The Coils of Bahamut raid continues!
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0:00 – Introduction
0:39 – QUEST: “Another Turn in the Coil”
12:42 – RAID: The Second Coil of Bahamut – Turn 1
18:34 – RAID: The Second Coil of Bahamut – Turn 2
25:55 – RAID: The Second Coil of Bahamut – Turn 3
30:04 – RAID: The Second Coil of Bahamut – Turn 4
38:39 – QUEST: “Another Turn in the Coil” (continued)
48:32 – QUEST: “Alisaie’s Resolve”
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Edited by Daniel Floyd
♫ “Pray Return” by Chris Logsdon
https://lnkfi.re/pray-return
#PlayFrame #FFXIV #FinalFantasyXIV
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I can't tell what I love more about this series: a lovable Overpowered munchkin and his merry dancing crew slaughtering monsters, or Dan trying to read Urianger's voice lines 😹
yo legitimately thank you for giving me like a 25-episode-long backlog that helped me push through this artblock. i had been sitting on an empty canvas for WAY too long before i decided to put these on
It was very nice of the devs to put enough story to explain the white raven without people needing to play 1.0,
Also more durmin adventures always a treat
While we don't get to hear the whole thing, can't you just tell that Nael Phase 1 music is an Uematsu track? It could have been pulled straight out of a PS1-era FF OST, and it's great.
Do you plan on changing jobs per expansion? Like, a new job per heavensward, shadowbringers, etc, and do you plan on staying a tank job each time?
Durmin, Sword in the Darkness!
Thank you for explaining the visual difference between Alphinaud and Alisaie, I did not notice those differences at all!
And Alphinaud has a good point that his sister should find a reason to protect Eorzea her own way, and not thinking that's something her grandfather would have wanted. It would be a shame if she were to regret that later in life…
i solo'd the entire coils on my summoner and turn 9 killed me more times than i'd like to admit
Alisaie really do be treated like a celebrity or royalty by Eorzeans because of her grandfather, huh
Let us all thank the Dantalus Theater Company for allowing us to experience this group content!
Thank you, Dantalus Theater Company!
Nael… Nael still haunts me to this day. It doesn't help that my FC's leader wants to run this content at 50 to "give new players a firm understanding of a fight's mechanics and difficulty" which is to say "I suffered, so they must suffer too"
I love how much the destroyed Bahamut clearly takes inspiration from some of the best visuals of the Godzilla films
There is some weirdness with Nael here.
As I understand it in the original japanese this is just a Samus moment. People thought Nael was a man, because asumptions and because there aren't really much gendered pronouns in japanese that might indicate one or the other but this confirms she was a woman.
I think the localization, since everyone aleays called Nael a he, made it so that this is actually his sister. Which brings up some questions. The biggest being "wait since when have you been impersonating him? since the end of 1.0? Before that?"
The answer would be that she was impersonating him from the beginning basically. So the 1.0 Nael was always this person.
Since I recently ran this Coil Synced with a group in the Free Company, let me give a very rough overview of mechanics! (This is not an exhaustive overview!!)
THE TALE OF DURMIN
Ep 041
The story of Eorzea is a grand and sprawling narrative. One that, unfortunately, belies a simple telling broken up over months of individual sessions – including necessary if tragic breaks. In the interest of helping viewers remember the characters and terminology they have seen before I have taken the liberty of creating a pronoun glossary of sorts of Durmin's adventures.
A few notes before we get started (this text will be the same in every episode, so feel free to skip it in future episodes). First: And most importantly, this glossary is COMPLETELY SPOILER SAFE . I have manually built each entry from the episodes that preceded it; although I have played most of the game, I have taken every effort to just copy information from these videos. Second: This is not a story recap, most of the story will not appear here. This is just a glossary of terms. Finally: This little project turned out to be significantly more exhausting that I anticipated and while I am happy to continue, I will make mistakes. There may be missing information in these records, and I welcome any additions provided they can timestamp the text where the information came from. I also shift in and out of various tones as I get more and less tired, so please forgive these inconsistencies, I plan to slowly unify the tone over time now that 2.0 is complete.
I'll also be including fun facts about the glossary at the end of each expansion.
Probably won't matter much after this point unless you ever get to ShB trials, but Nael's name is pronounced like the word nail, not kneel.
Fun facts based on my memories of progging Second Coil.
1. The little gazebo the crew was sitting at was packed every Tuesday as back then, before party finder and cross world travel, you had to be in the zone that coil started in. At least there was seating and a nice view compared to Third coil.
2. The boss of Turn 6 (or second coil part 1) hand some ridiculous mechanics involving brambles and bees that were used again in the Sohm Al Dungeon in Heavensward It also has a third phase where it shoot a VERY WIDE laser down the field.
3. T7 was tuned down as the mechanics involved petrifying giants to manage killing them. The savage version made things even more hectic
4 . Did I mention they released an even harder Second Coil as a fun test?
5. T8 was always the one where you sent off a sacrificial dps or tank to open the door and get the shortcut available rather than try to have the whole group get there in one piece.
6. T9 was fun to tank, but rough. I was always a fan of the tankbuster that then caused the tank to explode 11 seconds later
7. T9 still strikes fear in the heart of certain old school raiders, though it's one of the most fun fights in coil.
Looking Forward to the Third Coil video!
There is one more detail that is different between the Leveilleur twins. They wear their earing on opposite ears.
I must thank you guys. I watched how you all handled that last fight, then decided to try again by myself. I won! I did it! Thank you!!!!!
I was curious about Nael's gender too, so I did a little research on Fandom. Nael van Darnus died from grievous wounds sustained during an ill-conceived mission ordered by his father. His sister Eula was training to be a chirurgeon but was unable to save her brother. Eula assassinated her father, making it look like he died from disease. Then she took her brother's name and eventually became Legatus of the VIIth Imperial Legion.
I'm not sure if this was a translation error fix or not, but, there you go.
Here's an interesting tidbit on Garleans: While all races have an innate ability to weave aether and use magicks, garleans normally cannot. However, it's also implied that in exchange for this weakness, they have grown so physically strong that the more well-trained ones can be a threat in battle against their fellow spoken. You could see this with Gaius van Baelsar, one of the story's most prominent garleans; despite him using gadgets in his fight, he was genuinely strong and tended to use his actual might- enough to fight eight trained warriors and last a while, if his battle is of any indication.
Furthermore, this weakness is a part of why they developed and use magitek, as magitek gave the Garlean empire (as a whole) a much-needed edge over their aether-using counterparts and allowed them to be a genuine threat, and thus push for the subjugation of other territories. So a garlean using magicks is very unnatural, as you can tell with Nael here.
On my history with Nael, I fought her with a group of friends before I got out of Heavensward/Free Trial content, prior to the stat squish and 6.0. She managed to wipe us a few times (from general lack of knowledge, that and I was clearly level 60 in a group of like 2 level 80s and a 79) before we got outside help, as our tank had to leave during that fight in particular.
Nael's gender ambiguity is exclusively an element of the English localization of the game. Nael was a primary villain in the 1.x version of the game, but they were exclusively seen in their armor, and the 1.0 version of the game had no voice acting. Due to this, and Japanese not having gendered pronouns, the localization team in 1.0 used masculine pronouns to refer to Nael. Once 2.0 came around, the decision was made to "reveal" Nael to be female. It's a twist that only works for the players, since it wouldn't be a surprise to the characters who have heard Neal speak before. That said, it did leave the English localization in a bit of a pickle when they needed to explain the sudden gender swap. They worked an explanation in to the character's background lore (not touched upon here), but I can't help but appreciate the hoops the localization team jumped through to avoid simply hand-waving Nael's 1.0 gender away and pretending they were always female.
"Though I would strenuously deny it were she present" Never has a line connected with me than this about siblings. You'll say good things about them when they're not around, but gods forbid you say any such thing while in their presence, as it's much more fun to shit talk 'em.
As for the Coils themselves, I went through it unsynced in a 3 man party (I was level 70, had a level 68 WHM, and a 70 DRK) for the most part, til we got to Second Coil turn 4. Had to get help for that, which had a level 80 who knew what they were doing pop in and help us blitz through it. I think they stuck around for the 3rd coil, having decided it'd be fun.
I believe the way that final fight works is that if the meteors land on top of one another they explode and deal large amounts of damage, while if they land apart they remain on the field and create further obstacles like the golems later on. When playing unsynched at a high enough level you can opt to stand in one place and just heal through the damage from the meteors exploding, which is somewhat risky–and only doable if you have access to enough healing abilities–but simplifies the fight a lot going forward. The group here was loaded with classes that have great self-healing and also had a white mage with some powerful regen and burst healing spells, and so they went that route.
On a more plot-related note, Alisaie just breaks my heart in this section. Seeing her filled with hope that her grandfather could be alive after all this time only to have it absolutely crushed is so sad.
So Nael gender from someone only watching this series and no other FFXIV context. Nael appears to a Transmasc or at the very lest AFAB (assigned female at birth) and uses he/him, pronuns. possibly she/her as well, since that was also used but I'm not 100% confident in that. Nael's armour could have doubled as a binder. Even if unintentional Nael does present himself outside the tradition masculine appearance, which is totally valid
In today's spoiler free lore comment, we're going to discuss what happens when a mistake happens. And then you try to use lore to fix it. This are gonna be convoluted. Not quite Kingdom Hearts convoluted, but… well, you'll see.
Back in 1.0, players were pitted against the VIIth Legion (not the XIVth Legion, I made an error in previous lore comments). The Legatus, Nael van Darnus, The White Raven, orchestrated the use of Dalamud to destroy Eorzea with the Meteor Project. In one of the great battles of this campaign, the player would face Nael van Darnus and cut them down. The defeated White Raven dissolved into wisps of light. Dalamud continued its decent, but the Legatus was no more. So who the heck is this person at 20:00 !?!?
Throughout the 1.0 story, Nael van Darnus used he/him pronouns. The pronouns are in the lyrics of "Rise of the White Raven". Except, that's in the English localization. As it turns out, in Japanese, the pronouns are genderless, which isn't unusual. Somehow, discussions between the localization and writing team never brought up Nael's gender. The English localization team went forward with he/him pronouns, and in the rush of putting out 1.0 patches and building the new 2.0 game, no one caught on until it was too late. The writing team had intended Nael van Darnus to be a woman, with this idea being a slight twist for the players. None of this truly changed the 1.0 storyline; Nael van Darnus never removed their armor, and was defeated without players knowing about this little SNAFU.
But now, Nael van Darnus is back in The Binding Coil of Bahamut. So how did the development team work around this issue? Alisaie believes that Bahamut's corruption warped Nael, giving them the form of a woman (39:20). Bahamut would have no reason to do this, but writing away a weird localization issue was always going to be hard. Simply dispensing with the confusion with a weird "A Primal did it" line isn't the worst way to handle it. The issue was resolved and can be forgotten. Except it wasn't resolved.
The writing team decided to generate new lore! The Encyclopedia Eorzea is a series of books that the dev team have produced to provide additional lore and behind the scenes information. With the first book's release, the developers introduced a new character: Eula van Darnus. Eula joined the Garlean Imperial Army along with her brother Nael, as was the tradition of her family. But Nael was mortally wounded on a mission ordered by their father, and Eula could not save her brother. Eula assassinated her father in her grief, covering up this patricide as a natural death from disease. Eula took up her brother's name and armor, silencing any who knew Nael too well to prevent the deception. And so, the person all players have known to be Nael van Darnus has been Eula van Darnus all along. But any time she asserts who she is, she always uses the name Nael. All characters refer to The White Raven as Nael van Darnus. What pronoun is used for Nael really depends on when the content was written.
So, we have a character whos gender was mistaken due to a communication & localization issue. And then the devs explain this difference as a deception of a Primal. And then the writers went back and retconned in an entirely new character who took up the known character's identity all along, the Primal did nothing. And now everyone in Eorzea seems to know Nael van Darnus was secretly a woman?
I feel like there was a simpler way to handle this.
I ended up soloing the coils as a level 70 samurai cause I couldn't get a party to do it with me. Nael was definitely the one I had the most problems with
Props to Falka and Espoirie for fashion.
oh man nael. my main experience with this fight was doing it for the morbol mount. for those unaware, this means fighting the boss synced down to its level, with a team entirely composed of a gimmick job that makes hard mechanics into jokes and easy mechanics into advanced calculus. nael isnt too bad in that format, at least compared to some of the other fights youll do, but that second phase is still no joke and took us over 3 hours to get to the point where blue mage can gimmick it to death
55:33 You little eavesdropping shit.
Yeah, D2 handles this sort of storyline vastly differently, or at least it does nowadays.
Man, I have so much memories with this tier of coils.
In T6, there was also a mechanic called Blighted Bouquet and you had to completely stop any movement or you die. This was pretty new to me and had me scared due to my bad connection at the time; I was worried I wouldn't react in time. Anytime I saw that being cast, I'd mash cancel, look away immediately and not even breathe; even me playing the game didn't move a muscle haha
Impressed to see the new unsynced strat for T9! Last time I remember running it unsynced was with lvl 70 cap so we still had to do a lot of the mechanics. Nothing as scary as synced though. I still remember having to line up along the circle arena's radius during meteor phase and running around the circle when the meteors dropped so it didn't drop close together. Wasn't a 100%, but it worked a lot of the time haha
When I first did Nael, it was with 3… I think level 60-70s? All of us blind. It took.., a while. Honestly, I think a healthy degree of terror at the name ‘Nael’ helps with the experience of the story – they don’t come up a lot, but even their memory is meant to be rather scary.
Stop, hang on. Neal Deus Darnus? Deus like the latin word for God?
Their name is god darnus. Excuse me while I go cackle over this.
Urianger must collect thesauruses and Word of The Day calendars.
It continues to be hilarious how fast the Dantalus Theater Squads tear through what's clearly intended to be difficult boss fights without breaking stride. XD
One of my more recent personal achievements in the game was soloing nael savage as gunbreaker. No real dps check, but you still had some tricky mechanics to execute.
"Could it be, then, that the Allagans found a way to simulate prayer itself?"
Okay so here's my guess: they cracked AI and had no moral qualms about sticking them in a box of endless tedium and suffering and told them Bahamut would one day free them, so now they've got an effective way to convert energy into dragon, cause they sure weren't going to be praying to the dude. And now Durman and co need to go break the server housing the millions of people praying to Bahamut for salvation without knowing they're committing a genocide.
An alternative strategy you can do unsynced which lets you reliably (if slowly) complete this solo is possible as normally this boss has an enrage timer, that is to say if you don't do enough damage within a timeframe you just get pelted with highly-damaging attacks you that get stronger so they eventually kill you, but being highly overlevelled means healers can rather easily shrug it off.
As such, you can simply stand around for about 10 minutes in the first phase, you have to move a bit as one of the normal attacks in the rotation is a knockback and the edge of the arena will kill you contact. Then when the enrage timer hits, as that this replaces any other phase changes that would normally occur, you can start attacking after that and take the damage that would normally end a level 50 party. Skipping the phases this way means you avoid any pesky things that would otherwise kill you.
I've done this as a healer and I think tanks can also manage it, though a bit less forgiving than being able to heal yourself freely.
I wonder what organising these raids is like. Whether the other players are in a Discord call to hear Dan to know his current recording actions, or if it's all just in-game chat, or what.
EDIT: … and then he answers my question (in part) later in the episode, aha.
Melusine was my favorite fight back in 2.X. SMN used to have a spell that slowed an enemies movement, so it would end up binding the cyclops in place. So as a SMN I would kite and place the cyclopses in the correct spot. It was fun just being good at that role, and having so much responsibility.
Have the twins ever heard of a hairbrush??? That lock of hair sticking up grabs my attention every dang time. 😀
Watching you do T9 in minutes when my FC group took nearly three months of weekly raiding to get it right was bittersweet. 😭
Glad you've found a way to do these story pertinent raids on the channel in a more manageable way!
Isn't the most obvious difference between the twins the gender coded earings? One ear for boy, the other for girl?
I tend to read the FC tag as <Down To Cat> as I think of them as the NYANtalus theater company.
You know better how to make a video than me, but…
If it's too much work to talk about dungeon mechanics mid-fight, mayhaps you could edit commentary over the footage later? If the mechanics are something you want to discuss in-depth.
Up to you, of course.
So I’m a little late to this, but I did want to add a fun fact about the Turn 9 environment that Dan may or may not ever get a chance to see, depending on if he dives into the annual in-game events.
Every year, an in-game event called The Rising takes place, ostensibly to remember those who perished in the Calamity, but also to celebrate and thank the actual players (it’s a fan-favorite!)
One year, the in-game event was a “memory” of the final days of the Calamity, which included getting to fight a whole bunch of invading monsters inside of Ul’dah (an actual thing the devs did back then) and a close-to-faithful recreation of the 1.0 Nael van Darnus fight!
Can confirm Falka’s the best. They took me through the last set of coils all on their own while I tanked the floor.