Molasses.

The first weekend of June was, as the this entry's title suggests, slow and sticky. From the time Thaz and I struck out with Ose Thursday night, I didn't play much FFXI until Sunday afternoon.

Sunday brought us a fun, if chaotic, session of EXP. Many of the linkies were preoccupied or logged off much of the day. However, my girlfriend and I were looking to make things dead. Par for the course, Galbatorix was willing to follow us through any possible perils, to share in the rewards yielded. That convoluted sentence is my frivolous way of saying we partied. For six hours, in fact.

Me: PLD73/WAR36
Dungeonwhipper: RDM71/BLM35
Galbatorix: DRG71/SAM35

Sodako's 70~ish WHM was unavailable, so we filled with the following:

Edgh: WHM/BLM (Japanese)
Tenderloin: THF/NIN (Japanese)
Shady: DRK/THF

We partied in Caedarva Mire, fighting Imps and other filler for chains. Imps, who have area attacks of Silence and Amnesia, are both a blessing and a curse to us players. Blessing in that they are some of the easiest-to-kill monsters at this level, for many levels (can start camping here at 68~ish and go to 75/merit). Curse in that they can require extra attention, and that a WHM or at least WHM subjob is essential.

Edgh, with whom I'm previously familiar due to his apparently high-level crafting status, is an excellent White Mage. He was amazingly quick on the draw with Silena, assisting me greatly in keeping hate as well as keeping alive. With the near-constant lack of Job Abilities and Weaponskills due to Amnesia, spells are important for my Paladin.

Our THF performed adequately, though going largely unnoticed. Shady, on the other hand, routinely made his presence known. His Dark Magic is all but useless against the dark imps, he relied on his terrific gear setup and good timing. Sneak Attack / Trick Attack + Spiral Hell or Spinning Slash (depending on weapon of choice) was simply obliterating the little shits.

Edgh and Tenderloin parted ways with us after a few hours, when Edgh had to go to work. Shady stuck with us the whole nine innings, for which I was thankful. I replaced our missing members with a RDM/WHM (for the Silena duty and more healing) and Motherconfessor, a WAR/NIN.

The second half of this party was a bit less efficient, to be sure, but arguably more entertaining. The WAR started with pulling, but she may not have enough experience with this camp's landscape. My Sweets, DW, on the other hand, can pull quite well darn near anywhere.

DW kept a steady stream of mobs coming at us for the next few hours, with just barely enough time to breathe. We kept the pace up even against multiple parties coming and going, trying to usurp our camp. DW was having none of that, and would keep us amply supplied with targets throughout.

Fresh off her triumphant defeat of Maat-RDM on her second try (a battle loathed and feared by many a RDM who go 0/10+ and give up), Sweets attained 72. Galb and I both leveled, 72 and 74, respectively. We even got nice buffers all around before we finally had to call it quits. Typical of a Solonavi party: fun, chaotic, and fruitful. We did over 45k XP or so, but I lost track.

Monday afternoon, we were all bored. Galbatorix got his first piece of Ninja Artifact armor. We needed more to do, and only 3 people were in the Labyrinth of Onzozo. So, we headed down to kill Toramas en masse in hopes Ose would show its face. Sure enough, we got it and killed it. And once again, no drop. It's a bit frustrating, but that's life.

Everyone else logged off and so forth whilst I headed to Davoi to do my RDM AF1, a prerequisite for my Artifact Armor. The weapon is the Fencing degen, which as you can see in this picture, I wasn't terribly impressed to receive (forgive the poor quality):


Tuesday, June 5th is an Update Day, which is sometimes entertaining. Thousands of people trying to connect to a server to download an update and check out the new features... all at once. Good times.