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Annihilation
-More FF continuity here. Ramza discovered that the Lighthouse is built directly atop the Clockwork City of Goug. Rumor is that Goug was abandoned after an explosion left half of it in ruin.
-Interesting! Ramza theorizes that the Garlean Empire originated from Goug refugees. It works geographically, and would explain Garlean technological prowess.
-We have a lost city to explore. A new raid opens, the Ridorana Lighthouse.
-It takes some time, grinding, and gil to get my gear strong enough to try. Ready now.
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The Ridorana Lighthouse
-It’s another 24-player raid with a crapload of mechanics. I’ll incorporate my raid prep notes into this post.
My role as red mage is DPS (damage-per-second), a damage-dealer. To prep for a raid, I checked a couple of guides and wrote myself notes on the mechanics that I have to care about as a DPS, ignoring the healer and tank mechanics.
-The fight starts with a pan-up to the lighthouse. Montblanc and Ramza trail our group. The lighthouse itself is MASSIVE.
-The first boss stands just outside the lighthouse’s entrance.
Boss #1: Famfrit, the Darkening Cloud
-Briny Cannonade: Puts a circle on a raid member that explodes soon. Run out of raid with this.
-Tsunami: Knockback, then Famfrit spins his ewer in a random direction and blasts. Watch closely.
-Dark Ewer: spawns water ewers that move across the platform in straight lines or circularly.
-Darkening Rainfall: split up to destroy Dark Rain adds.
-Dark Cannonade: puts a triangle over your head. Stack with at least one other player who has the marker.
-Famfrit’s presence here – and presumably Belias’ – are explained in lore as manifestations of Ba’Gamnan’s anger through the auracite’s prism.
-His spinning ewer is the trickiest part. Gotta constantly watch where it stops and get on the opposite side, to avoid the blast of water.
-Famfrit goes down and we move into the lighthouse.
-There’s an ancient engraving on the entrance: “Lo, seeker in days unborn, god-blade bearer. Know you: this tower challenges the sky. Ware the watcher, the ward of the Three Waits, soul-hungry, unsated.”
[Non-rhetorical question: is this referring to Belias? What does “the Three Waits” mean?]
The warp system that existed in FFXII’s lighthouse exists here too, and we even get to see some tech bubble moving the characters higher and higher.
-The second boss awaits us high above.
Boss #2: Belias the Gigas
PHASE 1
-Time Eruption: Start on slowly spinning clock face. When fast clocks explode, move to those tiles.
-Crimson Cyclone: Two adds appear, pause, and charge straight ahead. Watch arrows on the ground to see which parts of the platform are save.
-Hand of Time: Nails tether players. Move away from nail if tethered. Do not “clothesline” other players with your tether or get clotheslined.
PHASE 2
-Kill Gigas adds ASAP.
PHASE 3
-Time Bomb: step on clock faces to change what direction the hand faces, and thus which direction the explosion will hit.
-A fire- and time-themed boss. Again, like pretty much all these bosses, he looks FANTASTIC.
-The boss platform is a nightmare of explosions and fire and charging Belias clones.
-Post-Belias we continue up… and shit gets weird.
In the last Ivalice raid, we started out XII’s Rabanastre and dived down towards Tactics’ Lesalia. A similar thing happens here in an opposite direction. We started in XII’s Ridorana Lighthouse and move up to a new Tactics zone.
The Clockwork City of Goug. IT’S SO FUCKING COOL! I’m not quite sure how to parse this geographically. I guess Goug was built above the Lighthouse and nobody in modern times has seen it because of aetheric stuff stopping airships from going nearby, or something like that.
-The next boss isn’t exactly an old friend, but they’re at least a prototype model of an old friend.
Boss #3: Construct 7
-Accelerate: If you get a circle around you, move out of raid. If you don’t get a circle, stack on boss.
-Pulverize: Point blank AoE. Run away from boss.
-Boss periodically teleports to the edge of the platform. Move out of his line before he charges.
-Lithobrake: Move as far away from boss as possible. Proximity-based damage.
-Dispose: Get and close behind boss.
Spinning ZAPZAPZAP of Dispose.
-Computation Mode: calibrate health according to boss’s request. Make your health a prime number or divisible by whatever number the boss calls out.
-Tartarus Mode: requirements depend on which alliance you’re with.
A: Polarity mechanic and tethered. You get a pos or neg polarity marker and he tethers you to another player. If he tethers you to someone with the same polarity, stack up. If he tethers you to someone with the opposite polarity, move away.
B: Dodge missiles that cross the platform.
C: Stop ALL action when the debuff you get is about to wear off.
-Construct 7 presents even more of a labyrinth of DEATH ZONES to avoid than usual, but the coolest part of the fight is the “Computation Mode” phase.
They spawn four circles, each with a different number of dots from 1-4. They then set each player’s max health to a different single digit. When you walk into one of the circles, it adds that number to your health.
For example, if Construct 7 set you to 4 health and you walk into the circle with two dots, your health goes to 6.
Finally, Construct 7 casts a spell forcing each player to do some quick arithmetic. You have to set your health to a number that fits his criterion before the end of the cast. For example, they might make you have your health be a prime number, or a number divisible by four.
WHAT A COOL MECHANIC! I LOVE THIS SO MUCH
I actually failed the first time because I was in a panic about where to go and my brain froze. My health was at 7, they cast “Divisible By 4,” and I panicked because I LITERALLY FORGOT THAT 7+1 = A NUMBER DIVISIBLE BY 4. I ran into some random other circle.
(I redeemed myself on the Computation Mode when my health was at 7 again, he cast “Divide by 5,” and I got to the 3-dot circle to bring my health to 10.)
-It’s a long, tough, close fight. We continue all the way up afterwards, out of the building, and into the open Clockwork City of Goug. It’s gorgeous, trees and gears and windmills everywhere.
-lolol Montblanc cheers us with singing along the way, our own moogly version of the Proclaimers: “And I would climb 5,000 yalms…”
-Ba’Gamnan is here, stumbling forward. Talking to himself, engulfed with rage at the Empire. Totally in the auracite’s grip.
“The blood of my fallen brothers feeds my hate!”
He transforms into a vessel for that rage.
Boss #4: Yiazmat
PHASE 1:
-If the boss stands up, run behind him.
-White Breath: stand in the boss’s hit box, the only safe zone.
-Magnetic Lysis: stand on the opposite side of your polarity. E.g. if you get a positive polarity buff, stand in the negative polarity zone.
PHASE 2:
-Burn my alliance’s Archaeodemon add ASAP, then switch to Heart of the Dragon.
-My favorite part of FFXIV’s take on past game content is seeing how it twists, blends, and incorporates those old parts into Eorzea. Turning Ba’Gamnan into the XII superboss Yiazmat is brilliant.
-I managed to die only once during the fight somehow. Positioning was everything here. A little bit too far away from the safe zone during his cast and you wound up petrified and dead. A little slow watching Yiazmat’s charge path, and he one-shots you.
-Raid complete! Didn’t get any new gear, and I lost the roll for the Construct 8 non-combat minion, but still came out with a shiny new Yiazmat triple triad card.
My very first five-star card! (That’s the highest rating for card quality.)
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A Man Possessed?
-Ramza sees his mother’s necklace on the ground. Oh right, we learned that Ba’Gamnan had the same one as her. WAIT WAS ASHE RAMZA’S MOTHER? [Later edit: I misunderstood. There were two separate necklaces.]
-He bends over to pick up the necklace and an energy shock knocks him out.
-Back aboard the ship. There are two necklaces. Ramza’s still unconscious.
-The stones in each necklace are cut from the same crystal, likely from auracite.
-I was sort of right. Ba’Gamnan treasured the necklace, but because it was given by Prince Rasler to him to deliver to return to Princess Ashelia once she was safely away from Nalbina Fortress.
-Ba’Gamnan kept it ever since Princess Ashe’s death. A reminder of his failure.
JENOMIS: “Each necklace – each auracite – has acted as a lodestone, drawing both of our parties closer and closer to Ivalice.”
Closer? We were there! We’ve been to Ancient Ivalice multiple times now. Isn’t your mission solved?
-Ramza wakes. He’s okay. We know that owners can imbue auracite with their desires. It’s possible that the owner of these two necklaces wanted simply to return to Ivalice.
(That seems like a leap, but I’ll go with it.)
-Appropriately, it’s Ramza who thinks that his namesake – Ramza Beoulve – is the one who wanted people to return to his homeland and uncover the truth of the kingdom’s founding.
-Why does Ramza think this? He simply asks us to trust him.
Not-So-Crappy Theory Time: Someone just possessed Ramza. My money is on his namesake, Ramza Beoulve. Or maybe someone more villainous from Ivalice’s past, like one of the Lucavi. Ultima herself maybe?
-Ramza reaches for one of the auracites, light washes over him, he’s knocked back. Definitely possessed.
-The ancient kingdom of Ivalice definitely existed. Jenomis will keep searching though – he wants proof that his ancestors, the Orrais, were not the heretics the church painted them as.
-The new mystery surrounds Ramza. Just now, he was aggressive and then friendly, casual and then hyper-formal.
That’s as far as the Ivalice story goes for now! I’m sure they’ll add more quests and probably another raid to wrap things up in some future patch.
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Next time: I improved my gear and can now progress to the Patch 4.3 main story quests.
