Royal Jelly BCNM

The evening starts off with the usual mule shuffle. Lot to move around this time. I also decide to synth some batteries for use in those electric polearms that Dragoons can use. This is because I decided to level Dragoon as my next job to get out of the dunes. After much shuffling, the deed was done, but I'm going to have to get to Delkfuts and farm some pot and doll shards. This is because the price for them on the AH is ridiculous under the current deflationary environment. Added bonus I manage to get some Scorpion Arrowheads synthed so I'll be able to make some scorpion arrows soon. My reserves of Scorpion Arrows are out.

While this was going on the call goes out over the LS for a BCNM40 run. Krolm wants to run the Royal Jelly BCNM in the Waughroon Shrine. So I head over to windy to get my level 40 gear out of the MH and get ready to go as a RDM/NIN. As part of my ongoing "show them my armor sets" campaign, here is my HQ Cuir Armor set:

Strangeone in Cuir Armor

BCNM stands for Burning Circle Notorious Monster. These are basically triggered boss fights. You get enough Beastman Seals trade em for a specific orb, get a party together, wander over to the burning circle, trade the orb to the circle (only one or two parties can go at a time - there are usually 2 copies of the battle field available - but technically it's not instanced - a 3rd party won't be able to go till one of the first two finish) and do the fight. They are nice in that you can't get disturbed by anyone else during the fight itself. Also they tend to have some really good loot in the armored crates should you win the battle. The usual accepted routine is for everyone in your party to go get an orb. Then you all trundle on out to the BC. And you do run after run till all the orbs are used. The person who's orb is used gets the loot for a particular fight. The first one is always a little tense if it's a new party doing this for the first time. You never know the quality of your party till you actually do the fight.

So we all gather in Jeuno and take the Airship to Bastok. This is because we're all going /NIN in order to limit the damage we will take. So we can't use the "escape" trick we would use to get to Palborough Mines. So after the usual stroll through the mines, we end up at the burning circle. This is a 3 man BCNM so there are only 3 of us. This is a fight against a bunch of slimes that are slowly gravitating towards the center of the room (7 I think or maybe 8, I'll have to count em next time). If they get to the center they merge in to a much tougher monster. So the idea is to kill em all fast enough so this doesn't happen. Oh and I've got to keep the boys alive through out all of this. The party consists of Krolm, Sadon and myself.

The party at the Burning Circle

We roll a random number to see who gets to go first. Traditionally the middle of the order is the safest place to be in these multi run BCNMs. Unless it's a repeat party, the first fight is a bit of an unknown. You never know if your party is going to gel or not (read die horrible deaths if not). The end of the order is chancy on the bigger parties since you might have people that need to split before you get to your turn. That happened on my last BCNM run, which is why I had an orb in my Mog House storage. So our order is Krolm, myself and finally Sadon.

The first run goes well. The last two Princess Jellies manage to merge into the Queen Jelly but by then she's almost dead so no biggie. I do go through enough mp to need to convert at the 5th Jelly or so. I also manage to do enough hits to WS twice in the fight. This pattern will hold for the next 2 fights as well except we won't see the Queen Jelly again.

Pounding away on a Princess Jelly

At the end of the fight that was started with my orb, I managed to get:

• Himmel Stock
• Mana Ring
  
• Mithril Beastcoin
• Steel Sheet
• Slime Oil x 2

Actually the big drops from this BCNM are Scroll of Erase, Scroll of Utsusemi: Ni and the Archer's Ring. And no one got the big drops. One trick we did to is for all those who are not opening the chest to immediately exit the battlefield once the fight is over so we don't all have to do the walk around to get back to the BC.

Me and my Armory Crate

After the last fight, Sadon left so fast he forgot to let his stuff drop into his inventory. Doh! Lucky it wasn't any of the big drops.

Victorious after the last fight

Then it was off to windy to put away the level 40 togs and stuff. Once that done I finally went to Jeuno and picked up my egg from the Upper Jeuno stables. Looks like a pretty standard egg. I'm going to hatch it later and see. If it's not special I'll see about trying for an HQ egg again. Devious seems to have gotten one.

AmberStorm-WildFox egg

And that was it for the evening.