And So It Begins

One of the more annoying Campaign behaviors comes from people who hoard mobs, dragging them off to some distant area so they can fight them alone. It sucks because the people back at the outpost stand around with their thumbs up their collective asses, listening to the battle music and wondering when the next wave is coming in because they have no clue it's just one or two people screwing it all up.

That

The yagudo in Sauromugue can be tricky.

happened yesterday in Fort Karugo-Narugo, when some dickhead Paladin started dragging a yagudo through doors into some adjoining areas. Neyla and I were on his tail, hitting at the mob and trying to keep it from chasing that schmuck all over the place. The guy even used Invincible to try to pull it away from us, but it didn't help much.

Real-world snow and ice nixed our plans to see a movie and hang out, so we did more Campaign battles today. Neyla logged on an hour or so before I did, and when it was all over he said he'd earned about 21,000 limit points.

I finished off a third merit and finally made my first Strength upgrade today. I need six merits to upgrade it again. Then comes the fun part, because after that it's three nine-point upgrades. That's a lot of campaign battles, the sort of maddening endeavor that could almost (but not quite) convince me to seek a merit party.

In other news, the black sole have been selling quickly. I'll be back in Port Jeuno before the escort tomorrow, hoping for more skillups to go with the gil I'm earning.

Black Sole

There

More fishing in Port Jeuno.

were plenty of campaign battles today, and I had fun killing mobs with Neyla and Rappa in West Sarutabaruta. Neyla's getting back into the gaming groove after a few weeks off, and his plan is to keep meriting his Red Mage spells while also doing ops to get his Dark Knight job to 40. When that happens, we're going to alternate between Campaign and Fields of Valor.

Today's fights were all bonus to me, because the real fun came at the start when I was fishing for black sole in Port Jeuno. Just like the early part of the month, I got two .2 skillups while I was there. My fishing skill is now 93.8.

Disappointments

My

I had a better Campaign experience.

campaign battles were going pretty well today, but Neyla was having a sucktacular time of dying constantly. He got frustrated enough to give up completely, and retreated to Vunkerl Inlet to work on his polearm skill awhile.

I didn't follow him. Instead, I hit Port Jeuno to fish awhile. I think he got the worst part of the deal, because the bite rate was complete crap. It seemed to take forever to catch just one stack of sole. Bleh.

Neyla eventually went back to Campaign, but I was too bored at that point to follow him out there. I logged out instead. Maybe it'll get better tomorrow. I hope so, anyway.

Let's Rumble

I popped on a little while Saturday to work off my Campaign ops, bringing my Dragoon right up to the edge of hitting 71.

I

Rumble Crawlers gang up on me.

had a shiny new op waiting for me this morning, so I did another Crimson Domino and only needed 60xp to hit 71. More from boredom than anything else, I went to Vunkerl Inlet and killed a few more crabs to ding the level and then get a small buffer going. I returned to Windurst after that, teleported around to flag the escort and avatar fights, and logged out awhile.

When I came back, Dalamar was still in Dynamis. I toyed with fishing awhile, but instead ran to the Crawler's Nest to see if there were any likely candidates for Guard skillups. I didn't have much luck, but I enjoyed punching my way to the back of the caves and killing Rumble Crawlers before taking on Knight Crawlers and Crawler Hunters. I really need to find a good skillup guide.

Beyond that, it was a standard Sunday. Neyla, Dalamar, and I did the escorts and avatars, although this week they were back on their traditional jobs. I was surprised and impressed Neyla remembered a suggestion I made last week about saving the scroll collecting until after the avatar fights so we wouldn't have to travel to San d'Oria twice. It definitely cut down on all the running around we had to do.