More ZM5, NM hunting in Temple of Uggalepih/Level 66 Party, Wajaom Woodlands...

When Almeth and I logged on Saturday the plan was for us to level our NPC fellows some more. However, as soon as we were ready to get started, Twinblade let us know that they were about to start making their way out to get the Fire Fragment, so we dropped our plans to go join them and get that as well. This involved a long, and ultimately disastrous, trek through Ifrit's Cauldron...

My first time ever in here, and it's a scary place...


To make things even scarier, there are lava flows that flare up in certain spots...preventing us from moving forward until they calmed down.


Thank God for Tonko and Monomi...there's no way I would have been able to do this using my broken casted sneak and invis...

At the very end of our trip, just before the zone into Yuhtunga Jungle, Twinblade and the WHM that had come along aggro'd a bomb, and since Almeth and I were ahead, stuck behind a lava flow, there was nothing we could do but watch in horror as they died. Since they were the only two with Raise in our party, they elected to give up and Home Pointed. Down to just three of us (Almeth, me, and a 72 Dark Knight that also lived through the trip), we decided to give the NM's a shot anyway...and wouldn't you know it, we managed to put the NM's down without too much trouble. Almeth was good enough to get him and I a garnet, so not only did we get our Fire Fragment, but we got ourselves an Opo-opo Necklace as well. Since it's used in most of the melee based Maat fights to break the level 70 cap, this was very important for us to have, and will come in quite handy.

With that out of the way, Almeth and I decided to try and kill another NM in the Temple of Uggalepih: Habetrot. This was purely a money kill; he doesn't drop any gear or anything, but he does drop anywhere from 1-4 Twincoons, which sell for about 25k each on the Auction Hall. Since he is a popped NM, and you can attempt to spawn him every 15 minutes, it wasn't too big of a deal to go out there and try and beat him down. Unfortunately, you can also spawn a plain old Crawler as well, and from our experience it looks like that's the more likely outcome...

At any rate, we used the time between pops to kill the random Tonberries, Wespes, and Rumble Crawlers that roam the vicinity...

I'd almost feel sorry for the guys if they weren't such little bastards.


"Yeah, sucka, eat that!!!"


When Almeth stands behind me and get's hit...this is what I see.


Somehow we managed to link 3 bees...wouldn't be so bad if they didn't heal themselves all the goddamn time.


"You're not the NM! Go get Habetrot, damn you!!"

We'd exhausted our supply of pop items without ever managing to get the NM. We journeyed further into the Temple to look for another NM to kill, but alas, we didn't have the proper key to get through a door we needed to, so we pretty much gave up on it and warped back to town. Not a stellar finish for the day, but at least we got the Fire Fragment done.


I took Sunday off for family commitments, but I did log on and pop my Empress Band in anticipation of our exp party Monday night in Wajaom. We all got on at our normal time and made our way out...

Regulators, mount up!!


"Whoa, dude...you do not hit me there!"

Legend has it, Puks are a mixture of Dragons and Colibri...why they have insect-like wings I have no idea...

As we were working on our second Empress Band of the evening, the redoubtable GodzillaX showed up, asked us what we were up to, and decided to come along and join the fun. It'd been a while since we partied with him, and it was nice having him with us again. ^^

One second before Almeth got his face bit off...these things are nasty little fuckers!


GodzillaX showing us how it's done...


GodzillaX catches a Crosswind to the face; Almeth's taking a stroll...


We threw the odd Tiger into the mix, but their AOE Paralyze was really fucking annoying...


Gotta love Ninja; with Mijin Gakure, you never need to bring a warp scroll with you...

Seriously, just look at this things teeth...

That was the end of our evening. Amedelie and GodzillaX logged for the night, and I went back to San d'Oria to trigger Sandy Mission 6-1. Hopefully we can knock that out tomorrow, it'd be nice to start ranking up again :)

In the cutscene, I got to talk ot the King again, and I told him what I really think about all this...

Think he get's the point? ^^

Until next time...