Nyzul Isle Investigation, ClanBEB Style

Our new ClanBEB Nyzul Isle Investigation static, with 5 core members and a few of people rotating in as the sixth, has been doing better than I had hoped. We've been working with two Runic Disc (Anastasia and I are holding them), and are currently up through level 20 on my disc and level 35 on Ana's. We're currently planning to alternate farming and climbing.

We've had 8 level 20 farming runs, and have fought Behemoth 5 times, Fafnir twice, and Adamantoise once. The Askar Gambieras have dropped 4 times, two pairs of Denali Gamashes, and only one pair of Goliard Clogs. We timed out on one of our Fafnir fights, so we're 7/7 on actual drops, which seems high compared to some groups. I guess Luc's TH4 is making a difference. Hopefully it will continue to do so on the higher levels.

Our typical set-up for normal runs is PLD, THF or NIN, BLM, RDM, MNK, MNK or WAR, but for the boss runs, we use BRD instead of MNK or WAR, and Lucrezia comes as THF. This has been working out for us quite well so far. Anastasia tried coming as PUP for the first run, but decided BLM works better. Yobun is usually either MNK or BRD, and Erock either RDM or WAR. Our special guests include Thoron's MNK or BRD, Ranzz's RDM or BRD, Lumikumi's MNK, and Elbryan's RDM.

We've been learning as we go along, making some mistakes along the way, like underestimating the Poroggo enemy leader, or continuing to floor 11 instead of exiting when we'd completed floor 10. But you learn more when things go wrong, right?

The stupid levels that make you light the lamps in a specific order are particularly trying, but we did really well on it the last time we had one, so perhaps we've got that pretty well figured out. After all my frustrations with Nyzul last spring, it's nice to have it become something that's quite fun.

One of the nice things about Nyzul is that you get exp for the mobs that you have to fight. The "eliminate all enemies" floors are nice for replacing exp lost to the Raise Is we some times have to hand out, as well as for just general exp buffer maintenance. I think I'll start using my empress band before we start our round of assaults every Monday.

We haven't got any interesting ??? items yet, but it's nice that we're batting 1000 on our Floor 20 boss drops. Hopefully we can get more Goliard and Denali for people. It'll be kind of sad if we have to start throwing away Askar boots because we all already have them. I think next week we'll be climbing on Ana's disc, but we may do 4 boss runs on the 40th floor instead.

The Askar set looks pretty nice for me, at least situationally. The boots have more enmity than any of my other boots, and also have -2% damage reduction, so they are my new kiting boots. With their STR and DEX, I probably should be swapping them in for weapon skills when I'm being all damagey, but so far I'm just leaving on my Homam boots in that mode. I'm not sure the pants are terribly useful for me with the other pants I already have, but if we get enough of them, it would be nice to have the complete set eventually, for the HP bonus when wearing the set.