Playing FFXI on Nasomi

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A couple of members in the K&G Community insisted that I give Nasomi, the new(ish?) FF11 “community” server, a try. I thought it was pretty new, but looking around I think it has been here for a few years. I know that people are starting to talk about it more, and there’s a lot of buzz around the population growing with new players to almost 1000 people. Now, I’m one of them.

It took a lot of insisting for me to finally buckle and go through the rigorous installation process. The detailed instructions are 12 pages long. Having played FF11 when it very first came to NA, I can tell you it wasn’t very easy back then either. PlayOnline sucks.

I’ll skip the boring details of my epic installation adventure, and how it took hours to get my controller to work, and get right to the details.

My character is named Keen, and I’m a Red Mage. I decided on Red Mage because I like the idea of being good at lots of stuff. I know that RDM are decent combined with other classes — or I hope so. I’m probably going to do RDM combined with Summoner. Can people confirm that this is a good combination of classes?

FFXI is confusing. I come from the EverQuest era of MMORPGs, so I’m typically okay with little to no hand holding, but this is on a whole different level. Much of the confusion stems from the UI, which is designed to hide menus behind menus behind odd labels. Using a controller makes it seem less wonky (keyboard/mouse forget about it), but that’s just the controls. Finding things in-game confuses me. Knowing what to do in-game confuses me as well. I pretty much had no idea where to go or what to do.

Thankfully I’m playing alongside one of my friends. He is guiding me by the hand around all the places in town where I’m supposed to go. Otherwise, I think I might still be running around trying to find out how to leave the city.

I reached level 5 last night. Seems like leveling up is similar to EverQuest: Go out and kill stuff. I like that model! I like it even more when I’m in a group, which apparently starts around level 13. I’ll give it a shot until then and see what the game is supposed to feel like.

Anyone else playing? Anyone have FF11 advice? I’m going in pretty open-minded while hoping that find that MMO experience I crave.

  • I also just picked up FFXI for the first time in 10 years over this past weekend. I don’t have a friend to help me, so everything I’m learning is from research, stumbling upon it, or dim memory. I have a whole series of posts lined up about my experiences. Hope to see more of yours!

    I’m also playing Red Mage, since that’s pretty much always the class I started with in FFXI. *highfive* 🙂

  • Yay. Very glad to see decade old games are all that can interest us anymore. With not even a hint of over zealousness about some soon to be overhyped game that will be released “soon” and will surely be great! Man we have fallen so far. Meanwhile, my real world job leveling is very close to level, and a treasure chest. Still wondering why I ignored it for 2 decades but meh. It used to be fun actually. Hard to imagine now but I swear.

  • Summoner isn’t the best support job. it’s not terrible, at level 50 main with 25 smn subbed you get auto refresh (1mp/tick). You can get much more utility from other support jobs. Black mage has warp to homepoint, and sleepga (AoE sleep). White mage helps with better heals, and crag teleports. I’d have to say Ninja is one of the best red mage support jobs. You get shadows to absorb damage these gain cooldowns from red mages job trait (fast cast).

  • I see you only made it to 10RDM, and you only played from 4/16 through 4/23. I hope you managed to get a server shell at some point, it makes a difference. If you decide to rejoin us, we’re here ^.^