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This quest gives us a weapon coffer. It would be handy but we're pretty well set on pretty much every class right now.
Good Buscaroon help Teteroon. Teteroon dead without good Buscaroon. Must give thankies. Many, many thankies. Teteroon make Qiqirn firewater for Buscaroon! Buscaroon love firewater! You help Teteroon make firewater? Need thingies to make. Need many, many thingies. Need coeurl pup whiskers. Need three good coeurl pup whiskers.
Every time I paste in dialogue from one of the beast tribes, there's a part of me that wonders if it's gonna trip some "instaban this fucker" flag hidden deep in SA's code. Because I'm pretty sure "thankies" is exactly the sort of thing the previous owner would have hardcoded to insta-ban someone for.
This is a kill quest where we need to kill some coeurls in the far northwest part of the zone.
And there's some monk log targets to kill here as well. Neat!
These fully grown predators are coeurl "pups" and we need to kill 3 of them. This is actually reduced! We used to need to kill 5 of them, and get a barrel from somewhere.
The quest is now quite snappy to get through!
Teteroon make firewater for Buscaroon. You bring thingies Teteroon need?
*hands over coeurl whiskers*
You brought all thingies! Teteroon make firewater now. Make good firewater for good Buscaroon. Teteroon start making firewater now. Good firewater take time. More time, more good. You come back later.
I'm pretty sure I wind up selling the contents of this weapon coffer on the marketboard for pocket change. The coffer generates a level 24 weapon for whatever class/job you are at the time that you open it. Their existence is a nice kindness from the game, because otherwise your only guaranteed weapons came from class quests. I have, multiple times, seen someone playing a healer in level 50 content with a level 30 weapon because they just don't have an upgrade and are too cheap to drop 20k to get something new from the marketboard.
Getting annoyed at myself from 2 months ago because I had zero patience and refused to let the damn QUEST COMPLETE fade first.
Teteroon make firewater! Good, good firewater! You take to Buscaroon. Good firewater for good Buscaroon. Tell Buscaroon no drink now. Tell put away one year. One year make best flavor. <sigh> Teteroon hopes Buscaroon happy. Teteroon gives Buscaroon thankies. Many, many thankies. You tell Buscaroon. Teteroon make big shop someday. Biggest shop in Eorzea. Make many, many sparklies. All thanks to good Buscaroon.
We traveled across the entirety of Eorzea, chased our tail on Vylbrand, and killed three terrifying murder beasts to get some whiskers so Teteroon could create a mash from them and stuff it in a barrel. And now practically as soon as we've arrived, we're returning to Buscarron. While I'm not an expert on alcohol, I'm pretty sure spirits aren't made from flesh.
This entire divergence was left in the game for the ARR rework because an NPC we didn't even talk to but briefly walked near features in a series of optional quests after 2.0 ends.
This NPC here is the person who features in the optional quest.
ARR isn't done jerking us around. The scenario writers thought "deliberately wasting the player's time and calling attention to that fact" was the height of comedy. They have rightfully been raked over the coals for it by everyone under the sun. Rather than go back and fix their mistakes, they just vowed to never do it again. Even after the ARR rework, which cuts down on the deliberate wastes of time, there's still plenty to go 'round.
One of the most egregious cases, which is entirely intact from the original version, is in-universe used as a test of resolve. I will have plenty to say about it when we get there.
Ah, you've returned. Thank you for seeing Teteroon's belongings to him.
*hands over the cat whisker whiskey*
...What's this? For me? Qiqirn firewater! So he remembers my fondness for the drink, does he? Why that old... He... I... Aw, bloody hells! Who's cutting onions back there!? He says to shelve it for a year, does he? Aye, that sounds about right. I hate to have to wait, but I reckon it'll be worth it. This stuff has an aroma and body unlike any other drink I know. It's going to be a looong year. What say you come back then, friend? We'll see if we can't make it through this bottle together.
Ginger is apparently the world's greatest drinking buddy. Everyone wants to share a drink with her!
There was word while you were away. Sylphs were seen in the wood, but near no lands of their own. No, this was a place near to here--a place we've never known a sylph to come. Something must have given them cause to venture this far. More than like, the missing sylph elder's among them. Here, I've marked the tract where they were sighted on your map. Go see if there's anything to be seen.
We need to look around at these destinations. There's several of them.
Two of the spots we check cause Garleans to appear in ambush. That's really not good. This isn't in the middle of a no man's land... the South Shroud is very close to both Gridania and Ul'dah. And while it's true that Baelsar's Wall isn't that far away, troops typically don't patrol in land that isn't theirs.
So, was there aught to be found in the wood? What did you come to-- ...Garleans!? In this part of the Twelveswood!? Hmmm... First sylphs and now Garleans, and all in the same place. It cannot be mere coincidence. Might the Garleans be following the sylphs? Tracking them or giving chase, mayhap?
But no, not this far into the forest. The Wailers' spires are everywhere. Imperials could never have stolen past them all. How in the bloody hells could they- Unless... Unless someone guided them through. Someone who knew where the spires stand, and when the Wailers watch. A Gridanian traitor.
He looks trustworthy. It's the mutton chops.
I'm glad you've come, friend. There's something I want to talk to you about. You know I said I thought we might have a traitor in our midst--someone as was aiding the Garleans? Well, I'm thinking I may have identified our suspect. There's a regular of mine who used to dine on thin soup, and sip his pint on account of not being able to afford another. But of late, he's taken to ordering my best wines and the finest cuts of meat I can lay my hands on. Were he a merchant, I'd prob'ly think nothing of it, but this lad's a Wood Wailer.
...And Wood Wailers don't earn that kind of coin. By chance, I was musing on where the money was coming from when you first told me about the Garleans in the forest, and I couldn't help putting two and two together. Suffice it to say, if a Wailer's working for the Empire, none of us is safe. The lad I'm talking about goes by the name of Laurentius. Last I heard, he was in the South Shroud. Find him, Ginger, and if he is up to no good, put an end to it-and him, if it comes to that.
Can you not see I am on patrol? Be gone. If you have business with the Wailers, take it to the Barracks.
We have to follow Laurentius around. This is another quest that got overhauled in the rework. You used to have to follow his awful ass around 6 times, but now you only need to speak to him 3 times.
Not long now... Hmph. To think patrol routes and rations would fetch such a price... No more than I deserve, though. 'Tis little wonder the Empire has risen to such heights. If only the Wailers paid men their worth... Y-You! What did you-? How long have you-? Help. Help! Heeelp! Please! Come quick, my friends! It is I, Laurentius! I am under attack!
Laurentius is the worst kind of traitor. The stupid, greedy kind. Anyway, we beat up this jobber idiot and confront him.
How...? How did you...? You just... I-I know nothing! I was on patrol. He just appeared! I...I thought you were working for the Garleans!
He's such a terrible liar.
How long do you mean to keep this up? What is it you imagine I've done? Enough! Enough, I say! It's... It's over, then. Aye, I sold maps and rations to the Empire. It was I. I meant no harm. I only wanted the coin. The Wailers are good. Strong. I was proud to join their ranks. Am proud. But... They do not provide. They preach justice, honor, duty. But in the end, it is those with money who do as they will. Who live as they will.
...So I sought an opportunity to change my fortunes, and took it. All I've done, I've done for money. Endangered myself, my home, everything and everyone I love... Why, my actions have put your life in danger, too...
...Though you do not yet realize how much. Heh heh heh! Bloody idiot-did you imagine that you had cornered me? It is not I who is cornered. Garleans! I've brought the Lalafell bitch!
Permit me a question, if you will. Are all adventurers so deluded as to believe they can challenge the power of Garlemald? You would need a veritable mountain of gil to fund such an endeavor! Such is the cost of fighting great power. Or of making it. Or of remaking it, as we will Gridania.
So that's the way of it. Swapped your hard bunk at the Barracks for a feather bed in Garlemald, did ye? <spit> You there, Lalafell. You stand here at ol' Busc's wish, no? Then you don't stand alone.
You mean to stand against the might of the Empire with this Redbelly rabble at your side? Hah!
Your eyes betray your words, coward. You know full well the Wailers fear the Wasps' sting.
It's a full-on brawl!
After these trees drink your blood, I will see to it they are cut down and burned.
Show them what happens to those who oppose the Empire!
After a moment, some catgirl poachers show up to start harassing the Imperials.
If this is a fight Buscarron wants won, then the Coeurlclaws will fight it.
How? Why!? You scum have no allegiances!
Soon enough Laurentius is alone and he has bandits, poachers, and an adventurer all smacking him around.
He tenaciously hangs on for a while, but eventually he falls.
Impossible... How did you best the Empire's finest? And with bandits and poachers at your side!? They are your sworn enemies! Why do they fight with you and not against you!? ...Ah, but I know the answer only too well. Buscarron. This is his doing. His words are wont to inspire men to act. Better men than I... Gods, what have I become? What have I done?
I... I am sorry. No more will I pursue this folly. No more lies. No more bribes. I will go to the Order of the Twin Adder and confess my crimes. There is something I would like you to tell Buscarron. Tell him Laurentius the fool says "thank you." I feel as though a veil has been lifted from before my eyes.
I don't believe him. There's a reason that traitors and Quislings are often given death as a suitable reward for their "service." Once a traitor, always a traitor. The only reason he's sorry is because he got caught and so he hopes Ginger and Buscarron are dumb enough to buy his excuses. They are.
Aye, Laurentius confessed to his crimes. I just had word from the Twin Adder. Seems he marched straight into the Nest and gave himself up. The lad's had quite a life, you know... His mother was killed by a brigand when he was only small. As a young man, he joined the Wailers, hoping to spare his fellow Gridanians the misery he'd known growing up. Trouble is, protecting Gridania's too big a job for one man, and he came to believe that he couldn't make a difference-that it was hopeless.
There are few things more dangerous than desperation, and a man lost in the dark is easily drawn to the glimmer of coin. I reckon he thought that if he couldn't change the lot of his fellow man, he might as well change his own. Thing is, he was making a difference--just not on his own. Somehow, he'd failed to grasp one simple truth--that those things we cannot do alone, we must do together.
...Eh? He asked you to thank me, did he? Then there's good in him yet. I just hope them at the Adders' Nest are able to see it... What he's done ain't easy to forgive, but I'd like to think he'd be afforded a chance to make amends. But let us leave fates to the Twelve. I have other news for you, Ginger. The sylph elder has been found!
If you don't recognize that blue-green dungeon behind OMPLE then I envy you.
It's taken us a fair old while, but we've finally got our hands on some reliable information concerning the whereabouts of your missing green friend.
Ahem! His name is Frixio, and he is the eldest amongst the sylphs of Little Solace. Long has he represented his kind in dialogue with the Gridanians.
Yes, he's like a bridge between us and them-a small, leafy, green bridge that we can't find at the moment. And bridges are no use if you don't know where they are. That's why it's so important that we find him!
There's an abandoned dungeon called the Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak here in the South Shroud. 'Twas by the entrance to the place that Frixio was seen--and not long ago, neither. If you hurry, I reckon you'll find him.
Walking ones, please help this one! This one needs help! Needs help to help elder one! Poor Frixio! Poor, poor Frixiooo!!!
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hooold your chocobos. Take a deep breath and tell us what's wrong, nice and slow.
Elder one went into Toto-Rak, but has not returned! This one is worried, so very worried!
And you're right to be... The place fair crawls with nasties waiting to make a meal of anyone daft enough to wander in. What in the seven hells was he thinking, entering that bloody death trap?
Elder one had no choice! Imperial ones were chasing elder one! Please! Walking ones must help elder one-help elder one now!
Argh! The fates conspire against us... Forgive my pragmatism, but Frixio is our best hope of reaching an accord with the sylphs. Were we to lose him, all our efforts thus far will have been for naught. I will tend to her wounds. Yda, make haste to the Adders' Nest and request assistance.
Understood!
Ginger--go to the Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak and see that Frixio comes to no harm. Peace between man and sylph rests upon your success.
By order of the Elder Seedseer, the dungeon known as the Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak has been placed under the control of-- ...What? The sylph elder is inside? And you are sure of this? How in the seven hells did he manage to sneak by? Gods strike me down for a purblind fool!
You must find the sylph elder before he falls prey to the fiends within. Entrance to Toto-Rak is ordinarily restricted, but these are exceptional circumstances. Pray assemble a rescue party, and enter as soon as you are ready.
I don't want to do it. You can't make me. You can't make me go into Toto-Rak.
A Thousand Screams
They can and they did. We have to do what I'm pretty sure is one of everyone's least favorite dungeons in the game.
You see that Magitek Photocell? We need to collect 4 by the time we reach the first boss. And 4 more by the time we reach the second. Monsters often drop these photocells. Groups understandably moving quickly through Toto-Rak will often forget to loot these photocells.
The only upside is that Ginger got her first AOE attack at 26, and Toto-Rak syncs to 27. So she can power-fart her way through most of the encounters.
The accusation chamber has the second photocell. It's also the only optional photocell in the dungeon. You can still find 8 if you skip it, but you have to go out of your way to do it.
Thick, sticky webs will pop up over the path as the party runs past the doorways. If you're unlucky or just slow, you'll often be on the wrong side of those webs and will have to break them down to continue.
I wish I could show you screenshots of where the photocells are, but the tank decided that things like "being out of combat for longer than a microsecond" was for losers. And so they did their level best to chain pull WoW-style as hard as possible. WoW-style chain pulling is gathering things up in a huge AOE pile, and then when everything is at 5% HP, hitting sprint and booking it as hard as you can to the next pack of enemies.
Luckily we have Orokin healing. But if the healer is undergeared or just not very skilled, then constantly being in combat due to asshole chain pullilng will take a toll eventually. MP doesn't really regenerate well in combat, you see, and if the healer is never out of combat to recover their MP...
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. In WoW, you can attack while moving and the DPS can easily finish off the pack between pulls. In FFXIV, that's not so much a thing. Ginger is a monk, and so even if she power farted on top of something, the AOE would never hit the enemies because the server already has them 5 yards up the road.
If we hadn't gotten the spare photocell from the optional chamber, we'd find the fourth one here.
The boss is just an ochu that occasionally poisons the party. This boss is meant to be a tutorial for healers to cure debuffs. No random healer can be trusted to reliably cure debuffs. There are dungeons later in the game where you'll get hit with a -80% move speed heavy plus a powerful DOT effect and all it would take is half a second of casting Esuna to clear you. All six healers in those 24-player dungeons will ignore anyone so afflicted, leaving them to slowly die.
I've also been informed that the ochu boss will just poison the party again if everyone is cured. So the actual strategy is to cure the two DPS and just let the tank suffer. I legitimately did not know that and am surprised that such an early dungeon features a mechanic like that.
The boss is barely a speed bump to any group, and so it falls quickly. Putting the photocells in the terminal makes it remove the nearby barrier.
I'm pretty sure one of these slimes here drops the next photocell. In my experience, if you're missing one, then it's either this one or the one from the next pack of enemies.
As such. Note that there are two in this shot because both groups were killed next to each other!
Another pack farther on has the next photocell.
We actually have 4 here, but the tank is on full autopilot mode and so they're going for a full complement of photocells.
You only need to come back here if your group didn't go in the optional room at the start.
Second verse, same as the first. Except now there's two meaningless adds thrown in the mix. The fight is not made appreciably harder by their inclusion.
The final stretech of Toto-Rak is part of why people hate it so much. You see that green goop on the floor? It slows you when you walk on it. From the point it shows up, it covers most of the floor in the rest of the dungeon. So what would otherwise be a boring if quick trip through mostly-empty hallways is instead turned into a lengthy slog because Toto-Rak is a 1.0 holdover. And the developers of 1.0 were aggressive with how much they openly loathed the playerbase.
Also there's webs that slow you down even more every 10 feet.
You see that green cloud up ahead? That's a sac full of poison bursting because the tank ran past it. They're fucking all over the green goopy floor! The damage they deal and the damage over time are trivial, but they're still yet another reason to dislike this section.
A good three minutes later, we arrive at this door. No there wasn't anything worth showing between the last shot and now. All you missed was a bunch of spider webs and some goop. The Abacination Chamber Door marks the final leg of the dungeon mercifully.
Buckle in, we got a long cutscene for this one.
Ginger gets a headache.
Darkness...
I tried very, very hard to avoid making a Kingdom Hearts joke here. I want you all to appreciate how much it pained me to not compare this jerk to a member of Organization XIII.
Hahahaha... The mighty slayer of Ifrit comes now to me.
...With a countenance that bespeaks understanding. An intriguing power, the Echo. I must needs choose my words with care.
This guy is not very bright. He mistakes Ginger's bug-eyed "wtf" stare for understanding. While it's true she can understand him, there's no way that look she was giving means "I understand you."
Mayhap I might if I deign to speak in my guest's crude tongue. We meet at last.
I am Lahabrea of the Ascians, servant to the one true god. Yours is a most fantastical tale. Truly absorbing. It is a tale to tell Eorzea's children before bedtime. And it will soon be dark, Bringer of Light.
...The Dark Minions...
All that stands between this world and Darkness is an irksome anomaly in the aether--the Echo. Yes...yours is a most fascinating tale. Alas, like all good tales, it must needs come to an end. But fear not...
Hear... Feel... The presence... of evil...
For the end of your tale is but the beginning of another... The tale of the Crystal's demise!
The spider that Lahabrea shot got bigger. Much bigger.
And content that he's finished us off, he fucks off into a dark portal. This guy is a moron.
Graffias is a simple boss. Just ignore the fleshy pods and beat on him until he coughs up loot.
Some adds show up, but they don't have a lot of health.
And occasionally Graffias makes a green pool of radioactive waste on the ground. Just don't stand in it.
Eventually his tail becomes vulnerable. If there's a ranged DPS in the group, they're supposed to use the ranged limit break to break the tail and severely injure the boss. Instead, Ginger kicks it until it breaks.
Breaking the tail makes the boss take more damage. So the fight is over pretty quickly.
This update is already running long, so I'm going to cut it here. There's still a ways yet to go still and this is the closest thing to a natural cutoff as I'm going to find. Next time we'll see about finding the sylph elder amid a thousand cutscenes. The arc is actuallly almost over!