I Love Realising I Can Solo Content

November 2, 2024

Despite the many hours I’ve pumped into Final Fantasy 14 over the years, I consider myself a casual player. I don’t tackle hardcore endgame content, and I’m certainly not the most well-versed in the best strategies or mechanics—heck I barely remember duties a month later— and quite frankly, whatever I do, I die. A lot.

One way to save face is to tackle content on my lonesome. Trust me, it’s better for both of us that you don’t have to suffer through my Bard eating dirt every five minutes. That’s why, despite friends offering to help me with the Monster Hunter collab duty, The Great Hunt (Extreme), so I could bag myself a Rathalos mount and Poogie minion, I haven’t taken them up on the offer.

A mash up of Prishe from Final Fantasy 14's Echoes of Vana'diel raid with Nintendo's Arms.

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And it’s not even the gameplay I’m worried about, it’s Prishe’s design.

The great thing about FF14 is that pretty much everything becomes soloable eventually, provided you’re willing to wait. You can use the Unrestricted Party option to go into duties at your actual level without any restrictions on party size or make-up. Every time an expansion launches that increases your level and item level, it makes older content that much easier to handle, and eventually, solo.

The Great Hunt (Extreme) was added in Patch 4.3, all the way back in 2018. I tried and failed it at the time, and promptly gave up, saving time and face. While other players whizzed around on their Rathalos mounts and I looked on with envy, I didn’t fancy attempting that gruelling Trial again. Six years later, and I’ve realised I can solo this duty now.

It must have been soloable for quite some time, as I’ve found it quite easy to complete on my failBard, which means far more skilled players would have been doing this ages ago.

Every now and then I’ll try some old duty on my lonesome, generally a Trial or Raid, to see if I can snag whatever goodies it might yield all by myself, and I’m always happy to discover I can. As well as the joy of getting my hands on whatever mount/minion/reward I wanted so badly, it’s almost a relief to get the content done and checked off. More importantly, it’s a relief to do it without being an embarrassment in the process.

Having spent far too long grinding The Great Hunt (Extreme) and yet to see the Rathalos mount drop, I can only imagine how horrendous it would have been if friends of mine had been forced to endure me attempting this years ago. It’s painful enough to grind content with rubbish RNG odds, but it’s so much worse when some muppet keeps screwing up attempts by dying all the time.

What’s even more daft is that I don’t even know why I struggled with this as much as I did when it was new. Yeah, you’re limited to three deaths and only ten potions to heal with, Monster Hunter style, and that was certainly a novel curveball for FF14 players to adjust to. But the mechanics are straightforward, Rathalos follows the same patterns, and it’s not that hard to stay out of the path of death. So how did I mess this up so badly?

When I hit content I struggle with, I generally go one of two ways. Sheer stubbornness to continue until it’s done or I’m quick to quit. The deciding factor tends to be whether I am just annoying myself or others by continuing on or not, and given this would have absolutely annoyed others, that’s probably why I threw the towel in so fast. Perhaps this should be a lesson to stop giving up so soon.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve run The Great Hunt (Extreme) this week. I still haven’t received the mount yet. I’ve only seen two Treasure Coffers drop in that time as the RNG is awful, but I at least managed to get my Poogie minion. I didn’t realise just how bad the drop rates were at first, so I haven’t really been bothering to attack the tail to get a guaranteed Rathalos Scale+ each time. Stupid me. If I save up 50 Rathalos Scale+, I can simply purchase the mount from an NPC. As I thought the mount would easily drop within 50 runs, it didn’t seem worth bothering with the tail. I was wrong, clearly.

I’ll persevere and get my Rathalos mount one way or another, hopefully, sooner rather than later. While I love being able to solo content, the downside is that you have no one to commiserate with about the awful RNG. One upside is you’re only burning through duties for yourself. I can’t imagine running this for multiple people, aiming to get a mount for everyone in your party. Absolute hell. It’s bad enough for just me, I might start seeing Rathalos in my sleep at this rate.