Couple of things we found in our run:
-Same mechanics as original Dynamis; pull statues to spawn a cluster of mobs, kill, rinse and repeat.
-NIN type mobs have nasty Mijin Gakure that will kill many people. Using SCH and RNG to skillchain them kept everyone out of danger.
-It appeared that the tombstones would spawn mobs with variable defense bonuses depending on the color of their eyes at the time of aggro.
-Upon entry, all drops from mobs will be the rusted cards used for getting a +2 item. I believe 100 rusted cards = 1 beastman medal and you need 3 beastman medals along with 2 footshards and some items for +2.
-The mini-boss is a giant statue that spawns across from the AH near the ramp to Northern Sandy. Killing him will drop personal loot to everyone. Seems like getting 1 medal was guaranteed and getting 2 was about a 50-50 shot. Average personal cards was ~15.
Mini-boss went down very quickly with SCH -> RNG SC and x2 BLM MBs.
-After killing him, 30 or more Orcs will spawn on your group. You need to get to a corner asap. They spawned about 15-30 seconds after his death. If you get linked by them all, it appears they have been programmed to all face the same direction. It's kind of amusing and looks a bit like a military rally. You can pick them off safely one by one from the back as they link by sight only.
-Mini boss kill gives 30 minute time extension.
-Side note: Trueflight or Leaden Salute with geo buffs easily killed statues with 1 hit keeping the statues from spawning any mobs. Could be used for a quick run or something.
-After defeating the mini-boss all of the card drops changed to the blackened type. These are for +3. So it would seem that if you needed to farm rusted cards you could delay killing the mini-boss until you got all you needed.
-Work your way to the MH and you will find an orcish overlord type mob named Halphas. Getting to him only is a bit tricky. It might be useful to get behind him and wipe, if need be, then you can fight him in the MH corridor.
-Halphas has a ton of defense to both magical and physical. Magic bursts only did about 3-5k on him. Trueflight seemed to do the most damage to him. At around 50-60% he starts using a 6 debuff aura which includes Avoidance (renders Battuta and Ochain insignificant). He will also begin doing a battle dance type AoE
with 25 yalm range that was dealing 2-3k to our party despite having Idris Bolstered Wilt and Fade up. Scherzo seemed to make a difference, but it seemed inconsistent. There was noticeable change in his speed and vigor at 50%. We ultimately timed out at 30%.
-From reading above it appears Halphas is even more difficult around 20%. With a Regain effect.
-Halphas had an afterglow to his body while we were fighting him. We skipped many tombstones using instant kills and wall hugging, I am curious if he is weakened by number of monsters killed, or if the number of tombstones aggroed with a certain eye color has any affect.
Questions I still have:
-For those that saw Aurix, did you beat Halphas?
-For those that beat Halphas, what damage was his AoE doing to you in DT sets?