Almost immediately after posting my last update, I died to the monster again, and seeing a crowd of players whose names were crowned with stars, I asked for help. A max-level healer had me join his party and slowly destroyed the enemy with melee strikes. As I understand it, I am now caught up on Rhapsodies until I finish with the base game story missions.
Since then, I have become the most famous adventurer in all of Windurst. To accomplish this, I purchased as many mandragora horns as I could carry, and then I delivered them to the local mandragora specialist. I repeated this process three times.
Because I am now a (relatively) famous adventurer, I was able to secure an invite to the criminal underworld. To accomplish this, I repurchased one of the beastman keys I’d looted during my leveling journey, and I delivered it to a man whose audience I obtained by deliberately saying nothing during two separate conversations.
As a criminal affiliate in good standing, I am now eligible to take a ferry to the distant land of Aht Urhgan. On my first trip, I stumbled into combat with a sea creature by mistake, and I died. I had to take the next ferry, instead.
In my destination port, I involved myself in a series of misadventures with the local law enforcement. I must now find my way to a ship in a cave in the depths of the swamp. The cave contains a gate which can be unlocked with a key or with thieves’ tools. Because I didn’t investigate how easily one can obtain such a key, I leveled up thief to 42 to make this journey… only to realize that I will also need the spells Invisible and Sneak to avoid combat with the enemies, if I want to pursue this without first getting to high level.
Since I was already a level 8 red mage, I figured it would be trivial to level that up to 25. And it was! But during this process, I discovered that my experience-boosting ring was not the superior Emperor’s Ring, and when I tried to buy one, it said I was ineligible to do so: I already possessed an equivalent item. (The Chariot Ring? Champion’s Ring? I forget.) So, I did what I thought was the logical thing and got rid of my existing ring. Since nobody would buy it, I dropped it instead. I talked to the merchant again, and—I was still ineligible to make the purchase! Apparently you’re only able to buy such a reward once during each reward period. They say that the reward period resets on Mondays, but I’m pretty sure I had my last ring for more than a week. I’ll be very frustrated if I cannot buy the Emperor’s Ring in the next three days.
As I was leveling up to 25 with red mage, I cleared Delkfutt’s Tower, obtaining the key necessary to unlock any of its doors. I convinced myself that I hadn’t successfully obtained the key from the notorious monster on its tenth floor, so I warped out to ensure that I’d completed the previous step in the mission at the Windurst embassy. It was only once I was cleaning out my inventory there that I noticed that I had in fact obtained one of the keys after all, so I had to climb the tower a second time.
Since I’m still trying to unlock corsair, my next task will be to either level thief up to 50 (so I can use level 25 red mage spells), or level red mage to 30 (and actually pick up the key in the swamp, presumably). I’m going to do that right now.