Fun in a ... Party? Huh?

I randomly decided to put up my flag tonight. The LS was again scattered to the winds and in social chatter mode, so there was no hope of me rallying anyone to do any sort of coffer hunt, and I wasn't in the mood to skillup, nor craft. So I bought some Sole Sushi (ouch, 70k?) and joined a party headed to Valley of Sorrows. The party consisted of RDM, WAR, WAR,SAM, BLM, BRD. I know, odd... and I was a little worried when the leader immediately asked 'where do we go?' once we formed (usually a bad sign), but it worked and everyone knew how to play their job to the fullest. We even took on those nasty Peryton's when they got in the way.

A few mishaps resulted in some {death} for a few people, including myself. First the Red Mage decided to play good samaritan in Kuftal Tunnel and was raising the victims of Guivre, the horrible horrible dragon that routinely wipes several parties in the nortwestern chamber of Kuftal. While it was nice of him, it got him killed. So we had to wait a bit to get started. Once in the Valley, we pulled Raptors, and skillchained Tachi:Enpi > Rampage for Distortion. Since there were two WARs and a SAM, it never got boring.

For one, we were dual tanking, so I had to pay attention to shadow counts and rip aggro to me when my partner's shadows dropped (no mean feat, since he was wearing a Scorpian Harness and Tungi ><). Secondly, I became the designated puller after the first few pulls by the SAM, who was getting hit too hard during the journey back to camp. Thirdly, there was the SAM's Meditate job ability.

One WAR would hit 100 TP with the SAM and skillchain, then the SAM would Meditate and the other WAR usually had full TP at that point, so if we needed to squeeze in another Distortion, we could (this was a lifesaver with the birds).

Alot of fun stuff to juggle!

I died twice, but it never felt that tragic, since I didn't want to hit my level cap and keep the rest of the party back, and we were gaining EXP so quickly it didn't seem to matter all that much anyway. One deadly mishap occurred before we decided to kill the damned Peryton's... when one of them agroed the party as we were killing a Raptor. This resulted in a swift death for the three melees that fought the good fight while the mages retreated. The second happened when I ran by a Raptor pop on my way back to camp... which wouldn't have been so bad, since they can be slept, but the other Warrior provoked the wrong Raptor (perfectly understandable), which left me to die in the confusion.

All in all I gained about 8000 experience points in a relatively short party, with pleasant folks.

In other news, I was asked by a former social LS buddy (who I hadn't seen in the LS in quite awhile) whether I want to join an HNMLS. I told him I would accept as long as he was in it... turns out he's the leader. Don't have the pearl yet, since he was asking me this right as I was heading to Altepa, but I hope to catch him tomorrow.

Soundtrack: Mr Bungle (Disco Volante), Secret Chiefs 3 (Book of Horizons)