Well from thumbing around Typo and Mogs journals, which were rather impressive I might add, I've decided to take up a journal I can call my own in this Forum. I have kept a journal of sorts at livejournal.com, but it was more to document my gardening. I like this format because people can respond to me in forum form. This first post is unfortunatly going to be pictureless, as I am at work and doing this on lunch, but no worries, they will come. ^^;

About myself:

Well, my name is Dantrag (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y44/Dantrag/pol2005-03-2101-28-52-95.bmp). I currently reside on the Unicorn Server. I have decided to take up my Great Katana and fight for the Republic of Bastok. I have allready logged about a month in playtime, and have reached the point where I can unlock advanced jobs. Being a Galka, I decided early that my job would be Melee based, and after traveling around the world, I have seen what the wonders of skillchains can do. Thus the entrance into the ideals of a Samurai.

I am still a mere apprentice, only lvl 10 to be exact. I am studying under a mentor of mine. His name is Ricardo, and he also practices the art of Meikyo Shisui. The knowledge that he has passed down to me has been priceless, and I hope one day I can do the same.


http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y44/Dantrag/Me.bmp
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Back to reality.....

Last night I met up with Rico in La Thiene. He is working on his RNG so he can sub it for Samurai when the time calls for it. On my way out there, I ran into an old buddy, Fosgate, near the outpost in Sandoria. He was watching an attack on the outpost, which was being defended by a group of people. The teamwork I saw was amazing. One day I hope that I will be able to participate in events such as that. Seeing as Fosgate was struggling with his whm job (He's a warrior at heart) I invited him to come along with me.

Fos and I made it to the Crag and met up with Rico. After all our macros were set and supplies in order, we set out to the dunes to start up a party. After 5 min or so we filled the last 3 spots, and everyone met up down near kon. highlands.

This is when the nitemare started.

Upon getting to camp, I checked out our two tanks, and thier gear. Both level 10, one a war/mnk, the other a nin/war. Both were wearing a full set of leather gear, and that is it. I shrugged it off, thinking that there has to have been some sort of reason, but after the first battle got underway, things went to crap. Our warrior took so much dmg, it was rediculous. I voked the lizzy off him, so the whm could catch up on heals. Well, the war never felt like voking back, and death was soon met for me. I'm not gonna go any further, but 4 more deaths for me was about all I could handle. I ended up disbanding and sulked back to Sandoria.

Coming up with a negative amount of exp after 2 hours of training got me a little discouraged. I talked to Narania, a blm that I have grown close to in the past 2 weeks or so, and she helped me get out of my slump. I think I'll send her a carnation today.

After my talk, I decided to do a little crafting. My ultimate goal in crafting is to be able to sign my own Haub by the time I reach level 59. A long road lies ahead of me for that though. I was able to become more familiar with the smithing guild in sandy, and raised my skill level to 2. After that, I fished for a little bit to relax, fertilized my plants, and then headed off to bed.

Hopefully tonight will be a little more productive for me in the experiance department, otherwise it's off to ghelsba to farm up more fire crystals.

On a side note
After a long talk with my friend Ricardo, we have both decided that leaving our current LS, TheForsaken, may be in our best intrest. Don't get me wrong, the people in this LS are wonderful people. It's just hard to relate to somebody that is lvl 70+ when you are starting out your career in a job. Even Rico, who is almost lvl 60, has a hard time relating with the quests and journies that these guys do daily. Weather we decide to start up our own LS or join another remains to decided, but as of now we are looking into LS's that are more geared toward activities concerning mid level jobs. So if anybody has any recommendations, please let me know.

Some Random Pics:
Gilgamesh (http://www.geocities.com/phialpha87/Gilgamesh.pdf)

Last night was the beginning of something I hope will be big. Ricardo and I decided on creating a LS. The name of the LS is "Makoto (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y44/Dantrag/pol2005-03-2321-12-33-70.bmp)", which is Japanese for "Complete Sincerity". At least that's what I have been told. The visions I have for this LS are endless. Up til now, I have been in LS's that have pretty much just been colorful chat rooms. No harm in that, but I want a LS that will help the entire population of it grow.

We are focusing on lower-mid lvls to join our LS. This way we can start out slow, work on quests such as garrison or eco-warrior. Camp a regular NM together, or work on rank 1 or 2 missions. Something that will get members used to the fact that "Ok, it's weds night, better wrap up the exp. party and head up to Jeuno to start up LS events"

The people that have been recruited so far show definate promise. Ricardo is my only standing officer at the moment, but I have a feeling that Narania may also take up part of the responsibilty as well. Besides those two, we recruited a blm and a whm in the dunes. They were the back lines to a party Rico and I had assembled, and played thier job well. (a pleasent surprise in the dunes) Also Fosgate decided to join the LS to. I think in the future he will be a good asset to the LS. He takes his time with things, and makes sure he does whatever is possible to make sure that he's equiped the best he can.

On top of all that, I am looking around to hopefully start up a LS website. Something that can help bring some organization to the group, and make event dates more accessible for the not-as-frequent members. Time will tell.

Besides that, I managed to muster thru 2 levels in the dunes, Putting me at lvl 12. Experience seems to be moving slow as a Samurai. When I came thru as a sub jobless war, it seemed that I get to 15 in a matter of hours. Maybe I'm just excited to move on, so things seem to take longer then they actually are. Regardless, I'm having a blast playing side by side with Rico. It's nice to know that there is at least ONE other person my party that you can rely on if things start to get ugly. We have developed a Skillchain, and have been teaching the newer players how to join in. It's nice seeing the excitement of a BLM after they do thier first Magic Burst, or the eagerness of a warrior to do his part with Shield Break. Shows to me that thier is promise to the future generation of Vanadiel.

On a similar note, I witnessed something that struck a funny spot last night. While I was on a mule in sandoria, I came across a large group of adventurers getting ready to do Dynamis. Apparently these are the high level NA players on the server. Some of these players have been friends to me in a past life (something I do not wish to go into) and the events that unfolded really disturbed me. Since this large group is rather noticable, and not something of the norm, low level characters were making comments. None of these comments were rude or condescending, but for some reason, asking the question "How come there are so many people here" set these high leveled players into a "burn" session.

"Orcs are attacking, you better log off!"

"STFU n00b, just go to your moghouse"

"Welcome to my blist, you'll never get a good party again."

"Shut your rank 3 @$$ up, you wouldn't understand anything anyway."

These were some responses to the mere question of "Why are so many of you here?" I was sickened. Just because you've gotten up to lvl 65+ does NOT give you the right to treat players like dirt. Everyone started this game at lvl 1, and everyone started this game not knowing anything. Stuff like that just ruins this game for people, and really gets on my nerves.

Ok, I'm done ranting now.

As for plans, I think I might take up fishing soon. Looking down the road, I'm gonna need quite a bit of cash when I get to the lvl 40is rng. Snipers, Kotes, Gi's, Katanas.... I'm looking at about 2 mil for that level alone. Now I see why it's called the level 40 ouch. So I think I will fish a bit right now, since farming at lvl 12 doesnt seem extremely profitable, and take half of my profits and fuel that into smithing. Reasoning: I want to make my own Haub =P

As unreasonable as that sounds, I think that would be awesome, to have my own, personally signed by myself, Haub.

Side Note: I have been doing a lot of research on gardening ores. I have been doing pretty well with my crystal growths, and I think I'm going to be putting some effort towards that now. I am going to grow my own saplings first, cutting half my cost right there. The only sucky part is that saplings take close to 3 weeks to grow >.< Check my website for updates on that.

Well, I hope you guys can bare with me here. I'm still trying to get a grip on posting pictures up here. Right now, I'm taking them with FRAPS, and I just put them up in .BMP format, but that seems a bit small. I tried converting them to .JPG format, but that MIGHT cause problems with viewers that do not have current Adobe programs. I guess we'll see how it pans out.

Anyway, last night was another entertaining night in the dunes. I was at lvl 12, and kept getting invited to parties that would have five lvl 11-12s and then one lvl 14. Experience was getting discouraging when we would have massive down time for just 50 xp a pop. But, the infamous Ricardo came to the rescue and him and Fosgate seemed to log on at the same time, so we started up our own Party (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y44/Dantrag/pol2005-03-2323-12-00-96.bmp). Once things got assembled, our party worked pretty smoothly. Aside from the fact that I was lvl 12 in a 13-14 party and kept whiffing on crabs, we managed to pick up xp pretty well. In no time I reached lvl 14, and I was able to equip my balance rings, to help BALANCE things out hahahaha ehhhh...

Ok that wasn't funny.

Anyway, after the nice group, I realized it was a new moon. Perfect timing to jump start my fishing career. I decided to head to sandy, as I hear that north/port sandoria have nice freshwater moats to fish in. I ran to the outpost in valkurm and finished my supply run for bastok, then high tailed it to sandy. While walking thru the front gates, I heard a LOT of commotion. People were yelling like crazy. Apparently moogle decided to have some fun, and started handing out eggs. He said he would reward me if I brought him the first three letters of my name, then handed me an egg with the letter A on it. Hmmm... being pushed for time, I decided to wait until later to try and conjur up a D and an N from my fellow adventurers. I wanted to get to fishing!

I ran home and unloaded all my access items and grabbed my fishing gear that rico crafted up for me recently. I headed over to the Auction House and purchased a Composite Rod and a couple stacks of insect paste. After 45 min in North Sandy (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y44/Dantrag/pol2005-03-2123-15-00-70.bmp), I was rather pleased with my results. Out of 3 stacks of paste, I pulled in 2 stacks of moat carps ^^

That basically paid for my fishing rod. What was a little disappointing was that I didn't even gain a level of skill. I think it was more like +.6 in that 45 minutes of fishing, I'm not positive though. I heard this was a slow process, but yikes!

I might try a different Rod, I need to target a fish that has a lower catching lvl I think. I am still lvl 0, but with the gear, i'm lvl 4. Moats are lvl 11 cap, so a 7 lvl difference. I hear thats good for skills, but I dunno, trying something new never hurt anyone.
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This up coming week has me a little discourage. I'm finishing up my last quarter in school, so my schedule is going to be pretty crazy. Basically, from 7am to 10pm I will be either at work, school, or commuting between the two. I'm afraid that this will effect my playing time drastically, which saddens me. I'm really enjoying my life in Vana'diel right now. Time will tell how things work out though I suppose.

Allo Dantrag~! Good taru read of your adventures so far~! Those comments that were made in response to "how come so many of you are here" are typical of a few bad apples in the high level ring on Cerberus, too. 'Spose it spans across all servers, but try not taru let it discourage you... they were once brand new taru adventuring, too, and any insults they can throw at a newbie when they've done nothing wrong are just immature and unnecessary. They're obviously not worth your time. ^.^/

And congratarulations on making your own LS~! That's something Typo has never even tried after 15 months in Vana'diel~X3 I hope that, as well as your gardening ambitions all work out for ya!


I might try a different Rod, I need to target a fish that has a lower catching lvl I think. I am still lvl 0, but with the gear, i'm lvl 4. Moats are lvl 11 cap, so a 7 lvl difference. I hear thats good for skills, but I dunno, trying something new never hurt anyone.

Typo used to be a fishertaru meself~ Fishies 5-7 levels above your current fishing skill ish a great way to make quicker skillups, if you can call skillups from fishing "quick". :3 I won't go further than that, since I haven'taru done any fishing since the latest change to the system... Good luck taru you. ^^

Also, you might wanna make those piccies .jpg format. Anyone can see 'em, and the smaller file size ish much appreciated for those with slower connections. .bmp files are huge ._.

Well, this weekend I was sure busy! It was nice to have a day or two to just spend time with my friends in vanadiel. Highlight of the weekend: Jumping from 18-22 with my samurai in 2 hours.

I had the most incredible party in qufim. I was skilling up my spear in la thiene with my flag up, and I got a tell from a Japanese player. I did a quick /sea on her, and it said lvl 75 rdm! So i'm thinking some sort of mistake, so I shruged it off. Well she tells me again, come up to jeuno, we're gonna go to Qufim for some xp. After questioning her, I found out that she was gonna go as whm. I arrived in jeuno rather skeptical. I had heard that melee really don't prosper in Qufim until lvl 20. Lord knows thats what I did with my war. Well this play proceded to tell me how she was gonna go whm/brd for party regen during downtime, and for melee accuracy during battle. I'm thinking works for me.

We get to the island, and the party is me (Sam) whm, blm, rdm, rng, war. The party ROCKED. We had no downtime, the rng and I were doing skillchains 2x a battle, and the blm (who was also galka btw) was bursting like a lvl 75 pro. I was amazed, and what made me even more happy was that everyone had something about themselves that put thier specific job "Outside of the box". The rdm subbed smn, the rng had war subbed for attack bonus, the whm subbed brd, blm was a GALKA, and the war was your simple war/mnk. I wish I coulda had something fun to sub ; ;

That party was really refreshing for me, I was struggling thru the dunes, and people seemed to be so bitter at everything going on in the game. I was just happy to get a group of people that weren't worried about rushing thru the xp, and to just have fun.

Unfortunatly, for every high, there is a low. Last night I ended up grabbing a party, and it was just awful. A horrible experience for me. The party consisted of 2 blms that just ruined everything. It started when it was night time, we ran to the tower to escape the undead. While we were there, we decided to pull clips. I, being the only melee apart from our tank, volunteered to pull, and everything was fun..... Until blm #1 decided to use stonega >.<

After casting stonega, he nailed a wight, something i didn't notice right away. All of a sudden, I see HP drop from the blm, and the crab is still whacking our tank. I spot the wight, disengage, and voke the wight with hopes of getting to zone and buying my crew some time to finish the crab, then zone themselves. Well the ploy worked, crab was killed, and I made it to zone alive. The rest file in, and thats when it starts.....

"Whats your problem Dan? Why'd you go and voke the undead" --blm #2

I explained what happened, told him to check his log. Then, this guy goes well it's your fault anyway, you're not supposed to pull between 18-4. Well, for one undead come out at 20... Second, I can pull perfectly fine while avoiding aggro from undead. I pointed out that blm #1 had cast stonega, and I was just trying to help out. This guy then decides to go on a rant about how he's had this game since it came out, and that I was wrong and he was right. I check his gear, /sea his name, this guy is a poorly equipped rank 1 blm. In my opinion, at low levels magery is not a tough job class to equip. If he has had this game for so long, how is he not more advanced in his playing. I decided not to argue, just told him I would find a party that would find me of more use, and disbanded.

After that, it was time to call it a night. I headed to jeuno and threw stuff up on the AH and logged out.

People make this game stressful at times, but meh, I'll get by.

On another note, Today is the start to a new quarter of classes for me at college. Time to start new, get a jump on things, make good impressions. It's funny how you can be so motivated for a week, then lose it all real quick.

I think with my restricted play times for M-TH i'm going to focus on crafting, then go out to xp on the weekends. I'm gonna keep at smithing, maybe mine for an hour or 2 today, craft tom., mine weds, craft thurs... we'll see. Something to keep me entertained. Anyway, thats all for today folks, until next time.

~Dtrag

Well a very uneventful day yesterday. I didn't have much time to explore anything new, or work on my skills as a Samurai. I ran over to Sandoria to start up cooking, I think that I will try this craft out instead of smithing. It's cheaper, and I will be able to learn the "ins and outs" of crafting a little bit better, and be more prepared with my smithing career when the time comes.

Kinda funny, I started out making carrot broth, out of sandoria carrots, and who comes by doing the SAME thing? Ricardo! Kinda laughed at that. He has become frustrated with the teachings of Samurai, and is making a career change. For the time being, he's hanging up his Katana, and going to practice is arts in black magery. I suppose it works out for me, he's letting me use his Och. Kotes until he needs money, so that will save me a LOT of gil (1 mil)

As for the crafting, I went from lvl 0-3 using the Recipe for Carrot Broth. Consisted of a water crystal, and 4 sandorian carrots. After that I headed back to Jeuno to meet up with Narania. She agreed to be an officer in my LS, so I gave her here sack. Then her and I headed over to windurst. She had some errands to run, and I wanted to work a little bit more on my craft. She likes the idea that I'm becoming a cook "Galkas make good home-makers" I believe she said. After making Orange Juice to lvl 5, I logged out. The recipe for that was similar to the carrot broth, except instead of carrots there were oranges. OJ caps at lvl 10, but I'm not certain if I'm going to take that recipe that far, I may have found a cheaper way.....

But more on that later.

I'm also gonna unlock the rng job while I'm in the windy area. I think I will work on soloing that and thf both to lvl 10 in my spare time. Those two jobs will come in hand later on in my Samurai carrer. Plus having TH in your arsenal of tricks never hurt anyone, eh?

So I changed crafts AGAIN =(

Cooking, while useful, just isn't fun to me. I just made some OJ, whoopie!!! I dunno, maybe at some point I'll work on it, but right now doesn't seem like it's needed much. So I jumped into Bonecrafting. I asked around, and this seems to be an unpopular craft for my server. I don't know why, but we have a lot of smithers and tanners, so why not be different?

I am currently level 9, I worked my way thru the "chip" stage, lvl 1-4 was a wind xstal and ONE bone chip, 4-9 was a wind xstal and TWO bone chips... exciting, I know. BUT I did find a woodworker that wanted my bone arrowheads, so I broke out even in that facet. Tonight I will be able to head back to Qufim though *shudders* and hopefully I will be able to get past that area and into the Jungles by tomorrow. I just really want Meditate, the bread and butter of my job.

Well, bout time to clock out, I'll try to post some pictures this weekend, I'm still trying to figure out how to change them to .jpg format. All I can seem to do is .bmg >.<

I took some of the things u said and did them lol
my cooking craft is at 9 ^^ i think i may try bone too
keep up the posts cause ill keep on reading

ps >> wanna up fighing get worms and any rod composit works great wont break from what i have seen go to north sandy and fish near mh to catch moat carp . they sell well on my server like 4k on average a stack and u can up your level from 1-11 on them

>>>>Methos<<<<<

I'm glad to hear that you also take interest in crafts! Hopefully we can swap recipes like a couple of old maids >.>

As for your fishing advice, I think I'm close to what you suggested, I fish with a comp. rod and insect paste (instead of worms) and although I catch a good amount of carp, my skill up rate is sloooooooooow. I am learning that is just how fishing works though, so it's more of a past time now then a project.

P.S. What server are you on?
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As for my life in FFXI, well it has been non-existant. Monday evening my computer crapped out on me, and it's still being worked on right now. Over the weekend I was able to progress pretty well with my Samurai, Making it to lvl 27. I'm just glad to be out of Qufim =^.^=

One thing that has really bothered me is the recruitment of Makoto. Well, there has been none. It seems like the people that recieve pearls will drop in for a day, and then disappear forever. As of now, it's pretty much just myself on the shell, with Rico in there whenever our play times over lap. I know it's only been a couple weeks since Makoto was born, but it's frustrating. I really want to stick it out, but I'm starting to get to the point where I can DO stuff, like BCNM 40 and the like. A LS consisting of just me will be hard to pull it off.

The brighter side of this is something a higher lvl friend told me. "Most of your best game friends you will meet during lvl 25-65" Well now that I'm at that stage of my career, maybe things will turn up. Anyway, hopefully my puter will stop being dumb and I'll get some time in this weekend.

~Trag

I am on the Diabolos server I am a galka i have level (war 30) (monk 27) (white 7) (red 7) (black 12) (thief 16) (ranger 7) (dragoon 7)

well if u are just useing insect paste u may want to try in west ron at the little lake

as for cooking i have to head to windy >< and get it uncapped and find out what i can make from 9+ now

>>>>"Most of your best game friends you will meet during lvl 25-65"<<<<
well i have never heard that before lol some of my best game freinds i met at level 10 or even lower 15 different people i have seen around

right now i am monk level 27 ^^ so i am doing some of the same stuff as u

bcnm sounds like a good gil maker cant wait till i get 40 ^^ i have 2 full stacks of seals

as for qufim i love that place ^^ i have had nothing but great teams there >> i go there for 2 days and its been the same thing both times i have been there 20-25 within the 2 days i am there >< something that worries me though there are level 18 people in qufim grrrr i see them my first statement go back to the dunes

Did u quit?...