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:

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.