Eorzean Evening Post: The Primal Threat .

Final Fantasy has a fair amount of recurring concepts that pop up in each game. Every game tends to be in a psuedo-steampunk level of technology, except they’re generally using magic as opposed to any sort of steam. Recurring themes of crystals are also common. However, one item that has always popped up in Final Fantasy games are the summons. Since Final Fantasy III, the Summons have existed in one form or another in each game. Here, however, things are a bit different. Today we look at the legacy of the Primals and where they stand in Final Fantasy XIV.

To really understand the Primals, you have to look back at Final Fantasy’s past. Final Fantasy III was the first game to introduce the class system into the series. This class system has become a standard – indeed, FFXIV owes its legacy of Jobs directly to FFIII, and it would likely be an entirely different game were FFIII much different than it was. One job that was introduced was the Summoner, whose horned appearance and green robes were directly referenced in our modern MMO. This class could summon powerful beasts from beyond the aether. The English name often varies, calling them Eidolons, Guardian Forces, Summons, what have you. The Japanese instead simply call them “genju”, phantom beasts. Regardless, these summons were often the same characters. Ifrit, a fire-demon; Shiva, a woman wielding ice; Ramuh, an old man wielding lightning; Leviathan, a serpentine creature with power over water, so on and so forth. These summons and more would reoccur time and time again in Final Fantasy, eventually becoming part of their legacy. However, FFXIV does something entirely different with the summons.

To be honest, they’re not working for you any longer. The Primals are the player character’s greatest threats.

Say hello to the Lord of the Inferno, Ifrit. He earns his title.

All the classic summons exist in Final Fantasy XIV, and you will wish to heaven they didn’t. Normally summons are on the side of man, but that could not be further from the truth in this game. Of the fourteen main games, XIV is one of three where the summons show up as enemies, and the only one where you cannot summon them at all to be on your side. Final Fantasy X offers the Summons as bosses, here called Aeons, but upon their defeat Yuna gains them as a personal summon. FFXI requires summoning them with items or during missions, and they tend to be an enemy on the physical field as opposed to a queue. Also, a Summoner could bring to bear that exact boss against their enemies. This isn’t the case in XIV – a Summoner can only draw upon a small amount of a Primal’s power, creating something called an egi. It’s a sufficient bit of strength, but when compared to the real thing, it’s absolutely nothing.

Primals serve as one of the two driving forces of Final Fantasy XIV’s plot, with the other being the Ascians. Primals are the more obvious of the two threats, as they are summoned by the beast tribes of Eorzea to destroy or push back against man. The “civilized” races of Eorzea have been systematically expanding their hold on the continent, and as the beast tribes feel the pressure of such expansions, they react to defend themselves with the power of their gods. Gods is a good way to describe Primals, as they’ll represent some of the single hardest confrontations you’ll have in the game. Their power is terrifying, least of all thanks to their ability to convert others to their side through a process most commonly known as “tempering”, thanks to Ifrit’s judicious use of it – though each Primal seems to have their own term applied. This places some of the Primal’s aether into someone, allowing them to be fanatically controlled by the Primal’s will. Results tend to vary: Ifrit’s Tempered are violent and infinitely fanatical, while Ramuh’s “touched ones” tend to be more passive and defensive, believing strongly in justice and protecting their own lands. Leviathan’s drowned can even be cowardly, running away from danger and seeking the assistance of those greater.  Regardless, it’s a permanent change, and one that can’t be reversed. However, even without their tempered followers around, Primals represent a great threat both in story and in gameplay.

Leviathan’s no small-time joke either. Honestly, this one’s probably my favorite Primal.

The Primals tend to be introduced one per patch, with the encounter with them serving as the core themed encounter of each patch. Raiding is different in Final Fantasy XIV than in perhaps any modern MMO. Rather than clearing out trash and slowly working your way through a series of bosses, FFXIV prefers to offer the boss immediately to the player, then use it to curb stomp them into oblivion a few dozen times until they get the fight. One-shotting Primals requires the greatest of players working in tandem, and when compared to other raiding experiences I find them to be much more difficult. This sentiment extends to the Binding Coil of Bahamut as well, though notably not to the Crystal Tower. The Tower is the only one of the three raiding progressions that offers trash and multiple bosses, and is by far the easiest of the three, requiring only basic “don’t stand in fire” skills to complete and having no DPS wipes. The Binding Coils, insofar as I have seen them, have only minor amounts of trash, with one of the Coils being entirely a trash run with no real reward and another being a boss fight consisting of multiple strong mobs. The closest thing to a “traditional raid” is Binding Coil Turn 1, which features a mini-boss at the very beginning, two pulls worth of trash that, at this level, is easily skipped, and a boss at the end which gives the loot. Other than that, at least to Turn 5, it is simply walk in and engage the boss. However, there’s no zone to walk into, no twenty minutes of killing mobs before you get to the next boss. Primals, I believe, exemplify FFXIV’s viewpoint to end game; get in there, and either live, or die.

Primals are queued for out of the Duty Finder, and as a general rule doing them in Duty Finder is the way you fail. They come in three flavors. The Normal Mode Primals are limited to the ones available during 2.0, the launch patch and storyline, and include Ifrit, Titan and Garuda. These fights serve as wake-up calls to the players that you can’t just walk through everything like you did the rest of the boss fights up until now, and are more difficult than a normal boss but not particularly stressful. However, each Primal has what is effectively an instant kill, that requires some work or another on the part of the DPS to complete, else the team gets turned into ash by a full-field area of effect. Hard Mode Primals are an entirely different beast, requiring strategic positioning and proper checks on all sides. This is the level any 2.1 and past Primals come in at, and generally these Primals have mechanics that will immediately blow away even tanking-class defenses. Instant kills are common and while the players don’t have to be perfect, they do have to know their class. Perfection is instead demanded on the Extreme Primals, who basically don’t take anything but the best. FFXIV is a slower-paced game, with skills taking a bit longer each time than most games. It trades this off by trying to kill you with mechanics whenever it feels like it. Titan will punch you off a cliff, Garuda will tear you apart with the winds, and Leviathan will gladly throw you into the ocean. To this date I have managed to down all Primals except for Shiva EX, and she’s my goal of the game right now. The challenge is great, but the rewards of getting the clear – to say nothing of the loot – are more than worth it.

It’s always interesting to see how each game does its raiding. FFXIV is a story-based MMO beyond that of most, and its raiding is intricately woven into the story, to the point that you won’t even open most bosses without doing the story quests to get to them. This makes the fight more satisfying, more enjoyable for me than in any prior MMO. It’s not just “hey, go kill these guys because they’re annoying.” This is part of the narrative being spun, and you as a player are making an immediate difference in the story. I’ve rarely seen it emphasized in WoW how important the raid bosses are, except for the inevitable final boss of the patch. It’s nice to have a game where they give a reason for you fighting, and thanks to my history with Final Fantasy, it’s even nicer to face off against those I once called ally. Bringing out a Summon in a Final Fantasy game is effectively your way of nuking the problem. This time the nuke’s pointed at you.

So don’t hesitate, because if you thought they were powerful on your side, wait until they’re against you.

And invest in friends. Really helps with the godkilling.