Notorious Monsters: Swift Belts!

After our swift belt run in February that left Lucrezia and I empty-handed, Lucrezia wanted to go back and try again with a smaller group, hoping to finally get one for himself and Kiki as well. Lucrezia spent hours and hours farming four of the Fomor Codices, while Kiki got lucky and only had to kill two Tauri to get hers. Since they're rare and can't be mailed, it takes a bit of coordination to get multiples. Lucrezia handed them off to Ranzz, Elbryan, and Grymalkyn. Grymalkyn's been living in the Tavnazian Safehold pretty much since my husband quit playing in January, since it's easy for me to leave her home point in Windurst for fishing guild and mog storage access, and she has her Tavnazian Ring to get back to the Safehold quickly and use the Jeuno Auction House to sell off her inventory.

Since we didn't want to fight the Tarutaru Fomor NM, and you can only pop the NM of your own race, all of Kiki's accumulated hate was worthless. I took Grymalkyn out with Lucrezia and Ranzz and Elbyran into Lufaise Meadows for several evenings of Fomor hunting to build Grymalkyn's hate, and would use Grymalkyn to pop the Mithra NM.

After weeks of not being able to come up with a time when we could actually do the run, we finally went last night. We had a different set of people than we thought we would, and more helpers than we had hoped for, which turned out to be a good thing. Our original plan had been to do something like BST BST BST RDM, but based on our experience last night with BST/NIN (Lucrezia), BST/WHM (Grymalkyn), NIN/WAR (Daden), BLU/WHM (Diasuke), SAM/WAR (Midget), PUP/MNK (Anastasia), we wouldn't have been able to do it. This group had troubles getting the Mithra classroom cleared without respawns popping up, mostly because the nasty damage Grim Halo would do (and the deaths it induced), and the need to rest up before proceeding. So Midget switch to Lalandra as SMN/WHM, and Yobun joined us as THF/NIN.

Grymalkyn ran in to pop Caithleann as Lalandra and Yobun were making their way to the classroom, since the path was clear and wouldn't stay that way for long. Unfortunately Lalandra ended up getting aggro in the maze and dying before getting to us, and our fight went really poorly. She's a RDM-NIN with chainspell, and a bit of a pain to fight. It looked like we were going to have a full wipe, but Lucrezia and Yobun hung on to the bitter end and won. Better yet, a Swift Belt dropped! Yay for Lucrezia! I think this was his 6th attempt to getting one.

Fortunately I had reraise up on Grym, and was able to start getting people back on their feet. While we were waiting for weakness to wear, I logged Grym out and logged Kiki in, charmed a Gazer from the first section of Sacrarium, and joined the group at the Mithra classroom. After we cleared the room, Lucrezia had enough hate to spawn Caithleann with his Fomor Codex. This time our fight went much much better, with no deaths. Having real pets probably helped a lot too, as both Lucrezia and I had been using funguar jugs on the first spawn. And again, a swift belt dropped! Yay for Kiki! That made it 1/2 for me. Not as lucky as some, but pretty darn lucky nevertheless. Now to figure out what else I'd need for a PLD/NIN haste build....

Since we still had 3 pop items on hand, and several of the helpers would also like a swift belt, we headed over to the Hume classroom, so Daden and Diasuke could pop Balor. Balor's RNG-MNK, and the only thing you really have to worry about with him is Eagle Eye Shot. As long as hate was either on a pet or a fully-shadowed Daden, it wasn't going to be an issue, and wasn't. Balor's a lot easier to kill than the Mithra. We did two rounds of clearing the area and spawning the NM, and were going to go for a third and final spawn, but we had several deaths when one of the Fomor Samurai used Grim Halo twice in a row. People were sleepy, so we called it a night. We'll probably head back soon to try for another bunch for other people.