NPC Buddies: Strengthening the Bonds

We've had our NPC buddies out several times in the past couple of weeks. Having the new tactics pearl is nice, as you can call them as soon as they've left you. We've had them out in Toraimarai Canal (bats, crabs, and makara), Crawlers Nest (flies, crawlers, exorays), Castle Zvahl Baileys and Xarcarbard (demons). Not only has it been good exp for the buddies, who are now level 47, but we also picked up about 2K exp.

One reason for taking them to Castle Zvahl Baileys was to get chest keys from the demons, so we can later go back and look for chests for the Bastok quest that needs you to get song fragments from CZB, Sea Serpent Grotto, and the Labyrinth of Onzozo. We ended up getting 4 keys with 20 kills, so that certainly wasn't a hard key to get. We headed back another night with Elboron and Siegward, and got a key for Elbo as well. The chests in Castle Zvahl can be either in Baileys or the Keep, so it will be interesting to run around and search for them. I'm not sure how to get to all of the spawn points.

Grym and Kiki also completed the Blighted Gloom quest. The NPC quests really have an interesting story line, and I'm curious to see how the NPC buddies will evolve with next year's expansion to the game.

We also did the Promy quest again to get another Tactic Pearl after using up the last one. This time we went with Kiki as WAR/MNK and Grym as WHM/BLM. We switched Balu-Falu to attacker and Wagwei to shield, and fought empty for about half an hour. It went pretty well, and they got their full 1500 exp for the quest.

Grym and Kiki were both asked for a 4th weapon upgrade, and Kiki switched Balu-Falu back to great axe (Voulge), mostly because it was 38K, rather than the higher damager-per-second great katana that Grym got for Wagwei for 100K.