Poor doggo! 😭

He ate too many adventurers

A for all in the belly B for belongs in the belly C for come in the belly Lol this is posted everytime we get to this fight

A for getting ate B for get in the belly C for chow time for doggie

A - Always in the belly B - Belly C - Can't wait to get in the belly

All in the belly Belly belly belly C ya in the belly

A(elly) B(elly) C(elly)

Well it does sound like you got something positive out of the misunderstanding! 😅 It is difficult because often people don't bother to explain how it's done!

oh yes Cerberus hits hard when you get cleaved in the front or got swiped by its tail, so ideally you'd wanna stand by its side

I was one of the people who started calling "EVERYBODY IN THE BELLY" on Hyperion, there was pushback at first, but I think we've won.

A= Always be in the belly B= Belly (duh) C= See yah in the belly

@@Autiga1 C = canine stomach

Awww! 🥰

I suppose the boss has what we observed as a case of an extra safety precaution! 😊

interesting that it's 16. ​ @CaetsuChaijiCh For Darkness, the max amount of cloud stacks she can get is 16. Which fills up an invisible damage meter, and like all bosses with DPS checks, max stacks means max damage.

That is quite interesting! 😁

CHUUUUUUUUUJI

I think that used to be more well known back when it came out, but has gradually been forgotten as new players have come in. My wife and I still run to avoid it, but I don't see many others these days.

​@@VHuntrDIt was definitely well known when it came out, everybody did it by default because they saw other people doing it.

More specifically, it’s a straight line through the center of the arena so most people end up piling up right in the middle of the danger zone.

Indeed! Including, for some reason, a fail safe in case your group is too excited by such an opportunity!

I'm sure it just boils down to having to account for every possibility that could occur during the fight.

I actually thought all it required was that no mobs was in the area, I never realized it required all players to vacate the premises as well! Thank you!

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Until I tried it myself on a tank, I ALSO thought it was just the mobs. But when I saw that the gorillas wouldn't spawn since the healer was still standing in the room, I realized. It's actually pretty interesting, and not a lot of people know about it since it IS so hard to actually pull off. ^_^

Thank you! I do think it is better to just be upfront with things like that, especially in a series dedicated to testing these things! :D

The interesting thing is that the first demonstration where everyone got eaten actually did result in him standing alone outside while the first batch of players hadn't been ejected yet! This was the reason why we saw little reason to test that blue mage situation. But we brought blue mage just in case before the test began!😁 Indeed, I imagine you are right about the 24 player thing, because the way we triggered that response was also sometimes by giving him two players when he only wanted one for example! 😊 Interesting about that 12 player limit though! This is actually the first time anyone has mentioned that to me at least! 😊

Absolutely agree. I actually did wonder why chains was an entire group, given exactly the observation that it doesn't overlap with the other two groups tasks. My best guess is that whoever came up with this split of tasks happened to be in C at the time maybe? Very convenient if true! 😂

Once I was the only person who went in the belly. I didn't last very long.

I'm glad the intro is appreciated! 😂

But which definition of non-plussed?

Yeah, indeed. When we got that reaction from cerberus the first time I wasn't even sure if something bugged out, but we managed to make it so consistent we learned how it worked! 😅 Yeah same. I've had cases where I was entirely alone inside... And not even in group B! 😂

Wow, yeah that would actually be harder!

It's clear how the mechanic works if you're familiar with some of the older FF games with similar spells. Some games have stuff like Level 5 Death which instantly kills anything whose level is a multiple of 5 (in fact, this is also a Blue Mage spell in XIV). If you know that, it's not too hard to figure out that Level 150 Death will kill stuff whose level is a multiple of 150.

I mean.... look how bad people are at math in Ridorana Lighthouse and be glad they didn't do it that way

iirc, there's a dungeon you can enter at lvl 59. but the max level for the instance is 60. Inside said dungeon, there's a mob that channels lvl 5 death (one of the abilities that BLU need to complete their spell book). If the mob tethers to a lvl 59 player, they are perfectly fine. but if they tether to a lvl 60 player, it will kill them. Same goes for unsynced. if the player's lvl is a multiple of 5, it will kill that player. Inversely, lvl 5 death spell used by the BLU works the same way, and only works on mobs that are not immune to instant death spells and a multiple of 5. I assume here, that the same system was made for lvl 100 flare and lvl 150 death. It merely counts the amount of lvls of players inside the circles at the time of activation.

No, it's still whether the player levels are a multiple, it's just that all players in the range of the attack are summed first.

It does not surprise me a boss like cerberus was this janky originally! Thank you for sharing! 😊

​@@CaetsuChaijiCh and still is janky after two or three expansions later Cerberus's mask in his chained form would phase through the model. It was patched during late shadowbringers

It's hard to say. As far as I can see, it resolves on you sooner if you are closer to the boss, later when further away, which is extremely weird. But exactly when it resolves seems to be almost the same moment so it is really hard to test this! 😅

Haha! If you eat all the toys then you have nothing left to play with! 😁😂

That is quite hilarious! 😂

Yes 😊 although enemies can be outright immune to it as well! And when you see random enemies use spells with levels like that in them, they also work like this! Although, they usually say level 5 as you mentioned, as opposed to level 50!😅

The Page 63 enemies in the Great Gubal Library use Level 5 Death...and it'll kill you if your level is a multiple of 5.

I'm glad to hear that! I'm glad you enjoyed it! 😁

I'm glad to hear that! Thank you! ^^

Indeed, that sounds reasonable! Others have mentioned both observing 12 and 15 players being allowed in the belly with a full 24 man alliance, so it is possible that it is more of a sliding scale as well! And I could imagine good old C'thun would be very buggy with such a mechanic back then!

Not counting other bugs, the issue with the Cthun stomach in 2004 coding was that characters get teleported by a fixed amount into the stomach and slowly die unless they break the targets inside to make C'thun vulnerable (A similar idea for Cerberus to get him chained again) but whereas cerberus is controllable, C'thun wasn't and due to A.I, if you tried to do C'thun with few as many people that get sent down, you always have a fight reset until you get more bodies. So i'm thinking they mark characters in stomach as 'stored' to solve the problem of no one outside to fight cerberus/not enough players outside. So my other theory is that the A.I for bosses do checks for attackable targets (And this has been in other fights before cerberus in 2.0) that either after a certain point or at certain conditions they do one of two things 1: Spam wipe skill if threshold is met whether it be timer based or on a specific mob death. (Ifrit has this problem if you ignore nails on EX and he becomes immune permanently until everyone dies with a spammable lethal damage.) 2: Try to replace players on the field with 'stored' characters due to a mechanic that took them away [This may also be the same kind of code they put into place to teleport people over the barrier if a boss is pulled early, as seen in Labyrinth of the Ancients Atomos trash where they all default to A section rather than get distributed evenly because they may not have the time or could code it where it would try to replenish characters based on player count in each lane] but that's my head theories of playing mmos for years and i'll stop before i flood this with non-proven tinfoil hat jargon. Now here's Wonderwall.

I'm glad to hear that! Thank you! 😊

Understandable! It is a quite weird quirk of final fantasy where certain mobs (like ahriman) have this kind of level specific weirdness, but I am reasonably sure it's not all the games where that level is literal!

I thought it was just to sound cool too, I'm used to skills like that from pervious FF games, but I never paid enough attention to see if lv 150 Death actually did anything 🤣

I forgot to actually test that part, and the group had long since dispersed before I thought of it 😅 The key point is that I tested in the video is that it recognizes that players are not level 50, which is why it doesn't hit us in the demonstrations in the video when it should 😊 In other words, the alternative is that the ability doesn't work at all if you are unsynced, which I find unlikely! 😅 Maybe I will go back and test this later!

That is an interesting myth 😊 During a jump your position is updated just as frequently as when running! The reason for the myth is that people often do the jump thing when just on the cusp of making it, and they are more likely to remember the times it worked over the times they didn't 😊 this is at least my understanding of the mechanism. However I will write this down to test anyway, since it is an interesting subject to address!

Hmm that is a good question. Maybe the timing of when you reach the part in the fight where this mechanic happens can impact the number of bursts. Like if he spends a certain number of seconds channeling it, and it bursts every 3 seconds on a timer similar to dots (which are not related to when the dot itself is applied for example), then if he starts at just the right (or perhaps wrong?) moment, only six bursts happen instead of seven? 🤔 I don't know, just an idea!

I always assumed it was tied to the Knights Twelve manifesting in pairs during the attack's windup. With twelve knights to form the circle, the sword should pulse six times before Thordan delivers the final blow. Yet upon further observation, it seems to pulse _once more_ when the circle is complete in the EX footage I reviewed-not so in the normal (both recorded in 2022). So there definitely is _some_ kind of discrepancy. I want to say there's a "phantom pulse" independent from the knights that's unique to the Minstrel's Ballad/Unreal, but based on your account maybe there _is_ a wrinkle in the logic of the attack itself.

Here's my guess: Ultimate End has a charge time of X seconds, and the pulses are set to fire at Y interval, aligned with the global server ticks. Because of those two values and variability in when Ultimate End can begin to cast relative to when the server ticks are, the Ultimate End cast can contain either 6 or 7 server ticks, and it will pulse for each. If you wanted to test, you would have to time the difference in between the start of the Ultimate End cast and the first pulse over several different clears to see if it varies and if there's a pattern on when you get 6 or 7.

Yes totally! We need the chain tank to take the boss. And then we need like three players to watch the tank to be sure they do it right. And then we need two chain managers. And two managers to manage the chain managers! Just in case! Oh wait! 😂😂😂 I do look forward to the day where "everyone in the belly" actually causes this fail safe mechanism of ejecting everyone to actually happen in a real fight! 😂

To be fair I've seen Cerberus wipe to chains more than I think I've seen any other fight wipe in the game, except _maybe_ Angra Mainyu mass-Doom deaths lmao. Absolute worst raid every time.

@@CaetsuChaijiCh Now Im looking forward to that day as well lol

@@titaniumvulpes I see. I think I’ve only wiped to cerberus like 3 times now but I’ve only been playing since last year. I’ve seen a lot more wipes the first boss of Dun Scaith during that one tomestone event.

I've wiped on chains once because one of the chain holders was standing next to the interaction point, not attaching the chain. A bunch of people shouted at them to do it/how to do it, and they took so long typing out an explanation that they were keeping him down on the ground longer for big deeps, that they failed to actually attach the chain in time

Interesting, I had to look this up because I didn't even know there was a zombie mechanic in that fight! I suppose the test would mainly involve checking if esuna works, or if... Maybe healing works! 🤔

I believe yes you can heal it. Assuming the person doesn’t die from touching the edge or to damage from the boss I think you can save the person by keeping them at full health.

​@@CaetsuChaijiCh Man I would be kind of annoyed if healing the zombie cures them, considering that in basically every other FF game the Zombie status causes you to *take damage* from healing.

@Zanador yeah it would be really backwards!

I remember being able to save at least one person by healing, possibly shielding, the person in zombified state during the years I've played, but not sure how much healing they need though. If it's ridiculous healing or crit shields, then the effort to save one person might not be worth it as opposed to just letting them die and rezzing them. And don't know if being a tank or something makes difference to the dmg they take when they sudoku themselves with the zombie debuff. Would be interesting to know

Based on what others mentioned, he would stop eating people once he had 12 inside. And it would even include a text log explaining that he was satiated. Apparently what we discovered in the video was an additional secondary fail safe making sure he left a certain number of alive players outside. Based on that, I would assume if you served up enough players at a time and skipped past the magical 12 number, he would eject players just the same!

You cannot, and I believe you can't see it from gridania either 😊

It's the default red color for party member dps players when you set party members to have role specific colors! 😂 Although your interpretation is really funny!

Syncing down syncs down your level, so you should have no need to worry 😊

That makes sense!

Based on what others observed it does seem like both kinds exist, which is not a bad thing! ^^

It is an interesting hypothesis, but as you said, this kind of claim is extremely easy to make without being disprovable, so if such a claim is made without video evidence, we can at best say that it sounds possible, and interesting, and wouldn't be the only time a scion acts differently than what you'd normally expect!

Indeed! A very good example! Another case of this is the level 5 petrify in haukke manor, but people usually just dodge or look away because of it being a telegraph with a gaze component anyway! 😂

Koko of the multicaeverse! 😂

Yes, but you need at least one player in each alliance first so you need to set it up with party finder! It gets a bit awkward! 😅

This is true, but would also be incredibly complicated to coordinate since you'd need players that just so happen to be at the appropriate lower levels! Although I suppose if you could catch a free trial player at 70, and then a blue mage at 80, that could check the 150 with two players for example!

As I recall, Titania one shots the group at 100, so that means the damage increase is somewhat gradually increasing, and then from 99 to 100 it just goes to the max! ^^

According to what others have observed, supposedly cerberus reacts in the same way as in the video if he eats more than 12 players! 😊 So there's that as well if most of the raid is alive and present! 😅 Incidentally exactly half of the raid!

It honestly didn't occur to me to demonstrate that until after recording was over and the group had dispersed unfortunately! 😅

That is an interesting one. It is so weird that I forget some people think it is a strict dps gain 😅 I have even spoken AT LENGTH about summoner myths before like in episode four where I compared openers! (this one kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bbWboqV81dimqp8.html) I will write this one down! 😂

I am certain that what happened is that the boss actually died exactly as the enrage went off. It is very reasonable to think you simply didn't look at the hp bar because you were looking at something else! 😊

I can assure you that when synced, the game counts you as actually level 50 in that scenario 😊

Indeed! That is also a good indicator!

I doubt it, as there's no need to adjust it. The only thing that it will happen in dawntrail is that when running it unsync'd lvl100 flare will always deal damage....but who cares, the damage will be nothing to a level 100 player with super echo. Maybe, 5 expansions from now when we reach level 150 they might decide to adjust lvl150 death to avoid it being an unavoidable death....but even then I wouldn't be surprised if they leave it alone, as a level 150 player with super echo will probably kill the boss before it even finishes casting it.

@phiefer3 Indeed! Later parts of the raid would probably require 3 players anyway, so it is probably fine!

Yeah this is the classic problem, that to me the ABC strategy usually feels like it is received as "a and c does not go belly" "a and b does not do chain" And then the cards fall where they will. Hopefully enough people choose to fight the adds, and enough people know how to and choose to go in the belly 😅

Usually if they appear a second time. But it also depends on how much damage the raid is doing 😊 Edit: you cannot both ignore the hourglasses and also dodge the quarter thing, because if the hourglasses are alive, the mechanic resolves suddenly and you have no time to react. It is the act of killing the hourglasses (ALL of them) that pauses the quarter so you can safely dodge 😊

Bah, if everybody is spread out you only loose 25% of the team, at worst if everybody spread evenly and waited. Trying to dodge the quater is no harder then trying to dodge the four fold strikes in delubrim and perhaps a tiny bit easier. At some point you will surely do more damage in the hourglass time then the two dead people would lose due to empty head.

And now you can also learn how to see inside for the future! 😁

The gate must be reduced to 1 hp five times before the mechanic resolves. Doing damage faster of course makes it feel like it takes less time overall! 😁 For the belly thing I do the same, exactly for the same reason: if you make everyone go in, the ones that know how are at least more likely to participate!

There was never any reason that all the DPS shouldn't go in, after the first couple of weeks of release "all in" became the done strat on NA servers. It was only when they made EU servers actually EU and I transferred that I encountered the strat of having only one group do it. There were a lot of safety strats I found on EU that I didn't encounter before actually. As long as you have the tanks outside to manage the boss and adds and 2 healers to do chains when they come up then you'll never go wrong as the phase won't last long enough for the adds to ever be a big issue. I guess when you are in with randoms you never quite know and organising which healer goes in to heal the party, which heals tanks and which does chains is harder than just assigning parties and saying "go in belly if you want" as some will go do it anyway and you might get 5-6 dps lol.

Based on what someone else said, supposedly cerberus has a limit of 12 players under normal circumstances, but it could still be funny to see! 😁

We did not test that no. That is mainly why I explained that the reason we know it has to work this way is because we tested the only alternative (that it doesn't count levels!) That is to say, if we did go and test with 5 level 90s and it DIDN'T work, the only remaining possibility is that the mechanic is broken and actually doesn't work at all! 😊 Part of the reason is that it occurred to me we could test this long after the original test and the group had dispersed 😢 You are also right that this series is precisely about testing assumptions, and if there were other possible outcomes, I would probably have made sure to test this more! 😊

Ha that is quite a convenient timing yeah! 😁

The windy Bois briefly explained: When you get the marker on you, simply jump down voluntarily. Stay down until it tries to suck in. As you are not reachable it will fail. When the Shockwave comes, make sure to be suuuper close like under the windy boi, then the Shockwave won't knock you off the platform. The jumpy circles that get you back up are powered by the glowy circles on the platform. Although, I believe alliance Bs circle powers C, C powers A and A powers B, so if one group isn't playing ball, it affects the next team over. It is important to get these stepped on! The add in those fights is just a nightmare because it rarely gets killed. I believe it has a frontal cone attack, but I can't say much else there! 😅

​@@CaetsuChaijiChIf the add is alive, there's also this annoying spinny thing that travels across the platform, dealing quite a bit of damage

Maybe it could be made so that it automatically sucks in people from the right party, like in the level 70/80 alliance raids that have splits

@@SabiaSparrow 100% believe that's why they started adding those in lol. Stops the chaos of CT where people go to the wrong arena and wipe the party. Even after so many years the idea of A = left B = middle and C= right is too complicated to grasp.

Yep! Very unfortunate for the poor doggo! 😭

That's a classic myth yes! It stems from players paying more attention to and noticing that their heals crit when it really matters, despite the fact that they would crit just as much on someone with full or close to full hp (the healing would just go to waste then, so they don't notice anyway! 😂)

Looks like you just barely got it! 😁