Quests: An Undying Pledge

Yesterday Yobun was looking for someone to complete the Undying Pledge quest with him. Kiki had picked this up a long time ago, but had heard the NM Sea Monk you need to fight is quite difficult, so hadn't finished it either. You get the quest in Norg, from Stray Cloud. He tells you about a friend of his who had gone to explore Sea Serpent Grotto and never came back. You then run into his friend when you leave Norg, and he tells you about a Hume who saved him and that he had left the Hume to die. So here it is, months later, and Yobun and Kiki meet up in Sea Serpent Grotto. Yobun was PLD74/RDM37, and Kiki was PLD68/RDM34.

We killed the too weak Sahagins, bats and leeches around the ??? to build up TP for Spirits Within, then cast Blink, Stoneskin, and Phalanx on ourselves, and Yobun popped the NM, Gryryvilu. He was a cute little Sea Monk. :-) We both unloaded our 300%TP Spirits Within and realized that this wasn't going to be as bad a fight as other people had led us to believe.

Which was a good thing, as Yobun got disconnected, leaving Kiki alone with Gryryvilu. Fortunately, when it started spamming Cross Attack, it was hitting for only around 350 (one was even only 70), and Kiki had plenty of time to get some Cure IVs in between hits. Yobun was able to log back in before Kiki killed the NM, and I invited him back into the party. We defeated Gryryvilu, and got a cutscene and key item.

We headed back to Stray Cloud in Norg to give him the key item and tell him what had happened. It seems that so many quests in FFXI have quite sad stories behind them. We were rewarded with a Light Buckler, which has Shield Skill +5 on it, so I'll probably use that when I'm trying for shield skillups. I'd really love to get that capped before I'm level 75.