Still Kicking Around

So where were we? Ah yes, FFXI seems pointless, with marginal improvement for massive effort, etc. I'm not really sure why I stopped blogging for nearly 9 months, but it certainly isn't because I stopped playing. I've been playing pretty much as much as ever.

A few things have changed in the meantime. For starters, TheUltimates no longer exists. We had our last run in June. I think I'm mostly to blame, since I'd been trying to leave for months, and Allia just didn't want to lead it without me there helping out. I had tried not coming on Wednesday nights, but it still wasn't enough.

My Warrior hit 75 around New Year's, and is still a work-in-progress. I've spent a lot of gil on nice gear for it already, though my weapon skill gear could use a bit of work. Merits are coming slowly, but I do have 8/8 in greataxe and 3 of the 4 I want in double attack. I also leveled SAM and DRG for subjobs. I really enjoyed SAM and will probably take it higher one of these days (I left it at 40). THF was at 30, and is only used on rare occassions for Dark Ixion, so I have been a bit slow at "finishing" that. It's sitting at 34 at the moment.

I've been settling in to Salvage a bit better, and am often one of the tanks on WAR. Sure beats being a tag-along like I had been when I could only come PLD. Just last week I finally got my first 35 for the Ares's set - the piece for the mask. It's the only 25 I didn't have, so I still need a drop to complete the piece, but it seems more hopeful now than it ever has. I'm able to make more than one run a week now, which helps too, though often the times I can make runs, we end up cancelling because we have too few people, or are missing a critical job.

I've been very fortunate in Eminence, and have gotten a lot of nice things since I last wrote: Aurum Sabatons, Hermes' Sandals, Martial head, Fenian Ring, Algol, Byakko's Haidate, Genbu's Kabuto, Crimson Cuisses, Valhalla Breastplate, Kirin's Osode. I love my new breastplate. It was our 14th Odin kill that finally dropped it. It's pretty much a kiting or blood-tanking piece with the -5% slow on it, but it is so nice for those situations - with 50 hp, +5 enmity and the highest defense of any of my body pieces. Plus it has a hidden latent effect of Cute +10 when equipped on a Tarutaru with the Valhalla Helm. I had an Avalon Breastplate for awhile, but between the new Iron Ram Hauberk, Valhalla Breastplate and Haubergeon +1, every situation where the Avalon had been useful is covered. I turned it back in to the LS bank after getting my Valhalla a week and a half ago.

I scanned through all my screenshots to try to find something to illustrate this entry, but didn't really find what I was looking for, so I leave you with a happy Kiki in her outfit she stole from Odin.

Where does the time go?

It's been over 2 months since my last entry, and though I've been as busy as ever in-game, I guess I don't feel I have much to blog about. I've noticed a tendancy for me to pull back a bit from blogging when I start getting overly annoyed with other players, since I don't like to have negative posts in my blog. And this has been the case over the last few months. I really question why I still play this game at times, but I do enjoy my friendships with the nice people I know.

Of course, there's the addiction that keeps me playing every day. Have to keep getting those constant little rewards, like exp points, skill points, another title, another bit of gear. It's been nearly two years since my husband broke free, and he's still waiting for me to be done. In the meantime, he been playing other games, but his penchant for playing/creating FFXI-inspired levels in Little Big Planet make me question whether his own FFXI addiction was truly broken.

So I keep chasing the dragon, and I just can't see an end. I pretend I have a shot at some absolutely hopeless quests, like Aegis or Burtgang, but unless I win the lottery and play full-time, I just don't see either of those happening. And if I did get either, then what? I'd still be doing the same old stuff, with a marginal improvement in performance. It's not like they open up whole new worlds that were previously unavailable.

Now I even find myself working on another job to 75, just to be "more useful" while trying to get more bits of gear for my PLD. I am enjoying the leveling (WAR is now 62), as much for the sense of "progress" as for the activity itself, but it makes me a little sad that I felt it was needed. I love being a PLD, and I wish that was all I "needed" to be.

Having said that, I agree WAR will be handy to have for assaults, merit parties, and salvage. The day I'm asked to bring WAR to HNM fights will be a sad day indeed, and hopefully will never happen.

Perhaps it was Inevitable

I applied to Eminence last week. Yes me, the Taru that was never going to do anything end-game. I applied to an HNMLS. Really. And they've given me a trial pearl. I think Beaucedine Glacier must be melting, and flowers are blooming in Xarcabard.

This came about mostly because there are things I'd like to do in the game that I haven't done yet: like Einherjar and, as I put it in my app, helping tank bigger and badder monsters than I've encountered in the past. I was talking to Goldfish earlier last week about Einherjar, asking if he thought TU might be able to cobble together a competent enough group of people to try it, since we're probably killing Salvage. I figured most people who were interested in it were already doing it with other shells. He said "You know, you should just join an HNMLS," and added that Eminence was open for applications.

I talked with Goldfish a bit about the shell, wrote up an application, talked to Peti as well, and then the next evening got a bit of encouragement from both Diasuke and Aksukia. So I actually submitted the application last Tuesday evening. I feared my lack of end-game experience and the fact that I have only PLD at 75 would weigh heavily against me, but I do have a lot of experience with Dynamis and Limbus, and have done a lot of different things like missions, assaults, and Nyzul. And I really do have a lot of nice gear on my PLD, thanks to all the people who've helped me over the years.

The Eminence schedule seems TU-friendly, since we have members who are in both (Goldfish, Peti, Dasheeit, and Reefermadness), and the few open spots in my schedule seem to fit in nicely with them. However, I do have a lot of in-game commitments, not to mention my long commute and full-time job allowing me only a few hours in the evenings for FFXI. Hopefully this won't be a problem going forward.

The public reaction to my application was welcoming, and on Saturday afternoon, Nyx/Muffins found me in Southern San d'Oria [S] and gave me my pearl. I attended my first Einherjar run (Tier I) and a Sea farming excursion that afternoon, and it was a lot of fun, though I felt very much out of my element, not to mention nervous, while trying to make a decent impression. I felt a bit like a bug under a microscope. I'll get over that soon enough I'm sure!

Seeing Ghosts from the Past

Two weeks ago, on a Tuesday evening, my only free evening of the week, I got myself ready to head off to the Boyahda Tree to work on club skillups. I was in Whitegate, having gone to bed there after our Nyzul runs the previous evening, and I popped out of the moghouse to drop stuff off at the Delivery service and Auction House before warping to Windurst. Suddenly I see "Elboron waves to Tsakiki." O.o! o.O! Elboron! He really came back!

It'd been over 14 months since he last played, quitting after we completed CoP, just like Grymalkyn and Wendell. He'd been talking about coming back from time to time, but I'd given up on ever seeing him again. But he proved me wrong. He'd installed the Wings of the Goddess expansion, so I spent the next few hours running around in the past with him. I hope he didn't feel too rushed as I dragged him all over the place and got him to enlist with the Cobra Unit Mercenaries in Windurst.

It was a lot of fun, especially fighting the NM Coeurl in Fort Karugo-Narugo. I'd gone as PLD/DNC and with his BRD/WHM we had no troubles beating the cat that slaughters so many hapless solo players.

However, I'm starting to think I imagined this all. I haven't seen him back in-game since then...

Since my schedule is so filled with my various group events, I don't have a lot of time to do stuff with him, and I'm not sure if he's either interested in joining any of the activities I do, or if his schedule is regular enough to do so even if he was interested. But it's great to see him playing again.

There seems to be a sudden influx of returning people, as Splinte, Omnius, and Muirnin all have started playing again in the past few days.

Campaign Battles

Now for the part of the expansion that has consumed most of my time and attention: Campaign Battles. In the past, the Shadowlord's forces are constantly attacking the areas that Altana's forces control, and vice versa. We have a campaign map that shows where the battles are currently raging, and an NPC in town that can teleport us to the battlefields for a small fee of Allied Notes. Once you get to the battle, you check in with a Campaign Arbiter, and receive Allied Tags to show that you're participating in the battle. With the tag active, you do not lose experience points if you're killed, and you gain experience/limit points and allied notes for the battle, based on your contribution to it. A sword icon appears next to the names of players and NPCs that are participating in the battle.

In areas that are under the control of the forces of Altana (the good guys), we defend the fortifications from waves of Beastmen attacks. Frequently, there will be squads of NPC fighters to help fight the Beastmen. Some times they'll be there before the battle starts, some times they swoop in at the end, and other times, they never show up. They're very powerful and kill the Beastmen pretty quickly, so people try to pull the mobs off of them to have fights last long enough to get some decent points.

Campaign battles are perfect for quick, casual exp points, and I've been using them to keep my buffer capped and have been getting a lot of merit points with it as well. It may not be as efficient as a merit party, but it's also easy to do in small chunks of time, and is really perfect for someone like me. If I get online early enough before Dynamis or Limbus, I can pop into a battle and pick up 600-2000 points before heading to the Trail Markings or Sagheera. And it's even good for those Saturday afternoons when I just don't feel like being committed to a merit party for 3 hours (I think that's most Saturday afternoons...).

Paladin is a very good job to take to Campaign, since you can tank, fight, and cure. All of these things build up your points, and also make you pretty self-sufficient (except on the Beastmen NM leaders). It seems like 50% of the players in Campaign are Paladins. Puppetmasters also seem to do really well in Campaign, and probably have the same troubles getting merit parties as PLDs.

I also go as PLD/WHM, since I really feel I have to have reraise on at all times. I often end up in Campaign battles where I am the only PC, and those NPCs aren't going to toss me a raise. I really would like to try PLD/DNC, but I'd have to be with someone with raise before I'd want to try that out.

My favorite Campaign battles have been ones that have a small group of players show up and work together. Some people are eager to form parties and help each other out, and it's really a lot of fun. We usually let the fortifications "tank" the horde of mobs, and pull them off one at a time, leaving the NMs for the end. Some of the fights with more players (like Jugner and Rolanberry) are a bit more chaotic and free-for-all, and people seem more reluctant to help each other or to take on the NMs in an organized manner. I've been bringing most of my gear with me, and go into full turtle mode on the NMs, and usually hold hate and stay alive with help from other people curing me, but toward the end, as my MP runs out, I either get killed or lose hate.

I also really like being the only player in a campaign battle, since I can do quite well points-wise. I have to be careful to let all of the beastmen get past me and pull one off the back of the train and then drag it to a safe spot. Then I just whittle them down and find another. This works better with some mobs than others. The magic casters can be pretty troublesome, as I'm built to resist physical damage better. But even if I have to fight the Shadowhand's minions, I can still get plenty of points despite dying, reraising, resting until unweakened and start fighting again.

Campaign's really been helping a lot with my merit points, as I mentioned. I've capped enmity, which meant backing out my 2nd level spell interruption I did back when I wasn't planning to be an end-game PLD and only did merits that would help me leveling other jobs, like BLU. It was a bit sad to actually throw away the two merit points that had cost. I'm currently working on my Sentinel recast, and need 5 more merit points for the final upgrade to have a 4:10 recast instead of the normal 5:00.

Campaign has ranks to go through, but they're different than what we've seen in city missions and assault. Every 5 days you can undergo an evaluation, and if you did well, you get the next higher level medal, but if you did poorly, you can be demoted and lose your medal. The medals are only good for 30 days, so if you don't participate in Campaign for a time, you can lose your rank. There are currently 3 groups of 4 medals - Ribbons, Stars, and Emblems. I'm on my 9th medal, which is the first Emblem level: Copper Emblem of Service. Higher ranks allow you to purchase more items with Allied Notes, gives you access to more Campaign Operations, with the higher leveled ones giving you more exp and AN for reward, and you also have a higher exp point cap for Campaign battles.

The Wings of the Goddess

On November 21, the content for the latest expansion, The Wings of the Goddess, was unlocked. The story behind the expansion is that there are these Cavernous Maws that have appeared/been discovered in several locations on the Mindartia and Quon continents. Upon investigating them, you discover that they take you to "twenty years" in the past, during the Crystal War, and your task is to join up with the mercenary units for one of the three nations, and help fight off the Shadowlord's minions. There are three completely new regions, a "fort" area for each city, which are bypasses for the Tahrongi/La Theine/Konschtat areas, which are not (yet?) accessible in the past.

After I got the expansion installed, I started out doing a bit of light exploration, and happened to talk to the right NPC in Crawlers Nest to get an invitation to the Windurst mercenaries, the Corbra Unit. I made my way to Windurst, travelling as PLD/WHM for reraise/sneak/invisible, and stopping to activate all the Cavernous Maws along the way. You have to go through them in the past once in order to use them in the future, somewhat like Runic Portals - forcing you to do some exploration to unlock the easier travel options. The zones are pretty much the same as they are in the future, with some different buildings, and some different mobs.

There are a lot of new monsters in the past, and it sort of makes one wonder where they all went. Did they drop stuff that was so good they were hunted to extinction? One of the nicest additions are the Pixies. They're high level WHMs, and as long as you haven't killed any of them, they simply drift through zones, handing out Raise IIIs to the fallen players, casting Cure IVs on those they see in yellow (or lower) HP.

Once I got to Windurst, I picked up the mission to become a member of the Cobra Unit, which involved three fairly simple quests. The third quest was a fight with a War Lynx in Fort-Karugo-Narugo, which was a bit harder for some jobs to solo, due to a TP move the lynx can use that drops you to 2 HP. If you're alone and not using shadows, it's likely the next hit will kill you. I didn't know this at the time, so headed up there as PLD/WHM, ready to solo the kitty, and was doing quite well against him. Then boom I was dead. As I rested while weakened, I watched the same thing happen to a MNK/WHM, and then to a PLD/WAR-BLM/WHM duo. So we all teamed up, and killed it so fast that it didn't make sense that it had killed us all just a few minutes earlier.

Over the next week, I made my way to Bastok and then to San d'Oria. In San d'Oria, I did a couple quests to get a deathstone and angelstone for one of my favorite features of the new expansion: 2 new gobbie bag quests! So I now have 70 slots in my gobbie bag, which was a big help, but I'd really like another 10. I still can't carry every piece of PLD gear with me at 70 slots, at least not with food and meds, and at least one free spot for any drops I might want somewhere.

They added two new jobs with the expansion, Dancer and Scholar. I've already talked about Dancer, but I haven't even done the quest to unlock Scholar yet. I'm sure I will eventually, but I don't currently see it as a job that I'll be leveling, so there's no rush.

The biggest addition to the game is the introduction of Campaign, the fight of the cities and their mercenary troops against the Shadowlord and his forces. There are Campaign Operations, which provide you with a small amount of experience points and a good chunk of Allied Notes (the equivalent of conquest points and imperial standing points for the past). Quite a few of these don't involve any fighting, and some you don't even leave the city to do, so they'd be good for quick bits of exp on jobs you don't want to necessarily level in an exp party. You have "tags" like for assault, and can have up to 7 available, getting a new one each day. By doing these operations, you help boost the resources, supplies, intelligence, and so forth for your nation.

This is turning into yet-another wall o' text, so I'll talk about Campaign Battles in a later post.

Merit Points and Me

I've had Paladin at 75 for well over a year now, and have only 50 Merit Points to show for it. I think Erock gets that many in two weeks. I don't really have time to go out with merit parties, so most of my points have come in small bits over time. Some of the Assaults have been really good for points, like Preemptive Strike and Troll Fugitives, but now that everyone's pretty much caught up in assault ranks, we're no longer spamming the old zones for AP, and instead are trying to do as many unique assaults as we can. Besieged is good for points as well, since you get so much ISP compared to normal exp parties on top of the exp/limit points, but it's too random to be at all reliable.

I've been on quite a few 60-90 minute parties after Dynamis, Limbus, or Salvage, usually when we've had much death and people need to recoup their buffers. Since I try to stay capped on experience points, it doesn't take long to get back to that and then get limit points on top of that. However, the need to replenish my exp buffer really cuts into my ability to build up the limit points. At least my weekly experience point scrolls help a lot with keeping me capped over level 75.

I have joined several pickup groups over the months, but those have been few and far between. It's nice having my anniversary ring for those occasions, to get double exp while using it. I see it as my "three free merit points" ring, and will be sad when I've exhausted its charges. My pickup parties don't seem like the ones other PLDs get. I'm always reading about other PLDs using nothing but PLD/NIN for merit parties, but I'm always told to sub WAR and actually tank. I've spent a lot of gil on gear to make me a decent PLD/NIN damage dealer, but since I'm tanking, I have to wear all of my +Enmity gear instead of my fancy damage gear. And even if I do get to go PLD/NIN with some friends, I end up spending half my time curing the others, so they laugh at my pathetic damage percentage. I'd like to see their numbers if they were casting Cure IIIs and IVs on other people all the time, instead of just madly swinging away at the mobs.

I really hate the style of most of the fighting in merit parties, but there aren't a lot of options. I'd love to go fight the greater birds and rams in Lufaise again some time, with an old school set up, but finding 5 other people happy to do that is another story. Hopefully I can get a couple parties in over the next few Saturdays. I'd love to finish off HP (5 merit points for my 7th upgrade) and work on one of the other categories.

Same Old, Same Old

I haven't been updating my blog very frequently lately, partially because real life has been a bit more stressful/hectic than usual, but also because I feel like I'm just repeating myself.

For a long time now, my game life has felt like a lot of of the same things, over and over. My recent AF re-questing helped drive that point home. I spend a lot of my free time helping people with missions and quests that I've already done, while my non-free time consists of Dynamis, Limbus, and Salvage, which tend to get somewhat routine as the months pass. I really enjoy helping others, and it's fun to go back and trounce mobs in missions that were often challenging when I did them the first time. And frequently, helping someone with missions and quests means that I then have more people to help out with a mission/quest that I haven't done. Assaults been like that - dozens of repeats mean we get people ranked up and can move forward to the ones none of us have done. Helping people with The Black Coffin meant more people for Salvage, and helping with CoP missions meant more people for Limbus.

There are so many things in the game that I haven't done, some of them are probably things I'll never do, and with the next expansion coming out in November, there will be even more added. It really is endless.

It's also the repetitive nature of leveling that probably keeps me from wanting to take another job to 75. I still think I want to take several more to 60 (WAR, DRK, BLM), and want to take more to 37 (THF, WHM, RNG, SAM), and I really do want to do something with Summoner, since I have all the avatars and even my Carbuncle Mitts, but I really don't see having the time for all of that. And then there's the matter of merits for my Paladin. I'm so far behind what I want to improve my stats and abilities, but it takes a long time to build up the limit points when the only exp I get is in a few assaults and an occasional Besieged.

I'm still mostly enjoying my time in-game. I'm quite fond of my game friends, and I love the sense of accomplishment when we win tough battles. It's quite nice to help people get things they want as well, but I keep wondering how much more this game really holds for me. How will I know when I'm done? My husband is patiently waiting for me to be done with "that stupid game", but as the months drag on and on, he's starting to give up hope. It's been over 9 months since he last logged into the game. I really miss playing with Grymalkyn, but he wouldn't be doing most of the things I'm currently doing even if he was playing.

The Tarutaru Times Online

Wyred of Odin has built a blog indexing application for the FFXI blogging community, which seems like a really nice way to keep track of other bloggers' activity. You can find it at: The Tarutaru Times Online. I saw that many of my favorite bloggers are already participating, and have updated my links in the sidebar here to remove the direct links to the blogs that are also on TTTO. This isn't meant to show I don't love you all dearly still, just to help encourage people to join the Times. :-)

Maybe I'll even get back to posting more regularly again...

General: Lack of Entries

Sorry I haven't been posting lately - I really haven't been in the mood for it. I would have just been whining about one thing or another anyway, so it's probably just as well. I've been keeping busy in-game though, and hopefully will be returning to my normal self soon.

General: Blog Boredom

I feel like my blog's fallen into a dull routine: Dynamis blah blah blah, Limbus blah blah blah, CoP mission blah blah blah (but that's all done now). I feel like I'm not doing much besides that and trying to get all my exp scrolls every week to keep my buffer healthy. I'm still busy trying to get fishing skill, both on my short free evenings and while waiting for besieged attacks, and I've been trying to help get all of Grym's mules' inventory sold off, which consumes a good chunk of time.

A week ago, I was sort of hoping to get some real exp after I'd done my two cookbook quests (one pre-conquest tally, the second post-conquest tally) and my chocobo race for the week, but instead I got killed by Guivre helping Vawn get a Kuftal Coffer key, and then a bit later, fell to Hakutaku while helping on the last few clusters on a Snakes O-Hat run. They had enough people to start out with, but as the day wore on, people started leaving after they got their hats. Vawn, Latch, Yobun, and I headed to the Den of Rancor to help them out, and Akuma joined us as well. We ended up wiping on the very last run (more people left by then), which was sad for Krimsonfury, but he was pretty good natured about needing to replace his cluster. I got to see Goto, Lumikumi, and Itera get their silly pointy hats. I suppose I'll need one some day, but it's not high on my list of priorities.

After finishing with the Optical Hats, a bunch of us ClanBEB people headed to the Temple of Uglypeople to help Vawn with his DRG AF3 fight. Goto came along with us, and I gave him a ClanBEB pearl. Hopefully he'll like the LS and be an active member!

We got a Temple Coffer key when we killed the Temple Gaurdian on the way to the Den of Rancor, and Yobun and Vawn let me have it, so I'll have to go coffer hunting to finally get my map of the place. I tried yesterday, but I think the coffer was in the room that I needed both an Uggalepih Key and a Prelate Key to get into. I killed the Temple Guardian three or four times and was relieved to not have him Meltdown on me at full health.

A few weeks back, I got a random /tell while in Windurst late one night. The person was looking for a tank for Windurst Mission 9-2, and I love that fight, so I was happy to help. We ended up with a team of 6 level 75s, 5 of us already Rank 10 in Windurst. I think the other 4 helpers were in the same linkshell as the person who needed the fight. We had a WHM, BLM, MNK, RNG, PLD, and RDM I think. The MNK was the legendary Zoya, with her fully upgraded relic knuckles. The fight was over pretty quickly, and was fun as always.

On Friday, Thoron needed some help with Windurst Mission 8-1, which involves killing the Orc NM in Davoi. Turns out 3 of the 4 other people in his group were all members of TheUltimates (Reefermadness, Zune, and Darsonavin). It was fun helping them out!

We were hoping to fight Fenrir Friday night with our CoP static, with Thoron in for Splinte, who doesn't have a Moon Bauble yet. Elboron was having internet issues, so we asked the Bard who'd also be doing WM 8-1 to come with us. Grym, Itera and I slept for TP and opened with our old three step light skillchain with red lotus blade -> raging fists -> sharkbite, and took out a huge chunk of Fenrir's HP to start. Things were looking pretty promising, but I got killed by three fast hits (300 crit hit, and an 800 Eclipse Bite followed by a 600 Eclipse Bite). Of course everything had been dispelled, including my reraise, so I couldn't do anything but lie there. Fenrir used his two hour, and everyone lived. Thoron and then Itera used Hundred Fists, but they died too soon, and Fenrir killed the rest. We did get him down to just a sliver, but that's not good enough. We just tried the once, since we had no more sleeping potions, and no useful damage two hours. One day, we'll get him.

General: Vacation Time

Sorry for the lack of updates over the past week, but I've had another at-home vacation, and as usual, I didn't take time to write things up as the week went past. Grym and Kiki spent a good portion of the week working on getting long-outstanding quests completed, so it seems we spent most of our time farming for elusive items in far-flung spots: Demons in Castle Zvahl Baileys (Sands of Silence), Sand Diggers in Quicksand Caves (Ancient Salt), Hurricane Wyverns in Ifrit's Cauldron (Wyvern Skulls), spawned crawlers in Crawlers Nest (Rolanberry 874s), Tonberry Stalkers in the Temple of Uggalepih (Giant Fish Bones), Brook Sahagins in Sea Serpent Grotto (Blackened Toad), Mycophiles in the Aywadeen Subterrane (King Truffle), and Young Opo-Opos in Yuhtunga Jungle (Wild Pamamas).

A lot of these actually gave us limit points, and some even provided some skillup opportunities, but it still seemed like a lot of time doing nothing. For the King Truffle, we gave up after getting 1 in close to 3 hours of farming. I'm surprised they don't sell for more on the Auction House. I was solo farming the Wild Pamamas, but after over 3 hours, left the jungle with 3 stacks of pebbles, 2 stacks of regular Pamamas, and 1 single bunch of Wild Pamamas. I bought a second on the AH in Windurst - they don't seem to sell more than once a month. I guess no one does that quest (Greetings to the Guardian).

Another colossal waste of time was the Vana'diel week (~8 hours) that we spent in Gusgen Mines. It was RSE week for Female Tarutarus, and I really want my Sweet Sachet for my mage jobs. For the RSE sachets, there are 3 possible spawn points in the dungeon for the RSE armor quest. If a character of the correct race/gender examines the ???, an Aroma monster spawns, and you have a chance of getting the RSE sachet from killing it. There's a 30 minute wait between spawns. The Mines were fairly quiet, with a handful of RMT miners running from mining point to mining point. There was one female Tarutaru PUP33 working on her RSE chests, but she did start scouting out the ??? spots between chest spawns when she had a high level BLM helper. Fortunately, we managed to get every single ??? spawn over the course of the day. Unfortunately, the Aroma Flies in Gusgen weren't very cooperative with me, even having Grym's TH2 and my own TH1 (PLD75/THF25). We went 0/14 that day, on top of another probably 6 more casual attempts in other dungeons on other days.

Between spawns, I spent my time catching Gavial Fish, but only ended up with .2 skillups on around 100 fish. Grym did some bone chip and elemental farming, but grew a bit bored with it, and left to do other non-game things while I fished. My fishing spot was close to one of the spawn points, and Grym would wait near another one, so we had good coverage of the three. Knowing the kill times helped give us an advantage over the PUP as well, so we didn't miss a single one (nor did they see us actually killing the flies).

I also seemed to spend a lot of time trying to get exp for my PLD, to build up a better buffer for all the Dynamis deaths I foresee in my future. We attended every Besieged we could, and did quests for exp scrolls as well. We did the Eldieme escort quest with Wendell, Ryrra, and Itera one Saturday night, made sure to get in chocobo races before and after the conquest tally, did back to back Cookbook quests in Sacrarium before and after the tally a week ago, and then tried the Crawlers Nest escort quest as a duo: PLD75/BST37, THF75/BST37. Our plan was to charm mobs that would aggro Olavia, use them to fight other mobs that would aggro her, use leave when Olavia was past, and then charm the ones that had been fought, and repeat the process as we worked our way through the dungeon. We thought if she took the coffer path we wouldn't stand a chance, but sure enough, that's where she was headed, so we decided to give it a shot.

Turns out it wasn't so bad at all. We had a couple mischarms on the Helm Beetles, but nothing critical. Olavia did get smacked pretty hard once, but we managed to pull the angry beetle off of her in time and got her health back up. We ended up completing the escort in around 12 minutes - much faster than we've ever done that particular route when we've had to fight all of the coffer mobs along the way.

General: Friday Night on the Ferry

ClanBEB's Friday night linkshell event was "help Trow level woodworking". A big group of us headed to the ferry where Trow supplied us with Clothespoles and bait, with the expectation we'd break a lot of rods and he would repair them, hopefully getting some good skillups in the process. We were also hoping for the Sea Horror (probably could have killed it with the whole group we had at the start) and Pirates for Sand Charms.

I thought it was a lot of fun, though I kept catching tunas instead of breaking rods. I did get about .6 or .7 skillups for my fishing as well. Grym had much better luck with breaking rods, and we decided that my +4 from gear made it more likely for me to actually land the tuna, since our skill level was the same, and Grym just wears +3 in gear.

We didn't see the Sea Horror, but we must have had pirates on 5 trips. I think everyone who needed a Sand Charm got one. It was nice to finish that quest finally, as it allowed us to do two more quests in Selbina (The Real Gift, Inside the Belly). Kiki also got a Bronze Box finally, and was able to finish the Scooped! quest in Windurst.

General: The Week in Review

Moat carp count: 2759/10000

The Egg Festival pretty much preoccupied Kiki and Grym from Thursday evening through Saturday morning, but after getting all the items, it got pretty boring trading and selling eggs from all of our characters, so we started getting back into our usual routine.  

Kiki joined in a ClanBEB linkshell event on Friday night. We headed to Pso'Xja for a general exploration and see if we could pick up one of the items for Gobbiebag VI and for a later Promathia mission. We started out with 11 or 12 of us, and ended up as two parties of 4 each: PLD62/WAR31, RDM69/BLM34, WHM52/BLM26, PLD51/WAR25 and MNK62/THF31, PLD54/WAR27, PLD50/RDM25, RDM52/BLM26.

Note that the first party had two means of escape (teleport from the whm and escape from the rdm). Originally the other party also had 2 members capable of escape, but they had to go earlier than the rest of us, and we didn't reconfigure the groups.

It was a really interesting area, and I love the music there. We had to spawn two sets of NM golems to get key item bracelets to get through a few doors, and we fought tonberries, lizards, bats, magic pots, and treasure chests. I got a cyan chip from one of the chests we killed, which will sit in my mog safe until PM 3-5 or something like that.

The treasure chests have a nasty AOE move with a strong poison (10 hp per tick) that was unpleasant. We had lots of keys, and tried to open the chests, but as soon as someone would get close to the chest, it would start attacking.

The area is quite confusing and puzzle-like, and we finally got to where we thought we wanted to go - an open elevator platform that would take us down to where we might find the GB VI item dropping mobs. As we dropped through the levels, a number of Diremites of some flavor jumped on with us and started slaughtering us. My party managed to escape, leaving the others to a miserable end on the Elevator of Doom.

Fishing has been going OK. Kiki's at level 37 (shining trout from 35-37), and can't seem to find a good combo for skillups now. Tried fishing herring in port Jeuno with lugworms, but got more colbalt jellyfish, tiger cod, yellow globes, and bastore sardines. Grym tried worm lure in Kazham for Coral butterflies, but didn't like that. Elshimo Frogs using a fly lure in Yuhtunga was much better, but she caught 24 and didn't get a single skillup. I'm planning to try lugworms at the ice pond in Qufim tonight.

Kiki broke her 25K gil Mithran Rod (and lost a sinking minnow) on a catch that was "you have a good feeling about this". I was shocked. Fortunately, Qix found another one in a bazaar in Bastok for 22K, and Quincy was able to sell the broken one for 22.5K, so there was little loss (the lure is about 700 on the Mhaura-Selbina ferry).

Kiki made about 24 stacks of scorpion arrows over the weekend and got about 2.0 skillups for the 72 synths - woodworking 55.1 now. Skillups sure seem to slow down after 50. At least the arrows sell pretty well. Trow's having a lot of trouble levelling from 62. The demon and bodkin arrows are big money losers, and that's when you can even find the arrowheads.

Kki's HQ rate on arrowwood is a bit disappointing, but not too bad really. She did 7 synths and got 3 NQ, 3 HQ1 and 1 HQ3, for 39 sticks of lumber from 21 logs. I love getting 12 sticks from one bundle of 3 logs.

Kiki offered to escort a Bastok ecowarrior group on Sunday, and when they seemed to be close to being ready, she headed to Gusgen from Jeuno, planning to meet them there. After an hour of killing bones, ghost and undead dogs and getting little to show for it (a wolf hide, 5 bone chips, and a scroll of gravity), she was informed that the ecowarrior wasn't going to happen after all. So she toddled along to Bastok, coming across a dead body with a level 50 galka paladin healing next to it. Kiki cast raise and made the galka cry. She feels bad about that. It might even have been his first opportunity to raise someone.

Qiwi's been running short on space, so Kiki headed over to Rabao and bought him 18 water jugs for an extra 18 slots of storage. At 188 gil each, that's certainly the cheapest way to get more space, as long as you don't mind having overwhelming water energy and have to use storage rather than mog safe space, which means being in your home town all the time (fine for most mules).

Last night Grym and Kiki headed to Eldieme Necropolis to help Ryrra (MNK49), Wendell (WHM49), Itera (PLD50), and Muirnan (THF50) get their ancient papyrus for G1. Vawn (PLD75) was allied with us and soloing in another part of the zone, and Muirnan arrived late and had to just stay near and entrance and be left out of the fun. Yobun was PLD62/RDM31, Kiki PLD/RDM, and Grym THF/WHM. We fought things for maybe 2.5 hours, but only got 3 papers. Muirnan will need to try again. Best bonus - Muirnan found a treasure chest and we all got over 2K gil from it! No deaths or close calls even, so it was kind of fun. Yobun was trying to tank without provoke, but would usually lose hate if Grym used SAnTA+backhand blow on to me (usually did over 500 damage, and even over 600 once. Good for Kiki's evasion and shield skillups, and got a few magic skillups as well.

Index: General

Many of my blog entries have acted as catch-alls for all those little things we do in the game that don't merit their own separate entry.

2004

07/2004: Kiki's First Trip to Jeuno
10/2004: The Adventures of Tsakiki
Weekend Accomplishments (Oct 15-17)
11/2004: Weekend Update (Oct 30-31)
11/2004: Fun With New-ish Players
11/2004: Solo Thief and Fishing
12/2004: Sick of Looking for Keys

2005

01/2005: Vacation Ramblings
01/2005: Frustration with Probable RMTs
01/2005: Odds and Ends
01/2005: More Odds and Ends
01/2005: The Week in Review
02/2005: Random Musings
02/2005: The Week in Review
03/2005: The Week in Review
04/2005: Friday Night on the Ferry
11/2005: testing the posts
11/2005: Introducing Tsakiki
11/2005: Odds and Ends
11/2005: Saturday Afternoon in Castle Zvahl

2006

01/2006: Holiday Vacation
01/2006: An Evening in the Temple of Uggalepih
01/2006: Odds and Ends
02/2006: The Elusive Old Goobbue
02/2006: All Those Little Things
02/2006: New King of the Opo-Opos
02/2006: Random Musings
02/2006: Everybody Else Is Doing It
02/2006: Armor Envy
02/2006: Weekly Jumble
03/2006: No Healer Means No Leveling
03/2006: Evening Exploits
03/2006: Ersatz Leveling
03/2006: Show and Tell
04/2006: Odds and Ends
04/2006: Catch-All
04/2006: Update Musings
04/2006: The Treasures of Aht Urhgan
04/2006: Just because it's been out for over 18 months...
04/2006: Adventures in Aht Urhgan
04/2006: It's a Blue World
05/2006: Support Staff
05/2006: More Fun in the New World
05/2006: Thises and Thats
05/2006: All those little things
05/2006: And the n00b-of-month award goes to...
06/2006: All The News That's Fit to Print?
06/2006: Happy Birthday Kiki!
07/2006: Odds and Ends
07/2006: Honey, have you seen my Promise Badge?
07/2006: Updatey Thingy
07/2006: Weekend Update
07/2006: Update Notes
07/2006: Catch-all
09/2006: Helping Strangers on Saturdays
09/2006: SMN AF3 and Asuran Fists WSNM
11/2006: Vacation Time

2007

02/2007: Blog Boredom
05/2007: Lack of Entries
06/2007: The Tarutaru Times Online
10/2007: Same Old, Same Old
10/2007: Merit Points and Me