History FinalFantasyXIV / TropesAToC

** Note that there's been at least ''six'' of these. The world's state tends to move between the GoldenAge of the Astral Eras, and After the End of the Umbral Eras. The length varies, as well; 1.0 started during the 6th Astral Era, which is noted to have lasted close to 1600 years, then moved to the seventh Umbral Era after the fall of Dalamud. This Umbral Era lasts five years until the conclusion of the 2.0 main story when the city leaders declare the Umbral Era is over, with the rest of the game taking place in 7th Astral Era (though with the threat of it ending even faster than the 7th Umbral Era did starting to pop up in later expansions).

* {{Bishonen}}: Most races have at least some examples among their male population, with the exception of [[HeroicBuild Roegadyn]] and [[BeastMan Hrothgar]]. It's particularly prominent in Miqo'te and ''especially'' Viera, however. The [[PlayerCharacter Warrior of Light]] can, of course, be made into one as well.

* ChildrenAreInnocent: During the 2023 Valentione's Day event, you can watch various NPCs talk about what they love onstage in front of a crowd. One of the possible events for those who have completed Endwalker involves Aenore and Clemence from the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. As usual, Aenore talks about her obsessions with the Boulder brothers, talking about how the greatest love to her is "brotherly love", as in she wants both brothers to love her, as she breaks down into tantrum onstage. Clemence quickly tells the audience to ignore Aenore's moaning. Astrid, the young MC for the event notes that even though Clemence told everyone to forget what they heard, she admits she doesn't really understand what Aenore was talking about to begin with.

-->'''Quintus:''' Even now, you still... Why go to such lengths? What is it all for?\\

** A questline near the very start of ''Stormblood'' has you going to a nearby village to recruit for the Ala Mhigan Resistance. However, the Empire's oppression of the people, combined with recent events nearly decimating the Resistance, have broken the spirits of the villagers, and even after putting in a lot of effort, all you have to show for it is one new recruit. Said new recruit shows up near the very end, and reveals to the the heroes an infiltration route they can use to sneak into the Ala Mhigan Quarter and open the gates from the inside to let the Resistance in.

* CorruptCop: While all of the military and law enforcement units have a few cases, the Brass Blades are a particularly bad case of this. several questlines deal with Brass Blade officers who are either taking bribes or even directly responsible for crime or carrying out illegal jobs for Syndicate members. In the Samurai questline, one such Blade commander is even covering for a moneylender who sells his indebted victims into slavery ''to'' said officer.

* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: In Stormblood patch 4.3, [[spoiler:there is a brief instance where you get to play as Alphinaud while fighting off Garleans within the Burn.]] Every patch afterwards up through 5.1 so far [[spoiler:has since featured a similar instance, respectively playing as Y'shtola while fighting the Azim Steppe tribes again in 4.4, as Hien trying to fend off a reborn Zenos in 4.56, and Thancred holding back Ran'jit on his own in 5.0. 5.1 has Estinien's escape from Garlemald's imperial palace after Zenos kills Emperor Varis. Patch 5.55 has the player control G’raha Tia, Urianger, and Alisaie in three different battles against the lunar primals. The Role quests for each of the five job roles in 5.0 (Tank, Healer, Melee, Ranged, Caster)--and the wrap-up quest you can do once all of them are complete--each feature a brief interlude as one of the Warriors of Light from the events preceding the Flood of Light on the First.]]

*** Before patch 2.1, there were hints of some Amalj'aa not following Ifrit's influence or going with their kin's way of worshiping Ifrit. One Amalj'aa, Kazagg Chah, spends his time hiding from people because he knows that everyone would mistake him as another Ifrit worshipper and could possibly be killed as a result.

** ''Dawntrail'' is a whole breather ''expansion'', sorely needed after the events of ''Endwalker''.

* BreatherEpisode: In ''Endwalker'', after [[spoiler: the extremely grim Garlemald area and the WhamEpisode of Zodiark's death and the re-starting of the Final Days]], the rest of [[spoiler:Mare Lamentorum]] is exposition and meeting [[PluckyComicRelief the Loporitts]].

** The Astrope is the biggest timesink for mounts in the entire game, even if you're doing everything right. [[https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/w/images/a/ab/Astrope_Whistle--20210306194519.png The mount itself]] is a two-seater WingedUnicorn, and it's designed to look suitably majestic. To get this mount, you have to go through three steps, each of which is going to take ages to do. First, you have to become a Battle Mentor. You do that by getting thousands of commendations from players, getting at least one DPS, Tank, and Healer class to the maximum level each, and complete one thousand dungeons and raids. Once you do that, you have to unlock the Mentor Roulette, which requires clearing all of the normal and Extreme-level content up to the beginning of the current expansion at least once. Finally, you have to successfully complete a duty in the Mentor Roulette two thousand times. Queueing up for this roulette pairs you with people who have been waiting the longest to queue into something, and it could be anything from an entry-level guildhest to a synced Extreme raid. And if a new expansion comes out while this is happening, the requirements for being a Mentor and opening their Roulette will change; you only keep the number of times you've done the Mentor Roulette. You've got to re-apply to be a Mentor and clear all the now-previous expansion's content to open the Mentor Roulette once more, meaning you've essentially got to start all over again. Once you've done all of that, you unlock the Astrope Whistle, which gets you the mount as soon as you use it. It could literally take ''years'' of playing the game before you finally unlock this mount, and it doesn't do anything that any other two-seater mount can't do. But if you do manage to get the Astrope, you have definitely earned it.

** The Astrope is the biggest timesink for mounts in the entire game, even if you're doing everything right. [[https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/w/images/a/ab/Astrope_Whistle--20210306194519.png The mount itself]] is a two-seater WingedUnicorn, and it's designed to look suitably majestic. To get this mount, you have to go through three steps, each of which is going to take ages to do. First, you have to become a Battle Mentor. You do that by getting thousands of commendations from players, getting at least one DPS, Tank, and Healer class to the maximum level each, and complete one thousand dungeons and raids. Once you do that, you have to unlock the Mentor Roulette, which requires clearing all of the normal and Extreme-level content up to the beginning of the current expansion at least once. Finally, you have to successfully complete a duty in the Mentor Roulette two thousand times. Queueing up for this roulette pairs you with people who have been waiting the longest to queue into something, and it could be anything from an entry-level guildhest to a synced Extreme raid. Once you've done all of that, you unlock the Astrope Whistle, which gets you the mount as soon as you use it. It could literally take ''years'' of playing the game before you finally unlock this mount, and it doesn't do anything that any other two-seater mount can't do. But if you do manage to get the Astrope, you have definitely earned it.

* BribingYourWayToVictory: There is an ''extensive'' cash shop of cosmetic items, but only two things you can pay for that have gameplay benefit.

** You can pay to skip the MSQ or level a job, but only to the beginning of the most-recently-released expansion.

* BraggingRightsReward:
** There are a variety of weapon glamours, mounts, titles, etc. that have no practical purpose but are a pain in the butt to get, so they show off that you worked hard to get them.

* CameraScrew: Especially if you're playing on console, the camera in Leviathan Extreme is easily mistaken for a Sahagin sympathizer. Leviathan's dives and bodyslams onto the arena (which are effectively instadeath/permadeath mechanics in the second half of the fight) are telegraphed for dodging by a plume of water signaling where he'll charge from. However, the camera doesn't pan back far enough to show every possible position, so you have to attempt to locate and then dodge the plume while wildly spinning the camera as fast as you can. Eventually a DPS check and ground based [=AoEs=] during these dives and slams are added to make this more... "fun."
** For a while, boss fights inside dungeons would have nasty cases of camera screw when the barrier blocking your escape got in the way of the camera since it was treated as a solid wall. This made some fights more difficult than it should have been if the fights required you to take the battle near the barrier. A patch rectified the problem by allowing the camera to pass through the barrier. Nevertheless, some fights still retain camera issues because of other objects around the arena that block sight, such as the overly-tall fence preventing you from falling out of the arena for the first half of the fight against Ravana.

* BlazingInfernoHellfireSauce: Zero's preferred curry blend is searingly hot even by the standards of the Hannish people, a FantasyCounterpartCulture to India that loves its spices. It's so spicy that one patron with a sensitive nose instantly faints when he catches a whiff of it. A braver patron who digs in has his face turn red, sweat pouring down his face, and steam coming out of his ears. Even the Warrior of Light, a OneManArmy who throws down with gods on the regular, can remark that their life flashed before their eyes while eating it. For context, if the Warrior of Light eats the milder curry, they get a temporary buff at rank I for how spicy it was. If they eat Zero's blend, the buff is rank '''XXI'''.

** Each of the orders of animals are referred to as something ending with "kin". You have Beastkin (mammals), Scalekin (reptiles), Cloudkin (birds), Wavekin (anything from the water), Vilekin (insects), as well as Seedkin (living plants like Treants or Morbols).

** The [=YorHa=] raid series ends like this. [[spoiler:The Machine invasion of the First is defeated, but the villagers refuse to forgive Konogg for indirectly causing the invasion to begin with, causing him to leave the village in dejection. This, however, only makes the villagers ''more'' angry, as they wanted him to stand trial for what he did.]]

* CueTheSun: The symbolism is made almost explicit at the end of ''Endwalker''. [[spoiler:The climax takes place in Ultima Thule, a place ruled by dynamis, i.e. the dominant emotions. Since despair is Meteion's motivation and weapon, the area is dark and forboding. But after beating the Endsinger and restoring hope to Meteion, she changes her song of despair and oblivion to one of hope and renewal. The change is marked by a light on the horizon that resembles a rising sun, symbolically both in-universe and out a new dawn for the world.]]

* ConvenientEclipse: Inverted. The world of The First is bathed in continual light. When the Warrior of Light kills the lightwarden of a particular region, that continual light is removed and replaced with the natural day/night cycle. Conveniently, '''every''' battle with a lightwarden takes place during what would otherwise be nighttime, so as to allow the sky to dramatically transform from day to night following the battle.

* ColonyDrop: The climax of the 1.0 storyline revolves around plans by a wayward Garlean legate to drop the lesser moon of Dalamud onto Eorzea. Atypical of how this trope typically plays out, Dalamud does not actually impact Eorzea, but the devastation unleashed by Bahamut upon breaking free from inside Dalamud is no less catastrophic.
* CoolAirship: Quite a few, befitting a ''Final Fantasy'' game.

** The first cinematic cutscene the player experiences in the ''Endwalker'' expansion is a [[ShotForShotRemake]] of the introductory Limsa Lominsa cutscene from the original (1.0) release of the game.

* CallBack: Dozens, even in storylines outside the Main Scenario. One of the major ones is in ''Shadowbringers'' [[spoiler:where the Crystarium has the Crystal Tower at the heart of the city, one that looks suspiciously identical to the one back in the Source. The Warrior of Light can ask if there's anyone within the Crystal Tower, only for the Crystal Exarch, the city's leader, to sidestep around that question because ''he'' was that lone occupant.]]