Life of a {Tarutaru}{Ranger}

One week (and a bit) since my last post, and I'm standing at RNG30 now.



I have to admit, plugging arrows and bolts into monsters is a lot more fun that I thought it would be. ^^

In this past week, I've had my share of amazing, terrible, and downright trying parties and people, which I suppose I could detail out in all its bloody glory. After all, it's been a while since I last wrote about my doings in this world we call Vana'diel.

As I detailed last week, I managed to completely bypass the dreaded Valkurm Dunes with a fantastic Ranger party that took me all the way from 12 through to 18.

I tried to solo some of the Worms, to no avail- my accuracy was bad enough that whenever I tried racing a Worm to the death, I'd end up with the short end of the stick, and dying. I believe Coejus was nice enough to PL me through this period of time in the Maze of Shakrami, while I worked on getting my Marksmanship up to scratch. I also got a "party", which was essentially me, a BRD, and a COR trio'ing Land Worms in Qufim which took me to 21, I believe.

Qufim came and went surprisingly quickly. I managed to land an unexpected party with Willriker, after I noticed him leveling up his Ninja (and complaining to him about my dearth of invites ^^), so he picked me up to join in his party after one of his Warriors left. To be honest, I think that was my first time actually, seriously pulling. XD I'm not sure what constitutes "serious pulling", but it sure felt different from the Valkurm Dunes.

Willriker mentions how big a difference a puller who knows what he/she is doing can make, and to an extent, I have to agree. It's interesting being on the pulling side of things, and directly playing a role in controlling the party's flow of xp. Granted, as Willriker said, we were camping a little far from the Pugils I was trying to pull, but I guess it turned out okay in the end. ^^

In any case, since he was nice enough to honour me in one of his posts, I'll return the favour and send him a littaru Vana'diel postcard:



There. I think he'd appreciate it. ^^

Qufim Island was also strange. It seems to me that Campsitarus is getting me quite a lot of fame in Odin, at least amongst the English-speaking population. This past week, I've gotten quite a few tells from strangers thanking me for my work over on Campsitarus, including one that literally opened with "Hey, you're the campsites taru!"

Glad to see people actually notice my profile over on that page. ^^

Then came the inevitable letdowns. I finally figured out what it must be like to be on the receiving end of an endless string of commands of "pull" and "don't pull". It was only a few times, but it was irritating enough that I just wanted to leave the party right there and then. Like, if you have enough trouble struggling to do your own job, don't very well turn around and tell me how to do mine. What's that you say? You're rank 2? Without Kazham access? On your first job?

'Nuff said, really.

I hit a bit of a dud at 24, when I felt that I needed to be out of Qufim, but was still a little too early for the Jungles. I eventually got a few Yuhtunga Jungle parties, nothing too spectacular, except for the one this morning, which had my favourite job base- COR BRD NIN. The party ended up being COR BRD WHM RNG RNG NIN, and I think we were 26-27 when we started. We ended up heading down to the Yuhtunga Jungle outpost and literally chaining the Goblin Furriers there like crazy. Of course, having two Rangers to pull certainly helped, and having everybody sub NIN, kept the WHM's mana high, not to mention with the added benefits of Healer's Roll and Mage's Ballad.



From 200+xp/kill, we stuck it out until too many Furriers were conning Tough to those of us who leveled twice, and eventually moved down to the Sahagin camp before calling it a day. At this point, I was RNG28, and loving my new pair of Archer Knives I picked up before I left. +20 Ranged Accuracy made such a noticeable difference in my shots, I was wondering how I survived without it...

I then got another party in the Yuhtunga Jungles with yet another "know-it-all" noob, who insisted on telling me when to pull and when not to pull, which once again really got on my nerves, especially given his inability to conserve mana, and insistence on waiting for 80% or more MP before my pulling. I almost pulled out the "I am more experienced than you" card, but chose to bite my tongue in the end.

I mean, I know I've been accused of being bossy before, but seriously, when someone who is probably more experienced at understanding and controlling party dynamics comes into something you're clearly not familiar with, it'd do you good to listen. -_-

Then again, I'm guilty of that myself- I remember a good argument in Doom waaaay back in my WHM40 days, where I was complaining to Armageddon about how WHMs aren't wanted in the later levels, and how ridiculous it was that RDMs got Cure V. (I have BradyGames to blame for that- according to them, Cure V is also a RDM75 spell. -_-)

Anyway, after that party disbanded, I grabbed three of its members (myself included), found three more seeking people, and then showed them how it was done. With like, proper party configurations and moving to a less crowded camp. Yeah. I'm nto sure how fast we went, but some people got two levels in just over an hour, so....yeah...

I hit RNG30 in that party, and came to meet my new friend called "Barrage". It's a lot of fun, although I have to admit that the TP gain from a good Barrage is downright silly. One shot took me from around 10%TP to 95%, with 280 damage thrown in for good measure. Seriously, with stuff like that, who needs Meditate? (Other than the occasional dud Barrages. -_-)

So here I stand, after making all my next purchases, including a new crossbow, bow, Holy Bolts galore and Nocto +1 gear. There're a bunch of other things I really ought to be picking up, like a Genin's Earring, but Ranger is expensive! I've just dipped below 2 million gil, and that was from the 4m I had before embarking on RNG. ; ;

Granted, 1.3m of that went to buying myself some Leaping Boots, but still...

...Ah well, it's all in good fun anyway. ^^ Seven more levels to go before switching over to COR!