The mis-adventure of a not so great solo'er

I don't like solo'ing much. Even on BST, I liked duo'ing much better--in fact, I once made a friend go duo'ing with my BST/WHM as WHM/BST. However, my main is RDM64, if I have anything that could be called a main, which is supposedly a great solo job in hands of a capable player. I'm no such player.

My RDM macros are not solo friendly--just about every spell switch weapon, and some switch in stuff with extremely low defense. My last sword upgrade was to Lv.55. I don't even own a dagger over Lv.34, unless you count Minstrel's Dagger. Heck, I type all my spells when I want to keep TP, since I've never bothered to organize my spell list.

* * *

Instead of leveling to RDM Lv.65 like I should, I spent most of the night just wandering about Tavnazian Safehold first, and then Misareaux Coast. In doing so, I accidentally spawned Bloody Coffin, a Lv.50 NM crab with very high resistance to physical and magical damages.

It was a long fight.

Started OK; sleep'ed it, buffed, then debuffed. Took a quick glance on Wiki and saw level "50-52", and decided to stright melee it. ("I'm 12-14 levels above; what can go wrong?")

Once I figured out it cast spells, I just silenced it. Its HP went down slowly; sword strikes were doing high single digits, enspells were around 4 per proc, and it was fairly resistant to Drain. However, it did seem doable, especially since Aspir worked ok.

Halfway through, it started to go hyper on me; must have gotten a haste through while I was busy with other stuff. Things became a bit hurried--it landed a Bio II, and I ran low on MP.

I bind it and gravitied it, then moved away for Convert. Rebuffed, redebuffed--then it all went downhill.

The bloody Bloody Coffin became resistent to silence, and paralyze started to wear off fast. Because I didn't want to lose TP, I was typing all the spells by hand (macros all have staves switches), and I had a hard time keeping up with all its nasty tricks and fast fading enfeebs. Worse, it was landing Paralyze and slipping Ice Spikes through, so I was paralyzed a lot. >_<;

When it had just about 3% of life left, I realized that my Protect and Shell have dropped, along with most of my buffs. Bio II was on me, and I have about 40% HP and dangerously low MP--with Refresh nearly gone. Quick check showed that Convert was nearly three min away. Ouch.

Popped up Protect II, then the Bio II on me and a crit hit ate away my poor Stoneskin. Tried to silence it, and it resisted. My HP was low, and going down fast--my time was running out.

Cure IV'ed myself, Gravity'ed it, Bio (I), and started to kite it. Refresh run out. Not enough MP to recast. Convert still over two min away. Not good. Not good at all.

Run away... but to where? (At least the Bio II on me worn off.) There's only so much room, since I've already moved past the exit from the coast area. Luckily, it kept stopping to cast spells (and not Bio II). It had just a sliver of life left, but I was down to 476 HP and 12 MP.

So, I ran toward it.

Started to cast a Poison on it... figured I'll take him to my grave, if I can.

It noticed that I'm in range, and started casting--Ice Spikes. I landed my Poison, and turned tail to run away again.

~10 seconds passed by...

"Bloody Coffin falls to the ground."

7 MP left.

I lived.

* * *

I took a moment to breath, then dumbly checked my convert timer again; still over a minute.

That, was not an easy fight for this RDM64...

Hello?!

Hello?! Anyone out there? Hopefully not.

Just in case, though:

Don't read this; there's nothing interesting here, nor will there ever be.

Move along. Nothing to see.