Last night was an evening of a bunch of competing objectives… most of which got completed or at least progress made towards them. The main and overarching goal was to make sure that my good friend Grace was able to run experts. I wound up running The Twinning and Incomprehensible Named Sad Robed People dungeon without her, and as such I wanted to make sure she got both unlocks last night. I am still not the biggest fan of The Twinning, because it seems like I just take way more damage than I do in any other instance.
However Grace healing it was a far better experience than with the previous healers that I had been in there with. Of the three 80 dungeons my favorite is the Sad Robed people one… which means I am likely going to have to learn its name. It has an art deco vibe that speaks to my soul… and reminds me of wandering around in Bioshock’s Rapture. The jazzy soundtrack is pretty freaking great as well, which made me realize how much Soken is experimenting with new constructs this time around. While I love his more metal boss themes… it is also nice to see him playing with a bunch of other genres as well.
Another side mission was getting people into the Linkshell… and dearest Rohiaux explained after making yesterdays post why the previous nights efforts were not working at all. It turns out that Square apparently blocks cross realm “tells” to players that you have not been in a party with before. Roh’s suggestion was to create a Cross Realm Party and then share out a password to everyone you wanted to invite… which makes an awful lot of sense but I also did not want to hamper myself from running content last night.
What I instead opted to do was to use the realm visit functionality to pop over periodically to Faerie, Gilgamesh and Jenova and from there I could send messages to people directly. It also allowed me to use the search functionality to see if someone was online in the first place. Essentially in lulls between content I would pop over to Limsa Lominsa and use the realm visit function on the main aetheryte. This allowed me to snag a Risa and a Leori… which gives me a beachhead on Gilgamesh and Faerie respectively. The next problem of course will be the relatively small size of a linkshell… buy that is a battle for another day… however we are already 1/3 full.
Lastly I spent some time working on my Samurai. I’ve swapped to doing as much in the way of the daily hunts as I can with the Samurai and then mopping up anything left over with the Warrior. I am also engaging in as many FATEs as I happen across while hunting for mobs. Lastly I am working on the Trust system and anytime I am not otherwise engaged I am running one with the SAM to both level the Trust NPCs and get some much needed XP. As a result I wound up finishing the night by running the 71 dungeon right before turning in and heading to bed.
What I really need more than anything at this point is the dungeon to actually start dropping striking gear and maybe even a samurai sword. I have a ton of caster and healer gear for classes that I will take forever to actually play… but my army of melee classes is starving a bit for modern gear. Everything that is available on the Auction House is at nonsense prices so I will not be going that route this time around. Instead I am hopefully going to keep running the dungeon until I can get some gear, which is also what needs to happen to level the NPCs. However I did manage to ding 72 which is progress!
I also feel like I need to start pushing some classes through Heaven on High so I have multiple characters that I can be running through the dungeon ranges as it takes so many more runs for the NPCs to ding than it does me. Long story short… I am super engaged in this game right now and loving it.