Dawn.

OMG, The Empyreal Paradox!

OMG, I'm finally done with CoP!

Despite the majority of us at TrueRune being unable to organise anything cohesive together, when things click, they click.

Since TrueRune attained Al'Taieu access all the way back in June, it has taken us about seven and a half months for us to finally get together and complete the last chapter of CoP.

Of course, we completed that last chapter in two weekends. >_<

Anyway, the TrueRune "static" at this point basically consisted of just myself, Chummy, Akanea and Saoirse. Seraphpdh had gone on to completing CoP while I had "quit" the game, and Tumble had also left the game.

We tried looking up our friendlists to see if anyone was willing to help us with 8-2 and 8-3, but the sheer length of the missions was a major turnoff for everybody.

Except one.

Enter Saintjust.

Like myself, a {Tarutaru}{White Mage}, he also needed to complete CoP from 8-2 onwards, and we quickly picked him up for 8-2. Figuring since we were only going to do 8-2 at that point in time and it was only escourting a bunch of Quasilumins around the Palace, we just went with the five of us,

NIN, SAM, BLM, RDM, WHM.

I came RDM/BLM, since I figured we needed to shore up a little on our offensive power, but boy I should've come /WHM instead, or at least BLM/WHM. While the mobs weren't exactly spamming status effects, there was enough Silence to make things irritating, and everytime Akanea and Chummy skillchained to make Dark, I wish I were BLM so that my MB would actually, y'know, finish off the mob instead of leave it at like, 10% health.

Of course, I corrected that for 8-3 and came BLM/WHM. Blade: Ku → Tachi: Gekko for Darkness, MB 2x Blizzard IV/Freeze II for the kill!

I have to admit, although 8-2 and 8-3 did take as long as most people said they would (roughly 3 hours each) they weren't nearly as hard as I thought they might've been. In fact, I felt they were rather easy, with the only tricky bit being dodging spinning pots (of which, I am not joking when I say we were initially incapable of sneaking past. -_-)

I shant really go into the details of 8-2 and 8-3, other than the fact that by the time we were done with 8-3, everybody in the party finally managed to get that spinning pot thing worked out, except for those in the Garden that spin really quickly against you. I don't think we ever managed to sneak past one of those. >_<

One of the reasons why we took so long though was our insistence that we get the map for both places, which as you can tell, isn't exactly the quickest of things to do. Speaking to Quasilumins from all over the Palace of Hu'Zxoi was bad enough, especially one that had to be done in the middle of an escourt, although I guess it strengthened our resolve a bit when it came to getting the map of Ru'Hmet, which involves climbing all five towers.

Fortunately, actually climbing said towers is rather quick and painless, and easily done with a few Sleeps/Binds here and there.

As the five of us were getting the Quasilumin from the last of the five towers, Fishura decided to come along, and from there, the party became 6,

NIN, SAM, RDM, WHM, BLM, BLM.

When it came to the gauntlet, we ended up just saccing to it while Fishura took the "easier" way through, having already completed CoP himself, and the final pots BC wasn't nearly as hard as we thought it might be. Of course, I guess when you have two BLMs, the pots go down quicker than normal.



Blade: Ku → Tachi: Gekko for Darkness, MB Blizzard IV + Freeze II killed one BLM pot.
Meikyo Shisui → solo Fragmentation, MB Thunder IV + Burst II killed the other BLM pot.

As the usual strategy goes, we wiped by the south door, reraised, rested to full recovery, slept one of the last remaining RDM pots, went all out on the other (toss in a Benediction), and the last was a piece of cake. Pots done!

After the last supposedly "hard" BC was over and done with, it was almost as if an unspoken revelation swept over us- we were very nearly done with CoP.

All that was left to do was the fight against Promathia himself in the coolest BC zone in the game- the Empyreal Paradox.

Of course, we weren't really sure what to expect. We heard he wasn't all that difficult, but we were in a funky setup with no medicines or supplies. Fortunately, Fishura assured us we could take him down easily, and so we just went straight into the Empyreal Paradox and comfronted the big P himself.



And yeah, he went down pretty easily, too. ^^

I have to admit, the Empyreal Paradox was every bit as spectacular as I thought it would be, and finally being in there myself after hearing other people tell me about how cool it is and seeing other people's screenshots, was really satisfying for me.

I kind of wish Promathia were much much harder than what he is- the way the fight goes right now, it is practically an anti-climax to the whole CoP, given some of the other fights you've had to go through along the way to get to this point.

Still, it's a ridiculously fun fight though, with a lot of running around, kiting, and watching NPCs own other NPCs (Prishe ftw!).

That, and you can Raise Prishe! No weakness, either! XD

It had been a long road, but it's finally over. I'm done with CoP. Congratulations, TrueRune. ^^



That, and I finally have my Tamas Ring. :)

Of course, now with CoP over and done with, I wonder what I'll do next...

But on an interesting note, Saintjust apparently had a bit of a starstruck moment as we were doing 8-2. It seems I'm more well known than I thought- he took screenshots of him doing CoP with me, and showed them off to his friend...

Tuufless's ego rises 0.1 points. XD