The Elements and their connections

[Morningstar1337]

Okay I ran the Library for the first time, however I was only able to check a few tomes, but one of them mentioned the relationships of the elements

the first of which is that they are in a cycle that goes Lightning (yes Lightning, not Levin) > Fire > Earth > Ice > Water > Wind > Lightning (the Ice to Wind being part of the water cycle obviously)

the 2nd part of that book notes Lightning, Earth and Water are "The three Conquests" while Fire, Ice and Wind are called "the Three Submisses" however this seem to be an indirect connection between the groups as they are their own cycles, going Lightning > Water > Earth and Wind > Ice > Fire, respectively

I was wondering who of you guys think of this and if there are other connections between the elements beyond the book and the BLM and WHM spell groups?

[Anonymoose]

This all goes back to an old book from Version 1.0 called, Essences & Permutations - A Treatise of the Six Elements. FINAL FANTASY XIV's elemental wheel takes a lot of cues from traditional Japanese elements while taking pieces of both Chinese and Medieval alchemy.

The outside of the elemental wheel rotates clockwise from the bottom - Ice, Water, Wind, Lightning, Fire, Earth, and back to Ice. These are how the elements are said to generate (the Nativities) - ice melts into water, water evaporates into wind, wind gathers storms, lightning ignites fires, fires burns all to earth, earth harbors the cold and creates ice.

There are also two "rock-paper-scissors" cycles in the system.

Conquest
Earth grounds Lightning.
Lightning boils Water.
Water Erodes Earth.

Submission
Fire is extinguished by Wind.
Wind is obstructed by Ice.
Ice is melted by Fire.

Though these aren't really used in the battle system (yet?), they influence a lot of subtleties in the lore. For example, when we wanted to nullify Garuda's wind barriers, we used over-aspected ice crystals to block the wind. We had to keep searching, too, because at first we came across over-aspected wind crystals, which would have just made everything worse.

Time also follows these cycles - from the days of the week to the influence of the months to the order of the Calamities themselves.

Barely-Related Digression: I've always hoped that as we approach LV99, the game would give Conjurer and Black Mage their three missing elements back to utilize them in different ways (because they did the best they could to make the class-to-job transition fit the lore, but not without some obvious hiccups). Imagine if they gave lightning back to Conjurer in the form of Shock Spikes, which had a chance to temporarily tilt a mob's aether towards lightning and make stone hit harder during that window. Imagine if you could cap a Black Mage rotation with a single-target Tornado instead of AOE-Flare and convert-Blizzard for twice the damage. Lost opportunities, I tell you.

[Morningstar1337]

This all goes back to an old book from Version 1.0 called, Essences & Permutations - A Treatise of the Six Elements.

This old book is the book I refernced in the OP, Like I said, I didn't read the first book (the info come from the 2nd volume) so I was wondering if the first book also mentioend something about Elements

[Anonymoose]

This old book is the book I refernced in the OP, Like I said, I didn't read the first book (the info come from the 2nd volume) so I was wondering if the first book also mentioend something about Elements

Only one of the books in Gubal references Elements.

The Gubal books are:
On Garlean Hierarchy Volumes I & II (Garlean naming conventions)
Essences and Permutations (Elements)
Over the Horizon (The New World)
Leather-bound Diary I & II (Goldsmith obsessed with succubi tries to summon one, it goes badly.)

If you missed a book, it was likely one of the non-element ones. The element one is just what I listed above, Nativities, Conquests, Submissions.

[Gwaeron]

There are other connections between elements. I can think of umbral vs. astral elements, for example.

Astral: Fire, Wind, Lightning
Umbral: Ice, Earth, Water

Conjurers and thaumaturges could each use some/all elements regardless of astral/umbral properties. But there were two more classes in the files that never had time to appear in the game: Mystic, which would use Astral elements and Arcanist, which would use Umbral elements and traps.

This split between umbral and astral elements does not mean much in the game now. The "new" arcanist seems to be non-elemental and mystic never happened, but this information might still be interesting to know for someone?

Astral Fire and Umbral Ice come to mind. Maybe there are some more allusions to it in the current game? In the six element cycle, they are grouped together according to astral/umbral properties.

[Kaiser-Ace]

I also submit that Nihlity (The Elemental, Oasok's atribute) is a force in and of it's self in the form of an anti-element.

[Shirobi]

Lightning weak to Earth weak to Wind weak to Ice weak to Fire weak to Water weak to Lightning

Lighting grounded by Earth, Earth eroded by Wind, Wind blocked by Ice, Ice melted by Fire, Fire extinguished by Water, Water struck by Lightning

There ya go.

[Morningstar1337]

Lightning weak to Earth weak to Wind weak to Ice weak to Fire weak to Water weak to Lightning

Lighting grounded by Earth, Earth eroded by Wind, Wind blocked by Ice, Ice melted by Fire, Fire extinguished by Water, Water struck by Lightning

There ya go.

Thank you. But I was asking if there were other connections, why the BLM and WHM have the spells they did (mostly BLM, WHM's spells could be a Land, Sea, Sky thing fitting with the nature motif), and why the intial primal were Ifrit,, Titan, and Garuda (and by extention why the later elemental primals were Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva)

[Shirobi]

I have no idea for that then. FFXIV has sort of shook up the FF status quo by mostly omitting light and dark based magic and moving spells like Cure over to elements like wind.

That's a good set of questions.

[Anonymoose]

why the BLM and WHM have the spells they did

Conjurer once had all six elements, Black Mages traditionally have all six elements, and XIV couldn't really reconcile Conjurer turning into Black Mage, so when Thaumaturge turned into Black Mage and Conjurer turned into White Mage, they split the elements in a way that made sense - CNJ/WHM wields the powers of nature, THM/BLM wields the powers of ruin. There's little more to the division than, "SE did what they could with what they had."

It was a huge challenge <...> this is one of the times we just blew it up and weren’t able to put it all back together. It doesn’t happen a lot, but every now and then you just have to say, “Okay, we can’t explain this, and if we tried it would sound forced.” It comes down to the system, and you don’t explain them, and you hope people don’t notice, and then people notice, and they have this podcast, and I have to say…

Interview with Gamer Escape, Fan Fest '14 (Vegas)

As I said earlier, I keep hoping that they'll try to give both jobs their "full set" back in some form by LV99, but it's probably hope in vain.

Why the intial primal were Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda

This is all about which areas are (and are not) in the game and in which order you visit them.
The earlier you visit a region, the earlier you see what threatens it.

Phase One: Introductions
The early levels are spent in Thanalan, La Noscea, and the Black Shroud, which are under threat by the Amalj'aa, Kobold, and Ixal, respectively.

Phase Two: Cleaning Up
Of course, Limsa is also under threat from the Indigo Deep by the Sahagin, so once each of the introductory three cities has its fair share of thematic threat handling, you go back for Leviathan. And, also, of course, the Sylphs still live deeper in the Black Shroud, so you go back for Ramuh.

Phase Three: Moving On
With all of that out of the way, you can go on to Coerthas and fight Shiva.

Get your darksteelfoil hats for this next section, I'm about to make myself seem craz(y/ier)
I have no proof for any of this, it's just a suspicion I harbor based on a perceived pattern (that may or may not really exist). I think there was also a second layer to the primal order / area logic based on the fact that each region is associated with an element and members of the Twelve representing that element.

A Theoretical Pattern:
The first and last primals you face are in their element-appropriate region. Ifrit appears in Thanalan (fire), Shiva appears in Coerthas (ice). The second and third primals faced still represented the Black Shroud (earth) and La Noscea (wind) ... but backwards. Why? I think it was to make room for the others without breaking anything.

Dravania (water) and Gyr Abania (lightning) weren't in the game for the base version, which was all about the elements and the Land. One was abandoned and one was lost to the Empire, respectively, anyway, but that also meant that two regions had to double up on primals to make up for it. I suspect there was a time when SE had to shift it all around so it would make as much sense as possible, and that's how we ended up with the order we did. (They had to do the same thing with the stones of the Twelve, if you remember; some had to get shifted around a bit.)

The Sahagin (Leviathan) end up conflicting with Limsa Lominsa, which is the closest city-state to Dravania (water). The Sylphs (Ramuh) end up conflicting with Gridania, which is the nearest city-state to Gyr Abania (lightning).

For some reason that remains unknown to me (assuming I'm not just making all of this up and seeing patterns where none exist), they chose not to have the Ixal in Limsa Lominsa (wind) and the Kobold in the Black Shroud (earth). It would have made for a much more consistent pattern, in my opinion. There's even a volcano east of the Black Shroud for the Kobold to call home (granted it's currently extinct, lol). I guess the cultural lore just all works out better with them swapped.

The point, probably, is that 1.0 was kind of a mess and SE has done everything they can to make it all work.