Where Is Everyone?

April 11-14, 2008

More late-night grind, a little more progress… I still don’t have the energy to do these right, so I’ll just throw all the updates on the table…

Finally got some WHM XP love, through two parties. One was Friday, and one was Sunday, both in Mt. Zhayolm on Magmatic Erucas.

The first party was started by Rickter, who invited me and told me he was still building. I took the time to PL Monnica bit in the Dunes. She took off suddenly, and the party nervously asked if I was leaving too. I told them I’d stay as long as I could but would leave once my party was ready. I resisted the urge to tell them to dress their Elvaan before the next party – they had a level 12 player naked…

Once Rickter signaled ready I warped back to AU and we made our way through the Runic Portal to Halvung. The party went well enough. Our Tarudin tank died twice from hit + Incinerate combos which he and I weren’t able to intercept in time. He didn’t seem to mind too much. About an hour in, Rickter and his lady friend (IRL? Dunno) say they’re leaving and make ME leader despite me shaking my head at his earlier request for a volunteer. Hooray for alphabetical order…

Fortunately, he hooked me up with both reps, so I really didn’t have to do anything. We kept on keeping on even after our BST DCed without warning. Oddly, XP went up with the new 5-player mix. And then I realized why XP overall was sucking… I forgot Sanction. Son of a… I wound up 4k short of 66 and no idea how close I’d have been properly outfitted ><

This was the party in which I met Embefora, who is a fantastic Red Mage, who happens to prefer White! Maybe she can give me advice.

Saturday and Sunday I tried using Campaign to get the rest of my level. I also went for an eval and got it – I now have the highest ribbon and should be up for a star next. Maybe some good usable or sellable items… Incredibly long delays between battles meant I only got 2k closer to a ding.

Ran into Fhox twice, who tried to set up something Saturday but we had no takers. He wanted help in Davoi farming a Sallet Cap but I begged off and went to Campaign. I kinda felt guilty but I just don’t get as much out of his farming as he does – my way is so much faster and easier ^^ He had to make it worse by reporting his death… We did have a great conversation about Japanese-English player relations and lingua-cultural education.

Speaking of farming, I’ve made two more passes through the Ruins. The first time, I got the tests, 2 Gravities and 4 Rusty Daggers, and all sold: 9k, 7k x2, ~1k x4!! Almost 27k! The second set won’t be as profitable but it’ll still rock. Even after all my shopping I have 140k now, which is good because…

I discovered using Furen’s Cure Calculator that VIT is nearly as important as MND. MND still seems to trump the same amount of Healing Skill. This is what led to my Hale Ring purchase and may lead to other gear setups if I can get more out of a VIT item (or VIT and MND) than the high MND I’ve been building with. I also learned there are two pieces of “RSE2”, River Gaiters and River Gauntlets. They have pretty fantastic stats for HP and MP but the sacrifices to SIR and cure power may not be worth it… Situational gear maybe?

Also on the shopping theme, I may be adding macroed Elemental Staves to my main macros. I have enough elemental spellwork even on WHM to warrant the swaps if they do in fact increase effectiveness.

Sunday night was the other Fhox encounter. He had part of a party in place so once he had grabbed me it didn’t take long to head back out to the fiery mountain. Apparently the party that he just finished with was lousy so he was hoping for better luck. And this time I remembered Sanction.

However good the XP was, I had a rough night White Mage-wise. The tank died twice and Fhox and I each died once, and mine happened just after RR wore. Fortunately I got a Raise III from a passing WHM which was awesome.

Like Saturday, the deaths were mostly hard hit followed almost immediately by the Erucas’ fave TP move – Incinerate. I took one from the BACK LINE that dropped me to double digits. What I learned from this party is that I can no longer rely on MPR boosts – there was next to no downtime to use it in. With Fhox’s Refresh, Vermy and Sanction bonus, I should have been pulling +5 refresh effect which kept me running a long time.

However, the pullers (one of whom was Lust!) only stopped when someone died or we had to recover from a link. I don’t like going cash-flow negative on partying but I guess I’ll have to investigate a Hi-Ether tank. /sigh

Overall the party was fun and I finally dinged 66 with a 4k buffer. We had a nice time and spending time with Fhox is usually interesting. I managed not to whine too much to Fhox about my performance but I still don’t like people dying. Especially if they’re me and I don’t have my RR sorted… {Amateur} indeed.

Monday night was a no-go. Something between a PS3 update and a POL update borked my internet. I went to bed with the new 2.30 update downloading and early Tuesday installed it, got on to POL and was able to sign in, with Matt’s help :) I was beginning to get paranoid that the Linux install screwups had somehow affected the network interface but I guess not.

And speaking of Matt: I was prepared for Monday to be a suck-fest. Sunday’s lousy mage-work, JHIN committee prep, work in general… Then I got some neat news. Brandon took third overall for his grade (4 classes), and Matt took the Stockton Grand Prize (Grand Prix – hehe – get it? Racing, winning, yada…)! His project is headed to State. Sweet! I was very happy for him. I’m already proud of my almost-clone, but he finally gets something good at school. He doesn’t get very many victories at Stockton and he just scored a big one.