Category: FFXI

After several hours in Zeruhn Mines and selling hundreds of Jack-o’-Lanterns, I now have 500,000 gil all saved up on my mule. Putting all that cash on my mule makes it easier to control my spendings and keep track of earnings.

Of that 500K, 200K was earned from selling JoLs. I’m going to stop crafting more for sale now. Since I pumped the price to 4000gil, it attracted a lot of other cooks who compete with me and offer lower prices. My stock ends up gathering dust on the shelves of the Auction House and then sent back to me [X(]. The price now fluctuates between 3000-3500. I’ll wait for the time when the Beastmen takes over the Elshimo Regions and Ogre Pumpkin (ingredient for JoL) supply drops.

100K would come from my farming experiments, in order to find out if farming materials at some places would be a viable source of income. I found it too troublesome for the amount I’m getting. Perhaps I’m just lazy.

I wasted a few Ks powerlevelling Smithing and Goldsmithing both to 18. Buying Iron Ores and Silver Ores from their respective guilds and synthing them on Firesdays. Yes, I’m lazy ; ; . But my losses are minimal.

I camped Spiny Spipi the other day. Out of 4 kills, 2 of them dropped the Mist Silk Cape [XD]. I don’t know what makes this item so special. It’s only +1 MND. Yes, I’m a lousy mage [X|]. I sold the first one off at 50K. Few days later, the price went up to 60K and I’ve put my second one up for that price.

*I just got /poked 3 times by Tuufless at Bastok Market’s fishless fountain.*

3 stacks of Fire Crystals and 4 stacks of Pickaxes made my mining runs last up to an hour or more each. I usually return with at least a Darksteel ore, 10K-12K in Bastok’s AH, on each run. I mined up 2 within 5 minutes once. Lucky~ Sold them all to Tuufless for a price of 10K. Faster this way, I would need the slots on the AH to sell off Iron and Bronze Ingots.

As for my DRK’s progress, I went on 3 EXP PTs only because I could borrow Ladyrikku’s Haubergeon. I’m now level 61 with 5000/30,000 exp. There was one PT where the Dragoon was dealing the same damage as me. Darn, I forgot to check his equipment to find out. All I know is he’s wearing his AF, and that he was dealing more damage-over-time than me made me feel ashamed.

It was also my first EXP PT at Attohwa Chasm. We fought huge antlions. EXP was 100-150 per kill and up to 180 on chains. The level range was 60-63. I was the only lv 60. I agreed since the PT leader told me those antlions don’t have high evasion.

PT setup was DRG/WAR, PLD/WAR, DRK/WAR, RDM/BLM, BLM/WHM, WHM/BLM. Despite the low exp per kill, our speed was 3000exp/hour. Not too bad. On our last chain before disbanding, I pulled an antlion which linked with another that just spawned. But this wasn’t the first link so my PT was very well prepared. RDM casted Sleep2 on the linked antlion. But halfway fighting one, a third antlion spawned on top of us, the linked antlion woke up shortly and needless to say, everyone died. I had Tottie, our last standing high level WHM in Doom LS with Raise 3, come save us.

500,000gil… 1,500,000 more to go. T_T

The one week vacation gave me enough time (though mostly wasted while looking for party) to make some progress. A quick report of what has happened:

First off, I finally hit level 60. And now have a new powerful scythe weaponskill, Guillotine. On some weak monsters, I dealt up to 10xx damage~ But damn, in EXP PTs, I dealt 1 to 3xx damage. Yes! There was one occasion Guillotine dealt 1 damage to the Peryton at Valley of Sorrow [X(]. The Ninja in the PT was laughing at me. [:(]

I seriously need a Haubergeon. Need a Haubergeon. Haubergeon.

The last EXP PT I went on, the leader had asked me to sub thief which I did, and gave him a warning that it’s my first time playing Dark Knight with a Thief subjob. But there wasn’t any chance for me to do a Sneak Attack, Trick Attack on the NIN tank. He insisted on provoking and spamming his Ninjitsu. So half the time I was frantically running around in a tight space Sneak Attacking and then Trick Attack + Guillotine on the tank. It was a fast PT, 4000exp/hour. We had no BRD or RDM. Just NIN, RNG, SAM, DRK, SMN, BLM.

I seriously need a Haubergeon. Need a Haubergeon. Haubergeon.

Managed to push up the prices of Jack-o’-Lanterns on the Jeuno AH to 4K. This gives me 20K profit per stack. [XD]

I seriously need a Haubergeon. Need a Haubergeon. Haubergeon.

I’m going to spend 100K levelling my Smithing and Goldsmithing skills. Hoping to get to 25 for both. Smithing for synthing the Iron Ores I get while mining and Goldsmithing for desynthing items for gold ingots. As of now, my Smithing is at 10 and Goldsmithing at 5.

I seriously need a Haubergeon. Need a Haubergeon. Haubergeon.

Also, I’ve finally defeated Promyvion-Holla! Amazingly easy battle if we all know what to do. Setup was 2 WAR/NIN, 1 BLM/WHM, 1 WHM/BLM and 2 RNG/NIN. With this done, I activated and completed the quest “Chasing Dreams” for the Venerer Ring with Ladyrikku. It took 5-6 hours and we ran around many places.

Rabao > Norg > Bastok > Selbina > Tavnazian Safehold > Rabao.

But the reward was worth it. Venerer Ring, with a 100-120K value, Accuracy+3. I’m aiming to get a total of Accuracy+40 before going on EXP PTs again.

I seriously need a Haubergeon. Need a Haubergeon. Haubergeon.

For this week, I levelled my Ranger job and White Mage. Ranger is an expensive job. Each shot you fire costs 5 gil. And each monster I kill, I shoot up to 10 times. White Mage can be easy if the other members in your PT performs well and the tank wears updated equipment.

Other times, I farm for Silk Threads and Beehive Chips. Sell them off for 15K and 5K respectively. My Jack-o’-Lanterns are selling very fast in Jeuno’s AH. Going for 2900-3000 a piece. I make roughly 1K profit from selling a stack. The demand is so huge I think I’ll be bring 1 or 2 of my mules to Jeuno so I could put up more JoLs into the market.

If this goes well, I could save enough money in 1 or 2 months for a Haubergeon. A very good piece of body equipment for melees. Increases strength, accuracy, attack at the expense of lowered evasion. This ultimate equipment sells for up to 2 million gil. [X|]

Over the weekend, I attained Rank 6 thanks to Joachim and Puipuipui for helping me defeat Shadow Lord. Joachim and I died the first round, second form. Puipuipui was able to drain and aspir and slowly kill Shadow Lord but alas, we ran out of time.

So Joa logged out to read up on Shadow Lord. Turns out that during the first form, when Shadow Lord uses an ability that makes him immune to physical attacks, he is actually weak to magic. Something we didn’t know. Equipped with this new knowledge, we went for a second round and defeated him with ease. No deaths too!

On Sunday, the Linkshell tried to form 2 parties for Promyvion-Dem. Congrats to PT#1 (Ladyrikku, Joachim, Triston, Puipuipui, Tatomi, Seraphx) on winning. My PT however, failed 3 attempts, largely because of me [:(]. I lost track of provoking the boss and caused the death of the other tank.

My reason at playing badly would be because it’s been a long time since I played a tank role. But giving excuses is not what a man should do. I accepted the blame quietly and apologised to the other members. I wouldn’t mind losing since I’ve completed Dem but since I’m the cause of our defeat, I feel terribly bad.

So for now I’ll be avoiding activities that involve other players except those from my Linkshell. Crafting Jack-o-Lanterns and farming for some gil now to complete the gobbiebag quests and increase my inventory space. I just soloed my Ranger job from level 1 to 7 last night just for the fun of it.

This morning, I brought my cooking skill from 47 to 48 from crafting Apple Pies. Attained Journeyman status and the option of purchasing a Chef’s Hat from the cooking guild is now open to me. I just need to rack up enough guild points for it. Currently 14K, target 70K.

Last night in Jeuno, I spotted a few players on seek with jobs that could form a standard EXP PT. Sent a tell to the BRD first because I love a BRD’s Madrigal (Increases melee accuracy). He declined telling me that he already had an invite [:(].

So nevermind, I continued to level up my woodworking skills using the wind crystals I farmed from camping Air Elementals earlier. But soon, I got a tell from a Japanese player asking if I would like to join his EXP PT. I happily agreed, he sent an invitation, and I saw the BRD in the same PT as me.

Read up a bit on Sushi dishes. They increase accuracy by 15%. I don’t know how much this is and if it’s going to be better than my Jack-o-Lanterns but I bought a stack of Tuna Sushi anyway. 15,000gil a stack [X(]. Later during the fights, I could not tell if it helped since I received the Madrigal effect from the BRD and the RDM in my PT casted Gravity every round. I think 80-90% of my hits landed and I was accumulating TP fast. There was one occasion where my Double Attack activated a few times on the Goblin we were fighting and I took hate away from the PLD.

Back on topic, Ladyrikku on the other hand wasn’t so lucky to get an invite for days. Tried forming a party but the Japanese players he asked never responded. I checked with him on the way he asked and there simply wasn’t anything that sounded wrong.

He got so frustrated from being unable to level up, I heard he did a suicide later that night. Fought a goobue in the Sanctuary of Zi’Tah without any weapons or armor equipped and died.

Earlier this morning while browsing through a few KillingIfrit forum threads, I came along this little screenshot of a Japanese player’s search comments.

RMT refers to Real Money Trade, Inflation refers to the increase in Auction House prices, MPK refers to Monster Player Kill, which is using monsters to kill another player. Steal probably means a breach of trust.

Enlightening yet so sad. Well, from what I know of the culture of Japanese players, this may be true. Back in Lineage 2, while on the Japanese Open Beta, everyone was friendly and helpful. There were only rare occasions of a few troublemakers but it wasn’t bad.

When the Japanese Open Beta ended, I tried out the North American servers using a friend’s account. There were Player Killers almost everyday and I have to watch my back every now and then in case a PKer decides to sneak up on me. I soon stopped playing because it wasn’t fun anymore.

And now I’m reminded of the Jackass movies, where a bunch of American people do really weird yet funny stuff. Some of them, at the inconvenience of others. There was a scene where one American dude would suddenly strip and dance in his glittering underwear in an electronics store. When the security guards came to shove him out, he would resist and start disturbing them.

Culture clash is what’s happening across all of FFXI’s servers. A lot of NAs have pissed off the JPs (and me) to a point where they put JP PT only in their search comments. Singaporeans get dragged down because we use the NA client.

I guess having the line “tadano ajiajin” in my search comments helped a little to differentiate myself from the NAs. “PT {Long Time)” helped too. The first phrase says “simple asian” and the second one just means I can stay in a PT for a long time.