Dammit, Dzemael Darkhold Dungeon

This is mainly a post to vent. You've been warned! (By Ahriman monster that does nothing but cause displeasure to your eyes.)




So, patch 1.18 brought two new dungeons into the scene of FFXIV, The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, and the Dzemael Darkhold dungeons. Toto-Rak is located north of Camp Tranquil in Gridanian territory and is for a party of four rank 25 adventurers. The Dzemael Darkhold, on the other hand, is for a party of 8 rank 45 adventurers. And it's difficult. I mean really difficult. In the terms that you have an hour to complete it, hope that no one disconnects, and literally run through hoards of monsters hoping your party doesn't get killed in all that mess.

If that's not bad enough, there's an Eye monster (can't be damaged, doesn't even have an HP bar) that floats around and does a devastating AoE if you're near it. Doesn't aggro, but whatever.

That ogre? No, no. He's not even the final boss and people are having trouble fighting it.

So the strategy turned out to be like this:

-Enter dungeon:

-Skip intro cutscene to save time.

-Skip the introduction of the eye monster to save time

-Wait for eye to hover over your party and continue ahead on the dungeon. (And hope he doesn't do his area attack on hop of where you and your party are situated. It's hard to react and run before he gets it off, unless you have really good reflexes.)

-Have Conjurers/Thaumaturge in group use party buffs.

-As Gladiator, I had to put on Sentinel, Aegis Boon, Defender, Rampart II, (defensive buffs) etc in order to stay alive.

-Run through the dungeon area aggroing all the mobs, stopping occasionally for party members to catch up and cast healing spells on you, and letting them sleep frogs and toads in the way. (Keep in mind that toads have a draw in attack, so you have to sit and wait for mages.)

-You want to be in active mode when you run. You may go slower, but it's more endurance (and staying alive) than speed. Also known as: Haul ass, but haul ass without killing yourself or your party. You can take hits and let the mages just heal you as you run/stop. Don't get too far out of range from the rest of the party, especially those who are healing you while you run!. I would advise everyone to get Fleet of Foot trait from the Lancer's Guild as well. It's invaluable.

-If you're the tank, skip the first gate, run to the second gate. (That is, unless you're farming.) The second gate will have a cut-scene that opens up the path. Keep in mind that this does not despawn the mobs. You need to run a little further, past some moles and frogs and stand on the various circles to despawn all mobs.


ANYWHO, we ended up doing it 5-6 times. None of them were Gladiators so the instructions were kind of vague, and had to figure them out myself. The run we finally got our sh*t together....

My game crashed.



.