Can FFXI be played with no expansions?Follow

XI released to NA with Zilart, so we technically never had the 50 cap fight with Shadow Lord. Might've even been 60 since AF was to be considered "best" at that time. Either way, the vanilla experience is only really possible through practicing some self-restraint.

- You could only use the starter jobs alongside BRD, BST, PLD, RNG, DRK, SMN.
- Can't travel through Korroloka Tunnel, Zi'tah, airship to Kazahm or anything past those zones.
- Can't be tempted to use home point teleports, mog tablet NPCs, or shortcuts like the KIs for Garlaige/Eldieme doors.
- Certain pieces of low level gear should be prohibited like Platoon items and crafted 29-30 CoP sets.
- Mog safe, storage, and inventory use only.
- Hardest NMs would be the 3 beastman kings, Roc, Simurgh, and Lumberjack. Honorable mention to the 7 sin skeletons in Eldieme.
- No GoV/FoV or Trusts permitted.
- Craft caps would be lower, maybe 70-80.
- Given Signet's boosts to defenses on EM and lower as well as keeping TP while resting, I could make a case for banning this despite needing it to get crystals aside from elementals.
- Certain spells/abilities should be prohibited like WHM's Afflatus JAs or Composure on RDM.

...and probably some more I'm forgetting about off the top of my head.

If you're talking about some kind of private environment, however, you're on your own there.

It was released prior to Zilart, but it only had elementals and no avatars sans Carbuncle. So, yeah, probably not worth playing.

Edited, Apr 10th 2015 4:09pm by Seriha

I'm not sure how the disc's load for the NA PS2 version as I started playing with the JP PS2 client base game (I was living in Japan at the time and it wasn't out for NA yet). However, I did get the NA PC client when it came out and the box had the base game plus the Zilart disc. I also have kept all of the expansion discs since I purchased those as they were released.

I had 'found' my old JP account information one day and thought it would be fun to run it through the game from the beginning. So I decided to load up the basic game and play through until I hit lv60. I did all the missions up until 5-2 and of course AF. After that, I loaded up the Zilart expansion and leveled to 75 and did the zilart missions plus the rest of the city missions. I did do dynamis (minus CoP zones) and sky and collected all the gear I wanted for the job I was using before loading the CoP expansion. After completing the CoP missions, I did a bit of sea and limbus before moving on to ToA. I did those missions and a few assaults/nyzul/zmn. I stayed lv75 for the 3 mini-expansions before loading up WotG. For WotG and the Aby expansions, I did level to 99.

I was a lot of fun attempting to relive the early days of the game, but there are some things you can't escape from. You will see a lot of things that came later on in the game in the basic game's zones. Things like the Maws for WotG/Aby stand out. The AH will load with all the gear and items that came much later and there's nothing stopping you from using them (spells also). Any QoL changes will be there as well (the added HP crystals, storage moogle, etc). It won't be exactly the same, but it will be as close as you can get.

I've never examined the data on the expansion discs, but I think they mainly contain the music, CS, and zones. All the items and whatnot are downloaded after you installed the expansion and do the POL version update. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on that.

I also fired up my JP PS3 and loaded my FFXI PS2 client on it to see how it would run...I will say this, whoever is still playing the PS2 version is either blind or still using an old tube TV from 1995. I tried playing on my digital TV and it was so pixilated I could hardly read any of the chat log or the item descriptions. I must have messed with PS3, TV, and games settings for the better part of 5 hours before I just gave up.

And before anyone asks, the food icon for the JP client is a hamburger just like the NA client. I've seen people say it's a 'bowl of rice' looking icon before...

You can play FFXI on PS2 with no expansions!

However, you will not be able to enter zones that you do not have the install data for, or that your account does not have registered. It will kick you back into the zone you were trying to leave with a message.