Dances with Dingbats

I have designs on levelling up the Deathgnome to level 16. I've got less than a thousand points to go, so logged out just outside the warp point into Tahrongi Canyon earlier this afternoon. (YES! I CAN SURVIVE TAHRONGI CANYON! I AM LIKE UNTO A TINY GOD! But only a very tiny god because Yagudo are tougher in there and a Yagudo Piper kicked my arse last night.) I am taking a break from this, however, because I am having a [GM]Dave moment. Essentially, I just met the biggest moron I have experienced in game to date.

So I'm in Tahrongi Canyon. Cute little Deathgnome with her cute little blonde wiggytails and her cute little staff and her cute little spells of doom beating, cutting and frying the living shit out of Strolling Saplings, Pygmiaoi and Canyon Rarabs. The XP is flowing and I'm generally happy with things. And then this ... individual walks up. A Taru in armour - this means either a Red Mage (okay, I can kind of get that) or a Warrior of some description. Warrior. Taru. These concepts do not mix. Seriously, with the HP Taru get and the low Strength stat, you really want to use that Int and the extra MP when you're playing a Taru, and that means mages. Anyway, it's possible that maybe he's a high-level something else levelling up Warrior, I dunno. Not my business. I'm busy. I'm levelling up, damnit. Then I get a tell (private communication from other player):

Moron>> can u help me

...I have no response to that, except to say:

Satomi>> With what?

And then go back to battering Strolling Saplings etc. Until, eventually, I get another tell.

Moron>> answer me

Oh for gods' sake. I try everything. I try to explain that I can't help him until I know what he wants help with and eventually, he says:

Moron>> i need to get there alive can u

Yes, that is a direct quote. I have many questions at this point (like, to quote [GM]Dave, would be, "Are you retarded?") but I settle for:

Satomi>> Get where?

He never did tell me. I told him I was soloing and he just kept standing there, inches away from me, watching me kill things, waiting. Getting on my nerves. Eventually I told him he might be better off finding someone else, and he says:

Moron>> ur the only one hear speaks english

It took everything I had not to say "Apparently so, given your tells". Instead, I pointed him at the handy-dandy translator programme, suggested he use it, informed him that this was as far as I could get without dying horribly (see note on Yagudo in Tahrongi above) and he finally - FINALLY - went away. Now admittedly, I might have been able to get farther into Tahrongi Canyon with a party, no matter how small, but I've been reading Bannable Offenses for long enough to know what happens to people who party with idiots. I will not party with idiots. Might make me elitist, but life's too short.

Quit While You're Ahead

Okay, so maybe not so much with the level 16 tonight.

So first I'm in Tahrongi and it's night-time. And there's a Ghost. I check - it says, "You appear evenly matched". So I figure I'll give it a shot. EVENLY MATCHED MY ARSE! 60 HP down on my initial Fire spell and the fucking thing's life bar went down about 2mm. It pounded my poor little Taru head. So now I'm back in Windurst Woods (my HP) and down many, many XP.

So I check my newly planted little herbs and suchlike (which are growing reasonably well) and trek all the way back to Tahrongi. I merrily kill things and yet again, I am less than 1000 XP away from levelling up. Huzzah! I break for the Lost rerun (we missed it Tuesday) and then headed back to kill things in the name of XP. Got up to 3150 - less than 500 XP to go before level 16, huzzah!

And I'm in a bit of a hurry so I figure, "Hey, I know! I'll go hunt up some Akbabas!"

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, an Akbaba is sort of a 2.0 version of a Carrion Crow, which in turn is an ugly buzzard-looking thing that cruises around making horrible noises. I had previously killed a singular Akbaba and, while it was fuck-hard, I managed it without dying and got a buttload of XP for it. So I figured to hunt down a few of those things, resting between each, and presto! Level 16 by dinner!

Or possibly not. You see, what I hadn't realised at the time is that, if you attack an Akbaba when many other Akbabas are in the immediate vicinity, they all descend upon you like ... well, a swarm of vultures. So I hit one with Fire, got its status bar a third of the way down ... and then another one hit me from behind. By the time I finally died, there were three of the fucking things hitting me all at once. I couldn't see my freakin' deathgnome through the veritable curtain of feathers and damage cloud as they all hit me. Whack whack whackity-whack, we all fall down.

So I'm back in Windurst Woods again. I check my status. On the bright side, I'm still less than a thousand XP from levelling up. However, it's not by much.

When I level up a bit more, I'm going to exterminate those evil fucking birds.

Oh, and in other news, the drugs have ceased to work. I am back to horrific stomach cramps. I haven't decided whether I want to go back to the doctor tomorrow or whether I want to just keep trying and see how I go.