Nooooooooooo!

With the World Cup over young Saikyo has returned to Vanadiel. First order of business - see what fish is required for Fish Ranking. It's a big Titanictus - sounds good for me. It can only be caught on boat trips (which are very hard to bot) and is a legendary so a Lu Shang is pretty much mandatory. Definately worth a shot.

So I head off to San d'Oria to get me some Meatballs for bait. AH is out of them, so I synth some of my own (complete with two synth breaks.../sigh) and head off to the ferry. Happily fishing up Silver Sharks and a few Titanictus (including a big 966 pz one). On the return journey to Selbina, hooked a big bite and reeled it. And was greeted by:

Your rod broke.
Whatever caught the line was too big to fish with this rod.

I nearly choked to death in shock and horror. Of course there's a chance you can bust a Lu against a Ryugu on the ferry, but I'd rather forgotten the risk, having caught several Ryugus in the past without so much as a line break. I went back to Selbina in a kind of dismayed shock, handed in my Silver Sharks and smaller Titanictus to Zaldon (who, unsurprisingly gave me nothing but a sticky handshake and a salty smile for my trouble) To add insult to injury the big Titanictus I registered for Fish Ranking came back with {Ranking:X}. Total bust!

The rod can be fixed by an NPC in Rabao if you trade 2 light crystals and an Ancient Lumber. Sandy AH only had stacks of the Ancient Lumber (for 230k no less o.O) so I decided to wait to see if a single becomes available. Singles go for 20k each, so potentially I could buy a stack and make my money back from selling the 11 spares, but thats time consuming and annoying.

So, not the most triumphant return to FFXI! On the plus side, I've learnt a hard lesson and I get to have a cool title when the quest is complete. Ahhh well.