Missions: The Secrets of Worship (CoP 4-3)

The Secrets of Worship, CoP Mission 4-3, can be rather long, so we decided to split it up over two Fridays.

The first Friday, we met up in the Tavnazian Safehold, ready to head to the level 50 capped Sacrarium (WHM/BLM, BRD/WHM, WAR/NIN, MNK/WAR, THF/WHM, and PLD/WAR). We killed a couple skeletons near the entrance of the maze part, but opted to sneak the rest of the way through the maze, fearing mass blood-aggro if we had to fight. We ran into two Tauruses that we had to fight, but managed to slip behind one other along the way.

Once you get out of the maze portion, there's a long corridor with several clusters of Fomor. Fortunately these clumps aren't parties, so it's easy to pull them one at a time. We needed to get two Coral Crest Keys from the Fomor, and we ended up killing about a dozen of them. We also got the subligars for WHM (Wendell), PLD (Itera wanted a Parade Cuirass), THF (Grym has wanted a Rapparee Harness forever, but always passed on the subligar on any hunts we went on), and DRK (Kiki will want the JSE when she gets DRK higher). Splinte would have liked a NIN one, but we didn't see any of them along the way, and Elboron might have liked getting the one from the Bard (he already has the BST/BRD Gaudy Harness, but not the BRD/RDM Cerise Doublet), but the Bard didn't drop his subligar. We also got a couple balloon cloths and shakudo ingots, which are used for Gobbiebag VI. These used to be worth a lot, but we were disappointed when we got to the AH and discovered they aren't worth much any more. I think my Gobbiebag VI items cost me 600,000 gil when I did the quest, but it looks like people can do it for 20k now.

After we were done with the Fomor, we headed to the two corridors with 6 skeletons each. These don't aggro and don't link with each other, but if you fight the NM Corse, Keremet, they will all come running to assist him. They were surprisingly easy for us to kill.

Keremet lives in a large room patrolled by scary Teratotaurs. I volunteered to pull, and had to wait a few moments for the Teratotaurs to have their backs turned. I ran to the back of the room and flashed Keremet and ran back to the hallway where everyone was waiting and we started in fighting. Keremet has an ability, Danse Macabre, which charms the party member with hate. Our plan was to sleep the charmed person to help reduce the damage to the rest of the party. I was the first to get charmed, and it was actually pretty funny, but I feel bad helping Keremet kill Splinte. After my charm wore off, Itera got charmed, then me again. We managed to kill him with no other deaths, and got the Sealion Crest Key we needed from him.

We spent the next half hour tearing around Lufaise Meadows killing Orcs and Gigas, and hopefully shed all of our Fomor hate.

The following Friday, we headed back to the Sacrarium. We had to fight one Stegotaur near the entrance, but were able to avoid all of the others when they turned their backs on us. We had a bit of trouble with aggro in the undead maze, and ended up very nearly getting killed by three mummies, but judicious use of Soul Voice, Perfect Dodge, Benediction and Invincible saw us through with no deaths. Diasuke decided to come along to help us as his WHM, and caught up to us after we'd safely made it through the maze.

Having no Fomor Hate made it easy to slip past all of them as we made our way to the area where we needed to get a cutscene. Diasuke wasn't sure about his hate level, so he kept himself snuck. The walkthroughs weren't very specific about how the two keys work for the door, and we ended up losing the first Coral Crest Key because I didn't hear a click and didn't know to use my Sealion Crest Key until it was too late. So we had to use our second key to get the first cutscene.

We started checking the ??? spots in the desks in the classrooms, and Old Professor Mariselle spawned in the second one we checked. People had been telling us that this fight is very annoying. I think they were too kind. It was incredibly annoying. We fought him right outside the classroom, and after a certain amount of damage, he'd warp away. I guess it helped that it gave the mages a bit of time to rest, but as a melee, it was a pain in the neck. Elboron tried to keep the pupils asleep and I tried to help keep his health up, and tossed an occassional Flash on one or another, but focused my attention on the Old Professor. The fight seemed to drag on forever, but we finally got him killed and got the key item we needed to complete the mission.

Since we'd used up our two Coral Crest Keys, we had to kill about 5 Fomor to get another one, then headed through to the Reliquarium for our final cutscene. We found a NIN Fomor to try for Splinte's subligar, but it didn't drop, and we all headed back to the Tavnazian Safehold for Mission 4-4, Slanderous Utterings, which is just a couple cutscenes. Next up is Promyvion Vhazl, which sounds like it could be pretty painful.

New Title: The Lost One