Golden Salvage – Private Second Class
Time limit: 30 minutes
This assault is like a casino game gone horribly wrong. There are
twelve Cursed Chest in the area; opening the correct chest completes
your objective. The other eleven are evil mimics that will continuously
draw you in until killed. Depending on your luck, you can beat this
assault in mere seconds or have it become frustratingly drawn out until
you run out of time.
There’s no way of knowing if a Cursed Chest is a mimic or not. There
used to be a glitch to find out, but it has since been removed. So
expect a mimic every time you open a chest. If a mimic spawns, you
pretty much have to kill it due to their draw in ability. Be aware that
they spam Death Trap is a huge radius poison + stun + damage ability –
it makes these among the most annoying mobs in the game.
Since fighting mimics is pretty much BS, the most common strategy here
is to have a pet job open the chests. If a summoner with a summoned
avatar pops the chest, the summoner takes a hit, the avatar attacks the
mimic, the mimic focuses on the avatar, and the rest of the party
clears out of the area. Once you get a safe distance away you can
release/resummon the avatar. The mimic won’t aggro anyone once its back
in treasure chest form.
Using this strategy a summoner can solo this assault (though they still
need two other. people in their party be allowed in, of course).
Multiple summoners heading in different directions make a mockery out
of it. Other pet jobs can do the same trick but not nearly as often;
BSTS have their call pet timers and DRG and PUP pets cannot be replaced
quickly. But they can all do it to avoid at least one fight.
Percepient Fish (pugils) roam some of the open areas. They’re true
sight and put up a decent fight. Sleep is your best bet for escaping a
few of them. Generally it’s not that hard to avoid them though, but if
you do pick one up, be sure to keep it away from your summoner while he
does his work.
The rune spawns in the center area once you’ve opened the correct chest.
Strategy tips:
Summoner solo is the best way to get this over with quickly. Be
sure to check the chests with the pet already summoned.
Mimics can draw in at incredible distance. They can’t be slept.
If you don’t have a summoner you have little options other than
fighting them unless you don’t mind a high death count.
The area to the south is largely pugil-free, making it the best
chests to check first.
Pugils are generally too annoying to fight unless you have a
larger group and want to protect the summoner while he does his work.
They can be slept and deodorize will prevent them from following you if
you get away while they’re sleeping.
Job-specific tips:
SMN – your day to shine, my friends. Check the chests with an
avatar out and let him delay the mimic while you get well out of range.
BST – you can perform largely the same trick with heel.
Lamia No. 13 – Private First Class
Time limit: 30 minutes
This is the first of the “boss battle”-type assaults where your goal is
to defeat a single, powerful enemy – Laima No. 13. With her are three
poor NPCs under her charmed control. You can free them and they will
join you against the foul snake, but she can attempt to recharm them –
and you!
Personally, of all the assaults I’ve done, this one ranks way up there
in the sheer fun scale. Because of constantly flying belly dances,
dispels, and sleepga, exactly who your enemies and allies are changes
wildly over the course of the battle. At one point you might have freed
all three NPCs and turn this into a 9 vs 1 fight. Moments later, your
melees could be charmed and you find yourself rapidly reading a sleep
spell or fleeing for your life. Or maybe you get charmed and start
beating on an uncharmed hapless NPC while your allies try to disable
you. Hilarious unpredictable fun!
Lamia No. 13 and her cohort patrol around pretty much the entire map,
so your first task is to locate her. It’s probably best to split up in
order to locate her quickly. She never stops when unclaimed so you
might have to run her down while the party regathers.
Your first task should be to deal with the charmed NPCs – the Fallen
Imperial Wizard (BLM), Fallen Imperial Trooper, and Fallen Volunteer
(both some sort of melee job). Upon aggroing Lamia 13 these guys will
also begin to attack you. The Wizard in particular is dangerous –
target him first. A party with dispel (multiple dispels is better) can
remove the charm from the Imperials. If for some reason you don’t have
dispel, the next best alternative is to sleep them.
Upon being dispelled, the formerly-charmed imperials immediately join
your side in the fight and will attack Lamia 13! Yay for Aht Urhgan!
They don’t do tremendous damage, but they’ll do their darndest to help
you take her down. It’s much better having these guys as allies then
enemies, that’s for sure.
Lamia 13 isn’t about to let you steal her pets that easy though. In
addition to her normal lamia-type moves, she has Belly Dance – AoE
charmga. She’ll target the character with the most hate. If it hits an
NPC, it will immediately permanently charm them all again (until you
dispel it, that is). If it hits a player character, any party members
around that character will be charmed – this lasts a minute or two. Any
uncharmed mages can try to sleep or sleepga their charmed allies;
dispel is impractical on party members since they likely have a half
dozen or more buffs that may be dispelled instead.
The only real danger here is when some party members get charmed and
others don’t. The charmed horde will cut down the hapless stragglers,
then when charm wears the NPCs and Lamia will finish off the party. If
she goes unclaimed with no DoT spells on her (be it from the entire
party being dead or being charmed) she will immediately begin to regen
HP all the way back up to 100%.
Since the actual battle is short, if you wipe you may have a chance at
a second attack. The trick is resting in a safe place. My
recommendation is where the rune spawns – the small island on the
middle of the map. If you rest on the north side of this island you’ll
be out of Lamia’s warpath and be able to rest to full with impunity.
Defeating Lamia No. 13 immediately breaks the charm effect on the NPCs
and your party. The danger is over; the rune spawns – mission complete.
Strategy tips:
Dispel the charm on the NPCs to gain them as allies – target the
dangerous Wizard first. If you don’t have dispel, sleep them.
If party members get charmed, don’t bother with dispel: just
sleep them. Sleepga is good for members with shadows but won’t actually
have an AoE effect on charmed targets.
You can cure uncharmed Imperials, so if one’s tanking, give it
some HP to keep him around. You lose nothing if an NPC falls however.
Merrow No. 17’s Locket, a neck item from an Aht Urhgan quest,
will make you resist charm often. This can be good or bad. Good because
you won’t be charmed, bad because your charmed allies might immediately
kill you.
Rest on the central island out of the warpath (behind the big
rock) if you need to rest to full after wiping.
Job-specific tips:
BLU – an amazing job for this. Geist Wall’s AoE effect is
normally a liability, but a single casting of this can break dispel on
all three NPCs at once! A BLU/NIN with Geist Wall, shadows, Merrow No.
17’s Locket, and a few sleep spells is a versatile job that is
difficult to defeat in this mission (and tremendous fun to play).
BRD – Magic Finale is likely not fast enough to keep up with
dispelling, so mix in sleeping charmed targets until you can break
their charm.
RDM – largely the same as BRD, though Dispel’s shorter cast delay
will help you well.
SMN, BST, DRG, and PUP – if your pet takes Lamia 13s hate when
she uses Belly Dance, the move will fail to charm your pet and protect
the rest of the party.
Extermination – Superior Private
Time limit: 30 minutes
A rather straightforward mission – kill fifteen mobs of various
families scattered through the map. Most of them are crabs, but there
are also leeches, slimes and a couple doomed. Occasionally an NM
will spawn upon defeating one of the mobs – a slightly harder version
of the mob, but not by much.
There really isn’t too much to say. Kill them all. Take care when
fighting the slimes, as their fluid spread is, as always, a nasty
powerful (but blinkable) water AoE.
The thing with the NMs is that they might not spawn right on your
party. So after killing all of the mobs, you may not get the flag for
mission completion. If this occurs, split up and look for an NM that
spawned at some point on the map – they usually spawn on the main
north/south pathways and not in some weird corner or anything.
Strategy tips:
Don’t get killed by the Fluid Spread move from slimes.
Backtrack and search after killing all fifteen mobs if you the
rune doesn’t spawn – an NM may be somewhere on the map that you need to
defeat.
As always, widescan is useful when searching for stragglers.
Demolition Duty – Lance Corporal
Time limit: 30 minutes
Ever wanted to play puppetmaster without your friends making fun of
you? This is the next best thing. This is the Ilrusi escort mission,
but its nowhere near as annoying as some of the other escort missions.
The goal here is to escort a Demolition Automation to five “shipwrecks”
– essentially wooden barriers blocking the path forward.
Admittedly, I was a bit disappointed by this mission – From the assault
description, I was expecting explosives blowing up huge hulls of ships.
I got a puppetmaster automation taking random thwacks at piles of wood.
Ah well. It’s actually kind of fun in a way, and not very difficult.
Have one person speak with Uzhahn when you spawn in: this player will
get the Demolition Automation following them around. You can’t command
it, but when that person moves close to one of the “shipwrecks”
(untargettable walls of wood) the NPC will automatically engage it and
start being away. You can cast buffs on it – haste and protect are good
choices. You can also heal it: it seems to have about 4000 HP.
If the NPC uses the move slapstick, a Carrion Crab will appear and
attack the automation. No amount of force can provoke it off the
automation so just go all out on the crab to kill it quickly. Further
slapsticks can spawn further crabs, but only one at a time.
There are also Imps scattered around the area. These are generally more
of a threat than the Carrion Crabs due to their sleepga, silencega, and
amnesia moves. Don’t forget your echo drops.
If the NPC or the player escorting it die, Uzhahn will give you another
one. If the player escorting the NPC gets too far ahead (by using flee
or something) the NPC will shut down. Any player can talk to it to
become its new master in this case.
After demolishing the fifth shipwreck, talk to Uzhahn and he will rate
your performance. The only way to get a bad rating is to let the
automation die - not very hard. After that, the rune of release spawns
and
the demo bot will vanish.
Strategy tips:
The Demolition Automation will follow one player and
automatically engage shipwrecks.
Any buff that can target people out of party can target the
automation. Cure, protect, and haste all work.
It’s impossible to pull the crabs off the automation, so just go
all out on offense.
AoE moves used on the crab (weapon skills, blue spells) will hit
the wreckage if its cloes enough and do half damage, but it's kind of
pointless - the automation is capable of doing enough damage to destroy
them with time to spare.
The automation has a TON of HP – roughly 4000. Feel free to
engage a shipwreck while the party is fighting imps: even if a crab
spawns immediately it won’t be able to kill the automation before the
wall crumbles even if you don’t heal it at all.
Job-specific tips:
WHM, RDM, or SMN – these jobs make good choices for the demo bot
controller. They can take the automation to the shipwreck while the
rest of the party clears out imps, and heal it for a long time in case
a crab spawns while the others are preoccupied.
Serat Salvation
Time limit: 15minutes
Yeah, it’s another odd mission, but this one isn’t entirely awful. Your
goal here is to guide Qiqirn NPCs from the starting area to their chief
at the end. The problem, and there’s always a problem, is that there
are Giant Orobons aimlessly the area. The Orobons pose absolutely no
threat to you as a player (and in fact you can’t even attack them -
they’re NPCs) but will cause any Qiqirn nearby to FREAK THE HECK OUT
and run like a madman.
Talk to a Qiqirn diver and he will follow you. You can have as many
following you as you want, but for practical purposes you will only
really be able to keep tabs on one. The qiqirns move as fast as you so
you don’t have to worry about the little guy falling behind.
Cautiously make your way across the map, watching out for Orobons. At
the beginning they’ll all be in front of you, but later on they could
approach from behind too. The Orobons move faster than you do so you
can’t outrun them. If you see one heading your way, try to lead your
Qiqirn off the beaten path, either on an alternate route or some rocky
outcropping far away from where the Orobon should pass. Sometimes
though two Orobons will approach and sandwich you, leaving you with
nowhere to go.
If your diver sees an Orobon, he will scream about not wanting to be
eaten and run away from it. If the Orobon approached from the front
he’ll run backwards; from behind and he will head forwards, which isn’t
really that bad. The problem is that the divers also run faster than
you as well. Use flee or crafty use of the terrain to catch up and talk
to him. One talk will stop him, a second will get him to follow you
again. But if the Orobon is still nearby he will immediately flip out
and run off again.
If you can’t catch your diver, he will eventually find a place to hide
off the main paths, usually in a cave or something. You can talk to him
there to get him to follow you.
Successfully getting one diver to the chief is enough for completion.
Getting less than five results in an assault point penalty. But unless
you have a bigger group, getting all five divers to the chief within
the 15 minute time limit can be frustrating.
Strategy tips:
Be aware of Orobons from both in front and behind while
progressing along the map. Notice little nitches and rocks to hide
behind if the need comes. And it will.
Flee is useful to catch a diver if he’s heading backwards towards
the start. If he’s heading forwards towards the goal, save flee and let
him run - you can catch up with him ahead on the route and not lose
much time.
Job-specific tips:
THF or /THF - the king of non-combat assaults returns.
Apkallu Seizure
Time limit: 30 minutes
I have a friend that thinks these little penguins are the cutest things
ever and should not be harmed under any circumstances. Luckily for her,
and for them, they cannot be attacked in this assault. Because if they
could, I would have gladly lost this mission at least once to cut the
freaking things to ribbons.
Of course, an assault of this frustration would not be complete without
the airheaded Professor Clauvauert B. Chanoix. Yeah, that idiot that
probably got
you killed from undead in the Leujaoam Sanctum. This time around he
wants you to lure unsuspecting Fairy Apkallus to him for study, or
skinning, or something. But rather than use your usual methods of
force, you have to play nice with the little birds.
There are some Kelp Pugils on the map. They don’t respawn and they’re
weak. They also freak the birds out. So kill them. Not much to that.
Did I mention how cool that screenshot of me looks with my sword way
back like that? Anyway, next you need a Hamsi, a temporary item fish.
These are found from ??? spots that spawn infrequently all over the
map. You need a Hamsi to play nice with the birdies so get a new one
each time you try.
Next find a Fairy Apkallu. Get in front of the silly bird until it says
it’s staring at you. Do a /bow emote at it. If it lowers it’s guard, do
a /welcome macro. This should get it to say it likes you. If not, start
over with the /bow. I’m really not making this up. Once it likes you,
talk to it and you’ll feed it the Hamsi, at which point it will say
you’ve tamed it.
THIS is the tricky part. Immediately get a very short distance behind
it and inch forward. The bird should move forward. Inch again and it’ll
move it again. Do this until you get it all the way back to the
professor. If the Fairy Apkallu sees another player or a pugil, or you
get too close or too far away, it will flee away. You’ll have to start
over by getting another Hampsi and doing the macros to gain another’s
trust.
It can be frustrating watching these birds continually flee from you,
not knowing what you’re doing quite wrong. The distance is tricky. It
may take a few Hamsis to get one moving. Once you do, make sure
everyone stays the crap out of your way. You only need to transport one
bird to the professor to be able to give up. You can do more for more
points, but honestly this assault sucks. Farm less frustrating ones if
you’re interested in assault points.
Strategy tips:
Kill all pugils. They don’t respawn.
Get a Hamsi before messing with the birds.
It may take a few tries to get the distance behind them right. I
recommend a larger group for this just to make sure someone succeeds.
