Solo brewing Shinryu

People have been brewing Shinryu solo for a while, but for a lack anything better to post about I'll try to convince everyone how easy it is so everyone can get their drops (eventually).

Ingredients
1x Primeval Brew
1x Doom screen
1x Samurai sub-job: Sekkanoki
several HP-recovery meds
equal amounts Atma of Apocalypse, Voracious Violet*, Mounted Champion**
copious amounts of cruor
*possible replacement: Sea Daughter
**possible replacement: anything to deal more damage

Instructions
One of the most important things is to go early to regain enough TP to WS twice at the start of your chosen "Blue" weakness time-frame. I try to get there a bit after midnight game-time and I enter at 7:00 for piercing weakness.

Timing your WS is obviously important here. Don't forget to Sekkanoki. When you engage and run in it'll aggro and swing at you from pretty far away. I tried waiting for it to get to me so I could run back a bit and fight+die outside of its aggro range, but you'll get drawn in and it'll make things last much longer than necessary. Besides, it isn't really needed.

Just run into range and WS after the first swing is over, and another time after the second. If you got no weakness Hint-message for a weapon you can proc on then I just die and try again. The reason why I don't try for a 3rd WS is because you need to use some of the better meds for it. I'd rather save those up for when I really need them. The Shinryu fight's cost is negligable when you have a healthy stock of stones. Also, you can try up to 4 times in one fight. You could probably survive long enough to get enough TP from Meditate and melee swings if you used a Fool's powder/drink. The tier4 AoE spells can really hurt.

If you die within aggro range (very likely), it's important to be able to survive 1 attack from Shinryu. You won't be able to move (annoyingly slow raise animation) until after the first attack. I can imagine that as a Taru on a low-HP job this could be an issue. THF doesn' t have much defense and I usually got hit for a bit over 300 damage. I use a regen Atma so I don't have to spend precious cruor on potions between attempts. If you don't go too often, you'll liekly recover those meds slowly from fighting other NM's and regular mobs in Abyssea.

Of course, when you do get a good hint or actually proc the Blue weakness, use your Brew asap. You could macro it, but I'd like to avoid any "accidents". Way too many times have I said "Crap, used Convert by mistake". Brew then screen and go through your Blue WS. After a proc it stops attacking. It may take you by surprise. Iron Giants and Shinryu have regular attacks that count as "special" attacks, much like TP abilities. That's why Amnesia stops them from attacking.

I've never had much problems healing it for excessive amounts. Unlike Rani, it doesn't heal for more than it takes damage due to damage resistance. Shinryu has none, so it'll take full damage from your WS, which makes it a pretty short fight.

Some final notes
I do this on THF which gives me both Blue and Treasure Hunter. Personally I think this is one of the best jobs to do this on, given the low drop rates. Get used to seeing no gear drops and some Apkallu Eggs. So far, of all the armor drops, I've only gotten a Twilight Helm out of 5 fights. Actually, a Helm dropped twice but the second time it went to someone tagging along for the win.

Cruor is your bottleneck. Nobody cares about merits anymore these days, I'm sure. Farming cruor in an EXP alliance sounds like it makes sense, but I recently found out that cruor drops work the opposite way of EXP chains. For exp you want to keep killing the same family of mob, but for cruor you want to alternate mob families. It may be due to Abyssites, but after about 8 fights I capped out at around 480 cruor per mob, while alternating between Sandsweepers and Fear Dearg in Altepa. Ladybugs and Mandies seem to give the most cruor in that zone. EXP alliances should kill really fast so that it evens out, but let's be honest... they usually don't.

Awesome Music Tip #3