Nemesis: a hundred famous monsters, a hundred levels stronger, and a chest that is yours alone

Every one of you has a monster you remember. The Lizzy you camped for an afternoon in Gustaberg for a pair of boots. The Emperor you never once saw spawn. The Kraken Club you read about and never held. Nemesis is that list, turned into a battleground: the hundred most famous notorious monsters in Vana'diel, each one fought on demand, in private, a hundred levels stronger than you remember it, for its own real drops with random augments on the gear.

Open it with /nemesis. Everything it does also works typed as !nemesis, or !nem for short.

How a run goes

• Pick a monster. The window lists all hundred by tier. Every row shows the wild level and the arena level, the home zone, the signature drop and its rate, your own kills, best time and drops against it, and an Enter button.
• Pay the fee. It is charged per real player, at the door, before anybody moves. Your squad alt-trusts ride free — they are the character you are playing.
• Get warped in. The server picks the emptiest of three venues — the Throne Room, the Chamber of Oracles and the Sacrificial Chamber, three arenas each, nine runs at once — and puts your whole party in together. You can enter from anywhere.
• Fight. One monster, fifteen minutes. It is spawned from its home zone's own data, so it looks, fights and drops like the original — just at its wild level plus one hundred, capped at 175 for now until you prove those fights are being won. A level 10 Lizzy is a level 110 Lizzy; Kirin stands at 175.
• Open the chest. When it falls an Armoury Crate stands up. Every real player opens it once and gets their own roll of the monster's full drop table. Nobody lots; nobody waits.
• Leave. Take your drops and go, or pick the next monster. You land back on the tile you left from. /port and !home work from inside too.

The fee

Three tiers, set by the monster's wild level. The tier decides the fee and the augment ceiling.

• Field (wild level 1-40, fights at 101-140): 20,000 gil and one Job Testimony.
• Dungeon (41-70, fights at 141-170): 50,000 gil and three different Job Testimonies.
• Legend (71 and up, fights at 171-175): 150,000 gil and five different Job Testimonies.

Testimonies are the twenty Job Testimony items — the same ones the Drift Board's Pop-Items tab already takes. They are Rare, so "different" is the only shape a bag can hold anyway; the fee takes the lowest-numbered ones you carry. Fees are never refunded on a wipe or a timeout. If an entry fails before the monster stands up — every arena taken in the same second, say — you get it all back.

Legend monsters carry one more rule: the same account can fight the same Legend once every twenty hours, and the clock starts at the kill, never at the door. A wipe does not burn your day.

What you can get

Exactly what the wild monster drops, at the wild rate. The chest rolls the monster's real drop table — the same rows, the same odds, the server's usual drop multiplier included. Bounding Boots sit at the same chance in the arena as they do in South Gustaberg. If the wild monster drops nothing half the time, so does the chest. Treasure Hunter does not apply to the chest, on purpose: nobody should have to bring a thief to make the run worth doing.

Gear comes augmented. Every piece of equipment out of a Nemesis chest carries random augments:

• 60% chance of one augment
• 25% chance of two
• 14% chance of three
• 1% chance of four

The pool is the same one the treasure caskets draw from — a boot rolls what a boot may roll — and the third and fourth slots draw from a short premium list (Double Attack, Triple Attack, Store TP, Fast Cast, Refresh, Regen, Treasure Hunter, critical hit rate and damage, Conserve MP), so the one-in-a- hundred four-augment roll always carries a line worth a screenshot. How strong an augment can roll is capped by tier: up to rank 3 from Field monsters, 5 from Dungeon, 8 from Legend. That ceiling is the whole power knob of the system and it will only ever move by decision.

Augmented gear is bound to your account. That rule already exists on this server and Nemesis inherits it whole: nothing you win here can be traded, listed, bazaared or delivered to another account. It moves freely between your own characters through DWBags and the Warehouse. Crafting materials, crystals and consumables drop plain and stay tradeable, exactly as they do in the wild.

Weapon Burst and X-Magic augments never appear here. Those belong to the Gauntlet and the Drift Board and stay there.

Mercy, the ledger, and the announcement

• Mercy. Eight chests in a row from the same monster with no gear in them, and the ninth is guaranteed to carry some. It only speeds up the first piece — it never touches how many augments roll, or how strong.
• The ledger. Every monster you have fought shows your kills, your fastest kill, your gear drops and your Mercy count, on the row and on a Ledger tab. It is per account, so your alts share it.
• Unclaimed. Any monster whose four-augment drop nobody on the whole server has ever received is marked unclaimed in the window. The first to claim one is named.
• The announcement. Every four-augment drop is announced to the whole server — who, which monster, which item — every time. It is a one-percent event, and it deserves the line.

What you need

• The dwnemesis addon, which the launcher installs and loads for you.
• Gil and Job Testimonies for the tier you want.
• A party of one to six real players, or just yourself and your squad. There is no level cap on the arena; the monster is the difficulty.
• To not be dead, zoning, in a cutscene, in another battlefield, level-synced, or standing on a boat. The server checks every member before anyone is charged, and a refusal names the member and moves nobody.

After any exit there is a five-minute cooldown before your next entry.

The first hundred

Thirty-six Field monsters — Leaping Lizzy, Jaggedy-Eared Jack, Valkurm Emperor, Argus, Golden Bat, Mee Deggi, Quu Domi, Leech King and the rest of the names you levelled past. Thirty-four Dungeon monsters — Serket, Simurgh, Roc, King Arthro, Sozu Rogberry, Capricious Cassie, Fei'Yin's three Shadows, the sabotenders and the Boyahda tree's. Thirty Legends — Lord of Onzozo, Charybdis, Hakutaku, Ose, Kreutzet, the Zvahl Marquis and Duke, Behemoth and King Behemoth, Fafnir and Nidhogg, Adamantoise and Aspidochelone, Tiamat, Jormungand, Vrtra and Kirin. The window has the full list with every signature drop.

The roster is add-only. If your monster is not on it, say so — the list is meant to grow.

Two honest notes

The level ceiling starts at 175. The wyrms and Kirin would land in the 190s at a flat plus one hundred; they stand at 175 until the first Legend kills are in and we have seen how those fights feel. When the ceiling moves, it moves for everyone at once.

And the kings are still in the wild, and the Drift Board's Pop-Items tab still sells their pop items. That is a different fight — the whole pool, the tradeable materials, the twenty-four-hour window. Nemesis is the private one: bound gear, your own chest, once a day per king. Both have a place.