Summary:
My introduction to the “trust” system. Puttering around the Bastok area
without much direction, but a major breakthrough at the end as I find
the next mission. Helping Cid.
Building Trust
-Back in South Gustaberg, a Gelka named Clarion Star introduces me to “Trusts.” I’m definitely interested in that, since the Adventurer’s Primer made it sound like it’s a way to get a group while solo. AI group maybe.
-He tells me to go see someone I met before, Naji in the Metalworks. Will I get actual named NPCs in my Trust then? (EverQuest eventually instituted “mercenaries” to hire to help you out, but they were random.)
-I go to Naji, and he’s… well, not an unwilling participant in the trust, but he’s uncertain.
NAJI: “Let me be up front with you – I’ve got absolutely no idea how this works. They told me something about trust and friendship, but what exactly is that supposed to mean?”
-AHA!! This lets me summon an “alter-ego” of Naji. So that’s how the game will use named NPCs in the trust but explain it in lore if I meet others with Naji as a companion too.
-this is WEIRD AS FUCK.
-hahahah – Alter!Naji isn’t just a mindless automaton. He is enthusiastic about things Naji is himself enthusiastic about. Like, about being a guard and a soldier, and even spills the name of his crush, Ayame.
-I now have a new “Trust” magic to summon Naji. Let’s try it out.
-Went North Gustaberg to try him out, and… yup. He’s basically a party member. A warrior. That’s fucking AWESOME.
-I get the sense that the “trust” party I get depends on my city. That I get a specific Bastok trust party, and if I did this quest in San d’Oria or Windurst, I’d get an entirely different set of NPCs native to those lands.
-By the way, Clarion Star (the Gelka in charge of setting up trusts in Bastok) is dapper af.
-The next person I have to find an befriend for this is Ayame. Clarion Star tells me though that it’s not always easy. I might have to build a reputation before they’ll befriend me and allow me to summon their alter-egos.
-Where is Ayame, where is Ayame…? Did a wide scan across each map in Bastok and didn’t find her… never mind. Found her.
-Incidentally, she’s the woman that Naji has a crush on. So not only is the trust more than random NPC helpers – it likely has its own story and set of interactions.
-HER GEAR IS SO BADASS
-Okay. She says I need to have a bond with her to protect Bastok, a bond we don’t yet share. I’m guessing this means I have to do quests for Bastok.
-Cool! There was a higher platform to reach (and no jumping in this game), so couldn’t figure how to get up there. But then a geyser spouted and shot me to the higher level.
-Well… crap. The area I have to reach for this other quest is in section J-5, right past the high level goblins.
Guess I’m supposed to come back later. Much later.
-By the way, check out that map! It’s no wonder I got lost here when I didn’t have a map during my first visit. This place is a maze.
---
Bastok
-I turned in some quests, but that status meter in my profile isn’t moving at all. It’s been at the point I’m screenshotting now for a long time, despite the quests I’ve turned in.
Ayame still doesn’t trust me enough.
-I’m doing something wrong. So many of these quests in the town that are supposed to build my fame and reputation are not budging this meter, and yet I moved it already by about a quarter of the way through rank one. Not sure how.
Going to try those guard supply quests… gah. I talked to a guard, and the supply quest required me to go like a million miles away, and it seems like a bonus thing.
**a chunk of time passes futzing around in Bastok**
-AHA!! AH FUCKING HA
-I found another mission. Not just a “quest,” not an achievement, not a record of eminence, but another “mission.” Those were the kind of quests I thought way back when were the core story ones due to how rare they are.
---
Mission: A Geological Survey
-This next one is called “A Geological Survey.” This guard by the newbie quest giver told me to report to Cid.
-I think I’m on the right track now. I spent hours upon hours trying to solve some of these “quests” – much of which was just running across expansive zones and trying to discover what to do – and I’m more convinced than ever now that those are just side things.
Later edit: I found my played time, and I wasn’t wrong about “hours upon hours.” Current played time is 23 hours.
And the quests aren’t BAD or anything! They are nice little side-stories. Make someone a sandwich from a beast in Zone A. Find a lost necklace for someone under a sign in Zone B. That sort of thing. Often with more pathos than I expected from FFXI. But they still feel… meandering.
-Strangely enough, that’s the game I expected when I installed FFXI. Now though? The Adventuring Primer makes it seem like there are core stories to discover, and this feels like it. We’ll see.
Building Trust
-Back in South Gustaberg, a Gelka named Clarion Star introduces me to “Trusts.” I’m definitely interested in that, since the Adventurer’s Primer made it sound like it’s a way to get a group while solo. AI group maybe.
-He tells me to go see someone I met before, Naji in the Metalworks. Will I get actual named NPCs in my Trust then? (EverQuest eventually instituted “mercenaries” to hire to help you out, but they were random.)
-I go to Naji, and he’s… well, not an unwilling participant in the trust, but he’s uncertain.
NAJI: “Let me be up front with you – I’ve got absolutely no idea how this works. They told me something about trust and friendship, but what exactly is that supposed to mean?”
-AHA!! This lets me summon an “alter-ego” of Naji. So that’s how the game will use named NPCs in the trust but explain it in lore if I meet others with Naji as a companion too.
-this is WEIRD AS FUCK.
-hahahah – Alter!Naji isn’t just a mindless automaton. He is enthusiastic about things Naji is himself enthusiastic about. Like, about being a guard and a soldier, and even spills the name of his crush, Ayame.
-I now have a new “Trust” magic to summon Naji. Let’s try it out.
-Went North Gustaberg to try him out, and… yup. He’s basically a party member. A warrior. That’s fucking AWESOME.
-I get the sense that the “trust” party I get depends on my city. That I get a specific Bastok trust party, and if I did this quest in San d’Oria or Windurst, I’d get an entirely different set of NPCs native to those lands.
-By the way, Clarion Star (the Gelka in charge of setting up trusts in Bastok) is dapper af.
-The next person I have to find an befriend for this is Ayame. Clarion Star tells me though that it’s not always easy. I might have to build a reputation before they’ll befriend me and allow me to summon their alter-egos.
-Where is Ayame, where is Ayame…? Did a wide scan across each map in Bastok and didn’t find her… never mind. Found her.
-Incidentally, she’s the woman that Naji has a crush on. So not only is the trust more than random NPC helpers – it likely has its own story and set of interactions.
-HER GEAR IS SO BADASS
-Okay. She says I need to have a bond with her to protect Bastok, a bond we don’t yet share. I’m guessing this means I have to do quests for Bastok.
---
Building Fame
-Went around Bastok collecting even more quests, and will see if I can knock any out.
-However, I’m not going to fret TOO too much about this. If I can’t get Ayame to trust me, I’ll come back later.
-For one quest, I laid flowers on a monument to some dead miners at the top of Zegham Hill.
There was a name on that monument that was rubbed out partially: “Vig****t O**.” The questgiver notes this, but doesn’t tell me much. Hm.
-OH HELL YES!! I found a map vendor in the Bastok Markets who sold me a map of Dangruf Wadi. While I’m here, I also buy maps for the Zeruhn Mines and Palborough Mines.
-So I was thinking of moving on, but I really want to prioritize getting another Trust member. They seem like a massive power boost, and a massive power boost means a boost in what I can explore. Going to try questing around the Bastok region a bit.
---
Konschtat Highlands
-So it’s really hard to describe the sheer power boost I get from having Naji by my side. It’s a full on party member that hits harder than me.
-Best of all? He doesn’t split xp with me. I was SURE he would.
-The quests are… well, they’re getting pretty tedious tbh. One quest requires me to find treasure buried under one of the windmills in the Konschtat Highlands. Fine. Except… there are like a BILLION windmills! Across the zone! So I just have to run by every single one, target around to see if I pick up A Thing, and if I don’t, move on.
-lol yeah, I didn’t find it. Gave up. Maybe I’ll try again later.
-Got a few quests done. Going to head back to town and see if it’s enough. There’s a “rank” in my status profile that I’ve made some progress on, but I feel like it hasn’t moved noticeably in a while.
---
Dangruf Wadi
-Whoops! Forgot that I have a few quests here – and now that I have a trust, and a map, I want to try again.
-At the start here, I found one of those training things that gives me repeatable quests to kill stuff. However, it’s for level 11-14…
-WAIT WHAT THE FUCK
So there’s a list of quests are in order of increasing difficulty. One is to kill low level enemies, then slightly higher, and then just after the 11-14 quest, there’s one to kill enemies in the 86-90 range.
-Jesus. I have to be careful. This means at some point in Dangruf Wadi are super high level enemies.
-I took a few attempts at this quest to escort Ken, but it’s SUPER annoying. Ken is the whiny soldier who is in this area but doesn’t want my help. His sister told me to look out for him, so here I am. He’s doing his thing, exploring this place, but if I get too close to him he says “That’s it, I’m leaving!” and I have to restart the quest.
Tried it a few times, but giving up. Screw that quest.
Building Fame
-Went around Bastok collecting even more quests, and will see if I can knock any out.
-However, I’m not going to fret TOO too much about this. If I can’t get Ayame to trust me, I’ll come back later.
-For one quest, I laid flowers on a monument to some dead miners at the top of Zegham Hill.
There was a name on that monument that was rubbed out partially: “Vig****t O**.” The questgiver notes this, but doesn’t tell me much. Hm.
-OH HELL YES!! I found a map vendor in the Bastok Markets who sold me a map of Dangruf Wadi. While I’m here, I also buy maps for the Zeruhn Mines and Palborough Mines.
-So I was thinking of moving on, but I really want to prioritize getting another Trust member. They seem like a massive power boost, and a massive power boost means a boost in what I can explore. Going to try questing around the Bastok region a bit.
---
Konschtat Highlands
-So it’s really hard to describe the sheer power boost I get from having Naji by my side. It’s a full on party member that hits harder than me.
-Best of all? He doesn’t split xp with me. I was SURE he would.
-The quests are… well, they’re getting pretty tedious tbh. One quest requires me to find treasure buried under one of the windmills in the Konschtat Highlands. Fine. Except… there are like a BILLION windmills! Across the zone! So I just have to run by every single one, target around to see if I pick up A Thing, and if I don’t, move on.
-lol yeah, I didn’t find it. Gave up. Maybe I’ll try again later.
-Got a few quests done. Going to head back to town and see if it’s enough. There’s a “rank” in my status profile that I’ve made some progress on, but I feel like it hasn’t moved noticeably in a while.
---
Dangruf Wadi
-Whoops! Forgot that I have a few quests here – and now that I have a trust, and a map, I want to try again.
-At the start here, I found one of those training things that gives me repeatable quests to kill stuff. However, it’s for level 11-14…
-WAIT WHAT THE FUCK
So there’s a list of quests are in order of increasing difficulty. One is to kill low level enemies, then slightly higher, and then just after the 11-14 quest, there’s one to kill enemies in the 86-90 range.
-Jesus. I have to be careful. This means at some point in Dangruf Wadi are super high level enemies.
-I took a few attempts at this quest to escort Ken, but it’s SUPER annoying. Ken is the whiny soldier who is in this area but doesn’t want my help. His sister told me to look out for him, so here I am. He’s doing his thing, exploring this place, but if I get too close to him he says “That’s it, I’m leaving!” and I have to restart the quest.
Tried it a few times, but giving up. Screw that quest.
-Cool! There was a higher platform to reach (and no jumping in this game), so couldn’t figure how to get up there. But then a geyser spouted and shot me to the higher level.
-Well… crap. The area I have to reach for this other quest is in section J-5, right past the high level goblins.
Guess I’m supposed to come back later. Much later.
-By the way, check out that map! It’s no wonder I got lost here when I didn’t have a map during my first visit. This place is a maze.
---
Bastok
-I turned in some quests, but that status meter in my profile isn’t moving at all. It’s been at the point I’m screenshotting now for a long time, despite the quests I’ve turned in.
Ayame still doesn’t trust me enough.
-I’m doing something wrong. So many of these quests in the town that are supposed to build my fame and reputation are not budging this meter, and yet I moved it already by about a quarter of the way through rank one. Not sure how.
Going to try those guard supply quests… gah. I talked to a guard, and the supply quest required me to go like a million miles away, and it seems like a bonus thing.
**a chunk of time passes futzing around in Bastok**
-AHA!! AH FUCKING HA
-I found another mission. Not just a “quest,” not an achievement, not a record of eminence, but another “mission.” Those were the kind of quests I thought way back when were the core story ones due to how rare they are.
---
Mission: A Geological Survey
-This next one is called “A Geological Survey.” This guard by the newbie quest giver told me to report to Cid.
-I think I’m on the right track now. I spent hours upon hours trying to solve some of these “quests” – much of which was just running across expansive zones and trying to discover what to do – and I’m more convinced than ever now that those are just side things.
Later edit: I found my played time, and I wasn’t wrong about “hours upon hours.” Current played time is 23 hours.
And the quests aren’t BAD or anything! They are nice little side-stories. Make someone a sandwich from a beast in Zone A. Find a lost necklace for someone under a sign in Zone B. That sort of thing. Often with more pathos than I expected from FFXI. But they still feel… meandering.
-Strangely enough, that’s the game I expected when I installed FFXI. Now though? The Adventuring Primer makes it seem like there are core stories to discover, and this feels like it. We’ll see.
-Found Cid, and he continues to confirm my thoughts: “This is only your second mission, huh?”
-Cid has a Gelka assistant named Raibaht who I did a side quest for once. The Gelka are FFXI’s big ogre type dudes, who the humes seem to use as manual labor and exploit more often than not.
I bring that up now because Cid here treats Raibaht well, with respect. Raibaht himself says so, says that’s why he chooses to work for Cid. I LOVE this. Cid here is much closer to FFIV Cid than FFVII Cid. By which I mean, he’s not an exploitative asshole. (At least from this small bit I’m seeing now.)
-He tells me to take an acidity tester back over to Dangruf Wadi and find a place it changes color. The way Cid describes the place makes me think he’s talking about the geyser. Mostly because he talks about “gas pockets in the soil.”
-They geyser in Dangruf Wadi did it.
Wheee!!
It changed the acidity tester from blue to red in my “key items” inventory.
-Returned to Cid and he’s happy about this. Is he trying to weaponized this?
-Someone named Volker who looks AWESOME comes in. Friends with Cid.
-By the way. I don’t know a lot about the FFXI community, but I HAVE to imagine that somewhere out there is Cid/Volker art.
-Volker is captain of the Mythril Musketeers. (Musketeers seems to be a Bastok thing, since I think their guards are the Iron Musketeers.)
-NOW WE’RE COOKING!! My rank just went up to about the 2/3 mark for Rank 1. A massive jump.
That’s it then. It’s mission-based. I’ll bet when I hit Rank 2, Ayame will trust me.
-Cid says he’ll let the guard know I finished this mission. I head back to edge of Bastok Markets, to the guard who gave me this last mission. He has a new one waiting for me: “Fetichism.” I’ll do that next time.
-I don’t care if I’m repeating myself: I’m SO EXCITED. I was feeling a bit directionless, like I was just failing and failing hard to make any sort of non-trivial progress on quests, and now I have life.
---
Next time: the third mission.
-Cid has a Gelka assistant named Raibaht who I did a side quest for once. The Gelka are FFXI’s big ogre type dudes, who the humes seem to use as manual labor and exploit more often than not.
I bring that up now because Cid here treats Raibaht well, with respect. Raibaht himself says so, says that’s why he chooses to work for Cid. I LOVE this. Cid here is much closer to FFIV Cid than FFVII Cid. By which I mean, he’s not an exploitative asshole. (At least from this small bit I’m seeing now.)
-He tells me to take an acidity tester back over to Dangruf Wadi and find a place it changes color. The way Cid describes the place makes me think he’s talking about the geyser. Mostly because he talks about “gas pockets in the soil.”
-They geyser in Dangruf Wadi did it.
Wheee!!
It changed the acidity tester from blue to red in my “key items” inventory.
-Returned to Cid and he’s happy about this. Is he trying to weaponized this?
-Someone named Volker who looks AWESOME comes in. Friends with Cid.
-By the way. I don’t know a lot about the FFXI community, but I HAVE to imagine that somewhere out there is Cid/Volker art.
-Volker is captain of the Mythril Musketeers. (Musketeers seems to be a Bastok thing, since I think their guards are the Iron Musketeers.)
-NOW WE’RE COOKING!! My rank just went up to about the 2/3 mark for Rank 1. A massive jump.
That’s it then. It’s mission-based. I’ll bet when I hit Rank 2, Ayame will trust me.
-Cid says he’ll let the guard know I finished this mission. I head back to edge of Bastok Markets, to the guard who gave me this last mission. He has a new one waiting for me: “Fetichism.” I’ll do that next time.
-I don’t care if I’m repeating myself: I’m SO EXCITED. I was feeling a bit directionless, like I was just failing and failing hard to make any sort of non-trivial progress on quests, and now I have life.
---
Next time: the third mission.
