At the top of the blog I'd like to take another moment for thanking @zombiepie for featuring the first two installments of the blog on the community spotlight this week, thanks so much! I've been having a fun time revisiting the game from its start up till this point and will be continuing to do so. Stay tuned! We still have three more patches after 2.2 to cover.

It would be the turn of the new year, and the new fresh faced Final Fantasy XIV would be seeing its 2.2 major content patch on February 22nd, 2014. A successful first five months and we were already seeing a steady flow of new content being delivered. 2.2 would be known as the patch that XIV really got its footing, it introduced what is considered everyone's favorite Primal fight to date, the next tier of Binding Coil, and a continuation of the Relic questline in its long journey to become a legendary Zodiac weapon. It also introduced the long awaited PS4 version of the game, which me being a PS3 player was probably the most exciting part for me. To help explain further, here's the trailer for one of the best patches to date:

During this time, I was unfortunately still stuck behind Twintania in Binding Coil for the first few weeks. I would eventually go on to beat it and journey into Second Coil, but not with the group that I got there with. This patch was kind of a personal downer for myself, as it took a while for me to finally join up with my current group, who have since gone on to clear the final encounter of the game. Though my personal raiding experience does not at all hamper my overall enjoyment of 2.2.

2.2, Into the Whorl

Now 2.2 for a multitude of reasons was a huge deal, mostly because this was the first content patch where most of the content felt new. Leviathan was a fresh face, and Second Coils was a completely different and harrowing experience from its predecessor. You got your normal additions to the daily routine, the three new dungeons and the introduction of the new Expert Roulette and your continuation of the 2.1 story. Along with that you finally got the ability to upgrade your shiny Relic Zenith weapon into the next two stages of the questline... but not without alot of time and effort put into it. Tomes of Philosophy were phased out of the game to introduce Tomestones of Soldiery, as well as Mythology tomes being bumped down to the new first tier currency. Which meant a whole new gearing process for everyone was about to commence. So here were the things that got you started on the journey once again.

• Lets all go swimming! Except minus the actual swimming part.
• Speedflox Myth runs!
• Raiding, How I stopped worrying and loved the pain.
• The Greatest Story Ever told, now with more fan service!
• Let me tell you about Atma, or Only Nerds let Books tell them what to do
• No Flash, All Glamour

The day to day activities of the entire population quickly changed overnight. People were rushing to get the Story Quests done to fight Leviathan for a sweet weapon, others chose to start the long journey of collecting Atma for their relic weapons. Brayflox took over for Haukke as the most popular farming dungon, and everyone was going nuts with the new Glamour system.

Bigger Fish to Fry

With the introduction of 2.2, Primals became the new headliner for all the patches, and to this date none of them had the same impact as Leviathan. The new Primal on the block was tied behind doing story quests just like Moggle Mog who also received his EX version in this patch, but because of the fact many people were stuck behind Twintania in Turn 5, alot of people opted to do the story first. If you could successfully down the Lord of the Whorl, and with a bit of luck, he would drop an i95 weapon for your class, the same ilvl weapon that Twintania dropped, but for some classes their Leviathan Weapon was better due to major stat differences. It was a no brainer for myself, since the bow was more than optimal than my Turn 5 weapon.

Leviathan was the main focus of the 2.2 story, it starts off with you meeting with a Doman refugee by the name of Yugiri who actually is pretty high up in the food chain from where she came from. Yugiri's character model was a bit of a surprise though, it simply just looked like a Miqo'te covered up with a mask and a thick layer of clothing, but her tail was reptilian, it would be later revealed not to long ago at fan fest that she was one of the new Au'Ra, the race coming in Heavensward, for the time being though we had no idea and just thought maybe she was something completely different and unrelated. After meeting up with her and a bunch of fetch quests later the Sahagin, the children of Leviathan, get their hands on a bunch of crystals and... you probably can guess what happened next.

Leviathan was summoned, and was heading towards Limsa Lominsa with the intent of ruining everyone;s time. A plan was devised to send you with a bunch of other adventurers on a platform with safety rails on the edges to deal with the threat once and for all. The Story Mode fight actually included most of the mechanics found in Extreme mode, but with the exception that the bumper rails stayed up at all times. Levi Story mode also did a significant less amount of damage, and offered no loot. We were a bit baffled with how the weapons were supposed to be distributed because in the patch notes it was revealed the same weapons could be upgraded with an item called the Mirror of the Whorl. Square decided that handing players i95 weapons for an introductory fight was probably a bad idea, so when people started clearing Extreme mode for the first time and got their weapons, the question remained, where are the mirrors?

Leviathan himself was a very enjoyable fight, in fact alot of people refer to him as the best Primal fight to date, he wasn't unforgiving even with the Extreme mode turning the platform into a similar version of Titan's, yet never shrunk in size. His mechanics were very easy to dodge if you were paying attention to the tells on the sides of the boat to where he was going to dive over next. He had a very reasonable DPS check, and easy, yet annoying to deal with adds if not dealt with swift enough. Overall he was pretty much the answer for all those Titan complains, and people's bloodlust towards clearing Titan was sated. Yet, things quickly changed, while people still farmed him normally because they enjoyed the fight and wanted weapons, the one complaint people had was the fact that the mirrors we needed to upgrade our weapons came from him... It just took a while to figure it out because the mirror was a rare drop... a 3-5 percent chance drop. The chance at upgrading a weapon aren't scoffed at, in 2.2 the only other weapons that could rival the easily acquired Levi weapons were the Raid weapons out of Second Coils, and the High Allagan Weapons from the last boss of Second Coils. With the close second being the Relic Weapon.

It became a running joke that the mirrors did not actually exist. For every mirror he probably did drop there were about five Water Ponies that dropped for other groups at the same time. In retrospect it was a very minor inconvenience, if you put the time into raiding and your relic weapon, you didn't really need to upgrade the Leviathan weapon at all, but people merely wanted it because it looked cool with the Tidal Wave effect. Today Leviathan is still done by alot of people for the horse, and since the introduction of 2.4, the mirrors actually drop every once in a while... a couple of patches late, but hey, you can go back and get the cool looking wave weapon you've always wanted. Luckily the Glamour system arrived this patch so technically you can still use it as a cosmetic!

Above all else, Leviathan quickly became a poster child for the Primal encounters, something that everyone could do and enjoy if they put the time into learning it. Every fight from then on out would go onto be in the same vein. Alot of people unfortunately didn't get to do this fight for a good couple of months though as Titan was still blocking people from coming through. Echo, the buff your party gets when failing an encounter but surviving more than 5 minutes eventually was introduced to the old Primals, and they became that much easier. Titan still knocked plenty of people off the platform, proving that you might be hitting 20 percent harder, but that doesn't mean you're surviving 20 percent longer.

The Illuminati is after the Goblin Cheese!

A ridiculous notion yes, but actually not quite as ridiculous as you would think to not happen in Final Fantasy. The story for Brayflox is that a goblin group known as the "Illuminati" is after Brayflox Alltalks, an NPC in the story from 2.0, and her famous cheese. The reason I chose this dungeon for the dungeon recap was simply because... Brayflox was the dungeon everyone ran. While Halatali Hard Mode had some cool things going for it, and Lost City of Amdapor having the return of Diabolos as a boss encounter, Brayflox was the instant favorite for everyone to run, especially because of the relic questline. Why you ask? It could be done within less than ten minutes.

Speedrunning dungeons in Final Fantasy had existed before Brayflox. For example the first blog covered the two Story mode 8 mans that capped off 2.0, Castrum Meridium and Praetorium, along with the 2.0 dungeon Wanderer's Palace also being extremely fast to complete. 2.1 mentioned that Haukke Manor was the speedrun of choice as well. Brayflox was a dungeon that came off of the response from Square after Pharos Sirius. This was a three boss dungeon, with a lengthy amount of adds splitting them up. Yet, it was found out that a geared enough tank and healer duo, along with the two right DPS combinations, could chain pull all three gigantic groups of mobs and AoE them down. Pretty crazy right? Well heres a video:

The clear difference with this video and my explanation is that this group doesn't even have a healer. Yet still was able to clear the place in less than 7 minutes. Because of this and the inevitable discovery of the second part of the relic quest, Brayflox shot up in popularity as the dungeon to run, with people running it almost 20 times in a day. Because of this dungeon the Myth and Soldiery tome rewards values would eventually be tweaked so you didn't nearly get as much from the place anymore, but only when its time as an "expert" dungeon was over. Another reason why Brayflox was also popular to run was it was the first dungeon to drop an incredibly rare minion, known as the Baby Opo-opo. This little guy is still sold for millions to this day, he possibly even had a lesser chance to drop than the mirrors. Which is why I'm so glad I eventually got one from a Brayflox run.

While Brayflox was definitely the fastest way to get your tomes, and it was fun to try and get a personal best on every run. I think overall Brayflox wasn't a very good dungeon. It definitely made the dungeon scene a whole lot more active but not in a way I would have liked. Still, it was a whole lot better than what 2.3 offered... but that story is for a later date.

In Another Bind

Like I mentioned before, when 2.2 came out and the Second Coils was introduced, I was unfortunately stuck behind Twintania back in the first set of Coil. The way Coils works is exactly how the Primals work, you can't run the new Coil until you're able to beat the final boss of the last Coil. It was a painful time to be honest considering around the time I completed it, and all the time I invested into trying to down it prior, I was only able to go about doing it once the Echo was introduced, and the fight wasn't as hard anymore. The group I ran with which was in the Free Company I was apart of at the time, was just incapable of clearing content as a whole, and it took a combination of two groups inside of the Free Company to eventually get a kill.

Eventually the good times would come to pass, my group would form up again after this kill to make sure we could all down the fight consistently (which we never could) and went into Second Coils. Shortly after the group would implode and I would be on my own once again. I would eventually meet up with a certain Dragoon that would change my fortunes for a short while, until that group also imploded due to some of the people went to Wildstar and we never heard from them again. Time passed and I would eventually end up with my current group after a long and tireless journey. I've been happy ever since.

Now the main reason I contribute my original group's failures, was because the Second Coil of Bahamut was even harder than the first. The raid content in XIV has always fit a certain style that is very alien when compared to other MMOs. You and a group of seven other people go in to fight incredibly challenging content, meeting certain DPS requirements, and above all working together as a team to beat mechanics. Coil, outside of Titan EX, is about as unforgiving as it got. If one of your party members died in the middle of the encounter, especially during progression encounters, you were met with either instant, or certain failure. Yet there was a very distinct difference between all of the turns of coils and Second Coils.

The first two turns of Second Coils, Turn 6 and Turn 7, were not only demanding in your DPS output and ability to do mechanics, there was also the needed ability to adapt to a changing situation. Unlike the other turns save for maybe a Turn 5 from Binding Coil, and turn 10 from Final Coils, there is actually bit of random chance involved in both Turns 6 and 7. Turn 6's mechanics that were met with the need to adapt was the boss would put three bulbs down on the battle field in very specific spots. When the bulbs are left alone, they start to grow a briar patch that will keep getting bigger and bigger, eventually the size will cap out and cover a good chunk of the arena. Normally this doesn't pose an issue, except there is about a 3 out of 8 chance that one of the bulbs would end up in the middle. If the bulb isn't killed fast enough, a briar will begin to grow under your group, and you will more than likely die if it gets too big. On top of that the boss randomly tethered two people together with a vine, that the only way to break was to run away from eachother a certain distance. If not dealt with the vine would slowly eat away both your healthbars and someone was guaranteed to die. Both of these factors together led to alot of groups wiping because the players selected to be vined, and the overall shape of the arena with the fully grown briars dictating where you could go without taking more damage than you should shrank. Even with those random factors thrown in, Turn 6 was not even comparable to the next challenge for those who were able to conquer the boss.

Now because of the class I played, and the stakes that were made every week during the climb up to Turn 9, I'm a bit biased towards this fight. I honestly think, even above Titan EX in its prime, that the original Turn 7 was the hardest fight in the game to ever exist. What made this fight so hard was that its mechanics were purely designed on you being able to adapt to the situation on a dime if need be. To star off the boss would put a debuff on three people, a tank, a healer and a DPS, all of course random of those roles got it. They had to be able to dispose of the debuff without their character looking at anyone, if the debuff hit zero and they were looking at a person, that person was petrified. When you got petrified in this fight, one hit from anything would kill you. If a ranged DPS got petrified, they died, if the main tank got petrified, he died, if the healers got petrified then the whole group dies. Very rarely did a situation pop up where if someone got petrified they lived long enough for it to fall off. On top of that there was an add that spawned every 20 or so seconds called a Renaud, which was just a giant Cyclops. If the Renaud was let loose, he would go on a rampage and proceed to one shot his target if he got too close. There was no living through the hit either, he did a flat 30k damage to anyone that even dared to step into his hitbox.

The fight from my point of view went like this. I had to, while beating up the boss on my spare time, grab a giant Cyclops as fast as possible, kite it to a spot in the back of the room, bind it to that spot so it can stay still long enough for the healer who has the Curse of Voice to stone it while trying to remember not to hit it even once or it crumbles and we all die horribly. The reason why we needed a Renaud in the back of the room was because the boss would eventually put out another debuff called Curse of Shriek, it worked similar to Curse of Voice, but instead of a cone, it went raid wide. the only way to protect everyone from it was for the Cursed person to run behind the Renaud and wait for it to go off, when it did the Renaud's stoned body would act as a line of sight that would protect everyone bunched up in front of it. Yet when bunching up to dodge that mechanic the ranged DPS couldn't ever be too close, the boss would randomly throw out fireballs to those specific two DPS simultaneously. It was just enough damage where if you got hit by both you could easily die. Thats only covering half of the mechanics too, later on the platform you're standing on becomes a disco, as the three rings eventually turn into floor AoEs that if you stand in when the AoE switches rings you blow up and die. At 35 percent an add spawns that introduces a new move called Petrifaction, which if you're looking at it as the add is casting it, you will instantly get petrified. Once you kill the add, that move gets transferred into the boss, and suddenly she can do it too.

The key reason, atleast as to why I believe this was so difficult, was that your group had to be hitting a certain DPS throughout the entire fight. If you pushed one of these phases to fast or too slow, it would screw up the timing on everything. When the fight starts the timer for when a Renaud spawns starts ticking, and after the first one spawns it will spawn again at the same rate. The mechanic you needed to petrify the Renaud started as soon as the fight begins, but if you moved to phase two at any point, that timer resets, and begins anew. Meaning the possibilities of when you would get another Voice, and when you would get another Renaud, was endless. This is why alot of people opted to use the four stack method, where you just put them one on top of another and keep them all in the same place. If you managed to get four all in the same place you could bypass that mechanic all together and not have to worry about it anymore. Yet if your healers forget to do their constant reapplying of the petrify, OR if you push the phase right as before she's about to cast it, things would go real bad real quick, as all four would become unpetrified and wreak havoc on the party.

Turn 7 could either be done in one attempt, or take up your groups whole night just trying to get past it. Both situations happened to me on numerous occasions. This fight was so stressful to me because I was the kiter for my group, meaning most of our success relied on me doing my job correctly. I'm not going to lie, on nights where we didn't manage to get past it within the first hour I would start to wonder whether or not I even wanted to keep raiding anymore. Of course nowadays with the Echo now flooding Second Coils, and the nerf hammer coming down, the fight is probably now the easiest in all of Coils. From all the way to the top to the bottom of the barrel. Oh how the mighty Melusine has fallen. Players going in today for their first time will never understand the true horror this fight was for me. Simply put, they don't know how good they have it.

My group would eventually go on to clear Second Coils merely days before the introduction of patch 2.4. The Second Coil of Bahamut proved to be plenty challenging for many people. In my opinion, Second Coil is probably the hardest raiding ever got. While Final Coil had fights with steep learning curves, most of its demands were mostly static, as in you need to be healing this much, and you need to be damaging things this much and so forth. Not much relies on spur of the moment game changing situations, but that doesn't diminish the challenge at all. Second Coil is simply just a harder group of bosses... because two out of four of them were total bullshit. Which was proven once the mechanics for both of them were turned down.

I also should mention Second Coils is the only Coil to date to actually receive a "Savage" Mode, which is basically taking the already difficult fights and making them even harder by adding more dimensions to the mechanics that were introduced. This was introduced as a thing hardcore raiders could shoot for after they were done with the normal version. This version never awarded any higher tier of loot, it was mostly for bragging rights and titles. You can still access this set today, and its still as hard as it ever was. So if you were ever curious to how much harder it could get... well look no further.

It's Completely Random

At long last, after five months of waiting and hyping up the relic questline from Square, we were finally introduced to the Legend of the Zodiac chain quest. Everyone was so excited to find out what challenging things we would have to do to upgrade it this time, maybe Leviathan and Moggle Mog had some components, or maybe they had even bigger plans in store... unfortunately to everyone's dismay the actual outcome was met with one of the biggest complaints out of all the 2.2 content.

With your shiny Zenith weapon you would return to Gerolt's stomping grounds in Hyrstmill, only to be met by an Alchemist by the name of Jalzahn. This mysterious fellow offered you a proposition to turn your shiny weapon into something more, if you brought him the right components. In your questlog you were given a list of twelve collectible items known as the Atma, and with that the playerbase began to riot. The twelve Atma pieces you were expected to get didn't come from dungeons or bosses, it came from FATEs. Yes, they decided to go with FATEs... again. Only this time instead of getting it on the first fate you got gold on... It was completely random! It didn't matter how many FATE's you did in a certain area, or the amount of time you spent, or for some people the time at which you decided to do said FATE's (looking at you Japanese Atma Theory). It was a random drop, that decided to drop when it wanted to, and that was it.

You see the backstory behind the decision Square went with for this process was the fact that their other MMO, XI, also had a really long (and by long I'm told nearly a span of over a year) quest for you to obtain this legendary weapon. In retrospect, this infamous step in the questline shouldn't have been a problem, and it definitely wouldn't span as long, except for some people it did. I can't really speak about this against anyone because I happened to stumble across all of my Atma within the matter of a week, but it definitely wasn't met without some hardships. Yet there are some people I know to this day that after a day or two of trying to just get one Atma during 2.0, they simply gave up, and their main class' relic weapon is still a Zenith. They just simply decided to go with other options for weapon upgrades at that point. It was a decision met with so much backlash that Square actually had to rethink the questline halfway through creating it so they didn't make the same mistake again.

At the time though people could definitely see why they decided to go with this method. They wanted the FATE parties of old populating the other areas of the world again. It was a callback to the 2.1 storyline of having veteran players come back to do old content to help out the new players. It was a very fine notion and at the same time they could kill two birds with one stone. Yet... the drop rate on the Atma was what ultimately killed this idea. While the areas were still flooded with people trying to get their pieces, alot of 50s were disgruntled, they couldn't even do the FATE's on their other classes if they wanted to also do two things at once, you had to be on a class with an equippable Zenith weapon in order to qualify for an Atma at the end of the fate.

After collecting all 12 Atma you returned to Jalzahn, who would proceed to turn your weapon into the Relic Atma... and the real kick in the teeth that sent people over the edge was that all the collecting was just... for a reskin! The Relic Atma was an increase in item level, and item level alone. The stats remained unchanged. In order for your weapon to get its stats, you needed to do the next step, which was turning it into the Relic Animus. The Relic Animus upgrade process atleast was a warm welcome compared to the unpredictable grind the Atma process was. You were introduced to a special vendor who dealt in books that you had to complete each section of by doing certain activities. These activities included Dungeons, Leves, more FATEs, and killing 100 monsters (10 of a different monster each, which totaled up to 100). Upon completion of each book up to a total of 9, your Atma would slowly get its stats and turn into the Relic Animus.

This Step was mostly tolerated simply because it was atleast a grind with a target already on it. People knew what they were getting and when they were getting it. Each book also costed you around 1500 Tomes of Mythology, which is where the Brayflox Speedruns came in. Atma was eventually, but not until recently, reworked so you can atleast expect your pieces within about five to ten FATEs now. All that time I spent in Western La Noscea killing those poor Sahagin for a rock, now trivialized because they upped the drop rate. I'm not complaining though, it was kind of fun to see the zones filled up as they were back in 2.0... even if it costed a bit of my sanity in the process.

I am a Manderville Man!

Once again we're met with the Agent of Inquiry, Inspector Hildibrand and his trusty assistant Nashu, as they continue the search for the Phantom Thief. This time around we're introduced to what is considered Hildibrand's Miles Edgeworth, Inspector Briardien. This case would eventually lead the two to the Rapscallion we all know as Gilgamesh and his long time friend Enkidu. Gilgamesh, joins Hildibrand on the case, as he too is looking for something, his stolen Spear (which he totally didn't steal in the first place). This chapter of the Hildibrand side story would prove to be one of the more absurd ones. Hildibrand's father, Godbert Manderville, an actual semi important character in the main story and owner of the Gold Saucer in 2.5, would go onto leave his biggest impact in the game as of 2.2, maybe you've seen it somewhere before this blog.

The Hildibrand Questline would also be the host of a very special Trial boss fight from here on out (excluding 2.3). 2.2 would introduce us to the Battle on the Big Bridge, a one time encounter with Gilgamesh in order to retrieve the Spear he has stolen and arrest him for being the so called Phantom Thief. Battle on the Big Bridge is one of the craziest fights in the game, it also is one of the only boss fights that was actually fully voice acted. Yes everything Gilgamesh says to you was accompanied by actual voice work, a trend that wouldn't even carry over to his next appearance in Battle in the Big Keep. Unfortunate, but doesn't at all downplay the overall enjoyment of battling against one of the more famous Final Fantasy characters from the original series.

Everything about the Hildibrand questline is just so absurdly good, and continues to be a great addition to every patch, and this fight will always be one of my favorites. In Heavensward one of my biggest hopes is that Square puts as much effort in to putting personality into more of these fights. Oh and of course, after defeating Gilgamesh, you are given everyone's favorite dance emote, The Manderville!

We're almost through the Maelstrom

In this patch Mor Dhona grew even larger, where there was once farmland, there was now a work-in-progress non-functional marketplace, along with the new Summoning Bells, so now you could access your retainers from inside the city! Rowena's two croneys would now operate out of an actual concrete Stall, and apparently she herself became too good to hang out with them anymore. She would go on to move into her new fortress in the wall where the farmland used to be. More stone towers and buildings would populate the area, finally Mor Dhona was shaping up to be a respectable place.

Along with Mor Dhona getting a new look, so were players. The long awaited and most requested feature, Glamour would make its debut this patch! Glamour was essentially the Transmog feature from World of Warcraft, but with less rules attached to it. Meaning what you wanted to do in Warcraft, like be a silly billy running around in your underwear in raid without taking off your clothes was more than just a possibility in XIV, but an actual thing you could do! The only limit was items that took up two or more slots couldn't be Glamoured over pieces that took one, which meant that sweet Odin armor was still unable to be glamoured. Yet if you wanted to have a pumpkin on your head while wearing nothing but your summer bathing suits, then you were more than welcome to. Once again people were running old content just to get their hands on gear they wanted to use in their new everyday outfit. Which was finally a positive way of implementing that type of idea into the game without forcing you to do it.

2.2 Send Off

2.2 was a great patch that deserved alot of the praise it got. It wasn't without its warts but if there weren't then Square wouldn't have anything to improve on later. I enjoyed my time battling Leviathan, my raiding experienced was a little on the downside, but overall I wouldn't trade the experience for anything in Eorzea. It got me to where I am now and I've never been happier to play the game. Special mention that didn't make it goes to the launch of the PS4 version. Without it I'd still be playing on the toaster that is my PS3 Phat, and after going through the open beta during 2.2 before its actual launch made me never want to go back... until I had to for a couple of months.

That's going to do it for 2.2, this entry is pretty long in the tooth as well but I hope you guys read all of it, or atleast the ones that caught your eye, In a couple of days we'll be going over 2.3, which is the patch I actually wanted to cover the most... For my own reasons, but for now, thank you always for reading, and stay tuned.