Speed Racer

Neyla and I did the Necropolis escort today. We made it to the final room with all the ghosts and Dark Stalkers, but didn't clear them out because Cannau always ran off to the right side of the room where there were few mobs. This time she didn't. Oops. We had to do that one again.

We

"Knock knock..." "Who's there?" "SQUAWK!

went back to Sky with a moderate goal of burning off the Empress Bands and getting a little extra. That damned Water Elemental was still there, but we completely ignored him. We also changed our prey a little. We cut the pots out completely (I'd never bothered to check them, and it turned out they were Decent/Even) and focused on the dolls. We cycled between the same three Groundskeepers: the one on the stairs, the one that pops on the bridge between the two sides, and one in the blue alcove down below.

"This really feels like cheating," I told Neyla at one point. Again, we were just letting the birds do all the work while we sat in the grass and watched. "But after 74 levels of Beastmaster, it's a nice little change."

It went faster without the pots to break the chains. The alcove doll was the most fun, just because we'd be up on the bridge above and send the birds down the stairs to kill it in its lair.

"You know that doll is saying 'WTF?'" right about now," Neyla said.

"Yeah," I agreed.

We liked getting a little payback on those aggro bastards.

After reaching our goal, we hit San d'Oria to claim our XP scrolls. I'm going to be visiting my folks this weekend, so we won't get to level tomorrow. We're going to try to burn off an Empress Band charge Sunday and do "Test Your Mite," which will put us close to 75. By Neyla's schedule, we should ding on Tuesday.

I

PapaPaprika races along Drogaroga's Spine.

traveled out to Al Zahbi to buy Wildgrass Seeds for my next gardening project. My mule Dibbler is going to start growing Vomp Carrots, because my next chocobo will be eating a steady diet of them to boost his physical traits.

Speaking of which, PapaPaprika's strength was upgraded to "Better Than Average" today, and his Endurance went to "Average." I re-registered him to my Chocobo Whistle so his new stats would be reflected when I called him in the wild.

Out of boredom scientific curiousity, I decided to test Paprika's endrance by riding him from Windurst to Jeuno. I more or less stuck to the road the entire time. I wasn't completely sure he'd make it, but I arrived safely in Jeuno and got a lift on the airship back to Windurst to log out for the evening.

I hope we can start racing these birds soon. I'm getting bored racing that black chocobo Best all the time in East Sarutabaruta.

Hope Springs Eternal

We

Neyla gets his map of Sky.

hit sky again for more key farming. We went to the first island over and were kinda surprised and miffed to find a Water Elemental on the side with the two birds. It hadn't been there the other times we'd farmed keys, making it easy to buff and do Stoneskin and all that.

It didn't matter too much, I guess. We were still doing the "remote detonation" game of letting birds kill the pots and dolls while we stood off to the side with our thoughts... or surfed the internet... or watched movies.

A key eventually dropped, and after we'd finished I led Neyla from one island to the next in search of the coffer. It was near a teleport platform with a bored-looking pot hovering over it.

Not a lot of heavy lifting today, xp-wise, but 75 is closer.

Today's Limbus was a farming run, for the most part. We did Apollyon NW, which always makes me happy because there's a chance for a Beastmaster upgrade item. I wasn't lucky enough. It didn't drop.

We had fun on our way up, killing Millinary Mossback while fighting him on top of one of the Benediction boxes so everyone could 2-hour twice.

The

Cynoprosopi is gonna kill me...

next floor has the alternate version of Fafnir, a wyrm called Cynoposopi. We still had plenty of time remaining, so we decided to try killing him. The people with wyrm experience told us where to stand to keep reasonably safe. Unfortunately, he did some sort of breath attack about forty seconds in that instantly fried our tanks. I'm pretty sure I could hear Celvantes sizzling inside his armor.

We moved off to the side and died with dignity, reraised, and moved up a floor to take down the behemoths. It was an easy floor, and Celvantes did a good job kiting Kaiser Behemoth around the loop while the melees and mages did their thing.

Quieren couldn't join us for the run because his Sky linkshell was doing Kirin and he's up for an osode. It didn't drop.

Carry On

Not

I'm ready to retire this camp. It's time.

much going on today, mostly because I was still a zombie after last night's Dynamis-Bastok and didn't feel like doing a lot of heavy lifting. Neyla left the choice of camp up to me, and I picked Mount Zhayolm because I wanted to rate the XP with the Empress Band and Sanction. It kinda sucks, basically. It's not a camp we need to return to unless all other alternatives are exhausted, and I think we can quietly spend the majority of our time farming his key in Sky when Bibiki Bay is closed to us.

I bought an Apollo's Staff before we headed out, but I haven't given it a real workout. I'm eventually going to have it as part of my Charm macro, but part of me abhors the idea of chucking away all that Axe tp I've built up on the previous mob. It won't be an issue when I'm solo, I guess.

After we left, Neyla returned to Al Zahbi to start working on the next round of missions and catch up to me at the Caedarva Mire fomor fight. We're going to fight him at some point.

I started working on a new sig. All the Pokemon talk during the Dynamis run inspired this mash-up (click it for a larger view).

lolBastok

Bibiki

I'm knee-high to the dhalmel. Scary.

Bay was open when I got home, so I rushed out there to claim the camp before Neyla logged on. Today was one of those all-too-rare role reversals where I only mischarmed twice the entire session and Neyla was constantly pissing off the birds. It made me grin like a maniac every time it happened.

Another party eventually turned up, led by Shaunessy of QCDN fame. They were off to the west fighting goblins. Every thirty or forty minutes he'd swing through and pick off one of our birds when they'd run out goblins, but he wasn't making an ass of himself about it and I didn't say anything until we were nearing the end of the run. "The sooner we finish the sooner you can have this camp," I told him, "so don't interfere."

Neyla needed an evening off, so I went fishing awhile to kill time until Dynamis. The market is picking up a little, and I'm in that "comfort zone" to buy an Apollo's Staff as soon as a few more go on the Auction House and the undercutters wade in to compete.

Tonight's run was Dynamis-Bastok, and I was dreading another evening of miscues and conflicting orders. Instead, we had a pretty easy time of it. One of the first scorpions got off a Breakga before I could put up Barpetra and Barstonra, but otherwise they were under control. I got my bar- spells up after that, so the next Breakga only petrified us two seconds before wearing off.

Our

This could end badly.

Black Mage corps -- seven tarutarus collectively dubbed "Tarmy" as in "tarutaru army" -- were there. Celvantes main tanked with Taurothar as backup.

There was remarkably little carping at each other. Everyone seemed relaxed and we were all joking with each other like we used to. Admittedly, you have to work pretty hard to screw up Dynamis-Bastok so the tension levels were reduced. The conversation drifted over areas like "Hello Kitty" porn and assorted RPGs, where Ajs and I were staunch defenders of the Pokemon franchise.

It only turned somewhat nasty after we'd cleared the row of shops behind the Auction House and were working our way through the mobs in the mine area. Some of the NMs like to spam that Wrath of Ghu'da move, which quickly started wiping out the mages. It didn't affect me much since I keep Stoneskin up at all times.

A few relic pieces dropped, but no Monster Jackcoat.

Division of Labor

With all the pushing on Beastmaster, I've been neglecting my fishing. I've gone out for short stints to replenish funds, but it's only in the past few days that I've really been working on it and actively trying to get some skillups. I fished Black Sole in Port Jeuno today for an hour or so before Limbus, and I was overjoyed to receive two back-to-back skillups. I'm now at 91.4 fishing skill.

Ah,

Look at that turkey! He's huge!

Limbus. Today we did the third floor of Temenos Central, a floor with Dynamis-style beastmen who clustered in groups of three. We had an easy time of it, slaughtering them as we worked our way through the rooms.

The last trio of mobs were the stronger boss mobs. We did okay with the orc and quadav, but the Yagudo summoner was a prick. He never got a chance to Astral Flow us into oblivion, but his AoE kick was doing some major damage and killing people. Of the three White Mages, I was the only one standing when it was over. We finally brought him down and got the final chip we need for our first Proto-Ultima fight.

I was surprised to learn Quieren and Veresko want to start splitting the team to do multiple Limbus runs. One team would farm coins in zones with a high drop rate while the other team would do zones specifically for chip sets. I'm sure it's all very practical and I'll end up with more coins each week than I was getting before, but I hate the idea. I'd rather have a stable crew of 18 people doing these things and having fun as one group, even if our firepower amounts to overkill on some of the zones.

Suddenly it's becoming about getting as much Homam and Nashira gear as we can. I have no interest in any of that stuff, which obviously factors into my annoyance at this new direction for the linkshell. No easy answers here.

Beyond

See you in hell, Pasuk.

that, it was quiet. The fish market seems to be picking up a little, so I'm going to buy an Apollo's Staff as soon as a few more hit the market and the undercutting comes into play. I spend too much time running from mischarmed animals to be able to avoid this particular expense any longer.

Cmdrfly recruited a Ninja friend from his linkshell to join us for the weekly "Test Your Mite" ENM. Hadafal wasn't on, so we went without him. Wulfgar will be joining us full-time starting next week. I like that easy 3,000xp each week for my Beastmaster and hated missing the last two weeks, but I think we're going to be okay. For comedic value, today would've been an ideal time for Pasuk to drop a Woodsman Ring, but instead we got the obligatory Geist Earring.

In other news, my chocobo experience the dreaded "lovesickness" which has been the bane of stable-goers for the past week or two. I'm not sure what I'm doing differently, but Paprika only had it for one day before he was cured. Others have seen it continue for over a week. Maybe exercising in a group cured him, or maybe it was all the gyshal greens I fed him.

I bumped into a Lv. 15 tarutaru named "Bonesaw" at the Buburimu outpost. He was getting the stuffing knocked out of him and I only had enough MP for one Cure. I rested and raised him, then asked if he needed help getting to Mhaura. I let my FunguarFamiliar destroy every aggro mob in his path and escorted him. I offered to farm his subjob items so he could have them ready, but he had to log out. He added me to his friend list, and I'll check up on him later.

Neyla managed to sell his 100 Byne Bill after bazaaring in Batallia Downs. He bought a Woodville's Axe of his own. Now we can pull hate off the pets together!