Echoes of Vana'diel FFXI Alliance Raid

[Powercow]

New afk spot in ffxiv will be Lower Jeuno at the auction house. Lullll

"Tattered Sheet Music found in the treasure chests of Jeuno: The First Walk can be exchanged with the peculiar goblin in Lower Jeuno (X:6.5 Y:5.2) for special orchestrion rolls relating to Echoes of Vana'diel."

Sick. I'm guesing LJ is gonna be like the Bozja camp then, with a couple NPCs to chat up and maybe a Tetra Mast-- er, Triple Triad NPC to play with? Here's to hoping.

[Fawkes]

New afk spot in ffxiv will be Lower Jeuno at the auction house. Lullll

"Tattered Sheet Music found in the treasure chests of Jeuno: The First Walk can be exchanged with the peculiar goblin in Lower Jeuno (X:6.5 Y:5.2) for special orchestrion rolls relating to Echoes of Vana'diel."

This sounds like they'll be putting in a truckload of orchestrion rolls if they had to add an exchange item instead of just having them drop, which is fantastic news.

[Daralii]

This sounds like they'll be putting in a truckload of orchestrion rolls if they had to add an exchange item instead of just having them drop, which is fantastic news.

It's a great idea that I wish they'd backport to the older alliance raids. I'm still missing a lot of rolls from Ivalice.

[SeriousPan]

I can only hope the 2nd and 3rd parts of this series don't make the gear 'matching' like this. Matching gear from a raid *sucks* and I'm pretty disappointed in the choice of Ark Angels as the equipment source. So many XI fans were hypothesising what sets we would get and then it just kinda ends up being, what I would consider, an easy option. I hope we get more like the Ivalician raids had with diverse sets that were nicely different from one another but still thematically fit. (Just let me dye them please!)

Gimme the Igqira Weskit damn it!

[CidHeiral]

This sounds like they'll be putting in a truckload of orchestrion rolls if they had to add an exchange item instead of just having them drop, which is fantastic news.

Come on Battalia Downs!

[Fawkes]

Ordelle... coin? Not bronzepiece?

Well they're called オルデール古銭 in the JP patchnotes and Ordelle Bronzepieces are オルデール銅貨 in FFXI, so I guess it's a choice and not a mistake to not call them the same thing.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Fawkes]

They added a Light Staff/Chatoyant Staff on this NPC but I don't see it obtainable for me to have anywhere

Also Shantotto's Staff is still sideways

[fulminating]

Day 1 thoughts:

Purely mechanically I haven’t had this much fun on a day 1 alliance raid since puppet’s bunker. It probably won’t be as exciting when people know what to do, but it felt like it had more mechanical variety than definitely thalia and euphorisine, maybe on par with aglaia? Apart from the doughnut on boss 2, the telegraphs seemed pretty fair - I thought it could have gone either way between doughnut and cone. There were some shared mechanics (concentric aoes) but didn’t feel too noticeable otherwise.

Boss 1 felt like a refined gladiator from sildih. There’s not really a lot more to say.
Boss 2 was probably the weakest despite causing the only full wipe. The knock up aoes were annoying during the wall phase but that’s their purpose.
Boss 3 was fun and relatively novel (2.1 I think the last time it was tried).
Boss 4 was fair and the mid fight change was visually interesting without being a “sit down shut up and watch this cs”. Currently the training wheel phase and real phase hp thresholds felt about right, but that probably won’t last long unless it’s hp% threshold.

I am a bit concerned about the impact of higher item level on this raid though, no one felt particularly tanky until half the alliance exploded, which is only going to get more prominent when people know the mechanics and have better gear. Hopefully this ages well and ends up being an enjoyable roulette in future patches.

I can’t shake the feeling I’m walking on my own grave wandering through some of the hd areas.

I’ll run it a couple more times later and see if I change my mind on anything.

[CidHeiral]

This alliance raid is amazing. The nostalgia is strong and I loved all the smaller subtle references to FFXI and its community scattered around. More importantly the raid is actually fun! Myths of the Realm was so incredibly boring from start to finish and this new raid series knocked it out of the park right out of the gate. The mechanics are a blast and it was enjoyable to actually have to stop and chat with the group after a wipe. I'm very excited to see what the next two chapters have in store now!

Also holy cow there's a lot of FFXI music in this series. I feel like I've already heard half the game's soundtrack. It's great!

[Kisshu]

Overall I enjoyed it. The fights are good and enjoyable, and especially the third fight is fantastic.

If they keep up with this fight design, this will be a very enjoyable series.

Plus some of these areas such as Sky in full HD looks incredible. The flavor text in both Jeuno (Mea... 1K... Can i have) and also the journal in Sky of taking the wrong teleporter are good.