"Return to Vana'diel" has moved

I've decided to move this blog to another blog service. From now on I will post about my character's adventures at shinjiru.wordpress.com! All the older post are already transferred to the new blog.
I hope you'll continue to follow Shinjiru's return to Vana'diel at the new blog! See ya there!

Qufim again

After spending some time in Windurst I returned again to Qufim Island. Using a chocobo I got there from Windurst in much shorter time than I was used too. At first I was in my usual party with Mouskouri, Ascyr, Zaxxon and Bulway but when this party split up I had to look for a party of my own. After some minutes I found a NIN and a SMN to join me. And some time after that we had a full-fledged party of six members. Everything went fine until half of the party was killed by a pugil. It seems one of the melee fighters forgot to provoke and so our main healer and almost everyone else was killed.

Although I died that day I managed to get enough experience to level up to BLM 24. Now it's time to work my subjob up to level 15 or higher. And after that I am finally ready to level Black Mage to the magic 30th level. Summoner here I come ^_^ !!!

Chocobo license

Yesterday evening and this morning and early afternoon I joined my friends Ascyr, Bulway, Zaxxon and Mouskouri in the area around Jeuno to hunt Goblins, Qadavs and beetles. There were several level ups and we did several successful skillchains and some nice magic bursts. We had great fun and I finally reached level 22 as a black mage.

This afternoon I did the chocobo quest and then used my newly acquired chocobo license to rent a chocobo and travel back to Windurst.

Forum Avatars

This morning I created a new forum avatar. Using the FFXI Model Viewer and the JASC Animation Studio I created an animated forum avatar based on my FFXI character. You can create your own avatar by following this steps:

1. Download and install the FFXI Model Viewer
2. Install a program for making animated GIFs (like Microsoft GIF Animator or JASC Animation Studio)
   
3. Start the FFXI model viewer and setup the character or NPC of your choice
4. Choose the animation of your choice
5. Use F11 to copy the selected animation frame to the clipboard
6. Use a program like IrfanView to change the image size and save the frame as image
   
7. Repeat steps 5 to 6 until you have saved all frames as single images
   
8. Read all images into your favorite animation program
9. Fine tune your animation
10. Save animation as animated GIF
11. Done!

Here's my new avatar:

Jeuno ... at last!

Yesterday Ascyr, Bulway, Zaxxon, Mouskouri and I went back to the Valkurm Dunes. Although we had no WHM as main healer, nobody died and I finally managed to reach level 20 with my Black Mage. Wahoo!!!
After some hours of killing Snippers, Pugils, Leeches and Goblins, the party disbanded and Ascyr, Mouskouri and Zaxxon escorted me to Jeuno. Always in fear of being attacked by some malevolent Tiger or a goblin we sneaked through Jugner and Batallia to finally reach Jeuno. Wow, what a sight to behold!
In Jeuno I took a rent-a-room and after that Ascyr showed me around. My next plan is to finally do the chocobo quest and then we head on to Qufim.

Old friends

Yesterday when I continued levelling MNK I saw that Zaxxon and Mouskouri were online. They are both people I know from real life and when I first started playing FFXI after the European release, especially Mouskouri helped me several times. I still remember when she and some other linkshell members helped me get a magicked skull. They both have stopped playing quite some time now but now they are back!

Later that day Ascyr, Bulway, Zaxxon, Mouskouri and I formed a level 10 party, travelled to the Dandruf Wadi to do some hunting there. It was the first time I used TeamSpeak to communicate with my party. Being able to talk instead of typing everything you need to say makes things much easier. It was also the first time I was the main healer of the party. We died several times (ouch) but had great fun nevertheless and almost everyone made two levels during that day.

Some progress

Today my friend Ascyr helped me to reach WAR level 9. He is a mid-level WHM and so we did some power-levelling. I also tried out one of those new XP+ items (empress band), so I was able to get up to 160xp per kill.

Shortly after reaching level 9 we returned to San D'Oria where I sold my old bronze armor and changed my main job to MNK. MNK makes a good subjob for WAR, so it's the next logical step to level up MNK until I am ready to go to the Dunes again.