With the recent launch of one of the latest patches for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail expansion, Patch 7.1 aka Crossroads, developer Square Enix has added tons of new feature to the long-running fantasy MMORPG. One of these was an upgrade and improvement to the mode Hall of the Novice, which was added way back in patch 3.2 during the second expansion, Heavensward.
It’s A Crossroads
The function of the Hall was to help players gain knowledge on basic skills and techniques they would use in party-based content such as dungeons, trials, and even raids. Final Fantasy XIV prides itself on slowly adding new mechanics over time, but a lot of those mechanics are based on older ones that have since been tweaked slightly. Once you had defeated this mode, you unlocked a basic set of armour to help you from level 15-24, and you also got an EXP Ring that would give you bonus experience points until you reach level 30.
Some of this can be confusing for newer players, and for those who may have skipped to catch up with friends using MSQ/Job skips, some of the later dungeons may have content that they will struggle understanding. As such, the community has been asking for this feature for quite some time. For instance, if you see a Square/Circle with arrows pointing in, this means a stack-based mechanic is about to happen. For new players, they would have no idea and would sometimes run off from the group, and because you need to stack together to survive, this would then often kill that player. Though a lot of fights are recoverable, depending on the job that died it can be really frustrating for the group chasing after you as you panic and run away from the rest.
I Said ‘DODGE!’
I should mention that this feature does still need some changes and I will go into more detail later in the article, but for example, there is a red version of this stack marker; this will be on the person with highest agro (which should be the tank) and normally means that a mechanic is a tank stack. This can happen in raids when you have multiple tanks. The hall doesn’t really teach you the difference between a normal stack and a tank stack so some people might find this confusing.
However, it does through quite a nice selection of different markers and coloured markers, as although later fights have been a little more unified with system markers, some of the older ones are still slightly different. The hall helps teach you some of them; for example, the above means the party should split apart or anyone in the circle will take damage, the opposite of a stack marker. This can either be on one player or multiple at the same time, meaning you sometimes have to organise which location to run on the map before pulling the enemy.
Oh God, Is That On Me?
Some markers split the floor into quadrants, meaning you have to find a safe spot: you can even have other markers on at the same time as this. Sometimes the safe spot will also become dangerous, but you have to move to the old danger triangle as it explodes. The Hall teaches so many different types of basic mechanics that you will experience in dungeons and expert trials, and I feel like some of these are even from raid encounters that I have participated in.
As with the tank marker, it seems to be a cone-based attack towards the tank, so if you have a party member near you or in front of you they will also take some of the damage. As such, the hall is teaching you about how important positions are for both you and the rest of the party. Some melee jobs still have positional based attacks, so placement by the tank with field awareness based on AoE can be vital for later dungeons and trials.
At the end of the day, there can only be a certain amount of stuff that this mode can teach, and I do think there are a few things more they can add. These include teaching players more about tank mechanics, and even some healing based things. For example as a healer, some mechanics involve fully healing a target so that the debuff is removed, and some debuffs can be removed with the spell Esuna, which can be checked with a little line above the debuff icon near the party list. You also have some mechanics later on that are move or not move; this would be cool to see in some kind of hall of the novice for raiders.
Future Updates, Hall of the Raider?
I do think we should see more help for raiders in this game, mainly due to the fact most people will out gear old raids, so will skip most of the older mechanics. But as the game likes to repurpose these mechanics, it would be handy to give people a chance to learn them if they wished without having to step into a live environment with other players. Nonetheless, this is a very good step in the right direction. I will give credit to Final Fantasy XIV’s development team, as they have obviously listened to feedback and went back to implement some welcome improvments. As I mentioned earlier the first set gave an exp ring to level 30, the new set also gives an exp ring that will give you bonus experience till level 60.
Overall the concept is very solid, even though there are spots that could be improved in the future. I hope that the team comes back and continues to add new markers, layouts and attack patterns to the game. But one good thing about Final Fantasy XIV’s combat is that it overall works as layers with new content taking old mechanics and adding new twists, so even just playing the game helps teach mechanics in the long run.
Final Fantasy XIV is available for PS5 & PS4.