Quests: Bombs Away!

For many of the CoP Missions there are special items you can obtain that help to defeat the bosses in the fights, and the Snoll Tzar fight is no exception. The item for this fight is a Shu'Meyo Salt, and is obtained through the quest "Bombs Away!". You need to trade two Cluster Cores to an NPC Orc in Uleguerand Range and in return you get one rare/exclusive Shu'Meyo Salt. Over the past year or so, our CoP static had managed to collect 16 cluster cores, and had hung on to them for this mission. We used 12 of the cores getting a salt for each of us before our first failed attempt at the Snoll Tzar, and since we'd only used 4 of the salts, we needed to farm "just" 4 more cores before we could try the mission again.

You can get cluster cores from clusters, which only spawn in fog weather in Lufaise Meadows and Misareaux Coast, or if you've got a full party, you can try to fight the IT ones that are in Riverne Site A01 and B01, but they can be pretty deadly. This is where most of our original collection had come from - on linkshell expeditions into Riverne Site A01, usually when we were fighting the Carmine Dobsonflies. You can also steal cores from them, meaning steal/hide is an option in Riverne Site B01, since hide works on clusters. The cores can't be sold on the auction house, but once in awhile you can find them in peoples' bazaars.

After spending 7 hours over 3 evenings in Lufaise Meadows and Misareaux Coast, getting fog weather only once and only managing to fight one cluster in the one brief fog window we saw, Grym and Kiki left Elboron in Misareaux to continue to wait for fog weather, and the two of us headed to Riverne Site B01. Grym was THF50/WHM25, and Kiki was BST50/RDM25 for widescan. We snuck around the islands, looking for Nitro Clusters, and found a tiny island that had two Clusters on it, and nothing else. Grym snuck up behind it, successfully stole a core from it, and used hide to lose aggro. Hurray! Maybe it wasn't going to be so bad. I kept my target on the one she hadn't stolen from (you can only successfully steal once from a given mob - after that you need to kill it and have a new one spawn), and after 5 minutes, she tried the same on the second cluster. The steal attempt failed, and then another duo, in their PJs, showed up on the island and managed to get aggro'd by both of the clusters. We ran away to the next island, in search of more Nitro Clusters.

We found a big clump of clusters mixed in with a group of Pyrodrakes on the biggest island, and Grym tried stealing from them a couple of times, but I was uncomfortable with our location, and spotted two Nitro Clusters on widescan that were all by themselves, so we headed over to them. They turned out to be in the cave with the ??? for the Unstable Cluster that people spawn to get a really nice level 50 Great Katana, and it was indeed a safe spot for us to try over and over and over again to get the last two Cluster Cores we needed. After 11 failed attempts, Grym finally got another core, and from that point on, it was my job to make sure we knew which Nitro Cluster was the one that still hadn't been stolen from, to keep her from trying to steal from the one she'd already stolen from. She finally got the last core we needed, with a total of 16 attempts for the 3 cores. Meanwhile, Elboron didn't see any fog weather in Misareaux Coast.

In the end, it took us 9 hours to get 4 cores. What a pain in the neck. We better beat that Snoll Tzar this time. I don't want to have to do that again.