The short guide:
Use BLU with this spellbook:
- Hydro Pull (mandatory)
- Choco Meteor (mandatory)
- Aetheric Mimicry (mandatory)
- The Ram's Voice (mandatory)
- Missile (mandatory)
- White Wind (highly recommended)
- Song of Torment (highly recommended)
- Surpanakha (highly recommended)
- Ultravibration (highly recommended)
- Bristle (highly recommended)
- Moon Flute (highly recommended)
- Whistle
- Final Sting
- Nightbloom
- Off-guard
- Eruption
Use Aetheric Mimicry on a DPS.
If you're too lazy to optimize then just kill FATEs with the shortest timer remaining but make sure you give yourself 3 minutes to complete Revenge of the Worms. You should probably read on though because there are ways to avoid doing that one entirely sometimes but they're almost as tedious as just doing it.
Some ways of clearing specific FATEs way faster:
- "Fallen Corpses Writhe in Style": Tag every mob with Song of Torment, it will kill them from full health over the duration even if they stand there and emote, if they're all tagged then Hydro Pull.
- "Taken": Spam Hydro Pull
The longer guide:
- Start with planning one FATE to fail so you know when the 1-hour timer ends.
- It can be a good idea to check the weather forecast before you start to avoid spawning Nunu when the weather is fog.
- If a FATE requires activation, you have exactly 10 minutes to activate it. Failing to activate a FATE counts as failing it.
- The later you clear FATEs, the later the next one spawns, and the fewer you have to do, so it's not always the best idea to just burn them as fast as possible.
- The worst FATE by far is "Revenge of the Worms" and one of your objectives should be to slow-roll that FATE slot as much as possible to avoid having to do it multiple times.
- If you REALLY want to slow-roll that slot and possibly avoid doing Revenge at all, start your 60-minute timer when Children of the Sands or Revenge of the Worms fails, start a 10-minute timer when Stone Torch appears, accept From Point A at the last moment, then drag out From Point A as much as possible by letting the NPC get waste as much time as possible punching one NPC in all 4 spawns. If you do this, and complete Children of the Sands at the last possible moment, you can sometimes push Revenge of the Worms past the 15 minute mark.
- What you want to do in the last half-hour or so is figure out what FATEs you can complete with less than 15 minutes left to spawn Nunu. For most of them, this will make them respawn with a 15-minute timer, meaning you don't have to do them.
- Most boss FATEs (except "Bump and Grind", "Blood, Augur, Hex, Magics", "Adventures in Throat Slitting", and "Revenge of the Worms") can be one-shotted with Ram's Voice + Ultravibration, or chunked down with Missile.
"Softening" FATEs and slow-rolling:
You can partially complete "Soul Man" by gathering the 20 items and turning it in later, and partially complete the enemy kill FATEs by leaving 1 enemy alive.
Be careful with doing this, if there are multiple FATEs under 5 minutes left then you absolutely need to start clearing them or you risk letting one fail. This takes MORE time than just killing the FATE because you have to travel to it multiple times so it's mostly useful for 2 purposes:
- Slowing down the progression of crappy FATE slots (especially the north slot, and Falling Corpses Writhe in Style)
- Gaining some progress while zone conditions are "easy"
More FATE-specific tricks/strats:
- "Run Like a Flame": There are 4 packs, the first pack sometimes spawns 2 and the second only spawns 1. If the first pack spawns 1 then you can let the FATE run by itself until 11:00. Leave 1 Seer alive at the last pack, the escort NPC will kill it by itself but it will delay the FATE completion.
- "From Point A": Similar advice to Run Like a Flame, except as mentioned before, you might want to slow-roll this one HARD because it's linked to Revenge of the Worms
- "Soul Man": You need 18 items to complete the FATE. Collect the items when convenient and then leave, come back when the FATE timer is low and turn in.
- "Revenge of the Worms": Use Bristle+Song of Torment whenever the DOT falls off otherwise spam Choco Meteor. Get the boss to 35% then do: Bristle, Off-guard, Moon Flute, Eruption, Choco Meteor, Surpanakha x 4, Nightbloom, Whistle, Final Sting. Make sure at least one friendly NPC is up so that if you fail this somehow, it doesn't reset to full HP.
- "Blood, Augur, Hex, Magicks", "Bump and Grind": Get the boss to 70% then use the combo above except instead of Whistle+Final Sting just spam Choco Meteor some more.
- "Adventures in Throat Slitting": Supposedly this one will fail early if you don't engage the boss? I guess you just have to complete it ASAP. Use the combo.
Here are the FATE slots for Southern Thanalan:
Slot 1: Sequential, 15 minutes
From Point A (Stone Torch) - Escort
Children of the Sands
Revenge of the Worms (spawns after a delay if Children of the Sands is completed)
Slot 2: Random, 15 minutes
Bump and Grind
Adventures in Throat Slitting (spawns immediately after completing Bump and Grind)
Soul Man (Ul'dahn Naturalist)
The Corpse Bribe
Harder, Bigger, Faster, Stronger
Slot 3: 15 minutes
Fallen Corpses Writhe in Style
Slot 4: Random, 15 minutes
Call Me, Mayhaps (Flame Recruit)
Book of Pride
Future Shock
Bigger Than Life
Full of Rigor Mortis
Diamond in the Rough (Flame Scout)
Tempered, Tempered
Slot 5: Sequential, 15 minutes
Hunters and the Hunted
Return to Cinder
Slot 6: Sequential, 15 minutes
Spark off the Bench
He's a Firestarter
Slot 7: Sequential, 15 minutes
Blood, Augur, Hex, Magicks
Fish out of Water
Slot 8: 15 minutes
Gyve Talk
Slot 9: Sequential, 15 minutes
Run Like a Flame (Flame Scout)
Downwind
Slot 10: Sequential, 10 minutes
Taken
Heroes of the 2nd
Quenching the Flame
Slot 11: 15 minutes
An Inconvenient Truth
Useless math for predicting the exact Eorzea Time of Nunu spawn:
1 hour real-time is 20 hours and 35 minutes.
There are 21 ET hours to spawn at 61:13 remaining so when your timer hits 61:13 you can subtract 3 hours and that's your spawn time.
