FF14 players are struggling to complete the Yo-kai Watch event thanks to a tide of Blue Mages armed with bad vibes and missiles
The Yo-kai Watch event has made a return to FF14, letting players grab weapon glams, mounts, and a terribly cursed dog. It's a fun excuse to run around the overworld and complete FATEs, which are public group quests that spawn regularly in most zones—but there's a wrinkle to the good times: the feared Blue Mage.
For the uninitiated, Blue Mage is a "limited job" in Final Fantasy 14. Essentially, it's not a real class and more of a minigame—allowing players to grab monster abilities by defeating them in combat.
However, it can't level past 80, it can't queue for duty roulettes or go into deep dungeons and exploration zones. Raids are available, but only when queued up with other Blue Mages or in undersized parties. Because of this, the Blue Mage has access to a smorgasbord of completely busted abilities which can one-shot enemies and delete vast quantities of their health.
A Blue Mage, however, can participate in FATEs just fine. You can see where this is going.
Yokai Event in a nutshell from r/ffxiv
This is relevant again from r/ffxiv
There are plenty of Blue Mage abilities which'll flatten FATEs in record time, but two are stand-outs—Missile, which has a chance to delete 50% of your target's HP if they're a lower level than you, and Ultravibration, which instakills enemies impacted by certain other status effects the Blue Mage can create..
All of this to say, a group of Blue Mages can complete FATEs in mere seconds. In order to earn medals for the Yo-kai Watch event, players have to not only participate in FATEs, they have to earn at least a silver participation medal—so even if they get there in time, there's no guarantee they won't walk away with bronze.
Interestingly enough, as one helpful player on the game's subreddit points out, FATE rankings are largely based on enmity—or 'aggro' in most other MMOs. This means that Blue Mages do absolutely have tools in their kit that'd let them farm these things without ruining the ultravibes for everybody. "If you want to generate enmity without dealing damage, use the Mighty Guard + White Wind combo," writes BondEternal. "Not even a tank can rip aggro off you."
If you're struggling with getting your medals, however, there are a couple of other options—you can join a party via the party finder (making it a lot easier to get the rankings you need), world transfer to another server, or just… wait a little while.
The event will be running until the release of 7.0—which is June 28, when Dawntrail enters early access. FOMO is one thing, but you could twiddle your thumbs for an entire month without missing out on these cosmetics. Or you could just level a Blue Mage, get Ultravibration, and join the shadow wizard money gang—I hear they love casting spells.