Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Final Fantasy 11
I got into Final Fantasy 11 a couple of months ago, and I’ve been playing it almost every day since. I’ve made a lot of progress in that time, but there are some things that I wish I knew before starting that would have helped me get even further and make the most out of my subscription. While I did find out about them eventually thanks to some helpful guides, I wish I’d gone into the game knowing about them to begin with. So I decided to make my own guide in the hopes that it will help newcomers get their footing a little easier. If you’re also thinking about getting into Final Fantasy 11, then here are five things you should know.
#1 Maps, Home Points, Survival Guides and Unity Warp
Travelling in Final Fantasy 11 takes a very long time. Once you reach Level 20, you’ll be able to get a Mount but it can’t be used in some areas and moving around is still pretty slow even with it. Fortunately, there are various methods of Fast Travel you can use to reduce your travel time. The first of these is Home Points. These are big blue crystals you can set as your respawn point after death and travel between for a certain amount of gil. However, you can only use them after you’ve interacted with them once. The same goes for Survival Guides, which are more scarce but also allow you to teleport between them for gil or ‘Tabs’ you get from completing Fields of Valor Regimes. While you’re travelling around, make sure to interact with any Home Points or Survival Guides you see so you can teleport to them later. You can see Home Points and Survival Guides on any maps you have, so it helps to buy maps for places you plan to travel to in advance.
Another way of getting around that isn’t mentioned as often as Home Points or Survival Guides is Unity Warp. Once you have completed ten Records of Eminence Quests(I’ll go over these later), you can talk to a Unity Concord NPC to join a Unity. This is kind of like a Clan where you complete quests for your Unity Leader to earn rewards and increase your Unity’s ranking. It doesn’t matter all that much which you join, but once you’re in one, go into your Records of Eminence menu and start accepting Unity quests. Completing these will earn you Unity Accolades which can be spent on a variety of rewards including Unity Warp. These are meant to be used to teleport you quickly to areas where ‘Wanted’ monsters appear for you to slay for your Unity, but there’s nothing stopping you from using it to get to far away areas quickly for other reasons. If there’s an area you need to go to that is a long distance away, chances are you can Unity Warp there. You can do this by talking to a Unity Concord NPC and selecting “Bring me to a Wanted Encounter Area”.
#2 Trusts
Something you’ll quickly notice is that as you get further away from your starting nation, enemies will get steadily tougher. Eventually taking down even the weakest enemies on your own can seem like a monumental and almost impossible task. In the game’s early days, players were forced to party up to stand a chance, but a 2014 update added a new system that makes soloing the game way easier: Trusts. Trusts are basically AI-controlled companions you can summon to help you in battle. They don’t completely fill the void left by other players but they are still extremely useful and make much of the game possible to complete without help.
To get your first few Trusts, you can complete a quest in your starting nation offered by one of these NPC’s. This will get you your first Trust. Once that’s done, open your Records of Eminence menu by pressing ’-’ and then selecting “Quests -> Records of Eminence”. Choose the “Tutorial -> Basics” category and if you haven’t completed the “First Step Forward” quest, activate that one and talk to one of the following NPC’s. Go into the same Records of Eminence section again, activate the quest called “Call Forth an Alter Ego” and summon a Trust outside your starting nation. You can do this by opening the action menu with the “Enter” key and selecting the “Trust” option. This will earn you an item called a “Cipher”. Go back to the NPC that gave you the first quest and trade it to them and you will get a new Trust. Go back into the RoE menu once again and activate the new quest that starts with “Alter Ego”. Go outside your starting nation and summon the Trust you just earned like you did with your first one. This will complete the quest and earn you another Cipher. Keep doing this until you run out of “Alter Ego” quests and you should now have a variety of Trusts to use.
#3 Inventory Expansion
One thing you’ll quickly notice while playing is that your inventory fills up really fast. Equipment takes up space in your inventory even while equipped and most monsters drop 1 or 2 items upon death. You only start with 30 spaces in your inventory which isn’t much at all so increasing your inventory capacity should be one of your main priorities. First you need to get to Jeuno. You can try using Unity Warp to get closer to it from your starting city but it’ll be a long and perilous journey regardless. Once you make it there, you’ll want to head to Lower Jeuno and talk to Bluffnix inside Muckvix’s Junk Shop. So long as you’ve done a few quests, he should offer to increase your inventory’s capacity by 5 if you bring him four different materials.
Usually these materials would be quite time-consuming and difficult to obtain, but fortunately you can obtain all of them through the Auction House, one of which is at the opposite end of Lower Jeuno from Bluffnix. The Auction House is a marketplace that allows players to buy and sell items from each other for gil. In most cases, the items you need will be sold there. If not, you can try again another day or find some other way to get the item. But usually, you should be able to get everything you need. However, buying these items will require a sizeable amount of gil, which brings me to my next tip.
#4 Sparks of Eminence and Making Gil
In FFXI, everything costs gil, the game’s main currency. Unlike other games, it can be quite difficult to obtain. You can sell materials and items you get from monsters but this usually won’t amount to much until later levels and areas. Some quests give a decent amount of gil but they will usually be too time-consuming or difficult if you need gil desperately for something like inventory expansion. Fortunately, there’s a reliable and easy way to earn gil if you’re new to the game. As you may have noticed, I’ve mentioned something called ‘Records of Eminence’ a few times throughout this article. These are special quests where you are tasked to complete a certain objective, such as killing a certain amount of enemies in a certain area, earning a certain amount of EXP or completing certain story quests. You can complete most of these just by playing the game and grinding so you should make sure you have as many as possible activated at all times. You can activate them by going into your main menu with the ‘-’ key and selection “Quests” then going to the Records of Eminence section.
Completing these Records of Eminence rewards you with “Sparks of Eminence”. These can be spent on a variety of things such as Equipment at certain NPC’s. There’s one particular item in the “Level 71–98” category called an “Acheron Shield”. This item will give you the most bang for your buck if you sell it, around 20,000 gil a piece. Once you’ve accrued enough Sparks of Eminence, I recommend using them on Acheron Shields and selling them to increase your gil. This is how I managed to afford the materials from the Auction House that are needed to expand your inventory.
#5 Signet, Rings and Maximising EXP
Before you go rushing out to fight monsters and gain EXP, there are various things you can do to improve the amount of EXP you get. By the exits to your starting city, there will be special NPC’s called “Conquest Overseers”. Whenever you leave your starting city, you should ask them to cast ‘Signet’ on you. This is a status effect that gives you a special currency called “Conquest Points” when you defeat enemies that give you EXP. Conquest Points can be spent on various rewards at a Conquest Overseer depending on your Rank in your Home Nation. However, the first two things you’ll want to get once you have enough Conquest Points are a Warp Ring and any one of the following Bands: Chariot Band, Empress Band and Emperor Band.
The Warp Ring is an extremely useful item that makes travelling around even easier. It allows you to teleport back to whichever Home Point you have set as your spawn once every 10 minutes. I recommend setting your spawn to a Home Point that’s also near a Survival Guide and in your Home Nation if possible. This increases your avenues of travel and allows you to quickly take care of any business you have in your Home Nation such as getting Signet again or starting a Nation Mission. The three Bands listed above increase your EXP gain by a sizeable amount when you equip and then use them, so I highly recommend getting at least one before you start grinding. These bands only have a certain number of charges, so make sure to trade them to a Conquest Overseer every now and then to recharge them. You can also get items such as the Echad Ring or Trusts such as Kupofried that increase your EXP even further from events, so keep an eye out for those as well.
