November 8, 2013 – Aleczan's New Diary (FFXIV: ARR)

Suppose there are 8 Karakuls at a farm, and you get there when it had no one else. You start killing them one by one. Suppose you can kill as many as 4 Karakuls before they start to repop. You may find any of these situations when someone else arrives:

– They kill the other 4 Karakuls in each round of respawn cycle without even trying to snatch your half of the mobs.

– They leave after killing a few Karakuls, for whatever reason.

– They obviously intentionally leave because they don’t want to seem like asshole.

– They try to compete by trying to claim Karakuls as fast as they can, as many as they can, even the one that pops right on your character.

– They try to compete by claiming as many Karakuls as they can, plus trying exceptionally hard to not letting you get ANY of the Karakuls.

I have experienced all of these, either when I farmed Karakuls as WHM50 and as ACN/SMN 38 to 41. People are indeed interesting. ^_^

Today I logged in in Coerthas after some FATE hunting last night. I saw Svara’s series was up, so I went there. This is the only set of FATEs in Coerthas that I enjoy making effort to go to, because it is 3 FATEs in a row, and thus I could hardly be too late to get good EXP. I usually end up getting gold medals, which yield about 15k, 15k, and 30k EXP consecutively.

Anyway, after that, I saw an empty Fleece farming spot, so I claimed it in hope to get some Fleece for my new Woolen Robe set, and to kill time while waiting for next Svara FATE. Then a MNK (or a PGL, not sure) came with battle chocobo and shared half of the farm with me. I don’t mind because I can’t kill all the sheep before first dead sheep respawns anyway. We both claimed and killed the Karakuls one by one.

Then I had to go for lunch. I returned and saw the same person still there, so I resumed my farming. After a while, the person left. So I kept killing. It’s a shame I can’t remember their name because I didn’t pay attention enough to memorize it and went AFK for lunch for a long time and forgot to take screenshot when I got back, and they left abruptly later. :(

Then another matter came up and I had to switch away from FFXIV to do stuff on my PC. Sometimes I peaked and saw a BRD (or ARC, I didn’t check) by the name of Akira Beaty (nice person!) killing all the sheep, and I went back to doing my other stuff.

Then, when I finally got back to the game and started killing ONE sheep, that person Akira Beaty ran away, saying something like “Aleczan you were here first and now you’re back so I’ll leave. Don’t want to be an asshole that wants to steal.” Probably referring to another person, BLM, who was also present at the camp and pulling all the sheep together before using AoE spell to kill them off.

That was very kind. Though it is unnecessary to feel obligated to leave the farm when AFK farmer who was there before gets back, I felt very grateful. I don’t own the farm simply by being there first, but it is very considerate and nice of them to yield the way like that. It makes me happy to find such players in the game. As I hate competition, and I feel that MMORPG should be more like helping each other instead of being hostile and competitive.

Anyway, I continued to try to win the claim war against the BLM, named Kaol’tan something (they turned out to be quite nice and friendly). Sometimes I win 2 or 3 Karakuls from one round of pops (probably 8 sheep there in total). The intense, unfriendly competition went on and on. I got kind of annoyed and just stopped caring about the claim and just kept attacking the sheep even when I lost the claim war anyway, because I get EXP when I outdamage them. And I think sometimes I even got the Fleece, too.

Then at one point, the BLM started talking in /say first, saying “So close” which probably referring to me almost winning the claim on that one Karakul. I didn’t know what they wanted so I said “Yeah so close and I’m almost level up too.” Because my EXP bar was almost full, it made me happy. The person was shocked to know that I was doing it for EXP and said it is bad EXP farm and suggested that FATEs are far better for EXP.

I explained to them that I can’t keep up with the chocobo riding to get to FATEs and that I got bad EXP from FATEs when I get there late (and I meant to say 1000 EXP but I mistyped it into 100 EXP, LOL!) They said joining FATE party will rock the EXP. I said thanks, I’ll do that later. Well, I usually don’t join FATE party because I want to level up my Chocobo too. So I always have my battle chocobo in my party when in Coerthas.

I also told the BLM that I kill Sheep for EXP to kill time while waiting for Svara, and also hoping for lucky drop of Fleece to make my new set of robe, as the current one (also woolen) is due for Materia conversion already. Then, at one point they just sat there on the ledge and stopped killing the sheep, probably trying to let me have an easy time claiming the sheep and killing for some fleece. So I went around attacking them in a killing spree. At my full speed and attention, I could hardly kill 5 Karakuls before first one pop, as I killed them one by one, with the help of Ifrit-Egi and my chocobo. And after a while, I almost ran out of MP because I’ve been using Fester to consume my Aetherflow effects instead of refilling my MP with Energy Drain. XD

Then it was 10 mins until maintenance, so I regretfully had to leave the scene, in order to get Sanctuary effect while logged out.

Anyway, by talking to a farm competitor and having friendlier ambiance in the claim war, it feels much less stressful to compete, and I don’t get mad when I lose the claim to my opponent when they seem friendly. Also, at first impression you may feel or judge that someone is a complete bastard and so greedy, but if they talk to you and you exchange opinions a little, you might feel like they’re not too bad a person. I can’t say the BLM is a great person because I only talked to them for less than an house, but at least they were not just a totally greedy, selfish jerk who doesn’t share with others. They were willing to share. However, if I never talked to the BLM, I would probably now be ranting about them here, saying they were awfully greedy for hogging all the Karakuls, blah blah blah. LOL.

It’s wonderful how a little bit of human interaction makes gaming much more enjoyable.