Soloing salvage

[ubermonkey]

Search was inconclusive, and it got mentioned in a newby-standard forum thread...

What salvage NMs are soloable, assuming you DC trick enter, and how does one go about soloing them?

I've seen strategies to 2box duo Hammerblow, is there anything else that's possible?

[Uzor]

Hammerblow
Qiqirn Treasure Hunter
Qiqirn Astrologer
Deviant Bhoot
Psycheflayer
Archaic Chariot(?)

[rog]

and LBC (and probably any other chariot too, provided you could get to it solo)

[Mojo]

Can definitely do chariot solo, also add 2F rampart to that list.

[Thorny]

Many many more are soloable, strategies vary widely. The 3 that come to mind right off as not soloable are 5f and 6f poroggo as well as citadel, simply because of pop requirements. All 3 of those are duo/trioable though. Rampart NMs can be soloed, but if having 5 mobs up stops NM pops(it's been discussed recently, not sure if something conclusive was reached) then it's very inefficient.

[Marzuki]

I'm curious about how to solo Chariot, I've never even heard of that. What jobs could do it and generally how would you go about doing it?

[rog]

LBC solo was by kaeko:

http://kanican.livejournal.com/32637.html

[Vyerz]

Kaeko does everything under ideal situations and have quite a bit of gear to help him.

I'd actually like to get some help in devising a 2-3 Man strat. for LBC without using movement speed (or at least only one person with it~ Sch + Blm for fake-gaiters), that has a more reasonable success rate.

*Lights the Kaeko Beacon*

[rog]

Kaeko does everything under ideal situations and have quite a bit of gear to help him.

I'd actually like to get some help in devising a 2-3 Man strat. for LBC without using movement speed (or at least only one person with it~ Sch + Blm for fake-gaiters), that has a more reasonable success rate.

*Lights the Kaeko Beacon*

LBC is impossible without +movespeed.

i would imagine 2 of either blm, sch, or rdm (maybe rdm/sch for extra ele skill? idk how resistant they are) could duo it reasonably well. both would need +movespeed gear of course. strat would be similar to how kaeko did it, just have each person takes turns nuking/doting, and resting. would probably want to avoid both people having hate at once, because even one more person makes it significantly harder to deaggro it.

[Vyerz]

Well, Desert boots + sandstorm = Movement speed
(I'm just trying to figure out how possible this is for a couple of people not so awesomely geared)

[mdkuser]

kaeko did solo LBC but after many tries and failure, under ideal drop rates etc; 2 or 3 man seems feasible 100%. Pchan soloed 50% on rdm in 30 minutes I think, with just poison. Need nukes and rdm's nuke suck on it it sems.

[Aurara]

kaeko did solo LBC but after many tries and failure, under ideal drop rates etc; 2 or 3 man seems feasible 100%. Pchan soloed 50% on rdm in 30 minutes I think, with just poison. Need nukes and rdm's nuke suck on it it sems.

pretty much what mdk said. not to mention you have to go in on a certain day and pray you get good cells from the start chest. Not to mention, kaeko had less than 5 minutes with his gear, so for somebody without that kind of gear, its going to be much more difficult to do it.

[pendragoon]

Could someone give me some info on soloing the Psycheflayer (or point me in the right direction)? I've tried with RDM and BLU so far...

Couldnt get poison to stick on BLU, so gave that up right away. Other posts stated they were successful with the poison, I might try it again....

On RDM, got bio III (full merits/full dark gear), got him to 70% after about 20 min, which is too slow IMO, then he started to melee me, giving little or no time for resting or nuking.

I've pulled the flayer before, lost aggro very easily... (I had assumed this was a normal, and he would deaggro many times over the course of the fight, but when I went to solo, I only lost him twice in 40 minutes. It unclaimed once on pull and once the very second my bind got resisted.

I can easily solo (with THmule) the first 4 QQ, and chariot with 25-30 min left over, done it consistently without losing any for 30+ runs... but this flayer rapes me

[Aragon of Odin]

I assume some people are talking about the Archaic Chariot in Arrapago for solo, so I'm intrested in hearing the strat. I went in to help a freind last weekend do the QQ's and they wanted to do the AC as well but I wasn't sure of how to. Any info would be great.

[drwaffles]

I tried soloing Psycheflayer once for the hell of it, and I'm fairly sure you need decent initial cell drops and a buttload of Poison Potions to manage it. He starts moving in to melee much earlier on than I expected (around 82%) and Sleepga -> -ga III or AM is pretty much guaranteed to end your fight, especially if you don't have HP. Dispelga move also sucks balls.

[Kaeko]

Regarding Soloing Archaic Chariot 5F (Arrapago):

You can easily solo this. I'm quite confident I could do 3F QQTH, 4F QQTH, 5F Chariot solo on SCH/RDM. There are 2 known ways to solo this, both involving mage kites. It was first done on RDM/NIN by clearing much of the first part of 5F and just sort of 'dueling' it with utsusemi, a few nukes, and largely DoT. I heard it took the person ~40ish minutes though. Should be less imo since it only has 15,000 HP.

The way I was able to do it is pretty much fundamentally how you'd solo LBC (soloing 5F chariot is actually how I got the idea to do LBC). You get it to the porter room where 6F porter is with movement speed (drops off local single gears on 5F). Then you kite it around the porter until the chariot deaggros. Then you get a 'free spell' on it. If it has Bio II on, you Parsimony Blizzard IV on SCH. If you don't have bio II on, relayer it. I got bold after awhile and just straight Blizzard IV'd without DoTs later on - but you lose your safety net if you die. You can solo this in about ~12-15 minutes if you do it perfectly.

The most difficult part is getting that chariot into the room considering all the other crap around it. Sac pulling was the best way I knew to do it. I just got the chariot and tried to avoid linking gears. It will probably aggro the Rampart (the nasty one that spawns Orobons) on the way. Get into a corner in the room and bind the Chariot. Then wipe. The door will walk back while the chariot is bound. When the chariot starts to move back, then you get it quickly. I'd bring like a reraiser as insurance on that.

Parsimony Blizzard IV on my SCH with weapon and INT cell + body + head + feet/legs was doing like 700ish on Chariot. I could deaggro it about once every 40ish seconds. So it's very fast as you're doing about 7-8% every 40-50 seconds. Ebullience will speed it up as well if you Tabula Rasa. Note you only cast when the chariot has deaggroed. If it's after you, don't stop running. Gravity and Bind work, but build resist and shortened duration after 2-3 casts.

Regarding Low-Manning LBC with 2-3:

Adding people isn't necessarily better on this for 2 reasons: 1) you need to get the extra person/people some base # of cells; and 2) as someone already pointed out, if you have 2 people with aggro on the chariot, it has to deaggro twice before sitting still for nukes. My solo was heavily based on the idea of maximizing the number of 'free actions' I could get on LBC. Adding a 2nd person does not necessarily increase the # of free actions because you can do 2 actions per deaggro, but it requires 2 instances of LBC losing tracking on a person to get a 'deaggroed state' instead of one.

I had not heard about Pchan's attempt, so I'd love to hear more about that. I personally feel that a RDM would have a horribly hard time soloing it because the nukes just don't do enough. I would have solo'd LBC on SCH/RDM if I could to sort of 'showcase' that job but it just wasn't possible because the elemental skill was so low, I could only get maybe ~60% accuracy tops. RDM/SCH could probably end up with higher skill than SCH/RDM, but Tier IIIs are just really weak. Remember the number of actions you get on LBC is limited by # of deaggros. You really need high damage/action on this.

The best method for doing a possible duo or trio would be to change your entire kiting strategy. Do not use the route I posted on that LBC solo. We used to manaburn LBC long long ago when Salvage first came out and got it as low as 4 people (3 BLM, 1 RDM). We needed a 5th person as a MNK melee DD to get us cells though (because there was no starter box). The kiting route is in that main room where LBC sits. This is the closest description of the kiting path I can really find...

http://kanican.livejournal.com/8169.html

It still required movement speed though. I think every BLM here had gaiters except 1, and he didn't fair too well if I remember.

My ultimate advice on doing a 'low man LBC' is to get a couple of friends and do it with like melee melee RDM BRD as your base 4. If you skip all the 35s you can get like 60+ minutes for the boss and 2 melees can whittle it away. If you get into trouble, you can use the kite/hold technique I used to solo it to get unweakened. It's just so much simpler than a manaburn.

The solo I did was not meant in any way to be a farming thing. It took a lot of tries, each one, requiring a lot of meds. I had to get really lucky on equipment and starter box drops (thought not as lucky as I could have been since no INT cell); in addition to going in on a very specific time to get full Iceday. Even with perfect condition and essentially perfect gear, I was on my toes the whole time. It gets especially bad the last 25% when it gets TP regain. It was meant as more of an epenis thing, not a farming ordeal. Definitely just get a couple of friends and do it the more standard way. melee x2 brd rdm can do this easily if you go straight for the boss.

Regarding Soloing Flayer 4F Arrapago:

Starts very easy since he stays in casting range. At some point around 80% it will move into melee range and the fun begins. It's got exactly 10,000 HP and I believe Poison does NOT work (please correct me if I'm wrong). This means you pretty much have to Bio II/III it to death. I know RDM/NINs have done this before... If you were to completely rely on Bio III - let's say 8 a tick, it would take you about ~60 minutes to do 10,000 damage. You can definitely get to 4F and do this with 60 minutes left - just don't expect to solo a lot of the other stuff in the zone.

As Waffles mentioned, with RDM/NIN, it's really about 2 things - avoiding Sleepga with Poison Pots and avoiding getting cornered then Ga3'd. But if you're playing it ultra safe and just Bio III damage (full merits you only have to cast this 4 times every 10 minutes...), you can focus like 99% of your time on safety. I'd even just sub /DRK so you have stun access since it helps more with avoiding getting cornered.

[pchan]

Normal Flayers are extremely resistant to poison, I bet the NM is not immune to it but it's not reliable.

To add to soloable NMs, 2F ramparts in bhaflau can be "soloed", but since you are alone you will miss a lot of bees, and kill like 20 top, constantly having 5 bees on you. Rdm or pup/rdm with whm puppet can do it (def food,phalanx).

[Tachys]

How frogs in Zhayolm Remnants

I'd really be interested in the 4th floor north frog

Would soloing him be possible?

[Thorny]

Yes, I've done it on RDM/NIN. Starting crate means you need to kill nothing on 1f, port to 2f on NE portal, kill mobs until you get back/waist and ring cell(.dat mods to see which are real droppers are a huge help if at all possible). Port up to 3f, go west and farm hp and mp cells from the mamool, others are a bonus. After you've been in the zone for 25 minutes, head toward portal and go up, maybe a bit later with cuisses but don't push your luck since you get no shot at it if you're late. Pull the madame from the rape link room, run until other frogs deaggro. Repeat until you have madame by itself, DO NOT RUSH THE PULL, you have 70 minutes or more remaining. Once you have only the madame you have 2 ways to go about killing it, both with their benefits and drawbacks.

1. Bind it, invisible, run over to the rampart room, kite there with DoTs. The upside to doing it this way is you'll always have extra mp and it's much more difficult to die. The downside is that it takes a huge amount of time, and if you do screw up and die your run is likely lost because it'll regen to full and you won't get another shot. This is theoretical to me, though I don't see why it wouldn't work.

2. Melee it to death, using bind sparingly when you need a breather or to convert. This method is much faster, I personally used Blau Dolch/Muse Tariqah when I did this to avoid the TP feed a combination involving justice sword and/or joyeuse gives. I did, however, use justice/joy to farm on 3f since I got a ranged cell on 2f. Before that, I used blau/joy. You absolutely need HP cell to do this, -ga 3 will one shot you otherwise unless you had an excellent starting crate for MDB gear. You could use Genbu's Shield instead, though I haven't taken mine out of storage in ages and the extra MND is welcome if you don't have pileus cell. Keep paralyze and slow on and cycle your DoTs, casting next when the previous has a minute remaining. If you have dia or bio 3, it helps a lot because you can go Dia 2 -> Bio 2 -> dia/bio 3. When your last DoT in cycle has less than a minute remaining, stop giving the frog TP until it wears then recast first DoT. The frog's melee is pretty harmless and a good paralyze will interrupt a good portion of the spells. Evisceration has a great chance of interrupting, you may want to use joyeuse(or a single hit sword because TP is annoying) for flat blade though I did it without. The obvious downside to this approach is possible death spell, regen through a badly timed charm, and possible death due to simply not managing your buffs well enough. The upside is that it will take a fraction of the time you have, meaning if you screw up you have time to reraise and try again from scratch.

[drwaffles]

As Waffles mentioned, with RDM/NIN, it's really about 2 things - avoiding Sleepga with Poison Pots and avoiding getting cornered then Ga3'd. But if you're playing it ultra safe and just Bio III damage (full merits you only have to cast this 4 times every 10 minutes...), you can focus like 99% of your time on safety. I'd even just sub /DRK so you have stun access since it helps more with avoiding getting cornered.

This problem of survival is only made worse by the fact that the only kiting path available is essentially linear. Good news is the NM is fairly susceptible to Bind and Gravity (although expect some resists with all the pathos you'll have) and doesn't seem to have any degree of Fast Cast. I think you'd certainly need a little luck in order to pull through, however.