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.

[kikix12]

Tanks struggle to pull without grabbing too many extras while backtracking to pick up accidental enemies.

Sorry, but huh?! They wouldn't struggle if they used their tools. They have 15 yalm attack for a reason. Use it and you won't get more than one group.

Also, it's a good place to learn situational awareness. The only reason why this dungeons first room is so bad is because players never gave a darn about where they stand. "I'll pull two or three more mobs? Who cares, the tanks will pick them up.".

It's a level 49 dungeon. Everyone can make a mistake, but no run should die a second time on it. It's easy to avoid death doing basic, fundamental things that you are taught in the first minutes of just about any action game in existence. Why people here are excused from learning it?!

The bosses in Aurum Vale abruptly introduce three new mechanics: Stacking damage over time, no telegraphs and ignoring enmity.

Ignoring enmity is nothing new by the time Aurum Vale hits. It's as early as Copperbell Mines on the last boss where he ignores the tank to wham the wall, same with the spawns.

In a party-wide context it's as early as Halatali, with the last boss throwing the fireballs at random party members during his immunity phase if I remember correctly. It's also present in Haukke Manor and Brayflox Longstop among many others.

As for no telegraphs...sorry. Though its swings and swipes may cause a problem (the swing in particular is huge and can catch a melee even if one runs away as fast as possible due to PING issues)...but glower and eye of beholder are really basic. Why would anyone fall for glower past the first time? If a boss, any boss, looks at you at any time, you run. It's simple. The only question is whether to run to the back/front (eye of beholder) or to the side (glower), but again...that's just looking at the skills once. He does have literally four skills. Out of those skills only two have a chance of hitting you generally. Swing and glower for melee, eye of beholder and glower if ranged and swing and swipe if tank. If you fall for any other skill past the first time you see them then you are doing something fundamental horribly wrong. And if you don't, then there are only two skills you need to remember. Cannot be easier than that.

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.

This is the fault of the game for not making Esuna significant. I don't know how a stacking debuff may not be "not obvious". It's a debuff, it's got a number by it and people keep getting more and more damage without being attacked. That's as obvious as it gets. What is a bit less obvious is how to deal with it, but that's already common knowledge.


Let's not assume people that play the game have zero learning ability, yes? The majority of problem in this dungeon comes from people having overblown ego and dropping the fault on others instead of admitting to screwing stuff up and adapting. There's nothing fundamentally hard in this dungeon. Just the fact that making mistakes affect the entire party more often than not. THAT'S something really new.

PS: The first room can be "cheesed" if the tank and healer know what they are doing. Just go hugging the left wall all the way to the boss room (the healer needs to be right on the tanks tails) and behind the corner of it. That will pull the ranged mobs since they have line of sight just like players do. And voila. You have pulled two or three groups of mobs that can easily be tanked and killed by AoE in one go and you're already at the boss room. But have the healer lag behind and the tank is dead due to THEM losing the line of sight.

[RokkuEkkusu]

I was with you on some points until you said this:

• 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.

There are 2 mandatory story dungeons that already have the specified qualities.

For stacking dots, the last boss of Brayflox's Longstop poison can stack up to 4 levels. It only occurs when people get hit by too much aoes and/or the fight drags too long to where the healer doesn't have enough MP to esuna the poison off.

For the telegraphs, the first boss of Stone Vigil has an attack called "Swinge". It has no aoe indicator either. It must be avoided by not being in front of the boss.

[Gralna]

For stacking dots, the last boss of Brayflox's Longstop poison can stack up to 4 levels. It only occurs when people get hit by too much aoes and/or the fight drags too long to where the healer doesn't have enough MP to esuna the poison off.

I remember this boss being annoying to heal through as a Sch in ARR, only way to get rid of the stacking poison was with selene, since Sch didn't learn Leaches (esuna) till lvl 40.

[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.

[Kuroka]

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

Im actually longing for that <3

[whiteblade89]

Im actually longing for that <3

Same. WTB Aurm Vale Hard Mode.

[DevonEllwood]

Im actually longing for that <3

Since it's a 1.0 dungeon, apparently we will never see a hard mode unfortunately. I'd love one though, even if it would be built from scratch.

One of my favorite memories of this game was from this dungeon. We ended up with a new tank and I made sure to give him step by step instructions for each part of the dungeon, which he executed perfectly. I hoped that made a positive first impression of the dungeon for the new tank.

On the flip side, I've also had one of my worst experience with the dungeon, and it wasn't because of of the dungeon itself. I was a newbie tank myself and being pushed to grab more in the dungeon. When I didn't, said I wasn't comfortable getting more, he grabbed them himself. I then had to chase down mobs, which ended up killing the healer. His friend asked me why I let him die. I ended up bailing on the last boss because I was tired of the healer pulling mobs. Unlucky for them, they were farming light and it was 20 minutes until maintenance. Unlucky for me they were on my server and followed me home.

I haven't read the whole thread, but honestly AV is one of my favorite dungeons.

[Iscah]

The biggest challenge with Aurum Vale, as a tank, is learning where you can run in and where you have to stop and wait for particular enemies. There are places where you'll be fine if you proceed with caution and target the right group of enemies first (eg. roaming groups), or it can turn chaotic if you target a stationary group and then the roaming ones arrive mid-battle.

And the first room is deadly and should always be approached with extreme caution. Slowly and carefully. Watch the toads.

I don't enjoy it, but I can see it's something you need to learn to handle properly.

Nearly everything is "Aetherial", unrepairable trash.

Is aetherial gear unrepairable? I've never noticed it being a problem, and some pieces from earlier dungeons have lasted me a long time.

Aurum Vale gear is in an awkward spot generally. It comes after you've (hopefully) picked up your Lv45 relic gear and only has a few levels of use before it gets replaced at Lv50, so it wouldn't need to last that long anyway. It's only going to be really valuable for the Heavensward classes that don't get Lv45 gear.