Beast Jackcoat

Neyla

We need more Fleshcravers in Toraimarai Canal.

and I spent Friday evening in Toraimarai Canal, using leeches against bats and the Fleshcravers. I really hated the camp when we first started out because the leeches aggro. I eventually hit on the bright idea of moving down the hall to camp at the stairway leading into the room with all the Scavenger Crabs and Cutlass Scorpions. That improved our situation quite a bit.

It's a lot of running to get down to the hall, charm a leech and use it to pull a mob back to the stairs, but we were getting Chain 4 pretty often. Our biggest problem was killing them too fast and running out of prey, so we'd pull a crab from the other room.

We finished at 5k away from Lv. 58 and spent some time helping Hadafal get a chip and Florid Stone from one of the Pso'xja towers.

Neyla

Grandma... what a big eye you have!

and I were supposed to see a movie and hang out today, but he wasn't feeling well. I ended up joining my linkshell for some BCNMs. They'd scheduled a KS30 "Copycat" run to get some Destroyers for Excalibur.

Nolie, Hoiy and I got there a little early and died a few runs through the "Royal Jelly" BCNM so they could get the Ni scroll. We got two Ni and one Erase. A WAR named Lucifel joined us. It was sad how easy that BCNM is.

"Copycat" is a lot of fun, too. It's against an Ahriman who constantly charms members of the party. The nice part is he charms in the order they were invited into the party, so you can work out a charm order in advance so you know when to switch from your uber-weapon to a Signet Staff or something. Quieren tanked the fight, and he was very happy when he got his chance to hit me with his Earth Staff. I'd forgotten to bring my wand, so I was either whacking away with my Light Staff or punching them barehanded.

We did the fight five or six times -- after awhile, it was all a blur -- and got the Destroyers. I got a Rare/Ex Retributor's Axe, and I imagine there'll be some gil from the other drops. We wiped on the last fight.

Once

We look awesome in our sheep costumes.

Neyla logged on, we headed back into the canal for awhile. It didn't take us long to get to 58 so we could equip our Beast Jackcoats. I love the way it looks, but I'd only ever use it in my Reward macro or for running around. I'd much rather keep the Gaudy Harness on unless I'm using my Rampage macro.

Some idiot came down to solo pugils and ended up getting blood aggro from the bones. He died, and Neyla suggested we be "neighborly" and raise him. Everything else was cleared out, so it was a lukewarm rescue mission against possible odds.

We're supposed to do "Test Your Mite" tomorrow with the linkshell. I'm hoping we'll get enough xp from it to put us 6k out from Lv. 59.

Swimsuits at the Ready!

Neyla and I were supposed to level Beastmaster yesterday, but the update sorta screwed us out of our time and I ended up spending the entire afternoon fishing. I'm no longer poor, although I was sorta pissed that some assholes had undercut the hell out of grimmonites to 14k each. It felt good to have some time off from my other "duties."

Today was CoP day. The three NM fights for "Calm Before the Storm" were a complete joke and we blazed through them in no time. We did the bugard first, then booked it over to Bibiki Bay to take out the manta, and finished up with the cryptonberries in Carpenter's Landing. The last fight was the only one where we weren't on auto-pilot.

With

This is not a boat accident! It's a shark!

it over, we headed for the Sealion's Den and the fight with Tenzen on the airship. I expected more from it, really. I worried about the three tarus nuking us to hell and back while that crazy Samurai was trying to slaughter us. It didn't happen. We blasted that poor bastard down fast, and the only death was Aarjuna's.

We were making fun of Sehl'teus' method of having all his speech in parentheses to indicate telepathy. We were saying things like "(I am emo.)" and "(I fucked your mother.)" Aarjuna, still dead, was a corpse in his cutscenes. I bet that was funny to watch.

Then we were in Al'taieu, aka "Sea." Holy hell, we couldn't believe it. In the real world, we would've been high-fiving each other like crazy and slapping each other on the back. Months of work and slogging through missions and dying repeatedly (I still hate you, Snoll Tzar!) and we were in a whole new area.

It's a beautiful area, although the "ground" makes my brain hurt. It's like you're walking in an aquarium stacked on another. It throws off my depth perception a little and will take some adjustment time. There are also "fish" everywhere, although nothing an actual fisherman could catch with a Lu Shang.

There

This is not your father's goldfish.

are the Hpemde, aka "goldfish," swimming around. They aggro and follow you around, but they don't actually attack until you attack them. After awhile, they get bored and swim off. Then there are the Phuabo "sharks," which stay under the "floor" but will fly up to your level and attack if you get in their line of sight or walk over one. The sharks check Very Tough to me at 70.

We decided to push on and do the next mission, which involves traveling to three spires and fighting the Aern beastmen NMs. Each spire pops three Aerns, and it took us awhile to find them because we didn't have a map or a guide. Along we way, we spoke to the Quasilumin NPCs (they look like Dark Elementals to me) for information about the area.

At one point I spotted one of the Yova jellyfish (known as UFOs) in the sky. Quieren didn't see it and thought I was smoking crack. I don't see how you can miss something that large.

The aern fights were exciting. They hit us hard, and it wasn't always easy to keep them slept. Quieren died during the first fight, so I had to raise him fast when the last aern died so he could get the cutscene. Once we had all three fights, we returned to the palace and went inside to obtain our Tavnazia Rings, which can warp you to the Safehold once every 24 hours.

For

The three aerns aren't as angelic as they look.

shits and giggles, we decided to kill one of the Aerns inside the palace. It was a Dragoon with a white wyvern. I got 140xp when it died, and then it scared the crap out of us by reraising! We had to kill it again and got another 140xp. It turns out the Aerns have a 40%-50% chance of reraising when they die, no matter what job they have.

We disbanded, but I stayed behind to track down the last Quasilumin NPCs to get the map of the area. My only death of the day came when I got chomped by a shark, but I still got the map. Good times.

Back in Jeuno, I fished up three stacks of Black Sole because they're at 80k a stack again. I got .4 in skillups while I was there, which put me over the hump and dinged me to 86 Fishing skill. I was also happy to see grimms were back to 18k where they belong.

I went out to Attowha Chasm to help Neyla, Nanunanoo and Hadafal with Hada's antlion fight. It died fast, but I was tired and didn't stick around for Hada's climb up the mountain.

Neyla Guest Entry: Refreshaholics Anonymous

Neyla fights a pair of NM gargoyles for access to a small portion of Pso'xja.

With as little time as I've been spending on Red Mage lately it's funny to walk around in my Beastmaster AF and still get /tells from people who think of me as a RDM first and foremost. A lot of the time it's someone wanting something - like a level 40-something Summoner who knows me from various online forums and wants to know if I'll go kill Leviathan for him, or someone else who needs a key or an NM tanked for a piece of AF - but sometimes it's someone who just wants to argue.

As it stands RDMs are some of FFXI's most fortunate children, to a point. We never have to wait long for parties (from about 40 to 73 anyway) and we're versatile enough to survive situations most jobs wouldn't even attempt. This, of course, pisses a lot of people off. If they try to invite you to a party when you're dead set on doing something else, they'll argue with you half the time and say something along the lines of "but we can't XP without you..."

To which I say, "Why the hell not?"

RDMs

Being a level 75RDM helps when lottery NMs like Mouu the Waverider interrupt your Beastmaster sessions.

and Bards are actually more luxury than necessity. If anyone truly "needs" us it's Paladin parties because they require so much mage support. That said, a good WHM with the right gear and a good knowledge of the values of Bar- spells and Regens - and maybe some cooking skill - can get by just fine without us. Black Mages don't actually need us at all since they spend most of their existence on one knee or flatout sitting on their asses. But people have become so addicted to cookie cutter setups that they never dare think outside the box. Perhaps a BRD or a RDM can get you some more XP faster, but not having one won't totally break you either.

If you're so strung out over a couple spells or a handful of songs that you don't want to leave to Jeuno to face the day without them, perhaps the tarus should start some sort of rehab clinic for you in Windurst Walls. No one ever goes there except for BSTs headed for Toraimarai Canal or lowbies bent on unlocking Summoner, so you'd almost be guaranteed complete anonymity. (Just avoid the Dynamis gathering point and you should be fine.) If you don't feel like changing your ways and want to stay hostage to a pair of jobs few level because there's little glory in being a supporting cast member, I pretty much think you deserve every inch they shove in you.

Also, bear in mind that Refresh and BRDs didn't always exist and that people got along just fine without them.

I know players who push on with parties even though they almost never find people with either job and they still manage to bring in 5k-6k an hour, which isn't that bad. In fact considering how many nooblets continue to exist in Vana'deil it can be pretty damn good at times. Odds are if you get a RDM you're going to get a particularly shitty one who can't keep a Refresh order or cast Paralyze between their feeble attempt at sword swings anyway, so what's the point of keeping them around if you see they're no good and you can earn more points by replacing them with some dejected Dragoon who's stuck in Jeuno with his wyvern licking the tears from his eyes.

I

Neyla kneels before a tarutaru involved in a quest involving her NPC friend, Yawawa.

bring this up mostly because of an argument I had with a LS mate that somehow went from Avesta's legendary solos (I admire your courage, little fella, but if RDM ever gets hit with SE's nerf bat I know I'll be able to lay almost all the blame on you) to mages and the "attitudes" they cop when they turn down invites, since it seems "no" is an unacceptable answer if your levels are showing your name can be called up via search. Mages, it seems, should always have to go anonymous unless they're willing to drop everything at a moment's notice in order to serve someone else's needs.

And we're the ones they say are selfish.

Eventually someone said that if parties didn't need RDMs and BRDs to get a couple extra thousand points an hour, then he didn't need parties at all.

"Did you just tell a BST that people don't need parties to get points?"

Dead silence.

It's no wonder almost every BST I know is a high level RDM, BRD or BLM interested in some relative peace and quiet, not to mention a job where they don't have to deal with people who want to treat them like slaves or feel dependent on anyone else at all. Freedom is a beautiful thing.

/endrant

Ahab and Omega

Quieren's obsessive drive to get Sea access is so maddening I'm starting to think he should change the name of the linkshell from lolCoP to Pequod. If there are any white whales floating around down there, I pity them when he finally struts in.

Today's airship battle was nearly called off because Truegrave and I were almost in the poorhouse and couldn't afford a lot of meds to carry into the fight, but we stretched our budgets. Truegrave even loaned me some gil. I was determined to at least get a few practice runs in if it looked like we weren't going to win it.

This

Having five Mamments angry at you is not fun.

was my first time going into a fight as WHM/SMN (other than the Windy missions where I Carby-pulled the cardians) for Auto-Refresh and an MP boost. My /SMN is gimped (as Neyla delighted in reminding me through /tells), but not when I'm in a 60-capped zone.

We did not get off to a promising start. The entire battle is made up of three fights, and there's a 45-minute time limit. The first fight is against five Mammets who, like the ones in Cape Riverne, like to change jobs and will cast high-level -ga spells if they switch over to mage. As White Mage, my job was to keep people alive and also try to silence the Mammets... which isn't easy when they run around so you can't keep track.

We wiped twice on the mammets before we managed to get it right, and we went into the second battle without a whole lot of time. Omega wasn't bad, but I quickly ran out of MP because Truegrave (PLD backup tank) and Hayatox were Cure sponges. I think Quieren and Asmodius were healing more often than they were nuking.

A change in tactics was required. Truegrave switched to NIN so he and Aarjuna (NIN) could dual-tank. Hayatox switched from SAM to WAR/NIN. We went back in and wiped on the Mammets again. The next round saw us blazing through the Mammets and then getting in to Omega. Having two NINs made a world of difference because I wasn't spamming Cure III like a madman.

We

Omega crouches over my poor, broken tarutaru body.

had deaths, but the key is to die where you enter the fight because Omega moves to the opposite side and gives you plenty of time to reraise. He managed to Stun me as we were heading toward a wipeout, so I couldn't make it all the way across. I reraised and tried to move, but he slammed me back down. Omega was almost dead, so the BLMs waited until their weakness wore and they had enough MP to use Burst and finish him off.

As soon as the tanks had him, I popped back up and scrambled out of the way. The two Bursts didn't quite finish him off, but he was so close it only took another minute of combat.

That win gave us our first look at Ultima. Again, having two NINs made it pretty easy. He kept me busy because he liked to spam Chemical Bomb and put Elegy and Slow on the NINs, which meant I'd have to spam Erase for most of the fight. He also has a Petrification move. The WHM does not get to rest during the fight, which is why I had so many Yagudo Drinks and Ethers. I also used the Vile Elixir I've had ever since the King Arthro fight I did a few months ago with TheNameless.

Ultima

I'm comfortable standing way the hell over here away from the fight.

did some sort of hate resetting move and then turned and petrified the mage line. That was the end of the fight. There was nothing to do except stand there like a statue and wait for death.

"One last attempt," I said. "That's all I can afford. I haven't had a lot of time to fish lately."

"All tarus are fat and lazy," Quieren laughed.

"I'm not a hobbit, goddammit!"

Fully rested and resupplied with meds, we went back in and immediately wiped on the Mammets.

"Okay," Aarjuna said, "that one didn't count."

Dispirited, we went back in and somehow hit all clicked together like we'd been doing the fight for years and could handle it in our sleep. The Mammets died quickly, and Omega wasn't much of a problem. Hayatox died before he could use his polymer, but he Reraised and and slapped the robot with it. Quieren hit Manafont and blasted him down.

We

Poor Ultima... he's dead and he doesn't know it yet.

went into the Ultima fight with 24 minutes to spare, so we waited for Hayatox to get back to full health. As soon as he was ready, we waded in and totally cleaned Ultima's clock. It was beautiful. I spammed Erase on Aarjuna, Truegrave and Hayatox and re-Hasted them when I could. I only had to use Stona twice.

Our clear time was 29 minutes, 43 seconds.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think we'd clear it on the first day. I spent 150k on meds and lost 4k in experience points. Three of us deleveled to 74. Reraise Hairpins and Gorgets purchased before the fight were drained dry. It was completely insane, but we finally won and I'm feeling very pleased.

On Thursday we'll do the three NM fights and have our showdown with Tenzen.

Neyla Guest Entry: Forks in the Road

Neyla and Halifirien recently tore through Bostaunieux Oubliette with Dark Aspic tanks. Sadly, they wouldn't attack any passing elvaan the duo tried to Sic them on.

Long time no see it seems.

Most of my recent time in the game has been spent leveling Beastmaster with Halifirien, in between his stints with his CoP static, and feeling a bit lost whenever I'm not. All the help my Red Mage is known for has pretty much fallen by the wayside because there's only so much you can do before you start feeling neglected yourself, which is why I look forward to returning to Dynamis and even Sky when the BSTs hit 60 and we put them away for a while. I wouldn't mind some Duelist gear just to satisfy the completist in me, or, better yet, Monster items for the BST.

Probably the most time I've spent on RDM lately was to help a longtime friend named Hadafal get keys for his RDM AF, mostly because I was bored while Halifirien was on vacation and Hada has been leveling at an unbelievable fast pace when you consider the fact that his BLM has been in the 60s for probably a year. Generally the man would rather hang out in Windurst Woods and play seamstress (clothcrafter) than go out and kill something, so seeing him so motivated has been a surprise.

Also surprising was how it easy it was to get people to help us out when I didn't feel like carrying the brunt of the work. Good reputations for both of us made volunteer a volunteer THF for Castle Oztroja (Necrosis) and a SMN (Galaika) for the Necropolis easy to find. Hadafal also has the luck of a whole party of mandragoras sporting four leaf buds since every time a key dropped the coffer would pretty much pop right on top of him.

But

Neyla waits for the Port Jeuno airship to Windurst with her first Beastmaster hero, Crookedmidget.

ah, the BST. At this point we've been going at it so long and hard that I've almost forgotten how to do anything else. Beastmasters I know (Crookedmidget, Miros, Kaikyaku, Gideon) have all turned their heads at how fast we've leveled as a team, but the truth is that even though I feel lost without it we're quickly reaching burnout phase, especially when a good camp goes bad because one level on BST can make a whole world of difference XP wise. Grinding it out in Sea Serpent Grotto was OK because there was always pets and prey and RMT I could slap, but Labryth of Onzozo and its AoE spamming squids get old fast, as does the hunt for viable hunting grounds whenever the numbers turn too low to justify the time.

I love BST. It's the most fun I've had in this game and in the right setting could outsolo my RDM with ease, but the break at 60 is going to last quite some time I think. We still plan on switching to it at least once a week for LS runs at Test Your Mite though. We already have a Black Mage, a White Mage and a Ninja lined up to go with us, which should be more than enough. Our best alternative would be Pulling the Strings, but I welcome the extra bodies and fresh faces at this point. Besides a break from BST, I wouldn't mind more of a break from each other as well, so Halifirien can go back to WHM and I can go back to meriting RDM and leveling WAR on my own.

If Quieren - our real life friend and coworker who recently made BLM his third level 75 job (also WHM and PLD) - wants to group us all together for merits when Halifirien hits 73, that'll be fine. But it will also take a while to get there.

Next up for the BSTs will either be killing bones and bats with leeches in Toraimorai Canal, which should prove interesting with sound and blood aggro all around, or taking on various mobs in Ulegeurand Range. Just for the love of god, no more Labrynth of Onzozo. Unless the floating squid is named Charybdis I don't want to see any for a while. At least until my RDM starts camping and killing Ose for our Assault Jerkins, at which point I'll grow sick of cats.

With the downtime on BST I might also dip back into CoP missions since Hadafal has caught up. I have absolutely no interest in Sea or Limbus right now, but new areas and new mobs are fun. New to me anyway. All that and the new expansion should keep me entertained and busy for quite some time.

Leaving Onzozo

Onzozo

Neyla and I quickly grew tired of manta AoE attacks.

was more of the same today, a seeming repeat of our last experience there. We camped in the same place, fought the same mobs, and even had Peg Powler pop an hour or so into the visit. She decided to wait until the end of the chain so we didn't have as many pets to use, but we eventually wore her down and I had a nifty Rare/Ex Schwarz Axt of my own. Wulfgar logged on about fifteen minutes later, which sucked because he really wanted the axe.

"My Schwarz is still bigger," Neyla joked.

My Schwarz doesn't run on batteries and have to be kept in a bedside drawer, mithra. I threw the axe away.

The only mishap came when I got cockatrice aggro while running out of the cave to buff and cure myself. My pet was already fighting a manta and I flubbed my macro and released it instead of turning it on the cock. To add to the hilarity, I targeted the cockatrice and charm-bound it instead of charming the scorpion beside it. My death was swift.

The xp turned to crap once Neyla hit 57, and it took us nearly an hour to get enough for me to ding.

This poor goblin chose the wrong mithra to aggro.

We decided to scope out Toraimarai Canal as our next possible camp. The leeches were a lot easier to charm, but I got cracked up when Neyla forgot his HP was in the yellow when he went to pull a bat. He got aggro from three or four Mind- and Fleshcravers and died (knocking him back to the same xp level I had) while I hauled ass down the tunnel and used my Warp Cudgel to get out before the bones came for me.

We're also going to check out Ulegeurand Range Thursday, which may be a better camp if it doesn't already have a Beastmaster there.

I still needed the Detector fight for CoP, and Neyla agreed to help me. We went out to the Dilapidated Gate so I could pop them. It was a tougher fight than most we've done together, but still pretty easy as long as the others were sleeping and you could take them one at a time. Neyla couldn't resist sending Quieren a /tell calling him a pussy for saying the fight was difficult.

With that out of the way, I retired to the Sea Serpent Grotto for some badly-needed fishing time. I got a .1 skillup off a bream (only .1 away from Lv. 86 now) and Neyla went off to do the NPC quest and earn a Tactics Manual for Yawawa.

I also bought a Mannequin Body out of someone's bazaar for 300k. Considering some of the prices I've seen, it seemed like a good deal to me. Now I only need the hands and head. I can solo "Shooting Fish" for the head. The hands tend to cost a little over a million gil, but hopefully I'll be able to get one soon.

I Get Around

I received a request a few weeks ago for use of one of my screenshots. The webmaster at CommandoSarge has me riding a chocobo on his banner. Heh.

Taken Down a Peg

I didn't play at all on Friday or Saturday, but with my vacation over and the return to my apartment, it was time for more Beastmaster goodness with Neyla.

We

The Onzozo camp doesn't suck as badly as I thought it would.

decided to check out the Onzozo camp at the hallway into the Flying Manta room. There were plenty of Mushussu scorpions to charm. I wasn't wild about the camp when we first arrived because of all the AoE attacks, but it wasn't bad once we got used to the dynamics and started using Stoneskin regularly. A manta would pop in our camp every fifteen minutes or so, but he was always either a pet or prey and I'd just drop whatever pet I had and charm him until we were ready to deal with him.

A manta NM called Peg Powler popped in the room after we'd been there an hour or so. It took a few extra scorpions and mantas to bring him down (Neyla two-houred a Tough manta for extra firepower), but it died pretty fast and dropped a Rare/Ex great axe. Neyla is planning to take up WAR next, so he lotted it.

We stopped at 8k into level and will finish getting to 57 tomorrow.

In crafting news, a high-level cook who regularly buys fish off my bazaar mule contacted me about future purchases. I told him about the current BST push and said Dibbler would be regularly stocked again in another week or so. I also made a signed Tarutaru Desk for Miros, who wanted one as a memento. I made another signed one and gave it to Neyla. My woodworking has been badly neglected, although I've started getting serious about guild points.

I managed to get a .2 skillup off an Emperor Fish while waiting for Neyla to log on. That puts me .2 away from Lv. 86 fishing skill.