Returning to Vana'diel

Many players are talking about returning to the game following the announcement of Seekers of Adoulin, but a lot has changed since when they quit, almost regardless of when that was. Speaking to players and looking around, it seems that their departure times vary from the height of Treasures of Aht Urhgan to the doldrums of Wings of the Goddess to the well-brewed finish of Abyssea. I will, in writing this guide, assume that players quit right in the middle of Treasures of Aht Urhgan but I will attempt to keep it chronological enough that you can simply skip through to wherever you quit.

For information regarding version updates of the past several years and their timing, please reference the FFXI Version Update History.

For the sake of simplicity and contrasting, I will be using "L75" to refer to thing from the Level 75 era.

Should you Return?

Still not sure if you want to come back? Here are the big changes that will help you decide:

Changes to Characters

The level cap is now 99 with 5 new Limit Break quests. This has a dramatic impact on the damage dealt to L75 monsters, a large impact on Evasion rates against L75 content, and smaller impact on the damage taken from L75 monsters. A level 99 Warrior has more evasion than a level 75 Thief did. Just let that one roll around in your head for a little while. This makes old events that were once difficult (like Salvage) very possible lowman. If you remember about how difficult L75 Nyzul Isle monsters were, now all monsters from that era are that easy or easier. Duoing Byakko is no longer a challenge and a wipe to him would be greeted with ridicule.

Additionally, there are new merit point caps and categories. Some of the Merit Weapon Skills represent the best available option for their weapon type.

Changes to Experience Points

Another incredibly large change to the game is how much easier Experience Points are to get these days. Players can attain solo XP/hr rates these days that would make the most elite L75 merit parties jealous. It is not very uncommon to break 200,000 XP/hr in an XP Alliance. That brings me to my next point. There are no more 6 person XP parties. Almost all XPing is done in alliances. I'm sure that we all have fond memories of meeting friends in XP parties, but I'm equally sure that we've all had "45 minutes to form, 30 minutes to get to camp, XP for half an hour and the healer has to go" experiences as well. Finally, many other new parts of endgame these days, like Voidwatch, reward Experience Points. Unless you are leveling a new job or really need some specific merits, there is almost no reason to join an XP alliance.

Overall, I would say that this change to the game was very much for the best. SquareEnix has decided to nearly remove XPing as an event unto itself, which was met with glee followed by nostalgia pangs and followed by acceptance. We don't need XPing to be an event anymore. There are dozens of other things to do in the game, and they keep adding more.

That said, in the years between ToAU's peak and now there were several other changes made to XPing. First of all, they roughly doubled the XP/kill from monsters. EMs now yield 200xp to a solo player, and EPs can yield up to 100. This makes grinding low level jobs very easy and is still a common way to get from 1-13ish. Secondly, they added Fields of Valor and Grounds of Valor, where you kill 5~10 specific monsters and receive a bonus amount of experience points. This is still a very common way to get to 30ish, the lowest level for Abyssea. Finally, they added Level Sync, a system that allows players to synchronize their level with any party member of their choice. No more xping out of camps and having to get replacements for party members that dingged 37 in Garlaige Citadel! No one XPs this way anymore, though.

Economic Changes

Fundamentally, the economy has changed from being Crafting based to being more farming based. The primary high-gil item that people buy these days are Relics, Mythics, and a new class of special weapon known as an Empyrean. This is not to say that it is impossible to make gil crafting, but it's no longer the crafter's market that it once was. Ideal gearsets are no longer riddled with Tier 0 and Tier 1 HQs that require capped skills to synth. There are a few for each craft, but not to the extent that it was at L75. It is still possible to make gil crafting, but farming is now competitive with it.

So what does this mean? Well, players that prefer to farm for their gil are now handily rewarded. Dynamis has undergone dramatic adjustments and now can be entered for two hours once a day to farm Dynamis Currency solo. Salvage has not been changed (yet), but it is still a great way to make gil by farming Alexandrite. Abyssea is a new set of areas that rewards both Experience Points and a new currency known as Cruor upon defeating monsters. This Cruor can be indirectly exchanged for gil via and item and then NPC and is another good way to make gil. Overall, these changes have made obtaining special weapons infinitely easier than they once were. You can farm a relic in two months doing Dynamis once per day.

As you may have noticed from the last paragraph, I mentioned NPCing items being a major source of income. This has led to somewhat gentle inflation. So when you return, price might look the same but they are actually much less valuable. Farming 4,000,000 for a Roundel Earring is a matter of two good Dynamis runs, or four hours of work.

Crafting Changes

Mega-Moglification and Crafting Torques have given skills a 4-6 point boost over the level 75 maximums. Additionally, the crafting cap for main crafts was raised to level 110 with the subcrafts being raised to 70. It is now possible to Tier 1 every synth from the L75 era. Additionally, it is possible for crafts with Torques to skill up on a synth that they are Tier 1 on. So a level 100+12 Smith could skill up on a 101 recipe while also being Tier 1 on it.

Quality-of-life wise, SE recently addressed several major crafting annoyances. There is now no synthesis delay (that annoying period after completing a craft before you can start another) and there is effectively no delay when buying ingredients at the guild.

Many of the crafts do not have sufficient skillup recipes from 100-110, but that will likely change in time. SE has hinted that the caps will continue to increase to a final cap of level 140. If you were primarily a crafter, this is both a frustrating and an exciting time to be playing.

Social Changes

I don't know an easy way to deliver the news, so I'll just say it. There is no more 21-24 hour HNM camping endgame and there are no more HNMLSs. King Behemoth, Nidhogg, and Aspidochelone are now forced pops using items that you indirectly get from their respective Themis Orb fights. Tiamat, Dark Ixion, Sandworm, and various other HNMs have not had their pop conditions changed, but the lack of the big-three and ease of soloing these formerly ferocious monsters has led to the disbanding of all HNM shells. Their drops are still worth gil, if you choose to camp them solo or duo. Some people love these changes and some are still itching for a Fafnir ToD that will never come, but this has unarguably changed. Every large shell that still exists is an event shell but there aren't even many of those left, as you will see.

Abyssea was the expansion set that accompanied the level cap increase and dramatically restructured linkshells. Everything in Abyssea can be duoed by a strong melee and a White Mage. At most, you need about 5 people in Abyssea to accomplish whatever your goal is. Large event linkshells that pulled 18+ people were now facing running split events every single night, and most of them just split into smaller groups of friends that formed their own linkshells. As the level cap went up and old content became easier and easier, there was less and less justification for linkshells that could pull more a full alliance of players. Some have managed to adapt and hang on, but they are the exception rather than the rule. It has finally happened. Your socials are now also your event shells. This has also led to a lot of Melee + Mage dualboxing, which is far more common than it ever used to be.

This was followed by Voidwatch, which is an event that requires an alliance of specific jobs for maximum efficiency. This can be done either by an event shell or by shout groups. Shout groups? Those things that wipe to Hakutaku five times after two mages Sneak and Invis a full alliance of melee through the Den of Rancor because no one has powders or oils? Well, the world has changed my friend. There are certainly still bad players that respond to shouts and there are fights that you don't want to do with just anyone, but by and large most of Voidwatch can be done by an alliance of the kind of players that respond to Voidwatch shouts. It's self selecting, as super-casual players don't want to deal with Voidwatch's admittedly horrible drop rates and simply don't respond, but it has changed the social dynamic of the game once again. Shout groups are in vogue.

Legion is threatening to reverse all this proposed progress by being too difficult to do with a shout group. It's also too difficult for the average event shell and offers pretty mediocre rewards, so people seem content to ignore it. If you are looking to return to the game with some friends and gun for a challenge, this event is your target.

Job Balance

The opening of the Forums has led to more direct conversation between the players and the Developers (at least for the Japanese players), but it has not been very useful when it comes to fixing things (other than spelling, the Localization subforum is amazing). It has, however, been useful in understanding what the Developer's ideas for different jobs are. Their goal is not to balance the damage these jobs do, it is to balance their utility.

For instance, the Devs seem content to give Thief relatively little utility besides Treasure Hunter. This appears to be entirely intentional because they feel TH is so useful. Sorry, Thieves. They seem to generally aim to make 2H DDs have relatively weak passive defenses (like Evasion) with high damage potential while 1H DDs have high passive defenses but lower damage potential. They are not aiming to make it so everyone does the same damage in all situations. They are aiming to make it so certain jobs will be preferred in some events (like heavy DDs in Voidwatch) and some in others (like light DDs in Dynamis).

There is an inevitable conflict between the Devs' job concepts and the players' job concepts. They have been entirely unyielding and I cannot think of a single suggestion (at least from the NA community) that would affect game balance and has been implemented. The official forums opening did herald a new level of communication between the Dev team and the playerbase, but it was mostly so they could tell us to screw off more directly.

Quality of Life Adjustments

Apart from the above, SE has changed many things that were formerly quite annoying so that they are less annoying. Most of these changes are "Why didn't you do that before release?" kinds of obvious gameplay problems, but some of them are an outgrowth of a shrinking game population. Depending when you quit, any of these may be new:

• There are now 6 different storage locations, all with a maximum capacity of 80. Three of them are available to you when you are in the field, though you can still only use gear and equip items from one of them (Items menu, Control-I).
• All auction houses now connect to the same AH. There can be only one. /Highlander.
• Crafting delay and guild salesroom delay have both been eliminated.
• The Runic Portal in Whitegate no longer requires a permit. You can pay to use it right at the portal.
• No more trips to Nashmau to exchange Imperial currency! You can select how many coins you want directly at the coin NPC.
• More common and just more sources of Movement Speed. There are boots that give a +12% enchantment and there are common (if not always cheap) +12~18% options for all jobs. You can use them in conjunction with one another.

Other things that have been promised but not yet delivered upon:

• SE is allegedly going to make it so we can access storage from any mog house, though they mentioned this a year ago and it still hasn't happened.
• SE says they're going to re-make icons at higher resolution and in more unique ways. Sort of like an official version of the old icon .dat swaps (now known as XI-View).
• Apart from the last point, SE has promised a general UI overhaul (for PC). There were some demos of it at 2013 FanFest.

Returning

If you choose to return to the game, before you read any further you will need to do these things:

• Buy all the Abyssea expansions. The cheapest way to do this may be by buying the FFXI Ultimate Abyssea Collector's Edition copy (digital download works). You may also get the Mini-Expansions depending how you do this, and will likely get a bunch of cutscenes related to them that I won't be discussing below.
  • It is recommended that you follow the instructions in Kohan's thread to speed up your update if you're reinstalling, as SE still does not offer a pre-patched download.
• Create a SquareEnix ID for your account (if necessary) and migrate to the Account Management system.[1]
• Log In. Welcome back! Now the fun begins.

Abyssea

The first thing you want to do when you come back is become minimally competent in Abyss-a-lese due to all the awesome armor and XP available within. Also, start your stone timer (Abyssea Guide) and read over the guide. This is probably the first "event" you should tackle when you return.

Voidwatch

The second thing you should do when you return is is start your Voidwatch

New/Adjusted Events

Abyssea

Abyssea is one of the newest and most popular events in the game. It deserves its own guide, so it has its own guide: Abyssea Guide

Voidwatch

Voidwatch is less beloved than Abyssea, but it has been fairly popular overall. It also merits its own guide, so here it is: Voidwatch Guide

Dynamis

Dynamis was re-worked dramatically and is now a 2-hour event that people do daily for gil or to farm themselves Relic Weapons. Relic Armor +2 was also added, which gives yet another reason to do this event. I strongly recommend reading the Dynamis page (especially the proc information part). You will need to buy a Perpetual Hourglass for 50k from the Goblin near the entrance of Davoi, Beadeaux, or Castle Oztroja. You can also buy maps here, if you want. These Key Items are permanent, so you will only need to do this once.

Also, you will have the most fun in Dynamis as a duo of some kind, so find a friend that also wants to make gil and get to work.

Trial of the Magians

Trial of the Magians is a system that allows players to upgrade equipment and weapons by fulfilling specific conditions. This is something of a response to players' demands for a system where a constant amount of effort would yield a constant reward, unlike SE's typical skinner box-ish event designs where you kill 50 Nidhoggs and see two E.bodies and then your LS gets four in two kills while you're on vacation.

A few important notes:

• All of the best equipment comes from this, but not all of it is easy to get.
• Mage weapons from this system are amazing, but their trials are a huuuuuuge pain in the... well, you get the idea. They're for the brave. I'm apparently not brave.
• You can use this system to upgrade Relic Weapons, Mythic Weapons, and to create Empyrean Weapons or Empyrean Armor +2. Additionally, SE has taken to making it part of some quests lately.

Some melee jobs use easily obtained weapons from this system. Here are a few that people typically approve of over AH options:

• Strength Axe, Dagger, or Katana
• TP Bonus Great Katana

Harder to obtain weapons that people like are:

• Occasionally Attacks Twice Polearm, Great Sword, and Scythe

Limbus / Einherjar

Limbus and Einherjar both got a light re-touch lately. All of the old zones/chambers are still fundamentally the same, but the entrance conditions for Odin's Chamber was changed and new areas designed for level 99 players with new bosses and new drops were added to each event. The events fundamentally haven't changed, so you can check out the new stuff with the links below:

• Temenos Expansion
• Apollyon Expansion
• Odin's Chamber II

For Limbus, now you can use Metal Chips to enter another zone in Temenos and Apollyon. Defeating this new zone yields a Key Item that you can exchange (with 150 Ancient Beastcoins) for the entrance item for new (Arch) boss fights. These new boss fights can be done with a well-prepared party or two. Only one player's key item is consumed per boss fight, so it's theoretically possible to do one Metal Chip zone and then 18 Arch boss fights (for the paltry cost of 2,700 Ancient Beastcoins). By the way, they haven't added a new obtainment method for Ancient Beastcoins, so you'd be farming quite a few.

For Einherjar, there is only one new chamber where you fight a powered up version of Odin that drops largely mediocre items. This is a hardish fight, about as difficult as Odin was at 75 or maybe a little harder. It requires an alliance of players, which means it is currently restricted to larger linkshells. That's fine. The drops suck!

Synergy

Synergy is a new crafting system that was introduced and briefly updated properly, but has now been officially abandoned in favor of higher crafting caps. It relied on bringing together various crafters in a party to undertake a more difficult synth and then having your party members with Synergy skill play a minigame to obtain the proper elemental balance for the group's synth. I'll admit that it sounds like a great idea, but in practice it isn't nearly as successful or fun as it sounds. Profit sharing is not something crafters like and none of the synths are hard enough to really require two players, so it generally devolved into a single crafter in a party with his level 100 crafting mules.

There are some items that can be made both through their native craft and through synergy, like Lucky Broth. If you want to synergize and item you generally need about the same craft levels as normal but the yields may be different and your HQ rate may be higher. Synergy typically has a higher HQ rate (even just the cap) than normal synths and does not follow the classic T0/1/2/3 structure.

I would not recommend spending any time on this as a fresh returner regardless how much you like crafting. Leveling this skill is neither difficult nor mentally taxing (choose a high level recipe, keep making it, and never hit complete), but it takes a lot of time and has pretty limited rewards. There are some things that it's essential for, but you can shout and find a synergist relatively quickly if you offer a little gil. I have had it for ages and mostly use my skill to augment things for my friends. As long as you have a friend like me, you don't really need it. Once you're long of tooth and decked out in Abyssea, you can waste a day or two hitting enter to cap your synergy skill and become "That Guy."

Sky and Kings

Various changes have been made to Sky Gods and Ground NMs. First and foremost, Tatter and Scrap Synergy was introduced. This system can be used to (gods willing) augment your old Abjurations with useful stats that will make them superior to or competitive with new equipment in some situations. You can tear up any abjuration that you receive and make Tatters, or tear up any seals you get from sky gods to make scraps. These are combined with suitable armor (Earthen Tatters for the Adaman set, Genbu Scraps for Genbu's Kabuto, etc.) to generate an augment.

In order to accomodate this system, SE increased the number of pop items and seals that drop when killing Sky monsters (1 guaranteed, 1 depending on TH). This system has revived Sky as a casual farmer's paradise. You only have an hour and want to get a nostalgia high while farming some gil? Head up to sky and kill Zipacna/Olla/Genbu. Now you feel warm, tingly, and have a million gil worth of stuff to sell.

Kings has also been affected by the Synergy augment system, but to a lesser extent. All King NQs are now force popped using items that drop from their respective KS99s and no longer 21-24 free spawn at all. These NQs have a chance to drop (10-20%) the HQ King pop item. This is shown below:

• Early Bird Catches the Wyrm -(Honey Wine)-> Fafnir -(Sweet Tea)-> Nidhogg
• Horns of War -(Beastly Shank)-> Behemoth -(Savory Shank)-> King Behemoth
• The Hills Are Alive -(Blue Pondweed)-> Adamantoise -(Red Pondweed)-> Aspidochelone

Additionally, Adamantoise Egg, Wyrm Beard, and Behemoth Tongue have been removed from the respective NQs and now are only obtainable from the HQ Kings or KSNM99s. Best of luck, Monks.

Legion

Legion is a difficult event that requires 18 or 36 people. As a returning player, you don't really need to be concerned with this event yet. If you're reviving the ol' LS and getting people back together, this can be your ultimate goal after you get yourselves geared again. It has very decent rewards for mages and is the only obtainment route for many of the new Abjurations.

Walk of Echoes

Walk of Echoes houses a series of battlefields (accessed from Xarcabard (S)) that reward level 75-95ish items and Experience Points (6-10,000). It is ruled by Summoners, but sometimes coherent JP groups get together and do it as well. Recently it has been all but abandoned during NA primetime on most servers, but sometimes the few remaining Event linkshells will attempt some of the harder chambers (they can't stop you from entering with them and there's no zone pool that would make it matter). This is pretty much how WoE works. Try to figure out where everyone is going and then follow them. Herd mentality.

Almost no matter when you quit, Walk of Echoes has probably been adjusted. It might be worth a look if you're up doing JP primetime some night and have Summoner or a lot of patience. Some of the drops are worth a lot of gil. Adjustments since 75 include:

• Normal monsters no longer drop coins and all drops are obtained through the chests.
• You're automatically raised after ~30 seconds of death (hence the Summoner paradise)
• You can skill up in Walk of Echoes battlefields now.
• You receive 5 random temporary items whenever you enter the battlefield, potentially including the ever-powerful Primeval Brew.
• There are no more entrance limitations. You can re-enter 5 times in one day if you feel like exiting the zone, buying another Kupofried's medallion, and re-entering.
  • The above two points combine to encourage some people to try and brew their way through chambers by exiting and re-entering until they get a brew. Frankly, I'd discourage this as a waste of time given the drop rate on items even assuming you do win a chamber and the odds of receiving a Brew initially. Plus, the harder chambers have anti-Brew mechanisms (like Charm TP moves).

Voidwalker Notorious Monsters

VNMs

Campaign / Campaign Ops

Campaign/Campaign Ops were added with the Wings of the Goddess expansion and still serve as a . . . way to increase your Campaign rank, which is useful for Rose Strap and a few marginal upgrades. The big news with Campaign is really as a Voiddust source, which will be relevant if you choose to dive in to the Voidwatch system and suddenly find yourself needing a ton of Voiddust. A good Campaign battle is soloable on a Melee/DNC and can yield over 10,000 Allied Notes, which can be used to purchase Voiddust from Voidwatch Purveyors in the Past cities. If you have some experience with Campaign in the past, the amount of XP/AN it rewards was buffed, nerfed, nerfed, and then buffed a lot. It's about back to where it started now.

To partake in this event, you must ally yourself with a past nation (complete one of The Fighting Fourth, Steamed Rams, or Snake on the Plains). After that, use your Campaign Map (/cmap) to locate an area where Campaign is taking place (little swords) and head there. Be aware that this map is somewhat slow to update and that not all battles are equal. You'll figure it out if you try it. There will be a Campaign NPC that you need to talk to in order to get Allied Tags and take part in Campaign. This NPC moves around depending on whether the area is beastman controlled (purple-ish) or nation controlled (red, yellow, or blue-ish). Beastman controlled NPCs will end in "C.A." and Allied controlled NPCs will end in "M.C.", "R.K.", or "L.C." You can look up the zone pages on this wiki and find out where they are. Once you have Allied Tags, talk to your Campaign NPC again to choose to join a Union. The particular one you join doesn't matter, but this lets you get some minor rewards for completing the battles. If you defeat a boss NM, you may even get a 100-piece of Dynamis Currency.

The point of Campaign is not to kill your enemies as much as to tank them indefinitely while doing a nominal amount of damage, inflicting status effects, taking damage, and healing yourself. /DNC is perfect for this. SAM/DNC, WAR/DNC, anything/DNC. You actually want to avoid being too evasive, because it will prevent you from getting points for taking damage and healing yourself.

Campaign Ops are... well... imagine that you're a week before expansion release and had an elaborate system planned out similar to Assaults but nothing actually done. Campaign Ops are the kind of thing you might squeeze out in such a situation. Feel free to look them over. I recommend doing them when you're going to rank up. If you can do the Goldsmithing crafting Ops, I always find those to be the easiest. Number of stars indicates the reward and importance of your Op, and all Ops are not offered all the time even if you're a high enough rank for them.

Ranking up in Campaign takes a little doing, but really not much. Basically, if you have a single good Campaign battle you can rank up once every three days. The longer you let it linger and go on, the harder it will be. Think of it like an average. If you need an average of 1k Allied Notes (AN) worth of credit every day and you let it go for 3 days, you need 3k AN worth of credit to be worthy of ranking up. If you let it go for 20 days, you need 20k AN. It benefits you to rank up as often as possible. Doing Wings of the Goddess Missions will allow you to "save" your progress and (upon completion of the missions), totally prevent yourself from ever being demoted. That's right, they can demote you if you don't do the missions.

Now that I've written five paragraphs about an event that I honestly don't see as very useful anymore, I'll provide another disclaimer. Really, only prioritize this event if you need Voiddust. Otherwise you can totally ignore all of this. You will want to ally yourself with a past nation for the sake of warping around and having somewhere to Retrace to, but there's no reason to leave Rank 0 unless you want Voiddust or Rose Strap.

ZNM

ZNM

Other Changes

Besieged, Misc.

Event List of Shame

These events haven't been successful or no longer have a use.

• Moblin Maze Mongers - This was briefly a way to get comparable XP to a Lolibri party, but it took a substantial time investment to get the runes to really make the system work, and they nerfed the major way to obtain runes. Now it has one or two pieces (Antica Ring) that people find useful and is empty 99% of the time.

• Stronghold Invasion - There is still a single piece of useful equipment from this system of 27 NMs with pretty unique AIs (for the time), and that is Stone Mufflers. Enhancing your Stoneskin potency by 30 is probably not a very high priority for a recent returner given the wealth of other equipment out there.

• Pankration - This event has not been updated and is done even less frequently now that Zeni exchange rates were increased.

• ANNM - This briefly-implemented BCNM-style fight was popular for a month or two and has not been done since. It offers no unique gear but some unique augments on old equipment.

• Succor to the Sidhe - A briefly tolerated set of BCNM-like fights used to augment level 75 weapons. The fights were fairly difficult at the time and often offered only minor improvements over other dramatically easier to obtain options.

• Equipment Augment System - This system allowed players to augment non-Rare gear that was level 75 or less with random (often useless) augments. People briefly blew ungodly amounts of gil getting Dex+4 on their Dusk Gloves +1, and then the system totally folded with the release of Abyssea and Trial of the Magians.

• Evolith System - Really, this was almost unarguably the single worst thought out system that was ever implemented in FFXI. I refuse to explain it further because it would be too painful for you to hear of the intricacies and obvious extreme amounts of planning that went into making such a totally useless system.