The {Tarutaru} is back!

...And I'm back!



At least from my perspective, those three weeks flew past a little too quickly for my liking, but I guess if you're enjoying yourself, that's a given. ^^



In any case, I did kinda miss Vana'diel and was happy to log back in again after my absence. I had been able to follow some of what was going on through forums, and to be honest, my primary worry was the state of the economy when I would return.



Fortunately, such fears were largely unfounded...I think.



To me, the big "ouch" comes from the rising cost of Gold Ingots. When I left, they were 1.5m/stk, but now selling steady at 2.2m/stk. However, a lot of the other things I deal with are more or less the same as when I left. Of course, the big ticket items , like an Igqira Weskit literally skyrocketed (7m to 16m!) in those three weeks, but I didn't really feel much of the "OMGWTF" factor as I had originally anticipated.



Of course, with three week's absence, how can one not want to party? ^^



Well, I still felt like leveling my Summoner, but my interest in the job has declined quite considerably, and I don't know why. Actually, I think the break did me some good, as it put quite a lot of things into perspective, and I suspect I am going to end up taking the game a lot easier from here on.



Oh, and while some things went up in price, others went down. Like a Noble's Tunic, which was 22m when I left, but 18m when I got back. ^^ And so, after some random haggling on the AH...



"You buy the noble's tunic for 18,500,000 gil."



Funnily enough, purchasing the tunic was rather...lacking in emotion for me, which is strange considering how much I've wanted this tunic over the last year. Not being an active participant in sky/HNM activities make things a lot more difficult for me to get the big ticket items, and so I've had to buy it the hard way, through cold hard cash (er, gil).



A friend, Faeyth, also recently quit FF and joined the WoW side of things, and left me all his things to sell. Suffice to say, there were a lot of things that I managed to liquidate, and I got enough to push my gil reserves to well over the price of a Noble's Tunic, and with some to spare. Normally, I'd hold onto the gil for my Goldsmithing, but given the glacial rate at which I skillup my Goldsmithing, I figured I might as well invest the extra gil into items, and so I bought the Noble's Tunic. I also have some spare Astral Rings lying about that I'm also keeping as investment, although only time will tell how worthwhile those will be.



Anyway, the problem with the Noble's Tunic was that at the time, I was WHM67, while the tunic is Level 68 gear, and so, it was back to the leveling treadmill for me. -_-



Fortunately, Woulfgang was in the midst of organising a Warrior party down in Bibiki Bay, and he invited me along for the ride! The end result was unlike any Warrior party I've been in- personally, when someone mentions "Warrior party", I think "WAR WAR WAR BRD RDM random job". However, when we set off, the party setup was...much simpler.



WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WHM ftw!



Well, I don't know to be honest. It certainly sounded fun at the time, but looking back, I think we overdid on the WARs and really needed a second support class. I came /SMN for the Auto-Refresh, since I figured I wouldn't be resting much, but still ran out of mana on curative magic alone. I couldn't even spare the mana to Haste the others, which irked me.



Eventually, one WAR dropped (after an acciednt resulting in a party wipe), and with just 4 other members, I was able to keep a semblance of a Haste cycle, which I felt made things a whole lot smoother. Anyway, I felt we really needed a BRD as the 6th, but in the end, we just went on with five members until we got a second WHM who would eventually replace me in the party.



Anyway, I ended up getting a decent amount of xp for the time put in, and as a result, I dinged WHM68, and am now a happy taru with a Noble's Tunic! ^^







I have to admit though, having a Noble's Tunic and Auto-Refresh from a Summoner subjob is quite nice, although I still think a /BLM subjob is the better one overall. I found that WHM/SMN has little in terms of link management which was a problem that reared its head quite frequently. Oh well.



It's good to be back. ^^