What goes around...

It had been kinda slow on the paladin front the last couple of weeks. I couldn't get a party for the life of me, and my decent ammount of gil I had stashed away was slowly decreasing. When asked by a fellow lower level Paladin on Wednesday for assistance getting her Gluttony Sword, I agreed, remembering the kindness that another Paladin had shown me (and by that I mean gave me one to borrow... >_>).

So, heading down into the Necropolis, seven of us gathered around the necessary spawn points and I chose the Skull of Lust, since it was one of the easier ones to get to. After killing all the skulls, I was rewarded with a new title of "Skullcrusher" and amazingly the Gluttony Sword dropped along with the Wrath Tabar axe. We decided to let our PLD friend off and just give her the sword, and the rest of us would split the axe for a nice 100K each.
It felt nice to help someone out for a change, but I was still kinda depressed about being forever stuck at Paladin72. A few days went by, and on Friday I had had enough and decided to try to go farm to kill the time, and possibly get some crappy experience points. As a joke I put my seek flag up since it had been of no help the past several days, and amazingly about 5 minutes later I get a party invite to Bibiki Bay. A few hours later I was just a shy 800 exp until 73 when the party dispanded. A Chocobo run from Sandy to Bastok, a few mobs, and a Crawler's Nest Escort quest later, I was Paladin 73! The long road to engame armor was over!

I danced around in my new Adaman armor for a little bit, and after deciding that the Adaman feet really do suck, I decided to go to bed. On Saturday I was abducted by my girlfriend, and went over to her house. Seeing as how I had just hit 73 it dawned on me that I could now lot on gear in sky. Asking politely, I was allowed to attend sky on the condition that a backrub was to be given at a later date. (Ironically, she wanted to do Beiseiged later that night, and forgot about her backrub... >.<).

Anyway, we had two new Paladins show up to sky, and being higher level than I was, they were told to tank above me. I still got some tanking in, tanking three of the seven fights of the day, and was lucky enough to get a Martial Hands Abj. drop! Once sky was over I ran to Sandy and traded in my recently purchased cursed armor and the piece of paper to recieve my Koenig Schaller:

I also tried to get my hands on the M. Hands Abj. drop, the W. Feet Abj drop, and the W. Legs Abj. drop, but alas none of them dropped. Still, I was very happy to finally have a piece of Sky gear.

A few days later, my dynamis shell finally decided to do a Dynamis-San d'Oria run that I could make. Now, not only did I need this last run to have all four initial cities cleared, but I also wanted the AF2 drop. As luck would have it, the very first drop was the Valor Gauntlets, the very item I had wanted for quite some time:

In addition, we got the clear, meaning I have now completed the first four dynamis cities. I can now head up to the Northlands for more fun (and death?)

All in all, it was a good week. Hopefully things will keep up like this, and before long I will have all the armor I want for PLD and can move on to my other ingame projects. (^.^)v

Adventurer Appreciation

Looks like the moogles are up to it again. FFXI is currently experiencing the Adventurer Appreciation Campaign. Essentially, moogles appear in the starting cities, and based on your stats they give you a free gift. I decided to wait a few days and was rewarded with this little beauty:

It's a cute little addition to my Mog House, and I placed it with care over my Christmas Trees (which are out all year long dammit!) and it looks cute. Best part is, it didn't even mess up my Moghancement San d'Orian Conquest. /hurray

One of the other benefits of this event is that adventurers get to see their current hidden "stats". Apparently the moogles keep tabs on these often forgotten pieces of information. For those of you who are curious, my numbers came up as follows:

Just a quick thought though; I am a Paladin, and I Blood-Warp a great deal. Also, I have only reported six fools of FFXI in my career, which really shocked me. Maybe I am learning to deal with idiocy a little bit more than I give myself credit for.

Anyway, maybe I can muster up the patience to finally level to Paladin 73. Between Beseiged and Real Life responsibilities, I find my time available to play cut a little short. Who knew graduating from college and looking for a job could be so time consuming? (^.^)v

Walking the path...

So, after a few weeks of exploring the new content in Al Zahbi, and finishing up my final exams, I decided to take Blue Mage out for a test drive before my Paladin leveling marathon. People said that BLU can be frustrating at times, trying to learn all those spells. They were right.

I took BLU to 13, and got all my spells through level 18. However, may I say there were a few trying times during that period. The highlights however, were Pollen, Metallic Body, and Healing Breeze. One apparently must be a master to learn the secret arts of the bee, crab, and dhalmel... and by master, I mean sit there for hours drunk screaming at my computer screen for the crab to use Metallic Body. I am told it was a very funny sight indeed.

After getting to 13 BLU, I can make the following observations: BLU is really overpowered at these lower levels. I don't know about, say, 60+, but i think they could dominate the dunes with ease. However, I really didn't feel like going BACK to the dunes, as I would probably rather solo or duo right to level 20. Maybe Tuufless will want to start a baby static or something.

With that out of the way, I have decided to make the final push of 25K exp to Paladin 73. As you can see, I have alot of equipment waiting for me...

With 2 days until my next little Dynamis adventure, hopefully I can finally pull off Paladin 73 and break into the endgame armor...

To be honest though, tanking endgame has really changed over the last few levels. With DDs putting out insane numbers, it has become more of a hate game than a damage reduction game. With that in mind, I have had a nice chance to keep leveling my Shield skill, and with the recent shield adjustments it seems to be just as good of damage reduction as my Terra's Staff (almost feel like I wasted 2M now...)

Honestly, on a whole I find myself getting bored in parties now (and bored while LFP forever, these burn parties are killing me...) When I go 3 hours without losing hate once, and the SATA that is getting placed on me is moved to another DD, and even they cant keep hate........boring. I mean, to be honest, I was reading a book in my last party, since it was such easy tanking. I guess I would rather have easy leveling than hard leveling though. Here is hoping for 73 sometime soon...