Learning by doing.

So we tend to do a few pick-up Salvages each week, and in general I have found that they are easier to deal with in general than the actual planned Salvage runs. I haven't figured out except to say that the more practice you get in Salvage the better that the run will turn out to be. It really is a place where you can learn a whole lot just by going over and over. I can't tell you exactly what we are doing to go faster from run to run, but watching other people do it also helps to make us move faster. I think part of the people that most people have when doing Salvage is that you really need to move quickly and you need to be a self-starter. I usually have to tone myself down while doing events so that I not do something that could be bad while everyone else is getting ready, but in Salvage it is better if people adjust to the speed of the events. Not just lotting cells and passing but also pulling faster, dealing with multiple mobs at once, especially ones that can't sleep.

Last night we had a perfect example of what not to do, and we were still able to handle things pretty well. In general we need to speed up pulls a little bit, and having multiple people willing to pull AND being able to handle those pulls makes things about a thousand times faster. I also got some really good recommendations from Celestria (who almost definitely runs the best NA Salvage LS on the server) who came as a guest on our run last night. We did a really good Zhayolm run, which of course had no drops, but we did kill both the 5th and 6th Madames and we got the boss down to about ~40% before timing out. We really only needed a few more minutes to take it down because we took it to 40% in about 5 minutes. We really need to focus on getting more 35's so the added benefit of killing the boss is just that, an added benefit. An example of succeeding despite trying to fail was our really bad pull of the Archaic Chariot on the second to last floor last night. Now the Chariot often comes with gears, but instead of focusing on the gears first, I thought it would be bright to have different people do different things, instead of focusing on one things at a time. This almost wiped us but actually no one ended up dying at all. Still it would have been much more efficient to kill the linking gears while kiting the Chariot instead of doing both at once. Another lesson for the next run!

One more thing that will benefit us is helping people know what exactly they need for cells and distinguishing that from the cells people want. Like last night, both Skur and I boned it because we didn't realize that we had forgotten to allocate a magic cell to him as he was the THF for the run and on the 5th floor there are necessary sacs to get to the Madame and then to get to the 6th floor. This meant that we had to do some interesting twists to do both of these but in the end it wasn't too bad. But we shouldn't have to come up with quick solutions, we should just remember to do the important things at the start so there aren't problems later on. So because of this, I am going to make a check list for each zone that should help me plan ahead for every run instead of doing it all ad hoc. Here is what the list for Zhayolm will probably look like:

Pre-run:
Day of entrance/4th floor Rampart:
3 Full unlocks:
Silver Seas Card:
Invis:

Starter cell distribution:
Weapons:
Magic:
Abilities:
Sub:
General equipment/stat lotting order:
Exceptions (Refresh items, movement speed items):

First floor:
Extra cell in box:
Puk:
Ziz:
Lindwurm:
Bugard:
Person that isn't using any cells:
Zone up wing and person:

Second floor (clear clock-wise):
Pop cell for Socket:
Zone up person:

Third floor (Go west at start, Clear South, Port North.):
Zone up person:

Fourth floor (Go west at start, Port east)
Rampart:
Zone up person:

Fifth floor:
Sac:
Followers:

Sixth floor:
Kiter:
Puller:

Boss:
Healer assignments:

That I believe covers a lot of things for Zhayolm but I am sure I will add to the list. I will also add lists for the other zones too, which I believe will help in planning for me, and also for not forgetting things that are important for runs to help everyone feel more comfortable.

More farming tonight, and I am either going to break out the BRD or WHM to level it tonight too a little. Maybe some pictures for tomorrow.