Ru'Aun Gardens*

[RunningDemon]

Reserved for information on Ru'Aun Gardens.

[Bov]

Lvl 72. Flamingos vs flamingos.

This is solo BST heaven -- pure and simple.

I have worked this camp as BST/WHM and as BST/NIN and subbing NIN wins hands down. However, if you don't have the Gaudy Harness +2x Rune Axe combo, I'd go BST/WHM.

Getting to the camp:

First, you'll need Sky access. This means you need to be through Zilart Mission 13. If you have Sky access, you know. If you don't, I suggest reading about it.

Once you have Sky access and ding 72, head to Sky. As BST/NIN you'll probably want to bring along some silent oils to get through Ro'Maeve. There are EP-VT weapons on the path to the Hall of the Gods. The first time I went, I forgot my oils (wasn't used to subbing NIN) and was able to make it to the Hall of the Gods by using a couple funguar jugs. So it's your call on whether to bring them.

Once you zone into Ru'Aun Gardens you have a ton of options for camp. The zone is broken into 5 major floating islands and 4 smaller ones. You move from major island to major island using blue teleporters. Blue teleporters need to be activated by hitting the nearest pincerstone. It's pretty straightforward once you figure it out.

Also, the zone is pretty symetrical. The island you zone into after your first teleport is the largest island and is 2-fold symetric. The other 4 islands are arranged in a ring and are more or less identical. Each of these island has two sides and each of these sides is a potential lvl 72 BST camp with 6 flamingos. The different islands have small differences like foliage and obstructions. Because of this, I prefer the islands on either side of the large center island. Explore a bit though, and decide for yourself which camp is best for you.

Mob Behavior:

There are 4 types of mobs that you'll run into as you wander to camp: Pots (Sprinklers), Dolls (Groundskeepers), Birds (Flamingos), and Elementals (all types). The pots, elementals and wandering dolls only aggro to magic. Ninjitsu does not aggro them (but using your reraise gorget or reraising will). There are two types of Groundskeepers though, wandering and stationed in blue nooks. The ones in the nooks will aggro by sight. Just stay as far as you can from them and you won't need to be invisible. The flamingos are perfect BST pets/prey. They don't aggro and they don't link.

Strategy:

At 72, you'll see the flamingos pop from EM to T. There are two ways to work this camp, the safe cheap way and the expensive fast way. I started doing the safe cheap way, but am moving to the expensive fast way because it's just so fast.

The safe cheap way involves making sure that at least 2 of the flamingos in a camp are EM. Charm one EM and send it at a T without engaging yourself. Let it work off ~20% of the T's life and then hot swap to the second EM. On this one you'll engage and it'll be easy to get TP for a finishing rampage. Using this route I was getting easy chain 1s and 2s...and a chain 3 if I did a EM vs EM for one of the later fights.

The faster more expensive route involves fighting along side a EM from the get-go. This will require that you use pet food on the toughest mobs (hence the expense). Now, I haven't been a proponent of pet food in the past (I've been of the mindset that I'd rather spend the gil on gear), but now that these levels require so much xp to get through, I've decided that I'm willing to shell out for the faster xp. You'll want 2 EM pets for this one too and you'll want to fight within your pets roaming radius to ensure that you don't lose your EMs. This method is an easy chain 3 and chain 4s are doable if you are able to keep your fights within the roaming radius of the EM bird. The repop rate of the birds is such that you don't have to wait for repops. As long as you keep your two EMs alive and not despawning you can just keep killing the new birds as they repop.



That's about it. Enjoy!

[RunningDemon]

I want to add my info to this since I am going through summaries for areas.

Flamingos vs Flamingos is good and all, but the real gold is when you have a few birds and go through the pots and melee with (should be able to kill 1 pot with 1 BRD if your melee gear isn't crap), or by tossing at dolls as they self sertruct and re-enacting so much Garliage basement fun.

Either way, with how many things aggro magic up in sky, /NIN is relaly good, just bring your 2x Rune Axes and Gaudy.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Duo -- Level 72
I duo'ed here all of 72 with a PUP friend. An Automaton doesn't put out nearly as much damage as a native pet, so a BST duo would no doubt do even better than my friend and me.

The Birds on the upper level can be grouped into 3 pairs, with each pair staying in one roaming area. I found that having 2 EM pets was sufficient. We consistently achieved chain 4s by killing 3 birds (one from each pair) and then killing 2 Sprinklers (one from the upper floor near the yellow teleporter, and one from the lower floor near the blue teleporter). Sometimes, we even hit chain 5 when we started the cycle again on Flamingos.

If you have 3 EM pets to work with, you get the benefit of the shortest pulls. However, I found that keeping 3 EM pets around also meant a higher chance that we would be stuck with no T Birds to kill, and having to kill an EM one to keep the chain going. If a Flamingo respawned as EM instead of a T, I would usually use it as my pet to take on the next prey, and simply leave it outside of its wandering radius (hoping it would respawn quickly as a T the next time).

Build up to chain 2 on Flamingos, and then pull the Sprinklers for chain 3 and chain 4. At 72, Sprinklers can spawn as VTs, which make for wonderful exp on chain 3/4. Even if we got hit with Gravity toward the end of the fight, we were still able to complete chain 4 before starting over again on Flamingos.

Expwatch reported that we got anywhere between 3.8k and 4.5k exp per hour. Just don't forget Signet, since it gives an exp bonus in small groups.

Drops: Flamingos drop fire crystals, which isn't much to write home about. However, Sprinklers drop Light Crystals, Mercury, Magic Pot Shards, and several BLM scrolls including Thunder III, Thunder IV, Thundaga III and Burst. I found that on my sever, the Mercury, Pot Shards and BLM scrolls all NPCed for about the same as I would have gotten on the AH.

Coffer keys also drop quite often. If you're lucky, the coffer itself will pop near your camp, which makes for a nice bonus.

Duo -- Level 73
Flamingos now spawn as DC, and will only spawn as T (and that being 1 level above you) about 1/3rd of the time. My duo partner and I figured Flamingos were no longer a good choice for target prey. However, they now make wonderful throw-away pets. So I talked my PUP partner into subbing BST (he's already a 75 BST) and explode some Magic Dolls.

Groundskeepers range from level 75 to 78. They will sometimes blow themselves up, which makes for nice quick exp. Even if they don't, we found that two DC Flamingos were enough to take down a Groundskeeper (we had perhaps 2 pets die in 2 hours of play). I never found myself needing to pet swap. I did, however, have to release my pet to clear hate and recharm at times. For some odd reason, there would be times when my DC Flamingo would be down to 10% HP while my friend's EM Flamingo was barely getting hit by the Groundskeeper.

Expwatch reported that we were getting between 3.6k and just over 4k exp an hour.