Luck Be A Lady Tonight
I think everyone who plays FFXI knows that sometimes, things go very well, and other times, things go very badly. Maybe it's the moon phase, some sort of karma, or the alignment of the planets, but for some reason, Lady Luck loves to toy with us in funny ways while we're playing FFXI.
Take last night for instance.
When the officers were a no-show for our Thursday events, I took matters into my own hands and asked some trusted friends if they'd be up for a low-man Limbus run. I know that in a lot of circles, low-man means 2-3 people, but when you're usually in a group of 12+ and only getting 1 or 2 Ancient Beastcoins for your efforts, a 6-man group with the potential to get more than 5 each is rather enticing. But whenever people are out to prove something or pull off something new, Lady Luck is always watching, right?
The first to hop on board were Erecia (BLU) and Santiago (WAR) and eventually Kisana (WHM) agreed to join us even though she hadn't done a Limbus run for months. Lehant was busy doing ACP final fight with some LS mates, but he wanted to come and I asked him to bring his BRD71 to help buff our melee party. I brought RNG of course, and reluctantly decided that subbing NIN was probably a good idea. After all, I've had a couple nasty run-ins with those birds on the second floor. Lady Luck knew about those birds too.
All we needed now was a NIN - preferable to a PLD tank due to its damage output. I think to myself, "Without a tank, we could be in some big trouble. Also with only 6 people it's important that we have as much damage as we can so we aren't wasting precious time!" I think Lady Luck heard what I was thinking.
Rushou logs on and picks up his shiny new Usukane Somen (congrats!) and we convince him that the best place to try it out is in our NE Apollyon run. Rushou agrees and we all sit in Jeuno waiting on my Cosmo-Cleanse to become available and for Lehant to bring his slow butt to us. By now the rest of the LS had collected in Jeuno also, but they knew that we'd been planning our 6-man run and they were going to do SE Apollyon. Both of our chips would complete a new Proto-Omega, so while the stakes weren't TOO high, we definitely had something invested in victory. I'm pretty sure Lady Luck caught wind of this too.
So after we're all together, we head out to sea and Jojoe's group kills the Euvhi for us. We break off from the group and after Ere gets to practice some of his BLU sleep spells saving Santi's ass from sharks, we get together in Apollyon and prepare for the run. Kisana's dual boxing her alt in Nyzul, so we give her a minute to get through a boss fight and when we're all ready we head in! You know, I think that feint hum we heard was Lady Luck singing to herself...
Rushou gave us a bit of a spook since he wasn't zoning in right away. "Well shit," we thought, "this will be a huge pain in the ass if we have to do this without Rushou!" And how thankful were we when he entered. Whew! Looks like we dodged a bullet on that one! Apparently Lady Luck had simply missed the mark and was reloading...
We killed a few mandies, and things were going pretty well. I managed to avoid links on most of the pulls, and we dropped the big white mandy who dropped our item chest. Next step was the Goobbue to unlock the portal - I pulled him with a Barrage which I didn't get the chance to use on the previous mob. About 450 damage later, we're fighting him at camp and what's this? Rushou red-dots. His character actually did an impressive job tanking while he had no control, with a frenzy of Somen-fueled katana strikes, but the moment he dropped off the Goobbue makes a bee-line for me. Lady Luck must have had a laugh or two at this point!
We managed to kill the Goobbue through some frantic kiting, the occasional sword weapon skill and some very excellent Silena and Paralyna from Kisa and Lehant. I got the other time chests we hadn't gotten yet, and asked everyone to gather around the refresh chest so we could go up the portal. But wait - the portal's not up? I had forgotten that the black mandy could also be the target for the portal. Unfortunately he and his posse were all having a little party, and we didn't have a clear shot at him. I pulled anyway and decided I'd just kite the remaining mandies until Ere and Santi hacked the big guy down. I avoided the rest of our group so I wouldn't be caught by a Dream Flower, running wide circles around the first floor. They killed the monster and didn't bother to actually TELL me - instead they simply questioned why I wasn't heading up the portal yet. So I thought I could take a sharper turn and head toward the portal so we wouldn't waste any time (we only had about 10 minutes left at this point). But no, Lady Luck had death in the cards for me - the mandies saw through my plan and cut me off before I could make it to the portal and we ended up wiping as a result. Ere had a fit about people running out of Soporific range and logged off Ventrilo, but we still kept going!
Just then COR dropped in the other group, so at least Lady Luck threw me a bone. I reraised, dropped to the other group, got my token and returned to our group. I ran into the 2nd floor with the idea that I'd just go pop the time chests, but I forgot that the chests on this floor were being guarded by my arch nemeses - the rocs! Those slashing-damage resisting bastards... piercing-weak monstrosities... but we had to face off with them in order to get any time extends. Lady Luck had been waiting for this!
We picked the 1st greater bird and took him down carefully. Killing Rocs without a proper tank was a very risky affair - poor Kisa was our first casualty but she got up and bravely continued to cure us all. Our damage was a combination of Ere and Santi smacking the roc around, Ere brilliantly stunning it with an impressive rate of success, and me very carefully shooting and waiting for the right moment to go all out and pin the bird down. We managed to kill it and it dropped the item chest! At least we had something more for our efforts now. Lehant, convinced that the smaller birds wouldn't aggro, bravely ran to the time chest and popped it. Of course the birds did aggro him, and due to his BRD71-ness everything in the freaking zone was resisting his lullabies and these two were no exception. Fortunately, they were kind and didn't chase after the rest of the group after they let him have it. At this point we only had something like 8 minutes left, so after Kisana unweakened I decided we'd just farm a couple birds and cut our losses since Rushou was still nowhere to be found. That went pretty well, so we decided to kill the Roc again, but no portal this time either. We did have access to another time chest, and so we kept on going. Third Roc - nothing... pop the time chest and keep going! And after having killed all FOUR Rocs, we finally got the portal to unlock with exactly 3 minutes remaining. Despite Lady Luck's best efforts, we managed to get through that second floor and moved on to the next.
Fortunately, all three time chests on floor three are accessible right off the bat, and since we were only one party, our targets for the item chest and the portal were clearly marked. We got the refresh chest, then I asked Lehant to pull the big magic pot which was guaranteed to drop our item chest. He did but took the link to the other side of the zone with him for some reason, but we made quick work of the pot and got our item chest. Pot #2 came back around and we dropped him pretty quickly too. Then we fought the doll and although he was a bit of a pain, we got the best of him too before long. We skipped the rest and ran straight for the portal. Lady Luck must have been impressed!
Floor four is where she really gave us a break. I ran through and got all three time chests, extending our time in the zone to 25 minutes. That sounds like a lot of time, but there's no time extend on the fifth and final floor, so I knew we had to move quickly. I asked everyone to run to the other side of the zone where the portal was because the big monkey happened to be there by himself, and he would drop our item chest. Everyone came over, including.... Rushou? Rushou had managed to reconnect and come upstairs! But when I pulled the monkey and didn't notice any Provokes, I had a sinking feeling and watched as Rushou dropped out of the party again. Lady Luck must have been having too much fun watching us to make it easy now.
We took the monkey down without too much trouble, which is fortunate because those things can be nasty. I ran to Hyperion, who is one of three gigas on the floor who might release the portal. He's magic immune, so obviously our primary target considering our melee group. Santi provoked it and was pretty much instantly Impact Roared into unconsciousness, so it was me and Ere who would have to take Hyperion down. Ere did a downright impressive job tanking this gigas. Every time I thought that he was done for, he managed to pull off a stun or cast Utsusemi JUST in the nick of time to keep the fight going. Whats even more impressive is that even though I was being mildly conservative, I wasn't by any stretch holding back on my damage since we didn't have time for that. Still, I only really stole hate a few times while we took this big guy down, and whenever I did, Ere must have been counting my shadows or something because whenever I needed to recast he was there with another Head Butt! I think Lady Luck was as impressed as I was, and when we killed Hyperion we thankfully unlocked the portal and didn't have to deal with the melee-immune or ranged-immune giants!
At this point we had about 12 minutes left, plenty of time to take out some silly Dhalmels. They were no trouble at all and we mowed through them pretty quickly. Thankfully they were all easy to pull too, instead of running all next to each other and linking like they often do. Rushou managed to reconnect and joined us for the last three mobs, lol. We were already having some fun times without him though - Ere stunned a Healing Breeze or two, I landed a 1250ish damage Sidewinder with a 1000 damage skillchain, and on the last one, I followed up Santi's Raging Rush with a SV Minuet'd 2200-ish Sidewinder + ??? Fragmentation (I blinked before the damage came up in the log... sadly) and dropped the Dhalmel from 47% to dead with a single strike, and it hadn't even used Berserk (as far as I could tell anyway). I could almost hear Lady Luck's applause as I snuck past the manticores and popped that precious final chest, clearing the zone and scoring our fourth chip for Proto-Omega in the process. We relished in our amazing feat and passed out our 46 coins among the five of us. Rushou didn't get any. :)
Since no one seemed to be on LS anymore (ungrateful bastards! We pull off an amazing victory and no one's even there to congratulate us!) we decided to head to Windurst Woods and have our own little party before we called it a night. Even if Lady Luck has a very unladylike way of running out, Luck was a Lady with us last night. :)
(LJ-Cut because this ended up being very long, but this is what Ere gets for insisting that I also blog about it even though he already beat me to it!)
Take last night for instance.
When the officers were a no-show for our Thursday events, I took matters into my own hands and asked some trusted friends if they'd be up for a low-man Limbus run. I know that in a lot of circles, low-man means 2-3 people, but when you're usually in a group of 12+ and only getting 1 or 2 Ancient Beastcoins for your efforts, a 6-man group with the potential to get more than 5 each is rather enticing. But whenever people are out to prove something or pull off something new, Lady Luck is always watching, right?
The first to hop on board were Erecia (BLU) and Santiago (WAR) and eventually Kisana (WHM) agreed to join us even though she hadn't done a Limbus run for months. Lehant was busy doing ACP final fight with some LS mates, but he wanted to come and I asked him to bring his BRD71 to help buff our melee party. I brought RNG of course, and reluctantly decided that subbing NIN was probably a good idea. After all, I've had a couple nasty run-ins with those birds on the second floor. Lady Luck knew about those birds too.
All we needed now was a NIN - preferable to a PLD tank due to its damage output. I think to myself, "Without a tank, we could be in some big trouble. Also with only 6 people it's important that we have as much damage as we can so we aren't wasting precious time!" I think Lady Luck heard what I was thinking.
Rushou logs on and picks up his shiny new Usukane Somen (congrats!) and we convince him that the best place to try it out is in our NE Apollyon run. Rushou agrees and we all sit in Jeuno waiting on my Cosmo-Cleanse to become available and for Lehant to bring his slow butt to us. By now the rest of the LS had collected in Jeuno also, but they knew that we'd been planning our 6-man run and they were going to do SE Apollyon. Both of our chips would complete a new Proto-Omega, so while the stakes weren't TOO high, we definitely had something invested in victory. I'm pretty sure Lady Luck caught wind of this too.
So after we're all together, we head out to sea and Jojoe's group kills the Euvhi for us. We break off from the group and after Ere gets to practice some of his BLU sleep spells saving Santi's ass from sharks, we get together in Apollyon and prepare for the run. Kisana's dual boxing her alt in Nyzul, so we give her a minute to get through a boss fight and when we're all ready we head in! You know, I think that feint hum we heard was Lady Luck singing to herself...
Rushou gave us a bit of a spook since he wasn't zoning in right away. "Well shit," we thought, "this will be a huge pain in the ass if we have to do this without Rushou!" And how thankful were we when he entered. Whew! Looks like we dodged a bullet on that one! Apparently Lady Luck had simply missed the mark and was reloading...
We killed a few mandies, and things were going pretty well. I managed to avoid links on most of the pulls, and we dropped the big white mandy who dropped our item chest. Next step was the Goobbue to unlock the portal - I pulled him with a Barrage which I didn't get the chance to use on the previous mob. About 450 damage later, we're fighting him at camp and what's this? Rushou red-dots. His character actually did an impressive job tanking while he had no control, with a frenzy of Somen-fueled katana strikes, but the moment he dropped off the Goobbue makes a bee-line for me. Lady Luck must have had a laugh or two at this point!
We managed to kill the Goobbue through some frantic kiting, the occasional sword weapon skill and some very excellent Silena and Paralyna from Kisa and Lehant. I got the other time chests we hadn't gotten yet, and asked everyone to gather around the refresh chest so we could go up the portal. But wait - the portal's not up? I had forgotten that the black mandy could also be the target for the portal. Unfortunately he and his posse were all having a little party, and we didn't have a clear shot at him. I pulled anyway and decided I'd just kite the remaining mandies until Ere and Santi hacked the big guy down. I avoided the rest of our group so I wouldn't be caught by a Dream Flower, running wide circles around the first floor. They killed the monster and didn't bother to actually TELL me - instead they simply questioned why I wasn't heading up the portal yet. So I thought I could take a sharper turn and head toward the portal so we wouldn't waste any time (we only had about 10 minutes left at this point). But no, Lady Luck had death in the cards for me - the mandies saw through my plan and cut me off before I could make it to the portal and we ended up wiping as a result. Ere had a fit about people running out of Soporific range and logged off Ventrilo, but we still kept going!
Just then COR dropped in the other group, so at least Lady Luck threw me a bone. I reraised, dropped to the other group, got my token and returned to our group. I ran into the 2nd floor with the idea that I'd just go pop the time chests, but I forgot that the chests on this floor were being guarded by my arch nemeses - the rocs! Those slashing-damage resisting bastards... piercing-weak monstrosities... but we had to face off with them in order to get any time extends. Lady Luck had been waiting for this!
We picked the 1st greater bird and took him down carefully. Killing Rocs without a proper tank was a very risky affair - poor Kisa was our first casualty but she got up and bravely continued to cure us all. Our damage was a combination of Ere and Santi smacking the roc around, Ere brilliantly stunning it with an impressive rate of success, and me very carefully shooting and waiting for the right moment to go all out and pin the bird down. We managed to kill it and it dropped the item chest! At least we had something more for our efforts now. Lehant, convinced that the smaller birds wouldn't aggro, bravely ran to the time chest and popped it. Of course the birds did aggro him, and due to his BRD71-ness everything in the freaking zone was resisting his lullabies and these two were no exception. Fortunately, they were kind and didn't chase after the rest of the group after they let him have it. At this point we only had something like 8 minutes left, so after Kisana unweakened I decided we'd just farm a couple birds and cut our losses since Rushou was still nowhere to be found. That went pretty well, so we decided to kill the Roc again, but no portal this time either. We did have access to another time chest, and so we kept on going. Third Roc - nothing... pop the time chest and keep going! And after having killed all FOUR Rocs, we finally got the portal to unlock with exactly 3 minutes remaining. Despite Lady Luck's best efforts, we managed to get through that second floor and moved on to the next.
Fortunately, all three time chests on floor three are accessible right off the bat, and since we were only one party, our targets for the item chest and the portal were clearly marked. We got the refresh chest, then I asked Lehant to pull the big magic pot which was guaranteed to drop our item chest. He did but took the link to the other side of the zone with him for some reason, but we made quick work of the pot and got our item chest. Pot #2 came back around and we dropped him pretty quickly too. Then we fought the doll and although he was a bit of a pain, we got the best of him too before long. We skipped the rest and ran straight for the portal. Lady Luck must have been impressed!
Floor four is where she really gave us a break. I ran through and got all three time chests, extending our time in the zone to 25 minutes. That sounds like a lot of time, but there's no time extend on the fifth and final floor, so I knew we had to move quickly. I asked everyone to run to the other side of the zone where the portal was because the big monkey happened to be there by himself, and he would drop our item chest. Everyone came over, including.... Rushou? Rushou had managed to reconnect and come upstairs! But when I pulled the monkey and didn't notice any Provokes, I had a sinking feeling and watched as Rushou dropped out of the party again. Lady Luck must have been having too much fun watching us to make it easy now.
We took the monkey down without too much trouble, which is fortunate because those things can be nasty. I ran to Hyperion, who is one of three gigas on the floor who might release the portal. He's magic immune, so obviously our primary target considering our melee group. Santi provoked it and was pretty much instantly Impact Roared into unconsciousness, so it was me and Ere who would have to take Hyperion down. Ere did a downright impressive job tanking this gigas. Every time I thought that he was done for, he managed to pull off a stun or cast Utsusemi JUST in the nick of time to keep the fight going. Whats even more impressive is that even though I was being mildly conservative, I wasn't by any stretch holding back on my damage since we didn't have time for that. Still, I only really stole hate a few times while we took this big guy down, and whenever I did, Ere must have been counting my shadows or something because whenever I needed to recast he was there with another Head Butt! I think Lady Luck was as impressed as I was, and when we killed Hyperion we thankfully unlocked the portal and didn't have to deal with the melee-immune or ranged-immune giants!
At this point we had about 12 minutes left, plenty of time to take out some silly Dhalmels. They were no trouble at all and we mowed through them pretty quickly. Thankfully they were all easy to pull too, instead of running all next to each other and linking like they often do. Rushou managed to reconnect and joined us for the last three mobs, lol. We were already having some fun times without him though - Ere stunned a Healing Breeze or two, I landed a 1250ish damage Sidewinder with a 1000 damage skillchain, and on the last one, I followed up Santi's Raging Rush with a SV Minuet'd 2200-ish Sidewinder + ??? Fragmentation (I blinked before the damage came up in the log... sadly) and dropped the Dhalmel from 47% to dead with a single strike, and it hadn't even used Berserk (as far as I could tell anyway). I could almost hear Lady Luck's applause as I snuck past the manticores and popped that precious final chest, clearing the zone and scoring our fourth chip for Proto-Omega in the process. We relished in our amazing feat and passed out our 46 coins among the five of us. Rushou didn't get any. :)
Since no one seemed to be on LS anymore (ungrateful bastards! We pull off an amazing victory and no one's even there to congratulate us!) we decided to head to Windurst Woods and have our own little party before we called it a night. Even if Lady Luck has a very unladylike way of running out, Luck was a Lady with us last night. :)
(LJ-Cut because this ended up being very long, but this is what Ere gets for insisting that I also blog about it even though he already beat me to it!)