Pimp Suit: Complete

It's been a busy weekend, but by far the best thing that's happened is the acquisition of the supremely stylish Warlock's Chapeau. This has been a long time coming as the pinnacle of spiffy hats is one of my long term goals for this game.

The problem I face now that I have it, is that I cannot yet equip it. Back to the exp grind I suppose.

That aside, the acquiring of the hat was more pleasant than a few of my other adventures involving higher level folk. The Guardian Statue in particular felt like a brutal battle. He's spawned in a rather small room in Garlaige Citadel and is rather large. The monster then proceeds to use spinning attacks that clobber everyone in the room for a few hundred points of damage and ripped through my Stoneskin relatively easily. I was glad to have my Linkshell there to support me tonight.

All in all I'd say this weekend marks a turning point in my FFXI career. Things are finally starting to pick up the pace and take off into something even more enjoyable than before. It's like the Red Mage AF suit has granted me rocket propulsion powers akin to that of Ironman. Now I just need someone to photoshop that image together...

I am sick of your goddamn pinball machine

When you bring a PL to a party, figure out whether you want the mob wailing on the PL or a tank. I am sick of having to chase the mob back and forth between the party and the PL.

Tonight it got so bad that I was very close to losing it and just tanking on Dragoon until I got myself booted. Very tempted, but then it was Linkshell party so I didn't want to be a complete dick to everyone there. Just to some of the people there.

I want to party with these guys next time. They seem liked they've got their act together.

I am a Spacetime Mage!

Exciting times are upon us!

By which I mean I spent the weekend collecting some spiffy RDM Artifact armor.

I blame my linkshell for this entirely. One of the other members was complaining about how I mismatch my gear and threatened to purchase the whole Crow Jupon set for me just so I'd have something that matched. Jokingly I retorted that we could do that or I could get off my ass and actually finish hunting down the rest of my AF. Well wouldn't you know it, he decided that we both needed to drop everything we were doing and go find it right then and there.

If you've been following along at home you probably know so far I only have two pieces of Artifact Armor so far. They generally require some dungeon crawling and this was no exception. First I needed to find my RDM Pants. I've been meaning to get them if for no other reason than to be able to find an excuse to say "I guess it's time to put on my RDM pants".

We headed East to Garlaige Citadel and promptly fell down some holes in the floor.

Turns out that was part of the plan since I needed some coffer keys and they could be farmed down there. Farming was rather uneventful, but one thing that I did notice and confused the hell out of me was the presence of Lightning elementals down there. That just doesn't make any sense. There's no weather indoors, much less in a basement. Yeah, explain that one to me again.

After finding a key we made our escape back to the entrance and borrowed a few players to open the Banishing Gate. At that point I was told to sit in the corner while my friend found the coffer.

I don't like that. I don't like it at all. This is a great opportunity for high risks adventure with a worthwhile prize at the end, but instead it seems to keep getting turned into just another item to check off the To-Do List. *grumble grumble I'm a purist grumble grumble*

Turns out the coffer was behind another gate which was best accessed by romping through the past. On our way there we bumped into a rather impudent Mandragora and decided to give it a good thrashing. That'll teach the vegetation to get uppity with us adventurers.

Once we got through the Maw and back to the present we descended once more into the Citadel to find the coffer conveniently waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. Quickly I swiped the sweet threads and we hightailed it out of there. Complete and total success.

The second half of our odyssey took us to Castle Oztroja. I'm not sure I like Castle Oztroja. It's very confusing to navigate and I tend to get lost rather easily even with a map so I probably wouldn't have even found my way through if not for my friend who has spent time there. Also I tend to pull the wrong levers and land us in punji traps.

While finding some pants in the Citadel was a relatively quick outing, finding a good shirt takes considerably more time. I blame Windurst personally.

We ended up teaming up with some Japanese players who were demolishing everything in the same area we were(which was conveniently close to the coffer oddly enough). My friend was convinced that by the end of the night they were making fun of us, but darned if I could tell. They let me have the key once it finally dropped and that's really all I could ask for in that situation.

Once again I grabbed the stylish clothing while my friend fended off a small nest of enemies, waiting for me to Escape us.

Upon our return to the surface I put on all my Red Mage AF armor. I've seen plenty of people running around in it and I know all the stats already, but damn if it isn't a thousand times sexier once it's equipped. I mean really, you can't look at that and tell me it isn't the most stylish set of armor in the game:

Sexy sexy Red Mage outfit.

I am a Spacetime Mage!

Moldy old NM

Tonight my Linkshell helped me camp Mysticmaker Profblix and we went 1/1 on Moldavite earring. They're kind of awesome like that. Now stick with me, there's more to this than "Oh look at my gear". Seriously if I wanted to put gear on exhibition I'd just ramble about my fishing goggles.

Anyway...

What I'm really concerned with tonight is just how completely and totally screwed I would have been trying to tackle this Notorious Monster on my own. The entire room was full of Cockatrices that were quite happy to aggro me and stomp around the room in patterns that would make it difficult to hide from them if I wanted to grab the goblin. Now there are reports of folks soloing this guy at about my level and I cannot for the life of me figure out how they would do this. There's simply so much aggro at that level range that it seems improbable at best.

This is something about the whole soloing NM thing that I've never understood. How do you deal with kiting stuff when you have a whole room full of aggro to deal with on top of the Notorious Monster? It seems impractical to sleep all the mobs that would aggro you along the way. Likewise I can't figure out how some folks manage to dodge all that aggro. There must be some trick to it or these people who can do it have a downright terrifying mastery of the terrain and mob movement patterns. Thinking about this too much gives me that sinking feeling that I'm just not cut out to be a Red Mage that solos stuff. I have mixed feelings about that. I'd like to be that competent, but at the same time I'm fairly sure what it entails is not something I would find enjoyable.

Bah, less thinking and more drooling over shiny new earring.

I really should get around to finishing my AF. Maybe I'll start that project again.

We tried fighting Vouivre for fun during a skillup party.

Rocket Chocobos away!

You're not allowed to use the Auction House anymore

I know I'm about eight years late to the beating of this dead horse, but people need to learn how to use the Auction House without being complete idiots.

I found a completely untapped market for something which was averaging less than one sale each day and was consistently absent from the Auction House. Over the course of a week I slowly managed to creep the price up a few thousand gil by putting one stack on sale each day. This is of course the cue for some idiot to come along when I was taking a break from supplying the item and set the price right back to where it was before I started.

Why would you do this? These things were flying off the AH as soon as they were listed. People were willing to pay the premium to get them. There was no competition when you listed your items that week. Why on earth would you choose to lower the price? It's not like you needed to drive others out of the market because they were muscling in on your market and making your sales slow.

So yeah, after a week or so away from the market I return and find some idiot has decided that lowering prices is a good thing when you have zero competition for your product.

There's enough demand and speed of sales that this person isn't going to affect my profits, but damn. If the demand and lack of supply accommodates higher prices then why would you consciously choose to not take advantage of that?




I need to go fishing in Purgonorgo Isle sometime. The scenery is just so vivid there.