Forumer

In all honesty, I've been rater preoccupied with stuff in real life, so I haven't really found the time to write anything substantial as of late. I helped Starfox out a little getting three RA/EX items that he needs to complete the quest for his Evoker's Ring, end ended up stumbling across Centurio X-I along the way, who dropped a Shaman's Cloak! Three of us needed the cloak, and we lotted. It fell into Starfox's lap, who was then wondering what he actually needed it for some ten minutes later. D'oh! >_<

In other news, the Kindred Seal's thing is going on. Had a little bit of trouble finding BLMs this time, with Gigoonleegon, Nikku, and Starfox offline, meaning that only four of us were around, but eventually, I brought in Traktor to fill in as the fifth. I didn't think we had that long of a run to go, with me bringing just some of the TrueRune folks down, but by the end of the day, we completed a whole twenty-five runs of Operation Desert Swarm, with three of them dropping a Venomous Claw!

Unfortunately, none of the TrueRune guys got anything big, except for Ncloud, who got a Damascene Cloth. ^^ Poor Aka got the real short end of the stick. His drops were so bad, he actually ended up with a 1.3k profit, which the chocobo ride to Palborough took away. >_<

Also, Butcher came down to the Waughroon Shrine with an Atropos Orb to try out. He wanted to try out this other KS30 battle that supposedly can also be BLM'ed, that involves four Giant Birds. We'd all Thundaga as usual, except that the problem was that two birds would immediately charge forward after being attacked, while the other two Birds would stay in the back row and cast spells. Hence, a Sleepga II would miss one or two of them. I think we lucked out on that one personally, as one of the casting Birds completed its spell early and then ran forward into Sleepga II range. That meant that we only had one stray Bird to deal with, which we handled with multiple Sleep IIs. A fully volley of Blizzaga IIIs later, three Birds were down, then a lot of nuking afterwards took out the lone Bird. Some of us had to use our Manafont though, so this is definitely not a run to do en masse, unlike the scorpions.

Butcher was after some sword of his, which didn't drop, unfortunately. To make matters worse, we all passed on the loot, then sat down to wait for Butcher to lot on his drops so he could take them. Unfortuantely, Butcher zoned, and since all of us passed, all the loot was lost. >_< Ah well, accidents happen, I guess. ;;

In any case, I've recently gone back to skilling up my Woodworking, and to a lesser extent, Bonecraft. A lot of us feel that Bonecraft 60 just isn't worth it- it's a money sink, with no real profit maker, the stuff you make either doesn't sell well, or doesn't stack, resulting in NPC resales, and overall, Bonecraft is just a disdained craft. I, however, want it so I can make my own Fang and Scorpion Arrowheads when the time comes in Woodworking to skillup off those, and I might as well get Bonecrafting done in the proess. As Gizzle put it, killing two {Chocobo}s with one {Stone}. Erm, never mind that. >_<

Many, many, many, many Silver Arrows later, I'm finally Woodworking 29.8. ^^ All too many arrows. I tried selling them in Jeuno, but people just don't buy them quickly. I have all three mules trying to sell arrows, until I noticed that Silver Arrows almost never sell in Bastok, so my San d'Orian mule is a little overloaded for the time being.

Despite having four character's AH slots filled with Silver Arrows, I still had some eleven stacks on me, and I had no idea what to do with them. Level up Ranger? Not for thirteen levels just to use them. How about skillup Archery? {Yes, please.}

While neither my Black Mage nor my White Mage can use a bow, my Red Mage certainly can. ^^ And so, I trooped down to the Korroloka Tunnel to begin the long, arduous task of shooting Land Worms down for skillup. I was joking that I'd hit the Archery cap before I ran out of arrows, although that won't happen- I used up half of them (that's about 500 arrows!) and gain a good 20 skill levels in Archery or so, with another 30 to go before hitting the cap.

I've also conducted some tests to see just how much money I actually make synthing. After many calculations, and notes, it seems that I can churn out anything between 50k/hr to 110k/hr just by plonking myself in Rabao and desynthing Mythril Earrings, which isn't too bad, I think. Of course, one's idea of a lot of money is all relative, and it seems to me that one's "major" unit is one tenth of the highest unit value he or she currently holds. For example, I have 3.5 million gil on me at the moment, so to me, I feel like denominations of 10k aren't that much, while 100k gives me pause. Or I could just be imagining things. ^^

Also tried farming elementals in {sky} to see what it is like, having been partially inspired by a video that's floating around the place. I tried it out, and it's really quite easy. I had a few hairy situations when lag meant I couldn't cast my Sleep II in time, and so got hit by a Firaga III on numerous occasions, but fortunately, I didn't die. Came back with ten Fire Clusters and 2k xp in about an hour. I probably make more money desynthing Earrings, but at least I get xp and the occasional Kindred Seal from killing Fire Elementals in {sky}. I didn't bring Ginger Cookies with me, so I couldn't regenerate MP fast enough to chain, but now I have some cookies on me, I'm gonna try to solo a Chain #2 for 300xp the next time I pop down. ^^

Anyway, I've since taken to posting in forums more often as of late, and I'm not entirely sure why. Normally, I read, but do not post in either Allakhazam or Killing Ifrit, but I've been compelled to take a more active role as of late. Right now, there's an interesting thread brought up in the Allakhazam tradeskills forum that attempts to discuss what exactly caused the serverwide price increase that's going on right now. I posted my thoughts on the subject matter, which you can read there.^^