Mission Name
 Where Messengers Gather (Ulmia's Path)
Battle Locations

Boneyard Gulley
Level Cap
 50
Estimated Time
 about 1 hour
Special Items:
Siredon Grills, quested in Carpender's Landing
Difficulty:
 Medium-hard, depending on party setup
Medicines Needed:
 Potions on tank a very good idea.
Recomended Jobs:
 Having a SMN and a BM makes this a lot easier
Brief synopsis:
 A BC fight against three mithra, each with a different job

Ulmia's path is clearly the hardest. Tenzen used up the dungeonus, but Ulmia’s Path has the hard BC fights. After you get the cutscenes done, your party can meet, travel to the BC, and defeat it (or not…) within an hour. That’s good, because both fights (the latter moreso) are difficult


5-3C: Where Messengers Gather

5-3C1 - Entanglement

Cutscenes:
Zone
 NPC name
 Location
 Other
South San d'Oria Hinaree (B-6)
Port San' d'Oria

zone in
North San d'Oria Chasalvige (L-6)


5-3C2 - Head Wind

Cutscenes:
Zone
 NPC name
 Location
 Comments
Windurst Waters Kerutoto
(J-8)
 see below
Windurst Walls
 Yoran-Oran
 (E-5)

Please note that Kerutoto is now the NPC to start the Diabolos quest. Make sure you talk to her twice. The first time she talks about Diabolos, the second she'll give you the cutscene you need.

Enough stalling! Time to fight!


 Cat Dance Party

For the first BC you’ll want your usual meds. Nothing fancy is required as long as you understand the concept here. Stock up on medicine and travel to Attohwa Chasm. The path to Boneyard Gully is pretty long but not terribly dangerous. Hopefully at least one person has done the map quest by now. Once at the Gully, check the Dark Miasma for a cutscene and a level-50 BC battle.


The Boneyard Gully BC area is pretty cool. There is a large ridge in the center, and on the far side of the ridge are your three mithra opponents: Shikaree X, Y, and Z. X is a BST/NIN with a knife and usually has a pet bunny summoned at the beginning. Y is a DRK/WAR with a scythe. Z is a DRG/WHM (she was out soloing before this BC, I guess) with a poll and waits until the battle starts to summon her wyvern. That’s five mobs total. The three kitties have some sort of permanent meditate effect on, so they’ll gain TP unfairly fast, and they’ll try to skillchain you. Even their weapon skills are strong. Their skillchains are downright deadly.

My static party was fortunate enough to have a BLM and a SMN. The PLD used Invincible, the SMN used Astral Flow on the avatar of the day, and the BLM used an Elemental Seal Sleepga. It was a thing of pure beauty. All five mobs took tremendous damage (more than half their life) and were immediately put to sleep. The party finished off Z first. X came next and Y was the last one down. The AoE damage from Astral Flow defeated both pets in two hits. The Mithra's individual WS were painful but nothing our party couldn’t handle. We weren’t rushing at all and still set the record over a minute lower than it was when we went in, and had no deaths.


I don’t know what’s up with the light in this pic, but it’s us owning some mithra.

If you don’t have this sort of advantage, you might have to fight fairly. There is an item called a Blackened Siredon that will stop their TP gain. You can fish up a muddy siredon on the Phanauet Channel barge, then give it to a tonberry NPC at the dock for the grill. I tried to fish one up but had the wrong bait or something. In any event, it doesn’t sound all THAT useful of an item since you need to use one on ALL THREE mithra, and it doesn't last the entire battle anyway.

It’s come to my attention that lots of parties don’t just go in and set the record on this BC. Unfortunately (for you, not for me) this was the one mission that I beat first try. So I really don’t have a whole lot of in-depth strategy here. One thing that might work is fighting close to where you spawn, so that if you wipe but kill a mithra, you can reraise, heal to full, and take on the survivors. Also, even if you can't stop them from SCing with sleep you can use stun to prevent the chain.

Farming:
Muddy Siredon
Move
 Enemy
 Job
 Effect
Pet Jug
 Shikaree X
 BST/NIN
 Has a pet summoned at the beginning
Knife weapon skills
 Shikaree X
 BST/NIN Varies depending on skill, can skillchain with others
Scythe weapon skills
 Shikaree Y
 DRK/WAR
 Varies depending on skill, can skillchain with others
Call Wyvern
 Shikaree Z
 DRG/WHM
 Summons a wyvern when the battle begins
Polearm weapon skills
 Shikaree Z
 DRG/WHM Varies depending on skill, can skillchain with others

Strategy tips:
BCNM-Specific Item
Blackened Siredon
When you kill the mithra, you still have another BC on this path with no additional cutscenes in between. Recharge your 2-hours, grab your 60-cap gear, buy some cluster cores from Jeuno bazaars or farm them yourself, and prepare for one heck of a battle ahead.

Exp reward for completion: 1000


5-3C3 - Flames for the Dead
Locations

Bearclaw Pinnacle

Level Cap
 60
Estimated Time
 about 1 hour
Special Items:
Shu'Meyu Salt gives you more time in the BC
Difficulty:
 Hard hard HARD!
Medicines Needed:
 Anything you can bring to improve your damage. INT pies and ATT gear.
Recomended Jobs:
 A powerful offense, though having 1 job like WHM focus on party survival is a good idea.
Brief synopsis:
 Beat a powerful enemy with an extremly harsh time limit

That Damn Snoll!


The second BC is against the infamous Snoll Tzar at Bearclaw Pinnacle accessed from the Uleguerand Range. This fight is 60 cap. As with the mithra, once you’re ready you can travel to the BC and attempt it within an hour. Very convinent, especially considering you’ll probably lose a few times and need to wait for your 2-hours to return.

The Ulgeruerand Range is full of magic, sight, and sound aggro mobs. Bring your oils and powers. Also, bring Icarus Wings, Hi-Potions, Yag Drinks, and your very best food. You’ll need it.


Hokay. Snoll Tzar. This one’s different. The Snoll Tzar will aggro anyone that gets within any sort of range against it, so there is no time for a first strike. Once it starts moving, you have 45 seconds to defeat it before it blows up. At 15 and 30 it will “be emitting a large amount of steam” and grow in both actual size and in brute force of attacks. Once the 45 seconds are up, it will use a self-destruct move that does heavy damage to everyone. If it blows self up, even if someone survives the blast, you lose, end of story. You are ejected from the BC. This can't be stunned and can't be avoided unless you beat the Snoll before it finishes using the move. The Snoll Tzar also actually tries to kill you during the battle, an often-forgotten fact. It has physical attacks, a move that puts frost on everyone, and a powerful WS-type move that can do over 1000 damage. It is estimated that the Snoll Tzar has 9000 HP.

Go over that one for a moment. 9000 damage. 45 seconds. Yeah. It’s not possible.

Technically it may be, but you don’t have to put up with that crap. There is an orc in the Ulgeruerand Range that wants two cluster cores, and every time you give him one, he gives you the EX item Shu-Meyu Salt. This item takes a few seconds to use, but once you use it you will see the message “the Snoll Tzar starts to melt!”. 15 seconds later you see “The Snoll Tzar shakes off the salt!” What this means is the time it is melting doesn’t count against you on the clock. You can use multiple salts in a given battle, but you probably won’t need more than two or three. You'll be going full out from the beginning, so delaying the time just won’t help you if half your party is already dead and all your useful abilities are used up.

DO NOT OVERLAP YOUR SALTS! The salt doesn't "give you 15 more seconds." Instead, it makes it so 15 seconds doesn't count against you. The difference is that if you use a second salt before your first one is finished, you won't get the effect of the 2nd salt, which means you're losing time you had counted on having.

If you can't find any Salts on the auction, you'll have to farm your own Cluster Cores. They drop from bomb cluster enemies, which are different from normal bombs. They spawn in foggy weather in Lufaise Meadows and Misrareux coast and are a 100% drop. THFs can attempt to steal an additional cluster as well. One person can farm a few on a foggy day. If you can't get enough, or run out, have everyone get their 50 gear and head back into Riverne-Site#B01. You won't need any scales to get to an island were 3 or 5 Atomic Clusters are always up, regardless of weather. Also, now that ToAU is out, there are several high level clusters near the Halvung staging point, so farming them is also an option.

Farming:

Unlike the previous battles where luck is a factor, here it is all skill. You need to totally maximize your party to the fullest to beat this stupid thing before he blows you up once again. Have people ready to use the salts. If you can make a powerful skillchain, bring Icarus Wings so you can do it more than once and shoot off a powerful magic blast. RDMs can chainspell, convert, use ethers, do whatever they can to burn their MP into damage. SMNs can Astral Flow twice if you use 2 salts. PLD tanks Invincible and cover to try to keep aggro. NINs can throw shurkens and blow themselves up at the end. Even a WHM has a place in this battle, doing their best to keep everyone alive. Give it your all, don’t pull your punches, but don’t have one person doing so much damage that the Snoll turns on them and kills them before they’ve given it their all.

Some strategy guides say that, should you fail this BC and be ejected, you will be inflicted with a status effect called Slip that does 32/damage per tic for a long time and can kill you even if you reraise.. I have no idea where this absurd information came from. Slip doesn't exist. Frost does, but it doesn't do nearly that much damage, doesn't really last that long, can be erased, and certainly doesn't affect characters that reraise from the dead after the battle. Maybe this "information" came from a badly translated from a Japanese website perhaps? The stars only know.

Move
 Effect
Berserk
 Increases Snolls attack but lowers defense.
Be very happy if you see this move.
Cold Wave
 AoE Frost
Freezing Rush
 Weapon-skill-ish move that does roughly 1000 damage
Heimel Storm
 Directional AoE for high damage
Hypothermal Meltdown
 Self destruct move, you fail the battle

Strategy tips:
BCNM-Specific Item


When you do beat the Snoll, gloat to everyone you know. You earned it. If you fail, and it likely will take a couple tries to figure out how to maximize your party’s power, go over the log, discuss alternatives, and remain vigilant. People make mistakes so don’t take it hard if you forget something. It is an awkward hectic battle. My party beat him in under a minute without using our SMN 2-hour more than once. We lost three times before, but that fourth time we were just ready to win. Keep trying it until you bust through. When you’re done dancing happily, go finish this path.

Cutscene:
Zone
 NPC name
 Location
Metalworks Cid
 (H-8)

If Ulmia's path is your final path to complete on mission 5-3, you will get an additional cutscene at Cid that leads into the next mission.

Cutscene:
Zone
 NPC name
 Location
 Other
Metalworks Cid
 (H-8)
 If completd all three paths


Exp reward for completion: 1000


Louverance's Path - Tenzen's Path
(next mission)
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