In the land of Vana’diel, many know that there are times when finding people for a party can be a headache. You may already have two or three other people, but finding the other people to fit into key roles? Not always easy, eh? It was always a problem when we leveled with our friends, and found ourselves just making a small party of three to pass the time and gain some EXP while we played the waiting game. After awhile, we decided we wanted this to change. We aren’t the most stellar players boasting x, y, and z accomplishments or equipments, but we trusted each other to get things done and almost always found each other’s company more relaxing than the random person in the party who either has nothing to say or feels we should be worshiping the ground they walk on. Leveling three RDMs seemed ridiculous, and leveling BST was out of the qusetion. Random conversations of BLU came up, and we knew the path we wanted to take…

The tale of the three BLU now begins…

Because I know someone out there might find these entries useful, I will be including as much detail as possible. Things such as food, leveling areas, subjobs, spells (learned or used), and monsters will all be taken note of. First, the rundown of the players:

Mekare

Mithra

Main: THF

Provides insight into mobs, areas, and is our excellent chef!

Orophen

Tarutaru (male)

Main: RNG & RDM

Troublemaker, scratching post, and butt of endless pokings and prodings. Oh, and supplies us with information and occasional tactics.

Calaera (yours truly)

Tarutaru (female)

Main: BRD & WHM

Of course, me. I wish to rule all of Vana’diel and claim supremacy over it with my trademarked “Cute Attack”! I choose where we level, camp spots, and basically set the pace for everything.

Now, all three of us have cooking leveled to at least to the point of being able to make pineapple juice and have Pilgrim’s Wand. I felt both are important in helping keep downtime to a minimum since we are working with half a party. We didn’t bring any ethers, potions, or status removing medicines (though the later could have helped depending on the mobs we fought). In fact, in our haste, we kind of forgot to bring more prisim powders! Not that it mattered in the end…

Starting at level 10 and spending a good weekend getting spells in advance is also a good idea. It takes a lot of work, is annoying as hell, but we had high level characters/jobs capable of getting us the spells we needed. We will probably continue this for as high as we can, as our target level (for now) is to get to 60 and get AF. Our first camp of choice was La Theine Plateau at the Emphemere fighting crabs, sheep, worms, and gobs. At one point, we found that a VT gob was a piece of cake even with less than half MP. It took a bit of work and careful balancing of MP, but it went down without too much trouble. After hitting level 11.5, we wandered around and killed Orcs, more crabs, gobs, and the occasional shroom. At level 12, we were ready for more action and wanted to see just how well we could do in the Dunes next to a full 6-man PT.

At level 12, we thought of camping the entrance of the Dunes near the Plateau, but went against it because of the IT++ Goblins that roamed that area. We favored the lizards after finding that some of them were at least T – VT. We decided to go with a camp and pull move, because of the Goblins roaming about the area and possible links that could incur. T mob went down smooth, but the next pull? Lets just say that didn’t go as smoothly… then again, its hard to feel confident with less than 100% MP and the mob is conning as an IT+. In fact, I’m not even sure how we happened to survive that fight even after some two very scary moves landed on us. Fireball is not something you mess around with as a Tarutaru, and go, “Haha! You silly little beast!” In fact, it calls for a random string of slurs, cries, and the spamming of spells that do not want to be spammed as fast as you want it to be spammed.

After barely living through that fight, an LS mate and friend asked if we could use a PL. We had been fine without one, but I knew the guy needed to level his healing skill and was happy to finally be doing something for us instead of the other way around. I will say now that another party was next to us and had two PLers with them. By the time we finished off our IT+ lizard, one of the members had leveled. I believe she was either a 10 or an 11, but they were taking on Gobs (ranging from VT to IT) while we attacked lizards and then moved onto Gobs ourselves. About 75-90% of the time, we were able to time our Head Butts just right so that we weren’t hit with a Goblin Rush or a bomb attack. They would go down fairly easily, and it almost seemed reminiscent of higher level TP burn parties in the ToAU zones.

Now, at level 14… we wanted change. We got cocky. Crabs? We thought they would be a good idea. We were, after all, on a roll! But we had left our PLer to wander around, and blindly attacked an IT+ (maybe ++) crab without knowing he wasn’t behind us. If there was a humbling experience then, it was at that moment. Neither of us died but it came close to it if we weren’t trying to spam Cure on Mekare (both Orophen and I have subbed /WHM and Mekare has subbed /WAR). Taking a toll on our MP, our ego, and our health, we decided to go back to the entrance of the Dunes (the Plateau side) and made quick work on the Gobs and rabbits there. Starting from 11:30 AM PST and ending the party at about 3:30 PM PST, we made it to level 15 while the person that had leveled up to 10 or 11 earlier? She was only 12 when we were entering South San d’Oria…

Anyway, that’s about it. We aren’t sure whether we’re going to level or try to get more spells today, but we’re very happy that we can party without having to be dependant on three other people to get EXP. We were relaxed, we were happy, and we had fun. Something we felt was starting to lack in the game for us. Good thing the working part of the job is getting the spells needed for us to be as efficient as possible… which will probably be a headache of itself as we progress further along as BLU. Oy…