Tales from the Long-Long Ago: The Origin of Gearliness.

Gear Whore’s connotation is too negative, so I’ve decided to refer to myself as Gearly. Jedimasta’s also very gearly. Gearliness is next to godliness, as I often say (but never out loud). Having the best gear has always been a goal of mine since I first started FFXI on the Fenrir server. I wasn’t Omael at the time, and I very quickly learned how important good gear was when I arrived at the Dunes as a level 13 Red Mage. I had just spent all my conquest points on those Legionnaire’s Mittens and most of my gil on a new sword. I felt pretty good about myself. Then I got to the Dunes. My first party was with a Tarutaru Black Mage wearing two astral rings. The little bastard would cast spells for the entire fight, while I would run through MP like shit through a goose. We got to talking, and he told me how INT and MND were the most important stats for a Red Mage while in a party. Being an ignorant noob at the time, I had no idea those stats made much of a difference. While using a sword did help the party kill lizards a little faster, getting a wand that increased both INT and MND would be a good idea to use when I was in a party, since all my enfeebling spells would be a little better. After a couple hours, my party got attacked by a goblin and died. I went back to my home point in Bastok and headed straight for the auction house. There I found a wand that added INT and MND, as well as making it harder for my spells to be interrupted. I fucking hated it when that happened, so the wand was instantly declared awesome. It couldn’t hit monsters very hard, but I still carried my sword around for that. After killing a few hundred bees to make some Gil, I took a look at the “spells” section of the auction house. I saw Bio on the list. I didn’t have that, and the Tarutaru black mage told me to make sure I get that one, since it’s a good spell. I bought it and learned it on my way back to my mog house. When I checked my delivery box to get my beehive chip money, I found a Saintly Ring and an Eremite’s Ring from the black mage! I sent the Taru a few /tells to let the person know I would gladly pay for them, but they told me no. The next time I went out to the Dunes, I did notice my Cures were a little better when I used the rings and wand. I also found out that monsters don’t like having Bio cast on them. Ultimately, though, I stopped leveling Red Mage around level 30. I envisioned the en-spells making weapons deal all of their damage as that element, not just adding on a shitty 3 or 4 points. My original goal was a Samurai/Red Mage, as they didn’t have my favorite job from FFV, Sorcerer (or Mystic Knight depending on who you ask). Turns out instead of being very cool like I had hoped, it sucked very ass. I then unlocked Beastmaster and took it pretty far, but those days are for another blog entry.