Snowy Day Tales

[thessalian]

Since I have some time to kill before I ring work and say "Not coming in - nothing's moving on my end due to snow" (which is actually true - Northern Line suspended at Finchley Central, they say there's good service on the buses but I can only imagine that they're not actually moving much owing to the traffic resultant from everybody saying, "Congestion charge be damned; my car's the only way I'm getting into work today"), I will post an actual update talking about how I'm doing, my last Vana'diel excursion and other items of note.

As previously stated, the new job is good, as far as it goes. There's not a whole lot to do this week, but apparently they're not always this quiet, which is a good thing because frankly, if there's this little work normally, they aren't going to actually need me for long, if at all. However, they still seem keen to keep me on a temp-to-perm basis, which is good. The work's fairly simple so far, and I'm sure they'll stick me on the phones and things later on in the proceedings, but for now I'm happy sticking with the typing as a whole. And it's classified as 'medicolegal', which is a whole new avenue for me. No wonder I get paid the big money, so to speak.

Went onto FFXI on Tuesday in the hopes of taking weaselbitch out for the damselfly worm and magicked skull she needs to unlock subjobs (and, incidentally, that I need as part of this whole "getting to Aht Urhgan" thing). I'd been hoping we could get a high-level WHM PL off our LS to help out, and we lucked out. Gjoll, who's the only person I've ever seen make Galka WHM work, had just finished his quest for his Ninja AF gear and was willing to help out. So off we went to the Dunes, and we chained some Damselflies and got the items we needed with no real trouble.

Now, I expected us to camp Valkurm for Ghouls to get the magicked skulls, so I was a little surprised when we padded off to Konschtat Highlands. I thought that we were doing this because it was sunrise and getting weaselbitch a Dem crystal would be a good way to kill time, actually. And Dem Crag was our first port of call, so I kept that particular misconception going for quite some time, wondering if now might be a good time to camp Stray Mary, a NM I need to kill for some quest I'm doing. And, as if talking of sheep had summoned it, a Tremor Ram popped up pretty much right in front of us. Now, a Tremor Ram is pretty much the Konschtat version of a Battering Ram - big, ugly source of all woolly evil. But I wanted to kill it, on the off chance that it, like the Battering Ram, dropped the Lanolin Cube I need for yet another quest. So I threw Stone II at it. And I was doing a really good job of killing it, too - some of my spell damage is prodigious, after all. And then weaselbitch, bless her heart, decides to help me kill it.

...And, in fact, gets the killing blow. I took it for hundreds of points of damage and how does it die? A lvl 18 WAR sticking it with a sword. Muh. What made it worse was that, when the drops came down, who got all the drops? Not the person who'd done all those points of damage but the person who'd struck the killing blow. In short, she pretty much accidentally bogarted my kill and drops because she "hadn't thought [she] would do it any damage". She was nice enough to give me the drops, though; something about, "You did all the work anyway". It wouldn't have bothered me on the whole if she'd kept them, to be honest - it was the principle anyway.

weaselbitch then had a problem getting hold of a Dem crystal because a bunch of arseholes were sitting right in the middle of the tele-crystal, not moving, which makes it hard to select the crystal itself with all the people in the way. So apparently, we were heading somewhere that wasn't the Dunes for this skull, and off we pootled. And we saw a couple of Poltergeists hanging around the crag - they tend to do that with craglike areas. Fucking Arcana - the number of times that I've died or nearly died at the hands of Dancing Weapons in Qufim while trying to meet a party... So I decided I'd pick on the offender's little brothers (not, mind you, that I haven't met my end at the hands of a Konschtat Poltergeist before, because I have). Area of Effect spell. Two of them on me at once. Eventually, dead Poltergeists. And no drops. Feh.

And that's when I found out where we were going for the magicked skull - Gusgen Mines. I've never been to Gusgen. I don't want to go back for a very long time. First thing that happened when I was in there was seeing a Bandersnatch. Next thing that happened was a Ghoul aggroing me. I mean, me. Killed it no problem, but then there were more of them. Eventually Gjoll had to cast Sneak on us both to get us to where we needed to be. And then there were Bogys. I hate those things... On the whole, Gusgen Mines = DEATH.

Eventually, Gjoll told us to wait where we were and not move (these undead aggro two things - sound and low HP) and went off to kill things - he's a lvl 51 WHM, he can get away with it. And we stood there, weaselbitch and I, chatting of this and that ... and then a Wendigo (jumped-up Ghoul, in short), turned up and for no apparent reason started kicking weaselbitch's Elvaan arse. I tried to save her, but only managed to extend the arse-kicking and get it applied to myself as well. Both of us died, and Gjoll told us to "Stay there; don't move."

>> Satomi: We're dead! Where're we gonna go? Windurst?

Gjoll came back and Raised us, and then we started heading to pastures safer - since the Raise Effect had us reading at full HP (even if full HP was only 76 HP), and we were silent due to Sneak, we caught no aggro ... until my Raise Effect wore off when I was halfway up a flight of stairs with not one but two Ghouls at the top of it. Needless to say, my arse got kicked quite comprehensively. Again. And one of the Ghouls dropped a magicked skull, and weaselbitch and I lotted for it.

>> Aegnor's lot for the magicked skull: 963
>> Satomi's lot for the magicked skull: 92

...So I had to die for it and didn't come anywhere near winning it in the lot. Arse. We wound up sitting next to a NPC and waiting while Gjoll went down into the depths of Gusgen Mines and killed something like 30 Ghouls for my magicked skull. Someday, weaselbitch and I will return the favour and help someone else do this. Probably dodgyhoodoo.

So I escorted weaselbitch back to Selbina so that she could drop off her items with the NPC and unlock her subjobs, and then Warped back to my homepoint. Shame I forgot that I'd set my homepoint in fucking Jeuno... So now I'm stuck in a Jeuno MH, waiting to be arsed to get on a chocobo or telebeg my way to Sandy. I have a chocobo to feed.

I think I'm done rambling for awhile. Now I call work - their phones cut to an emergency service before 8:30 am.

Comments

[weaselbitch.livejournal.com]

Erm... yeah, sorry about the ram :-)