The Crucible

Reading the White Mage message boards, the boogeyman lurking in the back of every healer's mind seems to be the Labyrinth of Onzozo. "Oh, it's terrible. The toramas are constantly paralyzing and silencing the tanks. Stay the hell out of there at all costs."

I partied there today, and I'm forced to conclude any White Mage who doesn't like it there is a complete and total pussy. I don't understand their problem, because the toramas telegraph the status ailments they're about to inflict. Any halfway-decent mage paying the slightest bit of attention should know "The torama readies Blaster" means you should start casting Paralyna and "The torama readies Chaotic Eye" means you should start casting Silena. They only cast them on the tank, so it's not like you're trying to erase three or four damage dealers the way you would when a crab uses Bubble Shower.

Fighting toramas in Labyrinth of Onzozo.

"That place kills Ninjas," Quieren told me at one point.

"Not my Ninja," I said. "I've got the ailments cured before she knows they've landed."

Onzozo, it seems, is the crucible which divides the good White Mages from the bad. My experience there only confirms what I've always believed: I'm a damned good White Mage.

The Onzozo party eventually disbanded and I later found myself partying in Bibiki Bay with the same Ninja tank and the same Red Mage (albeit with a different person controlling the character). We fought the birds which fly around for insanely fast and easy experience points, and we did that for hours with a revolving-door cast of characters. Waiting for replacements was the only time we stopped; everything else was constant Experience Chain 5.

I made it from 60 to within 5k of 62 when I finally quit because was tired and starting to minor mistakes. I'd rather quit before I level than be the guy who dumps a party as soon as he levels. It just seems rude to do that.

"I'd forgotten what a good experience points party was like," I told the linkshell. "This makes up for a lot of shitty ones."

It probably looked like Bizarro World to them, considering I was getting experience points and Neyla was the one fishing. I'm ready to start knocking out levels, though. As the master of delayed gratification, I put everything on hold to get my Lu Shang and bring my fishing skills where I wanted them. Now that I can easily pull in at least a million gil a week, I want to take my White Mage to 70 and learn Raise III.

I'll obviously be taking short breaks to fish enough to buy a Penitent's Rope, to complete rank and Zilart missions and to level my Black Mage and Summoner jobs...but otherwise I'm taking White Mage to Level 70 in a way that will seem surreal to anyone (like Neyla and Quieren) who thinks I've just been spinning my wheels the entire time.

The Big One

Today was largely non-stop fishing in the Sea Serpent Grotto with Neyla. I synthed eight stacks of crayfish paste and brought my cooking skill to 52 before heading out there. Neyla left for awhile to help with a coffer key hunt in Beadeaux, but I stayed in the grotto and hauled up a bunch of grimmonites, bream, nebonites, and jellyfish with the assorted damp scrolls and norg shells.

I finished out with a ride on the ferry and got my fishing skill to 64 on Noble Ladies.

I have a stuffed sawfish on my moghouse wall.

The best part of the day, beyond the great skillups (Neyla got .3 yesterday and another .3 today, the lucky bitch), was spotting a stuffed sawfish in a bazaar in San d'Oria. The sawfish is called "The Big One," and having it on the wall of your moghouse increases your fishing skill. The base rate is +1 skill, but overwhelming water energy will boost the effect to +3 skill.

My crafting goal is to one day be able to make signed versions of that thing and give them away to my friends. The skills and effort required are daunting, to say the least.

"Get the sexual innuendo ready," I told the linkshell when I bought it. "If anyone asks 'Does Hali have a Big One?' you can honestly say 'Yes. Yes, he does.'"

Rollin' the Bonze

Neyla and I created new mules in San d'Oria and took turns escorting them to Jeuno. I made a galka and named him "Kurrelgyre" after the werewolf in Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept novels. Neyla made a tarutaru named "Squidward" in honor of everyone's favorite aquatic misanthrope. With that out of the way, we went fishing in the grotto until mission time rolled around.

Mission 7-2 calls for a trip to the Temple of Uggalepih near the southern borders of Yhoater Jungle. I'd never been there before, so the prospect of exploring a new area was exciting. The temple is infested with small green beastmen called Tonberries. The mission requires the killing of a notorious monster called Bonze Marberry. This souped up tonberry drops two Cursed Keys used to open a room in the temple.

Fighting an Iron Maiden in the Temple of Uggalepih.

We got to the temple with no problems other than having our Black Mage, Lolindor, running late and staying behind in Jeuno. We made our way inside, using our invisible spells to avoid detection, switching to prism powders when we got too close to the Iron Maidens and Hover Tanks because they aggro to magic. We found the monster and then everything exploded.

Somebody charged in and managed to aggro everything in range because we didn't clear the room first. We suddenly found ourselves with the Bonze attacking us, plus another tonberry from a nearby room, as well as a doll and a pot or two. It was too much to handle -- even with Neyla trying to sleep everything that moved -- and people started dying on every side. Neyla called for Escape, but my casting was cut short by my quick death. I reraised and started casting again, but one of the monsters used a poison spell which drained my life as the spell was going off. I escaped to the outside of the temple, but I was dead when I landed. I had to homepoint back to Jeuno.

It took about forty-five minutes for us to get the party back on its feet. Most of the mobs which killed us had wandered back to their usual haunts, so Neyla only had to sleep one or two things so I could start bringing everyone back to life.

Once we were at full health, we went in and tried again. This time we killed everything nearby before kicking the Bonze Marberry's scaly green ass. It used a move called "Everybody's Rancor" which did about 4,000 damage to Wulfgar and dropped him like a rock. Tiael and Twille got the first two Cursed Keys, and I raised Wulfgar again so we could wait ten or fifteen minutes for the Bonze to pop again. Then Lolindor and I got our keys. The four Windurstians who needed the mission got to the room, used our keys, and saw the next part of the story.

Neyla and I finished the evening with another short visit to the Sea Serpent Grotto. We were joined by Ogami, one of my in-game fishing buddies. The moon phase was on our side and Neyla got .8 in skillups -- including an extremely rare .3 skillup on one of the nebimonites.

Despite the massive deathtoll (which Neyla felt horrible about) at the beginning, it was a fun night. The next mission will involve fighting a notorious Orc in Davoi.

Mule Kick

A "mule" in this game is an extra character you create to store items, sell goods, and purchase stuff from regional vendors in the cities. If you're in Windurst and you need a bag of flour from San d'Oria, it's easy to log out, log in as the Sandy mule to buy the stuff, and them send it to Windy for pickup. You can only sell seven items at a time at the auction house, so creating extra characters provides more opportunities to sell your wares.

Dibbler sells fish at the Culinarian's Guild in Windurst Waters.

I have three mules, and I haven't done a lot with them until this past week when I obtained the Lu Shang. Now I'm hauling up so much fish in the Sea Serpent Grotto that I constantly have to use my mules to sell it off. When I first log in, I check each of them. If something sold, I have them put new stuff up for sale and send the money to my main character.

My Windurst mule, Dibbler (named after the crooked "chef" and con artist Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels), has been very busy. I've been parking him in front of the Culinarian's Guild, which is where the game's cooks go to increase their skills and make food other people will buy. When I went to sleep last night he was stuffed full of grimmonites. When I woke up this morning he'd been picked clean.

I'm not used to making this kind of gil, but I'm glad to see all the hard work from my fishing is starting to pay off. I bought a Promise Badge on Friday which left me nearly destitute with only 10k to my name. A couple days later I have nearly 350k.

Windurst Mission 7-1

I joined a second linkeshell called "Liberi Fatali" a few weeks back, and one of the members is a Lv. 73 taru Beastmaster named Miros. He's as queer as a three-dollar bill and funny as hell. I like chatting with him. I recruited him to help out with Windurst Mission 7-1 because he said he enjoyed that one.

He had a dynamis run scheduled and declined at first. Then he popped back on and asked "Where are we meeting?"

"You coming?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Videotape it for me," I said, and we both laughed. Gay tarus should not be left alone together.

Titled "The Sixth Ministry," the mission involved traveling into Toraimarai Canal to find a secret lab called The Animastery. It's hidden on the other side of a large room with notorious monsters called Hinge Oils which have to be killed.

It was a cakewalk. The trip through the canal was relatively stress-free (I love my Skulker's Cape, which makes my Sneak spells last a lot longer) and the fights weren't bad at all. Neyla would pull each of the four oils so we could kill them one at a time. Miros would charm the bats flapping around and use them in the fight. It didn't take long before everything was dead and we were inside the hidden library.

Mission 7-2 is scheduled for Tuesday.