Fisherman

This outfit is very popular with Vana'diel's anglers.

The price of one stack of silk thread in the Windurst Auction House has jumped from 9000 gil to 11,000. I'm not complaining about receiving an extra 2k for my hard work. I've been running around East and West Sarutabaruta for the past few days, fighting every crawler I see.

I used the money to buy a Fisherman's Tunic, a nice blue outfit which boosts your fishing skill. There are four pieces of fisherman's gear in all, and I now own two of them. Windurst is home to the FIsherman's Guild, and any bridge or dock is likely to have at least a few fishermen making cast after cast. The anglers are thick as locusts in Port Windurst. It's a wonder the dock doesn't break under their combined weight.

Improving your fishing skill is a slow process, and I finally reached Level 3 last night while waiting for the VP debate to begin. I have to reach Level 5 before I'm no longer considered an amateur. Fishing is a good way to make money in this game.

Birkhimer has discovered the joys of hunting elementals. He's already made 200,000 gil. It's such a great idea I wish I were doing it. Unfortunately, my mage is not physically strong and would probably die a quick death. This reinforces my urge to start training as a Thief or Red Mage, both of which have more natural melee ability.

Jackass

I keep track of who's naughty and who's nice on my PDA.

One feature of Final Fantasy XI which should not be overlooked is the blacklist. If someone is being abusive or stupid or exhibits any number of gaming sins, adding their name to your blacklist means you will never hear from them again. Anything that player says to you will forever fall on deaf ears.

I came very close to using it yesterday.

I decided to hop the ferry to Selbina for an afternoon of fighting in the Valkurm Dunes. My excursions to the Maze of Shakrami have been interesting, but haven't given me much in the way of experience points. I reached the dunes early in the morning, and the majority of players running around were Japanese. I'm not skilled in the use of FFXI's Auto Translate function, but I managed to keep it together when party leadership was transferred to me.

I joined three parties over the course of the day, and a Warrior named Baron was in two of them. I knew we weren't get along as soon as I saw his macros. They're handy shortcuts, and it's always nice when the warrior remembers to include a line to tell the party when he's going to use Provoke on a monster, but his line was "Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks." It provoked me, and I told him his macro was infantile and offensive. Baron pulled a pugil into the fight when I wasn't ready, so he and most of the party was wiped out. He left the party because his home point was all the way out in San D'oria. One of the other party members said he'd done the same thing earlier.

Flash forward to the evening, after I'd taken a break to read more Dark Tower and watch the final episode of Jeremiah. I ended up playing beside Baron again. I thought about telling the party leader, Wraithe, to make sure Baron set his home point near where we were fighting, but I didn't bother. Baron was just as annoying as ever, wanting to pull monsters even though it wasn't his job. We'd just finished a tough fight and I was trying to recover my MP when Baron pulled a goblin. I couldn't heal, and Wraithe was killed.

"What the hell just happened?" Wraithe asked, and we explained. Wraithe booted Baron out of the party after raking him over the coals.

"Bitches," was all Baron had to say before running off.

I'll never party with Baron again. He's a jackass.