A Gnathic Deity
-Ysayle saw summoning her primal (Shiva) for the ultimate sake of peace as a necessary evil. The Gnath summoning a primal for pure territory expansion disgusts her.
-A Gnath Overmind directs them, Borg Queen style.
-The plan: surrender ourselves to the Gnath as sacrifices to their god, then defeat the god when it comes to eat our souls. What could go wrong?
-Ysayle will go with me while Estinien stays behind. The Primals can “temper” victims, twisting them into worshippers. Hydaelyn’s blessing protects me and Ysayle, but not Estinien.
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Lord of the Hive
-We get “captured.” Let’s see who this Primal is. Five bucks says it’s Hildebrand in an insect mask.
GNATH WORSHIPPER: “O Lord Ravana! Master of the Sacred Blades! Wrath of the Colony! Conqueror of the World! Hear our prayer!” Ravana? Not a name I recognize.
Which isn’t a bad thing! References and past enemies are fine, but I also love when the series creates new summons/espers/primals. See also Yojimbo, Valefor, most of FFXII.
-Four swords drop from the ceiling, and spin on the ground. A fiery pillar erupts from them. Ravana steps out.
He looks INCREDIBLE. A four-armed insect blademaster god.
-Ysayle pleads him to make peace with the dragons, leaving us to do the same.
-Ravana says no. He’s a war god, so we challenge him. If we win, he drops his war. If he wins, we join his army and serve him.
-Ysayle steps up first. The crystals in the surrounding area resonate.
HAHAHA IS SHE GOING FULL SHIVA?? SHE IS!
-They fight. She summons a sword and shield of ice. Hurls ice at him, encases him in it, but he keeps breaking free and slapping her away.
It’s a really sweet battle cutscene.
Victory for Ravana. My turn next, with three of my friends in a trial.
I LOVE THIS MUSIC SO MUCH! A friend in voice chat thinks it sounds like “This is Halloween.” I agree, mixed with a dose of the Mamushka from the Addams Family. The violin ties it all together.
Not only is it good on its own, but it’s perfect for Ravana specifically in a way it wouldn’t have been perfect for, say, Titan or Ifrit. Ravana is a graceful swordsman. This music is perfect for either an intense figure skating routine or fighting the Lord of the Hive.
-Lots of area effects to dodge as he launches himself across the room at different party members and sends energy blasts out with sweeping sword strikes.
-For Dark Souls 3 fans, Ravana reminds me a bit of the Dancer of the Boreal Valley (one of my favorite fights from that game).
-Victory! Close, but victory still.
-Igeyorhm, an Ascian, watches this. She’s pissed.
“Once more you achieve the impossible, Bringer of Light… But with every mortal heart that succumbs to fear and fury, another voice is joined to the chorus beseeching divine succor.”
The Ascians want a tide of gods to consume the world in a “swelling storm of chaos.”
-Ysayle and I meet back up with Alphinaud and Estinien. I think we can trust Ravana to keep his word. He seems like a relatively honorable god.
-The dragons are safe from the Gnath. Vidofnir should now allow us an audience with Hraesvelgr.
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Palace of the Dead
-I’m finding leveling super slow. My pre-50 leveling actions – FATEs, regular quests – give a much smaller percentage of my needed experience. I check around if there’s a new thing I should be doing, and the term “Palace of the Dead” (PotD) keeps coming up.
-I’d unlocked PotD a while ago. I knew that it was a self-contained area where your level got temporarily reset, but not much more. I’d planned to check it out at max level, but since you apparently get experience for it, I check now.
And it’s AWESOME! It’s basically “FFX-2: Last Mission” within FFXIV – except, y’know, good.
I start as a level 1 dragoon. I even get an adorable pixelated sprite.
-Each floor of PotD is randomly generated, and pretty short. Seems about 3-5 rooms on average.
There are traps, chests with treasures, enemies.
This was not a treasure chest as I’d hoped.
A temporary succubus transformation that gave me an area of effect fire attack.
-Every few kills I level up and get new abilities. Not PotD-specific abilities, either - my regular lancer/dragoon abilities. The abilities I got at level 4 as a lancer, I get at level 4 in PotD.
-The leveling-up process is super quick. Every few kills I level up, and every 10 floors there’s a boss. The first 10 floors took me and my friend about 30 minutes, moving slowly/deliberately.
-A mysterious witchy woman appears in cutscenes. She’s watching us as we progress. Probably the final boss.
-My friend and I cleared the first 10 floors as a pair. It was touch and go at times, but pretty smooth.
-Then I tried floors 11-20 solo, and it didn’t go so well. I died once midway through, and then the second attempt died on the floor 20 boss. This frustrated me a bit because if you die, you lose all progress since the last save point. And you can only save every 10 floors.
A floor boss.
-I tried again, with a randomly matched group, and it went quickly and smoothly. I think this is the main way to go.
-The experience PotD gives is incredible, and it increases with each ten floors. At least for now, this is gonna be my go-to place when I want to level.
-Oh, and while there’s not a whole lot of story here, I wanna see who this witchy woman is.
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Random Stuff Around Eorzea
-I get a quest to unlock my chocobo companion’s flight. It’s both sweet and sad – he had some kind of insect infestation thing in his ears that threw off his equilibrium, but now he gets the joy of flight again!
-A ring wyrm, similar to those in FFXII:
-Many quests in game have level sync, where if you’re over a certain level, they’ll level you down. But now for the first time, I found a “quest sync” mechanic, where the quest enemies level up to my level. I don’t quite understand the impact of this difference.
-An old hunt target from FFXII appears here in XIV:
-There’s a pretty cool Gnath-centered questline about a “Nonmind,” an independent Gnath separated from the hive mind. Reminds me a bit of those Star Trek episodes about individual Borg.
-One of my PotD rewards is a baby opo-opo pet that sits on my head:
-I really like the Chocobo Forest questlines. One centers on a clan of chocobo hunters who try to do so ethically and sustainably.
And of course, they introduce some glorious puns. My favorite is the quest “The Hunter Becomes the Kweh.”
-A chocobo mount in some amazing dragon armor:
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Next time: trying again for an audience with Hraesvelgr.
