You lose some, you win some

Usually in that order too.

This weekend's adventures were largely frustrating with a sprinkling of success.

I kicked things off with another attempt to get my Fencing Degen. As a level 49 Red Mage I figure I'm way past due for this thing seeing as how you can equip it at level 41. Unfortunately, to get my hands on it I first have to contend with Purpleflash Brukdok, a rather nasty Orc who enjoys chain-nuking me into the dirt. The last time I tangled with him I managed to wear him down to about 75% health before he decided it was time for me to go home. Needless to say, I was a bit wary about confronting this guy again, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and try until it works.

Or in my case you run like hell when all of his Orc buddies decide to join in the fun and warp back to town before they can shank you.

Only a minor setback really, but it got me thinking that maybe I was going about this the wrong way. At this point there were two ways to proceed.
1. Keep leveling until I could kill the Orc by virtue of being a much higher level
2. Level Ninja as a subjob and abuse the hell out of shadows.

Being stubborn I figured I'd do both. At level 50 I would gain access to Aspir which might help keep me on my feet longer during the fight by keeping my MP up. Since I didn't have Ninja unlocked yet I figured the best thing to do would be to put up my Looking-for-party flag while I started the quest to unlock it.

As some of our more educated readers know, the quest to unlock ninja took me to Korroloka Tunnel, which I can never spell without the tab auto-translation feature. The quest itself is pretty straightforward. The fun part comes when you unknowingly run into a newly introduced Notorious Monster that eats adventurers for breakfast. Yes, in Korroloka Tunnel I met Thoon. He looked a lot like all the other Gigas in the tunnel except that he had a name and therefore had to be attacked on principle. Apparently Thoon hits really hard and likes to invite friends. I swear, this guy was tougher than Purpleflash. I didn't even get a chance to solidify my defenses before I was face down in the dirt. Ah well, it's all part of being an adventurer.

Unfortunately adventurers tend to be very stupid creatures. No, I don't mean they go around attacking random monsters, I mean they're incapable of coordination beyond getting them to all attack the same monster. Yup, tonight's party was pretty horrible.

After getting thoroughly trounced by Thoon, I got an invitation to a party that was forming in the Quicksand Caves. I had partied there twice before with good results. In fact one of the best parties I've ever had ended up there, so the prospect of returning there was appealing. Once I made the trek out there I met with the rest of the party at the entrance to the caves. On the surface you would think this was gearing up to be a great party. We had a Paladin tanking and a Dancer to back me up on healing. What could possibly go wrong? The fact that there was a Beastmaster in the party should have been my first clue that this was going to suck. I have nothing against Beastmasters, but I don't understand how they fit into the party dynamic and so I'm always a little confused when I find myself with one. This particular one would contribute greatly to my distress. When we entered the dungeon I noticed there was a high level White Mage hanging out near us. I soon discovered that it was a second account belonging to the Beastmaster.

Someone had brought a White Mage to power level us in the Quicksand Caves. This was insulting. Not only was this offensive to me as the main healer, but it inspired a wrecklessness that quickly degraded the party's performance. Most notable was the Paladin who decided that the presence of a PL meant he didn't have to play his job correctly anymore. No curing, no flash, no job abilities, just auto-attack. Apparently the goal was to let the White Mage tank. So we have everyone flailing wildly, pulling without regard to MP levels, mob difficulty or anything else that might be important under normal circumstances. It left me feeling very disoriented and unable to get into a good rhythm. This party was chaos and it was painful. The exp was pretty crappy too, I barely made back the experience I had lost to Thoon.

The one good thing to come from this party was that I got to find another Dancer to add to my list. A good dancer can fix just about anything with the exception of a PL. Nothing can quite fix the level of stupid that brings out in people.

Needless to say I was thrilled when my friend sent me a /tell asking me if I was busy and if I wanted to take another go at Purpleflash. Luckily for me he party had all but broken down at that point and was hitting some downtime, so I excused myself and put as much distance between myself and that party as I could.

So we head to Davoi, a level 49 Red Mage and a level 60 Monk. This should go well so long as my friend doesn't get utterly blown apart by the Orc's magic, but hey he's got 11 levels on me so maybe he'll be more durable. So it turns out that the fundamental difference between Red Mage and Monk is that Monks punch holes through people, monsters, mountains, and possibly the time-space-continuum. We're still waiting for the test results on that last one, but the results for Orcs were pretty conclusive.

We then spent the next half hour searching for a storage hole to go with the key I'd found on the orc. Yeah, a hole in the ground and I need a key to get into it. I don't get it either but we found it pretty quickly considering how many different places it can show up. With my quest MacGuffin in hand I raced back to San d'Oria to collect my shiny new sword:

A big thank you to Mohan for helping me out tonight.