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thistlechaserThis post will have two parts: one covering last night and the other covering tonight. The one about last night I wrote up at work today, the (much shorter) one about tonight I'll be writing now. Note: Since there are so many of them, the screenshots are a little smaller than usual.
Last night:
Around the world in 80 days
Or rather: Around the world in a little over two hours.
When I logged on last night, I was invited to go on a sight-seeing trip of the world, an excuse to run hither and yonder and gather all the crystals you need for teleporting. It was supposed to start at 9 PM or later, so I asked how long it might last. (See, I try to log off by 11 each night. I need to be up at 6 AM every day, and it takes me at least an hour to decompress before I can go to sleep. That means at best I get six hours of sleep a night, and most often less than that.) Silly me forgot the next day was Friday *and* I had the next week off as vacation time, so I really could have stayed up later if needed. Turns out it was going to be finished in time anyway, so woo! I accepted.
I fished while eating dinner and reading through my massive stack of snailmail, then I went and killed things for a couple hours. I got to within 500 XP of leveling up! Woo! (The only hard part of the evening was my mother calling me during this. While I was standing still and talking to her, two sheep and three goblins gathered, slowly circling me. I felt like a wounded antelope in the middle of a pride of lions! Eek! Once I got off the phone, I went back to killing things. I encountered a new monster! A bomb! Woo! Unfortunately it was rather strong (DC), and I barely, barely beat it. (Ended the fight with 7 HP and 3 MP!) Got 50 XP from it though, so woo!
At about 7:30 I went back into the city and didn't do anything. I just found a non-spammy spot and sat to wait around. (Survivor was on at 8, so while I could have fished, I just slacked and did nothing while I watched TV.) At 8:30 it was decided that they'd take me out to get the first crystal (everyone else had it but me), so off a couple of us went! Remember my post from a couple days ago, with the party that left me in the middle of the dunes? I had been exactly where we were going! To that odd white "building" thing... I had even run up the stairs and looked at the crystal! (I hadn't touched it because I was worried it might have reset my home or something.)
So after I touched it, the rest of the party gathered. It was the biggest group I ever was with! One party with five people, and the extra people formed a second party, then we aligned the two of them. Eight of us total! Woo!
Off we ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. Very good things: (With help) I finally figured out auto-run! Woooo! And with my new keyboard, my macros work more often (/follow being one of them), so between those two things I could both keep up with everyone *and* not end up with a shaking hand! (I know it sounds silly, but keeping one key pressed for more than a half hour is hard. I think it was made worse because I was all tensed up, so in the past I was probably pressing the keys harder than needed to be.) With auto-run and /follow, everything was easy and smooth. (Oh, and with those two I could actually type and talk while I ran! Very very handy.)
I started out /following Marten, but since if we encountered things I was supposed to stay back with the catgirls, I switched over and /followed them instead. (Though at times I just /followed whoever I randomly targeted. -- Ha ha on the screenshot. It just got in the way, I wasn't really following it.)
Though the areas we went to were way, way, way above my level, I felt safe nearly the whole time! The two small exceptions were: The first time we zoned, I didn't see anyone so I thought maybe they had ran on ahead and expected me to follow. I ran a little and still didn't see anyone, but it turned out they were all still spawning behind me. (Non-players: The areas of the game are divided into really large sections (zones), and to pass between them everything goes black for a moment and you reappear on the other side. I'm not sure if everyone sees themself appear first, or if it has to do with your connection speed, or what.) Hm, phone call here at work interrupted my train of thought and now I can't remember what the other time was, but it was zone-related as well.
There were two (or three) best parts of the trip:
1) The boat! The boat! The boat! This really shouldn't surprise me: I kept grinning endlessly and repeating out loud 'It's so real! It's so real!'. I say that all the time of the game, but everything just keeps getting better and better! Between the sounds and the images and how things move, they couldn't have created a more realistic boat trip. I kept running from one side of the boat to the other, trying to see everything! I felt just like a kid. :)
Sometimes pirates or a sea monster attack the boat, but neither happened this time. (While that would have been exciting, I would have had to run belowdeck (is that one word?) to hide, so it's best that they didn't attack.) People fishing sometimes dragged up fish to battle! Hee. :) It was such an exciting trip! If I'm ever alone there, I might just ride back and forth, over and over, just enjoying it. :)
2) The Africa-ish area. Ooooh, it was so so so pretty! The trees were beautiful and the sky was wonderful! There was so much to see! (Too bad we ran through there at night, so my screenshots came out dark.)
3) Windy. (Non-players: There are three cities you can start out in. Sandy (San d'Oria) is one and Windy (Windurst) is another. Bastok is the last one. Sandy is my home.) Windy is just fall-down gorgeous. Nothing like a city at all! More like just a part of nature, with a touch of Africa to it. Peaceful. (As opposed to Sandy: endless bagpipe music, played over and over until you stab yourself in your ears with pencils.) I've only seen a small portion of the city so far, but it's just so beautiful! I don't know if I'll ever leave it. :)
So that's the trip! We entered Windy sometime before 11, giving me a bit of time to look around before I had to log off. I can't wait to explore more! And go out and see what sort of monsters are around to kill! I'm already missing Sandy a little, but Windy is so pretty I don't think I'll feel homesick for long. :)
---
Tonight: A swing and a miss! ...47305784758327582 times
I explored Windy more, got the shortcut through the city (gah, with the size of this city, the mog house shortcuts are totally necessary!). Other than that, I spent most of my time fishing. I was so tired and brain-dead, I couldn't handle more than that. (In the game, assuming you set up your macros, you can fish with the press of two buttons. Little more than that is needed!)
I ran into one downside of the ultra-realism of the game: The shops actually close for half the day! I ran out of bait for fishing, so I dashed off to get more. I got there one minute after they closed, so I had to wait 12 game hours (30 RL minutes) for them to open again! Just sit there waiting, doing nothing. "Funny" thing is, the clerks remain visible when the store is closed, they just won't help you.
Eventually I got more bait and went back to fishing, but because of the moon's phase, it was useless. About three hours of fishing, and I caught not one single fish. (Though I did catch three copper rings and a gil!) The rings sell for 50 gil each, so that's 151 gil I made tonight. I used 148 gil on bait, so you can see what a profitable night it was. :p On top of that, for all the time I put into it, I only gained .4 level of skill in it! I'm at 6.3 now. (Can anyone tell me why the skill list doesn't display tenths of a point? Sheesh! I have to keep track on a piece of paper!)
Since the moon wasn't going to get to a good phase anytime soon, I decided to log off and deal with the screenshots. Can you believe it took me nearly two hours to resize them and to link all the ones outside the cut? I hope to finish this post before bedtime, I'm going to throw the rest of them behind the cut with a little description.
These won't be in any sort of order, sorry.
Sheep in Sandy get stiff VERY fast after dying! -- From my XP gathering pre-trip yesterday. Heehee!
An African-esque Windy building. Look at those details! The thatched roof! The woven window covering!
Me fishing... or am I? Can you spot what's missing from this picture? It's not even in my shadow! The game got confused about that a couple times tonight. Very odd.
Arch, lighthouse during the day, pretty sky!
Windy Port, sunset. Sometimes I think the sky alone is worth the price of this game. :)
Port, sunset. Can you believe the details in this game? Seagulls! Flying overhead! And check out those boats!
Another sunset (or sunrise?) to die for! And windmills! (Windy Port) Just look at the colors in that!
The lighthouse at night (thus on), and another beautiful sky! (Windy Port)
The wilds outside of Windy. Can you be in love with a landscape? With a fictional place? If it's possible, I think I am. This area just makes me happy inside. It touches something inside me. The tall grasses, the wide rivers, it makes me want to cry in happiness.
Way way cool common monster in this area! I wanted to make friends and talk to it, not fight it... but I killed it and got one of its feathers, so I suppose that'll have to do. :)
The screenshot of the year. That's a muddy, wide, slow river in the foreground, and while those shapes look like elephants, they're rock formations. How in the world could they be charging so little for this game? And how much would they charge to let someone go and really live there?
Eh, or maybe I don't want to live there. Biiiiig bug! It was nearly as tall as me, and much longer than I was tall. Luckily I smushed it with my mighty cross.
Marten is very buff! See those readings on the lower right hand side? Those track HP and MP for people in your party. Notice his HP are higher than anyone else's. :) And go ahead, mock how much smaller mine is! ("So small, so small!") Look at the sky, too. And the moon! (You can't see how keen his sword was, but in the light of day it was way cool.)
Yes, the flowers were as tall as we were! What a beautiful area, and you can see the rain! (I was still /following Marten at this point, it was really early in the trip. Russet was behind me.)
Aellan is almost lost in the dark. Beautiful red sky and fingernail moon!
Following Russet through the desert! I love how there's foreground/background stuff, and of course another pretty sunrise or sunset! And you can see the tells from Stikysix, the only person I've successfully partied with so far (not counting people I knew before FFXI -- the LS folks and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
loneguardian) . She was impressed with how far away I was! :) Edit: I typoed my level, it's really still 12.
This is a cool shot. Check out those bones to the left! We were on a ranch which farms those critters for their meat. (I tried to get a good shot of them, but couldn't. They looked like very muscular giraffes.
"With the power of the rainbow, we defeat you!" I don't know who was doing what attack, but it came out looking pretty darned cool! Check out those cactus flowers, too!
Like ducklings running after their mother, we ran in a row through the Africa-ish area.Pretty sky, pretty landscape -- the usual! :)
Don't we make a nice straight line? More pretty Africa-ish area. The place does have a name, I just don't know what it was.
"Roll over, roll over! So they all rolled over and one fell out..." We all had /follows on, so when the lead person stopped we all ran into her. Hee! I like how it looks as if it was arranged by heights (other than me, since humans are taller than the catgirl folks). The magic is pretty and sparkly.
More running in a line!
Ta da! Done with the post before bed! And I just took a thumb tack out of my cat's mouth! She was trying to eat it! Gah.
Last night:
Around the world in 80 days
Or rather: Around the world in a little over two hours.
When I logged on last night, I was invited to go on a sight-seeing trip of the world, an excuse to run hither and yonder and gather all the crystals you need for teleporting. It was supposed to start at 9 PM or later, so I asked how long it might last. (See, I try to log off by 11 each night. I need to be up at 6 AM every day, and it takes me at least an hour to decompress before I can go to sleep. That means at best I get six hours of sleep a night, and most often less than that.) Silly me forgot the next day was Friday *and* I had the next week off as vacation time, so I really could have stayed up later if needed. Turns out it was going to be finished in time anyway, so woo! I accepted.
I fished while eating dinner and reading through my massive stack of snailmail, then I went and killed things for a couple hours. I got to within 500 XP of leveling up! Woo! (The only hard part of the evening was my mother calling me during this. While I was standing still and talking to her, two sheep and three goblins gathered, slowly circling me. I felt like a wounded antelope in the middle of a pride of lions! Eek! Once I got off the phone, I went back to killing things. I encountered a new monster! A bomb! Woo! Unfortunately it was rather strong (DC), and I barely, barely beat it. (Ended the fight with 7 HP and 3 MP!) Got 50 XP from it though, so woo!
At about 7:30 I went back into the city and didn't do anything. I just found a non-spammy spot and sat to wait around. (Survivor was on at 8, so while I could have fished, I just slacked and did nothing while I watched TV.) At 8:30 it was decided that they'd take me out to get the first crystal (everyone else had it but me), so off a couple of us went! Remember my post from a couple days ago, with the party that left me in the middle of the dunes? I had been exactly where we were going! To that odd white "building" thing... I had even run up the stairs and looked at the crystal! (I hadn't touched it because I was worried it might have reset my home or something.)
So after I touched it, the rest of the party gathered. It was the biggest group I ever was with! One party with five people, and the extra people formed a second party, then we aligned the two of them. Eight of us total! Woo!
Off we ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. Very good things: (With help) I finally figured out auto-run! Woooo! And with my new keyboard, my macros work more often (/follow being one of them), so between those two things I could both keep up with everyone *and* not end up with a shaking hand! (I know it sounds silly, but keeping one key pressed for more than a half hour is hard. I think it was made worse because I was all tensed up, so in the past I was probably pressing the keys harder than needed to be.) With auto-run and /follow, everything was easy and smooth. (Oh, and with those two I could actually type and talk while I ran! Very very handy.)
I started out /following Marten, but since if we encountered things I was supposed to stay back with the catgirls, I switched over and /followed them instead. (Though at times I just /followed whoever I randomly targeted. -- Ha ha on the screenshot. It just got in the way, I wasn't really following it.)
Though the areas we went to were way, way, way above my level, I felt safe nearly the whole time! The two small exceptions were: The first time we zoned, I didn't see anyone so I thought maybe they had ran on ahead and expected me to follow. I ran a little and still didn't see anyone, but it turned out they were all still spawning behind me. (Non-players: The areas of the game are divided into really large sections (zones), and to pass between them everything goes black for a moment and you reappear on the other side. I'm not sure if everyone sees themself appear first, or if it has to do with your connection speed, or what.) Hm, phone call here at work interrupted my train of thought and now I can't remember what the other time was, but it was zone-related as well.
There were two (or three) best parts of the trip:
1) The boat! The boat! The boat! This really shouldn't surprise me: I kept grinning endlessly and repeating out loud 'It's so real! It's so real!'. I say that all the time of the game, but everything just keeps getting better and better! Between the sounds and the images and how things move, they couldn't have created a more realistic boat trip. I kept running from one side of the boat to the other, trying to see everything! I felt just like a kid. :)
Sometimes pirates or a sea monster attack the boat, but neither happened this time. (While that would have been exciting, I would have had to run belowdeck (is that one word?) to hide, so it's best that they didn't attack.) People fishing sometimes dragged up fish to battle! Hee. :) It was such an exciting trip! If I'm ever alone there, I might just ride back and forth, over and over, just enjoying it. :)
2) The Africa-ish area. Ooooh, it was so so so pretty! The trees were beautiful and the sky was wonderful! There was so much to see! (Too bad we ran through there at night, so my screenshots came out dark.)
3) Windy. (Non-players: There are three cities you can start out in. Sandy (San d'Oria) is one and Windy (Windurst) is another. Bastok is the last one. Sandy is my home.) Windy is just fall-down gorgeous. Nothing like a city at all! More like just a part of nature, with a touch of Africa to it. Peaceful. (As opposed to Sandy: endless bagpipe music, played over and over until you stab yourself in your ears with pencils.) I've only seen a small portion of the city so far, but it's just so beautiful! I don't know if I'll ever leave it. :)
So that's the trip! We entered Windy sometime before 11, giving me a bit of time to look around before I had to log off. I can't wait to explore more! And go out and see what sort of monsters are around to kill! I'm already missing Sandy a little, but Windy is so pretty I don't think I'll feel homesick for long. :)
---
Tonight: A swing and a miss! ...47305784758327582 times
I explored Windy more, got the shortcut through the city (gah, with the size of this city, the mog house shortcuts are totally necessary!). Other than that, I spent most of my time fishing. I was so tired and brain-dead, I couldn't handle more than that. (In the game, assuming you set up your macros, you can fish with the press of two buttons. Little more than that is needed!)
I ran into one downside of the ultra-realism of the game: The shops actually close for half the day! I ran out of bait for fishing, so I dashed off to get more. I got there one minute after they closed, so I had to wait 12 game hours (30 RL minutes) for them to open again! Just sit there waiting, doing nothing. "Funny" thing is, the clerks remain visible when the store is closed, they just won't help you.
Eventually I got more bait and went back to fishing, but because of the moon's phase, it was useless. About three hours of fishing, and I caught not one single fish. (Though I did catch three copper rings and a gil!) The rings sell for 50 gil each, so that's 151 gil I made tonight. I used 148 gil on bait, so you can see what a profitable night it was. :p On top of that, for all the time I put into it, I only gained .4 level of skill in it! I'm at 6.3 now. (Can anyone tell me why the skill list doesn't display tenths of a point? Sheesh! I have to keep track on a piece of paper!)
Since the moon wasn't going to get to a good phase anytime soon, I decided to log off and deal with the screenshots. Can you believe it took me nearly two hours to resize them and to link all the ones outside the cut? I hope to finish this post before bedtime, I'm going to throw the rest of them behind the cut with a little description.
These won't be in any sort of order, sorry.
Sheep in Sandy get stiff VERY fast after dying! -- From my XP gathering pre-trip yesterday. Heehee!
An African-esque Windy building. Look at those details! The thatched roof! The woven window covering!
Me fishing... or am I? Can you spot what's missing from this picture? It's not even in my shadow! The game got confused about that a couple times tonight. Very odd.
Arch, lighthouse during the day, pretty sky!
Windy Port, sunset. Sometimes I think the sky alone is worth the price of this game. :)
Port, sunset. Can you believe the details in this game? Seagulls! Flying overhead! And check out those boats!
Another sunset (or sunrise?) to die for! And windmills! (Windy Port) Just look at the colors in that!
The lighthouse at night (thus on), and another beautiful sky! (Windy Port)
The wilds outside of Windy. Can you be in love with a landscape? With a fictional place? If it's possible, I think I am. This area just makes me happy inside. It touches something inside me. The tall grasses, the wide rivers, it makes me want to cry in happiness.
Way way cool common monster in this area! I wanted to make friends and talk to it, not fight it... but I killed it and got one of its feathers, so I suppose that'll have to do. :)
The screenshot of the year. That's a muddy, wide, slow river in the foreground, and while those shapes look like elephants, they're rock formations. How in the world could they be charging so little for this game? And how much would they charge to let someone go and really live there?
Eh, or maybe I don't want to live there. Biiiiig bug! It was nearly as tall as me, and much longer than I was tall. Luckily I smushed it with my mighty cross.
Marten is very buff! See those readings on the lower right hand side? Those track HP and MP for people in your party. Notice his HP are higher than anyone else's. :) And go ahead, mock how much smaller mine is! ("So small, so small!") Look at the sky, too. And the moon! (You can't see how keen his sword was, but in the light of day it was way cool.)
Yes, the flowers were as tall as we were! What a beautiful area, and you can see the rain! (I was still /following Marten at this point, it was really early in the trip. Russet was behind me.)
Aellan is almost lost in the dark. Beautiful red sky and fingernail moon!
Following Russet through the desert! I love how there's foreground/background stuff, and of course another pretty sunrise or sunset! And you can see the tells from Stikysix, the only person I've successfully partied with so far (not counting people I knew before FFXI -- the LS folks and
loneguardian) . She was impressed with how far away I was! :) Edit: I typoed my level, it's really still 12.This is a cool shot. Check out those bones to the left! We were on a ranch which farms those critters for their meat. (I tried to get a good shot of them, but couldn't. They looked like very muscular giraffes.
"With the power of the rainbow, we defeat you!" I don't know who was doing what attack, but it came out looking pretty darned cool! Check out those cactus flowers, too!
Like ducklings running after their mother, we ran in a row through the Africa-ish area.Pretty sky, pretty landscape -- the usual! :)
Don't we make a nice straight line? More pretty Africa-ish area. The place does have a name, I just don't know what it was.
"Roll over, roll over! So they all rolled over and one fell out..." We all had /follows on, so when the lead person stopped we all ran into her. Hee! I like how it looks as if it was arranged by heights (other than me, since humans are taller than the catgirl folks). The magic is pretty and sparkly.
More running in a line!
Ta da! Done with the post before bed! And I just took a thumb tack out of my cat's mouth! She was trying to eat it! Gah.
