Questing, Level 44 Party, Eastern/Western Altepa Desert

My main agenda for today, outside of the Experience Party we had planned for this evening, was to clean myself up some, mule some random items around that have been rotting on my main character for weeks (I don't why the fuck was I still carrying around my Bone gear with me, and my Samari's Great Katana, among other things...), and take care of some more of the Monuments we need to get impressions from for the "An Explorer's Footsteps" quest. When I logged in I saw that Almeth was already online, so I quickly recruited him and we got down to getting some of those things done. I set my H.P. in Selbina, met up with Almeth, and away we went.

Although the pic doesn't do it justice, this is one of the few places in Gustaburg that doesn't look entirely like vomit.

While we were out getting our first tablet of the evening, Kamiku logged on, and asked Almeth and I if we wanted to go get some of our G1 items, which are needed to break the level cap at level 50. As my Dancer is currently stuck 1 point away from 51, Almeth and I jumped at the chance to pick up a few of these items. Kamiku headed towards The Eldieme Necropolis to wait for us while we made our way out there from Jugner. Basically, all Almeth and I did was zone in and sit down, while Kamiku ran in and did all the dirty work. Within moments we both had the Ancient Papyrus we needed, so our next stop was Crawler's Nest. We made our way over there, and within a few more minutes we both had the next item we required...Exoray Mold. Kamiku had a Dynamis-Valkurm to do, so with 2 of the 3 G1 items secured, we wished him luck and went on our merry way.

Almeth and I carried on, getting more Clay Tablets, and after 3 or 4 more Amedelie and Reflaa showed up, so it was time to get serious and get some experience under our belt. Amedelie, Almeth, and I geared up, ran to Northern San d'Oria, and Outpost Warped to the Eastern Altepa Desert to meet up with Reflaa, who logged out there by the outpost the night before. We killed some things and got some experience, but the mobs were a little weak for our tastes, and the amount of Experience we were getting left a little to be desired. At this point, Kamiku was finishing up his Dynamis-Valkurm, so in preperation for having a 5th member, we decided to check out some alternate camps.

I pulled up Campsitarus, we discussed a little what our options were, and we decided to try and head out to Quicksand Caves, which was on the other side of the zone. Dodging Antican's, we made our way across the desert.

[Edit - As with yesterday, we had a lot of stuff going on, so I may have some of the events of our party a little mixed up in their ordering. Sorry for any inconvenience :)]

While we were trekking through Eastern Altepa, we caught some aggro to an Antican Something-or-other, so we quickly regrouped and started to beat it's ass down. While we were fighting, Almeth spotted another Antican nearby, so we steered the mob we were fighting away from it to avoid any linkage and death. After taking a closer look (I couldn't tell since I have names turned off for picture and video purposes), we discovered that the other Antican was indeed Centurio XII-I, a level 57ish NM. With Kamiku soon to be arriving there (Thanks Almeth for the correction, my memory sucks) with his 58ish Dragoon, we decided to give it a shot and try at putting him down...he has a 21 hour respawn time, so the opportunity was not likely to come up again any time soon. Since all of the rest of us were in the mid 40's, there really wasn't much we could do except for poke at it with our weapons and such, and let Kamiku handle the tanking aspect of the fight, since the rest of us really wouldn't have lasted too long with his full attention. Things were going OK when a freak Eagle Eye Shot caught Kamiku for like a bajillion damage, and down he went.

Without Kamiku, the rest of us were in some pretty deep shit. There's no way we could have really done too much to him on our own, so I quickly raised Kamiku so he could get back into the fray and take hate off of Reflaa and the rest of us "squishier" people. After a quick Cure III to get him in some slightly better shape (although he was still weakened from eating a death), we got back to into the fight. Unfortunately, Centurio hit just a little too hard for us, and I ended up eating it, with Kamiku follwing not too long after. Down to just three of them, Amedelie, Almeth, and Reflaa busted ass and started running for their lives the rest of the way across the desert towards the zone into Quicksand Caves.

Me, in the pose I'm best known for...lying dead while someone straddles my corpse. Reflaa is so disturbed he has to look away.

Kamiku home pointed, and changed jobs to his 75 Thief to get some payback, and made his way back out. I home pointed myself, Teleport-Altepa'd back out there, grabbed a chocobo, and started running as fast as I could to find my peeps and try and help. We were both a little too late unfortunately; Amedelie and Almeth managed to make it to the zone line, but Reflaa got caught up, and got slaughtered mere feet from safety. Kamiku was on the scene by that point, so he got to kicking Centurio's ass while I ventured out to find Reflaa so I could Raise him and get him back into the game. With Reflaa back in the land of the living, he ran across the zone to rest up while his death sickness wore off, and Kamiku put Centurio down. We farted around killing some easy preys near the zone line while Reflaa rested back to full and Kamiku ran off to change back into Dragoon, and once we regrouped, we headed inside Quicksand Caves to give some Beetles a try.

The Beetle's were definitely doable, but the fight was a little too long and hard for our taste, and while the experience was good, we figured we'd make better use of our time fighting something a little easier. Consulting Campsitarus yet again, we decided on heading over to Western Altepa Desert, right next door, to work on some slightly easier Beetles, so we packed up our shit and got to moving...

Great shot of our posse while I was in first-person mode...we're such bad mother fuckers :)

Things progressed a little better once we made the move to Western Altepa Desert and claimed our camp up against the base of the huge mesa in the center of the zone. Unfortunately, we still had some slight problems with links, and I ended up biting it at one point after a last ditch sacrificial Benediction, but luckily the rest of the party survived that time. A little while later, Almeth had another link, and while he Flee'd and started trying to outrun them, it was no use, and the mobs chased him down and dropped him. We all ran out of our little hiding spot to help, but it was just too late. The guys started working on the Beetles while I Raised Almeth and got him back on his feet, he ran a safe distance away, and we finished them off. With a collective sigh of relief, we ran back up to our camp before some other asshole party tried to take it (ended up having a party camp right next to us, the fucks), took a slight break to get us back to 100%. At this point of the evening, the Death scoreboard stood at Kamiku and I tied for first with 2 deaths, Reflaa and Almeth tied for second with 1 each, and Amedelie coming up the rear with none (lucky bastard). 6 deaths may seem like a lot to some people, but hey, this is Bahamut's Dreadnought, and we don't do anything half ass. :)

Towards the end of our evening, our friendly neighborhood Dancer, Mikers, popped on to say hi, and even though we were planning on winding it down and getting to bed soon, Mikers agreed to come out and fight with us for a bit. I've spent enough time extolling how awesome Dancer is and how much I love the job and want to have like 10,000 of it's babies in the past, so let's just say that I was ecstatic to have a DNC along, even for a little while, as it gave me a break and allowed me to get back into casting Haste and meleeing with the rest of the crew. My club skill is way underlevelled (like 50 levels lower then the cap) so I looked forward to swinging my Blessed Hammer and getting a skill up or two. Of course, I don't think I actually got any skillups, but I did manage to at least connect a time or two, so that was nice.

Clockwise, from bottom: Xxnumbertwoxx, Kamiku, Reflaa, Almeth, Amedelie, Mikers (with Rover happily flying overhead, waiting for the fresh meat to arrive)

From that point on, thing's progressed well. About 20 minutes after Mikers arrived, Reflaa lost power, and Ame and Reflaa disconnected. We were all exhausted at that point, with some of us literally falling asleep at the keyboard, so we just called it an evening, and everyone went their seperate ways. As always, another very productive evening for Bahamut's Dreadnought; we laughed, we cried, we came, we saw, and we conquered...not necessarily in that order, mind you.

I can't wait to do it again :)