Besieged: Fun, in an Annoying Sort of Way

Besieged fights have gotten quite a bit harder, but we've managed to repel the enemy forces every time they've attacked (108 times as of June 28th). It seems several Generals are getting killed every time now, and there are always a few prisoners taken, but the important ones are usually back pretty quickly. I haven't seen the poor pickaxe vendor in quite awhile though. I guess no one much cares about her. Elboron told me that in a recent Besieged, all 5 Generals were defeated, and the enemy entered the Hall of Binding, but the Lakshmi forces were able to repel them before the Astral Candescense was taken. I wonder if that's the closest call we've had, or if there have been others.

We've figured out the best way to get the full 700 points is to cure others, and raise the dead. It's still really laggy, which makes it a bit difficult to land cures at times, but it's bearable. Grym's been going out as thf/whm or even just whm to try to build up some Imperial Standing points and a bit of exp. Another important factor is being able to reraise so you don't miss out on any points when the fight is over, so using her whm helps Grym. I like doing Besieged with Elboron, since his Goddess Hymnus makes it easy to jump into the fray with no concern for death (you don't lose experience points for deaths during Besieged). I try to use abilities like rampart and warcry (full party buffs), and cure/raise people when they need it. Now that I'm 75, I'm better able to damage the intruders, but some of them are still pretty hard to hit.

Another thing I've been trying out is to go as my RDM60/BLM30, since I don't really want to level it any more, but would like to have it useful at 60. This means having a good death buffer as well as getting all of my magic skills capped. I'm still a bit short on enfeebling and elemental, and quite far off on dark. So I find a General to keep healthy, and cast Bio on the enemies when I have a chance.

If I'm doing Besieged "alone", without much hope of a raise, I do try to be more careful to not die. While there's a chance a passing stranger will raise me, I'll miss out on any exp or imperial standing if I'm dead when Besieged ends.

Quests: Trials by Earth and Ice (Titan and Shiva)

OK, so maybe the Avatars can still pack a good whallop, and deserve proper recognition as a separate entry, rather than lumped in with a bunch of trivial updatey stuff. Monday night was another Avatar Monday, this time with Charcole and Splinte instead of the vacationing Itera. Charcole's working on his moon bauble, and could only fight Titan, Shiva, and Leviathan. We decided on Titan first, as it's by far the easiest to get to of the three, so we first headed to Bastok (teleport-altep -> korroloka tunnel -> escape to Zeruhn Mines -> Bastok) so Splinte could pick up his Tuning Fork of Earth. Then another teleport-altep and a quick, now aggro-free, run through Quicksand Caves brought us to the Cloister of Tremors.

Titan was big and mean, but we didn't have too much trouble with him other than his two hour one-shotting Wendell for about 1300 damage - more than ten times what any of the rest of us were hit for, even with barstonra and earth carol up. We didn't set the record, but finished in a respectable time under 5 minutes. Wendell even got his level back with his Reraise II.

Next we decided that the Cloister of Tides was just too darned hard to get to quickly, and we'd save Leviathan for another night. Splinte and Elboron quickly headed to San d'Oria to pick up their Tuning Forks of Ice (Splinte OP warped from Altepa, while Elboron used a gate glyph he'd been saving since Summerfest 2 years ago), and Elboron then teleported the two of them to Holla, where Wendell took the rest of us to meet them, then all of us on to Teleport-Vahzl. We ran through Beaucidine Glacier and into Fei'Yin to the Cloister of Frost. All this running around is so much nicer with Chocobo Mazurka (not to mention the teleports)!

Shiva was in a really foul mood, and was hitting me a lot harder than I remember from when we fought her at level 69. When she tossed off her two hour, Elboron was flatlined, with 1380 damage (again, with ice carol and barblizzara). Shiva really hates Elboron. He's been killed by her both times we've fought her. I took about 750 from the two hour myself, but everyone else took significantly less. We set the record for the week, with about 3 minutes 40 second, which was our shortest avatar fight yet.

With my Whisper of Frost from Shiva, I'm now officially saving whispers for my Moon Bauble for Fenrir. I took the pact with Titan, since I hadn't fought him before. My collection of avatars is getting better, but I think it will be awhile before either Fenrir or Diabolos gets added to the collection.

Leveling: Bhaflau Thickets (75)

Itera was on vacation this week, and for some unknown reason (haha), his wife chose a place without internet access. So we had Anastasia join us for the evening on her BLM75/RDM37. Charcole had soloed his MNK to 74 since our last session, while Wendell's WHM was still 72. Yobun was back to THF again. We took the Runic Portal to the Mamool Ja Staging Point, and headed out into Bhaflau Thickets. There weren't as many parties as I've seen there before, but there were a few.

We camped at the zone to Mamook, and fought mostly Sea Puks, with a few Mamool Ja. As the area got more crowded, we fought more of the Mamool Ja, since people prefer the Sea Puks. Yobun started out as puller, but we switched to having Elboron pull at some point. I'm not sure I like having Elbo pull, since not only do we miss out on songs (I hardly ever had ballad on me once he started pulling), but he takes a lot of damage. At one point, we opted to have him pull a Jurik (wyvern), which ended up killing Elbo in two hits. Later, a Mamool Ja Blue Mage used Radiant Breath and killed me. I think it was under 800 damage, but I was a bit low health at that point and was dropped. Nothing like the nearly 10,000 damage Radiant Breath I took once during Besieged!

I ended up gaining about 15.5k limit points, with ring and sanction, in about 2.5 hours of fighting. Wendell made it to 73 near the end of the party, which was nice. I held hate a bit better this week, having worn more +enmity gear, and having Yobun's Trick Attacks on me. I would lose hate towards the end of the fight because I usually couldn't reuse provoke and flash and still be ready for the next monster, at least for the Puks, since we were killing/pulling so fast. Or Anastasia would toss out her meritted Thunder spells and have the mob go flying after her.

I had been trying to get a Tatami Shield for a couple of weeks now, but someone decided they were suddenly "worth" 30% more than they had been, and I just don't want to pay that much for one. I missed one within my price range overnight recently, but all the others that have been up have been too hight. I mentioned this to Yobun and he said that all the cool kids were getting the new Troll shield, which is the same size as the Tatami Shield (tower shield, size 4), so would give the same damage reduction, without the intimidation or the +5 STR, but at a greatly reduced cost. So I picked up a Januwiyah for 50k. It has +25 HP on it, and decent defense too. It did a good job at damage reduction, as I was often blocking for single digit damage (as opposed to the ~80 unblocked non-critical hits). My Koenig Shield would usually drop damage to around 14, so it does seem to be an improvement.

I still think I'd like a Tatami some day, since the intimidation could be really helpful, as would the +5 STR. My shield skill hit 262 Sunday night, so it's getting there. It will be so nice to see it capped. Then I suppose I have to wear +shield skill gear and cap it to those levels as well.

I decided that I kind of like getting limit points - with only 10,000 needed for a merit point, and not losing any with deaths (you lose exp instead), it's more "rewarding" than the huge exp requirements per level in the 70s. With one 2.5 hour exp session a week, we can still see one or two merit points a session. I've put my first merit into increased critical hit rate, while I'm saving up 3 points for a STR upgrade next. I'm going to focus on merits that will most benefit my melee skills rather then end-game Paladin abilities, and won't put anything towards things that might hurt other jobs (like +enmity). Since Grym and I are planning to go back to our BST duo at some point, comparing her Mithra BST41 stats to my Tarutaru BST41 stats can help me see where I'm weak (STR, DEX, HP) relative to her, and might be a good guide for where to put my merits.

Anastasia and I were later discussing the party, and we both aren't huge fans of this sort of exp, since neither PLD nor BLM are really well suited for it. We're better at fighting ITs, working together as a team to hold hate, build a skillchain, and burst on it for the kill. Plus it's just a bit too stressful for me to have things pulled before my provoke and flash aren't back from the previous mob. The frenzied pace, with everyone just trying to smash the mob as fast as possible lacks the, oh, finesse that one can see in a really good party that works together well and is camping the right mobs in a right place. We're joking about starting an "old school static", if we could possiby find a good camp with mobs IT+ to level 75, and other people willing to forgo the safe easy speed killing chain bazillionty-eleven parties everyone seems so happy with these days.

Crafting: Other People Seem to Think We're Crazy

Grymalkyn and I really prefer to farm our ingredient for crafting where feasible, rather than pouring out a ton of gil to buy things on the AH or in stores. Other people seem to prefer the "time is money" approach, feeling they can make more gil doing other things. However, we like the feeling of creating something from odds and ends we collect around Vana'diel. Crafting things while sitting in front of the AH for easy purchases just isn't the same. And it's nice to end up with more gil while we're leveling crafts, rather than just dumping all of our gil into it. Takes a lot longer, but it works for us.

Since most of my gelatin and all of my demon arrows had sold, I decided I could start gathering beetle jaws for my next phase of bonecraft - beetle arrowheads. I made my way through Sauromogue Champaign and Meriphataud Mountains, but didn't get many jaws. Grym headed to the Altepa Desert to start farming beetles there, and I made my way back to Windurst to outpost warp to meet her there. I passed through the Outer Hurototo Ruins along the way to kill the Beady Beetles, and saw the new NM slime, Maltha, and got myself the rare/ex Trailer's Tunica, for RNG16. Not sure it's worth keeping though.

Grym can still get skillups for bonecraft making Carapace Powder, so she was taking all the beetle shells and crafting as we hunted. We decided to head to Jugner Forest, since it really seems to have a better drop rate, but we didn't stay too long. With all our farming, we only ended up with 9 jaws, but Grym had quite a few skillups and made a stack of carapace powder.

We did a chocobo race from San d'Oria to Bastok (read my scrolls this week on DRK - which got it to 41 and let me read the Absorb-DEX scroll I've had lying around for awhile), then decided to do some farming in Oldton Movalpolis. Grym needeed Igneous Ore to be able to finish making all of her pellet pouches (leather and smithing?), and you get those from Bugbears. Our steal rate for the ore was really bad, but they also drop them, so we got a handful. We also got a good assortment of moblin/goblin/bugbear equipment, which we desynthed into its components. I got nearly 3 stacks of glass fibers off of a bunch of masks, which made us decide we should have Kiki make some artificial lenses for alchemy skill. We also got a lot of Kopparnickel ore, which Grym could use to make Paktong Ingots for skill, and Moblin Thread to make some Moblin Weave, both of which sell well in Jeuno for a gobbiebag expansion quest.

So we headed to Windurst to clear up some inventory space, then headed to Giddeus to get the zinc and copper ores Grym needed for the ingots, as well as flint stones for more glass fiber. Then back to Windurst, where we gathered up all the glass fiber and flint stones from various mules, and we settled in for some assembly line crafting. Grym converted all the flint stones to glass fibers, Kiki synthed Artificial Lenses from the fibers, which Grym then used with another two glass fibers to make prism powders just to make more gil off the venture. We ended up with 12 stacks of prism powder, and Kiki got 2.3 levels on her Alchemy. Artificial Lenses will last me another 2.8 levels, so I'm sure we'll do that again some time.

Quests: No Strings Attached (Puppetmaster flag)

When the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion was release, and Elvaan named Shmarhaan showed up in Bastok Markets, with an automaton. Everyone marvelled over it, and the Elvaan said we should talk to Iruki-Waraki in Aht Urghan Whitegate if we wished to learn the secrets of the puppetmasters, starting the quest No Strings Attached. Soon upon my first arrival in Whitegate, I found Iruki-Waraki and spoke with him. The Taru had lost his automaton and I went to the Automaton Workshop to see about getting a replacement for him.

Ghatsad, the Galka running the workshop, said that if I could find an old automaton (perhaps on a grounded boat in Arrapago Reef), he would see what he could do. I'd been through Arrapago Reef several times since then, but never had the opportunity to stop and look for an automaton, despite people mentioning "you can get your automaton on this boat" every time we went past.

Last weekend, Wendell, Grymalkyn and Kiki were finally able to search, and we each found an Ancient Automaton. We took them back to Ghatsad, and he said he'd get to work on it and asked us to come back later.

The next day I returned, and he presented me with the repaired automaton. I ran back to Iruki-Waraki to give it to him, but he refused, and said it was mine. He also gave me a controller for it, so I can give it commands. I named it Tsukushi. I'm not really sure when I'll get around to actually leveling the job, but at least it's there for me to do so. Grym and I still haven't unlocked Corsair, but I'm sure we'll get around to it eventually.

New title: Proud Automaton Owner

General: Happy Birthday Kiki!

It was two years ago today that I brought home a second HDD for our "spare" PS2 and created Tsakiki. I picked Tarutaru because I needed to play tank with Grym's Thief, and Tarutaru are so much easier to use SATA on - no tails to get in the way and much easier to see over. I waffled between male and female, going with female, just because there weren't a lot of female taru tanks around. I picked a "large" Taru, since a tank should be big, right? That's probably my only regret in character choice - it would be funnier to be a small size and tanking. Face selection took some time, but a few of the models were either too severe or too cutesy. Finally, I had such a hard time picking a name that I ended up going through the "random" game names and liked "Tsakiki".

On one hand, it doesn't seem like it's been two years since Kiki came into being, and on the other hand, I feel like I've been playing this game forever. I can't believe I've spent 175 days of time over the past 730 days, nearly 25% of my time, and well over one third of my waking hours, playing this (insert your favorite adjective here) game.

I guess they have me well-addicted. /sigh

Crafting: No More!

I've decided I can't do any more crafting until I sell all the things I've been making the past few weeks. I've got 14 stacks of gelatin, 2 beetle rings, 4 fang necklaces, and 27 quivers of Demon Arrows to go.

My bonecraft is now at 27.5. I made beetle rings (synth/desynth) from level 21 to 25, using a total of 34 beetle jaws. Then from 25 to 27.5, I spent several hours farming Giant Femurs from the Dhalmels in Buburimu Penninsula. Grymalkyn showed up to help me out and made vitriol out of the cups of Dhalmel Saliva that we kept getting as well.

The Giant Femurs seems to be few and far between, especially considering we had both TH2 and TH1. I ended up making 48 synths for gelatin, which means we must have killed around 200 dhalmels. With all the hides and meat piling up, we made frequent stops in Mhaura to sell those to an NPC there. Since the hides sell on the AH for about 3k, and less than 300 to the NPC, we lost a lot of potential money, but without unlimited gobbiebag space, there isn't a lot of choice.

Next on the list for bonecraft appears to be beetle arrowheads, which will require more beetle jaw and bone chip farming.

General: All The News That's Fit to Print?

I've decided that the Avatar fights no longer merit their own entries. Sad they're so easy now, but at least it's pretty painless. Traveling to the Cloisters is the most arduous part of the process. Wendell, Itera, Elboron, Grymalkyn and Kiki took on Garuda Monday night, as it was the last whisper Wendell needed for his Moon Bauble. We set the record for the week, at 5 minutes and 41 seconds, and we weren't even trying. I guess not many people have fought her since the reset on Sunday. In fact, I didn't notice a "previous record" when we entered the BC, so maybe we were even the first group to fight her this week.

Grymalkyn finally was able to get her revenge on the Sea Horror this weekend, over two years after her first encounter with it as a subjob-less level 14 THF (see photo). While I was off leveling with the Low Level Static, Grym was trying to catch Tuna on the Ferry for Qiara to skill up on Tuna Sushi. The Sea Horror spawned on one of the trips, and killed a newbie (reinforcing our theory it spawns whenever someone is taking their first trip on the ferry). A high level Ninja decided to take it on, only to realize he didn't have any weapons other than a level 20 dagger and was doing single digit damage. Grym joined him and the two of them whittled away at it. It was a good thing that Grym was THF/WHM, since the Ninja couldn't keep up his shadows through the Sea Horror's Hundred Fists. They won! I think Grym even got 19 exp for it.

We helped Elboron farm Yagudo Necklaces for his Norg fame on Saturday. It goes so much faster with a group - more pocket space for more necklaces - and I'm sure Grym's TH2 and Kiki's TH1 helped as well. It still wasn't quite enough for him to get the Tuning Fork of Water, so we made him do the quest for Tonko: Ichi (It's Not Your Vault), which gave him the fame he needed. He was then able to pick up both An Undying Pledge and The Sahagin's Stash (Utsusemi: Ichi), so we stopped and killed the cute little Sea Monk in Sea Serpent Grotto on our way to the room for the Utsusemi quest.

Later, we spent a game night on a watch tower in Lufaise Meadows, hoping to get an extra fine file for Elboron, which was all he needed to be able to complete Tuning In. We were able to get 4 sets of Fomor between 20:00 and 4:00, and the last Warrior yielded up an extra fine file.

Charcole, Anastasia, Elboron, Grymalkyn and I dragged Wendell out to the Dvucca Isle staging point, and we made it with no deaths this time. We did have a bit of a close call with a whole lot of aggro not to far from Nashmau, but we were able to get away safely. Wendell, Grym and I were able to pick up the old automaton from one of the boats in Arrapago Reef that we needed for our puppetmaster job quest as well.

After we got back to Whitegate from Dvucca Isle, Charcole and Ana left us, and we took Wendell over to the Mamool Ja staging point, so Wendell now has 4 of the 5. We also helped him with the Olduum quest, so he now has his teleport ring. It makes it so much easier to get back to Whitegate if you've needed to set your homepoint some place else.

Quests: Secrets of Ovens Lost

Now that we have access to the Sacrarium, and have completed the Spice Gals quest, we have yet another weekly experience point scroll quest we can do: Secrets of Ovens Lost. The premise behind this quest is that a woman in the Tavnazian Safehold would like to prepare some of the traditional foods, but the recipes have been lost. They're hidden away in the bookshelves in the classrooms inside the Sacrarium.

We decided it was best to just try to sneak around in there, so after killing a few Orcs to clear our Fomor hate from our last mission in the Sacrarium, Grym and I headed there as WHM43/BLM22 and RDM/BLM (capped at 50) with our home point set in Tavnazia. We safely made it through the undead maze section and started checking the classrooms. There was no ??? in the south rooms, so we headed north. We had to pass two Stegotaurs to get to the other classrooms, which required being patient until they turned away and we could run behind them. No ??? there. OK, maybe we just missed it, so back through the maze to the south rooms. Nope, not here, north again. And repeat again a third time. As we were heading to the 6th room for the third time, I was convinced we were doing something wrong, but lo and behold, there it was! Fortunately the spot doesn't move as soon as someone checks it, so we both got our cookbook and warped back to talk to Jonette and get our reward.

On Sunday morning, we decided to do this a second time, after the reset at the conquest tally. Seems to be a popular thing to do - there were a dozen other players waiting for the reset so they could pick up the quest again. Running through the Sacrarium with a bunch of other people felt a bit safer, though we hadnn't had any problems the first time. The ??? wasn't in the first three classrooms, but as I was waiting for the first stegotaur to turn its back, one of the other people said "??? pop", so we ran back to the classroom, got our cookbook, and warped back for our reward.

The following week, we again had an easy time with the quest. We waited for the conquest tally, along with a handful of other people, then headed off to Sacrarium. A summoner had Carbuncle take care of a Stegotaur blocking the way, and the cookbook was in the first room. Hurray! The exp scroll put me over 10K exp at level 75, and I switched to limit points before heading out to exp that night.

It's definitely an easy scroll to get. Between this, the escort quest, and chocobo races, I could see just getting about a 10K buffer over 75 and then switching to limit points, since the scrolls should be plenty to maintain a good buffer. I had been thinking of getting a buffer around 35k, but that's 2.5 limit points right there, so maybe a small buffer isn't so bad.

Leveling: Dvucca Isle Staging Point (75)

Grym has left the Low Level Static, still not yet level 75, but having got Kiki there. He was just too fed up with leveling THF to keep going any further. We've asked Charcole (MNK73) to join us, since the High Level Static that he had been in broke up before Charcole got past 73. So now we have MNK, MNK, PLD, BRD, WHM and Yobun, normally THF, but could be BLM, PLD or even BRD at this point.

We decided to go try fighting the Lamia Idolators (Qutrubs) and Heraldic Imps and Jnuns in Caedarva Mire, just outside the Dvucca Isle Staging Point. The area was devoid of other parties, so it seemed pretty promising. However, for some reason we opted to not do a skillchain and just free weaponskill, and the Qutrubs took awhile to kill (even though we'd seen a screenshot of over 7K damage from a Light Skillchain on these things). We were still getting Chain #5s, but it just wasn't as fast as the week before.

Yobun started out as THF, but went back to town to change to BLM. While Yobun was in Al Zahbi, we got aggro'd by a Lamia Idolator when Wendell was AFK. Itera used Hundred Fists on it, pulled hate, and the Lamia Idolator promptly cast Sleepga, putting the rest of us to sleep. Itera died, but then we all woke up and managed to kill the qutrub.

Even when Yobun was using SATA on me, I really couldn't hold hate at all. It was really frustrting, but with Itera and Charcole throwing out over 2000 damage with Asuran Fists, it was just impossible. After Yobun switched to BLM, Elboron started pulling.

I had decided to do some experimenting with gear and food, to try to increase my damage output (and seeing as I hadn't been taking much damage lately from these tough and very tough mobs we've been fighting, I could forego a bit of VIT and DEF). I started out the night with my Byrnie, Walkure's Mask, Psilos Mantle, Lifebelt, Jaegar Ring, Ruby Ring, Feral Trousers, Spike Earring, and Minuet Earring (some of this borrowed from Grym), and ate a Coeurl Sub for even more +attack and +str. I had a bit of accuracy trouble, so I switched to Bream Sushi after half an hour. I wasn't hitting as hard anymore, so next time I used Sole Sushi.

I gave up on the attack gear though, since I just couldn't hold hate at all, and put all of my +Enmity gear back on. That still didn't really help very much. But I do think that I'm better off eating Sole Sushi now rather than Tavnazian Tacos, for the +STR and +ACC. Maybe I need to use a High Breath Mantle and look into even more +Enmity, but I'm afraid if the MNKs are using Asuran Fists right after I provoke, all hope of me actually tanking is lost.

Yobun was parsing the fights, and I get discouraged with my minimal percentage of damage (13%), but since half the time I'm actually casting cures on the monks, it's not really a fair assesment. I do like seeing my Swift Blades for over 800 points every once in awhile though! I'll have to see what I can do with Vorpal Blade if I'm eating sushi.

It was an incredibly frustrating leveling session. I'm not a good DD (compared to the MNKs anyway), especially if I'm busy dumping Cure IVs on a couple of MP sponges, and if I can't improve the efficiency of the party by minimizing the damage taken from the mobs (by having them hit me instead of the squishier Monks), there really doesn't seem to be much point to me being there.

We ended up with a nearly complete wipe at the end of our session, with 3 of the qutrubs on us at the same time. I think we could have done better here than we did, but we'll probably never go back, so it doesn't much matter what I think. I ended up just short of 11,000 limit points for the evening, using my Empress Band. Now that I have my first Merit Point, I have to figure out my plan for Merits.

Quests: What Friends Are For

We got our maps for the Aydeewa Subterrane a couple of weeks ago, with an odd quest, What Friends Are For. It's started by talking to one of the Qiqirn in Nashmau, Tsetseroon, who expresses his feelings of loneliness. Later, we headed to a ??? spot on a stairway in the Subterrane, where we saw a short cutscene of another Qiqirn on the top of the stairs.

The cutscene drops your invisibility in a spot with sight-aggro mobs, but fortunately only a chigoe spotted us, and I was able to shield bash it into oblivion. While we were trying to find the right spot for the cutscene, we had gone into the wrong area and got a whole lot of aggro. A quick horde lullaby from Elboron, followed by hastily recast Sneak, and we safely high-tailed it out of there.

The next time we talked to Tsetseroon, he asked us for a chunk of tin ore and a cobalt jellyfish to make a special stew. Oddly enough, we just happened to have those items with us. We were in a hurry to head out to get to a staging point at the time, and I didn't want to keep people waiting, so I really rushed through that cutscene dialog. I'm not really sure what he was up to, but I know he gave me a key item Tsetseroon's Stew that I was supposed to take back to the Subterrane.

The three of us later returned to the stairway in the Subterrane and left the pot of stew on the ground and hid in the shadows. The Qiqirn came out, ate the stew, and fell to the ground. We ran up to examine his bag on the ground, and we each stole a map from his bag.

Such an odd quest - poisoning a poor Qiqirn and stealing stuff from his bag while he lies on the ground, dying or really sick anyway. I still need to return to Nashmau to complete the quest, but at least we have yet another map in the collection.

Assault: I'm still not liking this

On Friday, Elboron, Grymalkyn and Kiki decided that they'd try an Assualt mission or two with just the three of them. After all, the official description from the NPCs is that these missions are for 3 to 6 adventurers.

We decided to first try the Imperial Agent Rescue mission in the Mamool Ja Training Grounds. For this one, we have to find the Agent locked up in one of three rooms. In order to open the gate to the rooms, you have to fight the Mamool Ja in such a way that they break the gate down for you, either by throwing a weapon at you and hitting the gate instead, or by missing you and hitting the gate with Firespit four times. It wasn't until our third Mamool Ja that we even got it to hit the gate at all, but by that time it was too late. The fourth firespit hitting the door happened just as time expired, and we got to see the animation for the falling gate just as we were warped back to the staging point.

This is another example of where luck plays an important factor - if you're lucky enough to choose the right room and manage to get the gate knocked down, it should be winnable. I actually wouldn't mind trying this one again, since I think I got better at dodging firespit towards the end. The mobs were all Tough to us, and we don't usually take on Toughs as a trio. We even had to rest for MP between each fight.

Next we decided to see if there was any difference with the worms for the Leujoam Cleansing mission with just 3 people. There wasn't. There were still all the worms, and they were all just as tough as they had been with five people. There's no way the three of us could possibly kill all of them within the time limit, so we picked off the singles for some exp as long as we were there. Then we foolishly decided that one of the worms in the final room was far enough from its neighbors to avoid having them link. It wasn't, but the others were mostly castly harmless spells, so we kept fighting. Then we were hit with Stonega III from one worm and Stonega IV from another. Grym was dead, and Elboron and Kiki were soon to follow. With no choice but to home-point, there went 2000 exp.

I really am disappointed with Assault. It just isn't what we were hoping for when they announced it.

Quests: Trial by Lightning (Ramuh Prime)

Monday night, 5 of us from the LLS headed off to fight Ramuh Prime. I'm a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to do more avatar fights at a level where the fights would actually be a bit challenging. With a five-some comprised of PLD75, THF74, MNK75, BRD75, and WHM72, Ramuh was just a baby. We didn't set a record or anything, but Ramuh hit so weakly, and even his Judgement Bolt merely tickled. I don't think any of us dropped into yellow HP at any point in the fight. I'm almost convinced that Grym and I could duo some of the primes at this point (probably as pld/rdm and thf/nin), but not sure I'm willing to risk the exp we'd lose if we fail.

At the halfway point, Itera and Elboron used their two-hours, so I didn't tank so much after that, but even Itera wasn't taking much damage from the avatar. Hopefully we'll start doing these regularly and we can get all the avatars then collect whispers for moon baubles and try for Fenrir at some point. I've read that it is indeed possible for a Paladin to tank Fenrir, but it involves kiting, so it's best to have ranged attackers for that, which isn't how our group is set up. I've got a long time before I really have to worry about that though. Diabolos Prime also sounds like it will be challenging.

Next week we're heading back to Garuda, since that's the only one Wendell can fight. He's got whispers from all the others and will get his moon bauble after we fight Garuda and then be ready to face them all again. Grym doesn't have the Garuda avatar yet, since the other time we fought her, Grym needed Garuda's Dagger and chose that as her reward.

New Title: Heir of the Great Lightning

Quests: Escort for Hire (San d'Oria)

We've gotten a bit bored with our weekly jaunts through Crawler's Nest with Olavia, so we decided to try the San d'Oria escort quest this week instead. For this one, you have to escort Cannau through the Eldieme Necropolis. Since absolutely everything in there will aggro her, we had to kill everything along the way. She starts out by heading for the East Plate to "open" the doors, but as we discovered, she may not actually open the door (or someone else closed it on us). However, she runs right through the closed door, so we lost her on our first try.

The second try went much better, especially since everything we'd killed up to the switch was still dead, saving us some time. Grym took the Azer away from the switch and used hide on it to get it to despawn, so we didn't have to fight that at least. Grym also stayed at the switch until we got to the gate, just in case it was closed again (it was). It was quite easy, and we pretty much just ran ahead of Cannau, killing the skeletons, shadows, ghosts, and hounds in our path. Surprisingly, we actually got some exp in the final room on the west side of the first map. This actually seems a lot quicker than the Crawler's Nest escort, but it could be the other path the NPC can take is a bit longer.

Crafting: Living off the Land

We spent a lot of time this past weekend gathering materials for Kiki's bonecraft and Grym made some sheep leather for future projects. I headed to Tahrongi for some excavation, but there were a couple other people with the same idea, so I headed into the Maze of Shakrami and killed lots of skeletons as well as hitting the excavation points I ran across. I also farmed 4 or 5 Wind Elementals, getting a bunch of wind clusters, which I really needed at this point.

Meanwhile, Grymalkyn was off in the Konstadt Highlands, killing sheep to get sheep teeth for me and sheepskins for leather for herself.

We got enough sheep teeth and bone chips for Kiki to cap her skill on bone rings (level 17), and then it was time to switch to Carapace Powder. Each synth for that requires two beetle shells, so we headed off to Jugner Forest, which always seemed to have the best drop rate for beetle shells. This worked pretty well for a short while. We were running back and forth between the two spawn locations for Panzer Percival, the NM beetle that drops Neckchopper, killing the 5 beetles in each area, and any we'd see in between, along with Thunder Elementals for the lightning clusters. The respawns were quick enough that the beetles were back by the time we got to each spot. Then the Percival campers moved in and spoiled our beetle supply. So we tried farming in Carpenter's Landing and then East Altepa. Those just weren't as good.

Sunday morning we tried the Hurototo Ruins, but again, just didn't get many shells, so we headed off to Jugner again. I managed to get to nearly level 20 on the farmed shells, and since the carapace powder sells pretty well to clothcrafters leveling on Hunters Cloth, I opted to buy the rest of the shells off the Auction House (as long as I could get them for 1000 gil or less), and was able to get to the level 21 cap for Carapace Powder.

Next up is Beetle Rings, which are made from Beetle Jaws. We got quite a number of these while farming for the shells, so I should have enough to make some good progress towards the level 25 cap on the rings. What I find funny is that I can use a wind crystal to carve a beetle jaw into a beetle ring, and then take a lightning crystal and "split" the ring back into a beetle jaw. That just doesn't make sense, but it makes it easier to stretch the materials further, getting more skillups in the process.

On the woodworking front, my demon arrows just aren't selling, so I'm going to have to turn in to one of those undercutting jerks that sellers hate and buyers love. I can undercut quite a bit and still make a profit, so I don't feel too bad about it. I've had 31 quivers of arrows for a week and a half now, and not a single one has sold yet. The next one back from the AH is going up at a discount!

Leveling: Nearing the End (Caedarva Mire 74-75)

Last night, four members of the Low Level Static hit Level 75. Elboron and Kiki were the first, leveling on the same monster. Next came Itera, then Yobun. Grymalkyn's still 74, while Wendell's at 72. The rest of us will be switching to merits at some point (I'd like to have around 35K exp for a buffer) as we continue to static and get Wendell to 75.

The LLS started 14 months ago, at level 31. Only three of the members were in the original group (Kiki, Itera, and Yobun), and one of them switched roles at level 56 (Kiki had been RDM, but switched to her PLD), but we've managed to keep it together this whole time. Elboron and Grymalkyn joined the static at 56, though Grym had filled in as WHM for several levels in the low 40s.

People in the linkshell keep telling us the name needs to be changed, but I like the history with the name, and the fact that we've stuck together to 75.

We got our best ever exp/hour last night, ending up with a bit more than 17K in just under 2 and a half hours. We only had one rest break, after I'd gotten killed by a Jnun (we had two mobs on us at that point), and even then, an imp spawned on top of us. Rather than tank while weakened, I stood back and helped cure, so it wasn't really very much of a rest break. When we first got to the Mire, the area wasn't too full, and Yobun was able to pull the mobs very fast (imps, flies, and toads). Our exp slowed down a bit when a couple of roaming burn parties moved in and made it harder to find prey quickly. I'm not sure I could keep up that pace for hours on end, especially when Yobun would be pulling things while I was suffering from amnesia and my Flash timer still had a few seconds on it, but the exp points did rack up fast.

It's odd finally being 75, since it's been my goal from the time I created Kiki two years ago, yet I'm not really sure what to do now. It's not like we've suddenly become all-powerful beings. We're just a bit better than we were at 74, and we're still not capable of taking on a lot of challenges in the game without an alliance of competent players.

And now that I'm a PLD75, what do I do with it? I don't really believe I can handle the drama or time committment in a gods/HNM linkshell, though it would be really nice to have some of the gear I could potential get in one (but then too, what do I do with that really nice gear? hang out in Al Zahbi showing off?). I'd like to try Dynamis, if I could find a suitable shell, since there's story behind that, so at least I get some new game content.

Assault: Seagull Grounded (Periqia PSC Assault)

On Saturday, Yobun (THF74), Trow (RDM75), Diasuke (SMN75), Itera (MNK74) and Kiki (PLD74) decided to try the PSC Assault Mission for Periqia, Seagull Grounded. We had to escort an NPC named Excaliace through a dungeon, but it's not as easy as escorting Olavia through Crawlers Nest. This guy is really annoying. If he sees any monsters, he runs back to the start, and we hadn't figured out how to get him to stop and restart reliably, which wasted a lot of time.

In the first section of the dungeon, there are six rooms. Three of these rooms have three crabs in them. Excaliace will randomly choose three of the rooms to visit, and if he picks a crab room, you have to kill all the crabs in that room to keep him continuing through the dungeon. Of course, with our luck, he picked each of the crab rooms.

It ended up being yet another frustrating time-out. Yobun thinks he figured out how to "control" the NPC better, so perhaps we'll have better luck next time. At the rate I'm going, I'm never going to be able to get any of the cool equipment you can get with Assault Points.

Crafting: Profiting While Skilling

I did a lot of crafting over the weekend, and ended up getting Alchemy to 29.7, Bonecraft to 14.8, and Goldsmithing to 11.7.

I got goldsmithing a bit higher than the copper ring level by making and desynthing copper hairpins, and then moved on to brass ingots. Grymalkyn and I spent a bunch of time killing worms in Giddeus, with Grymalkyn turning the flint stones into glass fiber (getting her Alchemy to 61 in the process) and the silver ore into ingots, while I make brass ingots from the copper and zinc ores. I had more zinc than copper, so I ended up heading to the Windurst Port Airship store and bought more copper there, capping my goldsmithing at 7 in the process.

I used some of the brass ingots and glass fiber to make minnows, getting my Alchemy .7 in skillups, but no goldsmithing. I think the gold level on those is lower than the 9 listed in the guides, especially since it's using copper ingots.

Next on the list was Cornettes. We headed to Gusgen Mines to farm a bunch of bone chips, and noticed a trio of subjob-less level 17-18s fighting skeletons, so when we got a skull off of a ghoul, we asked if they needed it. Sure enough, that's what they were there for, so we teamed up with them and got all three of them their skulls. Grym then teleported them out to the Dem crag (she was THF/WHM), and apparently, it was even their first teleport! How exciting for them!

I ended up making about 40 Cornettes over the course of the weekend, 30 with farmed materials and another 10 with stuff I bought. Amazingly, these sold nearly as fast as I listed them on the Auction House in Windurst. As opposed as I am to the idea of people "buying" their fame by doing one repeatable quest with purchased items, rather than doing as many quests as possible, this approach really helps out the crafters! I ended up making over 100k just on the cornettes that skilled me up. If I had actually bought everything, it wouldn't have been so profitable, but it would have been better than break-even.

I had switched to Fang Necklaces before capping on Cornettes, but with the Cornettes having fewer ingredients, and the way they sell so quickly, I gave up on the Fang Necklaces, and capped bonecraft on Cornettes (14). I'm into the Bone Ring stage now, and used up all the bone chips and sheep teeth we had on hand, making then desynthing the bone rings, reaching 14.8 before I didn't have any left. I'll have to farm more sheep teeth, bone chips, and wind and lightning clusters before continuing with my bonecraft.

I decided it was time to get back to woodworking (it's been so many months since I touched it). I did some calculations, and I think I can do better than breakeven on demon arrows, and so I sank 550,000 gil into a stack of Demon Arrowheads. It would be nice if the 99 synths those will make would get me from 64.8 all the way to 69, but that doesn't seem very likely. Last night I managed to get 7 stacks of arrowwood lumber from the guild store in Al Zahbi for 3 gil a stick. That's practically free! I couldn't believe I was able to get so many. With what I already had on hand, I should have enough to get through the stack of arrowheads.

I started in making the demon arrows last night, and it's going much better than I expected. I did 45 synths and ended up with 13 stacks of arrows (6 failures, losing 3 arrowheads), and best of all, 1.8 in skillups. I still have 57 arrowheads to go, so I could well make it very close to the cap of 69 before I finish up these materials. It also looks like I can expect over 50% profit on my investment for these levels. I really love being able to make money while skilling up using purchased materials. Woodworking all along has been pretty decent for gil while skilling, as long as I stuck to consumables, but back when I hit 64, demon arrows would have been a 50% loss. I think the change to having demon arrowheads stack to 99 brought the cost per arrowhead down, but I didn't keep any records of the price of materials vs the selling price for the arrows back then, so I'm not sure. I'm just lucky the market's changed enough during my woodworking hiatus.

After I finish up with demon arrows, my next synth will be repairing broken clothespoles, so I foresee a lot of fishing to go along with that phase. Hopefully I can figure out a good place for both breaking rods and getting fishing skillups while we're at it. Most people seem to like using meatballs on the Selbina/Mhaura ferry for breaking clothespoles, but I'd prefer to avoid the ferry, just because of the wasted time while docked. Maybe sliced cod at the south side of Qufim will work - that's what I use to break mithran fishing rods when people need them.

Update, June 8th: I finished up with all my demon arrows last night, ending up with a total of 31 stacks of arrows, and 3.6 in skillups, getting me to 68.4 woodworking. Depending on how quickly the arrows sell, I may go ahead and buy another stack of arrowheads to get to 69.0 before moving on to clothespole repairs, since they're money makers anyway.

Leveling: Fun with Fleas (Caedarva Mire level 74)

We headed back to Caedarva Mire last night, making use of the Runic Portal from Whitegate, only to find the area filled with other parties. Yobun scouted around a bit and thought an area that we had to go through Arrapago Reef to get to looked promising (it's part of the eastern section of the Mire, but has a one-way drop off). So we made our way through the Reef and came back out into the Mire and discovered that section was populated with Mosshorns (giant rams), Elder Treants, and one lone Heraldic Imp.

Since there was a ram and a tree right at the zone, we fought those first before venturing further in. We discovered that Mosshorns have fleas (Chigoes), which pop off with every TP move. This leads to some interesting chaining possibilities, so we decided we would try to include the Mosshorns in our fighting.

We ended up camping right at the drop-off into the main part of the Mire, and were able to pull two imps from down below, so we were able to chain pretty well with the three imps, a tree, and a ram (and its attendant fleas). The ram fights got really messy at times, but it was pretty exciting, and an interesting change of pace. We had a full wipe on one of our ram fights (two great bleats in succession with fleas smacking us did us in), but we dusted ourselves off and continued on, making sure to only take on rams when Wendell could Divine Seal/Erase and have Divine Veil make Erase work on all of us to remove the max HP down.

During another ram fight we had an imp spawn on us, but we handled that one pretty well with the help of Benediction and Invincible. Itera's Hundred Fists might have helped too, but we got petrified just after activating our two hours. Itera got killed on another ram fight, and Kiki did on yet another. I'd flashed the ram when it did Great Bleat, but a Chigoe decided I needed to die, and with the reduced HP from Great Bleat, I didn't last long. I was killed by a flea. :(

All in all, I rather enjoyed the novelty of having fleas spawn while fighting another monster. When the rams avoided using petrification or max-hp down moves, things went rather smoothly. We ended up having Elboron sleep the Mosshorn while the rest of us would switch to kill the Chigoe (which were pretty easy to kill), then back to the Mosshorn until another Chigoe popped. We were able to get up to chain #8 once.

It was another short night, and our deaths slowed us down a bit. I ended up with about 9.5K for the night. We're getting so close to level 75, but it's going to be another week, since we're back to one evening a week for the time being.

Missions: The Secrets of Worship (CoP 4-3)

The Secrets of Worship, CoP Mission 4-3, can be rather long, so we decided to split it up over two Fridays.

The first Friday, we met up in the Tavnazian Safehold, ready to head to the level 50 capped Sacrarium (WHM/BLM, BRD/WHM, WAR/NIN, MNK/WAR, THF/WHM, and PLD/WAR). We killed a couple skeletons near the entrance of the maze part, but opted to sneak the rest of the way through the maze, fearing mass blood-aggro if we had to fight. We ran into two Tauruses that we had to fight, but managed to slip behind one other along the way.

Once you get out of the maze portion, there's a long corridor with several clusters of Fomor. Fortunately these clumps aren't parties, so it's easy to pull them one at a time. We needed to get two Coral Crest Keys from the Fomor, and we ended up killing about a dozen of them. We also got the subligars for WHM (Wendell), PLD (Itera wanted a Parade Cuirass), THF (Grym has wanted a Rapparee Harness forever, but always passed on the subligar on any hunts we went on), and DRK (Kiki will want the JSE when she gets DRK higher). Splinte would have liked a NIN one, but we didn't see any of them along the way, and Elboron might have liked getting the one from the Bard (he already has the BST/BRD Gaudy Harness, but not the BRD/RDM Cerise Doublet), but the Bard didn't drop his subligar. We also got a couple balloon cloths and shakudo ingots, which are used for Gobbiebag VI. These used to be worth a lot, but we were disappointed when we got to the AH and discovered they aren't worth much any more. I think my Gobbiebag VI items cost me 600,000 gil when I did the quest, but it looks like people can do it for 20k now.

After we were done with the Fomor, we headed to the two corridors with 6 skeletons each. These don't aggro and don't link with each other, but if you fight the NM Corse, Keremet, they will all come running to assist him. They were surprisingly easy for us to kill.

Keremet lives in a large room patrolled by scary Teratotaurs. I volunteered to pull, and had to wait a few moments for the Teratotaurs to have their backs turned. I ran to the back of the room and flashed Keremet and ran back to the hallway where everyone was waiting and we started in fighting. Keremet has an ability, Danse Macabre, which charms the party member with hate. Our plan was to sleep the charmed person to help reduce the damage to the rest of the party. I was the first to get charmed, and it was actually pretty funny, but I feel bad helping Keremet kill Splinte. After my charm wore off, Itera got charmed, then me again. We managed to kill him with no other deaths, and got the Sealion Crest Key we needed from him.

We spent the next half hour tearing around Lufaise Meadows killing Orcs and Gigas, and hopefully shed all of our Fomor hate.

The following Friday, we headed back to the Sacrarium. We had to fight one Stegotaur near the entrance, but were able to avoid all of the others when they turned their backs on us. We had a bit of trouble with aggro in the undead maze, and ended up very nearly getting killed by three mummies, but judicious use of Soul Voice, Perfect Dodge, Benediction and Invincible saw us through with no deaths. Diasuke decided to come along to help us as his WHM, and caught up to us after we'd safely made it through the maze.

Having no Fomor Hate made it easy to slip past all of them as we made our way to the area where we needed to get a cutscene. Diasuke wasn't sure about his hate level, so he kept himself snuck. The walkthroughs weren't very specific about how the two keys work for the door, and we ended up losing the first Coral Crest Key because I didn't hear a click and didn't know to use my Sealion Crest Key until it was too late. So we had to use our second key to get the first cutscene.

We started checking the ??? spots in the desks in the classrooms, and Old Professor Mariselle spawned in the second one we checked. People had been telling us that this fight is very annoying. I think they were too kind. It was incredibly annoying. We fought him right outside the classroom, and after a certain amount of damage, he'd warp away. I guess it helped that it gave the mages a bit of time to rest, but as a melee, it was a pain in the neck. Elboron tried to keep the pupils asleep and I tried to help keep his health up, and tossed an occassional Flash on one or another, but focused my attention on the Old Professor. The fight seemed to drag on forever, but we finally got him killed and got the key item we needed to complete the mission.

Since we'd used up our two Coral Crest Keys, we had to kill about 5 Fomor to get another one, then headed through to the Reliquarium for our final cutscene. We found a NIN Fomor to try for Splinte's subligar, but it didn't drop, and we all headed back to the Tavnazian Safehold for Mission 4-4, Slanderous Utterings, which is just a couple cutscenes. Next up is Promyvion Vhazl, which sounds like it could be pretty painful.

New Title: The Lost One

Crafting: Have Pickaxe, Will Travel

I had been thinking of synthing Gelatin from Chicken Bones to get from level 10 Bonecraft to level 11, so I headed to Tahrongi Canyon on Sunday, with plenty of room in my gobbiebag and three stacks of pickaxes. Qeebler sent me our set of Field Gear, which supposedly helps with HELM activities, but I have yet to be convinced of that. :-)

Grymalkyn came to join me after awhile (he'd been fishing in Qufim), to provide extra pocket space as well as teleports back to the crag as I ran around to the various excavation points in the Canyon. I ended up with a good selection of stuff to use for bonework, or to sell to help fund purchases of other materials for bonework. I had enough bone chips to make 2 stacks of bone arrows, and managed to hit level 10 on them, which is the level the arrows cap at.

However, I'm now having second thoughts about using the Chicken Bones to make gelatin. The bones themselves sell for quite a bit on the auction house, but what would be even more lucrative is to have Qiara make Turtle Soup using the chicken bones. That could provide a good chunk of change to fund less profitable phases of leveling bonecraft.

My current plan is to get Goldsmithing to level 10, and synth Cornettes for selling in Windurst. Those should be profitable, especially if I'm making my own brass ingots for them. I think cornettes cap at 14 for both bonecraft and goldsmithing, so I can be leveling two skills at the same time. I started out last night at the Goldsmith Guild stall in Al Zahbi, and got my skill to 3.3 on copper ingots and copper rings (which I would try to desynth back into ingots, getting an unusually high number of HQ2s while I was at it).