Limbus to the Danger Zone
Normal Thursday event schedule in AXI is sea farming in the evening until Limbus time. For whatever reason, no officers were on during sea farming and so nothing there got done. When it came close to Limbus time, no officers were STILL on, so Limbus wasn’t looking all that good either. Shadida decided to put together a low-man Apollyon farming group consisting of himself on RNG, me on BLU, Rushou on NIN, Kisana on WHM, Santiago on WAR, and Lehant on BRD. Eventually officers got on and Limbus got officially organized, but Shad’s group split off to do our own zone while the rest of the LS did another zone. Our target was Apollyon NE, which is a fairly good zone to lowman with a melee group for ancient coins, and also gets another chip we need for an Omega.
Lehant took for-farking-EVER to get to town, and then had the wrong sub, and then went shopping or something. Geebus. I’m just saying this because it was pretty annoying to wait so long, plus this is one of the few screenshots I actually took of this whole fiasco.
No comment.
On to the Limbus!
Floor 1
Enemies: mandies, goobbue
Portal trigger condition: kill either the white big mandy, the black big mandy, or the goobbue - it’s random which.
Things started out really easy. We’re pulling mandies and taking them down pretty quick. They were using mandy sleepga, which is ever-annoying, but no big deal. We mowed down all the white ones and were fighting the goobbue when Rush disconnected in mid-fight. Santi also got completely owned by some goobbue move. I probably would have too but was a bit low on MP, not anticipating a hard fight at this point, and so I couldn’t even pull hate if I wanted to. So Shad mostly kited it around. Eventually through a combination of Shad’s attacks, my low sword damages, and disseverment poison, we finished it off.
Still no portal up. Rush wasn’t back yet but we didn’t have any time to just stand around since you kill a bit slower in low-man. We had to kill the big black mandy but it was surrounded by 5 other mandies. Shad kited all the little ones around and eventually Santi voked the big one off. We slaughtered it, though of course Santi died again. Shad thought he was far enough ahead of the mandies to make it to the portal but wasn’t and died, and they all ran at our group. I tried to Soporific them amd was yelling for everyone to stop but everyone else in the party FLIPPED THE FUCK OUT and ran away anyway, and the mobs ran out of Soporific’s range of like 4 inches. So we all died there.
Floor 2
Enemies: little birds, big birds
Portal trigger condition: kill one of the four big birds - it’s random which.
I was not having an amazingly fun day up to this point, with things constantly going awry both in game and out. So at this point I log off vent in an emo huff, feeling very frustrated over the deaths that I believed should not have happened. The others in the group were still on there, coordinating stuff and probably talking crap about me being emo, so I was a bit out of the loop as to what was actually happening as far as planning was going. What became apparent is that Rush, our NIN, was having some serious connection issues that were taking a real long time to get back on, and everyone else was getting more and more pissed about it.
Eventually someone decided that standing around waiting for Rush to get back on wasn’t really the answer and so they pulled the big birds that we need to kill for the portal pop. These put up a fairly serious fight that ate up a lot of time. At one point Lehant the BRD just died for no discernable reason, and at another we had to fight two small birds someone had aggroed. Again I was trying to sleep stuff, again people were running like loonies, again it wasn’t doing any good. I was also trying to solo skillchain darkness (which seemed like a good plan on light-based mobs in a zone with double darkness weather) but, despite only having three melees, this proved aggravatingly impossible to get off without people interrupting it. So I started complaining in party about these things. Everyone else was probably getting tired of my so-called attitude, but I have a heart guys - damage dealing, tanking, AND sleeping on BLU with no refresh! That’s a nightmare situation! I think Kisa got killed somewhere in the middle of this mess. Probably Santi too. I dunno. I was kind of in a murderous haze. It was a pretty bad scene all around.
It took killing all four birds to spawn the portal up. We had two minutes left when this happened. This is the point where you say “well, it was a good run guys” but, well, it wasn’t. At least so far.
Floor 3
Enemies: pots, dolls
Portal trigger condition: kill the doll
This floor scales with difficulty based on how big your group is. We only had one party, so there was only one doll, so our low-man strategy finally worked for us. After getting a few time chests we gathered in a magic-aggro free area. The doll was surrounded by two pots. I was expecting them to pull the doll needed for the portal, but apparently the mood on vent was very grim at this point and they were just trying to kill pots in hope that the chest would spawn before we were booted. I was asked to sleep a pot while we killed the other one, but Lehant RAN THE HECK AWAY for no reason. I didn’t even bother chasing after him. We killed the first pot right around when Lehant died and the second pot returned to us. They both went down fairly quick.
At some point everyone must have decided we had a chance after all, so we pulled the doll. It had huge physical defense and put up more of a fight yet we surprisingly took it down with minimal hassle except with wasted time. We zoned up with about ten minutes left.
Floor 4
Enemies: monkeys, gigases
Portal trigger condition: kill a gigas - it’s random which
FINALLY Rush reconnects! We got our tank back! We got a few more time chests and were only two floors from winning, so there was that small spark of hope that we might pull this off. We worked our way around the enemies and pulled a monkey that was blocking the way to get to the gigases. Then we pulled Hyperion, the easiest gigas since its immunity is to magical damage (the other two are weak to either melee damage or ranged damage, neither of which we were looking forward to having to deal with.)
At this point two things happened very quickly. First, Rush disconnected AGAIN, having been in the party like 2 minutes. Second, Hyperion took down Santi extremely fast with some sort of crazy move that essentially one-shotted him.
So fragile a thing hope is, and so easily snuffed out!
And yet, at the bottom of the night, perhaps this will be remembered as my blue mage’s finest hour. Gigas that can one-shot a warrior with ease? Apparently no problem! lolSanti! Shad and I surgically took it down while I somehow managed to hold hate off him for most of the battle despite him doing ridiculously more damage than me. I was juggling shadows and stuns like I knew what I was doing or something. When it got low Shad basically just went all out while I kept up the stuns, and we managed to kill the darn thing with no additional deaths.
In what only can be explained by SE being impressed by our efforts, Hyperion was the gigas that opened up the portal!
Floor 5
Enemies: dhamals, manitcores
Final chest condition: none - it’s just waiting to be opened
At this point we could scarcely lose; all someone had to do was go open the chest. We spent our remaining 10 minutes-ish killing as many dhamals as we could, which turned out to be all of them in the end. Finally, the mood was overwhelmingly one of optimism. Lots of people got time to shine on this floor, like Santi finally tanking some mobs that didn’t just destroy him, me stunning some healing breezes, and Shad skillchaining with my CA Frenetic Rip do do a 1200+ Sidewinder with a 1000+ Reverb. I finally took a screenshot since the event quickly turned into something I’d actually want to remember later.
Once all the dhamals were dead, we wisely skipped the manticores and opened the chest with a stylish two minutes to spare.
Amazing come from behind victory! This chip finished off another Omega set, so that’s doubly cool. Everyone got 9 (NINE!) coins each, except for Kisa who randomed high and got the 10th, and Rush who we gave nothing but lawls to.
NONE OF THIS WOULD BE REMOTELY WORTH MENTIONING AT ALL, EXCEPT FOR THE FACT WE DIDN'T HAVE A TANK FOR THE ENTIRE FREAKIN' RUN. Come on, that's impressive! AXI usually does this zone with like 12 people. We cleared it with five. (I just noticed that a bunch of people changed their subs after the run. No, we didn't go in with a WAR/BLM and a NIN/DNC.)
I finally got over myself and got on vent and we all laughed about the crazy victory and shot off a couple hundred random fireworks. They essentially demanded I make the event into an Ereblog post (thus the strangely in-depth play-by-play that I’m sure none of the rest of you care about, but screw all ya’ll).
Behold the power of competent, knowledgeable players in a low-man, by-invite group that are willing to do what needs to be done to be victorious. Sure we had our fair share of mistakes and failures (I probably took more than my fair share with the whole emo thing), but all’s well that ends well. I believe strongly in results, and it’s hard to argue with that Smokey chip in the treasure pool.
I'm adding a lowman tag for stuff like this where we intentionally take less than a normal, safe number of people and still kick ass. I should probably skim through other entries and see if it applies there too.
Good times, man, good times.
Lehant took for-farking-EVER to get to town, and then had the wrong sub, and then went shopping or something. Geebus. I’m just saying this because it was pretty annoying to wait so long, plus this is one of the few screenshots I actually took of this whole fiasco.
No comment.
On to the Limbus!
Floor 1
Enemies: mandies, goobbue
Portal trigger condition: kill either the white big mandy, the black big mandy, or the goobbue - it’s random which.
Things started out really easy. We’re pulling mandies and taking them down pretty quick. They were using mandy sleepga, which is ever-annoying, but no big deal. We mowed down all the white ones and were fighting the goobbue when Rush disconnected in mid-fight. Santi also got completely owned by some goobbue move. I probably would have too but was a bit low on MP, not anticipating a hard fight at this point, and so I couldn’t even pull hate if I wanted to. So Shad mostly kited it around. Eventually through a combination of Shad’s attacks, my low sword damages, and disseverment poison, we finished it off.
Still no portal up. Rush wasn’t back yet but we didn’t have any time to just stand around since you kill a bit slower in low-man. We had to kill the big black mandy but it was surrounded by 5 other mandies. Shad kited all the little ones around and eventually Santi voked the big one off. We slaughtered it, though of course Santi died again. Shad thought he was far enough ahead of the mandies to make it to the portal but wasn’t and died, and they all ran at our group. I tried to Soporific them amd was yelling for everyone to stop but everyone else in the party FLIPPED THE FUCK OUT and ran away anyway, and the mobs ran out of Soporific’s range of like 4 inches. So we all died there.
Floor 2
Enemies: little birds, big birds
Portal trigger condition: kill one of the four big birds - it’s random which.
I was not having an amazingly fun day up to this point, with things constantly going awry both in game and out. So at this point I log off vent in an emo huff, feeling very frustrated over the deaths that I believed should not have happened. The others in the group were still on there, coordinating stuff and probably talking crap about me being emo, so I was a bit out of the loop as to what was actually happening as far as planning was going. What became apparent is that Rush, our NIN, was having some serious connection issues that were taking a real long time to get back on, and everyone else was getting more and more pissed about it.
Eventually someone decided that standing around waiting for Rush to get back on wasn’t really the answer and so they pulled the big birds that we need to kill for the portal pop. These put up a fairly serious fight that ate up a lot of time. At one point Lehant the BRD just died for no discernable reason, and at another we had to fight two small birds someone had aggroed. Again I was trying to sleep stuff, again people were running like loonies, again it wasn’t doing any good. I was also trying to solo skillchain darkness (which seemed like a good plan on light-based mobs in a zone with double darkness weather) but, despite only having three melees, this proved aggravatingly impossible to get off without people interrupting it. So I started complaining in party about these things. Everyone else was probably getting tired of my so-called attitude, but I have a heart guys - damage dealing, tanking, AND sleeping on BLU with no refresh! That’s a nightmare situation! I think Kisa got killed somewhere in the middle of this mess. Probably Santi too. I dunno. I was kind of in a murderous haze. It was a pretty bad scene all around.
It took killing all four birds to spawn the portal up. We had two minutes left when this happened. This is the point where you say “well, it was a good run guys” but, well, it wasn’t. At least so far.
Floor 3
Enemies: pots, dolls
Portal trigger condition: kill the doll
This floor scales with difficulty based on how big your group is. We only had one party, so there was only one doll, so our low-man strategy finally worked for us. After getting a few time chests we gathered in a magic-aggro free area. The doll was surrounded by two pots. I was expecting them to pull the doll needed for the portal, but apparently the mood on vent was very grim at this point and they were just trying to kill pots in hope that the chest would spawn before we were booted. I was asked to sleep a pot while we killed the other one, but Lehant RAN THE HECK AWAY for no reason. I didn’t even bother chasing after him. We killed the first pot right around when Lehant died and the second pot returned to us. They both went down fairly quick.
At some point everyone must have decided we had a chance after all, so we pulled the doll. It had huge physical defense and put up more of a fight yet we surprisingly took it down with minimal hassle except with wasted time. We zoned up with about ten minutes left.
Floor 4
Enemies: monkeys, gigases
Portal trigger condition: kill a gigas - it’s random which
FINALLY Rush reconnects! We got our tank back! We got a few more time chests and were only two floors from winning, so there was that small spark of hope that we might pull this off. We worked our way around the enemies and pulled a monkey that was blocking the way to get to the gigases. Then we pulled Hyperion, the easiest gigas since its immunity is to magical damage (the other two are weak to either melee damage or ranged damage, neither of which we were looking forward to having to deal with.)
At this point two things happened very quickly. First, Rush disconnected AGAIN, having been in the party like 2 minutes. Second, Hyperion took down Santi extremely fast with some sort of crazy move that essentially one-shotted him.
So fragile a thing hope is, and so easily snuffed out!
And yet, at the bottom of the night, perhaps this will be remembered as my blue mage’s finest hour. Gigas that can one-shot a warrior with ease? Apparently no problem! lolSanti! Shad and I surgically took it down while I somehow managed to hold hate off him for most of the battle despite him doing ridiculously more damage than me. I was juggling shadows and stuns like I knew what I was doing or something. When it got low Shad basically just went all out while I kept up the stuns, and we managed to kill the darn thing with no additional deaths.
In what only can be explained by SE being impressed by our efforts, Hyperion was the gigas that opened up the portal!
Floor 5
Enemies: dhamals, manitcores
Final chest condition: none - it’s just waiting to be opened
At this point we could scarcely lose; all someone had to do was go open the chest. We spent our remaining 10 minutes-ish killing as many dhamals as we could, which turned out to be all of them in the end. Finally, the mood was overwhelmingly one of optimism. Lots of people got time to shine on this floor, like Santi finally tanking some mobs that didn’t just destroy him, me stunning some healing breezes, and Shad skillchaining with my CA Frenetic Rip do do a 1200+ Sidewinder with a 1000+ Reverb. I finally took a screenshot since the event quickly turned into something I’d actually want to remember later.
Once all the dhamals were dead, we wisely skipped the manticores and opened the chest with a stylish two minutes to spare.
Amazing come from behind victory! This chip finished off another Omega set, so that’s doubly cool. Everyone got 9 (NINE!) coins each, except for Kisa who randomed high and got the 10th, and Rush who we gave nothing but lawls to.
NONE OF THIS WOULD BE REMOTELY WORTH MENTIONING AT ALL, EXCEPT FOR THE FACT WE DIDN'T HAVE A TANK FOR THE ENTIRE FREAKIN' RUN. Come on, that's impressive! AXI usually does this zone with like 12 people. We cleared it with five. (I just noticed that a bunch of people changed their subs after the run. No, we didn't go in with a WAR/BLM and a NIN/DNC.)
I finally got over myself and got on vent and we all laughed about the crazy victory and shot off a couple hundred random fireworks. They essentially demanded I make the event into an Ereblog post (thus the strangely in-depth play-by-play that I’m sure none of the rest of you care about, but screw all ya’ll).
Behold the power of competent, knowledgeable players in a low-man, by-invite group that are willing to do what needs to be done to be victorious. Sure we had our fair share of mistakes and failures (I probably took more than my fair share with the whole emo thing), but all’s well that ends well. I believe strongly in results, and it’s hard to argue with that Smokey chip in the treasure pool.
I'm adding a lowman tag for stuff like this where we intentionally take less than a normal, safe number of people and still kick ass. I should probably skim through other entries and see if it applies there too.
Good times, man, good times.