Breaking Chains

I've been eager to complete the Apocalypse Nigh quest since well before completing the Zilart and CoP missions and fighting Bahamut last January, but never had an opportunity until this week. The screenshot here is from when I visited the BC after completing the Shadows of the Departed quest in July, and I went to the BC for the cutscene.

Last night, Teluric tried to gather together a group from TheUltimates for a run on Tuesday night, but it was just him, Tye, and I who showed up, so we parked in Whitegate, and Teluric shouted to get people to join us. It took a couple of hours, but we finally had a full group, with Chef, Doomed, and Lustt (who's actually in TU too) joining us.

We headed to the Empyreal Paradox, as a party of SMN, WHM, PLD, DRK, BLU, and NIN, planning to have the NIN kite Kam'lanaut while we took care of the kid. We miscalculated a bit, and ended up wiping before finishing off the kid. Lessons learned: echo drops are essential, Kam'lanaut's -ga spells are really annoying, and Kam'lanaut's hate reset makes kiting a bit of a challenge.

After laying in a bigger supply of echo drops, we headed in for round two. This seemed to go even less well than the first, which surprised me. I headed back to the Tavnazian Safehold before the third run to pick up my new Lamia Mantle +1 and Lamia Kaman that I had Qiyuk buy for me earlier in the evening for TNU's upcoming Proto-Ultima fight, hoping it might help reduce the damage I was taking from Kam'lanaut's spells.

As often seems the case for FFXI battles, the third time was the charm. Lustt switched to MNK, while Chef switched to NIN for this round. She pretty much demolished the kid, even with him warping away in the middle of her Hundred Fists. He didn't go far, so only a few seconds were wasted. We ended up wiping on Kam'lanaut, with him at 50%, but managed to mostly reraise and recover before taking him on again. Chef was too close to him to accept his raise, so he waited until we engaged before getting on his feet. It was a rough fight, with some of us dying twice just from Kam'lanaut. He was so close to death when I died, leaving just Teluric with Carbuncle, and Tye still on their feet. I reraised and got another good hit in, pulling hate off of Carbuncle and taking a 1100 point Light Blade to the face. Carbuncle then finished him off, and we had won! Hurray for Carbuncle! Hurray for us! I ended up losing 4000 exp over the course of our three fights, but it was oh so worth it.

After the fight, I headed to Jeuno to tell Aldo what had happened, and then traveled to Norg, where I logged out for the night. After logging back in this evening, I talked to Gilgamesh, and was given my choice of earrings. As a career Paladin, there seems to be no option other than the Ethereal Earring. This gives me some HP, attack, evasion, plus a bit of MP for all the damage I take. I wish it also reduced damage, but I'll take the free MP.

New title: Breaker of the Chains