Most Difficult (winnable) Fight Ever In This Game?

What? They were both killed...

Probably Tumult Creator at release, or perhaps Daquwaka pre-ilvl.

The only reasons the CoP fights were difficult were because of inferior job availability back then (lots of people only had jobs that were bad at one or several of the fights, and very few had true flexibility), and inferior gear (for the level), as few people were willing to put as much effort into gearing at 50 as they did at 75. The fights themselves were not THAT bad if you knew the gimmicks and brought medicine.

Vytra was a true pain. Undead adds for days and charm made him extremely annoying. Years later after job updates and gear he was zergable but it was still quite the event. A buffed and charmed Apoc DrK would quickly dispatch your alliance.

I'd vote for a raged HNM. :)

I been playing science beta to wotg, quit and came back 1 year ago. So from the time I played I'd have to vote for AV when he came out. Before any nerfs.

PW was very hard, no zerg gimmic like AV had. No matter what you did it was a long fight. My LS had to pair up with another top end hnmls to even have enough ppl to kill him, however when I got shenlongs.... lets just say that was an amazing feeling never again replicated. From my knowledge I was the first 75 pup to have them, and for sure one of the first 5, that was a great achievement back then.

Sounds like you had yourself some fun lol

Was PW actually killed prenerf? I mean that 16 hour fight ended up with an L. And think every pre nerf win on AV resulted in a patch to "fix" it

I don't recall Daquwaka pre ilv being that hard, it was 1/1 or 1/2 (I don't remember) back then.

I think the key was using JP setup, using at least 1 DD RUN per pt . Without DD RUN it was really easy to wipe. NA top end endgame community at that time frenquently pushed high risk high reward setup with real DD only like MNK DRK etc. So many groups copied and pasted such risky setup and wiped if their support wasn't top.

Also if your group can clear Tojil then Daquwaka got much easier because of H2H from Tojil.

Legion hall of Mul at release was probably close to most difficult fight in post 75 endgame? Or maybe NNI?

Didn;t someone die fighting PW or AV?

someone got sick while fighting Pandemonium Warden.

https://www.destructoid.com/final-fantasy-xi-boss-causes-vomiting-takes-18-hours-to-beat-99391.phtml

the second pandemonium warden is the obvious winner, it needed more bodies setup and coordination than anything else

master trials probably a (not so close) second, if you look at them with only the gear and gameplay available at time of release

most of the stuff people are talking about was never objectively hard, players were just bad

Ehhhh the players are still bad but programs are a hell of a handicap.

Everything was objectively harder because of access to things comparatively.

"the second pw" is Tumult? Cause they SMN burn that. and anything in the "use smn" category is null and void from being called difficult.

Nah, pw after the nerf reducing it to 2hrs. The 20 hour shitfest that was only experienced by one shell doesn't count for anything. They might have just sucked, nobody ever got a second whack to see what it was all about.

I always thought Odin in Einherjar was pretty brutal before and even after the cap raise. I had a shell that beat him as soon as the 80 cap happened, but it might have had more to do with, we couldn't get people interested in Einherjar for a long time after it came out.

It's kind of relative for the most part, outside of AV and PW type stuff though. Some bosses were just too shitty hard to mess with, with a bad setup to take against them. But I guess really moreso, there was this string of most people wanting to play jobs like WAR/SAM/DRK etc. and nobody wanting to play WHM/RDM/BRD/COR etc. At least that was always a problem in shells I was in. Everybody wants to be the front line, nobody wants to be the back line.

Urteil

Original Game
Pre-60 Cap: Zvahl Demon Lords
60 Cap: Cassie and Serket
70 Cap: King Behemoth and Fafnir

Jiraat: Kirin, Nidhogg

COP: Vrtra, Absolute Virtue

TOAU: Pandemonium Warden


I didn't start playing until December 2002. I have to believe that the Zvahl demon NMs were impossible at the 50 and 55 caps, as they're level 76 and there was very little accuracy gear available in the original game (among many other reasons).

Cassie and Serket were nearly impossible, and probably not killed until summer of 2003.

I actually witnessed KB get cheesed by a 3-man (RDM, RNG, RNG) shortly after release, but that very instance caused the implementation of the debuff resistance nerf. After that, it was still impossible to tank and had to be kited and slowly killed by a large group over many hours. Fafnir was impossible until the breath gimmick was understood, which I don't believe happened until early 2004.

Nidhogg and Kirin were only ever killed by a handful of LS when they were actually relevant. They required at least a full alliance of fully-geared players.

Vrtra was impossible at release, and I don't believe anyone killed him until SMN zerg or melee zergs became possible with late TOAU gear.

AV and PW difficulty don't need to be explained.

Overall, I'd say that Cassie was the most difficult of all time that was actually killable with the right group and strategy; Vrtra was the absolute most difficult that was probably actually killable, but that no one ever successfully killed until cheese tactics were implemented; AV was artificially difficult due to latency; PW was probably designed to be impossible, and not legitimately killed until players had gear that was way better than what it dropped.

Divine might Htbf on VD.
SUPERMAN VD

BOTH were rough when initially released, minus the former just spamming ranger method

to this day, duplus grip never dropped...

DM was a blindfold event since it was during the rngeverythingphase.

But Yeah, Return to Delkfutts (superman) is the only event/mob around that time that our group had any issue with at all. I'm not sure it was legit hard though, more of a pld wasn't using enough add-ons kind of hard. (hate resets flash was always down etc)

(until we just started zerging it with 4 sams and yaegasumi)

I remember hearing that schah was difficult when it was new... Until ppl just started smn burning it.

I read all of it, talked to people as it happened, I'm not convinced.

Yes, some of the players involved were good. Some of the organization was good. You still only got one attempt at it and cried at the media to have it nerfed. You can't claim a fight where nobody got a chance to refine/improve strategy or even attempt it as the hardest, because your experience is solely one group and completely exempts possibility for improvement or streamlining.

Even as outlined, the HP amounts could have been cleared in a couple hours. Per Rukenshin's own journal, they were dealing around 500k damage per hour. With room for 6 buffed DPS, that's 1389 damage per minute. Even at 75, that means they were doing potentially below 10% of what they could have been. No COR buffs were used, when both blms and melee were likely struggling with acc or m.acc. No DNC(s) for steps. Only two BRDs(with 2 songs back then, that means DPS likely only had marchx2 madx2 and no source of external attack..). There was no GEO or bolster at 75, getting a worthwhile pdif on an extremely high target would require steps and light shotted dia2.

In the end, nobody else will get to try that fight. It's long since gone, we don't even have the same mechanics we had at 75. But, to claim it as the end-all fight because one group spent an exceedingly long time wiping/failing, is a stretch. We just don't know how it would've went with an improved strategy and more practice.