Progress on WHM, Axe, Sword, Fishing, and Tomfoolery

Here I go feeling like a swiss army knife again.

Progress has been steady on my WHM. In preparation for more Roughneck EXP, I acquired my pair of Mycophile Cuffs on my first Mycophile kill earlier in the week. Hooray for free gear.

I reached level 25 a few nights ago with the Roughnecks, giving me the privilege of casting my first Raise on Lexxi (I swear I didn't let her die on purpose, just to try my new spell. No, seriously).

When our EXP session concluded, I indulged a sleep-deprivation-induced whim and ran back to Jeuno to gear up as a "buttersheep", the warrior vernacular for WAR/WHM.

I had to equip my MP earrings & rings, Friar's Rope, and the walmart turban, but I finally had enough MP to raise and toss on a couple of cures. I pictured running around Qufim and horrifying newbies as an elvaan Warrior in artifact armor and a turban, raising & curing random people while spamming the angel-wing fireworks. But it was so late when I got back to the tower that my plans were canceled due to lack of corpses.

Still enamored with the concept of free Sneak (I don't even want to estimate how much I've spent on Silent Oils in this game), I decided to go sneak fishing for shall shells in Cape Terrigan on the following night. The shall shell bite rate has not yet been nerfed in this area, so I decided to give it a shot.

I was greeted by a nicely laid out group of /anon tarutarus led by a female hume.

The taru's rested and got up simultaneously, in 2 sets, and had amazing timing with their nukes, casting them synchronously on every crab. Yeah... /wave RMT party. I thought a GM might be interested in watching the show, so I invited one out.

I'm fairly sure he only decloaked to me and not the RMT, since they continued to do their magic right in front of him. I found this rather humourous on his part.

Anyhow, the fishing went well and I skilled up to 32 and netted about 3 stacks of shells. I probably won't do this again for awhile since I would be better served by other methods of fishing for profit, but I now have a more accurate estimate of profit per hour on shells. And it could be worth diversifying if other markets die or temporarily stagnate.

Feon invited me to more NM hijinks last night, which was a rather pleasant way to spend the evening in Ifrit's Cauldron (of all places). The target was Tyrannic Tunnok, a scorpion NM that occasionally drops a Venemous Claw.

Since we were killing virtually everything on the way to the spawn area, I was able to simultaneously skillup my Sword to 190 (via Joyeuse) and break the latent on my Pick of Trials, clearing the way for an eventual NM fight and the Decimation weaponskill. I and Ninjax also picked up coffer keys in the process... not that I'll be hunting for my map there anytime soon. I also capped out another Merit, which I really need to begin collecting again in light of the recent Combat category adjustments.

The NM eventually popped, and we approached it with a plan. NinjaX and I would skillchain Light and Feon would call the 2-hours around 50%. We were both primed with TP, but NinjaX whiffed on the first WS... not that it would have mattered if he had connected since I followed with Mistral Axe much too quickly. In the split second between noticing the SNAFU and that 100% of my shadows had been stripped while I WS'd, the scorpion turned to me and performed Death Scissors, adding to my collection of shapshots of myself lying dead on the ground next to a NM.

The rest of the party performed fine without me, although Feon eventually died as well, leaving Ninjax as the sole melee to take the rest of the scorpion's HP away. He succeeded but the NM was stingy with the drops, unfortunately.

We ended the night with a Teleport-Holla and what is becoming a regular ritual after our DarkEden adventures: a fight with the Goblin Alchemist, closed with Feon's Mijun Gakure when possible.