Why Aurum Vale is Loathed

Aurum Vale isn't that bad as long as people have alright situational awareness and at least have a tank or healer or heck if you're lucky and have a blm know their job. You have to go slow in this and Dzemeal as these two can pull themselves where wandering mobs can get close enough in range to someone who's just at wrong spot that they sight agro. They're not even as bad as pre-nerfed Amdapoor Keep and Pharos. Though Vale might be tougher as a sch since they don't have Lustrate as there are times where some tanks have their hp yo-yo due to one of the three reasons why a tank dies in that place. Those being undergeared, inexperienced, or arrogant/impatient.

You're also wrong about ignoring enmity as there's only one boss in the game up to that point where it doesn't care and that's the Golem boss in Temple of Quarn. I also get that you mean no aoe markers when you talk about no telegraphs but again there's only one boss that does that and even then it still has visual clues and if you're also talking about the last boss I don't count that as ignoring enmity as that's a scripted move they'll always do. Also SE did away with a lot of things effecting pets so that smns and schs can focus more on other things. No incentive to explain? Wow that's probably one of the few places I do explain specially if people have asked or wipes have happened.

It's one of the very few dungeons that can still actually be challenging, even though it has lost a lot of its bite. And the reason for that is exactly because you are synced to lvl 49, it's less about the skill, but the maximum ilvl is much lower than it is for lvl 50 dungeons. Imo dungeons should have a much lower maximum ilvl in general, they are only ever really interesting in the beginning of a new expansion, when people haven't outgeared them yet. For the dungeons released with content patches, people are already way over the minimum ilvl because they had months to grind for tomestones.
The only other dungeons i remember being a similar struggle were the 2.1 dungeons Pharos Sirius and Copperbell Mines Hard when they were new (mostly for their final bosses). I remember people wearing accessories for the wrong class (sometimes even crafting) just to get the minimum ilvl to go into Pharos Sirius. Which makes me wonder what we did back then with the tomestones...

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Originally Posted by Amariel34

Aurum Vale is NOT that hard. It's just that tanks have to pull carefully and dps have to be aware of where they are standing. Situational awareness is key in there. And sometimes a little LoS pulling never hurts. It's just hard to speed run in there, so people hate it. Honestly, other than people wiping in the first room cause they try to rush it, it's not bad at all. I must be one of the few people that doesn't mind it.

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This. I've run Arum Vale for every role and level it for gear. People just can't stand that you have to take your time in there.

Aurum Vale is my favourite ARR dungeon and it taught me more than any other dungeon when I was still new. I want an extreme version of it, not just a boring "hard" mode.

Outside of the disaster of 1.0 copied design that is the first room of AV, it's one of the best dungeons of this game. Its loathed because bosses can actually kill you and the first room is awful.

People dislike a challenge. This one actually forces tanks to pull strategically, dps to not just run wherever, healers not to have HOTs up when not needed.
It’s a really good stepping stone for all involved in how to play your role.

I miss the air of 1.0 though. Getting Breathless was some of the most fun and I wish I could wear it as a title. Wish we could still do that today.

Aurum Vales isn't a problem. If it was, even the tanks and dps who pay attention to their surroundings would have hard time with it. This is literally all that anyone, especially those who ran it before has to do in there.

How many times have I seen ranged dps and casters stay in the far back being oblivious to the patrol mobs in the first room? How many times have I seen tanks insisting on tanking plant monsters right where they are and eventually get nabbed by the toad and its corhorts instead of luring them to safe space? Don't even get me started on melee staying in the bile and healers confused about why they can't one-click heal the party and getting their mind blown they actually have to cleanse debuffs. All of this in the first room.

Aurum Vale is not a problem. Tunnel vision players who want to wham bam boom it are.

#AurumValeDidNothingWrong

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Originally Posted by Canadane

People dislike a challenge. This one actually forces tanks to pull strategically, dps to not just run wherever, healers not to have HOTs up when not needed.
It’s a really good stepping stone for all involved in how to play your role.

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If your in a FC and bringing your mates, it's a great team building exercise. But if you are in the leveling roulette, there's no benefit to spending all that time whipping up bunch of randos into shape since you'll never see them again. And if there's 1 or 2 newbies, your stuck having to explain everything for every damn run.

Honestly the dungeon itself has never been that hard for me. (Granted, I'm almost always tanking it don't know if that factors into things.)

The reason I hate it, is that it's just an eyesore. It's so ugly and unpleasant to be in. Even when I'm unsyncing it on a new character for grand company quests or helping a friend clear it I just want to get out of there as soon as I can. For me it's not that the dungeon is hard. Yes if you aren't careful you can pull extra adds and wipe but with a bit of caution and careful pulling it isn't difficult. But it's just...soooooo ugly.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

This and DD are great dungeons to teach people to stop acting like idiots on runs.In all honestly they should be manditory and not optional like the currently are.

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They are mandatory if you want to reach the max rank with your grand company. There's a quest to complete DD for one of the lieutenant ranks, and a quest to complete AV for another.

I actually really like DD, ran it quite a few times with my squadron back in the day for easy exp, but AV is just annoying and can get quite frustrating if you've got a bad group. I agree with most of what the OP wrote. I think it's not very intuitive, which can cause some confusion and hold ups. Once you know what you're doing, it's not particularly hard. Just irritating.

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Originally Posted by Felime

Tanks struggle to pull without grabbing too many extras while backtracking to pick up accidental enemies.

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Sorry, but huh?! They wouldn't struggle if they used their tools. They have 15 yalm attack for a reason. Use it and you won't get more than one group.

Also, it's a good place to learn situational awareness. The only reason why this dungeons first room is so bad is because players never gave a darn about where they stand. "I'll pull two or three more mobs? Who cares, the tanks will pick them up.".

It's a level 49 dungeon. Everyone can make a mistake, but no run should die a second time on it. It's easy to avoid death doing basic, fundamental things that you are taught in the first minutes of just about any action game in existence. Why people here are excused from learning it?!

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Originally Posted by Felime

The bosses in Aurum Vale abruptly introduce three new mechanics: Stacking damage over time, no telegraphs and ignoring enmity.

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Ignoring enmity is nothing new by the time Aurum Vale hits. It's as early as Copperbell Mines on the last boss where he ignores the tank to wham the wall, same with the spawns.

In a party-wide context it's as early as Halatali, with the last boss throwing the fireballs at random party members during his immunity phase if I remember correctly. It's also present in Haukke Manor and Brayflox Longstop among many others.

As for no telegraphs...sorry. Though its swings and swipes may cause a problem (the swing in particular is huge and can catch a melee even if one runs away as fast as possible due to PING issues)...but glower and eye of beholder are really basic. Why would anyone fall for glower past the first time? If a boss, any boss, looks at you at any time, you run. It's simple. The only question is whether to run to the back/front (eye of beholder) or to the side (glower), but again...that's just looking at the skills once. He does have literally four skills. Out of those skills only two have a chance of hitting you generally. Swing and glower for melee, eye of beholder and glower if ranged and swing and swipe if tank. If you fall for any other skill past the first time you see them then you are doing something fundamental horribly wrong. And if you don't, then there are only two skills you need to remember. Cannot be easier than that.

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Originally Posted by Felime

Stacking DoT is especially insidious because it is not obvious, drains the healer's MP trying to keep oblivious members alive and kills assisting pets.

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This is the fault of the game for not making Esuna significant. I don't know how a stacking debuff may not be "not obvious". It's a debuff, it's got a number by it and people keep getting more and more damage without being attacked. That's as obvious as it gets. What is a bit less obvious is how to deal with it, but that's already common knowledge.


Let's not assume people that play the game have zero learning ability, yes? The majority of problem in this dungeon comes from people having overblown ego and dropping the fault on others instead of admitting to screwing stuff up and adapting. There's nothing fundamentally hard in this dungeon. Just the fact that making mistakes affect the entire party more often than not. THAT'S something really new.

PS: The first room can be "cheesed" if the tank and healer know what they are doing. Just go hugging the left wall all the way to the boss room (the healer needs to be right on the tanks tails) and behind the corner of it. That will pull the ranged mobs since they have line of sight just like players do. And voila. You have pulled two or three groups of mobs that can easily be tanked and killed by AoE in one go and you're already at the boss room. But have the healer lag behind and the tank is dead due to THEM losing the line of sight.

AV is relatively easy. You can stun Coin Counter before he does the 2 handed one shot.

Coincounter doesn't really "ignore" enmity. He dumps the entire hate list. It's an ability called "Animal Instinct," his eye glows red when he uses it. There is also an on screen message when he does it. "Coincounter takes a moment to reconsider..." If a tank is paying attention (even if they are a new tank, if they are watching the enmity list they will see it completely reset when it is used) they can grab it back before it goes after someone else with Provoke and another action or simply hate combo.

Glower just targets someone else and is less obvious but it's really the same as any other targeted ground aoe circle.

He can actually be stunned, so you can mitigate 100 tonze or any other problematic skill that people can't dodge for whatever reason 2-3 times by just stunning him before diminishing returns kicks in.

Eye of the Beholder (In)
100 tonze Swing (Out)

Same as Chimera in Cutters' Cry who also has no telegraphs for similar abilities.
Dragon's Voice (In)
Ram's Voice (Out)

You can even outrange eye/dragon's by being really far away but it's intended to be a donut. I want to say 100 tonze is larger than Ram's, but the same principle applies.

Aurum Vale isn't too bad for the most part, it's just that the first room is awful in comparison to the rest of it, I blame the frogs specifically as their pulling move can be quite obnoxious even at the best of times.

I was with you on some points until you said this:

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Originally Posted by Felime

• Mechanics
...the difficulty suddenly spikes with no warning. The bosses in Aurum Vale abruptly introduce three new mechanics: Stacking damage over time, no telegraphs and ignoring enmity.

Stacking DoT is especially insidious because it is not obvious, drains the healer's MP trying to keep oblivious members alive and kills assisting pets. Even seasoned players can forget and end up with extra damage.

No telegraphs is a hard departure from everything the game teaches new players. Avoiding telegraphs is so fundamental it is taught in the Hall of Novices; changing that mechanic should have been a dungeon all by itself. But what makes it so over the top is the penalty for error: A single Glower nearly kills non-tanks and the angle of attack is wider than belt sizes at a buffet.

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There are 2 mandatory story dungeons that already have the specified qualities.

For stacking dots, the last boss of Brayflox's Longstop poison can stack up to 4 levels. It only occurs when people get hit by too much aoes and/or the fight drags too long to where the healer doesn't have enough MP to esuna the poison off.

For the telegraphs, the first boss of Stone Vigil has an attack called "Swinge". It has no aoe indicator either. It must be avoided by not being in front of the boss.

was just thinking today how much I loved Aurum Vale and Cutter's Cry (particularly speed runs) in 1.0. Oh well.

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Originally Posted by RokkuEkkusu

For stacking dots, the last boss of Brayflox's Longstop poison can stack up to 4 levels. It only occurs when people get hit by too much aoes and/or the fight drags too long to where the healer doesn't have enough MP to esuna the poison off.

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I remember this boss being annoying to heal through as a Sch in ARR, only way to get rid of the stacking poison was with selene, since Sch didn't learn Leaches (esuna) till lvl 40.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

Coincounter doesn't really "ignore" enmity. He dumps the entire hate list. It's an ability called "Animal Instinct," his eye glows red when he uses it. There is also an on screen message when he does it. "Coincounter takes a moment to reconsider..." If a tank is paying attention (even if they are a new tank, if they are watching the enmity list they will see it completely reset when it is used) they can grab it back before it goes after someone else with Provoke and another action or simply hate combo.

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Oh, is that what that message means? I thought he just did it before using one of his eye-beam attacks.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

Eye of the Beholder (In)
100 tonze Swing (Out)

Same as Chimera in Cutters' Cry who also has no telegraphs for similar abilities.
Dragon's Voice (In)
Ram's Voice (Out)

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The chimera doesn't display floor AoE marks, but it has the "[creature]'s eyes glow [colour]" messages on-screen every time it happens. So it's not really comparable for learning how to respond.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The chimera doesn't display floor AoE marks, but it has the "[creature]'s eyes glow [colour]" messages on-screen every time it happens. So it's not really comparable for learning how to respond.

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They both have cast bars and if you stay in the in between range there is more than enough time to react.

Most players want the path of the least resistance. AV is not a dungeon that lies on that path. Anyone who bails at the start of this instance instantly lumps themselves in this category of players.

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Originally Posted by Brynne

They are mandatory if you want to reach the max rank with your grand company. There's a quest to complete DD for one of the lieutenant ranks, and a quest to complete AV for another.

I actually really like DD, ran it quite a few times with my squadron back in the day for easy exp, but AV is just annoying and can get quite frustrating if you've got a bad group. I agree with most of what the OP wrote. I think it's not very intuitive, which can cause some confusion and hold ups. Once you know what you're doing, it's not particularly hard. Just irritating.

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So yes like i have stated they are not mandatory.You can complete story without them.A lot of newer players dont bother trying to max things like Grand company because they have so much content to get through to get to level 70.

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Originally Posted by Zephera

Aurum Vale isn't too bad for the most part, it's just that the first room is awful in comparison to the rest of it, I blame the frogs specifically as their pulling move can be quite obnoxious even at the best of times.

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Best ive seen so far was the healer standing at the edge of the boss room.Frog pulled him out of room just as the room locked.This was before you could auto teleport inside boss room after lock.
It was hillarious.

Also about the eye boss.If you're ranged there you can attack corner at the back of the room to the left and hide behind the rock if he targets you.You wont be in line of sight so his focus ranged attacks cant hit you.Most reason tanks die is because even though there is a cast bar that shows for the 360 swing they dont bother moving.Its the mentality of if there's no red aoe so i dont need to move.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Also about the eye boss.If you're ranged there you can attack corner at the back of the room to the left and hide behind the rock if he targets you.You wont be in line of sight so his focus ranged attacks cant hit you.Most reason tanks die is because even though there is a cast bar that shows for the 360 swing they dont bother moving.Its the mentality of if there's no red aoe so i dont need to move.

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And that's some deeper mechanics that the game has not teached properly, yet implements soon after the next difficulty step, thus, making the playerbase "what it is" instead of what i could be.

For example, the lack of more of this dungeon design shows why bosses like Cidolfus are so harsh on the first days, for many of us, harsher than they should be. One or two tries should be enough, but many many people struggle tries on end.
The game simply has not teach them to think outside a rule that reinforces so much, so so so so much, like with 60 different tutorials through class quests, novice network, the basic tutorials, almost every dungeon and overworld enemy displays it. It's a rule so fundamental, that when inverted suddenly, people get's staggered instead of being more prepared or more easily acquire or a adapt to situations, the battle design has been for a while moving onto a more reactive dynamic system than merely a "patterned dance", we know mechanics are coming, but in many fights that order or the patterns have been going blurry... So has the fundamental principle that enemies telegraphs their attacks through the orange indicator - When an enemy doesn't use it, well, it's way too rougher than it should.

And on the contrary, at harder level difficulties, telegraphs should be most inverted/disappeared, that's the direction in a way.
Well, dungeons and 8/24 normal raids are too steep in many cases for most players, the only gap it could be filled is if the game throws more curveballs at you with difficulty, just a bit.

This even benefits the overall gaming experience, i honestly think one of the reasons why zenos is so liked by many characters (his trial during launch was kinda steep), and in general many of the really liked characters of this game at some point have been truly difficult content, the difficulty itself gives them some extra. After all, this is a video game before it is a story or a "relaxed experience"

I would legit, put a fight like the level of mustadio/agrias at least in the level 75 dungeon, and the last trial of the expansion should be like Cidoulfus. Honestly Orbonne has a very nice difficulty curve. At the end though, just a bit more. A bit more.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Oh, is that what that message means? I thought he just did it before using one of his eye-beam attacks.





The chimera doesn't display floor AoE marks, but it has the "[creature]'s eyes glow [colour]" messages on-screen every time it happens. So it's not really comparable for learning how to respond.

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Having those messages is really not helpful later on if you only rely/learn by the messages instead of reacting to the actual cast (like I did). All other Chimeras in the game (like the ones in the Canals) are using the cast without this message. They should remove this crutch.

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Originally Posted by Alexandre_Noireau

And that's some deeper mechanics that the game has not teached properly, yet implements soon after the next difficulty step, thus, making the playerbase "what it is" instead of what i could be.

For example, the lack of more of this dungeon design shows why bosses like Cidolfus are so harsh on the first days, for many of us, harsher than they should be. One or two tries should be enough, but many many people struggle tries on end.
The game simply has not teach them to think outside a rule that reinforces so much, so so so so much,

And on the contrary, at harder level difficulties, telegraphs should be most inverted/disappeared, that's the direction in a way.
Well, dungeons and 8/24 normal raids are too steep in many cases for most players, the only gap it could be filled is if the game throws more curveballs at you with difficulty, just a bit.

This even benefits the overall gaming experience, i honestly think one of the reasons why zenos is so liked by many characters (his trial during launch was kinda steep), and in general many of the really liked characters of this game at some point have been truly difficult content, the difficulty itself gives them some extra. After all, this is a video game before it is a story or a "relaxed experience"

I would legit, put a fight like the level of mustadio/agrias at least in the level 75 dungeon, and the last trial of the expansion should be like Cidoulfus. Honestly Orbonne has a very nice difficulty curve. At the end though, just a bit more. A bit more.

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The difficulty progression is actually there.The issue is that level syncing and gigantic maximum ilvl allowances ruin it.
Look at the CT raids for example.People used to struggle on every boss in those until they learned the mechanics.Now they are oversynced even in duty finder where they entered meaning they dont have to do a lot of mechanics.
Heavensward dungeons.People struggled a lot more on those dungeons until they got things right.Now its same thing.They enter oversynced.
You can even do turn 9 in coil now and use scholar shield to ignore mechanics if you run it unsynced.
The reason people are struggling now in the new 24 man raid and new 8 man raid is because the game has created a meta of focusing on max dps because it's more important to ignore mechanics than learn them apaprently.

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

Im actually longing for that <3

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Same. WTB Aurm Vale Hard Mode.

i will take Aurum vale over The Aetherochemical Research Facility any day.

I wouldn't say I have good memories, Most of my memories can be summed up in the word "meh", as others have said its only really bad if you're grouped with people that don't like to pay attention. It feels more or less like a boring experience otherwise. My only true bad memories of the place stem during the 1.0 era and AF collecting parties, its pretty much in the same boat as DD for me in that area.

The only thing that does trigger my inner "dfldnkfkndklfnmfkd;lfm...no...NO!! I DON'T WANNA DO THIS!!!" in the ARR version is just how....well....the zone looks like visual vomit. Stone and puke green everywhere. I can work through that and suffer as long as the aforementioned people are paying attention thing is there. Not paying attention mixed with a zone that's very hard on the eyes to look at. That's a leave and eat the penalty for me.

I always hear the hate for AV, but it's actually one of my favorite dungeons because it's not just a faceroll / pull to the end and spam AoE type of dungeon akin to just about everything else these days.

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

Im actually longing for that <3

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Since it's a 1.0 dungeon, apparently we will never see a hard mode unfortunately. I'd love one though, even if it would be built from scratch.

One of my favorite memories of this game was from this dungeon. We ended up with a new tank and I made sure to give him step by step instructions for each part of the dungeon, which he executed perfectly. I hoped that made a positive first impression of the dungeon for the new tank.

On the flip side, I've also had one of my worst experience with the dungeon, and it wasn't because of of the dungeon itself. I was a newbie tank myself and being pushed to grab more in the dungeon. When I didn't, said I wasn't comfortable getting more, he grabbed them himself. I then had to chase down mobs, which ended up killing the healer. His friend asked me why I let him die. I ended up bailing on the last boss because I was tired of the healer pulling mobs. Unlucky for them, they were farming light and it was 20 minutes until maintenance. Unlucky for me they were on my server and followed me home.

I haven't read the whole thread, but honestly AV is one of my favorite dungeons.

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Does anyone have good memories of this place

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I do, it s one of the few dungeons in which tanking isn't brain dead easy and where you actually need to know how to pull.

I d take any day more the aurum vale rather than the countless corridors filled with trashs mobs we have as dungeons since heavensward.

I've tanked this a few times and never found it particularly frustrating or difficult. I'm not boasting, either, because I am an unskilled player in general and a cruddy tank in particular.

Completing this thing with my Squadron on the other hand...

AV is a masterpiece of how a duty must be.
You need pay attention to patrols, don't stay in the bad, look at how boss moves, and actually do some mechanics. Wish all duties being like that, not faceroll ignore-o-mechanics speedruns.

I usually end up doing this as healer and can make up for a lot of slack as a result. But if the tank sucks it's a nightmare and overall it takes so long to complete that eating the 30mn penalty doesn't sound like a bad trade-off, although I've never done it myself.

With that said AV is how dungeons really should be. We're just so use to facerolling mobs that we forget it can be fun to cc and pay attention.

My good memories of AV is in 1.0 when I got to collect the pot of Gil our FC put up after playing a 'pay gil as punishment for messing up' game while speed running AV and CC. (Which for those of you who were not here: Was actually a nice challenge and a vastly different set of dungeons.)

This dungeon is no harder then almost every other dungeon. Don't step in the water. Eat the fruit at 3 stacks. Stay in the healers range. Run out at Swing. That's pretty much it, you can do it!

Aurum Vale is just not fun is why it's loathed. Sure at this point anyone can win, but you enter with barely any moves and deal with a bunch of grievances that just slow the game down a lot. If this game wasn't so dungeon spamtastic it wouldn't matter so much, but you're pretty much guaranteed to play this dungeon at least 20 times per year if you consistently play and thus it sucks.

I've done this dungeon as a healer multiple times and now twice as a tank.

My first runs were miserable, for sure. As we had the usual brainless zoom-tanks and nobody explained jack to the sprout healer trying to keep people standing.

But now... I like it. First room reminds me of the strategic pulling I used to have to do in old-school EQ. Hell, if everbody wasn't so damn AE happy we could just CC the adds with sleep and focus stuff down old-school style. But I guess that's too hard.

More like this please. Stuff with this kind of difficulty is perfectly acceptable and welcome when it's off the MSQ.

Don't like the color pallet though. It's very sickly.

Aurum Vale is not difficult, so long as you have a grasp of how aggro works, and know what to pull in what order. The fact that you can get through all the prior dungeons WITHOUT knowing these things is the problem, not Aurum Vale.

Bottom line is, folks have bad memories of this because it was the first time the game actually punished the players for blundering through willy-nilly.

Perhaps it's because I play tank, and because I DO know how to handle the dungeon, that my experiences in AV have been almost uniformly pleasant. I suppose a healer or DPS who regularly wind up with newbie tanks might have a bit less patience for the place.

Aurum Vale has never been 'hard'. Its just that most of the people I meet through gaming have either the attention span of a common house fly or its patience(or both..). We live in a world where people cant be bothered to put in any effort beyond running in and crying when things don't "just work."(too much hand holding in modern games) The design is fine. I'd say the real issue is the community. I mean no offense, but people in this community really do seem to just want to be carried everywhere. Of course not all of it is like this. I think it would be better if there were more rewards for good play. If they can get the clears either way,(so long as they dont get kicked) why should they take the time to figure an instance out, learn mechanics or put time into an effective rotation? They get the same thing either way. We really do need some way to encourage people. (and maybe even a way to help them when encouragement isnt enough and they just cant figure it out)