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The Salt of the Earth  

Submitted by:Cokesplash
Realm:Bastok
Start Area: Bastok Markets
Start NPC:Mission NPC
Type:Mission
Related Areas:Metalworks
Rabao
Related Mobs:Gigaplasm
Macroplasm
Microplasm
Nanoplasm
Mission:9 - 1
Min Level:75
Max Level:75
Rating
*****
(Average from 8 ratings)
This Mission is Not Skippable
Previous Mission: Enter the Talekeeper
Next Mission: Where Two Paths Converge
Last Updated: Tue Apr 10 19:46:34 2007

Contents [hide]

Summary

You have been assigned to an investigation in the Vollbow Region. Speak with senator Alois for further details.

Walkthrough

Get the mission from a gate guard and then talk to Alois in the president's office for a cutscene. Next, head to Rabao and talk to Dancing Wolf on the far side of the pond.

Then head to Gustav Tunnel and head to G-6 on the second map. You must defeat an NM slime that splits into other NM slimes. Spawn the NM by clicking the ???.

Battle Strategy When spawning the NM, sneak a blm and another person and have them go to the ???. The one person pops the NM by targeting the ??? in the water, and the blm sleeps it right away to avoid aggro from nearby skeletons. After popping the mob, sneak up again if necessary and run back to the camp; H-7 in the tunnel is a safe place to fight.

Once the slime comes to your camp, sleep it, allow the tank to flash and voke it a few times to build hate.

The first NM is a Gigaplasm. Once you kill it, it turns into two Macroplasms. Each one of those turns into two Microplasms and each one of those turn into two Nanoplasms. Be sure to attack just one slime at a time, while having your mages sleep the rest.

After you defeat all the Plasms, everyone needs to sneak up, run to the ??? and touch it to aquire the key item: Miraclesalt. If someone dies on the way to getting the key item, do not tractor this person or he or she will have to fight the NMs again. After you acquire the key item, return to Rabao and talk to Dancing Wolf. There will be a short cutscene. Then return to the president's office in the Metalworks and talk to Alois again to complete the mission.

Spoilers

To read the transcripts for this mission, see The Salt of the Earth Spoilers page.

Mission Series

This mission is part of the Republic of Bastok Mission series. The entire mission series includes:

This page last modified 2008-11-19 21:07:00.
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VERY bad bug
# Jan 28 2005 at 9:17 PM Rating: Decent
Okay, did the mission. Had talked to everyone and seen all the cutscenes. HOurs and hours of finding people. We finally killed it, lost about 1k XP trying. Then I targeted the???. "Nothing it out of the ordinary here". Targeted again and again, with same result. Then Gigaplasm pops, and then kills me. Others inalliance did cutscenes too, but only some people actually got the key item....What is going on?!
melee is bad
# Jan 05 2005 at 1:44 AM Rating: Decent
melee's give this thing TP WAY to fast. If the melee's hit it you'll all die, so no meleeing.

RE: melee is bad
# Oct 17 2005 at 8:31 AM Rating: Decent
*
124 posts
I would like to comment on this mission and the Allakazahm "way of thinking this mission should be done".

For the past 5 months or so trying to join parties going on this mission I (samurai) 70+ I was told one of two things, I'm sorry melee are useless, or Do you have a Black mage? ><

So I get to reading about posts on this board, a lot of which have been deleted, about this mission. The thing I kept reading over and over, "DO NOT GIVE THEM TP". So no melee. Good lord, let's just remove 50% of the people in Vanadiel from the formula.

Soooo since I was mad at this "thinking" cause it has warped a ton of people into believeing that. I came here to stand on my soapbox and let it out.

You do need mages, probably 2 sleepers. You do need some nuking, enough to do about 50% damage to the Slimes. I think we had 1 BLM that was it.
A Monk or 2 would be nice for Chi-Blast. Samurai to me is a great choice for Meditate, and having some of them sub /sam for med.

The battle went like this, touched the ??? with sneak, mobs popped. Sleeper person slept them there. Then headed back to camp. Slimes woke up and followed. Slept again at camp. BLM nuked a big nuke. 50% dead. Slept it again.
Rested....
Keep a PLD on the other one sleeping and voke at all times and keep on him/her. At 50% health, melee engage. Everyone should have tp to 100+ and for your first one 300%. Nuke that bad boy. I bet 70% of your alliance will still have 300% tp cause he goes down fast.
Autotarget have turned off.
Sleep the 2 new ones.

TANK chooses who to fight the rest of the fight. BLM starts the battle, with his Nuke, which'll take him down to 50% again. Melee finish him off. Now the other one that split needs to die. Kill it now, all melee and everyone take it out fast. Be ready to use 2 hi-potions to give your healer a breather. Now you'll have the little ones. Tachi: Kasha took 90% of it's life. So Melee rape the little ones.

Now you'll need to get back to the first one that was slept. Your sleeper should do nothing but keep it slept. Gravity it, bid it whatever, but sleep it. Then once you kill the 2nd big one, sleep the 2 that pop, and then STOP.

Sit down, rest and get mp back, Melee without meditate, rest. Rest all the way up to full. Then laugh finish them off with the same strategy.

This can be done with 0 deaths. This can be done with melee. You can give them tp, just wait til they're at 50% health cause they'll never get to use it cause they're dead by that time.

Thank you /rant over.

9-2 is a joke, have a Samurai 2 hour the boss, have a blm thundaga 3 the 2nd forms. 2:47 was our server record. ^^
Pulling most problematic?
# Dec 28 2004 at 3:14 PM Rating: Decent
*
63 posts
had full alliance do this, lvs 61-75, majority around lv 70
had 4 blms, only 1 pld, i was 2nd tank as 70war/nin :/
pulling was the first problem
somehow i got nominated to pop and pull since i had utsusemi :/ and do the sneak, pop, and sneak pull
upon popping the slime, it aggroes me immediately
sneak is now useless
im running back to camp aggroing all the skeletons and pugils in the way
intelligently, i decided to die right before the camp, and yelled out for someone to pull the slime from the horde of mobs standing atop my dead body
i get tractored and raised, and stand in the back while they fight the slime
everything is going fine, until the when theere seems to be 4 or 5 slimes roaming around
a few fluid spreads later, the pld is dead, im dead again, and half the alliance is dead as well
at this point, it is so chaotic that it now seems this mission will be a complete failure
remarkably, the blms are able to sleep all the slimes, the pld and others start to get raised and we get ready for the final assault
after everyone is healed and ready, we start attacking again and eventually all the slimes are killed
sneak up and heal and go get the miraclesalt
be careful if you're still weakened
also, make sure you have talked to Dancing Wolf in Rabao before going on this mission, a rdm who happened to die at the end was unable to get the miraclesalt. I doubt it had to do with any timers for i have read that ppl have gotten up to ten minutes or so after beating the slimes whereas he checked it upon minutes. Only explanation i can come up with is he didnt talk to Dancing Wolf, but he disbanded immediately angry that the alliance wouldnt fight the slimes again for him so I have no way to verify this
RE: Pulling most problematic?
# Jan 12 2005 at 3:38 AM Rating: Decent
*
66 posts
We did this earlier, and yes Fluid Spread is a killer, wiped half the mages out. We also ended up doing this twice after all but 2 survived the first fight, our whm's all reraised and got killed again cause of fluid spread, so we had to wait for some WHM's to come raise us all. Once you kill it, my guess is you have 30 mins to touch the ??? and get the salt because one of the people who got raised after the 30 min mark ended up spawning Giga again and we had to do the fight all over, orz.
Second time around went alot better with only 2 deaths. This fight can be easy with good use of Lullaby/Sleepga once a slime is killed, just make sure that everyone attacks what mob the tank is attacking XD. Also, make sure everyone has autotarget off because that's what screwed us the first fight when 3-5 slimes were wackin away at the mages. Good luck and once you complete this the BC is cake.
o.@
# Dec 16 2004 at 5:13 PM Rating: Decent
Quote:
As for the minimum level, I think they should bump it down to 65. 75 minimum to do this mission is misleading and might disuade ppl from trying it. If you're confident in the talent in your alliance, 65+ can crank this one out.


I believe they arent refering to talent.... ITs a known fact alliances are hard to manage. Aside from having good players in your alliance i think they are reffering to how organized it should be
What I did
# Dec 03 2004 at 6:30 AM Rating: Good
***
1,298 posts
I did this today, and the really tricky part is pulling it. We had a blm/whm go with a drk/thf to the spawn point. the drk spawned it and used stun. the blm used sneak on the drk then they ran back to camp.

during the fight, the main key is to sleep 2 and only fight 1 at a time. multable high level black mages, bards and redmages are absolutely NEEDED for this battle to keep them slept and to do damage.
Our strategy
# Sep 06 2004 at 1:14 PM Rating: Good
Our alliance consisted of 18 members, with job levels ranging from about 59-71.

The first time we tried this battle, the plan was to clear out the pugils and skeletons next to the ??? and then commence the fight. This was a very bad idea. The skeletons and pugils don't take long at all to respawn, and when we had it down to the last couple slimes, a skeleton and fish popped and wiped us all out. (Several of us were killed by Fluid Spread already). Our white mages had Reraise on and I think they all died several more times raising themselves and others. (I can't stress enough that the area where the ??? is a bad camp!).

The second try was a success. The new camp was the narrow entrance into this room which is a hill, and no monsters around. This made for an extremely long pull, but our puller hit the ???, used sneak, and pulled with Carbuncle.

What everyone else did:
Ninja: blink tanked the active slime. and the ONE person who chooses the next slime to attack.
2 Dark Knights: no melee at all, used black magic.
Non-magic using melee: if a slime woke up, to keep it off the mages.
4 White Mages: healed n stuff.
2 Black Mages: nuked and slept. the most imporatant key to victory.
Bard: MP refresh, slept. another vital element to success.

Everyone did their jobs beautifully on this one. When the last slime is dead, this is very important: make sure youre not low on HP, raise whoever is dead and cure them, melees should use Silent Oils, mages sneak, and RUN to the ??? for the miraclesalt.

As for the minimum level, I think they should bump it down to 65. 75 minimum to do this mission is misleading and might disuade ppl from trying it. If you're confident in the talent in your alliance, 65+ can crank this one out.

Edited, Tue Sep 7 03:56:43 2004
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