Rebuilding the Buffer

Quieren's

I feel really rusty, but at least I'm with friends.

XP buffer on Paladin dropped so low that he deleveled during Wednesday's Proto-Omega fight. He got it back with Raise 3, but he asked for help building it up today. I volunteered my White Mage, Kyrial came as Blue Mage, and we asked Neyla to come as Red Mage.

"I don't party with Paladins," he said.

"You don't party at all, Mr. Snob," I laughed at him.

He eventually came around, though. It wasn't going to be a lame pickup group or high-pressure cannon party. We just wanted to have some fun and kill stuff for an hour or two. Veresko was going to come, but Quieren got impatient waiting for him to log on and invited a Monk and Dark Knight to fill out the roster. Veresko wasn't very happy about that.

We hit Mount Zhayolm to fight the trolls along the battlements. I haven't played White Mage in an xp party in months and months; despite all the Limbus runs, I felt kinda rusty about MP conservation and keeping the chains going. I never had to stop, but I didn't complain when Quieren said he needed to go to the bathroom.

I was only 60 points from a merit, and I dinged it on the first kill. I switched over to EXP Mode to rebuild my own buffer -- Einherjar and Limbus have been doing a number on me -- and then switched back to Limit Points after I got my buffer back to 10k.

We

Neyla and I work together a lot, but never before like this.

roamed around and killed stuff for about 90 minutes. Neyla and I were about 1k from having another merit point when we stopped, so we'll get ours later. I just thought it was kinda cool that we were partied up on our mage jobs, which we've never done in an XP session before. It was nice having a competent Red Mage and not worrying.

Quieren is slowly getting more involved in Vana'diel, so I'm sure there will be similar sessions at some point. An hour or so making easy points with friends beats waiting for a bunch of Besieged invasions when you're as lazy about merits as I am.

In other news, the chocobo egg hatched and it was a female. I retired her immediately. I wish Evildr would log on sometime so I could get some fresh breeding cards. I also beat The Darkness, so I'll be seeking on Monk all week.

Phallic Symbols

I bought a copy of The Darkness yesterday, so I've been playing that and not worrying about Vana'diel. I logged on today for Limbus.

Attendance

It looks phallic, if you ask me.

was bad, so the scheduled Proto-Omega fight was nearly called off. Achates had the pop set and would be absent for a week or so. We had several melees balking at that, so they started asking friends from their other linkshells to pitch in and help us with the fight. Nanunanoo came along on White Mage.

We won it and got the body, hands and legs. The run was only noteworthy for me because I teased Kougaijii that his Provoke macro looked like it had a cock in it.

"Did you do that on purpose?" I asked him.

"Maybe," he said.

"You think everything looks like a cock," Nyosan joked.

"Only if it has balls and a rounded head," I told him.

I logged out after the run and went back to killing mafia dudes.

Chopsuey Chucky

I

Digging in the desert is very tiresome.

completely failed to get a party on Monk today, which sucks because I'm halfway to 68 and was hoping to ding.

Still, the day wasn't a total waste. Now that I have a complete set of chocographs for the Hot and Cold game, I've been hitting the Eastern Altepa Desert to try my luck. It's an evil and the bird gets fatigued after only a few pecks at the ground, so you pretty much have to nail the chest's location in about three tries if you want to have enough stamina to actually dig it up.

I managed to find it today and got a Darksteel Chain and some Fragrant Antica Broth. I'll sell the chain, but I'm keeping the broth because it summons the antlion familiar Chopsuey Chucky. As jugs go, he's pretty expensive.

Bitter Failure

BigKahunas as taken its sweet time getting there, but we finally went up for a rematch against Proto-Ultima. Can you guess how it went?

He's

Proto-Ultima is a pain in my taru ass.

always so easy at the start and we have no problems whittling him down and surviving his attacks. It's that last 20% or so, when he starts using Citadel Buster, that knocks us out of the ring. Once the dying starts, it's very hard to recover because the healers are trying to keep the tanks alive and can't raise any of the melees. It really blows. Maybe we need more stunners. I just don't know.

It's not going to be my problem much longer, at any rate. I told Quieren that I plan to retire from BigKahunas at the end of July, which gives me time for one more shot at Ultima and more coins for an AF upgrade.

Beyond that, it was a quiet day. Wulgar was there for the ENM, so we won pretty easily. He couldn't flag the escort with us because he'd forgotten to pick up last week's scroll until after today's conquest tally.

In other news, I bred RedGirl and Bajaratt's red male for a fresh egg and turned it in this morning. I still need to get a green chocobo, but I'll settle for having one matched pair of colored birds. If the chick isn't a male, it's going straight to the nugget factory.