After a lengthy period of me ignoring my ToAU missions, I started them back up again. I went and explored the Alzadaal Undersea Ruins. The ruins themselves are really unique in the FFXI universe, and the undersea motif is very cool.

On my next visit to Windy, I found a Twinkling Treant in town (say that five times fast). This is the Christmas event this year, and I just couldn't get into it as the prizes didn't appeal to me. Alas.

I have mentioned I was starting to level some mage jobs. My first was to be WHM, but my final goal is to take RDM to end-game. Thus, I went out and farmed Spipi some more to try and get his cape. I spent a few hours without catching a single spawn, so I was ready to give up. The next day, I logged back in and thought "What the hell? I'll try him again". As soon as I get to his spawn area, I see him on widescan. He was unclaimed and I managed to get him. But the best part of it was after killing Spiny Spipi I got the drop! Woot!

Spipi was actually the first of many NMs I would kill that day. Next I was off to Carpenter's Landing to spawn and kill Mycophile. I wanted the mage item he dropped, but he didn't drop it this time.

On my way to Jeuno after killing Mycophile I happened on Panzer Percival. Again, no drop.

I then went to Beadeaux to hunt Ge'Dha Evileye. I wanted the Holy Phail he drops, but after killing him a couple of times I hadn't gotten the drop, and gave up. Trix, being the good friend that he is, managed to kill him over the weekend and sent me the Phail. Thanks, Trix!

Back in Windy, I encountered a new bug introduced in the last patch. The icon for disconnects is now blanked out on the 360 (at least). Here's hoping they fix it, because it is no longer obvious when someone is having connection problems.

I then did an Assault (my first since the limit point from Assault patch). I encountered a new nasty HNM bomb. The bomb is called "Arial Torpedo" and he killed many folk, including your humble narator. In fact, I don't think we ever managed to kill him before Assault was over.

Well, as I said, I've been leveling my mage jobs now. Here I am in the dunes as a Galka WHM. Thus far, it's gone pretty well. The most amazing thing that I noticed is that I've managed to have more MP than any of the other mages I've partied with save one (a Taru SMN who was two levels higher than me, and had 40 more MP). By and large, my mana pool was much larger than even fellow Taru WHMs my level. It just goes to show that Galkas can be excellent mages with some meritted MP and decent gear.

After the dunes, I was called to help out with Avatarx's Snoll fight. I needed it as well, so we headed out together.

Unfortunately, this was an ill-fated battle....

We had 2 MNKs, a dual-wielding DRK/NIN, 2 RDMs and a BLM. Realistically, we should have been fine. Here we are fighting Snoll Tzar. Unfortunately, not everyone listened, the mages were too close to the bomb, and we all died.

At any rate, I did make WHM 20, finally, and went back to level up BLM. My goal is to get WHM and BLM to 37+ for possible RDM subs.

Unfortunately, I had sold off my old BLM spells (thinking I'd never level it again). So I had to take my mules out to pick up Warp and Drain. For Drain, this meant getting a Sandy mule to Rank 2 (bah!). So I took out Mesohonee (who was already fame level 3 in Sandy, the other pre-req for the quest) and had Cyc help me get Rank 2 with it. This involved doing the quest 'Save the Children' and killing Fodderchief Vokdek and his friends. The battle was trivial because Cyc came as his 75BLM, and soon my mule was Rank 2 and I had a new Drain scroll in may hands.

Started out doing more ToAU missions. Avatarx and Cyc headed out to the graveyard in the Mire to help me beat my Ghost NM. I popped Jazaraat and we creamed him.

When I next went to Windy, I found my choco was auto-retired because it had been 130 days. BAH. Oh well. At least I got a shitty placard to put in my room.

Soon, I had enough friends who needed the next ToAU mission that it warrented attempting it. Before we could do it, however, we had to get Sloth caught up by killing his Ghost NM in the Mire. We headed out by boat because Sloth didn't have the right staging point. En route, Cyc tried fishing up a NM or two, but failed miserably. Eventually we got to the graveyard again and fought Jazaraat for Sloth. We won, of course.

After that, we headed out to the Ashu Talif where we would have our Black Coffin fight. I know I've been saying this a lot lately, but this is, yet another, one of the craziest battles in FFXI.

The arena is this ghost ship, known as the Black Coffin, or Ashu Talif. The battle itself comes at you in two waves. First, the captain of the ship sends 5 of his crew to battle you. Here, you basically pair up everyone with a crew and try to stay alive. It was interesting stuff. As a 75NIN, I had little difficulty surviving and killing mine, so I was one of the first to go and help the people who were having a harder time staying alive.

After you defeat the first wave of crewmen, the Captain joins in the battle and brings more crew with him. Here, we slept the crew while everyone focused on killing the Captain. It was a rough battle, but so very fun. We won, naturally, and we all advanced to the next battle.

We next headed out to Riverne for the weekly EXP page and ENM event. On their way out to meet us, Beppop and Vic found a NM, Upyri spawned. We all came out and fought it. We got the two "big" drops from him, but they weren't worth very much.

Wrapped up my weekend by dying in Besieged a few times.