Tor Blimey!

Today was a CoP day for the most part, but in the morning I decided to finish up my COR quest and unlock it. I hopped on the boat from Mhaura and then again from Aht Urhgan Whitegate and some (significant) amount of time later I was in Nashmau again. Getting to Talacca Cove from Nashmau is pretty easy - you just head west, round the corner and run through the cemetary into the cave. There's only one imp, who sits in the middle of the graveyard, so if you just run round it in a circle, you'll be fine. It's a bit harder at night with the undead out, but Sneak can fix that.

I finished up my cutscenes for COR (love it!) and then ran back to Nashmau. Instead of Warping home, I decided that whilst I was here, I'd run to Azouph Isle Staging Point to take the Supplies Key Item so I could finally become a mercenary and be able to Warp to Aht Urhgan whenever I wanted. I changed to DNC sub and headed north out of Nashmau into Caedarva Mire again.

Chigoes seem a lot easier to spot these days, and from memory I remembered there being roughly one on the run from Nashmau to Azouph Isle Staging Point, so when I got near the big lake, I used Spectral Jig to be sure. This got me through the cave and up to the short passage that leads to the place everyone used to camp Heraldic Imps (where the two Jnun ponds are). I waited for an eternity for the Heraldic Imps to turn, then pegged it across with a fresh Spectral Jig, so as not to aggro the Jnuns if I stepped in their ponds.

The first Heraldic Imp must have turned at the last second as he began casting Choke on me. One hit later I had blood aggroed all the Jnuns which finished me off in seconds so I lay dead on the little path right between their ponds. Fortunately I had Reraise up, and remembered that these Jnuns slept during the day, so I waited for them to do so. Even better, a BST came along and started killing all the Heraldic Imps between me and the Staging Point door. So, 15 mins later, I was able to Reraise up and safely return to Aht Urhgan Whitegate to become a mercenary.

Later on, I met with Chinchii and we decided to carry on with CoP. We began chapter three, and started with the cutscenes in Bastok, which led us to following Prishe to Jeuno. When we got to Jeuno, we were wanted for crimes against the city so had to go and turn ourselves in. We ended up having to serve Jeuno by going to investigate Promyvion-Vazhl, but in order to do so were sent to find three members of an old expedition to the Northlands, one in each of the main cities.

We decided on Windy first, so headed there and began the very long chain of cutscenes there, tracking down the member of the expedition whilst the three Tarutaru tried to find their dad. Eventually we were asked to obtain the Mimeo Feathers from Attohwa Chasm and chuckled to myself as I remember climbing up Parradamo Tor last time - Chinchii had no idea what was in store!

It wasn't difficult getting to the Loose Sand where Lioumere pops, as it's pretty much a giant circle, and the Loose Sand is on the far east of the Tor's outskirts. We popped Lioumere with the intention of casting Banish when he ran back. For the most part this worked then once he got to low life, Banish didn't seem to bring him back, so this fight rapidly became frustrating as, although he was quite killable in terms of level, he was totally unkillable as we had no way of preventing him from returning to his spawn point and regaining his HP. We decided to log there and ask for help later.

That evening, Cheekee and Sirdante came on, and quickly agreed to help which was real nice. The came on over and we beat Lioumere in seconds. Cheekee didn't need to do CoP (I should know, Cheekee was Kixxi once!) so returned to Whitegate to do Cheekee things, but remained in the party to give 'moral support'. Sirdante, Chinchii and I remained but struggled to find the ramp up the Tor (how the heck would anyone have known what to do when this first came out). Eventually we found it, and a couple of wrong turns later, we managed to begin our slow and treacherous climb.

Palms were getting sweaty and hands were shaky as we climbed, watching the light from the Mimeo Jewel fading. Unbelievably there were no falls from any of us, but there were a few moments where it was touch and go, when you sort of 'bounce' off the wall from hugging it too hard. We were all dreading the 'glitch' where the movement key gets stuck and your char runs off but it didn't happen and we made it to the top to turn the Mimeo Jewel into three Mimeo Feathers. Sirdante couldn't seem to click on the Cradle of Rebirth and got yet another message about the light being practically all gone but managed to get her feathers in time.

We wanted to go and do the Sandy cutscenes and fight Overgrown Ivy but this had taken much longer than anticipated, and two of us didn't have Warp, so we decided to call it a night. If there's ever a reason you want to distinguish FFXI from any other MMO, climbing Parradamo Tor is it.