Okay, so let me be clear, I am not gonna complain, because I know that I still had it easier than say…Claudia a long time ago. But the 120 upgrade quest has gotten even more pussified with the new patch.
Let me start from the beginning. When I hit 120, I stopped leveling. Okay, not stopped stopped, but I didn’t even want to attempt the quest because I heard so many horror stories about it; namely the Diabolic Highpriest (isn’t it a female boss? Shouldn’t it be Highpriestess by that logic?). But Esco had different plans–when he hit 120, he dragged me along. So I rolled with this set up.
And since I was paranoid, I went even further. I grabbed 500 awakening scrolls (excessive? Yes, especially since I wasn’t able to use them after the quest, but better safe than sorry), 60 res scrolls, +7 nix staff, cannon, gun, and instrument (in hindsight, I could have done without getting the instrument, but eh). My might was bumped up to 850k, which is a far cry from what it was when I first hit 120, and what my might is now (a little over 1 mil) at 126. All of which was probably not needed since barring bosses, I was duoing, but I was also duoing with a 120 who wasn’t as well geared.
All of my mercs were wearing +2-3 divine armor, barring my main–I had a few nix pieces. My uber-beefy (note sarcasm) front row had +2-+3 swords. All of my mercs were also well under level 120 (as were Esco’s–his druid was level 91 when we started)–my highest level was Achmed, my trusty TBS merc; he was 117 at the time. My empress (henceforth known as Pima–try to figure out her name, you get a cookie; hint: I have nightmares of Tatami runs now) was merely 106 at the time–and held her own for the rare times I needed her blessing. And trust me, it was VERY rare that I needed her blessing.
So bet you’re wondering: Why an empress? Wouldn’t I have been better off with a monk or even doing a double Holy Guard formation? Well, a double holy guard formation would work. However, I’d be losing a damage dealer, and with my tactic of “kill or be killed”, I couldn’t afford to have too many dead mercs. Remember, one that HG’s is useless when they’re horizontal. So instead of a monk (or in my case, hwarang–properly named after the squishy bow main fiance of mine–I did miss the extra damage aura helps with, just that Hwar-Esco would’ve died more than Pima), I used an oracle (henceforth known as Sage). That means my vampire (henceforth known as Schehrezade) was able to be sethed and add on to the carnage that MotoMoto and Achmed threw out in the form of…well…now it’s black bats apparently. And Pima was able to dish out damage of her own between blessings.
So on to the fight!
The mob kills were fairly easy. We were aware of the double form they have (WHY MUST THAT BE?!), but other than the monks throwing really big ass rocks at us (and by us, I mean Esco–he got pelted quite a bit), we came out unscathed.
Then the boss fights. Now the first fight was just so easy that I don’t remember much of it.
The second one? Easy, but he was still a bit nasty with his aoe. But I had a nice little merc for magic–the warlord, and a music main’s Melody of Madness, which, if you haven’t gotten at least level 20 of, it’s worth it even if it’s just for this quest. A nice Demoralize+MoM action=a fight that needed HG maybe once or twice. Fun.
Then…I had to face my fears. It probably helped that before I went to kill the Highpriestess, I got info on her. But I took a deep breath…jumped.
And nothing happened.
I lived! THE HOLY BITCH AIN’T GOT SHIT ON ME! Between Demoralize, Melody of Madness, and the very rare HG when both were in cooldown, she went down faster than those chicks who wrote this atrocity of a song (which apparently has a page on Wikipedia!).
But all my paranoia, and not only did I not die once, I barely dented my awakening scrolls, only using 22 of them. And I gained a couple of levels from it. Thanks Esco for being a stubborn pain in my ass!
Anyways, back to what I said in the first part–the 120 upgrade quest, as I did it, was pussified in comparison to what others went through a few years ago. And they further pussified it by cutting mob counts/drops in half. Really?! *facepalm* Now I’m definitely tempted to level up my cannon alt to see how bad of a formation I can have to make it through that quest. Only 80 levels to go!
Sarcasm and a Guitar 