The Investigation Continues

I'm still really enjoying our Nyzul Isle Investigation static. It's definitely the most fun I have in the game these days. The static has solidified, with Daden joining us as our sixth. He usually brings his SAM, with Yobun using DRG/RDM for climbing runs and BRD/WHM for boss runs. We've currently got Ana's disc up through floor 80, and mine up through floor 60. We've done a lot of farming on the 20th and 40th floors, but still need to get more gear for Daden and Yobun on those floors.

We've been doing pretty well on our drop rate on the bosses, at least comparing notes with other people. For boss fights we've actually won, our drops have been 9/10 on floor 20, 5/11 on floor 40, 2/2 on floor 60, and 1/1 on floor 80. We haven't had much luck with the ??? items from all the NMs we've encountered though, with only two that are the real items, and those two being somewhat useless - an Elemental Charm and a Malflame Ring.

Our plan of alternating climbing and farming on two discs isn't really working out so well token-wise, so it's likely we'll level a third disc to take care of farming on 20 and 40 at least. Last week, we had a set of really bad runs. It was our first attempts at floor 80, and we had a lot of really tough levels thrown at us - eliminate all Psycheflayers, eliminate all enemies with lots of NMs, charming frog leaders, and so on. So we ended up exiting on floor 78 twice, and made it to 80 twice. Both times we hit floor 80, we found Cerberus waiting for us. The first time we had less than 7 minutes, and had him down to a sliver when we timed out. We just couldn't get through his stoneskin fast enough. The second time, we had 10 minutes, but had the same end result, only with a couple of deaths this time.

So this week, we had Yobun come as SAM instead of BRD, and quickly made it up to the 80th floor. This time we faced the Hydra, and it was a pretty quick fight. Ana now has a Goliard Saio added to her collection of gear. We decided to spend our other 3 runs getting Kiki's disc higher, and had three really good runs, ending up with Khimaira on the 60th floor, and a set of Denali Wristbands for Lucrezia as our reward.

Things got pretty exciting on one of the climbing runs, a "kill all the Poroggo Gents" floors, with tons of undead to be slept and no BRD to sleep them. We got a bit overwhelmed, lost both Ana's BLM and Erock's RDM, and ended up destroying a gear we weren't supposed to and lost weaponskills as a result. We managed to complete the level with under a minute for someone to rush to the Rune of Transfer and get us out for the win. It was sure nice having 4 successful runs, with 2 boss drops in the mix, after last week's disappointments.

We're keeping up with Requiem of Sin before our Assaults, but haven't seen X's Knife yet. We did get a second scythe though, so my Mithra mannequin is hanging on to that for the day my DRK hits 72. /roflmao Since Daylight Savings Time went into effect, Anastasia's three hours behind those of us in the Eastern time zone (Ana's in Arizona, which doesn't do DST), and can't ditch out of work early enough to help out on the BC, so we recruited Daden to join us. That's been working out quite well, but one day I'd like to see Lucrezia get X's Knife from the treasure box.

As an aside, I finally capped my parrying skill on March 31, getting the final skill up against the Sin Hunters. I still can't believe it took nearly two years of tanking pretty much daily as a PLD75 to get that skill capped.