The Fox and the Blau

Working in the restaurant business means you’re more than likely working weekends… more specifically, all of them. Unfortunately, most of the people on your server in FFXI will want to do half of their activities during this time. I’ve become pretty used to this, but I still get really annoyed when I have to pass up on everything. Someday I will get a new group for the Mamets!!

Last night our LS planned on doing some 5-1, 5-2, and WHM AF3 up in the northlands. Seeing as how I wasn’t supposed to be home till 9:30pm and they had a scheduled start of 7:30pm, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to make it. When I logged in, though, they hadn’t even started. Lucky me?

EG and I ran up there to help Donteatme with the AF 3 fight. I’d done it before with another group and really wanted to assist. It was popped without much warning, but we cleared it with one death from our HL DRK Delacey. Congrats to Dont on his WHM AF Body!

None of my stuff has sold yet, of course. EG tossed me some Black Ink ingredients and I went at it real quick. I had an unbelievable run of HQs, put them up, and logged for the night.

Since I had to pay Talec back for the loan, I started pondering how I could raise some gil fairly fast this weekend. There’s always Silent Oils, Echo Drops, Hi-Ethers, Hi-Potions, etc; but that requires weekend playtime I usually don’t get. It dawned on me that I had not much interest in leveling BLM/BRD/RDM/SMN/WHM on my main hume Chakan, in part because the resultant R/E collection would end up being too gnarly. No, these jobs, in the future at least, will probably be leveled on a Taru alt.

So I freed myself up to start each and every valuable magic scroll quest. All of the teles, Warp II, and Sleepga II; if sold for their going rate, would give me enough to pay back Talec for the loan and buy a Maneater (my biggest expense coming up).

My initial questing was put on hold to try out the ENM Automaton Assault with EG (BLM) and Kakusaijin (NIN). We geared up for it and just rushed straight in with whatever we had lying around. The most difficult part was getting to the mine shaft, as the MFing NPC was giving EG a hard time.

Eventually, we all got down there and did our thing. Everything was going great until the fourth automaton, which was weak to magic. EG was slept, and even though she was hit once for at least 150 dmg, didn’t wake up till the very end. By that point, Kaku bit the dust and I was down to being able to take one more hit. She Manafonted, I put up one more set of shadows and Provoked, but it was too late. I ate some dirt, with her following very quickly. We wiped with the automation @ 1%. All 3 of us felt pretty robbed, but agreed to go again next week. Hey, it’s 2k free EXP with no potential penalty, why not?

I resumed questing and collected Tele-Holla, picked up Donteatme to do Warp II together, got the Fei’Yin chest key on the 2nd Shadow, found the chest in the last spawn point we checked and collected Tele-Vahzl, finally collecting Tele-Dem. I’d already done Tele-Yhoat and Toulon owes me an Aspir since I quested it for him before he had Windy fame. So as far as worthwhile scrolls go, I believe I only have Tele-Mea, Tele-Altep, and Sleepga II left. Can anyone think of any other valuable scrolls to quest?

Ended the night with a horrible Undead Swarm Beseiged. Everyone seemed to be skilling up, and doing so wasted. Our generals fell and the Swarm started invading the Hall of Binding. Those of us with a brain ran to the AC and defended it to the best of our abilities. I resoted to merely putting up shadows, Defender, and Voking mobs from the hall of the binding and running them back out to the courtyard. Any time I took dmg, I’d be Cured back to health by mages as I ran back to the HoB on the 2nd story. Unfortunately, every fucktard wanted to melee Medusa instead of pulling her far away from the AC. Too many charms led to a lot of people dead and I witnessed my first loss in a Beseiged.

Luckily, this morning, our JP players and nite owls seem to be working on that problem.

But I love that my ATT just went up. ^^

I always fall in love with a way a certain setup looks (lvl 10 scale mail, lvl 24 chain, lvl 30 kampf, lvl 40 iron musketeers, etc.) and then hate to break up the slick image. Unfortunately for my eyes, I have acquired Tarasque Mitts+1 today.

This whole past week, I’ve been eye-balling the AH for a pair of NQ or HQ Mitts to show up and none had. So last night, I mention to the LS that I would love to get some tarasque skins and have a HL Leathercrafter synth them for me. After a little bit of researching, I got the info on them (drop from Tarasque NM in Ifrit’s Cauldron) and some people interested in coming out.

It just turns out that Vasharu’s Retribution WS NM was down there as well. So even more people came down to assist us both.

Unfortunately, once we got to the first Flame Spout, our NIN tank and LS leader Saitox D/C’d ( ; ; ) and we spent some time waiting, wondering if he was going to be able to return. Eventually, we enlist our PLD LS mate Raykoh in the venture and were back on track.

We cleared the room of all mobs, Vash popped the Retribution NM, and, after what seemed like a loooong-ass fight for so many HLs, he dropped dead.

We spent the next half hour or so farming the Rattling Egg off of Ash Lizards in the same room. The Rattling Egg is the pop item for Tarasque. During this time, the seven or eight of us were split into groups. We pulled out a couple of NPCs and my Beattrice hit 43 pretty fast. Finally, the Egg dropped.

A few people went AFK for a quick break, we worked on the respawned mobs, and I popped Tarasque. His elemental spikes actually hurt a bit, but he went down pretty fast. We got one Tarasque skin and the recipe for the Mitts calls for two. I was initially dissapointed, but bucked up.

Afterwards, we headed to do Vash’s Dark Spark fight for DRK AF hands. With a PLD73, BLM 75, THF 75, and WAR70, DS didn’t last more than a brief moment.

I D2′d out of there, put my skin on the AH, and logged for the night. I was hoping that the skin would sell for the going rate of 100k and I could buy the NQ Mitts for their current 100k. Unfortunately, I woke up at 7:30am to find that someone beat me to it at 4:30am.

I went about this morning farming, synthing, skilling Club, Shield, and H2H; anything to raise some gil. I eventually discovered that a Rolanberry bazaar was selling the T. Mitts +1 for 300k. After politely asking my LS if anyone could spare the 160k I was currently short, Talec piped up and loaned me the gil. Now to get back to raising gil.

Been sick all day, one of my two days off this week. Drudged through the heachaches and such to ding 70 and get a whole 1/3 into it. Thanks for a nice time, Delacey, Durran, Aydan, Seemhow, and Dunod.

Now I need to farm like a mofo. >.>

I started the day off by putting my newly aquired Alchemy GP item Anima Synthesis to use, crafting a couple animas. After 4 or 5 synths, I finally dinged 68 and was ready for my test: an acid kukri. Luckily, my buddy Glendor was around to craft me a mythril kukri up so I could get it in this morning. So I now possess Artisan level Alchemy. Yay.

Today was MazurkaX’s first scheduled LS day in a while. We had a few things planned, so I set the entire day aside for it. Early on, I crafted up a lot of consumables so I knew I was ready.

When Vasharu logged in around 4, out of the 3 who needed Genkai 3 , only Evilgenius (my fiancee) was on. Some of us decided to help Vash get his DRK coffer key for The Eldieme Necropolis. That only took a short time, luckily.

Everyone waited for the remaining G-3 people to come online, but after a bit, we decided to just run out to Castle Oztroja to get EG her last crest. I had urged Vash to change to DRK since he already had his coffer key and, of course, he went as BLM and, of course, we saw the coffer chest on our way up.

The Yagudo High Priest and his buddies all fell pretty fast and without any hassle at all. EG (currently at BLM59) can now move on into her 60s, where she should be at already(!).

Since no one else popped online, we decided to Tele-Holla on out to Davoi for Vash’s other DRK AF coffey key. Things were going slow, so we started roaming and ended up wiping to Dirtyhanded Gochakzuk when a bunch of us got sloppy.

Good news for me during that run, though. I only lost 2k EXP after HP’ing and I finally dinged 225 on Great Axe and got Full Break for me. Skill ups on GAxe have been really slow lately, so this made my day.

Next up was a pick-up-ish Windy mission 7-1 run for Leosleigh. I got to tank on WAR/NIN since the group was mostly RDMs and other mage types. They kept me at full and we got through all four Hinge Oils without a problem.

Then we went on a trip to the Temple of Uggalepih to do the Axe Weapon Skill Decimation NM for Shiznito. Sometime during the fight, Leper got KO’d, but the rest of us walked away with minor cuts and bruises. I get to do this one again inside of another month after I ding 71 and break my latent.

Finally, we got the Hunter’s Socks for Leper. It went pretty fast and smooth. The Koenigstiger has what seems like a pretty solid Paralyze attack, which is the most annoying thing about the fight.

I just came back to the game from a 4 month break and it’s days like this that I really missed. It’s nice to be back again amongst my friends, and even more, being able to contribute and be useful more and more as I ding higher.