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[before-calamity]

Update

As you may have noticed, I haven't really posted in a while. Taking a mini vacation of sorts.

I'm not out of content and still sitting on some juicy posts.

Holidays are pretty tough for me emotionally. I used to have two brothers, but they are no longer alive and so I always miss them around this season. To cope with these feelings, I've basically thrown myself into my streaming career (which helps since I'm basically pretending to be a different character) and self-care with friends, and doing research and writing is unappealing.

I'll be back soon (hopefully in a couple of weeks or so) and back to posting regularly, and I'm sorry.

[before-calamity]

The Mun-Tuy Cellars

Hey! I'm doing a Saturday Stream of FFXIV 1.0 on December 9, 2023 at 10am! Come and watch me dig up information on lost skills, explain how I get everything to work, and we're gonna explore some places. Check it out at http://twitch.tv/maria_puddingway. The Mun-Tuy Cellars in 1.0 are different than the version you see in Modern XIV, which bridges South Shroud to East Shroud. This version is a world dungeon and is of Gelmorran design. It was destroyed in the Calamity and rebuilt, because the Gridanians loved using fermented Mun-Tuy beans in their food, and needed a new place to ferment them.

These cellars are outside of Camp Emerald Moss, which would've been in West Shroud, which isn't seen in the game. Quarrymill, which is where the new cellars in modern FFXIV are located, is in South Shroud. Read on to see more about this world dungeon...

The map is confusing like everything else in FFXIV 1.0. This isn't even FFXI design, this nightmare reminds me of the like you see in Dragon Quest 2.

These round rooms are all the same and all copy-pasted, and reminds me of something you'd see in Tam-Tara Deepcroft, although I'm not sure if a similar style room is there.

Here's where the magic happens! Jars of Mun-Tuy beans fermenting in a cold, dank cave. It's weird that this is like an actual brewery, but monsters have taken it over. You'd think that...ya know, the supply of bean-related goods would've dried out by now, unless the fact that the cellars were overrun were because of the incoming cataclysm.

Lastly, you also see these big kegs, which honestly? Quite cool looking and there's nothing really like this in ARR.

[before-calamity]

Lost Skills Part 2

Oh yeah, we have a lot of these.

These are different for multiple purposes. Notice the . infront of the name as well as the odd-harp-like icon (maybe a cut BRD skill?). Mass Fear II gets learned at level 78 as well! XIV 1.0 only went up to 50. Also there's an item in the corner of .Mass Fear II's icon. What is that? I'm thinking it might be the original design of the job stones myself, similar to how the final job stones appear in the corner of released skills (see some of the other skill overviews to see an example).

Now time for the skill itself - it simply just makes enemies flee. That's pretty powerful, and probably wouldn't work on bosses.

But...why? This leads me have a lot of question, because this seemed like a very different mechanic battle mechanics than what we have. Plus kind of a waste of a skill? .Mass Fear II apparantly does the same thing (it could be a cut description and it defaulted to I's description, or it could just be purely lost), but maybe it has more of a chance of doing it.

Read on for more cool cut actions...including a remnant of the cut gathering Shepard class...

Okay. So the data is filled with "Magic Missile" and most of them are...unfinished, with no description, and they do nothing. One does, and it's for the Arcanist class! This magic missile attack basically launches a ranged attack.

But wait, there's more!

Ranged magic attacks for both of the casters! These fall in the line of the fact that originally 1.0 had no auto attack. So for casters to do a basic attack...you'd have to do press a button. The auto attacks for casters, as far as I know, have been changed to melee attacks like they were in ARR. However, these skills are kind of sorta in XIV? Spirit Dart is now a variant action and are Logos/Lost actions in Eureka and Bozja, and Phantom Dart made it to ARR but was cut later on, and it was like a ogcd Scathe. I wanna disclaim - these two might've been released in the original 1.0 release, before they changed it to use auto-attacks. But I'm comparing everything to client 1.23b, so these would count as cut/removed content.

And now...remnants of the Shepard gathering class. You have these two actions - Herd and Herd 2. Both were cut out really early - look at Mass Fear II to see how numerals were handed later on, and they lack a hotbar icon (they don't even appear as the red X, like some other cut actions - they just don't appear at all).

Herd 2's action is pretty suspicious too. "Open negotiations" does fit an action related to the Parley minigame - so I'm wondering if the description for Herd 2 was rewritten by the one for Parley.

Next, we'll be looking at basically some basic attack skills, featuring a bunch of cut classes!

[before-calamity]

Sorry about not posting the last few days. It's been a rough weekend, and well, I need some self-care. We'll be back to business later this week.

[before-calamity]

Moonspore Grove

One of the places I didn't get to visit during my first batch of exploring was Moonspore Grove just because walking there took forever. Moonspore Grove is basically the home of the bad Sylphs in ARR, and where they reproduce. And I was actually surprised about what I found, past these two rocks. Read on for more pictures of Moonspore Grove.

So even positioning your camera behind these rocks you can see some structures. You see their little banners and these things that look like bleachers or tents, which are just decoration.

And in the middle of it, a giant shroom. Possibly untextured? Honestly, I can't tell. It looks out of place though.

Other than the fact that in ARR the air gets a lot more purple, this is kind of similar to how the grove looks.

You obviously can't get to the shroom, which would require jumping, which you can't do in 1.0.

Still. It's very different than the usual copy paste mess that we see elsewhere, or in some places, nothing at all.

[before-calamity]

Lost Skills in 1.0 P1

Let's take a look at some skills that are lost to time in Final Fantasy XIV 1.0. Today, we'll look at probably the most put together of these skills - largely because they have hotbar icons in a similar style to the final game. They all happen to be THM spells, although this might be a placeholder.

We'll start with a series staple, Slow.

I didn't took this sort of tooltip because it displays some more information about the skill - the other icon do not.

One thing to note about all of these is that there's no wand at the bottom, like other THM spells.

Anyways, Slow simply reduces the target's auto-attack speed. Interesting to note that originally, FFXIV 1.0 had no auto attack (albeit this client does, which is version 1.23b). So either this was a remain of an original plan to get rid of auto-attack or it was a skill that was cut early when the game was released. I'm still counting it here, because hey, it was removed but is still in the client. Read more for lost skills...

Gravity, another typical "time magic" spell, with an odd icon. It essentially inflicts the person with Heavy. What's interesting is that even in FFXIV 1.0, the ailment is called Heavy, not Sloth.

Says what it does in the tin - it binds an enemy, and they cannot move, similar to Foot Graze in modern FFXIV.

Once again, it does what it says in the tin. And the icon here is very different. Also notice that this and Bind have a shorter recast time of 40 seconds, meaning these simply are not default values. Silence skills in FFXIV 1.0 act more as interrupts, while this would've been like a traditional silence ailment as seen in other Final Fantasies.

Paralyzes the target. Recast goes back to 60, but it has a 2 second cast time.

And our last one we will look at is Blind, which blinds the target, which acts as an accuracy debuff here. Next, we will look at some two skills that introduces quite a different mechanics, and some basic attack skills for CNJ, THM and a cut class.

[before-calamity]

Hook (PGL Weapon)

This was a MNK weapon in 1.0 that didn't make an appearance in modern FFXIV (as far as I know). It's a captain's hook! You can engage in your Captain Hook fantasy, although you'll be missing an additional hand. But hey, nothing better than having two hooks for hands, right? No kettles here, but hooks? Hooks are in.

[before-calamity]

Macros

Yeah, like any good MMO, FFXIV 1.0 had macros. The macros are more expanded than what you see in modern FFXIV and are closer to FFXI macros. Unlike modern FFXIV, there is no list of commands you can use, so you have to use an external source.

And yes there are icons. Read more about those.

The icons are similar and in a much different style than in modern FFXIV and there are * a lot * more icons. The style that they're in is much more like 1.0's art style, with some even simpler in nature.

Configuring the macros are different, and more like FFXI. You don't drop them onto your heart bar, but instead pull up a macro palette with CTRL or ALT, which you configure in the above interface. This means that you can have a lot more macros in 1.0 than you can in modern FFXIV, which makes sense, since modern FFXIV discourages the use of such things.

At one point, I found a macro cheat sheet for XIV 1.0, but I wasn't able to find it again, unfortunately. EDIT: Thanks to user v25, they found it! http://lodestone.fragmenterworks.com/pl/guide/macro01.html

[before-calamity]

CNJ/WHM Skills Overview: WHM Spells & Traits

These titles are getting wordier...

Good ole Presence of Mind. Does the same thing as it does in modern FFXIV, but it lasts longer and isn't just for the next spell.

Read on for more WHM skills from 1.0...

This, however, is different. As everyone knows, Benediction in FFXIV is the classic "oh shit" spell for WHM, as it's a full heal. In 1.0, it's just an AoE heal. A strong AoE heal, but one nevertheless. In FFXI, it's also an AoE heal with an esuna type ability.

Esuna was only for White Mage, but does the same thing. Nothing too exciting.

And Holy is basically a WHM Flare and the Bind effect isn't even guaranteed!

Now as for traits...

Lvl 8 Greater Healing - Increases healing magic potency by 8 Lvl 12 Greater Enhancing Magic - Increases enhancing magic potency by 8

I believe enhancing magic is basically support spells.

Lvl 16 Enhanced Magic Accuracy - Increases magic accuracy by 8. Lvl 20 Auto-Refresh - Gradually regenerates MP. Lvl 24 Greater Protect - Increases magic defense gained from Protect Lvl 28 Greater Healing II - Increases healing magic potency by 10 Lvl 32 Enhanced Blissful Mind - increases speed of Blissful Mind accumulation. 32 137 Lvl 36 Enhanced Stoneskin - Increases efficacy of Stoneskin Lvl 40 Swift Sacred Prism - Reduces recast time of Sacred Prism by 30 seconds Lvl 44 Swift Shroud of Saints - Reduces recast time of Shroud of Saints by 60 seconds. Lvl 48 Enhanced Raise - Causes Raise to no longer inflict enfeebling effects.

I believe this means that like in modern FFXIV, raising adds an enfeebling effect (I think in FFXIV it's "Brink of Death", but that might the debuff given from using effects that kill you with Blue Mage). So, this is very powerful, because there's no penalty to death, other than the raise taking a long time to cast and recast.

Now, for the next skills overview...I have something very special for you.

Very special.

[before-calamity]

CNJ/WHM Skills Overview P1: CNJ Spells

Read more for more CNJ spells from 1.0...

I believe this is the same order of the spells you learn in modern FFXIV. I really don't have a lot to comment on this - they have a longer cast time and non-instance recast time like we've seen in the THM spells because, well combat was slower.

Remember what they took away from us. But not really. I know that everyone missed Protect from modern FFXIV, and I guess this is a hot take, but it wasn't all that effective. It amounted to a 3% damage reduction, and when they cut Protect, they went ahead and adjusted stats so that you have a 3% damage reduction. So you basically always have a protect on nowadays.

While it is a cool spell for class flavor (which they kind of ruined by making it a role skill in SB), I don't miss it.

Cleric Stance had a bit of a history, and it's another spell people miss. It's funny because from what I heard, in ARR, it was a literal swap between your intelligence and mind values, and then later on before it was cut it was more like it's 1.0 counterpart. This is heresay though. AND apparantly when it swapped the values, you also got the Attack buff and Healing debuff. It was replaced with a Cleric Role role action in SB and ultimately removed in Shadowbringers.

This spell confuses me. You basically turn HP into MP, and you set it aside so that you can get a big MP jump in the future I guess? I guess it's useful for a burst, but FFXIV 1.0 wasn't really known to have such bursts like modern FFXIV.

Stonera continues a trait we've seen in some spell lines where by default it's an AoE.

Stoneskin is another spell people miss, and it's one that NPCs still cast from time to time. Unlike Protect which is a general damage reduction, Stoneskin acted more like Scholar's Adloquium spell.

This was in the game until Stormblood, and even featured a Stoneskin II, which was an AoE. Like Protect, Stoneskin I and Stoneskin II lasted for a long time, 30 minutes.

Turn everything into an AoE...it just takes longer to cast. Not sure if this is a good trade off.

This was another spell that was in modern FFXIV until Stormblood...and it was basically reborn into Lucid Dream. Even the hotbar icon for ARR Shroud of Saints looks like Lucid Dream, just recolored.

We've actually covered Repose in an earlier post. I'm still shock it's essentially the same spell as a THM spell that they get at lvl 42.

So that's the CNJ spells. Next we'll talk WHM actions and Traits.

My one takeaway is how the spells are very similar to what they were in ARR, and I have yet another one of my famous theories (tm) regarding how CNJ changed during the development of 1.0, due to some recent data I've come across.

Do you miss Stoneskin, Protect and Cleric's Stance? Tell me what I'm missing out on. I never got to use Stoneskin but I did play during Stormblood which still had Protect and Cleric's Stance.

[before-calamity]

Main Menu Bar

I'm not sure what to call it. In modern FFXIV, this is your equivalent to those red button towards the bottom of your screen that let you get to various parts of the UI.

On the bottom, from left to right are: Main Menu, Active/Passive Mode Switch/Use Item/Emotes/Lock UI/turn on or off active help and turn on or off hotbar tips. It should be note that the knapsack is Use Item and not Inventory - you press it and a small menu pops up with all your useable inventory, like potions or food or things, but it doesn't display your full inventory.

And the buttons on top? I'm not really sure. I don't know what those buttons are for because they are always grayed out for me. Looking at some of the icons, they might be player interactions - for instance, the fifth one from the left looks like a trade button, and the one next to it might be party actions.

The All at the bottom is for filtering targets, I believe, similar to the same mechanic seen in modern FFXIV when using the controller (and kb/m? I don't play FFXIV with kb/m).

[before-calamity]

THM/BLM Skills Overview Part 2: BLM & Traits

Let's see what our little firey mages did in 1.0

Before Manafont, you had Convert in ARR, which removed 30% of your HP to recover some MP. This is a bit more of an extreme version of Convert, just switching your HP and MP values altogether. This was actually a materia with the same effect in FFVII (albeit a rare and niche one).

Read on for more Black Mage abilities...

As of Endwalker, Burst is in the game, as a PVP action for Black Mages, which is a powerful close-ranged circle AoE. This would've been the Flame or Freeze equivalent for the thunder element.

Kind of funny that this is now the default effect of the THM sleep spell in modern FFXIV.

And your hard hitting fire and ice attacks. I mean, it's not ultra surprising that BLM has these actions. A BLM without a Flare is like...dragoon without a spear. Only things surprising about these actions is how they all have long cast times and recast times (especially Burst!) and how Flare apparantly is a close-circle AoE.

Now for traits:

Lvl 8 Enhanced Magic Potency - Increases attack magic potency by 8 Lvl 12 Enhanced Enfeebling Magic - Increases enfeebling magic potency by 8 This is also referred to as Greater Enfeebling Magic elsewhere in the game's data. Might be a remnant of an earlier localization.

Lvl 16 Enhanced Parsimony - Increases MP gained from Parsimony by 25% Lvl 20 Auto-Refresh - Gradually regenerates MP. The fact you don't get this until level 20 is amazing to me, and shows the type of game FFXIV 1.0 is. Lvl 24 Swift Necrogenesis - Reduces recast time of Necrogenesis by 30 seconds. Lvl 28 Enhanced Magic Potency II - Increases magic potency by 10 Lvl 32 Enhanced Enfeebling Magic II - Increases enfeebling magic potency by 10 This is referred to as Greater Enfeebling Magic II elsewhere in the game's data.

Lvl 36 Swift Dark Seal - Reduces recast time of Dark Seal by 30 seconds Lvl 40 Enhanced Magic Crit Potency - Increases poitency of magical critical hits by 10. Lvl 44 Enhanced Sanguine Rite - Adds a damage reduction effect to Sanguine Rite. Lvl 48 Enhanced Excruciate - Increases critical rate bonus from Excruciate.

The only other thing I can say about Thaumaturge and Black Mage, is that I have a strong suspicion based on some investigation I did over the weekend was that this was not meant to be the "elemental" class, and was more...darker. Thaumaturge itself in ARR does deal with some dark concepts - the whole class questline is about dealing with voidsents and involves a lot of murder. Considering that their goal for the original FFXIV classes was to move away the common archetypes seen in final fantasy, this isn't a huge surprise.

We'll see more about what I mean later down the line, once we get more proof and evidence.

[before-calamity]

A Preview Of What's to Come.

Found a bunch of cut actions, including this basic attack for Musketeer. We'll be looking at a bunch more in depth later. And when I say a bunch, we'll be looking at a subset later, because I have...hundreds of things to take pictures of (and yes, some with actually skill icons.) There are some interesting things in this overall set - including sentinel when it was a seperate class (or at least remnants of it when it was in the game), possibly remnants of the mystic class, remnants of the assassin or a cut early on rogue class. Very, very interesting things and you can find them here.

So please follow, and enjoy this journey through cut content with me.

[before-calamity]

Invisible Wall

One thing I noticed is that there's just a straight up invisible wall in this area of the Shroud. Usually the game does a better job of cutting out places you can't enter (which reminds me, I need to grab pictures of that empty void in Limsa...) Also just noticed is that I was able to get perpendicular to the rock next to me.

Lots to do today, so a short one for y'all.

[before-calamity]

Heads Up! Stream incoming.

Hello all! Tomorrow (Sunday at 11/18/2023) at 1pm CT, I will be streaming more FFXIV 1.0. I'll be grabbing pictures for the BLM and WHM actions, and we will also be taking a look at some lost and cut skills.

This is a great way to see some behind the scenes information, such as the thrilling world of database management.

You can check it out on my twitch, posted below. I will go over the content of the stream during the week after the stream ends. EDIT: Stream starts at 3pm CT. Sorry for the inconvenience. Stream's been cancelled due to some changes in plans today (as well as the fact that it would be awfully tedious to watch). I do plan on still doing the work, but it won't be on stream. Sorry for the inconvenience!

[before-calamity]

Possible Staff for Lost Mystic Class

I found this staff along the weapon models. You might say "why is that interesting?" And I'll tell you it's because it is not with the other staffs. Each of the weapons are grouped by class essentially, and this was before all of the thaumaturge weapon.

I would argue it's a staff for the Mystic class, because that class was above THM in the data. I don't see why it would be any different from, say a Conjurer or White Mage staff.

Of course I might be wrong and this might be a staff that's familiar to other players or other final fantasy players.

What do y'all think?

Just as a note, I'll be streaming some 1.0 content on twitch on Sunday 1pm CT. Gonna take some pics of the BLM and WHM only skills and probably explore a bit in some cut actions. I'd love to see you there!

[before-calamity]

THM/BLM Skills Overview: Part 1

Preface: THM skills are actually fairly unique in 1.0! And there are a lot of skills that don't really need any introduction. Oh, and the elemental spells all combo on each other, similar to EW's BLM PVP...except for Blizzard for some reason.

Thunder is your starting spell, and it's not a bleed, just deals lightning damage. In 1.0 elemental resistance is very much a thing, so using the right type of spell for damage is important.

Read on to look at more spells!

The first of the more unique skills, kind of acts like Umbral Ice in a way.

Similar to ARR's Blizzard 2, which could also inflict Heavy.

They were really leaning towards the THM being a dark magic class, with a skill called "Necrogenesis". Also gave THM a bit of a self-sustain...every 90 seconds though.

All the fire spells were AoEs.

Imagine casting magic and it missing or failing.

Your THM can snipe enemies with this attack! Of course, that's just theory - I'm not really sure what the range of these spells are by default. Hopefully someone in the comments does!

Similar to modern FFXIV's Convert/Manafont, except it requires the caster to be hit. On the plus side, your casts can't be interrupted, which is handy.

This skill isn't great. It's basically just a longer way of getting a guaranteed critical hit.

Part 2 might come a bit later, apparently I either lost the tooltips for the job actions as well as WHM actions. I'll probably grab it this weekend.