Beastmasters: Leveling in Carpenter's Landing and Bubu (15-21)

This weekend Grym and Kiki spent a lot of time as Beastmasters. On Saturday, we headed into Carpenter's Landing as Level 15s, with maybe 600 TNL. Hours later we emerged as Level 19s, with a safe buffer. The area just off of North San d'Oria is really amazing for a BST duo at those levels. I'd say 17 was the optimum level, but there were plenty of pets and prey to keep us happy to 19. We pretty much had the area to ourselves, with an occasional 40+ wandering through and killing everything in sight, but that didn't really hamper us too much (though our worst close call happened during one of these times). We did end up dying once when I was trying to get my pet killed and my "Heel" command got me too much hate from the fly trap prey. We're still learning!

At one point, there were way too many toughs, so we each picked a tough pet and used our two hour ability to get the tough pets to take out a bunch of their friends. The new spawns were more agreeable to being charmed.

One thing really nice about Carpenter's Landing is that the only things that aggro are the orcs, and the occasional glide bomb and bat. It felt like a pretty safe area. We would focus on getting rid of any aggro'ing monster, and really had a fun time. Got stacks and stacks of fire crystals while we were at it, and a few shrooms and beetle jaws. Plus the area is small, and has the handy zone into town.

For the Glide Bombs, we would usually send two new pets in to take it down to a sliver of HP, while we stood off at a distance. When the bomb killed the pets and came over to us, we'd quickly dispatch it, getting 200 exp a couple times while they were VTs. One time, actually after we were 19 and just getting our buffer before finishing up for the day, the Glide Bomb did a suicide explosion for the first time. Grym was caught in the blast and got hit for 278 HP. It was a really good thing that Kiki was out of the blast radius, as even at full health she only had something like 258 HP.

On Sunday we headed to the south beach in Buburimu Pennisula. We pitted snipper against snipper and had quite a productive day. We're now safely into 21, and need to figure out a good area to exp in next weekend. We were pretty much the only snipper fighters on the two connected beaches, though there was one WAR/THF there for a short time. Most of the other visitors to the beach were either hunting for Carbuncle Rubies, or just passing through to Bibiki Bay (and of course, the usual fish botters were there).

It's a good area to level in, since there's the security blanket of having the Bibiki zone right there (we never actually needed to use it), and with the two beaches, the snippers are plentiful, and they don't link. The only thing to look out for are the bogies at night and the occasional water elemental. We did fight a few leeches, and had a couple leech pets after we hit 21, but pretty much stuck to the snippers. Once in awhile we'd run up above the beach and grab a sylvestre and maybe fight a goblin. We also charmed some bull dhalmels and had them beat up other bull dhalmels and goblins. The dhalmels are funny to have as pets, since the ground shakes so as they're following you around.

We have two different approaches we have been using. With one, we can get up to Chain #5, but less EXP per kill, and with the other, we get better EXP, but use up the pets pretty fast. We will often get two EM or DC pets, and send them in to fight a T prey. They will kill it while we heal. Then we send them to fight a second T prey, and wait until the pets are dead to finish off the prey. The other method, we would send our pets into fight, and join in with them right away. We could usually get to chain 4 with this, and once even to chain 5, with an EM or two thrown into the mix. On the final mob of the chain, we wouldn't fight until the pets were dead. It sure is a lot of fun.