Welcome to Prime Time

The Summoner is an advanced job in Final Fantasy XI which can only be obtained when you've taken a regular job to Lv. 30 and undertaken a quest. I unlocked the job back in December (right around the time Kristofer was falling in love with the Red Mage job) but hadn't bothered to level it. The first Summoner in the series was Rydia from Final Fantasy IV, I think.

A Summoner can, well, summon monsters to enter the fight. These avatars are all based on the elemental properties which drive the game's magic system: Shiva is ice, Ifrit is fire, Ramuh is lightning, Titan is earth, etc. Every Summoner begins at Lv. 1 with a blue electric squirrel named Carbuncle, but acquiring the others requires you defeat them in battle to make them do your bidding.

Halifirien and Neyla wait before Ifrit's protocrystal (click to enlarge).

The linkshell has had these avatar fights on the brain for the past few days, so I went around Monday to try and get access to the quests for each fight. The fights require a high level of fame in each city, so I was able to get access to all of them except Leviathan (Norg fame) and Titan (Bastok fame). I was just dicking around because I was bored; I didn't expect to actually be fighting any of them, since most people don't try them until they're at least Lv. 65. Mages can usually get in at Lv. 55 or above, but still...

But Dagry and Xeones were in the mood to kick some Prime Avatar ass. I was the highest-level White Mage in the linkshell at the moment, and they asked if I wanted to join them. Skoal, the highest level Summoner in the linkshell (who also happens to be played by Mike White from Glenville State College), joined us. We lurked around Jeuno and recruited two other people and then stalked out through the frozen wastes to Fei'yin and the battle against Shiva Prime.

We entered her lair, and I immediately cast Barblizzara on the party to reduce any ice damamge she could throw our way. The mages stood on a rocky overlook while Xeones and Dagry started beating on her down below. Xeones is a good Paladin; you have to love a tank who can use Cure IV on himself to recover large amounts of health. Shiva died pretty fast.

I went out to the Crawler's Nest to join Kristofer's character Neyla in a hunt for Exoray Mold for another WHM's first limit break. Dagry and the others were already talking about doing more avatar fights, so we left the nest and took Neyla to get access to the fights.

The first fight was The Boyadha Tree. We lurked around and killed Robber Crabs and Knight Crawlers while we waited for Hadafal (Black Mage) to finish crafting and join us (it's not easy tearing him away during a full mooon). A Lv. 75 Black Mage from the linkshell, Uliwela, also joined us. We ran in and kicked Ramuh's ass in no time.

(Rear) Neyla, Dagry, Hadafal, (front) Halifirien, Xeones and Uliwela celebrate victory over Ifrit.

Ifrit's Cauldon was a bitch. It's a volcanic region in the middle of Yhoater Jungle. In terms of design, it's one of the prettiest levels in the game with all the ash-gray rock and fiery red lava everywhere. Trekking through it and avoiding the floating bombs was a bit of a nightmare, and Uliwela died in a fight before we could get to Ifrit's lair. The fight itself was a cakewalk, although Neyla accidentally disconnected in the middle of the battle and didn't get credit for the win.

When it was over, I flew back to Windurst and headed out to fight bunnies and bumblebees with my new friends. A big fiery red demon like Ifrit can seriously fuck over a poor bunny. I quickly reached Lv. 4 Summoner. The funniest part was the sheer number of people who decided to check my stats.

I still need Garuda, Leviathan and Titan. Once those are out of the way, I'll need to fight all six again in order to get a chance at fighting the granddaddy of them all: a purple pooch called Fenrir. Having the big dog at your bidding is a mark of total Summoner badassery, and there was a point where a SMN who didn't have him was teased and treated as unworthy.

I Love Those Little S.O.B.s

Members of the linkshell take down Spelunking Sabotenders.

One of my favorite parts of Final Fantasy XI is a series of quests by members of the Star Onion Brigade. It's a gaggle of cute little kids who hang out behind a warehouse in Windurst and have "secret meetings" about truth, justice, and the Onion Way. As far as I know, there are no other characters in the game who have their own plotline going with so many quests. The quests start off pretty easy, but then they start to ramp up in difficulty until you have to be in the 60s to do them.

Members of my linkshell were in the Quicksand Caves on Monday evening to fight Spelunking Sabotenders for an item called a Star Spindel as part of a Star Onion Brigade quest. Sabotenders are little cactus-like creatures who have a fun attack called "1,000 Needles" that can do lots of damage. I got the first spindel to drop when I got a very high lottery number.

I'm mostly been fishing more shells. Neyla discovered the joys of farming exorays for mushrooms, which has become a skillup party for me. Neyla gets all the drops, and I get to improve my club combat skills.

I've been locked in at Lv. 55 after a bad party the other day, which prompted this thread on QCDN's flameboard and four or five pages of discussion.

"He's Here to Offer 'Assistance Healing.'"

I was 4k away from Lv 56 and being able to equip my Healer's Pantaloons. I put up my flag and got an invite to Gustav Tunnel. I've never partied there before, but one of the party's MNKs was at the entrance to meet me and guide me to the camp where we would be fighting goblins and robber crabs.

We're getting set up, and someone starts casting Protect IV on the party members. I look over, and there's a 71+ WHM casting on my party. The first fight starts, and the guy in the noble's tunic is throwing out cures and haste like they're going to be outlawed the next day.

After I asked two or three times what was going on, and the leader finally says "He's going to help us for a bit."

Mid-50s, and they've brought along a damned powerleveler.

"How long is he going to be here?" I asked.

"Until I leave," the leader said.

"Which is how long?" I asked.

"Two hours," the leader said.

"You need to find a new WHM," I said. "I don't do powerleveled parties."

"He's not powerleveling us," the leader said. "He's giving assistance healing to help us chain."

Clearly he wasn't reading the same log I'd been reading. "If this was the dunes," I said, "it would be called powerleveling."

The PL sent me a /tell asking if it was true I wanted him to leave, and I said "Yes, I do." He was more surprised than anything else; he said he'd never had anyone refuse a PL before. I started rattling off the same old list -- gimps your stats, doesn't teach you jack shit about the game, blah-blah-blah. He said he meant no disrespect.

We finally agreed he could stick around and give Raise III if anyone died, but otherwise he needed to keep his MP to himself. He was very nice about it. I'm sure the rest of the party was ready to wrap me up in a straitjacket and dump me somewhere.

It was a pretty bad party. We had a NIN tank who couldn't keep up with the the MNK and the DRG, so hate was bouncing around like crazy. We couldn't chain anything. It was very very sad. They thought it would be fun to fight that Wyvernpoacher NM and of course the tank and I died while the BLM escaped everyone else. I was only 800xp away from 56 and was more than happy when they said they wanted to disband.

I can honestly say that's the highest-level noob mindset I've encountered so far. If you need a PL to chain something, your party setup sucks and you should be fighting something else.

At least I got a Reraise III scroll as one of the drops.