Today we conclude the Crystal Tower raid series!
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0:00 – Introduction
0:34 – QUEST: “The World of Darkness”
13:13 – RAID: The World of Darkness
21:19 – QUEST: “The World of Darkness” (continued)
36:04 – QUEST: “The Light of Hope”
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Edited by Daniel Floyd
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Sleep well, G'raha Tia.
Smell you later, G'raha Tia.
Two additional side stories, huh… one is fairly obviously the Coils, but what's the other?
Not a raid series… ARR…
oh gods no it can't be HIM can it
Dan & Carrie busting the hits out here. Awesome
And now the final section of the Crystal Tower Alliance Raid Series & your spoiler free lore comment!
Welcome to The World of Darkness, and all the bosses are from the FF3 version of the World of Darkness! While the previous two raids have can endanger a few player if they're not watching carefully, World of Darkness has a reputation of causing raid wipes on normal synced runs even to this day. This is due to players tending to not pay attention, thinking the raid is low level and easy, and the fact that multiple bosses have instant death & raidwide kill attacks. The DTC has made this raid much easier on themselves by unsyncing.
14:53 – Angra Mainyu will periodically cover the floor with a two tone pattern. Players will need to remember what color they stood on the last time the attack occurred, and ensure they move to the opposite color when the attack goes off. Standing in the same color 2 times in a row will deal notable damage, but 3 times will be instant death. On top of this, Angra Mainyu has a gaze attack, with the large eyeball marker. Turning your character away will dodge the attack, but getting hit by it which inflicts the "Doom" status. Doom will kill your character when it expires, but can be cleansed by standing in one of the bright circles. When the boss summons 4 hourglasses & lights up one of the 4 quadrants, the raid will need to kill all 4 hourglasses. You also have to be wary of where you're standing when the final hourglass dies; if you're in the illuminated quadrant, you'll instantly die. Finally, the boss has 2 abilities that attempt to put your multiplication skills to test Level 100 Flare targets a single player with an AOE. If the total number of players in the AOE is even (divisible by 2), all the players will take significant damage. Level 150 Doom will be similar, but needs to ensure that the total number of players isn't divisible by 3. If they are, all players will die in the AOE.
16:37 – Five-headed Dragon makes multiple elemental attacks. Ice attacks will leave damaging ice puddles. A white ball being marked on a player requires players to stack to share damage. Slimes summoned will attempt to silence the raid; killing them leaves puddles that summons more slimes unless a player stands in the puddle and takes poison damage. Red birds can tether to players, and they need to swap the tether to someone else, or the original target will be killed. Red orbs must be destroyed unless the explode and deal raid wide damage. Finally, there are multiple sequences that require all 5 heads to be killed, so don't forget to target the other heads!
17:36 – The Howling Atomos don't have mechanics, but their arena does. They will try to push all characters off their platforms, and the players that remain will need to stand on illuminated circles to unlock jump pads for the players that fell off. Players not being able to jump back up will really slow this section down.
18:23 – Cerberus requires coordination between each of the alliances. Players who stand near the Gastric Orb are shrunk, and standing on the purple goo draws an attack from Cerberus. If you are full sized in the purple goo, you'll instantly die when Cerberus eats you. But shrunk players will go to the belly, where they will stun Cerberus before being vomited back out. Meanwhile, additional enemies will be spawning in the arena and must be dealt with. Finally, a group will need to tether chains to Cerberus' collar by interacting with the chain and then the collar. If Cerberus is not chained, he will wipe the raid. Usually this is assigned to the alliances as Adds, Belly, and Chains, but as long as all 3 duties get done, the fight will go well.
19:00 – And finally, the Cloud of Darkness, the final boss of FF3! Every time she disappears and reappears, she will fire a large, heavy hitting beam in front of her. If you're marked by red crosshairs, KEEP MOVING. The particle beam will chase you for some time, and you'll need to stay ahead of it. Similar to Xande, yellow circles will need a single player to stand in them to prevent raid wide damage. When dark cloud enemies spawn, they need to be killed before the boss consumes too many and wipes the raid. Standing in front of them slows them down, allowing more time to destroy them. Finally, 3 clouds with a perimeter outline will spawn. When the walls go up, only players inside the walls will be able to kill the clouds within. The raid will need to have players in each box in order to prevent a wipe.
And that's it! The Crystal Tower is safe! But as NOAH knows, the wonders within are a danger to Eorzea, and they are not ready for the possible horrors that could be unleashed. So our friend, now forged with the purpose of his Allagan Eye will become its quiet protector. G'Raha Tia will be locked within until the world is ready. Meanwhile, Nero returns to his vagabond lifestyle, searching for new technologies & toys.
45:50 some fans say that that is morse code and even translated it. But at least the devs have never said anything about that officially. The most popular theory is it was supposed to be about some planned content that was cut later though (There was supposed to be a labyrinth or something similar beneath the crystal tower but they moved that area somewhere else and kinda redid the concept entirely.)
Is the second diversion the dragoon job quests? I can’t think of anything else that would be relevant.
G'raha Tia best boyfriend for a budding Warrior of Light. <3
If enemy is melt, does that mean Durmin and party is hot?
Those were quite delightful raid quest series. I've enjoyed a lot
Also, I'm a big fan of this arrangement of Eternal Wind (tieing with the Pixel Remaster's one)
Nero and Cid have a rather strained relationship.
Most of the strain coming from that Nero never bothered to TELL Cid they were IN a relationship.
why is it that the goddess of darkness seems to use lasers as her primary attack? The one attack that is literally MADE of light? 😜
FF3 fans read after you've watched the video if you're unaware of the crystal tower story line
It's never stated in game, but the ancestor given the royal eye that G'raha inherited was named Desch, this is only stated in the encyclopedia Eorzia and adds parallels to this story from FF3
Sid's "a few" being 25one way and 28 the other is an interesting interpretation.
I really hope one of these detours is about making Durmin more gentlemanly.
Poor bestest catboy.
SPOILER THOUGHTS BELOW LALALALA
damn, those “last” words from G’raha about the tower becoming a beacon of hope take on a whole new meaning after Shadowbringers. And also hit like a gut punch weh.
ETA: “I know history will remember you. No doubt your heroism will be the the star by which I chart my course when I awake.” HELP THE G’RAHAWOL AND SHADOWBRINGERS FEELS HIT HARD.
I know the crystal tower leans heavily in Final Fantasy 3, but for some strange reason it gives me major Kingdom Hearts vibes
That throne IS craftable, but the drop is so insanely rare that you could run the crystal tower dungeons over and over for a month and never see it.
SHADOWBRINGERS SPOILERS AND IDLE MUSINGS
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The way the Cloud of Darkness operates is very similar to the Lightwardens. We defeat her, but she simply remakes her form from the dispersed aether and revives herself. Considering revelations about the nature of the void, and the nature of the Lightwardens, it's very possible the Cloud of Darkness is a dark equivalent…. a Darkwarden, if you will. I think it's quite interesting that these tie together so naturally, despite it being fairly likely that the exact nature of the void as indicated in later story and expanded on in Shadowbringers was not established at this stage.
For being "ephemeral" that shared bloodline lasts a long LONG time…. though the tower in the end does claim a price.
When I did play through the 3ds version of FF3; boy howdy my Devout (WhiteMage++) just shrugged everything the boss threw at us off, and complained loudly for the rest of the team to /STOP DYING/ XD;. high Magic Defense ftw~~~
So, a question for other players, especially those on non-english speaking servers. The method I know for which group does which job for the cerberus fight is A = Ads, B = Belly, C = Chains. Are there other methods other servers use?
Our little science bros? More like boyfriends xD
ENDWALKER SPOILERS
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45:53 It's a little hard to notice, but there does appear to be a sound much like morse code occurring here. Apparently this, when deciphered, reads: "IT'S ALL WRONG". Ominous, for sure, but makes sense when you consider that the Crystal Tower is able to receive energies from the heavens… and since Endwalker released, we now know that a certain somebody has been broadcasting a very negative message for a very, VERY long time.
I doubt this was the plan this early on, but gods it's a neat little connection.
I do feel like you're killing bosses just a tad fast. I think the pace you had at the beginning of the series where we got to see most of the boss mechanics but it still died pretty fast – that was a good pace.
….curious about the other "diversions". One sounds like The Binding Coils of Bahamut. The other….I'm not sure what other side content in ARR has future relevance. Sure there's Hildibrand, but that's only for…well, more Hildibrand.
I'm really hoping the third is the gentleman quest chain.
Bye ya nerd! Enjoy your cat nap!
Wait, hang on a second, aren't we missing a leg of the FF3 endgame? Where's the Forbidden Land of Eureka (and presumably NOT the unlocks for Ninja and Sage, this time around)? It's supposed to be below Syrcus Tower, no?
(Incidentally, I always preferred the old patch transliteration of 'Sylx Tower', myself, even if it's not strictly accurate. The new version just feels wrong somehow.)
You have to… get shrunk… and then eaten by the dog… sure, sure, okay, okay (I love this dang thing)
Wait wait, "none with Royal Blood"? Isn't G'raha Tia's eye the "Royal Eye" and tied to Royal Blood? Couldn't he, if he knew how, control it?
EDIT: I'm getting mixed messages now. The Tower recognizes G'raha's Royal Authority, but also doesn't? He wasn't "Allagan" enough to mess with things, but was "Allagan Royalty" enough to inherit authority over the tower? What?
A=All in the Belly
B=Brain Drills? Nah, Belly
C=Can't believe you're not in the Belly tbh.
With all the talk about the tower heeding only those with royal blood, is nobody considering that G'raha might have it? Given the exposition about eyes from Unei and Doga, that's my guess anyway.
And thus Nero strode off into the sunset. Some say he and Cid are getting divorced to this day
31:48 hahaha, Durmin sitting there like "Huh. So that sure happened." cracks me up for some reason xD
Even tho we spent just a week with these characters, I already miss Unei, Doga and G'raha a lot. They were so well written!
22:02– why he ourple
I feel like we're experiencing the Haunted Mansion Ride version of the Crystal Tower.
I think nowadays the only mechanic that you don't see lately is Cerberus's Abandonment (stack on top of other players with the debuff to avoid being inflicted fear) and Cloud of Darkness's Whack-a-mole phase. This used to happen before the alliance separates out into 3 to kill the clouds while they're locked into a cage. Snakes would pop up that would die in a single hit, but there were many of them so you would run around and 'whack' as many as you could find. If they were left standing, they would cast bad breath in a conal that inflicts a lot of negative status effects.
Also back then, if you timed it right, you could caster limit break 3 the 3 clouds before the cages went up, which would reduce all of their health by half (at the time.)
I've had some people wonder what would happen if you didn't kill the hourglasses on Angra Mainyu. For those who are curious, the rotating cursor fires without warning, you don't get the grace period where it stops and you can see which quadrant is the danger square.
Also, side note, you if you can shield the damage, you won't get 5 headed dragon's pyretic (damage from movement, auto attacks, and skill/spell usage), and cerberus's abandonment debuffs.
"We must seal the crystal tower."
Then just get a keyblade wielder. They can kill all the heartless and then lock the door for you.
Glad I finally made it into one of these. This was a blast.
Wait… If one has to have the blood of Allag's royals to even open the door, then how would anyone be able to open the tower again, now that G'raha's sealed it? That… doesn't really seem possible.
I do believe that tidbit of morse code after Nero discards his translocator has a chilling meaning for anyone who's played through Endwalker.
I really like how Final Fantasy remixed the elements from FF3 into this new story. Even in the DS remake, the story is pretty thin in places, and the Crystal Tower is basically just another dungeon. But this version has an interesting backstory, and the cast is engaging. Though I really wish this version of Unei and Doga had more going on than just their mission, since they come off very wooden.
Angra Mainyu is basically Satan in the Zoroastrian religion–in fact, it's where our concept of Satan originated. The short version, "Ahriman," has also been used as the name of a Final Fantasy enemy (also a big winged eyeball).
This part of the raid is the first time we really dig into the idea of the Void during the MSQ. I believe it comes up earlier though in less detail. A spoiler-free description is pretty important IMO though, since the Void features prominently in several plotlines going forward. The info below reflects what is known to Eorzeans as of the events of this video.
The Void, or the World of Darkness as the Allagans referred to it, is essentially a kind of parallel dimension to the material world. On Hydaelyn, the six elements are balanced between two polarities, astral and umbral, which roughly correspond to "active" and "passive" aspects. Typically, earth, water, and ice are most commonly found umbrally aspected, whereas fire, lightning, and wind are most commonly found astrally aspected, but in a broad sense neither astral nor umbral aspects dominate the normal world. In the tradition of Eorzean scholars, the active "astral" aspect is associated with the Light, whereas the passive "umbral" aspect is associated with Dark, though this is more tradition than it is based in any true relationship. The Void is essentially suffused with darkness, and so Eorzean scholars would consider it Umbral in aspect, but it is also almost devoid of aether. This is why when Nero was heavily injured, his body began to transform, as the aether which composed it began to have its aspect shifted to the umbral as it was no longer able to maintain homeostasis, more or less. While those who live in the void are generally, shall we say, inhospitable at best, It is worth noting that there is nothing inherently "evil" about umbrally aspected elements, just as there is nothing inherently "good" about the astral.
The beings that are native to the Void are called voidsent, and vary in power from weak creatures like puks all the way up to powerful beings such as the Cloud of Darkness. As explained earlier in the Crystal Tower storyline, voidsent feed and sustain themselves on aether, and it is Hydaelyn's surfeit of aether that makes it a very tempting target for voidsent, but they are incapable of breaching the barrier between worlds on their own. Because of this, they are wont to offer summoners power in return for being summoned, but this is a very dangerous bargain for unless magically bound there is nothing that prevents a voidsent from consuming its summoner. Perhaps the most well-known summoners of voidsent in the history of Eorzea are the black mages of Mhach, one of the countries that participated in the War of the Magi, which led to the 6th Umbral Calamity.