Desires of Emptiness

Mission Name	5-2 - Desires of Emptiness
Locations	Pso'Xja, Promyvion-Vazhl
Level Cap	uncapped NM in Pso'Xja, 50 cap for Vazhl
Estimated Time	4-6 hours. Long long long.
Special Items:	Anima still works on the bosses
Difficulty:	Medium.
Medicines Needed:	Normal BC meds. Mages should bring echo drops for the climb. NINs and RNGs bring more tools and arrows than they think they should need.
Recomended Jobs:	Any party that could beat an early promyvion will be fine.
Brief synopsis:	Defeat a regening NM to gain access to Promyvion – Vazhl. Once inside, defeat Memory Receptacles to progress up and check Memory Fluxs for minibosses. At the top fight all three Promyvion bosses, one after another.

I’m not well in the head somewhere, and Promyvion – Vazhl sort of proves it. While everyone else hated the first three Promyvions, I got used to taking people through with my BLM and SMN and got pretty good at them. So when Vazhl rolled around I took it as the ultimate challenge, where everyone else in my static probably took it as the ultimate annoyance.

It’s an endurance mission, but thankfully if you do need to stop it has built-in save points of sorts.

If you want to use anima (I recommend at least two) buy them off the auction house or farm them in Dem, Holla, or Mea beforehand.

Farming:

Obtained: various empty inside of Promyvion. Can be bought off the auction house or farmed. I recomend going back to the original three promies for these.
Number recomended: at least two
Optional or mandatory: optional, but makes things so much easier
Use: used to obtain anima in the Jeuno quest Empty Memories
Notes: yeah, more anima. Stock up on as much as you have the endurance to farm.

Pso’Xja Tower #3

Technically this is a part of mission 5-1, but since you need your party I am including it in this section. Prom Vazhl is accessed by yet another tower of Pso’Xja. This time it’s the tower in the far northwest. The tower is uncapped. If you follow the path forward for a short distance you will find a stone door. Checking it spawns a NM golem with 100/tic regen. Any party capable of completing Promyvion-Vazhl will totally destroy this thing, even more so because you are not level capped at this point.

Once you beat the golem sneak up and head down the elevator. Check the gate for two lengthy cutscenes, and then you will be tossed into Promyvion – Vazhl.

Cutscene:

Zone	NPC name	Location	Other
Pso'Xja	Avatar Gate	(G-7)
Promyvion-Vazhl		(zone in)	Immediately after first cutscene

The Fourth Promyvion

Vazhl is brown. Very brown. The others were nice teal colors, but this one is all faded and brown. Yeah, okay, you get it. But you’ll be here for a while so you’ll notice the browness too.

If you remember your experiences with the other three Promyvions, that knowledge will be useful here time and time again. Vazhl is like all the other Proms rolled into one. This time it is five levels high instead of four. All of the monsters here are tougher so you really don’t want to be fighting more than one. In the previous proms, empty could be any of the 6 elemental elements. In Vazhl they can be light or dark too. The Memory Receptacle fights are also harder. Also, on levels three, four, and five, you have to search out Memory Fluxs for mandatory minibosses before proceeding.

The MR fight on floor one isn’t too bad, but they get harder quickly. You may notice that this Stray is actually a Seether-type enemy!. In the previous Proms all Strays were Wanderer-type enemies. MRs can infrequently spawn Weeper-type strays on floor 3 and Seether-type on floor 4. They’re slightly harder then normal Strays, but not by much.

The MR fight can wear you down quickly as it has a lot of HP and spawns Strays MUCH faster than in previons promyvions.. Our party had the ranger attack Strays since he could kill them in one or two hits while everyone else focused totally on the MR. Or you could have the one player focus entirely on the MR while the rest mow down strays. Whatever you need to do to survive. The MR won't regenerate hit points when unclaimed. And yes, there is the possibility of getting a fake here, even on floor one.

On floor two there is something nicknamed “the gauntlet.” It is a narrow section of path covered with arches and choke full of enemies, including Seethers and the unique hard mobs from the previous Promyvions (all three of them are here). I’ve heard strategies that involve Stoneskin, Blink, and running full tilt through, but it’s really not necessary. Our party hugged the right side and fought anything that aggroed one at a time, and made it through with no deaths and only two fights. Or you could get very lucky and have all the enemies be on one side, and make it through unharmed.

All of the MRs on floor 2 are past the gauntlet. Defeat the second MR and get up to floor three.

Memory Fluxes and Previous Promyvion Bosses

Observant adventurers may have seen these Memory Flux things in the previous Promyvions, but they didn’t do anything there. Here, however, they spawn nasty NMs that you need to beat. Buff up and kill any empty that are too close for comfort, then have your tank hit it.

The one on floor three is called a Propagator, on four a Solicitor (yes, he calls you on the phone and interrupts your dinner trying to sell dictionaries!) and the fifth one is a Ponderer. Hmm. But don’t let the names fool you. They fight just like the bosses of the previous Promyvions. Propagator is Dem. It won't do that normal "spawn some strays" thing Dem does unless you're really unlucky. It is possible he can spawn one stray (probably more if the battle goes on long enough). Even so, he’ll go down easy, and any spawned strays will be defeated when he does.

Solicitor is Mea, and it has Impalement, that really nasty one-target massive damage move that Mea has, as well as the damage AoE and the poison AoE. Mages should keep their distance.

Ponderer is Holla, and he’ll drain your buffs and sleep you and drain your health and all that nasty stuff, so be prepared for a hard fight on floor 5.

They’re not nearly as hard as they were in the Dem Holla Mea BCs, but they DO put up a decent fight so treat them like any normal NMs. Obviously you want to save your 2-hours for the BC fight ahead. Keep your mages away from them but not close to the other empty. If you wipe, it will heal to full health then despawn.

When you kill each one of them, check the Memory Flux again for a cutscene. Then heal up and search out the next Memory Receptacle. The good thing about Promyvion – Vazhl is that each time you get the cutscene, you’re given the option to warp to that Memory Flux from the gate in Pso’Xja. So if you beat a Flux and need to quit, you can resume there later without mucking around fighting MRs to go up.

The Spire of Vazhl

If you don’t defeat all three Memory Flux NMs and get the cutscenes at those areas, if you find the Spire there will not be a bridge that leads to the Web of Recollections. Don’t ask how I know that. I just do. So be sure to fight those Fluxes.

Apparently SE couldn’t be bothered to add any new enemies to Promyvion – Vazhl, so they just stole the previous Promyvion bosses and gave them new names. You don’t have to fight them all at once like the Mammets. You pick which you want to fight first, and an additional mobs aggro when the previous is at about 20% health. None of them are as strong as they were before, or even the minibosses outside, but the problem is that at 20% health all of these mobs get mean. So you have to deal with a berserking NM and another fresh one at the same time.

My party designed someone to handle the linking mobs. Our RDM used bind and an anima to slow down Dem, and our RNG used shadowbind and another anima to stop Holla. This tactic bought us enough time to kill the wounded NM so we could focus on the next one.

None of the NMs aggro at the beginning of the fight so you actually choose the order of this battle. If you attack Mea (Cumulator) first, than Dem (Procreator) will aggro second, and Holla (Agonizer) last. If you attack Holla first, Mea aggros second, then Dem. Attacking Dem first gets you Holla second and Mea last. I recomend the Mea -> Dem -> Holla order. Mea is the most likely to kill someone outright with Impalement so if you see you're losing you can escape without using too many resources, and Holla is always the hardest so knowing you can go all-out with whatever you have left is a good thing.

Some of their more deadly moves, in case you forgot

Move	Enemy	i.e.	Effect
Carousal	Cumulator	Mea	AoE damage (center of AoE is the Boss itself)
Impalement	Cumulator	Mea	Does tremendous damage to one target but does not kill. Hate reset. Similar to a tonberry's Throat Stab.
Promyvion Brume	Cumulator	Mea	AoE 12 damage/tic poison
Fission	Procreator	Dem	Spawns 1 or 2 Stray-type enemies
Trinary Tap	Agonizer	Holla	Drains 3 buffs off of one target
Shadow Spread	Agonizer	Holla	AoE Curse and Sleep status effects
Trinary Absobsion	Agonizer	Holla	Drains life from one target. Used at low HP

Strategy tips:

As with all empty, their elements are random. Make sure to not the element of the bosses as so not to cast spells that will be ineffective.
The order of the mobs is fixed once you attack one of them, so wait for the other two mobs to aggro automatically.
When at 20%, the next mob in the line will attack you. Delay this mob with anima and/or bind/shadowbind until you finish off the weakened mob.
Any additional anima you have can be used to slow down a mob that's doing a lot of damage, or make it defenseless if you want to launch a powerful strike.
Watch out of Mea's Impalement early. If Mea kills the tank, it's probably easier to run away and try again.
Any strays Dem spawns will die when Dem dies, so just finish off Dem to get rid of the strays.
Holla is still the strongest. Save resouces (2-hours, MP, etc) for finishing it quicky. Cast "dummy" buffs and use poison potions if you brought any.

BCNM-Specific Items

Use them as you did in the previous promyvions

Really, by now you should be used to how these guys fight. Save a SMN AoE 2-hour for Holla but feel free to use the others on either of the first two mobs to finish them off quickly. When you beat them, you'll get a cutscene and be returned to the glacier.

Exp reward for completion: 1500

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