1623: Attack on Twintania, Part 1

Further to yesterday’s post, I had the good fortune to spend a bit of time in Turn 5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut in Final Fantasy XIV this evening, courtesy of my good friends in my Free Company — the “guild” of other people I play with on a regular basis. Although Coil goes beyond Turn 5 now, there are still a number of people who are yet to clear it, and I’m one of them — so part of this evening was set aside as some training time to get to know the encounter a bit better. We didn’t clear it, but we made some good progress.

What follows, then, is an account of how the fight went, written (hopefully) in a means through which a non-MMO player can understand what is going on. I found it an exciting experience — and if you’ve never tried it, you learn something about what high-level play in a massively multiplayer game like Final Fantasy XIV is all about.

Turn 5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut focuses entirely on one encounter: eight comrades-in-arms against an ancient dragon named Twintania, put there by the ancient Allagan civilisation to do their bidding. Actually, to be exact, it’s eight comrades-in-arms against an ancient dragon named Twintania and her three friends, but said three friends aren’t nearly as much of a threat.

The fight began with our de facto leader the paladin — a strong defensive fighter whose strengths lie not in doing a lot of damage, but instead in keeping the attention of enemies off the more fragile members of the party — charging in and provoking Twintania and her allies. The remainder of the group then followed — at a safe distance for those members such as myself, who were able to inflict damage from a distance — and concentrated on dealing with Twintania’s three friends. Meanwhile, we were fending off attacks from Twintania and her companions — fiery rings that dropped on the floor and hurt a lot if you didn’t get out of them as quickly as possible when they fell on you.

Once the three smaller dragons were down, the group turned its attention to Twintania proper, gathering around her with a strong defensive fighter at the front and another defensive fighter at the side, accompanied by our Scholar’s fairy companion Eos. The group aggressively attacked Twintania until one of the three Neurolink devices around her neck dropped to the floor, at which point the real fun was about to begin.

A curious “blip-blip” sound — perhaps from the Neurolink? — heralded the imminent arrival of a fireball attack from Twintania on a member of the party. No-one knew who these attacks were going to target, but as soon as the telltale signs appeared, they ran to the defensive fighter and fairy standing to one side of Twintania and shared the damage with their two companions — a direct hit without the support of others would have meant instant death.

As the healers frantically worked to help those hit by the fireball recover, the rest of the group prepared for another troublesome ability Twintania had up her sleeve: the ability to summon a terrible conflagration and trap a combatant within. The telltale “blip-blip!” sound came again, but this time with a different marker; its appearance signalled that the victim was about to become caught in a fiery prison, and would need their companions to break them free before it exploded.

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, it was impossible to break through the Conflagration before the next fireball attack came, but here it was possible to take advantage of a curious property of the Conflagrations: while those caught within were completely immobilised, it was possible to break in from without, and despite the temporary incapacitation, a Conflagration provided surprisingly good shelter and respite from the relentless fireballs.

After successfully dealing with this tense situation for some time, Twintania took to the skies and flew off. Had we driven her away? Of course not; this was just the beginning.

A second Neurolink fell from Twintania’s neck; the signal that we had to move into a recessed part of the platform upon which we were standing — actually the right hand of the dormant dragon god Bahamut, who wreaked havoc on the realm of Eorzea five years previously. Keeping a careful eye on the dragon revealed when she was likely to swoop across our battleground, attempting to kill us off with her “divebomb” attack. Fortunately, staying nimble on our feet meant it was eminently possible to stay out of the way of these deadly swoops, and instead focus our attention on some new friends: three snake-like creatures, one of which was known as Asclepius and the other two of which were known as Hygieia.

Although terrifying and against the principles of everything we’d trained for up until this point, the party stood firm directly in front of these three new opponents, eyes occasionally darting to the sky in case Twintania decided to swoop in once more. We weakened the two Hygieia without killing them, then set to work on the Asclepius — and then Twintania resumed her assault. Once again, some nimble footwork saw us dodge all but one of the deadly swoops — the last of which knocked me clean across Bahamut’s palm, but thankfully didn’t finish me off — and it was time to deal with two more Hygieia that had appeared to join the fray.

Muttering an incantation under my breath, I summoned all my willpower and unleashed my Limit Break skill, calling down a shower of meteorites to pelt Asclepius and its four children with devastating, fiery projectiles. The two weakened Hygieia fell to the assault, enfeebling Asclepius, the two remaining Hygieia and the brave frontline paladins in the process. It wasn’t long before the other two Hygieia fell, weakening Asclepius further in the process, and shortly after the larger snake was also defeated.

By this point, Twintania was obviously furious and preparing for some sort of last-ditch “ultimate” attack. We had but moments to dart for the safety of the fallen Neurolinks on the ground — and then to hope and pray as the room was filled with the brilliant white light of an aetheric explosion.

Not all of us survived the blast, and it wasn’t long after this that Twintania’s summoning of deadly whirlwinds finished the rest of us off. We collapsed to the ground — beaten for now, but determined to return once we had gathered our strength and prepared once again for the deadly conflict — and Twintania lived to fight another day.