Marching Orders

We had a Carbuncle Mitts run for Otak this morning. The lsmes had been gauging interest in it all week, but I didn't realize it was today or I would've gotten an offering to try for a Light Spirit Pact. I went along and we fought the NM twice, and the pact dropped on Wulfgar's turn. They're going to sell it and split the gil among the 5-6 people who were there.

I

I'm glad he's not pissed at me.

went to my first King Behemoth camp today with The Nameless as part of my effort to gradually increase my involvement. It's actually one of the nicer HNMs to camp because, while it has a three-hour window of opportunity to pop, the actual window is broken into 27-minute intervals in which he won't pop at all. The practical upshot of this is that you have to be alert for about three minutes and can then stop paying attention or go wash dishes or whatever for awhile. I mostly harvested fruit on "Animal Crossing."

We didn't get claim, though. So much for that. It was still fun to see all those people crammed into one small space and hoping to get him. Everyone was excited because it had been plain Behemoth all week and there was a good chance King Behemoth would pop instead.

Of

Seeing goblins running through town is disconcerting.

course the big event was a run at Dynamis-Jeuno. Working your way from the moghouse to Maat's area sounds like a very short trip, but we were circling clockwise around Ru'Lude Gardens and fighting our way through hordes of goblins. A set of Cleric's Pantaloons dropped before we'd even reached the top of the stairs but Kyrial beat me on the lot.

My party was Razzo (WAR/NIN), Naibara (SMN), Jescer (RDM), Ivela (MNK), and Kurii (DRK). I like having Jescer because he never forgets to refresh me, and Naibara is great about keeping Earthen Ward going so we don't get pounded by goblin bombs.

We were having a pretty easy time of it; we killed a few NMs for time extension, and the AF2 was dropping like candy. Veresko got a RNG hat, Dagry got the only piece of WAR gear to drop (he was the only one lotting for it, and he won with the ultra-low lot of 4), a NIN piece and a few Relic Lances dropped as well.

The

Maybe attacking the auction house wasn't such a great idea.

fun began when we hit the Auction House. I would learn later that most linkshells avoid it on their first try because it's almost always a wipe. I can see why. We had managed to clear most of the statues and goblins out of the way and had moved to the stairs when something went wrong. I'm not sure what triggered it, but all of a suddent the statues and goblins popped again and caught us with our pants down. It was a slaughter, but everyone except Ivela managed to die close to the palace so we could reraise and get back on our feet.

The biggest problem came from from bad marching orders as our time was winding down. A few people were saying "move over here" but none of them were saying where "here" was. Nearly half of our forces were resting up outside the palace while Ellemire and others were moving toward Maat's area. Ellemire swears he kept ordering all of us to head toward Maat, but I know I never saw it. Cythe, our main tank, was with us at the palace, and you'd think a missing main tank is the sort of thing you'd notice.

So we got caught off guard when a bunch of goblins and statues popped at the door to the palace and started killing us all over again. It was a complete clusterfuck. I managed to get about halfway back to the bend at the auction house when I went down. I had to wait for the patrol to turn its back before I could reraise and scramble out of the way. I rested, cast Reraise on myself, and then rested again so I could tractor and raise Cythe. His plan was to get back up to strength and then train the goblins away from the door toward the moghouse so at least some of us could get back to Maat.

There

Neyla and Halifirien celebrate snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

was a lot of arguing at that point. Ellemire was mad and didn't seem to realize just how many people had died. The rest of us were pissed because we hadn't known we were in danger and weren't told where to go. Others were moaning that we never should've tried the auction house.

We went from having plenty of time to running out of time, and I never even got a chance to see the boss. We're going to try it again next week. Hopefully we'll win. I know I wouldn't mind another shot at those Cleric Pantaloons, and it was a fun learning experience either way.

Bats and Beetles Go Boom!

I decided to switch over to Beastmaster and farm some animas for the upcoming Promyvion-Vahzl. I use the Crab Familiar or Carrie for those, and I swing along with my axe from the start. I rode out to Mea -- this was the first time I noticed the guy at the stable selling lower-tier pet foods and jugs -- and killed a few Wanderers until I got the drop. Then I rode to Buburimu, outposted back to Windurst and then out to the dunes to run to Dem. I got the drop on the first kill, rode a bird to Holla and got the drop on the first kill there, too. Three animas in ten kills is pretty nice, other than all the travel time.

I

I'd forgotten what this was like.

grabbed my Black Mage gear and had an invitation to Garlaige Citadel before I could board the airship to Jeuno. We camped at the first banishing gate. It took me awhile to get back into nuker mode, but I finally found my rhythm. I'd open with Frost and Drown, slap Poison on for good measure, and then wait for the next Provoke before dropping my first nuke. I always feel like I'm not nuking enough when I do this job. I know I am, and I know I'm largely waiting for the skillchain so I can do a magic burst, but the temptation to go nuts is always there.

Our tank got disconnected and we stood around another fifteen minutes before disbanding because no replacements were available. I ran around Jeuno and traded my Florid Stone for the ENM pass, had my animas synthed, and turned in a Chameleon Diamond for one of the CoP quests in Lower Jeuno before hitting the docks for some fishing. A stack of black sole and .4 in fishing skillups later, I got another invitation.

This party was much better, and I quickly reached 35. We were rocking pretty hard for an hour or so. The party suffered brain death when the tank had to leave, but it lingered a long time on emergency ventilation and replacement player feeding tubes. One of those replacements was a Dark Knight named Tigran, a gil-buying ass I've partied with before. We clashed almost immediately this time because he wanted to camp in the alcove off the stairs where two beetles pop and also because I chased off the powerleveler one of the replacements brought along. Tigran passed leader to me in a huff, so I moved us back to the first camp and got a "Thank you" /tell from our WHM.

I

I don't like when the beetles look at me.

tried setting up a skillchain for them to do, but it was falling on deaf ears. We fought a few mobs, but then the puller came back with two or three extra bats and didn't zone them. The WHM died and rode back to the citadel, but that was pretty much the last hurrah. Our puller went afk (or was pretending to be) and didn't respond. The other Dark Knight, a Japanese player, rounded up a few bats and let them kill the puller before we all zoned.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was a deliberate MPK.

With any luck, I can finally get to 37 and put BLM behind me on Sunday. Then it'll be time to get WHM to 70 (and Raise III) so I can focus on Maat.

Dance Floor Diremites

Today was nice and quiet. There was no death on the agenda, although Quieren tried to organize an run at the golem in Pso'Xja; nobody wanted to go early, so thankfully that idea was nixed. I hit the glacier to catch emperor fish for a high-level cook who wanted at least two dozen.

I started working out the costs of making shihei for Neyla's Ninja job. A stack currently sells for 15k. I have to get my Alchemy to 29 so I can make my own Bast Parchment. Once I manage that, I should be able to make four stacks for about 30k. That price will drop considerably once I get Woodworking high enough to HQ the recipe.

Nolie

Neyla and Halifirien make a light skillchain on a diremite.

and Neyla ran around Windurst and San d'Oria to get the cutscenes for the CoP mission "The Road Forks" and to fight the two NMs. Neyla and I waited around in Carpenter's Landing for Nolie and mostly entertained ourselves by watching a Beastmaster duo taking on forest tigers and mantraps with beetles as their pets. The malboro NM died fast, and the antlion in Attowha Chasm didn't last long. They even made it up that narrow path on the first try.

I returned to the glacier for more emperors at that point, although I took a break when Neyla needed to farm a chip off one of the diremites for the the Pso'Xja pass. We hit the uncapped western tower and practiced doing Light skillchains on the diremites, snowballs and maze lizards inside. I laugh every time we do Light and that disco ball animation goes off. Hexa would do 650-700 damage and then the skillchain would do about the same or a little more. It was awesome.

We finally got the chip and also Florid Stones for the "Test Your Mite" ENM battle I want to try. One of the prizes -- other than the 3000xp you get for winning -- is a Woodsman's Ring. I think a Woodsman and Venerer would be acceptable alternatives to Sniper Rings... and a hell of a lot cheaper.

I parked Dibbler, my bazaar/cooking mule, in the basement of Heaven's Tower so Zerayla could buy the emperor fish when she logged on. She picked him clean, making me 380k richer. I also hit Lv. 83 fishing skill while I was catching them.

Secrets of Worship

I'm

The fomor Black Mages tries to sell me a droid with a bad motivator.

beginning to think Ouryu was a fluke, since we managed to kill it on the first try. Our pattern since then seems to be dying two or three times on the current "Chains of Promathia" NM before we manage to get our shit together. Tonight, for example, we returned to the Sacrarium for the final showdown against Old Professor Mariselle. We had erased our fomor hate and could safely walk among them without Sneak. Truegrave was nowhere to be found, which was a problem since he had the other Coral Crest Key. Quieren bought a bunch of Lv. 50 Paladin gear to tank the ghost, but that's when True finally turned up.

We went into the Sacrarium with two Paladins, Andreva as Monk, Asmodius and Karihkinz as Black Mages, Hayatox as Samurai, and me as White Mage. We were wandering around the maze and fighting the taurus mobs we encountered with few problems -- Mortal Ray dropped Hayatox at one point because he didn't know to turn away -- and got to one of the classrooms where the professor appears. Unfortunately, Quieren was being nosy and wasn't thinking, so I only had half my MP when he clicked the ??? and the ghost popped and attacked us.

Old Professor Mariselle spawns two pupil ghosts, and the three of them made our lives a living hell. The prof is very fond of casting Sleepga II as well as using Curse and Gravity on everyone. Quieren tried to kite the two smaller ghosts, but it was a lost cause. We wiped out and had to wait for Mariselle to despawn so we could reraise and try again after a full rest.

We

Old Professor Mariselle tries to teach, but we don't listen.

got a lot closer the second time, but it was obvious that we needed better tactics because we wiped again. We decided to swap some jobs around. Quieren switched back to Black Mage and Karihkinz went Red Mage (the lack of Refresh was a big part of our loss). I bought some Poison Potions and we snagged Holy Waters so I wouldn't blow my MP pool dealing out Cursna after Cursna.

This is where I fucked up. We decided to use our remaining Coral Crest Key to let Kari through the door so she could get the cutscene first and get credit for killing the ghost, with the plan to farm another key after when fomor hate wouldn't be an issue. I targeted the wrong keyhole and Truegrave's key broke in the lock.

We got lucky, though. Vang, Phraust and a few people from a rival HNM linkshell called "Blood of Legends" saw we were in there and asked if we wanted to team up. They had two Coral Crest Keys. It was a no-brainer to say "Hell, yeah!" The only catch was that some of them had fomor hate and had to keep Sneak going the entire time or risk instant aggro.

We got through the door -- I told Vang he wasn't allowed to make jokes about me trying to stick it in the wrong hole, which made him laugh -- and they all got their cutscene. Then we started tracking down the ghost. Before the fight started we had each of them drop sneak one at a time to find out who had fomor hate and who didn't. One or two of them died and had to be raised, and they were ordered to stand back and cure if they could but otherwise stay out of the way.

Lich

The statue of Promathia is one of the Sacrarium's big tourism draws.

and Mummy aggro caused us to Escape, but once we were back inside we found the Professor and beat his ethereal ass. He couldn't sleep me because of the Poison Potion, so everything was great. One of the BoL people died to fomor aggro and didn't get raised in time to get credit for the kill, so we had to track down the ghost and fight him again.

It was a long and soul-destroying evening, to be sure. I'm glad we finally finished it so I can put that place far behind me. We're going to try the NM Golem in Pso'xja on Friday evening. Vang said he has some heavy hitters who want to finish CoP and will be bringing them along. I hope it works out.

In other news, Neyla spent the evening in Davoi with Crayola and a few other players. They took down the orc in the church twice for the Windy mission.

Tanked

My CoP fight against the ghost was postponed, so Neyla and I returned to the beach in Buburimu to kill more crabs. I went as DRG/WHM, but I quickly started to miss Oboro's breath attacks. As soon as we dinged 20 I returned to Windurst to switch to WAR/MNK.

Making

Neyla and Halifirien kill more crabs in Buburimu.

Neyla's life a living hell became the order of the day. My Great Axe skills were far below cap, so that's what I used. It didn't take long to realize why WARs use the G.Axe to tank. It's a slow weapon, but the spikes in damage are dandy when it comes to keeping hate.

I borrowed the boomerang to do some pulling, but the crawlers had a nasty habit of using Sticky Thread on Neyla and the birds tended to do more damage than you'd want to leave to a Pamama Au Lait. The crabs on the beach were lower XP per kill, but we could kill them faster.

Obviously, it's not fair to dog Neyla too much about the way I grabbed hate. He wasn't using all of his Ninja tools since it was just the two of us. Even knowing that, I still laughed my ass off when I finished off a crab and switched over to a one-handed axe and shield. It prompted this exchange:



If I'd been drinking milk it would've gone shooting out of my nose, I laughed so hard at that. We stayed a little while and dinged 21 before returning to Windurst.

I hit the Sea Serpent Grotto for two stacks of nebs (I'm going to turn them into Black Ink to make Neyla some Ninja tools) and several Grimmonites, which are up to 18k each. I went to the glacier for a bit, but I was too tired to stick around. I caught three emperor fish and logged out.

Invading Davoi

I

Oboro boils a snipper in its shell.

spent a few minutes killing beastmen in Lufaise Meadows to erase my fomor hate before switching to Dragoon. Neyla and I decided to duo our way to 20 and skip Valkurm Dunes completely. We traveled to Buburimu and fought bunnies for a bit and then wandered down to the beach. It was wonderful. A dragoon's Double Thrust followed by a wyvern's breath attack does major damage to a crab.

The two of us were ripping our way through tough Snippers and getting constant Chain 5. There was almost no downtime because Neyla synthed a bunch of Pamama Au Laits to keep a very strong Regen on us. We went from 17 to 19 in no time, and we're going to hit 20 tomorrow after my CoP mission is finished.

Dragoon is certainly growing on me. I'm going to keep leveling it, although it may just be more of a hobby job for when I get bored.

The big feature of the day was working Windurst Missions 8-1 and 8-2 with the static. Crayola, Pandorda, Istar, Passions, Fyanina, Kinkkerbelle, Firebrand, Faule, Tsiife, Aerdrie, Fravan, and Korjon turned up at Davoi to fight our way to the abandoned church where Dirtyhanded Gochakzuk dwells. We killed every orc between the cave and the church, and then someone -- Kinkkerbelle, I believe -- opened the door before we were ready and got aggro from the three orcs inside as well as their master. Two of us had to use Benediction to keep us from wiping out. I died and reraise as soon as the coast was clear so I could scramble inside the church to rest.

Once

Dirtyhanded Gochakzuk attacks from his Davoi throne.

we were inside, it was simply a matter of standing in the corner and waiting for the orcs and Gochakzuk to spawn again. The NM drops two Curse Wands each time, so we had to fight him over and over again until everyone who needed the mission had one. One fight got a little scary because Gochakzuk opened with Sleepga, but then the idiot used Poisonga II and woke us up again.

It took a long time to get wands for everyone, but we were finally able to fight our way to the taru NPC so they could give him the wands and complete that part of the mission. Having an alliance of people really speeded things up in comparison to the time Neyla and I did this. Hell, the orcs outside are tougher to kill than the NM. He has some truly nasty spells, but he's made of tissue paper compared to his brothers.

The

The Queen of Swords cardian does not die easily.

return to Windurst and Mission 8-2 involved a lot of running around to talk to NPCs and then sprinting off to Davoi and Fei'yin for cutscenes. We traveled into the Amaryllis Tower entrance to the Inner Horutoto Ruins for a fight against two cardians. Aerdrie ran ahead and clicked on the cracked wall thinking it would open up and let her through. Instead it spawned the two cardians and they slaughtered her. The cardians despawned while she waited for us to get there and raise her.

The actual fight was a bitch. Aerdrie pulled the Queen of Swords with no problems, but it couldn't be slept and we had to fight it. The other one attacked Neyla and he died fighting it. Pandorda, as your basic suicidal taru Black Mage is prone to do, died twice during the fight. We got through it, though. Once Neyla was back on his feet we returned to Windurst so the rest could get their cutscenes and pass through the mage gate to complete the mission.

Mr. Know-It-All

Today's activities were all over the map because I couldn't find a focus. Dagry and I escorted Aristarc through Korroloka Tunnel and the desert to get the gate crystal. I camped Leaping Lizzy for a bit. I even fished emperors in the glacier for awhile. Neyla and I teamed up for more lowbie action in Buburimu and got our respective jobs to 17.

Mostly I deserve points for getting off my taru butt and trying to get xp for my Lv. 34 Black Mage. I wasn't sure I wanted to party -- sleep was calling me -- so I put in my search comment that I was only up for about 90 minutes. I fished black sole in Jeuno and was about to give up when I got an invite.

The

We die fast, but we're damned cute doing it.

party sucked. Hard. I was amused at the idea of five tarus and a mithra partying together for the Snow White vibe it gives off, but we were doomed from the start. Three members of the party are in the same linkshell, but none of them seem to understand how to pick mobs in the right level for the party.

We started off in the Crawler's Nest, in some god-forsaken corner near a bomb and a doom scorpion. Our WHM was having connection issues and left before reaching camp, so I went into main healer mode. The puller somehow missed the memo about how crawlers link and shot one standing next to another. Sleepga... Escape.

They decided to try the desert instead, so I switched to WHM to teleport us out there. Instead of chaining beetles for mad xp like normal people, we ended up going to the southern oasis to fight Goblin Reapers. Our puller, who should probably have "Special Needs" sewn into her armor, brought back a link every time and managed to get blood aggro from a Lost Soul.

So they hit on the bright idea of fighting spiders on the west side. One of the other BLMs and I were exchanging /tells about how bad the party was. It only took one spider fight for the third BLM to say "This isn't working" and disband. The PLD who kept choosing these awful camps said "WTF?" and I explained -- as you would to a child -- that the xp sucked and we were targeting mobs out of our league.

"Sorry for wasting your time!" the party leader told me. "We'll get xp on our own."

That was my first time getting booted from a party. Considering I got 800xp in one hour, I don't think it was a big loss. I'm a bit of a masochist when it comes to parties because I'll try to make anything work, but this was above and beyond.

On the positive side, I finally managed to get a map of the Temple of Uggalepih. Getting through the wooden gate without being spotted by a Wespe or tonberry was an adventure, but I finally found a small private room where the coffer pops. I just sat there and waited awhile until it spawned, and since there were no mobs in the room I didn't even need Invisible.