How Does Your Garden Grow?

Gardening is a great way to grow your own ingredients.

I've discovered the joys of gardening in Final Fantasy XI. You can buy seeds and plant them in your home after you buy for find flowerpots. All you have to do is check on them once a day -- which I usually do in the morning before I leave for work or in the afternoon when I come home -- and feed them a crystal for fertilizer. After a few days, they bloom into items you can harvest.

I tried it on a whim and received 16 Khazam Peppers for my minimal effort. The peppers sold quickly at the Auction House to those scamps at the Culinarian Guild as an ingredient for one of their recipes.

It's just another aspect of the game I can enjoy. It's not too hard to imagine my tending a dozen plants, trying to coax out vegetables and crystals for resale. I'll be the Martha Stewart of Vana'diel.

More Mazes, More Monsters

I've been running around in the Maze of Shakrami for the past few days, trying to find someone to help me complete one of the WIndurst Missions. All I have to do is get into the cave, search a specific chamber for a piece of lapis coral, and take it back. Unfortunately, there are hordes of goblins, ghouls and scorpions barring the way.

More time in the Maze of Shakhrami.

Finding a good party is proving difficult.

Sunday afternoon's excursion was ridiculous because our party's "leader" seemed unconcerned that the entire party was comprised of mages. Fragile, armor-made-of-tissue-paper mages. It freakin' sucked because we didn't have a warrior to tank and keep the monsters from kiling us... which they did. Regularly. I should've left, but I haven't reached the point where I'm unwilling to at least try to make any party combination work. I told the leader a few times to find a warrior to tank, but I may as well have been talking to myself.

On the positive side, I met two other mages: Gavroche and Archaedran, who turned out to be pretty nice. The three of us ended up in a maze party again Monday evening. I'm on both of their Friend lists and they're on mine. Gav had found a Lv. 56 warrior to escort him to the coral, and I was hoping our party would make the effort. Instead, we ran around killing things randomly without racking up much experience points.

The idea of finding an escort is starting to have appeal, although I've been exploring the game's Search function and think I can put together a team of my own. The idea of tackling party leadership spooks me a little, but if that's the only way I'm going to get the coral, I'll learn. I can't do as poorly as some of the schmucks out there.