Dungeons
Brayflox's Longstop Hard Mode Guide
(Courtesy of GabrielCeleste on reddit.com)
TRASH
Most of the trash is similar to the original Brayflox's Longstop. You'll find a decent amount of Deep Jungle Coeurls (including a white version that looks amazing) and other assorted jungle creatures. There were one or two roaming coeurls (notable one near the wooden ramp midway through the stage) but nothing to really worry about. Once you reach the goblin town from the original dungeon, you have to clear out several groups of trash again to free the imprisoned goblins. There's isn't any danger of losing any goblins from what I could tell since they don't appear until after the trash is defeated, but you do have to clear all of it for Brayflox to blast open a secret passage to the last area. Lastly, right before the ascent to the final boss, there are some Illuminati Footmen that will periodically summon Gobbie Beak adds (pelicans), so unless you kill the footmen, you'll face a continuing wave of gobbie beaks. This might be a good way to farm the dungeon though, lol.
DANGERS
In the first area, your party is susceptible to random AOE attacks being launched from the final boss high up on the mountain. All you can do is dodge them, but they're pretty infrequent and not very potent. It can also be easy to overpull in the dungeon, especially since most of the trash packs have three or more monsters together.
Runstop Frontblock
The boss is called Gobmachine G-VI. It appears to be some sort of mini-tank constructed by the Illuminati that have taken over the area. This fight is sort of hazy for me because I didn't really notice an important gimmick that would have caused us to wipe aside form simple dodging. The boss's primary attack seems to be a crosshatch pattern of AOE lines that make a tic-tac-toe shape across the arena. The cast timer is fairly fast for this, so you need to move out of the way immediately. As the boss gets weaker, it appears to double up the amount of horizontal and vertical lines to cover more ground, so you may have to dodge twice in quick succession. Lastly, Illuminati Glider adds will spawn at various times, and one of them will attach a tether to someone. I'm not sure what this accomplishes, however, be we burned them down before anything noticeable happened.
Brayflox's Drossdump
The second boss is called Magitek Vangob G-III. This fight has the potential to become very dangerous, as you'll see in a moment. The boss itself is a magitek suit pieced together from goblin trash using the power of ceruleum. As you can imagine, the engineering isn't that great, so Ceruleum seems to spill out of it throughout the battle, creating vivid blue circles of liquid that start to cover larger and larger chunks of the arena. After several pools of ceruleum have spilled, the boss sets off a bomb of some kind that will explode and cause all of the ceruleum to ignite as well, doing a large chunk of damage to anyone still inside the blue zones when it goes off. Getting out of the blue areas all depends on your tank's ability to kite the boss (similar to Aiatar) and your own positioning around the walls to keep the ceruleum from covering too much ground.
From time to time, the boss will call out two Illuminati adds that must be DPS'd down in quick fashion. After a set amount of time, the boss will use a Halicarnassus-like aerial attack that does damage based on the health of the adds. They were always dead by the time the attack happened for my group, so the damage was pretty minimal (maybe 500 HP?) but I would imagine that it gets much worse if an add is still alive.
Swiftmake Checkgate
The final boss is named Gobmachine G-VI. This fight is probably one of the funniest fights in the game so far. The battle starts out with a red goblin tank. As you DPS it down to about 80% HP it will periodically use an AOE attack on a ranged party member, but that's easily dodged. At around 80% it changes to Phase Two!
In the second phase, the boss will start circling the room's outer perimeter and become untargetable. The party needs to immediately gather in the center of the room to avoid the circling tank. Two Illuminati adds will spawn, one of which is tethered to a party member. Obviously, just kill both adds fast to avoid whatever effect they may cause if they're left alive too long (not sure what it is). A few seconds later, it will launch a massive amount of bombs that cover the entire area. At first this looks hopless, but there's a trick to it. If you target a bomb and hit it, the bomb will be knocked far away from your current location. By standing in the middle, all the bombs will be knocked towards the walls of the arena, making the center safe to stand in. Obviously, all party members should use AOE abilities to clear out the very center and the single-target the bombs in the mid-range area so that everything is pushed up against the edge of the arena. This should give you just enough room to survive without taking any damage. Two blasts are survivable with 4400 HP, but just barely.
The cycle then repeats two more times. There seemed to be more bombs on the second and third cycles, and I also noticed a total of three Illuminati adds by the end, two of which had tethers on people.
Once the boss's HP gets very low (10% or so) it will go untargetable and turn towards someone at random, rev its engine for a moment, and then barrel toward them. I imagine this can be dodged, but I got hit because I didn't expect it. It did about 1800 damage or so. After that, the boss will spawn one final add... a MASSIVE BOMB. This is a DPS check. We killed it in time, but I imagine it probably wipes you if you don't. After the bomb is killed, the boss can be destroyed.
REWARDS
Boss 1: 20 Tomestones of Mythology
Boss 2: 30 Tomestones of Mythology
Boss 3: 45 Tomestones of Soldiery
TREASURES
A. The alcove on the north wall before the first boss
B. First Boss
C. Second Boss Left Chest
D. Second Boss Right Chest
E. On a landing before the Longstop section
F. Final Boss
Halatali Hard Mode Guide
(Courtesy of GabrielCeleste on reddit.com)
TRASH
It's mostly unremarkable. If you remember the original Halatli, just keep an eye out for roaming Peistes along the catwalk areas of the first two areas. In the second area (where Firemane was originally), there is a surprise attack with three bears that come out of the hallways where the Damantus used to spawn at. Make sure your tank is ready to pick them up after they show up. In the final area, you are faced with three different battles against humans that play our classes. The obvious rule is to take out the healer first if there is one, then the ranged, then the melee, and finally the tank. Pretty easy stuff.
DANGERS
The ceiling is rigged with numerous ball-and-chain devices that will slam down on the ground and inflict several hundred damage each time, so don't be a dolt and stand under them too long (if at all). Also, each area requires a teleport to reach similar to the original, so don't forget to pick up treasure chests before leaving the boss areas.
The Hall of the Crupellarii
The boss is a cyclops similar to Coincounter. Try not to stand in front of him unless you are a tank as he has his usual swipe attacks. He can also turn towards any ranged or healer and do that damned eye of the beholder attack, so make sure to mobilize if he starts turning.
The special mechanic of this fight is the Mammet. Periodically throughout the fight, a mechanical Mammet will start marching aimlessly around the room with a tether attaching it to a lever at the back of the room. Interacting with the lever will cause the Mammet to stop and start radiating a blue aura that will grant the "Manawall" buff to anyone standing inside it before it fades away about 10 seconds later. The trick is to wait until the cyclops starts charging his 100 Tonze Swing attack, which will cover the entire arena, and then activate the lever and get the buff before his charge bar fills. The Manawall effect will negate his swing attack, otherwise expect to take several thousand damage.
The Hall of the Bestiarii
The boss is Catoblepas, a gorgon-type bull that can turn people to stone with its Demonic Eye. The battle arena has four pedestals placed in a square around the edges. Once the battle begins, each pedestal will light up with a Tainted Eye activateable lever. As the boss takes damage, he will periodically activate Demonic Eye, which has a fairly long cast timer. During this time, all four players should go to different pedestals and activate the Tainted Eyes to gain a buff that prevents you from taking damage and debuffs from Demonic Eye (the buff is called Gloaming or something).
Catoblepas will also make his eye targetable from time to time. This is a DPS check. It starts out blue, then turns yellow, and then red. I'm actually not sure what happens if it passes red because we always destroyed it in time, but I imagine it has something to do with turning people to stone or killing them.
Lastly, this boss has some rough conal AOEs. It can turn toward a player and cover a good 1/3rd of the arena in a massive conal AOE that can be somewhat hard to dodge if you're directly in the center of it.
The Hall of the Secutores
The final boss is a series of battles. It starts with four combatants that will try to break apart your party. The Lancer seems to have no aggro table and will target someone randomly (he chose me as a Bard on our run), so just kite him around at first. There's a healer which obviously should die first. The Bard should probably die third, followed by the Gladiator. Keep in mind that these characters appear to have level 50 abilities appropriate to their job, so expect the Gladiator to be using Spirits Within and such. Overall, this section was pretty easy.
The second phase starts after the trash people are killed off. A red demon and a little Lalafell named Mumepo the Beholden show up. Mumepo does not appear to need tanking, but the red demon does. We took out Mumuepo first for the following reason:
Mumoepo will choose two members of your party (it doesn't appear to ever pick the tank) and chain them in place before starting a massive AOE with a slow cast bar. The remaining unchained person needs to save them by finding the "Thal's Scepter" interactive lever around the arena to unchain them before the cast bar fills up. Then the two chained players run out of the AOE before it goes off if everything goes well and no on takes damage. The damage is pretty severe if this fails (it was doing upwards of 1/2 to 3/4 of our WHM health bar). Once Mumoepo goes down, the rest of the fight is unremarkable. The red demon thing has a rear tail swipe, so keep that in mind if you're melee. Otherwise it was tank-and-spank from there on.
REWARDS
Boss 1: 20 Tomestones of Mythology
Boss 2: 30 Tomestones of Mythology
Boss 3: 45 Tomestones of Soldiery
TREASURES
A. First Area to the far left about halfway to the boss room
B. Boss 1 Reward
C. In one of the alcoves in the old Bomb-filled Room
D. Second Area in the left alcove of the Firemane room
E. Boss 2 Reward Left Coffer
F. Boss 2 Reward Right Coffer
G. Final Boss Reward
The Lost City of Amdapor Guide
(Courtesy of http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/)
Decaying Gourmand
When you have the link, run away to not let the Goobbue's stomach absorb you. If you are eaten, your party members need to damage the stomach til you're released or you would die.
Arioch
There are a bunch of moth adds in the fight, the adds will add debuffs to party members. The boss will attack the player with the most debuff. AoE the adds if possible.
Diabolos
There are 8 doors divided into pairs of 2 in the boss room. The strategy is to have each member of your team responsible for one symbol, the blue goobbue, red demon, the light green dragon-like, and the dark green moth. Each symbol will appear above 2 doors. Make a progression of who will open their doors first, this is important for later. When you open both doors you get sucked into a void and you become immune to attacks, When Diabolos casts Ruinous Omen, you need to use the doors or the party will wipe. At the beginning of the fight have one of your party members open his first door, and leave it open, when you get to about 60% of Diabolos health, he will go to the center of the arena and start to cast Ruinous Omen, once it gets about halfway through the cast bar have the party member open his matching door. If timed right you will get into the void as soon as he casts Ruinous Omen and you won't take any damage. If your damage is halfway decent you should only see Ruinous Omen twice, so two of your party members will have to do it. Remember, you need to look around and memorize the positions of the 2 matching doors you're responsible for.
Avoid the orbs when they appear, they apply heavy and deal more damage as the debuff gets stacked on the party.
Note: have your healer take the job of opening the doors instead of the tank and dps. Open the first door when you can and stand near the matching door if needed. If done right, the group wouldn't be taking enough damage for the healer to be doing much healing.
Note: When given the buff that makes you immune to attacks, aggro may change if you have a summoner or scholar with a pet out. Diabolos may switch to the let and they do not get the immunity buff, so summonses could use Titan at that point.
King Moggle Mog Extreme Mode Guide
Video: King Moggle Mog Extreme Cleared by Yuuchi Izumi (Gilgamesh)
