I did the new missions as soon as I logged on as usual. Not a lot of pointless running around, and no farming at all, which was a welcome change. Just 4 BCs one after the other. The missions did end rather abruptly though I thought.
Fun screenshot time (spoilers!)!
I really hope Levi gets access to the Shadow Lord BC. It looks pretty cool, and decent rewards!
WoTG story keeps getting better! Now I'm in a love triangle between Lillith/Lilisette?! Who are the same person just from different futures?! So much drama!
Odin/Alexander!
Both fights are easy and simple enough. Can be SMN burned or TP burned without much effort at all.
Alexander can be chainspell stunned to make it really simple.
As for Odin, using a SMN and Perfect Defense makes it a joke. When we first started Odin spam, we didn't know about it. Had this crazy win with a dia kill!
I went ahead and spammed Odin so I could complete the final Odin quest. It's kind of silly to have you repeat the same fight 13 times, but oh well. It's fairly obvious that there's going to be some connection between ToAU and WoTG (similar to Apoc nigh and ZM/CoP) or a Bahamut2 style BC to follow up the end of ToAU, so might as well get these Odin wins out of the way.
And after the 13 wins, I became Odin's knight!
And I'm in yet another love triangle between Nashmeira and Odin! What's next?!
Even NPCs admit I'm the best!
VNMs!
I think this system is nice overall, but has some aspects that I think they should change. The first being the repop timer on the NMs. I don't understand why T2 have a 1hour repop, and T3 a 3-4 hour repop. It just seems pointless for forced pop NMs. I also dislike the random upgrade style. I've gone 1/1, 1/10, 1/30...it's just so random. I wouldn't mind if it was something like "Kill 10 T1s for a colorful abyssite!" or something along those lines.
It does feel like with every new NM system they release, SE has been trying to avoid RDM solos. Over the course of the past several updates, it's been fairly apparent. All the NMs are immune to gravity/bind; most are immune/resistant to paralyze; and all of them run at incredible movement speed to avoid kiting strategies. Yet despite all that, players have developed strategies around them. Mostly involving a cheap "pinning" strategy, but still.
Anwyay, started with the Krabkatoa path. Capricornus is a pretty easy solo for RDMs out there looking to get their hands on a Karka Ring. Just slow2 and nuke. It 2hours every 20%, when it does you just want to run away and never stop running. Stopping to cast utsu is pointless since it'll just recoil dive those shadows away; whereas if you keep running you'll just get the out of range message.
I heard Yacumama is soloable using a pinning strategy, but I haven't gotten a chance to do it yet. It's an easy duo though. Just have some PDT gear, and bounce hate during HF.
When we first started doing Krabkatoa, we were doing the usual PLD tanks and BLMs for DD. Wasn't that easy of a fight. Mega Scissors on the tanks was annoying, since then it would run to the BLMs and proceed to kill them.
Saw a strat on BG about using RDM/NINs and bouncing hate, so we figured we'd try that! It was a lot easier. If you can get slow on, it's really a joke to tank.
Did the blob path next. Only did Lamprey Lord for the T2, since it actually has a useful drop!
As for the blob itself, it wasn't that bad of a fight. Just need BLMs to ga3 the adds when they pop.
No agi ring dropped!
Lord Ruthven path next!
Erebus is another NM that is soloable by RDM. Basically, you abuse the fact that it can kill itself to your advantage. The first thing you'll want to do is make sure your filters are setup properly so that you can see differentiate if it's casting on you, or itself. The way I set it up was to make sure "Special actions started by foes" was ON, and "Special actions started on you" was OFF. This way when it starts casting something, if it appears in the chat log, that means it is casting on YOU. If you see it casting something, yet nothing appears in chat log, that means it's trying to heal itself. I don't know if this is the best way to set it up, but it worked for me.
Erebus switches its element depending on the last spell cast on it. So if your last spell was water, it'll start casting water spells on you. The best element I found to keep it in is fire. In fire element mode, it only casts fire IV and firaga3. In other modes, you have to deal with stunga, slowga, paralyga, etc... Something to note is that only damaging elemental spells will change its element; so don't worry about slow, bio, and poison changing it. Also note that when you switch its element while casting something, you won't have to worry about changing it back to fire.
Basically you want to just dot/kite it, and when you see it trying to heal itself, cast a stone1 to make it hurt itself instead. I've found the best spot to do is around any of the towers in Beauc. As for Xarc, I haven't really found as good as a spot yet, so I just end up running around the entire zone.
Keep slow2, bio, and poison on. It has terrible pathing, so it's easy to keep distance even though it runs really fast. Even with a decent (not the best, but above average) magic defense kit, his ga3 spells will do 200-300 through a 380damage stoneskin. My recommendation is to just run. It casts a spell every 30seconds or so, so you generally only need a maximum of 3 shadows to survive its melee attacks. If you keep running, you should be able to run out of range of both ga3 and fire4. Once I'm safely out of range, I'll cast a fresh utsu, and then keep running.
The main difficulty of this fight is when it uses Blood Weapon. It does it at 74%, 49%, and 24%, and then after the 24% one, it'll start using it exactly every 2 minutes. During blood weapon, it gains increased attack speed. You're going to want to hope that it blood weapons after it's cast a spell, so that you'll have plenty of distance and make it easy on you. It only lasts 30 seconds, so you could avoid the entire thing if you have enough distance from it. Alternatively, you could again use a pinning strategy and make it even easier.
One final thing to worry about it is losing hate and it depopping. I highly recommend against getting out of 50' from it. I'd stay around 40' max, and even then let it catch up. Despite the ridiculous movement speed it posses, it can depop somewhat easily. I've even had it depop at 1%, which is very annoying; since it immediately returns to 100% HP.
Only takes about 20-25 minutes to solo, even without you nuking it yourself. Once you get more comfortable with the fight, you can speed it up even further.
Though I will say I hate Erebus defeats Erebus. No exp is lame.
Feuerunke is pretty easy if you use the cheap pinning strategy. I'm really not a fan though, gets kind of boring moving left and then right every 5 seconds!
Moving on to Lord Ruthven itself. First fight we did was with 7 people + mules and it wasn't too bad. Really the frustrating part is it's constant drain attacks. Nosferatu's Kiss is extremely annoying especially if it hits avatars.
As long as you don't face it, it's most dangerous TP moves can't hurt you, so it's not a bad fight. For our next couple of fights we had melee build TP on the surrounding mobs and SATA WS. Worked much better, and faster fight. Just make sure people don't stay in range to get drained!
Ever since our initial attempts, I've just been spamming it to try and get a HQ medallion/STR ring. So far out of about 15~ fights, only 2 rings have dropped(one of them went to me, yay!). The silver to make the medallion is a fairly common drop (50%~), but I can't seem to get an HQ. I think out of the 6 or 7 synths Stamos/Sedna have done, 2 of them HQed, but neither were for me.
Used our first Yilbegan pop in a shout-ish group. I knew we weren't going to win, so it was mainly a learning experience. His ga3 spells are so weak, it's basically like casting diaga to wipe shadows, so it could flail you.
Damage wasn't too bad, with only 1 RNG and in only like 8 minutes, we got it to 90% or something.
Next time I tried it was helping dryroot with theirs, and it went really well.
Really don't remember it doing anything crazy in this fight. I was outside alliance for half of it, but it went down really fast. It did meteor once I think.
Using all that we learned, we decided to give it a go ourselves. We went with RDM/NIN tanks, and I was one of them(woo?!).
First fight was in West Saru and despite the maybe not so best tanking, it was going well. RNG took hate a few times, but overall wasn't that bad. At like 80% we lost hate to a RNG, and needed to reposition. As we were, Side (cotank) ate a mean flail and died. It turned to go after someone else and depopped a second later. Someone was very slightly (maybe like.. 24' instead of 22..) out of range as we were trying to reposition.
Was pretty disappointing, and I really wish SE would fix it. Why doesn't it draw in like EVERY other mob? What's the point in it just depopping..?
Oh well, we ran to Xarcabard right after for our next fight. Arc joined as PLD, so we used PLD+ RDM instead of dual RDMs for this fight.
Was a much better fight I think, until 72%. Suddenly it gained its bio aura thing, and then just went crazy. Took 3 meteors within a 5 minute period; its regen went drastically up, recovered 72%->89% within 6 minutes (though we did stop DDing during this period); started using Slowga and Paralyga (never saw these spells before aura on any of the fights I did). Oh and Dark Star is always fun. In the chaos we lost hate for a second, and it did chaos blast, yay for HP/MP/TP down.
It's survivable but I think we were just caught way off guard at how difficult it became suddenly.
Started the Magian Trial. SE actually released a ton of good weapons and there's a lot of weapons I want, but I'm not sure if I have the patience to do them all. The cure potency staff looks really nice; COR has a new highest damage weapon for Quick Draw and crazy OAT gun; PUP has some pet: MAB hands; new BLU/RDM joytoy, SMN: Pet MAB staff, staves that actually beat HQ staves for potency, and the OAT Great Axe.
I figured I would start with the Great Axe and one of the staves. I doubt I'm going to take BLU to 99, and don't really care too much about it. I haven't really solo'd anything on COR in a while, PUP mab is nice, but don't really use it that often either.
The quests for the actual upgrades aren't the most exciting/creative ever. My gaxe started with low level NM hunts, which is kind of stupid. I guess this is the best way SE can reuse existing content!
Then I had to do 400 birds and 300 clusters... so much fun!
I really prefer vnm collecting than killing EP to DC mobs over and over. I was losing my mind killing them.
Last part of the quest needed vamp nails, which of course I had enough of!
And super great axe done!
The kill XYZ family during certain weather/day is absolutely stupid though, and I'm talking about the staves trials. First trial: kill 100 treants under any weather. It wasn't too horrible in Grauberg, but still... occasionally there we 20-30minute periods without any weather. Frustrating.
That was nothing compared to the next trial: kill 100 slimes under dark/ice/water/earth weather. There's absolutely no good camps for this at all. Best we found was Pashow Marshlands [s]. Two slimes with 5 minute repops. Water weather occured like every 20-30minutes, for a duration of 5 minutes... It was like kill 3 slimes> afk. It's even worse since you can't really afk, since you have no idea when exactly the weather will occur. So ridiculous.
I think they should change it so you don't have to repeat the same quests over and over. A lot of the weapons start off with the same base trials, before branching out to more specific trials. I think if you've completed the base trials once, you shouldn't need to redo it again for another version of that weapon
Despite not the so stellar quest design, everyone is being really nice/helpful to each other with these. Allowing people to AFK in party to kill counts; finding common mobs to team up on (I did my 300 clusters with several Kikoku NINs who needed the kill shots on arcana mobs) so it could be worse!
Regular news time!
Had a two hilarious back to back wipes in Einherjar. Breaze called slimes, and she was right!
I don't think a single DD was /NIN, and they completely destroyed us. It was just death after death after death!
I think /SAM is a better choice for T1 and T3 runs, but for T2, I don't see a reason to not /NIN. In my experience we've never needed the extra DD output from a non-/NIN to win in a T2. Dead DDs do no damage. Some people will say to have BLMs spam stuns, but fluid toss will still go through, nobody is perfect, and the runs end up going downhill kind of fast once a few people start dying.
After the two wipes, and some canceled runs, we finally made it to Odin like a month later! I think he got tired of me killing him in the Odin Prime BC, so he decided to reward me with a ebody!
Yay! Now nobody will be able to contest with me that I am the best WAR on Leviathan! Plus super cute!
Omega is just so annoying now. Another double head drop. It's not even worth the headache of making sure buyers are on and able to come so stuff doesn't hit the floor (and all that effort doesn't matter since head ALWAYS drops). I think we've kind of just put a stop to limbus for now.
Started repeating add-on fights again, particularly ACP7, final MKE, and final ASA.
Tossed!
First fight led to this:
Finally something nice! I think the best part was the reactions, rather than the mantle itself!
Such terrible language directed to such a nice person as myself! Proof #457389 how everyone is just jealous!
Some of the items we got:
I'd say post update, these fights are well worth your time to repeat. Far better than stupid FoV augments. Key item collection isn't that bad too; most of them are on the way to the BC or a 10minute detour at the worst.
Remora brought over Spatha, some guy that seems to almost strictly sit in whitegate and operate a casino. He must be successful with it because he shouted and offered gil to people that would win his silly quiz games. Of course I took the opportunity to show everyone how much I win, and won a quick 100k!
Was kind of confused by this! Not sure what I/Sedna did to give off the impression he was a mule!
That's all for now!
