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.

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 ...

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^^