I need to stop reading forums.

God damn it, people are stupid. We have people in some forum posting BEFORE they have been in Salvage proclaiming its suckage and its death. In an attempt to describe it to you, I will go over the basic tenents. If you have determined that it sucks before doing it, stop reading.

1. It take 2000 Assault Points, not IS points. This means that you can not do it everyday, but you shouldn't try to. Its a little longer than Limbus and a lot shorter than Dynamis, it is a good length of time. Not overwhelming but I think that most people should plan on doing it two times per week, and I also think that doing it will massively slow your progression toward Assault gear, so its kind of a trade off, but the very nice thing is determining when you want to go and how many times you want to go. Once a week? Twice a week? I think you could even go three times a week if you work it out correctly and did the right Assaults with three people. You also need to be on at least Aht Urhgan mission 17, which is the visit to the Imperial Whitegate after the Black Coffin. We made sure of that last night. Then you talk to this guy: He is standing next to the Assault Office.

2. IT IS NOT EASY. If you are looking for things given to you on a silver platter, its time to head back to Limbus. If you are looking for, you know, SOME FREAKING CHALLENGE IN A GAME, then this is the place to be. If you are going to whine about not having your weapons when you go in then this is not for you. If you like a challenge and have fun trying to figure things out, then this is you place.

3. The rewards are insane, its still to be determined how hard the rewards are to get and what the mobs above the first and second floors drop, but that will come with time. I will post the ultimate rewards at another time, there are too many for one blog entry.

4. Figure out who is going to get what items before going in. The subjob unlocks, magic unlocks, weapon unlocks, etc. Weapon unlocks should go to tanks first, and not to MNK's (orz) so that hate can be spread. Magic to healers first, subjob to monks or tanks for more HP, etc. Think about it, and you will usually want to pile up the first set of unlocks to Tanks, then WHM, then BLM for damage and healing, Once the MNK's have gotten there HP boost and subjobs, they will probably want to wait to get the rest of the items toward the end.

5. Pulling is very important, some mobs drop better stuff than others. If you get a link, just kite it, you can basically kite things on the first two floors forever, because they move so slow. Get the mobs with the better drops first. In Bhaflau Remnants it was the bombs that had better drops, so kill those before killing the crawlers.

6. What to bring: Reraisers, Reraise Scrolls, Potions, Au Laits and Sneaks and Invisible items. These will help a TON. Now we know why the Assaults drop so many potions, you will drink them like water on the first two floors.

7. Clear the first floor, but be sure to pull the hard mobs last after at least a few people have abilities unlocked. Our run went to hell when we pulled a PLD troll because it would just Diamondhide the Cure IV and we just sat there and couldn't do anything, after that we just basically force wiped and moved through the rest of the levels.

8. Don't give up and just move on to the next level, that is what we did, but there were Flans there and we couldn't damage them at all, so we just scattered and explored. You will get some magic and weapon unlocks at some point on the first floor, the important thing is to not rush, and just do your best to kill everything.

On our way around we encountered several different mobs, Archaic Gears this freaking huge Archaic Chariot and the Mega-boss the Long-Bowed Chariot We weren't able to do anything really because we had skipped by too fast, and didn't get any unlocks... I hate that Troll Gemologist >.<

We ended up mostly dead because we tried to play with the Long-Bowed Chariot so we ended up like this. Oh and if everyone dies or leaves the area you will be dumped out in 3 minutes like any BCNM.
In conclusion, this is not for the weak of heart or mind, or the whiny. If you want a challenge for the best gear in the game this is the way to go. Basically the run I did were some friends, some people from my Limbus LS, and some other random people. We lost focus when we got to the horribly annoying PLD, we should have just kited it and killed something else. We will know better for next time.

One last thought on Salvage. Its basically RMT proof, the drops are Rare/Ex, it takes time and actual coordination, and it can't be hacked (at least not yet) because even if you warp hack you can't kill anything later on, and you have to melee the first couple of mobs. So if you see a group of RMT's all level MNK, you will know what they are up to. LOL But even then its like doing RMT Dynamis, no gurantees on anything, and it will just probably get ugly really quick.

Now for the rest of my day, which was already long before we even tried Salvage, I don't even want to think about the time that I went to bed. orz (ZzzpandazzZ™) Anyway, it started off with helping Vesp get Exuviation from the Wamoura after he had already gotten Magic Hammer off the frogs (which just looks silly) These things are nasty and they only "evolve" from the regular Wamoura Princes after a certain amount of time, and I think there can only be so many in a certain area at a time. They like to do a lot of fire based AoE that wipe shadows, but don't hit too hard and we had like 4 BLU's spamming Head Butt, which afforded a ton of time for shadow recasts. Vesp got the spell on the first kill, and we only needed to get 2 more kills to get everyone the spell. Luckily, the Wamouras that we were killing just loved to spam the move.

After getting Vesp his new spell we were off to Limbus. We did the elemental floor, and I should have spoken up more apparently, because they didn't know you needed to kill the elementals in a certain order to prevent the Mystic Avatars from spawning. See, what you need to do is kill the mobs in elemental order because if you kill one elemental, then the elemental that is strong to the one you killed will turn into a Mystic Avatar, which are way more powerful than the elementals and like to use their Two Hours. :( We ended up having to fight Titan and Shiva because of this, if I had spoken up more we should have been able to at least do Ifrit or even Titan, but not both. :) It didn't matter two much because even though we took a few casualties to Diamond Dust, we still beat Shiva and fought Carbuncle and two light Avatars at the end. Afterward, I was at 72 Ancient Beastcoins and Vesp let me borrow 3 more to be able to finally get my Brutal Earring! I was so happy, but I never got to test it out on my NIN because of the limitations in Salvage. ; ; I would like to XP with it sometime soon, and I have had people bugging me to XP recently, including Bgalvin, Charlet, Eternalpain and Omoi, hey with a RDM thats like an XP party right there! :)

And now for your daily moment of enjoyment, Carby didn't look like he was feeling too good yesterday... his color was a bit off... maybe a few too many drinks in the Avatar Club.

(™ is Trademark of Aileecorp: Saving bunnies today to bite the fingers of Ringthree tomorrow!)