The last week brought many new event types to Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire, including special Noctis birthday events, Yellow Gear in the Casino, Chocobo Races, Marlboro-hunting and Realm versus Realm. In this article we will discuss the new event types and the ramifications for the game, as well as speculation on future changes.
Noctis’s Birthday
The Noctis Birthday events brought some major changes to high-level play and to packs. Previous to the Noctis events and packs, the only way to get to higher hero levels than 50 was by attacking level 4 and higher monsters to collect Noctis medallions.
At 5-10 medallion drops per monster and 1-2k required to unlock levels 51-54, this process was extremely slow. When the Noctis birthday event began, event packs in the store started showing 1-2k medallions per pack.
Several days later and well past Noctis’s in-game birthday, event packs are still available with 1-2k Noctis medallions. This pack type may well be here to stay, making level 51+ much more attainable than previously.
One downside is that the XP items appear to have been removed from packs EXCEPT the Noctis birthday packs, and the amount has been reduced. Also, the XP requirements for some of the levels above 50 have been raised. This means that while the medallions are no longer as much of a bottleneck, the XP itself is.
There is some good news for people who are not buying packs for the Noctis medals: medallion drops for level 5 monsters appear to have increased in the last few days as well, with drops of 20-30+ medallions reported on max strikes against level 5 Shieldshears.
With higher hero levels more readily available, Heroes can now add an even greater amount of combat power to a march.
Additionally, a new level 70 hero skill has been spotted which increases rally sizes, along with new levels to the existing March Size skill. This is currently VERY high level, and the majority of players will not reach this level for some time.
But you need to be aware of the increased rally size for defensive reasons, as well as higher-levels of the March Size increase at level 59. With bigger march and rally sizes plus higher levels of the combat hero skills, higher-level players can now bring more attack power against your Empire.
If you are already defending successfully against very strong empires, you may need to adjust your troop levels or defense research accordingly to keep pace.
The higher rally sizes also have a direct impact on Crystal contests in another new event: Realm versus Realm events.
Realm Versus Realm
Realm versus Realm, or RvR for short, is an entirely new event type in Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire.
For those of us who have been through multiple Kill Events and know exactly what kind of challenges our home Realms provide, RvR is a breath of fresh air with new opportunities for strategic coordination and combat against previously-unknown enemies. We will go in-depth on RvR strategy in an upcoming article, but a short primer here will be helpful to people who have not yet participated in one of these events.
RvR is similar to a Kill Event, except the battle is between two opposing realms rather than guilds on the same server. Points are scored for destroying the other realm’s troop and trap power, holding one or both crystals, or killing monsters, as seen in the point breakdown below:
- Hold the Crystal in your own Realm for 1 second: +10 points
- Hold the Crystal in the Enemy Realm for 1 second: +400 points
- Hospitalize or Destroy 1 Power of Enemy Invaders in Your Home Realm: +1 Point
- Hospitalize or Destroy 1 Power of Opposing Empires in an Enemy Realm: +5 points
- Destroy a Level 1 Monster: +1 Point
- Destroy a Level 2 Monster: +10 Points
- Destroy a level 3 Monster: +100 Points
- Destroy a Level 4 Monster: +1000 Points
- Destroy a Level 5 Monster: +10000 Points
Guilds and individuals that reach enough points in the event will win prize chests that award a large stack of consumables. The highest-scoring guilds receive avatars and/or badges as well as gear chests, although the rewards are likely to change in the future.
The winning Realm itself has special gold tiles appear on it that provide 50 gold after a gathering run on the tile.
You reach the enemy realm by using special teleports found in packs. In observed events, each pack has 4 Realm to Realm teleports and each lasts an hour. Normal teleports will not work, you need the special ones as seen here:
With the point and rewards structures that are currently in place, RvR has some interesting ramifications. Due to the 5-1 point difference, many defensive builds that work fine for local RvR battles are a liability in RvR. A strong opponent can lose to you in power lost, but still come out very far ahead on overall points gained. This makes knowing your own capabilities against a range of other builds and power levels extremely important for your personal success and guild points in RvR. Likewise, coordination across the Realm is absolutely critical to reduce point loss against opposing Realms.
The reward structure adds an additional wrinkle in that you get the best prizes for total points gained, regardless of how many you gave up to the enemy. So if you eat a 35k march of t4 troops and have 40k t1 hospitalized in the process on your home realm for example, you just gained your guild 280k points but also gave the opposing Realm’s guild 400k points.
This means that the best thing for you or your guild individually may not be the best thing for the Realm as a whole if you play defensively.
It is possible that the point spread will change in the future to be more favorable to defensive play, or it is possible that the reward for the Realm as a whole will be altered to gold tiles with a larger reward.
If you can afford the packs, the point gain in the other realm leads to some out-of-the-ordinary gameplay opportunities like rallying or attacking targets that would normally be way too strong for you and still coming out ahead. To maximize points gained versus lost, you will want to follow all of the normal protocol covered in the Combat Attack Guide and the Combat Defense Guide, and be careful not to become careless with your hero: losing hero early in the event can put a really big dent in your possible points.
Gear Casino Events
Gear Casino events are now live, which means that the normal Casino prizes have been traded out for Sentinel and Arbiter-related Gear.
This is an admitted improvement over the previous Casino prizes, which consisted of rss and gem removers.
Caveats before you run to the Casino: The drop rates are still very low for the rare items, particularly for the Gold Arbiter’s Call during the Arbiter events. And the number of chests you can get from the casino spins is far less than the number of chests you get from a chest pack. If you can luck into a gold for a single pack worth of tokens that would be a major improvement over the gear chests, but this isn’t assured.
At this time we can’t recommend taking Casino spins even for the better gear; your pack rss is far better spent on any permanent buffs or on the packs with the better rss.
As more gear is introduced to the game, existing gear will become much easier to attain, so hold off on those casino packs for now.
Chocobo Races
Chocobo Guild Tile Races are another new event type introduced to the game. When someone in your guild buys a chocobo pack, they can activate an item that spawns a special chocobo tile somewhere on the map. The location is announced to your guild via system message; but others who spot the tile can potentially get their first. Whoever gets to the tile can gather for chests that give random items for the game. Additionally, you can win points during the related event to get more chocobo chests.
The idea of the pack-buying players being able to create some fun for lower-level guildmates is a really great idea, and we hope that the developers continue to expand on this one given the collaborative nature of the game.
The tiles are a little pricey for the rewards though, which can include things like enough ether for a single hit in the special proving grounds or a small amount of Noctis Medals. Even to reward or create fun for low-level players in your guild, the rewards aren’t really good enough yet to justify the cost.
Malboro Event
The newest event to hit the game is the Malboro Hunter event, where your heroes can now hunt Malboros appearing on the map.
Malboros drop a new gear material with can be crafted into a new accessory called the Noxious Dagger, which gives a bonus to MP and to Monster Attack. Be aware that Malboro are extremely high-MP cost to hit, which makes them very tough to kill. However, a new mechanic has been introduced to the game in the form of MP restoratives found in packs:
Depending on your hero attack, the cost to kill a Malboro can still be very high. Helpfully, the packs do include a march speed and attack boost usable during the event.
Looking forward, it is very likely that this mechanic will be used in future monster events. It is also likely that the MP restoratives will be found in random chests similar to the ether, which means it might be possible down the road to stockpile them for a later monster event.
If you can farm up enough Bad Breath mats to make a Noxious Dagger or two, that will also likely be helpful in future monster events as well.
Conclusion
These new events signal some exciting potential directions for the game. The chance of getting gold arbiter items as casino drops points to potentially better availability of good gear, and the Noctis medallion packs may mean that better packs for other game bottlenecks are coming soon.
And Realm versus Realm itself signals the biggest departure from previous event types, opening up much more of the world. It is possible that this event type precedes the opening of realm transfers, allowing you to recruit from and join the entire Final Fantasy XV: ANE playerbase rather than just your local group.
And in the middle of the Realm map, there is still the mysterious Realm of the Titan. Whether that event will be a giant RvR free-for-all between all Realms as the tooltip suggests, or a different type of event entirely is unknown at this time, but either way greater Realm-to-Realm interaction is an exciting step forward for the game.
