And for the obligatory cooking

It's become evident that I'm going to need lots of Insect Paste in the long run. Several tons of it, from what I gather. At 1500-2000 gil per stack, that's quite a gil drain. So I've taken a few sessions to level Cooking to 28 (and change). Synthing my own paste also saves quite a bit of room since 4 stacks of materials yield 12 stacks of bait.

Leveling cooking from 6-11 allowed me to multi-task and skillup fishing at the same time, since Sliced Sardine was the recipe of choice in that range. I used a Sabiki Rig in Port Windurst and caught Quus for fishing skillups, while using the Bastore Sardines I was catching to level up Cooking. Fun stuff! I hope to have more such moments of Fishing/Cooking synergy.

Getting cooking past 10 has also enabled me to synthesize Sairui-Ran with my Alchemy skill, but I'll probably hold off on crafting those until my Woodcraft enables me to synthesize the Bast Parchment myself.

Skillups in fishing have been slower than expected, but not discouraging, since I'm not exclusively targeting the skillup fish. I want to collect carp as I go, rather than skillup as fast as I can and then worry about them.

I think I'll head to the jungles instead of Jugner this afternoon and fish there, just for a change of scenery. I'm very vigilant for the !!! messages, so I'm not too worried about fishing up a nasty mob.

In the back of my mind, I'm also itching to level NIN to 37 and be done with it, but I haven't found the consecutive time to LFG and party yet, so fishing & crafting will have to do for now.

It's been quite a relaxing process so far.