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Aetherflow – Autumn 2018
Welcome to our walkthrough of Sastasha Seagrot, the very first dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV. While it serves as an introduction to this type of content and various mechanics, it also introduces the player to the diverse type of players that exist within the game. Grab your weapon, queue up via Duty Finder, wait 30 minutes if you’re a DPS, and enjoy the content!
After you load into the dungeon you will probably be stuck in a little circle while one of your party members is watching a cutscene, which is the first new mechanic. Throughout the entire game you will see this phenomenon and actually be surprised that somebody cares about its early story. Following this, your party will awkwardly stand still while the healer forgets that Protect exists and wonders why the tank isn’t advancing at all.
Now, after these differences are settled, your tank will start pulling one group at a time as you advance through the instance at a reasonable pace, with everyone ignoring the bloody memo. It is around the third or fourth group of enemies when one of your DPS has a chance to snap. This usually includes a new player who’s playing tank and is actually doing perfectly fine. He’s tanking one group at a time, maybe stops to type to ask a few questions about his class or the content, which one of your players patiently answers. The DPS, however, is severely annoyed by this and starts pulling the groups himself. Don’t be this guy. Don’t be a dick.
Following their death (because the healer didn’t bother to heal him) you continue to a big room with a lot of Giant Clams and Shade Seekers. This is where you look at your party’s composition and regret queueing up for your daily leveling roulette, because for some reason you have been queued up with only melee DPS who don’t get their AoE abilities until much later.
Cherish this moment forever, because this may just be the only time in the game when you wish you had a black mage in your group. You’ll think about it as your samurai and rogue slowly kill the enemies one by one, the clam becomes invincible just before it’s killed and inevitably spawns a few more enemies to deal with.
At the following boss you may just regret your life decisions once again since nobody in the party knows which god damn coral to activate. Remember that bloody memo? Oh, you wish you looked at that now, while someone tries to guess the correct one and inevitably fails twice, becoming poisoned and spawning extra monsters. On the other hand, you may get lucky and save one minute of your life if the tank guesses correctly and the switch to spawn the boss appears.
After a few straightforward pulls and the easiest dungeon boss to ever exist in the game – no really, who thought it’d be a great idea to have a boss that doesn’t even use a simple dodgeable ground AoE? – you’ll arrive at the most difficult part of the dungeon. Deadman’s Drink, a giant room with multiple paths and a lot of enemies you could definitely avoid.
Your tank pulls the first group while you pray that nobody accidentally pulls a group of mobs you could avoid; amazingly, people somehow have the brain cells required to do so in this part of the dungeon and you safely arrive at the Captain’s Quarters door. You try to open it, only to realize that nothing happens.
You turn around and see a shiny little object on the floor. Of course no one picked up the key. That’s just normal in this game. After you kill the boss everybody will pick up the gate key and you simply advance to the next area. However, there is a dark timeline in this dungeon. If you’re lucky – or unlucky, depending on how you see it – you will get the one tank that insists on clearing this place completely. For the achievement? For the experience? For fun?
Your tank pulls the first group while you pray that nobody accidentally pulls a group of mobs you could avoid.
What you do know is that you either follow him or advance as three, without the tank. Did you know that in one of the optional rooms a bar fight between two groups of enemies breaks out? After another exciting boss fight with Captain Madison (which now includes even more adds because who needs mechanics anyway), you arrive at the final part.
You take a look at the time that has passed already, sigh, and get ready to engage. But this time your party members will not be able to simply ignore the optional mobs. Before you know it, one of your absolutely amazing allies, instead of hugging the wall, decided to just walk through the middle of the room.
Of course the person that pulled is the impatient dick from earlier. Suddenly you have around ten mobs attacking the tank. Your healer is panicking, spamming Cure. Your green leaf tank is struggling to keep aggro. You wish you were leveling black mage instead of rogue. You arrive at the final room and prepare for one of the most difficult bosses in Final Fantasy XIV.
After your tank finishes watching the cutscene you take a deep breath as he pulls and perfectly execute your combo. One, two, one, two. Finally, the bosses mechanic appears: bubbles begin forming on the water’s surface, but nobody bothers with it. Two adds spawn as your party continues to ignore them. They start attacking the healer, doing ten damage with every stab they do. The boss falls below 40% HP and four unnatural ripples spawn in the arena. You continue to ignore them and activate the limit break on the boss to finish him.
Or that’s at least how you wish it’d be, because in reality, somebody goes to stop the ripples but the enemies spawn anyway. Your healer is tabbed out, scrolling his facebook timeline while waiting for the tank to lose five HP so he can overheal him, because you certainly don’t pay his sub and healers aren’t supposed to do damage. The limit break goes off, but instead of you doing it, it’s the unfamiliar sound of a tank limit break and your other DPS stops attacking to complain about how he just lost ten seconds of his life.
Somehow, the boss actually ends up being killed with nine trash mobs attacking the healer. You sigh again as you get your thirty-first copy of Riptide and another Sahagin Triple Triad card to sell for shit all MGP at the Gold Saucer. You don’t even bother with commendations, you simply want to escape Sastasha. Congratulations! You’ve cleared Sastasha Seagrot!
But don’t worry – you get to do it tomorrow, during leveling roulette, again.
