Partying Hard or Hardly Partying?

Everybody who's familiar with FFXI says it - Valkurm Dunes are 'teh suxxorz'. Still, today was very ... educational.

( Cut for length and TEH SUXXORZ )

Total time on FFXI? 8-plus hours. Exp earned? About 200. I could have done better soloing in Tahrongi! Still, lessons learned, friends made, more missions ... more damn dunes... Hopefully less waste-of-fucking-time. At least now I know that not all other people in FFXI are morons.

Happy Deathgnomes Have No Stories

Woke up, didn't really know how I was feeling. Got up, moved around briefly, discovered that the answer is "like crap". Hurray for gastric horror, I don't think. I'm not even up for being out of bed yet, which bites. Well, at least I have the laptop.

Boredom leads me to overplanning even something as simple as being stuck at home all day. I figure I will stay in bed awhile reading. Then I need to go out for caffeine and stock up on smokes while I'm at it. Then I will force something that vaguely resembles food down my neck - either osuimono and something vegetable-like or leek and potato soup with toast, depending on how brave I'm feeling. Then I'll see if I'm up to the challenge of sitting upright in a chair for a few hours so I can go claim Rank 2 for the deathgnome. I need goals and things or I'm going to gnaw my own limbs off with boredom.

On the topic of FFXI, been having some nice chats with Kyr (same Kyr who sometimes replies to my deathgnome-related posts) about the trials of Taru-black-magedom ... and the Dunes ... and so on and so forth. It's nice to talk to people about this who actually know what I'm talking about. Not that I mind telling the stories and whatnot to people who've never touched FFXI before, but ... well, it's hard to explain but it's a nice feeling to have that story trade-off. You know, rather than "Jeez, that sounds really great / awful / stupid / confusing / painful (delete as appropriate)", I get something more like, "Oh yeah; I had a party like that! (insert tale of joy / woe / idiocy here)". Somehow that's more gratifying. At least it proves that I do not simply live for the sound of my own voice.

On the whole, I suppose I don't mind it overly when stupid things happen to me or to the deathgnome or any other character I play. Okay, I loathe being sick, because that's no fun however you slice it, but ... well, for example, last night's Doom-Dune run. I met a whole bunch of new people, exchanged witty banter with them - mainly on the subject of who would win in a PVP battle between me and the Elvaan red mage, plus requisite short jokes (I am officially 'Sat' or 'midget' to this lot) - and came out with a better understanding of the horror stories about the Dunes and stories of my own to tell.

Therapy? has it right. Happy people have no stories.

Levelling the Land

Rank 2 and lvl 17 in one day! Woo-hoo! Approximately the same amount of time spent as I did in the Dunes, and yet got ten times the EXP. *shrug* I guess that's the way it goes sometimes. As for Rank 2, I was unaware that upping your rank gets you paid off in gil. I was very pleasantly surprised when it turned out that, as well as upping my rank, I became 1000 gil richer on top of it all.

Unfortunately, I've now run into a problem. Now, some of the little shit in Tahrongi Canyon doesn't earn me EXP anymore (so I can forget about Sarutabaruta altogether, I think). Which means searching out the harder little ones (religious use of /check; I don't often bother) and hunting up some harder stuff if I'm soloing. Which meant Akbabas. Eep. But when I hit lvl 17, I wanted a nice buffer zone of EXP before I logged out for the night, so I decided that fortune favours the brave, stood on a cliff top, picked out an Akbaba, Poisoned it ... and was attacked by three of the buggers. Remember awhile back I was talking about how my poor Deathgnome disappeared in a hail of damage cloud and feathers until she finally dropped dead last time this happened?

Heh heh. I didn't have Stonega back then. Okay, fine, so I made it out with only 13 HP to spare. But I did make it out, much richer in EXP and with a few nice drops to call my own. Between that and the wonderous drops I got out of various other things in Tahrongi over the course of the day, I am going to find myself a very rich little Deathgnome when I have the energy to go tromping around Windurst selling the stuff I got, and I may even get some crafts skills out of preparing some of it (Cooking; hare meat and bird egg). Anyway, after that's all done and my well-planted garden is ready for harvesting, I'll have to think up a better way to get EXP. That probably means more partying in the bloody Dunes. The two guys on my LS spent the day in Qufim, and I have no idea how to get there. It's looking like Valkurm again. Surely no merciful god would lay that penance upon me...

I forced down dinner. I'm seriously regretting it now. I'm going to go have a shower and then veg briefly. Depending on how I feel, it may be an earlier night than I'd hoped for, but it seems ridiculous to me having an early night when I spent a good eleven hours asleep today, in total. *sigh*