Leveling: LLS Returns to Bibiki Bay (66-67)

None of us had any interest in returning to fight the pugils in the Den of Rancor, and Erock felt we were a bit low yet for the lizards there, so we decided to join the rest of Lakshmi and headed to Bibiki Bay. We found an open camp and proceeded to fight the Catoblepas (dhalmels) and Tragopans (birds). I felt like we were kind of sloppy, but it was so hard to see things properly. The way the camera gets angled when you're fighting birds and dhalmels is pretty annoying. Even unlocking the target doesn't help a lot. However, we did quite well, and ended up with 15K exp in less than 3 hours (my food wore off after I got to Rabao after our group called it quits for the night and Erock gave us our usual Teleport-Altep). That was with an Empress Band, but even without that we were doing about 5K/hour. I can see how a more normal party set up, with light skillchains and a BLM, would just tear through the exp there. Even with the dhalmels' annoying Healing Breeze, they went down pretty fast.

It was a fairly uneventful session. We had several links, but handled them with little trouble (though Elboron did get about one dhalmel-hit away from death at one point). We didn't really see any other parties, but once in awhile a puller would run through our camp to grab a goblin, and birds we had our eyes on for our next prey would vanish while we were fighting something else.

Itera hit 67, and Erock got to 61 (I thought he had last week, but I misremembered), while the rest of us finished up the night about 12K away from level 67. Itera's still about 15K ahead, so it's unlikely we're ever going to catch up to him. Last week Grym, Elbo and Kiki devoted 3 evenings to trying to make up some EXP, getting about 3K, but Itera got 4K himself during the week, so it's just pointless even trying any more. There are too many other things we have to do to waste time killing EPs and DCs for the EXP at our level.

I decided to try Black Curry this week, and I'm quite pleased with it. The stats I got from it are much better than posted on the internet (PLDs say there must be some hidden trigger that makes it better, but no one has figured out what it is). My defense boost from it was 26% over my full defense (went from 356 to 450 after I ate the curry), the VIT is the same as tacos (+6), plus it gives DEX, ACC, EVA, AGI, and bonuses for HP and MP regen while healing. I don't really notice the loss of the +20HP and +20MP that the tacos give me, and now that tacos are pushing 80K/stack, Black Curry is a cost-saver as well, being 12K for a three hour food. If I can keep getting it, my plan now is to have a Black Curry for our EXP parties, with a stack of tacos on hand in case I die or we end up partying longer than 3 hours (unusual for our static). Any time I need a good tanking food for 30 minutes, I'll use tacos, and for those special occasions when I need HP and an attack boost (ENMs, avatar battles, Maat fight), I'll use Carbonara.