Assault sucks...but Zilart Missions are fun!

Thursday is our obligatory Assault day, so we all jumped on and got started pretty quick yesterday. We've been working on the mission Imperial Agent Rescue for a while now, and while we've actually managed to win a few, so far it's been damn ugly. The basic idea is that this dude locked up in one of three cells, and we need to pull mobs to attack us while we stand in front of the cell door. By hitting us (with certain abilities), the mobs will damage, and eventually break down, the door; hopefully the dude is in there, we rescue him, and go on our merry way. In practice, the mobs are a piece of shit and never do the abilities that will damage the door, and when we do manage to break the fucking thing down, the dude isn't even in that one...so we need to drag the mob to the next door and try again.

"You know, you're a real asshole, dude..."


Firespit, one of two ways that the Mamool Ja can actually damage the door. This is probably why they just can't stand doing it, and when they do, 75% of the time it misses the fucking door for no reason.


We try to focus on mobs that have an Axe or a Staff, because they will throw it at us and bring the door down in one hit. Sounds easy, right? Well, it would be if one fucking crit from us didn't break their goddamn weapon...


Yup...someone crits and there goes the ballgame. This is so fucking frustrating...

I ended up eating it at one point, and that was it...it's really a pain in the ass, actually. The problem is, Ame and Almeth can't do a lot of damage...they just need to feed the mob as much TP as possible so that it will do it's "Firespit" move. Since they're not doing very much damage, the slightest cure on my part pulls hate. I eventually get drilled, so I have to cure myself again, and the cycle repeats until I'm dead. I fucking love it...

At any rate, our success rate on this mission is pretty damn dismal; we win maybe 1 in 5 attempts...through no fault of our own, mind you, the mobs just fucking suck. That being said, we were a little burnt on this particular mission, so we decided to give another one a try: Leujaoam Cleansing. This particular mission is pretty straightforward...you've got 30 minutes to kill 15 worms. Piece of cake, right? Wrong...

Making our way to the worms...

"This isn't so bad! We may actually be able to do this!"

Fighting the worms one at a time was pretty damn easy. The problem is, after about 5 or so you come to a room with about 6 of them. Worms link pretty damn easy, have nasty -aga spells that can drop all our shadows in one shot, and silence us to boot. Upon entering the room, we linked one, and discovered that these worms can cast ancient magic...things were going ok until Almeth caught a Quake to the face for about 930 something damage, and he went down. Amedelie and I ran like little girls and used our fireflies to get the hell out of there. All in all, we had two deaths for the evening and not a single win...bummer.

Amedelie had to log after that, so Almeth and I discussed what we wanted to do for the rest of our evening. We kicked around a few ideas, and Almeth suggested we try and shout for help with Zilart Mission 4 in Whitegate. To be honest, I didn't expect to get any replies from people; FFXI has been out a while, and there aren't a whole lot of people out there who haven't already done these things. Because of that, I damn near shit my pants when we started getting tells mere minutes after our first shout. Within 20 minutes we had a full party, with great jobs to boot.

Everyone gathering together for a Teleport-Yhoat.

We didn't have a WHM to teleport us, so I was happy to change jobs for ease of transportation. This required me to run to Norg and change back into Dancer, but that was fine by me, plus one of our members needed to do the Tonberry Hate quest as well...that didn't end up happening (I still have no idea why it wouldn't give him the quest) but it didn't matter anyways. After some running around, we all got together and made our way.

ZM4 is a bit of a pain in the ass in that you need to light 4 lanterns to open the doorway to the BCNM that concludes the mission. Almeth and I had our unlit lanterns, so that wasn't too big of a deal, but there was a lot of running around involved in Den of Rancor, where the mobs are pretty pissed off, even to a 75. Although it was pretty scary shit, we managed to make it through unscathed and got where we needed to be. Entering the BCNM, we were confronted by three Tonberry NMs...

With a 6 man group, 4 of which were 72+, this was a pretty damn easy fight.

After completing the fight, there was a long cutscene, with this cult doing some shit. I dunno, I prolly should pay attention to this crap, rather than just mash the Enter key compulsively.

After that was finished, our helpers offered to start working on the next Zilart Mission: Headstone Pilgrimage. Not wanting to pass up such a good opportunity, we all readily agreed, and we were off. First stop was Sanctuary of Zi'tah...

The basic jist of this mission is you go to these headstones, click on them, and some of them have NMs which pop that you have to defeat. After the NM is done, you click on the headstone again and receive a fragment of some element. I didn't watch the cutscene, so I have no idea why we're doing this, but at any rate it's gotta be done.

"Wow, that's quite a tongue you've got there..."

We put that guy down in about 3 minutes, so it was onward to Behemoth's Dominion for our next headstone and fight...this one involving a couple of Weapon-type mobs. While en route, Almeth and I ran into an old friend and LS-member, GodzillaX. It'd been a while since we'd talked, so we caught up for a few minutes while waiting for other party members to arrive. He told us what he'd been up to, we did the same, and we all promised to get together sometime soon to level or something. All in all, it was very good seeing him again, so if you're reading this Godzilla, "You rock, son!!" ^^

At any rate, we made our way and did our fight. I didn't get any pics of the fight itself, but I did manage to snag a pic of the "Swirling Vortex of Death" along the way. I don't think it's actually called a "Swirling Vortex of Death", but that's the name I'm giving it, cause it's cool...

Almeth's got nuts big enough to click on this thing, but luckily it didn't spawn Satan or anything...

After completing the fight, it was way past our bedtimes, so we bid everyone farewell and headed home. A few peeps said they were interested in doing the rest of the headstones on Saturday, so Almeth and I are defintely going to try and participate in that.

All in all, we had a very productive evening...in closing, I'd just like to thank everyone who helped out: Zackthegreat, Twinblade, Whispers, and Muffinman. You guys all rock lots, and it was a blast running around with y'all! {/bow}{/salute}