Soboro Sukehiro and the aspiring samurai
Since coming back to Final Fantasy XI not more than a few months ago I have done nothing but grind levels endlessly with almost zero inspiration or desire to do anything else. I've had fun speeding through levels, but until very recently I've had no goal except to be a level 75 Samurai as soon as possible.
Last night I was in a great party in the Garlaige Citadel basement, level 47 and just waiting to hit 50 so I could go to sleep and work on my 50 cap quest in the morning. Along with me in the party was another Samurai who was about 9000 experience ahead of me, and hit level 50 just before I hit 49. After this happened I started noticing we were going through mobs much, much quicker. I was seeing the other Samurai output a Tachi: Jinpu literally every 10 seconds it seemed. Upon inspecting him, I came to a discovery that completely changed my motivation and game goal.
It might not look like much to anyone else, but to me, it's perfect. It has revitalized my interest in this game tenfold. Watching the other guy dish out weaponskill after weaponskill almost like he was in permanent Meikyo Shisui...even causing renkei with himself, I decided that I would not join another EXP party until I was in possession of Soboro Sukehiro.
I had no idea what I had to do or where I had to go to get it, but if it was possible, I was going to do it, no matter what. I did the research last night and discovered that I'd have to go against my "no questing, no missioning" attitude I've held since I restarted (rank 1, bitches.) and tackle a decent chunk of the Chains of Promathia missions. Not because it is a mission item, but because I have to gain access to Riverne Site #B01.
I started this morning, completely inspired with a budget of about 500,000 gil to spend as needed. Luckily, I'd kept most of my old gear, but I still had to buy a few things to get myself back at the level 30 cap I'd need to tackle the first chapter, the Promyvions. Between gear, food, and medicines, I spent about half of my budget. I was ready with Hi-Potion +3's, Sole Sushi +1's, Poison Potions, and Eye Drops. It took over 4 hours to put together a party, and even then, I can't say I was completely happy with it. Our setup was SAM/WAR (me), WAR/NIN, WAR/NIN, BLM/WHM, WHM/BLM, and WAR/MNK, our first target was Promyvion - Holla.
We died and had to restart twice due to the same mistake, letting a Thinker aggro us on the third promyvion plain. One of the WAR/NIN's got really upset the second time around and left, we quickly found a replacement, a SMN/WHM who we hoped would do significant damage when we got to the boss.
Our third go, we actually did make it all the way. My heart was pumping about a thousand times a minute during that fourth promyvion plain. Avoiding the seethers and thinkers was incredibly difficult.
We set up our strategy, we were going to nuke it with 2-hour abilities at 50% health. We entered the arena and buffed up, rested up, and charged. Things were going pretty good until we decided to start using 2-hours, He used sleep and the summoner's avatar got slept and couldn't 2-hour. I used mine, and I saw the warrior use Mighty Strikes. We lasted until about 20-25% health on the boss before he slaughtered us.
I suppose I tried to rush into this a little too quickly...Some of the guys in the party were not really willing to invest anything into this except for a few hours. Honestly, I didn't expect it to be so difficult. I'm trying to set up a sweep of all three Promyvions on Thursday, I'll be a lot more careful this time, and I'm also going to try to drag a full alliance of people with me to pass the plains easily so we can concentrate on the bosses. I was pretty discouraged wasting 7-8 hours, dying three times, downleveling back to level 49, lots of money in consumables, and not any closer to Soboro Sukehiro...but I guess it's not so bad, since I have a working knowledge of how the place works.
I'll let you know how it turns out on Thursday.
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