Forward Progress

Since I started the evening in La Noscea, I was able to get some progress with my local leves.  Both armorcrafting and blacksmithing saw some progress including the acquisition of two new books.  Wow blacksmithing does not have a lot of books.  I need to make sure I don't accidentally nail one of the two remaining ones in with other jobs.

After the usual was done, I hooked up with Paw on voice comms and we coordinated the upgrading of some of his gear.  Lucky these days I actually have a stock of materials to craft with, but as is becomeing standard I end up with some holes in the mix here and there once a plan is agreed upon.  In this case there was the request for the carpentry 2nd hand tool and after asking about his current gathering levels, I determined that the level 7 mining and botany main hand tools as well as the fishing rank 12 tool would be good bets to upgrade to.

A quick perusal of the recipes revealed that I was missing slate-grey scale bugs (for a Sheep Leather Strap (grey) and a Soiled Femur (for a Bone Fish Hook).  I had sufficient material reserves for all the other components of all 4 items.  So the idea was to have Paw hunt down the two remaining items while I got busy processing materials into parts and crafting the tools.

Got it all done except the fishing rod as Paw was either getting unlucky or the changes to the Bearded Rock zone were such that it no longer had Soiled Femurs.  Not wanting to waste time getting the last tool done, I proposed we teleport over to the Bentbranch zone near Gridania since I knew there were Soiled Femurs there.  And just as we are going for the 2nd node in the place who do we run into but Silver grinding up his gathering.  So at that point it was "do you have any Soiled Femurs?".  He said yes and of course we simply went to his retainer and I was able to complete the Willow Fishing Rod. 

Of course Ironies of Ironies, just as I get to Paw to deliver the rod, what do I get?  Cursing on the comms, "what, what?".  "Two of them just dropped...".  "Doh!".

Just before logging off I brought them to Mor Dohna to check out the crashed airship and dead dragon.  Always a cool sight (along with the level 50+ aggro beasties)

Supporting newbies

The last few days have been rather active supporting some friends playing FFXIV for the first time.  Damn I had forgotten how much work getting a pair of newbies geared up in this game is.  And of course my materials reserves were rather low since my great divestment of crafting materials.

Some rather focused gathering runs were done to acquire missing gear.  It allowed me to introduce them to the gathering jobs.  Of course outside the newbie equipment one must keep them geared up as they progress (oy).  I foresee lots of crafting in my future for a bit until they outpace my skills.

Helping friends

Here I am with Silver and Paw.  Just got them into rank 11'ish gear.  Damn that was  lot of crafting...

Paw, Let, Silver

And I get Pugilist to 20

Much progress over the Sunday.  The guildleves regenerated and I was able to load up on some Alchemist and Weaver ones.  Having determined their destinations (both Drybone and Horizon) I then proceeded to load up on appropriate regional and fieldcraft leves at the destination camps.

Drybone was a nice change, just after I turned in the local leve and I was preparing to tear thru the 3 regional leves I had queued up, someone pipes up "anyone doing leves".  So I indicate that I was going to tear thru 3 of em and the person joins up.  A rank 13 Archer with a rank 19 Pugilist.  So long as she didn't get aggro, things went well.  We were running 4 star leves as I can conveniently solo 3 star ones.  So we did mine, then we did hers (female character, no idea what was on the other side of the keyboard), and at the end I teleported us both to Horizon so she could tag along on my guildleve there and pick up the Horizon Aetherite.

That done we parted ways and I was within 3000 exp of hitting 20.  So I just ran around killing things for a bit (was getting lucky with the Mitelings) and dinged 20.  I then teleported back to Ul'dah to get my rank 20 Pugilist quest done.  Not to mention get the 2nd Alchemist training manual (poisoning treatise).  Since I'm still 24 Alchemist, my plan on leveling crafting by doing just about exclusively local guildleves that have a chance on granting guildmarks is playing off.  I also decided to wait on 8000 mining guild marks before getting the next tome in that class.  My only worry is that it's much slower than grinding, which could be problematic once all my combat classes are past 20.  I've gotten 3 of the seven up to 20 now.  I intend to get Pugilist to 22 before switching back to one of the other jobs.  I also need to keep an eye out for Gladiator regional leves as I need to get 1500 more guild marks to get the trait that allows you to keep your shield up for 50% longer.

We will see how it goes, but it looks like I'll be in Ul'dah a while longer.

Pugilist time

After finishing up some leves in the Gridania area it was off to Thanalan and regions for some Pugilist and Gladiator work.  I intend to mainly concentrate on getting Pugilist to 22 and getting guild marks for the Gladiator job.

Things started out on an "interesting foot when the regional guildleve available was "The Whight Stuff"...  The decision was made that after turning in the local guildleves I would simply grind two levels and then I thought (remembering the problems I had with Thaumaturge), I should be good to go for this guildleve.  So I ground up through the zone (the sweet spot proved to be around level 25 mobs) and quickly dinged two ranks.  The leve was then "doable" Took me 24 minutes but did it.  I observed, however, that my existing equipment is not optimal for a pugilist since it has much more defense than evasion.  Some of the offense of the class depends on me evading the opponent.  So after finishing the guildleve it was back to Ul'dah to make some Pugilist specific gear.

And I ding 23 Weaver making a cotton shirt.  Switching to the Cotton Shirt and the Cotton Kecks (which I have from the Archery job) definitely upped the evasion stats.  We'll have to see if the increase balances the reduced defense stats  (although I like the increased magical defense).  And as predicted, a level early is the right time to switch to the Dodoskin Cesti.

First Archer book

I had about 2k archer guild marks to go to get my first archer book.  So I decided to stick around Gridania for a day or two and grind that up.  As well as some crafting at the carpenter's and leatherworker's guilds.  Dinged 22 Leatherworking, Also managed get some botany in.  I'll do some more tomorrow and then move on from camp tranquility to the Ul'dah area so I can work on Pugillist.

Carpentry

And I dinged carpentry 22 as I finished off some swallowtail arrows.  This should keep me in shootables for a bit.  I also managed to finish off the rank 20 quest for the Archer job.  Which is good.  I think next I will concentrate on pugilist and some crafting.