The Odyssey - || Strategy And Discussion ||

Well technically it wasnt a chest, but a Mimic pretending to be a chest :D

It seems that the mat cost for NM pops goes down by 1 for every 3 NMs you kill.

For example, after 3 kills, floor 2 goes from 3 > 2, floor 3 goes from 6 > 5, etc.

MM 16 is bugged (for me at least). Got it last night, and re-entered to this message

As someone who has never picked a chest lock in their ffxi career, what do I need/whats the strategy to pick chests on thf and how does one avoid mimics?

You need to stay at least at 5.9 yalms to use the key.

Some chests are very easy to pop when they are outside a camp. But sometimes it appears right inside of a camp, or close enough to get aggro.

I believe all nostos mobs are slightly different from them race as it seems all of them aggro by both sound and sight. And you need to drop invisible to use keys so either you leave dangerous chests alones to come back later or you take the risk of dropping inv when the mob is looking to the other side, use key and ran away.

Some chests takes a couple of tries with all those tries consuming one key. So you can easily burn 4 or 5 keys to open a single chest though normally you can get done with less.

Mimics are random, and to me it seems like aRound 10% Chance to spawn. Odyssey mimics have drawn in trait so if you ran away further than 3+yalms from it, it will drag you back making near impossible to ran away if you have hate.

And if you pop it in the middle of a camp, Probably youre screwed for good.

There are some tactics to deal with this though. One of them is using a “Bait” that can pull aggro while you ran away. Suposelly if you have a trust tank that can stablish hate on mimic, you ran away further than 20 yalms then youre safe. Other tactic is having someone else with /BLM that can tractor you further than 20 yalms from mimic. Last, you can just cheat and use any walking dead body addon and toss your body outside of it then raise.

Take care that mimic dont despawn and has permanent hate on the keyer even if you die. So, if you die and raise and come back within 20 yalms, he will instantly aggro and drawn you in again. This dint affect other party members, that can safely walk close to mimic. Surprinsingly mimic isnt aggressive to anyone but the keyer.

You can't avoid mimics but you can attempt to die safely away from them when they pops.

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Go buy Living Keys from the regional vendor based on Conquest Evaluation. You can also use Thief's Tools for cheaper, but they appear to fail more often. You can also buy Skeleton Keys from AH, but those will cost more money and might not be worth the price. They do have a higher success rate.

Bring several RR items, Vile Elixirs (to remove yourself out of yellow HP). Prebuff with RR. Bring about 6-10 stacks of keys. I prefer to bring more than less, since the worst thing that can happen is you run out of keys and are basically useless for the run.

Have a DT set handy (Malignance works) and keep it on at all times.

Sub dnc for Spectral Jig (Sneak/Invis) for easily traveling the zone. Make a macro for quickly re-applying

Summon 2x Trust tanks, 1-2 Healers, a Support

Do your best MGS Naked Snake impression and sneak around the zone picking Chests with keys. You can make an easy /item "Living Key" <t> macro and spam it when you get close. You need to be under 6' and not invisible for it to work (you can keep sneak on)

If you keep sneak on, enemies that are sight can be avoided by standing out of their line of sight, and opening the lock
keep spamming until it opens (keys can fail to pick locks), or a Mimic pops. If you get the chest to open, you can quickly run out of range or cancel your sneak and quickly use Spectral Jig to re-apply it and continue onward

If a Nostos monster aggros you, assuming it wasn't by Low HP, you can pop the chest, run out of range, and use Hide to drop your aggro. It should work on every monster besides Agon Beastmen and if you aggro an undead by HP.

If a Mimic pops, engage, swing once, then turn; let your tank trusts and healers build hate on the Mimic by their cycling abilities/heals. After a few seconds, run out of range but into a group of other monsters and have them aggro you and kill you

Die safely out of range (20+ from the Mimic)

After death, you can raise safely and continue your run. Make sure not to die in a spot where the Mimic corners or blocks off your exit route, or you are basically done since he will draw you in once you get to close (Mimics retain hate on the THF even after you die). Always a good practice to know where you want to die safely in the case that a Mimc does pop.

One of my favorite methods for getting dangerous chests: Pop flee and aggro everything nearby. Run out of range, then use hide. Run back and safely open the chest. I normally do this if there are multiple chests in an area.

Don't forget you have Perfect Dodge also, so you can use that as a last-ditch effort to stay alive long enough to spam a few more keys.

All Nostos aggro by sight, while some also aggro by sound, low HP, or magic.

Whether a mob aggros by sound is not matched by how the normal mob type aggros. For example, Buffalos and Wyverns both normally aggro by sight only, but in Odyssey, Buffalos also aggro by sound, but Wyverns do not.

Beastmen Nostos and Nostos that are orignally true sight (Wamouras, Tauri) are true sight in Odyssey.

Another successful solo NM kill today of Taniwha. Did better then I thought. Evasion gear and Issekigan critical. Hope this helps for anyone else attempting these.

Also another deaggro shown. Looks like indeed what I did yesterday is repeatable. Not really sure this is a solid strategy but it has helped two days in a row so figured I'd show it again and explain it.

I use MNK/WAR + GEO/WHM and have had no problems with any of the NMs on floor 1. I use Chakra, Perfect Counter, or Inner Strength if they are outdamaging my trust healer. I recently started dropping August because he loses hate immediately on monsters that 2+ WSs and I haven't had hate issues pulling with voke or just smacking stuff.

The key is to punch and kick, sometimes countering.

It seems that Odyssey NMs get a buff when adds are up, and the adds get that buff when the boss is dead, which heavily incentivizes killing the adds first.

I was fighting Akidu, and was doing about 1200 per hit. After he summoned his adds, my hits were suddenly doing about 400 to him (his SP is Mighty Strikes). Damselflies don't have any defense buff or attack debuff moves, and I didn't have STR down.

Similarly, when I fought Taniwha (Sea Monk), I think (not 100% sure) he took much less damage after SPing, and when I killed him first, the adds were suddenly taking about 1/3 normal damage.


Regarding a different buff, when I fought Gandji (Roc), his attack power went way up when he summoned adds. His crits went from doing ~600 with 50% PDT to ~1100 with the same gearset.

I agree with this considering my fight with the morbol.

But im not sure if the adds either are super squishy or just depop after certain time (when poped with izzat).

The adds are similar strength to the NM (minus the buff the NM gets for having them up), but have somewhere around 1/5th the HP and don't SP. They definitely don't die in one hit unless it's a big WS, so not sure what your earlier experience is about.

Gonna just add my two observations which line up with Geriond's findings:

Glazemane NM - gets huge attack bonus after he uses SP. I was hit for 2k dmg on Ninja (on a normal attack without shadows) on floor 1 when shadows dropped. This prompted Ulmia to immediately use Scherzo on me.

Borealis NM (Spyrysyon) gets Regen effect at 3%/tick value when he uses SP. See video below (forgive my sloppy play, it was a bad BAD run late night >.>)


1:58 pops adds (34%), uses Invincible
Few moments later before I switch targets, notice how he regens 3% back up to 37%
Fast Forward to 3:30 mark after adds are killed, Spyrysyon is 78% HP



So in line with what Geri said, I agree that the adds give the main NM a buff effect (I say it's geomancy aura if I had to guess, the opposite effect of debuff aura Sheol A gives the player when NM SPs.).

I'm going to start recording all of my runs and reviewing the battle data, to see if I can determine exactly which buff each NM is getting from his adds, but I can say with absolute certainty that Spyrysyon gets Regen+%

I actually recorded that fight, and adds actually despawned after some time (it was a wipe but they despawned before the entire wipe).

This seems right as Taniwha regened from 40% to 100% on me while I killed adds. Figured that was a crazy Regen for the "Regeneration" move but my guess is it also has a Regen effect he gets from his adds.

I only poped bomb NM so far (from izzat). Dont know what buff it gets tho. NM and adds had floored accuracy against my THF in hybrid set and I had BRD and COR buffs, so adds died fast too. Will try get more info next time.

NMs clones do die in 1 hit if you frailty them first and get a little lucky. They don't seem to have more HP than the trash monsters (not NMs). I would guess like 50-60k?

I just went back and watched your video. Adds spawned at 39%, and by the time you swapped targets, it was back up to 43%.

I did another solo runs on monk with 5 support trusts, killed 4 more NMs:
Simir (clibri, Mhuufya's Beak)
Spyrysyon (Fomor, Ethereal Incense)
Azdaha (Wyvern, Coca's Wing)
Ptesan Wi (Buffalo, Camahueto's Fur)

They were pretty easy on monk, the buffalo one hit pretty hard on mighty strikes with 2 adds but still not too bad on monk.
I didn't get a +1 on B mastery on the 12th unique NM in B, even tough I got Moogle Mastery 14+1 on the 6th NM before.

Also, the NMs get tougher on higher floors and I popped Gandji (the Arke's Wing bird) on the 5th floor (took 12 wings to pop it) and was doing ok until he did mighty strikes and 2 adds, and then started hitting me for 2665 critical hits o.O so I think it's best to pop it on floors 1-3 ...

Did anybody else notice some "level up" animations while fighting NMs? I couldn't tell if it was on my trusts or on the summoned adds the few times I stayed on the main one (which would g along adds powering up when boss NM dies first)

It did seems to glow a bit short before 1h animation.

Then the adds after.

Not sure if the exact lv up animation as i got some effects off.

I know this should be obvious, but don't pop the Vampyr NM, haha. He can charm and is pretty magically accurate. Landed it on me for a minute even with Idris Vex/Attunement and Malignance gear.

After 2 Charm + "Resummon trusts while my GEO mule kites" rounds, I managed to kill him basically by annoying him to death while August keeps hate (adds killed August at 50% the first round.)

He does Blood Weapon, which I added to bgwiki already.

I have one Glazemane Fang that I'll use later if we don't know what that NM's SP is yet.


But yeah, don't pop the Vampyr NM. I only ended up with that NM, 1 halo, and 20 monsters.

Wow your right there it is. So that may mean 4% a tic... wow that's a pretty potent regen. Also means that staying on him like I was thinking may not work out very well with all those adds still on me. Even if he's low HP I think it still makes sense to switch and take out those adds. It's hard to deal efficient damage with eva set on and all those adds on you so your just going to be fighting that Regen.

The Vampyr regenned to 90% when I was killing adds / kiting it because I got charmed as well.

I think I'm ready to try going on THF and popping a ton of chests after tonight. Two questions about it:
1) Does it count towards my chest total, so chests get cheaper the more I pop?
2) Are living keys the way to go?

Each 10 chest opened reduce 1 izzat in the cost, suposelly capping at 5 (so, 50 chests opened).

Acording to Bg imilar rule applies To coffer and aurum, capping at 8 and 10 respectively.

This reduction is exclusively to the Sheol zone. Ie, your izzat reduction in Sheol A dont apply to Sheol B, you gonna need to redo it in B.

Im not sure if the type of key affect the odds to get or no a mimic, but living keys seems to fail more, resulting in more keys wasted.

Suposing the key type dont affect the mimic spawn rate, If youre farming solo THF chests, i supose you should bring both and use living keys to Open chests in open areas, and skeleton in riskier chests, where you shouldnt waste much time or mob gonna turn to you

Yeah, I brought the cost-per-chest down to 5 in Sheol A, but I did it by opening chests with izzat.

I loathe having to go THF to Odyssey, but if I could use it to blitz down my chest cost in a few runs and switch back to monk, it would be worth it.

I think Mimic is actually a % chance when you fail to open a chest. Like lets say its 5% to get mimic on failed attempt. That would make Living key pop way more Mimics and I think thats statistically correct (I opened around 1000 chests in A and I was getting much less Mimics using Skeleton keys)

Just invest in Skeleton Keys then.

Someone (Panta maybe) posted the best strat a few pages ago.

Start on THF pop 50 chest with Keys (Skeleton > Living > tools)

After 50 use Izzat to pop Chest to spam Coffers. (90% spawn rate)

Rinse and repeat for Aurum.

Btw, for the first time i tried cruel cleaving (crueleaving), pulled a bunch of Tauri and used it.

It showed the no effect message.

So are the tauri also immune to doom or is just my cruel joke set a... joke (nothing specific, malignance 5/5, naeg+maxe, macc accessories).

EDIT: floor 1 also

Spawn rate isn't that high at only 50 chests. I'd say it takes about 100 before you start getting 90% rates.