Assault and Battery.

My Dark Knight needed to get from 38 to 40, for Promathia Mission 3-5: Darkness Named. This will be the battle against the avatar Diabolos, and will be a rite of passage into the Dreamworld Dynamis areas. On Thursday night, I had some time to use up, so I suited DRK and headed out to solo a bit. I got around 2K EXP before I finally got tired and went to sleep. It was a relaxing evening of just running around the Delkfutt Tower killing whatever was in the way.


Then on Friday I started going at it again a bit, but shortly after I logged in I got an invite from a Paladin. I liked the sound of some partying so I accepted, and even conceded to the request that I come /NIN. This wasn't thrilling to me at first but I did end up appreciating the choice. The Paladin was unimpressive right out of the gate, which is never good. It's one thing to not keep hate most of the time, but when you're not executing your basic duties and you're in the vicinity of a 75PLD, it spells trouble. Eventually I did get him to take some pointers and his overall proficiency increased to the point that we survived.

My DRK ended up chewing through a lot of Shihei casting Utsusemi so often, but I will admit I was enjoying DRK with the 2-hander update. I was tanking by sheer damage output alone, but using Drain & Aspir to keep me afloat. Camping on beetles meant free MP and plenty of EXP. I landed almost at 40 when the party disbanded. I figured that was cool, and I'd solo the last 1K or so. However, upon my exit of Crawlers' Nest, I get a Japanese tell. It was another invite, complete with a bilingual member asking me how long I can stay. I was up for plenty more if it meant a good killing session, so I accepted. Back in we went, and before it was over I had nearly hit 42.

This Junichi guy was a Puppetmaster and was quite hilarious with emotes and his arbitrary outbursts of poorly-constructed English sentences. Acsen seemed to be a friend of his, and the party all did quite well. I'm not sure how, but during this day of partying I ended up essentially doubling the damage output of the other DDs present... Samurai and Dragoon included (i.e. other 2-handers). My melee strikes, without food, were doubling the average swings elsewhere. My Weapon Skills were doing two to three times as much as those from my counterparts. It was an ego-fest and I was in just the mood for being silly, with not only my typing but my overdriven play style.

During the EXP party I had a discussion with Dyce about the possibility of an Assault linkshell led by yours truly. Now, I've wanted to do Assault missions for a while, but this was not something I jumped at right away, for a couple reasons: the first being that I was busy at the moment, and the second being that I've got quite a bit on my plate as is.

After the party, I did end up speaking with the 'Navi members a bit, seeing how they felt about the concept. The support behind the idea was strong enough that I ended up going for it. I headed to the same NPC vendor I used over three years ago, when I purchased TheSolonavi. I bought a "New Linkshell" and it was time to let the creative process take over. Before finally sleeping, some friends and I sat around thinking up a name. We were brainstorming to see what sounded good and was relevant enough for what I want.


We decided to sleep on it due to the late hour and the relative lack of my feeling comfortable with anything thus far. We had attempted AssaultandBattery but unfortunately it was already in use. More details on how this turned out will be posted at a later time, when I can clearly describe what's going to happen with it. It's still a melting pot of ideas at the moment, so I don't want to get ahead of myself just yet.