Dawntrail Predictions

[ShadowyZero]

title says it lets have some fun with speculations an theories! can even make a bingo card of it if you wish
i'll get the ball rolling

-usual tour guide quests to lead us around Tuliyollal we learn its history an background etc
-after some time the leader gajul is assassinated but leaves behind the key to the "golden city"
-we reach the golden city but viewed as outsiders or savages so no one will help us until we meet the girl who clears everything up
-discover that the golden city planned for world domination but were deterred by the presence of a greater threat(possibly elder primal)
-back in Tuliyollal there is a civil war between parties with us assisting the brother of Wuk Lamat to bring order
-City of Gold is launching a campaign against Tuliyollal and we have to defend it
-after settling the differences between nations we learn there was a mastermind probably in the form a great ai presence created by the original creators of the golden city an we have to shut it down to free the enslaved citizens of the golden city.
-end credits an we get our lead in for the 8 man raid

[NegativeS]

Here's mine:

1. We get to the New World and get tour guided around for a bit
2. Prove ourselves to locals by doing odd jobs, seeing new zones
3. The whatever tournament happens and we succeed in beating the hell out of them and helping Wuk Lamat become the Dawnservant
4. Wuk Lamat turns out to be a terrible leader, tyrannical and everyone hates her, everyone hates us especially because we helped her become Dawnservant
5. When we confront her about it, she kicks us out, so now we're stuck halfway across the world with no allies (Bloody Banquet 2.0)
6. Krile remembers that thing about the Golden City and her grandfather, we follow a lead to learn more about it and eventually find it with help left behind by Krile's family
7. Krile helps us learn more about Solution Nine and gain their trust, we learn more about it, etc
8. S9 helps us depose Wuk Lamat and helps us find a better Dawnservant, everyone is happy again
9. Erenville becomes the end boss of the post-MSQ alliance raid

[Grivvaint]

My biggest predictions:


Heritage Found and Solution 9 are related somehow to the 12th shard. Whether it's survivors of the 12th or related to survivors of the Second Umbral Calamity. The Levin is too prominent even in the marketing and the civilization that was wiped out by the Second Calamity despoiled the star with, seemingly, rapid advances in technology. The Levin shard may have been unbalanced with Levin in much the same way.

My other prediction is that the game will end with Wuk Lamat and Koana co-ruling and Zoraal dead. Galool Ja Ja's titles being "Vow of Resolve" and "Vow of Reason" feels too pointed. Wuk Lamat is resolve personified and Koana seems to lean reason.

[MikkoAkure]

My other prediction is that the game will end with Wuk Lamat and Koana co-ruling and Zoraal dead. Galool Ja Ja's titles being "Vow of Resolve" and "Vow of Reason" feels too pointed. Wuk Lamat is resolve personified and Koana seems to lean reason.

That's a good point I didn't think of and likely end result of the quest for the throne IMO.

The most that the Ascians/Ancients get will be an off-handed mention that you wouldn't even notice without looking for it. Unless you're talking to someone who's primarily an Ascian/Ancient fan, in which case it'll sound like the single most important part of the story.

I'm not even an Ancient/Ascian fan and said for months that I wanted no Allagans, Ancients, Ascians, or Garleans but after seeing a sigil/glyph (that I'm still not unconvinced is the logo for Arcadion derived from an sigil of an unaccounted for Ascian) and the players being told to "remember the seats of the Convocation" when an interviewer asked Yoshi-P what to recall from the past for Dawntrail's MSQ I think they or the consequences of one's plans are bound to show up. Plus there's so far no anachronistically advanced civilizations in the world that the Ascians were not involved with.


My own personal takes on Solution Nine keep changing and at this point I think I'm just ready to be surprised rather than having my theories proved right/wrong but as for my admittedly tame predictions for everything else:
- Koana ends up on the throne with or without Wuk Lamat since he's the only reasonable one (from what we've seen). If it's as Grivvaint says then maybe the throne requires two heads/people and they both end up working together by the end.
- Erenville and maybe even his Viera tribe are some sort of protectors of the secrets of the continent.
- Zoraal is killed by the Niners invasion just after or just before the level 97 dungeon after it looks like he's about to claim the throne and the key is taken off his corpse.
- Zoraal is the "starter villain" of the expansion whom we chase through much of it before the Enigmatic Maiden steps in, who is sort of in a grey moral zone since her plan makes sense to us but we have to defeat her and she ends up getting redeemed by the end, her plan half-fulfilled and Solution Nine here to stay since it's the endgame hub.
- The Garleans/Ilsabard will get some sort of blink-and-you'll-miss-it update on what's going on over there.

- Pictomancer quest involves a story revolving around the Archon Relm and a Sharlayan historian putting the pieces together.
- Viper quest involves going place to place in Eorzea with some Mamool Ja hunting down large game.

[MikkoAkure]

The Garleans/Ilsabard will get some sort of blink-and-you'll-miss-it update on what's going on over there.

There were two whole lines in the expansion about the Garleans and it was just the twins reiterating their purpose of being in the New World as having to do with learning about multiculturalism to help the Garleans...

While I'm glad there was no far-flung Garlean legion like people had predicted in other threads long ago, it feels a bit awkward that practically nothing that happens in Endwalker gets mentioned in Dawntrail except for Montichaigne's lesson on souls. I feel like the story could very well have gotten away with being a spin-off that while being meant to follow Endwalker and the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga, could have been a fresh start for new players and not have that as a hard requirement like how FFXI handled its expansions.


By the way, has anyone figured out what we were supposed to remember Convocation seats or the Myths of the Realm for? I don't feel like the shot of Azem's symbol would be it and unless I missed something, maybe it's something that happens later in the patches for the 2 raid series or MSQ.

[Cleretic]

By the way, has anyone figured out what we were supposed to remember Convocation seats or the Myths of the Realm for? I don't feel like the shot of Azem's symbol would be it

I think it actually was. Like I pointed out when that reminder was recent, it was likely never going to be anything big, the equivalent for Endwalker was basically just a list of things that got referenced with conditional text. That sounds like exactly the way that they'd prime us to keep a Convocation member's duties (in this case, Azem's) in mind without giving us too much to go on.

That doesn't really explain Myths of the Realm, and nothing particularly rings a bell there for me (unless you want to make a connection between Nald'thal and the blessed siblings' really bad mortality rate), but maybe that just had really quiet conditional text somewhere?

[Equitable_Remedy]

My other prediction is that the game will end with Wuk Lamat and Koana co-ruling and Zoraal dead. Galool Ja Ja's titles being "Vow of Resolve" and "Vow of Reason" feels too pointed. Wuk Lamat is resolve personified and Koana seems to lean reason.

This seems very plausible to me.

[Vallavia]

My other prediction is that the game will end with Wuk Lamat and Koana co-ruling and Zoraal dead. Galool Ja Ja's titles being "Vow of Resolve" and "Vow of Reason" feels too pointed. Wuk Lamat is resolve personified and Koana seems to lean reason.

The more I think on it, the more likely this seems. It would be a hell of a red herring if it didn't pan out this way, truthfully (though there have been plenty of those in this story). Given that two-headed Mamool Ja are in essence two minds in one body, it wouldn't even be much of a practical change from the current situation. It would also give Wuk Lamat some wiggle room to not be tied to Tuliyollal if they decide to let her linger in the MSQ as Koana would ostensibly be better suited to the banality of day-to-day governance.

[Turethir]

Here's my diagram Please note this contains spoilers for Media Tour/LL information!

Click here - it's big

It focuses more on structure based on evidence we've had so far from in-game and the trailer - story elements are more fuzzy.

[KatBoreas]

Some last-minute predictions:
(note that I decided not to watch the launch trailer to avoid spoilers, so apologies if any of the following has already been confirmed or ruled out)

- It's pretty much a given that DT will contain references to FF9, but since 6.55 already namedropped Relm and Valigarmanda it might also draw inspiration from FF6 (which is my favorite game in the series so I hope that's true!).

- Speaking of Valigarmanda, since it has been referred to a "legendary beast" and also shares its name with a summon from an earlier FF, there's a good chance it will turn out to be a primal (or rather, we will have to fight a primal based on it). After all, there's no reason why summon magic couldn't exist in the New World as well. It'sd possible that it has been lost for centuries and now the villain has revived it to further his plans (only to have those plans thwarted by the fact that Wuk Lamat happened to invite the Primal Slayer on her team).

- Which brings me to the (inevitable?) Ascians. Maybe one of the surviving Convocation members whose names we were told to recall was responsible for introducing summoning, and now we will have to deal with them. Also, given that Zodiark is gone and everything the Ascians fought for all these millenia has fallen apart, the survivors are bound to be suffering a major existential crisis that might be enough to turn them around. After all, Emet-Selch did acknowledge they had been on the wrong path all along; maybe some of the others realized that as well, and now they want to make amends and help us. I mean, by this point we've gotten chummy with pretty much all our surviving foes, including Gaius van Baelsar, so working alongside a reformed Ascian would only be the logical conclusion (not to mention that the Eden storyline already gave us a reformed former Ascian as ally, although she has no memories of her former life).

- And lastly, given that 6.55 presented Wuk Lamat as somewhat boastful, we can expect her to get some major character developement over the course of DT, possibly furthered by a major event that will have as much of an impact as the Crystal Braves fiasco did for Alphinaud.