Frohike and the Infinite Sadness

Oops was daydreamin' there, thinking of what it would be like to be a DRK... who listened to Smashing Pumpkins.

Ahem.

Anyhow, tonight was a bit strange and not very lucrative in terms either EXP or fishing skillups/carp.

I started the evening by the Jugner lake again, going from 22.8 to 23.1 before getting an invitation to Caedarva Mire. The party proved to be an experiment gone horribly awry. Well, either that or the leader was a moron; you be the judge. When I got to the Azouph staging point, everyone was still gathering and forming and we ended up with the following roster: WHM (leader), NIN, WAR, WAR, BLM, BST. A bit DD-heavy and no refresher. I asked if we were targetting Imps and Jnun, which the leader confirmed, adding flies. Strangely ambitious!

The BST pulled a Jnun, which we dispatched with no real problems. The second mob was a fly (notice how I'm counting mobs here?), which again went down without too much fuss. However the party began drifting north of camp, right into the Imp spawn at the entrance to the staging point path. As we were engaging the next fly, I told them to be on the lookout for a pop since they were choosing to camp on one, and speak of the devil...

As soon as the add occurred, the WHM leader disconnected. I two-houred the fly while a few people ran to the zone and the other Warrior panic-kited and died. The rest of us made it back safely, thanks to the Ninja who intentionally kited an additional Imp while we ran through the door. The leader never returned. After some embarassing search /tells for replacements ("No, we don't have a refresher. Yeah, BST is still here.") and coming up with nothing, I disbanded the party.

Back to Jugner for an additional .3 fishing skillups before another invitation to Bibiki Bay came in. I was pretty sure this was a replacement invite, which I confirmed once I arrived at the camp. This was unfortunate since the setup was decent: NIN, WAR, THF, BRD, SMN, BLM. The camp was at F-10, and the targets were the moblins in the area, which succumbed nicely to the Light skillchain we had established -- Mistral Axe + Shark Bite. The Ninja died to a random crit for 540+ damage, but otherwise the flow was uninterrupted until the SMN and THF both announced they were getting sleepy.

I fished up a few more carp before calling it a night.

11,000 Experience Points TNL.

It's my birthday. It's my birthday.

I'm gonna LFG like it's my birthday.

But no party for me tonight. It's alright, though, since the RL celebration was heartwarming and I wasn't particularly in the mood to stress out over a virtual party.

I've finished up most of my shopping and taken some advice from the Alla WAR forum. I sold the Victory Ring and purchased a Woodsman Ring and Sun Ring instead, hanging on to the remaining 2 million for upcoming purchases when I level up. I'm not getting the Spiked Finger Gauntlets since the cheaper Tarasque Mitts will provide the ATK boost I need at level 70. And I need to build up a bit more gil to prepare for the Tabarzin/Woodville/Maneater phase anyway.

I may want to try recruiting some members of CC to help me with the Tungi fight, since I really should at least upgrade one of my Axes. I'm not sure if time will permit this, though.

My gear as it stands is OK for the Maat fight, so I'm preparing the rest of my LB5 items and will take up the battle when I hit level 69.

After all the prep work, I took down my LFG flag and went fishing in Jugner, going from 21.6 to 22.8 (and getting around 3 stacks of carp) before calling it a night.

NIN: Out with a whimper

The Ifrit server will be pleased and relieved to know that Frohike will no longer be leveling Ninja.

I sold quite a bit of random 'extra' Ninja gear I'd picked up a long time ago, odd stuff that added Attack rather than Evasion or Agility (see irony below), and dusted off my old standard set that was sitting in Bastok since my last leveling session to 36... back in March. In hindsight, I wish I had just gone all the way and finished it then. I was rusty. Actually 'rusty' would imply a point in time where my Ninja skills were decent. There never was such a time, so I'll have to settle for 'crappier than usual.'

My gear wasn't bad, but I wasn't sure what food to use. I glanced at an Alla guide, which recommended meat, so I grabbed a stack of Meat Mithkabobs and put up my flag. What I didn't know was that the guide assumed all slots were completely up to snuff and the player wouldn't be overcamping IT+... yeah, I should have brought some sushi.

I got 2 invites within seconds of putting up my flag and immediately hated all of you Ninjas (not with a true hatred, but an envious one). Turns out we had another Ninja in the party, so I was being brought along as... insurance? Not sure. I certainly wasn't told I was being invited as a damage dealer.

I was slow as hell. Had to mule in a stack of tools I'd forgotten. When I ran to Signet I realized I'd forgotten my Empress Band. By the time I got out to the fields, the party had zoned to CN, and I felt like a dumb old codger. Fortunately for me, someone disconnected, so they had to wait anyway.

I was fortunate this other Ninja was in the party. This is how bad I was: the other Ninja had -Enmity merits... and still ended up tanking every fight. Part of the problem was damage. The other NIN had decided to compensate for the -Enmity by wearing some very nice +Atk gear. The other problem was that the mages were debuffing the mob before I had a chance to land any of my hate-inducing Ninjutsu (Paralyze, Slow, Blind, Poison). The other NIN would land Blind and that would be the end of Ninjustsu for the fight basically. So all I had was my crappy damage and Provoke.

I felt utterly worthless to that party, and that's just such an aweful feeling, even if you don't like the job.

Crawler's Nest was much too crowded. After a few Worker Crawler kills and lots of down time between pulls, we headed out to Gustav tunnel where I think we were a tad out-leveled by the mobs. Lots of misses reduced my hate-management to Provoke. Yeah, I hit rock bottom at that point. What good was all this expensive EVA gear when the mob never turned my way? And meat? Equally useless.

But the party went smoothly for the most part, aside from the puller's death which was basically his own damn fault. Note to pullers: there's time between chain 2 and 3 to find another mob and pull it. You don't have to bring one to camp as soon as we've killed chain 2... especially when such haste usually makes you link a mob for extra fun. Oh and there are /recast timers on Provoke. If you do something dumb and no one's Provoke timer is up, you'll be adding to your dirt collection. Don't whine.

We were getting up to chain 4 which wasn't bad considering there was no skillchain, so we steadily made progress and disbanded after about 3 hours of partying, with me pretty deeply into level 37. I ate my Utsusemi:Ni scroll as soon as I leveled and had fun with that, although it was unnecessary due to the aforementioned problems.

Overall, I wasn't proud of my performance, especially since I've seen good Ninjas in action. My last comment to the party was "I'm sorry I sucked," to which the other Ninja graciously replied: "You did great! Shush."

I'll be selling all of my Ninja equipment to more deserving players tonight, and thinking about what next steps to take for my Warrior equipment.

Easing in (and To Be a Newbie Again - Part 3)

I've decided it's time to bite the bullet and start upgrading my gear. So I did some shopping when I first logged in and purchased a Victory Ring for 500k, putting my Puissance+1 up for 140k, and the Combat Caster's Boomerang+1 for 50k. This will bring my sum down to an appalling 300k, and I need quite a few upgrades. So my plan over the next few sessions will be to level my Ninja subjob to the full 37 and sell all of the gear. I don't BCNM, and I won't do Promys with NIN, so I'll essentially be "done" with the job. The gear includes an Emperor Hairpin, so this should provide me with enough funds to make at least one other upgrade which I'm anticipating to be the Spiked Finger Gauntlets.

But not tonight. Tonight, I needed to slack.

I grabbed a couple of stacks of bait ingredients, my fishing gear, a folding chair, and a cold six-pack and set up camp at Lake Mechieume (in Jugner). The skillups were slow but I eventually dinged 21, and an additional .2 awhile after that.

Yaka was on, quietly puttering away in Palborough Mines. Although he's completed mission 2-3 and is currently level 24 on his Red Mage, I've seen him on several nights with a Warrior sub... at level 6. And yes, it's his only sub. So I let him in on the whole "gimped sub = no invites + lots of pointing and laughing" spiel that I assumed he understood the last time I gave it to him. It seemed to sink in, but who really knows. Other people in the LS are growing a bit exasperated with him (one of the most patient people in the group told me he was "high maintenance"), but he's got that 'spark' that new players have that's just fun to watch.

So I helped him with his Palborough Mines key for the Khazam airship pass quest, although in hindsight I probably shouldn't have done this. He needs to stay the hell out of the jungles until that sub is leveled. I guess he'll learn the hard way.

All in all I took it easy on my first real night back, although I admittedly remained logged in for a bit too long. I had one too many {Tavern} {drinks} which tends to render me a bit clueless about time.

Waiting for the murk to settle

What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better, because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. - Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

The combination of fatigue and illness is preventing me from thinking clearly in the game. I'm barely functional at work. Add a healthy dose of stress from selling our place and seeking a house, and I'm just a liability to any poor linkshell or party I might happen to get involved with at this point.

So I'm going on another hiatus, at least until my head clears (both physically and metaphorically).

I'll see you all soon.

Sick as a Mauthe Doog

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've become progressively more ill, but have hopefully gotten through the worst of it. I couldn't put in much gaming time, what with curling up in a corner and wishing for the sweet relief of death, & stuff like that.

When I did sign on, I did some brainless farming. Beehive chips in Giddeus, Bone Chips in Gusgen Mines. HQ'd about 10 slots worth of goods for... ok profit, I guess. This deflation is really kicking my ass as an Alchemist.

I'm getting ready to go up against Maat, but haven't capped my Great Axe since I got to level 68. I did however take the advantage of a couple of Besieged events to get a level into it. I logged in tonight with the intention of farming tree cuttings, but my friend Drocan needed his Samurai test... so I had some fun in Castle Zvahl instead. It wasn't a very eventful party since we got the drop within 6 or 7 demons (we took 2nd level of the pit in the Orc area).

Right before I logged out, I had the satisfaction of getting a tell from Drocan.

He beat Maat.

Mold

What's today's secret word, Conky? Well, Pee Wee, today's secret word is: dearth. Every time you hear someone say the secret word, scream real loud!

Yes, I'm a little groggy and punchy. I have a cold.

I did, however, put in a short session last night. I gave up on finding a party after about 30 minutes with my flag up and being unable to put my own group together. We have real a dearth of tanks in this level range who play around 10PM Pacific Time.

So I spent much of my time doing the FFXI equivalent of a garage sale and clearing out old unfinished stacks of random goodies on mules as well as my main character. While doing this, I heard someone ask for help with the Exo mold for their Limit Break 1 quest. The response from those around me was very dismissive, since this was supposed to be the 'easy' drop... as if the person asking could even solo the Exorays at 50 or had any other options but to ask for help. So I volunteered mine; I couldn't resist.

A couple of others in my level range did the same, one of them a Thief, so we basically had to wait for re-pops after we slaughtered every Exoray in the Crawler's Nest. It was a fun time, and the mold dropped after about 3 rounds of re-pops. Oddly enough, the mold dropped on my kill.

It was 12AM and I was passing out early, so it was curtains for me. But I hope he got his Papyrus sometime that night.

Big Z, little z, what begins with Z?

"I do! I'm a Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuz, as you can plainly see."

When I logged in tonight, Yaka had wisely decided to level his BLM subjob so I left him to his EXP session and put up my own flag. About a half-hour later I got an invitation from a Japanese WHM by the name of Jessy. He detailed the party makeup on the first tell:

{Hello!} {Team up?} {Party} is {White Mage}, {Bard}, {Black Mage}, {Ninja}

I of course replied "OK, {Please invite to join party}" within seconds. Just the presence of a Black Mage meant this probably wasn't going to be another "zomg FFXI on crack" TP burn party. As I joined up, the party chatter was entirely Japanese, but Jessy used auto-translate at one point to indicate the skillchain he had in mind (yes!): Mistral Axe and Dragon Kick for Light. This of course implied that a Monk was on his way, and I was about to be a very happy Warrior.

Once the party formed, the leader started asking for camp suggestions in the Aht Urhgan zones. I told them I was {/check}ing {Short time}, and put up the URL, in case any of them cared to put it through a translator: campsitarus.blogspot.com

Oddly enough, there weren't a whole lot of options listed for the 68-70 range in the new zones. I gave the leader 2 options: kill Marid/Chigoe in the thickets or woodlands, or go to Mamook. I didn't have the auto-translate for Spider, so I didn't really tell them the target mob in Mamook... but they all seemed interested and eventually {Gather together} {Runic Portal} popped up. We were off.

The western spider camp was taken, so I made my way to the other camp, worrying about mob availability due to the 16 minute re-pop timers. The party, however, had something else in mind and instead went to H-9... and dropped into the pit. They proceeded to target the Ziz, a mob in the cockatrice family and moved the camp slightly east to I-9.

With our setup, this turned out to be an excellent site aside from the occasional pop in the area, which was slept without too much fuss or simply left alone at nighttime. The Petrification and Silence TP moves were frontal, so removing the status effects wasn't much of a problem (they were usually hitting the tank). All was flowing smoothly with the Light skillchain and MB, and we consistently hit chain #5.

EXP with the Empress ring and Sanction was in the high 200's, and dropped to high 100's and low 200's when the ring wore off.

We hit a couple of snags, as usual. Hammer Beak hit the Ninja a bit hard on one occasion and killed him. So I tanked the rest of the fight with Defender and the AF gear while the Ninja got an R2 and didn't even rest... he just kept right on hitting the Ziz until it was dead and the party was safe. Now that's a badass Ninja.

Once we recovered, the Monk, Glocky, kept doing his thing and pulled Ziz regularly, throwing in the occasional Puk or Suhur Mas (pugil) as chain filler when pops were exhausted. However, pullers beware. There is a NM cockatrice in this area, apparently a lottery spawn, which we discovered the hard way when the puller's notification looked kinda... funny:

{Pull back!} Zizzy Zilla

In the immortal words of Scooby Doo: "Ruh roh"

We engaged it, barely making a dent in its HP, and we immediately knew we were screwed. The Ninja hit the dirt pretty quickly, so I futilely put up Mighty Strikes and my AF and fought my way to oblivion while the rest of the party (also in the pink from the dead tank transition) escaped out.

Glocky, of course, felt terrible and auto-translated {mistake} {I'm sorry}. I couldn't find {Shit happens} in the translator, so I responded with a "{/laugh}^^" and "{/comfort} Glocky", which elicited a "{Thank you.} Frohike!" so I hopefully soothed some nerves there.

We both got tractored to a safe spot at H-9 for Raise 2, and kept on going for awhile until Glocky hit 70 (after a couple of others hit 69), and people started to get tired. I and the tank logged out with approximately 12k under our belts, and the rest of the party probably got a little more.

Fun stuff! I hope to see some of those folks again.

To be a newbie again (part 2)

I logged in last night to fish in Jugner while waiting for Yaka to log back in, assuming he'd still want help with 2-3. He came on around 10:15 PST and sent me a {Hello!}. He was in a party out in the Dunes but had dinged level 20 (still no subjob) and wanted an escort to Jeuno to do his Chocobo quest. I'd made my way out to Valkurm when Yaka told me he would be AFK for 30 minutes.

Hrm, OK. What to do in the dunes to kill time?

What else? I camped the Valkurm Emperor. I've been wanting to get rid of my Emperor Pin to free up some cash for other gear, so camping for the Empress Pin seemed as valid a time-waster as any. I noticed a familiar name among the campers, though: Lurick.

He'd joined a very old LS of mine called the RingWraiths comprised of a tight-knit group of 4 people at the time: Gimppy, Rocco, Citroen, and myself.

We chewed the cud and he checked to make sure my Great Axe was capped, which I confirmed. He'd taken his to level 130-something, picked up his axes, and never looked back... until it came time to fight Maat. Now he's stuck at 70 on Warrior for awhile and leveling other jobs, since money won't buy skillups. {That's too bad!} It was nice of him to remind me though.

Again, if any Warriors out there are reading this, don't let this happen to you [reverb] [reverb] [reverb]! Keep it capped.

By hour 2, I noticed that dear Yaka still wasn't on. I'd turned down two or three invitations to party (with /anon and no flag up), and these invitations had come from people I'd partied with before, so I'll honestly say I was mildly... pissed off at the newbie for misleading me about his AFK time. I put up my flag and outpost-warped to Sandy to get some other stuff done.

Around 12:30AM, I got an invitation from a forming party that eventually decided to EXP in Mamook, with the sole problem being that Jeston and I did not have the staging point flagged. And the Chocobo vendor had been taken hostage in the last Besieged.

Yep, we did lots of walking.

And the leader had flagged the staging point so long ago that he'd forgotten how to get there, so we did quite a bit of backtracking before we even zoned to Mamook. Once we got there, my supply of oils was down to half a stack and I was getting dizzy from all the twists, turns, and potential True Sight mobs. The place was truly frickin' frightning and labyrinthine and I ... actually kinda liked it. When we finally got to the Bhaflau Thickets zone, nearly 45 minutes had passed.

Flashback to Al Zhabi while the party was forming. The Ninja, B**********o, had ants in her pants the moment the party had formed and wanted to start EXP'ing yesterday. When she found out Jeston and I needed to flag the staging point, the center in her brain that controlled her attention span must have suddenly and dangerously convulsed. But rather than tell us this, she made up a clever one:

Wow, big storm rolling in. I'll need to shutdown and hook up my UPC and boot back up. BRB.

Sure, Kiddo. No one else batted an eyelash at it, but I was worried. A UPC in a storm? Riiight.

Once everyone was together (again, this was 45 minutes later), the tank had yet to return. So after another 20 minute wait, the leader had to regretfully disband, to the angry cries of the 2 Japanese players who had been waiting patiently.

At some point during all of this, Yaka logged back in and sent me a heads up. When I told him what I was doing, he didn't seem too upset about it and still wanted the escort to Jeuno when I took the Runic Portal back to Whitegate, so I figured what the hell... it's 1:30am, and who needs sleep right? Besides, I felt a little guilty for ditching him even if he did fib about his AFK time.

I met him at the Teleport-Dem crag and we hiked on through the Pashow Marshlands, killing Goobbues along the way, which he had never seen before. I couldn't resist showing off Rampage either, which got a nice O.O out of him. Who could resist really? It wasn't so much self-glorifying as an advertisement for the Warrior job... come to the dark side, Yaka!

I wanted to complete my stack of cuttings so I could hand them over to him & help him out a bit on the money side of things, but we didn't get any drops. Maybe another day. I got a /check and a /tell from someone named Default while we were out there:

Default >> I am senile.

We sent a couple of /tells back & forth, and I told him I hope he enjoyed the blog. So /wave Default, good to see ya ^_^

Things got hairy when we entered Rolanberry, mostly because I was dead tired. A Quadav lumbered up to us while we were whacking at a Goobbue, and my sleep-deprived brain didn't register the 2 hits poor Yaka took before it was too late. I provoked the stupid Quadav a split-second too late, and Yaka dropped like sack of Mhaura Garlic. To make matters worse, he deleveled to 19, so he'd need to make some EXP back if he hoped to do the Chocobo quest tonight.

Great. Welcome to FFXI, Yaka!

I snagged a friendly Paladin by the name of Sige (level 60ish) who raised the poor kid. Once back on his feet, Yaka announced that Sige would be following us back in case he died again. Ouch. Trust gone. I hope I can get it back someday. Perhaps I should get off of my melee duff and level /WHM for just these types of occasions -_-

The entry into Jeuno was fascinating to watch, though. Yaka stopped at a bunch of shops and NPCs, just basking in all the stuff he could do. He made a beeline to the magic shops though and bought up a bunch of Bar- spells, ate them, and cast them all on himself.

Then he ran to his MH and made one more request: he had 4 spathas, wax, and water crystals and wanted me to try my luck again. I was happy to do it, and even happier when he got 2 HQ's out of it.

Then he was off to LFG and get his level back to do the Chocobo quest. Before I logged, I warned him that he would need to go back home and level those subs if he wanted to do well in Qufim. But I knew the allure of a new zone was killing him.

He'll learn.

To be a newbie again (part 1)

I've befriended a brand new UK player and nicknamed him Yaka since I can never remember the last part of his name ... Yakamake? Yakazuki?

Yes, I'm bad with Japanese names. Sorry folks.

He had been sending questions to the CC shell during my previous EXP session in Zhayolm: stuff about the chocobo quest, subjobs, and Bastok mission 2-3. And it was incredibly difficult to not answer them, but I really couldn't give them the justice of a fully formulated reply since the party was keeping me pretty busy.

He was a level 17 RDM at the time, and obviously didn't have a subjob yet. Roben had helped him with the items, so at least he was covered as far as that quest.

When I logged in around lunchtime today, he was still asking for help with 2-3 so I pounced. He needed to kill Warchief Vatgit, and then go to Windy to get a commission to kill the dragon in Giddeus. I didn't have much time, since my son would be up from his nap soon, but I joined up with him at the Ghelsba Outpost to go kill Vatgit (it had killed him and a buddy when they tried to duo it). As usual there were lots of questions about subjobs, where to EXP next, what jobs were like, what people expected, etc.

I'm almost glad he's taken up RDM and not something more familiar to me or I would probably 'nanny' him a bit too much in how he chooses to play his job.

We had to kill Vatgit twice because the first time was for nought: he hadn't flagged the proper CS in Sandy yet (lesson learned). By the time we killed him again and returned to Sandy, my son was awake.

Before I logged though, he asked me if I would craft some Bee Spatha +1 for him if he got the materials and I said sure (I've never been commissioned to craft anything so this felt really cool ^^;). When I logged back in tonight, he wasn't on, but I prepared for the eventual BCNM anyway and purchased all of my level 25 gear for the capped fight. We'll definitely still need a healer, so hopefully someone else in the LS will step up and give us a hand.

For the fun of it, I crafted a free Bee Spatha+1 for him and sent it to his MH, selling the 2 NQ leftovers.

The good things

I apologize to anyone who has grown a bit bored with my EXP reports. In my drive to level 70, I've grown somewhat myopic and haven't really looked at the 'big picture' in awhile.

This changed for me last night, when I was once again reminded of why I choose to play this game with such strange, prolonged, piecemeal obsession.

When I eventually do quit, the particulars of my EXP, or crafting, or even fishing sessions will fade with time, but a few things will stand out in memory (yeah, despite the senility). First are the random acts of senseless kindess from virtual strangers; moments that you don't want to waste by forgetting them or hording what you've been given. Second are the simple pleasures of sharing good times with old friends. These tied together for me last night.

The veteran members of CatastrophyCrafters had previously gone Ose-camping together a couple of weeks ago, while I was busily LFG and fishing. I'd felt guilty for not joining them at the time. At the end of the evening I regretted choosing EXP over hanging out with friends, realizing that the only reason why I wanted to EXP was to attend things like these in the first place. So when I discovered they were giving it another go last night, I didn't make the same mistake twice.

Ziedrich was 0/20 on his Assault Jerkin. That's right, 0/20, and it was time for this thing to drop. I wasn't even sure they had the time of death, but it was fun nonetheless to just hang out with the old group, kill random stuff, and discover new things such as the fact that Applebee's delivers ribs at 2am... and that Ose likes to pop when the tank happens to be AFK.

I got the first provoke, which felt good for some reason, kinda like when I voked Serket. It means nothing really, but there's something about being the one to claim a camped NM. Weaz came back before things got too out of hand and we steadily hacked away at the cat in the safety of a tunnel.

It died, and I was fortunate to watch Ziedrich finally get that Assault Jerkin. We all cheered and congratulated him profusely and eventually warped back home a happy linkshell. It was definitely good to see the gang in action again.

Speaking of which, I had the fortune of partying with a pair of old friends last night. These were two people that selflessly helped me with the Papyrus drop for my Limit Break 1 quest, when all other people I had supposedly 'befriended' in the game were too busy to take the time to even try to schedule a date in the Eldieme Necropolis with me. Squidy and Looney did this as near total strangers, and weren't even skilling anything up... just killing undead for hours to help me out with the drop.

I never forgot this and made it a point to return the favor to another stranger down the line, since I couldn't hope to really do anything directly for either of them at the time, other than offer my gratitude.

So when the EXP-party leader snagged Squidy last night (as WHM) for our Mount Zhayolm session, I looked up Looney on a whim and sure enough... there he was again as RNG 67 with his flag up. It was time to reunite some people.

The party went well, and I don't think I need to get into the details of EXP per hour, hate control, damage over time; stuff that won't matter to me or anyone else within a day of posting this. Suffice it to say, I had the priviledge of partying with two of the coolest people I know on the server, and we had a good time. Squidy's snapshot storage was full so I promised to post a picture of both of them. It turns out neither of them had partied together in a long long time.

Looney, in his usual fashion, decided to help Squidy and me at the end of the EXP party by showing me the way to the staging point, and Squidy the way to the ??? for his map. We were so exhausted we barely had the energy to type by the time we logged out (around 3:30 AM my time). But I'd like to think we all logged out happy.

Oh give me a home where the Eruca roam

Drocan is on a rampage apparently. As soon as I logged in tonight I received another /tell from him asking for my TNL.

And you can guess the rest. Most of the party was formed by the time I joined: White Mage, Ranger (yet another old acquaintance named Looney who helped me with my LB1 long ago), Black Mage, Samurai (Drocan again), Warrior, and Ninja. I was on a Chocobo on the way to Halvung within 10 minutes of logging in.

The party went fairly smoothly with only a couple of problems.

We couldn't really skillchain Distortion on the crawlers for awhile. My Axe was capped and I decided that I couldn't let my Great Axe slip, so I equipped that and informed the party that the best Looney and I could do would be Slug Shot + Raging Rush for Induration (Ice), since the Ninja didn't have Blade:Ten. It was OK, but certainly not as nice as a Distortion with MB. Looney's first job to 75 was Warrior, so I knew he would understand. It took a couple of hours, but the GA eventually capped out and I switched back.

The second problem, which I've become resigned to unless I'm lucky, was hate control with the Ninja tank. I think the picture illustrates it well enough. Dead horse beaten.

Before Looney disbanded for some sleep, he sent me a /tell to let me know how good it was to see a Warrior using a Great Axe for a change. From a veteran Warrior to another, this meant a lot to me and I thanked him...and let him know I was sharpening that GA for Maat's ass.

You hear that Maat? It's the sound of your doom.

His replacement was Slowmo the heroic Blue Mage from a few nights ago. Unfortunately by the time he arrived, the party was nearing the disband phase, but we had enough fun to cap out his EXP ring. We disbanded soon thereafter because

• People were getting tired and sloppy
• Sanction wore
• I was going R0
• Drocan had hit 68 (lowest in the party was 65)

All in all a decent night of EXP at around 16k, bringing me halfway to level 68.

Purty Pictures

I stumbled across this site when Strawberrie dropped a line about it in one of her entries and thought some readers might enjoy it. I personally think it's amazing (some of the shots look a bit fake but most of them are stunningly well done):

The Transworld Project

I'm adding it to the Fun section of the sidebar (to be renamed from Humor).

Appearance tweaks

Please bear with the changing appearance of the blog. This is my first foray into Photoshop and CSS, so I'm blundering my way through it. I think I'll photoshop the blog title in, since I can't seem to get the right placement and color for the font through CSS.

Fun stuff though. I set up a Flickr account too, so I'll be able to mail screenshots directly to the service from my pol account, rather than having a bunch of random shots in various email accounts and machines.

Ok, off to bed.

Experience Point Cursna. Ready!

Finally...

I broke my rule and logged in tonight, just to see if I could break the trend. Tons of flags were up: THF, NIN, BLM, SMN, SAM, MNK, BRD... the works. I was sending /tells to the first few folks when an old friend Drocan sent a {Hello!} my way. I noticed his flag was up:

-Frohike: "You're seeking, eh?"
-Drocan: "Not anymore."
[pause]
Drocan invites you to his party.
{Hello!}
5/6, need healer

Turns out he was gathering the same people I was. So we put together a solid international party of level 66 players: SAM/THF, WAR/NIN, WHM/BLM, BLM/WHM (an old friend Sassafrass /wave), NIN/WAR, BRD/WHM. And we headed out to Mount Zhayolm for the usual camp.

Another group was at the entrance to the Eruca zone, and I warned the party that we should take the back camp and beware the pop... but Drocan wanted to stay put. So much for courtesy, I suppose. The other group was immediately on the defensive and told us to GTFO to the other camp, as I assumed they would. I finally conviced our party to move, but they stopped a few feet into the first section and set up camp there. -_-

The other group took awhile to realize they had gotten their panties in a bunch over nothing. The mobs were plentiful and neither of us were interfering with each other's pulls. So it worked out, and they responded positively to my conciliatory tells (aside from one dude who apparently blacklisted me for some reason).

The EXP flowed smoothly, with a simple SA+ Tachi: Goten + Rampage = Distortion and MB.

The crawlers dropped pretty quickly and we nailed chain 5 every time. I had to get a replacement a couple of hours later for some sleep (a couple of other people were doing the same). In the 2-hour session I earned 12k, dinged 67, and got close to a 10% buffer. I can only hope the trend continues in future sessions.

Whew.