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?