Missions: Following Tenzen Around (part of CoP 5-3)

Our CoP Static did most of Tenzen's Path in the Three Paths mission on Friday. We had all initiated the mission beforehand by talking to Cid in Bastok, and then had travelled to La Thiene Plateau to see what Carbuncle had to say.

Friday night we met up in Whitegate, ready for the level 50 capped Pso'Xja tower, and Wendell whisked us away to Xarcabard. I think it's funny people still haven't gotten used to waiting for Elboron to cast Chocobo Mazurka before they run off after zoning. Mazurka sure makes it a lot quicker to cross these huge zones on foot.

The objective in Pso'Xja is to pass through a "Sprial" of 16 small rooms with doors that have traps on them, leading to an elevator and an Avatar Gate in the basement for a cutscene. Some of the rooms are empty, others have mobs that aggro to sight, sound or magic. The traps on the doors could spawn a Gargoyle, so the idea was to have Grym use Skeleton Keys to deactivate the traps. We had some on hand from our Key Ring Belts, and Itera bought a stack for the mission. This actually worked quite well. Grym ended up failing on two doors, and we had two unintentional door examinations that resulted in Gargoyles, so Grym saved us 12 out of 16 Gargoyle fights, which made the trip that much quicker.

The mobs themselves were VT-IT to us at 50, but we didn't have much trouble with them. There were Crytonberries (sight aggro), Camazotz (sound aggro), Magic Millstones (magic aggro), and Blubbereyes (sound aggro). We managed to avoid fighting all of the Magic Millstones, and Grym used Hide to get rid of one of the Crytonberries, but we fought enough that I got just over a thousand limit points, getting another Merit Point in the process. We managed to avoid any elementals until we were ready to leave after our cutscene in the basement. I provoked it and we kept it occupied while Wendell teleported us out.

The Spiral ended up being more annoying than troublesome - they sure seem to make us want to run around a lot. We headed back to Jeuno for a couple of cutscenes, and then donned our level 75 gear to fight a Doll in Lower Delkfutt's Tower. For one of the cutscenes we were supposed to examine a ??? twice, but a couple of us had only done it once, so after I spawned the Doll and we killed it (not a bad fight, but it hit pretty hard), the people who hadn't got the key item couldn't get the cutscene. They ran back to Batallia Downs to get their key item while the rest of us waited at the Cermet Door. It turns out they simply got the cutscene and we didn't need to fight the Doll a second time.

The final part of Tenzen's Path involves sneaking through the level 60 capped Pso'Xja tower for another cutscene at another Avatar gate. Itera's already soloed that, but I think we can do it as a group when we're working on the other level 60 capped portions of Mission 5-3.

Next on the agenda is Ulmia's path, with the level 50 capped BC fight with the Mithran Sin Hunters. We're having some debate over whether it's worth getting Blackened Muddy Siredons for the fight. I'm of the opinion that anything that can help us is worth getting.