In Defiant Challenge (Limit Break 1)  

Ok I've been doing this for a week now.. heres how i've done

Day 1: After an hour of seeking.. i head to Necropolis. We go through the glacier and we have a good time wacking many a lich. We had high level help. Well. after maybe 4 hours.. no drops, its 2AM and i need some sleep by that time.

Day 2: I try Necropolis again. I only seek for a half hour this time and we really romp those liches. well I saw 4 drops, of course i dont get any of em.

Later in teh day I head to the nest, about an hour of searching involved. I don't get any of the drops out of the 5....

Day 3: I try to go to Garlaige this time. Well I form a very promising party. Too bad someone pulled that nm that was running around....needless to say we all died. and that ended that.

later that night i went to the evil lich place... or tried to... we all died before we fought anything.....

Day 4: I head to Nest again. This time i get the drop in the 3rd kill. well i was very happy.. but well, soon after i got bad lag while pulling, and i died...well i got raised... and i went to open that stone door and hide behidn it...well, right before i do.. BAM! exoray uses darkspore.. Katz takes "place large number here, starting witha 6" and i died again.

Day 5: I form a party to go to garlage... but whats this? one member out of everyoen dosent need the coal? *everyone needed the paper, but no one had enough time for it* well this selfish redmage ruined a full 2 hours of gettign a promising party together.. *bard and everything*

Day 6: I head over to necropolis. This time i finally live long enough to get vhalz crystal. well, Im there in the pit fighting liches for a good 3 hours before i go. no drops. It took us maybe 2 hours to actually get there....

Day 7: I stayed in necropolis and i got a party... 5 minutes after i joined.. good thing alos.. since it took them a good 2 hours to actually get to the place. after a while of fighting.. 1 drop.. I lotted for 870.. and this otehr guy failed the lot.. well i was quite happy.. until, someone lots for 898... this person was also afk for a hour, and in no way deserved to get the item *it was the first mob we faught after he got back* party broke 30 minutes later...

I've been at this quest for about a week and a half now, i have the mold and the coal, but the damn papyrus is just getting me angry at the game, im supposed to have fun, not be stuck at Lv50 and keep waiting for help and not even enjoy this game anymore, anyway, I hope i get this soon before i get to the point where i wanna quit.

After a week of trying to get that damned Papyrus, I finally got it. I was in a party where 5/6 players needed the papyrus, and only one dropped after 4 hours of hunting down there -_-

The coal was easiest. The hard part about it is getting to the area with the explosures. The easy part is that we got all 6 people in the party their coal in like, an hour. 3 of the bombs dropped 2 coals ea.

The mold was fairly easy. I got that while leveling in Crawler's Nest in the secret area.

Edited, Mon Jul 12 10:34:38 2004

Yeah, call me crazy, but I can't wait to do this.

Kyrin, Cerberus Lvl 44 BLM/20WHM
(Yeah, i am going to level whm really soon, just waiting for some friends to catch up.)

I am wondering if the limit lvl is for all job or just 1 job ? If i do Genkai i hope i could get lvl 55 for all jobs ?

Edited, Wed Jun 16 10:24:14 2004

I am only a lvl 48 dark knight and i must say the only pain in this was getting people to help me get the items. But I got all the items on the first drops so it wasnt that hard for me once I got people to help me. Now I am on my way to level 50 so I can get this quest over.

This is a long post, but I'd encourage those of you still in the middle of this quest (or even those of you about to start it) to read of my experiences thus far. It may help you be mentally prepared for what is to come.

This is by far the most challenging quest I have encountered or heard of. I know there may be more difficult ones later on, but this one is certainly tough.

I still need Exoray Mold. Almost every exp group I've been with in Crawler's Nest wet their pants at the idea of specifically fighting Exorays to get Mold. I saw perhaps 3 Molds drop the entire time I spent lvling in Crawler's Nest, but we were fighting the Exorays around the secret room and usually only when they aggro'd while pulling a crawler, not in deeper around the ring. (I confess...as the puller, sometimes I would take aim on an Exoray and "/p AGGRO!" if I felt the party was good enough. I never caused any deaths, and there are at least two people on my server that got Exoray Mold because of it)

Edit: I recieved my Exoray Mold tonight. When all was said and done, it took roughly 4 hours to get 6 people their Mold, from the time the party was formed until the last member got what they needed. For the most part, it wasn't overly difficult. We were a 7 member alliance for the majority of the time when a lvl 50 PDN who had already completed the quest came and joined us. (Thanks again, Aivan) Our lvls were 47-50, with 2 PDNs, 1 WAR, THF, WHM, RNG and BLM. Please refer to my list of ideas to ponder towards the end of this post regarding being focussed on the needs of the group. Our BLM spent most of his time AFK without telling us until we finally booted him.

When we were trying to arrange the alliance to make it easier for the WHM, we asked our BLM (who was leader of one of the allied parties) to switch some people around. After a relatively lengthy pause came his response: "huh".

Camping in the short passage leading to the Exoray room, part of the spawn cycle included an Exoray spawning behind our group very near the mages. On at least three seperate occasions, our BLM was afk and either resting or sitting when the Exoray spawned behind him, causing the Exoray to attack him and forcing us into a defensive response rather than an offensive strategy.

We were relying on our BLM to sleep adds, and on one occasion, while fighting one Exoray, another spawned in-camp. Our BLM was AFK. I still don't know how we all survived, but it could have been much worse. Not only was he not present to sleep the add, he wasn't around to cast Escape, either.

On the final occasion before we booted him, our WHM was silenced by one of those nasty AoEs the Exorays have, and our BLM (who was subbing WHM) was once again AFK and didn't contribute to the emergency healing we needed him for.

Obviously, he wasn't contributing. Why go into so much detail on this? This quest is far too challenging and time consuming to tolerate leeches. While everyone else in the group was focused on the task at hand, one selfish person ended up wasting a lot of our time and made parts of our adventures this evening very unpleasant. We probably should have booted him much sooner. I've listed the variety of ways in which he let the party down in the hopes that some of you will be able to use this information to either identify trouble players ASAP and either straighten them out or get rid of them, or make sure you aren't doing the same kind of thing to YOUR group. *end edit*

The first time I ever tried camping Liches I went with a group and we made it safely to where we needed to be. We fought for a while, and our puller got his Papyrus, and promptly got linked by a Ka and a Mummy on his next pull...two people died, and he mysteriously had to leave. That was not cool.

Bomb Coal was actually quite easy for me. I was invited to a full alliance group that two of my LS mates had joined. We obliterated a path through Garlaige until we got to the camp spot and all 18 of us got our Bomb Coal in fairly short order. When you have 18 people beating down on a mob, it generally doesn't last too long.

Then we decided to take the alliance to Eldieme through the glacier. Again, we demolished everything in our path through to Eldieme, and that's where it went to pieces. We never even got around to getting sneak on people once we got to the Necropolis. I had already been here once with a group camping Liches for Papyrus and warned them of the dangers, but after a few hours of mass slaughter, too many in the alliance were overconfident. Looking back on it now, the mass anhialation of our alliance that took place was actually kind of funny. At the time though, it was frustrating because what was once a deadly alliance was now a trail of KOd bodies from the entrance all the way down to the coffin room before the cave. I survived...as soon as I realized what was going on (ie a couple of idiots charging in and everyone else following trying to keep them alive) I exited to Batallia and stood at the entrance trying to convince them to come out, form up, and not be so freaking retarded...but I digress.

I disbanded when I realized there was no hope, and my LS members told me shortly thereafter that I had made the right decision.

I was level 45 then, and I got involved with other things (leveling THF, farming, etc) and it wasn't until today that I really found myself back in the running for a Genkai 1 group. I'm lvl 49 now, and was hoping to find an exp group when someone in Jeuno mentioned they were looking for people to join for the quest. I joined, we headed around through the Glacier again and set up camp at the spot described in other posts here. Everything was going fairly well, despite not having a tank.

Then it went to pieces again. We're buffed up and ready for the next pull, when all of a sudden we see this:

GalkaMonk> someone on tv just said ham sandwich...brb

Three seconds later, in comes our puller with a Lich hot on his trail. Our Galka monk, who up to that point had been tanking, went afk just as our RDM pulled a Lich. We fought and fought, and I ended up dying when the Lich had a sliver of HP left (the rest of the group was asleep). Seconds before the Lich died, the Monk returned and said "ok I'm back now..."

DOH!! >.<

I got a raise, and by now the group was getting a little cranky. The fights were a little tougher than they could have been, we only saw one drop, and then someone drops the ball and gets someone killed.

10 minutes later our puller somehow aggrod a Ka that killed our BLM and our RDM...we had no WHM, so we had no Raise, and that ended that. I returned to Jeuno, put my seek flag up and...within 10 minutes I got invited to an entirely different Gankai 1 group. Talk about crazy luck.

This group was more balanced...we still had no WHM, but we had a PDN, THF, DRG, RDM, BRD, and RNG (me). Once again (for the second time that day) I found myself traveling the Glacier route to Eldieme. We made it to the camp with no problems, and started pulling. The fights went faster, we had a good Skillchain set up, and the party was a FUN party to be in. Most of them knew each other fairly well from the apperance of things, and we did well.

However, we were there for 3-4 hours, and only one drop. I don't need Papyrus anymore...I lotted a 975. But if this group were to ask me to go back with them and hunt Liches some more, I'd go in a heartbeat.

Why did I go into so much detail about this? Because if you're going to take on this quest, if you're going to subject yourself to this kind of thing, you'd best be prepared to ensure the following:

1) You are focused on the group, and what the group needs for success. You don't take stupid risks for the sake of looking cool or being the tough guy. There is no such thing as better safe than sorry in this game...it's better safe than dead.

2) You don't abandon the group after you get what you need. Everyone in the group should be expected to announce how long they anticipate they will be able to stick around before you even leave Jeuno. If you get your quest item and bail, you just made 5 enemies.

3) If at any time in the past you lacked the ability to communicate effectively with a party, whether on combat strategy before or during a fight, or simply how to go AFK without leaving your group in a sticky situation, you will learn it doing this quest or you will not succeed.

This quest is remeniscent of the Selbina sub-job quest, only on a "global" scale. It's the same quest that our JP counterparts had to complete back when there were NO lvl 60+ people to help them, because 50 was the highest level the game would allow. But they managed. They got it done. And I'm sure that for them, the idea of needing 2-3 weeks of camping the same mobs in the same places for 3 drops to move up didn't seem TOO onerous...what else were they going to do with their time?

It's not the same for us now. We may be lvl 45-50, but we're surrounded by lvl 75 players and it kinda puts a little pressure on us, doesn't it? I honestly think Square got a little bit of feedback from our JP counterparts about the difficulty associated with this quest, because based on what I've read and been told, they toned the following Genkai quests down quite a bit.

Nevertheless, it's decision time. Those who have finished the quest, those who are doing it, and those who are reading about it at least have some idea of the challenges involved. This quest alone is probably responsible for more people leaving the game than any other single reason associated with the way the game is set up.

I'm not trying to scare anyone, but if you're gunning for a level beyond 50, I recommend you make sure you're up to the task.

Edited, Fri Jun 11 02:56:05 2004

The paper.. 6 hours before we saw the first drop. We had a thief too.
16 hours we saw a second drop.
We saw 3 more drop in 4 more hours, but we didn't have a theif. Of course neither me nor my friend got the paper lots. We both rolled a 5 on one of the lots!
20 hours of paper hunting. Who knows how much longer it'll be!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




Edited, Fri Jun 4 14:15:46 2004

for me i have not yet completed this only because i have no need for another 4 levels ... as a 46THF i was called from a VE camp to join this pt. Within 6 hours we gained 4 papers from what i've seen so far this is a really good pace. for those of you who are reading this post and are near lvl 44-46ish ... start camping exorays for exp, u will definately be glad you did cause in the process u'll likely get ur mold. the bomb is the only thing i have not yet killed ironicly, but as u can see from others past experiences it is not likely to be a problem.. good luck and good hunting ^_-

use your LS, dont get into a paper party where more than 3 people need paper, it takes 8 hours to get 3 papers. ive spent 4 to 6 hours everyday for two weeks getting paper. If you cant find enought LS help, then camp out there and shout out for high level help remember to bring your gil with you.

i am having problems finding directions from Jueno to necro campsite for liches. can anyone give me directions from jueno to nero. Party tried going batilla downs to a tunnel leading into eldi necro but we were stopped by dead ends and aggro linking mobs everywhere.