Friday, May 12, 2006

General: Thises and Thats

Evenings this week were going to be devoted to getting ready to face Ouryu again tonight (Friday). The LLS wasn't meeting on Monday, so Grym and Kiki started shuffling their gear around so the could go farming for Hippogryph Tailfeathers in Riverne Site A01 on Tuesday.

Yobun asked me if I wanted to "unlock" the runic portal for the Ilrusi Atoll Staging Point through Arrapago Reef. I ended up having time, so I joined him on the trek. First we got my "free" Lamia key to make it easier to get through one of the gates (without needing to kill Lamia for a key). Yobun took me through a different part of Caedarva Mire than I'd been in before, so I finally saw my first Lamia (outside of Beseiged anyway). The reef is very creepy and convoluted. I really would have a hard time finding my way back to the staging area, but Yobun got us there without incident. He and I played hide-and-seek with the Imps hovering in the tunnels just before the staging area, and fortunately they didn't notice us.

I haven't spent much time in Al Zahbi this week, but apparently the Beseiged events since the update have been much more exciting and ferocious. Deaths all around, NPCs taken prisoner, rescue parties organized.

Tuesday evening, Grym and Kiki headed out to Riverne Site #A01 as BSTs, and found that there were 5 Hippogryphs within easy access (one on the entrance island, one on the island to the south, and three before going to deep into the big island to the west). We charmed flytraps and vultures and had little trouble killing the Hippogryphs. By the time Elboron logged in to join us with his WHM, we already had 4 of the 13 feathers we needed. The farming went quickly. When we had killed the 5th hippogryph and headed back to the 1st, it was back already, ready and waiting. In less than two hours, we got our 13 feathers, and headed back to Windurst for the night. We have enough for 8 mistmelts again tonight, but this time Grym will get 6 and Kiki 2.

Since it didn't take all week to get the tailfeathers like I thought it might, for the next two evenings, Grym and Kiki headed to the Boyahda Tree to work off the latents on our trial weapons. In order to unlock a special weapon skill once you get to level 71 and have sufficient skill in a specific weapon, you start a weaponskill quest. For me, the weaponskill is for sword: Savage Blade, obtained from the quest Old Wounds, started with Curilla in San d'Oria. She presented me with a Sapara of Trials and told me to come back when I'd used it enough to prove my worth. This means getting rid of a latent effect on the weapon by obtaining 300 points through weaponskills and skillchains on monsters that are high enough to give you experience points, and then fighting a spawned monster. Grym's quest is for the dagger skill Evisceration (from the quest Cloak and Dagger).

We've had the weapons for several weeks (since we hit 71 and could pick up the quests), and have been using them while we've been out exploring and stuff, but hadn't made a concerted effort just to work on the weapons. The best we can do point-wise with the two of us is swift blade -> sharkbite for Fragmentation, a level two skillchain. For this, I get 2 points, and Grym gets 3. We opted for the Tree so we could kill Knight Crawlers and hopefully get the Lucky Eggs we both will need for our Opo-Opo Crowns (we don't really need Opo-Opo Crowns, but they'll be fun to have, and maybe even useful at times). Grym also had a coffer key, so hopefully she'd finally get her map for the place. We killed lots and lots of crawlers and crabs as well. I actually prefer the crabs, since Poison Breath from the crawlers isn't very pleasant.

Before we finished up the second evening, we both had our lucky eggs, and Grym had found a coffer, and removed the latent from her Dagger of Trials. Hurray! My Sapara has to be pretty close at this point. I'm really eager to get Savage Blade just to see how it looks, but I'm not sure it's that useful a weaponskill in general, so I'm not in a huge rush. It's such a pain to get the people together and drag them to the furthest reaches of Quicksand Caves for the fight.