...basically.
So although much of our static still had to get through the Airship BC (well, Oufnev and Dugi at least), the temptation of finally getting to sea was too great for a few of us. So we decided to shoot for it shortly after finishing the Airship battle.
We began PM7-4 in Bibiki Bay, with a Kraken NM.
He was really easy. I was expecting a bit of trouble with Hundred Fists, but that didn't happen. Eh... can't complain about an easy fight :P
Next we headed to Misareaux Coast, for a bugard.
I thought we would have more trouble with this NM than we did. After hearing that it had very high physical resistance, I expected it to wear down our resources until we had nothing left, and then kill us off. No such luck for it XD... it ended up dying very quickly, which kinda... well... ruined my hopes that this mission would be at least a little difficult.
Finally, I actually DID get my wish. The tonberry NM(s) in Carpenters' Landing turned out to be the most interesting part of this mission. Blaize told us that we could camp very far away from where the NMs actually spawn (i.e., at the tunnel, out of aggro range), and just pop the first one (a NIN, with Mijin Gakure), while avoiding aggroing the other ones, that pop 10 or so seconds later. If we managed to keep the NIN at bay while waiting for the others to depop, we could kill it and get the cutscene while only needing to kill one mob.
Sure, eventually it worked... but it took some trial and error.
After arriving and buffing, Svayn (being /THF, for Flee) popped the NM and brought it back to us. All went as planned, the others were up (Nikup was tracking them as SAM/RNG for Wide Scan), and we held the NIN until the others depopped.
...which, incidently, was right as it used Mijin Gakure.
As you know, Mijin Gakure is dependant on the HP of the person/mob using it, and the mob was above 90%, so even with Shell V and Barfira, it still managed to do 3000+ to almost everyone. So... we decided on a different course of action: we would still pop the NM and wait for the others to despawn before killing it, but we would weaken it to about 10-20% so that Mijin Gakure wouldn't outright wipe us, and then whoever had hate (i.e. Tarai, the tank) would kite it until it used MG (since that's when the others despawned).
The plan worked perfectly. Though I had a little difficulty giving Tarai Regen and Barfira, it eventually got on, and Mijin Gakure only hit her for about 600 damage when the mob was being kited at around 15% -- way too little for the mob to actually recover on us. It went down with little trouble after that, and once we completed a few more cutscenes, we were ready for Tenzen!
The plan was simple: with the setup we had, it was impossible to lose.
-Espera, WHM/BLM
-Tarai, PLD/NIN
-Nikup, WAR/SAM
-Blaize, WAR/SAM
-Svayn, SAM/THF
-Jinsia, SAM/THF (I think it was /THF)
We all got about 300% TP before entering the battlefield.
We zerged him: Raging Rush, Steel Cyclone, Rampage, Tachi: Gekko, Vorpal Blade, everything we had. He died... pretty fast.
And before we knew it, we found ourselves in Al'Taieu.
I took a LOT of screenshots during that first visit to the Celestial Capital, and there's no way I'm going to post them all, but I'll post a few highlights:
Our first order of business in Al'Taieu was to find all of the Quasilumins in the area. This achieved two purposes: we learned a few things about the Garden of Antiquity, and we also obtained the map of Al'Taieu! Wootga! ^^
Anyway, several people had to leave after we picked up the map, so we (read: I) decided to check out northern Al'Taieu, easily accessable from the crags of Dem, Mea, and Holla. These lead to some of the area's higher-level monsters (usually indicated by the Om' prefix, rather than the lower-level Ul'), as well as to Limbus, both Apollyon (looking an awful lot like Promyvion) and Temenos (looking like the Grand Palace of Hu'Xzoi and The Garden of Ru'hmet).
Of course, with the Om' prefix comes monsters several levels higher...
Including the dreadful Om'yovra, which, due to a carelessness on my part, demolished me in a few swift blows. -_-
After being raised, we continued exploring, awestruck at the amazing area we found ourselves in after all the work we put into CoP. It was just incredible seeing Al'Taieu for the first time. We eventually logged for the night, eager to see what the next day would bring.
...Turns out it was Tuesday, which is one of Rakuen's Limbus nights!
It was my first limbus ever, and I was really really excited. Celestria and much of Rakuen had finished CoP over a year before, and they'd been doing limbus regularly as a team essentially since then. As a newcomer to the team, I was apprehensive as to my skill compared to them, but I'd say I did pretty nicely. ^^
We did Temenos West. It was actually pretty easy. We gathered in Port Jeuno to buy Cosmo-Cleanse, then teleported to Holla and entered central northern Al'Taieu. After running around for a bit and finding the Aw'euvhi NM for the White Card (which of course we killed), we zoned into Temenos and were almost ready to begin.
After the buffs, we were ready to enter Temenos.
The newcomers (me, Blaize, and Nikup {to an extent, he had done limbus before as Denchet, since they're related}) quickly adapted to the styles and strategies of the more experienced players.
Floor one was a general assortment of tigers.
The tigers weren't very difficult, even with their signature AoE potent paralyze, which was quickly dealt with by everyone who had the Paralyna spell. :P After killing most (all?) of the tigers, we moved on to the second floor: beetles.
Denchet came as NIN, so I don't do all that much curing most of the time, but there was still much to be done in the form of Erase, Haste (I kept up a cycle of 2, and Sephelia also kept up 2, along with all of his other duties... he's a very skilled player!), and various status-erasing spells. This floor is also where we got our first items chest:
My face kinda went "O.O" after I saw that many coins drop from the chest. ^^ We also got the WAR AF+1 item, which I think Blaize won the lot on. {Congratulations!} ^^
Floor three: lizards. These weren't any tougher than the beetles, but I did find my MP a bit more stretched than usual.
Floor 4 was the slimes... this was a bit more trouble than usual. We were only to kill one and then move on to the next floor, due to their very high physical resistance, but due to the low hate gain from the melees in combination with Celestria's normal damage, she ended up eating the dirt eventually... A couple times, I think.
Finally, we reached the birds. 7 of them in the center of the top floor; Cele was purely crowd control until there were only a few left, and then she joined in with the damage dealing.
These also went down with little trouble.
There was a floor with mandragoras somewhere in there, but I just don't have any pics of it. :P
Total treasure drops:
-49 ancient beastcoins (divided by 7 party members = 7 each... very nice start to my Loquacious earring ^^)
-WAR AF+1 drop from Temenos
-I think there were a couple more AF+1 drops, but I just can't remember what they are right now. :/
All in all, a very fruitful first limbus. ^^
Also, Seph, despite his skill, surprised us all with something quite... amusing:
Despite having RDM75 and WHM in the 70s as well, Seph didn't even know Diaga was a player-learnable spell. :P
Also recently (a couple days ago, methinks), Asher and I went for our BLM AF hats. After getting cutscenes, gear, etc., we headed to Toraimarai Canal to beat up the Magic Sludge NM for the hat. Mine was first... little difficulty, but it was hitting Tarai for 100+ each time, so I would have been happier as WHM. Den, sadly, had to leave after the first one, due to Salvage, so Ash's mob was much less easily handled, especially since a scorpion popped in the room during the second fight and aggroed Whmrock. >.<
ES Burst x2 to the rescue! ^^
Sadly, Tarai had to eat R1, but the important part is both Asher and I got our AF hats! {joy}!
Later that day, we decided to go organ farming to start on our obis and gorgets. After beginning in southern Al'Taieu, we kileld a few aerns, and decided to try and go after a yovra...
I think we managed to get it to like 96% (and it quickly regened to 100%...) before it Charmga'd and all the melees, along with it, decided to beat up on me. ; ; after some failed attempts at Sleepga, we became uncharmed and slept the yovra, and decided we didn't really want to take it anymore... we quickly also decided to go to northern Al'Taieu and take on the tougher monsters, which have a better drop rate, so I quickly ported us to Mea and we reentered Al'Taieu.
Northern Al'Taieu turned out to be quite nice. After a bit of frustration felt by a few party members at Nikup's insistence on taking Phuabo and only Phuabo, despite the fact that he was the only one who needed those organs, we ported to Dem and took on Xzomits and Aerns, far and away the most-needed organ for the majority.
I personally am going for my Korin (light) obi right now; I managed to get the 7 Xzomit organs, as well as the 5 Luminian tissue, but I still need the 3 Aern organs. :/ I guess I'll have to get those another time.
Again, later that same day (Saturday, so that would've been yesterday... I think out loud, a lot ^^;), we did another limbus: Apollyon NW. Having seen a video of two BLMs duoing this limbus and winning, I was very excited to see how we would fare. This was also Denchet's first time trying out NIN/DRK, and he was psyched; it worked out very well!
You'll notice that Oufnev, Dugi, and Acacia were with us on this limbus; I think it was Thursday night, we attempted the Airship and won again (putting me at 2/2 ^^ much better than I thought my personal record would be), and on Frida, the rest of the team finished up the missions before {sea} access. That put us at a grand total of 11 for Apollyon NW; quite the sum!
Anyway, Denchet noted that this is his favorite limbus, and there's good reason: a plethora of enemies, a decent challenge when necessary, along with a bunch of loot, make this limbus a blast! The first floor was a bunch of ghosts, with a doom toad boss known as Pluto. Things didn't exactly go as planned...
After starting the first monster, Pluto decided to aggro us. -_- we slapped Gravity on and kited with Bind until the first ghost died, then we took down the boss. After that, we headed to the restore chest, then up to the second floor.
Buffalos populate the second floor of Apollyon NW, and we fought and killed all of them.
Not too much {excitement}, but we did kill all of 'em! ^^
Next floor: bugards. These also gave us no trouble.
Since we had some extra time, we also decided to go after the floor boss, Millenary Mossback. He's a turtle. Yeah, an Adamantoise turtle. With a LOT of defense. It took a really long time to die, but we eventually killed it! :P
Next floor: Wyverns. With the nasty dispelga. >.< style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WLXI2JDeqOQ/RdjfumuMh4I/AAAAAAAAAFw/Kf77FaqKZKY/s320/img_0362.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5033018575347812226" border="0">
Yeah, the big boss attacked us while we were taking a normal dragon. Needless to say, a wipe ensued, and we skipped fighting the boss. :P
Spike Flail is great... when you're actually TRYING to wipe. XD
Anyway, after recovery, we ran to the restore chest and hopped up to the last floor: behemoths.
The general plan was to take out as many of the little behemoths as possible until a link was unavoidable, at which point Denchet would kite the big behemoth while Cele laid damage on it, and the rest of the team would take out what little behemoths were left and then cheerlead. :P That didn't really go so well though...
The daddy behemoth aggroed too early, leaving the majority to deal with two angry behemoths on us. We actually made it through with minimal deaths, and after piecing the team back together, we all helped take down the boss!
Finally.... we won! And actually got the WHM AF+1 drop, which went to who else but me. :P Now I just need the Temenos piece, as well as some beastcoins, and I can upgrade my briault! {excitement}!
Today, I saw this:
Yeah... a quick search of Al'Taieu revealed that BBQ was going to fight Love, so I headed down to watch the fireworks. Cele was also there, and I unoffically actually helped out on an HNM fight!
Sadly, due to terrible luck, the only drop from Love was a Love Halberd... no novio/novia, no anything, and no AV pop either. >.< I think they used another pop set and fought it a second time, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, big update about what's been going on for the past week and a half or so. Getting to Al'Taieu has been a really big acccomplishment, and I've been spending a lot of time there recently; I can see myself spending even more in the coming weeks, due to limbus and farming items for my obi. {excitement}ga! PM8-1 is tomorrow, and hopefully we can get CoP wrapped up once and for all soon, and I can finally get my Tamas Ring! /drool. Much love! <3
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