Advancement
My last couple of sessions on FFXI have been made of awesome, partly because of my new LS and partly due to just ... y'know, the awesome that is me. In the last two evenings, I have managed the following:
- Rank 4
- Limit break to cap 55
- Fellowship Quest - with signal pearl to summon NPC
- Dragoon flag
So in short - My rank's up, I can level WHM again, I have a NPC to help me with farming n'stuff, and I've unlocked a shiny new job! There were, of course, adventures.
So Friday night, I basically decided, "I'm bored - I'll go try to kill Porphyrion for my Rank 4 again". I didn't expect this to end well. This never ends well. I'm not saying that Taru can't solo, but Taru WHM getting aggro from not one giant but three? Not so much, no. And avoiding links is not easy in that particular section, so ... there was I screwed. Still, I figured to give it a go, so off I went to Delkfutt's Tower to make the long, boring climb and get my arse whupped again. However, it didn't turn out that way because there were at least two other parties of less than six roaming around trying to get that stupid key item, and one of them kindly invited me on board. I didn't even get near Porphyrion this time; it was two lvl 75 melee class individuals, one lvl 43 Taru WHM, and me, and the two 75s basically killed the stupid giant in three hits. And so we got our keys and went our separate ways to the various spots to find our ambassadors, as the mission dictates we must, and so it went. And I got my Rank 4 and 5k gil that turned out very handy.
This meant that I could start my Fellowship Quest, which has a minimum requirement of Rank 4. The Fellowship Quest lets you have a mid-level NPC that you can summon to help you in combat and such. This is a Useful Thing - I may remember that once I've levelled my NPC a bit and need to go farming for Elshimo Marble for my stupid Tele-Yhoat scroll (one of the two I've never got; I'm not bothering with Vahzl until I actually have the tele-crystal for that area, and I'm really not touching Beaucedine with a barge pole until I have to for my next limit break). Anyway, the first bit really wasn't all that challenging - it involved running around Jeuno trying to decide what race my NPC would be and what he or she would look and generally be like. I picked a Mithra with brown ponytails and a sisterly personality, and then had to go track her down. This, oddly, involved finding a little girl in Garlaige Citadel and incidentally killing a skeleton-type Named Mob ... whose Name I now can't remember; all I really remember is that I had to solo the damn thing. And so I did, relatively handily too. That went swimmingly but by the end of it, I was knackered and wanted for little but bed. This still left another thing to go kill solo. A dragon, if you can believe it. A sodding dragon.
So anyway, next day I did some research and discovered that I should have no problem soloing yon dragon even level-capped at 40, which I would be. Also that there was another thing I could do in the area, as I was there - my Dragoon flag quest. So that involved a lot of running around like a headless chicken excavating wyvern eggs out of the Maze of Shakrami (I get no aggro in the Maze of Shakrami - this rocks) and watching someone try to kill my newly hatched wyvern - and yes, I know it's not technically a wyvern because it's got four legs and a set of wings but they call it one so whatever - in cut-scene before I even got a chance to play the damn job and so forth. Anyway, the climax of this particular quest involves killing another dragon - this one, you don't have to solo and you have no level cap, so I figured, level 50 WHM, I can do this, right?
Wrong. So very, very wrong. I decided to do the Dragoon flag dragon before the Fellowship Quest dragon and got it down to half-HP before I ran out of MP and it killed me stone dead. But, undaunted (and stupid) I bought some Hi-Ether and made some Yagudo Drink and started again. And did worse - it was maybe 2/5 down before it mashed me into paste. And so I eventually whimpered to my linkshell, at which point a lovely gent calling himself Septhiroth (why is it that every time I get a new LS, it contains someone with a Sephiroth-variant name who turns out to be far more sensible than the rip-off name suggests?) offered to help me out. So while he brought his lvl 75 WAR down, I offed the Carrion Dragon for my Fellowship Quest and waited with this one guy who was trying to get his LS to help him with a BCNM but having no luck, poor sod. Anyway, Septh turned up and made very, very short work of the dragon that kept squishing me and that was the end of that. Next stop: Dragoon.
Dragoon as a job is awesome! I haven't got on very well with pet jobs thus far, but let's face it - Beastmaster is a bit of a suck when every so often, the beastie you charmed becomes uncharmed and turns on you, and Summoner involves a constant MP-drain and is generally frustrating. Dragoon, however, doesn't have any of that. Your wyvern doesn't drain anything from you and isn't likely to turn on you at an inconvenient moment; it's just there fighting with you. And some of the fighting bits are just. Plain. Awesome. See, mostly what it'll do is hit the mob you're fighting, but when you use a Weapon Skill, it'll breathe ... well, sometimes it'll breathe fire - Flame Breath, it's called. However, that's not the only thing it'll do. In fact, first time I saw it do any special attack of that nature, it was Lightning Breath. I also saw Hydro Breath, Frost Breath, Sand Breath and Gale Breath, so I've seen the gamut of offensive attacks. It appears that what your wyvern will do depends on what subjob you take, so if I picked another subjob, like for example Bard instead of Dancer, I'd get a different set of abilities. It's all very cool.
So I took DRG up eight levels, breaking for dinner (cooking and eating) somewhere in between, and then one of my LS members took me out hunting for those stupid limit break quest items I've been whingeing about for weeks. We started with the Ancient Papyrus (Liches in the Eldieme Necropolis - I HATE the Eldieme Necropolis) and spent far too long running around the place killing Liches and getting bone chips for our troubles. Then Antifutur (my LS-mate) claimed a Lich while a bunch of others were sitting and healing nearby, and they called her a douche and basically bitched us both out for 'stealing their mob'. (This is not the first time that accusation was lobbed in my general direction today - a BST accused me of being a mob-stealer because a Young Quadav aggroed me in South Gustaberg. *eyeroll*) Amusingly enough, that particular Lich actually dropped the Papyrus we were after, and so the death by Fallen Knight aggro was actually more or less worth it. Then I Tele-Dem'd us both out of there, right under the noses of the Fallen Knights who were proceeding to try to beat Anti into paste. They weren't succeeding, but we didn't really want to waste more time than necessary on that bullshit.
Next was a ride through Pashhow Marshlands, during which Anti asked me if it would make her a total bitch if she sent a /tell to the people who'd called her a douche in Eldieme telling them that we got the drop off that mob (I said yes, but that it would be funny) and meeting up with Septh in Rolanberry to do the Crawler's Nest trawl for Exoray Mould. I had to Sneak and Invis myself fairly early on in the proceedings but after helping Raise a couple of poor bastards who got KO'd in the tunnels and watching Anti and Septh help a lower-level party take on a Soldier Crawler, they went for the Exoray (funguar-type mob) I'd pointed at earlier. It dropped the Mould, first go! Hallelujah! So off we went to Mea, to cap things off with a ride through Meriphataud and Sauromugue to get to Garlaige Citadel.
...I also hate Garlaige Citadel. I got aggroed by a beetle and then one-shot KO'd when a Hellmine cast Self-Destruct. After that, I kept Sneak and Invis up and stayed well to the rear. Of course, by then someone had realised that we weren't even going for the right bomb-type mob; we wanted Explosures, not Hellmines. Anyway, so we had to move. This meant having to go through one of the Banishing Gates, which meant we had to get someone to form an Alliance with us for long enough to stand on these stupid bits of pedestal and open the stinking gate and ... it's complicated. Anyway, suffice it to say we got through, we headed for another portion of the stupid Citadel, they killed two Explosures, we got two chunks of Bomb Ash, which was what we were after, and then we Escaped back out to Sauromugue and called it a night.
Except that I had to get cocky, tried to take down a Tabar Beak, and got killed before I'd made it halfway back to Jeuno. Cue ending up in Bastok, dead because the Tabar Beak got its last hit in just as I finished casting Warp to get out. Long story, never mind. All that really counts is that I got my various bits and bobs to the relevant person in Jeuno and now can level WHM again. For five levels, and then I have to go to Beaucedine Glacier and yeesh. At least there are goals, though it's a shame that so many of them involve me turning to my LS and going, "HEEEELP!"
So ... yeah, a good couple of days in Vana'diel. Yipppee-skip! Sometime next week I may ask if anyone would like to help me with my Rank 5 mission (airship pass FTW!!!), but there's enough to do in the meantime - levelling WHM, levelling DRG ... it's a thing. *happydance*
- Rank 4
- Limit break to cap 55
- Fellowship Quest - with signal pearl to summon NPC
- Dragoon flag
So in short - My rank's up, I can level WHM again, I have a NPC to help me with farming n'stuff, and I've unlocked a shiny new job! There were, of course, adventures.
So Friday night, I basically decided, "I'm bored - I'll go try to kill Porphyrion for my Rank 4 again". I didn't expect this to end well. This never ends well. I'm not saying that Taru can't solo, but Taru WHM getting aggro from not one giant but three? Not so much, no. And avoiding links is not easy in that particular section, so ... there was I screwed. Still, I figured to give it a go, so off I went to Delkfutt's Tower to make the long, boring climb and get my arse whupped again. However, it didn't turn out that way because there were at least two other parties of less than six roaming around trying to get that stupid key item, and one of them kindly invited me on board. I didn't even get near Porphyrion this time; it was two lvl 75 melee class individuals, one lvl 43 Taru WHM, and me, and the two 75s basically killed the stupid giant in three hits. And so we got our keys and went our separate ways to the various spots to find our ambassadors, as the mission dictates we must, and so it went. And I got my Rank 4 and 5k gil that turned out very handy.
This meant that I could start my Fellowship Quest, which has a minimum requirement of Rank 4. The Fellowship Quest lets you have a mid-level NPC that you can summon to help you in combat and such. This is a Useful Thing - I may remember that once I've levelled my NPC a bit and need to go farming for Elshimo Marble for my stupid Tele-Yhoat scroll (one of the two I've never got; I'm not bothering with Vahzl until I actually have the tele-crystal for that area, and I'm really not touching Beaucedine with a barge pole until I have to for my next limit break). Anyway, the first bit really wasn't all that challenging - it involved running around Jeuno trying to decide what race my NPC would be and what he or she would look and generally be like. I picked a Mithra with brown ponytails and a sisterly personality, and then had to go track her down. This, oddly, involved finding a little girl in Garlaige Citadel and incidentally killing a skeleton-type Named Mob ... whose Name I now can't remember; all I really remember is that I had to solo the damn thing. And so I did, relatively handily too. That went swimmingly but by the end of it, I was knackered and wanted for little but bed. This still left another thing to go kill solo. A dragon, if you can believe it. A sodding dragon.
So anyway, next day I did some research and discovered that I should have no problem soloing yon dragon even level-capped at 40, which I would be. Also that there was another thing I could do in the area, as I was there - my Dragoon flag quest. So that involved a lot of running around like a headless chicken excavating wyvern eggs out of the Maze of Shakrami (I get no aggro in the Maze of Shakrami - this rocks) and watching someone try to kill my newly hatched wyvern - and yes, I know it's not technically a wyvern because it's got four legs and a set of wings but they call it one so whatever - in cut-scene before I even got a chance to play the damn job and so forth. Anyway, the climax of this particular quest involves killing another dragon - this one, you don't have to solo and you have no level cap, so I figured, level 50 WHM, I can do this, right?
Wrong. So very, very wrong. I decided to do the Dragoon flag dragon before the Fellowship Quest dragon and got it down to half-HP before I ran out of MP and it killed me stone dead. But, undaunted (and stupid) I bought some Hi-Ether and made some Yagudo Drink and started again. And did worse - it was maybe 2/5 down before it mashed me into paste. And so I eventually whimpered to my linkshell, at which point a lovely gent calling himself Septhiroth (why is it that every time I get a new LS, it contains someone with a Sephiroth-variant name who turns out to be far more sensible than the rip-off name suggests?) offered to help me out. So while he brought his lvl 75 WAR down, I offed the Carrion Dragon for my Fellowship Quest and waited with this one guy who was trying to get his LS to help him with a BCNM but having no luck, poor sod. Anyway, Septh turned up and made very, very short work of the dragon that kept squishing me and that was the end of that. Next stop: Dragoon.
Dragoon as a job is awesome! I haven't got on very well with pet jobs thus far, but let's face it - Beastmaster is a bit of a suck when every so often, the beastie you charmed becomes uncharmed and turns on you, and Summoner involves a constant MP-drain and is generally frustrating. Dragoon, however, doesn't have any of that. Your wyvern doesn't drain anything from you and isn't likely to turn on you at an inconvenient moment; it's just there fighting with you. And some of the fighting bits are just. Plain. Awesome. See, mostly what it'll do is hit the mob you're fighting, but when you use a Weapon Skill, it'll breathe ... well, sometimes it'll breathe fire - Flame Breath, it's called. However, that's not the only thing it'll do. In fact, first time I saw it do any special attack of that nature, it was Lightning Breath. I also saw Hydro Breath, Frost Breath, Sand Breath and Gale Breath, so I've seen the gamut of offensive attacks. It appears that what your wyvern will do depends on what subjob you take, so if I picked another subjob, like for example Bard instead of Dancer, I'd get a different set of abilities. It's all very cool.
So I took DRG up eight levels, breaking for dinner (cooking and eating) somewhere in between, and then one of my LS members took me out hunting for those stupid limit break quest items I've been whingeing about for weeks. We started with the Ancient Papyrus (Liches in the Eldieme Necropolis - I HATE the Eldieme Necropolis) and spent far too long running around the place killing Liches and getting bone chips for our troubles. Then Antifutur (my LS-mate) claimed a Lich while a bunch of others were sitting and healing nearby, and they called her a douche and basically bitched us both out for 'stealing their mob'. (This is not the first time that accusation was lobbed in my general direction today - a BST accused me of being a mob-stealer because a Young Quadav aggroed me in South Gustaberg. *eyeroll*) Amusingly enough, that particular Lich actually dropped the Papyrus we were after, and so the death by Fallen Knight aggro was actually more or less worth it. Then I Tele-Dem'd us both out of there, right under the noses of the Fallen Knights who were proceeding to try to beat Anti into paste. They weren't succeeding, but we didn't really want to waste more time than necessary on that bullshit.
Next was a ride through Pashhow Marshlands, during which Anti asked me if it would make her a total bitch if she sent a /tell to the people who'd called her a douche in Eldieme telling them that we got the drop off that mob (I said yes, but that it would be funny) and meeting up with Septh in Rolanberry to do the Crawler's Nest trawl for Exoray Mould. I had to Sneak and Invis myself fairly early on in the proceedings but after helping Raise a couple of poor bastards who got KO'd in the tunnels and watching Anti and Septh help a lower-level party take on a Soldier Crawler, they went for the Exoray (funguar-type mob) I'd pointed at earlier. It dropped the Mould, first go! Hallelujah! So off we went to Mea, to cap things off with a ride through Meriphataud and Sauromugue to get to Garlaige Citadel.
...I also hate Garlaige Citadel. I got aggroed by a beetle and then one-shot KO'd when a Hellmine cast Self-Destruct. After that, I kept Sneak and Invis up and stayed well to the rear. Of course, by then someone had realised that we weren't even going for the right bomb-type mob; we wanted Explosures, not Hellmines. Anyway, so we had to move. This meant having to go through one of the Banishing Gates, which meant we had to get someone to form an Alliance with us for long enough to stand on these stupid bits of pedestal and open the stinking gate and ... it's complicated. Anyway, suffice it to say we got through, we headed for another portion of the stupid Citadel, they killed two Explosures, we got two chunks of Bomb Ash, which was what we were after, and then we Escaped back out to Sauromugue and called it a night.
Except that I had to get cocky, tried to take down a Tabar Beak, and got killed before I'd made it halfway back to Jeuno. Cue ending up in Bastok, dead because the Tabar Beak got its last hit in just as I finished casting Warp to get out. Long story, never mind. All that really counts is that I got my various bits and bobs to the relevant person in Jeuno and now can level WHM again. For five levels, and then I have to go to Beaucedine Glacier and yeesh. At least there are goals, though it's a shame that so many of them involve me turning to my LS and going, "HEEEELP!"
So ... yeah, a good couple of days in Vana'diel. Yipppee-skip! Sometime next week I may ask if anyone would like to help me with my Rank 5 mission (airship pass FTW!!!), but there's enough to do in the meantime - levelling WHM, levelling DRG ... it's a thing. *happydance*