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.