Current Training: Fell Blade

Donations: Cassia Allin (40-50%).

Exploration: Tipulids.

Terrdi, day 6 of Winter, 559.

With the arrival of the New Year and now that I have reached my long-term goal of achieving 400 Atkus through training with Evus, I've been considering my future goals. As far as attack goes, I have been happy with a solid base of 400 lessons supplemented as needed with over 50 trainings with my Fell Blade (and counting). I doubt I will train more with Atkus again (and thus likely not with Evus either), but will instead keep working on my balance and damage and defense skills.

The big question is, how to go about this? There are three paths before me: continuing to train with the standard fighter trainers (like Natas or Mujin-kun), train enough Gossamer to become a Ranger and specialize along those lines, or train more Fell Blade (and gather yet more ore) to become a Champion and specialize along those lines.

Speaking to the Champion and Ranger folks it is pretty clear that I could become a Ranger pretty much instantly if I had the Gossamer training, while becoming a Champion would require some unknown but probably substantial investment in ore beyond the few hundred I have already tested, in addition to more Fell blade experience.

The problem comes down to this: instances like this where I am surrounded by beasts are not common enough or life-threatening enough to make me want to train with my Gossamer.

My kill rate is already pretty substantial with my greataxe.

Sure, Elenis Reyav and other Rangers could kill these 50 Bloodhawks a bit faster than I could, but I just don't see that as a compelling skill worthy of an investment of 100 or so lessons.

The plain fact is that I can slaughter every living thing in the Northwest Forest in a matter of minutes in search of coins.

Would reducing that time really help me any?

It would mean my coin hunt "loop" would have to be larger before I could return to any area with a hope of finding new furs, with more time spent walking than killing additional beasts. The density of fur-bearing critters just isn't high enough. I doubt I'd see my income rise that much.

If I wanted more coins, I'd do better to add 50 Skea lessons than 100 Gossamer lessons, and use the other 50 lessons for something useful in difficult areas.

Basically, I see training Gossamer as the price of admission to access to other Ranger skills. And while the Ranger shape-shifting is cute, I have yet to see it prove useful in battle. Burst running is actually useful, but the advantages of the other skills are not clear, as all the Rangers are rather new. I'm not sure the Ranger extras are worth it for me.

On the other hand, I like Fell Blade more and more, as I have started to accumulate enough training to see a real effect. I'm just not very interested in the Champion "extras" like lava cloaks and stone girdles. The fighter minerals sound interesting, but I have yet to see anyone who has specialized enough in these to show how impressive they might really be.

I will certainly train more with Fell Blade, at least until I consistently hit Slate and Pitch Arachnoids. Sure, I'll test what ore I find, but I don't think I am ready enough to commit to this path to start buying it or begging from friends.

So I suspect I will continue to sit on the fence awhile longer pondering my future path.

I have seen this a lot lately. Curious. I hope I don't pick up their bad habits!

One place I have traveled recently with regular companions was to the Ethereal Plane with PTF.

We were collecting Ethercles.

On one section we ran into two of the strangest creatures I had ever seen, sort-of an ethereal cross between a squid and a black widow.

They were pretty tough too, but we finally vanquished both Tipulids.

In this sketch you can see on dead one to the West, and a living one we are still fighting.

I was not the only one in the party who had never seen of heard of such creatures, but Yor assured us that they have always been found in the Ethereal Plane, if only rarely.

During a recent hunt in the Dredwood, we were interrupted in our clearing of the TGBG2 section by the unmistakable screeching of a nearby Drake.

This Forest Drake alighted near our group, and probably had no chance to even register surprise or alarm before we surrounded it and immediately put it down.

We then turned back to our hunting, and killed a number of Oak and Redwood Giants.

On another occasion, I joined most of the same folks to hunt in Ash Valley in the Foothills.

After a rough entry, we managed to erect a Kudzu fort, and proceeded to kill those Ash and Redwood giants as well, along with a large number of Midnight Wendecka.

After several trips to the Ethereal Plane collecting ethercles in recent zodiacs, I finally was able to join this group heading to the Ethereal Forge. There Valtrim was able to make 4 Ethereal Portal Stones for me. One went to Yor and the others I stored away for later.

Yes, that is Blitz, who is back in town after having been away from Puddleby from quite some time.

I also had to do quite a bit of gambling with Bumgal to obtain the ingots I needed, during which I won a boomerang!

I did not find it very impressive as a hand weapon, since it seems to have a very high chance of missing my target completely. That outweighs the lighter feel and marginally faster swing in my book, since I'd rather hit less often but hit hard rather than swing (and miss) somewhat faster.

Into storage it went, until the day I feel lucky and try throwing it.

Gradi, day 39 of Autumn, 558.

While passing through the South Forest, I ran into this new fellow, Norm Tratir.

He claims to collect phantasm pages, and sells pages for 100 coins.

One wonders whether he keeps the good phantasms for his own collection and only sells off the less interesting or more common pages.

Still, 100 coins is a good price, and he is much more accessible than that other Phantasm page seller, Senfantia, in Colmert's Castle on Gungla Island.

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