2231: Initial Impressions on Alexander: Midas

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Tonight, we cleared the last area of the new raid dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV… in its "normal" incarnation, anyway. Savage is likely to prove a somewhat stiffer challenge, but regular ol' vanilla had plenty of hurdles to overcome, too.

Now that we've been through all four of the new raids, I thought I'd ponder how I felt about them, and about Alexander as a whole compared to The Binding Coil of Bahamut.

The first thing to note about Alexander is that the overall tone of the whole thing is very different to Coil. Coil represented one of the most serious, dramatic parts of Final Fantasy XIV's story, and over its entirety revealed some very significant background lore about the Allagans and the Meracydians, both of whom we'd seen mentioned (and occasionally explored the relics of) but never encountered, mostly due to them both being long dead.

Alexander, meanwhile, largely concerns the goblins, and much like their Final Fantasy XI counterparts, goblins in Final Fantasy XIV are rather silly, afflicted with distinctive speech patterns and, for the most part, there for comic relief. They're not very threatening, in other words, so for them to be introduced as the main villains of the new raid cycle was… interesting, to say the least.

The overall aesthetic of Alexander is very different to Coil, too. Coil began as an expedition into the bowels of the earth and gradually gave way into a combination of fantastic, otherworldly scenery and pure sci-fi, futuristic environments, many of which were absolutely breathtaking in their scale. Alexander, conversely, has a pretty consistent "steampunk" look throughout its entirety, though Midas does a somewhat better job than Gordias in terms of presenting a bit of variety in the way things look.

This difference in aesthetic extends to the main attraction of the raids, too: the bosses. In Coil, you fought a wide variety of foes, ranging from a giant genetically modified snake to a fearsome dragon god via technologically advanced defence systems, a bioengineered lamia, a robot treant and, of course, the reincarnation of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0's main villain, Nael van Darnus, now going by Nael deus Darnus having apparently changed gender and gone a bit, well, dragonish.

Alexander, conversely, sees you fighting a lot of things in a similar mould: in Gordias, you fight a large steampunk robot thing, followed by a swarm of goblins and large steampunk robot things, followed by a squishy Pepsiman wannabe in what appears to be a sewage outlet, concluding with a battle against The Manipulator, which is a large steampunk robot thing. Midas is a bit better: first you fight a mad scientist goblin who keeps drinking his own concoctions and growing to Hulk-like proportions, then you fight a series of four large steampunk robot things, then you fight the main villain of the plot arc (and his cat), then finally you fight five large steampunk robot things — four of which you fought earlier in the raid — that then combine to make one enormous steampunk robot thing.

While I still like Alexander less than Coil in terms of its aesthetic and enemy designs, Midas is a big step in a better direction. Everything about it is better, from the variety between the four areas to the background plot that is revealed as you progress, which was rather lacking and forgettable in Gordias. It still lacks some of the outright drama that Coil had — the final boss of this particular cycle is an intense fight, but it's more chaotically humorous than terrifying like Twintania, Nael and Bahamut were — but things are improving a lot.

Of particular note is the boss music for the final boss, which I present with some pleasure for you below, in all its '70s anime glory:

Happy with how things have turned out with 3.2. I was getting concerned the game was losing its magic, but it's well and truly back on target.

2229: The Fist of the Son and The Cuff of the Son

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Been taking my time getting through the new Alexander raid (just the normal version) in Final Fantasy XIV over the last couple of evenings, and thought I'd write down a walkthrough for the first two floors, largely to refresh my own memory and perhaps to provide a convenient service to anyone passing by who wants to know such things.

As with Alexander: Gordias, Alexander: Midas is split into four areas, each of which allows you to get one piece of loot per week. These pieces of loot are tokens that can be exchanged for gear in Idyllshire in the same place you turn in Allagan Tomestones of Esoterics and Lore; like the gear from Gordias, you need varying numbers of tokens for different pieces of gear. Accessories require one bolt, so are the easiest to get, but are also often the smallest upgrade.

The Fist of the Son

Available loot: Bolt (1 needed for accessory), chain (1 needed for belt), pedal (2 needed for boots)

Run through the first area, and use the steam vents to jump up to the top of the room. Pass through the doorway and you'll be confronted with not one but two Fausts. They're much easier to handle than the one in The Fist of the Father, though; one tank take each, keep them together, focus down one at a time.

It's not over, though! After the second Faust drops, a pulsing AoE marker will appear on the floor. Get away from it, as Hummelfaust is going to drop down, dealing more damage the closer you are to its drop spot.

One tank should take Hummelfaust, the other should switch to DPSing and simply batter him down as quickly as possible. Much like OG Faust, this is designed as a DPS check to ensure that your group is going to be up to the job of toppling the subsequent bosses.

Once Hummelfaust is down, hop onto the conveyor belt to reach the boss room.

BOSS: Ratfinx Twinkledinks

This fight initially seems utterly bewildering, but it's actually fairly straightforward. You need to pay close attention to what is happening at all times, though; you might find it helpful to Focus Target Ratfinx to help keep an eye on what he's up to in case you need to target something else.

Before you start, mark the back-left corner of the room as A and the front-right corner as B. You'll be tanking Ratfinx at A, while B is set aside as a no-go area for a later mechanic.

Start the fight. Ratfinx will be reluctant to move as the battle begins, so take the opportunity to establish solid aggro if you're a tank. Once he transforms into his giant form, then you can move him over to A.

Ratfinx will proceed to pummel the main tank about the head, inflicting stacks of Headache, which increases damage taken. When Headache reaches 4 stacks, it becomes Concussion, which stuns you completely. When this happens, you'll see Ratfinx wind up for a big punch much like the one Sephirot does; at this point, the off-tank should immediately use Provoke and hit Ratfinx to take aggro from the original tank, and take the imminent big hit, which is slightly less big if you don't have Headache or Concussion.

Throughout the fight, Ratfinx will cast Bomb's Away, which brings one or more large bombs into the arena. When this happens, someone near the centre of the room should stand in the purple circle to activate the machinery, then at least one person should run to the red pool that forms to the side of the arena. Stepping in this turns you into a gorilla with just two abilities, the first of which allows you to punch bombs away with ease, and the second of which allows you to transform back into your normal form. Punch the bombs to B to keep them safely away from everyone, then change back and return to your normal role.

At various points throughout the battle, Ratfinx will mark a player and cast Glubgloop (or something similar). The marked player should get well out of the way of A, B and where the pools form under the syringes; after the AoE marker appears, a persistent puddle of goop will drop on the floor and stick around for a little while, so keep it out of the way, probably in one of the unmarked corners.

From his second giant transformation onwards, Ratfinx will start casting Boost. When he does this, a player needs to activate the machine in the middle and all players (including the tank) need to rush to the purple puddle to turn into a bird. By flying, you avoid his devastating ground-pound attack; once he's finished doing this, you can use Apothecary to change back into your normal form once again.

Repeat the process, with tanks keeping a careful eye out for Concussion and everyone else watching for Bomb's Away and Boost, and it won't be long before he's down. There are a few additional beasties that show up throughout the fight, but the off-tank can pick these up easily and they don't present much of a threat.

The Cuff of the Son

Available loot: Bolt (1 needed for accessory), pedal (2 needed for boots), lens (2 needed for headpiece)

Run forwards and engage the initial group of enemies. To take a bit of pressure off the main tank, the off-tank may want to take one of the two Gobwalkers. Burn down the enemies as quickly as possible and proceed down the corridor, where you'll be accosted by a number of Goblin Gliders. Tank and spank these, then jump down the passageway on the right of the corridor to be flung into the boss room, where you'll fight four bosses in succession. Don't worry; if you take one down, it stays down.

BOSS: Blaster

Blaster has two main attacks. The first is to drop mines in the arena. These will show AoE markers where they drop, and will continue to pulse afterwards. Do not stand on them, as they deal heavy damage and inflict various status effects in an area.

Blaster's second attack is to mark players; after a moment, he'll drop a Mirage version of himself on them, and after another moment or so, these will charge across the arena in the direction they're facing. Don't be in their way.

DPS down Blaster while avoiding these two mechanics and he'll fall easily.

BOSS: Brawler

Brawler has three attacks that don't have cast bars: you have to rely entirely on visual cues. These cues are related to the fists he holds up when he charges himself with energy; after the blue flash of light around both hands you'll see him have either a red fist, a blue fist or both fists, and you'll have a couple of seconds to handle the mechanic appropriately.

If he raises the red fist, a random player is going to get targeted and damaged. Everyone move away from the boss to minimise this damage; it declines with distance.

If he raises the blue fist, the off-tank should use Provoke to take aggro from the main tank, while the main tank gets behind the boss. Shortly after, the new main tank will take a big hit, but not as massive as the one the original tank would have taken with the Vulnerability debuff Brawler applies!

If he raises both fists, the current tank should turn Brawler around to face the rest of the party; he'll fire a massive dual laser whose damage is split between everyone it hits.

Best way to handle this is to have everyone stacked or lined up directly behind Brawler as the main tank tanks him, then move according to the mechanics. After a mechanic is finished, get back into position and continue.

BOSS: Swindler

This is a weird one that requires you to be observant, but it's not that complicated.

The main mechanic here is Swindlers High and Low Mathematicks debuffs that he applies to various players. High Mathematicks is a purple-coloured debuff icon, while Low Mathematicks is a red-coloured debuff icon. When you receive one of these, stand on a floor tile according to your debuff: if you have Low Mathematicks (red), stand on a red, elevated tile; if you have High Mathematicks, stand on a grey, normal tile. Note that the arrangement of the tiles will shift several times during the battle.

The only other mechanic for this fight sees a player marked with a circle around themselves and a number of orbs above their head. A number of people matching the number of orbs need to be in the circle to prevent horrible messy death.

Dance around according to the debuffs and you'll be good for the final battle.

BOSS: Vortexer

Vortexer will inflict a stacking Vulnerability debuff on whoever is tanking it; the off-tank should use Provoke and take aggro when this reaches two stacks.

Circle AoEs indicate that pools of fiery sludge (similar to Bahamut's attack in Turn 13) will be dropping in these places. Stay out of them, and don't run through them, as they debuff you while you're in them. Also make sure you don't have your back to one.

Super Cyclone is a massive knockback on everyone, centred on the boss. Position yourself so you won't get knocked back into a pool of sludge.

When a player gets marked, they'll drop a waterspout after a few moments. Position this somewhere near-ish and behind the boss.

Several players will get Shiva-style blizzard markers on and around them. At least one person needs to drop this with its circle over the waterspout to freeze it into a block of ice. These will leave a patch of Frostbite-inflicting ice on the ground for a short period, but these will dissipate after a few moments.

When Vortexer starts casting Ultra Flash, everyone (including the tank) needs to hide behind the frozen waterspout and break line-of-sight with Vortexer to avoid being instakilled. After this, the ice block will shatter and the process repeats. Once Vortexer is down, you're done!

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.

1890: Nael deus Defeated

A group of friends and I (including Andie) reached a milestone in our Final Fantasy XIV careers this evening: we defeated Turn 4 of the Second Coil of Bahamut, also known as "Turn 9" owing to it being the ninth in the series of thirteen high-level raid encounters that make up Final Fantasy XIV's endgame.

FFXIV's endgame raid is split into three main parts. The Binding Coil of Bahamut (which consists of Turns 1 to 5) is mostly — mostly — trivial in terms of difficulty these days owing to the fact that the average gear level of a level 50 character who plays a reasonable amount each week now exceeds the level these encounters were designed for by a considerable margin. As time has gone on, The Binding Coil of Bahamut has also been "nerfed" in terms of mechanics — i.e. made easier — and parties challenging it are now given a substantial buff to their HP, damage dealt and healing when they walk in, though those looking for a bit more of a challenge can optionally turn this buff off.

The Binding Coil of Bahamut reaches its conclusion with Turn 5, a notoriously difficult fight that sees a party of eight taking on Twintania, a very angry dragon. Turn 5 remains a challenge for many groups to this day not because Twintania is particularly difficult to kill in terms of her HP and damage — the aforementioned gear issue here makes the encounter much easier than it once was — but because everyone in the group needs to have a solid understanding of most of the fight's mechanics in order to succeed. Again, the power creep has meant it's easier to recover from critical errors, but if you don't know how to deal with her notorious Divebomb attack, for example, you're going to die and quite possibly take the rest of the group with you.

The Binding Coil of Bahamut is followed up by the Second Coil of Bahamut, which consists of Turns 6 to 9. These are significantly more challenging, even with the "Echo" buff to player HP, damage and healing. Mechanics are more unforgiving — though again, a number have been nerfed over time — and they're still not exactly the sort of encounters you can pick up and expect to coast your way through without knowing anything about them. Groups need to work together and be able to communicate effectively in order to pass through these challenges, and it all comes to a head with Turn 9.

Turn 9 remains notorious as one of the hardest fights in the game, even with the Final Coil of Bahamut subsequently being added after it. It proves to be a considerable roadblock to many groups, and indeed our party has been working on beating it for many weeks now.

The reason why it's such a challenge — even more so than Turn 5 — is because of its extreme complexity. In this one fight, which takes in the region of 10 minutes to complete, there are roughly as many mechanics as you'd see in at least four separate boss encounters earlier in the game. There is a lot to learn, and it feels like an insurmountable challenge the first time you jump in, but as our group have proven tonight, taking it a step at a time and practicing together whenever we get the opportunity allows you to eventually reach success.

And my God what a wonderful feeling it was as that HP bar dropped to 0% tonight. We'd had several close calls earlier in the evening — first a 9%, then a 10%, then a 6% — but there was no guarantee that we were going to beat it. But beat it we did, and many celebrations were had; now we have until June to make it through the Final Coil of Bahamut before the expansion pack Heavensward comes along and gives us an entire new raid set in Alexander to take on.

I'm looking forward to the challenge. The feeling of jubilation at finally defeating this notoriously difficult boss this evening is unlike pretty much anything I've ever experienced in any other game — and at least part of that comes from the game's multiplayer element. It wasn't just my victory, it was our victory. We worked together, we practiced, we communicated, and eventually we prevailed. And it felt great.

We poked our head into the first turn of Final Coil this evening, but didn't get anywhere, as expected. That's an adventure for another day! In the meantime, here's our clear video: