The first wing of Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker’s Pandaemonium raid has been out for about a month now, giving players plenty of time to learn the tricks of the encounters within. One Final Fantasy 14 player has taken that mastery a step further, challenging the first boss of Pandaemonium: Asphodelos solo and emerging victorious after a grueling battle. Warning: Spoilers for Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker’s Pandaemonium raid follow.
The Pandaemonium raid takes players into an ancient prison test facility undergoing a dangerous crisis that has released many of its prisoners. The boss of Pandaemonium: Asphodelos’s first circle is Ericthonios–one of the wardens of the facility who has been addled by the chaos at his workplace.
Enter Aka Ada, a brave and tenacious Final Fantasy 14 Warrior. After defeating Ericthonios with their static, they began to crunch numbers to see if the heavy-hitting stack mechanics and tank busters could be mitigated without a party backing them up. Two days and eight hours of practice later and Aka Ada had successfully defeated Ericthonios alone. Though their health dropped to frighteningly low numbers on multiple occasions, they were able to triumph over the hour-long battle thanks to the Warrior’s extremely powerful self-healing abilities.
Only the normal mode of the Pandaemonium raid could be soloed like this, since the Savage version of the Endwalker raid has a hard enrage at 10 minutes, which instantly kills everyone. While Aka Ada won’t be winning any awards for the fastest clear, they are the first player to solo any current endgame content in Endwalker.
Other Final Fantasy 14 players were floored by Aka Ada’s victory. The post sharing their accomplishment gathered over 500 comments over the first few days, congratulating them on the achievement, asking how and why they decided to try. The Final Fantasy 14 community was with them every step of the way–right now, Asphodelos can’t be entered by solo players, meaning Aka Ada had to rely on forming a party to enter and then leave each time they wanted to practice the bout.
Some players were annoyed that such a feat was even possible, however. Right now, the Warrior job in Final Fantasy 14 is one of the strongest in the game, being almost unkillable in most content. When Aka Ada shared video of the battle, no one was surprised it was as a Warrior. With Final Fantasy 14’s Patch 6.08, many jobs received buffs–even the Warrior, despite its absurd survivability–but none received nerfs. Many hope Warriors may have their abilities tuned down in the impending Patch 6.1 some time in March, while Warrior mains pray Yoshida might let them keep their powerful skillset a little longer.
Final Fantasy 14 is now available on PC, PS4, and PS5.
