With a knick-knack-paddy-wack shooting arrows made of bone.

This hume ranger no longer calls 'Dunes home...

!

Hmm... on my 16th job leveled through the dunes (15 "complete" as drg is 15 and can stay that way) I finaly got a good a.k.a. "Smooth" dunes party.

Yes it had a PL, but not an over zealous PL.
It was not a PL tanks the dunes set up, the nin and war tanked 90%+ losing hate from big cures mostly.

It was however a 5 man dunes wrecking crew ^^.

I almost DB'd from the start, I was actualy trying to solo the last 300 to 16 so I could log out for the night when I got the tell for it.
Him>> Party?
Me>> OK
Did a quick check on him and saw 14 Nin/War
aww crap, maybe the party is 15-16 and well... its the dunes if it sucks I snag my level and head out.
Took invite, checked pt 14, 14, 14, 14, Me 15 200 tnl -> 16 . aww crap the options now are over camping or severly under camping for the tanks.
Checked again 1 blm, no other mage jobs.
aww crap.
PT Lead>> bleh still need a whm.
aww crap. Finger on the DB button I ran to camp, imagine my suprise a high lvl brd was there.
Party sits around for a while in dead silence so I asked if brd was PL? Yes. Cool I said, I'm gonna start pulling.
And pull I did. The lead never bothered to find a sixth once we got rolling, no need for it. It was a smooth pt start to finish, not a zomg 12k per hr pt it was a good old 5k little to no flux party. Nobody begging to over camp, nobody bitching about 50-60exp T's we just killed as fast as I could get mobs to camp and I kept them as "simple" as possible since the nin was dual-boxing the bard and I have (had) almost 0 experience pulling next thing I know 4+ hours had passed and we had every Pt member to 20 (I hit 21!!). I guess the zomg part was not only keeping a party together in the dunes built of random invites but the fact that they came there to exp, not to piss and moan, brag, cry , whine, complain fake DC, drop party and so on.. and we all understood the reward was getting the hell out of there a.s.a.p.

The 3 parts of a Random Invite Smooth Party, from Xylos's Point of View:
1. Does not always mean "Uber" or "Standard" some of the smoothest parties will break the standard set, even spit in the face of party set logic, the exp flow ranges from average to zomg.
2. Does not require the "best" players, it requires the best teamwork. It does not take a Rank 10 multi 75 player to operate smooth, it takes the willingness to work with the strengths and weaknesses of your pt mates, sometimes it seems that the less people are set in their ways the better.
3. Requires a bit of tact. If the party is maintaining good exp per hour the smooth party players dont piss and moan about a few bad moments. (this happens to be my favorite part about JP pt's, not that they dont complain, I'm sure they do.. but that I cant read it so I dont get caught up in someone elses knotted pantyhose.) In my p.o.v. if a party memberticks around but runs their mouth complaining etc... the bad attitude spreads and it seems that sooner or later the majority of the party gets salty also, myself included.


So yeah, 5 crappy parties and a good chunk of solo to get from 11-15 and one good party to make up for all the frustrtation.

mwwwaaa haaaa haaaa rng does sick damage in the dunes, if he can hit anything ^^.

I'm Baaaaaaaaack

Bleh.


Its been a while ...

I'll blame the IT Dept. at work for my long absence here in blog land,see they "accidentally" unplugged me from the network and since I'm not really supposed to be on it in the first place it wasn't a priority to get me back up since f'n mid October ...


Whats new in Xland? Project Mule is a 64 MNK!
So I'm chugging along leveling the galka when it hits me ... lfg with no craft skills, no subjobs for "maximized" farming potential etc... really sucks balls. I figured I should start up thf and nin for farming/exp choices on him but uuhhg levling nin to 37 is costly no matter how you look at it, same goes for thf. It gets easy after playing so long to go on and on about skill vs. gil and how "as long as you know the job all that expensive shit is pure luxury". Bullshit... well 75% bullshit. Skill a.k.a job knowledge goes along way and for a few jobs plays a very big part, problem is that I should have capitalized underlined and italicized not forgetting to put in bold the word "FEW" but I cant find and option to underline so I gave it a red color the second time around.... How do I know this is true? M' parser whispers sweet nothings in my ear. My mnk is a machine it gives great pride seeing my #'s match or pass everyone else when the final tally comes in. After playing a balance of DD and Mage jobs it becomes rather obvious who and what can get by on a shoestring budget, unfourtunatly nin, thf and mnk dont fall into the realm of cheap jobs, I should also note that after a long history of playing with some of the best gear the AH had to offer it is unbearably hard/depressing to go forth unto the world dressed like a gimp noob.

One example:

Recently I had the great pleasure to party with a second mnk, I was not excited about the prospect out of a brotherhood of the galkan monks but rather that I had the chance to flex my nuts on the parser.
So here we go, same level, same race, same pt and two different gear/food choices.
I failed to check him or I was to sleepy when I did to get his complete profile, but our visable gear was drastic. He wore af except for a SH and his weapon was the Black Ardragas(sp?) I did check him at the beginning and he was still in "walking around town" type of gear. My gear of note: SH, O.Kote, TM Hooks+2, Ven+Woodsman rings, Kung Fu Shoes( dear lord I love these) Tiphia Sting, Brown Belt/Life Chiv Chain, Amehnt or w/e mantle etc.. ooo and my trusty Rep Subligar (yes subligar boy still lives even if the taru isn't there anymore to call him that).

Long story short .... I parsed out twice as much damage and then some. That's right more than TWO TIMES as much damage hahah and imagine I was stressing not having my CC's yet. Blessed with two very good pld's for those pt's the exp flowed and for the first time in a very long time I didn't have to gimp my mnk to avoid becoming a mp sponge.

Funny I still feel gimpy, I cant afford situation swap items so although I do have a decent amount of gil invested in the galka I made my build more of a utility set up rather than an "uber" damage one. The other mnk could out do me on average with his WS' but his normal hits were far under mine and his crits came in a bit higher than my kicks (gogo KFS!).

The price I pay for this sick pleasure? I'm am officially 100% flat fucking broke.
My mules that usually held a few hundred K worth of emergency cash each that I was always anal about repaying and never factored into the usual consumable living expenses etc.. are bone dry. Seems I took a few liberties and got caught up in joy of worry free exp a bit longer than I intended. ^^

My dilemma is this: I need/want to level alternate sj's for the galka, thf, nin, whm. I also need to pound out ZM's and at least complete the prommies. A depressing amount of work to be done at the least, not very cheap either ...

Now on the other side of the spectrum I have a char with all but thf sub to 37+, I have ZM's done, I have prommies+ I have skills and tools to occupy my down time, I have farming capable jobs and levels (other than 20 thf, that's now 28). Fuck it I said and loaded up xylos again, geared up thf and started my exp life as a hume again.

Currently working on thf and rng. I am happy to say I am doing my best to work with non "uber" gear, its hard to get over it but I have to learn how to get by with what I have. So far thf has been fun it seems to require alot from both the skill and gil depts but lacking the gil side of it I'm doing my best ^^.

RNG, why rng? well ... I have 70 WW and the bolt/arrowheads on mules to make in all honesty hundreds of thousands of arrows and bolts, and given the current markets its probably easier in the long run to just level the damned job and use them up at least it would be quicker that trying to sell them, hell I have nearly 4,000 platinum arrows sitting on a mule that cant be bundled (as I found out AFTER skilling on them) I really should just go skill up archery on rdm or nin to burn up the inventory, +15 rngd acc aint bad and being able to cap out archery using the nin would go along way towards keeping my rng skills up to date.

Like thf its one of those jobs that looked cool, but I just never got around to trying. Its also a nifty optional sj for farming/nm hunting.

Hell it looks like the old Xylos is back, rawwwr. I give my self a month or two before I get stressed out and pissed off again. This time I swore to myself that I need to pace it and not just liquidate my good gear to fund another job on a whim, I love my galka mnk too much to ruin his fun.

Xylos is dead.

R.I.P.

Will he be resurrected?
Can't say for sure.
No joy left in this character.
Dance on his grave w/e, mourn the loss, do what you must.
laters..

hmm deflation or depression?

The economy sucks balls.
Not that this is anything new but my current play style has really truely fucked me over.

Project mule has been fun as hell, but it has officialy drained me dry. I have gotten so caught up in this crackish addiction that I have most everything even my Lu Shang rod is up on the AH because I am compelled to purchase even more items.

What would the sale of the Lu' net me? Cross-counters, or a brown-belt/scorpion harness.

Why dont I just farm this crap? Well short answer is lazy. Semi long answer is to take advantage of the current price drops before its "to late". Longer answer is that I really have little love left for a good portion of this game outside of exp or fishing etc.. end-game activities have no draw for me, but I may have to poke my head into end game stuffs a bit to boost my income. Adding to the problem is that if I were to enter end game again I have no gear. nothing. nada. zip.

I have managed to burn most all my bridges or lost the map to get back to them. I have mentioned before having a very short friends list so gathering a few buds to go smash and grab a bcnm etc.. is not a viable option. I have a pretty good skill set for synthing but the market trends make crafting a lose/lose situation outside of major farming and the current influx of RMT has screwed the farmers or anyone attempting to farm.

I need to find a friend that gardens and pester them for info, I think I can handle gardenings stress lol.
anyhow...

It's time to get The Mule into a good LS, he tried with a newbie shell handed to him by an old friend but dear lord calling them newbs is being far to nice. He is going to need AF help soon etc.. so I have to bite the bullet and start begging/applying around lol.

He is however doing well in the exp arena, just hit 35.5ish and is the only source of pleasure this game has for me at the moment. Keeps me from pulling the plug and saving myself 20 bucks a month^^.

Busy week #2

Been a while since I posted here ;;.

Well.... I created a new mule to hold some extra junk and complete my collection of two mules in each of the four main cities.

This mule ended up being leveled a bit for fun.

This mule is now a smokin' rank 2 sandorian with level 8 fame in sandy, level 5 fame in bastok, level 7 fame in jeuno all gobbie bags complete (worth the price since having 30 slots just plain sucks.), chocobo license etc... and just dinged 26 (almost 27) last night.

This mule is also running incognito, he was created on a new handle, I had to many mules and this was a forced option and decided to go with the fresh start theme. New friends, new LS's etc...

Been fun so far, in the dunes with no sub I was called a RMT, Gilbuyer, subless noob etc.. lol the joys of being a frech character with a sugar daddy^^.

Sticking to this theme I think he will get his own blog seperate from this one sooo...

Waders obtained!

Got my fishing Waders last night!
Synthed my own signed fishing gear!
Synthed my own signed chocobo gear too!
Xylos brand outdoors gear is a step above your grandpas WalMart gear.

Kinda funny, until I put on the choco gear it never dawned on me that I had yet to see anyone wear this stuff... hopefully the +15 ride time works on personal choco's.

Made a quick round trip on the ferry and turned in a few more Marlins, nothing exciting.

No exp on bst, ran out of time since I logged on rather late.

Last GP fishing run for me.

Tonight I will obtain my waders! Fashion shot in the works ...


Did my gp fish last night, afterwards hit 24 on bst. When I was 6 exp into 24 I got a bit cocky and hit up the wrong mob, it was a high T and started to chew through the DC-EM at an alarming rate and a second farmer showed up to my spot and killed off the pets so I threw a EP at it and ran like hell. I made it to the zone and decided to call my choco and hit jeuno, I wanted to see if I could pull off a few worms at 24. The worms in quifm made for some tasty exp but I was still a bit low to charm the local crabs they all showed as mid-high T and seemed to lose charm quicker than I liked. I ended up 2hr'n a high T crab and reigned terror upon the lake worms for 25 minutes. When the 2hr'd crab finaly died after I failed to let reward cool down enough I tossed out a jug crab finished the worn I was on and was going to call it a night but I got cocky again and decided to make one more run around the lake. By now the RMT pt had killed all the worms and I was concerned about my pet so I threw him at a low T hoping to finish it meleeing. Bad idea I guess... as soon as I hit the mob my pet came uncharmed and one mischarm later I ate dirt. I RR'd up and ran towards jeuno, noticed obody at tunnel camp so I started killing worms there till I dc'd. When I logged back I must have ran to far out before dc and caught instant wight aggro for Death #2.

Gave up on bst for the night and grabbed rdm clothes and sword and went out /thf to see if I could farm a little silk outsie of windy. Drops rates sucked, after an hour I had landed 4 spools of silk and made one cloth >< on my last run I found Tom Tit Tat up and took out my anger on him, seeing him made me decide to try one last loop and I caught the Pilgram's Wand NM up and got him too.

So the nights summary is 68863 or so Fishing GP, I'm 500 into 24 BST, farmed up a single silk cloth, killed two low level NM's and got my Pilgrams Wand.

Oh so beastly.

Knocked out my GP fish now at 62K and change.

Hit jeuno and geared up bst o.O.
Not as expensive as I had thought, not as cheap as I wanted. After minimal research I decided to just hit Jugnar and target shrooms. Ended up burning off my ring in a little over an hour and a half and called it a night about 3100/5000 with no deaths.
The no death thing suprised me a bit, I guess bst is like riding a bike or maybe a tricycle, I wont say it went smooth but it could have been worse.
The only real problem was that the shrooms had a habit of respawning as T making pet pulling tricky at times, the DC-EM's seemed to like to spawn dead center in the area making me pull the fight far out and run back in to avoid links.
I tried the ghetto release trick a few times until a T @ 1% almost killed me. Tried various jugs and pet foods for giggles but stuck to the locals 95% of the time, the shrooms seemed to eat my jugs for lunch.
Going to complile usefull BST info and post it over in the links area soon.
All in all the trial run as a bst was great, cant wait to get out there everyday and burn my empress charges.

Back to fishing.. The contest will be reseting soon I hope its something in my range. My waders will be obtained within the next few days so I can start on my bone specs.

Craft-O-Ramma is over!

And I'm not even broke o.O.

Everything outside of gold and smithing is at a sufficient level to piddle around and cap out as I see fit. It was a wild and crazy week, tons of crap to sell off too^^.

Now that I got that out of my system it's time to pick up a job and just fish and GP on various crafts (bone spec's here I come).

I think I will take up BST again. My LS is packed full of BST to pester for advice so I hope it makes the job go a bit smoother.

I have enough gil left to gear up fairly well for now, my food/med mule should also be able to hold me over for a long time, hell with my new set of craft skills I can make a chunk of my own gear/food/meds.

My bst is 23 right now the last time I took it out was to try jug pets^^. It seems like the perfect job for now. I can exp on my own time, maybe just burn my ring everyday, who knows.

Update ...

A visual post covering the weeks events.

Craft madness week continues!

First off let me apologize for my wall-o-text posts.

Took bonecraft from 0 to 50 over the last two days and got 18 levels into cloth also last night. Also bumped fishing GP to 50k so I should have those waders in under a week unless SE decides to screw me with a string of 1200 gp days.

Must say I am rather excited to obtain my first ever bit of GP equipment^^.

Bonecrafting was a blast, I will be capping that off at 60 after I complete the other items on my vanity craft list. I learned the value of properly estimating material quanities too... Other than over estimating and purchasing an obscene amount of beetle jaws Bone went very smooth. The "ring" levels hurt a bit as it would be nearly impossible to sale the amount of rings I made (bone, beetle and horn) but the arrowhead levels provided some return on my investment. All in all I estimate bone at a 50-75% loss >< not good at all but I can say that if a few weeks of farming pre-crafting had been done I would have made a tidy profit. It also was such a blur that I really have no clue what crafted items or excess materials I have floating around at the moment so maybe the losses are not as bad as I think.
The investment into bone was moderate and close to my guess. The one thing that perhaps saved me from going farther over budget was the number of synths that required non-stackable items (ram horns, scorpion claws, giant femurs) and that all the ring levels could be offset by desynthing the items back into workable stock. The beauty of non-stackable items is the ability to sit at the AH near cap and purchase them bit by bit and not getting stuck with a whole pile of 4k items clogging your inventory.
I kept synthing till I ran out of materials and passed my 48 goal, eventualy I will bring it to 60 for the "cap"

Since I was already in windy and crafting there has its perks (quick run to the fishing guild to turn in points) I decided to tackle cloth.

I really only want cloth to 30 for now, if I can find a "reasonable" route I will run it to journeyman also to ease the eventual 60 cap cap run much like I did with bone.
So far cloth is an utter pain in the ass. Having to go back and make cloth from threads to make items to desynth into threads to make cloth is making me dizzy. Circle of life I guess. I would much rather purchase the cloth and eat the loss but I must have picked the wrong day/time to start and got shafted. I really think I may have over estimated my needed materials on the venture but a good deal of them sell fast on the AH in windy so offloading a good chunk of them quickly is a viable option vs. NPC'n them for a loss.

After the cloth run is complete I think a crafting break is in order to sell off the items I made and open some more room on the mules again. Then on to leather o.O...

Another thing I noticed is that the "Big Four" late 50's early 60's body gear is all 69ish cap crafting. Vermy, Hauby, Byrnie and Scorpion Harness all perfectly capable of being custom made and signed on a single character^^.

Arrows, quivers and bolts Oh my!

Level 70 WW obtained! Tens of thousands of arrows and bolts muled! Total cost of running WW to 70 in two sittings? 3.1 million gil. Guess-timated value of muled quivers and lumber 1.75-2.2 million gil. Total estimated loss 800k - 1.25mil gil. All in all it cost me my Marine male gloves to obtain Artisan status, not shabby.
Of course if I take my time and mule the swag off slowely I can get it closer to 300k (another guess). Still no hard data on the returns, I have not sold a single item yet. To be honest I had hoped to go a bit slower and roll with the market on a good portion of it but I caught the crafting bug and went nuts with it. The big hurt came from synthing Demon Arrows and Platinum Arrows, 400-500k per stack of those arrow heads, 3 stacks total between them.

I need a minimum of Lvl 72 WW to bother repairing Lu', but my legendary fish catching days wont be coming around for a while so I will take 70 on up as slow as I can stand, most likely break rod fishing for dual skill targeting large fish for fish skill that will also break my rods to work off those last few levels of WW with repairs.
No fishing the last two days, did not bother to go for GP fish as the points were crap, todays points are just as crappy but I need the last 25k turned in for waders soon. I may start the break rod fishing today if I have the time to sort the debris from my WW marathon out to mules. Kind of sucks that I spent all that time less than a week ago cleaning and organizing mules to have Hurricane Lumber land on them^^.
next on the list is to cap out alchemy and cooking, just a few levels of each to hit that sexy 60. Alchemy at 58 so a night of ogre eels and thats done, cooking is 56 .. I loved cooking but the recipe items take up too much space to make for a comfortable cruise.

So leather, cloth and bone are next on the craft list. I would like to get leather done as a priority since hides etc.. seem fairly easy to farm and maintain an income off of. Cloth mearly as a sub skill and vanity craft, signed fishing gloves and pants to match my guild boots and apron. Bone is the 100% pure vanity craft, no reason to pass 48 after I get those specs^^.
Blacksmithing (28 Currently) and Goldsmithing (23 Currently) both need to climb as I can get to them but the cost on those scares me.

I do not see WW passing the mid 70's unless the skill up rate on broken Lu's is godlike. I'll have 25 or so post 60 skill points to alot to other crafts but nothing is really calling out to me atm.

Save the trees.

Brought WW from 16.0 to 57.4 yesterday. What did I learn from this PL session? I learned that I am stuck with shit loads of arrows and that becoming a ranger with low overhead costs is now a viable option. Oh its not about to get any better either, I picked up all the ingrediants to run up to 69 tonight looks like its time to go skill up archery eh? After 69 my options for skilling "easy" end and I will have to be a bit more frugal with my gil. So far it has been an estimated 50% loss, this is just a rough guess, I have yet to sale a single item yet and did not include unsynthed Mythril Bolts or Demon Arrows. I also have a lot of excess arrowheads, lumber etc.. sitting in storage now for future synth/sales.

Suprisingly this cost far less than I estimated so.... I think I need to get myself a pair of boneworkers Protective Spectacles they remind me of the old style Oakley Frogskins and kind of look like those yellow tinted fishermans glasses. Of course I could just dat mod them in and save some cash but then I wont be able to share the sexy with others^^. I really think I want a pair of shades, I do have gold in the 20's but it would cost insane amounts of gil to boost it to 48, my cloth like bone is sitting at 0, cloth is another option for glasses but it seems like it would cost far more to level than bone, also cloth seems far more time consuming than bone to boost up for vanity. Then again I am bringing cloth up to 30 for signed fishing gear.....

Why the crazy crafting schemes with no long term goal? Well there is a goal of sorts. I have done my share of exp and I loved almost every minute of it, I wouldnt trade it for the world but it lost its luster. I could never focus on any one given job without burn out so I bounced many jobs accumulating gil and gear as I went. I was never happy with the standard stuffs and drove myself to obtain the best gear I could, not always the most outrageous +1 items but in the end I would show up to party in gear far above the norm. I made and lost fortunes: one week I had 43 million in my pocket, at the end of the week I was killing giants in quifm for choco money, a few days later I was dropping millions again. A constant circle of buying and selling gear, creating mules to store choice items or sell those same items, etc... In the end I had a lot of good stuff but never really held onto anything I would pour myself into one job only to short change myself in another. Changing jobs on a whim was a bad idea to say the least.
Then I said fuck it all and started fishing. little to no overhead, lvl1 gear no worries about pt's or ls's, the good life, retirement. Hmm no jobs to worry about, multiple mules packed to the gills with equipment, time to get a nest egg going. I told myself when I hit this or that level wealth I would invest in a certain job again and streamline my gear.. wait damnit thats what got me here in the first place. So after a bit of thinking I decided to take retirement seriously. No jobs, No gear, No exp. What to do with this steady flow of income from liquidation? Well first off was my Lu Shangs, dumped a lot of money into moats and fast tracked that. Near the end of my Lu' run we hit the jackpot with the mercurial kris, loaded again. Now back in the day my cut of the kris cash would have been gone in a flash on some trinket, now with nothing to buy but bait, a self imposed ban from the AH and that steady flow of cash from my mules my nest egg had to be saved for a rainy day or invested in something. I first thought about working the AH to stockpile an X-mas fund but given the current deflation trend that could turn out small profits or even a potential loss. So I started researching crafts.
I knew I wanted WW to 80ish to repair Lu' if I should ever get my fishing that high. While I was to sick to play last week I researched other crafts and started building a list of what I want need and the best or easiest route to get there. The goal with crafting is for the most part to spend every last gil I get raising my guild levels until I am 100% completly flat broke, no gear to sell, empty mules, no nothing. Then I will start a job from scratch or pick up a currently leveled job. I like the idea of taking one of my few pre-dunes jobs and giving him a fresh start with the tools to carry it via crafting, fishing etc.. and seeing what I can make of it. I know its a reckless plan at best, more thn likely I will kick myself in my broke ass at the end of it but like I said I will have the tools at my diposal that I never gave a second glance to back in the day.

Pirates Chart's

Yup plural, handed off some extra marlins to Mrfrodo and he got one too! Albatross Rings for all of us^^.

Been pretty damn sick the last few days so no updates just carried on doing GP fish only. Last night was the first night of normal fishing I put in and the combo of pills and Robitussin put me in a zone so I sat and caught 168 Shall Shells in one sitting o.O . Today I finished up the last 1.0 to hit Journeyman in fishing, those waders are calling my name. I think I was more excited about the new GP bracket I'm in, it seems like the points stay pretty high in it.

Going to start WW tomorrow if the regional vendor is up for the maple logs.... looks like all my mules MH will be pimped out in cheap furniture.

Lost my faith in the ferry.

What a crap gp fish the Bibikibo is. The only info I could find about catching it was that it bites only on the return trip from Purgonoro Island to Sunset Docks in Bibiki Bay. Add to that it is not a targetable fish, it falls into the same catagory as junk fish or rusty items.

As luck would have it I showed up in bibiki during the guild holiday so I set up fishing for a few cones and z-bass while I waited on the guild/manaclipper. I began casting a few cures on a BLU trying to gain an ability from an eft, we started chatting and he told me he needed to hit the island also to learn a move from an Uragnite but had been killed a few times trying. I offered to help since I was heading on that boat anyhow. Just before the manaclipper arrived the guild opened, I ran to check it and bought nine stacks of bibikibo's and a few stacks of z-bass to stockpile for GP, should be good for a good 45k gp over time lol. We only saw one uragnite on the ferry and he failed to learn the move. After three kills on the island he learned his venom shell move tossed him a D2 and we did the thank you-np dance. Good deed for the week complete back to fishing....

Hit windy turned in my gp fish warped back to bastok and checked on my chocobo, the little feller' is getting rather big. I set up a mix of care plans rather than his usual music/walk/rest and stuffed him full of greens.

Decided to hit the ferry and shoot for some more marlins to turn in. Shani hit the boat at the same time and got to witness me run blindly into the Sea Horror. I'll blame it on lag or better yet my lack of skill ups over the past few days required a sacrifice to the fishing gods and since there was a lack of virgins (horror noobs) on the boat I did the only responsible thing and offered myself up.
Crap run all in all, 0.1 for skill, only 7 marlins off of 3 stacks of bait, crap loads of titan bites etc.. 0/41 on the charts now. On the plus side I actualy got some bluetails to bite ^^.

Time to start researching some new skill fish. With the sale of the Mercurial Kris I no longer need to stress over profit fish as nice as they are I have to stop relying on them to carry me through skill ups. I should be able to work a few more levels out of shall shells they run between 24 and 36 cph (catches per hour) and cap at 53, another option is to target Red Terapin again caps at 53 also but ran a few less cph than the shall shells. The problem with the terrapin is that they do not AH very well. Used in Vampire Juice a lvl 90 cooking synth and Turtle Soup a lvl 71 cooking synth so maybe I can pawn some off on a cook^^ the soup sells for an average of 34k according to FFXI AH and looks like it has decent stats:

Description: A soup made from the vicious red terrapin.

Stackable: Not Stackable

Food Effects: (3 hours, All Races)

• HP +10%
• Dexterity +4
• Vitality +6
• Mind -3
• HP Recovered While Healing +5

Maybe I should get a few more cooking levels and skill up off of these and save a few for soloing. The downside to the potential profit is the lack of sales.

The Great Mule Liquidation of 06 is chugging along just fine. I find myself setting certain items aside "just in case I change my mind" I dont think I can part with my staves etc.. for now. But everything must go sooner or later. I kind of want to have it all gone then pick up a job to play again starting completely fresh or should I choose to quit down the road I will be set up to hand off gil to friends without trying to decide how to divy up gear. Haha sounds like a grim "getting my affairs in order" speech. It is kinda nice to be rich without having to worry about how long it will last^^. Oh yeah PL WW there goes the rich feeling ..

Been a few days..

It was a busy weekend. Thursday and Friday we spent the night out of town for my wifes B-day. Saturday and Sunday we had guests at the house.

I did manage to sneak in gp fishing when nobody was looking ^^.

Kind of bummed I failed to hit 48 by sunday it would be nice to hit the next bracket of gp fish.
As seen below it makes for a 2k gp gap today. Those 4-5k gp days look very nice indeed.

Your Rank	Item Rank	Item	Pts(HQ) / Max / #Req	Tomorrow's Forecast
Novice	Novice	Coral Butterfly	375 / 3280 / 8.75	Tomorrow's Forecast
Apprentice	Amateur	Bibikibo	300 / 2560 / 8.53	Tomorrow's Forecast
Journeyman	Journeyman	Bhefhel Marlin	900 / 4560 / 5.07	Tomorrow's Forecast
Craftsman	Amateur	Bibikibo	300 / 2560 / 8.53	Tomorrow's Forecast
Artisan	Novice	Coral Butterfly	375 / 3280 / 8.75	Tomorrow's Forecast
Adept	Journeyman	Bhefhel Marlin	900 / 4560 / 5.07	Tomorrow's Forecast
Veteran	Journeyman	Bhefhel Marlin	900 / 4560 / 5.07	Tomorrow's Forecast

Looking forward to getting my waders soon, only 35k gp to go!

Cleaned out my MH, Locker and Storage last night. Sent all non-fishing related items to mules. I'm now 90% done with that project hopefully get to finish it off tonight. I think I hit 70 open slots even with stockpiles of potential gp fish. The jeuno mules, Xylox and Obgyn are busy selling off everything they can and I will be walking two more town mules there this week. Most likely will send my last sandy mule and my secondary bastok mule . The sandy one is almost completely full of weapons and the bastoker is 100% full of meds and foods. The last two remaining town mules will end up gardening once they are completely empty, although the windy one may become a cooking mule instead. The steady flow of gil from the liquidation should cover a good portion of my crafting.

After I get some more room on the mules I will begin my woodworking to 80. Also considering taking cloth to 30 and leather to 20ish to make my own signed fishing gear, Fisherman's Boots Leather:20, Fisherman's Gloves Leather:14, Fisherman's Hose Cloth: 23 and Fisherman's Tunic a Cloth: 30. After I get the waders I need to get WW up far enough to at least snag LumberJack seems like a nice item to have down the road.

Plan so far is:
#1 Fishing to 48+ and carry on until 70k GP for Waders
#2 Switch Guild to WW until lumberjack is obtained, stock up on crystals to sign various items.
#3 Return Guild status to fishing to obtain points for Fisherman's Apron, and alternate fishing and WW on a weekly basis until I hit WW 80.

I think the "plan" should be easy to pull off inside of a month or two, a least as far as the WW goes. After I get the apron from the fisherman's guild I may sink more gp into WW or dabble in other crafts.
I am sitting at Smithing:29, Cloth:0, Alchemy:58, Wood:16, Gold:23, Leather:1, Bone:0 and Cooking:56. It would be nice to cap Alchemy and Cooking at 60 soon just to get it done. If I end WW at 80 it would leave room for one more craft to get to 80. Taking cooking to 80 I would be able to produce Sole Sushi, but run the risk of losing WW skill as it caps at 84.
I really have little interest in taking WW to 100 or any other craft for that matter on my main. I imagine I would best be served starting to cook all over again on a mule, between that and my alchemy I can make good use of a portion on my fishing catches.




RL demands are popping up again so I will be "trying" to cut my ffxi time down to four hours or so a night. My son has started 4th grade and his bus arrives at 7am, returns at 4pm. No more fishing till 4am for me lol. His bedtime is 8pm so I figure I'll be on 8pm-12am midweek, push the limits on weekends and every other sunday its just me and him till 3pm "father and son game time" he calls it, we go to our machines and zone out on games while the wife is away at work.

A Bit of Everything.

As seen in "Catch of the day" over there on the right I spent yesterday wandering around trying different locations. I started with the shall shells until i lost my lure then I went to go catch my GP fish for the day Gold Lobster. Nice gp's for that 3920 /hurray! Landed a few Breams and Ogres while I was there. Decided to try my hand at Bladefish while I was in the area and pulled up two of them. Those buggers were tough but rewarding .

Since I had lost another expensive lure on the shalls I needed to find something semi-steady to make my skill quota for the day and browsed various guides for ideas. I settled on Red Terrapin and picked the east pond on rollenberry. Caught two stacks before I got bored, not much to see there fishing in a pond the size of a kids wading pool.

The wandering bug bit again so I hit the ferry. Made it a fairly short run compared to most nights so the numbers were not that great. A handful of nobles, cones, bluetails and marlins. The exciting fish to pull up was the Silver Shark. These bastardshave plauged me since I started shooting for a few marlins per day. They show up as a single ! and usualy fight like a damned Legendary up till this one the most I managed to reduce their stamina was 5-10% before timing out or giving up. I also think I fought a titan down 10% before timing out, I could be very wrong but the only other possiblity would have been an extremely large and mean Marlin. I should have kept him but Zaldon was begging to gut another fish so I let him, no item /sigh.

Now that I have my Lu I dont need to focus so hard on the higher profit fish. I have time to mess around, look for new and exciting fishing holes, test my skill on bigger and better fish. It will be nice to have the extra time to fish up my own gp items and not have to worry about wasted time/fatigue. The big profit/skill shall shell's market has dropped a good 40% in the last week and sale rates dived along with it. Time to expand my horizons.

I will continue to liquidate my mules so I can start using a few of them to store fish and synthing materials. I may even try my hand at gardening soon.

I really ought to start crafting again one or two days a week and that brings me back to my woodworking or cooking debate. Then again if I get leather and cloth up a little I can sign my own fishing gear.

With heartfelt disapproval,

Hahaha .... Finaly got around to reading the testimonial from the Lu' quest.

Nice rod btw. It feels a bit odd to use after "growing up" on the Halcyon Rod wich has more of a squishy feel to its stamina bar, The Lu seems far less forgiving to any misdirection of the D-Pad. Took it out for a test drive yesterday shooting for marlins. Turned out to be a crap day to fish I failed to catch many bluetails for bait good thing we had a party of us so I could trade Nobles to Shani for Bluetails. Seemed to be a crap day for me on the Marlins too, not much time invested but only got three out of two full trips. Boat was packed most of the night, lots of fishermen and lots of Horror Bait and a good deal of Horror Bait fishermen. Makes you wonder sometimes why people bother fishing sardines and quus on the boat rather than sitting on the dock in saftey with no down time from turn-arounds. One guy did however say he wanted to not only see the horror and pirates but asked to be killed by the horror before anyone claimed it. Many pirate pops but no BB.

O.o also I was contacted by someone who actualy reads my blog!! Now I know how Ski felt lol. Taitai's tales of a taru

Had another offer on the Kris, the guy wanted to trade a Kirins Osode for the Kris+Gil. Intresting offer but no deal. Hell the odsode seems to be popping up in bazzars all over, lowest I found it was 25mil.

Nuff Said.

7:02 pm, 9-4-06

Big day yesterday.

Shani got her Seawolf Cudgel.



Well lazy day for me, fished a good portion of it not really aiming for anything. I did a bit of shall fishing, hit the boat for GP item fish, hit the boat again for Marlins, with ocasional bounces to go buy moats from various AH's. Also got fishing to 42.

Our buyer for the kris backed out so its back to bazzar and the jeuno /sh runs. Would be nice to see that thing gone soon, the gil I "almost" have is burning a hole in my pocket^^.

So very very close to obtaining my Lu, probably tonight or tomorrow. Time to plan my route to the E Rod ...

I almost died.

Before I begin I must lay blame where it is due for my near death experiance, Mrfrodo and Shanisasha. Without them I would proabably have a good ten years extra left on my heart, without them I would not have had the greatest moment in my FFXI career.

It was a warm summer day in the dunes, the smell of dead noobs in the air was sickly sweet on the breeze. Three adventurous friends headed to Whitebone Beach, one clutching a Pirates Chart in his hand, a funny looking group dressed only to cover their nekkid bodies they stood out from the masses. They needed no speacial tools or weapons for what was about to happen, the mission was do or die 8 seconds to glory or death, no time for games, no amount of gear would help and the odds of the pot of gold waiting for them at the end of the rainbow were painfuly against them.

The battle was said easy by those that came before. What drew them here was the chance to obtain a very rare item, not the glory found by defeating the creatures soon to attack them. It was a gamble twice over starting with obtaining the Pirates Chart from the gut of a Marlin. The second gamble was with the chest at the end of the battle. The stories told us not to have our hopes up that this item came very few and far between, even a good friend now gone from the game had went many times with no luck. Some even say they had invested months with no gain.

The time came to trade the Chart, the fight was on. Our adventurers summoned three Ramuh's to their sides and prepared for battle. A ghostly taru appeared and begged us to Fish for the treasure, screaming about a monster coming. The monster came, not one but three and the little soul was dispatched again. The Ramuh's Prepared their most powerful attack Judgement Bolt and brought down the wrath of the skies upon the creatures. The battle took mere seconds.

A chest lay before us, the shadows of the three beasts corpses still fading away I opened the Barnacled Box. Breath held I closed my eyes and opened them to see ....



We had beaten the odds!!





Yup my heart felt like it stopped, I couldnt stop shaking to type for a good five minutes either ^^ So yeah I felt like I was going to die, but in a good way. Thank you Shani and Mrfrodo for coming along with me, congratulations on our new found wealth and hope to do this again very very soon^^


<3 Xylos. The ring is 100% as far as I know, but still happy to have it ^^

Photo Finish

Sleepy so I'll sum up tonight in two images:


I found two strategies for this so far #1 and #2

My Sole is Black.

Quick and painless last night fishing. Hit the shall shell's for 99 for skill hoping to rank up. Once I hit 38 I ran over to the boat to join Mrfrodo and Bosco while I made an attempt at my rank up fish a Gugru Tuna managed to land two, I will be keeping the larger one in my bazzar as a souvenir for a while^^.

After I got my rank fish I decided to shoot for my GP fish before I hit windy. Sat at the docks in port jeuno I needed 12x Nosteau Herring, choose Halcyon Rod and Shrimp Lure as my weapons of choice. I ended up with my GP fish and 19x Tiger Cod and one Black Sole. I was kind of excited about the sole, it always feels good to land something way the hell over my skill level.

Todays GP item is Zamflug Bass that caps at 48-49, according to Finalfishing.com the best option is a worm lure in bastok so I will be able to single target them there with a chance at skill ups. Kicking myself in the ass for NPC'ing the 2 stacks I had in my MH a few days ago. The crappy GP items are the ones that require many low level fish, to gather them myself means lots of running around to vendors or spending the night burning my way into early fatigue and killing my skill/profit run for the day. At least I only need 27 of them.

I really need to organize my MH again to leave room for a few stacks of w/e I catch to take care of potential GP items, a scary task indeed.

As I round the bend to 50 I keep telling myself I need to get crackin' on my moats for Lu Shangs and since it is very likely I'll hit 50 in the next few weeks it puts me in a bind. I need to continue to skill but I also need to profit fish. I could go target moat carp and sand fish but that actualy costs money in the long run, not much but still a negative effect on the wallet. If I skill off of profit fish I will cap out long before I profit enough to purchase the moats, no happy medium^^. Time to set my mules in action selling off any and all uneeded gear and have them convert those profits into moats I want this damned rod before my birthday (nov 17). After I get my Lu the next step is deciding between leveling my cooking more or going for the WW skill to repair the Lu. I think my best option is to PL cooking on my windy mule even tho I am 56 on my main an I would hate to start over. The wood working on my main means crap loads of time invested in a craft for a single purpose, its only 16 now .. The other downside is losing my GP I have invested in fishing but I did plan to purchase the Waders first for the +2 skill. Or of course I could just level the damned WW and say piss off to Lumberjack etc..

Off to lunch now, more to come later... maybe^^

Score: Xylos 4 - Bhefhel Marlins 1

.3Got on rather late last night and headed out to the cliff to work on some more shall's. Seemed like both my bite and skill up's were coming slow, still hit 36.4, had really hoped to hit 37 for a good shot at 38 tonight. Snapped my line for the second time working shall shells, hit the wrong button canceling out a !!! so I headed into to town to sale the 6 stacks I had and call it a night.

I was sorting through my MH partial fish stacks and decided to sacrifice the two Bluetails I had there and see if I could hit a Bhefhel Marlin, grabbed my composite rod a few spare minnows and 8 bits of sliced bluetail and OP'd to selbina to cach the boat my plan was to make a round trip and trade marlins in for a shot at a chart, and see what the fishing contest was (fingers crossed it was something I could actualy catch). I made it with moments to spare. Once the boat was under way I climbed up to my usual perch at the top of the stairs, did my fish dance and hit the casting macro. First bite was a !!!, semi hard to reel in but I've had worse also seemed a bit tough for a monster so I kept at it just as I got my warning I wore it out, slammed my button and shazzam! Bhefhel Marlin #1. Next cast Bhefhel Marlin #2. Hmm this is not as bad as I thought it would be. 3rd was a cone calamry, 4th a Titan (I assume) 5th Silver shark (dear lord the regen on that bastard was astounding, failed to knock even 10% off) 6th Marlin #3, 7th Titan, 8th Shark. Not bad 3/8 on the bait, 50% return total with 4 fish landed. Threw on a minnow to try for some more bluetails to turn into bait and caught one as we hit town. On the return trip one more marlin, one shark, one "low skill fail" (assume marlin) and one monster. 40k worth of fish for the price of 3 wind crystals is a pretty decent return, but I choose to turn them in for fun. I checked the bazzars at the NPC and saw that one of my marlins was much larger than the 50 or so so I kept it to display in my bazzar along with my catfish. No chart but I was still happy/proud of my first attempt.

I think tonight will be exp on rdm night, I have been putting off exp claiming to be "retired" but I do need/want to lvl rdm a bit on the side. I hope it goes well, I'm kind of scared its been well over a month since I have been out exp'n and I get nervous when I feel out of practice. I think the big reason I want to exp is to prevent myself from selling any more gear that I have stocked up, my rdm is fairly well supplied till 75 if I leave my mules alone ^^.

Subligar scare me.

Spent the weekend in buburimu again, skill 30.1-35.5 there on shall shells. Almost like taking candy from a baby these guys are sooo easy to target.

I tried to keep up on my gp items even though fishing up four stacks of bastore sardines is rather sucky, easy enough to do but it killed my fish count for the day causing fatigue to set in early. I still managed to land 140 or so shall shells before I gave up.

As my skill goes up it seems like the stamina bar for shall shells is taking on a more random depletion rate. It used to be a fairly flat rate but now I get a few that seem to come in much faster. This adds a twist to fishing them since I stand a good chance of losing a 50k lure if I misread a stamina bar. The fake bites so far have been Bluetails (rod goes all over the place) Yellow Globe (almost the same rod action but slightly faster than normal depletion) and Rusty Buckets and Subligar (subligar can snap my line). I dont mind the Bluetails since I will be storing them for bait to fish for Inside The Belly, the Subligar scare me though.

Early to bed.

pic is the "keeper" out of the four I caught, much larger than the other three I'll hang onto this one for a while ^^

Not feeling well this evening so I cut it short.

Decided to check out a suggested guide area for 28 in West Sarutabaruta, a few dark bass and giant catfish later I gave up. Just seemed like too much work for little reward.

Bought a shiny new Rouge Rig and hit Buburimu cliffs to try my luck at shall shells. Amazing spot. averaged 2 stacks per hour and lost only one 50k rig taking a gamble on the stamina bar. Before I knew it I hit 30.1. Whoot off to get that pesky quest knocked out. Pretty easy and straight forward, the best reward was my new title "The Love Doctor" from the pre-quests.

Will be out of town for two days, taking our son to a waterpark/hotel for his birthday so I leave the slaughter of the Noble Ladies to you shani^^

All hail the Novice Fisherman!

As noted in last nights half-asleep post I hit 28. As a matter of pride I intended to go fish up that Giant Catfish but it got late and I was about to pass out so I snagged one off the AH when I went to sell my catch. Fairly crap GP items for now but with some luck I should be able to mix in some skill fishing with gp fishing.

I really do not want to leave the ferry, the regular income over the last week has been so very nice to have. Pouring over guides and databases it looks like I may be better suited targeting fish for skill vs. sitting on the boat hoping for skill ups on fish 30 lvls+ over me.
I did solve the "no skill ups for hours" problem this morning it seems I was trying to skill 27+ on Nebs that cap at 27 /blush. Good thing I did lose that last Shrimp Lure.

I have a pretty good collection of fishing items in storage now, rods, lures etc.. Trying to get at least 2-3 of every rod as a back up and I am trying to make room for a stack or so of the more common gp items.

I still plan to attempt my Lu Shang's rod asap (asap lol) but will more than likely change focus towards the profit fish then buy moats than actualy fishing up a decent % of them.

Skill to 30 is the priority goal I will probably hang out on the ferry for this so I imagine it will take a few days, padding of the pocket keeps me there. I have been staring at the Inside the Belly quest for years and eagerly await crossing it off "the list".

Layout Changes and Addiction

First off new look in the house!
New Template using the beta blogger.
Added in the Catch of the Day and Top 10 #'s in Recorded History lists. Try to keep them semi-updated as I can.

Its late and I'm tired. Lost 10 Shrimp lures total tonight thank god I synth them from mining loot. Forced to switch to minnows my catch-per-hour numbers are suffering now from too many !!!'s. Shrip lures have been silly easy to skill on as Nebs are very frequent and noble ladies have been very easy to reel in 90% of the time. Minnows on the other hand have been a royal pain in the ass. The easiest fish being Cone Calimary is semi-rare compared to noble, bluetail and !!!'s, but the bluetails are still semi-borederline to hard for me to land 100%.

No Horror sightings yet, always a bonus ^^

Did get to see Blackbeard today!! as soon as I remember to run memory stick to work I'll post some pics

!!!! As of right now 1:06 am I am Lvl 28 fishing!!! /huzzah

Time to hit jeuno AH fish, hit windy turn in item, go snuggle choc egg so it wont be born mentaly challenged and pass out. More in the AM.

Chocobo Eggs and 10 Stacks of Fish

Went ahead and did the chocobo egg quest with Corn last night. You get a free egg after completion, seems like a good idea till to you add up the costs of op warping, chocobo at tele etc.. and compare it to the 1k cost of an egg. My baby choco is is safe and sound in Bastok. I really do hope it does not die of neglect.

Fishing was great last night. The ferry was pretty quiet with chobo fever going on. Landed around 90 Nebs and 30 Noble's before calling it quits. No Sea Horror was a bonus. Finaly saw the NM Silverhook too, 70+ smn almost got him down before dying. Noob was killed by a monster, I raised him and monster killed him again.

Going to end this session early.

Fishing Skill 26.2

I Believe in Ferry Magic!

No not "Fairy Magic", like mithrandel becoming a mage but the magic of fishing on the Selbina-Mhaura Ferry. Skill ups, Cash, Sea Horror eating young un's, its the whole package!

Netted about 300k so far fishing, just about paid for the weskit I bought yesterday @ 400k, at least I dont have to roll out in full af any more ^^.

"X's guide to the Sea Horror and You."
1. It's mean.
2. Dont run blindly onto the deck.
3. Fishing half way up the stairs is no longer safe.
4. see #2 then let someone else run blindly onto the deck.
5. While person from #4 is occupying it run out and get to a safe fishing spot.
6. Tractor #4 person and raise them.
7. #4 will probably cling to you if you are lucky they will think stairs are safe so keep them between you and the S.H.'s path. I like to call this "The exp buffer" as they provide a buffer between myself and the S.H. and allow me to save exp.
8. Have a chuckle when a "noob" is killed and someone tractors him to the center of the deck, runs away and casts raise just as the S.H. is coming back from a light snack in the cargo bay.
9. /sigh when the same "noob" has that happen to him twice.
10. Dont be a hero, but DO play S.H. tag with someone if you are bored. S.H. like to play tag and there is no mistaking when you are "it" (did this with a sam and a thf as a blm till they quit and I had to warp out)
11. Cheer the 75 nin who gets sick of watching people play S.H. Tag and kills it.

In the course of ten rides saturday the Sea Horror popped 5 times. I ate hot steamy death three times and warped out on my fourth aggro. A 74 BLM/WHM cannot kill it when he is only wearing fishing gear and taken by suprise while fishing and watching tv. Well at least this 74 blm can't.


Current Fishing skill: 24.5

Slow but sure the climb to 30 skill is under way. Why 30? I need to set a point where I can trade off skill fishing for profit, guild points and moat carps. 30 is also the level for the Inside the Belly
quest and that can bring some loot and the fishing rings.

Took some time off the ferry yesterday to fish South Gustaberg for ogre eels and cobalt jelly fish to knock off a few alchemy levels on venom items. Craftsman Rank obtained!! Still debating getting at least the Trituration gp item for alchemy before I switch to fishing since I have 4k gp left and 10k are needed. Back to the gustaberg cliffs, I managed to land six Bastore Bream a lvl 86 fish sales are not that great on them so I'll stash them for gp item.

Two new additions to "Shani's Strays" arrived yesterday so I'm no longer the new guy /hurray. Mrfrodo pointed me to an excellent fishing database I had not found. I'll be adding it to the links: Kida's Fishing Database.

Fishing Skill @ 20.1

Really wanted to hit 21 but I choose to sleep ^^.

Started on the ferry shooting for nebs the bite rate was far to random still to bother I think I managed 3-4 catches per trip for a total of 30 nebs =50k gil ^^

Switched it up to skilling on tricoloreds, dark bass and gold carp in jugnar forrest for the remainder. SE's random fishing script was on virtual crack last night I imagine as I ran into a steady streak of gold carp ( a nice 300+ gil to npc) that I have never seen before. I wont bitch tho since I got some skill ups and left early after 5 stacks or so of paste.

So I started my fishing career selling my cure clogs for a nifty 1.4 mil or so thinking I would use this as survival money for a long long time. Last night after getting my 100th /tell for raise/cure/etc.. fishing ANON from people I DO NOT KNOW I gave up and bought a scythe for my blm to wear while fishing and wandering about, now I'm down 180k.
I had heard that "The Big One" gave a speacial moghancement fishing that boosted skill instead of items so I swung by the AH and snagged one, now down another 500k.

"The Tale of Xylos and The Big One"

Fuck TBO.
I ran to bastok to hang my stuffed fish.
Recently I had juggled my furniture to avoid the "bad" moghancement fishing and had my mh energy swaying on the line between light and water.
I hang the fish see "Moghancement Fishing" check my key items and see ... increases odds of fishing up items" or w/e.
Fuck me. 500k to get more rusty buckets ...
So I sent it to a mule and he gets "Increases fishing skill"
Now i'm between a rock and a hard place. Problem 1: my storage is at 80 and 75 of that being rare/ex I cant off load to a mule or in my case mules are packed I would have to create a new mule. Problem 2: my storage, safe and locker are full. Solution: Dump 10 coffer keys, r/ex items for quest I have been saving for years, stock piles of crystals, and so on .. I did this bit by bit always getting the same "items" version as I went. Prior to this disaster I had only cabinets and mannequins for storage.

Whew now I'm 0/0 storage and feeling a bit sick from tossing out those items time to hang TBO.

Moghancement Fishing. I check key item ... /huzzah "skill"
Add cabinet (4 to water)
Check key item .... "items" #$@#%@#@#%@#%@#%!!!!!!!!!
First thought is any water added will throw off the type of moghancement and that means .... 1/1 storage a.k.a. I'm now effectively fucked for storage forever if I want that tiny bit of skill.

I just tossed out 40 or so not so easy to replace rare/ex items to find out I have a choice between storage and +1-3 fishing skill ><><><

Add a few mannequins back: Skill and still at powerful energy!!!!

So a few hours of dicking around and tragic loss of many good rare/ex tidbits later I'm back to 60 or so storage.

Fishing isnt expensive my ass.

Gone Fishing.

Date: Last week.
While cleaning and organizing my mules for yet another attempt at prepping myself to take some time off I stumbled on a fishing rod.
Flash back two+ years: I am a lvl 30 mnk this is my highest job and I am sitting in east ron trying to catch chevel salmon to hit 13 fishing.
Whoa. Its been a while since I tried to fish ...
So I grabbed some insect paste left over from pl'n my cooking and hit the pond in west ron. I could not for the life of me figure out how to fish with the new system so pestered corn for info made a sucessful catch or two then bam snapped my rod.

This made me angry.

So I head back to town buy up more gear and new rod paste fixin's and run out again. Corn sends me a tell about fishing in Rol for moats so off I go. 10 stacks of moats later I'm hooked (no pun intended) and off searching the web for skill up info. After I spent a good portion of my night researching fishing spots, calculating time till lu shangs if I balance moats and skill, muling excess gear (during wich I discovered I had overwellming water energy explaining my almost 1:4 rusty gear to fish ratio) so I can start my fishing day with 60 slots open minus fishing gear etc.. it hits me. I started my night trying to find a way to get down to one mule max and "retire" if not quit entirely and ended up with a new past time.

I like fishing.

Alot.

No stress, no time restrictions, no B.S., no parties, just good honest fishin'. I can watch tv between bites, roll up a cig, cruise the net w/e no worries.

So far its not been a "profitable" venture for me maybe 200k invested in gear, rods. bait and paste items. But I have made back maybe 1/4 of that in npc/guild sales. With alchemy and cooking where its at for me I can do a few things to maximise profits and I do plan on leveling cooking more to hit the sushi train someday.

Lu Shangs by my birthday is the goal, I have till mid november. As soon as I can hit some more profitable fish I will pad my moat catches with gil earned via fishing. I figure about two nights a week of pure moat fishing and two or three devoted to skill should work nicely. I will exp rdm a bit or craft/mine/farm for sanity.

Shani gave me a pearl to her and mrfrodo's LS, I am no longer alone ^^.

Fishing Skill 19.1
Lu Shangs Journal an excellent fishing guide.

FFXI Prayer

Found this while wandering the alla forums:

From AbbadonX's sig,

Square-Enix which art in Tokyo, hallowed be thy game.
Thy expansion come. Thy patches be done, in NA/EU, as it is in Japan.
Give us this day our daily merits.
And forgive us our undercuts, as we forgive those who undercut us.
And lead us not into elitism, but deliver us from n00bs.
For thine is the MMORPG, and the addiction, and the timesink, for ever and ever.
Loldrk.

A damned fine do-nothing night.

Five hours of MH broken up by a bit of Beseiged^^ 500 exp and I never left town lol.

Finaly got Vorpal Blade last night when I logged on, the day before being stuck at 199 sword skill for nearly two hours had me feeling a bit down. Ran back out of W. Aht. and grabbed "one last" lesser col. and got my points in under a minute. Ran back in and changed to rdm to go whack something with my sexy new ws and discovered my sword was capped at 199 doh!

Tried to organize my cluttered mh and carry on tell conversations for a while and gave up the cleaning after bit to go to beseiged with shani and mrfrodo. We were joined by rew, phan and skibum and beat the Lam intruders to a pulp /hurray warp taru lives!

Had a nice long chat with ski afterwards. Its not often I get into a conversation of decent length in the game anymore unless its a ten round verbal boxing match. I tend to get excited when I have someone to listen so I think I may have ran on and on more than is socialy acceptable. Ski was a bit shocked that I not had not only read his LJ but knew the addy off the top of my head.

I never did finish cleaning my MH.

Woot skill ups!

Woot skill ups!

Since I've been pretty fucking moody lately I decided to strike out on my own and skill up a bit in Kuftal Tunnel near the Cape zone.
Went as nin/rdm hoping to up my pathetic 128 sword skill and 120 dagger a little before I died of boredom. Armed with left over food, AF gear, my secksie O.Hat and some cheap ass weapons I made my way to the "Crab Shack" I was of course anon as my rather embarrasing gear set was well.. embarrasing and wanted nobody to laugh at my level+gear. I ran a few hours the first day happy to get semi-regular skill up, made it to 135 on both and logged for the night.
The next day a.k.a. last night I logged back in at the Crab Shack and started back in on the slaughter, around 148 sword and dagger my friend King popped on the "Tellphone" asking what I was up to and said he wanted to join to clear up some points on his GS as a DRK.
I had just started a fresh kill and told him as soon as it died I would head home and switch to war sub to "tank" when wham Dagger 150 Xylos learns Energy Steal.
Whats this I say, so I switch to dagger main and see that it steals mp! O.o an unstoppable nin/rdm ^^
Anyhow I hit bastok switch to /war and op back. King arrives soon and we get to killing. We cant find a decent SC with my low sword skill and his GS so we just shove lvl1 crap sc's down the crabs throats for a while. King gets a tell from a random WAR asking to join because he wants to up his ranged and dagger, hells yeah 3's a party.
A few hours of bullshitting and crab crack'n later I learned Spirits Within, the war got energysteal and slug shot I think and best of all king got his trial weapon unlock just as we are about to call it quits ^^. All in all one of the best nights playing in a long time.

Static Shocked

Fuck the static.
Still no exp, still no discussion, still a mountain of gear sitting in MH waiting to be worn.
It had potential to be sure, good set up, agreeable times etc.. Set up remains but the times went to hell nobody will show up at a set time, even after agreeing to or actualy setting up a time themselves. Have to let them know I need out, I'll offer up my whm as a sacrifice to them when they hit 63.
So I went off to pt again after sitting for a week or two or three 2k tnl. I was the worst rdm ever. No clue what the hell happened, I like to think bad dynamics through out the pt. Nice set up and all just everyone but the mnk and pld decided to do w/e the hell they wanted. SMN switched from DD to main heal to buff/support heal to nuker at random, not as needed but completely random. DRK and BLU either blew through the mp in one battle or didnt touch it for extended periods completely screwing my refresh/haste order. Nobody complained but I felt like shit afterwards.

Oh well 15k till Marine Male Gloves those and my Ocean Rope will make for a sexy rdm indeed when I get to wear my Enfeebling Torque in 4 lvls.

Ding Dong the Dark Spark is dead

/huzzah
I got my rdm af hands the other day! I am a sexy beast! Now if I could only get some exp on it ....

FFXI is becoming more of a cause for boredom and depression than a cure these days. "I Static Partied My RDM Last Month and all I Got Was This Lousy 10k EXP" reads the bumper sticker on my chocobo. It sucks. I dumped and continue to dump all my gil into a job that has received yes no lie ... 10k exp a month now >.>

It feels weird, I have not had to live hand to mouth in FFXI for a long long long time, its like losing a good job in Jeuno and being forced to work at McGalkas in the bastok slums. I have had to learn how to farm again but thats kind of fun at times competing with the level 8's for bee's in north gusty lol. My alchemy and cooking skills are paying off in a small way with a steady trickle of cash depending on my willingness to farm but gone are the days of dropping a few mil for shits and giggles. I would like to think I have invested my money for the better, other than a few e-peen items my rdm requires no gear at all till 75 as far as exp goes. Its nice to have that security. Time to be frugal tho.

Talking to the nin in my static and we may work on bst for bcnm, now this excites me. I love to play bst even though I am a lowely 23 but I tend to get sidetracked after playing and do not return for months. BCNM's mmmmmm.

My /flist is getting shorter it seems now even the ones that logged in randomly are gone, its sad. I think the dead zone on it is up to 30 or 40 now and the active maxes out at 4.

Phase One of the Great Pearl Toss of 06 is complete. I now sit lonely in SubligarMonster. It kind of feels like moving out from home the first time. Clean break, stress and guilt free since nobody seems to have noticed, or said anything to me at least. I wont say that I dont miss some people but the majority wouldnt give me the time of day in the first place.

I have a few friends that prefer to go without shell or seek refuge in others besides main so I will probably hand out a few sacks when I bump into them.

Other thoughts on my mind these days ....
I have been debating quitting the game as the northland weather picks up, so much I can get done in RL vs. gaming atm. FFXI has lost its luster for sure.
I think I will be disavowing myself from all LS's and a good portion of the members contained in the very near future there really is a bold line between friends and acquaintances as seen in the "retard and her parrot" incidents my friends friends being my acquaintances and verbal combatants make life hell for other friends and acquaintances. I dont have time for loud mouthed imature fools at least the current one shares my distaste for the last pair, seems he dislikes them even more than I do in fact our shared thoughts on the matter lead to a very nice long chat. I hear people piss an' moan about backstabbing yet find them running thier mouths, I am told things were done in a certain manner yet find this trusted person saying the exact opposite. Its like a cartoon version of any given workplace^^
The more I dwell on this crap the worse it gets.
I should have went bst from the start.
BTW I <3 rdm.
Our static finaly got together mostly by happy accident and knocked out a few exp last night. This is a good thing, I was getting worried it would never happen and since I decided to go rdm main I was begining to panic. I may ask to carry on in static as a whm though since I really want/need to push ahead as rdm.
DVSIII has been fun so far, maybe because I havent done much ... I helped on some zm's the other day as a gimpy blm. Good times. A potential run to sea may be in the works for me there o.O or eeww I dont know .. so far its a keeper.
I pop into FU here and there. That LS seems very quiet lately, very nice people tho.
My very own LS SubligarMonster got a new member lol he saw the name and asked for a pearl just to put on while afk.
XTCPenthouse is what it is. I could probably slip out unoticed far easier than the shells I am a nobody in right now. Friends vs.(or) Acquaintances. I would love to ramble on about loyalty to the cause but I'm confused about how I go about it, seems that 2 people could destroy the community dance and laugh about it and cry /hurray and stay in the "circle of trust". Torn between "loyalty" to a friend and morbid curiosity about the future. I think its settled into more of a "comfort zone" than a watering hole for friends. At least for me.
My f-list is patheticly small but very honest.
I am happy to report that my b-list has been cleared^^ Since the dynamic duo a.k.a "The fun Couple" a.k.a. "The retard and her parrot" are out of sight out of mind theres no reason to keep them there anymore /cheer.

o.O It has been a while.
Nothing new to report other than 60 rdm /huzzah for pimp hat! My push to 1k has been on hold while I decide if I should go all out into rdm for now or keep bouncing between jobs.

maun·der
2 : to wander slowly and idly

Wow. If that shit doesn’t fit me to a “T” I don’t know what does.

Current mood: Deep Blue Funk
No clue wtf I want anymore.
I have very successfully managed to land my self in nowhere land in the game and RL. Jack-of-all-trades, master of nothing.

I miss my longtime friends in the game very much.
I miss the tight band of bad-asses I used to hang with every night, I was not as close to them but our group of six accomplished many things.

Main Entry: maun·der
Pronunciation: 'mon-d&r, 'män-
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): maun·dered; maun·der·ing /-d(&-)ri[ng]/
Etymology: probably imitative
1 dialect British : GRUMBLE
2 : to wander slowly and idly
3 : to speak indistinctly or disconnectedly