Wonder Party

I apologize for the lack of updates lately. I've been out of commission due to the fact that my hands and fingers have been hurting like crazy since last Friday. All that manic magic macro mashing on Red Mage has left my marvelous manipulators in a maladjusted mode at the moment.

On a completely unrelated note, the next person who tells me using Windower's extended macros isn't cheating because "it's only an extra one to two keystrokes" is getting punched right in the baby-maker.

But you all didn't come here to listen to me drone on about the onset of Carpal Tunnel syndrome. No, you came here to listen to tales of adventure and excitement. Since I haven't any new tales, I shall have to revisit an old one. I've made mention of it before, but I once had a Wonder Party. It took place months ago, but it made such an impression that I did a short write-up of it that's been floating around so I figure I may as well post it:

Does having the best party ever count as an accomplishment? Of course it does.

I finally got back to leveling Red Mage and tonight's trip to 45 was quite satisfying. My friend showed up tonight after a month long hiatus and since we were both bored with no real goals for the night we decided to go leveling somewhere. We decide to head for Western Altepa Desert to fight some Beetles. Along the way I managed to stumble across an entire party full of people who know what the hell they're doing. I was utterly dumbfounded. Our party looked something like this:
Red Mage - Me. I do an ok job of things.

Monk - My friend, he punches things until they fall down. He's a very intimidating Taru.

Paladin - Tarus can't be Paladins, right? Wrong! Seriously some of the best hate generation I've seen. The mobs looked at me once, maybe twice, during the four hours we partied. He also managed to not bleed all over the carpet, which was impressive.

Thief - Why are the Galka Thieves always the best ones? He was a seasoned puller and probably the first thief I've run across who asked for a SATA setup. He also managed to not pull when my MP was empty, something not many accomplish.

Dark Knight - For all the crap people give Dark Knights, this guy just disproved all of it. I made damn sure to keep refresh on him, because he made it worthwhile. Such spell slinging never have I seen before from a Dark Knight. Hell, he was helping me sleep links and Bind stuff to help keep the party from wiping at one point. Who knew?

Dancer - Holy Bajesus, Dancer makes everything better. Why they aren't in demand the way Corsairs and Bards are for exp parties, I'll never know. Ours was a Japanese player, so communication was limited but he stuck around for the whole thing even when we had a few mishaps and downtime. So damn many steps and sambas, this guy was a maniac. My only regret is that I couldn't properly tell him how awesome he was, and instead had to make an attempt using the Auto-translator.

So we made our way to Western Altepa Desert and set up wiping out beetles. It's a bit hectic, what with links and repops sneaking up on us, but we're at the tail end of the level range so we're handling it just fine. I'm relying on converts to keep on my feet, but there's enough support that the few times I did run empty it didn't even come close to a wipe.

All too soon I leveled up and the exp started to dry up, so we took a short break to figure out what to do next. I would have been content to end the night there. It had already been a fantastic run, but I didn't know where to go next. Thankfully my party did. We broke sync and headed for the Quicksand Caves.

We made our way to one end of the zone and started pulling in some beetles. They were tougher and a bit more taxing on the mp pool, but otherwise fine.

Unfortunately we were stuck with the less than ideal camp, which meant there were some ants to clear out if we wanted to get to the rest of the beetles. Damn were those some challenging fights. Every time we had to pull one of those, it ended up with me burning convert and still having next to no mp by the end of the fight.

One of the ants almost did us in. Our thief pulled one when my mp was already a little weathered, and somehow everything went wrong. I think our Paladin ran out of mp or something because he was suddenly in the red and I was fumbling for convert so I could cure him. Then he was down. This was the "Oh shit" moment. I flipped on Chainspell and raised him only to see another Taru, our monk, bite the dust. At this point we all had the sense to both call for a retreat as well as the sense to act on it. Some of our party was still under the Gravity effect from one of the TP moves. I tossed out a Gravity on the ant while the party retreated. Covering our not so swift-footed thief, the Dark Knight and I both cast Bind on the ant which stuck long enough for our party to make it to the zone line.

Alas, our Taru monk lay dead inside. Shortly after he recovered our Thief let us know that he would have to leave us soon. After about 15 minutes and someone leveling up it was time for him to depart, unless someone else was close to a level up. Turns out I only had 75 exp to go, so we tore through one last Beetle, declared victory and all celebrated having experienced a pretty rad party.

I do hope I'll get to see some of those folks again. I really had a lot of fun tonight.

Looking back this is still the party experience I hope to recreate every time I join a party. Everyone was on the ball that night and there was just enough challenge to make it interesting without turning it into a headache. This party is the standard of excellence and fun that I will probably spend the rest of my FFXI career chasing after.

Mohan is still out there punching things and as far as I can tell he's still a top notch Monk. Nothing stays alive very long when he's around.

Mrvile, our Paladin, is still one of the best tanks I've run into. He puts a lot of Paladins to shame.

Spitbreak is still the only Thief I've encountered who does a good job of juddging mage mp while pulling and still managing to keep things at a good flow.

Rydak played the role of Dark Knight masterfully and it pains me to see how poorly everyone else peforms the job after seeing him work.

Haine will clog your chatlog with all of his Dancer moves, but I'll be damned if it doesn't make everything work out just right. I've seen a lot of Dancers since him, but only one other could match him.

This party truly was too awesome for a mere blog entry to do it justice. It was one of those things that comes along precisely once, but I'm going to keep chasing the idea of having it again.

Now if only my fingers would stop aching...

From Mediocre Mage

I need to get out of Gustaberg more often, but it's just so pretty.

Use your MP!

Dark Knights frustrate me.

No, that's not entirely true. People who do a poor job of playing Dark Knight frustrate me.

The job has a lot to offer and I've seen a notable improvement in party performance when I get a Dark Knight who knows what he's doing. However, more often than not I'll get stuck with someone who refuses to tap into the full potential of the job. There's this nice juicey MP pool for them to draw on all night long and they won't even look at it.

I don't understand it at all. You've been given an awesome toolbox full of goodies, but all you want to do is hit auto-attack? For shame.

You wouldn't believe how often I've seen a Dark Knight sit there on a full MP pool who won't bother to Drain back some HP after they get hit. The option to sustain yourself is there, so why would you not make use of it? Why take the chance that your healer might run out of MP or not get to you in time before you wind up on the receiving end of a particularly nasty attack and bite the dust.

Let's not forget Stun. Stun is such an awesome tool to have at your disposal. Most Damage Dealers have little to offer in the way of supporting their party, but Dark Knights are blessed with the ability to do more than just kill the enemy. Is the Ninja tank having trouble putting Utsusemi shadows back up because he's taking a few too many blows to the face? Stun it to give him some breathing room so he can recast with ease. Is the mob about to perform a devasting move that's going to wipe out half of everyone's HP? You can stun that if you've got good timing. Just make an effort, that's all I'm asking. I don't expect Dark Knights to be single-handedly fixing everything that goes wrong on the front line, I just want to see them make an effort to use Stun when it can help the party.

What really gets under my skin, as a Red Mage, is watching those full MP pools. Fairly often I'll see that a Dark Knight has been making use of his spells, as evidenced by a less than full MP pool. Thinking that I've finally found one who will be making good use of his spells I cast Refresh on him, so as to slowly replenish his MP.

This is quickly followed by me beating my head against a wall repeatedly.

After applying Refresh, all spellcasting from the Dark Knight immediately halts. You were down ~50 MP so I thought I'd help you maintain your spellcasting and how do you reward me? By wasting my MP! If I give you Refresh it is because I expect you to continue continue casting spells. You're not doing me any favors by stockpiling MP and you're certainly not helping by letting me waste Refresh on you so you can watch it sit on your buff list while providing not benefit at full MP.

I try to help Dark Knights and it just screws with my own efficiency. To date, I've only met one Dark Knight who's made it worth my while to supply him with Refresh. He also happens to consider Red Mage as his main job, go figure.

I have no problem with Refreshing Dark Knights, I'd just like to see a little return on my investment is all. Is that really such a bad thing?

From Mediocre Mage

Ok, that was a lot of complaining, so here's a pretty picture to make up for it.

Can't talk, busy dying

Red Mage has a reputation for being a rather stressful job. I can see how this would be. It was quite apparent last night. However I don't think it's the most stressful job in the game, not by a longshot.

The award for biggest headache goes to the role of Party Leader, no contest.

As the party leader you are responsible for everything. You have to make sure you are covering your own job's role, but you also have to make sure everyone else is on task. Additionally you get to be in charge of choosing a camp, locating it and making sure everyone gets there alive. This is no easy task, believe it or not. Once you get to camp there comes the serene bliss of having party members deciding to leave and, you guessed it, it's your responsibility to find a replacement for them. All of this while still covering your responsibilities as a normal party member.

Being the leader truly is a headache. I think a lot of it is the knowledge that if things go wrong, it's all your fault.

Puller pulling too fast? You should have told them to slow down.

Mages not casting appropriate spells? Your job to give them the kick in the ass they need.

Tank being lazy about using their job's abilities to keep hate? You need to step up and tell them how it's done.

Damage Dealers stealing hate from the tank? You need to tell them to knock it off.

Party wiping to everything in the zone? You were supposed to pick a camp that people could handle.

Party falling apart as members leave? Why weren't you finding replacemets to keep it going?

I don't know how you could possibly make being a party leader anymore of a headache.
Oh wait, yes I do. You do it while playing as a Red mage. You know, the job that's already supposed to be doing everything at once.

Boy was that a rough party the other night.

Earlier in the week my friend was having trouble getting invited to a party as a Monk so we decided to make an attempt over the weekend to team up and put together another wonder party. I haven't told you about the wonder party yet, I will at some point, just rest assured that it was awesome. So using my spiffy-keen google-fu powers I consulted Campsitarus to see where I might want to hold an exp party as a level 52 Red Mage. Kuftal Tunnel seemed to fit the bill so I started the long and tedious process of finding a tank.

There really aren't enough tanks on my server.

I ended up asking a Warrior if he'd be willing to tank. He said yes. I took this as a good sign, since I'd partied with him before when he was a paladin and he'd done a fine job then. So with the roles of tank and healer filled I decided to rope in my friend and some other hooligans to head out for Kuftal Tunnel.

Our lineup ended up looking something like this:
Red Mage - me
Monk - my friend
Warrior
Dark Knight
Dancer
Thief

It is becoming increasingly clear that I need to stop partying with non-paladin tanks if I want to have a relaxing evening. Our warrior did a fantastic job of keeping hate, but he was still a warrior. This meant he tended to bleed a lot. I think we would have been sunk without the Dancer there to help with the healing. I really can't get over how useful Dancers are. This one wasn't the best, but they still added a lot to the party. Namely they helped keep everyone alive while our Thief was pulling like a madman.

My friend informs me that the pulling was actually a pretty standard speed. I am dubious however. I never felt I had enough MP during this party and I blame the thief for pulling so fast that I couldn't find time to rest for MP. When you are in charge of debuffing at the beginning of the battle, buffing the party, healing and renewing debuffs midway through the battle you don't get a lot of time to sit down other than when the mob dies and the puller runs off to get a new one. I'm not made of MP. Convert is on a ten minute timer. Cut me some slack. I guess I just need to get better at managing my MP if this is going to be the norm, but damn.

See, this is where I as a party leader probably should have said something to our thief in order to keep my own stress at a manageable level. Unfortunately I had two things working against me.
1. He was Japanese and I don't speak Japanese.
2. I'm not enough of an asshole to pull off telling people how to do their job.
So instead of causing a fuss I just attributed my stress to my own ineptitude and the ever present need to improve my skills as a Red Mage.

Somewhere along the line our Dancer says something's come up and they have to leave in ten minutes. Have you ever tried finding a replacement for a party member while main healing on Red Mage? I find it doesn't work out very well. So we had to take some down time while I tried to find someone to replace our dancer. I figured a Summoner might work. I know a lot of summoners don't like the healing role, so I try to make a point of not having them as a main healer. Backup healing however, I have no problem sticking them in that role.

You want to know something funny? For all the complaining I hear about Summoners not getting party invites, a lot of them won't even take an invite to a normal party. Apparently it's all about the Astral Burn parties or it's not worth their time to even show up to a party where they won't be the main healer. No wonder they don't get to come to parties for their Summoner abilities, they're flat out refusing to. Luckily the Japanese Summoner community seems a little more receptive to the idea of actually participating in a traditional party. I figured I might as well give our Thief someone he could talk to.

At some point during the night my linkshell figured out that I was in Kuftal Tunnel leading a party. They inquired about what I was doing there, to which my response was something along the lines of "Can't talk, busy dying". It was a very stressful party even with the support of a backup healer.

Towards the end of the night our thief managed to bring back two crabs at once. While I did manage to keep one slept while the party worked on the the other, it was a huge MP drain for both the Summoner and myself. We were running on empty by the time the second crab went down. So of course the thief wanders off right away to pick up some more mobs. Heaven forbid we should ever be without something to kill, even if we don't have the mp to sustain the party. So of course shit begins to hit the fan when the mages don't have enough MP. Our tank went down due to a lack of MP available for cures and the Summoner followed soon after. Somehow the remaining front line jobs managed to hold their own long enough for me to get back enough MP to keep them alive long enough to kill the mob.

After raising folks we decided to do one last batch of mobs in order to get our Dark Knight leveled up since he was pretty close. After that we all parted ways.

This was easily one of the more stressful parties I've had in recent memory. Not only did I have to be responsible for everything in-game as a Red Mage, I had to be responsible for everything on the meta-game level as a Party Leader. I honestly don't think I did a good job. I was over-eager to get a party going and picked up a less than optimal tank and didn't have the sense to keep our Thief in line, which ultimately resulted in a few people dying.

I'm not cut out for this, I think I'll let other people be party leader for a while.

From Mediocre Mage

A goobbue ate my face once. True story.

Inventory -8, sweet!

There comes a time in each Mage's life when they will need to acquire a few select pieces of gear that they will use for the remainder of their career. This gear happens to be available immediately after you break the first level cap. That's right kids, it's time for fun with elemental staves.

I've known these were coming for a long time. They're kind of hard to miss, since every mage in the game is lugging them around once they hit level 51. So for the past couple of months I've had an ongoing project of slowing picking them up when I see them at a good price in a bazaars or when someone decides to put a bunch on the auction house at dirt cheap prices. At 10k gil a piece, they're an absolute steal.

Think about that.

For the price of 24 pots of honey you can get a piece of equipment that you'll be using indefinitely. Ok, ok, there are high quality versions that go for absurd prices, but until you get mixed up in endgame you probably won't need those.

So yes, I've known these were coming and made sure to have them all waiting for me when I reached level 51. What I hadn't accounted for was how much I was going to stress over redoing my macros to incorporate them. It looks really straightforward at first. All you have to do is put the corresponding elemental staff into your spell macro so you'll cast fire spells with a fire staff, dark spells with a dark staff, etc. What they don't tell you is how much blinking for the equipment swap ruins your ability to target. Up to this point I had been using two basic INT and MND gearsets, switching prior to casting my spells. I didn't have any equipment that needed to be macroed in for a specific spell so I never realized until now how that blinking can throw off the target cursor. This wasn't a problem so much with my nukes, but with more critical things like Cures, it was pretty unsettling to have the cursor vanish right as you were trying to keep someone from dying. As a result I've shifted a lot of my macros' targeting types from < stpc > to < stal > . This means I have to get used to selecting people using the arrow keys, but at least I'll be able to target them as we all start blinking from frantic gear swapping.

The other macro issue that's been troubling me is the need to somehow maintain a macro set that will let me still swing my sword on my own time. Do I just use my new macro set with elemental staves and continually switch back to a sword and shield gearset after each spell? Do I add new lines to my current macro palette that are identical to what I have now except that they don't have the staves macroed in?

I'm not sure what the ideal solution is, but for now I've decided to just maintain two macro palettes that are more or less carbon copies of each other, except that one leaves out the staves. I also included a macro to toggle between the two.

As a Red Mage these are the things that plague me. It's not about having the right gear, it's about knowing how to make proper use of the gear you have.

From Mediocre Mage

I kill Manticores in my spare time.

Genkai 1, or: An adventure in losing exp

I've been having so many adventures lately that I haven't had time to sit down and record any of them. So I'm taking some time today to jot down what I can recall of them.

Genkai

After a particularly bad party in Crawler's Nest I finally hit level 50. For those of you following along at home this is the level where you stop being able to level up until you complete a specific quest to extend the level cap. It turns out there's this snarky old man in Jeuno who wants you to travel to three dungeons and pick up some items off some rather nasty monsters. It's a breeze if you can get a group of people to give you a hand, but if you try to do it on your own it becomes extremely difficult.

Being the stubborn mage that I am, I decided that I would attempt to complete this quest on my own before infringing on my friends' time. It also helped that I had about 4,000 extra exp I could afford to lose before I would actually de-level back to 49.

Without any further troublesome planning or strategy I set out for Crawler's Nest(I seem to end up here a lot lately). My prey was a large mushroom-like critter called an Exoray. I had seen a few during my last party in Crawler's Nest so I had a good idea of where to go to find some. Unfortunately, I hadn't realized just how densely populated the place was. In retrospect it was a miracle our puller had managed to bring in so few links. The monster density wouldn't have been as much of a problem, except for the fact that everything in the room was aggressive. The flies wanted to kill me, the crawler's wanted to eat me, the beetles wanted to run me over, the Scorpions wanted to impale me and the Exorays just wanted to give me a good old fashioned kick in the ass.

My first few trips in were mainly spent running and hiding while I searched for a good spot to set up camp. The mobs here were tough enough that I probably wouldn't be able to handle them more than one at a time, so I needed to find a place where I could pull one for a one-on-one fight. There weren't any such places to be had really. I died quite a few times figuring that out. Clearing the room out didn't work too well either, since Red Mages take forever to kill anything. I did eventually find an Exoray in a tunnel that was far enough away from the other Exoray in the tunnel that I felt I could make an attempt to fight it. Did you know mushrooms hit like tractor-trailers? I went down pretty fast, but not before getting a ton of skillups.

At this point I was becoming frustrated and decided to spend some time(and exp) getting some skillups before making another serious attempt. I figured maybe if I could get my evasion skill up some more I might be able to dodge often enough to keep myself alive long enough to defeat the Exoray. In short: I died a whole lot and got a bunch of skillups.

Round 2 went much better, although it was still a very difficult fight. The Exoray was kicking through my Stoneskin almost as soon as I was putting it up, so I ended up relying pretty heavily on Bio II and Poison II to deal most of the damage for that fight while I focused on trying to keep my buffs up. There was an amusing point towards the end of the battle where both me and the Exoray were paralyzed. Me from a move the Exoray had used, and the Exoray was paralyzed from Ice Spikes. I swear we sat there for a good 2 minutes each of us paralyzed and unable to do anything. The Exoray was getting low on hp and finally managed to knock my stoneskin off and was able to keep me from recasting it. With my hp quickly dropping, a moderate amount of mp left and the end in sight I decided to nuke my way to victory. I ended the battle with no stoneskin, ~11 hp and poison ticking. The item dropped and I've never been so happy to warp out of a dungeon before.

All in all, I'd say my expedition to Crawler's Nest was a smashing success.
I even learned an important lesson: disable Composure after you apply your buffs or the increased recast times could quite literally kill you.

The next dungeon on the agenda was The Eldieme Necropolis, where I would need to go Lich-hunting. I was all set to go get myself killed when a friend found out and decided to intervene before I lost anymore exp(I had already burned about 2,000 in Crawler's Nest). This actually turned out to be very good for two reasons:
1. I probably wouldn't have been able to defeat a Lich on my own.
2. Navigating through the Eldieme Necropolis requires multiple people to hit switches and open doors if you want to get to certain areas.

We had a few close calls, but with two people hunting down the undead, it was a relatively uneventful task. Honestly, it was kind of boring compared to what I went through in Crawler's Nest. There's just something about being able to die at any given moment that adds to the excitement and gives a certain sense of satisfaction when you emerge alive and victorious. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the assistance I receive from folks, but some days I wish I had a group of people to hang with that were all at the same point in their FFXI careers as I am. I guess I missed that boat by quite a few years, huh?

With two of three MacGuffins in hand, we set out to pick up the last one in Garlaige Citadel. We were kind of playing it by ear. Turns out the Citadel is even more obnoxious to navigate than the Necropolis. The bomb monster we needed to hunt down was behind a gate that required four people to open it. No one in my LS was free to come help at the time, but my friend managed to rope one person from his into helping us and so we headed out. When we got there we stumbled into another band of adventurers who were heading through the gate. Naturally we decided to team up and help each other out.

Once we got through the first gate we fought some magic pots and bombs through a few rooms. Somewhere along the way the item I needed dropped. The other people needed help opening a second gate to go deeper into the Citadel. Turns out they were searching for some treasure coffers for some spiffy artifact armor, so they were going to be there a while. We all agreed to stick with them and get them through the second gate. It was no burden to us, and we had already found what we came for so why not help them out? Along the way we encountered more magic pots and bombs.

I died a lot learning about magic aggro.

We saw the treasure hunters safely through the second gate and wished them well on their hunt. It was then time to call it a night and the rest of us headed back to Jeuno. I handed over the items to the snarky old man and he gave me a snarky response. I'm still working on coming up with a snappy retort, but I fear it may be too late at this point. At least the quest was done though, and I could get some sleep.

There are more adventures to tell of and I will post them in time, but for now enjoy the sunset over Lower Jeuno:

From Mediocre Mage

From Mediocre Mage

From Mediocre Mage

From Mediocre Mage

Tarutaru plan for world domination

I think I've figured out why this game is able to keep drawing me in.
It's the wonderfully entertaining and immersive world history. I'm completely serious, there's something about this world that feels entirely genuine in a way that very few games have been able to do. While I can't quite tell what exactly it is that makes this world so compelling, it has done a damn fine job of it. The number of games I've played over the years that have been able to pull this off can probably be counted on one hand. FFXI is a slightly different flavor, but it's still up there.

Last night I went exploring and learned a lot about Vanadiel while completing the quest to get the map for Crawler's Nest. For instance: did you know that long ago the Tarutaru were planning to use their magic to conquer the world? Yeah, all those sweet innocent little faces are hiding a secret desire to enslave the world. I knew there was a reason I didn't trust them.

It was a lot of fun having an excuse to go exploring all night long. I actually ended up running into my friend right as he was logging in for the night. Turns out he needed to do the quest as well, so rather than leave him hanging we went back and got him all of the monuments I had done the night before. We pretty much spent the entire night running all over the world, on foot, on chocobo or simply having me teleport us around. Some of the scenery was truly spectacular, and I was glad to have someone to share it with.
All told the quest took five hours from start to finish and it probably would have taken even longer if we hadn't been helping each other out.


Adventure:

From Mediocre Mage

Our journey took us to the familiar shores of Gustaberg.

From Mediocre Mage

We spent a lot of time running through the Dunes back to Selbina to get more clay. Why the mayor couldn't just give us a bunch to start with I don't know.

From Mediocre Mage

Mohan contemplates erasing the evidence of the Tarutaru plan for world domination.

From Mediocre Mage

After finding the last monument we decided to celebrate with some fireworks before collapsing in our moghouses after a long night of exploration and adventure.

Responsibility {Run Away!}

Last night my social Linkshell decided to put me in charge of planning and organizing events.

I have no idea how this happened.

It certainly wasn't by request and to be honest I'm not sure it's a wise decision. I'm not exactly a veteran player so there's a lot of stuff I still don't know. I do not have a lot of experience leading people either, which makes this whole thing rather awkward. Leadership positions are not something I seek out, instead they are things I reluctantly accept because someone needs to do it and some days you just get tired of waiting for everyone else to do it.

Despite all my reservations about this, I'm actually going to make an honest effort to put together some stuff for my linkshell to do. The trick is going to be making sure it's stuff that everyone can enjoy, rather than a bunch of things I want to do. Luckily I think we're laid back enough that people will be willing to try out some stuff that's less about the rewards and more about having a good time.

I actually spent a few hours last night brainstorming to come up with some events we could do. The results got progressively sillier.

Burning Circle Notorious Monster runs
This one's pretty standard. Everyone picks up their pop items and heads off for some good old fashioned monster slaying.

Garrison
This could actually end up as a two part event.
To do Garrison you need to farm an item to activate it, and you can only hold one of these. This means that to do it multiple times we need everyone to bring their own pop item. Since we're all going to be bringing one, why not have everyone go farming together? It's tedious, but with a group it could be less so.
Garrison itself on the other hand can be a very hectic experience. The rewards aren't end game gear, so people don't do it as much but it's still a fun event if you can find people willing to do it. It would also be a good event for any players who are relatively new since Garrison is a pretty low level event.

Artifact quests
Everyone loves free gear that's specific to their job, but it isn't always easy to get it on your own. This is a universal hurdle that everyone attempts as they level their job. I can't think of any reason why we shouldn't be helping each other get our AF gear.

Limit Break quests
Everyone eventually needs to break the level cap and the quests are set up so that it's much easier to do it as a group. Any linkshell that refuses to help their members with something this essential should hang their heads in shame.

Chains of Promathia missions
We were doing some of these a few months back and they got put on hold for some reason. I'd like to start them up again and at least get everyone through the Promyvion zones. Especially Promyvion-Holla. I harbor a grudge for the Notorious Monster at the end of that one.

Map runs
You know, with so many maps in this game that need to be quested or discovered in chests while in the depths of dangerous dungeons it's a wonder people don't do this sort of thing more often. Seriously, how many players have wandered into a zone and kicked themselves because they don't have the map because the quest to get it is something they can't do on their own until they're a much higher level? It's silly. People should be able to get the maps for the zones they are going to be partying in.
We can fix this.

Eco-warrior runs
For those of you not familiar with this, Eco-warrior is a quest that requires approximately 18 adventurers and has a level cap of 20. These adventurers cannot recieve outside aid. They are then sent into dungeons designed to kill people twice their level to hunt down various monsters and are expected to somehow come out victorious. The rewards are negligible. The bragging rights would be legendary.

Notorious Monster camping
If someone needs an item from a NM we could spend a night helping them do it. Misery loves company and all that good stuff.

Adopt a player parties
The general idea would be to form most of a party from linkshell members and then pick up one or two random people to hang out with for the night. There are a lot of directions we could take something like this, but I figure at the very least it would be a way to meet new folks without the headache of a terrible pickup party. If we like the people we find, we can even add them to the linkshell. I think I need to explore this one more fully, there's a lot of potential here.

Roaming party
This would not be your typical experience party. Instead the goal would be to pick a zone and explore every inch of it, killing things along the way would just be something of a coincidental bonus. There's a lot of interesting stuff out there and it would be fun to experience it as a group rather than just stumbling across it all by yourself.

Alliance experience parties
It would be like a normal exp party, only with more people.
Practical? Absolutely not.
Fun? Possibly.
Memorable? Absolutely.

Crafting runs
Taking a night off to help someone farm crafting supplies, either for skillups or to make a specific item. I'm still convinced we should have some piece of equipment that we all wear in town that's been made by one of our members.

Scroll farming parties
Because we all either need gil, or need to fill up our spellbooks.

Whitegate Conga Line
Do I really need to explain why this would be awesome?