Dual-boxing, develling and ZM4

For a long time, me and Dema have discussed the possibilities of dual-boxing on FFXI. Considering I live literally 5 minutes walk from Dema's current residence, it's always seemed a bit odd that to game together on FFXI we have to be in seperate houses.

However, this weekend Dema managed to combine laptop and desktop computers through the power of wireless internet so we could finally try out the joys of dual-boxing. And what joys they were.

We both hopped online this Saturday. Odrade, leader of the Ansible LS asked if I wanted to do a ZM4 run, and being always up for an {adventure} I agreed. Together with Charless of Ansible and Dema, we set off to the Temple of Unpronouncable and delved into its Tonberry filled depths.

Our progress was hindered by the fact that both me and Dema were using wireless keyboards which clearly didn't like each other. Occasionally our key presses would move the opposite player, and in moments of great stress the key presses didn't seem to move anything at all. Some furniture was rearranged and some stuff was moved around, and the problem was more or less solved, but not before a lot of curse words were uttered.

We made it to the Den of Rancor and Oddy set off to light the torches, but somehow managed to aggro literally every Tonberry in the world. Oh, and some Dire Bats too. The four brave heroes struggled against the overwhelming odds for about 30 seconds and then died. *bloooooooozm* (that was the sound of Dema's WHM delevelling to 62 ; ;). No reraise meant HP warping was the only option.

Never ones to be defeated by death, we reassembled and headed back in there with a determination to do some damaging to the little green bastards who had just killed us. This time we cleared out the Tonberries around the torches (although there was a scary moment when Charless got Throat Stabbed and dropped to about 74 HP, prompting him to cry "Moommy!"). Nevertheless, victory was ours. Even if Dema did keep having to shout at me to stop reading FHM's 100 Sexiest Women list and concentrate on avoiding aggro.

The usefulness of dual-boxing became quite apparent in this bit as Dema could yell "He's casting Flood!" and I could quickly sleep the linking mob, whereas I simply wouldn't have noticed otherwise. I could also shout useful things like "We're all going to die!".

We rolled into the BCNM and although it wasn't exactly a walk over, we won pretty comfortably (well, we were all in orange HP and me and Dema were totally out of MP, but hey!). The main problem was the stupid elemental that hangs around with one of the Tonberries which is apparently immune to sleep. It kept zipping around hitting people at most inappropriate moments.

Still, a win's a win and it was a lot of fun too, especially with the dual box aspect. It certainly adds an extra dose of fun to FFXI and I'm interested to see how it works with XPing together.

Finally, big thanks to Oddy and Chuck from Ansible for making the whole ZM4 thing possible. Ta muchly!