'Bout; Slightly Less Worse Each Time

In Mercenary Camp, you choose your first target then the next one, chosen randomly, aggros around 20% HP. Would advise against using AoE, obviously.

I prefer to start with Mihli so she doesn't aggro and start dropping cures on the current target.

Right, so how do you handle having more than one boss? I would assume if it comes up and smacks you, you die pretty quick.

I know these are dumb questions but there isn't exactly a guide for this stuff.

If you're doing Birds of a Feather, for example, all 3 mobs aggro your pet when you send it after the target. Fluid Spread 1 shot the lesser mobs and Fluid Toss finished the remaining one.

Eye of the Tiger is a good choice for when BCNM50 rolls around again since it only has 1 boss to worry about.

Summoner can get away with aoe, it works on the carby pull principle. Target the one you're fighting, then fire off an aoe, they'll all wake up and brutally slaughter your avatar but then go idle and return to their places again. Things can go wrong with that, it's not a 100% guaranteed win, but it was what got me through the times I won.

If you're going to try to do it that way though, starting with Mihli is not optional. You pull her first, then tease out Benediction before letting loose with the big guns.

Posted in another thread:
So because of Vana'bout, I've been using BST for some of these fights.

You can summon Caring Kiyo before entry. Even level capped she is AMAZING.

Having 25 Haste/MDB/Counter/Guard at Level 30/50/60 caps just feels broken.

Currently just cheesing up in Arms with her. I only had to use 1 milkbone the entire fight.

Dont need any real gear. Just a decent axe. Ikenga scales okay with all of the STR/DEX.

I just go BST/WHM for reraise/dia.

Dawn Mulsum for an emergency.

-Engage-> Sweeping Gouge-> Cast Dia-> Melee while monitoring pet HP.-> Wait for Ready Timers and pop Zealous Snort at 70%. -> Keep meleeing with pet while saving TP. -> Sweeping Gouge-> Calamity for self impaction.-> Resume meleeing, finish off with 1 more sweeping gouge.

Between sweeping gouge/dia. The Kraken should have -35% defense down.

Zealous Snort will give you and your pet 25% Haste/MDB/Guard/Counter for 60 seconds. It can tank melee hits/tp moves like a champ. It takes 3 charges though, I recommend saving it for about 50-70% once the damage starts ramping up as tentacles are lost.

Pop a stewpot for good measure to boost accuracy to cap.

Okay I just tried using your exact strat for Playing Host and my pet got 1-shot even with zealous snort up, so that's not gonna work for ENMs.

https://imgur.com/a/5W95G4q

Maybe dont pick the fight with the NM has a throat stab esque attack in its arsenal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ah this was for BCNM60, for ENM Slime seems best.

Also that NM type's impalement is basically throat stab iirc. Basically it's going to put it's target at about 5% HP remaining.

I obviously did not elaborate enough when I asked previously: Assume that I am fresh off the boat on any job that isn't SMN, because I really don't know ***about any other job enough that omitting information like that isn't going to be detrimental.

EDIT: Went in on Simulant with PUP and had zero problems so I'm gonna say PUP is the clear way to go here for anyone playing along at home.

Just went in and did the same as the above poster and it worked like a treat! I just used the attachments as defined in the Up in Arms BCNM noted above.

"I'm On A Boat" seems unnecessarily hard at Fishing 110. I don't think rod matters. Using Ebisu +1 and just getting Quus and Cone Calamary with Sabiki Rig most of the time. Lugworm is a rare bite but at least I can get Bastore Sardine occasionally.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it's impossible to HQ a crafting recipe unless you're at least at the skill cap for that recipe, right?

Supposing I'm right, what would be the best recipe to use on a mule with zero crafting skill to fulfill the 2x HQ Vana'bout objective?

Would need something with low skill cap (like 2?) so you can realistically get to that cap quickly enough, and ideally a recipe with few ingredients that you can easily procure from NPCs or AH, but I guess that goes for the majority of low level recipes after all.

No, it's absolutely possible to HQ something while below the skill cap for the recipe. Your HQ chance is very low though.

You can get up to ~15 in a craft in probably 10 minutes, FWIW. Using mats only off NPCs.


I finished the quest on a single boat ride with 110 & Ebisu+1, and also on a single boat ride with ~95 & Ebisu NQ. You might just be a bit unlucky?

I don't know the exact quest requirements but if you can HQ on any craft I'd suggest Roast Corn fire crystal + Millioncorn, LVL 2 according to wiki.

The on a boat vanabout sounds like you need to catch small fish? I suppose Seabird's Ring could help with that, just make sure to put it back on AH for like 100x the original price once you're done.

That was my guess as well.
Gonna buy a few stacks and see how long it takes me to get 2x HQs.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:Craft#High-Quality_Synthesis

I don't believe this is true, do you have evidence logged to back it up?

I'm sure this is something that can happen. I've seen it both for items that have an actual HQ and items that just produce more of the NQ. I'll dig around for the SS, but I'm sure other people could confirm.

I don't keep track of my logs but I can 100% guarantee that I've gotten an HQ while skilling up well before hitting the "base" level of an item (11 before it stops giving skillups).

Also: Mahatma Capes existed before the skill cap was increased to 110. This is only one example but tons of items in 75 era were 101+ and still had HQ results which people used.

108 synths (9 stacks)
Like 45-50 mins
Used +3 katana, +2 neck, +1% ring, Coconut Rusk (first ~30 synths were without anything in this list)

Ended up with 3 HQs and gone from skill 0 to skill 8.

Now I have a different problem: Ballista.
Tryin to get this on a mule but what do you people suggest?
Last 4 Ballista Matches I tried to participate in went desert.

Can you do it solo in Abdhaljis-Ghelsba or do I have to resort to, I dunno, yelling or something? Doubt anybody will bother anyway.


edit:
looks like you just gotta keep trying, currently there's 6+ people in Jugner so maybe this will be good!

You could still get +5 (advanced support and 2 pieces of gear) during the earliest days. Maybe we're just disagreeing on what 'below cap' means, but I'm relatively sure that you cannot HQ when your effective skill is below an item's cap. I agree that you can HQ when your *base* skill is below the cap.

If it's roast corn as described, just the katana put you above cap.

Yeah but first 30ish synth were with no gear/food.
I honestly don't remember if I got the first HQ within those 30 crafts though.

Wiki says you can HQ at ~1% rate even below the cap, but wiki could be wrong.
I forgot you could get skillups (altough lower rate) past the item's cap.
Did they change it over the last, I dunno, 10 years, or was it like this even at FFXI launch? I honestly didn't remember it.

It was absolutely not like this, they changed it sometime in the last decade or so and it makes skilling up crafts 1000x easier than it used to be.

I don't personally believe that items or synthesis image support play a role in certain parts of the crafting system, like skillups, break rates, what recipes you can attempt, etc.

You can have +14 skill, if you attempt something 9+ levels above your "base" skill, you'll be absolutely ***.

All this to say: base skill (in the menu) and your modified skill with all modifiers are absolutely used in different ways for the synthesis results.

Cross posting here with This post of mine
Credit to Buukki and Skarwind.

Basically if you have BST you can easily solo the Empty BC required for Vana'bout, and probably the lv30 Cloudy Orb VB Daily one as well.

It's largely pointless, but give this jp post a like.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/61244-%E3%83%B4%E3%82%A1%E3%83%8A%E3%83%BB%E3%83%90%E3%82%A6%E3%83%88%E3%81%AB%E3%81%A4%E3%81%84%E3%81%A6%E8%AA%9E%E3%82%8B%E3%82%B9%E3%83%AC?p=664784#post664784

The subsequent post, by sumitaru, too

Hi. Few things while yuking it up:

Beastmaster. Grab carrots from the grocery store and water crystals. It will make the pet jug for Hare Familiar, and requires literally no skill to make. Spam Foot Kick, or Foot Kick into Whirl Claws if you want to be fancy. Each synth gives 4, more than enough for what you need.
For the Lv60 arenas pet jugs are less abundant since the good ones (Sabersirvante) actually require skill. Instead use Ranger, Barrage/Sharpshot and RA. Any ilvl bow or gun will do and just use Sidewinder/Slug Shot to quickly take targets out. The old tried and true from Ballista.

Speaking of which...


Don't bother with OMs because the matches are 53 minutes long. Find a Diorama slot and reserve it. Set the ingame match to 10 minutes, do some actions and then wait for time out. You'll get the reward.

By the way I'm hosting a 2 hour block literally 55 minutes from this post. Be there or be deprived of plaudits.

This only works if you've actually done Ballista at some point in the past.

Disregard, you can get ballista points from copper vouchers.

Does reserving one solo even work? As in if no one shows up?

I've never done Ballista before this event. I did what Seankp posted earlier in this thread and was done in ~10 minutes.

You do need to to the quest to get the Ballista license if you, like me, had never done Ballista before.


Not sure if there are no other participants, but I did it with 2 characters and it worked fine.