Oh Hello Endgame

Spending a month floating through empty social linkshells has been less than fulfilling. Oh let's not mince words, it was terrible. Without a core group of people to run with you're left trying to accomplish everything either through pickup groups filled with incompetent people, or you end up soloing a lot.

Not being a social butterfly I chose the latter.

As a Red Mage there's a fairly large portion of the game you can realistically get through on your own. However, that doesn't mean it's always fun to go it alone.

That's why I jumped at the opportunity to apply to my first real endgame shell, Ouch.

My only experience with endgame thus far has been with a terrible dynamis shell and the ocassional event with a nice social shell that no longer exists. I figured it would be nice to finally experience events while running with some folks who actually know what they're doing.

So far it's worked out pretty well. The folks themselves seem pretty laid back, the rules are straight forward, fair and pretty sensible. Everyone seems to be competent at the jobs they bring to events, and there are plenty of events throughout the week to keep me busy. It's a sharp contrast to what things have been like in the past when there was never a clear plan for each night and events were pulled together on a whim rather than a schedule people could plan around. I'm really enjoying it.

It's still an endgame shell though, so unless it's event time it's fairly empty. But while it is about events and getting stuff done, it goes about it with an air of business casual rather than a suit and tie operation. Folks chatter enough that I don't feel like a nameless cog in a giant machine, although on reflection that might be because they gave me a nickname the first night I joined the shell.

Since the whole game is currently still revolving around Abyssea that's what a lot of the stuff we do is, but there's a good mix of other stuff in there as well. Every Monday we do Voidwatch, and I have to say it's probably one of the more enjoyable events I've participated in so far. The rewards are pretty lackluster and the drop rates are terrible, but the event itself is something I find a lot of fun. Tackling huge monsters with as many people as we can wrangle up in a night appeals to me. Unlike Abyssea it isn't everyone but the tank and the White Mage sitting around until procs are taken care of, instead it feels like an actual fight with a threatening foe. Sure you can't have the DDs feeding the NM TP the whole time, but it always feels like there's something for everyone to contribute to the fight.

I don't think I'm alone in this either. Last night we were short a few hands, but it wasn't because people didn't want to come. Quite the contrary we had a number of members who were disheartened that they couldn't make it to the event due to personal schedules and whatnot. Voidwatch is fun.

An endgame shell is never going to be a replacement for a good social shell, but right now I'm pretty content to enjoy what they have to offer.



Ouch.


I need to get out of Abyssea more often. The rest of the world is so beautiful.

Generic update

My brain is all melty so it's generic rambling today.

It's been a month since I updated last. Mostly it's because I've been trying to keep busy.

Lately I've been spending a lot of time working on Dragoon. It's quite a fun job and offers a stark contrast to Red Mage. It took me some time but I finally got it to cap. Looking back I feel a tad silly for buying top of the line gear for it on the way up rather than just slumming it since it always got stuck in some god-awful sync. Then again, it's a lot of fun to do roughly 40% of a party's damage, and the thought of my wyvern outdamaging people is both hilarious and depressing at the same time.

I feel like leveling Dragoon has opened a few doors to me. Before all I had to offer at events or pickup groups was Red Mage. What with the metagame being the way it is, Red Mage doesn't bring much to the table unless there aren't other options available. Sad but true. Now I can at least offer up the other half of the job spectrum (Magic vs Stabbing) so things are a tad more flexible now. Unfortunately I still feel like my Dragoon is woefully unprepared for prime-time. I've done what I can to start gearing it properly, but it's still miles behind my Red Mage. Just means I have more shinies to chase I suppose.

Mmmm...

How to put it.

The Linkshell I came to Valefor to join has since broken. The leader burned out and I can't really blame him. The guy worked weird hours and was putting in a lot of effort running the shell and trying to keep it accessible for everyone. Just too much stress I suppose. It's a shame, because I think it was honestly the best shell I've been in.

So when he stepped down from being the leader the shell split and people went in different directions. Some folks built a new shell designed for continuing to support new players while other folks drifted off into another social shell that was a bit more geared toward veteran players. I ended up following the folks to the social shell. It didn't have quite the same feel, but at least it had some friendly faces...I guess.

Something about it just didn't feel right. The atmosphere was a tad less friendly and jovial. The leader, who had done some events with the DiV shell previously, was a lot more talkative in their own shell.

How do I put this?

She was a bit cold, and sometimes her sarcasm bordered on just being mean to other shell members. The other night a few of us voiced some concerns. She did not take well to being told to stop repeatedly abusing a specific shell member. People got told off in an extremely aggressive and hurtful manner.

You want to run your shell that way? Fine.
I want nothing to do with a leader who thinks it's funny to pick on people and just generally be a raging bitch. It's such a shame too, I liked some of the other folks in the shell, but I just can't be happy in a situation where the management is like that.

So now I return to my eternal quest to find a good linkshell. Until then, I'll be aimlessly floating through Vanadiel.

Relocating

So a little over two weeks ago I decided to switch servers. The good folks over at Dreams in Vanadiel have been egging me on to make the jump for a while now and the way things were going on Quetzalcoatl it just seemed like a good time to do it.

In many ways I find myself realizing that yes, I was quite unhappy in my old linkshell. Sure I knew the folks in there and we all got along fairly well, but it was always so empty and devoid of activity. We could barely ever accomplish anything in that shell. Don't get me wrong, they're good people, but they weren't terribly skilled and there weren't many of us to begin with so a lot of the time I had to fend for myself to get anywhere and that gets old after a while. Also the LS leader was a tad clingy in ways that made me uncomfortable, though I was always too polite to let him know.

But now I've moved to Valefor. It's a very different culture I think. After spending a few years on one server you become familiar with its quirks and the personalities on it. I think I prefer those of my old server, but the bigger and better linkshell I'm with now more than makes up for it. No longer must I sit in my mog house thinking: darn, I wish I could get together enough friendly faces to go do event X. Now people are dragging me off to go do events or I can just ask and find a handful of people actually interested in doing the event, rather than realizing the only other people in the shell are afk bazaaring again.

I feel like I've accomplished more in the two weeks since I've landed here than in the past several months on Quetz. It's a good feeling.

However, there's always the flipside. While I'm getting more accomplished, I don't quite feel settled in. There's still a bit of that social awkwardness that comes from being the new guy. It will pass in time.

I'd always wondered what it was that possessed people to pick up and leave an entire server full of familiar faces behind, but it doesn't seem so odd now that I've done it. I guess it's just one of those things that's part of the FFXI experience.

One thing that I'm really hating about Valefor: the fish market.

It's so flooded and over-saturated that I haven't even bothered to go fishing once since I've moved here. It makes me sad because I really do enjoy fishing, but it just isn't worth it in this market.

I've been spending some time moonlighting as a mercenary. I like my boss.




Just some fun shots I took in Ro'Maeve


I've been spending more time in Abyssea lately, for better or worse I'm not sure yet.


I cannot tell you just how tempted I was to pick that option.


I've rebooted project Level Dragoon.




Living dangerously as a Red Mage.


I've said it before and I'll say it until the day the servers shut down, the attention to detail in this game is absolutely incredible.

Abyssea's effect on low level pickup parties

I have now seen the aftermath of Abyssea firsthand and it isn't pretty.

Tonight one of the newer players in our linkshell basically said that the lack of low level parties caused by Abyssea was discouraging him from logging in.

Sure we've all had nights where we sit around with our flag up and no invites, but I think it's reaching the point where there are enough people forgoing low level parties that it's actively driving players away from the game.

Things I have learned from Dynamis

1. A disproportionate number of mages are incompetent

It's very discouraging to be a Red Mage helping with Sleeping large hordes of mobs only to see one of the Black Mages open with Sleepga II, thoroughly preventing us from keeping the horde in check. We are not going to be able to maul everything in 90 seconds. You're just making it harder to stagger the influx of assailants, so cut it out.

Another horrendous choice I saw made: White Mages not using Sublimation when we're encountering mobs that are continually sleeping the whole alliance. Yes that Refresh II is appealing, but you know what's more appealing? Being able to wake up the alliance so we don't risk a wipe and lose more time.

My own failures in all this boil down to not being on the ball enough. I've done a shamefully poor job of keeping up Refresh and Haste cycles with people running all over the place while simultaneously trying to make sure everything is slept. I feel some of this could be alleviated if the alliance was a little more coordinated, but I also know that I need to step up my own game, or maybe just mess with my chat filters some more.

2. Communication is the most important thing ever

Our shell leader insists on using Vent when doing Dynamis. I was reluctant at first, but I'm warming up to the idea. The problem however, is that this leads to there being almost no communication in-game. This coupled with the fact that the vast majority of the shell is not on Vent means that the whole thing is very poorly coordinated, which leads to all sorts of frustrations. We really need to take some time before the next run to just sit down and make sure everyone is at least listening in on Vent even if they don't own a mic. It would make it easier to issue instructions and keep everyone on the same page rather than having half the alliance left in the dark for most of the run.

3. Not everyone is suited to lead a Linkshell

Without going into too much detail, our shell leader had IRL issues last night that forced him to abandon the run early, and those issues are likely to do so again. If your situation outside the game is such that you cannot consistently be there during the event, then maybe you shouldn't be leading a shell. I'll stick with the shell for now, but last night raised a number of red flags for me.

Dynanonymous

Some folks from my social LS roped me into joining a Dynamis run tonight. Let me transcribe part of the thought process:

Oh this is neat.

Wait, why is there no map? Oh god this is going to be terrible.

No, we're all moving in a group that's good.

Wait, these groupings make no sense. Why are you moving up there?

Oh god why are all the party members moving in different directions? I'll never be in range now.

Oh hey, some orcs...OH DEAR GOD WHERE HAS MY FACE GONE!?

Tonight was definitely an interesting experience to say the least. Thankfully everyone managed to keep their pants on through the many many many wipes that were had over the course of the evening.

If I had to give a brief description of Dynamis I'd say it consisted of battling a large army in small chunks while slowly making your way through a city.

The whole run felt very disorganized from start to finish. We got off to a rocky start when our first pull consisted of the puller bringing back a boatload of statues, each of which proceeded to spawn approximately eight thousand orcs apiece. We were very very dead very very quickly. After everyone got back on their feet and re-buffed we tried again, with similar results but we were at least making some progress in reducing the number of orcs in San d'Oria. By our third go round we managed to not wipe. I wouldn't say we'd settled into a good rhythm, but we managed to not die horribly and that was progress for us.

The arrangement of who went where in the alliance didn't make a lot of sense to me. I think in my own party there were at least three mages, a puller and something that pretended to be a tank, all of whom went in different directions making it damn near impossible to organize them into a cohesive unit that kept itself within casting distance for me to support. I have no idea what was going on in the other parties, no one bothered to really stop and explain who was in charge of what.

Ok that's not entirely true, the alliance leader kept yelling at the four Red Mages to cast Sleepga.

Would you like to see what those Red Mages looked like?

90 RDM/WHM

90 RDM/WHM

90 RDM/SCH

66 RDM/SCH

Yeah...about casting Sleepga, and it totally not happening.

That definitely lead to a few wipes. Manifestation + Sleep II from a single RDM doesn't cut it. There was a Summoner helping though, so we managed to not Die Horribly all the time.

Overall I just would have liked to see more organization to the whole thing. My friend kept trying to apologize throughout the whole thing because it was such a terribly executed run, but he really didn't need to. I could definitely see how Dynamis could be a fun thing to do if it was with a group working like a well-oiled machine, rather than a crowbar stuck in a block of cement like this run was. But even more importantly, this run let me get into Dynamis to see what it was like without having to hold any real responsibility, which is how I've wanted to get my feet wet in Dynamis since I first heard about it.

At this point it's very difficult for me to say if I'll enjoy it. If runs continue to be painfully slow, inefficient and filled with stupid leadership choices like tonight's was, then I'll probably stick it out for a piece of gear or two before making my escape. However, I'd much prefer to see the shell get itself smoothed out and have some proper runs, because I think I could get into it if it was done right.

My biggest concern right now is actually the leadership. I think I'm still holding a grudge against the LS leader because of that Summoner burn I helped him with that took two hours and kept me from my delicious dinner. That's like a cardinal sin with me. You don't keep me from my food. It ends badly for everyone.

The rumblings of my stomach aside, this guy just hasn't really laid out a clear system for how the shell is going to be run, or how gear is distributed. Maybe I missed the memo, but the shell's pretty young and I can't get him to tell me how the LS bank is going to work. He's said we can access the gil in it, but has been vague about how. At this point I think I'm going to press the issue and if possible abuse the existence of the bank to pay for some of the stuff on my shopping list along with my consumables until some concrete rules are laid out.

Likewise I'd like some gear acquisition protocol. Is this crap freelot for everything, or are we gonna have a points system? Or worse, is it going to be a "because I said so" rule of distribution?

None of this has been established yet as far as I can tell, which raised a ton of red flags for me tonight. I'll probably end up being the problem child of the shell and bother them about it constantly until they put something together. Or at least that's the plan.

My first Dynamis. I think it went well.




Did you know they put Tarutarus in treasure chests? If anyone has the Bastok one I'll trade you my San d'Oria one.



Shadowlord's home turf. I'm so glad no one managed to spoil the cutscenes for the rank 6 mission. It was so awesome.



A sense of impending doom.

Sticker collecting

So Genkai 3 happened last night.

I think I'm slowly getting over my aversion to accepting help on these things. While going on suicidal runs is fun and all, it's rarely successful and when the quest is hard enough it's still a tad suicidal even with a group. So yes, the Linkshell helped again and I lost count of how many times one of them died over the course of the night.

We started with the Orcish headquarters and managed to somehow build a massive aggro train on our way to the Wall of Banishing. Aforementioned member of the LS built the train and took it right to the wall and then died, at which point most of the orcs vanished. Unfortunately there were enough still there that our deceased Red Mage could not safely be raised, so our Summoner ended up sending out Leviathan to distract the orcs while I used Chainspell to raise him. Once Freguer was back on his feet he opened the wall and we all made a mad dash for the zone-line. Once we made it inside the rest of the trek to retrieve the Orcish Crest was relatively uneventful.

Our next stop was Beadeaux, Quadav HQ. I definitely learned a lot while we were there. For instance, I had not realized you can avoid the curse from those infernal machines by voluntarily silencing yourself using another nearby device. This reinforces my suspicion that I need to spend more time exploring the world than I have been lately. Other interesting thing, Moxxy showed me that Leviathan can cure status ailments, which we used to freely remove silence after bypassing the horrid devices. While I do a lot of homework on RDMing, I'm really quite clueless when it comes to some jobs, like Summoner. There so much I don't know about how they work, it's actually a little embarrassing.

Anyway, once we made it into the room with the Crest, we immediately caught aggro and ran away to clear the way. Upon re-entering we caught aggro again and realized a Notorious Monster was blocking our path. We decided our best course of action would be to stomp on the Ruby Quadav and simply remove it. It took a while but didn't pose much trouble. Once that was taken care of we ventured further in and caught sight of the crest, whereupon I caught aggro and was beaten into a fine paste. Turns out there were more true-hearing turtles in there, including another Ruby Quadav. Moxxy and Freguer cleared out some Quadav on the side of the room so I could safely reraise.

Then there came a shout: "Doc, up now!"

Figuring Freg had a better sense of aggro ranges I reraised. Then he pulled the most amazing trick I have ever seen. He timed his casting so that right as I revived, I had Sneak. There was no window for aggro at all. Easily the most incredible bit of spellwork I have seen in a long time, possibly ever.

Unfortunately, in my haste to retreat from possible AoE range I slipped and fell over a ledge, meaning I had to circle back around through the labyrinth again. Once I got back the NMs seem to have cleared out so I nabbed the crest and we boogied on out quick-like.

The Yagudo HQ portion of the quest was significantly less entertaining. We pretty much waltzed in and grabbed the Crest without encountering any resistance. It made me paranoid that maybe we'd picked up a fake Crest or something, but Maat couldn't tell the difference so it doesn't really matter.

Stylish Elegance at its finest.

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.

Wyverns on the brain

When I'm not constantly fishing, there's something about the folks in my linkshell I've noticed. Nearly all of us have Red Mage leveled. In our off time we also all seem to enjoy playing Dragoon. It's like some sort of mass conspiracy. Even the people who don't have Red Mage leveled enjoy Dragoon. I think there's maybe one guy in the whole shell who hasn't jumped on the Stabbing Things in the Face bandwagon with us.

This weekend we slowly rolled up a big Dragoon Katamari.

Two of the folks in our shell had recently unlocked it and were leveling it up from level 1. I tagged along with them and took Carbuncle for a walk. We got to level ten before calling it a night.

The next day we started up again and I pulled out my own Dragoon to join them. So there we were, three level 10 Dragoons ruffing up bunnies in Ronfaure and La Theine Plateau when another member gets on and wants to know what's going on today. We told him of our Dragoon Bunny Stabbing Squad that was going down and he decided to join our merry band.

Before long we had decimated the local wildlife. There was little hope of repopulation.

Turns out another shell member wanted to join in, bringing our total to five Dragoons and we headed out to the Dunes.

It's difficult to describe the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with having 9 other helpers when you go impaling things with a sharp stick. So much jumping and gnawing on faces, it's just magical.

By the time I had to leave to fix dinner we had eradicated all of the lizards and put a large dent in the goblin population. When I got back, two more folks had joined turning it into a full 6 person party composed entirely of Dragoons. Sadly we didn't have enough people to build a full 18 Dragoon alliance so I opted to go back to fishing rather than tank everyone's exp for the night by adding a seventh Dragoon.

Dragoon is a job I've been meaning to level for a long time now(see hints dropped in this blog). Now that I've actually started it, I must say it is everything I had hoped for. It provides a relatively simple alternative to pick up when I get burned out on Red Mage-ing it up and need a relaxing night of killing things. So far it looks like the majority of the complexity of the job will actually be coming from its subjob. This is good, because it means I can have a good level of control over how hectic the job becomes. While I could sub a mage job and get more survivability and utility out of it, I'd just as soon stick with /SAM or /WAR. If I wanted the stress of a spellbook I'd hop back on Red Mage, yeah?

Wyvern helper, a pointed stick and some jumps. I'm really enjoying this.

Buster poses for animal crackers.


Two firsts: Test driving Dragoon in Sarutabaruta at level 1 and my new NPC Liabelle. She hits things and they fall down, I can't really ask for more.


Getting people up to speed while walking Carby. He often took on foes all by himself while we worked on another.


The beginning of the Katamari.


Freg joins us while Gretta and Tryp try to drag me away from the fishing hole.


The Dunes didn't know what hit it, but it was blue and wielded lots of pikes.


We sang Kumbaya around the gobbie campfire.


If you fish long enough, stuff like this happens. Suddenly the world around you starts to break down and you realize that there is no boat.


But it's ok, because you achieve enlightenment and get superpowers, like the ability to breathe underwater.

Pebbles

I figured out what the litmus test for for finding a good Linkshell is.

If your linkshell organizes a party to Purgonorgo Isle and the primary concern is lotting on Pebbles then you have found a good Linkshell.

God damn was tonight fun.

On the way over.

Expect more coherent postings when it isn't 4 in the morning.

Genkai 2

*sigh*

"Underwhelming" is the only description that springs to mind.

Tonight my Linkshell took it upon themselves to run me through my second Limit Break quest. This one involved defeating some Notorious Monsters in the frozen northlands of Xarcabard.

I had wandered up to one earlier in the week just to see how hard it hits and it floored me in less than a minute. It wouldn't even be worth attempting to solo, unlike Dark Spark where I could see a glimmer of hope poking up just beyond the horizon.

Stomping on them with three higher level players helping just didn't bring me any satisfaction. It made the whole ordeal trivial, a chore, a minor inconvenience. I knew this was going to happen too. Hell I didn't even have to properly research the NMs, we just wandered up there and slaughtered them.

This was not an adventure.

I really need to make a point of exploring the Shadowreign era. It turns up cool stuff like this.

Warrior is the Batman of FFXI

It's true.

Worse yet I think Warrior is starting to grow on me, especially since I've started taking it to Linkshell parties.

I just spent the night in Spore Hollow and had a blast. We were syncing to 25 and our puller was clinically insane. At any given time we had two to four Funguar on top of us, and no one to sleep them so it was up to me and the Ninja to make sure they didn't eat the mages. I'm not sure the Ninja was up to the task when synced so low, but I sure as hell was. Firing arrows as two Funguars come in and provoking the third as our puller cackled maniacally, leaving the Ninja to hold the first one as the rest of the party wailed on it.

You know what gets a monster's attention better than insulting its mother?

Hitting it in the head with a gigantic axe.

At any given time I could wander up to a mob that wasn't eating the ninja, wallop it in the face and it would decide I was tastier. I'm not sure it quite counts as tanking, but I was eating enough cures that it kept me on my toes and I couldn't use Provoke carelessly. Heck, half the time I was switching to target a new mob just to make sure I kept hate until the rest of the party could start wailing on one of the held mobs.

I'm pretty sure we were making less than 5,000 experience per hour, but damned if it wasn't fun.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to go soak my head and put my head between my knees until the desire to abandon Red Mage and level Warrior goes away.





The new expansion is producing fashion disasters like this. I am displeased.

Some guy was shouting for mission 2-3, the one where you fight the dragon, tonight. I managed to rope most of the Linkshell into helping with the fight. Afterwards we adopted him and had an awesome party in Jugner Forest.

Dark Spark: Round 2...FIGHT!

I've learned two things from my fights with Dark Spark:

• Blood tanking is horribly inefficient

• I might not be cut out for soloing

The other week I decided to do a dry run against Dark Spark as a level 55 RDM/BLU and hit the dirt so fast it wasn't even worth writing home about.

After spending some time lollygagging about on Warrior, Samurai and hunting the odd Notorious Monster, I decided it might be time to make another go at it.

The basic strategy was to bank on Cocoon, Phalanx and Stoneskin providing enough damage mitigation for me to simply outlast Dark Spark. Sadly this was not to be.

Dark Spark delighted in tearing through my Stoneskin with remarkable speed and once that was down, even my formidable defenses weren't enough to keep him from devouring my face. I held out longer than I expected though. I think I managed to knock off a good 20-25% of his health before I died.

As I said before, blood tanking just wasn't efficient. I burned through my MP way too fast. Even if I had been a bit more calm during the whole thing I would have simply run out of MP at some point and that would be the end of it. I can certainly see how using Utsusemi shadows would be a lot more efficient, but I just don't have the gil for it and there's a few other things that bug me about it, like the prospect of having to manually turn off shadows when recasting Utsusemi:Ichi. I'm fairly certain that alone would be enough to get me panicking and screwing up everything else. While I'm used to killing things really slowly on Red Mage, NMs seem to be on a different scale altogether. Usually I'm fine with killing things so slowly because they hardly ever manage to land a hit. Dark Spark was pretty much the other end of the spectrum, and that adds a lot of stress to the ordeal.

So my Linkshell found out what I was doing and decided to come out and help me kick Dark Spark's ass properly. Afterwards we had some fun just goofing off and beating up demons. All too soon it was time to return to Jeuno.

How long has it been? A few months now I've been trying to get these gloves? While many would say I wasted my time fooling around leveling Blue Mage and even attempting this solo, I think I'm better off for it. I've learned a bit about gearing for melee combat, I've learned the fear and stress associated with trying to solo a monster that you have no chance against, and I've also found what could very well be my favorite subjob for Red Mage. For me this entire ordeal has been an absolute success.



Dark Spark:1
DrJones: 0


The cavalry arrives.


Stlyish gloves!

Warrior Revelations

1. Playing Warrior in a party puts me in a very aggressive mindset.

2. Face tanking proper is all sorts of awesome fun.

3. Linkshell parties are awesome.

Tonight was some of the most fun I've had in a while. My old Linkshell reformed itself this week and tonight we went out to do some exp partying. There were four of us, so we had a few slots taken up by interlopers but it was still a lot of fun.

It got especially interesting when the Dancer and I both came to the conclusion that our incompetent White Mage needed to die. I had to beg this guy for Regens in a jungle party...that's pretty damn sad. The idiot was just cure-bombing, which screwed with efficiency and on occasion, hate management. The proper course of action was of course to see if we could get away with killing him once a drive-by PL showed up and attached itself to our party. Goblin tossing a bomb at you? Run towards the idiot mage.

Yeah, as two guys who play mages as their main jobs we had so much contempt for this guy. Spamming Cure III is not how you main-heal a party, ok? Jebus...

So yes, there was all sorts of wonderful face-tanking tonight. Often with two mobs showing up to camp when we only wanted one. Juggling between Berserk, Neutral, and Defender modes was an interesting exercise in judgement. Most of the night was spent in Neutral, with Defender going up mainly when goblins showed up. My face was very delicious.

After all is said and done, I think I managed to gain about 8,000 exp over the course of five hours. I died a lot and it was a romping good time.

Mandy in a box!


This was common sight tonight. I lost count of how many dirt naps I took.


I also spent some time running around in the the Promyvion zones this week. They're so beautiful and eerie.

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?