Peregrine

I had zero luck getting a party invitation today. It's not a monumental hassle, since I've got the PSP version of Final Fantasy Tactics to keep me warm. Still, it would've been nice to go stabby-stab-stab on something. Instead, it was choppy-chop-chop with my axe. I traveled out to Pso'xja to get a Florid Stone for Sunday's ENM and was looking for something to do. Neyla suggested I quest the Peregrine, my Dragoon AF weapon.

I

Decurio I-III feels my fury.

had to flag the quest in San d'Oria, where the yearly Halloween festival was in full swing. I traded one of my ginger cookies and was briefly turned into a quadav, and Sabia waved to me while I was in the middle of the cutscene.

I switched over to Beastmaster and traveled out to the Eastern Altepa Desert to pop the antican NM. I'm not sure why I had to fight a Paladin-type monster for a Dragoon weapon, but it still died very fast. I returned to San d'Oria and claimed my weapon; it's supposed to be a good one, but I'm two levels away from being able to equip it.

In other news, Neyla talked to Crookedmidget about the three of us doing some BCNMs on Monday. Crook is trying to get a Peacock Charm, so we're going to do a couple rounds of "Under Observation."

Boxed In

The

Zazarg dukes it out with a Mamool Ja.

concentrated gaming power of Valve's The Orange Box is one of the few things which could pull me from Vana'diel and keep me out. I've been plugging my way through Portal, Half-Life 2 and its episodic expansions. I popped on for brief checks of my auctionhouse sales; I'm finally rid of all those demon quivers and made back all the gil I spent grinding woodworking to 69.

The only long-term bit was on Monday evening when the Mamool Ja invaded Al Zahbi. Neyla called to let me know they were gearing up for it. We teamed up as White Mage and Bard with a tarutaru Beastmaster for the fight, although I spent most of it babysitting General Zazarg. I hope that galka gets some decent backstory when Wings of the Goddess comes out, since he's my favorite.

Today marked my return to Vana'diel. I wanted to do a little Dragoon work so I could start bringing it to the "Test Your Mite" ENM on Sundays.

Getting

I keep pulling hate from Worker Crawlers.

a group seemed to take forever because there was nobody seeking at my level for the longest time, but I finally got tapped to party in the Crawler's Nest. The same person was controlling the Ninja and White Mage, which is never healthy. I wasn't heartbroken when they had to stop and get a replacement White Mage while another person took over as Ninja. Each player could focus on a single job, and the "new" Ninja did a better job of tanking.

I say "better," but not perfect because I was getting the snot beaten out of me on a regular basis. I was two levels higher than the Ninja, and it seemed like I only had to glance at the crawlers before they started pounding me. I was about to ding 40 when we decided to move to the beetle camp. We did two fights when our new White Mage "disconnected" and never came back. That was the end of our party, but at least I got my level.

Neyla had dusted off his Red Mage gear -- "This is like a Bigfoot sighting," he quipped -- and wandered out to be in a position to point and laugh if I died. I bummed a teleport off him when our party disbanded.

I'll try again tomorrow.