Leveling: Kiki's Dark Knight gets to 34 (Garlaige/Altepa)

Being in a static party really spoils a person.

I decided that I would try to get a level or two on Kiki's Dark Knight on Sunday (was Level 32, at 360/6000). So I spent an hour shuffling gear and food between Kiki and the mules, as well as borrowing Grymalkyn's crossbow and Merc Captains belt, and settled in for a long wait for a party. Surprisingly, I had an invite within an hour. Unfortunately, it was in Garlaige Citadel, but beggars can't be choosers, so I headed out as quickly as I could. The party seemed very promising. SMN had Fenrir, WHM had Erase, dual NIN/WAR tanks, SAM was a Rank 9 or 10 with a level 73 PLD. Things went quite well until a bat spawned on us when we were fighting another bat. The WHM, me, and one of the NINs went down. The SMN went to Jeuno to switch to her WHM and came back and raised us. At least I had enough EXP at that point that I didn't delevel.

So we continued on again, the SMN had hit 35 and then the SAM levelled and said he had to go after the next fight. Then I made a big boo-boo. A bat spawned while we were fighting a beetle. Someone mentioned it, and me, thinking they aggro'd (why do some aggro and others don't?) tried to sleep it. Our WHM ended up dying again. Poor Kiki is probably on everyone's blacklist in that group. Since two people were leaving anyway, we disbanded the party.

Spent about half an hour with my flag up just outside Garlaige Citadel. Got invited to a party with 2 other DRKs, a WHM, and a BLM. One of the NINs from my first party was supposed to join, but he DC'd. When he got back, he suddenly had to leave again. We finally found a PLD, and started fighting bats. Kiki had to pull. Did I ever mention I really hate Garlaige Citadel? Each fight completely drained the party. I got aggro'd by a beetle once when I was looking for a bat, and despite that beetle being easier for us to kill, the party wanted to keep up with the bats. One of the DRKs had to leave, and we replaced him with a handy PLD, and the original PLD switched to Great Sword (unlevelled, so that was a mistake). Our WHM died once or twice, and the new PLD died as well.  

The party wasn't making any progress, and no one seemed to want to go elsewhere (I brought up Eastern Altepa after the first fight), but finally the WHM and BLM decided to mutiny and asked me to come along. So we went to Jeuno, picked up a war/thf, a sam/war, and a pld/war, and headed off to Altepa. Things went much better there, despite lots of AFKs and BRBs. Our poor little Taru PLD had connection issues, and those contributed to his dying twice. We fought mostly beetles, but took on a few dhalmels as well. It was a good group, and we worked well together. Nice skillchains and magic bursts (unlike the three DRK party, where the leader said skill chains were a waste of time and MP).

I ended the day after about 8 hours of "levelling", with about 14000 more EXP on my DRK than I started out with, several thousand of exp into level 34 now.