Thaleia - Heaven of Water
This was originally posted in a mixture of 2 September 2024 and 8 October 2023. I’ve been uploading all night and I don’t feel like extricating the two periods. I believe Final Fantasy-heads call this a Time Compression Incident. Or something. If you want the order of posts, the clue is in the image filenames - images numbered 1-7 are from 2023. 8-onward, 2024. But then you’d be a bigger hyperfixative nerd than me.
This is an overview of Thaleia - Heaven of Water. 
Some cute little patios.
And the platform upon which the group starts is a fountain. With cute little goldfish! 
Here’s that Ewer up close.
The buildings have finials of various critters. None of which are pleasant to experience back in the mortal realm.
The map of Heaven of Water despawns as you leave, but some effects (the water from the Ewer) and some props remain.
This object is a Shortcut post. If for some reason you fall behind (such as by death and recall), you can use these to return to the arena of the last-defeated boss.
This other object is used in the cutscene. It’s Nymeia’s spinning wheel. It is used in the cutscene, as when the gods are dispersed, they leave this behind as an idol. Pictured here is it, absent of the geometry around it.
And here it is, with geometry present.
Why it is here, I have no idea. It is the only object of its like. Similar towers just have bells inside them. This part isn’t even Nymeia’s domain - it’s Thaliak’s.
Also in The Deloaded Heaven of Water is this strange gap. Not strange in itself (other than breaking what ought to be a contiguous body of water), but what happens when I pilot the camera into it.
…the screen is immediately overcome by a Spongebob Squarepants transition.
OHHHHHHHH–
…and when leaving it again, the view distorts to simulate water running down the lens.
This is a normal transition used when the player dives underwater any time after they gain the Kami’s Blessing of Aqualung. I don’t know why they chose to use this effect, considering the place the player is transitioning to is still above water, other than to hide the loading screen.
Thaleia technically has transitioning weather. Except the weather switches to identical weather. If the weather were unchanging, then the forecast would say “Continuously”.
(Pictured is the Umbra XIV plugin, which added a navbar seen in other conventional MMORPGs. If it survives the Patch 7.1 API shift, go and get it. It’s lovely and versatile, and the developer is a cool guy who accepts ko.fi donations! I am not being paid to write that.)