Missions: Vain (Windurst Mission 8-1)

We scheduled to fight the NM for Mission 8-1 this Saturday evening, so after completing Mission 7-2 last week, Elboron, Grymalkyn, and Kiki donated crystals to help the Windurst conquest, and the gate guard offered the mission Vain to them. We were sent to talk to Moreno-Toeno at the Aurastery, who wanted us to find another missing minister, Sedal-Godjal. To help us find him, we were given a magic doll, the Star Seeker, which was drawn to the power of a ring carried by Sedal-Godjal.

Every time we entered a new zone, the doll would jump in our hands and tell us to head in a specific direction. This led us to the Qu'Hau Spring in Ro'Maeve, where we didn't find Sedal-Godjal, but saw a very mysterious figure. Since this was our first time really in Ro'Maeve, we took the opportunity to run into the Hall of the Gods and take a look around.

On Saturday night, we had a huge group, with 5 helpers, and 11 of us on the mission.

helpers:
Trow RDM75/DRK37
Daden WAR75/NIN37
Yobun PLD73/WAR36
Erock WAR72/NIN36
Vynala PLD65/WAR32

mission participants:
Charcole MNK73/WAR36
Midget THF72/NIN36
Izan DRG72/WAR36
Diasuke SMN72/WHM36
Tsakiki PLD67/WAR33
Grymalkyn THF66/NIN33
Elboron BRD66/WHM33
Akuma BLM65/WHM32
Wendell WHM65/BLM32
Ryrra MNK65/WAR32
Muirnin THF64/NIN32

With this many people, we just fought our way through Monastic Cavern and back into the center part of Davoi. We cleaned up all of the Orcs around the house, and got ready for our first go-round with the NM we would have to kill 6 times to get the eleven items we needed for the people on the mission. Yobun entered the house, and wasn't able to pull the orcs in the house individually, so the battle was on. We had 4 or 5 orcs all over us, with the NM, Dirtyhanded Gochakzuk hitting us all with Blizzaga III right at the start. It looked bad for a few moments, but we got everything under control and won the battle with no losses on our side. We then headed into the house to wait for the NM to return (15-30 minute respawn time).

The NM was on a different spawn cycle than his attendant Orcs, so we usually didn't have to take them all on at once after the first time. Yobun and Ryrra were having network troubles, disconnected, reconnected, disconnected again, and couldn't get back. They ended up having Wendell log in as them to get Ryrra's Cursed Wand and get them both sent to their homepoints with a Warp II. This meant we lost our main tank after the first fight, but we had plenty of tanks in the group, and managed well enough. The fights were all over quickly, so most of our time was spent waiting for the respawns, the Tarutaru doing dances to help speed things up. We did manage to stop the rain once, but didn't seem to coax Dirtyhanded Gochakzuk out quicker.

When we'd killed the NM 6 times and all of us had our Cursed Wands, our helpers and a few of the people on the mission headed off to their homes, leaving a smaller group of us to make our way over to Sedal-Godjal on the platform above the pond in the first section in Davoi. He took our wands and explained why he was in hiding. Next, we headed back to Windurst to report back to Moreno-Toeno and completed our mission.