Mighty Strikes

Today the guild had me trudging out to the glacier in search of icefish. I'd never tried catching them before and didn't know what the bite rate would be like, so I took two stacks of little worms as bait. I found a small frozen pond with giants, goblins and Bat Eyes roaming around. It took twenty or thirty minutes to catch the eight fish I needed to max out my points. At one point I had two ice elementals humming away at my back.

Halifirien fights a goblin under Neyla's watchful eye.

My silk threads and a few other stacks of fish had sold, so I bought another twelve stacks of moat carp and took them to San d'Oria. The idea of riding back and forth on the ferry didn't have much appeal, so I decided to switch to Warrior and went to Tahrongi Canyon. The damage and defense differences between my Warrior and Thief jobs is substantial, and I was having no problems carving up Decent and Even Match monsters.

Neyla was bored and followed me out there to do some curing and buffing, which was cool. I didn't really need it that much -- I would've stayed with Decents and Evens otherwise -- but It certainly made the process go faster when I could chain dhalmels.

I think I'll solo WAR to Lv. 15, buy some Republic gear for the HP bonuses, and then hit the dunes. I'm in no hurry. I'm torn between paying for gear and buying moat carp. The life of a taru warrior will be hard -- we're the smallest and weakest race and need better gear to compensate for our shortcomings -- but I only plan to take it to 37 as a subjob for my Monk. One of the taru Warriors on Allakazham posted that he used to take shit like "That's not a great axe! It's a sharpened spoon!" all the time.

In other news, Xeones and a few other members of Wandering Souls have splintered off into their own linkshell. I'm not sure what's up with that yet -- Dagry semi-explained some of it to me -- and plan to wait to see how it plays out.

Dusting Off the White Mage Hat

It's been a quiet week in Vana'diel, for the most part. I've been fishing, although not as much because I managed to burn myself out on it. I got my fishing to 56, which is a good place to shift the focus to making money instead of improving skill levels. I've been going after black sole (which sell for 25k-30k per stack) in Quifum Island and Noble Ladies on the Mhaura-Selbina ferry.

The main thing is that I jumped back on the leveling bandwagon after weeks of Neyla's constant jokes about how my White Mage job would be at 58 forever. I put up my flag Friday evening and got a slow-but-steady party fighting crabs, Terror Pugils and Velociraptors in Cape Terrigan. It was the best bad party I've had; the experience points per hour were crap, but at least it was non-stop crap.

Sunday morning was much better. I logged on and had a party invitation in about two minutes; I was the only North American in an otherwise all-Japanese party. The leader, a taru Samurai named Angus, was bilingual and let me know the important details. We camped in Cape Terrigan, but we were chaining velociraptors, goblins and Sand Cockatrices. I made it to within 2k of Lv. 60 before we disbanded.

Halifirien takes down the notorious monster Nunyenunc.

Sunday afternoon saw Neyla powerleveling my Thief job from 12 to 14 in Tahrongi Canyon. It took a long time because I was using a dagger instead of a sword and didn't have any strength-boosting gear, but we got it there. I'll be doing the same for Neyla when the time comes. We just want to get to Lv. 15 for the Treasure Hunter ability.

After that, I spent an hour camping a new Notorious Monster in West Sarutabaruta. It's a bird called Nunyenunc (don't ask me why), and it drops a new item called a Pilgrim's Wand. It's like a mini Dark Staff and speeds up your ability to restore MP when you rest. I want it for my Black Mage and Summoner jobs. I subbed Ranger so I could find it on widescan when it popped. Feriz came out to help me and keep me company. The bird eventually turned up and I got my wand.