Question about FFXIV v1.x - Hamlets

[Vaer]

It was an instance that was pretty much like tower defense, it's been so long so I don't remember exactly what the setup was and completely how it worked.

There would be mobs that pour through the gate that would try to destroy the carts which you pretty much defended the entire time. You had a bunch of friendly NPCs that would attack them that were placed in between them and the various carts. The carts were basically defenseless. One strat would be to turtle with a bunch of WHMs to heal the NPCs so they didn't die (they do most of the DPS), a tank and I think a couple of gatherers and crafters. Gatherer jobs could pick up potions from objects around the field and turn them in to debuff the mobs. If you matched certain combinations of colors you would cause an effect to occur. IIRC, attack down was 3 reds. The crafters would make items to turn in to buff the NPCs I believe.

The tank would wait at the gate and grab the boss that would come through, and bring it to some empty location and kite it around for the rest of the time.

The reason for all this defense is to easily get a good amount of points which increased the loot you got at the end. There was a scoreboard at the end which determined what score you got and how good the loot could be. Stuff like keeping all the NPCs alive, killing all the mobs. killing limited time mobs that would spawn in some out of place location for a little while and would despawn if you didn't kill it. If you killed the boss, it would end, hence the kiting it around and killing it at the end so you could kill more waves of trash mobs to get more points, turn in more potion combinations, etc.

Before you even entered, there was a little turn in mini-game period that the entire server could participate in where you would turn in crafted items to increase the defense level of the hamlet being attacked. If someone in your group was in the top 3 places, you would get a higher chance at getting a seal from the hamlet. Not sure if it affected drops (maybe crafter offhands/personal loot to the person who is on the board only). Once this period ended, you could enter and actually do the Hamlet Defense. The seals were used for the relic in 1.0.

Might be forgetting a bunch of stuff but that was the gist of it from what I remember. There were certain other ways you could approach this but was one of the ones I took part in a lot.

The three hamlets were Hyrstmill, Aleport and Gold Bazaar. The locations still exist in 2.0, though. Most if not all the green crafted i55 militia gear in 2.0 were drops from hamlet defense.