Originally, our plan was to travel through Promyvion-Vahzl together with Subligar Connection, since having an alliance of twelve would make it somewhat easier to get to the top, but Onekomaru had homework to do on the night we planned for, so it ended up being a TrueRune-only thing. >_<
We didn't know too much about what to expect when it would come to Promyvion-Vahzl. We had snippets of ideas like the various floor bosses, some of which were reputedly harder than their BC-counterparts, and other horrors like "the gauntlet" that would be lying in wait for us somewhere inside Promyvion-Vahzl.
And so, we took no chances and came fully prepared with medicines and several animas, because good grief, we would need it. Hysteroanimas are your friend. Really.
Unlike the other three Promyvion zones which are accessed through the various shattered telepoints at the crags, Promyvion-Vahzl is accessed through the uncapped section of Pso'Xja. Just enter the tower at (F-7) of the Beaucedine Glacier, and heep heading straight once you enter Pso'Xja (at least, once the place offers you an option of which way to turn). There will be a door there with a Snowball guarding, which is easily taken care of.
The door is trapped. Trying to open it will spawn a (very large) Golem, which has a very high auto-regen on, something to the tone of 100hp/tick. Fortunately, he doesn't have that much HP, and really is quite laughable. Then again, since this was in an uncapped zone, having several 75+ people beat up on it wasn't really a fair fight either. I suppose a Level 50 party might have some trouble, but I really can't say for sure. I remember Akanea's Impulse Drive practically one-shotted the Golem though. ^^
You only need to defeat the Golem once- if you have already previously beaten the Golem before, the door's trap will remain forever "broken", which is a good thing, since things would get rather annoying otherwise. -_-
Take the life down to the bottom floor (do not cast magic!) and there will be a stone door that is the zone to Promyvion-Vahzl. Enter it to be treated to two lengthy cutscenes which really start to dig deeper into just what is going on in this place. Here are some teasers to whet your appetite. ^^
Unlike the other Promyvions, which are a rather grey-ish colour, Promyvion-Vahzl is instead a bit of a muddy-brown colour. You still have all the assorted type of Empty mobs- Wanderers, Weepers, and so forth, but unlike their Promyvion-Holla/Dem/Mea counterparts, these can also take on Light and Dark elements as well as the regular six elements. Also unlike the other Promyvions, which have four floors in total, Promyvion-Vahzl comes with an extra fifth floor that you must also navigate through.
As usual, to proceed onto the next level, you need to defeat a Memory Receptacle that may or may not result in a portal leading you up. I'm not sure if fake Memory Receptacles are still in place at the basic three Promyvions- I've heard they've been removed- but believe me, there are fake Memory Receptacles in Promyvion-Vahzl. ^^
Like the other Promyvions, the mobs gets tougher and tougher as you proceed higher up in floors, although this rate is somewhat slower, with mostly VT mobs crowding the top floor.
One interesting note is that the Strays the Memory Receptacles spawn are no longer all Wanderer-type mobs, in fact, Strays can even be Weeper or Seether-type mobs, although thankfully, they're still just as weak and easy to take down.
On the second floor, we encountered what has since been nicknamed "the gauntlet". This is basically a rather narrow stretch, ala "gauntlet" that you need to pass through, that is filled with Empty mobs. Good timing will get you through this easily, and if you're lucky, all the Empty will be on one side of the gauntlet, allowing you safe passage through.
Alas for us, we had neither good timing, nor luck, so we ended up stringing up a sacrifical lamb (a.k.a. "Seraphpdh") to run through, getting aggro, and thus clearing a path for us to run through. He quietly died in an isolated spot on the other side of the gauntlet, where we waited for the Empty mobs to return back to the gauntlet before raising him. ^^
The third floor is where things start to get interesting. On the third, fourth, and fifth floors of Promyvion-Vahzl is a Memory Flux somewhere. These didn't do anything in the basic Promyvion zones, but here they spawn an NM which you need to defeat in order to move on. Bear in mind that you get no warning when spawning the NM, so make sure nobody touches the Memory Flux until everybody is ready.
The NMs that spawn are essentially the three basic Promyvion bosses, and should be treated as such, although they do have different names. I'm not sure whether they are harder than the normal Promyvion bosses- they certainly feel harder, but in either case, be prepared for a good fight, since they are not walkovers. Well, that's not quite true. The third floor boss is a Propagator, which is basically the Promyvion-Dem boss. He's easy.
Defeating the boss not only you to proceed onwards through Promyvion-Vahzl, but if you touch the Memory Flux again after defeating the boss (don't wait too long!), you'll be treated to a cutscene and the Memory Flux is now a "save point". Should you need to re-enter Promyvion-Vahzl again for some reason, you can warp straight to the Memory Flux from the stone door in Pso'Xja. Convenient, no? ^^
The fourth floor boss is a Solicitor, a copy of Promyvion-Mea's boss. For some reason, we had a lot of trouble with this one, mostly because it has some really damaging moves. Impalement would bring Seraph's HP down to double digits repeatedly, while other moves like Carousel and Promyvion-Brume throw massive monkey wrenches into things (Promyvion-Brume is also a hate reset).
On our first attempt, we ended up spending a few Hysteroanimas, and almost beat it, except Impalement and Carousel took out Seraph and Akanea. Saoirse was soon to follow next, and then Akeem. I managed to throw a few nukes at it, but the final Thunder II which was supposed to be the finishing blow, got resisted. I died. >_< I tried Reraising and nuking it one last time, but by then it had regenerated enough HP to survive (still just a very tiny bar of health left! >_<) and it killed me again. -_-. As much as we would've liked it, no, Ksayyah and Carbuncle was not able to finish the job, and so we were left with the six of us lying dead on the ground and no more Reraises. ; ;
One problem we found was that there was a lot of lag for goodness knows what reason. We all went back to our Home Points and I decided to switch over to WHM/SMN since I figured the extra healing support with Cure IV and Curaga II would be worth it, not to mention having access to Benediction if we really needed it (as opposed to Manafont).
And so we each individually went our own way up to Xarcabard and over to Pso'Xja, where we warped straight to the third floor. Except that for goodness-knows-what reason, as we were trickling in, someone accidentally touched the Memory Flux, spawning the Propagator again, and a whole stream of "..."s and "WTF!"s followed suit. Yes, we wiped again, although thankfully I managed to squeeze in a quick Reraise in there somewhere so we didn't have to come all the way around yet again.
We fought our way back up to the fourth floor and went to take on the Solicitor once again. This time, we decided we'd go all out and actually commit to beating the Solicitor with our animas and what not. This time, we were actually successful, although it took us four of our six Hysteroanimas to do so. It probably is a lot easier to beat with an alliance, but we were the only ones in the zone at the time. >_<
Finally, we got up to the fifth and final floor. Simple process of elimination would tell us that the Promyvion-Holla boss was waiting for us (named a Ponderer this time). By this time, it was getting late and a number of us were feeling tired, so again, we decided to just throw the rest of our anima at it and just "beat the damn thing." The Ponderer isn't as hard as the Solicitor, but towards the end, it spams AoE damage effects like there was no tomorrow, including the infamous Shadow Spread which we were prepared for, and brought Poison Potions to counter the sleep effect.
After beating the Ponderer, we touched the final Memory Flux to "save" our progress, and /cheers went all around. It was a very long night. We started at around 11pm and by the time we finished it was post 4am. If you intend to go through this, be prepared with a lot of spare time on your hands. ^^
Tomorrow: the {Boss}{Battle}!
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