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