Cooking woes

I know that it's still cheap next to the other crafts, but it still hurts to look at my tally sheet and see that I've spent 115k getting Tav's cooking from 11 to 68.  It hurts even more knowing that it's partially incomplete, as I haven't tracked everything that Tam has picked up and mailed along the way.

While some recipes along the way have been money bleeds, the majority of my expense has been crystals.  And crystals.  And more crystals.  And, oh yeah, I'm out of crystals again, need more crystals.  Having explorer moogles has made getting to the various regional vendors pretty easy, but has probably also been a small unnecessary drain on my finances at 300 gil a pop.  I've also had to overreach my abilities a few times and rely on image support, which also starts to add up.

I'm at a point where nothing seems to give skill-ups.  I know that if I'm 5 points out, I'm not going to get skill-ups from failure.  I'm fine with that.  But can I please get maybe 0.1 from every, say, 5 successes?  Even that would be frustrating, but much faster than what's happening now, and I may not have to resort to setting the locals on fire!  (Which also failed to produce skill-ups.  Can't say I didn't try.)

Also, how do Rarab Meatballs justify their expense and skill level?  Talk about some food that needs to get over itself!  I'm not sure if I'm amused by the fact that their HQ is a Bunny Ball or not.  Well, okay, who am I trying to kid?  Of course I'm amused by it.  I'm just not entirely sure why, or how much.  Bunny Ball.  Ahahahaahahaaaa.

Anyway.

My aim is to get to the 75 or 80 neighborhood today, but that isn't going to happen if I'm sitting here blogging!  Now go away, I have stuff to do!

I'm not a white mage

It's weird, really, since I always intended to be.  My first character, the level 50 mule, was created to be a white mage, because I wanted to be Teh Healing Bawm.  As I leveled it, I realized it wasn't what I wanted.  The pressure that gets put on a WHM in a standard exp party in this game is enough to make the whole game feel like a chore.  So I made Tamberly.  Intentions and ambitions aside, I ended up falling in love with her as RDM.

RDM is a great job!  In a party, I'm the buffer, debuffer, and healer.  When I'm not doing any of that, I get to swing my sword at the mob.  I run /SCH.  Light Arts takes my healing magic rating from C- to B+.  It reduces the cast time and MP cost of my white magic.  Dark Arts does the same for my black magic.

There are those who say that I have to level WHM.  They say that it's the only way to be the most effective healer.  It never seems to occur to them that if I wanted to be the most effective healer, I wouldn't be RDM.  Period.  Why would I take a job that has a lower healing rating than PLD if I wanted to be the most effective healer?  I think that would qualify as a serious lapse in logic.

I'll never have Erase or Curaga as /SCH.  But I'll never have Drain or Aspir as /WHM.  And running with a MNK and DRG, Drain is good for bursting.  But wait!  There's more!  Erase is SCH39, Manifestation is SCH40.  Your arguments, my little number-crunching friends, just went south.

I really wish I felt like I owed apologies for the things that I said yesterday.  But I was told that I'm an inconsiderate, bad RDM because I don't play the way that a WHM would play.  I'm sorry that I don't have any desire to live up to your expectations of what you think I ought to be doing.  If you need a white mage for a job, don't bring a red mage.  Don't tell me that I'm the one who is inconsiderate.

The last choco post

...probably.  Just wanted to post a couple screenshots of actually riding the chocobo, now that I've gotten the whistle!

About as photogenic as I am!

Heheh, not the best picture ever, but the first picture of my grown-up chocobo.  He is, in fact, blue.

I seriously messed up and can't get my whistle until tomorrow at the earliest, but hey, lesson learned!

(For anyone wondering, the lesson is do not give the chocobo his normal food until you have the whistle quest completed.  I gave him his normal Azouph Greens x2, so he's completely full.  Ran out of energy while trying to get the key item.  Can't get more energy until tomorrow, as he is too full for any energy-restoration foods to work.)

FML.

Boo!

Heheh.

Woodworking 67

Woodworking is officially done until I decide where I want to allocate the remainder of my over-60 crafting points.  I had been planning to leave it at 60, but my income is mostly coming from crossbow bolts, which are mostly level 16 woodworking—pushing it to 67 puts me in the highest HQ bracket on them, which will hopefully prove to be worthwhile.

Clothcraft is up to 20, leathercraft at 30, alchemy 53, but nothing much to report as most of my crafting has been for profit this week.  Cooking 12 and Synergy 1!  That's a story for another time, heh.

Could it be?

This matches up pretty well with the only adolescent blue chocobo screenshot I've been able to locate.  Could it really be??

/happydance

Packrats Anonymous

Really, I need a support group.  I feel compelled to save everything because "I might be able to use it one day."  Or someone I know might need it.  Dhalmel leather, treant bulbs, cotton thread, beehive chips, fish, crystals—random crafting materials are pervasive throughout my inventory.  I don't even want to talk about lumber.

My inability to walk away from a locked chest when I'm out solo or walk past a NM without at least thinking about it is another problem.  I have a firefly, a pestle, pilgrim's wand, and more.  I don't know who Phlegethon is, but his trousers are in my storage.  If you happen to run into him, please let him know.

Of course, not everything is Exclusive, and therefore could theoretically be mailed off to a mule.  The problem is that the Sandy mule's inventory is already crammed full of gear and mats, and the Bastok mule's inventory is well on its way.  Now that I have two of them, I need to spend some time dividing their inventories up into categories—it's already kind of working out that the one in Sandy is gear and crystals, while the one in Bastok is mats, but there's still some overlap that needs to be cleaned up.

Tamberly's inventory still holds the gear for the jobs that I'm "currently leveling".  BLU and DRK gear is taking up a bit of space just now—at least they're currently at the same level and use basically the same stuff.  Most of the RDM gear that I replace on RDM is still needed for SCH, so it stays, too.  Then there's the issue of carrying six different weapons for RDM (no wait, 8 counting the bow and arrows for pulling in Ro'Maeve), various meds that I'll probably never need, chocobo food, flowers for quivers and lyco ports, and now two different exp rings.

Oh, and of course, there has to be the stuff that serves no purpose other than making me smile.  The various fireworks and costume serums that I've made as I level alchemy are prime offenders.  The red rose that I have no use for at all will continue to not only take up a space in my storage but be manually moved to the top after each auto-sort.  The Trainee Axe from the woodworking guild is completely useless now, but looks entirely too cool to toss out.

What I'm trying to say is, "HELP!  I only have 24 spaces left!"  (And thanks to leveling clothcraft again today, that's an improvement from this morning!)

Cutest thing ever

Well, next to my daughter, my favorite shirt, and the song "Kitty" by PotUSA.

I'm just too old for FFM

This has been bothering me for a while.  I notice that the FFM rules point to the younger members as a reason to keep the LS family-friendly, yet by and large the younger members are the prime offenders.

It seems like I can only stand to have the LS equipped between the hours of 6a and 4p.  It's relatively quiet during that time, and that's when the people who act like adults (whether they are or not) are on.  The straw that broke the camel's back was tonight around 8.  I woke up, got my coffee, and sat down just in time to see someone offering "2000 gil and nude pictures in an exposing position" for someone to PL them.

Synthesis failed.

The Dhalmel Overpopulation Action League has been stood down.  The amount of effort going in simply wasn't enough to have any lasting effect on the dhalmel population, and it didn't make sense to keep devoting that amount of manpower to a task that has proven to be an exercise in futility.  Again, my current lack of need for dhalmel-related items is a mere coincidence.

I did, incidentally, get leathercrafting from 15 to 20 by making dhalmel hides.  It would have gone to 21, but I capped my guild rank while valiantly fighting in the field, and the DOAL was decommissioned before I made it back from the tanners' guild in San d'Oria.

Thanks, Captain TMI!

And the first mog tablet of the week goes to....

Well, apparently, it just kinda goes, presumably directly to the Moogles.  But I found it sitting right by the lyco port in North Gustaberg.  So I talked to the Explorer Moogle in Ru'Lude Gardens, who had this to say:

Then he gave me a coffee table (zomg perfect, right?) and this ring.  You can propose with a ring, but what I want to know is:  Can you propose to a ring?

I'm considering it restitution for the nightmare I just went through unlocking DRK, and it just might make up for what I'm about to go through turning Chaosbringer into Deathbringer.

Thrifty Transit this week, brought to you in part by Tamberly!

Yes! Got me a magicked skull!

....Now if only I could find a Mithra.

This isn't funny anymore

Seriously.

I haven't picked this thing up in any of the 600 times it's been lurking in a chest, take a hint, SE!

As happy as a Tam in a room full of mats

On top of pulling in a decent profit on quivers today, I happened upon a NM lizard in Konschtat while out farming sheepskin today.  He gave me a piece of skin that sold for a sizable chunk of gil, which doubled my crafting budget for the day.  Oh, and I treated myself to a Light Staff—now I need to give up one of my precious macro book slots to make a "party" book and keep the one I normally use as a solo/duo book—as RDM, I don't want to be hitting mobs with a staff, but that "Cure potency +10%" is simply too good to pass up if I'm not in a mob-hitting situation.

"Medium, I think"

I've been curious about how big of a difference there is in the character sizes that you can choose (with no guidance whatsoever, thanks SE!) during character creation.

An almost-twin walked into the tanners' guild while I was there today, and I had to take the opportunity to record it for posterity.  She thinks she chose the medium option, whereas I went with small.

This was the best angle I could get for comparison purposes.

63! ...62. 63! ...62. 63! ...62. 63! ...62. ...62. 63!

As I was just settling into some farming in Jugner this morning, Cinn popped on and mentioned that he was going to farm the Kuftal key he needed for his AF helm quest.  Since he's always willing to help out when I need (want) something and so rarely wants anything big for himself, I leapt at the opportunity to tag along and help out.