About a week or so ago, I inquired with my FC, Eorzea Cartographers (EOCA for short), about getting our beloved black cat, Juli, through The Binding Coils of Bahamut for the first time. It was tentatively set for Black Friday, and I tasked my assistant on leading the charge.
The Binding Coils of Bahamut are 13 dungeon/fights for a party of eight, and they were once the hardest content in Final Fantasy XIV. The story helps in filling in some gaps as to what happened between Legacy FFXIV and A Realm Reborn. They’re so absurdly hard and/or ridiculous that they’re not even included in the Duty Finder – so if one is to seek out and tackle The Coils, they either need to force it in Duty Finder, set up a Party Finder, or solo it at max-ish level via the ‘Unrestricted Party’ setting that unsync’s it. Their accessible fairly shortly after completing ARR’s MSQ and then beating Ifrit (Hard), Garuda (Hard), and Titan (Hard), which then unlocks the quest ‘Primal Awakening’ all from within The Waking Sands.
With the day and my Assistant known of the task at hand, said moment finally arrived and they all set out to take them all on in own big swoop! Running them unsync’d for the first time takes about 4-5 hours to complete, and that consists of the dungeons themselves, the cutscenes, and general running around to unlock the later sets. There’s 3 sets total: the first set has 5 dungeon/fights, while the other two have 4 in them each of similar dungeon/fights.
Overall the experience went very smoothly with only the infamous T9 (Second Coil of Bahamut – Turn 4) being the only real tricky one. That being said, T9 is really the only obnoxious one of the bunch, where as the rest of them can have some odd mechanic (or none at all depending), but usually can be breezed through without much concern at higher levels.
Once the 12 were triumphed over, all that was left was Bahamut Prime himself in the 13th one, and that went off without a hitch. Juli got all her clears, saw all of the Coils of Bahamut, the missing story pieces that help connect Legacy and ARR a bit, and all of the hidden lore locked away in their depths! Congrats again, Juli!
I highly recommend trying to take on The Coils of Bahamut if one has not, even just doing them unsync’d solo is a very fun time!