Three man Citadel Chelonian.

[mdkuser]

Since a few people PMed me to ask the startegy I used to low man the Usukane Body NM, I'll post it here. This NM is probably the hardest NM to pop in salvage.

Set up:

Done it many times with RDM THF MNK, we kill CC with 15 minutes left if we did no mistakes.
Done it only once with RDM BRD MNK and had only 3 minutes left when CC died (droped though ).
Failed to do it with RDM THF BRD ( poped CC but couldnt kill it).


http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/d...714_115852.png


SHORT VERSION:
setup= rdm/whm thf/nin mnk/nin.
1F= Go east. Farm 3 SJ ABI MAGIC WPN and 1 MP 2 HP minimum. (15 minutes)
2F= skip, warp SW.
3F= kill gear/gears in GG3 room except one, that you keep slept. Kill the right door and warp. (50 minute)
4F= Sac pull 2 doors to start. ( 65 minutes)
Sac pull the 2 other doors ( 80 minutes)
Pull and kill the NM (90 minutes).


LONG VERSION:

Use the escape trick to enter with 3.

Time= 0 Minutes.

1F= Take the East route (not the NM route), because the formors there seem easier and drop more cells per. Anyway warp after you get at least 3 wpn 3 SJ 3 abi 3 magic 1 Mp 2 HP. Most of the time your 3 guys will be 80% fully unlocked by now , cells seem to be semi static. The 8 fomor in the big room drop static cells too, but they take too long to kill.

Time= 15-20 minutes.

2F= skip, warp SW. Rdm buffs while THF flees to warp.

Time= 20-25 minutes.

3F= Sneak to Giroscopic Gears room. Pull gear/gears without links. Don't kill the last one, and start killing the door. If Gear aggro, keep it slept. Kill the Pets poped by the rampart asap ( Rdm can't sleep skelettons and hounds, and you don't want him to die while sleeping adds).

Time= 45-55 minute.

4F= Move to the main room immediatly. Check a few chests otw and hope for a fanatic's drink. But don't waste too much time doing it.

At all time, you must know where the train of gear is. All you need to know is that it takes 10 minutes to make its loop.

THF sac pulls 2 doors, monk claims and brings them to start. RDM checks chests while monk is pulling, hoping for fanatics. THF dies , reraises, and go back to the first coffer room and spams chests for fanatics.

RDM keeps one door slept, monk soloes the second door. Thief helps when unweak. When pets pop, kill them immediately, they are actually strong and hard to solo on monk (easy on thf though).


The point of getting a fanatic's drink, is that the THF can just /logout instead of dying, thus doubling the dammage on the doors.

If all went fine, the train of gear should be back at start when the first door is at ~25%, and you now have 10 minutes to finish this door and kill the second one. That's plenty of time. If you made mistakes though, don't hesitate using 100 fist and chainspell nuke to speed things up.

Time= 65 minutes (?).

Wait for the gear train to come back again to start, and follow them, spam chests for fanatics etc. Do the second sac pull and kill the last two doors.

Time= 80 minutes (if you got fanatics), 90 else.

Pull and kill the NM at start. It takes 2 minutes to pull the NM. It takes 6-8 minutes with MNK+THF to kill it. Only dia2 and paralyze seem to proc with my super gimp mule rdm. When shadows are down move away and recast, the NM walks very slowly, and you can gravity it to help as well.

[Lordwafik]

A tip for the actual NM fight, if you go to the hallway just before the NM and squeeze into the 90 degree angle corner, the gears don't aggro since it's a blind spot, and they don't link to Citadel either, so you can stay fighting him in the corner , just don't cast magic when they are getting close and you'll be fine - you should have plenty of HP meds anyway from the chests.

[Hyan]

Good info, ty o/

[SamanosukeShiva]

nice one

A tip for the actual NM fight, if you go to the hallway just before the NM and squeeze into the 90 degree angle corner, the gears don't aggro since it's a blind spot, and they don't link to Citadel either, so you can stay fighting him in the corner , just don't cast magic when they are getting close and you'll be fine - you should have plenty of HP meds anyway from the chests.

this is true

[Crizto]

A tip for the actual NM fight, if you go to the hallway just before the NM and squeeze into the 90 degree angle corner, the gears don't aggro since it's a blind spot, and they don't link to Citadel either, so you can stay fighting him in the corner , just don't cast magic when they are getting close and you'll be fine - you should have plenty of HP meds anyway from the chests.

Gears link with Citadel?

[Kaiyoko]

Is it possible you could switch the rdm with a whm?

[Wizerd]

A tip for the actual NM fight, if you go to the hallway just before the NM and squeeze into the 90 degree angle corner, the gears don't aggro since it's a blind spot, and they don't link to Citadel either, so you can stay fighting him in the corner , just don't cast magic when they are getting close and you'll be fine - you should have plenty of HP meds anyway from the chests.

They also pass by very pass without a pause at the corner, so you only need to stop magic for like 10 seconds. Usually your Utsusemi timers will carry you through that time, even without Haste or Marches.

[Liseth]

A tip for the actual NM fight, if you go to the hallway just before the NM and squeeze into the 90 degree angle corner, the gears don't aggro since it's a blind spot, and they don't link to Citadel either, so you can stay fighting him in the corner , just don't cast magic when they are getting close and you'll be fine - you should have plenty of HP meds anyway from the chests.

Word. We do the same thing. Dunno why some groups kill the train. Good post btw.

[pchan]

Word. We do the same thing. Dunno why some groups kill the train. Good post btw.

Killing the train of gears takes 4 minutes (with 2H and with 3 melees), while pulling doors at start is 2'30 if you pull all 4 or 2x2'30 if you pull twice. I usually prefer killing the train when we go with 6+ because we don't have to worry about it this way and I don't think it's easy to pull all 4 doors + boss at start (chariot has enhanced speed I think, well at least kiting the doors is easy) in case you go for the boss too.


The corner method is only good with CC (saves 3+ minutes since it's a slow turtle..) as the gears would link to the doors.

As for rdm vs whm, I don't know how "well" whm can sleep those doors and gears. I know they resist a gimped rdm (caped skill+AF body+nq staff) like 50% of the time, so only repose would be reliable.

[Wizerd]

Killing the train of gears takes 4 minutes (with 2H and with 3 melees), while pulling doors at start is 2'30 if you pull all 4 or 2x2'30 if you pull twice. I usually prefer killing the train when we go with 6+ because we don't have to worry about it this way and I don't think it's easy to pull all 4 doors + boss at start (chariot has enhanced speed I think, well at least kiting the doors is easy) in case you go for the boss too.


The corner method is only good with CC (saves 3+ minutes since it's a slow turtle..) as the gears would link to the doors.

As for rdm vs whm, I don't know how "well" whm can sleep those doors and gears. I know they resist a gimped rdm (caped skill+AF body+nq staff) like 50% of the time, so only repose would be reliable.

Ramparts sleep nicely to light based sleep, unlike gears.

Also, we save our 2hrs for LAC, so recently when we've been going we've just sac pulled the doors. Previously, when we killed the 6 gears, it would take us around 5-6 minutes I think. Not sure why but the whole floor seems to take us 10 minutes less if we just hurry up, pull the 4 ramparts back (doesn't take 2:30, maybe 1:30-2min max), then kill that -> citadel -> chariot once the gears pass by, and up.

Anyway, the gear train wasn't the point of this thread I assume, since a trio won't do well on it.

[Uzor]

Gears are hard to sleep with Repose, but I can do it, albeit unreliably. Gears are strong to light, while ramparts are weak to light, and can be slept pretty much 100% of the time with Repose. If you do this strategy, a WHM/BLM could maybe replace a RDM. However, a RDM won't have the same MP issues a WHM/BLM would, as RDM have Refresh and Convert, unlike RDM.

While I don't doubt a good WHM could do it, a RDM would be far better.

As for the gear train when going for boss, the gear train takes about 4 min to kill, and makes the rest of the run easier and less stressful, and leaves larger room for mistakes. As Pchan said, if you aim on doing the boss afterwards, it is much easier imo to clear the train (takes like 4 min), then pull the ramparts and chariot in the same pull and sleep the ramparts while you kill the chariot in the last room before rampart room. You should still be able to do all NM's + boss with plenty of time left that way.

[Kaylia]

3F= kill gear/gears in GG3 room except one, that you keep slept. Kill the right door and warp. (50 minute)

Out of curiosity, couldnt you just have someone aggro everything and train them away? The mnk can hundred fist the rampart and kill it quickly, while the thief train everything away.

50 min seem horribly long on a useless floor that require you to kill a single monsters.

[SamanosukeShiva]

Gears link with Citadel?

hmmmmmm...........

A tip for the actual NM fight, if you go to the hallway just before the NM and squeeze into the 90 degree angle corner, the gears don't aggro since it's a blind spot, and they don't link to Citadel either, so you can stay fighting him in the corner , just don't cast magic when they are getting close and you'll be fine - you should have plenty of HP meds anyway from the chests.

[Thorny]

50 min seemed like the running total to me

[Wizerd]

Out of curiosity, couldnt you just have someone aggro everything and train them away? The mnk can hundred fist the rampart and kill it quickly, while the thief train everything away.

50 min seem horribly long on a useless floor that require you to kill a single monsters.

Hundred Fists won't kill the Rampart in time.. you've seen how much HP it has. The gears and ramparts lose aggro easily, so unless it's one of the back two Ramparts, training doesn't work well. If it is one of the back two, you can hope that when the gears do get back to the room to idle, they won't wander over to you very quickly.

[Lordwafik]

Non moving rampart has way more HP than anything else. Especially if you're doing this bardless so no buffs outside the meds you get from the chests.

[Kaylia]

Hundred Fists won't kill the Rampart in time.. you've seen how much HP it has. The gears and ramparts lose aggro easily, so unless it's one of the back two Ramparts, training doesn't work well. If it is one of the back two, you can hope that when the gears do get back to the room to idle, they won't wander over to you very quickly.

I was thinking it would be a ~3min kill with hundred fist and chainspell, but meh, I guess the lack of brd will hurt you. I know they have a fuck ton of hp, but I never use special against it either, and we rarely have more than 2 melee on it

It's probably doable easily if it's one of the back two ramparts (can tell with .dat swap). The rdm could always sleep (or train) the add again if they come back near the end.

[Mojo]

Add a BRD to that set up and you could do HB > PK > GG > CC. 1 NM per person ! >_>

[Wizerd]

Add a BRD to that set up and you could do HB > PK > GG > CC. 1 NM per person ! >_>

As much as I would love to do this, I don't quite see how.

I assume Hammerblow floor is done using RDM supertank, with weapon, and a couple other equipment slots (depending on what's available). Would BLU supertank work?

However, with 1 less melee than a 6-man setup, Powderkeg room will take a decent portion longer, and with less healing, 2 melees on Gyroscopic Gears might be a little too much.

I'd like to hear more about this because it would be fun to do.

[Mojo]

I've done it plenty of times with RDM BRD MNK MNK, although I'm sure that if you were well geared and everyone was a good player RDM BRD MNK THF would also work. Your BRD should bring a Reraise Hairpin as well as a Hermes quencher.

I was the Red Mage for all of these runs. I went as RDM/BLU for a few reasons. I was always pulling, so Cocoon was fantastic for that. I also have a decent melee set, which helped push through 1F + 2F much quicker and Blue Mage subjob gives you access to Vorpal Blade. Healing Breeze is also highly efficient, which was good because we didn't have a second WHM or whatever for when GG got spammy.

1F - Farm all four rooms out as quickly as you can. You will need the cells to clear Hammerblow room, you really shouldn't skip any. The MNK should be getting most of the gear first(typical Salvage method anyways). When you've cleared the four rooms, it's time for Hammerblow room. Phalanx II is required for this part, at least the way I do it. Fully geared MNK with Protect + Phalanx II shouldn't take much damage from the fomor, so just buff up and have him charge in first. You should kill the RDM fomor first, Dispel and other spells can be obnoxious. One of the fomor TP moves is defense -50%(will also overwrite Cocoon), so your Bard will need to pay attention with Erase. Vicar's drinks are also handy for this.

You really don't need to do anything beyond that. No Terra Staff, no Arhat's, etc. It is not necessary and will just slow you down.

2F - This floor can be challenging, there are many mobs to kill here. If your Red Mage is good a pulling, you won't have too much trouble. Nothing else to say other than keep buffs up and plow through everything as quickly as you can. If you get too many links you'll easily get overwhelmed, so avoid linking at all. If you can pull an Imp cleanly then that is the priority. When all of the Imps are down it becomes very easy.

3F - The Red Mage pulls gears to the beginning of the gear/rampart room as quickly as the others can kill them. Keep Haste up on your melee between pulls and keep your Bard Refreshed, as he'll be doing most of the curing, although you can stop and do a Healing Breeze if necessary. Cocoon + Phalanx + Protect IV + Tavnazian Tacos will take the gear's melee attacks down quite low, so you shouldn't have to worry too much about dieing just be careful. Bard could probably pull here although I don't recommend it. Sometimes I would deliberately link the Ramparts so I could see if they were 'the one.' If they weren't, I would deaggro them with Gravity while pulling other mobs. I don't really think a Bard is as well equipped to do this room but it's probably still possible.

4F - If you haven't found a Fanatics Drink in a chest, you will need to farm one here. Your Bard should be the one who gets it. When you're ready, Fanatics + Hermes(You can probably find one in boxes but if you don't use the one you bought) > train the gear/rampart/chariot room South. The rest of your group should grab the ramparts and take them back to the room you entered this floor on and begin fighting them. Your Bard can make his way back to you after he dies/reraises(if he's good/lucky he'll deaggro them all). Make sure to clear any pets that pop out of the ramparts after each rampart or else they can cause problems(remember you have 1 RDM sleeping everything here). Your Bard will return to you at some point, have him Soul Voice to make clearing this part quicker. After the ramparts are dead, pull the turtle back to the room and kill it.

Either way, it's very similar to a standard run with just a few exceptions. You don't need MNKs only either, I've done it with WAR as well as DRK. I've finished with as much as 15 minutes remaining so there is definitely room for error, although one huge fuck up will end the run.