/sigh

Yep, more Snoll Tzar death today. It's becoming a grisly ritual, where we gather and kill ourselves in a spectacular way. I'm getting really sick of it. I think we need to swap out some jobs; maybe having three Black Mages is what's screwing us over. I'm tempted to argue in favor of having Asmodious come as Beastmaster so he can sic a Funguar jug on it and Rampage his way through the battle.

We

Dead again... and again... and again...

were doing really well until the bastard used that uber-move that one-shotted me and Truegrave. Some of us just left our characters there and abandoned our computers until the 2-hour timers were up for another attempt, which of course ended in failure for much the same reasons.

Otherwise, I mostly fished. I caught about fifty gavials for Acute and finished the day 100k shy of the gil I needed to buy my Blessed Mitts. It'll only take me about thirty minutes of fishing in Gusgen to be able to afford them.

Neyla ran around one of the uncapped Pso'xja towers with Evildr, one of the linkshell's other White Mages, to help him get a chip for tomorrow's Diabolos fight. Neyla has little motivation for doing the CoP missions (after listening to all of my bitching, I can't imagine why), but at least with Diabolos out of the way he'll have Auction House access in the safehold.

We'll have time tomorrow to run around Pso'xja. The two of us can hopefully get a key and fine a real treasure chest for the map.

Shell Bash

Acute,

Quieren stopped by to tank for awhile.

the guy buying all the gavials I can catch these days, is a Lv. 75 Thief. He was in Beadeaux to camp a Valkyrie's Mask, so I asked him if he'd be in the mood to help me and Neyla farm some coffer keys. Mostly I was hoping to party up with him so we could leech his Treasure Hunter ability, but he came to the four-way intersection room to help us kill them after the NM popped and didn't give him anything good.

I hate camping the intersection room. The quadav are clustered together and like to link, the larva aggro you every time you rest so you're always having to clear them out, and you have to go through the gauntlet of Mutes and Afflictors just to get there. It's very annoying. We had early deaths when Neyla had three quadav on him and I threw out some Cures.

"I can handle two," Neyla pointed out, "but not three."

We even managed to drag Queiren away from leveling Black Mage for awhile. He came out as Paladin to join us, but made it clear he was waiting for a party invite and would leave if it came through. Mostly he wanted a Water IV scroll; there was a tarutaru Black Mage soloing the quadav in the room with us, and he was probably after the same thing.

Quieren also invited a Dark Knight along who needed a testimony. I had to run out and Sneak his cheap ass to camp because he didn't have oils -- he couldn't afford oils, but he'll probably spend more buying supplies for his Maat fight -- and got to be annoyed by the Mutes and Afflictors all over again. If Sneak had dropped in a bad place, I probably would've let him die.

Quieren took off for his party, and I finally got a key a little while later. Acute had another thirty minutes before he had to leave for gods, so we killed a few more. That's also when we found out the Dark Knight needed the testimony from the Adaman Quadav and started chuckling because we weren't going anywhere near that freakin' thing and his buddies. To his credit, the DRK stuck around until Acute had to leave. I teleported them out and then started working my way back into Beadeaux so Neyla and I could duo the quadav in the large room away from the intersection.

It

They're more relaxing as a duo.

was a huge improvement. First, we weren't constantly being drained of our MP keeping the melees alive because of all the damage they take. Second, the pace was less frenetic and stressful. We've developed a good rhythm for when we duo, and frankly I was glad to have the others well out of it.

Hell, at one point Neyla brought back three coffer mobs and we didn't have any problems taking them down, even with my accidentally smacking one with my hammer and waking it up.

"And you said you couldn't handle three at once," I laughed.

We finally decided to call our NPCs on the grounds that, by the laws of comedy, the use of the signal pearls would probably be wasted by an immediate key drop. The quadav were stubborn, though. We gave up and resolved to leave when the NPCs left. Neyla cut loose with a Chainspell series of Thunder nukes on the last mob -- something I'd never really seen in action before -- and we were amused to see the key drop. It seems comedic rules were simply biding their time.

We added some tweaks to our duo methods, too. I have a macro geared toward Neyla's Convert which hits my Divine Seal and targets him for Cure V. I stripped out the Light Staff equipment swap so all he has to do is apply a fresh Stoneskin and Convert in the middle of battle. I can give him full HP without losing TP for Hexa Strike and we don't have to stop.

I think I'll add a Blink macro, too. I tend to steal hate with Hexa Strike, so a few shadows would give Neyla plenty of time to regain control of the mob. It's a testament to our partnership that I don't get too worried about stealing hate on a Decent Challenge mob.

Maybe I should start leveling Ninja. WHM/NIN could be a lot of fun, I bet.

Neyla Guest Entry: Self-Reliance

Neyla, Halifirien and the NPCs fight a Sapphire Quadav. Splinter and his cohorts were nowhere to be found when this mutant turtle started pleading for help.

For the last couple of days Halifirien and I have been going around Vana'deil to collect all the chest and coffer keys we need for our Beastmaster AF. The way we figured it is that if we could get all these items early, we could collect all our AF early at 51 and be minimal bother to anyone else by only asking for help with the AF3 fight against a trio of mobs in Eldieme Necropolis.

As much as I like helping other people I really don't like it when I'm the one in need. If I can kill it alone or with just one other person, even if it takes longer than with a larger group, I'm going to do it. This is probably why I gravitate towards Red Mage and BST so much in the first place.

Of the four keys needed, I'd already obtained my own Castle Oztroja Chest Key during a mission run and had solo'd my Crawler's Nest Coffer key. Getting both for Halifirien was fairly easy, as was our run at getting two keys from the boney bastards in the basement of Garlaige Citadel. Today's adventure in Beadeaux was another story altogether, though. Every time I've been there to help in a coffer key hunt/skillup party the drop rate has been horrendous on everything but water crystals. I knew we were in for some long, hard hours.

Halifirien almost scored a coup by getting a 75 Thief he knows to come along for the first part of our quadav assault. Things would have been much better had he not been there to camp an NM and subbing BLM for Warp. All three of us suffered one death each around the intersection room favored by key/scroll farmers. Eventually our real life friend Quieren turned up with his 75PLD and it was skillchain heaven, even with the THF AFK most of the time. The big downside was the amount of MP being used. Melees are total sponges.

Quieren had ulterior motives for showing up, with hopes of landing a Water IV scroll from one of the BLM quadavs the THF was so leery of pulling. There was a taru RDM soloing the mobs with hopes of getting the scroll himself and I was quite content to let him go at them as long as he left all the other key droppers for us. If a Sapphire Quadav popped in one room while Quieren was pulling from another, I'd send the RDM a /tell and point him in the right direction. As far as I was concerned we were there to farm keys and nothing else. Halifirien got his somewhere along the way.

In

I've also been spending time in the Temple of Uggalepih with hopes of getting the pop item for Death From Above.

time Quieren and the THF (Acute) both left, along with a Dark Knight that had somehow hooked up with us with hopes of landing a DRK Testimonial from the Adaman Quadav, a mob no one else was interested in fighting. While Halifirien teleported the DRK to Holla so he could try his hopes in Davoi, I changed camp to a more wide open space and started soloing mobs while Hal worked his way back. By the time he finally arrived at the new camp I'd cleared the area out and was looking for fresh pops. It was smooth sailing from there on, aside from the continually craptacular drop rate.

Dedicated melees might laugh at our damage rate and occassional whiffing, but slow and steady wins the race and everything was a generally more relaxed after they were gone. Also, our downtime to rest MP completely disappeared. Halifirien would start things off with Protectra/Shellra IV while I buffed up with Stoneskin, Phalanx, Ice Spikes (which has a Paralyze effect I prefer over the actual Paralyze spell), Enthunder and Refreshes for us both. Then I'd pull (sometimes two at a time because of links, using Sleep II on one while we whittled away at the other) and Halifirien would Haste as needed. After a while, when my MP was finally down to around 100 and his was still hover around 800+, I'd Convert and we'd carry on with the killing.

Whenever we'd both get TP, I'd let off with Savage Blade and he'd close with Hexa Strike. I'd follow with a Thunder II in an attempt to diffuse some of his newfound hate, but overall it wasn't that hard because the quadav never seemed to pay him much mind. You'd think turtles would hate that hammer a lot more than they did.

After almost five hours we were ready to up, as were our NPCs. With one fight left in them, I decided we'd do our Light skillchain early and I'd Chainspell with Thunder II and Thunder III so the fight would be over before the NPCs could bail on us early. Halifirien enjoyed the light show and I enjoyed the fact that the mob actually dropped my key. Other than the eventual opening of our coffers in a few levels, I don't plan on going back to Beadeaux ever again.

To further illustrate the point, the quadavs were all easy prey to me and I ended the night 2.5k XP richer. No XP rings were used. That's a lot of turtle smashing.

Errand Day

Truegrave had a classroom presentation, so we didn't have to fight the Snoll Tzar today. It seemed like a good time to catch up on some errands.

First on the agenda was fishing gavials for Acute. He had a very lucrative BCNM run with Cythe and someone else the other night and now they have two Peacock Charms to sell. I stayed in the basement of Gusgen Mines for an hour or so until I had enough to fill my bazaar mule's inventory slots.

I really need to do more Gobbiebag quests on Dibbler; having 40 slots is nice, but it's not enough. Neyla is supposed to escort Dibbler to Jeuno at some point soon so I can use him to quest the Teleport-Mea scroll. Neyla had quested and sold his ages ago when he swore there was no way he'd ever level White Mage, but he'll be needing it soon enough. Having him buy it when I have a mule capable of getting it for free makes no sense. I should be able to flag more gobbiebag quests and kill a few birds with one stone that way.

When

Halifirien and Neyla farm a Castle Oztroja chest key.

the fishing was done, I subbed Ranger and hit Lufaise Meadows to farm a few cluster cores. I hit it lucky and got fog weather a few minutes after I arrived. I killed the first cluster and ran to the next clearing for a second; I can have a new salt made for Thursday's run at the Snoll Tzar.

Neyla and I headed out to the basement of Garlaige Citadel to farm two coffer keys for our upcoming Beastmaster AF quests. We didn't have competition for the mobs, although there was a BST named Angelita fighting Hellmines in the area. We're lucky bastards, because we got two coffer keys faster than it took us to farm one for Blaine a few weeks back.

We then hit Castle Oztroja for a chest key. We wandered too far up and wasted time killing the wrong yagudo before heading back down a level to the courtyard overlook and got what I needed.

It's one of those funky BST self-reliance things, I guess. The two of us will be able to handle all of our AF except for getting a key in Bedeaux, where the bastards tend to hit a little harder. I told Quieren I'm going to drag his Paladin ass out there when the time comes.

We finished out by leveling our NPCs in Zitah, slaughtering our way through cats and bones. Soulripr, a Black Mage in our linkshell, died trying to take down the Keeper of Halidom as we were finishing up. As we were crossing the zone so I could give him a Raise III, I got a /tell from a Lv. 75 BLM who had died in Boyhada Tree.

Once Soulripr was back on his feet we headed into the tree to take care of him. He'd subbed BST to charm a pet for skillups, but a mandy resisted his charm and he got gangbanged by two others who were standing around.

Neyla Guest Entry: The Beastmaster and the White Mage

Neyla prepares for a Beastmaster session before dinging level 45 for her checkerboard Brigandine armor.

Well it's been a while since I've posted anything, but I'm in a wordy kind of mood and here I am. Honestly, I'd rather play around in Vana'deil than write about it most days. A large portion of that comes from sheer laziness and a growing sense of ADD, which is funny when you consider how a game like FFXI wouldn't suit an ADD type. After logging off though, I'd rather be anywhere but by my computer.

That said, I've been playing Half-Life 2 again, in between BST and WHM sessions.

BST and WHM have been taking up most of my FFXI time lately. I don't think I've helped anyone with anything in the last week, except for a trio of 30-40 somethings who I ran into in Korroloka Tunnel, who were wandering around in an attempt to find the fight for unlocking Ninja. I think that was the only time I ever agreed to be main healer in a party.

The BST thing has been magnificent. From outpulling and outkilling three normie parties in the Crawler's Nest to going around to find new hunting grounds with as few people and as many pets as possible, I love every minute of the job. There are times, levels and locations where life gets tedious - like leveling on coeurl vs. coeurl in the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, which is like watching the South Park cripple fight over and over again because of all the paralyze moves - but it's amazing how BSTs can survive in the harshest of environments, provided there's something to charm.

Shortly

Charming a Doom Scorpion for the first time can make a BST feel downright giddy.

after message boards started lighting up with news of a possible Black Mage nerf, one of the other Red Mages in WickedWayz chimed in that he's afraid they might nerf us as well. I chimed in that I'm already 75 and merited, so I really don't care. "But don't you want to keep being uber?" he asked. "My BST will be more uber than my RDM," I replied. He laughed, but it's the truth. RDMs can kill things other jobs can't even dream of, but on most mobs in the game they do no better than THF, NIN or BST - they just take a hell of a lot longer. BST, provided there are charmables in the area, can outsolo them all.

And then there's White Mage. What else can I say about WHM other than it's like pulling teeth for me, Marathon Man-style. Now that Halifirien and I have talked Apu from WickedWayz into being our tank to 37 things are going a bit more smoothly because at least half the party will know what they're doing, but already I can see why a NIN might bore a WHM to death. Even against mandragoras bouncing off the walls like they're deep into a Hunter S. Thompson coke binge, Apu held his own and Halifirien's new SMN buffs helped everyone else along as well. It makes for good XP and an easy ride, but makes an already redundant job like WHM that much more tedious for me.

Our jungle party yesterday was the best party we've had in a while - probably due in part to the fact that four of us were Rank 10 for our respective nations (three Windurst, one Bastok), hinting that we might know what we're doing and what's expected of us. It slowed down after our taru BLM left and we replaced him with a Thief so our taru Dark Knight didn't have to pull anymore, but I'll take any points I can get as long as I'm inching my way toward being done with the job forever. If I take it past 37 it'll only be far enough to quest and learn the remaining teleport spells.

Before logging off last night Halifirien, Apu and I did the escort quest through Eldieme Necropolis so we could get copies of Miratete's Memoirs and use them to get even more XP on the lower jobs. I think it might become a weekly thing. I know what once Halifirien and I can more easily charm Crawler's Nest mobs, we'll probably be doing that escort every chance we get. I only wish we could do Windurst's escort through Garlaige Citadel instead, so I can go back to helping taru again, even if he is an NPC.

Buffed

Acute is a high-level Thief who runs with The Nameless and pulls for lolDynamis. He's in the market for gavial fish -- nearly 200, he figures -- and asked Quieren to catch them. Q turned him down but pointed him in my direction. After a bit of price haggling (I discounted from Auction House price, but not as much as he wanted because I can't get skillups from gavials anymore), we agreed to a deal which will let him skill up his bonecrafting and will pay for my Blessed Mitts.

Otherwise,

Hooray for the Galka Summoner power-level.

the subjob drive continued today. We hit Yhoator Jungle this time, camping in the tunnel with goblins roaming on either side. It started slow because we were underpowered for the camp, but it started to improve. The Warrior I'd invited, Skeeta, went afk without warning and I booted him after three or four fights and replaced him with another Warrior who was seeking. I also found a Samurai, and that gave us more firepower for chopping mandies into mulch.

One of the melees had a Galka Summoner friend who wandered out to powerlevel us while he waited for a party invite, although he eventually took his flag down and went /anon. It's amazing how quickly my dislike of powerlevelers is swept under the rug when I'm leveling a job I don't really care about. Neyla was bored out of his mind (being the unlucky White Mage in a PL party is often the ultimate in xp leeching) but wasn't complaining. We managed to get our respective WHM and SMN jobs to 28 before we disbanded.

I was excited to get Frost Armor, but the spell's duration is so short that it's not really worth wasting a bloodpact on it.

It was nice having Kurenae running around the camp as Beastmaster. She was charming the lizards and fighting the goblins, eliminating some awkward pulls for us. She had her flag up for a party, but at least she wasn't sitting on her ass in Jeuno waiting for it to happen.

Neyla and I finished out the evening by leveling our NPCs in the Crawler's Nest. His dinged 47 and mine hit 40. We also got a Nest Coffer Key for my eventual Beastmaster AF quest.

Dedication?

I had originally planned to spend the morning partying as White Mage to build up my steadily-dwindling xp buffer -- Curse you, Snoll Tzar! -- but instead spent it fishing and fishing and fishing. I caught a ton of emperors before moving to Qufim Island for squid and bluetails and then on to the Sea Serpent Grotto for bream, nebs and grimmonites. By the end of the day I'd sold enough to finally buy my Blessed Trousers for 1.7 million.

Before

Mandragora madness in the jungle.

that purchase came the jungle party. Neyla and I snagged Apu's Ninja and headed for Kazham to find three other players to round us out. I found a Dark Knight, Monk and Black Mage (the BLM said our minimal level spread sounded too good to be true and gladly joined us).

The Monk's gear was wretched, and the Black Mage ran to the auction house and spent 40k to buy him a few "essentials" (he didn't even have Courage rings). The Monk was grateful, but then whined that he didn't get better items. That's the sort of thing that makes you want to slap someone. When a noob tries to use "I'm poor" as an excuse I always want to shake them and scream "Stop partying and farm until you're not poor anymore!" He'll have a very rude awakening when he hits the infamous "Level 40 Ouch."

I'm not a big fan of the first jungle because of all the damned goblins running around, but we only had a few deaths along the way. I'm still not completely sold on the Summoner job. I'm enjoying it more now that I'm getting useful bloodpacts like Shining Ruby, Aerial Armor and Tail Whip, but I think Lv. 37 will be the endpoint for me unless I decide to press on to 40 just for level-capped events.

Four or five of us were close to leveling, so we disbanded after we dinged. I went to Giddeus to help Apu, since he wanted to tank the Rank 3 dragon fight as a Ninja for linkshell members Lepruvian and Drahzan. They didn't find out until the last minute that they needed to kill orc in Ghelspa Outpost, which led to extremely long delays.

I ran afoul of the forums at Allakhazam when I read up on the fight. One of the posts said they went in with three Summoners and used Astral Flow to wipe out the dragon with Leviathan's Tidal Wave. We went in and Lepruvian and Drahzan fought the eye while Apu kept the dragon occupied. I brought out Carbuncle, and that crazy little electric squirrel started tanking the dragon. Apu couldn't get hate off it, and I should've left it at that.

Instead,

Fighting bones for the escort mission.

I waited until the eye was dead and brought out Leviathan. His Tidal Wave move hit the dragon for a whopping 22 damage. Apu and I died because I had no MP for cures, although Apu was able to 2-hour first. The other two managed to finish off the dragon. I apologized for the craptacular experience, but they were too busy thanking me just for showing up and apologizing to me because I deleveled back to 25. Next time I'll stick with Carbuncle and see how Searing Light does.

It was nearly midnight before Apu, Neyla and I started the necropolis escort quest to get some free xp. It was extremely easy, and I switched back to Summoner to eat the page and get my level back. We're going to party again tomorrow.

Depending on Apu's schedule, I'd be happy if the three of us can move along as quickly as possible to Lv. 37. I don't hate the job as much as Neyla hates White Mage, but it's not bringing me a lot of joy. It's strictly one of those things we're doing because we have to. For me, it's an annoying calisthenics regimen prescribed by the endgame doctors. For Neyla, it's the hideous bit of sacrifice required to eventually obtain Beastmaster godhood.