Boredom

The high point of my day was making 800k from Crosis, the other high-level bonecrafter who needed gavial fish. I did two extended runs in Gusgen Mines to catch all of them.

Between

Fishing for gavials in Gusgen Mines.

batches, I decided to suck it up and spend some time in the endgame linkshell. Quieren had mentioned some possible activities for the day, but it turned into a sky farming run to get pop items for the turtle god Genbu. We needed the item from a notorious monster golem named Zipacna (aka "Zip" or "Zippy"). We spent an ungodly (heh) amount of time up there and never found the NM or did anything productive. It was extremely boring.

Someone got attacked by one of the statues and died, so another White Mage from the linkshell traveled up there to provide a Raise III. At some point that White Mage ended up dead but hadn't bothered to put up Reraise III and ended up homepointing. I'll never understand how a White Mage can walk into such a dangerous area without taking the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and members of their party.

Then, when we finally called it a day and started warping out, one of the Rangers got aggro and died. I'd already warped back, so he had to eat a plain ol' Raise. I guess I'll have to go back to my usual policy of being the last person out of the room for exactly those kinds of fuckups.

It's the sort of experience which strengthens my resolve to get the Noble's Tunic without aid. I'm still not in love with endgame activities and would rather be able to walk away from it at a moment's notice without any feelings of guilt or obligation.

On the positive side, Neyla and other members of Wicked Wayz went to Boyadha Tree for a skillup party. Neyla managed to get his sword skill high enough to quest the Weapon Skill known as Savage Blade. That will be awesome, because Savage Blade and Hexa Strike create a Light skillchain.

Noble Endeavor

You used to hear about people who would go weeks or months without leveling until they got that one special piece of gear they want. Farming, fishing, camping NMs or doing Burning Circle fights... whatever it took. Vang (one of QCDN's regulars) is one of those people; he won't level Thief until he gets a Thief's Knife.

I

Chuu synths a gavial fish while Dibbler rests.

joked with Neyla I should just tell people that's what I'm doing, that I refuse to level White Mage again until I get a Noble's Tunic. It was an offhand comment, but it's actually starting to look like a promising strategy. I went into Gusgen Mines today and fished gavials for hours. Silfer's bonecrafting mule, Chuu, met me in Windurst to buy everything I had as well as the gavials I had on Dibbler. When Silfer's quota was satisfied, I went to the Sea Serpent Grotto for a change of scenery.

I ended the day about 750k richer than I started, and I think I have another bonecrafter interested in buying my gavials. The price of the Noble's Tunic spiked heavily over the holidays, but it's starting to come back down again. The Jeuno Auction House and bazaars in Batallia Downs currently have them at 15 million. I'm about halfway there.

The Noble's Tunic is uber gear for White Mages. It has the same Defense and slightly more MP than the Healer's Briault, but it also adds Auto-Refresh and boosts Cure potency by 10%. Add that to the 10% you get from a Light Staff, and you're talking about very efficient MP usage. Neyla joked that I should sell my Lu Shang Fishing Rod to get it, but that would never happen.

I want to buy the Noble's on my own because I don't want to feel obligated to any HNM/Sky linkshell to get one. I joined Quieren's group, The Nameless, but I know how my mind works; I'd put in the time until I got the Noble's and then my motivation (what little I have) would be gone. I don't want to fall into that trap. I'd rather get the thing on my own and then participate because I really want to and not because I "need" to.

I capped on Gavials today, bringing my fishing skill to 81.

Heart of Stone

I've

Don't ask what Titan has behind his loincloth.

been fishing gavials largely non-stop the past few days, although I went with Neyla to get Pandorda and Passions (same person playing two characters) through the yagudo Burning Circle fight.

Today's excursions involved leveling our NPCs in Garliage Citadel. Neyla's is 36. Mine dinged 32 before he left. The greater joy came from fighting Titan Prime with Neyla and Malystryxx. Red Mages can solo the prime avatars, but they wanted to duo Titan to get a feel for how it would go. I still needed Titan's whisper, so the three of us prepared ourselves.

Seeing Maly and Neyla together is like looking at identical twins. Same mithra character models, same hair color, and virtually identical gear. We got off to a shaky start when Maly got disconnected twice trying to cross the Altepa Desert. Once he got back, we entered Korroloka and used Escape to shortcut our way to Bastok.

Tuning

Titan puts the stony smackdown on Neyla.

forks in hand, I teleported us back to the desert so we could enter the Quicksand Caves and make our way to the Cloister of Earth where Titan dwells. My role was to haste and regen as needed and break out the bigger cures if something went wrong, but otherwise let them do all the work.

They got what they wanted. Neyla's anti-virus program kicked in and he got disconnected as soon as we entered the battlefield. It only took him a few seconds to get back on. We ran up the ramp and Neyla cast Dia II on Titan to open the fight.

That's when I lost my connection, too. I started freaking out, cursing my computer and hoping like hell I could get back into the fight. I figured I'd have plenty of time. Logging in was a nightmare because the game insisted that I was already logged in and would have to wait a few minutes.

When

Neyla, Maly and I celebrate their victory.

I managed to log in again, Maly and Neyla had whittled Titan down to a sliver of health. I had time to caste Haste and Regen on them before the fight was over. We got our whispers and left victorious.

We're thinking about doing Leviathan Prime on Sunday. That's the last avatar fight I need before I can get my Moon Bauble and be able to fight everyone's favorite purple pooch, Fenrir.

Ancient Vows

Neyla was down with the flu, so I spent my Saturday afternoon joining my linkshell members for the next Chains of Promathia mission, "Ancient Vows." Everyone stocked up on Hi Potions and Hi Ethers, and we gathered at the Tavnazian Safehold around noon. There was a moment of drama when Otak made a comment about Confetti being unprepared and not realizing Confetti had joined the party and heard it. It took a few minutes to convince Confetti to rejoin us for the mission.

Once

Wicked Wayz members prepared to do battle with the Mammets.

everyone was ready, we traveled to Riverne Site #A01 (capped at Lv. 40) and started working our way through. I'd never seen the Hippogryphs before, so that was cool. There were also multi-bomb monsters called Atomic Clusters which can use Self-Destruct and stay alive. I want to go in there as a Beastmaster sometime to fool around.

We finally reached the uncapped area called Monarch Linn and reviewed our strategies. I was in the first group with Otak as Black Mage, Maly as Red Mage, Zoner and Veresko as Ninjas, and Apu as Samurai. The foes are three job-changing shadow creatures called Mammets. Zoner was in charge of kiting two of them around (with Maly keeping Zoner alive) while the rest focused on killing the the third and I kept the Ninjas alive. The conventional wisdom is that you've pretty much won if you can manage to kill the first before the other two kill the kiter.

We kicked ass. The fight took us seventeen minutes, but we didn't even have a scary moment. I didn't use any of my Hi Ethers, although I chugged through a few Yagudo Drinks. Apu, Maly and I were transported to South Gustaberg at the end of the fight. Zoner, Otak and Veresko had done it before and stayed behind to join the second crew who needed the mission. They won that round, too.

Saturday night some of us decided to clear the two Notorious Monster fights which make up the next section of Promatia missions. If it was a movie, it would be "Attack of the Taru White Mages," because Apu was our only melee. The rest of the group was me, Evildr, Confetti and Nanunanuu.

"I feel very safe," Apu joked.

The

Diremites aren't spiders, but they're just as icky.

malboro NM in Carpenter's Landing was a total joke. I didn't even have time to build enough TP for Hexa Strike. The antlion NM in Attowha Chasm was trickier because its HP jumped back to full if it managed to scramble back to its lair, but we managed to bind it long enough. The major headache was climbing to the top of the mountain in one hour after the antlion died; the paths are extremely narrow and convoluted, and there are no barriers to keep you from falling off and having to start over again.

I gave up after my fourth attempt at the mountain. By that point it was 3:30 a.m. and I just wanted to sleep. I logged on Sunday morning and made it on the second try. I ran around Vana'diel to watch the next round of cutscenes and traveled to Pso'Xja to kill a few diremites to get a gray chip to drop. I'm now ready for the next big fight of Chains of Promathia, the battle against Diabolos.

I'm still fishing gavials to fatigue and making a ton of gil while I do it. My fishing skill hit Lv. 80 during today's extended stay in Gusgen Mines.