Charakter

Warning! Serious Shadowbringers spoilers in this blog entry!


The new Exarchic set is pretty neat!


Wrathful And Resolute #7: What a season, what a season


Welcome back once again to the WAR blog! It's a nice change of pace for me to be able to talk about the MSQ in this blog after having been caught up for a while now. Certainly breaks the difficulty of banging my head against E10S in PF most nights... but we'll get to that. Also noticed that for blogs the "Use Current Time" for Post Date uses the moment you start writing, rather than the time you actually post the entry, which is rather interesting. Especially as I actually write this on the Lodestone itself, I figured drafting it in Word or something would be weird for the formatting, which on this site looks from a janky strategy game's forum from 2001.

But enough talk, have at you!


When last we left off, we were heading to Kholusia, to Eulmore specifically, to end Vauthry's reign of terror. A challenge no doubt, as we had to face Ranjit and Vauthry both. But we've had plenty of preparation, our team has swelled to include all the Scions in the First, we've leveled up and the Artist Formerly Known as Minfilia, Ryne, has gotten more magical Light-detecting powers.

I gotta admit, at this point I was really wanting to reach the climax of the 5.0 storyline. The storyline had been building in a strong crescendo for a while at this point and I was thinking the end would be somewhere around when we beat Vauthry. Somehow, even while a lot of things were spoiled for me, the end of the game had not, which was great. I figured we'd be doing a bunch of fetch quests around Gate Town and work our way inside Eulmore for a climactic battle.

But, it really wasn't quite like that.

We get to Kholusia, and realize that the people stuck outside have been... losing their minds. Ryne and Y'shtola clarify that meol is made out of sin eaters; these sin eaters were those in Eulmore who "ascended." And the meol let Vauthry control their minds.

Ew. Of course, we kinda knew this was coming for a bit.

Much faster than I'd expected, we storm the castle in a pretty cool solo instance. The jesters, which I'd thought would play some major role in the story, fall easily. Ranjit puts up a good fight, but not as strong as the Thancred battle, and also falls to our blade (currently, a RDM one for me).



At last, we get to Vauthry. As you'd expect, he's huddled away on his own, eating meol. Ryne warns us but out of nowhere he sprouts wings and flies all the way to Mt. Gulg in FF1. Which by the way is a reference to that earlier game I totally missed as it's been probably the better part of a decade since I played a bunch of FF1.

Alphinaud takes to the stage and delivers a speech to rouse the Eulmorans from their idleness and pleasure-seeking and to try to work towards something greater:



I should mention I never hated Alphinaud even when he was a whiny brat back in 2.x, but I really have appreciated how he's grown as a character over the series. Probably no other character has grown so much over the course of the MSQ as Alphinaud (probably the WoL has but then again, Lisotte is a silent protagonist). I felt like I have this dependable partner who can get shit done now. And he does get shit done as he rouses the people of Kholusia to help us get up the Ladder towards Mt. Gulg. And once we're there, he gets the Chais and all of our allies we've gained up to this point, to help us build a massive Talos to climb up to Mt. Gulg in a cool dungeon.



Ardbert is also impressed how we've managed to get everyone together, from the Crystarium, the Greatwood, Amh Araeng and Eulmore. Everyone except those from Il Mheg... who come to help us in the nick of time!

But before that we have a bunch of work to do. And we meet maybe the coolest, the raddest and baddest group in the First, the Dwarves! Together with the Exarch, we work with the dwarves to get the materials we need for the massive Talos.



Many dwarf side quests were completed in the building of that Talos. And in the course of it, RDM dinged 80 and so it was back to the art of WAR!

We have a quiet moment with the Exarch before the attack:


BTW, the Dwarven Mythril Hammer is one of the coolest WAR weapons! I never stopped glamouring it till I finished my Minos Lux

At this point, the WoL and the Exarch are both weary from everything that's been happening. But we have this moment to get to know the Exarch a bit before the coming battle.

And so we go up and fell Vauthry. Or Innocence, as he's called.



The ugly Vauthry turns into the beautiful Innocence, over the course of the battle. I had no clue what I was doing in this trial, but fortunately my party did! Felt kinda weird to have the 2nd trial so near to the end of 5.0 but it was a good moment. We also got some backstory about Vauthry's origins that, gasp, he's both a human and sin eater. The game tries to build some sympathy for him at this point (turns out Emet-Selch was behind it!) but I just was relieved he was finally gone at that point.

But not all was well. For the Light within us has become finally too strong to bear. But the Exarch jumps in to take the Light from us, seemingly for his own benefit!



But he really can't keep up the charade very long, and pretty soon we realize it's our old bud G'raha Tia, that NPC back from the Crystal Tower questline I barely remembered by this point, considering it was like seven years before:



But all was not well, Emet-Selch shoots our friend and disappears, leaving us suffering from the Light. Ryne luckily calms the Light down, and we return to the Crystarium, with all the land covered in Light again.

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Some soul-searching happens, and we wander around the Crystarium before deciding to go to the Tempest to hunt after Emet-Selch. We meet up with our companions again and head to the Tempest using Bismarck, of all things.

The Tempest was certainly a zone I was not expecting. An undersea zone with not-Sahagins and ruins of ancient Ascians. And not-Geralt there giving us our fancy new AF. I was more pressed than ever to finish the 5.0 MSQ, but there were a number of quests here. I was pretty stunned when I finally got to Amaurot, the city of the ancient Ascians:



Or a recollection of it, at least. The whole Tempest, and Amaurot specifically, feels just so different to me. Like, totally brand-new feeling in FFXIV, and I couldn't get enough of it. We got to learn more about the Final Days, that ancient world-ending calamity that the Convocation of 14 averted by summoning Zodiark:



After talking around town, we head to our final showdown with Emet-Selch. But he has a bit of a show for us first. We get that endgame dungeon, the appropriately-named Amaurot, a recreation of the Final Days:


Seems like some cool guys do look at explosions

Amaurot's a cool dungeon, and I feel like it's on par with ARF for an endgame, first level-cap dungeon in FFXIV for 5.0. But what follows... is even cooler.

We meet Emet-Selch at the top of the world it seems, for our final encounter:



THIS has been the moment I've been waiting for, the moment the game has been building towards. I'm beyond excited to finally reach the story finale, and boy does it pay off! The light is trying to overwhelm us, but Ardbert entrusts his soul to ours and as our soul is eight times rejoined, we can control the light:



Together with Ardbert and adventurers summoned by G'raha Tia, we begin the final battle against Emet-Selch's true form (and name), Hades:



I think Hades may be my favorite final boss fight of an expansion so far, previously that was Thordan. Hades has such an awesome design and it really feels like everything has built up to this one battle, which is awesome! We get some awesome looking special effects and wield Ardbert's power to destroy Hades once and for all with white auracite:



The battle is over! Yet, somehow, though it's another damn Ascian, it feels bittersweet. Emet-Selch really has become my favorite villain of the series, and in some ways an ally. I was truly sad to see him go, and honestly I'd have preferred if we kept him around longer while letting some certain other villains *cough* Zenos die. But it felt nice to reconcile in a way with Emet-Selch in the end, as he entrusted the legacy of the ancients, the Amaurotines, to us:



And with that, our objective to save the First has been completed, and we wash ashore in Kholusia as the credits roll to start the resolution of the 5.0 MSQ:



Man, while I rushed through the end of the story, it feels like too soon, it begins to wrap up. We get to see Ardbert one last time, and our legacy as the Warrior of Darkness on the first begins:



We regroup at the Crystal Tower, and the fact that it's an MMORPG MSQ comes back to set up the next plot points. We head back to the first to meet with Tataru and Krile. Gaius and Estinien work behind the scenes in Garlemald. Zenos kills Varis (goddammit, I liked Varis way better than Zenos). Thancred and Ryne begin to investigate the Empty. And Elidibus begins working towards our confrontation, that with the final unsundered Ascian:



And just like that, the 5.0 MSQ is finished! I didn't get to experience what it was like waiting for 5.1. Please let me know! But the story is not yet finished!



More to follow, next time on the WAR blog!