Farm Boy

Trying to bring my White Mage from Level 6 to 7 was painful. I died repeatedly while wandering through the Ronfaure region outside San D'oria. My playing was all over the map, frankly.

Fishing for crayfish in East Ronfaure.

I started out farming (killing weaker creatures and selling the items they drop), moved to fishing (until my rod broke), and then decided to kill things for experience. Hence my constant deaths.

Rimare, a member of the RainbowCarnage linkshell, decided to help me out Monday evening. It's a process called "power leveling," where a healer doesn't officially team up with you but stands back and repeatedly heals you while you tackle monsters outside your safe range. It's an activity frown-upon by the high-level players because it's an easy road. It's also boring as hell for the healer, which is why lots of them charge for the service.

With Rimare's aid, I reached Level 7. Now that I'm over that initial hump, getting the rest of the way isn't nearly as hard.

Square-Enix was performing server maintenance today until 9 p.m., at which point I started selling items in the Auction House and fished even more. There's a river outside the keep where I can snag crayfish with few problems. Between casts I could run around and kill any monsters who wandered close.

Spells are expensive, let me tell you. My efforts were worth it, though. I finally had enough to purchase "Warp," which is going to significantly decrease my travel time. No more dodging monsters and hoping like hell I'll get back to town without dying. Just "Zap" and I'm there.

Current goal is to fish and farm to buy all the spells I'm able to learn, then upgrade my equipment so I'm not such a gimp. I'm going to get my White Mage powers to Level 10, switch back to Black Mage until Level 20, and get my Chocobo license. Then it's back to Windurst to start doing missions.

Tarus Rock the House

Even when I'm not playing... I'm dreaming of playing.

I'm at my parents' house for the three-day weekend. I woke up early and started exploring the Final Fantasy XI forums at Allakhazam. Wow. They have race- and job-based sections, so I'm learning a lot of new things about playing a taru mage. It's an amazing wealth of information I wish I'd known about from the beginning.

I had to share this link, though. Someone with waaaaaaaaay too much time on their hands took character animations from the game and edited together an awesome rock video featuring tarus. It reinforces how cute we are and how much we rock. It was cracking me up and I almost spit out my water.

"Four times the metal at 1/4 the size," indeed.

[ Check out this video and soak up the taru goodness. ]