Power Leveling

Alternate title: Random Acts of goodwill

Ah, my hands are gonna kill me in the morning but it was worth it.

I've never been a big fan of PLs. They always tend to throw me off whenever I show up to a party that has one, and as a mage it's horribly frustrating.

On the other hand, PLing can be a lot of fun.

For those of you who missed the memo: I now have carpal tunnel syndrome, so I've been holed up in Jeuno crafting for the last month.

Tonight's adventure took me out to the jungles. I was tired of crafting in my moghouse without any social interaction so I figured I'd pack up my stuff and go somewhere while crafting. I packed up a ton of bottled water, rock salt and some ice crystals and headed for the jungle.

On the way over I ran into a party on the airship. What the hell, I thought, I'll do my crafting near their camp and toss some Hastes on them in exchange for horribly clogging their chatlog. I'm not really sure why I decided to. Boredom, the loneliness of being inactive for a month and having all your old linkshells blown to hell by the server merge? Just something to do in order to kill time I guess.

Turns out there were two parties outside the gates of Kazham tonight. One was already there when the airship party showed up. The incumbents had a bard so I decided to throw my lot in with the airship folk. For the most part I just ended up keeping a haste cycle between crafting sessions, but eventually I ran out of materials and started maintaining Protect and Shell on them as well.

I imagine the party was horribly confused. Everyone asking who brought the PL and no one admitting to it or knowing where it came from.

At one point, one of the members of the other party /checked me. He got added to the Haste cycle, although to be honest I didn't do as good a job keeping him in it since I was focused on the airship party. For some reason I have it in my head that I adopted them. Shut up, it's two in the morning, I can ramble.

Later in the evening the tank of the incumbent party went down. I didn't even really think about it, but I reflexively typed in the command to raise him. No sense in letting folks have over half an hour of downtime from people running all over the world switching jobs to raise folks and...you know what I mean.

Eventually the airship party packed up and left. The first party was still there, so I decided to switch my focus to them. They seemed to be a little more openly appreciative, which I still find odd in general. I may be "helping", but more than that I feel like I'm meddling. Not everyone appreciates the presence of a PL and here I am barging into your party handing out Haste like it's candy. Is everyone really ok with that? Well I assume the front line is, but what about the mages? No one ever asks them if they're ok with it.

At one point they managed to bring back a Goblin in addition to their normal prey. For some reason they tried to give me credit for them surviving the attack. I deny it entirely. I've made a point of not curing at all tonight. Buffs are one thing, but when I'm playing the mage in a party with a PL I hate when they cure. It makes hate management damn near impossible and throws everythign out of whack, including the rest of the party's sanity. When you have a PL "we don't die" button, you tend to do stupid shit that stresses out your mages. If these guys were gonna die I would let them. Sure I'd raise them back right away but I wasn't gonna cock-block the healers they brought along, that'd just be mean.

I can't tell if I actually did good tonight or if I was just messing with stuff I shouldn't have. And then there was the Japanese party. Dear god, the JP folk confound me. They would not stop thanking me, bowing, kneeling, saluting, etc. It made me mildly uncomfortable. Once or twice is enough guys, you don't have to keep it up all night. I will keep Hasting you regardless.

This has been a rather surreal night.

So yeah, I'm not really back but I haven't canceled my subscription either. Hopefully a few more weeks and I'll be able to start wading back in, but I make no promises. Hands hurt...

I have no pretty picture for you tonight.

I'm so ashamed.