Leveling: Bhaflau Thickets (75)

Itera was on vacation this week, and for some unknown reason (haha), his wife chose a place without internet access. So we had Anastasia join us for the evening on her BLM75/RDM37. Charcole had soloed his MNK to 74 since our last session, while Wendell's WHM was still 72. Yobun was back to THF again. We took the Runic Portal to the Mamool Ja Staging Point, and headed out into Bhaflau Thickets. There weren't as many parties as I've seen there before, but there were a few.

We camped at the zone to Mamook, and fought mostly Sea Puks, with a few Mamool Ja. As the area got more crowded, we fought more of the Mamool Ja, since people prefer the Sea Puks. Yobun started out as puller, but we switched to having Elboron pull at some point. I'm not sure I like having Elbo pull, since not only do we miss out on songs (I hardly ever had ballad on me once he started pulling), but he takes a lot of damage. At one point, we opted to have him pull a Jurik (wyvern), which ended up killing Elbo in two hits. Later, a Mamool Ja Blue Mage used Radiant Breath and killed me. I think it was under 800 damage, but I was a bit low health at that point and was dropped. Nothing like the nearly 10,000 damage Radiant Breath I took once during Besieged!

I ended up gaining about 15.5k limit points, with ring and sanction, in about 2.5 hours of fighting. Wendell made it to 73 near the end of the party, which was nice. I held hate a bit better this week, having worn more +enmity gear, and having Yobun's Trick Attacks on me. I would lose hate towards the end of the fight because I usually couldn't reuse provoke and flash and still be ready for the next monster, at least for the Puks, since we were killing/pulling so fast. Or Anastasia would toss out her meritted Thunder spells and have the mob go flying after her.

I had been trying to get a Tatami Shield for a couple of weeks now, but someone decided they were suddenly "worth" 30% more than they had been, and I just don't want to pay that much for one. I missed one within my price range overnight recently, but all the others that have been up have been too hight. I mentioned this to Yobun and he said that all the cool kids were getting the new Troll shield, which is the same size as the Tatami Shield (tower shield, size 4), so would give the same damage reduction, without the intimidation or the +5 STR, but at a greatly reduced cost. So I picked up a Januwiyah for 50k. It has +25 HP on it, and decent defense too. It did a good job at damage reduction, as I was often blocking for single digit damage (as opposed to the ~80 unblocked non-critical hits). My Koenig Shield would usually drop damage to around 14, so it does seem to be an improvement.

I still think I'd like a Tatami some day, since the intimidation could be really helpful, as would the +5 STR. My shield skill hit 262 Sunday night, so it's getting there. It will be so nice to see it capped. Then I suppose I have to wear +shield skill gear and cap it to those levels as well.

I decided that I kind of like getting limit points - with only 10,000 needed for a merit point, and not losing any with deaths (you lose exp instead), it's more "rewarding" than the huge exp requirements per level in the 70s. With one 2.5 hour exp session a week, we can still see one or two merit points a session. I've put my first merit into increased critical hit rate, while I'm saving up 3 points for a STR upgrade next. I'm going to focus on merits that will most benefit my melee skills rather then end-game Paladin abilities, and won't put anything towards things that might hurt other jobs (like +enmity). Since Grym and I are planning to go back to our BST duo at some point, comparing her Mithra BST41 stats to my Tarutaru BST41 stats can help me see where I'm weak (STR, DEX, HP) relative to her, and might be a good guide for where to put my merits.

Anastasia and I were later discussing the party, and we both aren't huge fans of this sort of exp, since neither PLD nor BLM are really well suited for it. We're better at fighting ITs, working together as a team to hold hate, build a skillchain, and burst on it for the kill. Plus it's just a bit too stressful for me to have things pulled before my provoke and flash aren't back from the previous mob. The frenzied pace, with everyone just trying to smash the mob as fast as possible lacks the, oh, finesse that one can see in a really good party that works together well and is camping the right mobs in a right place. We're joking about starting an "old school static", if we could possiby find a good camp with mobs IT+ to level 75, and other people willing to forgo the safe easy speed killing chain bazillionty-eleven parties everyone seems so happy with these days.