Quests: Shadows of the Departed

After completing the Zilart Missions and The Storms of Fate, the next step towards Apocalypse Nigh is the quest Shadows of the Departed. You're asked to investigate three locations, one on the fourth floor in the three main Promyvions. I'd flagged this quest last January, after completing the Storms of Fate with Splinte's gods/hnm linkshell, Eminence, but never managed to get a group to do it. One afternoon during my vacation, Diasuke asked if anyone needed to do that, and I jumped up and down and said "Me! Me! Pick me!".

We couldn't drum up any volunteers for help, nor did we wish to shout in Whitegate, so we decided we were crazy enough to try to duo it. We geared up as a SMN/WHM (Diasuke) and BLU/NIN (me), and headed off to the Dem crag to see how we would do. At this point, Erock said he would come and help us, but would need a bit of time to get his level 30 WAR gear. We decided to give it a whirl anyway, and we actually did pretty repectably, but probably would have been overwhelmed by the strays with just the two of us, so we waited for Erock to arrive. The three of us had no troubles making it to the 4th floor, and Diasuke and I got our first sliver. We headed into the Spire, and Dia teleported us to the Mea Crag. Itera met up with us there as a MNK/WHM, and made things even easier.

I think they made the memory receptacles a lot easier in a recent update, and changed the mob placement as well, since it was really pretty easy for us to completely avoid aggro without excessive waiting for mobs to change position. I did get caught by an IT Craver on one of the upper floors of Mea, and that was really a close call for us, but we survived (no MP and Erock in the red, but still alive). And when we had to go through the fences on the second floor of Holla, there was an unavoidable wanderer as always, but it was no match for us. We had our share of fake receptacles as well, but overall it was a pretty painless process to get all three slivers.

Diasuke and I headed to Jeuno to turn in our slivers and complete the quest. The following morning, I went back again to start Apocalypse Nigh, and headed to the Empyreal Paradox to enter the battle to get the cutscene as well. Now I just need to find 5 people to do the fight with me, and an Ethereal Earring will be mine!