Crystal Paradise Master Trial

Enjoy a megathread for Crystal Paradise. Pasting my info over from the update thread:

Required item: Crystal Paradise (250 Potpourri)
You can just use one item to get in, like a standard BCNM Orb.

Buffs don't wear on entry, no trusts.

Eald'narche and the TT teleport onto the aggro-getter on pull, was funny to see. The GK used Call Wyvern, HM used Mighty Strikes on pull. Just before I died to a big nuke, a Behemoth and Adamantoise were summoned from somewhere - I assume the Mithra?
An orbital spawned (after stellar burst?)

Eald'narche's nukes hurt. Thunder 6 hit my RUN for 2.4k. Water 6 hit me for 2k, so they hurt a lot.(Windsday for both)
An ES Sleepga on RDM/BLM slept the wyvern, behemoth, both orbitals, and got immunobreaks on Kam'Lanaut and HM. Resists on everything else.
Stymie Saboteur Sleepga landed just fine. Lasted 93 seconds with 0/5 duration merits.

No exoplates, but looks like more enemies to handle at one time than I was expcting. I think Kam and Eald have auras or something going on when they're close to each other? Definitely some TP gain buffs, and they glow, but they might always do that.

Aggro radius of 20', they won't re-aggro if you reraise after a full wipe and are out of range. Exemplar Point loss is unknown at this time.

We got the win tonight.





Party comp: WHM/NIN (ML46), RDM/NIN (ML40), BRD/NIN (ML29), COR/NIN (ML42), NIN/WAR (ML45), RUN/BLU (ML31)

Kill order: AATT > Orbitals x2 > Eald'narche > Kam'lanaut > AAGK > AAHM > AAMR > AAEV.

General encounter notes: outside buffs carry in. Traditional super tanking is possible, and is what we used. There is no WS wall/decay mechanic. Unsure if there is any Prime weapon damage bonus in there, as none of us used a Prime weapon for it. Naegling Savage Blade spam from everyone (mostly); AAGK and Behemoth are the two definite exceptions to this as they take very poor physical damage (Leaden does very well on them, as does SC damage). Both BST pets and AAGK's wyvern are not win conditions and do not need to be killed for the encounter to end. Killing orbitals levels up Eald'narche (one level up from each), and killing AA's levels up Kam'lanaut. Defense Down from NIN's Ageha landed for a full 3mins on everything in the encounter. Aisha: Ichi also landed easily with water threnody on the mobs that we specifically wanted to get it up on (Kam'lanaut, AAGK, and AAHM).

Tanking approach: RUN super tanks in the entrance doorway, and the NIN peels off targets one-by-one and shadow tanks them, with the exception of AAEV and AAMR, who were both deliberately saved for last and tanked by the RUN. Almost everything in this encounter is absorbable by shadows, making NIN an attractive "off-tank" and DD. Throughout the fight, the tank will often be dispelled from Kam'lanaut (and occasionally full dispelled from Tortoise Song from the Adamantoise). We prioritized getting at least a couple Minne's + Gallant's back up on the tank if he lost them.

Songs: Honor, x2 Madrigal, Minuet 5, Minne 5. We also had Herc Etude, a 2nd Minuet, a 2nd Minne, and Scherzo from an outside bard going into the fight, which all lasted a good portion of the way through Eald'narche. During certain stretches, we dropped the 2nd Madrigal for an extra Minuet. On Eald'narche, AAMR, and possibly AAEV, x2 Madrigals felt necessary (with the Madrigals/Honor needing to be Soul Voice'd for Eadl'narche).

Rolls: Crooked Chaos + SAM. Crooked Gallant's from an outside COR initially going into the fight. We chose to maintain Gallant's on the RUN for the first half of the encounter until fewer mobs were smacking him.

Eald'narche
The most annoying mob of the 12 in the encounter, and the main reason why our party comp is structured like it is. He seems to have potent regain, and spams Vortex, an AoE 15-second terror, bind, and hate reset. He summons x2 Orbitals roughly 15 seconds after aggro, and he gains significant DT from the Orbitals while they're alive, so those are killed before Eald in the kill order. The terror duration seemingly cannot be reduced - Idris Bolster Vex/Attunement + Odyllic still resulted in a full 15sec on terror. It is absorbable by shadows, and since it's a hate reset, shadow tanking is perhaps the only reliable way to tank him. Eald also casts Tier 6 nukes, which can one-shot any non-tank without shadows (Scherzo from an outside BRD, and Migawari are big value for this reason as perfect shadow upkeep isn't trivial). Eald's enmity seems very strange to us and he is the one mob in the encounter that cannot be super tanked as he will constantly teleport around to random people, but we were able to lock his enmity on a target (NIN) provided we were shadow tanking him - the hate reset from Vortex will never land if the NIN can maintain shadow upkeep, and everyone else can (mostly) mitigate the Terror spam via /NIN (Vortex seemed to absorb a random number of shadows ranging from 1-4). On pull, we waited for Eald to summon his orbitals, then we Sytmie + Sleep Eald while we kill AATT + x2 Orbitals. The investment of Stymie there is primarily to avoid the chaos of Eald porting around terror'ing random targets until we are actually ready to kill him. At 40% on Eald, AAMR will use Charm. At 25% on Eald, AAEV will use Benediction. At 10% on Eald, AAHM will use Mighty Strikes. These uses of the AA abilities that are based on Eald's HP% do not prevent these AA's from using the same abilities later when you are fighting them. The meaningful one there is charm, but since it's predictable, our RUN used Odyllic/Tenebraex3/Pflug when 40% on Eald was approaching. Eald is incredibly evasive (not sure how much of this is attributable to the level ups from the Orbitals, but given how potent the DT is from the Orbitals, I don't think you can avoid killing them both first). Soul Voice Honor March, x2 Madrigals, and Distract 3 felt like a must.

Kam'lanaut
Has access to Great Wheel, which is a physical AoE that hurts - without shadows, we had a number of one-shots on DD's from this during prog. Since we chose to kill AATT before fighting Kam'lanaut, he had one level up when we fought him, but we had previously killed him before any AA's were killed and we did not notice a meaningful difference in his damage taken, nor damage dealt from just a single level up. Kam'lanaut can cast Dispelga, so silence needs to be upkept on him because he takes a while to kill. It typically took a few immunobreaks to land it, and doesn't last very long. As with other versions of Kam, he absorbs elemental/SC damage aligned with his en-spell element, but Savage Blade spam makes this a moot point.

Orbitals
Unsilenced, these can pump out fairly strong -ja's, Dispelga, and other AoE debuffs including para and silence, but once silenced, these are not threatening.

AAGK + Behemoth
Both of these mobs take very poor physical damage, but good magic damage. Leaden does well on both. Bio for AAGK, as he can get spammy with Dragonfall, a pretty threatening AoE WS. We chose to have the COR solo DPS GK down, purely with Leaden spam, and everyone else other than the NIN outside of range of Dragonfalls. Darkness SC damage does chunk him, but for the sake of ensuring hate stays on the NIN, we chose to kill him purely via Leaden spam.

AAHM
Takes full physical damage, but hits extremely hard (he can use Mighty Strikes multiple times; he used MS 15 times in our win) and burns through shadows extremely quickly with multi-attacks. Has access to Mijin, so we Sacro'd at 50%.

AAMR
Extremely evasive, and in addition to the predictable charm she uses when Eald reaches 40%, she can also seemingly use charm at any time. Since the first Charm is predictable and we were ready for it, it missed the RUN with x3 Tenebrae, a Light Carol, Pflug, and Odyllic. The 2nd Charm missed with basically just Tenebrae x3.

AAEV
Spams Shield Strike, putting the tank in stun jail. She is seemingly the tank-iest mob in the encounter in terms of damage taken from any type, though her HP is far less than the two brothers. She will Bene once when Eald is at 25%, and can bene later on when you are fighting her. Around 25%, she gains access to single target Spirits Within (not the AoE version, Arrogance Incarnate). It one-shot our RUN for 8.2K when she was at 17% HP. Another for 6.1K damage with 6% HP, and 1.5K damage with 3% HP. One way to deal with this is to gravity kite her from 25%-0.

Adamantoise
Has access to Tortoise Song, and unlike Tolba, Silence does not prevent him from using it. Can be slept, but not easily. He also has access to Tortoise Stomp, the defense down from which should be removed from the tank asap.

Oh lemme guess. (Posted before the full page write up)

The only relevant info is where you managed to get them to all stack in front. Maybe invincible (RUN interchangeable). Only need to last through TT.

Sleep eld, Asylum zerg TT, nothing else of much consequence. Kill Orbitals to weaken eld, pull them off 1 by 1 as to be expected. ((lots of shadows))

I know you want it to sound way cooler and way harder, but yeah. It's just supertank and kill one by one, 20 paragraphs not needed.

You done it, realm first

Mostly the same comp, except PLD instead of RUN. We didn't kill the pets. Eald'narche is by far the hardest part of the fight - the first run we got past him was the winning run.

Kill order: TT -> Orbitals -> Eald -> Kam -> MR -> GK -> HM -> EV. Fight ended with Wyvern, Adamantoise, and Behemoth still alive. Only two deaths (the BRD to Kam, twice).

Other notes:
-For pre-buffs, we did Etude/Minuet4/Scherzo and Gallant/Fighter rolls in addition to SCH things.
-We use SV/CC outside and tried to Wild Card it back with the outside COR, but it didn't work this time and Cutting Cards set it to ~22 minutes. SV songs wore out at around 5-10% on Eald'narche and damage floored for a while.
-Bind lands on EVERYTHING with Saboteur up. Most notably for this is the pets (Adamantoise can't tortoise song if he can't hit anything). Gravity lands on all the Ark Angels too. TT and Eald'narche can still teleport while bound, though.
-Once the PLD had everything lined up in front of them, they didn't care about basically anything the other mobs did while Phalanx was up. We didn't need to Gallant's Roll them midfight (they were still getting Minnes). Fealty can block Charm.
-We got SV songs again mid-Kam'lanaut and killed MR after - she died so fast we didn't see a second Charm.
-EV seems to have the HTBC variant's MDB in addition to very high PDT - Enfire was basically doing full normal damage and was by far the best source of damage on her, but everything else was pretty terrible. The MDB might be bugged, honestly, GK doesn't have this issue.
-At the end, we had the PLD kiting a Gravity II'd EV around the crystal with all three pets either bound or also chasing the PLD. It was a bit hectic, but ultimately it avoided Dominion Slash spam and Spirits Within. If you do this, keep her Addled but unsilenced so you have time to hit her while she's casting.

Wow, world's shortest Megathread, huh? Congrats to all those who attempted and conquered this fight!

Did anyone in your party use a stage 4 at all, and I noticed you said "SCH things" in your prebuff portion. Did you use a sch instead of WHM? Curious what your actual line up was because you mentioned bringing a PLD but didn't explicitly say you brought a SCH.

No prime weapons used. SCH prebuffs before entry. WHM/NIN, RDM/NIN, BRD/NIN, COR/NIN, NIN/WAR, PLD/BLU. Think our ML range was only 19-37.

We can continue it by discussing next challenge: PorxiesParadise

I might throw a group together to try this, but as I'm looking at the strat and the available jobs of my targeted group, I can't help but wonder what jobs can be replaced by alternatives. Mostly curious if a counter build BLU/NIN can replace a NIN and if a SCH can replace a WHM. My biggest concern about sch is the lack of yagrush for stuff and things. Was hoping to see if one of the groups to get the win had any opinions based on their experience.

SCH would be pretty rough right at the very beginning, there are a lot of AoE Petrifies and other debuffs going out until the taru is down. Depending on kill speed, potentially would be find after that in terms of debuffs. Since you'd be /nin, not having any barspells would be pretty rough.

For the rest, Eald and Kam hit really hard, Cureskin from Afflatus Solace was very useful in our first win.

I think a SCH could work in this fight, but WHM is just simpler.

Regarding the counter blu/nin instead of nin. Only thing that really comes to mind is that Eald has weird hate reset mechanics. Those mechanics don't seem to come into play if the person tanking doesn't ever lose shadows. His moves sometimes only removed 2 shadows, but sometimes they removed 3+.

The shadow issue with Blu did have me a bit concerned about trying it because not having access to occultation since I'd need to use utsusemi would be a huge loss. Blu would have added benefits that a nin wouldn't, so on the surface it sounds appealing. Seems like the safe move would be to keep parties the same as the people that have won. Thanks!

Thank you Bigtymer/Mischief for the write ups. They were extremely helpful for our clear.

Did anyone manage to make a video of their successful run? Eald’Narche has been the common culprit to failed runs. Would love to get the time splits on how much time successful groups spent on each mob as a benchmark.

Eald'narche was killed with 46:24 remaining on the instance timer on our first clear. Kam'lanaut died with 38:22 remaining.

1st clear I saw:


Another group, starts around 1h50m in:

I know this is way late, but congratulations to Bigtymer, Shiraj, Mopar, Snukums, Aburaage, Shadowmeld, Saviorself, and Omaar.