Ixion and Stygian Ash hidden effects

[Mandudez]

A few rumors got me curious enough to do some tests to see just exactly how much power the ash holds. I never agreed with some people that said using an ash on ixion would be an automatic gold but enough people reported higher than expected rewards after poor performances thanks to deaths or lagg when fighting ixion that I decided to check it out further. My theory going in and still currently is using that the ash at any time even if it does not break the shield adds a significant amount of fate credit and essentially bumps you up a tier from what you would have normally gotten. So bronze>silver or silver>gold. I have never used the ash to break the shield. I normally used it at around 90% on ixion after the fight has started. I have done four tests so far where I am solo in all of them with no chocobo summoned and here are my results:

1: (PLD) Used ash, kept myself alive with a few heals and did a shield lob every 30-ish seconds. Got silver.
.
2: (PLD) Used ash, did shield oath + full hate combo only got up to yellow on the hate bar. Got gold.

3: (PLD) No ash, did the exact same thing as #2. Got silver.

4: (Bard) Used ash, died 5 seconds after that, someone rezzed me at around 50%, I did about 15 total attacks before dying again. Got silver.

5: (PLD) No ash, got there late with a friend in a 2 person party. I got 10 hits in and got bronze. She (AST) got 2 hits in after using ash and got silver.


~~~Other people note that it only adds to your own personal credit if you are in a party. One person said that the ash user got gold while the rest of the party all got silver. (credits to cutecookie19 on reddit for that)
This does make sense to me as the ash itself does not seem to generate any hate on its own and fate credit in a party is based on hate generated by all members. I have not done any test or research on this myself though.

So I did finally get to test this (kinda accidentally but it was a decent test all in all). Data point #5 shows me as PLD clearly getting more hate built up than my AST friend where I did not use an ash but she did. I got bronze and she ended up with silver. Obviously the threshold for just getting bronze is registering 1 hit of hate on a fate so the bump up from bronze to silver is simple. I am not a fate expert so I can't say for sure exactly how much you need to do to work your way in to the silver bracket to earn gold with the ash but just being there, alive and in a party should be far more than enough.

[Shu_Silberauge]

One person said that the ash user got gold while the rest of the party all got silver. (credits to cutecookie19 on reddit for that)

Confirmed that this isnt true at all, just a rumor, because my full party used the ash and all got gold ( sure we fight with the boss, done alot of dmg and healing )
For Sure, Ash make it easy to get gold, but maybe its just a big lie and only the dmg of the full party make it easyer, because 8 member party = reduce the amount of the needet dmg on boss alot more then 4 member party

[Mandudez]

Another data point added.

5: (PLD) No ash, got there late with a friend in a 2 person party. I got 10 hits in and got bronze. She (AST) got 2 hits in after using ash and got silver.

Confirmed that this isnt true at all, just a rumor, because my full party used the ash and all got gold ( sure we fight with the boss, done alot of dmg and healing )
For Sure, Ash make it easy to get gold, but maybe its just a big lie and only the dmg of the full party make it easyer, because 8 member party = reduce the amount of the needet dmg on boss alot more then 4 member party

Well yes, it is still fairly simple for a full party to all earn gold from party hate alone. In that case there is no way of knowing if the ash did anything or not because there is no further reward tier that it could bump the ash user up to lol. The example that you quoted was from a party that only earned silver from party hate alone. There was 1 person in that party who used an ash thus bumping his personal reward to gold. I just still see many people saying that they got less than gold on ixion so I figured that I'd share this info to help others get their mounts faster.

[Elana]

Hello!
Not a fate expert neither, but I have done a lot of Fates in this game (6k ish ?) and what I can say is that the reward (usually) depends on the enmity generated And the heals (not the over heals) done And the damage done.
The thing with this specific fate, is that the Ash, when used, is a debuff that increases the damage taken by Ixion. As such, all the 'bonus damage' done by every persons hitting Ixion is counted as your own damage. Which is why, I believe you usually get an higher rating after using an Ash; imagine the vulnerability up being 10%, for each million of damage done, you are doing 100k damage...

I have not done anything to prove this, but it might explain why you are getting silver/gold easily.
Now to explain why other member of the party didn't get gold... perhaps it is because not all the damage you are doing counts for them ?

It's just an idea, you are free to make your own tests again !

Have a good day !