Good area for lights to farm Dark Rings in Abys - KonFollow

As the title says

Personally, I usually build Amber and Azure by killing Razorbacks. They commonly drop the pop item for the NM Sarcophilus, which can be easily evasion tanked for guaranteed pearl. There's also 2 Ephemerals close by for bonus lights.

There are mobs that give more lights per kill, but the Razorbacks are ridiculously easy to spam.

Personally I build Ruby on the Ley Cenoid near Conflux 3. I take it to about 96 (abyssite dependent) from it I take azure to about 128, and amber a little less and on the same mob use pearl to kill after 96 ruby. I am still refining my DNC solo farming but ir has been decently successful everytime so far and I don't see why this wouldnt't work for any other DD job.

A Pavan always spawns among lizards, which is helpful since lizards don't amber. I've gotten both my refresh hairpins there.

Ok, maybe somebody can tell me what I'm doing worng. I go to Abyssea Konschat (sp) I caap azure on ephemral clionid, I get ruby to about 128 on ephmeral Limule, I get amber to 190+ on pavan and then start kills stuff for pearl, Treants, Fungars, razorbacks, Saplings, Bugards etc. and I don't get gold chests, sometimes I don't get chests period .. Am I doing something wrong or am I just unlucky?

You should be seeing chests frequently dropping once your pearl gets high enough, provided there aren't many groups in there Cleaving/AoE farming mobs in there as you're trying to farm them yourself, since only so many chests can be up at any given time. However, with the recent change to the number of chests that could be up at once, it'd take a significant number of people AoE farming like that to affect your chest drop rates once your pearl is high enough.

I personally disagree with the idea of building your ruby light up since the higher that gets, the more it's going to skew the % that the chest that will drop will be a large gold pyxis. It may take a bit longer to get your other lights where you want, but it prevents any unnecessary contamination of your lights by getting so much ruby.

you only need to take ruby to the high 80's low 90's. This will give you strong - Intense Azure Pearl Amber, Ruby, with the occasional silver, gold, ebon. Then you take pearl to cap and using the red chests you take amber and azure to slightly over 128 each. Once your Amber and Azure are above your Ruby the Ruby chest rate drops off considerably.

Its the best way for melee to solo farm things like dark rings.

and some jobs don't have the luxury of having ways to build azure. My DNC is my main solo farm for crap like this because in the end it gets the job done faster. This is using Ruby lights as my source. As long as you don't @#%^ yourself once you get amber and azure up you rarely see ruby anymore. Its only if you cap cap cap that it really applies. I used to use my RDM cuz I could azure, then melee amber/pearl. But using ruby to build lights has proved much faster.

Is there a good way to ramp up pearl lights? I've no problem building other lights, but it's all for naught when I get booted two hours later with something crappy like 60 pearl and not enough chests dropping to even build TEs.

The following information is only true if you have all 3 abyssites for each chest type.

128 of each light will cap each light. So, technically, you only "need" 128 amber to have a chance at getting a wivre hairpin with refresh. However, any lights over 128 also increase the frequency of that chest relative to your other lights. For instance, if you have 128 azure, and 128 amber, you'll see about the same of each (although amber chests seem to occur less than ruby and azure from my experience).

Now, since you want TE's I assume, as well as the wivre hairpin, the best combination of lights you can do is 128 azure/255 amber. Ruby should be avoided altogether. Treant saplings work great for that.

If you have BLU, I had no trouble going BLU/RDM and rounding up all the wivres. Then CFH on the one you are nuking, and you'll kill all the unclaimed ones and gain no additional azure lights. For some reason, disengaging from these mobs does not prevent you from gaining lights. If you don't have BLU, treant saplings are probably your best bet.

Edit: Highly recommend you build pearl off the VNMS. They give 10-15 guaranteed. With 3 abyssites you should only need around 115.

Edited, Aug 10th 2011 4:40pm by RangerMorie

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of chasing VNMs for pearl, either. With all the time you could spend warping around playing the peekaboo with resting to pop, you could've probably gotten the same amount of lights just mowing through normal mobs.

Ruby building is faster trust me, especially for pearl. If you do not believe me go out and try it. you can get up to 64 pearl, azure, amber from the chests, and as long as you keep it below 96 (with all three abyssites) you will see Amber/Azure/Pearl at Strong (32) or Intense (64). As you build pearl you will see your light build time increase.

My general strat is Ruby to MAX 96. Then I open all Azure, and Pearl boxes, leaving the amber for the time being. Once I hit MAX (or close to it) I begin pear killing, I do this until the very end of my farm.

It takes 3-4 chests of each light to "cap" yourself. Then you can just kill mobs and get gold chests.

This is best done at the Ley Cilinoids near Flux 3. It has a few positives,

1. The mobs take double melee damage while they cast (this means most physical WS' for ruby will one shot them)
2. The mobs are only aggressive to HP at night time.
3. Khalamari is nearby for 15 pearl every 15 minutes for a short easy fight.
4. Pavan wanders nearby for quick easy amber
5. T1 VNM also is in the vicinity

the only real drawbacks are if they get a ga III off, so a stun is recomended especially at night time as a gaIII will hurt you enough t cause links.

But this is the fastest way to do it. Ive played with the non ruby way as RDM/NIN and it is inferior to using Ruby chests to gain lights.

So what's the target amount for amber light for dark rings to pop, assuming we already maxed azure and pearl? (and ruby to 80-90 ish?)

If you're getting big gold boxes (which you should be, if you're trying to get the Dark Rings that you actually want to keep instead of just sell to NPC), that means you're able to get KIs too. It's just a necessary evil if you're trying to farm keeper rings.

This thread reminds me of how much I've come to @#%^ing hate tower shields.

Agreed.

I've noted this in the blm forums before but i'll put it here as well.

I farmed my dark rings (and yesterday my refresh hairpin) on Black Mage/Scholar. And I had capped Amber, Pearl, and Azure (and some Ruby). By the time I was done I had capped Silver and 120ish Ebon.

This method requires Vidohunir, the mythic BLM WS. Also while building Amber, put away all your staves except your Aquilos/Varunas and the grip of your choice (I used Ossa Grip). This prevents you from losing TP to an accidental macro swap.

The order I do my lights are: 64-96 Ruby, cap Amber, get 130-160 pearl.

Then I go on a killing spree which obviously will cap Azure since i'm on blm.

For Amber and Ruby, I use Sea Daughter, Cosmos, and Beyond atmas. I go to where the Treants are and find the Ephemeral Limule that is roaming there. I hit it w/ Blizz V and Blizzard I or II until it's at 5% or so. By then I have regained TP and hit it with Retribution. As you may or may not know, Ephemeral Limules give either 16, 32, 64, or 128 Ruby if killed for Ruby. If I kill and get 128, I zone out and try again. 64 is the target amount, but up to 96 is fine. As long as I don't get 128 i'm fine.

Next I work on Treants and the Pavan that is also in the area. For Pavan, Blizz V usually one shots him, so I hit him with Blizzard IV and blizzard I if necessary. Since he tends to resist Vidohunir, I try to get him down to 2% before I use Vidohunir. Upon a successful amber kill you will get 16, 32, 64, or 128 Amber. For the Treants, just wait until you have about 80% TP then blast one with Blizzard V. If you get the Treant down to 25-30% HP, you should be able to kill it with Vidohunir for 16 Amber. Proceed until Amber is capped.

The reason I cap Amber is because since i'm going to be capping Azure anyway, I want the gold chests to appear at a decent rate. Also as mentioned before, the NQ pop items are replaced by KI and are of the same frequency. (Btw for those who don't know, every mob in Abyssea - Konschtat will give you azure)

Once Amber is capped I switch to normal BLM atmas - Minikin Monstrosity, Beyond, and Ultimate (ensuring I have RR up from my /sch subjob). Then I run around hunting VNM until have about 130 Pearl light. My kill method basically is pop, Blizzard V, Water, and melee it down. Once in a while i'll get a set proc and one shot it, but what can you do. Obviously i'm also opening up red pearl chests and ruby chests if i'm not up to the 64-96 ruby range.

After I reach the desired pearl count, I then begin my killing spree with forbidden keys in hand. I usually kill the puddings near Fistule because they take enhanced magic damage, can be aspir'd, and the fact they stop to cast is an advantage. Use Sublimation on /sch, and use Parsimony/Bliz V when the strategems are up. When you get an Intense Soothing Light blue chest, pop manafont and the chest for some free quick kills. If you're capped on xp (and who isn't nowadays), you can also pop ebon and silver chests. Use pearl from red chests to eventually cap out your pearl. Once my pearl was capped I actually popped an intense ruby chest to bring myself up to 140 ruby on my last farming session. Once you're at or past 128 ruby, all red chests are gold/silver/ebon. My logic is the red chests are going to drop from time to time anyway and as long as ruby is lower than amber/azure, they won't be too frequent. So why not have lights that can be actually useful (By eyeballing yesterday i'd say I got 1 red chest every 8 kills).

After about 3 hours worth of breaks (and 10 hours in the zone) yesterday, I walked out with 600k worth of dark rings/tower shields/phrygian ores, and a refresh hairpin. Previous farming sessions yielded me my 2 keeper dark rings - 1 with -6% PDT, -5% MDT, -3% BDT, and the other with -5% PDT, -6% MDT, -3% BDT. I also have 2 dark rings in my MH that have -6% PDT and -6% MDT respectively.

It's all luck of course. The best you can do is tailor your lights and kill speed and keep trying. The awesome augments do exist I promise.

What is your nuke rig, out of curiosity?

I don't know if it has been mentioned but whm can do azure/amber/pearl pretty well (atleast in konschat highslands). Thats how I got my wivre hairpin. My whm is by no means really geared for much besides healing and I was able to cap amber/ azure and start working on pearl when i got it (I think I had 60 minutes left). I would basically go to flux 6 w/ my Cata atmas (SD , Cosmos, Ultimate) and kill Pavan / The clionid for amber and azure and try to pearl extra leeches. I used my pdt set, phalanx, viel, ice spikes, and refresh.

Once I was done w/ that I went to the licorices nearby and would kill those since Cata does extra damage. The only issue with that is Guimave, however whm can solo it fine and people like to pick it up for fistule. I didn't gear for pearl because my thf friend was coming to help for a bit, but as she got 1 pearl kill I got the hairpin. However whm can switch to melee atmas and pearl some stuff fine I'd assume.

Edited, Aug 14th 2011 10:46am by Dantedmc

you will always see the highest tier abyssite in the message if you have more then one. The key is the strength of light. That will tell you what you are tracking.
Tier 1 = feeble
Tier 2 = softly
Tier 3 = solidly

Thanks for reminding me about the resonating power. I know I was missing something.

@Lyltia: I'll be trying that method later this week, seeing as how slaughtering mobs isn't building pearl fast enough when I'm still missing two of the three Abyssites that help with building pearl.