Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker is finally out in the wild and players seem to be loving everything about it so far, except for the endless queues and congestion issues. The opening weekend has been harsh throughout all of the servers as players attempt to access the game in droves, only to find they have to wait for hours in order to just access the game. But this will hopefully calm down in the near future.
One of the early highlights of Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker has been the new dungeon Tower of Zot in Thavnair, a weaponized building brought forth by the Telophoroi. This building acts as a huge prison that, just like The Matrix, captures live beings in order to use them as sources of energy so players will get tasked with taking it down. Besides the actual plot in this area, it has a history and a set of bosses that links it to another one of the most beloved titles in the Final Fantasy series.
The Tower of Zot in Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker
Tower of Zot is a level 81 instanced dungeon that players can run with other players or with three other NPCs controlled by the computer thanks to the Trust system introduced in Shadowbringers. This location is one of the towers that sprung from the land in the post-Shadowbringers patches, and they are incredibly dangerous for tempering whoever gets close to them without being blessed by the Echo and bringing forth Lunar primals as a means of defense. The Scions collaborate with a group of alchemists who devised a means to access these towers without the Echo, by employing talismans made out of dragon scales.
Nidhana, the leader of these alchemists, led the effort to develop the talismans and employed the Warrior of Light's help in order to craft them, and eventually test them. By carrying one of these, the Arkasodara alchemist managed to get inside the Tower without losing her mind, but once there was attacked by Fandaniel himself, one of the big baddies in this expansion. After taking her captive and exchanging taunts and history with the Warrior of Light, he fled the scene leaving the players with the question of how to proceed. Luckily, the Scions realize the tower should have a core they can attack to bring it down, and that now that they have proven means to access it, there is nothing stopping them from running a full-frontal assault. Also, this is the first new dungeon players are able to run as sages or reapers, the new jobs in the Endwalker expansion.
Inside the Tower of Zot
The Warrior of Light leads a group that attempts to reach the core while the rest of his party, the healers, in particular, tend to the captive wounded. The Tower will continually try to heal itself by drawing life force from the tempered who can't be removed from captivity without being killed, so the solution is to just heal them so they don't die while the main group presses on. As players run through the dungeons, they will see a hellscape to the sides with people between life and death and bridges connecting each platform to the next with several tempered Imperial soldiers and mechs acting as the mobs, but there are bigger dangers ahead.
The Tower of Zot has three powerful bosses that players need to defeat in order to make it to the end. These are Minduruva, Sanduruva, and finally, Cinduruva, which are very clearly the Magus sisters seen throughout several other games on the series. The names are slightly changed in order to reflect Endwalker's Indian influences, but these are very clearly Mindy, Sandy, and Cindy. Players will have to defeat each of them one by one, but by the end of the dungeon, they will have to take all three of them on and withstand their infamous Delta Attack, which is three overlapping area attacks at the Tower of Zot that will require constant repositioning in order to survive.
The Connections to Final Fantasy 4
The Tower of Zot, as much of the content of Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker, has a very direct and deliberate connection to FF4. For starters, the location itself is a direct reference to a dungeon Cecil, Tellah, Yang, and Cid had to go through. The objective here was thematically resonant with what happens in Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker: they go there to rescue a captive friend at the top. The most well-remembered boss here was the Magus Sisters: Cindy, Mindy, and Sandy, who made their debut in this game as a group of mages employed by the villain Golbez. This incarnation already had their infamous Delta Attack, a combined attack between the three of them that players had to counter. It consisted of one of the sisters casting reflect on another while the third cast high-level black magic to bounce off and hit the party for massive damage.
There are more direct connections to Final Fantasy 4 too. The actual tune that plays throughout the dungeon is Masayoshi Sokken's cover of Nobuo Uematsu's "Golbez, Clad in Darkness," the villain's theme in that game. The new version sounds menacing as players go through each floor fighting up until the top, only switching up for the boss theme when facing the Sisters. Still, the most interesting part is what happens after they win. In the original Final Fantasy 4, the villain flees and the white mage teleports the heroes out of the tower before it crumbles. The same happens in Final Fantasy 14, except this time around the villain fled even before the Scions came in, and instead of teleporting they cast a levitation spell once the tower disappears so they can safely float to the ground along with every tempered prisoner inside it.
Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker packs an incredible amount of references to FF4. Just as Shadowbringers was an incredibly loving tribute to FF3, players who partake in the early access version have been amazed both by the old and the new, and how much the developers seem to love the early titles.
Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker releases December 7, 2021 for PC, PS4, and PS5.
