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 The Voracious Resurgence |
 
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| Prime Weapons • Ultimate Weapons • Ultimate Augments • Abjurations iL119 • JSE Necks • Divergence Augments • Escutcheons | |
| Reforged Armor Artifact: +1 • iL109 • iL119/+2/+3 Relic: +1/+2 • iL109 • iL119/+2/+3 Empyrean: +1/+2 • iL109 • iL119/+2/+3 |
Guides • Crafting • Trusts • Apex Monsters |
The History of Final Fantasy XI/2014
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Beta Information2014
In 2014, Final Fantasy XI saw many substantial quality of life improvements which helped further ease adventuring. A multitude of recurring Adventurer Campaigns started occurring this year, but they were in the infancy stage. They only ran for a few days at a time and at random points in the month.
Seekers of Adoulin's storyline concluded in November. The expansion brought more lore to Vana’diel than ever seen before in Missions or Quests.
Capacity Points and Gifts saw their debut, allowing players to further improve their character’s progression beyond Merit Points.
| Jan. 1st, 2014 |  Happy New Year 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| From the 1st to the 10th, Jubilant Alicorn roamed Vana’diel.
Trading items to Jubilant Alicorn may have awarded players the new Okadomatsu, or the Tsukubaneita (later renamed to Hagoita). There was nothing special about the furnishing, it only provided Moghancement: Gardening. The club dispenses Ichinintousen Koma fireworks. These fireworks were popular with players, as it was the first of it's kind. It turned players into a spinning top for a small amount of time. |
 The New Year’s event moved out of Abyssea and into Xarcabard. Fablinix was in the area with Goblin Year-ringers. When adventurers traded Fablinix a Kadomatsu, they would be awarded with the Ake-Ome Spirit for Monstrosity. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jan. 1st, 2014 | First Alter Ego Extravaganza | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The first alter ego extravaganza ran from January 1st, 2014 thru February 2nd, 2014.
The offerings for the first go-around were sparse, but this was the first opportunity to obtain the following Trusts:
All of these trusts became a staple in adventuring. Particularly Joachim with his Bard songs. Players found the fact that he threw pebbles (probably Traverser stones) amusing. |
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| Jan. 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #7 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This was the first opportunity to obtain Lion's trust. She was not very noteworthy as far as usefulness. She was, however, a highly sought after trust just for the novelty having her adventure with you once more.
Also of note this was the first time the Goblin Stew 880 was available from the Login Campaigns. Gobbiebag materials were closely controlled by crafters, so the prices were easily manipulated. This item avoided the trouble in gathering materials. To this day it is still a popular item, even if it is obtained by other means now. This is due to the stew costing less than all four items for most late Gobbiebag stages. Not to mention the rarity in even finding the items for sale anymore. Month: January 2014
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| Jan. 21st, 2014 |  Batallia Downs leg of Meeble Burrows released | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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High-Tier Battlefields
The Vanir Gun was a great addition at the time, since the only other options for Corsair were their Mythic Weapon or Empyrean Weapon. Vanir Knife was a good new weapon for Aeolian Edge, as well as offhand. The return of the classic Haubergeon as the new Mes'yohi Haubergeon was a popular piece for a brief amount of time after implementation. The new PUP attachments were locked behind the HTMB item Vanir Battery. Players wanted this item to simply equip, so it made the item fairly rare due to the demand from both crafters and melee jobs. The Wyrm Blood had no use until the July 2014 update when it was finally added to a recipe. This caused some confusion in which players thought it had to have a use, and scoured the guild recipe lists to see what it was for. A bad part of the attachment was poor translations on each language. French/German update notes talked about “Haste” while update notes about Japanese and English text was “physical delay”. The English .DAT description was “Haste”. Crafted Armor The Haruspex set had nice INT and MND, but not as much MAB or Magic Damage as seen on other pieces which limited its usefulness. Haruspex Hat had 8% Fast Cast, which was great for Blue Mage, and a great Precast Stun piece for Scholar. The appearance was fugly as hell, however. The Shabti Gauntlets were a desired piece due to the highest amount of PDT available in the hands slot for tanks. Even after 10 years, the Shabti Cuirass +1 still has a purpose today as the highest Enhancing Magic Duration piece for Paladin swaps.
There were two controversial parts of this update. The first one was that this armor was Item Level 115, and purchasable on the Auction House. This was the first update that allowed players to theoretically skip levelling. Players used to have to work to achieve every Item Level they could after they hit 99, and there were shouts that said things like “IL 110”, requiring players to have an overall Item Level of 110 on their gear to join. With this armor easily attainable, it only took a trip to the Auction House after hitting Level 99. Secondly, this new armor all used ugly recycled armor designs. Level 7 Lizard Armor was used for the new Aetosaur Jerkin set. These pieces were quite popular due to the ease of obtaining them. For some time, it felt like Adoulin turned into Valkurm Dunes with so many players wearing these pieces of armor as stepping stones while they upgraded their gear to Item Level 119 pieces.
The adjustment for pet levels dependent on a player’s item level was now much more noticeable. Surprisingly, there were no nerfs to offset all the damage increases for pets. People were noticing nearly double the damage on the same monsters with normal attacks after the update. Records of Eminence Players thought they would receive more than just EXP and Sparks for completing the new Notorious Monster records of eminence objectives. Some thoughts were that they would have a low chance of rewarding the NM drop item, and some thought REM upgrade mats (Beitetsu/Plutons/Riftborn Boulders) would drop. This was quickly debunked after it was discovered that these objectives were only able to be completed only once. Freshly Picked Vana'diel #3
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| Feb. 6th, 2014 | Valentione's Day Seasonal Event | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: February 6th thru February 17th.
No changes were made to the event from the previous year. |
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| Feb. 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #8 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Naja Salaheem's cipher became first available during this Login Campaign. Similar to Lion she was mainly a novelty trust coming along with her fabled Morningstar. She was a Monk main job; likely a homage to the time that she used Hundred Fists during the Treasures of Aht Urhgan Missions.
Sky NM System pop items were added to the login campaign this month for the first time. Even though most of the equipment has been out of date for awhile at this point, some gems still existed. Examples included the Genbu's Shield and Crimson Cuisses. Finally, this was the first login campaign where the Month: February 2014
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| Feb. 15th, 2014 |  Debut of A New World - Intimate Music from Final Fantasy | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A New World: intimate music from Final Fantasy was a concert project premiered at London's LSO St. Luke's Jerwood Hall on February 15th 2014. A New World: intimate music from Final Fantasy aimed to deliver the same great Final Fantasy music as the large Distant Worlds orchestra, but on a smaller and more personal scale. Instead of a full orchestra, A New World made use of a string quartet, piano and guitar solos, duos, trios and other mixed groups of instrumentalists to reach more Final Fantasy fans around the world. Arnie Roth worked as the Music Director for both Distant Worlds and A New World.
Roth's reasons for starting A New World was the awareness of the inherent limitations of size and scale with the Distant Worlds concerts, as there are many cities, smaller concert venues, universities, colleges, and conventions with Final Fantasy fan bases that cannot manage presenting something the size of Distant Worlds, both from the required physical space as well as the number of musicians needed. In March 2013, Roth had the Intimate Evening event in Chicago as a test run for A New World, as was the short chamber music performance in Chicago and London before the 25th Anniversary celebration concerts in November of the previous year. The choices of repertoire for A New World: intimate music from Final Fantasy have been made by Square Enix and Arnie Roth in consultation with Nobuo Uematsu. A New World was set to include a good representation of music from throughout the history of Final Fantasy, but there is almost no overlap of repertoire between Distant Worlds and A New World, but the intention has been to include many new pieces in the intimate concert that fans have been requesting. The two concerts provide different experiences, and compliment each other. Distant Worlds continued touring the major cities and concert venues around the world, while A New World presents the intimate chamber music concerts of Final Fantasy music in many locations and venues where Distant Worlds cannot perform. A New World is still performing around the world to this day. Final Fantasy XI tracks are frequently played in their shows. Visit their website to see upcoming concert dates. Like Distant Worlds, multiple albums have also been released and are available on popular music purchasing platforms. |
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| Feb. 18th, 2014 | Reforged Relic Armor Implemented | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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A small preview video was created to advertise the February 2014 Version Update, resembling the December 2013 Version Update video.
Job Adjustments This update was arguably Dancer's single best buff they have ever given the job. Dividing Waltz's timers allowed the job to function as it should have to begin with, a healer with less restrictions. TP Reset abilities were still much more dangerous to a Dancer's party than Silence was to a White Mage. Rune Fencer's adjustments were referred to as "perplexing". The good changes weighed the same as the bad. The Relic Armor graphics gave Rune Fencers the nickname "Peach Fencer". /checkparam command This command was the first time that a player as well as pet’s accuracy and evasion were visible in-game. This helped confirm many mechanics that we figured were the case for a long time, such as certain amounts of DEX and AGI giving Accuracy and Evasion. It also helped demystify some myths such as Hidden Effects and whether or not they existed on equipment. After this point we started to pay more attention to monster’s accuracy and evasion, and how much accuracy we needed to hit the cap of 95%. Rather than just speculation and talking out of our asses, actual mechanics and math became the mainstream of the game from this point onwards. Speculation and false narratives were still around, but less rampant. Reforged Relic Armor Reforged Relic Armor was already announced late 2013 and was supposed to be added in the December update. It was delayed until now. Many players voiced their concerns that they were still working on upgrading their Reforged Artifact Armor, and that their completed pieces might already be out of date just three months later. Another big question was what would happen to the augments on Relic Armor? Would they disappear, forcing players to get macro pieces for Job Abilities? Would they become stronger? What kind of materials will be needed? In the end, the same augments persisted across these new armor variants. Before this update, many players did not bother upgrading all of their Relic to the +2 It was disclosed on the Official Forums a couple weeks before the update that Dynamis currency might be needed for upgrades, which caused the prices of currency to rise in January. Even before this, players instead focused on farming High-Tier Mission Battlefields rather than Dynamis for Gil. The demand for Plutons/Beitetsu/Riftborn Boulders was much higher than Dynamis currency. If players wanted to make a Relic Weapon, it made more sense at the time to sell these stones and straight up buy Dynamis currency. With the switch in player farming habits decreasing availability, paired with the new currency demand for Reforged Relic Armor, Dynamis currency saw a temporary hike in price around this time. The "Forgotten" items saw a price hike as well, since the demand increased. It usually ended up being cheaper to just purchase 2x 100 pieces instead of the Forgotten items for the Magian Trial. Similar with Artifact Armor upgrades could skip Limbus, players did not have to end up clogging up Dynamis to upgrade their pieces since so many upgrade paths were introduced. Voidwatch and Delve materials were used for upgrading Reforged Relic Armor +1, so that artificially extended the viability of Voidwatch simply for synthesis material purposes. Merit Points were still easily attainable via Voidwatch chests, so players still did not mind doing the content at this point since High-Tier Mission Battlefields continued to be released. Inventory woes began to creep back around this time due to the large amount of macro swaps that players now needed to keep up with after so many gear options have been introduced. This may have been a blessing in disguise, because that meant that each piece or Artifact vs Relic was unique enough to work on upgrading both sets. 80 inventory slots just was not enough anymore. Storage Slips helped with overall character storage, but jobs could easily use more than 80 pieces of equipment now. New Trust Magic Trust NPCs that had a cutscene associated with acquiring them added a nice touch. When it came to ciphers, players were disappointed that no such scene existed. Naja's scene, for instance, would have had a lot of potential for laughs. Instead, they just threw her into the Login Campaign. With access to Ulmia, players now had access to four songs when they summoned both her and Joachim. It was too bad that players usually received Ballad or Paeon, however... Delve Changes Before this update Dakuwaqa and Muyingwa were already able to be killed with a small party. Adapting the HP by such a large amount made the fights more efficient with less players. There no longer was a need to have a Linkshell for Delve anymore, and these changes effectively killed 18 man content until Dynamis - Divergence. Yell PUGs had no problem farming the content, but a form of reliable Stun was still needed. A low Stun recast timer was needed, but too much Magic Accuracy had to be sacrificed for Fast Cast causing resist issues for your average mage. With the continued implementation of Item Level mage gear, Stun builds became easier to optimize. HP adaptation changes along with materials being purchasable with Plasm introduced many more Synthesis Materials into circulation for Reforged Relic Armor upgrades and crafting. Many players felt like the biggest issue with Delve was how easy it was to obtain "RME level" weapons. At this point it only took a week or less casually playing for a random tagalong to purchase a powerful weapon like Skirmish Changes The new Many pieces, notably the Mage sets, remained useful for years to come if good augments were attained. Seekers of Adoulin Missions The mission mini-games with Teodor were a huge annoyance right after implementation. Methods to alleviate the annoyance were not added until years later. The extensive Lore added in these missions was an annoyance to players who did not care about the story, as the cutscenes were much longer in general than missions in the past. Outer Ra'Kaznar was introduced with these missions, and adventurers had to figure out how to traverse the complex upper and lower floors of this area to reach the center elevator at the end. The Inner Court was not added until later in the year. The Ashu Talif Quests The quest line for the Ashu Talif story was hard to complete due to the player requirements before this update. That being said, some gear remained very rare and hard to get. In particular, this included the In addition to armor, the following Puppetmaster Attachments remained very rare because these quests were one of their main acquisition sources at the time: Reactive Shield, Optic Fiber, Turbo Charger, Dynamo, Economizer, Schurzen, Tranquilizer, Condenser. After the level cap increased, virtually nobody completed these quests. Not to mention, they were unpopular content to begin with. Changing the entry to 1 player helped the situation, but the quests remained annoying to farm due to the once per Earth Day lock out. Until the Attachment's sale NPCs were added in 2015, these items remained hard to find. Before they were sold via NPC, the very useful attachments such as the Tranquilizer sold for astronomical prices when they were placed on the Auction House. The History of Bazaar Taxes Taxes for items placed in a player's Bazaar were implemented in the December 19th, 2002 update. A 10% fee was set at this time for Lower Jeuno and Ru'Lude Gardens, as those two Jeuno zones were the only places with an Auction House. A 5% fee assessed in Port Jeuno and Upper Jeuno. As we talked about back then in this History project, Auction House NPCs were added later to Port Jeuno and Upper Jeuno. This is why those zones are NPCs rather than an actual Auction House counters. The Bazaar tax was implemented so that AFK players trying to sell items in their Bazaar did not congest Jeuno. Bazaar taxes gave birth to "Rolmart" on most servers where mules and players would AFK right outside of Lower Jeuno to sell their wares in Bazaars in order to avoid the Jeuno tax. On some worlds, this location was outside of Upper Jeuno in Batallia Downs instead. When Zilart was added in April 2003 there were initial Bazaar taxes of 15% in Kazham, 10% in Rabao, and 5% in Norg. These were quickly abolished in July 2003. In April 2006, Bazaar tax for Aht Urhgan Whitegate was implemented to be the same as Jeuno's areas at 10%. In May 2006, a 10% tax was applied to Al Zahbi so players would not take up spots in Besieged while AFK. During this same update, Jeuno tax was lowered to 5%. During the first couple months of TOAU's release, there were often system messages warning players that Whitegate was overloaded and that players would be automatically moved from the zone or disconnected if they did not leave. Additionally, it was common for the Delivery Box to fail to open, as well as the door from Whitegate to Al Zahbi. At peak times on the weekend, over 500 players could be found in Whitegate. In August of 2007, a 10% tax was added to the Chocobo Circuit and September 2007 it was added to the The Colosseum. Bazaar tax was removed from Jeuno in December 2008, and from all bazaars in this update in February 2014. Freshly Picked Vana'diel #4
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| Feb. 19th, 2014 | The Doll Festival Seasonal Event | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: February 19th thru March 4th.
No changes were made to the event itself, except that the |
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| Mar. 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #9 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cipher: Lehko was added as the unique item in this campaign, and it was the first opportunity to obtain him.
Cipher: Zeid returned for those who missed it the first time around in December 2013's campaign. Month: March 2014
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| Mar. 10th, 2014 | 11th Vana'versary Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| For unknown reasons, another set of campaigns ran from March 10th until March 17th. A new campaign doubling the Skirmish simulacra segments was run during this time. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mar. 18th, 2014 | Egg Hunt 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: March 18th thru April 2nd.
New in 2014 was the Hatchling Shield. Three new redeemable word combinations were added, and Copse Candy could be by turning in eggs that spelt "LEAFKIN".
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| Mar. 18th, 2014 | Fishing System Revamp and Job Point System Debut | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Job Points Merit Point parties made a... slow return. Many Job Point categories were unappealing upon first implementation because they only added two categories for each job. Additionally, each category only went up to 10 maximum upgrades. The available upgrades at this time for each job can be found at this Job Points page historical edit. Gifts were also not introduced until the end of 2014. Not many players rushed out to farm up Job Points for things such as Mijin Gakure effect, or Elemental Seal's reduced enmity effect... It was a surprising change that you needed to earn Job Points on the job you wanted to use them on, unlike Merit Points. This caused some jobs to be undesirable for parties again, just like what happened during the Merit Point party era. Players saw this as a way of artificially extending the game's life. With the increased level of monsters in the two Gates areas, melee accuracy became an issue. After more Job Point categories were added, Magic Burst parties became quite popular again due to the almost guaranteed damage that could be dealt. Reforged Armor With the Reforged Relic Armor +1 body and leg slots released, it became apparent that the newest armor they have now released didn't have enough differentiation between sets. If you were to figure out the differences with all of the stat barf, the gaps were not really noticable. The only big noticeable differences were special stats for macro swaps to enhance abilities. Dark Knight was the clear loser on stats for their armor. To add insult to injury, they were also not added onto the new New Trusts Ingrid was only appealing due to casting Haste, but Cherukiki casts it too so Ingrid was pushed to the sidelines and largely regarded as not very useful. On the other hand Cherukiki did not use Erase, so Kupipi was still top of the line for a Trust healer. At this time players realized that Trusts are not always available. Many players were asking how to obtain Lion if they missed her in the login campaign. It came to everyone's realization that all trusts would not always be available at any given time. This issue would always be present for the rest of the game's life. Every few Login Campaigns became the most popular way of obtaining limited time Trusts. It was now evident that Trust magic would continue to be released in the future due to it's popularity. Valkurm Dunes's fate was all but sealed. It was now more efficient to level up from 1-99 with three trusts instead of deal with looking for parties in the dunes. "/sea all inv" was now a thing of the past. Cait Sith Avatar At last, a new Avatar that did not involve Astral Flow to use was added. Unfortunately, Cait Sith was written off as a vanity pet upon first implementation. Additionally, it was confusing that it's available Blood Pacts did not extend to higher than levels than 75 until Regal Gash was added later. Quality of Life enhancements Next to Home Point warping, the ability to see an item's sale history during the sell process on the Auction House was the best quality of life improvement that we have ever seen. Prior to this, players needed to either use ffxiah.com to find the latest price or peruse through the huge amount of items for sale to find the correct category that an item is sold under. This change was so good that even middle 2000s era private servers use this function even when it was added in 2014. The lowered price of HTMB Key Items was also seen as being able to participate in three fights before having to reload your merits. Before, you could only participate in two. Having the Key Item, and having enough merits to purchase one additional key item. Now you can have the key item, and purchase two more before running out of merit points. With the addition of being able to trade in three Reive JSE Capes for the one of your choosing, some players finally obtained their desired cape. There were stories of the correct one never dropping for some players since implementation. Naturally, this was a slap in the face as at this point many players threw away the capes they did not desire in exchange for precious inventory space. The results of the player survey conducted earlier in 2014 were released in early April. The outcome was clear that players were happy with the significant adjustments that SE has done to improve the game's playability. Players respected that SE was actually looking for input on game changes with these new surveys. Treasure Hunter Changes Less confusion and rumors surrounded Treasure Hunter after this update. It was clear that Thief main only needed +8 Treasure Hunter on gear. The chat log also now displayed a message when the level of TH on a monster increased. An unintended consequence of these changes resulted in players trying to reach the maximum of TH+14 now before killing a monster. NMs would often be held for extended, unnecessary periods of time causing slight congestion issues in instances and a delay in respawn times. Mage jobs would now seek the Lockstyle Before the advent of this feature, players could always glance at a character and know what appearance armor that player was wearing. What was that cool piece of body armor they had on? Just examine them and find out. Now, players could make a lockstyle set wearing anything they wanted that the job they were on could wear. At this point, the main silly armor in the game was the Chocobo Suit. Players would experiment with mixing and matching odd outfits such as the seasonal event equipment thrown into their regular Item Level 119 gear with humorous results. You would have been yelled at for joining a Capacity Points party wearing a santa hat. Now? It was the norm. Chocobos were levelling everywhere. Upon first implementation, you needed to manually equip items you wanted to lockstyle and use the command to keep your appearance. Then you had to change back to your normal equipment. This effect also did not persist through zoning, so macros were frequently used to lock custom sets. From this point on, Square Enix added many more Level 1 armor pieces to give players more of a choice on their lockstyles. Final Fantasy XIV also introduced their glamour system in March of 2014 in version update 2.2. Their system went to another level, as it involved much monetization of unique pieces that could be purchased for real world money. Final Fantasy XI did not get that involved into it, but many players expected it to eventually happen. Records of Eminence Quests The quest Leonine Excruciation was added in this version update. The total number of Records of Eminence quests required to undertake this quest was 349. It was a weird number, but the total number of quests able to be completed at this time was 350. The hurdles to receive this quest were very high. To reach that number of quest completions at the time also involved defeating multiple NMs with spawn intervals of 21 hours or more. With future RoEs added later, along with Trusts being usable in Abyssea, it became much easier to complete Leonine Excruciation.
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| Mar. 18th, 2014 | The Second FFXIV/DQX Collaboration Event | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Anniversary MMO Collaboration Event ran again from March 18th until April 15th. The original end date was supposed to be April 9th. When the April version update was implemented, the NPCs for the event disappeared due to a bug (or incompetence/forgetfulness) making it impossible to participate. As a measure for this issue, the end date was extended.
This iteration of the event had some major additions compared to the first one that ran in December 2013. The following new items were added, along with two new species for Monstrosity.
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| Mar. 21st, 2014 | Delayed Delve Additions | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Delve Additions On one hand, Delve was now easier when entering with less than 18 players. On the other hand, it was unfortunate that Delve did indeed kill alliance 18 man content. Alliance content would not return until the release of Omen and Dynamis - Divergence years later. Another downside was that because the content was so easy with HP scaling, players found the META to be to brute force attack the NMs and not even pay attention to the mechanics of the monsters. It took longer to figure out NM behavior this time because it was more efficient to just kill everything as quick as possible. A little realized issue with Delve now was that players simply entered the fractures to obtain the Key Items, then they avoided setting foot in the content again. They would have rather just farmed singular NM pops outside of the fracture to farm Plasm after being able to purchase the equipment in town. Some new Delve accessories that were added proved useful for years to come: Unfortunately, the crafting materials from the new Delve zones that were required for the Reforged Relic Armor +1 body and leg pieces were also wanted for new Synthesis recipes. New top tier equipment like the | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mar. 26th, 2014 |  Vana'diel Tribune Chronicles Book | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Released only in Japanese, the Vana'diel Tribune Chronicles book is a collection of all of the Vana'diel Tribune, Vana'diel Tribune II, and Vana'diel Tribune III entries.
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Over 320 topics were published in the book, including commentary from staff members. A Campaign Code was included with the book, granting players the weapons Decazoom Mk-XI and Escritorio. The codes have since expired, and are no longer redeemable.
The gun resembles a camera. When aimed, it appears the player is taking a picture with it.
The polearm resembles a pen. When swung, ink droplet effects appear.
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| Apr. 1st, 2014 |  Adjustments to Service Prices | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Japanese Government raised sales tax from 5% to 8% on April 1st, 2014. This was the first increase in sales tax in 17 years. This increase caused a rush of sales in March, which was followed by a severe economic downturn. Accordingly, the price of Final Fantasy XI's subscription service increased by 3% for Japanese players. The base fees were not increased.
World Transfer Service In addition to the tax increase, the World Transfer service underwent a massive alteration. Until March 31st, 2014 the transfer service cost 3,150 Yen ($25 USD) and could only be performed once in 90 Earth Days. After April 1st, 2014 the service fee was lowered to 1,800 Yen ($18 USD) and the delay between transfers for a character was cut to a measly 3 days! A side effect of this change was that the World Transfer service was in no doubt used much more now with the reduced price and short reuse timer. This would be a way to avoid another massive server merger, along with the invent of Trusts which now tailored to lower world population to still complete events. The changes no doubt increased the income generated by Final Fantasy XI for Square-Enix, resulting in a good business decision. Due to how significant the wait time reduction was, many players thought this was an April Fools Day joke because it started on April 1st. |
 Auction House Effects The biggest effect that the World Transfer service had was the transfer of goods between worlds was prominent. From this point onwards, legitimate players as well as RMT would make a living buying high ticket items low and selling high between Worlds. Crafters could also import materials and export goods if they could afford the real world price. Rare crafted items and goods would now be seen popping up more readily on less populated Worlds. RMT The most obvious repercussion of the transfer delay change was that characters could easily be sold quickly after a name change. Buyers would prefer a character that could be transferred immediately to go to the world of their choice, rather than sitting for 3 months waiting for the transfer service to become available. RMT would now also be able to transfer massive amounts of Gil for less overhead to the world they needed it on. Player Created Worlds In 2014, Asura became the "Join Asura" meme world for returnees and current players alike. Some say that this was due to the growing population of Reddit, and the Reddit linkshell streaming FFXI online and recruiting players to come join Asura. This was more appealing due to cheaper world transfers for returnees who saw their friends all stopped playing. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Apr. 1st, 2014 | Second Alter Ego Extravaganza | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The "Spring Alter Ego Extravaganza" (second alter ego extravaganza) ran from April 1st, 2014 thru April 30th, 2014.
New trusts included Sakura, Ovjang, and Mnejing. The four trusts from the New Year's exp returned for those who missed them: Tenzen, Mihli Aliapoh, Valaineral, and Joachim. Even though the Spring Alter Ego campaigns today has different a lineup, this was an exception so returning players had more trust options. |
 Trust Synergy With the addition of Nashmeira's puppets Ovjang and Mnejing alongside of the new Trust party chat spam, players then got the idea that Trust Synergy might be a thing. This stemmed from the fact that the message that Trusts when they are summoned varied based on the other Trusts active in the party. Testing began to occur with these three trusts to see if having all of them in a party at the same time gave any benefits. It was soon found that indeed this was the case. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Apr. 8th, 2014 | Race Equalization & Addition of Item Level 119 JSE Weapons | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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JSE Weapons
The Oboro JSE weapons seemed to be part of the relaxation efforts that the developers were attempting to implement so new and returning players could more easily join veterans in endgame content. Final Fantasy XI had to adapt to new trends in video games these days, and "rather somewhat easy to obtain" powerful weapons gave players a great starting boost in order to dive head first into endgame content. Many of these weapons were on par (some better) than Delve boss weapons. Upon first implementation, the requirements to begin forging these weapons were not able to be solo'd; assistance was still required from other players. At first, the total cost of materials required to make one weapon on any given world was around 10 million Gil. Plutons, Beitetsu, and Riftborn Boulders shot up in price and were in high demand for a few weeks. The only use for these stones before this update were to upgrade Ultimate Weapons to Item Level 119, and each weapon only required 300 of their respectful stone. Due to low demand and high availability, there was a plethora across all worlds. Some players made millions quickly flipping these stones after the update by purchasing them for dirt prices from bazaars of those who had them listed for pre-update prices. At this time it was common to just throw away these stones due to their low value and high cost of time and inventory to sell them. The Race HP and MP Equalization Races all had their max HP and MP values increased to be much closer to each other, but at the same time no maximums were decreased. Before this update, Tarutaru could easily stay at 1 HP for many early levels with enough HP to MP converting equipment like After this change, Tarutaru still excelled with the most MP and Galka still had the most HP. This change was scheduled to be added in the March update, but it was pushed back. The reasoning was that program-wise, there are monsters that consult the race stat tables to determine their own statistics. Bard Song Adjustments Before this update a song could not be overwritten by the same song unless the one that was already active had less than 120 seconds remaining (2 minutes, the base duration). If a Bard tried to do so, they used to just receive a "Song has no effect" message in the log. This was problematic in situations where you wanted to use NiTro and overwrite songs already on your party with longer duration songs. This could not be done without first singing enough songs to take off the songs already on your party, and then re-singing the songs you actually wanted. A lot of damage from DDs could be lost to do this. After this change, the song with the lowest duration remaining is now overwritten first. Sparks of Eminence Exchange It was this update where Sparks of Eminence became a viable source of Gil by purchasing high level equipment and selling it to an NPC. Acheron Shields were not purchasable until January 2015's update, but players could still obtain 500,000 Gil by exchanging capped Sparks for other items added in this update. Freshly Picked Vana'diel #6
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| Apr. 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #10 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cipher: Luzaf was added as the unique item in this campaign, and it was the first opportunity to obtain him.
The Worm Feelers and it's +1 version were added as a new Lockstyle piece. Because of how silly and unique they were, many players spent their extra login points on this item during this campaign. The Month: April 2014
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| Apr. 11th, 2014 | April Campaigns "For The Discriminating Adventurer" & Meeble Burrows Campaign #1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The first Meeble Burrows campaign was held from April 11th, 2014 thru May 8th, 2014. This event was the first opportunity to obtain the new Mundus Shield.
The following campaigns were also held at the same time:
Many items normally obtained from Wizened Worms were swapped for more valuable items during this campaign. Notable item swaps are below.
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  Mundus Shield Useful as a lockstyle piece, the Mundus Shield was initially only available during the handful of times the Meeble Burrows campaign was held. It was a desired and unique item due to the outline of Vana'diel on the shield. The Pixioche was dispensed from the shield. In the Japanese client, this item is named Dwarf Bread. This is homage to Final Fantasy III, where an item in that game is called the Gnomish Bread. When used, it displays the World Map in the game. This is a connection to the fact that the Mundus Shield displays a map of Vana'diel on it. 
The event overall was only viewed as an additional way to obtain Arise (Scroll) and Meteor (Scroll). Naturally, players complained that they would rather have the unique items from the event such as the Dervish Sword instead of a scroll. Drop rates did not increase with this campaign. The original items that were replaced were already rare to obtain, so it was not like scrolls rained from the sky and crashed the markets. Meebles still proved tricky at this point, so multiple players were needed for some of the objectives to obtain worms. At this time, Arise was still selling for around 6 million gil across worlds. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Apr. 17th, 2014 | First Double Capacity Points Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| For 72 hours the first Double Capacity Points Campaign ran from April 27th at 11PM to April 20th. The first 16 Capacity Points campaigns were a simple double points received mechanic. This was due to the slower pace of killing monsters that players had in the early days of power creep. After that, the chain bonus campaigns were held as players became more powerful. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Apr. 21st, 2014 | Suspension of the Test Server | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Test World Udine was quietly suspended on April 21st, 2014, and no further version updates were added to the world after this date. The service was not officially closed until July 26th, 2016.
The reasonings behind this may have been due to the results of a community poll conducted in December and January 2014.
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The Test World was created with the name Undine, and service was opened on August 29th, 2011. Large scale version updates were added to this world for players to login and test changes and upcoming new features before they were added on the live worlds. Feedback was accepted from players, and sometimes consideration was made based on that feedback to change version update contents. One such instance involved feedback on Level 99 Ultimate Weapons and the item requirements to upgrade them via Trial of the Magians.
.DAT mining would occur on this world, and upcoming information was available pretty far in advance of the live world version updates. A few times during it's operation, official test events were held. Most notably, the event to test Legion held by Square Enix staff was rather popular. The biggest drawback to the test server was the requirement to install a separate client in order to login. This was entirely different than the existing game data, so around 11GB of disk space needed to be used. Registration was also required using your POL data. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Apr. 24th, 2014 | The Feast of Swords Seasonal Event | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: April 24th thru May 8th.
No changes were made to the event itself, except that the |
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| Apr. 24th, 2014 | Final Fantasy XI represented in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Returning to Theatrhythm, FFXI was again represented in the game. Main characters Shantotto and Prishe returned, but they were now accompanied by the new characters Aphmau and Lilisette. Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call was released in Japan on April 24th, 2014, and worldwide on September 19th, 2014.
Music in the game included the following tracks:
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| May 1st, 2014 | Second Double Capacity Points Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This time for 96 hours, a Double Capacity Points Campaign ran from May 1st at 11PM to May 4th.
At this time, parties with great setups and members would only obtain around 20,000-30,000 CP an hour (1 Job Point). Any more than that per hour was very rare. The major inhibitor for people not participating in Capacity Point parties wasn't the time it took to get points, it was the fact that the time it took to get those points was stomped out and invalidated by the fact that the points were by and large useless. Sure, there was probably at least one person who totally wanted that extra 10 potency on their Minne songs. That didn't mean they were in the majority, and it didn't mean that they should have went out and did it then instead of waiting for what the future brought. |
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| May 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #11 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cipher: Najelith was added as a unique item in this campaign, and it was the first opportunity to obtain her.
The Worm Masque and it's +1 version were added as a new Lockstyle piece. This item was even more ridiculous looking than the Hand to Hand counterpart, especially on Galka due to it's size. The most discussed item in this campaign was the It is worth noting that this was the only login campaign that the Month: May 2014
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| May 15th, 2014 | Mog Wardrobe implemented and Leafallia opened | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A trailer was created to showcase the May 2014 update.
Mog Wardrobe By far on top of the list of Quality of Life adjustments was the invention of the Mog Wardrobe. Even though only one was added for this update, the fact was it was free and accessible to everybody. This was the first time that equipment was able to be used from an inventory location other than your actual "Inventory". It was common before this for players to have 79/80 inventory filled with equipment, and that one space available for treasure drops that needed to be immediately thrown into another inventory system. Before the Wardrobes players would have to pick and choose what equipment to bring with them for certain situations and events. Full equipment sets and gear swaps were not usable on gear intensive jobs like Blue Mage due to space constraints. It was common back then to only swap a few pieces rather than entire gear sets for spells and abilities. Another common tactic was to find gear that had multiple purposes as well as usable across multiple jobs rather than elect to use that one piece that was best for only one job. A clear disadvantage to more inventory was longer load times. It was a small price to pay to more efficiently play your job. Speaking of the name "Mog Wardrobe", it reminded me of this official art from 2004 by Fumio Minagawa. You can click for a larger version.
Ergon Weapons and Coalitions Thus began the "6 month lockout" to rank up your Coalitions to Legend in order to obtain an Ergon Weapon. Before Legend was a requirement for Ergons, players simply ignored the Coalition Assignments as there was no worthwhile benefit of having them ranked up. This requirement was often compared to the difficulty in obtaining other Ultimate Weapons. For Mythics, all Assaults had to be completed for each Mythic that was created. Coalitions, on the other hand, were a one time thing. Players mistook the Idris's "Geomancy+10" stat as "Geomancy Skill+10" instead of the actual effect it grants. The weapon was chalked up as only useful for Luopan DT-, on top of the additional 20% that this update gave (Innate Luopan Damage was increase from -30% to -50%). Rune Fencer did not come into it's own quite yet. It was still known as a niche tank compared to Paladin. For this reason, many players felt like it was a waste to dump millions of Gil into the Epeolatry at this time. Putting PDT II on Epeolatry was a dumb thing to do. It was an expensive band-aid you need to function in any real capacity on the job. It killed any hope that SE would fix RUN's glaring issues as a tank vs physical attacks. Since they can just point at the Ergon weapon and say "use that." High-Purity Bayld was a nice addition to the in-game economy, and gave players a reason to continue to farm Reives of all kinds and to continue to participate in SoA content. The High-Purity Bayld requirement for all four stages of the Ergon was quickly compared to Alexandrite, but the one problem with that the population of the game was triple the numbers as it was now. Alexandrite was much more available, even though twice as much as required for a Mythic. It seemed unreasonable to earn 131 million Bayld to convert it to High-Purity Bayld yourself. Players were hoping that there would be some kind of HP Bayld Pouch introduced to the game in order to get more than one per event. If you had friends to help towards your cause, they could assist by donating the HP Bayld they received from Reives as well as convert their leftover Bayld for you. It was not a bad way to progress if you were able to net multiple per Reive. One problem that emerged was that some players wanted to hoard their HP Bayld at first because some of the player base thought that Ergon weapons would be created for the other jobs as well. After the update, some players were shouting to purchase HP Bayld for 50,000 Gil each, which equaled out to 655 million Gil. It was very difficult to get ahold of HP Bayld yourself at a reasonable price when players with stockpiles of Gil were willing to dump it all to complete a weapon quickly. Seekers of Adoulin Missions The new mid-mission reward Job Point Expansion The clear winner of the point allocation expansion was Samurai with their excellent Hasso category. Capacity Chains greatly increased the capability of CP Parties on higher level monsters in the Gates areas, but complaints surfaced with how little time was allowed to keep Capacity Point chains compared to the extra long timeframe for Experience Point Chains. New Coalition Equipment The new +1 variants of equipment added in this update were a great stepping stone for fresh level 99 players to jump right to Item Level 119. They were all very inexpensive and easy to obtain. New HTMBs By far the equipment that turned the most heads were the These BCNMs were somewhat unpopular other than those legs. The rest of the unique equipment pieces were somewhat underwhelming. Aspect Ratio Even though this sounds like an incredibly minor adjustment, the fact that the title menu background aspect ratio could not be adjusted above 4:3 for the last 12 years was just ridiculous. It was a huge turn off for new players to boot up the game after such a difficult journey to install and update it only to be greeted by a horrible preview of the game. Not to mention the nightmare that player creation is and how those models look nothing like the in game characters. Little quality of life adjustments like this can go a long way. PDT II and MDT II The Aegis and Burtgang had MDT II and PDT II functionality since the May 2011 version update, but this update is when the statistics were officially added to the game and the help text was made more clear to players. These pieces of equipment along with the Aettir were the first to have the "II" designations. Freshly Picked Vana'diel #7
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| May 16th, 2014 | Final Fantasy XI celebrates its 12th anniversary of service | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| On May 16, 2014, FINAL FANTASY XI celebrated its 12th anniversary of service.
Login Campaigns continued due to their popularity. Daily Active Users was a common metric in online service games now, and these campaigns helped increase those numbers. Producer Matsui announced the continuation of monthly version updates. Additionally, he stated that the development team would continue to implement quality of life improvements to help players who could not commit to long play sessions. |
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| May 16th, 2014 | 12th Vana'versary Mog Bonanza | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New to this Bonanza was the  Bayld Crystal, the equivalent of the  Cat's Eye for Ergon Weapons. At this time the item did not have a name. It was simply called "???" until the item's name was decided on later.
Marble sales were from May 16th until June 18th. Results were announced on July 18th. Note: See the 12th Vana'versary Mog Bonanza page for details on the event such as prizes and results. |
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| May 16th, 2014 | 12th Adventurer Appreciation Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A new anniversary event was held from May 16th until June 2nd which had a Moogle vs Goblin theme. Appropriately enough, it was called the Mooblin Battle. Speaking to a Moogle in a starting nation would grant players a Moogle or Goblin outfit (head and body), and they would then be eligible for the Level Cap status to participate in the fray after equipping the set. Items implemented included:
Three new Trust ciphers were available from this event. Players on the Moogle side could get the Cipher: Moogle, and they could then switch to the goblins for the Cipher: Fablinix. Managing to obtain 3,000 points on either side awarded Cipher: Aldo. A new Experience Point Bonus ring, the Duodecennial Ring was added along with the first Capacity point bonus ring Vocation Ring. |
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| Jun. 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #12 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cipher: Domina was added as a unique item in this campaign, and it was the first opportunity to obtain her. Worm Feelers returned for those who missed them the first time.
New to this campaign were all Job Testimonies for 200 points. Additionally, Strongboxes were added for players to easily participate in Stronghold Invasion content in La Vaule (S) if they wished. Month: June 2014
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| Jun. 10th, 2014 |  Nanaa Mihgo's performance at E3 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Final Fantasy XI band Nanaa Mihgo's performed "live" on the opening day of E3 2014 as part of Square Enix's presentation. The video itself seemed like it was pre-recorded and simply streamed online, even though it was advertised to be a live performance from Japan.
The band recorded a new song "Eternal Wind" from Final Fantasy III specifically for the Square Enix presentation. This song was also added into Final Fantasy Record Keeper. In the middle of the video, footage from their 11/11/13 performance was played. Band members remained the same for this performance:
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| Jun. 11th, 2014 | June Campaigns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Three campaigns were held from June 11th thru June 15th. | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jun. 17th, 2014 | The Great Weapon Skill Revamp | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Weapon Skill Changes Prior to the changes in this update, developers mentioned on the official forums that they were probably not going to alter the new Merit Point Weapon Skills since they were already used the most up to this point. Overall, these boosts were wonderful. Weapons such as Dagger had substantial increases in weapon skill damage. Weapon skills like Catastrophe now had modifiers that made sense; STR and INT instead of AGI and INT. Melee now had a reason to save their TP higher than 1000 rather than burning it right away. They also removed Alpha correction from Weapon Skill Correction; this meant that all weapon skills received an additional 15% WSC (multiplied; not necessarily an added 15% to, say, 30% STR to make 45%, but rather you no longer remove 5% from the 30). Hybrids were now affected by a weapon's Item Level. This was also the update where Hybrid weapon skills became viable. Hybrids got even better as more magic attack and magic accuracy gear was released via Alluvion Skirmish Armor in the February 2015 update that melee could use. Of particular note was Cloudsplitter. It was notorious for being a pretty bad weapon skill that was unique to Farsha until the November 2013 version update. This is when the Empyrean Weapon Skill quests were added to be usable with any weapon of that type. For those who might have difficulty understanding the gravity of the weapon skill changes, here are some notes that Byrth posted on the official forums.
An added bonus from Weapon Skill damage increases were the increase in Skillchain damage. This was especially true due to unresistable skillchains. Skillchain Bonus traits and stats on equipment were now given second thoughts, as it became more significant and worthwhile. As if the weapon skill increases were not enough, Samurai saw an extra damage buff from the additional Skillchain damage that was possible now. Easy Mode "An easy game became easier" was the sentiment now with how powerful players have become after these weapon skill adjustments. The balance they have found isn't bad, but things were getting boring and old quickly. They could not go on revamping old content and BCs forever. Seekers of Adoulin Missions were coming out very slow. This delayed future, harder content such as Vagary and Sinister Reign. Players were now reminiscing the difficulties of Voidwatch and Legion. TP Change This update made TP a 3000 point scale instead of 300. TP has always been 3000 behind the scenes but the game never showed decimal points. Before this change, if you used Store TP and gained 12.7 tp per hit you would just see 12. Now you would see the 127 TP per hit with 3000 being the max. It actually let players see subtle changes in Store TP gear, and TP gain was more exact than the old 300-point scale. Overall, TP gain on weapons was increased too. Some gear added in the previous two updates had "TP Bonus+1000" and "Regain+10" on their stats. After these items were DAT mined, some players were flipping a lid thinking these items were incredibly broken. The stats were simply added prematurely and actually reflected the 3000 TP scale implemented in this update. Wildskeeper Reive Adjustments This update was about the 5th time additions have been made to Wildskeeper Reives after they were implemented. Yes, the event felt grindy and repetitive on one hand. On the other, it was like Besieged where everyone was welcome to come and help fight. Nobody was considered a hindrance regardless of their gear level. You could dip out and take a break at any point during the "WKR Train" rather than feeling glued to the screen. When you returned from a break, simply rejoin the train and continue farming High-Purity Bayld. Synthesis Changes This update consisted of the most changes to crafting since cap increases to level 110. All of the changes that were implemented were intended as quality of life improvements to open the door for more players to check out the crafting system, while at the same time managing to be a refreshing change for veteran crafters. The /lastsynth command was considered to be one of the best Synthesis quality of life enhancements ever added. Crafting Kits were essentially a fast track to levelling sub crafts with minimal effort. Using kits was rarely cheaper than actually gathering materials and using the old recipes, but it was far more convenient. Another way to look at them were as unlimited synthesis materials for certain synths. Players frequently hit brick walls on their crafting journey due to lack of materials on the Auction House. Kits paired with unlimited stock of certain items from Guilds opened more paths for levelling crafts and supplied a few more items to the economy. The items purchasable from NPCs seemed to have been strategically chosen, rather than random junk. At this point in the game, nobody bothered farming things like At last, ores/logs/hides became stackable. They should have been this way from the beginning of service. Stackable materials affected all crafts in one way or another. It also was a major HELM quality of life improvement. One particular item that became stackable which did not have much of an impact on crafting was the Speaking of HELM/Gathering, the new glow spots that were implemented for Harvesting/Mining/Logging made the experience much more enjoyable. Previously, players had to spam their target keys/buttons and watch the lower right of the screen to see if they targeted a gathering point. This was particularly annoying in zones with multiple floors, such as Palborough Mines where this action would target things above or below you. Even though fan made marked maps online still proved useful, they were less critical for new players to try out the content. This change did not suddenly cause players to flock to HELM, as it proved less useful these days with Mog Gardens being a thing now. Eminent Equipment There were a few surprising but pleasant equipment additions to Records of Eminence NPCs in exchange for Sparks of Eminence. The Geomancy+ and Phantom Roll+ This buff was explained on the official forum to be more than just skill+ before Phantom Rolls also had improvements from the powerful rings that were implemented. The rings gave incredibly significant boosts to all Rolls, increasing Corsair's overall buff potency. As a example: Chaos Roll gave 31.2% Attack boost when rolling an 11. Adding the new Bard saw no improvements to song potency in this update. This was the turning point where GEO became a more desired job than Bard for melee parties. Especially if they had an Idris. This META would not change until Bard song buffs later on. WKR Augments It is worth noting that "Occasionally Attacks Twice" was added in this update as a possible augment for the Item Level 115 Wildskeeper Reive weapons. The proc rate was found to be about 40%. While this had a lot of potential, plugging in the numbers to the DPS spreadsheets did not beat Item Level 119 weapon stats. High level content proved that these weapons lacked accuracy and skill levels to prove viable replacements. Nevertheless, they were fun toys to play around with in old content such as Dynamis or Salvage. Freshly Picked Vana'diel #8
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| Jun. 23rd, 2014 | Mog Garden Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The next Mog Garden campaign was held from June 23rd to July 8th.
This campaign brought back double the shining stars from the previous iteration, but there was a new addition. The Flotsam had additional items added to it. During the campaign, a second (usually more valuable) item is now obtainable every time the Flotsam is retrieved. Players reported obtaining Savory Shanks and 100 iterations of Dynamis currency, all the way down to less useful Mannequin parts. |
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| Jun. 23rd, 2014 | Mog Garden Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Celestial Nights returned from June 23rd to July 8th.
The only addition this year was the new |
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| Jun. 24th, 2014 | “Wish on a strip of paper” contest | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Returning from 2013, the Tanabata event returned for Japanese players from June 24th until July 6th.
Players were asked to download one of three “bamboo strip” images (pictured to the right), each strip was colored and themed after one of the three nations. They had to write a wish on it, and then post it on the entry thread on the official forum. The example image to the right says “May you win first place in Mog Bonanza”. The reward for participating was only a Cracked Nut, but a plethora of players participated in this event due to the cultural significance. See the entry thread here if you wish to look at the entries. Tanabata (or 七夕) is a southeast Asian festival part of the larger festival called Obon. Nationwide, it is common practice to write a wish on a strip of paper and decorate it with bamboo leaves. The custom of decorating strips of paper on bamboo grass began in the Edo period. |
   
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| Jun. 26th, 2014 | Double Experience Points Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A Double Experience Points Campaign was held from June 26th until June 29th. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jun. 30th, 2014 | The First Summer Alter Ego Extravaganza | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The first iteration of the Summer Alter Ego Extravaganza ran from June 30th to July 31st.
With it was the first opportunity to obtain the following Trusts: It is worth mentioning that Ferreous Coffin is the first and only Trust that casts Raise on KO'd players. With it now possible to party up with other players, this proved to be an invaluable resource in a tight spot. |
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| Jul. 1st, 2014 | Second Version Update Survey Results | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Survey results were announced for the February thru April version update changes.
A few notes from this survey:
View the full survey results here. |
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| Jul. 8th, 2014 | Two new Adventurer Campaigns held | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| From July 8th thru July 29th the new Campaign Festa adventurer campaign was held for the first time. New drops were added to the beastmen god BCNMs in Campaign Ops. These included Ultimate Weapon materials.
Also, from July 8th thru July 22nd the new Alter Ego Expo also debuted. This new campaign increased Trust's maximum HP and MP by 1.5x. Alongside of this, all Trusts had a strong resistance to status ailments. 10,000 pieces Rumors began circulating that 10,000 pieces of currency dropped from this event. Because this tier of currency has never been obtainable without trading the goblins 100x 100 pieces, players dismissed this claim as a photoshop and hearsay. As more Campaign Festa events were held, more reports came in over the years. Eventually it was accepted by the community that these Dynamis pieces can drop in this event, but they have UR rarity. Other than the low chance at 10,000 pieces, Heavy Metal and Heavy Metal Pouches had much higher rates and were overall pretty common to receive. It was a fun change of pace to do these BCs if they were accessible. In order for these Campaign Ops to be accessible, the beastmen stronghold area needed to be under Allied control. This was difficult to accomplish without cooperation from other players. Adventurers were very shocked that Fiat Lux dropped Umbral Marrow. These were found pretty quickly. |
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| Jul. 8th, 2014 | Monster Rearing, Level Sync Trusts, and Synthesis History Menu Introduced | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Job Buffs The additional effect added to Corsair's Roll to also enhance Capacity Points was not the most discussed buff this update. Job Points were not spectacular enough to be worried about earning more at the time. Players with a decent amount of points just felt like the enhancements did not make them feel stronger than before having any. Instead, players were hyped up for Flurry, Distract, and Frazzle. These new spells along with GEO now having access to a GEO haste spell (which even gave 33% haste!) rendered them the new go-to party buffers. Players debated on how these new spells could greatly change party dynamics. It was also worth mentioning the potential for Red Mage as a sub job for access to the Tier I versions of these spells. It became more favorable to GEOs to cast spells such as Frazzle upon pulling to easily be placed on the hate list. Blue Mage received Subduction this update. It turned them into AoE killing machines in all types of content. Bard was left in the dark in the previous two updates. The new instrument added did not help veteran Bards. The job essentially turned into a Scherzo bitch for the handful of fights that Scherzo was useful for at the time.  New Home Points and Survival Guides The thought behind adding even more Home Points and Survival Guides was that the developers had the vision in mind that players should be able to start an event within 5 minutes of logging in. The locations added in this update were extreme hikes to access, so all of these teleportation locations were very welcome. They were so off the beaten path that was even difficult for some players to figure out how to get to these locations without assistance and tips from others. Synthesis History The Synth History menu was not as convenient as the /lastsynth command, but it was still nice nonetheless. Not many players realized that you could "Favorite" a recipe to keep it on the history. For unknown reasons, the Japanese client displayed craft levels under the Synthesis History box. This was absent in the English Client. Perhaps it was due to the limited characters available. No official explanation has ever been given.
Monster Rearing Upon first implementation of the Monster Rearing system, there was little point in participating in the content. Stat Rings The stat rings added in this update blew all previous stat rings out of the water because of the extra types of accuracy/resistances on the +1 versions rather than just pure Stat bonuses. Players were hoping that there was a use for the Avatarite stones added, and this was it. They were previously only used for Trials of the magians for certain paths. Silent Change This update quietly adjusted the Barone armor sold from the Tavnazian NPCs. Due to the lore setting in Tavnazia, the sell price for Barone was mysteriously set to 40x the current price. The Barone Gambieras were at over 25,000,000 gil to purchase them. It was said by developers that the reason for this was because Tavnazia was a secluded place. The value of items was much higher due to the rarity of materials in the lore, and as such the price to make such things was much more. Freshly Picked Vana'diel #9
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| Jul. 8th, 2014 | End of German and French Language Support | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This update marked the official end of in-game French and German language support for Final Fantasy XI. The announcement was made on April 30th that these options would no longer be supported as of the July 2014 version update due to the declining number of French and German players. Players who spoke these languages could continue to play the game in English, and French and German customer support was still available.
German and French languages were supported from March 8th, 2007 until July 8th, 2014. Ending support for two additional languages did not improve the localization issues that continue to plague the English version of the game. It may have been possible for fans to distribute translated DAT files for these languages, but it would have been a massive undertaking to keep up with every version update. |
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| Jul. 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #13 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The link to the English campaign page was broken for more than 12 hours on the website after the event was posted on PlayOnline.com, even after reports on the official forum. It was a nice coincidence... Right after support for the German and French versions of the game ended.
Cipher: S. Sibyl was added as a unique item in this campaign, and it was the first opportunity to obtain her. Two new fans: Returning this month was the Bomb Masque / +1. Also, Stronghold Invasion pop items for Castle Oztroja (S) were available this month. Month: July 2014
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| Jul. 17th, 2014 | First Double Salvage Plan Drop Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The campaign was held from July 17th until August 3rd.
It was a bit of a mystery to players on why they would make such a campaign at this point in the game. Players were not lacking Plans for Salvage II, this campaign just caused more unneeded stuff to throw away. What would have proven more useful is if the bosses instead dropped an additional piece. Players speculated that Salvage III was on the way, and this event was a precursor to allow players to stock up their plans. |
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| Jul. 29th, 2014 | The Fantastic Fraulein Mumor Superheroine Stage Show: Dynamic Doppelgangers | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Mumor event returned between July 29th to August 19th.
This year, there were two Mumor NPCs. One was the real Mumor, and it was hard to target the correct NPC. If you bought fireworks from the NPCs during the performance break, you would receive a bonus for the next round. New this year were the Kengyu Happi / Kengyu Hanmomohiki and Shokujo Happi / Shokujo Hanmomohiki kimono sets. The main prize, however, was the new Mumor Trust. |
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| Jul. 31st, 2014 | Double Capacity Points and Double Simulacra Segment Drop Rate Campaigns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Two more campaigns were held from July 31st.
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| Jul. 31st, 2014 |  The 12th Vana’diel Census | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The final Vana'diel Census was conducted on May 16th, 2014 but the results were released on July 31st. This was a very condensed form of the Vana'diel Census with basic information disclosed.
No further census has been taken since the 12th in 2014. It was mentioned on Freshly Picked Vana'diel #30 that it was a very difficult task to aggregate and format the data unless it was prepared in advance. Even if you aggregated it, it is not very interesting and players may dismiss the results as skewed. It was also claimed that the cost to conduct the census was large. As such, the administration team has "prioritized responding to the official forums instead of conduct the census". It is unlikely it will ever happen again. |
 The final Census can be found here. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Aug. 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #14 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cipher: Uka was added as a unique item in this campaign, and it was the first opportunity to obtain her. She synergized very well with Mumor who just was added the month before.
Synthesis Kits were added, but only for Smithing and Woodworking which left players scratching their heads. Odious items debuted for the first time this campaign. Additionally, the eyes required for the Hakutaku Eye Cluster were available for some unknown reason. Hakutaku and the Optical Hat were very out of date now. A nice addition were the Sky Notorious Monster System god seals for easy Kirin spawns. Ark weapons also returned alongside the new Avatarite gems used for the new Stat rings added in the July update. Month: August 2014
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| Aug. 12th, 2014 | Alouvion Skirmish, Ra'Kaznar Inner Court, and Equipment Sets released | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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August 2014 Version Update Promotional Trailer
Job Adjustments Fury's effect was boosted from +12.5% attack to +31.2% attack with a combined Handbell and Geomancy skill of 800. With Dunna, it was even more at +44.9% attack. Barrier was increased from +17% defense to +36.3% defense with 800 skill. Dunna made this jump to +59.7% defense. These were not small numbers. Geomancer was now a force to be reckoned with.
There was a bug in the previous set of Seekers of Adoulin missions. Specifically, The Lightsland. If you obtained one of the three neck rewards, equipped it, and then spoke to the NPC again players were unintentionally able to obtain a second neck reward item. This bug was fixed, but the way these extra equipment pieces that were obtained was addressed was in this new set of missions. In the mission The Charlatan where players obtained a +1 version of the necklace chosen, you were unable to proceed unless any extra necklaces obtained previously via the glitch were thrown away. It was rumored that the previous bug that existed was the only reason that +1 versions of these items were created. The stats on the +1 items were so much better so players who illegitimately had two necklaces felt like they were still receiving and upgrade when they were forced to throw away the second necklace. The new area Ra'Kaznar Inner Court felt incredibly large, but vastly empty. There were even special teleport animations created specifically for this zone. The only purpose it served was to travel to the end of it for the Seekers of Adoulin Missions. It is a shame that so many development resources went into creating such a unique area that was never repurposed for any additional content. Alluvion Skirmish With the new Alluvion Skirmish finally came new weapons to compete with Delve boss weapons. These unique weapon models felt like they should have been used for a new version of Adoulin's Ultimate Weapons rather than wasted on an easily accessible event like Skirmish. As players put it, the graphics were "pretty bitchin'". What was also bitchin' was the very nice augment system that came with these weapons. Rather than stones erasing all augments for every trade, each variety of stone granted it's own augment slot. It was easy to target the slot you wanted to upgrade and not have to worry about a stat you wanted to keep. Customization options seem to have been nearly endless for what you wanted to build. These weapons were rather short lived in their lifespan, with a few niche exceptions. Naturally, players saw the DAT mine stats and disappointment ensued about the low base damage and higher delay. Augments helped lower the delay and increase base damage. The The A screenshot was posted on FFXIAH.com four days after the update (see below). It features a Linos augment having "All Songs +3". This would have been the equivalent of a  Equipment Sets After implementation of Equipment Sets, it was such a convenient feature that many players who did not use Gearswap luas rewrote their entire macro sets to use Equipment Sets. One issue that players ran into was that at first, macros could be backed up to the server but the contents of equipment sets could not. After reinstalling the game, data corruption, or moving PCs, it was quite a hassle to recreate your equipment sets. There was a growing demand for set backups, but it was not possible to do this until after the August 2015 version update. One year after Equipment Sets were added. Job Point Expansion The categories added to Job Points in this update finally showed promise on useful categories to invest in for some jobs. For others, it did not help. Beastmaster for instance had two amazing categories: Pet attack speed and Reward effect. Earning Capacity Points was still a big drag. The new area Ra'Kaznar Inner Court did not add any viable camps. Title Music Historically, title music added to the main menu was the Vana'diel March theme for the most current expansion you had installed. There was no way to change this if you did not care for the newest iteration of the theme. With the addition of this new feature, players can now pick the theme they would like to hear every time they launched the game. It was a nostalgia trip to have the original Vana'diel Theme or the one from Chains of Promathia playing again. Warp Ring This update introduced the The April 2013 update lowered the cudgel timer to 1 hour, but that was even too long. Multiple cudgels were still needed to be held at any time so you were not stuck somewhere after participating in game content. The Warp Ring greatly solved this predicament, without the need to repurchase a cudgel after it ran out. It was foolish to use a Warp Cudgel charge when you were in town just to return to your Home Point. Before Home Point teleportation, players would level Black Mage to 17 for the sole reason of being able to Warp themselves to their home point without a "D3", or "death warp". Running to your Mog House was still required to change your subjob, and then you had to remember to change it back after warping. Crafting Torques The remaining four Crafting Torques that offered Crafting Skill +2 were added to the game files in July 2014, but they became available in August 2014. A post on the official forums disclosed this information. For some reason, it was not announced in the official update notes that equipment was added to Grounds of Valor caskets. It was also unclear and never answered why these crafts did not have a torque added back in 2011 when the other crafting torques were implemented. Freshly Picked Vana'diel #10
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| Aug. 15th, 2014 | Discontinuation of UltimatePay | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| UltimatePay was an alternative for those without bank accounts or credit cards to pay for online services such as games or digital goods. Essentially, they were rechargable credit cards. Consumers of this brand were unable to recharge their cards beginning on August 15th, 2014, and the last day to redeem their credit was on October 31st, 2014.
This only affected a minority of players of FFXI, but more seemed to be affected who played FFXIV. A common way to pay for the games was to use these cards to pay for Crysta, and then the Crysta was used for their subscriptions. These players had to replace their cards with a prepaid Visa or Mastercard to continue to play. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Aug. 21st, 2014 | Simultaneous Mog Garden and Skirmish Campaigns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Two more campaigns were held from August 21st until August 31st.
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| Aug. 28th, 2014 | Longest Double Capacity Points Campaign yet | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The longest Double Capacity Points campaign yet - 9 days long - was held from August 28th until September 5th. | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sep. 1st, 2014 | Salvage Bans 2.0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| News broke out on September 1st that players were getting banned or suspended for a Salvage II exploit that was recently fixed. This exploit was in the game since the introduction of Salvage II, but only hit critical mass the last couple months before the exploit was patched.
The exploit allowed players to defeat the mini boss and mega boss in all Salvage II zones by first defeating them like normal. Afterwards if you position hacked down to the floor below the mini boss, teleporting back up forced these bosses to respawn. Each time this happened, the player would have a guaranteed Linen Coin Purse for each mega boss kill, and a chance at a Cotton Coin Purse for each mini boss kill. Players who were banned reported the ability to obtain 3,000 alexandrite per run if you were efficient and had good equipment. Right before the fix, Mythic Weapons began popping up like crazy. The markets on all worlds were flooded with available Alexandrite at 40% less than it was before the exploit made its way around. Players noticed that their friends would enter Salvage as MNK subbing DRK, or other similar non-THF jobs and stay in the zone for the entire 100 minutes. |
Justice not served?
Three day suspensions were handed out to some exploiters, some were permanently banned, and others did not get punished at all. This was typical Square Enix and how they decided to handle the situation. Dishing out uneven justice. Rumors were that Square Enix did not want to invest enough time into FFXI to perform a "thorough investigation" like they did with the first Salvage bans, and the bans were issued with half-assed proof. Most players believed that those who exploited this glitch should have all been permanently banned. It was a blatant and unfair advantage for those that performed the exploit. Exploiters defended their actions with the following reasonings:
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| Sep. 5th, 2014 | Second Double Synthesis Skill Increase Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The second time the Double Synthesis Skill Increase Campaign ran was from September 5th until September 6th. Exactly 24 Earth Hours.
It was unknown why this was only active for 24 hours. The last time this campaign ran (which was the first time), it ran for 14 days. Many players missed out on this event, or just forgot it was going on. |
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| Sep. 9th, 2014 | Incursion and Surged Walk of Echoes Battle Content Added | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Job Adjustments The Beastmaster jug pets were all available for purchase from vendors upon implementation, and they were all set at very reasonable prices. Nothing special was added to them other than giving old pets the Item Level treatment with stats. The Dancer adjustment looked nice on paper, but building that amount of steps was rather pointless. By the time you reached the higher steps, the monsters typically were dead. The change failed to address the problems with the job, but any buff was better than no buff. The biggest issue with the job was that the longer a monster was alive, the deadlier it became. Dancer did not bring anything to the table to help with this problem. The job's major problem as a healer was AoE debuff spam on all content. The secondary problem was AoE damage spam. Contradance was insufficient to address either problem. Dancer didn't have any useful party buffs. They provided 1.5% JA Haste that some people needed and then another 8.5% JA Haste that no one but Dancer gears for. To add insult to injury, any job in the game was capable of providing the necessary 1.5% JA Haste (and still having another 3.5% JA Haste that no one gears for). As a DD/Debuffer, Dancer's main problem was their debuffing totally destroyed their DPS. Even assuming you stack with Weapon Skills, you still lost at least 1/15 of your DPS. (More like 1/10 with Presto.) Dragoon adjustments finally received a full time Beserk/Defender without penalties. It was also a Hasso effect while the Wyvern was out. Blue Mage getting new spells so quickly was unexpected. Restoral and Sinker Drill in particular became some of the most useful spells. Gobbie Mystery Box The Gobbiebox was revamped this update to what we have today. Not many players used the old Mystery Box feature, so practically the entire player base had huge amounts of stored tally to burn because it carried over. Naturally, players wanted a "Daily task" to put out more than just a vendorable item. Abjurations were a nice score upon first implementation. Especially the Legion level 99 sets, as they still had limited uses as well as a rarity factor. BG Wiki DAT miners had the ability to know what came from the box right away because a new item tag called "Flag02" was thrown up on over 8,000 items within the DATs. We were just oblivious as to what the flag actually meant. It would not be until around a year later that I had big brain energy and made the connection that "Usable within Mog Gardens" was "Flag03". It was added to many items in a future mog garden update. Those items happened to be ones that were "usable". That gave me the idea to look back and see which update it was that Flag02 was added. Sure enough, it was the same one where the Gobbie Mystery Box was revamped. Why create a labor intensive task of editing 8,000 items unnecessarily? This is SE we are talking about. Quality of Life Improvements SE continued to add unexpected Quality of Life improvements to the game with this update. The ability to sort party members should have been a day one feature. This made <p2> thru <p6> macros much more accessible. Many players ended up sorting their party members the same way each time - for example: tank in slot 2, DDs in slot 3 and 4, support in slot 5 and 6. Layouts similar to this in every party made the game more enjoyable from a support role's aspect. The /itemsearch command was much less intuitive than the //findall windower addon, which came out in 2013. Items needed to be fully spelt out as well as placed in quotes if it was a two word item. Nevertheless, it was wonderful to see SE continue to incorporate popular Windower addons in the game itself. Players on console or those who did not use windower could take advantage of /itemsearch. Adding icons to the maps seemed previously to be an impossible task. SE surprised us and followed suit with modern video games by adding this feature. The map popup during teleportation was reminiscent of the Auction House sales popup box. It was unneeded, but a really nice touch for players going to a specific coordinate in the zone they were going to. Reive Adjustments With the removal of the The ability to resummon trusts at any point in a Reive was also a great quality of life adjustment and made the content more easily accessible and solo friendly. Incursion The quality of the armor that was added for Incursion was nothing notable. They were largely not worth the effort for players to boost the difficulty of the event. The title Nilotican Decimator forever remained notoriously hard to get because of the lack of participation. It required Content Level 143, and you had to defeat Vanquisher Gramk-Droog. JSE Capes now had a random Augment on them when they dropped from the new Incursion content. Augments were also not added on these capes from any other source. Augments were also not announced anywhere, so at first players thought that more gear could drop from this event with Augments attached.
As noted in the Freshly Picked Vana'diel - July 2016 Edition, the development team released details on the chances of obtaining the Capacity Point bonuses augment. Assuming flat distributions, you would expect 1/180 Mantles to be +50% Capacity Points bonus on average, which would be 18000 normal coffers or 1800 Grand coffers. 10%-32%: 90% chance By mid-November 2014, a group was able to defeat Level 143 Vanquisher Gramk-Droog. A post was made on the official forums reporting that the NM was defeated and all progress Key Items were lost when the group attempted to level up the event again, and no reward was given. Unfortunately, it seemed that SE did not anticipate anybody would be able to defeat him at this point in the game. It was obvious that no planning was in place in the event that this did occur. With the final outcome of the event now public knowledge, players stopped trying to progress and just farmed capes. Walk of Echoes A case of whiplash seemed to be on players minds at this point in the game. We went from a marginal, horizontal gear progression system. This all changed when Delve being released with major equipment upgrades. Now with WoE v2 and Incursion, we were back to marginal gear upgrades. The only thing Square was consistent about was it's inconsistency. Players were not looking forward to spamming low tier fights for 3 hours just to get a chance of the high tier fight. On top of that, you had another small chance at the reward you wanted. Many of the +1 version of items from Walk of Echoes only offered slight stat increases... or nothing. Items such as the These HQ items were somewhat awkward for crafters. These were the first substantial Non Freshly Picked Vana'diel #11
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| Sep. 10th, 2014 | The Third FFXIV/DQX Collaboration Event | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Anniversary MMO Collaboration Event ran again from September 10th to October 2nd.
No changes were made from the previous run of the event. |
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| Sep. 10th, 2014 | Return to Vana'diel & Discount Campaigns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Return Home campaign was quite popular at this time due to the client being somewhat easy to download directly from the Square Enix website for the first time. It was only available for the duration of this campaign, however. It did return later on full time. Even though the free to play time was one week, it was the first free play period in quite awhile. |
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| Sep. 10th, 2014 | Idyllic Vana'diel Initiative | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Sep. 10th, 2014 | Active Adventurer Appreciation Campaign #1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Players who had an active, paid subscription at any point from July 1st, 2014 until August 31st, 2014 were given a  Mog Pell (Red). This was also the first time that the item was provided to players. Compared to the Mog Pell (Green), it had a much better selection of available items when it was exchanged.
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| Sep. 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #15 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cipher: Kuyin was added as unique items in this campaign, and it was the first opportunity to obtain her.
Level 15, 25, and 35 Usukane Salvage Armor pieces were available during this campaign. Even though the equipment was far outdated at this point, it was still really surprising to see such hard to obtain pieces in the level 75 golden era available for login points. Because the Salvage Plans were able to be sent to the same characters on a POL account, they were a popular choice. Month: September 2014
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| Sep. 10th, 2014 | Blazing Buffaloes 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: September 10th to September 24th.
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| Sep. 24th, 2014 | Alter Ego Expo Redux | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Alter Ego Expo, boosting Trust Magic's stats, ran from September 24th to Octoper 9th.
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| Sep. 30th, 2014 | Autumn Alter Ego Extravaganza | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| September 30th to October 31st
This was the first opportunity to obtain the following Trusts:
Returning trusts were Sakura, Ovjang, and Mnejing. Koru-Moru became a player favorite with his excellent support role, alongside Kupipi as a white mage. |
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| Oct. 2nd, 2014 | Double Experience Points & Additional Seal Battlefields Spoils Campaigns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Oct. 7th, 2014 | Atomos Avatar Addition & Avatar High Tier Battlefields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Job Adjustments All the skill changes were inconsequential. PUP's was the best, and it picked up ~2 base damage, 20 Attack, and 16 Accuracy. Warrior: The changes did not hurt the job, but they did not address any of the job's issues. Ninja: Before this update, Throwing skill was regarded as a meme and nobody bothered with it. Players did not want to have to level their Throwing skill for the new Daken trait. The only players who had Thief or Ranger levelled had any amount of Throwing skill already. Luckily it was very easy to level up Throwing casually with this Job Trait and no extra effort. With the addition of the Job Trait and Occasionally Attacks Twice gear, Ninjas could now easily self skillchain. The new Overall, the Trait was very well received. The damage increase and TP gain that Ninjas received was a wonderful addition to the job. Blue Mage: The spells that had durations increased were rarely used before. They were just not worth it for the effect duration received. Now that they could be kept up for much longer (50% to 300% duration/potency), they made it onto Blue Mage's spell lists a lot more frequently. These spell changes should have been done a long time ago. Summoner: Atomos, as expected, was situational and worse than anticipated. Players were hoping for another Avatar that had a set of Blood Pact Wards and Rages. SE then went for a twofer with the adjustments to Avatar's Favor. Diabolos was useful for AoE Refresh, but it became more difficult now with increase Perpetuation cost. Apogee was somewhat disappointing. Summoners wished that it was a stance instead of a 5 minute job ability. It was an ability. It was there. It did not hurt. Dancer: The Step changes in this update were pretty OP. Dynamis farming became so much easier while subbing Dancer because of how much easier it was to proc monsters. The downside to this upgrade was that the changes made the job even further handicapped by the game's Job Ability delay. They picked the worst of all possible ways to address the problems they created last update when they increased the max step level to 10. Geomancer: The new Entrust ability was wonderful for Geomancers to stay off of the front line, and instead grant another Indicolure effect safely from the back lines. Before the update hit, players assumed assumed that Entrust did not allow a second Indi spell and would instead grant your single Indi spell on another player. Allowing Geomancers to have a third bubble pushed it even further to the top of the desired buffing jobs. High Tier Mission Battlefields The proc system returned with the new Avatar HTMB fights, and they offered a pretty nice challenge on Difficult or Very Difficult. Players were not a fan of the single Key Item used for every Avatar, however. It would have made more sense to have one Key Item per battlefield, allowing players to have one of each stored on their characters. This would be reminiscent of the old Avatar BC farming players used to do to earn money back in the day with Avatar BCNM rotations. Overall, the equipment that came from these new BCNMs was not very noteworthy. There were a few exceptions of course, but at 20 merits a pop it felt like HTMBs should have been slightly more rewarding. No, merits were not hard to come by. They just required time that players did not have much of. The HTMBs were praised for overall loot acquisition compared to the 75 days. Back then it used to take over a year to get the most wanted equipment. Nowadays, all of the loot from a BC can be capped for a party in around 10~12 hours depending on luck. Even if it wasn't all the best stuff, a lot of situational items came from HTMBs. Walk of Echoes By far one of the best adjustments to the WoE content was the ability to purchase a new The adjustment from 10 minutes to 1 minute for Walks to respawn helped lower the price of items on the Auction House due to more Surge walks appearing overall. Freshly Picked Vana'diel #12
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| Oct. 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #16 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cipher: Karaha was added as unique items in this campaign, and it was the first opportunity to obtain him.
Additionally, the the all new Empyrean Armor +2 upgrade items returned which were also a popular pick. Month: October 2014
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| Oct. 17th, 2014 | Surge Walk Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A new campaign was held from Oct 17th to Oct 21st for the newly implemented Surge Walks in Walk of Echoes. All walks powered up to surge mode for the duration of the campaign. This campaign helped stock the Auction House with the highly desired Windbuffet Belt +1. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Oct. 21st, 2014 | The Harvest Festival 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: October 21st - November 4th
New this year were the Flan Masque and Flan Masque +1 for trading treats to the Flan type mobs added to the event. |
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| Oct. 27th, 2014 | Another Double Capacity Points Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Another 9 day Double Capacity Points Campaign was held from October 27th until November 4th. | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Oct. 28th, 2014 | Active Adventurer Appreciation Campaign #1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Like the previous iteration, players who had an active, paid subscription at any point from September 1st, 2014 until October 31st, 2014 were given a Mog Pell (Red).
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| Nov. 10th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #17 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cipher: Abenzio was added as unique item in this campaign, and it was the first opportunity to obtain it. Additionally, the the all new  Lycopodium Masque was available for the first time in this campaign.
Frayed Pouches/Sacks (Coins/Die/Residue for Unlocking Empyrean Weaponskills) returned after a 6 month hiatus. It was questionable why these items were in the campaign since so many coins were now in circulation from Surge Walks. Month: November 2014
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| Nov. 10th, 2014 | Idyllic Vana'diel Initiative | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dates: November 10th - November 25th
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| Nov. 10th, 2014 | Seekers of Adoulin Conclusion Released & Unity Concord Implemented | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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November 2014 Version Update Promotional Trailer
Unity Concord Reception around the preview released on the official forum was that Unity would further segregate the community with so many different Unity factions to choose from. Yoran Oran and Sylvie Unity Factions were not available until August 2015. Unity Chat seemed to be intended for players who didn't know how to make friends or join a linkshell in game. Before learning specifics about the pop system, players also thought that the Unity NM system would be full of drama over claims like the 75 cap days. At first, Unity Wanted Battles required 3 players in order to participate in the fights. This was done to promote teaming up with others in your Unity and to fight together. Overall reception about the Unity Rank statistic on equipment was that fighting for a higher rank was not worth the extra bonus. Do not count on it, and then if you got it then it was a neat extra. Unity Faction allegiance did not matter for choice of items available or equipment bonuses. The main purpose was the Trust you received and minor daily RoEs. Wanted Battles were a nostalgia trip for players to fight old school NMs again with an Item Level twist. The force spawn system was a very good addition so there were no arguments or drama about claims. The pop and battle system felt akin to Voidwatch. Gear that was released at first seemed like a mixture of sidegrades and some nice stand out pieces (such as the Regal Pumps +1, Augury Cuisses +1, and Macabre Gauntlets +1). SP Gobbie Key were added in exchange for Unity Accolades, but upon first release players focused on spending their accolades for armor and weapon upgrades. The ability to obtain the +1 version of armor at a very low rate from coffers was a very unexpected surprise. Speaking of unexpected, the newly added Unity Warps opened the door to even more convenient teleportation options around Vana'diel. Other players felt disheartened and skeptical about a system that seemed unnecessarily convoluted. Unity seemed to be a low budget attempt at rehashing content to keep players busy for a long time with the least amount of effort spent on creating it. Veteran players were dreaming about moderately challenging, deep, articulated content that focused on organized groups instead of low budget content aimed at small groups of multiboxed characters. Major Unity Bug Immediately after the update, players who joined a Unity would have their equipped Linkshell or Pearlsack downgraded to a Linkpearl. An emergency maintenance almost immediately after the update maintenance fixed this issue. Players who were affected had to contact a GM in-game to get assistance in having these items returned to them. Seekers of Adoulin Conclusion After the entire story was released, Famitsu published an article in December 2014 that revealed there is a hidden parameter between your character and Arciela called intimacy. If you chose strange options during the mission cutscenes, such as "staring at your chest", the intimacy level dropped sharply. If you chose a good one, it would increase. Intimacy only had a couple of effects in the game. One was during the mission Seekers of Adoulin Mission 4-1-2. The item requested during the cutscene depended on your intimacy level. The lower your level, the "harder" the item requested. During the final mission cutscene in Seekers of Adoulin Mission 5-5-1, if you continued to click no and obtained SE did a good job making all of the final reward rings very desirable. Many players wanted the Refresh rings. This was before Dark Matter augments, so the Treasure Hunter ring was also a good choice to pair with Chaac Belt for TH+2 on non Thief jobs. Many players wanted the ability to purchase an additional ring, such as the crafting ring, because of the vast differences between them. A modest fee of a couple million Bayld and all WKR Key Items seemed fair to do this. Naturally, over time some rings became less desirable with new rings introduced later. For the first time in nine years, a song with vocals is added to the game as the final closing ballad. In Freshly Picked Vana'diel #23, it was discussed that Seekers of Adoulin was intended to have a sixth chapter that was set in the area of Tartarus. In the unreleased lore, Hades created this area. Hades would have taken the power of August and manifested into a final boss. Additionally, Balamor was set to obtain the powers of Ultima and become a final boss as well. This idea was shelved due to circumstances such as development scale and time investment required to create it. Concept artwork is shown below. Click an image for a larger view.
Freshly Picked Vana'diel #13
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| Nov. 10, 2014 | Forever Today: FINAL FANTASY XI Seekers of Adoulin OST PLUS On Sale Online Only | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Forever Today: FINAL FANTASY XI Seekers of Adoulin Original Soundtrack PLUS, containing six previously unreleased songs and well as two versions of the eponymous expansion's ending song, Forever Today, became available for online purchase only. The soundtrack's website features comments from Naoshi Mizuta and singer Mika Kobayashi.
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| Nov. 11th, 2014 | Return to Vana'diel & Discount Campaigns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The next Return Home campaign was only two months after the previous free play period. The game client was available again from the Playonline website, so many players took advantage of this campaign. |
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| Nov. 25th, 2014 | Pictlogica Final Fantasy Crossover Event | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This new event ran from November 25th to December 9th
The collaboration featured a total of 11 new items available in Final Fantasy XI as furnishings (wall hunt portraits). Each of which depicts a famous NPC from the world of Vana'diel in retro style pixel art. Unlike other events, SE disclosed how to get these different portraits.
In addition, a temporary dial "Pictlogica Dial" was added to the Gobbie Mystery Box that could be opened once per Earth Day.
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 Pictlogica Final Fantasy was a free to play illustrated action puzzle iOS and Android game released only in Japan featuring pixel art from the FINAL FANTASY series. In September 2018, Square Enix announced that the game's online services would be shut down on November 30 and that the game will later be replaced by a version that is playable offline. Reception These boards were storable via Storage Slip 19 at the time of their implementation. If this was not the case, they would have certainly all been thrown away due to inventory constraints. They could not be sold on the Auction House or delivered to same account characters, but they could be sold in Bazaars. There was no benefit of obtaining all 11. At the time of implementation, the placement height of the portrait was low. This was probably due to only the player's character perspectives being considered rather than camera angles. Oftentimes these portraits were hidden behind other furniture placed around them on the floor. In response to this, developers wanted to ensure that even players who played as a Tarutaru could also see these portraits. When the Mog House second floor was added, these problems were somewhat resolved. This event only ran twice. This time in 2014, and again in 2017. These portraits are now hard to come by. With Pictlogica no longer in online service, it is unlikely that this event will ever return. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nov. 11th, 2014 | Sunshine Seeker | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A new seasonal event was released from November 11th to November 25th. This event was skipped in 2015 for some reason. This event took place in the home nations and was related to the quest Babban Ny Mheillea. You could obtain Mandragora lockstyle equipment, as well as an exclusive (to this event) Trust Babban.
Bug The first iteration of this event had a bug where players could defeat the monsters that roamed the cities with a ranged attack. This allowed the event to be completed without any hindrances, so players were flocking to it to quickly get their rewards. This glitch was fixed in an emergency maintenance on November 17th. |
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| Dec. 2nd, 2014 | New Campaign & Two Additional Campaigns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Dates: 12/2/14 - 12/18/14 This was the first time that the Bonus Bayld Campaign was held. |
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| Dec. 10th, 2014 | Gifts System introduced along with Superior Levels | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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June and July's version update survey results can be seen here.
Superior Level The preview on the official forums about Superior Level alluded that the equipment would have stats beyond typical Item Level 119 gear and be quite strong. In reality, the majority of the items were essentially casual tier RoE upgrades. There were exceptions though, such as the Sombra Tights with Dual Wield for BLU. All of the items in this update were synthesized, which finally threw crafters a bone. This system had a lot of potential, but SE did not take advantage of it. Superior Level equipment was the only Item Level 119 gear available on the Auction House. Many new and returning players would purchase this armor hoping to have easy to obtain equipment to reach Item Level 119, but not understand why they could not equip it. In future updates, not many Superior Level armor pieces were released. It was evident that this system was pretty much abandoned by the developers. Future Superior Level equipment felt like an attempt to keep the statistic relevant rather than properly planned out. This was probably for the best, however. Players were afraid that Capacity Point parties would be locked and segregated to SU level. For instance, SU3 players would not want to take an SU0 player. That tier player would have an almost impossible task of finding other SU0 players to start off with. Sure, 50 Job Points were not a lot. What about next Gift update? The future was unknown. The only constant that we from past updates that we have learned was that there would be more grinding. A lot more. Gifts Suddenly, Job Points were not nice little bonuses. Now they were actually required for significant job enhancements in the form of Gifts. Many jobs still had the same issue getting into Capacity Point parties that they had in the Merit Party days. They were simply not part of the META, so they were overlooked. It was even more detrimental that Job Points needed to be earned on the job that they would be invested in. There was no way around the fact that many jobs were undesirable. Not many people tried to organize CP groups. When you did, it could have taken hours to fill a party, supposing you even managed to. Gifts gave players a reason to grind out Capacity Points even if their job's categories sucked. Gifts were guaranteed to gift a nice boost. The immediate response to Gifts were that gear lock outs were attached as Superior Level. The requirement to grind Capacity Points just fueled the fire on botting them instead of actually playing the game. Far too little content provided CP. Coalition Assignments, Reives, BCNMs, penny value CP from RoE, and steep entry requirements for good camps all played a factor in the current outlook on CP and Gifts. Job Adjustments Summoner was long awaiting Hastega II since Red Mage Received Haste II. This made them slightly more appealing for Capacity Points parties, and opened the door to more summoner soloing opportunities. Volt Strike was overall stronger than Chaotic Strike, so it became the go to for Ramuh. The remaining new blood pacts were all good, but a couple were niche uses such as Leviathan's. The increase to Avatar Accuracy was drooled over. Around this time, developers were discussing Avatar's Favor and that the next tier would be achieved at 575 Summoning Magic Skill. It was impossible to obtain this at this point in time, so summoners were looking forward to what the future brought. For Blue Mage, Molting Plumage bumped up Dual Wield to IV tier. This was great but annoying, as now Blue Mages needed to figure out what spells to drop to make room for this new one. CDC and Savage Blade were also indirect Blue Mage buffs due to their massive increases in damage. Puppetmaster update was a step in the right direction and made it so PUPs could be less frugal with maneuvers. Before, some PUPs would do maybe 1 between fights, but now they could just toss them up as needed. More than anything it helped Automatons. PUPs still suffered from deploy delay. Mainly that it was a 10 second recast and has job ability delay. On fast fights where you were killing things in under 10 seconds, there are a lot of times where automatons just missed the chance to engage/has to wait till the mob was at 50%. For CP parties this was a pain. The main issues with pet jobs at the moment was the lack of accuracy gear. Weapon Skill Buffs This update buffed fTP values of many 1 handed weapon skills. All TP tiers were greatly increased for all weapon skills that were altered. This was the update that Savage Blade became incredibly strong. Before this update, it was essentially a meme weapon skill that nobody ever used. Many weapon skills were increased by 80% or more in damage. These 1 handed changes also gave much more value to weapon skill gorgets and belts. Many players who had no use for these items went out to farm theirs after this update. Rudra's Storm was unintendedly overbuffed. The weapon skill was dealing an amazing 6-20x the damage when stacked with SATA. These numbers were more damage than Tachi: Fudo and was compared to Ukko's Fury of the Abyssean era. It was found later that this power was due to an error in the correction calculation formula when using the weapon skill at 3000 TP. fTP was enhanced to the following:
These numbers were lowered in the March 2015 Version Update to what we have today:
The following Dagger weapon skill's fTP were slightly lowered in March as well, albeit not as drastically as Rudra's Storm: Chacharoon's Cheers With the addition of Cheer effects, players who neglected participating in Monster Rearing jumped on a bandwagon together to catch up to get useful bonus effects. The nature of the cheers as key items disclosed all of their benefits up front instead of a guessing game on what each one did. Rank 1 and 2 effects were rather modest, but as time went on and more monsters and ranks were added the effects were enhanced. The sheer scope of bonuses ranging from experience bonuses, to combat skill gain rates, to trust bonuses, all the way to synthesis skill gain rates made Cheers attractive to nearly all adventurers. Even better yet, these bonuses could be changed at any time for a modest Shining Star fee. Survival Guides Pairing the new Survival Guides with the Unity warps, navigating all over Vana'diel was now a breeze. Adding Maps to vendors allowed new players a much easier time navigating around instead of first having to complete a quest. This change did improve the overall feel of how welcoming the game felt to newbies. Freshly Picked Vana'diel #14
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| Dec. 10th, 2014 | "Quadruple your Fun" Campaigns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Dates: 12/10/14 - 12/18/14 |
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| Dec. 11th, 2014 | Repeat Login Campaign #18 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cipher: Rughadjeen was added as unique item in this campaign, and it was the first opportunity to obtain him. Two more new items included the  Cait Sith Cap /+1 as well as  Star Sprinkles.
Month: December 2014
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| Dec. 18th, 2014 | Vana'diel New Year Campaigns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: December 18th to January 14th
This set of campaigns was the longest running campaign yet. This was the first time that the Double Unity Accolade Campaign was run. It was surprising how quick a campaign was introduced for such new content. |
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| Dec. 18th, 2014 | "Quadruple your Fun" Campaigns | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Dates: 12/10/14 - 12/18/14 |
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| Dec. 18th, 2014 |  au Easy Payment Campaign | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Beginning December 18th, a new payment service called "au Easy Payment" began to be accepted within Square-Enix accounts for Japanese customers as a form of recurring payment for Crysta.
A campaign for Japanese players was held from December 18th, 2014 - January 31st, 2015. Players who switched to this new form of payment and charged 1,000 yen for Crysta, setup a recurring payment, and are still using the recurring option by the end of the campaign were eligible. Additionally, customers who purchased 3,000 yen worth of crysta as a non recurring payment were also eligible. Finally, qualifying players had to enter on the official website after qualifying to be entered in the drawing. 5,000 Crysta was given away to 1,000 different players. |
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| Dec. 24th, 2014 | I Dream of Mog Bonanza 2015 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New to this Bonanza was the  Dense Cluster, the equivalent of the Cat's Eye for Empyrean Weapons. Around this time in the game's life,  H-P Bayld were rather rare to come by. The Bayld Crystal was a popular choice for Rank 1 winners.
Lockstyle item Marble sales were from December 24th until January 27th. Results were announced on February 19th. Note: See the I Dream of Mog Bonanza 2015 page for details on the event such as prizes and results. |
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stage unless the piece proved to be incredibly useful. The attraction of the base statistics on 
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