So it seems that all the cool kids keep accounts of their time in Vana’diel using LJ so why not me? I may not be cool nor be uber yet, but I’m sure the friends that I’ve made would enjoy reading my blabberings. Well, maybe not but let’s try this out.
Yesterday after getting back from an interview for a game testing position (ugh … I know) I hop on XI to do some ram hunting before the full moon and my planned date of desynthing leather belts. From what I could tell there was only one other ram-hunter in the Highlands named Istondil so things looked pretty good for getting rams. However he was THF45/RNG22 so he did have a distinct advantage over my gimped THF41/RNG05.
Things go well and I end up shy 4 skins of 2 full stacks when I noticed that Rampaging Ram popped. I flee over and notice Istondil was already in the process of beating him down but rather than being angry (like I can sometimes be) I cheer him on as the battle proved to be a rather nasty one. That’s when him and I started talking through /tells and I discovered that he was a cool-guy and we started letting each other know when we saw a pop and that we had claimed it.
I finally filled out my 2nd stack of leather with perfect timing since I barely had enough time to get over to San d’Oria for a Full Moon Watersday. I hopped on a chocobo and felt giddy with excitement over the possibilities of mass profit I could make from a full moon watersday desynth marathon. I get to San d’Oria and get set up (I had 8 lightning clusters waiting and 50k to invest). So I proceed to fill up with 14 belts and run over to the guild for advanced support (just-in-case).
Make no mistake about it, the full moon is probably not a good day to desynth on. Previous to this I was at a 50% failure rate with more than enough HQ+1/2s to turn a tasty profit. On the full moon I was up to a 76% failure with no HQ+1/2s. 16 failures to 5 successes.
Disappointed I decide to try leveling up my archery for degimpifying my ranger sub and hunt some more rams at the same time. I head out to La Theine and promptly find 2 Air Elementals which I proceeded to trash however when it came to rams, I had stiff competition. No less than 4 ram-campers all with /RNG and all being at the right place at the right time.
So I decided to head back out to the Highlands since I still needed the Rampaging Horn for the Purple Belt quest. I try for 2 rams and notice that at the first there’s 3 campers, and the second 6 different, yes I said *six*, campers. Ram hunting is not profitable if you have that much competition so pissed off I logged for a break.
I came back after some dinner and browsing through forums and decided that I’d *gasp* level my thief in a vain attempt at catching up to my friends Joshamp/WHM52, Skeptic/PLD52, Yunie/WHM50 and Paran/BLM47(?). I put my seek up along with a detailed search comment and realizing that getting an invite could take awhile. So I turned on my PSOne w/screen and decided to start a new game of FFVII.
I get about 30 minutes into it and as I’m trying to escape the reactor I get an invite from a /anon Fortyseven along with a /tell including a -gana symbol and then a second /tell with PT?. So obviously he’s japanese but I figured if he’s inviting me, he’s willing to give it a shot (or maybe it was my +11 STR +20 DEX +18 AGI that got his attention ^^).
I accept the invite and find myself filling the 6th slot (cool!). That’s also when I noticed a stream of /p’s with pure japanese text. I was seemingly the only english speaking person in the party. (|I don’t speak any Japanese|) and the conversation in Japanese continues.
“Oh well” I figure, as long as my melee partners understand my romanji “Fuidama partner?” I’ll be okay and be productive to the team. I took a look at the party make-up and there was Ashie the NIN/WAR tank and the only other english speaking person (thank god), 2 BLMs, a WHM, and Fortyseven who was still /anon at that point. Obviously with 2 BLMs I figured we’d be doing Distortion and MBing with Blizzard II. That sounded mighty tasty since my ending Distortion with fuidama Viper Bite makes the BLMs look good with their 250+ MBs.
Even better was the fact that Fortyseven wanted to take us to Gu$tav where I could proceed to steal mythril coins from the gobs. So our WHMs tele-hollas us all except Forty whom for whatever reason headed off to his MH. Along the way to the tunnel I try to figure out who is going to WS before me with ” ??? > (|Viper Bite|) ” to which I get no response. This was mainly me fishing for what job Forty was and I was hoping that he’d be a ranger.
Forty finally arrives sporting a scythe of all things and immediately my gut sunk. Thieves do not chain well with DRKs at all until much later in the game and this then meant that Ashie and I would be trying to coordinate renkei with her Blade:Rin. We still had tons of firepower with the 2 BLMs and I knew that as long as we could get a Distortion off, we’d be fine.
Once inside and prepped I try to figure out exactly what Forty wanted me to pull since Hawkers start trailing off at 42 and if he wanted me to look exclusively for goblin$. However he finally responds with “fly” to which I was impressed that he didn’t want me to run to McDonalds and get him some fries (ok bad bad joke … but I have a quirky sense of humor).
Our first pull left a lot to be desired as Ashie immediately provoked the Hawker disabling my being able to SATA onto her. I then realize that Forty was now sporting a Barbaroi Axe and he’s actually BST. (>. Smash Axe -(Fragmentation)> Shadowstitch.
2 things … fuidama shadowstitch sucks in comparison to fuidama viper and ending the renkei with Fragmentation meant that the best MB we could hope for would be Thunder I and Aero II both of which won’t be that great against hawkers.
I decide to humor him and the first time we’re ready to pull this off he misses the fact that Ashie did her WS. After Forty finally pulled his WS out I followed up with shadowstitch as I wasn’t preparred to fuidama at the time. I then suggested going back to Blade:Rin > Viper Bite and Forty agreed. Things started to get smooth again after that and we even survived a couple of links.
Then there was the pull of a Reaper where half-way into our battle another Reaper walks up to us. Nothing to panic over, but for whatever reason our BLMs couldn’t get the sleeps to stick for long and we lost our WHM just before the first Reaper falls.
We all ran up and tried to re-establish hate control on the 2nd reaper and the battle started to look really really grim. However Ashie and I were ready to distortion again and I stepped behind her as she landed her Blade:Rin which to my dismay turned the gob in her direction. I have no clue how I developed mad-skills so fast but I rotated as I applied sneak which got me to the side of the goblin and then applied trick which got me behind the gob and behind Forty. My timing couldn’t have been more perfect as after I hit trick I pulled up my WS menu and hit Viper Bite. As soon as I got behind Forty my fuidama Viper went off for 400+ damage and the following MBs dropped the gob.
This downright impressed Forty that I had been able to turn an impossible fuidama suitation into our saving moment and saved all of us (well cept for the WHM) from a dirt-nap. As the dust settled a long conversation in Japanese played out to which I can only conclude that the WHM was pissed that he had died and the only chance of him getting a raise was Forty D2′ng back to Jeuno and grabbing his WHM60.
No less than immediately following Forty being D2′d the WHM releases and then disbands. So prissy asshole WHMs are cross-culture and the party more or less breaks up as we all get D2′d back. I stuck around along with Ashie and one of the BLMs Madrigal as Forty asked whether or not we’d want to continue on. At that point I was about 1400 away from 42 so I figured “Why not?”
Forty filled the party back up with Eet(WHM) and Gradiel(RNG) and we proceeded off to hunt Soldiers and the occassional Hornfly in CN. Before I get into how smoothly the party went let me proclaim my love for well-equipped rangers. Gradiel not only had great gear but she synthed acid and holy bolts in the downtime between our chain breaks. Without a RDM to dispel the acid bolts came in really handy.
Anyways, our newly formed party flowed much more smoothly and we only had one death (our puller Gradiel) due to an Exoray blocking the tunnel to the Secret Room. We even survived a hornfly link where there we no less than 5 points in the battle that I thought we were all done-for. We rounded the night out around 3am PST and I had gotten 800xp into 43.
For all of the semi-trash talking I’ve done about Forty he honestly wasn’t a horrible player. Attribute his lack of renkei experience to him being a BST and a WHM, but he saved us once from an idiot bringing an Exoray into the tunnel and then aggroing our BLM before she could apply sneak. That in my opinion made him the hero of the night.
After the party broke I decided I wanted to try out my new toy (Cyclone) in Palborough. I headed for Zi’Ghi’s room and tossed my ‘rang through the door at the turtles in the next room. I then trained the turtles in the room over to the room next to the elevator to await my oncoming train. I <3 cyclone <3.
I then ran back to Zi'Ghi's room and saw that a chest had popped nearby. Unfortunately I hadn't the foresight of bringing a key with me (or my tools) so I decided to try taking the boat back to Bastok, grabbing my key and then grab a chocobo back out to Palborough.
Once I got back the chest had been opened so I decided to be devilishly greedy with cyclone and trained every turtle between Zi'Ghi's room and the Quadav Egg room. Should this ever pop into your head to attempt … make sure you end up in a room with PLENTY of room for the turtles to circle you. I got mobbed in the tunnel and sat there helplessly with 300tp because I couldn't see my target to hit with cyclone.
So I ended the night upset over having to release and only being able to steal 3 coins of the gobs in Gustav. However at least I didn't delevel and can make the push to 45 tonight … hopefully. 
