2108: Heavensward Dungeon Boss Guides (For My Own Reference)

I ran The Aery for the first time in months earlier tonight, and I realised that, having not run it for months owing to being at the level cap, I had forgotten almost everything about it. So in an attempt to brush up on my Heavensward dungeons as I continue to level Dark Knight — and also to provide an excuse to write a guide, which is something I enjoy doing — I present to you some information on how to beat the dungeon bosses in Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward. Largely for my own reference.

The Dusk Vigil

Level: 51-52

Boss 1: Towering Oliphaunt

Towering Oliphaunt has a few abilities to watch out for. Firstly, there’s Rear, which is an easily dodged area-effect attack around himself, and Prehistoric Trumpet, which hits the whole room.

You should also be aware of his other abilities: Rock of Ages will stun a non-tank player, Wooly Inspiration is a conal pull attack, and Rout is a charge attack. Similar to Wild Charge in The Final Coil of Bahamut, Turn 1, Rout’s damage can be split between a party member and the targeted player. It’s a good idea for the tank to get in between Oliphaunt and the targeted player when this happens.

Tank tank, healer heal, DPS DPS and this shouldn’t present too much difficulty.

Boss 2: Ser Yuhelmeric

Tons of adds appear in this fight. There are two main types: melee adds have a few area-effect attacks, while caster adds have the ability to buff everyone around themselves, including the boss. The tank should try to keep the boss away from the adds.

The only real ability Yuhelmeric has that you need to be aware of is Death Spiral, an attack somewhat similar to Nael’s Lunar Dynamo in The Second Coil of Bahamut, Turn 4. In other words, it’s a doughnut-shaped attack that you can avoid completely by ensuring you’re in melee range when it goes off.

Boss 3: Opinicus

This is the most complex fight in Dusk Vigil. Opinicus has several different abilities, some of which are easier to deal with than others.

Alpine Draft is a simple line attack that can be avoided without too much difficulty.

Freefall is an attack where Opinicus jumps at a player, destroying any piles of rubble they’re standing near. These piles of rubble are important, so try and stay clear of them when you don’t need them.

Whirling Gaol is a room-wide ability that causes you to be repeatedly “pushed” towards the middle. If you reach the middle, you’ll be stunned and hit. To prevent being dragged in, hide behind one of the piles of rubble.

Winds of Winter is an ability that covers a reasonable area and stacks Wind Vulnerability Up on anyone hit, making Opinicus’ other abilities more dangerous. This attack also destroys all current piles of rubble and causes new ones to drop from the ceiling.

Sohm Al

Level: 53-54

Boss 1: Raskovnik

This is a considerably more forgiving version of the Rafflesia fight from The Second Coil of Bahamut, Turn 1. If you’ve completed that, you’ll know what to do here.

Acid Rain is a circular area-effect ability that takes aim for all players.

Sweet Scent causes Dravanian Hornets to spawn and slowly move towards the boss. These deal no damage, but should be killed if your party has low DPS, since they buff the boss if they’re in range of Devour.

Devour is an ability that goes off after a player is marked and stunned for two seconds. It’s a circular AoE attack, and any hornets in range will give Raskovnik a stacking damage increase.

Finally, Spit is a room-wide attack to simply be healed through.

Boss 2: Myath

Myath will periodically spawn jelly adds around the room, and use attacks based on which ones he consumes. When he consumes a blue add, move away from the party member with a blue marker. When he consumes a red add, stack up on the party member with the red arrow. Remember, blue is poo, red gives head. Or something.

The only other thing to be aware of here is the big green snot add. Kill this as a priority when it appears.

Boss 3: Tioman

Sohm Al’s final boss has a number of different mechanics.

To minimise damage from the frontal cone attack Abyssic Buster, tanks should ensure that Tioman is facing away from the party.

Chaos Blast places AoE markers on each player, so avoid these.

Comet is the main ability to be aware of here. Two players will be marked and AoE circles will appear on the ground. When the marks fade, comets will fall where the players were standing, dealing room-wide damage to everyone based on how close they were to where the comets fall. To minimise damage from this, marked players should move away from the party — ideally to an edge — while the rest of the party keeps their distance too.

At around 45%, Tioman will become invincible and you must destroy her wings to continue damaging her. During this time, she will use Heavensfall, which marks a player and then spawns a cluster of circular AoEs on top of them. The marked player should move away from the rest of the party to minimise damage.

Finally, Dark Star is a room-wide AoE that you need to heal through.

After the wings are destroyed, the fight continues as before.

The Aery

Level: 55-56

Boss 1: Rangda

Rangda only has two main abilities to concern yourself with. To avoid being hit with Electric Cachexis, move into melee range with Rangda, similar to avoiding Nael’s Lunar Dynamo or Chimera’s The Dragon’s Voice.

If you get marked with Prey, move to one of the tall pillars at the outside of the room to transfer it and stay safe.

You should also kill adds as they spawn; none of them are particularly tough. Rangda also has a few other AoE attacks, but none of them hit particularly hard, so just heal through them.

Boss 2: Gyascutus

Gyascutus will gain a damage-up buff for every cloud of poison it farts out around the room. To get rid of these, use the Mustard Gas bombs that spawn occasionally to eat one or two of the clouds, then kill them. If the bombs eat four clouds, they will self-destruct, deal damage to the whole room and poison everyone four times. Don’t do this.

Boss 3: Nidhogg

Nidhogg’s go-to attack is The Crimson Price, which shits out fiery orbs at you. These burn for a few seconds, then blast a line AoE. If Nidhogg faces you and you’re not the tank, he’s going to cast one of these at you. Step aside to avoid damage.

The Sable Price is Nidhogg’s jailing ability. One player will get trapped, and the remaining party members must destroy it before Sable Weave casts, otherwise the trapped player will die.

At about 30% HP, Nidhogg will retreat to prepare his ultimate attack. During this time, you must defeat all the adds and ensure that Estinien remains standing. Tanks should grab the adds as quickly as possible, and healers should divide their attention between the party and Estinien to ensure he stays healthy. When the final add falls, Estinien will put up a shield, which you should dive inside to protect yourself from Nidhogg’s ultimate.

After this, the earlier mechanics simply repeat.

The Vault

Level: 57-58

Boss 1: Ser Adelphel Brightblade

The first phase of this fight is a simple tank-and-spank — kill Adelphel’s companions first, then knock him down. He’ll change form and the fight proper will begin.

When Adelphel casts Holy Shield Bash, he’ll jump to a player, stun and hit them. Paladins can Cover this.

Holiest of Holy deals damage to the whole room. Heal through this.

Finally, Adelphel will occasionally charge around the room and leave big explodey balls behind. Do not be near his balls when they explode, otherwise you’ll be very sorry indeed. (Huehuehue.)

Boss 2: Ser Grinnaux the Bull

Like Adelphel, Grinnaux has a trash phase first. Batter him down to start the fight proper.

Most of this fight is about dodging the various ground AoEs that Grinnaux applies around the room, but there are a couple of specific abilities to watch out for.

Hyperdimensional Slash lays a red AoE in front of Grinnaux in the direction of a random player. When this goes off, anyone in the way will take damage, and an Aetherial Tear will appear where the attack hits the wall. These Tears will tether to anyone near them and damage them, so ideally bait them all to the same part of the room.

After two Hyperdimension Slash attacks, Grinnaux will cast Faith Unmoving, which will knock everyone directly backwards when it finishes casting. Make sure your back is to part of the wall that is free from Aetherial Tears to stay safe.

Boss 3: Ser Charibert

Filthy rats! Charibert has a bunch of nasty abilities that you need to watch out for. It’s a good idea to tank him near the entrance to his arena rather than in the middle.

Altar Pyre is a simple room-wide damage attack. Heal through it.

Holy Chain tethers two players together — run apart to break it, otherwise you’ll both take damage.

Heavensflame causes flame rings to appear on the ground. Avoid them.

Charibert’s most annoying ability is to summon a row of knights, who will march across the arena and Slow anyone they trample over. Each row will always have a gap in it, so position yourself so they’ll pass you by safely or run through the gap to avoid this.

At about 50% HP, Charibert will disappear, then reappear with a bunch of Holy Flames around the room. Kill as many of these as possible, because Charibert’s next attack deals more damage the more Holy Flames are left. You can leave one or two Flames up and still be safe when this happens.

After this attack, the cycle repeats, though both Heavensflame and Charibert’s knight-summoning become more dangerous: Heavensflame has two sets of flame rings, and two rows of knights appear instead of one.

The Great Gubal Library

Level: 59-60

Boss 1: Demon Tome

This is very similar to Demon Wall in Amdapor Keep, albeit without the time limit. Instead, there are some new abilities to watch out for, including an instant-kill.

The first thing to do is avoid Demon Tome’s line AoEs, since these apply a Slow effect. The lines will come down the middle of the room first, then the sides. Position yourself ahead of time to avoid these.

Dark Blizzard III is a circle AoE that targets a random player during the line attacks. Avoid this.

Disclosure is Demon Tome’s instakill ability. When it starts to glow, run around the side until you’re behind Demon Tome to stay safe. If you’re in front of Demon Tome when Disclosure finishes casting, you’ll die.

Finally, Words of Winter is a ground freeze attack that causes you to slide while it is in effect. Plan your moves carefully, particularly when Disclosure is casting, and only move when necessary.

Boss 2: Byblos

When Byblos runs to the centre of the room, two books will spawn, with the ability to cast Death Ray at you, a line AoE that, despite the name, doesn’t do all that much damage.

When they die, orbs will tether to players. Tethered players need to position themselves so the orb hits Byblos to break his invulnerability period.

In subsequent phases, Byblos will spawn clouds of fumes. Party members should take it in turns to disperse these by running through them, since this causes damage. It’s important to manage them, though, as they can interfere with the orbs.

When Byblos isn’t invincible, he’ll perform Gale Cut on the tank. When this is being cast, the tank should run through Byblos or to the side to avoid it. He also has a Tail Swipe attack on anyone behind him.

Finally, Head Down is a charge attack similar to the one seen in Amdapor Keep (Hard). The targeted player should ensure the line AoE doesn’t intersect with any other players to minimise damage. The easiest way to deal with this is simply to run straight at Byblos.

Boss 3: The Everliving Bibliotaph

Three times during the fight, The Everliving Bibliotaph will use Void Summon as a supernatural “Help Wanted” advertisement. In order to prevent his questionable hiring practices, you need to stand on the glowing platforms on the ground. The number of players who need to stand on a platform is indicated by how many lights are lit up on the platform in question. Multiple platforms will highlight at once, so be ready to spread out.

If you get targeted by Bibliotaph, run away from the party to bait the AoE he’s preparing for you. Everyone should keep away from this, as it pulses several times, applying damage and Vulnerability Up in the process.

At around 55% HP, Bibliotaph will cast some combination of Deep Darkness and Magic Burst. Deep Darkness covers the outside of the arena and causes a Heavy debuff for about 30 seconds. Magic Burst, meanwhile, deals damage and knockback. Neither are pleasant.

If you’re new to Final Fantasy XIV and want some more help, I wrote a bunch of guides during my time at USgamer; some of this information is a little out of date now, but the basic boss strategies and suchlike are still valid.

Dungeon guides
Level 50 dungeon guides (up to The Lost City of Amdapor)
Trial guides (up to Leviathan Hard)
Labyrinth of the Ancients guide

2107: Dark Knight Chronicles

Continuing to level Dark Knight in Final Fantasy XIV, and I’m having a lot of fun with it. I wasn’t quite prepared for how much more powerful it feels than Paladin, but I’m really enjoying the overall feel of it a whole lot — much more than Warrior, which seemed enjoyable enough, but didn’t quite “click” with me for some reason.

I think the reason I like Dark Knight so much is that it appears to be a little less dependent on strict rotations to perform its job most effectively — or, rather, there’s more than one rotation to play around with. I particularly enjoy the fact that when playing Dark Knight it’s absolutely okay — even encouraged — to drop out of Grit, the main “tank stance”, in order to do some additional damage. This appears to be of particular benefit when fighting single-target bosses, since taking fewer overall hits means that Blood Weapon (increase attack speed, drain MP from enemy with every hit, only available when not in Grit) becomes a more efficient means of restoring MP than Blood Price (gain MP when taking damage).

Even though many of the abilities are somewhat similar in function to those found in Paladin, they somehow feel more satisfying to use. Dark Knight has an area-of-effect damage over time skill called Salted Earth, for example, that bathes an area in black and red lightning, whereas Paladin’s nearest equivalent is Circle of Scorn, which has its own little pyrotechnics display but somehow doesn’t feel quite as enjoyable to use. Dark Knight also has Scourge, which is a damage over time that can be immediately applied rather than only used at the end of a three-hit combo like Paladin’s Goring Blade. When everything lines up nicely and you can apply Scourge and Salted Earth to an enemy before letting rip with a non-Grit Dark Arts Souleater combo for a significant amount of damage, it’s a great deal of fun.

Learning my way around Dark Knight has been enjoyable, and it’s helping me rediscover my respect for Final Fantasy XIV’s combat system. People who come to FFXIV from more traditional, customisable role-playing games are sometimes a bit put out at the relative lack of personalisation FFXIV offers in terms of abilities — everyone gets the same abilities at the same levels, and the only real flexibility is in any cross-class skills you choose to use, but even here there are only certain ones that are particularly useful — but in practice it works enormously well, behaving, of all things, more like a fighting game than anything else. A slow-paced fighting game, admittedly, but a fighting game nonetheless.

Allow me to clarify. Modern fighting games demand that players learn specific button and directional inputs to perform various special moves. In order to get good at a fighting game, you need to develop a certain degree of muscle memory to be able to pull these moves off automatically. Once you’ve done that, you need to master the timing of these moves to chain them together into effective combos, and then you need to understand what the most appropriate situations to use these individual combos are.

Final Fantasy XIV is exactly the same, just at a fraction of the pace of your average fighting game. Positioning is important; responding to your enemy’s moves is important; using the right ability at the right time is important. Even muscle memory is important, particularly if you’re playing on controller — while you’re not doing Hadoken button inputs to throw a fireball at someone, you do need to be able to remember where you put all your most important abilities and be able to practically automatically perform combos with no gaps for the most efficient possible damage output. For example, on Dark Knight, my average combo runs something along the lines of LT+Y, RT+Y, LT+A, LT+RT+X, A, LT+RT+B, LT+X, RT+B, RT+X, RT+A, RT+LT+B, RT+LT+X, RT+LT+up, RT+LT+A. This pulls an enemy with Unmend, cements aggro with Unleash, kicks them in the bollocks to stun them for a few seconds, drops a Salted Earth on the ground, applies Scourge, blasts them and anything near them with Dark Passenger, does my three-hit aggro combo then my three-hit, Dark Arts-buffed Souleater combo for a nice chunk of damage. And this isn’t even getting into the situational weaving in of various defensive cooldowns to ensure that I don’t take too much damage, or other skills to support the battle.

That may all sound exceedingly complicated, but I’ve done it so many times now that it feels “automatic” to be able to perform these abilities in the order that seems to work most effectively at my level. I’m sure I’ll have to shake things up a bit as I get closer to 60 and challenging more difficult content, but for now it’s extremely satisfying to nimbly pull off these combos without breaking a sweat.

Onwards to 60 then… I should hit 54 tonight, all being well.

2105: Into Darkness

The official trailer for Final Fantasy XIV patch 3.1 came out recently, and it’s looking simply marvellous. I am happy about this, because although I feel like I’ve got over my “rut” with the game, I’d still love to see something new at last. It’s been a long time coming, after all.

My initial reaction to the announcement of 3.1 was slight disappointment, but in retrospect this was rather silly. I’ll tell you my thinking, though: previous content patches for the game tended to include three new dungeons, a new raid (either a 24-player casual raid of the Crystal Tower ilk, or an 8-player hardcore raid of the Coil ilk) and maybe some new quests and minor mechanics here and there. And gear, of course. 3.1, meanwhile, only includes two new dungeons, one of which is a “Hard Mode” version of an existing dungeon — Pharos Sirius — which immediately made me feel a bit let down that we weren’t getting as much new stuff as we had in the past.

But then I considered things a bit more, and there are plenty of interesting things happening outside the dungeons, because dungeons aren’t the only interesting thing you can do in the game. They’re cool, sure, but I get the impression that Yoshi-P and the FFXIV team very much want to try and shake up the basic formula of the game a little bit having got it where they want to be over the course of A Realm Reborn and vanilla Heavensward. In other words, that means getting people out of the “grind the same thing over and over” mentality and into doing more varied things.

Perhaps the thing I’m most intrigued by — and most mystified by — is the new Exploratory Missions system, whereby individual players, parties, alliances and Free Companies can fly off into the Sea of Clouds with their airship(s), explore a region for 90 minutes, kick the shit out of some monsters, find treasure, complete objectives and gather stuff. This has the most potential to shake up the basic structure of the game, and I really hope it turns out well.

Details are still a bit thin on the ground as yet, but it seems like there will be three difficulty levels for these exploratory missions, with the hardest level being pitched towards Free Companies with their own airships. Monsters will have difficulty ranks between 1 and 6 instead of conventional levels, and there are apparently Hunt-esque “marks” to defeat as well as regular monsters. There will be objectives to complete that will allow players to earn the all-important Tomestones to upgrade their equipment, and treasure chests that contain new Aetherial equipment with randomised stats.

The randomised element of the Exploratory missions is the thing I’m looking forward to the most, to be honest. Exactly how random it is I’m not entirely sure as yet, but I know at the very least there will be several different areas that you can fly to when you start one of these missions — it seems you won’t be able to explicitly pick where you want to go and will instead be assigned a random landing point in a random region. The equipment you can find will be scattered in bronze, silver and gold chests, and presumably tracking these chests down will involve actual exploration of the area rather than the current situation in dungeons, where equipment can be found in boss chests and stuff in all the other chests is fairly underwhelming in its awesomeness, usually consisting of either potions or crafting materials.

Aside from the Exploratory Missions, the thing I’m looking forward to the most is the new Minstrel’s Ballad trial, which is a considerably expanded version of the final boss fight from the Heavensward story quests. This was an absolutely spectacular fight, albeit not particularly difficult, so it will be exciting to have the opportunity to see this realised as something closer to what the creators apparently originally intended. It will be a ten-phase fight — they stopped short of going for thirteen phases to match the thirteen Knights of the Round — and will apparently be on par difficulty-wise with Extreme-level primal fights and the first area of Alexander (Savage). Hopefully this doesn’t mean it will be a glorified DPS check like Alexander is, but from the little I’ve seen of it so far, it looks like there’s going to be some interesting mechanics at play.

Anyway. Patch 3.1 is coming in early November, which isn’t far away now. I’m really looking forward to seeing what it has to offer, and actually a little bit thankful that the new Relic weapons — which are apparently known as “Anima Weapons” — aren’t coming immediately, instead inviting us to grind ourselves into oblivion from patch 3.15 onwards.

In the meantime, I’ve got Dark Knight to level 50 today, so only ten levels to go before I can officially retire Paladin for the most part and start playing a tank class with a bit more damage output at high level! Darksiiiiiiide!

2093: Pondering Crowdfunding

I’ve gone back and forth in my opinions on crowdfunding a little, but after seeing a number of people spilling a bunch of salt yesterday over nothing more than a rumour that Square Enix might be looking into the possibility of using it to bring more niche, “unlikely” titles over from Japan to the West, a bit of reflection has convinced me that, on the whole, I’m in favour of it.

It is important to accept, however, that there have been a number of crowdfunding fuckups over the years — and, more importantly, a number of high-profile projects that have so far failed to live up to their potential or deliver what was originally promised. Anita “I Hate Fun” Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs. Women YouTube series (which I seriously regret chipping in even $5 towards, feeling the way I do about the social justice crowd these days) is several years behind schedule; Keiji Inafune’s Mega Man successor Mighty No. 9 has been delayed several times and has had a number of setbacks along the way; Chris Robers’ Star Citizen is in a state where no-one seems to quite know what’s going on with it and if we’re ever going to see it at all, despite it being the most crowdfunded thing in history.

All of these projects still arguably have time to redeem themselves if the finished product comes out worthwhile (fuck Sarkeesian, mind, the joyless hoop-eared twat) but it’s understandable that issues like this have caused some people to view crowdfunding with a certain degree of trepidation.

But then at the other end of the spectrum — and here’s where my overall positive attitude towards it comes in — there are the success stories. Ambitious visual novels that people once believed would never see a Western release are being localised, for example — the Grisaia trilogy saw its first release a few months back, with the second installment’s translation nearing completion; Clannad is coming along soon; and Muv-Luv’s Kickstarter is a hair’s breadth away from its final stretch goal — and crowdfunding has proven to be an effective means for people to demonstrate that yes, they really want to see things like a new 2D Castlevania (in everything but name), a third installment in the Shenmue series, or the return of early ’00s-style isometric role-playing games. Without crowdfunding, none of these things would have happened, because the (understandably) risk-averse games industry as it exists in 2015 would have a tough time convincing shareholders and the like that yes, it really would be a good investment of time and budget to put together something along the same lines as a game released 15 years ago.

One of the most common arguments I see against someone like Square Enix dipping their toes into these waters is that “they have enough money already; why do they need us to give them our money up-front?” Well, for exactly the reasons just mentioned: game companies are, like it or not, a business first and foremost — though they may be staffed by artistic, creative types — and as such, they need to know that any project they undertake is going to be worthwhile for them. Crowdfunding is a means of not only gauging interest in a potential project — with little to no risk if the desired target isn’t reached — but also generating some initial operating funds to get it underway. Some projects run over budget, of course, while others are specifically designed with additional funding sources in mind — Shenmue III springs to mind in this instance, for example — and others still, like Star Citizen and Broken Age, end up with a whole lot more money than they originally expected and have to make some tough decisions on how that money is to be spent. The point stands, though; crowdfunding is an easy way to demonstrate that yes, there is an audience for this sort of thing, here’s a rough estimate of how big that audience is, here’s what we might be able to do for them.

Crowdfunding also taps into an important development in modern society: social media, and the effect this has had on the concept of “word of mouth”. I wrote a while back about how the Kickstarter for Muv-Luv comfortably achieved its initial funding goal entirely through word of “mouth” (with “mouth” in this instance also covering “keyboard fingers”), without a peep from the mainstream press — though Kotaku, to their credit (there’s something you won’t hear me say all that often) did eventually put up a story about it a few days later. We’re no longer in an age where new products are dependent on the press to get noticed and promoted; there are plenty of creative works out there across all media now that don’t have any column inches — be they print or virtual — devoted to them but are still regarded with love by their fans.

So I don’t necessarily think that Square Enix delving into crowdfunding is particularly greedy. They’re a business — and a big one, at that — who need to ensure that they’re going to be able to make money on any projects they undertake, particularly as they’ve become a bit more cautious in the last couple of years after a few big-budget failures. Something like RPG series that have traditionally sold quite poorly in the West (hello, Dragon Quest) don’t represent a particularly good return on investment for them to just do out of the goodness of their hearts, whereas if fans can show their support for such projects financially up-front, Square Enix is more likely to sell more copies and fans are more likely to get things that they previously thought they’d never be able to enjoy if they were leaving things entirely to the Men In Suits.

As such, if Square Enix decides to jump into the crowdfunding arena, I say good on them. If it means we get games that we wouldn’t get otherwise, I am all for it. The traditional model is no longer the only way of funding and buying games, and we should embrace new ways of showing our support for the things that we want to see rather than pissing and moaning about the inevitably drab nature of commercially “safe” products. There’s always going to be dull-as-dishwater commercially viable megahits; they’re never going to go away, not with the size of the industry as it is today. But what we do have some control over is the smaller end of the market: the niche interest titles that have the most passionate fans in the world; the games that have enthusiasts who will do anything to play a new installment in their favourite series; the games who have fans that are willing to put their money where their mouth is and show that little projects matter, too.

The end result is a more interesting, colourful and diverse games industry; the alternative is a situation where we’re subjected to nothing but Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed and Forza Motorsport until the end of time. And while all of those games are good, if that’s all there was to play, I wouldn’t be nearly as interested in and excited by gaming as I am today. So if a way to support alternatives presents itself, I’m going to take it; you should think about it, too.

2092: I Can Have a Darkside If You Want Me To

I decided that I was going to get over my “rut” with Final Fantasy XIV today and get my mojo back, so I booted it up and decided to try something I hadn’t done before: give Dark Knight a go.

Dark Knight is the new tanking class that was added in the Heavensward expansion. So far, I’ve levelled Paladin (the main “defense tank”) to 60 as my main, and I have Warrior (the main “wallopy tank”) at 50, so I have a reasonable understanding of it. Dark Knight was a bit of a mystery, though; although I’d read a bit about it, I didn’t really have a bead on how it might actually feel to play it.

Turns out it feels like a hell of a lot of fun — far more so than the rather weedy-but-graceful-feeling Paladin, and, for my money, also more so than the cumbersome swings and heavy hits of Warrior.

I’ve only levelled fro 30-34 so far (you start Dark Knight at 30, unlike pre-expansion classes, which start at 1) so I don’t have a huge amount of experience as yet, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done. The class feels like a good balance between the relatively straightforward, set combos and defense of Paladin and the more intricate combos and damage-buffing of Warrior. There also seems to be a bit more in the way of “stance-dancing”, since there are a number of abilities that only work when you have a specific status effect active — or in some cases, if you don’t have it active. The skill “Blood Weapon”, for example, which increases your attack speed and allows you to drain MP from enemies, will not work if you’re in the defensive “Grit” stance, but that’s fine, since Blood Weapon is an offensive skill and Grit carries a hefty damage penalty, so the two aren’t really compatible.

I like this way of playing; rather than Paladin’s approach of sticking with Shield Oath most of the time and giving it a bit of Sword Oath only when you have a hefty aggro lead on the rest of your party, Dark Knight allows you to switch back and forth a lot more freely, giving combat a much more dynamic feel. The rhythm I was getting into by the end of tonight’s session saw me doing my basic aggro combo, weaving in the “Low Blow” stunning kick (which is off the global cooldown) and also dropping in the off-GCD “Reprisal” proc to reduce enemy damage after a successful parry. Then, when Blood Weapon was up — it actually has a pretty short cooldown — I’d drop Grit, hit Blood Weapon, unleash as many attacks as I could manage — including DRK’s DoT, which, unlike PLD’s, isn’t part of a combo, so can be applied immediately — before switching back into Grit again once Blood Weapon dropped. The timing of Blood Weapon’s cooldown usually meant that I could rotate defensive cooldowns at the same time as throwing up Blood Weapon, too, so I could mitigate at least some of the increased damage I’d be taking by dropping Grit’s considerable (20%) reduction in incoming damage.

DRK’s AoE aggro move is also a bit more intuitive than PLD’s Flash, whose radius I’m still not entirely 100% sure of. Unleash, meanwhile, displays a very clear area of effect when you use it, making it extremely apparent whether your positioning is right or not. It’s not quite as satisfying as WAR’s cone-area Overpower, being a weird-looking spell with an annoying sound effect rather than a distinctly HULK SMASH-style swing of your axe, but I’ve also found so far that DRK appears to be able to hold aggro pretty well even with only a couple of Unleashes at the start of the fight — perhaps a side-effect of its increased damage when compared to something like PLD.

I’m digging DRK so far, then, and although it’s another tank class like my main, it feels different enough from PLD already that I feel like it’s going to be enjoyable to level. And who knows? I might even end up maining it if and when I get it to 60.

2078: Two FFXIV Ideas That Will Never Get Implemented (Probably)

I haven’t been playing Final Fantasy XIV all that much recently. This is partly down to the fact that I’ve been really enjoying the other stuff I’ve been playing, and also due to the fact that the current content is feeling a bit stale and stagnant; Heavensward came out quite a long time ago now, and aside from the introduction of raid dungeon Alexander (which proved to be a little underwhelming after the dramatic insanity of The Binding Coil of Bahamut) there hasn’t been much new stuff introduced. Consequently, the grind to get other classes to level 60 — or to gear up my main class, for that matter — isn’t feeling all that appealing right now, particularly as there really isn’t a huge amount to do at level 60 at the moment: two dungeons, two Extreme boss fights, and Alexander in its Normal and Savage incarnations.

This, along with some of the other stuff I’ve been playing recently, got me thinking about ways the formula could be shaken up a little — partly to make the grind a bit more bearable, partly to make replays of old content a more attractive option, and partly to address some common complaints of certain aspects of the player base, specifically the lack of challenge in dungeons and the desire to show off your skills a bit more outside of the tippest-toppest highest-level content.

Final Fantasy XIV is heavily based on instanced content such as dungeons and boss fights, so I had an idle thought that the addition of two optional ways of playing this content would make the game interesting: specifically a Time Attack mode, which would reward those who can slice through a dungeon at high speed, and a Score Attack mode, which will encourage “full clears” of dungeons as well as skilful play.

I’m no game designer and I am under no illusions that these ideas would ever be implemented into the game, but I’ll share my thinking for each mode, anyway.

Queueing

Added to the existing Duty Finder options — Undersized/Unsynced Party and Minimum Item Level — would be the options for Score Attack and Time Attack. You would only be able to challenge one or the other at a time, but there could potentially be some additional options such as difficulties, whether to run it with level/item level sync or not and so forth. (There could also perhaps be an additional option for a “Story” run, for those who want to enjoy dungeons for the first time as originally intended, which could perhaps make cutscenes unskippable, bosses untargetable until everyone is out of cutscenes and perhaps even force a minimum iLevel sync. Alternatively, not selecting Score or Time Attack could simply assume that the run is for “story” purposes, without the restrictions suggested above.)

Time Attack

There are a few ways this could work. The simplest means would be for the party’s clear time to be recorded, starting from when the barrier comes down at the outset of the dungeon and stopping when the dungeon’s final boss is defeated. The final time would give the party as a whole a letter grade between, say, D and S — D being the worst, S being the best — and the rewards for the dungeon would be adjusted accordingly based on the grade attained.

Each player’s best time is recorded, and this could provide additional incentives: perhaps a small extra reward if you beat your previous best, or leaderboards showing which players/parties/Free Companies/servers have cleared content most efficiently.

A second means of approaching this could be to give the party a fairly strict time limit countdown from when the dungeon starts, with time being extended by reaching checkpoints or defeating particular enemies. This provides the opportunity for failure — something which the game as a whole is lacking a bit, particularly in dungeons, where you can just respawn until the currently implemented and overly generous total time limit expires — as well as the chance to reward efficient play; again, the run should be concluded with some sort of rating system or bonus based on time remaining to encourage speedy runs.

My thinking behind this system is that there are already people who like to rush through dungeons as quickly as possible, and this often leads to conflict with people who aren’t as confident or simply prefer to take things slowly. Providing a separate “mode” for those who like to speedrun — as well as incentives for everyone in the party to be on board with speedrunning the dungeon — would, I feel, alleviate at least a certain amount of this tension. Plus trying to beat your best times makes for an inherently satisfying means of rewarding replays of old content.

Score Attack

This would be a little more complex, but the basic principle is the same as outlined above: clear a dungeon, get a grade, adjust the rewards according to how good the grade was.

In this case, the grade would come from the total score the party attains in the dungeon. The score could change via any or all of the following possible events:

Dealing damage/overall DPS
Defeating an enemy
Overkilling an enemy (dealing more damage than necessary to knock its HP to 0)
Landing hits in rapid succession (skillchains)
Hitting multiple enemies at once with AoE skills
Tanks maintaining aggro
Losing points for non-tanks taking aggro
Clutch healing (i.e. the same circumstances where a well-timed heal increases the Limit gauge)
Using limit breaks
Finding treasures
Defeating bosses quickly

There could then be a number of point bonuses awarded, either at the end of the dungeon or at checkpoints (likely the bosses):

Time bonus according to how quickly the section/dungeon was cleared
Bonus according to the percentage of all enemies in the section/dungeon defeated (encouraging full clears)
Penalties for party KO’s or failing to deal with boss mechanics properly
Bonuses for achieving specific goals such as overkills, enemies simultaneously defeated and the like

At the conclusion of the dungeon, the party receives a letter grade between D and S, with rewards increasing for better grades.

My thinking behind this mode is that it would force players to play in a slightly different way; it would require cooperation, players playing their job well and being more willing to be thorough about clearing a dungeon. Because well-geared players are less inclined to do full clears of dungeons, the rewards for performing well in Score Attack should provide sufficient incentive for them to play in this mode, since better gear will inevitably allow for the attainment of higher scores.

Someone out there doubtless has a compelling argument as to why both of these are stupid ideas — off the top of my head, perhaps the strongest argument against would be making something so “gamey” fit into the overall lore, though FFXIV isn’t above a transparently shoehorned explanation or two here and there. (See: anything PvP; the Crystal Tower weekly quest; anything involving the Wandering Minstrel; the recent seasonal event in which you could meet the developers) To be clear, these are not by any means serious suggestions in the slightest. I do think they’d both be pretty fun, though — and they’d certainly get me pumped up to chase some high scores and best times.

2055: Adventures at Seal Rock

I’ve been playing some of Final Fantasy XIV’s player vs player mode recently, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised how much fun it is.

I’ve tried PvP in various other MMOs and never really got along with it. I never got far enough through Guild Wars for the PvP to be relevant outside of the single match you’re forced to play in the introductory chapter; Star Wars: The Old Republic’s PvP was unbalanced garbage; and The Secret World’s PvP just seemed too chaotic to be manageable.

The trouble with PvP in a game with RPG mechanics is that it often becomes nothing more than a numbers game rather than a test of skill. In other words, whoever has the best gear will almost definitely win every time. This is particularly apparent in games that make seemingly no effort whatsoever to balance things out for a fair competition, the most egregious example of this I can think of being Blizzard’s Diablo II. (To be far, PvP wasn’t really the point of that game at all, but the fact it was in there at all in such a gleefully unbalanced state was just baffling.)

One of the nice things about Final Fantasy XIV’s PvP is that it puts everyone on a pretty level playing field by syncing gear levels to a relatively low standard — iLevel 80 for level 50 PvP and iLevel 150 for level 60 PvP. This means that even if you haven’t spent months farming content for the very best gear, you can still be both competitive and an asset to your team, making PvP as a whole a lot more accessible to a wider bunch of people. Which is good, because it’s pretty large-scale, with 72 participants across three teams fighting it out all together in most cases.

Seal Rock is the newest addition to Final Fantasy XIV’s PvP lineup. The previous PvP matches on the Carteneau Flats saw you either capturing and defending points from enemy assault, or simply attempting to defeat as many of the enemy teams as possible. The “Seize” mode you play on Seal Rock, meanwhile, is a slightly more involved, dynamic affair that requires coordination and teamwork, challenging your team to activate and hold Allagan Tomeliths that activate at random at various points across the battlefield, with the ultimate goal being to score 800 points before the other teams.

Points are scored by holding onto the Tomeliths; when one is in your team’s possession, your Mammets gradually download data from it until it runs dry, at which point new Tomeliths will activate after a short period, and the process continues. The twist is that not all Tomeliths are created equal; there are B-, A- and S-rank varieties, with B-rank Tomeliths being worth the least potential number of points and S-rank Tomeliths being worth the most.

It’s not as simple as just charging for the most valuable Tomelith, though. At times, it can be more advantageous to watch the other two teams scrap over an S-rank while you sneak around behind their backs and capture all the other ones for a greater total number of points than the S-rank by itself is worth. Add to that the fact that every time one of your team members is knocked out, your team loses a few points, and you have a mode where confrontation is something you want to avoid as much as you can unless you have a significant numbers advantage, at which point it’s enormously satisfying to steamroller members of the enemy team.

What I think I like most about playing PvP is how different it feels from the PvE content. PvE can often feel quite “by rote” after a while, particularly in the more scripted encounters, and while this is satisfying in its own way at times — I’ve described the more intricate boss fights as being delightfully dance-like — PvP keeps you on your toes, challenging you to respond to new and unexpected situations as they crop up, and no two matches are ever quite alike. This makes it fun and enjoyable even if you’re on the losing side, particularly as matches are wrapped up within 20 minutes at the very most, usually less.

I haven’t quite figured out what the best strategies are quite yet, but I’ve been enjoying the experience a great deal so far, and I’m looking forward to battling those scoundrels of the Maelstrom and the Adders again soon.

2038: Vacation from Eorzea

Astute long-term readers will notice that I haven’t been talking much about Final Fantasy XIV recently. And the reason for that is simple: I just haven’t been playing it that much.

It’s not that I’ve gone off the game per se — I still see myself playing it for many years to come — it’s more that I’ve got out of it what I wanted to get out of it so far. The Heavensward storyline was exciting and dramatic — and, for my money, better than A Realm Reborn’s main quest — and the Alexander raid dungeon was an enjoyable challenge, though we’re still yet to clear its Savage incarnation.

Trouble is, outside of levelling alternate classes there’s not a huge amount to do at level cap right now.

This is the exact situation A Realm Reborn (and, I imagine, most MMOs) found itself in at launch, of course; the difference here, however, is that whereas it took me a good few weeks to make it to 50 in A Realm Reborn — I reached the level cap a while after the more dedicated players in my Free Company — I got through Heavensward pretty quickly. This was deliberate, of course; I binged on the new story content because it was enjoyable and interesting, and also because I wanted to see everything that the expansion pack had to offer. I also wanted to avoid inadvertently being spoiled on the storyline, since Final Fantasy XIV is that rare example of an MMO where the story is actually worth paying attention to and even told pretty well.

Consequently, I got to the “end” a lot more quickly than I did with A Realm Reborn, and consequently I’ve found myself with a lot more “dead time” with stagnant content. Sure, I could run Alexander over and over again to try and get some more gear sets. Sure, I could level other classes — I probably will do this at some point. Sure, I could run the current two level 60 dungeons over and over to get as many Tomestones of Esoterics as possible to gear up one or more classes.

Trouble is, I simply don’t have a lot of motivation to do so right now. And that’s sort of fine by me, really; whenever I play an MMO I always find myself in a weird place where I’m really enjoying the experience of playing the game and getting good at it — I maintain that Final Fantasy XIV is one of the few games I genuinely consider myself to actually be pretty good at — but also feeling a strange sense of “guilt” that I’m not playing any of the other million and one games that have been staring at me from my shelves for the last few years. Conversely, I play a game that isn’t Final Fantasy XIV and I feel a similar sense of “guilt” that I’m not playing Final Fantasy XIV more. I can’t win. Stupid brain.

On balance, though, this “dead time” is actually proving to be rather welcome, as since I have little inclination to log in right now for anything other than my weekly raiding commitments — and the group as a whole is pretty half-hearted about the whole thing at the moment, to be honest — I am having plenty of time to delve into other experiences. I managed to get the Platinum trophy on Omega Quintet. I’m working on the Platinum trophy for Hyperdevotion Noire. I am loving the shit out of Sword Art Online on PS4. And I’m also really enjoying Splatoon, Heroes of the Storm and any number of other games right now.

The trouble with any hobby that has a lot of different elements to it — be it gaming, music, reading, movies or whatever — is finding that perfect balance where you can enjoy all those different elements at different times and not feel like you’re neglecting any of them. Right now, even though I know that I don’t have much motivation to play Final Fantasy XIV, I still feel like I’m neglecting it because I’m not logging in to talk to my friends. So perhaps I still haven’t quite found the right balance there. But eh. I’m not going to worry about it for the moment — a new content patch for the game might rekindle my interest for a while, but in the meantime I’m going to cut right back and enjoy the other experiences I have on the go right now.

1998: Fist of the Father

Final Fantasy XIV’s new raid dungeon Alexander launched earlier this week, and our regular raid group (with a few tweaks) took our first steps in there this evening.

I’d heard Alexander was significantly easier than The Binding Coil of Bahamut and was mildly concerned about this, but there are two things that set my mind at rest, having run through the first area now: 1) it’s not easy, though it’s straightforward enough once you know what to do, and 2) “Savage” mode is coming in a couple of weeks for the truly hardcore. (And it has different loot from the sound of things, too, unlike the Savage mode of Second Coil of Bahamut, which was largely a “bragging rights” sort of situation.)

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Alexander. The concept itself is pretty weird: an iron giant raises itself out of the water in the Dravanian Hinterlands, but stops moving just as its hand grasps the bank. Through a convoluted series of interactions with the local goblins, you manage to find a way through the portal that is in its hand, and start working your way through in an attempt to find and destroy the core; the giant, it seems, is a Primal, and while it’s active, even if it’s not moving, it threatens to suck the very life out of the land.

Once inside you’re in a cool, mechanical and metal environment. It’s a big contrast from the previous raid dungeon, which made heavy use of the neon-glowing Allagan aesthetic, but since Heavensward as a whole has a lot of neon-glowing Allagan stuff just in its normal content, it seems the devs made the wise decision to not continue down this road with the new raid. Fine by me.

The bosses so far are appropriately steampunky in nature, and unlike Coil, which tends to be a short run to a single boss, the first level of Alexander features two bosses. The first is pretty much a pushover, but it’s fun that it’s more than just a single thing to fight. The main boss of the level, meanwhile, is a fairly involved fight that demands everyone knows what to do and performs their role appropriately. It’s a little more forgiving than Coil was — mistakes are less likely to immediately wipe the whole group, though they will put you all at a disadvantage — but still challenging. We managed to clear it within a couple of hours, though, and even went back in to go get some more loot for those who lost the rolls after we’d finished.

We’re hopefully going to jump in and see some more of it over in the weekend; I’m curious to see what mechanical mysteries the later levels have in store, and excited to be running with my regular group again.

1988: The End of Ascalon

Finished the Heavensward main story quest today. WOW.

Spoilers ahead!

I was pleased that the team went all-out and gave us a full-on Final Fantasy finale. The final dungeon, the Aetherochemical Research Facility, gradually gets weirder and weirder as you progress through it, until you eventually reach what is clearly The Final Boss Room, in which you’re set upon by not one but two Ascians, the dark-robed ne’er-do-wells whose evil machinations have been behind most of the Bad Things happening in Eorzea throughout the Final Fantasy XIV narrative.

Delightfully, this battle against the Ascians even does the typical Final Fantasy thing of unfolding across multiple forms, with the “merged” form of the two Ascians creating “Ascian Prime” and battering you with some of the most spectacular attacks in the entire game. Lest you thought that Final Fantasy XIV would lose some of the series’ trademark spectacle owing to the fact that its multiplayer nature makes cinematic camera angles and lengthy spell sequences impractical, this confrontation very much dispels that notion.

That’s not the end, though. The battle against Ascian Prime — the conclusion of which finally sees recurring villain Lahabrea apparently dealt with once and for all — is followed up by an eight-player Trial in the research facility’s Singularity Reactor, in which you face off against Ishgard’s Archibishop, Heavensward’s main villain.

This being Final Fantasy, however, you don’t just fight a doddering old man with an obscene amount of hit points. No; shortly before your battle with him, he draws upon the power of the Eyes of Nidhogg to channel the spirit of Ishgard’s legendary king Thorden — he who, with his knights twelve, originally laid Nidhogg low and took the great wyrm’s eyes — and become a Primal incarnation of the ancient king. Naturally, this involves him growing to approximately ten storeys in height in the process, and his bodyguards, the twelve knights of the Heaven’s Ward (do you see what they did there) undergo similar transformations prior to your final battle against the whole sorry lot of them.

The actual battle against Thorden and the knights is amazing. Final Fantasy veterans will doubtless recognise this setup as an excuse to bring in the notorious summon “Knights of the Round”, and indeed the final boss battle is effectively you fighting Knights of the Round, complete with ridiculously overblown attack animations — including, at one point, the reactor in which you’re fighting seemingly floating up into space, then your entire screen shattering to bring you back to reality. (This animation is pretty much a direct reference to Knights of the Round’s appearance in Final Fantasy VII, whose attack animation “Ultimate End” was the most powerful ability you could equip your characters with in the whole game.)

It’s a fitting end for Heavensward’s story, which has overall been a great addition to the ranks of Final Fantasy narratives throughout history. And it leaves some nice open teaser threads at the end ready for future content patches and the continuation of the story — most notably the character Estinien’s possession by the spirit of Nidhogg, the latter of whom is understandably pissed off at the world for numerous reasons, not least of which being the fact that he had his eyes scooped out, and some thousand years later, was killed by some young upstart claiming to represent the spirit of the planet itself.

Anyway. It was good stuff, and sets the scene nicely for the launch of the new raid dungeon Alexander, which must be due pretty soon now. (Indeed, the ending cutscene shows Alexander rising out of the water in the Dravanian Hinterlands, though it is as yet impossible to enter the great iron giant.)

I’m glad I beat the story (and the two “post-ending” dungeons Neverreap and The Fractal Continuum, both of which are a lot of fun — and pleasingly challenging) and am looking forward to seeing what’s next. In the meantime, I have an official full-on review of the expansion to write for Gamespot, so watch out for that soon.