Grinner

Up late hoping for a grind spot, but main group was full and the second group did not have an invite macro running. It's not that common that that happens, but it can. So I updated the forum blog with 5 more entries before poking my head into game again. just killing one spawn at a time, the Sliggy had already made it to level 3.

Hatching a new beast often makes me nostalgic.

My first pet in game was a deco grade Durni, made from DNA harvested from a stuffed bunny that had been made by OG's original bio-engineer, Ioleesem, who quit game just after the NGE, because they had ransacked his profession and left him (and thousands of other players) twisting in the wind. I will blog on that whole thing at some pint, and will link this back to that, but it really is a massive topic for another time.

Anywho, I had this cute lil bunny and he was pretty much just that. cute. Pointless, almost literally (I think he had like 6 points? Or maybe 18, I don't recall. Deco statted, defnitely. I had forgotten its name until I looked it up on SWGpets. Veridian, Aerys' maiden name.

Chase', our Guild Leader had invested a bit more heavily, both in expertise and in figuring out the BM crafting side of things, and I had made him a 54 pt Kliknik from similar, legacy DNA. Newly hatched, that tiny critter kicked my level 16 bunny\s ass enough times that I said to heck with that, and reset my expertise to see if he would hold up better. He did, but not much. That said, we were a crap tonne more effective in PvE, and that was it: I was bit by the BM bug.

My first serious combat beast was a 53 pt Narglatch, chosen for the hard-hitting feline damage specials, and because der, dolphin-cat? Yes please!

Grinner became my go-to guy. even with 7 points missing from his stats, he hit like a tonne of bricks, sharp, bad-tempered bricks. I could keep him alive through a lot of stuff, and he could snag aggro as needed to keep my rash butt out of the bacta.

With his damage combined with Orkin's DoTs, and Chase's and my guns, we were a supremely effective Krayt hunting team. We literally rolled through the graveyard, taking on double and triple spawns and enjoying the challenge of staying alive when an Ancient suddenly woke up on top of us.

There was something very grand about Grinner's  unflinching bravery in the face of such massive targets as we usually hunted. Krayt Dragons and Sher Karr had to crouch to get level with him, and he had this amazing cat leap into the air, with a claw swipe at the peak of it: just terrific animations.

Later, if soloing, I got other pets more suited to the work, and Grinner's missing points did make us less effective as a team, but  he inspired one of the things that gave the community the most fun, the LOL BM thread.


No beast has ever really compared to Grinner in my affections.