Ah, Lord of Verminion. Final Fantasy 14's very own in-game RTS (real-time strategy game). History has been unkind to it; introduced in Patch 3.1 and largely untouched since, many players report that their servers seem all but unaware the minigame even exists. But take the elevator up to the Gold Saucer's Minion Square, and sure enough, you'll see it: a collection of ritzy-looking tables and a scattering of NPCs designed to evoke feelings of enthusiasm, blissfully unaware that more than three players gathered here at any given time is considered a rare event.

Related:Final Fantasy 14: 6 FATEs With Amazing Rewards And How To Get Them

And yet, all appearances to the contrary, Lord of Verminion does have a small but dedicated group of fans. Queuing for tournaments can lead to surprisingly active results during peak hours, even if some of your would-be opponents are immediately disconnecting because they just want it listed in their Challenge Log that they "played a match."

If nothing else, Lord of Verminion is the one way to acquire a few unique prizes any collector won't want to miss, including the coveted Penguin Prince minion. So whether you're intrigued by the prospect of becoming something of grandmaster to this niche mode, or you're simply in it to grab the goods and run, our guide will get you started.

Getting Started

There are a number of things players must do before they can learn the ways of Vermilion. First, you must gain access to the Gold Saucer itself; to do so, find the Well-heeled Youth in Ul'dah, who will present you with the quest 'It Can Happen to You'. This NPC can be found in the Steps of Nald area, at the precise coordinates of (X:9.0, Y:9.0).

Take note, however, that the quest will not appear until you've completed your starter city's respective envoy mission. This will come to you by way of one of three similarly-designed quests: 'The Limsa Lominsan Envoy', 'The Ul'dahn Envoy', or 'The Gridanian Envoy'. It's at this point that Final Fantasy 14 takes off its training wheels, so to speak; players are invited for the first time to venture out into the rest of Eorzea, all bright-eyed and (if playing a Miqo'te) bushy-tailed.

Once you have arrived at the Gold Saucer, speak with the Lift Operator (X:4.0, Y:6.0) who will bring you upstairs to Chocobo Square. Exit Chocobo Square, run down the hall, and you'll soon find yourself in Minion Square. Here's where the fun begins.

You'll need at least three separate Minions in order to qualify to play Lord of Verminion. If you've come here after clocking a good deal of hours with FF14, you'll surely be prepped and ready. If you've only just gotten past the envoy missions, this might actually be an issue. Fortunately, you can purchase several Minions from the nearby attendants here.

Related:Final Fantasy 14: How To Get The Kamuy Of The Nine Tails Mount

Hotbar, Game Board, and Quartet of Categories

Minion Hotbar

You've just taken your first step into a miniature world. Access the Minion Hotbar from the Gold Saucer menu — to clarify, this means the Gold Saucer's dedicated menu tab in your main menu — where you'll be able to assign Minions to up to 24 slots. This hotbar will be displayed during active Lord of Verminion matches, so you need to construct it here, or you'll run into a spot of trouble once it's game time.

The Game Board

In Lord of Verminion, you'll be summoning your beloved pals to wage war for you on the game board. The board itself will seem far larger during matches. The design is reminiscent of a great many real-time strategy games that feature destructible bases for you to target and destroy before your opponent does the same to you. It's a lengthy list, and will doubtless seem familiar to many of you, but for a decidedly in-series example, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings was built around a similar premise.

Minion Categories

Every Minion belongs to one of four categories. Three of these categories perform a "rock-paper-scissors" style triangle of strengths and weaknesses with each other, not unlike Pokemon's Grass/Fire/Water types or Fire Emblem's Sword/Axe/Lance. (Yes, this means that every time the developers add a new Minion to the game, it gets registered for Lord of Verminion's typification system. That's a lot of options to choose between.)

As you can see, Gadgets are handy in every situation — but seldom especially so. Complete neutrality can be a pro and a con.

Stats and Special Actions

Had Final Fantasy 14's creators left things off here, there would be no reason to select specific Minions other than their category. It would be a free-for-all, simple to a fault, and finished within seconds.

Instead, Minions all have their own stats as well as a Special Action that is theirs and theirs alone. (Again, think of all that coding involved. It's a shame relatively few players will ever notice.)

Minion Stats

With regard to stats, consider the following:

• HP, or Hit Points, is the amount of health a Minion possesses. Much like in the main game, a Minion that fells to zero HP is incapacitated. Defeating Minions are removed from the board.
• ATK (Attack) dictates the amount of damage dealt by a Minion every time it strikes.
• DEF (Defense) allows the Minion a reduction modifier for the damage it receives from opponents.
• SPD (Speed) is written in the form of stars, rather than numbers, and predictably determines the speed at which a Minion moves. Minions can range from one to four stars.
• Cost is essentially an off-the-board speed stat. Cost is calculated when a Minion is selected for summoning, with lower amounts allowing for swifter arrivals. You'll find that many of the most powerful Minions will be balanced such that they take longer to appear on the battlefield. Additionally, there is an always-running sum total Cost that prevents players from summoning Minions to the board beyond a certain amount.

Minion Special Actions

Special Actions involve more than just waiting for the Special Action Points Bar to fill, although that's surely an important component to it. Players also need four or more of the same Minion on the board at once, and they need to be close to each other as well. Fulfilling these criteria can be a hefty burden at times, but the results are almost invariably worth the hassle.

Some Special Actions cast debuffs on enemy units. Others buff their allies instead. Some are capable of wide-scale carnage in the form of area-of-effect attacks. There are trap-based Special Attacks, single-target powerhouse assaults, and more. As a bonus for finding FF14's most fabled and sought-after pets, you may find that the rarity of a given Minion helps to determine the overall impact of its Special Action.

Related:Final Fantasy 14: 8 Achievements With Amazing Rewards And How To Get Them

Tips, Tricks, and Well-timed Terrain

Briefing, Engage

Once a match has been initiated, either against another player or the CPU, play will begin with a short phase called Briefing. Here, you will choose your first batch of Minions. This intrepid little group of front-line fighters will appear on the board as soon as the match progresses to its second (and far longer-running) phase, Engage.

Technically, there's no cap to the number of Minions you select in the Briefing phase. Instead, there's a hard cost cap of 60. The total cost cannot exceed this under any circumstances. This can lead to a situation in which as many as six or even seven Minions are drawn; alternatively, you might be stuck with one or two particularly sturdy friends.

Once you have reached Engage, and your starters are out in the field, the cost cap increases to a much more impressive 240. It's not a bad idea to get going with the further Minion-summoning right off the bat here. Just know that your Minions aren't going to do much except defend themselves against incoming attackers unless you give them orders.

Reporting for Duty

Orders can be as simple as selecting one or more Minions to move to a designated spot — click and drag over a group in order to compel them all to do your bidding — or to engage with a certain foe or foes. You can also keep them stationary at set locations to defend your Arcana Stones, which we'll go into further detail about shortly. Once those Special Action bars are full, make sure you're also issuing your squads of close-proximity same-type Minions to execute those helpful abilities.

Structural Integrity

There are three Arcana Stones assigned to each player. These represent the players' total HP pool. The ultimate goal in Lord of Verminion is to shatter all three of your opponent's stones before they shatter all of yours, thus depriving them of all their health.

In addition to Arcana Stones, there's a trio of extra structures, each with its own purpose. These structures will eventually regenerate, but destroying them is nevertheless advisable.

Summoned Minions spawn from Gates. Like Arcana Stones, each player has three Gates. Destroying Gates grants you multiple temporary strategic advantages that should seldom be overlooked. For one, Minions regenerate health whilst in proximity to a Gate. You will find that your rivals, especially those of the virtual variety, love to hit-and-run, sending injured Minions back to their Gates to heal up before repeating the assault.

Even better — or worse, if it happens to you — players cannot summon Minions to any destroyed Gates. That is quite the crippling blow.

Shields provide added defense to a player's Arcana Stones. Roughing up those all-important Arcana Stones when your enemy's Shields are deactivated is a bit like firing a torpedo at the Death Star and watching it ignite.

Last but not least, Search Eyes are used to reveal the location of your opponent's Minions and keep tabs on their movement across the board. Destroying one causes a "fog of war" state in that sector of the map. Suddenly, your little army of death is sneaking around all covert-like, which is as nice as it sounds. Nicer, really.

It can be especially effective to set traps in fog-of-war terrain for unsuspecting baddies to bump into, though with everything your opponent has to handle on their end, even human opponents can have a tough time noticing when you've tapped into a trap-based Special Action out in the open.

Related:Final Fantasy 14: How To Unlock Crafters' And Gatherers' Scrips

Verminion Challenge

There are three ways to play Lord of Verminion. You can access the minigame through the Duty Finder, you can participate in weekly tournaments against other players (and probably a bunch of bots as well), or you can participate in Verminion Challenge.

Verminion Challenge is Lord of Verminion's single-player mode. It consists of 24 increasingly difficult stages against an AI that scales in strength to suit each level. We'll reiterate it in a bit, but beating Verminion Challenge will award you the otherwise-unavailable Clockwork Twintania Minion.

Of these 24 stages, the initial round is nothing more than a tutorial. 14 more stages will pit you against armies in a fairly conventional setting. While many lineups will serve you fine, skilled Lord of Verminion gurus commonly recommend swarms of Mammet #001 and — even better — Kidragoras. You can bolster your ranks with Cherry Bombs to go after Shields, but the core tactic here is to spam the Mammets and Kidragoras in a beeline to shatter the Arcana Stones.

The boss stages are more involved affairs. Any Minion with a high attack stat and reasonably low cost should be used to accompany heavier hitters like Wind-up Nero tol Scaeva. Later on, Nero loses his edge. Using him is still doable, but far from preferable. Consider replacing him with somewhat rarer fare such as Wind-up Odin, Wind-up Louisoux (for steady healing), and Wind-up Gentleman.

Rewards

As Lord of Verminion hasn't received much support since its introduction in 3.1, the list of unique rewards is on the smaller side. Still, this is the only way to get them, and for some of us, that's more than enough reason.

The following achievements unlock Lord of Verminion goodies:

Win 300 Lord of Verminion matches against human players.

There are also a few Gold Saucer Challenge Logs to complete on a weekly basis. CPU matches do count.

Play Lord of Verminion five times.

Next:Final Fantasy 14: Complete Guide To Wondrous Tails