Endwalker – A Guide to the Tower of Babil

The second dungeon you will encounter while walking through Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker not as annoying as the first, but nonetheless, here’s our Tower of Babil guide.

As for the trash, there’s not much to write home about here. If you want to do giant pulls, the only room you need to be careful with is the last room. There are lots of heavily hit mobs, plus some environmental AoE.

As always, although I won’t spoil any “story” here, I will name all the bosses and show screenshots. So if you haven’t gotten this far in the game, beware: perverts are waiting.

Barnabas

Attacks:

Ground and Pound – Barnabas confronts a party member and charges an AoE. Don’t stand in the direction he’s facing.
Dynamic Scrapline – Barnabas increases AoE circles around himself, with a positive charge. Notice the polarized charge you have relative to its charge: equally polarized charges repel each other, while opposite charges attract. Like the ring outside the arena also painfully, you want to be as safe as possible away from him if you have another pole (because you will be pulled towards him) or as close to the AoE as possible if yours is too.
Shock force – Stack AoE. Team up and heal.
Dynamic pound – An AoE line through the center of the arena, with a pole. As with Dynamic Scrapline, you want to stand as close to the line as possible if you have the right pole, or as far as possible if your pole is different. (Keep in mind it’s a circular arena, so you’ll probably want to stay close to the center as well.)
Thundercall – Barnabas moves to the center of the arena and summons four electric orbs.
Rolling Scrapline – Barnabas increases the AoE of the circle around him. The orbs will explode with an AoE about the same size as the Rolling Scrapline, at the same time as it explodes. Stand in the middle of the spheres to avoid.

If the two poles match, stand next to his AoE. If not, stay away from it. You will be pushed or pulled respectively.

Strategy:

After the Tower of Zot’s relative cruelty, the first few Tower of Babil bosses took a breather. Barnabas really only has one mechanic, and it’s polarizing work. The only thing you really need to remember is that if your polarity is right for him, you want to be close to his AoE; if it doesn’t, then get out of it. That’s… well, that’s honestly. He is a real boss, very simply. Endwalker, please.

Lugae

Attacks:

Heat inhibition – AoE cannot be avoided. Heal it over.
Magitek missile – AoE of the big circle is targeted at two team members. Move away from them.
Magitek Ray – Lugae faces a party member and calculates an AoE line. Move out of the way.
Magitek Chakram – The spinning chakra appeared at the edges of the arena, and the two boards on the floor lit up. Stand on the purple one (marked by a shrinking person); you will be affected with Min for 20 seconds and the chakras will run through you.
Magitek Explosion – Lugae launches three giant bombs in the arena. These have Bomberman rule: they will explode in cross-shaped AoEs the length and width of the arena. Stand somewhere that is not perpendicular to any bombs.
Shower – Lugae… turned the entire arena underwater and that gave us a breathless bug and slowed us down massively, despite all the underwater stuff we did? Well, one of two ways: move to the glowing green square (marked with a toad) to transform into a toad for 20 seconds. You can’t attack in this form, but it removes Heavy and Breathless, and allows you to dodge the barrage of Magitek rockets he’ll launch while Downpour is active.

That’s right, even Lalafells need to move up the purple square to avoid Magitek Chakram.

Strategy:

As with Barnabas, Lugae is an easy boss (no pun intended with Downpour’s debuff). AoE and attacks are easy to avoid and heal through, and the only real “mechanic” is standing in the right box. For Chakram, stand on the purple tile to zoom out. For Downpour, stand on the green tile to transform into a toad. Once you’re on the square, you can safely move it away from it, although I’m not sure what will happen if you move up the tile again or if you switch to another tile. Either way, there’s not much about this, and even without this Tower of Babil guide, Lugae would go down without trouble.

Anima

Well, damn it.

Attacks:

Moon nails – Lunar Nails will appear around the arena.
Phantom Pain – Any Nail that forms a square will generate an AoE within that square. Stand in any “square” that doesn’t have a Lunar Nail in the corner to avoid this.
Mega Graviton – AoE cannot be avoided. Heal it over. This will also spawn four mega-graviton spheres in the corners, which should come into play soon…
Pater Patriae – AoE in a straight line, down to the center of the arena or aimed at a party member. Don’t stand in it.
Aetherial Pull – You’ll be tethered to one of the mega-graviton orbs right before Pater Patriae takes off. Move a certain distance away from the orb to stay safe (it will change shape when you get far enough) or you’ll be dragged into the orb and have a very bad time. You will have enough time to do this after Pater Patriae is gone.
Endless pain – All party members are dragged to the center of the arena, and Anima starts exploding AoE continuously. They start small and gradually grow to cover almost the entire arena. As soon as the Boundless Pain cast is over and you’re dragged, run towards one of the corners of the arena (preferably one near the Anima so you can keep hitting it). If you move too slowly, you will continue to take damage from Boundless Pain while running and potentially die.
Pain flare – Each team member is targeted with an AoE. Separate and then mend again.
Imperatum —Anima pulls you into Anima’s Dimension and the battle moves into phase two.

Boundless Pain only hits the center of the arena at the start, but as the actor continues, it will cover nearly the entire battlefield.

Oblique claws (1) – Anima summons claws on both sides of the arena that will explode as a straight line AoE. Pay attention to which side comes out first and stay in the distance between them to avoid the first wave of AoE. Then move into a gap between the other side to avoid the second set.
Oblique claws (2) – Two team members are marked with a tracking AoE marker. Run away and keep running to avoid the AoE that will explode when you wake up. Also, try not to run into the party.
Oblivion – When you defeat Anima in Anima’s Dimension (or perhaps when the Chaos bar is maxed out), Anima will perform the inevitable repetitive AoEs. Heal through them. As long as you kill the Anima before the gauge reaches 100, you should be fine. You will then revert to the “real” Anima.

Phantom Pain’s later attacks will hit all but one “square” of the arena, but it’s still simple enough: just move to the corner with no Lunar Nail in it.

Strategy:

Anima is easily the most complex boss in the Tower of Babil, but let’s face it: that doesn’t say much. However, there are a few things to keep in mind here. The basic thrust of the fight is that you’ll be fighting Anima until it uses Boundless Pain (or gets around 70% health – hard to say) at which point you’ll switch to Anima’s Dimension for the third stage. two. You’re against the clock here and need to kill it before the Chaos bar fills up, but you probably won’t note timer. Once that Anima is dead, you will return from Anima’s Dimension to end the fight.

There are only three attacks capable of causing problems. For Lunar Nail / Phantom Pain, the shorthand is just to move to a corner where there is no Lunar Nail. For boundless pain, start running as soon as possible when you’re pulled in the middle: with luck you’ll only be hit by the initial (large) explosion and maybe one or two of the smaller ones. If you’re too slow, turn on Sprint, because constant AoE can almost kill any non-tank.

To be honest, I didn’t even notice the Chaos bar until the end of this part of the fight.

Finally, Obliviating Claw (2) in Anima’s Dimension. The easiest way I’ve found to avoid this is to move a corner and then run across the arena. If you are too slow, back two or go around in circles this will probably kill you. Obviously you probably should not run into your party.

With Anima down, you’ve completed the Tower of Babil, and so it’s time to end this Tower of Babil tutorial. Don’t worry: there’s a lot more to come Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, and not everything is quite as simple as this dungeon…