Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn – #48 – Iceheart



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23 thoughts on “Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn – #48 – Iceheart”

  1. 42:52 I definitely agree that this is an improvement. But now that my teaching responsibilities are over for the moment, I've finally had time to work my way through Endwalker. Playing that in parallel with Dan's playthrough here is just such a trip. We really are just basically playing two different games. Like comparing…. let me see if I can come up with an analogy that actually works… Jade Empire with Mass Effect 2… or Final Fantasy III with Final Fantasy IX. They're so similar in some ways, reflections of each other, but just fundamentally different in so many important ways.

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  2. Regarding the Yeti-encounter, the stunning property of the snowballs is only half of their purpose. As you may have noticed, the boss had a pretty exorbitant health pool, making the fight last a while. By having the boss hit the spriggans/snowballs several times, the snowballs grow in size and drastically increase how much damage they do to the boss. When the dungeon released, you'd be there all day if you didn't use the snowballs for damage, but with the stats increasing over the years this has gone from "must" to "slightly tedious if you don't". I'm glad they went away from this "understand the mehcanics or stay forever"-design in duties, but at the same time it's an interesting look at how they tried to innovate on their boss encounters early* on!

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  3. When the wolf showed up, I jokingly said to myself, "Alright, your name is either Fenrir, Skoll, or Hati. No one in pop culture knows ANY other names for big wolves." And right on cue, Dan announced, "Fenrir!"

    I don't know why, but it made me laugh.

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  4. Today's spoiler free lore comment is going to cover a couple of mechanics. The story is moving apace, so let's talk about some nuts and bolts.

    During the fight with the Yeti, Durmin gets hit by one of the AOE attacks, and gains the "vulnerability up" debuff. This is one of two frequent debuffs that will become increasingly common going forward. The vulnerability debuff, or the "vuln stack" as the community calls it, is a stacking debuff which increases the damage taken from incoming attacks. The debuff lasts 60 seconds, and resets to 60 seconds upon receiving another stack. Usually, these are inflicted for taking damage from a dungeon mechanic (typically an AOE attack). The design concept is that continuing to get hit by mechanics also causes each subsequent hit to hurt more, and can eventually lead to death. Use of damage mitigation abilities and quick healing can off set this, so a couple of vuln stacks don't spell anyone's end, but continuing to accrue them will make fights harder.

    The other frequent debuff (and they are mutually exclusive) is the Damage Down debuff. Just as the the name implies, this debuff lowers a players outgoing damage. This makes fights longer, and with complex mechanics starting to overlap, this can result in unavoidable damage and deaths. The ultimate end to the fights are the enrage timers, which can occur in high end duties if too many damage down stacks are accrued.

    Next time! Playfriends should have their tickets ready for validation. It's time for a concert!

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  5. oh! this is the dungeon the person that did the video regarding the sound (the blind one, explaining how good the sound detail is in this game) that you had linked to was doing for that video!!! thats exciting!

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  6. I wasn't sure whether to comment under the relevant video or here but I'll just put it here
    Not sure how much you stay up to date on changes to the game Dan, but there have been significant changes to a couple of the final fights in 2.0 and Cape Westwind was one of these changes.
    I recommend you give it a play, it's now an instanced duty rather than a trial. Not sure if it's something you should or should not sneak as a bonus into a future video, that's up to you, but i really recommend you at least have a play. It's now actually fun to do so.


    Very mild spoilers about the nature of the changes..

    The fight is now much more interesting, both mechanically (i actually managed to die on my first attempt) and from a storytelling perspective (I won't spoil anything, but it made rhitahtyn feel like an actual character, rather than.. whatever he was supposed to be before).

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  7. I love how Icehearts whole deal is "I don't fight *for* the dragons, I fight *against* the war"
    All in all, a great setup for Heavensward, I'm very excited for it!

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  8. The greatest blemish on this series is your insistence that the story "will get better later" or, now, "Look! See? It's getting better!" That may have been a good thought to bring up once or twice in the first 5 episodes, but it has come across as insecure and defensive since then. Anyone who has made it past episode 10 is clearly enjoying the let's play, no matter how you feel about the game's writing at the time.

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  9. There is a door in the roof of Lord Drillemont's tower that is only one floor up from him, so it is faster too get to him while flying from the roof then the ground floor.

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