A resilient Final Fantasy 14 soloist trying to beat the MMO under the most punishing rules he can muster has overcome his biggest obstacle yet by beating one equally resilient Stormblood boss.
Over the past year, Rath Games has been trying to solo the critically acclaimed MMO under rules borrowed from RuneScape's Iron Man mode. You can read our previous chat with Rath to find out how that came to be, but the basics are self-sufficiency over all else – no trading, no party members be they NPC or human, and no quest rewards.
It would be one Stormblood boss called Susano, though, that would prove his biggest challenge yet. The Lord of the Revel is a boss you must topple in a trial to advance the story. It comes with a mechanic that's fairly by the numbers for a team but a nightmare if you're solo.
Essentially, at one point in the fight, Susano slams a giant sword into the arena, tasking one player with holding it and the rest with breaking it. As Rath explains to GamesRadar+, he can't do both, and failure to pass the damage check means the fight is over.
The eventual solution? Huge damage. As Rath points out, Susano will initiate the sword phase when he's at 40% health or three minutes into the fight. At that point, you've got around 14 seconds to avoid defeat – or, 14 seconds you could theoretically take him out in with a burst window mighty enough.
Rath identified the new Pictomancer job as just the job to put out the damage he needed, but he still fell slightly short. One of the main issues is that he couldn't utilize the Echo buff given to players who fail multiple times as he simply wasn't surviving the fight for long enough – considering the buff helps out with damage and healing potency, it proves invaluable for a solo run like this.
Stumped, Rath put out a 50 million gil bounty to anyone who could chart the way forward and was essentially rewarded the same day. The Pictomancer has an ability called Star Prism that heals for 400 potency, theoretically giving the soloist enough survivability to last the fight long enough to get the buff. Couple that with the Pictomancer's damage output, and you'll be in business.
The only minor snag is that the Star Prism ability doesn't unlock until level 100 and that Stormblood only goes as high as 70, meaning Rath had some capital-g grinding to do. You may be tired of me saying there was an obstacle or snag by now, but there was another. The Pictomancer dominating the meta made it a natural pick for the challenge, but Square Enix also had a balance patch planned – and those two facts had the potential not to play nicely at all.
It may come as little surprise, but Rath tells us the challenge of beating Susano "absolutely" ranks at the top of the list. And that's saying something. A Heavensward boss called Bismark is an easy second, though I also recommend checking out The Crystal Tower raid clear, which essentially required a six-month training program to draft in fellow ironmen to ensure he complied with his own rules.
Regardless, Rath's solo endeavor has been a long journey with plenty of road to cover. The Final Fantasy 14 fan reckons it's taken 265 days to solo A Realm Reborn and 200 days to clear Heavensward. Stormblood, meanwhile, could be the longest. With that in mind, I ask Rath what the next big challenge might be.
"I never really know," he says. "Susano and Bismark were the only ones I knew ahead of time. Maybe the Seat of Sacrifice, but there could be some dungeon before that that ruins me for a while. I'm looking forward to finding whatever it is."
It's currently a mystery whether he'll be able to finish Final Fantasy 14 solo. He plans to end at Endwalker "no matter what," though he says he can "never be sure when the end might sneak up on us." Despite the many, many hours, though, there are certainly no regrets.
"It is, without question, the best thing I've ever done," he says. "It's a very fulfilling and enjoyable experience. I do love pushing the boundaries of what can be done."
