CoP Dynamis Low Numbers?

[Elipse]

I run a shell that does dynamis once a week. We normally hit numbers between 12-18 (typically about 15). We have won all the basic zones up to Xarc and regularly farm AF there. We have some increased demand now for CoP items and I'd like to attempt some farming runs. I have been to each of the CoP dynamis area's once. I have little to no experience but I understand how the zones work from reading what I could find. I might be going about this the wrong way and if you have some other idea please feel free to post it.

1) Can you farm mobs in outlands zones before mega boss?

My thought here is go in, get subjobs quick and go find some mobs to farm for CoP items. If its going to take an hour to kill the bosses why not just go farm?

2) Can you reliably clear the bosses with 15 or less people to get the wins? If yes could you please provide any information in terms of strategies?


I know I'm asking some broad questions here. Thank you in advance for any information you can provide.

[souleman]

1> Valk/Quifim yes, Bubu no (well, you can do beastmen mobs, but unless your farming city af, not really worth it)

2> Depends on the people you have. If you have a decent group for a zerg, then bubu will be easy to win and valk will be luck based. Quifim its all about getting from point a to point b fast enough to kill the mini-boss to weaken mega-boss enough.


My dynamis ls does not have a good zerg group (no BB/ridill/DRK) and typically 3-4 blms. We have beaten all 3 with less then 30. If you want to do it with 15 or less you will need chain stun on valk/quifim (you can't stun bubu boss) and people that can do a crapload of damage in no time. Not sure if anyone has done it, but I'm sure with the right setup, it could be done.

[Soraan]

It'd be possible to farm nightmare mobs in Qufim and Valkurm before doing the boss, but... unless I'm mistaken, Bub. Pen. nightmare mobs don't spawn until after you kill Apoc Beast, no? I never really looked for them, but when I go out looking for the Dragons to pull them or looking for the ??? for SJ, I never saw any nightmare mobs.

As far as killing the bosses with 15, I really don't know. Pretty sure the Valkurm one would fuck you up... Apoc Beast probably would too if the fight goes on too long unless you spent more time killing the various NMs. We usually only kill the WHM NM, but you could probably kill the MNK, NIN, and RDM NMs and not worry too much (although we've noticed he resists stun a lot but not always and he tends to cast a lot of -aga 3 spells as well). The Giant in Qufim is... well, iono, we usually have a PLD tank far away so he doesn't do the gay AoE moves and hits all our DD. We've killed the Qufim boss with as little as 23-25 I think though. Not sure if it could be done safely with less, especially if you go and kill the Ulli-ish NM toward Behemoth's Dominion, time might be running low after killing the regen NM + ulli NM + any eles you wanna do.

[Suiram]

I think with 15-18 the boss should be doable in Bubu. The preparatory mobs don't take very long, and the boss himself is pretty straightforward after you kill a couple dragons and one or two beastman NMs. As for Valkurm and Qufim, I wouldn't say it's impossible but it would be decidedly harder than going with 25-36. The hard part for Valkurm will be the boss himself, since less people -> longer fight and longer fight -> more chances for something to go wrong. The hard part for Qufim will be getting to the boss with enough time, since it involves a lot more running around and clearing stuff along the way than either of the other two starter CoP zones.

If you're just looking to farm -1 stuff and accessories, you could probably do some rotation of beat bubu+farm > farm the mobs up at the start in Valkurm > farm snolls/bats/rocs up at the start in Qufim, although the Qufim plan will only give you access to half the accessory drops there, so you'll probably want to balance that by targeting the drops for the other 5 in the other zones when you do them to keep people happy. Also, if your group of 15-18 really works well together, it'd be worth trying to win them all just to get yourselves Tav access, because you'd probably have a lot of fun in there.

[recuperi]

I've done bubu a few times with low numbers (I think 18 each time). We usually just kill the WHM NIN and SMN NMs to get rid of those 2hrs, then kill Barong, Tarasca, and Aitvaras to get rid of the major dragon moves that would hurt a zerg. I think we killed the thorn song NM once then decided it wasnt worth the time because the spikes can be dispelled. My LS isn't geared in all the king-type gear, but it was still a fairly easy just getting rid of those 6 mobs. We usually ended up with about an hour and 20 minutes left for farming, but im sure if we did it enough we could end up with more time.

[Elipse]

Thanks for the answers guys. We'll give it a shot ^^

[Linliel]

Yeah, as has been said before, Qufim and Valkurm have some mobs up before you kill the boss (more mobs pop after you aggro the boss, such as the hippogriffs and manticores around Selbina, I assume there are more mobs that pop similarly on the Qufim boss but we've never really stopped to look around during the zerg, so you could theoretically go aggro CC, train to a corner near Selbina, die, reraise (only CC's babies aggro), try to get out after that -- the one thing is that I'm not positive that the mobs pop right away, it could be after a certain amount of damage is done to CC).

Low numbering Bubu would be different, but yeah I'd recommend going for the SMN, WHM, and NIN beastmen NMs as well as the dragons (the suggestion to skip the thornsong one is a good one for time's sake). We usually skip the beastmen NMs (including the WHM one) and zerg it with about 30ish people np before it even gets to the WHM 2hr. Our record in doing that has been well less than 30 mins for all the important dragons & the boss to be dead, and we don't really have a huge zerg team (one ridill, no kcs). One thing that seriously speeds up the time is using the beach ramp as a height differentiator for the slam-using dragons.

Good luck!

BTW has anyone else found that the efts in Bubu drop a stupid amount of AF-1 compared with the rest of the mobs?

[cdgreg]

BTW has anyone else found that the efts in Bubu drop a stupid amount of AF-1 compared with the rest of the mobs?

Agreed.

[Lordwafik]

BTW has anyone else found that the efts in Bubu drop a stupid amount of AF-1 compared with the rest of the mobs?

Agreed.

They dropped us 2 things only the whole time I've fought them over many months, PLD-1 and SMN-1

[souleman]

BTW has anyone else found that the efts in Bubu drop a stupid amount of AF-1 compared with the rest of the mobs?

We have gotten 1 accessory from them, and never gotten a -1 from them. Only farmed them a few times though.

[Alibeemac]

MNK Cape, MNK Cape and more MNK Cape with an occassional -1 Hands >.>

[Linliel]

Heh, we rarely see any accessories from them but I think they've dropped more AF-1 than the rest of our CoP runs combined. Always seem to get WHM, BRD and THF -1 hands from them. Stupid efts. We want capes!

[Elipse]

As a little update the experiment went well for us. We decided to try Valkurm first. It took us about 10 minutes or so to get the subjobs unlocked. I think we can cut this time in half with a little practice. We then went on to kill all the hippogryphs, sheep and most of the manticores. We ended up with 58 single pieces of currency and a Rdm -1 hat.

So thanks again for the good info. I have been researching Qufim for our group and have run across some conflicting information related to subjobs. Bgwiki map shows 6 subjob points and DynamisBums map shows 12.

Here are the two maps that conflict:

From BGwiki:
http://wiki.bluegartr.com/Image:Qufim.jpg

From DynamisBums:

http://www.dynamisbums.com/strategy/...ategy_quf1.jpg

So which map is correct?

Also does anyone know if nightmare mobs link with statues? I was thinking while someone was out scouting subjobs they could also pull the I-8 Rocs back to the alliance to save some time and make for an easier farming route.

Thanks again for the helpful info.


EDIT: Additional question. Can you easily stun sabotenders 1000, 2000, 4000, and 10,000 needles in Valkurm? If we're farming between Qufim and Valk to get Accessories PLD and NIN will be hard to get if we only farm Hippogryphs.

[Teorem]

For Valkurm, 10 minutes is actually a decent amount of time to get subjobs unlocked by. Sometimes you will be lucky and the Nightmare Flies are not right in the middle of the Sheep/Manticores/Hippogryphs and it will take less, and sometimes it will take longer if you wait for them without making any sort of sacrifice pull.

Our (DynamisBums') map should be correct. It includes points we found on our own as well as additional points I didn't know about that were discussed in another thread on these forums (the thread is also listed as a resource at the bottom of our Qufim strategy page).

Nightmare enemies do link with statues. Pulling the Nightmare Rocs any distance would be tough because you have the Nightmare Snolls and the statues by Delkfutt's Tower to avoid and you'd probably link one or the other.

1000/2000/4000/10,000 Needles can be stunned, and it should only be the larger Nightmare Sabotender within the group you pull that uses 10,000 Needles. 1000 and 2000 Needles aren't too bad and don't really need Stun as long as you have people who can cast Curaga spread around your parties, and you're making sure the damage is distributed over many PCs.

[souleman]

DB map for quifim is better. We have found the ??? at points that are not on BGwki. BG is the old map that people used, but DB has been keeping it updated when new spawn points are found.

[Suiram]

1000/2000/4000/10,000 Needles can be stunned, and it should only be the larger Nightmare Sabotender within the group you pull that uses 10,000 Needles. 1000 and 2000 Needles aren't too bad and don't really need Stun as long as you have people who can cast Curaga spread around your parties, and you're making sure the damage is distributed over many PCs.

Also, while 1000, 2000, and 4000 are standard TP moves, 10,000 is a 2H (for the big ones only, as he said). When our dynamis LS gets enough BLMs, we usually split off and manaburn cactaurs while the rest of the alliance farms other stuff. A RDM/DRK watching for the dust cloud animation stuns it reliably.