Final Fantasy XIV

Woo-hoo! Unless you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard this year’s E3 news, Final Fantasy XIV: Online is slated for release in 2010 (read: 2011 cause we know Square-Enix never releases anything on schedule).

I can’t help but feel a tad disappointed in the fact that this is basically an upgraded FF11 experience. I also abhor the fact that Square releases its Final Fantasy Online games in numerical sequence with the non-MMO variety. I think they should’ve stuck with the name Rapture or at least given it the name “Final Fantasy: Rapture” or something along those lines, but alas I digress!

I feel a renewed vigor to continue playing the game once the newer version comes out. My only qualm is that sadly I will be a full-time employee in the real world by then so who knows how much free time I’ll have to offer. I remember starting FF11 as a high school student when I was 15. Now, at 22, my free time is a lot less plentiful and the reality of the real world awaits.

Regardless, I hope to see all you guys on FF14 when it does come out. *excited*

In-game, I’ve been doing veryyy little. I’ve repurchased a bunch of gear that I’ve been needing in addition to getting around to finally uncursing my Zenith Pumps. I had the Aquarian Aburjuation: Feet for about two years now sitting in my mog, but I didn’t see a point to uncursing them since there are better foot pieces for BLM and RDM. My WHM isn’t high enough level to utilize Zenith Pumps, so honestly it was a waste of 700k. For those who don’t know, I’ve had someone attempt to craft me Zenith pumps twice resulting in {Full Break} BOTH TIMES (curse my luck). This time I went with the safe route and bought them off the AH. At least they look snazzy.

Else I’ve been running around figuring out how to continue soloing BLM. I apparently left my BLM off at LV65, so too high now to level off of Goblin’s Rarab in Bibiki Bay. I decided to forgo the hell-maze that is Movolpolis and move on to the Qiquirns in Adeewa Subteranne (spelling on all these places/mobs is my best guess).  The archers are indeed stupid and suffer horribly from RNG nerf so soloing them isn’t bad, if a little slow since I’m probably a level or two under what I should be. I’m making good use of this year’s Anniversary Ring.

So much has changed

Wow, I’ve been out of the loop for so long in regards to FFXI. So much has changed and honestly I think the game has made a turn for the better!

I don’t have much time now to explore the game and play around since I’m currently packing to move to Boston for the summer, but hopefully once I’m settled there I’ll have plenty of time to explore all the changes ingame and write some thoughts on ‘em.

All I’ve had time to do thus far was run around and start farming the En-spells II for my RDM. I have only Enwater II so far and I haven’t even had a chance to test it out. I need more timeeee.

5 hours 20 minutes of patching

I’m currently re-installing FFXI on my brand, spankin’ new laptop. ETA till done-ness is about 5 hours and 20 minutes. I see patching hasn’t improved in my few months AWOL.

More updates to follow, more likely than not.

FFXI Plans

Winter classes are back in swing, so we’ll see how much time I have to devote to FFXI at this point. I have some accomplishments I want to get done relatively soon:

1. Get DRK back to 37. I lost a lot of levels on it when my character was reset.
2. Finish Alchemy. I’m sitting at 98.6+2 right now. No reason not to finish this promptly.
3. Finish making gil so I can repurchase all my gear. I sold off all my gear when I quit.
4. Finish meriting RDM and BRD. I lost a lot of f’ing merits too. D:<
5. Finish leveling BLM. Sitting at 65 is fun and all, but 75 would be lovely sooner rather than later.

Optimistic goals seeing as I haven’t even logged in at all this week due to classes. We’ll see how far I get!

.DAT editing

For those who kept asking about .dat editing and what it is specifically there are a number of sites on the web that cater towards updating data models in the game with fan-made ones. For the most part this is harmless and easy to do. My resources page has a few links to rather good .dat sites.

FFXI Dats and MMO Xoops are two good sites to get dat files from. I’ll warn you the later has a lot of crazy Japanese hentai-esque stuff, so be careful, but the first is in English and has a lot of fun .dat models you can change your characters to.

TECHNICALLY dat editing is illegal according to Square, but I honestly see absolutely no harm in it if you just want to update the aesthetics of your character! Just a forewarning that it is against Square’s TOS, so use it at your own digression.

For those who aren’t sure how to update your dat files. Basically you’ll have to figure out what dat number corresponds to which specific piece of armor you want to update. Like if you wanted to update your character’s hair color you’d have to look for the specific dat that corresponds to your character’s face design. This can be done by finding the number in things like Model Viewer and then replacing the specific .dat with the edited one. Make sure to make a backup of the original and which folder it came from in case the custom dat isn’t what you were expecting. Obviously make sure you rename your edited dat to the same name as the one you want to replace and put it in the right folder.

Not so hard. So enjoy. :3