Rasen Kaikyo

Was Rasen Kaikyo misplaced in the world map? In the map it's placed east of Kugane, bordering Bukyo, whereas Ruby Tide is the part of the Ruby Sea that borders Othard, yet in game we have Rasen Kaikyo to the west of Kugane bordering Othard. What makes even less sense is that there's a job quest that references Ruby Tide being the one bordering Othard. Or am I misunderstanding something?

Some friends and I have been trying to figure out the world map for a while now; a lot of it is ... strange.

How can Rasen Kaikyo be east of Kugane but also part of the Ruby Tide Sea, which itself is west of Kugane? We haven't figured it out, yet. My first guess was that SE was originally taking us to Rasen but then changed it to the Ruby and it just wasn't a perfectly clean transition. Then I thought maybe the labels were merely positioned awkwardly; that the Ruby Tide Sea was only the strait between Hingashi and Othard while the Rasen Kaikyo was the sea between the Ruby Tide and the Glass Ocean. Except Kaikyo itself means strait. Maybe the Ruby Tide and Rasen Kaikyo are two straits and the Ruby Sea doesn't have a proper map label...? I have no idea.

And that's just the beginning of the weirdness, though I theorize that most of it is simply caused by SE not having to split the regions into multiple zones in 4.0 yet utilizing the same map mechanics as 2.0, so the entire map structure got shifted a tier. Now "Othard" is on the region level, and "Yanxia" is on the zone level despite Yanxia being a region of the continent of Othard.

Then Hingashi is the on the same level as Othard, which I would understand (because Aldenard and Vylbrand are on the same map tier) if it weren't for the fact that Koshu is the same font/size as Othard, on the "great landmass" tier (which are using the region map pins now) and if you open the Hingashi map it's labeled Koshu but contains the map of Shishu, Kugane, and Shirogane. But you can't lower Koshu a tier and put Hingashi there because Shishu's map label is on the same tier as just Daitenzan, a region of Koshu.

Even if you concede that the map has been shifted a tier, that regions are acting as continents, areas as regions, and that zones and regions are now equivalent, it's still hard to pin down the hierarchy as if it were an atlas (land mass, region, area, contrived cultural realms).

I'm having a lot of trouble with it, lol.

Hingashi is the nation/archipelago, Koshu is just that island.

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

Hingashi is the nation/archipelago, Koshu is just that island.

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Correct. The uniting of the islands is a man-made convention, much like Aldenard and Vylbrand and the islands around them are united into the cultural realm of Eorzea. I was just pointing out that it feels odd to look at the map and see an atlas-style convention (Koshu as a landmass, Shishu as an island of the landmass of Koshu, Daitenzan as a region of Koshu on the same level as Shishu, and Hingashi unmentioned) while the map links are conventional (Hingashi, pinned to Shishu, which opens a map labeled Koshu).

For example, imagine the wiki pages for the atlas. You can't follow the DB structure, 4.0 is offset a tier of 2.0. Also, Hingashi is a cultural term. So you would need people to understand that when looking at the atlas for Kugane, the hierarchy would start at (not Shishu, not Hingashi, but) Koshu - a landmass with the subordinate island Shishu upon which is the city of Kugane.

I'm not sure if it's ever been presented that way; that while Hingashi is a nation, geologists would see Koshu on the Vylbrand level and Shishu on the La Noscea level. We'll just have to adapt! :p

I'll point out that Susano has an attack named Rasen Kaikyo, the whirlpools that he creates under the party using the foot or so of seawater covering his arena. Also, Rasen Kaikyo is the name of a region in the Ruby Sea zone (above turtle town), and apparently it translates to "Whirling Strait", so...it probably shouldn't have been listed to the east of Kugane, since that body of water isn't a strait, and I guess it's prone to whirlpools? Just in case this is somehow helpful.