Salvage: Arrapago Remnants

[Julian]

I came up with an idea a couple weeks ago and have been a bit hesitant on testing. When you do a /sea in a remnants zone you see all other people currently doing that remnants i believe as it's treated as one zone. So my idea is to take a group of 18 that would get not nearly enough drops and split it into 3 groups and enter seperatly. After entering alliance the other 2 pts and start farming first floor. Take all drops from the 3 parties and give to a single balanced pt and have that pt push through the zone. As many have said the zone isn't too bad, it's just there are no drops, and this could potentially triple your drops and make it do-able.

This would also be nice b/c it's 100 set minutes so everyone could lot the item drops regardless of being in the pt progressing or the mule parties. Anyway can anyone confirm or discredit this idea?

When you move up a floor, everyone in your ally is moved up with you. Possibly everyone on the floor total.

Technically, everyone who entered your instance of the zone is moved up with you, whether pted, dead, or dced.

[Hiruke]

I'm not sure it would be worthwhile even if it could work. You would have to ally the PTs subsequent to entering, as otherwise they would simply be in the same group. I'm not sure if that would be possible, but it would be easy enough to test. You could also simply have one member of Group A drop and try to join one of Group B's PTs (again, once already inside). If they can join, they should be able to lot, etc.

However, it's pretty inconvenient to keep track of cells as it is, without that added headache. If you were to do something like that, you'd probably want a guy in your "main" group be PTed with the other group and simply lot everything the main group needs, then Bazaar or trade it.

By the way, fun fact: You can CFH mobs in Salvage. Useful, right??

Ninja Edit: Also, in Arrapago in particular, your "extra" group might have a hard time continuing to farm for your "main" group unless you just stock them to the gills with MNKs...

[divisortheory]

Surely they intended something other than this. Was already mentioned at the end of the last page, but I recently had the idea to split the groups up. 4 MNKs total, with 2 on the NW wing and 2 on the SW wing. Assuming you have an alliance of 18, that's 9 people on each wing.

I really don't think they would allow 18 people in the zone and then make it literally impossible to be effective, so I think splitting up is the key.

[Khamsin]

I came up with an idea a couple weeks ago and have been a bit hesitant on testing. When you do a /sea in a remnants zone you see all other people currently doing that remnants i believe as it's treated as one zone. So my idea is to take a group of 18 that would get not nearly enough drops and split it into 3 groups and enter seperatly. After entering alliance the other 2 pts and start farming first floor. Take all drops from the 3 parties and give to a single balanced pt and have that pt push through the zone. As many have said the zone isn't too bad, it's just there are no drops, and this could potentially triple your drops and make it do-able.

This would also be nice b/c it's 100 set minutes so everyone could lot the item drops regardless of being in the pt progressing or the mule parties. Anyway can anyone confirm or discredit this idea?

When you move up a floor, everyone in your ally is moved up with you. Possibly everyone on the floor total.

Technically, everyone who entered your instance of the zone is moved up with you, whether pted, dead, or dced.

I think he means to ally parties that entered their own instance of the zone. They'd be unable to see or directly interact with each other, but he wanted to see if they could ally once inside and share drops, since they're in the same zone (just separate instances).

[Sykes]

I haven't tested this specifically with Salvage, but with Assault they are completely different zones, and the only connection is that /sea works. I've done Assault with 2 parties of 3 allianced, with both doing the same Assault at the same time. It was like the other party was in a completely different zone. Their names were greyed out, and we couldn't see their HP (or MP or TP with TParty), nor could we see anything that dropped for them.

[divisortheory]

Is it possible that, just like with Zhayolm, there is a pattern to how many things drop on the first floor? In Zhayolm each room has exactly 2 mobs that drop stuff, and the rest don't. If that's the case here, you could know when to stop farming a wing and move on to the next wing.

[aurik]

I considered that and watched the drops on my 3rd run of the zone, but it doesn't seem to be the case. I would love it if someone discovered that to be true, however.

[Wulfgang]

The killer about this zone is that one mistake is run over.

We pulled a Lamia camping in the hallway to the SE side, some miscom in pulling, so we had a Skele and Lamia, not too much of an issue until the Lamia used Tail Slap and sent our tank with yellow HP too close to the room. 2-3 more skeles aggroed everyone, wiped.

Too many Hi-Pots used, 2 people had RR but forgot to put it up, called it a day. If you're camping in the hallway, turn your back to the wall so Tail Slap doesn't hit you far.

Killed 3-4 mobs as well, no drops, this zone is so fucked up, not only in drop rate, but the mobs themselves have shit that no other first floor mobs have. Qutrub mage triple attacking, casting Aero IV / Aeroga III; wtf.

Only constructive thing I have has been said before, don't attempt w/o 2-4 MNKs, leaning towards the latter if you want serious progress.

[Wulfgang]

Has anyone seen anything else drop from P. Pudding (besides cells, it actually drops MP and magic too lol)? I was hoping that perhaps the Hoshi Gi was 100% and something else was a rare drop. We had a much smoother run last night with 7 people (MNK, MNK, WAR, WAR, THF, WHM (Boxed), RDM, PLD) and finally got a chance to use one of our stockpile of Bhaflau Cards. One thing I've realized about salvage is that while more people helps in certain ones, having a smaller group of skilled people is infinitely better than a large group with some clueless people. Unlike Dynamis-Bastok, you can't carry people through salvage.

For anyone looking for specifics on the Pudding fight, it hit my unbuffed / unequipped WAR for 230-250 a hit and double attacked. Gravity was never resisted once and our fight went for quite a while (0 BLM). If you have a PLD and WHM, have them spam Banish I/II, one Banish II landed for about 150 dmg which was about as much as one of my buffed Rampages. A -ga III will kill a single target with max HP up and capped.

[divisortheory]

One thing I've realized about salvage is that while more people helps in certain ones, having a smaller group of skilled people is infinitely better than a large group with some clueless people. Unlike Dynamis-Bastok, you can't carry people through salvage.

I definitely agree, but having a large group of skilled players is also better than a small group of skilled players. People talk about how it hurts cell distribution, but lately I'm leaning more and more towards lot orders being based around individual people rather than jobs. Bring 18 people, fine, but make sure 9 of them know in advance they probably aren't getting shit, and they're only there for extra firepower.

[Wulfgang]

The issue for me has been familiarity. My current LS doesn't have the interest to amass full numbers for salvage, so we end up going with some randoms occasionally. They're not bad people, it's just that most haven't done Salvage as much as we have, so the cell dynamics are not as readily apparent to them. Right now cell distribution is a headache for me to the nth degree. I look forward to the day when everyone will lot / pass without me saying a word. Many cells make sense, others require some thought. In some cases such as Princess Pudding, it makes sense for your BLM/RDM/WHM to have HP unlocked before WAR/MNK b/c they will be more likely to pull hate. I also look forward to the development of your salvage parser; it's difficult when you're with 12 people+ to know at all times who has received what previously.

[divisortheory]

What cell distribution order do most people use here? I'm wondering if you should go after JA before anything else and give them to MNKs first, so you can make SC to take out the Qutrub faster.

[aurik]

Once you have at least 1 JA (monk) and 1 magic (rdm) you can take out the Qutrubs without too much trouble, which gets you weapons for your other melee.

[Wulfgang]

We got 4 JAs in 60 minutes on the first floor. Gave the first 2 to MNKs for Asuran, PLD 3rd for Sentinel / Rampart / Invincible, I took the 4th on WAR just for more DD.

We did RDM > PLD > WHM for magic. Dispel is one of the most important spells early on, many mobs have Ice Spikes whose para is gay to the max.

It's been said before, but do not bring melees to Arrapago who need weapons, we could have saved 20 minutes on the first floor if didn't have to kill like 10 Qutrubs for 2-3 weapons. We gave first weapon to our TH4 THF which seemed to make sense.

SJ cells don't drop until floor 3? Never saw one.

The only nice thing about Arrapago is that virtually anyone can tank. The mobs are annoying but are weak attack wise. Unlike Bhaflau where Wamoura and Sulfur Scorps' attack scale quickly even on the first floor, nothing was hitting me for more than 30-40 in Arrapago.

Actually one other nice thing is the cell rate lol, very easy to distribute when you get 1 cell every 2-3 fights almost.

[aurik]

Phalanx2 is godsend on the first 2 floors. After phalanx2 was open, I was taking like 5 dmg per hit.

[Viq]

My group's JA order for Arrapago is MNK -> RDM -> PLD. MNK is pretty obvious for the WS. I put RDM 2nd because he will be the first to get magic back, so I let him have Convert available since he is main healing + debuffing for the duration of the first floor usually.

EDIT: I'm thinking of saying screw the PLD in this area and bumping THF into the 3rd slot for JA. We have a couple people that can come TH4 THF (I almost always ask one of them to come MNK though) so they're the obvious choice to get weapon first. PLD won't be any better at tanking than anyone else without SJ anyway, so might as well let THF have SA and TA to speed things up.

[Wulfgang]

It's also nice for RDM to have HP unlocked after the tank for convert, something some forget.

[Muze]

sooo hmm,
how do you pop the rat astro on floor 2?

[aurik]

Rat has always been popped when my group gets to the 2nd floor center. We have always killed the 2 lamia in the wing before going tho. Sometimes he's down a path away from center, so just have a quick look for him incase he's down another path. Be careful, he aggros.

As for RDMs getting convert and JAs unlocked, have them carry hi-ethers instead and give the JA to someone more immediately useful. Phalanx2, regen, and hi-ether+rest between fights should be enough to keep up with no problems.

[Stellar]

We had two groups running the same route and tried to invite someone from the other group to lot on a magic cell, but they were unable to get the invite, so that won't work for sure.