a.k.a. The Box That Makes You Old
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0:00 – Introduction
0:25 – QUEST: “Tortoise in Time”
9:01 – DUNGEON: The Swallow’s Compass
25:12 – QUEST: “Tortoise in Time” (continued)
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Edited by Daniel Floyd
♫ “Pray Return” by Chris Logsdon
https://lnkfi.re/pray-return
#PlayFrame #FFXIV #FinalFantasyXIV #Stormblood
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I had completely forgotten that Swallow's Compass was part of the trial series.. I guess it makes sense, in hindsight.
tamate-bako 玉手箱 jeweled hand box probably refers to the tale of a man that saves a turtle and is invited to the ocean dragon palace and when he comes back he finds out ages have passed
He's left with a tiny box that he's instructed never to open
He does and gets all the age he should have gotten for the time he spent in the palace
Tama means both jewel and soul
Also
Orb
The Swallow's Compass is one of my favourite dungeons in the game. It's really, really fun, and just has a great vibe to it. Also I was hanging out briefly outside there (since I was keeping tabs on things for organizing of other stuff going on), and decided to stand on one of the railings and do the Ritual Prayer emote. We all decided it would be fun to set up and syncronize it so we'd all be doing it when Durmin arrived. I'm glad Dan appreciates these bits of silliness.
This is one of the best solo duties in the game, most cause its very funny. Its both fun and difficult to use game mechanics for humorous purposes, but the fact that Tataru is more frequently a hindrance than a help in this fight is a pretty good and consistent joke. One other thing worth mentioning is that we have another gear design contest winner in as the Swallow's Compass gear. This set was initially designed as a mage set, noticeable in this case as the Caster head piece has a unique fire effect that the other pieces of the set lack.
Qitian Dasheng, voiced by Sean Schemmel.
'look Itachi-san, I go through six calamitous events before lunch. we got this.'
I love all the references they have in this trial run. Up to and including the big banana himself
geomancer could be a puppet class, what with the shikigami.
you have adorable merch and i wish i could afford it at present.
I love that Tataru doesn't understand any of the mechanics and tries to bring them all to you
19:00 I too thought the puddle would just keep going, but getting into this dungeon and having particularly low dps made me realize that it disappears after a point, so it's not a timed race (thankfully I suppose.. xD)
This solo duty is an absolute delight.
you know, I was wondering when StormBlood was going to bring in China's mascot & biggest trope, Sun Wukong? i respect their restraint
Let's the some time warping today Playfriends! This is your spoiler free lore comment!
First, for those who don't know, tako-yaki are Japanese pan fried pancake spheres usually with a center of minced or dried octopus, although alternative fillings like tempura bits or scallions are offered. Note, "Pancake" in this sense is like North American breakfast pancakes, not the tall spongy Japanese pancakes. Takoyaki is usually served with a savory glaze sauce, mayo (much thinner and less eggy than western mayonnaise), and bonito (fish) flakes. The street food is popularly from Osaka, but can be found throughout Japan, like the big place I found in Shibuya. They're usually pulled fresh from the pans and served to you piping hot, as I quickly found out while scalding my mouth.
There's our TMNT reference, the quest name Tortoise in Time is a reference to the 1991 arcade and later 1992 SNES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, the sequel to the original TMNT beat em up game!
4:45 – Shisui of the Violet Tides is the optional level 83 dungeon, and part of Kurenai's questline, as I covered in episode 53's lore comment. Zhuriel is facing off against the Ruby Princess, which is controlled by the final boss of the dungeon, a voidsent. In fact, this is not the true Ruby Princess, but Hisui, the Ruby Princess's lady in waiting, and her body double. As Dan states, and the cast bar shows, she has a spell called "Seduce", which will charm players to move toward her, whereupon she will execute a point blank AOE attack. To avoid this, a player must step onto a box in the arena and receive the Old debuff, transforming into a Matoya-like figure. This doesn't imply that Matoya isn't attractive, but just less susceptible to the Ruby Princess's charms.
The Geomancers of the far east get some spotlight in the Astrologian level 60-70 questline. A geomancer of Kugane arrives in Ishgard, wishing to learn Sharlyan Astrology to help safeguard his home. Through his training, and when the Warrior of Light meets back up with him later in Kugane, we learn that geomancers use the world's elements to conduct similar predictions of events and healing as Astrologians. In fact, one of the quests brings you to the entrance of The Swallow's Compass to retrieve a series of texts regarding how the defensive wards of Kugane were built. The Wards of Kugane were erected due to a ferocious spirit, Kinko Kugane, who hates the city as its construction destroyed her home. The Geomancer, Kyokuho, seeks to reinforce his grandfather's wards, but he has little assistance. The modern geomancers of Kugane are largely charlatans, taking money from merchants and telling vague fortunes. None of them believe the wards are failing, and none of them have the skill to back up Kyokuho and his master. That's where you come in! Geomancer is one of the perennial favorite job request each expansion. While their story is related to the Astrologians, I don't think it would be too difficult to introduce it as standalone, but the difficulty would be distinguishing it from how Astrologian operates.
(Don't look to me for pronunciation help. I'm just here for lore!)
13:30 – Tengu are yokai (or sometimes kami?) in the Shinto tradition, and are depicted with a combination of human, monkey, and bird of prey features. They range from just monstrous birds, to long nosed, red faced bird people. They are usually depicted wearing single toothed sandals (like walking on small stilts, rather than two teeth that allow sandals to balance flat) and feathered fans, which they can use to conjure powerful winds and fight with.
17:45 – Daidarabotchi are yokai known to be as large as mountains (sometimes being mistaken for mountains as they slumber). It's a little odd that this one is water themed, but it covers both water and earth in the elements of geomancy.
21:30 – Qitian Dasheng ("Great Sage, Heaven's Equal") is one of the titles given to the very popular character Sun Wu Kong, The Monkey King. The Monkey King is arguably THE breakout character of classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, which depicts the monk Xuanzang's venture to India to bring back sacred Buddisht texts. The flying cloud mount and his extending staff are two hallmarks of his abilities from that story. The Monkey King has inspired many other characters, perhaps most prominent for anime watchers is Dragonball's Goku.
25:40 – Yup, this is Tataru's combat gear. You remember the last time Tataru summoned her carbuncle, right? It went… poorly. I believe Tataru's gear is an Augmented Shire set, which was the highest gear you can have at level 60, or Heavensward's max.
29:00 – Tataru, are you really the kind of person who tastes hot sauce and declares "it's not spicy!" and then downs half the bottle? This never ends well.
30:00 – I we can add "vanity" to Tataru's character list, along with "avarice"
33:00 – Tataru spends this fight casting Physick, which is one of the early Arcanist healing spells, and doesn't require a carbuncle. Although nothing's stopping her from throwing out a Ruin! Except maybe the desire to not draw any attention to herself.
Next time, we talk about the flames of longing, for real!
Alas that there isn't to be a Shisui of the Violet Tide run showcased upon this channel, it has a fond place in my heart and the armor set is all beach wear sized!
Lorewise, geomancy is just reflavored astrologian, so the chances of it being added as a fully separate job from AST are pretty low, I'd say.
Geomancy is functionally an astrologian theme for the Far East zones. You actually encounter several over the course of the game- there's one that's part of the AST job quest in Stormblood, and another that's part of a role quest in Endwalker.
2:28 That quite the threat. Takoyaki is delicious.
3:37 Boxes are dangerous, ask the Greeks.
5:56 I mean… it's what I'd do.
13:24 I guess they're using "o" instead of "dai"?
21:25 Sun Wukong? Is that you?
24:48 Yup, definitely Sun Wukong.
30:17 It occurs to me that I can't tell if it was uncharacteristic or not for Tataru… not enough interaction. She's perfectly cautious about money, but idk what else.
31:04 Good job Tataru, your arrogance in judging magic created a boss, because the person in charge had to tackle you and deal with your breakdown.
32:26 Man, they're really making Tataru annoying this series. Ship her back to Kugane and make her stay there till she regains her senses.
So what I'm seeing here is… you literally beat up Goku.
If you play as an Astrologian, you meet a Geomancer from the Far East that is quite important for the Job quest line and even gets you to do some stuff in Kugane related to Geomancy.
I really hope they keep the connection between Astrology and Geomancy if they bring Geomancer as a job, if only to interact again with that cast of weirdos. I miss the AST job quest NPCs…
I looooove the Swallow's Compass. Really good music.
@43:10 Spider turtle, Spider turtle, jumps whatever a spider hurdles
"Nohm vadaya khatta"? The orthography looks very reminiscent of it, and using Marathi pronounciations makes some of the lines feel like they're on the edge of comprehensibility to me. Is this Sai Taisui character speaking Sanskrit or something?
I kept wondering why tamate-bako sounded like a word I've read before (I mostly listen to these vids while doing other things, haha) and then I heard the dungeon description, and it was an immediate "oh yeah, the fisherman who went to the dragon's palace and returned decades later with his old age in a box". It's very fun to me the way certain Japanese (and Chinese, and I'm sure other Asian stories I don't recognize) have been integrated as both narrative and mechanical elements, even if I was kicking myself going "Genbu…Genbu….why do I know that name?" (I'm slightly more familiar with some of the stories from the Chinese side of things too though so that may be part of it)
Also the Qitian Dasheng fight genuinely looks kinda fun to me just as an interpretation of some of the abilities Sun Wukong has. I read Journey to the West when I was pretty young and it definitely had an impact on me so I always get overly excited by even the smallest references, haha.
I appreciate tatarus efforts. She's always doing her best.
Resident linguist in the audience here to answer the weird language questions that come up in this game because the devs are too clever for their own good!
Unfortunately the information I have today is going to be disappointing, because the non-English stuff in the text is made-up. It looks like it’s trying to look like Sanskrit or one of its descendants like Hindi, but it definitely is not. That said I don’t speak or read Sanskrit or Hindi, and besides them there are a ton of such languages still spoken, so if by some chance another viewer has some insight please chime in!
This makes it basically impossible to say what the [â] is supposed to be. That accent is called a circumflex, and it has a looooooot of different uses, denoting everything from vowel length to tone changes. However it usually marks some kind of emphasis, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess it just means a long vowel, and probably long as a Japanese speaker would consider it.
Also, and this is pure speculation, but it could be that we may see this language again if we ever see more of Thavnair, as this language would match their subcontinental aesthetic.
Folks like to correct me when I say Auspices are Primals. Truely they are nothing like the corupted holes in the world that drain mana and corrupt and temper people. And yet…
This episode’s story felt a bit rocky. I can understand that Tataru is trying to earn back the money that was spent on the sword, but I’m still not used to her being to money-driven. And then when she says, “I knew it.” in reference to the box being “fake” I actually answered, “Since when?!” And then Tataru recklessly runs forward, just so she can get old-ed, panic, wish she was already dead, and healed all in quick succession just felt… weird, kinda contrived. But this is the first time in this whole story line that a story beat has struck me so odd.
BLU's Clues: The Swallow's Compass is a nice win for BLUs–not only is it a rather fun dungeon, but it has two fun spells to learn.
At 15:36, we see Durmin and his friends sheltering behind walls from the Malediction of Water, which creates waves of water that deal damage and knock those hit by it back 10 yards (er, "yalms", in Eorzean). The catch is that this BLU spell knocks back friend and foe alike–any party member caught in it will also be sent flying. Consequently, it's mostly used to prank the BLU's friends. 😉
Dan calls out the second spell for us at 21:49. It's Both Ends, the trick the boss uses to extend his staff to absurd lengths and spin it around. It's a hard-hitting BLU spell with a large area, great against big packs of enemies, and it looks spectacular. Its downside is a long cooldown, which it shares with Nightbloom (Yotsuyu's venomous spider lily). You can only use these spells one at a time, and since Nightbloom is more effective against bosses, many BLUs only bring Both Ends out for special occasions.
I'm in this episode! (As the black mage eating all those AOEs. 😂)
This episode brings us another Tataru outfit change–and she's definitely going to need it. The heart of the outfit is an Augmented Shire Philosopher's coat, a piece of high-end level 60 caster gear. She's likely wearing the entire set, but has used glamours to coordinate her coat with a Songbird Skirt (a style popularized by Eorzea's popular musical trio, The Songbirds), dhalmelskin thighboots (they make her feel taller), and flowers for her wrist and hair. (These are all glam-only items; they're level 1 gear with no stat values.) The fact that she's wearing it suggests that she's managed to reach level 60 in her Arcanist class through sheer, stubborn practice.
This explains how she's able to survive blundering into so many attacks that would flatten most people. It's implied that Durmin's ability to "see" danger puddles is at least partially a function of the Echo–he's able to sense what opponents are about to do before they do it. (Fordola demonstrates a similar ability against Lyse after gaining her Resonant abilities.) To Tataru, with no Echo and precious little combat experience, this battlefield is just chaos, with magical waves and geysers popping up everywhere without warning. All she can do is scramble from place to place, trying to stick close enough to Durmin to heal him without getting clobbered.
42:39 if you pop over to check on Kamaitachi at this point, his dialogue is just "crunch, crunch, crunch" as he eats Soroban's takoyaki.
Geomancy and Astrology have common roots, as you discover in the StB AST quests. So in a way, we already have Geomancer, although it's not quite the same.
Earthly Star is my favorite AST skill.
i remember when i started playing, i used a guide for every dungeon.
but after doing modern raids and trials, there's almost nothing that is both incomprehensible AND lethal in lower tier stuff.
it's kinda nice how chill they are.
i do recognize that they've also been doing a good job standardizing stuff since stormblood which is also a reason i struggled in the early days
💙
I love the music in this dungeon so much