Missions: Desires of Emptiness (CoP 5-2)

It took us over 4 weeks, but we finally got through Promyvion-Vahzl last night. First we had to do CoP Mission 5-1, Enduring Tulmult of War. This mostly consists of cutscenes, but there is an uncapped Golem fight at the stone gate in the Pso'Xja tower that you need to go through for Mission 5-2, Desires of Emptiness, in Promyvion-Vahzl. We decided that we'd fight it on our way to the Promyvion, which caused a bit of consternation because people didn't have room for their uncapped gear plus all of the level 50 gear needed for the level capped Promyvion.

I told people to not worry about the Golem though, since it didn't sound like it would be a challenge to a group of 71-75, but it was even easier than I imagined. We all built up our TP, and worked out a Monk->Warrior->Thief Dark skillchain. It was all for nought though, as the Golem was dead too fast. It has a pretty crazy regen, but it just wasn't up to the massive damage we inflicted in a short amount of time.

From there, we headed to the elevator down to the entrance to the Promyvion, and got quite a lengthy cutscene. We found ourselves in the familiar Promyvion environment, but Vahzl is tinted in brownish hues rather than the green/gray tones in the Dem/Holla/Mea crags. Our team for this (capped at 50):

Wendell WHM/BLM
Elboron BRD/WHM
Itera MNK/WAR
Splinte WAR/NIN
Grymalkyn THF/RNG
Tsakiki PLD/WAR

Promyvion-Vahzl is very much like the first three Promyvions: find the memory recepticle, kill it and its stray, move on to the next floor and repeat. The biggest twist is that we have to examine three Memory Fluxes along the way, spawning an NM, defeating it, then getting a cutscene for the mission. The nice thing about this is that once you've seen the cutscene for a particular memory flux, you can be transported directly to that spot from the entrance of the Promyvion, making them very handy stopping points when you don't have 5 hours to devote to the mission.

We ended up making it to the second memory flux that Friday. The journey through the levels wasn't aggro-free, and there were several spots that we actually chose to fight since there were so many of the Empty that we didn't think they'd ever be in positions such that we could avoid them all. The flux NMs are of the types of the bosses for the other crags. The first one was a Gorger-type and didn't give us too much trouble. The second was a Craver-type, and he was a bit tougher. Both Itera and Kiki were dropped to low double digits, but we did just fine.

Evenings that week were devoted to preparations for going back June 23rd and facing the final Memory Flux NM and the 3 bosses in the Spire. We farmed for recollections in the crags, farmed Ochus for malboro vines to make hi-potions, and gathered materials for bolts and poison potions.

Unfortunately, after all of our preparations to tackle this on June 23rd, Wendell lost his internet connection, so we had to delay it until July 7th, since Itera wasn't available on June 30th. Then on July 7th, we were all set to go, but Elboron had internet problems, so once again, it was delayed until July 14th.

Then on the 14th, there was a freight train derailment outside Toronto that caused the commuter train service to be completely suspsended. I feared we'd have to put this off another week, but my husband drove into the city to pick me up. The 100-mile round trip took 3.5 hours, but we made it home in time to get ready for the mission.

We gathered together in Whitegate, did a quick check of all our gear and items, and Wendell whisked us away to Xarcabard. We ran through Beaucedine Glacier to Pso'Xja, and made our way to the basement entrance to Promyvion-Vahzl. We were given the option to warp directly to the two Memory Fluxes we'd already been to, so we were able to start where we'd left off four weeks earlier.

We had no troubles making it to the memory recepticle to the final floor, found the Memory Flux there and spawned the Ponderer. The fight went smoothly, and after our cutscene, we made our way to the Spire, with Grym aggroing the last mob in our path and using Flee to zone into the Spire unscathed.

We rested up and reviewed our strategy before heading into the BC. Our plan was to fight the Thinker-type (Agonizer) first, which would be followed by the Craver-type (Cumulator) then the Gorger-type (Procreator). We'd use two set of animas on each, Psychoanima first, then Hysteroanima, using our Terroanimas when the next mob would start attacking before the one we're fighting was dead. We picked Agonizer first, since its Trinary Tap attack will steal 3 buffs from the person with hate, and we didn't want it stealing helpful things like food or regens.

We headed in and buffed up, getting reraise on all of us. Since the mobs don't aggro at first, I headed in to stand behind the Agonizer, and Grym whalloped it with a SATA off me, starting the fight with a good deal of hate on me. The Agonizer put up a good fight, but we all had poison potions to wake us up from AOE sleep, eye drops to remove blindness, holy water to remove Curse, and fake buffs and food for the mob to steal without doing massive damage.

The Cumulator, as has always been my experience with Craver-type bosses, was the deadliest. Grym was dropped to 7HP by Carousel, and she was poisoned and died before anyone could heal her. She reraised, but was defeated a second time by another Carousel. Splinte was killed a bit later, and reraised. I used about 5 hi-potions during this part of the fight, and opted for a hi-ether as well. Those take so long to use. :-(

We managed to defeat the Cumulator, and the Procreator, again as typical of the Gorger types, was a lot easier than the other two, despite massive paralysis all around (I lost my Psychoanima trying to use it while paralyzed). We won! After a couple of cutscenes in Beaucedine Glacier, we're ready for Mission 5-3, the 6-in-1 mission that will take us months to complete....

New title: Frozen Dead Body