Gaining The Will To Live (And Run Solo Dungeons) In FFXIV Dawntrail's Patch 7.4

Over the weekend I marched on playing the new content in Final Fantasy XIV's patch 7.4. After crafting the Courtly Lover's healing set and cooking some food I was ready to enjoy the new MSQ that will introduce the story for the next expansion. I stopped Saturday night at the new trial, Hell on Rails. But not for the usual reason. I spent some time on Sunday exploring the new mechanics introduced in the patch for those running through dungeons using the Duty Support and Trust systems.

I usually run the 4-character dungeons solo because I'm so bad. Usually I take an hour or so to complete a dungeon my first time through because I die so much and have to start boss fights over. Apparently I'm not a small minority because the developers added in a feature called "Will to Live".  The patch notes described the feature this way...

When undertaking duties via Duty Support or the Trust system, players will now receive the Willful status effect after being incapacitated by a boss and rechallenging the encounter. The Willful status effect is expended when a player would take lethal damage, allowing them to survive with 1 HP.

When the effect is triggered, the player will be temporarily immobilized and the Will to Live status effect will be granted, restoring HP to full.

Stacks of Willful are granted in accordance with the number of times a player is KO'd, up to a maximum of five. Each stack allows the player to survive lethal damage once. The Willful status effect and any remaining stacks are removed upon defeating the boss.

I surprised myself and did not trigger the Will to Live in my initial run-through the MSQ. I only died once to the second boss and the only new thing I noticed is that upon returning to the boss area I received all three lillies and a Blood Lily on my healing gauge. A nice benefit since I no longer needed to build up resources every time I died to a boss.

Sunday night I returned to run Mistwalker in order to farm gear and Allagan Tomestone of Mnemonics and Mathematics. While my Courtly Lover's gear gave me item level 770 gear, if I want to run any other job through the patch 7.5 content I'll need to upgrade their gear. The requirement to run Hell on Rails is item level 745 gear, which means my previously crafted gear no longer suffices. And honestly, I do like running around as a warrior.

On Sunday I reverted to form and died on the final boss. Then I triggered the Will to Live mechanic. Instead of dying on the spot, I was immobilized for a couple of seconds, then was able to continue fighting the boss. While not having control of my character was annoying, I felt a lot better than having to start the fight from the beginning. Turns out, I didn't die anymore.

I should also mention the Will to Live also works on the raids players can do solo as well.

When using Duty Support, the Will to Live status effect granted in the following duties will now also grant healing over time:

• The Mothercrystal
• Worqor Lar Dor
• Everkeep
• The Ageless Necropolis

Instead of spending an hour trying to complete the dungeon, I took less than 40 minutes. A big time savings, and food savings as well. I'm sure some will complain about making the game too easy. Others will complain about turning the game into a single player RPG. But I'm all for making combat content required to craft a bit less painful and, more important, less time consuming.