"Chuwei's Gimp status has been removed."

THANK YOUUUU <3s TO: Ashy, Boomie, Stabs, Fruitdaloop (ノ´－`)ノ ☆ I'm positively drooling at the screen right now, but perhaps I should start retelling from the beginning. (`・ω・`) So, in continuance of the goals I set last night in my previous post, I decided to get my butt a'cracking and start right away. Taking full advantage of being a citizen of the great land o' San D'Oria, with Valkurm Dunes being right in the neighborhood, I figure hay why not go now while it's deadish hour on the server? So I change to THF37/RNG12 (and /anon to hide the gimp sub, of course) and OP on over. Right as I get there I spy ze elusive Valkurm Emperor right there on widescan so I zoom over on FLEE! ....only to find that someone *barely* just killed it and the highly camped NM was vanishing away from my beady, greedy little eyes.

Well, no biggie. At least I knew the time of death now and the fella who killed it either got the drop or had given up, since at any rate he headed out. There were still about 2 other VE campers around, but I figure I'd try my luck anyway and stick around. I managed to kill the PH a few times, but the others either weren't subbing RNG or didn't know what they were doing or were trying to mess me up, because they killed all the other flies and then proceeded to kill all the snippers as well. After awhile I just gave up and decided to mash widescan. VE pops, I don't get claim, and neither do the other two campers because a pair of hot pink pearl people (later I was told they were probably part of a somewhat notable HNMLS) came in, sniped the mob, killed it, then left.

The other campers go away and it's just me, and a scattering handful of Dunes-level hopefuls at the deadest hour of the server (roughly 2AM PST). After having unsuccessfully camped VE a few times before due to getting confused on the PH (I was so tired that I ended up killing the 4th repeatedly instead of the 1st), I had read up extensively on VE camping and had snagged the correct placeholder and was killing it on the dot every 5 minutes, feeling rather good about myself. There was absolutely no one else around and I wasn't even worried about the pin not dropping at this point. In all honestly I just wanted to get experience camping and claiming an NM, something I'd never had the chance to do before (Unless you count Spooks in King Ramperre's Tomb), particularly a notoriously "difficult" and popular one such as Valkurm Emperor.

Around an hour or so later, some high level NIN on /anon comes along and just stands there, killing very random things such as goblins or snippers occasionally, but mostly just standing there and to all appearances appearing to be AFK. I figure s/he was probably there for VE as well but figured I probably had an edge because I had /RNG and they didn't, they were dual wielding weapons and had Sneak Attack so I figured s/he was on NIN/THF. about 20~ 30 minutes later, VE pops on my widescan towards the east and I flee towards it--only to have the NIN get there before me and claim it, kill it quickly, and then leave without a glance back. T_T

Needless to say, I felt pretty frustrated at this point. It's more of having put forth so much effort into it, I know there's conflicting opinions regarding the matter but would VE have popped that fast if I hadn't been there killing the PH consistently for 2 hours? No. Did that NIN even put forth any effort other than standing there and letting me do all the dirty work? No. Having that all taken away from me so easily by someone who was just there to reap my efforts was *so* frustrating. More frustrating than that was the ease at which they managed to do it. I felt so utterly stupid, and useless. I know there's people who have gone 0/11 etc etc or more on VE, and yet, I can't even come up with a number like that because every time I tried to camp him I couldn't even get claim. At first, I could chalk it up to heavy competition, or lag, simply bad luck. But this time, VE had popped much closer to me than the lone NIN, there was only ONE other competitor, who did NOT have /RNG sub, and even with flee I *STILL* couldn't get claim. There was no other explanation for it other than I royally suck, and I think that was what frustrated me the most.

As ridiculous and somewhat pathetic as it was, I was feeling quite miserable for myself as I logged off to sleep at 4 AM only to wake up gloomily 'round 3 or 4 hours later. Logging back on to see who was on the LS, I proceeded to retell my woes, to be met with:

"Were you killing the wrong placeholder again?"

"Lol, how can you kill the wrong PH? They're all PHs"

"She was killing the snippers" <---(to which a lot of LOLing ensued, and I had to laugh as well)

However, despite the encouragement the others gave me I felt quite unconfident of my abilities to, well, camp shit. However, the Price History on the AH revealed that -- the Emperor Hairpin was only 150k ! O_o Unfamiliar with RMT doings, but fearful that the price might leap up again, I went farming on a frenzy and managed to scrunge up nearly 70k in one day, which was amazing for me considering I was a new player with THF at 37 being my highest job at this point and it took me forever to smash a single leech in buburimu beaches (yes, that was, and still remains one of my main sources of income). Long story short, just as I was tentatively hoping that the empy pin just might be attainable, up went the AH prices again to well over 500k. Needless to say, this dashed my hopes, and at a level where 150k already seemed like an xbox hueg amount 500k was like D8. Even if I could farm up that much, it didn't seem to be worth it anymore.


*cough* so, anyways. Teasing and light-hearted ridicule ensued in the LS as per usual, but my geniune miserableness must have permeated through, because as I was about to sign off the game our fearless leader Ashriel commanded every able-bodied, not-in-party LS member to "Get your ass in the dunes, NAO".

I think at this point I was still feeling pessimistic and kept telling them they didn't have to do this, but by the time I got my butt out of the city and into the dunes, Ashy on THF/RNG, Boomstick on BST/THF, Stabbers on DRK/THF and Fruit on /anon like always (although I was pretty certain he came WAR/THF) were all already there they pretty much pwned every single PH out there before I could even target and engage D8 and also pretty much killed everything before the other campers could even blink. VE surprisingly popped within 45 minutes and thanks to my lag it went something like this:

Boom: Valkrum Emperor
Ash: VE
Stab: VE
Fruit: *chops away at random clipper*
Me: *mashing widescan* huh? I don't see it

Boom, Stabs, Ash and Fruit proceed to all madly dash over to VE while my underleveled widescan still doesn't locate VE on the map. In their frenzied rush they somehow mistake each other as other campers and end up all trying to race each other to VE and tried to out-claim each other (much LOLing ensued over that later). Steal, Charm, Voke, Stun, etc all go off at about the same time.

Me: huh? *runs around randomly* Where are you guys? What's going on? (I still think it's a fluke because I don't see VE anywhere)

My chat log:

(Ashriel): {congratulations!}
(Boomstick): grats!
(Istabpeople): {congratulations!}
(Fruitloops): lol {congratulations!}
(Chuwei): Wha?

2.5 seconds later

You find an Empress hairpin on Valkurm Emperor.

(Chuwei): OMG
(Chuwei): OMGOMGOMGOMGOGAASKF'ASKLFASEJAWKTGAKA

in which mild panic on my part ensues, I accidnetally pass on the pin, and have to quickly drop from party and get reinvited to lot on it again. XD In the end, I walked away, 37 THF in mostly mediocre gear but now a shiny new headpiece that would last me well into the high levels. I nearly cried with happiness but was content to just crash into bed at 4 AM.


Lesson learned:

-I *SUCK* at camping/claiming.
- my lag is retarded.
-level 12 widescan does not cover the entire spawn area of VE when you're standing in the far west corner.
-I have the BEST LS in the entirety of Vana'diel \(* ω *\) <333>

（´д`*）ワイーーーーーーーーーーー