Ten Hardest Main Scenario Quest Duties in Final Fantasy 14! 

In From The Cold does one thing very well it get you to empathize with your enemy. I do remember feeling at that time there is nothing that can stop me! Only for this duty to remind me of what it’s like for common Garlean soldiers. Every fight is a struggle, the environment is harsh, you see the plight of the common citizens. It was a fantastic way to disempower the player through both story and gameplay a rare feat especially for an MMO which revels in the power fantasy.

The new Duty Support system for main story quest dungeons adds some difficulty to these dungeons because the NPCs won't raise you if you die. This means that the player must perform dungeon mechanics correctly. If you fail a mechanic and die, your whole NPC party wipes. On the other hand, you can learn how to do the mechanics by watching what the NPCs are doing, so there is that.

100% the hardest for my group of friends has been the solo duty against Venat. The two of us that have made it through EW both had to turn it to very easy because we just couldn't get through the dps check (or whatever you wanna call the final orb thing).

Not part of the MSQ, but someone else has already mentioned the Red Mage job quest. That and the Samurai one where you're fighting the enemies on the little boat always stick out to me as cases where I ended up going and getting better gear so I could get through them.

In from the Cold is one of my favorite gameplay moments in the whole game to be honest, if only because of how well the duty sold a sense of weakness and desperation.

In From the Cold really is tough, especially if it's you're first time and you're not sure where to go or what to do. Pretty sure the devs expect you to die at least a couple times before you "get it."

What came to my mind was the solo duty after your soul got ripped from your body and put into that random soldier in Endwalker. Had all the elements of some of the others on this list put together; a time limit, stealth sections, and how many to fight in a body that is unfamiliar.

I'm very surprised the thancred vs rhanjit duel wasn't even mentioned. I haven't failed it but it's an endurance test and the longest solo duty, with a specific method to win.

I found Thancred vs. Rhanjit & Unknown Imperial Officer duty were pretty challenging.

Now this is a list i agree with. Additionally, i think the mission where you have to piloting the G-warrior was pretty difficult in 5.3 i remember failing it soo many times due understanding its move set and how its how its abilities work. Now i approach solo duties very carefully. 😅

A lot of people, myself included, had some trouble with the Venat 1x1 in Endwalker. One reason why I think that is the case is that most jobs won't have the AoE damage to kill all the aether orbs in time, so it's best to use single target to minimize the amount of duty gauge Venat charges - which is precisely the opposite of what you're supposed to do in any other fight!

For me it was Venat. That is I think the only duty I failed more than once to - the DPS check is really tight I find on Tank

I failed the solo duty against Venat three times (I kept it on normal difficulty) and I’m a quad legend lol. I think Venat is by far the most difficult story content.

Surprised Zenos (Sb) appeared over Venat. The sb zenos encounter was so easy and boring that it infuriated me when we lose anyways. I didnt warm up to his concept as a character until ala mhigo bc of how badly the solo duty encounters sold his “strength”. Venat effectively having a dps check and a rather strict one if you don’t know which orbs to prioritize was far more difficult imo.

Besides Venat, which some have mentioned, I recall having an especially hard time with Amaraut at the end of Main-SHB. I dont remember what it was about that dungeon, only that our party wiped *multiple* times before the final encounter, not to mention at least twice during the final fight. I no doubt am sure I had a many responsibilities I was failing in there, but it's been quite a while. I think it just had a lot of different mechanics to keep track of, and almost everyone in our party had some amount of trouble with them.

Great video! Totally agree with a lot of the choices on the list. Not sure what you next planned video is, but a similarly themed "hardest job duties" might be cool to see. I remember a few of those being pretty difficult.

Browsing through comments, theres one I'm slightly surprised wasn't brought up, but the single duty, not the trial version, Lakshimi fight gave me a lot of trouble. Two main reasons being that she had that one attack that came out very quick and did a lot of damage. It basically felt like getting sucker punched. Blocking the orbs could also be a bit annoying.

The Cape Westwind boss was quite enjoyable on my first playthrough. When I got there, I thought, "Now this is an enjoyable bossfight"

It's probably a total joke these days, but I distinctly recall the Magus Sisters in Tower of Zot being a pretty notable spike in needing to pay attention. Particularly when all three are on the field at once, and going crazy with their AoEs at the same time. Their phase transitions have a predictable pattern after you've seen them a few times, sure. But it was super messy with four completely fresh players (plus the MSQ ferrying everyone there at Level 81 rather than synced at 82 with vital new Job Abilities to play with), and it certainly took the group I landed with a good few attempts to just barely eek past the onslaught on my first go-around. Heck, that dungeon in general could be weirdly punishing, in a way most Shadowbringers dungeons before it (or even Endwalker ones *after* it for that matter) rarely tended to be. Wonky pulls, unexpectedly threatening packs... Fun times, for sure!

The seat of sacrifice "mash" is actually extremely easy, it looks much harder than it is, but that's because the bar scales to your mashing speed to the point that you can pass with 2 presses per second, but can likely go as low as 1 per second.

man ive never agreed so hard with a list before in my life, glad im not the only one who thought these were super nerve wrecking. i lost twice playing as Urianger cause that was first time i had to actually play a healer

The only MSQ duty that I've ever struggled with and had to lower the difficulty on was the duel with Venat while playing as a Black Mage. The check where you need to prevent her from absorbing the orbs just absolutely stone walled me for like 3 hours.

Rhitahtyn was the first time I died and had to retry during the story quest. I think I got it on the second or third try. For me though, it was the Duel w/ Venat solo mission that frustrated me the most the part w/ the orbs that filled her final attack in particular. I struggled to notice that some orbs filled her bar more than others, so I stressed myself out trying and failing to kill every orb. EDIT: HOLY SHIT the first boss in Pharos Sirius! I completely forgot about that guy. the aoe patterns w/ his corrupted crystal debuff AND vuln stacks, I've been in a premade light party w/ people who've cleared savage raids and more, and it still takes us 3 tries just to pass him.

Hi, that was a nice video. I agree with your picks, especially your honorable mention of fights where you play as an npc on an unfamiliar class. The fight in Shadowbringers where you play as Thancred comes to mind as I had never picked up Gunbreaker. I often play as a Paladin, however, so there was enough roll similarity to muddle through it. I have also found that class and roll make a difference. I usually keep a tank, a healer and a DPS in my tool kit and have experimented with different rolls. My experience has been that a tank with strong self healing often has an easier time. Others with different roll preferences may have had different results.

The final phase of the Venat fight is unreasonably strict/hard for tanks. With all the aoes (which your bound to get hit by) giving a damage down and having to kill so many in the final wave of the orbs. With the fact its iirc 4 orbs across all the waves and you fail. You cant real stand in the center and aoe since they will get to her to quickly. And if you run to the orbs you are basically guaranteed a damage down, single targeting them isn't great either. I haven't needed to turn down the difficulty on any solo duty except that one. Since my dnc, blm, sam, and whm were all to low at the time to attempt it.

It's kinda crazy seeing the sprout icon in all these endwalker fights since you can lose it as early as the end of the shadowbringers patches. But then I remembered that you need a certain playtime too.

when you're a sprout doing solo msq duties in ARR (like the one near little ala mhigo, or the one at witchdrop), it can be difficult to clear them if you don't focus on keeping the required npc alive. I failed the little ala mhigo one a LOT before realizing what I needed to focus on lol (extra tough if you're dps or healer and can't pull aggro off the npc)

What this video taught me was that Endwalker had some truly fantastic Solo Duties! I love In From The Cold, the last Zenos fight is really good too. You didnt mention the Venat fight in this, but I really had trouble with the orb phase because i noticed that Unmend did Less Than Half of an orb’s hp, so unless I got up to it in time it would take 3 GCDs to kill.

Fun fact with Chrysalis: The DoT/vuln up you get from him before the rift dps check is also a good way to see when to pop your buffs if you keep running from the draw in. It's just long enough to fall off before the final pull in.

Ah happy to see the reworked Lahagorm fight mentioned. Ive had to explain it to first timers/returners who havent been since update so many times, ive memorized the whole damn fight. Explaining it to people in PC is tricky.

Breaks my heart how misunderstood that Nabriales section is, if you run from the portal your debuff wears off before you get pulled in, making the damage you take from comets etc in there completely inconsequential, every time it shows up I ask "Is today the day 8 people hold the W key?" and it never is.... T_T

The only solo duty I ever failed, aside from the ones where the objective just didn't make sense the first time around, was the level 30 Conjurer class quest - both times I did it. Of course the first time I did it I was just bad at the game and wasn't entirely sure of my buttons. It was my first character after all. But then I went back and did it on another character and even then, having played the game long enough and well enough to be casually clearing the latest extreme trials and savage raid tier, I still ended up dying my first attempt. For some reason that Akoman boss and the adds he spawned just chunked me whenever I got there. It was insane. Also I did the final Zenos fight as a healer. Maybe that makes a huge difference, but for me he didn't even rank. I only 'died' on the scripted section and never even dropped under 50% before or after, even while eating the occasional mechanic.

I used to call the old Cape Westwind as " a Trial that is not even a Trial". I never got to know, what was actually happening there, the boss died in about ten seconds every time. When I played the reworked solo duty the first time, I was amazed, how challenging it was. I nearly failed it even. If I could choose some challenging dungeons, I'd say Holminster Switch. The first time I played it felt like a steep spike in difficulty compared to any other dungeon before that. The mobs there made me feel like punching bag, my HP just dropped and dropped. There are still times it surprises me, especially if you do it with first timers.

I find ARF not necessarily the hardest, but certainly the most wiped-on fight, because the ice and fire AoEs are timed in such a way that if you wait for their animation to finish you have to be almost perfect to not get hit by the next AoE. Once you realize the animation doesn't damage you and you can run as soon as the floor damage indicators disappear it becomes a lot more lenient, but a lot of newer players don't know that and end up getting hit. It's very understandable - it looks like running through the big fiery explosion would hurt - but they hurt enough that they can one-shot a slightly health chipped healer, and tanks at that level don't have the sustain to not turn the healer dying into a party wipe.

The fight against Venat kicked my butt several times, even Zenos was easier to do.

I haven't seen it mentioned yet: I think The Burn, really just the Mist Dragon fight, is probably the most dangerous MSQ dungeon. It's the only one I can recall wiping on in roulette. If the healer doesn't know what's up and fails the "don't attack this" mechanic, there's enough damage that the dragon could wipe the party. Combined with the mist mechanic where you have to find the line AoE when the dragon disappears, it's a dangerous one if you don't already know the mechanics. With duty support in particular I could see a sprout wiping quite a few times.

In the cold is one of my favourites. Although I managed to get it first try, that was on the edge; it was one of the few times I actually felt challenged, and I thought this matched the narrative of the duty really well. Although not a MSQ duty, one of the hardest solo duty for me was one of the Monk's (but it's possible my gear was simply under-tuned for this one). I can't remember which one it is exactly, maybe one near the end of the lvl 50-to-60 questline ? In this one you are ambushed by a large mob, who frequently respawn while you take on the main boss. That one required some serious scheduling of my cooldown, target priorization, and positioning.

As a healer main who plays the msq as a caster, particularly WHM and RDM, the listed solo duty you play as the other scions was "this simplified kit is boring" 😂 Cape Westwind was the first time the Msq challenged me. Not sure if it was two or three tries or if I changed jobs, but I did make me redo the thing and pay good attention.

Undoubtedly the Venat instance was the single hardest duty for me. When i first did it, it was on WAR and bursting the orbs was near impossible without landing a perfectly timed AoE on the orbs. Ive watched my friends clear it on AST and BLM and both proved to be equally challenging, thought we managed it without lowering the difficulty

I started my character right around when a lot was reworked (April 2022), and as a BLM sprout fighting Rhitahtyn, I felt this to my core. I kind of want to NG+ to see how much I've grown since then.

I see a lot of similar answers here, but one that sticks out to me was the solo duty vs one of the Heavensward Knights in Foundation. This was back when I started (during ShB release) and I had just gotten to Heavensward. I did a bunch of Leveling for AST and was using that as my job for the expansion. However, when I got to that particular Solo duty, I just couldn't get past it. I know at the time it might have just been a skill issue, haha, but in the end I had to change to Gunbreaker for the duty. Playing on an alt a while later, I almost lost the fight as RDM as well but just baaaarely pulled through. Besides a lot of the same duties people talk about in other comments, as well as several on the vid's list, that one from Heavensward just sticks out to me, lol.

Anecdotally, I had a group fail The Heroes' Gauntlet once. The final boss will repeatedly wind-up a line AoE targetting one player, without a ground telegraph. We had a sprout healer who couldn't understand it and didn't successfully dodge a single hit. Even with me feeding them TBN, they would die and then the group would wipe. I tried coaching them through it, but after 5 or 6 pulls, the group Vote Abandoned.

Something else to consider in regards to the difficulty of the Cape Westwind solo duty is that it is very possible for newer players to not have a proper set gear for it (especially if they didn't do their job quests). Also, aggro types are still relevant to keep in mind in Eureka (maybe also Bozja, but I'm not too certain) and also Deep Dungeons. Not stuff needed for MSQ, but nonetheless not as niche as the Aurum Vale example.

I thought I was going to have to quit the game because of In From the Cold. Death Unto Dawn pretty much drove a friend of mine out of the game after years of playing. I love the new ARF boss fight, but any time I'm in there with a sprout, I know there will be dead people, lol. My honorable mention would probably go to the SB duty The Will of the Moon in Azim Steppes. I failed it multiple times as a sprout. Later, a sprout friend of mine took multiple days to get past it and almost rage quit. I think what makes some of the solo duties more challenging as a sprout is that they involve non-obvious mechanics that can miss if you aren't paying close attention to the NPC dialog. It is hard for many players to comprehend what a wide player skill range exists in games. I am 60+ and play with a lot of older gamers. We often struggle with mechanics that understandably feel trivial to younger players. Both our reaction time and our situational awareness are not as good.

I'm a filthy casual who's been playing a character over 30 for the first time so, I don't know much of the fights you mentioned but so far, from those I've done as a Black Mage, two solo duties stuck to my mind 1. The Reason Roaille: A solo duty where Ilberd must not die. I tried dozen of times in normal, and easy to not avail, I finally caved in and barely made it in super, hyper, extremely humillating easy mode 2. Rihtahtyn sas Arvina: I had been following the MSQ without much trouble so this took me by susprise, I expected it may be difficult, and I actually a second phase but I was not prepared for another, even less in the way it happened. It was actually rather fun, and it took me only three tries to complete it. Contrary to all other fights, doing this with my Black Mage was surprisingly easy but I couldn't do it neither with my paladin or warrior Regarding groups, as a dps most of the time I can shrug off my mistakes because the rest of the team is doing what they should but when the tank or the healer are new, just learning the class or the mechanics, things can get very though. In many, many low level instances my groups ran out of time, and have to give up so kudos to all those tanks, and healers which persevered, learned their jobs, and I guess enjoy the responsability

Probably already been said but “Will of the Moon” in post Stormblood.

I failed the first solo duty in Escape from Castrum Centri multiple times because they kept telling me to untie Papalymo and Urianger, but when I clicked on them, they just said "Now is not the time for that!". Eventually I beat it by ignoring Papalymo and Urianger, and instead focusing on mowing down the enemies. After the fact I learned that apparently you have to click behind the characters, and not on the characters themselves, to remove the ties. Otherwise they just think you're trying to talk to them.

Today I learned you get extra lives during the final Zenos encounter... I found it trivial even by solo duty standards. The only solo duties I had actual trouble with were the Thancred RP duty in Amh Araeng (due to misunderstanding what you needed to do) and the one where you have to charge Alisaie's sword. I just kept trying to interact with HER, completely missing that there was a sword *item* hidden on the other side of her.

I imagine a lot of us vets are thinking few or none of these are all that challenging -- so I appreciate just how much you are viewing these from the perspective of new players. Perhaps the most important point you make about those end-of-ARR duties is that it's the first time players see some of those mechanics. It's one of the things I have liked about the rework of ARR: some of those mechanics weren't standardized until HW or even SB originally, so bringing them in with the rework definitely helps new players later on.

I've seen a number of streamers fail the fight against Guillaime (one of them failed multiple times) during the level 40-something Coerthas stretch of the MSQ. A couple of the adds immediately go after Lord Drillemont as soon as they spawn, and if you don't quickly get their attention he can die pretty easily, and you fail the duty. It's not hard at all if you do get the enemy's attention right away, but the game doesn't seem to give you any indication that he's in danger of dying and needs to be protected, leading new players to fail the duty and not understand why they failed.

I feel like another good honorable mention is the 2nd boss in castrum abania ( fire ice guy) after the rework. Since then I cant tell you how many sprouts avoid soaking towers because they also get linear aoe at the same time thus causing big raidwide damage, and sometimes just a straight wipe unless the tank has some cooldowns to spare and enough hp is left over.

I just thought of a moment in the ARR MSQ that I've seen a lot of new players die to. It's not a duty, it's just a straightforward quest that's really easy to do if... IF... you pay attention and read what the npc tells you to do, but if you miss or ignore what they said and try to brute-force it, you'll likely be overpowered and die. It's the level 39 quest, Factual Folklore. You're sent to kill a mudpuppy in Daniffen Pass in Coerthas, and it has very high HP and damage for its level, and unless you've significantly overleveled/overgeared the quest, it will eat you alive. How are you supposed to beat it then? By doing exactly what the quest npc explicitly told you to do... use the vinegar item that he gave you, which debuffs the mudpuppy and drops its stats down to normal levels, making it easy to beat. The problem is that this stretch of the MSQ can feel somewhat tedious, and even some patient players might be only half paying attention to what the dialog is saying at the time.

In From the Cold can be pretty much entirely sneak trough, going trough back alleys and behind enemies.

surprised wol vs venat in elpis wasnt on here! i actually just did it for the first time about two days ago as a monk, that last phase with the orbs was absolutely KILLING me, meanwhile i went on to wallop zenos with all 5 lives in tact (first try!!)

Oh I'm in the Seat of Sacrifice clip! The intermission is definitely the worst part, when I did it for the first time on Day 1, we wiped 4 times to it, to the point where I thought it was a bug. I actually couldn't believe that 1 person not pressing any button would result in a wipe

I wish that the MSQ was harder...i'm currently at the stage where i want to do harder content but am way to scared to try because of the giant difficulty spike.

No joke, I did the reworked MSQ on a new BLM character when the Dynamis DC came out. I'm a savage/ultimate caster main and I had to genuinely take food, potions, and gear into account for Cape Westwind because Rhitatyn's soft enrage kept up with my lack of healing.

The Chrysalis/Nabriales The intended way is not not get sucked in early, so that dot+huge vuln drops before you enter the tear. That way even dps can take meteors. But everyone just does LB3 strat, I don't think I've seen anyone do it the intended way of resisting the pull in.

I failed in from the cold once and immediately restarted on very easy. And the button mash section seems to be bugged and it opens up menus when you mash keys, which has never happened to me before in an ATB.

Not MSQ but one of the healer jobs quests was such a pain. I'm not a healer, so that didn't help but you were supposed to ensuna NPCs that it was tough to track which ones had the debuff. I think it was a Scholar quest, I know it was in upper La Noscea.

I think Venat solo fight is a harder fight than Zenos. DPS check + quick reflex with some mechanics. My friend and I almost failed it the first time we went through it with how close the dps check for the orbs before Venat enrage

I wiped on the final mechanic of Venat as black mage enough times that I leveled a different class to beat it as. It felt like I just didn't have enough GCDs to kill enough orbs, even if I killed each orb in one shot.

"The Will of the Moon" solo msq duty I found kind of hard.. Not sure if it was because one of the first duties I had to do when returning. But the battle having many mechanics and the length of it, but I did fail and it was frustrating to have to try over again.

I started FF14 just focusing on MSQ most of my time. Afaicr, I was a PLD that shifted to a GNB when it became available. I only played diablo series, before playing FF14 as my 1st MMO. After almost a month of playing, Sadu forced me to put some damage materia on my gears, first time i used them. Then after about 2months, I met mom. It was the first time I had to settle for Easy just to move on after trying more than 10 times to beat those orbs in nomal. I made an alt after 9 months of playing. And the only thing that stopped my grind was Mom again even though I was already a SAM. She was the only one to make me retry. And if I may add dungeon causing wipes if a healer or tank goes blind, Amaurot, Vanaspati final boss wipe tendency is high.

I don't have any that I consider difficult, but I remember Cape Westwind being particularly memorable because I thought it was intense and the game was getting hype. Endwalker got me irrationally angry with the tailing missions, but 'In from the cold' is one of the most memorable moments I had in a game. The panic I felt was unreal and I believe the mashing section at the end might be the hardest in the entire game. Venat took me three attempts and I survived with a tiny fraction of health but I thought that was the point that you barely survive to show how strong she is. Is a beautiful moment. Is not MSQ but the hardest solo duty is definetly the one in the four lords.That took me several tries because Tataru just sucks at doing mechanics xD.

The solo duty versus Venat was WAAAAAAAY harder than the fight against Zenos. Also, the very very very first MSQ fight in FF14 where you actually have to truly pay attention is Ravana in HW. While tame by today's standards when you first come through as a sprout, with 7 other sprouts, it comes as a sudden shock where you have to sit up and actually play after a wipe and actually decipher some mechanics that aren't just "don't stand in orange".

Porta Decumana really seems to surprise some new players. I've run it a few hundred times and am happy when it takes only one blast from City Buster to convince my first-timer teammate(s) not to stand a second time in front of that big green orb that Ulty is summoning. The sheer amount of incoming damage from the Tank Purge raidwide, the Homing Ray spread markers, and the Laser Focus stack is enough to keep even an experienced healer on their toes, especially when teammates also get whacked a bunch by the avoidable mechanics. It's easy to get caught out by some of those as a new visitor, though. One of the things I would love to see more is Magic DPS using Addle and Melee DPS using Feint in there on the raidwide attacks. Addle is especially effective because every little thing Ultima Weapon does is _magic._ Yes, even the auto-attacks! I don't think the game does a great job of pointing out to players of that level that they have those mitigations that absolutely can help in a boss fight when used at the right times.

While i never struggled against any msq content. I have a friend who litteraly dropped from the game. They were tired of leveling slowly so they bought their way to shadowbringer. Just to find out that they lacked the skill to clear the very first dungeon, yes, the very first one. They were a NIN and didn't bother using duty finder as it was too long to find a group. So they never got caried and never managed to clear it on their own with npcs. That was quite sad to see them uninstal after 2 days straight of try

The reworked Cape Westwind surprised me when I got to it while taking a second character through ARR. Rhitatyhn went from being a joke that I would try to convince the rest of the party to take all of our gear off and auto-attack him to death to being an actual proper fight that I had to pay attention to. Good on him.

I actually had an FC member who got SO hard stuck on the final boss (the last solo duty in EW) that they actually quit the game for a bit and had to come back later. It's definitely a hard fight and I beat it with no lives remaining, but DAMN man it wasn't THAT hard 😂 Fun fact! You actually keep your dynamis stacks through the transition from the trial to the final boss. I died once on the trial and had one less for the solo duty, which added SOOOO much to it for me.

Although it's not a MSQ but a Job Quest I want to mention it, since I don't see a lot of people talking about it, but the Monk lvl 68 Job Quest is probably the hardest solo duty I did in the whole game. I remember when I did this quest, there were like 3 other players around the quest NPC, probably dying in that quest over and over again aswell xD It's one of the few quests, where you have to utilize breaking line of sight, because of the amount of ranged enemies and be very efficient with your self healing tools, otherwise you simply get overwhelmed. I still can't believe how square thought it's fine to throw you, a a simple monk, against 5 melee dudes + a Boss that does heavy tank busters and that calls 10 more ranged/melee dudes + a caster dude that creates area denial puddles. And you can't just simply aoe kill them all, because they have a "normal" amount of HP.

the fact that you didn't even mention the Venat fight with it's tight DPS check inside of a solo duty really surprised me honestly.

With the MSQ, I've had trouble with 2 duties: 1. Aurum Vale: This is the first duty that requires a Healer to actually heal 2. various "Role Play" duties, Hien's in particular was quite tough around the Ghimlyt Dark. The rest didn't give me much trouble, though I found their button order very unpleasant (couldn't reorder them before EW). Don't think anything else MSQ gave me trouble, but there is a lot non-MSQ that gives me a lot of trouble. 1. Azulmagia: I genuinely gave up on BLU because it's a massive pain to waste 15m to get to stage 3 and just wipe 2. BLM Solo Duties: These are very tough and overtuned. mitigated somewhat by gearing up with endgame gear 3. RDM's level 60 finale: This boss fight is impossible without endgame gear, even on 'very easy'.

While I don’t think it’s very difficult on the player itself, there’s that one fight from ARR where you accompany Captain Ilberd that has gotten me and another friend to retry it at least once. (I forget it’s name). I had to switch to WHM to heal Ilberd since he draws enemy attention too much and there’s not enough healing for you to tank the enemies yourself. This was forever ago though, so it could’ve also just been a skill issue lol

I’ve been getting the first EW trial through Mentor Roulette and you can wipe a lot if not enough people are alive for the stack, making it rough for people newer to the fight

i love seat of sacrifice so much. but that dang button mashing. yoship heard us complain about the active time maneuvers and decided we should just suffer then. 😭😭

I did the ultima fight with trust NPCs as the tank. It was close but they pulled off the limit break in time. I actually did all the arr dungeons with trust NPCs. I suppose it takes longer but every run was a clean one shot.

I'd have argued about Porta Decumana earlier, but I hard carried a run as a healer in MSQ roulette today, so there's that. Mechanics are for those who deign to do them, players are above that, of course. Or they just didn't know. But they should've seen quite a few similar mechanics up until that point, so not going to give them a free pass for not doing most mechanics. Final fight with Zenos: I didn't even know you only had 6 revives. I thought it was infinite. Chrysalis: Agreed. It's definitely possible to still wipe in this fight. It's not just the buffs that are extended 10 times, the debuffs as well. I'd have argued about some of the other duties, but this is for first time players (?), so it might be harder for them than it is for someone who did the duties a few times. A fight I'd mention is the Venat solo duty in EW. The DPS check can be tight if you're still new-ish (which is possible) or undergeared.

The hardest one for me was, by far, the mothercrystal. I did all of the Shadowbringers and Endwalker MSQ duties with Trust, and Hydaelyn kicked my ass multiple times. It was the first time I really had to learn mechanics and pay attention to the boss, since the healers in Trust aren't very good at saving the player if they mess up.

in from the cold feels kind of like a survival horror type of quest. a lot of my friends have never played those kinds of games and they loathed that quest - which is totally understandable. i enjoyed it tbh but i can totally respect folks hating it

Shout-out to my first run through the final Dungeon of Endwalker, The Dead Ends, wherein the healer and two Bards I was assigned to babysit kept getting hit by Caustic Grebuloff's AoEs that get blown by the wind, and there weren't enough brain cells between them to rub together and realize that the Doom debuff that attack puts on you can be cleansed by Esuna or Warden's Paean, before _or after_ being specifically instructed. Give PLD a res, and give PLD a cleanse. Please.

Venat as mentioned, but also Ran'jit Eulmore, specifically because I did it with BLM.

Thumbs up for: in for the cold (afair finding your way is also not simple) and the rework of Ascian Prime. Porta Decumana part 2 would be hard only for a group of new players who never have considered limit break. This days, quite improbable. I do find that the first Titan (the 4-man trial @ level ~25) is actually a hard one ... when you're new to the game. Lots of mechanics are unseen before, there's multiple way you can die or wipe and it just shows how the game can be challenging. I also had some hard time with the Nadaam, especially understanding who to target in the end to avoid wipe.

I think you forgot to mention two trials that just released: Golbez and Zeromus. Both are definitely super challenging fights especially Golbez because that fight is essentially a tiny ex thanks to the meteor towers

Yeah.... I'mma need you to add Worthy of his Back into those honorable mentions XP The fight against Venat is an excellent and challenging dance, but that orb phase is just brutal. The orbs start too far away to AOE ythem down, forcing you to attempt to start on one of them transfer into AoE oncce they are closer together at which point you only have seconds before they reach Venat. And did I mention you have to dodge explosions that give damage down during this DPS check? Yeah.... to this day this is the only duty I have had to lower the difficulty (and my signal that the actual hard content is probably not for me)

The weirdest thing about Nabriales is that you're supposed to run away to make sure the dot he gives you doesn't stay on you forever when he sucks you in. But because of item level tuning, most people ignore that. Hell most people don't know about it. It kills the tanks (and therefore you) with the meteors at min ilvl.

Only thing I personally had an issue with repeatedly is that damn group button mash in Seat of Sacrifice. The number of times we had people straight up leave a group because someone kept failing it is unreasonable. It's a prog lock that relies on having 7 other people that can do it as well and if someone in the group is having a lag issue you're more or less screwed.

It's probably somewhat job-dependent but I actually died to Sadu in her post-credits fight in Stormblood (playing Black Mage), and found her more challenging than any of the Zenos fights.

The hardest for me, back when I was a sprout, was the Nadaam. I failed it multiple times back then, and it didn't help that I started during Stormblood, so there was no difficulty settings on solo instances

I tried to do the Venat duty as BLM on a second playthrough. (I wanted to make a point of doing everything MSQ as BLM.) Unless there was something big i was missing, it required basically perfect play at the last part and it took me 15-20 tries. my first time in I think i did it with sage? or maybee SMN or RDM and it was trivial. I didn't even notice it was supposed to be hard. I failed in from the cold the first time in before the nerf because the order you do things matters and I had no idea what i was supposed to do. It was easy once i figured out WHAT to do, even if it took me a bit to find where again.

Hardest quest for me was the original Steps of Faith (against Vishap) before it was nerfed into oblivion, then changed to a solo encounter. This fight had two main issues: A) The DPS check was quite high even if you used all the traps correctly. Many people did not use these correctly. Trying to DPS it down without the massive damage from these traps was basically impossible. It was so intense that even if you did things perfectly you wouldn't have much bridge left. B) You literally could not wipe or reset. If you died you could return to the start arena, run all the way back to Vishap and continue fighting. This sounds fun until you know that you couldn't meet the DPS check, then you just sat around waiting for Vishap to slowly walk the rest of the way before you could try again. It is the single encounter that I have seen more people insta-drop from since my time back in beta to this very day.

I got a little bit of ptsd from day 1 Titania. So many wipes to giant add phase.

Venat fight is hardest fight using BLM, the last phases of orbs struggle me😢

There's a solo duty before the end of ARR with a bunch of robots that was impossibly hard. I think it had Ilbert in it? That was a terror. Also since i only played black mage everything was such a chore to kill in solo duties until later.

One dungeon that I always dread getting in roulette is Sunken Temple of Qarn. I've found that the first couple of packs and boss have been challenging for many sprouts I've matched with. As for many it's their first introduction of moves like Final Sting which is near-leathal from full hp, and first instance of the doom mechanic. It's also at that awkward level where healers and tanks don't quite have enough abilities to comfortably pull larger packs unless they are completely in-sync. While for experienced players this is nothing and not hard in any sense to us, and normally we wouldn't think twice on this but I'd say it's probably the first difficulty spike for new players and worth a mention. Also honestly it's probably the dungeon I have wiped most in, and it's always in that first section with new players. XD

Even though, you chosen the hardest for #1 it was hilariously fun as the same job as Zenos. He was 100% the best end solo duty ever created. Thank god he's gone but he'll be remembered for his battle lust. XD

Edit: nabirales people keep using lb on him I remember rhitahtyn go what because he almost deleted my hp but i beat him first try unlike my friend who got his ... kicked and beat him on easy (to be fair he didnt know you could step into the aoes after the indicators disappear). While i can only talk about arr, personally i only failed ultima weapon once but we managed the 2nd try after the dps to the bard to use his cds (still cant believe that worked). Also for ultimate weapon u can lb in phase 1 after ifrit nuke and in phase 2 when he casts ultima before the free lb 3.

The last quest in the ShB patches with that big battle where you have to play different characters made me so frustrated i was thinking about giving my account data to another person and having them do it for me

I had so much trouble with Sadu’s fight, then it’s the fight with hien, y’shtola and little sun, then yes the venat fight too honestly they are so bad Oh the one with lakshimi with you and arenvald that was memorable too

I got lucky doing the stealth missions and "In from the Cold" on my first try. I remember waiting after that quest for almost an hour waiting on a friend to clear it - able to do nothing but laugh at their frustrations even after I explained what I gleaned from my run. I haven't tried all of the reworked content from HW onwards yet but still to this day only one quest has ever been ludicrous for me. The only solo duty I ever had to set to "very easy" was the lvl 60 BLM class quest. I will admit, I do not like Black Mage and do not claim to be good, it is one of my weakest jobs along with Monk, Ninja and Bard - simply because I do not like them XD