Were you distracted?

So, last night while everyone was running around looking for mythic weapon skills or fighting AV, our happy little band headed out to La Vaule to do some NM hunting. There are now 8 NM in the area that appear to be on about a 8 hour timer. They are all relatively difficult but we were able to beat them all with 8-9 people. I will give a run down on each, how we fought them and the moves they tended to use.

A quick note about all of the mobs we encountered in La Vaule, none of them appeared to use their two hour. All of them drop a box of some kind that is related to Campaign, and we got 3 other drops from them which I will detail below. We had no THF or /THF for any of the kills.

These are in no particular order.

First is Coinbiter Cjaknokk, it is a DRK but I didn't get any pics of it. It hits pretty hard compared to the rest of the NM's. It's special move (if I remember it right) is Shoulder Slam or Tackle, which is pretty high damage directional AoE. It was turned the wrong direction at one point and killed three mages who all had Stoneskin up. Outside of that, it uses regular DRK spells like Absorb-TP and Dread Spikes but that is about it. We did not get any special drops from this guy. Suggested fighting with tank in a corner to prevent others from getting hit with the Shoulder Slam move, but outside of that it was a pretty normal fight.

Second, Argios a Gigas RNG. It uses Catapult, Grand Slam and Power Attack, all of which start off very strong but appear to get weaker as it's HP is reduced. Grand Slam is probably the worst, but it is stunnable. We held it in it's spawn area after clearing the Morbol that is there, and killed it normally and pretty easily. At lower HP, it started using a move called something like Debilitating Hurl, which appeared to be a stronger version of Catapult with a different animation, but by the time it started using it, it wasn't doing much damage. Only got the box from it.

Third, All-Seeing Onyx Eye which is a Ahriman SCH. This mob will spam a directional line-of-sight Charm and should be tanked backwards, with any DD standing behind the mob. It will also use the full range of Helix spells. It's normal spells appear to have all SCH effects when cast, meaning they are AoE and they have a fast cast effect on them. They are not so strong to have wipe potential but they can put a hurt on your tank and melee when it uses fast cast AoE AM's which it did more and more as it's HP fell. It can also use Level 5 Petrify. It did not drop anything but it's box.

Fourth, Cogtooth Skagnogg is an Orcish Warmachine, presumably a RNG type. This mob probably had the weakest defense of all the mobs, but did the most AoE damage. It had several difference AoE ranged attacks, including Fountain and Blast Bomb, but also new moves like Sticky Grenade which gave Gravity, and Scatter Shot (I believe that was the name) which gave Blind and Silence effects. We ended up pulling it down into the river to loss any links when it was pulled and just kited it, which even with Bind and Gravity was not difficult with how slowly it moved. Also, it can be kited like Kaiser Behemoth in Limbus, where you get just far enough ahead of it then stop so it starts using a TP move, then run out of range. This allows for rather easy kiting. It dropped the Llwyd's Clogs as can be seen above along with it's box.

Fifth is Draketrader Zlodgodd, a DRG. We assume this is a DRG but it never used Call Wyvern or summoned a Wyvern. It was also the hardest mob that we fought last night. It is pretty normal, and used the normal Wings Orc TP moves, but the reason we assumed it was a DRG was because it could use Jump. When it used Jump it used it three times in a row, and as it's HP dropped it used the trio of Jumps more and more often. These Jumps did very high damage, and would drop a PLD/WAR to 300 HP very easily. You can run out of range of the Jumps, even if the first one hits you. When tanked with Shadows, no one was able to keep up shadows with how often it used the triple Jumps. We ended up pulling it to the zone to clear aggro, then kited it around the starting area. Generally, even if the first Jump lands on the kiter, it will stop to try to do the second Jump giving the kiter space and making it pretty easily kitable even if the kiter does need to have a good amount of curing. It didn't drop anything outside of it's box.

Sixth is Falsespinner Bhudbrodd which was either a MNK or a DNC. Technically, it swung with both arms making it a MNK, but the only notable TP moves that it really used were the "Dances". Battle Dance and Berserker Dance were easy to deal with, but it did use Fanatic Dance at 3% but was killed shortly thereafter so how bad it could have been if it had Charmed earlier is unknown. We might have just gotten lucky with that one. It never used any steps or anything else to indicate that it was a DNC so I am leaning toward MNK that they wanted to look like a DNC on this one. It also did not get anything but the box from this mob.

Seventh was Feeblescheme Bhogbigg which I assume is a SCH or BLM. I didn't get a direct shot of it, but I did get a shot of one of it's "grenades" which is the reason that lead me to believe that it was a SCH in the first place. Adelheid Sturm uses these in Campaign and she clearly is a SCH type. It did not use any Helix spells though, and it did use -ga spells, so probably something like BLM and SCH. The grenades were generally of the kind seen in Campaign, like Bind, Silence, Paralyze, etc. The grenades would randomly target someone then "blow up" causing an AoE of their effect. We just generally ignored these, but it also had a "Vial" which needed to be killed because it did not "blow up" but would continue to move around causing their effects to whoever was close to it. It either had very low HP or it dies like Chigoes do, dying instantly from a JA. Outside of that grenades and vials, the first is a pretty straight up BLM fight. It dropped the Catalyst. We have yet to be able to test this item.

Finally, the Gnole NM, Rugaroo which was a MNK mob. This fight was much less difficult than it was annoying. Rugaroo would use Call of the Moon five times in a row, making it very difficult to do damage to without a RNG. When it was not using Call of the Moon in this manner it did use Asuran Claws, and other normal Gnole TP moves. This was the second mob that we killed, and we didn't really think much of the difficulty of the fight. It dropped the Danzo Tekko in addition to the boxes.

Look forward to the new NM's in Castle O and Beadeaux in the next couple of days.