Well, went hunting for this drop duoing with a friend (rdm & whm). We dealt physical damage to them and threw in light skillchains. After a couple of runs, lasting a few hours and about 40-50 total kills with not one drop, we took a week break.
Came back a week later with 2 other mages and just nuked the cactuars to death. No melee and killed them within 1-2 minutes. Four spinels drop within about 10-20 kills and in less than 30 minutes (protectra/shellra never wore).
Have to wonder now if melee or the cactuar using 1000 needles somehow affects the drop rate on spinel... but then again we could have just been lucky that day we all got drops so fast.
charmed a VT scorp (forgot what they are called) and 2hed it, it killed one but just barly because the lil ******* used 1k needles 3 times and that hurt a lot...
We were doing zilart mission8 i belive with 11 of of and we got on one after just killing 4 while waiting on first group to do thier run we were in our 70's five of us.
Me and some ls members (12 in total) were hunting this for some extra cash. We fought for about 3 hours, had 3 55+ thfs and a bunch of /thfs. NO drops at all. We saw the bailarina NM on our way and decided to try it out... BAD IDEA.. lol. It was hitting our lvl 61 pld for 150+ a hit. Then it turned on me and hit me for 256 and 247. Then kicked me for 674. Totally decimating me. This drop is such a pain..
('-`)> star spinel is a rare/ex item... so hunting for this is useless unless you want a star necklace and have coresponding fame to get the quest for it~ =x and if you meant the other items that are dropped by the mob that drops star spinel( i.e: cactus stems) i'm sure you could find a mob with a just as good drop, with a better drop rate..
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a few ppl from LS tried to get 4 star spinels we didnt have any particular setup. THF75(zenei =3) WHM70x2(one being me ^^) SMN58ish DRK75 RDM75(who was replaced with a BLM75..the rdm had to go ^.~) =x and a BRD 60+ @_@ i never asked the lvl i think he was anon >_>; (dont hurt me...w!) ahem.. well in about 2.5-3Hrs, we got 1/4 of the star spinels needed.. >_> we are gonan go back i hope >_< myself wanting a star neckalce hoped atleast xD, TH2 seems really necessary for this though...so i would recommend a THF come along ^.~(ZOMG props to the 'np i can tank anything yet i die sometimes doing this stuff' THF/NIN =p if you ever see this you know mad love<3! xD) ^_^ well ill stop clogging this lil box =x and let yall go on with your lives ._.;