Return to White.

It's been a long while, but I finally got around to leveling WHM again, and to be honest, I kinda miss it. I've always found it rather irritating that I can't just teleport over to Rabao to check the AH with my party flag up if I'm playing my Black Mage. That, and a recent series of deaths that began with the Balgas Dias BCNM fight way back when had finally taken its toll.

I have since then, helped out in several AF3 fights. I already mentioned the RDM and DRG AF3s that I did the other day, I have also recently helped Fangryn (and a bunch of other BLMs) get their Wizard hat in the Toraimarai Canal. To all those who wish to partake in this fight- it is HARD. Much harder than the WHM AF3 fight or RDM AF3 fights, which already have a reputation for being some of the more challenging ones. The Magic Sludge had an insane amount of hit points, magic resistance through the roof (we're talking Firaga II for 12 damage here) and took down five of us (myself included) before it finally died. That, and it didn't help that one of the BLMs inexplicably went afk as we were fighting, and didn't tell any of us. Hrrmph.

Also helped a few of the Doom RDMs get the first part of their AF3 fight done in Fei'Yin. Miser Murphy really wasn't all too difficult, and with a bunch of Doom's Level 75 members chiming in to help, the fights were quick and brutal.

The final straw was in a very unfortunate series of deaths that happened to me in the Kuftal Tunnel. Simply put, I died three times in under five minutes and before I knew it, I was back to Level 59 and /fume-ing.

So I got around to getting my level back. I was only 425tnl, so I hit 60 on my first party. I then ended up partying again tonight when I was switching gear over to my WHM so I could Teleport to Rabao to make a quick check of Gold Beastcoins before heading over to Bastok to craft (Darksday, Full Moon). A BRD by the name of Niambe sent me a /tell, asking if I wanted to party, and apparently, they were willing to wait for me to go to Rabao, pick up materials, come back, miss the airship to Bastok, grab the next airship to Bastok, craft, Warp, and finally list my stuff on the AH.

The party turned out to be good, and fun to play in. It wasn't the best I've been in personally, but it was nice to come back to Cape Terrigan after slugging through the Quicksand Caves and Crawler's Nest all over again. We had a little argument about what skillchain to do. No skillchain seemed particularly enticing at first. We even had the capacity to fire off two different skillchains, with one of our members being RNG/SAM, but he questioned the validity of two skillchains when firstly, there was no BLM to MB off, and that one of the skillchains needed Flaming Arrow, instead of the almighty Sidewinder/Slug Shot. We argued about it for a bit more, until I noticed a little gem tucked away in the corner of Aden's Renkei Chart:

{Nightmare Scythe} -> {Slug Shot} = {Transfixion} MB {Light}

Can you say, double MB with Banishga II and Holy? ^^

That party sure cured my BLM fix from having to deal out damage- I even managed to equal the RNG's Slug Shot damage when I successfully timed the dual MB for 600+ damage. It was great, and I was actually running out of mana, which is something I hadn't done in a long, long while. That, and I was the only mage, so filling in for both the RDM debuffs and the BLM's MBs certainly kept me busy. I even got to test out my new Ice Staff, using that in conjunction with Paralyze so it'd stick more. ^^ Whoever said WHMs don't have anything to do is underestimating the job, really. True, there are the boring moments, but they aren't a terribly common occurance. Anyway, the end result is that I am now just about half way through Level 60 (yea, the party lasted quite a while) and actually getting around to completing Genkai 3 is looking mighty appealing.

Still kicking myself for forgetting to pick up that Yagudo Crest when we went to the top of Castle Oztroja for M6-2 though. Now I'm going to have to traverse the whole damn castle, passwords and all again.

One quote particularly made my day:
Niambe: "just had to tell ya u are an awesome whm 8)"

/blush

Anyway, after we disbanded, I pretty much loitered around. For some reason, there seems to be a sudden shortage of goldsmithing materials around. It's getting very hard to get Mythril or Gold now, and Gold Beastcoins are in a bit of a tug-o'-war between 7k and 8k. As I write this, there're 16 Gold Beastcoins on the Jeuno AH, and none of them are selling for 7.1k, which is odd, given that the AH history is dominated by 7.1k sales, well, except that that one stray 8k purchase.

I popped down to the Labyrinth of Onzozo to try and get myself a map with the random Onzozo Chest key that's starting to collect dust, and failing that, headed over to the Maze to get a Divination Sphere worked on, then decided to visit the Attohwa Chasm for a little bit. The place looks very pretty, at least, some parts of it. Otherwise, it's basically a bunch of tunnels. Everything there conned to me though, yet, there were lvl 70+ Beastmasters there. I probably missed something, but it's a bit hard when you don't have the map of the place.

Ah well. ^^