We had transferred our operation from Underground Volcano to Ifrit’s Oasis.
“Even from Sharon, I didn’t expect this,” Kent grumbled as he wiped sweat from his face. As usual, he was leading our formation. “Are we seriously doing this? I guess we have to...”
I could hardly blame him. I’d just asked my party to help me gather one thousand Unstoked Embers. That meant we’d have to take out at least a thousand Heirs of Flames—“at least” being the operative phrase there. An Heir of Flames had about a sixty percent likelihood of dropping an Unstoked Ember. It was nowhere near a guaranteed drop, but those were decently reliable chances. I wondered how the party would react once I told them those odds and briefly contemplated keeping the information to myself. Still, they’d figure out the general chances pretty quickly when only about one in two Heirs yielded the item we were hunting for.
I’d only told the party that we’d get something cool after gathering a thousand Unstoked Embers. I was hoping that the element of mystery would make this farming session a little more interesting, but I wasn’t sure if making them farm an item without knowing its purpose was doing more harm to their morale than good.
“Heirs up ahead, Sharon. Three of them,” Kent called.
“Okey dokey. Smiting Light.”
As soon as I cast the buff, Kent used Taunt to draw the monsters to himself. Without missing a beat, Cocoa and L’lyeh launched their attacks, followed by Tarte’s Potion Throw. I could see in Tarte’s face how proud she was of her newly powered-up attack.
Like a well-oiled machine, we made quick work of the Heirs of Flames...which left behind a single Unstoked Ember. The road ahead of us might be longer than I thought. Farming like this had never bothered me that much in the game, but there was so much to worry about in real life: the need for breaks and sleep, not to mention the exhaustion and the unbearable heat. It was going to be pretty grueling to farm a thousand of the same item in these conditions. It’s going to take a few days, at least.
“One drop out of three kills. It’s a long road to a thousand,” Kent said.
“We’re after Ifrit’s drop item too. Each day, we’ll check on the egg, farm some items, then defeat Ifrit, and go back to the inn. Isn’t that a good schedule?” My suggestion earned a look of disbelief from Cocoa. Okay. Too much. “I’m kidding! Well, we do need to fight Ifrit. We really want her drop item, and we can only fight her once a day. That means we need to compromise on either checking the Salamander Egg or farming items.”
“We need to visit the egg every day!” Tarte exclaimed.
“I thought you’d say so!” I said. What else could I do? That meant our best compromise would come in the item-farming department. “Okay. What if we aim to farm three hundred of them per day?” I suggested.
“Three hundred... So we’d have to fight around six hundred Heirs each day?” Kent asked.
“Is that a little too much?” I ventured.
“A lot more than a little,” Kent said, shooting me down without remorse. Three hundred seemed almost doable to me, but it sounded like that number was still daunting to the rest of the party. “How about a hundred?” Kent suggested. “If we only have to hunt two hundred Heirs, we should have enough strength left to take on Ifrit each day.”
“Then let’s do that,” I said. My proposed schedule had been vetoed, but we now had a plan for the days ahead: check on the Salamander Egg in Underground Volcano, and then move to Ifrit’s Oasis to farm a hundred Unstoked Embers and defeat Ifrit.
A hundred a day seemed like a breeze in comparison to my original plan, but I could admit that it was still going to be a lot of work.
Having agreed on a reasonable goal, we huddled up and did a hands-in cheer to rally our spirits.