Dancing Shadows

So the cat on his fiddle played hey-diddle-diddle, a jig that would wake the dead: He squeaked and sawed and quickened the tune, While the landlord shook the
Man in the Moon: "It's after three!" he said.... Now quicker the fiddle went deedle-dum-diddle; the dog began to roar, The cow and the horses stood on their
heads; The guests all bounded from their bedsand danced upon the floor.... The round Moon rolled behind the hill, as the Sun raised up her head. She hardly believed her fiery eyes; For though it was day, to her suprisethey all went back to bed.
"Merry Inn" Song J.R.R. Tolkien's work

Tolkien wrote a little poem that you never know what will happen when you leave your door. This past week I've been leveling Ninja.

Its a fustrating point. In some cases, I have had a few parties that made me feel like I'm an amazing ninja and that I could do anything. I'm just a dancing shadow dealing death to monsters. Other times... I can't do anything right. And I am constantly getting hit. I'm sure the reason for this is in the monsters I have been fighting--Funnel bats have an attack that eats 3 shadows at oncce--and some monsters have higher accuracy than I have evasion.. which leaves me with some cases that I have no shadows at all. My previous party seemed to be a case when I could keep hate, and was in little danger of dieing. But I was fustrated, and very close to leveling. So I used 3 xp scrolls and obtained my level 49.

My next party was a very fustrating one. I was in a party with a war, sam, whm and two black mages. No matter how often they took hate, and even after one died, they constantly spammed spells. To top it off, they wanted me to do a skillchain, which always throws me off for keeping shadows up. And to round the whole thing together, the whm was one who constantly spammed banish and holy; which made it hard for me since I was constantly getting hit. "(Holy) ha takai desho?"

I never know what to do in these cases except to "ride the xp wave," except that most of the xp we got in that party was pretty bad. Its funny how ninja makes you think XP in terms of how much each point is costing you in gil. But eventually we finished up, and I finally arrived at level 50 ninja.

So starts the Artifact Armor hunt. Ninja is one of those lucky ones that require 4 coffer keys, but thankfully, I was able to get the first 3 fairly easy. I solo'd crabs in The Boyardee Tree (yea.. not the name, but I like it), bees in Ifrit's Cauldren, and was joined by my friend Malika and her friend in Sea Serpent's Grotto.

Then there comes the "official" quests... those are amusing. This is my fourth set, and it very interesting how you can do the whole quest as another job; but you have to flag the quest as a single job. I flagged the new quest to get a tick box, but they had to make it annoying, so they made it only spawn on the ship from Mhaura to Selbinia at night. I'm not sure how many people have tried to farm Ice Spikes, but this is a pain. You have to leave just at the right time, but somehow.. I made it! And first trip I killed it, and had a long 10 min ride to stand around and look pretty.

I haven't finished the second part yet, but I just wish it included a fiddle.