Old Man of the Desert

I've

Giant Spiders are good prey.

been online for small snatches of time this week, still trying to figure out when I want to do my gaming under my new work schedule. I've just been focusing on Warrior, catching up to Neyla for some eventual duo action.

The recent addition of Field Manuals to the Altepa Desert have been very handy in that regard. I used the one at the Korroloka Tunnel zone. The first page calls for the deaths of ten Giant Spiders, all of which checked as Easy Prey. Using Dancer as my subjob, I was never in danger of dying. I just hacked at their legs and claimed my bonus xp. I tossed in a few beetles for good measure, but mostly I just took it easy and cruised my way to hitting 40 this morning.

I hit Bastok and flagged the Artifact Armor quest for my Razor Axe. It involves finding some axe grip materials in Davoi -- at the same area where I recently died in the past to the much stronger mobs -- by clicking on a tent flap and killing two orcs. They were pushovers since I went as Monk.

I have to track down my Lv. 40 gear soon. I imagine most of my Beastmaster stuff will work, since it's likely just going to be me and Neyla as a duo. If I were going full-blown professional Warrior, I'd be using my Great Axe all the time and trying to keep my skill capped. Somehow I don't think it's going to be an issue.

Mazes and Monsters

Neyla and I have been moved to the evening shift at our job, which will no doubt impact our gaming a bit. This week is transitional, where he's still working mornings, so we only have about two hours of overlap if we wanted to do any serious running around in Vana'diel. Next week we'll be on the same hours, so it's just a matter of figuring out when we want to play. It's going to take some getting used to.

Since

My maze was full of beetles.

I had nothing better to do this morning, I finally tried Moblin Maze Mongers. I'd acquired the basic starter kit last week, but this was my first time going in. I knew I couldn't win by myself -- "Don't die too much like a bitch," Neyla told me as he was logging off yesterday -- but I wanted to see what it looked like. Hell, I wasn't even sure what mobs I'd face.

They were beetles, as it turned out. The first four or five near the entrance were all Decent to me. I killed them easily enough, but then I was faced with an Even and a Tough standing together and obviously ready to link, so I used the compass to warp out.

The mobs scale to the lowest member of the party, so I told Neyla I'd probably drag him in there on a lowbie job to make it easy for me to farm the marbles and assorted goodies to add to the customization levels. It'd make a nice playground for us to duo in at some point. I can see why the update added a bribe to keep people from using it every day.

Crystalline Quests

Neyla and I did the first quest of "Crystalline Prophecy" on Thursday, farming Seedspall items from the yagudo, quadav, and orcs in present-day zones. We usually had competition, which made it a little frustrating. There's a nifty cutscene in Qufim Island when they're gathered.

Today

The mandragora fight was absurdly easy.

was much easier. We met in Batallia Downs for the escort, and it turns out the first item we needed drops from the mobs in that zone. It's a little lame in that the key item goes to a random person in the party, so I got it from one of his mobs, etc.

We did the escort before traveling to Rolanberry Fields. There's a heavy goblin concentration near the Crawler's Nest, so that's where we farmed. Items in hand, we traveled through the nest and back outside to fight a goblin NM. Man, that was a seriously weak-sauce monster. The other two goblins were also easy, although we had to travel through Beaucedine Glacier to reach the rear entrance of Batallia Downs for one and then use the Cavernous Maw to reach the Sauromugue fight.

From there, it was off to Qufim Island for a battle against mandragoras. They were weaker than the goblins, usually dying to a single punch. We had to kill 30 of them, which took no time at all.

We finished up with the quest "Those Who Lurk in Shadows," which takes place in Fei'yin. That one was trickier, since you have to gather nine Seed Afterglows scattered throughout the dungeon. We ran out of time on our first attempt, but Neyla found a handy walkthrough which explained the mission structure and locations of the afterglows. We're ready to do the fight in the Qu'bia Arena when we have a fully party available.

While running through Fei'yin, we encountered a MNK/DNC named Apachie doing battle with the ghost for Beastmaster AF. He wasn't winnning, so Neyla invited him into our party and we beat it down for him. As Neyla said, we couldn't leave a BST hanging.