Salvage again, for real this time.

Running a little late today, which sucks because I have a bunch of stuff to cover. Well, lets start with the most important part, Salvage.

A little recap for those that don't know (you should by now, LOL) when you enter Salvage your equip screen looks like this:
We did a Bhaflau Remnants west side run yesterday. West side appears to be the easiest run for a couple of reasons. First, the first mobs you kill drop the best first floor drops, weapons and equipment. Second, these mobs also appear to be a little bit weaker than the mobs on the east side. Cannonball is definitely weaker than the fire breath move of the Eruca. I don't remember the exact set up, but it was something like PLD/WAR, NIN/WAR, NIN/WAR, MNK/WAR, DRG/SAM, BLU/NIN, WHM/BLM, SMN/WHM, RDM/WHM, BLM/WHM. Actually, I am pretty sure that is exactly what it was. We got a really good drop set for the first couple of mobs, but we were taking a long time to distribute the original cell drops, just because we wanted to take it a little slow and steady on the first run. In, fact the only person that died was Gordor on some Scorpions deep into the second floor, on a badly linked pull. Anyway, our plan was something like get some gear for Glacian (MNK/WAR) so he didn't take as much damage, get a weapon unlock to Izman (PLD/WAR) so he can use sword (Joyeuse was great for this) for hate and shield for damage reduction. Then equip the NIN's, then the DD's, then mages. Now here is an exception that most people would say is a bad idea but I think is a very good idea, suggested by Omoikitte and a few others. NIN's can't really tank until magic, they take damage like a regular DD, since that is the case, it is better to give the weapon unlocks to big damage DD's like SAM's, DRG's and DRK's because they do tons more damage with a limited amount of equipment. NIN's do damage through their equipment, like Haste and Dual Wield, but when these are no available they are actually quite weak. So initially to speed up kills at the beginning when there is a limited amount of equipment to go around, its better to equip two-handed weapon users because someone is going to be taking damage, you might as well get the most bang for the buck. You can't use the same rules you use for normal fully equipped situations as you would in Salvage.

Anyway, the faster you kill the first set of mobs, the faster you can move onto better mobs, so even though at first we were going slow to start distributing the cells we quickly realized we were going to get everything that we need very quickly so Omoikitte just started calling out who lotted what and we just kept pulling and killing. The very nice thing is that we got no links on the entire first floor, so there were no concerns about wipes and the reraise items that we brought were more than enough for our needs.

Another thing I wanted to mention here is that you probably dont need as many potions as you might think if you properly use the chests that are dropped by the mobs at the start, also don't use those assume boost items on the lower floors, you should save them for the bosses or NM's if you are farming. We didn't even use most of ours because we were holding them for something more important if we faced it later on. Anyway, once we were decently equiped we were able to clear out the first floor with speed, in fact we over farmed the first floor and could have spent more time on the second and third floor, but it was our first real run so it wasn't much of a problem for us.
The second floor was pretty easy, and we plowed through the flans that were supposed to spawn the Dormant Rampart NM, but in a series of mistakes that I personally made, I read the map wrong and opened the wrong Gilded Door AND I did it before I was supposed to because I misunderstood some instructions. Oh, well, we will know better for next time. We then moved onto some more scorpions then the third floor. Now here is the point where I say bring sneaks and invisibles. They are a godsend because there are just too many mobs to farm for cells, and alot of the time you just want to skip them, to get to mobs you need or mobs that will give you better drops. We did end up getting to some of the Archiac Gears. They hit pretty hard and its kind of shocking compared to the weakness of the other lower level mobs. They do some pretty tough moves too, like shadow wiping moves that also gravity, etc. We did get to kill one of them right before the end, and it did have a drop. LOL But we did get some more drops than that. and The run felt very successful even though we didn't get to see either the Mad Bomber or the Dormant Rampart

Immidiately after the Salvage ended we collected some people to go and do Promyvion-Vahzl for Hellzfury and Illius. We had already done the the NM's so all we had to do was boss fight, so we quickly farmed up some animas for the extras then headed to the boss fight. Which was a little bit interesting, LOL Well, right when the Mea boss was about to die, it Impailed Izman and somehow killed him, even though it is a throat stab type move, it may have been because the Dem boss aggroed and killed him or something like that, but we were left tankless for a little while, and Hellz just started voking the Dem boss and kiting it while Illius gravitied it and Gordor DoT'ed it. This bought us a ton of time for Izman to get back up and ready. Once Izman was up we engaged and killed the Dem mob very easily, then took care of Holla pretty easily. Now they are onto the Three Paths, and hopefully Sea within a week or two. The plan is to do Mithran Trackers today, which just leaves us with only two real hard fights left to do before they get Sea for later this week into next. Then Limbus! Woohoo!

After we finished this up a couple of us went to merit and had a nice little time. I had gotten up to 8 merits and I finally decided to spend some of them. LOL Level 4 HP and level 1 MP (before I even have a real use for them yet), just need to get 9 more to cap out MP then I will be set on that front.

And now, for what you have all been waiting for (drum roll), here is Ailee's new Shadow Mantle. Pretty damn impressive, I say, and I also say congratulations to Ailee! The blogger paparazzi has struck again!

Just so you know I will be in and out for the next couple of days so I don't want you to expect an update every day, but I will try to do everything that I can to post something. I will be very busy in real life until the end of the month.