General: Helping Strangers on Saturdays

Work was a bit crazy last week, and my play time suffered for it, as did my blogging time. Things seem to be back to normal for now though.

For some reason, Saturdays seem to have become the day for helping strangers. This is probably a combination of there being more people playing on the weekends, and me having a bit of "unstructured" time, since Saturday's the day I tend to play the entire day.

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Early last month, Itera asked if I wanted to help a random stranger with his Asuran Fists NM in the Oubliette. I was in the middle of fishing, and said I could when I finished. They were still gathering together when I finished up with the fish, and I OP warped from Windurst to Ronfaure and joined the alliance. I was really impressed with the random stranger. He knew where to go, what to expect, what needed to be done, and just was an overall good leader.

The poor guy had apparently been trying to get people to help him for days, so it was nice to be part of the group that finally helped him kill the ghost so he could complete his quest.

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The following Saturday, I was in Jeuno for a change, since I have been wanting to get a set of pop items for the Bomb Queen and Akuma had found a Rolanberry bazaar with them. Grym had been squid fishing in Qufim, so she was there too. I saw a shout from a Japanese PLD57 who was looking for help with the PLD AF3 quest, which involves getting a key item from a coffer in Castle Zvahl Baileys and then two NM Orcs in Davoi. She was shouting for help with the CZB part.

Grym and I decided we could help her, and I sent her a tell. She didn't speak any English and I don't speak any Japanese, but we were able to use the autotranslator well enough to communicate the necessities. She already had the key, but didn't know where the coffers were. She invited us to her party and had a RDM73 helping as well (also Japanese). We had Grym teleport us to Vahzl, who would then OP warp to Windurst, change to THF/WHM and come back to help. I was PLD/RDM for sneak and invisible.

Unfortunately, while trying to come up with a polite phrase in the autotranslator, Grym got aggro'd by an eye. We tried to save her as she warped, but she ended up dead at her homepoint. So she teleported again and made it safely to Windurst to change. Meanwhile, the three of us headed to CZB. The PLD was well-stocked with prism powder and silent oils, and I started making the rounds of the 8 coffer spawn points. When Grym made it back to CZB, she started checking spots as well. We kept going from spot to spot, with no luck, and the PLD was running low on Prism Powders, but since the rest of us all had sneak and invisible, it wasn't a problem.

We met up with Grym and the RDM and Grym went one way while the PLD and I went another. The RDM ended up getting aggro and killed, so we made our way back to her, cleared out the Demons (which was pretty exciting since we had 3 or 4 on us at once), and raised the RDM. Elboron had by then made his way to CZB to help us out as well, and we invited him to join the party. Elboron and Grym were each checking different spots while the PLD, RDM and I spotted the coffer in one of the rooms.

The PLD was very happy to get her key items, and rather than try to sneak her back out, we had the RDM cast Escape for the three of us. Just as the spell was going off, I saw Elboron's HP suddenly drop to 0. Apparently an easy prey eye decided to cast Flare on him, and he'd been one-shotted. We ran back in to rescue him, leaving the PLD at the front gate. Grym got to him first and waited for me to arrive. We killed the eye (which opened with Burst, but we were able to interrupt it) and raised Elboron, then headed back to the gate and Elboron gave us a Teleport Holla so the PLD could go to San d'Oria for the next step in her quest.

She was hoping the 5 of us could go fight the NMs in Davoi, but the RDM said (Time for work!) (See you again!) and left us. I managed to get the point that we needed more people to help, and she headed to Al Zahbi to recruit others. Itera was also around, so we talked him into coming as well. We ended up with a half English-half Japanese alliance with 7 level 75s: THF, BRD, PLD, NIN, WAR, MNK, and WHM, plus the PLD57 on the quest. We cleared the area, and she spawned the NMs. The PLD Orc took awhile to kill, even with Itera using Hundred Fists on him, but we managed just fine. The RNG Orc was softer, but he also hit a lot harder, but again, we managed just fine. The PLD got her well weight, thanked everyone, and we all went our separate ways.

This is the sort of thing that makes the game so cool. People banding together to help out a stranger, regardless of language differences.

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A couple of weeks ago, I was in Al Zahbi, wondering what to do with myself that Saturday evening, when a stranger asked if I could tank Windurst Mission 9-2 for them. He was a THF75 with Rank 10 in Bastok and San d'Oria already, and was putting together a party to get his final Rank 10. It's a fun fight, so I said sure and made my way to Windurst. We ended up with PLD/WAR, WAR/NIN, WAR/NIN, THF/NIN, RDM/BLM, RDM/WHM, all Level 75, and 4 of them needing the mission. This fight went pretty smoothly, with the Cardians posing no trouble, and then Ajido-Marujido again faking us out by heading for the wyrm first, then veering off to the Manticore. I think this led to the RDM/WHM getting one-shotted by the wyrm, but I'm not really sure what happened there. One of the WAR/NINs had been kiting the wyrm while we killed the manticore, and he very nearly got killed, just as we'd finished the manticore. I used Provoke, Invincible, and Flash, and managed to pull hate off of him in time. The fight was quickly over, and Windurst had 4 new Rank 10s.

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This past Saturday's good deed for the day was simply showing a MNK55 how to get from San d'Oria to Qu'Bai Arena in Fei'Yin. I guess he needed to zone in there for a cutscene for one of his AF pieces. We were heading there ourselves for the Mirror Images quest, so it's not like we were going out of our way or anything. I did offer to take him over to get the Vahzl crystal after we finished our quest fight, but he decided to instant-warp back to Jeuno and leave the crystal for another day.