The aftermath of the Garuda fight and the emergence of the ancient, god-eating, Ultima weapon left us more than a little discouraged. All this, and the Garlean Empire was just going to cause another Calamity to match the first one, just out of spite. Some problems are just too large to solve, and all you can do is solve the little ones and hope the big ones take care of themselves.
Maybe we wouldn’t have a chance against Ultima, but we could save Minfilia, Tataru, Biggs, Wedge and the other remains of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. And, more importantly, grab us some of that Magitek Armor, the two-legged personal tanks I first remember seeing in Final Fantasy III-slash-VI, when the Empire was in pursuit of Espers.
Unfortunately, even though Kasul and I had to gather the materia to FIX the thing in the first place, it was handed over to Cid’s assistants to use. Grrrr. That was MINE. It even pretty much loves me. Whenever we saw it using its Magitek Vision, it gazed lovingly on me. My Magitek. Mine.
Gunblade gauntlets. Magitek armor. The Empire has all the COOL TOYS.
The daring excursion into the Garlean citadel was all I could have hoped for, except for it being solo only. One of the things I like best about these story nights is sharing the story with someone else, but for most of the night, Kasul and I were forced to play apart. Omuro offered to help out, but since he’d done the story, he’d only be able to join in on any potential dungeons.
He’d logged out by the time we finally got to the first group content, the trial of Cape Westwind. This was only our second time in a Full Party – eight people. Most of the content before now has been in a Light Party – four people. The last Guildhest is a full party, some of the PvP stuff is full party, and now this. The fight was a simple tank and spank, and more set up, I think, the sort of waiting you’ll be doing for a full party than any sort of special mechanics. A couple adds spawned that I was supposed to offtank, so I did.
Completing Cape Westwind let us continue the story to the gates of Castrum Meridianum, which sounds like a fairly lengthy full party raid. Kasul wasn’t to level 50 yet, so we were obliged to stop there for the night.
Still having fun with the story. I do worry, though, that doing any of the pre-expansion full party content (these mini-raids, the pvp) is just going to mean frustrating waits. Last night, I could not get the pvp to fire. I did a guildhest roulette (the one with the goblin bombers) as dragoon, and then a low level dungeon roulette (Cutter’s Cry, a favorite) as paladin for the tomestones. Did a hunt for a few alliance seals, but then I looked at the alliance seal rewards and there was nothing much there to want. Maybe some of those minions. Any job high enough level to use the alliance seal armor will be high enough level to get ilvl 50/90 armor from their job quest.
It’s likely that most of the pre-expansion high level content is pointless. But, Kasul and I are locked at 50 for now. We still really have a lot of stuff to do.