So you want to Solo Final Fantasy? Beastmaster Guide

Neptus

I am a Beastmaster and being a high level Beastmaster I get /tells all day long while I am farming asking "Where should I go now?" or "What should I kill?".
This guide was given to me by my Beastmaster Mentor when I was low level and now I am giving it to the public because I've read some crappy clownassed guides.
This just tells you where to go and what to level on. I used it and followed it like 90%.
Since you're Beastmaster you have the ability to level everywhere, instead of that Valkurm to Qufim to Kazham and so on.

I take no credit for this and If I knew who originally wrote it; I would be glad to put his name on here.

Note to the new Beastmasters, The new update that just came out (AUG 2007). There are no more exp cuts. So, I suggest putting your flag up anytime you're in Jeuno buying new Items you just might get a party since Call Beast stays up x3 longer than It used to. Remember it's not all the same so pending on the Beast the longer it stays up.

Enjoy the Guide solo-ers.
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Level 1 - 9: Starter zone outside your favorite nation For the first 10 levels of BST, you don't even really need to charm anything. Just grab an axe and a shield, eat some STR/Attack food, pour Selbina Milk down your throat like water, and tear through a lot of low-level enemies. My personal favorite place to do this is starting in West Ronfaure and moving into Ghelsba Outpost. I just rapidly kill a ton of easy prey orcs, and farm fire crystals. Before you know it, you're level 10 and you've got an inventory half-full of fire crystal stacks.

Level 10: Tahrongi Canyon Here's where I actually started charming things. I'm sure La Theine or Konschtat would work just as well as Tahrongi, but since I'm from Windurst, I know Tahrongi the best, so I decided to go there because of familiarity with the mob types/locations/etc. Charmed Pygmaiois, Canyon Rarabs, Killer Bees, and Strolling Saplings. I used them to fight all of the above as well as the lower-tier Yagudo (Acolyte, Initiate, Scribe). One thing to note is that at level 10 you get the pet command "Heel". This can be used to get your pet killed at the end of the fight in order to gain full xp. To do this, when the enemy starts getting low in life, run away from the battle until you can no longer see the dot for the enemy on your compass. When the enemy's HP is down to a small sliver, use Heel. Your pet will stop attacking and run back towards you. Since you were so far from the enemy when you used Heel, you will not gain any hate from it, and the enemy will continue beating on your pet until it dies. Once your pet is dead, pull out your axe and finish off the enemy in a couple of hits for full xp. However, I don't suggest you try to do this trick all the time, as if your pet still has a lot of HP, it's more efficient to simply finish the fight, take the 30% xp penalty, and start another fight immediately. Waiting a few minutes for your pet to be killed doesn't make up for the 30% loss.

Level 11-12: Konschtat Highlands The Mad Sheep in Konschtat Highlands have a level range of 11-13, and there is a ridiculous number of them to the west of the Crag of Dem (between F/G-6 and F/G-. This is absolutely perfect, simply charm Even Match sheep, and send them after Toughs. Once you're level 12, you can use decents against evens, evens against toughs, or two decents against a tough. Some people prefer the strategy of grabbing an even pet and simply mowing through a lot of decents, meleeing along with their pet and taking the xp penalty, which is made up by speed of killing.

Level 13: La Theine Plateau Here we complete the circuit of the crag zones, using the pond at (H-7) in La Theine for the crabs and sheep around it. Crabs make strong pets, and you can even rip apart some worms around the area as well.

Level 14-15: Tahrongi Canyon Back to Tahrongi, using Dhalmels as pets. (F-5) is a very good location, with lots of Dhalmels and near to a zone. Dhalmels range from 14-16, so you can use them to fight each other as you did with the Mad Sheep, or use them against the higher-tier Yagudo that also wander around the area. At level 14 you start getting some CHR gear, so using that your charms should be considerably less risky. At level 15 you gain the pet command "Stay", which makes the "ghetto release" trick I described above much easier. As above, move far enough away you cannot see the enemy's dot, then use Heel, but then immediately use Stay. Your pet will start running back towards you and then stop, and stand still as the enemy finishes it off. I used this technique all the way until level 35, so it's good to get familiar with it if you prefer this method to the "ripping through a lot of decents" one.

Level 16: Maze of Shakhrami Though I had died a lot just getting to level 16, this is where I really kicked it up. Maze of Shakhrami was the first really hard place to level. Your pets are Stink Bats, and the Maze is full of these wonderful LINKING pets, which also happen to link with the much higher level Combats around that will destroy you. So if you fail a charm and your desired pet goes past a Combat on its way after you, you might as well just bend over. There's also Ghouls around that can suddenly seem to come out of nowhere when your life drops into yellow, so be very careful of those, they tend to hide inside little huts made of bone. I did manage to eventually get on a streak in the area of (G-, just at the edge of the large room there. Used the bats against the Maze Makers and Goblins. The bats will typically tear the worms apart, and this is very good xp if you can manage your mischarms/goblin aggro properly. If you find the Maze is too difficult, you may be able to go to the next location a level early, see below.

Level 17-18: Buburimu Peninsula After the Maze, this was much more relaxing. Charm the Mighty Rarabs and Sylvestres, and fight either other Sylvestres/Rarabs or the wandering goblins. At level 18 you will probably want to only fight goblins, as it will be rare enough to find an even Sylvestre/Rarab that you'll probably want it as a pet.

Level 19: Pashhow Marshlands Using mostly Snippers, Land Pugils, and Damselflies here, with the very rare even Thread Leech as a pet. Do NOT fight the leeches. They make great pets, but you do not want to be trying to kill one. The Goblins' level range here is 22-25 so it can take quite a few pets to finish one off, I suggest avoiding them if possible.

Level 20: Valkurm Dunes Here you can charm Damselflies, Brutal Sheep, and Snippers. I generally hung out around the oasis at (I-7). Lots of Snippers and Damselflies around, and the goblins will not wander through the oasis if you need a safe spot to rest. Up on the hill at (J-6) and (J-7) is also very good. Parties rarely camp up here, and there are a lot of damselflies and sheep, with Snippers and goblins in the trees. I found that the Goblin Gamblers were fairly easy to kill for good xp simply by throwing a few pets at them. They're BLM type, so die fairly quickly, and will often drop a bomb for an instant kill.

Level 21-22: Buburimu Peninsula Like many people, I'm not a fan of the Dunes, so I started looking for an alternative to keep leveling in. If you don't mind it, you could probably stay in the dunes until level 23 or so, or if you really hate it, you could come to Buburimu at 20. Anyhow, in Buburimu, you'll want to work along the coast at about (J-. Charm Dhalmels and Crawlers, and fight Dhalmels, Crawlers, and Goblins. I love having Dhalmels as pets, they're quite strong, so I generally charmed them and used them against the Crawlers and Gobs. This also gives the nice bonus of the odd Silk Thread drop from the Crawlers.

Level 23-24: Jugner Forest As great as Buburimu Peninsula was, I have to say that up to this point, Jugner Forest was by far the best location for me I had found. Head to Spore Hollow at about (K-6) and you'll find a small area packed full of Funguars. Just charm Funguars and kill other Funguars. They will constantly respawn, and you'll never have a shortage of pets or prey unless there's someone here farming. Very nice bonus of Dark Crystals here, along with the various -shrooms dropped by the funguars. They have fairly strong special attacks, so if you're going to melee with your pet (still difficult to do without pulling hate at this level), or even stand near the battle, make sure you stand on the opposite side from your pet, since the most damaging Funguar specials affect a sort of "cone" area in front of it. If you use a WHM sub, this place will make you very glad that you have Poisona. And if you don't use a WHM sub... well, {I'm sorry.}. Bring a lot of Antidotes, and then go level WHM, because it really is the best sub for a solo BST. :b

Level 25-26: Rolanberry Fields At level 25 it will be difficult to find Even Match Berry Grubs to charm, so your fighting will be mostly consisting of using Death Wasps against Berry Grubs. You have the pet command "Sic" now, so remember to use it, sometimes your Wasp will get off a nice strong Sharp Sting or Pollen. One thing to remember with Sic is that it simply picks a random pet ability to use, and some pets have AOE attacks. If the pet happens to hit any other mobs with its AOE, they will all go after your pet. Don't panic though, as their hate will not transfer to you. Once your pet is dead, all the surrounding mobs it accidentally hit will all simply continue about their business, and only the enemy you had originally been fighting will come after you. In the case that your pet angers a lot of enemies with an AOE, just quickly look for another pet, as your current one won't last long. Back on topic: at night, the Moon Bats have a good level range for charming, so use them as pets/prey as well. Once you're 26, you can still do Wasp/Bat vs. Grub, as well as Grub vs. Grub. I found a nice spot at (F-7)/(G-7) where there were two little "fields" full of Berry Grubs close to each other, one on a lower level, and another to the right and up a small hill. Perhaps I'll go run around Rolanberry when I get home from school and see if I can find the location, it was very good, and after I found it I didn't need to move until I dinged 27. (I'll edit the <pos> in if I find it)

Level 27-29: Qufim Island At first, you will need to charm the Clippers, and you can grab Bats for pets at night. Fight Clippers, Pugils, Bats, Giants, and at night, kill the Wights. The Dark Bats, even thought they're fairly lower level, will do a ton of damage to the Wights, and if you get lucky with a Sic and your bats use Jet Stream, it'll take off a huge chunk of the Wight's life. During the day, I stayed at about (H-6) fighting the Pugils and Giants in that area, occasionally taking a pugil or crab over to (G-6) to find more Giants. At night I would spend most of my time in (G-6) moving around in front of Delkfutt's Tower killing all the Wights I could find. The parties here will love you for this, especially if you occasionally check the entrance to Delkfutt's to see if someone has zoned a Wight for you to kill.

Level 30-32: Korroloka Tunnel Again, I don't recall the exact location here, especially since it isn't shown on the map. When you come into Korroloka Tunnel from Zeruhn Mines, turn left as soon as possible, and then follow the path until you reach a room with some water full of Clippers and Greater Pugils. The Greater Pugils aggro, so be careful as you walk near them. This room will be your base of operations for level 30 and 31. Charm the Clippers and Pugils and fight other Clippers and Pugils. Once you've cleared the room out, go back a bit and there will be another room full of Huge Spiders that you can fight against each other until the Clippers and Pugils have respawned. Spiders link, so be careful, and watch out for Sickle Slash. In the room between the Spider room and the Clipper room, a Slime sometimes appears. It aggros, and is quite difficult to charm, but I would usually attempt to charm it, and then run in circles in the room if I failed, making sure I stepped into the two ponds of water. The Slime tracks by scent and will often lose your trail if you run through the water, giving you time to wait for your Charm to become available again. With good CHR gear, you should be able to charm it after 3 or 4 attempts. Once you've got it as a pet, just use it to kill as many enemies as you can until it dies, it's not worth trying to charm other pets to kill the Slime. Once you hit level 32, the Clippers, PUgils, and Spiders won't be very efficient for xp any more, but I couldn't find a better location to level at this point, so decided to grind it out by killing a lot of DC/EP. At this point I went down to the main tunnel area (the straight path from Zeruhn to Altepa) and charmed generally Even Match leeches and just killed every non-leech, non-slime, non-giant thing in my way. There's usually farmers in here that will clear out the giants and slimes so you don't have to worry about them. This wasn't fast, but I died a lot of times trying other areas, and this ended up just being the best way to get through level 32.

Level 33-34: Gusgen Mines This is where I started really feeling like a Beastmaster. It was dangerous, it was a challenge, and the xp was ridiculous. Bring some Silent Oil, because you'll need them to get down to the area where you're going to be leveling. When you come into the mines, you'll want to go straight until you get to the first set of 3 doors. Take the door on the left, and then hug the left wall until you go down a mine-cart track into the lower level. You'll go past some Myconids and there will be a small room where a Feu Follet (bomb-type) spawns. There's a small tunnel with a couple Myconids that connects this small room to a larger room full of Gallinippers with 4 Feu Follet spawn points. Basically all you do here is charm something, throw it at a Feu Follet, and then stand back. Keep throwing things at the Follets until they either Self-Destruct or just die from the large number of pets you go through. Note that everything down here will aggro and link, so you have to always be very careful. If you stay around the edges of the room, you're usually fairly safe from the Gallinipper aggro, but when you're about to charm one, make sure you place yourself so that if you mischarm, no other Gallinippers will be linked when it comes after you. Note that you shouldn't be afraid of charming tough Gallinippers here. The main problem with charming Tough things is that they will uncharm very quickly, but in this case, the bomb either blows up or does so much damage to the Gallinipper that it probably won't have time to uncharm. If you're very worried about it, you can keep pulling the fight into the tunnel connecting the two rooms where the two Myconids spawn, just watch out for them respawning because they will aggro. Make sure you always have your next pet picked out, because each pet will not last long, and the bombs move fast and hit very hard (especially after they've used Berserk), so you don't want one chasing you while you're trying to find something to charm. EXP Chains are easy here, I almost always got Chain #3 with the odd Chain #4, almost always for 200+ xp. However, it is very likely that you WILL die down here. I believe I died 3 times trying to get the proper strategy figured out, but once I had the hang of it I didn't die for the rest of the time I spent down there. When you do die, don't home point too quickly, as there are mining points down here, and mages will often come down to mine and raise you. I never had any trouble finding a raise, just be careful when you accept the raise, since the Gallinippers will aggro you if you are too close.

Level 35: Bibiki Bay Well, you've made it to the holy grail of BST: Leave. Prepare to change your whole method of playing the job, it really is totally different. You should now be able to melee along with your pet for almost the entire fight, and then once the enemy is low on life, simply do Leave, and finish the fight with a weapon skill (I prefer Raging Axe) for full xp. Pets you have released will regenerate their HP extremely fast, and you can kill more difficult enemies simply by swapping back and forth between two pets repeatedly, with the one you have just released quickly healing to full while the other fights. One thing to remember is that released pets can and will aggro and link. So if the pet you're using is the same type as the one you're fighting, be very careful of links when you release. A nice trick to avoid this: when you are preparing to release your pet, unlock from the target and run a short distance away from the fight. Then do Leave, and the enemy will run towards you while your pet is still in "neutral mode" where it will not aggro or link. That way you can finish the fight without having to worry about your pet coming after you if you miss a couple swings. As for leveling at 35, zone into Bibiki Bay from Buburimu Peninsula, and in the first area there will be Dhalmels, Efts, Rarabs, and Ravens. Charm the Dhalmels, Efts, or Rarabs and fight the Dhalmels or Ravens. I don't recommend fighting Efts or Rarabs, as they're both quite strong, and there's plenty of Ravens to kill. Now that you have Leave, remember that you can basically keep 2 pets forever, and that will be all you'll ever need. So when you first zone in, it could be in your best interests to repeatedly kill your desired pet types until you have two Even Match ones that you can swap between for all your fights. If you read posts on the Beastmaster forums, this is called "converting", and lets you always have those perfect Even pets to use. Welcome to Beastmaster.

Level 36-38: Sea Serpent Grotto Sea Serpent Grotto is great because it's very easy to find leeches to use for pets. Leeches are one of the best pet types, so these levels can be quite easy if you can find a couple nice Even Match Royal Leeches to swap between. Note that you will once again need Silent Oil to get around safely in SSG. For level 36, I stayed right near the entrance to SSG from Yuhtunga Jungle. There are lots of leeches here in 3 connected rooms, with Sahagin and Bats to kill. The leeches intimidate the bats, so this makes the fight even easier. Be careful of the Sahagin Hydro Shot special attack, because if your pet gets hit with it, your pet will lose all the hate it has accumulated. So if you've been meleeing along, turn around and let your pet get in a few good hits to regain hate. Once I hit level 37, the xp from bats and Sahagin was starting to fall a little, so I decided to go find a good location to kill Ghasts. I know most people don't have a map of SSG, so I'll describe how to reach the location I used for all of 37 and 38 from Norg. From Norg, go straight until you reach the cracked wall. Go through the cracked wall, then hug the right wall until you reach a long narrow room packed full of Royal Leeches. For those of you with a map, this is at (F-7). This is your base of operations, you should have no trouble finding a couple of Even leeches in this huge bunch, just be very careful of mischarms because they will link. From this room you're going to go to the south and north and kill the Ghasts. They won't link, but they will aggro from a very long distance to yellow life, so whenever you're going to pull one, make sure your HP is near full, and pull it back into a safe area so other ones won't aggro when you get knocked down to yellow life.

Level 39-41: Yuhtunga Jungle Back to every BST's favorite: suicidal mobs. The leveling location here is (H-11), which is east of the outpost. If you get a Teleport-Yhoat and head southwest from the telepoint, you'll get to the spot easily, or head down towards the outpost from Kazham. Once you get to the location, you'll find (non-aggro) Soldier Crawlers, and 4 Goblin Poacher spawns, one in the middle, and one along each of the 3 branches from there. You'll want to charm the Soldier Crawlers and fight the Goblins, of course. You can melee along with your pet, but keep Barfira up, and stand on the opposite side. If you see Bomb Toss getting readied, unlock from target (* on the numpad) and run away from the fight. If you do it quickly enough, you won't take any bomb damage. The goblins respawn so fast that by the time you kill the 3rd or 4th one, the first is back. You never have to stop killing for lack of prey. This was a great place to level, I got mostly chain #3 and ended up with a chain #4 for 280 that leveled me up to 40. One thing to notice is that once in a while a strong Lava Bomb will spawn in the middle area. If you leveled in Gusgen, you know how to handle this guy - stay away from the fight, and just keep throwing crawlers at him until he goes nuclear.

Level 42-44: Crawler's Nest This leveling spot isn't listed in the Hunting Grounds post I linked above, but it worked well for me. When you first drop into the main "ball room" in the nest, take the second tunnel on the left side. It'll go down a little ways past one of those glowy things, and you'll come to a room full of Killer Mushrooms. These are your prey. The tunnel you took to the room should have two Worker Crawlers in it. These make the best pets, but parties will tend to steal them, so if it's busy, don't expect one to be there when you need it. However, the parties will leave the Maze Lizards in the ball room alone, so use those as pets when needed. When meleeing the mushrooms, make sure you stand on the opposite side from your pet, as their Silence Gas and Dark Spore attacks are very powerful, and hit in a cone in front of them. You can make some good money leveling here, since the Mushrooms will drop Dark Crystals and (very rarely) King Truffles, which high-level cooks need. Occasionally someone will show up and start farming the mushrooms, hoping for the Truffles. Don't fret too much about this, they usually leave after a short time when they realize they've gotten one truffle in an hour of farming, and made 7k for their hour's worth of work.

Level 45: Yhoator Jungle/Crawler's Nest I actually duo'd my way through most of 45, so I list both locations here. For a duo, I highly recommend Yhoator Jungle, right around the telepoint. Charm crawlers and fight the Master Couerls. This is really only doable with a duo because of the Couerls' ridiculous Blaster paralysis attack. It will basically totally disable one of your pets for quite a long time. The Couerls are spaced far enough from each other that you don't have to worry about links, and they respawn fast enough that me and my partner were able to just keep running a circuit around the telepoint. Very, very good spot. I didn't actually duo all the way to 46, however, so I had to gain some solo xp at the end of 45. For this, I went back to Crawler's Nest, and now used the Killer Mushrooms as pets. I found an Even Match one, and dragged it across the ball room to the place where 3 Doom Scorpions spawn (first tunnel on the right side, I believe). Released it, went back and found another Even Match mushroom, and brought it over as well, using it to attack a Doom Scorpion. It will generally take 2 mushrooms to kill a Scorpion, but they don't wander back very fast, so you should have no problem swapping pets mid-fight. Enjoy their strong TP attacks, and watch out for scorpion links. For the first couple fights I pulled them into the tunnel, but after that, their respawn times were staggered enough that I didn't need to worry about links and could just fight in the room.

Level 46-47: Gustav Tunnel Another good spot to fight goblins. You will want to bring Prism Powder in case you need to get past a goblin in your way. The first good area to fight is not far from the Valkurm Zone, it's right where the tunnel slopes down into a room. I believe there are 4 goblins spawns there, and once you've killed all those, continue a little deeper into the tunnel and you'll find another room with 4 goblin spawns. The Goblin Robbers have crazy evasion and can be quite difficult to hit, so dont' get cocky about finishing them off yourself if they still have more than a tiny sliver of life. The best pets here are the leeches, but Hawkers, Lizards, Bats and Pugils make acceptable pets as well, just watch out for the pugils aggroing after being released. One of the "features" about Gustav Tunnel is that it has a few NMs. Goblinsavior Heronox pops in the first room I mentioned, so keep an eye out for him. I managed to solo him as BST46, but I don't recommend trying this unless you're like me and like to attempt soloing NMs 10 levels above you "because its there". It was an extremely intense fight, took about 20 minutes, and I came out of it with only about 100 HP and no MP. Not to mention 6k in gil, a gold beastcoin, and a rare/ex axe I'll never use. Amikiri will pop in the second room full of goblins, and I DEFINITELY don't recommend even going near it. I was watching an alliance of level 75s fighting it and almost died when I got too close to one of its TP attacks, so keep your distance. I hear Bune also pops up here, but I was lucky enough not to run into him in my time here. The xp here will start to be quite low when you're 47, but I tried to find a better place to go and was unable to, so I just ground it out.

Level 48: Labyrinth of Onzozo When you zone into Labyrinth of Onzozo from Buburimu, you'll need a Prism Powder to get past the room full of goblins, then you'll find yourself in a long tunnel with several leeches going down to a larger room full of goblins and cockatrices. As usual, the leeches are your pets, and the cockatrices are your prey. Kill the goblins if they get in your way, but they're not particularly good for xp. There's two things to be very careful of here: the cockatrices Baleful Gaze attack, which petrifies your pet; and the Air Elemental that spawns fairly often in the hallway you're using as camp. If one of your pets gets petrified, just disengage and let it tank for a little while until you find a new pet to replace it. This can get very annoying if the cockatrice uses Baleful Gaze several times in a row. If you happen to get petrified during that last sliver you're attempting to finish off, you WILL die, so I recommend not releasing your pet at the end of the fight if the cockatrice hasn't used its TP in a while. Yes, the 30% xp penalty sucks, but dying sucks a lot more. As for the Air Elemental, just be very careful where you're casting when it's around. The hallway full of leeches is long enough that you should be able to find a safe spot, but always keep track of where it is. When reading about leveling in Onzozo, I saw a lot of complaints about people having problems with the farmers there, but I didn't run into any during my time there, could have just been luck or maybe nobody farms there on Sylph.

Level 49-50: Crawler's Nest Back to the Crawler's Nest, except luckily this time you're going to be venturing away from where the parties are. If you don't have a map (and I know you probably don't), take the second tunnel from the right in the ball room, use Sneak to get past the Soldier Crawlers and Doom Scorpion, and you'll come to a drop-off into a room hopefully full of Labyrinth Lizards. These aggro by sound, and they also link, so this can be a bit of a tricky place to level, but it's totally worth it. There is also another room to the northwest full of the lizards, and make sure to Heel your fights into the hall between the two rooms (where the Witch Hazels are) to avoid links. The drop rate on these lizards is absolutely ridiculous. I would generally get 4-6 items from every fight (and good items, like sometimes 3 skins at once), and I came out of my two levels here with many stacks of Fire Crystals, Lizard Eggs, Lizard Skins, and threw away more Lizard Tails than I can even remember. The lizards also drop Nest Chest Keys, and six, count 'em, six chest spawns are in the two lizard rooms. I opened 5 chests while I was here, got 3 Gigant Axes worth 25k each, 6k gil, and a 2k Ametrine. The xp here isn't fast, but this isn't leveling, this is farming with a side benefit of xp. Note that the lizards also have Baleful Gaze, which is great when it's your lizard doing it, but you may have to pull the pet swap thing again if the enemy lizard does it. On that note, be careful when you use Sic inside the tunnel with the Witch Hazels, as if your pet uses an AOE attack it will shortly be fighting a couple Hazels as well. A final note is that due to the unbelievable drop rate, there will occasionally be high-level people farming these lizards. This will not make you happy, but some of the people were courteous and asked me if I was xping there, then left when I said that I was. Others will do everything in their power to pull every lizard they can from right under your nose. I know some other people weren't able to deal with this, but it was just me and the lizards 90% of the time, so I just waited out the hard times, the farmers never stayed very long. One very odd thing is that almost every single farmer was a MNK75, so I get the impression that this farming location was posted on some japanese monk message board or something.

Note: at this point, my descriptions are probably going to start to be quite a bit longer. At level 51, the amount needed to gain a level jumps up to 10k, then quickly moves up to 20k at 55. So since I spent hours upon hours in these locations, I'll probably have a lot of stuff to talk about. Because of this, I'll start breaking my descriptions up into multiple paragraphs so it's easier to read.

Level 51-52: Sea Serpent Grotto For these two levels, I was behind the Mythril door in Sea Serpent Grotto. If you're not familiar with the various beastcoin doors of SSG, I'll give a quick explanation. There are several doors around the zone that can be opened by trading the correct type of beastcoin to them. However, the game isn't very obvious about this, and when you first examine the door, it will just give you the generic "Nothing out of the ordinary here." message. You actually have to examine the door about 6 times before it will tell you about a certain type of metal shavings on it. After this point, trading the correct type of beastcoin (corresponding to the type of shavings seen) to the door will open it. When you do this, the beastcoin isn't used up, so as long as you're carrying a Mythril Beastcoin, you can open the Mythril door as many times as you want. With that in mind, make sure you buy a Mythril Beastcoin for these two levels, there's usually a good supply of them at the Norg auction house, since it's linked to Bastok's (where the Goldsmithing guild is located). As before, I'll assume you don't have a map of Sea Serpent Grotto, so I'll describe how to get to the Mythril door from Norg. It's a little odd to describe, so I hope you're able to follow these directions. Remember, you only need Sneak in Sea Serpent Grotto. Follow the path from Norg until you reach the Cracked Wall. When you open the cracked wall, turn left and go up the hill, following the right wall of this passage until you drop down one of those one-way cliffs. After you've dropped off the cliff, you're going to want to switch to following the left wall. Up ahead you should see a large "Ornamental Door". Once you've followed the wall into a downhill tunnel to the east of the Ornamental Door, switch again to following the right wall. You'll come out into a large chamber with a lake, pass under a bridge, and the Mythril Door will be straight ahead. Phew, I hope you can follow that. If you DO have a map, just go to the line between (H-11) and (I-11).

Now that you're behind the Mythril Door, follow the right-hand wall to the west and then the north until you get to a small alcove with a candle and two Sahagin Parasites (leech-types) in it. On the map, this is at (J-5). This will be your camp for the next little while. The Parasites don't aggro, so this is a safe place. However, they do link, so be careful of mischarming when they're near each other. If you're very lucky, the two Sahagin Parasites in the alcove will already be Even Match or Decent Challenge, but most likely at least one of them will be Tough. There's a fair amount of Parasites in this general area, so you should be able to find at least two suitable pets, but I highly recommend trying to convert the ones in the alcove to Even Match or below. My personal method of doing this is to charm a Tough one, Familiar it, and then kill as many other Tough Parasites in the area as I could before my pet died. I could usually kill 2 other ones before my Familiar'd one died, and that get 3 Tough Parasites out of the way that will hopefully respawn at a better level for Charming. You'll very likely be the only person back here doing anything involving the leeches, so once you've converted them to a good level they'll probably stay that way for quite a while (I'm talking days or weeks) if you don't get them killed.

Alright, once your pets are all set, it's finally time to start gaining xp. As I'm sure you've probably guessed, your prey is the various Sahagin back here. Send your pet out to fight one, and then Heel the fight back into the alcove to avoid links. You may have to use Sneak while pulling to avoid the crabs, they will aggro. There are three types of Sahagin back here: Bog Sahagin (Dragoon), Marsh Sahagin (Monk), and Swamp Sahagin (Bard). Each of these have their good and bad points. The Bog Sahagin are quite strong, they do a lot of damage, have a mean Jumping Thrust TP attack, and fairly high defense. These are the hardest to kill, so be careful of the Very Tough ones. The Marsh Sahagin don't hit very hard, but they have a ton of HP, and tend to guard and counter a lot of attacks. They can take a very long time to kill, so be careful of your pet uncharming in the middle of a fight, this will almost definitely happen against a Very Tough Marsh Sahagin. The Swamp Sahagin are pansies, as I'm sure you know if you've ever tried to farm or solo stuff as a Bard. The only annoying thing about them is if they stick you with Foe Requiem IV, but even that's not that bad. I always tried to start my chains with the Marsh and Bog Sahagin, and then finish with a Swamp, since even the Very Tough Swamps went down fast. Now that you're 51+, you can get 250 xp without a chain, so by chaining a VT, you can get over 300 xp, which I did many, many times over these two levels here.

Since it's probably the major danger of this place, I'm going to say a bit more about pets uncharming in the middle of a fight due to length. By this level, you should have a pretty good idea of how long an Even Match pet will stay charmed, so if you suspect that your pet is close to uncharming, disengage, use Leave, recharm it immediately, and send it back in. Your Parasites are strong pets, so about the only situation where one might get close to death is when fighting a VT Bog Sahagin. There's quite a few Parasites around this area, so if you did a good job of converting them, you should have no problem swapping pets mid-fight to finish off the Sahagin. Also, since the leeches are so strong, you should be able to easily melee along for the entire fight. I don't suggest using Sic here, since leech specials generally suck, and your pet will tend to use Sand Breath or Acid Mist and hit the other Parasite(s) in the alcove, which definitely does not qualify as a good thing. As I said in the first section above about SSG, watch out for the Hydro Shot attack, since it will cause your pet to lose all its hate, so if your pet gets hit by this, just turn around for a bit, take your beating for a few seconds, and the Parasite will pull hate back soon enough. Blink is also pretty much entirely useless while you're here, since the Spinning Fin attack will rip off all your shadows, AND do damage anyway. So don't bother, just keep throwing Regen on yourself every time you get smacked by Spinning Fin, and you should be alright.

Now, while not a major problem, there's one other thing to know about this camp. In the area right in front of the alcove, where the three Sahagin wander around, an NM by the name of Mouu the Waverider will spawn every two hours or so if you keep killing the Bog Sahagin. Don't even CONSIDER trying to kill this guy, he's level 64, and since he's a DRG, will 2-hour and summon a "Sahagin's Wyvern". I'm doubtful that any BST at these levels would be able to kill him even if he didn't use Call Wyvern, but since he does, I'm confident in saying it's impossible. Whenever he shows up, don't panic, just shout something like "Mouu the Waverider {Notorious Monster} @ <pos>" and a level 75 or two should show up in a few minutes to kill him, since he apparently drops Siren's Hair, which is worth upwards of 500k. Then just sit back and watch the show for a couple minutes, and go back to your leveling when the big mean NM is dead.

Level 53-55: Bostaunieux Oubliette Once again, we're going to be heading off to a place that people rarely go. You'll get used to this eventually, being the only one in the zone, losing upwards of 1000 xp if you die, with practically no hope of a random person with Raise walking by your dead body. Let me suggest you get some Moghancement: Experience going on. Anyhoo, Bostaunieux Oubliette is a great place, this has so far been one of my favorite places to level. It was extremely safe and easy xp, I eventually started doing my homework while xping because it wasn't dangerous at all. If you have no clue where Bostaunieux Oubliette is, you're going to head to Northern San d'Oria, enter Chateau d'Oraguille, and then turn right and go down the stairs inside the Chateau. This will put you on the top floor of Bostauniuex Oubliette. From here, go straight until you reach a hallway on your right side. Turn right and go down this hallway, open the door at the end, and there will be an NPC and a hatch inside a small room. Cast Sneak on yourself (VERY IMPORTANT), and then talk to the NPC and ask him to drop you through the hatch. You'll most likely land directly on top of a Dark Aspic (slime), so if you didn't cast Sneak on yourself first, you're probably now dead. Many poor unsuspecting level 10 San d'Orians have died this death, to Square-Enix's neverending amusement, I'm sure.

Now that you're in the real Oubliette, first order of business is to find a pet. If you're lucky, one of the two Dark Aspics you landed on will check Decent Challenge. I'm going to stress this here, because it's very important: you must use a Decent Challenge pet, don't even try with an Even Match. The fights down here will be quite long, and Even Matches will uncharm before your target is dead. Due to the high Charm resistance of Slimes, you don't want to try recharming your pet in the middle of a fight, so just use a Decent Challenge and you won't have to worry about it. Anyway, if both these slimes are higher than DC, you're a little unlucky, and you may have to wander around the Oubliette a bit to find a suitable pet. Without a map this could get ugly, so I would suggest that before coming here, you go take a few boat rides, kill some pirates for a while, and do the quest for the map. If the Aspics here aren't Decent Challenge, just take note of that, and you can come back for them later after you level. It's extremely rare for people to kill the Aspics, so if you keep track of where the Even Matches were at each level you'll have a perfect one-level-lower-than-you Decent Challenge to use next level.

Again, I don't want to exclude people that don't have a map, so I'll describe the way to camp from the drop point. If one of the Dark Aspics here is Decent Challenge, Charm it, recast Sneak, and bring it along. Getting to camp is quite simple, just follow the right wall, and eventually you'll zone out onto a small outcrop in West Ronfaure. Don't fall off here, or you'll have to go all the way back through San d'Oria again, but this is a good place to go afk or to log off. Just inside the zone on the stairs is your camp. Now, if you didn't bring a pet along, you can follow the right wall (if you're facing inwards, coming from the West Ronfaure zone) a little ways past the bats, and you'll go into a small waterway with two more Dark Aspics in it. Hopefully one of these will be DC, and if it's not, then I hope you have a map, because it's a bit more complicated to find more Dark Aspics. Be careful of "miscolored" squares on the ground in these waterways, as they are trapdoors and will drop you into the lower level where things are considerably stronger.

The great thing about using a Dark Aspic is that you never need another pet. At the end of every fight, you just uncharm the Aspic, let it slowly wander back down the hall and heal its HP to full, then Charm it again and use it for the next fight. They also have some extremely strong TP attacks, and the fights are long enough that if you use Sic right at the beginning of the fight, you should be able to use it again before the fight is over. I had Fluid Spread do over 300 damage several times, and Fluid Toss over 250. Also, since the Aspics hit hard and take very little damage, they'll probably never lose hate, so you can melee along for the whole fight with no problems at all.

Anyway, if you haven't figured it out, your prey here are the Werebats. One of the amazing wonderful things about Werebats is that they don't link. That's right, bats that don't link. So you don't even have to be careful with your pulls, just make sure you have Sneak on if you're going past any other bats so they don't aggro. The only time you'll probably worry about this is if you're trying to specifically find a Tough or a Very Tough. Otherwise, just pull the closest bat to the zone, and you won't even need Sneak. I personally Heeled every fight back to the bottom of the lower set of stairs, then when the bat got low on life, I would unlock, run up to the landing, use Leave, and finish the Werebat off with a weapon skill when it came up after me. This should put you far enough away from your Dark Aspic that it won't aggro. Then just sit down for a minute and rest your MP while it heals back to full, recharm it, and take on the next bat. As I said, they have quite high Charm resistance, so you'll probably fail quite a few charms, even with good CHR gear and a Light Staff. When I failed a Charm and Tame missed (or wasn't ready), I would just run back and forth up and down the stairs to the corner, using Charm whenever it was ready. This can be pretty random, I had streaks of over 10 successful Charms in a row, and once failed 8 Charms in a row before I gave up and zoned. If you're failing a lot of Charms and getting low on life, don't panic, just zone out to West Ronfaure, heal up, then come back in and try again, the Aspic won't have wandered far.

Final thing to note here is that there are only exactly enough bats for one Beastmaster. I'd usually just finish off the last one in the hallway before the first one would respawn. So if you get here and there's already another BST here, don't try to share the camp with him, you'll just make it so both of you get crappy xp. If you go to the waterway I described earlier, this is also an acceptable place to camp, it's just more dangerous and requires attention. It's not particularly difficult once you get used to it, just don't get lazy, stay alert. There are two Dark Aspics wandering back and forth, and bats can spawn anywhere. So while you're fighting, unlock from the target, hold down the Shift key, and you can use the arrow keys to rotate the camera. You should do this quite often to watch out for bats spawning next to you, or the other Dark Aspic plotting a path through your fight. Again, since the bats don't link, if the situation looks bad, just cast Sneak and Heel the fight to wherever you want, past other bats if needed. If you do end up fighting two things at once, just tell your Dark Aspic to Fight both of them, and then find a clear spot and log out. Come back in a second, recharm your pet, and go back at it. The Aspic will have no trouble tanking both mobs for 30 seconds while you're logging out.

The competition here isn't entirely other Beastmasters, a couple of times a Japanese party would come down here to xp off the Werebats at the zone. This would probably be an incredible place to bring a party because of all the reasons I like xping here as BST, but I doubt that I'll ever get in a party intelligent enough to make it to this camp without half of the members dying. Parties in general don't have any respect for Beastmasters. They'd never come and take this camp if another party was already there, but they'll have no problem doing it when it's "only" a Beastmaster camping there. When this happens, just suck it up and move to the waterway camp, or log out for a few hours if you're not comfortable with the more dangerous camp. I know you could make it very uncomfortable for them to stay there (Leaving a Dark Aspic in the middle of them ought to do it), but the waterway camp really isn't that bad, so don't cause a fight over it. They don't have the option to move to another camp like you do, so it's easiest to just let them have the good camp.

Level 56-58: Garlaige Citadel Yes, Garlaige Citadel. I'm sure you've heard all the horror stories, killing entire parties by accident and going to jail for MPKing, having Serket-hunting groups kill off every pet so that you die from that bomb chasing you, etc etc etc. Don't worry though, I promise it really isn't that bad. Especially if, like me, you wait until level 56 to go here. There's one very important reason to do this, and it's because Chamber Beetles are level 56-58. If you come here earlier in the 50s, as many people do, you have to rely on bats as pets, which means you have to level in the basement, where all the parties are. However, if you come at 56 or higher, you can level behind Banishing Gate #2, which I cannot recommend enough. The only charmable mobs behind gate #2 are Chamber Beetles, so you will have to be at least 56 to level back there effectively. Beetles are much stronger pets than bats, and there's rarely ever anyone killing anything behind gate #2, so you usually don't have to worry about crossing paths with anyone. If you can convince three friends to come let you through the gate, that's easiest, but if not you can just hang around the gate for a while and a group should come through to open it eventually.

Once you're behind the gate, you'll have an idea of the sheer number of Chamber Beetles back here. Unless something weird is going on, you should never run out of pets. When you get through the gate, turn left and go down the stairs, it'll turn into more of a cavern area, and up ahead to the left will be a small room with 3 Hellmines and a few Weapons in it. Beetles and bombs both aggro sight, so you should only need Invisible back here until you get past the Hellmine room and go up the stairs to where the undead are. Just be careful not to run into the Tainted Flesh or the Weapons. The Hellmines will be your main prey here, and there are beetles for pets on both sides of the room.

If you've been following my guide up to this point, the only previous time you fought bombs was in Gusgen Mines, and you've gained a lot of abilities since then, so I'll go over the tactics I use for fighting bombs. Find an Even Match beetle if possible, send it into the room after a Hellmine, then back up a fair distance (both the Hellmines and the Weapons will aggro magic, so make sure you're out of their range, judging by their dots being off your radar works well), cast Blink and Stoneskin (and Invisible if there's any beetles wandering nearby), then just sit down to rest while they fight it out. A Dark Staff is highly recommended if you don't already have one by this point. The bombs won't link, so you don't have to pull each Hellmine out of the room, just let the fight happen wherever it starts. If your pet is almost dead and the Hellmine hasn't blown up, just release it and charm another Beetle in the time it takes the Hellmine to get to you. You don't always have to wait until your pet is almost dead, in fact, I suggest doing a pet swap right after the bomb uses Berserk if your pet is low on HP, since that guarantees the bomb won't be able to Self-Destruct on you during the swap. The only times I ever died while fighting bombs was because I didn't bother with this, and had the bomb start Self-Destructing while I was still beside it after sending my new pet in. Anyway, while you're doing the swap Blink and Stoneskin should save you from 3 hits, and this is a very good thing, since the bombs hit quite hard once they've used Berserk. Send your new pet after the bomb, and then get out of range again, recast any buffs the bomb ripped off you, cure if needed, and rest again. I like to rest at a distance where the bomb's and pet's dots are just about to fade out on the edge of your radar. This puts them at a distance where your actions won't get you any hate, but you can still see the damage they're doing to each other in your log (and more importantly, see what special attacks the bomb uses).

That's the general routine, but there's a few other details. First, note that the Self-Destruct move does damage based on how much HP the bomb has left, so there are a couple tactics relevant to this. If the Hellmine's life bar is bigger than your pet's when it starts Self-Destructing, it will usually kill your pet, but if it blows up after you've done a pet swap, the bomb will typically have less HP than your pet, so often your pet will still be alive and you'll take a 30% xp reduction. 30% less xp is never fun, but luckily there's an easy way to avoid it. If you're at the distance I mentioned above, you'll still be able to see the Hellmine, so when you see the message "The Hellmine readies Self-Destruct.", immediately stand up if you've been resting, and there will be a point in the animation where it's like a sucking of air into the Hellmine and it starts shaking (you'll know it when you see it). As soon as that section of the animation starts, use Leave. If you time it right, the bomb will explode, your pet will still take the damage, but you'll get full xp. It may take a few tries to get it right, but it's not difficult if you're paying attention. Just be careful about using Leave too early, since if you're too early the bomb will stop Self-Destructing and come after you. Also, if the bomb is going to die in a couple more hits and hasn't self-destructed yet, just release your pet, let the bomb come to you, and kill it in a few hits from your axe. Most people are really scared to do this, but even if the bomb explodes, it will hardly do any damage because of how low the Hellmine's HP is. You should have Stoneskin and Blink up, so you'll have a little while to finish the bomb off before it starts really tearing into you. Cast Dia if you're really worried about missing, the damage from it could make the difference.

Once you've killed the 3 Hellmines, you will have a while before they respawn. At this point, there's a couple things you can do. You can start killing off all the Tough beetles in the area to try and get more pets, or you can go past the Hellmine room, up to an intersection, and there are Fallen Warriors and Fallen Mages all down the hall ahead. I'm not a fan of converting pets I'm using to fight bombs, since they tend to end up dead from a self-destruct soon after, so I personally chose to fight the skeletons during the times I was waiting for bomb respawns. I could typically kill one or two before the Hellmines started respawning, and it's a good way to get an EXP Chain started, so that you can get bigger numbers from the Hellmines. I usually didn't melee through the whole fight, since Black Cloud and Blood Saber are really annoying and the skeletons are fairly tough and usually require a pet swap (swapping pets when you already have hate built up on the mob usually doesn't go very well), so I'd just sit back and basically follow the same bomb routine. I tended to try and start meleeing near the end, giving enough time so that I could build up 100% TP to finish off the fight. Just be careful of other beetles wandering around, and watch out for aggro from your ex-pet when you Leave it to finish off the fight, I suggest running a distance away before using Leave.

A few other things to mention... Now that you're level 56, you can equip a Reraise Gorget. Especially for leveling in hard-to-reach places like behind Banishing Gate #2, I highly recommend keeping the Reraise effect active 100% of the time. On Sylph, a Reraise Gorget costs about 40k, and has 10 charges, each of which give you two hours of Reraise II. That's a total of 20 hours, so think of it as paying 2k/hour for Raise II insurance. It's definitely worth it for the amount of xp you'll save and especially the amount of time it takes to get back behind gate #2 if you homepoint (it's extremely unlikely you'll get raised back here). Personally, unless I'm partied with other BSTs fighting things I'm confident we won't die fighting, or in a place I'm sure I can get a R2 or R3, I keep Reraise up constantly. It's your own personal choice, but I can't even imagine how much time and xp my gorget has saved me overall, so I'm going to keep using it all the time. Note that you can unequip the gorget after using it and the Reraise effect will stay up, so don't worry about it taking the place of your other gear.

Also, one very happy thing about leveling in Garlaige Citadel at 56 is that this is the level you can equip your Beast Helm. Notice that, by some wonderful coincidence, the Beast Helm comes out of a Garlaige Citadel coffer, and Hellmines, Fallen Mages, and Fallen Majors drop coffer keys, AND there's four coffer spawn locations behind gate #2. All the stars are aligned for you to easily solo your Beast Helm, and you should have no problem getting it just during the course of your normal xping back here. If a key has dropped, spend some of the time in between bomb spawns running through the coffer spawns behind gate #2 and see if one is there. I got my Helm and also opened two other coffers while I was back here for some gil. I also gave away a fair number of keys to random people that asked me for them. Just keep your inventory full at all times (go into manual sort mode and double-click on your stack of Beastmen's Seals a bunch of times until it fills your inventory) and any items that drop after that will sit in your treasure pool for a while. If a key drops, you can then invite whoever needs it and have them lot (note: make sure you invite them, all treasure is lost if they invite you). For other items, just use manual sort to put a Beastmen's Seal back into your stack for every item that drops, and the drops will go into your inventory.

Finally, a safe place to log out is up the stairs at the intersection where the skeletons start. There's a door to the incinerator up there, no mobs will wander up to it, so if you're like me and just want to stay behind gate #2 until you're done with Garlaige Citadel, that's a nice safe place to log for the night. Other BSTs will often log out back here too, and there's not even really enough Hellmines for one BST, never mind multiple. So if they were logged in and fighting before you, I consider it the right thing to do if you don't try and beat them to the Hellmine claims. Once, I was the first BST back there, and another one showed up and decided to start killing all the beetles as an attempt to drive me out. Please don't do that, log out and take a break for a while. At one point, there were three BSTs behind gate #2, so I convinced them to team up with me and we went down to the basement and trio'd the Magic Pots. This was very good xp, so if there's a glut of BSTs in Garlaige, I highly recommend it. I got a decent chunk of my xp during this period off those pots. At level 58 you can take them more easily in a duo, but trio is definitely better for the lower levels.

sniperg

Very good guide. Another note worth mentioning is that with the new patch beastmasters don't get any more the penalty so they don't have to do the whole release pet thing.

dominia

With this change to BST, can we expect to see a couple more in pt's?