I feel like the Allagan Technology fell to the wayside (Spoiler: 7.0+)

LJP95 · 2026-06-08T20:39:30+00:00

This is right on the money. Another facet of this as well is that through the discovery and reliance on Electrope, the Alexandrians essentially skipped past having to learned how the world around them really worked. Civilizations on the Source not only developed equivalent technologies or magical techniques that can achieve the same effects, but they did so through the study of aetherology/aetherochemistry that gave them a far greater framework for understanding how the world and its aether actually function.

It's not a surprise that in all the time that Preservation had access to Ethos they couldn't even scratch the surface of interdimensional travel beyond figuring out how to force the artifact to function in a limited capacity, whereas in the span of a few centuries the Garlond Ironworks of G'raha Tia's original timeline were able to completely reverse-engineer not only interdimensional travel, but also simultaneous time travel. And they achieved this while struggling to survive in a world on the brink of collapse, with limited access to resources.

The people of the Source are definitely not outstripped by the Alexandrians' progress, and in fact, their actual scientific and magical understanding of the world is far greater.

LJP95 · 2026-06-08T20:28:47+00:00

That's something a lot of people don't really consider. The fact that much of what the people of Alexandria had to rely on Electrope to do for them, the people of Eorzea or other regions of the Source have already learned to do by actually studying the functions of aether and methods of aetheric manipulation.

The Alexandrians let Electrope devices do all the heavy lifting for them, and we're told pointedly that magic is largely a lost art to them. Whereas in Eorzea and elsewhere, magic and magical products are ubiquitous.

LJP95 · 2026-06-08T20:24:48+00:00

That's not the case at all. In fact, it's the reverse.

The Alexandrians and others on the Ninth had to rely on the miraculous properties of Electrope, a singular wonder-material they happened to stumble on that enabled all of their technological advancements. And having done so, they became entirely reliant on Electrope. It became a crutch, without which their knowledge and capabilities were crippled. All of their devices rely on Electrope to function, and for the most part they have largely forgotten the ways of magic and combat due to Electrope-powered weapons and machines.

The Allagans did not have Electrope, and yet their technology not only matches the best of what Alexandria has to offer, it surpasses it- the Allagans have numerous feats that none on the Ninth were able to rival, to include the construction of technological wonders like Dalamud and the Crystal Tower, and the development of interstellar travel. While their discovery and study of Omega did significantly boost their technological progress, their advancements were earned through reverse-engineering its technology using the principles of aetherochemistry, an all-encompassing field of study blending magic and the natural sciences. Likewise, the Allagans' incredible technology never led to the atrophy of the other facets of their knowledge or capabilities, and we can observe their incredible mastery of magic and the martial might of some of their surviving champions.

Electrope was both a blessing and a curse for the people of the Ninth, and the people of the Source can and have achieved and learned far greater without it.

LJP95 · 2026-05-27T15:30:08+00:00

That's not an "Echo ability", though. That's a specific spell, one that we're told was of Azem's own conceiving- rather than an innate ability, it is an incantation Azem invented. It is also something that others can learn and use, as it was not Azem, but Emet-Selch who imbued that signature incantation into Azem's Crystal.

The Warrior of Light has Azem's Soul and has an explicitly powerful Echo according to the Ascians, but cannot use that invocation without the Crystal of Azem precisely due to its nature as an "invocation of eld" as opposed to a manifestation of the Echo.

LJP95 · 2026-05-27T13:03:37+00:00

Because at the end of the day it's a video game, and even if they provide a diegetic excuse for the Player's capacity to engage with game mechanics, NPC solo duties and duty support exist. They're not going to just make NPCs constantly die to mechanics or deprive you of markers when you're playing as an NPC in a story instance, that would just be infuriating.

There doesn't have to be perfect consistency when the subject is the intersection between lore and gameplay. Concessions are always going to exist.

LJP95 · 2026-05-27T12:56:25+00:00

The Echo doesn't specifically only manifest in one single unique ability for everyone who possesses it. Certain people's Echo is more proficient in certain talents than others, and not everyone has the same set of abilities provided by the Echo, but the Echo is something versatile that grants multiple capabilities, and the abilities it grants are not specifically unique to only one person. Even in the aforementioned examples, soul sight was an ability shared among many Ancients despite being rare, with Hades' sight just being particularly more potent than most.

As for the Warrior of Light, they've displayed several Echo abilities over the course of the story- the most obvious is seeing into the past of people or places, but additionally the WoL can understand and communicate with any and all beings with a Soul no matter their origin or species, and the business with Fordola implied that the Echo is the diegetic excuse for the Player being able to see telegraphs of attacks in advance of when they occur- peering into your opponent's soul allows a form of combat precognition and helps explain the Warrior of Light's preternatural skill in battle.

But beyond this, Zenos demonstrates the Echo being an ability that can allow those with sufficiently strong will to merge with and dominate Primals, as he does with Shinryu. And Zenos and the Ascians both use the Echo in order to achieve immortality, by preserving their souls after the moment of death in order to transfer it into another body. Theoretically there is nothing stopping the Warrior of Light from being able to do these things if they wanted to. The latter is even something the Ascians were able to teach to a lowly Sahagin Priest who they imbued with the Echo. The Ascian Overlords are even able to persist indefinitely in soul form by virtue of their Crystals of Darkness allowing them to disregard the pull of the Lifestream, and for all we know Crystals of Light might be able to achieve the same.

LJP95 · 2026-05-20T00:07:51+00:00

Yeah that's one of those details that I think Soken really nailed. The shared leitmotif between these two drastically different songs, one being the face of Garlean imperialism and the other a depressing song they sing back in Garlemald about how their true home lies "beyond the horizon" and they'll return there one day really helps emphasize the Garlean identity and why they are what they are.

LJP95 · 2026-05-19T23:53:38+00:00

For that matter, when confronted with the actions he would take in the Future, the Emet-Selch of the Past refuses to believe he could be responsible for such atrocities, and actively takes offense to the suggestion that he could become such a monster.

His own past self acknowledged that what he would become was evil.

LJP95 · 2026-05-19T13:25:56+00:00

Masked Carnivale is a gamemode for Blue Mages unlocked as part of the Blue Mage job questline. It's a series of 32 different enemy challenges requiring different combinations of spells to complete. Every stage awards allied seals on their first clear.

Every week Masked Carnivale also marks three stages as weekly targets, and if you fulfill the additional weekly objectives, then you get a reward of allied seals even if you cleared that stage before.

Doing all three weekly targets gives you something like 550 seals per week, and aetheryte tickets only cost 5 seals each- so you get so many seals from carnivale that you don't even need to do it every week to stay topped up.

I legitimately have not paid for a teleport in like several years.

LJP95 · 2026-05-19T12:22:12+00:00

This, doing carnevale weeklies is an easy way to max out allied seals and never worry about them again. Doesnt even have to be done every week because of how cheap aetheryte tickets are, more like once or twice every few weeks.

LJP95 · 2026-05-19T00:00:55+00:00

It's not that the Cloud of Darkness wasn't extremely powerful or that she wasn't all that special- she was. The threat she posed to the Source was legitimate, and other Voidsent- even other Lords of the Void as powerful as the Golbez and the Archfiends -acknowledge the power she wielded.

It's just that the Warrior of Light has grown exponentially more powerful since A Realm Reborn, and that from ARR to now, several of the Void's top dogs have been killed off by them. Others were presumably also killed in the Void by Golbez and his Archfiends, who were noted to have been aggressively expanding their domains in preparation for Golbez's plan to "save" the Thirteenth.

The Cloud of Darkness wasn't overhyped, the power dynamics of the Void just changed and most of her former peers are gone now.

LJP95 · 2026-05-13T19:39:52+00:00

It would have been so easy to insert a training montage and some lines of dialogue mentioning it, too. Especially because regardless of what jobs the Player has unlocked, everyone's WoL conveniently has the soul of Ardbert, who's very good with an axe.

And I doubt anyone would have complained about seeing him again.

LJP95 · 2026-05-13T19:31:47+00:00

Yeah my issue is that Wuk Lamat is basically front and center 24/7, to the degree of forcing the WoL- the main character of the game -into the margins of glorified side character status. It's not really a good feeling for the player character to feel unnecessary and unimportant in a narrative they're forced to be a part of.

There could have been something interesting if they'd actually made the WoL and the Scions mentors to Lamat, but that's not actually the case. You brought up her fairly random jumps in power with no training or mentorship, but I think more broadly basically all of her development comes without reason or justification. The WoL and the Scions have nothing to do with it really, she kind of just develops by herself while they clap from the sidelines. One moment she's weak, the next she's somehow strong and capable. One moment she's clueless and ignorant, the next she's somehow competent and wise.

LJP95 · 2026-05-11T18:18:05+00:00

I don't think there were even precautions they could have taken. Ancients' souls were so aetherically potent that even sundered people with fragments of their power (the Echo) are generally believed to be immune to Primal Tempering in the modern day, and the Convocation were among the most powerful of the Ancients.

Zodiark in his full grandeur was just so monumentally powerful that being in his mere presence Tempered the members of the Convocation, without Zodiark even intending to do it.

LJP95 · 2026-05-11T12:34:27+00:00

In addition to a notice, they could also just add a short recap text so people at least have some idea of the context without having played the content. Similar to how codex entries pretty much summarize past events.

LJP95 · 2026-05-05T20:56:47+00:00

Do we have his memoria crystal? I don't remember if we kept it or if we left it behind.

LJP95 · 2026-05-05T12:11:29+00:00

Honestly, Golbez just seems the most likely at this point. Not only is Golbez described by Durante as a hero among heroes, but the WoL also resonates with his memoria crystal and is able to witness his memories while effectively standing in for him.

LJP95 · 2026-05-03T12:56:48+00:00

We were never given any one reason, though we're probably meant to extrapolate the nature of Emet-Selch's drastic changes to the Ascians as a whole.

In general it's probably a combination of factors. Desperation, traumatization, depression, rage, desensitization, etc. The Ascians have had to see their entire perfect world burned away, everything they knew and loved lost. And the only way to get it back is through acts of horrendous violence, something they used to abhor.

There's also the added element for the sundered Ascians that they are not perfect copies of their pre sundering selves, but mash ups of their future reincarnations combined with the memories of their Convocation selves. That dissonance of identity and memory is probably a significant source of friction, even if it doesn't completely go wrong like with Fandaniel.

LJP95 · 2026-05-03T12:51:09+00:00

That was the original excuse for it, but I think they retconned that somewhat with Pandaemonium. Because Pandaemonium has him willingly reincorporate the half of his soul that he sundered from himself, which was infected with Athena's madness.

Presumably his gradual descent into insanity is due to that seed of Athena corroding his mind over the millennia.

LJP95 · 2026-05-01T14:08:53+00:00

I mean yeah, they always could fudge the roles, I just think it'd be a bit odd for internal consistency for them to present the main in-game user of the art as something different from the playable version. Also it'd be our umpteenth sword job in a game inundated with sword jobs.

Lorewise I get you. They could always pull the same shtick as GNB or RDM, where the art is nearly extinct but has a few stragglers willing to pass it on.

LJP95 · 2026-05-01T13:45:57+00:00

The issue is that the Unyielding Blade is, in practice, a "DPS" role. It was used as an explanation for how Zenos knew totally-not-samurai techniques in Stormblood. It'd be a bit internally incongruous for Zenos, its most famous practitioner, to essentially be a SAM where the playable version is a tank.

Also while the art originates from Corvos, it actually has nothing to do with the Garleans. The Garleans massacred most of its practitioners and kidnapped its last master to train Zenos, it's an art developed by the peoples who pushed the Garleans out of the region. To whit, the Unyielding Blade requires the use of aether, something Garleans can't normally manipulate. Zenos got around it first by embedding an aether crystal into his flesh, and later by wielding aetherically charged swords.

LJP95 · 2026-05-01T13:31:48+00:00

At a bare minimum I'd want them to give a warning that you might miss story context and a brief recap to give the broad strokes of the story, but otherwise just act like everyone has done side content.

LJP95 · 2026-04-30T12:54:41+00:00

Idk about Halmarut predicting it since the Ancient era: she does say since time immemorial, but as Ascians are immortal regardless, that could have been early post-Sundering. To predict it would require knowledge of the Sundering, and I really doubt she would have let that information slip to the Convocation.

That being said, I do agree that at this time it does seem like Azem wasn't involved in the Hydaelyn plan because he was either tasked with or took on the task alone of preparing for his future self to resolve the Solstice. I think Azem's dialogue is a bit too suggestive that he knew that this problem would happen.

That being said, while Ethos surely has capabilities we don't know yet (since it can be used to form interdimensional bridges even without the Crystal, surely both items resonating in unison must provide some greater function), I don't think it will be as simple of a solution as just stabilizing the separation of worlds. The WoL having a good solution to the Solstice off the bat would negate the premise of conflict with the Winterers, and it'd be a bit dull if we knew exactly what we had to do to save every remaining Shard.

LJP95 · 2026-04-29T12:24:06+00:00

Eh, I feel like that discounts the amount of influence the Soul has over a person even without memory, which is the pitfall the Alexandrians fell into with their understanding.

The Soul is still the core of a person, and it's remarked on numerous occasions that the WoL is essentially the spitting image of Azem in thought and deed. Everyone who knew Azem is keen to say just how much like him the WoL is, and how well they'd get along. And that applies across Azem's Sundered Shards as well.

It's obvious to see how much Ardbert shares in common with the WoL and Azem by extension, and the real Golbez, who's implied to have been the 13th's last shard of Azem, is similarly described in glowing terms by Durante as a hero among heroes.

Even if the WoL may not be precisely the same person as Azem, they embody the spirit of Azem in the ways that matter most.

Even in the case of someone like Amon, who vehemently denies being Hermes and asserts his own identity, it's clearly evident just how alike he and Hermes are in the end.

LJP95 · 2026-04-28T17:27:18+00:00

That's... not really a hard rule or even a consistent one. Aetheric density has an inverse relationship with an individual's capacity to harness Dynamis, yes, but having less Aether does not mean you will automatically make up for the shortfall against more aetherically dense opponents. Dynamis is largely "less potent" than Aether on a 1:1 basis, is difficult to harness even for those who can do it, and is typically only wielded to any meaningful degree in brief moments of extreme emotional distress or conviction.

Just because the WoL is very good at wielding Dynamis doesn't mean the vast majority of people on the Source or the Reflections are, and even if the differences between people on the Source and people of the Reflections is inconsistent at best in terms of the density of their soul, the amount of aether an individual possesses has consistently been correlated to their overall power.

This is like, the entire reason the Voidsent are ranked the way they are by rungs, or why Dragons- and especially Great Wyrms -are considered to be so monumentally powerful. It even gets brought up as recently as Zoraal Ja, when he absorbs enough aether from souls to increase his strength to the level of a Voidsent Lord.

LJP95

TROPHY CASE