Events: Starlight Celebration 2006

I was in Windurst after the update on Monday, and spotted a group of adventurers gathered around a Nomad Moogle who was trying to hold back a Twinkling Treant that had invaded town. Puzzlingly, they were all cheering on the Treant, negating the efforts of the Moogle. I ran into my mog house and grabbed my Dream Hat +1, and headed back out to join in on the fun.

As the Treant approached the fountain, it suddenly vanished, and a Smile Bringer appeared. He told us about a fake smile bringer in town, and asked for helping in finding the culprit. We ran around until someone spotted the fake and alerted everyone else. We all ran to confront the fake smile bringer, and headed back to the real one. As a reward, we were given a Dream Stocking.

The Smile Bringer also had given me presents for the kiddies, which I delivered to one of the Mithra children roaming the paths of Windurst. Because of this, the Smile Bringer offered to teleport me to San d'Oria or Bastok. I decided to head to San d'Oria and see if they too had been invaded by a Twinkling Treant. Sure enough, there was another one, and the Smile Bringer there was also looking for a fake. Our reward here was a Dream Platter.

I then asked the Smile Bringer to send me to Bastok, and it was the same situation there, with a Dream Coffer as the reward. I took my new items back to my mog house in Windurst and set them up on the floor, adding 6 spots to my Mog Storage (at the expense of 3 slots in my Mog Safe).

Quests: Fenrir 3, Tsakiki 0 (The Moonlit Path)

I was standing in my moghouse early Sunday evening, wondering how best to use my time before Limbus, when Thoron sent a tell asking if I was busy. He was trying to put together a party for Fenrir, and was looking for a PLD. I've had my Moon Bauble for months, but our little group has been having a hard enough time being on at the same time for CoP missions and the Ninja Blues static, and our plans for getting purple puppies for everyone have been pushed aside.

Thoron (MNK/WAR) had lined up a DRK/THF, WHM/BLM (Kiki's little sister!), and SMN/WHM, and was looking for a BRD when I said I'd come along. One agreed, but then ditched us when we were all ready to head into the Hurototo Ruins in East Sarutabaruta. Fortunately, Yobun was just getting out of an exp party, and offered to join us with his BRD.

Our first run saw most of us dead shortly after Fenrir used his two hour. We got him down to about 20% before we were all dead. We learned we needed to keep the mages back further. Yobun and the DRK had used their 2 hours on this run.

On the second run, we learned that Fenrir has a move that knocks me back really far, and that if I have him turned 90 degrees from the mages, I get knocked out of their spell range, and die fast. Rather than have another full wipe, the WHM, SMN, and Yobun were able to get out of the battlefield.

The third run went remarkably well, but we couldn't quite pull it off. The DRK stunned Fenrir's two hour, saving us a great deal of pain. I used Invincible and Thoron cut loose with Hundred Fists. He ended up pulling hate and died, next was the DRK. The WHM used Benediction (but Fenrir didn't even look at her), and we got Fenrir down to just a sliver of HP before he wiped us out. If the SMN had had enough MP for Astral Flow, we definitely would have won. It was so close!

It gives me hope for my group of the usual suspects to be able to pull it off, with a bit of help from sleeping for TP and icarus wings. With the changes to Sentinel, Rampart, and Shield Mastery from the update on Monday, I'm actually quite eager to try Fenrir again.

Dynamis: Close in Bastok, Flag in Jeuno

Last Tuesday, we tried for the flag in Bastok, and very nearly made it. However, our sacrifice pull on the Mega Boss went wrong, and there wasn't time to recover and try again. We did however have a terrific run dropwise. Loads of currency for our sponsor Youssarian, 3 Monster Jackcoats, 2 Wyrm Brais, Saotome Kote, Bard's Cuffs, and Duelist's Gloves. I won the lot for the third Monster Jackcoat, bidding against the only other person with BST sublot who didn't have one already. I asked him 4 times what level his BST was, since it wasn't in his lotting comment, since I didn't want to take it if he was closer to the level for it than me, but he didn't answer, so I lotted and won. One of my mannequins will be wearing it in the meantime.

Saturday morning, I was fishing in Lufaise Meadows until it was time to head to Jeuno. I had a nice conversation with a SAM75 named Balrog, and he ended up coming to Dynamis-Jeuno with us. I'm not sure whether he'll stick with the shell, but at least he got the flag with us. Our sacrifice pull on the boss went poorly, so both Narsat and I were in spots impossible for anyone to come and rescue us. I believe Naruuto and Meta managed to pull the boss down to the moghouse, and everyone was able to kill it. Then all the mobs respawned, and slaughtered everyone before they could get to the ??? for the key item. I ended up home-pointing to Windurst, and used my Ducal Ring to get back to Jeuno quickly, and reentered. We tried to get as many people raises as we could, and then Narsat and Youssarian took turns pulling all the mobs away from the ??? so people could quickly get up and get their key item. It was pretty messy, but we got it done. Drops were pretty bad though, with just Warrior's Mufflers and Saotome Sune-ate dropping. Lots of relic weapons though.

Our main tank Takoom has been conspicuously absent since the Dynamis run where he mentioned that he was getting a PS3 the next day. I've been getting more comfortable with the role of main tank, but I do find it a pretty stressful. I have to be completely on my toes for the entire run, unless I'm recovering from a death. It would be so much easier to simply have a "/assist

/wait 1 /attack" macro like the regular melee members! I think the puller and the sleepers/nukers have it worse than the tanks, but there's not room for inattention either.

With all my deaths last week, my exp buffer dropped from a healthy 20k to a low 7k, so when Narsat started putting together an exp party after our Jeuno run, I joined in. We ended up with Narsat (RDM/NIN), Mochimochi (BRD/WHM), Goto (WHM/BLM), me (PLD/WAR), and picked up a MNK/NIN and a WAR/NIN. First we headed to the Mire and ran around killing flies and a few imps, but it was so crowded, we decided to head to the Qutrub camp at the Dvucca Isle Staging Point. Unfortunately Mochimochi didn't have that one, so we headed to the Mamool Ja Staging point, and fought puks and Mamools. We lost Goto to a disconnect, and replaced him with Ayumii's NIN/WAR and Narsat changed to RDM/WHM. Then the WAR/NIN left, and we got another one. I hadn't really eaten lunch or supper, and was starting to feel a bit sick, so I only stayed long enough to get about 14k exp. I was happy to get my buffer back up over 20k, but I fear it won't last long.

New title: Dynamis-Jeuno Interloper

Missions: The Garden of Antiquity (CoP 8-1)

Our static met in the Sealion's Den on Friday evening, ready to tackle The Garden of Antiquity, Mission 8-1. This mission involves visiting the 3 Rubious Crystals in Al'Taieu and spawning 3 Aern NMs at each one. It turns out that these are three switches that control the gate into the Grand Palace of Hu'Xzoi, and after we've defeated the NMs, the Chebukkis can open the gate for us.

We headed into Al'Taieu, and went to the southern crystal first. The three Aerns here are WAR, WHM, and SAM, and without trying to sleep them (they're highly resistant to Lullaby, and I didn't want Elboron to get more hate from trying), we took a lot of damage during the fight, but didn't really have any troubles winning.

Next we headed to the eastern crystal, watching for UFOs as we walked. The NMs here are BLM, PLD, and MNK. I got taken out by a ~1200 damage Water IV, and then Splinte fell quickly afterwards, but the other four managed to finish off the 3 NMs. The MNK was the trickiest, since it used Hundred Fists. Grym managed to pull hate off of Itera, and used Perfect Dodge to negate the damage from Hundred Fists, and they were able to win the fight for us.

After Wendell raised Splinte and me, we all headed to the western crystal and fought the three NMs there. These three are RDM, RNG, and DRK, and went down more quickly than the first set. We then headed to the Grand Palace, where we got another cutscene, and Ulmia presented us with a Tavnazian Ring, which can be used once every 24 hours to teleport straight to the Safehold. I think this is a terrific reward, and will come in very handy.

We're down to just 3 missions left in the Chains of Promathia story line. We've sure come a long way since our first fight as a static, against the Mammets in CoP 2-5, back in March (which was over a year after I first arrived in Lufaise Meadows.

Limbus: Apollyon NW

It looks like I'm going to have to add another category here. Lucrezia has been part of The Ultimates Dynamis linkshell for quite some time now, and has pitched their virtues several times over the past few months, but their schedule just seems to be a bit off for me: 9PM Wednesday is a bit late for me, and their 9PM Saturday run conflicts with my Ninja Blues static. This was one of the reasons I went with SoaD - the "earlier" start on Tuesdays, and doing runs on Saturday afternoon instead of evening. However, SoaD doesn't have any interest in doing Limbus, probably because Narsat hasn't even got Lufaise access yet.

Now that Limbus is a possibility for me, Luc asked if I'd be interested in doing Limbus. Since one of my dreams (note it's not in my to-do list, it's simply a dream) has been for Kiki to wear Homam, and more realistically, I'd like to have a Boxer's Mantle, I said yes, I'd was very interested in Limbus. Turns out TU doesn't have a very strong Limbus contigent, for a variety of reasons - Sea access, already doing Limbus with another shell, cost - and they were willing to let me join the Limbus shell (The New Ultimates), without being in their Dynamis shell. They were getting ready to do a run on Sunday evening, and Luc was able to convince them to at least bring me on for a trial run.

Grym and I were in Rolanberry Fields trying to learn Uppercut from the Goobbues at the time, so we ran to Jeuno with me knowing Uppercut and him not knowing it. I quickly switched jobs and gear, and ran out to join the group in Port Jeuno. We ended up with a group of 9. I think this was the first Limbus run for two of us, but the others all had some experience. We had Lucrezia (THF), Venn (DRG), Kojita (DRG), Sarntur (BLM), Meshe (WHM), Alfrodo (RDM), Astran (SMN), Ranzz (BRD), and Tsakiki (PLD). This was Ranzz first time with The New Ultimates as well, but it looks like he's actually applying for their Dynamis shell too. I'm wondering how he held out for so long when his brother Lucrezia has been so active with them.

We each talked to Sagheera in Port Jeuno and paid her 50,000 gil for the key tiem Cosmo-Cleanse, which we'd need to enter Limbus. We then teleported to Dem to use the Dimensional Portal that would take us into Al'Taieu near the "lobby" for NW Apollyon. We had to kill an NM flower to get another key item (Red Card), and then we made our way to the vortex that would take us into Apollyon, avoiding UFOs along the way.

The NW Apollyon environment is very much like the Promyvions - fractured and dream-like. The mobs aren't Empty though, they're pretty much "normal" mobs, though they seem to have some different attacks, and sure seem to move fast. For Limbus, the objective is to make your way through the levels, killing mobs, getting Ancient Beastcoins and other items used to obtain different armor or to upgrade Artifact Armor into +1 versions. Each floor has its own type of mobs, with one mini-boss NM. Chests spawn that will extend your time limit, regen hp/mp, or drop items into the treasure pool.

For NW Apollyon, the first floor has ghosts and a Doomed NM. The second floor is buffalo with a Ram NM, the third is bugards with a giant turtle NM, the fourth is wyverns with a giant Wyrm NM, while the fifth has Behemoths. We wiped on the Behemoths and ran out of time, so I'm not sure what else was there.

I must say, I really enjoyed this a lot. As you can see from the screenshots, I did end up face down several times, but got an R3 each time, which softened the exp loss quite a bit. It's so much better than Dynamis in that you only have to fight one or two mobs at a time, and with it limited to 18 players (we had only 9), there's nearly no lag making things difficult. And I really got to tank, thanks to Trick Attacks from Luc in addition to my own abilities. I "tank" in Dynamis, but it just doesn't seem like "real" tanking to me. Limbus is real tanking. Fights last long enough I can provoke more than once, something I can't do in Dynamis unless it's a boss or NM, and something that doesn't happen in merit parties either. Plus having an objective and a time limit makes it "exciting" as well. I do think it's sad that two black mages can do better in terms of drops in Limbus than a larger balanced party, but that's just the way the game is.

We ended up with three ancient beastcoins each, so I'm 4% of the way to my Boxer's Mantle. /laugh Several items for upgrading AF dropped as well. I believe they were for BLM, DRK, and RDM, but I couldn't say for certain.

Leveling: Ninja Blues hit 37 (Behemoth's Dominion)

The Ninja Blues headed back to Behemoth's Dominion on Saturday evening, a mix of levels 34 and 35. Charcole has officially abandonded the static, and Ryrra's WAR has filled his spot. It's a good thing we weren't the Ninjas Blue, since we're down to just one Ninja now.

Since this static was formed mostly to get Charcole and Itera's NIN to 37 to use as fully-leveled subjobs for their MNKs (and the extra shadows they get from Utsusemi Ni), as well as Wendell's SMN for his WHM, I'm not sure how much further we'll be taking this. I know I've been having a lot of fun with it, and it would be handy to have our BLUs at 40 at least, for more possibilities for some BCNMs, but we'll see how it goes over the coming weeks. Elboron seems to be enjoying BLU as well, but he's playing less and less these days.

We spent an uneventful evening fighting bats, and stayed until we all hit the magic 37.

Grym and I spent a bit of time over the next couple of days picking up some more spells - Digest (black slimes in Hurototo Ruins), Pinecone Bomb (walking trees in Jugner), and Uppercut (goobbues in Rolanberry Fields). One of the side benefits of having Sea access now is that we have a relatively quick way back to civilization if we happen to be near one of the crags. We just use the Dimensional Portal to get to Al'Taieu, run to a nearby Auroral Updraft, which takes us to the Updraft that goes to Sealion's Den, and then we're in the Tavnazian Safehold. I suppose most people just use warp cudgels or something, but we've always tended to use free travel options when we have them.

Dynamis: Interlopers!

On Saturday, SnakesOnADynamis was planning to start our run on Dynamis - San d'Oria at 12:30pm EST, but we logged in Saturday morning to discover an emergency maintenance was going to have the server down from 12 to 2. We rescheduled for 2:15ish, and hoped we'd have enough people to go for the win.

We ended up with a group of 23, but we were missing people we know probably would have been there had our run been at its normal time. I ended up being the only PLD, and my tank party had 3 WHMs, a RDM, and a NIN. The NIN had done Dynamis, but only as a kiter rather than the backup tank, but I ended up not dying on our "normal" fights. I think I should always have 3 WHMs in my party. :-)

This was far and away our best run yet, and we're starting to work together better. The first trigger NM didn't charm anyone until he was nearly dead - we didn't melee him this time. We had some big link-fests, but handled them all one by one, thanks to the sleepers. We did have a lot of deaths from a couple NIN mobs blowing themselves up, but we changed our approach on them and got much better. The SMNs that gave us so much trouble on an earlier run were a piece of cake.

It wasn't until we tried the second trigger mob that things started going poorly. Narsat was RDM/THF and was sacrifice pulling on that one. I was to grab the NM Summoner and bring it back to the chocobo stables for everyone to kill, while one of the RDMs was supposed to sleep the avatar. When Narsat went running past with a thousand angry Orcs chasing after him, I couldn't find the NM in the crowd, and it wasn't until after Narsat was dead that I could get him, along with a few of his friends. This didn't work so well, and we ended up with what was probably a full wipe.

For the second try, the RDMs were going to nuke a time extension statue as part of the sac pull, but they ended up dying right near the mobs. Sharingan (the NIN) and I grabbed the avatar and SMN, but since the pull wasn't going to work, we died outside the stable entrance, and kept the rest of the team safe from certain death. We did get the time extension though, so we still felt we could get the win.

The third time's the charm, and it worked perfectly. Narsat went running off toward the Moghouse with all the Orcs in two. I picked the NM out of the crowd and voked it, while Sharingan voked the avatar. We ran back into the chocobo stables, where everyone "stood back" and used what ranged attacks they could (nukes, chi blasts, arrows, bolts), while they tried to keep the avatar asleep. I stood by the SMN to keep him focused on me, and used my two hour to buy a bit more time. We got the SMN nearly dead when BOOM, 15 HP bars on my screen suddenly dropped to 0, thanks to Astral Flow. Itera and Latch were the only two still standing. Itera quickly fell, and Latch was able to kill the SMN using his two hour. Hurray! We'd popped the Mega Boss!

We quickly reraised and raised everyone, then rested up. Narsat made another sacrifice pull on the Boss statue, and I was able to get him cleanly back to the stables for everyone to kill. This was harder, since we could only use magic on him. I was killed pretty quickly when it used Death on me, and the mages were kiting him around and nuking him. I reraised and tried to "tank" a bit more, throwing in holy and banishes when I had MP, and we finally managed to get him dead. We got everyone on their feet and we all ran over to get our key item for "completing" Dynamis-San d'Oria. It felt good to finally win one.

We still had 10 minutes on the clock, so someone had the bright idea that we should farm a bit more. Unfortunately, pulling a mob resulted in about a dozen mobs on us, so we had another full wipe, which somewhat dampened our celebratory mood. The drops on the run were a bit disappointing, mostly because there was no one there who could actually use them yet. Our only DRG-main couldn't be there, so the Wyrm Greaves ended up going to Purr, who's DRG is 30-something. The only other piece of armor was the Monster Trousers, and Metah and I were the only BST (sub) lotters, with our BSTs at 60. Metah won the lot on those. There were several relic weapons as well, but until people actually start upgrading those, I don't find those to be too exciting.

New Title: Dynamis-San d'Oria Interloper

Quests: Blade of Death

Another quest I've had active for a couple of years is part of the Dark Knight storyline: Blade of Death. For this quest, Zeid wanted me to kill another 100 monsters with the Chaosbringer greatsword that I used to kill 100 monsters in order to unlock the Dark Knight job. Since I had thrown away my Chaosbringer as soon as my DRK had reached level 5 and I could equip a better greatsword (a Deathbringer I had bought on the Auction House), every time I took the boat out of Palborough Mines, I received a new Chaosbringer for the Blade of Death quest.

On Sunday, when I got yet another Chaosbringer after leaving the Mines when I'd been looking for the diary for the Faded Promises quest, I decided I'd go ahead and complete the quest. It shouldn't take that long to kill 100 bees, worms, and bats near Port Bastok in North Gustaberg, and as a DRK41, I was hoping maybe I could even one-shot them, despite the low damage of the Chaosbringer.

Unfortunately, it usually took me two swings to kill the mobs. With the extremely long delay on the weapon, it felt like I took a minute between swings, and then I wasn't able to attack a new mob without a long wait. But the time passed quickly enough, and I killed a few extra for good measure. Grymalkyn gave me a teleport to the Dem crag, and we headed into the pool in Gusgen Mines, where Nothing Happened. I was sure my count was accurate, so I did some quick research, and learned that the sword you trade to the ??? for the quest must have 200 kills on it. The assumption here is that it's the same Chaosbringer used for the initial DRK Flag quest, so you need only do an additional 100 kills with it. However, if you've tossed that Chaosbringer and started over again, you need to kill 200 with it.

So the next night, I spent an hour or so in West Sarutabaruta killing bees, mandragoras, crabs, and rabbits. I headed back to Gusgen, and this time Zeid appeared and gave me a Deathbringer in exchange for the blood-soaked Chaosbringer. Since it's only good for a DRK from level 5 to about level 10, I promptly placed it on the AH in Windurst and sold it off to another aspiring DRK.

New title: Black Death

Quests: Faded Promises

I've started reading scrolls on my Ninja again, after building up my Paladin's buffer over 20K (though it's already dropped to 13k). My Ninja is now under 50 points to level 28, so I decided to finally do the Faded Promises quest. The reward for this quest is a nice level 28 katana, the Fukuro. If I ever decide to actually take my Ninja out fighting, it will be a good katana to use in my off-hand to get my katana skill leveled up.

This quest involves a bit of intrigue in Bastok, and starts with Romualdo, one of the guards in the Cannonry. Ayami then asked me to find a diary that's been hidden in Palborough Mines. I headed there as a PLD/THF and killed the Quadavs until I got a key, then ran around looking for a treasure chest until I finally found one. Sure enough, it contained the diary I was looking for. Returning to Bastok, I had to run around a bit talking to various people, and helped Ayami expose a corrupt senator. She rewarded me with my shiny new Fukuro.

New title: Assassin Reject

Dynamis: Someday, Maybe We'll Win

SnakesOnADynamis tried Bastok again last Saturday (we'd been hoping for Windurst, but another LS took it - I really wish there was a way in-game to make reservations, like they have for types of Ballista and the Hostel in Whitegate), and we did no better than we had other times, but we did get couple of pieces of relic armor for people (and enough Relic Blades to outfit an entire regiment). We'd been suffering from a shortage of members, so Vawn really stepped up the recruiting, with seemingly continuous shouts in Whitegate.

His efforts really showed when we had 13 new members show up for our run on Jeuno last night. We had 35 people in attendance, quite an increase from our usual 18-24, and we had high hopes for finally winning a city. We did quite well making our way through Ru'Lude Gardens and into the Palace. I was main tank again for the night, and I survived all of the MNK monsters, but the Rangers and their Eagle Eye Shots seemed to get me every time. I ended up losing about 4.5k exp from the nice buffer I'd built up. I used my Reraise Gorgets, so I had Reraise II for each death, which helps with the exp loss.

We spawned the boss, and had plenty of time on the clock, and could even taste the win at that point. Two failed sacrifice pulls (the first ending in a full wipe), and then some sort of misguided Leeroy Jenkins tomfoolery ended up in another wipe, and then there was no time left. I died twice each on both the sacrifice pulls - it's so annoying to be resting in a "safe" spot while weakened, just to have the mobs either spot you in your safe spot, or other people run past you, making the spot no longer safe. At least I manage to get my RR back up quickly.

We've got a long way to go to be a good shell. People don't listen at all, and don't seem to understand about using /assist and turning off autotarget. I know it must be frustrating when I'm a bit slow at picking out and engaging the next target (the lag was just insane last night), but having people just jump on whatever mob they're closest to gets people killed. Plus we need to kill some mobs faster than others, since they pose a greater danger - like the SMN mobs with their avatars.

And then there's all the people bitching at each other, not to mention the ones whining about lost exp and refusing Raise Is. If you "need" a Raise II, bring a hairpin or gorget - it's really that simple. And grousing about losing lots to new members is unbecoming, since up to now, our rules have been that new members can lot on their first run. We'll get more AF on other nights - it's not like that was the last piece ever to be seen.

We ended up with 2 Warrior Mufflers, Duelist Tights, 2 Relic Shields and a Relic Bow. Seemed like a light haul considering how many mobs we killed and the presence of more THFs and /THFs than we've had on other runs.

Missions: The Warrior's Path (CoP 7-5)

Since we'd had a hard time getting the static together during November and didn't finish CoP 7-4 until Friday night, we opted to give up our Ninja Blues static time on Saturday to face Tenzen and the Tarutarus and see if we couldn't finally reach Sea. Saturday evening, we met in the Tavnazian Safehold. We all went in to the BC either singly or in pairs to see the cutscene, look at the layout of the battlefield, and watch the Chebukkis celebrate when Tenzen defeated us. The most amusing thing about this was that Grymalkyn went as a level 1 Summoner, and sicced Ifrit on the Tarutarus. Tenzen came running over to help them, and missed Ifrit. Twice. I think the man has some serious accuracy issues if he has that much trouble with a level 1 avatar. Too bad he doesn't seem to have so much trouble with a full party of level 75s.

The fight for this mission is uncapped. It takes place on one of the airships, just like the Ultima/Omega fight. For this fight, for reasons we can't quite make out, Tenzen has turned against us and has hired the Chebukkis to help him. The Tarutarus can't be harmed, but as a RNG, BLM, and WHM, they do make the fight a little more annoying than it would be with just Tenzen. For this fight, Tenzen ends up self-skillchaining with 4 weaponskills, which end up ejecting the group from the battlefield if you aren't able to defeat him before that point. We decided to approach this fight like we had the Snoll Tzar fight, and go all out to get him dead as fast as we could.

Our set up for the fight was WHM/SMN, BRD/WHM, MNK/NIN, WAR/NIN, THF/NIN, and PLD/WAR. Since Utsusemi blocks most of Tenzen's weaponskills, we felt it prudent to have /NIN on the damage dealers so when they ripped hate away from me, they might survive. We're given 30 minutes for the fight, and we knew the actual fight would only take a couple minutes, so we had plenty of time once we entered the battlefield. Everyone except Wendell put on their Opo-opo Necklaces, and used sleeping potions to reach 300% TP. We all used a reraise item of some sort, so that if any of us died, we could get back up immediately and continue fighting. I was going to use Spirits Within, and had bulked up my HP to over 1500 with gear and Carbonara. After about 15 minutes, we were ready to start the fight. I didn't have a chance to go back over the log in detail, but here's pretty much how it went.

Itera chi-blasted Tenzen to get his attention, and the fight was on. I flashed and provoked him to get his attention, and we all immediately unleashed our strongest weaponskills. My Spirits Within did over 700 damage, thanks to all my extra HP. Grym used TA on me for the extra damage boost. Then the 4 of us meleeing used Icarus Wings and weaponskilled again. Splinte was using Mighty Strikes and Itera Hundred Fists. Splinte ended up getting hit by Tenzen's first weaponskill without any shadows up, and took about 2,250 damage (his max HP is under 1400), dropping him like a sack of rocks. He got right back up, but a -ga spell from Kikki-Chebukki dropped him again. Wendell was getting peppered with arrows from Makki-Chebukki, meanwhile, Itera ended up tanking most of the fight, so I focused on helping keep his HP up and flashing when I could. I'm not sure if Elboron used Soul Voice or not, but as always, his songs really helped the battle go smoothly.

It was over very quickly, and after a long long cutscene, we found ourselves in Al'Taieu. We still have quite a few missions to go before we complete Chains of Promathia, but finally having Sea access feels like a major milestone. We got the first cutscene for Mission 8-1, The Garden of Antiquity, and then spent about an hour exploring Al'Taieu, mostly going from Quasilumin to Quasilumin in order to get our maps for the area. The Quasilumins are NPCs, and look somewhat like an elemental. They're "guides" to the area, with each one giving you a bit of information about Al'Taieu. In order to get the map to the area, you simply need to speak to each one.

Most of the mobs in Al'Taieu will not aggro you. They've all got weird names, so people generally call them by more familiar terms, like "goldfish" (we think they should be called dolphins), "squid", "shark", "UFO". These last two do actually aggro - the sharks coming up from below, and are untargetable until they're coming after you, and the UFOs dropping down from the sky, certain doom for most parties. We had to fight several sharks, but managed to avoid the UFOs. The area is really different from anywhere else in Vana'diel. I really enjoyed our visit there, but it seems to be a playground for BLMs, SMNs, and RDMs rather than the more mundane melee jobs, so I'm not sure how much time we'll end up spending in there. It's cruel that the In the Name of Science quest requires drops from the UFOs for the gorgets the melee types would want. There's no way we could get those without a lot of people helping.

After we got our maps, we decided to see where each of the Dimensional Portals at the three main Crags would take us. We also learned how the Auroral Updrafts work - one near the entrance to the Grand Palace takes you back to Sealion's Den, while the other 5 take you back to the first one. It makes it really easy to travel around, since Updrafts are located near the Dimensional Portals from the crags.

New Title: Seeker of the Light

Missions: Calm Before the Storm (CoP 7-4)

Because of US Thanksgiving and other Real Life stuff going on with various people, we ended up doing CoP Mission 7-4, Calm Before the Storm, three times with various combinations of our group to get everyone through so we could move on to the big fight with Tenzen in 7-5. We all had run around everywhere to get our cutscenes for Missions 7-1 through 7-3, and started Mission 7-4 with Cid in Bastok.

For this mission, you have to fight three NMs: a bugard in Misareaux Coast, a kraken in Bibiki Bay, and 4 Tonberries in Carpenter's Landing. Our first time through we had Itera (MNK), Splinte (WAR), Grymalkyn (THF), and Tsakiki (PLD). We decided to use our NPCs, set on Soothing Healer, to help fill in the party, which worked out really well. Yobun joined us as his SMN to help with the Tonberries, and we found a dead NIN/WHM there as well. He'd been trying to solo them, and was happy to join with us. He ended up dying again, but at least we killed off all the Tonberries and were all able to complete the mission.

The bugard is highly resistant to physical damage, and since that's pretty much all we had, that fight usually took us awhile. For the third time we fought it, we decided to try our old three part light skillchain (red lotus blade -> raging fists -> shark bite), and with Elbo's Light Threnody on the bugard, ended up doing over 1000 damage with just the Light part. The fight was a lot shorter that time.

The second time through the fights, we had Wendell (WHM) and no Splinte. Once again, the NPCs were a big help. The only tricky bit was again the Tonberries, with Wendell ending up getting killed. We had tried to pull the NIN away from his minions, but didn't get him far enough, and they all ran to help him when he called.

For our final time through for Elboron (BRD), we did manage to pull the NIN Tonberry far enough and killed him without trouble. However, it turns out you really have to kill all four Tonberries. We had let the 3 others despawn, and Elbo couldn't get the cutscene. He popped them again, and we had a very messy fight with Astral Flow killing all of us but Itera. However, he managed (with his NPC's help) to continue fighting, and Wendell reraised and kept Itera alive until the Tonberries were all dead. Wendell raised Elboron, and he got his cutscene and could complete the mission.

New titles: Esha'ntarl's Comrade in Arms, Prishe's Buddy

Quests: Playing Catch-Up

We completed a few of the other quests that we've had sitting in our quest logs for quite some time now.

A Chocobo's Tale has several different parts, and requires a lot of running around (Jeuno, Bastok, Pashhow, Beadeaux), and requires each person to get three Warding Oils, which are an exclusive drop off of Emerald Quadavs in Beadeaux. We did that part of the quest months ago, but put off the final part until last week. The last task for the quest involve checking a headstone in northwest Batallia Downs, and fighting the five NM tigers that spawn. We had been worried that we'd have a bit of trouble fighting them all as a duo, but it was a needless fear, and we easily defeated them, obtained the key item and headed back to Jeuno to complete the quest. The quest involved the story of two chocobos that were in love, but ill-fated (star-crossed?).

For Cid's Secret, the proprietress of the Steaming Sheep in Port Bastok needed a Rolanberry 874. We could have bought these on the Auction House, but opted instead to get them for ourselves from the spawned crawlers in Crawlers Nest. I bought 3 stacks of Rolanberries from the Duty Free Shop in Port Jeuno before our last escort quest in CN. When we finished up with Olavia, we headed back to the first lizard room, where people fight crawlers in the mid-30s. There's a basket there, and if you place a Rolanberry in it, there's a chance a Guardian Crawler will come charging in to get it/you. They drop slightly older Rolanberries, the Rolanberry 881. From the 36 regluar rolanberries, we ended up with 10 Rolanberry 881s. We took these over to another area with another basket (the room with the Rumble Crawlers). The room was empty, so we didn't have to worry about links, and we lured Drone Crawlers to the basket by placing the Rolanberry 881s. We ended up with 4 Rolanberry 874s, which worked out well, since we could use the two extra for the Cargo quest in Selbina.

We headed back to Bastok with our bounty and completed the quest, obtaining a ram mantle as our reward. We picked up the next quest in the series, The Usual. This time Hilda needs a King Truffle for one of her patrons, a galka who knew her husband. She didn't know his name, or where to get the King Truffle, and needed our help. We tried to tell her she could get them on the auction house, but she just ignored us. So we headed off to Aydeewa Subterrane to kill Mycohoppers for a few hours. We gave up with only one King Truffle, so I took that back to Bastok to complete the quest (with a Speed Bow as my reward). These two quests gave us a bit of background story on Cid, which was pretty interesting.

When we were farming for Grym's Giant Fish Bones in the Temple of Uggalepih, we also fought the Trompe L'Oeil for the quest A Question of Taste, in which we'd been instructed to hang one of Angelica's paintings in the Temple. The Trompe L'Oeil didn't like the painting, and ripped it to shreds, then attacked us. We had to do the fight twice, once for each of us, and the first time the fight was a bit tougher than we thought it was going to be, so the second time, Grym subbed BST and had an Opo-opo helping us out. It was much easier with our helper monkey. Returning to Kazham to report what had happened, we were rewarded with a bit of gil.

A very old quest that we were probably just too cheap to complete was Wondering Minstrel, where we're tasked with cheering up the minstrel at the tavern in Windurst Waters. A friend of his in the Merry Minstrel in Lower Jeuno told us we could cheer him up by bringing him a piece of Rosewood Lumber. I made three pieces from logs I bought from the guild, and the third piece of lumber paid for the logs I bought. We brought the lumber back to Windurst, and the minstrel was indeed pleased. He gave us both a Faerie Picollo for our troubles. To our surprise, those were selling for 90k gil on the Auction House, so it was definitely a nice reward.

Finally, we completed Better the Demon You Know, the last in the series of quests with Koblaqik in Oldton Movalpolis. She was afraid her brother was taken by the demons in Castle Zvahl Baileys, and asked us to go look for him there. We'd been a bit worried about this fight, versus the Marquis Andrealphus demon and his 4 minions, since the Marquis is known to "escape" whomever has hate, sending them out to Xarcabard, making the fight tough for those left behind, and making it possible that you'll have to do the fight over for the escaped person to get the key item after the fight. The move is blocked by utsusemi, so we decided to have Grym tank as THF/NIN. The fight went pretty well, and the minions all disappeared when we killed their boss. We found Zeelazok's Earplug and headed back to Koblakiq to complete the quest. She gave us a Goblin Grenade (30k on the Jeuno AH) for our troubles.

I really enjoy the quests for their little bits of story, but some of them seem to require a lot of time running around and/or obtaining hard-to-get items and the rewards are often very trivial. I guess I can understand why a lot of people don't want to bother with them. Those people are playing a slightly different game than me.

New titles: Chocobo Love Guru, "Steaming Sheep" Regular, Down Piper Piper-Upper, Apostate for Hire