I had a great weekend on Final Fantasy XI! Seriously. I have been stuck at level 31 with my Red Mage and White mage for months now. Real slow invites or fake one. I have gotten so many ? I say yeah sure. And by the time i get out to the meeting point I get the now infamous, "Sorry we're full, maybe next time." Now this is not why I am ranting right now, just letting you know the frustration that I have had the past month. Now this weekend I am up in Jeuno looking to adjust some of my gear and create a few gear swap macros just incase I get a real invite. As I am running around I get a /tell for a party. They asked if I would mind being main healer as a RDM/WHM. I'm ok with that. So we all meet up at our rally point and meet at the Citadel.

The party make up is NIN/WAR, MNK/NIN, BLM/WHM, THF/NIN, DRK/WAR, RDM/WHM (me). Now it may not be the perfect set up but it seems to work. As we start rolling things get a little hairy. But we do pretty well. Then for whatever reason the THF starts to complain about not being able to SATA. Now I have not leveled THF at all, and I do not claim to know what the big deal about SATA is. All I know is that it does massive damage and puts hate on to whomever is in front of the THF. In a perfect world that would be great, the tank never losing hate. That means I can kinda go out and cure more and the BLM can nuke her heart out! But our NIN was having some trouble holding hate so it tended to bounce around. So the mob was coming for me or the BLM at times. So there was alot of movement. So after a battle i notify the party what my MP is so they can pull or rest accordingly. Well our THF decides to tell me if they could do thier job and SATA I'd have more MP. Once again I don't understand how, but ok. Well needless to say as the battle ensue, our screen gets spammed with complaints and gripes about SATA. So we boot her and replace her with another RDM to help with healing and enfeebling.

Well our DRK decides to pull and grabs alot of hate and becomes a MP sponge. I have partied with this DRK before, they claimed to have never died once in the game. So what do they do when things go downhill the run away and tell the mages to take hate so she can escape. Now last I checked it was us mages who had raise and the cure spells to keep them alive. So i kindly say don't worry I will keep everyone alive. They actually listened to reason, but they decided to quit when the screwed up and fell down a pit and died. Meh oh well. We get a SMN to take her place.

Now that wasn't really that bad. Minor complaints. But remember we have another RDM/BLM in the party. So I think to myself, This person must be totally geared to be a enfeebling machine right? Well upon a check of their equip, I was wrong. I have to gear set ups. One that maxes MND to help with healing and buffs and a INT that helps land my nukes and enfeebs. Now, I am not saying everyone must carry two set ups do do their job right. It would be nice to see players grab gear that enhances some aspects of their job. I really do not want to see a WHM with a full attk and str set up in my party. The other RDM we had had not one piece of +int gear. Her spells were 90% resisted and if the did stick they didn't really do much or wore way too quick. I asked why they had just basics on. They said they didn't have the gil to buy good gear. Now the basic +int and +mind gear is fairly affordable with some farming. They told me that they didn't care, as long as they get invites they would be fine. So I ended up being a healer and enfeebler. Another thing is having +mp gear as well. She was a level higher than me and was sitting at 260 mp. Where i was sitting at 352 mp with +18 to MND (+10 INT with gear swap).

Now the party did move very smoothly. Given our RDM seemed to be a leech I did make it to 35 (almost 36). It was one of the best parties that I have had in a long time. Considering the stagnant period I had. One person brought a PL for us, but we did not use them they just hung around to take care of any links. Then tele taxi'd us out. We averaged 150xp per kill and some were about 224. Didn't get alot of skill ups that I would have liked, but hey I am not complaining about that.

Also a few RL friends got together and completed mission 3-3. We trio'd that. At first I was a little worried we would get owned. This was because I thought the NM was a lvl 45. Turns out he was a 36, so we ended up owning him. Got our rank 4. Now I just need to level some more and then complete a few more quests and finish up rank 4!

I will post more as I play more.