We’re used to being challenged on our FFXIV story nights, but it sure didn’t look like any sort of challenge was in the cards last night. We did start out with Ifrit (Hard), but essentially the same encounter as the normal Ifrit with double the players just wasn’t memorable. Maybe before FFXIV started shoveling great gear at new players, and people had to gear up… but with ilevel 115 gear cheap in the auction house and ilevel 120 gear easily obtainable via poetic tomestones, most of the fights that included gear checks are pretty trivial – Ifrit included.
The story continued with the preparations to move the Scions of the Seventh Dawn from Vespers Bay to Mos Eisley. It’s not really Mos Eisley. I just can’t remember the real name of the place because “IT’S A WRETCHED HIVE OF SCUM AND VILLAINY AND THE TOMESTOME ARMOR VENDOR” is stuck in my head.
Since we’ve just saved the world from the Garlean Empire and given the (omg they’re baaaaaack) Ascians a bloody nose, obviously what we need to do next is some trivial jobs like sweep a floor and clean up a spill on aisle three and ask someone if they’d like fries with that. Sure, I know you have to reset the action somewhat so you have something to build up to once more, but why can’t they at least be more imaginative about it? Ultima Weapon could have erased everyone’s knowledge of the Scions that beat it. Odin could have done it. Something.
Instead, we do some fetch quests, do some easy guildhests, run through Qarn in normal mode (we did it unsynced with a guildie)… and eventually the story comes around to something new.
The Moogles have summoned a not-really-a-primal, King Mog, who (in the old tales) held the rope that let the Moogles climb down from heaven to Eorzea. That’s a problem. We Eorzeans like our gods dead. Deicide is literally the prime mission of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.
While waiting for the mission to start, Kasul and I unlocked Garuda (Hard), because killing the Moogle god would just be a good start. We need to be killing the Ixali god ASAP, too. Seems the Ixali are feeling that the player races are getting a little too powerful, and we just can’t be sharing the planet with any sort of empowered beast-folk. They figure they need Garuda back just to have any sort of independent existence. We need to teach them the error of their ways by killing their god.
I’m not entirely sure that we’re the good guys, here.
Pretty much as soon as we unlock Garuda (Hard), the King Mog encounter pops, and in we go.
We immediately see that the vast majority of the people in the raid are unsynced 50s, just as are Kasul and me. Usually I can chip up with the astonishing revelation that I’ve never done this content before and the other people will give advice, but here, most everyone admitted that they, too, had never been here before. Well, I did have (as I usually do) the walkthrough up on the other monitor, and there were a couple people who HAD done it, but that wasn’t enough.
I got voted to be main tank, though, so I eventually realized I had enough spare time to be marking the moogles (who have to be killed in some sort of order) for focus fire. That helped, the two healers who would mutually raise each other helped, and on our third try we succeeded in destroying the only hope of the Moogle people and congratulating the good Moogles who knelt and allowed the boots of the Eorzean people to rest gently on their head balloons.
I’m REALLY unsure we’re the good guys.