Zel's Weekly Digest
Week 1 - November 14-20, 2023
Leatherworker relic completed!
I've already got all of my crafter relics at stage 4 (the highest previously), so it was just the last two steps. Unfortunately the last two stages are all Expert crafts, so they're more labor intensive.
That said, I'm happy with my new pizza cutter!
Finished Mount Rokkon and got the mount!
Mikey and I absolutely loved the first variant dungeon, Sil'dih Subteranne, when it first came out. While we mostly completed it sans hints, I did, at the very beginning, look up one of the endings, because we hadn't fully figured out how they worked yet.
Eventually, they released the second one, Mount Rokkon, but we never got around to playing it. We actually started progging it a couple of weeks ago, just the two of us, this time with absolutely no hints from outside, only the information provided specifically in game.
Up until last week, we were stuck on the last entry, trying to figure out how to get the final ending, and on monday, we did it! We successfully cleared Mount Rokkon and got the mount! The last puzzle didn't give us many clues, but we knew the devs did not expect us to just brute force the solution, that isn't how these dungeons work. After some careful observations and another reread of the endings we already cleared, I finally noticed the admittedly obvious pattern and solved it, leading us to the final boss and our brand new mounts!
I greatly enjoyed the follow-up quest too. I love the added character development for Hancock, and I've developed quite the fondness for him now, actually.
The Aloalo Adventure Begins!
Still high on our victory over Rokkon, Mikey and I started our journey through the new Variant dungeon, just added this patch, Aloalo island.
First impressions, this place is absolutely stunning. Rokkon was gorgeous too, and I'll be going back for sure for artistic screenshots in the future, but I'm currently enamoured with not only the island's scenery, but some of the dungeon mechanics as well.
On our very first run we were incredibly fortunate to get really good loot: a pet and an parasol!
Mikey actually won the parasol and tried to give it to me, but I felt really bad taking it. He insisted however, knowing that this was the one umbrella I've been waiting for them to add since the start. And that's entirely because it was my main umbrella in Animal Crossing New Leaf.
To top it off, the Statice wings are incredibly cheap, just three potsherds, so I was able to buy them right away.
As of monday, we have unlocked [BLANK] out of twelve endings, again with no hints or guides, duo-ing it at our own pace. We still have a few leads left to try before we run out of obvious endings and have to start throwing things at the wall to see what works.
Mount Rokkon Part 2?!
With Rokkon cleared, that meant I could start taking friends through it with my knowledge to be a talking strategy guide.
So of course, when Liz expressed interest, I took her there! She went in as Dark Knight, while just for fun, I went as Warrior. She insisted on Main Tank. By which I mean she put on tank stance and I didn’t, despite me not only having better survivability but also better gear. Which eventually led to her lying on the floor while I solo’d the midboss amidst complaints about Dark Knight losing all of their tools, and Liz begging SquareEnix to give DRKs Sole Survivor again.
When we got to the last boss, we switched to Gunbreaker and White mage and finished up.
Mount Farming with Friends
One of my FC mates, Magris, has been gone from the game due to IRL circumstances for over a year, and he recently came back! He was still missing two of the stormblood Kamuys, Suzaku and Seiryu specifically. So we gave Seiryu a try with him on DRK and me on WHM (the usual team up for us). Unfortunately, we learned that Seiryu EX hits incredibly hard in the second phase, and it was simply impossible to survive as a white mage.
So I switched to Warrior, and we were able to clear no problem (even if I might have accidentally given him a heart attack on the big attack that murdered us). I was able to mitigate and holmgang through the worst, and Nascent Flash heal us both back to full. Eventually, we got it!
After a short break we gave Suzaku a try and got wrecked by the Eternal Flame mechanic. So we popped our party on Party Finder and waited for some people to bite. Eventually we got two 80s and another 90, and the mount dropped immediately! Only for one of the 80s to bolt (Ironically, not the one who got the mount! They stayed and helped more!). So the 4 of us managed to get a good rhythm going and eventually, we got the mount drop! Then got a second one the run right after, which is how we realized that the other person that stayed had the mount, they were just there to farm materials (no shame man, suzaku feathers are still pricey). We said farewell and moved on to our next targets.
First, we swung by Kugane to finally pick up our Kamuy of Ninetails mounts. I already had all the kamuys, as I had gotten Suzaku's just a month or so prior during the mogtomes, I just never actually got around to picking up the quest.
After getting our big fox friends, we tried our hands at the Omega raid bosses to see if we could get their savage mounts. Of course, we were unable to tackle either Kefka or Exdeath savage with just the two of us. We then finished off our old content mount tour by hitting up Alexander for the Faustlet pet.
PVP Series rank 11-15
Nothing big here, just a progress report really. Been doing frontlines almost daily. A slow climb to the big prizes rather than a grind. That said, I have acquired the Tourmaline Weapon pet!
Fall Guys Rhiyes Mount Aquired!
I haven't spent a lot of time in the new Fall Guys collab area. I'm not super great at it and even the smallest amount of lag can mess things up. The rewards are still pretty easy to get, and even if you're not good at the game, it only takes a few rounds to get some of the prizes.
This week, I was able to get the Rhiyes mount. It's so pink!
Eureka Orthos Expedition
White talking about good ways to level, I mentioned the most recent Deep Dungeon to Mag. He was looking to level Gunbreaker and wanted to check it out. After he unlocked it, we did a run of floors 1-10. When he saw the 30+ minute queue time for 11-20, however, he suggested taking some other FC people in.
So we convinced Wren and Zeb to come along, me knowing full well Wren wouldn’t be able to resist the extra Allagan stuff now that we had a full team. So they grabbed their Allagan Alts, Amon and Scylla, and we headed down.
Of course, surrounded by all of his old cloning technology, Amon just couldn’t help himself.
We had a blast, and for the most part, it wasn’t too difficult, except for one bit at floor 28 where uh…I was an idiot and ran into a pack of mobs to cast Holy because Mag pulled a bit too much, which, combined with the patrol mobs coming up and having a near instakill hit, resulted in Wren furiously having to spam Verraise while running away from the danger that was now focused on Amon. Thankfully, I’m actually very experienced in picking doomed runs back up, and with some patience and planning we managed to get things under control and revive Scylla too (who we sadly had to leave on the floor while I focused on healing Mag until everything was dead.
No clue when we’ll be taking on the lower floors, but I definitely want us to make our way down to 100 eventually!
Too bad none of us thought to take a nice victory shot :(
Posted 2023/11/20