I was on a serious nostalgia trip the past week, much like i always am, and it got me thinking back to camping this little bastard.  So many sleepless nights lost and so many days of being a complete zombie at work because of a silly little crab.  King Arthro was one of, if not the, most camped world spawns in FFXI.

Due to the game mechanics, haste was the most important stat of any min/maxer.  This little crab dropped, at the time, the highest valued haste item in the game called a Speed Belt.  Not only did this belt have the highest haste value on any item but it was mid level and on a freaking belt!  The alternatives to this item were poor to say the least so everyone and their mother was after it.

10 Knight Crabs would pop between 21 hours 5 minutes and 24 hours 5 minutes after King Arthro was last defeated.  After all 10 of these Knight Crabs are defeated, King Arthro would spawn 5-10 seconds later.  The fight itself was a joke but the waiting around for 3 hours and having to compete for claims with hundreds of other players and claiming bots made this difficult.

This was the only decent video i could find showing off the entire fight.  I’m assuming this was after something better was introduced because I’ve never seen King Arthro unclaimed for so long.

The spawn conditions, drop rate (about 7%), and competition (about 1 claim per week if lucky) contributed to not only much drama but also much excitement if you were lucky enough to get a chance at even fighting this crab.  As annoying as it’s circumstances were, i miss having really rare items dropping off mobs in the open world.