Final Fantasy XI Playdiary
Entry 9 - Hunting hunting hunting - revisited
I was really in a rut the last few days - hardly any time to play and when I did, hardly any time to find a party. I ended up with less experience than I started until today, Saturday, when things finally started looking up. Here's the story, starting off with an end to the disastrous adventure I began the day before in Selbina.
My ship sailed off back to Mhaura, leaving me high and dr...er, dead. Surely someone would eventually come by and be able to help me so I didn't have to waste my previous hours of gameplay?
This picture came out rather surreally somehow. Anyway, a chap walked by and started calmly fishing close by. Either he is blind or afraid to talk to dead people. He was doing rather well with his fishing from the look of things and with nothing better to do, I watched him. With that scythe on his back he might be related to the grim reaper.
A new ship. Great! Maybe some people will disembark and save me. Alas, it wasn't to be.
As night fell a few people passed by, some stopped to stare perplexedly at the dead body in this area which obviously had no monsters in it. Where are all the white mages when you need them?
Maikie was really sweet and chattered to me to check I was alright as he waited for his ship. Having never had the opportunity to explain how I died in broken Japanese before I'm sure I was rather amusing to him. He checked up on me for quite a while and looked for a white mage until he had to go. What an angel.
Unfortunately I ended up forced back all the way to Buburimu as no white mages were around. I was rather frustrated and went to bed. The next morning I woke up and VOWED to achieve something today no matter how trivial. I was wandering around the canyon punching tiny monsters annoyedly when I bumped into Hui, the little black mage I wrote about before. She was level sixteen now so I guessed she must have been working hard since I last saw her and she declared we would hunt together again! How could I refuse?
We gathered a few more people, or rather I did, as she delegated that duty to me whilst she ran around making smilies. I don't think she is confident about being able to get Japanese people to join her. I somehow cobbled a group together and we wandered around the Tahrongi area killing things until we came across an Earth Elemental. Eek! I'd never seen one before and soon found out Hui still had her deathwish from before, so we ran over to kill it. Just like the Air Elementals I had seen on windy days, physical attacks hardly scratched this one and we relied heavily on Hui to kill it with her magic whilst we took the blows. Very, very painful blows. Eventually it fell and we were all still alive. Woohoo!
Whilst we were resting another Earth Elemental popped up by another party. We rose and found them dead with the Elemental floating away. My group helped them find someone to raise them and told me to find us a new warrior to complete our party. Easier said than done - I eventually delegated to Cmas.
Waiting for the new warrior, Lear, to appear, I captured a picture of Rinia frolicking around. She was our white mage and main healer. She was also definitely the boss of our group despite me having the group leader status in the menu - not that I minded.
Rinia declared that we needed better experience so we headed to Buburimu. After a close shave with a hostile Zombie she decided we needed to hunt somewhere far from the other parties so we sprinted back to Mhaura. Neat! I could go back there without having to to run alone and risk death. We set our homepoints to Mhaura in case we died and then gathered just outside the gates to plan our attacks.
After a few Bull Dhalmels fell to us, a Goblin white mage killed all the fighters including me. Argh. The mages all ran off to safety somehow whilst we revived and came back. Cmas begged us to wait for a white mage to walk by and revive him so he'd lose less experience, but none came so he gave up and revived too. In the meantime Reze walked by and said hello (he is in the same linkshell as me). He was very kind and tried to give me 5000 gil to help out when he heard I had died, but I couldn't accept that from him! We talked whilst my group boringly debated which weapon skill combo would be most effective and Hui practised her black magic confusingly in the background. You can see part of Cmas' fallen corpse in the picture gruesomely.
One of the fallen Bull Dhalmels dropped an item needed for the Support Job quest. I was lucky and won it in the lottery (when more than one group member wants a specific dropped item, the game randomly assigns it to one so nobody can hog). Ooh, already one third of my Support Job quest done and only level thirteen! It started to rain heavily and Rinia said now was a safe time to hunt in a specific area, as it was too late in the morning for there to be "Bogy"s around. Off we ran to this new area for some more hunting.
Wow, a calm beach area so close to the rocky snowfield above. We descended onto the sand and ran down to the shore to attack the Snippers which gave excellent experience.
Our tactic was to sent Cmas out on his own to dodge enemies and pick something nice for us to attack, then he'd run back like the wind after aggravating it into following him so we could all attack it. It kept risk down for everyone but Cmas and worked well as we could take on the very strong creatures one at a time. Here we are all resting and chatting whilst Cmas did our dirty work :).
Eventually it got late (not to mention wet) and the Bogys came out. They were strange floating ghost things and apparently very frightening. We cautiously killed a few more Snippers then decided to come back tomorrow after some rest. We parted ways and agreed to meet up again if we could for more hunting in future. I had levelled to fourteen and made some new friends - all in all a successful day!
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Date entered: 21st December 2002