Unexplored Locations (6.1 to 7.0 Thread) *Spoilers throughout 6.0 as well"

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I was under the impression that the same Famitsu interview with Yoshi-p and Matsuno from September 2021 also mentioned that when we did go to Dalmasca after said time gap, Dalmasca would be liberated.

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Exactly. The IVth is defeated in the Field Notes-epilogue of Bozja, which means possible future Dalmasca content would need to be tied to Bozja, and the type of content Yoshi-P mentioned fits with that more than an expansion since it’s easier to ask players to complete Bozja to access a side story than the main story.

The IVth legion exists independently to the status of the Garlean Empire as a whole since they deserted from it before the Save the Queen starts. The IVth then went on to control Dalmasca, Bozja, and Nagxia with Valnain as its capital city. So you can’t have any future content in Dalmasca, Bozja, or Nagxia, whether it’s an expansion or a side story, without first completing Save the Queen since that entire region is tied directly to the fate of the IVth, which is dealt with in that storyline.

While probably not as bad as doing Shadowbringers without doing Crystal Tower, which is required now anyway, it would be super awkward to have a whole main storyline where you go to liberated Dalmasca without actually doing the questline that destroys most of the IVth legion and leads to the liberation of Dalmasca. You can’t just have “nods” to your completion of the quests when Valnain and the rest of the country is only free (maybe) of its imperial overlord Gabranth only because of Save the Queen and nothing to do with the Garleans in Endwalker.


Dalmasca is in Othard, but Ilsabard is a big place and we can still go there without Dalmasca and a possible post-liberation side story in Dalmasca if you completed Bozja would make sense if we did as well and hopefully lead to SE streamlining requirements for the 3 instances in it that give people trouble.

I don't think that this matters as much as you think it does. Most of the raid series are incredibly important to the story to date, but they're still optional. The assumption is that someone at some point has gone off and dealt with Bahamut, Alexander, and the rest of them to address their potentially world ending threats. And if you go back and do those quests yourself, you discover that person was actually you. Who would have thought.

We weren't directly involved with Dalmasca's liberation. It happened offscreen. A company of heroes were responsible for putting a stop to the IVth. It doesn't really matter narratively whether you're actually the Hero of Zadnor and were part of them or not. You might be, you might not be. But Southern Ilsabard's 'liberation' is just backdrop at the end of the day. If you're going to introduce a threat to the region it's not just going to be simply a case of 'defeat the Empire', because we've done that already. It's going to be something new, built in the setting of these lore references that have already been planted.

A more valid obstacle is the fact that they'd probably need to have the storyboard for next expansion's trailer done around now, and any forays to the area are probably going to require at least some prior consultation with Matsuno. So it's really a question of whether they have time to could coordinate such a thing now or whether it gets shelved for later. But it's definitely feasible.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Corvos was never involved with any of Matsuno's works, and those three regions only account for an extremely small portion of Ilsabard's landmass.

Considering that the continent was described as being in "varying degrees of chaos" by Thancred I'd like to think a problem is going arise there sooner then later.

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Out of every single place ever described in this game, Corvos is the one place I'm genuinely surprised we haven't gone to. They were slathering on so many references to it being very directly relevant and having very present-day problems in Endwalker that I was sure they just HAD to be relevant soon. But nope, not a peep from them at all in the entire postgame.

And the weird part is that unlike a lot of the other places we haven't been, I'm actually not excited because of that. Every reason to care about Corvos was only really interesting when the iron was hot; the longer it takes for us to go there the less interesting its hooks are, because ti will just feel like reheating Endwalker leftovers.

I was honestly feeling like they were setting up for the relic-related questing to be over in Corvos, but everything over there seems to have conveniently resolved itself for the time being with the second legion being wiped out by the Final Days, the beasts eliminated by the Eorzean Alliance and others, and the Corvosi rebels having "reclaimed" the land from the Garleans.

All this talk about instability in the wake of the Final Days/Zodiark's destruction and a "great change" coming to Etheriys suggests something is going to blow up eventually, so I suppose only time will tell why we go there, since they did mention they have "plans" for it.

If we end up having to do Shard hopping again, if I were them, I'd make Corvos incredibly important for it. Perhaps it being "Ground Zero" for where the Sundering happened so long ago, meaning the Source and Shards all have their strongest link there. It makes the region important, and makes keeping it safe moreso (and explains why Emet-Selch made it so important for the Garlean Empire to take and hold).

Corvos is likely relatively rich in aether, much like Eorzea, which translates into fertile land (hence 'Locus Amoenus'). Hard to say if there's any specific significance to this in terms of shard hopping.

I think that the Crystal Tower is going to remain the main reference point for shard travel for now, though, given that it's already been used that way before. I don't think that the tower itself is the critically important part, so much as the nearby Silvertear Lake. Much like its counterpart on the First, it's a popular spot for powerful sleeping entities. That's coupled with the fact that the Twelve's Omphalos sits in the middle of it, and there's a certain amount of spiritual symbolism behind the 'navel' as the center of things. If I had to guess a point where all the shards are connected to each other and to the lifestream (the ouroboros, if you will), that would probably be it.

I suppose another question worth asking is 'Where exactly was Allag's capital situated?' The Crystal Tower was just a conduit, so it would have just been built wherever there was a suitable power supply, hence its location by Silvertear. But the tower itself was only created in the midst of the war with Meracydia, so the capital's location wouldn't have been picked with this in mind. The underlying backstory that we're slowly uncovering here is Allag vs. Meracydia, so part of this story does have to come from the Three Great Continents. But where?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I suppose another question worth asking is 'Where exactly was Allag's capital situated?' The Crystal Tower was just a conduit, so it would have just been built wherever there was a suitable power supply, hence its location by Silvertear. But the tower itself was only created in the midst of the war with Meracydia, so the capital's location wouldn't have been picked with this in mind. The underlying backstory that we're slowly uncovering here is Allag vs. Meracydia, so part of this story does have to come from the Three Great Continents. But where?

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I can't possibly imagine that the Crystal Tower wasn't close to the Allagan capital, if not directly in it; by the end it was also acting as something of an imperial palace, given that throne room at the top. And remember that it was definitely more than 'just' a conduit and battery for aether; while that might've been its purpose for being built, it was definitely more by the end.

Especially considering the only real Allagan facilities we know of that weren't related to Azys Lla or left by Dalamud are either there or Seal Rock. (And like, one ruin in Coerthas that we still don't really get.) Surely if their capital city was anywhere, then both real-world logic and narrative satisfaction says that it should be somewhere that their ruins have already been found, right?

Intuitively, what you're saying seems like it should be right. But we haven't seen a definitive citation about the capital's location itself.

From a storywriting perspective, it seems like Mor Dhona is the easiest answer, and upcoming lore from Orthos may well support that point. It may also be that after the Crystal Tower was built, it ended up being Allag's primary center of operation, and they simply built a new capital around it. But the tower itself was only built after Allag waged war on Meracydia, which was well after they conquered the Three Great Continents. So the original 'country' of Allag itself prior to its widespread expansion could in theory be anywhere on the landmass, including places that we haven't visited yet. In fact, it's entirely possible that a currently existing city could well have been built on the ruins of the former capitol, because that's how these things often pan out.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

But the tower itself was only built after Allag waged war on Meracydia, which was well after they conquered the Three Great Continents. So the original 'country' of Allag itself prior to its widespread expansion could in theory be anywhere on the landmass, including places that we haven't visited yet.

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The Crystal Tower was created many centuries before the war on Meracydia, not after it. Xande was only revived because of the energy from the Crystal Tower and it was only after his resurrection that the war in Meracydia happened.

It was also originally made to collect energy from the sun, not the ambient aether of the land. And it was made specifically to power “homes and manufactories”, which would put the Allag capital in Silvertear/Mor Dhona. That the first emperor Xande’s original tomb was located in Silvertear seals the deal. The Allagan Empire is also described as being from Eorzea and having conquered Ilsabard and Othard later.


Edit: I think the part where you might have gotten that confused is that Dalamud itself came after the Meracydian campaign. Dalamud was meant to augment the Crystal Tower's already existing solar collecting abilities since an orbital solar collector with Bahamut sitting in it can get more power for the tower in space and beam it down, which ended the Allagan Empire.

The bit about collecting energy from the sun was an inference made by the Sons of Saint Coinach as per the EE. I'm not really sure how relevant it still is given what we know about aether crystals. Do you have citations for the rest?

Ahh... let me guess, are you referencing 1.x material?