Leveling: Soloing as WHM/BST (15-17)

On Sunday, I decided to see how soloing as WHM/BST would work out. I got all my gear ready, grabbed three Vampire Juices Qiara had made out of red terrapin she had lying around, bought a brass hammer at the AH, and headed out from Windurt. I made my way to the Maze, stopping in Buburimu Penninsula on the way to check the mob levels (mostly Tough). The bats in the Maze were also Tough, so I fought the Akbabas near the zone, using one as a pet to kill the others. This went fairly well until night time. A Tough ghost proved to be much too tough, and I high-tailed it to the Crag and popped into Al'Taieu to escape its fury.

After that, I headed west a bit, and mostly fought Dhalmels. I'd been a bit displeased with how things were going with charmed mobs, so I called Balu-Falu to help me. I'd set him as Stalwart Shield before I left town, and that worked out really well. He pretty much held hate, and did more damage then pets did. I kept his health up, and bonked the mobs with my hammer. Things went quite well, and I managed several Chain #2s, which isn't bad for a solo WHM. :-)

Just after I hit 16, I spotted Serpopard Ishtar, the NM Dhalmel. The last time I saw him was before I created Kiki - back when Grymalkyn was a subjobless newbie herself. There was an Even Match Dhalmel near him, so I ran up, charmed the EM, and sent it in to fight Serpopard. I started fighting as well, but ended up getting scared, and ran off, leaving Balu-Falu and the dhalmel to whittle him down. As soon as I got out of range and put my weapon away, Balu-Falu came running after me as well. He still had hate, and as Serpopard got closer, I saw that they'd taken a good chunk off his HP, so I popped a vampire juice and started fighting again.

It was a really close fight, and when my pet came uncharmed, I was afraid it was all over, but I recharmed it, and we killed Serpopard! Both Balu-Falu and my pet Dhalmel had about 10 HP left, but at least we were all still standing. We got a bit lucky - Serpopard's last TP move was Berserk. If he'd used healing breeze, I think I would have lost the fight. I got 140 points for the kill, even with the penalties for having an NPC and a pet. I'd like to say I soloed a level 20 NM as a level 16 WHM, but really it was a trio...

My experience points dropped off a bit at 16, so I headed back to Buburimu, and was happy to see some of the bunnies and mandies were now even matches. Balu-Falu and I would fight those, or I would charm them and use them to help fight Toughs. I really did like soloing with Balu-Falu, and didn't end up charming all that much for the two levels, but when I do this again, I will keep subbing BST. It gives me that extra bit of safety in emergencies, as well as allows me to take on tougher mobs than I could without a pet. One thing I ended up doing a lot was charming a pet, sending it off to fight a tough mob, and waiting for the mob to kill the pet and come after me. Balu-Falu and I would then finish it off, and I'd get more points than I would if I had both Balu-Falu and a pet.

One interesting I noticed - Balu-Falu changed his outfit when I zoned with him, just as he normally would when I'd call him again after having him out.

After hitting 17, I walked back to town to send all my WHM gear back off to the mules and get back to my PLD75 for Limbus later that evening.