Beastmasters: Beastly Pursuits (41-47)

Saturday morning, with no planned events ahead of us for the day, Grymalkyn and Kiki decided it was finally time to get their BSTs back into action. We hadn't leveled BST since we hit 41 in mid-September last year, so it's been long overdue. It took us over an hour to shuffle our gear around, between sending what we could off to mules and having them send back what we needed for our BSTs. We checked the internet for feasible camps, and searched for other BSTs near our level to make sure we wouldn't be stepping on someone's toes.

We ended up making it to 45 before we stopped for the night, pretty much in two camps. We stayed in West Altepa fighting spiders and dhalmels with other spiders until we hit 44. It was handy fighting so close to Rabao, since we could head into town to empty our pockets as they filled up pretty fast with crystals and dhalmel hides and giant femurs.

At 44, we decided to see what it looked like in the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, and traveled through Qufim on the way there. I decided we had to charm the Kraken and drag it over to Delkfutt's Tower, just for fun (I think this is something all BSTs do at some point). The Kraken would be a terrific pet to use for farming bone chips at night in Qufim - he kills them very quickly.

The Sanctuary didn't feel right at 44, so we didn't stay there long. We decided to head to a crawler/goblin camp in Yhoator Jungle, which worked out much better for us. We had to fight a lot of crawlers to get them to convert to pets, and even had to charm an opo-opo a couple of times. They make terrific pets, but they sure are a pain if you mischarm repeatedly and end up having to fight them. We ended up hitting 45 in the jungle, and having had a long day, we logged out there, hoping to log back in to get a buffer in the morning.

When we logged back in Sunday morning, there was another BST (/anon, but had a pet/prey/camp in his search comment) in the camp, so we left. We headed to East Altepa to see what it was like around the outpost, but ended up just getting enough for a buffer. It was really fun having Sabotenders as pets, but I'd sure hate to mischarm after leave and get a face full of needles.

Since I had had my PLD static Sunday evening, I had to spend some time on Monday getting back my BST gear so we could head out to hunt again. We had a really hard time finding a good camp at 45. We tried Sea Serpent Grotto, but the suggested area wasn't at all appealling either pet or prey-wise. We checked on the bigclaws and makaras in Misereaux Coast, but there weren't enough pets at our level. Same situation in Gustav Tunnel.

Finally, we headed back to the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, and had a wonderful time. Pets were plentiful, we didn't have to worry about losing them on leave, and we had plenty of T, VT, and even IT prey to hunt. We decided to try the Rock Golems, and quickly learned that we would have to have our pets fight alone, since they have a terrible AOE bind (as well as damage), which would make it nearly impossible to get a fresh pet when needed. But they were worth the effort when we were getting around 350 points on a chain 2, with our Empress Bands. We used leeches, funguars, bats, and coeurls as pets, and fought coeurls, goblins, and golems.

We hit 46 and decided to head deeper in to the Sanctuary and try some of the undead. In the process, we learned that the Rot Prowlers will blood aggro from miles away. Grym deleveled, but I managed to kill the hound we had been fighting before the Rot Prowler killed me too, leaving me 16 points over level. It was really fun though.

Next, we headed back to Gustav Tunnel. It was much better at 46 for pets, but the prey was mostly low toughs, and we kept losing our pets on leave. Since we hadn't leveled BST since the Great Nerfing of 2005, it was really our first experience with the pain of disappearing pets. We did try to make use of it to try to convert pets (charm a tough, drag it out of its wandering range, release, check its respawn a few minutes later), but it was a slow process, and a bit frustrating in spots like Gustav where you end up fighting outside the pet's range. We also found we were using jugs a lot more for these levels than we had in the past. Jugs were pretty much emergency-only in the past, but we ended up needing to use them just because we didn't have enough pets around.

We gave up on Gustav after a while, and headed back to see what Misereaux Coast looked like at 46. It was much much better, and we had a fun time with bigclaws and makara vs bigclaws and makara. Those fish have such high evasion though, there were times I didn't think we'd be able to kill them even with just a mere sliver left. I decided to try Gravity on them, and suprisingly enough, it stuck more often than not. We made it to 47 and got a buffer before calling it a night.

I was able to cap both axe and scythe every level, which was nice. Grym's scythe is pretty far behind, but since she doesn't have DRK at 41 like Kiki does, it's not a surprise. We spent some time at the auction house on and off over the weekend, trying to find suitable upgrades for some of our gear, but ended up just buying a Woodsman Ring for each of us. I think it makes sense to focus on accuracy for our fighting gear. We have our life belts for 48, and I have a Viking Axe (good bazaar bargain months ago), but we'll go try to farm another one for Grym. I feel weird still wearing Wonder gear (legs and feet), but really they're the best option for those slots. Even if I wanted to spend the millions needed for a set of Luissant gear, the stats aren't that amazing. I think the hands would be the good, but Battle Gloves have +3 ACC. I'd love to wear something other than the stupid Tablecloth (Brigadine), but our Gaudy Harnesses have been waiting for months and months, and we could soon be 50.

I'm also eager to get to 50 so we can start collecting our AF. Grym and I have been arguing over whether we can only use BST to work on AF. I think he agrees at least for Beadeaux coffer keys we're going to have to use our 74/75 jobs, but he is probably going to insist we do the others "properly", with our BSTs.

Getting back to our duo reminded me of why I really enjoy it. It requires more thought and strategy than just having a group of 6 gang up on some hapless monster. We stalk our prey, size up the surroundings, clear out potential problems, choose our fighting spot and make use of the local flora and fauna to help us kill our prey. Play BST in a duo is so much safer than solo, since we're always there to back each other up in case of a mischarm or link/add. And since we're sitting on the same couch as we play, it's really easy to know what each other is doing. And when we need to stop for lunch/dinner/laundry/phone calls, we aren't upsetting 5 other people.