Tourism Treasures

Neyla,

I'm surprised a fish that large doesn't snap a rod.

Quieren and I got our copies of the expansion today. I'm feeling spoiled right now, because there's so much to do I'm getting sensory overload. Neyla had a coffer key to use for the boarding pass quest, and the two of us went out to Cape Terrigan to fight goblins and try to get a testimony for me. The goblins were stubborn and wouldn't give it up, so we just went the subjob item route. I had to wait until the next game day after turning in the stuff, so I ran all over Vana'diel to get some of my final cutscenes for Chains of Promathia.

There were a ton of people on the ferry to Al Zahbi. I had bought two stacks of meatballs from the Fisherman's Guild in Windurst, and I spent the ride trying to catch some of the new fish. I caught one of the new legendaries, a mola mola, and put it in my bazaar as a trophy since I have no idea what it's worth.

Al Zahbi

Neyla and I took a moment to appreciate the Fomor Beastmaster's gear.

is huge, and it's easy to imagine a lot of people making it their permanent home. Neyla followed me around for awhile, but I was just running up to every NPC and talking to them to see what I can learn. We eventually wandered out into the wild to check some of the new monsters. We saw birds flapping around and then reached a clearing with some fomors. We couldn't resist fighting the Fomor Beastmaster and admiring his gear. The elephants were pretty wild, too.

I like running around new zones because it's exciting and unspoiled. Anything could happen. Neyla saw a watchtower on the map (I'd forgotten to buy one) and we made our way there, sneaking and invising our way along because we didn't know what would aggro.

Quieren

Yep, this crawler is red.

eventually turned up and decided to guide us through the first mission, but we killed a lot of things along the way. He used the "sleep and nuke" method, which is boring as hell to watch. We found a clearing with red crawlers ("How do they come up with that stuff?" Quieren joked) and some trolls, and of course some of them had to die. Once we actually reached the volcano, Quieren led us on a wild goose chase all over the zone. We never found the gate leading to the staging area, but I did get to witness an awesome sunset. I also couldn't help thinking the place would be a Beastmaster duo's playground. One of the tunnels had three slimes which were nicely spread out, which just screams "Charm me, baby!"

Neyla logged out at that point, but I decided to explore a little. I ran back to Windurst to get my Beastmaster gear. The prospect of being able to run around a city with a jug pet in tow was too great to resist, so I called a funguar. Too bad nothing invaded.

I

I couldn't resist running around as Beastmaster for a bit.

finished the evening by traveling to Nashmau after I noticed a second boat dock. I think of the place as "rat town" because of all the little rodent dudes living there. There wasn't much for me to do except talk to NPCs, so I returned to Al Zahbi before logging out.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I finished the Promathia cutscenes and collected my Rajas Ring. I even found myself getting a little misty-eyed during the final cutscenes. It didn't end exactly like I thought it would, but it came close enough.

So far, I'm very impressed by the expansion. I liked Chains of Promathia, but the promyvions were a mistake because the difficulty all but exiled most people from the new areas. This new expansion is open to everyone, and the high-level players are drooling because they only have to step out of town to find Incredibly Tough monsters to fight. It's still too early to determine the expansion's impact, but it suddenly feels like an entirely new game.

Averters of the Apocalypse

The trip through the Garden of Ru'hmet was a lot like Hu'xoi, but this time there was background music and more variety in the architecture. Ramps, overpasses, balconies... it seemed a lot nicer. The Grahs and Zdeis checked VT and IT, and we were getting pretty good xp while we were running around. I used my Empress Band and it had worn off before we finished.

Asmodius died several times along the way. He had been so used to nuking down the monsters that it took several deaths for it to click that they were xp mobs and he'd have to hold back. He had an Uggalepih Pendant and kept telling me to let his health stay in the yellow for the stat boost, but I finally told him he'd better get used to being healed.

We

The Zdei gauntlet is annoying.

climbed the tarutaru tower first so I could get my cutscene, then escaped and went after the elvaan tower for Quieren. Everyone else was hume. After all that running and backtracking, I'm really glad we didn't have a mithra or galka with us.

Key items in hand, we headed for the elevator. We had to pass through a gauntlet of four zdei pots, but we reached them and managed to aggro all of them before Hayatox and I had a chance to discuss strategy. The door at the far end of the gauntlet only opens when the pots are on their platforms, so we just let ourselves wipe at the door and waited for them to go back before we reraised.

The actual BCNM was against a similar room with four zdeis. Two were BLM, two were RDM, and none of them could be silenced. The strategies said to at least kill the two BLMs before you wipe so you can reraise and do the others. We managed to kill one BLM zdei. We rested and waited for weakness to wear and went after the next. We killed it and a RDM before we wiped again. The last RDM pot was at about 75% we started. We won with about four minutes remaining on the clock.

Then

The Promathia fight is especially bad for acrophobics.

we were ready for Promathia. Holy hell, the cutscenes leading into this battle were amazing. The battlefield itself is somewhere high in orbit above Vana'diel, and you're joined by Prishe and Sehl'teus. We tried kiting him around the arena the first time, which didn't work at all, so of course we wiped. The second fight was a straight-up tanked fight, and then it worked. Prishe was beating the hell out of Promathia and throwing out Cure V spells on us. Sehl'teus was flying around and throwing out lightning bolts. Quieren and Asmodius nuked like crazy.

Promathia has some fun moves. He uses Meteor, but he also has an AoE dispel which throws off every buff you have. Worse yet, he can give you amnesia so you can't use any of your job abilities (bye-bye Provoke!) and an AoE silence which can't be removed with echo drops or Silena. He alternates between physical and magical immunity. We still killed him. Our clear time was ten minutes.

Asmodius died during the fight and we apologized, but he was so stoked at our victory that he didn't care. Now we just have to wait until tomorrow to go through all the final cutscenes and collect our rings. We're going to break for a week and finish Zilart as well.

I had little else to do, so I wandered a bit and got to see a Puppetmaster at work in West Ronfaure. Feriz sent me a /tell while he was gathering subjob items to access the new areas, so I hit Buburimu to club bunnies and bogeys. We went to Gusgen for a skull, but there were about thirty people roaming around and it was like trying to get claim on an NM.

We went to the northern tower in West Sarutabaruta, which was empty except for about twenty ghouls roaming around. Neyla joined us for the carnage. It didn't take long to get what we came for.

The 'I Don't Have ToAU' Blues

None

The Boreal Hound has a lot of hit points.

of the stores in my area have the expansion yet, so Neyla, Quieren and I weren't able to start dripping with anticipation the way some of our friends are. It's hard to get excited about mundane activities when you realize an entirely new continent is about to open for exploration and you're not going to be able to board the ship. We had to try to find other ways to amuse ourselves.

I fished for an hour or so before Neyla and I went out to Xarcabard to try to Boreal mobs for the limit break quests. Moriki is going to need it soon, so trying it as a duo sounded fun. The bastard has a lot of hit points; Hexa Strike and the Light Skillchain would smack him for about 2k damage and his life bar looked like it was barely moving at times. By the time we beat him Neyla had about 100mp and needed to convert. Throw in another damage dealer or two and it'll be no problem. We didn't mess with the other two.

Neyla logged out for an hour or so, and I spent some of that time leveling my NPC in Xarcabard. Lost Souls die a lot faster under my hammer than the crawlers and coeurls around the Yhoat telepoint. I spotted the Shadow Dragon while I was out there, but he checked Easy Prey and I wasn't about to go after him without backup. My NPC dinged 45 on the last mob.

I

He's out of shape and has to rest to catch is breath.

fished a little more, and then I decided to do the next mannequin quest. I talked to the NPCs in the Safehold and Mhaura, and then rode out to Carpenter's Landing to pop an Orc NM named Bullheaded Grosvez to obtain some Red Oil. The orc cracked me up, because he'd emote about having to stop and catch his breath during the fight. He used Hundred Fists on me twice, but it was a total joke and should've been called Hundred Misses.

Completing the quest earned me a set of Rare/Ex Mannequin Pumps, which can be worn by any job over Lv. 35. They some very nice stats: DEF6 MP+12 INT+1 MND+2. They're very red and look like some bastard hybrid of cowboy boots, hightops and Dorothy's ruby slippers, but I'll happily wear them on my Summoner. After tomorrow I can do the third mannequin quest to pose them.

Later that night...
Woke

The plates on the Gaudy Harness are as large as my head!

up and saw Apu and Evildr were over in the new area, which went live while I was asleep. Hadafal was gushing because the new city has all the crafting guilds and you can get advanced synthesis support. Naturally I'm jealous as all hell.

I rode out to Mhaura and bought a galka mannequin with yesterday's fishing profits. There were 34 people in Mhaura when I arrived, and Hada said there were 130+ people on the boat when he first went over. That's just wild.

I'm a Barbie Girl... I Guess

Yay!

Mannequins make a lovely addition to any moghouse.

I logged out in Mhaura and when I popped on I was given my Male Tarutaru Mannequin. I bought a Tarutaru Female and, after checking my mules for overnight fish sales, the Mithra.

They're awesome. They take up one space in your safe and give you seven storage spaces. They can be equipped to wear any armor you have in storage. I have the tarus in my BST and MNK gear, and put the mithra in my WHM AF. The extra space will be wonderful when I don't have to mule six million times to get all my BST equipment.

I'm buying a galka next. I'm also going to do the quests so I can change their poses. I hope there's a /hurray option.

A Fate Decided

The maintenance is over, and the tweaks are in place. WHM's Benediction change was a nice (and largely worthless) change, but my favorite so far is that Reraise is no longer knocked off if you warp, teleport or Escape. I like it because it'll save a lot of mp and I won't waste charges on Reraise items.

I met Neyla in Port Windurst and got the Mannequin Head, then hustled out to Mhaura to turn in the parts. The NPC is making me wait before she'll give me the completed mannequin; hopefully I'll get it tomorrow.

Once

Sometimes the Grahs look like spiders, complete with Sickle Slash!

that was out of the way, the lolCoP group hit the Sealion's Den for the next mission, "A Fate Decided." We had to travel through the Grand Palace of Hu'Zxoi, which is a series of lengthy white corridors with a boss fight at the end. Along the way are locked doors which can only be opened by Quasilumin NPCs, which have to be escorted around and kept alive.

As missions go, this was pretty easy. We got to encounter the Grah mobs, which are floating balls of hexagons capable of changing form by rearranging their plates. They don't aggro in ball form, but they also become birds and spiders. Then you either wait for them to change or, as we did, kill every one of them for xp. Like the Empty mobs, the color of their core tells you their elemental base.

Truegrave and Hayatox got separated from us at one point, which seems almost impossible because the quasilumins move so slow even box turtles would be annoyed. It turns out they went into the wrong alcove and got aggro from one of the Zdei pots.

The

Zdei "pots" are fond of Ice Spikes and other annoyances.

pots weren't bad, either. They like their Ice Spikes, and they use an AoE silencing move every so often.

It seemed to take forever to get through the place, and the only death came during a nasty AoE that dropped Hayatox. We eventually found the door to pop the NM, which was another Grah that could be a ball, spider, bird or human. It's element is based on the current day, so ours was fire-based. It's two-hour is based on its form at the time; it decided to use Mighty Strikes, but it died before it could get in a hit.

We'll do the next mission on Thursday. I'm not wild about that, since I'd much rather be exploring the expansion areas, but I got outvoted. At least I'll be able to console myself with a shiny Rajas Ring.

I finished out the evening by leveling my NPC a bit and doing a little fishing, but I was tired and logged early.

Tick... tick... tick...

Today's the big 10-hour maintenance to set up the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion. Can't play... can't fish... can't do anything but wait.

The waiting is the hardest part. On the positive side, there will be new fish to discover. They've changed the fatigue rules for people who release bites (no more canceling cone calamary and rusty subligar without penalty) and bumped up the fatigue levels for devil mantas (no more farming angel skin in Kuftal all night). Neither change will affect me much.

They've tweaked the White Mage's Benediction two-hour so it now cureing all status ailments. I can imagine that'll be handy at some point, but I'm not sure when. I'm sure the Paladins are going to be very excited about getting Auto-Refresh.

Hand Job

I found a set of Mannequin Hands in a bazaar out in Batallia Downs. The asking price was 1,250,000. I've been mentally prepared to pay that much for them, but I wasn't there financially when I saw first them. I sent the guy a /tell asking if he'd lower the price, but of course he wasn't actually there. The hunger -- the need -- to buy those hands was immense.

While I was sleeping, Hoiy had sent my cut of the Erase scroll from the BCNM. That put me close, so I undercut a few stacks of black sole, ran screeching from mule to mule to see if they'd sold anything, and did everything short of screaming "Buy my shit!" in Lower Jeuno. I found myself 25k short, and drove myself nuts thinking some undeserving jerk would beat me to them.

So I did what any self-respecting White Mage who needs fast gil would do: I started tele-whoring in Lower Jeuno. As soon as someone shouted for a tele, I'd start inviting them. I had competition from a Lv. 50 WHM who probably needed the gil a lot more than I did, but he was faster and got more customers so it all balances. I wore my fishing gear the entire time because tele-whoring in a Noble's Tunic is too humiliating. I got the money and bought the hands and only had 4k to my name.

That's

Funguar jugs do well against the diremite.

why I love fishing. Having to borrow gil on Tuesday because you're broke and having a million by Sunday is what it's all about. I just wish the price of sole and grimmonites would stabilize instead of bouncing up and down like a damned yo-yo.

In other news, Neyla and I went as Beastmasters and were joined by Veresko (NIN), Hadafal (BLM) and Nanunanoo (WHM) for the "Test Your Mite" ENM. We want to make it a weekly thing because an almost free 3,000xp for leveling BST is too good to pass up. Nanu likes it because it erases a lot of Dynamis death. The fight wasn't too bad, although the hate-resetting move meant Nanu got drilled to death at one point and Hadafal died at the end. Nanu popped the chest before we raised Hada, so he didn't get the xp.

Next week we'll have a sixth person, and Neyla and I will go BST/WAR so there'll be an extra Provoke to keep the diremite away from the squishy mages. Our funguar jugs did pretty decent damage against it, too.

I was also happy when Veresko passed along part of my cut from the KS30 fights. After that I could afford Pet Food Zeta supplies.

We

The Fleshcravers will be more relaxed when we leave.

went back into Toraimarai Canal to get our level. A Red Mage with an NPC turned up to kill Scavenger Crabs at the top of the stairs where we were camped, and I hope she was doing it for some sort of skillup because it took her about ten minutes for each fight.

It didn't affect us (other than making it harder to target our leeches for recharm) because we finally added the Mindcraver skeletons to our prey list. They like to use -ga spells and ancient magic, so we'd only fight them when Neyla had nearly 100 tp at the start. We wouldn't melee them at all; instead, we'd let the leeches fight it far from us and release them at the end for a final Rampage of death.

Moriki needed a Toraimarai coffer key, but we didn't get one while we were there. We didn't bother getting a buffer and left as soon as we hit 59 (double-ding on the same mob). Neyla brought Moriki back on his Red Mage job and they toiled for hours trying to get the key and then find the coffer.

While they were doing that, I traded in some Beastman Seals and tried to solo my Mannequin Head as Summoner in the "Shooting Fish" arena. I should've asked for a refresher course on how to do it. I forgot to let my first Ramuh die, but I got the Judgement Bolt timing right and killed the side pugils. That Ramuh died shortly after and, miracle of miracles, I didn't get interrupted and managed to summon a second one. Instead of letting him melee the Sniper Pugil to death, I got greedy and shot out a third Judgment Bolt and got hate. Ramuh missed the pugil and I died spectacularly, deleveling back to 32.

Moriki had a spare Mannequin Head in his moghouse, so he said he'd give it to Neyla to pass along to me. Later in the week I'll supply an orb, yag drink and ether so he can solo it again and get his replacement. At least I'll finally have a full mannequin on Tuesday.