What is the Secret to Shadow VNMs

[Kfox]

Some friends and i just fought our 14th Yilbegan and defeated him. We are 0/14 to see any rings still. All 14 Yilbegan have not had a shadow and none of them have granted us the title.

I have tried to read up on VNMs and their shadows. From my experience it would seem VNM without a shadow cannot drop rings but can drop other equipment. Got a lucky coin today from the no shadow Yilbegan, had TH12 on em. I have not seen it but many folks say their vnm lost its shadow mid fight. I wish the dev team would shed a little light on this topic. If anyone has any information, I would love to hear it. What is your Yilbegan record? Have you deduced how shadows work? Where did you pop the shadow version of Yilbegan?

Its rough farming up black abyssites and popping a dragon where in the first 5 seconds you know its not going to drop the equipment you seek.

[Mayoyama]

I did 15 krabkatoas for OAT GS and only one of them had a shadow (got ring and title). From that only got 1 black.. which ended up not having a shadow /sadface

Would be nice if SE could revise this and either make it easier to upgrade the abyssites (but then again doing emp wep trials could become more annoying constantly upgrading T2 to T3) or just remove the shadow requirement and adjust it so it always has a chance to drop, just a low rate (ideal since a chance is better than no chance if it has no shadow)

[Dragoy]

It would, in my mind, be very strange if it were determined at the time of spawning the monster (or in the middle of the fight) if loot was going to appear.

I have not looked into it personally, but I have read of such reports quite often, and they indeed do point towards such a direction. Already the fact they would not have a shadow seems more like a bug than anything else.

Moreover, if it really does not give the title either when there is no shadow, there's no way that can be intended. This is rather old stuff, but I would implore you who have witnessed it, to head over to the In-Game Bugs (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/forums/80) section, and file a bug (I don't remember seeing this being reported, which does seem unlikely).

I would like to look into it myself, but at this time, I don't even have a Content ID active so I can't. ^^;


I don't know why, but I really hope that loot isn't determined when the spawn is triggered. It's not like it's much different in the end, except for when you can tell it's not going to be there if the shadow isn't (one could argue that you could just go home then, if one is after the ring and/or title, but I don't think it's an acceptable argument even though another one could argue that not knowing is the worst, and so it is in many other cases, but I digress).

A glitchy bug is what it (hopefully) is!

[Mayoyama]

Been like this since VNM was implemented....

Working as intended -.-

[Dragoy]

Yeah, I am aware that it has been so since then, which is why I'm confused as to why it would not have been fixed ages ago, unless it was intended... but it does not — make — sense!

Filing a bug might increase the chances of getting an official answer (of a kind), if nothing else.

[Kfox]

Later today I will toss something out in the bug area, but I do think its how they intended it to be. Even more interesting probably 1/4 of the Yilbegan I have fought have definitely be a HQ fake, and thus were much stronger than their NQ counterparts. Kind of like KS99 can have NQ and HQ versions of the mob. So many time you are all exciting because the VNM is lasting forever and you think maybe this is the one even though it doesn't have a shadow. But nope. In all the black abyssite farming I have done I have gotten many of the T3 rings and all the rings have dropped off NMs with shadows. Just a side note.

[Natenn]

All Yilbegan have the same power shadow or not, i kill all the time and never notice a difference. I killed 2 with shadow recently and they were both in B.Glacier present. There is no HQ stronger versions of VNM, theres the ones with and w/o shadows.

[Kfox]

How many Yilbegans have you battled in total? I have popped him in the glacier before but definitely give it another shot, although I think its total luck of the draw.

Have you ever seen rings or titles drop from non shadowed version?

As for HQ/NQ maybe it just seems HQ due the how much time spent in specific forms that have higher damage reduction. I know for a low man group the difficulty in defeating him has varied a lot, so much it seems like there is a higher tier version. Least that has been our experience anyways.

[Natenn]

I've don't keep exact kill count but its somewhere around 65ish ill say, it shifts between DMG taken up/down mode and Bio aura on/off w/e it casts dispelga, and if you stun it it still shifts modes. Wings shift up for dmg resist and down for normal dmg. it takes full phys dmg during TP moves and full magic dmg when its casting spell. if wings are up it'll still cut dmg by 50%ish. And no, its not possible to get title or rings unless it has shadow when it dies.

[Kfox]

Yeowzers, how many dragons with shadow have you seen out of your estimated 65 run ins. Typically I end up 3 manning him with another bst and a thief friend.

The rough part of this content is the house of cards design. You kill T1s and eventually get a T2 abyssite. Sometimes right away sometimes it seems to take forever. Take that T2 and pop and eventually get a T3 much like the prior tier. But taking that T3 and turning it to dust and not getting an upgrade crumbles the house of cards. Getting the black and popping the non-shadow crumbles the house of cards. (Least if your hunting them rings). Then by chance you beat the shadowed version i bet the rings are not 100% drop.

The bad part is I don't think anyone does this content except to upgrade empy weapons. So not sure the higher tiers will get any dev attention do to its unpopularity. One of these days I will get lucky and hopefully the shadow version will drop a Galdr ring. It will be proof of my efforts and time wasted along the way. haha.

[Kfox]

Updated to 0-16, ack! So rough.