Semi-spoiler alert here!

Was reading through my CoP guide for my LS and I got to thinking about the Promathia fight in CoP 8-4, Dawn.

I believe each of the five Mothercrystals (Holla, Dem, Mea, Vahzl and Al’Taieu (?)) represents a playable race (something to do with the five tears of Altana giving birth to the good races of Vana’diel). If I remember correctly, each playable race has a flaw, such as the Cowardice of the Tarutaru, the Rage of the Galka etc (inflicted by Promathia to be spiteful to his sister Altana) and obtaining the Key Item: Light of… (e.g. light of Holla) I believe is supposed to represent overcoming that racial flaw, or at least I think so!?

Anyway, in CoP 8-3 you travel up the Garden of Ru’Hmet to retrieve one of the Key Items, which is stolen from you in CoP 8-1 by Nag’Molada. The one stolen is the one that corresponds to your race, e.g. Tarutaru have the Light of Holla stolen from them, and you can get it back from the Tarutaru tower in the Garden. However, you also travel up the towers to get the Dawn Fragment and the Twilight Fragment (I think they’re called by these names), which are used to progress in the Mission and enter the BCNMs.



Now, in the fight with Promathia, he uses Chains of… (e.g. Chains of Cowardice) which is supposed to Terrorise the race it corresponds to (Cowardice = Tarutaru) temporarily, or so I have read somewhere, but in my fight I am positive that every Chains of… did nothing to anyone regardless of race, which leads me to ask…

…Is reobtianing the Light of Dem/Holla/Mea etc optional? I know that the Dawn and Twilight Fragments are essential to progressing in the missions, but I would like to know, for the accuracy of the guide, if anyone has tried to enter the Dawn BCNM without having reobtained the Light Key Item, and if so were you granted entry and did the Chains of… move have any effect on you?

I think nearly every guide I have read says to obtain the Light, but I am wondering is this just because everyone takes it for granted? I cannot check Wiki at work, but I am quite sure none of the guides mentions if it’s optional or not.

I think the "Chains of" moves are sort of a freebie that SE tossed in to make the fight a little less troublesome, after all, it's only the first form that uses it if I recall. I don't think you can enter the fight without the lights though, wouldn't be a great idea to go without them if you can though.

I'm pretty sure that you can't receive the dawn and twilight fragment thingies without getting your light. It's been so long for me, but I do recall you need all three key items to fight Promathia. I actually wondered the same thing a long time ago. Promathia uses things such as "chains of apathy" that "takes no effect" on players. I haven't found anything saying that getting your light is optional, and later just pawned this off as SE's attempt to put some storyline into the fight.