Leviathan didn't make the cut. It's a cool shot.
If you haven’t heard the world speak enough about Final Fantasy XIV - Square’s rebirthed MMO - you certainly will have by the end of this ongoing weekly arrangement dedicated to all the happenings of Eorzea. We’re heading into Week 2 now, while our first piece detailing why now might be the best time to hop into the game is still available through this link.
Eorzea is filled to the brim with massive monsters and intimidating figures. It’s the principle of every Final Fantasy game, in the end. Sometimes even the softer looking creatures can give you hard time, but so long as a well established reason to fight accompanies the many deaths, we’re all up for the challenge to get smacked around the battlefield a little, bask in some finely crafted music and run it dozens of more over the months from weapons, mounts, pets and whatever else has managed to land in its loot pool.
So no matter which fights give us the most grief, we’re usually more than happy to set our differences aside and toss a couple of casts its way in the hopes of getting something to show off our unrelenting thirst for nice looking clothes and maybe a miniaturized version to accompany us in our adventures – whether they’re out in the field or in the confines of our virtual houses. I’m looking at you, Balmung players.
But which of these once – or still – punishing encounters do we still subject ourselves to? Which do we brave for the sake of RNG and wasted time? Here’s just a few;
Good King Moggle Mog XII: Thornmarch (Extreme)
This assumed giant moogle of legend manifested in the very same was all primals become solid, formidable beings in Eorzea - the prayers, pleas and cries of its tribe and a whole lot of crystals. It wouldn’t be Final Fantasy without crystals now, would it? Still longing after the elusive Kingly Whisker for that adorable Moogle furnishing and weapons with more glow than a nuclear reactor, players still occasionally band together to take their chances against the ruler of the poms.
While an undersized group scaled above this fight’s original Level 50 target can likely crush it with ease, it’s still reliant on correct execution of its finer mechanics. Each of the king’s kind needs me killed in a fairly specific order with the two caster-types throwing a spanner into the works with their skills if not correctly intercepted. Having a charm go off can still land a few members in hot water while bad stun timings and wrongful kills can, and will, still cause a raid-wide wipe-fest.
There’s still a lot to go wrong here, and it’s never fun trying to explain to a group of strangers to stop attacking the Moogle with a giant ‘Ignore’ sign over its head. Other than potential Kingly Whisker goodness, the only reason you’ll enjoy this one is for the constantly accelerating absurd battle music and lyrics formed by the fantastic localisation direct Michael Christopher Koji Fox and the ever-talented maniac composer that is Masayoshi Soken. More on them another week!
Living Liquid: Alexander Gordias (Savage)
A newer contender to the mix, Living Liquid – at least, its ‘Savage’ counterpart – came along in the first few weeks of the game’s first, and current, expansion “Heavensward”. Standing guard in the great mechanical fortress Alexander, Living Liquid stood as our third trial before the final fight of the scenario’s first wing. Often referred to as Pepsi Man by the game’s community, the harder version of Living Liquid was seen as a great wall for hardcore raid groups.
Unclear mechanics, potential RNG-based wipes, tight damage gates and multiple shape-shifting forms, this shimmery bastard stood undefeated for most for a long time to come with only around 30 teams claiming a kill in the first month. Of a game played by millions, that’s a strikingly low number.
He’s since been nerfed in recent patches with the introduction of the raid’s second wing causing many to hearken back and mourn the days of the muscleman’s days of old as a roadblock in every adventurer’s path. Final Fantasy XIV players like a good challenge. They’ll get mad, but they love it really.
Brute Justice: Alexander Midas (Savage)
Here we go. The current cream of the crop. Maybe this behemoth won’t be the king of raid slayers when it comes to Patch 3.4 in a few weeks, but he’s been sitting atop that throne for 7 months now. Of the 2 raid teams I follow on my server, neither have shut down this insanely chaotic automaton despite quelling its predecessor shortly before it become obsolete two patches later – just about, anyway.
Brute Justice has become a fan favorite over the last few months. The fight caught everyone off guard with its sudden shift in musical taste in the middle turning from the heavy techno grunge heard in every floor of Alexander before it, to an far more upbeat tone almost begging to have you get up to dance with death.
Formed by the joining of the mechas from two floors below, Brute Justice was dubbed a Power Ranger even before release. Raid groups may hate the many months of wiping to this moving castle, but they’re all looking forward to dealing with those golden wings as it activates the good old ‘Spin to Win’ mechanic to wreck the healer’s mana – and life.
Ser Claribet: The Vault
Heavenward is full of angry religious figures, and The Vault throws more than a few of them at you. A power hungry parish with a lot to say, its one of the more vocal instances in the whole game. At the end sits Ser Claribet who genuinly wants to burn you to the ground; and for many first timers he manages that no problem.
Spouting such famous lines like “Sickness must be purged” and “This shall be a mercy” before rigging up explosive chains to your allies and expecting you to go down, down down in a burning ring of fire shows he just really wants to seperate you from your team in any way he can imagine.
Healers have it rough with constantly high hits followed by never-ending reasons to cancel a cast to dodge an army of marching clockwork knights stomping on their face followed by every reason to dump their mana into dealing damage to the Holy Flames surrounding the angry priest else risk trying to heal through even more fiery madness.
He’s degrade you, he’ll slap you around and take pride in ruining your rotation and combos. Big pointy hats off to Ser Claribet, we love you for your drama and hate you for everything else.
Yeti: Snowcloak
Snowcloak still wins the award of one of the game’s most relaxing battle scenarios. The frozen caverns lead up to one of our favorite story battles and gave us our first glance at the Fenrir mount – one that wouldn’t be obtainable realistacally by anyone on the losing side of a jumbo cactpot ticket. It’s music didn’t chill us to our core and instead reminded 90s kids of their trip through the Ice Cavern in Ocarina of Time to collect the Iron Boots before giving up at the Water Temple.
In the middle of this dungeon was a creature simply known as Yeti. He looked like any other yeti in the game, just marginally bigger. The trick here? To have him face the straying spriggan mobs before his cone-shaped AoE frozen nothing but the ground in front of you. Frozen monsters became the snowballs needed to effectively reduce this creature’s massively exaggerated health pool with bonus damage being caused by snowballs battered by more than one of the Yeti’s breaths.
The problem here? Either the DPS wouldn’t reliably kite the spriggan into the line of fire or would kill them outright. Other times the tank would refuse to aid in the placement leading to little to no snowballs being available to cancel Yeti’s periodic blast. Maybe a much bigger monster would appear and slap the snowballs away – maybe the damage-dealers would do it with either terrible judgement or lazy spamming of uneeded wide attacks. Everything could go wrong. You’d either get a team capable of ending the Yeti’s life in a minute or have the fight last 10. We love the Yeti for being both incredibly quick to fall or hate it for refusing. In the end, we usually end up hating the team too.
And that’s the lot! A crude mixture of end-game raids and entry-level dungeons shows just how Final Fantasy XIV caters to all. Newcomers get a challenge and move onto far crazier things to either become the new Nerdscream or die trying. Maybe they just give up and become the ones to fuel our never-ending need for crafted goods and foreign wood. Either way, we always have something to bang our heads again; but we generally enjoy it.
Most of the time.
