Primal Slaying

[Iscah]

Fast forward to late into HW and it's like *Meet a random person for the first time* "Oh, hello there adventurer, isn't the Echo wonderful. My whole family has the Echo. Look I can come with you to the primal because I have the Echo! Should I invite all my friends? They all have the Echo too!"

Who? Since when?

Characters I can think of with the Echo, in rough meeting order: Minfilia, Arenvald, other Scions*, Ysayle, Krile, Warriors of Darkness, Unukalhai (kinda sorta), Temulun (maybe), Fordola and apparently Zenos (artificially).

* ie. minor characters at the Waking Sands. The only definite one I can think of by name is Dariustel. But I assume others got recruited because Minfilia found out they had the Echo as well.

We met a lot of other characters over this period that don't have the Echo at all. Who are you thinking of?

It's an occasional plot point that we can't easily take our NPC friends with us to fight primals in case they get tempered, which is why we have to call up a random group of Echo-blessed adventurers who can safely assist us instead.

[Naria]

Like, if it was SOOO common back in the day, why wasn't Minfillia recruiting a bunch more people all the time? Why couldn't we have formed the Crystal Braves out of people with the Echo and let them go deal with Primals instead of relying entirely on the WoL (You know, with the whole disaster that was not in question)?

A few Path members show up as background Scion npcs early in ARR but I've kinda assumed it is a soft retcon or that many of them died in the Calamity and Hydaelyn just doesn't have the ability to gift the Echo as frequently anymore as she grows weaker. As Iscah said we don't actually meet that many people explicitly said to have the Echo 2.0+.

Also the WoL defends Alisaie and Lyse from being tempered in a CS when Lakshmi is first introduced, presumably we can do that for our non-echo blessed companions to a degree or we have a network of Echo adventures we can call for backup. Take your pick.

[Lium]

Good evening all,
Sorry if this has been asked or discussed before. I'm reading the first lore book and it talks about the WoL killing the primal by himself, even though in game we have a party. So is it cannon that we slay primals by ourselves?

Some of the posters in this thread are incorrect. Canonically, the WoL acts alone in every fight. The quest text about "gather some friends" just lets you know that you are going to have to go into duty finder to run the dungeon or trial.

[GrumbleBeard]

Some of the posters in this thread are incorrect. Canonically, the WoL acts alone in every fight. The quest text about "gather some friends" just lets you know that you are going to have to go into duty finder to run the dungeon or trial.

Doesn't the journal during the Susano-o fight mention how convenient it was that your adventurer buddies just happen to be nearby in a boat to help you or something silly? I don't think they're all fought alone.

Here it is:
“Your efforts to wreak havoc on the Isle of Zekki and draw the Red Kojin away from their imperial masters have exceeded all expectations. Unfortunately, for reasons beyond your knowing, two of the sacred treasures stored in the isle's vault "reacted" to the presence of the Yasakani-no-Magatama, summoning forth from the aether the great kami Susano—a primal by another name. How fortunate that you had the wisdom and foresight to invite several of your fellow adventurers on this journey to the Far East, and how kind they were to agree to help you torment the Red Kojin, for no single warrior, no matter how blessed or powerful, could ever hope to slay a primal on their own, despite what some wandering minstrels would have you believe.”

[Kalise]

Some of the posters in this thread are incorrect. Canonically, the WoL acts alone in every fight. The quest text about "gather some friends" just lets you know that you are going to have to go into duty finder to run the dungeon or trial.

Well, it's not just quest text. The actual characters in the game tell you to go grab some adventurer friends. Like, I believe for Bismark, Cid asks you if you and your friends are ready to go. As I recall, you also get told to go grab some friends to take out Lakshmi too.

Let me dig up some quotes:

Bismarck -

Cid:
Then all that remains is to confirm the readiness of the poor buggers who'll actually be doing the fighting. Forename, let Wedge know when your party is assembled.

Wedge:
A-Are we really going to go skyfishing for a primal!?

Cid:
We'll depart for the island once you've assembled your party. Let Wedge know when you're ready.

[Lium]

Doesn't the journal during the Susano-o fight mention how convenient it was that your adventurer buddies just happen to be nearby in a boat to help you or something silly? I don't think they're all fought alone.

Here it is:
“Your efforts to wreak havoc on the Isle of Zekki and draw the Red Kojin away from their imperial masters have exceeded all expectations. Unfortunately, for reasons beyond your knowing, two of the sacred treasures stored in the isle's vault "reacted" to the presence of the Yasakani-no-Magatama, summoning forth from the aether the great kami Susano—a primal by another name. How fortunate that you had the wisdom and foresight to invite several of your fellow adventurers on this journey to the Far East, and how kind they were to agree to help you torment the Red Kojin, for no single warrior, no matter how blessed or powerful, could ever hope to slay a primal on their own, despite what some wandering minstrels would have you believe.”

That was tongue-in-cheek. SE was actually making fun of the fact that you were supposed to only be there with Alisae and Lyse (I believe) yet somehow there were several of your adventurers in the region just waiting for you to call on them. You are THE Warrior of Light. The only person on the star (that we know of) who has the Blessing of Hydaelyn, which is something only Midgardsormr seems to understand, and not even the Ascians can fully grasp.

Canonically, you are the only one capable of performing these miraculous feats.

[leocordis]

Thanks everyone for the answers. It was just weird to me because one spot mentioned about Thordan how history will never know how we beat him by ourselves yet then lyse says we need help with Lakshmi

[Iscah]

Some of the posters in this thread are incorrect. Canonically, the WoL acts alone in every fight. The quest text about "gather some friends" just lets you know that you are going to have to go into duty finder to run the dungeon or trial.

Canonically, if it was spoken within the story, by other characters in the story, that you would be going into the location with other people, then that's my understanding of exactly what makes it canon that you are not alone in that dungeon.

Sometimes it's specifically justified - sending a small group into the narrow passages of Snowcloak, or leading a team of fighters in the raid on Castrum Meridianum (who are with you for both the Castrum and Praetorium dungeons, even though they only appear in the cutscenes for the latter). You canonically recruited a whole crowd of adventurers to defend the Steps of Faith and surrounding areas, and see "your party" (actually fixed NPCs that look like they'd be player characters) sitting around exhausted in the cutscene after the battle.

And sometimes they make no mention of other characters, or make it clear that you actually are (supposedly) there alone. Those are the instances where we can assume our party are purely a game mechanic.

The tongue-in-cheek-ness of Susano's trial description is unusual, as far as I can remember. Normally they don't highlight the absurdity of assembling a party out of nowhere; they would just act like you're going in "canonically alone".

Unless it's been said somewhere outside of the game that they "don't mean it" when characters say this sort of thing?

Thanks everyone for the answers. It was just weird to me because one spot mentioned about Thordan how history will never know how we beat him by ourselves yet then lyse says we need help with Lakshmi

Power levels in an ever-increasing game like this are always weird. Technically Lakshmi does outlevel Thordan and we've gotten stronger since that fight. But who knows if "game levels" are really supposed to come into this? I think they just do whatever works storywise at the time, and maybe don't think too hard about the exact levels. Or keep track of how they framed it last time.


Although I did like the theory I read one time that the reason Zenos thrashes us the first few times we fight, is that he's already Lv70 and we need to catch up before we can fight him on an equal level, as it were...



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(Also, headcanonically, my WoL has an actual permanent party with her anyway. Which works an awful lot better for story and power-level consistency, not that it helps much for interpreting the canon take on things...)

[Dualblade]

So first things first, atleast some instances of "go gather some fellow adventurers/some friends just happen to be in the area!" are English only tongue-in-cheek references, atleast thats what I remember when this last came up back when Stormblood people got to Susano.

Second: The Echo is indeed a rare ability to possess, but nowhere NEAR being a one of a kind thing. Hell, before you even get out of your first city-state story-wise and meet the Scions officially you are made aware that many other people also have the Echo. And none of those NPCs you see in the Hydaelyn vision where you see this are seen afterwards (personally believe they are stand-ins for other player characters there.)

The actual very rare ability we have is the Blessing of Light, which is not connected to the Echo as demonstrated at the end of ARR and a good chunk of HW when we had the Blessing taken away but still held the Echo. This gives us a good bit of power at the right moments to deal with problems as needed and while not exclusive to us, the amount of users who we know for sure had it throughout all of known history can be counted on two hands, just one if we only count the source and not the WoD from the First Shard.

Third: Primal Slaying may not be the easiest thing to do, but without their Tempering ability you'd see alot more people be able to stand up to them. If we got the level 20 quest and instead of us fighting Ifrit we were told Raubahn came in as the cavalry and defeat the Primal? I'd believe it in a heartbeat. The problem with Primals as far as fighting them goes always comes down to tempering though, and thats why us being to beat them solo story-wise is believable. We no sell the biggest threat they have. How well anyone can stand up to them alone or in a group outside of tempering also depends on the amount of aether/prayer they got as well (again why first time we fight Ifrit I could believe Raubahn coulda solo'd him too: Ifrit tends to get summoned the first chance the Amal'jaa can get and all that).

Final note: I also headcanon a group of adventurers in my head rather than just one, with some other ones being around enough to be called on for 8/24-mans or even vice-versa with them calling on the WoL group instead.

[YianKutku]

Some of the posters in this thread are incorrect. Canonically, the WoL acts alone in every fight. The quest text about "gather some friends" just lets you know that you are going to have to go into duty finder to run the dungeon or trial.

Doesn't really explain the text about having friends in the fight after said fight, though.