Behind again! (HP, FFXI)

[thistlechaser]

While I've seen many recs for Stealing Harry, I had never checked it out because it's SB/RL. (I hatehatehate Black and I'm indifferent about Lupin, so SB/RL isn't exactly my thing.) Wednesday I was trying to catch up on my flist, and came across a rec from isiscolo for it. Since out tastes are similar, I checked it out. (I had only intended to glance at it and see if I wanted to bookmark it for later! Honest!) I was hooked from the first sentence, and I've been reading it since then (as work allows, so slower than I'd like). I'm on chapter 22 now (of 28) and loving it, but my flist is back at skip=200 again, so I put it aside to try to catch up. (If I'm not caught up by the weekend, I'll come in on Monday to skip=550 or 600, and that's just damned insane, even for me.)

So sorry to people I'm slow in commenting to! (Man, I make that apology a lot!)

FFXI: Gardening is just tickling me! I harvested my second plant today, and I got another stack of fire crystals! Woo! I currently have nine pots of stuff growing, and need just one more so that I'll be at the max amount you should have.

Non-players: Gardening is just another example of how insanely complex this game is. I can't believe they put this much thought into things! There are four different plant pots, each will give you different results. There are... seven(?) things you can plant, each with different harvests. You can feed seven(?) different crystals to the plants (or none), each resulting in a different harvest. (Some plants will take two feedings, which is another seven options.)

So there are 4 x 7 x 8 (x 8) potential results from growing things... and each of those results have many outcomes! *Plus* the day you feed the crystal affects things, too! *And* how often you check the plant!

I swear, even if they had one person planning just the gardening stuff, it must have taken him or her weeks to plot out it all...

Leveling up: Finished level 9 of black mage (about 2000 XP) was very, very slow and painful. Enough so that I almost wanted to quit. But finally I reached level 10, learned Blazing Spikes, and it was the difference between night and day. At 9 I had to kill things with magic (which meant tons of downtime as I waited for MP to come back), but with Blazing Spikes I did a 180 and killed things by hitting them (and by them hitting me!). There's nothing like casting the spell on myself, then seeing:

Goblin hits Thistle for 2 HP damage!
Thistle's Blazing Spikes do 12 points damage to Goblin!

Heehee. I never once used Blind, because I wanted the mobs to hit me! They could kill themselves just by hitting me! Good times. I'll probably go out and get to level 11 tonight, but alas, sometime this weekend I'll probably look for a party to help me in my rush to 17. Warp! Yay!

I checked my fame yesterday, and surprisingly it's high! Level five ("everyone knows your name and no one says bad things about you"). I just need to get my rank up now... I suppose I'll repeat Save the Children a few times this weekend maybe...

Back to flist reading!

Comments

[loneguardian.livejournal.com]

You can up rank by donating crystals instead of going through missions again. ^^ What mission are you on?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah I heard that, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to give my crystals away! :p I did Save the Children and ... was it Bat Quest? Something about the tomb way down in the southern area of East Ron. The next one is that (I'm going to misspell it) Duvil Report, the one in the orc camp.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

It was isiscolo's rec that spurred me into action, too. I'd passed up Stealing Harry because I wasn't much into the Lupin/Black love, and also because the story sounded like too much of an AU, if that makes any sense.

I'm so glad now that I read it; it's just chewily excellent on so many levels. It was nice being able to read it all in one go, too, instead of as a WIP, though I generally like the delayed gratification of WIPS. I guess I'll get to enjoy the sequel WIP-style, though!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I was a little worried that it'd be too much AU, but it really works. And oddly, I'm finding that I like reading the kid safe version better, not because I'm at work and shouldn't have NC17 stuff on my screen, but because it lets the Lupin/Black be not quite in your face as much.

Back to reading it!