Eorzean Evening Post: I Want to Slay the Dragon .

“I hear the roar of a big machine”… Or well, I hear the roar of a great wyrm. Patch 2.55 is upon us and with it the final pieces of the story that began with A Realm Reborn, if not even before that. As foretold in an earlier patch in the Before the Fall-trilogy, the dragons are going to war against Ishgard. It’s up to us to come running to the city’s defense and try to save the Holy See from its final destruction.

Considering how grumpy the Ishgardians have been, and that they haven’t really been that inclined to help us, I’m not 100% why we’re doing it. The job as a hero and a good guy never ends, I guess. Hopefully we can guilt trip them into helping us out later.

This, of course, is the big lead-in to Heavensward, which is coming out in June. The whole series of Before the Fall-patches have really shown how ambitious Square Enix are when it comes to their MMO and I can’t wait for the expansion itself to roll around. The story over the last few patches have been really exciting, and I’m expecting a huge pay-off at the end of 2.55.

Some fans are already speculating if an important character is going to die or not, which would not surprise me either. The top rated comment in that thread is currently “my social life”, which I guess is a given. If an actual character kicks the bucket, I’m hoping it will be one with a big emotional impact – like the Sultana, for example. Nanamo has been in a tough situation in Ul’dah for a long time now, and she’s loved by both her subjects and the players. Also, ominous screenshot time!

There’s a lot more good speculation in that thread, so if you’ve finished the story up until 2.55 and want to worry yourself about one of your favorite characters dying once the patching is done there’s a lot of stuff to read through.

 

Steps of Faith

In Heavensward we’ll be fighting both giant dragons and the gigantic living fortress of Alexander, so we’ll be getting our fair share of epicness in the expansion. But we’re getting a taste of that already in 2.55, with a new Trial – the Steps of Faith. A dragon, Vishap, has landed on the Steps of Faith and is ready to tear down the wards that have been placed there – wards protecting the city of Ishgard from the Dravanian assault.

As usual, we don’t know that much about the fight before it becomes available later today, but judging from the screenshots it looks epic enough for me. Vishap is bringing in a bunch of his smaller friends and it looks as if cannons will be involved as well. The Trials are usually a lot of fun, often more so than new dungeons in my experience, so I’m looking forward to trying it out – as soon as I have the time to actually sit down with the game and finish the gorram Chrysalis! No, I haven’t had time to play since my last column and it’s killing me now!

Overall, the screenshots from this patch makes me want to call in sick for the next two weeks. Screw work and screw my BA paper, I have a isolationist city state to save from dragons.

Gold Saucer changes

Except the new Trial and the finale to the pre-Heavensward story, 2.55 of course comes with a bunch of smaller fixes and tweaks as well. Some of these are for the Gold Saucer and are very welcome in general.

First of all, there are general fixes for Triple Triad – some new NPCs to challenge, a few tweaks to the decks used by certain NPCs and a couple of fixes and changes to tournaments. As far as I can see, nothing major – but then again I am not as deep into Triple Triad as some of you guys out there. If there’s something here that I’m simply not seeing, feel free to let me know in the comments exactly how much of a TT-noob I am.

The changes to Chocobo racing are more important, though. Since the beginning, there was an issue with the rewards you get for finishing a race – or, more specifically, in the lack of rewards you get. In fact, if you wanted to do Chocobo racing seriously, you were better off doing other things for MGP than actually racing. As I’m not a Triple Triad-guy, that was quite disheartening. You want the activities to be self-contained, and obviously Square Enix heard our whining about this.

So, with 2.55, MGP and experience rewards for finishing in 1-7th place have been increased! Exactly by how much I don’t know, but hopefully enough that it will feel worth it. Coming in last will suck even more than it does right now though, since the rewards for that position will have been lowered. According to the patch notes, that’s to “discourage players from purposely finishing in last place”, which I’m guessing is the same as saying “screw you, botters/AFKers”. While it will also suck a bit for the players just starting out with Chocobo racing, I think it’s a sacrifice that we can all live with.

One change that makes me really happy is that “the size of treasure coffers that appear on race courses has been increased.” Hooray! With the controls being what they are, it could be way too easy to miss a chest even if you were sure you were going to get it.

Loot, loot, loot!

Since I haven’t had much time to play, I feel like I’ve slipped behind when it comes to gearing up – I have been really bad at capping poetics. With 2.55, the weekly limitation on loot from the World of Darkness is out the window, which hopefully will allow me to grab at least a few pieces of gear (or Carbontwine) now and again. Encrypted Tombstones have also been added to the weekly quest, Gift of the Archmagus, which I guess could come in handy.

And speaking of weekly things – “The weekly restriction on entering all four turns of the Final Coil of Bahamut has been abolished.” Have fun in there! I’ll be out here, looking jealous.

Overall, 2.55 looks like it will be a nice pile of epic goodness. Let’s go slay dragons together! Or well, I’ll be with you in a while, as soon as I’ve actually dealt with this pesky Ascian…