The Kugane Tower, with its unfair jumping sections, is a major challenge for speedrunners in the online MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. The goal is to climb the tower on protruding wooden beams without falling down. A player set a record about a month after the release of the Stormblood expansion, which lasted five years. However, the record has now been broken for the first time.
What was the five-year-old record? The player who set the record just one month after the release of Stormblood was the speedrunner Em0_oticon. He took 43.58 seconds to reach the top of the Kugane Tower, which is located in the city of the same name, noted for its Asian setting.
How fast was the short-term world record holder? The five-year-old time of Em0_oticon has now been beaten: The user Pint trained for several months and analyzed the plateaus of the tower in great detail. With some training and the technique he subsequently devised, he was able to break the world record by a fraction of a second. The new record stood at 43.3 seconds.
For this, he used a special combination. He increased his movement speed by 20 percent and even switched jobs in between to move faster up the tower. You can see his success in a YouTube video:
But Pint couldn’t enjoy his newly acquired world record for long: The former champion of the Kugane Tower, Em0_oticon, caught wind of the action and decided to tackle the tower once again.
And indeed: Just a few hours after Pint set the new record, Em0_oticon reclaimed the title of fastest speedrunner at the Kugane Tower (via youtube.com).
On Twitter, Pint expresses his admiration for Em0_oticon and writes that the freshly set world record has been broken again. Em0_oticon is simply incredible.
Fans of Final Fantasy XIV can currently look forward to the fan festival:
Where does the world record currently stand? If you want to try your hand at the Kugane Tower, you now need to beat a time of 38.74 seconds. However, you should prepare for several months of training, as the tower is quite challenging.
Incidentally, it’s no wonder that Em0_oticon was able to break the time so quickly: Behind the player is the well-known speedrunner Pydoyks, also known as Shaeden, who has also performed legendary speedruns in Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. However, he mysteriously disappeared from the community one day.
Community reacts with funny image
A user created a funny image in celebration of the competition that depicts Pint’s defeat. Initially, it shows Pint proudly sharing his video for the new world record.
The second part of the image shows a golden elephant proudly holding its record of 38 seconds. Em0_oticon wore a golden elephant costume while he beat the world record by several seconds and confidently showed who the master of the Kugane Tower is.
In the comments, players celebrate the competition between the speedrunner who returned from retirement and his opponents:
- Jimmy_8bit: “This is a strong power move!”
- TurbulentVariation51: “Oh no, we lost Pint again for another eight months.”
- DarkElfMagic: “I’m still impressed that Pint discovered a legendary speedrunner who vanished from the speedrunning community. The best anime plot of all time, I swear.”
We shall see if Pint will attempt another record or if the world record will stand for several more years.
But there are still more challenges that players face in Final Fantasy XIV: A group completes the hardest raid in FFXIV completely without healers – players complain: “Every day healers become a little more useless”
