Abyssea

let me know if you find it PLEASE!!! lol

I want serpents set

IF you switch out members, you have to make sure that the new members do NOT GET THE KILL SHOT. It will make the xp go down for everyone.

Once the "new" people have been there for about an hour, then it's okay. If you have the right tank, the new people can just switch targets to the next one that the tank is on.

Recently went with a group of 6 and in 90 minutes we couldn't have gotten more than 7k the whole time we were there. EXP was around 150 per kill, on efts in Highlands. Based on what I'd heard, I was going for azure light and killing a ton of mobs with magic, but never got any time extensions. We'll probably head in with a lot more this coming week, but if someone would like to suggest the best way to get some more rapid exp and/or time extensions or what they did to do so, I'd be all ears.

Updated the known drops list.

New adds are:

Item	NM
Harmony Cape	Hadhayosh
Praeda Sabatons	Balaur
Serpentes Cuffs	Mictlantecuhtli
Varangian Helm	Khalamari

Please elaborate. Have you done this? If so, which mobs, what was your setup, and what lights (if any) did you focus on?

I haven't heard of a group starting out with less than ~12-14 getting enough TEs for hours worth of extra time.

Just an observation of going both blm and sam to these kinda parties now, I believe with strong 8 members its probably possible to do this not much slower than some 18man alliances could. Considering some of the time ppl afk or are lets face it gimp. Could probably solo sc a bird for example 600rana 1300 gekko 1300 darkness magic burst 2k dmg pretty much a dead mob. 2 strong sams, a monk to tank a dnc for haste samba a brd double march an 80 rdm, then another pty with 2 blms would do it id imagine.

I agree that it's possible. Like I said, I haven't heard of it being done yet.

There's also the whole issue of which lights should be gone after and when to make a PT actually get TEs. An alliance will go through mobs quick enough that they have a good amount of breathing room.

My group has 7 constant folks now (2 more that are still on the roster but haven't been to the last 2 runs). I'm thinking of getting us to 12 and stopping there. It seems like a good number to reliably get the TEs to make succesful XP/cruor sessions and take down NMs. I'd also much rather juggle the NM wants of 12 people than 18.

Edit: Posted this before the above post was posted.

I'll keep that in mind and give it a shot with my group.

This has been the case for each of our last exp sessions.

There's really no trouble in keeping the chain with less people and getting up to the tier for TE chest.

People seem to focus too much on certain kill shots though thus slowing down their overall kill rates. Unlike the above poster, we don't try to get magic kills on everything, but with an alliance, it takes about 45 mins to reach max tier/chest drop rate.

The azure lights also seem to trigger from skill chain damage (eg: Darkness kill).

It's a matter of luck if your blue chests are time or something else. We've found several time chests back to back, just like sometimes we get several cruor chests back to back.

Since exp isn't much reduced depending on how many people there are in the group, 6 people could get as much/kill as an alliance.

I don't believe that capping azure light is what you need to get blue chests every kill. You'll never get blue chests every kill. It caps the tiers, sure, but once on max tier for azure, you just want max chest drop rates (melee/WS/Ruby lights).

Once you get max chest drop rate, well, in an alliance, 2 people spamming chests aren't enough to pop all chests as up to 10 may be lying on the ground (1 per kill).

Edit: All sessions were on the mandragoras, and everyone would cap out their jobs from 75 to 80 and max merit before even reaching the 600exp/kill mark anyways, at one point, more exp off a kill at the base becomes redundant

Easy mobs are easy

To compliment my previous post,

Every exp session, we get multiple gold boxes which contain pop items (there rare ones) for nearly every NM in the zone.

The pop items can be tier II NM drops as well, so doing an exp farm might bypass those annoying/bad drop nms to go up in tiers.

Also, the BIG BOXES dropped several interesting items

I've obtained a Overgrown Mandragora bud and Chipped Sandworm tooth (Tier IV NM drops) which are the Zone boss pops, from the BIG BOX dropped off regular Pachypodiums (mandys)

Other items included new craft-able gems, durium ore, Phryingite ore (however it's spelled), all the new WHM BRD BLM RDM and NIN spells.

Screenshot for proof

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb58/Zerker7/Abyssea/Keyitemsfromgiantbox.jpg

Ya, I don't know image tags, and I don't give a ***, go see or don't.

I am not interested in popping it at this time.

We're more casual group and if we feel like dicking around and get completely murdered, then I'll post about it.

He clearly doesn't care what others think, as right he shouldn't! He's Zero for ***'s sake!

If he really wanted he could just look the NM in the eye and order it to kill itself, but where's the fun? :P

@Zero: When you obtained these items were you doing anything in particular? Did you have a certain "feeble light" glow? When I'm in there we typically go for azure light for time extensions; can any light get the types of chest you refer to? I'd really like to beat the Tahrongi NM so any additional information is appreciated.

Damnit, I just hit Ctrl+R to reply to someone and was on this page <_<.

What exactly do you have to do lose your chain? I know killing other types of mobs or NMs will break it, but aside from that, is it just a time limit on killing the next mob like in a regular exp party? The reason I ask is because if you have more chests than 1-2 people can open, and they're offering TE's 1250 exp or 1k cruor, wouldn't it be worth pulling some people off the killing to help open the chests? I'd have thought that even at 600exp per kill, slowing the kill rate down a little in order to pop all those chests could be worth-while. I'm just not sure how big the risk of breaking chain is if you decide to do that?

Another thing, my earlier suggestion about swapping between exp and NM's, I didn't realise that the 120 minute time limit only took effect when re-entering the zone. If it's true that exp can get your time limit well above for the duration of your current stay, then it sounds like that's the perfect solution to getting in as much NM time as possible.

The ideal abyssea run would start out with exp, kill stuff for 2-3 hours until you A: have a heap of exp/merits and B: have a lot of extra time (3-4 hours). Then at the very least, you can use all the time you have over 120 minutes to kill NMs. Using this method, I don't see a reason why a dedicated group can't spend as much time in abyssea as they damn well please. You could go every single day for hours on end. The only slight downfall to this plan, and I'm not sure about this, is this; Do you have to have a traverser stone to enter abyssea if you already have left-over visitant time? Actually, even if you do, if you had 120 minutes left over, you can pick that up without using another stone can't you?

See I actually thought it might be that way. I think if I had most of an alliance and I got to the stage where there ~10 chests on the ground, I'd probably just keep one strong party killing and pull everyone off to catch up on chests for a bit. Just make sure that the same person (LS leader perhaps) opens all the big chests for the pop items.

Snipped your post a bit.

Losing chain only happens when a different mob is killed. CFHing any aggroing mobs (i.e. ephemeral) will prevent them from breaking chain. Time between kills won't reduce XP from everything I've seen.

If you have THAT many chests spawning that 2 people can't handle it, you should probably be using keys on some of them anyway. TEs are always worth a key if you're low on chest opening time. Same for the HUGE chests if they contain key items.

No risk as far as I can tell. Just make sure whoever is getting killshots doesn't change to opening chests or you risk getting a lower tier chest.

No, but there is a risk that you might lose any leftover time if you don't use a stone. Currently unknown how people are losing time even when exiting with visitant status and more than 5 minutes. I wouldn't risk it personally.

Also, one other thing of note. You can only raise your time limit to a max of 120 without zoning out. What this means: If you zone in and have 60 minutes remaining, don't use more than two stones without zoning. If you use a third it will add a single minute to your remaining time (even if you only have 10 minutes left on the clock when you trade the third stone).

Hang on a sec, that means the glow is based only on the person getting the kill-shot? So if you make sure that one person gets the kill-shot every single time, will your exp/cruor/chest rate increase faster? I would have thought everyone in the alliance, or at least everyone with enmity would have their glow increase at the same rate?

Ok, let me see if I can explain this better.

Say you have 2 WARs in your PT. One gimp, one pimp. If the gimp occasionally gets the kill, and a chest pops, it will probably be a lower tier than the pimp WAR. This is how groups end up getting the lower tier chests despite several of the 1k+ chests in between.

Now if you have a balanced PT with kill shots going around, you will see that it takes longer for the chests to reach max tier. However, once you reach max tier, you shouldn't have an issue with occasionally getting a lower tier.

Keep in mind there's some theory tossed in this post. Nothing is 100% right now.

Edit: Also, it's my understanding, that you won't get TEs unless you have the max tier of blue chests.

So has anyone come up with what color lights go with what killed them. Like Azure seems to go with Magic Kills or am
I misunderstanding. Also can any light be spammed and max out to get TE chests?

Azure light = magic kills (blue spells count as well even if they're physical)
Ruby light = WS kill
Pearlescent = Melee kill (includes jump and pet kills(at least SMN confirmed))

This is the best summary I've found for what to do based on the current theories.

Edit: Of course, this isn't the only way to do or the only recommendation, but it was the first one I stumbled upon while double checking the light info.

Thanks,

Will try that next time i join a group. Most people i have partied with so far can't even seem to understand changing mobs kill xp. Had to cfh the glowing mobs several times in a party i was in the other day.

/comfort

This is why I lead my own group and keep it limited to folks that can follow directions.

Does it still count as melee if your avatar uses a magical blood pact?

What does geocrush count as? Saw a SS of it giving pearlescent.

I'm pretty sure I've seen a wyvern get both pearlescent and ruby lights on kills, but I've got to doublecheck my logs.