Final Fantasy XI Playdiary

Entry 16 - Day to day life in Vana'diel

With a busy time in the 'real' world, including a trip to Japan, I have had little time to be working on playdiary updates. I experienced many new things in game during the past month, including a pirate attack on the ferry one day that I was unable to record with screenshots (my folder was full...typical). I have over one hundred pictures to update with so here are the highlights of what Xylia has been up to, split over two entries.


After the sobering experience I wrote about previously, I renewed my determination to level up as white mage, and eventually reached level 25. This was a milestone for me as the driving force behind my decision to switch to this job was to be able to help people and at level twenty five I could learn one of the most useful spells for this purpose - Raise. As I headed to Selbina by chocobo to purchase the spell scroll I joked to the linkshell that it was alright to die now - and almost as soon as I'd paid for the spell I heard someone asking to be revived. The person was Stryder and I charged over to where he was to test my new ability. It felt great :)


Later the same day I met up with Hopkins to try to get some revenge on the dragon for the wipeout the time before. Farplaner heard us talking about our plan on the linkshell and offered his help yet again. So lucky! We headed back through Ghelsba outpost and I stood there pathetically throwing healing spells around whilst Hopkins and Farplaner tore through the enemies.

Incidentally, we were particularly fortunate in completing this at this time since at the next 'version up' patch, Square modified the mission so no high levelled players could help this way.


I decided to switch to black mage for a while to keep it levelled enough to be useful as a support job for my white mage. I chose La Theine plateau as my levelling area since I get extra conquest points for killing in areas controlled by a nation other than my home country, and a lot of people pass through to form parties. Another reason was that later in the day I had arranged to join up with some others from NeoGundan linkshell to try to complete a series of quests in Sand'oria, so I wanted to be within easy running distance of there. At this level (around eleven if I recall correctly), black mages are very powerful but terribly fragile. I was pleased when I started getting invited into parties.


It wasn't long before we started to gather for the quest. It was a great opportunity to meet a lot of people in person whom I'd only heard about before, as well as catch up with some familiar faces. The quest was a very simple one - we were to form a party of six people who came from the same nation as we did. Subsequently we had to form parties by race and then by job too. A very easy quest but difficult to arrange without prior planning for those not from Sand'oria.


Here we are inside the watchtower with the NPC who was checking the parties. Unfortunately for me, only one other person turned up from Windurst so I was unable to complete the task at the time. I stayed around hopefully and hoped I could be useful to others working on the latter parts of the quest. A few days later I managed to team up with some Japanese players and passed the first part with them - hopefully one day I will find another five mithra in town who are free to help with the rest. I'm still pleased that I attended the NeoGundan gathering to see so many of the people who have been kind to me in the past.


The next day I went back to hunting as a black mage, and was invited to my first party in Valkurm at the tender level of twelve. The reason I include this picture is to note that the mithra on the right has my favourite character model, which I would have picked to start with had I known how nice it looks in game (it looks a little frightening in the character selection screen).


A young mithra girl (NPC), included as proof that there are children NPCs...and because she is adorable. She was involved in another quest I was working on. The reason I am suddenly doing so many quests is because I required a total of 135 completions to unlock a set of quests for teleport magic. That's a lot of work :)

Speaking of quests, I had reached level seventeen as black mage by now and finished the quest to obtain a new spell previously seen in my last journal - Dezone. This warps me back to my homepoint and can save hours of walking. It is my favourite spell to date and you can see the warp effect in the second image.


With Dezone, I felt prepared to return to workin on my white mage job. Back in Jeuno I met up with Tekerin and made a party to hunt in Batallia downs. We would wait in small tunnels under the hills whilst a designated party member would 'fish' for a suitable monster to kill, and lure it back to the rest of us. This way we avoided enemies teaming up to slaughter us all. Unfortunately, one monster cast the spell Bind on our 'fisher', and whilst he was unable to move he was killed before we could run to him. It is very saddening to have to raise a dead party member...


For a single hunt I was allowed to join another linkshell called 'inertiatic' to aid communication. In the picture you can see my usual blue pearl beside my name became a dull red. The party had been formed with four foreigners and two Japanese players, so all the foreigners spoke in English over the linkshell channel so as not to overwhelm the others. The next day I broke my linkpearl to inertiatic as asked as it is officially a closed shell for a group of friends only. It was nice to be trusted and chat to them for that short time though.


During a quiet time of day I boldly decided to attempt to complete mission seven on my own. I am quite shy by nature and it embarrassing to always have help when I do things without being able to help others back, so I jumped onto a chocobo and galloped to the Yagudo fortress in Oztroja. It was my first time there and as a lone white mage I would be ripped to pieces if I was found by the monsters inside. I crept around cautiously using Sneak and Invisible magic. The mission involved exploring until I fell through a trapdoor and met up with a tarutaru. It was satisfying to be able to complete it by myself although my heart was pounding every step of the way. Finishing this mission allowed me to accept the next one. The representative who gave me the next mission advised travelling in a party for it, so I would have to wait a while before progressing with that.


Exploring the marshes in a quiet moment, I came across some new (to me) monsters. A Goobue and a Marlboro. I wasn't brave enough to get off my chocobo to test their strength...


Another thing I found in my wandering - a treasure chest! I have only opened one of these once before as each requires a specific key. The items inside are usually excellent so I gazed at this one longingly before moving on.


And whilst I'm showing some random things, here is a small tunnel behind the North Gustaberg waterfall. It amazes me that such a beautiful place is so well hidden. I would probably never have known it was here had I not been specifically searching for it as part of a complicated quest and it is tricky to get to. I wonder how many other places there are in familiar areas that I have yet to discover?

For the sake of bandwidth I shall continue my random musings in the next page. See you there!



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Date entered: 9th March 2003