Cynoprosopi

I

Celvantes kites Cynoprosopi around the central island.

bought copies of Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy XII today, but I managed to drag myself away long enough for Limbus with BigKahunas.

We had a few new people from Quieren's Sky/HNM linkshell who'd just managed to get Sea access. I wanted to do a Temenos zone for another Ultima chip, but instead we did the kings section of Apollyon. We decided to try the Fafnir clone, Cynoprosopi, but unlike our hideous defeat last time we followed Mirewen's advice and kited him while the mages stood in the center. It was a blast, figuratively and literally as I managed to get myself fried into charcoal by a Dragon Breath attack.

The top floor fight against Kaiser Behemoth was smooth. Again, Celvantes kited around the large donut-shaped arena. I couldn't keep up with him, so I'd run in the opposite direction to buff and Regen him as needed when we'd meet on the other side. Achates, one of the new people, commented that it was extremely funny to watch.

Each of us walked away with three Ancient Beastcoins, and Otak managed to complete a full upgrade set for Black Mage.

While

Neyla's killing him softly with his song.

I was doing that, Neyla was off leveling Bard. We've been feeling a lack of direction since getting Beastmaster to 75, which is one of the reasons I immediately jumped into Monk again.

I decided to make some signed musical instruments for him. I didn't manage a Maple Harp+1 because I only bought enough ingredients for three attempts, but I had more success with the other. Neyla now has a signed Flute+2. Hopefully it'll be useful for a little while.

I'm going to push on to 50 with Monk and start questing my AF, I think. I also need to tackle Woodworking again and start cranking out some levels.

Beat This

I've

Carrie rips the ghost a new hole.

been leveling Monk lately, so today seemed like a good time to quest my artifact weapon. I traveled to the Steaming Sheep restaurant in Port Bastok to start the quest, which involved killing a ghost NM in Gusgen Mines. It's a fight I've done before with other people, but this time It was just me and Courier Carrie. I almost felt sorry for the ghost.

I didn't return to Bastok right away. Instead, I went to Jeuno to fish while seeking a party on Monk. I eventually got invited to the Crawler's Nest. Asmodius was in the party as Bard.

"Good luck finding a camp," Neyla told me. He was there already, farming shrooms from the exorays. "The place is full of RMT."

He wasn't kidding. A quick search revealed a swarm of gilsellers. It was an army of tarutarus in the starter RSE gear. They were killing everything that moved and making it impossible for legit players.

Our party decided to try the Quicksand Caves.

The xp was kinda crappy, but I only needed 3,000xp to get to 44 and viewed anything beyond that to be a bonus. As I've joked before, 75 levels of Beastmaster really screws up your sense of what's an "acceptable" xp rate. We could get Chain 3 before the White Mage would have to rest, and I eventually started sending her some /tells about how to boost her MP efficiency. Some people get annoyed when you offer advice, but she wasn't one of them. Her performance steadily improved over the course of the evening.

One

This will not end well...

of the more entertaining moments came when our puller, a tarutaru Blue Mage, pulled an antican. As Beastmasters, Neyla and I used to charm the spiders and beetles to fight the anticans, so I'm well aware of the difference in difficulty. I sent a /tell to Asmodius that he should be ready to run for the zone.

We managed to kill it, but it took me using Hundred Fists and our WAR/NIN tank using Mighty Strikes to do it... and even then our 2-hours only whittled it down.

"No more anticans," I said.

We crutched along and I eventually dinged 44. The XP was getting a little better as more and more of us leveled up, but I was starting to get tired of it and announced I'd be leaving in an hour so they'd have time to find a replacement for me. The White Mage, who was also the party leader, had similar plans; we agreed to stick around until the Black Mage got his level.

Our Blue Mage had dragged a Corsair replacement out to camp without telling anyone, and I fully expected the party to suck even worse after the switch. Instead, it improved considerably. Once we got into the groove, we were getting Chain 4 and 5 regularly. That made it harder to leave.

I

Sickle Slash is not my friend... and neither is subligar.

only died once to a Sickle Slash to the head, taken during one of my frequent bouts of tanking. I'd usually end up Provoking mobs when the Warrior's shadows were interrupted, and other times I'd end up tanking because Raging Fists was doing anywhere from 200 to 300 damage.

The party ended for me when Asmodius linked a spider to the one we were fighting. He and the Black Mage tried to keep it slept, but it eventually woke up and created problems. The tank died and I kept them occupied while the Black Mage cast Escape. My replacement was already waiting outside, so I called it a night and rode Paprika back to Rabao.

After changing jobs, I rode to Korroloka Tunnel and Escaped myself to Bastok to complete the artifact weapon quest.

Demon Night

I only logged on for Dynamis-Xarcabard today, since Ocarina of Time is getting my devotion. This was strictly a farming run, with Ajs reserving judgment about the next visit being a Dynamis Lord attempt until we proved we could handle ourselves. It went well, so we're going after the prick when we come back. Of course, it'll be entertaining to see how that run goes when our Red Mages are all /DRK and not handling sleep duties.

The

Did anyone get the number of that truck?

only stress for me came at the end, when Moink (my partner White Mage in the tank party) disconnected during the wall of eyes. My reraise went down at some point, and after the wipe I was one of the last people raised. My weakness hadn't worn off when Gladdy pulled the demons again, so of course I died right away.

We killed off the mobs and some other pops and hit the ramp toward Uleguerand Range. It was a slaughter, with a greasy swarm of demons carving us into jerky strips. We didn't have a lot of time to get back on our feet and farm more, so Ajs told the White Mages to give everyone Raise III and we'd call it a night.

Celvantes died under the boots of a group of demons, and I said to wait until we got booted out to raise him. Instead, Ferrious brought the demons down on us a second time by trying to use Tractor on him. I was pissed at the senseless deaths -- "Good going," I barked. "He was fine where he was." -- and stuck around long enough to raise the dead before warping back to Windurst and logging out.

Brutality

I spent most of the day playing Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but I logged on long enough to handle my two Sunday obligations.

Limbus

Lots of people need Yovra organs.

with BigKahunas came first, and we seemed destined to start another long haul of swinging through the Apollyon zones for an Omega chip set in the wake of Wednesday's loss. I immediately lobbied for a run at an Ultima set. If you collected all the drool the melees produce at the thought of Homam gear and put it next to the drool from the mages for Nashira gear, I'm sure you'd see a difference in that the melees could drown a family of cats and the mages could barely manage to seal a few envelopes.

Still, as I told Quieren, I have no interest in seeing mages get shafted by allowing BigKahunas to become a Homam-only linkshell that doesn't even try Ultima. There's also artifact armor upgrade items from the Temenos side that people still need, including myself. I have no desire for either set of gear and view those fights as a waste of my time, so if we're going to skip out on coin farming we're going to be equal opportunity about it.

It was an easy run against floors of beastmen. There were goblinss, gigas, sahagins and assorted others along the way. I died on the last floor when I ran forward to renew Barfira against goblin bombs; the slept mobs woke up and saw me and were cranky enough to take it out on my broken taru body. It was good for a laugh.

We had our auction of banked coins when the run was over. We've been building up attendance points for bidding on five-coin sets. Quieren checked the number of coins and realized there were plenty to go around. He just deducted ten points and passed out five coins to everyone who wanted them. Sweet.

That put me seven coins away from having my Brutal Earring. Quieren said he'd loan me the rest, so we met up in Port Jeuno and I got it! I'm seriously looking forward to trying it out.

"Grats," Quieren said when I got it. "I seriously fucking hate you."

I

I can't wait to try out my new toy.

logged out for more Ocarina of Time and came back for the "Test Your Mite" run. We were late because Mikeman didn't start farming his Florid Stone until thirty minutes before the fight was to begin, and I had to go to Nue's Tower and drop down to fight the stuff on the second floor down without Sneak or any of my /WHM buffs because I go /WAR for the ENM. Mikeman almost died on the first fight because he used Provoke and didn't let my pet tank; I had no way of curing him.

We finally got into the arena, though. Hate was bouncing around and my attempt to keep Pasuk off the mages by using Provoke resulted in my swift and hilarious death. I was surprised to learn ENMs can also be used for Limit Points, since I'd forgotten to switch. I'd always assumed I'd have to stop coming as Beastmaster once my xp was capped; it's good to know I still have that option, although I'll mostly be going as Monk (and sometimes White Mage) for future runs.

I only needed another 300 limit points to earn my first Merit Point, so I did a short scythe skillup session in Boyahda Tree. I'd planned to unlock Devotion, but I didn't have the option. I think you have to place a merit in a Group One category first, so I put it in Regen potency. Clearly, I need to do some research in how the Meriting system works.