Missions: Darkness Named (CoP 3-5)

For CoP Mission 3-5, Darkness Named, we needed to defeat Diabolos in a level 40 capped fight in the Shrouded Maw, accessed through Pso'Xja. In order to reach the Shrouded Maw, we first needed to get a Pso'Xja pass from the Tenshodo by trading a cyan, gray, or magenta chip which can only be obtained from some monsters in Pso'Xja.

Wendell had already done this mission many months ago,and so already had his pass. I had a cyan chip that had been in my moghouse since March 2005, when we had an LS farming event in Pso'Xja, so we just needed to get four chips. We did most of our farming in the Pso'Xja Tower where Nue spawns, spread out over 4 evenings. There are 2 diremites that are very much too weak and 1 decent challenge diremite assaulter that we could target on the floor below and pull up to our level, so the camping was a bit slow.

Between spawns, we would kill the lizards and snowballs for skillups. One of the snowballs exploded on us, and hit Elboron for 825 damage, so we decided that maybe we should leave them alone. I don't quite understand how something that's over 25 levels below our level can do that much damage in one shot.

One morning, Grym and Kiki switched into their mage jobs and went to investigate the trip to the Shrouded Maw. That Pso'Xja tower is capped at level 40, so we were WHM40/BLM20 and RDM40/BLM20. The tower is just steps away from the Fauragandi outpost, which makes it so much easier to get to than some of the other CoP mission locations. We headed into the tower and spotted a bunch of mindgazers, which aggro to sound, so we cast sneak. A little further in, there was a snowball, but that one snowball is the only one along the way, and just the first two areas have mindgazers, so it is an easy trip. We used the directions from this thread at GamerSquare to help us navigate through Pso'Xja.

We got to the Shrouded Maw and entered the BC, getting the cutscene for the fight. It was a bit odd to just go in and run around up on the balcony, looking down on Diabolos. It helped lessen our jitters when we actually did the mission as well. After we'd done all we could - pointing and laughing at Diabolos from our safe spot - we warped home.

On Friday evening, our static set out to Beaucidine Glacier, and met up at the Pso'Xja tower. For this fight, we went as:

Wendell WHM40/BLM20
Elboron BRD40/WHM20
Splinte NIN40/WAR20
Itera MNK40/WAR20
Grymalkyn THF40/RNG20
Tsakiki DRK40/WAR20

We were well-stocked with hi-potions, juices, and au laits, and made our way without any trouble to the Shrouded Maw. There was another group there to fight Diabolos as well, and they had a WHM75 (Peterbon) standing by for raises in the event of a full wipe. It was Darkday when we arrived, so we waited for the day to change, and headed in to face Diabolos.

Our plan was to have Wendell and Elboron go to the upper right hand corner (we could see which tiles would be dropping), while the melee would be at the center of the bottom. We were all set up with stun abilities, and hoped to stun Nightmare. I had leveled DRK to 40 to be able to use Stun on Diabolos (I always planned to level it through AF, just might not have done it yet if not for this).

We started out with Elbo using Soul Voice and using Fowl Aubade on us, and Wendell kept barsleepra up as well, but Diabolos was pretty nasty. We got hit with a total of 5 Nightmares, none of which we managed to stun. For the first couple, we woke up really fast, but with all of the damage we'd taken, Wendell used a Curaga II, then a Cure III on Elboron, and Diabolos got really pissed off. So Wendell was dead, but we kept on fighting. One by one we died, mostly because of Nightmare's deadly Bio. Itera was the last one standing, and with his Hundred Fists, we actually got Diabolos down pretty far, especially considering how early we'd lost Wendell. I was really disappointed about how badly I sucked at stunning Nightmare, since that's what I was supposed to be doing. My macro just wasn't quick enough - I'd hit it as soon as I saw the Nightmare message, but I was asleep before casting the spell. I also missed a couple of the Nightmares while trying to do other things.

We fell into a heap outside the BC, and Peterbon, on standby for his friends, started using Raise III on us all. It was very handy that he was there, as Wendell's computer decided to blow up on him at that moment, and while we waited for him to install a new videocard and get back to the game, we discussed our options. We were extremely low on hi-potions, as we'd used so many on the first run, and we didn't have Elboron's or Itera's two hours. We decided to tweak our strategy a bit, try the fight a second time when Wendell returned, and if we failed again, we'd head to town to resupply and fight again when Elbo and Itera's two-hours were back. While we were waiting for our second run, the other party came out of the fight dead, raised and rested and went back in, and came out dead a second time.

So we headed back in, buffed up, and jumped down to face Diabolos a second time. This time, we had Itera voke first, and Grym was able to get a nice SATA on to Splinte to give him extra hate at the start, as well as do a good chunk of damage. Splinte pulled Diabolos over one square further to help get it away from Wendell and Elboron and hopefully they wouldn't get hit by nightmare. I moved close enough to hit Diabolos with my greataxe and brought up my spell menu, selected stun, and had the blue arrow over Diabolos, ready to hit X as soon as I saw the Nightmare message. At that point, I did nothing but watch for that message. As soon as I saw it, I hit X, Stun went off, and I stunned the first Nightmare. The fight progressed incredibly smoothly. Diabolos only tried Nightmare one more time, and I was able to stun that one as well. When my stun wasn't back up, I did cast one Absorb-AGI, and got in a Sturmwind, but I really focused this time, and actually stunning Nightmare helped a lot. At the end of the fight, Diabolos was spamming his attack that drops everyone's stats, sort of like the opposite of Fenrir's Ecliptic Howl, so we were a bit weak at the end, but I got to deliver the killing blow with a second Sturmwind. The fight was so easy the second time, it was almost as though we were facing Diabolos' kid brother instead. Everyone did a terrific job, and we're ready for Ouryu in Mission 4-2 now.

We headed to Jeuno to get our cutscene to complete the mission, then it was off to Tavnazia to get the cutscenes for Mission 4-1 and start Mission 4-2. At this point in the CoP mission line, we have several nice perks: access to the Jeuno Auction House from the Safehold, a delivery guy in the Safehold, and the ability to complete supply quests and have Outpost Teleport access to Tavnazia. Since Windurst controlled Tavnazia this past week, Elboron, Grym, and Kiki all did a supply quest, which will certainly make it easy to get to Tavnazia, and reduce the number of trips we need to take to Jeuno.

New titles: Dreambreaker, Transient Dreamer