Rivenroad (Hard) Discussion and Strategies Thread

[NefGP]

Neither Airship nor DM were as hard. Airship could be a little expensive with the CCBs and yes, it was pretty damn punishing at the time - but I still feel this fight trumps them both. You at least had a break between each battle, and there was some room for error - as long you had a solid plan and stuck to it you could win. That's how I got through CoP, sheer skill. I don't have multi-million double-meld gears or fancy, heavy darklight armor that seems to be mandatory to survive his BS. What are people charging for lunar curtains anyway?

Neither fight forces you to lose outright from an unavoidable AoE that will more than likely wipe the party for one thing. And the hardest part of DM was getting enough people who knew what they were doing - the fight itself was not that bad save for possibly EV - but that's why you killed her last. Hell, it was even possible to 1-shot the fight with 18 BLM all casting Thundaga 3 simultaneously (not the easiest thing to do but hey).

And Suppanomimi was a MUCH better earring than this thing - Brutal too. Like I said, it's the fact that the majority of the playerbase that beat the main story got absolutely nothing (a series first) and then we're given a very short time to attempt a ridiculously hard fight for what amounts to a cool but hardly game-breaking trinket. Dick move on SE's part.

Uh, didn't influence the story? DM basically took the place of the Ark Angels mission - you had to kill 5 either way to progress Zilart, just if you fought them all at once you got something special for it. Beating Zilart also gave other benefits later on as well, so no, it was not irrelevant.

Nael = Rani but with a significantly less impressive accessory (and no brew lol...)

[Avarghaladion]

I agree with this assessment. The better part of a decade later and many of XI's storyline reward items are very good. This was especially true prior to the level cap being raised when all of them were basically must-haves. Supa and Brutal still hold water, as does the WoTG reward earring for many jobs. I don't think I've lost in DM or pre-nerf CoP missions but we went 1/10 on Raven. Even still, I would have preferred that they average the difficulty of normal and hard modes, made it one fight, and given the earrings as the reward. The only thing I can think of is that they didn't want to make it look like they were handing out amazing, 2.0 unattainable gear to 1.0 players.