Dragon and Done It!

I know I refer to milestones a lot in this game, but I don’t think I’ve passed such a big one for a long time. A lot of THFs say that when they get to L60 they are so used to SATA that they find it difficult to separate their SAs and TAs (due to the Trait Assassin) and they need to relearn their job. As I had been using TA on my NPC since L50, even though it was largely ineffective, I was already used to separating my SA and TA by the time I got to 60 so there wasn’t much to relearn.

Then in my mid 60s I learnt to macro gear properly giving myself a melee Build, an Evasion build and a WS build but tonight I got L73 and became able to equip my end-game JSE, the Dragon gear.

For the majority of their careers, THFs are “told” to equip Accuracy for their melee build and at end-game, Accuracy can be forgone to some extent and replaced with Haste and more damage, provided that Dagger is kept capped and Merits are put into it. Of course everyone can do their own thing, but I am a firm believer that a THF shines in its SA or TA plus WSs such as Sneak Attack + Dancing Edge means I can pull off weaponskills of just under 1000 damage on Campaign mobs, and I’m a Taru!

So now that I’m technically end-game, what do I melee in? I cannot afford a Haste build yet, so do I now drop my Accuracy build and go for Attack, as the Dragon Gear has a lot of Attack on it? I am loathe to drop my Store TP gear as I have a total of +9 Store TP on and my TP is rocketing up. Anyway, I also bought a Potent Belt (STR+3, Accuracy +8) to replace my Life Belt and bought an Ecphoria Ring (Accuracy +4, Store TP+1, Cure Amnesia X100 charges) to use until I could get my hands on the Ulthalam’s Ring once I complete ToAU. Although I haven’t finished breaking the latent yet, I have my L73 Dagger, the Heart Snatcher so once I break that, it can replace the Hoplite’s Harpe (my green sickle-shaped dagger). Whilst I like the way the Hoplite’s Harpe looks, I am a sucker for Rare/Ex gear and the more I can get, the more non-Ex gear I can sell back to the AH.

So anyway, I went back into Campaign to try out my new gear and was very impressed with the numbers. Only problem is I now pull hate very easily and need to get my Evasion skilled up to compensate.

After Campaign I was very tired so didn’t speak on the LS but I went with Teila to the Sea Serpent Grotto to get a Coffer Key for Balbir’s SMN. I enjoy putting Treasure Hunter to good use, but ironically the Coffer Key dropped from a Rock Crab that I wasn’t fighting. We soon found a Coffer nearby so Balbir unlocked it to find his Old Gauntlets.

At the same time I noticed an NM lurking by a pool nearby called Worr the Clawfisted. It aggroed me from a reasonable distance, linking in with a couple of Sahagin, so I had to clear the normal mobs out of the way ASAP to concentrate solely on Worr.

As his name might suggest, he was a MNK NM and therefore had lots of HP and attacked twice, meaning my shadows didn’t stay up for long. Due to his level (can’t have been more then L60), I was able to land Bloody Bolts easily so I was able to Drain regularly, and as I had my NPC Yawawa out, I could TA onto her so she could take the hate.

I was pretty tired so I didn’t play to my best and was pressing the wrong macros/forgetting to Drain etc, but it wasn’t too bad, especially when Teila and Balbir caught up with me and assisted. We also got the drop, a L60 pair of Hand-to-Hand weapons for MNK, which were pretty good.

You can watch the fight here.

Balbir then returned to Jeuno to try to put a party together for Dark Spark whilst Teila and I stayed a little longer to see if the other NMs were up and sure enough the second of the three behind the Mythril Door was there, Pahh the Gullcaller. Pahh was much easier and the two of us took her down in half the time, again getting the drop, a Rare/Ex icy-blue Polearm which has a hidden effect of allowing you to eat raw fish even if you are not a Mithra.

You can watch the fight here.

We tried to find the third NM which drops a nice Rare/Ex Dagger (I need more Daggers for capped events) but despite trying to pop it by clearing the Sahagin, didn’t appear. There was another THF running round who may have got the claim before we were there.

Falling asleep at the keyboard, I logged out in the Grotto to see if he was there next time I logged in.