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.