No more avoiding this

I've got so much content to catch up on now, I thought I'd start working through things systematically, because there's so many things to do now it can be quite daunting.

Today I thought I'd try starting with Voidwatch. I'd given this a go way back when you couldn't summon Trusts to fight with you, but now you can, and I can bring a full partay to join me!

So as PLD (still my only L99 job) I started with Windy, and picked up my Abyssite key item from Windurst Waters. I ensured I had a full compliment of Voidstones and headed out to West Sarurabaruta and went south to the cliff edge overlooking the ocean. I clicked on the Planar Rift and triggered the NM, Virvatuli, a corpselight mob, and engaged him.

This guy was no problem at all, particularly with five Trusts supporting me and we took him down without him doing anything of note. I got a chunk of Iron Ore or something as my reward, nothing special, but hey, I'm just trying to complete content. Next up was Pancimanci in West Sarutabarua (S).

This guy was a huge pink mandy mob, a BLM of sorts, so I thought I'd bring along a few stunner Trusts, like Fablinix and Zeid, but as with Virvatuli, this guy was to easy for an iLvl'd player with five Trusts. Pancimanci also went down very easily, and no special reward, but I had to log there for the evening. Tomorrow I'll try to find time to carry on with Voidwatch and see how long it takes me to get to Provenance Watcher.

What it all amounts to

Yesterday the update introduced the new mount system! This is quite a significant change to FFXI, bringing it in line with most other typical MMOs, which allow the player to summon a mount from a list at the touch of a button. For years FFXI has only allowed mounts through the chocobo rental system, or through the use of the Chocobo Whistle if you've reared a chocobo. Now, you can complete a quest to allow you to summon a mount of choice from your Abilities menu. In short, it's a lot more like FFXIV, for those who've played it.

After you've completed the quest, you can even trade the NPC your old Chocobo Whistle and it'll add your Chocobo to the list of summonable mounts too. I guess this means your Chocobo Whistle is redundant but I haven't thown it away yet... just in case!

First of all I apologise for my screenshots - they're a little stretched. I'm going to need to play around with my screenshot settings to try to fix this.

To start the quest, go to Upper Jeuno where the stables are. Outside in the yard, talk to Mapitoto, a Taru wearing a Chocobo hat. He'll send you out to Batallia Downs to pick up five bowls of Raptor Food around the map (they're marked on your map so you know where they are) within a ten minute time limit. Sounds easy, right?

You've also got a motivation bar (which affects speed) and a pep bar. As you run around the map, your motivation bar drops, making your mount run slower and slower. Once it becomes empty, you dismount, and you get the option to either try again, try again on an easier mode (this has no detrimental affect on your reward) or quit.

What I noticed was that if you run up a hill, you'll see a "!" symbol over your mount's head, which I think means its struggling, and the motivation bar drops quicker, so run round the hills. I also didn't pick this up from the quest (I had to find it on the FFXI forums), but the pep bar is for speed bursts. Once it's 50% or higher, you can /cheer and your motivation bar goes up and your pep bar completely empties. The more pep, the longer the burst of speed. This'll allow you to reach the Raptor Food easily.

Once you click on the Raptor Food (you need to be really close) it'll tell you how many you've got so far in your chat log. After you've got five, you'll need to run your mount to an NPC on the far western side of the map, where you'll have completed the challenge. She'll send you back to Upper Jeuno to complete the quest where you'll get your first mount, the raptor.

It's as fast as a rental chocobo, so purely cosmetic, but it paves the way for interesting and exotic mounts to collect!

Interlude

Yes I still play, and have done, on and off over the last two years since I last updated the blog.

Sadly, however, I've had several major computer crashes over that time too, and the end result is that I've lost a lot of FFXI images which I use as the basis for my reminders about what I've achieved, which means that unless I can find them on one of my backups somewhere, I don't even know if I can retrospectively add blog posts from the last two years.

In that time, Rhapsodies of Vana'diel (RoV) has been the biggest change - it's allowed us to use more Trusts when adventuring, increased things like XP gain, or reduced cooldowns on instances or key items which are required to partake in certain activities. I've progressed to the start of Chapter III of RoV, but I'm still sub-par in terms of gear, merits, job points and gifts, so I've got a long way to go to catch up to allow me to progress to the end of RoV solo. I don't really want to PUG these days, mainly because I don't have time, and I never see any of the old crew on the LS, which is a shame.

When I first started FFXI I was in my mid twenties, living at home with my parents, in a simple job which gave me lots of free time. Now, 11 years later, I'm in my mid thirties, married with a child, living in my own house, in a fantastic but demanding job, so my playing time now is extremely limited. If I get more than half an hour a day it's good!

So blog posts may be less frequent, or, contain less, but I'll keep playing FFXI until the servers go down.