New Assault Area Overview

[Akashimo]

Party Setup
thf/nin(me), pld/war, blu/nin, rdm/drk, whm/blm, mnk/war

Gotten to Floor 4 where we failed and gotten kicked
30 min time limit

Floor 1 - Orders: Eliminate the Leader.
Mobs - NM Dire mite and NM Flan. A Warmupacha(sp?) and ercua were present as DC. Leaders would be the NM to activate the Rune of Transference

Floor 2 - Orders: Eliminate the all enemies. Simple as that
Mobs - 2 or 3 puks, a Wyvern, a Archaic Rampart, a NM Ghost

Floor 3 - Orders: Eleminate the target mob. NM undead dog and a drauger

Floor 4 - Orders: activate all the lamps w/o destroying the Archaic Gears.
We failed there. Gears, ramparts aggroed. There was 2 killing weapons there.
Also all lamps must be activated at the same time. About 3 or 4 lamps

??? drops were a ??? ring and ??? bow - copper ring and light crossbow

I'll post more after the second run, also my group was the first to do this on Seraph ^.^

[Mog]

Gah.... I would've joined ya, but my computer is STILL downloading the files. Doesn't help to be doing this in a hotel room....

[KoukiRyu]

Also I was wondering if you could update us on how tough some NM's are, if you get a chance to see one from another part of Vana'diel. As in, are they toned down/up to match the level cap or are they at their real strength?

[RunningDemon]

Also, do you get map so you can widescan when you enter like Salvage?

[Akashimo]

NMs are about tough as Tough mobs, no two hours so far if any.
Also haven't had time to test if we can avoid mobs for the lamp one yet
Lastly, no map of the area, so no widescan

[Akashimo]

Now, run 2
Floor one: Kill specified target. Alots of puks there and a wyvern also a pudding NM that gave us trouble and ate time.

Floor 2: Elmeniate all enemies. Puddings, mousse and 2 nm cactars(both dropped ??? foot wear)

Floor 3: Light lamps. Failed here, floor was HUDGE and less than 10 mins when we started there

[Caspian]

Keep us posted, we were supposed to do this tonight, but I jost got off work and its gonna keep me d/l'ing all night unless I get a miracle.
Also let us know what your ??? items end up being.
Thanks for the info!

[RunningDemon]

Fun!

My assault LS gonna be testing it at least once a week^^

So get all the info you can before Friday (our next scheduled day)

[Akashimo]

??? ring become a copper ring, ??? bow = light crossbow
???footwearx2 = 1 ash clogs, 1 bronze leggings.

So far, just like SE said, everything is random foremost. Even the same orders for a floor gives different mobs and used a different lay out.

Only mobs that give real difficulty were the puddings. A pld and blm is highly recommended. Given how things went, I highly recommend a standard party of tank, blm, healer, refresh, puller and dd.

[Sevv]

my assault perma is going to do this alot now will keep you postyed we will probably go tonight for 4 runs. (^.^)b

[raidenn]

Lotta killing there.... Are the mobs easy?

[Aeolus]

If the NMs are as "tough as Tough mobs" Im gonna go out on a limb and say the normal enemies are probably pretty easy.

[RunningDemon]

I'm hoping all the reports of mobs being as tough as DC-T mobs is right. Means my LS that is mostly BSTs gonna make short work of it.

[Sevv]

we also are only talking about the first set of floors here from what we know no one has hit floor 5 yet it may not all be a cake walk =P

[Akashimo]

Aside from the Flan and cactaur nms, mobs were pretty easy. Flans themselves through out the entire place really eats up time though. BLM to nuke them I really recommend. Also if anyone does the Floor with lamps and not destroying the Archaic Gears, test to see if those are true sight or not and post any thing I haven't gotten here too please.

[Vyuru]

Several things here.

I've been reading that by killing some of the archaic gears your party gets hit with some kind of nasty status effect, I've heard of at least having your divine magic sealed similar to the restrictions that Salvage gives you. Good news is that the restriction is lifted once you move to a new floor.

So for all those drg/mages who do this, you may want to use /rdm, it is the only sub that I am aware of that has elemental, divine, and buff spells so you can still function as a healer even if you get one of them blocked off, in theory of course.

Also, I was wondering can you charm the mobs that appear in there? Or are those all charm resistant mobs like Puks are? I'd think a bunch of bsts who go in there, charm mobs and have them rip the NMs to pieces would be really effective.

[KoukiRyu]

Anyone have any idea how to activate those lamps...? We spent pretty much all of the rest of our time on that floor...and it was our second floor. We activated them in tons of different order, had each member standing at one lamp, randomly trying, all these different things, and nothing worked. If anyone has gotten a hold of how this works, let meh know please? :D

[Akashimo]

You have to activate them all at the same time

[Gobo]

Theres 3 different types of lamps:

Everyone touch 1 at the same time

Light all at the same time

Light them in the right order

The last one is really annoying, pretty much as to be done by trial and error. Have the group set up an order to go, follow that order and once all are turned on the lamps will light. If one was lit in its proper spot (like someone lit the 3rd lamp 3rd in order) than the that lamp will stay "lit". Keep changing the order around until you get the rest right. Even if you lit one in its proper spot in the order, you still have to relight it until you get them all right.

For kill the specified monster, its almost confirmed that the right monster cons impossible while the rest don't.

[KoukiRyu]

Theres 3 different types of lamps:

Everyone touch 1 at the same time

Light all at the same time

Light them in the right order

The last one is really annoying, pretty much as to be done by trial and error. Have the group set up an order to go, follow that order and once all are turned on the lamps will light. If one was lit in its proper spot (like someone lit the 3rd lamp 3rd in order) than the that lamp will stay "lit". Keep changing the order around until you get the rest right. Even if you lit one in its proper spot in the order, you still have to relight it until you get them all right.

For kill the specified monster, its almost confirmed that the right monster cons impossible while the rest don't.

Ohhh! Thank you so much! :D We had so much trouble with it, and couldn't quite figure it out...it didn't help that some of my party members were idiots. ^^; Well I'll try it again, hopefully with friends, and maybe it'll go better, thanks again for your answer. :D

[Caspian]

Probably too soon to know for sure, but, do the NM's drop the items they once did, or is all the really good drops the ??? items from the end of each floor?

[Gobo]

the NMs drop the ??? item that relates to their real drop (so Lizzy drops ??? Footgear from her chest). Get the item appraised for a chance at their real drop, just like you would if you killed the NM outside Nyzul. At least, I think thats the answer to your question.

And no prob KoukiRyu. Took us forever yesterday figuring it out and wondering why some would stay on, but others would fade. When we finally got it we had 2 min left so we just kicked ourselves for tokens.

[silentsteel]

gah, I wish I could get on, then maybe I could join you rei XD

[Caspian]

Had one where we had to light all the lamps at once, except for one lamp. Once all the others are lit at once, then you light the last one to finish the floor.

About lighting them in order. Spent a LONG time on one floor trying to light them in the right order. It seemed they'd randomly all turn on for a second and it would say something along the lines of "Confirming action" or something to that effect. After that everyone had the option to light theirs and had to figure out the order. Never could figure out for sure what that meant and ended up getting stuck on that floor for the rest of the time.

Note: seems pretty necessary for everyone to have oils and powders for areas to get past certain mobs, especially those that aggro magic. Also friend had a bird pop next to him and aggro immediately, no delay whatsoever.

If anyone else has more to add about the lamps in order, I'd love to hear it. Right now I'm going out on a limb and saying that the lamps in order is the gayest thing I've seen so far.

[KoukiRyu]

Had one where we had to light all the lamps at once, except for one lamp. Once all the others are lit at once, then you light the last one to finish the floor.

About lighting them in order. Spent a LONG time on one floor trying to light them in the right order. It seemed they'd randomly all turn on for a second and it would say something along the lines of "Confirming action" or something to that effect. After that everyone had the option to light theirs and had to figure out the order. Never could figure out for sure what that meant and ended up getting stuck on that floor for the rest of the time.

Note: seems pretty necessary for everyone to have oils and powders for areas to get past certain mobs, especially those that aggro magic. Also friend had a bird pop next to him and aggro immediately, no delay whatsoever.

If anyone else has more to add about the lamps in order, I'd love to hear it. Right now I'm going out on a limb and saying that the lamps in order is the gayest thing I've seen so far.

Definite agreement here, I'm really not liking this, at least with pick up groups. Until some concrete solution is posed, or you just know how to order stupid people around really well, I'd suggest going with friends whenever is possible. o_o

[Karinya]

Are there any clues as to which order is the right order? It hardly seems reasonable to expect people to just guess...

[Caspian]

I'm thinking at this point you're basically screwed on getting through 5 floors if you get the lanterns in order one. You really just have to hope for a lantern everyone has to touch, or a kill all enemies or something.

Someone asked earlier if the Archaic ramparts are true sight or sound, the answer is no. Ran right by them with sneak/invis up. I would guess the same holds true for the Archaic gears, though they do link to the ramparts.

[Akashimo]

I'm thinking at this point you're basically screwed on getting through 5 floors if you get the lanterns in order one. You really just have to hope for a lantern everyone has to touch, or a kill all enemies or something.
Someone asked earlier if the Archaic ramparts are true sight or sound, the answer is no. Ran right by them with sneak/invis up. I would guess the same holds true for the Archaic gears, though they do link to the ramparts.
Woot, that could be a critical time saver next time doing the lamp floor with those all around it. Though, gotta wonder if they can be slepted incase they are surrounding a lamp. And what do they aggro to, sight or sound?

[Caspian]

Archaic gears are True something. I'm guessing sound. Had both up, but I dont even know how you'd tell what way it was facing anyway.

There's some lamps where you have to light all but one at once time, then light the last, and sometimes light all but one (it tells you which one) then kill the rampart (don't know if this can change) then light the last one.

As for kill all the enemies one, you can get seriously dicked on this one. If you get a Hellion NM, you better hope to clear the others fairly fast. Its a flesh with a ton of HP so takes a bit. If you get a Dahak, just call it a night. Ours was T, was only hitting for 100 dmg with food and minuet. Only taking at most 1% of health per shot, spams a petrify move. We got it on the 4th floor with over ten minutes left and got this one. Heard of some people get it on the first floor and never finished killing it.
Oh, Archaic gears don't seem to build resistance to sleep, which is nice since you have to keep them slept on the ones where you have to kill everything but them. And you will aggro them at least once, since you have to kill the ramparts and they link. As for the ones where you can't even aggor them? No idea, heard you lose a minute if you aggro one, not sure if it accumulates for every time you aggro one or not.

So far, after 7 runs my thoughts on these:
It can be a lot of fun and can be one gigantic headache. Its so much luck of the draw it can be incredibly annoying. Not only do you have to hope for the right tasks to get, but also the right mobs in the kill enemies one.

And one more thing I thought of, one the kill specified enemy(ies), its the mob(s) that aren't NM's, but check as Impossible to Gauge.
Hope this helps some people and post what else you figure out.
I haven't checked it, but apparently BG's forums also has a good list of what is what and explains a lot of it. (Apparently floor 20 is random pop of Faf, Turtle, or Behe) And for rng's apparently Eastern Shadow is floor 22.

[Karinya]

As for NM strengths, Tom Tit Tat and Leaping Lizzy each survived several Tier III nukes and a couple level 75 melees beating on them for about a minute before going down, so I'd say their strengths are definitely adjusted. When Frostmane isn't particularly stronger than Leaping Lizzy you know something's up. :)

Haven't seen anyone complete a set of 5 levels yet - it seems to depend a lot on luck as some objectives are far more time consuming than others.

The ramparts have very nasty AOE that goes through shadows - blink tanks work very poorly against them. And because of the cramped areas it's hard for mages to get out of range, too.

[Karinya]

Activating lamps in order is harder and more time consuming than killing 5 ebony puddings with a 5 person party that includes no BLMs. (Although if you get either one, forget about reaching the 5th floor. In fact, you can probably forget reaching the 5th floor with less than 6 people ever, except with the most extraordinary luck.) My assault static (short one person who couldn't make it last night) spent 15 minutes on a four-lamps-in-order floor - and didn't finish it. When you have only 30 minutes for 5 floors that's obviously not going to work.

SE, please give us some clues on the lamp levels. For example, change the objective to "Activate all lamps simultaneously" or "Activate all lamps in the correct order" so players will know what kind of lamps they're dealing with. For the "correct order" floors, the lamps should have some kind of clues that allow players to figure out the order by some means other than trying all 24 possible orders (for four lamps). A Vana'diel Tribune article explaining the mechanics of lamp levels would be great, except there is no Tribune anymore; but surely there's some other way SE could release this info to players.


P.S. Never go in without a BLM if you can possibly avoid it. Slimes, puddings, ghosts and every possible physical damage resistant monster are all extremely common in Nyzul (except elementals, I haven't seen any of those yet). I haven't seen a single pot, ahriman or colibri. On at least 1/3 of the floors where killing specific monsters was the objective, the target monster(s) were puddings, and when killing all monsters was the objective, some physical-resistant monsters were always present. Unless we had an extreme run of bad luck, it looks like the zone was deliberately designed to very heavily favor manaburns or *at least* RDM+BLM dual magic bursting.

[Nazo]

I'm pretty sure we encountered lesser colibri on our run the other night.

The description for the lamps one is really bad. After activating my lamp clicking it again gave the message 'all lamps on this floor are active but some other action seems to be necessary to activate the rune of transference' or wsomething like that. Thing is, we hadn't activated all the lamps at all, we'd missed one.
I really hope SE changes this, we haven't gotten past floor 3 in 4 attempts yet and every time it's been the lamp one that has done us in. At least give us some way to extend our time.

[Akashimo]

I'm pretty sure we encountered lesser colibri on our run the other night.

The description for the lamps one is really bad. After activating my lamp clicking it again gave the message 'all lamps on this floor are active but some other action seems to be necessary to activate the rune of transference' or wsomething like that. Thing is, we hadn't activated all the lamps at all, we'd missed one.
I really hope SE changes this, we haven't gotten past floor 3 in 4 attempts yet and every time it's been the lamp one that has done us in. At least give us some way to extend our time.
That message means you didn't follow the second part of the objective from what I could gather. Most number of lamps I've seen were 4. Also, FFXIclopedia.org has some detailed info on the assault area now if you haven't checked it yet.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I gotta say bring a balanced PT to these missions, you will not get through every floor with a TP burn or Manaburn setup. You might get lucky on a few floors with such setups, but you will not succeed on all of them, so go balanced. I wouldn't say you need a "refresher" (hate that term) for these, but it helps. That said, I wouldn't go in to any of these instances without oils/powders (required for all), tonkos for /NIN, some au lait/yagudo drinks and a reraise item.

Haven't seen this mentioned but the are levels where Pathos is inflicted to certain abilities - not as extreme as salvage, but just as annoying. This is why you want a balanced setup, because you have no idea what you'll be facing, so be prepared. We had a floor last night where Blue Magic and weaponskills were locked off. So if they can lock off Blue Magic, it can happen to other types.

Oh, and anything can and will aggro when given the chance, I've yet to see a mob that didn't aggro at all. All aggro types can be found here - sight, sound, magic, blood aggro and true sight/sound. I think there are even NMs that will pop and aggro when you check something. Had a Cactuar NM spawn on me when I checked a lamp the other night.

So, yeah, be a Boy Scout and always be prepared. Best way to be and stay prepared is to go with an organized group of players you can trust.

[Feenicks]

I'd agree with the balanced party suggestion. We made two attempts in one night, the first time we had TONS of colibri and a few Magic Flagons as well, second time was nothing but flans and slimes. So don't think you can ace it with a BLM party.

[Sevv]

best party i had was 2runs:
Nin/warx2 sam/thf rdm/whm blm/rdm whm/smn did this for 2 runs are damage was a bit low so i changed form nin/war to drg/sam and killed alot faster. Balancing it out is the best way to go but should swapped out the rdm or blm for a brd lol =P

[Caspian]

Vent ftw. If you have people you trust and have a vent server at your disposal, use it. Makes it much easier on crap like the lanterns.

I have heard of people getting past the first 5. Apparently some people have made it past 20 even. At this point they're probably even farther than that, this was a week ago that I heard this. Lvl 20 can apparently either be Faf, Turtle, or Behe, same def and stuff, but much less HP. And Eastern Shadow is supposed to be on lvl 22, or atleast can be.

[Nazo]

What's a vent server?

[eticket109]

What's a vent server?

Vent (Teamspeak is another variant) is an audio chat server where you can talk to other players through a headset/mic or speakers/mic. Its common for LSes or groups of friends to set up private vent or teamspeak servers for planning and coordination.

[Sevv]

Vent ftw. If you have people you trust and have a vent server at your disposal, use it. Makes it much easier on crap like the lanterns.
I have heard of people getting past the first 5. Apparently some people have made it past 20 even. At this point they're probably even farther than that, this was a week ago that I heard this. Lvl 20 can apparently either be Faf, Turtle, or Behe, same def and stuff, but much less HP. And Eastern Shadow is supposed to be on lvl 22, or atleast can be.


this early O.o if it true then Kings may be in it our what else could they have in store for the top ?

[eticket109]

People are presuming that the ToAU HNMs will be on the top sets of floors

[Sevv]

ya i just wouldnt mind getting koening body from assault still tho =P