Soloing the Primes

A couple of months ago, I decided I wanted to try soloing the 6 Prime Avatars (the Celestial Avatars) in the "Trial by (element)" quests. Lots of people have done this, but I just wanted to see how I'd fare. I was mostly worried about Garuda and Leviathan, since they can heal themselves, so I thought I'd start out with Titan.

However, I mentioned this in BEB one evening, and Yobun needed Shiva, so my first "solo" ended up being a duo. Yobun didn't really do anything, though. In fact, he sat down to watch after casting one (resisted) spell. This was a good way for me to try out soloing, with a SCH standing by in case it didn't go so well... I did go back a few weeks later for a true Shiva solo, just to keep it consistent with the others.

One the things this exercise reinforced was just how much better the Paladin job is now than it was back in the day. Yobun had tried soloing avatars years ago on his PLD, but had either timed out or been blasted by a two-hour. These days, with the changes to Rampart, Shield Mastery, Sentinel, and new things like Atonement and Reprisal, Paladin really has come into its own. Not to mention there's a lot of really nice gear available now that wasn't around back then.

The fights took from just under 8 minutes (Shiva) to nearly 13 minutes (Leviathan), so they weren't slam dunks by any means, but for most of the fights I never felt like I was in any danger of dying or timing out either. Ramuh proved to put up the biggest fight of the 6, mostly because of his en-stun effect.

I went to each fight as PLD/RDM, for the bar spells as well as innate magic defense bonus. For gear, I wore a hybrid magic reduction set with accuracy where appropriate. Valhalla Helm, Avalon Breastplate, Iron Ram hands and legs, Askar feet, Joyeuse, Ice Shield. I used Parade Gorget to help with MP recovery.

I cast Protect IV, Shell III, and Stoneskin and then rested to full MP before entering the arena. Once inside, I cast Phalanx, and the appropriate bar- and en- spells, then ran up to face the avatar. I didn't recast Stoneskin after it was broken, but in at least one fight, it lasted until the avatar was nearly half-dead. The other buffs I'd reapply when they wore, and would cure myself as needed. I saved Rampart for the Primes' two-hour abilities, which drastically reduced their power:

I would use Atonement whenever I had the TP. I think for Ramuh I did need to use Chivalry, but I didn't run out of MP on any of the other fights. It was a fun "experiment", and I even made 50k gil out of it, and got a Water Belt for my fire kit too!

Orastery Woes

After finally getting Ground Strike, the quested weaponskill for great sword, in March, I've been working on raising my club skill to 230 so that I could pick up the quest for Black Halo, the quested club weaponskill. I used some of my Saturday afternoons and Tuesday evenings for this, which meant I neglected my Campaign duties, but with all the scheduled events I have, I don't have much time for all the other things I'd like to do, so I have to pick and choose.

I'd already had it around 168 from messing around with it over the years, so I started out with the handy Windurst Walls entrance to Toraimorai Canal. As PLD/RDM with phalanx and regen on, I could walk away from the game and leave Kiki fighting Impish Bats without me paying attention. One really nice thing about leveling club is that I still have my shield on, and shield skill really helps Paladins an awful lot.

The next skillup spot was the Robber Crabs on the lower level of the Boyahda Tree. These are still easy enough for phalanx/regen/not-really-paying-attention fighting, and have the very nice side benefit of dropping coffer keys. Every half hour or so, I could take a little break and run around looking for treasure coffers, netting 10-13k gil from each. :-)

After gettting club skill to around 200, I had to move up to the DC-T Steelshells on the top level, since my skill level was getting too high to get reasonable skillups on the Robber Crabs. It was no longer the carefree task it had been on easy mobs, especially when I had a Tough Steelshell to smack. In order to conserve crabs, I would fight the one at the zone to the Cloister of Storms, and I would zone when I had it down to a sliver of health. That way it would despawn when I zoned, and a replacement would repop within a minute. If I had killed it, it would be 16 minutes for the next spawn, and I would have to go find another crab to fight. If there are other groups working off latents, skilling up, or Beastmasters leveling, the Steelshells can get pretty scarce at times.

Depending on the level of the crabs, I'd either wear my DD gear or my "turtle" gear, and I'd keep Phalanx and Stoneskin up. Stoneskin would usually get used up about the time Flash was up, so it was relatively easy to get Stoneskin back up with the help of Flash. On Tough crabs, I'd usually end up using Chivarly in the middle of the fight to recover 400-465 MP, but it still was pretty easy fighting these.

One evening, a Mithra WAR/NIN when flying past me into the Cloister, with an angry Steelshell hot on her tail. She came back out just after her attacker despawns, and knelt to heal. I tossed a Cure IV on her as I was working on my own crab, and she asked to team up. I hesitated momentarily, since I don't like to spend my skillup time healing other people, but since she was working on club skill herself, it seemed likely I could hold hate, so I teamed up with her.

Turned out she was less than 1 point to cap on club, then switched to her great sword. She also neglected to mention that she'd wanted to work on parrying skillups as well, so instead of just having someone lightly rapping on "my" crab with a club, not interfering with the rythym that works so well for me soloing, I now had to deal with someone using provoke to pull hate off of me, along with berserked greatsword weaponskills. She didn't keep her shadows up either, and took so very much more damage than I did with phalanx up. So my last hour of "skillups" netted me 0.1 skillup and I spent most of my time curing her and resting for MP. She didn't even pull either. Nothing like being treated as though I was someone's personal Soothing Healer NPC... It was a good reminder of why I prefer solo skillups - or at least self-sufficient skillup partners.

On May 5th, I finally hit 230 in skill, and headed back to Windurst to pick up the Orastery Woes quest and get my Club of Trials from Kuroido-Moido. I figured it was best for me to try to fight things that would give me club skillups (PLDs have an A- skill in club, which caps at 269), and since I needed an 108-Knot Quipu from DC Yagudos in Sauromogue Champaign [S] (for the quest, Knot Quite There), I decided to give that a try. It took me a couple of sessions, but I finally got the drop, and had some skillups and plenty of weaponskills in the meantime. The BLM Yagudos there are a bit deadly, but there's a handy Pixie patrolling the area, which helped a lot when I was fighting those.

Since the Steelshells are so much easier to solo, I finished off both my trial club's latent and capped my club skill over another three days in the Boyahda Tree. I even had Balu-Falu join me for a bit. The Haste was certainly handy, and he needs to get some exp once in awhile. I teamed up briefly with a NIN/DNC who had 4 levels to go on getting her Dagger skill to 230 to pick up the quest for Evisceration. She and I were a compatible duo, and both benefited from the other's abilities, so teaming up isn't always a bad thing...

I finished my trial weapon before I capped club skill, which surprised me. I also thought I was keeping good track of the points, but I was off by about 30. Maybe my skillchains with Balu-Falu counted. I headed back to Windurst, and turned in my Club of Trials, and asked the linkshell for help with the WSNM - Eldhrimnir, a magic pot in Ro'Maeve.

Serenity, Ranzz and Erock offered to help me, so we met up in the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, Serenity as SMN/WHM, Ranzz as RDM/WHM, Erock as WAR/NIN, and me as PLD/WAR. We made our way to the SE corner of Ro'Maeve, and killed an Apocalyptic Weapon that was near the spawn point for Eldhrimnir. I ran over and touched the ??? spot, and the pot spawned and I ran back to the group. We killed it fairly quickly, though we did aggro a Cursed Puppet in the process. While the others killed that, I ran back to check the ??? spot and obtained the Annals of Truth for Kuroido-Moido.

I hurried back to Windurst to complete the quest, and thanks to my helpers, I can now use Black Halo. It seems to be quite powerful, and as with all of the quested weaponskills, it has a more interesting animation than the "normal" ones. Kiki does a cute little spin as she gets in her extra hits with the club. I'm still not sure how much I'm really going to be using it, but I like having the ability there for when it makes sense to use it.

Ground Strike!

I decided that I needed to make a concerted effort to break the latent on my (Great) Sword of Trials, if for no other reason than to free up the inventory space, since seriously, when do I actually use Great Sword? But my skill level is capped, and the quest (Inheritance) was open, so it really must be done.

For quested weaponskills, you are given a trial weapon of the type for the specific skill, and you need to perform weaponskills on mobs that are Easy Prey or higher. The mobs in Besieged count for this as well. You need to get 300 points to break the latent, and get 1 point for solo weaponskills and 2 to 5 for opening or closing various levels of skillchains.

I picked up the quest in November, which was a bit more recent than I remembered, but it was the week before the expansion came out, and I've been spending all of my spare time in campaign battles. Since you can't break latents in campaign, I wasn't getting very far on the task. I'd done a few random Besiegeds, but at the rate I was going, I wouldn't be done for a few years. Since I hate bugging people to help me with stuff like this, I geared up my PLD/RDM and took Balu-Falu to The Boyhada Tree. My trusty NPC kept me hasted, and we killed dozens of Robber Crabs, but I quickly realized I really didn't need his help at all. With Phalanx up, the Robber Crabs were frequently hitting me for 0, and I never came close to running out of MP.

After Balu-Falu called it a day, I decided to head up to the upper level and see if I could get any parrying skillups from the Even Match/Tough Steel Shells up there. I'm between 0.8 and 1.0 points off my parrying skill cap, and I'd love to finally have that done. I switched to sword and shield, used my Parrying Torque and Boxer's Mantle to enhance my parrying skill, put on my most defensive gear, and pulled a Tough crab to the Cloister of Storms zone for a quick escape if things got bad. I was actually surprised at how easily I handled the Tough. I was able to get Stoneskin up reliable with flash, and with Phalanx and shield blocks, I avoided a lot of damage. I did use Chivalry during the fight and had to rest for mp before pulling the next crab, but still it was a bit surprising to me. Alas, despite frequent parrying, I got no skillups on several crabs, and I headed back down to the Robber Crabs to work on my trial greatsword a bit more before heading home.

A couple days later, I headed back to the Tree to see if I could finish the latent, since it had to be close at that point. Sure enough, after two or three crabs, the latent was gone, and I was finished! Hurray! I headed upstairs to try for parrying again, but after two crabs and no skillups, I decided I'd try Pucks in the Den of Rancor. This was actually much more exciting than the crabs, since I couldn't keep stoneskin up at all, and by the time my fights with Toughs that yielded 180 exp points, I had no mp, my HP was below 400, and I was poisoned to boot. I parried a lot more with them as well, but still no skillups. After 3 Pucks, I decided it wasn't worth the effort, and I'll get my capped parrying some day in Limbus, Dynamis, Nyzul Isle, or Salvage. :-)

I took my trial greatsword back to Gumbah in Bastok, and he told me to head to West Altepa to obtain the Annals of Truth to prove my worth, so later that afternoon, I asked ClanBEB if anyone could help me with the WSNM for Ground Strike. Itera, Demin, and Wendell (yes! Wendell! he's back! Sort of...) all volunteered, and we met up in West Altepa. After killing the local goblins for TP, I popped the NM Tiger Maharaja. It was an "easy" fight, though both Itera and Demin used Hundred Fists at some point, and both Wendell and I were a bit low on MP when it was over. Hurray! Thanks guys! Allia had suggested that she and I could duo it as RDM/WHM and PLD/NIN, but that probably would have taken quite a bit longer.

I ran back to Bastok to give Gumbah the Annals of Truth, and he rewarded me with the knowledge of Ground Strike. I played around with it a bit in Campaign, which was fun, but as I mentioned, I'm not sure how much use it will get. In the meantime, I'll be using my Subduer when I get the chance, and one day, its latent will be broken as well.

I guess club should be the next weapon I work on capping. Again, the uses for this are a bit limited, but there are situations where something like the Templar's Mace and its increased Cure potency might make sense (main healing as a melee PLD/WHM perhaps?).

First Lieutenant Kiki

Last Monday night's assaults were more than enough to get me the points I needed for my final promotion quest. Since we were all Sergeant or better, I got to do three that were new for me. We started out with Supplies Recovery in Leujaoam Sanctum, where we had to get more items from Imps than two of the Immortals. The NPCs kind of cheat, since they run faster than we can, and can jump up ledges that we cannot, but we still managed to get more of the supplies than they did, so it was a win.

Then we played matchmakers for a bunch of Apkallus in Lebros Cavern (Apkallu Breeeding). This was kind of cute, and really pretty easy - just have to avoid a few bombs. You have to talk to the males (they're larger) and lead them to the appropriate female. They're matched up by the noises they make, a cipher that spells out a simple word, and the females will have a word that "matches", like "cod" and "fish", and "orange" and "apple". It's also a 15 minute one, so I could see this being handy for point spamming for Lebros.

The third new assault was Stop the Bloodshed, in Periqia. The goal here is to kill at least 35 chigoes that are spread throughout the area, while trying to avoid (haha) the Lamia "Chigoe Breeders". I didn't much like this one, but it was another win, and I'm now at 25/51 of the assaults I need to reach Captain.

We did a final Troll Fugitives so we didn't waste the 5-pointers for Erock and Lucrezia, plus we all like the experience points we get from that one.

The next evening I did the Promotion: First Lieutenant quest, which was basically three sets of logic puzzles. First I had to use the Force, err, my sixth sense to pick out 3-5 disguised Qiqirn, then prove my ability to learn some simply ciphers, and finally, face several NPCs for a modified version of Rock/Scissors/Paper. None of this was too difficult, especially with the walkthrough on FFXIclopedia, but it did take a bit of time. It might not have been so bad, but I got a black screen of doom on my PS2 just as I'd completed the first phase and was being "zoned" out of the cutscene. The game didn't register that I'd done that part, so I had to repeat it.

I've been enjoying the assaults quite a bit, and have been happy that we've been able to maintain interest and keep people doing them on Monday nights. I've been building up quite a lot of points in each of the zones, since I haven't felt the Amir armor is worth getting for my PLD, and I don't have any other jobs high enough for the sets. Since I'm getting more than the 1500 I need each week for Salvage, it will just keep piling up.

New title: First Lieutenant

Seem So Oddly Familiar....

Last May, I reset my Paladin Artifact armor quests, after upgrading my Gallant Leggings and then my Gallant Breeches. Since I lost the original pieces in the upgrade process (they repair your originals with the materials you provide), I no longer had my full AF set, which is handy to have for level capped events. Plus it's nice to be able to store the set when I'm not using it. Any relief on inventory is welcome!

The first step in the reset process was to drop my Honor Sword, and then head to Lower Jeuno to pay Vingijard 10,000 gil to make me forget everything I had done for the original quest. After that, I took the airship to San d'Oria to restart the quests.

For Sharpening the Sword, I first talked to young Ailbeche in Northern San d'Oria. He remembered me as the person who'd returned his fishing rod, and needed some help sharpening his father's sword. I set out in search of a special sharpening stone in Ordelles Caves, where I had to fight Polevik, an Earth Elemental. I brought the stone back to the lad, and he was so pleased, he gave me his father's sword.

I chatted with him some more (picking up A Boy's Dream), and he lamented that his "friends" were going fishing, but he needed some giant shell bugs to use as bait. So I headed to Crawler's Nest to kill the Dreadbug 3 times over the course of a couple of hours, getting 4 giant shell bugs in the process. Ailbeche decided I should go catch the monster fish myself instead of him, so later that day, Thom (who also was re-doing the quest) and I headed to Castle Oztroja to fish up the monster fish. It was certainly easier than when I first did it as a level 50 PLD. Thom and I took our fish back to Ailbeche, and he recommended that we take them to Zaldon in Selbina. Zaldon gutted our fish for us, and we received a pair of yucky old knight's boots that Zaldon found inside. Since this is a key item, I decided to wait until I got the coffer I needed to replace my pants before I would head to Prince Trion to get my new boots, unless I needed them beforehand.

At some point, I talked to Guslam in Upper Jeuno, to restart Borghertz's Stalwart Hands quest to get my Gallant Gauntlets, and to make the treasure coffer pieces available. I didn't pursue things further until mid-August, when Meshe needed a Tavnazian Bell to replace one of his WHM AF pieces. Meshe, Erock, Anrita and I fought the mobs in the Eldieme Necropolis for a short while, ending up with Meshe's Bell and 4 coffer keys rather quickly. The next morning, I returned to Eldieme, and eventually found my coffer in the Hume Bones area. I returned to Guslam with the Old Gauntlets I had found, and then talked to the ghost of Borghertz in Port Jeuno. He needed an old flame to repair them for me, so I headed off to Castle Zvahl Bailey to fight Dark Spark. As a PLD75/RDM37, the fight was even easier than I thought it would be. Once again, I didn't complete the quest, to avoid having the new piece of AF until I was ready to store the complete set. At this point however, I dropped my original pair of Gallant Gauntlets, figuring if I needed them, I could pick up the new ones.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to finish up my re-questing. I was getting close to having what I needed to upgrade my Gallant Surcoat, and I figured it would be nice to get my AF set complete again and put it back into storage. I headed to Beadeaux with my trusty NPC Balu-Falu (set as Soothing Healer). I was hoping to get some Great Sword skillups while I was hunting for keys, but I hit 217 on the first Quadav, and didn't get another skillup. It didn't take me long to get a coffer key, probably 10 Quadavs. I discovered one drawback of having Balu-Falu helping me - when I used the Mute to get past an Afflictor without getting cursed, he immediately used Silena on me. However the coffer was next to the first Afflictor, with two Quadavs guarding it. Balu-Falu and I took care of the Quadavs, and I opened the coffer to get my shiny replacement breeches.

I walked to Jeuno to get my Gauntlets from Borghertz, then took the airship to San d'Oria to get my Leggings from Prince Trion, then I put the entire set into storage with the NPC in San d'Oria. Hurray! At that point, I had just Under Oath left to do. If I ever open a coffer in Garlaige Citadel as my PLD, I'll get another Coronet, but I'll just leave that be. I started the quest in San d'Oria before heading off to Dynamis.

The next day, I headed to Castle Zvahl with Balu-Falu to fight the coffer demons and eyes. I was actually surprised how easily I could solo them, as they always seemed so much tougher than the normal beastment coffer level mobs. The BLM ones were the hardest, but even when I had a BLM and a SAM on me at the same time, I wasn't in any danger. It took me two or three hours to get my key, and the coffer was in the next Demon room that I checked. I headed to San d'Oria with the old paintbrush I'd found in the coffer, and continued with the quest.

Last Friday, I recruited some help after Salvage, and Venn, Meshe, Albany, Erock, and Serenity came to Davoi with me to kill the two Orc NMs I needed dead in order to get a well weight. The fight was over quickly, and we headed over to the old monastery and killed the NM there for Serenity's Windurst Mission 8-2.

I sent the materials for a Gold Brocade to Venn's clothcraft mule, and on Sunday morning, I picked up my second Gallant Surcoat (with the original safely in storage with the NPC), and took it to Sagheera along with the Gold Brocade, a White Rivet and Snowy Cermet from Limbus, and 30 Ancient Beastcoins. It seems really odd to be upgrading the replacement, but as far as the game is concerned, I didn't have my original on me, so it worked. When I came back later for Limbus, Sagheera had my Gallant Surcoat +1 ready for me. I still wonder if this was worthwhile, but it has +6 VIT, so would be really good for tanking big things that I have to fight PLD/WAR and need to care about how high my VIT is. My Valor Surcoat has more enmity, a bit more HP, but DEX instead of VIT (plus the nifty damage->mp while using cover), and will remain my default body piece. But I had the items, and it's definitely a nice piece to have around.

I think that's it for PLD AF upgrades though. There's no point in upgrading the gloves (and I don't want to do my PLD AF a third time), and the coronet seems a bit of a waste. I suppose I should macro it in for cover, but I can leave that decision to some other time. Now we have more PLDs in Limbus, I won't be getting the white rivets and snowy cermets all to myself any more. They'll get much more use out of Gallant Leggings +1 than I ever would from a Gallant Coronet +1!

Not so new title: Paragon of Paladin Excellence

Second Lieutenant Kiki

We still have our regular Monday evening assaults going, which has been really a lot of fun. Every once in awhile we team up with the TU assault group when both of us are a bit short, and that works out pretty well too. As people have been gaining in the ranks, we've been doing more and more of the higher leveled ones, especially when we can get people a new rank every week by doing 5 assaults that are new to them. I still haven't done any ranked Sergeant or higher, and missed out on a few of the Corporal ones recently, when I was with the TU group and the BEB group did 4 of the Corporals.

I'd gotten enough points to get the promotion quest for Second Lieutenant, and did that a few weeks ago. It was easy, but it was "expensive", since I had to keep giving Naja's bitch coins for my training sessions. I passed with flying colors and opened up another set of 5 assaults.

The new-to-me ones I've done since the last time I wrote about my assault progress are Demolition Duty, Building Bridges, and Counting Sheep. For Demolition Duty, you have to escort an automaton around to several blocked gateways, which he will clear, but a crab will spawn and try to kill the automaton. There are also imps running around that will aggro the team, but overall, it seemed fairly easy. Building Bridge we had tried before and timed out, but my second attempt was a success. Counting Sheep was an easy win, but I think full points would require a lot of luck. For that one, you have to dig up ore to get coins from a Qiqirn NPC, which you then use to pay another Qiqirn NPC to lead a Sheep to safety.

We gave the SP level Escort Professor Chanoix assault a couple of tries this week, but failed on both. For this, you have to escort an NPC that you have no control over, through a zone with skeletons and ghosts. We tried using sneak to avoid aggro ourselves, but that didn't completely work, and we tried having Carbuncle out to aggro all the mobs, but since the professor has an unpredictable route, that didn't work so well either. If we could manage to stay snuck and just cure-bomb the professor, we might be able to do it, but it still seems pretty tricky.

Last week, we decided to give Nyzul Isle Investigation a shot. I was the only one in the group of 6 who'd done it before, so I was nominated leader and keeper of progress. Since I had 1302 tokens from previous attempts, it made sense. My old Nyzul Isle static disbanded before they modified the assault, so I was curious about the changes. They definitely seemed to make an improvement, though it could have just been random luck on the floors we got on our first run. We ended up with two Eliminate All Enemies floors, two Light All the Lamps floors (which were incredibly quick and not at all annoying), and one Eliminate Specified Enemy floor. We finished in plenty of time, and took our exit at level 5, where I saved progress, so I can use 500 tokens to start us out on level 6.

Our second run was more like I remembered, and we wiped to a pudding boss on the second floor. I think we'll try to do one Nyzul run each week, as long as people are game. It'll be fun to see how well we can progress.

New title: Second Lieutenant

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

Quests: Like the Wind (Boneyard Gully ENM)

Have I mentioned that Erock came back to the game, after being gone for over a year? Sort of? Well, he did. And since he gave away most of his stuff when he quit, he's been trying to rebuild his gear for both WAR and RDM. Towards this end, he's needed help with some things like the "Like the Wind" ENM to try to get a Maneater. He'd manage to get one, but since ENMs are a quick and easy way to make some potential gil, he asked Itera and I to go one night.

It's actually pretty fun - there's one Eft to fight, Race Runner, and he tears around the area. The challenge is to get enough hate to have him stand still for a bit so you can beat him up. We got a Galateia cloth, which translated to 55k gil, and 2000 exp for our efforts.

Since then we've done it several more times, but haven't got anything worth more than 10k. It's still nice getting the 2000 exp/limit points though. It feels like we had better luck with the drops in the Antlion ENM, but I don't think we could manage that one with just the three of us.

Assault: Chief Sergeant Kiki

This week, we were able to do a batch of Lance Corporal assaults, and since I had four tags available, I got enough points to pick up the quest for Promotion: Chief Sergeant! That was sure quick.

We started out with the Shanarha Grass Conservation in Leujaoam Sanctum. For this assault, you're supposed to exterminate the cute little bunnies that are eating all the grass. There are around 20 of them, and they split up into two groups, with one group heading north and the other south. They're not too tough, but they do hit kind of hard and fast for DC bunnies. The first set wasn't too spread out when we started attacking them, but we managed to get them all killed without dying in the process. The second set was easier, since they'd spread out pretty well. It was really a pretty easy assault for the 6 of us (Yobun MNK, Demin MNK, Daden SAM, Itera MNK, Erock RDM, and Tsakiki PLD).

Next up was Breaking Morale at the Mamool Ja Training Grounds. This one's a stealth mission, with a bit of danger. You're supposed to run in to the area, find the supply coffers, and return to the NPC at the start with the supplies you've pilfered. The trick is to do it without getting caught. The area is filled with Mamool Ja Recruits, who will attack you if they see you, and Mamool Ja Trainers, who will send you to the prison area when they see you. There's a pot of viscous liquid at the prison area, which conveniently puts you into a Mamool Ja costume, but at the cost of a heavy poison. This takes off 22 HP per tick, and slows your movement speed. We learned a few things on this run: if you get aggro'd by a Recruit, run away to find a Trainer to get sent to prison. This will shed your aggro. Watch your HP, the costume can kill you. We didn't do as well as we would have liked, but we were able to turn in two sets of supplies and got the win, at the expense of two deaths.

For our third run, we tried Evade and Escape in Lebros Cavern. We switched around the group a bit, and had Diasuke WHM, Yobun WHM, Daden SAM, Itera MNK, Erock RDM, and Tsakiki PLD. For this assault, you need to find 3 switches that can be in 6 different rooms. Once you've found all three, you need to activate them within a minute of each other in order to active the Rune of Release, then have someone get to the Rune of Relase for the win. The complication for this one is that there are 3 Daleks roaming the pathways in the Cavern. The rooms themselves are safe from their patrol, so you have to watch them and try to avoid being spotted. Yobun assigned rooms for each of us to check, and mine was the furthest from the entrance, in the southeast corner. It was kind of fun finding spots to hide from the dragons as I made my way to the switch room. We did have several deaths in the process, but we found the three switches, and completed the assault.

Our final run for the night was Shooting Down the Baron in Periqia. This one has a 15 minute time limit, and you need to find an imp and kill him. There are pugils in the zone that will aggro as well, but it's best to avoid them to save time. The imp will warp to another location, which means hunting him down again. The hide and seek aspect is a bit annoying, especially when you don't have much time, but it worked out well for us (Diasuke WHM, Ryken MNK, Daden SAM, Itera MNK, Demin MNK, and Tsakiki PLD). We spotted the Baron pretty quickly, and very nearly killed him before he warped, thanks to at least one of the MNKs using Hundred Fists. However, he did warp away, and we ran all over the place looking for him. Fortunately he doesn't regen after warping, so when Itera spotted him, he quickly finished him off, and we won the assault.

I now had 28 points towards my promotion, so I ran off to talk to Abquhbah and picked up my quest for Promotion: Chief Sergeant quest. Abquhbah's messed up an easy task and fears the wrath of Naja, and needs help getting out of the situation. I had to go find some special "scourshrooms" in the Aywadeen Subterrane, which involved picking a mature scourshroom and then planting it in a sparse mushroom patch, waiting until 4:00 the next game day, and then getting two young scourshrooms to take back to Abquhbah. I completed the quest, and was promoted to Chief Sergeant. Only one mercenary rank left, though I'm sure they'll be adding more soon. I hope they're not done with the Perdu weapons that you can get from mercenary rank and ISP. They still need a one-handed sword Paladins can use....

New title: Chief Sergeant

Quests: Shadows of the Departed

After completing the Zilart Missions and The Storms of Fate, the next step towards Apocalypse Nigh is the quest Shadows of the Departed. You're asked to investigate three locations, one on the fourth floor in the three main Promyvions. I'd flagged this quest last January, after completing the Storms of Fate with Splinte's gods/hnm linkshell, Eminence, but never managed to get a group to do it. One afternoon during my vacation, Diasuke asked if anyone needed to do that, and I jumped up and down and said "Me! Me! Pick me!".

We couldn't drum up any volunteers for help, nor did we wish to shout in Whitegate, so we decided we were crazy enough to try to duo it. We geared up as a SMN/WHM (Diasuke) and BLU/NIN (me), and headed off to the Dem crag to see how we would do. At this point, Erock said he would come and help us, but would need a bit of time to get his level 30 WAR gear. We decided to give it a whirl anyway, and we actually did pretty repectably, but probably would have been overwhelmed by the strays with just the two of us, so we waited for Erock to arrive. The three of us had no troubles making it to the 4th floor, and Diasuke and I got our first sliver. We headed into the Spire, and Dia teleported us to the Mea Crag. Itera met up with us there as a MNK/WHM, and made things even easier.

I think they made the memory receptacles a lot easier in a recent update, and changed the mob placement as well, since it was really pretty easy for us to completely avoid aggro without excessive waiting for mobs to change position. I did get caught by an IT Craver on one of the upper floors of Mea, and that was really a close call for us, but we survived (no MP and Erock in the red, but still alive). And when we had to go through the fences on the second floor of Holla, there was an unavoidable wanderer as always, but it was no match for us. We had our share of fake receptacles as well, but overall it was a pretty painless process to get all three slivers.

Diasuke and I headed to Jeuno to turn in our slivers and complete the quest. The following morning, I went back again to start Apocalypse Nigh, and headed to the Empyreal Paradox to enter the battle to get the cutscene as well. Now I just need to find 5 people to do the fight with me, and an Ethereal Earring will be mine!

Assault: Sergeant Major Kiki

Amazingly, the ClanBEB Assault fad has persisted, and I managed to get another rank last week. Over the past month, I've mostly done repeats. We got Erock to PSC pretty quickly with 4 unique assaults and 5 repeats, and then SP came quickly as well. The most notable of that group was when we did Lamia No. 13 with Yobun as SMN. Garuda really tore apart Lamia No. 13, and made the assault go much more quickly than when we'd have just the NPCs attacking her to avoid hate issues.

We tried the Troll Fugitives assault, and it's similar to the Preemptive Strike for PSC: kill all the trolls, and get experience points in the process. I think that's my new favorite for recapping my exp after a rough weekend, and for getting limit points once that's done. It's more fun than the Mamools, since the fights are more interesting - the Trolls all can use their two hours. Plus it's a bit more experience as well, and it's a zone where I really don't have a lot of assault points.

Another new SP one we tried was Sagelord Elimination. We had Daden (WAR), Yobun (BLM), Anastasia (BLM), Goto (WHM/SMN), Erock (RDM), and me (PLD). This one is pretty annoying, and I'm not sure we'll rush to be repeating it, but it was kind of fun. For this one, you have to infiltrate the Mamool area, find the Sagelord, and kill him. This means trying to avoid the other Mamool, since there are too many to kill them all. To make it more difficult, after the Sagelord takes a certain amount of damage, he takes off at flee speeds. So you're likely to pick up aggro from the others as you're running after him. We had Goto's Garuda on him to make it a bit easier to follow, but we ended up getting somewhat overwhelmed and had a near wipe. Yobun had disconnected out to shed hate, and we managed to raise safely and killed off the Sagelord for the win.

Last week I finally had enough points to pick up the Promotion: Sergeant Major quest. This exceedingly annoying quest took me hours to complete. It consists of 3 minigames where Naja has you "training" three subpar recruits to whip them into shape. You can attempt each minigame once a game day. For the first, you have to observe them doing pushups and point out the slackers to Naja. This one wasn't so bad, but it did take me two tries. Next, with a very amusing cutscene of Abquhbah in his skivvies, you need to get them to do a number of situps in unison. This too wasn't so bad, but again, took me two tries to get it right. The final part was encouraging them to keep up in a foot race. This one took me 5 or 6 attempts before I finally had them all with me at the finish line. Naja was very pleased, since I turned the poor guys into lean mean fighting machines.

So now that we got Daden, then Ryken, the Erock to SP, guess what? Yes, we had a couple more people join us. Last week, Lucrezia joined in, and she got the last points she needed for the SP promotion. And this week, Ranzz finally relented, and last night he got the last points he needed for SP as well, so we should be done with PSC and PFC for awhile!

We actually had 10 people show up for assault last night, so we broke into two teams of 5. Itera needed Mamool points to get his P. shorts, and Ranzz was only PFC, so I took Itera, Ranzz, Erock, and Anastasia off for three rounds of Preemptive Strike, while Yobun took Demin, Erock, Ryken, and Lucrezia for the Trolls, Ryaaf, and whatever other SP fun they had.

New title: Sergeant Major

Quests: Divine Might

I had the past week off from work, and as usual, I probably spent more time playing than I should have. However, this has provided some blog fodder, so maybe I really will get back to posting regularly again.

Saturday, as I ran through Whitegate to get Sanction before heading out to solo Lesser Colibri to get Great Sword skillups (and work off the latent on my Subduer), I noticed a shout recruiting jobs for Divine Might, including PLD. This has been on my to-do list pretty much since we got Sky access in April 2006, but I've always been afraid of pickup groups. Last year, a ClanBEB group did Zilart Mission 14 instead, so I'm one of what seems like only a handful of people to complete Zilart without doing Divine Might.

I decided to throw caution to the wind, and I sent a tell saying I'd like to join. Since they needed a PLD, I was invited to join. We were to gather together in 90 minutes, so I headed out to work on my great sword (202 now, only 48 more levels to go...) before heading back in to town to get ready for the fight. I got all my gear and items ready, and was invited to the growing alliance as we waited for everyone to gather. It was full moon, so I grabbed a piece of parchment and went to Rolanberry to check bazaars for an Illuminink, but couldn't find one. Then I headed to Ro'Maeve from Jeuno and waited for everyone to gather together. It turns out that all the full moon nights on Saturday had weather in Ro'Maeve, so even if I'd gotten the Illiminink, I still wouldn't have been able to get an Ark Pentasphere. You can only get them during clear weather between 00:00 and 03:00 with a Full Moon. I did however get to use the bridges and run straight back to the Hall of the Gods. I'd never done that before.

So I found myself in Sky, for the fifth time ever, and first time since we'd beat Eald'narche last August, completing the Zilart Missions. I guess people who don't do gods don't have much use for Sky any more. I think Grymalkyn and I would have leveled our BST duo there if we'd ever continued past level 60.

Anyway, back to Divine Might. Finally we had everyone gathered together, and we started going over strategy. One person kept yelling to just trade the ark already. Apparently this was his 8th attempt and he was impatient to get in there quickly so he could add another failure to his list. For our first run, I think we had 3 NINs, 2 PLDs, 3 BRDs, 3 WHMs, 2 RDMs, a DRK, a WAR, and 3 BLMs. Each tank was assigned an Ark Angel to kite (I got the Galka) and the kill order was set for TT -> MR -> GK -> HM -> EV. We planned to kill the first two, wipe, reraise, and finish the rest. Unsure about buffs, we buffed once we entered the arena. The first two went down as planned, but a few of us didn't make it to the stairs before dying, so we couldn't reraise until the rest were up and unweakened and started fighting again.

We ended up timing out on the EV, but in general, the fight had gone extremely well for a first run with a bunch of strangers. We were all confident we could pull it off. People needed more reraise items and echo drops, so the other PLD headed back to Whitegate to resupply people. Meanwhile, one of the WHMs and RDMs had to leave. There was another group that had just made an attempt or two and failled, and three of their people (two BLMs and a PLD) wanted to join us if they could. Our other PLD didn't "need" the fight, so he bowed out after delivering his supplies.

For the second fight, we changed things around a bit. We knew buffs wouldn't wear, so we buffed up before entering, saving a few minutes. The tanks were supposed to kite the HM, GK, and EV up near the entrance, keeping people safe from AOEs and also ensuring no one would die in the arena. This time I was in charge of keeping the wyvern and BST pet off of the Bards as they kept them slept. The TT petrified the BLMs right at the start, which meant it took a bit longer to get him dead. The kite support people missed the memo on the kiting changes, so at one point I dumped a Cure IV on one of the NINs who'd dropped under 200 HP, which meant he was no longer kiting. We didn't even get the MR on this round. So we wiped, and decided to abandon the attempt and try again.

The third fight went extremely well. We'd learned from our other attempts, and very nearly even killed the GK before wiping. I think we would have if the person who'd had hate had brought him back to the arena when he was supposed to. For this fight, I was again on pet duty, but I also stuck close to the BLMs and helped keep them alive. We all died in safe places, reraised, unweakened, and took out the remaining three Ark Angels, without too many casualties in the process. Everyone ran off to the Palace to get their earrings, and great joy was felt within the alliance.

Many thanks to Killarutaru for gathering us all together, and to Djnem for taking charge and telling us what to do. And thanks to everyone who participated. I didn't write down everyone's name, so I won't try to list them from memory and leave someone out.

I picked the Suppanomimi over the Knightly Earring, since it's really unique in what it does for you. Even if I'm not dual weilding, it still gives me an extra 5 points of sword skill, which is very nice. It's definitely for when I'm in merit parties rather than tanking in Dynamis or Limbus, but I don't need the shield skill from the Knightly earring, since it's only a bit better than the buckler earring, and I already have other earrings I prefer for tanking (Hades +1, Cassie, and hopefully soon, Ethereal). With my normal tanking setup, I already have 313 shield skill: 276 base, +8 from merits, +10 from my boxer's mantle, +12 from my Gallant Leggings +1, and +7 from my shield torque, without wearing my Buckler Earring. At one time, I thought the Beastly Earring would be my choice, since I thought Grym and I would be BST75s, but that's never going to happen. The Suppanomimi just makes the most sense, much like the Sattva Ring made the most sense for me from CoP.




New title: Pentacide Perpetrator

Quests: Double Dragonian x4 (KSNM30)

Ryken recently returned to the game after a break for several months, and he's pretty much retired his PLD to focus on MNK. One of the items on his to-do list was to finally get Destroyers, the coveted rare/ex Hand-to-Hand weapon that drops from a couple different KSNM30 battles. He'd tried several times in the past and wanted to put together a sure-fire team for Double Dragonian, and recruited Anastasia as BLM, Yobun as RDM, Albany as WHM, Demin as RNG, and hoped for help from one of his NIN friends, having read that stinky PLDs can't tank this fight.

My own previous experience with the KSNM wasn't so great, so I didn't jump up and volunteer either. However, the appointed evening arrived, and none of the Ninjas were available. So he asked if I could help them out. I agreed, warning him of my previous near-failure - I didn't want to be responsible for any lost orbs. However, I have more experience with big dragons, enhanced PLD abilities from updates and better gear than I had last summer, plus a few merit point enhancements as well, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

I warped off the ferry, where I'd been fishing, changed my sub-job and made sure I had all the right gear, paid the taru to send me to Windurst and used the OP Teleport to Ronfaure, and headed up to Horlais Peak, the last to arrive. I was briefed on the strategy: kill the warrior, kite the bard. We buffed up and headed in. I opted to use Pescatore for its defense and HP boosts, though I knew it would be stipped off at some point, and started out in my "tanking" gear. We ran up the ramp, and Ana opened with a sleepga on the dragons. I ran in and engaged and provoked the Warrior, and we proceeded to tear him apart. With Sentinel and Phalanx II, I didn't really take all that much damage. Ryken ended up pulling hate off me and got cursed, then Ana turned the dragon and a Body Slam took out both Ryken and Demin. Demin was hit for 1000 damage, and his max HP is less than that. I guess they didn't have their shadows up either. I had a momentary twinge of panic, but the dragon was nearly dead, and Ana was able to finish it off.

Ana and Yobun kept the Bard asleep while Albany got Ryken and Demin back on their feet. Meanwhile, I built up my hate on the Bard by provoking and flashing when I could. I'd also switched over to my full enmity gear at this point. After a few minutes, the Bard started resisting sleep, so I started kiting it up and down the long valley, with Yobun and Ana keeping gravity on it, and binding it from time to time as well. When the lads were back to full health, they started chipping away at the dragon, while I tried to keep its attention and keep it moving. I took a few good smacks, but Albany kept me healthy when I couldn't cure myself.

Soon, the Bard was dead as well, and when we popped the crate open, we found Ryken's Destroyers. Hurray!

Demin and Yobun both had orbs, so we decided to do two more runs. The next two were even better, with no deaths or even close calls. On the second run, a Subduer dropper. This is one of the best greatswords available for PLD, once the latent is unlocked, so I asked for it and now have to get 500 weaponskill points on it to turn it into a worthwhile weapon. I'll use it while skilling up, and some day it will be ready. A friend of Albany's (Drxcrist) needed a pair of Destroyers and came out to Horlais Peak, but got there a bit too late. We had a second pair drop on the third orb, and he didn't arrive in time and they auto-lotted to Albany. Drxcrist also brought an orb, so we did a fourth run for him, with his MNK replacing Ryken's. That run went smoothly as well, but no Destroyers in the treasure chest.

I really had a lot of fun doing these runs, and am pleased they went so smoothly. We had a great team, and worked very well together. It was nice to be able to show that stinky PLDs can indeed do that particular fight!

Assault: Corporal Kiki

Amazingly, our BEB Monday night assault group has been continuing to get together and do 3 or 4 assaults every Monday night. Yobun, Daden, Itera, and I are the "regulars", with Anastasia, Goto, Thoron, Izan, and others being a bit more haphazard. We've been doing a lot of Preemptive Strike, and then to mix things up a bit, we did Lamia No. 13 and Seagull Grounded last week, neither of which Daden had done. Goto hadn't done Seagull Grounded either. After that, they were both able to pick up the quest for Superior Private rank, and we planned to do some SP assaults this week.

Jarbit's Nyzul Isle Assault static has shifted its focus a bit. We did one run of Nyzul Isle on April 27th, got two "easy" levels, and took the win. Then Goto had to leave for his gods linkshell, so we did two runs of Excavation Duty for Allia, to get her enough points for Salvage that evening. Every other time I've done Excavation Duty, we've always killed the Qiqirn to get mines, even with a BLM going off to solo a wall. So I provoked the first Qiqirn, surprising everyone else, since they'd never killed the Qiqirn - or did once and didn't get mines. Fortunately, we did get a bomb from the first one, so the time I wasted fighting one of them was made up for by the next wall going down immediately. The people who'd never used a mine were pretty impressed with how well they worked, but it really does leave it up to chance. On the second run, we just fought all the walls. With the right sort of group, it's a very safe assault and an easy win.

Last Friday, Jarbit and Frostwitch couldn't make it for our assaults, so we had a group of Salvage people do two runs of Leujaoam Cleansing, which was a new win for several of the people. We had Anrita, Venn, Habanero, Goto, Itera and I. Both runs went pretty smoothly - I like the "kill everything" sort of assaults, since it leaves less to chance than some of the others. Plus you get exp or limit points from them, which is always a good thing.

This Monday, we had Daden, Itera, Ana, Yobun and I. Goto was trying to do CoP 8-2, and didn't join us. We did three SP runs, starting off with Saving Private Ryaaf, which was new to Daden. Yobun came as PLD/SAM and I as PLD/BST. The roaming Experimental Undead were behaving well, and we had an easy time making our way from room to room, and had another easy win.

Next, we decided to try Troll Fugitives. For this assault, you have to find and eliminate 15 Broken Troll Soldiers. They all have between 25% and 75% HP, but the PLD types will heal themselves and others, so some end up a bit closer to full health. They're scattered throughout Lebros Cavern, alone, in pairs, or in sets of three. We didn't have any troubles with them, but without a strong DD group (like Daden and Itera), it would be pretty easy to run out of time on this one. Yobun had switched to RDM for this, and between Phalanx II and Sentinel, the one Troll that used Hundred Fists on me was sadly disappointed at how little damage he did.

Last up on the agenda was Extermination, set in Ilrusi Atoll. This one is also a kill everything assault, with leeches, crabs, doomed, and slimes scattered throughout the islands and boats. They can spawn an NM version of themselves when killed, and we did get one Undead Leech NM, which was much tougher than the regular leeches, but still not too bad. This is another one where you can get pretty tight on time. We left the slimes for last, and I was sent to the spot where the Rune of Transfer would appear so I could hit it as soon as everything was dead. I think we finished with about two minutes to spare. I got enough limit points to get another Merit, so I have the three I need to finish my shield skill upgrades. Next up will be HP, I think. I'll need 24 Merit points to get it where I want it. That's going to take me forever. :-(

After our assaults, Itera and I both were able to pick up the quest for promotion to Corporal. We headed out into Wajaoam Woodlands on chocobo, looking for a Warhorse Hoofprint for Naja. She gave us quartz transmitters to place in the hoofprint, which will somehow give her the ability to track the Dark Rider. I searched the southern section, while Itera got the northern section, where he found the hoofprint. Task completed, we headed back to speak to Naja and receive our promotions. Woohoo, longer Sanction time, and a new set of assaults available to us!

New title: Corporal

Quests: Summoner Preparations Complete!

I had been on a Carby Mitt run awhile back with a group Plumpixie and Chanell had put together, but I was only there for the first fight. I knew that I would probably not be able to stay the whole run, since I would have to get to Dynamis-Beaucedine, so I said I would go last. I didn't want to be a "got her mitts and ditched the rest" type of person. Sure enough, after our first kill, I was summoned to the Glacier, as another LS was gathering, and we needed to get people there early to make sure the zone wouldn't be stolen from us by another group (we're using the Rusty Bucket calendar, and wish all the other linkshells would as well). I knew I'd have another chance some day, and there certainly wasn't any rush for me to get mitts that can only be worn by a level 20 Summoner.

Now that Goto's actively leveling his SMN, he really could use a pair of Carbuncle Mitts, so I tried to get some people together to help. Thanks to Luiss dragging his friends into it as well, we had a decent little group with me (PLD), Goto (WHM), Luiss (BLM), Yumex (WHM), Madbender (BLM), Itera (MNK) and Fabian (MNK). Gilgameshrulz, another BLM, wanted to join us, but got girlfriend aggro just before we got the spawn area for the Crimson-toothed Pawberry, so he had to leave. On our way there, we stopped to pick up another offering, which was for Gil, but since he left, that offering was used for Madbender instead. Yumex also had an offering, so we fought the NM 4 times.

The fights went really well, with Rampart on my party preventing any damage from the first Searing Light, but I don't think we would have been damaged much even without it. We didn't get any Light Spirit Pacts to drop for our helpers, but we got the four pairs of mitts that people wanted.

I had Balu-Falu out as a Fierce Attacker for the last fight, since Itera had to leave. Balu-Falu leveled up to 57 when we were clearing the regular Tonberries out of the room, so that was nice too. He was nearly done in by the first Searing Light, but hung in there and fought with us until the next AOE got him.

Then on Sunday, Anrita put together a team for Diabolos Prime, which Frobro and I needed. He recruited Itera, Allia, and Habanero, and needed another MNK, so I asked Thoron if he'd like to go as well. He needed it too, so was very eager to join in. The seven of us made our way to the Shrouded Maw, and the three MNKs all slept for 100% TP. We headed into the arena for the fight, with Anrita waiting outside to raise us, just in case things went wrong.

The MNKs boosted a few times, Habanero used Soul Voice and gave us double attack songs, Itera Chi Blasted Diabolos and we were all drawn in. Allia let loose with Chainspell Stun, and three MNKs tore into Diabolos with Hundred Fists and their weapon skills. I cast Cure IV on Itera, then on Thoron, and then a Cure III on Thoron, and it was over. The poor avatar never stood a chance. I feel like it was cheating, but after my 6 failures and 10,000 exp lost to Diabolos Prime last year, maybe it's not so bad. I was just making the best use of available resources. Yeah, that's it. At any rate, it was pretty impressive to see them demolish him so easily.

I headed to Windurst Waters and claimed my pact with Diabolos, and ran out to play with him for a few minutes before heading to Jeuno for Sunday's Limbus. I'm still not sure if/when I'll ever level Summoner, but if I do, I'll have a full set of avatars on hand to do so. I'm still missing three of the elemental spirits, I think: Thunder, Light, and Dark. I think the prices have come down a lot, so even if I resort to buying them, it won't be too bad.

New title: Heir to the Realm of Dreams

Quests: Spice Gals for Goto

I've told Goto about my weekly exp scrolls, and he was very interested in doing them himself. In order to do Secrets of Ovens Lost, you first need to complete Spice Gals, which involves a trip through one of the Riverne sites to pick up a key item rivernewort. On Saturday, the two of us headed to Riverne Site #A01, as a BST40/NIN20 - WHM40/BLM20 duo. I prefer going through site #A01, since if I recall correctly, the ??? spot you have to get to in #B01 is in the middle of an aggro-filled island. It's true you only need one dragon scale instead of the two in #A01, but then again, there's also the fact that I know my way around #A01 a lot better than I do #B01.

We had to kill 7 or 8 Firedrakes to get the two scales we needed, and had quite an exciting time in the process, with lots of near-death experiences, and unfortunately one death for Goto. The birds I needed to use for pets were mostly Toughs, and rather than try to convert them to Even Matches, I used the Toughs as pets for a few of the fights. Of course they'd come uncharmed before the Firedrake was killed, but at least I didn't have any charm failures on my recharms.

After we got the two scales, we safely made our way to the island before Monarch Linn, where we both picked up our rivernewort from the ??? spot. I try to make sure I always have this repeatable quest active, just in case I happen to be in the area. For some reason, I'm doing well on my exp, and haven't actually gone to pick this scroll up yet, as I still have last week's cookbook quest scroll in my inventory. The ENM on Saturday night made up for most of my Xarcabard deaths, and Preemptive Strike on Monday capped me off again, since I somehow made it through Limbus without dying on Sunday.

In a mood for more exploration, we headed over to the island with the stone monument. We were careful to avoid the atomic cluster that hovers near the monument, and examined it. I'd forgotted that was the island for the Minstrel's Dagger quest, Confessions of a Bellmaker, but Goto was treated to the cutscene that starts it. It was a fun couple of hours, and now Goto can do the weekly Sacrarium runs too!

Quests: The Moonlit Path (Fenrir)

A couple of weeks ago, Anrita gathered together a group to fight Fenrir Prime. At least one of us (me) had never beaten him and a couple others wanted items for the Evoker's Ring quest, and still others just wanted to help out. We had Anrita (WHM/BLM), Allia (RDM/DRK), Habanero (BRD/???), Frobro (MNK/NIN), Fliggity (WAR/NIN), and Tsakiki (PLD/WAR). The fight started out pretty well, but we didn't do enough damage during Allia's Chainspell-Stun, and ended up wiping, with Fenrir at a sliver of health. We sort of hoped Anrita's Dia II would be enough to finish him off, but it wore pretty quickly. We agreed to try again in two weeks.

So yesterday, the same group gathered, only with Itera joining us as MNK/NIN instead of Fliggity. We went over our strategy in detail before heading in, and confident that we knew what we were going to do, we headed into the burning circle. Frobro, Itera, and I slept for 100%TP, Anrita buffed us up, Habanero used soul voice with madrigal and minuet and we ran in to fight the big puppy. As usual, he was hitting pretty hard, but Anrita kept us well-healed. I used Sentinel and then Invincible to help hold hate and keep my damage down. Once Allia started using her chainspell-stun, both Monks used 100 Fists, and I pretty much didn't have hate for the rest of the fight.

Fenrir managed to get his two hour off between stuns, but we all survived. I missed the message that he was readying it, and didn't get Rampart off, which might have saved us a lot of damage. Anrita ran in for Benediction, and Fenrir didn't even look her direction - he was too mad at the monks to bother with the little white mage. Frobro took a huge Eclipse Bite, knocking him down to 28 hit points and I ran over to cover him, but Itera had pulled hate, so cover didn't really do anything. We got Frobro's HP back up, and cure-bombed Itera to keep him going. Then all of a sudden, it was over. Fenrir was defeated! Finally I could have a pact with Fenrir, after 5 failed attempts.

These fights are sure a lot more fun when we win! Anrita escaped us from Full Moon Fountain back to East Sarutabaruta, and we ran to Windurst Waters to talk to Leppe-Hoppe and get our rewards.

I headed to my moghouse to switch to PLD75/SMN1, and headed out to West Sarutabaruta to pick on some tiny animals, just to play with my new puppy. Hopefully I can leech with a group of Monks and a RDM/DRK to win against Diabolos Prime, and have my avatar set complete. I'd still rather be an integral part of the team, but my 0/6 record on him is making that look unlikely. I don't really see that I'll ever level SMN, but I always wanted a complete set of avatars.

New title: Heir of the New Moon

Assault: Repeats for Assault Points

I've been doing assaults some what regularly, and even managed to get enough repeats to be able to do the Lance Corporal promotion quest 4 weeks ago, despite having only done 2 unique assaults since my Superior Private promotion. Of course that was last August, so you'd think I'd have gotten 25 points a bit sooner..

ClanBEB has started doing Assaults on Monday evenings, and the thought is to repeat easy ones in areas where people need points for a specific piece of gear until everyone has what they need, and then move on to the next one. Meanwhile, people are getting enough repeats to be able to rank up, but some of us would like to try more of the assaults we've never done before.

The main one we've been doing is the PFC Mamool Ja Staging Point Assault, Preemptive Strike. I kind of like it since we end up with close to 1,000 exp/limit points for each run, and it's so quick and easy with a couple of monks and a war plowing through the Mamool Ja.

Anastasia, Yobun, and I also did several runs of Saving Private Ryaaf - this time with me as PLD/BST for wide-scan. That was helpful for seeing whether an Experimental Undead was blocking a corridor on the way to the cell rooms.

The Lance Corporal Promotion quest was pretty easy - I had to collect water samples from 5 springs in the Woodlands and Thickets, and bring them back to the Alchemy Guild in Whitegate. I was a bit worried about getting aggro near the ponds, but it wasn't really a problem. I used my chocobo whistle to get my chocobo to take me from pond to pond as well, which was pretty handy. When I got back to Whitegate, I tested the samples with the alchemist, and came up with a sample with a high concentration of Mythralline, which netted me two gold pieces as my reward, along with my new mercenary rank.

New title: Lance Corporal

Quests: Operation Desert Swarm, Melee Style (KSNM30)

On Sunday, Corbun wanted to do a round of Operation Desert Swarm, melee style. We ended up with Corbun (SAM/NIN), Yobun (WHM/SMN), Daden (NIN/WAR), Lucrezia (THF/NIN), Jaerik (SAM/NIN), and Tsakiki (PLD/NIN). I've been on a few manaburn runs, with Black Mages for hire, but on those I would merely stand back and watch the spectacle. For the melee style, the plan is to have a NIN tank 2 of the Platoon Scorpions, with 4 melee with NIN subbed each taking care of one of their own, and a WHM on hand for cures, buffs, and status removal.

We each picked up a Lachesis Orb in Port Jeuno, trading 30 Kindred Seals for it, then headed up to the Waughroon Shrine in Palborough Mines. The fights all went very smoothly, and were quite a lot of fun. We were each assigned a particular Platoon Scorpion (or two in Daden's case). We ran up to the edge of the arena, targetted our assigned foe, drew our weapons, and Corbun used his bow and arrow to pull them all to us. We each grabbed our Scorpion and fanned out over the arena to avoid each others' Scorpions' AOE attacks. Daden pulled his two into the entrance. We each worked on killing our own, then jumping in to defeat the others. Lucrezia usually finished hers first, then ran over to assist me, while Corbun and Jaerik would finish theirs and go help Daden. When Luc and I finished mine, we'd help get the last blows in on Daden's second scorpion. Meanwhile, Yobun would run around casting spells on people as they needed them.

It was really quite an easy way to do this KSNM, and I don't know why it has a reputation of being hard to do without manaburning it. Of course, it took us 5-6 minutes for each run, compared to under 2 minutes for a burn, but still, it's not like it's really time-consuming. Unfortunately, despite the full moon, we got terrible treasure. I think the total for all 6 runs was under 300k - not exactly a good payoff for the 180 Kindred Seals.

Quests: Under Observation (BCNM40)

Daden wanted to do some runs of Under Observation, a three-man BCNM40 that can drop the Peacock Charm. For this BCNM, you have 15 minutes to defeat three Hecteyes: Sobbing Eyes and his two smaller companions, the Compound Eyes. We had 4 people wanting to do it, so we did 4 runs, with Daden's NIN/BLM and Lucrezia's NIN/WAR going on all 4 runs, while I went on two runs as BST/RDM, and Yobun as BST/WHM went on the other two runs.

The strategy we used was to have the BST pull the Sobbing Eyes using a jug pet, and then kite it up and down the long entrance path, while the two NINs would each take a Compound Eye and solo them. After the NINs defeated their eyes, the BST would bring the Sobbing Eyes back up to the arena, and everyone would fight. Since the Hex Eye attack from the Hecteyes doesn't work if you're turned away, NINs using the Ninjitsu elemental wheel do a great job in this fight - they face away and just cast their spells, killing the eyes fairly quickly, and damage minimized by their shadows.

Our first run was a failure. I used a Courier Carrie for my pet - theory being it could take more damage, but it got bound or petrified at the beginning of the fight, so it didn't move out of the area right away. Daden also got paralyzed at the start, and ended up dying while we fought the Sobbing Eyes.

Yobun went on the second run, which was a success and we got a scroll of Utsusemi Ni. For the third run, I used a Tiger Familiar. That worked a lot better for kiting, as the kitties run so very fast. I sent my tiger in to fight the Sobbing Eyes, ran out of the arena, used Heel, then headed to the bottom of the ramp, where I told the tiger to stay. Then back up the ramp, heel/stay, down the ramp, heel/stay, and then the NINs were ready for the Sobbing Eyes. Another success, but nothing good dropped. The final run also dropped Utsusemi Ni, so we had a decent payoff for the four runs, and it was a lot of fun as well!