Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.5 (Part 1)

I didn't spot them after I had initially finished the Werlyt storyline, but those Au Ra kids in Terncliff playing hide and seek do eventually reappear and find a fourth child.

...Except it seems they actually are the spirits of the departed orphans as the one resembling Alphonse remarks that his sister is with Father when asked where she's hiding, but after the other three leave, he turns towards where Allie and Gaius are standing and says she'll come play with them again much later.

I hope they keep putting more subtle little events like in future areas.

EDIT: Apparently, the kids only appear in the daytime. which would explain why I didn't see them.

Originally Posted by Lauront

Thanks for that! Looks like I got hit by a dose of the Emissary's amnesia as I forgot that section. Either way, he would make a good proof of concept then. I'd like to compare that to the French one to see if it sheds any light but the 'freshy minted souls' makes me wonder if they came out as ancients or not, or what. It's possible we won't find out until later. It may have some bearing on why her faction had a preference for this.

Hmmm so on that point, the French one is a bit vague as well, referring to "new lives" or "young shoots of life", so it is leaving it rather unclear, but it does leave me wondering if the newer souls were indeed less potent than the ancient ones and in particular, less/not capable of creation magicks - therefore, less capable of replicating their "doom". It would tie it all together then.

Originally Posted by Alleo

I can see your point and maybe you are right but imo Mitron said in the Eden storyline that it was their action on the 13th that brought the imbalance especially on the first shard which is confirmed by her words that you posted. I agree that Ardbert and his friends were used to create more light but if I understand Mitrons words correctly he was the one releasing all the saved up light when he was turned into the first sin eater. Its sound for me like that was probably a lot of the Light that was created by the imbalance (however that is somehow possible) and Ardbert and his friends Light was only the tipping point it needed to bring it further towards a flood.

She says that "Primordial forces will strive to achieve equilibrium" so I guess no matter what the first was always much more turned towards the light. Which begs the question on what will happen with the first in the future? The 13th shard is still in a bad shape....if these strange forces still stive to equilibirium wouldnt they again turn the first towards the light?

I suspect they will strive towards equilibrium so long as the world isn't already flooded, but then again Elidibus busied himself about on the Source to ensure the balance did not tip too much in one or the other direction, so it's not really clear how correct she is on that point; it does probably occur naturally, as with the 6th Umbral Calamity, but once you've gone into Flood territory, the aether becomes too corrupted to re-balance. For their purposes, the world needs to be close to but not at flooding levels, so I imagine it needs more precise fiddling to be achieved. Anyway, I imagine we will hear more about the Blessing in due course, but to me it does seem fairly clear that attunement to the Crystals of Light achieves alignment to it, and therefore allows for those champions to spread it.

Hydealyn had way less people to summon or fuel her. (Maybe even only those original summoners) What if that makes it so that they could resist it? And because she was much weaker she needed the power of sundering to even be able to try at all?

I think what we need to consider here is that it's not so much the summoners being tempered which is relevant here - although I don't doubt they would be (and again, the intention behind both of these primals was not to summon them as gods, but as instruments to achieve specific goals, so similar to Bahamut's summoning that very likely results in a different kind of tempering.) The question is how the sundered life forms stack up to her. Her summoners are gone; either sundered, or part of her. It is the sundered life forms she enlists which we're talking about. Though she may not be a primal on the order of power of Zodiark, she is nonetheless more powerful than almost any other Primal we know of. There is also the fact that they co-existed (whether peacefully, or not) for a time, and I am guessing they may well have shared an auracite before the Sundering. With the caveat that these are paintings by the sundered life forms, driven by memory of the ancient world, the cave paintings from Rak'tika do suggest she emerged all the stronger from the conflict. Once he was weakened and removed, that power would, presumably, remain for her to draw on. It's not too important, though, because even at a base level, she is more than potent enough to temper a sundered life form.

I also wonder if Zodiark or Hydealyn even count as active right now? Other primals always need huge amount of aether that they take from the land to be able to exist. Hydealyn alone should have kinda destroyed the star by now if she really needed aether all the time, the same with Zodiark when he was active. (They only talked about new sacrifices to get old ones back not to keep Zodiark "alive") What if those two simply can exist without hurting the land because the aether that the Ancients used was so massive that they are using this? What if her silence is her simply being so weak because she truly just used up most of the fuel that was given to her at the time of creation and she does not want to take from the world?

He definitely isn't - Fandaniel confirms as much.

Homme à la robe blanche : Notre éventuelle proie est encore endormie, mais une férocité sans pareille bout en elle depuis des millénaires…

= “Our eventual prey is still dormant/asleep, but a ferocity without such an end in it for millennia…”

She is a more open question. We'll find out, I suppose.

On your other point, which is something I've also pondered, the best answer I've come across is that it's in auracites (apparently, the Heart of Sabik is referred to as a black auracite.) I need to re-order that album properly at some point, but 5 follows 9. Their lore is such that they could probably limit how much of the Primal's own aspected aether flowed out while also limiting the need to draw on the Lifestream. Even if they had need to draw on its immaterial aether from time to time, it seems that much like the RDM focus, the auracites can amplify its effects. Even if they weaken over time, we know from the Crystal Tower that they're also re-chargeable. Unukalhai mentions they had a "flaw" in that they would bleed Primal energies, but I think that is intentional - Zodiark's darkness would speed up recovery of the planet. It does make them exceptionally poor prisons for a Primal, but if they work as I suspect, they're a very clever device, that can regulate the outflow of Primal energy into the Aetherial Sea while also limiting their need to draw on it for power. They can also be used to emit a message, like we found out Hydaelyn does in 5.2. Ultimately, very good Primal batteries.

On another note, there is Fandaniel. Assuming tempering survives the sundering for the sundered Overlords (there's some indications it does, albeit memory seems to be the most important driver for them as per 5.4 Eden and the memory crystals in 5.3), with:

-a dormant Primal for which there is now a story route for him not to enslave his tempered summoners
-a flawed/weak memory crystal that is not sufficient to awaken the memories of ancient Fandaniel (assuming he is even the original shard of the office-holder), and therefore commit him to the cause of the Ascians
-quite possibly a plan to just use Zodiark's energy to fuel a new Primal, summoned by already-tempered minions

...he can just go on a wild rampage. Zodiark's return could throw a spanner in that if he were to use any tempering to halt Fandaniel, which is an interesting point.

Originally Posted by Jandor

I think that Zodiark and say, Ifrit for example, are both primals in the same way that a space shuttle and a bicycle are both vehicles. They share some basics in common, they're both man-made devices for getting someone from point-A to point-B for example, but beyond that they're not very comparable.

I have to wonder how much of what we have learned from dealing with modern primals will even be applicable to the pair of several millennia old reality warping gods at the heart of the story.

Indeed, and I think that can't be stressed enough. There are general principles that apply to all Primals, but we don't know the full catalog of them, nor do we fully understand them (aka the writers are leaving open sufficient room so as not to be constrained by existing lore on how they implement Zodiark and Hydaelyn and their final arc - recent stuff helped us understand a fair deal more about why their tempering does not appear to enslave in the usual way.)

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

If Zodiark mostly invokes Astral Will of the Planet and the ancients were full aware of the need for balance, Hydaelyn may have been summoned as the Umbral Will of the Planet to help balance him out. The hopes may have been that instead of one voice making all the decisions, there would be two different voices that could reach compromise much like how the Amaurotine people did through their various verbal debates, leading to a better result. However, something happened that led to the fight between the two, because there's no way both Elidibus and Venat would just seek to fight when both come from the very civilization that sought debate to solve problems.

A plausible interpretation of it could be to do with the aetheric balance of the Underworld/Aetherial Sea. Granted, the very use of auracites might serve to ensure that any outflows from the primal aren't excessive, and thus contain the influence, but at least some must've been intentional, since the dark alignment is linked to a more active polarity of aether and therefore expedited growth. Zodiark wasn't really there to act as a replacement for the Convocation as the star's governing body and even Elidibus's intention was to aid them via mediation, rather than tell them what to do. All the same, I can't help but think that Venat's main concern really was just to prevent him from reviving the ancients, in order for their preferred outcome (ceding the world to the "new life") to take place.

Originally Posted by Alleo

About Nier raid

Maybe he did that in his games but he is only a guest in this one and imo we should have gottenat least a mostly whole story line when running it the first time. Right now we have nothing at all. If you had not played his other games you wont really know or imo care about the Nier characters and I really doubt that they will go out of the way to include redoing the whole raids but with a twist. (Which would mean a whole lot of new cutscenes for all of them + all the missing information) Of course I dont know how long these weekly quests will go until they are finished but I doubt that most players will even try to do them. At most (imo) we will get another cutscene at the end where we will meet the brother again and maybe find a way to save his sister or conclude it in another way.

Also what realistically could the player even sacrifice if we would get such another ending? The other dwarf?

About the last point...spoilers for final surprise for the endings of Nier and Nier: Automata below.

In Nier and Nier: Automata (albeit optional there) you sacrificed the entirety of your save data. Considering Yoko Taro would want people to sacrifice something else, but be unable to do anything extravagant due to this being an MMO, I won't be surprised if you are forced to forfeit all rewards from that run of the duty in order to get the other ending, or that he'll do a more story "sacrifice" type thing, making it so that section of Kholusia is "reset" back to before the 24 mans first started (albeit with differences) without any NPCs or the WoL remembering either other as if it never happened.