Salvage - Silver Sea Remnants - thread 2

[Ryushii]

Something that's been gnawing away at me the past couple of days:

Exactly how bad is the drop rate of Lv.35 armor inside of Silver Sea?

Hammerblow and Dekka I'm not too horrified over, but Powderkeg and (even worse) Citadel Chelonian are something I'm not looking forward to farming.

We're 0/20 on NMs in the zone but I'd expect that it's about 10% or similar to Arrapago. With a bit of practice you'll be able to do Hammerblow/Powderkeg/Gears/Citadel in the one run I think. Powderkeg isn't too hard, just time consuming as you have to clear the room. Following Auriks Turtle strategy speeds that last NM up considerably.

How on earth can you kill all of those in 1 run? I can see Hammerblow/Gears/Citadel, but I just took a group of 11 up and it took us til about 89 minutes in to kill Hammerblow. Yeah, we got a bit gimped on damage (bare minimum opa til the 3rd to last mob) and we had no MNKs, but i still don't see how you could kill this NM in under like 40 minutes.

[Arthars]

1 2 3 4 can be done

but usually time is comfortable if u doing 1 2 4 or 1 2 3 or 2 3 4

1234 need a kinda good 6 man team who know what to do etc and not even waste any time

[Suiram]

Do you mean Powderkeg? Not that it should take 89 minutes either but I mean, Hammerblow is on the first floor lol All the mobs in the big 2nd-to-last room on both paths have fixed drops, the east side is listed in the wiki, the west side they are listed in a post a few pages back, so if there's a shortage of a particular cell just target that one first. On the way to Hammerblow's room we kill as few as 2 fomors, at most 5 or 6, depending on whether we got 2 praes in the chest or not, since we want both rdm and brd to have magic before we start clearing the big room. Powderkeg room is the only one that's seriously time-consuming until the person pulling becomes accustomed to it so you can kill non-stop.

We started doing 35s here more often recently, and with 6-7 people at worst we get to CC with just 5-10 minutes short of hitting all four NMs (Hammer, Powder, Gyro-3, and CC). I blame those failures on the fact that it's always been on impromptu runs where we have 1 or 2 people who aren't regulars in our group, and have no doubt that as Ambir said it just takes some practice and experience and you should be able to hit all four reliably.

[divisortheory]

Something that's been gnawing away at me the past couple of days:

Exactly how bad is the drop rate of Lv.35 armor inside of Silver Sea?

Hammerblow and Dekka I'm not too horrified over, but Powderkeg and (even worse) Citadel Chelonian are something I'm not looking forward to farming.

We're 0/20 on NMs in the zone but I'd expect that it's about 10% or similar to Arrapago. With a bit of practice you'll be able to do Hammerblow/Powderkeg/Gears/Citadel in the one run I think. Powderkeg isn't too hard, just time consuming as you have to clear the room. Following Auriks Turtle strategy speeds that last NM up considerably.

How on earth can you kill all of those in 1 run? I can see Hammerblow/Gears/Citadel, but I just took a group of 11 up and it took us til about 89 minutes in to kill Hammerblow. Yeah, we got a bit gimped on damage (bare minimum opa til the 3rd to last mob) and we had no MNKs, but i still don't see how you could kill this NM in under like 40 minutes.

it's possible to clear the room in 20 minutes if your sleepers are good and you have lots of damage. Preferably MNKs, as usual since you might not have a bunch of weapon cells yet.

Best I've done in this zone is Hammerblow -> Dekka -> Gear -> Citadel. We don't usually try Gears.

[Wizerd]

Something that's been gnawing away at me the past couple of days:

Exactly how bad is the drop rate of Lv.35 armor inside of Silver Sea?

Hammerblow and Dekka I'm not too horrified over, but Powderkeg and (even worse) Citadel Chelonian are something I'm not looking forward to farming.

We're 0/20 on NMs in the zone but I'd expect that it's about 10% or similar to Arrapago. With a bit of practice you'll be able to do Hammerblow/Powderkeg/Gears/Citadel in the one run I think. Powderkeg isn't too hard, just time consuming as you have to clear the room. Following Auriks Turtle strategy speeds that last NM up considerably.

How on earth can you kill all of those in 1 run? I can see Hammerblow/Gears/Citadel, but I just took a group of 11 up and it took us til about 89 minutes in to kill Hammerblow. Yeah, we got a bit gimped on damage (bare minimum opa til the 3rd to last mob) and we had no MNKs, but i still don't see how you could kill this NM in under like 40 minutes.

it's possible to clear the room in 20 minutes if your sleepers are good and you have lots of damage. Preferably MNKs, as usual since you might not have a bunch of weapon cells yet.

Best I've done in this zone is Hammerblow -> Dekka -> Gear -> Citadel. We don't usually try Gears.

I thought the Fomors and Imps both weren't sleepable. Which are? And how so?

[divisortheory]

I thought the Fomors and Imps both weren't sleepable. Which are? And how so?

Eh, you might be right. Change sleepers to binders and gravitiers in that case, I usually just hit shit till it dies, we've cleared that area in 25 minutes and that was with a death and a few seconds of downtime between some pulls.

[Wizerd]

I thought the Fomors and Imps both weren't sleepable. Which are? And how so?

Eh, you might be right. Change sleepers to binders and gravitiers in that case, I usually just hit shit till it dies, we've cleared that area in 25 minutes and that was with a death and a few seconds of downtime between some pulls.

We don't do Powderkeg very often, so the Imp/Fomor connected hate thing wasn't very easy to handle for us. We had no RDM that run because 3 kings are gay and get in the way of Salvage. 2 BLMs, but their Binds and Gravities were getting resisted. After the first one, I just had our BRD Elegy the fomor and kite it away until the Imp was almost dead. Then the BRD would run it back. The room got a bit messy because I haven't pulled it very often, and I was on MNK. If anything is sleepable, that would make it so much easier.

[aurik]

Nothing in that room autolinks. When we get 2, we just have the puller keep running while the rest of us take out the imp.

[Wizerd]

Nothing in that room autolinks. When we get 2, we just have the puller keep running while the rest of us take out the imp.

I think it was mentioned a couple pages back but, a few times when I pulled a fomor that was near an imp, regardless of being well out of sound range and not looking at the fomor, the imp would instantly look back and link. I tried waiting until the imp just finished moving on one pull, but the same thing happened. It didn't happen if the fomor was alone with decent range or the imp was alone with decent range.

I can probably do it just fine, if I take some more care while pulling and be patient.

What setup do you guys use, again, for clearing the NMs with 6?

I'm assuming MNKx2, THF, BRD, RDM, WHM? Or is the WHM a BLM?

[aurik]

mnk mnk thf whm rdm brd

[Suiram]

Regarding the Powderkeg room, my revised understanding of the imp-fomor interrelationship is as follows. Aurik is right in that nothing auto-links. Any time an imp and a fomor both have hate on someone and are within a fairly wide radius of each other, whether due to link or because you've pulled one before the other is dead, they have linked TP. Killing imps first in the case of link (and I imagine this should be reversed if you opt to kill fomors first), if you pulled the fomor and the imp linked to it, then when the imp is attacked the fomor will stay on the puller and can be kited off. If the imp was pulled first and the fomor linked to it, the fomor's hate will turn to whoever has hate on the imp and a separate action is required to pull it off. You can also have more than one fomor link to an imp (and presumably more than one imp link to a fomor).

We typically go NIN MNK THF BLM RDM BRD when we go with six, but I'd imagine that a number of different setups would work. I'd just stress that NIN and MNK are preferable to other melee jobs due to to subtle blow. The difference is noticeable from the 2nd floor up, but it becomes especially important when you reach gyro 3-gear because the amount of TP spam is going to mean a much longer fight from restoral, and will require a lot more healing because of the other WSs. We fought it once with two ridill wars, never again...

Also we've tried a number of different approaches to the 4th floor, at first spamming chests, then waiting for the gears to make a full pass through, then pulling ramparts. Later we moved to spamming chests until the gear train arrived then sleepga and killing them one by one. Last night for the first time we tried aurik's "skip the chests and sac the big room asap, pulling all the ramparts back to the portal" strat and it is by far the fastest way to approach the 4th floor, and I recommend it if you've got a group that is familiar enough with what's going on that they won't mess it up. If you do think they'll mess it up and you have one or two sleepgas then killing the gear train is probably second-fastest.

[Kaylia]

^
I always fight both Gyro gears with 2 ridill war and never had any problems (blm is 3rd DD). It usually goes down in 2-3min depending how retarded his skill selection is (10% per rampage, and 1 rampage every 20sec) . The only time we ever had trouble is when we added 2 rng, 4 melee was too much on it. 7 men party with 2 ridill war is fine for this zone imo

[Suiram]

Well we did have 4 melees, WAR WAR MNK THF on that particular occasion (we were 8 or 9 total I think it was on a regular run rather than an impromptu one). The difference was still pretty significant, I think, even when the THF backed off and stopped fulltime meleeing as if it was a chariot, unless there were other factors involved that I'm not considering.

[Kaylia]

Yeah, I can see a PT being overwhelmed by TP with 4 melees DD (that's what happened to us yesterday with 2rng/2war). I'm not even sure I would add a 3rd melee unless it's a mnk. Not arguing that 2 mnk +nin wouldn't be better, but 2war+blm is perfectly fine in this case if that's what you have. We even won 3-4 days ago without brd in the party (like I said, dekka ended up being much harder than gears without brd and war tank).

[alphacat]

How do people go about clearing the Hammerblow room? I read in the old thread that people just sac pull all 6 fomors, but that seems like a major waste of time when you're going with 6. I was thinking about letting a thf kite everything to the entrance, but according the aircommand, the fomors will lose aggro and head back. Are they sleepable via lullaby or sleep?

One more thing, we're going for the card NM tonight, so we must port up via the north path on 2F. However, ppl want to do Powderkeg as well. Is it possible to clear Powderkeg room and kill him, then move NE and port up from the portal that's always unlocked?

[Francisco II]

We've only gone this route twice so far - the first time we had a THF kite them around the room, while a RDM kept Phalanx II, Regen, Cures etc on him... we picked them off one by one.

The second time, the THF was unavailable, so I had to kite them on my MNK... it wasn't the most graceful kite you'll see, but we survived.

[Wizerd]

How do people go about clearing the Hammerblow room? I read in the old thread that people just sac pull all 6 fomors, but that seems like a major waste of time when you're going with 6. I was thinking about letting a thf kite everything to the entrance, but according the aircommand, the fomors will lose aggro and head back. Are they sleepable via lullaby or sleep?

One more thing, we're going for the card NM tonight, so we must port up via the north path on 2F. However, ppl want to do Powderkeg as well. Is it possible to clear Powderkeg room and kill him, then move NE and port up from the portal that's always unlocked?

The fomor lose aggro without too much trouble, you can use that to your advantage. Clear one of the first side rooms with 4 Fomor, then have anyone aggro the fomors and run straight towards entrance. They'll usually lose aggro by the time you get back to the room, but if they don't, run past the room and have someone pick one off. When they lose aggro, they'll mostly be at different points while walking back since some are casters, some melee, and some are rangers. Just pick them off when they are solo or in groups of two.

[Suiram]

You don't even have to go all the way back to one of those rooms usually, they lose hate really early.

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/2...blowsacaz9.jpg

This is an illustration of what we do (not our own idea, was borrowed from someone else's recommendation in either this thread or its predecessor). Everyone but myself and someone who has voke or chi or spell unlocked goes to the south wall. I cast (if I have magic) or get close enough to aggro and quickly double-back. I take the green path, and the enemies consistently lose hate at that dark-green dot in the next room while I'm in the hallway north of it. The only exception seems to be that if a mob paths around the right side of the center divider instead of left, as illustrated by the red path segment, they won't lose hate for whatever reason, in which case you keep booking towards the entrance and they lose hate around the next room or so. Also the person who pulls the mob off you needs to be fairly quick about it if you don't have shadows unlocked because if you get bound you're going to go down really fast.

Typically after one 'sac' (which I guess is not technically a sac since you're not usually going to die) someone in the big room can pull a loner walking back without link, then 'sac' again, then pull a loner. Or, if you have a larger group or got lucky on cells from the crate + first few mobs, you can pull two at a time and it goes all the more quickly. Just make sure that you keep fighting along the south wall even on the last one because if you're in the middle when Hammerblow pops he'll come after you with no time to rest if you need it. We do this consistently even with only 6 people. It's actually preferable to just skip everything except the first fomor and head to this room if you have a smaller group and intend to go for powderkeg, because popping powderkeg is time-consuming, and if you spent a lot of time farming the wings on the first floor you'll just be getting redundant cells from 2nd floor southeast.

[alphacat]

Nice strat, gonna give it a try today. The only fear I have about fighting in the room is that if we get overwhelmed and wipe, there's no way to recover. We'll give it a try tonight and see how it goes.

Also, can anyone confirm that it's possible to hit up Powderkeg + card NM in the same run? From the maps I'm reading, it seems like once you open the west wing, you can port either N or S. Only concern is that if you meet the unlock condition of the south room, you won't be able to port up north.

[Wizerd]

Nice strat, gonna give it a try today. The only fear I have about fighting in the room is that if we get overwhelmed and wipe, there's no way to recover. We'll give it a try tonight and see how it goes.

Also, can anyone confirm that it's possible to hit up Powderkeg + card NM in the same run? From the maps I'm reading, it seems like once you open the west wing, you can port either N or S. Only concern is that if you meet the unlock condition of the south room, you won't be able to port up north.

You open a door to get to the south room, so no, you can't do Powderkeg and card NM in same run.

Also, you can recover if you die in the room, if you're far enough south. The fomor don't have whole-room aggro, they have normal aggro ranges.