Breaking into Abyssea.

[Bluecube]

Alright, I've hit a little bit of a problem here and was sort of hoping I could find some information on this. So I'm not a complete stranger to how Abyssea works, I've done Dominion Ops and gotten to MNK95 and life is pretty good. The job's ok and getting here hasn't been too much of a pain, but I've hit kind of a brick wall with the rest of Abyssea.

See, the problem is I have no clue how to actually get involved in the rest of Abyssea. It seems like to do much of anything you need the AF3+2, Atma and other assorted gear, none of which I can figure out how to get from here. So when you don't have any of that stuff, and you don't have a group that can just go and get it for you, how do you go and get it?

To clarify, I've got no problem contributing to my own progression but it seems like the gap between those with Abyssea gear and Atma and those that don't is too large. Lacking that right now, I can't figure out what I could do that would be even slightly useful. Should I level up a different job from MNK for now? Sit in Port Jeuno and watch for shouts, then hope someone feels charitable? I'm just feeling a little lost on where to go from here.

(Oh uhh, I'm not entirely sure this is quite the right part of the forum to ask this in so if I'm putting it in the wrong forum, feel free to move it to the correct one.)

[Arcon]

This is pretty much the right part, so don't worry about that.

The order of achievement inside Abyssea should be like this:
1. Necessary Atma/Abyssites
2. +1 gear
3. Other Atma/Abyssites
4. +2 gear and miscellaneous items (gear and weapons)
5. Empyrean weapons

I've seen too many people come to Abyssea and wanting Empyrean weapons and +2 gear, and that kind of thinking is wrong. You will need some prerequisites to be able to do the other things realiably, unless you have a group you can leech stuff off. So let me go a bit into depth with the aforementioned points, and keep this in mind: if you do it right, it's very easy.

The "necessary" Atma/Abyssites are the ones you'll need for +1 farming. If MNK is your only job (is it?), you'll probably only need RR. RR and GH are a good combination for you at this point. For this, you'll need two Lunar Abyssites. One you can buy with 100k cruor (which I assume you have from lvling MNK to 95?), another you get from defeating a zone boss. Easiest to farm and kill are probably Bennu or Resheph, however you can just go to Abyssea - La Theine, Tahrongi, Misareaux or Attohwa and see if anyone is fighting the respective zone boss in there. People will often let you leech the win.

The sad part is, this is what you can't effectively do on your own. You will need some kind of help with those Atma and Abyssites (or zone boss wins). If you have a LS or some friends to help you, great, if not you'll probably have to read up on it and shout to find other people who need them. However, while all of that can easily be duod by skilled and equipped people, it can be quite difficult for a party of Abyssea newbies, so this will be the hardest step.

So mobs you'll want to kill for Atma and Abyssites include Sobek and Ironclad Pulverizer (both in Abyssea - Misareaux), as well as Mictlantecuhtli, Warbler and Xibalba (the latter two being dangerous for inexperienced groups) for their merit Abyssites. Also, you should buy all Abyssites you can with cruor, as well as the quested ones (although this may take a decent amount of time, it should only be done for the important ones for now, merit, furtherance, celerity and sojourn).

Next is the +1 seal farming. With this basic set you should be able to DD efficiently enough to be the primary DD for seal parties. That means, you'll only need a WHM and a BLM (and possibly a THF) to make an efficient seal party. These you can usually get by shouting for people who need seals off the same mobs you do. As an example, for MNK head seals you'd go to wiki and search for "Tantra Seal: Head". You'll see a list of mobs that drop it. You just pick the easiest one of them (in this probably case Berstuk, since Amun is a timed spawn and Gaizkin can be kinda nasty on unsuspecting people). You usually find that out from reading testimonials on the wiki talk page.

Let's stick with Berstuk for now. You see that it also drops THF, NIN and DNC seals, so you shout for people who have a WHM or BLM and need those seals. Then your party is set. You usually do that until you have all seals for everyone in the party or until people have to leave. Once you've done that, you can repeat that step for the other pieces, until you have a full +1 set.

+1 sets are usually a good start for any job, most can be upgraded in plenty of ways with other gear and macro in situational gear, but once you have all +1 pieces, you can be considered a decent DD for Abyssean purposes. That's the point at which you'll want to get other Atma and Abyssites that you'll be missing. You should focus on merit and furtherance Abyssites. Once you get some of these, you may wanna start getting other zone boss kills. Seven zone bosses means you'll get to equip a third Atma. I'm not really sure about MNK choices, but other Atma that spring to mind are Sanguine Scythe (off Bukhis) and Voracious Violet (off Eccentric Eve).

At this point, you'll also want to skill other weapons, namely Club and Staff. Most people will expect MNK to have both Club and Scythe skilled up to 230~250, for their WSNM weapon skills (Retribution and Black Halo in this case). This will also help with acquiring further Abyssea gear (since gear drops often depend on the blue stagger).

At this point, there isn't really any order, and you can approach the rest of Abyssea in a similar fashion. Mostly with small groups, either friends or shouted. You can start working on +2 gear, slowly work towards Shinryu access as well as pursuing some harder to get items (Epona's Ring springs to mind, not sure if Zelus Tiara is worth it for MNK, but you get what I mean).

Once you're decently decked out, you can start pursuing empyrean weapons, although that will require some teamwork (people to hold key items for you and help you kill harder NMs). Once you're at this point you'll have Abyssea all figured out anyway, so there's not much else to say here. In general, it's pretty much all the same: check out what you want, what's required for it, and work your way towards it. As long as you don't try to jump too far ahead, you'll have no problems getting stuff done. Only the beginning can be a bit rough, but once you have your basic Atma and Abyssites working for you, you'll be able to get the rest a lot easier.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Don't forget voracious violet.

[bryangelos]

Id just like to say Thank you arcon, very few people would of taken the time for a real reply with useful info.

[Bluecube]

Wow, that's an extremely useful post Arcon. Thank you a ton for that, that's going to come in extremely handy. And yes, at present time MNK is my only leveled job, with SAM and DNC tied for second at 66. I might as well ask if there are any jobs I could level that might make finding parties for this stuff easier? I've heard WAR and BLM are both extremely useful for procs, and I might have an easier time if I leveled one of those as well. (And admittedly, WAR looks kind of fun too. I've only ever leveled it as a subjob, never tried it as a mainjob.)

[Zarchery]

WAR is incredibly useful for getting red procs, since with a little effort and NIN sub you can cover almost all of them. Red procs are the ones you need to get Atma and Abyssite and pop key items for higher tier NMs. I think there's like 1 Katana WS and 2 Great Katana WS that you can't cover. A full fledged Ninja would be able to cover these last ones. Of course the trick is that besides levelling WAR, you would need to take the time to skill up Club, Staff, Sword, Great Sword, Scythe, Polearm, and Dagger. You don't need to go too far with these, only high enough to get the right skill. This site goes over the basics of weakness targeting.

The yellow procs that BLM is heavily favored for are only for increasing the drop rates of +1 seals and +2 upgrade items.

Monk doesn't offer much for Abyssea really, except when trying to get blue procs, because they can cover so many blunt weapon skills. But I don't see people trying for blue procs that often.

Black Mage, like you said, is useful, but it's also kinda expensive. Scrolls will set you back several million gil. I dunno offhand what the total cost would be if you weren't a completionist and only got the scrolls you needed for procs (Quake, Flood, Tornado, Flare, Freeze, Burst, tier-3 and 4 single target nukes, and tier-3 AoE nukes, Drain, Bio, and Aspir). Probably less, because it's those above level 75 nukes that really start to hit the wallet hard.

Hope that helps. It sucks that you don't have an established linkshell to do this. Best you could hope for I guess would be to listen to the shout channel for pickup groups, or see if there are any decent Abyssea linkshells on your server.

[Bluecube]

Seems like WAR isn't a bad way to go then. It's a lot of skilling up, but I think I can handle it. Especially because it seems like WAR/DNC should be able to skill up solo pretty much anywhere.

To clarify a little bit, I do technically have a linkshell and I love 'em to death, but they're in the same boat as I am aside from one person who already has a handful of Atma. Pretty much no Atma or anything. That one person with it though has WHM as well as Refresh atma, which is why I had initially leveled MNK up first. That's pretty much what I'm hoping to do is get lucky with rounding up the vital melee Atma myself, then being able to duo with my WHM friend to start getting Atma and stuff for all our friends.

In light of this advice, I think I'll shoot for WAR and see how that ends up working out. So thank you, that's very useful stuff to know.

[Zarchery]

Well if you're all in the same boat, seems you could help each other out in that regard. Obviously you don't NEED atma and abyssites to participate in Abyssea. We all started out without them after all. You'd probably just need bigger groups, and it'd help a lot if someone had the abyssite of discernment.

Skilling up weapons for procs isn't hard. I think you only need to get most of the weapons to level 75-125 or so, except for Dagger which has to be closer to 150. It's just a bit.... tedious.

[Meyi]

I'd also like to add trying to get Celerity Abyssites as those help stones accumulate faster. One you can buy for 9000 Cruor from a Heroes of Abyssea zone, one you farm off of Tonberries in Abyssea - Konschtat (note: whoever needs it needs to pull the tonberry first), and the last one you can get from a quest, Whither the Whisker in Abyssea - Vunkerl. The quest one is the hardest because you have to build up enough decent fame in Abyssea - Vunkerl to get access to it. The first two are incredibly easy though and definitely worth getting right away.

[Arcon]

Don't forget voracious violet.

I did mention that, although, again, I'm not a MNK, so not 100% sure on the Atma choices. It's just from what I hear from other people.

As for job choices, WAR is indeed very useful, so is NIN or THF. MNK does come in handy quite often, especially if you go as a LS. It's a great DD when decked out properly and has a lot higher survivability than WAR (which is still relevant on some mobs). For mages, WHM and BLM will definitely be the most useful, BLU and BRD will also have something to do (although most people just level their BRD to sub level and go BLM/BRD, it's usually good enough). However, keep in mind that higher level BLM spells will be very expensive if you're a new (or broke) player.

As was said before, you should try to team up with your LS and do stuff together. The lack of a discernment Abyssite is probably the biggest hindrance for efficient Abyssea farming, but it can still be done, and should be a lot easier with more people. Just bring several people who can cover weakness staggers and have at it.

A few things about Abyssea you should keep in mind:

• Sometimes it will make sense to get stuff for certain people first. If you're close with your LS I think it shouldn't be too difficult to help certain people get some stuff sooner, for the benefit of everyone in the LS. This affects mostly your WHM (+1 head, legs, cure staff, MM Atma) as well as your main tanks, which can be any job with a good evasion, usually NIN, THF, DNC or MNK (general +1 gear, proper DD gear to keep hate better and help DD faster).
• The high level of players these days means natively high evasion for most jobs. Any NIN, DNC, THF, PUP and possible even some MNK will be able to cap evasion on lower NMs with little to no gear, if skilled up high (and Evasion is arguably the easiest skill to level). You may want to help your evasion tanks to skill it up, for example by going to Abyssea - Attohwa and have them aggro (not claim!) a lot of mandies, while WHMs spam cure on them. It shouldn't take more than an hour to cap someone's evasion skill that way (PDT gear and Phalanx help a lot).
• NMs are best tanked with only one person on it. You won't need any buffs for evasion, so just get damage buffs (Atma of the Razed Ruins is the best for this). It will help you keep hate a lot easier.
• Turn around when people are trying to stagger the mobs. Feeding it TP will cause it to use TP moves frequently, which can be difficult for proccers, especially if your BLM don't have a Refresh Atma yet.
• Have other people get TP on surrounding mobs, to avoid a) feeding the NM TP and b) killing it too quickly. Have other mobs engaged when trying to proc WS, just select the WS from the WS menu and target the NM, run towards it and use it.
• WHMs should focus on Cure V, only use other spells if necessary. With just one WHM, it may be tough to keep up without the proper gear if they are to support an entire alliance, even with the Atma of the Minikin Monstrosity. Cure VI costs a lot of MP for the amount it cures, and Cure IV will generate a lot of enmity. You should look to get your WHM +1 head and +1 legs, as well as the cure trial staff (people can also team up for this). Having a good WHM will help the entire LS, in Abyssea you'll all be happy about a better WHM.
• Ideally you'd want an Evasion tank. MNK can probably do it as well at 95~99, but NIN, DNC or THF are really great for this, even with very little gear. They get hit rarely, and can back tank mobs, so most mobs won't WS very often, which makes it easy to proc. And if you fear others are getting too much hate (especially BLM or WHM), just turn around and melee it for a bit, with RR Atma you'll cap your hate rather quickly.
• Do not underestimate the importance of cruor buffs. Get merit and furtherance Abyssites, to help with that. Capped cruor buffs are often more important than Atma, especially HP ones. Once you have +80% HP and +50 VIT/AGI you'll actually have to try to die on most mobs.
• Even without a discernment Abyssite, you can narrow down stagger choices. For grellow procs, the element of the spell has to be the same as the current, previous or next game day. For blue procs, it's a blunt weapon skill from 20:00-06:00, a piercing weapon skill from 06:00-14:00 and a slashing weapon skill from 14:00-20:00. Red procs are already pretty limited (only 13 weapon skills) and you should be able to cover that with a few DDs. All those depend on when the mob was claimed/pop, not when the spell/WS lands.
• If a mob goes yellow, the staggers do not disappear, only if it deaggros (i.e., when everyone dies or zones). Same goes for Treasure Hunter.

Going as a group of friends is really recommendable. You'll find you'll get the hang of it very quickly, and it'll be a fun few months ahead once you guys know what you're doing. Once you're adept enough at it, you'll be able to split up and fight several NMs at once with a minimal setup each, to enhance efficiency. Although, when you do that keep in mind to lot/pass stuff quickly, so that loot pools don't overlap and you lose items.

Edit:
About the quest Whither the Whisker, it's actually quite easy and quick to achieve the necessary fame level, if you're willing to spend some money (not a lot). Check out this quest, which is repeatable (without zoning or waiting for a new game day even) and can be used to cap your fame in a matter of minutes with AH items that are 1~5k each. Just stack up on cheap items that can be traded for the quest, then go there and trade them all, then warp back and repeat. You should have enough fame in 15min, and shouldn't pay more than 100k on it (30k if you're cheap and do more runs for 1k or lower items). You can also farm some of the items in Vunkerl itself.