>>Onekomaru you sound strangely excited ^^
As it turned out, Onekomaru had a Hakutaku raid going, and they wanted me to come along! Given that I had finally reached the point where I can start going for these high-level raids, I figured, why not, and decided to tag along for the ride. The alliance, it seemed, contained quite a lot of people that I have known since my earlier times, and it was nice to meet everyone again now that (most of us) were in the 70s. In addition, I met a number of people who seem to be in the "community", or the players who have been here since the NA release of the game, the people who reularly post on the Killing Ifrit messageboards, so I finally got around to meeting them proper, although it seems that a number of them know me through some means. As it stands, I was the only person in the alliance who was under Level 70. ; ;
For those who don't know, the Optical Hat is the height of melee headgear, at least, in terms of accuracy. It's a Level 70 hat that gives +10 Evasion, +10 Accuracy, and +10 Ranged Accuracy so you can imagine why the melee (especially Rangers, I think) drool over it. Or at least, I'm not aware of another piece of headgear that melee wear, but then again, I prefer the magical arts for a reason. ^^
Getting the Optical Hat is no joke though- one must first gather five Hakutaku eyes which are dropped from the assorted Hecteye mobs located all across Vana'diel, levels ranging from 50 to 75. Alternatively, while these eyes fall under the category of being non-AH-able, people can still sell them in Bazaars. Once you have all five eyes, find a high-level Alchemist (90, I think) to make a Hakutaku Eye Cluster (and not break in the process). Having done that, you need to then find an alliance, go down to the Den of Rancor, trade the Hakutaku Eye Cluster to a ??? somewhere in there, and kill Hakutaku! At least the Optical Hat is a 100% drop, since it'd be, well, rather annoying if it wasnt...
Prior to this I had heard numerous things about Hakutaku, not all of which was accurate. I had heard that Hakutaku is a hard fight, and that the fight lasts around 30 minutes each. I had also somehow managed to get the idea that Hakutaku was forced spawned in the Kuftal Tunnel, when in actuality, it is forced spawned in the Den of Rancor. Oops.../blush.
I was one of the last people they were looking for, and so, with 16 people in the alliance, we all Teleported over to the Yhoator Jungle and beelined for the Den. It was a little bit awkward with people unsure of where the ??? was in the Den, and I got lost quite a number of times. Most of all, I was deathly afraid of screwing up, after all, it was my first "real" fight (well, excluding HNMs) and given what I had heard about some up and coming players, I didn't exactly relish the thought of tainting my image with a screwed up Hakutaku run. Did I mention that the Hakutaku fight is supposedly difficult? >_<
As such, I stuck to following my party leader, who just so happened to be Ashira. I figured Ashira would in turn follow the alliance leader, so at least if something happened to our party, at least I wasn't alone floundering around delaying everybody. Obviously, that didn't quite work out as planned as after resting from a fight (someone got aggro), I got up to find that the rest of the party had gone on without Braveheart (a Galka Beastmaster ^^) and I. It didn't help that the other members didn't show up on the /map, but that was soon rectified after we discovered that we were directly above the rest of the party. :P
So after clearing the area out of Tonberries and Million Eyes, we got down to business. Onekomaru was first, and she traded her Hakutaku Eye Cluster to the ???, and we begun!
My task was to Stun all of Hakutaku's most damaging spells. Fire IV was okay since Thebrebaud (NIN) was tanking, and his Utsusemi would gladly absorb a Fire IV. The same reasoning applies to Flare. Firaga III, on the other hand, needed to be Stunned, and we had three Black Mages there who were in charge of making sure Firaga III never resolved. That, and I quickly soon found out that nuking Hakutaku really wasn't a worthwhile endeavour, so I took to helping the White Mages out with Paralyna, which, by the way, Hakutaku does A LOT.
I'm not sure what the attack is called, but I remember Gluey telling me something long ago (around the time when he got his Optical Hat) about looking away from Hakutaku to avoid its eye (Paralyze) attacks. That, and Onekomaru said to try tanking Hakutaku backwards, so as you can see from the pictures, I had my back to Hakutaku the majority of the time, although I didn't think it'd affect a mage, but hey, better to be safe. ^^
Of course, having one's back to Hakutaku made targetting it a right pain, but we do what we can. :P
Long story short, the Hakutaku run was a success, with few deaths, two of which were Riotouscrow's, who I hear dies pretty frequently anyway. It was particularly funny when he decided to pull a Million Eyes when all the White Mages were away, and he soon came running back to camp screaming "Cure III". Evidently, all the other mages figured the white mages would Cure him, so we just kept sitting down.
Then Riotouscrow was defeated by the Million Eyes. Oops. >_<
I didn't come back empty handed, either! On our second run, Hakutaku dropped a scroll of Flare, and I asked if I could take the scroll (for obvious reasons). Well, people started lotting, so I figured I might as well try my luck as well. Somehow, I actually managed to win the lotting, and five minutes later, I had a scroll of Flare in my possession, which I wasted little time in using. Now I have my most powerful (and pretty!) Ancient Magic, I can now go give Maat a shot for his money. :D
All in all, we fought, and killed Hakutaku three times, taking a little over an hour and a half to do, although it certainly didn't feel like it. {Congratulations!} to Onekomaru, Fatesfury, and Shuyjin on your Optical Hats! ^^ (Now, if only it didn't make you look like a mage...)
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