Davoi (Knight's Quest) Guide

[Graus]

I'd like to offer my experiences on Davoi. This might be helpful to gauge your ability to solo it, or perhaps decide what help you may need.

For starters, I was a Level 30 Paladin, with a Level 30 Whitemage. We used invis and sneak. We encountered 4 types of monsters:

(Various) Orcs: aggro, unless invisible (weak-Incredibly Tough)
War Lizards: not aggro (easy-tough)
Davoi Pugils: aggro, unless sneaking (easy-decent)
Davoi Mush: aggro, unless sneaking (tough)

We followed the path furnished by Eldrin of Midgardsormr at the following link:

http://www.teamxspeed.com/ffxi/davoi.jpg

This sequence of the path islike this:
Room 1: Easy Orcs (Solo-killable)
Room 2: Incredibly Tough Orcs
River: Pugils (The bulk of the trip)
Room 3: Incredibly Tough Orcs
Well Hall: Tough Slime

With two travelers, you have twice the chance of an early failure on sneak or invis. We kept both up at all times. They seem to last a random duration of 10-60 seconds.

We had sneak fail in Room 2, we ducked into a hall and recast when only lizards were around. This wouldnt have been neccessary though - at that point Orcs would only detect with invis. We made it to the river when immediately we had a sneak fail. The pugils are spread very far apart and the first few are easy cons. I think the river trip is quite easy. We had sneak fail many times, but there are many places to space yourself far apart enough to avoid them for refreshing sneak. You get three warnings about 2 seconds apart that let you know sneak or invis is failing.

The last leg was crossing the last room and going into the hall with the knight's well. Invis across the orcs and youwill have another staging area for the final part. The hall has no orcs in it, just unaggro lizards. At the well itself, there is a Davoi Mush that will aggro unless sneaked. With sneak only (drop invis) go up and touch the well and you will have the Knight's Soul Key Item. If you are invis, you can pick up the soul. I also understand there is a chance of a notorious monster being here that may see through sneak (I'm sure like me, if you made the trip and found him, you would take yer chances- but I was lucky and had a simple mush)

In all we used about 8 sneaks and 3 invises - sneak seemed to drop more frequently. It could be easily done solo with a stack of 12 of each. To be frugal since they are expensive, you can try to use only invis through orcs, and only sneak through fish and the last part. This is how we did it on the way out. While you are navigating the river, orcs are on a higher level, and wont aggro you. There are some exceptions where land meets the river. At those points approach them with caution, but I never saw orcs there.

Also, there is a strategy I did not try, but this quest only required level 30 to start, but not to finish. One tactic may be to switch to a level 1 job before setting out for davoi (but then you cant take choco) If you avoided mobs on the way there, and used sneak/invis through davoi, then you have nothing to lose. You might also make up for lost time if you remain bound at San D'oria and die for a quick and painless trip home after you have the soul in hand.

Good luck Future Knights!

[foobar]

Good post. A couple of comments:
I believe orcs at the bridges can agro.
You can take the I-8 route to jump directly into the river and skip the lvl 30ish orcs.

[Pilsbane]

I ended up going the path drawn in the picture. It worked okay for me once I figured out that was the way to go. The only info I had when I started the quest was the vague and incorrect information posted on Allakhazams (It was printed as 'disused wall' and given an incorrect coordinate on the original write up). After I ate a few deaths and figured out exactly what I needed to do it wasn't so bad with the help of a whitemage.

You can run to the river with only invis if you steer around the level 30-range lizards (saves you having to worry about sneak/deodorize). In the river you can sneak/deodorize past the pugils or just kill the pugils with your whitemage partner. Nylia and I just killed the pugils on my last trip, to avoid our spells dropping at a bad time. If you do kill the pugils, there are a couple spots in the river you want invis to not aggro the orcs nearby.

When you get to the end of the river get sneak/deodorize run up alone (no reason for the whitemage to risk it too--plus they can raise you if you get aggro but can make it back to a safe spot to die) to the well, snag your knights soul and run back to the river. Obviously dodge the orcs. If the named slime isn't up the regular one doesn't detect you with sneak/deodorize. You can safely run to the well and back to the river.

After that backtrack your way out. On my successful trip I made it all the way in and all the way back out without dying.