S-Rank hunts in Final Fantasy 14 are funny little things. Each S-Rank monster comes with specific spawn conditions, some of which are awfully niche. Want to spawn Armstrong, a monster from Endwalker? Whack on some gear you pick up from a level 46 quest in A Realm Reborn, die in a specific spot and hope he turns up. Spawning Salt and Light requires you to discard items from your inventory 50 times, a painfully tedious process.
With other bizarre spawn conditions including using Blue Mage’s self-destruct spell to KO yourself, crafting a high-quality steak, or flying over spawn points with a specific minion summoned, deciphering how to prompt these foes to appear can be a bit of a task. Thanks to groups of dedicated hunters, these riddles usually get figured out pretty quickly… that is, except for one pesky elite enemy from Dawntrail, the game’s latest expansion, which left players utterly stumped for days.
Kirlirger the Abhorrent was one of the newest S-Rank hunts to be added in the game’s 7.05 patch, which was released on July 30. Yet three days later, on August 2, he was still nowhere to be found. Hunters’ increasingly desperate attempts to spawn him were highlighted on Twitter, with some of my favourite suggestions being to emote dozing on a “landmine” (what hunters call fixed spawn points on each map), popping on a pair of sunglasses, or walking around spawn points as a crafter or gatherer.
via @EENlx on Twitter. (Image credit: @EENlX via Twitter.)
How do players even get an idea of where to start? Thankfully Final Fantasy 14 doesn’t leave you totally high and dry on the guessing game—each S-Rank comes with a little description that hints towards its spawn condition. Kirlirger’s was heavy on references to him avoiding a fair fight, preying on merchants and being able to successfully sneak up on and attack someone despite his large size.
Well, after numerous hours of dressing as merchants, using countless eye-related abilities and killing mobs in an attempt to spawn it, it turned out all players needed to do was wait for some very hyper-specific weather conditions. Kirlirger the Abhorrent only emerges when there’s fog during a new moon, the latter of which only occurs around once every 37 real-time hours. Makes sense that folk weren’t able to spawn it too quickly, though it was a slightly more anti-climactic end than people were anticipating.
Despite the final spawn condition being relatively uninteresting, seeing the process of trying to figure out the conditions for a new S-Rank is really neat. It’s one of the few things in the game that can’t be brute-forced via methods like datamining. It’s all trial and error, baby, or sometimes simply waiting a very long time for a narrow window where the weather-based stars align.
