Off of the beaten path

As I settled into my dune party, preparing for another comical grind to 19 or 20 on my BLM, I was invited to tag along on some more adventures with Feon and his LS DarkEden. Ishmael had just gotten his joy toy and the group was apparently on a roll. On the menu for the evening was Cactrot Rapido, with a side-order of ZM5, time permitting.

I waved farewell to a new friend I had made in the party, a Scottish player by the name Fushia, who already has a petulance belying her level and rank. The server had better clear a path for her ^_^. Feon's group kindly teleported me to the Holla crag and I took the slow hike back to Sandy to get dressed for the fight, hoping for the new title we all coveted.

The {Gather together} stage took a bit of time, but we ended up with 8 participants, most of whom brought their NPCs to spread out the 10k Needles damage. Feon handed out the Icarus Wings and we established weapon skill orders for Light.

We didn't need to drag our half-dead Sabotender around for long before Rapido ran to the rescue. The fight was lightning-fast, and it ended with most people dead. Fortunately, Rapido was one of them.

After the fight, Cozmos, Feon, and Littoguy stuck around for a trip to Ifrit's Cauldron to finish up my last ZM5 fight and to assist Littoguy in getting a key item. The fight with the Opos from hell went pretty well, although I'd inadvertently killed my Provoke STNPC macro, so Cozmos had to deal with one of the monkeys a while longer than I would have liked.

When we arrived back at the Holla crag, Feon noticed the spawn point for the Goblin Archaeologist was up and giving the message "You hear a voice from right beneath the surface of the ground." So he popped it, and I ran back to help kill it off before logging out for the night.

On the following night, DarkEden was getting ready to have some adventure in Den of Rancor. Littoguy needed to kill a NM by the name of Carmine-tailed Janberry.

But first on the agenda was a Leviathan Prime fight, which I had somehow missed in the chat log so I merrily accompanied them to the Cloister of Tides and stood in front of a giant crystal wondering why I couldn't go where they were going. Frohike noob moment #3123.

After the fight was over, Feon and Cozmos came back and Escaped me to the temple entrance. We killed every Wespe we came across on our way back to the Den of Rancor, but none of them wanted to drop the pop item for Death from Above.

We wreaked havoc in the Den of Rancor for awhile, and it felt good to run around with this area like we owned the place, killing most of the Tonberries in sight. Thankfully, I'd remembered to bring my Pick of Trials this time around, so Ninjax and I were Light chaining with Dragon Kick and Mistral Axe to work off my latent.

Janberry didn't take too long to pop and was a fairly fast kill, dropping the Asklepios for Littoguy on our first attempt.

Having some time left to kill, the group made its way to Bastok for some tuning forks and we gathered at the Cloister of Tremors for a Titan Prime fight, which also went well, although our two Tarus died to what I'm assuming was bad Geocrush timing.

We established a new record for the fight! 3 minutes, 14 seconds.

After this whirlwind of adventure, I ended up with a few things in my inventory.

I felt badly when I noticed this one:

Feon had lotted on this and I had neglected to pass on it, and somehow it ended up going to me anyway ><;

A huge thanks to Feon & Cozmos et al for letting me in on their adventures. I definitely needed a vacation from the dunes for a few days, and it was good to meet some more members of the group.