Final Fantasy XI Playdiary
Entry 7 - New friends, new enemies
More work and other duties the past few days have kept my FFXI playtime at a minimum, so today's update is a small one with the highlights of the last few days.
Last time I would see the Auction House for a while. My wealth will suffer from my renewed dedication to gaining experience but hopefully it will recover later. An alarming occurence at first is seeing random people suddenly generating bright bursts of elemental light in town. It is caused when they are trying to mix crystals with other items to create new ones and is very nice eye candy. I just missed getting a nice big shot of this purple one by a few seconds (you can see me dashing over as fast as I can).
Frustrated with my poor dedication lately and subsequent lack of progress, I headed back out to Taronghi Canyon to hunt innocent saplings like I'd never hunted before. Here I am taking a rest under a waterfall in the stream in East Sarutabaruta. It is a long run from Windurst to the canyon and I'm getting tired of doing it so much. Perhaps today I'll find a solution?
Soloing in the dangerous plains beyond the canyon (where I often encounter the frightening Air Elemental) I encountered a little tarutaru black mage girl called Hui. She spoke a little English and a little Japanese and hailed from Taiwan, so we managed to communicate stiltedly with liberal use of smilies. She turned out to be incredibly ambitious when selecting targets to fight as I soon discovered when we teamed up for a while. Due to her low HP and lack of a healer she would end almost every fight dead, but didn't seem at all discouraged. I wondered how she was possibly gaining any experience with all these deaths but she did seem to be having fun.
After barely surviving one such battle we met a young thief by the name of Zasyu. He spoke no English at all, only Japanese, but Hui kept insisting he join us so we could hunt bigger things and I managed to somehow teach him how to use the party invite system whilst barely understanding myself. As a thief he was quite fragile but had some nice speed so we headed off to test our blades in combat once again. I'm not sure what Peeman was doing in the picture, he wanted to party but ran away before we could ask him to join.
Wahh, Zasyu has a cool cap like my old one, I wanna be a thief too! But maybe that outfit wouldn't look so good on a female ^^;.
Hui died a million more times that day without losing her smile once, but eventually Zasyu had to go get some sleep. He was very shy but said goodbye in English and later sent me a message on Playonline asking to be friends :) I went to cook some dinner too after wishing Hui well. Maybe I will meet up with them again one day? The strange sillhouette is Mea Crag. I have never been there up close as there are too many hostile enemies for me.
Hui showed me a new area to the east where I could set my homepoint. Now if I died, I would return there rather than go all the way back to Windurst. Now I was forced to stay here until I was stronger because it was a long run home! Once I was able to play again I headed out in a new direction, further north towards the ominously named Shakrami Maze. I passed by through some kind of terrible graveyard for giant creatures and had to walk over many bones to progress. It was creepy and full of circling birds waiting for some easy meat.
Oo, I'm alone and in a new area I have no map for. What should I do? Showing my innate inability to learn from past mistakes, I headed into the dark cave I saw in a corner. I had a feeling I wouldn't make it out alive.
Unusually, luck was on my side and after stumbling around in the dark on my own for a few minutes a tarutaru whispered me to invite me to join their party. I accepted and found myself part of a nervous five person group who spoke absolutely no English and were hunting for experience in this particular cavern. I think they thought I was a little simple with my awkward speech and shy manner but they took good care of me anyway and we fought waves of "totetote" (really really strong) rated enemies for excellent experience.
When our TP guages were full we unleashed our weapon skill techniques. This was the first "professional" group I had been in so far and they were all very organised, so once I missed the first cue in a combo I could tell they were a little frustrated by my newbieness. The second time onwards, I got it right to a chorus of "Uwaa! Kakkoi!" ^_^;. When you link a bunch of weapon skills together in a chain it shows some extra animations and the monster really takes some punishment.
This guy in the foreground was Nesta, the highest level fighter we had. He was a monk like me only higher level and with a support job to boot (warrior), so I looked up to him to learn how to work in a group properly. He would get frustrated quickly but had a funny sense of humour and was very brave. Someday I hope I will be cool like that :)
Sadly, as usual when living dangerously someone eventually got hurt. Manel was one of our two healers and had chronically low HP when a strong monster unleashed a room-wide earthquake attack. The fighters (including me) hardly survived right next to the beast and it was only some quick thinking by the other healer (Express) that saved the rest of the group. Manel apologised sadly for dying and the group decided it was a good time to go to bed, so I was lost again. I hate timezones!
Back out in the graveyard I got annoyed by the greedy birds flapping about and killed one. Feeling mighty, I smacked another one, only to have the rest swarm at me and peck me to death. I suppose I brought it upon myself. I did end the hunt with more experience than I started with so it wasn't a total failure. When I get some more time I will try to come back to the maze and get another group, I can almost taste level fourteen...
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Date entered: 19th December 2002