Gradi, day 23 of Winter, 553.

Today at noon, 28 exiles gathered to attack the Pitch Caves. We traveled quickly, and were camped outside the Pitch Cave within 70 minutes of leaving the meadow.

The first Pitch cave seemed about the same as always: overcrowded from the first moment. The Runner and Zu teams entered and blocked off the Southern arms of the cave after a couple of attempts.

Instead of the usual hit and run fighter raids slowly diminishing into desperate chain rescues, however, we tried a new strategy. Tuzar Bloodblade ran in and gathered all the Noids in the North half of Cave 1, and then deliberately ran into Cave 2. The idea was that webber Noids would follow him over and get trapped there (since the snell seal leading east again would be unbroken), leaving Cave 1 with only easier-to-handle non-webber noids to clear.

Amazingly, it worked perfectly, and we were then able to control Cave 1 very quickly.

With the healer rod in place in Cave 1, when we began luring webbers from Cave 2, alternating with fighter runs to clear non webbers. It took some time, but we steadily killed the Arachnoids in Cave 2 until we were all able to enter safely and advance.

Same strategy worked in Cave 3, and we started on Cave 4 as well, with steadily rising expectations.

It was also an impressive sight to see Pitch Noids we met along the way dropping quickly. What worked well today was having very strong Bloodbladers attack the stronger Arachnoids, and particularly the Pitch Arachnoids.

The one advantage to having Bloodbladers is that when they fall (and they always do), the healers have so much less work to do to get them effective in the battle again! ;-)

J'jh recovering a 186c Crimson mandible was a sight to see!

In Cave 4 we were doing quite well advancing toward the bridge, when a Pitch Arachnoid backspawn (at least 3) occured right in our midst. After some hurried fighting and falling, a rush to Cave 5 was called, but the bridge was blocked by crossing Malachites and Olives we hadn't gotten to yet. So a retreat East was ordered. Many exiles made it over, with many more on chains, and the healing began.

However, at least two Pitch Arachnoids followed us over to Cave 3 after a time, and instantly killed a good many exiles who tried to fight first one then two of them. They then hunted down the few survivors. End of hunt.

A couple more minutes without that backspawn, or Crimsons instead of Pitches, and we would have been snug inside Cave 5, with Mystics to scan it finally. I did manage to scan one wall of Caves 2 and 3 and quite a lot of Cave 4 for hard paths, with none seen, and others were supposed to be looking at the other wall. In addition, Lundar was scanning along for illusions, so that much was a success as well.

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