Leave 'em Behind

Fighting bombs with myconids in Gusgen Mines.

Neyla and I got Beastmaster to 35.

It's a magical number, a milestone in the life of a BST. Lv. 35 is when you learn the "Leave" command. Beastmasters take an experience points penalty if they have a pet charmed when their prey dies. The options are limited: either you kill the monster and take the penalty, or you use "ghetto leave" and order your pet to stop fighting near the end so the monster can kill the pet before you finish it off.

With "Leave," you can simply release your pet near the end of the fight and finish off the monster yourself for full experience points. Your former pet will make its way back home, provided it doesn't aggro someone or die on the way.

Neyla and I generally took the penalty, although we sometimes staggered pets so that only one was charmed for the final blow. We weren't really worried about it, though. We may have been making less xp each fight, but we were compensated by our lack of deaths. Solo beastmasters eat a lot of dirt, but we've been able to keep each other alive most of the time.

There were more deaths today than we normally have. We were partying in the bottom level of Gusgen Mines, charming the flies and sending them to battle bombs. Talk about a sweet hunting ground! Bombs are great because they only have two special moves: Berserk and Self-Destruct. Berserk lowers their defense so pets can do even more damage, and Self-Destruct causes them to blow themselves up. Sometimes you get lucky and the bomb explodes early in the fight.

The explosions are nasty if you're caught in them. I was knocked out by one early in the session. I died again later when three of the flies started attacking me. A passing miner started casting Raise on me, but I had used a Reraise Earring earlier and popped up on my own. Unfortunately, one of those bastard flies was close enough to aggro me and kill me again before the miner had finished casting. This time I waited for the fly to get more distance.

A face only a mother or beastmaster could love.

We had gone in at 33, and once we reached 34 we had a much easier time of charming the flies. Many of them rated Tough, which meant our charms were often wearing off at bad moments. The flies and funguars were plentiful, at least. We avoided the Rancid Ooze in the middle of the room until we dinged 35, but even then we couldn't charm it and spent a few fun minutes trying to kill it off.

I'm glad the miners were so helpful. One of them, Newjack, practically lives there and was gracious enough to kill a banshee for us when it popped in the lower hallway. Every so often a miner would give us stronger buffs, too.

Now that we have Leave, the fun really begins. We're going to continue our regular sessions until we get our AF weapons, at which point we'll have to slow down a bit. The gear will become more expensive and we'll need to stop so Neyla can level his WHM subjob.

Taming the Wild Beast

It's been nearly-constant Beastmaster goodness in FFXi for the past two weeks. There have been distractions -- a little fishing here and there (I'm .1 away from Lv. 73 skill), getting assorted Artifact Armor pieces and RSE keys for people -- but mostly it comes back to me and Neyla hitting the field and charming monsters.

We take our revenge on a Walking Tree in Jugner Forest.

Jugner Forest was the worst for us. All the mobs which can give experience points were too spread out to make quick progress, and the low-hanging branches reduce visibility. There were deaths... and revenge on that walking tree was pretty sweet.

The beach in Buburimu was much better for us. All those pugils and crabs are concentrated on the beach, so the only thing we had to worry about was a ghost cursing us every so often. It takes that stuff forever to wear off.

Rolanberry Fields provided an xp gold mine. We camped in the fields south of the Crawler's Nest, charming wasps and crawlers and sending them against crawlers, goblins and quadavs. The only downside to partying there was the constant presence of farmers after silk thread or bored players who had nothing better to do while they waited for parties in the Crawler's Nest. It sucks when they kill your pets, but usually a quiet word was enough to send them out of our camp.

Berry Grubs duke it out for our amusement.

We've since worked our way through Qufim Island and the Maze of Shakhrami. We spent today running around Batallia Downs, charming birdies and saplings and tigers (oh my!) to take down goblins and assorted orcs. We hit Lv. 32, which is unfortunately a "transitional" level where there's no good xp to be had. We'll grind our way to 33 tomorrow, at which point we can hit the basement level of Gusgen Mines to fight bombs for faster xp.

In other news, I joined a static experience party with Sneakypants, Jender and a few others. We meet every Tuesday evening and party from 7-11 p.m. This is probably the fastest way for me to get my White Mage to 75, because otherwise I'd just goof off and do all sorts of other things besides partying.

Of course, I don't know how I can say I never level anymore, because that's all I seem to do these days. It's just on Beastmaster.