AURUM HELL

[Zholi]

This dungeon is extremely annoying as SMN and SCH (ironically the only two jobs I've done it on) for the reasons Penny stated. IMO it's the most unbalanced dungeon in the game simply because pet classes are flat-out awful here, whereas they're fine everywhere else. You pretty much have to resign yourself to working without a pet in the morbol boss fights. They die so fast it's hardly even worth resummoning. And there is absolutely nothing you can do to save them.

[Mang]

Aurum Vale is easily the worst dungeon in the entire game, although Cutter's Cry is pretty close.

[adahn]

Aww why all the hate? it's my favorite dungeon in the whole game. I did it many times as a DRG and kept doing it while leveling my SMN (entered as a SCH). Overall I did this dungeon probably close to 20 times, time out probably 3 times, 2-3 times someone left after a wipe. 60% ish the run is very smooth.

The small morbols give very good EXP, if you can ask your party to allow them to hatch. Also the morbol minion sells quite a bit.

I dunno if it was due to a fix but summons no longer die to the last boss' burrows. They still die to the first boss' poison so the first boss has been more difficult ironically. Also, the whole no red zone thing from the second boss can be pretty tricky, I think I dodge ADS laser 100% but still gets hit by his glower lol.

[Mishakai]

I'm not a fan of Aurum Vale either. Mostly because it seems to be a do it once and forget it dungeon. You get a lot of people who have never done it before, or are on their nth attempt to complete it via the duty finder. Once they finish and get promoted and move on, there's no reason to go back except helping FC/LS members.

But yeah, Aurum Vale made me so mad like the 6th time I tried it, I had to spend a weekend crafting to return to my zen place.

[Macho]

I prefer to have my tank sit on Mistress where she stands while Sowing that way DPS can stay targeted on Mistress and AoE from there. If you do it the other way with your DPS targeting a single Fruit you can end up with two DPS targeting the same one and someone can end up missing a very crucial cast or chance to use a WS due to their target dying mid cast/WS thus allowing 1 or more of the seedlings to spawn. Targeting the Fruit can also cause an AoE not to reach all of them.

Working as a team is key but if you have a blm, I can't stress how much easier this makes it. I leveled on this dungeon and only once did a tank do this and omg it makes it easy. First time she lays eggs the blm can use raging strikes and handle the eggs on his/her own. Second time is a team effort but again keeping her at the eggs makes it so the blm can stay targeted on her and they can cast fire aoe from a distance(I don't think a lot of people realize blm needs a target for fire aoe). Third time she lays eggs blm uses LB and you should be done a little after that.

[Reiterpallasch]

May I ask how? I had a character in Tonberry pre-patch who was able to unlock AK without doing AV but was unable to do so on my character in Balmung. When I reached that part of the Relic Reborn quest, there was no option to unlock AK by talking to an NPC or something.

It should come from the dungeon guy in Vesper Bay. While the link isn't completely up to date, they didn't remove the dungeon from him when they made the GC change:

http://www.bluegartr.com/faqs/ffxiv/...t-dungeon-here

[Limecat]

The best part about Aurum Vale is that you never have to go back there again.

[Terius]

Want to know a secret?

I've never set foot in the place. I did my GC quest, skipped it and thought, "Oh I didnt do that....nevermind." ^^

[Astarica]

You don't have Flare at Aurum Vale as BLM, so at best you get 2 Fire 2s off (which will kill all the pods) which is a base potency of 200 (100X2). So your 4 guys in the group has to combine in AE potency of 200 in 2 attacks. While some classes are better suited for AE than others, 200 potency just isn't that much. I'm sure there's a way to construct a group such that even getting 200 potency worth of AE is difficult, but most reasonable groups should not have a problem finding the raw firepower. You really have to be ready for the pods because they hatch very quickly.

[Gradlein]

It should come from the dungeon guy in Vesper Bay. While the link isn't completely up to date, they didn't remove the dungeon from him when they made the GC change:

Unfortunately, that guy won't give you the quest unless you already completed Aurum Vale. You'll get the red quest icon and when you try to get the quest, it will have the message "Requires Aurum Vale" or something along that line. That's what I did on my second character.