It was an intense weekend of Mastery grinding. Between Sortie, Odyssey (with a campaign running, no less), Limbus, Dynamis, and more, we managed to squeeze in a surprising number of objectives. I’ve been focusing mostly on Adoulin quests and Mog Garden progression, but as I wrapped up a surprisingly long quest chain that required fishing in Foret de Hennetiel, fishing in Carpenter’s Landing (I’m pretty sure this was my first time on that ferry in my entire FFXI career), and fishing in my Mog Garden… seriously, why does this game want me to fish so much?… I found myself the proud owner of a Midras Helm +1.

This, unfortunately, led me to confront a system I have avoided for nearly two decades: crafting.

Anyone who knows me knows there are three things I refuse to do in FFXI:

1. Fishing.
2. Adjust my hard-headed, axe-swinging “hit it harder and hope I live” Warrior strategy.
3. Crafting.

My crafting skills are all level 0. Except Synergy, which sits at a mighty 5 — exclusively because I once needed to break God Seals into God Scraps for Escha NMs. But with a crafting skill-up campaign active, I equipped my new construction helm, grabbed some food from the moogle, and marched proudly into the Bone Zone, because Twitch chat demanded that Bonecraft be my first craft.

And I have to admit… it was actually pretty chill. With chat’s guidance (and the melodic screams of Johnny Silverhand — you truly had to be there — expressing some complicated cocktail of disdain, love, and fear for the Bone Zone), we pushed Bonecraft from 0 to 18 in no time. That’s like… what, 15% of the way to the cap? We’re practically professionals now. Well on our way to our first fully capped craft!

All that to say, we made a ton of progress this weekend. We knocked out probably a dozen or more Adoulin Quests, we kept up with our Mog Garden, we increased our first crafting skill from 0 to 18, all well keeping up with daily tasks. And I’m excited to report that our Mastery Rank is now… checks notes…

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still 5.

See you next time.

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