Poke It With a Sharp Stick

The

The colibri in West Ronfaure [S] are made of tissue paper.

major downside of getting most of my Dragoon experience through the weekly "Test Your Mite" ENMs is that my polearm skill has been gimped. I called up the Skill Database to check the current cap and discovered I was 14 points underleveled. It's not a huge deal when you're constantly fighting a monster capped at Lv. 40, but I've been planning to flag up and try to get a party. The last thing I want to do is get to camp and find myself unable to hit the prey.

So I checked a few sites for soloing guides. At 61, ost of them pointed to beetles in Garliage Citadel or the colibri in Wajoam Woodlands. I was hoping to find some good spots in the Wings of the Goddess areas because the Allied Sigil allows you to stack multiple buffs as well as giving an XP boost.

I started in East Ronfaure [S], where the ladybugs and colibri were Easy Prey. They were extremely easy to kill, but there were no skillups to be found.

From there, I moved to Vunkerl Inlet to fight Robber Crabs. They were rated Tough, but the fights were a little difficult. I was spamming Dia on them so my wyvern would keep using Healing Breath III on me, but it was rough. I killed three or four of them and had to rest between fights. Ugh.

I'd

Neyla tanks mobs in Vunkerl Inlet [S] for me.

moved to Meriphataud Mountains [S] in search of better prey when Neyla logged on. He offered to tank skillups for me back in Vunkerl, so we headed out there and started fighting. He's already hit 70, so the Robber Crabs and Stygian Pugils weren't a problem for him. The pugs were Very Tough to me, so I was getting pretty good skillups off them.

We were out there awhile, but I finally managed to cap my Polearm skill and learn Skewer. I'm not sure how likely I am to party up when Campaign is so addictive, but at least I don't have to be embarrassed that I can't hit anything. I'll just have to find decent WotG camps to keep up to date.

Holyknight Emblem

Today

I almost got the kill on Jagidbod's Warmachine.

was mostly Campaign stuff, which is hardly a surprise because that's all I do these days. Grauberg is like an addictive drug and quickly turning into a junkie.

There were some fun battles. One of them went through three waves of mobs and I was dead for ten minutes because the mages were slacking on their raises, but still managed to get 1800 points.

It paid off, though. I did an entire merit point over the course of the afternoon. I also went for my evaluation and earned the Holyknight Emblem. I don't know if new ranks will be released in the future, but for now I'm capped out. I'll never catch up to Neyla -- I'm strictly a recreational user in comparison -- but at least we have the same rank.

After You, My Dear Alfonze

A

I killed a few diremites for Alfonze.

few members of WickedWayz have been working their way through the Chains of Promathia missions in a semi-static group for awhile, and today they were going to fight Diabolos. I'd just taken a break from Team Fortress 2 and logged on to do my guild points when Drahzan asked if anyone else needed it. Neyla is still on that fight, so I said I'd call and wake him up to ask. This was around 1 p.m., and they were planning to do the fight an hour later. The only thing left to do, they said, was farm a Gray Chip so Alfonze could get access to the battlefield.

Neyla logged on and started suiting up Bard while Al hit Pso'xja to kill some diremites. I was fishing for Bhefhel Marlin on the ferry when the guy managed to get himself killed and homepointed. I returned to Windurst -- it was faster and much easier to just buy the fish from the NPC down in the hold -- and put on my Beastmaster gear to go help him.

I told him to stay up top and kill the two weak-ass diremites since I didn't want to babysit and dropped down to tackle the tougher diremites below. They were stubborn and didn't want to drop the chip, which is normal because you end up throwing them away all the time when you don't actually need them. I finally got one on the bottom floor, which has two Tough diremites. I'd never been that far down, but Neyla used to do laps of the place and was telling me what to expect with each descent.

With nothing else to do until the escort, I parked in Batallia Downs and went back to play more TF2. When I returned nearly an hour later, they still hadn't started the fight. It turns out Alfonze hadn't done the legwork and watched all the cutscenes. When they called him out for being a slacker -- the guy'd had an entire week to do this -- he copped a real attitude and Lepruvian broke his linkshell pearl... but only because he beat Wulfgar and Neyla to it. I apologized to Neyla for waking him up and wasting his time.

I

The gnoles are a big pain in the ass.

can't really say I'm sorry to see Alfonze go, but the upside is they're making a real static out of it and will try the fight next week. We also invited Drazhan and Almane to join us for "Test Your Mite," since we had two open slots.

Beyond that, it's been a quiet week of mostly doing offline stuff. I've been doing Campaign battles and unlocked Formless Strikes, which is just as handy as I'd hoped. Mostly I've been total aggro-bait lately. It seems like I can't cross the battlefield without attracting the attention and anger of passing mobs. Maybe Neyla put a sign on the back of my Scorpion Harness.