Vana'diel Bestiary: Lumber Jack  

Though if you're prepared with Stun and a decent level of bar-stone and bar-break, it's really a piece of cake for a mid-60s party with a blinker.

Seems a lot of people here are having trouble defining HNM, and even some fellow HNM shell members hadn't thought it through. But there's a clue in the most common expansion of the acronym - Hyper Notorious Monster. I'd put it this way:

An HNM is a notorious monster of immensely greater difficulty compared to the normal monsters in the vicinity.

There's still some vagueness in what exactly counts as immensely more difficult. But for this instance if you have 200 weapon skill and miss more often than you hit Lumberjack, whereas everything else around you gets hit pretty well by 110 weapon skill, chances are Lumberjack is an HNM.

Creatures like Skewer Sam (gives you title, odd spawn type), Aquarius ("immensely" more physical defense), and many of the beast lottery or short timed NMs (check as impossible to gauge, often use two-hour abilities, ranging from low to high level) don't fall under the HNM category by mere comparison to the monsters nearby. They're just souped up by a few levels, and sometimes a semi-effective method of attack (e.g., meleeing robber crabs) must be replaced by a different strategy (e.g., gravity + nuke Aquarius).

And even while Serket is blink-tankable, with some reputedly soloing it, that's merely honing in on its weakness - a strong but slow attack. One cannot take a strong exp party nearby (51x6), add five levels and some potions and ethers to it (56x6), and expect to win, blink tank or not.

It was a fine set up. 72PLD/WAR Falconer, 60DRK/WAR Blacky, 58WHM/BLM Devendras, 64BLM/WHM Jennax, and me, a 50BRD/WHM. Heading to Eldieme for BRD AF2 when Blacky says `I wonder if any NMs out`
`Yeah, let`s check` says Falconer.
`Weeping Willow` and Blacky pokes the willow with his scythe. `LOL it kinda hurts` he later says when his HP dips into orange. We run to find him. We get there and see him fighting Weeping Willow with four or five saplings attacking as well, and the beetle Lumber Jack. I immediately Horde Lullaby and announce that I will quickly die when they wake up. Then Blacky goes down. Falconer soon follows. Stonega IV catches Devendras as Jenn and I head for the hills. The saplings wake up, I hear the collectively chant "mmmm bard meat" as they chase after me toward eldieme. Jennax falls to the beetle and I zone to eldieme.

I zone back out and run over to raise Devandras so she can raise II falconer. As I`m casting Raise one of the saplings hears the casting and starts chanting again. Fck! I check it, TW-eva. Start fighting it, and finally, 5 years later, kill it. Raise Devendras, who raises Falc, who raises Blacky who doesn`t care about the exp loss, and Dev goes to raise Jenn. We go into eldieme, get met by a train, Jenn escapes, putting us at Jugner entrance. Dev and Jenn have to go, Falc rain checks me, and Blacky has to go.

---

Epilogue:
Falconer joined me the next night with Enoeht, 65rdm/blm, Monicca, 61rdm/blm, Minimaru, 64rdm/whm, and Castmstrpimp, 60blm/whm. Af2 obtained. ^^

Do yourselves a favor if trying to tackle this mob. Don't unless you are 65+ full pty. This is one seriously tough NM. He hits for 100 on a full AF 65 PLD which isn't terribly bad. Until he casts Stonega IV. Multiple times in the first couple minutes. He decimated our pty with 3 casts (We were 50-68). It hit for 400-500 each time. We didn't try to silence him until after the second cast. Who ever heard of a Stonge IV casting beetle anyways?

Well, im the friend primal was talking about. We were on a 5 man papyrus hunt, one of which was a 63 ninja. I decided to hunt down some trees while we waited for a DC'd member to come back, and i found a "Weeping Willow". I decided since it conned ep, it must die. I ended up fleeing with 100 hp to the ninja, who took it out while i continued to take off, trying to avoid any AOES it might have. I noticed alot of WTF!'s and Holy ****'s a few seconds later. The ninja was being attacked by 10 saplings and Lumber Jack. His utesemi was rendered useless, so he 2houred the monster and died along with the other 2 players with him. I and the whitemage lived. I proceeded to follow it around untill it vanished. Primal arrived about a minute later. Hey prim ^.^

o_O

Um...quite simply hnm's give you a title after you kill it. (ie. kill serket and you new title is "serket breaker")

My title after killing it last night was still "Cat burglar groupie" so this would seem to be classified as a NM, not HNM I believe.

We were a party of 63-65 and it was a good fight...I wouldn't recommend taking it on with a pt too much lower than that, the thing has junkloads of hp.

that is our pic of us fighting it ^^

our tank assassinator did a good job tanking

and it does spam stonga IV like there is no tommorrow ; ;

oh yeah that piece of the glutonny sword is me ; ;
; ; ; ;

killed this with the ls twice. It has a 21-24 hours spawn rate, i think ^^. The first thing that pop's is a Treant named Weaping Willow, halfway through fight he'll have a bunch of baby saplings come out his backside. Once you take him out Lumberjack pops in his place, he's a beetle. Barstonra helps a bit. Our party was primarily 74 thf/nin, 67 rng, 2 rdm's, and about 3-4 blm's each fight; uber-high lvl healer there for first too. We got the drop on the second fight ^^; Bloodsword 600k on Titan

LOL!!!! Yea right.... It's lvl 55.

65WHM, 50PLD, 49RDM, 50RDM, 48WHM...

We got spanked....

We were passing through Batilla on the way to Eldiem Necro., and killed the weaping willow. This guy spawns, and the 65WHM says, "look... a NM!!", and pulls it...

He cast Stonega IV about 5 times in less than 2 mins. We never had a chance. BTW... we never hurt it. Luckily one of the RDM was able to zone and raise us all.

Lesson: Don't fight this guy unless you have a party of 60+ people.

This mob has to be pretty tough. On my way to kill liches in Eldiem Necropolis for Genkai 1 our party passed a lvl 75 rdm soloing this mob. It took the rdm somewhere between 30-45 minutes to beat it. Rdm almost died several times. I don't suggest trying this mob out for anyone under 60, and if you do make sure you have an alliance.

He will spawn after the NM "Weeping Willow" is killed, for some reason Wheeping Willow isn't listed here on this site, but it's a treant NM, my ls has gotten it to spawn 3 times by killing the wheeping willow

someone in my ls provoked this guy on accident... crazy *** was just spamming provoke... (ls not listed) this happened about 5 months ago

My 50pal roommate 'accidently' took it on with a 57whm friend....they were already a bit weak when it spawned.

It cast stonega3 on them for 500-600 dmg each in the first 10 seconds HAHAHA <death> ,_,