Leveling: More Spinners (75)

Sunday night, it was back to Mamook for the Low Level Static. Itera was busy with Real Life, so we had Akuma join us as a DD NIN75/WAR37. We seemed to have more links than usual, rarely getting to fight a single, and even having 4 on us at once. The only bad one was when we had two and another spawned, and the new addition was on a different lullaby cycle than the first link, and Elboron went down, and then me too. Other than that, the evening was fairly uneventful. Charcole regained level 75, and everyone on limit points got at least one Merit Point. I didn't really keep track of total exp or time, but it seemed about the usual.

Tuesday night, having missed the LLS on Sunday, Itera was really itching for some meriting. Since we were still dressed from Sunday, it wasn't too much of an effort to put together a party. Izan was looking for a party for his DRG75, so Itera grabbed him, Elboron, and Kiki. He found a friend of his seeking party for his SMN75, and picked up a WHM75 as well. We headed out to Bhaflau, but it was overwhelmed with people working on merits, so we told the others about the Spinners in Mamook and everyone agreed to try it out.

The SMN had already obtained Geo Crush, one of the new bloodpacts from the update, and had fun playing with that. When he got his next merit, he had three and warped back to Al Zahbi to get Heavenly Strike, while the rest of us kept fighting as a 5-some. The SMN helped Elboron with the pulling, using Avatars when it looked like Elbo would get a link, so we mostly got to fight one at a time.

It went pretty much as our parties usually go. Elboron got killed on a link (they shredded him up pretty badly on the way back to camp, and I only got one off of him before he was down). I got taken out with Sickle Slash, but we didn't wait for my weakness to wear, and just kept fighting with Itera tanking until I was back to full health.

There was an NM Mamool Ja Treasurer chasing people around near our camp, but he didn't pay any attention to us. I wonder if he might be one of the new mobs they have guarding the Astral Mirrors in the strongholds.

After awhile the WHM left us, but replaced himself with a RDM. The RDM had meritted Phalanx II (and Dia III), so I got to benefit from the extra defense boost. Without a thief, even my full enmity gear/food didn't help me hold hate off of Itera, so it probably would have been better to have cast Phalanx II on him. I get so tired of not tanking. I wish we could fight tougher things where I might have a fighting chance of keeping hate. Either that, or just have us all sub Ninja and not care who's got hate.

Leveling: BLU Trio

Saturday evening, Elboron, Grymalkyn and I got set to go out to Ghelsba to try to learn Blastbomb from the Orcish Warmachines. Grym and I were just 15, and Elboron was quite close to 15, and Blastbomb is one of the level 18 spells we still needed (Cursed Sphere is the last). We didn't really know where to find the Warmachines in the Outpost section, except for one spot that was being camped by a BLU12, so we headed into the Fort Section. We didn't have much luck there, but killed lots of different Orcs, and managed to have all 3 of us learn Blood Drain (level 20) from the first Cheiroptera that we tried to learn it from.

We headed back to the Outpost, and went down to the lowest level. There we found several spawn points to run between, killing Orcs for more points as we went back and forth. We eventually all learned Blastbomb and decided to head to Carpenter's Landing for some exp. After hitting 16, we all set Healing Breeze as one of our spells. It's a bit expensive MP-wise, but it's nice to be able to cure everyone. I really like the way you get certain traits when you've set certain combinations of spells - such as autoregen with both Pollen and Healing Breeze set in the spell list.

It's really fun to have the three of us spamming Tough mobs with Blue Magic as we slash them with our swords, bouncing hate around between the three of us. We mostly fought beetles and Orcs here, but tried a few pugils, just to see if we might learn Screwdriver (level 26). We finished up the evening quite close to 17, and will probably head to the Dunes for our next outing, and try to learn Cursed Sphere.

General: Catch-all

On Saturday afternoon, Kiki, Grym and Elboron got dressed up for some level 40 fun and excitement in Riverne Site-A01. We wanted to get Elboron to the ??? spot near Monarch Linn so he could get some Rivernewort to complete the Spice Gals quest and be able to move on to the Secrets of Ovens Lost quest that Grym and I have made a regular part of our weekly routine.

Grym and I went as BST/NIN, and Elbo was WHM/BLM. We needed two Giant Scales to get through Unstable Displacements. These drop from Firedrakes, and it would be easier to have pets help kill it than to try to bring them down as some other trio configuration. Our charm rate on the flytraps there is just awful, and that caused some problems, but it's always better with a BST duo than it would be solo. Riverne Vultures were more reliable, but we had a hard time finding suitable pets consistently. Killing the Firedrakes was pretty easy in general - our two pets could pretty much finish off one Firedrake by themselves. Grym got aggro'd by a Firedrake while in search of a pet, but popped a Crab Familiar and managed to log out in time. His Crab was dead and the Firedrake was charging for him just as the logout countdown completed. After the 'drake despawned, he logged back in and we continued on.

We had to kill about 7 Firedrakes to get the 2 scales we needed, then proceeded to sneak our way across the islands, noting to the LS that the Carmine Dobsonflies were up when we went within Wide-Scan range. The island before the one with the ??? is just swarming with Cloud Hippogryphs, which were IT++ to us, and we had no intentions of fighting. They're also true-sight, so it's tough to get past them in such a tiny space.

I got aggro'd here, and set my pet Vulture on the hippogryph and quickly logged out. My hippogryph didn't despawn, but moved away and I logged back in. Since it looked like we really couldn't get through undetected, I set a Funguar Familiar on the one hippogryph that we couldn't get past, and we ran for the displacement and went through to the final island. We were very curious to see if the Hippogryph would follow us through after killing the funguar, but it didn't. Elboron got his Rivernewort, we zoned into Monarch Linn, and Elboron teleported us out.

He headed to San d'Oria to complete his quest, and we met back in the Tavnazian Safehold, but he couldn't get the next quest. Either he has a conflict with another quest or our current CoP mission, or he had to wait a real-life day or past the weekly conquest tally. He'll try again some time this week.

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We decided to head to Bastok to pick up the Crawlers Nest escort quest, and again Grym went as THF/BST. Olavia headed to the basement, but we still finished up with time to spare, probably because there were people fighting the coffer key mobs that tend to slow us down on that path.

After picking up our scrolls in Bastok, Elboron and I did a chocobo race to San d'Oria, for another scroll. And the next morning, Grym and I did our cookbook quest for yet another scroll. My NIN is now 22. I still think I'll have to actually go kill things for exp points, rather than just read scrolls all the way to 37, but the scrolls certainly help.

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Before the LLS went out on Sunday evening, I had some time on my hands, so I grabbed my Lu Shang's and Shrimp Lure and caught two stacks of Salzanbaligi near the Auction House in Al Zahbi. These are like Gold Carp, and probably cap at level 56. Using a Shrimp Lure in this spot, these are the only fish I catch, so it's good to try for skillups while I might otherwise be idle. I managed to get .1 in skill, pushing me to Level 54. At this rate, I think I'll be able to get my Fishing Apron (at level 68) in about 2010. Good thing we got all those guild points built up so early. :-<

Quests: Luck of the Draw (Corsair Flag quest)

Grymalkyn and I finally got around to finishing the Corsair Flag quest on Saturday. I'm pretty sure we picked it up our first day in Whitegate the week the expansion came out, but it didn't seem too critical for us to finish it quickly.

We had an uneventful ferry ride to Nashmau, and headed out the western gate in Caedarva Mire, an area we'd never been in before. I was RDM60/BLM30, while Grym was THF/WHM37. We decided to try a "short cut" by going this way. We headed through the graveyard into Talacca Cove (passing one imp right at the zone), then through Talacca Cove and out to Arrapago Reef. There, I cast Escape on us, which dumped us in Caedarva Mire, right near the zone into Arrapago Reef, but in the middle of some skeletons and a Lamia. We quickly zoned, waited for them to despawn, then headed back to the Mire for Grym to pick up her "free" Lamia Fang Key.

Back into Arrapago Reef, we made our way to the boat with the ??? spot for the quest. There was another person traveling through the gate we needed the fang key for, and since he opened it, we didn't need to, and Grym has a spare key for some other occassion (just what he needs, another rare/ex item taking up space). We found the spot without incident, and the sight aggroing Lamia was at the opposite end of the boat, so we dropped our Invisible and got our cutscene.

When I came out of the cutscene, the Lamia was right on top of me, and was pretty angry to find me on her boat. I ran to a safe spot for her to kill me, and Grym stayed in his cutscene until the Lamia despawned. Then he raised me and we waited for my weakness to wear before walking back to Nashmau.

We headed back out the western gate again to Talacca cove for a couple more cutscenes, and the quest was complete. We could now become Corsairs! Grym's currently planning to level it as a subjob option for our BSTs, since a couple of the rolls can enhance pet attack and accuracy, which could be interesting. Since I feel like I really should have WHM to 37, though I'm not really sure why, I'll level my WHM along with his COR. He got his COR up to 4 (my WHM's level) on Sunday, subbing PUP for an extra melee buddy, and that worked so well for him that we're considering leveling PUP a bit so we can duo as COR/PUP and WHM/PUP and have our no-exp-penalty Automatons helping us out. What was very interesting is that the Automaton was getting magic and melee skillups, which seems inconsistent with the normal subjob mechanics.

General: Update Notes

I might get a bit whiney in this post today, so please bear with me.

Yesterday we got our first big update since the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion came out this spring. Highest on the buzz list were all the new spells, abilities and traits that the level 75s could use Merit Points to obtain. I was really hoping for something that would improve PLD and help get rid of the stigma that we're nearly useless for exp post-70 (and even lower now that even the 66s are having Imp-Burning parties). I was quite disappointed with the two new traits and abilities that PLD can get, and don't see that they're worth the Merits.

Chivalry: This job ability can be used once every 20 minutes (with 2.5 minute recast reductions with each additional upgrade, down to 15 minutes). It will instantly convert whatever TP you have at that time into MP, reportedly at a 1:1.5 ratio. I just don't see that this would be useful for me. So once every 20 minutes I could instantly get a good chunk of MP back, assuming I saved up all my TP. With autorefresh, double ballad, and juice, I usually don't have trouble maintaining a decent MP level. And in other situations where I like getting more MP, I'll use a staff and Spirit Taker and get 300 MP for 100 TP and do 200 damage at the same time.

Fealty: This job ability is also on a 20 minute recast timer, with the same upgrades as Chivalry. It will give the PLD enhanced reduction to status effects. I don't know how long it's active, but as an ability, it simply doesn't seem worthwhile. If it were a Job Trait, and always active, that would be different.

Iron Will: This is a job trait that imparts a spell interruption rate while using Rampart. Again, this just doesn't seem worth it. I usually use Rampart, which gives a defense boost to the party members within range, when I've lost hate, since it helps protect the person with hate. More often than not, just using Rampart will pull enough hate to get the mob back on me, and I can merit spell interruption rate separately, which benefits all my jobs. Plus the people usually pulling hate off of me are two MNK/WARs, and they don't cast any spells.

Sentinel: This is a job trait that slows the enmity decay while using Sentinel, which is a job ability that boosts my defense. Again, I just don't see much use to this, unless it pretty much means I really don't lose any accumulated hate for the 30 seconds it's active.

A few of the people in the LS, none of whom have PLD leveled, think these are awesome enhancements for PLD, but haven't actually explained why. The level 75 PLDs aren't so thrilled. My suspicion is that that NIN75 thinks they're "awesome" because it keeps NINs in their place as everyone's prefered tank (grump, grump, grump). He says the new abilities/traits are great for end-game, and he never even considers exp any more.

Seriously though, since I know nothing about HNMs, Gods, or even Dynamis, can someone please explain to me how these would help at endgame? It's my understanding that PLDs tend to die before they (a) get an appreciable amount of TP and (b) get a chance to use up much MP (unless they're on curing duty, and then they're not getting TP). So that rules out the usefulness of Chivalry in endgame. I can't really see much use in the others either, but I'm willing to be instructed.

So I guess I'll continue to spend my merits on things that help my other jobs rather than "wasting" them on PLD-specific things that don't seem all that great to me. Maybe they'd appeal to someone who's done all the Merit upgrades they can do and gives them a new bunch to put more towards.

Some of the other jobs got what seem to be very good boosts in the upgrade. THFs and DRKs especially, and not only merit related, with damage increases on the high level daggers, and a new absorb-TP spell for DRKs at level 45. Even Grym seems to think the THF traits/abilities are decent, but unless they are still active in level-capped areas, he doesn't see any use in getting the limit points he'd need to get them, since it's not the level 75 stuff that he cares about.

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After grousing in my moghouse about my crummy new merit categories, I ran over to the Chocobo Stables in Al Zahbi and went out for a ride. It was odd being on Chocobo in Wajaom and Bhaflau, but it will be fun to do some thorough exploration over the next few days/weeks.

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As soon as the server was up and running, the beastmen forces started in on amassing their forces. We were all eager to see the changes to Besieged, and a bit worried we were going to finally lose, marring our pre-update Besieged record of 155 wins and 0 losses. The Undead Swarm was the first to arrive. I decided to try this one as my PLD75, and teamed up with Grym (WHM43), Elbo (BRD75), Ranzz (BRD75), and Ryken (PLD75). After the cutscene scattered us, we all gathered together and started attacking a Qutrub. He seemed determined to head to the Hall of Binding, so we kept running after him, fighting and fighting and fighting. Other people joined in with us, but I swear it was 30 minutes before we finally killed him and were able to move on to other mobs, like Lamia No. 9.

Some of the changes are pretty funny. Some mob was doing something that kept removing all of our equipment, leaving me punching the Qutrub with my bare hands, in my pyjamas. No sooner I'd get my gear back on, and off it'd come again. The Lamias were also busy charming as many of us as possible, which was pretty amusing. Fortunately, the Lamia wasn't so good at telling us what to do, and she'd drag us over to the door of the Hall of Binding and we'd stand there guarding her, without actually fighting anyone.

The Besieged seemed to go on longer than previous ones, but with 700+ people in the zone, we were successful at forcing their retreat. They managed to kill 2 of our Generals, and took a total of 10 prisoners.

A short while later, the Mamool Ja invaded. We died a lot more often with the Mamool Ja, Elboron especially seemed to get killed as quickly as he could reraise. There wasn't as much different about the Mamool Ja forces, but the new NM, who's name I cannot recall at the moment, had something like 4 wyverns hovering about him. He (and his wyverns) were probably responsible for most of our deaths. Again we won, and the Trolls were preparing to attack, but it was past my bedtime, and they wouldn't arrive for at least another hour. Hopefully the Lakshmites were able to keep our record loss-free.

I ended up getting 1400 exp/isp for the two besieged, which is always nice. Grym's WHM leveled to 44, so she can read the Regen II scroll she's been hanging on to, and then try to decide which job to use in future Besiegeds.

I've been building up my IS points, and am getting close to being able to get one of those turbans all the cool kids have had already for months. Mog locker expansion and accessibilty take priority though. I forgot to talk to the Mog Locker guy last night, so I'll have to do that tonight.

Missions: Following Tenzen Around (part of CoP 5-3)

Our CoP Static did most of Tenzen's Path in the Three Paths mission on Friday. We had all initiated the mission beforehand by talking to Cid in Bastok, and then had travelled to La Thiene Plateau to see what Carbuncle had to say.

Friday night we met up in Whitegate, ready for the level 50 capped Pso'Xja tower, and Wendell whisked us away to Xarcabard. I think it's funny people still haven't gotten used to waiting for Elboron to cast Chocobo Mazurka before they run off after zoning. Mazurka sure makes it a lot quicker to cross these huge zones on foot.

The objective in Pso'Xja is to pass through a "Sprial" of 16 small rooms with doors that have traps on them, leading to an elevator and an Avatar Gate in the basement for a cutscene. Some of the rooms are empty, others have mobs that aggro to sight, sound or magic. The traps on the doors could spawn a Gargoyle, so the idea was to have Grym use Skeleton Keys to deactivate the traps. We had some on hand from our Key Ring Belts, and Itera bought a stack for the mission. This actually worked quite well. Grym ended up failing on two doors, and we had two unintentional door examinations that resulted in Gargoyles, so Grym saved us 12 out of 16 Gargoyle fights, which made the trip that much quicker.

The mobs themselves were VT-IT to us at 50, but we didn't have much trouble with them. There were Crytonberries (sight aggro), Camazotz (sound aggro), Magic Millstones (magic aggro), and Blubbereyes (sound aggro). We managed to avoid fighting all of the Magic Millstones, and Grym used Hide to get rid of one of the Crytonberries, but we fought enough that I got just over a thousand limit points, getting another Merit Point in the process. We managed to avoid any elementals until we were ready to leave after our cutscene in the basement. I provoked it and we kept it occupied while Wendell teleported us out.

The Spiral ended up being more annoying than troublesome - they sure seem to make us want to run around a lot. We headed back to Jeuno for a couple of cutscenes, and then donned our level 75 gear to fight a Doll in Lower Delkfutt's Tower. For one of the cutscenes we were supposed to examine a ??? twice, but a couple of us had only done it once, so after I spawned the Doll and we killed it (not a bad fight, but it hit pretty hard), the people who hadn't got the key item couldn't get the cutscene. They ran back to Batallia Downs to get their key item while the rest of us waited at the Cermet Door. It turns out they simply got the cutscene and we didn't need to fight the Doll a second time.

The final part of Tenzen's Path involves sneaking through the level 60 capped Pso'Xja tower for another cutscene at another Avatar gate. Itera's already soloed that, but I think we can do it as a group when we're working on the other level 60 capped portions of Mission 5-3.

Next on the agenda is Ulmia's path, with the level 50 capped BC fight with the Mithran Sin Hunters. We're having some debate over whether it's worth getting Blackened Muddy Siredons for the fight. I'm of the opinion that anything that can help us is worth getting.

Crafting: Beetle Arrowheads for Everyone! (Bonecraft)

When I'm actually making arrowheads (rather than buying them), I like the fact that they stack to 99 now. Makes it a lot easier for leveling on them. I've in the beetle arrowhead phase of bonecrafting, starting at 27.5 (caps at 33). This is a pretty bad money loser if you have to buy your materials, since a stack of beetle arrowheads would cost nearly 65,000 to make, and sells for a mere 10,000. But being the odd Taru that I am, I've been farming up my materials (plus other things that fund the purchases).

I had 11 beetle jaws and over 3 stacks of bone chips on hand, so I started out with support at the Guild, doing 11 synths for .7 in skill, which took me to 28.2. I got a Beetle Earring off of the Jeuno AH for 2k and passed my Bonecraft Recruit test.

I decided to see how the farming was in Garlaige Citadel, and took along a couple of stacks of wind crystals to convert the non-stacking beetle shells into the stackable (and decent moneymaker) Carapace Powder. I killed any beetle I ran across in Sauromogue, and was lucky to find Garlaige free of parties on the top level. I circled around killing the beetles and got a stack of jaws, 3 stacks of insect wings, and made a stack of Carapace Powder. Plus I got to help people open Banishing Gate #1 several times. :-) I made enough selling the Carapace Powder to buy another stack of jaws off of the AH.

My next bout of synthing (again at the Guild in Windurst) netted me 1.7 skillups (now 29.9) with 24 synths. Since I was running low on bone chips, I went out to the Outer Horutoto Ruins to kill the Wendigos behind the Three Mage Gate. Using my staff, the first would respawn about the same time I finished killing the last, so I had a neverending supply of Wendigos. One thing nice about skeletons is that you can also steal bone chips from them, helping increase your total haul. I ended up with 3 stacks of bone chips, 5 Rusty Daggers, a set of Test Answers and 2 Gravity scrolls.

The extra loot funded another 2 stacks of Beetle Jaws, but I actually ended up buying 3 stacks of Jaws, and got my skill up to 32.6 (2.7 skillups on 38 synths). I think it's time to move on to Fang Arrowheads (black tiger fangs and bone chips). I had some time before I had to log out last night, and headed back to beat up Wendigos again, and should be able recoup the costs for that third stack of jaws I bought with the additional Rusty Daggers and Test Answers I got.

I haven't decided what to do with all of the arrowhead thoughs. I think I have enough to make 150 stacks of Beetle Arrows, more if I HQ them. I would probably end up making about 300K if I do that, versus 40K for just selling the arrowheads themselves, but it would take a fair bit of time to make and sell that many arrows. Of course I don't have to do it all at once, and could do something like make a stack of quivers a week. Then I can start the process over with Fang Arrows.

Leveling: Mamook Spinners (75)

The Low Level Static headed back to Mamook on Sunday, fighting the Spinners again. Wendell hit level 74, which means he's got to go out and get the next level on his BLM (it's 36), or face the shame of an underleveled sub.

Charcole couldn't make it on Sunday, so Onima joined us for the evening as a MNK75/NIN37. I decided that Itera should sub NIN too. :-P

We ended up with about 14k exp with sanction and ring in just under 2.5 hours, so it was about the same as last week. We did get at least one chain #8 this week though, so that was fun. Our only real break was the result of a Kiki death. I got Sickle Slashed for 680 damage when I was apparently low in HP. (My HP this week was 1200.)

Using sushi made a huge difference (plus my Woodsman Ring for part of the night - switched over to my Jelly Ring at some point). My accuracy was 86%, compared to 64% the previous week. I also had put a Merit into +2 Sword Skill, and that probably made a difference as well. I was taking more damage than last week when I was using defense food, but the unblocked hits were in the 80s, so they were still pretty reasonable. The Sickle Slashes seemed worse, and for some reason the Spinners seemed to be double attacking more.

Nearly every pull was two Spinners. This made keeping hate a bit hard for me, since I had to split my hate tools between two mobs, making sure the one we weren't fighting wouldn't jump on Elboron when it would wake up. Itera was also provoking the links, giving him a head start on hate, which he certainly doesn't need. This week, Itera got to borrow Yobun's Kirin's Osode. This made him even more of a menace than he usually is.

My shield skillups were a bit slow this week. I don't think I even got a level, so I'm still stuck at 264 (cap is 276). I think maybe next week I'll wear my shield torque and see if that helps.

General: Weekend Update

I've been spending some time trying to make contributions to the FFXIclopedia Wiki. I started out mostly by checking the lists of "wanted" or "short" pages, finding something with which I'm somewhat familiar, and go on from there (like "tiger hide", which led to a bunch of missing mantles that have tiger hides in their recipes, and in turn are used to craft other mantles). I'd also add things I've personally observed to mission and quest walkthroughs.

I added a Mule "guide", and then decided the Paladin guide to weapons and armor needed a section for Tarutaru-specific advice, as well as general cleanup. My current "project" is making sure every shield in the game is properly represented in the Wiki (there are templates to use for entries, but many entries don't adhere to the templates), and I'm adding the type of each shield to each of them while I do that. I'm rather enjoying helping out with the Wiki. The more people that contribute to it, the more complete it becomes.

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On Saturday afternoon I decided to do a chocobo race, and since I hadn't really shifted gear back to normal after Friday night, I ended up doing the race as PLD75/BLM34, wearing only my Federation Aketon and Pole of Trials, which seemed to mean I got /checked more than usual. I also ended up getting tells from random strangers. One offered 300k if I would hold his hand through the Rank 5 missions, but by the time I got to the point I could respond (I have a hard time typing and racing at the same time), he'd disconnected or logged out. I'm still not sure what I would have done.

Then a well-geared, subjobless RDM17 begged me for some gil (I had just gotten off my chocobo after completing the race in San d'Oria. When I told him I didn't like giving money to new players as it instilled bad habits, he offered to do something for me, but then he ran off before I had a chance to respond, since I was busy talking with another fellow who apparently was leveling a random "mule" on Lakshmi when he already has a character with PLD75/WAR75/NIN75/MNK7x on another server, and he needed to brag to someone about how rich and powerful he was on the other server but would really like a powerlevel and was terribly poor here on Lakshmi.

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I did some crafting at the Bonecraft Guild in Windurst, then caught a few Bastore Bream for sushi. I would have liked some fishing skillups, but no such luck. Then Elboron suggested an escort quest, and we talked Grym into logging on for it. We headed to Crawlers Nest, and Grym went as THF/BST, with as much of her +CHR gear as reasonable for a THF/BST. We ended up only needing to kill 2 monsters (Grym had troubles charming the Soldier Crawlers), plus Olavia took the shortest route, so it was over pretty quickly.

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Elboron and I decided to level a baby job for a bit outside Bastok. He'd spent the afternoon unlocking DRK, so we teamed up as a WHM1/BLU1 and DRK1/WAR1. After getting killed at level 2 and homepointing to Whitegate, we headed back to Bastok and tried again, with Elbo as DRK2/BLU1. We got up to level 4 before I felt it was getting late and I should go. A WHM-DRK duo works pretty well - Elbo kills stuff so much faster than I could on my own!

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We had two Besiegeds back-to-back on Sunday evening, before the LLS headed out for exp. First it was the Mamool Ja, followed immediately by the Undead Swarm. One thing that surprised us was that we had all 5 generals for the Undead Swarm, despite 3 of them being killed by the Mamool Ja. I would have thought they would have been "captured" when they were killed. I went as my RMD60, as I've been enjoying getting the exp on that job without leveling it, and it's a good opportunity to skill up dark magic. And healing people seems more useful than fighting things. I must've died 5 times during the undead invasion. No sooner I'd get raised and down I'd drop again. I still got decent points, ending up with about 1200 exp/isp for the two combined. As of Sunday evening, Lakshmi's Besieged record is 141/0.

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Grymalkyn hasn't been happy with the game for quite some time now, and recently things have gotten worse (he's convinced the game hates him), so he's trying to decide what he wants to do. He may end up quitting altogether, which would be very sad for me. There are so many things I wanted Tsakiki and Grymalkyn to do together. I'll have to actually schedule time for the game so I don't force him into the role of a game-widower. I suppose it's one way to confront my addiction. :-(

Missions: Desires of Emptiness (CoP 5-2)

It took us over 4 weeks, but we finally got through Promyvion-Vahzl last night. First we had to do CoP Mission 5-1, Enduring Tulmult of War. This mostly consists of cutscenes, but there is an uncapped Golem fight at the stone gate in the Pso'Xja tower that you need to go through for Mission 5-2, Desires of Emptiness, in Promyvion-Vahzl. We decided that we'd fight it on our way to the Promyvion, which caused a bit of consternation because people didn't have room for their uncapped gear plus all of the level 50 gear needed for the level capped Promyvion.

I told people to not worry about the Golem though, since it didn't sound like it would be a challenge to a group of 71-75, but it was even easier than I imagined. We all built up our TP, and worked out a Monk->Warrior->Thief Dark skillchain. It was all for nought though, as the Golem was dead too fast. It has a pretty crazy regen, but it just wasn't up to the massive damage we inflicted in a short amount of time.

From there, we headed to the elevator down to the entrance to the Promyvion, and got quite a lengthy cutscene. We found ourselves in the familiar Promyvion environment, but Vahzl is tinted in brownish hues rather than the green/gray tones in the Dem/Holla/Mea crags. Our team for this (capped at 50):

Wendell WHM/BLM
Elboron BRD/WHM
Itera MNK/WAR
Splinte WAR/NIN
Grymalkyn THF/RNG
Tsakiki PLD/WAR

Promyvion-Vahzl is very much like the first three Promyvions: find the memory recepticle, kill it and its stray, move on to the next floor and repeat. The biggest twist is that we have to examine three Memory Fluxes along the way, spawning an NM, defeating it, then getting a cutscene for the mission. The nice thing about this is that once you've seen the cutscene for a particular memory flux, you can be transported directly to that spot from the entrance of the Promyvion, making them very handy stopping points when you don't have 5 hours to devote to the mission.

We ended up making it to the second memory flux that Friday. The journey through the levels wasn't aggro-free, and there were several spots that we actually chose to fight since there were so many of the Empty that we didn't think they'd ever be in positions such that we could avoid them all. The flux NMs are of the types of the bosses for the other crags. The first one was a Gorger-type and didn't give us too much trouble. The second was a Craver-type, and he was a bit tougher. Both Itera and Kiki were dropped to low double digits, but we did just fine.

Evenings that week were devoted to preparations for going back June 23rd and facing the final Memory Flux NM and the 3 bosses in the Spire. We farmed for recollections in the crags, farmed Ochus for malboro vines to make hi-potions, and gathered materials for bolts and poison potions.

Unfortunately, after all of our preparations to tackle this on June 23rd, Wendell lost his internet connection, so we had to delay it until July 7th, since Itera wasn't available on June 30th. Then on July 7th, we were all set to go, but Elboron had internet problems, so once again, it was delayed until July 14th.

Then on the 14th, there was a freight train derailment outside Toronto that caused the commuter train service to be completely suspsended. I feared we'd have to put this off another week, but my husband drove into the city to pick me up. The 100-mile round trip took 3.5 hours, but we made it home in time to get ready for the mission.

We gathered together in Whitegate, did a quick check of all our gear and items, and Wendell whisked us away to Xarcabard. We ran through Beaucedine Glacier to Pso'Xja, and made our way to the basement entrance to Promyvion-Vahzl. We were given the option to warp directly to the two Memory Fluxes we'd already been to, so we were able to start where we'd left off four weeks earlier.

We had no troubles making it to the memory recepticle to the final floor, found the Memory Flux there and spawned the Ponderer. The fight went smoothly, and after our cutscene, we made our way to the Spire, with Grym aggroing the last mob in our path and using Flee to zone into the Spire unscathed.

We rested up and reviewed our strategy before heading into the BC. Our plan was to fight the Thinker-type (Agonizer) first, which would be followed by the Craver-type (Cumulator) then the Gorger-type (Procreator). We'd use two set of animas on each, Psychoanima first, then Hysteroanima, using our Terroanimas when the next mob would start attacking before the one we're fighting was dead. We picked Agonizer first, since its Trinary Tap attack will steal 3 buffs from the person with hate, and we didn't want it stealing helpful things like food or regens.

We headed in and buffed up, getting reraise on all of us. Since the mobs don't aggro at first, I headed in to stand behind the Agonizer, and Grym whalloped it with a SATA off me, starting the fight with a good deal of hate on me. The Agonizer put up a good fight, but we all had poison potions to wake us up from AOE sleep, eye drops to remove blindness, holy water to remove Curse, and fake buffs and food for the mob to steal without doing massive damage.

The Cumulator, as has always been my experience with Craver-type bosses, was the deadliest. Grym was dropped to 7HP by Carousel, and she was poisoned and died before anyone could heal her. She reraised, but was defeated a second time by another Carousel. Splinte was killed a bit later, and reraised. I used about 5 hi-potions during this part of the fight, and opted for a hi-ether as well. Those take so long to use. :-(

We managed to defeat the Cumulator, and the Procreator, again as typical of the Gorger types, was a lot easier than the other two, despite massive paralysis all around (I lost my Psychoanima trying to use it while paralyzed). We won! After a couple of cutscenes in Beaucedine Glacier, we're ready for Mission 5-3, the 6-in-1 mission that will take us months to complete....

New title: Frozen Dead Body

General: Updatey Thingy

We've been spending some time out in the Woodlands skilling up various weapons (Colibri are terrible for me to work off my Pole of Trials latent though - Feather Tickle steals my TP, seemingly at 90% every time). One evening we got to see the Trolls invading Al Zahbi. It was pretty cool to watch them streaming through, but there's no way I'd start attacking them outside the city. We then ran into Al Zahbi behind them, to join in on the Beseiged.

Grym and I did the Cookbook quest twice last weekend (once after the update on Sunday). On Saturday, there were a few parties in Sacrarium fighting things, and on Sunday, someone came in at the same time as us, and used elemental seal-sleep on the Stegotaur that was blocking our path. I'm not sure what he did at that point - we just ran ahead and got our cookbook page. Since I'm usually going in as RDM/BLM anyway, I suppose I can try zoning one of those if we're ever stuck alone. My NIN is now 21, with a buffer, thanks to the exp scrolls. One of these days I may have to get more serious about getting it to 37.

I had 4 Merit points to spend, and finally opted for upgrades in HP (+10), Sword Skill (+2), and Spell Interruption Rate (-2%) (along with my first in Critical Hit Rate (+1%)). I'm currently thinking my next upgrade will go to sword skill, then maybe enemy crit hit rate followed by STR. I'm probably going to change my mind 5 times before I get another Merit point though...

We were a bit short of people on Avatar Night, so we opted to fight Titan with just Grym (THF), Wendell (WHM), Elboron (BRD) and Kiki (PLD). The fight took a lot longer without a "real" damage dealer or two, and Elboron was killed by Titan's two hour. He took over 1000k damage, while the rest of us pretty much fully resisted. I don't understand how random it is when we all had earth carol and barstonra on us. Other than that, the fight was fairly uneventful.

Last night, Grymalkyn and I headed to Toraimarai Canal to see if we could get a Viking Axe for Grymalkyn. We killed the Girtab in the room for the BLM AF3 fight, and what do you know, the axe dropped. We decided we'd see if we could get another one or two, for those times we want to be dual-wielding BST/NINs, so Elboron came to join us. We headed to kill the Girtab near Full Moon Fountain, but no axe. We waited for two sets of respawns, but had no luck, and gave it up for the night. We went to the zone to Windurst Walls and killed bats and skeletons for about an hour, trying to get that latent off of my Pole of Trials. It just seems to be taking forever.

Leveling: Spinners in Mamook (75)

Yobun heeded the pleas of Kiki and Wendell and found us an unpopulated spot for the Low Level Static on Sunday night. We fought Spinners in Mamook, near the zone to Bhaflau Thickets. They took a bit longer to kill than the Sea Puks on the other side of the zone, but they were almost all Very Tough, and yielded better experience than we'd been getting from the Puks. Plus Spider Web is much less annoying than the Puks' knockback attacks. Best of all, they don't have Radiant Breath or Firespit, and Sickle Slash isn't as fearsome as it once was. We got mostly chain #5s, and 4 chain #6s, averaging around 150 per mob.

The Spinners do not aggro, but they do link. Most of the time, Elboron would keep one asleep while we fought the other, but once Yobun had three on him and he zoned two while we grabbed one as he went past.

We fought for less than 2.5 hours, with a couple of AFKs in there, and ended up with 13,733 with sanction and empress bands. Once again I selected the Refresh bonus with Sanction, and once again it helped reduce the need for juice on top of Ballad.

This was my first exp party since I got my fancy new Tatami Shield, and I was quite pleased with the intimidation rate on the spiders. I'll be keeping it. I'm sure my BST will love having it when it gets high enough to wear it as well. I stuck with wearing a good bit of enmity gear, but switched to tank food this week (taco, then black curry). My accuracy suffered as a result (64%), so if we end up in the same camp next week, I'll eat bream sushi for the VIT and ACC, use my High Breath Mantle instead of the Knightly (lose VIT, gain Enmity), and wear my Woodsman Ring instead of my Mermaid's (lose Enmity, gain ACC). Overall, I'll have more enmity and accuracy, and less VIT and DEF, but the spiders weren't hitting all that hard, so we'll see how it goes.

Itera and Charcole are quite the monsters these days, and Itera's put a couple of Merit upgrades into his Hand-to-Hand skill. Even if I was completely kitted out to be a Damage Dealer, there's no way I could keep up with them, and in doing so, I'd lose all of my +enmity, and wouldn't be tanking. So as long as I continue to be the tank, I will have to ignore how little damage I do. I wish there were Paladin parsers to show the number of hits and damage taken, shield blocks and parries, and HP recovered by cures. :-)

One thing we noticed here: the Spinners were stunned by Chi Blast. None of us have ever noticed Chi Blast ever stunning anything. They really did some interesting things with the various mobs in the new expansion, making it new for everyone, instead of the same old repetitive things we've all seen before.

Leveling: Blue Mage Duo (8-15)

Our previous "leveling" bouts for BLU were more about learning abilities rather than just fighting things for experience points. Since we had nearly all of our spells through level 16 (were just missing Healing Breeze, a level 16 spell), we were able to just kill monsters for experience points for several levels.

We started off in Windurst, and went running through East Sarutabaruta to head to the Outer Hurototo Ruins. We fought mostly DCs, and headed deeper into the tunnels, and found some Tough bombs, bats and beetles. We successfully took on several of these, but one of the beetles killed us, sending us back to Whitegate, just in time for a bout of Besieged.

After Besieged, Grym gave us a Teleport-Vahzl, and we used the outpost teleport to get back to Windurst. This time we made our way up to Tahrongi Canyon, and fought DC-T mandies, sprouts, and bunnies. Corbun, who hadn't played for months, showed up to power level us a bit. I think he was curious to see what Blue Mage was like. When we hit 11, we headed back to Windurst to empty our pockets, upgrade our gear, and eat some supper.

We then decided to head out to Giddeus, and found a perfect spot in the "basement". For some reason, there was a lack of necklace farmers (perhaps because the necklace price dropped to under 1K over the weekend), and we had 6 mostly Tough Yagudos and 2 Even Match-Tough worms to rotate through. They respawned as fast as we needed them, and we had a great time getting to 13 there. We routinely had chain #3s, which is just not something we've ever seen with any of our other duo combinations at that level. In fact, besides BST, I don't believe we often fought Toughs as a duo and lived to tell the tale. Blue Mage does seem to be a bit over-powered, at least at these baby levels.

We headed back to Windurst after we hit 13 with a buffer, and again emptied our pockets and upgraded some gear again. I wanted to go beat up some Cardians to see if we could learn Bludgeon (a level 18 spell), so we headed to the Ruins in West Sarutabaruta and fought mostly the Threes. We had a power failure in the midst of this, and then kept getting disconnected for another hour afterwards, but we finally managed to both learn Bludgeon. Then it was off to Tahrongi Canyon to see about Healing Breeze. Elboron's BLU was 14, and he also needed Healing Breeze, so he said he'd meet us there.

We fought our way up to the dhalmels, using our empress bands, and quickly got close to 14 ourselves. Before Elboron arrived, we had a dhalmel link and kill Grymalkyn. She had to homepoint to Whitegate, Tele-Vahzl, OP to Windurst, and run back out to the Canyon, killing things along the way to try to make up for the death. Meanwhile Elboron showed up, and he and I kept working on the dhalmels. Grym got back rather quickly, and the three of us didn't have any trouble with the dhalmels, but they just didn't want to use Healing Breeze, and instead would use Stomping, Cold Stare, Sonic Wave, Whistle, and whatever the Berserk one is. Eventually we all learned it (Kiki first, then Grym and Elbo on the same one). Both Kiki and Grym got to level 14 in the process.

The next morning, Grym and I headed back to the Canyon, and Grym soloed until she caught back up to me. Then we teamed up and got to 15, mostly so we could sell all of the gear we'd bought, and can buy new stuff the next time we take out our BLUs. Another benefit of 15 is that we can rent chocobos in the starter cities, making it easier to get out to exp.

I'm having trouble deciding how to dress as a BLU. MP is critical, so even as a Taru, I think I'll be wearing MP boosting gear. I noticed that if I wear +MND gear, my cures do a bit more healing, so I'll probably end up doing gear swaps for every macro like for RDM. If we're going to keep duoing or trioing rather than joining normal parties, we need to be geared a bit like BST - good attack and decent defense. And if we decide to use our NPCs, do we set them to be Stalwart Shields?

Food is another question. I think we might try Menemen, a new food made from puk eggs that gives +30HP/+30MP and +1HP/+1MP recovered while healing.

Quests: Elderly Pursuits

Grymalkyn and I did another of those "See the World!" quests so common with CoP, Elderly Pursuits, which is next in the Spice Gals/Secrets of Ovens Lost series in Tavnazia.

The quest is started with Despachiaire in the Tavnazian Safehold. He gives us an Antique Amulet that had been his wife's, and asks us to see if we can learn more about it in San d'Oria. In San d'Oria, we talked with Rouva, who said the amulet was too tarnished to read the inscription, and sent us off to Carpenter's Landing to get some glowing mushroom spore to polish it.

When we tried to get the spore, an NM Funguar named Para appeared. While we were fighting him, he cloned himself, so we had to fight two of them. Apparently you need to kill him quickly when you get his health down to a certain point.We re able to polish the amulet and discovered that it was a Cathedral Medallion. We returned to talk with Rouva, who gave us some more information, and then we headed back to the Tavnazian Safehold to report what we had learned to Despachiaire. He rewarded us with yet-another-seemingly-useless item (an Elegant Ribbon), but I do enjoy the stories.

General: Honey, have you seen my Promise Badge?

Rather than get out of the house early for real-life errands on a holiday, we decided to do a complete inventory of our AH-able armor, weapons and accessories. We did this partially to come up with a current "net worth", but mostly to give us an idea if there's a lot of inexpensive, easily replaced items that we don't really use often enough to justify having it clutter up all of the moghouses. It also serves as a good reminder of just what we have on hand, and which character is hanging on to which items. We didn't count any of our fishing rods/lures other than my Lu Shang's, nor any ammo aside from my Morion Tathlum.

It was an interesting exercise, but drove home the fact that we're really a couple of pack rats.

Between the two of us, not counting any EX items, we have 50 rings, 29 earrings, 28 "hats", 24 necklaces, 23 pairs of pants, 22 pairs of gloves, 22 belts, 19 pairs of boots, 19 cloaks, and so on, for a total of 373 non-EX items. There's not a lot that falls into the "really easy to replace on a moment's notice" category though, so I'm not sure we'll really be able to clear up that much inventory space. So much of it is needed for active jobs, and for level caps we often need.

Quests: Tuning Out

On Tuesday evening, we decided to start in on the Tuning Out quest that we'd picked up from Leepe-Hoppe in Windurst. He wanted us to try to find out more about the mysterious Mithra, Shikaree Y, who had forced him to create a new type of tuning fork

First we headed to Kahzam to talk to the chieftainess, Jakoh Wahcondalo, and then to Romaa Mihgo, the former chieftainess. Ildy-Goldy kept showing up, and Romaa Mingo sent us off to "toss a pebble" into a pool at the base of Gemini Falls in Yuhtunga Jungle. Ildy-Goldy did the tossing, and a swarm of bees (Nasus) zoomed up to attack us. Elboron, Grym and I easily handled the swarm, and Ildy-Goldy showed up after they had been defeated. (We had to do the fight three times, once for each of us.) We headed back to Kazham, and Romaa Mihgo said we should go talk to Kumai in Norg, but warned us we'd need to bring some food with us as a bribe to actually get into see him.

One of the items was a bunch Habaneros Peppers, which are an exclusive drop off of Mantraps in Misereaux Coast. So we headed there and spent about 90 minutes getting the 3 that we needed.

The next evening, we bought some Mutton Tortillas in Windust, and a couple servings of Black Curry from the AH in Jeuno (and took one from Kiki's supply), and headed off to Norg. Kumai was pleased with the spicy food we'd brought him, and told us about a Mithra's interest in finding a place of power deep in Uleguerand Range, and we set off to Beaucedine Glacier to see if the Tarutarus from the Windurst Rhinostery had any more information.

All of this running around seems to have been just a test of our mettle, and Ildy-Goldy rewarded us with 6000 gil (which prompted one of the Tarus to exclaim "You can get a nice helmet with that!" - I guess prices have gone up a lot since he last visited Jeuno), and when we reported back to Leepe-Hoppe in Windurst, he gave us a Cache-Nez for our troubles. It's a really nice item for a young tank, being level 1 with +2 Enmity, but I'm not sure I really have any use for it at this point, and will probably just sell it.

I really enjoy the stories that you get from these Chains of Promathia quests, but they really do make you run all over the map to complete them, often for little reward aside from the story.

New Title: Friend of the Helmed

Beastmasters: Beastly Pursuits (41-47)

Saturday morning, with no planned events ahead of us for the day, Grymalkyn and Kiki decided it was finally time to get their BSTs back into action. We hadn't leveled BST since we hit 41 in mid-September last year, so it's been long overdue. It took us over an hour to shuffle our gear around, between sending what we could off to mules and having them send back what we needed for our BSTs. We checked the internet for feasible camps, and searched for other BSTs near our level to make sure we wouldn't be stepping on someone's toes.

We ended up making it to 45 before we stopped for the night, pretty much in two camps. We stayed in West Altepa fighting spiders and dhalmels with other spiders until we hit 44. It was handy fighting so close to Rabao, since we could head into town to empty our pockets as they filled up pretty fast with crystals and dhalmel hides and giant femurs.

At 44, we decided to see what it looked like in the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, and traveled through Qufim on the way there. I decided we had to charm the Kraken and drag it over to Delkfutt's Tower, just for fun (I think this is something all BSTs do at some point). The Kraken would be a terrific pet to use for farming bone chips at night in Qufim - he kills them very quickly.

The Sanctuary didn't feel right at 44, so we didn't stay there long. We decided to head to a crawler/goblin camp in Yhoator Jungle, which worked out much better for us. We had to fight a lot of crawlers to get them to convert to pets, and even had to charm an opo-opo a couple of times. They make terrific pets, but they sure are a pain if you mischarm repeatedly and end up having to fight them. We ended up hitting 45 in the jungle, and having had a long day, we logged out there, hoping to log back in to get a buffer in the morning.

When we logged back in Sunday morning, there was another BST (/anon, but had a pet/prey/camp in his search comment) in the camp, so we left. We headed to East Altepa to see what it was like around the outpost, but ended up just getting enough for a buffer. It was really fun having Sabotenders as pets, but I'd sure hate to mischarm after leave and get a face full of needles.

Since I had had my PLD static Sunday evening, I had to spend some time on Monday getting back my BST gear so we could head out to hunt again. We had a really hard time finding a good camp at 45. We tried Sea Serpent Grotto, but the suggested area wasn't at all appealling either pet or prey-wise. We checked on the bigclaws and makaras in Misereaux Coast, but there weren't enough pets at our level. Same situation in Gustav Tunnel.

Finally, we headed back to the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, and had a wonderful time. Pets were plentiful, we didn't have to worry about losing them on leave, and we had plenty of T, VT, and even IT prey to hunt. We decided to try the Rock Golems, and quickly learned that we would have to have our pets fight alone, since they have a terrible AOE bind (as well as damage), which would make it nearly impossible to get a fresh pet when needed. But they were worth the effort when we were getting around 350 points on a chain 2, with our Empress Bands. We used leeches, funguars, bats, and coeurls as pets, and fought coeurls, goblins, and golems.

We hit 46 and decided to head deeper in to the Sanctuary and try some of the undead. In the process, we learned that the Rot Prowlers will blood aggro from miles away. Grym deleveled, but I managed to kill the hound we had been fighting before the Rot Prowler killed me too, leaving me 16 points over level. It was really fun though.

Next, we headed back to Gustav Tunnel. It was much better at 46 for pets, but the prey was mostly low toughs, and we kept losing our pets on leave. Since we hadn't leveled BST since the Great Nerfing of 2005, it was really our first experience with the pain of disappearing pets. We did try to make use of it to try to convert pets (charm a tough, drag it out of its wandering range, release, check its respawn a few minutes later), but it was a slow process, and a bit frustrating in spots like Gustav where you end up fighting outside the pet's range. We also found we were using jugs a lot more for these levels than we had in the past. Jugs were pretty much emergency-only in the past, but we ended up needing to use them just because we didn't have enough pets around.

We gave up on Gustav after a while, and headed back to see what Misereaux Coast looked like at 46. It was much much better, and we had a fun time with bigclaws and makara vs bigclaws and makara. Those fish have such high evasion though, there were times I didn't think we'd be able to kill them even with just a mere sliver left. I decided to try Gravity on them, and suprisingly enough, it stuck more often than not. We made it to 47 and got a buffer before calling it a night.

I was able to cap both axe and scythe every level, which was nice. Grym's scythe is pretty far behind, but since she doesn't have DRK at 41 like Kiki does, it's not a surprise. We spent some time at the auction house on and off over the weekend, trying to find suitable upgrades for some of our gear, but ended up just buying a Woodsman Ring for each of us. I think it makes sense to focus on accuracy for our fighting gear. We have our life belts for 48, and I have a Viking Axe (good bazaar bargain months ago), but we'll go try to farm another one for Grym. I feel weird still wearing Wonder gear (legs and feet), but really they're the best option for those slots. Even if I wanted to spend the millions needed for a set of Luissant gear, the stats aren't that amazing. I think the hands would be the good, but Battle Gloves have +3 ACC. I'd love to wear something other than the stupid Tablecloth (Brigadine), but our Gaudy Harnesses have been waiting for months and months, and we could soon be 50.

I'm also eager to get to 50 so we can start collecting our AF. Grym and I have been arguing over whether we can only use BST to work on AF. I think he agrees at least for Beadeaux coffer keys we're going to have to use our 74/75 jobs, but he is probably going to insist we do the others "properly", with our BSTs.

Getting back to our duo reminded me of why I really enjoy it. It requires more thought and strategy than just having a group of 6 gang up on some hapless monster. We stalk our prey, size up the surroundings, clear out potential problems, choose our fighting spot and make use of the local flora and fauna to help us kill our prey. Play BST in a duo is so much safer than solo, since we're always there to back each other up in case of a mischarm or link/add. And since we're sitting on the same couch as we play, it's really easy to know what each other is doing. And when we need to stop for lunch/dinner/laundry/phone calls, we aren't upsetting 5 other people.

Leveling: LLS in Bhaflau Thickets (75)

We headed back to fight Sea Puks and Mamool Ja near the Mamool Ja Staging Point in Bhaflau Thickets again on Sunday night. Elboron was geared up for pulling (including a Kirin's Osode borrowed from Midget), and it made a huge difference in the amount of damage he was taking on the pulls. Even the Jurik didn't kill him this time.

We started a bit late, and had several interruptions with disconnections (I had a storm-induced power failure), and one Kiki-death at the hands of another Mamool Ja Mimer. This time it was Radiant Breath followed by a Firespit, when I was silenced and fumbling for my echo drops, and someone was bugging Wendell for a Raise III.

I ended up with less than 10k limit points, with ring and sanction. Too many other parties in the same area overwhelmed the prey, and provoke makes for faster pulling than Elegy, so Elboron was getting outpulled by the WARs or /WARs from the other parties. I opted for the Refresh bonus with my Sanction, and it seemed to make a difference, since I hardly touched my melon juice supply. I had almost all my enmity gear on, and was eating Dorado Sushi, and am fairly satisfied with the results (i.e. I can hold hate better). I'm still not a fan of this type of exp, but it definitely is really easy to get to camp with the Runic Portals.

General: Odds and Ends

Our evenings for last week were fairly quiet, but we kept busy with assorted adventures. I'll have more updates from the long weekend over the next couple of days.

I decided to visit Brygid in Bastok to trade my Libra Subligar for a Cerise Doublet. Brygid wanted me to wear a White Cloak and Wool Hose - it was very odd seeing Kiki dressed up in a White Cloak. I used to like having the Libra Subligar to swap in while resting as my RDM, but I've since bought a pair of Baron's Slops for my BLM, which also have +HMP, so the Libra Subligar aren't necessary any more. The Cerise Doublet has +attack and +accuracy, which isn't that useful for the way I play RDM, but it's also wearable by BLU, and maybe one day I'll have BLU at 50. It's nicer looking than the Glamour Jupon, so I'll probably toss it on when I'm running around Sacrarium for the cookbook quest. I was also curious if any of the Level 50 JSE had been changed to be equippable by Corsairs and Puppetmasters (since the Cerise Doublet had been modified for Blue Mage), so I checked all of Brygid's offerings. None of them had COR or PUP listed as a job that could use them.

Currently, there's only one more of these special body armors that I think I'll need - the one for Dark Knight. I already have the subligar for that, but since my DRK is only level 41, there's no rush to turn it in.

A week and a half ago, Yobun organized a run for Operation Desert Swarm (KS30) for linkshell members. With Yobun as BLM75 and Trow as RDM75, and three other BLM75s from their gods linkshell, it was a nice way for the rest of us to get a chance at the lottery with our Kindred Seals. This was my fourth run, and I finally got one of the big drops, a Damascus Ingot. I had got an Orichalcum Ingot on each of my first three runs, which was still a decent reward, so I can't really complain about those. Of course, Damascus Ingots plummetted over a million and a half gil since I got mine, so I waited for them to start going back up before putting it on the AH. Unfortunately, it came back to me, as the price started dropping again. It finally sold yesterday, but it was awfully close to getting sent back a second time.

Elboron did two runs, but got virtually nothing to show for it. I think Yobun himself is 0/9 on the v. claw or d. ingot. What rotten luck!

We spent a couple evenings in Toraimarai Canal so I could work on my Pole of Trials. Without keeping track of how many weaponskills and/or skillchains I've done with it, it's really hard to have a good idea of how close I am to removing the latent, but it will get there eventually. If I'm fighting with just Grym, I tend to use Spirit Taker to regain MP, which only gives me 1 point towards the 300 I need, but Elboron joined us, so Grym and I were able to do a Fusion skillchain, which gives me 3 points. The first night we just fought bats and skeletons near the Windurst Walls zone, but the second night we headed in to fight Starmites, and gathered the 3 shells each of us needed to complete the "Toraimarai Turmoil" quest.

We did a chocobo race one evening, and I read the scroll on my RDM, but I'm happy with the exp level on that at the moment, especially if I start using it more for Besieged. So after we did the Crawler's Nest escort quest this week, I decided all of my weekly exp scrolls will start going towards Ninja, unless I need some exp on PLD or RDM.

I helped with the WSNM for Asuran Fists for Demin. Somehow our group got split up heading for the ??? spot deep in Bostaunieux Obliette, and all 5 of the Tarutaru in the alliance were running around together through the sewers. It was funny seeing us all with the water practically over our heads.

I've done both Mog Locker expansions in Al Zahbi, and am looking forward to them making the locker accessible from other mog houses. I hope they don't make it too annoying to gain that access!