General: Weekly Jumble

Here are all the random things we've been up to in the past week that don't really merit full entries on their own.

Atop the Highest Mountains: Splinte is fast approaching 55 on her Warrior, and rounded up a few of us last week to help her out with Genkai 2, Maat's second limit challenge. This requires killing 3 NM creatures (the Boreal Hound, Tiger, and Couerl) in Xarcabard and retrieving a shard from behind them. We had Daden (WAR75/NIN37), Ryken (PLD69/WAR34), Itera (MNK68/RDM28), Grymalkyn (THF68/WHM34), Elboron (BRD68/WHM34), and Kiki (PLD68/RDM34) helping out young Splinte (WAR53/NIN26). I was planning on letting Daden do most of the tanking, but Grym's 1600 damage SATA+Dancing Edge on me meant I got to tank for most of the fight with the Hound. Stoneskin and Phalanx are great - I was a bit worried Flare was going to do me in, but it only hit for 200 damage. The fights were all pretty quick, and with both Elbo and Grym able to help with paralyna, even the AOE paralysis wasn't too big a deal. After we finished up, we headed to Castle Zvahl Baileys for some skillups and hoping for a coffer key for Splinte's AF as well, but never got the key.

Moon Reading: We've been doing the easy parts for Windurst Mission 9-2, and are now ready for the the final burning circle fight, but I'll cover those in detail when we actually complete the mission. It mostly involved running around to a lot of places for some cutscenes and key items. The fight will be much more challenging.

An Odd Tarutaru: One day, we were making use of the Outpost Teleport service in Port Windurst, and while standing near the NPC Rottata, a WHM31/SMN15 kept running back and forth between the zone and the fishing guild. We guessed he was probably doing the Bastore Sardine quest to raise his fame, possible for his mini-tuning fork avatar battles. As he ran to and fro, he kept using /stare and /check on people, so I /stared back. He /checked me, sent a /tell "!!!" and then tried to trade with me. I refused, he insisted, so I opened a trade window with him and he wanted to give me 6,050 gil. I cancelled and shook my head, but he insisted (Present), so I took it. I thanked him, but am perplexed as to why he felt it necessary to give me a present of gil. Maybe he figured I needed it after buying my Byrnie. /laugh So I tried to think of something I could give back to him, and decided to try to make a signed Solid Wand (level 32, good for WHM, BLM, RDM, and SMN, but most useful for BLM and RDM). I did just that, but have since seen him shouting (and posting on Allakhazam) for help with avatar fights as a SMN20, so maybe some other gift would be more appropriate. We "spoke" only in emotes and using the auto-translator, but after seeing his shouts and posts, he's definitely an English speaker. Then again, he was offering 100K for each helper for his avatar fights, so I'm not sure a token gift from me would make much difference to his character.

Fishing Guild Points: We fished up our limit of Monke-Onke on Friday night, and Grym went out on Saturday to catch our limit of Red Terrapin, and those brought us over the 100,000 guild points we need for our Fishing Aprons. Hurray! Unfortunately, we can't get those until we reach Fishing skill level 68 (I'm not yet 53, and Grym is under 51). At the rate we get skillups, that will be a long long time from now. In the meantime, we'll continue to turn in stockpiled fish should they come up as GP fish, and use the excess GP to buy the occasional Robber Rig.

Wild Card: Both Elboron and Grymalkyn needed coffer keys in Toraimarai Canal for the Wild Card quest (part of the Star Onion Brigade quests), so we headed in there and fought bats and skeltons for less than an hour and got the two keys we needed. I really love having stoneskin now as a PLD/RDM. And spirit taker's great as well. They both were able to find their coffers and will be able to pick up the next quest, The Promise.

Recluse Spiders: For The Promise quest, we need to get a rare/ex drop of Shoalweed from Recluse Spiders in Kuftal Tunnel, so we thought the three of us would head there to do just that. Unfortunately, it seems everyone on Lakshmi was in there with their NPCs farming spider webs. We decided to leave, but at least Grymalkyn was able to find a treasure coffer and finally get her map.

Shaman's Cloak: Having been stymied in Kuftal, we thought we'd head to Quicksand Caves and see if maybe Kiki could get the Shaman's Cloak she covets. There was a RDM74 soloing Centurio X-I, so we watched him kill it and went on our merry way.

Labyrinth of Onzozo: Next, we decided we'd go kill chest key droppers in the Labyrinth of Onzozo and get maps for the three of us. Since the place was empty, Kiki wanted to see if we could get Mysticmaker Profblix as well for the chance at a Moldavite Earring. We managed to get the three keys and chests we needed, though while we were looking for one of the chests we had a small aggro problem and since the three of us were scattered throughout the Labyrinth, it took awhile to quell the problem, but we survived. During this time, a RDM showed up to camp Mysticmaker as well, but when he popped in front of me, I got the claim. So Kiki's now officially O/1 on her Moldavite Earring.

Temple of Uggalepih: Saturday night, five of us headed to the Temple of Uggalepih. Itera and Wendell both wanted to get a Paintbrush of Souls and an Unlit Lantern for Zilart Mission 4, while Wendell, Grym, Elbo, and Kiki needed to get a key to get into a room for a cutscene for Windurst Mission 9-2. We had a fun time killing the Tonberries (stoneskin blocks Everyone's Grudge, but doesn't seem to block Throat Stab), and it didn't take too long to get the 3 keys. We headed to the outside of the temple and got two unlit lanterns from two Tonberry Jinxers, and headed back into the Temple to get our mission cutscene. With a bit of an aggro problem, we had Wendell escape us after we got our key items. While we were farming for our keys, we got a set of giant fish bones. Kiki added those to her new collection of items for the Opo-Opo Crown quest.