FFXIV – Palace of the Dead Discovered

Most of my gaming over the weekend was preempted by other media consumption. First it was Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, which I could not put down between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon, until I reached the third part of the book and had to have a break. (It’s a convenient stopping point, the reasons for which should be fairly obvious upon reading the table of contents.)

And then Sunday night I noticed that Deadpool was on HBO prior to Westworld, which I hadn’t yet seen. It wasn’t that funny, since surprise is essential for comedy and most of the gags were predictable, but I thought the serious parts were pretty good. (I have zero knowledge of the comic book on which it’s based.) I found it somewhat amusing to see Collosus in the movie, which was a character I played a bit in Marvel Heros, seemingly a million years ago.

Then of course I had to watch Westworld, HBO’s new thing, which was suitably creepy. I’m not sure how they’re going to make a whole series out of it though without going into cliche territory. (I haven’t seen any of the original Westworld incarnations, though for some reason I can’t even explain I instantly recognized the “Westworld” name as a famous science-fiction property.)

Amid all that, I managed to play a little bit of FFXIV, and mainly worked on the main scenario. Lately Alphinaud and Tataru (probably spelled those wrong) have been concerned with finding certain people who went missing pre-Heavensward. However, when the scenario took me through Gridania, I got distracted when I stumbled onto a new-to-me quest that took me out to Quarrymill and opened up the Palace of the Dead, that new randomized … um, thing. I’m not really sure what to call it. It’s kind of like a rogue-like instanced mini-game.

It’s a fun diversion, but I’m pretty sure I don’t know what I’m doing because after three tries*, I’m still “failing” my duty (by dying). With the last two attempts I made it easily to the 10th floor where a big nasty boss awaits. Said boss pummeled me to death very quickly with his unavoidable room-wide AoEs and massive hits. (I did this solo, because if there’s a solo option, I’m usually going to take it.)

My current theory is that since the boss was level 20, I need to make sure I’m a lot higher than level 20 before I get to it. Clearing all the upper floors only put me at roughly level 20 when I got to the 10th floor, which I suppose means I need to spend more time farming levels on the upper floors by waiting for mobs to respawn and clearing them out multiple times. That doesn’t sound particularly fun, but it’s something I could do while watching Netflix.

At this point, though, I don’t really see the point of it other than to get achievements, because the only “real” reward (usable outside the instance) I got was a bunch of health potions. I can only assume the rewards get more meaningful when you get way down to the lower floors. (A recent post from Aywren confirms this.)

* Technically it was four attempts, but I’m not counting the first one since my UPS shut off for some reason almost immediately after I entered and I didn’t even get beyond the first room.

Update: Added the link to Aywren’s post which I forgot to do before publishing.