Dungeons, raids, boss battles? In my MMO? Pshaw, lame. Predictable. Overdone. A glitched-out level one nothing mob minding its own business out in the wintery wilderness? Now that’s the good stuff right there. Something actually worth playing the goddamn game for.
Final Fantasy 14’s Patch 7.4 dropped on Tuesday, tying up most of Dawntrail’s plot points while gently ushering us towards whatever narrative the next expansion has in store for us. There’s the conclusion of the Arcadion raids, an overhauled glamour system—oh, and a debug “blue deer doe” roaming around in Coerthas Western Highlands with no name, just a menacing icon indicating it’s hostile if approached and a level one indicator next to it.
Naturally, it has taken no time at all for the community to rally around this being and treat it as if it were our collective son. Groups have gathered near the deer—which some theorise has a measly 40HP—to take photos of it, pet it, and quickly scold anyone who dares kill it. The level 1 debug mob cult is strong.
“I went and saw one a while ago,” a Reddit comment reads. “I killed it and the person standing there yelled at me. I thought it would be stronger. I wanted to see how strong it really was.” A user on X posted a screenshot of the level 1 nothing, adding: “If you kill this thing people get really mad at you btw,” to which someone replied “if it kills you people think it’s awesome though”.
Despite only existing in all its nothingness glory for just over a day, art of the creature has been popping up all over social media in the hours since its discovery. It feels like Endwalker’s low-poly grapes all over again—or, for the veterans among us, Heavensward’s skybear situation which occurred in the exact same region over 10 years prior to this incident.
As for why this has happened, players have their theories. The most prevalent is that it’s an accidental leftover from the team testing the upcoming Beastmaster limited job—fellow limited job Blue Mage also has mobs exclusive to it, so the theory certainly holds water.
Unfortunately, much like the jank of grapes and skybears past that the community came to love, I imagine that level 1 __ will be departing in a hotfix pretty soon. But for now, get your pets in, take your /gposes, and for the love of Hydaelyn don’t kill the poor thing. He’s our stupid idiot deer son.
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