Waking Dreams

Quest Name	Waking Dreams
Locations	Pso'Xja, The Shrouded Maw
Level Cap	uncapped. 75 recomended
Estimated Time	very short fight, between 5 and 10 minutes
Special Items:	Poison potions
Difficulty:	High. Take not Diabolos lightly
Medicines Needed:	Icarus Wings for melees, INT food for BLMs, MP food for RDMs
Recomended Jobs:	RDM/DRK for chainspell stun
Brief synopsis:	Diabolos is back with a vengence!

1) Talk to Kerutoto at (I-9) of Windurst Waters.

2) Travel to The Shrouded Maw and enter the battleground Waking Dreams.

3) After defeating Diabolos return to Kerutoto for your reward.

Oh, I’m sorry, you wanted something more? Perish the thought that a STRATEGY guide have some STRATEGY in it! While looking online to double-check some of my information I found only the above “hints”. Great help guys, thanks. Guess it’s up to Erecia to try to tackle this alone!

Anyway…

Diabolos has Arrived

This is the new quest to obtain to summoner avatar Diabolos, or if you choose, one of his items. You don’t need to have the SMN job unlocked (or need Fenrir, or any other rumor about having other avatars) to do this quest although you do choose a pact with Diabolos as your reward. You absolutely MUST have beaten Chains of Promathia mission 3-5 (Darkness Named, the first fight with Diabolos) to get this quest. You also likely need a lot of fame in Windurst as well. And since this is a murderously difficult fight, I recommend only high levels try it. 70+ is probably a good rule.

Cutscene:

Zone	NPC name	Location	Other
Windurst Waters	Kerutoto	(I-9) lower map	Key item: Vial of Dream Incense

Once you’ve talked to Kerutoto you get that key item. Like all avatar fights, every single person in the party going into the battle needs to have the key item. So make sure they do. Other than that, you’re prepared for combat. Assemble your party, grab some poison potions, and head out. The route to The Shrouded Maw is exactly the same as it was in mission 3-5.

By Demons be Driven

Even with an effective strategy, this fight is very difficult and you may lose multiple times before getting it right. While in The Shrouded Maw a mere few hours the first two nights after this quest was introduced I saw at least 100 adventurers fall out of this BC dead. So if you tried to fight Diabolos and found your party quickly decimated, don’t take it too hard; you’re not alone.

I just want to state that I fought Diabolos first on Slyph. I got the quest immediately and came straight to the battleground. I lost hardcore of course, and it’s not really a very notable achievement to be the first on a server to LOSE a fight, but I’m putting it in here anyway. My dedication to information for this guide is supreme!

ANYWAY!

Diabolos has two old tricks, two new tricks, and a bunch of things you can generally ignore. The old tricks are Nightmare and the floor dropping. The floor is nothing new at all; it still drops in exactly the same patterns so follow the placement tactics from the first battle. The “dark lines around titles that will be removed” trick also still works and is a good way to avoid falling. So no worries there. Nightmare, on the other hand, is still a fearsome and deadly threat. Diabolos regularly starts using this at around 30% damage. The damage from the bio has been increased and there is still no effective way to wake up from it. Unless someone resists, is magically out of range, or only sleeps for a very small time and can wake up your party you can expect Nightmare to be the death of you. Thus, the first accepted tactic: STUN NIGHTMARE. No “if possible” in there and no excuses. Do it or you’re going to die! I’m not kidding here! Only DRKs and BLMs know Stun, so you either need a DRK with an ichy trigger finger, a BLM (or multiple BLMs on rotation) standing around not casting waiting to stun, or a job that can sub DRK at high levels and gain stun that way. RDM/DRK is a popular job for this fight and I’ll go into why later. So yeah, Nightmare. Stun it.

Those are the things your familiar with. Diabolos has a bunch of new moves too, but only two are actually threatening. One is Sleepga II. Yeah, AoE sleep. That’s what the poison potions are for. They weren't useful in the 3-5 battle because he only used a single-target Sleep spell but here he goes all out. The 1/tic damage from the poison potions won’t harm you at all and will keep you awake from Sleepga. Take a few and reapply them when they wear off. Venom potions, which do 3/tic damage, also work and are often cheaper, but actually do dangerous amounts of damage to your character over a few minutes. Whatever you choose make sure you have them.

The second cheap shot is Diabolos’s SP “2-hour” move, Ruinous Omen. This does a random percentage damage of your current HP. It can’t actually KILL you, but it can take away hundreds of HP in one fell swoop. It’s unstunable so be prepared to deal with some serious pain midway through the fight.

The less threatening moves are things like Nether Blast and Drain and Camisado. Things that just do pure damage. They hurt but they won’t break your party. Others, such as Noctoshield and Dream Shroud, enhance Diabolos’s defense.

So Diabolos has a lot of abilities. He casts them very quickly and doesn’t wait very long before firing off another. Some power Diabolos up, some slam one of your members, and a few of them, if left unchecked, will smite you all.

You ARE Going To Tell Us How to Kill It, Right?!

If you’re any good at sifting through information you probably already figured this out; every second that Diabolos is alive increases the chance that your party will be defeated. He uses his power moves often and with reckless abandon. You can die when he’s at 0% damage or when he’s at 99% if your luck is bad enough. Thus tip #1: KILL DIABOLOS AS FAST AS YOUR PARTY CAN MANAGE! If you’ve fought the Snoll Tzar CoP mission the same tactics apply. Hurt Diabolos and hurt him hard. The difference between this and Snoll Tzar is that 1) you don’t need to win in 45 seconds and 2) Diabolos’s moves are a lot nastier. So thus comes tip #2: DO NOT ALLOW DIABOLOS TO GET OFF NIGHTMARE! Think of this. Nightmare – luck = death. You can’t count on the luck so expect the death.

How do you stop Nightmare? He can use it as often as he wants. Having a DRK won’t help you if the DRK stuns Nightmare and Diabolos uses it a few seconds later. Stun has a 1 minute cooldown. It’s possible to beat Diabolos with a normally balanced party but highly unreliable. You can hope for luck but like I said it’s nothing to base a strategy on. But FFXI players are creative. They found a way around it: a RDM/DRK. Red Mage 2-hour is Chainspell, which removes cooldown timers. /DRK subjob gives them access to stun at high levels. So they can Chainspell Stun. But that only lasts, what, 45 seconds? A minute? Not enough time to kill Diabolos outright. And even with all those stunnings Diabolos might get an ability through. So it won’t save you outright, but it WILL help.

There are two cheap-shot strategies to win this fight. This first one makes use of the RDM/DRK. If you can’t find one, well, actually, I don’t know. Tell me what you can do without a RDM/DRK. But anyway, here is the strat if you have one:

Party setup: RDM/DRK, 5 open spots (mostly DD, though a tank or a WHM is also helpful)
Fight Diabolos until he is roughly at 70%, stunning Nightmare the normal way until this point.
At 70% the RDM/DRK begins Chainspell Stuns
Everyone else that can do damage goes ALL OUT NUTS with trying to kill Diabolos as fast as possible.

That's method one. Don't know a RDM/DRK? Want to pay a bunch of BLMs and a PLD to help you get through this? Here's the second "sneaky" method.

Party setup: PLD, BLM, BLM, BLM, two open spots (more BLMs = faster kills)
Everyone enters the BC.
PLD disbands from the party, drops down, gets "drawn in"
PLD is reinvited to the party, uses Invincible
BLMs nuke from above, not being drawn in and being safely out of the range of Nightmare.

Why does this work? Well, Diabolos only draws in everyone in at the beginning of the fight. But the PLD is the only one in the party (he's solo actually) so the rest of the people in the BC don't get drawn in After that, Diabolos only draws in people out of range that get too much hate. But with a PLD invincible those BLMs can nuke their little hearts out without problem. It doesn't take that many high-level Thundaga or Blizzaga spells to finish the demon off. This seems REALLY dirty to me, but if it works, it works.

A lot of strategies involve multiple BLMS, but really, melees can dish out serious pain at level 75 too. If you want to fight him conventally, trying to stun or outrange Nightmare, go ahead. I just included those two because they seem to be relatively fool proof (though knowing some fools on FFXI I wonder sometimes.) I’d love to see a party with multiple MNKs with god gear all using Hundred Fists. That would be fun.

One final note: just because you’re focusing on offense doesn’t mean a WHM will be a leech. Benediction is a great way to wake people up and heal the massive damage from Ruinous Omen, and the rest of Diabolos’s moves hurt hard too. So give one of those WHMs that want this fight a chance.

Diabolos move list:

Move	Type	Effect
Drain	Magic	Steals some HP
Aspir	Magic	Steals some MP
Sleepga II	Magic	AoE sleep effect Poison potions prevent sleep
Dispelga	Magic	AoE dispel effect Removes a postive buff
Blindga	Magic	AoE blind effect
Noctoshield	Ability	Gives Diabolos phalanx
Dream Shroud	Ability	Gives Diabolos magic attack and magic defense bonus.
Camisado	Ability	Damage
Nether Blast	Ability	Ranged damage
Ultimate Terror	Ability	AoE, drains several attributes Doesn't actually give terror effect
Nightmare	Ability	AoE sleep + powerful bio No reliable way to wake up STUN THIS MOVE!
Ruinous Omen	Ability	Diabolos's "2-hour" ability Does a random % damage of remaining HP Hurts but can't kill

Strategy tips:

Diabolos is dark based. Dark attacks and spells will be useless against him. Weapon skills that form light skillchains or spells that magic burst light will be more useful. Sadly, because of his high level, Banish and Flash are not very powerful on Diabolos.
Avoid standing on tiles that will be removed by looking for and avoiding tiles with dark outlines.
Nightmare must be stunned. One successful casting of Nightmare may doom your entire party.
Diabolos can be silenced to stop his casting of Drain, Aspir, Sleepga II, Dispelga, and Blindga. Not that it helps much.
Nightmare is actually a targetted ability. The center of the AoE is one of your party members. It is possoble, though difficult, to outrange this move.
Diabolos won’t start spamming Nightmare until approximately 30% damge (70% life). Do not begin RDM/DRK chainspell stun until this point. If you have two RDM/DRKs you can start earlier but having two is totally not necessary.Once you are covered by stunnings go absolutely all out on damage. Use any abilities and 2-hours you have available to increase your firepower.
As long as a tank has secured hate while not in the party, BLMs that were not drawn in can nuke from above with saftey.
Ruinous Omen appears to be unstunnable. Diabolos seems to use this around 55% damage (45% life). It will kill no one but will lower everyone’s HP dramatically and make you vulnerable to being picked off by a weaker move.
Benediction is a great way to save the party from annihilation. Just saying.

It’s you or him at this point. Don’t pull your punches because he won’t be pulling his. If your firepower overwhelms Diabolos you will gain his whisper. Return to Kerutoto to choose your reward.

Cutscene:

Zone	NPC name	Location	Other
Windurst Walls	Kerutoto	(I-9) lower map	Choose your reward!

If you want to look at the items you can back out and choose a different by selecting "Wait!" after viewing the item. So go ahead and look at them all. You can get a Diabolos Staff (meh), Earring (not bad for a melee), Torque (okay), Ring (very bizarre and unworthwhile), gil (yeah, right, like you’d suffer through this for a lousy 10k!) or a pact with Diabolos (the main reason people do this, can only be chosen if you’ve unlocked the SMN job). If you want more than one reward, tough! But you can talk to Kerutoto after Japanese midnight (11 AM EST) and get the quest again to beat Diabolos a second time and choose another item.

Happy demon hunting!

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