First off, the items are not cheap. Most HMN shells are asking a minimum of 2 million gil per item.
6 million gil is not a small amount of money, and you will find most people in the game do not have
6 million gil to buy the items.
Even if you do have the money, it is a lot harder than you make out to buy the items. For example,
I have been trying to buy the items myself for over a year now without success. I have the gil, but
I lack the game time to sit and camp the spawns. I have a full time job, so am only online for 1 to
3 hours max a day, and that is usually in the evening. You will find that if the NM windows are not
up during that time, then I have to wait around a week before they overlap with my usual play time.
Ok, so I see people in the zone, I head out there. I start sending /tell to all the party leaders,
and start /shouts asking if the item is for sale. Guess what, its the usual case of:
- No reply whatsoever from anybody in the area
- No, somebody in the shell needs it
- No sorry, selling to somebody else
- Yes, we will sell it to you - but then that shell does not get the claim
- Yes, we will sell it, but you have to bid against those other guys in the corner
- Yes, we will sell it to you, but the item does not drop
As I said, I have been trying on/off for over a year to get these items, and it seems nobody wants my
money. The vast majority of the time I end up wasting 3 hours+ of my time shouting and getting no
response whatsoever. I have effectively given up on buying the items now, and think that the original
posters idea of getting into the shells themselves is probably the best route (if you have the time
to stand around for hours camping each day).
BTW, if you are planning on joining a shell just for BB items, you may only have the choice of joining
one particular one. I was originally from Hades before the merge, and it seems the HNM shells from Hades
are having a very tough time getting claims on Cerberus. Every time one of those shells agrees to sell
me the item, they never get the claim. They always seem to be out claimed by "Armada", who appear to
be botting (I can not prove it of course, but it seems mighty fishy to me when there is a party of naked
Taru who always get the claim, then all mass DC directly after getting the claim). There is a Taru army
at each of the camps I am told (I have only tried Fafnir camp since moving to Cerberus) owned by Armada.
So unless you join Armada, seems your chances of getting the items by camping them is very very slim indeed.
As for your chances of getting into Armada, well that might be slimmer yet depending on their recruitment
policy...