Sheep in Antlion's Clothing

[rog]

I tried this SMN solo. I timed out after bringing it down to 25%. The largest problems I had were: Garuda wasn't lasting long enough to get a 2nd pact off before she died, Pit ambush was doing 600 damage through stoneskin, and there was not much opportunity to make full use of sublimation. Also, drain does shit for damage. I think I could cut some time down in between phases, but it would be a very close win if possible.

use -dmg% gear for pit ambush. it hits me for like 300 or so on blm (all the -dmg% gear i use for blm can also be worn by smn).

Did you use any dark skill gear for drain? with a proper dark skill+macc build you should be able to get them to land fairly often. iirc with 291 skill+pluto's i land drain unresisted maybe 50-70% of the time (which leaves 25~20% or so as 1/2 resists, which are still decent damage). at best smn can get 266 skill (not including abyssal), and 31 macc, which is 297. that is nashira head+body, dark torque/earring/grip, merciful cape, goliard feet/hands, shadow legs, and balrahn's/omega, most of which isn't too hard to get, though some might be if you don't have rdm/blm.

if mp was an issue, then it might be worth releasing it between BPs.

meleeing alongside garuda may also be an option. even without proper dd gear, something is always better than nothing, and you could also get some extra mp from spirit taker.

[LurkaKitty]

I've been duoing/trioing this fight as RDM/NIN and BLM/RDM and COR/WHM if they choose to come along. All you need is the .dat swap. I changed black antlions into wyrm's, so now after the first pop and sandpit, I just have my BLM partner wait by the start, and I'll go find the biggest Wyrm and pull him all the way back.

Very easy, very quick, very safe. We won within 7 mins our first time trying it as a duo.

Could you please direct me as to which .dat file is the correct one for black antlions? I`ve looked through modelviewer and altanaviewer and can`t seem to find it. (though, I did just come back to game a few months ago and it`s been aaaages since i`ve messed around with MV/AV)

[Vakso]

I had good number of PMs sent to me about how to do this .dat swap, and Lurakitty above. I had reponsed with step by step directions on how to do this. What I forgot to mention and I'm a very lazy person so instead of sending another bulk PM to how many ever people, I'll just mention what I left out here.

All 4 Black antions in the ENM will appear as the same monster that you interested (or swapped) over, be it a wrym or something like a behemoth. Tuchulcha will be the largest of the 4. Thats the bit of info I forgot about. Sorry about that. GL!

[cdgreg]

for the people who vakso pm'd. Did this method work and are those the correct dats?

[Illek♫]

Tried this ENM today for the 1st time, DRG solo.

Wyvern kept taking hate and died when Tuchulcha was at about 80% hp.

Does this NM deal with hate differently or was I just unlucky? Wyvern never takes hate during solo usually... If I can get around that i'm sure I'd have a good chance at soloing it.

Will post back if I win, couldn't find any info on DRG soloing this apart from one comment on FFXIclopedia.

# Can be soloed by a skilled Dragoon, Samurai, or Red Mage.

[Wolfknight]

Tried this ENM today for the 1st time, DRG solo.

Wyvern kept taking hate and died when Tuchulcha was at about 80% hp.

Does this NM deal with hate differently or was I just unlucky? Wyvern never takes hate during solo usually... If I can get around that i'm sure I'd have a good chance at soloing it.

Will post back if I win, couldn't find any info on DRG soloing this apart from one comment on FFXIclopedia.

Dunno, I've duo'd it before w/drg+various jobs fine never really attempted solo.

[rog]

Tried this ENM today for the 1st time, DRG solo.

Wyvern kept taking hate and died when Tuchulcha was at about 80% hp.

Does this NM deal with hate differently or was I just unlucky? Wyvern never takes hate during solo usually... If I can get around that i'm sure I'd have a good chance at soloing it.

Will post back if I win, couldn't find any info on DRG soloing this apart from one comment on FFXIclopedia.

It shouldn't. Did you use high/super jump right before it pulled hate? Should probably only use them right after each time you pull it if your wyvern is pulling hate.

[Thorny]

Tried this ENM today for the 1st time, DRG solo.

Wyvern kept taking hate and died when Tuchulcha was at about 80% hp.

Does this NM deal with hate differently or was I just unlucky? Wyvern never takes hate during solo usually... If I can get around that i'm sure I'd have a good chance at soloing it.

Will post back if I win, couldn't find any info on DRG soloing this apart from one comment on FFXIclopedia.

You used High/Super Jump(which sheds a large portion of your hate) or your damage blows horribly, either way.

[Illek♫]

High jumped at start with Wyrm Brais (-50% hate) but shouldn't really have affected hate as I only only dealt maybe 1 hit and a Jump. It was only really whenever it used Healing Breath that hate shifted which never usually happens. Got of a 1000+ Penta but that didn't keep hate for too long :s

[Hioki]

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/6333/drgsolo.jpg

First time doing it about a few weeks back, on 360, no drop.

My gear is far from great, used Carbonara since it was my first try. Used Rabbit pie on my second attempt and was a bit easier, though I ended up getting the other 3 antlions first. Very easy solo if you have some enm+ merits, /blu for cocoon, and have a DMG-% set.

[Tzar]

Just soloed this as drg/blu in 12 mins 50 secs, was a very easy solo despite my wyvern dying once due to poison. Used carbo to increase the trigger point for HB, only HB gear i used was AF helm, Relic Helm and af+1 legs. Made sure not to use high jump or super jump to make sure my wyvern didn't take hate. Foragers dropped aswell so that made my day :D

[Yugl]

High jumped at start with Wyrm Brais (-50% hate) but shouldn't really have affected hate as I only only dealt maybe 1 hit and a Jump. It was only really whenever it used Healing Breath that hate shifted which never usually happens. Got of a 1000+ Penta but that didn't keep hate for too long :s

Maybe you should post some merits/gear. It's odd that it would occur AFTER HB since the HB itself is hateless, but the spell itself can generate enmity (Depending on what you use, I use Barspells to build enmity/cast HB fast).

[Illek♫]

Thanks for replies, definatly know it's soloable now!

Maybe you should post some merits/gear. It's odd that it would occur AFTER HB since the HB itself is hateless, but the spell itself can generate enmity (Depending on what you use, I use Barspells to build enmity/cast HB fast).

Yeah I was thinking that was weird as well.
Gear is:
Thalassocrat, Pole Grip, ___, Tiphia Sting
O.Hat, Chiv. Chain, Assault, Fowling
Pahluwan Khazagand, Wyrm Fngr. Gauntlets, Iota, Ulthalam's
Amemet +1, Potent Belt, Barone Cosciales, Gavial Greaves (Really need new feet equip, but -2% Damage helps for this I guess.)

Merits (worth noting) are:
Polearm 8/8
Crit. hit rate + 4/4
- Emnity 1/4 (This probably isn't helping).

[Thorny]

more of a problem than your -1% enmity from merits is the quality of your gear.. you're sitting on a flat 0% haste and still less accuracy than a full homam drg has

i'm not saying this to be mean, it's just a reality that a large portion of hate generation comes from damage especially in a situation like this

[Illek♫]

more of a problem than your -1% enmity from merits is the quality of your gear.. you're sitting on a flat 0% haste and still less accuracy than a full homam drg has

i'm not saying this to be mean, it's just a reality that a large portion of hate generation comes from damage especially in a situation like this

No offence taken ^^; I could use W.Turban but don't really have any other haste pieces to back it up. And my ACC Has never been a problem, i'm usually around the ACC cap from whenever I look at parse results. I'll try better attack food next time and see if there's an improvement.

[rog]

No offence taken ^^; I could use W.Turban but don't really have any other haste pieces to back it up. And my ACC Has never been a problem, i'm usually around the ACC cap from whenever I look at parse results. I'll try better attack food next time and see if there's an improvement.

You don't need any other haste gear for turban to be better than ohat, in high acc situations. Though you should still work on getting dusk hands+feet, as well as swift belt.

[Yugl]

Thanks for replies, definatly know it's soloable now!



Yeah I was thinking that was weird as well.
Gear is:
Thalassocrat, Pole Grip, ___, Tiphia Sting
O.Hat, Chiv. Chain, Assault, Fowling
Pahluwan Khazagand, Wyrm Fngr. Gauntlets, Iota, Ulthalam's
Amemet +1, Potent Belt, Barone Cosciales, Gavial Greaves (Really need new feet equip, but -2% Damage helps for this I guess.)

Merits (worth noting) are:
Polearm 8/8
Crit. hit rate + 4/4
- Emnity 1/4 (This probably isn't helping).

I would get rid of that enmity merit even if this weren't a problem. FFXI teaches you quickly that enmity merits can come to kick your ass should you decide to level a class that relies on/doesn't want enmity. You could probably sell that Potent belt and make close to the gil needed for Dusk feet. Full time AF+1 legs will net you more ACC. Depending on your server, you can also sell that Tiphia Sting temporarily to buy Dusk Hands (Or feet if Potent Belt isn't enough) which will net you more haste. Also, unless you're soloing Marids/Aquarius, you don't get much out of Gavial Boots (Try for Askar if you need Feet like that). Just a few cheap options if you need gil.

[Atolm]

So I've been trying this as drg/blu, with a good def food mob is easy, but I found the Bind from Sandspit to be extremely annoying, because you lose more than a min bound each 25% and if you're unlucky with your ws dmg time limit draws near. Can you dodge Sandspit with Super Jump? I didn't try yet (can't do the enm till Wednesday) but I guess not since Tuchulcha doesn't seem to "ready" the ws, he simply uses it.

[stewie]

So I've been trying this as drg/blu, with a good def food mob is easy, but I found the Bind from Sandspit to be extremely annoying, because you lose more than a min bound each 25% and if you're unlucky with your ws dmg time limit draws near. Can you dodge Sandspit with Super Jump? I didn't try yet (can't do the enm till Wednesday) but I guess not since Tuchulcha doesn't seem to "ready" the ws, he simply uses it.

Switch gear while you move while bound, it'll be slow but you'll at least be moving.

[Yugl]

So I've been trying this as drg/blu, with a good def food mob is easy, but I found the Bind from Sandspit to be extremely annoying, because you lose more than a min bound each 25% and if you're unlucky with your ws dmg time limit draws near. Can you dodge Sandspit with Super Jump? I didn't try yet (can't do the enm till Wednesday) but I guess not since Tuchulcha doesn't seem to "ready" the ws, he simply uses it.

I recently tried it as DRG/BLU as well, and I find that this can easily mess up your run no matter how good you are. Even if you blink run (Which I did), you'll have time issues if you aren't lucky with the NM. On my run, I only used the blink trick once because it's risky due to the possibility of aggro while running. I actually found the NM three times in a row, so it wasn't that bad, but I can imagine it being worse in other situations. If I get the chance to solo again, I'll try /WHM and see if I can handle the DMG (170 DMG per hit) using Kabobs or Tav items.