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

Isle of Haam removed from the list due to it now appearing in 6.4

Removed a few other things too mainly to do with 1.0, I think those areas are gone for good.

Edit -

The Topic is more cleaned up now, majorly updated.

You all are going to call me crazy for saying this, but I think we're actually going to see the homeland of the lalafells soon since it could be on the way to Meracydia.

Also judging by the last remaining named areas of the planet, we maybe looking at 2 or 3 more expansions? Unless we suddenly visit the remaining reflections.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

You all are going to call me crazy for saying this, but I think we're actually going to see the homeland of the lalafells soon since it could be on the way to Meracydia.

Also judging by the last remaining named areas of the planet, we maybe looking at 2 or 3 more expansions? Unless we suddenly visit the remaining reflections.

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Keep in mind that the New World is essentially North and South America combined. Meaning if it took this long to explore the stuff we have now (which still isn't fully explored), The New World alone will last us another 4+ expansions.

I like to mention if there is like little bits of land lore I missed let me know, and I'll add onto it.

I expect 7.0 to be about rejoining the remaining shards safely so the new zones will be various shards and maybe another zone in the first. 8.0 is the Meracydia expansion.

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Originally Posted by Yuella

I expect 7.0 to be about rejoining the remaining shards safely so the new zones will be various shards and maybe another zone in the first. 8.0 is the Meracydia expansion.

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Reducing entire shards -- whole worlds as big as the Source -- to a single zone each would be an absolute waste of their potential.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Reducing entire shards -- whole worlds as big as the Source -- to a single zone each would be an absolute waste of their potential.

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Not to mention making basically no sense whatsoever as a story beat. Like, why would the crew want Rejoinings enough to go on an express trip to do six of 'em in a fortnight? The only people who were going for it were the Ascians in a goal of bringing back the world they lost, but not only are the Ascians all dead and Amaurot can't come back anyway, but even trying to do so would completely devalue everything that the entire game up until this point has gone for, because the point is fairly clear that even if their reasons were sympathetic, the Ascians were wrong to kill entire planets' worth of people, because those people should have the right to live their lives. Why would they refute the entire purpose of Shadowbringers and just have us mulch entire shards with no regard for the people in them?

...not to mention, the shard with by far the most story investment is the Thirteenth, which has had stories tracing as far back as 1.x patches, and the story right now is very clearly not going to end in a Rejoining of that one (in fact, one could argue it's all about stopping one.) In fact, they logically can't even rejoin the Thirteenth, because not only does that cut them off from ever using any voidsent again, but it also breaks Reaper, whose baseline concept requires the Thirteenth to exist as it always has. So if they're very clearly going in the opposite direction as this for the shard with the most story investment, why would they flip that entirely and introduce, like, the Eighth entirely so that we can literally obliterate it?

EDIT: Also, Y'shtola's got a whole thing with trying to figure out shard travel now, and has clearly reached a point of 'workable theory, gonna be really hard and take a long time to put into practice'. So... what does this theory suppose? That she's going to suddenly have an immediate breakthrough of something that's been framed as a long-term project, and then immediately turn her plan from exploration into 'let's consume all of these planets'? Or is she going to crack this mystery much later, only to learn that we already turned all possible destinations into aetheric slag to pour into the Source?

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Not to mention making basically no sense whatsoever as a story beat. Like, why would the crew want Rejoinings enough to go on an express trip to do six of 'em in a fortnight?

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Actually I didn't pick up on that wording, because "rejoin the shards and then go explore them" is a contradiction. Rejoined shards are physically gone. They don't get added to the Source's geography, and would make a huge mess of the world if they did.

If they're meaning "open up the path between shards and explore them", I stand by my previous statement. Reducing them to single zones would be a waste.

If they really mean rejoining... no. Just no. Rejoining is bad, we stopped the people seeking rejoinings, and I don't want the game to turn into "actually you have to do this thing we previously established is morally abhorrent".

I'll need to dig up a specific quote for this, but I got the impression from this most recent patch that not all shards are equally easy to access. We've seen a lot of our neighboring reflections, but not a whole lot else.

It's not difficult to find a reason to travel to another shard. All the reflections were identical at the time of the Sundering, but they've been exposed to different conditions over the past twelve thousand years. Perhaps the shard furthest from us was the least influenced by Calamities on the Source, and thus is geographically most similar to the World Unsundered. Even if your goal isn't to explore every last region across six or so worlds, you can play a game of Light World/Dark World with this to access otherwise inaccessible regions on the Source.

I do hope that some of these are actually full worlds, though, even if we don't ever physically get to explore all of it. I think reducing the First down to Norvrandt was a convenient shorthand, but I hope this doesn't become their fallback for all the others. Either way, I don't see us doing shard jumping or popping up in Meracydia next expansion. There's at least two other unexplored regions that we can hit up enroute, even if Meracydia is a long term goal.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

You all are going to call me crazy for saying this, but I think we're actually going to see the homeland of the lalafells soon since it could be on the way to Meracydia.

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I don't think that's a strange idea at all. My personal prediction is Southern Ilsabard, then South Sea Isles, then Meracydia (with perhaps some shard hopping enroute to get there).

Lalafell pirates? Blitzball? I don't see them passing this up.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I'll need to dig up a specific quote for this, but I got the impression from this most recent patch that not all shards are equally easy to access. We've seen a lot of our neighboring reflections, but not a whole lot else.

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No, you've got it right. Y'shtola theorizes that each shard is essentially in sort of a gravitational pull towards the Source, and that Hydaelyn leaned towards light to try to suppress that pull to make it harder for the Ascians to do Rejoinings. But the Thirteenth was so inundated with darkness that it had a counteracting effect on that light, leading to the planar fissures and voidgates; basically, the Thirteenth is more affected by the Source's 'gravity' than any other shard.

Inversely, this would've probably made the First the hardest shard to open a gate to, as even before the Flood it was aspected towards light. The future Ironworks had centuries' worth of time and effort focused on nailing that one specific jump, and only had to manage it once; who can say how much more trouble it made for them that it was that particular shard, or if they had to figure out a return trip? Chances are any solution Y'shtola comes up with will work for any of them, but that might in part be because her first target will be that hardest one to reach; if she can reach the First, she can reach any of them.

It does occur to me from Y'shtola's explanation that, if she's right (and she probably is), then theoretically 'natural rejoinings' might be a possibility; that without Hydaelyn's influence, eventually that gravity's going to pull shards so close that they collide in some way. But I don't honestly expect that to be a problem anytime soon, it feels more like that's a very-far-future problem if it is indeed one at all.