Final Fantasy: Heavensward – Palace Of The Dead In Patch 3.35

On July 19th, Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward introduced patch 3.35 featuring the Palace of the Dead: Deep Dungeon. For years, players on the game’s official forums and elsewhere asked the developers for content with random elements and a sense of progression. The Palace of the Dead delivers on both counts—up until the second-to-last floor, to a point.

The fifty floors of the roguelite instance are unique in Final Fantasy XIV’s collection of scripted battles and linear dungeons. Deep Dungeon features hidden traps, treasure coffers, and a progression system for the dungeon’s unique set of arms and armor. Leveling up the Deep Dungeon-exclusive weapon up to +30 grants the player any item level 235 weapon of their choosing. The item level makes the weapon relevant in the game’s current cycle of vertical gear progression. I wasn’t surprised at all to find Quarrymill—the area where we enter the dungeon—packed with players for the first time in ages, ready to try their hands at the new content.

For my first try I went in by myself and let the Duty Finder find other players for me. I’m most comfortable on my astrologian, a healer job.

When I entered the dungeon, I started at level one. Killing monsters earned my party experience points quickly. At the beginning, we leveled up after every other monster.

I felt useless as a healer. No one took much damage at such an early stage. The hidden explosion traps on the ground did more damage than the enemies. I mostly followed my other three party members around, throwing in offensive spells when I could.

The layout of each floor changed randomly as we progressed, and the music sometimes changed to other well-known Final Fantasy XIV tracks such as the Snowcloak dungeon theme. As we opened silver treasure chests, we occasionally got upgrades for our aetherpool arms or armor. The gold treasure chests gave us healing items like potions, or unique pomanders with different effects. Pomanders of sight reveal the full map on the current floor, while pomanders of lust temporarily turns the player into a succubus monster with increased damage, and so on.

After defeating enough enemies on one floor the portal to the next floor activates. On every 10th floor, the player fights a boss. Victory will save their progress on that floor.

For us, the boss on the 10th floor went down in a few short minutes. After the battle, we said our goodbyes and proceeded to the lobby. There I had a choice of having the Duty Finder match me with another group for floors 11-20 or exiting back to Quarrymill.

Since some of the experience points earned in the Deep Dungeon counts for other classes, I decided to change to another job for leveling up. I used my second save file to go through the dungeon on my monk, a damage dealer. Outside, I was level 55. As I progressed to the final floor, I reached level 60.

While inside the Palace of the Dead, I had access to job skills beyond my actual level. I enjoyed trying them out and getting a feel for the job at max level. Learning how monk feels at 60 in only a few hours of leveling helped me decide to continue with the job outside of the dungeon. Some jobs changed drastically from 50 to 60 after Heavensward released. I would have liked to have a system like this when I leveled black mage or dragoon, for example. I didn’t like how those jobs changed at level 60.

The dungeon became increasingly difficult after defeating each boss, but because I’m a veteran Final Fantasy XIV player, the encounters were easy. For the easiest sets of floors, the Duty Finder matched me with at least one healer. For 21-30 and 31-40, I didn’t have a healer, but I did have a tank with me to absorb damage. The tank died a few times from running ahead. They also triggered explosive traps on the ground while they had enemies attacking them.

For the final set of floors—41-50—I had a party of four damage dealers. I wasn’t used to holding back or pacing myself. I ended up dying after the first few monsters.

None of us were used to being careful in dungeons. For the first few floors, one or two of us were dead most of the time. We pulled too many monsters at first. Once we slowed down, the monsters hit too hard for us to deal with. If I was low on HP, I had to use a potion or stop attacking. Our bard had half health while pulling some of the monsters; they stopped after dying a few times. Since we can only carry one Phoenix Down at a time, we resorted to waiting for the Cairn of Return to activate. Carefully fighting enemies with only a few party members alive, and without a healer, was more difficult than I expected.

We had a black mage with us—they can cross-class the Physick spell for weak heals. I thought it was suspicious that they didn’t stop to heal us. Then I figured they hadn’t set the ability. We managed to get through to floor 49 without it. I learned to use my two stuns to our advantage, blocking enough damage.

But we also didn’t get many upgrades for our aetherpool gear. Because the gear caps out at half the players’ level inside the Deep Dungeon, they’re unable to run the lower floors over and over again for silver treasure chests. In order to get the aetherpool arm to +30 and exchange it for an item level 235 weapon, players have to run floors 41-50 for upgrades. The random nature of the upgrades are one roadblock. The other is a massive developer oversight: being unable to pick which set of floors to repeat. After beating the boss on floor 50, players are forced to start from the first floor all over again.

As soon as we cleared all the enemies on the 49th floor and opened all the chests, our group was ready to move onto the final boss. Our black mage ran off and disconnected a few seconds later.

I’m usually the type of person to give others the benefit of the doubt. But this had to be a fake disconnect. The black mage wanted us to kick them from the duty. If a player manually leaves the instance, any progress on their aetherpool gear is reset to their last save point. The same thing happens with disconnecting. If someone disconnects and they get kicked, they don’t have to suffer the 30 minute Duty Finder penalty that comes with manually leaving the duty. This player wanted to avoid that penalty and take their chances getting better luck with silver chests for weapon upgrades.

We had no choice but to kick the black mage. We wouldn’t have defeated the boss with only three players. Thankfully we had a replacement who knew the fight well. I tanked the boss on my monk and dealt as much damage as I could. I had a few self-healing abilities and potions. I died while my potions were on cooldown. One of our bards died to the boss mechanics right after me. Our other bard kited the boss while the lancer finished it off with a limit break. An interesting cutscene at the end builds up the next sets of floors that the developers will add in a later content update.

My aetherpool arm was at +21 by the end. I don’t mind running the dungeon again, as aetherpool gear carries over across save files. The Gelmorran potsherd I received let me purchase a grade V materia. I sold it for a nice sum of money, and I also got quite a bit of experience points on my monk. Others saved their potsherds for a unique mount.

That black mage was a lot like other players—they find the dungeon too easy, and they don’t want to spend three hours or more getting back to the 41st floor, only to have a bad run with little to no silver chests with weapon upgrades. I’m not sure if the developers anticipated this, or if they were naïve enough to think that the player base wouldn’t find a way around the hurdle.

Time and time again, players prove to game developers that they will take the path of least resistance to achieve their goals. If someone needs one last upgrade for their aetherpool arm, they should be able to select floors 41-50 to repeat as many times as they need to. Seeing people leave or fake disconnect on the 49th floor is irritating. There’s no guarantee that other players will join in-progress. If no one does, then the remaining party members will lose their progress if they leave or die against the boss. According to a thread on the Japanese official forums, there’s a fix incoming on July 26th.

I enjoyed my time in the Palace of the Dead. I went in knowing that it was easy content. For me, it’s another way to level up other jobs to 60 with the added bonus of getting a good weapon. I like that the developers intended the Deep Dungeon to be an alternate method for leveling jobs instead of running dungeons or FATEs. The next sets of floors will be more of a challenge, according to the developers. I expect the rewards will scale with the difficulty. In the meantime, I’ll have fun leveling my last few jobs to 60 while keeping count of how many of my party members “disappear” on the 49th floor.