Are Empyrean Weapons Easier During NM Camping?

The last time i played was when they were first released, and I remember trying to camp an NM but having to wait hours for a single pop, and having to do that 4 more times. Yeeeaaars later, Im looking at wanting to build an Empyrean Weapon as my first "big item", but I'm wondering, have they made the earlier phase camping the NMs easier? Were NM pop times changed at all or is it all still the same>

Still the same aside from some spawn points being shuffled

You still need to camp, and yes you can be stuck waiting. Bgwiki has the relevant info for the NMs, including placeholders (ids) and min/max respawn times. Its part of the fun of Empy grinding. The 50/50/75 is more of a pain / timegate anyway if you ask me.

what's the 50/50/75 part :o?

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:Empyrean_Weapons

Ahhh. Those. Is it easier with trusts or do you still require a party?

You can do everything solo with trusts but your speed will benefit immensely from having another person or multi-box to help kill more things and hold pop items/ki.

Ahhh... I don't want to multibox : o. I've tried shouting for social LS or communities on Asura but I never get a reply, just continued bot spam.

People put pearls for their shells on LS concierge, check those.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Linkshell_Concierge

Wait what lol? We can do that now o-o;?

You don't need to multibox. I'm all vanilla, single player and I'm the (self-annointed) grand champion of rema acquisition.

Big difference (from 2009) is lack of competition from other players. You'll usually be able to hunt the mobs you need totally by yourself. If you arrive and see someone there don't counter camp them...that's so 2010. Just give them a wave and move on, come back later. I've only countercamped once but only cause a guy camped on me and I only needed 4 more of the 75.

As for not needing multibox for drops? It's simple: Recycle Bin
This has totally changed the game for farming empyrean. If you get a drop you need you can /toss it and it's not gone. It's just stored in the recycle bin and will stay there (unless you zone). Extremely useful for farming multiple rare/ex at once.

Trusts (all healers til you get comfortable) and Atma (stronghold or RR, sea daughter for tp gain, and apoc for just in case) and you are indestructible at 99/119. Skip the attribute (STR DEX ETC) buffs, you'll melt your NMs too fast before you can proc them red.

I always go NIN/WAR and have the toys to proc all red. Some people will go war for faster kills / cleaves but aeolian edge cleaves fine and 25% movement speed is way more important than 20% faster kills on enemies that melt anyway.

Happy hunting.

Its way easier.

I think they adjusted the minimal respawn time for 1h some time ago (it still can take a long time if the PH respawn is 15 mins).

Also, there is a shitload of options to warp, so you can always casualy move to kill the PH, do whatever and come back for a new try.

I used to kill one NM last thing in the day, first thing in the next day so i usually get 1 trial done casually in a day and half, without trying too hard

Minimum respawn time can still mean that Ankubut will take 12 hours to spawn.

Does this still work?

This does work, but it's also worth noting that you can't do this for KIs, whereas when cleaving with multiple characters you can have the extra character(s) pick up separate popsets.

Ultimately this isn't a big deal for too many NMs, but some (Chloris, Glavoid, et al) can be really annoying solo, but much easier with 2-5 characters.

Any empy NM can be done solo, it's really just a matter of time/efficiency.

Or, y'know, send them a (Team Up?) and party invite. You aren't competing for drops, and the whole party gets credit as long as they're in EXP range and have the weapon equipped.

I'm sure there are a-holes out there but the handful of people I've run across in ~10 weapons has been super chill and cooperative.

The nm timers got nerfed i dont remamber by how much but its much easier to do em now they respawn super fat compared

It works, but I'm not sure I'd call it game changer.

If you crank up amber light trying to get key items, you essentially reduce the chance of obtaining items from small amber chests so it may work against you. Many paths have timed spawn NMs, so you'd lose much of the time saved waiting on those to spawn anyway.

Ya I think the thread got a little mixed up up above; some were discussing magian trial weps while others were talking about specifically empyrean wep item collection. My comment was specifically related to the latter.

Maybe it's just me but I find farming the pop items in between waiting for timed NMs to spawn much faster than trying to get the one KI you need from a bunch of gold chests.

If you are already doing something like trials then sure, getting random KIs might help you in the future.

If you're solo cleaving for that last KI, even in Tahrongi, you're an absolute fool. Its guaranteed you're wasting so many other KI's in the hunt for that last KI.

I don't think it does work any more. I've been dual-box farming Ulhuadshi fangs for the past couple days, including right now, and one of the NMs needs a Blanched Silver rare drop.

I have Blanched silvers in both characters' inventories and in the treasure pool. If I drop one with one of my characters, they cannot lot on the item in the pool - game says I can only have one (the one in my recycle bin).

Yeah, Im not sure when this used to work, but I do remember how the sh*t was bothersome during bonanza.

I was forced to toss the bonanza and zone out because the mog wouldnt sell me more marbles because they were in my bin

The last bonanza I partake wsa last year, so if it worked at some point, its long done.

But if you meant that an item in recycle bin it wont be considered for rare/ex drops (like, if I have a pop in bin, then the fodder will drop another rare/ex in pool), that I didnt test

But shouldnt be that much better than cleaving fodders to fill up the pool with pops and rushing to pop the NM before the extra pops go to the floor.

Unless the pop is expensive/rare, but even then, I wouldnt rely on pool timer to keep an extra if thats the case

It was working fine as of about a month ago when I was farming Alfard.

Was tossing minaruja skulls constantly as it was the southernmost NM, most out of the way of Ninga/Alfard spawn points. Saved me going back and forth down there considerably.

And there is (was) no "timer" for the recycle bin. Everything stays in there unless you zone or overfill it.

Worked fine for me unless they changed something.

99% sure the rules are different for party and solo in regards to abusing Recycle Bin in this way.

That makes sense.

I'll be back to farming today, will do a purely solo test to confirm. Definitely did not work with 2 characters in a party.

I got curious so I tested.

With a Transparent Insect Wing in recycle bin for both characters, they still drop off the enemies

If you're solo they will drop into your inventory, where you can toss them into the recycle bin and collect as many as you want (I held several in my recycle bin).

If you're in a party they drop to the treasure pool but any character who already has one in their recycle bin cannot cast lots on the ones in the treasure pool. After 5 minutes when they auto-lot out of the pool, they will drop to the ground.

Seems like if you want to save up items for abyssea NMs, it only works while you're solo.