Quest: The Truth Beckons (Abyssea)
-A man in Jeuno, Joachim, heard a “noise” coming from a cavernous maw and asks me to explore it. I thought we were done with the past and Atomos, but nope!
-HOLY TIMERS, BATMAN!! I have only 60 minutes in this place? [Later edit: this turned out to not be a problem. I had plenty of ways to re-up my time.]
-Abyssea is another dimension. Another version of Vana’diel.
-Ayame is here! She tells me that Bastok is wrecked, and she’s a resistance captain.
Theory: this is one of the Lilith-style dimensions where the Shadow Lord defeated the Allied Forces. Maybe even the actual Lilith’s dimension – would be sweet to see Lilisette here.
Beneath the bloody Abyssean sky.
-I return to Joachim. Turns out that he’s an Abyssea native.
“The once-blue sky turned a blood-red, an’ the saviors we’d prayed fer were all felled, one after the other.” Very sudden. Sounds different from the Shadow Lord after all.
He wants my help saving his world from whatever caused this swarm of monsters.
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Quest: Dawn of Death (Abyssea)
-When I go back to the Cavernous Maw, a new woman – Norrah – approaches. She’s from Abyssea, and wants my help taking down a Peiste in Konschtat Highlands.
-I wandered Abyssea a bit aimlessly. There are some quests, but it took talking to friends in game and reading the wiki to really grasp what the hell I’m supposed to do.
1) There are no story missions, but there are nine Abyssea zones with big zone bosses I have to kill for the story.
2) I spawn zone bosses by killing NM (notorious monsters) for drops and turning those items in.
3) Big Abyssea monsters drop stuff when you “trigger” them. This took me a lot of questions and Wiki reading to grasp. If you’re interested in this mechanic:
http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Weakness_Trigg...
The gist: player skills – magic or weapon skills – trigger the enemies in different ways that stun them or force them to drop key items. The thing that triggers an enemy is semi-random. You need a dedicated party to test different things and trigger them.
Like many FFXI mechanics, in my opinion it's more complicated than it needs to be. By a lot. I know some people love it, but... yeah, things like this make me excited for FFXIV to be honest.
I’d heard a bit about this before, and at this point would consider skipping Abyssea altogether since I’m often solo, but my linkshell mates are super awesome and agreed to help me party up through the different triggers.
-Whenever I reach a new Abyssea Maw, another Abyssean citizen comes up and asks me to take down a zone boss. The bosses are giants and sea creatures and all manner of nasties.
A world dominated by monsters.
-Killing the zone bosses is a long and boring process.
I run around the zones hunting down rare drops to spawn a boss, hoping that boss drops a key item to summon another boss, which may drop a key item to summon the zone boss.
-After many hours and a full night’s worth of help from my linkshell-mates, the zone bosses all go down.
-I return to Joachim. He wants me to meet someone in La Theine Plateau.
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Mission: Rumors from the West (Seekers of Adoulin)
-Enough Abyssea for now. I’m ready to start the next expansion: Seekers of Adoulin.
-Jeuno has started “a pioneering initiative in the land of the setting sun.”
-They test my adventuring by making me travel to a geomagnetic font in a nearby dungeon.
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Mission: The Geomagnetron (Seekers of Adoulin)
-I complete this in Dangruf Wadi. My reward is a permanent geomagnetron and a permit that lets me warp to Adoulin. Yay for no boat!
-The geomagnetron will let me warp between many points in Adoulin. Nice quality of life improvement.
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Mission: Onward to Adoulin (Seekers of Adoulin)
-I teleport to Ceizak Battlegrounds, a wooded area.
-A kid screams nearby, under attack by plants. A floating golden spirit called a Heartwood stops me from helping her.
“(This child has violated the sacred pact. She must be punished!)”
A woman charges to the rescue, sword and magic at the ready!
People can’t travel here without the blessing of spirits. That’s the pact the kid broke, but surely that doesn’t mean death. That’s why we have to save frigging Wesley Crusher over here. She explored here without the spirits' permission.
-We scare the things away.
-This woman is great. She shoos away the Heartwings, (relatively) unconcerned. She’s Arciela. The kid is Tiana.
-Only certified pioneers can walk in these woods, so she urges me to head to town. That’s my path.
-She wants me to become a pioneer! Good. I was afraid this was gonna be some colonial bullshit for a second.
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Mission: Heartwings and the Kindhearted (Seekers of Adoulin)
-A montage greets me in the city of Adoulin. A stony, quasi-medieval city.
-A woman urges me to join the Pioneers’ Coalition to help make Adoulin safer, more habitable.
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Mission: Pioneer Registration (Seekers of Adoulin)
-A talkative dude named Brenton registers me as a pioneer and introduces the city/continent.
-The jungle to the west is Eastern Ulbuka.
-There are six coalitions. The Pioneers’ Coalition, the Couriers’, the Inventors’, the Scouts’, the Peacekeepers’, and the Mummers’. Each has a role in the city. The Peacekeepers are guards, the Mummers provide entertainment, etc.
-I can do a limited number of tasks per day for my choice of coalitions, depending on the kind of task I want to do.
-The main currency here is “Bayld,” a type of local moss.
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Questing Around (Seekers of Adoulin)
-I can’t progress the story until I raise my Adoulin “fame,” so I raise this by clearing a ton of smaller local quests.
-One hilarious quest allows me to join a kid’s coalition: Fantastic Adoulin Imperial Liberators. The FAIL Brigade.
-Adoulin started with a king, but now a council of ministers rules.
-Found the main geomancer, one of the expansion’s two new jobs along with Rune Fencer. Geomancers focus on riding a current of balance in the land.
“We call that current the ‘lifestream.’” I see what you did there.
-I really like the new “Reive” mechanic in “Seekers of Adoulin.” They’re a type of new public quest that spawns at a location, and whoever’s nearby can participate in taking down the enemies.
-This is the first expansion in FFXI where I’m playing at the current level. The zone is at least a little bit populated – and thankfully not to the point where I compete for monsters.
-One of my favorite quests involves a Mithra pioneer hunting a ghost. It turns out that the ghost is her former mentor. After we defeat the ghost, we see her flashback of when she died. Fading, dying, regretting not being able to talk to her friend.
And then a spirit approaches the dying woman.
???: “This will make an excellent specimen. I know what you desire. And I may yet grant it to you.”
Until I hear otherwise, I’m calling this a ‘sperm demon.’
She makes a pact with this thing to come back from the dead. It backfires – she comes back as a monster.
-She begs her friend to never go further into the woods. Something is there. And then she fades away.
If you think this’ll deter a Mithra from pushing on, you haven’t played FFXI.
“You didn’t think a lost parrradise was waiting for us, did you!? I don’t care if we’re greeted by the flames of hell themselves. We’ve got a task to do, and we’re going to do it.”
-This is a common theme in the quests I do. Something lurking deeper in the woods. A Big Bad probably.. I predict that the Big Bad is some ancient spirit native to Adoulin that the pioneers accidentally unearth.
-There are some kind of political shenanigans afoot here. The Peacekeepers and the Ulbuka Wardens oppose to the pioneering efforts. They think it brings “riff-raff” into their town.
-Digging the outdoorsy theme of Adoulin. Parts of the different zones require me to cross water, climb mountains, clear debris from a path, etc.
Nothing says “rugged pioneer” like an inflatable boat.
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Mission: Life on the Frontier (Seekers of Adoulin)
-FINALLY got my fame up high enough to progress on the story.
-Due to my reputation, the Adoulin cabinet has invited me to dinner.
-I hear about “Naakuals,” major boss-level monsters on the frontier. Rumor is that someone is pulling their strings to slow the pioneering effort.
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Next time: Meeting a mysterious figure in Abyssea. Meeting the Adoulin leadership in the castle.
