Now where was I?

It's been so long since my last real post, I don't know where to begin. Hmmm. I know, a Dynamis update!

On July 5th, we had our third Dynamis-Tavnazia run. We were supposed to do one at the end of May, but had so few people sign up that we had to switch to another zone. Since then, we've had quite a few more people gain access, with our recent wins in the other CoP Dynamis zones.

We had more than 18 people wanting to go on the run, so we conducted a lottery to decided who would go. Since only a couple people bothered to show up for the lottery, I ended up doing the /randoms for nearly everyone. Then of course on Saturday night we had people upset that they weren't included, and others who hadn't even bothered to sign up upset that they couldn't go. We'd been telling them for a couple weeks to sign up, and had it posted on the boards as well, but I guess people just don't pay much attention.

We gathered together in at the Heiroglypics in the Tavnazian Safehold, with 1xBRD, 1xTHF, 1xNIN, 2xPLD, 2xWHM, 2xRDM, 3xBLM, and 6xDD (SAM SAM SAM RNG MNK DRG). We did our usual walkthrough, since this was the first time for at least 7 of the group. We headed in, made short work of the Bugard, ran up to the top floor and took out the Antlion, then back to the main floor where were got our sub jobs back from killing the worm.

At this point, we had a choice: try for the two ??? time extensions and then head for Diabolos, or just head for Diabolos. We opted to try for the time extensions first. We nearly wiped on the third? set of Fomors pulled, and it just wasn't going well at all. We changed our minds, and decided to head for Diabolos after everyone was unweakened.

All four of the Umbral Diaboli were clustered together right at the entrance to the hallway. We stood watching and waiting for our chance to get past them without them noticing. Allia went first, and made it through, with a few more following soon after. The 10 minute warning came up and we felt more urgency, but still waited for our chances to get through. Unbelievably, we all made it past the NPCs, so Goldfish pulled one, the Jeuno Christmas music started, and Diabolos Spade spawned.

The fight started out fairly well, but quickly became messy, with much death all around. When I was killed, Diabolos didn't have a lot of HP left, and I quickly reraised, and Serenity sent me a tell to get her up, since she still had manafont available. I did so, and started getting hit by Diabolos, but the spell completed, and she got up and started nuking Diabolos Spade. I was dead again without having been able to get reraise back up. Soon after, Diabolos was defeated. Hurray! We'd won! Now it was a race against time to get people up so they could get the flag.

Peti raised me, I popped Chivalry and had enough MP to raise Goldfish. I managed to get the flag, but the ??? despawns at the 30 second mark, and both Goldfish and Erock just missed it despite getting raised "in time". We ended up with nearly half the group missing the flag. But they got the title for killing Diabolos, and we gave them preference on the roster for the next run. It was a very exciting fight, and it was so nice to win it, no matter how poorly it seemed to go.

On our next Tavnazia run, just this past Saturday, we went straight for Diabolos right after the bugard, antlion, and worm, but unfortunately the group wasn't as stealthy as we needed to be, and we aggro'd too many of the NPCs. So we gave up on the clear and farmed the rest of the evening. The only drop was THF hands, but that was our first ever drop in Dynamis-Tavnazia besides a 100 piece once.

In other Dynamis news, we've been having a bit of trouble again with people not playing nice and using the Rusty Buckets calendar. A couple HNM shells moved to Lakshmi, merged, and call themselves Vicious now. They've got a huge superiority complex since they get so many HNM claims with their botters, so they think they don't have to work with other linkshells cooperatively. So, we've found ourselves switching zones at the last minute a lot, and on Wednesdays, that usually meant a CoP zone. This suits me fine, since I enjoy the CoP zones the most, but we do have a lot of people needing cities, and others who still haven't managed to get up to Chapter 4 in the CoP missions.

I'm still struggling with the PLD crew, since people quit, get deployed to Iraq, or just plain don't show up on a regular basis. We do have a lot of PLDs now, but I can't count on 3 of the PLD mains to be there any given run. We've also had a few runs where neither Goldfish nor Lucrezia have been able to attend. As our main pullers and strategists, we've become pretty dependant on them for the success of our runs, but we've been able to win without them, which has been good for our confidence. It was especially nice to win both Qufim and Beaucedine with our less experienced pull team.

I've completed my BST relic armor set (shown here on one of my mannequins) - getting the gloves in Xarcabard in July when lotting went to BST60+, and then the helm in Windurst early in August to complete the set, also at BST60+. With so many BST75s running around, I was surprised I was able to complete the set relatively quickly as a BST60. I doubt the CoP accessory for BST will ever drop to BST60+, but who knows, maybe I'll get that one day as well. The big question now is will I ever find the time to level it further and actually use the gear?

New Titles: Nightmare Awakener, Dynamis-Tavnazia Interloper, Confronter of Nightmares