Abyssea Discussion

[CaitsithCrumb]

Three things.

2.) Is there a definitive list in existence of the records of what actions create !!'s above monsters, their colors, and what effect each one has? I don't exactly feel like skimming 93 pages >.>

There is a separate thread for Abyssea NM weaknesses. Weaknesses seem random each time you fight a mob, so weakness for your first fight isn't necessarily weakness in the next fight. They seem to have 3 categories, Red (terror + high atma drop rate) caused by elemental ws, blue (increased drop rate) caused by physical weapon skills, and yellow (unnknown i think) caused by magic spells. Think there are some instances where these !! were caused by something else, but this seems to be the norm.

[Ibisariot]

Three things.

1.) Has anyone heard or seen any sign of the Iratham/Caturae listed in the VoA bestiary? And what does the bit about "Fringe researchers have posited a relationship to a recreational pastime of a long-lost civilization" mean?

Haven't heard anything about Iratham being spawned, myself. And I think it was mentioned elsewhere on here, but that description is likely referring to the fact that "Iratham" is a piece (similar to a Rook in Chess) in the Indian game Chaturanga. Other pieces may be showing up in future updates, least I hope so.

It's been a while since I've done CoP so I can't recall most of the details on the plot, sorry. I think that VoA requires only RoZ and WotG and not CoP, so I don't know how much they'd be connected. Probably no Abyssea - Al'Taieu in this case, though, haha.

[ronin sparthos]

To answer some of your questions:

1. Iratham has not spawned yet in Abyssea-Tahrongi yet meaning that either perhaps SE intends for him to appear closer to the release of Scars of Abyssea or because no servers have met the requirements. He is pitched as the endboss of Visions so perhaps all other NMs (a few arent still) must be operational before he can appear at all.

The bit about the ancient civilization? He appears to be a machine to the Abysseans so they assume it was created by an ancient civilization. The text also plays to the fact that the name Iratham refers to an ancient predecessor to chess in which an Iratham is a rook.

It basically guarantees that we'll see more endbosses with this theme in Scars/Heroes.

2. The !! weaknesses are basically randomized and what we know for sure is that red !!s terrorize and up the drop rate of atma (if said NM has) significantly.

Blue !!s up the drop rate of treasure but can make a monster significantly harder.

Grellow !!s enfeeble the monster (silence/amnesia) for a short period of time.

3.

Spoiler: show

It is my understanding that Abyssea connects more to the events of WoTG than CoP though I should note that it has been a long while since I have watched the CoP CS's.

The maws appearing in the new zones are a direct result of the Cait Sith awakening Atomos in order to carry out their plan to erase Lilith's vana'diel. After creating our vana'diel to be the substitute for Lilith's by the will of Altana, the plan went awry as Atomos opened doors to other worlds/times.

The original plan seemed to be opening maws only between our vana'diel and the shadowreign in order to influence history enough to make Lilith's world the "false" vana'diel and thus devoured by Atomos. What wasn't expected was that maws would open on Lilith's side allowing her to return to the shadowreign and put up a fight.

Abyssea just seems to be yet another case of the out of control Atomos creating links between worlds that should have remained isolated from eachother. This allows the Abysseans to request help from a far more prosperous world while at the same time demonstrating that Atomos can open up a portal to multiple timeperiods and dimensions.

I think I recall hearing that this was also SEs way of explaining a link between Vana'diel and Eorzea.

[urat]

Spoiler: show

Which now begs the question, where did all these abyssean fiends come from? Did maybe all of Cait Sith's fucking with time and space indirectly open up a portal between wherever the hell the abyssean fiends came from and the past vanadiel, resulting in a split of time into two different dimensions, the one we know well where that never happened and the one where it did and everyone got fucked up?

If so, that means the abyssea fiends were mostly concentrated in the three nations where they attacked.

My guess is Scars or Heroes will actually take place in the ruins of bastok/windy/sandy, trying to salvage the cities and save the survivors of the devastation. Also, because the fiends are concentrated here from the attack and the crag areas are far away, Im guessing the limules and cliniods are small fries out scouting territory, and the real enemies are closer to the hometowns.

Curious to see what higher tier fiends will look like =o

[Jeryhn]

"Chess" seems to be a common theme with both Abyssea and WotG (Lilith and Scholar stuff).

http://www.playonline.com/ff11/event...mg/5b_3472.jpg

The mob on the far left... any guesses as to what chess piece it could be?

[ronin sparthos]

It's an iron giant and it owes me some variant of Mighty Guard.

[urat]

"Chess" seems to be a common theme with both Abyssea and WotG (Lilith and Scholar stuff).

http://www.playonline.com/ff11/event...mg/5b_3472.jpg

The mob on the far left... any guesses as to what chess piece it could be?

Whenever I look at these mobs the first thing I think of is Kingdom Hearts... anyone else?

[miokomioko]

Rayman.

[urat]

Rayman.

Thanks for that, now I'm never going to get that out of my head

[Zadimortis]

Thanks for the help with the questions. =3 I'm not nearly as far as I should be along with the WotG storyline, so that explanation helped. And durr me at not seeing the other thread. I just keep refreshing this thread, haven't really looked at other threads. Will check there now.

I think the guy on the left more resembles a chess rook than Iratham, personally. It looks like a guard because of the bulky bits. Heck, if it wasn't raising a sword to attack the cameraman, I'd say it's not even an enemy. From what I've learned of manga/anime drawing, round and bulky shapes like cylinders and squares = good guys, and sharp points, triangles, french curves, and arbitrary twists = bad guys. Iratham definitely falls into the "bad guy" category, the monster above falls into the "good guy" category, except for the bit with the flames and the sword.

What I'm more curious about in that picture is the background. To the best of my recollection, SE has never posted any picture for updates, teasers, or anything at all in a meaningless, plain background. Update notes always show some zone in the background, and even seasonal events take place in recognizable cities. Heck, even the pictures of Mog Bonanza awards are taken in a mog house. But there definitely isn't anywhere in Abyssea yet that looks anything like where those three monsters are pictured.

That in mind, I have another question - Has anyone finished one or more of the three zone-specific HNM quests (Briareus/Glavoid/Kukulkan), then got a cutscene with Joachim (or elsewhere) after it? On Wiki, it lists that the quest "The Forbidden Frontier" comes after those three, but I already have it flagged, and I haven't even finished one of the zone-specific HNM quests (to my great dismay). I'm just wondering if there is any generic, non-zone-specific cutscene that explains the story/origins of Abyssea to a greater extent.

[urat]

I'm just wondering if there is any generic, non-zone-specific cutscene that explains the story/origins of Abyssea to a greater extent.

Just chat with the NPCs, especially the konshtat line, they'll tell you all about the stuff.

From what I gather basically it was an identical world to ours, and then randomly portals opened up and abyssean fiends started pouring out, and they proceeded to gang up and rape the three nations, possibly with the help of the beastmen and other monsters.

Which leads me to assume the current abyssean fiends, limules/cliniods, are simply the little guys of the abyssean hordes. The fiends are depicted as waves of smart monsters, capable of converging and acting as a group. I really don't think these retarded wandering around abyssean monsters would have managed to take down any of the three nations.

Thus, as eluded to by an NPC in konsh, there has to be smarter and much stronger fiends deeper towards the center of control, including some clear cut leader of the fiends.

I'm guessing this Irithram is some kind of sub general or soldier for the fiends. Even then this far out in the middle of nowhere I'm guessing he will be nothing compared to the things we have to deal with deeper into abyssea.

[Salmijr]

That in mind, I have another question - Has anyone finished one or more of the three zone-specific HNM quests (Briareus/Glavoid/Kukulkan), then got a cutscene with Joachim (or elsewhere) after it? On Wiki, it lists that the quest "The Forbidden Frontier" comes after those three, but I already have it flagged, and I haven't even finished one of the zone-specific HNM quests (to my great dismay). I'm just wondering if there is any generic, non-zone-specific cutscene that explains the story/origins of Abyssea to a greater extent.

Have completes 2/3 of the zone bosses, and it has yet to change. Maybe once we get AV out of our system and go back to abyssea we can finish the 3rd zone boss.

[Oulanbator]

Got a couple questions, not sure if it belongs here or into random question though. Sorry if it's noobish.

I've never done abyssea as an event to farm/pop monsters (only did xp).
- Is it worth it when doing a farm session to farm time extensions first ? Is it advised ?
- How much time could be build in 30ish minutes ? Do you know a good pattern to farm time. I don't see NM sessions reasonably go over 3Hours, so farming time for more than 30~45 minutes does sucks.

- Can you keep farming lights while moving to a different kind of monsters (like start on clionids, then move to bats) ?
- Do lights have an impact on drops from NMs ?

[Hanyoko]

Got a couple questions, not sure if it belongs here or into random question though. Sorry if it's noobish.

I've never done abyssea as an event to farm/pop monsters (only did xp).
- Is it worth it when doing a farm session to farm time extensions first ? Is it advised ?
- How much time could be build in 30ish minutes ? Do you know a good pattern to farm time. I don't see NM sessions reasonably go over 3Hours, so farming time for more than 30~45 minutes does sucks.

- Can you keep farming lights while moving to a different kind of monsters (like start on clionids, then move to bats) ?
- Do lights have an impact on drops from NMs ?

30 min of farming for TE will often result in 0. There are exceptions but they usually seem to appear better after an hour of farming lights. One tactic i've seen some groups use is they will do an exp session (4+ hours) and try for a lot of amber lights. This gives them exp/merits and lots of giant chests which contain pop items. They have bypassed fighting entire paths of NMs by luckly getting high tier pop items they wanted.

[Salmijr]

Yea, we did this in Konschtat with buggards, since those like to put out amber lights. But yea, start off like an xp party, build up your lights, get a few TEs, then switch focus and go for amber lights. You might even get a few refresh hairpins out of it. Then cycle your lights as needed. Need more TEs, switch back to magic killshots for a bit, etc.

[Zadimortis]

Got a couple questions, not sure if it belongs here or into random question though. Sorry if it's noobish.

I've never done abyssea as an event to farm/pop monsters (only did xp).
- Is it worth it when doing a farm session to farm time extensions first ? Is it advised ?
- How much time could be build in 30ish minutes ? Do you know a good pattern to farm time. I don't see NM sessions reasonably go over 3Hours, so farming time for more than 30~45 minutes does sucks.

- Can you keep farming lights while moving to a different kind of monsters (like start on clionids, then move to bats) ?
- Do lights have an impact on drops from NMs ?

- Even if you have a group who knows what they're doing, it's only worth building time if you're going to spend five or more hours in the zone, and are willing to spend two of those five farming for time. And again, emphasis on "group with skill." Don't even think of trying to "farm for time" with a pickup group. In fact, don't even think of doing a NM farm pickup group. Terrible, terrible idea.

- Only chance you'd have of getting time with 30 minutes to start is if a couple of black/blue mages entered ahead of time and built up their azure aura on T1 VNMs or whatnot, then got all the killshots for the group, so they would build azure aura while still getting TE's.

- Yes. You do not lose lights in a zone until you leave the zone. You do lose any invisible exp chain you have acquired.

- To the best of my knowledge, lights do not affect NM drops (other than chest drops, obviously).


And now, another question for y'alls. Has anyone pinpointed the effects of the abyssites that enhance blue/red/gold chest "fortune" (Scarlet Abyssite of Kismet/Azure Abyssite of Prosperity/Viridian Abyssite of Destiny, respectively)? And is the effect party/alliance wide, or is it limited to just your killshots? Basically, how do they work? (If we know)

[Lilswitche]

Incredibly difficult to pinpoint exactly what it does, but from what I could tell, from having both blue/gold chest fortune abyssites, it more than likely increases the potency of the lights you gain.

Yesterday we started a fresh group on coeurls, a sch and myself both in the group at the same time. Only amber lights obtainable were from red chests in this pt, however after having got amber lights a few times, my killshots were yielding giant gold chests and his (and anyone else that had joined at the time) were still yielding small chests.

If you were so inclined to test it, I would imagine it would be easiest to do in a fresh group with blue chests. Only problem is the chest spawn rate is so low at the start it's hard to obtain any concrete data.

[urat]

I managed to pop a top tier blue chest with said abyssite in 20 azure lights, whereas it normally takes 30-35, so it looks like, eyeballing it, you build up your light about 30% faster which is pretty decent.

[Oulanbator]

Ok, thanks for the answers.

I'm not planning to do Abyssea through pickups, more thinking about a shell (like there used to be sky shells or dyna shells). I don't think a 5H event is a good thing though, events and NMs require more concentration than an 18 man group killing xp mobs.
Farming pop items through xp parties is interesting, but it's really random and doesn't gives drops.
Having people building lights for TE before the whole group enters seems a nice idea though, but it might be hard to set.

Got another question though. Do NMs give lights, and do they give lights at a faster rate than xp mobs ?

[miokomioko]

NMs do give light just like any other mob and it has been assumed that the lights are of a higher potency via eyeball tests.