Captain!

OK, so I've been neglecting my blog again... This time I'm blaming Etrian Odyssey on the Nintendo DS.

We've made really good progress on assaults, and Erock, Lucrezia and I got our Captain rank on December 22, while Anastasia and Yobun got it on December 29th. Goto still needs "Operation: Black Pearl", but we should have that wrapped up for him soon.

We focused on completing the First Lieutenant assaults, picking up ones people have missed on nights when we didn't have our group of 6 all present. After we finally won Belleraphon's Bliss, we went back and picked up the ones people were missing. Now that we're pretty much "done", I'd like to see us continue doing assaults, perhaps getting other BEBers to rank up, as well as get points for items people want. A Nyzul Isle static might be worth trying as well.

Lebros Supplies (Lebros Cavern): We'd really been dreading this, but it turned out to be not so bad. We did it with 5 of us, Lucrezia as THF, Yobun as NIN, Erock as RDM, Anastasia as BLM, and Tsakiki as PLD. Most of us subbed THF and had our fancy new Sprinters Shoes from the Wings of the Goddess missions. Lucrezia and Yobun both had enhanced movement speed from gear, and did a lot of aggro-linking of the crawlers, while Erock and Anastasia would resort to sleeping the crawlers. We all ran around feeding the soldiers, and won with a minute or two to spare. We did have two deaths, with both Lucrezia and Erock getting overwhelmed by crawlers, but overall, it certainly wasn't an assault to be dreaded as much as we had.

Siegemaster Assassination (Lebros Cavern): I'd missed out on this assault when our group had done it, since we had more than 6 people that night and I did assaults with TheUltimates instead. Anastasia informed me one Saturday afternoon that there was a pickup group shouting for that assault, so I joined in with them. Daden came along as well. For this assault, you have to kill a Troll general hidden in amongst the other Old Trolls. They respawn, so you have to keep track of which you've killed, or just get lucky and kill fast enough that you get the general. It was a very quick win for us, and another assault got checked off the list.

Egg Conservation (Lebros Cavern): For this assault, you have to protect a bunch of female apkallu from Qiqirn Egglers. There are male apkallu that fight them as well. We failed this on our first attempt, though when we did it a second time, it seemed so easy that it was hard to understand why we'd done so poorly on the first try.

Operation: Snake Eyes (Periqia): This one seemed a bit odd - you have to defeat 3 NM Lamiae to rescue 2 generals that they have kidnapped. This involves some sneaking around, some fighting, and quite a bit of time spent charmed. We managed to win on our first try, and haven't gone back. :-)

Operation: Black Pearl (Lebros Cavern): This assault reminds me a bit of Blitzkrieg, but with the added twist that you're protecting an NPC. The NPC is located in an area with four tunnels leading in. Hordes of monsters come swarming in to get the NPC, and your job is to keep them from touching her. It's pretty easy to lose if you get a bit overwhelmed by the mobs, but if you have the right combination of DD and healing, it's not so bad.

Searat Salvation (Ilrusi Atoll): This is another of the annoying "escort" type assaults, where you have to lead a bunch of easily-frightened Qiqirn divers to safety. Giant Orobons are scattered about the zone, ready to chase down the Qiqirns, making your job more difficult. On the plus side, it's short (15 minute time limit), and there is no fighting or chance of death involved. It still was annoying enough to not really want to do it again however.

Bloody Rondo (Leujaoam Sanctum): For our first First Lieutenant assault, we tackled Bloody Rondo, a fight with Count Dracula. We went melee-heavy our first round, and found his AOE drain made it too difficult, so we ended up with Lucrezia as NIN/WAR, me as PLD/NIN, Erock RDM/BLM, Anastasia and Yobun as BLM/RDM, and Goto as WHM/SMN. This worked out very well for us, though was pretty amusing when Luc and I got turned into bats a few times, not to mention the Cursed Dopplegangers of Kiki running around causing trouble.

The Susanno Shuffle (Mamool Ja Training Grounds): For this assault, you have to defeat Orochi, a Hydra. It took us 5 attempts to finally win, though the first attempt was really just a "let's see what this is like" attempt without Goto. I can't remember the different set-ups we were using for the first four attempts, but we finally managed to win with NIN/WAR, WAR/NIN, BRD/NIN, BLM/WHM, WHM/SMN and PLD/NIN. We were trying for a fragmentation skillchain with Burst II as the magic burst, since we couldn't really do a light chain easily with our set up, but the silly thing kept putting up either a physical or a magical shield, hampering our efforts to damage him. He has a pretty high regen, but we managed to get him whittled down, with only a death or two on our side.

Better Than One (Lebros Cavern): Here you face a Cerberus-type monster, Black Shuck, who summons 8 fire elementals just to make your life more interesting. It took us three attempts to win this one, using NIN/WAR, WAR/NIN, PLD/NIN, BRD/WHM, BLM/RDM, and WHM/SMN. On our first two attempts, we didn't handle the elementals very well. What worked for us was having me in the NE tunnel with Anastasia and Goto and helping out with the elementals until we got rid of them, then I joined Luc and Erock fighting Black Shuck. It was a really close call on this one, as he started getting meaner when he had low health, but a well-timed Benediction from Goto saved the day.

The Price is Right (Periqia): This really annoying assault took us 4 tries before we won. In this assault, you face King Goldemar, a Dvergr on a floating throne. He casts a lot of magic, has some really annoying AOE TP skills, and also has 5 floating weapons that he calls to assist him. For our first two attempts, we tried kiting him, with NIN WAR PUP PLD/NIN SMN and WHM, but that really didn't work well at all. So we decided to have Luc straight tank the King in the entrance, with Ana, Erock and I disengaging to fight the weapons as he summoned them. We got really close to winning on this third attempt, but close doesn't count. Out of tags, we resolved to win the following week. Things went fairly smoothly on our fourth attempt, though we did suffer a few deaths and had to have Lucrezia kite the King after all the weapons were dead so we could recover a bit. The bastard finally went down, but not until after a Benediction/Invincible kept us going. We rejoiced and said we'd avoid doing that assault ever again.

Bellerophon's Bliss (Ilrusi Atoll): For our final First Lieutenant assault, we're faced with a dice-rolling goblin and his "pet" Khimaira 14X. On our first attempt, we went as NIN PLD/WAR WAR BLM BRD WHM, and decided to kill the moblin first, so Luc kept Khim busy while we quickly dispatched the moblin, then all turned our attention to the giant kitty. His TP moves were really quite hard on us, and I was taking 200-300 damage from his normal hits, which was a huge drain on all of our MP. We went back for our second try with me PLD/NIN, and this time, we decided to leave the moblin alive, since Khim. only does his TP moves when the Moblin tells him too (and occassionally refuses to listen to the Moblin).

To open the fight, I flashed Khim to get the Moblin to link to me, then Lucrezia took over tanking Khim. while I fought Khim and tried to stay facing the moblin so I could shield block some of his attacks and keep "tanking" the moblin without actually doing anything to it. This approach worked very well for us until a big TP move took out Lucrezia and I had a hard time keeping my shadows up with both the Moblin and Khim. hitting me. We kept going for awhile, but a big move took me out as well, and we kind of fell apart at that point, since Luc was still weak.

We used the same approach on our third attempt, and won! This was the final unique assault for Erock, Lucrezia and I, so we quickly ran off to talk to Naja and were given our final rank of Captain. Then it was back to pick up some of the earlier assaults for Anastasia, Yobun, and Goto.

New title: Captain