Destiny is something... You forge for yourself! (Until about lv.40)

Good Evening Ladies, Gentlemen, Aliens, and Rhikku if she happens to read this.

It has been a while since my last confes...I mean blog! I have left the front page mostly to Saik, who has been posting his (admittedly somewhat bitter) thoughts about levelling in FFxi. I can't say I blame him. The first few levels are a bitch. But I will not fall into that cynical trap (any further than I already have done anyways!) This is a post about something else. Something mystical and magical that I never thought I would see in FFxi again.

Yes ladies, gentlemen, aliens and aforesaid Canadian, I am talking about.... FUN!

You see, when I sojourned from FFxi onto WoW, I really left because the game wasn't fun. I couldn't drum up any enthusiasm to level anything, and crafting remains a tedious, boring, moneysink. I knew there was an expansion coming out for FFxi, so I said I wouldn't log back in till then.

Then I saw on the FFxi EU website (which is always wrong about maintenance times btw... seems that no one can get the hang of GMT times) that Blue Mage was the first new job announced. Whoopee! I said, with about as much enthusiasm as putting a gun to my head. You see, I have played pretty much all of the FF games, and in none of them was Blue Mage a fun or barely useful job to play. Quina was odd, Quistis was cute but fairly useless, Khimari was... well, lets not go there. I never liked Blue Mage.

Then I saw the second announced job and I was immediately psyched (or as much as I could be when I was close to breaking point at work, something that again, I shall try to keep out of this blog as talking/writing about it makes me feel worse, which really isn't the point!)

Corsair! With Piratey artifact armour!

I knew that this was the job for me, the perfect fun job that I would enjoy playing.

And then there is Puppetmaster, but no talk of that here. i shall save that for another Blog entry.

So yes, when I got the expansion and did all the quests for the new jobs (took me 5 tries to get the Blue Mage questions right btw >.<) I didn't even bother starting the missions; I got my pert elvaan backside out into West Ronfaure and immediately started levelling Corsair (COR).

I am now a level 21 COR. This is after 3 weeks of playing. Why so low?

Well, COR is a "busy" job, as Saik mentioned a couple of entries ago. But it was a bit tedious solo, and the Dunes were nightmarish as always. When I got to level 15 I got my first gun and was like and then I found that I did rubbish damage with them because I can't use decent bullets till 22. I also saw that the job was likely to be RATHER expensive, and that put me off more than the rubbish damage did.

I came back to FFxi with almost 4,000,000gil in the bank, which I had been saving for my hauberk. Bullets are expensive, and unlike the Master of Fishing, Saikyo, I have no real way of making gil in the game apart from lucky NM drops and BCNMs. I farmed a lot on THF, but I just can't be bothered with that kind of chore anymore. It is a game, not a job!! So yeah, I had gil, but I knew that wouldn't last. I levelled RNG to 36 a year or so ago, and that wasn't cheap. Bullets are more expensive than arrows too!

So anyway, while levelling COR I regularly checked in on the folks in Resurrection, which has pretty much become my "main" LS at the moment because there is always someone on. Several people were raving about how uber and powerful Blue Mage (BLU) is and how it should be nerfed. Now I'm a simple kinda guy. If someone says something is broken, I want to see HOW BROKEN!

So despite my vow that I would probably never touch BLU with a barge pole, I went and started levelling it. The equipment choices were significantly better than COR, which was a plus, and I had quite a bit of stuff I could use. I also quickly went and read up on the Blue Mage spell list to see what kind of things I should do in the early levels. And then I hit BLU running, and I hit it hard!

You see, I've always been a bit fascinated by collecting things. I don't, as a rule, collect things myself. I did when I was "young" and saw how much money that cost me, but - and I probably shouldn't admit this online for fear of social ridicule - I DID enjoy the Pokemon games, where it was a challenge to "catch 'em all". BLU is very much like this and taps into that kind of mentality. There are spells you can "learn" from various creatures (mobs) throughout the world. Some of the spells are used often by enemies, some of them are not. Neither is it a 100% chance that you will learn that spell when the mob does use it, so there is a bit of effort and luck involved.

So yeah, from being the "job that I'd never touch with a bargepole", BLU is now my 5th highest job, tallying in at level 46 (almost 47) at time of this entry. It hasn't been an easy job to play either, nor has it been cheap (I'm down to under 1M gil, but have most of the equipment I'll need till past 60 now anyways). It also isn't particularly broken, which was kinda disappointing. Yes it does good damage, but it has a piss poor mana pool, and most of my gear is devoted to accuracy+ since the job melees and requires accuracy for the "physical" Blue magic spells to hit better. Does it need nerfing? I actually don't think so. It seems to be quite well balanced and have a nice mix of spells (some of which, like some Pokemon, are shite!)

Back to the quote I used for the heading...

On the BLU quest, the quest-giver asks you a series of questions. The first one is "What is destiny?" The answers are fairly generic, but the one the guy wants to hear is "Something you forge for yourself..."

This is particularly poignant for me at the moment in my current emotional state (but as I say, no more on that!) but also very indicative of the Blue Mage job... UNTIL around level 40+. BLU is a good soloer in the early levels, able to take on Even Match - Tough mobs in some cases with no problems. Around level 35 that drops off, then picks up again slightly at 38 with Jet Stream, then dips again around 40-45 because of mobs high armour and hit points. We can still solo Easy Prey mobs and SOME Decent Challenge mobs, but really, the forging destiny for ourselves stops here.... now we need a bit of help >.>

I suppose that is part of class balance, but hey, I don't mind a bit of teamwork. That is what the game is for after all!

Today I posted on the Resurrection forums (demajen.net/res) about getting help for some of the really awkward spells that i couldn't get on my own, due to them being in level-capped areas. The two spells that I needed for level 48 were Jettura and Refuelling, the latter being a 5-minute self-haste which is pretty damn good in this game. About 10 minutes after I had logged in, a nice BLU that I have partied with a couple of times sends me a /tell asking if I'd like to join a spell-learning party for Riverne Site #A01 which is a level 40 capped area where the two above-mentioned spells are learned.

We spent a happy 3 hours here, back and forth, killing hippogryphs for Jettura (I learned the spell on the second one we fought... the others took forever XD) and on to Atomic Clusters for Refuelling. Refuelling didn't go quite so well. Elandra got some unlucky crits from one of the Clusters and ended up dying quite horribly as no one could heal her in time. Fortunately she had a friend's account, so, dual-boxing, she logged onto said White Mage's account and made her way here. Meanwhile, we left the particular part of Riverne we were in, because we would need a special item to open the way so the white mage could get through.

As we made our way back, tragedy struck. Someone managed to aggro not one, but two dragons. Yes, dragons! They checked as "Tough" to a level 40, placing them at around 41-43 at a guess. Some genius BLU in the party (I didn't see who) used Sheep Song (baaaaa!) to send the dragons to sleep so we could concentrate on one at a time. A fair plan! Unfortunately, the AoE of Sheep Song caught a Hawkertrap (flying plant nasty thing) too, and while it also fell asleep, it didn't do so for long, and proceeded to tear various party members a second rectum. This was quite a painful experience, and the party wiped.

It was now about 9pm, roughly 2 hours in. I was due to go out for a meal at 10pm with some friends. Curry. Yum! I think it took around 20 minutes for the WHM to get to where we were and raise us. I had still not learned Refuelling by this point, and was getting a bit edgy as I didn't really want to go away empty handed! Yes I had jettura, but its not supposed to be particularly good ><

Anyways, we raised, we fled while weakened, and we rested up. Then we started fighting clusters, and fortunately at about 9:40pm, I got the very satisfying "Demajen learns Refuelling!" message. Hurrah!

Several people still hadn't learned it by the time I had to log out at 10pm though, for which I felt a bit guilty, but they were all rather chipper about it, so I shan't feel too bad! I'm done beating myself up over things anyway! New, positive me!!

The curry was very nice by the way. Steak Massala. Yum!

When I logged back on, I quickly ascertained that a very good friend of mine, Madpierrot by name, was seeking assistance with getting his WHM artefact body armour: the Healer's Briault. Having levelled WHM to 63 myself, and having helped on that fight on several occasions, I almost didn't offer to help. I really do hate that fight! I've seen the mighty fall to the nasty mob we have to fight for it. But Maddy is a really nice guy, and he's helped me out on more times than I can recall - including recently on BLU when I needed some annoying spells that I couldnt' even GET to, let alone learn. So I offered to help. Two Paladins, a Red Mage (me), two White Mages (Maddy and some other guy) and a Samurai. And it was surprisingly easy. We did the fight twice and there were no deaths or even near deaths. The only person who went down into the red hp was me, and that was only cos I used Convert midfight (and gave the WHM whose name I can't remember a heart attack. eeeevil RDM ^^).

So Maddy is now a proud owner of a Healer's Briault. Yay.

But there's more! Apparently our level 75 samurai, Treppe, had not done his AF helmet fight (the level 60 helmet!) and politely asked if we could go do that. I figured I may as well, so I went for that too. On my way to Palborough Mines, I used the Gusgen Mines > Oldton Movaolpolos > Escape trick to save myself 15 minutes journey. As I run out into North Gustaberg to make my way to Palborough Mines, I notice a familiar figure... a NM Strolling Sapling called Maighdeane Uaine, who I camped and killed several months ago. It drops "Optical Earring", a lv.10 earring with +1 Accuracy Bonus for -2 Attack. I didn't need it, but I was feeling nice, so I saw who was around. There was a level 4 Warrior (no sub in the zone) and I asked him if he had just started playing the game. He said yes, so I quickly disbanded from the AF party, invited him up, killed the sapling in about 4 hits (one of which I, embarsassingly, missed) and left him with a sparkly earring.

Truly I am a good person!

Anyways, we went and did the AF Helm fight, which was good fun, and then I pretty much called it a night and started to write this blog entry.

You are now up to date.

~ Dema

PS. Hi to Akaibara who seems to have found the Blog ^^ Nice to have you back with us hun!! And yes, I do seem to be plastered all over the internet don't I.... I didn't used to get so many hits on Google >:3