Solo duty: Taking a Stand

Hello All

This solo duty is a nightmare to me. It combines all what I hate together: It's solo, I'm forced to different class than my and it's a melee class... I could cry. Even in very easy mode, my health decreases at light speed while the boss doesn't seem to take any damages, and within some minutes, am out.

I have the following problems:
- The healing skill doesn't heal much and has a long recharge time.
- The skill 1 is supposed to bring some healing, but it's annihilated by the rate at which the boss is damaging me.
- Moving continuously doesn't seem to prevent being hit: My health is simply continuously decreasing, no matter what.
- The skills don't seem to damage him? :confused:
- The limit break skill is rarely active and when it is, doesn't seem to deal any damage?

I would really be glad for any hints and information. Honestly, with this one, it looks like the rest of the msq will be out of reach for me. But well, before to give it up, I would like to give it another try with some support from your side.

Worst case, I would see if I can find a friend who could do it for me.

Thanks in advance.

This one’s a stumbling block for folks who don’t play melee/don’t play Warrior. The same basic guidelines as any FFXIV combat apply though. Stay out of telegraphed AoEs, but note that you can’t avoid auto-attacks, don’t bother trying. You get a basic melee attack combo that’s pretty standard Warrior fare, so you should mostly be using that, or your AoE combo if there are multiple targets in range. Your ranged attack is a last resort if you’re forced out of melee. Luwatena Pulse increases max HP in addition to current so you should use it early and often, it is never really wasted as long as there’s significant incoming damage. And you also get a gap closer, basically a cut-rate Primal Rend, that you should use for movement, especially to get out of AoEs if the enemy is near a safe spot. Idk why your limit break isn’t doing anything, it was quite effective for me. Is the enemy out of range?

Wuk Lamat plays basically like a weaker Warrior, and since I play Warrior a lot this solo duty was trouble free for me, but if you struggle you can also turn down the difficulty after losing. It’s not like you need to learn how to use her move set for normal play so there’s no reason not to turn it down just to get through.

Hmm, and in case I didn’t make it clear enough: you need to be aggressive and get up in the enemy’s face whenever possible. You are tougher and more dangerous than him, let him know it!

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Originally Posted by GraceHorizon

Hmm, and in case I didn’t make it clear enough: you need to be aggressive and get up in the enemy’s face whenever possible. You are tougher and more dangerous than him, let him know it!

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Thank you for your help. For info, I did it in very easy mode (as said): It didn't make any difference. I saw on the internet that it seems to be a bug? Some players say that the easy mode version is easier (because really scaled down) than the very easy one... LOL! I could try it.

Its been a minute since i looked at this one, but heres what i remember. You play a warrior like class. You still want to avoid the big orange attacks on the ground, but otherwise extra movement isnt doing anything for you. Ability wise you mostly ride the melee combo(tail of something). That one is damage and a heal. The aoe combo is for when the add phase happens. You can likely avoid the ranged attack altogether. The gap closer(run something) is useful if you find yourself away from the boss and need to move close to/behind him. That leaves the heal and the LB. For the heal(something pulse) it works by raising your hp, healing you for that amount, and increasing any healing done by you for the next few moves. So try to make sure that after you use it you get in either the melee combo or the LB to take advantage of the heal boost. Which leaves the LB. It isnt designed to be a big strong hit. If i remember right its like a medium hit with a medium heal. The real power of the LB is that it gives you a boost to your damage for a time while giving you a lifesteal affect at the same time(the wiki says 15 secs for each). So after hitting this you need to keep going with the melee combo(or aoe combo if used during the add phase). The lifesteal means that most of the time you should end up close to/at full health if you keep pressing the attack(especially in the add phase since you would steal from every target hit by the aoe).

If theres a move he does that troubles you i can try to explain, but honestly nothing he tries is really new. Youve seen towers, youve seen fake clones, youve seen cleaves.

To offer a word of encouragement, if i remember the story right this might be the last solo duty you struggle on. I wont lie and say there arent any more, but you play as yourself for most/all of those left and i dont remember any others off the top of my head that really stopped people later in DT. I fully believe you can do this.

And as a final tip, at one point this quest might have been bugged in that the "Easy" mode seemed to be easier then the "Very Easy" one. I never saw proof of this "bug", but heard plenty of anecdotal evidence. I also never heard definitively if this was "fixed". So this might be worth trying too. I can think of one solo duty for sure where the "very easy" just boosts all the numbers across the board - damage dealt, damage taken, raises available. So in that fight you do more damage, take more damage, die more, and still win if youre trying. This fight i havent played with the easy/very modes to know what the actual changes made are. But again, if normal and very arent working, try the other setting at least once to see.

Frizze already offered all the advice I came here for, so I'll just cheer on you! I agree this should be the last actually annoying Duty of DT, so don't get discouraged by the difficulty and don't be afraid to be aggressive!

Thank you. I will retry on a day am not too tired and try to apply what you describe. Worst case, I believe that the son of a friend is also playing FFXIV and maybe he can do it for me. But I will keep that as the last solution. :D

Hello All

Well, it's definitive: I can't beat this solo duty.

No matter what mode, no matter how much I spam skill 1 and 3 to maintain health, no matter what guide I follow point by point, I keep failing again and again and again... The best I ever achieved was to get the boss health down to 82%, in very easy mode, after a hard fighting of 15 minutes before dying. It means that I can't damage the boss more than 18% per 15 minutes... Seriously? Let's face it, it's totally out of reach for me.

You know, I like to keep working hard on things to learn and progress, but when they are fun. The problem with that duty is that it's no fun to me. Beside, after 15 minutes jumping in all directions (even with max zooming out), motion sickness starts and even if I could survive longer than 15 minutes, I would have to stop because of it.

So what are the consequences? I can't finish the msq. Does it mean that for example, there is no point for me to buy any potential next expansion pack? Because if I understand correctly, the next story will be locked behind finishing the previous one? So it's dead for me?

What solution do I have? Do you think it is possible to handover my credential to someone so that the person does the duty for me? In the meantime, I clarified that it would be a violation of TOS, so not authorized. They really blocked any possibilities to get some help.

Thanks for any idea you could have as I'm despaired by now. :(

Sorry, I edit my post for one more question: I'm level 100. Is the splendor vendor with level 100 gear located in a city locked behind winning that duty?

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Originally Posted by LuSnow

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I'm so sorry. To answer your questions:
1. You would be able to skip DT eventually by buying a story skip from the store, but that would skip the entire expansion, not just this duty. But no, you wouldn't be stuck forever.
2. Yes, it is against TOS to share your account credentials, but this is more for reasons like they don't want 8 people sharing 1 account and paying only 1 sub, or they don't wanna be responsible if you share your account details and something bad happens to your account. But they're not actively monitoring who logs in from what device and they obviously can't know if it's actually you or someone else playing from your PC... so yeah.
3. Indeed, you cannot buy tomestone gear until your MSQ is done. The relevant NPC for DT is located at Solution Nine. The NPC that gives you your job gear is also locked by MSQ, although not exactly by fully finishing it, is located in Tuliyollal.

You dont mention if you tried it, so im gonna ask even though it was already suggested. Have you tried the fight on EASY mode? Not very easy, normal easy. I remember repeatedly hearing that it was actually the easiest of the 3 for this particular instance for some reason.

As for the tome shop, yeah its in a place you cant get to yet. When the next expansion comes out they will sell a story skip that brings you to the beginning of it, so continuing on will eventually be an option if you want.

Back to the fight, are you saying that your best attempt was a 15 minute long fight that maxed out at 82%, or that within 15 mins worth of multiple tries thats how far you got? Was there a specific thing that got you, or was it just attrition+sickness? Even for someone struggling with the fight, that doesnt sound right to me. Try to answer if you can, i might need to do a bit of digging.

Edit: Looking at the NG+ data, damn that is deep in there. I was hoping, unlikely as it seemed, that there would be a start point closer to the cookoff. Nope. Its either start of the expansion, or a dozen or so quests PAST this point. Ive seen this question enough times that curiousity points me towards pushing into that NG+ range, but im not sure when ill find the time to get that into my schedule. Has anyone else done this recently/is already partway through a run?

I just posted this in another thread but I think it's particularily relevant to this one as well so I'm sending it again.

I did NG+ just to reattempt this on all 3 difficulties.

Easy is NOT easier than Very Easy. Easy gives you 20% Echo while Very Easy gives you 40% Echo. Here is the data for anyone who wants it:
The Echo buff is called "Indomitable Spirit"

Normal (No Echo)
- Your HP: 122.732
- Ranged Attack Damage: ~3.5-3.8k
Easy (Gives 20% Echo)
- Your HP: 147,278
- Ranged Attack Damage: ~4.2-4.5k
Very Easy (Gives 40% Echo)
- Your HP: 171,824
- Ranged Attack Damage: ~5.0-5.3k

There is no difference in mechanics or damage taken between any of the 3 difficulty tiers. It may seem like you take more damage in Very Easy but that is because the cast "Roar" seems to be percent based taking out around ~50-55% of your HP. Outside of Roar all damage is the same.

So how do you clear this duty easily? You really just need to do 3 things:

1. Hit Luwatena Pulse on cooldown. You can use it as a proper heal as well but I found keeping it rolling on cooldown is enough for this duty.
2. Hit Dawnlit Conviction the moment it is available. The fight stops for a moment giving you enough time to use it whenever it is up.
3. Keep your Tail of the Br'aax Combo GCD rolling. This is really important since the 3rd hit of your combo heals you. Seriously, just spam the combo button the entire time.

As long as you don't make too many mistakes this is all you need to do to clear even on Normal difficulty.

@Shistar, thank you! Just to know that I would have a solution (story skip) for a potential next expansion is a true relief. However, if I can already not manage the current chapter, I'm not sure it would make sense buying the next one since it would be equally harder or even worse? LOL

@Frizze, each fight is around 10 minutes until I die. After that, I can't go for an immediate round as I need to wait that the motion sickness calms down. That's why I haven't tried easy mode up to now. Next time I will suicide immediately to bypass normal mode and go straight into easy mode.
Regarding fight duration, today with cold mind, I can't tell for sure how long I last exactly because it feels very long but maybe it's only because the - for me - nightmare seems never ending. At my next try, I will check how long I'm in there really.

There are 2 facts I don't understand:
- I can't damage the boss enough. His health doesn't decrease, or very little only.
- My health is low, always. It very rarely goes up again, although spamming 3 and 1. It's a mystery to me, because I have by now well understood the mechanics of the boss and avoid them properly.

Today, I will relax and not retry. But tomorrow, I will as said suicide straight at beginning to bypass normal mode and retry into easy mode. Let's see.

*** A few hours later, edited to answer to Celliera ***

@Celliera, sorry, I had to edit my post to reply to you because I posted before I had seen your reply.

Thanks for the confirmation re easy vs. very easy.

As for the method you describe, that's what I try all the time but it didn't help me. I'm the problem. I'm an average player. I'm slow. I play only ranged class and do hate melee (at which I get motion sickness as a bonus). All that combined, that duty is the worst possible case for me.

I don't think I can beat that duty. It makes me sad because I will never see the rest of the msq, will not reach the splendor vendor level 100, will not complete fisher, botanist and miner, and so on... That's quite frustrating.

I will keep trying once in a while, but I have no big hope.

Generally, it's OK to me that they put solo duties in the msq, but I find the concept as is unbalanced. Close to end of a chapter, at highest level of difficulty, to force non-melee players to play melee (and vice versa) is the wrong timing. Exchange of classes should happen before and once at higher difficulty, we should be on similar classes than own. It's - for me - not normal that I'm forced to do something at which I don't get the slightest fun.

Personally, I prefer the concept in GW and GW2. The activities of highest difficulties are aside of the story so that they don't block it. Those activities are optional and players have free choice to do those or not. If they chose not to, there are negative consequences: the best gears and weapons (legendary) can't be obtained. I find that a well balanced concept: People are free to chose but those who decline don't get the legendary rewards. Fair enough. At least, everybody can complete the story.

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Originally Posted by LuSnow

@Shistar, thank you! Just to know that I would have a solution (story skip) for a potential next expansion is a true relief. However, if I can already not manage the current chapter, I'm not sure it would make sense buying the next one since it would be equally harder or even worse? LOL

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Difficulty is not necessarily correlated to if it goes before or after in the story. As an example, ARR and HW were much harsher with the player back when they were current, yet they came before EW—which was generally considered easy by the playerbase (personal opinions notwithstanding) so we really can't know if it'll be more difficult or not until we can play it.

Although, if you can't do the duty yourself, I'd suggest "casually" allowing a friend to check out FFXIV at your PC... it'd be a terrible shame if they just so happened to go ahead and do the duty while you were not looking.... wink wink. Anyways. The next expansion is a long while away still, so it's not worth remaining stuck waiting for a story skip to become available in the store. Remember to change all your passwords after and stuff.

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Originally Posted by LuSnow

There are 2 facts I don't understand:
- I can't damage the boss enough. His health doesn't decrease, or very little only.
- My health is low, always. It very rarely goes up again, although spamming 3 and 1. It's a mystery to me, because I have by now well understood the mechanics of the boss and avoid them properly.

Today, I will relax and not retry. But tomorrow, I will as said suicide straight at beginning to bypass normal mode and retry into easy mode. Let's see.

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Would you be willing to record your attempt? It would be incredibly useful information so we can tell you more exact tips and tricks for your case. There's nothing necessarily wrong with hanging out with half or low HP so long as you don't die. It seems that Celliera's information about Roar might be correct, although I haven't tested it myself yet. Since the HP goes down faster, Roar happens more often and thus you have less time to recuperate between attacks.

You can use OBS (it's free and there's easy tutorials to quickly set it up) to record your screen if you're on PC, or even pointing your phone at the screen will give us some clues. Then just upload it somewhere you can link it back to us.

Regarding a future story skip. Obviously it isnt ideal. But this is what some people do. Around the time you buy the skip, find a way to watch the story or a recap to read. You could find a streamer who played it and look at their VoDs, you could find a list of the important things that happened, you could find a youtube video that walks you through it. There will 100% be YT creators who make videos reminding people of the dawntrail story and where we're going next, if only because so much time will have gone by that many people will have forgotten some of the important bits. As i type this, its been 18ish months since i did the base DT story and we dont even know yet how many months away the next expansion is. Even the final bits of story will be several months old when its finally time to download 8.0. We'll have the trailers, we'll have the hype, we'll have what info gets shared at the fan fests(for those who decide to keep up with all of said info) - but none of that assures that we'll remember everything that came before. So there will for sure be videos looking to fill in the gaps. The next step of course is to buy the actual skip, which will go onsale at around the same time the expansion goes live. Once the skip is applied to your character, you have the option to go back into the inn and watch some of the important scenes with your character in place. Then you continue the story with whereever we go next.

Alternatively, buying a skip would also unlock the NG+ mode for dawntrail. As i mentioned previously, the first NG+ point for the expansion is the very start. The 2nd starting point is somewhere in the approximately level 95 range of quests, shortly after the next dungeon. So you could theoretically buy the skip, activate NG+ to the 2nd DT spot, read the quest descriptions for what happened after the current fight, replay the dungeon via trust or que, look at what happened after, then just play the story going forward to experience it yourself. At that point youre buying a skip to get past more or less one fight(you would also be able to stop NG+ and jump ahead if you decided you want to at any time), which... i dont know if that makes it more or less worth the money.

But for now, with a fresh set of eyes give the fight a try again like you planned to. If you fail, the more details you can remember the better for us to maybe find you a path. If you succeed, then congrats! Let us know tho!

Thanks Frizze.

For info, I have edited my previous post to reply to Celliera, as I failed to see her post before to post my.

Today, I will not retry. I need a break from it. I will enjoy lazy easy stuff with my alts... LOL

Thanks Shistar too!

You guys are so nice to help me the way you do. At times, I failed to see all the replies and my reply doesn't cover for all. Sorry for that.

We were all sprouts once or struggled with one thing or the other. Return the favor by helping someone else when you can! :D
Breaks are important. This is a game, it's meant to be fun.


Something's fishy for sure, surely there's a detail we're missing here... but I'm sure we can solve it somehow. If you're dodging the mechanics well and pressing your buttons, I'm not quite sure where we're going wrong. If there's any other details you happen to remember please share them!

I only read and post on a few of the forums here, New Player Help being the main one. I qualify to be a mentor in game, but i choose not to claim the burger king crown. Helping people who ask for it, on the other hand, im happy to volunteer for. All of which is to say, if it wasnt already obvious, we're glad to help in whatever ways we can.

Obviously none of us have had a chance to watch your progress, so we cant say for certain what mechanically is stopping you. My thinking is that it is probly one of three things, but it is impossible to say. Potential problem #1, as Shistar guesses, is Roar timing. Doing damage too quickly against an enemy that does percentage damage at regular intervals can result in an imbalance of health versus healing. It feels like this could be the root of the very versus easy problem people have reported. Potential problem #2, combo interuption. Ive watched enough people play to know that in some of these duties with automatic combos(as in, press 1 repeatedly and it updates to do all the steps in the combo) people will interupt the combo before it finishes without realizing. If you only get the first 2 hits, then do something that causes the combo to reset you never get the healing from the third hit. Not sure if that is an issue here, but it stands as a possibility. Potential problem #3, low activity. This instance is trying to tell the story of a fighter taking on a foe seemingly stronger then herself, barely hanging on, finding her confidence along the way, and winning in the end. To achieve those ends, your health yoyos a good deal, your healing is enough though it never feels like it, and your damage isnt overwhelming. How does that relate to activity? You really do want to be hammering the 1 combo more or less constantly during the fight. You try not to disengage while dodging whenever you can, and the more hits you get in the more often you get those small bits of healing. I have seen people who attack 10 times per minute(or less), whereas if youre constantly hitting 1 you get a small heal roughly every 7.5 seconds. For a fight that was designed to feel close, that would make a difference.

Again, no idea if any of those actually apply to you LuSnow(and they certainly arent the only possibilities) but any of them could potentially be causing issues.

Frizze, you should absolutely grab the crown if only to unlock the most glorious roulette, Mentor roulette, where you get to run Shiva, Ramuh and Rathalos EX synced and wipe forever :D (totally not traumatized at all!)
I lost my crown when DT came out, but I still have mentor roulette unlocked lol

One thing for sure if that generally I'm slow at reacting. But strangely, in that case, compared to the videos I watched, am rather pretty OK on that side at least. :D

@Frizze, there is one point not clear to me and I believe it relates to your point #3: In one video, the guy is spamming 1 madly. In another video, the guy does different. He seems to take his time, using 1 but not spamming it, then alternates with 2, then re-use 1. So I'm confused about it. What is correct? To click non stop and madly on 1, or to click 1, wait a bit, re-click it, use 2 once in a while...

Clicking the combo action button madly isn’t going to do anything, it a GCD action, so the guy doing that is just his style not a necessary thing. You just need to keep the GCD spinning, so that’s once every 2.5 seconds (technical note, most action inputs are buffered, so it counts if you do the input a little before time). And very definitely keep spamming that combo (from melee range! don’t break contact unless you have to!) in addition to using your Luwatena Pulse and limit break whenever available.

1 is single target. You use it on Bakool.

2 is AoE (multi-target). You use it when lots of enemies spawn, which they do later in the fight. If you use this only on Bakool, it is less damage than 1 and probably has no heal.

3 is heal.

4 is a ranged attack. Use it when bakool is too far from you.

5 is a gap closer. Use it if you want to get close to Bakool. Only if you think it's safe to do so.

6 is a limit break.

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Originally Posted by LuSnow

One thing for sure if that generally I'm slow at reacting. But strangely, in that case, compared to the videos I watched, am rather pretty OK on that side at least. :D

@Frizze, there is one point not clear to me and I believe it relates to your point #3: In one video, the guy is spamming 1 madly. In another video, the guy does different. He seems to take his time, using 1 but not spamming it, then alternates with 2, then re-use 1. So I'm confused about it. What is correct? To click non stop and madly on 1, or to click 1, wait a bit, re-click it, use 2 once in a while...

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My quote above said "hammering the 1 combo", which isnt inaccurate but is also a slight exaggeration. How much someone would gain by doing so depends on how often they would be hitting it otherwise. The fastest you can actually get the combo moves to activate requires one button press approximately every other second. Someone hitting the button once every 3 seconds loses 4 attacks per minute, one press every 4 seconds would be losing 9 attacks per minute. So the slower someone normally is, the more "overpressing" would help. But pressing the button 3 times per second gives no additional added benefit.

Ideally every time you press 1 you want to complete the three part combo. The only time i would press 2 is during the add phase toward the end, mixing it in to the middle of the three-step would be an example of the "combo interruption" i mentioned as potential problem #2 above. You should be able to hit the heal(3) without breaking combo, and i would guess probly the gap closer(5) too. In fact, using the heal in the middle of the combo might even make it last long enough that you get an extra boosted hit out of it.

Hello All

It has taken time for a reply because I have needed long to feel good enough to re-try the hassle. 5 minutes ago, I did it. Finally. In very easy mode. I need to share about my experience to get the nightmare off my chest and my mind.

In normal mode, I got slowly used to the first phase, biggest challenge being to keep the motion sickness under control. Then I died at the phase with the 3 x yellow columns spawning one after the other, simply because I'm too slow moving. No surprise.

I didn't give up and re-try in very easy mode. It didn't feel easier. There was no difference I could notice until the step with the columns, that I achieved to manage so they must have eased it somehow. I was glad. After that, I managed OK, apart from the motion sickness that kept increasing. Eventually I got rid of the step where we are chained and need the mad clicking.

I then thought I would be finally done: But no! There was more to come with tons of foes coming at me and AOEs in all direction. I got panicked, not understanding what is happening and at the top of it, the motion sickness by the time hardly bearable. Honestly, I was close to cry at the idea to fail it yet, because there would be no way I would redo that again.

I tried to take a deep breath and understand what has to be done with all those foes around. My bad really. I should have read about the full duty. Because I didn't, I thought that after the fight against the boss, it would be over. But no, it seems the struggle wasn't enough... I was so tired and hateful against the game in that moment...

Anyhow. So, I did whatever I found logic: I finished the boss first, but it didn't end the duty. I finished the illusion guy, but the duty kept going on. Since I couldn't cope anymore, I just tried to kill everything approaching me and eventually, at some point, the message spawn in middle of my screen: DUTY COMPLETED. I jumped off my chair to lie down on the floor to stabilize my stomach ROFL

You know, I don't even feel happy. I hated it all along and what I feel now is only relief. I can't even pretend I managed all of it, because toward the end, I just killed blindly without understanding what had to be done. I have been very - very - lucky that the duty ended as successful. It means I did the right thing somehow, but I have not a clue what it was.

I can't help the question: This game is supposed to be fun right? Why am I forced to something like that? It should be optional, not a road block to the MSQ. :(

Im sorry it was so rough for you. If it were legal to just run these fights for someone else, id have volunteered to help you out. Take your time with it, relax and feel better.

With that said, congrats on finishing the fight! Right this minute its not much solace, but i dont remember another solo duty that you should struggle with. You mostly(only?) play as yourself going forward and the next couple that i remember are decently easy. I know it doesnt really mean much for someone else to say that a fight is easy, but i dont remember hearing about people struggling with the upcoming solo fights. So you should be perfectly fine for awhile. And hopefully you can get back to enjoying the game and the story as you move forward. When youre ready. No hurry.

If you care about the story of the fight, ill do the shorty recap here. With spoiler block, because why not.

As the fight starts, Bakool Ja Ja is not just confident he is OVERconfident in his ability to defeat Wuk. During their super brief encounter at the reed parade he not only deflected her best shot, but cracked her weapon in the process and with little effort on his part. He sees her as unworthy of ruling, she isnt a threat. During the kidnapping episode after the rite of pots she isnt the threat, its her friends and allies. He also takes a fairly damaging shot(both physically and to the ego) from Zoraal Ja during this timeframe. He causes mischief, but doesnt directly partake in the fights around Valigarmanda instead seeking to weaken his opponents through the attrition of the turaal vidral. Fast forward to now, and he has arranged for this to be a fight she has to do alone to negate the advantage from Wuk's comrades. The fight begins, and he throws everything he has at her. She is behind, but he isnt quite able to overwhelm her. As she pushes back more and more, as she deflects avoids and survives his best moves, as she just doesnt give up he starts to lose confidence. At the same time Wuk is gaining more and more confidence. This petty bully cant push her around, shes learned too much from her friends and family. In the last third of the fight, Bakool's followers start to interfere in the fight. They are convinced(its essentially their religion) that he must win and start to gang up on Wuk, ignoring Bakool telling them to stay out of the fight. This further loss of authority, along with the large number of followers you drop dooms him. The little girl who he thought was beneath him isnt folding, his people arent listening or following his orders, and the biggest threat of all is just sitting there watching. He was supposed to be the chosen one, but he cant do this. Its too much. And of course, him running off seemingly in terror after the fight confirms this.

Thank you for your kinds words Frizze. In the mean time, I discovered a beautiful zone and completed one more solo duty in normal mode, on own class, that was a piece of cake in comparison to previous nightmare. So it helped me reconnecting with the game a bit.

I also enjoy lazy times with my alts, what helps to get the fun back. However, lesson is learnt: I will not push any of my alts up to that solo duty. I don't want to redo it ever. :D

Generally, I believe that the main story of a game is the base game content and should be entirely do-able by ALL players, no matter if they are casual, good, weak, whatever.
This is especially true for games with a monthly fee: all customers pay the same and are entitled to the same main content.

Unfortunately, the way FFXIV works doesn't allow that. This hard duty for example is discriminating players who can't manage it, because the sanction is that they're kicked off the msq (main content) that they can't finish. It should not be possible.

That's why I prefer the concept of other games (like GW, GW2, ESO, ...), where the higher difficulty activities are separated from the main story and optional. That way, the base/main content can't be blocked.
The high level activities bring superior rewards and side zones, that can't be obtained/visited by those not doing them. So it's also a discrimination of course, but a fair one because based on a choice made by the player him/herself, without loosing the main content.

I'm glad you managed to do it, great job! I hope you enjoy the rest of the MSQ!


One thing I have to say is I do not think the devs deliberately made this specific duty more difficult than the rest, and they seem to not understand why some players are having such trouble with it. I think at some point, if you fail it too many times, it should allow you to skip it or watch an NPC run it for you (or better, allow a friend to run it in your stead without being against ToS). But MSQ is the base difficulty of the game and we had a lot of complaints about EW being excessively easy... what I mean is, yes I agree all players should be able to get through MSQ, I personally don't care for "playing as NPC" duties and could do without them or turn them into cutscenes, but I can't help but fear what kind of message the devs are getting from this. They almost always manage to misunderstand what the playerbase is telling them.

The devs are probably highly skilled players, who are good at all classes and at everything generally. For players like them, it can be quite difficult to understand how it is for players who are not equally skilled/talented or/and with whatever health troubles or simply slower because older, where the concept "learning by doing" will reach its limits.

It would certainly be a good idea to have a "helper" or a "joker" concept so that all players can finish the main story.

My impression is that the devs love their game concept and strongly stick to 3 specific points of it:
- Everything is locked behind MSQ.
- A player must be capable to play all classes.
- Lot of solo duties.

Probably their idea is that either players like it as is or leave it. And that will probably last as long as there are enough customers to sustain the game.
I can understand how difficult it must be to set in question points of the concept that are the original essence of it.

For Guild Wars for example, they did "bypass" the problem by bringing a new game: GW2. That was for them a way to bring a new concept without changing the original one (there were also technical reasons though).

For me, playing since decades, it's very interesting to see how the games I know are compared to each others and how they evolve over time. :)