Instanced Fights

[Adrian74]

Hi Ninster.

I started to play recently and maybe I'm not the one who should give you tips, but I did those instances without any problems so maybe I can help you with the Arcanist fighting style:

This is how I did those. First of all I added to my regular crossbar (or hotbar) the 'Sync' action of the pet, it is useful because that way you can choose who the pet must attack in case you need the carbuncle fighting someone (And for example not losing time with the main enemy NPC). It happened to me a lot in my first fates and other things, I didn't know how to control carbuncle well and it lost time attacking the boss while the other monsters were attacking me. Now that I have an easy access to sync I have the mania to say the pet which target should attack. But be careful with sync, can be annoying if you are not targeting anyone and you use joystick... The best way is to select an enemy and then use sync.

I have two ways to do it, normally If I see many enemies, I start selecting all of them and casting miasma, then bios. Once everyone is poisoned the pet and I focus on destroying one of the enemies. After that, miasma and poison again to everyone and focus in another target... And so on. Then against the boss, always check its status, be sure to always deal miasma and bios, and if they are already active, use ruin. You should also have a energy drain 'reserve'. I mean you use aetherflow but don't use the energy drain until you have another aetherflow or your health - MP is having trouble.

Like the others commented, the main trick is to finish first the healers and overall, everyone in the instance except the final boss.

With the topaz carbuncle everything is slower but easier when you are alone, you first send the topaz to attack with sync, then when it gained the attention of all the enemies you start using bios, miasma, and ruin if the enemies or enemy already have bios and miasma. If carbuncle is having HP problems you can use physick and heal it. (In level 18 or so, It becomes even better because you have a skill for healing the pet automatically, "Sustain").

Also, the meal I use when fighting is "Raisins" increases the spell speed if I remember right.

I hope to be of help ^^.

[Niwashi]

I have more but... char limit.

The forums only check for the character limit when initially submitting a post, and not when editing it. So the workaround people use is to post the first part, then edit it to add the rest. (It's a good idea to write out the whole thing in advance, so you can just cut and paste to add it all in when editing. That way, you can get your entire post up quickly almost as soon as you initially post it.)

3. Following from 1., is there anything I can do out in the field to catch up from what I missed? I'm sure I was supposed to pick up on something with Topaz Carby besides just summoning him for when I need a tank, but that fight's been Echo'd (as I mentioned before) and gone. The sad thing is, I never run into problems out in the field since it's just me and Carbuncle to keep track of.

That's the main difference between them. Emerald Carbuncle does more damage, but Topaz Carbuncle can hold aggro and can withstand more damage from the mobs. During most dungeons, you're going to want Emerald Carbuncle, because there will be someone else there to tank for the group and you're supposed to be providing DPS, which Emerald is better at. But Topaz Carbuncle is very useful during solo content as he can keep mobs off of you (and in the case of these duties that have you fighting alongside NPCs, can help keep some of the mobs off them as well).

There's some more minor differences as well. Topaz fights from up close to the mobs, while Emerald can stay further back and fight at range. When you want to pull one mob away from a larger group and not have to fight them all at once, you want to start off with a ranged attack. So if you have Emerald Carbuncle out, you could start by using Sic to have him attack the mob you want to pull, but if you have Topaz out, then you'd want to pull the mob with an attack of your own and have Topaz take aggro back from you after you've brought the mob closer.

4. This is probably the big thing I'm having issues with. I've noticed that I can't tab to target NPCs. Is there a way to pick out an NPC to heal when they're mobbed together? What about how to find out just how many NPCs there are and which ones are the ones to keep alive? And which ones have hate from which mobs? The more questions I ask the more I feel terrible about all this. Ugh.

There are settings you can configure under the Target Filter section of your Character Settings. How they work depends on whether you're on PC or PS3 (or I guess more accurately, whether you're using keyboard/mouse or a controller). I can only describe the PS3 settings (which are similar to using a controller with PC). If you're using a keyboard and mouse, maybe someone else can help with that.

With a controller, there's two ways you can handle targeting, and the default one doesn't work the best. If you go into the target filters section of character settings, there's a section for setting what you want to target based on whether your weapon is drawn or not, and another section below it for manually choosing what types of things to target.

Disable the top part, about choosing what to target based on whether your weapon is drawn or sheathed. That part is rather buggy and in any case doesn't allow much flexibility if you want to target different things at different times.

Enable the section below it, that lets you set up to four targeting groups. Each is configurable. For instance, I have L1+[square] set to switch my system to only targeting mobs (useful when focusing on DPS). Then L1+[circle] sets it to only targeting players (useful when healing). L1+[triangle] sets it to targeting everything. You could also set one of them to targeting specifically NPCs, or else include NPCs along with players in your healing setup. Once you use the L1+(whatever) to choose a targeting group, then the right/left directional buttons will only cycle between members of that group until you use L1+(something else) to change to a different targeting group.

[ph03n1x13]

My primary class is Arcanist. I also play on the PS3. For this particular quest, I found it easy to pre-target the named NPC (since that's the only one you need to keep alive) before they get into the fray. I kept close to him while targeting the adds and eventually the gargoyle. Since I could always see the character that I have to keep alive it was easy to target him and use physick.

Of course, this becomes more a pain in the ass once you get to the lvl 30 Arcanist quest...

Also, I didn't know that the PS3 had targeting filters. Thank you for that bit of knowledge.

[Feilina]

There is an option to show NPC-Life(HP)-Bar only when they received damage. This greatly helped me with my Conjurer quests.

[Ninster]

Thanks again, everyone, I tried the fight and cleared it this time, with less trouble. Although there a few spots where things got out of hand, like when the voidsent showed up before I'd cleared everything else, or when I noticed that for once I was the one about to go down. But at least I could see which NPCs I needed to keep an eye on.

The... fight after that caught me off guard, but that was really nothing. Only me and the mob to keep track of.

I'm really enjoying this game, even after tripping up here, but I just don't want to get to the end-game festivities and completely flop on all of'em. I'm well aware of how hard the community can be on its fellow players for not knowing what they're doing. Granted, I'm already in an FC with my friend, but for those cases when I have to reach out... I don't want to be the load.

Again, thanks for the advice, everyone. I hope I don't have come back here when the NEXT instanced fight shows up.