Eureka: The Fine Print

[Hasrat]

Pagos. The nightmare. Hell frozen over. Most players seem to class this as the worst of the bunch. Personally, I think Pyros edges it out just slightly, but they're both pretty bad for different reasons. In the past, it was not entirely uncommon to see players new to the zone dying right out of the gate. The enemies here seemed just a wee bit tougher than Anemos trained you to expect. Probably not the case anymore, but, beware.

Probably the first major thing to note is the cliffs. The zone is basically divided into "north" and "south" areas, with only a single, somewhat dangerous path leading to the north. This makes travel through the zone, until you are able to attune to the northern aetherytes, tedious at best. If you're attempting to follow the NM train, you may find you just can't keep up for some of those higher ones. You may be better off choosing to plan ahead, and traveling to the next NM prep/spawn ahead of time, if you know/ask what the group is planning.
Even worse than the impassable cliffs is the small mid-height areas. There are a few caverns that require you fall down to a ledge from up above, made all the more frustrating by the fact that it's never one singular ledge. If you jump off at the wrong location, you will find yourself cut off from the path you want, and you'll have to go all the way back around to try again. Awful, awful zone design. I understand the intent, but it's far from fun.

Next important thing is the introduction of the void dragons. High level mobs scattered around the map, but they're all permanently asleep. This should be fairly obvious how to handle them, but somehow seems to not always be. If the high level mob is sleeping, and you know the high level mob will likely kill you if you wake it up, don't wake it up. In simple terms, they're sound aggro. Walk by slowly and quietly and nobody gets hurt.

This zone also introduces adaptation and mutation. Many of the mobs in the area may spontaneously change as you fight them. Adaptation seems to usually just be the mob gets bigger and tougher. Mutations can change them completely, from elemental affinity to their model. These can be important to pay attention to. You may be all set to handle something tuned to ice, but as soon as it changes, if you don't remember to change accordingly, you can easily find yourself getting beaten when the elements are no longer in your favor.
Mutated mobs can drop special cold-warped lockboxes. These special boxes offer rewards not found in the standard lockboxes you'll have in abundance from NMs. In Pagos, they only contain a couple furnishings, the Shiver emote, and one of the Hakutaku eyes.

Starting with this zone, you'll also see the bunny FATEs. These will continually recur, and they're not on the same timer for respawn as the NM. Personally, I have a bit of trouble solo-ing them myself. The basic idea is save the bunnies from dangerous mobs, and when you succeed, they will lead you to treasure. This treasure can be anywhere on the map (at specific locations) I'm pretty sure. So, be mindful if you're low level, your treasure reward may be somewhere you can't reach very safely/easily.
The rewards offered aren't incredibly substantial, however. You may find any of the Hakutaku eyes, as well as a minion, a card, and a stuffed bunny furnishing.
The regular lockboxes here in Pagos don't contain much of particular excitement. All the same materia trash, ten more glamour gear pieces, a new FF11 minion (Tarutaru), a couple crafting ingredients for more glamour gear, and all four ingredients for crafting an exp boost Harmony Potion for Eureka.

As for special NM rewards, the Hakutaku eyes mentioned previously come in to play here. As I only recently learned, because this information wasn't really gathered anywhere convenient, the eyes can all be crafted together into one special item that, when in your inventory, will allow you to get gold in the level 25 Hakutaku NM FATE. Gold on this NM guarantees an Optical Hat will drop, which will consume the special crafted Eye item thing. The hat, along with the Speed Belt, from level 29 King Arthro, and the Cassie Earring from level 35 Cassie, are special Eureka gear that all have a Haste stat. As you would expect, this will speed up your attacks, which should equate to more dps, even if their other stats are a bit lower than the gear you likely already have by this point. Not certain on the maths here, but I still try to get these items for myself, just to see if they make me feel any stronger. While the hat is a guarantee if you have the special item (I forked over a load of gil for that), the belt and earring are random rare drops, and the NMs themselves are weather-dependent as well, making it especially difficult to collect.
Not much else of note other than that, besides a couple TT cards.

The zone has a lot more sound aggro enemies than Anemos, so it's crucial here to know your aggro types if you're going to survive on your own. Know when to walk, know where to run. The Tracker site also says some enemies are "true sight" aggro, which, I haven't even figured out what that is yet. I think it's maybe supposed to mean they can see you even if you're stealth'd somehow? This is one point I'd love clarification on, can't seem to find the info anywhere.