FFXIV: Patch 3.55b Diadem Revamp (No Salt)
The newest FFXIV patch brought us the revamped Diadem, just as promised. It also brought a truck-load of community salt… because MMO communities have to find something to be salty about.
To tl;dr: ilvl 280 pink weapons have a very very slim chance of dropping from the Emergency Missions in Diadem. People are flipping tables over it.
┻━┻ ︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻
The moment I heard about these weapons, I knew that the very RNG nature of the Diadem would make it hard to get a drop that mattered. But some people were still up in arms. During the PAX East Q&A, Yoshi-P seems to share my sentiments and has also told people to calm down.
I just wanted to mention so… it’s only been about three days since the patch and I see some of you freaking out… you all need to calm down a little bit. It’s not something you can obtain so easily. You have to go to Diadem and start a mission, and then an emergency mission triggers, then you have to participate in it, and clear it, and then be lucky enough to be the one that gets that item drop, and even if it drops, you dont know if it will be for the appropriate job… plus it has random perameters!
If you can imagine… you go to the casino’s in Las Vegas and you just happen to notice a quarter on the ground- you take that quarter, put it into a machine and pull a jack pot. That’s how rare it is. Please take your time and enjoy the content.
It seems like that rare occasion did happen to a few people here, but I still believe the Anima weapons at i275 where you can set your parameters is the strongest one available. There may be some players out there that want this emergency to trigger and they go in and do many FATEs, but you should just enjoy the content that is available and then maybe you happen to run into an emergency mission. And once again, you all need to calm down.
So, anyhow, my FC decided to get our airships revved up and take a trip into the Diadem to see what’s changed. Note, I’ve only been there once this weekend, so this isn’t a guide. Just some observations. We were exploring and figuring things out. Here’s what we discovered:
- You no longer have to unlock flying before taking on mission objectives (thank you).
- There’s now a primary and secondary mission to accomplish within the time frame.
- Primary mission objectives alternate with secondary mission objectives until you finish them all.
- Primary missions are marked as orange circles on the map.
- Secondary missions require the completion of FATEs.
- You can find random coffers hidden as treasures around the Diadem if you look for them. They spawn as white loot-orbs on the map.
- You’re awarded lockboxes and damaged lockboxes for completing the overall mission.
- Similar to PotD, you take the lockboxes to an NPC to open for treasure.
- It takes one normal lockbox or 40 damaged lockboxes to equal one treasure.
Now, compared to the last romp our FC had in the Diadem, this was much harder. Not only did the difficulty of the enemies ramp up, but the FATEs you have to do are on a strict, short timer, and they spawn really, really close to each other.
This is not a rush-in-pull-everything affair.
Navigating the Diadem requires old-skool tank-pulling and careful party placement. The islands are very much densely populated, and your party can easily get overrun.
That being said, once we figured this all out, we were able to clear our mission without incident. Lockboxes have the chance to reward items such as Brass Spoils (used to purchase stuff like the Pegasus mount/minion/materia), materia, or even ilvl 265 gear. The gear is super random, though, and may or may not have useful stats.
I’ve got my eye on that Pegasus mount, myself, seeing I stashed away 11 Spoils from this first run. It shouldn’t take too long to earn the mount and the minion if you put some time into it.
While we were there, the Emergency Mission did not spawn. We also didn’t see any other parties out there, which was really strange.
I’m curious about trying out the gathering missions in the Diadem once I get my gear leveled up a bit. Overall, this is something I would run again.