197½ lb., 25.1% body fat ()

Last night, I finished VNOLG. Level 48. Had waaaay too much equipment to go through. Bought a stone ripper just before the little quest for the stone ripper. Man, I wish I could recoup some of those stone shards. (I played as Nuparu, so stone shards went to my weapons.)

12 Attack

14 Defense

21 Technique

A high Technique makes the game a lot easier: Defense becomes less important when you're dodging the attacks, and Attack rating can take a back seat when you keep dealing critical hits.

Equipment for the Vezon/Fenrakk fight:

Defense Great Kanohi of Air

Heavy Attack Armor of Stone

1 Stone power launcher

Soulstone (unused)

Heavy Defense Greaves of Air (something I bought with the 50 Air shards I had....I had 70 Fire shards at one point)

...and one hand tied behind my back.

Vezon was gone with the last shot from the power launcher. Yeah, I had another one in the other hand: it just went unused.

I was amazed how few problems couldn't be solved by the judicious use of a power launcher and a harpoon.

Thanks, lavaside rahi (if you still read this blog), for the walkthrough, and the driving home of why you shouldn't face Vezok before Reidak. I've got a few other glitches for you, too.

Now, at what cost did I defeat the game? The late nights I've spent trying to put the quest in the "complete" column have left me sick. Literally.

I've caught some kind of bug. Cough + cold + bleh = Flu - fever = what KIE has right now. And I haven't gotten a flu shot yet, so that's something else I need to get better for.

If I'm laying low on the longest 2-day weekend of the year, you now know why: I'm curled into a ball in bed, trying to sleep it off, complete with orange juice IV.

-KIE