For glory! A battle on an airship! How cool is that?! All, the plot thickens! Where is this fleet of airships going? Why are you fighting mobs on them? Why do none of the lousy NPC characters ever help you fight?! These questions, and more, await you beyond the sea of clouds in the absolutely most complicated, crazy, fun mission in Final Fantasy 11.

On-The-Clock Pressure

I’m not going to say “easy,” but this mission would be a lot less daunting if it was not timed. You have 45 minutes to complete all three battles, and that includes cutscenes before and between the fights. Were there no harsh time limit, if you wiped on the later two battles, you could just piece it together and attack again. You sort of have time if you’re fast enough, but making a strategy out of it and doing it until you win just isn’t going to work. The record, last I've heard, is 32 minutes. I’ve heard people that have beaten it in 38 and 42, and up all the way to 44:36 out of 45 minutes. Zounds. There isn’t built-in time to spend too much time waiting for people to be unweakend.

Fill your inventory with meds before going on. You won’t need many, or perhaps any, of them for the first battle. But the other two you will. With no time to rest, you have to heal HP and MP on the move. That means potions, ethers, yags, elixirs, icarus wings. Bring it all. And because MP is such an issue, I highly recommend everyone bring ways of casting Reraise on themselves. A Reraise Gorget and a Hi-Reraiser should do it.

The special item this time is a CCB Polymer, a RARE item that makes the last two bosses sluggish. Use them when you start to lose control of the battle, or when you want to launch a powerful strike.

Recommendations:

1. Shadowbind can buy up to 30 seconds
2. carby can tank one for a while
3. your normal tank, obviously, can tank one, definately more than one if they have some backup support
   
4. your powerful DD types can shread one early if they work together. 

• The Mammets aren't nearly as hard as they were on 2-5 but you won't want to use significant resources on them.
• Silence all of the Mammets at the beginning, even the melee types, to prevent them from switching and casting a powerful -aga spell. A WHM can handle resilencing Mammets.
• Since most of the Mammet moves are AoE, the kiters and the rest of the party should spread out as much as possible to avoid damage. This isn't easy on the small airship.
• Watch the log. If you're healing a Mammet with your hits, unlock combat and turn around for a time.
• All players need to be self-sufficient at the beginning. If a player is having trouble handling a Mammet until he or she can be relieved, consider altering your strategy.
• Yellow liquids drop like water if you're killing Mammets. Use them with reckless abandon to make this fight easier and faster. You'll almost always end up with more than you use.
• Try to beat the Mammets without any deaths, even if it takes a minute or two longer.

• Obtained: drop off of mammet enemies. Can be traded and sold on the auction house (under medicines)
  
• Number recomended: five or six
  
• Optional or mandatory: optional but recomended
  
• Use: prevents a mammet from changing jobs
  
• Notes: again, these will stop mammets from changing jobs. They are especially useful here as multipe BLM mammets usually means a painful -aga induced death. Even if you can't lock them in DRG jobs do your best to prevent them from becoming BLMs.
  

Omega Weapon, Robot on Steroids

Don’t’ be fooled by that greek letter crap. Omega isn’t the end of this mission. He’s just the beginning of the real stuff. At first glance you might think that the Mammets will be hard because they are five mobs and Omega easier because he is one. And, in a certain sense, that’s true. In another, it’s very not. Omega has a crapload of HP, some very powerful attacks, and gets very unpleasant when low on life.

Oddly enough, Omega seemed to get "stuck" using one move a lot when I fought him. One battle he would spam Ion Efflux, the next Homing Missile, and generally ignore the rest of his normal attacks. Go figure.

When Omega gets low on life, he starts using a move called Pile Pitch a lot. In addition to destroying all but a small bit of your HP, it has hate reset. Sigh. Holding hate becomes damn near impossible at this point. A 2-hour that does damage quickly such as Eagle Eye Shot is a good idea at this point, but save some for the next fight too. A CCB Polymer Pump is also a good idea, but save some of them too. The Pump will halt weapon special moves for a minute, making them very worth it.

Have the tank fight where you start the battle while all the ranged characters hang out at the airship door. If the tank dies, that’s really bad, and all the mages should move over to where the tank was. Wipe there if you need to. Omega will return to the airship door, so if you’re all far away from it, you can all Reraise, rest to unweakend, and finish it off.

Omegal move list:

Strategy tips:

• Omega won't go down quickly. Keep chipping away at him without causing too many hate issues.
• Do everything in your power to keep Omega facing ONLY the tank.
• Start using yag drinks and potions to conserve resources. Rest only when someone else can cover your job.
• When Omega starts using Pile Pitch, ignore all of the above and try to kill him as quickly as you can.

• Obtained: from traditing a carmine, cyan, and gray chip in the Jeuno/Basok quest Chips
  
• Number recomended: at least two
  
• Optional or mandatory: optional, recomended
  
• Use: halts weapon moves for one minute
  
• Notes: the last specific BCNM item you'll never need for CoP. Make sure that two people don't use them at once as overlapping a CCB pump will waste one of the items. Each person can hold one and if you're having trouble with the BC you may want everone to pick one up. If money is no problem they can be bought off the auction but poorer parties can quest the item themselves by farming a set of three chips (the same chips used in the 3-5 Diabolos mission) and trading them to Cid. Don't use them all on Omega.
  

Because the weapons get mean when low on HP, it’s entirely possible that you wipe when it has but a sliver of health. Operation: Burst is a way for a BLM to finish the battle. It doesn't need to actually BE Burst, as that just makes a better name for this heading. If a BLM can have enough MP to cast ancient magic while weakened, he can Elemental Seal and cast ancient magic for a nice thousand or so damage. The trick is having enough MP to do it. Only tarus with good MP gear and food are likely to be able to pull it off. It’s an interesting thing to consider and very useful if you can do it, but not much to base a strategy off of. This works on Ultima too. Omega and Ultima regen HP, but it's so small as to be totally negliabable (estimated 1% in 5 minutes).

If you can beat Omega with 20 minutes left, you’re in exceptionally good shape. Odds are you will have less, but that might be okay.

• Wearing down Ultima to low HP will take less time than with Omega
• The tank will need lots of WHM attention, but curing and status removal. Make sure the WHM has the meds to say casting without any rest at all.
• Keep ranged characters as far away as possible to avoid the very deadly Equalizer and other, lesser directional attacks.
• Once Ultima gets low, use any CCB Polymers you have left (not at once, obviously) to delay the onslaught as much as possible.
• Hit it hard with everything you have!!!

• Obtained: from traditing a carmine, cyan, and gray chip in the Jeuno/Basok quest Chips
  
• Number recomended: at least two
  
• Optional or mandatory: optional, recomended
  
• Use: halts weapon moves for one minute
• Notes: any additional CCBs you haven't used should be thrown at Ultima.