Beastly Behavior

Neyla, Avatarofwoe (controlled by Falsey) and I took Uday into Garlaige Citadel to get him past one of the banishing gates to find a coffer with the next piece of his artifact armor.

Uday had mentioned the other day that he already had a key, but I couldn't figure out how he would've managed to get one. It turns out he had a treasure chest key, not a coffer key. There was nothing left to do but warp out and plan to come back later to get what he needs.

Neyla and I returned to Windurst, ran around to collect ingredients for Pamama Au Lait regen drinks, and returned to Buburimu for another beastmaster session. It didn't take long to hit Lv. 22 and regain the ability to use Cure II.

Two inconsiderate farmers take all the crawlers.

A "fun" aspect of being a beastmaster is competition with other players. In tonight's case, we had to deal with Diaconfrost (crappy Red Mage I've partied with in the distant past) and Rokusho, who were out there killing the crawlers for silk thread. People who "train farm" by getting a horde of enemies to chase them so they can be killed all at once with a few spells are annoying as hell, and they make our lives difficult by taking away the monsters we want to charm or fight.

I politely asked Diaconfrost to kill the crawlers one at a time to at least give us a chance, but other than his "I'm farming" response, it was like hitting my head against a wall.

"They're using Ice Spikes," Neyla pointed out. It's a spell which damages and paralyzes an enemy when it hits you. It has the nasty side-effect of negating any experience points you would normally earn by killing it. "They're worthless to us now."

"Not as pets," I pointed out. I didn't have any problems walking over to their massed army of crawlers and taking one for a pet as needed. I wasn't being a dick about it, but if there's nothing else around...

We finished out the night by reaching Lv. 23. I summoned my first jug pet, a Crab Familiar, on the way back to the outpost. We'll be heading out again on Friday. At this rate, we might hit Lv. 26-27 by Sunday night.

Skillups

We took Uday to Zvahl Castle for a piece of his Black Mage Artifact Armor as part of linkshell event. We had to travel into one of the deeper pits where the demons dwell and fight them for a key.

The yagudo in Castle Oztroja provide skillups.

I love it that I can now walk in the upper areas without having to worry about being attacked. I still can't kill any of it, but they leave me alone. Hadafal, Veresko, Azzariah and Wulfgar joined us to make the hunt a little easier. I got separated from the group and couldn't find my way around, which is probably a good excuse to wander in there some day and start exploring it for real.

With Uday's AF piece out of the way, the rest of us went to Castle Oztroja to get a coffer key for Azzariah's Bard job. The upper levels are fun for me because I can still get club skillups there, and Wulfgar was using the opportunity to gain points on his Weapon of Trials for some weapon skill he's trying to unlock.

I gained two levels on my club. I'm very close to having Hexa Strike, which is when White Mages get to rock a little with the damage.

Let's Get (Meta)Physical

On the Final Fantasy XI message boards, one of the mental horses constantly being beaten to death is what it means when a guy plays a female character. Is he gay and getting in touch with his inner drag queen? Is he straight and playing a girl because she's hot and he'd rather stare at a woman's ass? Is he doing it to flirt with guys and see if he can get help and items with little work from some slavering virgin who plays MMORPGs all day and never sees a real woman?

I don't really care about the answer, but it does create confusion sometimes. I think of it as a role-playing game, so if your character is female... I'll just relate to you as a female unless you correct me. The feline mithra race are the area where this line gets blurred a lot. My buddy Kristofer plays a mithra, and it took me awhile to get use to referring to him as a "he" in-game.

The fun part is after awhile you sorta tune out the idea that real people exist behind these avatars, and seeing a photograph of the actual person creates some serious cognitive dissonance, like finally seeing that radio DJ with the "fat" voice and finding out he's a skinny little bastard.

I'm a member of the WickedWayz linkshell. There are people in there I "see" all the time when I'm playing, and I didn't realize how deeply I'd internalized my impressions of them until I started flipping through the Quetzalcoatl section of FFXI Players and started seeing what some of them really look like. It's one of the strangest mental freakouts -- completely subjective and hard to really explain properly -- I've had in a long time.

Obviously these photos aren't going to mean a damned thing to anyone who isn't playing the game; they're just random strangers. Still, these are a few of people I work and play with in-game on a daily basis. I'm still trying to get over the idea that Nanunanoo isn't three feet tall in real life.


Nanunanuu


Otak


Uliwela


Veresko


Zoner

Nanunanoo is a total clown who is constantly making us laugh. Veresko (danger ranger!) is our resident alchemist and I can't handle seeing him without a crossbow in his hand. Zoner is the leader. Uliwela is a hell of a black mage. Oddly enough, Otak is the one who most closely resembles her character... which is doubly funny considering she plays a male taru.

The Call of the Wild

I think Neyla and I are officially hooked on the Beastmaster job. We seem to go back to it every chance we get. It's fun to go into areas where few people hang out and use the animals there to advance.

Beady Beetles take out a goblin in the Horutoto Ruins.

We went into the Horutoto Ruins to fight goblins by using the bats and beetles which crawl around in there. We tried taking on one of the blobs, but that didn't go over as well because they resist physical damage and we almost ran out of pets while trying to kill it. We quietly agreed we wouldn't try that again, but I can't wait until we can start charming those.

We hit the ruins because, while we were eager to start leveling in the Buburimu Peninsula, we weren't quite at the level where we could comfortably charm the mandies and rabbits there. Even after finishing the ruins, we figured we'd need at least one more level before Buburimu would be an option.

The northern shore of Carpenter's Landing is a forested area accessible through a large wooden shutter in North San d'Oria. Logs float in the water before being taken into the city for use by the woodworkers guild. It's rare to see anyone in that area except beastmasters and woodworkers on their way to the guild shop, so we decided to try it out Saturday.

I think that area was custom-made for beastmasters. There are tons of wasps and beetles to charm, and we were using them to fight the pugils, orcs and flytraps. Because nobody else goes there, you seldom have to worry about some schmuck coming along and killing the animal you plan to charm next.

Carpenter's Landing is populated by many critters...and orcs!

Neyla died two or three times while we were there. One of them was my fault because I had pulled my weapon to fight a flytrap and then put it away to charm another monster. I didn't get back with my beetle in time and Neyla was already whacking away at it and got beaten down. That sucked, but beastmasters tend to eat a lot of dirt.

We're still working out the flow of working together as a team. We're staggering our pets a little more often, usually keeping one out of the fight until the one engaged with the target is halfway-dead. By doing that, we can keep the monster we're fighting busy about 95% of the time so that it never comes after us. Sometimes the pets die too fast or we have problems finding a new one, but we're getting better at it. We got to Lv. 19 before we left.

I had planned to spend Sunday taking my Warrior job through the dunes, but waiting for a party invitation was getting on my nerves. I probably sat in Selbina with my flag up for thirty or forty minutes when Neyla logged on. He had originally planned to help Uday with some Black Mage AF stuff, but that fell through.

So I had Neyla escort me back to Windurst so I could change my job to Beastmaster and we headed out to Buburimu.

The little mandragora-type Sylvestre takes down a flying Zu.

This time the area was much more friendly for us. We made camp at the outpost and charmed rabbits and mandragoras for use against the goblins and birds. To add to the fun, zombies would wander out at night to attack if they smelled blood.

Buburimu sees a lot of traffic, so every so often we'd have some idiot running for the zone with a couple goblins chasing after him. We saved one guy by sending our pets to stop two of the goblins on his back. That was when I started feeling like a badass.

Once we reached Lv. 20 we wandered off to the west to check on dhalmels and crawlers. We can charm some of them now, so we're going to be back out there again on Wednesday.

We also bumped into Bogo, another taru fisherman who was there to cheer me on when I got my Lu Shang. I didn't realize he was a Lv. 50+ beastmaster -- "If I have a main job, it's BST," he told me -- and I asked him about the job. He was impressed that Neyla and I were getting Chain 3 every so often, as it's rare to do that until you start fighting suicidal bombs. He told me we should make some pretty good xp if we keep our duo going.

At Lv. 23 we can start using "jug pets," which are summoned animals for use in emergencies when there's nothing around to charm. At Lv. 35 we get the Beastmaster's Holy Grail, the "Leave" command. Then we can charm a pet, let it fight awhile, and turn it loose whenever we want to kill our target without taking the xp penalty you get for having a pet.