I'm doing a little testing in the Golden Coins Mansion and the Beast Palace. I know GCM really well, but it's been a while so a little testing doesn't hurt. At CS12 I can grind in there but the xp rate is not great. The hallway mobs are green for me and they drop CS12 BD weapons. The mobs in the lower two rooms are white/yellow for me and the mini-bosses are bright, bright red. LaCeNa, from the Thor's league and I were able to take those two down with no problems. These mobs didn't really drop very much.

The mobs in the side chambers are yellow/orange for me and again the bosses were bright, bright red. I'm not going to say it was no problem to take down those mini-bosses but we did it. We had to carve out a meditation spot in the hallway and I was throwing a lot of heals around, because LaCeNa is only CS10 and those mobs were red for her. She still out-damaged me though.

Obviously I have very little chance of getting the True General Wei epithet any time soon, which is sort of depressing.

One bit of good news is that the mobs in the side chambers will drop GL BD weapons and I got both a set of gloves and a spear, no slots of course and not really what I need. Isn't that always the way?

The top two rooms are full of red mobs and I only stayed there long enough to kill one mob.

In that 30 minute run I got only 3% of xp, which really isn't that good for a grind spot. Too much time spent killing the mini-bosses I guess. I got a couple of other drops though, a Water Seal and a set of male 10% vagabond boots, so at least that's promising.

LaCeNa and I tried the Beast Tower but I got disconnected almost immediately and didn't have time to make any notes. Last time I was in there it was a one hour grind dungeon, which helps, and as I recall, there is a set period of time in there where you can't meditate, so plan for it. Turn off your Meditation and Steps buffs, and switch to an old noobie active skill that doesn't use much VE. Of course, the better plan is to take a healer with you.

These dungeons will be great to break up the monotony of the grind until we get the Ice Map. I'll happily go in any group of three CS/GL characters, and we can split the price of the passes.

Who wants to go to the Golden Coins Mansion? Camlost, maybe?

(hehehe, thanks for the run Camlost. that was fun...)

- AxtTreiber