Return to DRK

It all began as a DRK, or so the legends say. In ages past, Khaki made it to level 71 before being banished to real life. Bathed in assumptions to never return, he deleted his original character and entered an era of bliss; until one day, he changed his mind. That day was in early January, 2005. 

Actually, there is one more reason as to why I deleted my first character: SE warned of automatically deleting characters that went untouched for three months after cancellation. I was somewhat furious to learn, several years later, that had I not manually deleted my character, I could have restored it through a new service designed to bring old players back to FFXI. I now regret deleting my original character and not reaching level 75.















A) My old character as a high-level DRK.















B) My new character, reposing the picture above as a BST. 

It has been three years since I left Vana'diel, and upon my return, I decided to recreate an Elvaan nearly identical to the original. However, I wanted my new character to appear different, so I opted for red hair instead of blonde. Although I wanted to play DRK again, I remembered facing hardships with my original character, so to make things easier, I decided to level BST first.

The benefits of leveling BST first became immediate upon starting a new DRK. For one, my new DRK would have capped Scythe skill until the high-70s, so I could focus on leveling my Greatsword skill early on. In addition, I could also solo a great deal of quests and farm gil with ease on BST whereas my DRK struggled. What has taken me two years to prepare for is finally being set in motion. Although I leveled BLM to 75 before DRK, DRK is next on the list. Currently at level 52, I am slowly climbing back to the top, so here are some highlights as to what has been going on:















This NM is for one of the DRK AF pieces. He did not last very long before the might of Snippy's claws and my Axes. Surprisingly, the Sword NM (above) was much easier than the Axe NM (not shown).


DRK AF Spoilers below!














Usually, Artifact Quests (AFs) are for obtaining job-specific armor that is iconic of the FF series. Most AF quests involve bashing creatures or opening treasure chests; the quests also introduce a brief background surrounding the job itself. The picture above shows that the creatures I just beat up are actually slaves to the weapon itself.
















A close-up of a powerful Evil Weapon (the rapier) and its slave (the Koboid) inside the Shrine of Ru'Avitau. Both the Koboid and the rapier can attack, but only one at a time. 



Notes:
a) Green text denotes linkshell chatter, and only members of the same linkshell can exchange linkshell messages.
b) Vana'diel is the planet where all the fictional beings of FFXI reside.