Final Fantasy 16 (XVI) Headwind Walkthrough

Headwind is the 12th main story quest in Final Fantasy 16 (XVI). This walkthrough will guide you through all objectives of the Headwind main scenario chapter.

Starting Location: Caer Norvent
Requirement: Complete The Dead of Night
Reward: None
Quest Info: In their pursuit of the missing Dominant and Lostwing’s Bearers, Clive and Cid must infiltrate a nearby Sanbrequous fortress now teeming with Waloeder soldiers. Fortunately for both of them, Clive knows of a secret entrance.

Objectives:

Find the captives
Defeat Suparna & Chirada
Pursue Benedikta
Defeat Benedikta

Find the captives

At the start of the quest, you’re inside Caer Norvent. Follow the linear path ahead into the dungeon area, then interact with the door at the far end of the cells to open it and progress further.

Keep following the path ahead until you run into enemies. Throughout this whole quest, you’re largely fighting the Waloeder soldiers, so there are not a ton of new mechanics in the individual enemy types other than the couple that are specifically pointed out later. After the first group of enemies, interact with the door on the far side of the room, then the window on the wall opposite the door to progress.

In the outside area, you can take either the path up the stairs to the right or around the path to the left. Both paths lead to the same spot and you fight enemies through both areas, so it doesn’t matter which you pick.

On the other side of either path you’ll run into a miniboss enemy called a Royal Tognvaldr. You’ll run into these enemies throughout the game from this point, and the trick with them is that they have the same moveset as the Midnight Raven boss from earlier. The only difference is that they won’t use Futon and Assassinate, but still use the normal moveset and Raiton and Katon, so keep that in mind as you fight them.

Once they are dealt with, head through the gate behind where they jumped in. Before running up the stairs move slightly to the left where you can find a chest containing the accessory The Favor of Fire (Scarlet Cyclone), which increases Scarlet Cyclone damage. If you’re not already been equipping accessories now is a good time to, as this one is helpful with your current abilities.

You can then head up the stairs to continue to the next area. Here you’re been dealing with a number of waves of soldiers as well as wolves, so make your way around the area and take them out as you can. You’ll also be introduced to the enemy guarding mechanic, where some enemies will guard against your normal attacks. When you see this occur you want to stop attacking them, and hit them with an Eikon ability if possible. If you keep attacking them with normal attacks they’ll counter you’ll, dealing a larger amount of damage.

Once all the waves of enemies are defeated, head through the door at the end of the courtyard, then through the large gate inside the chapel.

Defeat Suparna & Chirada

After some scenes, you’ll be in a miniboss fight against Suparna & Chirada. This is relatively similar to the single fight you had against Chirada prior but against two enemies. At the start of this fight, they’ll be split up on what type of attacks they do though, where Chirada will only do melee attacks, and Suparna will only do ranged attacks. Because of this, you should focus on Chirada, as the ranged attacks are relatively easy to avoid at the same time. The main ones to spot are the long-range attacks that show the beam on the ground. In this fight it will occur in the single beam from Suparna, but will also occur in a number of waves out from the one wall, which you can avoid by just moving in the open spots.

Once you get one of the enemies to mid stagger, they will perform a Cinematic attack, which you need to deal with using an Evade, then an Attack prompt. After this both enemies will be staggered, so continue focussing on the same one.

After this, they will start doing a named attack, called Perfect Storm. During this attack, there will be points on the floor you need to avoid, while Chirada charges at you from across the room. Like most charge attacks, this can be avoided by just moving in one direction and dodging. This will happen 3 times total during the attack period.

Keep focussing the same enemy until one of the enemies is defeated. Once they are, the other will use Inheritance, and they will effectively absorb the power from the other. They’ll then start doing more powerful ranged and melee attacks until the end of the fight. The most notable is that the ranged attack being shot from the walls now happens from both directions, so you need to make sure you are in the square between the shots.

If they are doing melee swings they will also do up to 3 in a row, so if you are attacking between only do the Precision Counter from a single attack then wait for the next one. They don’t get any new ranged attacks, so keep focusing them until the second enemy is defeated.

Pursue Benedikta

After the fight, follow the stairs up to the next area. You can check some side rooms along the way for extra materials, but the main one to check is the room after going across the short bridge. In this room, there are a couple of potions, along with the accessory The Favor of Fire (Heatwave) in a chest.

Keep following the path through the net area. You’ll face a number more soldiers, and be introduced to the enemy Cure mechanic. When you encounter magic wielders they’ll sometimes use Cure on friendly enemies, and if there are more than one they can typically outheal your normal attacks, so you want to focus the magic users first so they don’t just constantly heal each other.

The rest of the path in this section is very linear, through a number of not notable enemies. The final set though is another Royal Tognvaldr along with a couple of wolves. This one works the same as the prior one, but they are more likely to use their named abilities due to the small area this is.

Once they’re dealt with, keep heading through the next area through a couple more enemies to the final boss of the quest.

Defeat Benedikta

After a number of scenes, you’ll have your first real fight against a Dominant. These fights will throw a lot of unique attacks at you at once, so don’t be too worried if you need to be using all your healing during them. In this first bit, Benedikta isn’t fully powered up, and mostly sticks to using ranged Aero variations and ranged attacks. She’ll typically use multiple Aero attacks at once, so don’t try to charge in immediately after the first one.

The other named ranged attack to watch out for in this first section is Wind Blade. This is a low horizontal attack that shoots directly toward you, starting from a line you can see in front of her. This can be dodged through or jumped over, but watch out if you’re really close to her.

After you get her to low health, there will be a short scene where she semi-primes, and you will have a Cinematic Evasion to deal with. After this, she’ll be back to full health and have a bunch of new attacks based on her Eikon powers.

A number of the attacks, like Nosedive, involve her jumping into the air and dropping from above. Nosedive has a visual effect on the ground where she is dropping, so like other attacks like this just move to one side until she hits the ground.

After these moves a lot of the time she won’t stick near you but will continue flying around. She’ll typically shoot a couple of ranged attacks at you, followed by a lunge attack. To avoid these keep circling in the same direction opposite her, dodging to the same side when the ranged attack is about to hit.

After the lunge, she will typically do a set of 3 attacks, which you should wait until she is done attacking and stuck on the ground again before you do anything. After these attack strings, she’ll typically stay on the ground for a bit, which is when you can start attacking.

She’ll also continue doing Aero attacks during this section of the fight, though now she’ll typically do 3 attacks in a row for each version of Aero, so don’t jump into too quick.

If she jumps to the outside of the arena she may start doing an attack called Aero Rain, where she circles the outside of the arena shooting sets of bolts at you. These can be generally avoided without dodging just by circling the arena opposite her, but you can throw an evade in at the end for extra safety.

After this you’ll have seen most of the new attacks, so just keep focusing her until she is staggered where you’ll be able to get the most damage in. After the stagger she’ll perform another Cinematic attack, which you need to Evade, followed by a Strike shortly after where she will be immediately staggered if you are successful with both actions.

After this, she’ll start using an attack called Tornado. There will be a highlighted spot on the ground where after a short period she will summon a large tornado that will damage you if you are inside. To avoid run directly in one direction like normal.

She’ll also have a new two-part attack, starting with Gathering Clouds where she starts sucking in air toward herself, followed by repeating the Rammelfall attack, though not cinematic this time. Avoid it by dodging to the side before it hits the ground.

She will also use Aerial Slash, similar to Wind Blade from earlier, but this is 3 vertical slashes toward you that can be dodged through, followed by the horizontal Wind Blade strikes, though this time multiple in a row, the second which is at dodge height.

This is the rest of her new attacks for now, so keep focusing on her. After she is at about a quarter health left, there will be another Cinematic section where Torgal rejoins you, and there will be two Strike prompts in a row. If successful she will be instantly staggered again.

After that stagger, you will be in the final phase of the fight. She mostly still uses the same attacks, though some variants like a powered-up version of Tornado with a bunch of smaller tornadoes at once, followed by a grab and a number of slams into one spot. The main new attack she can do is Deadly Embrace, where she will quickly try to grab Clive and pull you towards her. If you get hit by the grab you have a very small window to dodge after she drops you, which if you can’t do successfully she’ll initiate a heavily damaging attack called Twister you can’t avoid.

After that, there’s nothing new to see. Keep damaging her to complete the fight, after which you’ll have a number of scenes and earn the story trophy With Great Power.