Revelations from Dawntrail (7.0)

[Wyssahtyn]

No one's seem to have made one yet, so.


use [ HB ] [ /HB ] with no spaces inside the brackets ( ex: [HB] ) to spoiler tag your posts. Or press the like speech bubble with the question mark inside of it in the advanced reply post creation thing.

It would probably also help people seeking to avoid being spoiled along their journey if you denote the level range of the MSQ/lore topic you're discussing since it's EA at the time of this thread's creation.

Like so:

90-91

alpaca primal

[Wyssahtyn]

90 MSQ

apparently the pel to gil exchange rate is roughly 1:100, as alphinaud says ten thousand pel would equal to around about a million gil

tencharacters

[Iscah]

After some delays with getting the game downloaded, plus I decided I really wanted to get the Endwalker role quests resolved before I started Dawntrail, I'm still in the level 90 quests so far. I've been doing sidequests but I may have to drop those and step up the pace a bit.

Tuliyollal feels overly big and confusing as a city design so far, with a lot of open-air multi-storey buildings that seem to have no clear reason to exist - no NPCs in them, no furniture, no upper-level exit so they function as a staircase. There doesn't seem to be any reason to not allow mounts in the city, either.

The inn looks nice but the layout feels uncomfortable and disorienting.

The scenes introducing the four competitors feel like they wrote two different ideas for how to handle it and then stuck them both in instead of choosing one or the other.

I did the Hanuhanu quests and I've finished up for the night partway through (probably towards the end of) the Pelupelu questline. The trading quest chain thing is tedious. Talk to a few people, do nothing, get a congratulatory fanfare for the excellent trade you achieved.

So far there's way too much "Wuk Lamat insists she's good at X while blatantly failing at X" that seems intended to be endearing.

I'm quite wary of how heavily they're repeating the "oh, look at this clever idea, Koana brought it back from Sharlayan" as if a two-continent-spanning empire can't manage to invent useful devices on their own. I can see what the writers are trying to do with it, setting up the conflict of tradition and innovation that they did most heavily in the conclusion of the Hanuhanu, and giving some people reasons to support Koana's outlook, but I think it at least needs a bit more "we took this Sharlayan concept and incorporated it into our existing technology" than so much direct copying.

It's also annoying that the two "ugly monster" competitors are the bad ones and the "playable race" competitors are the good (or at least neutral) ones.

[SableHahma]

After some delays with getting the game downloaded, plus I decided I really wanted to get the Endwalker role quests resolved before I started Dawntrail, I'm still in the level 90 quests so far. I've been doing sidequests but I may have to drop those and step up the pace a bit.

Tuliyollal feels overly big and confusing as a city design so far, with a lot of open-air multi-storey buildings that seem to have no clear reason to exist - no NPCs in them, no furniture, no upper-level exit so they function as a staircase. There doesn't seem to be any reason to not allow mounts in the city, either.

The inn looks nice but the layout feels uncomfortable and disorienting.

The scenes introducing the four competitors feel like they wrote two different ideas for how to handle it and then stuck them both in instead of choosing one or the other.

I did the Hanuhanu quests and I've finished up for the night partway through (probably towards the end of) the Pelupelu questline. The trading quest chain thing is tedious. Talk to a few people, do nothing, get a congratulatory fanfare for the excellent trade you achieved.

So far there's way too much "Wuk Lamat insists she's good at X while blatantly failing at X" that seems intended to be endearing.

I'm quite wary of how heavily they're repeating the "oh, look at this clever idea, Koana brought it back from Sharlayan" as if a two-continent-spanning empire can't manage to invent useful devices on their own. I can see what the writers are trying to do with it, setting up the conflict of tradition and innovation that they did most heavily in the conclusion of the Hanuhanu, and giving some people reasons to support Koana's outlook, but I think it at least needs a bit more "we took this Sharlayan concept and incorporated it into our existing technology" than so much direct copying.

It's also annoying that the two "ugly monster" competitors are the bad ones and the "playable race" competitors are the good (or at least neutral) ones.

Yeah, I'm not very far into the story yet, only finishing up the waterfall story right now. I don't really feel like going into spoilers right now, but the story so far feels very much....Not good? There have already been several plot holes and inconsistencies and it feels like everyone is taking turns holding the idiot ball. And this is coming from someone who is generally very easy to please. People complained about Stormblood's storyline and poor pacing but I had a blast playing through that.

[Fenral]

I got 90k2'd towards the end of the level 94 zone, but I've done every side quest up until then, keeping Viper and Ninja at the same level just on quests and FATEs. I'm enjoying taking it slow for a change.

Viper Story (80-90):

We get teased with a possible secret connection between the Vipers and the Twin Adders, but it all gets dropped pretty fast.

Innocent Stork is definitely going to be back, though. She seems like a possible antagonist for Beastmaster.

94 Zone (partial):

It was very obviously hinted that something gross was happening, but I was not expecting the secret of the twin-headed Mamool Ja to be quite so... analogue. It's not the conception that's the issue, it's the live birth rate, and they have a whole well full of stillborn babies to show for it. Fun.

I like the direction Bakool Ja Ja is going, but I'll have to stay tuned to see if it sticks, or if he gets Icehearted at 99. I was prepared to make him one head shorter, but it looks like it won't be necessary.

1,800 in queue...

[Rannie]

Yeah the whole

still born double heads was really banal when I was expecting something like them taking two of the eggs and some how aetherically fusing them together to cause it to happen.. still born is bad and stuff but was pretty meh

Also while the back ground stories for it are interesting and such the execution so far of Dawntrails story had been slow boring and a completely repetitive slog of annoying. I don't like Wuk Lamat the reveal that

that the Hrotthgar guy in that one village was her birth father

so blatantly obvious when we first met him that it was laughable at the reveal. The constantly having to cheer her up and cheer her on is getting annoying. I've never hated a "good guy" character in this game so much as I do her.

And the whole calling them promises in the English text is such an odd choice when listening to the Japanese vocals they're calling them prince and princess.

On a bright note they're not over using "I daresay" as part of the dialogue this time around and finally learned that a thesaurus existed...

Oh one more thing

the stupid cabin scene with Wuk and then afterward with her yelling out at the top of the stairs area

made me groan and facepalm with how bleh it was.

The first two dungeons were pretty easy and the first trial was not too bad.

More later if I can stay awake while playing to finish the msq....

[Lyth]

Overall Thoughts:

Cahciua really stole the show here.

Some genuinely immersive locales (aided by the graphical changes). Conceptually, there were a lot of really interesting story ideas in here, but the problems were primarily in their execution.

The pacing was erratic and the story could have easily ended at three different points along the way. This felt longer than Endwalker. The dialogue felt overly apologetic in parts in an attempt to avoid stepping on anyone's toes. 'We know that you're harvesting souls from other societies to keep your immortality going, but we don't want to be seen to judge you on your cultural practices.' Some of the writing choices felt overly safe to the point of being awkward (i.e. it's high noon, but don't worry ratings board, they're just using rubber bullets). I also felt like the dialogue choices were definitely underutilized this time around, and missed having the usual banter line of choices (...Kupo?)

It felt like Daichi Hiroi wanted to create a grand scenario in line with Ishikawa's previous work without really understanding how the magic of her storytelling works. I think a more grounded, less ambitious storyline would have worked better.

End Speculation:

I'm not sure if I missed this in the information overload, but I'd like to know which shard Living Memory is in. Given that the problem is Lightning-aspected Aether, it's probably adjacent to a world with a Water-aspected Calamity, similar to how the Thirteenth's Flood of Darkness polarized the First towards Light. Given that the Tenth was rejoined in the Calamity of Water, and the Twelfth was rejoined in the Calamity of Lightning, my guess would have been something like the Eighth. Definitely an interesting plot hook, though, and I hope they expand on this partially merged shard more.

I also liked the Aloalo references.

[Iscah]

I got up to the level 93 dungeon and left it there for the night.

I forgot to say yesterday, but the whole Hanuhanu village plot made no sense. They have a regular harvest festival with such a clear, visible effect on their crops, and yet they can be unaware of its power and they need to seek help from outsiders to find the reason why the harvest is failing now? I would be fine with it if they revealed it was all a ruse and were waiting for the contestants to work out the solution, but the village elder outright said they couldn't have solved it without our help.

So anyway, finished off the Pelupelu storyline and then onwards to the highlands.

The moblins and their pet artists are such a weird thing. Also I hadn't realised before now that their "armour" is pottery, which makes a little more sense than being a complete copy of the metal-armoured goblins.

Level 93 dungeon with trusts is such a strange choice of setup, with Alisaie healing as red mage when it's Krile who has conjurer training.

There are a few NPC outfits that I hope we'll get. The Landsguard seem like an obvious incoming tome series, and there are multiple townsfolk outfits - the standard one the Pelupelu and other Tuliyollal residents wear (I'm not so keen on the poncho but I like the pants and sandals), some characters in the level 92 area are wearing a different set, and one sidequest in Tuliyollal involving an artist has him wearing a sort of t-shirt but it's a traditional Turali style thing.

I unlocked the role quests but haven't started on them. Does anyone know whether they should be done alongside the MSQ or put off until later?

[Rannie]

Depends Iscah I was doing them and just the wind aether quests but I stopped because I was gaining too many levels. (I like to be usually at level in the quest. And so far (at the 96 quest line) the msq isn't tied to it like it wasn't in endwalker.

[Elecrom]

A general thing that I'm curious about is

why is every aetheryte in Tural bleached at the bottom? Was waiting for a mention of the Aether there being special because it looks like a lesser version of the First's partially corrupted aetherytes

Level 97 Zone Spoiler

Ok, so this might be a non-issue at the end, but I am really intrigued by the fact that we know nothing about Zoraal Ja's mother and nothing about Gulool Ja's mother as well. I didn't see any Mamool Ja in Heritage Found and Solution Nine so I am very heavily leaning towards Zoraal Ja being some kind of clone of Gulool Ja Ja, and Gulool Ja being a clone of Zoraal Ja himself.