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Baldesion Arsenal Complete!
2021-Jul-15, Thursday 08:59
Last night I finished off the final part of Stormblood that I wanted to complete--I cleared the last dungeon of Eureka, the Baldesion Arsenal, and got my proto-Ozma mount!
I wrote about it in my Stormblood review, but Eureka is deliberately a throwback to Final Fantasy XI. Most of the gameplay revolves around chaining monster kills together to get better drops and spawn more powerful Notorious Monsters, and the very end of the story is an 56-player open-world dungeon--unique in FFXIV--containing a bunch of bosses that require supreme coordination to defeat. Or at least, that's what I knew before I went in.
It's actually not that bad nowadays. In much the same way that WoW Classic players killed Ragnaros after a few days instead of taking months because now they actually know how to play and the math of every single ability and fight have long since been worked out, people have Eureka down to a science. There's a discord for Aether, my datacenter, that coordinates Baldesion Arsenal runs literally every single night and sometimes multiple times per night, and last night the timing worked out well enough that I was able to go--Laila and![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
sashagee were both asleep, I had been the one to put Laila to bed so I wasn't taking un-earned time, and my book group had ended a bit earlier than normal so it wasn't overlapping with everything. I set up all my logos actions (special abilities that can only be used in Eureka), signed up through the Discord, and joined the party that it DMed me the info of.
After having watched a huge pile of bodies appear in Eureka Hydatos headquarters two nights ago thanks to a botched BA run, I thought I'd be in for a harrowing experience, but it was extremely easy. The first two bosses, Art/Owain and Raiden, both died in about three minutes each, with Raiden only getting off a single mechanic, and then when we got to the infamous Absolute Virtue, the boss that took FFXI players an 18-hour fight to finally defeat after years of failed attempts--here's a blog post about one such attempt from back when people didn't know exactly what AV's mechanics were--it died in four minutes before ever getting to use its Call Wyvern skill. I was nervous when we got to Proto-Ozma, because I knew that unlike the version in Weeping City of Mhach, Proto-Ozma's Black Hole straight-up sucks you out of the dungeon and you get no rewards, but I needn't have worried. The player doing the calls on Discord led us through the fight beautifully, and the only screwup, when two people took a meteor to the same location instead of separating the blasts, was nullified through the use of a tank Limit Break. Ozma died, I got my mount, and I'm done with Eureka!
Well, not done done. I still want to improve my elemental armor sets to +2, which requires more drops from the Baldesion Arsenal.sashagee hasn't done Eureka at all and I promised I'd go there with her. There's still some very rare drops I'll either get or, more likely, make enough money to just buy. But the story and the achievement are mine, and I no longer have to be jealous of people flying around on their tamed FFIX boss!
I wrote about it in my Stormblood review, but Eureka is deliberately a throwback to Final Fantasy XI. Most of the gameplay revolves around chaining monster kills together to get better drops and spawn more powerful Notorious Monsters, and the very end of the story is an 56-player open-world dungeon--unique in FFXIV--containing a bunch of bosses that require supreme coordination to defeat. Or at least, that's what I knew before I went in.
It's actually not that bad nowadays. In much the same way that WoW Classic players killed Ragnaros after a few days instead of taking months because now they actually know how to play and the math of every single ability and fight have long since been worked out, people have Eureka down to a science. There's a discord for Aether, my datacenter, that coordinates Baldesion Arsenal runs literally every single night and sometimes multiple times per night, and last night the timing worked out well enough that I was able to go--Laila and
sashagee were both asleep, I had been the one to put Laila to bed so I wasn't taking un-earned time, and my book group had ended a bit earlier than normal so it wasn't overlapping with everything. I set up all my logos actions (special abilities that can only be used in Eureka), signed up through the Discord, and joined the party that it DMed me the info of.After having watched a huge pile of bodies appear in Eureka Hydatos headquarters two nights ago thanks to a botched BA run, I thought I'd be in for a harrowing experience, but it was extremely easy. The first two bosses, Art/Owain and Raiden, both died in about three minutes each, with Raiden only getting off a single mechanic, and then when we got to the infamous Absolute Virtue, the boss that took FFXI players an 18-hour fight to finally defeat after years of failed attempts--here's a blog post about one such attempt from back when people didn't know exactly what AV's mechanics were--it died in four minutes before ever getting to use its Call Wyvern skill. I was nervous when we got to Proto-Ozma, because I knew that unlike the version in Weeping City of Mhach, Proto-Ozma's Black Hole straight-up sucks you out of the dungeon and you get no rewards, but I needn't have worried. The player doing the calls on Discord led us through the fight beautifully, and the only screwup, when two people took a meteor to the same location instead of separating the blasts, was nullified through the use of a tank Limit Break. Ozma died, I got my mount, and I'm done with Eureka!
Well, not done done. I still want to improve my elemental armor sets to +2, which requires more drops from the Baldesion Arsenal.
sashagee hasn't done Eureka at all and I promised I'd go there with her. There's still some very rare drops I'll either get or, more likely, make enough money to just buy. But the story and the achievement are mine, and I no longer have to be jealous of people flying around on their tamed FFIX boss!
...and then everything went back to normal again. With the epidural in, she was even able to get some sleep, while 
: 
A couple days late to this news, obviously, but 
Happy New Year! I drank too much last night and I haven't felt 100% today, but it was nice and relaxing. 
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No one could come, but that's understandable. We're all adults with lives. But that's something I never would have done a couple years ago without at least two weeks' planning. Of course, if I had planned further in advance, maybe people could have come, and I'll remember that for next time.
) marriages of his daughters, the jokes, it was all great. I especially liked his performance of "If I Were a Rich Man," which made it seem like he really got into the fantasy of not having to work, swaying as he sang to himself (a bit like davening, now that I think about it). It was much more free-spirited than the 
