Fomor Codex

[Hirronimus]

Recently I picked it up in Phomunia Aquadacts while doing CoP Mission with LS mates, so I figured I'd give this NM a go.

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/images/items/FCodex.JPG
Drops off Stegatours.

The conditions to popping this NM in Sacrarium requires extreme amount of Fomor hate. Meaning that they will aggro you even if you have sneak on when you try to get to "???". (Note on fomor hate: They won't aggro you at all if you have 0 hate and unsneaked if I'm not mistaken.)

The codex itself is used to pop Fomor NMs at 5 different spawn points. Each spawn point pops a Fomor of different job class. There's a THF(Elvaan), a BRD(Hume), a RNG(Hume), a RDM(Hume) and a BLM/SMN(Taru). I was told that you have to pop it a point corresponding you race, but seeing as 3 out 5 are Humes I don't see how that can be the case.

The item you get from killing the NM, aside from RSE throwing Rare/EX items (which seems to have been removed from somepage's list) is this:

Swift Belt

So my question is to everyone out there who has done this fight. What's the difficulty of the NM? How hard is it to get to pop point with such extreme amount of hate?

[amlaruil]

My suggestion would be go to the pop point with 0 hate, then clear all the fomor in the room. You'd have to do that anyway for the fight, and that should give you all the hate you need.

[Hirronimus]

True, that's probably a good idea.

[Nicholas]

Our LS has done this fight quite a few times. It's not directly Fomor hate...it's slightly different...we just haven't been able to figure out the exact trigger.

You touch the stale drafts and you get different messages. (I'm paraphrasing them from memory)

- "You feel goosebumps"
- "Your heart is racing"
- "You feel the overwhelming urge to flee"

When you get the final message, you can pop the nm. Each of the 5 stale drafts is tied to a specific race...and only a member of that race can trade the codex to actually pop it. We've focused on the ranger hum one, since a lot of us are hum (and yes we tried having a taru and a mithra pop it when they received the message, but nothing happened).

After you kill the nm (one party is enough), the person who popped it, has their hate reset back to goosebumps.

I don't believe it's tied to overall fomor hate, because I've never worked to remove it by killing giants/orcs. I need to sneak, but don't get true sound aggro yet. Other members in our group received varying messages. Each time we've gone to pop it, no matter how much hate we had, we all started at the first two messages. It takes us about an hour to clear the room and the nearby hallway 3-4 times, before one of us is able to pop it.

Another interesting note...different races were gaining different amounts of hate. For instance, our token taru gained hate the quickest. We think that the hate is race based, tied into which type of fomor you kill, but have no data to back it up.

Killing these is quite profitable by the way. Camping an hour we made 2 million in shakuda and balloon drops.

[Hirronimus]

Do you know which library room is what race pop point?

[Rex]

mega-long post incoming!

My belt:
http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/8...iftbelt1vh.jpg

Anyhow, gonna correct a lot of that info you have there. First off, to pop the NMs, you definitely don't need truesound hate from the fomors, our LS has fought these things over a dozen times and no one ever had that much hate.

However, the hate at the pop spot either A) is independent of actual fomor hate, or B) resets your fomor hate to a much lower level once you spawn the NM. I say this because, once you spawn the NM, when you check the spot again your hate has been reset to the lowest level (this is only for the person who traded the codex, not the rest of the party/alliance). This does not make your fomor hate zero (no hate while unsneaked) as we did test this, but I'm not entirely sure if this is based on actual fomor hate or a separate "sacrarium hate", as we've killed countless fomors raising the hate at the stale draft so members can pop the NMs, but have yet to run across truesound aggro.

I'm not sure either way right now, but I'll take a run out there in a little while; I know I have highest hate possible (based on the stale draft), so I'll check with the npc in safehold first, pop the NM and suicide it, see my hate reset (yes, it does reset whether you win or not) and check back with the npc.


At the spot itself (Stale Draft), based on your hate you get one of 3 messages when you check it (forgive me if I paraphrase):

"You get goosebumps." [lowest level hate]
"Your heart is racing." [second level]
"Your common sense tells you to leave as quickly as possible." [third and highest level]

Once you have the highest level hate, you can trade the fomor codex, in the room of your race, to pop the NM. If you attempt to trade it to the wrong room, or if your hate is too low, you'll get the message "Something is lacking."


Now, moving on to the NMs themselves (which are quite fun to fight, if you ask me):

There are indeed 5 different NMs, I'm not sure where you got your info from but there is one for every race, which pops in its corresponding room of same race fomors (I didn't really notice myself on my first trip to sacrarium until I walked into a room and thought "Whoa, I'm surrounded by tarus"... yea I'm a taru myself but it was still an odd feeling )

These NMs all have a mainjob/subjob combo, and from what I can tell, are pretty strict in following the same rules we do (i.e. no cheating like chainspelling high tier blm spells), and only 2-hour with their main job. Our LS has no galkas far enough in CoP to pop that NM, and haven't had any elvaans there yet, but we've done taru, hume, mithra enough times.

Elvaan - THF/??? -- haven't fought this so can't give too much info, from what I read he attacks fast, and probably triple attacks as well, high evasion and P.Dodge; subjob is almost definitely warrior, as that's the only other elvaan fomor job that comes to mind.

Galka - BRD/??? -- again, haven't fought, but probably /PLD, as /BST doesn't seem like it would offer much in terms of abilities (though charm would be fun, if that's a possibility :D ) Seems like he'd be easy prey if you've got some galkas to pop this one.

Hume - RNG/MNK -- this was our fomor of choice for the most part, since at first the only 2 we did were hume and taru, and hume is way easier. He uses one-inch-punch (hence the mnk subjob, even though he does wield a weapon), as well as all normal fomor attacks. Uses a gun (if that matters haha) and, if ninjas haven't noticed yet, but ranged attacks can miss entirely from fomors, unlike every other mob in game which takes shadows 100% of the time, so he's fairly easy to blink tank. He does use Eagle Eye Shot though, which is really the only thing to watch out for. Real easy to blink away, but should take a backup tank just in case, 2 ninjas work really well in case one eats EES (hume ninja with us ate 2 or 3 of these, all one-shotting him for 1k+ damage, I ate it once for 600ish damage and survived. Taru ninja ftw! ) Balanced pt of 6 with 2 tanks should have no problems at all; something like nin nin whm (for dancing chains, though drown doesn't last very long in 50 cap, as opposed to 40 cap, as well as defense down and acc down... not 100% necessary but nice to have) rdm or brd, and 2 other random jobs.

Mithra - RDM/NIN -- this is the one we figured out how the subjob thing works, really, since she cast a few red mage spells, then utsusemi and kurayami ichi. Though we had fought the ranger a few times before this, and taru once, I guess we hadn't paid enough attention (yeah ranger using one-inch-punch was weird, but we thought nothing of it), and this was also the coolest job/subjob combo thus far so I guess it grabbed us. Anyways, from what she cast, she was limited in the subjob spells she could access (only a few ichi spells, no utsu ni or anything like that), and thinking "what if she can 2hr with subjob" worried us, but again it followed our own rules, subjob seems to be limited to 1/2 main job, and only 2hrs with main. Nin tanking the mithra seemed a bit tougher in that she can diaga from time to time, seems to attack a bit faster and maybe better accuracy (though this might just be in my head, as faster attack speed = shadows go bye bye faster, duh ) Once debuffed, she's easy though. 2hr is chainspell, but like I said no cheating by these fomors, only uses rdm and nin spells, though from what we saw she uses at least 2 different tactics for it (maybe it's random, maybe it depends on the party's hp and how the fight is going): from what we saw she either uses offensive or defensive chainspell; either chainspell dia/fireII/etc, or chainspell blink/stoneskin/utsusemi exclusively, which we thought was neat, though it didn't save her in the least :wink: [If you have any choice at all in which one to fight, I would recommend mithra; easiest by far, and pretty much zero chance of death, though haven't tried galka or thief, but thief trip attack scares me as nin tank hehe.]

Taru - SMN/BLM -- Watch the hell out for this guy! I would not recommend trying him unless you either have a full alliance (or at least 12+ people, I would say 3+ being tanks, to push odds in your favor), or have 2 parties and have one of them on standby (far, far away from the fight) to clean up the mess after 2-hour. From the couple times we've tried him (basically last ditch effort in the wee hours of early morning, where all the humes/mithras have popped the NM and had their hate reset, with only tarus left being able to pop -- btw from lowest (reset) hate to max it can take 6-7 people about 1-2 hours to build up enough hate to pop) he seemed to only summon a dark elemental to his side (bard really useful here to lullaby, as it is immune to Sleep), and astral flowed with fenrir each time. Now, unless the elemental is beating up your mages, the fight is incredibly easy for the most part, but once he uses Howling Moon, it floors everyone there. The few times we tried it (7-9 people I believe) astral flow killed at least half of us and left everyone else with ~10-50hp, I don't think I recall seeing anyone with 3 digit hp left after an astral flow. So once that happens, if you're really unlucky he might have tp to do grim halo (nasty aoe ws fomors with 2h weapons use, 200+ dmg, blinkable but you don't have blink after astral flow ) or kill you via drown, or he'll just go around whacking people and killing them in one hit due to their low hp. Reminded me a lot of fun dynamis runs. Take care when trying this one, maybe dark carol would help, but I don't really see 20-30 dark resist making all the difference here. Take lots of people and hope enough tanks survive 2-hour to continue fighting, has fairly low defense and easy enough, if you disregard the horrible, horrible Howling Moon.
**edit: looks like we just got really unlucky with fenrir, he does use other avatars for astral flow, and they don't seem as bad as fenrir was for us, just got really unlucky I guess. If you can get a gimp astral flow from him I wouldn't see any problems coming from this guy.***


As for the drops/drop rate... we went 3/3 on the belt, with a wipe to the taru, on the first night we tried this. Then the next time we killed and got another belt, so we were all "okay, 100% drop, this is cool" then we went 0/4 and suddenly drop rate went to 50%, then wiped to taru. That night was less fun Then we went again and belt dropped off the second NM and went 1/3 or 1/4 that night. Haven't seen a single satchet (throwing item) drop, really doubt they drop them.


Maybe Galka is easy as hell (I mean, how deadly can soul voice be, really?) and Elvaan too, though his "fast attacks" and surely triple attack trait, as well as high natural evasion might make him suck, though neither job's 2-hour is in any way deadly, but I would still recommend hume or especially mithra, if you have any choice in which race you get to pop.


Good luck with these, they're really a lot of fun, and a nice departure from other NMs.

[Rex]

haha got beaten to it while I was typing that long-assed post, but I'll leave my stuff up for the sake of it

[Rex]

Do you know which library room is what race pop point?

there are 6 rooms in sacrarium, one has a mix of all the races (and, of course, no Stale Draft), the other rooms have only one race in them. The race of the room = race of NM, and that race is the only one that can pop it. Pretty easy to figure out once you're there

[Rex]

Another interesting note...different races were gaining different amounts of hate. For instance, our token taru gained hate the quickest. We think that the hate is race based, tied into which type of fomor you kill, but have no data to back it up.

Funny you mention that, it did seem to us as well that some people got to the highest level before some others, though it might come from them killing a few fomors on a previous visit to sacrarium, as we did have several humes that didn't always gain highest level at the same time. I'll check in with the hate guy a lil later, though I, too, suspect it's independant of fomor hate, and may fall under it's own sacrarium hate.

[Hirronimus]

Awesome. Thanks for the info. Got a question tho. If you're familiar with Automaton Assault ENM, is it in anyway similar to that? Like particular race is weaker to certain types of attacks?

[Rex]

nope, they're just like standard fomors, I imagine if galka is /pld he'd have high defense, but it's not like the ENM (not gonna be doing freeze for 2k or ranged attacks for 400dmg here haha, was a nice thought though :D )

[Hirronimus]

Oh well. Gonna give this a try once enough people clear CoP up to Sacrarium. Btw what's the drop rate on Codex itself? We've gotten only 1 out of maybe 4 kills in Aquadacts, than again we were trying to avoid those things when doing the mission and not farm them.

[Rex]

hmmm... now that I think about it, scratch the possibilities for elvaan and galka subjobs til someone who's fought them can corroborate. Hume NM is rng/mnk, even though monk fomors are taru; but taru NM is smn/blm, both taru jobs, and mithra NM is rdm/nin, again both mithra jobs, so I figured subjob would have to be one of the jobs the race can be. Either hume is breaking this rule, or taru and mithra are just coincidence. So leave that as galka brd/??? and elvaan thf/??? until someone comes along to confirm.

[Rex]

I soloed all of my codexes (got 3 or 4 in total, though 4th one I got after my belt, I was just soloing the xp quest and had to get past those stegos )... without treasure hunter soloing sacrarium ones (decent challenge @50) my drop rate I'd say roughly would be maybe 1/10 or so, last one I got off the first stego I cleared to go down that hall, usually before that took 2 or 3 clears to get one to drop (3 stegos pop there). Only went in phomiuna once for others to get it (since there's more pops there it's easier if you need many of these), had thief there and got i think 3 or 4 codexes in about an hour? Maybe hour and a half. Not sure how many we killed but I'm pretty sure drop rate was 1/10 or better.

[Hirronimus]

Coincidentaly I'm an Elvaan. We shall see.

Oh and another thing, do they still drop throwing items? Sompage removed the from drop list for some reason.

[Rex]

I mentioned that up there someplace in that huge chunk of text, we're like *gets out calculator* 5/12 or 13 on the belt, and 0/12 (or 13) on the throwing item. I really doubt it's a drop off of these, unless it's ridiculously rare, which I don't think is feasible, since the item is super weak compared to the belt itself. Crap item having lower drop rate than the nice one? Think it's possible? I don't, but SE isn't always logical in their choices

[Hirronimus]

Yeah I know you did, my question is about Codex drop rate not the belt.

Edit: Do they drop subligars also? lol

[Ankiseth]

We've got 7 belts in the past 2 days among I think 13 pops? The throwing items don't drop, nothing at all drops except the Swift Belt, in general it seems mostly a 50/50 shot, and we had 2 THFs every time if that makes any difference.

Everyone else covered the details pretty good, but I will add:
We did the Elvaan....do NOT fight him if at all possible, he is insane. He attacks so fast, he took down 3 of 4 NINs during the fight against him because he just plain took out all of the shadows since his delay has to be around 90. So yeah, definitely go with the Hume, the Hume is easy as hell. The taru isn't bad, just be sure you've got some people ready to cure when he 2hrs. I think of 3 pops of the taru we only had 1 death during a Fenrir summon, and it was of course a taru.

I got my belt, it works nicely^^

[Ankiseth]

The NMs don't drop subligars, but the rest of them do.

We got soooo many DRG ones ><

[Rex]

I was saying in reference to this -> "Oh and another thing, do they still drop throwing items? Sompage removed the from drop list for some reason." that I answered up there :wink:

Answered the drop rate thing in the post before that. (replies are kinda goin by quick on here )

None of our NMs dropped subligar, pretty sure they don't, but we haven't killed em hundreds of times or anything, even though I'd say: highly unlikely.