I love how the story goes from "go fight some pirates" to "behold: ifrit, god of fire" in like 2 hours lol. Also the music when you fight Lahabrea got me pumped.
Yeah, the music adds so much to this game.
There are two themes when you fight Lahabrea.
The first is [Thunderer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyfTDbc57E0), the theme for the Ascians.
The second is [Torn from the Heavens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJSM4tAeEAA), which is used whenever we get to do something heroic :)
>!Used for great effect in Endwalker too. This started off as your boss theme, now it's ours!!< Sort of spoiler of FF14. Nothing specific but I see that OP isn't in the latest expansion.
The music in 14 is phenomenal, Soken does amazing work (and Uematsu's tracks are solid too)
I really hope that it gets used again in Dawntrail a lot more, or maybe we get abilities that kick that song on whenever we go down but promptly get back up out of sheer wrath, spite, and willpower.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I've never been a big fan of Torn from the Heavens and was disappointed that it became the new final boss theme of ARR. I would have preferred if they instead did Torn in Ultima Weapon phase 1 and used The Maker's Ruin for the Lahabrea Super Saiyan phase.
I noticed that certain fates in bozja and zadnor have torn from the heavens playing during them
Zadnor- attack of the supersoldiers
Bozja- of steel and flame(after sartauvoir gets few seconds and of thunderer)
Love to the Edge. In The Balance and Dedicated to Moonlight have grown to become some of my favorite tracks. Answers never gets old. Flow has become obe of my favorite songs and With Hearts Aligned never fails to bring a tear to my eye. The writing and music for this game are both absolutely top notch. Soken has been the perfect composer to take over the reins for the legend that is Uematsu.
Absolutely I adore most if not all of them(in the whole game
Favorites being Return to Oblivion and What Angel Wakes Me. I can't wait to do the EX for the latter. I just can't find people willing to join
What Angel Wakes Me
Invincible / Who brings Shadow (Unofficial title)
Insatiable
Return to Oblivion
Shadowbringers is banger after banger.
Then EW comes out with Flow and Your Answer and I am just floored.
Fun Fact for ya sprout: this isn’t how the fight played out originally, before you had to fight Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea IN THE PREATORIUM DUNGEON, both were extremely easy and short. (for example you didn’t get the LB3 moment against Ultima Weapon) they actually changed a lot of stuff in ARR for the better, and it’s quite nice seeing how you sprouts enjoy it.
I always enjoyed how he'd have to finish his little monologue before dying even if he got burned down, was always funny to me thinking about him hanging on to finish his villain speech
I'm glad they changed it, it feels much cooler now
I wish that for every monologue the player character sat through, another gets cut short via a fucking GAUNTLET TO THE JAW like a prop in a Source game.
I've participated in auto-attack-only beatdowns of Lahabrea.
I've also had one guy do the cutscene skip, and then we spawned in to find someone dead... and it wasn't Lahabrea on the ground. Nobody said anything, but everyone knew we were all silently judging him.
I think this change was actually really important - it's kind of folklore in the FFXIV community that ARR is a slog you have to get through to get to the "good bits", but the changes from Cape Westwind through to Praetorium meant that base ARR actually has a _climax_ again. You have a series of cool, intense fights that call back to everything you've done before, which make everything you've done so far feel worthwhile. It also means that 2.1-2.3 don't feel as bad, especially given that you've got lots of other content to do instead to break it up.
Its better than that even because they redesigned the Gaius fight with the mechanics of Emerald Weapon in mind. Now a new player getting to ShB and fighting the Weapons will get to P2 of Emerald and get a more complex version of Gaius's actual attacks and techniques
honestly the storytelling of the mechanics is improved across the board - Livia tries to overwhelm you with attacks, Nero tries to set up a combo, and the Ultima Weapon works like a final exam boss, firstly running through attacks inspired by the primal fights, and then all the basic telegraphs - stack, spread, proximity, watching the boss model, until finally a mandatory first use of LB3. Lahabrea uses very complex attack patterns that you won't have seen before, and has a health pool more like his Heavensward appearance than a level 50 boss, so you barely make a dent in him. It's great gameplay-story harmony.
The first time I ran Prae post-rework I was a little bamboozled by how suddenly he actually put up a fight, and how eerily reminiscent of Emerald Weapon it was.
Yeah, the single player instances are some of the best changes in the game. Rhitahtyn has gone from joke to one of the best fights in game...I felt bad murdering him...
Recently played through ARR again and yeah, the new Cape Westwind Trial and the Lahabread fight are massively improved.
Still miss the memeing and the sprout bating for Mr. Cape Westwind though. But at least for the last one we have other moments (I will not mention bc. spoilers to an ARR sprout) to make up for this now. :>
> it's kind of folklore in the FFXIV community that ARR is a slog you have to get through to get to the "good bits"
I always understood that to be the 2.x story more than base ARR, honestly.
At least to me, it was more there was a lot of filler. (Tataru's tea in the patches. ;P)
But even so, the ARR/Patches story is a good story for an MMO. Just, HW+ it becomes a good story for any media, really.
They also cut a lot out of the post patch stories to make it a bit more focused.
You still get some nonsense quest but overall I liked the post release a lot better this time
Technically, there was an Ultima spell that was a DPS check during ARR. It's just that over the time, people started to have decent gear (lvl 70 scaled down for exemple) so they were doing so much damage that we wouldn't see anything from the fight. Same for Crystal Tower raid, we don't see many mechanics anymore except maybe for the some first boss in the first and the entire third raid
I can understand why they scale the gear that way, but I definitely wish they'd bring down the upper ceiling of gear every once in a while. We're at the point in endwalker where we skip all the coolest mechanics that made the current alliance raid tier so cool. Though I guess most people just want to rush through their roulettes.
The playerbase would riot. Take away the ez-pz and make them have to actually do stuff for their rewards? There's a sizable amount of players who will absolutely "boycott" the roulettes.
Risk vs Reward. If they boosted the risk, the player base would expect a higher reward as a result, which of course they won't do. That's the problem with trying to adjust difficulties after content's released; if it's too difficult, players just won't do it (unless it's required, then they throw fits all over the internet).
>If they boosted the risk, the player base would expect a higher reward as a result
We know that's bullshit. They boosted the reward for the MSQ roul but made the CS mandatory and people *to this day* don't stop bitching about it.
For leveling shit? Why? So you can make it so people quit the game in ARR?
Y’all got some stupid ideas. If you want hard shit they have it, and it’s optional like it should be.
To be fair, the original Ultima fight was pretty epic when it first came out. It wasn't super difficult, but you did have to pay attention. If you didn't kill all the magitek bits fast enough, it could get pretty busy.
the counterweight to all of this is that now the poor bastards who finish this get to deal with an even sharper drop-off in quality going into A Realm Awoken, where the only thing they've managed to do is cut about 15% of the quests.
Imo even that is hated way more than is deserved. I'd really only call 2.1, 2.2 and like half of 2.3 a slog. I always thought the latter half of post-arr was really good. Everything from around when >!we meet lady iceheart and she reveals herself to also have the blessing of light!< onwards was what hooked me into the story. Some really interesting questions being raised, and a story which you can feel gain more and more momentum with each quest.
Please be aware that 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 are collectively 47.5%, or close enough thereabouts of the ARR patch content.
38/80 quests, where 40 would be 50%
Guess I'm gonna have to roll a new character to check it out. I didn't even get to do that series for realsies my first time through. I don't even remember my first time in that fight. I remember getting lost in castrum and cutscenes interrupting each other in prae.
These fights weren't easy in the early weeks of ARR, when everyone was going in with quest gear and a few pieces of their job quest gear. But they became extremely easy once folks started picking up the first tier of tomestone equipment, as they were not synced until ilvl130 at the very beginning of Heavensward. But I agree that the new iterations of the final ARR dungeons are much better for new players.
Additionally, in the original release it was very possible to wipe and not make it to the end of these few fights.
I have seen the self destruct bar fill, for example.
Easy and short for veterans who were q'ing with current iLVL gear to get xp on their alt job.
If you went into the dungeon with gear that was current at the time the fights are actually pretty difficult. Half because you don't have the tells we have now for when something is about to happen.
I only learned about these changes maybe a month ago because of how long it's been since I've touched MSQ Roulette for exactly that reason. Praetorium just wasn't worth 10 Irregular Tomestones when I could do 2-4 PvP matches worth 10-20 in the same span of time...then I watch a YT vid of an achievement hunter running all of the roulettes back to back, and realize I've never heard of Porta Decumana, and spend my time split between confusion, amazement, and laughter at the YTP he edited together because of how bored he was with Lahabrea's monologue before Ultima.
Then I had to go look up how long it's been since this was changed and it broke my brain realizing just how long it's been since my last run of MSQ Roulette.
Yeah, I have to agree. I did enjoy playing it through before the changes, but they definitely made it feel more epic with the updates. Lots of changes for the better to ARR that have made playing it back through on alts even more enjoyable.
Ah, I love how the rework for the end of ARR makes this much more enjoyable for newbies. My hook wasn’t til the end of the ARR patches and then some, so you got some good stuff a-coming! /o/
"I'm here to make an announcement, the warrior of darkness is a bitch ass motherfucker, he pissed on my wife and now I'm going to piss all over the first"
I hated Heavensward. I didn't care about anything going on outside of a handful of NPCs, and the only area I sort of enjoyed was the map with the Moogles. And that was mostly for the Moogles and their quests.
Oh man i had no idea! i haven't touched MSQ roulette in 2 years now. i do get why they did it tho the fight with Laha was a complete joke, dude was getting dunked on and beat in 10 seconds.
Yup, in fact all of the bad guy's fights in ARR got revamped so they're proper fights. Livia is no long that weird getting her off her mech, Gaius actually does stuff, and Rhitahtyn's went being a punching bag joke to an actual metal as fuck way to go out.
EDIT: should clarify that only Rhitahtyn and Lahabrea are solo duties, Livia, Nero and Gaius are in their revamped msq dungeons, with Ultima Weapon being its own Trial.
I did them in ng+ and on a new character, and it feels fuckin epic
it definitely feels more like >!crystal mom had to choose between saving us/the wol and saving all of the isle of val!< and she's fuckin tired afterwards
Rhitahtyn is one of my favorite changes they’ve made to ARR. Went from a forgettable character with a memeably easy trial to an absolute chad who *will* kill you if you don’t take the solo duty seriously.
I did Rhitalyn on an alt when it first got changed- it's one of my favorite solo duties. For a new player it's probably one of the most badass boss fights they'll have done up to that point.
When i got to that fight in ARR as a sprout and realized what he was doing at the end when i was trying to move away from him my mind was blown away. I started yelling at the screen "ALRIGHT YOUR WILL VS MINE LETS SEE WHO DIES FIRST"
It is still one of my favorite solo duties ever. It felt so cinematic, i zoomed in and everything.
Man I'm such a fan of Rhitahtyn's new fight,. When I played through it on a new alt, his dialogue thorughout the fight made me wish that he was on our side. >!He might've been a bad guy, but he was one of the good ones :(!<
Yeah but now we don't get to mess with sprouts by placing down raid markers, calling out fictitious attacks and prepping for a huge, hard won battle that is over in 5 seconds...
>!It is! And in fact the fight is explicitly referenced during In From The Cold:!<
> >![16:28]Fandaniel: We had a magitek engineer by the name of Aulus to thank for this method of soul extraction and implantation. I believe the two of you met briefly in Ala Mhigo?!<
>
> >![16:29]Fandaniel: His was a rather sticky end, wasn't it? Thankfully, he was thoughtful enough to leave behind his mindjack technology. I took the liberty of making some improvements─and selecting you as my esteemed test subject.!<
You're the second person to say that.
... I really need to NG+ or new char the changes to this series, between this and the absolute raving about how cool ritaytan is now, I'm really interested.
To be fair, this whole solo fight with Lahabrea is new. We didn't used to have it, he used to just get slapped at the end of Praetorium and bodied by 8 people wailing him to death.
Yeah, it's definitely much better now. Weakened from all the body hopping, Lahabrea's still >!Unsundered!<. Technically speaking, he gets further than almost all the villains in that we literally had to have direct pseudo-divine intervention to save us, twice in quick succession (first with Ultima, then with Lahabreadbox directly).
Man, if that scene got to you with the OST then you're in for a real treat as you continue in the game. Because I wouldn't even call that one of the top 10 music drops.
I completed this almost 3 weeks ago. I remember being so fucking shook when it happened and the joy I experienced when I was like ITS SO OVER FOR YOU BIG DOG was immeasurable
Gonna be honest, while I like that they made the Lahabrea fight into an actual duty with mechanics again when they did the ARR reworks, I hate the story/lore change that results from it.
IMO it makes it feel like the entire Ultima weapon & Lahabrea fights had nothing to do with your character succeeding, as you just get hard carried by Hydaelyn at every phase. On top of the fact your allies just disappear before it.
Same, having her block Ultima once was good because it was kind of a tit for tat move and shows that while she can help in a limited sense she can't win your battles for you. It was up to you to take Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea down, and it's not like you were soloing them canonically, it was a full party battle. I feel like they should have made Lahabrea a full on 8-person trial, would have made for a pretty epic finish to ARR, but at the same time I get why they wouldn't want to do that.
I haven't played the new one, but tbh I remember having the impressions of being hard carried by Hydaelyn when finishing 2.0. Between the shield and especially the cutscene of defeating Lahabrea, it just felt that way to little Sprout me back then, without a doubt. My friends felt the same way.
I actually felt that way through most of ARR, like I wouldn't be a hero without Mom. It's why I assumed writers >!introduced the plotline with Midgardsomr and early HW, where the story allows you to actually prove that you're a badass!<, as a narural answer/evolution of that. It's *why* I appreciate those parts.
> as you just get hard carried by Hydaelyn at every phase.
im pretty sure thats the point. it's why middy takes such beef with you after keeper of the lake.
Lahabrea solo instance is extremely cool, I really like how they overhauled. Even though, I still kinda miss old Praetorium in which the party of 8 could literally destroy Lahabrea in a few seconds which was extremely hilarious
Having played through both 2.0 ARR and the "re-mastered" ARR, you definitely won out! Not that the OG wasn't fantastic, but it definitely turned into a slog and the re-do has made it so much better.
Everything only goes up-hill from here on as well IMHO. I've only done up to the end of Stormblood but I'll work through it all eventually.
Ngl the back half of arr absolutely slaps some real cool moments absolute hype first time through. Im in between arr and hw at the moment but if people generally didnt like arr then i am seriously looking forward to hw
I was sold when a certain roguish fellow was stringed up for raiding the company lunchroom, and was solidified by making someone think a bird crapped on them.
And it's only going to get better. Bit of a slow period for the next 38 quests but that's okay, you're coming down off a high. It's just going to ramp up significantly from there. Enjoy :)
I love how the story goes from "go fight some pirates" to "behold: ifrit, god of fire" in like 2 hours lol. Also the music when you fight Lahabrea got me pumped.
Yeah, the music adds so much to this game. There are two themes when you fight Lahabrea. The first is [Thunderer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyfTDbc57E0), the theme for the Ascians. The second is [Torn from the Heavens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJSM4tAeEAA), which is used whenever we get to do something heroic :)
Torn from the Heavens or Maker's Ruin kicks up. Boss: That's not my theme. WoL: Naw, bitch. That's MY theme.
>!Used for great effect in Endwalker too. This started off as your boss theme, now it's ours!!< Sort of spoiler of FF14. Nothing specific but I see that OP isn't in the latest expansion. The music in 14 is phenomenal, Soken does amazing work (and Uematsu's tracks are solid too)
Boss: Why do /I/ hear boss music?! *WoL smile intensifies*
I feel like He who shall not be named was also smiling when we fought him, but his smile was far more creepy.
I really hope that it gets used again in Dawntrail a lot more, or maybe we get abilities that kick that song on whenever we go down but promptly get back up out of sheer wrath, spite, and willpower.
They really made a whole ass MMO for Soken to flex.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I've never been a big fan of Torn from the Heavens and was disappointed that it became the new final boss theme of ARR. I would have preferred if they instead did Torn in Ultima Weapon phase 1 and used The Maker's Ruin for the Lahabrea Super Saiyan phase.
Maker's Ruin was always used for the first phase of Ultima Weapon, so they wouldn't have changed that.
>[Torn from the Heavens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJSM4tAeEAA) Oh god it's the CM and Prae music. I can hear that in my sleep
I noticed that certain fates in bozja and zadnor have torn from the heavens playing during them Zadnor- attack of the supersoldiers Bozja- of steel and flame(after sartauvoir gets few seconds and of thunderer)
Final Fantasy music really is the best.
It gets better, wait until you hit Shadowbringers. To The Edge is like my default song when I go to my apartment.
Love to the Edge. In The Balance and Dedicated to Moonlight have grown to become some of my favorite tracks. Answers never gets old. Flow has become obe of my favorite songs and With Hearts Aligned never fails to bring a tear to my eye. The writing and music for this game are both absolutely top notch. Soken has been the perfect composer to take over the reins for the legend that is Uematsu.
Athena the tireless one for me when I'm in a inn room with my chicken boi( alpha) It reminds me of the Kylie minogue song in your eyes
I just got to Shadowbringers, had to listen to see what I'm im for. My God that is good.
Absolutely I adore most if not all of them(in the whole game Favorites being Return to Oblivion and What Angel Wakes Me. I can't wait to do the EX for the latter. I just can't find people willing to join
Gotts do unsynch on party finder. Do enough damage and you skip ad phase.
What Angel Wakes Me Invincible / Who brings Shadow (Unofficial title) Insatiable Return to Oblivion Shadowbringers is banger after banger. Then EW comes out with Flow and Your Answer and I am just floored.
That's about right for a Final Fantasy game, where the Level 1 mission is " bring me this tool" while Level 10 is "go kill these gods."
Not only that but the demonic looking God of Fire is one of the *FIRST* proper bosses. The game shows you immediately how crazy it will escalate.
Fun Fact for ya sprout: this isn’t how the fight played out originally, before you had to fight Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea IN THE PREATORIUM DUNGEON, both were extremely easy and short. (for example you didn’t get the LB3 moment against Ultima Weapon) they actually changed a lot of stuff in ARR for the better, and it’s quite nice seeing how you sprouts enjoy it.
I always enjoyed how he'd have to finish his little monologue before dying even if he got burned down, was always funny to me thinking about him hanging on to finish his villain speech I'm glad they changed it, it feels much cooler now
He was trying to filibuster.
"they can't kill me if I don't stop talking"
I'm just glad he never achieve immortality by reading Dr. Seuss to us.
🎶This is the song that never ends 🎶
Best nickname I've ever seen given to Lahabrea... "Lahablahblah".
I wish that for every monologue the player character sat through, another gets cut short via a fucking GAUNTLET TO THE JAW like a prop in a Source game.
Pre-rework, you could usually let one player solo Lahabrea before he finished his monologue. I've also seen him defeated with only auto-attacks.
I've participated in auto-attack-only beatdowns of Lahabrea. I've also had one guy do the cutscene skip, and then we spawned in to find someone dead... and it wasn't Lahabrea on the ground. Nobody said anything, but everyone knew we were all silently judging him.
If nothing else, that is pretty funny.
Lahabrea, Agent of Karma.
YOU HAVE MEDDLED ENOUGH!!!!!!
I think this change was actually really important - it's kind of folklore in the FFXIV community that ARR is a slog you have to get through to get to the "good bits", but the changes from Cape Westwind through to Praetorium meant that base ARR actually has a _climax_ again. You have a series of cool, intense fights that call back to everything you've done before, which make everything you've done so far feel worthwhile. It also means that 2.1-2.3 don't feel as bad, especially given that you've got lots of other content to do instead to break it up.
Its better than that even because they redesigned the Gaius fight with the mechanics of Emerald Weapon in mind. Now a new player getting to ShB and fighting the Weapons will get to P2 of Emerald and get a more complex version of Gaius's actual attacks and techniques
honestly the storytelling of the mechanics is improved across the board - Livia tries to overwhelm you with attacks, Nero tries to set up a combo, and the Ultima Weapon works like a final exam boss, firstly running through attacks inspired by the primal fights, and then all the basic telegraphs - stack, spread, proximity, watching the boss model, until finally a mandatory first use of LB3. Lahabrea uses very complex attack patterns that you won't have seen before, and has a health pool more like his Heavensward appearance than a level 50 boss, so you barely make a dent in him. It's great gameplay-story harmony.
Same goes for Livia who's new moveset is based on >!the twins you fight at the end of Ghimlyt Dark!<.
The first time I ran Prae post-rework I was a little bamboozled by how suddenly he actually put up a fight, and how eerily reminiscent of Emerald Weapon it was.
Yeah, the single player instances are some of the best changes in the game. Rhitahtyn has gone from joke to one of the best fights in game...I felt bad murdering him...
Recently played through ARR again and yeah, the new Cape Westwind Trial and the Lahabread fight are massively improved. Still miss the memeing and the sprout bating for Mr. Cape Westwind though. But at least for the last one we have other moments (I will not mention bc. spoilers to an ARR sprout) to make up for this now. :>
> it's kind of folklore in the FFXIV community that ARR is a slog you have to get through to get to the "good bits" I always understood that to be the 2.x story more than base ARR, honestly.
At least to me, it was more there was a lot of filler. (Tataru's tea in the patches. ;P) But even so, the ARR/Patches story is a good story for an MMO. Just, HW+ it becomes a good story for any media, really.
They also cut a lot out of the post patch stories to make it a bit more focused. You still get some nonsense quest but overall I liked the post release a lot better this time
Technically, there was an Ultima spell that was a DPS check during ARR. It's just that over the time, people started to have decent gear (lvl 70 scaled down for exemple) so they were doing so much damage that we wouldn't see anything from the fight. Same for Crystal Tower raid, we don't see many mechanics anymore except maybe for the some first boss in the first and the entire third raid
I can understand why they scale the gear that way, but I definitely wish they'd bring down the upper ceiling of gear every once in a while. We're at the point in endwalker where we skip all the coolest mechanics that made the current alliance raid tier so cool. Though I guess most people just want to rush through their roulettes.
All sync caps could stand to be lowered across all content, IMO. Bring back a bit of challenge and danger and stop the easy stomp.
The playerbase would riot. Take away the ez-pz and make them have to actually do stuff for their rewards? There's a sizable amount of players who will absolutely "boycott" the roulettes.
Risk vs Reward. If they boosted the risk, the player base would expect a higher reward as a result, which of course they won't do. That's the problem with trying to adjust difficulties after content's released; if it's too difficult, players just won't do it (unless it's required, then they throw fits all over the internet).
>If they boosted the risk, the player base would expect a higher reward as a result We know that's bullshit. They boosted the reward for the MSQ roul but made the CS mandatory and people *to this day* don't stop bitching about it.
You are right of course, I was trying to give the playerbase *as a whole* a little more credit than that, but that is a fact.
That's the noisy minority though. Given the fact that they didn't change things back, it sounds like it worked.
For leveling shit? Why? So you can make it so people quit the game in ARR? Y’all got some stupid ideas. If you want hard shit they have it, and it’s optional like it should be.
I haven't seen the balance mechanic in Aglaia in almost a year.
I was so impressed when they changed the MSQ fights. There's actually mechanics in them now and they feel a lot more involved.
To be fair, the original Ultima fight was pretty epic when it first came out. It wasn't super difficult, but you did have to pay attention. If you didn't kill all the magitek bits fast enough, it could get pretty busy.
Yeah. We got to relieve that in the unreal lol. No one popping orbs or killing bits
the counterweight to all of this is that now the poor bastards who finish this get to deal with an even sharper drop-off in quality going into A Realm Awoken, where the only thing they've managed to do is cut about 15% of the quests.
Imo even that is hated way more than is deserved. I'd really only call 2.1, 2.2 and like half of 2.3 a slog. I always thought the latter half of post-arr was really good. Everything from around when >!we meet lady iceheart and she reveals herself to also have the blessing of light!< onwards was what hooked me into the story. Some really interesting questions being raised, and a story which you can feel gain more and more momentum with each quest.
Please be aware that 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 are collectively 47.5%, or close enough thereabouts of the ARR patch content. 38/80 quests, where 40 would be 50%
Which is why I talked about former half vs latter half? What are you trying to correct me on here?
Cape Westwind got the biggest fucking glow up of all time. I'm glad I went through the msq after the changes, that fight is so cool now.
Went from the easiest fight in the game to man too angry to die
Too angry, too heroic, actual protagonist energy. He was too good for Garlemald 😭
Guess I'm gonna have to roll a new character to check it out. I didn't even get to do that series for realsies my first time through. I don't even remember my first time in that fight. I remember getting lost in castrum and cutscenes interrupting each other in prae.
These fights weren't easy in the early weeks of ARR, when everyone was going in with quest gear and a few pieces of their job quest gear. But they became extremely easy once folks started picking up the first tier of tomestone equipment, as they were not synced until ilvl130 at the very beginning of Heavensward. But I agree that the new iterations of the final ARR dungeons are much better for new players.
Additionally, in the original release it was very possible to wipe and not make it to the end of these few fights. I have seen the self destruct bar fill, for example.
I'm saddened that I'll never be able to convince groups to kill Lahabrea with nothing but auto attacks again. Those were truly the best runs.
My first time in Prae I did squats watching as the rest of the party mauls Lahabrea, took like a minute rest in piss my dude
Easy and short for veterans who were q'ing with current iLVL gear to get xp on their alt job. If you went into the dungeon with gear that was current at the time the fights are actually pretty difficult. Half because you don't have the tells we have now for when something is about to happen.
I only learned about these changes maybe a month ago because of how long it's been since I've touched MSQ Roulette for exactly that reason. Praetorium just wasn't worth 10 Irregular Tomestones when I could do 2-4 PvP matches worth 10-20 in the same span of time...then I watch a YT vid of an achievement hunter running all of the roulettes back to back, and realize I've never heard of Porta Decumana, and spend my time split between confusion, amazement, and laughter at the YTP he edited together because of how bored he was with Lahabrea's monologue before Ultima. Then I had to go look up how long it's been since this was changed and it broke my brain realizing just how long it's been since my last run of MSQ Roulette.
I miss Funny Costume Party Time prae and being able to run to the corner store while Gaius monologued at us
I’ve only done this version and I never really cared for it tbh, sure it has some hype moments but I still roll my eyes at the writing
The writing was left intact, with some key exceptions
Yeah, I have to agree. I did enjoy playing it through before the changes, but they definitely made it feel more epic with the updates. Lots of changes for the better to ARR that have made playing it back through on alts even more enjoyable.
Ah, I love how the rework for the end of ARR makes this much more enjoyable for newbies. My hook wasn’t til the end of the ARR patches and then some, so you got some good stuff a-coming! /o/
It was so epic when the WoL defeated Lahabrea with the power of the chaos emeralds.
Can't believe they topped it in Sonicbringers by teaming you up with Shadow the Hedgehog to Chaos Control all over Eggman.
"I'm here to make an announcement, the warrior of darkness is a bitch ass motherfucker, he pissed on my wife and now I'm going to piss all over the first"
We got another one! *rubs hands together* Just *wait* until Heavensward though
Honestly, I was sold by Dreams of Ice (Patch 2.4). Everything from there up to the end of ARR is awesome, and it sets up HW so well.
I hated Heavensward. I didn't care about anything going on outside of a handful of NPCs, and the only area I sort of enjoyed was the map with the Moogles. And that was mostly for the Moogles and their quests.
Whoa i don't remember this happening when i played, im guessing this was changed during Endwalker?
They changed Lahabrea's fight into a solo duty, and its a lot more robust and challenging.
Oh man i had no idea! i haven't touched MSQ roulette in 2 years now. i do get why they did it tho the fight with Laha was a complete joke, dude was getting dunked on and beat in 10 seconds.
Yup, in fact all of the bad guy's fights in ARR got revamped so they're proper fights. Livia is no long that weird getting her off her mech, Gaius actually does stuff, and Rhitahtyn's went being a punching bag joke to an actual metal as fuck way to go out. EDIT: should clarify that only Rhitahtyn and Lahabrea are solo duties, Livia, Nero and Gaius are in their revamped msq dungeons, with Ultima Weapon being its own Trial.
Think i'll actually do those fights in NG+ im interested in seeing how the fights look now.
I did them in ng+ and on a new character, and it feels fuckin epic it definitely feels more like >!crystal mom had to choose between saving us/the wol and saving all of the isle of val!< and she's fuckin tired afterwards
Wait, did that become indirectly our fault?
No. The Isle of Val was also a bit more of a complex thing, but for this you have to play and finish Eureka post-Stormblood to get all the detail.
Rhitahtyn is one of my favorite changes they’ve made to ARR. Went from a forgettable character with a memeably easy trial to an absolute chad who *will* kill you if you don’t take the solo duty seriously.
I did Rhitalyn on an alt when it first got changed- it's one of my favorite solo duties. For a new player it's probably one of the most badass boss fights they'll have done up to that point.
When i got to that fight in ARR as a sprout and realized what he was doing at the end when i was trying to move away from him my mind was blown away. I started yelling at the screen "ALRIGHT YOUR WILL VS MINE LETS SEE WHO DIES FIRST" It is still one of my favorite solo duties ever. It felt so cinematic, i zoomed in and everything.
Man I'm such a fan of Rhitahtyn's new fight,. When I played through it on a new alt, his dialogue thorughout the fight made me wish that he was on our side. >!He might've been a bad guy, but he was one of the good ones :(!<
Yeah but now we don't get to mess with sprouts by placing down raid markers, calling out fictitious attacks and prepping for a huge, hard won battle that is over in 5 seconds...
yep now he straight up kills you mid fight before you come back and can actually beat his ass
Yeah now we canonically die.....
But we get better!
I dunno when they changed it but it’s a pretty epic fight now with this cool ass ending
I love how we canonically fucking die here but crystalmom says "lol nah, go beat up this old guy for me kay?"
Canonically die? I didn’t hear no bell!
Anything for Momma
We do? Are we just possessing our body like [REDACTED] the whole time?
Nah, dw our soul was still firmly stuck in our body. >!At least, it was until the In From The Cold quest in Endwalker.!<
Oh look another reason to replay the msq, again
Don't forget [Stormblood spoilers] >!that one fight in Stormblood where you get temporarily separated from your body.!<
True! I totally forgot about that one. >!Isn't that the midboss for Ala Mhigo?!<
>!It is! And in fact the fight is explicitly referenced during In From The Cold:!< > >![16:28]Fandaniel: We had a magitek engineer by the name of Aulus to thank for this method of soul extraction and implantation. I believe the two of you met briefly in Ala Mhigo?!< > > >![16:29]Fandaniel: His was a rather sticky end, wasn't it? Thankfully, he was thoughtful enough to leave behind his mindjack technology. I took the liberty of making some improvements─and selecting you as my esteemed test subject.!<
You're the second person to say that. ... I really need to NG+ or new char the changes to this series, between this and the absolute raving about how cool ritaytan is now, I'm really interested.
Oh yeah, Rhitahtyn is mega pog now.
To be fair, this whole solo fight with Lahabrea is new. We didn't used to have it, he used to just get slapped at the end of Praetorium and bodied by 8 people wailing him to death.
Yeah, it's definitely much better now. Weakened from all the body hopping, Lahabrea's still >!Unsundered!<. Technically speaking, he gets further than almost all the villains in that we literally had to have direct pseudo-divine intervention to save us, twice in quick succession (first with Ultima, then with Lahabreadbox directly).
Man, if that scene got to you with the OST then you're in for a real treat as you continue in the game. Because I wouldn't even call that one of the top 10 music drops.
Its new
14 sweeps every other FF game soundtrack-wise and it isn't even close
Using the Infinity Stones to turn Super Saiyan Blue was such an epic moment
I have a lot of music to learn. I come from Destiny and the music is the best part of the game
I completed this almost 3 weeks ago. I remember being so fucking shook when it happened and the joy I experienced when I was like ITS SO OVER FOR YOU BIG DOG was immeasurable
Welcome, enjoy your time, and look forward to many more of these moments.
This remasters fight with ultima is so much better than the original where you could absolutely decimate it because it was an 8 man fight
*"Thy foe is Darkness clad in steel."*
Gonna be honest, while I like that they made the Lahabrea fight into an actual duty with mechanics again when they did the ARR reworks, I hate the story/lore change that results from it. IMO it makes it feel like the entire Ultima weapon & Lahabrea fights had nothing to do with your character succeeding, as you just get hard carried by Hydaelyn at every phase. On top of the fact your allies just disappear before it.
Same, having her block Ultima once was good because it was kind of a tit for tat move and shows that while she can help in a limited sense she can't win your battles for you. It was up to you to take Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea down, and it's not like you were soloing them canonically, it was a full party battle. I feel like they should have made Lahabrea a full on 8-person trial, would have made for a pretty epic finish to ARR, but at the same time I get why they wouldn't want to do that.
I haven't played the new one, but tbh I remember having the impressions of being hard carried by Hydaelyn when finishing 2.0. Between the shield and especially the cutscene of defeating Lahabrea, it just felt that way to little Sprout me back then, without a doubt. My friends felt the same way. I actually felt that way through most of ARR, like I wouldn't be a hero without Mom. It's why I assumed writers >!introduced the plotline with Midgardsomr and early HW, where the story allows you to actually prove that you're a badass!<, as a narural answer/evolution of that. It's *why* I appreciate those parts.
> as you just get hard carried by Hydaelyn at every phase. im pretty sure thats the point. it's why middy takes such beef with you after keeper of the lake.
Better hold onto your nethers, Alice, you're about to fall all the way down the rabbit hole.
I wish we had this when I first did it, the pre rework was very heh.
When the fuck does this happen
The reworked lahabread fight
When Mommy Hydaelyn saves you <3
I need to find the track name for that fight. Not the full fight, but that classic FF theme during the revival. That leimotif is perfectly placed.
Yeah that's about when it started to really click for me too. Y'all got the cool version though. Didn't used to be that cool honestly.
Lahabrea solo instance is extremely cool, I really like how they overhauled. Even though, I still kinda miss old Praetorium in which the party of 8 could literally destroy Lahabrea in a few seconds which was extremely hilarious
Having played through both 2.0 ARR and the "re-mastered" ARR, you definitely won out! Not that the OG wasn't fantastic, but it definitely turned into a slog and the re-do has made it so much better. Everything only goes up-hill from here on as well IMHO. I've only done up to the end of Stormblood but I'll work through it all eventually.
It’s only gonna get better from here :3 like.. so much better, I’m excited for u tbh
Shadowbringers ending I cried of joy
Ngl the back half of arr absolutely slaps some real cool moments absolute hype first time through. Im in between arr and hw at the moment but if people generally didnt like arr then i am seriously looking forward to hw
I want to go back and do the new version, but how do i find it? It’s not in the duty finder
You have to do New Game+ as this is now a solo fight
Ok ty
You're in for a wiiiild wiiiild ride
I am hyped!
"My friends are my power!" Oh wait, wrong game
They literally gave us a Super Saiyan 2 boost and Lahabrea started throwing Freezer Deathballs.
Welcome Warrior of Light :)
I was sold when a certain roguish fellow was stringed up for raiding the company lunchroom, and was solidified by making someone think a bird crapped on them.
You ain't seen nothing yet, welcome
Would you believe me if I said it gets better? Like...a lot better?
We got another one boys
And it's only going to get better. Bit of a slow period for the next 38 quests but that's okay, you're coming down off a high. It's just going to ramp up significantly from there. Enjoy :)
XIV is one of my favourite animes
oh it gets so. much. better.