1976: The Sonic Game That Never Was

I’ve been pretty restrained with the current Steam sale, but one game I did pick up today was Freedom Planet, an homage to ’90s mascot platformers and particularly to Sonic the Hedgehog-style speedy platformers. And I’ve only played three levels so far, but I’m already gobsmacked by quite how good it is.

Freedom Planet tells the tale of the Kingdom Stone, a powerful artifact that is stolen by a horrible alien dude, and the quest of a plucky band of heroes to rescue it. The playable cast includes Lilac, a purple dragon that looks like a tsundere female Sonic; a green cat called Carol; and an overexcitable dog-like thing called Milla. There’s also an alien who thinks disguising himself as a duck is the best way to blend in — although on a planet of furries, that’s probably not all that unfair an assumption.

You can play the game in two ways: Adventure mode punctuates the levels with some lengthy, fully voiced cutscenes that tell the unfolding story, while Classic Mode allows you to play it in authentically old-school fashion without having to worry about narrative. When you’re in the platforming segments, you control your chosen character as they run, jump, climb, bounce and kick the shit out of enemies in their way. Each character handles noticeably differently and forces you to approach the levels in a different way, and some hugely enjoyable but challenging boss fights force you to play methodically rather than just mashing the attack button randomly.

It’s an absolutely beautiful game. Deliberately taking a low-resolution pixel art aesthetic but running in high definition for some beautifully sharp corners, each and every character is packed full of a ton of visual personality, with lots of different and unique animations for different situations. During the cutscenes, the characters make appropriate poses and animations according to the things they’re saying rather than just flapping their heads, and the whole thing is just so full of character that you can’t help but be drawn into the rather silly (yet surprisingly dark at times) plot.

And it plays as good as it looks, too; wonderfully tight, responsive controls mean that you never feel like you’re battling against the game, and the characters are always doing what you want them to do. Some tweaks have been made to Sonic’s basic formula, too; characters can run up walls and even along certain ceilings without too much difficulty, a double-jump special move makes traversal a little more straightforward, and each character has their own unique super-special abilities that help them get around as well as kill things.

I’ve only played a few levels so far but I like it a whole lot, and am looking forward to exploring it further. That will probably have to wait, however, because tomorrow is Heavensward day, and I’ve finished my work for the week, so I know exactly what I’m doing all day tomorrow…

1975: Bahamut Down

In the early hours of this morning, Wuckle and I achieved something I hoped we’d achieve before Friday: we defeated Bahamut Prime in The Burning Heart, bringing our expeditions into the Final Coil of Bahamut to a close — for now, at least; we have some members of our static raid group who are still yet to clear these fights, so we’ll be helping them through at some point soon.

As the “true final boss” of the game, I was hoping that the Bahamut Prime fight would be pretty spectacular, and sure enough I wasn’t disappointed. Here’s a video (from my character’s perspective as a Black Mage) of our clear:

The fight is not only a suitably challenging battle to bring the main endgame raid of “vanilla” Final Fantasy XIV to a close, it’s also a fitting conclusion for a Final Fantasy game. Japanese role-playing games are often known for getting a little… peculiar in their final confrontations, with final bosses often being fought in space, in clouds of darkness, in strange swirling miasmas or inside the cores of planets. In the case of Final Fantasy XIV, your battle against Bahamut Prime takes place within Bahamut’s own heart — Bahamut Prime, it seems, is not literally Bahamut himself (since he is both absolutely massive and in the process of being regenerated by the various Coils) but rather a manifestation of his will and rage.

This doesn’t stop him being a formidable opponent, mind you. The fight combines mechanics from a number of earlier battles to create a confrontation where you have to use everything you’ve learned about handling mechanics to be successful. There’s heavy amounts of damage. There’s people taking responsibility for ensuring the group isn’t wiped out by carelessness or inattention. There’s puddles of nasty shit on the floor that you have to drop carefully. And, of course, there are Divebombs, Final Fantasy XIV’s most notorious enemy ability, first introduced in the Turn 5 fight against Twintania, later seen in a somewhat different format in the Turn 9 fight against Nael deus Darnus and finally seen from not one but two independent sources in the Bahamut Prime battle.

Divebombs are notorious because in the case of Turn 5 in particular, they were the “roadblock” that stopped a lot of groups from progressing further, simply because they’re tricky to handle properly and can have devastating consequences for the whole group if handled incorrectly. Their inclusion in each of the three “final” battles in the three separate parts of Coil shows the battle designers’ awareness that they are a challenge — albeit a surmountable one — and a desire to test players’ abilities to the maximum, often without the helpful visual telegraphs that many of the other enemy attacks in the game have.

But anyway. You didn’t come for a deconstruction of the mechanics of Final Fantasy XIV’s raids. (Probably.) You came to hear me enthuse about beating a spectacular final boss fight — and, if you’ve watched the video, you’ll see that it most certainly is.

As I’ve written about a few times previously on these pages, I’m a big fan of well-done final confrontations, and a big part of an effective one in my book is good use of music. Turn 5 and Turn 9 (the previous “final bosses” of the game prior to the introduction of Final Coil) both had great music that was unique to the fight (or “almost unique” in the case of Turn 5 — it’s also used for the final boss of the main 2.0 storyline as well as a later confrontation); Turn 13, meanwhile, makes stunningly effective use of the game’s main theme song “Answers”.

“Answers” is one of the first things you hear in A Realm Reborn, since it accompanies the dramatic introduction sequence that depicts the end of the 1.0 world through the Calamity — an event that those who played the original incarnation of Final Fantasy XIV actually lived through.

The Calamity saw the descent of the artificial moon Dalamud as a result of the machinations of Nael van Darnus, an overly ambitious Imperial legatus and the main antagonist of the 1.0 storyline. As the moon approached Eorzea, however, an unexpected thing happened: it burst open to reveal a very angry Bahamut, who proceeded to lay waste to the realm in his somewhat understandable rage — after all, you’d be pissed off if you’d been locked inside a moon since ancient times, wouldn’t you?

All looks lost for Eorzea, but the intervention of Archon Louisoix, a major character in the 1.0 storyline and quests, sees something mysterious happen that no-one quite understands or remembers. Everyone wakes up five years later in a realm that is somewhat different to what it once was, but still very much intact. This is how A Realm Reborn kicks off, but the main storyline then goes off in its own direction and the truth of what really happened in the Calamity doesn’t start to be revealed when (if) you venture into the Binding Coil of Bahamut.

Through your explorations of the three Coils, you discover not only the truth behind the Calamity, but also what happened to a number of important characters who had apparently disappeared or died — most notably, Louisoix himself and Nael. Needless to say, everything comes back to Bahamut in the end — but during your investigations you also discover exactly what it was that led to Bahamut’s imprisonment inside the artificial moon, and why he’s so full of rage and resentment towards humanity.

Since “Answers” is a song so closely tied to this storyline, it’s fitting that it should be the accompaniment for its final conclusion. And it’s used beautifully throughout the fight, too, beginning with the mournful baritone lyrics speaking of suffering and pain, moving through the gentler, sweeter female lyrics that speak of “the land’s light of justice” and walking free before eventually culminating in the gloriously thick-sounding choral finale. The music isn’t just played straight through, though; the simple, sparse baritone singing is used in the fight’s first phase, the female lyrics come in in the second phase as you start having to deal with Bahamut’s minions as well as the dragon god himself, and the explosion of passion that is the finale comes as Bahamut Prime begins casting his ultimate attack Teraflare: a devastating blast of flaming energy that, assuming you survive, signals the beginning of the end.

Final Fantasy XIV uses music spectacularly well throughout to help with its storytelling. Each of the story’s main confrontations are accompanied by their own unique theme tunes, many of which have relevant lyrics. The presentation of the game’s absolutely, positively, definitely final battle (until Heavensward, obviously) is no exception to this, and I’m very excited to hear what Soken and his team come up with to accompany our new adventures.

It’s now 1am, though, and since I’ve had like three hours sleep, I think it’s probably time I caught up a bit.

1970: Phoenix Down

We cleared The Final Coil of Bahamut, Turn 3 (aka Turn 12) in Final Fantasy XIV this evening. That means there’s only one more boss left to go until I’ve officially cleared everything in the game at least once. Said boss is a biggie, however; I’d expect nothing less, both for the “true final boss” of the game and for the “true final boss” of a Final Fantasy game.

Turn 12 is an enjoyable fight, though. It took a bit of practice to get it right, but we eventually got there without too much difficulty and frustration. It’s interesting in that it’s quite unforgiving of any mistakes you might make, but also relatively straightforward and easy once everyone knows what they’re doing. There’s a lot less in the way of randomness than some of the other encounters (particularly in Coil) so there’s a lot less in the way of unexpected things for the party to deal with — any unfortunate happenings can usually be traced directly back to someone doing something wrong somewhere.

Interestingly, a guildmate pointed out that the fight is very unforgiving because unforgiveness is an important narrative theme of the confrontation itself. I won’t spoil the story context of it for those who are yet to clear and hoping to remain unspoiled — it’s a significant narrative moment in the grand scheme of Final Fantasy XIV’s overarching storyline, particularly the spectacular cutscene that follows your victory — but I found it really cool that the mechanics of the game mirrored the narrative themes so nicely. It’s a subtle thing, but as someone who is very much interested in the different ways interactive entertainment can tell stories, I liked it very much.

I’ve been a little burnt out on the game recently, as prior to the imminent expansion Heavensward it’s been going through its longest drought of new content since it launched, and it’s been hard to motivate myself to keep running the same things over and over again, particularly as in some cases the things I “need” to run for various quests are things that have been in the game since launch, and as such I can probably do them in my sleep. (The Aurum Vale is a bit of an exception; I kind of like that there’s a dungeon that can still kick the arse of an unprepared or complacent party, even if it can be frustrating to plough through sometimes.)

There’s also the fact that with Heavensward comes a level cap increase, too, and as such a lot of the shiny, top-end gear that everyone’s been stocking up on will probably be irrelevant in a matter of weeks following the expansion’s release — though not much has been revealed about new gear as yet, so it will be interesting to see how they deal with the discrepancy between character level (currently capped at 50, rising to 60 with Heavensward) and gear level (currently capped at 130, with a couple of individual items being level 135) without revamping the whole system. (Or perhaps they will revamp the whole system, I don’t know. Either way, I’m looking forward to it.)

Running T12 tonight, though, reminded me the main reason I play this game; it’s not to always be running new and exciting things, it’s not to bring down fearsome foes — though that’s cool — and it’s not to experience the story (which is also great) — but instead it’s to have a good time with people who have become really good friends over the course of the last couple of years. The feeling of camaraderie you build when playing a game like this over a long period is unlike anything else in all of gaming, and it’s a delight to be able to team up for nights like tonight, where everyone bands together against a common challenge and helps each other out.

So yeah. I may be a little burnt out on grinding for tomestones and the current gear treadmill, but there’s still plenty of life in Eorzea’s champion Amarysse yet; and I have no doubt whatsoever that Yoshi-P and his team will deliver a spectacular experience with Heavensward that will make me fall in love with the game all over again. Only 6 days until Early Access starts… man, I better finish Omega Quintet before then…

1963: Cold Steel

XSEED Games, localisation specialists extraordinaire, made a number of delightful announcements for fans of Japanese games earlier today. Firstly was the entirely expected but now thankfully confirmed news that Senran Kagura Estival Versus is coming to Western PS4s and Vitas later in the year — I’m supremely happy about this, as Senran Kagura is a fantastic series with some of the best characterisation out there.

Secondly, the more “major” news for many was the announcement that Trails of Cold Steel — known to Japanese fans as Sen no Kiseki or its previous unofficial English moniker Trails in the Flash — is also coming West. Not only that, the first of its two chapters is pretty much finished and almost ready to go.

For the unfamiliar, Trails of Cold Steel is part of the Legend of Heroes series by Falcom, a long-running and deeply, deeply respected series of role-playing games. We haven’t had a lot of them over here in the West, but PSP (and later PC) installmentTrails in the Sky First Chapter came out a few years back to critical acclaim — I wrote some words about it here — and its own Second Chapter is coming shortly having nearly killed poor Andrew Dice of Carpe Fulgur, who worked on the mammoth job of translating its extremely substantial script.

After the initial joy at the announcement came some concern from long-standing series fans who had played Trails in the Sky’s follow-up games Zero no Kiseki, Ao no Kiseki and Trails in the Sky Third Chapter. Unlike many of the previous Legend of Heroes games, the Kiseki games have a deep relationship with one another, with each of the three “groups” of games (Trails in the Sky, Zero/Ao no Kiseki and Trails of Cold Steel) unfolding on a different part of the same continent. The games all refer to one another and act as “prequels” to one another, so some fans were concerned that newcomers to Trails of Cold Steel would be thrown in at the deep end having missed three whole games’ worth of lore and background. And the Kiseki series is not what you’d call light on lore; in fact, it features some of the most well-realised worldbuilding of any RPG I’ve played.

Brittany “Hatsuu” Avery of Xseed, one of my absolute favourite people in the games industry, took to the Xseed blog to address some of these concerns. And she’s certainly set my mind at rest.

To summarise, the reasons why we’re not getting Zero and Ao — yet, anyway, since there’s a strong suggestion that they will come at a later date, probably on PC — is partly due to technological and marketing concerns. Zero and Ao are PSP games, you see, and while there are still a few PSP games trickling out here and there due to their Vita compatibility — Trails in the Sky Second Chapter will be one — the PSP as a platform has technically been “dead” for some time. As such, it makes sense to push out Trails of Cold Steel for PS3 and Vita, since both of those platforms are still relevant at this time — PS3 is on the decline somewhat, but while developers such as Idea Factory/Compile Heart, Nippon Ichi and Square Enix have made the transition to PS4, there are still a number of PS3 titles incoming for the next year or two at least. Vita, meanwhile, for all the press’ attempts to declare it “dead” every few weeks, is enjoying a small-scale but successful existence as the go-to platform for fans of role-playing games and other Japanese fare.

Hatsuu also notes that Xseed took this decision with the full approval of the games’ original developers Falcom, whose original intention was always that the three sub-series of the overarching Kiseki storyline could stand on their own and be played in any order. In fact, what you’d get from playing them “out of order” would be an experience and perspective on the overall story unique to Western players and different to what Japan had. Kind of like the difference between watching the Star Wars films in chronological order of release or watching them in “canonical” order from I-VI.

Trails in the Sky First Chapter was a stunning game that I enjoyed very much, and I’m glad to see the rest of this highly regarded series is coming West. It may not be in the “right” order and that may have a few snooty fans being a bit salty, but I’m more than happy to support Xseed taking on ambitious projects of this magnitude and delivering them with aplomb. Xseed are one of my favourite developer-publisher-localisation outfits right now, and they deserve the support of anyone who loves Japanese games.

1923: Target: Bahamut

After successfully clearing The Second Coil of Bahamut in Final Fantasy XIV a while back, our raid group is now on to the Final Coil of Bahamut — the last four encounters in this particular part of the story, and, like its predecessors, some of the toughest fights in the game.

Since we’re approaching the release of expansion pack Heavensward, which will feature an all-new raid set inside giant fortress/robot thing Alexander, The Final Coil of Bahamut has been “nerfed” slightly in order to allow a few more people to make it through. Specifically, the “Echo” bonus that was gradually introduced in previous Turns has been brought in, giving anyone who enters an immediate 10% boost to their maximum HP, damage dealt and healing.

This doesn’t make the encounters easy, by any means — although we’ve all cleared Turn 10 (aka The Final Coil of Bahamut, Turn 1) several times, today we had real difficulty with it for some reason. So after a while we gave up and took a look at Turn 11, which none of us had seen at all before.

For the unfamiliar, the Binding Coil of Bahamut storyline in Final Fantasy XIV is effectively a direct follow-up to how version 1.0 of the game ended — with “The Calamity”, which saw artificial moon Dalamud called down from the sky, only to burst open and reveal a very angry dragon god called Bahamut, who promptly proceeded to blow seven shades of shit out of Eorzea. Archon Louisoix — grandfather of Alphinaud and Alisae, the former of whom is a main character in A Realm Reborn’s main storyline and the latter of whom serves as the “protagonist” of sorts for the Binding Coil of Bahamut narrative — did something appropriately spectacular when all hope looked lost, leaving a number of adventurers temporarily trapped in limbo until they woke up five years later in an Eorzea that was in the process of being rebuilt. What happened to Bahamut? That’s the question that the Binding Coil of Bahamut sets out to answer, and you gradually discover bits and pieces about what really happened as you progress through it.

That’s not all, though. Although Final Fantasy XIV’s setting of Eorzea is very much “swords and magic” fantasy, with a hint of magical technology lifted pretty much directly from Final Fantasy VI, there’s also a hint of sci-fi in there. Like any good sprawling role-playing game worth its salt, Final Fantasy XIV has an ancient race of long-dead weirdos who left mysterious, technologically advanced relics all over the world. The background of said weirdos — known as the Allagans — runs as an interesting undercurrent to everything else that is going on, and is specifically explored through both the Crystal Tower and Binding Coil of Bahamut story arcs, with it being necessary to complete both to get the full picture — or at least, everything that has been revealed about them so far.

The Binding Coil of Bahamut is where some of the most interesting, exciting and surprising developments in this aspect of the game’s overall lore come, and it’s also home to some of the most spectacular visual settings in the whole game. By jumping head-first into the sci-fi angle, the Binding Coil of Bahamut is free to let loose with some enormously creative, absolutely massive environments that are quite unlike anything seen anywhere else in the game. Turn 11 in particular, which we saw for the first time tonight, is quite astonishing to behold, unfolding in and around an enormous scale model of the artificial moon Dalamud, and I understand that 12 and 13 are even more spectacular. I’m looking forward to it.

The thing I’m looking forward to most about this, though, is the fact that it represents the “true final boss” of the game as a whole as it exists today. And, while I haven’t spoiled myself on the encounters in Turn 12 and 13 as yet — though I can pretty much figure out who/what you’ll be fighting there — I have had a listen to the music. And it’s going to be quite the experience battling with this — the music from Turn 12 — in the background, I feel.

We have a big hydra… thing to flatten first, though, and we’re taking another pop at it tomorrow. Wish us luck!

1911: Life in Los Santos

I grabbed the PC version of Grand Theft Auto V this week. Grand Theft Auto is one of the few games where I’ll happily suckle on the foul teat of triple-A gaming because, unlike a lot of other recent releases, for the most part the games tend to actually work and live up to their potential rather than just being flashy showcases. (Of course, in Grand Theft Auto V’s case, its online component was completely broken at its console launch, but the single player worked perfectly, at least.)

I picked up the PC version not to play through the single-player game again — I enjoyed it on PS3, but not enough to play it again — but instead to delve into Grand Theft Auto Online, which has been gradually evolving since its barely functional initial incarnation into something rather interesting over the months since its original release.

I’m not yet fully convinced that it quite realises the ambition it clearly has, but it’s certainly interesting to play and fun with friends. I had a bit of a tool around with my friend Tim earlier tonight, and hopefully a couple of our other friends will be joining us in short order.

GTA Online starts with a rather overly long tutorial in which you’re introduced to race events, shooty bang-bang events and missions. After that you’re pretty much flung into the game world and invited to do what you want, whether that’s causing the traditional chaos of a Grand Theft Auto game, taking on other players in competitive challenges ranging from races to team-based shooting events, or simply exploring the world. There’s arguably less incentive to explore in GTA Online as in the single-player, since the online mode lacks single-player’s collectibles, but there’s a certain amount of fun to be had from just trying to get to different places and admire the scenery — because by golly, does the game ever look lovely on PC.

The default way a GTA Online session works is that you log on and are put in a “session” with up to 30 or so other players. Each player is wandering around the game world doing their own thing; they might be stealing cars, holding up stores or causing chaos. The latter option — attacking innocent pedestrians and destroying property — causes your “mental state” meter to rise, indicating that you’re becoming increasingly unhinged and dangerous, and once it reaches a certain level you will be highlighted on the map for other players to hunt down and kill for rewards. You can also just kill other players and attempt to take money they have failed to bank, too, but this also has an impact on your mental state.

The meat of the game comes in the form of “jobs”, which are instanced activities scattered around the map. The majority of these are races (in cars, aircraft, boats and on bicycles) or variations on deathmatch (last man standing, last team standing, team deathmatch, capture the thingy) but there are also missions to take on that are a little more like the activities you’d normally be doing in single player — things like chasing down cars, stealing things without the cops noticing and that sort of thing. Once you advance to a certain rank, you can also take on full-blown Heists with a team of four people, but I haven’t had the opportunity to try those yet.

When you hop into a Job, you have the opportunity to invite people. You can invite friends, crew members, the people who were in your free-roaming session or simply cast a wide net to anyone who might be interested in playing that job. Those people who were invited get a text message sent to their in-game phone and can join the Job wherever they are on the map at the time; once everyone is together and everything is in order — whoever is “hosting” the Job gets control over various settings, including the enjoyable ability to lock the camera angle to the new (and very impressive) first-person mode added for the PC version.

Completing a Job rewards you with money and Reputation Points, or RP. RP allows you to increase in rank, with more activities and purchasable items becoming available as you progress. In this way, the game starts fairly simple and gradually expands over time; “rank” isn’t quite the same as “level” in an MMO in that it has no impact on your character’s abilities — these can all be levelled up independently of one another — but rather it simply increases the amount of available content on offer to those of higher rank.

So far it seems like fun, though when playing with random people I haven’t seen much incentive for people to interact or talk to one another. I’ve seen people get into random firefights with one another, but certainly in free-roam it doesn’t seem ideally set up for “cooperative” play — there doesn’t seem to be a way of making a “party”, for example, though it is possible to create a friends-only session to ensure you only play with people that you like or trust.

I think the issue with GTA Online is that it’s not quite sure what it wants to be. It has some rather MMO-esque ideas — advancing in rank; daily, weekly and monthly challenges; instanced content — but the execution is a little wanting in a few areas. Load times are fairly astronomical, for one thing, and there are a few bugs here and there. Being an online game, though, in theory both of these issues can be fixed in time, so hopefully things will improve.

I don’t wish this to sound negative, though, because so far my few hours in GTA Online have been rather fun. Whether or not I stick with it in the long term remains to be seen, but I’m hoping it will be a game that a number of my friends and I can enjoy together on a semi-regular basis for some time yet.

1909: How to Black Mage

Following on from yesterday’s post summarising what I’ve learned about playing Paladin in Final Fantasy XIV, I will now follow up with what I have learned about playing Black Mage, the class I initially started playing the game in. Again, I’m not claiming to be the World’s Best Black Mage, but this is what works for me.

Golden Rules

As a DPS class, your job is to maximise your damage output as much as possible — but at the same time, you’re no good to anyone dead. Black Mages wear light armour and have significantly lower HP values than melee DPS classes, so try and avoid taking damage as much as possible. If it’s avoidable, you should be avoiding it — even if this comes at the expense of a spell you’re in the middle of casting.

In other words, if you find yourself in an area-effect marker and you’re in the middle of casting a spell, don’t hesitate, move, even if this interrupts your cast. The only exception to this is if your cast bar only has about 10% or so remaining, in which case the spell will still go off even if you start moving. Learn encounters and be able to anticipate attacks so you know when it’s safe to stand still and let off some spells and when you should be prioritising movement. If you outgear content, you may be able to survive some big hits, but this isn’t a good habit to get into. Particularly heavy hits will interrupt your cast anyway, so just get out of the way, okay?

Black Mage Basics

Learn how Astral Fire and Umbral Ice work. Astral Fire increases the damage from your Fire spells but nullifies MP regeneration. Umbral Ice increases your MP regeneration at the expense of damage for your Fire spells. Thunder spells are unaffected by whether you’re in Astral Fire or Umbral Ice, so should be cast while you’re in Umbral Ice and regenerating for your next barrage of Fire spells.

Blowing a Thing Up

Black Mages have two real modes they’ll be in depending on content: single-target, used for bosses and individual enemies, and area-effect, used in dungeons and particularly on big pulls.

When attacking a single target, here’s the sequence of spells you should be using:

Fire III -> Fire -> repeat Fire until 770MP or less -> Blizzard III -> Thunder I -> Blizzard I -> repeat

This has (apparently) been calculated as the optimum DPS rotation for most Black Mages, since it allows you to cast pretty much continually. The 770MP threshold is there so that you have enough MP to cast Blizzard III once — which puts you into Umbral Ice status and thus starts your MP regeneration — and get off a cast of Thunder I (which deals damage over time) even if you haven’t yet had a “tick” of MP replenishing.

Why not Thunder II or Thunder III? Because they cast considerably slower. Once you hit level 50, Thunder II will be largely irrelevant, and Thunder III should be saved for your “Thundercloud” procs, which allow you to instantly cast a Thunder spell to deal all its damage immediately plus the damage-over-time effect it usually does.

On that note, because Thunder III has a stronger, longer damage-over-time effect than Thunder I, if you hit a Thundercloud proc before Blizzard III in the combo above, replace the Thunder I with another Blizzard I or Scathe, since there’s no sense “overwriting” the Thunder III status effect with an inferior effect. The only exception to this should be if there’s only a couple of seconds left on the Thunder effect.

When to Hit Firestarter and Thundercloud

If the target currently doesn’t have a Thunder effect on it, Thundercloud can be hit immediately to bump up your DPS somewhat — remember to use Thunder III rather than Thunder I. If the target does currently have Thunder on it, it may be worth saving it for the Umbral Ice phase; the immediate cast may allow you to get an extra Blizzard I or Scathe in there at the end for a small DPS increase.

Firestarter should be used immediately if in Astral Fire, and never in Umbral Ice. If you get a Firestarter with your last Fire before your Blizzard III and it’s too late to cancel the Blizzard III cast, don’t panic; cast Blizzard III -> Thunder -> Blizzard I as normal, by which point your MP should be back at full, then drop in a Transpose. This puts you back at Astral Fire I status, which is a slight damage decrease from Astral Fire III, but still enough to make the free Fire III from Firestarter meaningful. After using Firestarter in this way, continue from Fire.

Blowing Several Things Up

When facing three or more targets, it’s probably more efficient to use area-effect spells. Here’s a sequence of spells that works well and is apparently, again, optimised for maximum DPS.

Fire III -> Flare -> Transpose -> Fire III -> Fire II -> Fire II -> repeat from Flare

This combo allows you to use Flare considerably more often than the frequently seen Fire III -> Fire II until 250MP -> Flare and thus represents an increase in damage potential.

Target an enemy as close to the centre of the group as possible. If the enemy you’re targeting is down to about 20% HP or less, switch to another target with more HP so you don’t have your cast interrupted by the enemy being killed before you get your spell off.

Double and Triple Flares

Flare normally costs all your MP and requires at least 250MP to cast in the first place. As such, it usually leaves you with 0MP in Astral Fire III status, which is no good to anyone. As such, Transpose is normally used immediately after Flare to regenerate some MP, and indeed this is how the sequence above is built.

However, there’s a couple of little tricks Black Mages can use to get more than one Flare off in quick succession. All you need to do is get at least 250MP back, which can be done using either an X-Ether potion or the skill Convert, which sacrifices some of your HP to give you some MP.

To perform two Flares in a row, do one of the following:

Fire III -> Flare -> X-Ether -> Flare
Fire III -> Flare -> Convert -> Flare

To perform three Flares in a row, simply combine the two:

Fire III -> Flare -> X-Ether -> Flare -> Convert -> Flare

Since Flare has a long cast time, it’s worth using Swiftcast on the final Flare in one of these sequences to make it cast instantly.

Note that triple Flare in particular generates an enormous amount of aggro, so either warn your tank that you’re going to do it, or make use of the level 34 Bard skill Quelling Strikes — which Black Mages can use as a cross-class ability — to reduce the aggro you’re generating before you unleash the beast.

Also note that X-Ethers, Convert and Swiftcast all have cooldowns of varying lengths (Swiftcast is back up quickest, then Convert, then X-Ethers), so don’t double or triple Flare carelessly; save it for when you’re dealing with a large group or need to deal a massive amount of damage very quickly.

Staying Safe

Black Mages have a few skills that help them stay safe, chief among which are Manawall and Manaward. Manawall will absorb two physical attacks before it’s dispelled. Manaward will absorb up to 30% of your maximum HP’s worth of damage before it’s dispelled. Both have a time limit and a moderate-length cooldown, though, so you can’t simply keep them up all the time.

It can sometimes be tough to tell which are physical attacks and which are magic attacks. As a general rule, anything that involves elemental damage — fire, ice, thunder, wind, water — is probably magic, while everything else is physical. Note that the earth damage Titan does seems to be considered to be physical damage rather than magic damage despite it being elemental in nature.

One interesting side-effect of Manawall — and the game’s damage system in general — is that if you don’t take any damage from something, associated Bad Things won’t happen either. This means that Manawall, when used effectively, can be used to avoid status effects and knockbacks. Learn which encounters allow you to do this.

Another interesting ability that Black Mage has is Aetherial Manipulation, which causes you to fly through the air to a target player. This is useful for getting out of the way quickly — or in trials like The Whorleater (Extreme) where you’re at risk of falling off the platform, it can be a lifesaver.

Finally, squishy party members and tanks alike will thank you for casting Apocatastasis on them, which reduces elemental damage for a short period. Plus it makes a great noise. Note that once someone has had this cast on them, they can’t have it cast on them again for a short period. The ability also has a cooldown period, so only use this when it will actually be of benefit to the party member in question!

1908: How to Paladin

Can’t think of much to write this evening, so since I was helping some people out in Final Fantasy XIV earlier, I thought I may as well share the things I helped them out with in a more coherent form. That way, if anyone asks in future, I can simply point them to this post. Wild, huh.

Okay. Over the next couple of days, I’m going to share what I’ve learned from playing Paladin and Black Mage in Final Fantasy XIV. Paladin is a tank class, while Black Mage is a DPS class. Both are very different and have nothing to do with each other; they are collected together here simply because they’re the two classes I have the most experience with.

I’m also not claiming to be the be-all, end-all authority on either of these classes; I’m simply sharing what I know in the hope that it will be of some use to other players like me who enjoy the game, enjoy challenging the higher-end content like Coil but who aren’t five-days-a-week, six-hours-a-night hardcore raiders.

All right then. Let’s begin with Paladin.

Note: The following information assumes a level 50 character with access to all its abilities at the time of writing, but is mostly applicable to lower-level play, too; you simply don’t have as many abilities to use.

Paladin

As a Paladin, your job is to get punched in the face in lieu of the rest of your party. This is what tanks do. Paladins differ from the other tanks — Warriors — in that they have a lower amount of overall HP and damage output, but a greater selection of defensive abilities. Warrior, conversely, relies on a combination of self-healing tied to damage output, much higher damage output overall and significantly higher base HP.

Remember, as a tank your job is to maintain “aggro” (also known as “threat” or “enmity” depending on who you’re talking to) rather than dealing a lot of damage. You can check aggro in two ways: the coloured gems in the target list on the left of the screen — ideally you want them to be red, indicating that those targets are targeting you and not others — or the little bars that appear over the job icons in the party list in the top-left corner. Know which abilities generate the most aggro: any damage will generate aggro, but Savage Blade and Rage of Halone are specifically designed to generate more than usual. Flash generates aggro over a circular area around you, as does Circle of Scorn. And Shield Lob generates aggro at range. Provoke does something a little different, which we’ll talk about later.

Paladin is arguably the “easier” of the two tank classes to play, so for those trying tanking for the first time — like me, when I started Paladin — it’s a good choice. Warrior is more complex, with lots to keep track of at once, so if you’re uneasy it’s a good idea to save that for later.

Getting Ready

In a four-player dungeon, make sure you are in Shield Oath. This makes you take less damage and also increases the amount of aggro you generate. In an eight-player trial or raid, agree with the other tank who will be “main tank” and who will be “off tank”. If you’re main, go with Shield Oath. If you’re off, go with Sword Oath unless you’ll both be picking up separate enemies at the same time, as in the Battle in the Big Keep trial, in which case you should both be on Shield Oath in most situations.

The Pull

As a tank, it’s usually your job to kick off an encounter. In a four-player dungeon where you are the only tank, you should do this by running towards the group of enemies and using Shield Lob on what you intend to be your initial main target — some tanks like to mark this target to make it clear to their party which target they should attack first. The reason you should use Shield Lob rather than just running in and using a close-range attack is that it allows you to get an immediate, ranged head-start on aggro generation, because once the DPS and healers get going, you’re going to need that head-start, particularly if there’s a gear disparity between you and them.

Run right through the group of enemies to the other side, then turn around so you are facing the rest of your party and the enemies are facing away from the party. (This is so any enemies with “cleave” attacks — cone-shaped attacks that hit multiple targets — won’t hit other party members.) As you do so, use Flash at least twice, and Circle of Scorn if it’s ready to use. This extends your head-start on aggro on your main target and also builds aggro on the surrounding enemies.

You Got ‘Em, Now Keep ‘Em

What you do next depends on how many enemies you’re dealing with.

If you’re fighting a single enemy — like a boss, for example — then go with Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone repeatedly. This is the simplest possible tanking situation, and you are unlikely to lose aggro like this. If you are, make sure you are using Shield Oath.

If you’re fighting a small group of enemies (two or three), go with Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone on the main target, drop in a Flash every couple of times around the combo and change targets every couple of times to make sure you generate aggro on the whole group. Healers generate aggro by healing, so making sure you hit each member of the group every so often — with your main focus being on the main target — means that enemies are less likely to peel away and clobber the healer.

If you’re fighting a large group of enemies (three or more), as you will probably be doing on a “big pull” or a speedrun of a dungeon, go with Fast Blade -> Riot Blade -> Flash. Although Riot Blade produces less aggro than Savage Blade and Rage of Halone, it has the convenient side-effect of regenerating MP, which you’ll be expending with every Flash. By doing this combo, you have effectively bottomless MP with which to keep using Flash and keep the attention of the group. Make sure you move so that Flash hits all the enemies, but try and keep all enemies in front of you and facing away from the party as usual.

Getting ‘Em Back and Tank-Swapping

Lost aggro on an enemy? This is where Provoke enters the picture. Provoke is notorious for having the worst tooltip in the whole game, so here is how it works: when you use Provoke, your aggro level on the target is set to the value of the person who currently has the highest amount of aggro, plus one. “One aggro” is not very much, so if you don’t follow up Provoke with something, you’ll lose the target again and have pretty much wasted the ability.

As such, good Provoke practice is to use Fast Blade -> Savage Blade, then Provoke, then Rage of Halone to secure your lead on aggro. Alternatively, you can Provoke then Shield Lob if you need to pull in an enemy that has moved away from you. In a pinch, so long as you follow Provoke with something, you’ll probably keep the enemy on you.

Tank-swapping is simply deliberately using Provoke as above — including the follow-up hits — to take another tank’s target off them. This mostly comes into play during Coil and Extreme Primal fights, when taking too many stacks of a debuff a boss gives you will cause you to die. You can also use this to switch places with a main tank that seems to be struggling to mitigate the incoming damage if you know you’ll be able to handle it better.

Cooldowns and You

Paladin’s basic combos are easy to learn and less complex than Warrior’s, so much of the skill is in knowing when to use your “cooldowns” — the abilities which have a persistent effect for a short period, then take a short while to “cool down” before they can be used again. Here’s what they do:

Fight or Flight increases damage and, consequently, aggro. This is good to use at the beginning of a fight and indeed whenever it’s up. You’re never going to be going toe-to-toe with a good DPS numbers-wise, but this will help.

Rampart decreases the damage you take by 20%. It has a fairly short cooldown so in most dungeons you can simply use it when it’s available. In trials, which tend to be more “scripted” fights, you’ll want to save it for when you know big hits are coming. The Triple -> Spark attack the boss in The Chrysalis does is a good example, as is Ravensbeak in Turn 9 (though if you’re doing Turn 9, you probably don’t need a guide like this); you’ll still take a chunk of damage, but your healers will thank you.

Sentinel decreases the damage you take by 40%. It has a shorter duration and a longer cooldown than Rampart, so it’s an ability to be used a little more carefully. Again, if you know a big hit is coming, Sentinel is a good ability to use. In long fights, use Rampart first, then Sentinel, then in most cases Rampart will have cooled down by the time you need to soak another big hit.

Convalescence increases the amount you are healed by for a short period. If you are getting low on HP and want to help your healers out, popping this will get you fighting fit in no time, so long as you do it quickly enough. It is worth setting up a short macro to announce when you are using this so that the healers know you need healing in case their attention has been on other party members. That macro looks something like this:

/p Using Convalescence! <se.1>
/ac “Convalescence” <me>

Awareness means you won’t take critical hits for a short period. This is most useful during large pulls where you are taking lots of hits in quick succession — an unlucky run of criticals could do significant damage. It’s also useful to pop before a big hit if you have time; an already damaging move critting could knock you to the floor if you’re not prepared.

Bulwark increases your likelihood to block with your shield, which reduces damage. Again, it’s particularly useful to use when lots of hits are coming in at once, but it’s also good to use if both Rampart and Sentinel are on cooldown. Unlike those two abilities, it’s not a guaranteed damage reduction as there’s a degree of randomness as to whether or not you’ll block each hit, but it’s better than nothing.

Tempered Will doesn’t reduce damage at all, but it has two important functions: it cures Bind and Heavy status, and also makes you temporarily immune to any abilities that would normally cause you to move against your will. Titan’s Landslide and Leviathan’s deck slams are good examples. By popping Tempered Will before these moves go off, you’ll be able to continue standing where you are without worrying about being knocked off, but don’t get too overconfident with it!

Hallowed Ground makes you temporarily invincible for a very short period. Note that there is a short “animation lock” between triggering the skill and it actually activating, so it’s not an immediate “don’t lose” button. This is good to use during large pulls if the healer isn’t keeping up with the incoming damage, or when you know a big hit is coming and you’re not at full HP or your mitigation cooldowns like Rampart and Sentinel aren’t available. It also has a very long cooldown, so in most situations you’ll get just the one chance to use it effectively. It’s also useful to macro this so the healers know they won’t have to heal you for a short period; follow the same format as for Convalescence above.

Good Places to Practice

If you’re new to tanking, it can be daunting to think about what to try doing — no-one likes to mess up, after all, and if the tank messes up it’s pretty obvious. Here are some good fights where you can get some solid practice:

Brayflox’s Longstop is a good low-level dungeon to familiarise yourself with tanking effectively. Its final boss Aiatar demands that you both move it out of the pools of poison it spits and keep it facing away from the party. As a low-level dungeon, though, you don’t have access to all of your abilities.

Wanderer’s Palace is probably the first level 50 dungeon you’ll unlock, and it’s very easy to outgear it. This is a good place to practice doing larger than normal pulls, though be sure to check with your party if they’re okay with this before charging in!

Wanderer’s Palace (Hard) has a final boss that is good practice for moving and positioning enemies. Keep it out of the swirly areas on the ground, otherwise he’ll be considerably buffed; move him effectively throughout the fight so you don’t cover too much of the arena with unsafe areas.

Labyrinth of the Ancients, the first of the 24-player Crystal Tower raids, has far too many tanks, but the first encounters in this dungeon are good for practicing picking up enemies and grouping them together for area-effect classes like Black Mage to kill as a group. The Atomos fight is also good practice if you volunteer to be the one who picks up the additional monsters that appear and bring them to your comrades standing on the pad.

The Chrysalis, a trial towards the end of the main storyline, is good practice at cooldown management. In particular, pay attention to when the boss casts Triple and Spark; that’s the time to use Rampart or Sentinel to mitigate the incoming damage.

The Howling Eye (Extreme) is a good fight to learn about how two tanks are used. Not only do you need to keep the two additional enemies Chirada and Suparna away from one another, you’ll also need to tank-swap the Spiny Plume enemy to prevent either of you taking too many stacks of the “Thermal Low” debuff and dying.

Thornmarch (Extreme) is another good fight to practice working together with another tank amid absolute chaos going on around you. You’ll need to Focus Target your partner, and tank-swap the boss at the appropriate time. At the same time, you’ll need to make sure you’re positioned somewhere that isn’t going to get other people hurt.

The Binding Coil of Bahamut, Turn 1 is pretty straightforward until the last boss. When it splits in half, one of the two tanks will have to Provoke it off the other and drag it elsewhere, positioning it so that neither its frontal cleaves or its tail swipes hit other players. With the enormous “Echo” buff on this content now, there’s not much to worry about here.

Good luck! Tomorrow, Black Mage.

1896: Mastering War

Ahead of the release of Final Fantasy XIV’s expansion Heavensward, I’ve been levelling some of the other classes that I either haven’t touched or had only levelled a little bit. Today I reached level 50 on my fourth battle class: Warrior. (My previous 50s were Black Mage, White Mage and Paladin, in that order; I now play Paladin more than anything.)

Warrior is one of the two tank jobs in the game — i.e. their job is to maintain the attention of enemies and get punched in the face so the rest of the party doesn’t get punched in the face. Having gained a lot of experience with how Paladin does things, I have to admit I was somewhat skeptical about how different Warrior could possibly be. After all, their reason for existing is the same, and it’s not like damage-dealing classes where you can make a distinction between ranged and melee characters; a tank is, by its very nature, a melee class.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how different it feels, though. This is down to several factors, both mechanical and aesthetic.

On the mechanics front, Warrior initially appears to be a more complex class to play. Whereas Paladin only really has two main “combos” of abilities to worry about — one for single-target threat generation, one for maintaining your stock of MP so you can keep aggro on larger groups — Warrior has several more, each of which has its own function. There’s a basic aggro-generating combo that is the backbone of your single-target tanking, but there are also two combos that branch off the damage-increasing “Maim” skill, one of which reduces the enemy’s damage output, another of which reduces their resistance to a particular kind of damage while increasing the healing you receive. Alongside this, fighting as a Warrior in your tank stance builds up stacks of “Wrath” which, when they reach five, can be expended for one of several special abilities.

So, to put things simply, there are more buttons to press as Warrior — or, more accurately, more different combinations of buttons to press according to the situation. Paladin is mostly about managing your defensive abilities to mitigate as much damage as possible; there’s still an element of this with Warrior, but it’s a much more aggressive, active class with self-heals and attacks that inflict various status effects.

Aesthetically is the other big different. Although most classes in Final Fantasy XIV work off a 2.5 second global cooldown (i.e. 2.5 seconds has to elapse before you can use another ability) and consequently play at the same “pace”, Warrior and Paladin feel worlds apart due to their animations and sound effects. Paladin’s sounds are higher in pitch, the animations more fluid; Warrior’s animations look more cumbersome and make lower-pitched, heavy-sounding impacts. The reason for this big difference is the difference in weapons, of course — Paladins use a one-handed sword and shield, while warriors use axes as big as themselves — but it’s surprising quite how pronounced the contrast is between the two classes, even though the basic “pace” of how they play is very similar.

Having got Warrior to 50, I’m not sure if I’ll do much more with it, but I’m glad I’ve experimented with it and now have the flexibility to use it in endgame content when I want to. Overall I prefer the faster-feeling fluidity of Paladin, plus I know that class a lot better and thus feel more confident using it in difficult fights, but I’m not going to rule out a bit more axeplay in the future!

What’s next? Probably Bard, which I’ve already got to level 40; while a ranged DPS like my Black Mage, Bard plays very differently owing to the fact you don’t have to stand still to use abilities and don’t have as much of a set skill rotation as Black Mage does. After that it’s on to the classes I haven’t used much or at all before: Monk, Dragoon, Ninja and Arcanist (which becomes both Scholar and Summoner).

1870: Cards, Cards, Cards

Spent a bit of time playing Triple Triad in Final Fantasy XIV this evening, and had a lot of fun.

Triple Triad, for the uninitiated, was a card game introduced in Final Fantasy VIII. It’s a very simple game, although optional advanced rules can make it surprisingly brain-melting, particularly when they’re used in combination. And it’s a flexible enough game that, by playing around with these rules, a player with a “better” deck of cards isn’t necessarily always going to beat someone with “bad” cards.

For those who have never encountered the game, here’s how it works: There’s a 3×3 grid onto which you and your opponent take it in turns playing cards from a hand of five. (This means there will be one card left over at the end.) Cards have four numbers on them, corresponding to the four edges of the card. When you lay a card down and it “touches” the edge of another card (for example, you played a card in the middle-left space while there was already a card in the central space, meaning the right side of your card is touching the left side of the card already there) you compare the numbers. Under the normal rules, if the number you laid down is bigger than the number that was already there, you flip the card and claim it as your own. (For example, using the situation above, if the card in the middle had a “4” on its left edge, and the card you laid had a “5” or higher on its right edge, you’d claim the middle card.) Whoever has the most cards under their control when the board is filled wins. Simple.

The advanced rules fall into several different categories. Variations on “Open” mean that you and your opponent reveal either three or all of your cards from the outset, allowing for a degree of forward planning. “Random” disallows you from using the five-card decks you’ve built yourself, instead pulling five random cards from your complete collection. “Order” forces you to play the cards from your deck in the order you put them in there. “Chaos” forces you to play the cards from your deck in a random order. “Reverse” flips the normal rules on their head, meaning smaller numbers now beat larger numbers — this rule makes a “bad” deck suddenly very good. “Ascension” causes cards of the same type to inflate in value the more of them that are placed on the board. “Same” allows you to claim cards if you put down a card and the numbers on two of its sides match two cards already on the table. “Plus” is a similar rule, only instead of matching numbers, the two sides must add up to the same value. Both “Same” and “Plus” can set off combos, too, allowing you to potentially take the whole board in one go with a lucky or well-planned move.

As you can imagine, combining these rules can make for a game with a surprising amount of flexibility, and change the feel of it altogether. But even in its basic form, Triple Triad is a surprisingly compelling little diversion, and the more you play it, the more cunning little strategies you’ll spot and be able to adopt. Final Fantasy XIV allows you to challenge various non-player characters around the game world to a game — who may potentially give up some rare cards if you beat them — and also to play other players. In the latter case, you have the option of customising the rules to your liking, or throwing caution to the wind and having a “Roulette” match in which the rules are determined randomly. There are also regular tournaments — the first one started today — in which you have a set period of time in which to complete (and hopefully win!) as many games as you possibly can in order to score points and get yourself on the leaderboard.

It’s an extremely well fleshed-out version of a game that was a lot of fun to play against the computer in Final Fantasy VIII; it’s even more fun to be able to challenge friends to a game thanks to Final Fantasy XIV’s massively multiplayer nature.

And if nothing else, it’s something to do while waiting in a queue for a dungeon…