Guide For Upgrading AF (NIN)

yeah it is funny and so true lol, i prefer low manning something or having a crap load of blm doing their thing on a NM.

SE seems to have been made the lower teir NMs (not sure about higher ones) more focused towards a low man set up. More then 2 or 3 melees on alot of them seems to make them churn out the tp moves too fast to handle on alot of them, with the exception of ones with out AoE that is.

Top right

That armor


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The two key items that drop the time for a new stone by 4 hours each are quite good. Especially if you have a lot already, as it resets the stone count to include those reductions.

Went from 80 to about 100 with just one.

Hi fellow ninjas out there~

I'm sure there has been a lot of ninjas out there still wondering exactly what Iga Kyahan +2's "enhances utsusemi" meant. (Perhaps may be it was just me...)

But, I was able to complete my Iga kyahan +2 and is able to confirm that it increases the shadow count of Utsusemi: ni to 5
and :ichi to 4.

Also, I know a lot of servers will see people running around with Masamune due to MNK + WHM being able to duo Carabose and so on, but for us NINs I am able to confirm that Briareus is very duoable by NIN and WHM.

Happy Hunting and God speed

My brother just upgraded his Iga Kyahan to +2 today, and he managed to do almost all of it solo as NIN90/DNC45 in 2 days.

He found that the fastest way to get the 6 Cards of Voyage needed for +2 upgrade was:

1. Get a Clear Demilune Abyssite from Cruor Prospector for 300 cruor
2. Use it to pop Vu'zdei, it can drop a Colorful Demilune Abyssite
3. Use the Colorful Demilune Abyssite to pop Hm'Zdei, it can drop a Crimson Demilune Abyssite
4. Use the Crimson Demilune Abyssite to pop Ketea, which can drop up to 3 Cards of Voyage, Exequy Gun, Schellenband, Coins of Voyage, and also Atma of the Demonic Lash (Attack+30, Double Attack +10%, Occasionally absorbs magic damage) if triggered

These NMs are all in Abyssea - Vunkerl. He soloed Vu'zdei and Hm'Zdei as NIN/DNC without too much trouble, though I remember one time Hm'Zdei managed to one-shot him for nearly 2k when shadows were down. The great thing about these NMs is that you don't lose your pop item (since the drop is really your transformed pop item) when you pop it, so if you don't get the drop you can just wait for the repop and try again.

Getting a group together for Ketea wasn't too hard, since everyone has a chance at the Atma of the Demonic Lash, a pretty good Atma if you don't have anything better yet. Make sure your group has all the jobs you will need to guarantee you get the triggers.

Edit: And yes the +2 gives an extra shadow. For some reason when you cast Ni the Utsu icon still just shows the number 4, even though you do have 5 shadows. Ichi shows 4, though.

I know this is from a while back... but:

Store TP works as follows:

(TP gained) x (1.[amount of store TP you have])

So if you gain 2 TP per tactical parry, and have 19 sTP you would get

2 x (1.19) = 2.38

Now I'm not saying that it /does/ work with Tactical Parry, but that you would need a /minimum/ of 50 sTP in order to get 3 or more [ 2 x (1.5) = 3 ].

Worth testing sometime, though its nearly a useless thing to count on, because you would have to full time the sTP, as you dont know when you're going to parry ;|. That is assuming your haste/evasion/pdt/wtfever setup you're using doesnt have that sTP+50 in it already, but that'd be rare for a non sam job.

if you look CAREFULLY at the icon there is a small tiny "+" sign next to 4... yes... why couldn't they just make 5? It's SE...

as for Ketea, I did finish mine in one day also but I did have some help from LS friends who were bored (mostly in procing yellow so I did finish in 3 kills.. 1st one didn't proc, 2nd and 3rd did).

Good information for VNM in Abyssea- Vunkerl would be, that currently the repop timer on VNM T2 and T3 are very low as I'm sure everyone noticed by now. Even Lord Varney pops every 5-15 mins, and it is about the same rate for T2 VNM, I have seen it pop within 15 mins before. Also, for T3 Ketea, it seemed to me like the repop on that VNM is about ~30 mins give or take. So happy hunting everyone (proc yellow twice and you're home free!)

As for Kannagi hunt, Briareus farming is not too bad as long as you can live with getting the KIs over.. and over... and over.. again... if you were able to solo Ketea as NIN/DNC, you CERTAINLY will be able to solo Briareus. It usually takes me about 6-7 minute per kill but I do dual box and I go nin/war + whm. (takes about an hour or two to farm KIs for both characters... yes it sucks) but yeah I'm 11/50 in about 3 days of work. So good luck to you all :)

PS: thought people might want to know which atmas I use to kill Briareus (however his name is spelled), I currently use VV/RR/and atma of dread since TH seems to help a lot with helm drop rate, but as you could probably tell, I did start soloing this mob with 2 atmas only so good luck and happy hunting.

Can nin/dncr and rdm take bria down as easy? I do not have whm lvld so I normally dual box with rdm. I have not tried brias yet so any help on kill tactics would be great. Also would it hurt to throw a mnk in the mix or is that to much tp gain

To kill Hm'Zdei I just use the ninjutsu wheel, A full cycle should take 10~15% off of it. Using 2 Atmas for INT/MaB, and the last set to Mounted Champion I can just nuke and run away if I get hit, however keeping Yonin up you won't get hit much at all. I was able to kill it in under 2 minutes yesterday.

With 370Skill 78+182 INT my Futae Hyoton: Sans do 2.1~2.2k DMG on it.

admittedly I've never even tried to kill it straight tanking on NIN/DNC, if I remember correctly it has some PDT. So if you have a nuke set you might want to try it out.

Holy ***, NIN nukes sure arent lulzy anymore eh.. xD

I straight tanked Hm'Zdei and Ketea, as long as you have a decent evasion set, it shouldn't be a problem.

There are 2 TP moves by Hm'Zdei you really should look out for
Reactor Overheat + Reactor Overload, both should be more than easy to handle as long as you have your evasion gear set on and have at least 1 shadow. Never had a problem with Hm'Zdei since lvl 85, so I'm guessing it's even easier now.


For Briareus, I have seen my friend who has clearled 50 helm with MNK/WAR + WHM/SCH alone (well which can kill most things nowdays).

I really believe that it would be very easy to kill briareus with NIN/DNC + RDM (may be NIN/DNC could solo just as easily).

To be safe I would use a HP atma along with heavy Melee Atmas (VV + RR) for the first fight, but only thing that you really have to watch out for is

(Mercurial Strike) when it hits you for 1111, as soon as you see your hp go down by 1111, then you need to make a run for it and stay out of its aoe by at least 15', right after 1111 he'll pop his 2hr and spam colossal slam 3 times in a row. Now, colossal slam is a VERY VERY slow move and it takes him awhile to charge it up. I usually just pop on my -PDT set and run away from him to get away (gotten hit once so far just to see how much dmg it does, and it does about 400 dmg with zombie effect with -50% pdt gear).

As I've mentioned before. Hardest part in this fight is getting the KIs to pop Briareus.. 25-30 times. I'm currently 11/50, and it took me about 3 days to collect 11 helms, but I am slowly dying inside with boredom of killing same mob.. over.. and over.. and over... (good thing no one needs Juogi and briareus sash went down to 100k....... (-_-;;))

anyways happy hunting and if you need anymore help, please let me know. (really it's not hard at all..)

Sweet thanks for the info, was actually planning to play around with if i could solo him lol...

On another note Berstuk is soloable by nin/dnc now for head seals since i havn't seen anything here about soloing heads. I used atma of RR and a regen atma as my second (don't have 3ed lunar yet) but thats just personal prefrence so i can be lazy on healing my self. He is actually kinda a joke, just stay at max range to keep out of his aura and stun his waterja/ga. Once in a while violent flourish's stun wouldn't proc but all those times i had let stutter step wear off so as long as you keep it lv1 you should be safe. Even when he strips you it's not that bad, just watch your shadows saving ni if you can for if he pops a ga and you miss vio flourish due to lower H2H skill (mine is 150ish and still hits half the time). Full evasion set not really needed I found that most of the time i could stay in haste gear with dual eva sekkas (+1) and kurayami up. Para seemed to last a really short time so did't bother much with it and yurin was good at the end incase he gets stripga happy.

Hope this helps, 6/8 seals so im sure ill regret this when my server has it spamed with soloing nins :P

well wanted to give a quick update on how many helms I have been able to obtain. I'm currently 24/50 on the helm and I haven't even played much to be honest. What I normally do to get helms is I go in to farm TE and Amber farm by myself.

I normally use VV/RR/Dark depths to farm amber.

When I think that I get few key items and is ready for Carabose (for my friend)+ Briareus, then we proceed to killing the nms to fill in the gaps in the KI, and then we proceed to killing the NMs.

Carabose takes about 8-10 mins with NIN + BRD+ WHM (plus another thf mule for the TH).

Briarues usually takes about 4-6 mins.

Happy hunting all and Merry Christmas. If anybody has some nice tips to hunt down Sobek with lowman, let me know ^^/

Sobek Isn't too Hard. Only thing to really watch for is Tyrant Tusk. Trio'd This with a Mnk and Whm and me as Ninja. I ate a Tyrant Tusk once. Actually easier to Low-man Since there is not too much TP feed. Joined a shout with 12 people once. Everyone jumped on it and feed TP even after I said to not feed TP. Sobek Practically did Tyrant Tusk Back to back. Hate shout groups. I think adding a BLM to the Trio Set up would be nice. Can proc Grellow and Stun Tyrant Tusk.

does nin/dnc with stun flourish be nice on it?

I've been wondering...wtf is the set bonus D:

"Augments Dual Wield", im curious lol.

it adds occ att twice to your rounds
ninja edit (both of your attacks)

anyone know the chance of it attacking twice with 3 af3 +2?

I am still working on trying to get my feet, have been out lotted 4 times now, and still don't even have my head or legs to +1 >.<

to add to the guide, out of all the 3 possible nms that drop feet seals the primary drops came from Iku-Turso (sea monk nm).

It's very easy to pop the nm (not to mention cheap), and also it's very easy to farm up. Problem with the nm is that it gets stronger and stronger toward the end of its life, and Maelstorm does upto 1800+ dmg toward the end.

So make sure to kill it fast and have a WHM who can cure spam you and for me it was (razed ruin + ebon hoof since there were only 2 atmas available at the time). NM will spam ws every other round so just save up TP toward 20% and go nuts on it at the end and have WHM just spam cure 5 and 6 to you with afflatus solace period at any dmg.

for Leg seals I did Athamas which was up every 30-45 mins for me (before the update and I'm sure it's up 24/7 now).

Athamas is easily soloable by nin/dnc as long as you have evasion gear set on. It will drop mostly mnk AND nin seals.

for head seals, I did blazing Eruca and this also can be VERY easily soloed as long as yo uhav ethe right atmas. Currently ninja's nuking + kiting should work well and just avoid casting on it while it's casting and you should be gold.

Happy hunting

PS 41/50 on helm as of 12/24/10

How many stones would you say you've used getting that many helms? I've been wanting to farm up some helms for my Kannagi but I also do abyssea events with LS so I kind of need some stones to be able to keep up with them.

Build Azure and Pearlscent (ONly those two) And time while farming sets isn't an issue.

If you know where Clonoid are can get a TE within 10 minutes of you're lucky. (only happened once). 30-40min is probably enough time to get azure and a decent amount of pearl (to get TE enough to survive). I just get pearl off frogs. But if i have a fair amount of time can kill NM for pearl, and get pearl while you farm pop items.

Just finished 50/50 Helms. I used to try to not use any TE by farming my own TE along with amber but that just wasted soo much of my RL time that I decided just to go ahead and kill nms. Got through about 12 helms today alone. (totally sick of it)

Discernment did help quiet a bit.

It took me two stones to farm up for two characters and kill Briareus twice.

If you guys need some help, let me know :)

A lot of JPs are spamming so... You guys better hurry up.

ok so an update as of 01/02/2011

I did finish Kannagi to a fully upgraded version.

took me 3 days to be exact to farm up 50 sobek skins (my LS mates said it was nuts)... but it just goes to show if you have will, there is a way. (took me few days to finish up magian trials and such since I didn't do any of the magian trial before finishing Briareus helm part).

I did farm up 35 skins in day#2 and only had 6 left on the third day. (this was with the helps of 2 other dedicated friends Anduril LS mates and few donations from other LS *thanks Ettornio & Puba.

Anyways, sobek is very easy to farm now and i'd say even easier than briareus, so good luck to everyone.

PS: It is everything you dreamed of and more, I really seriously doubted the power of this weapon. Blade hi: averages 4k+ in Abyssea on normal mobs. about 2.5k - 4k, but Aftermath effect is just ridiculously sexy too since with atmas since we swing so much within the aftermath period, ninjas are able to REALLY shine in that period of double damage (critical hits double goes over 500 per hit). I killed Bakka within 30 sec of engaging... got off one blade: hi.. and amenisia... so yeah, if you are serious abot ninja, get Kannagi.

One last thing, get Loki's Kaftans... it really increases your dmg output on Blade: hi.