An extensive warren of tunnels and waterways stretches beneath the barren lands of Thanalan, but none come now to marvel at this remnant of fallen Sil’dih. Its memories lie undisturbed, festering silently in the dark and the damp. Yet not for much longer. You have come at the personal behest of Nanamo Ul Namo, and together will you throw open the gate to the desert nation’s troubled past.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker – Buried Memory
TL;DR: There are many elements of this I would love to be added to normal dungeons and this is the first time during Endwalker that I have enjoyed playing outside of most raids.
Introduction
The Sil’dihn Subterrane is a new style of dungeons that has a heavy focus on exploring multiple pathways. The idea of the dungeon is to discover what is going on in the sewers we used to escape Ul’dah and to do this we must take many different paths to do so.
By taking different paths we get to learn a little bit more about the ruins while also fighting against different bosses (okay, the first boss is the same for each route but with other things happening; will comment on this later) but one thing that is different compared to a normal dungeon is the bosses, even if you fight the same one, has a few different versions of what they do to keep things interesting.
Background Story
The story of the dungeon isn’t that interesting but does go more into the backstory of Nanamo Ul Namo’s parents and something I was happy about was that they went a bit more into the history of the nation that existed with Ul’dah – Sil’dihn. I am also hoping that it will into the nation that came before both of them (Belah’dia) but we will see where this content goes further.
How we get the quest I don’t recall much about it but it is something to do with “creating” an adventure guild in Sharlayan due to a bunch of people who are now out of work.
During this dungeon, we are joined by Nanamo Ul Namo as she wants to explore due to a key that she was given by her parents who died before it could be explained to her what it was for.
Design
Unlike other dungeons the Sil’dihn Subterrance there are a few things that it does differently with the main one being branches. While some dungeons (mostly ones from 1.x although they are now reworked) had different parts the Sil’dihn Subterrance allows you to pick different options such as going left, middle, or to the right which affects the location, you go to. During these routes, there are little things such as a switch, flowers etc that you must interact with to go to the other different paths.
While this is fun to replay and figure out and to see the different routes, what I liked the most is going down these different paths affected the bosses themselves. To use an example there is a boss where you can interact with a water pipe where if you turn it on you have to deal with water-style attacks and if you do not turn it on you have to deal with mud-style attacks which are on top of its normal attacks which varies it up.
The boss fights, even in the story mode of the dungeon, feel much more like a savage fight with the attacks merging together and affecting each other where you do need to think about what to do and where to stand.
Mobs & Bosses
The mobs themselves are standard when comparing them to dungeons but I liked the feel of the small pulls and murdering them compared to large pulls. I understand in dungeons they are designed to be “bite-size” so you can rush them for tomes but it did feel nice about how you attack them. I did like how some mobs you had to attack in different orders based on notes you find around the place so you could go the different routes.
For the bosses I am going to do something different now and rather than talk about what the boss does for each attack, I am going to just generally write about the main thing of the boss and what I liked and disliked about it and I think I will do this for future dungeons.
Geryon the Steer
You will fight this boss a lot as it appears on each path with minor differences but the main thing about this boss is the barrels that appear in the arena. The red ones go boom boom and the green ones will go boom boom with a safe zone next to them.
What I liked about this boss is the environment. The barrels go boom in the same way but you will sometimes have to dodge water on the ground, a wind knockback and a few other things and I like the awareness factor of it. You have to watch what is going on and then adapt the barrels to figure out where the safe zones are or even if the expected safe zones are safe!
There wasn’t anything I can say I disliked about the fight other than how often you fight it but at least on each path the boss has differences.
Silkie
This boss fight is the fight that made Ryu decide to farm this place and dragged me to do the rest of them after he learnt Silkie is the mount you get after discovering everything about the place. The main thing about this boss is its tail – it will go two different colours, one being a circle around it and the other being a cross.
The next major thing is the blooms that will go around the arena and Silkie doing an attack that targets two different directions. Now imagine the above with a bunch of different environmental stuff that happens which changes the attacks such as flowers which causes the brooms to sweep up in a different order.
This fight is a lot of fun and can be slightly chaotic when you do it for the first time but it stays fun after the multiple times we farmed it!
Gladiator of Sil’dih
Out of the three fights you will do the first time (without searching how to find the final one), we found this one the most tricky to figure out simply due to something new happening. The main two things that happen in this fight are a “charge” that happens where the colour it stops is where the attack will stop and not where it starts.
The rest of the fight involves those two charges while all of the environmental stuff happens and it can be tricky to figure out where to stand but it is a fun fight to figure out and rewarding when you do!
Zeless Gah
You would think the boss that has a bunch of teleporting, knockback and dragging to markers would be annoying but this fight is easy. The main thing it does is a bunch of lanterns that will move around, teleport and either knock you away or drag you somewhere.
Sadly due to how these attacks work you will always know where the safe spots are as there are not multiple ways to do it and it saddens me slightly but I did like the fight the first time we did it.
Thorne Knight
Fuck me. While we did not wipe a single time to this fight when we did it for the first time but the main thing about this fight is watching where the AOEs are and when they switch around but I am not aware if there are different versions of this fight as we only did it once.
This fight is fun and I would like to do it again at one point!
Music
If you have read Life in Eorzea before you should know I love the track that was placed here. Overall I liked the music and the boss fights were alright but would have been nice to have something new.
Rewards
Sadly this is where I am disappointed. There aren’t really many rewards from this place beyond the odd minion, one gear set and a mount. Surprisingly you are not able to buy materia with the tokens. There aren’t even any music sheets to buy.
It would have been nice to see some more rewards but nothing else I can add there.
Final Opinion
I loved this dungeon and while it is unfair to expect all dungeons to be like this, just having the bosses have a few different sets of attacks and interactivity would go a massive way to changing how I view normal dungeons. The bosses for these were fun and replaying them many times I still enjoyed them and likely will still do should I come back to it in a few months.
When I think of a dungeon THIS is what I am picturing and being very blunt here if this dungeon dropped more tomes I would likely do this over expert roulette – even when new dungeons are added.
I would recommend this dungeon just for the pure enjoyment of it!
Screenshots
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