Xarc Farming Routes with 20~

[Callisto]

Someone asked in RTQ but I really would like to see some input on this and figured this would be a better spot for it:

Basic question, we have 18-20 people and aiming for AF2 drops over anything else. Are the NMs a waste of time despite missing out on the last 2 TEs if we skip them? And if so, what are the recommended farming routes for plowing through normal mobs?

[Haunted]

I did an xarc with about 21 people the other day, what we did is took the normal farming root towards the NMs (55, 57~59), then picked NMs that people wanted drops from (rdm brd thf(dropped yay) pld blm drg) then started killing normal mobs for the rest of the time, as we would have spent more than 30 mins clearing the rest of the NMs (then probably died a lot on the eye wall for the last TE >.>). as for which we killed, we killed a bunch of ones back near the first NM set(E~SE of it), most of the pulls were manageable, although didnt really get many other mobs done after the boss, we did statues 53, 54, 56, 23~25, i think 20~22 would be manageable, and maybe 97~105 but im not sure how big some of those pops are. anyway, hope that helps a bit, good luck! (we got war off normal mob before NMs, thf off nm, and no other drops)

edit: all statue numbers are taken from the map on wiki

[MillionDollarMan]

It's best to farm the all the nms and just get the one 30 minute time ext that pops. There's so many mobs you can farm with 20 people..

[Asharah]

20 people is fine for xarc we go in with 18 most the time and even clear the Eye wall.

You just need someone willing/Capable to Sac the wall over and over and gradually clear it out. Grab a number of mobs youre confident with, sometimes it goes wrong but theres usually plenty of time to deal with it.

Im at work so no visuals but the above works for my LS pretty well.

[Callisto]

That's how we typically do it, then move to mobs NE of the eye wall, but I've been wandering if we'd get more kills in overall by just skipping that TE and going straight to other pulls instead of pulling the eye wall in stages.

[SeleneGaruda]

I'd really appreciate it if someone could point me to a guide which lists the Xarcabard farming pulls from easiest to hardest. Any descriptive insight from a puller’s point of view on some tricky pulls would be extremely helpful.

Yes, I've seen/read DynamisBums, but there’s hardly any depth.

My LS is quite experienced with Xarcabard, we normally have a little over 20 people spiking rarely to over 30 people. We're very good at clearing the NMs and have gotten comfortable with many of the easier pulls. The easiest pulls for us are actually the ones where we can nuke down the eyes with a timed volley of -ga IIIs and pop the mobs with no agro. (You can actually do this with the wall btw.)

We tend to have much more trouble with the pulls with 3 or more eyes and a lot of mobs.

If you’re familiar with the numbered pulls on the wiki map, we kill the following eyes/spawns.
010 (Sac’ed, TE only)
043 (Timed nuke, initial 2 eyes and TE only)
057, 058, 059, 060(TE)
NM Towers: 127 through 141
142 (HP statue), 143 (TE)
Wall: 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150 (TE) (1 Sac pull required to split the wall)
097, 098
099, 100, 101
089, 090
091, 092 (Low manpower runs usually end here)
102, 103, 104, 105 (Sac pulls required)
053, 054, 055, 056 (Sac pulls required, any good strategy for this?)
We’ve never gotten further than this.

[Wizerd]

I'd really appreciate it if someone could point me to a guide which lists the Xarcabard farming pulls from easiest to hardest. Any descriptive insight from a puller’s point of view on some tricky pulls would be extremely helpful.

I can do that.

053, 054, 055, 056 (Sac pulls required, any good strategy for this?)

These are very standard pulls, you can handle them with 15-16 easy enough. When you enter, you typically pass 001-005, 006-010, 023-025, all on their north side. Instead of just killing the eye extension and avouding 053-056, pull them from that side. 054 > 055 > 053 > 056. You get no links, and it's 4-6 mobs per pull with just 1 eye. I believe it's 5 > 4 > 5 > 6. Each eye spawns 5 mobs but 2 of them don't aggro after pop and that makes the uneven 4/6 for the second and fourth pulls.

From easiest to hardest, I'd have to rate them like this:

Easy Pulls
014
057
058
059
015-016 (pull from west to avoid linking 014. Alternatively, pull 014-015 from east to avoid 016)
018 (if proper pulling technique is used, you won't link. *1)
019
017
074 (From south)
055
053
054
056
115-116
110-111
113-114
099-101 (If time nuked to kill the eyes)

111-112 (Difficulty untested)
123-124 (Difficulty untested)
125-126 (Difficulty untested)

Medium Difficulty Pulls
044-047 (They're all RNGs and BLMs and eyes, very easy to kite)
029-031 (*2)
032-034 (*2)
075-076
089-090
091-092
097-098
020-022
023-025 (Ew thieves)
035-043 (The eyes, if all pulled together)
102-103 (Assuming a split pull from opposite corners, getting half each time)
104-105 (Assuming a split pull from opposite corners, getting half each time)
144-146 (Assuming a split pull from north/south, getting half each time)
147-149 (Assuming a split pull from north/south, getting half each time)
066-067

079-082 (Difficulty untested, kinda. Pulled once, seems pullable in 3 stages. If successful, 2 medium pulls and 1 easy pull.)
086-088 (Difficulty untested)

Notably Difficult Pulls
068-073 (If pulled in at least 2 stages. If lucky/skilled, pullable in 3 stages)
083-085
001-005
026-028
011-013
106-109
093-096
006-010
048-052

061-065 (Difficulty untested)
117-120 (Difficulty untested)


*1) The middle of these 3 eyes spawns mobs in a fashion that will not link the other two. Required is a RDM puller from the west side, and a normal puller from the east. The RDM gets in range of the eye and gets ready to cast on it. From the east, the normal puller pulls as they would, and goes straight out west perpendicular to the other eyes. As soon as the eye goes red, the RDM binds it and moves in closer to it. Gravity the eye and then unbind it, guiding it slowly outwards and then around to the group. The problem with not doing this is the eye will always make an unnecessary curve north and then back south just after it starts moving, if pulled normally from the east.

*2) It is possible to not link any of these 6 eyes in this line, but it's relatively difficult. Typically 2-3 eyes will come in one pull, which is why I split it into 2 and rated the difficulty as such.


Of course, this is just off the top of my head looking at the map right now. All pull difficulties assume you don't do something weird or pull from odd angles. The harder pulls can all be handled with relative ease if you have more than 30ish people. Once you get a certain amount of crowd controllers, no amount of monsters, even demons, will topple you.

When I go with my LS, we typically clear all of "South-East", all of "South-Central" except 048-052, all of "South-West" except 093-096, all of "West-Edge", all of "North-West", 057-060 from "North-Central", and we start digging into the bottom end of "North-East" as time is running out. Our record had us clearing most of "North-East".

[SeleneGaruda]

Awesome, thanks Wizerd

[fishstix]

My shell is pretty new and I doubt our ability to take down the NMs in a clean fashion without several deaths. Would it be best to concentrate on farming normal mobs? Anyone know if the droprate is increased just on the normal mobs or all?

[Drex]

Hard to say for sure without parsing drops, but our luck has not improved on NM droprates at all. If you're going for AF, it seems to be better to go for regular mobs. Then again, you get a 30 minutes extension for killing the NMs, so it depends on how much time it will take you to kill them all.

[fishstix]

We did our run, focusing mainly on the normal mobs, and killed a few NMs before moving onto other normal pulls. Got a total of 9 AFs with only a sam dropping off of the sam NM. Yeah, I tried weighing the time spend killing NMs vs the 30 min TE, but unless I sac pull or people stop sucking, it might take us way too long.

[Callisto]

We did our run, focusing mainly on the normal mobs, and killed a few NMs before moving onto other normal pulls. Got a total of 9 AFs with only a sam dropping off of the sam NM. Yeah, I tried weighing the time spend killing NMs vs the 30 min TE, but unless I sac pull or people stop sucking, it might take us way too long.

What farming route did you take?

[fishstix]

Hmm... no specific route >.> I fail for not having planning things out fully, just had a general idea of "easy" pulls. I should've done what wizerd said to do, 54>55>53>56, since it worked for me well in an 8man run, but everyone had already moved to the first NM tower while blms were nuking down the 2nd TE at the eye tower. So after the 43 TE, we pulled 57-59, got ninja tekko off one of those mobs. Pulled 55, got drg armet off one of those, then proceeded to pull 54, but 53 and 56 linked since some dumbass tried to walk inbetween the eyes to get to camp, instead of hugging the wall. It must've linked the first NM tower too, because they were already popped after that mess was done. Chose to sac the rdm NM, since we wasted so much time with that last pull.

Bad call on my part, wasted time running, but sent us all to 97/98 and kill that cluster. Then, sac pulled the eye of walls several times to clear it fully, targeting middle eyes first, then 4 middle mobs to split the wall in 2, then pulled each half. Between the wall and 97/98, pld, mnk, and blu dropped. I had planned to do 99-101, but someone got lost and aggro popped them. We then backtracked and worked our way backwards through the tower NMs. Probably should've just done them as normal, since all the running wasted time. Sam NM, dropped sam head, then we moved to the next tower, smn, pld, thf.

Blms screwed up the next tower, so I decided we suck too much to try any other NMs after the smn/thf/pld, and went and farmed 89-92 where another blu and nin dropped. After that, we went north and I sac pulled mobs from 104-105 until we timed out. We had other drops, but I forget when and where >.>

[mdkuser]

We did plenty of 20 people xarcabard, and with 'casual' players, far from pimp etc ( most gimped lol). Just need to know what you'r doing. 2 RDM/BLM for sleeps, 1-2 BLMs, 2 PLD 2 WHM 1 BRD 1TH4 and few DDs.

1- RDM CS nuke first time stone.

2-farm eyes near tele vahzl. 7 eyes total. ( N and S)

3- sac pull the eye extension ( kill only eyes that matter)

4- sac pull all NMs one at a time ( dont need 15 sacc cause nin BLm etc are easy to kite).

5-kill extesnion that pops after NMs.

6- clear Wall of eyes by doing 2-3 sac pulls ( get 4-5 demons at a time and 3 eyes)

7 farm remaining time.

If no mistakes were done you'll have 1 h left after the last extension.

[Avarice]

I may have overlooked it, but is it possible to time nuke 378 (Eye) so that other eyes pop without aggro along with TE Statue, then effectively time nuke the statue so that we don't have to bother with any of the other eyes?

[fishstix]

I may have overlooked it, but is it possible to time nuke 378 (Eye) so that other eyes pop without aggro along with TE Statue, then effectively time nuke the statue so that we don't have to bother with any of the other eyes?

yes, you can either nuke the first 2, one by one, or aga. if you do one by one, make sure you know which eye is the 2nd one needed to pop the TE

[Drex]

We've always done it with a sac pull, designate two people as eye pullers, one for each eye. Saccer runs in, aggroes the two, runs away, eye pullers grab their eyes and bring them to camp. Kill, then BLMs timed nuke the TE from behind the tower.

[fishstix]

Yeah, this way would be better/faster, get TH on the eyes for possible 100. I'll actually do this next time, thanks ^^

/edit ohwait I remember now that I did try this >.> eye puller didnt understand the "wait until the popped mobs start moving" and wiped us. Probably my fault for not making it more fool proof.

[Zidiane]

For that eye, we just have 1 person pop both eyes and aga w/ 5 blms usualy works lol.

Xaca is one of those zones, if you run w/ a small group, make sure you atleast have 5 blms, or 6. They are more helpful then more meatheads.

[Eder]

What you do for the first eye tower TE is you AM2 nuke eye 35* > rest > 39* > rest > timer pop > AM2 TE again gg.

Trigger to the TE is really 35 & 39, but not the eyes that popped after u aggro them.
I am sure with 3 blm with ES up if u not confidence, once i went in with 2 decked out blm went AM2 and was able to finish each of time eye with a rdm tier3 nuke. no melee involved, so even if it fail takes very little time to recover - while the alliance can head to rdm tower and pull that slope/TE over there.

side notes: yea make sure your blm nuke which eye to AM2 >,> AM2 the wrong eye is no thx, and u know the result.

I wouldn't recommend any pulls from 106 - 124 for the size of your group.
reason is because anything more than 3 eyes would be too hard to handle, plus pld & /rng/ should be definitely avoid if possible for lowman.