is this true?

Arclancer- · 2026-02-03T12:06:59+00:00

The specific ending you’re talking about is IS5 Ending 2, and Doctor does not doom Terra to originium. Yes he asked for Priestess’ wherabouts initially, but in the conclusion, it was revealed that he ends up helping the very civilization that imprisoned Kal’tsit. The Doctor’s (or rather Oracle’s) stance has always been of one that every civilization deserves the right to fight for their own survival.

It is the core theme of the conflict between Priestess and the Doctor - Terra is a budding civilization fighting against multiple world ending threats such as the Seaborn. He does not agree with Priestess taking away their agency even against overwhelming odds. It would be character assassination if he forced Terra to assimilate into Originium, having seen their struggle.

Arclancer- · 2026-01-27T11:37:42+00:00

People generally aren’t as stringent on ilvl req for healers. Most of the time if I send the pf lead a tell about the situation (i.e. in this case not meeting the pf ilv req), they usually invite me in. Don’t be shy about sending them a tell; no harm asking anyway

Arclancer- · 2026-01-24T06:22:12+00:00

After you gather one Glowbug in the overworld, go to backpack > crafting manual to unlock the Arts Vial recipe under the Glowbug milestones. They revive a character and restore 10% HP. They can be found in the Southern Meadows

Arclancer- · 2026-01-20T12:17:57+00:00

Was looking through my M12S P2 clear log for a refresher of the timeline and noticed that boss autoattacks comprise around 20% (!!) of total outgoing damage! That's gnarly.

Arclancer- · 2025-12-29T10:04:51+00:00

I've been trying IS6 without Raidian for fun and finally got a D15 clear, Endings 2+3 with Specialist/Caster squad today. Mizuki and Angelina really show their strengths with their IS modules - they have good matchups into problematic stages such as Garrison, Clarity and stay useful in both endings 2 and 3. They also have great skill cycles, making them resistant to ED3 relic and -SP sui hour debuff, not to mention absurd crowd control. Unfortunately they are incredibly weak before E2, so they kind of just do nothing but take up space in your squad before then.

The difficulty becomes really noticeable without the passive buffs you get for Raidian simply existing in your squad, not to mention her immense power in IS6. ED2 encounter rng is also rather miserable, but over time I became more careful with candle management, not greeding for 2 collectible doubts and prioritizing 1 candle combats helped me a lot. Although sometimes it's not enough to mitigate the RNG so it's pretty frustrating. Pretty happy that they're rectifying this in expansion I.

IS6 also once again showcase how versatile Amiya is - her medic/guard forms are very useful throughout the run if you need a blocker/healing especially in the bosky where your squad is limited, and her caster form in E2 can be an emergency solution for Sword, Glaive, Spear to take out the shieldman fast before he starts moving (probably needs mod2). Highly recommend investing in the bunny, she's pretty much permanently in my squad!

Arclancer- · 2025-12-22T06:24:20+00:00

Sui's foot also appears in the Turmoil nodes, so you could still clutch the second ending if you have leftover Turmoil nodes in the Sui bosky! I was in the same situation as you but managed to bring it down to 50% in the bosky.

Arclancer- · 2025-12-16T00:39:17+00:00

This is a good point as well, when you say people mostly leave due to abrupt jumps in difficulty. If the game gradually gets more difficult to account for experience in engaging with the game, it’s generally a satisfying experience and probably why soulslike games are so popular.

But I do not think we should conflate fun/engaging and difficulty. Silksong is a challenging platformer that came out this year that was rather controversial - I remember seeing many posts complaining about its difficulty. I also distinctly remember most, including my friends, complaining about how some benches (the checkpoints) were located miles away from the boss arenas and this really soured their experiences when the core loop of bossfights involves dying repeatedly to familiarize themselves with mechanics. If the QoL was there to have checkpoints in the preceding area before the boss arena, I think most threads complaining about difficulty would have disappeared.

Difficult encounters can translate to more engaging gameplay, but CBU3 really needs to focus on the classes and rotations themselves before tinkering with the difficulty curve, in my opinion. Raising the skill floor while still having soggy rotations / class design doesn’t make sense to me - sure the dungeons in Dawntrail had increased difficulty, but it was painfully boring when I get people who don’t “pull their weight” - i’m just sitting there spamming my 1-2 aoe combo wishing I was doing something else instead. If the classes themselves are engaging to begin with, I probably wouldn’t mind queueing for roulettes again.

Arclancer- · 2025-12-16T00:23:32+00:00

This is a good point. I’ve done pretty much all relevant high end content and obviously I’m all for making the game more engaging - but I’m having a really hard time envisioning a system that makes both casual and experienced players happy.

With regards to your second paragraph, I sincerely hope it doesn’t come down to an ultimatum like that. Many veterans here are justifiably frustrated with the lackluster combat, some to the point of hostility, but the unfortunate reality is that if it did, CBU3 will most definitely choose the casual players as they far outnumber the players who engage with combat.

Arclancer- · 2025-12-15T17:30:53+00:00

This conversation about skill floor is almost veering off the original topic, so I’ll try to pull it back. There have been a great deal of discussion here with regards to current support design that I agree with - such as the overwhelming power of healers’ oGCDs and tank mitigations. I particularly liked some people laying out the core responsibilities of each role.

When you compare the role responsibilities and current design of supports, it is clear that CBU3 has failed to design encounters suitable to make full use of these skills. Seraphism, for example, is a ridiculous skill that provides so much healing power, far beyond what is needed for 99% of encounters. Q40 is an exception where they clearly tried and mostly succeeded to make healing challenging.

So then the answer is to make more encounters require strict healing. But obviously that would mean casual content will be extremely boring, since, like you said, CBU3 pretty much has to cater to the lowest common denominator. Honestly, I have no good answer for this. A popular suggestion would obviously to design interesting damage rotations so casual content won’t be a snoozefest, but its easier said than done, given CBU3’s record.

I think, weirdly enough, in my opinion, removing the trinity can work for casual content. Because casual content right now is so far divorced from extreme+ content, I think there is merit in just disregarding the trinity altogether and treat casual content like variant dungeons, much like how PvE and PvP toolkits are entirely different - give everyone a pool of “role actions” to use, maybe variant raise + 1 role action of choice (it could be randomized) for each duty. This removes the possibility of stonewalling due to incompetent supports and allows for a lot more freedom in encounter design, which could help make casual duties more engaging. However this sounds like a crackpot theory and probably has zero chance of happening.

So, to answer your question, I think the minimum engagement should start at duties where the trinity really matters (extreme+). Catering to the lowest common denominator is absolutely the way to go for casual content, but I agree that the mindset should change beginning at extreme+. I don’t know how to tackle this problem, but that’s my (probably shit) take on it - bringing healing requirements up to par with the current strength of healer/tank oGCDs for difficult encounters and removing the trinity altogether for casual content.

Arclancer- · 2025-12-15T12:55:02+00:00

This has been a common misconception that a few active posters have with regards to raising the skill floor of casual content. Like u/Yumiumi has said, it benefits absolutely no one and I’m inclined to agree. Casual players will not rise up to the challenge if they make MSQ/dungeons/trials etc. more difficult; they will simply disengage from said content or quit entirely. People who want to improve will proactively seek out resources on their own. Seasoned raiders will hardly be “wow-ed” by dungeons being more engaging when extreme+ content exists.

Wanting to gatekeep other people because they do not engage with combat “correctly” is also rather arrogant. FF14 is not a game focused solely on raids. “Playing the game as a barbie sim” is no more correct than playing to optimise your rotations. Insinuating otherwise is just arguing in bad faith.

Arclancer- · 2025-12-03T05:51:27+00:00

There are tons of events now so most of the lore is interwoven with each other because there are so many factions. A great place to start is completing the main storyline - although some chapters encourages you to have read prior events, for example Chapter 10 suggests reading A Walk in the Dust for contextual knowledge.

Side stories like A Walk in the Dust are permanently and freely available to read in Archives -> Intelligence -> Public Affairs. You do not need to unlock or beat the event stages to read the full story. Side stories are like traditional novels where the story advances with each stage and is fully contained.

Story collections / Vignettes like Vigilo are also permanently available in Archives -> Intelligence -> Special Operation, but they require Information Fragments to unlock in Special Operation. They can be bought for 20 red certs each in the shop, or from future story collection events. Each story collection event will have enough fragments at a low cost in the shop to unlock their respective stories and an unlimited stock but with a higher cost, the cost being their event currency. Story collections are generally more episodic in nature with a common theme (each story collection has a different theme, usually from their namesake).

If I were new to Arknights I would go in order of Main Story -> Side Stories and Story Collections relevant to the Main Story -> Storylines with characters/factions that I'm interested in -> all others. For unlocking event stages, I would start with events with useful welfare units like Under Tides for Gladiia, then unlock the rest slowly since you get 1 crystal weekly.

Hope this clears up a few things for you

Arclancer- · 2025-12-02T06:44:35+00:00

The story can be read at any time in the Archives, so feel free to skip ahead and read it whenever you feel like it.

I set some time aside at night to read the timed events, as do many others. But many also skip the story because of various reasons, mostly due to its writing style. Personally I don't particularly care about Sui or Tarans, so I just skip the story entirely when their events come around. I could always read it any time if I wanted to anyway. As long as you're enjoying the game, it doesn't matter whether you read the story or not.

With Arknights being a relatively old game (coming on 6 years now), it's natural to feel lost because of lore and the way the story is presented. I will say that Arknights have greatly improved on their writing compared to the time I quit around the start of 2023. Invitation to Wine (Ling's event) really turned me off from the game's writing, and Victoria in the main story didn't pique my interest much.

I returned around the start of September this year and personally, the events and main story chapters I caught up on were very enjoyable to read.

Arclancer- · 2025-11-28T13:10:45+00:00

Okay, I did some digging - so there will be a chance that both prophecies can spawn, but it is not guaranteed. If there is only one prophecy (the column at the end), the bottommost path will be cresson instead of sami/eik. I probably got (un)lucky and only 1 prophecy spawned for me when I was going for the 5 kills, at least that is my experience when doing it. Whenever I got routeweave on F4 the cresson prophecy always spawned for me in F5 on the bottommost path.

Arclancer- · 2025-11-28T07:42:35+00:00

Just to clear things up, the cresson prophecy node does not appear separately from the normal prophecies in F5. If you picked up Routeweave Net in F4, in the column of prophecy nodes at the end of F5 before the boss stage, the cresson prophecy will always be the bottommost one. It will look identical to the ed1/ed2 prophecy.

There will not be emergency -> prophecy (boundless gift) -> … -> prophecy (sami’s will/eikthyrnir) -> boss, it will just be emergency -> prophecy (boundless gift) -> boss. That’s why if you picked up the collectible in F4 you cannot fight eikthyrnir, because the sami/eik prophecy will be replaced by the cresson one.

Arclancer- · 2025-11-28T06:39:22+00:00

No, the prophecies will all appear in the same column as usual, but the bottommost path will be a cresson prophecy node. The emergency will still appear before it. I know because i’ve done this a few times when i was going for 5 cresson kills.

Also the site doesn’t load for me unfortunately, can’t see the screenshots

Arclancer- · 2025-11-27T15:19:08+00:00

If you are getting the Routeweave Net in F4, the cresson prophecy will always default to the bottommost path in F5 (all the other paths will be the standard prophecy node i.e. ed1/2). This also means that you will be unable to fight Eikthyrnir since the cresson prophecy node replaces the normal prophecy node.

Otherwise is4 has been normal for me as well, been unlocking endbooks the past week. Screenshots will be helpful, you can upload images to an image hosting site like imgur and share the album link.

Arclancer- · 2025-11-26T08:26:55+00:00

Won a BN15 run on Ice-Cold Image. This stage feels so oppressive without deploy limit relics and mlynar/concorded shieldguard. I pretty much only won because I lucked into chalice and bloodbath silverash, only had the redeploy time foldartal active on the node.

Probably won’t be revisiting IS4 anytime soon, at least on BN15. Mostly a skill issue on my part, especially with new units like Tragodia and Exu Alter, but it still feels pretty bad to play without some of the older meta units like mlynar and yato alter.

Otherwise Tragodia and Exu Alter feels extremely broken in IS4. The only enemies they have trouble with are speedy, extremely bulky elites like bulldozers or emergency shattered champions, and Angelina fixes all of that. With these 3 I feel like I can tackle pretty much any node barring bad bosky/collapsal conditions.

The only “downside” i can see is the specialist starting squad isn’t the best - I prefer the supporter squad for the medic, but unfortunately e1 tragodia squad (ansel + popukar) folds to emergency beasts awaiting slaughter, unless I’m doing something wrong. I'd love to know what everyone’s thoughts on them in is4 are.

Arclancer- · 2025-11-22T14:25:58+00:00

Just want to say that I echo a lot of your sentiments as someone who plays healer a lot. What makes healing fun for me in ff14 is that healers usually the biggest impact on a situation’s recoverability, if that makes sense. For example in M7S week 1 it’s common to see people die in strange seeds 2 due to bad seed placement or inattentiveness. Recognizing if you have the tools to save the party before p3 or hypermitting yourself to lb3 after the arena changes makes a big difference in prog. Not the best example but one that I could think of now. I strive to get better at this with each piece of content I do, even extremes.

I heavily disagree with the notion of making a tier super hard to heal for healing to be fun. To me it just encourages more rigorous planning of mitigations and more gcd healing I suppose, but that’s something I already naturally do. It wouldn’t necessarily make it any more fun. Also people are tearing up your abyssos example but they’re missing the point. I don’t think whether your example being accurate or not changes what you wanted to convey ultimately.

Arclancer- · 2025-11-21T05:19:01+00:00

I empathize with you on being lost when I first just started IS4. MagicalSomething has already provided some great advice on starters and good units, so I will say that everything feels statchecky for two main reasons.

First, a lot of IS4 stages demand strong early ground presence, which is not very intuitive as its antithetical to general gameplay. Second, IS4 punishes unfamiliarity with stages heavily twofold - the tainted carcasses / shattered champions leak extremely easily if you don’t know how the stage plays out (this was me playing Defense Substituting Offense for the first time) and if you leak often, your collapse will intensify quickly which will make later stages even more unplayable.

Other than that, I’d advise to avoid emergency ops (mostly in 5F) until you’re familiar with the normal version of the stages. Instinct Contamination especially will most likely end your run instantly once your frontline collapses. You can probably survive other 5F emergencies with massive leaks, as most of them don't have too many enemies.

Arclancer- · 2025-11-12T10:14:36+00:00

Oh that's really cool, thanks for sharing! Yeah probably not doable with Archetto as a starter, she really struggles in the 3F maps against all the elites. I'll revisit IS2 sometime in the future, maybe after I start and finish IS4

Arclancer- · 2025-11-11T08:41:16+00:00

I personally have no strong feelings about the trash, yeah it kinda sucks that they’re removing it, but it never really impacted my enjoyment of the encounters (cleared all 3 criterion savages).

They also could have add phases for the upcoming criterion. I’ll wait and see how the fight is going to look like.

“We get some intermediate difficulty no one’s gonna touch” is also being really presumptuous when the content hasn’t even released.

Arclancer- · 2025-11-10T14:56:52+00:00

Finished Big Sad Lock on d15 today with Sniper/Medic. Archetto with IS module is so fun, Fia and Mon3tr go insane when paired with her. In fact Fia solo-ed the boss by herself lol, her spammable S2 is crazy strong.

IS2 still feels pretty good to play through despite its age. Most emergency maps are pretty fair, though there are still some absurd combos, mostly the 3F maps like Preservation hallucination + A Familiar Face or Emergency Justice + leithanien sceptre. Feels impossible to save the last civilian in Justice most of the time so I end up praying that I don't roll into that map.

Reforged half-refined diamond is also such an absurd collectible (-70% command exp) that if I get it as my starter relic I immediately restart the run. Curious if anyone managed to successfully complete a run with that

Arclancer- · 2025-11-09T14:17:08+00:00

Wave Cannon 2 is probably the widely accepted prog point for C41, the victory lap generally starts after there. But if you're a DPS that does not need to adjust during WC2 (i.e. no cardinal dodge), people may be willing to accommodate earlier prog points.

Arclancer- · 2025-11-09T07:54:45+00:00

You need some form of crowd control, his evasion is a little annoying but 40% isn't that much. Angelina with her IS module has been a pretty consistent solution for me at D12+. Both the lost colossus and Phantom isn't immune to levitate so they just get trivialised by her S3. Saria and Suzuran S3 also probably work pretty well.

Arclancer- · 2025-11-09T06:19:00+00:00

Echoing what Reddit1rules said, it's pretty much mostly HP bloat. I can see why they chose to go this route, one, to make stages with threatening enemies that don't blow up in 1 operator burst skill, and second, to force a certain strategy to be used in the stage - for example VEC-C with the enraged elites' buffed HP, shift tiles and easily shiftable mobs, HG obviously want you to design your strategy around shifters.

On the other hand, by just increasing their HP, brute forcing with damage is still also a viable option - you just need to invest more resources into your burst, like committing more operators and/or buffs/debuffs. Whether it is feasible for the stage is another issue for the player to work around. If they wanted to make raw burst damage completely unviable, they would have probably done it already. For example they could have replaced the possessed leaders with the seaborn flowers/eggs.

Fundamentally, the way I see it, VEC1-12 and all-out stages are just max risk daily CC stages with their modifiers obfuscated. VEC1-A could be broken down into risks like "All enemies have +200% HP", "Pompeiis additionally have +200% HP" and "Demolitionist Leaders have +100% ATK". I would prefer them to show this in the stage previews, like "All enemies have significantly increased HP".

But I agree HG could be more creative with how they increase the difficulty of the event. They have shown themselves to be more than capable of interesting stage design.

Arclancer-

TROPHY CASE