This post is a April 2026 transcription of this video. The text has been edited for readability while preserving my original sentiment.

Welcome to my day four discussion on Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail. I think like almost like six hours or something today and I stopped right before the very first level 97 quest where we got to ram a train into a dome. It’s freaking insane.

I will start off with the Skydeep Cenote, but that just leads to a lot of stuff dealing with the City of Gold and where the future that we’ll be heading towards in like day five, six, seven, eight, nine, like however long it will take me to beat this game. So I just want to talk about the ceremony at first because it was just a lot of fun.

It was so cool to see Wuk Lamat there to celebrate and to also like, look, we predicted this. I believe I’ve mentioned this also in my discussion videos, but if Koana and Wuk Lamat were together as like co-Dawn Servants, and that seemed to be the case. I love that when Wuk Lamat revealed the next saga and the Tuliyollal story that she was like, I’m really glad you chose it because it’s both of us in this slate. It’s like, I’m really glad that you accept it because that would have been embarrassing if I added you to the slate if you just didn’t accept it. So that was really fun. I really enjoyed that. It was awesome to see everyone celebrating. Everyone’s so happy. We also saw for the first time the Giants here at Tuliyollal, which was awesome. It’s just showing the unity of all the characters together. The fact that at the end of that like ceremony, we got to talk with everyone. We got to visit to everyone, talk. It was like, it was just such a great time because it really showed just how awesome and how much Wuk Lamat affected everyone’s lives.

And then this is where Dawntrail’s weakest moment occurred. Everyone was like, awesome. We can’t get into the City of Gold, which I’ll speak more deeply about the City of Gold once we talk about the Skydeep Cenote. But essentially everyone’s like, oh, we can’t go into City of Gold because like, look, the gates are closed. I don’t know what to do. So we’ll just hang around until we get some more information. And then we’re like, okay, so what do you want to do, Warrior of Light? And we’re like, oh, we just want to travel to Yak T’el. I’m like, okay, cool. And so we go with Erenville and we go visit Yak T’el.

And the game just slows to like a slug pace. Look, I love how beautiful the environment is. It’s an old Western town? Look, I’m from North America. I’m from California. The sky that I got to see in the game just reminded me of my own sky that I see. The environment looked beautiful, looked amazing. It’s like, oh yeah, this is my backyard. We finally got to see, hear American accents for the first time in Final Fantasy XIV. That was incredible. It definitely felt weird, for sure. Also means that I got to get myself well known in the voice acting community so that I can voice the character in Final Fantasy XIV now, because now it’s a possibility.

The pacing for the Rite of Succession was so good. It was amazing. We learned about each of the nations, like everything held so much importance. And then we got the mystery of the City of Gold. And then the game was like, we don’t, we can’t solve this mystery right now. So hey, go off and have fun adventuring, because that’s what you like to do. And it was just like, we’re going to find the bandits. And we found out the sheriff works for the bandits. It’s so boring. It felt like they were stopping us at every moment to not take the train. It wasn’t until the whole incident where we got the train up and running, it starts heading out, and then the dome gets created. And we’re like, what the fuck is happening? Lightning starts striking down. We see a bunch of these crazy looking spaceships heading straight for Tuliyollal. And that’s where we will begin talking about Zoraal Ja.

Zoraal Ja was not expecting his crazy evil turn. I was suspecting him to be a little bit evil because someone mentioned to us that I can’t believe a sibling would hold this much hate towards another sibling. And that was Zoraal Ja looking at Wuk Lamat after he lost the culinary competition? And what we see that him and Zoraal Ja approached the City of Gold. They knocked out Ketenramm, took all the keystones, unlocked the door, and then they had the artifact that they stole from Gulool Ja Ja to then access the City of Gold.

And then Zoraal Ja was like, for the first time, had an expression on his face. And it was the most evil expression in the game. And he cuts down his seer. And then he is speaking to a being on the other side of the gate. And he was like, help me conquer my world. And then they said, we will in exchange for… and then we cut off. We don’t know what that exchange is for. But then that’s when we start seeing all the technology come from beyond the dome, which is very interesting, right? So, you know, Erenville’s hometown becomes this electrical dome where all the spaceships are coming from. It’s like, huh, but the City of Gold’s gates are not there. So I’m like, why is the dome over here? So it’s very confusing. There might be another gate. There might be multiple city gates. And that one’s a gate for like military. I’m not quite sure, but there’s probably multiple gates. He actually then takes over Tuliyollal. And that scene was so horrifying to see this beautiful town that we saw that was brimming with beautiful music, bright colors to see it be destroyed, to see people and characters that we have seen get killed.

It was really cool to see Bakool Ja Ja like join us, like he’s fighting with us. Dude, it was it was so cool. But at the same time, it was just so depressing to see how much destruction was happening in this beautifully, wonderful, peaceful town. Like I said, I just wasn’t expecting the story to take this turn. I was really I was really expecting us to like go through the City of Gold and maybe find that it’s like there’s some bad things happening there, but happening in the City of Gold. But no, it was happening right here in Tuliyollal. And the game does something that I found so beautiful.

There’s the point on the Winged Walk where Wuk Lamat is always proclaiming what she wants to do for prosperity and for peace. And she looks out all of Tuliyollal and is like shouting her name? She does this multiple times in the quest. This time in the game, when you approach that same spot, you just see this ominous ships in the sky waiting to attack and destroy everything. And I was like, damn, they’re using this vista against us. I’ve been talking about how amazing the vistas are. And now we see this ominous ship in the like in the background. That was like crazy. This was really cool. This was really awesome. I’m loving where the story is going so far. I’m really happy that the Yak T’el part of the questing was like very short so that we can get back to the real action. The real thing that I care about was so cool.

But lastly, I did want to talk about one of the most coolest dungeons in the game, the Skydeep Cenote Dungeon. And this one was like both super cool and super horrifying. Because like the dungeon is broken up into three parts, right? The first part of the dungeon is like the burial grounds for the Mamool Ja. You have all these like creepy beings all around. But if you look in like the waters, you can see all the like pots that they held all the dead two-headed Mamool Ja there. And that was horrifying.

But then as you go in further, you see the Yok Huy quarries. And it’s so cool. Like the designs are so completely different. It was like really cool because it’s funny because as you’re going through the burial grounds, you see this like mining shaft and you jump drop down to mine shaft and then you enter the quarry. Then you see all these like crazy like, you know, stone stuff that been like cut out and everything. And you start fighting even like stone automaton, which was like kind of crazy. Like, whoa, what the heck is this? I’ve never seen this for any of the Yok Huy before. But you start to explore and start to investigate.

And then you get to a very specific moment here where it transitions from the Yok Huy to this mysterious new ancient technology where like the stones are all glowing. And you’re like, what the heck? And I believe it was like Alisaie or someone mentioned that like it feels like it’s like aether infused stones. And as we get further and further, we see this like one of the most stunning views in all Dawntrail. We see the gates to the Golden City and we look at it. It’s like has this beautifully purplish gold tone to it. It looks so beautiful, especially with the new lighting and the texture work. It was like it was incredible. I can’t believe it. It was so beautiful. I tried taking multiple pictures and we fought the boss. The boss is really cool. Yeah, the boss is really cool. But the Golden City was so freaking amazing.

And the funniest mention about this was Alisaie was like, I sure hope this is not the Allagans again. And that made me so I was laughing because honestly, a lot of like this, like Alisaie was like listening to the community, right? Because when they showed us Solution 9, which was all this future technology, because keep in mind, the during like live letters, like the developers would talk about, like they would tease you about certain stuff. And they teased us about a place called Solution 9. And it was this very futuristic technological area. And they only they showed us an image. I believe they showed us like during the media tour, I think they showed like an actual like video of going through Solution 9. But from what I’ve seen, I just I’ve just seen the image. And a lot of people were like, I hope it’s not Allagans again, because that’s kind of where like, if you see futuristic technology, the story always goes back to the Allagans. But he and so Alisaie says that it’s like, oh, that’s exactly what the community was also saying, like, oh, my God, Allagans again. But this time, no, no, no, no, it’s not.

In fact, Gulool Ja Ja was waiting for us. And he was like congratulating Wuk Lamat on like finally finding this gold. And he even mentioned like, yeah, we never figured out how to open up the gate. But he’s like, hey, let’s come back home. Let’s go ahead and celebrate you being the Dawn Servant. I’ll tell you a bunch of other things about it. And when we go back, right, he mentions this all to Krile, Wuk Lamat, and Koana. And what he tells them, the backstory behind finding the gate. And what we learn is that beyond the gate, that was where Krile’s parents were. They came out of the gate, they gave Galuf like Krile, and then they gave him the artifact which opens up the gate. And then they had to go back for some reason. They had to go back. They could not stay. But they still wanted to take their to bring their daughter out. So we still don’t know what that entails or what that means, which was really cool.

Also Krile is not from here. We learn that she is from another reflection, because during this whole moment where we’re discussing about the city of gold, Y’shtola mentions that like, oh, this gate is most likely leads to another reflection. And for some reason, I didn’t even assume or think at all that this was another reflection. Now, this is I still don’t know the truth about this, but because the developers already tease us that there is a place that you get to visit called Solution 9, it makes me believe that this is the reflection. This is the ninth reflection. What else? Oh, and Galuf also does some lore drops for us.

So Galuf is looking at the all the stone technology, all the aether infused in the stones. And he’s like, this is not Allagan. This is not Mhachi. This is not Nymian. This seems more like Southeast Islanders for the technology. And I was like, have we ever heard of any of these names besides the Allagans? So already we’re getting some crazy lore about other ancient civilizations that existed before our current era of humans, which makes sense, right? Because if the Allagans are from the past, right, that means that they exist in Eorzea. So if we look at Tural, who are the ancient citizens that exist in Tural? And I assume that all these other ones are based off other ancient people from the different continents. So that was also super cool and super awesome to hear as well. I greatly love that.

Can’t wait for tomorrow! Excited to fire a freaking train into the defenses. My one hope is that I hope it’s a dungeon, the train situation, because it would be really cool to have an opening, because much like the jungle cruise that we saw at the first dungeon where we’re on like a moving device, I hope we do the same thing for the train. And then we have a moment where we crash the train in and then we continue the dungeon through. Because I think what they have shown us, I hope this is the future of Final Fantasy XIV, is that dungeons tell more of the story. The coolest thing about the dungeon we visited, the Skydeep Cenote, is that I was not expecting us to find the gates to the City of Gold. I was not expecting that. Excited for more!