Welcome to the Eorzean Archive! This will be an ongoing chronicle of my adventures and experiences with Final Fantasy XIV, as well as a general overview of some of the great content it has to offer. This week, I’ll be talking about The Dancing Plague (Titania) Extreme, the Eden raid series, and my first experiences leveling a healer Job.

What Angel Wakes Me

The Dancing Plague is one of the new Trials introduced in Shadowbringers, the game’s latest expansion. The Trial pits you against the Faerie King Titania, who is holding the Kingdom of Il Megh in her diabolical sway, and is complete with a bevy of Shakespeare references.

As far as Extreme Trials go, Titania Extreme is one of the harder ones I’ve attempted. As with all the others, a great deal of team coordination is required to be victorious. If one person messes up, the entire party usually wipes. Luckily, XIV is well-known for having an incredibly friendly community, so I found a group who was willing to teach me the mechanics in no time. After several hours of attempts, I was able to get my first clear, and boy did it feel good.

Successful completion of Titania Extreme awards you the chance to obtain several new weapons, as well as a brand new dragon mount known as the Fae Gwiber. I have yet to obtain either, but I plan on forming a farming party at some point in the near future (the mount in particular has a pretty low drop-rate), but with the right group, farming the dragon mount shouldn't be that bad.

That said, if you’re looking to test your mettle against a very challenging boss, then give Titania Extreme a try! Like I said, she's one of the harder ones I've attempted during my time playing FFXIV, and that's not a bad thing. It was really fun tackling the fight, and the community makes it even better. So don't be afraid to give Titania Extreme a shot, even if you're not usually an EX Trials kind of person.

Into the Core: Eden's Gate

I’m admittedly a bit behind when it comes to new content in XIV. There are currently two tiers of the Eden raid series, but for this post I want to specifically discuss the first tier, Eden’s Gate. This raid series features some of the best boss designs in the game, several awesome callbacks to encounters from A Realm Reborn, and even some musical references to Final Fantasy VIII (specifically, new renditions of the Balamb Garden theme and Force your Way). There’s also a super intriguing story to go along with it all, which I’m not going to spoil for you.

I haven’t attempted any of the Savage versions of this raid series, but even the standard difficulty can be pretty challenging. There are plenty of engaging mechanics to keep you on your toes, and I can’t wait to delve further into it.

Testing the Waters with White Mage

For most of my time in Final Fantasy XIV, I’ve played either Tank or DPS jobs. Healing was never really something I was interested in. However, in an effort to start chipping away at the requirements to become a Mentor, I decided to pick up White Mage and see what it was all about. To my surprise, I enjoyed it quite a lot!

For one thing, I really appreciate the amount of utility White Mage has in its spell-pool. Obviously most of them revolve around healing, but there are also skills to cause status afflictions, regain MP, reduce casting-time, and deal damage-over-time. It’s without a doubt a new favorite of mine, and I’m definitely going to make time to level it to 80. Overall, I would say healing is the most difficult role to play in the game, and I definitely have a newfound appreciation for healing and the challenges it brings.

Through the power of instant healer queue-times (seriously, I didn’t have to wait to enter a dungeon once), I was able to get White Mage to Lv. 50 in about four days. Not too shabby, right?

Thanks for reading this week’s entry! I can’t say for sure what I’ll be discussing in the next one, but I’ll be keeping you posted on my adventures in the world of Eorzea!