Cernunnos and Kerykeion are words I can't pronounce

Over the weekend I was hearing about other linkshell members are gearing up to finish the last of the WotG missions up to this point. This reminded me how horribly behind I was on the WotG storyline. An off-handed comment turned into a Cernunnos run. I was shocked on how people were willing to drop what they were doing to help a poor lil Taru. Thanks guys!

The fight itself... was a doozy. This tree hits like a ton of bricks and regularly does a move that erases ALL of my beautiful buffs! There were deaths, but luckily the party decided to stick with it. I can't say I'm looking forward to fighting this thing again for other people (and in retrospect, am amazed that people were willing to fight it again for one person) but of course I will do so. It's the WHM code, after all.

Sunday was another empty Salvage run. The system is designed specifically to destroy all hope you might have in actually getting a drop. We couldn't even get a mob that has the items to appear. The fact that the phantom mob that we can't get to appear might not even drop anything does nothing to inspire confidence. How do people complete Salvage items with such horrible drop rates is beyond me. I look at my Marduk Dastanas and for the life of me cannot remember how the hell the 35 gloves dropped.

ZNM did wonders to raise the spirits though. We fought Claret, which from what I remember, wrecked us hardcore last time we tried it. Itazura has an elaborate plan involving timing nukes to make Claret travel back and forth between two parties while gravitied, however there was so much nuking power that we just fried the thing. The ZNM is heavy in the magic damage department which made a slime such as Claret a breeze to fight. It's the magic-resistant enemies in the future I fear. I got a weird club called the Kerykeion of of it. It has an en-drain effect but I haven't tested it out yet to see how much it "procs". It also has a regen effect when at 50% or less hp. That's all fine and good, but I can call up this effect at will with my, err, white magic. I'll play with it in Campaign or something to see how it performs.

I earned my coastal chocograph on Sunday which means I'm done with the prairie/bush areas now. I also did my first dunes Hot & Cold run and was shocked when I got the "you're chocobo is fatigued" message. Apparently this happens when about half of your digs are used up, but I haven't seen the message up until now. You get far less digs in the dunes before you chocobo gives up. I got an armored pisces from my first dunes run... it's some sort of armored fish that I'll probably end up vendoring. Next up is digging in Buburimu Peninsula.

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