Do the walk of life...

Ok, last night I went back to Misreaux Coast to work on recapping my range attack skills to level 44 now. As I’ve gained a level it should be easier now right? Well sort of...

As I’ve mentioned before, to skill-up to your level’s cap you have to fight Even Match or stronger enemies. Now I like to skill-up and XP on beastmen whenever possible for the gil drops. Misreaux has beastmen that top out at my current level. Unfortunately, that’s a 5 level range terminating at 44. The Orcish Warmachines (kind of like the FFXI version of a tank) actually go to 46. What is also important to note is that just because something checks as an Even Match doesn’t tie exactly into how easy or hard it is to beat.

Now considering the level range of my prey I have to go hunting for the EMs, possibly pulling them through the Decent Challenge slop back to my camp. At least I’m getting to keep my pulling skills sharp. Martial Master is still active, so luckily I manage to recap Marksmanship in about 5 kills. Unfortunately, the repops are coming in DC, and that doesn’t work for my needs as I still have throwing to cap. So it’s time to go on a killing spree. The problem is a dagger doesn’t really do a lot of damage to really perform a spree, and my tanking NPC is using a staff, another slow damage weapon. So we power through-sorta- until the EMs start to pop, and I spam throws on those. This is a bit slower for whatever reason, it took about 10 EMs to cap throwing.

I need to discuss NPCs now. The actual term is “adventuring fellow”, but everyone I know calls them NPCs. Now when I created mine I only contemplated taking 2 jobs to 75 on Glam-beastmaster and bard- and so I built my NPC along healer lines. There wasn’t a lot of information available-I got my NPC within 3 days of their addition to the game-so I made some mistakes in the creation. I chose a tarutaru female to max MP. I gave her a staff thinking I could get more defense with parrying from a 2-handed weapon than a club and shield, especially since you can only do upgrades on weapon OR shield, not both, and I also wanted her to eventually have access to spirit taker weapon skill. Knowing what I’ve learned since, I would either have gone with a club/shield or left her sword/shield.

I chose to build thinking she would always be healer, since I never contemplated her in either a tank or damage dealer role. Unfortunately, despite NPCs having an A+ rating in all weapons and shields staff is just not a tanking weapon. It’s slow and it doesn’t particularly do a lot of damage in comparison to the other 2-handed weapons melees can use. This means that my thief is pulling hate fairly often, even without SATA. Luckily, it takes almost all the cool down time for Provoke for me to take hate so her provoke can usually take it back. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a lot of HP or MP as stalwart shield and my dancer sub doesn’t heal for huge amounts at this level. For whatever reason the game makers don’t have NPCs benefit from Sambas either.

Tonight I get to try out my new Bard cuffs +1 in Dynamis. I don’t think the effect will be huge, but it should at least be felt...