Call me silly. For some reason I just feel it proper to do an ancient mib with a fisherman. And besides, wouldn't it be cool to actually have fun with a fisherman! Here are the tactics I use to solo the red and blue Ironman with a fisherman. Oglethorpe is a 7x character. Archery Tactics Anatomy Healing Resist Fishing Item ID A fairly typical and rather utilitarian template for any type of fishing, particularly MiB's. One that your average player might already have. I realized this utility would also be great for the ancient ones. On an Ironman run you absolutely cannot carry out all the loot with any degree of practicality. And I dunno about you but I just hate leaving unidentified magic loot behind (because those ones are always high end vanq slayers) and its always better to identify it to verify that it is indeed not a +25 vanq, but utter garbage like 95% of the magics you run into. You can do so with Item ID wands but they add weight, get used up, and take longer. Time is a concern and the ability to ID the whole container is a handy bonus. Now I do carry a decent load of arrows so I leave the regs and gems behind but its feasible that they could be kept. I just toss a trash bag on the ground and empty the chest. Brings me to another point. Empty the chest. You have time, and one of the conditions of the Ironman is that you get all the platinum coins, and no one wants to leave a platinum coin behind. Platinum coins are elusive creatures already due to their diminutive size and are even more so in the dense jungle environment of a level 5 treasure chest. You wouldn't want to risk screwing yourself out of a platinum coin and a trophy. Empty the chest. Being absent magery to cast telekenesis, I have to rely on scrolls or roll the dice in the maybe-it-wont-blow-me-up lottery. Having blown myself up doing them with Balla the sloppy way, I added tele scrolls to my necessary equipment list. There are only 2 chests, but carry 3 scrolls anyway in case you retardedly tele the chest before unlocking it or something else dumb that I would never have done and waste a scroll. The chests in the blue become obscured for targeting at a safe distance so you will have to use last object to hit them. Oh and don't forget to bring 2 trash bags! Unlock, tele, ID, sort, empty. You need a good bow. I use a +25 vanq bow that I keep powdered to full durability. I carry about 400 arrows. A good power would work fine too. The Red amib eats a lot of arrows beating down the kraken but the blue you can often come out with more than you went in with. I carry about 100 bandages give or take. You could carry less if you really felt like farting around cutting pirate clothes. The pirate sailors are squishy, boatswains a bit tougher, but the navigators and particularly those nasty nuking bitches, the quartermasters, take abuse rather well. The bosses are pretty easy to outmaneuver and the standard archer dance will take them down easily. The Bartender's bombs hurt but are easy enough to bandage heal through as long as you aren't taking melee damage. The Pirate Captains DP but have no ranged attack. You still want to hit them as hard as you can though. Red AMiB When entering the red amib the first pirates you encounter are sailors and a boatswain. Easily dispatched with a little dancing. Next you encounter the kraken pool. Here is where you waste a lot time. The walkway goes right around the kraken pool so you have to engage them and they need to be dealt with because you will need this space to kite spawn later. Rather then killing them and dealing with more, I choose to redline and ignore them. Beat them down and their breath weapon will hit for easily-healable damage, don't beat them down and they can wreck you. There are 3, one kraken and 2 shipwreck kraken. I believe they are "pond raised" and do not drop amibs (could be wrong). Their breath weapons hurt quite a bit and they take a while to beat down, but they do spit slow and often its possible to stand there and bandage heal through it. However if their shots sync up its a big ouch. Redline all 3 but do not kill and move on. Next you'll encounter a few more pirates and boatswain. The Bartender, Pirate Captain, and quartermaster are all uncomfortably close to one another in this area so it isn't wise to dance around too much. Inch forward and kite them back around the kraken pool. Safe to do once the kraken have been neutered. I have at times engaged both the captain and quartermaster off the boat as they agro'd across the gangplank early, so be wary of biting off more than you are ready to chew. Archers need room to move, take them around the pool. The Bartender throws bombs and has a solid melee so its best to kite carefully and err to the side of caution with your bandage timer. The bombs hit for sub-20 damage but he throws them fairly quickly and it will stack up on you. The quartermaster is a nasty animal too. He has very potent magery and annoyingly heals quite a bit. I prefer to lead the quartermaster back to the beginning and just get him out of the way. Lead the captain off the ship to fight him so you wont have to deal with the navigator and his bow trying to fight him on the ship. He will DP you if he hits you but he is easy to dance with and take down. Take out the navigator and loot the chest. The first chest you encounter in the red amib is a level 4 chest and will not have a platinum coin in it but the second chest is a level 5 and will have one, possibly 2 if you are really lucky, and the ore-colored ancient treasure chest. Pay special attention to the west wall of the bartender's shack, the spot to the right of the cool pirate painting (pretty please can I have one Telamon) because if a string of shells spawned it will be here. Blue AMiB The blue amib starts with the usual mix of sailors and boatswain, easy to engage. Again just creep forward to engage as few at a time as possible. The boss, the Pirate Digger is on the west side near the mountain but wanders, be careful not to drag him early. When you get agro on the quartermaster, again I prefer to lead him back to the start and park him. It is a gamble of sorts to lead them back to the neighborhood of the ankh and vendor but its a risk I feel fairly good in taking, you can lead him east and hope he stays put too. The navigators you can pretty much just stand there and heal through the archer duel while you take them down. The navigators are also a great source of replenishing 50-70 arrows. The digger boss has a pretty ugly melee and an earthquake attack. He is easy enough to dance with while healing through his AOE damage. Be careful not to stray too far north as it is possible to agro the Dread Pirate boss out of the lighthouse across the bridge. When you enter the lighthouse you will drop into a basement of sorts with a couple sailor and a boatswain. There is ample room to dance with them and knock them down easily. The Pirate Captain is on the second floor typically and has a sailor/boatswain or 2 with him. It is possible to manipulate the captain's AI by running up to the 3rd floor rooftop and shooting him down the stairs while moving back and forth to keep him on the second floor and away from you. If not he is easy enough to dance with and avoid his melee and DP and he has no range attack. Any rare blood tile that spawned will be on the second floor of the lighthouse in *surprise* the room with all the blood on the walls. Take care to look for it. The chest is located in a shitty little room on the roof. There is much deco on the floor around it so its a pain to toss down your trash bag but here is where the goodies and the garbage are. Both chests in a blue amib are level 5. Both will contain at least one plat. The Haul All amibs guarantee an ore-colored ancient treasure chest in the second chest, a 30-40k-ish value. The red one yields commonly 11,000 - 12,000 gold between chests and kills. The blue between 12,000-13,000 gold. The red amib is a guaranteed 3 platinum, one from each boss and one from the level 5 chest. The blue amib guarantees 4 platinum due to both chests being level 5. If successful, you will also get a trophy for the Ironman achievement, a 1 plat for the red and 2 plat for the blue. Oh and HUGE bags of +25 vanqs and invuln armor from the chests...just kidding, you'll be leaving heavy garbage bag next to each. Keep the take in mind when looking at buying amibs. Each amib has the potential for a cool spawn rare, but be realistic about the chances of getting one, they call em rare for a reason. I will follow up with my experiences from the purple and green when I get that far. I know there are plenty of guys out there that can farm these amibs as efficiently or moreso with other templates, but I wrote this to show the average player that you don't need a high-powered PvM character to do these by yourself. Anyone can do them with a good fisherman pretty easily. Good luck!
