Welcome to Inundation! It’s the third phase of the Eden raid introduced to Final Fantasy 14 with patch 5.01 of Shadowbringers. It also introduces a somewhat familiar face… Or faces. Don’t let those fool you, though! This boss fight is an entirely new beast than anything you’ve faced before. That’s why we’ve constructed this handy Eden raid guide to FF14 — this time focused Inundation and its boss, Leviathan. Let’s get started.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The main tank cannot face this Eden raid boss away from the group. The enemy is just too big! That doesn’t mean you should stand next to your friends, though. The attack Rip Current will fire a massively damaging beam toward the whichever tank has enmity. I’m pointing this out at the beginning of the guide so you don’t get your allies killed unnecessarily! Stand off to the side — away from your teammates, but close enough for healers to reach you — to save a life (or seven).
Auto-Attack – Inundation: FF14 Eden Raid Guide
Auto-attacks aren’t usually much to write home about in any FF14 raid. In Inundation, however, things work differently. The raid boss will always auto-attack whichever player has the highest enmity (i.e. the main tank) plus another tank (i.e. the off tank). However, should one tank go down, this will cause the boss to deal double damage per attack to the survivor.
DPS players can alleviate this, if they so choose, by taking enmity while the dead tank gets resurrected. That’s likely to cause more problems than it solves, however. As long as the healers resurrect dead tanks quickly, and surviving tanks use their cooldowns judiciously, it shouldn’t be an issue.
Tidal Roar – Inundation: FF14 Eden Raid Guide
Leviathan 2.0 will let you know the fight has really begun with Tidal Roar. This is your everyday, group-wide area of a effect attack. It cannot be avoided, so healers should heal through it. Tanks can also use low cooldown shields to eat the hit. Save your biggest stuff for later in the fight, though!
Rip Current – Inundation: FF14 Eden Raid Guide
This is that powerful beam attack I mentioned at the top of this guide. Basically: Just don’t stand in front of your teammates. This column AoE attack will wash right over you and almost certainly annihilate your allies. You likely want to shield through it with a cooldown, too, since Rip Current deals heavy tankbuster levels of damage.
Temporary Current – Inundation: FF14 Eden Raid Guide
This is another line AoE attack that fires across the battlefield in an obvious, easy-to-avoid diagonal. Just don’t stand in the blue rectangle! Temporary Current only becomes an issue later in the fight, when Leviathan starts to layer multiple attacks on top of each other — and you have less floor to work with. We’ll get to that part later.
Drenching Pulse – Inundation: FF14 Eden Raid Guide
Next up, this attack will force everyone to scatter with simple circle AoEs. After which point the entire party will be marked with their own damage markers, telling you to avoid each other. Failure to do so will lead to damaging one another (and probably death). Leviathan likes to further follow this up with another cast of Temporary Current. The party must be ready to move into a safe corner immediately after Drenching Pulse drops its payload. I hope you like scrambling, because this part of the Eden raid forces you to do that a lot!
Tidal Wave – Inundation: FF14 Eden Raid Guide
The previous few attacks will repeat for a few seconds until Leviathan casts Tidal Wave. This is an immense knockback from either the left or right side of the arena. You should stand pretty much as close to the “safe” side as possible to avoid being knocked into the abyss to your death.
There is no floor marker for Tidal Wave, but it’s still easy to tell which side the push is coming from. Just look for the giant water spout on either side of the field! Then stand as close to this area as possible. Tanks should be especially ready to move back into position, since they need to keep Rip Current away from the squishy types.
Undersea Quake – Inundation: FF14 Eden Raid Guide
This is where things get… interesting. Undersea Quake will cause both Leviathan mouths to glow with blue light. After a brief delay, both heads will then blast through the arena and destroy the left and right sides of the floor. And it’s instant death if you’re standing in either spot.
There is a normal AoE indicator for Undersea Quake, but it’s very brief. You should instead watch for the attack name and/or the Leviathan heads to start glowing. Then move into the center sliver of land. At this point the raid boss will fire away with the usual AoE attacks: Temporary Current, Tidal Roar, and so on. The basics remain the same, but now you only have roughly half the usual landmass to move around. Be extra careful and precise when dodging!
Tsunami – Inundation: FF14 Eden Raid Guide
After a few seconds of this, Ryne will restore the floor and you can resume your normal position. Leviathan doesn’t like that, however, and so it casts Tsunami. This starts as another unavoidable AoE attack — similar to Tidal Roar — but does much more damage.
That’s not the worst of it, either. Shortly after the damage is dealt, one player will be marked with pulsing arrow icons. This indicates that everyone else is about to be pushed away from this player. The knockback isn’t as intense as Tidal Wave, but it’s just as deadly if you get booped off a ledge.
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The marked player will not receive the same push as everyone else. As such, it’s best for them to move towards one side of the arena (preferably right up in front of Leviathan’s faces). That way the “clean” players can maneuver behind their unfortunate friend and all get pushed back in one direction — with plenty of floor between them and a watery grave. This becomes doubly important when Leviathan overlaps Tsunami with Undersea Quake. The smaller, thinner floor gives you less room to slide. Hence approaching Leviathan when possible.
The hits just keep coming, too. Next, Tsunami will mark a player with a typical “stack up” marker. Get close to one another to share and divide its damage! After you do, one player will receive a ring-shaped damage marker, while the rest get simpler, circular damage markers. That is to say, you need to split up again… But don’t get too comfortable! Leviathan will finally hit someone with yet another pulsing knockback marker. Deal with it just like the first one: by having the targeted player move toward a ledge, while the rest of the team lines up behind them.
Maelstrom – Inundation: FF14 Eden Raid Guide
Got all that? Good! Because we’re not done yet. You’ll get a few seconds to breathe before the raid boss casts Maelstrom. At this point, Leviathan will fly away from the map, leaving behind three small puddles. Avoid said puddles at all costs! They deal light damage and apply a damage vulnerability buff (specifically Dropsy). They also don’t stay small — periodically expanding into large, surging whorls that affect a wider area.
These hazards aren’t the real danger, though. Leviathan is still the main threat. The boss will begin to open portals around the sides of the arena before bursting through them. Getting caught on whatever half of the arena the boss marks will cause massive damage (and likely death). You must avoid the puddles as they expand and contract, while moving into position, but there’s lots of time to avoid Leviathan before it leaps through the portal. Just move carefully. You only need to dodge the boss twice before it returns to its normal position.
Undersea Quake (Part Two) – Inundation: FF14 Eden Raid Guide
Most of the previous moves will not repeat with increasing overlap as you whittle down the raid boss. The only major difference is that Undersea Quake now has two forms. The first temporarily destroys the outer edges of your platform, as usual. The second — also just called Undersea Quake — destroys the center of your battlefield.
On normal difficulty, Undersea Quake always seems to destroy the outside first, then then center, then the outside, and so on. So you can always just count out the attack to stay alive. The only other useful tell is that Leviathan will cuddle its two heads slightly closer to each other, near the center of the arena, when destroying the middle. If you’re ever unsure, just look at the position of the heads and you should be able to stand in the right spots! Continue the fight with all of this information in mind and you should have the raid done in no time.
There you go! Thanks for reading our guide to Inundation, part of the Eden raid in FF14. Be sure to check out the rest of the site for more information on how to conquer the rest of the Shadowbringers raid. Until then, take care and good luck!
