My favourite zone of all...

The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah may be pretty, the The Ru'Aun Gardens, strangely tranquil. The Tavnazian Safehold has one of the better pieces of music in the game (in my opinion), with Gustaberg following closeby behind.

But my favourite zone of all? The Misareaux Coast and the Lufaise Meadows.

I can't quite describe just why I like the place so much, but I'm sure gorgeous scenery, nice music to just chill to, and flying dragons overhead have something to do with it. Granted, technically they're two zones, so if I had to pick one, I'd go for the Misareaux Coast simply be merit of the waterfall that lies outside the Sacrarium, which is unrivalled in anything else in Vana'diel.

Several months ago (back in February, to be exact), I scouted around Vana'diel in search of potential camps to explore as Campsitarus was picking up speed and I wanted new places to put in. At the time, Treasures of Aht Urhgan had not yet been released, but for some reason, barring the occasional merit party off Abraxas in the Lufaise Meadows, there was a complete dearth of xp parties in the Tavnazian Archipelago region.

And that made me a sad taru.

On a bit of an aside, I have to say that all things said and done, I think I prefer Chains of Promathia over Treasures of Aht Urhgan. Don't get me wrong, ToAU did a lot of good things- but it feels all-too detatched, and made things a little too easy for players. Talk about pampered xp parties, with Sanction Refresh, a 15% xp bonus, physically weak mobs, and even a teleportation service straight to camp! On the one hand, all this is great, but I think some of that, y'know, adventuring, and actually travelling to camp has been lost (along with people's strange disregard for an already overpopulated camp. -_-)

But I digress.

So I was wandering around the Lufaise Meadows and the Misareux Coast looking for ideas when I happened to come by a pair of Beastmasters leveling off the Bigclaws and Makara. Crabs and Pugs are no stranger to xp parties, and at the very worst, they're friendlier than say, Leshachikha and Leshies that I still don't believe I managed to convince a JP party to go to. I wandered around the water for a while, following its trail upstream, marking down any potential camps I saw, and lo and behold, it led up to the waterfall.

"This is somewhere I want to party someday." I thought to myself at the time, and I scurried off to make my entry.

Unfortunately, I couldn't quite test the spot out myself, which I demand out of the vast majority of the camps I post on Campsitarus, mostly because I didn't have any jobs of the correct level range. However, my static group with Strawberrie and co. finally got me to the point where I could concievably drag a party there, although Darya who had just rejoined Odin after running away to Remora (he would later learn the error of his ways!) did not have Tavnazian Archipelago access.

Fortunately, Darya happened to go to sleep early today, leaving just Vagus, Strawberrie, Ristin, and I to party. All four of us had access to the Archepelago, and even better, all of us were actually willing to go to the Archipelago Gears started to turn.

Some hunting around later, I catch Masasume (who had just returned to the game) off guard on his WHM38, and we pick up a Japanese PLD41 for the ride as well. With that, all of us were off to xp at the Misareaux Coast!

XP was a little strange there. I won't say it was the easiest xp I've gotten (the mobs aren't as squishy as say, Worker Crawlers in Yhoator), but it was enjoyable nonetheless. In between Strawberrie yelling at Vagus and I to line up so that the Paladin would not get hit by Chaos Roll, I was busy happily snapping away at us fighting mobs for Campsitarus. Sometimes, I get a really nice shot, that is just too big for use in the compilation. So, I decided to make another copy, one that placed less emphasis on the mob itself, and post it here:



Seriously, how could you not want to party there?!

I think we ended up partying a little longer than expected though. Some of us hit Level 42, which leaves Darya now trailing at WHM40, so I guess he'll have a bit of catching up to do. ^^ Vespermoo is also trying to catch up again, given his absence for the last few days, so with any luck, we'll be all back and storming whatever strange location I come up with before too long.

And if you're thinking of dragging a party down there yourself, here's the link to the Campsitarus entry!