Final Fantasy XI Playdiary
Entry 17 - Airship?
Continuing from the last diary entry, here are some strange and varied pictures I have taken in the past month or so. As the title of this entry may hint in a rather unsubtle way, there may be some interesting developments.
A line of tarutaru obviously planning something twisted, and a member of a hunting party trying to ride a caterpillar. Some people are crazy...
Getting doubleteamed by powerful enemies in Rolanberry fields. The music in this area is really relaxing so I daren't hunt here when I'm at all sleepy.
My usual hunting grounds would change every couple of levels. As soon as the appropriately named Evil Weapons in Batallia, Rolanberry and Sauromugue stopped giving good experience my groups moved farther afield to a place named Garliage Citadel. This turned out to be one of my favourite places in the whole game so far due to the chilling atmosphere. Fighting ominously named "Fallen Evacuee" skeletons in such a cramped and unpredictable area made for some tense and exciting hunts.
For one of my teleport spell quests I had to come here and search for something deep inside. I went alone because I didn't want to burden anyone. It was terrifying at my level, everything inside would attack me if they could hear or see me and once I barely managed to dezone with my life when a beetle spotted me. I wish I had taken pictures of that expedition but I was far too afraid! On the second attempt I managed to find what I was looking for and obtained the spell, saving myself the 50,000 gil it would have cost to buy on auction.
Wasn't expecting to see High Wind in FFXI...
Once again on the subject of quests, I had hit level thirty and wanted to unlock the five advanced jobs - paladin, dark knight, bard, ranger and beast tamer. The latter was the first one I obtained since it involved the least amount of travelling. I had to head across Qufim island at night to find some flowers and a wayward chocobo. The flowers were guarded by a Kraken. Being the coward that I am I snuck past without fighting it and finished the quest in record time ^^;. The beast tamer job doesn't really appeal to me but I was pleased to be able to give it a try.
The first thing I did was raise the job to level five, which was very easy after levelling so many jobs up in the past. In fact, it was so easy that I hadn't had to tame anything to help as yet, so I cruelly charmed a weak rabbit and pitted him against another to see how things went. My bunny won, barely, and then I killed him too. Muahaha.
I spoke about mission nine before - the mission I would need to be in a party to complete. I joined up with some fellow importers who also needed to do it and hung around in Jeuno until the planned meeting time. Whilst I was there I saw someone I had missed a great deal, Rokugo (and her twin NPC). She had helped me so many times in the past and I am constantly trying to figure out how to repay her for her time without her cleverly turning it against me ^^;. She helped me yet again today by inviting me into a new linkshell called RedLotus. I was delighted, the NeoGundan shell is going to be broken up on the 15th when Jonnyram leaves the game and I was wondering how to stay in touch with so many people. RedLotus reminds me in many ways of how NeoGundan was when I first joined with a friendly atmosphere. Once again, I seem to have a disproportionate amount of luck. The RedLotus pearl is a lovely hot pink colour, very easy to spot other members from a distance.
Later on the mission started. About half of those who had planned to come actually showed up but we had plenty of help in the form of Skye, Densetsu and Palinmage, all of whom were high levels who felt like giving up a few hours of their time to help strangers progress. Spanky came to help too despite it being very early morning his time (incidentally the same timezone as me). Skye and Densetsu competed to show off all of their attacks and gave us quite a humbling display of power.
We had to make our way all the way up Delkfutt's Tower in Qufim - ten floors full of monsters. It took quite a while but eventually we reached the top. Here we had to kill a particular giant named Porphyrion to obtain the key to the tower. Annoyingly there was a Thunder Elemental right beside the giant so I wasn't allowed to cast any magic (it would attract the elemental and lead to my certain death) so I couldn't do much to help with the killing.
We all warped back to Jeuno once we'd finished what needed to be done in the tower, and those who were working on the mission were promoted to rank four. Fantastic :)
Encouraged by success, I started to work on mission ten alone. This is a long and difficult mission, but the reward is rank five and a pass to use the airship. It had been four months now since I first saw an airship land in Windurst. As part of the mission preparation I met up with Aldo for the first time. He is a character from the game introduction so this was quite interesting. I also met the lord of Jeuno. A very sinister fellow...
At this point I must apologise for the lack of pictures. My screenshot folder on the PS2 was full and I was playing, not expecting anything to happen worth recording. I could not have been more wrong. What happened is that I headed to the orcish stronghold to work on the first challenge of the mission alone. I completed it and excitedly said so on the linkshell. We started to discuss the mission and I was planning to do the rest with someone else when to my amazement Bebetaro said he'd help us all finish it right then. Five of us assembled in Jeuno and for the next couple of hours we ran through Oztroja, Davoi and Beadeaux, working hard and chatting. I couldn't believe how smoothly everything went with the small party and experienced help. Still dazed, we warped back to the Jeuno lord and earned rank five status and our airship passes. I was tempted to ride the airship immediately, however I chose to wait until I had cleared my screenshots to allow me to take some pictures of the first trip!
I decided to fly to Sand'oria for the purpose of levelling up my other jobs in the surrounding woodland. The airship costs 200 gil per journey to ride on. A bargain, considering that a chocobo ride would cost between 100 and 600 gil for the same route whilst taking a lot longer. It was early morning in Vana'diel when the vessel I would be taking reached the port. Eagerly I scrambled to the entrance.
I went crazy and took as many pictures as I could on the three minute flight. The airship is much larger and more luxurious than my usual boat. Sometimes you can see birds flying below, as well as the constantly changing terrain. I can tell I am going to have a lot of fun with this new mode of transportation in future. I have been fortunate to have found kind people to help me every step of the way so far in my travels. The next step will be to become strong enough to repay them by assisting others with the same things when the time comes. I hope that I will update this playdiary more frequently in future to allow for more coherent entries ^^;.
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Date entered: 10th March 2003