We do not walk alone - in search of subjobs

Damselfly Worm. Crab Apron. Magicked Skull. 2 of these things are, theoretically, easy to get while exping.

Theoretically.

We had very little success with getting drops during our weekly exp sessions, so while slowly working our way through the flies near VE's spawn area, Sai offered up a good-natured shout to ask if anyone got drops they didn't want, to let us know. Unfortunately, this was not quite as well received by a group that were camping VE.

After showing Dralan this blog, he apologized to us and his party (including Saskea) helped us with getting a couple more worms. Apparently, at first glance our little group seems to look like gilsellers. I'm not sure why this is, since we have actual gear, no powerleveler, and names that don't look like we smashed our faces into the keyboard. Now granted, we do all have related names - we all have names of dinosaurs - but they aren't things like "Applea" "Appleb" and the like.

Crab aprons proved marginally easier to get - I think we got all 6 during regular exp sessions, though we didn't get our last ones until we were level 20. We tried to do the same with the skulls, but the necessity of roaming all over the zone to find ghouls during the nighttime hours was yielding poor results. Of course this means we head to the best place to get skulls - Gusgen Mines.

Our first attempt did not go very well, despite 4xMNK + bones. Maybe trying to exp on bones at level 14 wasn't the best idea... If Almoo hadn't happened along then and raised us, I think that entire night would have been wasted.

We were hanging out just outside the zone line and discussing what to do next when someone got aggro and we died again. ; ; We had another taru happen past and raise us, then cure and buff us. ^_^ Hinazuki was a little BLM that /cheered us on and then went on his way.

So scarred by this experience were we that we did not venture back into the mines until we were level 18. Sai had leveled her THF to 15 while farming on the side, and she pulled it out to help get us some more drops. Having a THF was quite helpful, though since the THF was a few levels below the rest of us, she died a bit more than the rest of us. Once again, we had wonderful luck in finding a helpful person to come raise our unfortunate dead.

Roxanos was a PLD in the 60s that not only raised Sai, but hung around and helped us farm up the rest of our needed skulls - making the whole process much faster and less painful. With all the help we got from Dralan, Saskea, Almoo, Hinazuki, and Roxanos, we got to see this lovely sight much sooner than expected:

Valkurm? No, this is hell with sand. And subjobs.

At 75, in merit parties, the big, exciting way to form a party is 1 healer + 1 support + 4 DDs. I've been in those parties, and 20k/hr+ is amazing.

Would you believe that this sort of set-up does not work quite as well at level 12? I mean, seriously, what noobs decided that 4xMNK + 1 WHM + 1 RDM was a good idea - particularly when the 2 mages are both Elvaan and have about as much combined MP as you can squeeze out of a Tarutaru's shoe?

Oh. Right.

Well, it can't be that bad, right? They're MNKs, they hit hard and they have Boost - that should keep the mobs off the mages, right? We have what, Cure II?

...sigh.

Someone want to tell me how the taru survived that?

Oh yeah, as Geni tells us all the time, "I'm too cute to die!"

We would have skipped this special hell altogether if it weren't for the fact that we needed to eventually get subjobs. As a party of 6 noobs, we thought it best to go the Crab Apron / Damselfly Worm / Magicked Skull route - we had 4 MNKs, and the thought of trying to take down enough bogies or banshees to get Bloody Robes for everyone was a bone-chilling thought. Next time, I'll tell you more about our adventures in acquiring subjobs and the players helpful and not that we encountered along the way.

It's not the level, it's what you do with it

This game would be pretty boring if all you had to do was gain experience points and level up. I like exping with friends as much as anyone (and sometime I will post some of my favorite exchanges from party chat), but I need more than that to be fulfilled in my gaming experience. I need storylines - quests, missions, battlefields!

Since we started exping in Zeruhn, we were able to get the first Bastok mission out of the way early on. That left a quick trip to Dangruf Wadi, and then some farming of fetich parts in the Palborough Mines.

Those fetich parts that seem to drop off every other kill when you are just jerking around in Palborough on your way to the BCNM area? They don't much like to drop when you want them. Or maybe they just don't drop well for low level parties who are farming exclusively for them. I don't know.

I re-learned a valuable lesson while farming for those fetich parts though. Rarabs have a 36 mile link radius, and they will all rip your face off if you attack just one of them.

Ow.

I think we farmed for 2 weeks (that is, 2 static sessions - 1 per week) before we finally got all the pieces for everyone. But we prevailed, and ultimately we all saw this:

Being low level meant that we had the chance to do some quests that we might never have completed on our main characters. Do you remember that quest The Gustaberg Tour? You have to be level 5 or lower to complete the quest, and in a full party of other level 5 or lower players. I have had this quest in my log on my main for years, I've never completed it, and at this point I likely never will. Walking from town to the NPC you need, getting the full party of people together, making sure everyone is the right level - it is all too much hassle for a paltry sum of 500 gil.

But not if you are actually level 5, on a new character, and scraping to get every single gil you can! We didn't even need to go out of our way - on our way to Konschtat to exp one night, we found the NPC and collected our gil. It is little things like that quest, and experiencing parts of the game we may have missed the first time through that I am enjoying so much with this experiment.

We do not walk alone - running to San d'Oria

As promised, I will tell you about some of the other players we have encountered in our travels around our adopted server of Lakshmi. Some have been helpful in ways that were probably trivial to them, but made us extraordinarily grateful for the help in this experiment (which is somewhat harder at times than we anticipated!). Others have been less pleasant to encounter, yet still memorable in their own way - and others have simply given us a giggle or three as we pass.

Sometime around level 10 on our first jobs, Hama, Sai, Tyr, and I got it into our heads that we wanted to run to San d'Oria. From Bastok. On foot, of course. This wasn't completely a wild-hare of an idea - you may not remember, but making gil as a newbie character is not so easy. We could spend ages running around town, doing little quests for 200 gil, or trying to farm (when we didn't really want to level outside of static then), or we could find another way. That way happened to be fishing.

The major fishers in our group are actually Hama and Sai, and both were talking about getting Lu Shang's rods. And in Sai's case, she not only started fishing, she started cooking, as well!

Lu Shang's means San d'Oria, and Fishing/Cooking both mean Windurst. So one night when we could not exp for one reason or another, Hama, Sai, and I set out for San d'Oria. We didn't get very far before Tyr said she'd come along too.

Knowing your way through a lot Vana'diel purely on sight makes life much easier when you are too poor to buy all the maps! We got to La Theine before we started reflexively checking for the map - not that it did any good!

We followed Bortz most of the way through La Theine, and watched as he killed a Battering Ram. We never talked to him, but we felt a little safer for following in his shadow for a few minutes. I ran into Bortz again during the Halloween event - it was exciting to realize that I recognized a name on this server!

We made it to San d'Oria, and I don't think we even died - despite some unfortunate lag in Valkurm during a sandstorm and gob aggro just before escaping those dreaded sands.

Early days in the Zeruhn Mines

It has been almost a year since the crazy idea to try being a noob on another server began - why don't I go back to the beginning and show you some of our earliest adventures?

Those days when the only spell a WHM has is Cure 1 and RDMs are stuck with nothing but Dia. With 2 mages and 4 MNKs, and 2 whole spells among them, what does a party do? Everyone melees, of course!

Of course, being level 1 on completely new characters means that you have 0 skill in everything. We could kill everything well enough, but it meant resting after every 1-2 mobs, and sitting on TP for a long time until someone got to level 10 skill.

Thankfully, low levels go by quickly! We got to see the following scene repeatedly, until we were level 5 or 6, when deaths and exp loss created some gaps in the party's exp.

We were living in our own little self-contained world up to this point. Sure, we'd see others in town, but since were leveling down in the mines and not really venturing out and around into the wider reaches of Vana'diel, we didn't really interact. After level 5, we started to leave town and accomplish some goals outside. Next time I will tell you about some of the people we have encountered on our adopted server. Some have been good, so not so good - but all of them have made an impression!

Meet your guide on this trip, Avalonia

This is Eirenne, first and always a PLD - though she spends time supporting her comrades as WHM and BRD these days, as well. Eir started endgame quite early, venturing into Dynamis at a mere level 66, though she had 2 75s before she jumped the rest of the way into HL activities. In between HNMs and HL events, Eir spends most of her time running from one static party to another, and occasionally working on cooking.

Alternately, you can find Eir living a different sort of life as the Elvaan girl, Avalonia. For now, Ava spends her time seeing how fast she can pull hate with BLM nukes, but will eventually be the one in The Hat as the party's RDM.

Introducing Tyrannia

This Elvaan lady started out as a melee RDM, and that instinct to do harm to the enemy never faded, as she is now also DRK, THF, and COR. The latest addition to the list of 70+ jobs is PLD, giving Mels at least 1 of each support, DD, and tank jobs. These days Mels can be found bazaaring chocobo cards in Windurst when she isn't traipsing around Vana'diel to put TH4 on some big bad monster or to sleepga some horde of angry mobs, or else to shoot something in the face.

In that alternative reality, Mels can be found as the slightly shorter hume girl Tyrannia, presently a WAR and previously a MNK, but is eventually destined to be a DRG - with a wyvern named Rex.

Presenting Saichania

 

This is Sheathe, a sexy hume BRD who has been known to moonlight as a WHM and PLD, and now RNG as well. When not shooting away vast amounts of gil on RNG, or perpetually deleveling on BRD, Sheathe can be found enjoying all kinds of endgame activities from Sky to Salvage, and occasionally doing off-the-wall things like duo sleep-nuking skeletons on WHM in KRT for fun and merits.

In our alternate reality, this jack-of-all-trades is a fearless hume girl called Saichania, who rushes into battle without a second thought. For now, Sai has been a MNK and is now a WAR, but eventually she will be our suicidal DRK. She has the damage and dying down already - well on the way to being a successful career DRK!

Please welcome Dimetrodon

This hume male started out DRK, and then took SAM, PLD, and WAR to 75 as well - but he has never forgotten his first love. A quintessential DD, Ellion recently finished upgrading the relic great sword, Ragnarok. While he is an excellent tank and will even agree to go as PLD to certain events, with the completion of Ragnarok, he is most often seen on DRK these days. Ell's endgame experience includes Sky, Sea, Einherjar, Dynamis (uh, duh?), Limbus, Salvage, and ground kings.

In another reality, this heavy-hitting hume can be found healing his party as the pimpin' Elvaan WHM, Dimetrodon. Indeed, Dime really is the pimp of the group - of the 6 members of the MoG Squad, he is the only male character! He started out as RDM, and is now bringing WHM up through the ranks. In the final party setup, Dime will be providing the musical inspiration to the rest of us as a BRD.

May I present Hamalocephale

Meet Imitarate. A versatile Hume male, Imit started as a RDM, then took DRG to 75. These days Imit can be found soloing on his PLD, destroying Nyzul Isle floors with flying creatures on DRG, or refusing to cast Haste on anyone but himself on RDM. ^.~ One of these days Imit might finish off his MNK and DRK. Imit is another who has done just about everything that he can in the game, but Summerfest in Windurst will always have a special meaning to him.

In the alternate reality that we sometimes exist in, Imit can be found chasing his own tail as the Mithra Hamalocephale. Up to now Hama has been a MNK, but will be WAR until we reach 40. At that point Hama becomes the main healer of the party as a lithesome feline DNC.

Allow me to introduce Ingenia

 

This is Phlux. This Elvaan male started out a RDM, and is an excellent one. In addition to RDM, he has BLM, WAR, and THF at 75, with DRK and WHM coming up through the ranks quickly. Phlux has probably done just about everything one can do in FFXI - all manner of endgame activities, missions, quests, and battlefields, and he has the gear to show for it.

In an alternate reality, this handsome Elvaan man is an adorable Tarutaru female named Ingenia. We call her Ing, or sometimes Geni, and for the time being she is a MNK. In our final party setup, Ingenia will be our PLD tank -- because Tarutaru female PLDs are among the cutest in the game.

An experiment in choosing to be noobs

It all started as a crazy idea, formed in a half-dream state as I was falling asleep one night.

I have been playing Final Fantasy XI for about 2 years now. I've got 2 jobs at 75, I have a decent grasp of most of the game, and I've experienced a big chunk of the things you can do. Boy a lot has changed - I remember being a total noob who didn't even know how to talk to people or move around. I wonder what it would be like to be a noob again - like if I was starting now, but with all the knowledge I have about the game?

I mulled the idea over for a few days before bringing it up to Melsara. Mels is one of my favorite RDMs (and DRK, THF, COR) and has been playing the game longer than I have. He laughed, and then decided the idea sounded fun. We started talking about finding an alternate server to make mules on, so that we could duo. But the more we talked about it, the more we both thought it would be even more fun if we had a full party of 6 to play with.

We approached my in-game twin, Sheathe, first. The idea was greeted with much enthusiasm, and Sheathe came firmly onboard. Next up, I talked to two of my other favorite RDMs, Imitarate and Phlux. Imit first said no, that he was going to be too busy - but that didn't last long. ^_^ "What the hell? I'm in." was the answer after about 5 minutes. Phlux thought about it for a couple of minutes, then agreed that it would be fun.

5 down, 1 member to go. We spent a week or so discussing who else would be a good fit for our group, and fit all of our requirements - 1-2 jobs at 75 on Gilgamesh, a good grasp of the overall game dynamics, and someone who is known and on friendly terms with everyone else in the group. Then it hit me - Ellion! A real life friend of mine, and someone that everyone else knew and liked. I proposed the idea, and he immediately agreed.

With the party filled out, thus was born the Mules of Gilgamesh!