Dzemeal Darkhold Speed Run Guide

*** Updated 08/10/11 ***

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfGVL2hUIOY --> Video of a 5 chest speed run. Guide/tactics discussed starting on the third page on (can't add any more text to this post =\)


*** Original Post ***

I apologize for the length, but here we go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYWtisRBS-0 --> Video of the full run

Our Preferred Classes:
Aizen Hajime - Marauder (main tank)
Artanis Bluestone - Archer/Glad (switches to Glad to pull mobs away for certain parts, BRs)
Miko Neversleeps - Conj (BRs, DoTs)
Seiken Valk - Conj (Back up BR, DoTs)
Katsu Kobashi - Conj (Main Healer)
Leodegrance Peacemaker - Conj (Magic Burst, DoTs)
Kaeko Leta - Conj (Magic Burst, DoTs, Backup Everything)
Cursive Kassad - Thaum (Magic Burst, Debuffs, DoTs)

First Section:

Before entering, we assign each mage a buff (Pro II, Shell II, Stoneskin II, Shock Spikes II). The buffing times are as follows: Before entering, Ogre, and Batraal. We used Profundity II + Roaming Soul on all of our buffs except for Stoneskin II. We do, however, use Stoneskin II throughout the dungeon as needed.

Skip both the first and second cutscene. After the second cutscene, the entire party uses quickstride to get to the first Toad. We do NOT get any of the chests here, so we skip over the Warlock Patten’s chest.

Each mage is assigned a toad to sleep. There are three mages not assigned toads that will deliver a backup sleep if sleep gets resisted.

When getting to the first room that de-spawns mobs, we assign two mages to get the smaller magitek circle, while the other six party members go straight for the larger magitek circle. The tank ALWAYS enters first.

When entering the room with three magitek circles, the Tank (Aizen) enters first and pulls everything to the last circle. Mages sleep as necessary. Two people are assigned to the first magitek circle, two people are assigned to the second circle, and three people + the tank are assigned to the last circle. Always make sure to stay ahead of the AOEing Eye.

Mages are always tasked with re-upping stoneskin. In the video, you’ll see both Miko and Kaeko casting SS II on the tank as they run towards the exit.

Tank leads the way again while mages continue a sleep order. One getting the moles, others getting the toad.

When you get to the left tunnel (right before Bladedancer’s Boots), the tank and five other mages quickstride again all the way down to the teleporter. The Archer/Glad and one mage do not use their quickstride, as they will save it for the run right before the ogre. Again, sleep mobs as necessary, especially the Toad. The two people NOT using quickstride should be able to get to the teleporter by the time the magitek circle comes down.

Make sure SS is rebuffed in the next area. The Archer/Glad (he is a Glad at this point to take extra hits) leads the way with a mage. Both use quickstride. If done correctly (it didn’t happen in this video, unfortunately), the Glad should be able to get out of reach of the Toad’s tongue attack while training him to the Ogre room. The mage quickstriding behind is tasked with curing and ensuring he stays alive (note: Yes…Miko totally mistargeted him =\). The 6 members following behind should not have any difficulty keeping up and should be able to avoid mob agro as they are focused on the Glad/Archer.

Once we reach the ogre, we buff once again using Profundity II and Roaming Soul. For the most part, we actually try to buff while in the glowing circle. Furthermore, the Glad switches back to Archer before the fight begins.

Ogre Tactics:

We use two mages here to BR with the Archer. One mage uses Levinbolt II/Radiance, the other uses Damnation (just in case he has to BR with the other mage). Both mages are equipped with Invigorate II and Siphon TP. The Archer repeatedly uses Bloodletter for his BR. The spells we use to “burst” on the Ogre is Aero II and Scourge II. One mage is focused only on curing the Tank.

We open the fight by skipping the cutscene. Then, everyone who is able uses punishing barbs while the Tank uses Disorient on the Ogre. The Tank keeps his distance and makes sure he is with the other mages so that he can force the Ogre to use his AOE. With Barbs up and Stoneskin, this can take about 10% of the Ogres HP away right at the beginning of the fight.

The Tank then proceeds to pull the Ogre up the ramp and to the position shown on the video, with his back to the wall. Mages position themselves either in the center, or to the left (from the video’s perspective) when the ghosts teleport to the inner circle.

Note: DO NOT CURE THE TANK! The Tank must able to take care of himself this early on in the fight. If you cure him too early, the mages WILL pull hate and the ogre will run all over the place.

Once the Tank has established hate, one mage and the Archer will immediately initiate a BR. Every mage should be involved in the BR EXCEPT for the main healer. The Thaum will attempt to land DoTs and Debuffs in between BRs. When the Ogre is at 60%, we try to land as many elemental DoTs as we can (everything except Burn and Frost, pretty much).

Skeleton Room:

This is probably the trickiest thing to do. After the Ogre is defeated, you have to be careful not to rush. Forsaken Souls can spawn ridiculously close to the exit, and you do NOT want them to agro. The Archer switches back to the Glad at this point. Both the Marauder and the Glad use quickstride, with mages following behind. MAKE SURE TO SLEEP THE TOAD.

Once in the skeleton room, the Tank (Aizen) will run along the left edge and gather up as many Forsaken Souls as he can. He will then pull them to the spot in the video and engage, with Katsu ensuring that he stays alive. The Gladiator is tasked with running down the center of the room (where the eye likes to spam his debuffs) and to gather as many forsaken souls as he can. He will train them and make a sacrifice pull all the way to the entrance to Batraal.

All other mages are assigned magitek circles that they must deactivate before joining the Tank in engaging the Forsaken Souls. At this point, the Tank will deactivate the last circle to spawn the skeletons. When he feels that there are not too many, he will agro the skeletons and pull the entire room to where the mages are.

This part is awesome. Let your AOE nukes fly. Banish II and Fire II work particularly well here as we spam them to death. Once this is done, we chainspell rebirth our fallen comrade and make him turn back into an Archer. We then proceed to Batraal.

Batraal:

Again, rebuff in the circle before engaging Batraal. The archer and two mages are tasked with one skeleton each. One gets east, one gets north, and one gets west. ALL of them have Provoke II on their bars to ensure that they can pull the skeletons. We leave Batraal alone with both the Tank and the Main Healer. Everyone else is on skeleton duty. Once pulled to the northern position in the video, we proceed to spam nuke them to death. We make the main BRing mage take care of curing the party as he does not use much MP during the actual Batraal fight.

NOTE: The Archer and the BRing mages do NOT use their TP on skeletons.

Once the skeletons are defeated, the entire party moves towards the barrier magitek circle. Once the barrier is down, we start to immediately BR him. In the video, the BR system happened to glitch on us and wiped the stack away for some unknown reason. If performed correctly and if there are no glitches, you should be able to perform three full stacks of BRs before the barrier goes back up.

Again, we assign two people to get the skeletons from the second wave. This time, however, we position them at the pond near the barrier circle. Proceed to kill the skeletons.

Same as above, only this time, we assign one mage to keep the main BRing party alive with sporadic curagas. After you start seeing the first skeleton glow and about to use a TP AoE attack, Spirit Bind, Cast Curaga II, and then proc Sentinel. Keep using Curaga II as needed and use Aegis Boon II when Sentinel fades. Once the skeletons are dead, run to the magitek circle to deactivate and have a mage cast SS while waiting. We do NOT kite Batraal to avoid the mages, instead, we keep him as positioned in the video and stack BRs. Mages should also be attempting to land DoTs and Debuffs in between each stack. Poison II seems to be the most effective DoT

For the third wave, you do the same thing as the second wave.

When Batraal starts to spam his AOE, we have our Tank make sure that Batraal is facing south. Whenever Batraal attempts to spam his AOE cone attack, our Tank will rotate around and dodge the attack. When Batraal attempts to AOE again, our Tank will then rotate back into place and have Batraal facing south again while avoiding the AOE. Rinse and repeat this to avoid Batraal’s attack. We also have one of our mages look out from word from our main healer to see if he needs backup. Otherwise, he will continue to stack in the BR or heal our BRing party from any ghost damage we may be taking. We have found that 8-9 BR's will kill Batraal.

Continue to BR and deactivate the barrier until he is dead, and you should be able to complete Batraal within 25 minutes to get the Sword and Bow.

Final Note:

The above classes are NOT required, but we found them to be optimal for our play-style. Since there was extra time (and we still believe we can get faster times with this setup), you can probably get away with switching a class or two and still succeeding.

Also, make sure to assign the roles (buffs, which magitek circles, etc.) before entering.

Good luck!

SO
MANY
CON!

Speed run:

CON CON CON CON CON CON CON CON

WIN!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DoctorMog

Speed run:

CON CON CON CON CON CON CON CON

WIN!

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needs more mar.

speaking of which...have you cleared it with all mar yet?? ;p

Well it's pretty understandable that most classes won't be as useful when crowd control and running is the main goal. Conjurer is the optimal choice with both repose and sleep (bind needs stationary targets...) and multiple damage reducing enhancements for the task. Having more people to help do this makes the run easier and safer which is just common sense to want.

Pretty good guide on where to cut corners to making those 25 minute runs successful.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DoctorMog

Speed run:

CON CON CON CON CON CON CON CON

WIN!

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I miss the days of Thaum x 7 + 1 Glad ;_;. Imagine 7x Chainspelled Shadowsears and Punishing Barbs >_<.

we go with Mar, Arch, Arch, Arch, Lnc, Con, Con, Thm.
can usually clear with about 38ish minutes left. we got batraal fight down to about 5 minutes and ogre fight down to 3.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Murda

we go with Mar, Arch, Arch, Arch, Lnc, Con, Con, Thm.
can usually clear with about 38ish minutes left. we got batraal fight down to about 5 minutes and ogre fight down to 3.

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Those are both very, very fast kills. I'd really like to know what you think about our Batraal and Ogre kill. Especially our Batraal kill. We had some problems with our BR glitching in the beginning that caused about a 30-40 second mishap on that run, but the fights are still taking us about 7-8 minutes (as opposed to your 5).

After watching our video, what do you think we're doing differently that makes our kills so much slower?

for ogre fight we have Lnc stand behind ogre entire time which makes him spam elbow drop which is easily avoided making the total dmg taken by the tank next to nothing, the Lnc is really the only person taking dmg when the ghosts are up top with him hitting him. for batraal fight MRD and THM take Batraal and every1 kills 1st set of skeles gather them and aoe nuke/ws but for second set of skeles we have LNC CON and ARCH everyone else stays on Batraal. we always send mages back to hit light before invulnerability kicks in and DD stay on batraal. for last set of skeles LNC takes them all himself and uses lifesurge bloodbath and all that jaz and solos them while we finish off batraal

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Murda

for ogre fight we have Lnc stand behind ogre entire time which makes him spam elbow drop which is easily avoided making the total dmg taken by the tank next to nothing, the Lnc is really the only person taking dmg when the ghosts are up top with him hitting him. for batraal fight MRD and THM take Batraal and every1 kills 1st set of skeles gather them and aoe nuke/ws but for second set of skeles we have LNC CON and ARCH everyone else stays on Batraal. we always send mages back to hit light before invulnerability kicks in and DD stay on batraal. for last set of skeles LNC takes them all himself and uses lifesurge bloodbath and all that jaz and solos them while we finish off batraal

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That's a pretty unique and interesting strategy. The only question I have is how does your Lancer keep hate on the last phase of skeletons? We tried having someone solo the three and hold them until Batraal is dead, but he was struggling with hate management.

store tp towards end of fight on the 2nd set and use invigorate if hes not at 3000 a simple melee on one and provoke and taunt on the other 2 once he groups them spam AoE ws. the hardest part is grouping once they are grouped and he starts spamming as ws as long as no mage tries to heal him he wont lose hate. one or 2 times he has died we just finished fight b4 the skeles did any real dmg one time he actually managed to kill 2 of them before we were even done with batraal

Great stuff =)

We kill Ogre and Bartaal a lot faster than you guys, but you do the skeleton room super fast... some notes (I watched your video last night)

Have your archer use a different WS in your BR's... you are wasting bloodletter uptime by saving it for the BR's. Might be TP issue but theres some more speed there. (Skull Sunder 2 for BR's maybe for lower TP cost).

I don't think I noticed many DoTs. We usually have 2 lines of DoT's rolling on the Ogre... he starts to just get crushed when the full line is on. Maybe assign DoT's to cast between BR's for the mages.

Those are all I can think of you speed up your Ogre kill with that exact set up.

For Batraal speed you could AE set 1 of skeletons on top of Bartaal to speed it up, but you -might- die to Grim Halo since you are all mages. We usually have 3 archers get 1 skeleton each and tank on top of Batraal.


Also Batraal has very very low P.def, but unsure about magic defense. (after every skeleton round our 3 archers engage Batraal with 800 damage multishots off the bat) So it may be that slowing you down a bit compared to other people, but just like Ogre Batraal still gets crushed by having tons of DoT's on him ^^

I see, thanks.

Thanks for the post, I haven't had chance to look at the video yet, but the description is useful.

The one question I have is the Marauder, do you have a specific reason why you use a Marauder as main tank? I can see how in some battles the mad AoE skills the Marauder has would be useful, but I can think they would be helpful in a single boss battle.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AndrewN

Thanks for the post, I haven't had chance to look at the video yet, but the description is useful.

The one question I have is the Marauder, do you have a specific reason why you use a Marauder as main tank? I can see how in some battles the mad AoE skills the Marauder has would be useful, but I can think they would be helpful in a single boss battle.

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MRD DPS > GLA DPS

Gladiator's extra mitigation isn't really important for those two bosses when you have a static group that knows what they're doing.

@ OP, nice setup. What is the piety of your mages?

Here wowtards are happy about racist kung fu panda expansion (i really can't believe this, even if its in the lore, the lore is racist), we have to look forward to actual strategy, if people don't agree, i don't this dungeon is meant for arc,conj,gla, maybe a poor depressed thm when they couldn't get another arc, i think you just have to develop different strategies around having mrds or lncs there, (even though running away from tp attack is lame for lnc). its nice to see someone use most of the classes we have available in a run. How many runs would you say it took you before you settled on "this was the way to do it"?

Nice guide!!!thx!!!
Someone on lindblum wants try?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zaviermhigo

Here wowtards are happy about racist kung fu panda expansion (i really can't believe this, even if its in the lore, the lore is racist), we have to look forward to actual strategy, if people don't agree, i don't this dungeon is meant for arc,conj,gla, maybe a poor depressed thm when they couldn't get another arc, i think you just have to develop different strategies around having mrds or lncs there, (even though running away from tp attack is lame for lnc). its nice to see someone use most of the classes we have available in a run. How many runs would you say it took you before you settled on "this was the way to do it"?

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we've been trying different things...honestly, you could go in with a slightly different setup and have enough time...we are working on a 5 chest run atm...only problem has been a bunch of people missing this weekend. its also already been done unfortunately.

we use the one thm to spam thm dots and debuffs. like i said...any setup with some mages could clear it...just have to know what they are doing and how to avoid tp attacks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Neptune

@ OP, nice setup. What is the piety of your mages?

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181

after much discussion we felt this was the best value...doesn't compromise safety too much by taking tons out of vit and allows for a decent mp pool.

I wonder how stats affect your dps as mages, do you mind posting stats?

I have a very hard time with stats since I always am crafting for hq, right now i'm working on WVR crafts with high DEX and I need to keep 130'ish DEX. Am i killing my mage ability with such low DEX?

Also what wand does Kaeko use? I was using the Jade crook+2 but your usage of Aegis Boon II makes me want a shield.

5 chest speed run: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfGVL2hUIOY

after making some slight adjustments to the batraal kill we completed a five chest speed run. after some minor testing we found ws>ws>magic br did about the same dmg as spamming banish and scourge II. also, we kept an arc, thm and con to continue dmg on batraal while the three other cons nuked down the second group of skeletons. the plan for the third group of skeletons was to aggro and group them all and have all mages chainspell sleep in hopes that it would stick given enough tries and then focus on killing batraal. this sort of worked as seen in the video.

obviously this was a very sloppy kill, which we think illustrates there is a bit of leeway with your party setup in completing this. also, four archers instead of mainly mages can kill the bosses quicker, but we found it was much slower running through the dungeon and instead went mage heavy. we also had varying levels of success landing dots. sometimes all stick, other times only one or two. we think that two arc and a thm on dots would probably work best for constant dmg on batraal.

thanks to everyone who responsed with any ideas. if anyone wants more info we can write up a more detailed strategy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tachikoma

I wonder how stats affect your dps as mages, do you mind posting stats?

I have a very hard time with stats since I always am crafting for hq, right now i'm working on WVR crafts with high DEX and I need to keep 130'ish DEX. Am i killing my mage ability with such low DEX?

Also what wand does Kaeko use? I was using the Jade crook+2 but your usage of Aegis Boon II makes me want a shield.

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kaeko is using the gridanian wand. there is really no benefit to using a two handed arm when a wand/brand and shield increase your ability to survive.

as thm i have 181 pie with gear and stat trait switches, 140 vit, 80 mnd. int is at base. seiken valk has high pie as well.

other cons have high vit and mnd only...pie and int at base.

Hey tachikoma, I'll try to remember our relative stats.

For the DPS mages, they were stacked mostly into MND with some Vitality, no INT whatsoever. For the DoT mages, 181 PIE with the rest split between MND and VIT.

The main reason why the dps mages have such high MND in our run is to Curaga tank the Purgatory Knights. Profundity II with Banish II will do about the same damage regardless of your INT.

I think Kaeko either uses the Gridanian wand or an NQ Walnut wand of Storms (He should really use a wind wand on the ogre to help build TP faster). The reason he uses a shield is to curaga tank more easily and better survivability. Sentinel/Aegis Boon II/Deflection with Spiritbind/Curaga is a guaranteed way to keep hate and stay alive. He used these skills to hold the 2nd and 3rd groups of Purgatory Knights.

I'll ask Kaeko to post his stats when he gets online after work today.

If a party can complete a speedrun with lancers, pugilists, etc, I will appreciate it if they posted on the forums a guide on how to do such a thing, because all these guides are heavily stacked in one direction or another.

A balanced party, please.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cursive

5 chest speed run: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfGVL2hUIOY

after making some slight adjustments to the batraal kill we completed a five chest speed run. after some minor testing we found ws>ws>magic br did about the same dmg as spamming banish and scourge II. also, we kept an arc, thm and con to continue dmg on batraal while the three other cons nuked down the second group of skeletons. the plan for the third group of skeletons was to aggro and group them all and have all mages chainspell sleep in hopes that it would stick given enough tries and then focus on killing batraal. this sort of worked as seen in the video.

obviously this was a very sloppy kill, which we think illustrates there is a bit of leeway with your party setup in completing this. also, four archers instead of mainly mages can kill the bosses quicker, but we found it was much slower running through the dungeon and instead went mage heavy. we also had varying levels of success landing dots. sometimes all stick, other times only one or two. we think that two arc and a thm on dots would probably work best for constant dmg on batraal.

thanks to everyone who responsed with any ideas. if anyone wants more info we can write up a more detailed strategy.

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Cant sleep undead.

Other than that. good stuff!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DoctorMog

Cant sleep undead.

Other than that. good stuff!

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yea, we know...however, if you throw enough sleeps at them they will sleep...hence chainspell sleep. the few times we've tried it we've gotten 2 or 3. don't remember what happens in that video, but i think we got 2 of them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DoctorMog

Cant sleep undead.

Other than that. good stuff!

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You can sleep the skeletons, just with an incredibly low land-rate and with a low duration of time. That's why we have 4-5 mages chainspell + sleep the last set of mobs so that we have about 8-10 chances to sleep the mob.

You can't, however, sleep the Ghosts.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SilvertearRen

If a party can complete a speedrun with lancers, pugilists, etc, I will appreciate it if they posted on the forums a guide on how to do such a thing, because all these guides are heavily stacked in one direction or another.

A balanced party, please.

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Now that we have the 5 chest run completed, we are going to try to mix things up a bit with Lancers and other class combinations. One thing to note is that a reason you see so many guides with seemingly skewed parties is because while there does exist a margin for error (you can see it in how sloppy we are in this video), the instance is pretty unforgiving if you're trying to go for a "full" completion. The content is still relatively new, so you'll see more and more people stream-line tactics that'll eventually allow for more customization.

One minor caveat, however, is that a balanced party will still probably have 3-4 mages and either a Marauder or a Glad as your main tank. Which means there will really only be 3-4 spots left for other melee class. Another thing to take into account is that that melee class might not play like a "normal" variant of that class. For example, they may be borrowing so many other job skills as to give them a truly niche role that not every Lancer or Pug may be able to fulfill.

Lancer is pretty good for dungeon runs. I've completely respecced from Thaumaturge to Lancer.

Dat Chaos Thrust!

I also enjoy poking the ogre in the butt with my long stick.

Actually you can sleep the ghosts cause we've done it. But like it was stated earlier it's chances are really low. Ogre can be slept as well. Not sure about Batraal as we never tried.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tachikoma

I wonder how stats affect your dps as mages, do you mind posting stats?

I have a very hard time with stats since I always am crafting for hq, right now i'm working on WVR crafts with high DEX and I need to keep 130'ish DEX. Am i killing my mage ability with such low DEX?

Also what wand does Kaeko use? I was using the Jade crook+2 but your usage of Aegis Boon II makes me want a shield.

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I'm using a Walnut Wand (of something, I forget). The best wand to use for the role I play in this (basically lots of Curaga spam, taking hate, and staying alive) is Gridania Wand since you get a reasonably high Potency with MP and MND (your curing stats) but I've been too lazy to pick it up. The shield is essential. Aegis Boon and Deflection are very broken, especially with a +2/3 Square Ash shield.

My stats are 174 MND (cap), then 132 VIT (dumped everything I could into VIT after capping MND). INT doesn't seem to make an appreciable difference in damage currently in 1.18 so there's not a huge benefit to stacking INT for nuke damage, especially when nukes do so much on normal mobs at 0 +INT. Really the concept of the build I play is pretty cheesy:

(1) Get the maximum amount of MP possible from stats and food (use divine Stone Soup)
(2) Go purely HP and MP gear on equipment
(3) Lots of defense buffs (Sentinel, Featherfoot, Aegis Boon II, Deflection, +/- Diversion and Decoy)
(4) Spam Curaga I/II +/- Spiritbind blindly with no regard for enmity or MP efficiency
(5) Use defense buffs for temporary safety with the assumption mobs will die before they break buffs

Our main healer Katsu Kobashi has a similar stat build but a much different strategy regarding play-style since he's the designated "main healer" and has to worry about other issues like enmity and MP efficiency.

EDIT:
Also, you can definitely sleep the skeletons for Batraal. They are slept a number of times during the video that was posted. I even accidentally wake one due to the clumsiness of auto-attack in 1.18.

lol reminds me of Paragon back in WoW and their heroic ragnaros raid composition...nothing but druids and paladins..