The Wrong Proportions
Good Morning Friends. I have to say I was overwhelmingly excited when I got to the point of the ARR MSQ when it started doling out the formerly Binding-Coil-era gear sets. For pretty much all of my time as a Lalafell I have used this set, dyed jet black, with the bunny kabuto for my signature look. So I was ecstatic to be able to have this appearance on my Roegadyn alt. Sure I could not wear the tanking skirt with it that comes from a level 80 dungeon, but I could get MOST of the way to replicating the appearance. I bounced around between all of the servers in Dynamis until I found the cheapest bunny kabuto for 160k and snapped it up to be able to compile the look. Then in all of my horror last night I realized… the proportions are all wrong on a Roegadyn. It just looks too bulky and my bunny ears are way the hell too small to really work in the same way. So alas… I wasted a bunch of money on something I am probably never actually going to wear until I fantasia again.
I guess I should once again give a fair warning that as I am talking through this ARR revisit, I am going to be talking about spoilers. Be warned if you have not made it this far into the game.
We started off last night by running Snowcloak and then Odin which represented all of the new things that we had not run yet. Snowcloak was just as sleepy as it always is… and I maybe overpulled a few times leading Ace to have to scramble to keep my ass vertical. We pulled through it and it was a largely enjoyable experience. I still lament the loss of the proper version of the yeti fight where you throw snowballs at him. From there we ran Odin thinking it would be a long queue… but got in almost instantly. This fight is still exceptionally tough and we got some bad RNG on the first attempt and had to deal with a spear phase while he was casting his one-hit enrage attack. The second time though we managed to take him out right before the cast timer was finished. This fight is legitimately still probably more difficult than most of the ARR era Extremes.
Knowing that Shiva was not too far off we put our heads down and quested along furiously until we unlocked Akh Afah Amphitheatre (Hard). It is sort of sad how stinking easy the ARR Hard versions are. When you have spent so much time farming the extremes to get mount drops for folks… the Hard versions just sort of feel like a cakewalk. I keep waiting for mechanics that never come, like I did not remember there was now ice floor phase in the Hard version, or at least not one we had gotten to yet. The music is still so freaking great and if you have not listened to it in a while, you own yourself to click through and do so right now. I have so much love for this era of the game because it represents the period of time when our little FC was the most active and dedicated. It was the era when we were actively fielding raids and hanging out with each other multiple times per week. While Ace and I have recaptured some of that in small bursts… I still miss all the rest of our team.
I stuck around last night and pushed through the story up until the point where Keeper of the Lake unlocked. I am very much looking forward to this dungeon because I can remember it being one of my favorites. It also has some freaking amazing music and a few really fun fights that make the player feel super cool for honestly dodging some rather simplistic mechanics by today’s standards. The story is heating up and honestly… I am starting to feel some “feelings” because I know what is about to happen in the next patch. It is hard to explain how emotionally it hit me to play through this content the first time. I was so oblivious to the catastrophe that was about to befall my character and my friends… but seeing it all again you can absolutely see the underpinnings of foreshadowing. A game had never quite doing anything like this before, not at least in the MMORPG space… so I was simply not prepared for the level of betrayal that was impending and as such did not heed the warnings.
The hardest part of this replay is having to run quests with Ilberd knowing what is about to happen. I so despise this person and everything that he and the Crystal Braves come to represent. I’m immensely bothered by what the hubris plays out in Alphinaud and I just want to shake some sense into his obliviousness. The writing was absolutely on the wall. I am seeing it now and it was clearly there for us… if we just chose to look at it. Last night seeing Ilberd say “you never betray your own” was just too f*cking much. If I could change the course of the game I would… I would strike him down right now and suffer the consequences. I hate “Cold War” periods in video games… because I am a character of action, not politics. I was not designed for this, and quite honestly I think most of us are not equipped to handle it… which as a result is why this whole sequence managed to blindside so many. Unfortunately, this is a card that only works once… and every betrayal from this point forward has been spotted ahead of time because now we know it is possible… and now we are always on the lookout. Ilberd and crew shoot our faith… in a way that can never be regained.
Anyways… I am deeply looking forward to Heavensward because I want to hunt a Sky Whale. I’m probably looking forward to that fight than almost anything else at this point. Heavensward had some freaking amazing primal fights.
