How do gunblades work?

Hey everyone,

I was looking at different gunblade models in search of a cool glamour when I noticed that more than half of the current models have no barrels. If they don't have barrels, and can't shoot their aetheric bullets (this is how I believed they worked based on comments from Thancred), how do they operate?

I like to understand the ways that the jobs I play use their abilities in order to contend with the enormously powerful enemies we face. If anyone has any info, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

They really don't shoot bullets in the traditional sense. Pulling the trigger and "firing" causes the blade to recoil like a revolver as well the blade becomes super heated and vibrates increasing the damage. Gunblade wielders are trained to use that recoil to increase the speed and power of their swings. Aetheric bullets are essentially the ammo that causes explosive recoil.

Interesting, thank you. And so the bullets have different properties despite being used to do basically the same thing? I notice that some of their abilities carve a blue/lavender colored path through the air, while others leave a red path behind the blade as it swings. Also, are skills like Heart of Stone, Camouflage etc. using aetheric bullets? If so, are they also exploding within the chamber and imparting their effects in a similar manner?

Thanks, by the way!

My understanding from the quests is effectively the 'bullets' are Aetheric rounds used to empower the blade and allow the Gunblade user to manifest aetheric attacks. Effectively it is less that the rounds are used to create a physical impact and more that they are used to create a burst of Aether that can be used by the wielder to create special effects to their attacks or defensive things like barriers.

The cartridges are packed with pulverized crystal; the wielder infuses the powdered crystal with some magic or another which stays latent until the charge is activated and the powder is ignited. You can fire them to send a shockwave through the blade OR fire it into the air around you. It just can't fire projectiles over long distances like a gun or Garlean gunblade.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Anonymoose

The cartridges are packed with pulverized crystal; the wielder infuses the powdered crystal with some magic or another which stays latent until the charge is activated and the powder is ignited. You can fire them to send a shockwave through the blade OR fire it into the air around you. It just can't fire projectiles over long distances like a gun or Garlean gunblade.

---

To add on to this...

The there is two types of Gunblades that exists in FF14 being the Gunbreaker Gunblade and Garlean Gunblade....

Gunbreaker Gunblade is designed to follow the concept of Squall from FF8. The weapon focus is to be a pure melee focused weapon that uses the Magical energy infused into the Cartridges to enhance the Blade of the Gunblade. Depending on the Cartridge, the user can infuse different elemental attributes into the gunblade's melee attacks but the most common one used is the Fire Element to perform the explosion melee attacks the Gunbreaker is well known for. The Cartridges can be made by the user or another person by infusing empty cartridges with magical energy.

In Thancred case he has "Minfilia" provide him with the Cartridges due to his lack of ability to use magic and he will even have a Special Unity attack with "Minfilia" if they are in the Trust party together which has "Minfilia" throw to Thancred a Special infused Cartridge for his strongest attack.


The Garlean Gunblade is designed to be the Lightning Gunblade from FFXIII and Real Life Gunblades you can find in history books. Their blade is made for melee combat and they have a fully functioning Gun Barrel to fire projectiles or create magical range attacks for Range combat. The source of Garlean Gunblade's magical abilities and projectiles is Ceruleum rather than the user's magic. The Barrel function is also different from Gunbreaker's Gunblade because it is primarily used for Range attacks both physical and magical attributes and the weapon is designed for a hybrid of Melee and Range combat. The basic one we seen that used by Gaius and normal Garlean Officers use basic physical projectiles and depends on a Magitek wrist gun for their magical projectile attacks but the newer version of Garlean Gunblades (as we learned in GNB quest is just recently developed) are used by Regula and Vitus with the designed made to implament the Magitek wrist gun function into the Gunblade so it can maintain a infinite ammo using only a Ceruleum core with the added function of performing Magic Range attacks.

Lore wise, the Gunbreaker Gunblade and Garlean Gunblade are considered two completely different weapons due to their design's function. If SE wanted they can easily create a separate Job with the Garlean Gunblade.

Wow, that's awesome! Thanks so much, everybody. This makes GNB even more hype for me.

Gunblades are the FF take on this: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Vibroweapon

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Gunblades are the FF take on this: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Vibroweapon

---

Although in-game it looks like you're just slashing with explosions.

https://i.imgur.com/CAM3ev0.png

Some of the gunbreaker ones do have normal barrels. The Ronkan manatrigger being an easy one to see. Weather the Ronkan were the not-garleans of the first i do not know. The gunbreaker itself doesn't make use of the barrel often. the LB3 fires something out of the end to form the shield, but it might just be a magic puff as the same thing gets done on a lesser scale with Heart of Stone.
In a lore friendly way I assume the blade acts like a focus and directs the aetheric charge, or quickly dissipates it in the case of explosive hits. It can be assumed it needs reloaded often, but that is something we don't do in game for MMO reasons. Just from observation of the models at hand, i also assume the flintlock looking ones are very early designs requiring muzzle loading of charges.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atamis

Some of the gunbreaker ones do have normal barrels. The Ronkan manatrigger being an easy one to see. Weather the Ronkan were the not-garleans of the first i do not know. The gunbreaker itself doesn't make use of the barrel often. the LB3 fires something out of the end to form the shield, but it might just be a magic puff as the same thing gets done on a lesser scale with Heart of Stone.
In a lore friendly way I assume the blade acts like a focus and directs the aetheric charge, or quickly dissipates it in the case of explosive hits. It can be assumed it needs reloaded often, but that is something we don't do in game for MMO reasons. Just from observation of the models at hand, i also assume the flintlock looking ones are very early designs requiring muzzle loading of charges.

---

That is just vanity use only and very few as the majority of Gunbreaker Gunblades will not have a Gun Barrel designed into it since the Primary use for the Ammo is for infusing Magical Energy into the blade FFVIII style. Strongely advised not to confuse the Gunbreaker Gunblade with the Garlean Gunblade simply because a few designs have Gun Barrels in them.

The magic energy released from the Gunbreaker Gunblade is only dispursed magical energy and cannot maintain a solid form for a long time which is why the only projectile released from Gunbreaker's Gunblade are Barrier Magic and Healing energy (GNB healing regen skill) they can apply to themselves or to allies. The Magic energy from the cartridges cannot form a offensive attribute unless it is from the blade itself which is why Gunbreaker Gunblades can only release small burst of magical energy as Defensive Magic if released as a Projectile. Along with everything offensive can only come from the Blade itself.

Garlean Gunblades, on the other hand, is specifically designed to have a functioning Gun Barrel since it follows the Real Life Gunblade design thus instead of the energy being used to infused the blade with magical attributes, it release the magical energy as offensive projectile attacks instead. (Fun note: Real Life Gun blades used Muskets as their Guns. We don't see much of Gun Blades in history because they never last very long in history and was discarded from production due to horrible handling issues and other problems)

The two weapons greatly differs from each other by how they function with their ammo with Gunbreaker Gunblade can only use it offensively by infusing the Blade with magical energy from the cartridges and Garlean Gunblade will just directly fire the magical energy as offensive projectiles and Projectile Magic.

(Another fun note, The revolver of Garlean gunblades is similar to Webly Revolvers used in WW1 which is not just because of "Revolver" from FF8 but there are a few historical "Pistol Sword" made using a Webly Revolvers by the British back in WW1 but very few)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Edax

Although in-game it looks like you're just slashing with explosions.

---

That's fairly true to the original FF8 gunblade animations; when you had Squall (or Seifer, for the short time he's in your party) use Attack, pressing R1 at the right time during the animation would add an explosive effect to the attack and trigger a vibration in the controller. Same thing occurred during Squall's Limit Break, Renzokuken, except that there you had a bar onscreen to more clearly show the timings. Since not everyone uses a controller for FFXIV, adding the vibration effect might not be as easy for this, though it would be pretty cool if a vibration was triggered every time you used Continuation (Disclaimer: I play with KB+M, so I have no idea if vibration effects occur for controller players, so take that with a grain of salt).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Edax

Although in-game it looks like you're just slashing with explosions.

---

That's better anyway IMHO. The whole magic vibrations for damage and using recoil to increase speed always sounded a little bit silly to me anyway.

It's a sword that explodes, do we need anymore than that? I feel a magic exploding fire sword explains itself.