Leujaoam Cleansing - Private Second Class
Orichalcum Survey - Private First Class
Escort Professor Clavauert - Superior Private
Shanarha Grass Conservation - Lance Corporal
Counting Sheep – Corporal
Supplies Recovery – Sergeant
Azure Experiments - Sergeant Major
Red vs. Blue - Second Lieutenant


Leujaoam Cleansing  – Private Second Class
Time limit: 30 minutes
 
The most straightforward of all the private second class assaults, your goal here is simply to slaughter the fifteen worms before running out of time. You can burn through them somewhat, but you’ll want at least a decent back line – the worms have a number of AoE moves.

You essentially do two loops – one on the north then one on the south.

A single worm is no match for your party, but in numbers they can start to hurt. In addition to normal worm moves like dex and attack down, they cast powerful earth magic such as Stonega III at will and will readily link. Make sure to keep any linking worms slept and silence the worms you’re fighting. Other debuffs such as slow and the like work – really, just treat them like normal mobs and cut through them as fast as possible.

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Orichalcum Survey – Private First Class
Time limit: 30 minutes
 
This one is sort of odd, but not overly hard. You run around checking mining points in an attempt to find a temporary item Orichalcum ore. Occasionally a worm will spawn so you need to be ready for combat, but as long as you have people that can tank you can split up into two groups to cover more area.

Talk to the NPC to get the temporary item Pickaxe and then head out lookin’ for mining points. If you find a mining point just check it to mine – don’t use the pickaxe for anything. I went an entire freaking run trying to use the pickaxe and getting bitter about it. Yeah.

Anyway, when you mine, most of the time you won’t dig up anything. Occasionally you’ll get trash results like a pebble. Maybe your pickaxe will break – head back to the NPC for another one. Other time a worm will spawn. If a worm pops, you can’t mine there until it dies. They’re weaker than the previous mission’s worms, but still hit pretty hard so I recommend staying in groups of at least two. Three is better. Keep mining each point until it disappears then continue along to the next point.

Once someone finds the Orichalcum ore, have them head back to the starting NPC to complete the assault.

The Qiqirn Miner mobs in the area aren’t actually mining anything. They don’t aggro until someone finds the ore. Once someone does however they will aggro anyone in the party. They’re too strong to bother fighting with – just sleep an aggro one and use invisible to make your way back to the start.

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Escort Professor Clavauert  – Superior Private
Time limit: 30 minutes
 
Another wacky NPC escort mission, Professor Clavauert is a massive airhead that you cannot control in any way and will gladly run into a room full of undead. Since you cannot even stop him for a rest break your goal is simply to keep him alive until he gets where he wants to go.

This is probably the most annoying of the SP missions, though admittedly the strats I went with didn’t work too well. The Professor has no sense of self-preservation and can go in circles before getting to his destination. This is another mission where melee jobs are less useful and people that can cure and sleep take the limelight. Too bad the limelight surrounded by evil undead.

Two types of undead roam the corridors: BLMish ghosts and RDMish skeletons. Both have very potent ice magic – Blizzaga III and Blizzard IV. It won’t take very many hits on your party to kill you all if you eat too many of those.

The usual suspects come to mind when dealing with the undead. Kiting isn’t a very good option since the skeletons can bind, sleep, and gravity aggro targets. The undead also return to their start positions quickly and since the professor is a goof he very well may run straight into a group of them. Sleeping the horde may also work, though like in many missions this is only a temporary solution until sheer numbers become an issue.

The two most common strategies are 1) to have everyone keep sneak up and cure cure bomb him. This works, to a degree: the prof will sometimes stop in an area for 30 seconds or so and just eat powerful spell after powerful spell.

The second strategy involves running ahead of the prof with carby out and sneak up. The undead attack carby and when it dies they leave the summoner alone. This is okay in theory. In practice it’s quite difficult to figure out which corridor the prof is going to head down next to stay in front of him.


The really funny part about this mission is that you can fulfill the objectives while the entire party is dead. This is actually how I won my first shot at this. For all his stupidity, Professor Clavauert has a fair amount of HP, and he may reach his goal if you’ve been keeping him at high health before a wipe. In that case, have someone reraise (watch out for blood aggro), heal past yellow HP, put sneak up, and run for the rune. Mission complete and everyone gets points even if they’re dead.

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Shanarha Grass Conservation – Lance Corporal
Time limit: 30 minutes

This is an interesting, if quite easy, assault. Essentially your goal is to kill twenty Coneys – rabbits - roaming around the central area of the map. If left alone, they’ll eat vegetation spots, reducing the maximum number of points you get for the assault. Your goal is clear; wipe them out as fast as possible!

Aside from the last mission (Escort Professor Clavauert), it seems all the Leujaoam Sanctum assaults thusfar are pretty easy. Short of some sort of horrible party wipe where nobody has reraise, it’s very difficult to lose this mission, even with a small setup. 30 minutes is overkill amounts of time and so the only real challenge is finishing for more points. But even with only four people our party had no trouble doing that.

You spawn in a room full of Coneys – don’t worry, they don’t aggro. Still, twenty is far too many for you to take on at one time, so you’ll want to head either north or south to the edge of the swarm and begin pulling. You’ll inevitably get a few links so a sleeper is a good addition to your party.


As far as assault mobs go they’re pretty squishy. A single DD can solo one but it's muche easier to have everyone gang up on a single one to take it down fast.

If you're quick in moving to one end and starting on the swarm you can kill all 20 before they even leave the main area. If you're slower, the Coneys will disperse down random dead ends and stuff and become a pain to track down.

Scattered vegetation spots seem to be what the rabbits are after. If the rabbits are left alone long enough they’ll “eat” them and the spot will disappear. You don’t do anything with the actual vegetation spot though, so don’t worry about it.

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Counting Sheep – Corporal
Time limit: 15 minutes

This is a luck-based assault that is mostly harvesting and mining. It involves explosives too, which is cool.

This is non-combat assault - there’s no way to die here (unless you bring a lot of venom potions or something) so it’s most useful to come on jobs with speed enhancements such as ninja AF feet or THF or /THF jobs.

Note the 15-minute time limit.

The general gist of it is that there are five sheep trapped behind ice walls. Quirins have mines to blow up the walls, but they demand an Imperial gold piece for their services. No, not the real ones, you use temporary item gold pieces obtained in this assault. In order to obtain the gold pieces, you have to either mine up gold, or mine up a lesser ore and gamble to win an ore.


Mining is required in either case, so talk to the Quirin Mine Baron to obtain a pickaxe and find a mining point. Remember, just select the point to use the pickaxe. You can mine up either copper, silver, or gold ore, which the Quirin Mine Baron will convert into copper, silver, and gold imperial pieces respectively.
Once you’ve gotten a gold coin, leave the starting area and go track down a Quirin Sheppard. Talk to him to trade the gold coin and he’ll follow you. Take him to one of the ice walls (inconveniently not marked on my nonexistent map, but they’re pretty to spot at a distance) and he’ll proceed to start using mines on it. How many mines he uses is random, but it usually doesn’t take too long. Once the way is clear go in and check the sheep, which will vanish - that’s good.

I say “usually” won’t take long because sometimes he’ll just start slacking and demand a certain food. The foods are obtained through the other half of the harvesting. A Quirin Greengrocer will give you a sickle to use on harvesting points. Like the mining, there are three possible results, but they’re all more or less the same “goodness” of quality. Harvest up the items and talk to the Greengrocer to get temporary food items; the stuff the Sheppard might demand. Any player can trade him food items he wants, not just the person that traded him the gold coin.

Therefore, the wise party doing this assault will send most of their members to start digging up ore to get gold coins from while one person will harvest up the food in case the Sheppard refuses to finish until given something. Since there a limited number of mining points, and some are very far from the Mine Baron, having someone on food duty doesn’t really slow you down much.


As soon as you get your first sheep the Rune of Release spawns. You can keep working to try to get all five and will take an assault point reward penalty for each you fail to find, but if time gets short it’s better to get out than to lose on a gamble.

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Supplies Recovery – Sergeant
Time limit: 30 minutes

This is ANOTHER luck-based assault, which puts Leujaoam up to 4/6 mostly luck-based assaults at current tally. Thankfully, this one involves both stabbing imps and spiting haughty immortals, both of which are good times.

The goal here is to get temporary items from killing imps, which are squishy and pretty easy for any 75 melee to solo. The catch is that two immortals will also be running around killing imps for items, so it’s sort of a contest - if they get more than you, they win and you fail the assault.


The imps don’t actually spawn nor will the two immortals move until you talk to the NPC Kuihlud. It’s a crafty strategy to leave one person at the start while the other members of the group get farther in the map so they can have lots of imps to themselves without worrying about the immortals taking claims.

The immortals themselves may be gimped as far as gear goes, wearing full AF at 75, but they’re quite competent at killing imps. Trying to kill steal from them is an a quick path to frustration. It’s far easier to bypass imps the immortals have engaged and find a fresh target, which makes the above strategy of delaying spawning the imps that much more important.


If your party kills an imp, you’ll randomly get a message about an arbitrary temporary item. What the item is doesn’t matter - it’s the number of them that counts. The immortals will also randomly get temporary items and you will periodically be updated on how many they’ve gotten. It’s luck which imps will give the temporary items so the only safe strategy is to just kill more imps than the NPCs.

Once all the imps are killed the game’s over. If you’ve gotten more items than the immortals you get win and the rune will spawn back at the starting point. Even a low-man group won’t take close to 30 minutes to finish this assault.

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Azure Experiments – Sergeant Major
Time limit: 30 minutes

This is a bizarre little mission. You have to defeat several groups of decently powerful Lamia monsters. The catch (there’s always a catch) is that you will have your statistics drastically altered for each set in random ways so you will have to adapt your strategies on the fly.

The blue mage NPC Nareema will “graft tissues” on to you and your party. The effect is random, you can see the same one more than once in the same assault, and getting a new tissue removes the effect of the old one. The ones I saw were:
As you can see, they’re all more penalties than bonuses, though that flee speed was amazingly fun despite the HP loss.

There are two groups of 2 lamias and two groups of 3, for four groups total. Each group consists of an unsleepable BLM that always starts with ice spikes on. The rest of the lamias will be rangers that can be slept but still resist. All of the lamias are decently high level and are quite dangerous. It’s best to try not to let them link if possible, though keep in mind they all attack from a distance so you’ll have to run back very far in order to pull them away from their sisters.

Once you defeat each group, talk to Nareema again. She will remove your tissue and inflict upon you a new one. Complete this process for all four groups to spawn the rune.

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Red vs. Blue
Time limit: 30 minutes

Or, as it may be in my case in that image above, blue vs. blue. This is one of the best assaults ever. It’s time to teach these full-artifact armor immortals how to fight!


Your goal here is to defeat Raubahn, a high-ranking blue mage and the leader of the blue team. You must do so without allowing Shailham, the leader of the red team, to be defeated himself. The red team also consists of a bunch of red mage (despite the weird weapons they are rdms) npcs and your party. Unfortunately for you, the blue mage enemies are stronger than the red mages, so you’ll have to pick up the slack.

Talking to Shailham spawns the blue mage enemies and begins the hostilities. Almost immediately upon talking to him, several blue mage enemies will attack the red team, possibly from both sides, so be prepared for combat. The blue mage enemies seem to have access to all blue mage spells of mid level, including sleep spells, so be prepared for anything from these guys. A 75 melee can solo a BLU without too much trouble but they attack in groups so it’s rarely an even fight. Shailham himself is a powerful black mage that will cast tier-III aga spells on his attackers, but he still requires protection against large numbers.


Once you’ve ensured that Shailham is okay you can make your way towards Raubahn’s group. The red mage NPCs will also head out, most likely to their deaths if you don’t assist them. Scattered groups of 2 to 4 BLUs will be periodically stationed in all possible paths to Raubahn and they will make short work of your allies. Each elvaan NPC that dies gives you an assault point penalty, but it’s so hard to keep them alive since they’re so weak. It’s easier to forget about them and focus on defeating your enemies.

Raubahn himself is surrounded by about 7 lesser blue mages - far too many to practically fight at once. It’s easier to draw the group’s attention and flee away while someone vokes Raubahn. The leader himself has more HPs than his minions, but not too much better of spells, so if you can isolate him and get a few dds on him he will go down quick. Raubahn’s defeat despawns all other blue mage enemies and spawns the rune back at the red team’s base. Mission complete.

Groups looking to low-man Red vs. Blue often send several powerful Dds to Raubhan’s spawn location before talking to Shailham. One of the members pulls Raubahn’s group while the others beat on the leader himself and defeat him hopefully before Shailham is defeated by the initial wave of enemies. Doing it this way can end the assault in about a minute, but if something goes wrong either Shailham will be killed for a mission loss or it will be hard to regroup with blue mages all over the map. Besides, doing this assault the “real” way is just too much fun.

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Information in part referenced from FFXIcyclopedia