The Hell that is Cirein-CroinFollow

Since the servers are down for a week I thought id share my quest to complete my Stage 2.

A little back story first. I run with a 5 man static. Everyones very well geared and we get sh*t done. We decided we all wanted empy weapons so we made a deal that we would complete everyones stage 1 first before doing stage 2s. We started with Carabosse since at the time I was the only one with an actual weapon on the correct trial. I split my gems with the guy upgrading masamune and we finished all 100 gems about 3 weeks ago. We have then moved on to the hell that is 100 glavoid shells for gaxe and twashtar.

I decided I wanted my gun now instead of in 2 months so I started doing 5-6 man shout groups doing 1-2 fights at a time. While this does get the job done as many people have stated, i dont think the sheer amount of retardation from the pickup community is understood. Below is just some of the stuff ive encountered.

My groups are generally thf(me) war nin whm blm for the most part.

1. I spent about an hour getting a 6 man group together. So we get out there and miss the first claim on heqet. Not that big a deal we are farming time and such. So about 2 min before the window opens for heqet the war pulls/aggros about 10 frogs. Hes fighting those as I claim the NM. I pull the NM back safely and proc red with energy drain or something. At about this time the WHM starts saying if he dies he is leaving since hes getting hate from cure bombing the WAR. Just as he says that he dies and home points and disbands. We killed heqet with the brd main bealing and all was well.

I must of missed the memo where exp loss was serious business. So as soon as he dropped i got a tell from a random whm wanting clear so we invite him and finish up the 2 popsets.

Now as lucky as finding another whm within seconds of someone dropping is, this whm didnt seem to understand how cure works or any of his other spells for that matter. So at 20% charm happens and everyone dies because they dont know how to run away. We eventually kill it and the other pop after a longgggg time.

2. New group with 2 of my friends in it this time. My friends are blm and nin. We farm up the pops and start fighting. At 20% charm happens, we have the war voke and kite, but my blm friend stunned jala at the same time on accident. Luckly jala has the accuracy of level 5 whm and im kitimg both while everyone homepoint and comes back since the mages didnt have rr on.

On a side note same blm friend about wiped us on orthrus when he earth crushered about 10 dhalmels procing red on orthrus.

3. Just as a note for people who do this, no one reads your shout past what mob it is. Ive had tells ranging from can i have x drop locked to what mob are you fighting to ill go if you kill flame skimmer or t3 vnm.

4. Outside of cirein croin heqet camping is always interesting. Ive seen people get mad at other people for claiming and even a solo nin/whm killing heqet with 4 adds.

Didnt ditch them, just nit forcing them to finish my gun while we work on their weapons. I didnt think it was fair to make them spend even more time on my gun when they dont even have a stage 1 yet. Glavoid farming is slow going.

With my group we got the empyrean to lvl85 before starting a new one, Sometimes it sucks(Hi to you chloris) but you just got to suck it up. At least the Armagedon path is by far the easiest, took us 4 farming sessions to finish my 85 Caladbolg.

Theres no a trust issue with our group, its just how we did it. We are of the mind set of knock both out at a time while we are here so we dont have to come back. We split up our Glavoid farming at least so we dont burn out. Wednesday we farm 6-7 pops and Saturday we kill those then go do other things we need to do. Its not like carabosse were we could farm and kill 10-20 pops a day. Either way still need 100 shells regardless so we just split them up.

We have a good time doing it either way. Only reason I amde this post was I was flameing out with the shout groups I was getting for the fish and 11 in general. Will be good to have a nice week or two off not worrying about letting people down and such.

I really pumped for my gun so I can jsut start brew killing mass amount ofs NMs. If I time it right I should be able to kill 6-8 glavoids under one brew, so we spend less time actually killing them and can work on peoples +2s and stuff.

Easy to kill with 2-3 people? Have you even tried? 40'+ AOEs with incredibly potent para followed by an aura of the same para, Spike Flail, full dispel, Bliz V and Blizaga IV, and terror. Para aura can only be partially avoided by being outside of party, and even then they are still on hate list so can get hit with AOEs.

Before using the outside healer it was possible to lowman, but incredibly risky.

If you considered it "really easy", you're getting pretty lucky.

As for the MNK/WHM duo, it's very possible as I posted in the Armageddon thread. As I've said here as well, now that we know the outside healer trick it's much more manageable. And protip: when lowmanning, it's actually best to tank from the rear to force a lot of Spike Flails. 2k damage is much easier to deal with than constant terrorize/dispel.

Edited, Mar 13th 2011 9:34pm by Chewzer

Dunno, maybe in our couple of initial attempts we just had a seriously bad string of luck. Constantly getting dispelled then followed by 3k nukes... healers unable to avoid or remove the paralyze from Gregale Wind and aura... constant terror, and even terror screens would get dispelled. Perhaps it's not as hard as I'm making it out to be, but our first 5 tries we tried with 3 very skilled/geared players only resulted in 2 wins, so we were pretty disheartened right from the start.

I suspect that Isgebind will have some AF3+2 drops added to him as part of their whole "new ways to obtain AF3 upgrade items" schtick, so maybe it'll become easier to get help for him after that.

As it is right now, yeah, it can be annoying to get help for fighting it due to the fact only two jobs want his non-empyrean related loot.

I am having trouble not facepalming seeing cirein croin and hell in the same sentence. I am in a similar-ish situation and (after many moons of grinding for glavoid solo) teamed up witha smallish group from linkshell people for empy's. After doing glavoids/Itzas for my twashtar and then doing Pixie/Fish for a members great sword, I am having a REALLY hard time digging up any sympathy for anyone on that path on the basis that its 'to hard'.

Pixie overall is completely laughable as most will agree since it takes about 5 minutes to get a pop for it and you can basically auto attack carrabosse with a melee or 2 with occasional cures.

Fish is only TWO pop items. Frog is a walk on a sunny day in the park compared to tunga (also timed/camped NM in a swath of aggro mobs) +2 more mobs that are more spread out and more annoying than the mini fish as well.

Itza isnt really that bad, but ive seen far more groups wipe to itza than fish....just sayin.

I just cant really drum up any sympathy about that path being 'too hard'. Guess ive just gotten way to jaded and bitter from stupid twashtar -_-

Mmm its not about the fights which are easy its more about the
Morons in the pug community.

Oh man, and here I thought people were doing 1 brew: 1 kill.

Didn't even think about multiple pops and NPC buff-freezing. I can definitely see brewing Isgebind being worthwhile now, especially with the 3-4(?) shots it probably takes with wildfire.

I'll be honest, I found Isgebind to be far easier than one of the other wyrms like Dragua, and was honestly probably one of the easiest of the lv. 90 Empyrean weapon item NMs I've fought so far (I'd consider Alfard if you tank him from behind is easier). When my group popped four or five Isgebinds the other day we breezed through them without any issue at all, as the paralysis from the aura didn't seem to be all that potent (only Bar- I had on was Barblizzara, and even then I was only getting maybe one or two paralysis messages before the aura wore), whereas it seemed that I'd barely get Dragua's petrification off before it was put back on again. He also seemed to use TP moves far more frequently than Isgebind did, and I'd take Gregale Wing over Terra Wing any day. As you said though, the biggest downside for Isgebind is the lack of Empyrean +2 items, but as far as his difficulty I didn't find him a problem at all.

Edited, Mar 17th 2011 10:33am by Vlorsutes

Yes and yes. Sturdy Pyxides work as well.

Anything that stops your movement and causes dialog or a dialog box to appear that requires input from the player to advance will freeze your stauses. This even includes using your Magian Specs and examining your trial log; however, don't use this to freeze a brew except as a last resort. After being in the dialog box for your trial log for about a minute, it will automatically close itself and "Event Skipped" you, resuming your statuses.

Edited, Mar 17th 2011 5:38am by Fynlar

7-8 is realistic with good gear. 9 is pushing it, but it might be possible if everything goes perfect.

Some tips to make the most out of your brew:

1) AF3+2 feet will drop it from 4 Wildfires to 3 if you Wildfire->Fire Shot->Wildfire->Wildfire. I often had Isgebind at 1% health after 3 Wildfires before I got the +2, which really sucks. (maybe the +1 will work, I don't remember for sure if I had the +1 the first time I brewed)
2) Use chests instead of an item like Magian Log. Magian Log will boot you out of menu after 1 min, where chest menu is infinate, even if someone opens it or it fades while you're already in menu.
3) Have your THF engage the mob before you leave menu, and set an /assist macro. I lost a lot of time on my brew once because Isgebind wasn't targetable due to the fact that he can spawn directly on top of the chest he dropped the previous kill.
4) Have your THF disengage as soon as possible. If you let Isgebind get off a TP move it might be full dispel, which will remove your terror screen and screw you over if it gets off another TP move on another pop.
5) Use Tactician's Roll, it might just save you a tick.
6) Have a friend as party/alliance lead so they can set you as quartermaster and pass the hearts to you. It takes precious seconds to lot them.
7) The hearts stack, but still leave a lot of inventory room. People will be killing some raptors for your chests, or you might have someone amber farming for more pops, which can potentially clog your inventory. Again, you don't want to be wasting precious seconds having to rearrange your inventory.
I think I got seriously unlucky on few tries we gave it. Then again, it was right after the 90 update and nobody had much AF3 or the new atmas.

I'm surprised you think that Dragua was more difficult, though. Since it drops Fanatic's Powder to the entire party/alliance when it dies, just set up a powder rotation and beat the crap out of it.

Edited, Mar 17th 2011 12:51pm by Chewzer

I was saying that you shouldn't lot them, thus the QM'ing. It might not take more than a few seconds to cast lots on the hearts, but it adds up and could cost you an Isgebind.

Obviously not everybody uses Windower, much less Light Luggage. Whenever I was doing Isgebinds and I had people holding pops, they typically came to leech the 6k or 6.5k exp it drops per kill, so they tended to be afk a lot. Also, when doing that many you know someone is going to forget to pass eventually.

The better question is why wouldn't you Quartermaster the hearts? It also guarantees that you have enough inventory to hold them, eliminating any possibility of a heart not dropping to you.

Edited, Mar 17th 2011 2:00pm by Chewzer

My group didn't think of using a Fanatic's Powder rotation until after the 2nd Dragua we did, and considering none of us had Fanatic's Powders on us when we fought him the first time, you can imagine how rough he was. If you factor in a seamless rotation of Fanatic's Powders and enough people to use them, then sure, Dragua's undoubtedly going to be easier than Isgebind. If you just go by how difficult the mob was excluding meds, then Dragua was far harder.