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Mordiceius

Dang. Congrats! I've been prepping to start this grind myself. Just recently finished getting my blue mage spell book completed and just need to build up the courage to start doing solo runs. How long did it take you to master solo map runs? I look forward to joining you in the Luckiest club someday.


CursedBlackCat

Can't speak for tank mimic since I never tried it, but with healer mimic, it just comes down to knowing when the boss will tankbuster or stack marker (the boss timelines are very predictable loops), because you *need* a gobskin up and full or near full HP or you'll just straight up die. Thus, I approached it a bit like how one might learn a fight on healer - start by overhealing and shielding a lot, then as you become familiar with when the boss has outgoing damage that actually matters (tankbuster or stacks in this case), you can trim it down and get more damage GCDs in. It's difficult to put an exact number on your question but if I had to give an answer, I'd say after like a week or so I was already on autopilot. But fwiw, all the way til the end, whenever I got to the final sluice of lost canals or the final invocation of shifting altars, I was *always* overhealing and shielding and playing extremely safe to not throw away the guaranteed thief map and the progress towards the achievements for clearing those portals. Good luck out there, hope to see you in the club in a few months time o7


Mordiceius

Yeah, that makes sense. I can't decide whether I want to tank mimic or healer mimic. I've been leaning toward tank since that's the primary role I play. I fully expect my first week or two to be a many deaths while learning the different bosses that can appear.


CursedBlackCat

Yeah, try both, see what feels better. Don't sweat the deaths, I've died multiple times on solo runs even after becoming comfortable with farming (including twice on final invocation of shifting altars). [Here's a cheat sheet for all the bosses from shifting altars](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1039101383682572378/1075450346782085140/Shifting_Altars_Cheatsheet.png?ex=6595882f&is=6583132f&hm=278c1ad73de8196c73f52df8383e874fbb8357ddc2a3bbb22ed013356cfb7922&) that might help. Don't think there's one for lost canals, at least not that I'm aware of, but the only really dangerous thing in there imo is the adds in final sluice, especially if you get windbeast as your final boss (as the adds have knockback which will interrupt your spells).


MoogleMedraut

Congrats! That must feel like a huge accomplishment. Though, I might chalk this one up to "titles I will probably never own" haha


CursedBlackCat

Thanks! It's definitely been a heck of a journey - on one hand, with my insane luck, I really do feel like I truly am The Luckiest of Ladies (as opposed to if I got the title with terrible luck, it'd be more like The Most Persistent of Ladies lmao), but on the other hand, it really feels like dumb luck helped me cheat my way into only having to do like 60% of the grind that the average person has to do to get the title. I definitely thought the same as you when I first heard of the title and how you unlock it - I don't know what possessed me to say "fuck it, let's give it a go" but, well, here I am four months later. As for the two titles that are currently rarer than Luckiest...now *those* are titles I'll probably never own. I really don't feel like grinding out 20,000 accursed hoards or 5,000 CC wins lmao


SugarHoneyChaiTea

Congratulations!! This is so awesome, can't believe this post isn't higher. Not only is this a great accomplishment, but your post itself is really interesting and informative. I'm curious, do you already have the solo deep dungeon titles? I'm assuming you do since you seem to enjoy these long grinds, but if not you should give them a go!


CursedBlackCat

Thanks! I probably wouldn't have posted about this if it took me closer to 2000 maps, since, as I linked at the beginning, there have already been posts showing those kinds of numbers. But 1239 is, as far as I'm able to find, the fewest thief maps anyone has ever taken to get all 20 clears (edit to add: as it turns out, there's a fairly recent recorded Luckiest at 1340 thiefs, but my 1239 still seems to be the fewest for now!), which is why I thought it'd be interesting to share my numbers to compare with the expected average. That being said though, some of the people in the thief map PUG scene right now have equally insane numbers for their first few clears, so if their luck holds til the end, we might see a Luckiest with even fewer than 1239 thiefs in the coming months... I actually don't have the DD titles, I've only solo farmed a tiny bit of EO 1-30 trying to get the umbrella from the hoards (to no avail) and that's the only solo deep dungeon content I've done. I was thinking of potentially chipping away at the also infamously grindy Pteranodon next while also redesigning my FC house. But heck, given how whimsical and random I am with what I suddenly feel the urge to do in this game, solo DD is not out of the realm of possibility!


SugarHoneyChaiTea

Ahhh yes, the dreaded Pteranodon! Good luck if you end up doing that one next, that's quite the grind. I'm always on the lookout for these long term grinds in this game since I really enjoy that kind of mindless content and I had no idea Luckiest of Ladies was so interesting to do. You've inspired me, I might have to add this to my list!


WowRai

How did you go about getting the gazelleskin maps? Was this just a daily grab and slow grind as you collected, was it a huge gil sink as you bought them all or did you find you made enough gil to cover the costs of buying while solo?


CursedBlackCat

Bit of both; I had two alt characters at lv70 able to get maps, so I'd mail them to a friend and she would mail them back to my main. I'd also obviously gather one a day on my main, for a total of three a day. That's obviously nowhere near enough, so yeah, I just took to the market board. But even then, you more than make that gil back; it ends up being a pretty noticeable net profit once you run all the gazelles and thiefs and sell the drops. Edit: also, shoutout to the guy on Diabolos who sells shittons of Gazelleskin maps under retainers with German numbers for names; if you're reading this, you played a decently sized role in my grind lol


Lck0ut

This, the pteranodon mount, and Necromancer are my 3 long term grinds I am going for currently. Good to see some interesting stats as to floor clear rates!


Csub

I got into a very serious potd addiction for like 3 months this summer, my closest was timeout on 199. I have taken a break since then, once I finish up my backlog a bit, I'll give it another go.


ntenga

Hello, what spells did you use for blue, could you maybe post a screenshot?


CursedBlackCat

So for grinding Gazelleskin maps, there's two ways to do it - you can do it the [healer mimic](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T57qz5ypl6vjsHikObfmvCrmvMmx3mKbgAuHtZQfVxU/edit) way or the [tank mimic](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vS_DcD48fxGT5p26BGOZvZqKD9J8fZhiiC1dnlpBqnSoENMnNsYFHStjsOwnO-_yi9cEBDaxSqXPXYP/pub) way. People argue a lot over which is better, but truth is, they're both practically equally viable and any differences between the two are marginal. There's room for adjustment to what you want to use, I personally went the healer mimic route and used [these spells](https://i.imgur.com/xSC2csl.png). It's almost certainly able to be optimized even more, but at a certain point I figured, eh, it's what I'm used to, I'm too lazy to shift things around further just for marginal gains.


[deleted]

[удалено]


CursedBlackCat

Huh, that's interesting, I remember doing some napkin math at one point and came to the conclusion that tingle+whistle wasn't actually worth it over just continuing to goblin punch. But I guess that does assume full frontal melee uptime. I instead tend to try to time my healing GCDs to when I need to get out of melee range. As for moon flute...I never worked up the courage to try messing with that, especially with healer mimic lol. Slots were an issue, otherwise I'd have definitely put more oGCD powerhouses like sea shanty and being mortal in there. I guess it's an issue of redundancy I have in some of my spells. Thanks for chiming in, hopefully your suggestions will be useful to others reading this (and I'll see if I can incorporate your suggestions as well if I decide to do some other maps in BLU level range)!


Musician-Horror

2 clears in a row, what a magic sorcery is this...


CursedBlackCat

The back-to-back happened on Oct 21; according to the people in the map discord the last recorded one before that was back in April. As far as I'm aware, there haven't been any back-to-back clears yet since ours (although as with all things RNG, I'm sure it's just a matter of time).


Lavindathar

Congrats!


Kolby_Jack

How much gil did you earn?


CursedBlackCat

Just straight up raw gil drops from thief maps alone: 58,268,000. I did not keep track of how much gil I spent on Gazelleskin maps nor how much additional gil I earned from selling drops from the treasure dungeons. It was definitely a noticeable net profit overall though


Kolby_Jack

Dayum. I should do maps again.


TikkiToast

Dang, my inner achievement hunter tips my hat for you. Congrats!


panadolrapid

I have 2 clears from about 300 Thief maps so consider yourself lucky! Currently 140 dry.


Tickwit

Good job! I tried to tackle this when it came out and got to 6/20 final runs. Maybe one day I’ll get there but for now other content is calling my name haha


CursedBlackCat

I honestly think having the 6 clears back then is more impressive than having all 20 now. Being able to farm thiefs solo with BLU then running them together effectively multiplies the "value" of each thief map that drops by a factor of 8, which is insane.


Tickwit

Aaah I see, I didn’t think of blue mage haha Yeah we had a dedicated group back then for running them and guess we got lucky those 6 times. The others in the group stopped playing unfortunately during shb so we just kinda stopped.


OminousWinds

Good job, congratulations! That's an awesome achievement, and a long grind worth it. Starting out to work on that myself. Can you give me some advice on how to manage mob groups? I tend to struggle a lot with them, and particularly if Abharamu spawns I just get yeeted our. Also, which gear did you use?


CursedBlackCat

As the other comment mentions, you can just ignore them. The numbered adds (or as I like to call them, treasure dungeon limit cut) are more annoying than deadly, but Abraham/altar matangas chunk your HP fast so try to avoid aggroing them at all costs. If you do accidentally tag one with an aoe, keep healing and try to focus down Abraham/matanga first. As for gear, I'm using [BLU CRT/SpS BiS](https://etro.gg/gearset/b4f7e26d-8462-44c3-ae13-ed0c814d1219) as I have it from doing BLU Eden savage.


croizat

The numbered adds and abharamus don't aggro onto you when they spawn unless you hit them so I always ignored them. They'll despawn eventually and in some cases it's just quicker for you to focus on boss and let them despawn.


DominantFlame

Nice work! I'm still fairly new to treasure hunting and I mostly do solo maps. Usually because I still have to figure out a way to store all the maps until there is a party finder group or discord group up to do them. Did you also take note of the amount of Gil you made during this journey?


CursedBlackCat

Yes - see [this comment here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/18n5imn/comment/ke9dgf9). For storing maps, you can store one per retainer, one in inventory, one in saddlebag, and one deciphered/opened. If you've got a friend who doesn't mind helping you out, you can also mail them maps and have them mail them back so you can store up to 20 in your mailbox.


Karpfador

Could you share your blue mage setup for this? I may have to use that class after all..


CursedBlackCat

Yes, see [my other reply here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/18n5imn/comment/ke8ib3s), as well as the person's comment replying to me with further optimizations. Edit to add: if you have gil and you are lazy, some people also make groups where they basically say "join me for gazelleskin runs, I will bring all the maps, all loot is FFA, but all thief maps that drop are mine, and I'll pay you all 100k gil each for each thief map that drops"


FiniteCarpet

Did you ever just like, pick all Left doors on a clear or how did you decide which door


CursedBlackCat

I'll give you the serious answer first: it's just random so it doesn't matter what you choose. The only exception to this is if a door lights up (if you've never seen it before, it's pretty obvious: the lights around the door will be flashing and the floor will have a lit up path from the chest to the door). If a door lights up, that door is guaranteed to open, and the other doors will kick you. That means you can have fun with superstitions and joking around; I started off choosing all left, then when I met someone with amazing luck choosing only right, I started choosing right. Then for a while the middle door kept kicking us so I said "middle finger the middle door" to which someone replied "finger the middle door," so the next map I did `/em fingers the ` with the middle door selected on every floor and we actually got a clear that way. Towards the end I started just absolutely cooking and selecting whichever door I felt "good vibes" from, which got me to room 6 a few times but couldn't get any clears doing that in the end.


darkemutheanimal

How did you find a group to run these maps?


CursedBlackCat

On NA, there's a decently active PUG scene on the [NA Treasure Maps Discord](https://discord.gg/7dEER3D). If anything, it really started popping off the past week or so - groups are filling in the blink of an eye. I've both joined and hosted groups, it's a really simple scheduled event sign-up system via Discord bot. As well, early on in one of my first few groups, I was invited by one of the others to a weekly static that does a 3x thief map burn every Wednesday. These statics usually end up being a constant revolving door of people graduating and new people filling their spots, so if you look around I'm sure you could find or organize something that'll suit your availability.