Labyrinth Raid Required for 5.3 MSQ?

[Mhaeric]

They have.
I think it is one of the helptexts you get when you are about to enter Sastasha for the first time.

Eh... sort of. When you unlock Sastasha it does open up an Active Help about "Instanced Raids" and "Cleaning Instanced Raids" to talk about how instanced content work. These help texts don't mention anything about the type of content at all, although it's definitely implied that all instanced content is called a raid, though, so that might be briefly confusing? It definitely wouldn't make people think that 24-man content is harder because it's called a raid, regardless of any confusion it might cause of what difficulty a raid is. If anything it would be the opposite if they think Sastasha is a raid because of that help text. But everything after that, the duty finder and party finder, in particular, refers to 4-person content as either a dungeon or a guildhest so whatever confusion over 4 person content is called is quickly squashed.

[Shibi]

Some people see the word "raid" and freak out, and in this case it isnt at all justified. The Alliance Raids in this game are designed to be beaten blind with a random group in the minimum level gear from the moment they are released. The tells are mostly very obvious, and the ones that arent are easily solvable and the devs assumed we would share that knowledge as we learned it.

This was, of course, my concern. After raiding in other games... it's not something for an noob. So I did see this gate freshly appear with 5.3 and though it to be blocking his and our access to Ishgard.

I do appreciate and thank people mentioning that an alliance (is that the word) isn't a raid. That can hopefully be made clearer as more people ask the same question.

[Iscah]

Eh... sort of. When you unlock Sastasha it does open up an Active Help about "Instanced Raids" and "Cleaning Instanced Raids" to talk about how instanced content work. These help texts don't mention anything about the type of content at all, although it's definitely implied that all instanced content is called a raid, though, so that might be briefly confusing? It definitely wouldn't make people think that 24-man content is harder because it's called a raid, regardless of any confusion it might cause of what difficulty a raid is. If anything it would be the opposite if they think Sastasha is a raid because of that help text. But everything after that, the duty finder and party finder, in particular, refers to 4-person content as either a dungeon or a guildhest so whatever confusion over 4 person content is called is quickly squashed.

I think the intent may be that all instanced content is some kind of "raid", and within that umbrella term a four-man raid is a "dungeon", 24-man is an "alliance raid", etc.

I was looking through the PS4 trophy list last night and noticed that it has trophies for "clear your first instanced raid" and "clear 100 instanced raids". It's long-earned so I can't be sure what it's counting, but I may be able to cross-check the date I earned it against the date I started playing, if I look it up later.

[Hasrat]

Being that HW and Ishgard looks like it is now gated behind this raid (is that correct because we did get a red MSQ marker with "you must do crystal tower"), does that also count for an average level 50 player in level 90 gear?

If what they say is true, and the requirement only crops up near the end of the patch content, the story quests start handing out i110 gear well before that point, which should also help assuage any concerns.

[Mhaeric]

I think the intent may be that all instanced content is some kind of "raid", and within that umbrella term a four-man raid is a "dungeon", 24-man is an "alliance raid", etc.

I was looking through the PS4 trophy list last night and noticed that it has trophies for "clear your first instanced raid" and "clear 100 instanced raids". It's long-earned so I can't be sure what it's counting, but I may be able to cross-check the date I earned it against the date I started playing, if I look it up later.

It's a bit of a mish-mash of terms in there turns out, in more ways than just ambiguity about the term raid. There's an achievement category for each of "Dungeons," "Trials," and "Raids." Within the Dungeons category there are achievements called "To the Dungeons I-VI" and "Dungeon Seige I-IV/Dungeon Master" with the requirement "Successfully complete X unique instanced dungeon raids or trials." and "Complete X instanced dungeon raids or trials." respectively. Whenever you reach one of these achievements it's the title of it that appears and the requirement itself only shows up if you look at the achievement in the achievement window. Achievements for completing specific trials shows up under the Trials category but completion of multiple trials is lumped in with dungeons under the Dungeon category.

[Grimr]

To OP, alliance raids are not to be confused with wow raids or anything else of that matter. Lab, Sycrus tower and world of darkness are pretty faceroll. tech if you went after the 3.0 relic weapon you would of had to unlock them anyways. Half the time when i queue alliance raids these three come up all the damm time. That is the major con having to do these thing for that queue. When i get lucky i get void ark series or ivalice.

Yes with these three you normally don't have to worry about mech most of the time.

[Grimr]

snip

They may be designed to be beaten blindly , but tell that to thundergod cid when he first came out. He is nerfed to hell now. But he was a wiper of raids back in the day.

[Hasrat]

Cid isn't in the Crystal Tower series, so, within the context of the post, was excluded. Why bring it up at all when this is about the Crystal Tower being faceroll?

[OryzaMercury]

Yes, yes, yes. I expected all of this fanboy nonsense when I posted my query. NOW I also find out that the ENTIRE Crystal Tower quest line, including THREE raids, needs to be absolutely completed before proceeding. I'm not sure if you boys realize this, but there are many older players out there (I know, a shock) that have jobs and kids and a myriad of life responsibility other than spending hours waiting for and participating in raids just to experience the story line (seriously... MrHappy, Meoni, Work to Game, Desperius, Lynx and the rest -- none of whom look like they have girlfriends aggroing them let only wives or kids). So, poo-poo me if you must, but I'm pretty much giving up on MSQ in FFXIV. Maybe when I'm MUCH older and retired and home bound.

Note: Just finishing 5.0 Shadowbringers was a Herculean task using strategies like waiting until EVERYONE was asleep to sneak in play time. I had to watch a lot of the cutscenes later on YouTube to fully enjoy the story as I simply didn't have the sit down time for it originally.

poo-poo you

[Frizze]

They may be designed to be beaten blindly , but tell that to thundergod cid when he first came out. He is nerfed to hell now. But he was a wiper of raids back in the day.

Cid was absolutely a wipe machine back in the day. And because people suck, abandon votes would pop up. I still stand 100% behind the statement that he could be done blind by an average group with communication and patience. He sticks to his pattern hard, so each mechanic you solve and get past moves you deeper into the fight. Each of his moves has a 5+ second windup. After the initial doom, he shows you the difference between the 3 sword swings(the order is random, but they have a visual and audio tell). And while he has a relatively large number of moves(cleansable debuff followed by tankbuster, chasing aoe puddles, passable tether with vuln debuff attack, etc), i only remember 3 of them being raid wipes. If Duskblade(3 people stand in the circle on either side of the group positions) was failed, it tended to end in a wipe. If Shadowblade(growing orbs) was failed, the bleed tended to be a fight ender. And Icewolf(kill the add in your area before it bursts) could be survived if one group failed, but 2 or 3 explosions at once would be fatal damage. Solving the attacks wasnt even the biggest problem at launch, it was that you needed at least half of each party to play at an acceptable level for the approx 10 minutes that the fight took. A full group incapable of doing duskblade meant you couldnt get past. A wiped group when he does the 6 orb shadowblade means that the surviving groups will have 2 extra puddles to safely drop, and might not be able to run fast enough to get to the safe zone. And yeah, he was nerfed to hell. I saw a group in the last mogtome event get 4 bleeds out of one shadowblade(the guy from one group dropped his puddle between the puddles of two people from another group that did it right) and the DoT was managable for the healers. The damage on a failed duskblade is much smaller now, and the burst adds dont pose much of a threat(on top of the fight usually being over by the time they spawn).

I cleared Cid blind on day one in a group of 20+ new players from the duty finder. It took a few pulls, but we managed just fine. Fight, fail, communicate, win. And the hardest CT boss is still miles easier then even nerfed Cid, so again - for the scared new people - this talk of a tough boss doesnt apply to what youre being asked to do. Nothing in the CT raids requires even half the team to play well or know what theyre doing. A single tank who knows where to stand the boss is honestly enough for like 7 of the 12 bosses between the 3 raids, and its astronomically rare(like almost statistically impossible) to get a group where no one knows and no one can solve the mechs for the other fights.