Happy New Year!

...And a Happy New Year to everybody out there!



As usual, with all the stuff going on, I haven't really been able to play much as of late, although I've been trying! Honestly! >_< Actually, I only just started to promote the Campsitarus blog
over on Killing Ifrit, and so far, I've been getting some very nice complimentarus from people about it! Unfortunately, that kinda makes me want to make sure I actually do a good job, so working on the campsitarus blog has been taking up...quite a lot of my time as of late...^^;



However, I do have some unrelated happenings in Vana'diel, albeit, a little out of date. First of all, I now have a Guide Beret! The Guide Beret is a reward you get for bringing a friend into the game via a Gold World Pass, and after a certain time has elapsed (I think 40 real life days), you and your "sprout" can both make a party to go get a pair of berets- a Guide Beret for the person who bought the World Pass, and a Sprout Beret for the person who received the World Pass.



Of course, that begs the question, who did I bring into this world? Well, I brought Hirushi back! Hirushi was my trusty Bard back in the days of manaburning through the 60s, and while he quit (and deleted his character -_-) when he hit BRD70, he's back, and back to the BRD leveling treadmill again. Given the rate at which I xp, he's probably almost caught up to my Red Mage now, come to think of it...







Personally, I liked the white Sprout Beret better at first, although the Guide Beret has since grown on me. It's just too bad we couldn't exchange them (RA/EX) to see what they looked like on each other. But meh, I'm the black mandy-taru of {death}!!!! Hear me rawr!!



I feel as if I should've mentioned something about the massive price increase over Christmas, given that it is something big, and got quite a lot of people talking.



For those who missed the memo, a lot of the high-ticket items just skyrocketed in value practically overnight over Christmas. Haubergeons went from 7m to 11m, Astral Rings from 1.2m to 3m, among others. I, like many others out there, suspect a ridiculous amount of credit-card power to be going on during that weekend, further aggravated by the special Christmas rates the Chinese-based companies were giving out.



In all honestly, IGE gets waaaaaay too much collateral damage for what it does. It doesn't take very long to realise that the Chinese companies offer rates that are a third or even a quarter of IGE's rates, so I feel the real culprit lies with them. Heck, when gil goes as low as $4.95 per million, not to mention an extra, free 1 million gil as a Christmas gift for purchasing 30 million (/stare), what excited little kid wouldn't want to come bursting into mummy's open arms to get the money to buy the Scorpion Harness he really wants?



Well, maybe that's a bit of an unfair assessment there. Personally, I have little qualms about actual gilbuying since I know there are those out there whose real life commitments just do not give them the time to sit around farming and crafting for gil for hours each day. What I do have gripes against though, is reckless gil-spending, although as many have said, the two are somewhat related. Someone who buys their gil has very little concept of how much that gil is actually worth, and so they are wont to just splurge it on the first shiny thing that catches their eye, as opposed to someone who actually farmed/crafted/haggled for the gil.



In retrospect though, my real lesson was one in investment- cash on hand is a very bad thing. My purchasing power literally halved overnight because I had held onto my gil instead of buying "investment" gears. Had I invested my excess gil into say, four Astral Rings, I would be 8 million gil richer now, and well on my way to getting Goldsmithing 80. Alas, it was not to be. /sigh



Ah well, lesson learnt. Time to just take the hit and move onwards. ^^;



Finally in closing, I got a classic slip-up form none other than Sakurato, who revealed her true colours after she and I were talking about her Greater Manticore party up in Cape Terrigan. This is what she had to say:







Oops...^^;