bad dunes experienceFollow

I'm not intending this to become a whine thread for bad dunes experiences, but... well, for the first time, I encountered a party experience so terrible I HAD to disband. (There was one other time, as I posted a month or so back, where I disbanded after the PT leader started spamming a JP who wouldn't join... but that was before we left Jeuno.)

What got the ball rolling

I got to the dunes via Konschtat zone. Level 10 samurai/warrior taru. Full gear, lots of food, lots of arrows. (I like to be prepared--though I didn't have my weapons for level 12+. T T) Sat LFP for a few minutes, then got an invite from a JP nin. JP started forming a party. Ended up with a level 9 (no sj), rank 1 WHM, and all the way up to a level 12 something or another. Four-level gap.. eh, it's the dunes. I was making suggestions, but the JP leader didn't follow all of them (I had a level 11 galka standing right next to me, and instead he invited a red mage who was in Ronfaure.)

That was slightly weird... but I could handle it. So, we got together.. except the red mage, who was running as fast as his legs could carry him. We take a lizzy... white mage runs out of magic, but we make the kill. Two of our party are poisoned. The warrior's got 40 hp, and the other guy had, like, 120. White mage heals... warrior ticks down towards death.. everyone's just standing there. (The white mage in me is screaming, HEAL! HEAL DAMN YOU! POISONA!)

The white mage gets up to 60mp. The warrior is down to 4hp. I yell at the mage over party chat. The white mage gets up and casts Cure. The warrior falls over dead mid-spell. I yell, in a much less mean, and slightly more instructive tone, at the white mage. He didn't need to rest ALL of his mp, and instead let his tank die.

But, he's a newbie, so I can forgive him. This is the dunes, after all. I shouted for a raise... and the next party over had two PLers, so...

Dunes as normal, until...

Then... wtf. No more than 30 seconds after I shouted for a raise, the sand-eating warrior got kicked out of the party. No explanation. I asked for one... but, with a JP leader, it's a little hard to communicate--and I can forgive that. So we're sitting around... the red mage finally gets there. There's another pull, and we barely survive... even with the whm dumping his whole MP pool again in the middle of the fight. (And then flailing about on /p.)

The dead warrior, who's still eating sand, sends me a tell, asking me where his raise is. I shout again. Nothing... the party pulls another, after the mage heals to full MP... an easier one. WHM still runs out of mp, but we take it anyway. Corpse still lying on ground. I start to wonder what the hell is going on.

So finally, I /say SOMEONE PLEASE RAISE (WARRIOR). THE SAND IS GETTING INTO HIS BRAIN.

One of the PLers at the other party then replies something to the effect of, maybe you should shout so someone other than (us two) could hear it. I replied with, well, can't you do it? The pld56 comes over and says, well, I was told not to.

............... okay, my whm code of ethics right then took a tire iron and murdered three kittens, when I heard that. /say WHO THE HELL told you not to raise him?!

Something was definitely going on behind the scenes...

Apparently, the white mage in my party told the PLers not to raise the warrior because he was being a jerk. I told the paladin to do exactly that. And then thanked him, because I appreciate a raise. Then I asked the party if they'd reinvite the warrior because we only had five. Instead, someone else got invited.

Whatever... I started thinking... this really doesn't feel good at all. The party of five got jumped by a gob and ran like hell for zone. I didn't take aggro, and so I stayed behind. When the party safely zoned into Konschtat, I said: {I'm sorry.} {I'm not up to it.} {Disbanding party.}

I waited a moment, then disbanded. The red mage sent me a tell, saying, "I don't blame you." I told him that he missed the really good parts, and filled him in on the abandonded corpse thing... I then started my own party, got a sam LFP.. then invited the red mage who left, got the warrior, got another sam, a THIRD sam, and a whm. One of the samurai brought along a PLer friend who hung out with us for a while. We totally rocked out, at that point. It took a short bit to get the group in motion, but we got a good head of steam and partied hard. The white mage needed to learn how to do her job, being a rank 1 with no sj, but she was much nicer than the first, and did quite well. Our PLer left, and it slowed down the momentum a lot, but we still did well. I ate sand, but I didn't mind, because I stuck up for this party.

Closing comments

That was the worst experience I've had in the dunes, and this is my fifth job going through. I've never had to leave a party before. I... really felt uncomfortable, because everything was so odd. The JP leader didn't say anything at all, but that's understandable with their hesitation to speak English lest they get it wrong and embarrass themselves.

edit: minor fixes; need to proofreeeed first

Edited, Fri Jul 8 04:36:52 2005 by elixwhitetail

I thought I'd balance my karma by following this up with last night's dunes run. I took Thursday off from the game, so no change.

Last night, got online, started forming a party. Invited a JP nin... and then a JP whm (had invited a NA whm, but apparently they went afk or fell asleep while still LFP), and then a second JP nin. So, we were nin nin sam (me) whm blm smn, 11-12. Everyone used the AT as much as possible, but I had to use my limited Japanese to communicate some things to the JP half of the party.

And then we rocked hard. Both ninjas were level 12, so we had dual utsusemi tank action. All the melees had war subbed, so we had plenty of provokes if a mage drew hate. Also, the best part... everyone was rank 3 and up--one of the nins was rank 10. No fooling around, here.

We had four different ways to achieve a Distortion chain, and used each one of them (and the blm and whm MBed) over the course of the night. Moved from lizzies to clippers and continued to rock hard. No casualties in about 3.5 hours, though we did have a few close calls. Had a gobbie aggro on me while trying to pull, pulled him back to camp.. our wonderful whm kept the party alive through two bomb tosses without using Benediction, the blm used mana font, and the gobbie dropped right when I hit Meikyo Shisui and hit him with the first Tachi: Enpi. Two of the party levelled up (the whm was one).. still had 207% TP.. so I went and pulled a clipper! w

And we killed it. All in all we were pulling between 4k and 5k exp per hour, in the dunes... I was tremendously happy that it worked so well. All things have to end, and the party disbanded when everyone had to leave. (The red bull was starting to wear off, for me... and it was laaaaaaaaaate.) But it was exciting.

In case they're reading, Lint (galka blm), Alitas (mithra smn), Norikun (taru nin), Riddo (taru nin), and Aquarium (taru whm), thank you. ありがとう。

You wanna here a really bad dunes experience?
i went in there as a 14whm/blm. i ptied for almost an hour an a half. i left dunes as a lvl 14whm/blm, after i finally hit 15, and then died, delvled, and never got my lvl back ;;. long story short, the nin apparently thought to be a whm ment to tank -.-. needless to say, i got 3 raise III's in a row, out of sheer pity. I havent takin my whm back to the dunes in 3 days.