I'm growing more and more away from the idea of a relationship, to wanting something more casual, it seems.
The idea/concept of singular commitment to another person doesn't really settle right with me.
Maybe what I'm just looking for is someone I can talk to and listen and be able to have a good heart-to-heart conversation, someone who is there for me if I need her.
No romantic attachments, no sex, just a close companionship with a female.
In the last week, the last update for the 1.0 version of Final Fantasy XIV launched, bringing a lot of additions and wrapping up things before the reboot. The reboot of FFXIV was also announced, called "A Realm Reborn", and will be launched late this year-early next year. Check out the trailer if you haven't.
New Music in Patch 1.23:
Nael Van Darnus Fight (Phase 1) : Formerly the Coerthas Leve Theme
Nael Van Darnus Fight / Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 Final Boss Battle (Phase 2) : Entirely New Track
Nael Van Darnus -- The Final Fantasy XIV Seventh Umbral Era Storyline Finale (Contains Spoilers!)
I know a lot of people reading this probably won't be playing until the reboot version is launched. Note that this mission will be unavailable after the launch of "A Realm Reborn". This is because this serves to tie up the pre-relaunch storyline, and after the reboot, meteor will have already crashed. This serves as the final prequel mission of sorts. If you're still playing, I would recommend skipping this part to avoid spoilers. If you don't plan on playing until the reboot, read for some background information.
Nael Van Darnus is a Garlean Imperial who wanted to purge the land of Primals by summoning Eorzea's second moon (Dalamud) to wipe them from existence. In the Patch 1.22 previous storyline quest, we had to storm the Imperial stronghold of Castrum Novum to de-activate the lunar transmitter that was bringing Dalamud closer and closer to crashing with Eorzea.
In this storyline quest, Nael Van Darnus found a way to get to Rivenroad (the floating island archipelago) in order to summon small baby meteors upon Coerthas from parent meteor Dalamud.
Something a lot of people don't notice is that in his fight he says lots of quotes like "I will return back to nothingness". Most of his quotes are nod backs to older Final Fantasy games. I know the one I mentioned comes from Final Fantasy V, where some other quotes come from Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy IX, and Final Fantasy XII.
According to Wikia, he uses the phrase "mummer's farce", a phrase also used in Final Fantasy XII.
There's also scenes where he's walking through the fire in 1.22 which is a clear nod to Sephiroth from VII.
But enough about nostalgia, on to the mission/boss itself. Note that the videos only contain the cutscenes pertaining to the mission. The screenshots of the fight are below. Beware of spoilers. I would recommend watching in High Quality on the links themselves. The embeeded low-quality versions here don't do it justice.
See the meteorites? He calls them down to assist him. They need to be nuked down with Thunder combos. If they land on the battlefield, the whole party takes a massive amount of damage. It also adds damage to Megaflare (his ultimate move- Bahamut reference) if too many land on the battlefield. My job as Black Mage is to nuke down Nael Van Darnus, and run up the stairs to nuke down meteors. Originally we only had both Black Mages on Meteor duty, but now we have one (usually me) that nukes the hell out of the boss until the meteors become too much to handle with only one Black Mage.
Skirmish:
The 1.23 update added Skirmish which is a small-scale end-game event. There are two zones: Locke's Lie and Turtleback Island.
Locke's Lie is an island that houses lots of small-scale Notorious Monsters. They're scattered throughout the island in near a star-shape. The objective is to go around as a full party of 8, speed-killing all of them to spawn a giant tree in the middle of the island that likes to reset hate frequently and put the tank to sleep.
Locke's Lie:
Turtleback Island is also an island (but literally empty. Only a few palm trees and no caverns) They have bigger ferocious monsters that must be dealt with quickly in succession before the next one spawns. We've almost gone all wins except for one time where we wiped to Chimera because we were too close.
Turtleback Island:
The reward for Skirmish are some pretty good high-level weapons. They need to be melded with materia to be useful though. One weapon is guaranteed to drop to one random party member, and sometimes two drop.
XIV Summerfest Festival:
It's pretty fun, and this comes from someone who traditionally hates little events. They added /firedance (see video below) and you have to use that on approaching bombs to kill them. You get different colored Yukatas for defeating them.
Check out this dancing glitch.
And that's about it on my report for adventures. Catch me on Lodestone, and follow me! I would appreciate it greatly.
Note: Transferring save files from v1.0 to v1.1 is okay. Transferring save files from 1.1 back to a previous build of the game may corrupt save data.
[Critical Bugs Fixed]
-An issue where Luis would appear and teleport the player back to the prison in Chapter 1-4 or later has been fixed.
-An issue where the player character would become permanently invisible upon re-entering Mt. Onyo has been fixed.
-An issue where a party member in Chapter 1-5 has a rotating sprite in battle and the wrong name has been fixed. Old files that have this issue will be corrected when going to the third floor of Mt. Onyo.
-An issue where the game may lock-up in certain cutscenes in Chapter 1-5 have been fixed.
[Minor Bugs Fixed]
-An issue where the sound effects for the cats would not play has been fixed.
-An issue where Melanie would continue to appear in the Trial Cave after Chapter 1-2 has been fixed.
-An issue where the name of the area would no longer appear after the beginning of Chapter 1-5 has been fixed. Old files that have this issue will be corrected when going to the third floor of Mt. Onyo.
-Certain voices that did not play correctly have been fixed. -An issue where Availian Students rescued would not appear at the Trial Cave has been fixed.
[Gameplay Changes]
- Items picked up in jail cells in the Availian Prison now disappear permanently.
- Monsters have a greater resistance to "Shock" status effect.
-Elemental nukes do more damage.
-Two new spells have been added.
Paramedic: Level 1 - Regeneration -- Gives the whole party a regeneration effect. Heals HP over time.
Elementalist: Level 1 - Focus -- Adds Regeneration effect to self and restores AP.
-Monster placement outside Availia has changed. New monsters have been added to reflect this.
-Certain monster art has been slightly modified.
-Some dialogue has been modified.
-New equipment has been added.
-New treasure boxes have been added to existing areas.
-The difficulty of the game has been adjusted.
-The game now launches in full-screen mode. To toggle full-screen/windowed mode. Press Alt+Enter key.
This page is mainly for game bugs. Suggested changes and recommendations to gameplay have been logged as well, but won't be posted here. Thanks to all who have submitted feedback! Version 1.1 is going to come later this week.
Last Updated: 7/24/2012 -- 5:40PM PT
Current issues:
System-Related:
Paramedic does not learn Poispur.
Non-existant items may appear in the inventory.
Stomach ache hurts entire party.
The ability "Ice Blade" has a missing sound effect.
When hidden kitties are found, the voices don't play properly.
Story-Related:
Chapter 1-2:
Some of the voices are not executing properly.
Unintended NPCs appear in the wrong areas if certain circumstances occur.
Chapter 1-3:
There is an issue where Luis may get stuck in the introductory cutscene.
Some of the voices are not executing properly.
Some of the dialogue does not match voice properly.
Chapter 1-4:
Certain NPCs don't appear in the Trial Cave if certain conditions are met.
Chapter 1-5:
Some of the voices are not executing properly.
Phase 1 of the final battle is bugged and voices/moves do not go as planned.
In the topic: I feel really bad about posting the Batman-related joke
yesterday about people spoiling it. I'm also glad that the picture was
taken down from the source.
What a depressing day. I do still
want to see the film, though. But it is saddening that even things like
simple movie theaters are probably going to get metal detectors or
additional security from here on out.
It has been a very long time since I last blogged about my in-game adventures. Since I've posted last, Patch 1.22 has hit, and it opened up Hamlet Defense battles, a new imperial stronghold called "Castrum Novum", and a fight against the primal Garuda.
New 1.22 Tunes:
The soundtrack isn't 100% done by series composer Nobuo Uematsu anymore. Sad face. But I am happy with some of the co-composers. Naoshi Mizuta (FFXI, XIII-2, and 4 Heroes of Light), Tsuyoshi Sekito who was a member of the band "The Black Mages", and Ryo Yamazaki who is a synthesizer programmer and has worked on older Square games.
Here are some of my favorite tunes out of 1.22:
Garuda Battle Theme
Castrum Novum Imperial Stronghold
Storyline:
We were sent by Cid to investigate the new stronghold Castrum Novum situated in Western Mor Dhona. Our job is to stop the Garlean Imperials from summoning Meteor by destroying their Lunar Transmitter situated within the center of the stronghold. Pictures below. However, as the transmitter is destroyed, peace comes for a short time. We'll figure out what happens at the conclusion of the pre-2.0 storyline in Patch 1.23.
Hamlet Defense:
I really like Hamlet battles, though the way to make them as efficient as it is, is kinda crazy. An optimal setup hardly has any fighting between us actual people. We buff/heal the NPCs and they take all the mobs down.
Short version: Fun, but way too limited.
Garuda:
A pain in the ass, it's a constant joke among my shellmates that we call her the Bird B*tch. She has three phases. We're slowly struggling our way through the fight making constant attempts to take her out every Friday and Sunday night.
Phase 1:
She has four rocks that surround her, we have to kill her and little Tornado adds slowly damage and whittle down the surrounding terrain. The size of the rocks determines the damage from Aerial Blast. The lower the rocks, the more damage.
Phase 2: She starts summoning winds that surround the battlefield and teleports everywhere. Did I mention those tornado adds come for us now that the rocks are destroyed?
Phase 3: She summons two of her sisters to help out. We can't seem to get past this phase.
It's my current in-game goal to knock out Garuda before the 1.0 client goes down, because the nature of her fight will change. I want to be able to say I beat it in the current pre-2.0 thing, even if only for bragging rights. *Shrug*
Moogle:
Not really 1.22 material, but I'm still working towards a Moogle Sword. Haven't gotten it yet, but got some other interesting things.
Chapter 1 is scheduled to hit late tomorrow night, and I've been spending many sleepless nights in order to try to get it done in time. (Sleep? What is sleep?). I've compiled a list of features that may or may not be consistent with the actual game when it hits next year.
Some examples of changes:
-There will be a level cap imposed on the characters to prevent the trial from being 'too easy' via grinding. The level cap for the chapter 1 demo will be level 30.
-The amount of reserved points one can hold is capped at 300.
-There will be an allowed saving feature. There are plans to allow save data to carry over to the actual game once it is completed next year, this may or may not change in the future.
-The progression in the demo is intentionally easier than the actual game will be.
-Some quests have been left out of the trial version, and this may cause certain areas to become inaccessible.
-Achievements are not present, but there will be a special achievement if you bring in saved data from the trial version to the actual game. Like the saving feature above, this may or may not change in the future.
