A Diabolical Idea

As this was my last full evening on the game before I went away for the Christmas hols, I thought I'd try to get myself a couple of little Christmas presents called Fenrir and Diabolos. As I still needed two of the Whispers from the Primes (Garuda and Ramuh), and Teila needed one of the drops from both Primes to go towards her Evoker's Ring, we decided to head on out to Cape Terrigan to make the long trek up to the Cloister of Gales.

I used to remember fearing for my life whilst taking this route - sneak and invis mobs who rate Tough, with little or no room to stop and recast, it's awful. Plus I always get stuck on the same bit of foliage by the Greater Manticores!

Garuda Prime wasn't too bad, but she seemed to enjoy casting Whispering Wind on herself alot, healing 800 or so a time. We managed to beat her, but almost a minute behind the current record. Her 2hr, Aerial Blast, hit me for 0 and Teila for 38, which we found rather amusing!

Ramuh Prime was much easier, simply for the fact he didn't keep healing himself, but he did like to Paralyse and Stun a lot. We managed to beat him taking 0 damage from his 2hr, Judgement Bolt, and even set the record for the fight - probably because no one had fought him since last night's update!!!



Now that I finally had all six Whispers I headed back to the Rhinostery in Windurst and picked up my Moon Bauble from Leepe-Hoppe and warped back to Whitegate. I managed to get a party in less than a minute for Fenrir Prime, including the luxury of a RDM/DRK for Chainspell - Stun.

Getting to the Full Moon Fountain was easy, oddly enough. Whereas the others require you to Ninja past difficult monsters, the route through the Toraimarai Canal was full of Too Weak monsters, most likely to throw you off guard for what's to come.

This was my first ever attempt at Fenrir Prime and it went horribly wrong. He repeatedly did a move called Lunar Cry to put a huge Accuracy and Evasion Down on the party, and our NIN tank couldn't evade the attacks. He also used Lunar Roar, a Dispelga move, and took all buffs off the party, including our Reraises. His damaging TP move, Moonlit Charge, hit the NIN for around 800 each time, and on one occasion, he was one-shotted. Only the RDM and myself made it out of the BCNM alive.

The second time was much better. Teila and me shared the Erases for Lunar Cry, and when Fenrir Prime was at low health, the RDM activated Chainspell and Stunned Fenrir repeatedly. This tactic got him killed (I was a second too slow with Benediction, as I was resting MP), but we managed to win by the skin of our teeth, so his death wasn't in vain. Teila returned to Windust to pick her item to contribute to the Evoker's Ring, whilst I selected the Pact with Fenrir! Yay, finally!



On a complete roll, we returned to Whitegate to shout for Diabolos Prime. I thought Fenrir Prime was hard, so I wasn't confident at all for Diabolos Prime. As fortune would have it, people were relatively quick to respond, and we ended up with the following setup:

NIN75/WAR37
BRD75/WHM37 (Teila, but came back as BLM75/RDM37 after 3rd attempt)
DRK75/NIN37
SMN75/WHM37
BLM75/WHM37 (but was replaced by a SMN75/WHM37 after 4th attempt)
WHM75/SMN37 (me)

We tried this five times and lost on all of them. Admittedly three of those attempts were on Darksday, but each time it was the same thing that killed us: Nightmare.

OK, I'll be honest, this wasn't a tough fight. We survived everything really well, and had a Stunning order for Nightmare, but towards the end of each fight, someone always seemed to miss-time a Stun, but through no fault of thier own. Diabolos regularly cast Sleepga II before doing Nightmare, but even with Poison Potions to avoid the Sleepga, the Sleepga acted as a mini-Stun, so it wasn't always possible to get the Stun off on time. The Bio effect from Nightmare was a Bio III, which absolutely annihilated us, and I couldn't wake up despite having 108 Dark Resistance.

He also had some other nasty moves, like Cacodemonia (Cursega), Dispelga, and his Nether Blast and Camisado were murderous too. I used my 2hr in the first fight, but I missed the tank so she went down. Our SMN also 2hred in the first fight, but died as he was readying Diamond Dust, which was also disappointing. That was our closest fight.

After the forth fight, the BLM left, but the DRK brought along another SMN friend, who turned up in Relic Gear. Also, at this point, the day changed to Firesday, so we thought that this time we'd do it. After waiting til nearly 2am for this SMN to turn up, what happened? She didn't have the key item to get into the BCNM, so we went in at five and lost again.

Diabolos 5, Kixxi 0

To be continued...