The Liberation of Temenos

It's been a some time since my last Limbus update, and it's a bit overdue now, since not only did we manage to finally wrest a heart from Proto-Omega (and tear off a foreleg while we were at it), we finally beat Proto-Ultima! Hurray! It wasn't pretty, but a win's a win, and it was much much better than our previous attempts. We opted for a "manaburn" strategy, and were very mage-heavy. Venn was the only non-caster in the group. Our team for the win was 2xPLD/NIN, NIN/DRK, 2xWHM, BRD, 3xRDM/DRK, 4xBLM, 3xSMN, BLU, and DRG.

The crucial Dissipation at 19% health didn't get stunned, but it didn't spell disaster for us as it usually does either. Having fewer people up close to Ultima helped enormously for the AOE attacks like Armor Buster, and we were really good about leaving the Citadel Buster target alone with Ultima. I did survive the one that hit me (lots of magic damage reduction gear), but the following attack for over 200hp knocked me out of the fray. I believe it was a DOT spell that ended up killing Ultima, but it was so exciting to finally see that evil biomechanical thing collapse to the ground. We ended up with two legs, and sadly the treasure assignment caused some drama, but hopefully we'll have more wins soon, and more mages with bits of Nashira gear.

Our chip farming runs are generally pretty mundane these days. Our attendance is somewhat variable, so some nights we'll do one zone with 16-18 people, romping through quickly, other nights we'll scarcely have enough for two successful runs, so often we will have one team of 6 sent off just for coin farming. We try to mix things up between Apollyon and Temenos, but whichever we do, someone complains about not doing the other. There's no pleasing some people!

Once in awhile, we have a particularly exciting farming run, like one recent SW Apollyon (fomor, treants, mimics, elementals). We linked nearly all of the 10 fomor on the first pull, and we wiped. Anrita had DC'd, but I'm pretty sure we still would have wiped on that. We killed just the ones we needed, took the time chest and ran up to the next floor. On the second floor, we killed just the NM treant to open the vortex, then ran up again. We had to fight 4 mimics before getting the time chest (but also managed to get items and restore chests). I think we had under 3 minutes to go when I found the time chest. We dashed up to the elementals, and had time to kill a total of 8 of them before exiting. We ended up with only 18 coins, but at least we'd got the chip.

The most fun I've had recently on a coin farming run was with a 6-man group in NW Apollyon. We had Erock as WAR/THF, Fliggity's BLM, Serenity's BLU/DNC, Anrita's WHM, Zorris' BRD, and my PLD. We killed all of the normal mobs in the zone, except for one of the wyverns, and the bosses from the first floor. We weren't careful enough around Faffy-lite, and kind of wiped, but we had plenty of time and recovered and headed up to get the baby behemoths as well. We ended up with 40 coins, which helped bulk up the coins from the Temenos chip upgrade run the other group had done. I don't think we could have beat Kaiser Behemoth with our group, but we sure had a blast with our coin farming.

In mid-January, we had an absolutely terrible Proto-Omega run, which reminded me way too much of our first attempt, but somehow we managed to win despite ourselves. We ended up with pants and boots on that run. Our next run, on Valentine's Day, was far superior. Not only was it our best performance yet (with one death - me, probably because I let myself get a bit distracted by some /tells), but we finally had the heart drop, which went to Luc for the Homam Corazza, and the second foreleg we've seen. I lotted a disappointing 282, but Toshimitsu lotted an even more disappointing 88, and I finally have my Homam Manopolas! Hurray!

Some time last month, I stockpiled enough Ancient Beastcoins for my final purchase from Sagheera, a Loquacious Earring. It seems pretty expensive for something I seem to only use for casting Utsusemi Ichi, but I'm sure I'll find more uses for it. It was nice to have in an exp party that I was in as a PLD/WHM main healer... I'll be selling my coins from here on out, which should help cover the costs of the Cosmo-Cleanse.

New Title: Temenos Liberator