Leveling: Another Evening in Altepa (34-35)

The static party headed back to East Altepa Desert last night, 4 of us at 34, and one at 32. We picked up a DRK34/WAR17, and it was really great having a trick buddy. It wasn't so great when provokes were a bit late and we'd miss the SAnTA, or when the SMN's avatars came out too early and we missed the SAnTA, but we only had one miserable failure when Manon the RNG died. I think she pulled *and* provoked, and I couldn't get the dhalmel off of her and we couldn't cure her fast enough and a double attack got her. She was also too far away to be able to use cover in that situation. It was very sad.

We started out fighting just beetles until 2 or 3 of us hit 35. Even though we'd fought a few dhalmels at 34 last time, they really were hard on the party. We discovered that Fragmentation is a truly awesome skillchain to use on Dhalmels (Shadow of Death -> Piercing Arrow). Aero and Thunder magic bursts added good damage as well.

When we'd land the SAnTA at the start, especially with Grym using Viper Bite, the battles when a lot faster and a lot smoother. It's so much easier for me to keep hate with 350 damage attributed to my wimpy little PLD!

We ended up with about 8500 exp (except Manon), over a 3 hour period, finishing the evening as a bunch of 35s and a 34 (Grym and Kiki are quite close to 36). We had to break a few times for Elementals, and people zoning Anticans and Scorpions, but the desert was pretty quiet last night, with no other parties exp'ing. There was one BST who at one point had their battle right on top of us, but they didn't seem angry at us or anything, so I don't know what that was all about. There was one party there that was leaving just as we arrrived. Their tank had to leave and before we'd formed our party, he had sent me a tell to see if I could replace him. Since they were then tankless, they disbanded. I don't really understand why there are so few tanks around. Do people just want to be damage dealers or mages? I'm always getting tells asking if I'm interested in tanking for a party, and I'm never LFG as a WAR or PLD.

Emith isn't going to be playing with us much longer, so I'm not sure what we will do when we lose our WHM. I'm tempted to post on Allakhazam to see if we can find someone who'd be happy with our schedule, but it's possible we'll just stop. We're not sure how much longer Manon will be playing FFXI anyway.

BST to 75! :-)