Koggelthingy Get!
Update day tomorrow! In light of the MMM changes, I’m finally posting my MMM guide to obtaining the Koggelmander, one of the best Blue Mage swords in the game and one of the few that doesn't require an endgame linkshell or an insane amount of money. Bask upon this guide's soon-to-be-obsolescence. BASK!
First off, I’m not going to go through all of doing Moblin Maze Mongers here, because that’s a lot of drudgery. Wiki it if you’re an absolute beginner, though you’ll probably learn more by going on a run or two than you will from THAT mess of rambling pages. In any event, I’m going to cut straight to the chase of aiming specifically for the Koggel.
The cost of the Koggelmander maze:
* Maze Tabula M03: 100 marbles
* Maze Voucher 07 (Liquidation Team): 100 marbles
* Maze Rune 005 (Lizard): 200 marbles
* Maze Rune 013 (Great Warrior): 300 marbles
* Maze Rune 094 (Lost and Found): 500 marbles
I also recommend:
*Maze Rune 017 (Supreme Might): hoardbox
And one of either of the following two runes:
* Maze Rune 041 (Divine Magic): hoardbox
* Maze Rune 046 (Darkness Magic): hoardbox
So, the absolute minimum number of marbles is 1200 for the costed runes and other parts. Since many believe that Lost and Found increases drop rates and you do need a couple freebie runes from the boxes, get that one first.
It doesn’t matter how you put together these runes, as long as you put Maze Rune 013 on the little earth symbol. It will resonate (make a little vibrate motion) when you do this so if you see it doing its funky dance you’re all good. The rest of the runes can be placed in any order, as well as any other runes you want to add in. Shown above is my setup, which I admit is identical to the wikipedia's image and even includes the (almost certainly) useless rune 75. I admit to being superstitious.
At only 15 marbles a pop, assembling 1200 marbles would take an amazingly long time (80 runs to be exact.) The best way to deal with the cost of the marbles is to have half your group focus on buying runes that build your BCNM while the other half buys runes that increase marble drops. Maze Runes 100, 101, 102, 103, and 104, along with 017 and 018 above, all increase marble drops. The 100-series runes each cost 100 marbles and can all be bought. With all of these runes set you can get a total of 46 marbles per maze, which really cuts down on the times needed in a hurry and can get the other half that much closer to their mazes. Don’t be a dick; help out your friends that are spending their marbles on the 100-series by using your completed BC maze to get them their stuff too.
The Fight:
Once you’ve assembled your maze, there’s little left to do other than get some friends and have at it. Your single enemy in this fight is a bugard named Tanihwa. It is a relatively straightforward manaburn fight. If you’ve properly set up the maze with might and supreme might he’ll be pretty high level but still susceptible to magic damage. He’s fairly resistant to debuffs, but nearly everything, including sleep, would stick with elemental seal.
Tanihwa’s moves:
Heavy Bellow - conal stun that ignores (but does not strip) shadows. A good reason not to stand in front if it.
Bone Crunch, Tail Roll, Tusk - all damage moves that should be shadow’d. The damage can be pretty scary if they aren’t; I saw a 1k Tusk on our PLD.
Banishga III - if using the divine magic rune. Hits for 350ish aoe. Fairly long cast time so try to stun it.
Repose - if using the divine magic rune. Tended to sleep a DD that wasn’t tanking. Most everyone else would shadow this.
Dark Knight Absorb spells - if using the darkness magic rune. Basically do nothing.
Stun - if using the darkness magic rune. Tended to cast on a DD that wasn’t tanking. Lol @ them
The purpose of the divine or dark magic rune is to essentially stun Tanihwa’s attacks by having him cast relatively useless spells. Technically any type of magic does this, but things like elemental and enfeebling and healing magic scare the crap out of me, so I tried these two weaker runes and was pretty satisfied with the nonthreatening nature of the spells.
Effective jobs:
PLD/NIN - most reliable tank I’ve found. Tanihwa hits HARD, around 350 a hit to even a well-geared PLD. /NIN shadows are very valuable, though this combination does cause a bit (okay, a lot) of hate problems during the fight, especially at the beginning.
BLM/NIN - your main source of damage. Because PLD/NIN loses hate a bit easily /NIN shadows are a BLM’s best protection. Nuke ice and don’t overdo it early. The staple effective spell is Blizzard III, but when it’s getting low on HP go ahead and Manafont and go crazy with the Bliz IV’s and Freeze II’s.
SCH/WHM - kind of a BLM-1 since they didn’t seem to hit as reliable hard as a BLM. Or maybe Wiseman is just a lil gimpy. They can AoE hailstorm and backup heal though so that’s pretty nice.
RDM/WHM - an unusually effective job for this fight. Refresh is always welcome, debuffs always nice, and they can toss out Bliz III’s for actually pretty good damage since Tanihwa is so weak to magic damage. Similar to SCH except they can refresh and haste but do a bit less damage.
WHM/SCH - I had a number of WHM friends willing to help out so I got used to never entering the fight without a WHM. On the best of runs they did very little. On the worst, they prevented a wipe.
Most DDs - Tanihwa’s defense is so high that their damage is going to suck pretty much regardless of what they try. Best way to work one into a strategy is to have them solo skillchain, preferably darkness. A MB’d Bliz IV would easily break 1500 damage. DDs that can’t solo skillchain aren’t going to do much in this fight.
My most effective parties ended up looking something like PLD WHM BLM BLM BLM RDM, subbling in the SCH or a DD in for one of the BLMs whenever they were present. Manaburn go! We’d usually nuke it down in about 10-15 minutes with little problem.
The smallest party I ever tried was PLD RDM BLM BLM WHM. This fight took a bit longer and we had to toss a few 2hours like Manafont but was still pretty easily handled. In theory, a PLD BLM BLM RDM party could win, but that would be uncomfortably hard, I think.
People I brought to this fight kept talking about trying SCH BLM BLM BLM BLM BLM. The basic gist of this would be a sleep nuke strategy with Freeze II, using elemental seal each time to land sleeps. It would almost certainly be able to kill Tanihwa with six volleys, but I don’t know enough BLMs to try it out.
I got my Koggelthingy on the seventh fight. A big thank you, in rough order of how much they contributed to the MMMing, to: Wiseman, Izzybella, Valiant, Santiago, Lehant, Jags, Kisana, and a few others that went on one or two runs like Cribe and Dank. My friends rule. <3
So that's about it. In roughly two months of off-and-on farming I assembled the runes needed to fight the boss and got my drop 1/7. If I can do it starting off with no knowledge of the event, anyone can.
I’m not entirely sure what will happen to the MMM group now. Technically I’m okay with stopping here, but it’s pretty obviously BS not to help the rest of the people in the group get what they want. Though the names changed on nearly every boss run, I had essentially no trouble getting help with this BC fight for the seven tries it took to get my sword, but I do wonder if help was so readily available because 1) it was a pretty fast event 2) it’s actually a fun fight or 3) people were just helping me out because that’s what friends do. Now that I have what I want, will people be still willing to come help the others get their stuff, or is enough enough with a silly event that doesn’t drop gear that interests most of my group? My friends have impressed me time and time again with their altruism, but now that it’s not about me anymore, I don’t know how dedicated anybody really is to the whole MMM thing. Well, I will put forth an honest effort to keep this going, so we’ll have to see.
UPDATE DAY TOMORROW! WHM CHANGES AND STUFF YEAH!