April 1st ends up being a strange night. I get asked by Usul to sub for someone in the Nyzul Isle group. No problem, I’m game. The 1st run I’m asked to go bard and we end up confirming what seems to always be the case, bard simply isn’t as useful as a dedicated damage dealer or healer or whatever. So the remaining runs I’m asked to go beast (which is a damage dealer) and I sub ninja for the extra axe. These runs go better, but we ran into issues on the last run with getting spammed with charms (meaning one of our players is now working for the enemy). This ends up costing us too much time so we actually only had 1 successful run. We try to do 1 last assault but run into rank issues with one of the players. Instead, we work on kills for Usul’s new augmentable weapons. I don’t actually understand this system so I’ll probably get into it more later.
So, April 2nd we ended up not having Dynamis, some stupid religious holiday, whatever. I made a point of torturing the Catholics in my building and opposite it, home-made Italian Beef slow-cooking all day in my apartment with the windows open so you could smell it everywhere!
Well, this seemed like a good time to get my bard XP back up (it was under 18k and I’m not comfortable that way) even though I really need to work on thief too. So I decide to campaign battle. Crash course on Campaign for those who don’t know. Campaign is a battle system at random intervals in certain areas against some very tough enemies. The advantage to campaign is that you don’t lose XP on death; in fact, you can actually get XP for raising yourself even though it’s not a lot. The XP system is different too. In campaign you get all your XP at the end of the battle, and it’s calculated on damage done, debuffs, buffs, raises, cures and probably a few other things as well. You cannot get skill-ups at all however. Now I usually campaign as bard/ninja so I can max my damage, keep up constant Hymnus (bard’s AoE reraise song) and constant Paeon (bard’s AoE Regen song) without putting up with all the unreasonable demands placed on bards in merit parties.
I think S.E. did something to the XP rate in campaign recently. I used to average 2-2.5k in a regular area, and 5-8k in Eldeime per battle, but now I’m lucky to be getting half that. In addition, the union drops are frustrating. Noone has ever said S.E. does not discriminate against American players; all updates are scheduled to not interfere with JP prime time but no such provision for American players, stores open a few seconds earlier in japan, they get much more information on their display which is considered cheating by Americans, etc. However, I’m convinced that the treasure lot random number generator for JP players only goes 500-999, not 0-999 as it does for American players. Regardless, I’m getting crappy XP and drops from campaign. I think I’m going to have to start taking parties to campaign to beef up my XP for buffing, which kind of defeats the purpose of campaign.
I did the same thing Saturday when I finally logged on, but I spent the 1st part of the day spending quality time with the new nephew. He’s a good kid, I was there for hours and he never cried once, even when he was tired or hungry. My presents were received well too, so that’s good. To make a long story short, I got bard to 41k XP and logged when I got bored to read a book.
Sunday it was time to break the thief back out. Took my NPC (who’s name is Yufafa for those that are wondering) out and went after beetles in Western Altep. Because of the level sync party I mentioned a few posts ago my ranged attack skills are lagging badly again so I need to get them skilled up. Beetles are a decent choice because the camps work out well. However, I’m running into problems with the majority of the beetles popping DC and not higher, making it difficult to cap marksmanship. I do manage it eventually, but my NPC dies in the process. I actually soloed the last 2 for cap without my NPC. I decide to move before I try the same thing with throwing to get a more favorable level range. I end up choosing lizards in Crawler’s Nest-certainly not my favorite choice, but it’ll work. Now these things link and they like to gather in groups which makes pulling them to safe places to fight a bit tricky, but the practice certainly won’t hurt me any. However, I promised myself that I would get some real-life work done so I end up logging there not even half-way finished.
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