Sunday, December 12, 2004

 

The Worm's Turn

This is a report on the linkshell event we did last night in Final Fantasy XI. A linkshell is basically a club inside the game. Our linkshell is called MaximumMonkey, after the late lamented comic book store. From time to time we will organize in-game events we can do as a group. Our current favorite activity is the Burning Circle Notorious Monster, or BCNM. (You might recall I wrote an article a while back about a BCNM 30 that Riloth, Dydo and I did.)

Last night's BCNM of choice was "The Worm's Turn." It's a BCNM 40, meaning the characters are capped at 40th level during the fight. A party of six has half an hour to defeat the giant worm Flayer Franz and his mob of smaller Flesh Eater worms. The worms are immobile, so if you stay away they can't hit you physically. On the other hand, they can all cast huge spells. A mob of worms all throwing Stonega spells at you is a very bad thing. Oh wait, it gets worse. Whatever PC currently has Franz's attention will get sucked into the middle of this mob. I don't know about you, but standing in the middle of a writhing mass of evil, hungry, giant worms is not my idea of a fun time!

This fight is actually very easy if you know what you're doing. Our linkshell learned how to beat this fight the hard way a few weeks back. Since then, we have beaten Franz & His Band of Fanz 18 times in a row. Now the only question is whether or not we'd still win if we were all loaded. (We haven't tried...yet.) I might get in trouble for this, but here's the Secret Monkey Plan:

Party Composition & Preparation: You will need a white mage to keep everyone alive, as usual. You will also need a good ninja to be the blink tank. You MUST have someone who can cast Sleepga or the equivalent (black mage, usually). The rest of the party should be made of good ranged damage dealers, such as rangers. A bard or red mage is also very useful, though not optional.

Mages should bring one pie and about one yagudo drink per fight. Rangers should expect to blow through a stack of arrows per fight. Players should supply their own sodas and snacks. Everyone should bring a Star Orb.

Phase One -- Kill Franz: After you enter the arena, buff up, eat your foods, and what not. Rest to full MP and then approach the circle. Your ninja blink tank will then provoke Franz. Franz will pull the poor ninja into the middle of the circle. The black mage then uses Elemental Seal + Sleepga on Franz. This will put the mob of Flesh Eaters to sleep.

After that, the rangers turn Franz into a big wormy pincushion. The black mage hangs back a bit, recasting Sleepga as necessary. No one enters the circle except the blink tank. The white mage will have his hands full keeping the ninja alive, as well as casting Barstonra on everyone. If Franz draws someone else in, that person must run back out immediately and not engage Franz up close. If the black mage can hit Franz with an Aero II a couple of times, so much the better. Mainly, the black mage should concentrate on Sleepga, and not use up all his MP. If you have a bard, he'll be very busy with Ballads, Minuets, and Earth Carols.

This actually isn't that complicated. As long as you keep the Flesh Eaters sleeping and your ninja tank alive, you will wear down Franz in about 5-10 minutes. Once he's dead, you have essentially won the fight, but you still have to deal with...

Phase Two -- Mopping Up: After Franz is done, things get tons easier. The mages can retreat and rest, recharging their MP. There's no hurry, you will have plenty of time to finish the fight. Everyone else just stands back, out of spell range of the Flesh Eaters, and mows them down with arrows, AoE spells or whatever. Just don't get within their spell range, or their Stonega spells will hurt. Don't bother sleeping the Flesh Eaters now; just make them sleep with the fishes. You should be able to finish them all off in about 3-5 minutes.

Phase Three -- Profit: Now comes the fun part, collecting the loot. You will get six drops, provided nobody died. (No one should, and if someone goes down, you can Raise them near the end of the fight, when there's one or two worms left.) Lots of great drops from this fight, including Erase scrolls (350,000 gil on the Phoenix server), Utsusemi:Ni scrolls, Phalanx scrolls, spirit torques, and bunches more. How you divide the stuff is up to you, but I recommend following MaximumMonkey's policy.

In our linkshell, we'll repeat the BCNM as many times as we can, until we run out of Star Orbs or conscious players. Last night, we did this one ten times, winning each one. We pool all the drops and sell them at the Auction House, dividing the spoils evenly among all participants. We had eleven different participants last night, and all will get an equal share, even if they only did one BCNM that night. This is to encourage everyone in the linkshell to give it a try; we also recognize that not everyone can stay up until stupid hours of the morning. We want everyone to benefit, because we like the people in our linkshell!

Since only six people can play in the BCNM each time, we rotate people in and out. It lets folks rest, and this way no one worries that they'll "miss out" on a really good drop from a particular fight. Often times, the "bench" players will run back to Jeuno to pick up another Star Orb, or buy more supplies.

Yeah, yeah, you don't care about that. How much did we make? That's all you care about, the gil. Well, it looks like each of us will get about 325,000 gil after all is said and done. Beats farming, don't it?

Credits: I'd like to give a huge pat on the back to Dydo, who is our linkshell founder, our ninja tank for all 10 fights, and the organizer of last night's event. I'd also like the thank everyone else who participated and made it such a great night:

Brudis (thief)
Daeuhl (bard--and the best one ever)
Eoa (white mage)
Fatbox (ranger)
Flimage (ranger)
Orlia (white mage)
Riloth (ranger--and good friend in real life)
Tobias (white mage--but wishes he could be a pirate instead)
Vibrator (black mage)

Jefferson 12:30 PM

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