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Tuesday 25 May 2010

Starting Out: San d'Oria (Part 1)

What to kill: 1-6
I’ll start out in San d’Oria as Elvaan THF, but I want a sword instead of the dagger this time around, so I start out as WAR to be given the starter weapon Onion Sword. Then I go to the MH and change job to THF.

So let’s first have a look at what San d’Oria has to offer. They got the Blacksmith Guild, Carpenter Guild, and the Tanner’s Guild. This isn’t overly helpful to us, but once you get a job lvl 10+ you can start Logging in Ghelsba Outpost (You enter Ghelsba Outpost at (E-4) in West Ronfaure.

Tunnel Worm
Earth crystal 500g
Flint stone 1,5k (sell fast because it is used for a fame quest)

Ding Bats
Wind crystal 400g
Bat wing 3k (sell fast, also used in a fame quest)

As you can see I am going for the Tunnel Worm and Ding Bat money making strategy. Ding Bats are only out at night time so just kill Tunnel Worms until you see some Ding Bats.

Lets head out to West Ronfaure, but don’t forget Signet. Talk to Aravoge, T.K. at (F-10) South San d’Oria for Signet.

At lvl 6 I had 2 and a half stack of Earth crystals, 2 Wind crystals, 1 Bat wing and 1 and a half stack of Flint stones. AH the full stacks and get ready to head out for King Ranpeer’s Tomb at (H-11) in East Ronfaure. Keep in mind that you wont have a map at this time so be careful not to get lost ^^

Wednesday 19 May 2010

Ekstra Starting Out: Windurst note

If you lvl the WHM (or BLM,RDM for that matter) as your first party job.
Do NOT buy spells on AH. Buy them from the spell shop in Port Windurst. You can also buy a wand or a staff there for hitting monsters with.
However spells like Protectra you’ll have to buy on AH unless you were lucky and it dropped from the Yagudo acalytes.

Tuesday 18 May 2010

Starting Out: Windurst (Part 2)

What to kill: lvl 7-10
Take your 1 Rarab Tail and head to Port Windurst G-5. Talk to Kohlo-Lakolo and chose “I was born to be in S.O.B” After their little meeting is done, trade the Rarab Tail to Kohlo-Lakolo. Tada! You can now equip the lvl 7 Justice Badge.

Refresh your signet before you head out again.
This time we will be killing Yagudos and Crawlers. You should be able to kill Easy prey and Decent challenge monsters. To check, target monster and alt+c. You can find them around H-10. If you die don’t worry about it, just view it as a new opportunity to cap out your skills before you lvl. If you d-lvl just go back to killing bees until you regain your lvl, chances are you’ll get more honey and wings for a stack anyways.

From the Yagudo we want, Wind crystals, Yagudo feather, Yagudo bead necklace,
You can also steal Beastcoins from them.
From the Crawlers we want, Earth crystals, Silk thread and Crawler Calculus.
The silk thread sell for 21000gil on my server so make sure you kill some Crawlers ^^

At lvl 10 I had 1 and a half stack of Wind crystals, 3 stacks of Yagudo feathers, 7 Yagudo necklaces, and half a stack of Beastcoins. 1 and a half stack of Earth crystals, almost a stack with Silk thread and 3 Crawler calculus.
Again AH the full stacks and put the rest in MH, if you have 3 Crawler calculus you can do the Creepy Crawlies quest for 600gil
Quest is at Illu Bohjaa, Windurst Woods (I-6)

Starting out: Windurst conclusion:

I got in 2500g this time around, but imagine if I had gotten a whole stack of silk threads ^^

Once I have gotten THF to 10 I will change to WHM and do the Starting out: Windurst part 1 and 2 again for another 8400g and most likely a whole stack of honey and silk thread for an additional 26000g(depending on your server’s prices of course.)

8400x2= 16800 + 26000 = 42800gil + some extra from NPC junk selling and the yagudos drop a little gil too. And depending on how much time you have on your hand, you can easily do this in one day.
42800gil is A LOT of gil for someone starting out in FFXI.

Monday 17 May 2010

Starting Out: Windurst (Part 1)


I have decided to start out in Windurst, because it is the least newbie friendly city out of the 3. It was also my favourite when I started out, but I was having a hard time there.

I hope I can help you out though, new to MMOs or not ^^

Let’s first have a look at the races and the benefits of starting in their assigned cities.
Mithra and Tarutaru that start in Windurst are given the Windurstian Ring: Mp+3 Agi+1 Int+1
Elvaan starting in San d’Oria are given the San d’Orian Ring: Def 2 Str+1 Mnd+1
Hume and Galka that start in Bastok are given the Bastokan Ring: Hp+3 Dex+1 Vit+1
You can start with any race in any city, but if you don’t start in their assigned city you wont be given the ring.

Mithras has high Agi and Dex making them good thiefs. Tarutaru got high MP and Int making them good Blackmages (or mages in general.)
Elvaan got high Str, Mnd and HP making them good Paladins and Whitemages, however they got low MP so keep that in mind.
Hume are the best balanced class, I guess you could see them as jack-of-all-trades race.Galkas have high Str and HP like the Elvaan, and they are considered the best melee/DD race.

Start out as a Thief (THF):
Let’s ask ourselves: What will I need playing FFXI? My answer is: Gil, equipment and means of travel. So why THF? Because you will get “treasure hunt” at 15, and the only way to get gil when starting out in FFXI is farming and selling loot.

With gil you buy equipment :p (or camp NMs but I wont be focusing on that.)

Transport in FFXI is Chocobo(lvl20), Airship(Rank 5 or pay 500,000gil), Teleport (by Whitemages(WHM), Warp (by Blackmages(BLM) and some ferry rides (about 100gil)
But the majority will be by Teleport, and you will most likely be paying for most of them.

So I will recommend, THF as a solo farming job, and change to WHM for your first party levelling job. So this is what I will focus on in the starting out tips and tricks for Windurstians.

First things first:
When first logging into FFXI you’ll get a random cutsceen that will give you a little insight on an event going on in the city (they all somewhat leads to a mission later in the game.)
Then you will be given an Adventurer Coupon to trade in for 50gil.

To find the person you are to give the coupon to open your menu and select MAP.
Once on the map, click on MARKERS, now this does not always show you anything. If the markers tab is empty click your right or left arrow button to flip the page until a name pops up. You should se a green dot on the map now, that is the person you are going to trade the coupon to.

Once at the NPC select him/her/it, and open your menu again and click TRADE. Put your coupon in one of the boxes and click ok. And there you have it, you should now have 60gil (woho…)

Get ready to go party:
So you want to go party do you? Well you wont be doing that just yet. First you need at least lvl 10 (I recommend lvl 13) and then you need equipment, spells and maps.
Lets go get some gil then shall we.

We’re going to start out by lvling our THF for loot. We could just run around killing things, but it would be a waste of time, and you wont have enough inventory space for it either.

What does Windurstians need that I the newbie can offer? Lets look at our map to see what Windurst has to offer. In Windurst Woods you can see the Boneworkers Guild, and the Weavers Guild.
In Port Windurst you can see the Fisherman’s Guild.
In Windurst Waters you will find the Culinarian’s Guild.
All those Guilds are FFXIs Crafts. To craft you need two things, crystals and items.
Crystals are easy money so that’s probably what you will be selling the most.

Lets head out and get some loot and crystals, but to get crystals to drop you need to get a Signet from an NPC. Go to Windurst Woods and head to Leviathan’s Gate (Location K-10 see picture.)


Talk to Harara, W.W. and pick the option “Would you cast a Signet on me?”
A crystal will show up in the upper left corner of the screen.
Now you are ready to go kill some monsters so head out the gate.

The first thing I will save up for is 2200 for all the windurst maps, except the Castle Oztroya one for 3000g because we wont be needing it for awhile.
Remember to equip your starter weapon before you start attacking anything.
Menu – Equipment – Weapon goes in the Main box, as a THF you will have an Onion knife.

What to kill: lvl 1-7
We will be killing Bumblebee until lvl 7, after that they pretty much stop dropping items. They drop Wind crystal, Honey and Incest wing. All of those sell for an ok price and at an ok rate. You can find Bumblebees at G/H-11/12 East Sarutabaruta.



To attack, target the Bumblebee hit enter and select Attack, it will auto attack so you don’t have to worry about doing anything at this time since you don’t have any skills. Once your weapon skill to lvl 5 you can use Wasp Sting with dagger when your TP is 100% or more. To open your Weapon Skill(WS) menu, hit Alt+W. Then at lvl 5 you’ll get the ability to steal, lets make a macro for it. Open your menu, flip it once (right or left arrow button) you should see MACROS. Select Book02 and Confirm. Fill it in like this:



(The big S in Steal is very important.) Now you can close the menu again. To use steal macro now hit Alt+1 and you will use the steal ability.

There will also drop chests. The blue chest contains temporary items that will disappear when you zone. The brown chests contains item you can have if you can guess the lock combination.

Once you hit lvl 7 you should have about 4 stack of wind crystals, almost 1 stack of honey and 1 and a half stack of Incest wings. AH the full stacks you have of those items and put the rest in you MH. Rarab tails you can sell to NPC(save 1 for a quest though) to get more money for AH fees, they wont sell on AH anyways. If you have gotten any Beastmen’s Seals I would strongly suggest saving them for later, stuff them in you MH.

Get items to sell a little faster on AH:
If you see the wind crystal sell for 700g a stack, put your up for 698 or 699, they will sell a little faster that way.

When I had sold all my stacks from killing the Bumblebees, I had earned 5900gil, and I was only lvl 7. I'm very happy with that ^^

Saturday 15 May 2010

Basic of the Basics. (FFXI)

I asked my sister what she thought was the hardest in FFXI when she first started out.
She mentioned: Macros, Controls, Auction house, gil and crafting.
Crafting and macros I will cover a little later cause starting out we don’t need to know about it yet.


Controls:
I have told you a bit about the controls already, but lets go through them again.
You will be using your Numpad for the most part.
Walking: 8 forward, 4 turn left, 6 turn right, 2 backward.
Insideview: To switch between inside and outside view hit 5.
Autowalk: While holding down 8 to move forward hit 7 and you can let go of the buttons for autowalk. Hit 7 again to stop.
Menu: You open the menu with – button on the numpad.
Rest: Hit * to sit down and recover your HP and MP.
Lockon: If you have a target while hitting * you will lockon that target. Hit * again to cancel.
Open and expand the chat window: Hit + to open the chat window, then hit enter if you want to expand it further. Use the arrow buttons to scroll. Close with ESC.
Target: Hit Tab to target, hit Tab again to switch between targets.
Target self: Hit F1 to target yourself. In party you can target the party members with F2 to F6
Zoom in/out: 9 zooms in, 3 zooms out.
Walk/run: To switch between walk and run hit the / button on the numpad.
Pic: The target get a arrow above their head, and a menu pops up (lower right corner). If you have Lockon activated the menu will have a red box round it saying >Locked<


Pic: To open your map, hit - button on the numpad to open the Menu, then select Map.

Auction house(AH):
All citys have a auction house. Here you can list your items or buy items from other players.
Find the AH on the map, it got something that looks like a judge’s hammer icon on it.
Select a auction counter, it does not matter if someone is already standing there. Click on it (Tab and Enter) and you’ll get up a little menu:

BID, this is where you can brows through the wears in the AH.
SELL, this is where you list your items for sale (you might want to brows in BID for the best price first.) You can list 7 items and they will be listed for up to a week (for a fee.) If your item sell, the gil will be sent to your Moghouse(MH) right away. If the item does not sell it will be returned to you in your MH. Lastly
SALES STATUS, this is where you can see the items you have up for sale. Grey items aren’t sold yet. Yellow items have been sold and can be clicked to remove them from the list so you can list new items. Red items have not been sold within the time limit and have been returned to you (Can also be clicked to remove from list.)

Gil:
How to make gil I will cover in my Starting out: City posts. I will start out with Windurst.

I hope it was helpful ^^ If you got any questions, feel free to send them to GamersNutshell[at]gmail.com

Final Fanatsy XI Online

The first MMO I will start out with is my all time favorite (so far) in the MMO world.
I have been playing Final Fantasy XI for about 5 years, it was my first ever MMO, but it have a sense of uniqueness about it that I haven’t found in any other MMO.

After playing the game for 5 years I can safely say that this game is not newbie friendly.
I didn’t know this when I started playing, cause I hadn’t played any other MMOs. To me it was this magical little place with all the nice and helpful peoples.

I first found FFXI while browsing the net for info on other Final Fantasy games. It was due to launch in North America in about a months time then, I got so exited about the thought of an online game, that I decided I had to play it. My only problem was that I live in Norway, and the game wasn’t going to launch in EU until a year after NA, there where no chance of me waiting for that, so I went ahead and imported a game from the states, resulting in me starting to play one month after NA launch.


Graphic:
When I first logged into the game I of course thought the graphic of FFXI was stunningly beautiful. I play FFXI on my computer and two laptops and the graphic is widely different on all of them. Compared to other games I have played (like Guild wars, RF online and Archlord) the graphic of FFXI is a bit grainy, but what I think is most important with FFXI is that it has a Final Fantasy feel to it (as a Final Fantasy fan) and FFXI pulls that off nicely.

Story:
The storyline takes place in the world of Vana’diel. 20 years past of when the story of when we start playing, there where a war between the playable races and the beastmen. The beastmen were guided by the Shadowlord, and they laid waste to beautiful towns and land.
But the people united and seized victory from the beastmen, and the Shadowlord disappeared.

But trouble is steering in Vana’diel once again. You’ll have the chance to play as one of the 5 races that inhabits Vana’diel. Mithra, Galka, Hume, Elvaan or the Tarutaru, and chose between 1 of 3 nations to start in (It can be changed) Windurst, where the Mithra and the Tarutaru lives. San d’Oria, where the Elvaan lives. Or Bastok, where the Hume and Galka lives.

You will be fighting against the beastmen (and the other nations) over control over the different regions, and of course – over the crystals ;)


Repetitiveness:
The thing with MMOs it that they tend to be repetitive, and FFXI is no exception, but unlike most other games I have played, FFXI is not based on doing quests, and the never-ending “go there kill x amount of monsters.” The important aspect of FFXI is the community. FFXI is hard to play in the sense that you can’t really find the info about the quest or mission you do IN the game, unless you maybe shout about it in town of course. I have found that best way to find info on FFXI while you play is to have two computers (or now with the windower you only need one.) and look up the info you need on FFXI encyclopedia.

Controls:
FFXI is very easy to use. It’s based on only using the keyboard (PC) and controller for the consoles. You walk with the numpad 8,4,6,2. Inside view with 5 ,and also autorun 7.
Rest with * and open the easy to use menu with -. FFXI also have macros that is easy to learn.

Overall:
The only bad thing I have to say about FFXI is that its low on solo content and it isn’t newbie friendly. I personally like it a lot, and I hope FFXIV will be even better. ^^

I give FFXI 4 out of 5.

Friday 14 May 2010

Gamer’s Nutshell’s Ranking System.

So I decided to have a ranking system for my blog, before I start with tips and tricks for a game I’ll be giving you my little review on the game, and tell you why I want to play it.
I’ll be ranking from 1 to 5. 5 being the best score I’ll give.

I look at:
Graphic: Though not overly important, I like the games I play to look somewhat ok.
Story: I love a good story that’s not too cliché.
Repetitiveness: MMOs are always repetitive, but I’ll be judging the amount of it.
Controls: How easy is the game to operate?

MMORPGs are games I like dedicate the free time in my life to, and for me to be willing to give that time the game have to offer something I want.

Tried and Tested Gaming Tips.


The purpose of this blog is to help you grow as a gamer. This includes guiding you to all the tips and tricks. I will focus on the casual and legal sides of games, and for the most part MMOs, pay- or free-to-play. By doing this I hope I can make you feel more motivated, energized, and passionate about the game you are playing.

Starting out a new game I know I haven’t always been very motivated until I found the “trick to the game.” I have never been the type for NM hunting, and hours of sitting around doing nothing but stare at the screen, ready to hit the button the second the NM spawns, is just not for me. So needless to say I wont be doing much of that.

I want to tell you how I do things when I’m starting out. How I fix the never ending questing for gold. How I get parties the fastest, Level crafts, and anything else game related. But most importantly, you aren’t here to struggle and suffer, you’re here to enjoy your game and have fun!