Yara Ma Yha Who

I killed this Tahrongi NM before I had the chance to take a snapshot. I lucked out and he popped on my second Distilled Water trade, so total camp time on this one was only 50 minutes, fortunately.

With my Fasting Ring acquired, I ran over to West Saruta to try the lottery spawn on the Pilgrim's Wand NM. No luck on this one, though I suspect I was camping the wrong positions. FFXIclopedia gives one location whereas the ffxi-atlas map, gives another. I'll have to try the other spot on Wednesday.

The mage honeymoon is over

With both BLM and WHM at 10, I now need to take the plunge and go partying. Solo'ing these levels was quite fun, although I'm surprised at how much easier it was to level WHM. BLM just seems extremely anemic outside of a party at these levels, especially for an Elvaan with a limited MP pool. I probably died around 4 or 5 times on BLM, while WHM only garnered 1 death.

I spent last night shopping for all the new equipment I'll need. Due to my race, I'm going to need compensatory equipment which will not come cheaply or easily. This includes the Astral Ring, which goes for 700k or so on Ifrit, and the Fasting Ring, which is 'free' in terms of gil but not in terms of time. This RA/EX ring drops from a force-popped sapling NM in Tahrongi Canyon, but the pop doesn't always occur and can only be fed once every 50 minutes or so (some recommend after 22:00 Vanadiel time). Needless to say there are horror stories of people going 6-9 rounds with no pop. I'll give up after 4, since I need my sleep and sanity.

Next on my list will be the Pilgrim's Wand, which gives a nice +2 hMP effect. I can macro this in along with a cookie before resting (assuming Ginger Cookies hMP effect stacks with this wand's hMP?), then macro the standard +MND wand when I get up. This wand drops from a lottery spawn bird NM in West Sarutabaruta, so I'll probably camp it on Wednesday night.

Tonight will be spent pouring Distilled Water on the ground in the Canyon (zzzzz), and tomorrow will be Xbox Live maintenance, so no FFXI for me then.

Noobin on up

On a whim, I'd decided to get to work on my White Mage sub after acquiring the Maneater. Solo EXP in Ronfaure just seemed like it would be a nice vacation after the two weeks of crafting. And my hunch was correct.



I went the melee route as recommended by "those who came before me", on various boards or wiki pages. Loading up on Selbina Milk helped to reduce the down time while leveling White Mage to 8, but I was still burning through my MP with Dia pulls and Healing Magic skillups. So I still had some down time here & there.

Last night, I prepared to level up BLM, since it was now a gimped sub for my WHM, and decided I needed a nice cheap MP refresh to complement my HP regen. I went the lazy route and simply asked the LS, since many folks have leveled mage jobs, and Jingy recommended Pineapple Juice. This was something I could craft cheaply, so I purchased 8 stacks of Kazham Pineapples from the regional vendor in Port Bastok and put most of them on Frohike, along with a partial stack of water crystals.

Then Jingy recommended a Jack 'o Lantern, which I remember being a nice lowbie accuracy and evasion food. I looked up the recipe and did a double-take... As long as one of the towns owns Lower Elshimo, this synth is super-cheap, and people sell Jacks for 6-7k (probably because most buy the beeswax rather than HQ'ing it). So that's another recipe to tuck in the back of my mind as a good Bazaar synth. I have a few stacks of Ogre Pumpkins for now.

Before I headed out, Jingy kindly gave me some Pamama Au Lait which were quite a bit more effective than the Selbina Milk, albeit unstackable: 2 HP regen for 10 minutes. Nice!

When I finally made it into the forest I ate the Jack o' Lantern, the juice, and the au lait... and marveled at the contrast from my early days here. I simply had no down time. At all. The pugils in particular were wonderful targets because Stone killed them quickly, and they would drop water crystals which I'd forgotten to stock up, so fortunately I never ran out of juice ingredients.

Loading up on all this food led to over-confidence, and a few close calls. But the MPK adjustment made it rather easy to come out alive, especially when a linked mob happened to be a mage and would stop to cast...only to despawn. And since I wouldn't disengage from the target, I could still pause to throw some newbie-nukes at the more persistent chasers and continue running as my HP regenerated. A bit of this and I could just turn around and finish off the mob. Fun stuff!

I logged off with BLM at 6, and plan to take it to 10 tonight. Then I'll switch back to WHM and probably attend a few Valkurm parties once I hit 10 on that job. I'm still reading up on how to not suck as a WHM, in case this whim snowballs into something else. But I have a hunch the Dunes will probably beat the 'noob allure' out of me.

Finally got the Maneater

I dropped the Black Ink market, crafted all of my Echo Drops and sold them, and took on Poison Potion again, while keeping an eye on Sleeping Potion and a few other cheap synths. I managed to sell about 200k worth of the product before more overcrowding brought the price back down to 20k/stack (from 25-27). Sleeping Potion remained a joke, and still does.

It seems to me that the 60ish Alchemy market is bottoming out again. Granted I didn't exactly put in 100% focus, but it still seems like the 2 weeks dragged themselves out longer than they needed to. It should not have taken this long to make the gil.

I barely had the 2 million but needed some quick buffer money in case someone put a Maneater up for an additional 100k. And I also didn't want be a complete pauper by the time I actually did get the Axe. So I quested the Teleport-Dem scroll and sold it for 200k. I can always buy one later if I ever feel the urge to... tele-taxi?

So I took my wad of money and did a lot of this:

You can't see it, but my cot is a little off to the side. And my megaphone is on the ground.

I spent awhile fruitlessly camping the Auction House and shouting for the Maneater in Whitegate and Lower Jeuno. Of course there were a few people who couldn't resist responding to "{Maneater} {Can I have it?} {Reward:} 2,000,000 {Gil}" with a witty pun on the weapon's name. Yeah, that didn't get old fast ;-_-.

When 10:00PM came around, I decided that it was time to have some fun while the night was still young and go back to my home town to level White Mage and Black Mage in preparation for leveling Beastmaster. As soon as I got off the airship, I sent 2 million to my Jeuno mule and decided to check the AH there again... just in case.

And whaddya know. I didn't bother trying to haggle. I bid the 2 mil, sent the Maneater to Frohike, and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

I now have 200k in my pocket, and some peace of mind in knowing that my expensive gear purchases are now mostly done before the holidays. I can weather the storm with what I've got for awhile.

I spent the rest of the evening drinking Selbina Milk and clubbing things to death. White Mage is at level 5, Black Mage at 3, and I can't wait to play around with BST.

Mercredi sucks

This yahoo has succeeded in dropping Black Ink from the livable 12k-10k range to an embarrassing 8k or less. If anyone on the Ifrit sees him, please give him a nice /slap. I mean what the hell? It's barely worth filling AH slots with these now. I can HQ these like crazy, but it's almost to the point where I'd be better off selling the Nebs. But... too late for that, since I'm now sitting on upwards of 20 stacks of this product. I oughta smack Mercredi into next Jeudi.

The Poison and Sleeping potion markets have recovered from a week-long slump so it may be time to pick those up again for a quick 200 or 300k jaunt. And I have tons of honey that I held onto for ... no reason really, so it's probably time to sell some Echo drops. Still not sure if they're really worth my time, but I hate staring at multiple stacks of ingredients, especially when I'm so close to the coveted 2 million.

In other news, I went for an easy 80k and completed the quick and painless Sandy quest: The Rumor. This basically involved going to the Oubliette and giving a vial of Beastman Blood (1.5k) to a vampire in exchange for a Drain scroll (worth about 80k). The vampire's description of his 'affliction' and 'research' for a 'cure' made me wish there were such a semi-permanent status effect in this game... they use vampirism quite well in the Elder Scrolls games and I could picture it being used effectively in FFXI as well: weakness in daytime, strength at night, some DRK'ish absorb abilities, strength vs undead, weakness to light spells, and a quest to remove the 'affliction' if needed. Meh, daydreaming I guess.

Savage Blade

After Zorrandor broke his latent, the LS tried to put a Savage Blade run together but people's schedules didn't allow for it that week, so the event had to wait until last night. It was an adventure, in parts, even though a large percentage of it was spent waiting for poor Zorr and Lycas to run around to all 4 columns to unlock the Altepa Gate.

The group gathered at Rabao:

• Atrenore - 70 DRG
• Lexxi - 62 WHM
• Lycasdemus - 69 PLD
• Minusjoker - 75 BLM
• Murrdoc - 62 DRK
• Zorrandor - 75 RDM

We headed out to J-9 in Western Altep and made our way through Quicksand Caves (the Tribunus VII-I map) to the 'waiting room' just south of the Altepa Gate.

For anyone unfamiliar with this quest, it involves zoning into four different entrances to Quicksand Caves from Western Altepa, and in 2 of the 4 cases, opening weight-triggered doors which give you access to sand pits, which drop you down to passageways that lead to the activation points for the 4 pillars. The weight-triggered doors require a duo unless the player is a Galka (no joke). And of course the path to each pillar is littered with Anticans and Spiders that will aggro anyone below 71-2ish. Once all 4 pillars are active, the Altepa Gate opens, giving access to a special area in Quicksand Caves populated by high-level Anticans, several NM's, and of course containing the ??? point for the WSNM.

Although Zorr had cleared the 2 solo-able pillars earlier (Topaz and Ruby), they had apparently been reset by the time we all made it out to Altepa, so Lycas and Zorr headed out to trigger the remaining pillars while we sat in the waiting room and killed the single Ant that would pop there occasionally.


After awhile we started goofing around while Zorr and Lycas did the heavy lifting. We pulled the occasional mob for fun. Murrdoc and Minusjoker used their Chocobo whistles and raced their birds up and down the trench.

We did eventually make it through the gate.

While waiting for Zorr and Lycas to return from their last pillar, I zoned into QC and went poking around downstairs to check for the Ant NM that typically blocks the path to the ???. I didn't get very far before I felt quite uneasy and turned the hell around. Most ants there conned DC to me, and I didn't want to put the group in the awkward position of attempting to raise me in such a place.

Once we all zoned in, I did my best to warn everyone about the NM Antican Praetor that agros through Sneak and lurks at the 4-way intersection on our way to the ???. But one of us ended up agro'ing the NM anyway and we all ran back, poisoned, battered, and laughing.

Our second attempt was successful once we waited for the NM to move a bit south, and we made it to the room we would need to clear before triggering the WSNM. To my recollection there were around 6 DC ants here, but they didn't present too much of a problem to our group.

Once the room was clear, Zorr triggered the ??? and the Scorpion NM Girtablulu appeared. Lycas took on the tanking role, and within seconds the scorpion used its dreaded move: Death Scissors. This hit poor Lycas for upwards of 1200 damage, resulting in death. I immediately 2-houred, dropped Berserk, lost my shadows pretty quickly, and took a few hits before I could get my shadows back up. Each strike took a good 200+ chunk out of me.

I tried skillchaining Mistral Axe after Zorr's Decimation but failed miserably as my Utsusemi spell interfered... so we kept slashing, piercing, and nuking away at it. I'll admit I lost my head a bit when Lycas died and by the time I got my wits about me the process was more than half-way over.

We eventually defeated the NM and Zorr got his key item for Savage Blade.

My sincere thanks to the group for a very fun evening, {Congratulations!} to Zorrandor for unlocking a very powerful weaponskill, and {/comfort} to Lycasdemus for the being the unfortunate victim of such a nasty mob skill.

Must...sell...more...Potion...

Sorry for the lack of updates. I could have done a few posts, but all of them would have simply consisted of several shapshots of myself crafting and camping shops. That's about all I've been doing...

I'm making steady progress to the 2 million gil I'll need for the Maneater. I'm currently at 1.33 mil and have a few more stacks of Poison Potion, which if sold at the 30k average will bring me to close to 1.5 mil. I'll let the Poison Potion market cool down a bit and move on to Black Ink this evening, fishing up Nebs on the ferry.

The 2 million should be reached around the end of the work-week, freeing me up for...anything other than crafting for a bit.

I came. I saw. I rampaged.

Sales on my Alchemy items are progressing steadily, and no one seems to be flooding or massively undercutting the products I'm selling, although Carbon Fiber sales are a bit slower than expected. Poison Potion has resumed its 30k price-point, and I'm tempted to camp in Bibiki again since most of my stacks have sold. Fingers crossed here. All it really takes is one determined moron to ruin the market for a week.

By the time I put up my last scraps of Sleeping Potion on the AH last night, I was out of materials and didn't feel like schlepping more Bomb Ash from my Bastok mule to make Firesand stacks...so I put up my flag and grabbed some food.

An invitation came within minutes for the usual Caedarva Mire party. Atrenore and Lycasdemus were in an EXP party out there on their Dragoon and Paladin respectively, so I got to see both of them as I made my way out to... wherever the camp was going to be. There was a bit of milling around until we all arrived and settled.

We checked Imp Alley but two roaming parties were already killing everything there. The lake camps were also taken. So we perched on the hill at the NE corner of K-8 and killed imps, flies, and Jnun for a few hours. The leader was a Bard, so I was able to beat my 1008 rampage with a 1022 on another Jnun. Most other WS damage fluctuated between 400-700, with the occasional 800-900 fluke, usually on the Jnun.

It was a DC-happy night. Between my party and Nore/Lycas, we had about 4 disconnects. One of them was our Ninja, which didn't seem to phase the party: they kept pulling and let me de facto tank, so I had to kill Berserk for awhile and use Defender quite a bit. Fortunately the NIN returned. About 30 minutes later the THF disconnected permanently so we got a WAR replacement and kept going with a pretty good EXP setup: NIN, WAR, WAR, BLU/THF, WHM, BRD.

I kept screwing up the mob alignment to the consternation of the the BLU/THF, and I apologized profusely, explaining that facing the tank was practically programmed into me from years of SATA setups.

We suffered only one death when an Imp slept everyone immediately after the other WAR had rampaged. You can guess who died there. Oddly, the BRD kept ordering the WHM to R3 the fallen warrior, as if s/he didn't know how to play the job. Very...strange. To make matters weirder, this resulted in the WHM blacklisting the BRD for the remainder of the party, and yes they actually stayed. Odd folk.

During the largely uneventful EXPing, I was able to chat sporadically with the shell, and we eventually all waxed nostaligic about old videogame titles (Jingy was watching a documentary on the subject), almost all of us revealing our advanced age in the process. Platforms ran the gamut from Intellivision to Commodore 64, or in my case Odyssey (aka Videopac in France) and Amstrad. And yes, some of us are old enough to have played the first Zelda during our high school years (/em raises his hand), although I failed to reveal this to the group.

At an earlier point, Lycas dinged 69 on his Paladin while my HP was in the deep red, so all he got from me was a 'Woot!'. So a belated, proper, {Congratulations!} to Lycas is in order.

I myself am about 6k away from equipping my Woodville's Axe. But that'll have to wait.

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:



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.

I feel pretty...oh so pretty

At level 71, I'm amazed at how good I look. Yes, when you reach my level as a Warrior, you too can look as awesome as...this:



I put some little comment tags on that first photo, in case you want to know the proper nomenclature for the components of this amazing gear set.

In fact, I looked so tremendous as Besieged began that I actually caused mobs to /say "o_O;" followed by a weird line in the status log before promptly killing me off:

[mob_name] is intimidated by Frohike's fashion sense.

I've never seen that before. Very cool.

After Besieged was over, I didn't have enough time to spam-shout for a ZM4 group, and I'd spent the last couple of nights fruitlessly doing this, so I put up my flag (sorry Tuuf, I promise I'll get on the ZMs) and got a party with an entirely Japanese group. They took about a half hour to find a tank, and for whatever reason they decided on a Bibiki Bay camp after cycling through several other bizarre options including The Boyahda Tree and Dragon's Aery.

Our roster was: WHM, BLM, BRD, NIN, RNG, WAR.

It went rather well and everyone was on their game. I saved the Ninja from death a few times when a Hobgoblin would land those nasty crits on the triple-attack. But it happened one time too many and my attention slipped, resulting in tank death. This left me no recourse but to don my full AF and cause the mob to suicide bomb almost immediately. Otherwise the party went smoothly, and my goofy looking gear actually performed quite well...unfortunately. I'm about 20k TNL.



I woke up this morning with 'In the Navy' stuck in my head because my new LS is insane. I have a feeling I'm going to fit right in.

/sanctimonious drama off

My apologies to anyone who sat through that rant from a couple of days ago. I'm not going to be disingenuous and edit that post. When you cut out all the sanctimonious huff and puff what it comes down to is missing old friends who've mostly parted with the shell because of social forces in the game that I wish weren't there. I really will miss them and several other folks on CC.

That's all for now. Just had to get that out.

The start of something new

I had the good fortune of logging in as the Mamool Ja were retreating from Al Zahbi last night, leaving me with a rather large audience in Whitegate to hear my shout-spam for the Greenman WSNM battle. A Japanese party picked me up within 15 minutes of shouting and we were off to The Sanctuary of Zitah to chop down a tree. The fight lasted 3-4 minutes but was pretty uneventful, aside from seeing the fireworks of Spiral Hell and Savage Blade... and how quickly a DRK can rip hate away from a PLD.


We checked the ??? after the battle to recover the key item "Annals of Truth" and Tele-Dem'd out to Konschtat Highlands for the long walk to Bastok Metalworks. Here Iron Eater gave us a thankfully brief "voiceover" to a rather cheesy sensei-student flashback and awarded us with our final Great Axe weaponskill: Steel Cyclone. It looks pretty in action, but is rather difficult to snapshot, so pardon the crappy picture.

I'd recently offered my help and companionship to an active and small social linkshell by the name of Lifthrasir that I'd found on the Ifrit community forums, and I had received a very friendly response from its members, including the leader. So I had the privilege of meeting several of them last night and helped them out with the San D'Oria Rank 7 fight, which was quite a bit of fun...running around Ranperre and goofing off while we waited for everyone to arrive. They're a very charismatic tight-knit group of people, for the most part grown adults, several with children my age. It really felt...nice being part of such a group. I felt at home in a very brief amount of time. I can only hope they'll let me hang out again sometime.

On linkshells

This is a rant post. The 'report card' post will follow either later this afternoon or this evening.

I've grown disenfranchised and a bit frustrated with the CatastrophyCrafters linkshell, which has become progressively more quiet with the conspicuous absence of several longstanding regular members, either due to a virtual absence (shell on + absolute non-response) or real one (shell off).

It feels much as it did last year, as if the shell were created on a whim by the original leader to just get some people together, then virtually abandoned in favor of other activities with other shells. In essence, it has become a large chat room and nothing more, although it had in fact started out as something more. Yes, I like chatting, but I also enjoy activities with these people, and the leadership seems to have given up in this area...once again.

When I found out last night that several of my friends had basically emigrated to yet another "endgame linkshell", known as PhoenixDown, I became resigned to the death of what I had once known to be CatastrophyCrafters: an active social shell with a nice mix of new and veteran players having fun doing activities together and helping newer members progress.

On general principle, I will not apply to nor join PhoenixDown. I've grown exasperated with the fractured concept of activities in this game and such linkshells are a part of this broken model, in my opinion.

I shouldn't have to switch to another shell to enjoy endgame related activities, nor switch to another to socialize with the people I've befriended. The concept of 'applying' to a linkshell is also broken and detrimental, and mostly a pretense at objective selectivity in most cases.

I want to be in a group of people who don't feel the need to pigeonhole their activities. People who actually focus on coordinating said activities, have fun together, and support each other rather than farming members out to activity-specific shells to 'get the job done.' After 2 years with the linkshell, I think all of us deserve more respectful engagement and participation from members in the existing group. And after 2 years, my own patience is coming to an end.

I would understand this happening in a shell with an unbalanced roster or social schisms. But this wasn't the case with CC. There were so many mid to high-level players in this group who, for the most part, got along and could have accomplished something together. But no one picked up the ball, and almost every one has lapsed into the BS mentality of "graduating into" an endgame LS, with the occasional return to CC to throw the newbies a bone or just... chat until the next pickup party. Sad...

I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to salvage my connection to the group.

All I know is I can't keep the shell on permanently anymore.

Greenman, here I come

Thanks to a skillup/latent party this evening, I've successfully broken the latent effect on the Axe of Trials and traded it for the key item (Map to the Annals of Truth), which I'll use to force-pop the NM Treant by the name of Greenman to acquire my final Great Axe weaponskill: Steel Cyclone. This WS is STR modified and TP-multiplied, and therefore typically used at 200% TP...or less if using the Martial Bhuj for the TP bonus.

I took a couple more parties after the last one I reported to gain the full 300 WS points. I was forced to take a Kuftal party for the last leg of the process, since I wasn't getting any bites for a party in the tree and someone else was spamming for a latent-busting party in the aforementioned zone. So I acquired no Great Axe skillups beyond the 250 I reached last night, which is actually pretty good considering the cap was 251 right before I dinged 71.

I'm going on our first family camping trip with the kids tomorrow, so I probably won't have any updates until Monday.

Happy gaming, everyone, and have a good weekend!

Why I probably won't be endgaming in FFXI

I think this thread pretty much sums up the morass that comprises Ifrit's endgame "community". What a disaster.

Even if I had the time, I'd probably have to say {Thanks for the offer but I'll have to pass}.

Two birds, one stone...or...Great Axe

And we weren't killing...birds. Oh I give up. Frohike misses the Post Title.

In order to simultaneously skillup Great Axe and break the latent on the Axe of Trials, I've spent the past couple of nights killing lots and lots of crabs in The Boyahda Tree, closing level 2 chains with various people. I haven't had the fortune of closing level 3 chains yet, but I basically took all the help I could get.

Les and Lee (Gimppy and Rocco respectively) helped me last night on the first leg of the latent break before passing out. At midnight, I still managed to recruit another skillup group, but 2 of the 6 didn't understand the skill vs. mob level concept and had to disband.

I had a much faster response shout-seeking in Whitegate rather than Jeuno tonight, and ended up landing a BRD and WHM, and 3 WAR and a SAM, within about 15-20 minutes of shouting. I added "190+ skill recommended" caveats to the shouts, but one of the WAR still "discovered" the principle once we started killing crabs and he announced his GA was level 120 and wasn't connecting very much. He still stuck around long enough to unlock Calamity on his regular Axe.

The process has been very relaxed, and actually enjoyable until the sleepiness sets in.

I'm now roughly 177/300 on the latent (I think I forgot to log a few WS here & there).

What next?

The past couple of nights have been inviteless, and I've been unable to scrounge up enough people who are willing to party. So I've mostly been fishing, and thinking about next steps. The O-hat and a couple of 2 million gil axes, among other things, loom out there. I have no sky access, haven't cracked the promies, and need to progress further in my crafting.

To be honest, crafting and fishing are becoming more alluring by the day, but I'm hesitant to fully go in this direction, since I believe part of that impetus is self-doubt. Can I really push the rest of the way to 75? Am I ready?

But another part of it is an attempt to be realistic. I'll probably never participate in more than a few random sky runs, and CoP, while nice, sounds like a monumental pain for ... what? Some storyline and sea access for Limbus? Am I Limbus material when I play such weird time windows? Maybe I should look into Dynamis, but that effort just seems so time-consuming and draining with the Dynamis LS mentality.

In mulling these thoughts, discarding some, shuffling others, I'm wondering if it's time to prepare for another job. And this, of course, brings me back to the gil to support a new career. I need more ways of making it, and I'm tempted to go for 100 on Alchemy and pumping gil into Goldsmithing, slowly, over the course of fishing and leveling other jobs.

Anyway, as far as actual actions in the game, I helped Jeston, a career WHM, get the parasite skin drop for his Warrior AF2 last night. It was a fun run through Castle Oztroja, and we only needed to dodge aggro on the third level so it was rather easy. It was funny to think of my crazy solo LB3 run through this place, in mortal fear for most of the final stretch. {Adventure}!

I got a nice comment from a reader named Feon last night as I was fishing in Jugner, and this made my evening a bit brighter. So, thanks!

In fishing news, I've broken into level 27 and have now officially traded over 1000 carps. 1047 to be precise. Only 8953 more to go! {Adventure}!

I was in a brief party tonight which brought me about 1.5k into level 71. So I guess some immediate goals to accomplish will be re-capping Great Axe, which I've let slide for a level again (and I call myself a Warrior... pshh) and breaking the latent on the Axe of Trials for my Steel Cyclone WSNM.

Blowing on Dice

That's what all of my gear swaps feel like after quite a bit of experimentation tonight. The massive numbers from the night before were clearly the result of frequent crits and enhanced accuracy from the COR BRD combination. The best I could do tonight was land 500-600 Rampages more consistently during the last couple of hours of my 5 hour session when I gave up on meddling with accuracy and only swapped in STR on the head, hands, and sometimes the legs (if it seemed like I was connecting adequately with no Life Belt). Anything else would either cause misses during the weapon skill or low enough Atk to essentially negate any STR modifier that might be happening.

I'm already starting to covet that Optical Hat... and I appreciate all of you BRDs and CORs more than ever.

I spent tonight in a largely Japanese party that launched around 9PM and disbanded around 2AM. The setup was initially SMN (the same leader who put together the Bibiki Bay party a few nights ago), RDM, WHM, NIN, WAR, WAR. We camped a bit further north in Caedarva Mire tonight, on the southern end of the alley at J-7. Well, I wouldn't call it a 'camp' exactly since we seemed to roam quite a bit, but we hovered around that area, killing flies and imps and the rare Jnun when we would drift far enough south.

I was fortunate that the fellow Warrior, Steelreserve, was a US player and an acquaintance, so I didn't have to party in complete silence. He was chomping at the bit to get to 70 since he had a Rune Axe and Juggernaut waiting for him.

Since the zone was crowded (as usual), the SMN puller Bubukitty was ambitiously setting up mobs in the queue by sleeping them and/or sicking Titan on them while we killed the current mob. Sometimes she would do this within seconds of pulling the first mob, which surprised me. The Ninja also roamed and pulled imps as he found them. I dinged 70 sometime within the first half hour of the party.

There were deaths, including my own, due to linked imps. Handling these was a bit of a crapshoot since Amnesia can completely destroy hate control in these situations. Sometimes we would come out unscathed, sometimes the NIN would die, sometimes I would die, and the party wiped once.

When we wiped we were around the 2.5 hour mark and the WAR had to get to bed, so we took a breather in Whitegate to refresh supplies and Sanction while the leader found a replacement.

He was a Ninja, US player by the name of Tekmo, who had just picked the game back up about a week ago after a long hiatus. He didn't have the Azouph staging point flagged, so it was a long ship ride for him to Nashmau. The party decided to continue killing mobs with just the 5 of us, and we were still hitting chain 5 somehow (I suspect the SMN was pretty active). I gave Tekmo directions to camp and he joined us shortly after getting off the boat.

The Ninja died once during an Amnesia attack (so excrutiating to watch helplessly), but otherwise the killing continued unabated until the crew got sleepy and disbanded, showing Tekmo to his staging point along the way.

5000 Experience Points until level 71.

When old Warriors get together and have pints

This is what we talk about. I put in my 2 cents on the thread and don't think they need to be re-articulated here, since you all already know I'm a bitter and obstinate old man.

Attack of the Pointy Hats

Hey, I look at a blog title, I get bored, strange things happen...It is, however, germane to the entry so keep reading before doing that little o.O emote in your head m'kay?

After buying some more gear and juggling around with Acc/Atk/STR stats, I put up my flag and went to work on an Excel spreadsheet to dynamically calculate my statistics tradeoffs for WS macros. Yes, I'm that geeky -_-. No, I'm not looking for the 'holy grail' of perfect balance between these three statistics because that would ultimately be futile. There is no gear set compatible with all EXP situations since there are too many intertwining variables that force you to change things on the fly:

• Atk or Accuracy buffs from your job abilities
• Atk or Accuracy buffs from another party member's job abilities (BRD/COR)
• Mob Defense and Evasion
• Mob Job Ability Effects

So what I'm looking for is a quick calculator before I change my gear macros or start manually fiddling with equipment mid-fight. Something that emulates the GUI behavior in game but with the bonus of Attack and Accuracy differentials and the ability to group gear sets.

Hey at least I'm not setting up a database and a quick PHP application to do the job. I'm totally not thinking of doing that. Ahem.

I purchased some Thick Mufflers and Thick Breeches for my Acc/Atk build, and held off on the Sipahi Turban for my STR build until the price dips back below 300k or thereabouts. I might grab it tonight anyway, since the head is really a great gear slot for swapping at the moment: I can add and remove Atk vs. STR without compromising Accuracy, freeing up other slots to give the alternate bonuses.

Anyway enough gear talk. I barely had time to build the pick list and stats on my spreadhseet when I got an invitation to party in Caedarva Mire. I got to the staging point before anyone else did, and the party took a good 30 minutes to form, which gave me additional time to obsess over gear swapping.

The party eventually formed as COR (leader), BRD, WHM, WAR, WAR, NIN. I was the only sub-70 player there and the highest was 72, I believe. I could tell this was shaping up to be a strong TP-burn party and couldn't wait to experiment with my gear. Did I say I was going to stop talking about gear? My bad.

The WAR and NIN both had Optical Hats, which I think are the most unfortunate aesthetic mistakes in the game considering what wonderful pieces of equipment these are. I do plan to own one in the distant future, but for now I was the odd one out... It must admit that it did feel kinda cool to be killing things with Pointy Hat people, although I'll probably get pretty tired of seeing that Scorp Harness + Optical Hat combo after awhile.

The zone was quite crowded but we still found a nice scenic overlook at J-8 which was a short jaunt from several fly and Jnun spawns and nearly on top of an imp spawn. The WHM was self-admittedly not in top form (long workday burnout) but did well enough for us to hit chain 6 a few times.

I and the WHM died due to an epic link of Fly + Fly + Fly + Imp. The WHM ran out of echo drops and was silenced by the Imp, which I futilely tried to tank while the others killed the remaining fly that AOE'd poison all over everybody. We eventually took down all the mobs, but not before the WHM was poisoned to death. Watching my HP quickly go from 70 to 50 to 30, I did a /wave and "/em chokes" before lying down to gaze at the stars for awhile. The BRD quickly returned on her WHM to give us Raise III.

The WHM eventually hit his level 70 EXP cap and hadn't mashed Maat yet, so he brought in a replacement. And this is when things really started to click.

The new WHM didn't miss a beat. There was rarely a moment where I noticed any Silence/Poison/Blind effects lingering on me and I seemed to be Hasted quite frequently. The BRD puller never seemed to run out of mobs. Both the COR and BRD were doing amazing things to my stats, and we were plowing through mobs quite quickly. When the other WAR got a MNK replacement (also wearing a pointy hat), the damage really started... and we hit chain 10 at some point.

My favorite mobs were the Jnun, which had terrible evasion and allowed me to go all out on STR swaps, and therefore just crumpled to Rampage: I eventually hit for 1008 damage with Aggressor+Berserk only, no 2-hr, no Warcry (although the buffs from the COR+BRD probably influenced this quite a bit). The rest of my WS were consistently high unless I missed a gear swap or was overambitious in swapping out accuracy. I started considering 400-500 to be the low end of the WS damage and would occasionally go into the 800-900 range.

I'd never seen numbers this high on my Rampages on EXP mobs before so this was very exciting for me. BRD+ COR + squishy mobs = fun.

But what was even more exciting was the fact that the Ninja was absolutely holding hate. Again, major kudos to the Ninjas who know what they are doing in these types of parties.

I participated in the party for about 3 hours and gained around 20-21k EXP before calling in a MNK replacement. I was 3k away from the big 70, but it was 2 in the morning and I needed to decide between 'tired at work' and 'zombie at work'.

I chose the former.

Maybe Bibiki Bay isn't so bad...

The EXP is definitely slower, but now that most people are choosing the new zones, the competition is thinning out a bit in the southern camps.

I started the night in Al Zahbi, joining 300 or so people in failing our server miserably and losing the Astral Candescence. I put up my flag immediately upon completing the event and got an invite fairly quickly from a largely JP party: SMN, RDM, COR, WAR, WAR, NIN

The initial plan was to go to the Azouph staging point, but since the AC had been taken, this was no longer a good option. So we all opted for Bibiki Bay and went for the southern G-10 camp, targeting the Hobgoblins once again, and avoiding the Blaggers when possible. We then decided to move to a Dhalmel camp ag G-9, performing quite well even when we managed to get 2 adds for one long camelfest. Then another party showed up so we moved yet again into a little nook between G-9 and 10 and targeted both the Dhalmels and Hobgoblin Alastor's when possible.

A rather fun night considering the zone, mostly because I think I decided to be engaged and really try to get the most performance out of my setup: staggering Aggressor and Berserk cycles rather than simply synchonizing them in a macro, gear swapping based on individual mob evasion, more gear swapping during WS based on the particular mob, and timing Rampages appropriately on the camels to get the chains closed before Healing Breeze kicked in.

Another good, productive night.

My only regret was in letting Great Axe slip again during all the fun.

I'm about 11k into level 69 now.

A series of fortunate events

I did some more Jugner fishing while LFG a couple of nights ago and eventually dinged 24, and soon thereafter landed a Mount Zhayolm party around 11PM. It wasn't exactly an epic party, but it lasted long enough to bring me within 1300 of level 69. Since it was a TP-burn and we couldn't get past chain 5 or 6 on the crawlers anyway, I got my Great Axe back up to cap at level 241. Between the RNG and I doing 600-700+ damage on our WS spam, I was amazed at just how well the PLD maintained hate throughout the party. I logged out around 1AM, tired but satisfied... and mighty tempted to go up against Maat and get it over with.

I was fortunate to be able to log in at 5PM yesterday and attend Sannobia and Lilrusso's wedding in Chateau D'Oraguille. The event was cute and touching, although the GMs really should have told the couple that there would be a 15 attendee limit beforehand, as well as warned them about a few of the FFXI wedding rules:

No weapons or hats allowed.
No running. Auto-walk only.
All attendees must be wearing the same pearl.
No emotes (out loud).
No one can enter area before the appointed time.

I think that about covers it. As you can imagine, getting everyone to follow these guidelines, especially when there were close to 40 of us, was a bit like herding cats. Only one person found it appropriate to mess with the rules, refusing to take off his pimp hat (or alternately putting on his halloween hat), shouting, and running... and I believe he was booted from the area. Faulsey, you can probably guess who that person was -_-;

Anyway, I took a few pictures and hope they turn out. I'll post them here and on Flickr as soon as I can. We all had fun with fireworks at the end of it.









Last night was a 'dry' invite night, but I continued to fish for awhile. I was unsuccessful in coaxing a WHM and BRD who were both seeking a party into forming one with me and some assorted melee (we were the only English speakers on... what were they all waiting for, the second coming?).

When that didn't work out and 11:30PM rolled around, I was resolved to make something of this night and felt that it was time. Time to gather my items, set up my macros, read the strategy one more time, and trade my testimony to Maat. Dun dun duuuuuuun!

Here was my gear:

• Colossal Axe
• Bomb Core
• Walkure Mask
• RK Collar
• Spike Earring x 2
• Hauby
• AF Hands
• Venerer Ring
• Woodsman Ring
• Amemet +1
• Life Belt
• RK Breeches
• AF Feet

And my Maat fight prep items:

• Icarus Wing
• Opo-opo necklace
• Stack of Sleeping Potion
• Blink Band
• Meat mithkabob

I equipped the Opo-opo necklace and consumed 11 sleeping potions, bringing my TP to around 240 (I had panicked and eaten one before I even entered the BC, lol). I took the opportunity during the down time to put on some mellow ambient music and finish my pint. Once that was done, I put on my Blink Band and used it, then switched everything to my battle set and popped a meat kabob.

When I got within range to engage, I drew my weapon and cast the Death Warrior sequence: Aggressor, Berserk, Mighty Strikes, Warcry. I did as the guide said and ran at him "screaming like the crazy viking you are at heart" and the following transpired (due to the 2-hour, all hits were crits):

Frohike hits Maat for 233 damage.

Maat misses.

Frohike hits Maat for 236 damage.

Maat eats one of Frohike's shadows.

Frohike readies Raging Rush: 1133 damage

Frohike uses an Icarus Wing

Frohike readies Raging Rush.

Maat eats one of Frohike's shadows.

Maat: "Hmm that was a mighty fine display of sk..."

Frohike hits Maat for 911 damage
Fragmentation: 68

Frohike hits Maat for 191 damage

BCNM over.

Clear time - 8 minutes, 21 seconds

Frohike walks away without a scratch, and promptly has a heart-attack when he realizes he'll never have to worry about another Limit Break ever again.

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.