Little Birdies

Just before logging in I tried out Friend List Plus, POL’s web-based friend monitor and basic messaging client. It lets you see your friend list and their online status. You can also send and receive messages. But these are email-type messages, not chat ><.

I messaged Fhox who was offline about wanting to know where he’d been. Once I logged in at around 10:40 he had made it in and replied – God of War II was competing for his attention. Anyway, I chatted with him and Puma while I handled my auctions and spell storage (and a free tele). Puma beat Maat since the last try and had already dinged 71.

Around 11, I got an invite from Ameena for a Colibri party. We got started close to 11:30 and thankfully, she didn’t plan on pulling anything but Colibri. Well, actually, at the camp we chose (SW corner of the Thickets) there’s not much besides the pink toucan lookalikes. Also, a bonus, our Paladin Nile was fantastic, our Dancer Lilangel did her thing and co-healed, and I rarely ran low on MP.

We pulled almost all chain-4 and 5’s pretty much non-stop for two hours. I warned Ameena well in advance that I had to go close to 1 but she didn’t respond and there weren’t any healers seeking at our level. I eventually had to tell the party I was getting ready to leave and she piped up that a rep was coming. That WHM bailed however and she eventually found Woofin, a RDM I’ve seen around.

All these delays meant what was supposed to be 90 minutes wound up being about 135. The great news is that I dinged 62, raking in just over 17k in xp! That’s around 6,800 an hour, for next to no effort.

Actually, I was often bored between doing a few heals on Nile and Fultum (a Taru DRK with an occasional WS that ate about a third of his HP) and the Haste/Buff cycle. I eventually asked for permission to melee a bit for Staff skillups and Ameena said OK but I wanted to ask the party who ignored me. Well, Furea said {That’s too bad.} but I think that might have been in response to a chain-break.

In any case I didn’t melee until the WHM rep bailed and I was forced to wait even longer to leave. I was a little annoyed and didn’t care at this point. It did dawn on me that at least 2 and maybe more of our crew was Japanese, so I threw out “{White Mage} {Attack} {Short time} OK” in party chat and set to work. Either my skill is too low for this level of mob or my Accuracy blows, but I was only hitting about 15% of the time, and many of those hits were zeroes, granting no en-Aspir MP or skillup points.

But I did get most of a full Staff level and healing started jumping up too. I ran out of MP pretty fast without Furea’s hMP and Refresh Corsair rolls and so I put away my weapon and went back-line again, and had to use Bene almost immediately… Three of us were in the yellow and Nile was low on HP. It all worked out OK though – I only took a hit or two and the yellow HP cleared right up.

All in all a great party with fantastic XP and great support from everyone. Well, Ameena and Fultum were pretty much pure melee so they did their jobs on the mob but Nile, Lilangel and Furea were a delight, making my job really easy.

Now that I’m *62* I think I’ll give Sorcery of the North another go and work on AF parts. I’ll try to stick to leveling Dancer and Ninja in the meantime.

And I absolutely need to do some skilling up on both Staff and Club!