Stage 4 Prime Weapon's Effect On Sortie

+2 cases do not exist in the game files, atm.

Maybe they can drop the ??? Earring: Job +2 directly rather than cases.

I'm lost. Why would they make bosses HARDER after upgrading a weapon...?

The only reason I can think of: to artificially slow down the last stage.
So that that "5m galli" required, feels like "10m galli".

I can't think of anything else honestly.
Then again, there's way too many things we don't know atm.
There might be a way to trigger an even different behaviour and prevent this new thing or make it meaningful in some other way.

Don't want to sound rude

So, I posted yesterday in the Sortie main thread about how some of the basement bosses had changed AI after acquiring a Stage 4 Prime Weapon. We went in again tonight to test the rest of them, and...well...this is bad. It's bad enough that I felt it justified its own thread so more people can see it.

TL;DR Do not upgrade your Stage 4 Prime Weapon until you are finished with acquiring Gallimaufry, or be prepared to tank the Galli rates for you and any group you join as soon as you get it.

First off, a few commonalities - despite the basement bosses getting harder, the rewards are completely unchanged. 10k Gallimaufry per boss, no guaranteed Case+1, no Mesosiderite (this is probably luck based). Second, actually equipping the Prime Weapon is irrelevant, the bosses are harder if anyone has the Stage 4 anywhere in their inventory. It might be the case that it only looks at the person entering Sortie to determine the AI (both times our party leader had a Stage 4), but that's unlikely. Finally, the base stats of each enemy seem unchanged, it's only their AI that gets altered.

Now, on to the specific bosses. We have recordings of all of the new enrage mechanics, in case anyone's skeptical about all of this. There may be other changes, but these are the ones we've seen. This is all mage strategy, too, so YMMV if you use melee strategy.

Dhartok - Seems mostly unchanged. It seems to favor Noyade more and might use Cesspool earlier, but it dies just the same to mage strategy.

Gartell - Enters double hands mode MUCH sooner, and enters it repeatedly. In our run, he entered it at 65% and 30%, and stayed in it for full duration each time (at least 3 minutes, maybe a bit longer). Bind works from a RDM fairly easily in this mode, but all damage gets tanked and his damage output skyrockets, so it's basically a forced staring contest eating your time while waiting. Gravity seems to work once, then resists badly. It's possible that forcing him to change elements resets the double hands timer, but it's not like that's at all consistent...

Triboulex - Instantly uses Setting the Stage in response to using the same SC element more than once in succession. This one is less confirmed, but after doing a Fire -> Thunder = Fusion Skillchain, doing either Fire or Thunder with Immanence up resulted in death. You can still avoid Setting the Stage going off by kiting him. I don't know if the "same SC property = Death" applies to Weapon Skills, and now that we know Gravity kiting works I quite frankly don't want to test it.

Aita - Has...some sort of new trigger for Vivisection, I'm honestly not sure what it is. The first Vivisection was used 1 minute after pull, the second was used 58 seconds after it's first TP move after re-pulling it. The third took far longer, but we stopped nuking it midway through and it still wasn't the full 3 minutes. These are, of course, separate from the insta-Vivisections it still does upon re-pulling it after a wipe. It might have to do with number of Magic Bursts or something stupid like that?

And last, and certainly worst...

Aminon - 10 seconds after using Bane of Tartarus, Aminon will now instantly use Incessant Void again, regardless of TP. After upgrading to Stage 4, the Absorb-TP strategy is IMPOSSIBLE. Anyone who tried to fight this thing pre-Absorb strategy knows that it's an absolute disaster of a fight, so Aminon basically doesn't exist for our group anymore.

I'm honestly speechless. The fact that the bosses are this much worse for *** reasons, there's seemingly no way to opt out of it after upgrading a weapon, there are no extra rewards beyond a worthless -drite we haven't even seen yet, and there was ZERO indication that this would happen prior to upgrading?! There wasn't even a chat message or any visual indication the bosses are buffed until our group got blindsided by Vivisection at 70%!

The worst part, though? Not everyone in our group even HAS a Stage 4 Prime Weapon! So, unless it only counts the person who enters the group (which, in that case...why?!), that means that if you upgrade to Stage 4, you're destroying the Gallimaufry potential of ANY group you join! Truly, this is one of the most severe case of punishing the player for upgrading an item I've ever seen.

That's why I'm making this a separate topic I guess - making sure as many people see this as possible. Our group was the first to upgrade to Stage 4, and we're paying the price for it now. Spread the word: either keep your Prime Weapons at Stage 3 (and thus be unable to use their WS outside of Sortie), or tank your Gallimaufry rate. What a fun choice that is......

After some point in FFXI, every single NM has a proc system.

After some point in FFXI, every single NM has a proc system.

For a week or so, then strat gets figured out and its businesz as usual

While the strat for killing them might be discovered, I honestly doubt it's gonna be even close to being competitive with 9/9 runs and 80k Galli.

Well, since they are the only group pulling 80k at least they rest of the community wasn't impacted by that lol.

I'm lost. Why would they make bosses HARDER after upgrading a weapon...? How does that logically make any sense besides just injecting forced difficulty into the event you're gonna do anyways? I have to assume the mechanics change because the drops change for your group? Seems weird though if not everyone is on stage 4.

This but again they said they would behave differently to the weapons. Maybe like you said you gotta find the objective to make it not do it like sc or some ***. This is sortie after all with all these stupid objectives.

The worst part, though? Not everyone in our group even HAS a Stage 4 Prime Weapon! So, unless it only counts the person who enters the group (which, in that case...why?!), that means that if you upgrade to Stage 4, you're destroying the Gallimaufry potential of ANY group you join! Truly, this is one of the most severe case of punishing the player for upgrading an item I've ever seen.

Obviously need to trade your Stage 4 Prime Weapons to the Ebon Panels.

I don't know about you guys but I'm in chiefs group and this updated difficulty is pretty eggsciting.

While yes they seem absurd at the moment it wasn't too long ago that if someone said you could do 9/9 nms in a single run most would have said that was impossible/absurd. I'm sure we'll figure something out, it would seem counter intuitive to instantly make a single character functionally useless to farm more than 20k galli in a single run solely because of owning an item in game.

Either that or we figure out something far more absurd and end up making 9/9 with all 4 basement mini nms in a single run possible. I'd like to think that whatever the case may be that it won't stop the us from continuing on, we're all just in shock on what seems sudden jump in difficulty. But even then we'll find a way, we always do :D