Elemental Lords Battle/Quest?

[Seitekifu]

As most of you know, FFXI is full of references to older Final Fantasy games, especially FFI and IV. We can trace the origin of DRK, DRG, and PLD from FFIV, for instance. Would it be at all possible to include a boss fight (Probably a quest, but MAYBE a BCNM or Aht Urhgan mission, but I doubt that.) against the four elemental lords of FF4?

I was originally hoping for Lich/Kraken/Tiamat/Marilis from FF1 and 9 (and others?), but 3/4 of those are already included as unrelated monsters. But, FF4's Elemental Lords have completely different names. If they could be grouped together in one big battle, I'm sure long-time Final Fantasy fans would have a lot of fun (Maybe even throw in the elemental lord battle theme? But that might be asking too much). Here's a description of the monsters (And the two names for each of them.)

Milon/Scarmiglione[Earth]; I was originally thinking Corse for this, but that's CoP... And thinking about it more, the hunched-over undead look would be more fitting of a Qutrub, but it could also be a Lamia, since he appeared with a group of undead in FFIV. It would naturally be resistant to sleep. Going with it being a Lamia, it'd be a BST.

Kainazzo/Cagnazzo[Water]; Sticking with Aht Urhgan monsters, it'd be an Orobon BLM. It'd charge up a super-strong water-based AoE like he did in FFIV, and you'd need to stun it somehow. Possibly Waterga III or maybe just Leviathan's Tidal Wave, which was the name of the attack he used in FFIV anyway.

Valvalis/Barbariccia[Wind]; I'm thinking that this would be a dragon or pallete-swapped Puk Ninja. It'd be able to cast Utsusemi and possibly give a big damage boost to piercing-type weapons, as Kain's Jump was the only thing that could get her out of her tornado form in FFIV.

Rubicant/Rubicante[Fire]; I'm pretty sure this would be good as a Mamool WAR or RDM. He'd probably just be the hard-hitting one of the group and use lots of fire magic.

I haven't really thought through the kind of rewards you could get from this fight. Possibly weapons along the lines of Milon's Axe giving good benefits to BST or something following that fashion. It could be done in the style of avatar battles in that you flag the quest, do the fight, and return to the starting NPC and claim your reward. I understand that it would be hard to include an additional fight in the storyline, assuming that the story is basically planned-out.


NOTE: Remember the recent updates with BLM and the gradual magic resistance thing, so don't start screaming that this will be just another manaburn-only quest what with elemental weaknesses and all. d(^ ^)

[Aralays]

Re: Elemental Lords Battle/Quest?

With the eight elements being more or less at the same power in the Lands of Altana just four elemental lords would not make sense ... but in Aht Urghan the people speak of five elements: flame, water, stone and gale and sky, so why not make a group of fiends based on these elements. I'm sure there could be some reason why there is no fiend of the sky but just the other four ...

How about you have to do as special Assault mission against the according fiend of the element when the appropriate serpentgeneral has fallen in Besieged to free him? The assault could be named "Fiend of the [Element]: [Name]" and be at Lebros Cavern, Mamool Ja Training Grounds and Ilrusi Atoll, depending which beastmen army has imprisoned the serpentgeneral.
To save Skyserpent Rughadjeen the fight would be against all four fiends (like in the Giant in FFIV) at the same time but with slightly weaker fiends (just 65% HP or so).

My suggestion would be to make the enemies in a certain way anonymous: make them to servants of "the Great Evil"(tm) of the ToAU storyline (there will be one I guess) and name them just "Fiend of the Flame/Water/Stone/Gale" - I think that is enough to honor the older FFs and it doesn't copy them 1:1 ^^

Fiend of the Flame could be a Mamool Ja looking like one warrior caste, using Firespit very often and just flame-related weaponskills with his sword (Burning Blade, Red Lotus Blade and so on) and the ability to use some fire-related spells (Enfire, Blaze Spikes, Flare, Firaga II)
Fiend of the Water could be a Merrow using a katana (Blade: Teki/To/Ei for water, ice and dark damage) and the ability to use some water-related spells (Enwater, Ice Spikes, Flood, Waterga II)
Fiend of the Stone could be a Troll with a staff (Rock and Earth Crusher as weaponskills) and the ability to use some earth-related spells (Enstone, Stoneskin, Quake, Stonega II)
Fiend of the Gale would be a Lamia with a dagger (Gust Slash, Cyclone), a Bow (Sidewinder) and the ability to use some wind-related spells (Enaero, Blink, Tornado, Aeroga II).
Oh ... of course they could do skillchains with each other - with these weaponskill technically all renkeis are possible except Scission and Distortion. And of course they could Magic Burst too ...

[Seitekifu]

Re: Elemental Lords Battle/Quest?

Yeah, your idea looks much better Though it might not be for just saving the generals. I still like the idea of it being a quest with good rewards at the end d('_-) And I don't think that SE would want to change what they already have going with how to rescue them.

And maybe Skyserpent could just be another, separate battle. Who knows, maybe this elemental lords quest could be the prerequisite to Skyserpent, and then that could be an avatar fight for SMN~. SE did mention something about new avatars, didn't they?

[Aralays]

Re: Elemental Lords Battle/Quest?

Well, then put them in this prison-assault *and* a different quest. Perhaps a quest-series where you can find out a bit more about the great evil. A little problem could be the rewards of that quest. If they are tied 1:1 to the elements four elements would be left out. So I think they should give things which are similar to elements.
Perhaps the stone-reward being something with a Phalanx-Enchantment (1/1, 30s, 1hr, duration 10 minutes) instead of stoneskin, gale enhancing Sneak and Trick Attack instead of 'real' wind-buffs and so on. I imagine rewards more in the 'philosophical' view of these four elements than in the 'magical/elemental' way, if you understand what I mean.

And I don't the we should get our avatar this way. I'm pretty sure the next avatar will be partly involved in the ToAU main storyline and will either be Odin or Alexander (more likely Alex I think) - perhaps accessable after we got to a certain point in the mission-storyline lie Diabolos was in CoP.
... as much as I would love to see Alex finally I would prefer if SE finally does something to improve avatar performance first. I'm sick of my avatars just being shiney ways to cast spells instead of real pets.