Happy days are here again...

...makes me feel like a corrupt New Orleans political candidate in the 1890's, where did I come up with thatsong?!!!

I’ve been having difficulties with leveling caused in part by my in-game finances and partly by not finding people I’m comfortable partying with. Firstly the finances… bard songs are not free, shehei are not free if I need to /ninja to pull, food is not free, even getting to and from battlefields costs some money and it does add up. I can craft shehei to save a little money (although not that much), but the materials are often hard to find; for the rest I’m at the mercy of the server economy. As to finding people I’m comfortable partying with, I’ve spent too much time solo to have a good group of party buddies to draw on. As I posted a couple ago, I’ve also dropped confidence in some of my social LS members (those that haven’t been with us that long). Granted, I’m not willing to be driven ragged as a bard unless it is for good friends and we are showing results, so I might not be the bard you want to party with.

That being said, things are changing some in game for me. 1st off, Dynamis has actually been kind to me of late. As I mentioned a couple posts ago, I finally got my bard pants (probably the best bard pants in the game to date, outside of situational changes) after over a year of waiting. Well Monday I got my thief gloves-we had 2 drop and the only person in-line ahead of me wasn’t there so I got them, despite my thief only being 61. I will be leveling thief as soon as bard and beast are 80, so I was legitimately in-line for them. This means that as the levels come I will have my full treasure hunter bonuses (and until then I can store the full set on the relic NPC).

Last night I got a late start on XPing. It’s the summer, and so everyone has this stupid idea that it’s nice out. I don’t agree; if I’m quite literally drenched in sweat, smell, and am dehydrated 90% of the time it is NOT nice out. In any event, I get volunteered for a lot of family stuff and it cuts into both my playing and my real life free time (I live alone so if the housework is gonna get done I’ll be the one doing it, I won’t be doing it if I’ve been volunteered elsewhere though). Whatever, suffice it to say my game time is being severely curtailed (about 12-15 hours less per week than normal).

SE has a feature in game called a “friend list” that needs a bit of work. I check it when I 1st log in to see if any of them are on and want to do something (success increasing greatly with people you know, trust and genuinely like), but that is usually it. If SE is looking for elements to improve play they might want to consider a notice that a friend has just logged in. Otherwise I don’t know until I see a post from them or I just trip over them.

So I thought I might farm scorp shells, but Xolotol decided to eat my face. So I decide to Campaign battle. Hard to find a battle, but I eventually land on one in Grauberg. Decent XP, but a lot of downtime between waves now with the level cap raise. So, while waiting for wave 2 I get a tell from Mousie (making me happy) asking me to come XP on my bard. Naturally, I finish my battle and head out (with a stop to change subs and regear). XP was good—not great—but I got about 30k, leaving me 12k short of level 77, which I hope to knock-out tonight!