Steamed Sprouts  

Wow, this a tough one. Ok, so we did this the other day and it was a complete nightmare. Here was the scenerio:
Atempt #1
BRD, RDM(me),DRK,MNK,WHM, and cant remember the other guy NIN or WAR I think.
We all /random to see who's orb goes first (of course I'm last >.<)
We go in buff up and BRD runs ahead and starts casting horde lullaby all mandis. Barely got if off due to all the mandis hit the crap out of him. Myself and the WHM struggle to keep the BRD alive. DD's rush in and start smashing the black mandi. White mandis wake up after about 10 or 20 sec and begin ripping the BRD apart. We manage to keep BRD alive and he is able to sleep them again only this time not all mandis get slept. The black mandi is still alive and refuses to go down, despite repeated attempts by the BRD to cast lullaby mandis defeat him and everyone else after that.

Atempt #2
This went much worse than the first. Before the BRD was able to fully sleep all the mandis they did their AoE sleep attack and AoE paralyze attack. Me and WHM were both slept and paralyzed and unable to heal the BRD so he died fairly quickly hence we were ???ed after that.

Rough BCNM. I plan to try it again, but the BRD is key here so BRD gear must be up to par with plenty of CHR+ stuff to make lullabys stick. Good luck everyone. Tips and suggestions are greatly appreciated, thanks.

Hi guys, I've never ever done BCNM before. My main is lvl 41 DRK, and I've got lvl 30 WAR and lvl 20 THF. Just wondering if I'm qualified for any bcnm at all? My LS friend told me that only selected jobs are suitable for bcnm (he named RDM, WHM, BLM, WAR/NIN, BRD, BST), so I was a bit discouraged on hearing that. After looking at this post however, I became even more confused lol cause some of you went into the battle as DRK.

Besides the qualification question, I'm just also wondering what sub is good if my main is DRK, and what food to bring? (I'm never into food before, but I guess a lot of you think they're crucial).

So yeah, I'd appreciate any advice ^^. Thanks, all!


qtmonster

Character: Toha (Asura server)


Edited, Thu Jun 8 09:45:29 2006

Started doing this way back when for Phalanx for my RDM, eventually formed a static in the LS to repeat. Formation: BRD, WHM, RDM (me), PLD, RNG, RNG.

Typical routine, the Bard would sleep the entire mob, PLD would pull a whitey and keep the hate (dunno his secret, but he keeps it good) while the RNG would tear the thing apart. WHM took care of any problems and I kept the BRD alive. For the last one, WHM and I would spam spells while everyone tears it a new one. Done and done.

The one time we died was the Bard D/C, which was one of those "Oh no...." straight out of the movie moments as every mandy woke up and went ballistic on everyone.

Better than shelling out the dough for Phalanx, and have made some pretty sweet cash from other drops. Probably my fave BCNM.

So myself and 5 members of my LS did this 6 times yesterday. We had a Nin (Shizume), Drk (me), Smn (Lyshell), Whm (Setesh), Blm (Gabrielle), and Brd (Darion).

We went 6/6 with the main drops of 5 survival belts, 5 utsu ni's, and 2 erase's.

The keys are this. By having the Brd single sleep the black mandy, the 7 regulars will aggro the brd. At this point the Nin and Drk headed to attack the black mandy as the brd mass slept the whites. Now I must give props to the Brd, even when the suckers refused to sleep on the 2nd run, he STILL managed to get them to hit the hay and let us do our jobs. So all in all, have a good Brd for this else you're effed.

The key for damage was the Nin and Drk was making a SC (We did Blade: To to Shadow of Death for a Fragmentation). On top of that we had the Smn MBing with Thunderspark for 250-300 damage fairly steadily. The Blm would MB with Thundaga for a good 260-330 on average.

After we got down to 2 or 3 mandies, we would just start AoE blasting them as they stood by the brd. All in all it was an amaazing set of runs, so you can do it.

tried this 3 times tonight all failed! party was pld(me) brd/whm whm/blm drk/war and 2 mnk/war. first 2 times we buffed and ate then brd went up cast foe lullaby on main mob other minions linked on her and she ran they followed and she didnt have enough time to cast horde lullaby on the minions they took her down quickly and then whm(who was trying to heal her) then they came and joined in on us at the main mob. 3rd time she tried horde at the start and it only lasted like 4 seconds. before she started to get creamed again. what are we doing wrong or was there a better way? tried to do it like above posting suggested but didnt work? im on Leviathan so give me a tell or post a reply thanks :)

Some general notes to a bard looking to do this BCNM for the first time:

1. You are going to get hit. Don't panic when at the start you have to control 7 mandies. Just do what you are supposed to do (cast Horde Lullaby on the littlies), then Blink up again, then mages ballad if needed, then repeat. You will get hit. Do not panic. That is why you need someone with you (ie rdm) to keep you alive. RDM friend is good because they can sleep the odd one that wakes up early, and they have convert for emergency mp.

2. Bring food. Flint caviar is nice, a little extra mp and CHR. Yagudo drink when you need it.

3. Check your internet connection. If you d/c, it's pretty much gonna turn to custard. (Unless there's like, only one mandy left)

4. Wait until they wake up before you resleep them, unless you are really really good at counting seconds. Or you could do a macro. Safest is to just wait until you see the log stack up with a whole load of "is no longer asleep messages". You cannot afford to cast sleep when they are sleeping and waste it. 30 seconds is a long time to be hit for ~30HP from 7 mandies.

5. Don't panic. Probably the most important one.

---

General strategy:

Enter BCNM, food on, buff: blink and aquaveil is quite handy - whm buff, wait for mp, then bard approach bcnm - get into maximum range for foe lullaby onto central bad mandy, cast - with any luck it will sleep and the other 7 will race after you. stay still. Keep the mandies together. other four people (tank, 2x dd, whm) should then go off and attack big mandy. when 7 mandies are gathered around you, horde lullaby. while they are sleeping, re-blink, mage ballad, and then wait for horde lullaby recast. keep doing this until the other four have killed the big mandy, then they can steal one mandy from you while you keep the rest asleep. Eventually you will be left with one mandy and you can just kill it.

---

I speak from a pained first experience in which the rest of the members probably hate me for now. But I learn! And hopefully you won't have to learn the hard way like I did. >< There's probably lots of other ways to win but we were doing good until I d/cd...so check your connection and keep those mandys in line and you'll do fine :)

I'm wondering if you get a pair of BLMs to use thier highest -ga spell on the 7 mandys after the big one is dead and time it to where just after the -ga spell goes off the bard finishes his lullaby, could that work? It would require a group that REALLY knows each other and has good timing macros, but I would think it would save the BRD a lot of damage.

Sorry... double post.

Ok, went for my first two attempts at this last night. Failed both times. All the mandy's seem to be waking up at different times for some reason. Even with Mary's Horn they just won't stay asleep for very long, but I've maxed out on CHR gear and am going to try again soon.

Now, someone asked about the Carby pull, and a friend and I tested the idea today. My friend was RDM/SMN, and I was Bard, along just in case the carby pull didn't work.

Carby pull does NOT work. Carby was sent in and upon attacking, was immediately linked on, obviously. Carby died almost instantly, and seconds later, an army of raddishes was angrily marching single file toward us like we were preaching the advantages of an all vegetable diet or something. I slept them, and we ran out.

I am not sure if having carby retreat, then releasing would have made a difference, but I don't think so. It's my theory that after carby dies or is released, the mobs that were engaged upon him enter a sort of "cooldown" period, in which they just sit idle and do not link. For normal mobs, this is enough time for the mob that carby attacked to run after you and out of link range, but I am guessing that the mandy's cooldown time is extremely short. I am trying to think of a way around this, but can't.

OK me and my LS members and a BRD friend have this down cold....

First, your BRD (or BLM) has to be very calm and be damn good at his/her job. I can't stress this enough... Second, you need 2 mages, preferrably a WHM and RDM, WHM to Erase any status effects from DD and to help keep an eye on party's HP, while the RDM keeps the BRD alive. I've done this BCNM over 30 times and found out that using a good tank (the best damn Taru PLD in Vanadiel in our case) helps conserve the mages' MP. I've done it with a variety of DD jobs so those two spots in the pt are of least importance. As long as the mages and BRD have their sh*t together, you should be fine. After NM drops, one DD should go pull a single mandy to the middle away from mages (who should be at the entrance's edge of the circle) to avoid having mages put to sleep. Takes us 20 minutes on average to finish off these mandies.

Mages should bring Pies and Yagudo Drinks, the more the better... DD should bring their best food possible. I found that my SAM works really well in this BCNM because of fast TP building and the added Stun effect of Tachi: Hobaku helps Stun the NM mandy when it starts to cast Flood. DRK works very well too, as does RNG DRG MNK and THF. Just make sure to have one DD who can Stun, because Shield Bash doesn't always work... trust me. So on to our strategy...

Our pt setup is as follows:
Panamanian (PLD/WAR)
Cheetahhra (RDM/WHM) and sometimes Marauder (RDM/BLM) if Cheet's sleepy
Kuda (WHM/BLM)
Hellscream <me> (SAM/WAR)
Janzeeno (BRD/WHM)
6th member is another DD, usually a different person each time. (Thanks to Zythe, Zella, Hyolee, Varucard, Nianiel, and all those who have helped us)

We enter and I Meditate, WHM buffs us and everyone uses food (pies, kabobs, etc.) We rest full MP and the BRD runs up to the edge of the circle and does Foe Lullaby on the NM mandy putting it to sleep and aggro'ing the other 7 mandys. He then does Horde Lullaby and the mages start to cure BRD. In the mean time, the DD runs in and engages the NM mandy keeping it in the middle of the circle. Pan does his tanking while me and the other DD do our thing... Kuda keeps Paralyze and Darkness off us since he got Erase ^_^. Stun on the NM while it's casting Flood is important, because at level 40, you usually end up dying if you get hit. It takes forever for it to cast Flood, so you should see it coming... After the NM drops, I run back and pull a mandy off (which is usually hard because BRD accumulates tons of Hate) and pull it back to the middle. Watch the mandys drop one by one, ocassionally pissing everyone off by doing AoE sleep while we're trying to pull one off the BRD.

We've used this method a ton of times and have made millions of gil. The only times we've failed is when the BRD lags or we have connection problems, and the two times we've had deaths because of missed Stuns (I died once and got raised but we ran out of time, and Zythe died too, but he got raised and we made one hell of a comeback to win). Good luck to all who attempt this BCNM.

Edited, Thu Jun 23 08:58:51 2005

Ok we did this last night. Two times, group looked like this...

Brd/whm
Sam/war
War/Nin
Rdm/whm
Whm/smn
drk/war

We failed 2 times. Both times my sleep was not sticking...(I was the bard). I do not have monster signa, but my CHR is +22. I've talked to a friend of mine who is bard and said everytime he does it w/out signa and w/out mary's horn and they do just fine. Horde would stick, but only for a few seconds, and by the time I was individually sleeping one of them they all would wake up. I don't understand why my songs aren't sticking? Anyone have any ideas? Either way i'm done with this BCNM forever until i get signa and mary's horn. After last night i'm thinking of just switching back to my 52 samurai for good. Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a bard =\

On the Hades server; if anyone wants to help a DRG/WAR or DRG/WHM do this please send me a /tell.

Im on Leviathan Server and would like to do this bcnm send me a /tell Lesco i will prolly be on.

I did this last night
it was my first time ever doing a BCNM that wasn't mission 2-3 (dunno if you count that as one)

Party was
Pld/war
Drk/war
Drg/war <<< Me
Brd/Nin
Whm/Blm
Whm/Blm

IMPORTANT TIPS FOR THIS
1. If the BRD goes down, everyone does
2. Flood = big trouble. Stun as soon as you see it cast. If you miss the text que, the Black Mandy will cast for like 10-15 seconds, so if you see that stun.
3. keep the 2 whms on the brd. A Pld, Drk, and Drg can handle the NM alone for a good while, and even to its death.
4. the Brd builds plenty of hate the more times it has to sleep them, so the faster you kill the Black Mandy the better. you still need more than a voke to pick off the others though.
5. Keep the mandies as far apart from the Black Mandy as possible. For us they were on the dirt well past the bridge, whilst the Black Mandy was in the centre of the circle where he started. This seems to affect how likely they are to split from the pack.
6. MOST IMPORTANTLY don't expect to win from the onset. Keep the group together and you will succeed. After all being together and experiencing it, you will be able to do it again and again, so its worth the time and effort to stick together.
After reading through these forums it sounded like a cakewalk. It wasnt easy, until everyone knew what they were doing.

So i dont get flamed, let me say that i still think that everyone did their best and im happy we stuck together through the tough times. Don't discredit anyone in BCNM party because without them there would be no party. least that is my attitude.

We failed the first 3 runs of 4.

THe first time the Bard was unable to sleep straight of the bat. fair enough cause i don't know too many bards who have experience sleeping 7 enemies at once, unless they've done some BCNMs. We all died, and i was a complete tard and did not dismiss my wyvern, so i was wyvern less for the rest of the time. Though it can still be done without it, as a drg i was doing like 3/5 of the damage i should've been doing.

Second time through i think there was some whm trouble cause the brd died again. Once the bard is gone ppl forget it and run for the exit. There is no 2 ways about it, unless there are like 2 guys left.

3rd time in the Bard had it down. The mandies didn't move at all, and me the drk and the pld were fighting the Black Mandy. He starting casting FLood but the drk didn't see it, to be fair i didnt see the message of him starting to cast it either. I think though that flood takes about 10-15 seconds at least to get off, so if you miss the que and you can see the little bugger casting something for awhile, stun his arse. Anyway it still worked out well cause me and the drk bounced off voking the little guy for as long as we could. Had him down to about 5% and we died. At the time one of the whms was raising the pld, when i think they should've cured me cause we would've made it. Neway, something important happened, so its all good. Once i was dead and the dark was at like 200 hp he starts casting Flood. The newly revived pld used 2hr and provoke and he did not move. Im not sure if hate got wiped when he and I died, leaving the drk with a battle load of hate, but either way he wanted the drk dead! so maybe Flood won't switch off the to someone with more hate if they grab the attention. Dunno, but keep it in mind.

4th run through was a success, though we cut it close. I still didn't have my wyvern (IDIOT!!!) so we could've done this noticably faster. Bard, like round 3, had it to an art. We assigned BOTH whms to him, cause the pld(elvaan), drg(Galka) and Drk(elvaan) can fight this dude without whms. As long as flood is cut down. Once he was down, we picked off the remaining chumps. keep in mind though that during the Black Mandy fight, the Brd has built alot of hate up on the others, so it takes a fair bit to get their attention. THe pld had to voke, shield bash, flash then use a weaponskill to get it over. Once over though the PLD pretty much had the hate for that guy. I got one once with some jumps, and a weaponskill cept there was no loosing its attention to the pld.

We finished it in 29 minutes and 33 seconds. Very close. as i said though, i had no wyvern and things kept getting better each run through.
Ive put the important tips at the top of this post, but i look forward to running it again.

i've been trying to get a bcnm group together for some time, but nobody wants to ever do it. so any one out there in shiva server want to do a bcnm, 20-40, please contact me.
RDM-51
THF-25
BLM-24
NIN-16
SMN-9
WAR-8
RNG-5

Me and a party, setup was PLD, WAR, WHM, BLM (me) BRD, and MNK just tried this. It started off good. BRD slept all the white ones and we started to kill the black one... everything was going good till the black one died, then the white ones woke up and started to spread out. the BRD managed to resleep 3 of them, but then got raped by the others... then the whm, then me... it was sad, but we got 5 more orbs and are trying it again... wish us luck!

Edit: Tryed again, but the same thing happened... any tips?

Edited, Sun May 22 17:59:35 2005

GiveMeYourTots LS BCNM!!!

This weekend Tots plus a couple non-Tots did this BCNM. We were 9/9!!! All I have to say is Bard is crucial! They need to sleep everything and cast Mage's Ballad after every Horde Lullaby for the Mages' regen.

Our recipe for sucess is:
1 competent Bard
1 WHM/SMN
1 BLM/WHM
1 RDM/WHM
1 MNK/WAR
1 ?/? Tank

Bard go first and pulls all mandy except Black one back across the bridge. Then casts Horde Lullaby and Mage's Ballad. Rinse Repeat. While this is happening WHM stands near BRD and pays close attention to BRD's hp. Meanwhile everyone else takes down the black one. Then the MNK comes back and pulls one of the white ones off of BRD, taking it back towards circle away from BRD. rinse repeat. The whole time RDM debuffs the flanked mob and heals two tanks, while BLM nukes and serves as 3rd healer. This all works well so long as everyone understands their job and sticks to it everytime.

BTW: our best time so far is 17 min 9 sec. I think this is quite good. This round, our MNK used Hundred Fists. That saved us a good minute of fighting I think.

I am tired and lazy. If you have any questions send a /tell.

Good Luck

did this last night... 5/5, 3 utsusemi:ni's, a few belts, and random junk. with utsusemi going for 450k atm on odin... that's still a considerable sum of money :D

it went very well, especially since most of us had no previous (succesful) BCNM experience.

our setup was BST/WHM (me!), BRD/PLD, DRK/WAR, WAR/NIN, WHM/BLM, and RDM/(BLM?).

we followed pretty much the 'usual' procedures, except for one thing. instead of having the BRD pull (>.>) i would call beast a crabby friend and use fight on the black mandy. at this point, all the white mandies would come running towards me. (aggro? iuno) melees would then run over to the black one, wupping his {fun} {hole}, while i would run over to the brd so he could horde lullaby 'em.

after the black one dies (or just before), i would run back to the bard, leave my jug and charm a mandy, while the WAR was trying to steal hate from BRD... charm success rate was about 65-70% or so. (CHR 45+29 with songs & food) and if charm failed, bard would have so much hate that i could go back and melee while my charm timer reset, without taking a mandy with me.

a few tips however: doing BCNM runs is LONG. our battle would usually last 17-21 mins, and you have to factor in the time to run back to balga's dais. (another 10ish mins?) so doing 6 runs could very well take 3 hours... yes. that's if people don't go afk all the time, etc.

and brds, tavnazian tacos will be your best friends :D vit, def, mp, hp, chr... what else do you need? too bad they are kinda expensive :( (i also ate them as bst) anyways, looking forward to doing more of these! (still have way too many seals for my liking >.>)

heh did this today figured id post my results...
as for the pt setup was

brd/whm
rng/nin
pld/war
rdm/whm
whm/blm
and me as drk/war

you know i could do into blah blah what is best pt setup etc... or how to avoid flood but here is what we did and it worked average time being around 18 min or so....

buff up, melee go to left side of entrance mages to right.. brd cast mages ballad on mages, comes to melee cast armys paeon and sword madgrigal.. then does the defense song (march?) on himself and other mages.... goes up horde lulabyes the black mandy .. runs back down entrance a lil ways...gets all hate sleeps all the smaller mandies...
me ,pld, rng, and rdm go in wdm stays back... i sit there and wait for stun dont cast any other spells until i see flood (dont want to see flood pop up then not be able to stun possibly destroying all the melee)... if he does cast flood i stun him immediately, sometimes it didnt even work so me and pld shield/weapon bash it and hopefully stops it (always seemed to work) then rng pulled mandies one by one until there was none... whm kept brd healed... rdm kept melee healed (ocasionally ran down to heal brd if whm mp low or in trouble)... basically whm and rdm are interchangeable at this part rdm might be better for healing brd as they have convert incase of super low mp and need for some major cures... but everything went great only thing close to bad happening was rng acidentally 2 hr after doing barrage and we couldnt pull hate i had to voke, bash, last resort, berserk, souleater and spam diff magic to pull hate off (rng was smashed down to 2 hp) but he lived and all went well :)

drops were 2x erase 1x phalanx and utsusemi:ni made about 400k each im happy :)

oh btw the whms bf was the pld and he had no seals and in such offered to not take any money cuz he was helpin his gf out ... anyays <sic> <fun>

Edited, Mon Mar 14 01:14:09 2005

I'm a level 54 war and i wunna do this BCNM. Whats a good pt setup for my war? Also i'm lvling my thf to lvl 40 and subbibg nin. Any pt ideas for that one?

How would you guys rate the necessity of RDMs in this? I just hit 40 and am looking to do a few of these, but am not sure if I am wanted.

This is the first time I've done this BCNM since the update a few days ago. Normaly with 5-6 orbs, depending on the party size, we would come out of the bcnm about 400k richer on the average. This time however we go in there and come out with our best item being a survival belt and the avergage total per person was around 65k. The average chest would contain the following;
1000gil
red rock
Scroll of Absorb Str
Fire Spirit
Enhancing Earring
Scroll of Refresh
So pretty much we got junk and that trip was really a waste of seals since were used to seeing atleast a few of the big name scrolls. But no Erase, Utsusemi, or Phyalanx. Just wondering if anyone has done this bcnm since the update and if there luck was much less then expected as well.