Tanking: in which I poke things I shouldn't

So here's a thing.

Tonight my linkshell event got canceled, leaving me at loose ends for the night.

Here's another thing.

Now being the whimsical and somewhat haphazard Red Mage that I am, I figured tonight would be a perfect opportunity to attempt to copy someone else's success. I headed out to Abyssea Attohwa and began climbing Parradamo Tor.

Parradamo Tor is a particularly obnoxious mountain with ledges two feet wide and obstacles littered all across the path to the summit. I've only climbed it twice before and heartily detest it. Seriously, it's one of the more obnoxious level designs in FFXI, which is saying something.

When I finally dragged myself up to the top of the mountain I could see Yaanei drifting along in the distance. I quickly buffed myself and crossed the plateau in search of Yaanei. After some running back and forth I managed to locate the aberration.

As I fought, I found it interesting that this creature which is essentially a second zone boss was susceptible to all of the standard enfeebles. These days most NMs are immune to a bunch if not all of our enfeebling magic. Being able to use my enfeebling magic unhindered makes just about any fight go a lot smoother.

The beginning of the fight was fairly simple. Yaanei swings a little faster than most big monsters, but it's not enough to make shadows useless. The only concerning threat is the tier IV AoE spells he casts, but with Addle and their native cast time you should have plenty of time to switch into a MDT(magic damage taken -%) set even if you aren't able to run out of range. I found my nukes were either getting horribly resisted or that Yaanei is packing some mad magic defenses. My tier IV nukes weren't even breaking 1,000 damage and my nuking set isn't exactly terrible. So this was looking to be a long and drawn out fight.

As I was shaving off the first quarter of Yaanei's health I almost tripped over something low to the ground and a tad beligerent. There was a Tarutaru Black Mage who had scaled the mountain as well and we was offering to assist me. Somewhat disheartened by my uninspiring damage output and the ticking clock, I agreed to accept his offer. For the most part my play didn't change. I had built up a ton of hate and Yaanei was very intent on trying to clobber me and didn't care too much about the Tarutaru that was dropping stuns and additional nukes. Kill speed had gone up considerably, though it was still a slow and arduous process to be sure. At some point the Tarutaru asked for me to pass him party lead. Turns out he had two friends on the way to help as well.

When the White Mage and Warrior Tarutarus finally arrived, a curious thing happened. I found myself receiving Hastes and -na spells for the nasty status effects Yaanei was now doling out. It seemed that no one really wanted to pry the beast's attention away from me so I was going to be allowed to tank. No one actually said it, but there's an old saying that still holds true: "Actions speak louder than words", and the party's actions spoke volumes. I'm sure both the Black Mage and the Warrior could have taken hate if they'd cared to, but with our rag-tag band I was best suited to holding the monster's attention while simultaneously Not Dying. It was fun, it was amazing, it was something I thought I'd never get to do after the update that nerfed all of Red Mage's enmity tools. But hey, if I can cap hate early and not fall over it's all good, right?

As the Caturae was on its last legs, they asked me to slow down on killing it as they were still trying to proc red for the atma. An odd request given our slow and steady approach thus far, but ok. I slowed nuking almost to a halt. Spellcasting became slower as I mainly cycled shadows and tried to recall which spells in my arsenal still gave me cumulative enmity, because I knew the shadows were slowly eroding my hold on hate. I knew enspells gave some CE, and renewing enfeebles seemed to provide enough volatile enmity to hold out long enough to proc red. Afterwards, at about 10% health, Yaanei decided to get really mean and began unleashing nasty AoEs that inflicted horrible status effects like terror and also swatted some of the Tarutarus after hate reset. There were enough targets that we were able to survive while the monster induldged a serious case of ADD. Eventually I regained hate and was able to hold Yaanei as the rest of the party tore down the last few shreds of its HP.

We won. I got a spiffy new cape. Congratulations and fireworks were had by all.

And people say Red Mage tanking is dead...Ha!

Soloing.


Celebrating our victory.


This is what happens when my linkshell is waiting on people to get to Voidwatch.


I've been having an absolute blast in Nyzul Isle lately.


Ah bunny punching, it never gets old.

Failure is a good thing

The more you fail, the more opportunities you have to improve yourself. It is only when a player refuses to learn from their mistakes that we ought to ruthlessly and shamelessly make fun of them.

Today I had a wonderful failure in Abyssea, Vunkerl Inlet to be precise.

One of our Linkshell members had expressed interest in obtaining a Pluviale during today's scheduled romp through Abyssea. Due to some attendance issues the event was postponed a bit.

Being the reckless Red Mage that I am, I figured I would make use of the down time to scout out the Notorious Monster that dropped the frilly prize we'd be after. Turns out we'd be fighting a hulking behemoth made up of scrap metal and spare garbage cans.

I found the beast wandering around when I got there and decided I may as well poke it and see how hard it hits. The verdict: not as bad as I feared, but still enough that I'm not keen to stay within punching distance. Quickly I turned on my heel and ran, trying to dodge some tigers along the way. Sadly they were far more alert than I gave them credit for and one of them followed me out of the valley, joining the Executioner's quest to pound me flat. The tag-teaming worked and I found myself face down in the dirt.

After dusting myself off and resting up I realized I needed a new approach, or at least a different escape route. There's another valley to the south that proved to be much more suited to my task, even if it meant dragging the Ironclad Executioner on top of all those Bastion combatants. It was fairly empty, but had plenty of rocks and trees to put between me and the overgrown dumpster. I tried kiting to the end of the valley and back to the initial spawn area, and that worked for a while but ultimately it ended up being a little too risky. The spawn area isn't really suited to kiting and a number of times I ended up within punching range over there. Eventually that proved to be my undoing as I got caught in a stun-lock and was beaten into a fine paste while a Tarutaru watched on the sidelines cheering me on.

This time around I had managed to wear down the beast's hp to well under 50% so one more try wasn't so unrealistic. However, before continuing I decided to take some time off. If you tackle NMs too fast and too often you end up burning yourself out. Sometimes it's good to just take a break and reflect on what you've learned. In this case, I'd learned that the goal of soloing the NM was well within sight and that the southern valley had proven to be a safer location for pulling it off. In particular, there is one tree at the end of the valley that works well as a pivot point, letting you slingshot yourself back north while the NM crawls around after you (instead of making a bee line straight for you). It's not a lot, but it slows him down enough that you can put a little distance between you. On the northen end of the valley, there's a couple of rock formations that can provide a similar reaction, although they seemed to be less reliable.

It's not just during downtime that you learn though. During my next attempt I began to pick up on other things that were important, such as how dropping a tier IV nuke always seemed to leave me open to swatting due to the slow cast time. Actually a lot of spells were long enough that I had to time it just so, or I'd end up getting swiped at. Luckily the wonderfulness that is /SCH offers a solution: Alacrity and Celerity. When your primary concern is keeping yourself out of harm's way, mp efficiency becomes secondary to getting your spells off fast enough to let you get back to running. When stratagems are down your options tend to shift a bit. Instead of dropping high tier nukes you drop lower tier nukes. With buffs you end up having to just pull far enough ahead of the mob that you can hopefully finish casting before it catches up with you. Poison II and Bio II cast fast enough that you don't really need to waste stratagems on them.

In case I was being too subtle, /SCH is really what makes the whole operation work, but not just because of the stratagems.

No, what makes /SCH work so damn well is Sandstorm and Desert Boots.

For those of us who aren't fortunate enough to have spent years in a Sky linkshell getting Crimson Cuisses, /SCH offers the unparalleled boon of increased movement speed at a very affordable price. It's not as noticeable as the boost given by bard songs or the super Kupowers, but it's enough that you can realistically outrun the NM without applying Gravity. You just need a long enough corridor in which to do it.

So yes, on my third attempt I managed to take what I'd learned along the way and annoy the iron giant to death. Failure is a good thing kids, it's how we learn to kick more ass.

Soloing in a Broom Closet

While it's not exactly a noteworthy accomplishment to solo a level 70 Notorious Monster when you're level 80, today's adventure feels noteworthy all the same.

I've been meaning to get to Sky and I've started the legwork on the missions. Today I've been going around to the Cermet headstones and collecting fragments. But enough with the exposition.

I wandered into Cape Terrigan and tackled Axesarion the Wanderer. He's a Shadow and takes reduced damage from magic, so my nukes weren't exactly melting his face. The tricky thing though, was that he's located at the end of a tunnel that's constantly patrolled by goblins, meaning I couldn't exactly kite him over long distances. In fact I couldn't really kite him more than a few feet. The room was incredibly tiny and the goblins were all breathing down my neck the whole fight, but I somehow managed to keep enough distance between me and the NM that he couldn't swing at me while bound.

This is sort of the problem I've always had with the concept of kiting NMs, there's always an entire zone full of aggro waiting to ruin your attempt if the NM doesn't. Today I started learning some basics of how to get around this. You really don't need much space at all if there's a clear spot that doesn't have aggro. Just enough space that the monster can't swing at you. It kind of blew my mind when I realized what can be done with just a broom closet of aggro free space.

It got pretty hairy when I got caught with Convert down.

That room is so tiny.

Krakens off the port bow!

Tonight I spent some time reaffirming my suspicions that soloing isn't always easy.

I've been sitting on a sizeable stockpile of Beastmen's Seals for quite some time now but I never bother to actually round up people for BCNM fights to actually spend them on.

Tonight I decided to fix that somewhat and took it upon myself to try soloing Up in Arms.

This seemed like the logical choice for me. I had heard that a Red Mage could solo the fight earlier in the week. I've also become considerably averse to syncing down past level 51 if I don't have to or if it isn't for friends, so a level 60 fight was right up my alley. Lastly, this fight was against a lone Sea Monk, which was the logical progression of what I'd been fighting recently.

See, I've spent the last week or two hanging out in the Sea Serpent Grotto soloing Sea Monks in the room Charybdis spawns in, keeping tabs on the NM for the rest of my shell so we can all get Joyeuse.

So a fight against the type of mob I've been practicing on seemed like a good choice.

I proceeded to do my homework on the fight and learned that the Sea Monk would gradually build up a resistance to Sleep spells, so I would have to modify my usual tactics somewhat and use Bind and Gravity more heavily than I had been. Also there was a time limit. Some nasty special moves as well.

So I spent my evening gearing up and heading over to Waughroon Shrine. I got into the arena and buffed up. The fight went pretty much how I expected it would, Gravity sticking and nuking down the long hallway and then throwing Bind in the end rooms to hold the monster in place while I doubled back into the hallway again. It was actually pretty easy once I got into the Rhythm of it, basically using Bind where I would have used Sleep before and saving the Sleep spells for times when I needed to recover some mp by resting. There were a few iffy moments where Stoneskin went down and I had some tentacles reaching into places they shouldn't, but overall it went pretty smooth. Sailing along nicely I had wittled the monstrosity down to about 2/5 of his health left, maybe a little less, but then something awful happened.

The time limit was up.

I felt foolish. There had been little to no danger of me actually dying. Instead I lost simply because I hadn't been nuking fast enough. What a frustrating turn of events.

I'm hesitant to try again right away because the problem seems to be more than just slipping up. This is more along the lines of forcing myself to unlearn bad habits I've picked up soloing in a dark, damp cave.

Or maybe I should have just used chainspell to nuke at the start of the fight and kited the rest of it.

Port Bastok is Beautiful.

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!

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!

The Notorious Monster Addiction

Hi, I'm Cid and I camp Notorious Monsters even though I know better.

Nothing significant mind you, but there is something very appealing about finding and killing a monster that doesn't show up every five minutes. It's even more appealing when you start adding cool treasure to the equation, althogh I'm not convinced that's the sole appeal of the activity.

In many cases it's an excuse to check out new areas I don't usually pass through.

On some level I suspect it operates on the same principle as gambling. Often even finding the monster in and of itself feels like an accomplishment, and then the drop rates are the same thing all over again. Yes, it can be frustrating, but it can also be really rewarding as long as the drop rate isn't too abusive. Once the drop rate gets too abusive I run the risk of repeating the Rambler's Gaiters incident. Trust me, it isn't pretty.

There are some inherent flaws in the system, but I don't think the drop rates or long respawn times are the big ones. The real problem is that most of the treasure isn't level appropriate. Notorious Monsters are robust enemies that will trounce you if you're not a sufficiently high level. But once you reach that high level, the gear they provide is most likely outdated. This is a problem. In order to take down a NM at the level where you would be using the gear, you need to drag multiple friends out to help you fight the critter. Given how frequently these mobs show up and their atrocious drop rates, this means you either can't have nice things or you have to make your friends miserable in order to get nice things. I know FFXI is all about the teamwork and what-not, but this is just silly.

Despite all this, I've spent a good bit of time camping things. There's just this wonderful sense of satisfaction (or is it vengeance?) that comes from slicing up the monster and finally seeing that shiny trinket fall out of their entrails.

If nothing else it's been something to pass the time while I try to figure out what to do next in game. Also the prospect of having stupid good gear when taking up a second job is very appealing. Oh Dragoon, someday I'll actually level you and it will be awesome.



After 18 kills it's just not worth it when I can buy the belt on the Auction House for cheap.


This one might be worthwhile if I can figure out the timing and placement a little better.


I accidentally killed this one back in the day without realizing it was a Notorious Monster.


You know what else is appealing about camping Notorious Monsters? Being able to do stuff like this while waiting. Nothing like taking on a pack of orcs single-handedly.

That's how I like to start my mornings

Camping Notorious Monsters I have no business camping.

Aggroing four angry Quadavs when I was trying to pull just the one.

Managing to let Refresh drop when I was down to 22 MP.

Somehow managing to outlast three angry turtles before one lands a lucky critical hit and swats me to the floor.

Ah, adventure...smells a lot like dirt.

Weekend Wipe

That Blue Mage thing is still happening, but I'd like to steer the blog away from focusing on that for a while.

One of my friend's has been getting back into the game lately, so I've been spending some time giving him a hand with some of the nation missions. The most recent one we tackled took us to the Gusgen Mines where he had to fight a Pugil. I came along on Red Mage as backup so he didn't have much to worry about, aside from his sporadic connection. We've been perplexed by this phenomenon in which his connection takes a nose dive around the same time every night before stabilizing an hour later. The weirdest part is that it seems to just boot him off FFXI, because he doesn't get kicked off his XBox Live thingy. We're pretty much stumped at the moment, but at least it beats the satellite internet connection he had at his old place.

The other big thing to overcome when making a return to the game is making gil. I did what I could to spot my friend some gil to get him back on his feet, but the need for income is a constant problem for all of us. However, a few coincidences coincided to make it clear what my course of action ought to be.

Many moons ago I had spent a lot of time running around in Rolanberry with a Corsair while searching for my Rambler's Gaiters. At the time we had devised a scheme to see if there were any money making schemes we could tag-team. We had decided to attempt a Burning Circle Notorious Monster(BCNM) fight. In preparation I had saved up and spent 30 Beastman Seals to acquire the requisite Sky Orb. Unfortunately before we had a chance to make the attempt the fight, the Corsair vanished. I still haven't heard from him since.

The other half of the equation is that my friend just recently reached level 30, the level this particular BCNM fight is capped at.

So what the hell, I thought. This thing's been collecting dust for months and we could both use the gil so why not make an attempt? The original plan was to attempt to duo Creeping Doom, but I decided to see if anyone in my Linkshell was interested. My old pal Mohan decided to tag along. Awesome, the more punching power the better.

We all met up in Giddeus, two Monks and a Red Mage. After discussing some strategy we entered the arena.

Oh my god was I unprepared. I'd done my homework on this fight and figured subbing White Mage to help deal with paralysis would be a good idea. What I hadn't counted on was just how durable the crawler was with the ability to spam Cure III on itself. I ended up wasting a lot of MP trying to silence the darn thing. Even with level appropriate gear for the fight, it just wasn't going to happen. Maybe I should have subbed Black Mage for Elemental Seal after all.

However, I feel that my choice of sub-job wasn't really the issue here. I felt really rusty and flustered during this fight. I had planned to join in the melee after dropping the initial enfeebles, but when the time came I ended up fumbling with my gear a bit while trying to make sure my friends were on their feet and not paralyzed. Between that and trying to land Silence I wasn't really as quick on my feet as I needed to be. The chatlog flew by me and I wasn't even watching for enfeebles wearing. It was just a shameful performance on my part. Because of my indecisiveness I also managed to completely ignore the need to rest for mp. I placed too much faith in my Yagudo drinks. We lasted a good while, but the constant Cure III spam from the monster outlasted us. One by one we all hit the dirt.

Nothing ventured nothing gained, right?

I'm not so sure. My friends didn't seem to think too much of it, but the more I turn the scenario over in my head, the more convinced I am that this loss lies squarely on my shoulders. I wasn't on high alert, I didn't read the situation and adapt to it the way I needed to. Worst of all, I panicked and froze up often enough to disrupt the flow of things and eventually that got us killed.

Makes me wonder if I'm really cut out for this Red Mage business.

The "Fun Pile" after our wipe. Good effort guys, we'll have to try again sometime.

I picked up some cool shades from a Bazaar and I've taken to wearing them everywhere.

Carpenter's Landing makes for an interesting and photogenic environment.

Screenshot Spectacular, the First

Oy, what a slow week it's been. Low level solo adventuring is rewarding in its own right, but sometimes it just doesn't make for good blogging. No one really wants to hear about how I spent all week hanging out in Buburimu Peninsula beating up bunnies and trying for hours on end to learn some Blue Magic.

Unless of course I spice it up with a bunch of screenshots and other unrelated goodies, which is why I'm pleased to announce the first chronic Screenshot Spectacular. Today we'll be mixing in an unprecedented number of screenshots to go along with our tale of adventure.

As many of you know, I've recently taken to leveling Blue Mage. It's been a slow but relatively painless process. During the lower levels I can't imagine how a player would manage to join exp parties and keep his spell list up to date at the same time. You simply gain levels before you even have time to learn your spells.

Anyway, this week's menu of delicious Blue Magic took me to the Konschtat Highlands to hunt down some woolly critters. Now I know sheep can be noisy, but I wouldn't think to refer to their bleating as anything resembling a song. But hey, a Light-based sleep spell is a darn handy thing to have, so off into the highlands I trekked. The sheep had all gathered near a collection of windmills for my convenience. After a time I found a sheep that was decidedly more of a stray than the others:

I've become even more reckless as a Blue Mage than I ever was as a Red Mage. I think it's the faster damage output that does it.

Sadly Stray Mary didn't have a soul for me to dine on.

Later in the week my hunt took me East, to the Horutoto Ruins just outside of Windurst. Whilst trying to hunt down some Cardians I was savagely ambushed by a lurking Goblin.

Being stabbed in the face for nearly 200 damage per hit tends to be detrimental to your health.

I later found out that the Cardians were in a different section of the ruins. Regardless, after taking such a beating I opted to explore Tahrongi Canyon searching for Dhalmels instead.

Even taking the high ground you can't look a Dhalmel in the eye.

An odd thing happened while hunting Dhalmels. A bunch of high level players were running around one-shotting the behemoths I was trying to track down. They left enough of them alive that I could still hunt, but it baffles me. What could they possibly want from a bunch of low level Dhalmels that don't have any spectacular loot? The only thing I can think of is that new Trial of the Magey-thingies, but I haven't been following that too closely so it might not even be that. Luckily it didn't take too terribly long to learn Healing Breeze.

Taking a break, I helped my friend reach level 30 on his Monk so he can start unlocking advanced jobs.

He decided to unlock Dark Knight. For those of you following along at home, this means he has to undertake a quest that involves slaying 100 enemies with a very slow and blunt Greatsword. Since my Scholar was of a similar level I decided to tag along and give him a hand with it. We ended up having me beat the mob within an inch of its life, at which point my friend would finish it off as I ran off to start on the next mob. Up on Vomp Hill we had a few close run-ins. Worms and sheep and goblins, oh my! It was actually a lot of fun, figuring out how to manage the hate levels and pace ourselves so we could fend off an extra critter or two. Last I heard he was still up on that hill swinging his sword.

I was running some errands one day and on my way to Jeuno I came across a terrifying sight.

Holy crap! A dragon in Rolanberry!

It was eating all the adventurers and there was nothing I could do. If dragons normally wander through Rolanberry, then I guess that might explain why we no longer have Rolanmart.

In other news, people have taken to keeping pet Tremor Rams at the Dem crystal.

I gotta say, that's a really terrifying thing to zone in to. I still have a deep-seated fear of Tremor Ram, which is why you might have noticed I'm trying to get away in the above shot.

Ah, another week in glorious Bastok. Onward to adventure!

*munch munch*...delicious souls

Some nights it all just falls into place perfectly.

So lately I've been slowly working my way up the ladder as a Blue Mage. It's been a lot of fun so far. I get to wield a sword and chuck spells all day long, complete with really nifty animations. Seriously, I will never get tired of the hand gestures that go along with Blue Magic. There's also the fun of skilling up a whole new branch of magic along the way, so that's been rewarding as well.

The only down side so far has been the need to farm spells, and that hasn't really been much of an issue once I acquired my first spell. It's a chore sure, but it's one I can enjoy. Having to hunt down spells means hunting down specific enemies, which means exploring all kinds of areas. Ok, ok, there's always the option of standing around in Gustaberg tickling a Quadav with unarmed attacks until he gives you Head Butt, but why would you do that when you can go explore Palborough Mines or the Turtle HQ? So yes, farming for Blue Magic has been a bit of an adventure.

The whole mechanic seems tailored towards solo play. EXP parties tend to hunt in very specific locations and only attack certain kinds of enemies, so you can't rely on them to learn your spells. Also you can't always count on the enemy to use the spell you want if you tear through it too fast. This means you either end up poking the sickly bunny with a stick until he kicks you in the face and you kill him, or you find a bigger bunny with sharp pointy teeth who'll give you a run for your money and last long enough to use a few monster moves on you.

What you don't do is go pick a fight with the biggest, baddest, meanest mob in the zone.

Unless of course you're me.

Tonight I was romping through Giddeus punching Yagudos out left and right in the hopes that one of them would teach me Feather Storm. Sadly they weren't terribly keen on using it. So I wandered around for a while until I came across a rather large and intimidating Yagudo named: Juu Duzu the Whirlwind.

By now you all should know what happens when I encounter a critter that has a name. That's right, I ran headfirst into the big fluffy oaf and began slicing him up. With a notoriously large health bar, I decided now would be a very good time to make use of Azure Lore. This was followed by a great many Head Butts and Foot Kicks. It's really amazing how much damage a Blue Mage can pump out in a short period of time if they completely empty their MP pool.

It was close but I emerged victorious on all fronts. I had defeated the Big Bird ninja and he had relinquished a pair of Light Soleas, which I immediately equipped. Most importantly however, the Yagudo had lost his soul. I ate it and learned Feather Storm.

I really enjoy being a soulless monster that sustains itself on the spiritual essence of others.

I have a penchant for sunset shots

My friend needed some help collecting subjob quest items for the journey to Whitegate so we got horribly lost in the Gusgen mines.

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.