Finally made it.

[Yeargdribble]

So it took a while. I got CoP long long ago but did nothing with it really because I was a lowbie. When I was around level 50 I made a point of getting my Promyvions done so I could go to Phomiuna Aqueducts and get my awesome JSE body and then I saw nothing else that CoP could offer me really.

When I'd been 75 for a while a group let me tag along and get a few missions done. It was a whirlwind ride from 2-3 up to 5-3 and then I stagnated. I was left behind by a group that was moving to fast for me. So there I sat on 5-3 for quite some time.

Recently, only about a week ago I was lucky enough to get asked into a CoP static starting on 5-3. We did so many missions so fast. We lost almost none of the BCs winning almost all on our 'dry runs'. We only ever lost on 6-4 and once we rectified a tanking mistake we won it immediately and almost broke the record.

So last night after sitting so close we did it. Not only did we do it but we continued into sea and did more missions. I'm standing only 2 BCs and very little work away from my Tamas Ring and the glory of saying that I've completed CoP.

Soon after I shall finish up my ZMs (got lucky to win DM from a random group patched together after a year of trying I finally got it... 1/20) which only requires one more BC for me. After this perhaps I'll put my focus back on finishing my national rank missions. It will be great to finally say that I'm done with it all and can be prepared for all that Aht Urhgan has to bring.


Here is a pic of our group shortly after finishing the (remarkably easy) 7-5 BC and entering sea for the very first time.

[chionos]

grats year
I really want to get on w/ cop but i don't have good mission jobs at the required levels i'm on 4-2 and only jobs i have that can go are war and thief which nobody wants....and so i'm leveling my mages.
i want to have cop and zilart finished before treasures comes out so i can concentrate on that

[Miriel]

Congrats man. :)

I've only successfully completed one Promy run, so I can't even imagine how long it'll take to complete all of the CoP missions.

[Yeargdribble]

Let me see if I can roughly recap all of CoP to give an idea of all that is involved since, like Zilart, not every part has some crazy hard battle. You will notice there are a lot of cutscenes. If you are early in Promathia I HIGHLY suggest trying to pay very close attention and follow the story or later you'll regret having not. That said, it is difficult to follow the story when you only do one chapter or one part of a chapter every week or so. Since I missed a lot of it I have been reading and rereading the script at GameFAQs. Some of the story begins to make more sense as you continue through it. Also I sadly DO NOT suggest using the very popular "History of Vana'diel" site. The introductory material there is good but the CoP stuff (having read it all about 5 times) leaves MUCH out so as to make it almost unfollowable.

Chapter 1
1.1-CS (Cutscenes)

1.2-CS

1.3-The three crags. These are easier some of the hardest parts of all of the Promathia Missions. Even with much strategy at 30 cap you are very limited by abilities. These are all pretty damn easy if everyone has 3 anima each though. The climb to the top can be far worse than the actual boss battles. I believe the first 3 Promyvions were meant to separate the men from the boys.

-=Benefits=-
Access to the Tavnazian Safehold which also leaves access to Lufaise Meadows and Misareaux Coast. Lufaise Meadows is some of the best XP endgame especially for non-BLM, BRD, MNK types that have more difficulty getting high chain KRT PTs. There are also many quest available once you have Tavnazian Safehold access that can make or save some gil for you. Getting items like the Powerful Rope, which is amazing for most mage jobs, is an easy task considering its steep price on the AH of most servers.

Chapter 2
2.1-CS

2.2-CS

2.3-The Aqueducts and the Minotaur. This is pretty easy if you can manage to get an alliance together. With all of the content now that requires sea access more people are interested and getting an alliance isn't as difficult as it once was. You get to deal with true sight mobs which is always fun. If you have one person that knows the way through it's pretty short and easy with a fight that is extremely easy for an alliance. Try to kill as few fomor along the way as possible (and clear your hate if you've killed any in subligar farming PTs by slaughtering beastmen in Lufaise/Misareaux) and this will be even easier.

After killing the Minotaur you have to explor and find an ornate gate past some doors. If you have a THF that can pick the locks then you don't need to farm the keys which makes life much easier for you.

2.4-CS

2.5-Getting through Riverne Site #A01 and fighting the Mammets. Getting through Riverne at 40 cap is almost more difficult than the battle that follows. You will have to do some farming in preparation to make it through the Unstable Displacements warping around toward the end. You start to learn here that CoP Missions can be costly and must be very well prepared for. In addition to farming scales to open the displacements (farmed in capped Riverne itself, blech) you'll probably wanna bring a decent bit of foods and medicines for the following fight as well as Yellow Liquids.

There are 3 mammets and there is a very good kiting strategy to easily beat them. They can change jobs and there are certain jobs you do want them as and others that you do NOT want them as (such a BLM that does -ga spells and can wipe you fast) so you can use the Yellow Liquids to lock them in jobs like DRG that attack slow and miss frequently. All-in-all not too difficult if you know the strategy and have your liquids and medicines ahead of time.

Chapter 3
3.1-CS

3.2-CS

3.3-This involves two separate paths that can be taken at any time in any order. The first requires you to speak to some people in San d'Oria before traveling to Carpenter's Landing and fighting a Malboro NM that is easily soloable by most 75 melee jobs. I almost managed to solo it as BRD/WHM though I needed a few extra cures than I could give myself. Even with Slow+Elegy the mob hits decently hard and pretty fast.

The other path involves some talking in Windurst before fighting an Antlion NM in Attowha Chasm. The NM isn't that hard but you MUST have someone to bind it. If it goes back to the 'Loose Sand' from which you spawn it then it will be full rejuvinated so you must pull it away from there, bind it, and do a lot of damage to it fast. Afterward you must climb the Tor (the notorius mountain here which is fairly difficult to climb the first few times) in a long but restricted amount of time... I think 1 hour. If you are doing this mission I suggest taking a practice climb before fighting the Antlion to avoid fighting it multiple times.

3.4-CS

3.5-This is the Diabolos fight. Before fighting him you must get your Pso'Xja pass by farming 1 of 3 chips in Pso'Xja. If you have any 75 job this is very easy as the Diremites just inside are TW and drop one of the chips frequently.

You will have to travel through a short passage of 40 cap Pso'Xja which is pretty easy with oil and powder if you know the way and then the battle. Diabolos isn't that bad if you are very prepared. Nightmare is scary but if you are ready to deal out a decent amount of damage fast you will be fine. A blink tank is almost a must for this battle. Even as WAR/NIN will work though. Also understanding the tile layout is important as some of the tiles will disappear at points throughout the fight which could potentially drop you to your death of diremites below. Just stay against a wall on your appropriate tile so that any of his attacks that knock you back don't knock you off.

-=Benefits=-
You can now access the Jeuno AH and use moogles from Tavnazia which is a HUGE benefit and henceforth you are very likely to be spending a decent amount of time here. It is a nice haven for those that dislike the crowding in Jeuno. Tavnazian will become a who's who of sorts as you will tend to see a lot of the more famous people here I've found.

Also after completing the Diabolos battle you can attempt to take on the uncapped Diabolos for a chance to summon him as an avatar.

Chapter 4
4.1-CS

4.2-Ouryu. This is another of those make or break BCs for most. You MUST be prepared and most throw together groups will not have a shot at finishing Ouryu unless it's a group of smart BLMs. To get to Ouryu you will have to travel through Riverne Site #B01 (50 cap). As the caps get higher you'll be much happier to have more abilities available to you. Riverne B is much like A in that you will need to farm scales from the wyverns here.

Also you MUST MUST MUST farm quite a few Hippogryph Tailfeathers. Even 2 can be turned in for a mistmelt and each person can have as many as they like (unlike the similar items in later chapters). Having one person (one that is less likely to die) have about 4 or 5 of them and everyone else have 1 each for backup will make this an easy fight.

What do they do you say? They keep Ouryu on the ground. When he is in the air he is mostly invulnerable and more likely to do bad/xxx.gif/xxx.gif/xxx.gif/xxx.gifga on your PT which will quickly wipe you. On the ground he's a pussy cat. A PLD tank is the best choice here though I've seen it tanked with a WAR/NIN and I suppose a NIN could do it if everyone was smart about it (stuns+flashes+mistmelts). Also lots of Hi-Pots, Yag Drinks and potentially some Ethers.

4.3-This one is rough. If you thought Ouryu was a nightmare of organization trying to get several people with mistmelts you will find this nearly impossible. The last and some of the very near following missions almost require a static due to the organizational necessity.

First off it's best to farm 2 Coral Crest keys at the beginning of this mission. These drop from Fomors in the 50 cap Sacrarium. They are Ra/Ex so you need to get two people you know and stay with you through all of this mission to get them and this mission could potentially takes 2-3 days depending on scheduling. After you get the 2 keys which aren't that uncommon as drops do everyone a favor. Slaughter a ton of beastmen in Lufaise/Misareaux to clear your fomor hate. You MUST MUST MUST do this to make life bearable after this point.

Once your hate is cleared go back and find the NM Keremet who will drop another key. Before killing him you must kill of 12 skeletons outside the door to the room he is popped in (as if you don't they will all rush in to help him when he is popped) which is easy especially with a MNK or two as they are very weak. Keremet is no joke. He is pretty rough. You get a Sealion Crest Key from him. You must simultaneously use this key and one of the Coral keys to get into a portion of the Sacrarium and check out a CS. After this you need to find a ??? that spawns in one of 6 rooms in Sacrarium. Getting around to checking these rooms is cake if you have zero fomor hate and that means EVERYONE in your group. Do not let someone say, "But I want the subligar that drops from XXX fomor... look there he is... can't we kill just one?" NO you cannot kill just one... period.

The ??? is in all of the rooms but only one of them will spawn the NM you must fight. Old Professor Marsaille and his 2 pupils. Focus only on the professor and just leave his pupils be. They are annoying but not that deadly. This is a fight where less is more. An alliance might have been nice for Keremet but a PT is better for the Professor. He can drain HP from everyone around and if there are 18 bodies around you will NEVER kill him (so I found out the hard way my first go at this).

4.4-CS

Chapter 5
5.1-You must fight a Golem NM on your way in to Promyvion-Vahzl. He is very simple for almost any group and soloable by most 75 jobs. This is almost not worth mentioning.

5.2-Promyvion-Vahzl is a little more difficult than the other promies and at the same time easier in its way. There are 5 floors. Unlike having an alliance for the earlier promys (bad idea as it seems that those without practice just cannot avoid aggro there) having one here works nicely. On the first 2 floors there are places where you are almost required to fight. The Memory Receptacles here are a little rougher and use that knock back AoE attack much more freuqently. On the 3rd floor the path is much easier and if someone knows where to go it is pretty easy to avoid all aggro. You will go to a Memory Flux and pop and NM. The NM is easy and after defeating him you will have the ability to bypass the first 2 floors directly to this one in the future.

Floors 4 and 5 are also very easy to navigate with no aggro which is good as most things are IT here. As on 3 there is an NM spawned at the Memory Flux that will allow you to be transported to their respective floors. If you have a chance get into part of a large group to make through all of these (not too difficult) NMs so that later you can teleport directly to the 5th floor and run to the spire for the BC.

You MUST have anima this time. You cannot simply have a ton of RNGs and SMNs win this one for you like so many do with the earlier promys. You will have to take the 3 bosses of the 3 crags almost simultaneously. You will ned to pick a good order to fight them in. When one gets to 20% the next one will aggro your group. Having someone with a Terroanima to use on the aggro will buy you time as you finish of the first one. This is almost a must.

If the Terroanima wasn't a must on that having the proper anima (can't remember... the one that stuns TP moves) for this last boss is an absolute must. If you do not you cannot win realistically. Once the last boss gets down to a particular percentage of HP it will start to drain HP from your group like the Professor. Some LS friends have tried this only to be kicked out when time expired because their damage couldn't keep up with his drains even with 2hrs. If you can use anima to stop the TP attacks you can finish him off quickly.

5.3-This chapter is looooooong. You will have to do a lot of fighting with a lot of CSs in between. There are 3 paths that can be taken in any other but I'll just lay them out here. I suggest taking one of the paths in separate sections. First off you'll go to 50 cap Pso'Xja. You must pass through 16 door that are trapped to spawn dolls which get progresively harder. Not all of the doors do this but most do (13/16 for me). A normal PT can easily make it through this portion very quickly and an alliance would absolutely tear through it. You just have to to take care for the other aggroing mobs in the area: Pots, Tonberries, Bats and Hecteyes.

After this you'll do some CS stuff and then travel to Delkfutt's Tower and fight another doll NM that's not too rough. Apparently he uses spells based on the day so Lightsday is probably the easiest and the second easiest would be Darksday. After this you'll need to travel to 60 cap Pso'Xja for more CS stuff.

Lotsa CS stuff and then you'll have to fight the 50 cap Mithran Trackers. There are 3 and they quickly do L3 SCs on your PT if you let them. Two of them have pets which is annoying. This is like a mini Divine Might. I'd suggest going in and taking out Z (the one with the Wyvern pet) first so that you don't have to deal with it. Starting off with an ES Sleepga can make this all the more possible. Our group personally wiped after killing Z and then reraised out of aggro range, rested to full, ES Sleepga'd again. We took out X next (the one with the rabbit pet which doesn't go away even with its master dead) and then followed up on Y very quickly.

Technically the next leg of this path is Snoll Tzar but we saved that for later which I suggest doing. Skip to the Moblin BC which is also 50 cap. Nothing too difficult about this. Just take the 4 Moblins out in a good order and then finish off the Bugbear. Get rid of the 2 mages first and then the 2 melees. They aren't sleepable but are bindable and gravityable. Hate is weird because they will give commands to do things which basically can reset hate and put it on a particular person. Clear these out and you are done with 50 cap missions

We saved Snoll Tzar for last as it is 60 cap now that we have all of the 50 cap stuff out of the way. You will need to farm up or buy some Cluster Cores to be made into Shu'Meyo Salt for this. You will probably need 2. This is a VERY difficult BC because you only have 45 seconds to do 9000 damage to the Snoll Tzar. A random band of rogues cannot do this. You need a group of people that plan ahead and work extremely well together. The Shu'Meyo salts will technically stop time for 15 seconds which in a way gives you extra time but not really...it's hard to explain. Have the less busy people in your group use them (BRD, WHM) and have everyone else focus on doing a ton of damage through SCs and MBs and potentially 2hrs.

Chapter 6
6.1-CS

6.2-CS

6.3-CS

6.4-Ouchies. This is easily one of the most difficult BCs in the game. It is 45 minutes long and divided into 3 battles. After each battle you will be fully healed so this helps a great deal. You will most likely want to go with all melees subbing NIN and a NIN tank. If a NIN tank is not an option for you... I am very very sorry. We tried and failed 3 times with a PLD tank. I'll explain more on that in a moment. The first section was 5 mammets. The kitting strategy doesn't really work here because you don't have a large area to work in. The best would be for your melees to each solo one and your mages to pick one to bind. Keep them silenced at all times in the even they turn into BLMs. If you have a spare person (thatw as me... the BRD) use them to run around and use yellow liquids on the DRGs to keep the BLMs from killing you. Some say this was the hardest part and I can see why... but I'll also disagree. You DO need to have a group with good chemistry to pull it off though.

Next up is Omega. If you are PLD onry you will have a lot of trouble. Staying alive will be next to impossible and if the WHM is throwing cures at you you will never be able to hold hate off of the massive amounts of cures needed. I've heard of PLDs winning using 25 Hi-Pots, Vile Elixir and a Vile Elixir +1. If you are PLD it will be hard and expensive. Just have you mages stay away from the AoE. If everyone is subbing NIN and the mages are far away this will be easy. Omega has a LOT of HP but if you aren't taking a ton of hits you can whittle him down pretty quickly.

Next up is Ultima. This was a blur for me. We killed Ultima in under 2 minutes with SC+MB and the use of some Icarus Wings. Suposedly Ultima is much less friendly to NIN tanks but even if this is the case (which we didn't notice with 2 stunners and a flasher) Ultima has far less HP than Omega so it's more of a non-issue and you can take him out quickly and worry less about instead of the endurance marathon that PLD tanking Omega is.

Be proud if you finish this. I know people who've been hung up here for months. If you finish this I can safely say that you pretty much have sea as the next battles are nothing to write home about. You also get your Ducal Gaurds Ring after this which gives you 5 Tele-Jeunos.

Chapter 7
7.1-CS

7.2-CS

7.3-CS

7.4-You will need to fight several in field NMs here similar to, but less annoying, than 3.3. First the one in Misareaux which is pretty easy. It's a buggard that hits like a truck but isn't very accurate and is very slow. Next is a Kraken in Bibiki which has horrible accuracy as well... easily taken down. After this you will have to spawn several tonberries in Carpenter's Landing. They are not hard but do not take them too lightly. The SMN will Astral Flow in the blink of an eye and I had to eat an R1 because I was ill prepared for it.

7.5-This battle is a big spoiler so I won't give you much detail. Basically you need to do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time because if you don't the boss here will do something that pretty much ends the battle for you. Treat this like Snoll Tzar. After winning this you have sea and you get your Tavnazian Ring which never runs out and lets you Tele-Tavnazia once a day.

Chapter 8
8.1-You'll need to travel to Rubious Crystals in sea and pop PTs of 3 Aerns. These aren't too rough if you have a normal PT. After finishing all of these you will be able to enter the Grand Palace of Hu'Xzoi.

8.2-This is not hard but long. With a normal PT you should be able to make it around very easily but you will definately need a good guide to know where to go. (see the end of this post) At the end of a very long trip through the Palace and learning the aggro habits of your new foes you will have to fight a fairly easy NM to get access to the Garden of Ru'Hmet.

8.3-Each race will need to travel to the top of their respective tower in Ru'Hmet and get a CS and an item. Each can go solo with a few methods. THF/NIN or NIN/THF can run and have a Reraise Hairpin/Gorget on incase the /xxx.gif/xxx.gif/xxx.gif/xxx.gif hits the fan. You have to travel up to the 4th floor which isn't bad. Mages than can sleep can do it much more easily. BRD cannot sleep much here but they can sleep the Zdeis. A BRD+BLM duo can easily run through each floor having the BLM sleep the Grhahs and the BRD sleep the Zdeis. If you are doing it for your group it may or may not be faster to go as a group to the top of each races tower.

After everyone has done this you'll have to do some more painful manuvering within the palace and dealing with Zdeis as a group and eventually fight a pot BC with 4 Zdeis that I've not tried yet. After finishing this and some other menial trials which I'll write about when I finish them you can take the elevator to the top for the last battle.

8.4-Apparently this battle is supposed to be so easy that you almost have to try to lose. I'll find out when I get there. After this you get your uber ring.






I wrote all of this because I personally wish I'd had something to look at not so much for guidance but to show me the lay of the land in a quick format for CoP. I should be finishing soon and perhaps will add in some details where they are needed. If you are on any part of CoP and need help feel free to PM me and IM (AIM: Yeargdribble) for tips on what to expect and how to take out different BCs. I wish you all luck.

[Lionx]

http://promathia.runtimerepairs.com/index.html