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