Leave it to Neyla

I

Neyla and I hack away at catoblepas.

tried seeking on Dragoon, but Neyla made a better offer and I couldn't turn it down. He's been doing some meriting on his own lately -- remote detonating the goblins in Bibiki Bay, etc. -- and he only needed one more merit point for the last of his MP upgrades. By a staggering coincidence, I only needed one more merit point to cap my Critical Hit rate. He dangled the meriting session bait in front of me and I snapped at it, eagerly putting away my dragoon crap.

We hit Bibiki Bay and slaughtered some dhalmels, and it felt more laid back and less grind-worthy since it'd been a few weeks since our last visit. Another BST duo rode in at one point, but they kept themselves off in another area until we were ready to leave and I told them they could have the camp.

I'm not sure what I'll merit next, but it'll probably be BST-related. I'd kinda like to unlock Feral Howl and maybe sink a few points into my Axe skill before starting on STR upgrades.

Optical Hat Adventure

WickedWayz had planned an Optical Hat run for Sunday, which I didn't volunteer to join because I figured I'd be asleep at the time. Generally speaking, I only log on to do the ENM and escort on Sunday evenings. They didn't have enough people, so they rescheduled it for today. I was happy to join them this time.

I was a Beastmaster for it, since they figured I could help with crowd control in the pop party. I rode out a little early and tried to get a coffer key from the bombs in Ifrit's Cauldron for my impending Dragoon AF quests.

It

Veresko tanks Hakutaku for our first O-hat attempt.

took a little while to herd everyone out to the Den of Rancor, and we had to be careful since a few of them were under Lv. 70. Veresko was the leader for this shindig. Filling out the roster were myself, Neyla, Nilhaar, Sihaya, Zoner, Wulfgar, Dazell and Ziaro.

We screwed up the first fight. We went in, cleared out all the Million Eyes roaming around, and then popped Hakutaku. The fight was going okay right up until all the Million Eyes started popping again. There were deaths... like, a lot of them. Like... we wiped. Oops.

Neyla and some others homepointed to come back and raise us, while Veresko and Wulfgar went after more gear and to try and find a cluster in some bazaars. I had Reraise up already and waited for the hecteyes to move out of the way. I ran to the little nook near Hakutaku's resting place. None of the slimy bastards ever go there. I suggested we drag the NM there for our next attempt.

Apu was running late, but he logged on in time to join us as Samurai for the second fight. The fight was considerably faster with his extra firepower, and the hecteyes never came near us when they respawned. Even with the alliance wipeout, it was a lot of fun; I wish we had more linkshell activities to bring us all together like that.

We'll have to do two or three more fights in the future, when everyone has their clusters. We also killed an NM called Ogama, which dropped a neat katana for Apu.

Peregrine II

It's

More Mamool Ja goodness in Al Zahbi.

been a slow couple of days, as you can imagine. I did a Besieged on Friday and helped defend Al Zahbi from the Mamool Ja. Ever since they changed the rules, it's pretty easy to hold them off for an hour; they stay at Lv. 8 all the time now.

Friday was nice because I managed to get another invitation to the Crawler's Nest, and that time the party stayed together and ground out some decent XP. My big goal is to get to 45 so I can wear my Brigandine, although I'd mostly like to get to 50 so I can start questing my Dragoon AF.

And then there's today. Dazell was dead in the desert from trying to solo his Peregrine as a 68 WAR. He got close to bringing it down. I teleported out to raise him and then switched to Beastmaster to kill it for him. It turned out to be the only productive thing I did all day, because otherwise I was sitting on my butt in the moghouse again.