Trail by Wind

It's a nice break from the regular scheme of things. You know the drill. I go on about my xp adventures, how my parties rocked, or how my parties sucked (today was mostly of the latter), and end with a little whining about how expensive Goldsmithing is (for the record, I just spent 38k on 7 synths with a break and no skillups ; ;).

Today was pretty much the same except for one little thing, which if you read the title, is pretty obvious. Trail by Wind.

Garuda Prime.

I'll get around to that eventually though. I actually had a rather memorable party earlier on with my Red Mage, which I finally got around to leveling after Glue reached RNG20. Our original party was horrible, and things just weren't going right, and dissolved pretty quickly. That was when Glue and I made a new party with only four people- RDM RNG RNG BRD. ^^ It was good times. We hit Chain #5 on IT Land Worms for 260xp. What was funnier was that I got /tells from assorted melee players all wondering if I had space in the party.

Well, I _did_ have space, but we didn't really need the extra members...

Eventually, once I hit Level 21, and Worms were giving us a little less xp, we brought in two more members- a WAR, and a BLM. ^^ We still ended up killing Land Worms for the most part, although we'd bring in the occasional Clipper to maintain a chain. Too bad the BLM fell asleep at the keyboard and died when a Land Worm spawned right next to him. ; ; RDM22 so far. ^^

So, onto the Trail by Wind.

I was randomly idling around Lower Jeuno having just logged on, and debating whether I should go level or not. I then saw a /shout from a RDM70 named Toefu recruiting people for the Garuda Prime fight. People seemed to sign up quickly enough, and soon, we were off. RDM, BLM. BLM, PLD, DRG, and me. For the record, we were probably horribly underleveled. Our job levels were like RDM70, BLM66, BLM64, DRG55, PLD61, WHM62. I guess it was worth a shot. Besides, I wanted to do something a little different for a change. ^^

So we headed down to the Cloister of Gales, which until now, I hadn't the faintest idea where it was. Apparently, it's tucked away in the hidden areas of Cape Terrigan, right off the marked area, guarded by Greater Manticores aplenty. Fun stuff. The cloister itself, compared to the Cloister of Frost in Fei'Yin, is a lot more vibrant to look at, at least, in my opinion.



We come up with a preliminary strategy- Apoc (our PLD) tanks, obviously, while the mages spam Cure II and Regen + Haste to keep things flowing. All this, with an Ice Staff-powered Baraera, and we were good to go.

The fight started out well, Apoc got, and held hate as expected, and while he was taking damage rather quickly, it was certianly manageable with myself, Toefu (our RDM), and Krutoyhooligan and Tearl (our BLMs) alternating between nuking and healing. The first obstacle comes when Garuda used Aerial Blast. 800+ damage on all the melee killed off both Apoc, and the DRG55, Chalky who came to help.

So now it was an all-mage fiesta. WHM RDM BLM BLM. I have to admit, Toefu did an admirable job tanking Garuda Prime. Between Stoneskin, Refresh, Regen II and Haste, we could go on for a very, very long time. There were, however, some problems that soon brought itself to light. Like what to do with the second Aerial Blast.

Toefu died, and soon, it was a mad rush to the protocrystal to try and get out of the battlefield. I ended up dying, and then suggested that since we had gotten Garuda to a sliver of health (5% or so), I could activate Reraise II, Raise II the BLMs, then just nuke it to death. That sounded like a fine plan, until I scouted Garuda Prime back in her nest to see she was at full health. Oh well. ; ;



So we left the battlefield, and while I'm going through the long process of Raise II'ing everybody, we come across a high level party who was out to help Kayla with her SMN AF3 fight. They ask if we want to help out, and after some internal discussion, we agree only to find that we are locked out of the battlefield when we try to enter. >_<

So our perspective of the SMN AF3 fight is basically watching the alliance HP bars go up and down, and watching status remarks fly across the party chat. In the meantime, we're busy trying to figure out how to go about beating Garuda Prime the second time through. Eventually, it boiled down to grabbing someone from the SMN AF3 alliance, since Kruto had to leave, and then trying to take on Garuda that way. Eventually, Kayla, the SMN who was getting her AF3, ofers to help us, and after a minor mishap whereby she got a Warp II from a Japanese BLM who "had trouble reading English quickly" >_< we're off once again.

This time though, the plan was different. Toefu would be main tanking after Shiva took on Garuda. Everybody else would, well, just try doing their thing. Unfortunately, Apoc and Chalky still die first after (you guessed it) another Aerial Blast wiped out the two of them. Apac was a little bit too fixated into his PLD role, forgetting that it was the RDM that was supposed to tank, and Flash'ed Garuda Prime twice, both times meeting resists! First time I'd ever seen a resist on a Flash....

And so once again it was 4 mages versus Garuda. Once again, we almost beat her, except that Tearl nuked a bit too hard, and got aggro, during which he got hit, and ran over to rest. For some reason, Toefu's attempt at holding hate didn't work after that, and Garuda went halfway across the battlefield just to slap Tearl around a bit and ten seconds later, we have another party face down on the floor. Even worse, Reraise II wears off. ; ;

Things are getting dire, and barring major heroics or miracles, we weren't going to beat Garuda. It didn't really help that Toefu didn't seem to have the time to Refresh me, and as I write this, I'm very sure that if I had mp, we could've won. But you know the drill. Stoneskin wears off. Toefu gets hit. I Cure V, and all the mages are out of MP. That means Toefu cannot Convert, and is literally trapped. I try some heroics and Benediction (without Reraise up ; ;) and die soon thereafter. Toefu follows suit, and Kayla runs out of the battlefield so she can Raise (1 ; ;) me.

So I didn't get Garuda Prime, and sucked up 3100xp (or all today's work xp'ing) in the process. Ah well, at least it was fun, and in the end, isn't that what it's all about? (Still sucks tho...)