Prime of Life

GhostWing

GhostWing's physical stats are maxed out.

achieved First-Class status on Strength and Endurance today. I never get tired of riding by a player and hearing them compliment me on the bird, which happened again today while I was in Meriphataud doing the Hot and Cold game. I'm hoping to teach her some abilities, so I'm changing her over to a mental stats diet and care plan.

I did a little fishing after that. Even though I don't really need one, I've got it bouncing around in my head that I want a Templar Mace. While I was casting my line, Neyla hit Pso'xja to farm a Florid Stone for Sunday's ENM. He headed out to Bibiki Bay and saw the catoblepas camp was open. I shipped my fish to the mules, geared up, and rode out to join him.

I've only merited there once before with Quieren, and it was only for a short time. The dhalmels are almost exclusively Very Tough, and the bunnies hopping around the camp will rip them to shreds.

The first mob Neyla pulled was one of the Hobgoblin Blaggers, and it was the last Blagger he pulled. Their evasion is insane and they just aren't worth the hassle. He followed up with a Hobgoblin Physician who killed himself with a bomb and nearly took me out at the same time. We stuck to dhalmels after that.

There

I love it when they Berserk at the start.

are three bunnies in camp with a fairly decent roaming range, so we could release them and let them regen between fights. The only danger is that two of them are clearly mates because they tend to stick together, so mischarming one can be fatal. My history of mischarming has honed my sense of self-preservation to a razor's edge, so I'm extra careful about stuff like that. There's a fourth bunny to the north near a Hobgoblin Toreador, so I'd charm it when the camp bunnnies were clustered or in need of health. A fifth bunny is to the south, and I think Neyla charmed it a few times.

I had one or two nasty mischarms that almost got me killed, and later on I was distracted from chatting with Zeromous (he's 68 BST now) and ended up attacking a camp bunny instead of the catoblepas Neyla had brought to camp, but otherwise it was smooth sailing.

With our Empress Bands, we were getting anywhere from 210 to 300+ per kill, depending on their spot in the chain, and averaging 4k an hour. It's small change by cannon party standards, but we were happy. We were only about 2k from having a merit point by the time we finished. I hope we can get that camp two or three times a week, because that was nifty.

The Mamool Ja were preparing, but I had stuff I needed to do around my apartment. We rode out and parked in Al Zahbi and I went semi-afk to do my chores while we waited for the invasion to begin.

Quieren,

Mamool Ja push us to the edge of a merit point.

feeling bummed out that he didn't get into the endgame linkshell he wanted to join, came as Black Mage and dished out a ton of elemental damage to mobs. "Ever see a Mamool Ja fly?" he asked as he started casting Tornado II. I'm surprised he wasn't getting swarmed with angry mobs.

Nanunanoo came as White Mage and raised us as needed, but I actually managed to live through most of it. We focused on the smaller mobs and ignored shouts to join the fight against the boss NM. When it ended, Neyla was about 300 away from a merit point and I needed 700. I'll probably solo it over the weekend if I get time.

Devotion

No

Time to trim this Demonic Rose...

gaming yesterday, but today Neyla and I went to Boyahda Tree to finish off some merit points and level our NPCs. A team of gilsellers was killing the Elder Goobues when we got upstairs, so we dropped down the waterfall to another camp where Hadafal goes to merit. There are plenty of Korrigans to charm, but the aggro and link danger is pretty high. It wouldnt be so bad if there was plenty of prey to go around, but it's uneven. It didn't help that I was having one of my "king of mischarms" days and had everything trying to kill me.

We wandered back upstairs to the waterfall and camped there. Quieren came in to solo some points, but he stayed a respectful distance from us after not being able to find a handy NM to drag on top of the gilsellers.

Neyla spent his two merit points to raise his MP, and he's happy because it pushed him over the hump and gives him enough to cast Raise. I used my three points to unlock Devotion, but I'm not going to worry about lowering the recast timer. I immediately tried it out on Neyla and found I can restore 202mp.

I

Grave Digger doesn't get to charm us all this time.

was able to put it to use in Limbus, but it'll take some mental adjustment because I kept thinking something had hit me. I added a few recast lines to some of my macros so I could keep track of when it was available. I've seen a few WHMs who have a Devotion macro complete with a /p line to let everyone know who their target is, but that's unnecessary spam as far as I'm concerned... especially for an ability you can only use every 15-20 minutes.

The run itself was great. We slaughtered everything in our path and only had two deaths.

We got the win, and Quieren decided to raid the linkshell bank so everyone could get three Ancient Beastcoins instead of two. The problem is he warped out and the rest of us teleported before the treasure pool emptied out. We still got our three coins, but the final chip needed for the Omega fight was lost. They have to repeat the run Sunday.

Q was beating himself up over it, but I told him I didn't think many people would complain about a shot at more coins.

lolDrama

The

It's boring here now.

worst part of fishing for gil is the inability to get skillups in the more lucrative spots. I quickly grow tired of the Sea Serpent Grotto when I go there, but I stick with it because I enjoy buying things. I've been doing a search whenever I arrive, and I've noticed that same crew I raised a week or so ago is always there. No more raises for them... not that they've asked.

The closest I got to excitment was giving someone directions for finding the map; the adventurer died and sent me a /tell asking for a raise, but by that time I'd already warped back to Windurst and gone afk to play something else.

Enough about that, because today's main event was a farming run in Dynamis-Xarcabard.

We had a fun moment near the beginning because Celvantes has been away for two or three weeks on some kind of military/work assignment. He was up for the Paladin relic if it dropped, so Gregedor asked if he could log him in and lot it.

The

The BLMs take out the pedestal eyes.

rule is you can't log someone in just to get a drop, since it's not fair to the other people who want the gear. The loophole is that you can log them in if you stay on that character for the entire run. Before we got to that point, there was some extremely ugly shouting in the linkshell. Ugly, but entertaining. Gladdy is no shrinking violet and will plainly tell you to shut the fuck up, which I can appreciate. The only real downside is that it distracted everyone in the main alliance because they were chewing over the exchange when they should've been focusing on the pull.

The Valor Surcoat dropped on the first pull, which made everyone laugh. Gregedor (controlling Celvantes), lotted it and spent the rest of the run following us from camp to camp. I'm not sure he actually did any tanking, but he was there.

Otherwise, it was a very smooth run. Tormknight was our main tank, so Moink focused on keeping him alive and I ran with Taurothar during the NM kiting. I told Tauro not to go nuts kiting out of range or I'd happily let him die; he tended to run long, but at least he was predictable enough that I could get ahead of him.

The

Eeeeewwww... I landed in yellow snow.

wall of eyes proved troublesome and we wiped, but we recovered and took them down before moving on to farm another area to the south-east. We eventually ended up in a new place we'd never explored, so Gladdy told us to get ready for whatever might happen. Some demons spawned and Blancho, distracted by a telephone call, hit the wrong macro and pulled one... which pulled them all... which killed us. Owie. I couldn't really get mad about it since I hadn't died very much, but it effectively ended the run because we didn't have a lot of time to recover. Gladdy ordered us to give everyone Raise III.

All in all, not bad. We even managed to get a Red Mage hat for Tsiife.

We're supposed to do Jeuno on Friday. I'll be at my parents' house, so my attendence will depend on how much their computer wants to cooperate.

Evisceration

I've

This escort is so much faster with four people.

been getting serious about capping my fishing skill lately, and I was thrilled by two .1 skillups while waiting for Limbus to begin. I'm .2 away from 92. My earning potential capped out a long time ago and this is strictly for bragging rights, but I'm happy.

Limbus was good to me today. Nanunanoo had the day off from work and joined us as a second healer, and the dhalmel floor was generous enough that everyone received four Ancient Beastcoins when the run was over. I've decided to upgrade to a Healer's Cap +1 and then start saving/buying coins until I get a Loquacious Earring.

I didn't have much to do after Limbus, so I just parked in Windurst and went off to finish Bully and revel in a satisfying ending to that game. I came back in time for the "Test Your Mite" static; Cmdrfly came as White Mage this week, so I got to go Monk. The participants are getting a nice little payday from this one because Pasuk dropped a Woodsman Ring and a Geist Earring this time. Very nice. The ENM and subsequent Necropolis escort have put me 2000xp away from 55 on Monk.

I was ready to log out at that point, but Wulfgar asked for help with the Evisceration fight in Gustav Tunnel. Veresko and Nanunanoo came along, and I'm very glad of it. I didn't feel like going White Mage, and it turns out those undead near the ??? have some of the nastiest AoE I've ever seen.

There

The Baronial Bat picked an awful place to make his home.

was a Robber Crab in our tunnel camp, so I charmed it and used it. I had my party damage filtered out and couldn't compare its damage to Neyla's CourierCarrie, but I have a feeling the jug pet was doing a better job. Once we'd cleared out the bones, Wulfgar popped the Baronial Bat and dragged it back to us. That fight was considerably easier than the bones, but it had a lot more HP and took longer to kill.

In other news, GhostWing's physical stats have bumped up to "Outstanding." One more notch and she's maxed out, at which point I can concentrate on some mental attributes and try to teach her some abilities.