Hunting

After spending lovely holidays doing holiday quests and sitting under the decorated trees in her mog house, Pasifika was ready for some adventures, and so she went hunting for notorious monsters...

First one was easy to find: Bune was patiently waiting in his cave, keeping an eye on the tunnel where the tasty adventurers usually come from. pasifika kept an eye for Bune for a while - from a safer distabce this time - until others could come bring it down.

Just as the reinforcements arrived, a single red mage grabbed the big beast. :O
For a good while it looked like an even fight, although a very, very slow one. Bune got the better of him eventually, and Pasifika's party claimed the monster. Bune had no treasure, though. :/
After Bune went down, Pasifika raised the unlucky red mage.

Next notorious moster on Pasifika's list was a sahagin in Yuhtunga jungle. Known for appearing in various parts of the jungle, the walking fishie eluded Lina and Pasifika for a long while. Finally Pasifika cornered it in the northern parts of the jungle. Assisted by their loyal adventuring fellows, the two mages took on the sahagin.

It was a fierce fight, and Feliz coudn't quite keep up, but Romidiant fought to the bitter end. It was close, but not good enough. :/
Despite their defeat, Lina and Pasifika didn't give up, but called another white mage over instead. Who says white mages can't tank notorious monsters?

The Sahagin had no treasure either, but Lina, Pasifika and Romi blew some steam by wrecking havoc in the Quicksand Caves, and there was a treasure coffer just waiting for them. Lina got the map for the area, cheer!

As if that hadn't ben enough excitement for one day, Pasifika went to help Tito get a formidable monster, behemoth. Unfortunately, others got it, and it turned out to be a pretty small behemoth anyway. Lina wondered if it was just a behemot pup still. In any case, it was no match for the trio fighting it, and there was nothing Pasifika could do about it.

After getting suddenly teleported out of Behemot' s Dominion (leaving others with no means of transport behind :/), Pasifika was starting to calm down after a day of excitement. Just then a cute little taru came by, on her way to Jeuno for the very first time. A tarutaru escort quest? :D What a nice way to end a fun day. ^^

Season's Greetings~

The Great Escape - a little game

Last year I made a little FFXI-themed game as present to Lina. It was in Finnish and just a silly little game, but now I've translated it into English anyway.



Instructions for downloading and installing

Follow the link to the site where the game is uploaded.

Link (File Dropper, updated 4.8.10)

If the link doesn't work (it will expire after a while since this isn't exactly a popular file) or if you'd like to get the game for different OS, leave a comment or /tell me in FFXI.

Among the ads there you should find a button for downloading the file. You'll need to give the number from a picture... sorry, bots, no game for you! (I know, it's a bit complicated, but it's free.)

After you've downloaded the Great_escape.exe to your computer, run it to unpack the game. A folder will come out, and inside is the icon for starting the game.

The version I have up now is for Windows, but I have it also for Mac and Linux, so leave a comment if you want me to add a link to either of those versions.

Instructions for gameplay

This is a point-and-click mystery for you to solve. There's not much to say about the controls, you'll just use the mouse to play.

One hint that comes to mind is that sometimes when there's text on the screen, the next click will make it disappear - and nothing more. So if you click A first and get some text ("This looks like A and what do you know, it is A.") and then click on B, you won't get the description of B - the text for A just disappears. Just click B again. If still nothing happens, then the game has nothing to say about B.

If you have any problems, tell me about in in FFXI or leave a comment, so I can fix it.

I made the game with Ren'Py, in case you're interested. (renpy.org) The pictures are from FFXI (Square Enix) and "music" by me.

I hope you like the game~
Please leave some comments if you play it (whether you like it or not).

Treasure hunt

Pasifika has some (many @_@) quests uncompleted that she has started ages ago, and one of them came to mind recently. It required finding some very important items in treasure chest, and Pasifika started the treasure hunt in Sea Serpent Grotto.

This kind taru helped Pasifika get the key and lead her to the chest. One down, two to go~

Next place was the Labyrinth of Onzozo, and Pasifika spent a good while trying to get the key. Finally she got one, and then searched for the chest... Of course it's always at the last place you look, there's no point in looking any further, but this chest was in the last possible place, after Pasifika had checked all others already.

A goblin seemed very interested in this treasure, but not in the least upset about some adventurer taking it. Not fighting over it was a smart choice from Mr. Goblin, as Pasifika had just done short work on a notorious gobli that had crossed her path in the labyrinth. Aptly named place, by the way.

Last treasure was in Castle Vahlz and Pasifika already had the key. The chest was sitting there in plain sight, not far from the entrance. Lucky!

Pasifika got caught up in the excitement of treasure hunting and decided she'd go find a chest in Ru'Aun Gardes, too, to get the map. Its just that... she didn't have the map and was hopelessly lost there.

Luckily, the taru guide from earlier volunteered to show her around, and Pasifika got her map from a heavily guarded chest.

The guided tour included also other highlights of the place, like the tragic Five Galka Bridge and also the place where Kirin occasionally hangs out. Kirin wasn't in this time, but some other time, then~

Shielded!

Here's Pasifika's new shield.


I can't say it's shiny, because, well, it isn't...
but it should be sturdy, since it popped out of this guy.



Here's Pasifika's new Shellra V. It's shiny enough.


(Let it be known that the first merit point was used on club skill.
The three after that on the shiny.)

End game

Sky is like this:


People running around, that pretty much sums it up. Sometimes some notorious monsters are involved. Mainly on purpose, too.

I still have no way to tell what the rest of end game activities are like, but Pasifika's first sky run was... intersting.

Here are some more highlights:

In Lina's kitchen

Today Lina told me we could bake cookies together if I went to her place, and hey, she wasn't trying to lure me in with something suspicious like candy, so of course I happily followed her. :D

At her place, Lina whipped up a batch of tasty dough while I took out the tarutaru cookie cutter. (Doesn't everybody have one of those?)

I went a little wild and created an alliance of tarutarus~
Here they are, can you guess which is which?








Look closely for the tell-tale details, and then check if your guesses even came close:

1) Dhm, wearing his blue mage helm and all
2) Nt the Notorious
3) Lechuck, the melee white mage taru(!)
4) Shantotto... no comment
5) Titotaru, the cutest of all Titos
6) Fari-Wari the long-winded
7) Shihu-Danhu the not-so-brightaru warper (but I like him~)
8) Eisteddfodd, the cheerful taru that makes you dizzy
9) Flygon, the dancing *and*singing taru
10) Badda on a windy day, his cape flapping in the wind
11) Dibble the christmas taru (ok, all seasons taru, but well remembered for that role)
12) Yoran-Oran, a leading mandragora researcher
13) I even gave you a hint there, so you probably knew right away this is Star Sibyl
14) Dennis the menace... not. He's a cute taru~
15) Kohlo-Lakolo, leader of Star onion Brigade
16) Kupipi, Heaven's Tower's receptionist
17) Lutete, Master Caster of the Ariesian Casters

An observant reader might notice there's still room for one more in the tarutaru alliance, and that's because Pasifika need sto be able to join, of course. However, right now she's adventuring with Lina and Romi.

After that I got a little carried away with the cookies... Here's a scene from Saruta, and I'd like to point out that the mandy there is Pasifika's friend, and she's fighting that crawler. Yes, it's a crawler.

I started to run out of dough by the time I got to the humes and such in the background. (You can see the perspective there, right?) They are, from left to right:
Havster, Astarael, Fyren, Nakago, Catzen (far back), Malachiuk (in front of her) and Djbobby. The resemblance is uncanny, don't you think?

But then I ran out of dough, so I couldn't quite finish this masterpiece. I'm sure I could've squeesed some more people in to admire Pasifika's battle prowess, at least some elvaans to the back row... Lina wanted to put the cookies in the oven already anyway, so I left it at that, for now.

Lina made the dough and operated the oven, but creativity was mostly all mine. Here are a couple more eager helpers, now enjoying a well deserved rest after being constantly underfoot and overly curious about the baking process.

(The cat looks humongous, but she's actually pretty tiny, she's just on a chair at the foreground. ^^;)

Mage vs. Mage

In the shiny corner, we have Pasifika, lvl 75 whm/nin!

She's wearing her Noble's tunic and crown, and dual wields clubs, Brass jadagna and Deae gratia.

In the shadowy corner lurks Romidiant, a lvl 74+ rdm/nin!

He's wearing the Tactician magician's cloak and wielding, err, a shiny dagger.

The match is about to begin, but let's rewind a little to see where this is coming from. How could Romidiant turn against his best adventurer friend?!

Romidiant has always been ready to adventure with Pasifika. Always ready and willing to help, always polite, never telling white mages shouldn't melee... Such a perfect adventuring fellow.

Just a while ago he saved Pasifika from those quadavs, when yet another one of Luto's schemes backfired.

Pasifika is always happy to help him out, too, with investigating the emptiness or whatever needs to be done. Every now and then Romidiant bakes her a loaf of homemade bread they can share while on the road.

Romidiant has been steadily improving, both becoming more powerful and wearing nicer clothes. He has come a long way from wearing the useful but plain race specific vest. :D He's starting to catch up with Pasifika. And... it seems he'd like to surpass her.

That's understandable, but a duel? With Pasifika? But... but... I blame it on that mithra, Luto always has such twisted ideas... @_@

And so Pasifika had no choice but to duel with Romidiant. He always looks so impressive and intimidating with the great katana Pasifika got for her, although Luto probably took credit for that... but he would prefer a dagger?!

It's a nice one, though, pretty handle, decorated blade... but totally useless against Pasifika's stoneskin. And no en-spell on it, until near the end?

Romidiant made a valiant effort to sleep/nuke, but looks like no one told him casting poison first wasn't such a good idea. Romi clearly hasn't practiced soloing enough! Perhaps it's time for him to do things on his own, maybe take some more of those 30m a piece jobs from Luto he's been doing lately. >_>

He might like to avoid Pasifika for a while anyway, after that last Hexa Strike. Got a little carried away, sorry about that. ._.

Friends~

It seems Pasifika is slowly but surely becoming an accepted member of her community, with increasing number of people (= at least 3) being understanding of her, err, unique qualities, or at least benevolently amused instead of upset and disgusted.

Pasifika can also impersonate a proper white mage if desperately needed, but only for short periods at a time. It's pretty exhausting. Deep down Pasifika is a white mage that walks her own path (fierce attacker~!), and every now and then someone is actually willing to walk beside her for a while. ^_^

There's even a new friend around now, a lovely mithra lady. :D

I have a suspicion that she looks a bit like Lina under that hood, but no, it's not her. Tail looks somewhat similar, too... But this is a San d'Orian Mithra. It's such a joy to have friends~

Well, there's always Romidiant the adventuring fellow, but lately... things have gone a little weird between him and Pasifika. >_>

Why haven't anyone come to think of this...

I just came to think of one thing that the great world of Vana'diel lacks: dating service. And I mean proper dates, like long walks around the Purgonorgo Isle and maybe some clamming, if inventory space permits, or doing an interesting quest together, preferably involving a long-lost love letter or something similar... that kind of things.

If there were such a thing, though, with my luck it would be Ms. Salaheem's attempt to squeeze just a little more money out of the adventurers. I can imagine her making lovely matches, with her spiky friend... >_>

Today's revelation was at least partly influenced by a music video I saw, and with my compulsion to make vids, I just had to tinker with it... here's my take:




Do You Wanna Date My Avatar (feat. Felicia Day) Go find the original, it's really nice. :D

Unfortunaltely, Pasifika would probably be beyond help no matter how cute a tarutaru cupid was making the matches... In addition to taking things really slow (You know how long it took to take white mage to 75? ^^;), she has really high if not unrealistic expectations; She used to date the most dashing and handsome elvaan you could find, after all. -_-;

Also, the proper wedding ceremony (I did warn about the expectations, didn't I?) is a one-in-a-lifetime experience. ;_;

I'm sure we could get an event Moogle to officiate, though :o




Edit: I had problems getting the video to buffer, it kept stopping for several seconds at a time no matter what I did. I uploaded a lower quality version that plays well (for me), but here's the other one in case it's just me (or my connection) and not the video. It's exactly the same video, just uploaded differently.

Happy Halloween~

Tarutaru tarutaru taru~ taru~

Everyone knows there's nothing but tarutarus in Windurst.

Ok, maybe some blond hume females, too.
The kind with a ponytail.
But lots and lots of tarus.


There are even duplicates of some.




Tarutarus in Jeuno~
Nothing but tarutarus as far as eye can see. *_*

Melee white mage taru! :D



Taru-in-a-box!
Too bad it's one of those temporary item chests. ;_;

Taru in my Mog house! :O

What I see:

So~~ cute!

What tarutarus see:

Cree~~py~

...that might explain some things... >_>