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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.