“In from the Cold” is a level 83 MSQ quest in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, which involves you playing not as yourself but as an Unknown Imperial who needs to get back to Camp Broken Glass within a specified time limit. It’s a challenging quest but also incredibly memorable.
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To complete “In from the Cold”, you’ll need to make your way back to Camp Broken Glass very slowly, navigating the unfamiliar Garlean streets while trying to avoid as much conflict as possible. I’d recommend setting aside roughly 45 minutes to an hour to complete this quest.
You do not, by default, have any health regeneration during this quest, although you can rarely find potions that grant a five-minute regeneration buff. You can also find Med Kits, which will restore 35% of the Unknown Imperial’s maximum HP, but you can only carry a certain number of these at any one time. Both of these items can be found by interacting with the many clickable elements encountered during the quest.
Getting to know the Unknown Imperial
After you’re transported into the body of the Unknown Imperial, you’ll lose all of your regular abilities and have to quickly get acquainted with some new ones. For those who regularly play as a Tank Job, particularly Paladin, these will be familiar:
- Fight or Flight:
- Increases weapon damage by 25% for 25 seconds. Has a 60-second cooldown.
- Fast Blade:
- A sword weapon skill that executes an attack at 200 potency.
- Riot Blade:
- Deals damage to a single target with 170 potency, increasing to 300 potency when used after Fast Blade.
- Rage of Halone:
- Paladin Job skill which delivers an attack with 100 potency, increasing to 330 potency when used after Riot Blade.
- Rampart:
- Reduces incoming damage by 10% for 20 seconds. Has a 90-second cooldown.
Surviving your first enemy encounter
To begin with, you’ll only have a time limit of 25 minutes to reach Camp Broken Glass, although this will change as you progress through the quest. While you should avoid as much conflict as you can during this quest, some enemies need to be fought, and the first one is just ahead and to the East.
The most challenging part of this first fight is the fact that you don’t regenerate health, so the biggest piece of advice I can give is to avoid any telegraphed attacks and make sure you use Fight or Flight and Rampart whenever they’re available.
Once you’ve defeated this soldier, interact with his corpse to find a Med Kit and use it to restore some of the health you lost during the fight, then interact with it again to pay your respects.
After this encounter, you’ll be warned that in order to survive, you’ll need to avoid any unwanted attention. With this in mind, you now need to find a way out of the first area you find yourself in.
Get the Magitek Reaper in working order
Head South and interact with the Immobilized Magitek Reaper (X:23.6, Y:16.9). Doing this will allow you to progress by unlocking the next two things you need to do. While you’re in the area, make sure to interact with the Wrecked Magitek Reaper (X:25.4, Y:16.5) to loot a Med Kit.
Next, head to one of the buildings to the West of the Immobilized Magitek Reaper and interact with him. He’ll give you the identification key required to use the Immobilized Magitek Reaper, but you’ll need some fuel if you’re hoping to get it working again.
To find the fuel, in the form of a Ceruleum Tank, head to the East and find the Fuel-concealing Wreckage (X:27.4, Y:13.4). Interacting with this wreckage will provide you with a Ceruleum Tank, but this poses a problem – you’ll enter into Transporting mode and, while carrying the Tank, you’ll be unable to use any of the Unknown Imperial’s abilities.
If you take any damage while Transporting the Tank, you will drop it and have to defeat the threat. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to pick it up again and continue onwards towards the Magitek Reaper. Interact with it while holding the Ceruleum Tank, and you’ll now have a fully operational Reaper.
Use the repaired Magitek Reaper to clear the way forwards
Now that you can use the Reaper to assist you in your journey back to Camp Broken Glass, you’ll have three new abilities to become familiar with, all of which do 5,000 damage each and are enough to one-shot each of the enemies you’ll encounter during the coming sequence:
- Magitek Cannon
- Ground-target AoE with a short cast time and no cooldown.
- Diffractive Magitek Cannon
- Line-attack AoE, which has a short cast time and a short cooldown.
- High-power Magitek Cannon
- A much larger AoE variation of Magitek Cannon, which has a short cooldown.
There will be multiple mobs of Magitek units which need to be defeated. Some of these will come in waves, meaning you’ll need to pay attention and adjust yourself accordingly:
- Large mobs of units to the West, in front of the curtain of light blocking your way. Any attack is appropriate to take these out pretty efficiently.
- Mobs of 5-7 Magitek Slasher units in the center of the area. Use Magitek Cannon to focus an attack to take them down.
- Magitek Vanguards which spawn and use telegraphed abilities, which need to be avoided before taking out the Vanguards. The larger, High-power Magitek Cannon is perfect to defeat these.
- Magitek Death Claws will slowly approach in a line. Use Diffractive Magitek Cannon to take out the line in one shot.
Once you’ve defeated all of the different waves of enemies, you’ll be able to dismount the Magitek Reaper and make your way past the now-disappeared curtain of light. Once you’re through, two Tempered Imperial Soldiers will appear, but these can be avoided pretty easily by simply walking behind them to avoid drawing attention to yourself.
Make your way South and then West, moving under the broken segments where a bridge used to be, to get to the next challenge.
Protect the Imperial Citizens
There’s a lot of local wildlife in the next area who are attacking some Imperial Citizens. You’ll need to defeat these creatures while continuing your journey North West. Thankfully, you’re unlikely to draw any aggro from these creatures as they’re pretty focused on their original targets, so you can take them out pretty easily.
The types of enemies you’ll need to defeat are:
- Morozko
- Ceruleum Zoblyn
- Almasty
- Eblan Bear
While you can fight these creatures in any order, I’d recommend taking out the bigger ones first, as they’re likely to do more damage to the people you’re trying to protect. You’ll also be helped by some other civilians.
After defeating the creatures and heading further North, you’ll encounter some more enemies. This time, you’ll have to defeat some Corrupted and Transformed Imperial Soldiers. The best method to do this is by focusing your attention on the Transformed Imperial Soldiers, because the civilians with you have entered a Magitek Reaper to take on the Corrupted Soldier.
At some point during this battle, the Corrupted Imperial will explode with a telegraphed AoE. You can avoid death by finding the safe spot behind the Magitek Reaper and sheltering there, but you won’t get out of this unscathed.
Drag yourself to safety
The blast from the Corrupted Soldier will render you unconscious for a short while, with the screen going black. Don’t worry, you haven’t failed, this was supposed to happen.
When you wake up, you’ll immediately be thrown into an Active Time Event. During this, you’ll need to quickly and repeatedly press any button you have at your disposal in order to remain conscious and drag yourself away from the battle. You start off going very slowly as you’re weighed down with debuffs, but as these drop off you do pick up some speed. Thankfully, you don’t have to do this for the entire distance to Camp Broken Glass, just to the end of the street. This can take roughly ten seconds, so avoid hand cramps by alternating hands.
Once you’ve completed the Active Time Event, a cutscene will play and then you’ll wake up in your own body, free to talk to Alisaie in order to complete “In from the Cold”.
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