I think, perhaps, I am a masochist... (FFXI)

[thistlechaser]

So today was the first day of what was to be my "perma-vacation" on FFXI: No pressure to XP or to level, to not do anything I didn't want to do, to not be forced to do anything... and boy was I bored. :P I miss the pressure of having goals and stuff!

I started the day trying to do some quests (to get rid of rare/ex quest crap I had in storage), but after running around for an hour or so I gave up. The quests had too many quests needing to be done first, and it was all just too much work, so I dropped the items back in storage.

Avie logged on and I helped her with Bastok Whatever-Number Mission: killing 20 Copper Quads in that ugly rusty-water place. That was about the only real excitement of the day. :P She also needed the drop for the Rank 5 thingie from the Quad NM deeper in. Quite handily, some idiot trained half the quads in the zone, including that NM! I had never, ever seen such a big train before. I succeeded in getting the NM (and a pack of only 5 of his 50 or so friends) away from the others, and I killed it for her. Whee! Plus we saw a DRK NM, so I killed that, too. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's killing! :P

After that I farmed here and there (hours of farming...) and got bored again. I needed goblin masks to desynth to make prism powder out of, so I decided to try mining in Oldtown Mob-whatever for the first time. Amazingly, on my very first swing I got a gold ore! Nice! Even though I ended the night with two gold ores and a bunch of moblin armor parts, I'm still very "meh" about the whole thing. Mining is boring and usually ugly, though at least Oldton is somewhat more interesting than other tunnels. My biggest problem was that I wanted to stop and kill the mobs, but I know how badly they link so I resisted. c.c

I have some screenshots, but no time to edit them. Tomorrow, maybe... though I really need to figure out what to do tomorrow besides edit them...

Comments

[jehryn.livejournal.com]

Perma vacations are fun. I remember hitting level 72 and being able to wear my errant gear and just having no motivation at all to level anymore.

[zubis.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I remember dinging 65 PLD and I just stopped leveling for months.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's how it is for me, too. :) I'm wearing what I like, there's nothing more I'm looking forward to for the rest of the levels, so why rush! Yay vacation!

[sukashi.livejournal.com]

I remember having a perma-vacation for like two months after I hit 75 on BST... and it was really bad :| I love setting goals and rushing to meet them ingame, and that's what basically happened with BST when I decided to level it up on a whim. BST21 to 75 in six months.

It's nice to take time and your mind off levelling however; it certainly sets some things in perspective sometimes. Some people enjoy grinding furiously and meeting goals in a matter of days/months. Others enjoy a more Type B playstyle - easygoing, laidback, and lazy. Either way is fine XD

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that fits how I play, too. I guess after this break it'll be back to the rush to 75!

:)

[southern-hell.livejournal.com]

I know exactly how you feel. I always thought I hated the level grind, rushing to 75, and I'd be happy once I hit it and could do god knows what. A second job to 75 didn't convince me I didn't hate exp anymore than I always thought I did. Lately I'm leveling 3 jobs in tandem trying to decide which to do first.. and am totally bored when I'm not doing that or killing something with LS z_z I have a 94+1 craft and I don't touch it, rarely farm or do quests or just skill up something, it's weird -.-;

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, exactly. I really have no idea what I thought I'd do on this vacation... I guess it'll be back to XPing for me soon.

[gbeans.livejournal.com]

Mining has filled the void Fishing left in my life after it was changed. I can mine and chat at the same time, concept! So, when I'm in a chatty mood (more than questing or whatever) I go mining so it's like I'm being productive, heh!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I did more mining today (a lot more) and I can kind of see the attraction of it. Plus it's nice that people don't seem to steal points in Oldton, unlike other places I tried it...

[yshyn.livejournal.com]

The advantage of Oldton is that it seems most of the gilsellers and what have you don't seem to have realised how nice it is. The disadvantage is that there's only about 10 points in Oldton, so I generally do a /sea beforehand. If there's more than half a dozen people (actually, if there's more than three) in there, I don't bother.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ah, that'd make it better, yeah. At the times I've gone so far, checking /search would be hard. (There have been like 30? 40? people in there just killing stuff for some reason.) All three of the times I've been mining there there have been probably 5 other people mining (and once like 9 or 10, people basically each just took a point), which was a little rough.

In the end I just end up camping those two spots that are sort of close to each other, on a part of the map where paths make an "I" shape. Saves me a lot of running around, I just grabbed them when they popped up there.

It'd be hard for me to get there during low-population times, since I can only be on during primetimes. :/ Darned work and sleeping!