A little bit of everything from a returning playerFollow

Ok, so I guess I must really be boring most of you, 87 views, no replies, but Im going to keep at it. So I see I missed an auto-correct, "Seeing as I'm on an iPad, it would really suck if for some reason I had to fettle all this". Really auto-correct, how does the word re-type turn into fettle? Im at home now, so I can use my keyboard, however now its started to act up and half my punctuation turns into these É è, which really frigging annoys me. Its only doing that in this forum too, I can type those symbols just fine in notepad, so Im having to copy paste question marks and quotes. Im skipping apostrophes completely. Sigh....

Anyway, in no time at all I had taken 3 jobs up to level 12, monk, warrior and black mage. While I was leveling my blm I got a tell asking if I wanted a party in the Gusgen Mines. I was only 30 minutes from logging so I declined and the person said to come by any time, as the party is going 24/7. The next day I decided to give it a go, but I leveled up to 16 so that I could easily get past the bats in the dunes tunnel. I got a party immediately and spent a few hours in there, easily dinging 32. I had read about how fast the xp goes and still didnt believe it until I experienced it. Holy crap. So much for dunes parties! (for the most part anyway) The biggest problem with the level sync page burn parties is that you really outlevel your gear fast and when youre brand spanking new, thats not good, as its really hard to come up with enough gil to keep up.

TIP FOR RETURNING NEWBIES: Stop fighting every now and then and open some of the brown chests. Nobody seems to mind you taking the time to unlock them and some of the stuff you get inside sells really well. Make sure you stand right on top of the chest so people know youre opening it and dont use up some of your chances. Make sure you dont go after every chest though, thats just rude and you should be fighting most of the time anyway.

So level 32, no subjob, it was definitely time to take care of that. I had already gotten a magicked skull from the gusgen group, dont be afraid to ask if you can lot on the skull, nobody cares if you do. I headed off to the Dunes to fight some crabs and damselflies. It took about 15 crabs for the apron and 4 damselflies. Not too horrible. Once I had my sub I spent the next day or two leveling up the primary jobs, only once did the gusgen group stop from lack of players and that was during a weekday at about 10am. I always brought several weapons with me and tried to keep some higher level armor with me but there was just not much room in my bags. Thats when I discovered:

TIP FOR RETURNING NEWBIES: Theres an artisan moogle that is near your moghouse that a) gives you a scroll of instant warp once per day and b) For 9980 gil he doubles your bagspace!!! Extremely worth the price!

By this time, both my wife and I were well past ready to do the chocobo license quest, so we headed off to Jeuno. After a few million cutscenes, we entered Jeuno and settled in to do the 6 hours worth of chocobo feeding. I decided to just pop down to pick up my beastmaster key item, holy crap are silencing potions expensive when youre new! I knew I only needed silencing potions, because hey, the only thing that agros sight are the gigas right? That was my introduction to Goblin Bounty Hunters. When did these guys show up? After warping to my home point and running back to Jeuno, I decided to hold off on that just a bit.

So this is something that you dont want here? I have no interest in Live Journal, I just wanted to share my experience, some tips that I had for other returning players and eventually ask some questions. If thats no good, I guess I can stop posting.

Yeah... seeing as this forum is nye-on dead, and the majority of the job forums are even closer, I'm more than happy for a thread like this to exist. It's one thread, it's not hurting anybody, and to be honest, if he did ask a question about something noobish then the replies would likely be "(insert thread/site/x here)", {Please check it}. The tips are actually useful to real new players, i.e. players who are just starting, and I quite like reading a little backstory. It's nice to have some context with the tips.

Edited, Mar 8th 2012 7:51pm by Diamondis

I don't think you need to stop. People can be just a bit cranky at times. I really like the enthusiasm

We could always start an argument about rdm melee or smn melee or something if that would make people feel like the thread is more productive

Here's my issue: This is a forum, not your private blog. You have two posts, one right after the other, just about your experiences.

That's material for a blog. You're not discussing anything. You're not providing a guide. And I'm pretty sure there is a rule against repeated self-bumping of a thread.

No one posted anything till my response because they were like, "OK, um, sure whatever this is" *clicks back to main page*

If you want to blog, there's Blogger, LiveJournal, and several other website for it. Hell GuildPortal has blogs.

Do I want to see forum activity? I do, there's still plenty going on, just not as many discussions because information is so readily available. But I'd rather not see this become a trend where everyone posts their private little journal as if it's some form of content for a discussion forum.

Ok, you don't like it, so what? I do. New people might read it and pick up something from the little tips he did actually give. You honestly think this is going to start a trend? Really? I highly doubt it, and even if it did, mods would probably stomp it out. Again, as you're not a mod, you don't get the say on what is considered post-worthy. If mods to take this down then that's fair, until then, don't like, don't read.

The fact that this is not a discussion is irrelevant. A discussion does not equate to a good or useful post, and can be disregarded as equally as this one can. Example: "Where do you think you stand in the FFXI society". This thread is pointless, serves no purpose, and yet is somehow valid because it has a question mark in the post? Pretty much every reply in that thread is a blog post.

This thread won't be setting any trends, provides something fun to read on an increasingly dry and repetitive forum, and does provide tips which, from his perspective (returning player/wtf is going on), are useful.

tl;dr

Keep your issues to yourself.

Edit: Damn... was beaten to the same idea. lol.

Edited, Mar 8th 2012 11:19pm by Diamondis

HeyFFATMA, just wanted to say that thanks to your posts, I have just purchased FFXI from Steam...

I haven't played FFXI in YEARS, and thanks to your post I am super excited to jump back into it!

Oh the drama!

I actually enjoy posts like this, brings back the ole' nostalgic feeling. Having had SE investigating my account for 7 months now (damn you slow ass customer support) this is actually making me consider just leaving my old account and buying a new one.

If anything, we need more posts like these to get people back to the game. And I'm not saying it's dieing, but the more the merrier!

Keep going man, if only one person dislike the thread it's most likely his problem, not yours.

Don't be discouraged. This forum could use some infusion of excitement so if you want to keep it up, I think most of us would like to read it. If it bumps a 3 month old thread to page 2, I think that will be ok.

Because, when you go past a certain amount of text, it scrolls past where you can actually go back to it and when you're typing a lot on a virtual keyboard that you have to two-finger type on, you have to concentrate on the keyboard. I couldn't care less if anyone knows that I have an iPad. Big deal, lots of people do, why would that matter? So stop being a complete ass, I am not bragging, it's a really minor purchase in life. Adjust your attitude and maybe you will find some real friends.

Edited, Mar 15th 2012 9:59pm by FFATMA

Sorry, I didn't mean that everyone should be able to afford one, I just meant that it's really not something that's worthy of bragging about. It's a minor life purchase that really doesn't matter.

Just stopped in to say good sh*t OP, glad you're enjoying the game! :)

I've been really thinking about coming back lately as well. Do you have an LS or anything going? You sound like you'd be a fun guy to play with. I actually just reactivated last month, but right when I did my buddy (who was already playing...) bailed on me; and didn't reactivate. Was a big time bummer. Said he didn't have the $$, but you know how that goes...

So I've been looking for people to play with, lol. I've been big time in to playing my fighting games / making Youtube videos lately, but I sure do miss my FFXI. I wish I could help bring a resurgence back in to this game by starting up a Youtube series on it; but I'm not sure how many people would actually watch, this late in to the game.

If only I was in to video editing/making 10years ago...lol.

Lol, apologies. :)

My wife and I just came back about 1 month ago and we are loving it.... however the forums on all sites are slow and often full of people that think you shouldn't post anything they don't like. Alla forums are the worst both for butthats and lack of anything being posted.

That being said FFXI is the best it has ever been imo. Leveling is really fun. There are a lot of options on places to go if you are willing to solo/low man things but it is possible to get great exp doing it. My wife and I have been duoing characters in lower tower off of qufim starting at 28ish and going to 37 or 38. We get about 20k exp an hour doing that.

The economy is hard to get used to. Some things that where worthless when we left are now worth way more, others that cost a lot are now worthless. Low level gear is nearly impossible to find unless an NPC has it for a decent price.

You will still find really stupid people in groups that are doing really stupid things but because of the way GoV/FoV works it doesn't mater to much that they act like that. Before those people could ruin your day.

Overall I am very happy with the game.

I forwarded this thread to a friend and he enjoyed reading about the bronze harnesses since he will be starting from scratch. This thread is what was needed to convince my friend to play. He thought it was just me trying to get him back to Vanadiel lol. Thanks and will continue to read of your adventures.

Yeah, like I said, Pawkeshup puts out some great info and I can understand why he doesn't agree with this thread. That said, obviously there are quite a few of you who did like it, so thank you! I'm glad to hear about more people coming back, I think we need to spread the word and round up as many old players as possible! My schedules been packed, so no updates recently but there will be soon. One quick update though, I just finished LB10 with my BST on my old account, so he's now level 96! Man that fight was rough until we got a tail! After we farmed up a tail though, it was cake.

For me, the best part about starting over was that there was much more focus on events rather than EXP.

Good post FFATMA ^^ keep up good work, As a returning player the few extra tips are nice and cool to see people are still excited about the game xD

i think it is great to hear about ppls adventures on FFXI this forum is not just about tips and stuff, pleased you are having fun on the game, too many ppl forget its a game at times and its so nice to hear someone just playing and having a good time, take the time and explore every part of Vanadiel, lots of lovely places to see, places ppl have forgot, some real nice side quest stories too that make you laugh

Wow, some real cranky jerks showed up in this thread. I enjoyed reading it. I've just returned as well and reading about your experiences got me much more excited and enthused about getting started. I'm only level 8 so far, but now I'm excited to push forward over the next few days. I also enjoyed some of the tips and plan to try them out. Thanks for posting; what server are you on?

Hi people, thanks for all the nice replies! I've done so much since I posted last, it's hard to think of everything I've done since then! I've spent a lot of time leveling in both the book parties as well as old school parties. I joined a LS that still does Dunes and Qufim etc. parties and it's so much fun! No competition for mobs at all, no worries about trains, no stressing over deaths, most everyone knows how to play their class, it's just awesome. I always thought BST would be the first job I'd take to 99 but I stopped to level DNC as a sub and enjoyed it so much, I kept on going! It took me one night to get full AF and even doing that was fun. Pretty sure it'll be more like annoying after doing it on several other jobs, but it's fun for now! I was scrambling for gil for a while until I learned about how to turn cruor into gil by buying chocobo blinkers! No more gil problems, as I'm just rolling in cruor from leveling so many jobs!

My absolute biggest tip for those returning that haven't done any Abyssea yet: If after going into the Battalia Downs maw it drops you off in Sauromugue Champaign, DO NOT exit through the Sauromugue Champaign maw!!!!! Travel somewhere else to exit or you'll have to find people to open the banishing gates for you, and that's not fun nowadays!

I'm currently working on leveling my second account to 99 BST so I can duo BSTs and open up the range of mobs/NMs I can kill. Just finished leveling my DNC sub and have taken my BST up to level 9 so far, almost ready for Gusgen Mines again. When people say "See you again", they really, really mean it, as you will be seeing them again and again and again in the book party areas. I did some soloing in Dynamis, first time I've ever even been in Dynamis, was semi-successful for having no clue what I was doing, made a bit of gil. Also did some scroll camping, managed to get Flood the other night which promptly sold for 330k!

Time for sleep, I am still having a blast playing and don't see that slowing down any time soon. For those of you who wanted to know, I'm on the Bahamut server, used to play on Quetzalcoatl. I was originally in the LS BigFun over on Quetz, name was Archatius if any of you happened to play there.

If you're still on the fence about this game, I seriously urge you to give it another try, I don't think you'll be disappointed!

Edited, Apr 10th 2012 3:11am by FFATMA