As I discussed when the actual patch came out, I was somewhat less than enamored with Final Fantasy XIV’s first Variant Dungeon. It’s not bad, but it suffers from two major issues. The first is filling in lore gaps that weren’t particularly wanting in terms of exploration to begin with; the second is that once you have the story paths and the (relatively small number of) cosmetic rewards, it’s not really relevant any more. It’s not a great source of tomes for time spent across the board, and past that, the cosmetics are all it has on offer.
That having been said, I also am very firmly of the mind that this is the first of a new style of content, and the team behind the game always iterates and improves over time. With that in mind, I want to look at the obvious places that this content can go in the future, both in terms of covering different portions of the lore and in providing reasons for people to run the content more effectively.
Potential lore points for future runs
Gelmorra: A lot of people have suggested this as an obvious area for exploration, and quite frankly I not only agree with it but find it far more interesting than what little additional nuggets we gained in this dungeon. Gelmorra is largely an unknown quantity, and what little we do know comes from people who are openly prejudiced against its history and the Duskwights who inhabited the tunnels for so long. It’s been something we keep getting teased with and then not getting, and I would adore a dungeon exploring Gelmorra’s history and people.
Southern Mor Dhona: Did you know that there’s an entire half of Mor Dhona that not only hasn’t been seen since 1.0 but hasn’t even really been referenced? We know that it’s still there, but we’ve not explored that region of Mor Dhona since the Calamity happened, and it was weird and dangerous and scary at launch. Considering that there’s still things to unpack about Silvertear Falls that we never got to look into, we can assume there’s potentially more to see down here. Plus, it might give us some information about the Gigants, who we’ve learned precious little regarding.
Gwyr-Aen and the lost portions of Coerthas: Much like the aforementioned portion of Mor Dhona, there’s a lot of Coerthas we still don’t get to see. Gwyr-Aen from 1.0 wasn’t particularly interesting except for the fact that, well… Gwyr-Aen has a name that sounds nothing like any other thing named throughout Coerthas. Diving into the history of this region and its inhabitants would be fascinating.
Corvos: All right, enough woolgathering about lost things from 1.0; we still have lots of newer regions, like Corvos. It’s not far from Radz-at-Han, it has resonance with both the Garlean history as well as G’raha Tia’s personal history, and it’s pretty interesting. This region might be earmarked for a future expansion (we did barely explore Ilsabard in this expansion, after all), but it’s come up a bunch in Endwalker already.
The Floating City of Nym: This thing has been floating since 2.0 started off, but for some reason we’ve never gone there despite Scholar quests extensively delving into the Plainsfolk history back in Nym. It’s weird that Wanderer’s Palace is still our only taste of this culture, and I would love a chance to learn more about what the floating city is all about.
Something, anything with Qiqirn: It’s kind of a shame that we know more about the Qitari than we do about the Qiqirn, despite the fact that we’ve literally had the Qiqirn around for ages. They’re located everywhere, they’re mildly avaricious but not very threatening, and by and large they seem pretty good and interesting. It seems like a foregone conclusion we’re never going to get a tribal quest series focused around them at this point, so maybe we could at least get some lore exploring some of their burrows?
Potential mechanical changes for the future
A tie-in to relic quests: Obviously, I kind of expected this to begin with, but I can certainly see a reason to not put this in at the start. It’s likely true that the development resources otherwise devoted to new relic zones went into Variant/Criterion dungeons, and as I’ve discussed in the past, those zones had a number of issues. That having been said, I do not exactly look forward to a return to chain-running old content to raise light levels or something similar, so I’m hoping we do still have options.
Having said that, though, I think the fact that we didn’t get this for the first stage makes it feel, well, less likely than it would otherwise be. So let’s explore some other useful options beyond that.
Better tome reward rates: I’m sure that part of the reason for keeping the rates a bit lower is because unlike expert dungeons, you can run these solo. However, as it currently stands the dungeon rewards half as much as an individual max-level dungeon and takes longer, and that’s whether you do it solo or with a group. Unless you have some deep aversion to doing things with other people, you are not using these for tome rewards, and if that’s the case, you probably are not playing the game at level 90 anyhow.
If you absolutely must give lesser rewards because you can do this solo and a good solo player can clear them faster than clearing an Expert dungeon with Trusts (which is just as solo, so that defense doesn’t really hold, but whatever), I’d say tuning the rewards to be about 1.5 times what they currently are would at least put into “not better but not worse” territory. Frankly, I say just make the rewards comparable to an Expert dungeon without the roulette bonus. Gives you a reason to keep running it, you know?
Materia rewards: It’s not exactly hard to get Grade X or Grade IX materia at this point, but I also feel like that’s part of the point. You have options at the end of the day, motivation to still do this content. While Sil’dihn Silver can purchase materia, at that point you’re already doing this content primarily for the challenge, which makes this addition feel almost wholly pointless. It really should be available for the otherwise worthless potsherds you’re going to be acquiring along the way.
“But that makes it endlessly possible to solo farm Grade X materia!” Yes, which you can already do from Arkasodara quests in the unlikely event that you desperately need more of this materia than you can farm through other means. Seriously, it at least makes the potsherd rewards endlessly relevant.
Challenge log bonuses: This is a fairly minor one, but… like, adding some thing to the challenge log? That would at least give you some motivation to do these after clearing out the routes. And since there seems to be no likelihood of actual gear upgrades here, that’s a good thing.
Feedback, as always, is welcome via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com or in the comments down below. Next week, I think I’d like to talk about something that I’d really like to see addressed in the future but worry won’t ever happen: finishing up the work that earlier expansions and stories started.
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.
