Final Fantasy XI Playdiary
Entry 10 - Notable events of the "missing weeks" 1
What with Christmas and the New Year, I mainly played in short bursts in my free time so my journal-making was swept to one side. Thanks to a computer crash and the subsequent reformat I was delayed further, and had soon amassed 99 unused pictures in my screenshot collection from this period. Oops. Since my usual journal writing would take hours to get through all of this, I have decided to pick the most notable images from the last two weeks and write about them to bring this journal up to date. I have split them over more than one page for the sake of loading times, so here goes part one!
At this point I was a level fourteen monk and in Buburimu, which as someone pointed out to me upon reading my journal is in fact a raised seabed rather than a frozen beach. That'll teach me to have my television brightness up so high. Looking for a party to continue my power levelling I came across this person, "Doorknob". For some reason I found the name hilarious and rolled around laughing everytime my status window said "Doorknob casts Protea" and so on. I think I need to get out more.
Eventually I stopped dillydallying and found myself a party to join in Buburimu. We headed to the outpost and sent Luser out to bring some suitable monsters in to our camp. Poor Luser died quite a few times on our hunt as he was very fragile and the one most monsters seemed to pick on aside from the mages. He was also rather pleasant to look at - I hope he didn't notice me staring. Our healer kept disconnecting and eventually left apologetically so our group found a replacement who turned out to be from the same linkshell as I - Shay. He didn't have much more luck than Luser when it came to being mauled by the monsters but he was very noble about it and kept everyone else safe.
After a run to Mhaura and some hard work, I levelled and gained a new ability which increases my evasion for a short while (but can only be used every five minutes, so has to be timed). It looks pretty nifty.
Eventually our group broke up and I headed back to Windurst to sell the things I had collected and generally waste time. On the way I saw Pago and Sansan, members of the same linkshell of me and coincidentally both cute tarutaru twins. Pictures were taken before Sansan had to run off with his party.
Back in Windurst I had grown tired of collecting so many crystals - even the gate guard had asked me to stop giving them to him. I wondered if I was able to take up a crafting skill at my level and bought some corn on auction to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised when I found I could cook the corn with a fire crystal and from that moment on, no food was safe from Xylia and her crystals. I was even more pleased when I found the roast corn I had made could raise my hitpoints for a long while after I ate it. I have a feeling my levelling will suffer now I've discovered how fun crafting can be.
Wandering back out to hunt for more crystals, I mean experience, I ran into a dark knight with some really nice high level armour on. He ran off before I could take a closeup.
It was getting difficult to find a party at this time of day so I chattered on the linkshell chat boredly. Suddenly Oosh kindly offered to help all the people who needed to do their support job quest and my ears pricked up - I had been wondering how it would be possible to get the final item on my own for a while and I'd have to do the quest in a few days. First he went to help the huge group of people who needed the help in Selbina (the port I had died trying to reach in a previous adventure). I waited in rainy Mhaura as that's where I was doing my quest until the other group was done.
My heart sank when Oosh said he would have to go for a while. He told me he'd help me out later though, so I bumbled around Mhaura on my own wondering what to do until I met Carnage, who also wanted to do the quest. It was Christmas Eve and he fell asleep waiting. At that moment, Rokugo piped up on the linkshell that she'd help the Mhaura people with their quest items since Oosh left. Wow! She arrived on the boat before long and headed out with me since Carnage logged off after some prodding to wake him. I felt quite bad getting Rokugo to come all this way for what turned out to be only me.
Rokugo and I wandered in the darkness back to the beach I had hunted on before in search of the Bogy enemies we needed to kill. Eventually and after having my life saved a dozen times by my companion we found some, and I bravely hid behind a tree whilst Rokugo killed it for me. The first Bogy we encountered dropped the rare item I needed, so we only had to kill one. I felt even worse for wasting Rokugo's time but she was very kind about it. Now I just needed to get to level eighteen and I would be able to get a support job!
Back in Windurst yet again, it was Christmas morning in Japan. A mob of people ran past me as I headed to the auction house, yelling excitedly. I caught the words "Christmas Event!" in the chaos and, having nothing better to do, followed them to the Heavens Tower in Windurst Walls. I had never seen so many people before in one place in my life! Whilst I was interrogating various NPCs to try to find out why people were talking about a Christmas event, Quinn on the linkshell said there would be a party formed to do Windurst missions four and six. Despite being quite weak I wanted to join in, so I left the milling crowd and ran to meet the others.
Everyone met up at the gate to Windurst Woods. I had never seen any of these linkshell members before and was happy that they were letting me tag along. This was Eiken, he kept asking me if I was alright. I thought the mask he wore looked much better than my old headgear and stared at it.
This was Quinn who had arranged the expedition for us all. He played bard songs to keep us strong and made sure I was defended from the stronger monsters we would meet.
I ate some roast corn in preparation - I had a feeling the extra few hitpoints might help. For some reason my roast corn gives a swirly light show. I'm not complaining. Sleepy was a very friendly elvaan who made me feel welcome. I felt small and weak next to him - his sword is bigger than I am!
The final members at this point were Hakuzero and Tristesse. Tristesse was a very pretty mithra who ran ahead of us and Hakuzero was a tarutaru black mage whose help was invaluable. For the first part of the mission we all had to run to Shakrahmi maze and investigate some fossil rocks. The journey was quite lengthy but without incident. Once we had all completed this stage, Hakuzero cast Escape and warped us all back to Tahrongi canyon. It saved a lot of time and looked magnificent. It also made me want to try out the black mage job sometime. For the rest of this story and more adventures, please check out the next entry in my journal...
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Date entered: 5th January 2003