9 years ago today!

Happy Meteor Survivor Day!!

(November 11th, 2012 was the final day of FFXIV’s 1.0 servers being online before they were shut down to focus on development of A Realm Reborn. It is the real life date of the Seventh Umbral Calamity.)

Heard echoing everywhere during the final days, this version was made that much more eerie by the sporadic growling/rumbling sounds of Dalamud disturbing the atmosphere. Below, with scenery:

Hi everyone. I'm glad to see so many of you still taking interest in all of these historical 1.0 gems. Alas, I haven't made any updates here in well over two years, but I do hope to revisit it eventually and I had planned on uploading all the old cutscenes until the computer died where they were stored. Good news is that other people have posted theirs on YouTube for posterity.

In the meantime, the archive isn't going anywhere, so please continue to enjoy all the screenshots and tidbits which are already here. I have no plans to close this blog anytime soon.

All true.

I was wondering if anyone had tried praying during this event for these reasons. Thank you for testing it out @akuosa. Maybe next year they'll do and instanced Battle of Carteneau.

So I didn’t find this out until I was running around like a potato. But for those that didn’t know where the Rising tokens come from, they are pretty much from an instance that makes you go through 1.0 days in Uldah and get beaten by a bunch of mobs. It’s chaotic as hell, but also pretty entertaining (at least to me) since it’s a war zone like the one shown in the end of the calamity.

Bonus:

Keep reading

You're in for a treat this year!

So I didn’t find this out until I was running around like a potato. But for those that didn’t know where the Rising tokens come from, they are pretty much from an instance that makes you go through 1.0 days in Uldah and get beaten by a bunch of mobs. It’s chaotic as hell, but also pretty entertaining (at least to me) since it’s a war zone like the one shown in the end of the calamity.

Bonus:

Keep reading

Walkthrough of an unused 1.0 dungeon: Bloodshore Hollow

Some people have the 1.0 version on the game loaded on private servers, so we get to see videos from it.  This was a dungeon that was never accessible to the players back then. It’s really interesting to see now though!  

Originally, this track was used for Behests in 1.0.  You can now enjoy it while fighting Notorious Monsters in Eureka.

Looking through old screenshots and found these. Here is a small glimpse of what the “End of the Era” looked like for those who weren’t here in 1.0. (Top image is me. Second image is my sister Zelulu)

There’s not a whole lot to say here since they cover pretty much everything.  Of the three locations, Drybone has undergone the most drastic changes from 1.0.  What wasn’t mentioned was that it was also a starting point for Caravan Escort missions which also ended at Gold Bazaar.  I will write a bit about caravan escorts at another time.

Like Aleport, Vesper Bay was also quite different before the Calamity.  It wasn’t much more than a quiet seaside village with a ferry port.  It has since grown in size thanks to a certain Lalafel. Note the change in location of the Coffer & Coffin on the map.  The video explains the lore-based reasoning for this change. Oh, Aurum Vale.  You thought you hated Aurum Vale in ARR?  It used to be a constant Hell with an automatic debuff.  I didn’t remember the Coincounter fight when it came up in ARR - probably tried to forget it existed, but I do remember Miser’s Mistress with painful clarity.  The video below will allow you to witness how we suffered.

Credit: Sylvarion Ryulong on youtube

Video credit Bobby on youtube. During the later patches of 1.0, you could log out via the beds in the inn rooms, and logging back in after doing so meant you had a chance of seeing a little flavor text in your chat log which described the type of dream your character had.  Along with this, you would find an item corresponding with the dream such as crystals, eggs, fish, biscuits named for each of the three inns, and so forth. The above cutscene was a nightmare your character could have, as of patch 1.22.  After the Calamity officially happened and server data was no longer saving, players had a chance of logging in to find basic relic weapons in their bed.  This provided a marginal power boost when dealing with all the super tough mobs which kept showing up in cities, and the relics did not carry over into ARR.  It was also random as to which one you might get, so you had a chance of getting one for a job you didn’t play. Now, I don’t know if this has ever been verified, but during the monster invasions, people started /praying to the Twelve for salvation.  The rumor I heard at the time was that the devs enjoyed seeing this so much that they decided to add the relic weapons as a random “answer” from the gods.  People, of course, prayed more when they got wind of this rumor just to see if it improved their chances. As far as I know, it didn’t. Considering some of the things the players did which the devs later wrote into canon, such as the Great Goobue Wall of Ul’dah, the above is pretty believable and helped to make things a little more interesting. Then again, I ended up with Gae Bolg twice, when I never leveled Dragoon. Getting the right one was like winning the RNG lottery.

Aleport, in all its 1.0 lackluster glory.  Although the video mentions Hamlet Defense, it doesn’t talk about how it worked.  I still have plans to write a piece about this for this blog. Dzemael Darkhold and its changes.  The Deepvoid Slave fight (now known as Taulurd) didn’t have other ogre type monsters coming out to throw rocks at you, as it does now.  The room was surrounded by ghost mobs which alternated their placement between the upper and lower levels of the chamber.  This, of course, meant you had to move according to where they were to avoid their attacks. The Batraal fight looks boring in the video, and he only mentions that the boss summons skeletons, but this was actually a fairly complex boss fight compared to what is is now.  Skeletons were summoned in waves, but you also had rings you had to step in which altered debuffs on the boss. 

And then all the classes we never received.  Arcanist ended up becoming something very different from what was originally planned, and then there’s a handful which simply never saw the light of day, including Flayer and Shepherd, which were supposed to be DoH classes. I’m still a little bitter that we didn’t get Musketeer.  Oh well.

I’m one of the many people who doesn’t remember Battle Regimen being a thing.  That’s how forgettable that part was.  Cutter’s Cry was also a lot more difficult in 1.0, as were all of the dungeons at the time, but it was great for spirit bonding mass quantities of equipment in one shot.  We would load up our inventories with gear and go into the Mymidon Princess fight, keep her around, and mass slaughter wave after wave of adds, then swap gear every time something finished spiritbonding.  There were many times we came away afterward with oodles of Grade IV materia which, at the time, were selling for upwards of 1 million gil a piece, particularly the reds: Heavens’ Eye, Heavens’ Fist, Savage Aim, and Savage Might.  There were also, supposedly, two other reds: Sanguinary Might (meldable to waist, increased crit attack power) and Evenflow (meldable to hands, Store TP), but I don’t recall ever seeing either one.

Click this link for more about all the different 1.0 Materia which no longer exist!

Skirmish and Giantsgall Weapons

Video Credit: Leonesaurus on Youtube

Skirmish was about as close to an endgame raid as we had in 1.0, and it came in two flavors: Locke’s Lie, and Turtleback Island.  You had to be a Grand Company member at level 45 or higher, and parties of 4-8 players could enter. Both modes pitted you and your team against hordes of powerful monsters, and more powerful versions of Notorious Monsters which used to appear in various regions.  Some of the standard monsters on these maps ranged upwards of level 70, when jobs only went as high as 50. Locke’s Lie: In this mode, your visibility was limited by a lot of crags and large natural structures.  Seeing what was around you for monsters was tricky without moving around, and sometimes this led to unpleasant surprises if you weren’t careful.  This was more of an offensive mode. Turtleback Island: In this mode, you didn’t have the same visibility issues you had in Locke’s Lie, and while you did have fewer monsters over all, they were more powerful. And you only had so much time to take them down before more would spawn.  This was more of a strategic and defensive mode. Click on the links on each mode’s name, above, for more info on each. More about Giantsgall under the cut.

Among the rewards you could receive for completing these modes were the original iteration of the Giantsgall weapons, some of the most powerful at the time, and among the first content-dropped weapons which were meldable.  These weapons still exist today and Alchemy recipes, as well as obtained through level 50 MSQ rewards. Giantsgall Lore: The stone Giantsgall is found only on Thavnair possessing exceptional hardness. Its name is derived from the legend of a Far Eastern hero who voyaged to the island and vanquished a savage giant. A nearby stone drank up the giant’s blood and gall, receiving its strength. The ARR version of giantsgall weapons require you to have a “mossy stone” version of whatever weapon you want to make, since the likelyhood you’ll get your hands on fresh, unprocessed giantsgall stone is pretty much nil. So unless you received one way back in 1.0, then the weapon you have now is a restored version of an old one. Still, considering the source of the original materials, that’s not half bad.

Have some 1.0 Hildibrand goodness. Credit: Leonesaurus on Youtube

Take a look at Nanawa Mines, one of a handful of freely accessible dungeon areas from 1.0, as well as the old version of Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak. Compare 1.0 Toto-Rak to ARR Toto-Rak for grins, and conditional chest drops. And butts.

Here’s a look at Heavensturn in 1.0!

Since FFXIV debuted in 2010, the first Heavensturn was at the start of 2011, which was the Year of the Rabbit.  Usagi Kabutos were introduced as rewards for this seasonal event.

For 2011, there was an overlap from Starlight into Heavensturn, as you'll see in the first video.  

The celebratory bells were still available in the three main cities, and ringing them would still grant you an item - fish stock, raw urushi, or the usagi kabuto. As with the Starlight event, you could ring the bell every 8 hours for a chance at another item.  There really wasn't much to this event, and I haven't been able to find any more complete videos showing if there was more to it.  

This also marked the first appearance of the silver (white) and black usagi kabutos. While the red default helm was level 1 and free, the silver and black ones were crafted, and wearable at level 20.  You needed Armorsmithing, Clothcraft, and Goldsmithing to make the materials, but if you had the mats on hand, you could make the helm at around level 15-20.

In 2012, we rung in the Year of the Dragon.  The storyline for this event followed on the heels of Winter's Knell, and had the player doing a little detective work to find out where a snowman up and disappeared to.  The player soon learned that it got up and walked off, literally, due to the presence of a powerful ice Elemental bound to an artifact called the Heart of Winter.  

For completing this event, you received the default (blue) Dragon Kabuto, but you could then obtain gold, black, and red versions of the kabuto by speaking to specific NPCs in each of the three cities.  

There was no Heavensturn for 2013 as the servers were down, however, the Year of the Snake was not forgotten the following year in 2014 when it became purchasable, along with the usagi and dragon kabutos, from an event NPC.  All of these later became available on Mogstation. Note: You only need the first few minutes of the top video since it was done as part of a Let’s Play, but the rest is also worth watching just to see some more of the world, combat, and other features.