PUP infinite chain solo

Really fast update on something really cool!


Ok so I only got chain 22, but technically you could go on forever! Basically the only thing that can stop you is a resist/overload (and even then you can still keep the chain) and boredom.

You'll probably need capped magic merits/optimization and a piece of MAB gear (AF2 feet, ACP body, random augments). Go PUP/COR for Corsair's Roll. Camp is in Xarcabard[s] right where you OP into. There's a bunch of Gigas BST in the area.

Just use the standard Water>Icex3 maneuvers and run around one shotting the pets. If you get a resist/overload, I would just nuke>deactive>nuke again without manuevers. The 2 weaker nukes will be enough to kill.

I think EXP/hr is maybe like 10k or 11k/hour, so it's not great, but not horrible either. Would be better if Sigil gave an exp bonus though.

Initial Fomor Kings Exploration!

Tried the new fomor NMs! Started off with the Galka, Elatha.

We had 5 people in the beginning: RDM/NINx2 BLM/NINx2 WHM/SCH. A little bit into the fight we realized that /SCH wasn't the best SJ for our WHM, /NIN would've been much better. Will definitely do that next time.

Two Explosures(bombs) spawn in his area as well, but they both con EP, and are on the standard 16minute dungeon repop. We just killed them as they popped, wasn't that big of a deal.


Hate is REALLY random. I have no idea how people are using normal tank parties on this. Any little thing, and it'll run off and attack someone else, which is why /NIN should be required for everyone. Not only for the random hate though, it also counters all magic with an instant Blizzard IV of its own(think like the Beaudeaux[s] SCNM Observant Zekka).

It's ice based, and casts all the standard ice based spells: Blizzaga3, Blizzard 4, Bindga, Paralyga, and Freeze. It also casts some ice based blue magic: Cold Wave (Small AoE Frost, heavy damage/tic), Frost Breath(400~ damage + paralyze), and Ice break (AoE bind+ 100-200damage). The -ga black magic spells wipe shadows as typical, but the blue magic spells don't which is nice. His Blizzaga3 is surprisingly weak too, doesn't even break a capped stoneskin.

In terms of melee attacks, he hits fairly hard (400-500 a swing), but incredibly slow. If it wasn't for all his shadow wiping -ga spells, I'd have no problems ichi tanking it, even without any form of slow/elegy on it. It has the standard GS weaponskills, none of them are dangerous except for Shockwave, which is AoE damage+ sleepga. It uses the normal fomor TP moves too, like Grim Halo (AoE, can be blocked by shadows), Carnal Nightmare (AoE TP reset), and Netherspikes (bind+damage, can be blocked by 2-3shadows).

Wiki claimed that it "levels up" when you cast any spell that would give it a status effect, so we avoided bio. I leveled up anyway, despite us not casting anything on it other than nukes. At about 50% it seemed to reach its max level, and stopped leveling up, which is when we started to bio it anyway, since it didn't matter. It does have an auto-regen, so any little bit to counter that helps. We stopped worrying about level ups when we moved onto the other NMs too.

You only want to cast fire spells on it. I think all the level ups made it more resistant, especially for the RDMs. I was having no problems in the beginning, but once it reached its max level, I considered it lucky to get a 50% resist.


At 35% it can start to 2hour, Blood Weapon. When it does that, its attack speed literally becomes 100 fists, which is annoying because if he gets through your shadows, he'll just heal itself. I think our first Blood Weapon he healed himself almost 12%. Best way we found to deal with it was to abuse draw in. Kite it away, and it'll draw you in back to it's spawn point, which gives you breathing time to utsu, and then kite away again.

We had 3 more people join as the fight went on. Got a Dull Claymore drop(the level1 aern weapon), but no Britca's cuffs! Going to have to spam this one.


Next we tried Buarainech.


A LOT easier. I'd say the easiest of the 5 probably. Same strategy applies: RDM and BLM/NINs. He's thunder based, which is actually nice, since it doesn't have annoying paralyze spells. Obviously cast stone instead of fire. There's 2 scorpions in the room, instead of 2 bombs, which isn't much different.

It levels up if you buff apparently. We didn't even bother trying to avoid it, and really noticed no difference when it leveled up.

It casts thunder magic, but they are just as weak as the ice spells Elatha had. His blue magic selection isn't amazing either. There was Temporal Shift (AoE stun), and Mind Blast (small damage+ paralyze).


It uses polearm WS, which are slightly worse than GS, since they're multi hit. Was pretty fun watching something Penta Thrust you though.

At 35% it can start doing Spirit Surge, which really did nothing except give it endoom. Just bounce hate/shadow block it. Use Holy Water if it goes through, problem solved!


Horrible drops!


We wiped to the next 2 fomors unfortunately.

Ethniu! Basically a disaster. Not really much to say except its pop area has a ton of mobs compared to the other NMs. 6 Goblins, and 4 Gazers. Our plan was to have a THF and DNC duo the adds as they popped, while the RDMs/BLMs took care of Ethniu itself. Unfortunately what we failed to realize was that it's immune to all magic anyway, so we would have never won. It also attacks extremely quickly too, and hard (200-300 damage). No slow or elegy since it's wind based. Needless to say, it was a quick wipe.


Lugh!


We did a little better here. I think our lowest was 85%. It has a 100% double attack proc, which is annoying. Black magic spells are just as weak, but his blue magic was a little stronger. Heat Breath did 700~ damage.


En-plague was frustrating too without an actual WHM that wasn't being 2boxed. I think we could probably win though, with a dedicatd WHM and maybe an extra person or two to help bounce hate.

Didn't try the taru, Tethra! Hopefully soon!

Oh, and I got my Spurrer Beret! Went 1/2, so yay for that.

Duo Zirnitra!

Finally killed this! As a duo, none the less!

Did it as RDM/NINx2. It actually was surprisingly kind of easy, we won on our first try! Took us about 90mins~ to kill it.

Make sure to bring a LOT of echo drops. Silencega isn't your friend. I think we used about 2 stacks each.


We really didn't know what we were doing, and kind of just decided to see how it went. Started off by kiting it around the little area, which kind of worked. It's huge, and its pathing glitched around the tiny rocks. After a bit of that, we decided to just straight tank, and ping pong it around, which worked pretty well.

Pre-50%, it's tame. Doesn't do any dangerous TP moves really, so just slowly take it down. Bio3/Poison2 on it, and nuke with Blizzard 3. It's resistant to nukes, but we still managed to get about 260~ damage blizzard 3 around 50% of the time. Slow doesn't work, and paralyze never landed, so don't bother. For silencega, I recommend just running as soon as you see it start casting it. You won't be able to out run it, but you'll be able to get some distance on it, and enough time to use an echo drop+cast ni. Usually we had the other RDM (not the one being cast on) get it's attention when it was casting, so that it'd also give them silenced RDM a few more seconds to recover, especially if ni wasn't up.


The only 2 TP moves it has were Reaving Wind (TP reset+ knockback), just run away from that, and Storm Wing (400damage~+silence), but it should rarely do them, since you'll be barely feeding it any TP.


Below 50%, it gets a little tougher since it has access to Calamitous Wind (600-700damage+full AoE dispel), Feral Peck(AoE Throat Stab), and Warped Wail (HP/MP down, though not significant).

For Calamitous Wind, it only does it after Reaving Wind, and it does it twice. You can outrun it as long as you are over 20' away. Basically, as soon as you see it do Reaving Wind, immediately start running away. A few seconds after, it'll do Calamitous (which you should hopefully be out of range for, but the animation will still go off as you can see below), and then it'll take a few more steps, and try Calamitous again. When running away, be careful not to run too far; if you leave its area, it'll just draw in both of you, and then Calamitous which would be bad.


For Feral Peck, it's range is actually rather tiny. We were able to outrun it easily; just run as soon as you see it readying it. It also drew us in+ Feral Peck a few times, but again just run as soon as you are drawn in. If it DOES hit, it doesn't wipe shadows, and of course since it's a throat stab move, it can't actually kill you; so just recover.


Warped Wail isn't very threatening; it's like -50HP/MP.

Only the pigment dropped! Which was what I wanted anyway though.


Overall it really wasn't bad at all. We were playing safe a lot, I'm sure we could cut the total fight time down by a bit. Big thanks to Riki for trying it with me! Though I had to beg forever, and he had no faith we'd win! I really need to find more people to go on crazy adventures with me! Wish more people would be like "sure! sounds fun!" when I ask, instead of like "uh.....what's the strat again? don't think we can win...". Well maybe if we actually tried, then we'd be able to build a strategy and win! You can't figure out stuff by not actually trying.

Decided to try and go after some of the remaining unknown NMs in hopes of obtaining a Spurrer Beret. Unfortunately no luck popping 3~ of them, and took 10 kills on this stupid troll to get this:

Yay for a club! Never going to replaces staves, and I don't even have hexa so...

Back to killing demons in Xarc!

November Update!

Warning: I am posting a bunch of screenshots from various cutscenes throughout the post; if you care about being spoiled then don't continue!



So with new update here, I started playing a bit more and exploring some of the new content.

The first thing I decided to when the servers came back up was start on the new WoTG quests!

I enjoyed the quests. As usual, Windy had the best storyline/cutscenes. The actual quests themselves were pretty good too. None of them felt like like a waste of time, or had pointless farming. Of course, the length was again short. 6 total quests, and each took about an hour to do.

The fights got a little harder too. Definitely need a full party now.




Too bad what the elvaan F is wearing is hideous! Definitely not cute!

I was spamming print screen during the last windy CS, so pretty!


Cutaru love!


Robel's mask if finally off! Too bad we don't get to see the face!

Double summon power!











SE really like to use "...is come."

Fenrir about kill Tzee Xicu!



Or not!




Tarus in trouble!


Bow of light to save the day?!





Wish my Fenrir was this cool!

Another problem was basically finding people to help. The amount of people that do WoTG itself is pretty minuscule (especially among the NA population). This problem gets worse by the fact that WoTG splits that already tiny group into 3 when it comes to the nation quests, since doing only 1 path is required.

It's also rather disappointing that it seems like we are a YEAR away from WoTG's end. A year from the missions ending, which means a year from WoTG's endgame area (Walk of Echoes presumably). If the updates continue as they have been in the past, the next update will be for missions, the summer update will finish the nation quests, and the fall/winter update to finish WoTG's missions. That's really upsetting, considering it will have been THREE years since WoTG was released.



A Shantotto's Ascension! I actually thought this was by far the best of the three add on scenarios. I didn't have to farm a single low level mob! Yeah, the whole breaking synthesis aspect of the first mission was stupid, but personally I didn't mind since I just bought everything off the AH. Went 1/2 on the synth, though I wouldn't have cared if I had to spend even more gil. I think it cost me a little over 100k.

Aside from that, there weren't any fetch quests. No level cap climbs/run around high level dungeons. The storyline itself was decent. It didn't take itself too seriously, and instead chose the humorous route, like the moogle add on did.

I waited a few days to start the add on, and then proceeded to rush and finish the entire thing in about 8 hours straight. I'm glad I did, because finding a group to do these is pretty painful. It seems like not many people bought the add on at all (again, especially NAs), so finding a group in NA primetime seemed difficult. I remember when ACP came out, so many people were shouting to do the BCs, and so many people were running around wearing the new body pieces.

On the other hand, JP primetime is a lot better. There's shouts every 20-30minutes or so for a BC, so finding a group didn't take too long.

For the Full Moon Fountain fight, the strategy my group went with was kind of strange. We went with RDM/WHMx2 DRK NIN MNK BLM/SCH. BLM performed initial sleepga, and died once they woke up. Instead of subbing BLM and gaining access to ES sleepga as well, they wanted us (the 2 RDMs) to kite. It wasn't that hard to kite them, since they ran at normal movement speed, and basically hit for 10-30 damage, but it did seem silly doing that instead of just sleeping them.






Poor taru army!





Double Shantottos!



For the final BC, went with a SMN burn. 5xSMN and 1 BRD. The BRD was useless, the crazy buffs you get in the fight (triple MP, refresh effect) are more than enough. i think we made the fight a lot harder than it had to be. We split into 2 groups, 1 for killing the dark shantotto, and one for the light. We pulled one Shantotto to the start, and left the other at the pop area, and we stood between everything. This ended up being a bad idea, since we were getting hit with AoEs from BOTH sides, so the fight ended up being extremely messy. Luckily there's no weakness when you die.







The final CS was pretty cool!



Everything turning into Shantotto!



Giant Shantotto battle!




My intermediate key rewards were useless. Tossed both.



For the final piece, I decided to go with movement speed +8% and cure potency +5%. Since I don't have gaiters, I had already decided going with movement speed, plus, BRD gets movement speed now too! The second choice was kind of difficult, but I ended up going with cure potency. -enmity is pretty easy to get in other slots (mahatma, errant cape, novia, blah blah) while cure potency is unique. It's also pretty good for soloing I guess, where enmity isn't really an issue.



I tried some of the new NMs! Helped Seeko with the Cradle Horn NM, though unfortunately it didn't drop.


Did Boompadu for some cute pup pants!


The ram in Lufaise!



Ran into some pixie NMs while doing WoTG. Both dropped nothing.




Solo'd (mostly) Chelicerata.

Pretty much exactly like the Chigoe ZNM, except in Wajaom, and much easier. It's only additional effect is slow (so who cares!). It does hit hard/fast though. Train it to the tower, and just kite in circles/dots! It'll deaggro here and there.



Riki came out to give me TH4, and it dropped! Trying to collect as many Aptant things before the Synergy update.

Lizardtrap!



Fairly simple, 0/2. Only danger is Blizzaga3.

Ramponneau!


Really easy, obviously, for any 75 job! Too bad no drop :(

Tried the new NM Zirnitra in Xarc! Getting people to try it with me was really challenging. Since it basically drops nothing useful (until the actual Evolith update), nobody really wanted to bother with it. I really like doing new events/fights, even if there's no actual tangible reward. Doing the same events over and over makes FFXI boring to me, so trying something new is always fresh and exciting to me.


Finally managed to get 7 though to try it with me. Most people that posted on forums had at least 12+ members from what I saw, so I was anticipating us not winning, but we did pretty well I think! Went with:

WHM/SCH
WHM/BLM
RDM/WHM
PLD/NIN
PLD/NIN
BRD/WHM

SMN/WHM



The fight pre-50% is rather simple. It has a lot of annoying TP moves though. It casts Silencega a lot (its only spell thankfully). It's Storm Wing does damage, and silence as well. It also constantly spams Reaving Wind, which knocks people back, and resets tp. I think our PLDs got to 100 TP maybe once or twice the entire fight. Nothing is that threatening though.

Once it's below 50%, it gained 3 new TP moves, 2 of which we didn't know about. Feral Peck: which seemed to do some crazy AoE throat stab on our PLDs, and Warped Wail, which was small Aoe damage and max HP/MP down. And finally, the TP move we did know about Calamitous Wind, which did 600-700~ damage, and full AoE dispelga, with a range of 20'.



There's also some weird hate decay. It seemed it would go after the mages randomly. I think if we were try it again I would have all our WHMs and RDM sub NIN; it totally would've helped controlling damage, since it isn't that bad to tank.


The only enfeeble I could get to land was Poison (and Bio of course). Wiki claimed Paralyze to work, but after about 15 tries, I gave up. Slow/Elegy are obviously immune since it's wind based.

A single SMN dd was a little slow, but not horrible. Each BP took about 1-2% off. I tried nuking with Blizzard 3 a few times early on, and averaged about 200damage.



I actually think we can win next time we try. We didn't realize that Calamitous Wind was 20' range move until after we got hit with it a few times. It was really fun though, so I can't wait to try again!

Did the new MMM voucher: Fishing!




It was... interesting. I have 0 fishing skill, and barely any practice fishing. It's a race against 2 other NPCs on who can reach the goal the fastest.


I basically just started guessing my way through it. I fished up a few monsters, which gave me more points than the crayfish did.




Unfortunately I lost horribly, it wasn't even close.


Team Tsolamogola wasn't supposed to fail! NPCs cheated!


Did some more Sarameya! Crap drops as always. I don't think Haidate exists anymore.



As for the SMN update, it's pretty cool. Need to rework my SMN xml (or wait for someone else to post theirs online and ninja edit it into mine!)

I can get 317 skill, and the top tier for buffs. Of course I'd be sacrificing -perp gear to do so.

269 skill, no merits.

+5 Bahamut's Staff(no reason not to full time, since it gives -3perp)
+7 Marduk's Tiara (if weather is active then I give up -3 perp, or in Garuda's case -2perp)
+7 Summoning Torque (no -perp in this slot)
+3 Summoning Earring (no -perp in this slot)
+5 Marduk's Shalwar (no -perp in this slot)
+10 Summoner's Bracers (giving up -1 perp from Nashira Gages)
+10 Evoker's Ring (-1 perp, nothing better in the ring slot)
+5 Astute Cape (no -perp in this slot)

So total=321 skill.

Diabolos, probably the big one with it's refresh effect gains the most of this. If you have over 317 skill, then you can get reach 4MP/tick, instead of 3.

You can also turn Diabolos into pretty much the new Carbuncle. Using the gear above:

13 MP/tick perpetuation cost
-2 Avatar's favor being up
-4 Diabolos' Refresh effect
-3 Bahamut's Staff
-1 Auto-refresh trait
-1 Evoker's ring
-1 Conjurer's ring
-1 AF+1 Feet
-1 Yinyang Robe

So free Diabolos! And you gain MP with it out! Would be better if if I had merits though, because then I wouldn't need to rely on Conjurer's ring.

Of course for Diabolos it balances out, focusing on +skill gear, and dropping -perp gear, since the favor itself is essentially giving you -perp.

For the other avatars, I can't really see the point though. Shiva's MAB favor is pretty much negated by the fact that you can just use Diabolos and Dream shroud (which is slightly gimper, but I'd rather have a few less MAB and gain 4MP/tick refresh). I can't find a practical use for Titan (defense). Garuda (evasion) seems weird, maybe if you're with a NIN or THF evasion tanking something...? Could do Hastega+ evasion bonus I guess. Leviathan's magic accuracy probably won't be too useful, since again mages would probably prefer MAB+refresh. Fenrir's magic evasion would be good maybe if you're expecting some huge AoE magic attack and wanted to prepare for it? Though I can't really think of a situation like that... Ramuh(critical hit rate) and Ifrit (Double attack rate) would be ok for a melee party, but chances of them replacing a BRD, COR, RDM, or WHM in a melee party of any kind is rather slim, so they're useless too.

Carbuncle's regen is nice though, 15HP/tick, and it should of course be free with Carbuncle mitts.

However other than that, I don't see much use for the favor buffs, aside from Diabolos' mainly. I see SMN now being able to support BLM parties more effectively if needed with Dream Shroud + Favor.

The general -2 perp from having the JA active is nice though. Even though your avatar's attacks are weakened, you can now use a stronger avatar, like Fenrir or Diabolos, than Carbuncle.

That's it for now! Hopefully the synergy update wins too!