PLD34/WAR17

Wellll, that was interesting. o.O I have a few screenshots, but as usual I forgot to email them to myself.

After I first got on, I turned down 5 invites while I was helping a couple of friends with some things. I was kinda hoping that would mean good things for when I actually started lfp, but you know how FFXI goes... :P Around midnightish EST when I started looking, it was dead. DEAD.

But honestly, I didn't have my flag up that long... maybe 20 minutes while I was crafting my melon juice. I'm not really known for my patience, though, and I REALLY wanted a party, so I swallowed my fear of leading and got down to business.

My /tells to potential invitees go like this: ((Hello!))(Experience points))((Party))((Garlaige Citadel)) @3 ((Member)) PLD COR WHM 33-35 ((Do you need it?)) I still got ignored a few times, but not nearly as much as I used to before I started using that format.

After a million frantic questions to the only ls mate who has patience for me, and asking about 15 NA & JP players, I finally filled my party. We were 3 NA and 3 JP, which actually turned out really well. The one and only problem I had was that the jp whm was really bad about overcuring me, and I couldn't for the life of me think how to communicate my request. Somehow, ((Cure))((No thanks.)) inspires visions of angry ((White mage)) and lots of gory ((Paladin)) ((death)). o.O

The afore-mentioned ls mate came and stood watch over me. Too nice, that one. xD We didn't really need a pl, but it was nice to have the company and the security of knowing that a Cure IV was trained on me if I needed it (which I did, but only once! lol)

The more parties I lead, the less intimidating it gets, but... I'm not leading anything again for a while until I get used to the Crawler's Nest. I've not been there yet... hell, I don't even know where it is! lol This should be quite the interesting weekend. I plan on getting at least 36.

Arw & Arc, Exterminators Extraordinairres o.O

I logged on bored out of my mind with nothing to do. Ever have one of those days? :P But, I found out that when you're having a bad day, there's nothing quite as cheering as grabbing a friend and wreaking poetic vengeance on the Dunes.

My friend Arc and I set out to get my items for the Road to Aht Urghan quest, and in the process mowed down every goblin in our path (and about 30 that weren't in our path). ^_^ We also cleared out the Cave of Death a time or ten.

In the middle of our jolly little bloodbath, I glanced over and noticed a bogy that looked just a little too pleased with itself. Turns out it was hot on the heels of some poor guy running for his life towards Selbina. Even though I was at just over half hp and mp, I didn't think twice about tossing out a cure II and voking it off him. Brilliantly, I waited until it started smacking me around before I began to wonder what level these are killable at. o.O But Arc and I pounded on that thing til I was almost dead, then he voked it and we were finally able to finish it off. Wooo, that was fun! O.o

So, we got to save some people, and I got 3 of the 6 items I need for my quest. Yup, for having started out bored as hell with nothing to do, it turned out to be a good night. ^_^

The best compliment

I've spent the majority of my ffxi career as a tank, and nothing is better than seeing those six little words: "I can't get it off you!" When my hp is in the red and 2-3 vokers are doing everything in their power and the mob doesn't blink... that means I'm doing my job. ^^ Even as a war/mnk tank last night in Garlaige (*shudder*) with a drk stubbornly playing a hate war with me, I still saw that line many times and ended what seemed like every other battle one hit from death. lol

Pld is now 33, and I gotta be honest - the whole run from 29-33 is a blur. It was a long weekend. o.O Fun, though. I got the privilege of pt'ing with a fantastic drk, who did crazy damage but had enough sense to let me get a 2nd voke in first. ^^ She made my day when she complimented me later for being able to keep hate from her, which I guess was really unusual. Drks generate so much hate, and it was very refreshing to meet a drk who was actually a team player and understood the dynamics of hate management.

I am really glad I got that chance to tank again on my war/mnk last night, because it made me realize how much I love being a paladin. But, I won't be lvling it again for a little while. My puppetmaster friend just came back to the game, hopefully for good this time. ~.~ I need to make some money and level cooking anyway.

Speaking of cooking, I just discovered I can make jack-o-lanterns! ^^ I can't wait to see how much those sell for. o.O

Why do you play?

Someone posted this question on one of the forums I frequent, and it got me thinking. The general consensus was that everyone plays for either the story, or to get to the endgame stuff. But I don't play for either of those reasons.

I play for my friends. I level up my jobs so that I can be helpful some day. All I ever want to do in this game is help people, and spend time with my friends. I bet I'm not the only one.

LS Drama + mindnumbing exhaustion = bad day

It's a sad day when your own friends manage to reduce you to tears twice in one night. A sad day, and probably a pretty clear indicator that you're completely exhausted. o.O

I won't go into exactly what happened, but there were two separate major LS blowups yesterday, and through no fault of my own I was smack dab in the middle of both of them. The 2nd one upset me so badly I had to /shutdown and walk away. I reflected on everything for a bit, and came to the conclusion that I was so tired of the drama and bad feelings and I was ready to leave the game for a while. But it didn't feel right, and then I remembered that I am not the kind of girl who can just roll over and accept defeat. And if I let that one stupid ignorant character drive me away from my friends, my linkshell, even my game - that would totally be letting her win. So I cooled off, logged back on, and got everything cleared up in record time. Turns out that 99.5% of the problem was my sheer exhaustion. :P lol

After that little mess was cleared up, a couple of ls mates and I got into a pt and my pld hit 29! XD I can wear my eisen armor now. ^_^ *happy place*

The difference between newbies and noobs.

You know me, I don't mind dying. In fact, I rather enjoy sacrificing myself on a regular basis. But it's dying for the idiots that really gets me peeved.

I've caused a party wipeout before. I know what it's like to be new. Hell, I'm still new. However, I don't remember ever being as dumb as the rank 1 noob we pt'd with last night.

She's not the leader. But from the moment I arrived, she's throwing around ridiculous orders, desperately trying to sound like she knows what she's talking about. She didn't listen to anyone, had to be told what to do three or four times before she began to comprehend, and was just generally the classic example of a noob. Almost immediately after I got there, she pulled a gob that we couldn't handle and weren't even ready for. Of course we had to zone it, and damn my pld instincts, but I pulled it off her without even thinking. But after a few seconds, I realized the Smithy train (there were two of them now) had done an aboutface and was headed back to smackdown our whm who had been valiantly throwing out cures. Yeah, that whm wasn't dying on my watch. I voked them off him with 32 hp left >< and made it about 3 steps before I was facedown in the dirt. But the whm made it! So it was worth it. And luckily, my ls mate who'd been out there to join us anyway was able to raise me. ^^

Anyway, back to my point. I've caused a pt death or two. But I have never, and I repeat - NEVER - lol'd and said 'my bad!'. Oh my god, kid. Seriously. Just... wow. Unfortunately, "she" was most likely a 12yrold "he" on summer break. o.O

I did get one level. But the whole experience and the way the night ended just sorta left me with a bad feeling. I want to keep lvling pld, but it's so hard to get a pt during the week, with my schedule the way it is now. Guess it's time to try a new schedule, or better yet, take a break for a while.

FFXI videos, ftw!

This may be wrong, but I cannot stop laughing to save my life. LOL!

"You've been bad taru taru"

That helpless feeling

I watched my friend die tonight.

He was a 25bst, and I was a 33war. I was out there, ostensibly to save his butt in case he needed help. There's not much else a 33war is good for. And, everything was going smoothly for a while. Then, he decided to take on what must have been an IT battrap. After his third charmed pet was defeated and the battrap still had half health, I realized this wasn't going to end well.

I stood there next to him, and watched helplessly as his hp bar went lower and lower with each vicious hit from that ugly plant. I had the little bitch targeted, my hand hovering over my voke macro. Call for help, dammit! But he didn't. And then he died.

Ugh. That is the worst feeling in the world. I was so frustrated I ended up leaving as soon as he had a raise on the way. At least it was good motivation to hurry up and lvl pld and whm. Because kicking ass with my great axe is fun, but turns out it's not nearly as much fun as not feeling helpless. :/

Dunes >> {death}{you can have this}

I'm not going back to the Dunes. I'm not. You can't make me. As it stands now, I'm going to beg Z to pl my thf to 20, but if I have to, I will solo it. I'm not going back to the d00ns. ;;

This sucks the big monkey balls, because I really need to get thf to 20 so I can start lvling war again. On another note, I learned that I can lead my own pt's, and I'm not that bad at it. At first I thought, 'this isn't so bad, why do people hate being leader so much'? Then I realized that the job comes with a huge bullseye on the back of your head. You get blamed for EVERYthing. I left my last pt on Saturday and was done for the whole weekend because being leader burnt me out way faster that just being a member. However, I did some research on pt dynamics, level-appropriate campsites, and what NOT to do as a leader, and I really think I did ok. The worst one was my Dunes pt, and 2 of the little brats got a tad belligerant with me. My only response was: do you want lead? No? Didn't think so. Stuff it. >:(

Focusing

I leveled my thf a bit last night, and got halfway to 13. I'm going to wait and get a pt in the Dunes this weekend. That was some seriously fun leveling, even though it boring after a while. THF/MNK does some wicked damage, and compared to the other jobs I've been leveling lately (whm, blm, pld and thf using a dagger: *shudder*), this is just too much fun.

I haven't used ranged much at all, but since my primary job up to 37 will most likely be puller, I've started lvling archery. I got the Self Bow and Bone Arrows (from the same NPC) and was really proud that my archery got up to level 9. Then this morning I checked the skill limit database, and the archery cap for THF12 is ... 35. ><

After I took a break from the leveling, I finally got around to organizing the mess I'd made of my gear. One main and 3 mules - should make for some easy organization... you'd think. But I got so excited about leveling other jobs that I ended up with whm, thf, war & pld gear strewn all over the place. It's back to a semblance of normalcy now. And after this, I think I will keep that third mule until I can sell off some of the more worthless junk I've aquired with all my lowbie lvling.

Tonight, I'm going to get back to the business of lvling either pld or thf. I don't really want to lvl war any higher until I have the option of subbing thf for damage dealing. I plan on putting in my search comments that I can sub either /mnk for tanking or /thf for DD. Hopefully I'll get lucky and someone will let me tank. But the reason I want to wait to level war any more until I have /thf is because DD as a war/mnk is no fun at all. :(

The mess I recently made of my inventory is evidence enough that I need to try to focus on one job. But for me, it's two. :D So I'm putting my war, whm, blm and mnk away for a while, until I can get thf leveled up enough to 20 at least. And of course, lvling pld is going to be a big priority.

One other thing. As I've said before, the people are what keep me coming back to this game every day. And therefore, people can be what drives you from it. I miss some of my friends who haven't been on in a while, and at least one person is making my FFXI life more cluttered than it needs to be. Methinks the /invisible feature was put there for a reason. :P

I can't believe I'm saying this...

I've just now - JUST now - decided I'm going to level thf as my other war sub. o.O

Why? Because I just discovered I can take war/thf higher than 40, keep my great axe, do ungodly amounts of damge, and actually get invites.

{fun}{excitement}{do you need it?}

XD

My first JP pt

I keep forgetting to email myself the screenies! Grr.

Anyway, tonight I logged on and decided I was gonna get a pt. First I tried putting my flag up on war. Waited 10 minute or so, nothing. I'm not known for my patience, so I decided to grab my mnk gear from my mule and see if I could get a pt in the Dunes. Halfway into that, I decided I would save myself the grief, since this was in the middle of JP primetime (and I've NEVER been invited to a JP pt before), and just level whm some more. So I changed back into war, because I was too embarrassed to ride the airship in my gimped whm soloing gear (XD) and the moment I stepped out of my mh I got an invite.

Ye gods, what is this madness? An invite? Without my flag up? During JP primetime? On my WAR/MNK?!?!

I was pretty sure I must've fallen asleep, so assuming this was a dream, I was like Hell yeah! Let's do this thing. I put my war gear back on and trudged my ass out to Garbage "you know what". Hate that place. >:( But it was a dream, right? How bad could it get.

Well... turns out I was, in fact, awake. Not a dream at all - more like a waking nightmare. o.O I didn't get to tank... no, the taru paladin got that honor. And I couldn't stop missing. I must've missed at least 50-60% of my hits. And when you're swinging a great axe with over 500 delay... *ouch*. More than a little embarrassing, to say the least.

I've come to the conclusion that I dearly hope I get into more JP pts in the future. Even though they could've been laughing their asses off at me for all I know, it was a fantastic pt. Probably the most incredibly smooth pt I've ever been in. I got one level, and the only bad thing was that we broke when I was only 400 away from 34. 400! ;; Oh well. It was just so much fun to be playing warrior again, but I really hope that next time I get to tank. So far there's still nothing I love more than tanking with my great axe. :D

I'm supposed to be waiting for my friend to level pld with me... but that's really starting to hold me back. I need to figure something out. In the meantime, I'll keep leveling war. However, this weekend I really have to start leveling mnk again. I only have two more levels on war before my sub will become gimped. o.O Can't have that, now can we? :P

Then, I helped some a LS mate try to get his friends rank 3. That was fun, because he asked me to look up the mission and walk them through how to do it. The LS mate has helped me out a lot, and met me when I was a very newbish newbie, so it was nice to be able to show that I've matured somewhat as a player, and I'm not a helpless newbie anymore. :D

And, that's about it. Damn, I'm in a good mood today. Here's hoping it stays. :D

It's a game, folks.

And the other players are essentially just people you've met on the internet. Yes, they're real people. But what do you know about them, really? People lie, and even if they're not malicious about it, it's so easy to make yourself sound different from what/who you really are. Also, even if/when you do find out more about them, 9 times out of 10 the ONLY thing you're going to have in common, is the game.

I have many wonderful friends in this game. And all but two are male (though several of them play female characters). Thankfully, most of them are mature/cool enough to just play with me instead of hit on me. After 4 months of playing, I can tell you there is nothing more frustrating than being hit on for no other reason than the fact that I'm a female character. Guess what? Hit on me, and you'll win a shiny new spot at the top of my blacklist. I'm afraid I've run out of patience. This is a game, not a dating or 900# service.

Granted, there are exceptions to that general rule. But not many.

Recently though, I think I've come to understand some of the reasons behind people falling for each other ingame. First, it becomes incredibly easy to get caught up in your character. After all, most FFXI players spend several hours a day ingame. Because of that, it becomes easy to fall for someone based on the way they interact with your character. If they're very helpful, or are fun to pt with, emotions can develop. Why not? This is someone you're interacting with every single day. But it's important to realize that you're falling for someone based on the way they play a video game. This doesn't have a lot of bearing on how they are in real day-to-day life.

I understand that FFXI is an online community, full of real people, and this kind of thing is going to happen. I guess I wish more people would just play, and enjoy playing with each other, instead of running around looking for an ingame romance.

/end rant

Rank 5 newbie

Talk about a productive weekend. I got rank 4 and 5! woot. According to PS, I'm one lucky bitch. lol Evidently 4 months into the game is rather soon to be rank 5 (hence the title). I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I'm blessed with some amazing friends. I'll never take them for granted.

I have screenies, lots of screenies. But I'll have to post them later.

In other news... I may be giving up on being a paladin. It's entirely too frustrating dealing with dumb people who expect me to be back up voke for a ninja. It's hard to believe there are still people who don't understand that paladins can only do one thing - tank. Ugh. But I have some great paladin mentors, and for their sake I'm giving the job one more shot. I'm adding a search comment (Main tank only / {backup}{provoke}:{No thanks.}) and I'll be making absolutely certain when I join each pt that I'll be main tank. If this same s??t keeps happening (i.e. being informed that the nin will be tanking after I arrive), then I will absolutely politely excuse myself from the pt immediately. It's not worth the aggravation. And anyway, there's no point at all in playing a job in such a way that I'm not having fun or learning anything, just to get exp.

And, now that I'm finally rank 5, I think a little vacation is in order. Hopefully when I come back it'll be fun again.