Salvage: Arrapago Remnants

[aurik]

Only 1 orobon kill that I know of (ours) and he only dropped hands x2.

[divisortheory]

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/User:Divis ... irst_Floor

I've never actually broken it down like this, but now that I have it seems far more efficient to farm NE and SE immediately upon entering the zone instead of wasting time with NW and SW.

[Lhexh]

Just checked the rest of the chatlog from last night's run and can confirm the following at least dropping on the 5th/6th floors.

Orobon: 2 Radiatus, 2 Cumulus
Devil Manta : Cirrocomus Cell, Stratus Cell
5F Archaic Rampart : Spissatus Cell, Radiatus Cell [ both ramparts in final room dropped this, but the first Rampart in previous room dropped nother for us this time ]
6F Archaic Rampart : Humilus Cell

[divisortheory]

Nice! That filled out 2 more cell drops that had not yet been reported. I think Arrapago Cells are pretty close to completion. There may be 1 or 2 more cell drops left to be discovered from some of the less common reinforcements like the Pugil, Korrigans, etc that nobody ever fights.

I'm also going to start parsing every run to track cell drop rates. After probably 8 or 9 Arrapago Runs, if I keep building off of the same saved parse, we should be able to get pretty accurate drop rates for things like weapon / magic / ability cells. I may even edit DAT files so that 1F, 2F, and 3F enemies have different names, to possibly distinguish drop rate differences between floors.

[catzie]

Nice! That filled out 2 more cell drops that had not yet been reported. I think Arrapago Cells are pretty close to completion. There may be 1 or 2 more cell drops left to be discovered from some of the less common reinforcements like the Pugil, Korrigans, etc that nobody ever fights.

The korrigans drop chr >.>.

[Bleu]

My group is just getting into Arrapago now, and we're trying to form a solid strategy for farming the NMs in the zone. We're focusing on MBs in other zones, so we'll worry about the MB here at a later time.

We're a small man group, usually 8-10 people, but we have a good mix of jobs to use. Usually we can get 2 MNK, 1 NIN, 1 THF, 1 RDM, 1 WHM, 1 BLM, 1 BRD (or COR).

So far we've had a hard time making progress on anything in this zone. Usually we make it to the 3F QQs, but barely get to take a shot at them. We haven't had the damange to take out 2F QQ, and clearing 3F consumes almost all of our time. I'm not sure yet how much HP the QQs have or how other LSes deal with them running away. I'd also be interested in knowing if the Qutrubs take double SC damage like normal ones do?

For the next run I was thinking of trying the following:
1F - First Abilities to MNK and THF, first Weapon to THF, first Magic to RDM and BLM. MNK>THF can now make Fragmentation, so we can clear our 1F faster.
2F - Clear the first room to finish of Magic/Abilites, save TP for Astrologer. Use another Frag SC > Thunder MB on him then have MNK pop HF.
3F - Clear the first few rooms (other north or south side depending on what we need) and then have somebody sneak to the portal and aggro the QQ. Have everyone else wait near the start ready to gank to QQ when he shows up.
4F - The QQ is near the porter, no problem here
5F - ...ideally I'd like to kill the chariot next, but we need to get 1F-4F figured out first.

For the people more experienced in this zone, does this seem viable? Am I overlooking something with this strategy?

Thanks.

[divisortheory]

Weapon: THF -> Other weapon DDs
Ability: THF (for stealing SJ cell on 2F) -> MNK x2 -> RDM
Magic: RDM -> WHM -> BRD -> tank -> BLM
SJ: tank

1F - Farm at least 2 wings of nothing but lamia (meaning sneak/invis past everything else). Pull with magic/ranged once someone gets one, body pull before that. After that farm like 1 room of skeletons to get some HP and stuff. Exit SW so you have a chance at some weapons. The key to the zone is getting off of the first floor quickly. You should not be fighting many non lamia mobs on this floor at all. It's far more efficient to farm cells on the 3rd floor, so the key is getting ot the 3rd floor with the bare minimum that will allow you to kill stuff up there, then killing the high drop rate mobs on 3F and 4F.

2F - Don't waste HF on the Astrologer, he spends a lot of time running around, if 2 MNKs have abilities and you're SCing him there's no reason you shouldn't be able to take him out.

3F - Clear some lamia and mobs from the east/north path, but don't waste time with the QQ on this floor. Steal a Cumulus (Body) cell from him, but don't even attempt to fight him. There's another QQTH on the next floor that's much easier, this one is a complete waste of itme. Exit north or south, doesn't matter, but farming should be on the east/north path.

4F - Kill a few gears for SJ cells, kill the QQTH

[aurik]

Weapon: THF -> Other weapon DDs
Ability: THF (for stealing SJ cell on 2F) -> MNK x2 -> RDM
Magic: RDM -> WHM -> BRD -> tank -> BLM
SJ: tank

we always give first ability to mnk; counterstance + phalanx2 is pure hax.

we always give second magic to brd, for finale, elegy pulling, and haste on melees.

[divisortheory]

Weapon: THF -> Other weapon DDs
Ability: THF (for stealing SJ cell on 2F) -> MNK x2 -> RDM
Magic: RDM -> WHM -> BRD -> tank -> BLM
SJ: tank

we always give first ability to mnk; counterstance + phalanx2 is pure hax.

That actually not a bad idea, but I'm always paranoid we'll get hosed on cell drops and only end up with 1 ability total for 1F and 2F, not allowing us to get a SJ cell. But I think I'll try that idea from now on.

How much damage do you take as MNK with Counterstance up, assuming no Phalanx II

[aurik]

Weapon: THF -> Other weapon DDs
Ability: THF (for stealing SJ cell on 2F) -> MNK x2 -> RDM
Magic: RDM -> WHM -> BRD -> tank -> BLM
SJ: tank

we always give first ability to mnk; counterstance + phalanx2 is pure hax.

That actually not a bad idea, but I'm always paranoid we'll get hosed on cell drops and only end up with 1 ability total for 1F and 2F, not allowing us to get a SJ cell. But I think I'll try that idea from now on.

How much damage do you take as MNK with Counterstance up, assuming no Phalanx II

the same as without, basically.

[divisortheory]

the same as without, basically.

Do the mobs have super low attack or something, that your defense is almost negligible?

[aurik]

the same as without, basically.

Do the mobs have super low attack or something, that your defense is almost negligible?

Basically, defense under the influence of counterstance is the same as defense naked. The only thing that affects it is minne. Since you're pretty much naked already, counterstance has almost no impact on your actual defense number.

[Lhexh]

There's a million different ways to go around farming arrapago depending on what jobs you can get. The only real target for the first floor is to be warping up by the 35 minute mark at the absolute latest while ungimping yourself as much as possible. If you spend any more time than that on the first floor you probably won't have enough time to aim all the NMs.

My group has somewhat unfair advantages over other small groups in this zone, so of course what works for us won't work for other small groups. In our 8 member team, 5 can come as MNK, 4 have relic weapons, and everyone is heavily meritted, so our first floor plan involves clearing every single mob in the NW and SE paths, as well as 2 rooms of BLM Qutrubs, and a few Lamia from the SW, NE paths we can pull safely. We can do this and warp up in 30-35 minutes. We kill more mobs on this floor than most other groups because we value the weapons, they speed up killing on 3rd+ floor substantially, especially if the MNKs get theirs as well.

If your group can't kill a Qutrub in around 45 seconds or less, then minimize the number of those you kill and just Sneak around and snipe as many Lamia's as you can in each wing, like Divisor suggested, since JobAbilities and Magic will be far more important. Gearing up the THFs is a huge advantage and if you can get them TH3 and Steal on the first floor then go for it.

Third floor QQ is the real time waster, it is possible to kill it without clearing the PsycheFlayer/Bhoot rooms but is tricky. We always kill the room completely for the drops but you can have 1 person MGS and aggro it with DoT and run back to camp and then full attack it at the small room prior the large room, as long as nobody with hate is in the path behind it it will continue its path of run+stop all the way back to start point and then head back to portal. You just need to make sure you kill it before it gets back to the Flayer/Bhoot room. We've done it once this way, and honestly it got very ugly because the person MGSing to aggro Qiqirn aggrod flayers and had to kite them around the entire time.

The basics for your strat should be ok, but this zone does take quite a while to get used to, more than Bhaflau did. Success at salvage just requires persistence/stubborness. We've gone from struggling to kill 3 NMs in a single run, to easily killing all 35 gear NMs with time to spare at the end. I'm actually at the point of thinking we can make Boss attempts with our setup while still killing every 35 gear NM since I see ways to cut time down and we had over 10 minutes after chariot last run.

[divisortheory]

Our problem is that weapon drop rate seems to be about 10%. I'd love to get weapons for MNKs, but there have been times where we killed over 20 Qutrubs and didn't get a single weapon.

I'm starting to wonder whether or not it would be worth it to try to dupe weapon cells. Even if it takes you 10 extra minutes to kill the NM, if it saves 10 minutes killing other mobs + chariot + QQs, it would probably be worth it.

[Lhexh]

Yea weapons can never be counted on, but currently we just killed all those mobs anyways since they die soo fast to this new setup we use. If I remove the time spent farming weapons on first floor, I can probably shave 15 minutes off which is why I think we can try Boss on a run as well. I'm just not sure how efficient we'll be without weapons on the 3rd floor. I almost need to do a run without any weapons just to test kill speed on, since our setup doesnt MGS around anything. We currently kill every single mob in our path and not sure if giving up on weapons to save 10-15 minutes on first floor will cost us time on the subsequent floors. I can't give up 3rd floor Qiqirin since Macha's Coat is our most in demand item

[divisortheory]

Do you farm any lamia at all before killing Qutrubs? Seems like you'd waste a ton of potions healing yourself if you don't have any magic yet. My shell also has 5-6 people who can come MNK, so unless your setup is completely dependent on relic H2H, I'm sure we can probably do it to (we have 2 relic daggers). What cell orders do you use for magic, ability, and weapon?

[Bleu]

Interesting. Last time we had a COR instead of a BRD, so the first ability went to him. In hindsight, that was a bad idea. COR just doesn't seem like a good job choice in this zone. We also gave the first weapon to a WAR... which in hindsight was another bad idea.

Almost everyone in our group has a melee and mage job, so I think unless someone is MNK, NIN, or THF they should bring their mage job.

I think we'll try MNK > THF on abilities as well next time, and THF first on weapon.

Thanks for the info.

[aurik]

The way my group farms is by sniping lamia for the relatively-more-common drops, and once we get some magic and abilities we can go for Qutrubs. Our base setup:
mnk mnk thf rdm whm brd, blm

We've gotten totally fucked on weapon drops a lot recently, I think we're on an 0/20ish streak for incus cells.

[Lhexh]

We bring a lot of potions so kill Qutrubs + Lamia as we encounter them. Even if we don't see a magic cell drop until later on the floor we can usual manage until with around 10-15 Hi Pots each, 2-3 Persikos. If you can bring that many MNKs then you should be able to do this easily as well. None of our MNKs have relic H2H, they just used relics when they came SAM, or WAR, or NIN, which really helped kill speed once they got weapon access but I was mightly impressed with our kill speed using 4 MNK, WAR, RDM, WHM, BRD. Ruk and I also have mules with THF leveled and we'll 2box one or both on a given run based on who has points available.

I prioritize it as follows, we usually see on average 2 weapons, 2 magic, 2 JobAbilities, 4 HP on the first floor, but most days its better than that.

Weapons: WAR ( to use Ridill ) -> THF(s) -> MNK
JobAbilities: we give to 1 MNK first then to 1 THF then the rest to MNKs until capped out then BRD->RDM->WHM
Magic: RDM->WHM->BRD

By taking south path on 3rd floor we usually will get another weapon or two, not sure if drop rate on Qutrub is better there or not but we always seem to get at least 1 there, and Psycheflayers usually cap us out on magic/jobabilities and are extremely easy to kill if you save TP and unload on them at 25% to avoid the Bio move.

[divisortheory]

Yea we have a Ridill WAR, I had him come WAR once but we got hosed on weapons and it didn't work out so well so after that I had him come MNK again. I suppose I could try it again, it's just really discouraging because you kill asstons of Qutrubs and get nothing. We also haven't been making use of Phalanx II enough. Also, even though we've had upwards of 6 MNKs come to a single run, we tried splitting up before, which was making people run out of potions a lot faster. Maybe we'll try Lamia until we get 1 ability+magic, and from there on clear all Qutrub in the path to try for the Ridill.