Ninja... Feh!

The Ninja excitement never stops, as Neyla and I went into Lower Delkfutt's Tower yesterday to kill bats and gigas on the stairway. There's plenty of them wandering around up there. The xp wasn't exactly wonderful, but we managed to drag ourselves up to Lv. 28 while we were at it.

We

Neyla carves up a goobue in Rolanberry Fields.

also decided to change our tactics by the time we were finished. Instead of duoing our way along, we decided we'd just take turns powerleveling each other. Without the need for tools, we figured we could hit 37 and not have to spend a ton of gil on tools. I grabbed a chocobo and scouted around for some good leveling areas when we'd finished.

That's why we were in Rolanberry Fields today. I started out on Ninja, hacking and slashing my way through an endless series of crawlers and bats. The quadav wandering the area were sometimes Decent, but most of the time they were Incredibly Tough and I gave them a wide berth.

We took a break so Neyla could find a temporary Ninja for Sunday's ENM, but then it was back to Rolanberry so I could cure him. It wasn't too bad, and my MP rarely dipped below 900.

It's a crazy way to go about it, I guess... but it'll do.

I Am the Eggman

I'd ignored the new holiday Eggstravaganza until I was running through Windurst Woods today and saw dozens of bazaars clustered around the event moogle. I started checking some people and saw many of them had Fortune Eggs and Happy Eggs equipped.

I

That's right, man... my birds shit diamonds!

may have gone a little crazy at that point, because I started buying eggs. Most of them were 2000 gil each. I went for the "initial three," which is just the first three letters of my name: H-A-L. That netted me the new Egg Helm, which looks like Salvadore Dali's melding of a kaiser helmet and a bare breast. That sucker went straight into storage until the NPCs are willing to take custody. Next I went after a Fortune Egg, which gives VIT+1 and MP+10% (which works out to a whopping 10 MP), buying seven 'X' eggs.

The Jeweled Egg, new to this event, was the biggie. It's a rotating egg-shaped diamond that cycles through the elemental colors. I had to get one of the nation eggs first, which inolves trading the first five letters of a region under that nation's control. For Windurst's Wing Egg, I went with Sarutabaruta (S-A-R-U-T). Trading another set earns the Jeweled Egg. Unfortunately, I couldn't find another 'A' anywhere. I went to Bastok and saw one schmuck wanted 20,000 for it. Ha! The guy next to him was selling an 'A' for 2k. I returned to Windurst and got my Jeweled Egg. I still need to get the Bastok and San d'Oria eggs.

I also got an Orphic Egg. It's a little less exciting, but it gives Accuracy+1, Attack+1 and Evasion+1 when you have a Bard's song on you. I figured I could take it along for the weekly ENM static, since Neyla always goes as Bard.

The other thing on my agenda was the Proto-Ultima fight, which didn't happen.

Only

Yay. More adamantshell crabs. /sigh

twelve people turned up, which had me and Mirewen crying foul and entertaining thoughts of being mysteriously absent during the next Omega fight; it seems like the melees fall all over themselves to be around when Homam gear is up for grabs, but then they disappear when it's Nashira time. It's frustrating. The main complaint I always hear is "But Nashira gear isn't that great!" I always respond the same way: "So?" If I'm going to throw away 50k for a fight in which I'm not going to gain anything (not even coins), I expect them to do the same for me.

We farmed instead and everyone got three Ancient Beastcoins. The final chest had the Blue Rivet for a Dragoon AF upgrade, so I lotted since nobody else wanted it. I'll figure out later if it's worth keeping or if I should throw it away. It can stay in my mog locker with my WHM, BST and MNK upgrade sets.

On a side note, the latest update changed some lines of text, and the grammar nazi in me came out in Limbus. We now get lines like "Halifirien removed Wulfgar's paralyzed," which had me screaming "I removed his paralysis, damn it!" I didn't remove his "slowed," I removed his "slowness." It's not his "blinded," it's his "blindness." I'm going to go on the POL site and complain so they can remove my irritated.

Tool User

Veresko, one of the leaders of our linkshell, is scaling back his playing hours in an effort to regain his social life. He's also dropping out of all end-game activities, meaning he'll no longer be doing Limbus with BigKahunas. That blows, but I can't really blame him. I still play enough to make an outsider shake his head in disbelief, but comparing time spent now to six or seven months ago would show a real difference. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

In Ninja news, I realized I'd missed out on my Hojo scroll when I hit 23. I'm obsessive -- almost anal-retentive -- about keeping spells current, so the first thing I did when I logged on was to travel to Norg and flag the quest. I had to ride around the jungle to find a ???, and trying to navigate that place ranks right up there with repeatedly smashing my hand with a hammer.

One

"Derka derka jihad!"

of the bigger reasons for leveling Ninja as a duo (besides lack of interest in tanking) was to reduce the need to spend a billion in gil to cart around all those tools for holding hate. We're pretty much only using shadows, and I can make those tools myself. I broke down today and bought a stack of Kaginawa to try out Hojo, since it slows down the monsters' attacks. The casting time felt like an eternity -- doubly so when Neyla was getting pounded and I needed to Provoke -- but I got into the groove of casting it as Neyla was bringing it back to camp. I'm not sure how much of a difference it really made; I can't wait to get to 30 so I can paralyze our prey.

The beastmen control Qufim this week, so we can't oupost home. There was a dead taru in front of Delkfutt's Tower when we'd first arrived, and Neyla used Mijin Gakure to return to Windurst and switch to Red Mage to do the raise. We dinged 27 on Ninja and got a buffer until his 2-hour timer reset, at which point he ran at a bat and started screaming "Derka derka!" before blowing himself up. I tossed out a "Derka derka jihad!" before pulling my own pin.

I spent the rest of my evening doing some hardcore fishing. Funds are getting a little lower than I'd like.

In breeding news, my new egg hatched today. It's a girl. Because I'm shooting for matched breeding pairs of each color, I plan to name her RedGirl. Eventually there'll be a RedBoy, GreenGirl and GreenBoy, etc. I could just keep notes the way I do for the various cards I've received from other breeders, but why bother?

The Soft Fluttery-Winged Sound of Death

Neyla

The bats near Behemoth's Dominion are an xp goldmine.

and I decided to give the tunnel to Behemoth's Dominion a try, and it was a hell of a lot better than the tunnel near Jeuno. We can outpost directly to Qufim now, so it's a short run to our campground. There are multiple Seeker Bats and Ancient Bats flying around, most so far apart that there's little danger of linking. Several adventurers ran past us on their way to King Behemoth, and sometimes they'd even toss buffs our way.

I had a nasty moment when an Ancient Bat knocked my taru ass down into the red, one hit away from death. I decided to cheat by calling my NPC for some emergency Cures, but we killed it before Gauldeval could patch me up. I wasn't going to complain.

My xp was a little higher than Neyla's, so I dinged 26 first. I got bitch-slapped by another bat a bit later and deleveled, putting me 10xp ahead. We dinged on the same bat and started working on a buffer by killing stuff on our way back to Jeuno.

We rode the airship to Bastok to quest a Lv. 28 katana called Fukuro.

It's not an expensive blade, but I like to quest things when I can. We talked to the appropriate NPCs in the Metalworks, switched over to White Mage and Beastmaster, then headed out to Palborough Mines to farm some treasure chest keys. We'd slaughtered a ton of quadavs near the Waughroon Shrine, trying to get the drop. Between spawns, Neyla would entertain himself by running off and training every quadav he could find. I'm not sure how much gil we made, but we got enough fetich pieces to build a small shrine.

I

Neyla trains the quadav.

won the lot on the first key and went off to find the chest. I got the diary key item and then trained all the quadavs on my way back to Neyla. It didn't take as long to find the second key; Neyla made his search while I returned to Bastok to finish the quest and claim my katana. I'd just zoned back into the mines to help him look for the chest when he found it.

In other news, I tried another chocobo race. It was against those three idiots from the "Compete Against Others" options in caring for your bird. Their jockey used a Fire Biscuit to tire my bird at the start, but she still kicked ass and won 3,000 gil.

Attendance Issues

Kougajii missed today's Limbus run, and he's been holding our chips for the next Omega fight. We did Temenos North instead, working our way through floors of beastmen. I always Carby pull the gigas floor, since the three of them are standing still in the middle of the room, but the update added a fourth one that patrols the outside. I also used Carbuncle on the final goblin floor, but Kerowynn interpreted "Have Sleepga ready in case it goes bad and they link anyway" as "Use Sleepga from the start." /sigh

Apu

Neyla, Hadafal and I finish escorting Cannau through the necropolis.

dropped out of our ENM static to join Veresko and Quieren's new dynamis shell and Wulfgar couldn't make it this week because of his work schedule. Cmdrfly came as Ninja; he has a NIN friend who'll be joining us next week. Nanunanoo was supposed to be our healer, but I guess he forgot because he was nowhere to be found.

I had to go White Mage, which irritated me because I'm getting close to 60 on Monk and I was looking forward to the 4000 xp from the ENM and escort. We decided to try it with four people (WHM, BRD, NIN and Hadafal on WAR); the fight took longer, but we managed to bring down Pasuk.

The escort through the necropolis was all-BST. Some other people were in there triggering the gates, which made for a fun diversion just trying to get to the final room.