Astral and Umbral

[Zohar_Lahar]

This being the technical term for light and dark elements in FF14, I'm curious about a lacking of it compared to other elements in A Realm Reborn. Specifically, there's no astral/umbral resistance on character sheets, nor are any (current) abilities are aspected to it. I thought I read THM used to specialize in that stuff in 1.0 before the revamp.

But the real puzzle to me is why there's no astral or umbral crystals for crafting, or Brand of Astral/Umbral crafting skills. Seems really weird, since miners can dig up astral rocks and umbral (and antumbral) rocks, and there are "Unaspected" crystals in Mor Dhona.

What's up with that?

[Anonymoose]

Astral and Umbral aren't so much elements as polarities. Earth, Water, and Ice are Umbral elements (with Ice at the pole), and Fire, Wind, and Lightning are Astral elements (with lightning at the pole). That's why when you're on Black Mage today, spamming fire slightly pulls your body's balance towards astral, while spamming ice slightly pulls it towards umbral. On top of this, Astral and Umbral exist in all things - even their opposite polarity's elements. It's kinda like a yin and yang kind of thing.

In 1.X, something that was "umbral aspected" was 33% Water, 33% Earth, 34% Ice.

I'm still trying to work out how Shadow Sprites from the Chrysalis fit into it. I'm not confident that "umbral" and "Darkness" are synonymous, but there's also the Astral Realignment buff in Labyrinth of the Ancients, which claims that there's an "Astral Realm" for "ghostly beings."

[Darkstride]

Yes, in 1.0 Thaumaturge used Astral and Umbral attacks that were essentially light and dark polarities on the elemental wheel. Dia was an astral DoT that lowered enemy defense and Bio was an umbral DoT that lowered enemy attack (if I remember correctly). They could also lower enemies' resistance to Astral or Umbral type attacks. Thaumaturge originally did not carry the natural elements such as Fire, Thunder, etc....those belonged to Conjurer.

As the above response stated, the natural elements also fall under Astral or Umbral alignments which is easily seen with Black Mage as it is now.

From 1.0, the elemental "rules": see Chapter 4:
http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Es...e_Six_Elements