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Monumental
The Warp II quest begins in Windurst, so after spending about 40 minutes not being picked up for a party as a white mage -- what the heck is up with that -- I set out to try and tag one of the monuments outside of Jeuno (in Sauromugue Champaign) to bring clay back to Selbina.

This turned out to be the most valuable one, with a 6000 gil reward, but also was out of reach. After almost perishing trying to reach it alongside Finch, Finch set out for Windurst and I caught another chocobo to join him.

How I Escaped
What happened out in Sauromugue Champaign? An evil weapon saw me after I hopped off the chocobo to try and climb up to the monument. I trie d to warp out, it failed, and I pulled the rip cord, used my 2-hour Manafont, and warped again. I made it out due to Manafont's benefit of uninterruptible spells. I had a viral infection, which I safely waited out with lots of mana to heal myself. Then I went and got another chocobo to meet up with Finch in Windurst.

West Sarutabaruta
Once in Windurst I went after the West Saruta. monument and found that it, too was hidden. The guide book I have describes the map location, but not exactly how to reach the monument if it's not in plain sight. I'm surprised it is hidden, given that the East Saruta. monument is in plain sight, but I'll eventually find out how to get it from someplace on the web.

Fame
Once in Windurst I found that I have to do more quests to build fame before I can start the Warp II quest. This isn't altogether unwelcome -- the enjoyable, detailed culture and lore of the game is what comes out in these quests, distracting one from the xp grind.

Questing basically involves me reading my guide book, buying things from the auction house, and maybe going out and smacking down low-level monsters. I have some gil in reserve, about 15,000 after buying velvet and tiger leather for the GobbieBag 3 quest in Jeuno (the gold ingot and painite is way out of my price range right now), so small expenses of items aren't a problem right now.

What To Farm
While waiting for the clock to turn over to the next day in Vana'Diel so I could continue a quest, I found myself gathering required items from the auction house. A quick look at the guide book confirmed what I needed, but also listed what monsters to get them from and where they could be found nearby.

This set off a light bulb in my head. I finally knew how to make money in Windurst.

Dead Zone
Windurst is for all intents and purposes a dead zone. Very few players congregate there, and the auction house is almost always empty.

The city is also annoyingly large and spread out. It can take a long time to cross one of its zones to get to another section. Why they did this is really beyond me.

Very little is sold there, and not much tends to sell there. Or so I thought.

The key is to sell items directly related to quests there, and nothing more.

More populous cities like Bastok, Sandoria, and the incredibly packed Jeuno have very large markets where established players will entertain a variety of activities there. They'll want a variety of items -- different crystals, components, and the like. The dead city of Windurst seems only to have an appetite for quest-related items.

So when the time comes to earn gil there, that's what I'll try to do. I'll use the guide book to find the certain spots to get quest-related items and then turn the excess in to the auction house.

Salesmunn has had a letter published on Gamespy's onlife column. Check out my post about it here.

I had forgotten about that. It was absolutely hilarious.

I was thinking, "Ah, here comes Sisom in his fancy new robe! Hope he can maneuver around that hole easily.......hope he sees that hole at all! NO!"

Then *POOF* Sisom disappears out of sight. Our party new instantly what had happened when they saw me holler,

"SISOM NO!!"

Pretty damn funny.

Did you get to see the Fallen Evacuee in the Citadel? They made me laugh.

Meet the New Boss...
It's always fun and exciting when you enter a new area or dungeon for the first time, and seeking out the Garlaige Citadel in Sauromugue Champaign on the back of a chocobo was fun. We were on our way to new adventure to level again. Always an exciting experience, and after leaving the jungles of Kazham -- far too early in my opinion, but with no groups to pick us up we had no choice -- we figured a new area would have more variety and be more fun.

...Worse Than The Old Boss
The first areas in the Citadel are very tight corridors, and they're populated by linking bats and aggro beetles. Add trains of bats being dragged past you as someone flees and you're toast.

It's more claustrophobic than Kazham was, and the enemies are far tougher.

It'll probably be much easier to just fight out in Sauromugue Champaign, and that's what Salesmunn said they ended up doing after I logged out.

Rant: Partying in Specific Places
One of the annoying things about this MMOG, and probably MMOGs in general is that almost everyone interested in earning XP does almost exactly the same thing. That is, when they get to level X, they all run to the same place to continue as a full party to earn similar levels of XP.

It seems like all the other zones that still have monsters that will yield XP for a group -- even a small group to keep it from diluting too far -- are ignored.

This is what's happening to me right now as a level 32 Black Mage. Almost nobody is still partying in Kazham around my level for reasons I don't understand. The last party I was with was doing very well, earning considerable amounts of XP, and they were all my level, but still this wasn't enough for them. They wanted to move on when we were rolling along doing very well. They did end up staying, but since then I've been unable to find another party in the Kazham area.

There are plenty of areas around Jeuno that could provide some hunting opportunities -- far better opportunities than Kazham. Kazham is claustrophobic and goblins often ruin things in short order. Roaming out in Rolanberry Fields or cleaning up in Passhow Marshlands, maybe even picking out certain mobs in Batalia Downs could all be productive.

That and it would break up staring at the jungle all the time.

I suppose it could just be laziness. People want tight areas packed with mobs, even if that means getting leveled by a train of goblins someone drags past while fleeing in terror.

Farmer Sisom
So last night I walked back to Konschtat Highlands and farmed some bees (honey, beehive chips I can turn into wax) and saplings (seeds, treant bulbs) to hopefully earn some cash to upgrade my very out of date gear. As an example, I'm waring a level 12 robe. My goal is to get the "Seer's" gear which is level 29.

Farming is low stress and mildly satisfying when others aren't trying to farm too, even if I have to run around a lot to scoop up my foes.

I was also getting some petty cash from the Quadavs in the area, as well as leeching mana off of the Amber and Onyx (spellcasting) Quadavs in the process. At one point I put away my staff and waited another ten seconds so I could leech even more mana off of an Amber before striking the killing blow. Now that's farming.

I plan to farm until another XP opportunity arises.

Charge it
I did get to clean a lightning elemental's clock and got Lightning Clusters. I didn't know where they came from before then. But I hadn't really asked or looked online, either.

Boo
I also got to slay a few poltergeists, which didn't seem to drop anything, so I avoided them along with the mist lizards which also seem to drop few things for me.

Additional 15 minute download update for FFXI today. Seems like it effects the Chains of Promathia versions only, but interesting nonetheless.

I'm paraphrasing. They're not "sweatshops" per se, like manufacturing sweat shops. They were called them by some reporter. The people that work there do so voluntariliy, and they're obviously more tech savvy than the kids in the nike shops.

I would probably have been more accurate if I'd just called them MMOG currency and item factories. They don't abuse their employees, it's just a mechanical job to them. They probably play their own characters at home since they know the game inside out and probably memorize the manuals they get at work for getting the most in-game cash from sheer repetition.

IGE
I'm glad they hooked you up so quickly. I wonder if this is the one I read about a while ago which has massive Korean "sweatshops" of kids they pay minimum wages or low wages to farm special items and money nonstop in a wide variety of MMOGs around the clock.

When you're a white mage, everybody knows your name.
After last night's session playing as a White Mage with Finch we want to Sandoria and did some shopping. I was able to pick up almost all of my white mage spells I'd been missing while leveling up, including Silence, a monster-dropped scroll I'd been holding in my safe for some time. Silence will finally allow me to muzzle mage monsters.

Being a WHM means you're never at a loss for a party in busy locations. Not ten seconds after I accidentally separated from my party by hitting the wrong button I had two messages inviting me to join other parties. It's nice to be wanted.

I'm thinking of bringing my lv17 WHM up to lv20 before switching over to my BLM as primary, but my Summoner is languishing at lv12 or 13, I forget which.

I'm enjoying being a healer and defender, but all it takes is a few unlucky hits and a party who can't provoke a monster off of me at the right moment and I'm knocked out. Healing attracts a lot of creature hate, which means the provoking classes have to be quick on the draw or their lifeline -- the white mage -- could be severed.

I tend to attract less attention when I'm a BLM, and even when I do I can pull hit points off a monster using Drain or draw mana off of them using Aspir.

Top three
As of now my favorite jobs in order are:
1. Black mage
2. White mage
3. Summoner
4. Red mage

Ok so a threw a fourth in there. The red mage's ability to use weapons and some armor made it a fun class for me to solo to level 7, but it's not really a useful subjob when the white mage subjob is much more helpful to party members.

The summoner job isn't really appealing to me yet because I only have some basic elementals in addition to the mascot summon Carbuncle. Everyone tells me that it really kicks into high gear when you quest for and win the major summon scrolls. But those scrolls are attached to level-capped quests. That said, the summoner gets ridiculous amounts of Magic Points when you already get a lot as a TaruTaru. Which is good because even the most basic summon draws magic points while it exists.

The BLM is still my favorite because he can contribute to a party as a "nuker", striking monsters with a variety of elemental energies. As a WHM subjob I can heal in a pinch and remove poison, paralysis, and other things (once I reach the high enough BLM level so the subjob catches up). Also the BLM is pretty good at farming low-level monsters for raw materials with his area-of-effect elemental spells. It's awfully fun to slap five or six enemies with a group effect fire spell and have half or 3/4 of them fall dead on the spot, giving up the goods.

PlayOnline had a network error while it was downloading. I'm heading over to Burnout 3.

I'm still undecided on whether I will purchase the Chains of Promathia expansion pack later this month. If I don't purchase the expansion, I won't renew my subscription past this month.

It's become incredibly tedious to accomplish anything in FFXI lately. I'm currently traveling from one Auction House to the next, hoping someone will be selling a lvl 12 Ninjitsu scroll under 100,000 gil. It seems high level players are buying up all the scrolls (which formerly sold for 10,000) and selling them for 100,000 gil from Jeuno. I earned this scroll from a quest 2 weeks ago, when I was level 3 or 4 Ninja and sold it for 20,000 gil (double the going rate), I actually never thought anyone would even buy it for that price. I then wisely used that money to buy every Ninjitsu scroll I will ever need, so I would never have to return to Norg (which is horribly out of the way).

My sales at auction have practically ceased to exist. Items I place up for sale are continually sitting there for days before finally getting sent back to me unsold. This is incredibly frustrating, especially because you are forced to stay in that region if you want to take that item OFF auction to lower a price or sell something of higher or lower value. I can't access my sale items from a different region's auction house thus I will be tortured for days, having all my sale slots filled. Lucky for me, the items are priced at 5 cents over the going rate and will never sell.

There is a waterfall in North Gustaberg near Bastok that is involved in one of the Bastok quests. You are charged with filling a canteen or bucket of some sort with water from the falls. The odd thing is, if you travel to N.Gustaberg you can see the waterfall on the far eastern side of the zone, and it falls into a deep ravine that crosses the zone east to west. You can't really reach the waterfall itself to fill the vessel from there.

You can get there by traveling through the Dangruf Wadi via a passage hidden on the map. You end up in the ravine itself and must cross it to reach the falls. I did this quest a couple of weeks ago with Finch and the help of SBrightblade, a red mage who is one of our linkshell's fearless leaders.

Before I knew where the passage was in the Dangruf Wadi, I set out alone to find it. To my delight once I entered the wadi, everything in there was weak enough not to "aggro" and attack me.

Only after I headed farther north, deeper into the wadi, did I encounter one or two goblins that would come after me if I got too close. I didn't really know how much farther I'd have to go to reach my goal. The guide page I was reading from the web wasn't very specific. So I pressed onwards.

I managed to sneak past a few goblins without the benefit of potions or oils and stumbled on a goblin around a bend. While I tried quickly did a "check" on his difficulty level, he cast Silence on me.

As a mage, Silence means I can't cast spells. This is basically a death sentence, leaving me to pick at my foe with my dagger. The goblin started digging into me as best he could as an "easy" monster, and I waited for the Silence to expire.

Realizing this could be the end, I activated a Raise Scroll that I had purchased before leaving Bastok. (By trading in Conquest Points, one can aquire one-use scrolls that give you mage abilities. You simply activate the scroll to use the spell.) I activated the Raise Scroll, which, if I died in this fight, would ask me if I wanted to be raised on the spot. I might gain back a little bit of the lost XP, but I wouldn't have to walk all the way back here to keep exploring ahead. A little halo appeared in my HUD showing that the scroll had been activated and was waiting to see what the outcome of the fight would be.

Another bad part about being a spellcaster in a melee situation is that getting hit will often interrupt spell casting. This means that not only do I take damage, but I can't finish the spell and deal damage that time around.

Silence wore off when I was about two or three hits away from being killed by the goblin. I first tried to heal myself, which was interrupted by the goblin hitting me. My last hope was to warp away. Warp has a long cast time, so once I started it, I was hopeful the goblin would miss me and let me get away.

I started casting Warp. I watched the percentage bar fill up, knowing that if I passed 80% it wouldn't have been interrupted. At 40% I was hit by the goblin, and once it reached 85% my mood brightened. This was it! I was getting out of there! The purple energy portal started to blossom and the goblin hit one more time, taking me down to zero health.

Right away the Raise Scroll asked its question: Raise now? Yes/No. In the split second I saw the question, the warp spell completed and I was gone. The "Loading..." message appeared.

Sisom the black mage appeared beside the Bastok Mines home point, and immediately fell to the ground dead with a THUMP. No Revive Scroll question was waiting for an answer, and I had the excellent luck to have landed dead in the middle of a city where no monster could possibly have killed me. How humiliating.

Thankfully a passing white mage noticed me and raised me from the dead.

Death by Poltergeist
While hunting for Animal Glue and Dahlmel Hides for a quest out in Tahrongi Canyon, I rather excitedly came upon a poltergeist who was "Easy Prey" when Checked. I attacked and was smacked down horribly by the beast which leeched MP with each physical hit. The two-pronged attack was far too effective, and I died.

I ended up going to the Auction House to get those instead.

Yet More Quests
Last night after completing maybe three or four more Windurst quests in total, I turned in some quest items for repeatable quests and figured I'd drag myself over to make sure I was still unable to get the Aspir scroll quest, Making The Grade in Windurst Waters.

Risk
Convinced I'd just be told I wasn't well known enough, I spoke to the NPC and, lo and behold, he gave me the quest.

I quickly looked up where I had to get the Test Answers he wanted, and when I found them in the auction house for about 6,000 gil (annoyingly 2,000 gil higher than the previous one sold), I snapped them up and ran back instead of doing the quest that required 3 mages to stand on three stones to open the door: a red a white and a black. Where was I going to find those?

Book Deficiency
The BradyGames guide book has a definite shortcoming -- it doesn't say what level you should probably be to take on the monsters within. Of course this varies by class, e.g. warriors will have an easy time of killing most things that mages would run from, but a general idea would be nice.

Reward
My reward after a couple more conversations across the maps was the Aspir scroll. I immediately absorbed it and laughed an evil laugh across the linkshell channel. Which was promptly ignored by others online.

In Practice
I immediately ran out into the Sarutabaruta area to try out my new spell. To my surprise it only really worked on creatures that could be spellcasters. Goblins really gave me nothing, even though they can cast Dia. Yagudo casters tended to net me 15 or so MP per cast (25 total given a 10 MP cost).

I expected a bigger draw of MP, but my dark magic skill level directly affects it just as dark magic affects Drain, the HP leeching skill.

I took the plunge and bought the BradyGames book for FFXI, Spring 2004 edition. After SBrightblade -- who I think is the leader of our linkshell group in the game, if not him then Sheildbreaker (misspelling intentional) -- told me he only had to go online once yet to find more information on a quest listed in it, I realized that when I need to build fame by doing quests, I can't afford to spend lots of time printing them out on my PC, then throwing out the paper when I'm done.

It's still slow going completing quests, but at least I can be sure I'll take care of all of them to earn the most fame and get the big quest I really need to take on -- the quest for the Aspir scroll.

As a level 25 Black Mage, I can now learn the Aspir spell. Aspir steals mana from an enemy, more than it takes to cast. This coupled with Drain to steal health means I can have less downtime in large groups by siphoning off mana and health from foes being taken down by the melee fighters.

The auction houses have Aspir going for ridiculous sums of money. I thought the 19,000 or so I spent on Drain was a big deal. In Windurst, where the Aspir quest is given, it goes for over 25,000 gil. But the price of Aspir at Jeuno was only about 15,000, probably beacause some creature folks fight around there drops the scroll and they don't need it. Still I prefer to try and get it via the quest, which might be difficult anyway, and in order to get the quest, I have to get famous enough for the quest giver to know my character's name.

Fame is earned by completing quests for a given city. You don't get a number, but research shows that the bards that can tell you how famous you are have set phrases based on "fame level" the game keeps track of.

You get fame by completing quests for a city. Some depend on others, so you need to basically talk to every NPC in there to get a quest, then go do it, or use an online guide like allakhazam.com or a paper book to do it more quickly and know who to go to.

Each of the cities has a fame level, and the worst of them is Jeuno, which has no fame level of its own. It uses the lowest fame level of the other three (Windurst, Bastok, and San D'Oria) as its fame level to determine whether you can get certian quests.

Allakhazam has a lot of advantages to the paper book. Hyperlinked databases of items, people, and quests are great, but for advancement and crafting, the paper book has lots of information in one place that doesn't require lots of trips away from the TV to read up.

Of course the book is static and doesn't change once printed, unlike the game which has additions made, but I know that before I run out of content and quests to do in the book, they'll have added even more before the next edition is printed in the fall.