Variant & Criterion Dungeons

[SassyAssassin]

lol, SAME! It was too adorable to NOT no-life it. >>;;



And a bit curious with the grouping up for this. How quick are runs when you have all 4 people?

I did all of my runs solo, most of them as a SGE, and each run was pretty much 20 on the dot (minus a few where I derped on bosses). I had tried my RPR and DNC on a couple of runs too, but honestly they didn't feel that much quicker, and I hated the healing skill. With SGE you can just Kardia yourself and then use your oGCD skills if/when you need. Was pretty easy. :X

Also, do the random groups normally just follow whichever door Nanamo chooses, or do you find they are trying to work towards specific routes?

I knooooow so cute!!!!! And the flying animation????
As for soloing, I did dancer and smn, smn felt great if you want to kill stuff fast also because you can add the shield AND the pet shield on yourself, you barely need any healing unless you run into all the aoes haha.

Criterion? Yeah you need heals. You need heals BAD. Did not finish that.

[Deveryn]

lol, SAME! It was too adorable to NOT no-life it. >>;;



And a bit curious with the grouping up for this. How quick are runs when you have all 4 people?

I did all of my runs solo, most of them as a SGE, and each run was pretty much 20 minutes on the dot (minus a few where I derped on bosses). I had tried my RPR and DNC on a couple of runs too, but honestly they didn't feel that much quicker, and I hated the healing skill. With SGE you can just Kardia yourself and then use your oGCD skills if/when you need. Was pretty easy. :X

Also, do the random groups normally just follow whichever door Nanamo chooses, or do you find they are trying to work towards specific routes? I feel like this could be really annoying to coordinate with randoms unless no one cares which version they get.

I've done a few groups and a solo. I feel like groups can be slightly faster, but with people still learning mechs, it can get slowed down by trying to pick them up. It's random who does what. I wouldn't be surprised to run into people that want to do a puzzle the wrong way to get all the notes.

[Rithy255]

I'm happy but also disappointed, the content ive played was great, I love dungeons with pathways, just keep in mind if you group up you might get a route that's undesirable, mind you ive only played the casual dugeons.

The good:
>No role requirements has a good side effect that you can't tank privilege through things, I actually kind of like how hard it hit on my first few runs when I messed up a mech, I generally took a heal/raise as PLD mostly but depending if you got a healer you may wanna free up space for that strong "dot", Generally take a Dot, heal or raise as tank, I love how you can switch classes mid dungeon as well.
>Bosses are actually very fun for a normal fight, I've always liked certain new EW dungeons that have heavy movement and punishing mechs, I'm glad they're willing to be less hand holdy, it's not perfect but I think it's pretty fun
>Replayable, I've had serval runs now and its way more replayable then any old dungeon, its not perfect but it's really good for what it is

The Bad
>Rewards, I'm sorry but the glam rewards I can't say I'm a fan of, mind you if they had some really nice looking sets maybe this would be a positive, I also think savage dungeons should reward something like 625 gear, I mean it's 6.25, at this point I don't think it's a bad idea (maybe it is?) to reward players who might wanna just do harder dungeons, as raids and getting a group that isn't PF can be a bit more annoying, I hope they actually want to push for more of a hardcore dungeon crowd as well... I'm pretty disappointed to say the least with the rewards, I feel like even if they just wanted it to be cosmetic rewards, a few other things they need more variety in rewards If the content is meant to be way harder then ext I really dont see why you can't get some high leveled gear (doesn't and shouldn't have to be bis or on par with savage).
>AOE (In normal) is a joke and a complete waste of time, let it hit harder if you're going to scale dps and healer hp higher it really doesn't matter if you got a tank or not (esp if you can bring var rampart), hopefully next dungeons allow you to pull more or mobs hit harder.

Overall I'm happy they're making some dungeons more fun from even a casual perspective, honestly I feel like having different routes and stuff just makes dungeons so much better, I hope they keep mech heavy combat and fast paced combat, a big problem with a lot of dungeons is they're not just "ez" but they're very boring and don't teach players to avoid mechs well, they should generally actually scale gear better in a lot of dungeons I find because you got such good gear when you normally replay them it becomes a joke compared to min item level where it might be at least a bit engaging to the average player, I just really hope we get some better glam rewards and possibly just better rewards for the savage version I would say a lot of players would be more compelled to play.

[caffe_macchiato]

From my experience, criterion (normal) seems to be in between a savage and an ultimate. Is this correct? You have savage-level difficulty with the bosses, but with multiple in succession and you can't take a break like a raid tier. Savage is similar to normal but with no resurrection.

While it's admirable that Square Enix is putting in more hard content, it seems like this will divide the player base further between raiders and non-raiders. There's already a steep learning curve between normal and endgame content. The difference between variant and criterion dungeons are extremely steep. Many people will like this, and that's fine, but I don't see this content retaining popularity since there's not a lot of reward for clearing. At least Square Enix gave it a shot, and that's something. There's not much else they can do before 6.3.

[SentioftheHoukai]

Not surprised or disappointed. If you thought there would be gear in this with dungeons, crafted, tome and savage already out there, you played yourself.

Makes me wonder if anything makes you happy or brings joy and smile to your face. Or if you just smile and nod as the tenders bring you your soup with no solids in it and sedating music as you sit in your calming lawn chair.

These are not a replacement for bozja/eureka...This is explicitly new content and we are getting a new deep dungeon later on which does take the place of bozja content.

Since when was Bozja/Eureka in any way comparable to Deep Dungeons? One was always significantly larger in scope and had more lore to uncover, the other was barebones as all hells and had practically no story at all. Face it, and admit it. We got a downgrade.

I disagree. After progging a fresh run, there's value in the variety of jobs.

This whole set of dungeons is them thinking outside the box. There's finally 4 man content that's legit challenging and no one is excluded.

If so, then they have a lot of work to do yet.

If this is "thinking outside the box" to them, the best they can do then they're not gonna make it. This is not innovation, this is toeing the line.

Besides, so many people mentioned it being FFXIV's Mythic + content that it's not even that. It's just a lesser version of what WoW has already done. Innovation is defined by the invention of something not done before, a road never before tread. This is not that road.

[Iscah]

I had a thought on what glamour they could have included, which is in the game but not accessible. Have you noticed that there are a few different variations of the Oasis/Riviera/Glade sets? I think there's at least two other versions of each gendered Oasis top – from memory, a fancy red version of each, a sleeveless version of the men's top and yellow-sash version of the women's top, and I've seen that last one on a male NPC so they went to the effort of adjusting those versions when they got gender-unlocked. So it seems likely that they're also adjusted for all races as well, or they can draw on the models of the accessible versions.

The Glade gear goes even beyond this and there seem to be entire designs we don't have access to – I suspect that peasant dress we see on a number of NPCs is meant to be the female counterpart to the Glade Tunic that we get, and there are multiple versions of the tunic, including a shirt version that cuts off at waist length, and two versions of boots: the mender at the Gridania inn is wearing knee-length boots, and characters wearing the peasant dress have a thigh-length version. (I accidentally got the camera wedged inside the skirt of an NPC when attempting to look at her shoes...)

I also thought of a missed opportunity on the Noir set, because it would have been a good chance to give us "rolled-up sleeves", built as elbow-length gloves with mostly bare arms and just the cuff around the upper edge of the piece.

[Deveryn]

Makes me wonder if anything makes you happy or brings joy and smile to your face. Or if you just smile and nod as the tenders bring you your soup with no solids in it and sedating music as you sit in your calming lawn chair.

You should stop trying to read from what's not presented there. I said what I said and that's all that needed to be said. I don't express much joy here because I already know what the response will be and it's rather dull.

[OgruMogru]

I had a thought on what glamour they could have included, which is in the game but not accessible. Have you noticed that there are a few different variations of the Oasis/Riviera/Glade sets? I think there's at least two other versions of each gendered Oasis top – from memory, a fancy red version of each, a sleeveless version of the men's top and yellow-sash version of the women's top, and I've seen that last one on a male NPC so they went to the effort of adjusting those versions when they got gender-unlocked. So it seems likely that they're also adjusted for all races as well, or they can draw on the models of the accessible versions.

The Glade gear goes even beyond this and there seem to be entire designs we don't have access to – I suspect that peasant dress we see on a number of NPCs is meant to be the female counterpart to the Glade Tunic that we get, and there are multiple versions of the tunic, including a shirt version that cuts off at waist length, and two versions of boots: the mender at the Gridania inn is wearing knee-length boots, and characters wearing the peasant dress have a thigh-length version. (I accidentally got the camera wedged inside the skirt of an NPC when attempting to look at her shoes...)

I also thought of a missed opportunity on the Noir set, because it would have been a good chance to give us "rolled-up sleeves", built as elbow-length gloves with mostly bare arms and just the cuff around the upper edge of the piece.

Oh my god I would have loved this! I glam both the oasis tops quite often and would loooove more variations!

[Iskander]

anyone figure out the Malachite Portico puzzle?

[Skivvy]

anyone figure out the Malachite Portico puzzle?

This is the guide that I used for my run-through: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...iant_dungeons/

For the sack part specifically (these are the 4 variants):

#1 Room with Green + Yellow Sacks, take the GREEN SACK in the NE corner on top of the rubble, and the YELLOW SACK in the SE corner on the very small hill of dirt, after clearing the enemies after teleporting, there is a door to the west behind the rubble that you can open before moving ahead. This door won't have a name or be interactable until Nanamo walks up to the gate to leave, do not walk up to Nanamo immediately if you want to open this door first.

#2 Same as #1, but do not open the door

#3 Primary Path, use two of the wrong sacks (don't activate the teleporter) and trigger the puff circles after the door opens

#4 Primary Path, use two of the wrong sacks (don't activate the teleporter) and don't trigger the puff circles after the door opens