Why Aurum Vale is Loathed

[Felime]

I forgot this dungeon existed until today when a Roulette slotted me into an already-in-progress run. They were 16 minutes into the dungeon and hadn't cleared the very first room; three tanks before me abandoned and ate the penalty the moment they saw which run it was.

Does anyone have good memories of this place? I haven't done it in over three years but still almost reflexively dropped the party. I swear the experience is so negative scientists use Aurum Vale to test for clinical anxiety.

So I did the run, mostly because I figure one good deed is worth a lot of chocolate cake later. It was just as awful as I remember. But thinking it over afterwards I might know why the experience is so bad: Everything about Aurum Vale is the opposite of the normal FFXIV experience.

Broadly speaking there are a several categories of things I enjoy about the game: Skill/Experience, Challenge, Teams and Job Roles, Equipment, Mechanics, Loot and Visuals. Aurum Vale breaks nearly everything in all the wrong ways.

• Skill/Experience
Players spend a lot of time learning skills, abilities and synergies between actions. There are whole groups that argue endlessly about damage rotations and methodology. It is an intense, in depth topic that changes over time. But Aurum Vale removes all of that by awkwardly level capping at 49.

Suddenly tanks are missing enmity generation tools, DPS get weird half-rotations and Healers are stuck with a limited toolset. Lower level content is always an exercise in remembering how to do things but the Vale is on a whole new level. Which is bad, because...

• Challenge
...the difficulty is top of the chart for that level range. Most dungeons progressively ease in mechanics one at a time until the final area. It is a teaching progression: One enemy will demonstrate an AoE or pull-in, then later a debuff mechanic shows up or players are taught to use environmental objects. Then at the end everything will come together for a "final test" or boss that sums up what the dungeon's theme was.

But Aurum Vale takes the idea of a learning progression and slam dunks it into the trash: The very first room has wandering, linking monsters. Pools you can't stand in. Cramped movement and bad camera angles. Enemies that pull in, then AoE. Long range attackers grouped together with short-range threats. Environmental hazards that throw people around. None of this is "learning friendly" and a one-second mistake often leads to a party wipe. All of this in the first minute or two!

This leads to frustrations because...

[Felime]

• Teams and Job Roles
...people have a hard time doing their part. Tanks struggle to pull without grabbing too many extras while backtracking to pick up accidental enemies. The "crowd" gets out of hand and can whiplash back and forth as enmity drops or new aggro happens. Even going slow doesn't guarantee management; monsters can aggro from farther away than most pulling happens.

Meanwhile damage dealing members are all over the place avoiding puddles, dodging ranged AoEs and running into wandering monsters. Prioritizing becomes a nightmare as some enemies stay at max projectile range and moving to them may trigger additional fights. Healers struggle to top up everyone from random damage. Pets, both DPS and healing, will stand in puddles and die if not managed. Even for experienced players it is easy to get thrown into personal crisis mode and just handle whatever is right in front of you.

And it doesn't help that...

• Equipment
...level 47-49 is a weird spot for gear versus skills. DPS get a bump in damage, however healers and tanks don't get abilities to even things out until level 50. This makes enmity and crowd control a little bit more dicey than normal during a time when everything is already in danger of going wrong.

Healers juggle drawing attention from accidental pulls while trying to keep members alive. Meanwhile tanks run out of MP using AoE enmity abilities or try to maintain hate individually on whichever target the melee are fighting. In a weird way Aurum is the only place where having exceptionally good DPS can actually cause issues as the pack bounces back and forth.

Monsters benefit from this sort of dysfunction. The longer it takes to reduce the "pack" size the more incoming damage occurs. Not to mention an accidental aggro will quite happily slip by to pound a back line job to death in five or six seconds. Most enemies are at (or near) the highest damage output for the level, which is bad because...

• Mechanics
...the difficulty suddenly spikes with no warning. The bosses in Aurum Vale abruptly introduce three new mechanics: Stacking damage over time, no telegraphs and ignoring enmity.

Stacking DoT is especially insidious because it is not obvious, drains the healer's MP trying to keep oblivious members alive and kills assisting pets. Even seasoned players can forget and end up with extra damage.

No telegraphs is a hard departure from everything the game teaches new players. Avoiding telegraphs is so fundamental it is taught in the Hall of Novices; changing that mechanic should have been a dungeon all by itself. But what makes it so over the top is the penalty for error: A single Glower nearly kills non-tanks and the angle of attack is wider than belt sizes at a buffet.

Which makes ignoring enmity a problem. Bosses will simply stop paying attention to the tank, run off and do their own thing. This is not something new players are expecting to happen.

[Felime]

Normally having a new player will work itself out; experienced people can cover or make up for missed mechanics or extra damage. However in the Vale a single new player (or untimely distraction) can cause a wipe in every single encounter entirely by accident. Which would be fine if the rewards were good enough that players want to spend extra time educating each other and coordinating, however...

• Loot
Nearly everything is "Aetherial", unrepairable trash. Even experience can be junk if impatient or inexperienced people don't spend extra time to "hatch" additional enemies. There is very little tangible benefit to the entire dungeon and nothing that gives people a sense of reward or accomplishment. It just feels like punishment to be there in every way.

Most unpleasant experiences can be endured if the final reward is worth the time and effort. Endgame content is built entirely around that sort of "grind" and seems to be doing well. But with no incentive to make it worthwhile the only thing left to enjoy are the aesthetics of the dungeon-- the look and feel. Which is bad, because...

• Visuals
...Aurum Vale's design is the opposite of appealing. The floor is literally poison and discourages exploration. Tight, cramped passages make for difficult camera management and targeting. Enemies are awkwardly placed and chaotic fights happen in small areas. The geography actually conspires to unfairly murder party members by breaking line of sight in odd ways-- on a memorable occasion the healer couldn't save the tank because a knee-high root stopped them from "seeing" the party.

The monsters are copies from creatures found elsewhere. The music is uninspired. Nothing about the dungeon sets it apart from anything else: There are no unique features or interesting parts. No one revisits Aurum just to look around and everything about it is done better somewhere else.

• • •

If someone made a list of everything enjoyable about FFXIV then Aurum Vale would stand out by doing the exact opposite of each one. Then it adds punishment on top.

Maximum level difficulty, skills artificially constricted, party dynamics forced apart, unexplained mechanics dumped in, worse loot than normal(!), terrible layout, players given no incentive to explain things, everyone punished for one person's error.

Aurum Vale a master class in what not to do in dungeon design and consistently makes every "Worst Dungeon in FF14" list. Imagine a Hard Mode remake of this instance if you don't feel like sleeping tonight.

//Whoops, three parter there. Sorry.

[Amariel34]

Aurum Vale is NOT that hard. It's just that tanks have to pull carefully and dps have to be aware of where they are standing. Situational awareness is key in there. And sometimes a little LoS pulling never hurts. It's just hard to speed run in there, so people hate it. Honestly, other than people wiping in the first room cause they try to rush it, it's not bad at all. I must be one of the few people that doesn't mind it.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Aurum Vale is loathed because it requires paying attention in the first room instead of blindly rushing in or you'll get outnumbered and murdered. PUGs are not so great at paying attention.

Also, it's a cave, like many ARR dungeons. From Sastasha to Dzemael Darkhold, the pre-50 content has a LOT of caves. It's not terribly interesting to look at.

[Amariel34]

You know what I'd love to see? A "Bog of Eternal Stench"-themed dungeon. xD

[Edax]

The Aurum Vale even breaks immersion. I thought as a Dragoon, I could jump over the sewer water. But nope, even Elusive Jumping over it means you get afflicted all the same.

[Brill_]

I like AV. As a tank, I like having to put a little thought it what I pull, when and keeping an eye out for roaming mobs. Much more enjoyable than mindless wall to wall pulling we have in every dungeon since AV.

[Kuroka]

Imagine a Hard Mode remake of this instance if you don't feel like sleeping tonight.

Im actually longing for that <3

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

I remember having a party where the Tank and Healer both got killed by swing when I was Ninja. So I popped Diversion, let the Bard Tank, got his HP as low as I could, and then finished him with LB.

Only one commendation, of course.