Campaign Battle: Who needs xp parties anymore?

After getting a map and making it to the past’s version of Windurst Waters, I did the easy quests to join up with Windurst’s Campaign faction: the Cobra Unit. A few minutes later I headed out to West Sarutabaruta, where the outpost will be in 20 years. In the past, there’s a large tower and an npc that’ll sign you up to take part in Campaign battles. Basically, you stand around waiting for the music to change. Once it does, you talk to the npc again and get some allied tags which remind me a lot of those tags you need in order to use the Runic Portals in Aht Urhgan. A few minutes after the music changes, the beastmen will arrive. Being Windurst, you mostly fight Yagudos.


Each wave has a leader, and there are three that will piss everyone off more than the rest. Kazaan the Peerless gets first mention because his aoe move blows through all 3 shadows from Utsusemi and hits me for between 1800 and 2000 damage every time, leaving me eating grass and cursing at the monitor. Here’s a screenshot of everyone at the Campaign Battle swarming him.


Vaa Oozu the Redolent is second, as I’ve only seen him show up in Meriphataud Mountains [S]. Vaa Oozu’s one of the few bad things about Campaign battles in Meriphataud Mountains [S]. He is apparently a beastmaster, and will summon a scorpion to attack whoever is currently holding hate. As he’s monk, he swings twice and takes down two shadows, leaving me open for his scorpion to swing once, taking the last shadow, then use Death Scissors. Death Scissors is one of those moves I’d like to see work as well for the Blue Mages I pt with as it does for the scorpions. It averages 1900 damage each time, and I think Vaa Oozu’s buddies have fed me that just about ten times since I started taking part in these battles. The third and final Yagudo nm you should watch out for is Dee Xalmo the Grim. He’s a monk type that seems to have a permanent en-Doom effect on all his attacks. For everyone that’s never been Doomed on FFXI, let me tell you how it works. Dee Xalmo hits you. You have 10 seconds to remove Doom (if you can, I don’t know if it’s possible.). After 10 seconds, you die. As he gets closer to dying himself he activates Hundred Fists, meaning a lot of people die in domino-like succession. SE finally decided to do something smart and not have any kind of xp penalty if you die during a Campaign battle, so you don’t have to worry about losing levels. If they’d only do that for “normal” xp parties….

Back to the Past: The Map Will Show You the Way

Sitting around lfg gets boring pretty quick, so I decided to give Vana’diel’s past another try. My first attempt ended when I circled Fort Karugo Narugo for an hour before I got frustrated and warped back to Aht Urhgan. By now other people had already discovered there was a quest to get the map of the Fort that stymied me completely. Armed with that knowledge, getting the map was incredibly easy. I’ve looked up the quests for the maps of Grauberg and Vunkerl (Venkurl? One of those.) Inlet, and I can say the Fort quest is much easier for non-75s like me. After getting the map, running to Sarutabaruta is a breeze. Right after I got into the area, I got attacked by a goblin. It was annoying and killing me at the same time as I fought it. Luckily one of the new monsters, a pixie, floated by and cured me. They aren’t aggressive and actually help players out, so they are now my favorite type of monster. Here’s a picture of me with my little pixie friend.


After reaching Windurst Waters, I did a couple quests so I can now fight in the campaign battles. While I’m pretty sure you have to be lvl 75 to be an effective dd there, it’s nice to know that pretty much anyone can go fight. I’m looking forward to when the other Windurstians in The Greatest Linkshell Ever can fight by my side. When I say “by my side” I actually mean in front of me. Kyrek’s around 75 war now, and Kyss and Cold are still super fast leveling robots so they should be sporting Maat’s Caps by the end of next week.

2 ½ Years Later: Rank 6 {|All right!|}

Rank is fairly meaningless to me. I don’t have any jobs lvled up enough to do “endgame” so I don’t fucking care about going to Sky or the Dynamis areas. I’m sure Sky is nice and Dynamis is fun, but until I have any actual reason to see those places, I don’t need them. Here’s a picture of me getting the last magicite I needed to get rank 5. The date on that is June 28, 2005.


I only got to 5 for the free airship pass, and I had no interest in getting past that. Then I started leveling Samurai. The AF quests for the job all take place in Norg, one of the hardest towns to get to if you don’t know how to buy 1 silent oil (maybe 2 if you get lost) and take every right turn on the way. You have to go through the Sea Serpent Grotto to get to Norg, which is full of aggressive monsters that will kill any lvl 30 players heading there for the first time. None of them have ears apparently, so you can Sneak past them all and get to Norg without dying. I hit 51 with sam recently, and the AF quests are looming. Faced with multiple trips to Norg and finding various NPCs, I asked the Greatest Linkshell Ever for help getting to rank 6. This would finish the original FFXI storyline and allow me to get a map of Norg on my next visit there. Another ls member, a rdm named Jerred also wanted Rank 6. His being from Bastok meant he would actually know what the hell was going on during the conversations between the Shadow Lord and Zeid. I’m from Windurst, so all that Galka drama doesn’t means shit to me. Coldwind and Cyaan volunteered immediately to help me and Jerred out, further proving why they’re among the more respected ls members. Bassetto came along to help as well, as we could help him get a part of his whm AF on the way. We needed a sixth person, and Roninhiroishi agreed to come along. He’s about the only Elvaan character I don’t want to /point at when I see him and /shout “Douche!”. I will probably further explain my dislike of the Elvaan people later. Before we could fight the Shadow Lord, we had to clear out some Skeleton NM in Fei’Yin. Bass’s AF fight was also there, which is probably one of the main reasons Bass came along, and I agree with that reasoning. After waiting a while for everyone to get ready, we headed to Fei’Yin.


We headed to the ??? spot Bass needed, only to find a 3-man pt already fighting the NM. Rather than wait 15 minutes to spawn it later, we formed an alliance to fight the NM, Altedour I Tavnazia. It was already pretty weak when we joined in, so it died pretty quick. It drops two items that whms need, so Bass got one and the other guy got one. After a quick rest, Bass spawned it again and we fought him again.

It wasn’t a particularly hard fight, but I did manage to get hate from Coldwind right as my shadows went down and the NM did Dimensional Death. Having taken some –aga spell a few seconds earlier, getting popped for 800 killed me. The NM died a few seconds later and I got revived, but dying still sucks ass. With that out of the way, we headed to the Qu’Bia Arena to fight the Skeleton NM, Archlich Taber’quoan. The fight is lvl capped at 50, so I got to use my Luisant set for extra ass-kicking. The fight starts off easy enough, against the one stupid skeleton.


Eventually, the skeleton will begin summoning minions to fight. I ignored these completely as Cold, Cy, Ron and I decimated the NM. I got hate from Cold again, and the NM began concentrating on me. I figured if the NM wants to just fight me, I’d give him a good reason to. So I activated Mighty Strikes and we finished the Archlich off quickly.


With that finished, I headed back to Windurst to talk to the Star Sibyl. She said the Shadow Lord was returning, but Windurst couldn’t do anything officially because it would piss off the Yagudo. Why Windurst wants peace with those stupid birds I’ll never know. So, unofficially, the Star Sibyl asks that the Shadow Lord’s return be prevented. Which means the mission is pretty much a commando assassination. (“Assassination” has ass in it twice…..) So I rejoined the party and headed through Xarcabard’s strange lights from beneath the ground to Castle Zvahl.


Everything in Castle Zvahl is aggressive to me, so I had to keep Sneak and Invisible up at all times. Which sucked.


After following Cold and getting kind of lost a few times, we came to the Throne Room.


Amazingly, nobody died at all on the way to the Throne Room despite all the high-lvl beastmen that guarded the way. Finally we saw the door of destiny. Again, I’m sure it would be much more interesting if I was from Bastok.


After a “Nyah-ha-ha, I’m the evil Shadow Lord!” cutscene that also involved Zeid for some reason, the fight was about to begin.


The fight itself was fairly anti-climactic with Cold, Cy and Ron all high leveled. We crushed that stupid bastard. My lvl 64 war/nin even got hate away from Cold’s 75 pld for a couple seconds, which I see as an even greater victory than the one over the Shadow Lord.


Lion shows up for some reason once the Shadow Lord was defeated. Damn Bastok, they get most of the story. After thanking everyone that helped out, I headed back to Windurst. A cutscene later I got to hear that Rank Up sound again for the first time in literal years. Rank 6 was mine, and the map of Norg awaits.