Ewe Boll is a Hack.

Starting off today are a couple various pictures, then I'll get to the events themselves. First up is my brother's character and mine standing near the Mog House with our new Dandy Spectacles from the event. The second is another display of him being violent. I dunno where he gets it...


My Monk is currently 37, with a possible situation coming up for a friend to level alongside it, maybe enjoy the job more than I have of late. To be honest I'm loving Monk but the slow pace of late is driving me batty. I want to get 40/41 for the gear and for Chi Blast & Raging Fists.


My Linkshell has adopted another goofball. I met Llewelyn in an EXP party with my Monk. The day had been treating us unfairly but we finally had some progress happening, even though the party was nowhere near as good as it should have been. We had a PLD, BRD, RDM, BLM, DRG (Llewelyn), and me on MNK. Llewelyn's name reminded me of Ewe Boll, the horrid director (read: hack), and therefore nicknamed him "Ewe" for the time being.

The PLD was Rank 10 and was apparently a friend of the BRD's. If you think that, by rule-of-thumb, this would spell out at least a modicum of success, you'd be wrong. Ewe was tanking most fights all the way down to roughly 25% HP before the Cure-bombing would take the mob off him. Yours truly was using Provoke on the links, since the PLD was incapable of tanking two at once (let alone one). Overall I'm surprised we even survived. The only reason I stayed in the party was because no one was dead and I was having so much fun chatting with TheSolonavi I barely cared about incompetence.

Later in the evening, Ewe mentioned Mission 5-2 and a few of us in the 'Navi were up for some Shadow Lord destruction. My brother happened to be on 5-1 and thus it became an eventful night. First we geared up for 50-cap battle in Fei'Yin against a skeleton horde. We had Valion on PLD, Saruka on WHM, Llewelyn on SAM, Anacalius on WAR, Bloodless on MNK, and me on BRD. This was easily the smoothest run I've ever done on this fight. There really was no contest. Bringing a Monk to a Skeleton fight is almost unfair. Here's a shot of us before entering the Burning Circle:

Then we regrouped and got prepared for 5-2 in Castle Zvahl. There isn't much to tell, as it was fairly unremarkable. Galbatorix swapped into the party for Valion, who went to sleep. Took the good ol' hike to the Keep where Shadow Lord resides, and we stomped him pretty handily. I was down to almost red HP by the end (some people were still in cut-scene).

Here's a shot of the cool-looking room that leads up to the Burning Circle:

Then there are a couple shots of me vs. Shadow Lord, not that the lighting is good enough for picutres:


Monday afternoon/early evening started out with my Bard getting an invite within one minute of changing to Bard. Yes, literally one minute. It's kinda disturbing. Caedarva Mire Imps are just too good for EXP during these levels, and I was 68 and a third toward 69 before the deed was done.


The evening was promised to Galbatorix, for meripo/EXP buffer party. He uses his Black Mage for most of his endgame, yet it's often difficult to get invites on BLM so he ends up deleveled more than we'd like. Thus, I took the crew to Mount Z to take on the Trolls. They're fun, if annoying at times. The party was overall kinda hectic and spazzy but we did a fair amount of XP. Saruka's WAR got some merit points, I got some more PLD buffer and one full merit point, and I'd imagine Galb just stocked up on EXP.

We brought Dyce's 72COR and his girlfriend Aynee's 71DRG along. They're always entertaining to have around 'cause they'll keep the party chatline going with some oddball stuff. Aynee did alright keeping up with the fact that Trolls are among the tougher mobs to fight for merit parties. We had many links due to the mobs respawning on us (kill time was pretty long so we'd still be fighting one when re-pops occurred). Despite this, we did pretty decent and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Dyce hit 73, which of course I had to joke was time for him to retire (since he retired his PLD upon reaching 73).

There was only one death in the party, and it belonged to me. Mages were tapped on magic points and eventually I bought the farm. Damn Red Mage Troll popped me with a Fire III during my Invincible. To be fair, here's a pic of me dead since I've been posting my friends' deaths lately, heh.


Finally today, a little something to appreciate in Vana'diel: Jeuno's first gentleman's club:


Until next time~