Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Party Hardy.

Ahh, the insatiable need to gain levels. I cannot escape it. I have a feeling most other objectives shall fall by the wayside as I add more notches to my belt. And so it went...

I hopped on Bard, seeking for a while. I disconnected about four times in a row, which irritated me. This led to me deciding I'd just read a book and stay logged in for LS chatter (a common thing for me to do). I didn't want to get into a party if I was not going to have a stable connection.

I hung around by where my brother was leveling. After a little while of not having my party flag up, I got a tell asking me if I'd be interested in some XP. This prompted me to take note of the fact that the game hadn't disconnected in a while, so I accepted. Turned out to be a group of five friends who just needed a support job to fill the group. We camped at Mamool Ja Staging Point, fighting Puks and the occasional "Spaniard" (a.k.a. Mamool Ja).

I realized that one of the party members was a regular poster on a forum I frequent, so that was kinda cool. We partied for a few hours, though it didn't seem tedious since the whole time there were jokes and entertaining anecdotes being spread around. It reminded me of why I usually leave my jobs static with my own linkies. The EXP grind of FFXI just isn't nearly as annoying when you have familiar people around. I didn't level, but that was because the levels are looooong at this point and I wasn't terribly far into 69 when I started.



Partying Monk is quite simple, to the point of making me feel lazy. I'm not really a viable puller unless we have no other option, so I just stand there at camp. I have a macro that handles pretty much everything and I only have a few Job Abilities that are worth using. I have actually found myself reading a book while partying, and thankfully the parties were good enough that I didn't have any crises to deal with.

I was 42 earlier this week, and was invited while I was soloing with Dancer subjob. DNC is a pretty good option for this, by the way, but I won't get into that topic at the moment. The invitation was from a Japanese player, which I assumed was going to mean I'd be ignored the moment he found out I was in fact, English. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had run across some of the excellent, fun Japanese players as opposed to what has become the norm for me lately.

We headed out to the Altepa Desert to fight Beetles at a place on the map called "Revelation Rock." I happen to love this camp, by the way. As long as you have Dispel for the Evasion Bonus the beetles do, they're quite manageable. They repop pretty quickly for a non-ToAU camp and there are enough to support a couple parties if need be.

There was plenty of emotes and silly comments for the duration (including me using the little Japanese I know along with some phrases made up, translated, and romanized for the party's enjoyment). On to the action shots~

I was 44 at the end of this party, and it really got me in the mood to keep going. My damage right away impressed me, and any time you end up in a party that goes smoothly it seems to spark your interest for more of the same.

Thus, I partied again the next day, this time with plain ol' North Americans. Crawlers' Nest was the order of the day, and it went pretty well throughout. I gained another two levels with this crew.

Here I'm seeing colors:

Two Dancers in one party is probably inefficient, but I still leveled.

During a break in the action, I got some free Mithra lap-time.
Leveled again!

Later on, I got a second party, this time with a Japanese and English mix. The tank was a Ninja from the Land of the Rising Sun, and she performed adequately. However, it was readily apparent to me immediately that the Paladins from the previous two parties had spoiled me. Now I had to remember I'd be damaged more often after using Weapon Skills. I can't really complain; Raging Fists was doing pretty heavy damage.

I felt a little guilty after this party. The reason is, I was reading my book, no big deal. But as the party went on into the evening, I became complacent. I was hitting a matter of maybe three different macros every so often and not really needing to do anything else. I would look up at the screen when the movement told me the next mob was at camp, and keep reading. I wasn't reading the text at all, so that meant anyone who sent me tells as well as any LS chat was completely lost on me.

This is not like me to do, but I was enjoying the multi-tasking. All the sudden, I look up and the party was ending. I see Warp cudgels going off left and right, so I head to my Equipment screen to equip mine. I hit the wrong option and it went to Status instead, where I found I was level 47 and hadn't realized it. Too easy? Perhaps.

And no, the party didn't end due to my lack of paying much attention. (I checked...) The leader was falling asleep at this PC.



I'm not sure why, but this little shack out in the middle of Rolanberry Fields puzzled me.
I don't know if they added this somewhere along the lines, if I have never run past it before, or if I'm just plain crazy. Regardless, I could not for the life of me remember this structure being here. I wandered around it for a few minutes and then moved on to more pressing matters, like cookies. That's all for today~

1 comment:

Soda Pop said...

D:

I need to move my ass and get some more levels. . .

I thought you were were kinda out of the FFXI mood?