#shb moding-!!

[alackofghosts]

our love won't fade

[shalpilot]

she has a friend nowwww

[ostentenacity]

one of my favorite things to do in ffxiv of late is what my friends and i call "favorites roulette", which is that we go around and nominate 1-2 boss fights each that we like doing (up to a max of 5 because duty finder limitations), then queue up for all of them and see what we get. we only pick from normal trials and raids so it's always an 8-player story-difficulty fight, and due to personal preference we usually end up at level 80 or 90 (though there are sometimes a few 70s in there, and maybe a final steps of faith every now and again). the first time we did it, it was just for shits and giggles because we were bored, but now even though i prefer harder fights in general, Favorites Roulette is one of my favorite parts of the game. 10/10 would recommend.

[picaroroboto]

in the ShB role quests, we watch each of Ardbert's party members make some sort of personal sacrifice, forced to discard their own goals, for the sake of the greater good. The moment they make that choice is when a Crystal of Light appears, officially marking them as Warriors of Light in recognition of their heroism and sacrifice. "By your sacrifice, a warrior made.", as the Shadowkeeper says in battle.

The same lore doesn't hold true for the WoL, back when they were in crystal-collecting mode in ARR and HW, the crystals just appear after major victories without the need for some sort of momentous sacrifice, and seem to serve mostly as a marker of how much story progress you've made/need to make to the end of the expac.

But if you think about it not lore-wise, but symbolically -

With each victory over a Primal, you're ensuring that you'll be the person who'll be called upon for help when next a Primal appears. You're cementing your own role as hero each time.

And each time, you are making personal sacrifices.

You might not even realize it until much later, what you have offered up, bit by bit - your freedom, your peace of mind, your own goals and desires, for the sake of the greater good of the star.

"By your sacrifice, a warrior made."

[lilas]

avi’li’s hair journey

ARR ��� switching between an updo ponytail and his hair being down, loose or out of the way

ARR Patches — got a cute new haircut, trying to look more suave to live up to his new found fame; very much trying to conform into a specific role; dyes ear tips as a fashion thing

HW — grown out from his ARR Patches cut, some sections twisted into braids from Tataru; doesn’t care to maintain the original cut and lets it get shaggy

SB — angry and bereft of direction; channeling some of that anger into swagger and style

SHB — full on depresso mode; does NOT care anymore, cuts his bangs out of his face that’s IT, let’s hair frizz and fray and fall where it pleases

ENW — still in depresso mode, doesn’t know who he is and doesn’t care, has people around him who force him to wash, keeps it pulled back and out of the way so he can get shit done

ENW Patches — eat pray love healing journey; got a nice haircut from one cool armor guy

DT — well onto his mental health journey, embracing this new path, flourishing

[sebille]

Thinking about how the wol barely even looks at Zenos after they kill Zodiark on the moon. Like there's literally a scene where they make a point to not look at him.

He's spent all of shb and the early parts of ew just dreaming about what it will be like when they're finally reunited - and that's what happens.

I KNOW that it's his own goddamn fault but MAN having the only person you care about and consider your friend turn away from you. No wonder my guy was just wandering around during the rest of EW in full on depression mode.

[plounce]

im a pretty good triple triad player if i do say so myself but my main flaw is that if my shb urianger card ever gets taken i go into a mode i call "wife guy rage" where my only strategic aim becomes "get my wife back" (aka "stop emailing my wife")

[fooltofancy]

ilya's official and immutable class progression as of the last time i thought abt it real hard is arr - gld+tangential blm > hw - drk+mch > sb - drk+mch > shb - drk+mch > ew - drk+mch > dt - gnb+mch+sam

i'm still attempting to shoehorn blm in there somehow, but i simply do not think he would have been accepted into the thaumauge's guild, lmao, so it's mostly legacy baby mode cowboy wizard wishful thinking to weird drk magic pipeline, at this point. i'm not sure how much he's actually canonically mch, either, because the separation from the violence viscerally bothers him but ALSO he and stephanivien truly do get along like a house on fire and i think he probably carries the thing out of a weird sense of love, lmao.

he's just a. he's just a guy with a sword, man, idk what else to do about it.

[unionizedwizard]

honestly i think nowadays Irma is spending most of her time in solution nine, which weirdly grew on her even though her first impression was... less than favorable lmao. three reasons:

1). she's currently developing the most severe energy drink addiction alexandria has ever seen (nobody should be able to consume that much Gimme Bat NutriZap! & cie without suffering adverse health consequences. some people are starting to get worried) (spiritually she is a grad student with a collection of empty monster energy cans in her room).

a). since she physically couldnt channel healing magic for most of her adventuring career (up entil post shb/pre ew), she had to rely pretty heavily on 1. carbuncle shields (which she made into a really efficient combat aid) 2. phoenix and its regenerative power 3. her original red mage rapier's contraption (original design and prototype by moenbryda!) which allowed her, through combat, to siphon and store enough aether for 2 to 3 vercures or one (1) verraise, at max capacity. less refined and efficient than actual healing magic, more like the equivalent of a defibrillator and finally

b). 4. various healing potions, enhancing tinctures, regenerative ointments, you name it. she eventually learned enough alchemy to make her supply by herself, though whether she actually joined the alchemists' guild is a bit of a mystery. fun fact: she actually learned about the various alchemically-produced enhancing drugs, especially the illegal ones, and how to make them (which ingredients come into the process, that kind of thing) as part of her training at the arcanists' guild. you need to know about illegal contraband merchandise if you're going to find and seize it...

eventually, as the demands of her newfound position increased, as well as the level of responsibility involved, she boiled-frog'ed herself re: tolerance levels. nowadays only the most potent elixirs will have any noticeable effect on her.

however, energy tonics are (as of yet) an untapped potential, so they still work (even though she started taking the most potent versions pretty quickly). she was really surprised to see that "doping" (?) was a thing (??) and apparently banned (????) in the arcadion.

2) speaking of: the arcadion. she's in need of some outlet for all that pent-up energy and stress, the whole "saving the champions from turbonuclear soul cancer amd releasing stored souls" part is an added bonus but she'd have done it even without that part. the whole "it's not a fight to the DEATH death and is mostly entertainment" part is also rather new to her (she was aware of the concept of gladiatorial arenas obviously but this feels different, somehow)

also, she's pretty much stuck in hypervigilance mode and struggles to sleep (hence the redbull addiction, in part)

3) electrope. finally breaking her lifelong frustration with, and dislike of, magitech; FINALLY something she understands. FINALLY some arcanima material WOOOOOOO!! OBVIOUSLY aloalo is canon for her (thats what she's been doing before 7.0) (she's been spending so much time studying the glyphs that remain on the island. you have no idea) so she's conducting comparative research on electrope etchings and south seas calculations. back to the summoner main she's been all along <3

[elizabethrobertajones]

Okay after Mikoto, unknown blorbo queen, I ask you for the bingo on the secretest of blorbos, Cyella/Cylva!

uhhhh I don't have to give out prizes if you get a bingo, right?

I am SO BAD at the shadowkeeper fight but I have tons of the deepshadow weapons stowed in my armoury chest and I'm always trying on deepshadow gear at the nuts vendor and contemplating making space for it.... :')

She used to come up on raid roulette constantly and I'd eat dirt constantly. So I have gained even more respect for her retroactively after learning all the lore.

I actually stopped doing ShB for a few months frozen at the quests pre-Heroes Gauntlet because my brother insisted I do all the Eden questline first, so I didn't unlock expert roulette for the first time for mooooonths after I had hit 80 and started knocking out endgame goals. In that time I did all the regional FATEs which is how you learn probably the bulk of shadowkeeper lore, all the side quests, and all the role quests. So like, I had already learned almost as much as I could about the local myths and legends of Norvrandt and our friendoes from another time and their role in it, AND about the friendo from another time and world who was still serving drinks in the bar.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend other people shape their play experience around min-maxing being obsessed with Cylva, especially because I think my brother just wanted me to get the right cutscene options with Ryne, and didn't know I'd gone sickos mode on the fates and sidequests (He is a notorious sidequest leaver *grinding teeth*). But it certainly is an intense way to experience one of the many eden bosses :P

[emcapi-gaming]

my brain has just been in Ards mode lately. SO. please enjoy some scared ShB era babies, as promised.

[iwanomono]

Prompt #1: Steer

Prompt #1: Steer Somewhat before ShB and timey whimey timeline that was eventually pruned off.

“I’ve been watching you… You and her are not too different. She would have understood.” He glided around the young Hyur woman.

She was no taller than Elidibus. Her white and black attire would have given the orange hair young woman away as an Ishgardian citizen. And yet she was dressed in highhouse justacorps like the young young men do. This young summoner would have caused quite a scandal in Ishgard.

“Fooouuu…….” He ignored the growling carbuncle at her feet, it was a strange little thing, not as luminescent as regular carbuncle goes. The weak little fluffy thing seemingly reminded him of Elidibus.

“Do you not wish to take back what was once lost?  To return to the life that you had before? Ordinary? Mundane? Happy?” He had her attention and it made him wonder how similar was she to him?

All that he managed to discover were but bits and pieces, but that was enough to draw her into his web.

“Do you not wish for your dear friend to have a chance at that normal life too? And the chance to bring her family back?”

He smiled, offering a hand to young woman despite the mistrust of her team and that annoying archer tracking him with his arrows. They were of no concern to him for they defer to her.

“I can teach you.”

-------------------

Note - Don’t know where this would go but the mirrors and parallels of FGO and FFXIV had been bugging me ever since Olympus’s(NA) Wodime godhood reason monolouge and Varis’s alliance parley reason for maybe godhood speech happened within days of each other. .

And Emet, Hylnyan and Gudako ran amok with the whole – hero of one story is the villain of another. Still in Tuliyollal vacation mode soo… I don’t exactly have new stories from Hylnyan. And she doesn’t want Gudako squatting on her blog.

[vermanaward]

6.5 msq

for the most part there were exactly zero (punny) surprises on how things played out

dungeon was. honestly it felt like a solo duty that got out of hand. also the baron theme in a minor key got annoying after a while. plague horror being a mob rather than a boss... eh. the ff4 style doesn't always translate well to 3d and the antlion is peak example of this. durante's boss form was cool though.

trial normal mode was fun. not a fan of the music though tbh. it's not as bad as rubicante's but its. not great

not a fan of zero's new look. like i get it she was a pld main back in the day idc it's cringe

golbez turning sides here at least made decidedly more sense than 4's 'welp guess i'm not mind controlled any more'. it also occured to me belatedly that zero's half voidsent nonsense is probably supposed to be a reference to golbez and cecil being half lunarian.

it makes sense that she's staying in the void but damn. gonna miss autistic rpr wife. especially since she ditched one of the best melees for the worst tank.

i hate hate hate hate that we couldn't take her to see cylva and unu. that all we saw of gaia was 30 seconds right at the very end. like. bruh. ikik side content but like just say that ryne solo'd that shit if the wol couldn't be bothered. idc.

eulmore section was dumb. it was basically an engineered plot segment to make us go catch up with the chais that otherwise made no sense. good to see that uh. the strip club is still going strong while people are living in tents. priorities.

why can't we ever take letters or gifts across from raha or thancred or shtola to the people they miss there. why can't we take replies back from lyna and runar and ryne. why can't we so much as check in with our beautiful branch.

not the worst the story has ever been (looking at you sb) but kinda stupid in parts and unsatisifying and embarassed to admit shb even exists never mind that it was everything ew wants desperately to have been but. i would have been a fool to expect anything else

am i really the only person who wants to know what happened to zero's domain and all the voidsent who were living there. did it stop existing when we took her to the source. did someone else move in. did she even forget she had it or???

[cafe-melanion]

No hate here, I enjoyed DT far more than I anticipated. It's not my favorite expansion (they will be hard pressed to ever top ShB in my heart) but I thought the race to the Golden City was charming and delightful.

The fact that the game starts out with such low stakes was almost therapeutic. I could feel my WoL's muscles relax, her jaw unclench, her mind finally snapping out of survival mode and for once (possibly since ARR ended) she could simply sit back and enjoy the ride.

Twitter dash is full to bursting with Dawntrail hate. Calling it slow, boring, exposition heavy.

I've been loving how low stakes and relaxed it is. The full circle narrative of being the experienced and confident Adventurer watching someone young learn and grow into themselves. We are seeing our own ARR development from the outside. The cultural detail and exposition is just a delicious cherry on top of the narrative themes. I don't even need the story parallels I would play an entire expac of just community hopping participant observation.

RIP to y'all I'm different (has an anthropology degree).

[meowww-ffxiv]

Alisaie was greatly assured by Meowdred. He might be a bit YOLO on the battlefield but so was she! And when it came to things like planning and dangerous stuff that he knew he was walking into, Meowdred seemed very thorough when planning for pros and cons.

He fucked around and found out real hard during ShB and hadn't tried again since (yaaay) so at least when Alisaie worried about him, she knew she was doing it because she wanted him to be okay and not because there was precedent of him doing stupid shit.

With Liios, on the other hand.

Liios's mode of reassurance was Telling Lies. And he'd just smile his unbearable cheery smile and repeat it like it was a mantra against evil even if Alisaie and Alphinaud and everyone around him that this was not true. Liios tended to know the truth to its most barren, heartless practicality, but he either denied it to them or he denied it to himself. And then he collapsed and they found out the heart defect that drove him to rescue his brother from their clan had come for him, and it happened during a crisis.

And he'd been telling them for months, years, that it wouldn't happen to him even though Alphinaud knew how genetics worked and knew that identical twins could only share that fate. A dormant defect was not a nonexistent one. But Liios insisted. He insisted. And everyone around him perhaps bought into his airy attitude and claim of invincibility because they needed it, too.

Mordred offered no reassurance. Alisaie probably liked that best about him. If things were going poorly, he would say so, and if there was no choice but to believe in a miracle, then he said, "Believe in me." And meant it. If he knew he would have to bleed to make it happen, he said so, too.

Liios said no worries! No worries! Things will be fine. Do you have to bleed for it? Of course not. (Lies.)

[semi-imaginary-place]

ffxiv 5.1-2

you can see sqnx is rolling in shb money. honestly i was fine with arr's lack of animations, voiceacting, and cutscenes. im a ps2 player reading doesn't bother me. i wish xiv was like fe3h where if you cutoff a dialogue line the voice line keeps going until the next is started. dungeons are really getting harder... do i risk dps and dying or tank. remember the days when yashtola was a conjurer and both twins arcanist. soo french elves german voeburt? i need those clawed shoes for my bunny. you sure that's a nu mou? they have tentacle hands and a different face. ah a glamour. they sound like a ten year old boy. beq lugg's a soul mage.... ah voeburt...

like a primal?

i don't remember what was the excuse they gave for why the pc can freely travel between worlds.

i don't think the light visual effect was the right one to use here. hmm the seperation of mind and boy. tempering was described as a filter or barrier between the mind and reality or something. the stagnation was from light aether. i remember early in 5.0 the writers went for quite a while describing how light was stagnant and dark vivacious.

welp i'm locked out of editing my draft. damn you tumblr.

anyways hadn't kal-shir moved to the crystarium also why didn't you ask her what's wrong.

here's the thing they established that upon buying their way into free citizenship they gave up all worldly possession to eulmore/vauthy. so all their private businesses's ownership was transferred to the State. unless vauthy sold them they should still be owner by eulmore. idk if vauthy kept them running or now just owns the trademark and stuff. also why not just make this wrenden mayor. i don't think making the parlor the seat of governance is a good idea. just convert vauthy's room to office space

they really are turning it into las vegas. which i mean the strip is a tax haven but nevada is doing pretty well, implemented some good policies recently. if it's advertising, could do traveling shows and pop up bars. bro you're getting paid in company credits don't do it ask for gil.

it was a whole plot point with moenbryda that white auracite can't store aether it just dissipates it quickly

i don't remember what a soul crystal is. but uh hey anyone remember job stones those picked up bits of memory and personality,

so zenos can use aether now. dude you're a dragoon break a window

look i have dps brain. killing the boss is mitigation. i was i suppose the know the adds explode and wipe me. also where's my easy mode

an echo with out the hydaelyn. hmmm. zenos probably got the battle echo.

im only half listening to voiced lines but he does mention aymeric by name here

wow they're really dangling the plot thread teasers

ffxiv 5.2

ew. the gaius redemption arc.

oh wouldn't that be fun in this game actually forced the player character to choose between the scions and the threat of the garleans. shame that's not going to happen.

oh yeah the ardbert look alike plot thread.

ojii-chan!!!

timeline lore! g'raha arrived after everyone hated the wols, after the flood? pr campaign go! this ties in pretty well with cyella's quest. i do think the player character could use their time better like hello the ultima weapons and garlemald and war and scions, but ffxiv in general has a priorities problem (i remember the arr titan questline), and there's no one the crystarium loves more than the wod and crystal exarch. disturbing really how much influence these two people have. i hope there's a scribe present recording everything the pc is saying. im a bit iffy on the ethics too that 2 people (as moral as they actually are as we know out of universe) should be able to dictate history and opinion. should we be able to do this just because we personally like ardbert and have a personal connection with him. the fact that we're doing this not for truth's sake but because woe ardbert doesn't deserve a bad reputation rubs me the wrong way

huh he's acting like 3.x ardbert. interesting. uh wasn't warrior of light like specifically for hydaelyn's chosen. wow the pc HATES new arbert. i wonder why they are so convinced he's not ardbert initially when there is 0 evidence. like new ardbert walk into the room and pc immediately starts death glaring at them. i actually think it'd be more interesting if the devs had left it ambiguous as to whether that was actually ardbert or not instead of immediately telling the audience he's fake. because a lot of players really liked ardbert and dearly wanted him to come back. and i mean the new writers did bring back gaius, dragoon boy estinien. and fake ardbert acts so much like 3.x ardbert the devs could have made it ambiguous whether he had memory loss or not. string the player on a little have a couple heart to hearts hahaha. uri always refers to the paragons by full title, he's so stuffy and proper in japanese (unlike eng uri who's a theatre kid). it's never Elidibus like in eng it's always Ascian Elidibus, never Lahabrea it's always Ascian Lahabrea.

wol and mean wod different things. warrior of light refers to hydaelyn's chosen, possibly tempered, with the blessing of light, and echo. warrior of darkness meanwhile refers to the person to returned night to novrant no metaphysical implications or affiliation with zodiark. so it's real weird to hear the scions equating the two.

back to the bunnies! that statue's totally going to come to life and attack us. yup

wow the pc hates new ardbert so much "extend a friendly fist". the new writers crying and shaking and sweating and tearing their hair out over how to retcon the old writers saying that elidibus sought to balance light and dark because let's be real the old writers said that and probably didn't have a plan.

the elidibus writers definitely changed. warring triad and 3.x vs 5.x you can tell the writers were writing him for different goals different types of characters.

my, aren't we quick to believe one side of the story. the writers clearly are framing a good guy bad guy situation but if this were real and you look objectively at the situation there's isn;t enough information to be making drastic decisions like attacking the benthos.

that's a little infantizing. the fish people are allowed to make bad decisions.

yeah why didn't we try the boat to begin with

why do we need bismark again. oh it's also buried underwater. could have just sent wol and alisaie instead of destroying another ecosystem

anamnesis anyder. surprisingly intact for 10000 years under the sea or something. unless the ondo have been refurbishing it. like the lights are even on. see originally bosses disappeared into purple wisps because they were ascian aether summons or something but even after that stopped being a plot point they kept the bosses poofing mostly, like there should totally be a corpse there that was a normal person/ondo why'd she go poof into dark aether. huh so that's a a female ondo/sahagin look like (ignoring that they gave the fish tits)

praxis. you help people by helping people. if you leave who's going to help the people of the crystarium and lakeland. who's going to protect the roads and keep the city functioning. what was that you do more by plants native plants in you garden then you do chasing some grade world saving dream. are the devs retconning the echo and hydaelyn connection and separating the two. i like this actually framed as a misconception. what is eli up to. trying to awaken the echo in more people? why didn't any of the scions get the echo if so many in that crowd did. (real reason plot breaking need to keep the pc special). the custom animations for ardbert's face. how did the pc awaken the echo i don't remember. or did we start in the hydaelyn cutscene. hmm what about 1.0 player characters. those two would honestly probably do more good staying in the guard adventuring seems to be a mix of oddjobs and mercenary work you aren't going to be heroes saving people it's a job like what if a crime lord hires you as a bodyguard against assassins.

if zenos didn't implant an artificial echo, maybe he could have awakened it naturally, should have gone to more meteor showers smh. but doesnt he hear hydaelyn's voice? could he be one of the few echoes not tied to hydaelyn?

also yeah i got spoiled on cystal mommy. the internet is is the internet. also asahi is malding from beyond the grave.