1643: Twintania Down for the Count

It’s taken a lot of effort — including the effort to gather groups of people together for a common purpose — but this evening… morning… whatever it is now, I finally cleared Turn 5 of The Binding Coil of Bahamut in Final Fantasy XIV.

For those unfamiliar, The Binding Coil of Bahamut is a five-part dungeon for level-cap players. It was originally designed to be the absolute hardest challenge in the game, but has since been superseded by new content added in the three big patches there have been since launch. It’s also been “nerfed” considerably, with players going in now being the recipients of the “Echo” buff — a 20% increase to maximum hit points, damage dealt and healing received. The thinking behind this gradual easing of its difficulty is so that, in theory, everyone will eventually be able to make it through — and that they might want to do so, because it offers some intriguing story content along the way.

Even with the 20% Echo buff, however, Turn 5, the fifth and final part of the dungeon, is still a stiff challenge. It’s theoretically simple, consisting of nothing more than a boss fight between a party of eight people and a rather pissed-off dragon called Twintania, but it’s a very demanding confrontation, requiring detailed knowledge of the mechanics, what to expect from the fight at every stage and fast reactions. As such, it’s still a significant achievement to make it all the way through.

It’s taken a good few hours — and several different parties — over the course of the evening to get through, but we eventually made it by the skin of our teeth. Not before we had an agonising defeat with Twintania’s HP down to just 1%, of course, but we eventually made it nonetheless.

Turn 5 in particular is a good example of how high-level content in MMOs differs from more accessible challenges such as dungeons with lower player counts and open-world content. It demands either solid communication — which is why many players choose to make use of voice chat rather than the game’s text-based chat — or extensive knowledge of what to expect from the fight. Or, preferably, both, because even with an experienced group, sometimes people’s attention wanders, causing mistakes that can easily snowball out of control. Not only that, though, but as cheesy as it sounds, the amount of teamwork required for a successful clear is the sort of thing that really helps to build bonds between friends.

It’s the kind of challenge that I don’t think would be for everyone. Turn 5 in particular presents such a daunting challenge to many players that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were plenty of dedicated endgame players who never cleared it. Which is a bit of a shame, as it’s a spectacular, genuinely thrilling fight — and the perfect antidote to those people who feel that other content in the game is a little on the easy side. (It definitely is if you overgear yourself, which is quite easy to do these days.) Not only that, but my God, did it feel good when we eventually beat it. There may have been an audible “Yes!” from everyone participating when that HP bar finally dropped to 0.

Anyway. Battling that fearsome foe has led me to the doorstep of 4am, and so I’m going to go and get a few hours of sleep now. Well-earned, I’d say.