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Hello everyone and welcome back! The Holidays are more-or-less ending and I figured what better way to close out 2021 than by ending the patch we've been stuck in for 5 months?
The downside is we have to go through some of the worst dungeons in the game in order to do so. Patch 2.1 was a patch full of experimentation. The devs were seeing what did and did not work, and I don't hold the quality of these dungeons against them.
But Christ on a cracker are they bad.
I've seen more and more visitors to this godsforsaken place lately, most of them battle-hardened types seeking a worthy test of their mettle. I trust that I might count you among them?
That sounds like me, yeah.
Look, you didn't hear this from me, but word has it that Copperbell Mines are looking not unlike the eighth hell in recent days. The Stone Torches would have us believe that they have matters under control, but a miner acquaintance of mine would beg to differ. He says the Torches have proven far more adept at quelling rumors than hecatoncheires, if you catch my drift.
Why do I betray this knowledge to you? I fear for my friend's life, and mine own as well should those hulking monstrosities break free to the surface. If it's a challenge you seek, what say you accidentally find your way to Copperbell and proffer your services?
So the first new dungeon on the docket is Copperbell Hard Mode. Hard modes in FFXIV aren't just the same dungeon but harder. There's new bosses, the layout is probably different, and it's got a whole new story as you can see. We're going back to Copperbell.
An adventurer? Baseless rumors notwithstanding, I can assure you that your meager talents are not needed here. No hecatoncheires have returned to the mines, and even if they had, the Stone Torches would be seeing to the threat swiftly and ably, as is our wont...hm?
*Indistinct noise in the distance*
Ahem. I know not what you just heard, but it was most certainly not the tortured scream of some unfortunate miner being consigned to the maw of a bloodthirsty giant birthed from the godsforsaken depths.
...Ah, seven hells! It's true, all of it! We thought we had seen the last of them, but we were wrong! Horribly, dreadfully wrong! Let down our guard, we did, and now Copperbell is overrun with a damned legion of the fiends, each one nastier than the last.
We've already lost scores of our men to the chaos. The few that have returned alive claim that even the once-docile spriggans have gone mad, falling upon the poor miners in droves. So much for being harbingers of wealth and fortune, eh?
The Stone Torches are loath to lean on the strength of outsiders, but I cannot in good conscience place fool pride before the lives of good men any longer. You reclaimed these mines once. The Torches-nay, the entire nation of Ul'dah-would be forever in your debt if you could perform the deed again. I beg of you, friend: banish those fiends to the depths, that they may never resurface.
Unlike the first time, we're not playing Pinkerton. These things are actually hurting innocent people.
So we're definitely starting with the worst of the lot and working our way backwards.
And as things just so happened to work out, Ginger is going to be tanking for this endeavor.
Instant pop because Ginger is tanking, Orokin is healing, and Tydus is dancing.
The Dark's Embrace
There's not a lot to say about this dungeon at first.
Just generic enemies in the first stretch.
Eventually we spot a random spriggan that runs off through some collapsed rocks. We'll be chasing it through most of the dungeon.
There's a good four or five piles of rubble on the critical path.
Eventually we reach the first boss. He used to be a challenge because wave after wave of adds would spawn and rush at everyone. Meanwhile the floor would catch fire.
Meanwhile Ginger just grabs them all and runs to the end. The platform catches fire very fast in this case.
This is the most straightforward boss in the dungeon. The rest... aren't good.
Dropping down this elevator shaft we find some stranded miners.
In theory we're supposed to protect them.
In theory anyway. Self-destruct on the bombs actually hurts.
Past them, we find the second boss.
This boss is simple enough. He takes almost no damage and is all but untankable. Instead what players need to do is use the blasting device to put a bomb down next to the boss.
Each time you do erases a chunk of his health. This takes a while. After the first explosion he starts lazily walking back and forth across the room, occasionally pummeling the tank for a lot of damage.
After the golem dies, the spriggan we've been chasing pops out and goes berserk.
Gimmick bosses suck.
Just a bunch of enemies past the second boss...
Nemesis
Ouranos: YOU KILL MY SON? I KILL YOU!
So do you remember the final boss of OG Copperbell? Yeah, that was this guy's son. So we're killing a grieving father.
What is it about this mine that makes the storywriters so fucking twisted all the time?
For the tank, the boss itself is quite simple. Almost no mechanics affect them. The rest of the party, though...
See those dust clouds off to the left? That's an unkillable, untargetable worm running around down here. Those dust clouds really hurt. Thankfully the worm can be made to go away by setting down on the sand crystals found around the arena.
Adds also attack the DPS and healer. They can't be taunted, nor can they be persuaded to attack the tank, as I found out the hard way.
I got that dungeon in a random Numbers Roulette a few weeks ago and the entire group wiped because that last boss was Too Much. Also the healer was, admittedly, drunk at the time.
Time for the second dungeon in the lineup!
My first genuine assignment under Master Mimidoa, and now this! Whatever did I do to deserve such a fate? Oh, but where are my manners? I am Diamanda, a smith recently in the employ of Naldiq & Vymelli's. I arrived in these parts not a few days past to assist in the restoration of Pharos Sirius.
Little did I expect my arrival to be greeted by that godsforsaken song. A song I thought confined to my worst nightmares-yes, I speak of the grim serenade of the foul sea witch that lured my poor father into a watery demise so many years ago.
So I stand here with idle hands. Powerless to avenge his death, powerless to repay my debt to Master Mimidoa-once my father's mentor as he now is mine. The agony of it all! If only my brother were here, he would see to it that...
...But alas, my brother remains lost at sea. You are an adventurer, are you not? Perhaps if you were to defeat the siren... Yes, you must! If not for me, then for all the sailors who seek safe passage across threatening seas. Seek out Master Mimidoa at the pier-you'll find him gazing grimly in the direction of Pharos Sirius, lamenting our fate.
So yes, we're finishing up a dangling plot thread from the Corrupted Crystals arc. Time to fight the Siren!
Eh? 'Nother 'nitiate, are ye? ...No? Huh. Ain't no one says "yes" to that. Ye've a familiar face, though. Come to think of it, ye bear a strikin' resemblance to a brave lassie I once met. Helped us chase one of those godsdamned sirens from Pharos Sirius, she did.
Actually...
What's that, ye say!? Speak up, missy, years o' hammerin' have taken their toll on my ears. Anyroad, ye may not be half the heroine yer predecessor was, but ye know the sayin'-any port in a storm. Aye, that's right, damned if I can tell ye why, but that hells-born hussy is back, and she's runnin' roughshod o'er the place with a crew of her song-snared flunkies. Me an' Diamanda, we've naught to do but sit on our arses till someone cleans the place out.
Look, this is more than a reclamation project to me an' the lass. That scurvy witch killed her father-one o' me prized students. I swore a vow to meself to do his name proud an' restore the beacon, but these hands were made for hammerin', not scufflin' with sirens.
What say ye follow in yer forebear's footsteps and fight this one for ol' Mimidoa? I'll send word to Davyd, the guard at the lighthouse. He'll tell ye all ye need to know.
Ah, adventurer-you've come not a moment too soon. The siren has holed herself up in the lantern chamber atop the structure.
The most direct route would be through the front door, but I fear the siren is already wise to our intentions, and has posted the most formidable of her thralls to guard the entrance. Our only hope to breach our foe's defenses is to attack from below, through the flood cellar. If you cannot win this battle for us, I know not who can. Go forth, friend, that Pharos Sirius may shine bright anew!
Pharos Sirius doesn't have as many gimmick bosses as Copperbell HM, but it's still pretty bad.
Ashkin are the undead. Now you know.
Same group as last time!
A Light in the Storm
The theme is INCREDIBLY LOUD.
One of the big gimmicks for the dungeon is zombies. These guys are lying dead, but walking near them will wake them up.
First boss is just down the hall.
He summons a million adds.
He also believes in extreme area denial. These two gigantic AOE zones will each spawn a persistent patch of Bad on the ground.
This was the father of the woman who gave us the quest to investigate.
Pharos Sirius's second gimmick is EXPLOSIONS. Huge chunks of corrupted crystal are breaking off and literally exploding when they hit the ground.
Up a couple sets of unremarkable stairs we find the second boss. Zu is a pub breaker.
Do you see those eggs? They have next to no health and will pop if brushed. Dancers, like poor Solitair's character, deal a large amount of AOE damage as part of their single target rotation.
This goes about as you'd expect.
We need to kill the pullets immediately. But also look at the boss's buffs carefully. It can be hard to see becuase I have the information deliberately shrunken, but the boss has 16 stacks of its "fuck you" buff.
I probably could have Holmganged the boss, but there's no assurances I would have lived past that point. It three shot me!
The boss is actually quite easy if you don't kill its eggs.
The next section you have to turn off aether valves. This is made a little difficult because the valves occasionally spawn caustic clouds.
There's a second up at the top of the stairs.
This boss...
...is a fakeout that lasts seconds.
The actual boss is up top.
The same Siren that Ginger drove off all those months ago is our target now!
She's pretty easy.
Lunatic Voice needs to be interrupted or it will, I'm pretty sure, charm people in the party.
She also puts a debuff on party members that needs to be healed to full, or so I'm told. I'm gonna be honest, I can't remember the last time I got Pharos Sirius in a roulette.
Moving on.
Time for our last dungeon of the update!
Aaaaaah! ...F-Forgive me, friend. A most chilling encounter has my nerves on edge. I was traveling through the Shroud when a man accosted me out of nowhere. His eyes darting wildly in fear, he spoke of a haunted mansion from which the tortured screams of young maidens can be heard day and night. Hawkett Manor, was it?
You can't possibly mean...
Ah, Haukke Manor, yes. What's that? You purged the selfsame manse of its unholy inhabitants some time ago? That is curious, indeed-the man recounted the events as if they had happened not days ago.
While it would put my heart at ease to know his tale was but a fancy born of a few too many flagons of mead, the poor soul had not the air of a drunk or a liar. Perhaps you know someone who could shed light on the matter?
All the way over in Gridania, we find Ursdanel still in his usual spot. Let's see what he has to say for himself.
Ah, friend. It is good to see you again-how I wish I could greet you with more joyful tidings. I trust you have heard the rumors. Yes, I fear they are true, and then some. Oh, wherever shall I begin!?
After you released my lady from her torment-a deed of bravery and kindness that I will remember until the last of my days-I paid visit to the Wood Wailers and told the tale in all its tragedy, that the guardians of the Twelveswood might know the truth.
Though the Wailers did not doubt my words, they insisted on a thorough investigation of the manor. Without witnessing my lady's remains for themselves, I was told, they could hardly vouch for the citizenry's safety. A prudent judgment, I thought, and I did not argue.
It is what happened next that confounded everyone, myself most of all. A contingent of Wood Wailers was dispatched to the manor, and I personally escorted them in. This would be the last I saw of them, for nary a one returned.
Minutes turned to hours, and before long, night surrounded the silent manor. 'Twas then the screams began again-ungodly, heartrending screams that shall be burned in my memory forevermore. Against my better reasoning, I mustered the courage to peer inside.
Oh, how I wish I had not! For what peered back, friend, was someone-nay, something, for that which I saw surely possessed no soul like you or I-that has no right to exist in our world!
The Wailers have dispatched another contingent to investigate the manor. The fools! Do they not see that they have writ their own death sentence!? I cannot save them, but you, friend-you may succeed where I so miserably failed! I implore you, pray come to our aid once more!
I'm not gonna point out every disconnect, but I want to call attention to this one. I've been using a program to automatically save the chat logs when I record. This disconnect fucked it up and so no extra text was saved after this disconnect.
Normally I'd check on GarlandTools for the text, but the text dumps on Garland have been sparse ever since The Ultimate Weapon.
I still think it's bullshit of the highest caliber that you can get kicked off the server and be made to wait in a queue all over again. This is also why there were barely any updates during December. Queues have only started to abate finally and I can't imagine how upset I would have been had I got kicked out through no fault of my own and then been made to wait through a 5,000 person queue.
You know, aside from the times that actually happened to me.
Anyway this quest ends unceremoniously at the manor gate.
Haukke HM is a dungeon that has actually only been made harder by the power creep in the game. It's the least bad of the 2.1 bunch, but groups that can't focus are going to have a bitch of a time here.
The Dark's Embrace
We start off up on the second floor.
Like before, we need to use tiny keys to make our way through the dungeon.
Eventually we come across the first boss. No, nothing of note happened between then and now.
I'm not sure the first boss has any mechanics beyond "don't stand in this puddle."
The next hallway has a bunch of blue doors. These occasionally shoot out beams of light for a little damage.
We're starting to see what happened to the poor bastards who got sent in first. They've all been converted to demons or possessed or something.
Gotta open this door off to the side to progress.
This chest is important! It's the only source of Manor Varnish in the game. That's needed to craft some really nice looking furniture.
Sadly none dropped this time.
The second boss is also kind of easy.
The only mechanics I was able to identify was "don't stand on the glowing blue bits" and "kill the adds."
This crystal ball warps us to the basement.
Which is not even worth mentioning until we get to the boss gate. This boss is surprisingly difficult.
Halicarnassus summons adds and they need to die priority one.
Like against Lady Amandine, the Manor Sentry puts stoneskin on her.
After we kill the add, she devours it for permanent buffs.
Next come the maidservants.
Here, we burned too hard. Lady Amandine herself comes out as the last add. Eevee claimed the golden period to kill her was between 35 and 40% remaining. Halicarnassus has 24% remaining.
So when she devours Amandine, she casts a raidwide for more HP than anyone has.
Haukke HM is weird in that it's actually a dangerous dungeon.
The second time, we really slowed our burn down and Amandine popped out sub 40%. We got her down quick.
From there, it was a simple victory!
Now there's one more quest I want to show off before I finally draw the curtain on Patch 2.1.
No, I'm not going back on my vow. But I realized that if I don't show this introductory quest off, then the LP will seriously never cover Gerolt. Given how important he is, that would be a shame.
How fares the adventuring of late? Your gear holding up against the rigors of the trade? Make no mistake, my friend, the quality of your weapon may well prove the difference between life and death.
If you're serious about such things, there's someone I can introduce you to. Her name is Rowena, and she is a collector of all manner of rare artifacts. She just might have something in her stock to suit your martial prowess.
Rowena used to do business in Ul'dah, but has since relocated to Revenant's Toll so as to be nearer to the ancient ruins from which she derives her livelihood. Should you ever have reason to go there, you'd do well to pay her a call.
Rowena is the proprietor of the large building facing opposite the Rising Stones. She's... pure, distilled capitalism. Like to the point where she pays her employees in Scrip instead of Gil. She also owns the houses they are forced to live in while they work for her. She makes absolutely criminal amounts of money and they stay in abject poverty because scrip is fucking useless outside of Rowena's Company Towns.
The game treats her as a good person because she just so happens to support the WoL.
A friend o' Nedrick's, are you? Then you must be an adventurer o' some skill. My business relies on capable people such as you. As a gesture o' goodwill, I'm goin' to share with you a morsel of information.
There's this bloke named Gerolt. Makes his livin' in weapons and armor and whatnot. They say his skill is the finest in all the realm. Might be as it's gone to his head, though. Folks don't take to the man, if you get my meanin'. Oh, and he likes a drink, and all.
Bloody Byregot Himself in the forge, though. As a young lad, he was cast out on his ear by his master for the crime o' craftin' finer wares-and that while piss-drunk. Ever since, he's roamed here and there, earnin' his keep day to day.
Aye, I've known Gerolt ever since I landed in this business. Ain't seen him for a while, though. And the last time I did, the ol' fool had tears in his eyes and snot drippin' from his nose. "Fallen on hard times," he said. Asked for a bit o' coin to tide him over. Never paid me back, neither.
Couldn't say for sure where he is now. Seem to remember hearin' he was in the Black Shroud, puttin' up at Hyrstmill or some such place. You might do well to commission his work. He'll even reforge the relics of old if you make it worth his while, and there ain't no other in Eorzea as can do that.
If it's relics you care to know about, I've a promise o' payment what might catch your fancy. It don't look like much, but it'll get ol' Gerolt to fire up his forge. That much I promise.
I'm legitimately unsure if the MSQ has ever brought us to Hyrstmill. It's one of the really low level quest hubs for Gridania. Gerolt has been there the whole time, mending and making kettles.
Got business with me, have ye, adventurer? Then there'd better be coin or drink in it. Elsewise, bugger off back to wherever it was ye came from.
Actually...
...Restoration work on an old weapon, ye say? Hah! What makes ye think I'd fire up the forge for a grimy old-
I got a paper says you will~
Egads! Wh-Where in the seven hells did ye get that promise of payment!? I ain't got no coin, I tell ye! Nay, not a single bloody gil!
Gods, jus' look at me...at how far I've fallen! Me, the greatest weaponsmith of our age, hammerin' out dints in kettles to pay off a tavern debt! <sob> Can ye even begin to grasp me humiliation? Can ye!? Bah, 'course ye can't! Why did I even bother askin'!?
<sigh> All right, all right... I'll restore yer bloody weapon. Jus' get that godsdamned slip of paper out of me sight.
And that was Gerolt. He's the greatest weaponsmith who ever lived, but circumstances have been really hard on him. He's perpetually in debt to Rowena, who's actually - no shit - his wife. Or she used to be. Nowadays I'm pretty sure their relationship is more like "findom" and "paypig" rather than "husband" and "wife."
Anyway, Gerolt is pretty much exclusively used for relic weapons. I'm never doing another Zeta weapon again, and I'm not covering Heavensward in this LP, let alone Stormblood or Shadowbringers.
Anyway, that is it for Patch 2.1!
NEXT TIME: Through the Maelstrom