Xarcabard Farming techniques question

[Celebrindor]

I have heard a great deal about varying techniques for full linkshell farming of Dynamis-Xarcabard, and wanted to get some testimony from those who have opted for a "mass kill" approach over NM platform killing and just going for time extensions.

My LS recently got a DL win before Christmas, and we have 2 farming runs planned for January. These won't be the small group farming runs as many do, but rather a 30-40 member farming run. After previous runs that have netted respectable drops (ranging from 2-4 drops with no TH3 in the shell) while building towards a FTW run, I'm looking forward to an efficient, max benefit dedicated farming run.

[Mifaco]

I don't know if it's just me, but the demons seem to resist sleep like fuck after all fifteen NMs are gone.

This past Xarcabard run, my LS avoided fighting the clusterfuck of demons from the Wall of Eyes(tm); the time saved from that was great for farming. THF sac pulled the demons while six vokers grabbed the eyes; once all six eyes are dead the time extension statue pops.

With 30-40 members, you'd be best to split up the alliances and have them farm different pops. I've always found it retarded how every Dynamis runs involves 64 people beating on one mob.

[Garret]

From a strictly farming standpoint I think the path my LS does is pretty good for a group your size.

I'll assume you are comfortable with whatever approach you take to kill all the NM's & get all the TE's and will assume you probably end up at the Eye Wall TE before 'farming' time really begins.

After getting that TE I have my LS go back through the center where we camped for most of the NM's & head back NE until we are just north of the bone spine running east/west across that part of Xarcabard.

From here we typically head to the east & do the pulls along the edge here. After clearing this area up until the Drg/Bst/Smn set of mobs we then head back west & basically cut south around what is effectively the large basin near the entrance to Glacier. You can farm around the edges of this quite easily, the pull in the dead center of this area, as well as the pull closest to Glacier are relatively large & not really a good idea to do. Other than that you can easily farm all the way around this basin with pretty manageable sized pulls. If you have some extra time you can head up towards Animated Dagger and pull the Rng/Blm pulls on the way to it, and also work your way up to pull the mobs in the tunnels near Animated Shield as well.

All the pulls along this path are pretty reasonable, 3-6 demons each for the most part, although if your puller really messes up you can get some 10+ pulls.


Edit: Mifaco, I actually find it to be more efficient concentrating firepower, even with large numbers, the difficulty really becomes more a question of how fast can your puller bring in the mobs. While mobs may die very quickly I find it helps by cutting down significantly on the amount of WS mobs get off, since they only have a chance to do a few TP moves usually, as opposed to a longer fight which can be more of a strain on mages. To each their own obviously but I've had pretty good success with concentrating DD's.

[Nystul]

Typical farming run for my LS:

Enter, kill first batch of mobs right in front of you. TBH if you have the melees go after the eye mobs first and put your blms/rdms on sleep duty things go pretty easy on that pull. The eyes are typically your biggest problem because they kill mages fast (they don't crawl slow like normal stat mobs), use magic shield, and cast really annoying spells. Anyway, after that pull we take a right out of the tunnel and stop right at the wall. From here you can see some eyes in front of you. THey aren't too bad of a pull (some bst mobs) so we farm those.

There is an extend in that low area, we used to sac pull and kill the statue but there were problems with pathing etc. We discovered that a well geared ranger can just one shot barrage it and get absolutely no aggro. So we just send someone down, pop it, get the extend and then continue on. From the wall, we turn around, pass the entrance tunnel, and hug the wall until you get to another set of mobs (mostly pld/rdm/whm). After these, continue hugging the wall and you come to an uphill bit (sam/rng/nin mobs etc). We clear these out, then head to the platform that is all eye mobs.

After that platform, we head down the hill, pull the mobs on the hill, then head up the hill and pull the next bit that triggers an extend from the top (they don't link if you pull from the top. After the extend it's up to the first NM tower (RDM etc). We farm a few pulls of normal mobs after the NMs, then continue to monk/bst/whm tower, then to blm/nin/drk tower. After those three we pull the mobs in the tunnels by the blm/nin/drk tower.

We do the rest of the NM towers, then head to what I think most people call the "death hill." 6 eyes, lots of mobs, pops a time extend trigger.

I've developed an effective pull technique for this using anyone with shadows and movement speed pulling and anyone that can aoe a non-dot spell. The mage should range test, and prep a fast casting AOE (stonega I, banishga, etc). The puller will basically run down the face of the eyes, top to bottom and die at the bottom. This is to pop all the mobs and train the bottom half away. When the 4th eye aggros the puller, the mage casts on the SECOND eye, pulling half the mobs to the camp (top of the hill). 3 eyes and 10 or so mobs are pretty easy to handle.

You can then pull the 2nd half at your liesure, it's easy to have a blm or rdm ES+sleepgaII and then you just have to start out on eyes and the occasional resisty pld. After this we farm the tunnel at the bottom of the hill, and then move up to pulls that were between NM towers etc until time expires.

[Sidanoir]

The Wall of Eyes pull I try to avoid in farming runs...I split the eyes/demons for the extension...but those guys whenever we have killed them never drop af...and all the whms and stuff resist sleep a lot..pain in the ass pull.
I agree that with the NM death the mobs seem harder/more resistant..I think all dynamis work that way by and large but its not as noticeable in the cities...
City its like the mobs go from even match --> VT
Xarc its like the mobs go from IT -->IT++

[Dammerung]

here's a far easier method to split up the eye walll:

have 2 pullers (preferablly thf.. since demons run fast) target the top and bottom eye. both shoot their mark at the same time, bottom runs back to group, top sac pull down the ramp heading to castle zvhal

2 pulls of 3 eyes+assorted mobs isn't really terrible, just kill the pld before they get too sleep resistant and kill your mages

[Celebrindor]

thanks for the replies, I'll be sure to pass on the info to my shell for discussion.

Yeah, we're pretty seasoned on the extensions up through the wall of death, which we're still working on a really solid way to effectively NOT sac-pull it...however the sac-pull works just fine, and on our "for the win" runs we always sac it just for the extra prep time at the DL.

note: you do not need to kill all 6 eyes at the wall of death to pop the time extension. From our experiences it will pop with as few as one eye, however that one "magic" eye varies. We usually sac-pull it and have 3 vokers grab 3 eyes, and hope for the best. Last time we didn't get it, but after beating the DL we popped it after killing just one of the remaining 3 eyes.

Basically right now we Metal Gear FF to a safe area from the center (in the basin by a ridge of snow) to which our puller brings the TE that is nestled with the BST mobs. Then its off to the RNG,SAM mobs time extension, then the BLM and THF time extension (3 eyes waiting at the bottom of the hill just east of the first platform NMs...I know they include duke berith but that's all I can remember offhand). Then clear the NMs, grab that extension, then the wall-o-death extension.

After getting the win mid-december the 30ish of us who remained after the win (had a large group of members who had a sky event they were late for, and had to leave after the win) farmed some of the paths to the animated weapons with success...well...success in terms of kill but not drops. We didn't bring any THFs or /THFs for our first two attempts to kill the DL (got win on second try), so those two runs only netted one piece each run (DRK and RDM, respectively). The upcoming 2 runs in January are strictly farming runs, meaning our THFs will come on that job instead of others (2 have WHM, one has BLM, one has RNG) and assorted melee will come /THF to ensure at least TH1 in every party.

By the way, the main reason I posted this was because while I have not recorded it, I believe we've seen about a 2:1 ratio of drops on normal mobs versus drops on NMs in xarcabard.....I know we of course kill at least 3 times as many normal mobs even with sac pulls to save time, but still, we want the best odds for drops in our favor. My guess is we'll do more serious farming of the normal mobs, picking off NMs to get the extension, then skip the wall of death completely and farm the pockets of mobs we haven't hit yet.

[Sidanoir]

NMs will overall have a higher drop rate...

Even if you go 1 for 15..

You may get 2 AF out of 100 normal mobs...so ya

Not to mention normal mobs die faster...

Some pulls in Xarc are pretty unmanageble though with groups less than 30..even with higher than 30 they are no joke...

Honestly AF seems to drop in same spots for us....same AF types too..then again we usually kill the same stuff everytime cause again a lot of the pulls are too ridiculous to handle!

[Demitrius]

The easy pulls my LS usually does are as follows:

3 eyes one at a time near 1st NM set, with the extension, everyone does this. 3 mobs each.

1 pull left and 1 pull right just south of the NIN/BLM/DRK NM set. 2 eyes 6 mobs per pull.

Eye wall leading up to dragon area is easy if you split it up using the dual-pull approach described above. One thing though, have a slight delay (like 1 second) between pulling the 1st eye and the 4th eye. Otherwise they'll pop all funny and most will follow the sac puller. 12 mobs 6 eyes total.

Next pull going clockwise past the eye wall, 2 eyes 6 mobs.

One after that, 3 eyes 6 mobs. BE CAREFUL here, they're not close enough to hit all of them with a sleepga as they pop. I usually send two red mages to sleep the left and right sides separately.

4 eyes 4 mobs each in the field southeast of the first NM set. If you pull the one closest to the NM set first and then pull the other three going counterclockwise, none of them link.

12 mob eye wall in middle, has to be sac pulled. Eyes move too much to reliably pull without linking.

Dunno if I'm missing anything, but that'll get you at least 60-70 farming mobs on top of the NMs. And yes, kill the NMs, because 10% a shot is way better than trash mobs. An hour for a good shot at 1-3 AF is well worth it.

[Celebrindor]

thanks for the pull tips!

While many pulls were MUCH larger than we had experienced on our for the win runs, and at times we simply weren't prepared (more wipes-2- than we had seen in MANY dynamis runs), it was a helluva lot of fun.

Drops were quite stingy, just one relic armor......but I got my Duelist's Chapeau!

again, thanks for the tips. I'm sure we'll be implementing more and more of them over time.

[Alpsyche]

We tend to farm the back of the NIN tower. There's some MNKs and BRDs back there to make it interesting but it's becoming known as AF2 alley. We always get 1-2 drops back there when we pull everything out.

The tips on the front end of the farming is very helpful. We often run out of things to farm as we usually sac the first extension - pop the eyes for the second extension and then clean up. We've found a few solo kills we can all do around the front side of the RDM tower but after that it's all been quad sets leading into relic weapon areas.

[Dexster]

Sorry for being a late to the converstation.

When my LS farms Xarc we generally do the typical time mobs kill the Nms from each tower and then we head back over to the Nin tower like Alpsyche said. Pull the 2 eyes on each side (total of 3 mobs each eye).
Then clear the back of that hall. Then we go to the wall of mobs. I've done it a few different ways but with most success I will have 4 blms (1 every other eye) Sleep then just have blms dedicated to sleep. As it's been said by others just kill those Plds asap. Get the 30 minute time mob and keep heading North East clear the mobs from that group and loop back around to the other group and continue killing until you get back to the BST tower. At that point we will generally head over to the Dynamis Lord if we still have the time but with all that moving you are pretty short on time usually and can just call it a night. (hope you get better drops than we do lol.)

1 THF after 50 runs...

[Masterofshade]

Between my Dynamis LS (only runs once a week) and my HNM (once a week also) we're on our like... 7th? 8th? THF hands. Aside from that, most of our drop rate is garbage, in over 2 years of dynamis, 1 RDM hat... Anyways.

Behind the NIN tower is great, we tend to get 1 AF everytime we go back there. Last timne was THF hands, before that, WHM hands, etc.

What we do for Death Wall (with about 20 people, actuallly) is to kill all the eyes first (1 sac), then, we kill them like this:

Original pops look like: eye eye eye eye eye eye

After original sac, each eye pops 4 mobs or so, and pulling 1 links them all indefinitely.

Each eye pop looks like:

MobA MobB
MobC MobD

We pull the 2 on the right (B and D) for each pop. This also needs to be SACed. After those have been pulled and killed, each 2 mobs after that (A and C) come to the ally clean if pulled from the top of the hill.

This is when we go with my HNM (15-20 people). If we're doing my DynamisLS, we just cluster fuck everything. Really the only way the wall of death can be handled without sacing is going in with 60+ well geared/merited/skilled people. It's a cake-walk then.

Behind NIN tower, since we go there with only a few people, is multi-saced. We don't have time for ANY mistakes with only 20ish people, and while sacing is kinda amateur, it's also incredibly safe. And I don't mind hucking away xp, i get to lot all the scrolls and really only lose like 5k.

[Skjie]

We've actually found that there is a way to pull the eye wall safely, but you need either really good sleepers, or a large group. We have a THF Perfect Dodge and run along the south wall past the mobs. When they pop, they'll run back towards the THF and not fully aggro everything. Then the THF runs back along the wall towards the group and we kill the mobs that come with him. Usually end up with 3 eyes + mobs.

After, we get our BLMs to stand south of the eyes and time nuke the southmost eye. The mobs pop with no aggro on them, and if you then pull both of them straight south they won't aggro the other eyes. We then work north and finish off the wall.

It's not the fastest way, and you waste a 2hr, but you don't need to sac anyone, and if you do it right, it's clean.

[Dexster]

We have had around 5 Rdm Hats drop .

Mainly we get Bst and Drg.... Lots of Nin...

[Eggroll]

We have had around 5 Rdm Hats drop .

Mainly we get Bst and Drg.... Lots of Nin...

Same here, gotten a ton of rdm hats lately and starting to get mnk a lot too. I'd suck major dick though for those tekko, haven't seen them drop in 6 months of dynamis or so ; ; Last 2 DL kills only gave 100 pieces too -.-

For farming the 15 NMs first, we usually have black mages nuke from behind now and then do 2 demons and then 1 demon + eyes on the next pull.

[Celebrindor]

Its completely amazing to me how every shell, regardless of TH level, just seems to have those "sweet spot" drops in each zone, and other shells can be completely opposite.

My shell has now had 5 RDM hats, 2 NIN, 2 DRK, and several 1 each's in 12 xarca runs. But no THF, no PLD, no SMN.

Conversely, we're severely hurting on RDM legs in Jeuno, but WAR hands? Lord we mannequin 'em now after about 18 Jeuno runs.

We're a once a week shell, with the occassional midweek farming run due to half the shell being NA, half EU...really messes up our chances midweek to do runs b/c if we do EU primetime, NAs at work....NA primetime, EU's asleep! But we've been lucky without any TH3 in the shell at all, and keep getting more and more solid.

Again, thanks for the tips, I certainly hope to implement more every xarca run we do. By the way, anyone noticing that stationary pull targets in xarca now roam, causing more links? We've been analyzing what happened our last xarca run, and think this may be the issue, the same way that bastok statues that used to be stationary now roam.

[Kaouri]

For farming the 15 NMs first, we usually have black mages nuke from behind now and then do 2 demons and then 1 demon + eyes on the next pull.

Sorry for the necro bump and noobish questions, but how exactly does that work?

What does nuking from behind do for the alliance and how are you fighting 2 NM then 1 eye 1 NM? Are you sack pulling and just doing 2:2 then 1:1?

[Izzy]

The way we pull the eye wall is:

(E = Eye)

Puller|----E---E---E---E---E---E---E---|SacDude

Have the Puller and SacDude pull at the exact same time, the puller will get the first 3 eyes and demons, the SacDude will get the last 3. Works every time haha.

*EDIT* Woah, didn't know I was answering a 7 month old question Q_Q.

[Dexster]

That post made 0% sense to me...

Sorry about the retardism...

So we pull it a few different ways.

The first tower (Rdm,Brd,War) we will get everyone infront of the tower. Have the blms aga the eyes then fight the 3 NMs.

Second tower (BST,Mnk,Whm) I will have a thf sac pull, I will bring the mnk alone to the alliance
after the mnk is dead we will aga nuke the tower and then kill the survivers.

Third tower (Smn,Thf,Pld) We will sack pull, I will bring back the Smn then once he is dead we will aga nuke the survivers and continue on.

Fourth Tower (Nin,Blm,Drk) Sack pull , grab Nin, then aga / kill the rest.

Fifth Tower (Drg,Sam,Rng) Aga nuke (no sack pull needed)

Depending on how many people we have (generally anything below 28 I will have all NMs sack pulled and just fight one at a time to lower risk of wipe.) If you have a large turnout i would recommend just aga nuking ALL towers, it ends up saving like 30 minutes which is great for farming time in Xaracbard (if anything ever wipes in the zone :\)