Windsday, 2/30/1033

Bibiki Bay. Levels 36, 37. Defeats =0

My adventures in Bibiki Bay continue. When I broke camp I saw that the area was far less crowded than last time, So I went back to fighting in this ultra safe area. At 36, the experience slows down a bit, but is still decent. This time I mostly targeted Dhalmels and Ravens using Efts and bunnies as pets. It actually became pretty routine, to the point where I could almost do it in my sleep. I may have even slept-walked through a couple of battles. Before I knew it, I was already level 37.

I am starting to get the hang of using Leave. It is not too difficult to learn the roaming area of each creature if you simply observe it for a little while. By this point, I have been in Bibiki for so long that I knew the location of each creature like the back of my hand.

Since I have been fighting alongside my pet for my entire stay here in Bibiki, it turns out my lagging Axe skill finally capped while I was level 36. Around the end of that level, I switched to Scythe, which had been even further behind. I was a little surprised to find my pets holding hate even with the larger damage spikes of the Scythe. I figured it was because my skill was too low and I might have been missing often (although it did not seem that way). Because the pets were so effective as tanks, this seemed to be a good opportunity to get my weapon skills caught up. So, at level 37 while working toward the buffer, I kept leveling Scythe trying to get it to a respectable level. Just like the last level, I mostly focused on dhalmels and ravens, using efts and rarabs as pets. Actually, I fought everything with everything, but the dhalmel prey was best for skill ups due to their high health and relatively low evasion. However, while skilling up, I did the opposite of my usual strategy. That is, usually I fight higher level prey using lower level pets, such as Decent Challenge vs Even Match or Even Match vs Tough, and so on. But while skilling up, using a higher level (or at least more damaging) pet was more effective for keeping hate; so I tried to do Even Match vs Decent Challenge whenever I could. To get the last few levels of skill I knew I would have to fight Even Match or stronger prey, but my skill was so far behind I didn't think I would have to worry about that anytime soon.

I only intended to stick around for a little while, but the skilling up was a nice change of pace. The experiences was slow. Really slow. But the skill ups were pretty fast, and I got some decent loot along the way, including 2 dozen Beastman Seals, a few Dhalmel Hides, and a High Quality Eft Skin. Not too shabby. Best of all, I actually went all the way through level 37 in the process. The level may have come faster elsewhere, but that may have required some extensive travel time.

While I seem to be addicted to Bibiki Bay, at level 38 everything in the dock area is Decent Challenge or lower, so it is certainly time to move on.