Cripple Fight!

Moriki

Ramuh prepares Judgment Bolt.

took me to Horlais Peak to demonstrate how a Summoner can solo the "Shooting Fish" BCNM. It's extremely easy and he did the fight naked. You run up to the arena, summon Ramuh, chug a Yagudo Drink, hit Astral Flow and then slam the Sniper Pugil with Judgment Bolt. That knocks the two Archer Pugils to half their life. Then you sprint back to the entrance and wait for Ramuh to die. By the time that happens, you've regained enough MP and had your blood pact timer reset so you can resummon Ramuh and slam them a second time when they come for you. The second bolt kills the lesser pugils and Ramuh melees the last bit. Simple as hell.

I'll have to practice a bit and reconfigure my macros, since I got too close to the pugils during my attempt and they killed me before I could trigger the second Judgment Bolt. Moriki said he didn't get it right the first time he did it, so I felt a little better about it. I want the Mannequin Head from that BCNM, and getting the rare Mannequin Body as a drop would be nice.

With that out of the way, I muled all my Summoner gear and grabbed my Beastmaster stuff. Neyla and I tried the Crawler's Nest, but the beetle camp was already occupied and the Killer Mushroom area sucked because of constant links. I was highly amused when Neyla died in a fight with a Doom Scorpion and homepointed because he'd forgotten he had Reraise up. Noob!

We

It's like watching paint dry when they paralyze each other.

checked out Gustav Tunnel, but there was already a party there. Resigned, we outposted to the Sanctuary of Zitah to grind our way to 46. It's a beautiful zone and I enjoy the music, and a Beastmaster certainly doesn't go wanting for pets while he's there. We started out using flies, leeches and funguars as our pets and using them on the goblins near the outpost.

The fun began when we push out to the coeurl areas. They ranged from Decent to Tough, which is wonderful to see. We were charming them and making them fight each other. Their paralyzing move is so strong that it tended to slow the action. Watching three cats basically stare each other down because they can't move is like watching a cage match between Lou Gherig, Christopher Reeve and Steven Hawking.

We had one of those fun Beastmaster ordeals where we were running to a safe spot and caught aggro, each of us soloing a cat and dealing with links by charming and releasing as needed until it was over. I love the end of those battles when we can giggle and say "I can't believe we survived that! I love this job!"

The

Neyla and Halifirien battle their way back to the outpost.

undead provided better xp. Most of the dogs and bones roaming around at night checked Very Tough or Incredibly Tough. They weren't always easy to fight because the areas are so small you constantly risk coeurl aggro; the cats also have a fairly large roaming area, so releasing one means it'll probably get its wits back and attack you if you don't hustle away pretty fast.

We got to Lv. 46 and built a decent buffer. We're going to try Gustav next time and then hit the Labyrinth of Onzozo at 47.

Misfire

We almost managed to kill the Snoll Tzar, knocking him down to about 1% of his life. Talk about frustrating! He probably would've died if we'd had Bio II on him. I tried using Holy to finish him off, but it didn't work. He exploded and knocked us out of the arena; I survived the blast, but didn't realize I still had that nasty Frost attack on me and died embarrassed on the outside.

There

The mini-jugburn party fights a Firedrake in Cape Riverne.

were no cluster cores to be found (except for some schmuck selling them 125k each in his bazaar, which was too outrageous for words), so Asmodius and I switched over to Beastmaster and had Neyla join us in Cape Riverne to farm some. Aarjuna came along as Black Mage. It seemed like a good idea, having a little jugburn party. We used funguars and Courier Carries to take down hippogryphs and wyverns who stood in our way, although we eventually had to farm a scale to get through one of the unstable distortions.

We finally got to a bomb, but we were outmatched. It chewed through our pets and then came after us because our Call Beast timer hadn't expired. We killed it, but Asmodius died and we didn't have anyone who could raise him. That was the end of our little adventure. Neyla left us to scope out hunting grounds for tomorrow's Beastmaster xp session.

Plan B was to head out to Lufaise Meadows and wait for foggy weather so we could farm them in a much safer environment. To my considerable surprised, Padfoot popped on top of me while I was waiting. I didn't know how it worked -- that five of them popped and only one dropped the treasures -- so hearing Hayatox and Quieren shouting they had claim had me running to meet them without realizing one was at my position. By the time I realized, it had been claimed.

On the positive side, I bought a set of Mannequin Legs for 70k from a bazaar in the Safehold. The guy also had feet for the same price, and I would've bought them if I hadn't already owned a set. He thanked me and said he hoped it was a fair price, as they'd been gathering dust in his moghouse for ages. Considering how much I paid for the feet, I thought it was a great deal.

One

The Snoll Tzar gloats and says "Try again, noobs!"

of Aarjuna's friends logged on and just happened to have a cluster core and was willing to give it to us. We returned to Bearclaw Pinnacle and again had our asses handed to us. We're getting better at it, though. This was the second time we got very very close to winning. I'm hoping we can kill that floating bastard on Tuesday when we meet again. This is easily the most frustrating Chains of Promathia battle so far, but we're not giving up because at this point it's all about revenge.

I needed to kill something, so I joined Neyla in the Crawler's Nest to level my NPC and hopefully get a coffer key for the eventual Beastmaster AF quests. I didn't get a key, but there's still plenty of time.

The Normie Conquest

Windaria, one of the Red Mages Neyla and I helped along to Rank 10, took a lot of flak at QCDN a few weeks ago for screwing over a Beastmaster in the Crawler's Nest. The BST had been charming Caveberries and using them to fight Nest Beetles alongside an xp party with few problems. A second party came along and started slowing down everyone's xp, and Windaria took it upon herself to try to drive off the BST by killing his pets. Neyla and I reamed Windaria over that, as did almost everyone else.

That

Caveberries are sweet pets against Nest Beetles.

thread came to mind as we were partying in the Crawler's Nest today. We had the Nest Beetle camp at G-9 all to ourselves, and the xp was sweet as hell. The Caveberries make excellent pets: they were doing insane damage on beetles and they gain tp like a madman. We could usually jump in and start swinging with our axes after the first few hits.

We were there well over an hour, doing near-constant Chain 5s before the first xp party turned up and decided to camp on top of us.

One of them was a BST with a crab familiar. It always makes me sad when I see that. If you're a Beastmaster, why the hell would you want to join a normie party? So you can advance to 75 really fast and only be good at partying with other normies? It seems like such a waste, and I feel a certain level of contempt for them the way a buckskin-clad mountain man feels watching city folk pretending to rough it in the woods.

I try to avoid a big ego about it. I've been in a duo most of my levels, so it's easy for me to picture a Lv. 75 BST who went solo the entire way looking at me like Curly in "City Slickers" and growling "I crap bigger than you."

They really didn't have much to pull since we were cleaning the place out, and I sent a polite /tell to the leader, Briine, to point out there was already an xp party here. He wasn't overly impressed by our claim on the camp, but after a few minutes of seeing us pull and kill every beetle as they popped (sometimes two beetles at once), he and his crew packed up and left.

We chugged along and a second party eventually turned up. It was almost the same drill as before: I sent the polite /tell to their puller saying there was already an xp party there and got a sarcastic "That's almost funny" response for my troubles. This crew was actively trying to complete for a little while, but they realized they weren't going to be getting past Chain 1 with us around. The leader had wanted to party in the desert, but some of his members were lacking the Altepa crystal. They took off, too.

Our only death happened when Neyla went to charm a caveberry standing around having a conference with some of his friends. The charm went bad and they all attacked Neyla at once.

"I knew that was going to happen at some point," I laughed, "but I was 100% certain it would be me."

The third xp party was the worst. Their leader seemed offended that we thought we had a right to the camp because we were there first. Their puller ran a circuit around that room, and I used Dia to beat him to a pop. I was again being polite but firm with the leader that the camp was taken; it might support two normie parties, but no way it could support them and us at the same time.

Just

Neyla's Doom Scorpion smacks around a Nest Beetle.

to have fun about the lack of crap we were going to take, Neyla charmed the Doom Scorpion down the hall and used it to fight a beetle practically on top of them. We had already dinged Lv. 45 and were just getting a buffer at that point, but the last thing I wanted was to make those idiots think they'd run us off. We stayed, and we claimed, and we completely destroyed their hopes of getting even halfway-decent xp. Neyla was about to return to Jeuno and come back as his Red Mage to really mess up their Easter, but they finally gave up and left our camp.

A couple minutes later the leader of the first party sent a polite /tell asking if we were still getting xp. I said we were almost finished and they could have the camp since it would be wide open. We were happy to give it to him after running off the third party.

Final score: BST duo 3, Normie Parties 0.

"Where's Windaria when they need her?" I joked at one point.

We took the scorpion with us just for the joy of parading it through the sac room. I brought a Caveberry along and we fought bees on our way out. At one point several Death Jackets linked and we were amused to watch them trying to kill the scorpion. When they finally brought it down and killed the caveberry we'd just charm one of the bees and set it on the other.

We finished up by returning to Jeuno so I could buy a Brigandine ("I look like an ad for Purina dog chow in this thing," I complained) and then flying to Kazham to buy a stack of funguar jugs from the NPC. I want to keep those on me all the time, along with some Courier Carries.

Kaboom!

I really really really hate the Snoll Tzar.

We were nearly an hour late getting started because Asmodius hadn't done the cutscenes in advance despite having a couple weeks to get them out of the way. Quieren wasn't too pleased and made it clear that if anyone in the static was late for that crap reason again it meant the day's activities were scrapped, no argument. I can't really blame him, although I couldn't resist pointing out the time we lost last week because Q hadn't done the mithra tracker cutscenes.

The

I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you...

trek to Bearclaw Pinnacle wasn't nearly as far into Uleguerand Range as I'd feared, and I kept close to Quieren while he looked for the hole where we had to drop. One of the true-sight taurus mobs saw me and attacked, which knocked off my sneak and invis and caused a raptor and a ghost to jump me. I dropped down the hole and they followed me. I died, naturally. Truegrave provoked the taurus instead of letting it despawn with the others. Aarjuna got knocked into the yellow during the fight and got blood aggro from one of the skeletons roaming down there. That's some serious entertainment!

The Snoll Tzar is a very large bomb who swells in size as the fight progresses. When you go in, you have 45 seconds to inflict as much damamge as possible before he explodes. You can extend that time by using Shu'meyo Salts (obtained by trading cluster cores to an orc NPC in a Uleguerand tunnel). We went in, buffed and rested, and then attacked.

I was first in the salt rotation since Truegrave opened with Invincible and I had nothing to do for a few seconds. Quieren, Asmodius and Aarjuna opened with Flare to try to nuke him down quickly. We got him down to about 25% of his life before we wiped. It probably didn't help that my macros weren't updated for the Lv. 60 cap. We tried again, but without our 2-hours it was a farce that ended with the Snoll Tzar exploding.

Demoralized,

Hayatox and Truegrave take down Bugby.

we decided to do the hobgoblin and bugbear fight in Mine Shaft #2716. We traded our snow lillies to the goblin NPC so he'd warp us there from Oldton Movalpolos. This fight was exciting because there's a large bugbear and four hobgoblins to deal with. Truegrave ran in and voked the bugbear, kiting him around the arena while everyone else took a hobgoblin. I mostly stayed in the center so I could cure Truegrave and silence the mages. It was a cakewalk, a thrilling victory after our normal pattern of wiping three or four times on each fight before we get it right.

Quieren and Truegrave hit Jeuno to buy more cluster cores. We tried one more run at the Snoll Tzar, but it moved out of range and Hayatox's salt failed to activate. Kaboom! Asmodius survived the explosion, but the rest of us were dead.

I traveled back to Oldton Movalpolis and gambled with one of the goblin NPCs for the return trip to Mine Shaft #2716. I bet 1,000 gil and won on the first try. I traded my Gold Key to the gate and got the cutscene there before returning to Bastok to complete that leg of the journey by talking to Cid.

I finished out the evening by guiding Neyla through King Ranperre's Tomb to the King Arthro camp so he could complete the Fellowship quest to strengthen his bond with Yawawa. Arthro's window was open and there were easily forty people standing around waiting for him. I chatted with Rappa a bit while Neyla was getting the cutscene; when it was over, we warped back to Windurst and logged out.

Linkshell XP Party

Partying

Ifrit readies Burning Strike.

in Qufim with members of your linkshell makes everything more fun. Neyla and I were on our White Mage and Summoner jobs, of course. Veresko came as Monk and Minima joined us at the last second on Dragoon. The hard part was finding a tank. I hate pestering people who don't have their flag up, but I managed to drag a Warrior named Elfie from Fort Ghelspa. We rounded it out with a Red Mage named Legolas (I had to give him props for being the first to register the name).

The ideal goal of the day was to reach 25 and leave Qufim behind, but the realistic goal was to get to 24 so we could static with Apu's Ninja. That would leave us only needing a puller/DD slot to fill whenever we wanted to go xp those jobs.

We had Elfie pulling, which was slow going. Legolas started lobbying (both in-party and in /tells to me) to be puller, so I had Elfie give him a bunch of arrows and turned him loose. The boy was fast, bringing us an almost endless stream of crabs and bats. We also took down a gigas (I set Carbuncle on the pet leech). We didn't try pugils because Elfie was Lv. 21 and therefore too low to tank them.

We got a powerlevel for a few minutes from a very bored mage, and once Elfie dinged we moved inside to fight goblins. Legolas managed to link the goblins on his very first pull and I died running for the zone. I'd set my homepoint outside, so I didn't bother waiting for a Raise. I pulled with Carbuncle after that.

Quieren was bored and came out to PL us a bit, but we were slaughtering the goblins faster than they could respawn. Legolas took off and we replaced him with a Thief named Bigpoppa. We moved to the west side to fight gigas, and I died again because Bigpoppa brought back a gigas and a bat; Q was going to kill the bat, but I'd already put Carbuncle on it because I thought it was a pet and not an Incredibly Tough death machine.

Quieren

Halifirien an Neyla duo their way to 24 in the Maze of Shakhrami.

had to leave after that. We moved camp to the stairs so Bigpoppa could pull from either side, and of course there was another lousy pull and the inevitable wipeout. I tried to stave it off with Astral Flow, but we were screwed anyway. We decided to call it a night. Bigpoppa, Elfie and Veresko homepointed while the rest us waited for Nanunanoo to come raise and Escape us.

"I wonder why White Mages never ask for powerlevels?" Nan giggled while we were resting and someone suggested he PL us until Neyla and I got our level and we declined.

"I think it's because we know how much it sucks for us," I said.

Neyla and I did a few worms in Qufim and then returned to Windurst. We wandered out to Buburimu and then to the Maze of Shakhrami to duo our way to 24 on worms, bats and goblins. There was a moment of hilarity when I started fighting a goblin standing in one of the bone huts without checking him first. It was a Tough, so we had to run for the zone.

Neyla got about 500 into Lv. 24 and I still need about the same just to get there. I'll wander back out and solo on Wednesday to catch up before we start leveling BST again.

Summoned for Duty

I

Dibbler carves up some goblin steak.

used to park my bazaar mule, Dibbler, near the Culinarian's Guild in Windurst Waters. I figured it would be a good place for cooks to find my fish. I was too tired and lazy to trot him all the way out there a few nights ago, so instead I left him outside the moghouse in Windurst Woods. The difference was amazing. There's so much traffic in and out of that moghouse that he was being checked constantly, and they'd picked him clean by morning. I've been restocking him daily and he's almost always dry by morning.

I've raised his fame quite a bit to flag the gobbie bag quests in Jeuno and have done two so far. I plan to do all of them so he'll have the maximum slots available for selling my fish. I'm too cheap to buy him an airship pass, so this morning I bought him some lowbie gear and popped out to Sarutabaruta and got him to Lv. 7. I'll solo to 15 or so and then either keep soloing or hit the dunes and get him to 20 for a chocobo license.

I guess it's true what they say: Location, location, location. I'm making about 300k a night, provided I can fish in the Sea Serpent Grotto for an hour or two. I also managed to get a .1 fishing skillup today, which was the first skillup in over a week. I was starting to worry.

The majority of my time was spent in the Sacrarium with Wicked Wayz. I tagged along because I had the Sealion's Crest Key and wanted to save them the hassle of fighting Keremet.

We got through the maze with few problems and was preparing to kill fomors for the Coral Crest Keys when we discovered the hard way that Otak had a lot of fomor hate. Her sneak dropped and two of them ganged up on her. She was dead before we had time to really react. The Fomor Dark Knight and Fomor Summoner were making with the AoE and being all around cranky. Malystryxx and I died before the fight was over. We moved to a better camp and got the keys pretty quickly. Then we escaped out and killed beastmen to erase our hate.

The

Wicked Wayz celebrates victory in the Sacrarium.

fight against Old Professor Mariselle was complete chaos, but a hell of a lot of fun. Unlike my static party's experience, where we wiped three or four times before we got it right, we did this one on the first try. Each of us had Poison Potions, so the constant Sleepga spammage didn't hinder us. We were running all over the room every time the Professor popped in a new place. Otak died, but otherwise it was smooth sailing.

We also managed to score some Red Mage, Dark Knight and Samurai subligar for Malystryxx, Zoner and Apu.

"Ooooh, I can store TP in my underwear," Apu joked.

"TP for your bunghole?" Zoner asked.

"I AM CORNHOLIO!" Veresko shouted, and we all cracked up.

"Are you threatening me?" I asked.

We were going to try for the Beastmaster subligar, but the fomor was in a room with six or seven friends. Otak pointed out that BST subligar was easier to farm in the Aqueducts, so we're all going to do a Minotaur run for the folks who need it when Neyla and I get BST to 50 and can wear the Gaudy Harness. That'll kill several birds with one large stone.

I had nothing to do at that point except fish and restock Dibbler. Neyla still hadn't logged on and I was casting about for something to do, so I thought "Hey, I'll try fighting Maat." I was getting some stuff together when Neyla sent me a /tell that he was getting his White Mage gear together so we could level our subjobs in Qufim.

We changed strategies this time. Instead of building a party -- which I hate doing -- we put up our respective flags and had search comments saying we were a package deal. I got an invite from one, but it turned out he was also a WHM and knocked that party out of the running.

Another person asked if I wanted to party, so I said "Sure, if there's room for my WHM friend." There was.

That's

Ramuh prepares to shock the crab into submission.

how we ended up in a party with two Samurai, a Thief and a MNK/WHM (a MNK/WHM using a STAFF, no less). It was crap xp, but at least we were getting our feet wet again. I mostly stuck to using Ramuh for Thunderspark and Shiva for Blizzard II magic bursts. Reaching Lv. 22 was a thrill because I could use Cure II again for better backup healing. The SAM party leader left after bringing in a Warrior replacement, but we didn't really complain too much when the party broke up thirty or forty minutes later.

Neyla and I stuck around and fought a few worms near the pond using Carbuncle and Garuda but evacuated when the undead started to turn up. We're halfway to 23, and we're hoping for 24 or 25 tomorrow. Then we can do BST to 50 and quest all the AF gear, which will goad us to level White Mage and Summoner again so we can level BST to be able to wear it. Whatever carrot-and-stick approach gets us through these subjobs, I'll take it.