Soloing Apollyon NW (Limbus)Follow

I'm sure many scholars (especially those that are blms as well) have heard, and know of Apollyon NW being soloed by blms. With that in mind, and also knowing that the dark arts side of scholar is very much like blm, many of you have probably assumed scholar could do it as well. I have been testing scholar in solo limbus, setting out to prove that, and tonight I did just that. This was my first successful, fully cleared Apollyon run, as a scholar. I was very excited and it made me feel that same giddy excitement that I felt when I did it on blm for the first time.

I ended up netting 24 coins, and the final drops were sam, rng, and I believe thf (yuck). One thing that I absolutely love when doing this on Sch as opposed to blm, is the consistency, and safety nets that scholar provides. It is wonderful to have a 50% recast for bind when soloing the NQ behemoths on the 5th floor. One thing that makes the run a tad more difficult though, is that doing this as Sch chews up more of your (very needed) time. The HMP on sch vs blm, is noticeably slower, thus longer resting time; your usage of abilities like parismony, ebullience, and alacrity, add up as well, where as with blm, its just target and nuke. All these factors pull your time down on you more so in an already time pressed event.


I actually prefer farming (not clearing) Apollyon NW on scholar more so than I do blm now. The abilities that come into play with scholar, make soloing more consistent, and more reliable. In fewer words, I feel much safer as scholar than I do blm, and I feel like I get more out of each run as a scholar vice black mage.

I'll return to this post at a later time for more in depth details regarding the run, as well as screenshots/links. But for all you ambitious Scholars out there, that love the solo challenge, it is possible to do, and extremely fun doing it ^.^ Go go go!! Good luck fellow Scholars and have fun!!

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Adding my later post to OP so ppl don't have to skip around to get to the details:
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I'll just jump right into the strat I suppose:

Floor 1: Upon entering I had RR, Pro IV, Shell IV, fully stored Sublimation, etc. My first move was to sleep 1 > Gravity > parsimony > alacrity > Ebullience > Thunder storm > Tabula Rasa. From there just spam tier IV nukes, stay safe of course making sure to sleep if mob casts dangerous spell, bind when able to buy yourself time and get more use out of your 2 hour.
Vortex popped on mob 1 in this particular run.

I always use 2 hour on the first mob of each floor. Might as well right? if you get the vortex on the first mob, your 2 hour was wasted if you didn't use it.

Floor 2: My first fight started off the same way in terms of the 2 hour. The only difference is that you have to bind or sleep after each nuke to keep distance. Sometimes bind sticks through nukes though which is always great. After the first buffalo I still had about 400ish mp left over, so sat to rest to full. 2nd buffalo I pulled from the east side to prevent linking to the buffalo parrallel to it. Parsimony spam thunder IV and Blizz IV. It was Blizz day and I used hailstorm. After the death of that buffalo, I popped the 2 hour chest, and pulled the 3rd buffalo. Same strat as 2nd buffalo. I use bind every chance I can, over sleep. Bind will sometimes stick through out a nuke so you can nuke again, sleep will never do that. Also, when you nuke after a bind, there is a moment of hesitation before the mob runs at you, with sleep, they run as the nuke lands. Vortex on 3rd buffalo from this mob. At this point, I sandstorm > Desert boots, get all 3 timer chests, and run to vortex.

Floor 3: As most know, floors 1 and 2 are the pains in the ass as the mobs have higher HP and a bit more to deal with. You "should" be able to take down 2 bugards per mp pool, making the 3rd floor relatively fast. First mob, 2 hour strat > began 2nd bugard with 1 nuke of still being in 2 hour mode. After that I slept, then used up my sublimation stock, parsimony spammed the rest of that kill, got vortex on 2nd kill. I then put up full buffs, sandstorm , popped restore chest in full mp gear, then picked up all 3 chests and headed to zone.

Floor 4: Dragon strategy is pretty much same as bugard really. Started in 2 hour mode, killed 1st dragon, and spawned vortex. I snagged the other dragon since I was still in 2 hour mode, and snuck a ebullienced nuke in before 2 hour mode came off. Finished off with parsimony spammage, then put up fresh buffs, and sandstorm to run around for timers > zone. Since I got vortex on first kill, I chose not to waste my sublimation stock, so that was still full as I went up to Floor 5.

Floor 5: Upon reaching this floor, the first thing I did was recast RR II so that I wouldn't get screwed with a possible wipe and not realizing RR wore off in mid fight. Pulled 1st behemoth with grav, tossed a quick cryohelix, alacrity > bind, then put up ebull, pars, alacrity, then began 2 hour mode. This 2 hour mode goes a tad different though; I nuke once, run away to 24', nuke again, alacrity bind, run out to max again, nuke, run away, nuke, alacrity bind, finish off.

On the 2nd and third behemoths, I don't use pars spam method because safety is needed more. Since they don't sleep very well at all, Bind is your only safety net coupled with grav of course. I pull with grav, toss on helix, alacrity > bind, nuke 1, run away to 24', nuke 2, alactrity > bind. From here, since I have a bit less room to maneuver at this point, I use alacrity > bind after every nuke. This is (hopefully obviously) to have your bind recast time halved, so you can ensure you keep bind available when needed. With blm you have to nuke, bind, and wait till half your timer is up before nuking again... well at least that's how i do it on blm.

After Behemoth 3 is down, it's time for the Mother Bish (I call her that cause of how much she @#%^s over your pulls from changing directions at the worst times lol). Of course rest to full. While in max mp gear, I put up new protect IV and shell IV, Sandstorm, then Stoneskin. I ran up the clockwise side to find her, and luckily she was running by the nuke spot. I quickly put up hail storm, alacrity > parsimony, and tossed a blizz IV for my pulling spell.

Here's where my strategy differs from time to time.... I'm still trying to time and test which method is better/faster. There is a spot near the half way point near the vortex, where you can cast spells on her in time before getting hit with meteor. This is where I cast aspir if needed, re up stoneskin or storms, or drop a helix or bio on her. The thing I'm trying to test is whether the use of helix and bio at that half way point actually wastes more time than it saves. I've yet to come to a conclusion, but im leaning on it wasting time. On this run, I tried to refrain from stopping there as often as possible. At each nuke spot, I always nuked with parsimony > ebullience > blizz IV. Every so often you get caught up on recast times for strategems so I would only use parsimony. Eventually you'll get your double timer back so you can use both though.

At 21%, I got a bit greedy with my nukes; She was closer than comfortable for a nuke, and I'd usually run away, but instead I tried to squeeze a nuke in, and got hit with meteor. It dropped me to ~ 400ish hp (stoneskin and shell was up, and I'm taru). At the half way point, I tossed up my stoneskin again, and cure IV'd myself, then used my sublimation stock again. Oh that's the other thing, make sure you're paying attention to your sublimation stock and using it often to keep your mp up at all times. You can do this fight without ever having to miss a nuke as long as you keep up with sublimation and use parsimony per nukes. I'd have to double check my screenshots, but I think it took me roughly 15-20 mins to kill her. I had ~ 5-10 mins remaining iirc.

Upon killing her, I ran to the chest, invited some LS members that were waiting on the outside in hopes of free AF +1 items, and popped the chest. I netted 24 coins, as mentioned above, and had rng, thf, and sam items drop (which noone needed that came for free loot).

I guess that's about it. Hope that helped with strategy details. ^.^

Edited, Sep 25th 2008 12:39am by xXxNaobixXx

Without, I've never personally owned gaiters. I do however have the desert boots which do the same thing as long as you have sandstorm on you which I don't heavily use in this. The only time I activated sandstorm for the movement speed, was to quickly collect timers and head up the vortex, and a couple times during KB fight when I wanted to gain some extra ground so i could put up Klimaform, or weather bonus, or some other time consuming things other than the standard parsimony and ebullience.


EDIT: Desert boots cost about 10k or so on my server to make.

Edited, Jul 10th 2008 9:16am by xXxNaobixXx

I laughed.

With the amount of time you spend to cast sandstorm I wonder if it really helps to use Desert Boots in situations like this.

nice post, i might try this soon for our LS ^^

To add to this, as long as your 3-4 parties are separate when entering you can form an ally once you're all inside- make sure each group is in the correct area before doing this, as you'll get locked into a previously entered area if your party hasn't entered but another has and you're allied.



If you're low manning this, blu x3 + RDM/BLM is extremely effective. You can use blms as well, but you'll want to use a slightly different strategy to BLM + SCH burn.

If you're using blus, make sure a taru enters so the fomors that pop chests are BLM. RDM chainspell sleepgas everything while blus zerg BLMs. 2 notes: overwrite initial sleepga with sleep 2 if you're the rdm, and if you think you might die make sure to die where you can RR (fomor have large HP aggro areas so be careful).

If you're manaburning (blm + sch) you might want a tank for the mimics, but otherwise it's fairly straight forward. 3-4 blms or sch, a rdm/blm and possibly a tank /nin are suggested. I suggest having a elvaan (thf fomor) or hume (sam fomor) enter first. Sam may be slightly more dangerous as he'll have TP moves to throw at you due to 2hr. Take your time pulling the first one, then you can chainspell sleepga > sleepga 2 everything and burn the second one out of existance.

Apollyon SE probably can't be done with less than 6 in a balanced melee pt.

Do you think you could post (or point me toward) a guide about how to farm (efficiently!) Apollyon NW for coins for a SCH solo or duo (or SCH+BLM). Just got sea -- but not interested in getting a LS just for coin farming -- and my hubby has a BLM, so we wanna try it. He's done small man a few times, but they didn't net more than 2-3 coins each, so apparently nobody knew what they were doing. Thanks!

A couple other things to keep in mind (since Naobi covered the basics pretty thoroughly):

Make sure you're somewhat familiar with solo/duo fights already; you can get unlucky and sleepga'd etc. Also the buffalo run fast and have high HP; take it slow and easy. For the Behemoths, bind and gravity are your only safety net, so kill quickly and make sure you don't give them enough TP to WS.

Careful with pulling. There are some pulls that like to link. Use the map on wiki to help guide you and help you find chests.

For bosses:
-Pluto can be ES slept, and has a TP move that gives virus effect. Otherwise he's only weak to bind/gravity. Fairly easy to kill if your MP holds out. Careful on blood aggro when fighting.
-Ram boss uses mighty strikes repeatedly, so keep buffs up and stay ahead of him. Otherwise he's not particularly challenging. He can use great bleat if you give him TP.
-Giant turtle unlike real ones is stupidly strong to magic. Don't even bother.
-Fake faf- can technically be killed, but would be very tricky without 2hrs.
-Kaiser behemoth chest drops a few coins and of course the chip. If you plan to duo this alot, you may be able to find a LS that will buy the chip for a reasonable price (if you don't plan on doing omega yourselves). Kaiser behemoth is an endurance fight. SCH works much better kiting than BLM will. The last 2 bosses (faf and kb) require some + elemental skill to nuke effectively.

Can anyone tell me how to move the add on the right side to the background so I can read the OP?

Can anyone mark that nuking spot for Kaiser Behomoth on a map.

Visual aids help so much!

Apollyon Map and Pointers

The X represents where KB will be running when you should begin your cast.

The 2 arrows represent where you should be standing. Spot one (nuke spot) is @ the bottom left most, and the aspir location (or alacrity + boots tier IV location) is the upper right most spot.



Caracter view of aspir location as you're running up to it.



Sorry that I was so incredibly lazy about getting these up for ppl ; ; /sigh



Edited, Feb 13th 2009 3:48am by xXxNaobixXx