With my eyes closed.

Before anything else, just a few mentions of things that appeared in the last couple of days about the expansion. First, in Famitsu (the JP equivalent of some combination of Game Informer, IGN.com and The Escapist, only better) there was an article about the new Conquest/Besieged-type thing in the expansion. It is to be called Campaign, or Champagne, or Campagnie or something like that, anyway, it appears to be like Besieged but more complicated and maybe more consistant. Instead of one huge battle in one zone, there appear to be smaller bases or outposts that will have to be defended and then, depending on how the battle goes, it can be extended into beastman bases and outposts. Sounds very interesting, and something I am going to look forward to. Also, there was a mention on Play.com, that was quickly removed, that mentioned that people will now be able to enter the Mog Houses. Interesting, very interesting. I don't know it if was accidentally leaked by Play.com because the Play.com advertisement also mentioned Campaign but that was also removed. Either way, neither of these items have been mentioned in any of SE's NA media releases, so we will have to wait and see.

Leveling WHM is interesting, I was thinking about saying that it was easy, but I don't necessarily think that is true. If I am fulling paying attention, then yes the job is very easy. If someone needs a cure, they get it. If someone gets a status effect you remove it. On this I would like to say that there is some benefit to being a melee before being a mage in that I tend to know what TP moves have additional effects. This allows me to anticipate status effects and have the spells ready almost as soon as the effect lands. The only problem with this is that I find it hard to pay full attention on WHM, and this is because I just don't find it as engaging as a melee job, especially one at 75. This may sound weird because a mage probably has more things they need to cover and they need to manage MP, etc, but for me on a melee job especially in a burn party or when tanking, you constantly have your eyes moving around; checking shadows, watching TP, checking on JA's, equipment switching, etc. On WHM, I have a rather strict routine; Dia, maybe Slow and Paralyze, then heal. Thats about it. Now, of course all of this is coming from a newly level 28 WHM, so of course it is noobish, but I only see that this routine will be added to rather than made more complicated. When I start leveling RDM into the higher levels of course I will start adding in Haste and Refresh to the cycle, but those are things that I can learn on the way. Ultimately I hope that they will make me more engaged because I am not one to pay much attention to the chat log, and its impossible to change the notice when an effect wears off of a player. So that is something that I will need to learn how to do. That will also require proper setting of my chat filters, which I have never needed to change before because I have been exclusively a melee for my entire time in the game. I am both looking forward to this and dreading it at the same time. I have the attention span of a Tsetse fly so maintaining a simple cycle of spells and buffs is actually more difficult for me than keeping a constant track of multiple inputs.

So basically, WHM is not hard at all to play well, but is actually quite difficult to play excellently. I have actually started my last couple of parties on WHM using my controller then quickly moved over to using the keyboard. Its quite weird for me to use the keyboard but I find it much easier to do with it. I don't have to move or look around a lot, and generally the keystrokes feel quicker if I use the keyboard, although at times it feels like if I use the macro combinations too quickly then the macro doesn't go off, which is weird. Maybe I am not hitting them together, but it sure feels like I am.

Anyway, enough with all that mage talk. At least in the second jungle and I am getting XP decently quickly. Some all of this WHM leveling will be behind me and I can start on RDM.

Now, for the little bits from yesterday. Here is another strange crystal in sky. Red AND blue this time.

And here are my counter merits. I still need nine more merits to max them out, but then I will be able to start stacking up on my Tier 2 merits. Ultimately, I am going to need 33 more merits to complete MNK, and I think I am going to work on that pretty hard in the coming weeks.