Weapons are Tools of Ill Tuna

Wondering is my favorite thing to do.. I know the trips from one spot to another can be boaring, but some of my favorite FFXI memories happened cause I took the time to walk. Case in point, I was wondering Garliage Citidel to find things to kill without annoying a bunch of people trying to XP. I was checking around on the different mobs and seeing a sea of Too Weaks when...something started attacking me... I stood there taking hits, not understanding. Level 73..should be anything to agro me, when I saw "Old Two-Wings" flying above me. How rude! Well... it looked at me funny.. quite literally.. so I summoned my NPC (Had no idea how tough it was) and killed it very fast. It was very dissapointing; not only no drop, I didn't even get a single XP for killing it. So...rather than waste a charge, I went killing, but didn't find much worth the time. I ended up in the basement to kill Weapons, but ever since my NPC reached 59, I have been having a hard time finding good mobs to kill. My NPC was complaining about the time when I finally got an invite to party, so I ran back to Jeuno.

Accepting invites to Japanese parties is a huge question mark anymore. It is very difficult to participate in the party decisions, it is nigh near impossible to ask for a replacement no matter how late it gets, and now a days you can't guarentee they will or will not be a competent group of players.

A few days before, I accepted an invite from a US black mage player who invited a group of Japanese players to party in Luf. Meadows on rams and birds. The composition was odd to me, since no distinct healer was invited, but the black mage assured me he would be main healer. In actuality, however, he spent the whole time casting Antient Magic and constantly had no MP to keep me alive. It is unfortunatly a very common case where I am forced as a Paladin to cure myself, but even in those cases at least people are capable or at least put up an effort to cure me when I'm down to 200 or less HP. And no matter how many times I said "what exactly are you doing" or "cure me" he did EXACTLY the same thing, and the end result was that I died twice. What is sad is that the only reason I stayed was that I could not explain why I wanted to leave suitably in Japanese, but by the 2nd time, I was so fustrated, I just said "my food is gone. excuse me" and left. But of course, the black mage got his level while I gained a whole 1k xp for my time.

This new party was an all Japanese party, with a setup almost near the same as before, and had only two possible healers, instead of three the previous one had. Yet, they announced, it was okay. hehe.. anxiety aside.. I decided to accept it and give it a try.

Once again, I found myself past the moon gate and xping off of weapons there. The only switch was that we camped right ontop of one spawn point, which resulted in frequent adds. However, we had a good crew and two sleepers who were on the ball. And we were able to pull from both sides of the map, which was the one weakness of the camp--you run out of mobs very fast. However, I very rarely feared that I was the only one casting cure on myself, and the party continued quite well. In fact, they seemed glad they invited me...hard to tell tho...lol.. I don't read kanji very well. Whats ausome...they liked my one fireworks joke.

It is very hard to tell what is a good party of bad party. Two very similar parties had drasticly different results because of the competency of the players. Yet doubting the competence at the pickup party level will lead to never XP'ing ever. I guess its the "live and learn" ideal; and trying to remember the names of people before hand. lol.. there are some names that still leave me cold, and others I'm sure I've forgotten. In the end, I just can't stand still very well.

I wonder how many people think the same of me...lol.. hope I never find out.