A Camping Excursion
Feb. 14th, 2007 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianSo I needed a lanolin cube for this one quest in Jeuno. Which, because it's non-AH-sellable, means that I was obliged to do something I never thought I'd bother with - I had to camp a mob. Specifically, I had to camp the Battering Ram in La Theine Plateau. You know, the one that splattered me all over a half-acre of La Theine the first time I encountered it because I misjudged my spellcasting. The one I've whipped the tar out of the two other times I've encountered it. So ... yeah. Now I had to go looking for the damn thing.
Now, the problem with the Battering Ram is that it's one step away from a NM. Which means it's fucking rare, spawns only occasionally and farming it for a specific drop involves camping. Camping involves hanging around at its (two, in this case) spawn points and waiting for the fucking thing to spawn. This involves a very large amount of screaming boredom.
Now, of course, I rode in on chocobo and started pattering around the place, looking for the stupid sheep. And I found a couple of other people - Hume male and Mithra who was high-level and obviously farming (as suggested by her total lack of armour, thus leaving her more inventory space for drops) - and thought, "Shit; they're after the stupid sheep too". But I persevered. And I found the stupid sheep not 20 seconds later. Unfortunately, its name soon went purple as the Hume male ran up and started kicking the shit out of it. FUCK. Another ten minutes and I'll probably have to compete with the Mithra as well.
And then the Mithra (by name of Gothicangel, which gave me the heebie-jeebies - how much more emo does a FFXI handle get?) sends me a tell.
>> Gothicangel: rams?
<< Satomi: Yeah.
>> Gothicangel: what're you after?
<< Satomi: Lanolin cube.
And I figured that was it. Until...
Gothicangel invites you to join her party.
...Okaaaaaaaay...
Turns out that Gothicangel has been farming the Battering Ram for days and all she wants are the ram horns because she's levelling Bonecraft. So she's perfectly happy to let me have the lanolin cube when it drops (and the ram hides, which she's just been throwing away to keep her inventory space free for horns) so long as I help her camp the other spawn point and give her any ram horns that drop from dead Battering Rams. So ... okay. We're a party of two. Fine, I get no XP because she's a lvl 70 Dark Knight (who's subbing Thief for this farming excursion so she can use Flee to get to spawn points faster), but at least we can cover both spawn points and work together quite easily.
The first one that spawns pops right in front of me. And it aggros me. It won't aggro a lvl 70 but it will aggro a lvl 30. This is not a big deal because a) I can still kick its arse and b) it means that claim is a whole lot easier to stake. I didn't kill it, though - because the lvl 70 DRK Mithra turned up and damn near one-shotted the fucking thing. It dropped a few bits of hide, one horn, and no damn lanolin cube. Oh well. Next!
Actually, I didn't see the next one. Gothicangel had it pretty well locked at the other spawn point, and I couldn't even get anywhere near it before she offed it. Still, it dropped the cube and a lot more hides (no horns, which was a bit of a pity), and Gothicangel said she'd be fine solo from here on out. So we wished each other luck and went our separate ways. So ... you know, not all arseholes on FFXI.
In a benevolent frame of mind, I decided to hike over to San d'Oria from my spot in La Theine. And Kyr's right - there's nothing like casting Cure and Protect and stuff on lower level players for giving you the warm fuzzies. I really must lvl WHM again at some point. I suppose once I've done my rank quests. That's if anyone on my LS ever shows up again so they can (hopefully) help me. Seriously - I'm not doing Castle FeatheryDeath by myself.
Bonus, though - my mog storage now holds 60 items (or stacks of items). Now all I have to do is rack up the gil for a mahogany bed so I can do the second storage space-granting quest. Seeing as I have 8 ram hides and they go for 800-1000 gil apiece at the Windurst AH (the only selection of zones that haven't got sheep, y'see), maybe that won't take so long as all that. However, it's another reason to get those damn rank quests out of the way - 5k and 10k for ranks 4 and 5 respectively. Plus I may ask the gang if they're into doing those high-gil earning quests with me. You know - ones that involve going to Gusgen Mines and Maze of Shakrami and all those places of massive amounts of death. I'm not the only one who's trying for the gil and the fame...
I swear, too much to do in that game and not much of it I can do solo. I need to farm more leeches for that stupid, stupid ruby (apparently the best places to find them are in the high-level zones like Maze of Shakrami, though I could apparently farm the fucking thing in Dangruf Wadi if I wanted to) so I can start the Summoner quest (and isn't that going to be fun, chasing weather conditions all over fucking Vana'diel). I really want to unlock Dragoon as well. I'd like to get my rank up and I'd also like to level at some point, though that's going to be tricky without an escort to Altepa. But I suppose no good things come to those who take no risks. So I'll do that after I'm done with my bunch of vegetable seeds - at least gardening = good gil ... if you remember to check your plants at least once a day... And while I'm waiting for that, maybe I can corner some of my LS-mates and ask them for help with rank quests.
Okay, still bored. Now what do I do?
Now, the problem with the Battering Ram is that it's one step away from a NM. Which means it's fucking rare, spawns only occasionally and farming it for a specific drop involves camping. Camping involves hanging around at its (two, in this case) spawn points and waiting for the fucking thing to spawn. This involves a very large amount of screaming boredom.
Now, of course, I rode in on chocobo and started pattering around the place, looking for the stupid sheep. And I found a couple of other people - Hume male and Mithra who was high-level and obviously farming (as suggested by her total lack of armour, thus leaving her more inventory space for drops) - and thought, "Shit; they're after the stupid sheep too". But I persevered. And I found the stupid sheep not 20 seconds later. Unfortunately, its name soon went purple as the Hume male ran up and started kicking the shit out of it. FUCK. Another ten minutes and I'll probably have to compete with the Mithra as well.
And then the Mithra (by name of Gothicangel, which gave me the heebie-jeebies - how much more emo does a FFXI handle get?) sends me a tell.
>> Gothicangel: rams?
<< Satomi: Yeah.
>> Gothicangel: what're you after?
<< Satomi: Lanolin cube.
And I figured that was it. Until...
Gothicangel invites you to join her party.
...Okaaaaaaaay...
Turns out that Gothicangel has been farming the Battering Ram for days and all she wants are the ram horns because she's levelling Bonecraft. So she's perfectly happy to let me have the lanolin cube when it drops (and the ram hides, which she's just been throwing away to keep her inventory space free for horns) so long as I help her camp the other spawn point and give her any ram horns that drop from dead Battering Rams. So ... okay. We're a party of two. Fine, I get no XP because she's a lvl 70 Dark Knight (who's subbing Thief for this farming excursion so she can use Flee to get to spawn points faster), but at least we can cover both spawn points and work together quite easily.
The first one that spawns pops right in front of me. And it aggros me. It won't aggro a lvl 70 but it will aggro a lvl 30. This is not a big deal because a) I can still kick its arse and b) it means that claim is a whole lot easier to stake. I didn't kill it, though - because the lvl 70 DRK Mithra turned up and damn near one-shotted the fucking thing. It dropped a few bits of hide, one horn, and no damn lanolin cube. Oh well. Next!
Actually, I didn't see the next one. Gothicangel had it pretty well locked at the other spawn point, and I couldn't even get anywhere near it before she offed it. Still, it dropped the cube and a lot more hides (no horns, which was a bit of a pity), and Gothicangel said she'd be fine solo from here on out. So we wished each other luck and went our separate ways. So ... you know, not all arseholes on FFXI.
In a benevolent frame of mind, I decided to hike over to San d'Oria from my spot in La Theine. And Kyr's right - there's nothing like casting Cure and Protect and stuff on lower level players for giving you the warm fuzzies. I really must lvl WHM again at some point. I suppose once I've done my rank quests. That's if anyone on my LS ever shows up again so they can (hopefully) help me. Seriously - I'm not doing Castle FeatheryDeath by myself.
Bonus, though - my mog storage now holds 60 items (or stacks of items). Now all I have to do is rack up the gil for a mahogany bed so I can do the second storage space-granting quest. Seeing as I have 8 ram hides and they go for 800-1000 gil apiece at the Windurst AH (the only selection of zones that haven't got sheep, y'see), maybe that won't take so long as all that. However, it's another reason to get those damn rank quests out of the way - 5k and 10k for ranks 4 and 5 respectively. Plus I may ask the gang if they're into doing those high-gil earning quests with me. You know - ones that involve going to Gusgen Mines and Maze of Shakrami and all those places of massive amounts of death. I'm not the only one who's trying for the gil and the fame...
I swear, too much to do in that game and not much of it I can do solo. I need to farm more leeches for that stupid, stupid ruby (apparently the best places to find them are in the high-level zones like Maze of Shakrami, though I could apparently farm the fucking thing in Dangruf Wadi if I wanted to) so I can start the Summoner quest (and isn't that going to be fun, chasing weather conditions all over fucking Vana'diel). I really want to unlock Dragoon as well. I'd like to get my rank up and I'd also like to level at some point, though that's going to be tricky without an escort to Altepa. But I suppose no good things come to those who take no risks. So I'll do that after I'm done with my bunch of vegetable seeds - at least gardening = good gil ... if you remember to check your plants at least once a day... And while I'm waiting for that, maybe I can corner some of my LS-mates and ask them for help with rank quests.
Okay, still bored. Now what do I do?