A return of the NullStone?

I suspect no.
It would be an insanely powerful tool, and Cait Sith might be able to teach somebody else how to use it, but they don't tend to recycle macgruffins.

Though if they state that the Shadows of Maich quests are required before progressing further in the MSQ, that will be a dead giveaway that they've descided to reuse it.

Any thoughts?

Personally I think they should make the major side stories mandatory if and when they fit the MSQ. Unikalhai and Cylva should be a major players right now, but instead they're completely ignored because optional sidequests.

(Not that I think everyone should be forced to do the ShB role quests, but locking such story behind them was weird in the first place.)

The Nullstone wouldn't serve much purpose since it doesn't just kill voidsent, it specifically sends them from the Source back to the Void. It would only help us if Golbez actually does manage to cross worlds.

On the topic of mandatory sidequests I don't think the Mhach raids really need to be relevant here, but it is extremely odd that we're doing this whole Void storyline without Cylva and Unukalhai. Which is why I think the restoring the Thirteenth stuff Y'shtola was talking about will be a sidequest itself, and require completing their side quests too. Both of them actually have new dialogue after you finish 6.2 saying to come back to them if you get any more information.

Doesn't the Nullstone actually dissipate the aether of the voidsent? Wasn't this what Diablos did with Scathach in the final Shadow of Mhach raid?

To my memory what the Nullstone did was nullify the contract between summoner and Voidsent, thereby returning them to the Void. Used to keep unruly Voidsent from getting too uppity. Wouldn't be too useful in a foray into the Void, and given our contract with Zero's mutually beneficial and she doesn't seem like the backstabbing type, I don't see why it would be needed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

Doesn't the Nullstone actually dissipate the aether of the voidsent? Wasn't this what Diablos did with Scathach in the final Shadow of Mhach raid?

---

Diabolos devours Scathach to become Diabolos Hollow, like how Ciriatto devoured Farfarello (though for very different purposes).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Personally I think they should make the major side stories mandatory if and when they fit the MSQ. Unikalhai and Cylva should be a major players right now, but instead they're completely ignored because optional sidequests.

(Not that I think everyone should be forced to do the ShB role quests, but locking such story behind them was weird in the first place.)

---

I think the thing there is that for the most part, they approach with the mindset that every time you can plausibly link something from a side-story to the MSQ is a bonus for the people who played both, rather than mandatory to understand and appreciate either. You don't need to play the Alexander raids to understand when they come up in Shadowbringers, it just helps if you do. The only exception was the Crystal Tower, and that was because after a point the MSQ literally did not function as a story without those events having happened.

If I'm completely honest, though, I suspect G'raha wasn't the actual reason for that so much as the decoy reason; they actually needed to make sure everyone knew Xande and Amon for Endwalker, and the World of Darkness for 6.x, but also needed to keep our guard down about those things becoming relevant because they were all surprises. So pin the requirement on G'raha, give everyone a cute boy to focus on, and then wait over a year before revealing the real reason for the required reading. So I think in terms of going 'they should make this raid canon', the question shouldn't just be about the specific related events, but also how many plot hooks that brings over; the Crystal Tower had a lot, while Mhach actually has remarkably few.

You're right that Cylva and Unukalhai are in a funny space, where they feel like they'd fit just fine being made MSQ-canon but their barrier is too high to ever make that even remotely plausible. (I'd not just point out Cylva's requirements being 'every role to 80', but also Unukalhai's being 'very strongly imply you need to do Extremes'.) I'd also point out that C&U's story can only really bring over C&U themselves, since unlike with the Crystal Tower there's not really a great wealth of worldbuilding that only exists there, it's all expanding on stuff already in the MSQ. However, I think the developers very much know that, hence their dialog updating immediately, and I assume the stories will progress in parallel. Their goals don't exactly intersect or contradict (C&U's 'find a way to fix the Void' versus the Scions' 'get rid of that asshole making the Void a living hell'), so they can do okay while never needing C&U to cross over to meet Y'sh and Zero.

Cylva and Unukalhai have been hit really hard by what I am now calling "FFXI syndrome." Two expansions building up the lost prince of Tavnazia in a particular mission series, only for him to be entirely AWOL once you actually go to Tavnazia, on account of the "what if you didn't do San d'Oria?" excuse. (Though the THF quests are somehow perplexingly relevant.)

I think there's still a chance they can show up, in the same way that Alisaie keeps her development from the Binding Coil story even if you haven't done it. And, y'know, Estinien. The only real issue with CT was that G'raha and Nero are in very difficult situations to handwave depending on your progress, so it was easier to just require it. But we could just as easily get some kind of bonus quest at the end explaining what they were up to.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Personally I think they should make the major side stories mandatory if and when they fit the MSQ. Unikalhai and Cylva should be a major players right now, but instead they're completely ignored because optional sidequests.

(Not that I think everyone should be forced to do the ShB role quests, but locking such story behind them was weird in the first place.)

---

I find it disheartening when talking about the void we completely skip over the void ark raids and not used any of the lore pertaining to them. Yoshida that raid doesn't need an epilogue. Cait Sith will be useful into our journey into the void. That entire raid should be put into the journey context thing which i can not recall this moment.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grimr

I don't buy the whole devouring other void sent messes with your identity ... the other voidsent we have killed don't have that problem and simply devouring each other would deplete armed forces.

---

You can't say the other voidsent don't have that problem; you don't know how their personalities have shifted as they've grown. And they don't have fixed "armed forces" to maintain.

It's also covered in dialogue that the stronger a voidsent is, the higher possibility it can't reform as it was before, because some of the souls within it might break away or get devoured while in their defeated state.

Tbh i somehow beat mhach without knowing i even started it. Oh sure i somehow remember the redbill side but not the voidsent side lol.