September 2025 Version Update

I think the deathknell is the loss of exemplar.

high chance of dying (with massive xp loss) + no personal reward for doing it = do it why?

Seems like removing the xp loss and giving players on the enmity list when dies a a unit bonus (1k?) fixes both issues.

Wow. So there's a SMN NM in West Temenos-5 right now. He's pulled to the entrance and spamming Astral Flow and Earth Crusher. Tons of dead bodies, because the AOE range on AF is massive. This is a joke.

Also, they made it so that once you generate hate on the NM, you can NO LONGER call trusts (unlike Domain Invasion where you apparently can keep calling trusts as long as you want). They really want people teaming up for this nonsense for a chance at 0 Units? Here's the alliance content yall asked for!

Bot army, get to work.

Side note: Sudden Lunge lands on this guy, but seems to build resistance to stun effect. I was able to land like 15 stuns before it started wearing off immediately.

I have huge doubts smaller servers will beat these NMs weekly. And for that reason, I expect this to get patched.

Also, what the hell!? I died, ran very far away (like 50+) and standing on a hill with height difference, and Astral Flow hit me from over by the entrance? The hell is going on here

Smaller servers already beat Temenos NMs. Didn't see a Smn, but there was a Ninja spamming AoEs leaving dead bodies everywhere. Hyin-something or other.

They take decent enough damage and with enough people on it, dies relatively quickly. But need defense spells/songs/buffs/food to survive.

If I'm understanding the patch notes, the system seems to work like this.
The server kills and nm in either temenos or apollyon.
People go through temenos or apollyon and pop the chest. The very first time you do this, you get 1 guaranteed alabaster or murky matter depending on the zone, per character.
After that, you'll merely have a chance to get one dependent on how many nms your server has killed in each respective zone the previous week.
You need one alabaster matter to trade in for the respective earring or mantle each and one murky matter for the ring and mantle each.
You then need one more of the right respective matter for each to start the augment process on each one.
After that, you need temenos or apollyon units to get rp. But if I'm reading the notes correctly, for each stage of the rp process, you'll need to unlock it with the proper matter.
So, if each accessory were to hypothetically cap at 15 for the augments, you would need 1 matter to get the accessory, 1 to start augmenting, and 14 more matters to complete it, along with however many units the rp process takes.

There is also an implication it will take two weeks to even unlock augments. Sunday JP midnight needs to pass to get first matter from chest to get the gear.

Then need another matter to unlock augments and more to RP? And it's not guaranteed after the first time so a minimum of two weeks, more if you don't get a matter the second time.

They're named after Relic and Artifact gear.

Someone in my LS made a great point, and I think it's true: these were designed to kill bots in zones. Cannot afk zones for points with these roaming around. They basically are the new Goblin Bounty Hunters

IDK, there are 40+ floors and only (at most) 4 NMs per area, plus the NM might not actually spawn anywhere near you, might not have any/many AOE attacks, and they don't seem aggressive. If these are to combat bots, it's a terrible plan to combat bots.

I hope they do kill bots though. *** bots.

We just killed Vishap (DRG) in Apollyon. Shadows really helped and made him very straight forward. Yagyu FTW.

Are the stats for the new items posted anywhere? I didn't see them in the thread yet unless I missed them.

For the SMN NM, every trust I summoned died within 1-2 hits...Except Ygnas, who survived until the end. That guy is a champ, MVP healer trust right there

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/September_2025_Version_Update_Changes

There might need to be yet another channel for notifications when/where these NMs spawn.

Currently with Temenos especially having so many floors, you won't see any yells saying an NM has spawned while you're in Temenos as they only go to the cities. So you rely on LS members seeing it, or being there.

I made Kikoku after getting dark blade and am having so much fun with them. I will make Heishi but it’s just such a fun combo.

since you can RP the equipment after getting the augment, the augments should be capable of being dat mined, right?

Didn't someone else in this thread earlier said that they do not aggro and do not link?

Supposing they're right, then I'm not sure your statement can be considered true.
(sadly, if I may add)

Some idiot will leave their bot to target unclaimed.

All it takes is one singular person to attack the NM, and if it has an AOE like the SMN, everyone will get destroyed, bots included.

The SMN was a pain. Did AF about once a minute which nuked my trust. Sometimes Ygnas or Sylvie would survive but not every AF.

Sounds like some hot exploitable MPK action. I dig it.

Can you pull them around? if you can, expect that to get "adjusted" so they stand in one spot like DI. No fun allowed.

So anyone figure out how to unlock Archduke's sword or shield?

Don't exist yet. They'll add them in htmb for a special event in like a week.

Probably. "the Jueno in the spotlight" thing

We'll find out saturday.

There has to be something we're missing about the NM's if they are hitting that hard, right?

How many people have you guys been fighting them with? What if SE pulled some freaky nonsense where the more people you fight them with the more HP they have but the weaker they hit? Giving you incentive to WANT to fight them with at least a minimum amount of people instead of just 1 person with a bunch of alts/trusts running around killing everything?

I know, sounds sketchy, but this is SE. Has anyone tried fighting them with a full alliance... or possibly more? And see if it affects the damage being shelled out against single targets?

Can tank + rangers + support kill all of these? My guess is yes...

On small pop servers, you could conceivably kill them with a single part without really worrying about other people.

Probably, yes, but I think we don't necessarily know which augment path goes with which item.

Its just DI, campaign bosses, beseieged bosses etc. Though i figure theyll either nerf them or heavily reduce/remove ep loss on death

EP loss is going nowhere.

Most there will be is a nerf to their Aoe spam, attack power or both.

The annoying jobs are annoying regardless of how many people you have (WAR for Cleave, BLMs, Staff Users (SCH GEO WHM), MNKs, THFs, SMN (Astral Flow or Blood Pacts), BLUs etc. The tame ones are like DRG, SAM DRK, any of the harmless HQ volte mobs in dynamis. More people feeding more TP on SMN = Earth Crusher + Blood Pact spam, was fun taking 1800dmg through DT (apparently they ignore dt or somethig wild).

Volte NM's have unusually high stats, which combined with the fact they use player weaponskills and player abilities.... that also scale much harder than traditional monster abilities with higher stats, leads to them being able to destroy non-tank players in two hits and a skillchain. Staff and dagger weaponskills are frightening as hell. Exudiation and dancing edge deals stupid levels of damage when volte NMs do them because of the stat mods and/or quantity of hits. I can take my warrior to wave 3 and wear my most defensive set. Full sakpata's, defensive accessories, weaponskill in total defense with nyame and etc etc etc. But if I'm not also getting barrier and at least a minnie or two in addition to that, the moment I rip hate from the tank I'm going from full health to deep red faster than the healers can keep up.

Odyssey gear and maximum defensive sets alone cannot protect non-tank jobs from a focused Volte NM assaul for very long. I'll be laying on the floor waiting for a friendly arise very quickly if I try to withstand that for any sustained duration. So I'm guessing these are just higher level volte NMs with even more stats than their dynamis counterparts. That means they're going to pack a whallop no matter what you do.