One Piece Down.

From the lack of updates, one can tell that not a heck of a lot has been going on recently in Vana'diel. At least, not on the party scene anyway. For some strange reason, there's been a sudden lack of any tank whatsoever as of late, and when all you see are Dark Knights, Samurais and the obligatory 3-4 Dragoons during peak hour, it's time to focus your attention onto other endeavours.

Like Goldsmithing. :)

We passed through a Darksdays with Full Moon. Well, not quite. Lightsday had a 100% moon while Darksday had to contend with just 98% but I'm not complaining here. I just so happened to finish collecting up my four stacks of Mythril Beastcoins, so I headed down to Bastok to craft them up. Some might wonder why I don't just craft up in Jeuno since I've past the cap for making Mythril Ingots via Beastcoins, but I prefer to get the Advanced Imagery Support, no matter what. Put it this way, would you rather 120 gil, or losing even one Mythril Beastcoin and the Fire Crystal? (Not to mention having to troop down to the Bastok AH to get a replacement.)

For some reason or another though, I just decided to check what the going rate for Mythril Ingots were in Bastok. I used to sell them at 78,000 a stack before I noticed Jeuno was 82,000, and given that Bastok's Mythril economy is fairly stable, I wasn't expecting a surprise.

Mythril Ingots were going for 90,000 a stack.

Blinking a few times, I double checked the figures that showed themselves on the screen. This wasn't someone who just decided to be funny. This was a consistent 90k+ trend on stacks of Mythril Ingots, and someone even paid 95k for a stack. There was little doubt I'd put up more stacks for sale, but the problem was that the AH had just 15 pieces of Mythril Ore left. That, and with Darksday, Full Moon, it was a very good time to skillup my Goldsmithing.

Enter the Goldsmith's Guild. Thanks to my Rank 10 Bastok fame, the guild was selling Mythril Ores to me at 1,500 gil each. Note that this is still 150% of my usual buying price, but I didn't want to alter the price history of the Bastok AH by buying all the Mythril there, although in retrospect, injecting extra Mythril was probably a mistake. I do a quick calculation, that told me that even with 1,500gil Ores and 3,000gil Fire Crystals, a stack of Mythril Ingots still cost me 75,000gil to make. I'm looking at 15,000gil profit, even when I buy all my raw materials from the guild itself. Wow.

Many guild purchases later, I have made two more stacks of Mythril Ingots. Even better, all this Mythril has bumped up my Goldsmithing, and I am now Goldsmithing 40.0! /cheer
Alas, the guild master requested a Chain Gorget out of me, and after seeing the 10k price of a Gorget on the AH, I decided to suck it up and use the 6 Silver Ingots I had saved up instead. /grumble. At least I am now recognised as an apprentice to the Goldsmith's Guild. Hah! Unfortunately, it's now time to blow up a lot of money. Silver Bangles and Mythril Rings... /shudder

I also starting taking another look at assembling my Black Mage gear. I have most of the body pieces now, only lacking the shoes and trousers, and while I am still undecided on getting a pair of Garrison Boots (which incidentally rose to 70k /fume), the Seer's Slacks are a piece of cake. Whether I'm willing to chuck another 8-9k for +1MP and a Seer's Slacks +1 to show off is another thing entirely. The next thing on my list was the Morion Tathlum.

53k is still a lot of money, even when I have saved up quite a bit over the course of my Mythril (and incidentally, the sales of my three stacks of Mythril Ingots brought me to a very nice 420k or so), but reading up on the Morion Worm got me thinking that for something that was as simple as it sounded, 53k wasn't worth it. So I set off to looky-up the spawn points of the ??? in the Korroloka Tunnels, and soon, I was off.

As it turns out, getting the ??? in the first place is hard enough without having to contend with the drop. I first went down with Akanea, a DRG friend who's an all-around swell-well guy, and he gave me a Linkpearl to his Linkshell, where I met up with some other people I've bumped into on my adventaruing. We were lucky when we got in there from the East Altepa Desert- the ??? was pretty much a half minute walk into the tunnel itself. We killed it with little difficulty and...

You find a chunk of copper ore on the Morion Worm.
You find a chunk of copper ore on the Morion Worm.
You find a chunk of tin ore on the Morion Worm.

/fume

Our problem now was that we hadn't the foggiest idea where the other five spawn points were. I mean, I had a rough idea, but that clearly wasn't going to get us far. I tried later in the day with Xiaoke, when he was randomly bored out of his mind and decided to come and help me (although I don't see how camping an NM is any better) and splitting up, we managed to find the ??? again after beating a few Tathlum hunters to the ???. Unfortunately, no drop either. It was somewhere around this time I met Xiaot, who was also camping the Morion Worm. Some chatting later, I find he's from Hong Kong, and given that he's in full DRG AF with a good /THF, I don't think he's gilselling at all. So we chat for a bit, knowing we are rivals at the "Find the ??? first" game.

Over the next hour or so, I manage to chance upon the ??? one more time, and this time get Iron Ores instead. /sigh 0/3 so far. About 15 minutes later, when the two spots I've been camping don't show up, I decide to check out the others, and bump into Xiaot, who has got the kill and the Tathlum. He offers to sell me the Tathlum for 50k, but as Xiaoke said, if you buy it, it just doesn't have that much meaning to it, but if you hunted the NM and got it yourself, that's something else altogether. Seeing as how I was a little tired out at this point, I pretty much give up and log out for a while.

Fast forward many hours later. I log back into the Korroloka Tunnels and try it out again. I see Xiaot still there, still hunting down that elusive ???. Apparently, he took just took a few hours nap and is back to the hunt. About ten minutes into it all, I see the ??? spawn up before me for the fourth time.



I'm at half of my usual MP, thanks to randomly throwing out Cure IIs and IIIs on the Rangers who are solo'ing on Land Worms in the tunnel, and quickly /panic upon this discovery. Fortunately, I remember I can Stoneskin and Aspir to keep things going pretty much indefinitely, although at this point, Xiaot decides to show up. I give him a /wave and figure, why not, he seems to be a nice enough guy. I ask him: "Do you want to help? ^^"

I send a party invite, and he quickly makes short work of the Morion Worm. I didn't even get a chance to Barstonra he and I. >_< Anyway, the drops roll in:

You find a chunk of copper ore on the Morion Worm.
You find a chunk of copper ore on the Morion Worm.
You find a chunk of tin ore on the Morion Worm.
You find a morion tathlum on the Morion Worm.

He passes, I lot and the Tathlum is mine!!! /cheer

I figure since he's a nice enough guy, I might as well stick around and help him try to get another Tathlum. He was a little bit confused, saying "You only want one?" Of course I needed just one, and quickly explained to him I needed the Tathlum for my Black Mage. He understood my situation after that. ^^

So we chatted. Xiaoke randomly logged in so we talked some more. We talked until we forgot about the time and missed the ??? that spawned right behind us. It was rather funny, and some other high-level group spawned the Worm before we realised the 15 minutes had passed. At least they got the Tathlum. ^^ We keep track of the time. Another group spawns the Worm. Another 15 minutes later, Xiaot finds the ??? over on his end of the tunnel. He, too gets another Tathlum to sell, along with a Darksteel Ore for his troubles. 55k for 15 minutes work isn't too shabby, although with Goldsmithing to support me, and the luck involved in the drops (and camping the NM to begin with), I don't think I'll be hunting the Morion Worm again anytime soon.

My shopping list goes down by yet another item, and I'm starting to get excited about leveling up Black Mage again. Only two Morion Earrings, two Wisdom Rings, Garrison Boots and Seer's Slacks to go. ; ;