Astonishing Wyrms

Rather than clear my backlog on all the exciting things I've done with Eminence, I'm skipping ahead to the most recent adventures. I intend to go back and cover what I've missed, but I'm too excited about the lastest to let it sit. Thanks to Alibeemac for her wonderful screenshots. They sure put my PS2 ones to shame!

The second Bahamut fight, as the BCNM The Wyrmking Descends, takes a bit of work to get to the point where you can do it. Everyone needs to have completed the Chains of Promathia missions, won the first Bahamut fight (The Storms of Fate), and then gathered Cloud Evokers, which are a rare drop from various ENMs. The Cloud Evokers are used to fight the BCNM Ouryu Cometh, where you face Ouryu. From winning this fight, you get a Monarch Orb, which allows a group to enter The Wyrmking Descends. I originally did Storms of Fate as a tag-along with Eminence back in January '07, so I had that part out of the way.

Eminence hadn't faced Bahamut V2 for quite awhile, and we finally had enough Cloud Evokers to plan the runs. For our Thursday event on August 21st, we had 3 Ouryu battles lined up. We headed out to the proper spot in Riverne Site #A-01 with more than an alliance, planning to rotate people in so we all got to fight at least one of the BCs. Naramaska wanted the PLDs to try with /RDM subbed, so most of us did that. It works so well with the Jailer of Love, I was curious to see how it worked with Ouryu. The basic strategy we were following was to sleep Ouryu when he was on the ground, and nuke him while he was in the air.

I sat out the first fight, but co-tanked the second with Sanjiyan's PLD/NIN. Kachiko was in the tank party with her relic horn, and the fight went really great. I had endless mp, despite spamming flash, bind, blind, gravity, dispel, and my cure-kit, and it was really a lot of fun. Sanjiyan couldn't keep up hate-wise without the extra spells, but did what she could to keep Ouryu under control along with me.

For the third fight, Tanta and I were co-tanks, both of us as PLD/RDM. Kachiko had to leave, so we just had a "normal" bard. The fight was so very different from the first. I had a lot of MP issues, getting devotion from Alibeemac twice, in addition to my chivalry. Hate was a lot looser. Ouryu also seemed to use more of his most annoying moves, making it that much more of a struggle. We still won, but I don't think we'll be using PLD/RDM on it again, at least not on both tanks.

With three Monarch Orbs available, we had The Wyrmking Descends on the schedule this past Saturday. A lot of shells melee-zerg this fight now, but we needed to use an army of black mages. Again, we had more than a full alliance available, so we rotated people in for the different runs.

Tanta went over strategy with the PLDs, and stressed that this is the hardest fight to tank in the game, since the main tank is solo on Bahamut, and doesn't have the safety of a co-tank. We went as PLD/NIN, with two per fight: one on Bahamut, one waiting for the wyrms he summons, as well as being ready to step in if the main tank was killed. For the first fight, Tanta was main tank, and I was on summons duty. I helped cure Tanta while waiting for the other wyrms to appear, then would flash the wyrm and bring it near the BLMs for them to quickly get rid of it. On our second summons, we got Vrtra, and he charmga'd all of the BLMs when he was at about 5%. They quickly killed me and ran around killing everyone else. It was a wipe, a wasted orb, and a sad loss.

For the second fight, I was main tank, with Infi on summons duty. I felt I did horribly on the fight. It started out poorly, with me taking so much damage trying to get Bahamut into position that Muffins pulled hate keeping me alive.

Over the course of the fight, I used up too much mp for healing and didn't have much left for hate. I always seemed to get my shadows wiped just before being terrorized, wasting the support crews' mp healing me. I had a hard time keeping Bahamut lined up properly as well, partially because I was having camera issues with my character being right up against a small wall to reduce knockbacks. Overall, it was a frustrating fight, but fortunately we won, with only 5 minutes to spare. And I learned a lot from it and hope to do better, given the chance. We won a Bahamut's Mask, which went to a happy Ragnorok.

On the third fight, Infi main tanked, with Karupt on summons duty. I sat outside the unstable displacment, going over my problems with Bahamut with Tanta, and got some good advice. As long as I can learn how to improve my tanking, having imperfect fights isn't bad. The third fight was also a win, and I was very surprised to see Ali say "kiki and karupt lot the mask". I really didn't expect to be able to obtain a Bahamut's Mask so soon. I was invited to the alliance, and out-lotted Karupt, winning one of my "dream" items for my little Tarudin.

I really thought I was further down the list for this, but with Solarus on a bit of a break from the game due to real-life circumstances, a couple other PLDs not there for the event, and Infi feeling the PLDs without an Aegishjalmr should get it first, I got really lucky. Karupt and I were within 10 points of each other in DKP - he's been with Eminence for years, but hasn't played a lot recently, and has spent a bunch of points in the past, so I actually had a few more than him.

I love my new mask! I still can't believe it's mine.



New titles: Ouryu Overwhelmer, Wyrm Astonisher

Nyzul Isle Musings

Just as for everything else, it's been quite awhile since I've posted about our Nyzul Isle static's progress. Things seem to be winding down a bit, as we've got nearly all of the armor that people were interested in, but we're still missing desired weapons, and at least Erock would like to get a runic key (he hasn't raised a disc yet). And I need at least 129,000 tokens for my book for my Burtgang :-).

My last Nyzul update covered our disastrous first run on Floor 100, where Anastasia's disc got wiped. Since then, we've leveled my disc from level 61 to Floor 100, done another 9 Floor 100 bosses, raised Daden's disc to 96, and done lots and lots of farming on various levels. We've been doing quite well on our runs, with occasional bad luck giving us some really tough floor combinations, like Psycheflayer families, five lamps in the right order and huge kill-all floors. Floor 100 hasn't been generous to us, and so far, we only have had 3 hats in 11 runs, but they were the 3 Askar Zucchettos that people really wanted the most, so that was good at least.

Other than the hats, we've been having really decent luck on our drops, and we haven't yet had to toss something no one wanted while trying to get a particular desired piece. Our Floor 60 luck has been phenomenal - we've got 9 drops in 9 kills, and they were all the ones we wanted. Recently, I completed my Askar set, getting the Askar Manopolas on our 4th level 60 run of the night. Two weeks earlier, we had 3 level 80 runs for body pieces, and got Goliard for Erock, and Askar for Yobun and I.

Overall, we have a 66% drop rate on boss kills, ranging from 30% on hats to 100% on hands. We've won 31 pieces total out of 47 kills. Of those 31 pieces, 16 were Askar, 9 Goliard, and 6 Denali.

Anastasia has leveled SCH to 75, and has been coming on that instead of BLM. This has been working out quite well for us, especially on the boss floors. At times we've missed her Sleepga II and Stun, but the benefits of SCH outweigh the benefits of BLM for us. The rest of us pretty much stick to RDM THF PLD SAM and SAM, though Daden has been coming on his WAR once in awhile instead of SAM. I just don't understand why the general opinion of PLD in Nyzul is bad. It works very well for us.

I still really enjoy Nyzul. We've got a really good team that works well together, and the randomness of the floors keeps it different enough to not feel like you're doing exactly the same thing every time, with the same mobs in the same spots over and over again, like Limbus and Dynamis.

We also finally got Lucrezia her X's Knife from Requiem of Sin, on something like our 30th attempt. To replace that pre-Nyzul activity, we've started in on the Ashu Talif quests. We did the first, Scouting the Ashu Talif, two weeks ago, and though it was a bit messy, we won. Last week we moved on the Royal Painter Escort, and were surprised at how easy it was. The goal for this is to repeat the third quest, Targeting the Captain, and hopefully we'll get some of those Barbarossa's Zerehs for people who want them. So far so good, as we won a pair on our first run last night. Anastasia has some very nice new shorts for her PUP!