Even after 130+ hours, the world of MMO feels slightly confusing and weird to me
Like this scene:
There's just a bunch of people hanging out in mid-air and I'm like..."wha?"
And then everyone just keep saying LFG in chat
And then suddenly the entire group storms off at once. I followed them to see what's up and it was just a generic low-level FATE? Is there some valuable random rare drop to be gained from this? Oo
Even after 130+ hours, the world of MMO feels slightly confusing and weird to me
Like this scene:
There's just a bunch of people hanging out in mid-air and I'm like..."wha?"
And then everyone just keep saying LFG in chat
And then suddenly the entire group storms off at once. I followed them to see what's up and it was just a generic low-level FATE? Is there some valuable random rare drop to be gained from this? Oo
Some acronyms (and other terms) you might see in Shout chat...
LFG - Looking For Group (or Party)
NM - (Notorious Monster) another term for FATEs
A/S Rank - rare monsters that have more HP than usual and have very long spawn timers
DF - Duty Finder
PF - Party Finder
MSQ - Main Scenario Quest; main story of FFXIV
Common Terms for fight mechanics
AoE - Area of Effect (any attack that does damage in a large area); common shapes include lines, circles, cones and doughnuts
Stack-up Marker - large flashing yellow arrows (shows an attack that does damage proportional to how many people stand in it; more people = less damage on each person)
Tethers - line connecting one player to something else, weather that be another player, the boss or something else (often means an attack will be fired off in the direction of that player) different tethers mean different things
Meteors/Towers - any indicator that has to be stood in to soak the minimal damage; not standing in it does big AoE damage to every one that is often fatal or close to it
Vun Stacks - vulnerability up stacks; often gotten when getting it with damage that can/should be avoided (makes you more vulnerable to any incoming damage; means the healers have to heal more)
Tankbuster - any very hard hitting attack; designed to only be survived by tanks... and often only with some kind of damage mitigation
Yeah tonight folks. Just log in and say in the FC chat - last night we went at 2200 UK time, so it's probably a safe bet we'll do the same tonight? Just final coil left now.
Hildibrand quests for A Realm Reborn seem to be finished now and they were a hoot :')
Who wore a dress better, Cloud or this gentleman extraordinaire?
I got a kick out of this MGS reference
Most welcome were the appearances of classic characters like Gilgamesh:
Oh he's fine I'm sure he's just sleeping
There's even a battle on a big bridge!
And then Ultros shows up:
I was wondering about that NPC he's perving on as that's clearly a unique character model...and then it turns out it's Hildy's mom.
How does this work she looks like she's twenty and Hildibrand looks at least mid-thirties =P
She's a hoot as well but I do think it's funny that her dialogue seems to be going for like some kind of brit dialect thing but she looks like a Japanese anime waifu
Anyway, these quests were hilarious and I need more in my life. Please tell me these are a thing in every expansion.
Trials were fun too with fights against Gilgamesh himself and the Ultros+Typhon combo. The latter has some weird mechanics where you get turned into imps and if Ultros hits you with Aqua Breath you get a stack of "wet plate" debuff and you need several stacks of that because using Imp punch or something will then cancel Typhon's sneeze attack that can cause the entire party to fly out the arena...I only knew this because I looked up a guide beforehand. How do people figure this out? I feel like sometimes these battles have weirdly specific and obscure mechanics. O.o
So the Binding Coils of Bahamut are done now as well.
Gotta say, the story for those was some excellent stuff. Calls back to a bunch of 1.0 and answers some questions one might have had concerning what happened after the calamity. It's odd to think that this is locked behind ultra-hard difficulty. Sure, nowadays you can run it unsynced and get high-level players to carry you through (which is obviously what I did, thank you Lex-senpai), but you'd think they would have patched in a "casual" mode for these by now or something!
It's reassuring to know future raids do have normal difficulty for filthy casuals such as myself at least
I wonder if they have stories nearly as interesting and lore-important as this one though?
Anyway, so Lex, Force and Avec and myself did the first two Coils back to back. Force and myself were barely above level 50 so the unsync didn't do a ton for us.
I died...a lot.
For the most part I just tried to maybe get a hit in or two when battles started so I could at least pretend like I contributed
I remember when we fought Twintania and everyone except Lex died and he just solo'd the damn thing :'D
So Second Coil, Turn 4 was interesting because of the whole 1.0 callback, fighting Nael van Darnus at Rivenroad (or a holographic projection thereof). Also, Nael is now a woman. For some reason. I'm not sure I understood that part.
This is also where we wiped...a lot.
I actually enjoyed that fight though because we had to actually learn the mechanics and coordinate and couldn't just entirely rely on Lex to carry us (though we did rely on him to explain the mechanics because y'know, figuring this shit out by yourself will take ages, Nael's got so many mechanics they could open an auto repair shop, dang)
It took us 50 minutes to clear that fight. And the funny thing is, watching videos of how the fight was done back in the day, we still skipped a ton of mechanics. There's a bunch of stuff going on in the second phase we didn't even do and just powered through lol
...I also had to pee really badly throughout the fight...
Yeah it was a bit of a struggle. Just a tiny, tiny taste of what it is like to do the hard content in this game, I guess. I saved a recording of that fight for posterity. Maybe I'll upload it if anyone wants to see us struggling for almost an hour.
Anyway, after the coils you get dropped in a place overlooking Bahamut's head. Had to take a quick screencap of that of course as it seems like a unique photo opportunity as I don't think you'll ever return to this location again as it happens after the raid is finished and you only get there if you do the quest for the first time.
The Final Coil was Lex, Force, Roger, Obsidian Fire and myself.
One of the turns was a bit confusing because this jump pad catapulted everyone to the left but then it would turn right for me and it forced me to go a separate way? So then I was by myself and had to try not to run into enemies and y'know, die. Somehow managed to be reunited with everyone again though.
This one didn't have anything as challenging as Nael's fight, but that final battle against Bahamut Prime was pretty amazing just in how cinematic it kind of was. I didn't expect to get chills from an MMO raid but "Answers" playing will do that for you. That phase change when Bahamut readies Tera Flare was epic stuff!
In conclusion I really enjoyed this raid and only wish there was a regular version because as of now for a non-harcore player it's either getting steamrolled by enemies doing it synced or mostly steamrolling the enemies doing it unsynced, no in-between.
That reminds me that the 2nd coil has a Savage version too. jfc
Next up is the Crystal Tower alliance raids. The questgiver for these is this man:
This is part of the fun of being in a static. All fights have pretty unique mechanics, and the harder difficulty stuff like extreme primals, savage raids or ultimates require group coordination. It's really satisfying to go into content when it first releases and commit to figuring stuff out with a group, then clearing it. The vast majority (including myself in most cases) will look up the mechanics for difficult content so you know what to do and you're not holding anyone back, but blind runs are fun and that's normally what I prefer going in with a static.
Yes. One of the main complaints players had re: coil was how important it is to the story (though you can get by without knowing what happens there, it definitely fills in a gap) - which is why they have a normal mode for all the raids after that. Even the normal modes for them are optional though, so it's a similar situation where you can get by without knowing what happens, but you should absolutely do them. Same with all the 24 man content.
My suggestion is that you should do/ unlock everything you can in the game. I know you're still feeling a bit weird about doing content that requires other people, but it's how you get the most out of the game. Every ARR patch added one story dungeon and two optional dungeons, but they all provide additional world building and lore. There are also optional primals - these things are "optional" in name only. They're not required to progress the main story, but you will be missing out by skipping them. I'm happy to come along on anything you want to do.
And yes, Hildibrand quests continue. You've quite a journey ahead :3
So Second Coil, Turn 4 was interesting because of the whole 1.0 callback, fighting Nael van Darnus at Rivenroad (or a holographic projection thereof). Also, Nael is now a woman. For some reason. I'm not sure I understood that part.
There is two explanations for this. One in-universe, one from the dev team. The dev team's explanation is considered to be one of the best (worst?) examples of why the 1.0 dev pipeline was so... bad and inefficient.
What happened was that the 1.0 character/story teams decided part-way through 1.0 production that Nael was going to be female. Problem was... they didn't manage to get that info to the art/animation teams somehow... There was a lot less communication between the different parts of the dev team back in 1.0 to say the least. So the animation team used a model based on the male elezen model for Nael in 1.0. Only for the character/story team to go "umm... she's supposed to be a woman..." after the models had been made an animated. And by then it was too late to change anything in the game. So they were kind of stuck with it.
So the story team came up in an in-universe reason why Nael looked/acted like a guy in the armor...
Her real name was Eula Darnes and she had a brother Nael. Their dad was the previous Legatus of the VIIth Legion and both Eula and Nael were in that legion. Only their dad was a really bad legatus and really didn't care about the lives of the people he was commanding in the Legion. Including the lives of his own kids. So after one engagement, Nael was hurt really badly. Eula tried to save him (she was a medic at the time), but she couldn't and Nael died in front of Eula and his fiance. His fiance committed suicide. Eula ended up hating the Garlean system that killed her brother (and his fiance) and decided to bring it down... while making sure no one forgot her brother existed.
She did this by impersonating her brother and... arranging for her dad to be killed. This resulted in Eula/Nael getting promoted to Legatus of the VIIth Legion herself where she promptly killed off all her dad's advisors who might have figured out who she really was. Not satisfied with just being Legatus, Eula/Nael went about figuring out how to destroy Garlemald for good. It just so happened that the Darnes family had a bunch of Allagan relics one of which was the Lunar Transmitter; the device that controlled Dalamud. Eula/Nael decided that dropping Dalamud on Garlemald would be a great way to bring the system down and made the arrangements for research to be done on the Lunar Transmitter to figure out how it worked. It should be noted that Eula/Nael was not tempered at this time. She really did of her own volition want to bring Dalamud down... just on Garlemald, not Eorzea.
These arrangements included getting Midas nan Garland, Cid's dad involved. And that is when it's suggested Bahamut did start getting involved. It's... heavily suspected Bahamut tempered Midas first so Midas got obsessed with the Lunar Transmitter... to the point he activated it and wiped the city he was in off the map... and all the Allagan Relics there. With Midas dead, Cid was ordered to work on the project himself, but the Bozja incident woke Cid off to what was going on with Garlemald and he and a good portion of his assistants escaped to Eorzea and founded the Ironworks. This is also around the time it's hinted that Eula/Nael becomes Tempered by Bahamut... mainly so that she wants to bring Dalamud down on Eorzea instead of Garlemald for... various reasons. (Another raid gives a massive hint as to why Bahamut would want to come down on Mor Dhona specifically).
Ten years after all of that, Eula/Nael can finally get her "drop Dalamud on Eorzea" plan off the ground by taking Eorzea over. One of the main reasons it took so long was because with no Lunar Transmitter, Eula/Nael couldn't communicate with Dalamud. So she needed to get a replacement and then get it to where Bahamut wanted Dalamud to come down. This is the story of 1.0.
Ironically, a vital part of why this doesn't work entirely as planned is because Gaius van Balsaur wants to take over Eorzea himself. And he really doesn't want to take over a blasted wasteland devoid of people/infrastructure (and he has... major issues... with using WMD as a whole). So he ends up making sure the Eorzea Alliance end up getting more info about what Eula/Nael is planning then they would have been getting on their own (often with a heavy dose of plausible deniability). To the point Gaius flat out tells the 1.0 WoL that the VIIth Legion will be at Cartenau trying to stop anyone from messing with Dalamud... so maybe the Eorzean Alliance wants to do something about that?
So yeah, Eula/Nael is pretty much FFXIV's Sephiroth reference. Person who wants to destroy the world by flinging a meteor at it because someone killed the family member they had a connection to and they're furious about that. Complete with "maybe it's their own idea, maybe they got the idea from someone else" motive mix ups... as well as some really crazy body horror.
Eula/Nael is also a very early example of what has become a running theme of "the Garlean Empire screws over its own people as much as it does everyone else it's conquered".
All this info is in Encyclopedia Eorzea Vol. 1. Although... as time has gone on, more details about this have gotten added into different parts of the game...
If you want a much more detailed account of Nael van Darnus (and the background/story of 1.0 as a whole) I highly recommend reading this: The Rise and Fall of the White Raven
See, the thing about unlocking the optional stuff in the game is that it's kind of random whether the quest ends with the unlock or whether you need to also do the unlocked content in order to end the quest. Often I unlock optional stuff that I don't intend to do right away (if ever in case of like, the Extreme trials) and I get irrationally annoyed at having the quest thing open all the time
That's why I didn't get the Odin quest clear when we did that trial, because I abandoned the quest a few days ago so it would fuck off my screen
I unlocked King Moggle Mog and Leviathan Extreme and the quests ended with the unlock, meanwhile Garuda Exteme wants me to do actually clear the trial for the quest to end.
I don't understand why this is so random.
Unrelated: I did the leveling roulette a few times for shits and giggles (don't really need it atm as I'm overleveled technically anyway, almost at 56 and not even started 2.3 lol) and like...it's 75% Aurum Vale so far. Why the fuck is it always Aurum Vale?
I just did a run with where I kept pulling aggro from everyone and died and another DPS had to explain to the tank to use an ability to not let that happen.
It was mostly fine after that but they still kept moving around a ton and pointing enemies at me, like...no I'm a squishy ninja, I stab things in the back, not the front D:
Also holy fucking shit at the absurd amount of EXP when doing MSQ roulette btw
Often I unlock optional stuff that I don't intend to do right away (if ever in case of like, the Extreme trials) and I get irrationally annoyed at having the quest thing open all the time
That's why I didn't get the Odin quest clear when we did that trial, because I abandoned the quest a few days ago so it would fuck off my screen
It's a lot easier to just focus on unlocking things one patch at a time or one story-line at a time. All the content that is available wasn't released all at once.
Here's how the general optional questlines work out over the course of expansions that open up raids.
MSQ (opens up two raids in x.0 and one raid in x.1 and x.3 patches; 4 trials overall)
8-man trial quest line (opens up one trial per patch in the x.2, x.4 and x.5 patches; 3 trials overall)
8-man raid quest line (opens up four trails per patch in the x.0, x.2 and x.4 patches; 12 raids overall)
24-man raid quest line (opens up one raid per patch in the x.1, x.3, x.5 patches; 3 raids overall)
The end result is something like this...
Seven 8-man trials
Twelve 8-man raids (really three sets of four trials)
Three 24-man raids
per expansion
There's some scattered trails every now and then like Odin and some other ones. But those are the exception rather than the rule.
Yeah, Nael Darnus was basically a case of a “Samus (from Metroid) is girl“ twist that didn’t get communicated to the English localizers soon enough (especially since Japanese can use gender neutral pronoun language a lot more often to obscure gender compared to English). Initially before the lore team came up with the official Eula explanation, the English team tried to come with there own explanation of having the characters speculate if Bahamut had changed Nael’s gender to be a woman when they got tempered. Understandably, most found that attempted explanation stupid and the Eula explanation was later added.
It's just 2.x jank holdover tbh. Titan, Garuda and Ifrit extreme were all added prior to Leviathan etc., so those have quests that require you to complete them. We'll do them to clear them off your list, it's no biggie unsynced. All extreme primals after that (including in future expansions) just unlock upon quest interaction.
There are also repeatable quests in Mor Dhona which you can completely ignore (one of them tasks you to do Garuda, Ifrit and Titan extreme). The symbol for a repeatable quest is the quest marker with arrows in a circle in the centre. They were ways to get items by doing certain content once per week. They completely stopped doing this type of weekly content after Heavensward (thankfully).
The rule of thumb is just to do the blue+ unlock quests but if you want something a bit more tangible to peruse - this google sheet is updated with every patch so you can browse patch by patch to see what you've not got unlocked and focus on one thing at a time (it's very useful). It has tabs at the top separated by patch and tells you the quest name, location, what it unlocks and prerequisites (if any):
The reason you're getting Aurum Vale a lot is probably because you haven't unlocked a bunch of the optional dungeons in ARR, but sadly sometimes you just get shit luck with levelling roulette. I had Aurum Vale 3 times in a row when I was last doing levelling roulette regularly and I have every dungeon in the game unlocked
At least it's not Sastasha or Thousand Maws...
Also btw if you routinely do levelling roulette for the daily exp bonus you'll probably hit 80 before you catch up to the main story lol. That's just how it goes. The good news is you have absolutely no grinding to do to level your main class. If you want to slow it up a little you could play another class and do levelling roulette with that to dip a toe elsewhere.
The other reason you are probably getting Arum Vale alot is because the level cap for the Free Trial was increased massivly and Arum Vale is the last "leveling" dungeon before you hit 2.0 Endgame dungeons. So there's probably more people than usual running it to level their characters up to lvl 50.
