For quite a while, I've been vaguely interested in playing through the story of Final Fantasy XI.
I'm a rather intense FFXIV fan, and a fair number of other FFXIV players have mentioned that FFXI is also comparable in terms of lore and story. It's also more or less considered "complete", as in all the major expansions and storylines have been released and the game is in what they claim is "maintenance mode", although it appears to be getting a large amount of minor content patches even to this day, so it's a very well-maintained maintenance mode.
A long time back, I did attempt FFXI, and my overriding impression of the game was spending an hour or two trying to find a party, then waiting in some barren sandy area while one member of the party heads out to find and drag one (1) enemy at a time to us, at which point we beat it down, then repeat for hours on end. This was, I was assured, the primary content of MMORPGs at the time, and certainly FFXI in particular. Story content was allegedly meant to be done while overlevelled and just blitzed through. It almost soured me on MMORPGs entirely, until I discovered City Of Heroes and learned that MMORPGs can be interesting.
But hearing people talk about FFXI now, it appears I was simply taught incorrectly at the time. So now, with the advertised "Trust" system, I assume I can use NPC party members to handle what used to be group content that required hours of finding a party. Until now, the biggest obstacle is having to navigate through PlayOnline, but I figured I might as well get on with it rather than procrastinate forever, and I just spent most of an afternoon trying to figure it out, even with an allegedly step-by-step install guide.
Despite the thread prefix, this thread probably won't be a full-featured Let's Play, because I'm not sure how to handle large numbers of images; at the moment I'm using Imgur to host the pictures, but I don't know how tenable this would be if I take a lot of screenshots. So I'll probably just be posting my immediate impressions of whatever is happening at the moment, rather than attempt some sort of narrative.
This is all alarmingly early-2000s.
I'm also open to any spoilers or gameplay advice and tips, if it would help with my experience. My primary purpose in playing FFXI is to explore the world's lore and story, and my secondary purpose is to listen to any good pieces of music.
I know nothing about FFXI, apart from whatever a cursory glance at advertising material shows. I know what the Five Races look like (and that they're called "the Five Races", because that's what the original FFXIV races were based on), and there's apparently a slightly unhinged Tarutaru mage named Shantotto who is the representative of FFXI in most marketing materials, and that is about it. (Oh, and there's a samurai-type woman named Iroha who is the crossover event character in FFXIV.)
The usual advice I've seen is to follow this Quickstart Guide, but it appears to be written by someone who appears to be unusually defensive about FFXI, rather than letting FFXI stand on its own merits. For example, there's a lot of "play whatever class you want", but not a lot about what classes actually play like.
I have no commentary on FFXI - as like you I've only played XIV - but I'd imagine you'll be best-off playing a tank or DPS so that you can direct your Trust team more effectively and help them clear content? I know that playing as a healer in XIV's trust dungeon content is intensely tedious.
(Also I got about 100 words into the quickstart guide you linked and am already having flashbacks to the early 00s; I wouldn't describe the writer as defensive, but as offensive. You're 'mentally defective' if you use standard MMO terminology, apparently.)
Interested to see how you do, though! All I really know about XI is that there was a boss that took like 20+ hours to nearly beat and then Squeenix pulled the plug on the server and restarted it so people couldn't beat it.
I have no commentary on FFXI - as like you I've only played XIV - but I'd imagine you'll be best-off playing a tank or DPS so that you can direct your Trust team more effectively and help them clear content? I know that playing as a healer in XIV's trust dungeon content is intensely tedious.
If it matters, I love playing support classes, and main Healer (SCH, as my userpic implies) in FFXIV, even in FFXIV's Trust system. But I'm okay enough with Tanking and DPS that I can pick those too, since I don't know how differently FFXI plays to FFXIV. I assume, from my hazy recollection, it's based more on "auto-attacks are the primary damage dealt, and ability casts are for special occasions" paradigm of gameplay than the current "always be casting" paradigm.
In keeping with the early 2000s ideas of account security, FFXI recommends that players use the software keyboard to input our password, which is kind of amusing in this modern day of password managers. Still, I assume it's partly based on the original Playstation 2 console limitations, which does persist to this day when trying to input long and complex passwords using a controller.
Anyway, trying to make a proper account in PlayOnline apparently requires me to not just buy a FFXI service account (expected), but also buy a character slot for $1 (not expected). I'm not sure if this is some workaround to make sure the player has a valid payment option for the sub, rather than asking for the payment option straight out when creating the service account. As usual for MMORPGs, the first month is "free" (ie no sub fee), which works out to be a discount for exactly as much as the sub fee would have been. I sense the work of having to migrate an ancient account system to a newer unified one somewhere in the background.
Apart from that, I did have to work on even more fiddly stuff to get the game to some form of modernity, due to the following:
That's the default resolution for screenshots in the native FFXI interface. 512x382 pixels, which I'm pretty sure was small even for 2000s standards. Googling has not given a good way to increase that resolution, other than scary registry edits.
The recommended route according to Google is to install Windower, which is a framework for plugins and addons and thus "violates the FFXI User Agreement", according to Windower's own User Agreement. I don't think Square Enix really cares that much for FFXI, though, since it's such a QoL improvement on an understandably outdated set of UI standards.
On to character creation.
I'm not sure if there's a way to change it, but the default mode of character creation is to have the character model keep moving around with different camera angles, presumably to show the character in motion. This does lead to the issue of not being able to try out various face options in a neutral angle, and occasionally having to wait for the camera to pan around to the front of the character just to see what the face looks like.
Anyway, five races are available: Hume, Elvaan, Tarutaru, Mithra, and Galka. Humes are default humans. Elvaan are the elf equivalents, tall with pointy ears, and like FFXIV's Elezen they suffer from the design decision of small heads on long necks, making them rather giraffe-like. Tarutaru are the hobbit/dwarf short race, and the design progenitor of Lalafells in FFXIV. Mithra are the predecessor of Miqo'te, being catgirls, and in FFXI are female-only. Galka are the big burly race like Roegadyn, although in FFXI lore they're apparently genderless and reproduce by reincarnation; in practical user terms, they're male-only.
Character creation options are fairly limited, even by 2000s standards. After choosing the character's race, the player chooses between eight face types, which includes hairstyle. Each face type also has two hair colour options. Then there's "physical size" of small-medium-large, which does not seem to have any real effect even aesthetically, and that's it for character customization options.
Next is Job selection, where we're presented with six starting Jobs, none of which are explained very well in the game interface. Warrior, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage, and Thief. Most starter guides recommend Monk or Thief, but I'm partial to casters, so I'll try Red Mage. Most starter guides also say this choice doesn't matter much, since players can swap Jobs easily.
Next is choosing a name. There's a "random name" option (by pressing the plus key on the keypad), but it gives me stuff like, well:
Probably better to come up with something less vowelly. Apparently the face option I picked is named "Myo" in the game files, so I go with "Miyoto".
Finally, we pick a server. I don't know how much it matters, since I'm just going to solo most of everything, so I go with Sylph. I recall new players used to not be able to choose their server without having an invite item from existing players, but this has evidently been changed. (I think the server I was on back then was Fairy? Which, upon Googling, was folded into Sylph, so that's a bit of serendipity.)
Unlike FFXIV, starting city does not tie into the starting class, so we get a pick of three options:
The Kingdom of San d'Oria
The Elvaan, a proud race of warriors, forged this kingdom in northern Quon from the fires of civil war. House d'Oraguille has ruled from the fortress city of San d'Oria for over five hundred years.
Two elite chivalric orders keep watch over the kingdom. The Royal Knights patrol its borders, while the Temple Knights maintain peace within the capital. Thanks to their vigilance, no army has ever breached the city within.
This nation was established in southern Quon by the Humes, a people with great technological ingenuity. The president is elected by popular vote. Once a small mining town, the capital city of Bastok prospered when mythril was discovered in the surrounding mountains. In time, it grew into the great industrial power it is today.
In the southern part of the capital live the mighty Galka. They tirelessly work the mines and forges that drive Bastok's economy.
Tribes of Tarutaru from the sweeping grasslands and neighbouring isles of southern Mindartia united to form this league of states. It is governed by a council of representatives from the five ministries of magic, legacies of the five founding tribes. Their decisions are based on the prophecies of the mystic Star Sybil.
The capital, Windurst City, was razed in the war twenty years ago, but this prominent center of learning has since been restored to its former glory.
San d'Oria, Bastok, and Windurst. Immediate impressions are Ishgard, Ul'dah, and Gridania respectively. I'm a little curious to see if this assumption will be challenged as I learn more about the lore.
Also there's a couple of names I figure I should take note of: Quon, which is apparently large enough to have a northern and southern portion that have differing climates, and Mindartia, which I know nothing about. I should probably actually watch the opening cinematic sometime, preferably with subtitles.
The FFXI opening movie. There's a "sentient crystal" (I assume they actually mean "sapient") that blesses the land, and everything was happy until the gods went to sleep for some reason.
In the year 863, there was an invasion by "the Shadowlord" who led "beastmen" to invade. War, invasion, the fall of a city, and refugees failing to escape. The focus character in the cinematic is a boy named Aldo, who managed to escape, but his older sister apparently did not. Flash forward to the current date, "twenty years later", so presumably the year is 883.
I strongly suspect there is a story reason to be revealed about this slumber of the gods, and how this led to the Shadowlord invading the land. Where did the Shadowlord come from? What purpose does he have in invading? Where is he invading, specifically? The cinematic narration calls the Shadowlord's forces "beastmen", but there's a potential lore twist akin to the "beast tribes" labelling in FFXIV, where it's maintained by in-universe racism.
The whole story point about a Shadowlord (or Demon Lord, more often) invading with beastmen is a very standard JRPG cliche, made famous by Dragon Quest, so there's always the possibility that it is exactly how it looks on the surface, but Final Fantasy tends to try to have some sort of extra twist in the formula, starting all the way from Garland/Chaos. The emphasis on the crystal (which I keep wanting to call the Mothercrystal) and the slumber of the gods makes me think there's definitely a connection.
I also suspect we'll be meeting Aldo eventually.
Something I also noticed: the allied forces opposing the beastmen are from San d'Oria, Bastok, Windurst, and Jeuno. I am curious why Jeuno isn't an option for a starting city, which might be due to story reasons, or possibly just coding limiting the starter cities to three and Jeuno not making the cut. On Googling, Jeuno sounds like the Limsa Lominsa equivalent, albeit focused more on trade in general than thalassocracy.
Picking San d'Oria for a starter city:
The fortress city of San d'Oria lies to the north on the great continent of Quon. The beating heart of an ancient kingdom, it is home to a thousand legends past.
But now, her reign of glory is but a memory. Heroes raise shining swords to the heavens no more.
The sun has set on the kingdom of knights. An old lion, never to rise again... Thus do some dismiss her now.
Yet young Elvaan knights still venture proudly into the wilds of Vana'diel, determined to triumph over any foe.
A similarity with FFXIV: the player character is implied to be freshly arrived to their starter city, from parts unknown and undefined. This allows for a greater range of possibilities for character backstories, according to the FFXIV devs. I don't know if the narration changes for players who start in the "origin" cities of their chosen race, or if the character is said to have come from elsewhere even then.
Unlike FFXIV, there's no dialogue box. Or speech bubbles, in comparison to other MMORPGs of the 2000s. Everything is in the chat log, which would probably be a little messy if there's a zillion shout chats going on, but Sylph seems relatively quiet as a server.
Ceraule is the first NPC we meet, and illustrates the immediate situation here in San d'Oria: there are the Temple Knights, who guard the city, and the Royal Knights, who patrol outside the city. A group of Royal Knights have just returned, and Ceraule wants to verify their identities, but the Royal Knights are dismissive of him and the rest of the Temple Knights.
Ceraule's superior, Curilla, arrives and waves the Royal Knights through, while advising Ceraule not to be so uptight with rules and regulations, since the Temple Knights are the "face of San d'Oria", which I take to mean the first impression all visitors have of the city. She also greets me as a new recruit, which may be significant: I don't seem to be treated as a random adventurer mercenary, but rather a recruit of whatever official forces San d'Oria fields. I don't know if this means I'm beholden to the org chart as part of the story, or if it's just how FFXI phrases things.
More worldbuilding, courtesy of Rahal, who's plainly attempting to flirt with Curilla, who coldly shuts him down. We learn the primary day-to-day threat to the city is Orcs, and the armed forces are governed by two princes, Trion and Pieuje. Curilla and Rahal leave to discuss matters, with Curilla firmly insisting on holding the meeting in an official location like the strategy table, rather than Rahal attempting to set up a date.
Already I like Curilla, and dislike Rahal. I'm fully expecting FFXI to subvert my expectations on this, with Rahal if nothing else; Curilla is probably as upright as she seems, but Rahal might have some redeeming features.
Ceraule gives some elaboration: General Curilla's Temple Knights "watches over the city and protects Chateau d'Oraguille". Rahal, whose rank is not given, has his Royal Knights "spy on our enemies and battle fiends". With that done, he asks if I need information, and I'm given two options: shopping or battle. (Or leaving the conversation, but we could always ask him again.)
Telling him we want to shop has Ceraule give us an Adventurer Coupon, to be handed over to someone named Ailevia, in what is presumably the markets.
Who gives us 50 gil for the Adventurer Coupon, and sends us back to the front gate to talk to Alaune, who is clearly the designated tutorial NPC.
As a minor note, Ailevia doesn't automatically take the Adventurer Coupon. Instead, we have to navigate through the menus and use the Trade interface to hand the Adventurer Coupon over. I'm not sure if this is to add verisimilitude to the usage of the game UI, or if it's due to coding limitations at the time.
Alaune teaches us about the Signet buff, which seems to be just something to apply passively and forget about, and food buffs, which are relatively familiar from FFXIV, but the Meat Jerky she gives us has a malus (-1) to INT while giving a bonus (+3) to STR. So it looks like choosing the right food for the class is more important than in FFXIV, where it's mostly just going for the substats.
For the tutorial, Alaune wants me to go level up my Dagger weapon proficiency to 5, in order to learn a new Weapon Skill.
Combat in FFXI is indeed mostly centered around auto-attacks, at least at this early stage. I have one White Magic spell, Dia, which lowers enemy defense and does minor DoT Light-element damage. Various proficiencies like Dagger, Evasion, and Parrying all rise bit by bit as I fight, and I get Dagger 5 quickly enough, learning Wasp Sting, which says it poisons the target. Each time I use a Weapon Skill, it takes 1000 TP, and TP regens moderately quickly but not instantly, so it results in just auto-attacking until I get enough TP to use a Weapon Skill.
When I go back through the San d'Oria gates, a cutscene plays.
Oh hello, Iroha. I recognize you from the crossover event in FFXIV.
Back in San d'Oria, Alaune teaches me about crafting, which works in FFXI by just selecting the Synthesis menu option, picking a elemental crystal, selecting ingredients, then pressing OK to craft. No rotations to worry about here. A couple more tutorials about the Auction House and an XP-increasing Chariot Band, and my next goal is to hit level four.
One of the comments I'd heard about FFXI (from FFXIV streamer Mr Happy, if it matters) is that FFXI did not respect your time, which was fine in the era it was popular, because players didn't respect their own time either. The gist is that if you don't have a couple of hours of playtime free, you can pretty much forget about doing anything in FFXI, simply because the pace is that slow.
I have the impression FFXI deliberately slows down the pace, which includes the speed of navigating through menus. And FFXI's UI is entirely through menus, which makes sense for a Final Fantasy game (which is menu-driven), but kind of falls apart when it comes to MMORPG gameplay. For example, mouse support is barely present, in that it's often quicker to use the keyboard only. Presumably it's even quicker to use a controller, but doing so in this present day would require me to set up DS4Windows and fiddle with the settings.
For example, sometimes when defeating an enemy, they drop a treasure chest (or "treasure casket", according to the label). Blue ones can be opened as is, but brown ones are locked, and require the player to guess a number between 10 and 99 to unlock it. We get five or six tries (the number of tries appears random), and there's an option to use a try to "examine the lock" to give a clue. This clue can be useful like "you have a hunch the second digit is X, Y, or Z", or not very useful like "you have a hunch the first digit is odd". If you guess incorrectly, as long as you have tries left, the game tells you if the target number is less than or greater than the number you picked.
Except every time you use a try, you have to target the chest, interact with it, choose the "attempt to unlock" option, which goes into another menu to choose whether to guess or examine, and if you guess, the game reminds you that the number is between 10 and 99 (which you have to acknowledge) before you can actually enter the number. And after you enter the number, whether right or wrong, the game untargets the chest for you, so you have to target and interact with it again.
After a while, I end up just ignoring the locked treasure caskets, since it's too tedious to open them.
Treasure chest contents so far seem to be the same between locked and unlocked chests; they usually give "temporary items", which are potions or ethers or such. These remain in my inventory only until I change zones, at which point they disappear. Rarely, the chests give equipment, which are not necessarily ones that my current class can use.
Sometimes the chests give multiple items. I have to choose to obtain each item one by one, going through a confirmation prompt every time.
And every time I press an option in the game UI menus, there's a slight but very noticeable lag, making the sheer number of button presses needed to perform simple tasks take even longer.
I'm guessing wildly, but I think all this might be a relic of FFXI's netcode being from the early 2000s, and specifically using the Playstation 2 peripherals. Which means every single action needs to be checked and double-checked by the server, under the assumption that it's an unstable (or metered) connection. So the game can't send a lot of data at once, and needs to slow the player down to manage every possible dropped network packet.
Being a long-running game, FFXI has introduced a great many gameplay systems. I encountered this one by chatting with random NPCs, which is apparently the primary way to obtain quests; no quest markers around. Which might add more "verisimilitude" for some player mindsets, but personally I just Googled up the FFXI game wikis later to look up a list of quest NPCs, so no big deal.
Rolandienne introduces Records Of Eminence, which are akin to the Challenge Logs in FFXIV. Some are one-off tasks, many are repeatable, and all of them give experience points and "Sparks", which are a RoE-specific currency exchangeable for (regular levelling) gear. I'm thinking this might be a catchup mechanic in case players can't earn the gil to buy equipment properly, since the Auction House system might not hold up now that FFXI is in maintenance mode.
It's generally a good idea to keep RoEs going as long as I'm doing anything remotely related to the tasks required, like dealing damage or clearing out enemies in a given area; it's free XP and Sparks.
Also of note is the Mog House. This is accessible apparently from the start, and just needs me to head to any "Residential District" exit marked on the map. The Mog House, by default, provides a fair amount of free storage, as well as the option to add furniture for even more storage. At this time I don't have the gil for furniture, so I'm making do with the (rather spacious) free storage options. The Mog Wardrobe option is essentially the Armoury inventory from FFXIV, letting me store my gear and equip gear directly from there, instead of having to hold it in my main inventory.
The Mog House also contains a Moogle, who can change my main Job, and is apparently the only way I can change Jobs at all. He takes several seconds to load in, which further increases my suspicion that a lot of FFXI's clunkiness is due to ancient netcode.
Looking through the Records Of Eminence tasks, I find one about Trusts. It sends me first to someone named Gondebaud, who in turn sends me to Excenmille.
Excenmille explains Trust Magic as summoning "alter egos" of people I have built a bond of, well, trust in. For "proper" story purposes, this means I have to complete quests or gain reputation ranking in order to summon characters as Trusts; in practice, Records Of Eminence keeps giving me new Trust options at a brisk pace.
I don't know if the original implementation of Trusts required me to do quests for Excenmille, but here he just lets me summon an alter ego of himself, with whom he banters for a bit before sending me back to Gondebaud to finish the quest.
I can summon up to four other Trust characters to help me solo what used to be group content. Right now, I just summon one, Valaineral, who opens every fight with "Uriel's Blade", which looks rather like Circle Of Scorn from FFXIV's PLD, and essentially one-shots every enemy in the starting field areas. I assume his usefulness will drop off as I gain levels, but it's pretty impressive now.
More early 2000s MMORPG-ness: spells are not learned automatically by mages. Instead, I have to buy scrolls (or rarely find them in treasure chests) to teach me the spells. And to buy scrolls, I have to find the actual magic store, in a rather out-of-the-way location in Port San d'Oria. This store is so out-of-the-way that the proprietor gives me a quest to hand out fliers advertising the store location to fifteen NPCs, via the Trade menu. Not just any fifteen NPCs, but fifteen specific NPCs across San d'Oria. The only clue for which NPCs these are is a line in the chatlog saying they "look interested" when I approach them.
Again, this would have been a long and tedious quest if played properly, but I just pulled up a wiki page for the quest and handed over the fliers without too much trouble. I feel this is probably going to be how I approach FFXI quests by default.
Over in North San d'Oria is a cathedral, dedicated to Altana, the Goddess of the Dawn. I'm withholding judgment for now on whether this church is benevolent or creepy, but I admit "When the Gates of Paradise open, the Shining One will lead all San d'Orians to her celestial utopia" sounds a little too fervent in faith. Even Ishgardians weren't as worshipful towards Halone.
The church ranks here are interesting: lay brothers are "Friars", but the vicar post is titled "Vicasque", and there's mention of a "Papsque" Shamonde, who is probably the Pope-equivalent, unless there's another church rank I don't know about that might fit better.
Vicasque Arnau does not give a sermon (being indefinitely "preparing shortly") until I complete a fetch quest from one of the friars, to fill a waterskin with river water to be blessed.
In the meantime, I wander around the city talking to random NPCs, and encounter a surprisingly informative scholar named Villion.
Ever heard of the elements, the most primal forms of energy? There are eight in all.
Behold, they are like a wheel, with arrows forming a circle. This shows how the myriad elements relate to one another.
They are like six serpents in a circle, each biting the tail of the one before it.
I will explain simply. Water puts out fire, whilst the heat of fire melts ice.
Ice blocks wind, whilst wind wears away at earth. Can you see it right there?
Earth steals energy from lightning, whilst lightning throws its bolts into water.
Light and darkness occupy the center. They are in mutual opposition, for one cannot be both at once.
The same six elements in a circle, but arranged differently, along with a different justification for their placement. And Light and Dark are more like polarities than separate elements in themselves, as explained in Shadowbringers. The Earth-Lightning-Water relationship still holds in FFXIV, but the Fire-Ice-Wind relationship doesn't follow the one from FFXI. Which probably tripped up a lot of veteran FFXI players doing Eureka content in FFXIV, since that follows the FFXIV elemental wheel rather than the FFXI one.
Villion also explains how the elements are tied to status effects:
Very good! Fire causes disease, ice paralysis, wind silence, earth petrification, lightning stun, and water poison.
Then there is charm, which is caused by light, whilst blindness, curse, and sleep are all the domain of darkness.
Therefore, armour and accessories that resist certain elements also help you avoid status ailments caused by those elements.
It does kind of sound like the devs had to assign the status effects to elements evenly, and just threw together whatever sounded plausible enough. "Fire causes disease" is probably the oddest justification.
Anyway, after doing the fetch quest for the friar (and closing the game client to adjust UI scaling, since it cannot be done in-game), Vicasque Arnau gives his sermon.
The mention of peas is another fetch quest hook, namely delivering peas to a friar out in the wilderness, because his oath of poverty involves eating nothing but peas.
The sermon is quite standard, talking about a promised land for true believers, and adding a clause to be generous to others while renouncing greed. The church of Altana seems to be harmless at the moment, focusing on improving oneself and society instead of going on righteous crusades or some such. I do note that we don't actually hear any stories about Altana herself, or any activities she may have done to display her divinity, but that might just be something that will be elaborated upon later.
Unrelated, but as I collect the peas and head out, I continue to gain more Trusts from the Records Of Eminence.
Tenzen the FFXI original, looking very much like his cameo counterpart in FFXIV's lore. I'm curious if his role in FFXI will involve anything like the Four Lords of FFXIV, or when I'll actually get to meet him properly.
How does the actual gameplay feel? Is it similar to XIV or is it just as awkward and clunky as the rest of it looks?
(Also there is a method to reliably do the chest puzzle but from the sounds of it it's just not worth putting the effort in. You just pick the halfway point every time and narrow it down by 50% each guess; so you start at 49 and then you go for either 74 or 24 depending on whether you get high or low and so on.)
How does the actual gameplay feel? Is it similar to XIV or is it just as awkward and clunky as the rest of it looks?
(Also there is a method to reliably do the chest puzzle but from the sounds of it it's just not worth putting the effort in. You just pick the halfway point every time and narrow it down by 50% each guess; so you start at 49 and then you go for either 74 or 24 depending on whether you get high or low and so on.)
Yeah, the chest puzzle I just leave to an addon for Windower, which might be visible on some of my screenshots: "boxdestroyer", which is something like a solver to tell me what number to try, or if I should look for more hints instead. It's not infallible, but at least I don't have to engage my brain all the time for that.
As for gameplay, the best way I can put it is it's clunky, but in a way where I can understand why the clunkiness was made that way. Apart from the suspected ancient netcode problems, the UI also only really works if I play on a controller. (Enough that I took some time to set up my PS4 controller for FFXI, although I suspect the "native support" is a little glitchy.) With a controller, the UI makes sense; on KBM, it's clunky and awkward.
The usual manner of combat goes as such: upon seeing enemy. I target it, and then open the action menu (which is tied to the Confirm button):
The left example is when I open the action menu while targeting an enemy critter, and the right example is when I choose "Attack". The game takes a second or two to convert from the first to the second, which I suspect is another netcode thing.
Since at this low level I only have melee attacks, I have to close in to the enemy. This becomes tricky if the enemy happens to be moving, which they do in the usual "critters wandering around their spawn point" way. I also have to be facing the enemy, or I'll get an error message saying "Unable to see (target)".
If everything lines up right, I start auto-attacking the enemy. Weapon Skills require TP to use, and TP builds up with every auto-attack, so I can't blast enemies immediately with them. TP is retained between battles, but resets upon zoning, and also drains quickly when Resting. Even if I have enough TP (1000) to use a Weapon Skill, I have to be in combat first before I can use it, which means I need to at least get enemy aggro, which in turn means at these low levels that I have to auto-attack first.
Magic can also be chosen from the action menu. Pressing the "Magic" menu option brings up a list of every spell I can use on my class, which gets unwieldy if I'm on RDM and thus can use lots of spells. Pressing right on the "Magic" menu option (either on the controller D-pad or on the keyboard arrows) opens up more menu options that divide the spells by category. Again, intuitive when on controller, but awkward on keyboard.
I don't have to attack the enemy first to cast magic on them, so it's a valid opener. However, casting offensive magic on an enemy does not put me into attack mode, so I have to manually press "Attack" anyway after that opening spell.
There's also a "Check" option, which is the only way to determine enemy levels, and even then only vaguely. Upon using "Check", I get a message like "It seems like a decent challenge" or "It seems like easy prey" or some such, which is relative to my own current Job level. Too high and the message is "impossible to gauge", too low (I think about ten levels?) and the message is "too weak to be worthwhile". If the enemy level is too low, it doesn't give any XP or rewards, which will cause certain issues I'll mention in the next post.
Therefore, the gameplay loop is to look for enemies, find a likely one, Check its level, and if it's worth fighting, go forward and initiate auto-attack. Wait for auto-attacks to build up enough TP, or start using MP to cast spells, until the enemy dies. Repeat.
Since quests and missions do not give XP, this is the way to actually gain levels outside of the Records Of Eminence. So it's kind of grindy, which is exacerbated by two factors: first is the Rest (or Heal, in this game) mechanic. You can press a button (numpad asterisk, Ctrl+H, or gamepad L3 by default) to kneel down and rest. You don't actually start recovering any HP or MP until twenty seconds of inactivity has passed, and each healing tick happens every ten seconds after that. So if you're down to maybe half HP and MP after a tough battle, you might end up kneeling in one spot for over a minute just to regen to full. I'm assuming this is because Resting is a last resort, and the intended manner of recovery is through items.
The second is that compared to FFXIV's Eureka, which many said was a very FFXI-like experience, enemy spawns in FFXI's overworld are barren. Sometimes there's a cluster of like five or six enemies in one location (none of which are tethered together, so I can cast a ranged spell to pull them one at a time), but most of the time it takes some walking to even spot an enemy. One of the dangers of Eureka is how easily players can get aggroed, and how to thread through enemy spawns, but in FFXI I can just auto-run through the wilderness and chances are I won't be in range to aggro anything.
(There's a caveat in that I think part of the barren-ness is due to what I suspect are bots roaming around defeating critters. I think they're bots, because they act in ways that are very odd if they were real people: zooming around to the nearest enemy and two-shotting them, but if I happen to be fighting that enemy, they just zoom up and stare fixedly at the enemy, which makes me think their script can't handle when an enemy critter is claimed by another player.)
So overall the gameplay is understandable, if viewed through the context of an early-2000s game intended to be played on the Playstation 2, and careful not to tax that system too much. But objectively, yes, it's very clunky.
In FFXI, there are two types of quests: one is categorized as "quests", and are just sidequests. Occasionally there's a sidequest series (the church bit is an example: I had to get some blessed river water first to hear the Vicasque's sermon, which gave me another quest to deliver peas to a friar in the field), but in general they're one-off quests that just flesh out the world. The equivalent of yellow quests in FFXIV, although in FFXI, doing quests increases the "Fame" level of the player character in that city. Higher fame means more quests open up, and according to wikis also better prices for buying from merchants.
FFXI also has "missions", and these appear to be the equivalent of FFXIV's Main Scenario Questline: the primary story, at least for the current area. I had missed the existence of these until I read up on the wikis, because to start them I had to speak with "any Gate Guard", but "Gate Guard" does not mean any guard who happens to be standing in front of a gate. Instead, they mean the guards who are standing in front of the gatehouse next to the gates.
Presumably the intent was for new players to start interacting with every NPC they encounter starting from proximity, but this is less clear in the present FFXI: the area around the gate (and gatehouse) is full of NPCs, many of whom have nothing to do with new players, but are instead convenient NPCs for later gameplay mechanics added into the game (like "Voidwatchers", which I'm still not sure about).
My first story mission is to go hunt down Orcs, in search of a specific drop. I've seen these Orcs around in the starting field areas, and they're about level 5 (or at least require level 5 or so to have a good chance of defeating), so that's probably the game's way of telling players that we need to level up to handle some quests.
Which brings up the issue mentioned earlier about overlevelling: drops from enemies can only be obtained if the enemy is within the level range to give XP. So if I'm overlevelled on a class, I can't get the drop. And with the increased levelling rate of present-day FFXI, it's very easy to be overlevelled.
I head back to the Mog House and swap to another class (BLM), and level it up to collect the necessary item, an "Orcish axe". Which is an actual equippable item, although the stats are kind of bad, and I can't use it on my classes anyway. The drop is not guaranteed, so I'm overlevelled again by the time I get one. Given I don't have a way to sync my level down solo, I suspect this might turn into a problem if I try to level many classes at once.
Handing in the Orcish axe (via the Trade interface), I get another cutscene.
Rochefogne reminds me uncannily of FFXIV's Aymeric, mainly in the colour scheme and "generally handsome black-haired Elezen/Elvaan" appearance.
Endracion: Oh, you're back. Well, if you're so happy you defeated an Orc or two, you've a long way ahead of you! For one so new, I'd be... Hmm?
Rochefogne: Lord knight, forgive this interruption, but there is something I must ask of you.
R: I question whether Queen Leaute truly passed away fifteen years past. Tell me, of what cause did she die?
E: Who are you, and why do you pry with such inquiries?
R: Please, I have travelled from afar to see Her Highness!
E: You've what!? Very well. Listen closely. Fifteen years ago, Queen Leaute fell to a rare sickness. She left this world before we could save her.
R: Ah, so an illness claimed her life.
E: Well, it's none of your concern at any rate. Even if she lived, an adventurer like you could never see her, much less the inside of Chateau d'Oraguille.
R: Er... What was the name of her illness?
E: We are not told such things. Only the royal family would know.
R: Is that so? Well, I thank you for your kindness, proud knight of San d'Oria.
Lore we learned: the former Queen of San d'Oria was Queen Leaute, and "everyone knows" she died from an unspecified illness fifteen years ago, with no more details given to most people. Rochefogne clearly thinks this is sus, although I don't know if he truly didn't know about Leaute's death, or if he was faking it to gain information.
Also, this inquiry rattles Endracion (or any of the interchangeable Gate Guards who give these missions) enough that he goes from "you're just a newbie" to "Excellent form, my friend!" I don't think Endracion knows any more than what he told Rochefogne, but having to suspect the official story clearly unsettles him.
As the screenshot implies, I can take the first mission ("Smash the Orcish scouts") repeatedly, which presumably helps raise my Ranking in San d'Oria, which is a different mechanic from Fame. Orcs now have a chance to drop Orcish axes, and I can turn them in to complete the mission on the spot. There's no reward other than Rank Points, and the Orcish axe cannot be sold on the Auction House, so the only alternative is to vendor it. And Rank Points can, as I later learn, be obtained in much easier ways.
The next mission is to go to King Ranperre's Tomb, which is off to the south of East Ronfaure (one of the two starter field locations from San d'Oria, the other being West Ronfaure). Signs of the grave being disturbed have been reported, and we are tasked with investigating and returning with proof of the culprits.
King Ranperre's Tomb is considered a "dungeon" zone. I don't actually know how this differs from "field" zones, other than having some cave-like tunnels; I assume other "dungeons" are similarly enclosed, perhaps in buildings or ruins.
Some distance in, I encounter the actual gravestone of King Ranperre. Interacting with it starts a cutscene, where Rochefogne walks up and my character quickly hides behind the gravestone.
Rochefogne: Hm... King Ranperre... It is I, Rochefogne. Does Your Majesty not remember me? Often in youth did I hear stories of Your Majesty's glorious reign. I longed to grow into a man like the great Dragon King, Ranperre.
R: Try though I did, I have failed. I have lost everything, even the most sacred of possessions. I... Your Majesty, please tell me. Whence has the sword disappeared? Did you dismiss it?
At this point we step out from behind the gravestone, and after a moment of surprise, Rochefogne calms down, and agrees that "of late many of the cairns are missing".
We are interrupted by Vauderame, whose face I didn't get a screenshot of in time. He bluntly tells us to "look no further than bats" for the proof we need, and orders Rochefogne to leave with him. Rochefogne complies silently.
Clearly there's some shenanigans afoot. There's something about a sword, Vauderame seems to have some authority over Rochefogne, and I don't know how to interpret Rochefogne's conversation with Ranperre's grave. Ranperre lived (and died) two hundred years ago, and I don't think Rochefogne is some unaging Elvaan, since he claimed to want to meet Queen Leaute, who died fifteen years ago. Maybe Rochefogne just has a habit of talking to Ranperre's grave to psych himself up, with his clear hero worship of Ranperre's legend.
I'm trying not to let my immediate reaction to the title "Dragon King" influence my opinions, given the similarities of San d'Oria to Ishgard and the Dragonsong Reprise Ultimate.
Here another instance of the problem of overlevelling occurs: the enemies that drop the necessary item, "a handful of Orcish Mail scales", are Ding Bats, which are among the lower-level enemies found in King Ranperre's Tomb. By the time I reached the interactable gravestone, I had overlevelled again, and thus had to go back to San d'Oria's Mog House to swap to a new class (MNK) to get the item. Even worse, when I checked my combat log, apparently I did get the Orcish Mail Scales before interacting with the gravestone... except my inventory was full at 30/30 slots, because Trust Valaineral opens with a wide AoE attack that one-shots everything around, and my inventory filled up, letting the overflow into the "Recycle Bag" excess slots. And after I interacted with the gravestone, that counts as "zoning", so the Recycle Bag emptied out, while I was overlevelled enough to no longer get drops from Ding Bats.
Eventually I get the drop properly, and I head back to Trade it with the nearest Gate Guard.
Apparently all Gate Guards share the same hive mind.
EDIT: Correction to an assumption I made: according to what I've managed to Google, apparently enemies do drop their stuff even if I'm overlevelled. It's just that drop rates in general are terrible, and I was simply lucky enough to see a bunch of drops from enemies of my level range, while never seeing a single one from enemies outside of it.
Incidentally, given the time of year, FFXI also has its Valentione's Day event going on. There are a bunch of "Valentione's Single" NPCs scattered around for that purpose, and there's instructions from the Moogle about matching chocolate halves or something. I didn't put much thought into it or attempt to participate, because it became clear this is not a quest event I could complete solo; it requires at the least two players, each playing different gender characters.
Back to San d'Orian missions, Endracion is preoccupied by an emergency: a boy named Tedimout, a friar in training, has been kidnapped by Orcs. Normally the Royal Knights would be mobilized to mount a rescue mission, but that would require a command from Prince Trion, who is "away in the north" and thus not present. And Prince Pieuje is considering sending his Temple Knights, despite their role as city guards only.
At this point Endracion is desperate for someone to cut through this bureaucratic delay, and a free adventurer like us (despite our being called "recruit" even now) is the best option at the moment. He sends us to the cathedral to get a description of Tedimout.
Vicasque Arnau is pleased to see us, and talks about Tedimout's good works; presumably we also get a physical description "offscreen" in the middle of this dialogue. Also I think I was actually supposed to go through these first missions to introduce me to the rest of the city, rather than wandering around myself and meeting people out of story order. This is likely the "introduction to the cathedral of Altana" mission.
While Arnau beseeches us to rescue Tedimout, we are interrupted by Prince Pieuje and Papsque Shamonde, ie both our superiors (at least in our current role as representative of the Temple Knights).
Pieuje: Vicasque Arnau, I've come to talk to you about the missing acolyte. It seems his disappearance may not have been the Orcs' doing after all.
Shamonde: That is correct, Your Highness. I hear that Tedimout sometimes went into the forest to look for herbs. Let us not jump to conclusions. Perhaps Tedimout set out on his own... for an extended hike, for example! Temple Knights are sent out only in special cases. First, we must know more!
P: You speak the truth, Your Holiness. The citadel cannot be emptied of Temple Knights for so uncertain a cause.
Arnau: I understand, of course. However... If it were true that Tedimout did happen to be kidnapped by Orcs, surely we could not simply let him die?
P: No, of course not. I have decided to send an adventurer. If she finds that Orcs do hold the boy, then the Temple Knights will be there to claim him.
A: I understand, Your Highness. I am very thankful.
Only after all this does Pieuje notice our presence.
It's a little unclear, but I think the implication is Pieuje only heard that we, a random adventurer, had expressed interest in helping rescue Tedimout, but didn't know who we actually were. Once he knew that we were the ones who volunteered at the gatehouse, he gave us a formal order to do what we were about to do anyway.
The alternative interpretation (which I had assumed at first) was that Pieuje had sent another NPC adventurer to investigate, and since we're here he decided to duplicate the order just in case. Either way it reads strangely, so I can only assume it's a bit of a glitch with event flags.
In any case, Shamonde and Pieuje are obviously sus here. They're clearly in cahoots in some scheme or other, although it's not clear yet why they're so insistent on leaving Tedimout in the hands of the Orcs. From Arnau's description, Tedimout doesn't sound like he knows some dangerous secret or something; he's just a friar in training who happened to be unfortunate enough to be kidnapped by Orcs.
Ghelsba Outpost is the zone northwest of West Ronfaure. The small hut in question is fairly easily found, being one of the very few landmarks in the area. Clicking on the hut door warns me that I am about to enter an instanced area, which the wikis call a "BCNM": "Burning Circle Notorious Monster", ie a boss arena.
Inside are three named Orcs: Fodderchief Vokdek, Sureshot Snatget, and Strongarm Zodvad. I don't know what each of them do, because they don't aggro until I approach, which means I can spend the time to summon my Trusts, who wipe them out in one shot.
Vokdek blusters a bit more before disappearing in a circle of sparklies. I don't know if this represents him dying and despawning, or if he's teleporting out.
We're sent back to our initial spot outside the hut, and interacting with the door again initiates a cutscene.
Prince Trion praises us for our heroics, but I am still a little wary about him; he sounds like he's more into glory-seeking and one-upping his brother than actually being concerned about the populace. Still, at least he's here, and we open the door to the hut to find Tedimout.
Tedimout uses a standard NPC Elvaan child model, of which there are plenty in San d'Oria. I'm not sure I would have been able to pick him out of a crowd, without the nameplate. Trion checks the boy's safety, and sends us back ahead. Tedimout does seem sincere enough about this rescue at least, and Tedimout is glad enough to see him that he thanks Trion instead of us. Maybe this is due to coding limitations resulting in NPCs not really being able to acknowledge us by name in cutscenes, or maybe Trion has enough public support that Tedimout recognizes him, while we're just an unknown adventurer.
Back in San d'Oria, Endracion congratulates us on a successful rescue, as well as Trion mentioning our contribution. So at least Trion is already more trustworthy than Pieuje, given Pieuje's actions earlier.
Speaking of which, Endracion also tells us Vicasque Arnau wants to thank us in person if we're interested. Mechanics-wise, I think we don't actually need to go to the cathedral, since our city ranking is already raised and we can (technically) take the next mission. But we're here for the story, so of course we go to the cathedral.
Okay, never mind my speculation about coding limitations: the game is perfectly able to acknowledge your character's name. And Tedimout does thank us here, so maybe back at the hut he was just latching onto the person he recognized, ie Prince Trion.
And up in the balcony, the Papsque, predictably, is being all evil and scheming and "how dare this meddling adventurer meddle".
After the excitement with the rescue mission, things appear quiet in San d'Oria. So Endracion suggests joining in the Temple Knights drills, specifically a rescue drill.
On the one hand, this is a bit far afield to the Temple Knights' stated role of city and palace guards. On the other hand, given what happened with Tedimout, I can understand the Temple Knights deciding that rescue missions do get priority regardless of department, especially if the Tedimout situation happens again, where Trion of the Royal Knights is absent and cannot give orders.
Also on a game-mechanic side, to actually start the Rank 2 missions, I apparently had gain at least one point in Rank 2 before I am offered any missions. While the "intended" method is probably to redo one of the earlier repeatable missions (eg get an Orcish axe and turn it in for the first mission), the wikis suggest Trading at least one crystal to the guards who are able to cast Signet, ie the ones with initials after their names like "T.K." (standing for Temple Knights), "W.W." (War Warlocks, for Windurst), or "I.M" (Iron Musketeers, for Bastok).
So of course I Trade a stack of twelve crystals, and that is enough to fill the Rank 2 bar all the way, with the excess being converted to Conquest Points (whatever that means). So technically I don't need to do any missions other than the rank-up mission, but we're here for the story.
I've actually been to La Theine Plateau before, on behalf of the tutorial NPC Alaune. As Endracion says, it's to the south of West Ronfaure, so it's the natural next zone to explore. La Theine Plateau big, taking a long time to traverse. Enemy spawns are still kind of sparse, so it's often a case of just mindlessly trekking across low-textured ground. PS2 limitations, and all that.
There's a big weird structure in the middle of the eastern half of the zone, called the Crag of Holla. Alaune's tutorial quest (which was the last she offers) is to head there, interact with one of the crystals around there (which gives a "Holla Gate Crystal" key item), and return with it in my possession. Like many FFXI quests, the objective is simple, but the execution requires some preparation via levelling enough that I don't die from the critters there. The key item allegedly allows for teleportation straight there, although it requires a spell that the wikis say is a level 36 WHM (and WHM only) spell. According to the wikis, that spell allows for the teleportation of an entire party, and is a significant reason for the demand for WHMs in parties.
On this revisit, I have to go look for one NPC in this vast zone, which Endracion did not name, so that's presumably another aspect of the game that was supposed to engender "social interactions" by new players yelling in shout chat about where to go.
Which is an odd design decision, because once we actually find Galaihaurat, he gives rather good directions down the nearby valley, and along the way are other NPCs, Equesobillot and Deaufrain, who keep pointing us (literally using the /point emote) the right way.
Eventually we meet Vicorpasse, who reveals the embarrassing situation: their rescue drill might have become a rescue mission, since one of the soldiers playing the "injured" role has actually gone missing. Joining in the search mission, we walk along the valley, which is mostly just one path, encountering more NPCs along the way who are also searching for the missing soldier.
Culminating in Narvecaint, who beckons us over to check out a cave entrance. As in, the NPC runs up into view when we approach the rise, delivers his line, then runs back the way he came. This is a surprising level of scripted actions outside of a cutscene, and I didn't expect it in FFXI, which has been fairly conservative with its NPC action coding thus far.
The cave entrance leads to the dungeon zone, Ordelle's Caves. I don't know who Ordelle was or why these caves are named after them, but we do find our missing soldier not far fron the entrance.
Ruillont refuses to follow us out of the cave, claiming that as a knight, he cannot be rescued "by some passerby", due to pride and honour and all that. Instead, he wants us to collect his sword from safekeeping, upon which he will fight his way out himself. We evidently have no comment about the wisdom of this plan, as our next step is to head back out and ask every NPC along the way if they have Ruillont's sword. According to the wiki, Ruillont's sword is held by one of three NPCs, namely the ones who pointed us down this valley: Deaufrain, Equesbillot, or Galaihaurat. So of course, the sword is held by Galaihaurat.
I like how Galaihaurat immediately believes our story the moment he hears that Ruillont refused our help. He hands over a Bronze Sword, so we go all the way back down to Ordelle's Caves to Trade it to Ruillont, who tells us in turn to go report mission success to his captain.
In contrast to Galaihaurat, Vicorpasse is proud of Ruillont's refusal. Very much the same sort of "honour beyond reason" silliness that Ishgard's knights got up to.
Vicorpasse hands us a Rescue Training Certificate, because according to him, venturing into the caves is way more difficult than participating in a drill, so we've more than earned it. We return all the way back to San d'Oria, where our gate guard contact Endracion congratulates us on a job well done.
Due to my handing over the stack of crystals earlier, we can access the next mission immediately.
The Orcs' stronghold is in Davoi, so it's vital that we stop them from massing, or they may launch an assault.
Of course, the Orcs are keeping an eye on us, too. Why, just a few days past, a squad of our Royal Knights fell to their axes.
Prince Trion has ordered scouts from the Royal Knights to Davoi, while Prince Pieuje ordered scouts from the Temple Knights. It's like the right hand knows not what the left is doing!
Monarlais Halver is furious, but first he needs knowledge. You must find the scout from the Temple Knights, receive his scouting report, and return that report to the monarlais.
New title learned: "monarlais". I'm not sure what this means, but it's clearly not "monarch". Probably some sort of prime minister or chancellor? High-ranking enough to act on his own initiative when it comes to matters of state, but not so high-ranking that he can scold the princes outright. The split in chain of commands mentioned by Ceraule back in the beginning is reiterated here; coupled with the issues during the Tedimout rescue, it's clear that San d'Oria has trouble properly executing missions without having politics interfere.
To reach Davoi, I return to the La Theine Plateau, then continue east to zone into Jugner Forest. By this time, the average enemy levels have risen to about 20. From Jugner Forest, I head down the first southern zone exit into the dungeon zone Davoi.
The Temple Knight scout, Zantaviat, is directly at the entrance of Davoi. He had prepared a report and given it to another officer, but the unnamed (and unseen) officer dropped it. So we have to head slightly deeper into the zone to retrieve it, while "the Orcs have doubled their forces in the area", explaining why Zantaviat hasn't tried getting the report himself.
Zantaviat warns us that a direct assault is too dangerous, and to sneak in unnoticed to collect the report. This is probably good advice at the time, when levelling was much more difficult. As it was, the average level of enemies here is about 25, which happened to be around my level. So I could just walk in, clear out the enemies around the area one by one, and then slowly search for an interactable spot. I think this is supposed to teach players how to sneak around dangerous areas, so my not doing so might end up causing me issues later.
We bring the report back to Zantaviat, who tells us to hand it directly to Prince Pieuje. Going all the way back to San d'Oria, we check in with Endracion, who tells us that Pieuje is in the cathedral. Arriving there, we head up the stairs to the second floor balcony, where there is a room labelled "Papal Chamber".
Shamonde: How dare you! Eavesdropping on the papsque as he entertains the prince!
Pieuje: No, it is all right, Your Holiness. You came to deliver the report, yes? Well, let us see it. So... The Orcs are searching for something. What it is we cannot say. This requires further delving. Thank you, Miyoto. I will inform the gatehouse knight that your mission is complete.
I assumed we at least knocked, so I don't know why Papsque Shamonde thinks we're eavesdropping. Meanwhile, Pieuje is rather chill for someone who may have been caught scheming; he doesn't seem to care if anyone hears him, and he's friendly enough to stop the Papsque yelling at us. I don't know if this is because Pieuje honestly does not believe he is doing anything shady, or if he's simply that chill by default, even when potentially committing crimes.
It's an interesting contrast to Shamonde's rather standard Evil Pope thing. Shamonde and Pieuje were willing to ignore Tedimout's plight, but Pieuje had authorized us to go investigate anyway, while our success in doing so apparently set back Shamonde's plans. Is Shamonde using Pieuje, while Pieuje is ignorant or uncaring about being a pawn? Are they equals in the conspiracy, and Pieuje just thinks he's protected from any consequences? Are they actually working at cross-purposes, and Shamonde only thinks that he has Pieuje's support?
At the moment, neither Trion nor Pieuje are completely trustworthy, their politeness to the player character aside, but I'm not sure if I would consider them evil as such. Trion seems more glory-seeking, and Pieuje seems more overly flippant, which are character flaws that might be penalties to any considerations about succeeding the throne, but are not that terrible either. Papsque Shamonde is a much more obvious villain, but too obvious; he's more like the small-time villain who thinks he's more of a mastermind than he really is, while being manipulated by someone higher up the conspiracy. Given the presentation so far, the prime suspect is Prince Pieuje, thus making his easy-going nature a mask for deeper evil. However, this might be overthinking it, and Shamonde is a small-time villain because this is just the city-specific story arc.
The next mission from the San d'Oria has the Gate Guard (Endracion, as usual) simply pass a message that Monarlais Halver is looking for an adventurer for a mission. I like that by now Endracion just goes "oh, it's you", since we've done a few missions for him (or the Gate Guard hive mind, in general) by now, and he knows we're competent enough to complete missions. No more "hey recruit" or "just a newbie".
Halver is located inside the Chateau d'Oraguille zone, ie the royal palace, which up until now I don't think I could enter. Now that I have permission to talk to Halver, I can take missions from various people inside, including Curilla from the intro cutscene; she's in the Temple Knight quarters, for instance. For now I leave it be, since I have a rather long and grueling journey ahead of me.
Ah, you are Miyoto, are you not? I've heard word of you from the gatehouse. We've got a mission for you -- a special mission.
Our scouts say the beastmen are rising again... Not just here, but in lands abroad. We want you to go to Bastok and Windurst and see how they fare.
While there, you can be recognized by both nations, with an Adventurer's Certificate. Not a bad deal, it it?
I hereby order you on official business. Visit the two countries of Bastok and Windurst, and receive recognition as an adventurer.
Here is a letter of introduction to the consulates of San d'Oria. Just hand it to the consul, and they'll know what to do with you.
The consulate will give you further orders. Once both countries have given you official recognition, come back here. I will issue you your Adventurer's Certificate.
This will be your first journey abroad, Miyoto, no? None can tell what adventures await. Take care, and come home safe.
This is the part of the FFXI MSQ where I am to visit the other starter cities. I've already seen the Consulates for Bastok and Windurst in the Northern San d'Oria district, so I assume the other city starting MSQs also have equivalent missions.
Now, in FFXIV, we visit Limsa Lominsa, Gridania, and Ul'dah at level 15, and are given the use of free airship rides to do so. So the player is clear on how they can go from one city to another, and perhaps spend a bit of time on their own initiative to explore the zones outside the cities.
Not so in FFXI. I am told that I have to go visit these other cities, and that's it. Actually finding my way there is entirely up to me. Therefore, I have to consult the wikis once more, this time with a bit of research: I have to wiki-walk trace my way through zone connections to find out how to go from San d'Oria to the other cities.
Take Bastok, which I decide as my first stop. From San d'Oria, I have to go through West Ronfaure, La Theine Plateau, Valkurm Dunes, Konschtat Highlands, North Gustaberg, South Gustaberg, and finally to Bastok. Of these, Valkurm Dunes is the highest level zone, with enemies around 15-25. So if I want to survive getting to Bastok without getting flattened by high-level enemies, I have to level to around 25. And then it goes back down in levels at Konschtat Highlands, which is the "next step" zone like La Theine, down to starter field zones in Gustaberg.
As a bit of background, Valkurm Dunes is apparently one of the more notorious zones in FFXI, known for the level grind parties that made up much of classic FFXI gameplay. FFXI veterans tend to talk a lot about "the Valkurm Dunes experience", which I suspect is what I went through back then, as described in my first post. When I actually reach Valkurm Dunes, I don't really recognize it, but that could be due to fading memories.
Valkurm Dunes is actually visually more interesting than I expected. The name implies a desert, but it's actually a seashore, with sand and sandstone dunes. Over in the middle south is a zone exit to a town area, labelled Selbina.
Selbina is a port town, with a ferry to another town called Mhaura. According to the wikis, if I wanted to go to Windurst on the neighbouring continent of Mindartia, I have to take that ferry, head to Mhaura, and go through the same lowering-level progression of zones to Windurst. So it's a good idea to get accustomed to Selbina for now.
The intro cutscene to Selbina has Esteban accost me to inform me about a job the mayor needs doing. He points me to another NPC named Flandiace, but Flandiace is just a generic direction-giving NPC who points the way to the mayor's residence, which makes me wonder why Esteban didn't do so himself. Possibly coding limitations.
Inside the mayor's residence, we can talk to the receptionist, Naillina, to learn some generic background lore about Selbina: it was established by Bastok as a port town for ships carrying Gustaberg ore. During the Great War (I assume the Crystal War mentioned in the "twenty years ago" opening cinematic), Selbina declared neutrality, and has been independent to this day. While Selbina has the advantage of being the only harbour for ships in central Quon, airships are starting to become common, so Selbina is trying to branch out into other industries like fishing and agriculture.
None of this is likely to be relevant to anything other than lore trivia, but it's still nice to learn.
At the back office, we meet Abelard, the mayor of Selbina.
Greg! He's a pirate here in FFXI, and sounds well-established in the area around Selbina at the least. He also knows about us, via the mysterious young woman he rescued. Even if I didn't already know about Iroha from her FFXIV crossover appearance, it's pretty obvious that she's the one Gilgamesh found, and who has been asking about us based on that Rhapsodies Of Vanadiel cutscene.
I don't know why Abelard says Selbina is a "tiny village" when his receptionist describes it as a "thriving port town". He might be self-deprecating, or there might be a writing mismatch somewhere.
The Crag of Holla we already knew about, in the La Theine Plateau. The Crag of Dem is another big weird white structure, this time in Konschtat Highlands.
This is also where FFXI's early-2000s MMORPG design philosophy happens again. Abelard tells us that Greg wants three clumps of Bee Pollen, ie three Bee Pollen items. Most item drops can be farmed from any member of a general critter "family": for example, Honey can drop from any critter in the Bee family, whether it's a level 1 Huge Hornet or a level 55 Wespe. Occasionally the item drops only above (or below) a certain level, but any critter of that family within the level range can drop that item.
Bee Pollen only drops from the Huge Wasp critters, and no other. Huge Wasps are only found in La Theine Plateau and Konschtat Highlands, although despite what Abelard says, you can find them a bit further afield than simply the area around the Crags. It's just that the Crags areas tend to have more spawns of them in a relatively small area, and I note that the word "relatively" is doing some heavy lifting there.
And according to the wikis and everything I've Googled (which I admit might be based on the wikis anyway), Bee Pollen has a 0.83% drop rate from the Huge Wasps.
If I hadn't already obtained two Bee Pollens from the La Theine Plateau while going up and down the valley during the Rescue Drill mission, this would have been far more irritating. As it was, it took way too long for the third Bee Pollen to drop. I actually gave up after a while (definitely over an hour, albeit possibly not much more), and returned to grinding Huge Wasps after the next few story parts.
I believe the intended time-saving method back in the popular days of FFXI was to buy Bee Pollen off the Auction House, but in this present time and on the Sylph server, not only was the Bee Pollen price history at 20,000 gil each, but there weren't any single Bee Pollen items put up on the AH anyway. So clearly that isn't a viable alternative anymore.
This is not the only important quest to grind for rare drops for here in Selbina, although in the following case it's already a solved problem in multiple ways.
So, little girl, you want to be an adventurer, do you? Well, you've got a long way to go, I reckon.
I, too, once took up arms for honour and country. But it was all in vain.
I helped defend the nation. I tasted glory. But behind their smiles people grew jealous. I lost my family, and my comrades deserted me.
Soon I realized that all I did, everything I fought for was in vain. I left the ranks for good.
But of late the beastmen rise in challenge. Again, many may lose dear friends and family to the storms of war.
I thought then of preventing such tragedy from happening again. Fortunately, an answer came to me.
I decided to teach my survival techniques to brave youths like yourself.
If you wish to learn them, you must prove your worthiness to me.
Isacio wants three items: a Damselfly Worm, a Magicked Skull, and a Crab Apron. Alternatively, he wants a "Gilgamesh's Introductory Letter", which will bypass all of that. And from the wikis, I know that upon returning the three Bee Pollens, I'd get exactly that key item.
However, by the time I spoke to Isacio, I already had all three items, which are all found on critters in the Valkurm Dunes: the Damselfly Worm from Damselflies, the Magicked Skull from Ghouls (spawning at night), and the Crab Apron from Clippers. They were also fairly easily-found, so either I got lucky, or the drop rate is certainly much better than the Bee Pollen.
When I trade these items to Isacio (one at a time; he does not mention the next item to get until you hand over the previous one, so once again thank you wikis), he teaches me the "most precious skill" of Support Jobs.
Support Jobs are undertaken anywhere you would normally change jobs. And you must be proficient in a job before you can declare it your support job.
Furthermore, the effective level of your support job can never exceed half that of your main job. Also, since it is merely a support job, you'll never advance through experience.
I shall give an example. Let us say you have attained level 20 as a warrior and level 10 as a white mage. You would obviously declare your main job warrior, and your support job white mage.
In this example, you fight as a warrior of 20 levels and as a white mage 10 levels lower. Thus, you would be performing both jobs to their maximum potential.
In contrast, if you had declared white mage your main job and warrior your support job, things would bw very different!
Since you would have only 10 levels of experience as a white mage, your potential as a warrior would be reduced to half that of your main job.
5! Not a wise decision, is it?
Similarly, you wouldn't want to make your support job something you've never done before. If your support job is less than half that of your main job, your undeveloped skills would not make a difference. Remember this well!
I recommend you choose a support job that covers your main job's weakness, or one that enhances its strengths.
Support Jobs, also known as Subjobs, are one of the features of FFXI that get a fair amount of praise. In brief, you can assign a Job as your Support Job, and it will provide the same benefits for Job skills, abilities, and traits as you would get at half the level of your Main Job (rounded down). There's apparently also a small stat boost specific to the Subjob, but I don't know the details.
This means, for example, you'd be able to cast White Magic spells as a Warrior if you try the example Isacio gives. There's plenty of Job guides out there about good Main Job/Support Job combinations, and from what I hear, that sort of flexibility is both good for exploring character build options, and bad for inevitably adding a lot of "pointless" combinations where there's no synergy. Which, to be fair, Isacio does warn us about: players need to consider the Main Job's strengths and weaknesses, rather than just combining Main/Sub without thought.
And of course, there's the caveat that Support Jobs do not gain experience points even if they're assigned as Support Jobs. And in FFXI, there's no such thing as FFXIV's Armoury Bonus, where a lower-level alt Job will gain experience at a faster rate. Once again, FFXI's primary gameplay is grinding out levels.
Making my way to Bastok, I am kind of grateful I chose San d'Oria as my starter city, because the environment around Gustaberg is desert, desert, and more desert. And while there are the occasional scrub bushes and desert trees, the majority of the land is brown sand and rocks. I already dislike Ul'dah and Thanalan for that bland colour scheme, and FFXI just makes the equivalent city just as dreary.
Bastok itself has white and off-white stone architecture in relatively low, rounded buildings, contrasting with San d'Oria's soaring grey stone castles and wooden shacks. The NPCs talk about how Bastok makes its fortune as the forefront of technological innovation and industry, financed by the output of the mines around Gustaberg.
Also there appears to be simmering racial tensions between Galka and Humes. From an outside perspective (ie a Mithra from San d'Oria), it sounds like the Galka feel that the Humes oppress them and hold them in contempt, while the Humes feel that the Galka are stupid and ungrateful.
Clarion Star is Bastok's resident Trust Magic explainer, and since I've already learned about it from Goundebad in San d'Oria, he skips to an abbreviated spiel. He also mentions Cid as one of the driving forces behind Bastok's research, so we've found FFXI's Cid character.
Although since we're not Bastokan and we don't have any quests involving him, Cid curtly brushes us off.
Speaking of Cid, he's in the area of Bastok called "the Metalworks", and it's arranged into two stories. To go from one to another (at least without using Home Point teleportation), players must use elevators, which are just platforms that go up and down on their own schedule. It helps that there's two elevators, and they alternate floors, but having to wait for one to arrive (or depart) is more of the alleged verisimilitude of FFXI that just spends more player time. Player movement speed is also too slow to move from one elevator to another if you've just missed one, so most of the time it's better to just wait until the elevator returns (or you'll end up at the other elevator just missing it as well), or even better just ignoring the elevators after the first time and just using the Home Point teleport crystals.
Naji here is a member of the aforementioned Mythril Musketeers, and he's Bastok's introductory Trust NPC. I think the Mythril Musketeers are supposed to be the elite forces of Bastok, which might explain why Naji is standing guard in front of the President's Office, but more likely he's just there because he needs to be easily located for Trust tutorials.
The San d'Orian consulate, and indeed all the embassy buildings, is in that same administrative area.
Riault: To be precise, we need you to bring back an onze of mythril sand. Thanks to our agreement to mutual cooperation, Bastok is allowing us to send you into the mines. Your true objective is to gather as much information as possible on Bastok's advanced technology.
Savae E Paleade: If it were up to us, we would want you to go to the mines right away, but we were told by the Bastok authorities that you must report to them first in order to receive authorization. I know you'd rather do without all the red tape, but bear with us and report to the Bastokan official named Pius. He can be found in the President's Office. I must warn you that we thought the Humes were a reasonable people before we came here... but we've found that this is not always the case. Their talent at making profit is incomparable, but their sense of duty is somewhat lacking. In fact, even their officials can be troublesome. For the sake of your mission's success, try to be patient.
Clearly the nations of FFXI are nowhere near the camaraderie of FFXIV's city-states, even in the early days of A Realm Reborn. Instead of at least attempting a united front against the beastmen, the nations are all looking out for their own interests at the cost of the others, with the San d'Orian consulate ordering us to engage in espionage, while dismissing the threat of a reingited beastman invasion.
This is more cynical than the disunited city-states of Eorzea, since during ARR (and probably in 1.0) they were more self-interested than self-serving, if the distinction makes sense. Their first priority was their own citizens, but they at least knew that eventually trouble would come to their homes if they ignored world events. The Eorzean city-states were willing to consider helping each other, albeit only if it did not threaten their own safeties. When it did, as in the cases of Ishgard and the Sharlayan colony of Emporium, we could see the unfortunate results of isolationism and withdrawal, but at least the city-states only wanted an advantage over their enemies, rather than each other.
Perhaps the difference is the Eorzean city-states didn't usually see each other as enemies, while the nations of Vanadiel might do so, and are only in a state of truce due to the recent war against the beastmen.
The President's Office is, as mentioned, right next door. Pius is not exactly happy to see us, and sends us to talk to yet another person.
Grohm is in the eatery as mentioned, not doing anything in particular, although I'm curious if he's intended to be drinking his troubles away. Perhaps he's taking a break from work, or maybe he's been there ever since the ill-fated expedition into the Palborough Mines.
Hm? What do you want? Hey, you're not from Bastok, are you?
What!? You're San d'Orian, and you listened to what a Bastokan official told you to do?
Hah! I have no idea why that Hume sent you here... or why your consulate sent you to him in the first place.
You better listen good. A lot of us died trying to win the Palborough Mines back from the Quadav...
It might not matter to a foreigner like you, but they always send us Galka to do the dirty work!
What gets me the most is that they don't even think about it twice! Even if you haven't been here long, you must've seen how they treat us.
More examples of the racial prejudice in Bastok. I'm not sure how true this account of contempt against Galka might be, but I don't think I've seen any NPC give a good counter-example against Humes, so I think chances are good the Galka really are being oppressed. I'm reminded a little about Ala Mhigan refugees vs Ul'dahns, although that was a class conflict rather than a race conflict, and the actual race conflict in Gridania is a different situation.
After his rant, Grohm gives us instructions on how to get Mythril Sand: get one chunk of Mine Gravel, put that Mine Gravel into the refiner located in Palborough Mines, collect Mythril Sand. Mine Gravel, in turn, can be obtained "from someone" (ie bought on the Auction House), or mined myself in Palborough Mines by using a Pickaxe. Grohm provides three Pickaxes for this purpose.
When we exit the eatery, we are accosted by someone who has been eavesdropping.
And here's the "are you sure you're doing the right thing" dialogue spiel I've been waiting for. The Palborough Mines are a holy place for the Quadav, and the Bastokans don't care, wanting to mine the riches inside. This is very Ul'dahn, as befits Ul'dah's inspiration.
Interestingly Lion singles out the Humes, rather than both Humes and Galka. She also phrases the "home and holy land of the Quadav" information as an aside, which makes me wonder if she's serving the Y'shtola role of pointing out the societal problems of the "friendly faction" nations, but is primarily there to advance the main plot rather than focus entirely on the injustices of the playable races.
Also I keep thinking of Rikku from FFX (or rather, her FFX-2 default costume) whenever I see Lion's outfit.
Lion leaves after giving us the mysterious message, and I head into Palborough Mine. Which is twisty and turny and a little confusing to navigate, but also completely underlevelled compared to what I had to go through to get to Bastok in the first place. I think it's the Bastokan equivalent of King Ranperre's Tomb, ie the First Dungeon Zone and thus not too scary. I'm far enough ahead in levels that heading to the Mythril Seam mentioned by Grohm, every enemy is "too weak to be worthwhile" and thus non-aggro.
The Mythril Seam is located in an alcove in the mines, which is the only real clue about where it is: the alcove just looks suspicious enough on the map that gamers will assume something is there. And as illustrated in the screenshot, it doesn't even glow or have sparklies like FFXIV interactables. And there's no separate texture for an alleged Mythril Seam; it's just regular blank brown rock.
Actually obtaining the Mine Gravel is an unnecessarily complex mechanic: instead of interacting with the point, what I have to do is open the Trade menu, and "trade" a Pickaxe to the seam. This results in one of three outcomes: a Mine Gravel drops itself in my inventory, a Mine Gravel drops itself in my inventory and a Pickaxe breaks, or a Pickaxe breaks and I get nothing. Thankfully I have three Pickaxes, and I'm not that unlucky; I get a Mine Gravel on the first try, losing only one Pickaxe.
Getting to the Refiner is a little confusing, but I manage to make it there. The enemies wandering around are now "easy prey", so they're closer in level. I Trade the Mine Gravel to the intake chute of the Refiner, pull the convenient lever beside the chute, then go down a winding path to the floor below, and interact with the output chute to collect one Mythril Sand. Task done, I venture back out of Palborough Mines, and to the San d'Orian consulate in Bastok.
Consul Savae E Paleade congratulates me on mission accomplished, and I get to stand there awkwardly while her consulate staff gripe among themselves about how they hate working in Bastok. Special mention to Chantain who lectures the others about "don't say anything if you don't have anything nice to say", moments after mocking Bastok's architectural style. We don't see what Riault wrote in the report about Bastokan technology, and Savae bids us good luck in Windurst as she shoos us out.
Reading this just makes me aware of how big a change the original World of Warcraft was in terms of ease of use and accessibility; no wonder it was so successful if stuff like this was the competition.
And the original World of Warcraft was still deeply inaccessible and fairly clunky, so that says a lot.
Reading this just makes me aware of how big a change the original World of Warcraft was in terms of ease of use and accessibility; no wonder it was so successful if stuff like this was the competition.
And the original World of Warcraft was still deeply inaccessible and fairly clunky, so that says a lot.
Yeah. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a fitting description I'd heard about FFXI was that it didn't respect the player's time, which was fine for most of its players, because they didn't respect their own time either.
And my own early MMORPG experiences were in City Of Heroes, which was considered much easier and more "casual" than FFXI and its type. For example, even if you got defeated by an enemy, you didn't even lose any levels! All you got was a debuff that made you earn half the experience points, for a certain amount of XP, and it was even capped at one full level's worth. So easy, so casual.
So when World of Warcraft came out and the only penalty to death was equipment damage (ie gold tax) and potentially "rez sickness" for several minutes, that was by far the least punishing death mechanic at its time. Again, so easy and so casual, and it turned out that being easier and more casual than its competitors at the time was a good idea for making a MMORPG popular.
Now, obviously it's not necessary for MMORPGs to all "be like World of Warcraft", and in some cases that even hurt some MMORPGs: The Old Republic was way too much of a WoW clone until it finally decided to be its own thing. But sticking to the sheer hostility to user-friendliness of the early MMORPG days, much of which was due to tech limitations, is also not the correct way.
Because the "retail FFXI" of today (ie what you get when you buy FFXI from Square Enix, rather than a private server) is already made much more convenient than the FFXI of old. I'll get into one of the biggest changes in a later post, but just the addition of the Sparks currency to buy gear is already significantly better for new players.
Eventually, I concentrate on getting the last Bee Pollen for Greg's questline, and return to Selbina.
Greg is clearly his own person in FFXI, rather than the interdimensional traveller in other Final Fantasy games. Thus far he seems like the archetypical "honourable pirate captain" character, commanding respect from his subordinates and everyone who interacts with him, while keeping to the idealized pirate code of freedom and travel.
Gilgamesh: Miyoto, might come as a bit of a surprise to hear this, but I'm a pirate known for roamin' the Bastore Sea.
The oceans ta the west have been a bit stormier'n usual of late, an' me crew an' I came across a small vessel adrift upon the tides.
So 'course I say to meself, who'd'a thunk that such a delicate rowboat could stay whole in such a terrible brew... an' then the whole thin' started flashin' red.
Being the curious sailor that I am, I went an' investigated. Lo and behold, there was a pretty young lass lyn' prone along the deck.
I've always had quite the fondness fer the colour red. Figuin' it must be a sign from Altana herself, I took her on board and brought her back with me ta Norg.
When she came to, the first words from those pale lips of hers were yer name.
I can see this is another example of Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver becoming the Standard Pirate Accent. Also, some elements of the interdimensional Gilgamesh's lore are referenced, from the mention of the colour red, to the "pressing engagement" line.
After Greg leaves, Mayor Abelard begs me not to tell the townspeople of Selbina that he's aiding and associating with a known pirate. Abelard knows that Greg and his crew are not law-abiding citizens, but "as a port town, we still depend on them". I'm not sure what he means by that; in most RL port town interactions with pirates, the "dependence" usually comes in one of two forms, with some overlap: the pirates are either the one consistent stream of income and trade that the port town sees, or the pirates run a protection racket that the town has to pay. Given Greg's "honourable pirate" character type, I'm assuming the former. The people of Selbina are probably familiar with Gilgamesh coming and going, but they might now know he's a pirate. Or if they know, they probably pretend not to.
Abelard also gives me a Copper AMAN Voucher. "AMAN" here is "Adventurer's Mutual Aid Network", which is like an expanded Novice Network system, and which the Sparks to buy equipment are a part of. The Copper Voucher can be traded in to one of the AMAN representatives (in San d'Oria, that would be Rolandienne) to exchange for a variety of currencies. However, if I hadn't done the subjob questline earlier, this would have been a Gilgamesh's Introductory Letter, which would have bypassed the other monster drops required.
Ironically getting the Bee Pollens was much more troublesome and tedious than getting the monster drops, so what was supposed to be a convenient alternative is not much of one.
Pacomart here runs a (free) ferry to Norg, which is where Greg makes his pirate base. I have to wonder if everyone on Greg's crew is contractually obligated to talk so much like a stereotypical movie pirate.
Norg is mostly caverns and tunnels, with the ferry boat docking in an underground harbour. The general atmosphere is a hidden pirate cove, which conveniently contains the usual gameplay stuff like an Auction House and vendors, and Moogle Porters in case we need to access our Mog House storage.
Also one resident of Norg who decided to choose a different verbal tic than pirate speak.
At the back of the Norg cave complex is Greg's office, where we finally meet Iroha face-to-face.
Our reaction to this, as both character and player, is a puzzled "whomst'd've".
Iroha: This time is many, many years before I came to be, and my presence here is somewhat of an anomaly.
Gilgamesh: Did ya hit yer head 'fore I found ya floating adrift or somethin'?
Aldo: You mean to say... that you haven't been born yet?
G: Then how'd ya get here?
I: I come from an age far in the future, when Vana'diel stands on a precipice -- and the master is the only one who can guide me.
A: So you mean to say that Miyoto... is this master of yours?
G: And from that outfit yer wearing, I'd wager ya were born in the Far East.
I: That is correct. I am the guardian of Reisenjima Sanctorium, and have a strong link with the heavens as its chief priestess.
G: Oho. I know the particulars of the eastern faith are a bit foreign ta the rest of us, but Altana remains a central figure even there.
So that'd make ya a religious authority, then?
And let me guess. The power of the spirits sent you back ta our time?
Being that we're just as clueless as everyone else, we of course give our assent. Since this is an actual player choice, though, I wonder what would happen if the player chooses the "no" option. I assume it's along the usual lines of the question being repeated until we say "yes", or we won't be able to progress the story.
Iroha: By your will.
In the age from whence I hail, Vana'diel is gripped in the vise of fear.
In my homeland, we refer to it as "Emptiness", a blanket of darkness that infects all it touches.
Major lore dump. Iroha is literally doing a G'raha Tia here, sending herself (or being sent) back in time to prevent a bad future from occuring. It's even akin to the Calamity Of Light with "emptiness", although here it's still "darkness" as a negative force. And like G'raha, Iroha has much hero worship for the player character, based on the tales of heroism that have become widespread in the future. And in that bad future, the player character does not survive.
Reisenjima is also found in FFXIV, as "Reisen Temple", although "Reisenjima" more properly translates to "Reisen Island". Given Reisen Temple in FFXIV is heavily involved with Tenzen, who we've seen originated here in FFXI, I can imagine FFXIV made that reference deliberately. We know FFXI's Reisenjima is definitely a temple of sorts, although they call it a "sanctorum" here; Iroha mentions being a "priestess", which is probably "miko" or "shrine maiden" as many other media translates it.
(From Googling, "sanctorium" is the usual noun form, while "sanctorum" is mostly used as "sanctum sanctorum", ie "holiest of holies", as a synonym for "sanctorium". I don't know if this is relevant to Iroha mentioning "Reisenjima's sanctorum", or if it's a typo and it's supposed to be "Reisenjima's sanctorium".)
Also hello Aldo. I know I suspected we were going to meet you in-game eventually, but this is a little underwhelming for an introduction. I'm assuming I'm meeting Aldo out of order here, since this is part of the Rhapsodies Of Vana'diel content pack, released way after everything else. The "proper" first meeting of Aldo is probably going to be more consequential.
Iroha hands us a key item, a "Reisenjima Sanctorium Orb". She tells us that we will undergo "many trials" (ie the rest of the game until we reach the requisite expansion content) before we finally set foot in the Far East, but this orb (a magatama, technically) will ensure "the path will remain open to you, always", and it will "lead you unfailingly to my time". In other words, probably a key item to allow teleportation to the Rhapsodies Of Vana'diel content area when needed.
Iroha is about to say something else, when she is interrupted.
First by Greg reasonably pointing out that we're still lacking in information, and then by Iroha vanishing entirely in a flash of light.
We see here that Aldo apparently has "agents", thus implying he's a member (or leader) of a network of informants. Which works for his association with Gilgamesh on the greyer side of the law, and makes him a mysterious spymaster.
I know Iroha's disappearance is intended to be part of the Rhapsodies Of Vana'diel storyline and she's (probably) going to reappear, possibly when we visit this bad future, but I like to imagine that it's just one of those random cross-dimensional accidents and Iroha finds herself bewildered and confused in Eorzea, just for that crossover event.
After Aldo leaves to do his investigating, I can talk to Greg again about the next step.
Greg confirms that we simply don't have enough information, and recommends we get in touch with his daughter, Lion. Which is itself a bit of a revelation, raising Lion from "random well-informed adventurer" to "Gilgamesh's adventurer daughter".
Since Lion is part of the rank 2-3 mission for our home nation, the game handwaves her exact location; she's said to be found in Bastok, San d'Oria, or Windurst, ie the places we'd have to go for that mission depending on our country of allegiance. And we did indeed run into Lion in the course of our investigation into the beastmen, although it was more like Lion ambushed us with tantalizingly vague beastmen cultural information.
Besides, we cannot progress with Rhapsodies Of Vana'diel without completing that rank 2-3 mission and ranking up to 3-1. Greg tells us to go finish with that first.
As a reward, we get a "Rhapsody In White" key item. This is very important, but I'll have to digress for a bit to explain some of FFXI's sytems.
At first, the primary way to travel across the entire game world is on foot. FFXI introduced teleportation mechanics for travelling the world in relatively recent (ie during the "modern era" of mid-2010s) updates.
These are Home Points, and they work like FFXIV aetherytes. They can be found mostly in city and town areas, as well as a few random field locations, which I think are placed for convenience near raid entrance locations or some such.
Like aetherytes, if you use them to teleport within a city, they're free to use. However, travelling between cities (eg from San d'Oria to Bastok) or to one of the Home Points in the wild costs gil per teleport, also like aetherytes: 500 gil to teleport between cities, and 1000 gil to teleport to field Home Points. All Home Points are the same, so there's no "mini-aetheryte" distinction.
These are Survival Guides. They're floating books which can be found in a variety of locations, mostly field and dungeon zones, and one in each. Occasionally there are field zones that don't have one, but there's usually one at the exit of the previous zone. They also work like Home Points, allowing teleportation between them. Flat fee of 1000 gil or 50 tabs to teleport between each of them.
"Tabs" are more properly "Valour Points", although most of the game's UI just calls them "tabs", for some reason. They're obtained by taking on Training Regimens, which are zone-specific hunts for certain numbers of various critters. Training Regimens are provided by Field Guides, which look identical to Survival Guides in that they're using the exact same floating book model, so I usually have to actually target the book to find out which it is. Each Field Guide offers several Training Regimen options, requiring different sets of critters to defeat.
(Tabs can also be used at Survival Guides for various other effects, like casting Protect or Regen on myself.)
Upon completing a Training Regimen, we are awarded XP, gil, and tabs. These Training Regimens can be repeated indefinitely, but the gil and tab rewards are only given once per (real-time) hour. The screenshot here is in a mid-level zone (level 25-30), so we can see that completing one Training Regimen there gives barely enough tabs for one teleport, and not enough gil except for inter-city Home Point teleports. So for the most part, until now, I've not been using teleportation options other than the free intra-city ones.
All this has changed now that I've obtained the Rhapsody In White. With it in my key items, I get the following benefits, among others:
30% bonus to experience point gains
100% increase to skill point gains for combat and magic skills
Ability to summon one more Alter Ego for Trust parties, for a total of five (including the player)
Half the tab cost for the various buffs and bonus effects from Survival Guides
80% discount for all teleportation costs
It's understandable why new player guides tell us to beeline straight for this quest and its key item reward. With Rhapsody In White, the game really does open up; I don't need to be miserly with my gil and tabs when teleporting, since instead of paying 500 gil to a Home Point, I can pay just 100 gil, and instead of 50 tabs to a Survival Guide, it's now 10 tabs.
This does mean it's literally cheaper to teleport via Home Points across the continents, rather than pay 200 gil per ferry or airship ride. I just need to pay the ferry/airship ticket cost once, attune to the Home Point at the other side, and I'm set.
With this newfound power at my disposal, I immediately ignore the actual mission to progress the MSQ, and instead flit around to check out various other pieces of content that I had put off for being too annoying to travel for.
Balasiel in San d'Oria gives a series of quests that, according to the wikis, will result in eventually unlocking the Paladin Job. It's not really necessary to note down everything he says, because the majority of his dialogue is very cryptic instructions to "get this" or "do that", often with obtuse clues. Again, the wikis bypass all the mystery. Personally, I feel none of the puzzles are worth the mystery, being at the same level as the PLD questlines in FFXIV: weird and pointless-seeming rituals that don't really teach us what it means to be a Paladin (or a squire or a knight). Just deliver a monster drop, or interact with a given spot in a dungeon, done, no moral. At most, it just makes you level up from either having to defeat lots of critters for a low-drop item, or to survive going to the area where the interactable spot is. There's no lore.
Curilla, who does give her full name as Curilla V Mecru, is as mentioned in the Temple Knights quarters in San d'Oria's Chateau d'Oraguille. Talking to her first gives a standard cutscene where she declines to give us her Trust Alter Ego, until we "further serve San d'Oria", ie rank up in our missions. But she does have a separate quest for us, to collect some water from a hot spring. As an aside, Horlais Peak is reached from going to West Ronfaure, Ghelsba Outpost, Fort Ghelsba, Yughott Grotto, then finally Horlais Peak. There's a Home Point in Yughott Grotto, so presumably there's a boss fight or raid in Horlais Peak somewhere.
Upon returning with the hot spring waters, Curilla thanks us and provides some backstory. She's clearly the upright honourable lady knight archetype, where "lady knight" is especially significant in that characterization: a woman who has to try much harder than the men just to be seen as equal, and has to prove herself at every instance against the default prejudice. I'm not sure whether this is actually the case in San d'Oria, or if they're egalitarian; I don't think I've seen outright gender discrimination in NPC dialogue. But the archetype is there, along with the associated personality.
Speaking to Halver initially just repeats the current mission objectives (ie visit the other starter cities), but now that we've met Lion and had Greg tell us about her likely whereabouts, Halver gives us a bit of extra lore: Lion had visited San d'Oria and tried to barge her way into an audience with Prince Trion, presumably because he's in charge of the expeditionary Royal Knights. This obviously did not work on the stuffy court of San d'Oria, but Lion was convincing enough that Halver figured she probably knew something important.
Since we're also investigating the beastmen movements, Halver offers us his Trust Alter Ego cipher.
Incidentally, if we talk to Halver again, he gives us another unrelated quest, most of which is explained in flashback:
Halver: At the time I was but a lowly student, and I snuck out of a lecture to catch a glimpse of her noble countenance... In the end, I skipped the entire class to see the royal parade.
I managed to view Queen Leaute's fair profile from the gathered crowd. That image is still burned into my mind even now.
I never dreamed that I would end up working so closely with the beautiful princess I saw that day. Queen Leaute would always smile and have a kind word for me...
Destin: Halver. I wasn't asking you for a rambling trip down memory lane.
H: Ah, my apologies, Your Majesty. Was this request related in some way to the queen?
D: This has nothing to do with Leaute. I wanted to speak with you about a new queen.
H: !!! Again, I must apologize for not seeing straight to the heart of the matter, Your Majesty.
King Destin orders Halver to begin the search for a new queen. After some back-and-forth, Halver realizes that Destin is not asking for a new wife, but rather to matchmake his son Trion with a potential wife. Trion is, at the moment, the heir presumptive to the throne, but Destin does note Pieuje may end up the chosen king instead. For now, Halver needs to know Trion's tastes in women.
F for Halver's daughter, who isn't even there. I don't know if Halver's daughter is someone we know or have met, or if she's just there to be the butt of this joke.
Pieuje walks into the scene, claiming to know Trion's tastes. Now, according to the wikis, the actual description of the "perfect match" is randomized, although the potential match should be a "well-travelled, free-spirited adventurer". In other words, a player character.
In my case, the description is "Tarutaru girls with voluminous blonde hair parted in two and tied back behind the ears", ie Tarutaru Face 4 Hair A. The wikis say that I must party up with another player character of the matching description in order to complete the quest. Since I can't do this quest solo, I'll have to ignore this exists, and will have to drop it as soon as I figure out how to do so.
Still, we can see here what the king of San d'Oria looks like, and that he's, well, kingly: assumes royal authority, is used to getting his way, and confers candidly with his Monarlais. Also, the relationship between Trion and Pieuje seems to be more like brotherly rivals than serious enemies; Pieuje, assuming he's not playing a prank on Trion, is close enough to his brother to know his tastes and offer that to their father, for Trion's own sake.
Given the randomness of the description of Trion's predilections, it's probably not fair to comment on Trion's alleged preference for Tarutarus, but I can imagine the discussions about it even so.
Now that I can flit back and forth across Vana'diel via Home Points, there is one place I've been wanting to go to for a while: Jeuno, mentioned as the fourth nation in the alliance during the Crystal War, and according to the wikis, a source of many major questlines.
Wiki-walking the route, it goes from San d'Oria, Western Ronfaure, La Theine Plateau, east to Jugner Forest, northeast to Batallia Downs, then east to Upper Jeuno. The highest-level zone in this is Batallia Downs, at 25-35, so getting to Jeuno at all is clearly a mid-level effort.
Most of the trip is uneventful, until I reach Batallia Downs, and on a whim decide to click on one of the big "Cavernous Maw" Atomos that's been a regular feature in many zones. Normally there's just a message saying "Nothing happens", but now, possibly because I'm above level 30, I suddenly get a cutscene.
My character is turned into motes of green light, and sucked inside.
I'm in the Void! Or whatever the equivalent of the Void is in FFXI. Pretty standard use of an Atomos in the Final Fantasy series, as a portal to go from one dimension (or faraway location in the same dimension) to another. So if the narrative needs us to be transported to a given eldritch location, Atomos makes sense.
Suddenly, a voice is heard. We don't yet see who or what it is, and it sounds like it's not being heard clearly, and we can only catch bits and pieces.
The voice seems to notice us, and appears as a light in front of us. They appear to need help of some sort, and asks if we are willing to provide it, as a start to asking even more people. Perturbed by this, we poke at the light.
Which promptly yeets us right off the edge, where we're sent through yet another portal.
The light coalesces into a figure familiar to FFXIV, although in this case I think this particular form factor came from FFXI: Cait Sith, who finally gets to look around, and just missed us.
I'm not sure if Cait Sith being associated with the Void or Void-like content comes from FFXI, but given how much inspiration FFXIV got from FFXI (continuing from 1.0 and beyond), it's a nice call-back in FFXIV. I'm experiencing a sort of reverse-nostalgia: I encountered the newer version first, so when I go back and see the original source, I go "oh, so that's where it came from" and feel excited.
A cutscene set in what the system calls "Rolanberry Fields (S)". On the one hand, Rolanberry Fields is one of the connected zones to Jeuno, just south of Batallia Downs, and connecting to Lower Jeuno in the northeast. On the other hand, recall that I went into the Cavernous Maw in Batallia Downs, so presumably FFXI had to transport me to Rolanberry Fields (the S version, which I'm not sure about the meaning of, but I have suspicions) for the purpose of this cutscene.
A squad of three knights (or the Jeuno equivalent): Lysander, Barnabas, and Alystair, in apparent order of rank. Lysander himself was sent out on patrol by a Carlisle, and these Cavernous Maws are not exactly a surprise, but still an unknown factor that they have to be wary of. Three in the vicinity of Jeuno, and nine total reported across the two continents (of Quon and Mindartia, I assume).
Lysander: Still, that's not a small amount, even if they are spread over two continents...
Could it be the arrival of the "Harbinger"...?
Alystair: You speak of the prophecy, sir?
L: Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but something feels wrong to me...
A: Rumours in Bastok say these maws are monsters set loose by the beastmen... or maybe even the Kindred.
Barnabas: They say the same in Windurst.
L: We are at war. It's natural for people to jump to conclusions.
But the truth is, we still have no facts either way.
B: We do know these things appeared right at a time when the beastmen forces suddenly grew in size. That can't be a coincidence.
The Cavernous Maw chooses this moment to spit me out in front of the Jeuno soldiers. To them, I just appear out of nowhere, lying on the ground regaining consciousness. Lysander and Barnabas are surprised but can see that I'm not a threat, telling an over-excited Alystair to stand down. We also learn incidentally that Barnabas is a Sergeant, and Alystair is a Corporal.
Barnabas tells me to head to the safety of Jeuno, but Alystair reminds him that civilian entry to Jeuno is currently restricted, possibly due to a security lockdown. Barnabas suggests heading to the Crawler's Nest instead, which is not a location name that inspired confidence, and the wiki says Crawler's Nest (the non-S version) contains level 40-55 enemies. So not exactly a good place to go at my current levels.
The three Jeuno soldiers depart to report this new maw location to Archduke Kam'lanaut. With the strong feeling that I've wandered into content that I'm not supposed to know about yet, I click the Cavernous Maw again, which transports me to the non-S version of Rolanberry Fields. From there, I head into Lower Jeuno, which (in this time) is not restricted to civilian entry.
Speculation: the "S" versions of zones, accessible through the Cavernous Maws, are in the past. Specifically, during the big war against the Shadowlord that's a major part of the FFXI backstory. "S" might mean "Shadowlord", or some similar term to denote the Crystal War. The mention of the increase in beastmen forces, as well as the Royal Knights of San d'Oria being wiped out, implies a much worse situation that what currently exists in the present time. It's not such a hopeless situation that the nations can't do routine patrol sweeps, though, so it's not like the allied nations are on the brink of defeat; possibly San d'Oria even survives in some form, and it's just their expeditionary force that's been defeated.
I'm not sure why we're getting content set in the Crystal War, but I think it might be an insight into the history of Vana'diel. If I recall, back in the early-2000s era of MMORPGs, it was fine to release an entire expansion pack that's just "this is more lore about the history" side content, rather than the current era where an expansion has to be relevant to the greater ongoing plot, due to the increasing costs of making expansions.
Of course, it might be entirely relevant to the present plotline, like FFXIV's Shadowbringers trip into the First. Or I could be completely mistaken, and the "S" versions of the zones are in some sort of alternate timeline, like the Black Rose future in FFXIV.
I had speculated Jeuno to be the Limsa Lominsa equivalent, but from the architecture and the general city layout, it doesn't really fit that much. The impression is Jeuno is a well-laid-out trading city, unlike Limsa's haphazard design. Also there's no maritime focus, since it seems like airships are the primary transports of trade. So the only real similarity to Limsa Lominsa is "trade city", which isn't much of a link. Which is fine, since Jeuno is its own thing.
Of course, the moment I set foot into Jeuno, I'm given another cutscene. This one has a young boy apparently cause a giant glowing crystal to appear in the skies above Jeuno, to much constern and alarm.
We also see the reactions of named NPCs, including Aldo, who is with a woman named Vereena. More evidence that I'm encountering this cutscene out of order, because I assume I'm supposed to already know who Vereena is, or have more interactions with Aldo.
The crystal is visible all the way in San d'Oria, where Trion, Pieuje, and a new character named Claidie are watching. Claidie is clearly a princess of San d'Oria, and in this scene at least, the three siblings are friendly enough (or at least civil enough) to be together in the garden to see this vision.
From the crystal comes a mysterious voice.
In Bastok, President Karst and other citizens are also hearing the voice. Naji we've met, and Ayame is likely the member of the Mythril Musketeers that Naji had a competitive rivalry with.
Also Cid, who calls the floating crystal "a slab of rock", and "that's no ordinary energy it's giving off".
And in Windurst, NPCs we've not met yet are also reacting to the crystal. Shantotto here is very familiar, because she fills the role that Y'shtola has for FFXIV in multi-crossover Final Fantasy media: she's the designated lead representative for FFXI, possibly because she has a very clear personality, including speaking in rhyme. I believe Shantotto has also had her own FFXIV crossover event, which I encountered via Youtube recommendation, and where Shantotto acts as unhinged as she usually does. The FFXIV Black Mage lore character Shatotto is very restrained in comparison.
The Star Sybil is presumably a person of some importance in Windurst. Given the Gridania similarities, I speculate that she's like the one-person equivalent of the Gridanian Seedseer Council, ie a political and spiritual leader whose duty is to lead the citizens to live in harmony with the woods, via oracles and messages from supernatural sources. Her exclaiming that "Love will be the ruin of us all" is quite ominous.
We finally get the title of the content pack that this cutscene involves: A Crystalline Prophecy, which the wikis say will trigger upon any character above level 10 entering Jeuno. Which is way too low for a new player to have experienced any of the relevant content that provides the backstory for this content, but I suspect it's the only way FFXI can come up with to provide the content to every eligible character, given how character levels are based entirely on the Job they're on at the moment. So a veteran player who has completed the rest of the game and wants to try levelling a new Job can also access this content, without having to go to a Mog House just to change their Jobs to the max-level one.
The message the crystal is sending is the starting narration to the FFXI opening cinematic:
It all began with a stone...
... or so the legend says.
In ages past...
... a sentient jewel, enormous and beautiful...
... banished the darkness.
Its many-coloured light filled the world with life and brought forth mighty gods.
Bathed in that light, the world entered an age of bliss...
... until after a time, the gods fell into slumber.
It's a lot longer than "Hear, Feel, Think", but not exactly more informative.
After the crystal vanishes, most people forget that they saw anything unusual. However, some still retain their memory of the crystal, and I suspect the criteria to do so is "importance to the plot".
Equally mysteriously, time stops for everyone except me and the young boy from the start of the cutscene. He names the song of the crystal "Memoria de la Stona", which is close to but not exactly the name of the FFXI song featured on many Final Fantasy arrangement albums: "Memoro de la Stono", which presumably means the same thing ("memory of the stone"), but in a different language: "Memoro de la Stono" is Esperanto.
The boy emphasizes that all this weirdnes should be making me curious and unsettled, and eager to learn what it's all about. The boy says I have been "chosen by the echo of the crystal", and to find out more, I need to gather three items: Seedspall Lux, Seedspall Luna, and Seedspall Astrum. As a parting bit of information, the boy calls himself Aldo; given we've seen the other Aldo, who's in more content than just this one, I'm thinking the other grown-up Aldo is the boy we see in the opening cinematic, and this Aldo is either someone who coincidentally has the same name, or is some sort of supernatural construct based on young Aldo.
But that's not the end of it. After the boy Aldo departs, time starts to move again, and then we see another explosion of light up in the skies. This time, it knocks us out.
We're woken by a man named Joachim, who starts out with "nobody saw anything, you must be seeing things", and suddenly goes serious and tells us what we saw was actually real, and we have "potential" that allows us to see it. If we want more answers, we can look for him.
Joachim is actually one of the "free" Trust Alter Egos given by Records Of Eminence, so I knew what he looks like already; he's a BRD Job. He's also just hanging around Port Jeuno, and the wikis say he's actually the NPC for Abyssea content, so completely unrelated to A Crystalline Prophecy. And it triggers on a level 30 and above character entering Jeuno, hence my character getting these cutscenes back to back.
I just grab all the Home Points in Jeuno (as well as the Survival Guide in Ru'Lude Gardens, ie the district with the Archduke's estates), then get around to one of the sidequests that had been in my quest journal for a while: expanding Mog House functionality by letting me exit to any of the current city zones.
In the three starter cities plus Jeuno, there are Mithra children who ask for an item: flowers for the three starter cities, and a Yellow Rock for Jeuno. There are two methods for getting the necessary flowers: I could get into flowerpot gardening, by obtaining various seeds (Grain, Herb, Vegetable) as a drop from defeating plant monsters, plant them in flowerpots inside my Mog House, check on them every day (or they'd wither), feed them crystals at a certain stage, and still be at the mercy of RNG for what plant I'd actually get in the end. Each gardening plant takes like five real-life days to grow, and I cannot know what plant it is until I've harvested it.
Or I could go to Upper Jeuno, where there's a flower shop, and buy the flowers I need for like 120 gil each.
I should note I was growing the seeds anyway, and seeing if it was faster to level up my character to survive the trip to Jeuno, and also get the Rhapsody In White key item (and its required Bee Pollen hunting) to make travel and teleporting easier. Absolutely no contest: getting to Jeuno is much easier and quicker, even with the Bee Pollen grind. Note that each flowerpot costs around 1000 gil, and each city sells only one type of flowerpot, and certain plants only grow in specific flowerpots, so I'd have to travel anyway.
The irony is, again, that the added functionality to the Mog House exits isn't even useful anymore; the city Home Points always have one right outside the exits towards the Mog House districts, so I might as well use them. And since it takes like half a minute just to load in everything in the Mog House, I might as well use the Home Points for faster loading. (Why does it take so long to load the Mog House? My character model and the Mog House interior load in just fine, but the Moogle and the various Mog House functions take so long to load.)
Still, for completionism's sake, San d'Oria's Kuu Mohzolhi wants a Marguerite, Bastok's Valah Molkot wants an Amaryllis, and Windurst's Ojha Rhawash wants a Lilac. Jeuno's Zona Shodhun wants a Yellow Rock, which can be bought at a shop in Bastok Markets, so that's easily vendor-obtainable too.
Also I pick up the PLD unlock quest from Balasiel. Again, he just gives me a puzzle to figure out, which I just wiki up.
Book of Tasks
The greatest knights in all the land
Are watched by others from high nest.
The watchers know the task at hand.
When lost go East to know the West.
Solution: go to South San d'Oria, which has a Westgate and Eastgate (leading to West Ronfaure and East Ronfaure respectively), and go to the battlements on top to talk to the sentries there.
Book of the East
From the island lake,
South goes the flow.
Where it goes,
Only beastmen know.
Solution: a broken sword in a well at the end of that above-mentioned river flowing south.
As I mentioned, the actual activities are really not worth the obtuse puzzles. The only clever part is "in the sky a beacon makes", which is a perspective of the sky from the bottom of the well, thus following the spirit of riddles for looking at things from a new perspective. The rest of it can be best summarized by fellow FFXIV PLD Sultansworn Captain Jenlyns:
Now that I've satisfied my urge to touch Home Points across the land, it's time to finally continue with the main mission, and travel to Windurst.
The route to Windurst starts from Selbina, where the ferry to the other continent of Mindartia operates. The fee is 200 gil for a one-way ferry ticket, and once I pay, I'm shuffled into the waiting area immediately in front of the pier. To exit, I'd have to talk to the ferry ticketer counter people again, and I'm not sure if I'd have to buy another ticket to get back in.
The ferry employee at the ticket counter offers us a look at the sea route of the ferry.
This is also a workable world map of the general area of the two continents, albeit definitely not to scale. Note the place where the continents are almost touching, at the northeast of Quon (the west continent) and northwest of Mindartia (the east continent). That's where Jeuno is located, serving as a bridge between the two continents. So technically there's a land route to Mindartia and Windurst.
If it matters, starting from Jeuno, it's from Port Jeuno, to Sauromugue Champaign, southeast to Meriphataud Mountains, south to Tahrongi Canyon, and from there south to East Sarutabaruta, and southwest to Windurst Woods (or west to West Sarutabaruta, then slightly east-southeast to Windurst Waters or southeast to Port Windurst). In Tahrongi Canyon there's also an exit east to Buburimu Peninsula, which is where Mhaura is located, and where the ferry from Selbina is headed to.
The employee at the pier gives an update on how long we have to wait for the ferry. As can be seen here, this is based on the ferry's own schedule, which is merciless to individual player schedules. To actually get on the ferry, we have to wait for it to arrive on its own time, as translated to our own real-life time.
I've seen the claims that this adds "verisimilitude" and provides "a living world", but honestly it falls completely flat for me due to what is probably technical limitations: the ferry does not sail up to the pier. Instead, it sails up to the vicinity of the pier, then shifts the ferry model perpendicular to its initial movement to dock with the pier, in an unnatural way. As in, from that screenshot, the ferry continues onwards until its doorway aligns with the pier, then it stops abruptly, before the ferry model just moves straight towards the pier. It's as though the ferry model cannot properly pathfind its way to a more natural docking, so this is the best they can do.
The ferry entrance leads straight into the cargo hold. The ferry will also wait at the docks for I think another five RL minutes, ie two in-game hours. So I hope you don't have anything better to do.
When the ferry casts off, we get a generic cutscene of it leaving the docks.
Now, the actual trip from Selbina to Mhaura takes about six in-game hours, which works out to be about fifteen minutes. During this time, we can wander around the ferry all we want, including going up to the deck.
Where there may be enemies spawning.
Apparently ghosts and undead spawn at night, while aquatic enemies like pugils and crabs spawn whenever. There's usually just one or two spawns, so it's not exactly a dangerous area. According to the wikis, the regular spawns are about level 20-30. Allegedly, there may also be pirate attacks that drop some moderately uncommon loot, but I didn't encounter anything like that during my trip.
From all accounts, the main point of the ferry is fishing. There's a couple of vendors on-board (right outside the cargo hold) who sell bait and fishing tackles, and reportedly rare fish can be obtained on the ferry rides (or rather, only on ferry rides). Banri Oda, the lead lore developer for FFXIV, has a story about how his early days at Square Enix included working on the official guide for FFXI, which meant manually obtaining fishing data himself. He was given a colleague's high-levelled character to do the fishing with, and while fishing, he accidentally fished up a Notorious Monster, on a character he had no idea how to play, so the character got killed and de-levelled. Oda had to apologize to that colleague, while being certain he would be fired for that. (As we know, obviously he was fine.)
Arrival at Mhaura means another generic cutscene. Again, the ferry model docks in an unnatural way.
Mhaura is just like Selbina, including "the mayor has work for you" quest hooks, although I think it's mainly for the Gilgamesh stuff, which we've already done in Selbina. So I'm pointed to the mayor's residence, am greeted by her (a Tarutaru named Ekokoko), and that's it for now.
Proceeding out of Mhaura, we go through Buburimu Peninsula and to Tahrongi Canyon.
Another Crag in Tahrongi Canyon. This one is the Crag of Mea.
Heading into Windurst and after a bit of wandering, I am given yet another cutscene for content I'm not supposed to be doing yet.
There aren't a lot of Tarutaru in the other cities and areas, and those that live elsewhere speak relatively normally. But here in Windurst, the home of the Tarutaru, their "accent" is clearly very thick. It's not just Koru-Moru, but all Tarutaru here speak like that, to one degree or another. Koru-Moru tends to use a lot of "dilly" and "doodley".
Meanwhile, Yoran-Oran uses a lot of "ethy".
According to various NPCs, Koru-Moru is the current principal of the Aurastery, which is the Windurst magical school. Yoran-Oran is the previous minister of the Rhinostery, the Windurst flora (and small fauna, I think) research department. Koru-Moru is worried about what Shantotto is up to, while Yoran-Oran dismisses it as not worthy of concern. The scene fades out on Yoran-Oran speaking in hindsight about how wrong he was.
At that time, Shantotto is being her usual unhinged self.
Shantotto: A moment from now, it'll all make sense. Without further ado, let the magic commence!
Hark, portal, I demand of thee! Open up and set me free!
Hm?
Wh-what...?
That my calculations were in err is beyond comprehension! That I could blunder so defies the established convention!
Yeah, I don't think I was supposed to see this yet.
As with A Crystalline Prophecy, this cutscene triggers by zoning into Windurst Walls from another Windurst city zone. I had been wandering around Windurst because unlike San d'Oria and Bastok, Windurst is particularly confusing to navigate; the consulates for the other nations are all in different districts. Kind of like Gridania, in that way.
In the San d'Orian consulate, Consul Mourices gives me my task: some sort of monster has appeared in Yagudo territory, and since the Yagudo and Windurst have a peace treaty, that monster needs to go away. In an effort to make nice with Windurst, San d'Oria is offering my services as a monster exterminator.
Mourices: What? Don't tell me you hadn't heard of Windurst's little peace pact with the Yagudo?
Of course, we San d'Orians have no need to show to those vulgar beastmen any courtesy whatsoever, but this is an agreement between our two countries, so we have no choice but to go through with it.
So go ahead and exterminate the ferocious monster plaguing the depths of Giddeus, but don't think you have to hold back from also giving those whining beastmen what they deserve.
Anyway, enough chatter. Godspeed on your assignment.
Mourices's consulate staff also share this opinion against beastmen, believing that it's just a matter of time before the Yagudo betray the peace treaty and attack Windurst.
Catalia: I would not try to deny the Tarutaru of this land from pursuing peace. It is just that I desire lasting peace, not the temporary facade that Windurst has now.
The apparent tranquility of this place can be considered an illusion born from idealism. Until we wake Windurst from its dream it will continue to be beyond help.
Not sure if realist, cynical, or paranoid. A negative reading would be that Catalia (and other San d'Orians of like mind) is just looking for an excuse to attack the Yagudo, dressed in the desire for peace, while not mentioning that it's the peace of the grave.
I'm thinking the comment about the Yagudo in Giddeus being fair game to players is an attempt to integrate gameplay and story, because the game cannot make enemy critters non-hostile to specific player factions. But it's a good integration, because it shows the different approaches to beastmen among the three starter nations: San d'Oria is completely antagonistic to them as a whole, and believes in "civilized races" supremacy. Bastok doesn't have the same depth of racism against them, but sees them as inconvenient squatters on valuable mines and land. And Windurst tries to live in harmony with them.
This might be due to the specific beastmen tribes nearby each nation. San d'Oria deals mostly with the Orcs, who have been presented as very militaristic and aggressively expansionist, so they generalize this to other beastmen. Bastok just wants money, which means expanding into the lands of the Quadav, thus making it a sort of capitalist "nothing personal, just business" aggression, and it's likely they would do the same to other beastmen tribes in the same situation. Windurst seems to only have experience with the Yagudo as neighbours, so they believe that every beast tribe is as willing to sign treaties and agreements.
Goblins and Moogles seem to be exceptions, like in FFXIV: Moogles are simply too helpful and useful, so they probably get a pass despite being a "beast tribe". And Goblins usually engage in more mercantile efforts, with the Goblin enemies we see as hostile critters being "Bounty Hunters" and such, which would make them the same as any other race with intra-racial conflicts and disagreements. Goblins seem very individualistic based on NPC dialogue, so it's possible that they don't see themselves as a "Goblin race".
Possibly another factor is I think the beastmen races seen as "dangerous" and "hostile" are the ones who joined the Shadow Lord's armies in the Crystal War, while Moogles and Goblins stayed out of it. Moogles in particular have shown devout belief in the goddess Altana, more so than the average "civilized races", so they're probably considered "on our side".
This is all speculation, of course. And obviously I'm assuming there's something much deeper in the labelling of "beastmen" by the people in the player-affiliated nations.
Before we go hunt down the scary monster, we need to get the key to the place from Heavens Tower. This seems to be the main government administrative building for Windurst, located in the Windurst Walls district; Chateau d'Oraguille in San d'Oria and the upper level of the Metalworks in Bastok are the equivalents. There, we speak to receptionist Kupipi, who reiterates our mission, along with "better you than me".
A Mithra named Semih Lafihna approaches us to give us her Alter Ego cipher. I don't know what her significance to the story is, but I know she is significant, since she was in that Crystalline Prophecy cutscene. I think this interaction was added just to remind players that Trust exists, since she tells us to go ask a Trust representative if we don't know what to do with the cipher.
The Trust representative in Windurst is Wetata, who sends us to the Trust example of Windurst, ie back to Heavens Tower to talk to Kupipi.
Kupipi explains that she's a White Mage, so she'll help with healing and the occasional offensive magic. At this point I have a few other WHM options, so I don't know how much I'll be using her.
Kupipi also suggests one Nanaa Mihgo as another possible Trust, which I'll keep in mind; the wikis say Nanaa is a THF, so she would be helpful in getting rarer items without being a THF Job myself. Her questline requires some low-level drops, though, so I might save them for levelling other Jobs.
As I exit Windurst, I get another cutscene.
My Mog Home Moogle rushes up to me with a letter, which opens up to a holographic image of Shantotto. Or rather, Domina Shantotto, since this is pretty obviously part of the Shantotto Ascension content pack. She wants me to show up at Qufim Island (a field zone accessible from Jeuno) with an enfeeblement kit of sleep, which requires some crafting skill (or can be bought on the Auction House in the old days of FFXI popularity). She also tells me to do so immediately ("Should an accursed, gruesome end be that which you desire, show up not with extreme haste; we dare you to incur our ire"), and the Moogle advises us the same.
Of course, given I know this is a content pack from the tail end of FFXI's active lifespan, I also know the dire warnings about delaying this content are just flavour. (I double-checked on the wikis, and they say nothing about penalties for being late.) I do like how even the Moogle just goes "yeah, Doctor Shantotto is doing something dangerous and weird again", like she causes major incidents every other week or so.
Back to the main mission. Giddeus is west of West Sarutabaruta, and it's another starter dungeon zone like King Ranperre's Tomb or Palborough Mines. Since everything is too low-level, I don't need to slaughter any Yagudo on the way to the mission location, Balga's Dais.
Which is accessed through a cool-looking sigil that teleports us into the Burning Circle Notorious Monster area.
This odd fellow would probably be classified as Voidsent in FFXIV, so I'm thinking they might be something similar here. They call themselves the Searcher, and for some reason they wanted to lure us here. I don't actually know what that reason is, since they don't seem to be picky about who was lured there, so deceiving a random adventurer apparently counts as a success to their plan? The Searcher is too busy gloating to explain themselves.
It's a little confusing due to the cutscene framing, but Semih Lafihna was actually there before us, and is probably the person the Searcher was addressing about being lured. I'm not sure why the Windurst government was willing to give the monster-slaying job to San d'Oria's adventurers (or Bastok's, presumably if I started there), when Semih is perfectly willing to do the job herself.
The Searcher summons a "Black Dragon", which is a familiar critter model to FFXIV: it's the Dahaka model, which in FFXIV lore is when a voidsent possesses a drake corpse. Interestingly, Semih is relieved by this; she sounds like she was prepared for something much more dangerous.
At this point we arrive, so Semih unilaterally leaves this Black Dragon to us, and departs. Coincidentally I do have Semih's Alter Ego in my Trust party, because as a Ranger Job, she does a lot of burst damage, at the cost of not having a lot of sustained damage.
The battle is relatively easy. We have to fight both the Black Dragon and the Searcher, but with Trusts and being rather over-levelled they go down in a couple of hits each. According to the wikis, Searcher is more dangerous because they can use status effects like Silence, while Black Dragon spams poison AoEs. I think I saw the poison, but the WHM Trust cleansed it soon enough.
After the battle, Lion shows up and identifies the Black Dragon as a "nether beast from the Northlands".
Lion, the Searcher was right there. Just fluttering in place while you were busy marvelling over the dead Black Dragon. Are you really so easily distracted that you didn't see the weird flying eyeball thing in front of you?
And Searcher, who laughs like that? Even the early-game black mask Ascians in FFXIV, who served the same plot purpose of sending a monster at us while cryptically speaking about further doom, is less scenery-chewing.
Lion is worried about the Searcher's statement about the Shadow Lord being resurrected, and tells us to go back to our home nation to report on this. I think she hopes that a report about the Shadow Lord coming from us is going to be listened to more seriously than when she tried to tell the San d'Orian court about it.
Kupipi welcomes us back, and tells us that Semih had been worried about us. In which case, I don't know why Semih left us there instead of staying for a bit to make sure that we could handle the Black Dragon, if she was going to feel so guilty.
Mourices just repeats what Kupipi and everyone else advises, ie go report the Shadow Lord's imminent resurrection to San d'Oria as quickly as possible.
Halver, perhaps infected by the apathetic conservatism of San d'Oria, first accepts our report, but then starts second-guessing its accuracy and urgency immediately. He gives us our Adventurer's Certificate anyway, and raises our nation rank to 3.
Which means we can go pick up Curilla as a Trust. Once she gets over her own self-doubt, at least.
Curilla: Try as I might, I cannot help but picture people pointing and laughing as I falter. A leader who cannot command respect is no better than a king with no country.
And further, I have never been one to fight for fame or personal gain. Not since I lost my eye in exchange for victory in the tourneys.
I recall discussing this with you when I asked you to bring me water from the spring atop Horlais Peak.
You proffer that I should think not of glory, but of... helping others?
... You are correct, of course. Yet another sign that I have much to learn.
Curilla's Alter Ego GET. Despite being PLD, She's actually not that good as a Tank, since she doesn't use Provoke on enemies often (or at all, when I tried), so she has trouble holding aggro, especially against the Burst Cannon that is Ranger Semih Lafihna. Still, she's a passable off-tank if I want to play especially safely in case the main Tank (Valaineral, who has yet to be dethroned) is defeated.
On a whim, I go across the hall to the Royal Knight quarters.
"Overzealous" is the sort of term used by someone who is trying to downplay and excuse behaviour that is more properly labelled "fanatical".
Aramaviont: Royal Knight Aramaviont reporting! I've returned from Windurst. Maybe it's just me, but the wee folk there are hiding something, I know it!
Why else would they let Yagudo run wild over the countryside? I'd lock those nasty feathered fowl up in cages if I were them!
Once again, we can see the intense racism and hatred that San d'Orians have against beastmen. Even the actions of the Bastok miners, who send expeditions into the mines to clear out the Quadav, are seen as too light-handed and lenient towards the Quadav. Bastok wants to remove the Quadav because the Quadav are occupying prime mining locations, while San d'Orians (or at least the Royal Knights) would have removed the Quadav for the sake of removing the Quadav. The genocide is the point.
One result of handing flowers to the three Mithra children in the starter cities is I now have access to a second floor to my Mog House, which is accessible by trying to leave the Mog House and choosing to go to the second floor.
In practice this just means another apartment-sized space to decorate, using furniture that I don't have, which I need to buy with money I don't have. The second floor of the Mog House is entirely decorative, since any furniture items with actual use like flowerpots and storage only work on the first original floor. So that extra decorative space is probably going to be empty for the foreseeable future, since I don't even have enough money to buy furniture for the first floor.
Oh ffs.
The cutscene starts upon entering my Mog House the next time after I unlock the second floor. According to the Moogle, the Mog House is not only leaky, but also a "tottering, tumble-down shanty", and requires repairs. To do so, I need to hand over an Orcish armour plate, a Quadav backscale, and a Yagudo caulk block. In other words, drops from the three starter city beast tribes. I already have the Orcish Armour Plate due to starting in San d'Oria and hunting (ie being aggroed by) Orcs, so the others will have to wait for when I level alt Jobs.
This cutscene doesn't have the content pack title pop up, so I had to check the wikis to see what it was. This is A Moogle Kupo d'Etat, and is allegedly triggered upon entering the Mog House at level 10 or above, but I've been doing that all this time without this happening, so who even knows. Once more, it's content for the future, so I'll ignore it until I get around to farming the necessary items.
While I'm in San d'Oria, I get another mission from a NPC I happened to talk to: Sobane wants to tell me a secret, but to make sure, she wants proof of my oath to Altana to keep that secret by obtaining a cathedral tapestry.
These are dropped from the Orcs in Fort Ghelsba and Yughott Grotto, and I got one the last time I went there for Curilla's hot springs water fetch quest. I don't think the game elaborates further on the circumstances of this tapestry, but the implications are interesting: the Orcs are carrying around this tapestry, which the description says was recognized by the San d'Orian Cathedral as a genuine relic used by a former saint. So the Orcs not only obtained this relic somehow, but are carrying it, indicating they know its worth. The obvious assumption is the Orcs looted the tapestry during an invasion of San d'Oria sometime, likely during the Crystal War twenty years ago. I'm not sure why Sobane wants this tapestry, though, or if she even knows it was stolen by Orcs and now returned by me. I don't even know if Sobane cares where I got this tapestry, or if she's just fine with me grabbing one off the wall of the cathedral.
Now that we have proven our discretion via dubious means, Sobane tells us the secret, which means it's probably not much of a secret by now if she's telling it to others.
Sobane: Francmage's only son and member of the Royal Knights, Leservieus M Mistalle, was swept up in a whirlwind of rage and despair.
He became embroiled in an argument with Lord Epuliphont, a Temple Knight with whom he was not on good terms. Enraged by the slanderous conjecture on his father's fate, Leservieus challeneged Epuliphont to a duel to the death.
As has always been the case in San d'Oria, duels are strictly forbidden by law.
When word of their battle reached the royal court, both families were stripped of their titles and Leservieus's wife returned to Selbina with her infant child in tow.
Thirty years have passed since that time.
The son born to Leservieus and his wife grew up to become a magnificent knight.
He has embarked on a journey to redeem his family's name.
When Count Teulomme learned of this, he ordered his vassals to search for this heir to the Knights Mistalle.
The count, under the pretext of wishing to know the truth of what happened thirty years ago, is offering to assist the knight in this endeavour...
However, the count's cook believes that Teulomme is more concerned with losing his lands to their rightful owner.
In short, San d'Orian court politics: land rights, family honour, and sudden issues cropping up after thirty years with nobody caring about the potential time bomb. I'm not sure what revelations the current Mistalle knight is hoping to find that would "redeem his family's name"; his father did duel someone else, and duels are against the law, so prima facie Leservieus broke the law. Even if it turned out Epuliphont was insulting Francmage, duelling is still against the law. Besides, Epuliphont's family also lost their titles, so it's not like the Mistalles were unfairly punished.
And it's been thirty years, ie longer than the Crystal War. More than enough time for Teulomme and the Mistalle family to come to a long-term understanding, since surely one party or another should have seen this coming, if the Mistalle knight was planning on this journey.
The next step according to the wikis is to talk to Mayor Abelard at Selbina. Which makes sense, since that's where the Lady Mistalle went after the family was demoted.
For some reason Abelard introduces himself again. Possibly the game does not have the capability to check if the player character is already acquainted with the NPC, unlike FFXIV.
We do see that the name of Leservieus's wife is Leffine, which sounds like something we should have learned from chatting with other NPCs if we had to actually investigate. But we have the wikis, so straight to Abelard it was.
Abelard: Sure, I've been doing some research on Ironheart's past, but...
That's not the same thing, lass. I haven't got the slightest interest in his private life.
I already know all there is to know about him, in any case.
Have you heard of Lord Torresapet B Ordelle? It was feared he would die a demented death in Ordelle's Caves before he completed the map of those twisted tunnels.
He gathered the facts about Gwynham Ironheart's life into a single volume. I have the book right there.
It's just that... Before that book came into my possession, Gwynham's daughter, Enid, tore out several pages and threw them away.
I'm curious as to what was written on those pages, but I suppose there's a reason Enid removed them in the first place.
I guess I should respect that. Besides, I doubt anyone could find them anyway...
It's a little confusing, but upon re-reading I think it's confusing in a slightly realistic way: Abelard isn't actually talking about the Mistalles, but rather rambling in an old-man way about his own thoughts on uncovering the past. So he reminisces about his own research into Gwynham Ironheart, the renowned explorer, and how he would have liked to learn more via the biography by Torraspet, but some pages were torn out, oh well.
According to the wikis, our next step is to go to Ordelle's Caves and find those Torn Pages. Which presumably we would then present to Abelard, surprising him, and getting him to open up about Leffine Mistalle.
I'll be putting that on hold for the moment, though, due to how dungeons work for this: in every dungeon, there is a treasure chest that spawns in one of several locations. The spawn rate is allegedly just a couple of minutes, but it spawns in only one of many locations. To open that chest, I need a "Chest Key" specific to that dungeon, which drops only from certain enemies in that dungeon. So not only do I have to grind for that key drop, I also have to actually find the treasure chest.
I actually tried looking for that key, but I didn't get anything after half an hour of grinding. It's entirely RNG: back when I was grinding levels in Gusgen Mines, I got like three Gusgen Chest Keys in quick succession. They're unique items, so I can only hold one at a time, so it was kind of a waste for the other two.
Continuing my noodling about, I head to Upper Jeuno to unlock another game mechanic, or rather start the long process to unlock another game mechanic.
Brutus runs the Chocobo ranch in Jeuno. There are Chocobo ranches in all the main cities, and theoretically I could hire a Chocobo to ride, but I've not done so because I need a Chocobo Licence first, and I need to go through this questline with Brutus to get one anyway.
Brutus actually offers several quests at once, and I have to work my way through them before I can get to the one I want. The first has me release a Chocobo from the stable while Brutus's back is turned; rather than being angry, Brutus is pleasantly surprised, because that Chocobo had always looked like it wanted to go explore the wilds of La Theine Plateau, and Brutus wants me to check up on it to see if it has acclimated to life in the wild.
The second would eventually lead to getting a Chocobo licence, and has me attempt to befriend a Chocobo, to prove that I'm trustworthy enough not to abuse them. Can't abandon a Chocobo if I've never had one, after all.
The process requires me to feed four Gausebit Grass items to the Chocobo (as usual, via the Trade interface). These drop at a fairly high rate from Craneflies in the Meriphataud Mountains, accessible a few zones away from either Jeuno or Windurst, level range 15-25. I get them without any problems, which is a pleasant change from the ridiculous drop rates for many other items.
As I feed the Gausebit Grass to the Chocobo, a cutscene happens where Dietmund, allegedly the Chocobo's former owner, turns up.
Dietmund: This chocobo belongs to me. Can't you see the brand? Now give him back.
Osker: Wait, that means -- Master, come quickly!
Brutus: Mister, you may be a chocobo handler, but I reckon you handle 'em roughly!
D: So? You got a problem with that? Spoil your animals and they'll never obey.
You gotta instill them with fear! I mean, come on... They're just animals! You eat meat, don't you?
So don't lecture me over what I do with 'em.
Come on, let's go.
Chocobo: Kweh!
O: Lay off, mister! You're scaring him!
D: Yeah? Well, that's 'cause you've spoiled him rotten!
Dietmund is so stereotypical and cliched for an abusive animal handler that he's obviously going to have a change of heart.
Brutus tells me not to worry about it, and to continue with my Chocobo feeding.
Thus getting me a Chocobo licence, allowing me to rent Chocobos at Chocobo stables across the land. Which I will never end up doing, because right across from Brutus is a Tarutaru named Mapitoto, dressed in a Chocobo suit.
Mapitoto has a reason for her costume: every time she unmasks, the Chocobos attempt to bite off her nose. Still, she loves her job, and has been experimenting with domesticating different beasts to ride on. At this time, they're just about to unveil their recent success, the raptor. Which just needs a test drive to prove its suitability.
This takes the form of a minigame. There are eight spots across the zone of Batallia Downs that have "Raptor's Food" in them, and I have to get at least five of them while making my way to the other side of the zone, where a NPC is waiting at the nook directly west of the western-most Raptor's Food. While running across the zone, the raptor will gradually lose Motivation, which makes it go slower and slower. If it runs out of Motivation, I fail the minigame, and must start over; luckily QoL applies and I can restart via a menu option, rather than go all the way back to Mapitoto.
Along the way, another bar named "Pep" fills up. If I use a /cheer emote, the raptor gains some Motivation proportionate to the amount of Pep, and the Pep bar empties. Motivation can also be filled significantly by picking up Raptor's Food. So it's supposed to be a balancing act between using the Pep bar, the distance between each Raptor's Food item, and how quickly the raptor is moving based on their Motivation.
The Raptor's Food items are tucked away inside small underground alcoves, but thankfully are marked by beams of light, so I can see them from some distance away. It takes me a couple of tries, but I succeed in the end.
This is the game's way of explaining why I'm teleported straight back to Mapitoto when I succeed.
As a reward, Mapitoto gives me what I came here to get: a trainer's whistle, which is a key item that allows me to call my own mounts. I get the default raptor, and other mounts are supposed to come from seasonal events, all of which I can "register" to my Trainer's Whistle as an option for a mount.
Personal Mounts in FFXI feel like they were added on much later, as a quality of life feature, and tacked on to the existing Chocobo rental mechanics. Mounts can be used in all Field zones, but not Dungeon or City zones. When you're mounted up, nothing will aggro to you, even if you auto-run into them. You can't do anything while mounted other than chat, Check enemies, and dismount. If you have Trusts out, they'll remain out, and just run along behind you and auto-teleporting to your vicinity once you outpace them. Trusts don't aggro anything anyway, so it's safe to leave them out.
You also get a limit of 25 minutes of mounted time, whether you're hiring a Chocobo or you're on your own personal mount. Once those 25 minutes are up, you are automatically dismounted. Personal mounts also have a one-minute (shared) cooldown between summons, for some reason, so you can't repeatedly mount and dismount in succession.
Still, it's quite useful, because it certainly feels like mount speed is quite fast. I'd say about twice the speed of regular foot travel, if not more, and the scenery just goes by at a good clip. I don't know how much of it is due to FFXI environments being big and expansive in the first place, and so speedy travel makes it feel faster. Along with not having to worry about aggroing (and having to deal with enemies too low to be worthwhile but still high enough to aggro), my complaints about intra-zone travel in FFXI are mitigated. It's a little annoying that you need to be able to get to Jeuno in the first place to accomplish this, but it's better than not having it at all.
While I'm doing all this, I get a system notification in the chatlog to go see Nantoto in Lower Jeuno.
Nantoto: A.M.A.N. is the group responsible-wonsible for those and other such adventurer-supporting ideas.
Records of Eminence is just another manifestation of A.M.A.N.'s helpful-welpful nature.
I'd like to know exactaruly who's dispensing the spoils for completed objectives and why, however.
They say that people's greatest fear is the fear of the unknown, which makes sense to me. Why else would my teeth start chattaruing every time I get objectives addressed to me with no sender?
Anyway, that's why I'm so graciously-waciously giving this one to you, Miyoto.
... You are going to prove to me that you're a truly valiantaru and brave adventurer, aren't you?
You adventurers can never abide affrontarus to your character, can you?
Either way, your objective is to investigate various telepoints. Yeesh, this task is so far beneath a white mage of my caliber-waliber, it isn't even funny.
The "telepoints" Nantoto wants me to go investigate are the crystals in places like the Crags. There's the three Crags (of Holla, Dem, and Mea) I've already encountered, and three other non-Crag telepoints in places I've not been to, but which are accessible if I want to go explore a bit.
One minor issue is having visited the telepoints before this quest doesn't count. I have to actually visit (and touch) the telepoints after activating this quest, or it doesn't count. Luckily I can just warp to a Survival Guide in the zones, and then mount up and head to the telepoints in safety.
Also the wikis tell me this quest is worth 2500 experience points, and I can save it for another Job I want those experience points to go to. So that's something I can try.
Dietmund the abusive animal handler lives in Lower Jeuno. He has a son named Domingart, and I can already see how Dietmund is going to get his change of heart, since he obviously loves and cares for his son.
Zoning out (to Selbina to buy some spells) and zoning back in gives another cutscene when I interact with Dietmund's house door:
Dietmund wants my help to get a special herb from Qufim Island, available only at night, which the wiki says means between 21:40 and 04:00 in Vana'diel time. As previous posts showed, I'm familiar with Qufim Island by now, since it's level 25-35 and a good place to level up my Jobs to 30. So I just need to wait until evening before heading there and checking the quest location.
The wikis say I was supposed to talk to NPC Shalott before Dietmund would give me that quest, but I tried before, and Shalott just gave me generic NPC dialogue (about being nice to Chocobos). So I may have done things out of order a little, but it's just flavour text. According to Shalott, Domingart was shocked at Dietmund's treatment of his Chocobos, so the son already disapproves of the father's Chocobo handling. Neither Shalott nor Osker thinks Dietmund will change his ways.
In the background, the Chocobo gives a quiet kweh.
The path to the quest location on Qufim is down a ramp by the cliff, which I would not have noticed if it wasn't for the wikis. There's usually nothing there, but now there's a single regular monster of the Sea Monk (ie octopus or squid shapes) family called "Kraken" there, level 37-38. I don't know why it's there or what significance it has to the quest, other than "aha, a challenge for the player, just because".
Dietmund shows up, and laments that having a Chocobo to dig for the flower roots would be much easier. So of course, the Chocobo Dietmund had abused shows up and digs up the roots for him.
It's not an especially deep tale, but it does follow the same sort of mini-arc as many of the questlines in FFXIV, and likely several more in FFXI itself: people who are abrasive or cruel in small and petty ways can change, although it's not always a given. They can recognize that they were wrong, and that they should do better.
Notably, nowhere does it say we have to forgive them, or that they're immediately redeemed. But often, showing them the error of their ways and beliefs is accomplished just by being the best person we can be; in this case, we help out because we want to save Domingart, who is blameless for his father's actions. Dietmund himself doesn't ask for forgiveness, but rather a chance to atone and make right his mistakes.
When we return to Dietmund's house, we're greeted by his son, who's up and about. Domingart gives us the quest reward (a Beastmaster necklace piece), and runs off to do little kid things.
The next step is technically to go to Brutus to see how it all ends up, but before that I take a detour to La Theine Plateau to finish off that runaway Chocobo quest. It's not very interesting: the Chocobo is found at La Theine Plateau making eyes at another Chocobo, before returning to Brutus's ranch in Jeuno. We go back to Brutus, who wonders what that's all about, and that the returned Chocobo is acting all mopey. We have to go to the president of the Vana'diel Chocobo Society, Hantileon, in Southern San d'Oria, where representatives from other cities' chocobo ranches are present and asking what it's about.
We attend this meeting, where we are asked why this one Chocobo from Jeuno and one other Chocobo from San d'Oria wanted to leave their stables so badly. We are given three options to respond, all of which are obviously wrong, but must go through all of them before the correct answer finally appears: the Jeuno Chocobo was from San d'Oria initially, and had "fallen in love" with the San d'Orian Chocobo back then. So when the Chocobo was transferred to Jeuno, they wanted to meet the other Chocobo badly. Thus, the correct solution is to bring the Chocobos back together.
The VCS representatives all mutter that this was a waste of time, and I agree. The reward is a Chocobo Egg (not one from the Chocobo couple, apparently, but just one that the VCS happened to have spare), which begins a Chocobo Raising mechanic that requires just under a month of RL time to complete. It is also the only way to get an iconic Chocobo personal mount, as well as do other Chocobo-related minigames, and for now I'm thinking I'm just going to get the mount and forget about the side minigame content.
Talking to Brutus in Jeuno again, we see the conclusion of Dietmund's arc. He apologizes once again to the Chocobo, as well as Brutus and Osker. He also tells us that we could be a "great beastmaster", which is the hint that this questline is the prerequisite to unlock that Job.
Like so.
Unlocking "advanced Jobs" in FFXI is kind of uneven. We have the relatively easy unlocks like this, which just requires some fetch questing and the ability to survive Qufim Island and the surprise Kraken enemy. And then there's the disgustingly tedious ones, which I'll get into in a bit.
For BST, I would consider it as "passable". It's not too troublesome, and it contains some story, albeit not a lot of lore: we see the negative example of a Bad Beastmaster in Dietmund, who believed in using fear and pain to control his animals. And we see the comments by the Good Beastmaster in Brutus, who advocates for caring and loving your tamed animals. And the questline series shows the path Dietmund takes from cruel to caring, in a quick and abbreviated manner.
Compare to the Paladin unlock, where Balasiel doesn't explain anything about what being a Paladin means or what the quests have to do with it, other than "San d'Orian knights must rely on their swords". We just solve his pointless riddles and he congratulates us, quest done.
In Upper Jeuno, on the streets above the Chocobo stables, there is a troupe performing, and the leader Laila is dismissive of our request to join this troupe and unlock the Dancer Job. When we persist, she tells us to go get a stardust pebble, while refusing to tell us what that actually is.
The Mithra next to her, Rhea Myuliah, offers to help us out, but only if we prove our conviction. She wants us to go to the Lion Springs Tavern in San d'Oria and convince the proprietor to let us dance on the stage.
Teleporting over to San d'Oria and the Lion Springs, the proprietor Valderotaux is easy enough to convince, largely because he remembers the last time Troupe Brilioth put on a show there. Since we claim to be a dancer, he's willing to give us a chance.
It does not go well.
We're given a few choices like "Appeal to the audience" and "Strike a pose", all of which result in the audience heckling and booing us. The heckling is just two lines, "Should we call for a doctor? I think she's having a fit." and "Is that what they call dancing these days?", but we have to pick the options four times, so they get repeated. I feel like this is one of those times when some trimming of the dialogue might be better for pacing.
Valderotaux diplomatically tells us that our dancing style was a bit too "original" for his establishment. Still, we did what Rhea told us to, so back to her.
Rhea Myuliah: Twenty years ago, stardust pebbles could be found lying at the bottom of Lake Mechieume in Jugner Forest.
But their dazzling glow made them such a collector's item that not a single one remains there today.
I believe our merciless leader has set you a task that cannot be completed.
It's a shame. While you still lack the skill, you certainly have the spirit of a dancer...
Per the wikis, to continue this quest, I have to go to the "S" version of Jugner Forest, which further confirms that it's during the Crystal War era, conveniently twenty years ago, meaning I can pick up a Stardust Pebble there. This is very much akin to those quests in FFXIV (and other games) where the player character has access to apparently impossible locations via time travel or dimensional travel, and so we can just hop over a teleport to pick up something the world has not seen in millennia. "This beast is only known through ancient legends," the researcher says, so we just port to Elpis and pick up its horn or teeth or something.
For now I'm leaving it, since I'm a little intimidated by the level range of the "S" zones. I should be able to handle it just by mounting up, but just to be safe.
I spend some time on Qufim Island grinding critters. Specifically as many "Acrophies" as I can, because they're part of the Leech family of enemies, and in my current spate of unlocking advanced Jobs, there is a certain (very rare) drop that comes from Leeches. At least this time it's from any Leech enemy (as far as I know), but I do need to be above level 30 before it has a chance to drop.
Finally, after a few hours and levelling up THF enough that I get the Job Trait that increases drops, I get it. With that item in my inventory, I teleport to Windurst. The destination is the House Of The Hero in the Windurst Walls district.
"Seek and gather the seven colours?" Well, at least it doesn't sound like a trap. And I'm not sensing a whole lot of energy from within this ruby, anyway.
But I need to tell you this -- when you let down your guard to hear the voices around you, you should probably have a strong black mage by your side... just to be safe.
Those voices around you aren'taru always going to be weak ones like just now. You had better be careful. You won'taru always have me there to protect you!
I'm not entirely sure what Ajido-Marujido means with his talk about black mages. I think it's a reference to how we're going to get other summons than the default, ie fight them until they submit. And he mentions "black mage" because based on his Trust Alter Ego entry on the wikis, he's BLM/RDM, so he's talking about being a Trust while we fight those potential summons.
Summoner is one of the most tedious Advanced Jobs to unlock. As the Carbuncle's Ruby says, we need to "gather the seven colours". What this means is we need to be in outdoor zones with the Carbuncle's Ruby in our inventory, to experience seven different specific types of weather.
FFXI, being of the era where "user-friendliness" and "quality of life" were considered "dumbing the game down", and "gameplay" meant "find it out yourselves", makes this as difficult and tedious as possible. Firstly, the weather in each zone is mostly randomized, including when the weather changes. Which means there's no handy website which lists when the next weather to be experienced will be in RL time, and weather types can last for anywhere between a couple of minutes of RL time to hours.
Secondly, there are "weather reporters" in various city and town zones, but they only give the weather forecast for nearby zones. So Selbina's weather reporter is the most centrally located on Quon, and gives the weather for most of the Quon zones, but not the farther Mindartia zones, or most of the expansion areas. The weather report NPCs are not labelled as such, and must be either looked up on the wikis, or we have to talk to every NPC until we find and remember them.
Thirdly, the weather report NPCs have a chance to be wrong. This is allegedly for "realism", where there's always a chance for freak weather occurences, but in a game it just adds uncertainty and tedium. From what I can find, this chance to be wrong is very small, but I'd experienced it myself twice during my own weather search, so either I'm very unlucky or it's not that small a chance.
Fourthly, the weather report NPCs give the weather report for each zone in blocks of three days, starting from the day itself and ending on the day after tomorrow. Then they end the conversation, so to actually check the weather for multiple zones in succession, there will be a lot of clicking on the NPC and navigating their dialogue menu.
Lastly, the weather is "mostly randomized" because there is reportedly a very slight bias towards weather patterns in real life. Specifically, northern hemisphere seasons, presumably as experienced in Japan. So if I'm looking for the Heat Wave weather, the suggestion many people give is to wait until RL June or July, ie the summer months.
Also, I'm not sure if this is a coding oversight or if there's some lore reason, but certain locations like Qufim Island do not count for this weather gathering. This matters for the Thunderstorm weather, which is near-constant on Qufim, but rather rarer in other zones.
If it matters, the seven weather types are in the usual rainbow mnemonic ROY G BIV, ie Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet. Meaning Heat Wave, Clear Skies, Dust Storm, Windy, Rain, Snow, and Thunderstorm. It's not enough to be in the zone when the weather changes; I have to actually load into the area during that weather. The only consolation is I can gather the weather in any order.
As it is, I end up exploring and discovering many new zones in FFXI, not because I particularly want to explore ahead of the story, but because I was looking for weather in likely biomes.
