All right, “boring” is arguably the wrong word, but it’s still the parts that you didn’t really need a preview to learn about. Is anyone actually surprised at the thought of us getting a new dungeon and the last part of the Mhach raid? Of course not. We’ve all been waiting for this for some time. It’s a foregone conclusion.
Just the same, there’s stuff to talk about and some interesting points to unpack, so I’ve done precisely that for this week’s column. I’ve also put together some of the nicer-in-isolation screenshots from the official transcript, if you’d prefer them in a straightforward gallery. So let’s get started on the completion of preparation for the preparation of completion.
Dungeons ahoy
Sohm Al (Hard) was somewhat unexpected, but it also makes sense: Back when I listed the dungeons that we still don’t have hard modes for, it was a dungeon that seemed tricky. It’d be even harder to find justification for including it once we leave Coerthas, too, so now seems like the right time to have another jaunt through. What it actually contains is anyone’s guess, but much like Great Gubal Library (Hard), it’s a side story rather than the main new dungeon. My hopes are accordingly not high for major story revelations.
Baelsar’s Wall, meanwhile… well, that’s going to be a big pile of lore based just on the fact that we’ve never actually gone through the wall, so we’ll get a peek at what the border crossing looks like. It’s also the first time that we’ve had a Garlean dungeon in this expansion, which seems a little bit weird given their presence in the 2.x series. Expect some interesting hardware, and if we’re lucky, perhaps a flashback or two to the pre-Calamity days; I’d love to see some of the old Garlean dreadnoughts hopping about, or perhaps even older weapons.
The last batch of dungeons that we got in 2.5 was a lot of fun; it was the final iteration of the specific design that existed then, and it showed everything the designers had learned, so I’m eager to see what we get out of this final pair. At the same time, it’s fairly predictable at face value; we always knew we’d be getting the ending of this.
Finishing up the side stories
Oh, yes, we’re also fighting the last of the Warring Triad and finishing the Mhach series; that’s another non-surprise. I feel bad grousing about this, as it’s not like Weeping City or Sophia were poorly designed, but neither story has managed to be quite as engaging, and I’ve found myself not much caring about sky pirates or the Warring Triad and their rather perfunctory back-and-forth.
Rather than providing interesting lore or character interactions, the Warring Triad arc has mostly concerned itself with a few unclear character motivations and a couple of mysteries that are obviously waiting for answers; there’s not much going on that really speaks to the Triad alone. If you haven’t done any of them, you’ve missed out on a little bit, but the promise of the premise has mostly gone unrealized. This is going to cap things off and most likely will answer all of those lingering mysteries, but it still seems like a bit of shoehorning in of major figures without the interesting stuff one might otherwise associate with the Triad.
The Mhach story, meanwhile… in theory, I like it. In practice, it’s always felt rather secondary, partly because I don’t think the sky pirates are really the right group to put in this particular setting. Much like Alexander, it has a foregone conclusion, and we unfortunately spent more time focusing on the new NPCs (who may very well drop entirely off of the radar after this story) than the history of Mhach or the voidsent.
But, hey, the content itself should be fun. Isn’t that what really matters? Mostly.
Exploratory missions are cancelled
All right, they’re not really cancelled, but they are being split in half. And I’m not going to lie: That frustrates me because it means that rather than find a way to make the premise work, Square has left us with the remnants of a premise that show how badly the idea didn’t work.
Obviously, these missions were never quite what the developers wanted. Gathering players wanted to gather while players wanted to smack monsters en masse and wait for pinata to dispense some loot. The thing is, that disjunction was actually a good thing; there were places to go from there, and a chance to make a sort of content that really explored mixing these different disciplines. Heck, that was one of the points that the original 1.0 design called for.
There’s new content coming for crafters and gatherers in the patch, as well, and that’s also good news. I don’t mean to imply that this is somehow a net loss; it just feels like a tacit acknowledgement of how badly this content failed to manifest what would have actually made it unique and interesting. As it stands, I have low hopes moving forward. If there’s been a big whiff in the expansion, this has been it.
Birds and pets
The first version of egi glamours are indeed coming, and I’m very sad that you can’t access them if you’re playing as Scholar. You have to stare at the fairy all the time! Let me make one of them into a carbuncle, come on.
All joking aside, making the switch a text command is a good thing; it means you can just change it as you feel like it rather than having to go to someone specific or sort through several menu-trawling chores. It’s also universal, like I’m still hoping Gauss Barrel’s disable option will one day be. This one took longer than expected, but it’s a nice quality-of-life improvement for Summoners, and it lays the groundwork for more.
I’m also glad to see that we’ve finally gotten past the existing chocobo issues as pets; summoning your bird will be far more rewarding and worthwhile from here on out, which is most welcome. There’s long been a back-and-forth about whether or not using a chocobo is actually worthwhile, and this pushes the critter into more useful territory. Of course, it might also mean that you need to pick up a Thavnairian Onion or two along the way just to keep up with the leveling…
Overall, we haven’t heard much about patch 3.5 that we couldn’t already guess at, and much of what we have heard was long since predicted. That in and of itself is somewhat expected; it’s the last patch of the expansion, so we’re not going to get some huge new thing. But just the same, it seems… safe, so far. Then again, we do have the next fan festival coming up very soon, so perhaps that’s by design.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I want to talk about Machinist again; I talked about what was wrong with it back when the class was the new thing, but has it gotten better? Can it still get better? Should it?
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
