I tend to be a little behind the curve when it comes to things like raids and trials in FFXIV. Unless the raid has a reward I can’t live without, or there’s story I really need to see, I simply forgo doing them until they’re no longer relevant (and easier to finish).

That was the case with the Eden raids. I finished the first set and just never came back to do the rest. It’s not that I thought the story ideas weren’t interesting at the time – the concept of trying to revitalize the Empty on the First did have me interested. But I heard from Syn, who tends to do these raids before I do, that the second set of fights were a step up in difficulty (and indeed they remained the hardest set of fights in the raid from what I experienced).

Due to story changes that came up in Endwalker revolving around my RP character, Syn suggested I might want to experience the rest of Eden since it was somewhat linked in theme. It dealt with what life was like for sundered Ascians who needed to make a choice between their past lives and their present.

I already knew the gist of the story because I hadn’t stayed away from spoilers. In fact, I’d inquired of Syn what it was about and she’d summarized it for me. But it was far better to have played through the experience, even if fights got in the way.

When all was said and done, I felt this was one of the stronger raid stories in the game. I don’t have any real emotional attachment to the other raids when it comes to story – Coils was good for its time and Omega had Alpha to keep me curious. Alexander had a clever time-travel story, but none of the characters introduced there connected with me much.

The amount of effort that went into a very character driven story for Eden gives me a lot of hope for the story of the next round of raids, which are dropping with maintenance tonight. That’s another reason I decided to go ahead and push through Eden (aside from the fact that Syn was encouraging me and willing to wait around for me to watch cutscenes).

For the most part, running the raids were her instructing me what to do on voice chat during the fights. There were only a couple fights that I failed miserably on, despite going in blind. I’d still have to practice a lot to really learn the fights, but that’s not the purpose of having cleared them for me. I doubt I’ll ever go and do them again.

I did get a couple full sets of gear (for glamour) and the Gaia minion.

I have some passing curiosity about Pandemonium, but seeing that Syn is going to be on holiday for a while and will only have her laptop, I don’t see us doing any of the raids at launch. I’d much rather let things calm down and have folks who somewhat know what to do by the time I go in to learn it myself.

Anyhow, another chunk of content done.