General: Updatey Thingy

We've been spending some time out in the Woodlands skilling up various weapons (Colibri are terrible for me to work off my Pole of Trials latent though - Feather Tickle steals my TP, seemingly at 90% every time). One evening we got to see the Trolls invading Al Zahbi. It was pretty cool to watch them streaming through, but there's no way I'd start attacking them outside the city. We then ran into Al Zahbi behind them, to join in on the Beseiged.

Grym and I did the Cookbook quest twice last weekend (once after the update on Sunday). On Saturday, there were a few parties in Sacrarium fighting things, and on Sunday, someone came in at the same time as us, and used elemental seal-sleep on the Stegotaur that was blocking our path. I'm not sure what he did at that point - we just ran ahead and got our cookbook page. Since I'm usually going in as RDM/BLM anyway, I suppose I can try zoning one of those if we're ever stuck alone. My NIN is now 21, with a buffer, thanks to the exp scrolls. One of these days I may have to get more serious about getting it to 37.

I had 4 Merit points to spend, and finally opted for upgrades in HP (+10), Sword Skill (+2), and Spell Interruption Rate (-2%) (along with my first in Critical Hit Rate (+1%)). I'm currently thinking my next upgrade will go to sword skill, then maybe enemy crit hit rate followed by STR. I'm probably going to change my mind 5 times before I get another Merit point though...

We were a bit short of people on Avatar Night, so we opted to fight Titan with just Grym (THF), Wendell (WHM), Elboron (BRD) and Kiki (PLD). The fight took a lot longer without a "real" damage dealer or two, and Elboron was killed by Titan's two hour. He took over 1000k damage, while the rest of us pretty much fully resisted. I don't understand how random it is when we all had earth carol and barstonra on us. Other than that, the fight was fairly uneventful.

Last night, Grymalkyn and I headed to Toraimarai Canal to see if we could get a Viking Axe for Grymalkyn. We killed the Girtab in the room for the BLM AF3 fight, and what do you know, the axe dropped. We decided we'd see if we could get another one or two, for those times we want to be dual-wielding BST/NINs, so Elboron came to join us. We headed to kill the Girtab near Full Moon Fountain, but no axe. We waited for two sets of respawns, but had no luck, and gave it up for the night. We went to the zone to Windurst Walls and killed bats and skeletons for about an hour, trying to get that latent off of my Pole of Trials. It just seems to be taking forever.