of us, and we didn't reconfigure the groups.

It was a really interesting area, and I love the music there. We had to spawn two sets of NM golems to get key item bracelets to get through a few doors, and we fought tonberries, lizards, bats, magic pots, and treasure chests. I got a cyan chip from one of the chests we killed, which will sit in my mog safe until PM 3-5 or something like that.

The treasure chests have a nasty AOE move with a strong poison (10 hp per tick) that was unpleasant. We had lots of keys, and tried to open the chests, but as soon as someone would get close to the chest, it would start attacking.

The area is quite confusing and puzzle-like, and we finally got to where we thought we wanted to go - an open elevator platform that would take us down to where we might find the GB VI item dropping mobs. As we dropped through the levels, a number of Diremites of some flavor jumped on with us and started slaughtering us. My party managed to escape, leaving the others to a miserable end on the Elevator of Doom.

Fishing has been going OK. Kiki's at level 37 (shining trout from 35-37), and can't seem to find a good combo for skillups now. Tried fishing herring in port Jeuno with lugworms, but got more colbalt jellyfish, tiger cod, yellow globes, and bastore sardines. Grym tried worm lure in Kazham for Coral butterflies, but didn't like that. Elshimo Frogs using a fly lure in Yuhtunga was much better, but she caught 24 and didn't get a single skillup. I'm planning to try lugworms at the ice pond in Qufim tonight.

Kiki broke her 25K gil Mithran Rod (and lost a sinking minnow) on a catch that was "you have a good feeling about this". I was shocked. Fortunately, Qix found another one in a bazaar in Bastok for 22K, and Quincy was able to sell the broken one for 22.5K, so there was little loss (the lure is about 700 on the Mhaura-Selbina ferry).

Kiki made about 24 stacks of scorpion arrows over the weekend and got about 2.0 skillups for the 72 synths - woodworking 55.1 now. Skillups sure seem to slow down after 50. At least the arrows sell pretty well. Trow's having a lot of trouble levelling from 62. The demon and bodkin arrows are big money losers, and that's when you can even find the arrowheads.

Kki's HQ rate on arrowwood is a bit disappointing, but not too bad really. She did 7 synths and got 3 NQ, 3 HQ1 and 1 HQ3, for 39 sticks of lumber from 21 logs. I love getting 12 sticks from one bundle of 3 logs.

Kiki offered to escort a Bastok ecowarrior group on Sunday, and when they seemed to be close to being ready, she headed to Gusgen from Jeuno, planning to meet them there. After an hour of killing bones, ghost and undead dogs and getting little to show for it (a wolf hide, 5 bone chips, and a scroll of gravity), she was informed that the ecowarrior wasn't going to happen after all. So she toddled along to Bastok, coming across a dead body with a level 50 galka paladin healing next to it. Kiki cast raise and made the galka cry. She feels bad about that. It might even have been his first opportunity to raise someone.

Qiwi's been running short on space, so Kiki headed over to Rabao and bought him 18 water jugs for an extra 18 slots of storage. At 188 gil each, that's certainly the cheapest way to get more space, as long as you don't mind having overwhelming water energy and have to use storage rather than mog safe space, which means being in your home town all the time (fine for most mules).

Last night Grym and Kiki headed to Eldieme Necropolis to help Ryrra (MNK49), Wendell (WHM49), Itera (PLD50), and Muirnan (THF50) get their ancient papyrus for G1. Vawn (PLD75) was allied with us and soloing in another part of the zone, and Muirnan arrived late and had to just stay near and entrance and be left out of the fun. Yobun was PLD62/RDM31, Kiki PLD/RDM, and Grym THF/WHM. We fought things for maybe 2.5 hours, but only got 3 papers. Muirnan will need to try again. Best bonus - Muirnan found a treasure chest and we all got over 2K gil from it! No deaths or close calls even, so it was kind of fun. Yobun was trying to tank without provoke, but would usually lose hate if Grym used SAnTA+backhand blow on to me (usually did over 500 damage, and even over 600 once. Good for Kiki's evasion and shield skillups, and got a few magic skillups as well.

Leveling: Kiki's Dark Knight gets to 34 (Garlaige/Altepa)

Being in a static party really spoils a person.

I decided that I would try to get a level or two on Kiki's Dark Knight on Sunday (was Level 32, at 360/6000). So I spent an hour shuffling gear and food between Kiki and the mules, as well as borrowing Grymalkyn's crossbow and Merc Captains belt, and settled in for a long wait for a party. Surprisingly, I had an invite within an hour. Unfortunately, it was in Garlaige Citadel, but beggars can't be choosers, so I headed out as quickly as I could. The party seemed very promising. SMN had Fenrir, WHM had Erase, dual NIN/WAR tanks, SAM was a Rank 9 or 10 with a level 73 PLD. Things went quite well until a bat spawned on us when we were fighting another bat. The WHM, me, and one of the NINs went down. The SMN went to Jeuno to switch to her WHM and came back and raised us. At least I had enough EXP at that point that I didn't delevel.

So we continued on again, the SMN had hit 35 and then the SAM levelled and said he had to go after the next fight. Then I made a big boo-boo. A bat spawned while we were fighting a beetle. Someone mentioned it, and me, thinking they aggro'd (why do some aggro and others don't?) tried to sleep it. Our WHM ended up dying again. Poor Kiki is probably on everyone's blacklist in that group. Since two people were leaving anyway, we disbanded the party.

Spent about half an hour with my flag up just outside Garlaige Citadel. Got invited to a party with 2 other DRKs, a WHM, and a BLM. One of the NINs from my first party was supposed to join, but he DC'd. When he got back, he suddenly had to leave again. We finally found a PLD, and started fighting bats. Kiki had to pull. Did I ever mention I really hate Garlaige Citadel? Each fight completely drained the party. I got aggro'd by a beetle once when I was looking for a bat, and despite that beetle being easier for us to kill, the party wanted to keep up with the bats. One of the DRKs had to leave, and we replaced him with a handy PLD, and the original PLD switched to Great Sword (unlevelled, so that was a mistake). Our WHM died once or twice, and the new PLD died as well.  

The party wasn't making any progress, and no one seemed to want to go elsewhere (I brought up Eastern Altepa after the first fight), but finally the WHM and BLM decided to mutiny and asked me to come along. So we went to Jeuno, picked up a war/thf, a sam/war, and a pld/war, and headed off to Altepa. Things went much better there, despite lots of AFKs and BRBs. Our poor little Taru PLD had connection issues, and those contributed to his dying twice. We fought mostly beetles, but took on a few dhalmels as well. It was a good group, and we worked well together. Nice skillchains and magic bursts (unlike the three DRK party, where the leader said skill chains were a waste of time and MP).

I ended the day after about 8 hours of "levelling", with about 14000 more EXP on my DRK than I started out with, several thousand of exp into level 34 now.

Crafting: More Broken Rods

Moat carp: 2,457/10,000 (24.57%)

I got Kiki's woodworking up to 53. Levelled it to 50 on broken Fastwater Rods, which was a pretty slow process until I headed to the Lake in East Saru - broke rods quite fast there. It took about 18 repairs to get the 1.0 skillups I needed. Then I started in on scorpion arrows. I had a lot of breaks at first, but things improved each time I levelled up. Fortunately arrows are going for so much on the AH in Jeuno that I still made a profit, even with all the breakage. I know that won't be the case when I have to start in on Demon Arrows.

Crafting: Breaking Rods

moat carp count: 2295/10000

I've been working on Kiki's woodworking the past few days, and have it up to 49 now. Arrows are very good for levelling on, since I tend to at least break-even on them. I've also started to get about 50% HQs on arrowwood lumber, with a lot of HQ2 and even a few HQ3, which is really nice. I probably could make decent gil just making arrowwood lumber. It can cost as little as 361 to make a stack, and at most 1500. I suppose it's not the quickest way to wealth, though it's certainly easy.

Horn arrows cap at 49, and the next good ones are the scorpion arrows. However, they cap at 59, and I would probably fail a lot if I started trying those now. I decided that I can try repairing fastwater rods (cap 52) for awhile, so I bought a stack of light crystals and a broken rod, got 2 more rods out of storage, and started fishing in Northern San d'Oria to try to break them. I used 4 stacks of little worms and only broke my rods 3 times. At least I caught some moat carp. I got .4 skillups on 4 synths, so it seems pretty promising. This morning, I headed out to East Ronfaure to see if I'd have better "luck" breaking my rods there. I was able to break two rods with one stack of little worms, but didn't get any skillups on the repairs (it was light day, waxing crescent I think). It's not the cheapest of bridge synths, with the light crystals running about 5K a stack, but the scorpion arrows might be worse until I get a few levels higher.

Missions: Magicite for Elboron

A few nights ago, Elboron logged in and didn't have any concrete plans for the evening. Grym and Kiki suggested a few things, and it was decided that they should get Elboron's Magicite from Beadeaux and Davoi, and maybe even Castle Oztroja. Emith heard of the plan, and joined in as well. So we all met in Jeuno, Grym as WHM36/NIN18, Kiki as PLD51/RDM25, Emith as BLM58/WHM29, and Elboron as WHM30/BLM15, so he could use Sneak and Invisible on himself.

Grym gave us a Teleport-Dem, we grabbed chocobos and rode to Beadeaux. It was a quick trip into the Qulon Dome area, with just Elboron keeping himself sneaked. He got his magicite and cutscene, and Grym cast Teleport-Holla to get us out of there.

Another chocobo to Davoi, and we had a really easy time getting to the Wall of Dark Arts - someone had been killing all of the Orcs. However, Elboron couldn't get through. He hadn't picked up the Davoi Charm or the Yagudo Torch yet from Jeuno, just the Beadeaux key items. So Grym took us back to the Holla Crag, and Emith sent Elboron back to Jeuno with Warp II. We met a little while later back at the entrance to Davoi.  

This time things didn't go so smoothly. Elboron ran up ahead and took a wrong turn, got aggro'd by some bats, and we weren't able to save him. If I had subbed /war and had been able to provoke, it might have been OK. So we killed the nearby mobs, and Grym raised Elboron. We headed back to the Wall of the Dark Arts, and there was an Orc a bit too close to the door. Elboron saw Emith and Grym drop their invis and go through the door, and he figured it was safe, but I think the Orc was watching more closely by then. Elboron was still weakened, and was down in one or two shots. Again, if I had provoke, I might have been able to save him, since I was still out there with him and saw that it might aggro him. We killed the Orc, and Grym raised Elboron again. Another Orc started to attack us, but someone else grabbed it off of us. We headed into Monastic Cavern and Elboron got his Davoi magicite and the next cutscene.

We were a bit subdued by Elboron's two deaths, but thought that it was a good opportunity to get Elboron to Rank 5, so we decided to push on to Castle Oztroja. Since it's such a long walk through the Castle to the Altar Room for the magicite, and at 51 the bats would not aggro, Grym and Kiki had Emith D2 them back to Windurst, where Grym switched to THF51/WHM25, and Kiki to PLD51/WAR25. Our plan was to kill all the bats so Elboron just had to worry about invisible for the Yagudos.

We got to the door on the main level without incident, when suddenly an enormous train of Yagudos started bursting through the door, hot on the heels of some hapless idiot. I'm pretty sure some checked as IT to Kiki, but I know I definitely saw a VT. The four of us huddled in the corner near the door, keeping ourselves invisible, hoping they would not notice us. When they started heading back to their spots, we slipped back the other way and south a bit to hide in a nearby hallway until they all were gone again. It seemed like the train had every Yag in the whole place in it.

We continued to make our way deep into the Castle, and really didn't have too much troubles. We started running into some EP Yags for Grym and Kiki, and fought quite a few. When we got pretty close to the Altar Room, we opted to use invisible to get past them. The two guard Yagudos at the torch door both were EP, so Emith grabbed one and Grym and Kiki fought the other. We all got the torches lit without incident, and got past the final two Yags and into the Altar Room. Hurray! Elbo got his magicite and cutscene and was ready to head back to Jeuno to complete the Mission. Emith sent us all home, our goal for the evening accomplished.

Missions: The Static hits Promyvion-Dem

On Friday night, our static hit Promyvion-Dem, back with our original six. We used this line-up:

Grymalkyn THF/RNG
Manon RNG/WAR
Locmari SMN/WHM
Emith BLM/WHM
Elboron WHM/BLM
Tsakiki WAR/MNK

I picked WAR/MNK for this, since it's easiest to keep hate this way at level 30, and there are no need for shadows in Dem. We had 6 Psychoanima, 5 Hysteroanima, and 5 Terroanima, so we were well prepared for the boss. I still think this is the baby promyvion, but it's certainly great to get people used to the process of getting through these safely.  

We had minimal aggro on the way to the spire, and the Memory Recepticles posed little problem, though they did get progressively harder to fight. The boss fight was really very easy. Emith and Kiki both used their two hours, but no one else did. I really liked the way we did it. We started out using our Psychoanimas at 30 second intervals. This meant the boss hardly hit me at all, since it was intimidated nearly constantly. When the boss got to 50% HP, we switched to Hysteroanima. It simply couldn't do any special attacks. We never got any offspring and we never needed to use the Terro. Hurray!

I hope the next two go as well, but I'm still scared of them.

Missions: Distant Beliefs (CoP 2-3)

Kiki headed into Phomiuna Aqueducts with 13 others in ClanBEB for Promathia Mission 2-3 on Friday night. It was quite the adventure, and a lot of fun. It took a long time getting through the aqueducts to the location of the minotaur. There were huge spiders that don't aggro, bats and pugils, which may or may not aggro, Stegotaurs, which have true sight, and Fomors, which sound aggro, but will have true sight (sound?) if you've killed enough of them. Everyone was kept sneaked, which was a bit of a time consuming process, and only had to fight Stegotaurs and a few Fomor that we chose to fight (got two rare/ex subligar drops for the new Brigid quest - Yobun got one good for BRD/RDM, and Kiki got one good for PLD).

The Taurus types (stegotaur and minotaurs) have some nasty attacks, the worst being Mortal Ray, which causes Doom. Doom gives you 10 seconds and then you're dead. Holy Water and Cursna may cure it, but when Yobun got Doomed, he spammed 3 holy waters and had cursna cast on him four times, and he still died. Sasukeosiris got Doomed on another fight, and died as well. It's best to try to avoid doom, which means the tank has to face away from the mob, and everyone else tries to be behind (and not pull hate). We had 2 WHM, 2 RDM, 1 SMN, 2 BLM, 2 PLD, 2 MNK, 1 RNG, 1 THF, 1 SAM. Yobun was the main tank, and Kiki didn't really tank much, but did when we fought the NM Tres Duendes, three bats with a Tarutaru pet called Duendes' Amoroso. Yobun tanked the bats, while Kiki tanked the Taru. It was very odd fighting another Taru. The NM can drop a really nice ranged attack dagger, but didn't for us.

The Minotaur fight itself was fairly straightforward, and actually easier than the NM bat fight. When we got close to the room with the Minotaur and it spotted us, we were all drawn in. This was great for Jabberwocky the SMN, who had arrived late and waited at the entrance until this point. If it weren't for the True Sight tauri along the way, it might be fun to send one person in to find the Minotaur and just have everyone else suddenly transported to the fight without needing to make their way through the dungeon.  

After the Minotaur fight, we had to continue through the Aqueducts to a library area, which is through a locked gate (opened thanks to our THF, Lucrezia), and finally get cutscene. We all headed back to Tavnazian Safehold (D2 please?) and saw a few more cutscenes. Several people decided to go back and hunt for more Fomor subligars, but I was running late for the ClanTen run on Promyvion-Dem, so I warped to San d'Oria for that.

Saturday morning Kiki headed back to Misareaux Coast for another cutscene and completed Mission 2-4. The next mission involves fighting wyverns in Riverne Site #A01 and a boss fight in Monarch Linn. Both of these are capped at level 40.