Partying Hard or Hardly Partying?
Oct. 9th, 2006 02:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianEverybody who's familiar with FFXI says it - Valkurm Dunes are 'teh suxxorz'. Still, today was very ... educational.
To start: I went in and put up my party flag for that whole Horutoto Ruins crap. The first guy I found who was anywhere near me in job level ... well, his name was 'Sephirotaru', so you can imagine I looked upon this individual with some concern. However, he was still all that was available, so I swallowed my misgivings and poked him. I tried to explain my issues with the giant beetles and so forth, and he told me, after some toing and froing, that I was doing something wrong. So we met up outside the entrance to East Sarutabaruta, we linked up, and off we went. He also gave me a linkshell pearl, so now I'm a part of his linkshell. These are basically groups of people who band together to play, chat, whatever - sort of a clan. I'm supposed to register but now I don't remember what the linkshell's called. So it'll have to wait 'til tomorrow. Later today. Whatever. Anyway, it turned out that I had the wrong hidden doorway and didn't have to go through those horrible cavey levels at all, which meant I could have soloed the whole thing if I'd only known. Oh well. Live and learn. We ripped through and earned gil and drops (but no exp) and I got my rank points and all was good.
Heartened, I decided to do the second rank mission solo. Did it, too - even got some exp for it, as a few of the little rooms I had to go through had Balloons in them (they're called Balloons, they look like someone carved a giant tomato to look like a Jack o' Lantern and then blew it up, and they're hard to kill). All the while I was chatting to the linkshell (hereafter, the LS) and as I was going to complete my mission and mentally gearing up for the trip to Giddeus for the third (and rank 2), some guy on my LS said, "Why don't you come do the Dunes with me?" Now, I'd heard horror stories about the Dunes, but I was tempted by the lure of new surroundings and the possibility of a buttload of exp, so I said "Why not?", completed my mission and met this guy (Elvaan RDM; who picks an Elvaan if they want to be any kind of mage? Their mana points and INT are incredibly sucky) in the entrance to Tahrongi Canyon. After slipping through areas that I solo in and then cutting through Buburimu Peninsula so we didn't catch aggro from things we couldn't handle, we hit Mhaura and got on the ferry.
The ferry got boarded by skeletal pirates mid-trip. "Parlay?" Not really. Now, if you're going to warn someone about not killing the pirates because they're way too high-level for you, it might be wise to do it before the pirates board the ship. Pirates kicked my arse in two hits. Thankfully the ferry was full of, among other things, high-level white mages who could and did Raise me so I didn't lose more HP than was necessary and have to go all the way back to Windurst. 'Cos that would have sucked. After that, we got to Selbina, set our home points there and headed off for the dreaded dunes.
First thing we had to do was get a larger party. We tried. Oh, did we try. We waited and waited for suitable people to come along as we watched people bigger and badder than we were killing Brutal Sheep (huge, homicidal sheep bent on revenge for every sweater on the planet) and Damselflies (big bad bugs. BIG BAD BUGS). We got a couple of nibbles and then they had to log out before we'd killed so much as one Sand Hare. So we wandered off in search of new blood again. New blood was getting its arse kicked so we went to save the new blood. Then we camped a spot but it got overrun by another party, more people had to leave our party, we still couldn't find a damn healer anywhere, our tank disconnected mid-battle, our puller kept pulling in the mobs for us to fight even though we had no tank - and then the puller started bitching about my casting too many spells and "catching aggro" when, if you have no tank, the only way to deal is to kill things fast... Then there was the level 15 Black Mage with the starting-point level one armour and weaponry. I got killed by a Hill Lizard and nearly offed by a Goblin Gambler (don't ask me why it's a Gambler), and eventually we decided, "Screw this; we're going to go kill things in Tahrongi". We met up with somebody who was also exping and had come all the way to Selbina to meet us (and had to go back again, poor shmuck) ... and then the party leader discovered an alternate RL committment and had to log out.
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.
To start: I went in and put up my party flag for that whole Horutoto Ruins crap. The first guy I found who was anywhere near me in job level ... well, his name was 'Sephirotaru', so you can imagine I looked upon this individual with some concern. However, he was still all that was available, so I swallowed my misgivings and poked him. I tried to explain my issues with the giant beetles and so forth, and he told me, after some toing and froing, that I was doing something wrong. So we met up outside the entrance to East Sarutabaruta, we linked up, and off we went. He also gave me a linkshell pearl, so now I'm a part of his linkshell. These are basically groups of people who band together to play, chat, whatever - sort of a clan. I'm supposed to register but now I don't remember what the linkshell's called. So it'll have to wait 'til tomorrow. Later today. Whatever. Anyway, it turned out that I had the wrong hidden doorway and didn't have to go through those horrible cavey levels at all, which meant I could have soloed the whole thing if I'd only known. Oh well. Live and learn. We ripped through and earned gil and drops (but no exp) and I got my rank points and all was good.
Heartened, I decided to do the second rank mission solo. Did it, too - even got some exp for it, as a few of the little rooms I had to go through had Balloons in them (they're called Balloons, they look like someone carved a giant tomato to look like a Jack o' Lantern and then blew it up, and they're hard to kill). All the while I was chatting to the linkshell (hereafter, the LS) and as I was going to complete my mission and mentally gearing up for the trip to Giddeus for the third (and rank 2), some guy on my LS said, "Why don't you come do the Dunes with me?" Now, I'd heard horror stories about the Dunes, but I was tempted by the lure of new surroundings and the possibility of a buttload of exp, so I said "Why not?", completed my mission and met this guy (Elvaan RDM; who picks an Elvaan if they want to be any kind of mage? Their mana points and INT are incredibly sucky) in the entrance to Tahrongi Canyon. After slipping through areas that I solo in and then cutting through Buburimu Peninsula so we didn't catch aggro from things we couldn't handle, we hit Mhaura and got on the ferry.
The ferry got boarded by skeletal pirates mid-trip. "Parlay?" Not really. Now, if you're going to warn someone about not killing the pirates because they're way too high-level for you, it might be wise to do it before the pirates board the ship. Pirates kicked my arse in two hits. Thankfully the ferry was full of, among other things, high-level white mages who could and did Raise me so I didn't lose more HP than was necessary and have to go all the way back to Windurst. 'Cos that would have sucked. After that, we got to Selbina, set our home points there and headed off for the dreaded dunes.
First thing we had to do was get a larger party. We tried. Oh, did we try. We waited and waited for suitable people to come along as we watched people bigger and badder than we were killing Brutal Sheep (huge, homicidal sheep bent on revenge for every sweater on the planet) and Damselflies (big bad bugs. BIG BAD BUGS). We got a couple of nibbles and then they had to log out before we'd killed so much as one Sand Hare. So we wandered off in search of new blood again. New blood was getting its arse kicked so we went to save the new blood. Then we camped a spot but it got overrun by another party, more people had to leave our party, we still couldn't find a damn healer anywhere, our tank disconnected mid-battle, our puller kept pulling in the mobs for us to fight even though we had no tank - and then the puller started bitching about my casting too many spells and "catching aggro" when, if you have no tank, the only way to deal is to kill things fast... Then there was the level 15 Black Mage with the starting-point level one armour and weaponry. I got killed by a Hill Lizard and nearly offed by a Goblin Gambler (don't ask me why it's a Gambler), and eventually we decided, "Screw this; we're going to go kill things in Tahrongi". We met up with somebody who was also exping and had come all the way to Selbina to meet us (and had to go back again, poor shmuck) ... and then the party leader discovered an alternate RL committment and had to log out.
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.