ZM8 - Return to Delkfutt's Tower  

My LS was trying to get as many people to sky as possible. So the LS did this one 5 times to get people through. I was in 3 of the 5 fights. The "core" members was Pld73, Rdm74 (maybe 75), and Blm75 (me). The remaining slots we rotated people through. We always had a Whm in the group. On the 2 that I wasn't in, a Blm67 took my place. Also, everyone who was going was level 67+. We won all 5 fights. There were some deaths, but they were "flukes".

The strategy was to have the mages stay by the steps (where you enter); and the melees "crowd" the Duke in the center.

As a Blm, I only cast teir 2 elemental spells, drain, aspir, and elemental debuf. The only time I would nuke was on a SC. The idea was to keep the Duke away from the mages. The fights lasted anywhere from 8 mintues to 11 minutes. What made the difference was whether the party SC'ed or not.

After we had finshed the 5 rounds, another group (who had been trying to win) asked for our help. We decided to give them a hand and went again. This time the party was: Pld73, Rdm74(or75), Blm75, Pld71, Rng63, and another DD in the low to mid 60's. It was a tough fight and 3 players were dead when it got the Duke down to a sliver of life. At that time, unfortunately, I cast the "wrong" spell and gave it health back. Soon after that, we were all dead. So, something to watch for: The Duke will be Strong to a certain element. Casting spells in that element will restore the Duke's hp. I was told (after) that you can tell which spell the Duke is strong to by some color on him.

We recommended that the group get a few levels before trying again. I think the recommendation is that most players be level 68+ before attempting this mission. I'm not saying that it can't be done with lower levels (since it is clear from other people's experience), but it will just go smoother if the party is 68+

Edited, Wed Jan 19 04:55:53 2005

We had 6 ppl who desperatly needed sky, (me)69 whm, 70 whm, 70 mnk, 66 sam, 68 blm, and 73 pld. We really had no idea what we were up against, so we grabbed a crapload if drinks, med's and icarus wings, and went in <Full Attack!>. Everyone died but the whm's because the blm sacrificed himself so we could get out, all melees 2hr'd and the evil archduke killed our pally thru his invincable with additional fire damage... Basically we got owned...
But alas, as I said we were desperate for sky, so we decided to try again. The tactic this time was to have one whm heal and the other keep buffs up.
It worked awesome!! Only at one point did things get critical after the sam dropped and the buffing whm used her 2hr to bring the pld and mnk back up. We didn't set any time records, but we beat him. Saw the amazing cutscenes, and got acess to the coveted sky palace^^

*edit*We also killed the Ancient Vessle with this setup... once we found the ???

Edited, Tue Jan 18 05:48:48 2005

Just did ZM6-13 this evening, and I was pretty anxious about this fight. It actually wasn't too bad. He was annoying, but if you can endure the fight then you're good to go.
We had the following party setup:

72 PLD
69 RDM
73 BLM
75 DRK
65 WAR
64 WHM

We had 2 deaths sadly, 1 was the war, who drew hate, and the other, the blm. We beat it in about 9 minutes, but I can't complain. I would recommend that mages and tanks bring echo drops for Silencega. I was the only mage in my party who packed a stack of drops, so it was very annoying wasting my MP silenaing people multiple times. o.<

Beat it in 9 minutes exactly, while the server record on Kujata currently stands at 3 minutes and 20 seconds. o.O

Edited, Sun Jan 16 04:28:52 2005

Just did this last night and the battle went much like the other posts on this page. The hate reset was our biggest problem as it got many of us killed. Our 70-75 party almost won the first time, but the PLD died early on and the RNG, DRG, and other RDM followed soon after. The WHM and me (RDM) were the only ones to escape the battle feild alive.

What messed us up, however, is when the other RDM Chainspelled and tried to nuke the crap out of it with Blizzard III, we noticed right away it was doing no damage. Only to discover later that Blizzard III was healing him instead of inflicting damage. She finished her chainspell with a Thunder III which did full damage. I don't blame her, though, in the heat of that insane battle, reading the log is next to impossible.

In the next battle, my Chainspell was up and I cast Aero III to see what would happen and it healed him as well, I tested thunder II and it did full damage.

I don't why these elemental spells healed him, but heads up if you plan to nuke him to death.

Edited, Thu Jan 6 14:19:07 2005

We went in this fight afraid of all the horror stories and not having extremely heavy DD (no blm or rng) nor was everyone 70+ but we went in over prepared and came out with the win and no deaths after a far easier fight than we expected.

72thf
73pld
73sam
73rdm
65whm
65rdm

We had the melee bring a couple xpots and sleep to 100 tp at the beginning of the battle. We had the mages bring a couple ethers just in case. We opened up with a light renkei which did good dmg and placed hate on the pld nicely but even though it did over 1.5k total dmg it didnt really put a big dent in his health since as has been mentioned hes got loads of hp.

So we just worked on him getting tp as fast as we could and the rdms dispelled the add effects he kept putting up and tossing out erase from the gravity aoe and blindna from the blindga he casts.

Never really had any close calls the pld said that the light blade ws was doing closer to 400-500 dmg than the 800 as someone mentioned it may do. Pld got down pretty low one time during the fight but was quickly cured and we put this guy down in 10 mins exactly, and alot of that was sleeping to 100 tp at the beginning which we really didnt need to do.

One ether was used by a rdm, noone finished in yellow HP, and noone used 2hour or incarus wing or xpotions.

Cool fight and cool cutscene.

Just did this with:
69 PLD
69 BRD
68 BLM (delvled to 67)
67 RDM (not sure of lvl)
66 MNK (me)
64 WHM

Bring lots of echo drops.

Gravity for me was killer. It made me move slower than walk. He got pretty evasive at times.

Time: over 14 minutes
Record: 5:46 <--- insane

Did this yesterday with:
68 PLD/WAR (de-leveled to 67 >_<)
68 BLM/WHM
68 THF/NIN
67 WHM/SMN
66 RDM/BLM
65 BLM/WHM

It was very easy going at first. We got him down to about half life with no close calls. The mages would switch off healing/medding, and the PLD never dropped below 700hps until Kam'lanaut used his TP move for 850 damage followed by a critical hit for 150 damage that basically one shotted the PLD. If that hadn't have happened, I have no doubt we could have pulled this off with no deaths.

After the PLD went down, hate was bouncing around a ton and our THF tried to hold aggro and blink tank it for a bit and used Perfect Dodge while we raised the PLD. Once the PLD was up he popped Invincible and Provoked and I used Bene (everyone was nearly dead at this point) and the PLD covered me. The BLMs used their 2hrs and started nuking as much as they could. Once the PLDs 2hr wore off he was killed again, and the BLMs continued to nuke with me trying to keep them alive (hate bounced between the 3 of us).

We ended up pulling it off but it was very close. One ill timed AE and we would have all bit the dust. The RDM died once and the PLD died twice, but no one else died. We all used our 2hrs except for the RDM.

Kam'lanaut had over 13k hps, and did over 13k damage to our entire party. The PLD took nearly 9k of that damage. BLM spells at the end did this much damage:

921 (Aeroga III), 921 (Aeroga III), 921 (Aeroga III), 885 (Flare), 765 (Flood)435 (Fire III), 803 (Thundaga II), 731 (Thundaga II), 854 (Burst), 380 (Aeroga II)

"Intense" is the only way I can describe that battle. If the PLD hadn't died things may have been easier, but it seems most people don't come out of this battle without some casualties.

If it's any consolation, the NM you fight in the next ZM is way easier. We killed it no problem with 67 PLD, 68 BLM, 67 BST, 68 THF, 67 WHM, 66 RDM, 75 BLM, 70 BST.

Hope that helps ^^

This has got to be the single most fun fight ever. We had little to none trouble doing this, but there were people involved who did it for the second or more time. Although all of them said they had never been walked out of this battle without casualties xD

If you separate all the mages and have your RNG to stand back excepting WS, majority should stay out of the AoE range. Wheel didn't hit me once, nor did it hit our mages. BLM is the key for this fight and I would personally recommend after seeing our BLM in action that BLM SUB NIN IF YOU HAVE IT LEVELED. This may sound a weird setup, but that will save taru BLM from Kam'lanaut's WS. Also, if you need to cast anything at all, counting Ninjutsu; Bring a few echo drops for everyone, AoE silence will get you no matter where you stand. Rest of the AoE attacks can be avoided if he's tanked about in the middle of the room and everyone with ranged nukepower makes a circle around him as far as possible.

Had fun, gotta love ZM ^^;

EDIT; our setup was 64-74 BLM, RDM, WHM, PLD, RNG, WAR

Edited, Fri Nov 26 19:41:57 2004

We heard about the horror stories with this fight, so we overprepared on what we had to do.

The party setup was:

75 NIN/WAR
69 DRG/THF (me)
69 PLD/WAR
69 DRK/THF
69 RDM/BLM
69 WHM/SMN

What we ended up doing was the NIN, DRK, PLD, and myself brought in a stack of sleeping potions each, and each had an opo opo necklace. The DRK and I also carried in an icarus wing each.

We entered the BC, each slept to 300% tp. NIN opened the fight with a Blade: Ku. I did SATA Wheeling Thrust at 300% off the PLD, who then did a 300% Spirits Within to grab the hate. The DRK then did a 300% SATA Spinning Slash onto the NIN for a Light skillchain, bringing him down about a third of his life within the first 20 seconds of the fight.

We toughed it out for the rest of the one minute SATA cooldown, popped our icarus wings, and redid the SATA Wheeling Thrust > SATA Spinning Slash light skillchain. After that all we had to do was melee the rest of the way. We didn't break any records because of all the time we took sleeping, but the fight itself lasted no more than 4 minutes I'd say. At the end our white mage still had 908 MP remaining, and not a single person was in yellow health.

Sure, we may have overkilled it, and we probably didn't need to do all that much in order to win this fight. But I figured it's always better to be overprepared than underprepared, and this way we were pretty much given a cakewalk of a fight from what could have been a very tough fight.

So maybe consider doing this if you're having a tough time beating this boss. It made things much easier for us.

This was a really fun fight, we wiped our first time cuz we went in half blind, but our second time it was kind of a joke since we knew what was going on. Zero deaths the second time we went in, no drinks/medicines used, no 2hrs used (except the RNG at the end to finish off) and the RDM never had to convert.

68 BLM/RDM <me>
68 WHM/BLM
66 NIN/WAR
63 PLD/WAR
73 RNG/NIN
70 RDM/BLM

You can't Haste to get rid of his slowga, you have to erase first (similar to spiders). Mages fight near the entrance and melee fight down on the ground.

He will get en- effects, and I'm not sure what he does to give them, but they are dispelable. I was never able to stun slowga, but I could stun dispelga with ease, so the second time we went in I had the mages keep me hasted (for stun recast). The second time the RDM focused -very- heavily on the debuffs, and having Paralyze on this guy makes him much, much, much easier to take down. The mages kept up stoneskin specifically, I know I had phalalnx up, too, and if he did hate reset and ran towards the mages, the mage that had hate would run away from the other mages so he wouldn't nail everyone with AoEs. Even when we had our PLD tank (It got a little messy on hate towards the end) it wasn't a big deal... LV63 PLD would drop from full to about 300/400 I believe, and he can't spam his sword attack thing, not to mention it has a pretty long casting time so you know its coming. The first fight our RNG used spartan bullets, but didn't have as many as he originally though he had, and he wasn't able to use them on the second fight. This is -incrediably- helpful. Shooting every shot with stun he was able to (very often) interupt anything that was being cast.

Go in with a cool head, if you can win BCNMs with seals, you can win this. Once again, the fight we won both the PLD and the NIN tanked a fair bit, and neither of them did a poor job of it, at all. Nobody in our party had "Godly" gear, no scorps or anything like that, just good gear for our jobs and appropriate food (witch kabob, pies, meat).

If your tank is a nin, you must have someone with erase before you can haste.
Any weapons or ammo that have add effect: stun - +1 version stun rates are noticbaly higher (in general).
Haste your BLM or DRK, stunning dispelga helped a ton.

G'luck - our tanks were our -lowest- jobs, and after our shell shock fight we didn't need/use 2hrs or have real mp concerns (possibly due to having a nin tank a sizable amount of it).

This guy isnt as bad as I thought....but. He killed everyone but me (RNG) and WHM who had 13 MP and 24 HP XD. The NIN 2houred for the Win....but if only that AoE didnt wipe the BLM out it would have been a victory with all alive. Won on First Try. PT was : 73 BLM, 75 PLD, 65 NIN, 71 WHM, 70 RDM, and me. 61 RNG. Was Amazing battle though :o.

Don't let anyone tell you a Pre Lv70 PLD can't tank this. I'm only Lv66 and, I easily tanked it. Had Lv73 SAM, Lv70 RNG, Lv75 WHM, Lv75 RDM and, Lv72 BLM. BLM was support curing and, it still wasn't even that bad. I think we were close to the insane record of 3:37. We did it in 5:1?. Was a fun fight. Scary at times... but fun.

-Xtek

Edited, Mon Nov 15 21:48:06 2004