Savage Blade

After Zorrandor broke his latent, the LS tried to put a Savage Blade run together but people's schedules didn't allow for it that week, so the event had to wait until last night. It was an adventure, in parts, even though a large percentage of it was spent waiting for poor Zorr and Lycas to run around to all 4 columns to unlock the Altepa Gate.

The group gathered at Rabao:

• Atrenore - 70 DRG
• Lexxi - 62 WHM
• Lycasdemus - 69 PLD
• Minusjoker - 75 BLM
• Murrdoc - 62 DRK
• Zorrandor - 75 RDM

We headed out to J-9 in Western Altep and made our way through Quicksand Caves (the Tribunus VII-I map) to the 'waiting room' just south of the Altepa Gate.

For anyone unfamiliar with this quest, it involves zoning into four different entrances to Quicksand Caves from Western Altepa, and in 2 of the 4 cases, opening weight-triggered doors which give you access to sand pits, which drop you down to passageways that lead to the activation points for the 4 pillars. The weight-triggered doors require a duo unless the player is a Galka (no joke). And of course the path to each pillar is littered with Anticans and Spiders that will aggro anyone below 71-2ish. Once all 4 pillars are active, the Altepa Gate opens, giving access to a special area in Quicksand Caves populated by high-level Anticans, several NM's, and of course containing the ??? point for the WSNM.

Although Zorr had cleared the 2 solo-able pillars earlier (Topaz and Ruby), they had apparently been reset by the time we all made it out to Altepa, so Lycas and Zorr headed out to trigger the remaining pillars while we sat in the waiting room and killed the single Ant that would pop there occasionally.


After awhile we started goofing around while Zorr and Lycas did the heavy lifting. We pulled the occasional mob for fun. Murrdoc and Minusjoker used their Chocobo whistles and raced their birds up and down the trench.

We did eventually make it through the gate.

While waiting for Zorr and Lycas to return from their last pillar, I zoned into QC and went poking around downstairs to check for the Ant NM that typically blocks the path to the ???. I didn't get very far before I felt quite uneasy and turned the hell around. Most ants there conned DC to me, and I didn't want to put the group in the awkward position of attempting to raise me in such a place.

Once we all zoned in, I did my best to warn everyone about the NM Antican Praetor that agros through Sneak and lurks at the 4-way intersection on our way to the ???. But one of us ended up agro'ing the NM anyway and we all ran back, poisoned, battered, and laughing.

Our second attempt was successful once we waited for the NM to move a bit south, and we made it to the room we would need to clear before triggering the WSNM. To my recollection there were around 6 DC ants here, but they didn't present too much of a problem to our group.

Once the room was clear, Zorr triggered the ??? and the Scorpion NM Girtablulu appeared. Lycas took on the tanking role, and within seconds the scorpion used its dreaded move: Death Scissors. This hit poor Lycas for upwards of 1200 damage, resulting in death. I immediately 2-houred, dropped Berserk, lost my shadows pretty quickly, and took a few hits before I could get my shadows back up. Each strike took a good 200+ chunk out of me.

I tried skillchaining Mistral Axe after Zorr's Decimation but failed miserably as my Utsusemi spell interfered... so we kept slashing, piercing, and nuking away at it. I'll admit I lost my head a bit when Lycas died and by the time I got my wits about me the process was more than half-way over.

We eventually defeated the NM and Zorr got his key item for Savage Blade.

My sincere thanks to the group for a very fun evening, {Congratulations!} to Zorrandor for unlocking a very powerful weaponskill, and {/comfort} to Lycasdemus for the being the unfortunate victim of such a nasty mob skill.