Out Of The Loop - What Did I Miss?

Hi guyes.
So.
I've been out of the loop 100% for the last 3-4 years ish.
What did I miss?!
Before that I was out of the loop for around 3-4 years and I never really cought up, soo...

What is the game like now?
How has it changed since Adoulin released? I only got to play that for around a few weeks\months really.

Also what is the community like? Is Cerberus still alive, or did everybody move on to Asura? It doesn't seem like there's been a server merge?

Absolutely everything you have is probably irrelevant

All new kinds of endgame events, new areas, a whole new storyline, all new overpowered gear tiers. They have added so much stuff since adoulin.

If you're actually asking what would you do if you returned then that's another question, people can give you a list of ways to gear up solo and then events you would do to get more gear again.

It's actually really easy to get caught up gear wise solo even, you can do it in a few days to a few weeks alone.

Asura is the biggest server but all the others still exist, people usually just stick to their shells there.

SE refuses to merge servers due to offering discount server hops usually twice a year during anniversary events, meaning you'll probably have to pony up $8 or so on top of your sub fee if your server has suddenly turned JP ONRY over the years and you're not down with that. There's been like three different levels of power creep since SoA hit, the first being ilvl gear, then a basic 119 setup, and now ilvl 119 gear that's more like ilvl 125 in terms of stats and quality that usually comes from higher tier battlefields or the higher end content they've added in the last few years for RoV.

The first real order of business will be getting setup with ilvl 119 gear and doing RoV for all the wonderful things it does, and invest in Shantotto II Trust for about 300 login points since she should still be crazy strong as far as DD trusts are concerned. If you manage to find a group to play with and make it past the free trial, stuff like Ambuscade and possibly card farming will open up as new content to do, as well as Dyna-D and possibly some other content to get job gear up to ilvl 119. The endgame for now is mostly just people running Dyna-D to get their super weapons to ilvl 119 II or whatever, where they have even stronger effects, but it'll cost a pretty penny the last I heard, something like investing 125M to take them from regular ilvl 119 to the new current high based on the cost of drops and that's not including a win from the zone to actually be able to flag upgrading said weapons. Your Apoc is listed as 99 version at the moment, which means that you'll have to do like 60M worth of trade ins from a new currency type before you can do the Dyna-D step, but the final result is obscene compared to what you're wielding now https://www.ffxiah.com/item/21808/apocalypse

Just take it easy, you can solo most of RoV in ilvl 117 spark gear with trusts until the final boss, which benefits from a boost to early SoA ilvl 119 gear to beat the final boss due to the jump in health and attack trusts will gain, as well as yourself with magic evasion. If you're somehow addicted again and want to play SE's carrot on a stick, be prepared to learn how to farm either with Ambuscade or straight up doing Alexandrite farming with the reduced cool down for entries being like an hour instead of once a day or whatever it used to be. Dyna is long dead and botted by RMT to the point that base relics are about 20-30M depending on the server, so there's better ways to farm than that.

Mounts, inter-survival guide warps, inter-home point warps.

You can get around rediculouslly fast compared to when SoA came out.

Cerberus is really good at the moment, but you'll want to get into one of the LS. LagunasWarriors always have pearls in the concierges, and it's a good (re)starting point.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Returning_to_Vana%27diel
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Quickstart_1-119_Guide

Both good guides to brush up on.

Also, warp ring is the best item in the game, hands down, holla/Dem/mea rings might be number 2, only really need one of those three though.

They added a new event to the game called Merc. You will see shouts for it almost constantly depending on what server you play on. It's the most popular event to-date. You pay someone to play the game for you and you get anything you want.

Stay on Cerberus. Asura is a freaking cess pool of terrible players. Asura has the highest population, and therefore has the best economy and most items available, but doing anything in a group is horrible.

Cerb my be low on shouts, but the people on Cerb are 500x higher quality people. I'm speaking as a life-long Hades/Cerb player that jumped to Asura 6 months ago. Asura was great when I got here and I was just crafting away and buying all the things that aren't available on Cerb... but trying to actually play content with people is painful.

You have to know people.

I got into a linkshell and we kill everything pretty often and consistently.

If you are going to be in a social shell, then yes, you won't kill ***. But there are just as many (per capita) shitty players on Cerb than Asura. And there are just as many (per capita) good players on Asura than Cerb.

Asura gets shitted on because we have more players. And I don't blame you, but to say that your server has better quality players means you are so much out of touch and/or biased that you cannot make a honest comparison.

I have 3 just in case. There are occasional times I need to port to Mea for something and it's faster to port than book.

the new game loop works like this:
1. be a sucker and buy gil or be a douche and run a (or multiple) bots.
2. pay mercs the sucker fee.
3. repeat.

you'll going to love it.

If there aren't any pearls, Quilly or myself can get you one also. Plenty of nice people looking to do stuff and are in the same boat.

pay mercs for what?

to play the game for you.

Can get all the gear they used to merc from domain invasion now, only thing left really is job points.

No you can't. Nearly every BIS item is still Merced. Not sure which planet you're living on. Can you get these items from domain invasion:

Malignance set
Gere Ring
Cath Palug crown/Stone
Sacro bulwark/breastplate
Telos earring
Molybdosis
Tartarus platemail/vagary gear
Niqmaddu ring, regal hands (all of them), ilabrat, ammurapi shield, all the other omen only gear
Omen bodies (good luck)
Volte armor
Ambuscade weapons/armor

(I could go on)

Merc has been in the game since day1, not sure why you think that is something new, Buuukki.

Also if the feast of swords event is still on, make sure you get that helm. The only phoenix down in the game but its worth it because it comes in handy.

OP if you wait a week before signing up again, you can get an extra free 10 days because it's Return to Vanadiel time again.

I still say the real reason is they have no one left working on FFXI who would know how to do another merge.

I don't doubt this one bit.
I think I got Apocalypse and Ragnarok to ilvl 119 last time I jumped in, but I'm guessing everything else is completely useless.
-> inb4 even ilvl 119 relics are completely useless

After looking around a bit I honestly think the biggest wall for myself to return is having to learn the new "spellcast" and then remake all my gearsets etc.
I'd feel so terribly bad not doing that stuff that I'd not want to play, and idk if I wanna spend all the hours prepping that stuff only to get shitloads of new gear really fast and having to constantly change it :|


That sounds exactly like it was pre-adoulin, so I guess not much have changed ;)

I actually was looking for it but the walkthrough seemed like a pita.

I got a couple of green kupons i could use though

I hate to break it to you dude...

Best relics are those that cant get to 119.

119 is a curse.

Its a distorted way to say 11/9 (illuminati theory)

is my feeling for time that off or didn't they have a free campaign just a few months ago? they sneaking a out of order free campaign in due to corona?

I suppose they would've been completely useless due to complete lack of other gear anyways eh.

So..
FFXI Classic when? <_>

Don't listen to all these jaded ***, the game is still fun if it is treated as such. Login, find some pals, build gear sets, smash things. Relics still smash things just fine, ppl too focused on their 99k epeens too much here.

Yeah I figured :)
I'm pretty split on resubbing, like I really miss FFXI, but I'm 30 now and sadly I don't know if I can spare the free time I would end up feeling like I'd need to spend to get anything out of playing again.
I remember how much time this game eats up :|
All day every day from I was like 15 to 23-24.
And I have a very addictive mind, so it could probably easily happen again :P

Ozmosis on cerb regularly has 50+ people logged on every evening (American time). We regularly split into multiple groups for Omen and Dynamis, lots of Aeonic farming lately. There's plenty of stuff to do if playtime matches up for you.

Edit: We also have a very active discord server, if that's your type of thing.