What's your favourite trial/dungeon/raid?

Jake

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That's an awkwardly worded title but I couldn't think of anything else :wacky: I didn't see any other threads on this topic so apologies if I missed something.

It took a while to even find a group capable of beating it once, but after almost 20 or so clears... My favourite trial in this game has probably become Ravana (Extreme). I made a video of my White Mage perspective of the fight to show a friend, but I'll post it here too for the sake of having more than just text.


It's just very mechanical and requires quite a bit of coordination with the party. While admittedly it can go so horribly wrong sometimes, unlike a lot of the other trials in the game, once I learnt the "rotation" I began to feel confident about what was happening. It becomes somewhat easy to control! Fun, even. Haha. When you wipe, it's simple to see where things went wrong and improve upon it later. It's also the only time I've ever used Cure III as a White Mage, so that's gotta count for something! Plus the music is awesome. Half way during the fight when Ravana casts Bloody Fuller, it just feels so epic to hear the tone of the background music shift.

So yuuuuuus. It's so easy to complain about terrible instances like Neverreap and the Aurum Vale :whistle2:, but do you have a favourite dungeon, trial or raid in XIV?
 
I don't believe I genuinely have one off the top of my head, so I had to do some thinking. Here's some strange answers though. 0.0

- Aetherochemical Research Facility

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Firstly, it has THIS theme. Imagination is awesome and it builds the mood perfectly for your onslaught through a horde of unrelenting opposition. Final two boss fights have this one from the Nabriales and Twintania encounters, and this good old classic from the first phase of the Ultima Weapon fight. So I absolutely can't fault the music at all in this dungeon and that's always a major plus.


While The Vault proved to be a particularly frustrating kind of challenge for me, particularly with that last boss - though I suppose that might have been equally to do with the fact that I had a paper armour Dark Knight and two DPS players who weren't very responsive when it came to chains and AoEs - Aetherochemical was a thrill for me. True, I only ran it once and I may not be singing this dungeon its praises if I had been saddled with a terrible party, but the run I had was one of the most enjoyable ones I can recall and certainly put me through my paces as a Scholar who just about met the minimum ilvl requirements. Game looked at me, saw I was prepared to rush to the end, and decided that it may as well throw everything short of the kitchen sink at me.

It can be intensive with the enemy mobs, but it gave me the opportunity to push myself with the DPS-heal balance. And I love doing it. I still managed it by buffing Eos up and sprinkling a Regen effect on the party while I threw out Adlos, Eye for an Eye and Deployment, before going to town with the Cleric Stance DPSing. We had a Monk, Black Mage and Warrior, so as a party combination, it was just glorious to see all of us essentially melt the mobs in very good time. There are few things better than to work towards maximising what your job can do and seeing the results of it. True, this is only a story dungeon and not some difficult raid, but it suited me well as a nice little challenge for a somewhat casual player of my level.

While there's little I can say about the first boss, I think the second one has to be my favourite of the dungeon. I personally haven't even touched any of Coil, and I could appreciate the shape-shifting boss randomly switching into a few Coil modes. It's nothing overly complex and nor does it require coordination the likes of Ravana EX as shown above, but a boss with switching mechanics is always still more interesting than a one-trick pony. Final two boss fights can be tough and admittedly irritating. It's still typically a test of reflexes and just running out of the orange circles, but for some reason I giggled way too hard at the sight of my character just gliding uncontrollably across an icy arena, unluckily landing from orange circle to another like a Loony Tunes sequence. The close of the dungeon was an exhilarating healing rush for me. My party members enjoyed eating each others' orbs instead of just their own, so there was a quick avalanche of splash damage. Trying to maintain enough healing to keep HP bars stable at that last minute was...exhilarating. Yes, my butt clenched hard and I nearly took off again. But in a good way. Not The Vault way.

- Battle in the Big Keep

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Aside from that...well, Battle in the Big Keep (second Gilgamesh trial) was also very enjoyable and gets my vote for the trial fight category. I farmed it for the Enkidu minion and it would consistently amuse me that I would regularly forget about the mechanic whereby a healer would be chained up, so I would annoy the party by not moving away from Greg as far as possible whenever the thing unexpectedly popped up. There's a lot of rhythmic dancing to avoid the AoEs, and the patterns depart from the usual orange spheres in favour of gorgeous flowery flourishes on the floor or a chessboard. The first part of the fight is just hilariously chaotic when half the party transforms into chickens and they all fight with each other for tornadoes.

I haven't done Big Keep in a while, as after I attained Enkidu, I felt it warranted to take a (prolonged) break from the trial...if people are even doing it anymore, but I certainly had fun with it while it lasted. Here's hoping Greg returns for whatever kind of chicken-related absurdity is brewing next.
 
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