Level Like It Means Something

I finished leveling Warrior! After approximately 15 deaths, I was able to reach level 18 and put Warrior behind me. Thank god.
And I went and leveled Ninja too! It's up to 27 already and I didn't even use a stack of Shihei doing it. So that's cool. Now the question is do I level thief to 55 and do Genkai 2 (and some AF stuff), or do I just get Ninja to 37 so I can concentrate on one thing at a time?
Decisions, decisions.
I'm just pretty happy with my progress lately.

Something A Little Lengthier

... But still not very long. I've been able to coax my 360 into slightly better health, but the fact remains that soon it will be returning to Texas for a spruce-up.
Before that happens, however, I've been getting stuff done. Thief is now at 50! And I've gotten the Old Gauntlets already for the Borghertz AF Gloves quest. AF2 has also been started. But the true horror at hand is that I've given up on the idea of subbing THF to get NIN to 37 and I'm only 2 levels away from Warrior 18. This will allow me to sub it for Ninja up to 37, and then go back to getting Thief all the way to 75. But I hate Warrior, at least in the dunes. I swear I died 10 times today. I think I'm going to solo the last level... Sigh.

Another Mini Update

Big thank you to Vid, Zo and Elmi for going with me to get my Genkai 1 items!

And I got up to TAU 12. Seems like a lot, but basically it's all easily soloable. Now I'm stuck at getting a drop off an ameretat. Which there's no way I could solo. Oh well.

And I got 28 Corsair. Archer's Knife! Can't seem to get an invite on thief though.

News Brief!

Hey there...

3 levels of Corsair! 

Archers Knife!

1 level of Thief!

Finished TAU 6!

Gobbiebag 5 & 6!

More to come...

Farming Giddeus

I decided that I really needed an inflow of gil. I have lots of things I need for Corsair; Bullet Pouches (and lots of them!), a Bard Die, a Gunbelt... some pricy things. So I decided to do something stupid. I went to camp Hoo Mjuu the Torrent.

He almost never shows up. He has a variable time lottery spawn. He's always camped. He has a 5% drop for his big treasure. Hoo Mjuu! I had camped Hoo once before, spending about 12 hours trying for him and not getting claim once. So after I calmed down and stopped leveling Bard, I went on my way and never tried again. Until yesterday.

I get out to Giddeus, this time as THF/BST for the charm claim technique, which had stymied me on my last visit. I made a few macros up and got to killing. Luckily, there was only one other camper and he seemed to be afk. On my second pass through the area killing all the yagudo, he popped! And I claimed him! Poor Hoo doesn't really have a chance in hell against anyone over level 25, so he cast his benediction and promptly died. And there, on his still warm corpse, I found... Zealot Mitts. Better than a scroll of deodorize, at least.

After taking a break, I went back to camping, my enthusiasm renewed by my first successful claim. I fought my way through a host of yagudo, and even some other campers. I claimed twice more, both deodorize scrolls this time. I went back to town and sold my stuff then went to bed.

This morning I returned to Hoo's spawn area, where two campers stole almost every mob I tried to claim out from under me. I held back my charm claim, hoping to surprise them. Then, suddenly, Hoo popped right in front of me. I hit charm, and was out of range. On my second try, however, I got him. I was amazed i had two trys on the claim before the other two campers could notice he was up. So Hoo died again. (I wonder how long his average life expectancy is? Less than a minute?) And there, gleaming like a shiny thing surrounded by unshiny things, was my drop. Monster Signa. 

Good times. And I got almost 100k worth of extra stuff to sell off the yagudos and wasps I killed waiting for Hoo to pop. 

Now it just has to sell.

Anniversary In Buburimu

Last night, I went to Buburimu Peninsula with the Anniversary Ring... and leveled Corsair to 24. Very fast. Unbelievably so. I died once, but still ended up 1k into 24. Amazing. 

I'll post more later.

I need to farm some Tiger Fangs for some money.

The Dunes... Solo

This morning I was at a loss for what to do, still no sales at the AH, and no space to put anything else up, so farming is pretty much out. I considered burning some beastman seals on Treasure and Tribulations, but I've never gotten anything good off of that. Going as a Ninja keeps me from losing xp but... it just never seems worth it.

Then I thought of what Zeik had said in passing, that I might want to go try to solo in the Dunes. So I decided to give it a shot. It went very well, I was surprised. I was able to get OK xp off of the rabbits and gobs near the zone to La Theine Plateau. I tried to conserve ammunition by saving my bullets for Hot Shot and emergencies, and it worked well. I went after a sheep and took it down pretty easily, although I needed to rest after just the one kill that time. 

So later this afternoon the plan is to use an empress charge and solo my way up to 23. I think it shouldn't be a problem at all. If it goes really well I might even use an anniversary charge too. That would get me to 24 easily. Then I could get the Empress Hairpin and Nomad's Mantle out of the mog safe and get working on 25 and Kazham.

So many plans...

Auction House Blues

Well none of my stuff sold yet. /cry

Whatever. If it doesn't sell I'll just vendor it all for some cash at least.

Quick update:

1) Got Puppetmaster Die.

2) Died trying to solo Immortal Sentinels.

3) Leveled Corsair up to 22. Bullets are fun!

More later. Bed now.

Farm Day

Not much big today. I took Corsair back out for a little bit of soloing, just enough to get my buffer so I ddon't have to worry about deleveling. Just barely. Then I decided to get on Thief and do some farming. After some aimless wandering, I found what will hopefully be a dependable goldmine, netting me enough Auction House materials to get a stack of Bullet Pouches and my next two Corsair Dice. I need about 91k for all that, and I now have 11k on me and 40k in the AH, with another 8k ready to post once that stuff sells. So potentially I'm at 59k. Tomorrow I'll go out and do more of the same for another hopeful 48k worth of stuff, buy my dice and make do with my two stacks of bullets. It might get me through to 23, I'm hoping. We'll see, I've never really tried just ranging the whole fight, at least not in a long long time, since I got Ranger up to 20 years ago. I did also get my other Beetle Ring +1. Cool. And very cheap. I'm almost ready to get back on the grind. 

Soloing Giraffes for Fun and... Femurs.

I just soloed COR up to 21. I'm not very far past the level... if I die it's the big delevel for me... for now. But level 21 means new armour! Yay! I was pretty broke, but I managed to grab one of the Beetle Ring +1's I wanted, as well as a really cheap Beetle Harness +1 (for 5k!) and a Beetle Subligar. I like the subligar since it's one of those ones that actually doesn't look like copper diapers. It even covers my legs completely, which is odd since the Lizard Trousers didn't. Anyhow, all I need now is one more Beetle Ring +1 and I'm set for the next few levels. Woot.

Cool Sig!

Alsaius of the FFXIclopedia forums made me this awesome new sig.

Yeah I know I don't have a hexagun or all that AF in the back... it's still pretty neat.

New Box, New Boots

/Hurray

My 360 came back yesterday, That is to say a new 360 came by UPS yesterday, with a note basically saying they couldn't fix the old one so here's a new one. Good enough. I hope it has the extra heat sink in it.

I got everything set back up and got right on FFXI to se what had been going on. Everyone was very nice and said they missed me. Aww.

In the dry spell of the last month, I had started to peruse a few forums and blogs, and I had started to think that when I got my 360 back, I really wanted to level Corsair. Why? They have one of the neatest concepts I think there is in the game. The whole gambler thing is awesome. (Cait Sith was awesome, and Wakka, while not awesome in and of himself, did have his voice acting done by John Di Maggio, who is also the voice of Bender in Futurama. So he was cool by extension.) I just like the idea that Corsairs might help out the party, or, then again, might not. Also, they look amazing. The hexagun, the AF, they just look so perfect.

So I decided as soon as I got going. I switched to Corsair. I went to the Auction House and blew all my cash on the extra equipment I'd want to have to really be geared up. Luckily, at level 19, there's not all that much leet gear to worry about. I got a Kingdom Bandana, a Feather Collar, a Warrior's Belt +1, (I seem to have lost/sold the one I used to have... mule confusion!) and some ingredients for Jack-o'-Lanterns. And then I was broke. I have the NQ Bone Earrings and Rings, and I figured that was no big deal since I could upgrade to Beetle +1's at 21. And I already have the Earrings. So money saved there (sorta).

Then I went out with my flag up. No invites. Ah, that's what happens at level 19... too high for Dunes, too low for Qufim. So I went over to Bastok to try for the one piece of gear I really wanted. Bounding Boots. 

I went out to Lizzy's spawn area, and there were about 7 people in the area. Two of them seemed to be AFK, two were leveling some jobs around lv7, two were apparently trying to pop Lizzy by killing every Rock Lizard they could find, and the last guy knew what he was doing. Once I was actually able to figure out which lizards were the placeholders, I saw that he had them both on timers. It looked bad for me. Then, after about 10 minutes of looking around, I saw her. I took aim (with a Bandit Gun!?) and... moved. Oops. I aimed again and got the claim. Yay. I wasn't too hopeful since I was just a 19 COR/RNG, no helpful TH2 and all. And so it went. No drop. Aww.

So I left, off to Konschtat Highlands to solo a bit. I got some xp and then died. Just enough to basically break even. On the downside I had used my Empress Ring. So I ran down to Qufim and flagged up. And nobody, absolutely nobody was partying. Not one single party of anyone between the levels of 19 to 24. Nothing.

Then a DRG showed up and saved the day! He got a whole group together and we went off to the lake to kill worms and crabs. After a short time, the THF leveled. To 24. Then left. Then the WHM had to go. Then the NIN blew himself up and was suddenly in Whitegate.

...And we got 3 more people, including another WHM! We were killing stuff left and right, and I got my xp bonus completed with 13 minutes left on the charge. And then I even got to COR 20 with a nice big buffer. It was very nice.

Oh, and then this morning I went back to South Gustaberg as a THF, walked straight up to Lizzy, who was waiting there unclaimed, killed her and got my boots. I got back to Jeuno before the airship did.

Heat Sinks!

Apparently the extended warranty is because they finally figured out how to make these damn things work right.

Add another heat sink! Dang. Wonder who finally figured out that one.

Worker>> Damn, this one has a melted motherboard too!

Boss>> What could it be!?!

Yeah, anyhow, I should get it back in like a week now I think.

Ring of Fire

Hey! My Xbox is broken! Wheee!

Three red lights on the ring mean I'm sending it back to Microsoft for free repairs, so that's ok.
And they've even just expanded their warranty, so I guess thats cool.

I'm starting a new blog, about all sorts of games very soon.
If anyone ever reads this thing even though I never update it, I hope you go check it out.

I'll update that one regularly, I promise.

I'm not sure why I couldn't get a title up there... hmmm. Oh I fixed it.

Bloodpool Vorax

Hey there.

In following my 'new plan' the next step requires me to raise Ninja to 25. I was at 23. So I switched around my jobs and equipment and lo, I was the ever popular and often mistakenly invited NIN/THF!

If you ever want to get told that you're playing your job wrong, NIN/THF is the job for you! It goes like this:

Someguy>>(Party)?

>>Someguy I'm not a tank.

...

>>Someguy (Ninja)/(Thief) (Please check it.)

...

And thats how 90% of all invites go! Like I can't do damage or something. I'll rant about it some other time though. The real point here is I got into one party and leveled to 24, then couldn't get a party for the rest of the day. I eventually gave up and went to go farm up some beastman blood and silk thread.

I went to my usual area in Pashhow, next to the Luremarsh where Ballista usually happens. After killing stuff for a while, I got fed up wwith the low drops I was getting and decided to try the Hoaxmarsh camp up in the Northwest corner of Pashhow.

The Hoaxmarsh is a great camp spot for crawlers and leeches, if you're alone there. There's just enough spawns to keep you pretty much constantly killing what you want. However, since the leech NM Bloodpool Vorax spawns here as a lottery of the leeches, you're usually not alone. I expect one other PC to be here whenever I show up, and we compete for the pops.

This time there were two. There was what I suspect was a THF/NIN, like myself. He was definately higher level than me, but he was /anon, so I couldn't tell exactly. The other guy was a Galka Paladin, I think. We'll call him Joe.

So I get up to the camp and see these two guys. At first as I'm standing there they seem to be keeping the place pretty well covered. Joe sent me a tell about how he only needed two more blood and then he was leaving. So I thought I would give him a chance. I cruised out of there, killing all the bees and funguar in the corridor to the camp. As I reached the end, however, I decided I could compete with these two, and it would be fun. I hadn't responded to Joe's tell, and I just decided to ignore him.

So I run back in, and start to kill all the leeches and crawlers, and Joe starts to get annoyed. He sends me tell after tell telling me I'm stupid, that this is his camp, that there are already two people here and I should leave.

Then Joe begins to stalk me.

He follows me all around, trying to steal everything off of me. He got one or two, but I was definately outpulling him since he had to watch both what I was doing and look for pops at the same time. Still Joe follows me, ranting at me to leave.

I still say nothing.

Then, suddenly, Joe was gone. Perhaps he got the last two blood he needed for his stack. Perhaps he got fed up and left. I don't really care. He was gone, and the whole camp got a lot nicer. I was pulling in mobs left and right pretty easily by trying to stay on the opposite side of the camp from the other guy. He would run over, I would go to the opposite corner. Leeches and crawlers died.

Then I claimed Vorax.

I actually didn't even see it was Vorax until my boomerang had hit him. I killed him easily, with the only annoyance being his theft of my TP the moment I was hitting Cyclone. Oh well. He was dead. My drop: Fiend Blood.

Oh well.

I walked up to the other guy and used auto-translate to just say (Fiend Blood).

The other guy's response: (Bastard Sword).

Then he walked off to the corner of the camp and d/c'd.

Having liberated the camp form the tyrrany of the evil people who are not me, I promptly added large chunks of blood and silk to my growing stacks. By killing everything I could see.

Not much of a story, but there you go. The moral: Annoying people who annoy you is fun.

I guess any 4 year old could tell you that.

I've Been Busy

Ok, I haven't updated this blog in like 3 weeks. But I have been playing.

I did what I usually do upon attaining BLM 25, which is completely change my plans. I looked for a party as 41RDM for about 10 seconds, got an invite, and realised I didn't really want to just Refresh everyone for a few hours. What I really wanted to do was make THF my main job.

I traditionally love to be a thief-type character in RPGs. I'm usually a thief in D&D, ever since I was a little kid. In EQOA I was a rogue, in Neverwinter Nights I play a Thief, or is it Rogue, i forget. The point is I like the character abilities, as well as the general attitude of playing a thief. And here I was in FFXI with RDM 5 levels higher than THF.

What was I thinking, right?

So I assessed my THF setup. I was at level 36, and I really wanted to get up to 45 as soon as i could to make farming easier with Treasure Hunter 2. NIN wasn't in the best spot as a sub, stuck at 21, but it would do well enough to get me up to 40, then I would get my AF1, then level Nnja.

Ok, easy plan.

I muled my stuff around, sending all the mage gear off to gather dust for the time being, and hauled out my Thief and Ninja gears. All I had for Thief was some Mercenary Captain stuff, with the body legs and feet upgraded to Windurstian long ago by Firedweller. I bought some Windurstian Kukri to do some fast damage, and I was ready to go.

Time passes. Two parties leave me at the cusp of 40. I figure I can soplo the 350xp i need then go get my AF1. I'm outside the Crawler's Nest, soloing Gobs and Crawlers for a pittance of xp, as well as silver beastcoins and silk thread. I decided to leave my party flag up, for no reason really, just to see if i can maybe get a buffer in case I die on the AF1 run. After killing 3 crawlers, I get an invite from what I find out later is a JP party going to Altepa. So I join up and we head out.

Now, I had no maps for Altepa at the time, and I couldn't really talk to these guys... Luckily I made it to the Outpost in one piece, and after a small shaky start (I sata'd off the Monk instead of the Ninja) we proceeded to make mince out of gobs left and right. Then we went and killed some Beetles.

When the dust cleared, I was Thief 42 ?!?

---

So the next morning I head out to do AF1, run to Windy, then to Jeuno, then to Mhaura and finally to the 'fight' in Bedeaux.

Not a fight so much as whacking Quadav with my boomerang to pull them down from the higher level and trying to steal a Quadav Stew off them.

I tried 3 times then as I rested outside the zone, I saw another Thief, a taru named Soccerball. He asked me if I was doing AF1 and I said yes, and offered to team up so we could steal from behind the Quadav. But he declined for whatever reasons he had. I tried 5 more times to steal the stew to no avail. Then I had an idea.

I waited around near Soccer, acting like I was looking for a Quadav to pull. He pulled one, failed to steal from it, and ran for the zone. I followed and stole off his Quadav the moment his claim dropped and, yippee, I had it.

Snickering at Soccer, I headed back to Mhaura for my CS. On my way back to Jeuno, I saw he was still there trying to get it. I warp-jumped my way to Jeuno, finished up the quest and was admiring my new Marauder's Knife and Calveley's Dagger set and I checked again. He was still there.

I went and switched to Ninja. Got into a terrible party in Qufim. Slowly and excruciatingly leveled Ninja to 23. Headed back to Jeuno.

Still this guy is sitting in Beadaux.

The next day I'm back leveling Thief again and, lo and behold, Soccerball is in my party, with no Marauder's Knife. He claims he doesn't really care, his kukri are better anyhow. I told him how I stole off his mob and he laughs. Then he gets grumpy about our camp in the secret room of Crawlers Nest and disconnects after 3 pulls.

The party fell apart after that/

---

Then I got a very nice party with Kaweenie, who was leveling SMN. We smashed Beetles in Altepa then in Quicksand Caves for a while, and I was up to 44. Quite nice, and a very good Paladin tank had me not even worried about doing a 2nd SATA off the 1st voke every now and then.

A party back in the CN slowly got me 45 as we fought undermanned almost the whole time. Someone even brought out their Fellow at one point.

So to wrap up this too-long post, my overall results from the last three weeks:

Thief from 36 to 45

Ninja from 21 to 23

All new gear! Brigandine body, Noct+1 legs and feet, Windurstian Gloves (Thanks Yojo!), and Empress Hairpin!!(Super thanks Oshinto!)

So that's March done. Perhaps April will be just as good for me.

Qufim Is the New Dunes

I had some troubles this week, my internet went down... mostly. I could get it going for anywhere from 5 minutes to two hours at a time. So I called the cable company and yesterday they sent out a guy who got everything leading up to my house replaced, and, lo, there was internet.

So I decided to get back to leveling BLM, I only had 3 more levels to get to 25. I got an invite pretty fast, and it was even for a full party. Good so far. Then as they all enter the tunnel from Port Jeuno, the party leader dies.

Oops.

Then he wanted to wait for a raise, even though his home point was in the Port.

Alarm bells should start to go off here.

We killed some stuff, and eventually he gave up, HP'd, and caught up with us as we plinked worms out of boredom.

'Let's go to pug alley', someone says, and we all proceed to run off that way. Except I suddenly seem to be alone. Oh, I see, everyone has gone to the lake instead.

I try to explain that pug alley is right near us, but somehow everyone else thinks that we should now go to Delkfutt's Tower. So I go with them... and watch them run straight through a wight.

So we're still heading to the tower, but now someone is dying. They all zone and I watch the wight de-pop. 'You can come out now.' No-one comes out. 'It's safe.' Nothing.

/sigh

Soon after that someone decides it's time to get started. On clippers. I explain that I'm the lowest level in the party and the clippers are only T to me. Maybe we should try some pugs. But apparently our 6 member party can't handle them.

Perhaps because the tank seems afraid to actually provoke more than one time per mob. Or maybe because one of the mages had a Baron's Chapeau on...

Because, you know, more enmity on the mages is good, right?

Hmm, what else? The thief had WHM 10 as a sub, that was cool. Someone else had an underleveled sub too, I forget who it was.

Oh, and the other BLM really liked to use aeroga. Big confidence booster there.

In the end, I got halfway through 23 and decided to leave when we moved into Delkfutt's Tower to fight more mostly T mobs. It was long, but at least no-one disconnected or left without warning. I got a 24 Dragoon to come in my place, and he was probably happy for any invite, so that was okay.

I'll be levelling more often now that my internet is working, so hopefully I'll be getting back to a better post frequency. More than once a week at any rate.

Coming soon: More NM's!

Slow Week

Sometimes I get distracted by things.

In fact, that's sort of the whole point of this blog.

So I haven't played that much this week, Mainly because of D. Grey-Man and Naruto.

Ah well.

I have kind of come up with a plan for my progression, something other than BLM to 25 then RDM to 50. Just some things I have been thinking of at work while I've been waiting for some anti-virus scan to run or something. I've been trying to think of the gear I'll want to get as I get higher as RDM.

BLM stuff will be strictly utilitarian stuff I will keep to then raise WHM as another sub, hopefully.

So I started to consider what I would want to get, and I quickly spirraled out of control, thinking about nonsense like what I should do after I get RDM to 75.

Ha. I've been playing for three years and I'm at 41. I'm looking at things I'll be doing post 2010, most likely.

Anyhow, I'll be trying to get to 50, then raise BLM to 30, then RDM to 60.

I'll be all sorts of happy if I can do that.

If.

Qufim Trials

So I had gotten BLM up to 19.

The next venue for leveling would be Qufim Island, to kill worms, clippers, and pugils. Woots.

I don't seem to have the best luck getting invites in Qufim. I don't know why. I have gotten 3 jobs through the area, compared to the 8 jobs I've finished the Dunes with. WHM, BLM, NIN, SMN, and RNG all sit at 20 or 21, waiting to get past the invite stage.

OK, SMN I haven't even tried to level there, as I'm waiting to get all my avatars. That might take a while. I do have Shiva though!

All the other jobs have sat at the mouth of Qufim long enough to let me get distracted and end up leveling something else.

This will be harder to do as time passes, since I only have 70 levels of jobs under 20. Sooner or later I'll just end up with every job needing to get through the area.

Anyhow, I'm trying to get BLM up to 25. That's my goal so I might then get RDM up to 50 with it as a sub.

My first day out was not so good. Me, 2 White Mages, a Red(I think), a Samurai and a Warrior. Could be OK, you might think. Except the War seemed to not understand Provoke. Because she used it twice. For the whole time I was in the party.

That's why I don't like powerleveling.

The Sam left in disgust, disconnecting unannounced. A paladin was supposedly going to come, but I don't know where from because I got sick of the whole thing before they showed.

Oh well. I got to 20 (barely). The next day was better.

Last night I got into a much better party. There was a war/nin, a smn, two white mages, a cor(!) and of course me.

We stormed around the icy lake, killing crabs and worms, and in what seemed like no time at all, I was 21. We headed over to the tower and did crabs and pugs and continued to smash everything.

There were regular skillchains. I got to burst on pretty much every mob. I was doing great.

Then it was late and i had to log off.

In the end, I had gone from 26 points into 20 to 1.2k from 22.

I'll get there soon.

Kjahl

What the hell is wrong with all you beastmasters???

Poor defenseless animals...

Jolly Green

I was out farming as THF/NIN. I didn't have any tools with me, since a) they cost a lot, and b) they take up a lot of backpack space. I got to the center of Pashhow Marshlands and started to look for Goobue to kill.

The tree cuttings dont drop often but they sell for a bunch, or at least they used to. The boyahda moss is a nice secondary drop, and there's always Carnivorous Crawlers who drop silk thread. And you can steal it off them too!

So, anyhow, there I am, in the middle of the marsh. I'm targetting whatever I can to try to find stuff to kill, and suddenly I see, highlighted in the corner of the screen: Rook.

Yay, all of a sudden I was in the middle of a ballista match! Farming amidst people trying to kill each other is pretty entertaining, especially since they can't touch me... or Jolly Green. He had popped right in front of me with about 30 other people around us, and I was the only person who could claim him!

/joy

So I smacked him up and down with a sneak attack and a Viper Bite... and he was done.

For some reason, I haven't seen anywhere near the number of NM's as I have since I started this blog.

I didn't get the best of his drops, the Shaman's Belt:

But I did get a tree cutting. Pretty much the equivalant of getting a silk thread off Spipi; not great, but at least I got something good.

On the map, we were here:

Here's some action shots!

He dies!

I'm not sure who to look for next...

Suggestions?

Green Choco

It seems like the colorful chocobos are becoming more widely spread. Here's a green one I saw while I was out leveling in the dunes.

I likes it.

Oh, it looks like NegativeLily is going to be yellow. Oh well, she'll still kick ass.

Kadohahahddo

Another member of The Knights of Nee, Kadohahahddo:

He reminds me of someone else though.

Jaw-Droppingly Bad

This is Maginot:

He has been, without a doubt, the most unprepared, underequipped, just pretty-all-around-bad player I think I have ever grouped with.

The party was BLM BLM BLM NIN NIN DRG. I was main healing easily with Cure as the NINs bounced hate back and forth pretty well. The old party leader had left, and we picked up a new level 18 Elvaan BLM, Maginot. Now, no-one died because of this guy, but he was simply pathetic.

He only cast Stone. Okay, one time he cast Bio, but other than that, just Stone. Did he have any other spells? I have no idea.

He would melee every mob. We were fighting Pugils and Gobs on the secret beach, so he was hitting for 0-6 damage. The 6 was a crit.

He had a Brass Ring on. Now I know people bring some basic equipment to the dunes, usually because they don't want to spend cash on equip they're going to use for a session or three... but a Brass Ring?!? I guess it makes the teensiest bit of sense since he was trying to melee everything. But what BLM actively tries to lower their MP?
The other ring he had was a San d'Orian Ring, not much better. He didnt cast Cure anyhow, so the Mind boost was totally wasted. Otherwise he had level 12 basic cloth set armour on.

No amount of coaxing would get him to a) cast other spells b) stop meleeing c) make him useful at all.

On the up side, once we booted him for a Monk, we had a great party and I got to level 19.

Daggerclaw Dracos

I posted earlier about going out to look for Daggerclaw Dracos and running into Waraxe Beak instead. Luckily I managed to stay on my chocobo the entire time he was nearby, and I logged there to go back the next day for more hunting.

If there's a less camped NM, I'd like to see it... Nobody was in the area for the hour or so I was there killing raptors. Like absolutely nobody. Ever.

I ran a pretty straightforward path, circling around the perimiter of the area, killing all the raptors I could find. NOne of that was a problem, although I was thinking somewhere in the back of my head that it would be pretty funny if Waraxe popped on me and ground me into paste.

What I didn't realise, however, was that the raptors Dracos lottery spawns from extend up into the valley that leads to the bowl I had been patrolling. I got turned around during one fight, and saw I was going up into the valley, and as I turned to go back, there was Daggerclaw!

Here's a map:

And here I am smacking him around:

I didn't get anything to drop, not a single thing. But if you're interested, he drops this:

or sometimes a raptor skin. Not for me though. I might go back and try this guy again, I'll have to see what those Sonic Knuckles are going for in the AH.

Blam Mage

I've been leveling Black Mage lately. I started last week, way down at level 10, and I wore out my Empress Band soloing up to 13 pretty easily in East Sarutabaruta, then I decided it was time to go Back To The Dunes.

*Foreboding Doom*

I got a few spells at the shops in Windurst, grabbed a Slime Oil to get warp, then flew over to Bastok.

Oddly, the Warp scrolls in Windy AH were going for about 100k. Slime Oils were 2k. Who in their right mind would spend 100k on such an easy questable item??? Well, whatever. I was all equipped and ready to get me some levels.

The first party I got into was a pretty typical dunes setup, i.e. we had a powerleveller helping out so noone was doing anything very well, but it didn't seem to matter. I tried to take part as best I could, but it was a bit hard to get a good rythm going when there was an IT++ mob in the camp at all times.

The xp was ok, but it wasn't much fun as far as party dynamics can go.

I ended up getting to level 15 by the time I logged off.

Then yesterday I got into the other type of dunes party. No powerleveller this time, just BLM/WHM(me), WHM/BLM, SAM/WAR, MNK/WAR, THF/something, and WHM (no sub, party leader). We did pretty well, and the WHM/BLM had an alt to switch to for raises, which we used a few times. I got to 17, and even got to use Warp. (yippee)

The only down side was the subless WHM, the party leader had a line of text in every damn spell macro they made. Cure had a line, Cure 2 had a different line, even better since it had a reference that was some sort of indecipherable in joke. Dia, Poisona, you name it, this WHM had something to say every second or two.

I did okay, though. I ignored it as best as I could, and really the only mess-up I had the whole time was targeting a crab instead of the fly everyone else was fighting. Nobody died on that one though, so I don't feel too bad about it. * more levels and I'm going back to RDM to get to 50!

Aww Yeah

These are the coolest pictures ever!

Thanks to Sullen Girl (many times!) for these amazing pictures!

Red Chocobo Sighting

Well, A few days ago, I saw someone on a red chocobo, and I was very excited. I hadn't seen one before, not counting screenshots from SquareEnix at least. I took a few pictures of them and told the owner I thought it was cool to finally see one. We had a nice little conversation. Then I went on my way.

Later on, I was sending my pictures from the XBOX hard drive over to my computer.

I erased all the red choco pictures before I sent them.

Sometimes I get confused by the order of steps in things.

Luckily, I saw another one the very next day, and snapped a few more pictures. This one was being used as a digger in Meriphataud Mountains, and would not stay in one spot very long. But I did get a good shot.

Yay for the new chocobos! Now give me one.

More Problems Summoning

I just don't know what's going on with summoner lately... I got a Summon: Fenrir off this guy who swore it was the real deal, but something seems wrong.

He just seems cuter than I remember him looking before.

A Hunting Surprise

I headed off to Meriphataud Mountains to look for a new NM to kill, in this case, I thought Daggerclaw Dracos would make an interesting target. I had never hunted for him before, so I did a little research. It seemed that Dracos popped down in the southeast corner of the map, in that little circular area off by itself. I also noticed that there was another NM who shared the same spawn, a certain Waraxe Beak. Dracos is a lottery spawn off the Raptors in the area, and is level 27 or 28, an easy kill. Waraxe is a 20-something hour spawn, and is a much more challenging level 55-56 -ga spell spammer. The Vana'diel Bestairy said Waraxe beak was 'Killable by 6 level 55 characters; Red Mage soloable at 70.' So not by me.

I figured I'd be fine, that there was no way that spending an hour or three down there would have me running into this giant cockatrice.

So I check up on Negative Lily (who is sick right now... poor little choco) and feed her, then grab a full-grown rental bird to run up to Meriphataud.

*cue jaunty choco music*

Guess who was wandering around when I got there?

Oops.

Leveling Everything

There's some things in Vana'Diel that I'm an absolute sucker for. Most of the holiday events have me running around town throwing cookies at giant bulls or whatever. These events are fun, even though they are obviously engineered by the devs to make me waste time on an item that does nothing except clutter up my moghouse.

Another big distraction is farming, since it goes: 1)I'm leveling! 2)I need money for new equipment! 3)Farm farm farm. 4)Look at that shiny thing in the AH, I could use that on (insert job)... Wow, I havent leveled (job) in a long time. I think I'll try getting (job) up to (level).

So here I am, I've played this game for years, and my highest job level is 41. I'm not complaining one bit, I love playing and I don't feel bad about it. I have my own accomplishments that other people don't have. Like I have every job leveled to at least 10.

Which brings me back to jumping from job, to job, to job...

This week, after I got my AF1, I was thinking, 'You know, I should just get RDM up to 75. It will let me farm more effectively, I can hunt all sorts of cool NM's, and I can do more missions.' (I'm still waiting to get up to 50 to do Windy 5-1&2)

So my mind is made up, RDM full steam ahead.

'Man, I should get BLM up to 25 for a good sub.'

...

I love this game.

Carbuncle Prime?

I was out leveling BLM solo, so I decided to sub SMN since Drain pretty much lets me fight EP mobs without needing Cure spells.
When I got out to East Sarutabaruta, I was checking my Summon macros and this happened:

Someone's been DAT swapping my XBOX 360 or something...

Thanks to Sullen Girl for the Gimp expertise!

Negative Lily

Here's my new chocobo, Negative Lily!

(I play on an XBOX 360 so I don't have FRAPS. TV photos only for my poor choco reports.)

I'm happy to say that her recent sickness turned around, and she's as happy as she can be. I even got her Receptivity up a rank, to Substandard. Added to that nice surprise was getting two stories to tell her when she becomes a teen next weekend.

I hope she ends up being green.

But I'll keep her no matter what.

Spiny Spipi

This week's Notorius Monster is Spiny Spipi, the huge crawler of East Sarutabaruta.

Spipi is definately my most reliable NM, with a 3/8 rate on his/her (?) money drop. Spipi drops the Mist Silk Cape:

Or, more often, a Crawler Calculus (boo), a Smooth Stone (also boo), or one or two Silk Thread (not too shabby).

The nice thing about Spipi is that I can farm Beehive Chips, Silk Thread and Saruta Cotton (if I have Steal) while I'm hunting.
Here's my scan path:

Spipi usually only has one or two other people hunting for him/her (?!?) so it's a nice relaxing hunt. Nice cash for an easy drop.

To Clear Up Any Confusion

It recently came to my attention that some people (Twee) thought that I was a girl, perhaps due to the posting of this picture on the Supernintentaru Forum.

I would like to state, for the record, that I am the person on the LEFT. On the RIGHT is my girlfriend, who used to play Asphyxia (aka Sullen Girl). The dog she's holding is our Italian Greyhound, Couscous Caboose.

So, to be precise:

ME ---------------------------

MY GIRLFRIEND-----------------

Thank you.

Tweezerpleezer's New Girl

I think they make a great couple.

AF1 Finally

So since I have finally gotten up to level 41, I decided to try getting my first AF piece, the RDM's Fencing Degen. I had tried to get it once before, but I hadn't really looked into how the quest went, and I ended up wandering around Davoi aimlessly for a few hours, then dying somewhere in the Monastic Caverns.

This time I had a different plan, especially since I didn't have an XP buffer, and I wasn't looking forward to deleveling. I headed out to Davoi, hoping that when I got there, someone from the Knights of Nee could help me out, or perhaps some random stranger would be in need of Killing a NM that I couldn't handle at all.

Once in Davoi, I promptly got really lost.

Then I logged out for the night.

---

Day 2!

Still lost, I decided to ask strangers for help. Unfortunately, there were 3 other people there. 2 power levellers and a Summoner who was just hanging out AFK standing next to Carbuncle. Everyone in the LS was still busy, so I decided to get my buffer filled up, in case I happened to die in there. I found some orcs that conned EP in a good spot and ran through them, with one near death saved by a timely Chainspell. Then I finally looked at a map and headed down the river to Purpleflash Brukdok's spawn area. I killed a few pugils and had a full buffer. I checked the search window and there were suddenly a ton of new people. I lucked out on my first try, a taru 75 WAR named Scabbers who got lost for a bit, then came over and got my key item for me. I already knew where the Storage Hole was, and I managed to loot it unseen, got the hell out of Davoi and ran over to Sandy. In the end...