First *actual* post.

I had today off school, leaving most of the day to adventure in Vana'diel.

I got a good bit done. When I first logged in in Aht Urhgan Whitegate, I saw a Level 6 Troll Mercenaries Besieged advancing on the city. Good, I thought to myself, free Experience and Standing. You see, Besieged is an event where a marauding beastman army attacks Aht Urhgan to attempt to take control of the "Astral Candescence", an artifact of great power. Participants are rewarded with Imperial Standing and Experience Points proportional to the work they did. Anyhow, I changed area into Al Zahbi, where the battles take place...

...and found myself immediately set back in Whitegate. What the...? I thought, and attempted to enter Al Zahbi once more, to the same results. I then remembered something I had read about Al Zahbi having a set upper limit on players in area. I performed "/sea AlZahbi" (which shows the names and number of players in an area, in this case, Al Zahbi), which showed 710 players; 10 over the limit. Realizing that not many would leave, I decided to head out to Windurst to finish some business I had there.

I first went by the Auction House to pick up a pair of Bone Chips and a pinch of Bomb Ash that I needed to complete an important quest; not in itself, but sompleteing it and the next quest allow access to a quest that gives the Scroll of Warp II, an important spell for Black Mage. I bought the two Bone Chips, but after seeing how expensive the Bomb Ash was, I decided to go kill the monsters for it -- and the Bomb Arms for the next quest -- myself, in the Inner Horutoto Ruins.

The Bomb Ash, and, inadvertently, a spare three Bone Chips, came easily, but I couldn't find the Bomb Arms on the low-level Balloons I was fighting, so I decided to move in and up to Will-o'-the-Wisps to see if they had a higher droprate.

Fifteen minutes later, having gone all the way through the area and only having enountered one Will, I found myself in the Wendigo room. Why not kill a couple, I thought, they may drop those answer sheets. You see, Wendigos drop a stack of test answer sheets they stole from Windurst's School of Magic. The School pays handsomely for returned sheets, once per adventurer, with a Scroll of Aspir: another useful Black Mage spell, which drains the foe's magic power and gives it to the user. I had already collected my scroll, so I decided to sell my sheets on the Jeuno Auction House and reap the twenty thousand Gil ransom most players would pay for them. I was using the portal to leave the room, and then to Escape myself out, when I rn across Aisur, Vivimeister, and Bushtaru - two Linkshell friends and a person they were helping, respectively - opening the door into that room, to farm some themselves. I stuck around and helped two of the three get theirs, before leaving for the Grand Duchy of Jeuno to sell my own test answer sheets. I was amazed to see that they had sold within five minutes, and decided to head back there once I had finished with Shantotto. I used the Gil to buy my much-needed Scroll of Fire II, as well as a Fire Spirit Pact and Ice Spirit Pact for my Summoner job.

I bought the needed Bomb Arms and Revival Tree Root for the second quest, and then returned to WIndurst and completed both quests, as well as the Mission 5-1 I had "completed" the other day. That had been a fun fight - it had a fifteen-minute time limit, and we had finished in 14:42. Anyhow, I went back to Lady Shantotto and recieved the third and final quest in the series, "Curses, Foiled A-Golem!?", which required me to go out to Beaucedine Glacier and Fei'Yin, two very distant - and fairly high-level - areas. Sheemie, another Linkshell member, offered to help, and we met up in Aht Urhgan Whitegate to find a Teleport-Vahzl, a spell that takes the user's party to Xarcabard's Telepoint Crystal.

Our teleport-er was Akashea, a name I recognized form somewhere, but I couldn't remember quite where. She teleported us on a donation basis, but wouldn't take mine. In fact, she even offered to help us do the quest, which of course, we accepted. We completed the quest almost without incident... Only two things went wrong: Sheemie was killed by a Shadow Dragon he was fighting for its Dragon Scales drop, and we went to the wrong tower in Beaucedine Glacier, costing us around five minutes.

All's well that ends well, though. Akashea gave me a Teleport-Mea to Tahrongi Canyon near Windurst, and from there I rode a rental chocobo to the city itself. I gave Shantotto the information she had asked for, and she gave me my Scroll of Warp II. I then returned to the Horutoto Ruins, defeated a few more Wendigos for another pile of answer sheets, and put them up in Jeuno again for 20k. Having nothing better to do, I put up my search comment and invite flag, bought a stack of twelve Melon Pies, and waited for an invite... and waited... and waited. I waited longer than Black Mages usually have to, but it was worth it: a Thief named Fredderico sent me an invite to a Crawler's Nest party. I set out, and got there while they were fighting (and finishing) a Worker Crawler. The party went very well: our Ninja tank kept hate very well as long as I didn't overnuke, which I did several times. We had a set Skillchain, something that didn't seem to happen very often: the Dark Knight's Power Slash to Fredderico's Sneak Attack (bonus damage from behind) + Trick Attack (makes monster think someone else performed the attack if done from behind) + Viper Bite, making a Distortion skillchain, which the Dark Knight would Magic Burst (bonus magic damage from casting right after a Skillchain) Blizzard off of, while I did the same with Water II. Everyone levelled up at least once, myself to Level 40. (Which allows me to start the quest for my Artifact Weapon, the Casting Wand; It's useless in itself, but I need to get it to perform the other three Artifact quests later on, at Level 50.) Our Bard was awesome: He performed Etudes (single-target, single-stat-enhancing songs) in both myself and the Red Mage without having to be asked. He also kept us Balladed (Ballad gradually restores MP), and the melees Madrigal'd and Minuet'd (accuracy and attack, respectively.) with no qualms. He must have been the hardest-worked member of the group, but he didn't complain even once. Thanks, Bakerboy.

Eventually, though, our Red Mage had to leave, so Fredderico had me use my new Warp II spell to send him out to Whitegate to change jobs to Ranger, while our new Red Mage, Kampingkarl, arrived. We had to switch our Exp camp, also, because our current one just wasn't giving us enough Experience to be worthwhile. After checking and noticing that the Nest Beetle camp was open, we relocated there, after a fair bit of confusion and disorientation. Once we got there, our first fight went well - I noticed my MP was lower after that fight than it was after the previous ones, but Nest Beetles are tougher than Worker Crawlers, so I wasn't surprised. Our second fight, though, wasn't so great: The Dark Knight died halfway in, and there was no White Mage nearby to Raise him. He homepointed and left the party. Knowing I had to log off soon, I left also, thanking the party and Warping back to Whitegate.

I noted to my Linkshell that I could now perform the Casting Wand quest, called "The Three Magi", then used the Al Zahbi "Warp Taru" Shihu-Danhu to teleport to Jeuno. I checked the Auction House and saw that my second set of answer sheets had not yet sold (though Aisur's set had), then logged out for the night.

First post

Not much to say yet, I suppose, save an introduction for those of you who do not know me.

I'm Ironside of Windurst, thirty-ninth level Hume Black Mage, and I'm horrible at introducing myself, if you can't tell. Anyhow, with my staff and spells, there's... well, still a heck of a lot that can stop me. >_>;

I'm still trying to get the hang of this, so, as they say, "watch this space."