The Minstrel's Ballad: Sphene's Burden is a challenging trial in Final Fantasy XIV introduced in Patch 7.1, which can be unlocked by speaking to the Wandering Minstrel in Tulola after completing the 7.0 main scenario quests. In this trial, players face off against the recreated queen, Queen Eternal. The trial drops item level 725 weapons and includes various bonus loots such as mounts and crafting items. The fight features complex mechanics that require precise execution and teamwork. Luckily, Mrhappy shared a guide on his YouTube channel to help us conquer this queen. Let's explore what the strategies are. Meanwhile, if you need some Dawntrail gold to prepare for the trial, MmoGah can help by providing reliable gil selling services. Now, let's get into the article.
Positions
At the start of the fight, Mrhappy recommended assigning light parties with spread positions.
Aethertithe
The first mechanic is Aethertithe. This will cause the party to take moderate damage every second while the boss does three back-to-back Conal AoEs, like in normal mode. You can see the warped ground indicating where these AoEs will hit. After each Conal AoE, the boss will fire a line AoE at both healers, dealing heavy damage split between every player hit. We have group one on the left side of the room and group two on the right side. If an AoE is covering the left or right side of the room, the group related should shift over to the middle of the room for their dodge and stack. If the Conal from the boss is going through the middle, then both light parties should ensure they're on their respective sides of it. Be sure to have decent mitigation for this and watch your shields because they are being stripped away by the Aethertithe non-stop.
Virtual Shift (Wind)
The next mechanic is Virtual Shift. This will deal heavy damage to the party and you'll enter the wind phase and be pulled onto the center of the new X-shaped platform. Immediately break into light parties and position yourself northwest and southeast between the two parallel platforms. Each healer will get a split damage AoE called Aeroquell to soak. This will also leave behind a wind puddle that you'll need to avoid for the rest of the phase.
The Aeroquells will also give everyone a debuff, either East Wind of Change or West Wind of Change. When this debuff wears off, it will knock the player directly east or west, basically in the direction the arrow over your head is showing you or the direction of the arrows on the debuff itself. At the end of the duration, ensure you're on the correct side of one of the two horizontal lines to get knocked around safely.
Once the stacks go off, have everyone go to the center for Chains. Each DPS will be chained to a support. Once the Chain debuff appears on your bar, let the DPS run northeast and supports run southwest, using the pathways that aren't blocked by the wind AoEs. The boss will shortly after begin charging Legitimate Force, a back-to-back half-room AoE. Look for the hand that gets raised up first and dodge that before dodging whichever one was raised second.
While dodging Legitimate Force, think about your Winds of Change. You may have just two or three seconds to get into a safe spot after that second fist if your debuff requires you to be on that side, so sprint really helps here when your debuff falls under 10 seconds. Once the winds are settled, mitigate the World Shatter raid-wide, which will also reset the arena back to normal. After this is a two-hit tank buster. You can choose to invuln these or simply tank-swap them.
Divide & Conquer
Next is Divide & Conquer, which will fire a line AoE at every player one at a time. After all eight go off, the AoEs will then repeat a second time in the exact same spot, so you should stand out of them. This is the position we take now - DPS, DPS, tank, healer from the edge of the arena inward, with group one on the left and group two on the right,
This isn't essential, but it's not a movement-heavy mechanic, regardless. We just sidestep our individual AoEs after they go off with the space in between them. Get close to the boss without being hit by an overlapping AoE. Two-minute buffs go out during this, so if everyone's all the way on the outside, you will miss buffs from the other side of the room, which is not what we want. The other solution is to put the DPS all closer to the middle of the room, but it's still probably a better idea for everyone to step in.
Virtual Shift (Earth)
Next is another Virtual Shift to the Earth phase. Players will be split onto two separate platforms and be given a Gravity Well in the middle of each of them. Stepping into the Gravity Well will raise you off the ground if you're on the platform or lower you back down to it if you're in the air.
First, have everyone go into the air immediately and walk to the center of the room. You'll have two Legitimate Forces to deal with, after which there will be four Earth Towers on each platform. Let group one handle the west platform and group two handle the east. Also, use the spread position from earlier, with the DPS on the north side and the support on the south.
Once the towers are soaked, two random players on each platform will be targeted with an attack. One player will be tethered with a prey marker, while the other is given a big old AoE. These two players should go into the air via the Gravity Well in order to position. The player with a tether should run towards the front of the room off to the side, while the player with the AoE sidesteps towards the edge of the arena while in the air. Please note that the edge is still lethal here, so do not touch the edge of the arena itself. The remaining two players will get two towers on the platform. Ensure they are on the ground and not in the air. You can have a loose spread with the leftmost unmarked player getting the front tower and the rightmost unmarked player getting the back tower. There's plenty of time here, though, so don't worry about it too much. After all of those attacks go off, everyone should be airbound, as it makes the movement for the next mechanic much smoother.
Meteors + Weighty Blow
In this mechanic, all eight players will be targeted with meteor drops. Each hit will leave a meteor behind if dropped on a platform, dealing some splash damage in the process if anyone else is too close. However, if a meteor is dropped off the sides while you're airborne, it won't do the big AoE splash. It'll just hit the player and then pass through and not land on any ground. Now, we're going to need four meteors on each platform for the next mechanic. For the first set, while airborne, we set up this L formation on the platform like the image below.
Then, stay airborne and drop the second set off to the side. Note that these meteors hit hard even when you're off the arena and dropping them into the abyss, so ensure there's decent mitigation and some healing between each hit. Once the second set of meteors are thrown off the sides, light parties should return to their respective platforms and return to the ground. At this point, the boss will begin casting Weighty Blow, which will target a random player on the platform and attempt to hit them with a lethal attack. However, standing just barely behind a meteor will cause the meteor to block the hit and explode. Start from the frontmost meteor and, as a team, walk backward into each meteor to blow up all four on each side.
The reason to use the L-shape here is that if you put the final meteor in a direct line to the back of the platform, it could make getting behind it a bit spottier. So, put the meteor to the side. If there are any meteors remaining on the platforms when the World Shatter cast comes out, and the arena goes back to normal, it's going to explode, which is not what you want.
Coronation
After the World Shatter and another set of tank busters will be the Coronation mechanic, which will summon four line AoEs, each tethering to two players. These players can then move the AoE with its movement based on the lateral or longitudinal distance the tether players are from it.
Each player simply looks at the line AoE they're tethered to. If you're tethered to the left side of it, stand directly on the cardinal that line AoE started on. If you're the player tethered to the right side of the AoE, go to the corner clockwise. This will safely dodge every line AoE. After this, every player is also going to get a large spread marker; be spread out with these positions as well.
Absolute Authority
Next is Absolute Authority. Upon the skill being cast, one role will be given four flare debuffs and one player on the other role will get a split damage AoE. Your goal is to put the flares in the corners of the arena and have any non-flares meet in the middle for the stack AoE. The split damage AoE doesn't give a magic bone, so you can stack all four flare markers in the split damage AoE, move together as a group, and then, with a decent amount of raid mitigation, you could survive and not have to use the method below. In case PF doesn't go for this stack-everyone version of the mechanic, here is the normal way.
Start everyone dead center with melees and tanks going toward the boss while the ranged and healers go back, dropping baited AoE all along the way. Group one players will then split off and go west once they're comfortably towards the edge of the platform, while group two players will go east. Now, the flares should get in the corner while the non-flares all head to the middle once you do this split-up. Once the flares and stack AoE go off, every player will have an Isolation AoE over their head, meaning you need to stand on at least one other player to prevent the effects. In order to make it easier for the flares, have the melee and ranged group meet up halfway between the middle of the room and their respective partner's flare. So, the group one melee and tank would meet up midway group one ranged and healer.
Virtual Shift (Ice) / Laws of Ice 1
Then, there's going to be a knockback coming from the north side of the room. Everyone could just step up to avoid this, but you can also knockback resist it - do whichever you want. Now, we're on to the last major mechanic of this phase, the ice mode virtual shift. This will start all of the players on a narrow middle platform. Here, break up into DPS forward and supports towards the back and make a short lineup of D1 through D4 from left to right and main tank, off-tank, H1, and H2 left to right in the back. Law of Ice will force the player to keep moving until the ice debuff on them goes away. It will also form four ice bridges. These bridges can only support one player at a time, so you'll need to carefully cross them one at a time to solve the next mechanic in a timely fashion. They won't come back until Law of Ice is cast again if they break, so be careful.
Once the Law of Ice finishes, eight icicles will also appear around the room, four in the back and two on each side, east and west. The four back icicles will tether to one of the roles first before the second set targets the other role. Your goal is to get far away from the icicle and stretch out the tether until it changes to be safe. Failure to do so will cause the player to be knocked off, and if a player dies before the icicle is resolved, that icicle will do a giant explosion around it when the tethers go off instead.
To cross the bridges, set the DPS forward and support back. You'll never share a potential bridge cross with more than a single other player for the duration of this mechanic. So, the DPS for the first cross only uses the front bridges, and the supports only use the back bridges.
Basically, the player closest to the bridge they need to cross crosses first, and the player furthest from it crosses second. So, the leftmost DPS needs to stretch their tether to the west. They can cross immediately once they've recognized this fact because they're the closest to that bridge, while the other players have to watch them cross before going themselves. But if that leftmost player had to cross to the east, they'd be waiting until somebody else crosses it first.
Once you cross, spread like this.
You can technically cross the parallel icicles, east and west, but it's fine to stretch them and take a few steps to the side to avoid that icicle path. As soon as the icicle resolves, the players who solve the east and west icicle should cross back to the middle across the closest bridge. Then, the players who had to stretch to the far north can either take turns with the northmost platform, with the player closest to the middle crossing first and the other player crossing second, or the further player can rush all the way to the back of the room with sprint and cross to ensure that there are no traffic jams. You'll need to make it to the middle of the room again to dodge Legitimate Force, so also get to the correct side once you're there.
We have the innermost player on the north side take the north bridge, and the outer player takes the south bridge, but quite frankly, that's a lot of running. Since Legitimate Force isn't auto-lethal, it's safer to take the hit here instead of focusing on the crossing, as you'll get a vulnerability stack, and you'll live. Healers need to make sure everyone is close to the top tier after the icicles go off. However, you'll want to return to the middle before the next mechanic begins anyway.
Laws of Ice 2
Another Law of Ice and another motion check. Two tethers will appear on the party while a split damage AoE targets a healer. The tethers will need to be taken out of the group by two players, and when they expire, they'll do a massive AoE, which doesn't deal much damage at all but does give those players ice resistance down. Players with ice resistance down also become the eligible targets for the split damage line AoE in place of the healers.
Now, it's intended that you cycle through all four roles here. We had tanks take the first tether, then healers, melee, and ranged, so the healers could front-load their movement, heal the rest of this part, and then you don't have to worry about the World Shatter AoE afterward.
However, you can tank cheese these tethers even with being targeted by the split line AoE. Use no cooldowns on the first tether hit, and the party should have to deal with the stack. Then you kitchen sink the second hit and then invuln the last two hits. It's about 6 seconds between each tether and the line AoE going off, so they'll want to invuln like 4 or 5 seconds after the second tether hit goes off. Even with the split damage AoE, the damage isn't that severe.
Once the World Shatter goes off, there is a series of basic mechanics for about a minute, which is tank buster raid-wide, Legitimate Force raid-wide, and finally, Authority Eternal for the Enrage. This phase lasts about 8 minutes and 5 seconds. If you lower Queen Eternal's HP to under 2%, this phase will end early. However, she will not interrupt a major attack to phase push, so if she's already started Laws of Ice 2 with the tethers, you will have to finish that mechanic before she phase-pushes, including the World Shatter after. If Queen Eternal's HP is depleted before Authority Eternal is finished casting, it will become a standard raid-wide, so be sure to mitigate it. After a short delay, she will then return for phase two.
Radical Shift
The main mechanic of this phase is Radical Shift, which will summon two copies of the various elemental arenas to the east and west of the arena, rotated 90°. The animation for Radical Shift will show the background of the arena behind Queen Eternal, rotating clockwise or counterclockwise. This indicates which arena Sphene will be changing your platform into. If it's rotating clockwise, then the east arena will take over, and counterclockwise will cause the west arena to take over. You'll be knocked into the air during this, after which a spread AoE will hit every player. So, you basically want to figure out which arena it is; spread out for that layout, and then let the spreads hit and make sure you have enough health, as it will do a lot of damage. Radical Shift and the AoEs both hit pretty hard, so ensure every single hit here has decent mitigation and shields.
Dimensional Distortion
After two Radical Shifts, the boss will do Dimensional Distortion, which is alternating X from the front of the room. Avoid the first set and step into them after they're done so you don't get hit by the second set. The team will need to quickly retreat to the south after this to avoid the half-room AoE that the boss is doing, and each tank will need to mitigate a tank damage tower. Group one tank takes the west, and group two tank takes the east. After this, there's a ton of back-to-back AoE to mitigate and heal before the arena frees up again.
From this point, the fight is repeated. Ensure healing and mitigation are on point, as this last phase goes very quickly.
