Why Aurum Vale is Loathed

I don't know if it just because I ran it alot for leveling but I once you know the mechanics it's not hard. I would often play it as sch to get in fast and level up acn fast for smn. The most difficult part was killing those pods before they "hatched" and players knowing just how to remove the stacking dot at the right moment.

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Originally Posted by Felime

Does anyone have good memories of this place?

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The memes, my friend, the memes.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cvx2xHcXgAAIRNU.jpg
When I entered the dungeon for the very first time, I didn't understand why the rest of my party was making a such a fuss, but by the time we reached the first boss, ohohohohoho, I knew. After wiping several times and replacing a member, the rest of the run wasn't much better. From then on I dreaded whenever it reared its ugly head in roulettes, even contemplated abandoning and just taking the penalty (though I never did). But eventually - perhaps due to the fact that runs typically became smoother as time went on - I began to see Aurum Vale as something of an old friend. An old friend I loved to hate. I can't say it's as terrible as I once thought it to be, especially if everyone in the party knows what they're doing. If anything, I consider it to be a rite of passage. I survived the Aurum Vale. Again. And again. And again. And again...

Most likely it's the classic case of "When it's good, it's fine, but when it's bad, it's really bad." And the "really bad" tends to stick out in memories more than anything else.

Basically, confirmation bias. Everyone knows it's not really as bad as everyone makes it out to be. But everyone has also had one of those runs where it most certainly all went wrong, and it just stands out like a thorn.

This made me laugh a little bit, because when I initially went into Aurum Vale I hated it too! But to be honest it didn't actually have to do with the reasons mentioned so much. For me, the biggest issue was impatient and intolerant fellow players who didn't explain anything while lashing out. It's a newbie trap level for sure, there's a lot of stuff there that can totally throw off someone unaware of what to expect. But that can be said for a few other runs. If someone going in knows they have a new person, knows it can be tricky, and can offer a little direction? That makes a huge difference. More than that though, maybe I'm odd for it but when wipes happen my reaction isn't generally to rage so much as go okay, gotta change strategy, what can we do better next time?

It's a game. The challenge of figuring stuff out and improving is part of the fun for me. If someone's being repeatedly dumb and ignoring advice or otherwise being inconsiderate that's a pain yeah, but most cases I've found people just don't know. If party members are being snotty though, even if the run is going fine or can be salvaged... that kills the mood.

When I had a bad time on Aurum Vale, I tried again remembering anything I'd learned previously. It became a point of pride to get good at it. The dungeon doesn't bother me now. Since I learned how to go through I just try to help out new players when that comes up.

My personal dislike comes from differing playstyles. When I do a dungeon, I want to get it done quickly, and Aurum Vale is already one of the longest dungeons there is.

So when I went in as a tank, I carefully pulled just enough to clear a path to the first boss, only the idiot DPS kept standing out in the middle of the area and getting more aggro. But then we got to the boss room and they started running out of the boss arena to pull more mobs. When asked to stop, they responded that they wanted to fight every mob for the EXP and would not quit. If we continued pulling every single enemy in the dungeon, it would have doubled the completion time, so I left and never bothered with Leveling Roulette again. I understand why those guys wanted to kill every mob, but I'm sure as hell not going to waste my time on that crap.

It's one of my favorite dungeons as well, personally I hate Dzemael, so many pulls that are there just to annoy the tanks with the ranged mobs sprinkled in, AV is way better designed in that regard. I also love the unique design of it, definitely way more visually interesting than any other of the 2.0 dungeons, later on I'd add Pharos Sirius and the Lost City of Amdapor as the highlights of ARR in terms of dungeons. The music is also fantastic in AV, if it actually played for more than 30 seconds, but that's just the terrible sound design in the 2.0 dungeons in general, 30 seconds of the dungeon music and the rest is just the generic dungeon battle music or silence.

I've had runs with several wipes (though sometimes I had the pleasure of being able to survive and hold off the enemies until the party returned), but the only bad memories I ever had in AV is having to wait at the start as sometimes people would come and go. The first time I queued for AV, I ended up having to leave myself as a party of 4 couldn't be achieved. Needless to say, I was very annoyed as I had to endure some DPS queue time just to get in.

I actually like the design in Aurum Vale. The first floor is both open and dangerous, I like it. It gets a bit more linear afterwards. I actually miss the "more open" feel that ARR dungeons had (Brayflox's swamp, Aurum Vale, the cliff part in Dzemael). Now dungeons are a straight line to the final boss, rinse and repeat.

It's just a "tougher" dungeon after being basically dragged by the hand on the previous ones, just like The Vault and Bardam / Doma's Castle will make you understand gear is important and mechanics / strategy too. Most of the time it's harder on the healers / tanks.

All honesty it's a meh dungeon the only real standout thing is the 1st room where you could be flung around and aggro more than intended after that it is not a bad dungeon.
Will say my 1st time ever going into AV i had just started the game back in 2.2 and i overleveled msq because i wanted max gc rank so i did fates (back then i found them fun XD) so before i entered Brayflox Longstop i had entered AV as a lv49 Smn which ofc meant no garuda-egi i was asked to bring it out but told them sorry i didn't have it rather than quit the people i was with had a laugh with me how i did what i did and explained mechanics to me it is thanks to that group i have stuck with ffxiv so long oh and i decided to level pld after that to finish msq XD

I maintain a certain fondness for the instance.

Aurum Vale is the first instance where Bards really learn what Quick Nock is supposed to do. Tanks start to learn that pulling an entire room is not always the best strategy. It is required for Grand Company advancement to Second Lieutenant. It used to be the first place a Dragoon could test out their AoE jump move (alas, since removed).

Good times ...