Leveling: LLS in Kuftal Tunnel (69-70)

On Sunday night, Itera actually managed to find a White Mage, Susperia, a Taru WHM67/BLM33, and the Low Level Static decided to head to Kuftal Tunnel to fight tigers and cockatrices. This may have been our last night with our current line-up. The Mid Level Static (which the Low Level Static passed a couple of months ago) has disbanded, and we're sort of doing a merge. Yobun is probably leaving and will level THF with pickup parties, and we're picking up Muirnin (currently THF67 but will catch up), and Wendell (WHM68 and also wants to catch up). I'm excited at the prospect of having a full static once again, and am hoping that we can actually manage to level twice a week, for three hour sessions. I also think it's cool to have a Taru Paladin and a Galka White Mage in the same party. :-)

Anyway, back to Sunday night. We had to wait for the rock to drop to get down to the camp site, and ended up with a tiger aggro issue, but took care of it and continued on our way down to the lower tunnels. There was another party in one of the camps, but the other one seemed fine. The way the tunnels are set up, we actually didn't even have to compete with the other party for pulls. Either that, or they left soon after we arrived, but we never saw them pulling anything we might have pulled.

It was a nice change from the over-crowded Bibiki Bay scene, but the tigers especially were a bit annoying with their seemingly constant AOE paralysis. I'd lose provokes to it, the THFs would lose their trick and sneak attack, and Elbo and Susperia were constantly casting paralyna. Their razor claw attacks would also do a lot of damage - often hitting Elboron as he ran to and fro playing his songs on the party. The cockatrices were a bit better, but Baleful Gaze got annoying, and Hammerbeak and Poison Pick could hit terribly hard. Some times things would go quite well, and we'd get our Chain #4s, but other times we had to rest for mp after Chain #2. Overall, it felt worse than usual exp-wise, but we were getting a lot of points per kill, and factoring in a couple of AFKs for our snacking WHM and a disconnect for Yobun, it was actually not bad. I ended up with 11k exp using my ring.

Grym, Kiki, Elbo, and Itera all hit 70, but Yobun's still a bit behind us. I can't believe we're 70. For the first time in ages, Kiki actually had multiple pieces of new gear at 70: Company Sword, Rosenbogen, Lord's Armet, Lord's Cuisses, and for my /heal macro, Lord's Sabatons (+3 mp regen while healing). I think I've picked up an extra 6 points in VIT with the new gear. At this point, Kiki's PLD AF is with the storage NPC, as I think the other gear she has is better for her. The Lord's gear has +VIT and +Enmity and minor amounts of MP->HP, but enough that most of the other races don't bother with any of it other than the boots for when they're resting for MP. I'm not fond of the Armet - I wore the IM Armet for nearly a year, and this is the same, just golden - but I don't need to have it on while not fighting. Kiki now has Protect IV as well as Warcry from /WAR and Fast Cast II from /RDM when she's not exp'ing.