Krakens off the port bow!

Tonight I spent some time reaffirming my suspicions that soloing isn't always easy.

I've been sitting on a sizeable stockpile of Beastmen's Seals for quite some time now but I never bother to actually round up people for BCNM fights to actually spend them on.

Tonight I decided to fix that somewhat and took it upon myself to try soloing Up in Arms.

This seemed like the logical choice for me. I had heard that a Red Mage could solo the fight earlier in the week. I've also become considerably averse to syncing down past level 51 if I don't have to or if it isn't for friends, so a level 60 fight was right up my alley. Lastly, this fight was against a lone Sea Monk, which was the logical progression of what I'd been fighting recently.

See, I've spent the last week or two hanging out in the Sea Serpent Grotto soloing Sea Monks in the room Charybdis spawns in, keeping tabs on the NM for the rest of my shell so we can all get Joyeuse.

So a fight against the type of mob I've been practicing on seemed like a good choice.

I proceeded to do my homework on the fight and learned that the Sea Monk would gradually build up a resistance to Sleep spells, so I would have to modify my usual tactics somewhat and use Bind and Gravity more heavily than I had been. Also there was a time limit. Some nasty special moves as well.

So I spent my evening gearing up and heading over to Waughroon Shrine. I got into the arena and buffed up. The fight went pretty much how I expected it would, Gravity sticking and nuking down the long hallway and then throwing Bind in the end rooms to hold the monster in place while I doubled back into the hallway again. It was actually pretty easy once I got into the Rhythm of it, basically using Bind where I would have used Sleep before and saving the Sleep spells for times when I needed to recover some mp by resting. There were a few iffy moments where Stoneskin went down and I had some tentacles reaching into places they shouldn't, but overall it went pretty smooth. Sailing along nicely I had wittled the monstrosity down to about 2/5 of his health left, maybe a little less, but then something awful happened.

The time limit was up.

I felt foolish. There had been little to no danger of me actually dying. Instead I lost simply because I hadn't been nuking fast enough. What a frustrating turn of events.

I'm hesitant to try again right away because the problem seems to be more than just slipping up. This is more along the lines of forcing myself to unlearn bad habits I've picked up soloing in a dark, damp cave.

Or maybe I should have just used chainspell to nuke at the start of the fight and kited the rest of it.

Port Bastok is Beautiful.

All your fish are belong to us

You see this? This is a goddamn milestone. I'm putting it here so I'll remember when it happened.

G4 is brilliant

No not that awful TV network.

I am of course talking about the fourth limit break quest.

It emphasizes what I continue to love about this game: its attention to detail and world-building.

Maat gives you four clues and tasks you with finding four corresponding people scattered throughout the world. This must have been desk-gnawingly frustrating for people back when the game was in its infancy before wiki documented everything. But even so, it illustrates a point which Maat articulates better than I:

"Remember, adventuring is not all about battles and monsters, but about the people you meet along the way."

I feel this is something many adventurers need to reacquaint themselves with, and even a few folks on the design team.

Holiday festivities were particularly elegant in Bastok.