Thread: Best assaults by area (all ranks) for pure AP whores?    

My group of 5 recently finished and got SM, now we're going back to each zone to get the 20k points for everyones P and Y gear and stuff. As fun as some assaults are (sheep! Blitz!) we're trying to capitalize on the AP for our 7 tags each week and reduce the total number of assaults.

Has anyone done the math to say in each zone which ones are the best AP profit per tag? (also factoring out the annoying random shitty ones that can be lost if the NPC's are annoying as hell).

This is what I've come up with (points on wiki not that helpful on most):

Lejoam:
Shanarha Grass - kill the rabits. Easy as hell I remember but not sure on points. Counting Sheep maybe better?

Mamool Ja:
Double Agent: Normally quick, rarely annoying

Lebros:
Excavation Duty

Periqua:
Saving Private Ryaff

Illrusi:
Lamia dispel-a-thon
Golden savage


If anyone has suggestions/ideas I'd be glad to hear them. We can pretty much do any job combo's needed with our team. I think the only thing we don't have is a PLD in the mix.

I posted this to my LS forums ... I left out Apkallu Breeding which would be a good one, but these are the ones I like ...

Here are some Assaults that are easy to farm and take very little time. I have arranged them by rank, and highlighted the ones I actually like to farm in bold. Note: Leader gives 10% additional points, completing a mission for the first time gives a 50% bonus, and there is a 10% reduction in points for every member that you bring above 3 members.

As you can see, at any rank there is at least 1 Assault that people can do regardless of jobs and get 4400+ points from 4 tags in less than an hour (in most cases, around 30 minutes).

Private Second Class
Assault: Golden Salvage
Zone: Ilrusi Atoll
Points: 1100
Minimum Participants: 3 (exploitable by 1 person with any job)
Time Required: about 5 minutes
Task: Find the real chest. Opening the real chest will win the Assault; opening the fake one will create a mimic.

Go up to the box and check it while getting the "You must move closer" message, if the cursor moves it is the real chest, if the cursor stays it's a fake chest.

This still works as of yesterday.

Private First Class
Assault: Lamia No. 13
Zone: Ilrusi Atoll
Points: 1200
Minimum Participants: 3 (at least 2 need to have dispel in main job or sub job ... BRD sub was reliable for me)
Time Required: around 20 minutes
Task: Lamia No.13 wanders around with 3 fomor-type minions. If you cast Dispel on them, it will dispel their "charm" and they'll turn in to NPC-types and attack the Lamia. She will occasionally use the charm ability as a TP move, and it is AoE on whichever group (you, or the fomors) has hate, so you must re-dispel them as this happens and make sure that your other pt members are out of range if it is going to be a pt member getting charmed. You basically just keep the NPCs alive until they kill the Lamia. Doing anything to the Lamia directly will get you hate and it will be very difficult to shed it without getting charmed, but curing the NPCs will not get you hate.

Lance Corporal
Assault: Breaking Morale
Zone: Mamool Ja Training Grounds
Points: 1333 (for all the chests)
Minimum Participants: 3 (any jobs)
Time Required: about 10 minutes
Task: There are 8 chests on the map. You must open the chests and return the items to the NPC without getting caught. Trainers catch you and send you back to start, while Recruits just aggro (you can shed aggro by getting caught by a trainer). You can get a costume which does 22 damage/tic while it is on by using the Viscous Liquid on the map. Being in costume will prevent aggro. Reward is variable based on how much treasure you get. Chest locations are on the Wiki link.

Corporal
Assault: Counting Sheep
Zone: Leujaoam Sanctum
Points: 1166 (for 5 sheep)
Minimum Participants: 3
Time Required: about 10 minutes
Task: I don't remember much about this one, but I'm told it is quick and easy for Leujaoam points. Best bet is just to read the Wiki link.

Assault: Siegemaster Assasination
Zone: Lebros Cavern
Points: 1100
Minimum Participants: 3 (tank, DD, and healer work best)
Time Required: about 10 minutes
Task: There are 8 trolls. One of them is the guy in disguise, but you won't know which it is until you kill it and it tells you that you won the Assault. The trolls will repop, but the guy you want will never be a repopped troll, so keep track and only kill the oriignal ones.

Assault: The Double Agent
Zone: Mamool Ja Training Grounds
Points: 1200 if you capture the right Qiqirn the first time
Minimum Participants: 3 (being able to solo easy Puks is a bonus, but just being able to stay alive until someone else can help works too)
Time Required: 5-10 minutes
Task: You must question the Qiqirn. Some of the answers will be worthless, but others will tell you what direction the spy is in. Sometimes it is something like "close", "really close", or "really really close", while others will give you a direction, and others will give you an exact distance (in the same units the windower distance thingy uses). The spy will also lie, so if you have 1 Qiqirn that gives a direction that is completely different from everyone else, it might be a spy. Capture the right Qiqirn, and you win. More info at the Wiki link.

Assault: Building Bridges
Zone: Periqia
Points: 1200
Minimum Participants: 3 (any jobs, completely naked is fine)
Time Required: 5-10 minutes
Task: You must touch a Bridge Switch in the North, South, East, and West corners of the map. Also note that the Rune of Release is in the very center of the map. There are NPC Lamia wandering around. If one sees you, it sends you back to start. You just have to dodge the NPC Lamias on the way to the switches and the Rune.

Sergeant Major
Assault: Defuse the Threat
Zone: Periqia
Points: 1600 (if you don't allow any bombs to blow up)
Minimum Participants: 3 (2 people could do it easily with the 3rd AFKing ... any job that can solo or sleep really easy Qiqirn is helpful)
Time Required: 5-10 minutes
Task: Going to be lazy and copy and paste because there really isn't much of a trick:

This is a rather simple assault. You are set in a very large map and given a mine detector at the start. Mines are invisible until you step on top of them. When you approach a mine it says "The mine detector signals there may be something nearby." and shortly thereafter you will get a message indicating a bomb has been activated. You then have approximately 10-20 seconds before the bomb explodes.
The detector tells you how close you are by "Kachinks"
Nearby: "Kachink......"
Close: "Kachink..."
Extremely Close: "Kachink!"
When you see "Kachink!" walk around just a step or 2 to get the bomb to pop. You will also hear a clicking sound which indicates you're in the right position. Touch the bomb before it explodes to defuse it.

Our group has been spamming Defuse the Threat trying to get a member the sniper collar, even if you let a couple bombs blow up you're still getting 1200. We usually defuse all but two or three though. A run for us usually takes like 10 minutes.

BST/RDM rapes the crap out of Lamia 13. CC can't be charmed, and hits suprisingly hard. Did it as BST/RDMx2 and RDM/BLM and I was sitting around picking my nose 90% of the time >.>

Originally Posted by wunjo_on_ramuh

Ilrusi Atoll:Lamia 13

This can be done very easily with the following setup: SMN (w/ Fenrir) and 2 Dispellers. (On a side note, PLD/RDM did just fine here.)

At Start, the Dispellers cast Dispel to get the mobs' attention so that the SMN can use Assault /ja without getting initial aggro from the Fomors. SMN assaults the Lamia in such a way so that the Fomors and the two dispellers are behind her while Fenrir and the SMN are in front. If done correctly, the dispelled Fomors should never be re-charmed. (Fenrir can never be charmed.)

The SMN will have to release/re-summon Fenrir for a few cycles to keep this positioning. Try to kite around the island in the northeast.

If done with a soloing-experienced SMN, your dispellers should only ever have to dispel each fomor once.

Note to the SMN:
(1) you may need to release/re-summon even before Fenrir's HP is gone due to the weird geography
(2) Don't use any BPs, since only Fenrir attacked the Lamia directly, no one else should have any hate
(3) Make sure that your dispellers don't do any other hate action besides Dispelling the Fomors. In other words, no /heal whatsoever.
(4) If you bring others - like those that need the assault or LS mates that want a few more points - please please please be absolutely sure that they stay away from everything. I had a meleer one time and he started hitting the Lamia. I had to use a BP to get hate off him. And that meant that I had hate from Lamia.
(5) BYOB. The dispellers cannot give you refresh/ballad while you are kiting. You should not run out of MP, however, you should bring your own Yagudo Drinks or hi-ethers if you don't have any -perp besides the dark staff.

I always did this with NIN RDM BRD, and the NIN rarely got charmed when we kept the fomors dispelled.

As far as the SMN tactic, while Fenrir can't be charmed, the fomors can, and the Charm ability is AoE. Also, the fomors will follow and attack Lamia 13, and will likely be tanking rather than Fenrir.

Same for the BST tactic, CC can't be charmed, but the three fomor will.

How do you two avoid those issues, with a pet strategy?

I've done Lamia 13 with 3 dispellers about 20 times (rdm/blm x2, and a blm/rdm). We just dispel the charm of the npc's and cure and then get bored around 20% and just nuke the crap out of her. Almost impossible to loose that way. It does take a while and is an incredibly boring way to earn your P body.

Burning bridges my group had bad luck with the 1st time and didn't take advantage of our 2 nins/nighttime. I would not want to do that in day without some movement speed help for some members beyond just subbing flee. Since we generally get together and burn thru 3 or 4 tags at once we'd switch it up with something else for day runs.

Siegemaster we only did the once for rank up, and I remember getting my ass beaten quite a bit as the bard whilst praying my lullaby recast was ready.

Originally Posted by Khamsin

As far as the SMN tactic, while Fenrir can't be charmed, the fomors can, and the Charm ability is AoE. Also, the fomors will follow and attack Lamia 13, and will likely be tanking rather than Fenrir.

Same for the BST tactic, CC can't be charmed, but the three fomor will.

How do you two avoid those issues, with a pet strategy?

I remember reading somewhere, and our runs seemed to back this up, that 13 only charms either the NPCs, or the party members (and pets), but not both. When we went, every time 13 did her charm move, it never affected the NPCs. One run we had a SMN come as well and when Lamia did the charm move, he got charmed (lolMelee) and the NPCs didn't.

I only tried Building Bridges twice, and both times we got stopped before getting anywhere near the switches by like 2-3 Lamia directly at the entrance to the 2nd map. I feel like I'm not "horrible" at MGS; I can certainly get through Promyvions, get to Khimaira, etc. Maybe I'll go back and try it again, but I ended up spamming Ryaaf for points (and don't need any more for Periqia specifically). Obviously I don't have any problems getting around the Fomor on the same damn map, so I don't know.

I agree. SPR is a complete cinch compared to Building Bridges. /SAM anything takes care of the chigaoes in each room and once you know the name of the NPC in the north (or the fomor lol), you will know by one of 5 set patterns where the rest of the NPCs are. With 3 people, we win constantly in less than 15 mins. Building Bridge's random nature hurts it in that no matter how good you are, if a party member pulls a Lamia down the wrong path, you could get screwed. Plus, the time limit of 15 minutes makes every little mistake count more.

Defuse the Threat is by far my favorite Periqia Assault, but besides that, I prefer Building Bridges to anything else in that zone by far. The Lamia follow predictable patterns, it's easy to hide, and with a little bit of practice it's easy to win reliably. With a little luck I soloed this once (1 person was dual-boxed and idle at the start and the other DC'd), and I haven't lost a single time farming this with 2 people (over the course of probably 30? runs). It's easy, you can take any jobs, you can go completely naked, and if you you don't suck you should have little trouble winning every single time (especially with 3 or more people).

Originally Posted by wunjo_on_ramuh

Originally Posted by Khamsin

As far as the SMN tactic, while Fenrir can't be charmed, the fomors can, and the Charm ability is AoE. Also, the fomors will follow and attack Lamia 13, and will likely be tanking rather than Fenrir.

No, they won't be tanking so long as Fenrir is. Ever done the Khimaira 13 Mission BC? Karababa has like -1000 enmity. I soloed this on my SMN and even with Karababa nuking away, Fenrir was able to keep hate even though his melee attacks weren't that good and he was getting hit for over 100 per swing. Same goes for the NPCs in this assault. All Fenrir needs to do is hit Lamia once, after that, it simply doesn't matter what those NPCs do, they can't take hate away.

That's odd, because when I used to do this as NIN RDM BRD, if our tank got charmed, I would sleep our NIN and kite for a little bit, with Lamia 13 chasing me. However, on occasion, after a bit of kiting I did notice the NPCs manage to get Lamia 13's attention, and she stopped chasing me and started attacking the NPCs instead. Since I had been curing and supporting our NIN, I should have more hate than Fenrir would each time he's freshly summoned.

And its not the kind of situation where I shed aggro, because I saw Lamia 13 reach that borderline stage where she looks at you, then the fomor hits her and she looks at the fomor, then she looks at you again, then back to the fomor before finally deciding she'd rather attack the fomors.