Apkallu Breeding - Farming for AP

[Alexei]

Hey everyone, here's hoping on some input from all of you:

I like taking my 3-man group to 15 minute Assaults because they generally require you to be on your toes, involve good communication, and well... they're 15 minutes per run which is what's most appealing lol. We've been successful with all other 15-min Assaults, and now that we started working on Apkallu Breeding, we ran into logistics issues.

At first I thought decoding morse code would be the bottle-neck (none of us know morse), so I reorganized the morse code table to help match to letters faster. I even updated the wiki with that info. This did help us, but not enough.

On our 1st try, running around trying to find males was an issue, and not knowing where all the females were was another issue. We went 5/8 before ending it. On our 2nd & last try, one person identified the words for all females by regions of the map (NE, center, SE), so we had a general idea where to lead each male to. We went 5/8 again I think.

All of us were subbing THF.

Do the 8 female apkallus always get assigned the same 8 words? I noted them all (have the screen shot at home, sorry), and I intend to validate on our next run if this is the case or not.

Only improvement I can think of right now is to split up at the start, with each person identifying the females in their assigned region of the map, and then running to find males afterwards.

If your group can get 8/8 consistently, I'd appreciate any feedback you could give us. How you handle the coordination, your logistics, etc.

Thanks in advance,

[Tessei]

We farmed this run a little while ago; it's not that bad once you can recognize the names. I don't have my sheets with me, so I'm just going off by what I remember.

The males are the large ones correct? Each male has (I think) 2 spawn locations; for example Fire is either a close West from the start, or at the northernmost room past some bombs. The female (small) ones have only 1 spawn point, but I think they move around a little, so the NE area which has (I think?) 3 of them, they might cross paths.

There are 3 general areas for the females; NE has 3, slightly S has 2 (I believe the combos are Fire/Heat and Snow/White here), and the last 3 are farther south, with the last one being through the southernmost tunnel which tracks west and then back up north a bit, past 1 or 2 bombs. I believe this is the apple/orange combo, but could be wrong.

The males are generally in the W-NW sectors. I think wikipedia has the full list of names -- Fire/Heat, Rain/Cloud, Sound/Song, White/Snow, Cod/Fish, Moon/Star, Blue/Sky, Apple/Orange.

The females never move from their sectors, so once you identify the males you will know which area to go to. Highly suggested to translate all the morse codes into names before entering; so you can read the names, and glance at a sheet really quickly to know which you are talking to.

Our runs are pretty straightforward; we all have certain males that we look for to start, so we head in 4 different lines. If the male isn't there (ie. at another spawn point) just look for the closest one and continue. Communication is the key; if you find an area with 3 males, take the 15 seconds it takes to identify all 3, then in /p give the names and location so everyone knows where to go next. After/during you complete a set, give a shout so people have a general idea which are done, which are left. Don't all go for the same males at the start; make sure you all know which one each is aiming for, but be flexible enough to accomodate the diff spawn points.

Once you have this down it's pretty easy. If the males are in the easy areas (ie. not behind too many bombs) you can hit all 8 pairs with 3 pretty fast. If they all go to their farther spawn points it's a lot tougher. My static is 4 people tho so we generally don't have a problem with this one anymore, although it gets really boring after the first 12 runs or so. Make sure to bring non-magic invis for the bombs; if not, it is possible to just run around and lose aggro; had this happen once to us.

Much more prefereable to the walls; only half the time, not as boring (imo mainly because of time), and I think it gives ~150 more AP (4man walls vs 4man apkallu), which is a little over 1k.

[aurik]

Evade and Escape. Fuck penguins.

[Jeryhn]

Actually, this penguins one could have some merit. Since everyone's all up on the exploiting of tricks in Assaults...

Perhaps find the Apkallus that pop inside the Lebros data file and use a Hex Editor to rename them into Lebros Apkallu 1, Lebros Apkallu 2, etc. From there, use the morse-code system to match up Apkallu numbers and you could quite possibly win by matching all Apkallus with their correct partners in 5-ish minutes for lots of points.

Before people get all "omghax" on my ass, people already do this all the time with placeholder mobs for NMs. Ever wonder why gilsellers know exactly when Och Kote NM or Ulli will pop? They probably edit the Castle Oztroja and RuAvitau Mob List data files to know exactly which mob is the correct placeholder and track it's ToD to the second. The consequences of Square keeping these types of data downloaded to the client I guess.

This could be patched easily by SE by just randomizing the text that comes from each Apkallu pop, assuming they didn't already forsee an exploit like this coming out and did it already, just I'm working on the foundation that SE programmers continue to be fundamentally lazy.

[Teorem]

I made this for my assault group, as we farm this zone regularly. With 3 people, we will usually get all 8 within 10-12 minutes.

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/790...reedingjv2.jpg

All 8 females are given the same words and are roughly in the same spots every assault. The only one that kind of varies is "sound", which can sometimes be right next to "cloud" but is usually right next to the Vulcanian Bomb.

With Lebros Apkallu, you can keep them moving as long as you are in their field of view and the distance between you and it does not exceed just inside the inner circle on the radar (opposite that of Fairy Apkallu, where you must stand close behind them and between their wings to avoid scaring them off). Occasionally they will take an odd turn though, usually going down a ledge, and end up facing another way and stop.

You can pass by the Vulcanian Bombs safely with Invisible, and the apkallu will still follow you. There are other bombs on the map, but you won't pass by most of them unless you're unlucky enough to get an apkallu at the top part of (H-6).

Communication is still important and you can assign certain apkallu (eg., "orange" and "apple" to someone with increased movement speed), but after a few matches you can tell which ones are still missing and whether your other group members are in the process of matching them up.

[Alexei]

Wow Teorem, that's a fucking awesome map! You should post it on the wiki. That's the kind of info I was looking for; thanks for sharing it! Knowing that all females have the same words in the same spots should make things a lot smoother for us. I can't wait for our next set of runs to try this!