Leveling: Welcome to the Grind (Bibiki Bay 71)

The LLS headed back to Bibiki Bay Sunday evening. When we left Jeuno, it looked like Bibiki was practically deserted, but by the time we got there, there were several other parties moving in as well. We ended up at the same camp as ther previous week, right about the Hobgoblin Angler beach. We spent about two and a half hours killing Hobgoblins, mixing in the bunny and the eft to fill out the chains (usually in the middle though, saving a higher-point goblin for the chain #5).

It was a bit dull, but we're making progress. Yobun hit 71, Wendell was 69, the rest of us were 71. We weren't able to exp on Monday night - Yobun was "stuck" while zoning, and the GMs couldn't help him. Every time he zoned, he'd get disconnected, and had a really hard time getting back into the game. So the five of us opted to do the Crawlers Nest escort quest. Olavia took the hardest path, down into the coffer key mob area, so we actually did get some exp after all. Then we headed to Davoi to get Wendell a tetimony for his Aht Urhgan ferry boarding pass. Hopefully this coming weekend we'll be able to find a camp somewhere in the new regions, just for some excitement.

Our exp session on Sunday was my first since the update and the new enhancements to Paladin: Shield Mastery and Auto Refresh. I did't really notice a huge improvement in my shield use, but I usually seemed to end up fighting in a small bush in our camp, and couldn't really see my character all that well, so I didn't notice if Kiki's shield was coming up more than usual. I did seem to be getting hit for less though, so it probably made a difference. On the other hand, Auto Refresh was much more significant than I had anticipated. That extra 1 mp every second stacked on top of double ballad from Elboron left me with more MP than I'm used to. I used less juice than usual, and only had to sit on my butt once, after we'd had a link. Almost makes me wonder why I've invested in various items for +mp regen while healing (dark staff, lord's sabatons, hierarch belt). :-)

Wendell is very jealous. It's bad enough that my (taru) PLD's base MP is higher than his (galka) WHM's, but then for me to get Auto Refresh is just icing on the cake. Please note that he's got nearly twice as much MP as me when we're actually EXPing, as he wears oodles of +MP gear and food, while I have some MP->HP gear, and he manages his MP better than most Taru WHMs I've partied with.

General: It's a Blue World

Of the three new jobs in the expansion, Corsair, Puppetmaster and Blue Mage, Blue Mage is the one I was most interested in playing around with sooner rather than later. I do want to level Puppetmaster at some point (perhaps when Wamoura Cocoons are a bit cheaper), and though Corsair doesn't yet hold any appeal for me, that may change. I am however, very interested in seeing how BLU works. Back when I was obsessively playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, one of my challenges was to get my Blue Mage character to learn all the spells he was able to, and though I didn't really use that job much in my normal play, it was a lot of fun. I'd really like to see how the FFXI BLU works. It could actually prove to be a very useful subjob for my PLD when we're not exp'ing, and WAR/BLU might even become an accepted tank. Time will tell. I think at the lower levels, BLU/WAR will be a decent tank, but they can't wear the best tanking armor, which will probably limit their effectiveness.

To unlock the Blue Mage job, you need to complete the quest An Empty Vessel, started with Waoud in Aht Urhgan Whitegate. He appears to be a fortune teller, and asks you a series of questions. Depending on how you answer, he'll either take 1000 gil and tell you that you should go harvesting or fishing, or he'll ask you to bring him an item from the "Middle Lands". Kiki got lucky and got the quest her first time through. It took Grymalkyn 4 or 5 tries, and since you can only try once every game day, it was a slow process.

Waoud asked Kiki for a Siren's Tear, and asked Grymalkyn for Sun Sand, so they both picked up the item they needed while running around doing other things. Elboron later was also asked for Sun Sand. When we brought our items back to Waoud, he said it wasn't really for him, but asked us to take it to someone else in Bhaflau Thickets. We made our way through the Thickes and into the Aydeewa Subterrane, where we found a fountain and met with one of the Immortals. We had apparently passed a test of some sort, and were transported back to Whitegate. We had obtained the Mark of Zahak, and could now become Blue Mages.

Grym and Kiki headed to San d'Oria, and ventured into East Ronfaure as BLU1/MNK1 and BLU1/WHM1, wearing little more than their Federation Aketons. Our goal was to learn Foot Kick from the rabbits and Sandspin from the worms. We would engage a rabbit or worm, bring it down to a sliver of HP with our bare fists, then turn our back on it and let it pummel us to build its TP and use a special move. More often than not, the bunnies and worms would use their TP on moves we cannot learn, but eventually Kiki learned Foot Kick. This helped speed the process, since the mobs get 10% TP from us using abilities on them, so Kiki would Foot Kick the mob as much as she could. We managed to get to level 2 and we learned both Foot Kick and Sandspin.

Later, we ventured out into East Sarutabaruta, both of us as BLU2/WHM1. Here we were targetting bees and mandragoras for Pollen and Wild Oats. It looks pretty funny to see a Mithra and Tarutaru, bare fists up, ready to hit, standing with their backs to an angry bee or mandragora, spamming it with Foot Kick, then standing there getting hit and cureing themselves (or later, using Pollen) to heal themselves waiting for the mob to use its special move. It was especially funny when one of the Tiny Mandragoras kept using Photosynthesis, and its Regen recovered HP faster than we could knock it off with our bare fists, since we'd run out of MP and couldn't use our Blue Mage. We ended up having one of us disengage and /heal while the other tried to keep the mandy occupied. I remembered I had melon juice as well, so drank one of those. We finally managed to kill that Mandragora after about 15 minutes, but didn't learn anything from it. We did however attract the attention of a low level SMN, who probably couldn't figure out what the hell we were doing. He even followed us to watch us fight our next mob. We both got to learn Pollen and Wild Oats before we hit level 4, but continued to kill things to get our level.

Our next time out as BLU, we decided to head to Bastok to try to learn Sprout Smack. This time we picked up a couple of bronze swords from the weapon shop, as it was getting riskier to rely on our bare hands to kill the mobs. Getting Sprout Smack took us over two hours (some of that travel time getting back from our home point in Whitegate after getting aggro'd by a Quadav when we were a bit low on hp and mp), but we finally both got it. The saplings were really reluctant to use that move, and seemed to greatly prefer Slumber Powder and Sprout Spin, which didn't do us much good. Since Kiki's WHM is only level 1, I went as BLU/BLM, for the extra MP boost. Kiki learned Sprout Smack relatively early in our attempts, but we'd pretty much resigned ourselves to Grym not getting it until later, since it was time to head back to our moghouses for the night. We'd decided to fight the saplings we'd see on our way back to Port Bastok, and one of them used Sprout Smack. Grym used her BLU two hour (Azure Lore) before we finished the sapling off, and I don't know if that made a difference or not, but she learned Sprout Smack!

We're pretty close to level 6, and will head back to the San d'Oria area next to try to learn Power Attack from the beetles, Queasyshroom from the funguars, and Metallic Body from the crabs.

One of the really interesting things about Blue Mage is that you do not have access to all of your spells. You actually have to pick and choose, and have a limited number of Blue Magic spell slots and Blue Magic points (these both increase as you level). Each spell takes up a certain number of Blue Magic points. This is SE's way of keeping BLU from being able to do everything at all times, and I like the concept so far. Setting certain spells together also gives you job traits, such as a Killer trait (Kiki has Beast Killer with both Wild Oats and Sprout Smack set - both are plantoid abilities and beasts are weak to plants), or Auto Regen, and so on. The spells also bestow other attributes just from having them set, such as +1 VIT from setting Sandspin. One thing somewhat annoying about this is that when you change your job to BLU, it doesn't reset your spells the way you had them when you were last BLU, so you have to set them all. This sort of customization is a very interesting change from the other jobs, and I'm looking forward to playing around with the combinations as we continue through the levels. Just after changing the spell list, you have to wait 1 minute to be able to access any of your Blue Magic, so it's not too convenient to switch things on the fly in an emergency, but it would be very handy in an exp party to be able to modify what you can do as you fight different mob types, or get replacements and need to fill a slightly different role.

General: Adventures in Aht Urhgan

We did so many different things over the weekend, both in the new areas and back in the "old world", that I'd rather just write one big rambling entry here, instead of breaking it down into individual stories.

They've really added an enormous amount of content to the game, and they've really changed it from the way they did Chains of Promathia. With that expansion, you faced great challenges to be able to access new areas and new content, which means it took (is taking) a great deal of time to even scratch the surface. So even though it was released in September 2004, there are still areas I haven't been able to go to yet. With the Treasures of Aht Urhgan, it seems like it's all there now, readily available (with a few very minor hoops to jump through) to everyone. However, the new areas don't seem to have any monsters that are too weak to be worthwhile to a level 75, so it's a bit limited by a player's level. I probably wouldn't even recommend anyone get it unless they have a job over 60, though there are Assault missions at level 50.

Having it all there, ready to explore now, is actually a bit overwhelming. I found that by trying to do too many things on Saturday afternoon, I actually wanted to go back to the "old world" to catch my breath. One of the oddest things I noticed was that I felt at times I was playing a different game. Having played FFXI literally every day with a couple minor exceptions for over two years now, some of the new areas, new monsters, different monster behaviors, new quests and missions, just seemed different enough to feel like a different game. It was a bit surreal.

We started off Saturday morning trying to get Grymalkyn's ranger leveled a bit. Grym wants to do the Ouryu fight as THF/RNG, and with the 50 level cap on the fight, her RNG needs to be 25, and was at 21. We headed off to the East Altepa end of Korroloka Tunnel with Kiki's RDM60 for some, ahem, assistance, and Grym ate her food, used her Empress band, and killed the first worm for 300 points. Then we realized that the tunnel was absolutely full of parties and soloers. Yes, we'd forgotten that Saturday morning for us is Saturday evening prime time for the Japanese players, and they seem to "get" Korroloka Tunnel better than most North Americans. So we headed to Qufim instead, and Grym got to level 22. The worms in Qufim took a bit longer to kill, but weren't much of a problem for her and she chained better than a solo player should be able to, even with a RDM60 tossing some cures her way.

Elboron showed up, so we switched back to our normal PLD71/THF71/BRD71 trio and headed off to Mhaura to catch the ferry back to Aht Urhgan. This trip was a bit more exciting than our first the other night. Someone fished up a Gugru Orobon (NM fish) and a bunch of people formed an alliance and took care of it. We saw a whale jumping out of the water off the side of the boat. Since the Bibiki Bay ferry has dolphins that swim alongside, I was happy to see they added something for this ride as well.

We ran around talking to NPCs and picking up quests, and have completed a few, with tangible rewards:

Keeping Notes (reward: moghouse exit)
Arts and Crafts (reward: Imperial Bronze Piece)
An Empty Vessel (reward: Blue Mage job, title: Bearer of the Mark of Zahak)
Olduum (reward: Olduum Ring, level 60, enchantment Teleport Wajaom Woodlands, recharge 20 hours)
Got It All (reward: Bibiki Seashell, level 60 ammo, VIT+4)
The Prankster (reward: map of Caedarva Mire)
Delivering the Goods (reward: 3 Imperial Bronze Pieces)

Most of these simply involved running around in town, but for An Empty Vessel, we did have to venture into Aydeewa Subterrane, and it was back to the same spot to dig up an item for the Olduum quest. The outdoor areas in the expansion are just so lush, even on the PS2. They must be stunning on a good PC setup.

The Missions for the Treasures of Aht Urhgan are really just a series of cutscenes. The only dangerous one is the second mission, Immortal Sentries, which requires you to deliver supplies to one of the assault staging points. As of last night, we've already completed through the seventh mission, and there's only one more to go (until they add more to the game):

Immortal Sentries (title: Private Second Class)
President Salaheem
Knight of Gold
Confessions of Royalty
Easterly Winds
Westerly Winds (title: Agent of the Allied Forces)

Our first trek into the wilds outside the city was for the BLU quest. We made our way through Bhaflau Thickets to the underground area, keeping sneak and invisible up, hoping we wouldn't run into any of the fleas we'd heard people talking about. We made it safely to the spot we needed to get to for our cutscene, and were sent back to the city.

We had seen the excavation points near the BLU quest cavern, and decided to try to complete the Olduum quest, so we grabbed some pickaxes and headed back, with Kiki as RDM60/BLM30 for escape this time. The three of us got the key item we needed and headed back to town to get our thunder ring. Kiki switched back to PLD71/RDM35 and we headed out to the Leypoint in Wajaom Woodlands to complete the quest. I was so surprised that it would be such an easy quest to get the teleport ring. I'm not sure how much we'll actually use it, since it drops you in the middle of the huge woods, but it should be faster than taking the boat from Mhaura, and with a mage (sub)job, it should be safe enough walking to town. And having it recharge every 20 hours means it will be good forever.

Since we were already more than what looked like halfway to the Halvung Staging area, we headed through Halvung to Mount Zhayolm to deliver our supplies. It was fun sneaking past new monsters we'd never seen, hoping they wouldn't notice us through sneak and invisible, and we safely made it to the staging area. Once there, we were able to "attune" ourselves to the Runic Portal, for an easy trip back to Chamber of Passage in Whitegate. Now we just have to get to all the other Staging areas to unlock those portals as well, and we'll be all set for any of the Assault Missions.

We decided to head to Nashmau and explore around there, and hopefully unlock COR and PUP as well, so we hopped on the boat and made our way over. Nashmau is filled with Qiqirn NPCs, and their names are all confusingly similar, which will make it tough to keep them straight for the different quests. I wasn't going to include this screenshot from Nashmau, but since Halifirien used the same spot for his own photo opportunity, I thought it would be funny.

Our first trek into Caedarva Mire was in an attempt to reach the Azouph Staging area. We ran into a clump of true sight Heraldic Imps that checked IT++ for us at level 71, and despite our careful attempt to get around them, Grym was spotted first. I think part of our problem was that it was hard to tell which way they were facing in the darkness. Thinking Elboron was still safe behind us, Grym hit perfect dodge and warped out, I flashed it and used invincible and used my instant warp scroll just as Elbo tried to sleep it. Death 1 for Elbo.

Back in Whitegate, we did some other stuff, then decided to go back again and try to do the PUP and COR quest, hoping we wouldn't run into the Heraldic Imps again. This time, we all headed into the Mire with our Treat Staff IIs equiped. We got near a tunnel we had to pass through, and there were 5 imps hovering around. We nearly made it past them, but one spotted Elbo. Grym again hit perfect dodge and warped, I flashed the imp to get it off of Elbo and used invincible and waited a few moments before warping, but Elboron had used his lullaby macro, swapping in his Apollo's Staff and losing the timer on his Treat Staff II. Death 2 for Elbo. :-( I really hate Heraldic Imps. We vowed to not return until we at least got the map for the area.

At this point, Grym and Kiki headed back to a now-empty Korroloka Tunnel and quickly got Grym's Ranger another level. Only two more to reach the goal of 25. Elboron went to Windurst to work on leveling BLU a bit.

A bunch of the other people in the linkshell were planning to fight the NM flea for The Prankster quest, which rewards you with a map of the Mire, so we headed back to Whitegate to join in on the fun. With an alliance of 10 level 71-75s, that poor flea didn't have a chance, but a PLD+WHM duo had fought it right before us, and it was pretty impressive to see how the flea just kept smacking that PLD. We got aggro from a couple Fomor in the Thickets - they're much better dressed than their less fortunate relatives back in Tavnazia.

After that, some of us continued on to Halvung to try to find the "cockroaches" that drop a cocoon that's in rare supply and needed for all the Puppetmasters to upgrade their Automoton frames at level 10. We fought a few things along the way rather than try to sneak/invis, since there were enough of us to handle aggro. One of the amusing things is that the crawlers in the new area sleep at night, and have ZZZZZs floating up from their heads. I was surprised that a Qiqirn in Halvung didn't aggro us.

We finally found a few of the Wamouracampa, but they were pretty stingy with their cocoons, and we only got one. We had to fight several Friar's Lanterns, which was detrimental to several peoples' exp. I think we ended up with 6 deaths while we were there, but Diasuke has Raise III, so it wasn't too painful for those who died. The cocoons sell at the cloth guild for less than 800, but they seem to have only 3 up per game day, and people have been camping the guild to sell the cocoons on the AH from 250k to 1 million gil. I think I'm going to wait awhile before leveling PUP (of course, not having it unlocked yet makes that even easier).

Sunday, Grym and Kiki spent some time leveling BLU, but I think I'll write up our adventures in blue as a seperate entry.

I was a bit worried about traveling back and forth to Aht Urhgan, but I think I'm happy with the "solution". I'm keeping my home point in Al Zahbi. When I want to get back to the old world, depending on where I'm going, I can either get a free "warp" from the Taru near the moghouse to somewhere near Jeuno (I've ended up on top of a gate in Rolanberry, on a rock in Qufim, on a rock in Sauromogue, and Grym's even been sent to Ru'Lude Gardens), or Grym can teleport us to Altepa or Xarcabard or Mea and we can quickly get to an outpost to get back to Windurst and our Mog Storage and the OP teleport network. And if there comes a time that we really need to reset our home point somewhere (while leveling BLU perhaps), we can use our Olduum rings to get back to Wajaom Woodlands and Al Zahbi. Or we can decide to take the ferry and do some fishing.

Chocobo prices at the Mea crag were running over 7k on the weekend. The new city is so popular that they've sent out system messages telling people to disperse from the area (Whitegate), or risk being forcibly moved. There were over 700 people in the zone when I saw that message. The lag is terrible, the shouts are annoying (I avoided Lower Jeuno as much as possible to get away from both of those), but for now at least, Al Zahbi is a bit quieter than Whitegate. I noticed the server population was running over 4000 for most of the weekend. I haven't seen those sorts of numbers for months. It typically runs closer to 3k during JP prime time, 2K in NA prime time. So it seems that everyone's checking out the new stuff. A guy on my friendslist who left Lakshmi for Hades ages ago, and hasn't played in about a year seems to have started playing again this past weekend. I think there's enough new and different with this expansion to tempt people back, but whether it holds peoples' interest remains to be seen.

General: Just because it's been out for over 18 months...

... doesn't mean it's not still new for us.

Friday night, rather than let everyone explore the new areas, our CoP static headed to Riverne Site #A01 to farm hippogryph tail feathers, and to try the Fire in the Sky ENM as long as we were there. I opted to farm in A01 rather than B01, which is indeed new to us, since the ENM is a level 40 cap, and I didn't think we'd want extra gear to farm at a 50 cap and switch to 40 cap gear for the ENM. We went with Kiki PLD, Splinte NIN, Grym THF, Elboron BRD, Wendell WHM, and Itera MNK.

We need to get the hippogryph tailfeathers so that we can have mistmelts for our next fight in CoP, against Ouryu in Mission 4-2. Ouryu is a dragon that likes to fly around, and he's much more deadly while airborne. The mistmelts force him back to the ground again.

It took us maybe two hours to get the dozen tailfeathers I thought we needed (we'll have enough to get 8 mistmelts with feathers Elbo and Itera already had), but it was fun, and we got a decent chunk of exp while we were at it. I think the level 71s ended up with about 2.5k, and Splinte's level 40 NIN did much better. On one chain, where Kiki got 130 points, Splinte got 260. I'm not sure why they gave such a penalty to high levels in the level capped zones, but I understand there's no penalty for the 75s working on merits rather than experience points. One bad thing to using level capped zones for exp would be the hit you'd take on skills development - everything's capped for me at 40, so no skill gain. So I guess it's not a good idea to exp in level capped areas after all.

We fought hippogryphs as we made our way towards Monarch Linn, camping for awhile in a spot with 3 Cloud Hippogryphs, and camping finally on the second to last island before Monarch Linn, which is through an unstable displacement, but we knew had three or four of the Cloud Hippogryphs on it. Both Splinte and Wendell ended up leveling, Splinte to NIN41 and Wendell to WHM69, so that was a nice bonus.

After we got the feathers we needed, we headed into Monarch Linn and went in to face Razon, a cluster NM. We'd fought it 4 times last summer, 3 times successful, 1 not so much. One of the possible rewards for winning is a Woodsman Ring, a nice level 40 accuracy ring that goes for 1.5-2 million gil. Razon is more resistant to physical damage than I had remembered, so Splinte's ninjitsu was doing most of the damage. We got it down to what looked like one hit from death, when it did its third self-destruct, blasting us out of the arena, and leaving us dead in a heap, having done 2038 damage to us with the blast. It was fun though, and with no EXP loss in ENMs, there was no downside. I think we could even try it as a threesome some day, with a NIN, WHM, and RDM.

General: The Treasures of Aht Urhgan

I finally managed to get my hands on two copies of the PS2 version of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion yesterday. I had pre-ordered from Amazon, but when it was still showing as "not yet shipped" on Thursday morning, and it had been released on Tuesday, I called an EB Games less than a mile from work. They had just got their PS2 copies and were in the process of seeing how many they had left over after their pre-orders were taken care of, and told me to call back in 30 minutes. I did so, and they had six left. It was lunchtime, so I hurried over to the store and bought two copies, then called my husband to tell him to cancel the Amazon order.

It took about two hours for our installations to complete, then we logged in and headed to Jeuno to turn in our testimonies for our boarding passes. We met up with Elboron in Jeuno, also in the process of getting ready to head to the new area. When the day changed, we talked to Faursel again and got our boarding pass, competing our first ToAU quest, The Road to Aht Urhgan.

We warped back to Windurst and used the OP teleport to get to Buburimu Penninsula and run to Mhaura. There were quite a few other adventures waiting for the next boat to Aht Urhgan, most of them seemed to be level 75. I think it's funny that I still feel like a "baby" adventurer at 71. I'll probably still feel that way at 75. The boat ride was uneventful, but it was pretty exciting to see the Al Zahbi/Aht Urhgan Whitegate skyline appear on the horizon.

It was already past my bedtime by the time we got off the boat in Aht Urhgan Whitegate, but I certainly couldn't simply log out and go to bed. We spent some time running around, talking to as many NPCs as we could. We bought all the maps from the vendor, picked up a bunch of quests, completed our first ToAU Mission (Land of Sacred Serpents, which was just a cutscene), and turned in our four invitations to Naja Salaheem for a new title (Wildcat Publicist) and a reward of an Imperial Mythril piece. Needing to get to bed, I checked Kiki into the quite luxurious rent-a-room in Whitegate and logged out for the night.

Since we're farming hippogryph feathers tonight in Cape Riverne in preparation for CoP 4-2, I won't get to explore any more until Saturday. They've sure added an awful lot of things to the game, and I'm really eager to unlock the new jobs, do lots of quests, get going on the missions, participate in Beseiged, and most of all, see what Assualt is like. There's really not a lot here for the under-50 crowd, but there's so much to do in the "old" game as well, that it really shouldn't be an issue for people.

My concern at the moment is travel. I would really like to have an easy way to get back and forth between Aht Urhgan and Windurst without needing to take the boat each time. With mog storage in Windurst, and the new mog locker in Aht Urhgan, I "need" to be able to access both with relative ease, unless I end up using the mog locker for things that are so Aht Urhgan-specific that I won't need them unless I'm there. Hopefully we'll discover easy two-way travel.

Quests: Quest Catch-Up

In Search of the Truth

As you progress in the Chains of Promathia missions, more quests are unlocked as well, so we picked this up this past weekend. You basically have to play detective and help solve a crime that's been committed in the Tavnazian Safehold. I really enjoy the CoP quest and mission cutscenes, and hope the new expansion upholds the same standards. The reward for this was a Gramary Cape, which doesn't really seem all that useful. However, an NPC was happy to pay us more for them than we could have got on the auction house.

Soul Searching

I was checking through my quest log the other day and didn't recognize this quest. It's another one of those "secret" quests that just pop up in your log durning Zilart Mission 5. All we had to do is examine the Cermet Headstone in the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah for a cutscene, and we obtained a Bat Earring, which may actually prove useful for some missions. With both equipped, you have +30 evasion while blinded, and people say that part of the Omega/Ultima fight in CoP can be done with a PLD tank if the PLD uses an evasion build for parts of the fight and a full damage build for other parts.

New title: Guider of Souls to the Sanctuary

The Promise

This Sunday, Elboron pointed out that there were only 15 people in Kuftal, so the three of us headed there to see if we could finally get to fight enough of the spiders to be able to get the shoalweed pieces we each needed for The Promise quest. This is the last in the Star Onion Brigade series of quests, and we needed to get a Shoalweed so that Chamama could make an Invisible Man sticker that would help Joker get away from Windurst.

We were able to get a shoalweed for each of us in less than an hour, and I hurried back to Windurst to complete the quest. I will miss the little SOBs, but it was nice to finally get my Promise Badge (Level 48, All Jobs, DEF:3, HP+10, MND+5).

Artifact Weapons

Now that Kiki, Grym, Elbo and Itera have another job at 40, it's time for the fun of the Artifact Weapon quests. Having level 70/71 jobs to use for the fights sure makes them pretty trivial, but they're kind of fun nevertheless.

Dark Legacy: Kiki headed to Bastok to talk to Raibaht in Cid's workshop in Bastok Metalworks, and he said if she helped track down an old book with the secrets of Darksteel smithing, he'd make it worth her while. So she headed downstairs to the Darksteel Forge and talked to Mighty Fist, who suggested she try some library. So she set off to Windurst and the Opistery, where she talked to Cochal-Monchal. He informed her that a Yagudo had taken the book, and she might be able to find him in Giddeus.

Knowing the Yagudos can't resist a good cherry, she picked one up from the vendor and headed out to Giddeus with Grym, stopping along the way to take her revenge on Tom Tit Tat, an evil Mandragora on the hill in West Sarutabaruta, who had killed her when she was a wee lass, nearly two years ago. Somehow revenge doesn't seem so sweet when you're a level 70 Paladin kicking a level 10 Mandy's butt. Getting a pair of Fruit Punches from him was a nice surprise though.

Anyway, back to the DRK AF1 story. We got to the area where people usually farm for Kazham Airship keys, cleared out a couple of Yagudos, and Kiki lured Vaa Huja the Erudite out from his cave with the Yagudo Cherry. We quickly killed him and Kiki took the book she found back to Bastok. Mighty Fist and Raibaht were thrilled to see her, and rewarded her with a Raven Scythe, with +2 STR and +2 INT. Kiki can't use it until level 43, but it looks like a pretty nice weapon from the stats.

20 In Pirate Years: For Grymalkyn's Ninja Artifact Weapons, a pair of Katanas, she first headed to Norg and then Bastok. We then headed to Eastern Altepa Desert and fought two spiders for her to get a Trick Box. The fight was very short with the two of us at level 70. Next time she plans on playing Ninja, she will head to Norg to give the guy the trick box and get the Katanas as her reward.

Messenger from Beyond: The quest for Elboron's White Mage Artifact Weapon started in San d'Oria. This past weekend, Elboron, Grym and Kiki headed to the "secret" beach in the Valkurm Dunes, as their now-level 71 jobs, and Elboron spawned Marchelute, an NM shadow, and we quickly killed him off, and Elboron got a Tavnazian Pass, which he was able to bring back to San d'Oria and obtain his weapon, the level 41 Blessed Hammer.

The Doorman: Finally, the other night, while heading deep into Davoi to get some testimonies just in case they really are an item that will get us a pass to Aht Urhgan, Itera, Elboron, Grym, and Kiki took care of the two NM orcs for Itera's Warrior Artifact Weapon quest. It took us longer to kill the 2 orcs than I would have thought it would take 4 level 71s, but they scarcely touched us, so it was an easy fight. Itera will get his Razor Axe the next time he heads to Bastok.

Leveling: LLS v. Hobgoblins (71)

We headed back to Bibiki Bay again on Sunday, and ended up camping on the cliff above the Hobgoblin Angler beach. Wendell reached 68, but Yobun still isn't quite yet 71. We did pretty well, chaining #5 almost every time on the eft, but we just couldn't manage a #6 on the bunny that was there as well.

We had a mishap towards the end of the evening. There were two hobgoblins near each other, and Grym pulled one, waiting to see if the other noticed. It didn't make a move, so he headed back to camp. On the way, another hobgoblin had just spawned, but he ran behind it, and paused to make sure it didn't notice him. It didn't, so he kept coming. We started in fighting the hobgoblin, and what seemed like ages later, the two other hobgoblins came tearing into our camp, intent on murdering Grymalkyn. Grym pulled away from the fight and used Hide just as Elboron used Lullaby on them. One wouldn't sleep, and we ended up with 4 of us dead. Grym and Yobun were able to stay alive and finish off the hobgoblin we'd been fighting.

As near as I can figure it, the gob that was standing near the one Grym pulled did indeed notice, but opted to cast a spell on itself rather than immediately start following. The gob in the tunnel on the way back to us didn't notice Grym, but when the other one came running through, it decided to join in as well. In any event, it was an unpleasant end to our leveling session. With the update maintenance on Monday, we only had the one session this week, but hopefully we'll get two sessions in this coming Sunday and Monday.

General: Update Musings

I've been very preoccupied with the new update and the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion this week, and am eager to get to the new areas and take a look around. We farmed some testimonies for Itera, Elbo, Grym, Xanther and Kiki last night, hoping that those are indeed one of the items to get the pass to travel to the new region.

Paladins got a couple boosts with the update. At level 25, we now have a job trait "Shield Mastery", which increases the amount of TP we get when we successfully block with our shields. This should help me get TP faster than I have been, and be able to weaponskill more often. People are reporting that the block rate seems to have been improved as well, so I'm eager to see the change in action when we exp next Sunday.

At level 35, Paladins gain "Auto Refresh", which means we get back 1 MP per tick, just like Summoners do. I have to admit that I'm not nearly as excited about this as a Galka or Elvaan Paladin might be (I have about 500 base MP, which would take a long time to refill at 1 mp/tick), but it is a really nice enhancement. I've read that some RDMs are using this as an excuse to not Refresh their PLD tanks anymore, which is a huge mistake.

Some of the new equipment looks pretty amazing, but I'm sure a lot of it's going to be made of unobtainium for players such as myself.

Missions: Darkness Named (CoP 3-5)

For CoP Mission 3-5, Darkness Named, we needed to defeat Diabolos in a level 40 capped fight in the Shrouded Maw, accessed through Pso'Xja. In order to reach the Shrouded Maw, we first needed to get a Pso'Xja pass from the Tenshodo by trading a cyan, gray, or magenta chip which can only be obtained from some monsters in Pso'Xja.

Wendell had already done this mission many months ago,and so already had his pass. I had a cyan chip that had been in my moghouse since March 2005, when we had an LS farming event in Pso'Xja, so we just needed to get four chips. We did most of our farming in the Pso'Xja Tower where Nue spawns, spread out over 4 evenings. There are 2 diremites that are very much too weak and 1 decent challenge diremite assaulter that we could target on the floor below and pull up to our level, so the camping was a bit slow.

Between spawns, we would kill the lizards and snowballs for skillups. One of the snowballs exploded on us, and hit Elboron for 825 damage, so we decided that maybe we should leave them alone. I don't quite understand how something that's over 25 levels below our level can do that much damage in one shot.

One morning, Grym and Kiki switched into their mage jobs and went to investigate the trip to the Shrouded Maw. That Pso'Xja tower is capped at level 40, so we were WHM40/BLM20 and RDM40/BLM20. The tower is just steps away from the Fauragandi outpost, which makes it so much easier to get to than some of the other CoP mission locations. We headed into the tower and spotted a bunch of mindgazers, which aggro to sound, so we cast sneak. A little further in, there was a snowball, but that one snowball is the only one along the way, and just the first two areas have mindgazers, so it is an easy trip. We used the directions from this thread at GamerSquare to help us navigate through Pso'Xja.

We got to the Shrouded Maw and entered the BC, getting the cutscene for the fight. It was a bit odd to just go in and run around up on the balcony, looking down on Diabolos. It helped lessen our jitters when we actually did the mission as well. After we'd done all we could - pointing and laughing at Diabolos from our safe spot - we warped home.

On Friday evening, our static set out to Beaucidine Glacier, and met up at the Pso'Xja tower. For this fight, we went as:

Wendell WHM40/BLM20
Elboron BRD40/WHM20
Splinte NIN40/WAR20
Itera MNK40/WAR20
Grymalkyn THF40/RNG20
Tsakiki DRK40/WAR20

We were well-stocked with hi-potions, juices, and au laits, and made our way without any trouble to the Shrouded Maw. There was another group there to fight Diabolos as well, and they had a WHM75 (Peterbon) standing by for raises in the event of a full wipe. It was Darkday when we arrived, so we waited for the day to change, and headed in to face Diabolos.

Our plan was to have Wendell and Elboron go to the upper right hand corner (we could see which tiles would be dropping), while the melee would be at the center of the bottom. We were all set up with stun abilities, and hoped to stun Nightmare. I had leveled DRK to 40 to be able to use Stun on Diabolos (I always planned to level it through AF, just might not have done it yet if not for this).

We started out with Elbo using Soul Voice and using Fowl Aubade on us, and Wendell kept barsleepra up as well, but Diabolos was pretty nasty. We got hit with a total of 5 Nightmares, none of which we managed to stun. For the first couple, we woke up really fast, but with all of the damage we'd taken, Wendell used a Curaga II, then a Cure III on Elboron, and Diabolos got really pissed off. So Wendell was dead, but we kept on fighting. One by one we died, mostly because of Nightmare's deadly Bio. Itera was the last one standing, and with his Hundred Fists, we actually got Diabolos down pretty far, especially considering how early we'd lost Wendell. I was really disappointed about how badly I sucked at stunning Nightmare, since that's what I was supposed to be doing. My macro just wasn't quick enough - I'd hit it as soon as I saw the Nightmare message, but I was asleep before casting the spell. I also missed a couple of the Nightmares while trying to do other things.

We fell into a heap outside the BC, and Peterbon, on standby for his friends, started using Raise III on us all. It was very handy that he was there, as Wendell's computer decided to blow up on him at that moment, and while we waited for him to install a new videocard and get back to the game, we discussed our options. We were extremely low on hi-potions, as we'd used so many on the first run, and we didn't have Elboron's or Itera's two hours. We decided to tweak our strategy a bit, try the fight a second time when Wendell returned, and if we failed again, we'd head to town to resupply and fight again when Elbo and Itera's two-hours were back. While we were waiting for our second run, the other party came out of the fight dead, raised and rested and went back in, and came out dead a second time.

So we headed back in, buffed up, and jumped down to face Diabolos a second time. This time, we had Itera voke first, and Grym was able to get a nice SATA on to Splinte to give him extra hate at the start, as well as do a good chunk of damage. Splinte pulled Diabolos over one square further to help get it away from Wendell and Elboron and hopefully they wouldn't get hit by nightmare. I moved close enough to hit Diabolos with my greataxe and brought up my spell menu, selected stun, and had the blue arrow over Diabolos, ready to hit X as soon as I saw the Nightmare message. At that point, I did nothing but watch for that message. As soon as I saw it, I hit X, Stun went off, and I stunned the first Nightmare. The fight progressed incredibly smoothly. Diabolos only tried Nightmare one more time, and I was able to stun that one as well. When my stun wasn't back up, I did cast one Absorb-AGI, and got in a Sturmwind, but I really focused this time, and actually stunning Nightmare helped a lot. At the end of the fight, Diabolos was spamming his attack that drops everyone's stats, sort of like the opposite of Fenrir's Ecliptic Howl, so we were a bit weak at the end, but I got to deliver the killing blow with a second Sturmwind. The fight was so easy the second time, it was almost as though we were facing Diabolos' kid brother instead. Everyone did a terrific job, and we're ready for Ouryu in Mission 4-2 now.

We headed to Jeuno to get our cutscene to complete the mission, then it was off to Tavnazia to get the cutscenes for Mission 4-1 and start Mission 4-2. At this point in the CoP mission line, we have several nice perks: access to the Jeuno Auction House from the Safehold, a delivery guy in the Safehold, and the ability to complete supply quests and have Outpost Teleport access to Tavnazia. Since Windurst controlled Tavnazia this past week, Elboron, Grym, and Kiki all did a supply quest, which will certainly make it easy to get to Tavnazia, and reduce the number of trips we need to take to Jeuno.

New titles: Dreambreaker, Transient Dreamer

General: Catch-All

Elbo 1, Maat 0:
This past weekend, Elboron beat Maat as a BRD70, on his first attempt. Congratulations Elbo! See his blog entry for full details.

Skillups and Farming:
Kiki needed to get her Greataxe and Scythe skill capped for her level 40 DRK, so dragged Grym's THF70 off for some skillups on Friday afternoon. We first headed to East Altepa and fought Dhalmels, then switched to spiders in West Altepa, but it was pretty slow. We ended up going to Misareaux Coast and fought Bigclaws for awhile. Greataxe is capped, but Scythe is still a couple points off of the cap.

We spent some time over the weekend farming the level 40 scrolls for elemental Ninjitsu for Grymalkyn. We spent a few hours in Castle Zvahl Bailey and Keep, killing Yagudo Conquistadors, Lutenists, Zealots, and Priors. We got 2 each of Raiton, Katon, Doton, and Hyuton, but didn't see any Huton or Suiton scrolls. The Bard types also gave up a Dragonfoe Mambo and a couple Blade Madrigal scrolls. Grym read the ones she needed, and we made 160k or so on the ones we had to sell. We decided to try Castle Oztroja on Sunday, and sure enough, we got the other two scrolls there, with a duplicate of Suiton, which sold for 140k. Elboron came to help us as well, and we found an Electrum Hairpin in a treasure chest, which will be useful for his WHM.

After finding lizard blood on diremites in Pso'Xja, we decided to try to farm the other ingredients for Blood Broth, which allows BSTs to call a Diremite familiar at level 43. We were heading to Norg to pick up Grym's Ninja AF1 quest, and killed a few leeches in Sea Serpent Grotto for a couple containers of leech saliva. Later, we headed to the Sanctuary of Zi'tah to kill bats for beast blood, and finally went to the Labyrinth of Onzozo to kill more leeches for bird blood. Qiara was able to turn these into Blood Broth for us, but we'll have to get our BSTs out leveling before we can use it.

While doing our farming these past days, I've been trying to skill up dagger and club, and they're making decent progress. It seems like weapon skill is like craft skill - the lower the skill level is, the faster you get skillups. They really seem to slow down the higher they get.

Fishing:
Grym and Kiki headed off to Selbina to catch the ferry and try for tuna and skillups on noble ladies and bluetail. We subbed BLM to make it easy to get home. We made about 4 trips before our pockets were pretty full, and decided to make one last trip, with two open slots each, figuring we'd warp when we couldn't catch any more fish.

I caught a tuna, and then a noble lady when I already had a full stack. So I started trading the single noble lady to Grym to get an open slot and keep fishing. In the middle of our trade, we noticed the "Sea Monk" that had been floating around the ship since we left Selbina suddenly seemed much bigger than it had, and seemed to be quite interested in us, and seemed to have the name "Sea Horror" above it. So we cancelled the trade and Grym started getting hit by the Sea Horror, and used Perfect Dodge and warped out. Meanwhile, I ran to the back of the ferry and warped out myself. Grym had taken two hits, one for just over 100, the second for over 200, which is about how hard Maat had been hitting her. I do think if we were properly dressed and had our proper subjobs, that we could take the Sea Horror on as a THF70 and PLD70, and if we had Elboron's BRD70 with us, most definitely. However, it wasn't something we were willing to try with underlevelled black mage subs and in fishing gear.

We ended up with enough tuna for Qiara to make 6 stacks of tuna sushi, which got her over 75 Coooking, and both Grym and Kiki got a few fishing skillups as well.

Under Oath (PLD AF3):
On Saturday evening, Rovont requested some help with the fight for his Gallant Surcoat, his Paladin AF3 quest. When Kiki did this fight for her quest last October, we had a full alliance of 18, with several members in their 70s. This Saturday however, we only had six of us: Onima MNK75/WAR37, Tsakiki PLD70/WAR35, Grymalkyn THF70/NIN35, Elboron BRD70/WHM35, Itera MNK70/WHM30, and Rovont PLD60/BLM17. I was a bit concerned about our ability to succeed with the tank also being the main healer, but was certainly willing to give it the old college try.

We got the the area in Davoi with the disused well that Rovont needed to examine to spawn two NM Orcs, one a PLD and one a RNG. We cleared the area of all the orcs and Rovont examined the well. It was a really tough fight, but we did win. Rovont hurried back to San d'Oria to complete his quest, and is finally in his full set of shiny white AF - truly a milestone for every Paladin.

Leveling: LLS Welcomes Wendell (Bibiki Bay, level 70)

The Low Level Static was thrilled to have Wendell join us from the now-defunct Mid-Level Static. We headed to Bibiki Bay on Sunday evening, and managed to find an open camp, with 6 Catoblepas and 2 Goblins all to ourselves.

We did pretty well, raking in 13k exp in 2.5 hours (using our Empress Bands), and didn't have a single break. Yobun hit level 70, and Wendell got really close to 68. With the collapse of the Mid-Level Static, we're trying to have the LLS meet on both Sunday and Monday evenings. We didn't get as many chain #5s as we thought we should be getting, but the evening progressed quickly. We had a bit of excitement with a Catoblepas link, but other than Itera getting down under 100 HP, we did just fine. A couple of the suicide Goblin bomb tosses were pretty devastating, but a Divine Seal-Curaga III from Wendell and a Divine Seal-Curaga II from Elboron would top us back up again and we'd be ready to go.

It's so nice having Wendell as part of the group! I love Regen III. We were doing so well with our MP management that Wendell was even bursting Banish III on our Light Skillchain.

On Monday evening, we headed back to Bibiki Bay, and got the camp in the southwest, back by the cave. At this camp, we pretty much were only fighting Hobgoblins: Alastors (DRK), Toreadors (RDM), Physicians (WHM), and Blaggers (THF). There was a bunny there that we pulled for a chain 5, but he didn't come back for over an hour, and then came back as a Catoblepas. After we killed that, the bunny kept coming back as expected after we'd kill it.

We had another really good evening, and got ourselves about 15K exp in 2.75 hours. If we can keep up with our two sessions a week, we're definitely going to make good progress. Especially compared to the weeks we couldn't even find a healer. Fighting the Hobgoblins pretty much exclusively did require a lot more Curagas from Wendell and Elboron, but we really didn't have to take a break between chains, and got quite a good number of #5s. I'm worried we're going to outgrow Bibiki when we all hit 71, but maybe we can push it another level.

Missions: Gate of the Gods Unlocked (Zilart Missions 6 through 13)

On Friday night, our Zilart "static" was hoping to get through the next two fights, ZM6 (Through the Quicksand Caves) and ZM8 (Return to Delkfutt's Tower), but when our three hours came to an end and we were already up to the ZM12 fight (The Mithra and the Crystal), we opted to stay up late (some of us braving the wrath of their wives) and got to Sky for the first time.

The night wasn't as smooth as it could have been. Our group consisted of:

Ryken PLD71/WAR35
Tsakiki PLD70/RDM35
Itera MNK70/WHM30
Elboron BRD70/WHM35
Grymalkyn THF70/NIN35
Wendell WHM67/BLM33

We met in Rabao and headed to the Chamber of Oracles through Quicksand Caves. We buffed up and headed into the BC, where we were faced with 3 Anticans, a BLM, PLD, and RNG. We fought them in that order. Things went pretty well until Itera was taken out by the Ranger's Eagle Eye Shot, but we finished the fight and won the battle. Itera deleveled with the death, but a Raise 2 from Wendell got his level back, which was nice.

We found ourselves in a room with eight altars, in which we placed the shards we had collected from the Cermet Headstones in ZM5, and got a cutscene. This was "Mission" ZM7, The Chamber of Oracles.

Next up was ZM8 - Return to Delkfutt's Tower. We headed to Qufim Island and made our way to the Stellar Fulcrum from the 12th floor of the tower. This fight was much tougher than the others, and we lost Ryken first. Itera used 100 Fists to hurry the fight along, and I used Invincible to keep Kam'lanaut on me instead of him. We were a bit low on health, but doing ok and Wendell pulled hate, and I was Gravitied, Flash wasn't up, and I couldn't get to him in time for shield bash, so Wendell died too. It looked like we could still win, so rather than have Wendell reraise and get killed again from an AOE, he stayed down until after the fight was over. We got our cutscenes and Wendell reraised and then raised Ryken.

Then came a bunch of running around for missions 9 through 11. First to Jeuno, then Norg for ZM9 (Ro'Maeve), then to the Hall of the Gods for ZM10 (The Temple of Desolation), back to Norg, and then finally Rabao for ZM11, The Hall of the Gods.

It was time for both Ryken and Wendell to go, but we just had one last fight in Quicksand Caves for ZM12 (The Mithra and the Crystal), and we were already in Rabao. I asked the LS "How hard is ZM12 - the fight with the pot?" and the general consensus was that it was really easy. So Ryken and Wendell said they'd see it through rather then reconvening Saturday night to get through to Sky. We hopped on chocobos and headed back to Quicksand Caves, spawned the pot and defeated it. Back to Rabao with the item we'd obtained, and we were given the Cerulean Crystal to open the gate in the Hall of the Gods.

A quick Teleport-Vhazl, the OP warp home and then back out to the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah and we headed into Ro'Maeve and the Hall of the Gods (ZM13, The Gate of the Gods). We opened the Gate and headed up to Ru'Ann Gardens. The cutscenes for the mission were pretty cool, but lack the charm and wit that Chains of Promathia has, with Prishe and the Taru trio. It was very late, so we looked around a bit, took some screenshots to commemorate the event, and headed home for the night.

The last two Zilart missions with fights sound pretty tough, so I think we'll wait a few more levels before trying them.

New Titles: Lightbearer, Sealer of the Portal of the Gods

Leveling: Subjobs hit 40

Over the past two evenings, Grym (NIN), Itera (WAR), Elboron (WHM) and Kiki (DRK) have been leveling their subjobs, getting from 37 to well over 40. Again, there just weren't any people looking for parties at our level, so we rotated in two of our NPCs at a time.

Wednesday night, since Crawlers Nest had a party our level, we decided to head to Yhoator Jungle. Elboron used the outpost teleport to Yuhtunga, while the rest of us travelled to Kazham and chocobo'd out to the area we were planning to camp - near the southern-most zone to Yuhtunga. It didn't look like it would be a good camp, so we headed to the northeast side of that area, and ended up camping near a couple Opo-opos in a T-shaped area near the tunnel that leads north to the area with the teleport crystal. Itera opted to sub his underlevelled NIN for the shadows, and that ended up saving him a bit of damage when he pulled hate.

We started tearing through the Worker Crawlers, and ended up over 8K exp in just over 90 minutes, using a ring, but also having an NPC out. Crawlers are great for fighting with the NPCs, since they don't have any bad AOEs, as long as the people with hate keep the mobs turned away from the NPCs to avoid poison breath. We had to fight a coeurl or two since they got in our way. Those are more trouble than they're worth, but at least we managed them fine. It's kind of fun using the NPCs. They don't go AFK or complain, though they do only give one fight notice when they have to leave. However, it's quick to get a replacement out, as long as someone still has a fresh tactics or signal pearl. When we were regularly getting 280 point Chain #4s, it's hard to complain about not being able to fill in the party.

We left the jungle with Elboron and Kiki at 39 (Kiki levelled on our last kill). We didn't think we'd be able to exp again on Thursday, but Elboron's real-life plans were put off until next week, so we headed back to our camp, courtesy of Elboron's newly learned Teleport-Yhoat spell. I was thinking about subbing NIN too, but then I remembered that my Axe Belt only works with a warrior subjob. That belt turns my DRK's greataxe skill into an A level skill, and allows me to use the Horror Voulge as effectively as any scythe or greatsword. Since the Horror Voulge is arguably the best weapon a DRK at level 40 can weild, I want to use it for Diabolos, so have been using it on my DRK while leveling until capped.

This evening there was an Anemone lurking about near our camp, which made Itera's pulling a bit trickier, but he did a great job, and before we knew it, we were all 40. Itera got aggro'd on his first pull after Kiki and Grym hit 40, and tried unsuccessfully to zone it. Since the exp had really fallen off dramatically as we got to 40, we followed Elboron as he went to raise Itera, and then we headed off to fight Bigclaws in Misareaux Coast (teleport-Dem, chocobo, dunes vortex, Lufaise Meadows, Tavnazian Safehold, Misareaux Coast). We had fought the Bigclaws here quite a bit on our main jobs in the mid-50s, both for skillups and simply for farming silica to make our goldfish bowls, so it was a nice familiar spot. The crabs don't aggro and don't link, making it fairly safe, as long as the Makara don't get too close.

Since Elbo and Itera were further ahead than Grym and Kiki, they called their NPCs and we started in fighting the Bigclaws. They didn't go down as fast as the crawlers in Yhoator, but fast enough that our first set was a chain #5 for 300. I also liked fighting the Bigclaws since I could Aspir MP off of them, so I was using more spells per crab. Things slowed down a bit when Itera switched to his hand axes, but we still got lots of exp rather quickly. I think we were in that camp about 70 minutes, but got over 5k exp for it, so Kiki's got quite a good death buffer for facing Diabolos.

Leveling: LLS in Kuftal Tunnel (69-70)

On Sunday night, Itera actually managed to find a White Mage, Susperia, a Taru WHM67/BLM33, and the Low Level Static decided to head to Kuftal Tunnel to fight tigers and cockatrices. This may have been our last night with our current line-up. The Mid Level Static (which the Low Level Static passed a couple of months ago) has disbanded, and we're sort of doing a merge. Yobun is probably leaving and will level THF with pickup parties, and we're picking up Muirnin (currently THF67 but will catch up), and Wendell (WHM68 and also wants to catch up). I'm excited at the prospect of having a full static once again, and am hoping that we can actually manage to level twice a week, for three hour sessions. I also think it's cool to have a Taru Paladin and a Galka White Mage in the same party. :-)

Anyway, back to Sunday night. We had to wait for the rock to drop to get down to the camp site, and ended up with a tiger aggro issue, but took care of it and continued on our way down to the lower tunnels. There was another party in one of the camps, but the other one seemed fine. The way the tunnels are set up, we actually didn't even have to compete with the other party for pulls. Either that, or they left soon after we arrived, but we never saw them pulling anything we might have pulled.

It was a nice change from the over-crowded Bibiki Bay scene, but the tigers especially were a bit annoying with their seemingly constant AOE paralysis. I'd lose provokes to it, the THFs would lose their trick and sneak attack, and Elbo and Susperia were constantly casting paralyna. Their razor claw attacks would also do a lot of damage - often hitting Elboron as he ran to and fro playing his songs on the party. The cockatrices were a bit better, but Baleful Gaze got annoying, and Hammerbeak and Poison Pick could hit terribly hard. Some times things would go quite well, and we'd get our Chain #4s, but other times we had to rest for mp after Chain #2. Overall, it felt worse than usual exp-wise, but we were getting a lot of points per kill, and factoring in a couple of AFKs for our snacking WHM and a disconnect for Yobun, it was actually not bad. I ended up with 11k exp using my ring.

Grym, Kiki, Elbo, and Itera all hit 70, but Yobun's still a bit behind us. I can't believe we're 70. For the first time in ages, Kiki actually had multiple pieces of new gear at 70: Company Sword, Rosenbogen, Lord's Armet, Lord's Cuisses, and for my /heal macro, Lord's Sabatons (+3 mp regen while healing). I think I've picked up an extra 6 points in VIT with the new gear. At this point, Kiki's PLD AF is with the storage NPC, as I think the other gear she has is better for her. The Lord's gear has +VIT and +Enmity and minor amounts of MP->HP, but enough that most of the other races don't bother with any of it other than the boots for when they're resting for MP. I'm not fond of the Armet - I wore the IM Armet for nearly a year, and this is the same, just golden - but I don't need to have it on while not fighting. Kiki now has Protect IV as well as Warcry from /WAR and Fast Cast II from /RDM when she's not exp'ing.

Leveling: Subjob Static In East Altepa (36-37)

Saturday evening, we set out to get some experience points for our 36-37 jobs, since I'd really like to use Kiki's DRK for fighting Diabolos in CoP Mission 3-5, and we'd like to do that mission sooner rather than later. There were no people seeking for parties in level 35-36, and there were actually only 10 players total at level 36 on the entire server. So we decided to head to East Altepa, where we could still find IT Dhalmels, and we opted to use two NPCs to fill out our party.

We had Itera WAR37/MNK18, Grym NIN36/WAR18, Elboron WHM36/BLM18, and Tsakiki DRK36/WAR18. Our NPCs some times would mess up an intended skillchain, but overall, they were quite handy to have around. Other than a BST35 fighting beetles with spiders, there was really no one else in the area, and we had plenty of dhalmels to get decent chains. We all soon hit 37, and Grym got to read her expensive Utsusemi: Ni scroll (1.5 million - I think we should do a few BCNMs some time), and Kiki got to read the free Stun scroll she's had in her mogsafe for over a year. She got it when our old ClanTen static was fighting goblins in Gustav Tunnel at levels 38-41, in Decemeber 2004.

I'm enjoying DRK a lot, but it feels odd to not be able to help out with healing people, since PLD70 and RDM60 are my two highest jobs, and both of those are not only capable of healing, but are expected to. However, I don't really like that my Dark Knight, a force to be feared, looks like a little rodeo clown in her Wonder Kaftan, which is really the best body armor for her to be wearing in the 30s, stats-wise.

Itera had to leave a couple thousand points shy of level 38, so the three of us decided to stay a bit longer and get closer to his level. At this point, I think we were down to just Elboron's NPC, since Elboron was a bit ahead of us and the exp cut would help Grym and I get caught up. We started fighting tough beetles and tough dhalmels, and things went so smoothly, I pulled a VT dhalmel. No troubles there either, so I grabbed an IT low evasion, low defense dhalmel. Again, no problems. Our PLD/THF/BRD trio would certainly never try fighting a low IT mob, but it wasn't a problem for our DRK/NIN/WHM trio.

Once Grym got Ni, he decided that he could understand why people actually like NIN. The cast time is so much shorter than Ichi, and the extra shadows make it easier to keep them active. I'm still not convinced, but i really should get Kiki's NIN from 20 up to 37 one day.

General: Odds and Ends

Two weeks ago Sunday, our static couldn't exp again, so four of us headed to Upper Delkfutt's Tower to get another Monk's Testimony for Itera. Since nothing's better than Even Match there any more, we didn't get a lot of exp for our efforts, but we did get him a testimony. And more wool thread from Gigas socks.

Our weekly escort mission has become quite routine. Splinte has finally joined in as well, and the six of us make short work of the mobs threatening Olavia. We really have to try one of the other ones some time for variety.

Last Tuesday night, Itera needed another Monk's Testimony (I think he's getting a bit tired of Maat), so we headed to Davoi/Monastic Cavern after killing a baby NM for CoP 3-3, and Erock met us there. It was late, so I couldn't stay long, but little did I know that would be the last time I'd see Erock in the game. :-( He's quit again, and I'm told it's permanent this time. It's very sad.

Windurst took first in the conquest last week. I had a feeling that we would, from looking at the region info just before the tally, so Grym and Kiki stood next to the gate guard in Windurst, waiting for the results. Sure enough, Windurst was first. Hurray! Finally, we had our very own Federation Aketons. Seems like a silly use of so many conquest points, but it's something I really wanted to have, and to have earned the right to wear. The speed increase in town isn't very dramatic, but it is noticeable. I suppose at some point we'll tire of it and forget to change into it, but in the meantime, I love it!

I did about an hour's worth of fishing last weekend in Qufim, and caught about 100k worth of squid, bluetail, and cone calamary, and even got a .2 skillup. It's such an easy way to make some quick gil, but I never seem to have the time these days. I think Grym's about out of sushi, so I'll have to do some fishing again this week.

One night last week, we headed to Castle Zvahl Bailey to try to get a coffer key for Rovont. We had Elbryan RDM74, Itera MNK69, Grymalkyn THF69, Elboron BRD69, Kiki PLD69, and Rovont PLD60. We killed the coffer mobs for about two hours, and the last Demon in the last set we'd said we do before calling it a night actually dropped the key. Rovont set off to find his coffer while the rest of us headed home, but got aggro'd and died in front of a coffer. Elbryan headed back in to raise him and help him. Rovont got his coffer item, but Elbryan died in the process as well. That place can be quite painful for coffers.

Another night, a group of us helped Trow with his BLM AF3 in Toraimarai Canal. It seemed to go so much faster than it had when we did the fight months ago for Yobun and Diasuke, despite having fewer people: Trow BLM57, Yobun BLM75, Midget THF75, Kiki PLD69, Elboron BRD69, and Itera MNK69.

Later that night, Midget and Charcole were finally ready for Windurst Mission 9-2, and recruited a bunch of us to help. We had Midget THF75, Yobun BLM75, Charcole MNK73, Elboron BRD69, Wendell WHM68, and Kiki PLD69. The fight was much faster than it had been when we did it a couple of weeks ago - partly because 4 of us had done it before, but also because Charcole's two hour just demolished the Manticore. Ajido-Marujido did the same fake-out manoeuver he used when we did it originally, but I anticipated it this time, and I don't think he got smacked by the Manticore at the start.

Sunday morning, Grym was /anon, standing at the auction house in her Aketon and got a tell from someone named Cyclopss asking if she was Japanese, sort of using the autotranslator. Grym replied that she wasn't, and he asked what Rank she was. When she responded 10, he asked if she would help him with Mission 3-3. We decided we could - he was a WAR42, and wouldn't need too much hand-holding for the trip up Delkfutt's. He also had a WHM58 helping him. Grym and I OP warped to Qufim, while the other two took the airship, then we made the long trek up to the 10th floor of Delkfutt's, with Cyclopss not getting any aggro until the 7th floor. We killed Porphyrion and got his key and headed to the basement. Turns out he'd neglect to talk to the embassy in Jeuno first, so he ran back to Jeuno for that part and we waited to show him how to get back to the basement quickly. It turns out he's quite a young player, and wanted Rank 4 so he could get his NPC. His dad also plays, so we're guessing that his dad funded his airship pass. He was very polite, so it felt good to have helped him out.

A group of us helped Narm fight the NM Shadow for his WHM AF3 in Fei'Yin. We had Anastasia BLM75, Trow RDM75, Drakel RNG75, Gleko MNK6x, Kiki PLD69, and Narm WHM58. It was a pretty tough fight, with the Shadow practically spamming Dimensional Death, but we finished it off and Narm finally got his WHM AF body piece.

And then tonight, after our escort quest, Elbo, Grym, Itera and Kiki headed to Castle Oztroja to get another Monk Testimony for Itera. It took about an hour for one to drop, but this was the lucky one. Itera headed straight back to Jeuno and went to show Maat who's boss. Congratulations Itera!

Missions: CoP 3-1 through 3-4

Most of the third chapter of the Chains of Promathia missions involves a lot of running around and seeing cutscenes. However, for Mission 3-3, we did have to kill an NM Malboro (Overgrown Ivy) in Carpenters Landing, as well as an NM Antlion (Lioumere) in Attohwa Chasm.

We knew these would be easy, so we didn't bother scheduling them when Wendell was available, since he'd already done them. Elboron, Grym, Itera, Splinte and Kiki headed to Carpenter's Landing, built up TP and popped the Overgrown Ivy. We were planning to use our Red Lotus Blade -> Raging Fists -> Sharkbite skill chain on it, and I decided to get a screenshot at the start of the fight. By the time I got out of the screenshot and back to the action, it was already half dead. Our skillchain quickly finished it off. We headed back to San d'Oria to get a cutscene to complete that part of the mission.

A couple of days later, we were hoping to take care of Lioumere in Attohwa Chasm, but Itera had a soccer game (bad idea, as it turned out), and rather than do it without him, the rest of us headed to Attohwa just to practice running up Parradamo Tor. It's a tricky path, and quite easy to fall off, and since you're given about an hour to make the run up after killing Lioumere and getting a Mimeo Stone, it seemed worth the practice. A few nights after that, the 5 of us headed to Attohwa again. The antlion will return to its spawn spot and regen HP quite fast, so I decided to go as Red Mage to be able to Gravity and Bind it. Splinte popped the NM and tried to drag it out to us a little ways from the spawn point, but it went back almost immediately. With a bit of coaxing, they were able to get it further away, and we killed it before it had a chance to go back again. Bind and Gravity probably did help.

We examined the ??? spot and got our Mimeo Stones and made it up the Tor without incident, then headed to Windurst for a few cutscenes, then it was off to Bastok to talk to Cid, then to Jeuno for another cutscene, and we were done with Mission 3-1 through 3-4. I really enjoyed the Windurst cutscenes, with the Taru trio from Tavnazia.

Next up is Mission 3-5, a level 40 capped fight with Diabolos!

This series of missions/cutscenes are named:

3-1: Call of the Wyrmking
3-2: Vessel Without a Captain
3-3: Road Forks
 3-3A: San d'Oria Route: "Emerald Waters"
  3-3A1: Vicissitudes
  3-3A2: Descendents of a Line Lost
  3-3A3: Louverance
 3-3B: Windurst Route: "Memories of a Maiden"
  3-3B1: Comedy of Errors
  3-3B2: Comedy of Errors
  3-3B3: Exit Stage Left
3-4: Tending Aged Wounds