Melee Royalty

My work generally follows a certain pattern: about every hour, we have a rush of calls as people are arriving to work or a meeting and things aren’t working. After about 15-20 minutes, the calls die off and you get the odd call here or there for the remainder of the hour. Certain types of calls also happen during certain times of day. I get most of my LAN password reset and printer issues early in the day, while many of the SAP and report processing calls happen later. So I will typically take in a large rush of calls, followed by long periods of little to do. Luckily for me, I’ve discovered Google Books, and have been reading The Adventures of Oliver Twist the past few days in between calls.

After work, I went to pick up Clara, only to be reminded once I arrived there that she was with DeAnn for a doctor’s appointment. -.- I knew that... Really I did… I got home no sooner than I would have normally, but at least DeAnn was home before me to tank the kiddos.

Before gathering in Xarcabard for Dynamis, I went to complete the next leg of my NPC’s limit break. It involved finding a shell by excavating in Korroloka Tunnel. I got it in two or three swings, and decided to break the rest of my pickaxes there as well. Nothing pricey, but I did get a turtle shell, which NPCs nicely.

While we were gathering together, my party was talking about pregnancy. Two members in my party were expecting, Azmodius and Shadokaryuudo, and Shado is having a hard time with it. I feel for him – I remember when DeAnn was carrying Clara all too well. It was like some strange alien being had taken over my wife, turned her into a raving maniac, drained her of all life energy and instilled in her an insatiable craving for ice cubes. I joked around with him a bit. “It’s too late to save her. But you still have time. Run, and you might get a head start.” Poor guy.

We had our first wipe in Dynamis – Xarcabard pretty soon after starting. It’s pretty easy to catch aggro from half the zone and train it right into your alliance. Which is exactly what happened. We got to the first set of steps and a full-sized freight train of demons plowed the whole alliance. Considering what I had done Sunday evening, I can’t say anything, save that at least I waited until we were done and most people were out of the zone instead of the other way around. ;-P Dynamis ended with as epic a wipe as it started. We tried to pull only a few of the popped demons from an earlier sac pull. Instead, we pulled the entire ramp that popped from the sac. Made for a great screenshot.

As for drops that night, we were there for Shado’s Demoniac Fragment, which is needed to upgrade the Relic Katana, Kikoku, among the most powerful weapons in the game. We handily took down the Animated Kunai and got his fragment. We also got several relic armor drops, including the Melee Crown. That’s right: after nearly two years of trying without seeing one drop, one finally did. I’m now a proud member of 5/5 Melee Royalty – and I can finally scratch that off my wishlist.