Creative Conversations with Rath Games

Rath Games’s FFXIV moniker of “Solo Only” is ironic, considering the many viewers who tune into his biweekly streams to watch him single-handedly claw his way through as much of Final Fantasy XIV by himself as possible. “No parties, no market board, no retainers, no NPC support, just Solo and his trusty axe Bill,” as Rath narrates in his Solo Only videos. Yet in my conversation with the laid-back but passionately determined creator, I learned that the community which has grown around his challenge series has been just as much a part of his journey as the Funny Final Fantasy XIV Solo Man himself.

Just to get things started, tell me a bit about your history playing FFXIV. What aspects of the game did you enjoy most before getting the idea to start a solo-only challenge?

Hello Eru it’s me stinky gamer 3000xXxslayerxxXx

(I’m keeping that reply in, he can’t make me take it out)

I’ve played FFXIV since Stormblood. I came in around the end of it when Nidhogg scales were still worth a mil each. I’ve always enjoyed the raids for the game and all of the fun fights but I didn’t actually start doing savage or even extremes until Shadowbringers. My first one was Memoria Miseria, then Titan Unreal, both of which I sucked at. I’ve been a shot-caller since I started raiding back then, though I don’t do it anymore.

My favorite part of the game is the Red Mage class BABY YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT WOOOOOOOOOO. I like flips, I like doing cool moves, I like being silly and blinding people, but really it felt very self-sufficient. If my healers are ever focused on tanks I can just pop a heal for myself in between casts. 

For what part of the game I liked most… it’s hard to say, I guess. I was never really into crafting or gathering, I hate fishing, and I suck at decorating so I guess my favorite is the fight structure. I enjoy that every part of a fight feels like an intimate dance rather than just a stat check like in other MMOs I’ve put many hundreds of hours into.

Were there any particular creators who inspired you in your early days of streaming and YouTube, and what did you explore in that earlier work before Solo Only?

I think for Solo specifically Settled was a big influence, but it’s hard to pin down specifics when its really been my whole life watching creators and being inspired to make things by them. I mean I attribute most of my comedic style to videogamedunkey and the Creatures, but I think ever since I started watching creators I wanted to be one, so I guess that means it was paperbatVG that sparked the original inspiration to do it.

And there’s too many to count for older works. It’s nice and clean and easy for me to say Solo Only and Rath Games was my first try and I just took off from there but it’s probably not even within the first ten tries. You can even see that on my channel, some of my old video game review videos, a series I called the Silver Lining, is still up now. That Cube World Silver Lining was the first time I had ever had a video get more than a couple hundred views.

I went through everything. Lets Plays, comedy edited game cuts, reviews, podcasts. Some of my old videos are still up, an entire channel with, I think sixteen year old me? Maybe fourteen? And I still go back to it every once in a while to watch them again.

Even if I look back at any older video and cringe with how bad the editing was or audio quality, I always remember how proud I was to have made it. You have to love your stuff. You have to be the first person that loves what you create. I’m hardest on myself when it comes to video quality, but I’m also my own biggest fan. I go back and binge the solo series occasionally. Because if I can’t make something I’d willingly watch, if I can’t make something that I love and want to see, then who would want to watch that?

From the beginning, you’ve cited Runescape Iron Man challenges as a major inspiration for your XIV solo challenge. Challenge runs in RS/OSRS have become such a backbone of its community that there are support structures for them in the actual game itself. XIV, in contrast, is not “built” for challenge runs in the same way. You had to trailblaze a lot of your rules and boundaries, especially early on. Has that provided an additional hurdle that makes your challenges more difficult, or is the freedom more of a boon for you?

Oh it sucks. There are entire rules that I personally dislike having but need to just to reassure people that I haven’t cheated. It’s like when A Friend did his first “iron man” run before iron man was a supported game mode. He posted the 14+ hour grinds he did as unlisted vods so everyone could verify he wasn’t lying or cheating.

I think retainers would be a super cool way to interact with XIV, but I can’t have retainers – otherwise any money I get immediately feels suspicious. There’s a lot more scrutiny, and a lot more folks saying negative things, when there’s no precedent for it. But in the same way it gives me a lot more angles to how I can handle things, though I’m sure like with OSRS the ruleset would be much more lax than my current one if it was an officially supported game mode.

For some of the things I do, the freedom is great. Lim Sa, Ul dah, Professional Yapper, all exist on their own because of that freedom, but the Solo Only run would honestly be a lot easier and less restrictive. So it’s a give and take I suppose.

So I have to ask about Professional Yapper, your challenge character that you streamed during your Solo Only hiatus while you prepped for Hades. Text and chat command only. A challenge so ridiculous no one in your community even saw it coming. Did you do any research prior to starting Yapper, or did you dive in with a “let’s just try it and see” attitude like you did with Solo?

Yes I did a lot of research actually, she’s one of very few challenges that got it. Normally I do none :^), but this time around it was uh. Well. 

I needed proof of concept first. I needed to know there were enough commands that I could walk around and progress the MSQ. That’s why I knew the /facetarget and /automove commands first thing, and why I started knowing I’d need the exception to progress dialogue. I spent a lot of time digging through until I had the bare minimum. I still don’t know when it becomes too much for me to handle, but I at least knew I could start. 

I honestly thought she’d get somewhere but I’m a bit surprised at how efficiently she got to her first dungeon.

Was that concern of how much scrutiny you’d have to deal with already on the forefront of your mind when you started brainstorming the idea of Solo Only? Challenge runs seem especially ripe for the kind of advice and criticism from viewers that – well-meaning or not – can quickly become exhausting, especially when you’re already throwing yourself into situations where how you’ll succeed is often unknown, or if success is even possible.

Yes absolutely, it is the one and only reason that Retainers are banned. I deal with a lot of personal scrutiny on my own, but as the challenges have grown I’ve gotten a lot of external scrutiny as well which, well, I don’t exactly plop down and say this is the challenge 100% no deviating from this. I normally start when I have a vague idea, then slowly start going piece by piece and adjusting it until I find something that feels good, is possible, and isn’t soul sucking.

You can even see with the start of the Solo Only series, I didn’t decide to do the no quest rewards rule until I was a few levels in and looking at the quest gear you get from the MSQ.

Sometimes it makes it feel arbitrary to others but, to me it’s always purposeful. I want a challenge to be that, a challenge. If something makes it too easy, if something fundamentally changes it, I’ll likely ban it outright just to enjoy the challenge more and not get stuck in 1 method.

There is a certain segment of people that believe they are correct and will state something as fact to me, even though I have previously tried or proven wrong that thing. A huge part of this is the obscurity with some mechanics. Potions, for example. A LOT of people wanted me to use vitality potions or DPS potions earlier on in A Realm Reborn, and while most understood when I told them, “Oh it shares a cooldown timer with HP pots,” there’s a smaller group that would keep pushing saying I’m wrong or I’m using the wrong ones and X would work for it. 

And then for those that are vehemently against it, saying, “Oh there’s no point when it ends at X Y or Z,” I just delete them. Or in actuality it’s almost a driving force – to be pushed forward through spite. And maybe they are right, but… why ruin the journey, why give up the rest, why deny myself the experience just because the answer, 2,000 hours later, is no.

The sort of challenge like Solo Only tends to attract the more hardcore, number-crunching gamers, but from day one you’ve balanced your off-camera intense self-oversight and pre-planning with a generally matter of fact and laid back sensibility on stream, tackling each problem with a “we’ll figure it out when we get there” attitude. Is maintaining that balance important for you?

It’s important for a lot of reasons actually. There’s the half of me that wants everything to be perfect, the one that fights for every inch, and the part of me that just likes to enjoy the moment as it happens. If I didn’t have both I wouldn’t be here.

That desire to be perfect, for the most incredible fight, for the last second victory, to do what everyone thought was impossible, can very quickly drive me to burn out. A lot of the time I pace around once I’ve hit something I don’t know how to get past just walking through every angle I can imagine, and most don’t end up going anywhere. So when I explore things and let myself be relaxed, hoping and knowing “I’ll find a way somehow,” it makes every step a joy, rather than just the victory.

I think your approach has really influenced the XIV solo/challenge community that has built itself around your game.  They are adamant about encouraging players who are interested in soloing to adapt the rules to what makes the challenge accessible and ultimately fun for them. Did you anticipate your solo run encouraging the challenge community to grow both alongside you and, as it has gotten bigger, also independently of you?

I really kind of hoped it would. You can’t make a mountain out of a mole or whatever the saying is I can’t remember. uh. 

I want people to adapt it. For a lot of the start of my challenges I adapt on the fly until I feel comfortable. That’s what makes it fun and not just the worst thing I’ve ever done. And for outside my community, I love to see others succeed. I love seeing new challenges pop up for FFXIV, though it does make me nervous someone will eventually come up with some I have planned and haven’t gotten to yet, more in a competitive way than actually nervous.

It’s a weird aspect you might notice on YouTube now but, the more success people have, the more people around them succeed. OSRS is massive mostly for the amazing quality of content they have, but also because that content has convinced so many people to come back over and over that it becomes central to the kind of videos they’re shown. It’s the same for us here. When we have a boon of dozens of people making XIV challenges or series, expanding out and getting more and more people into the game, it’s not only fun to watch, but also gets people to pop over and see my fun little challenges.

Can non-challenge (so, normal) XIV players can take away any inspiration from your challenge runs for new ways to look at and enjoy the game?

The biggest one by far I want others to take away from this is that games are much more fun when you don’t know what the future holds and you’re discovering your path forward. Maybe try a blind EX day 1 for fun. Go do things without a guide and grab a guide when you feel like you can’t go further. 

Hunt vendors, desynthing for materials, the entire Vril system in the Lakshmi fight… so many fights, so many parts are different because of my restrictions, and I get all of it. I have to have all of it. If I don’t see every detail of a fight I’ve already lost.

Do you think it’s possible to enjoy XIV in the same way now as you did before? Are there things you miss from before Solo days, or do you find your experience has largely improved as your approach to the game has evolved?

It kind of feels like two very different games to me at this point. I’m now at the stage where I enjoy both, but there was definitely a time where I didn’t care for my main anymore. And I definitely prefer how I see the game now. It’s much more fun to be a little gremlin dead on the floor when I know the fight so intimately I could’ve done it on my own.

What has been your favorite moment of your Solo Only challenge that has made your rhetorical 2,000 hours, no matter how it all ultimately ends, worth the journey so far?

There are many. But the most important moment, the one that shines through and made everything worth it was Ifrit. That very first step, level syncing a trial boss, proving that it could be done. And of course, there are many more since then. Bismark, Susano, the twins in the Ghimlyt Dark, Titania.

And soon, Hades.

Even if I had never made it out of A Realm Reborn. The first moments made it all worth it. The battle with Ultima made it all worth it.

Any final thoughts reflecting on your journey as Solo Only?

While I’m secretly working on the Hades clear, away from streams or anyone else, I still have those guttural screams of victory for a hard challenge. Because of the weight that this sort of thing brings… At some point, this stopped being just my silly little challenge, and became my life. Such a massive part of it that the thought of failing is the same as losing a job. Because I mean, it is. It so quickly and secretly became my life – not just a part of it, but all of it.

That I’ve been thinking about this for a while – and that’s my screams of victory, because it bugs me a bit. It’s not like I didn’t yell to celebrate victories while I play video games before, but they are much more guttural, much more emotional, and much heavier, since starting Solo, and I think I finally know why that is.

And y’know, I kind of like that. I’ve always let myself enjoy movies or games or otherwise as openly and emotionally as possible. I purposefully let myself be swayed by whatever emotions the thing on screen is trying to give me, even if it does a terrible job at it. And now I get to feel that even stronger, with the weight of knowing every step I take isn’t just for me, but for thousands of others waiting to see where my foot will land.

You can tune in to Rath’s streams (and videos) on his YouTube and Twitch (streaming Thursdays 6 PM EST and Sundays 2 PM EST) or follow him on Bluesky!