Monday, September 25, 2006

Keeping busy

Just to try something different I had decided to camp Centurio X-I for some nice scrolls on Friday and was getting ready to head out to the Quicksand Caves as soon as I logged in. Coincidentally, Jingy and Minusjoker were both already out there in the spawn room; Jingy to skillup his Guard ability, and Minusjoker to get a coffer key. All three of us were getting some EXP for our NPCs, so it turned into a full party. A couple of people had killed Centurio within minutes of my arrival, so I sorta...gave up on camping it and proceeded to kill pretty much everything in the area for the coffer key.

When Minusjoker went AFK for a minute, I decided to pull another Antican but got a little too big for my britches and linked 3 of them. I killed two, and whittled the third one down, but died in the process. Jingy finished it off, and thankfully didn't die.

Lurick came in sometime that night to level his NPC... I didn't chat with him much but I think he was procastinating: his WAR was still level 70 so he probably hadn't beaten Maat yet. I didn't ask if he'd given it a third try.

We left once MJ's key dropped and I logged out, confused about my experience points since I still appear to be 20k TNL. I must have underestimated my EXP on the last update.

I logged in sporadically throughout the morning on Saturday to buy up Cobalt Jellyfish in Bibiki Bay and craft it all into Mercury. When you're playing in the living room with 2 kids all morning, firing up FFXI every hour or so for a mini-session is actually pretty easy and convenient ^_^. I might make this a weekly ritual on Saturdays, depending on how long the Poison Potion market lasts.

By the time I logged in for my evening session, I was sitting on 18 stacks of Mercury and moved on to Carbon Fiber which was selling quite well at 20k per stack. After crafting about a dozen stacks of these, I noticed the LS was gearing up to get a couple of members through LB1, so I threw on the only gear I'd left in my MH and warned the group. They were going to be playing with a male Elvaan warrior in full artifact armor. I remembered to bring Blinding Potions this time.

We decided to do the Papyrus run first, since this usually takes the longest, and we headed for the 'easy' camp in hopes that no one else was going for the paper drop that night. We were the only ones there and proceeded to kill Lichs and other assorted mobs. Zorrandor was working on breaking the latent on his Sapara of Trials for the Savage Blade weaponskill, so he and I eventually set up Fusion (Spinning Axe + Flat Blade) since he unfortunately couldn't use Red Lotus Blade as a RDM.

The paper refused to drop and the Lich spawns were sparse, so the Zorr and I stayed at our camp while the rest of the group took the long trip through the Glacier to enter the Necropolis at the F-5 entrance from Batallia Downs. I skillchained with Zorr until I was close to passing out around 1:45AM and called it a night. I wished the LS luck on the paper and the rest of the items.

It appears they were indeed lucky. Murrdoc posted the following report to the LS forum the next day:

First off...congrats to Mal and Q for getting all three LB1 items last night! After trying to get the drops near the bones camp for an hour or so, we relocated to the northwestern part Necropolis map where it was a matter of what...20 minutes? For BOTH drops! o.O How totally insane...I've never seen the papyrus double drop...well, ever? lol. Someone was smiling on Q and Mal last night^^ Then, we were off to GC, where Zorr solo'ed back to back bombs for back to back coal drops...I think we were there for a grand total of 5 minutes lol. We did spend a little more time in CN fighting exo's for the mold...but that had more to do with the giller pt in the exo room than anything else :P

Once the ball got rolling, though...all three items x 2 in a little over two hours! /hurray

I discovered yesterday morning that Zorr also broke his latent on the mob immediately following our last one. So we got quite a bit accomplished that night, and I was proud to have participated in at least some of it. Some pictures of the group:

Let's kill whatever Zorr's killing...Say {Hello!} to my little {Friend}Waiting for more Lichs


It seemed like the team was gearing up for the Savage Blade WSNM last night, which would include a very interesting run for opening the Altepa Gate. It sounded dangerous and I wanted to participate and take some pictures, but a couple of our mages were on leave for a few days, so we slated this run for a later date.

I spent the night crafting Poison Potion and killing mushrooms in Spore Hollow for Sleepshrooms. I've got 6 or 7 stacks of shrooms and will be ready to craft these into Sleeping Potion tonight.

This and Echo Drops (and perhaps some Firesand) will round out my merchandise for the week:

  • Poison Potion: 18 stacks @ 27k = 486k
  • Carbon Fiber: 12 stacks @ 18k = 216k
  • Sleeping Potion: 7 stacks @ 30k = 210k
  • Echo Drops: 10 stacks @ 10k = 100k
  • Firesand: ??? stacks @ 20k = ???

So it looks like be back up to 1.5 mil sometime this week. Another crafting session next weekend should get me enough gil to grab the Maneater before the holiday inflation maelstrom hits the server.

2 comments:

Faulsey said...

Thats odd. I seem to remember Zorrandor and Murrdoc being in an LS of mine a while back; DistortedReality... Hmm. Doubt they'd remember me, though, if I'm not, in fact, mixing up names.

I really need to get my act together and start making some money with woodworking -.-; Damn alchemists seem to do quite well for yourselves :P

Paul Bauman said...

They're an awesome group of people who've mostly been around for the past 2 years or more, so I wouldn't be surprised if you've seen a few of them. Jingy and I remember one another from the ToonAdventures LS, for instance. I think we've all been through several LS iterations at this point ^_^

Woodworking is next on my list. I'd love to be able to make all of my own Shihei components with a combination of fishing, WW, and Alchemy. Being self-sufficient just feels...neat.

Alchemy is pretty good money, at least by my standards, but it takes a crap-load of inventory and diversification to keep the gil flowing. It's not really something you can AH-craft either, so crafting for profit while LFG never really worked for me. The market took such a nosedive in all my "bread & butter" products that I actually quit crafting for awhile to wait for the prices to stabilize. I hope the current ones are the norm and not an abnormal jump (FFXIah.com history isn't quite extensive enough to check this).