Poor, Poor, Poor

I wasn’t looking forward to tonight. The CoP Squad (plus help from Teila’s BLU) was due to be doing Tenzen’s Path in Pso’Xja and remembering how tedious it was when we did it last year for Teila made me want to give up right now. My instincts were correct.

Put it like this. It’s a +-shaped dungeon, where you go through sixteen identical rooms, each one containing monsters that have to be killed. Also in between each room is a trapped door, and if you don’t remove the trap carefully, a Gargoyle swoops down to attack. Sounds easy? Guess again.



The mobs in the rooms checked VT to IT, so took some time to kill, especially when there was more than one in each room. The fights were also long, and taking into account resting time and risks of repops and aggro through the walls, it was dangerous. There was also nowhere to Reraise if we died.

Before we went in, I made it clear to the party not to try to go back through any doors, as doing so Warps you out into the Glacier and you have to start all over again.

In the sixth room, I was given the nod to remove the trap on the door. I did so and it opened, but behind the door was a Cryptonberry and a Blubber Eyes (Hecteyes family) which immediately aggroed me when the door opened. I moved inside and we began to fight the Cryptonberry whilst BBK put the Blubber Eyes to sleep.

Seconds later we noticed it was awake and one of the group was fighting it solo. Blubber Eyes are powerful magic users so you can imagine the AoE that was coming from it. We sent after , caps message after caps message, but he wouldn’t disengage, so I can only assume he went AFK whilst on Auto-Attack. As a result we were overwhelmed and wiped. A complete waste of XP as it could have been avoided. In my annoyance I accidentally clicked on Reraise and stupidly stood up in front of the mobs. One more hit and I died again, having to bite a death plus a HP’s worth of XP. Anyone wanna know how long that took to solo?

Once we’d all HP’d, Teila disbanded as she had to go, and we returned to Pso’Xja. We agreed to take it slow, and I made sure everyone was ready before we proceeded through the doors. At the first door, Usagy suggested we kill the Gargoyle, then wait for the door to close before going through, to see if it respawned a second time. After killing it, Omnislasher ran through and we just managed to get him to come back before the door shut. The Gargoyle didn’t respawn but instead Usagy received the message “you fail to activate the trap”. Looking back, that was probably because he was a BLM, and doors and traps are based on INT.

Everything was going smoothly until we got to the room with a Magic Millstone (Magic Pot family). I managed to see it through the wall, so I gave the heads up and we agreed to pull the Gargoyle into the middle of the room to avoid magic aggro. When the Gargoyle popped, Omni ‘Voked it right by the door and cast Flash straight away so the Millstone linked in. Usagy managed to Sleep it, but not before being hit into the red.

We managed to get three rooms from the end, and the sh1t hit the fan. The last three rooms were quite easy (from what I remember when I did it with Teila before) so we were quite relieved it was almost over. I was given the OK to pop the Gargoyle, but luckily my Tools worked and we opened the door without a problem. We moved through, but Akashea was making drinks and got stuck in the room.



Seeing what was coming next, I quickly told the group not to panic, as there was a way round it. They could die and get Tractored through the door. Akashea also warned the party NOT to try to open the door from our side, but what happened? One guy clicked on the door. To our utter, utter disappointment, the next we knew he was standing outside in the Beaucedine Glacier. I lost my temper at that point as was rather rude, for which I apologise, but I couldn’t believe it. I was so bitterly disappointed that we had wasted so much time, XP and money, and now I will have to traverse that bloody dungeon for a fourth time next week.

What made it worse was that the Gargoyle at the door was repopped and wiped out everyone else except Doffo and me, meaning more XP was wasted. Another guy logged out, pretty mad, understandably, and BBK and I were fuming as our XP was soloed, something that takes us a long, long time.

Next week, we’ll be going back into Pso’Xja, but I need all heads screwed on TIGHT. The behaviour tonight was pre-Dunes, not something that should have happened to my LS.