BRD 75 and Bonus! Experinece Points

I managed to finally get BRD to 75. Most of the experience came from campaign battles and campaign ops. I did get one PT in the lower bird camp when I was ~73 and they wanted me to sub COR (which I have @ 7) for corsair's roll and the slight XP bonus, which I think was retarded. The PT didn't last too long, but I got a few XP. Another PT I got after I dinged 74 was in the middle camp and it was my first opportunity to pull in a bird meripo. I think we got to chain 50 something before we had to stop because two people had to go to some ls event. The healer in this PT was a RDM/SCH named Tehonn who used sublimation instead of refresh. At the start of the party, he cured me a couple of times even though I would immediately drop back down into yellow HP due to my latent gear swap macros. He was in the process of casting Regen II on me when I told him not to regen me or cure me past 1k hp. So, he didn't cure me for the rest of the night, until I was down to less than 200 hp ><. I left that PT at 20k to 75.

The next night, I thought I'd get that xp very quickly and a bit of a buffer. I ended up taking a PT sync'd to 60 against colibri. Things were going very well until the PLD had to leave suddenly, and the DRG leader d/c'd with me just 8k to 75. It took more than an hour to reassemble the PT, change camps, and then get back to fighting. I still didn't manage to ding, since other ppl had to leave and I was tired of the slow xp and lack of mobs to kill. I ended up leaving that PT after more than 3 hours, gaining only 14k xp.

Before I logged off, I did a couple of campaign battles and managed to finish the last of my level and dinged 75! It was nice to put my goliard gear and W.Turban back on. It also allowed me to fine-tune my latent macros so that I can hit my latent in just 4 macros instead of 7.

When I logged on again, I was just 928 into 75 BRD, so I didn't want to actually use it for anything; not until I got a proper buffer. Shiji asked if I wanted to help him camp Voluptuous Vivian, so I geared up RDM and headed out there. He went THF, Lun went BRD and we actually saw the NM pop after just 35 minutes of camping (give or take, it was after the 4th or 5th PG, I think). Our first attempt didn't go too well. Spider agg and silence/para/etc overwhelmed us pretty quickly. We managed to get up safely. Shiji changed to NIN/DNC and we tried again. This time, we got her down to, like, 1% (no joke) before we wiped. After a bad breath went off (and we had spider agg) I noticed that I had used my last echo drop and we all died. We were able to recover and Lun ran back to town for more meds.

The third time, instead of Lun and I zoning the spider adds, I just kept one slept for the duration of the fight. I think the fight took 20 minutes or so. Shiji managed to get VV to the mouth of the tunnel, leading towards Dragon's Aery so he was safe from most of the agg in her room, we just had a single spider to deal with in the tunnel. Of course we didn't get the drop, but we got cool Vivisector titles!

While Shiji and I were killing PHs, we noticed that the kupowers went away. I happened to be online the following morning ~10hrs later, so I decided to go mog tablet hunting. I went WHM/RNG (for widescan, since the tablets show up on widescan) and just teleported to each of the telepoints to widescan for a tablet. I also climed paradomo Tor to get a miasma filter, in case we ever happen to do another ENM. While I was climbing, I noticed a new coeurl NM that was up (drops the Layqa Seraweels: enfeebling magic +2) so I killed that for no drop. It is a timed pop, 1.5-2 hrs, so I would resume my tablet hunting until the 1.5 hrs were up, then I'd run back and kill the NM again.

When I actually saw that a tablet was discovered, I went on full-tilt tablet hunting and happened to find one in the northern part of Pashow Marshlands (NW of the outpost)! I checked in with the moogle in Ru'Lude Gardens and got a Kupofried's ring and an adaman ingot for my trouble.

That night, I got a meripo invite and we hit the mamool ja in the top floor of the bird camp. We got to chain 30-something before one of the SAMs died and a WAR had to leave. By the time his rep arrived, the lower camp had cleared out so we went down there. I used one charge of my emperor band against the mamool ja. I used 1 charge of the Kupofried's ring before we started on the birds. It was crazy seeing consistent chains for 518 xp! Toward the end of the night, I started getting some severe lag which was causing my casting to get interrupted, so we lost the chain at 120-something. I pulled for a bit longer (into chain 50-something) before I was tired and left the PT. I started the night @928/44,000. When I had finished, I was capped on XP and had also finished off 1 merit, and completed a 2nd. In total, I got just over 60k xp in 2.5 hours or so. CRAZY XP!

I also managed to get the Layqa Seraweels from the NM in Attohwa Chasm for a little boost to my Enfeebling Magic set (I can get 345 skill in max gear).

Since it was a full moon, I talked Vay and Braego into doing Up In Arms, but didn't get a drop. Going RDM, RDM. BLM made this BC super easy. When vay has enough seals, we'll go back and try again. After, Vay and I tried to duo the Puppet In Peril BC for ToAU mission 29. The first 70% of the NMs life goes very smoothly. Once we get it to 30%, however, things tend to fall apart. I think we'll try again once we tweak some macros and both have our 2hrs (I used mine on the last UIA run).

I have done a few ISNMs but haven't gotten a drop. It's funny: I kinda levelled BRD so that I could do ISNMs more often, but each time I've gone, I've been WAR!

I finished up the weekend by heading up to sky to do some FoV and re-cap XP on RDM. I ended up capping XP and finishing off a 3rd merit point. Not sure how I'll spend it just yet.

Mog bonanza starts in two days. I think I'll buy 30 marbles and use the same strategy for picking numbers that I used earlier in the year (which helped me win 1.1mil in drops). If I am able to just break even, I'll be happy.

Posted Dec 22 2009, 12:12 PM