12.02.08
Posted in Final Fantasy XI, Guides at 12:35 am by Pisces6
I’ve been in dire need of zeni for FFXI’s ZNM system, however, I’ve been having trouble just going out and getting soul plates of the appropriate monster since I only have a 75 white mage and I would like to take pictures of the monsters in Aht Urghan rather than going off to the conquest areas in Vana’diel. :|
So instead of snapping pictures, I’ve been earning a stockpile of jettons with my Pankration pet, Savage Sanguinaire, a wyvern. My wyvern was around level 19 when I started, but now he’s level 35. >.>;
I’m not an expert on Pankration, but here are a few hints on how to “control” your pet:
1. Try to give orders to your pet for every match he enters. How can your pet listen to you if you don’t give him any commands to follow?
2. Once your pet starts to listen to your commands, get a feel for what type of actions your pet performs when given a certain command. Your pet may not perform the action you are expecting so you must get familiar with the moves or spells your pet likes to use during a fight. I strongly suspect that the TP moves and spells performed by your pet depend on your pet’s job, subjob, and temperament.
3. Try not to spam your pet too many commands at once. Why? It seems that your commands cannot really be canceled. Your pet must perform an action relating to your command before it can move onto your next command. So, if you give too many commands to your pet at once, you run the risk of not being able to tell your pet what to do right away if he is about to die.
That being said, I have spammed commands to my pet before if it appeared he was not doing anything helpful in the fight or if the fight is not going well. You may also want to spam commands if your pet has not learned to obey you yet. Since he won’t listen to your commands, it doesn’t really matter how many commands you give him anyway.
Oh, and if you happen to have a pet with a mage job, better make sure he has the appropriate magic scrolls so he can cast the magic of his job. What would a black mage be if he didn’t have black magic spells? (Note: Most magic scrolls can be obtained from taking pictures of colibri. They usually cost 17 Feral Points.)
Anyway, I love my wyvern. The irony? I wasn’t the one who took a picture of him. Antorel, a friend I met in FFXI, had snapped him during a Beseiged when Pankration was first added and gave it to me. I haven’t seen Antorel for a while, (he’s working on getting his book published) but I’m really glad he gave me my wyvern. XD I have much love for it. <3 Hm, maybe I should level dragoon at this rate. ;)
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04.02.08
Posted in Final Fantasy XI, Guides at 10:59 pm by Pisces6
Note: This particular entry was posted on my LiveJournal on June 3, 2007. I am simply reposting it here for my own record keeping.
Battlefield clear time: 4 minutes, 19 seconds!
So last night, after many runs, many deaths, and many Nightmares, we finally beat Diabolos Prime for the first time. We had 3 monk/warriors (2 75 monks, 1 71 monk with Asuran Fists), 1 red mage/dark knight (for Chainspell + Stun, Stun, Stun!), 1 black mage/white mage, and 1 white mage/black mage (me). Here’s a guide on how to beat him:
Recommended Supply List
- 3-5 Yagudo drinks for each mage (I only used one per fight, but you’ll want to bring more than one to make sure that you can do more than one run in case you fail.)
- A stack of sleeping potions for each melee. Have at least one Opo-opo necklace.
- 3-4 poison potions for each party member.
- 2-3 persikos au lait per melee.
- Appropriate food for your job.
Before Going to Pso’Xja
Get the key item, vial of dream incense, from Kerutoto in the Rhinostery (lower half of the Windurst Waters map, J-8). This is like the elemental tuning forks you retrieve for the elemental avatars like Shiva, Garuda, etc.
Within the Shrouded Maw
Protective magic (aka buffs) do not wear upon entering a fight with Diabolos Prime. TP does not reset either. So have your healer cast Protect and Shell before entering. Melees should consider bringing an Opo-opo necklace and sleeping potions so they can sleep themselves to 100% TP. (Our 3 monks slept themselves to 100% TP at least.) I brought 12 + 7 sleeping potions myself since I had them on mule anyway.
Eat decent food that’s applicable to your job. (The red mage and black mage ate melon pies. I ate a snoll gelato. I don’t remember what the monks ate… Most likely sole sushi so they don’t miss.)
All party members should have reraise of some kind (either the spell or an item that gives reraise effect) as a safety measure. Rest to full before entering.
The Fight
One thing you need to keep in mind is that Diabolos Prime has killer spells/moves that he does not have with his level capped fight. For example, he only has Sleep in the capped fight, but for the Prime Avatar fight, he has Sleepga II. I remember one fight where, he really killed us by using Sleepga II (we didn’t have poison pots at the time) and then followed that up with Nightmare. He proceeded to do that at least 2-3 more times during that fight.
So basically this fight is like a Maat monk fight or a Snoll Tzar fight. You basically need to kill Diabolos fast before he can land a Nightmare. Stunners help, but Stun has a huge recast timer, and even with Chainspell + Stun, a Nightmare can still sneak through. (One time Diabolos got us because our red mage had just Chainspelled right when Diabolos decided to Nightmare us.) Poison potions will help if he casts Sleepga II, but they won’t wake you up if you are Nightmare-ed.
Oh, here’s some information about Nightmare (courtesy of Kayanna of Bahamut):
- Nightmare takes about 4.5 seconds to happen starting from the moment when you see “Diabolos readies Nightmare.” message.
- The last 2 seconds of casting cannot be Stunned or interrupted.
- So, you basically have the first 2.5 seconds to Stun Diabolos to prevent a Nightmare from going off. Make that 2 seconds to be safe.
- He can spam Nightmare many times. Many, many, many times. He can, god forbid, start the fight with a Nightmare.
Our strategy once inside the battlefield:
1. Monks stack their Boosts up to 10 boosts. Have someone do a countdown for you (preferably one of the monks).
2. Mages cast buffs like Stoneskin, Blink, Haste, and Barsleep / Barsleepra. Everyone should be heading towards Diabolos, but far away enough so that he doesn’t aggro you and draw you into his battlefield.
3. Use your drinks (au laits for the melees, yagudo drinks for the mages). White mages, don’t bother casting Regen spells during this fight; it just takes too long. You’re better off with high leveled cures. Also use a poison potion when the Boost count is almost done.
4. Monks use Chi Blast to start the fight. Engage, and use Asuran Fists on him. Use a Icarus Wing and then Asuran Fist him before popping your two-hour, Hundred Fists.
The red mage Chainspells and watches out for Nightmare. I don’t remember exactly if the black mage Manafonts at the start as well (probably doesn’t since he has full MP). Healer should be using high level cures to make sure everyone stays alive.
Everyone stays together on one tile. Yeah, this makes the mages vulnerable to AoE attacks, but we found that we were spending too much time keeping Diabolos in one place during the fight when the melees and the mages separated themselves into two groups on the battlefield.
Notes:
- Diabolos Sleepga-ed us, but we had poison potions, so it never affected us.
- He never got around to using Nightmare on us.
- He tried using his two-hour (Ruinous Omen) near the end of the fight, but our red mage stunned him, so he couldn’t use it.
- If you do it right, you’ll beat Diabolos before he even gets around to having the tiles fall down.
The black mage only had time for one spell before Diabolos was dead. I only cast 2 Cure IVs and 1 Cure V before he was dead. By the way, remember you can cancel your Stoneskin if Diabolos does cast Sleepga so the poison will wake you up.
Once you beat this badass, go to back to Kerutoto in Windurst Waters to make him your slave (or you could chose one of the other rewards given for beating him).
Welcome to the playground. Phantasmagoria!
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03.18.08
Posted in Final Fantasy XI, Guides at 9:39 pm by Pisces6
Did a lot last night, oddily enough. o_O I came home a bit late (uh, like 48 minutes late because of work, ehehe), so I had to hurry to get dinner ready so Aslann and I wouldn’t starve while we did the weekly escort quest.
Yesterday’s escort was the Windurstian escort, so that meant we had to help the npc (non-playable character) get through Garliage Citadel. This escort is usually the one that no one does because it requires at least 4 people to get through the first banishing gate. I don’t know why it’s called a banishing gate. There are 4 “platforms” that need to be weighted down before the gate opens. Each platform only needs one character to weight it down, however they are placed in separate areas. So only a group of 4 people can “weight down” all 4 platforms at once to open the gate.
Sounds easy? Well, maybe initially… Until you add aggressive monsters that will attack your character if:
1. They see you.
2. They hear you.
3. Your character is low-leveled enough. (Example: level 32) Luckily if you’re already level 75, you won’t be attacked by these monsters because they’ll check as too weak to be worthwhile.
4. You happen to cast magic around a monster that will attack you for uh… Casting magic. (Aka bombs, magic pots, and dolls.)
Not to mention that there are holes in the ground in which you can fall down and areas that are completely blocked off by said holes! Hey, Garliage Citadel was a war zone about 20-50 Vana’diel years in the past! They haven’t had time (or money) to repair it, I bet. Amazing those gates still work reliably. @_@
Ahem. Anyway, cooking dinner cut into the beginning of escort, so Aslann had my character /follow his character around while I cooked. I used my white mage melee macro set to cast spells since those, for the most part, don’t involve me changing my gear while casting spells. So, I could cast spells when Aslann was standing still and still follow him. Didn’t know you could do that, but it makes perfect sense! :D
Next, we prepared to go fight the NM (notorious monster) gnat (Bloodlapper) which has a chance of dropping vicious mufflers for black mage, dark knight, and scholar. You need to farm some gnat pellets ahead of time from Yagudo Nokizaru (a ninja-type), Yagudo Yojimbo (a samurai-type), and Yagudo Superior (a summoner-type) before you can trade the pellets to the appropriate ??? target in Meriphataud Mountains [S]. Our tank found out the hard way that even regular gnats check very tough to 75s and and just plain suck in general:
The fight itself against the Bloodlapper isn’t really that hard, though you need to watch out for the gnat’s Drain spell (can drain a massive amount of hit points) and for the gnat’s “2-hour” ability, Blood Weapon. Our tank almost died on the first run because of that stupid thing. XD The gnat also casts Virus on random people and has a move that gives AoE (area of effect) Burn and Choke. I’m not sure if I just happen to get burned and choked or if that same move just randomly choses two of the black mage enfeeble spells. I think that AoE move is blinkable though, since I see it taking shadows. o_O
Most of it takes preparation and waiting for the ??? target to re-appear about 15 minutes after the fight. We had 5 pop items on us from yesterday’s farming session (which was more like a lazy style merit party with 7 people, heh). Unfortunately, the gloves are not a guaranteed drop; you may not get them each time you kill the Bloodlapper. Luckily, we asked Aslann to bring his thief for his TH3 (Treasure Hunter 3). :D
We had 9 people join us: a paladin subbing warrior (Finduilas), 2 monks subbing ninja (Kayanna, Shinlong), a thief subbing ninja (Aslann), a warrior subbing ninja (Fogoazul), 2 black mages (Flemming and Talin), a summoner subbing white mage (Shuzer), and me (a white mage subbing summoner). All jobs were around 74 to 75. I think we had more than enough people to kill the gnat, but it is fun to hang out with linkshell members. :)
Another party came to the same spot right after we killed the our first Bloodlapper. They also needed the gloves. o_O; Well, after that party watched us kill the second Bloodlapper with relative ease, (relative ease being accidentally having another gnat attack us in the middle of the fight, argh) they asked if they can join us. They had a smaller party than us (about 5 people?) and most of them left once they joined up. Only 2 people, both black mages, stayed. (I guess they were the ones who really needed the gloves.) The fights became even shorter since 2 skillchains (fragmentation and darkness) + 4 black mages = one dead Bloodlapper pretty damn fast. Lol.
The good news is that everyone who wanted the gloves got them. Yes, even the two that joined us. I think we had a total of 7 pop items between us and the 2 people that joined us. We got a total of 4 gloves out of the 7 pop items, so that was pretty nice. Congratulations to Flemming, Talin, Huruku, and Pompeii for getting your zenith mitts replacements! :D
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