The Tortoise and the Hare

(spoiler alert: the tortoise loses)

Silver Sea Remnants
Party 1: Cole (main MNK), Erm (BRD), Ofe (WHM), Rob (SAM), Kuni (RDM), Liquidblue (BLU)
Party 2: GH (THF), Khrone (MNK)
Not in attendance: n/a
Enter Time: Mon 01/11/2010 ~11:00PM EST
Goal: NM Run

1st Floor: bypass
We decided to take the East path for a change, which bypasses my Usu 35 Head NM {/cry} but it turned out nicely because the other side seems to give a lot more cell drops, plus we can move through it a lot quicker than the West path.

2nd Floor: bypass
SW path. Pretty sure we killed a few before porting up.

3rd Floor: success
Made our way to the East porter. Everyone bypassed the South room without incident... which I'm pretty sure was a first for us. lol When clearing the East room, only had maybe 1 or 2 deaths from some unlucky hits. No major incidents. Gyroscopic Gears (NM) only dropped Ares 15 Head. :-P

4th Floor: success
Made our way down to the main room. All 4 pullers made sure we knew which Archaic Rampart we needed to grab. ... And then the wandering Gears came floating by, heading North. :-P GH managed to aggro them and pull them far enough away so that after he had died, they didn't come back after us. Since the wandering Gears were on the North side of the main room, we decided to switch tactics and pull the Archaic Ramparts towards the South end, instead of the entrance chamber to this floor. Once everyone was set, GH aggroed the room and ran North while the 4 pullers grabbed their Archaic Ramparts and headed South. Pullers had to make sure to keep hate and not lose their mob, but we eventually all made it down to the South end and picked them off one at a time (while the others were kept slept). Citadel Chelonian popped. We waited for the wandering gears to start heading back North and kind of followed them back up to the main room. Once we were clear, we pulled the turtle NM a little further South (but not even all the way to the end) and took him out. He only dropped Morrigan 15 Head. :-P

Flied out.

Final Notes / Lessons Learned:
While it kind of irked me that I (as the 2nd MNK) was put in the outside party AND that we bypassed the 1st floor NM, I'm still happy that we finally had a VERY smooth SSR run. Apparently this layout/plan worked for us this time, so I can't really complain. I'm pumped that we finally got a chance at killing the turtle (every other time we've somehow managed to screw up pulling the Archaic Ramparts) and that it went down so easily. We didn't get any good drops, but at least this is another run that we finally have worked the kinks out of. The drops will just come with us executing our battleplan successfully over and over again. :-)

=========================

Follow-up regarding the next night's run:
Basically the exact same run (and still no 35 drops) with a few minor changes:
- Rob (SAM) was in the outside party and Khrone (2nd MNK) was in main party
- before Ofe (WHM) got his magic unlocked, he was actually in the outside party and Rob (SAM) was in the main party, since a WHM without magic is basically useless (although I think he actually got his magic unlocked withing the first 60 seconds of entering Salvage. lol)
- we had a slight delay on the 3rd floor when someone accidentally aggroed one of the mobs in the South room. only took a few minutes to kill though. nothing major.
- we also delayed a bit before pulling the Archaic Ramparts because we weren't sure where the wandering gears were. we probably could have saved a bit of time by just charging in as soon as we got there. again, no major time-loss though.
- we pulled the Archaic Ramparts North this time, instead of South, due to the location/moving-direction of the wandering gears. (which seems like it will always be a coin-toss) So, at least now we are accustomed to pulling in either direction and know we can do it without incident. :-)