My journey through Heavensward has slowed down considerably. I have other games to play and review. And generally, the steam that powered this expansion leading up to The Vault encounter has petered out significantly. Thatâs not to say Heavenswardâs sluggish back-end pacing wasnât punctuated with a few bright spots.
After losing Haurchefant, I didnât think Heavensward could still hurt me. But when Haurchefantâs father, Lord Fortemps, gave me his fallen sonâs broken shield, I absolutely lost it, not because of the reminder of our shared loss but because of the tearful, grief-stricken expression on my characterâs face. Heavensward is six years old, I donât know what tech runs the gameâs engine, but Iâm telling you, itâs pure witchcraft. This is an MMO that has to run for more than 20 million people across millions of devices at varying levels of performance power. And yet, I can see the literal tears welling in my characterâs eyes. This is the kind of facial animation youâd expect in a prestige, AAA single-player game developed for the PS5 by Naughty Dog or Sony Santa MonicaâŠin a six-year-old MMO. Damn.
Beyond being stunned by FF14âs facial animations, there was another moment I experienced in the bowels of the Great Gubal Library that reignited the spark I felt playing this game when Haurchefant was still around handing me mugs of hot, indeterminate liquid to drink.
Recently, Iâve decided to sideline my other jobs and focus solely on leveling on my astrologian because it was getting increasingly difficult to level all my jobs evenly, progressing through the main story quest. As I and others have expressed, healing is difficult and stressful, but on the whole, very rewarding. However, this change also meant that whenever the main story quest (or MSQ) mandates a trip through a dungeon to proceed, your girl will be required to heal, and itâs rough.
My first dungeon after this change was the Great Gubal Library. I had been forewarned that the dungeon is tough on healers, so I watched a couple of YouTube videos explaining the layout and boss mechanics. Queuing for a dungeon as a damage dealer can take upwards of 15-20 minutes. As a healerâtwo seconds. I made the right choice picking my AST.
Party members usually donât talk in dungeons beyond a quick âhelloâ at the beginning and âGGâ at the end. Everyoneâs there to do a job, get some loot, and get out. But since I was afraid my developing healer skills wouldnât be up to snuff, I decided to break with tradition and let my party know that I was new to the dungeon. After I spoke up, the tank did too, telling us they too had never seen this dungeon before. The damage dealersâtwo black magesâremained silent. The first part of the dungeon went fine until we faced the first boss when our progress screeched to a halt.
Fuck that book. Yâall know the one. We just could not kill that book. Either I died or the tank died after getting caught by its insta-killing area attack. I was so embarrassed that I considered faking a disconnection and coming back to complete the dungeon on one of my damage classes. But I felt sorry for the tank who kept lamenting in chat about how bad they were and how sorry they were for dying so much that I stuck with the party doing my best to teach the tank what I had learned from my YouTube research. Eventually, I stopped dying, figuring out when and how to move, but the tank still couldnât get the hang of it. The damage dealers grew frustrated. One of them left the dungeon in a huff which actually ended up being the best thing that ever happened because they were replaced with a bard who saved our expedition.
That bard was patient, kind, and very knowledgeable. They would call out when to start moving to avoid Book Bossâ insta-kill attack and put down enough damage to finally put the boss to rest. We â/cheeredâ and â/criedâ in chat, thankful for this heaven-sent party member, and with their help, the rest of the dungeon was a breeze.
That bard saved our dungeon run. Other players would quit rather than patiently guiding us to victory. It felt like being in a shonen animeâour party, united by the fire-forged bonds of friendship overcame seemingly insurmountable odds.
Dungeons arenât supposed to be difficult. Theyâre loot piñatas attached to an EXP firehose. But every once and a while, FF14 chooses violence by throwing players an inexplicably difficult dungeon boss encounter for shits and giggles, and I love it. As an MMO player, I typically donât get to feel this great sense of accomplishment until the endgame, when content is explicitly designed to be extremely difficult. Having these experiences peppered into normal content feels like getting intermittent shots of adrenalineâtheyâre reminders of why I love this game, even when itâs slow.
